Guardian eCommerce - Key E-Commerce News & Tips

Growth in Online Advertising Slacking Off

2009-04-29T16:18:00.002-04:00

There's good news and bad news in the latest Internet Advertising Revenue Report, newly released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The good news is that Internet advertising revenues in the U.S. are still growing, topping US$23 billion in 2008. The bad news: That growth appears to be flattening. Indeed, it did not take this report to alert the industry that growth in this once hot category has been on a downward slope recently.

"The ad buys on our site are in line with the IAB's findings," said Brian Gluckman, manager of media relations for AutoTrader.com. "The growth in purchases here by both dealers and manufacturers has flattened from years past, though it's certainly not stopped entirely," he said. "In these times, some advertising makes more sense and other advertising makes less," Edmunds.com CEO Jeremy Anwyl said. He noted that Edmunds.com -- whose audience is a very focused group of car shoppers -- is experiencing growth in ad sales, "but I'd imagine a media outlet that serves a more general audience has a tougher sale to make these days."

To be sure, 2008 was a year of economic anomaly -- the financial system equivalent of the 100-year flood. The fact that Internet advertising topped 2007's total of $21.2 billion -- a record year -- by 10.6 percent is significant. Still, 10.6 percent is the smallest yearly increase for the industry since 2002. In year-over-year growth, 2007 topped 2006 by 26 percent.

One reason for the slowdown, of course, is that the four main verticals that use Internet advertising have been severely impacted by the recession. The top sectors to advertise online in 2008 -- as in 2007 -- were retail, financial services, computing and automotive, the report found.

Notably, consumer packaged goods increased its share of total Internet ad revenues in 2008 by 60 percent over 2007, the report said. Online ad growth "is flattening for the same reason as all else -- the economy," Tracy Tuten, associate professor of marketing at Longwood University and author of Advertising 2.0: Social Media Marketing in a Web 2.0 World.

"Ad budgets are tightening overall, and this is causing the flatter growth curve," she said. "Still, things will not become too dire for online advertising because of the efficiency of buys in the online space, and because of the measurement and accountability benefits."

There is another story hidden in these numbers that bodes better for the online advertising space. Online ad buys are making up a much greater percentage share of advertisers' budgets, noted AutoTrader.com's Gluckman, with big cuts coming from traditional print mediums. "Auto dealers and manufacturers are still spending some on TV, but more for brand-awareness campaigns," he said.

"My opinion is that the report gives a high-level snapshot of what is happening -- but to get the true story, you have to dig deeper," Anand Subramanian, CEO of ContextWeb and the operator of the ad exchange Adsdaq, said.

"If you look specifically at growth for targeted advertising versus run of network or run of site, it's a different picture. What we're seeing is that targeted advertising, be it contextual or behavioral or geographical, is actually going up," Subramanian said, "and untargeted buys, like run of network [or] run of site, are coming down. This blended effect is what's reflected in the IAB report."

This is further evidenced by Google's data, which shows advertisers continuing to spend on search and contextual advertising, he said. Untargeted vendors, like ValueClick or AdNetworks, are seeing a downward trend. It was inevitable that online advertising growth would slow, Ray Lyle, principal at Driving Revenue, said.

"Don't worry," he remarked. "With the newspapers and magazines dropping by the dozens, expect online advertising to continue to grow for the foreseeable future."

Get The Guardian eCommerce Privacy Seal.

Innovation in a World of E-Commerce Woe

2009-04-29T16:12:00.003-04:00

It's been nearly a decade since the Internet bubble burst in 2001, and the intervening years have seen the rise of powerhouse companies such as Google, MySpace and Facebook, which have helped broaden the scope of what was once referred to as the "Information Superhighway."

The Internet was once limited primarily to email communication, file transfers and other rather mundane purposes. It's now evolved into a global social gathering place with as many diversions as the local mall, multiplex and fairgrounds combined. Users turn to the Web to read and post news and opinions on a smorgasbord of topics from politics to food.

However, as the impact of an ongoing global economic crises continues, is the outlook for online businesses and services as rosy as it has been for the past eight years? The world -- both online and off -- is still coming to grips with the economic downturn that hit full force in September 2008.

Disappointing fourth-quarter figures that saw ad sales increase less than one-half of a percent have lowered expectations for online ads over the rest of 2009.
"When we ran the numbers for Q4, we were pretty shocked, because it was much worse than we thought it would be," Karsten Weide, an IDC analyst, said. "Overall growth in Q4 year-on-year was just 0.4 percent. It was essentially flat, and the only reason why it was still at least a little bit of growth was because search grew by 10 percent. But display [advertising] declined by 7 percent, and classifieds dropped by 18 percent."

The first quarter of 2009 will not see much improvement for online advertisers, according to Weide. "We think that the search growth rate will still go down to 8 percent, display will be worse than last quarter, and classifieds will be as bad -- maybe a little better -- with a big loss but not quite as much. If you count these all together, we think the bottom line is that online advertising may decline this quarter by as much as 4.8 percent," he explained.

That would make this the first time since the bubble in which the segment will see losses for the second quarter in a row, Weide observed. Sales will likely hit the bottom around the middle of 2009, he said.

The economy is unlikely to recover with the same speed that it tanked, in Weide's view. "We think it's not going to be a U-curve, recovering as quickly as it went down. We expect a long, protracted recovery phase with growth starting again in 2010."

Companies whose advertising formats or venues are still considered experimental will take the biggest hit, according to Weide. "That includes social networks, even though they made US$50 million dollars last year."

Google is in a good position. Because the company focuses primarily on search, it is insulated somewhat from the turmoil. Microsoft and Yahoo have seen ad sales decline, but their display businesses have not been as deeply impacted as those of other, smaller companies.

Given that advertising is the bread and butter of a wide array of online businesses and services, the loss of revenue could have a significant impact on what companies will be able to do in terms of developing new technologies and business models.

Despite the loss of advertising revenue, smart companies will invest even more in research and development, according to Weide. "It should prompt them to spend even more money on research. You need to explore the market segments that are just coming online, like online video -- and mobile, to some extent. Plus, you need to put money into technologies that make your advertising offer more attractive to advertisers," he said. "We're talking performance advertising here: behavioral targeting, semantic targeting, social advertising and things of that nature and things that have a service quality to them -- media planning, integrated dashboards, in-gaming and possibly creative services as well."

Despite concerns about user privacy, behavioral targeting, semantic targeting, and advertising on social networks are very promising fields. "There's a lot of pressure on marketers to deliver online for the same money or less money for advertisers," Weide said. "Yahoo is the big guy, and [there are] a number of small players like Q Interactive.

The biggest risk there is privacy concerns, and most of them are not evil," Weide said. In a few years, it is possible that advertisers will have come up with multiple new methods of reaching consumers, all designed to offer up ads that are the most relevant for them based on location and other demographics.

When it comes to search engines, there are a number of technologies from larger and smaller companies that could still shine despite the tough economic conditions, Susan Feldman, an IDC analyst, said. "When I looked at Kumo from Microsoft Live, I thought 'Oh, yeah.' We're beginning to see inklings of what they're going to do -- some of the stuff that Yahoo is doing and Google is starting to copy with drop-down, type-ahead suggestions to related queries," she noted.

Older search utilities could also benefit. For example, Clusty, a clustering search engine from software maker Vivisimo that's been around for years, is one alternative to a traditional search engine.

"You have to have a way of describing very succinctly what you are looking for, and sometimes you just don't know how to do that. You know it when you see it. StumbleUpon is getting there, but is still not exactly what you need," she explained.

MrTaggy, an experimental site developed by the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) uses metadata to help users find what they're searching for. "MrTaggy has all kinds of information. The keyword search is a tool, but not one I want to use all the time," Feldman pointed out.

For example, when Feldman was preparing to give a speech on innovation, a keyword search for serendipity, innovation, industry, etc., did not yield the results she sought. However, when she put the term into MrTaggy, the application returned the phrase "Ah ha moment."

"That is what I should have been searching for, and there has been a lot written on it," Feldman said. "I wouldn't have found it. That's the kind of thing we need so we can explore things that are tangential. All of those are coming to market. Just today, Endeca released a new platform called "McKinley," which is different way of introducing people to what is going on in the world."

Netbase has created a technology that moves beyond traditional keyword search and instead uses advanced linguistics to read every sentence of documents and extract rich information and relationships. It then organizes that data into meaningful categories for researchers.

"Suppose you're a medical researcher and you want to find causes of a particular type of tumor. Netbase has indexed Medline and returned relevant results that would take days to find in 10 seconds, including drugs that have an effect [and] genes that are related to a particular condition," she said.

This next generation of search goes beyond simple words and looks at the relationships between various words and the ideas they represent. It will pull out information in a way that can help users shorten the time they spend looking for what they want to know.

"The semantic Web is nothing compared to what these guys are doing," Feldman said. "This is using text analytics. This is what the semantic Web ought to be and should be. It will be amazing."

The mobile Internet continues to be a major source of innovation, as existing and emerging companies seek new ways to bring an ever-expanding mass of content onto smartphones and other handheld devices. On the other end of the spectrum are the huge in-home systems like home entertainment centers, which are also being built with Web-facing features. The drive for building Web access into multiple devices will feed the ongoing demand for video content online.

"Individual access to the Web is probably the biggest change we've seen in the last 10 years. It will continue to push innovation because you need more content available for more devices, which means more opportunity for services in the cloud and greater importance placed on things like storage on a device," Joshua Martin, a Yankee Group analyst, said.

As video content moves online and broadband moves into the living room, look for a migration away from traditional cable and satellite subscriptions. "This is going to be earth-shattering, because the Internet is no longer restricted to the computer for the mass market. Now that the average Joe Consumer will be able to do that, it will really change the game," Martin noted.

However, an old hiccup remains for online video companies: how to monetize the business model. Even though owners have worked in advertising models to a certain degree, the rise of user-generated content on sites such as YouTube More about YouTube has generally not resulted in great amounts of revenue. Fans of these sites may soon find themselves paying a subscription fee to check out the latest antics of Joe Schmoe.

"It is probably harder now more than ever for companies to develop ways to monetize their content, particularly with the advent of user-generated content that is becoming increasingly compelling. With so many options for people, it will be interesting to see what happens," Martin said.

Sports is one entertainment genre that enjoys a great deal of attention. For example, online viewers may soon be able to view each hole of a major golf tournament, Martin said. Recently, college basketball buffs were able to watch NCAA playoff games online, and advertisers bought sponsorships.

However, tangles still remain. Professional football will likely be one of the last sports to come online, given the exclusive contract the National Football League signed with DirecTV for its NFL Sunday Ticket offering. Once that contract expires, the organization may head online.

In terms of movies and TV shows, Netflix continues to be a leader in online video content and is an example of the kind of innovation other companies should pursue, Martin said. The company has launched numerous partnerships with hardware makers that allow Netflix subscribers who own devices like Xboxes and TiVos to stream content directly to their TVs.

"This is more of an evolutionary phase," Martin noted, "where the convergence we've talked about that makes services and the consumer experience more valuable is coming to fruition."

Go Guardian eCommerce!

The Fact And Fiction Of Online Shipping Costs

2009-04-29T16:04:00.002-04:00

You search, you find, you click "buy." Your e-commerce quest is nearly complete. You get to that checkout screen, and you think it's all good. Then the shipping charges get tacked onto your total, and you're left thinking that US$9.95 deal didn't end up being such a bargain after all.

Then there are those times when you need to make sure your package gets to its destination before the holidays -- a day late makes it a wasted effort. So you fork over the few extra dollars to guarantee the delivery date -- but did you really need to do that?

Countless online shoppers are asking themselves whether paying a premium for express shipping and handling fees is really necessary. After all, there have been many times when they've ordered an item for the "week-to-10-day" delivery and received it within three business days without paying the premium.

So what gives? You might think the retailer is charging extra for a service you don't need, and that it's all a sales ploy to hit unsuspecting consumers with extra charges just to beef up profit margins.

However, shipping and handling is a growing expense for retailers, and in these trying economic times especially, it's hitting their bottom lines more than ever.

"We work with many major retailers and can tell you that the vast majority lose money on shipping, especially during the holidays," Fiona Dias, executive vice president of partner strategy and marketing for GSI Commerce, a specialist in online business services More about business services, said.

The reason retailers are willing to take the hit on shipping and handling is that shipping costs represent the single biggest deterrent for consumers shopping online, Dias explained. "They pretty much have to offer free shipping or add constraints -- such as a minimum purchase amount."

With the tumbling stock market last fall, retailers actually "took a bath on shipping," she added. "Then [the] Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays were more compressed. [To encourage purchases,] retailers were either offering express delivery for free or subsidizing it greatly."

Today's price-sensitive consumers, for their part, are being extra careful when assessing shipping costs for an online purchase, confirmed Kevin Brown, director of marketing for Newgistics, a transportation system provider.

"They didn't think anything about shipping and handling costs. Today, a lot more that used to want next-day delivery now realize that five days is fine. They've decided they paid a premium for something they didn't really need."

These perceptions about gouging consumers on shipping and handling may have come from other retail channels, such as infomercials, where unsuspecting shoppers have sometimes been hit hard with hidden costs after placing that order for those too-good-to-be-true deals.

The online flower delivery business, for example, is another industry that may have gotten a bad rep when it comes to charging express premiums, Aron Benon, CEO of HonestFlorist.com, said. "A lot of 'practices' weren't up to where they should be," he explained "There were florists that charged extra for express delivery. That's ridiculous [in some cases], because delivery could usually be made within four hours anyway. Some have made a lot of money in shipping and handling."

Today, the only premium that should be paid is for a guaranteed delivery time, according to Benon. "You can assume it will get there in reasonable time, but a premium will get you that guarantee if you need it."

If there is confusion among consumers about shipping costs, it's more around setting expectations, Dias said. "The No. 1 call center complaint is the 'where's my order' inquiry." That's one of the main reasons why retailers will tend to overestimate the standard shipping times. "It's better to under-promise and over-deliver," she said. "If you say it will take a week and the package comes in four days, then you have a happy customer. If you say it will be four days and it's longer, a disappointed shopper is complaining to your call center."

As far as express shipping is concerned, the extra costs are necessary since retailers need to use more expensive delivery services versus the U.S. Postal Service More about USPS.

"It's less about the labor and more about the carrier,"" Dias said. "Sending through the US Postal Service is cheap. But once you get to UPS or Fedex, there is a lot more involved."

Given the fluctuations in fuel prices and the like, retailers have had to absorb those transportation costs, Brown added. "You're not seeing those rate increases being passed on to the consumer, which means costs are going up on the retail side. There's a point consumers won't go beyond, and shipping fees is one." There are a number of things online retailers can do to avoid problems and keep customer expectations in line.

One is to provide clear messaging on your site about shipping options, associated costs and delivery times. During holidays, spell out deadline dates for orders to avoid disappointment.

Second, do not put items on the site that aren't in stock. "I'm not a big fan of back orders," Dias said. "If it's not in inventory, let people know before they get to the shopping cart."

Third is to have a system in place to fulfill orders in a timely fashion. Where deliveries may have to cover lots of ground, partner with someone that offers regional warehousing services. On-site pickup at a store is an option that has proven very successful for retailers like Sears and Nordstrom, Dias said.

Providing visibility into shipments on the move can also ease consumers' minds and reduce the load on call centers. "It can cost $4 to $5 per call for a customer service engagement," Brown explained. "If consumers can track a shipment themselves, that can help reduce that cost."

For shoppers who are simply unhappy about shipping and handling fees, Avivah Litan, senior analyst for Gartner who offered the following advice: "Remember, it's a free world. If you don't like shipping terms on a site, shop somewhere you do."

Guardian eCommerce Privacy Seal Program.

The Flourishing Fraud Economy

2009-04-29T15:53:00.002-04:00

Online scammers who sell stolen credit card numbers, bank account data or Social Security information haven't felt much pain from the economic problems facing the rest of the world, according to new research. One factor is a steady supply of raw materials -- phishers have targeted the growing number of people looking for mortgage and credit fixes with specially crafted scams to steal their info.

One economy apparently isn't hurting these days -- the one run by identity thieves in the dark corners of the Internet. Demand and prices remain stable for stolen credit cards, Social Security numbers and other private information, according to a new study by security software maker Symantec.

Meanwhile, the supply of such data is steady too, thanks to the way the recession has inspired new scams targeting people who are worried about work and their finances, according to the Symantec report and another study from Gartner. "There's no pricing pressure at all -- it's not dropping, they're not negotiating down," said Alfred Huger, vice president of Symantec Security Response. "That tells us that there are still the same number of buyers. The underground economy has not been affected by the recession."

One reason is that the prices for some records have been falling for years and can't go much lower. Stolen credit card numbers now go for as little as 6 US cents each, if they're bought 10,000 at a time. The price can be $30 per card for smaller orders.

Access to hijacked e-mail accounts: 10 cents to $100.

Bank account credentials: $10 to $1,000.

Scammers can hire people to "cash out" compromised bank accounts for between 8 percent and 50 percent of the amount they're stealing. Hosting for scam Web sites ranges from $3 to $40 per week.
Stay in Line

Symantec says sellers appear loath to undercut each other. Many cyber gangs are believed to be affiliated with organized crime, and crooks who don't play by the rules risk being locked out of future business, or being targeted with Internet attacks or possibly even physical violence.

"It makes you wonder if there's some collusion among the sellers," Huger said. "And it's a very heavily self-policing industry. I think people there would take a very dim view of significant undercutting of prices that would affect the whole industry."

Security experts not involved in Symantec's study say prices for booty like stolen credit card numbers might not be falling anymore because they have hit a bottom. The usefulness of stolen credit card numbers is waning because of anti-fraud measures -- crooks now need additional details, like PIN numbers or the security codes on the back of the cards, to sell as a package deal.

"The value of just the front side of your credit card has gone to almost zero -- the bad guys need to get more and more data," said Peter Tippett, vice president of research and intelligence for Verizon More about Verizon Communications' business security solutions division. That division investigates many large data breaches.
Gone Phishing

The pipeline for stolen data is being replenished by phony "phishing" e-mails that are becoming more common as the economy worsens. Three-quarters of the phishing e-mails Symantec examined were banking-related, for things like low-interest loans and mortgage refinancing. When people pay for those services, their money vanishes.

Symantec found a startling 66 percent increase in the number of phishing Web sites from the previous year.

Symantec studied data from more than 200 million personal computers running its antivirus software, 200 million e-mail accounts that do nothing but collect spam, and information from large corporations that use Symantec's products.

Gartner's study reinforced the finding that phishing scams are proliferating. It estimates that more than 5 million U.S. consumers lost money to phishing attacks from September 2007 to September 2008 -- a 40 percent increase over the estimated number of victims a year earlier.

Each victim is losing less money, though. Criminals have changed their tactics and are now pursuing a higher volume of lower-value attacks to evade banks' fraud detection systems, said Avivah Litan, a Gartner vice president.

Go Guardian eCommerce

Bounce Rates Count

2009-01-14T12:13:00.001-05:00

Of late there has been a lot of discussion about bounce rates and whether or not the search engines count these in their algorithms. As far back as late 2007, there were reports that webmasters were seeing a difference in their rankings for major keywords within a few weeks of drastically changing their bounce rates. However, none of the tests and reports seem to be complete enough or repeatable enough to constitute proof.

As a result, there are plenty of naysayers who believe that such things as bounce rates are not now and probably won't ever be part of the search engine algorithms.
I am of the opposite view; bounce rates will certainly be part of the search engine algorithms and probably already are.

What I would like to do here is share with you some of the common naysayer objections and refute all but one of them. But first, for those who are scratching their heads about what bounce means, we are referring to people leaving a website. A bouncy website is the opposite of a sticky website, one where people stay a long time.

Objection 1: There is no definition of "bounce rate".
Response: This is the flimsiest of arguments. A bounce is when someone leaves a website, going back where they came from.

Objection 2: I don't like how Google Analytics defines a bounce.
Response: Sadly, Google doesn't ask me for advice, either. But cheer up, the bounce rate in Google Analytics might not be the same as they use in their algorithm, just as the little green bar is not necessarily the PageRank they use in their algorithm.

Objection 3: Many sites don't have Google Analytics turned on, so Google would have very incomplete data.
Response (scratching my head in confusion): What does Google Analytics have to do with anything? This is about Google (or Yahoo, or MSN, or Ask, or some other) tracking their own traffic and how their own users move about and - most importantly - how their users return to their website.

Objection 4: What is the threshold for a bounce? After 5 seconds? After 10 seconds? After 15 seconds? This is a mess! (This is often part of the how-do-we-define-a-bounce debate.)
Response: A bounce is a bounce, whether it takes a person one second or one hour to bounce back, it is a bounce. How the search engines choose to treat bounces with varying lag times is another matter. Let's be clear; they won't tell you, just as they won't tell you how many links on a page they index, how many they follow and how many they count in their ranking algorithms. Furthermore, it is a moving target. Just like every other algorithm input, bounce rates and bounce lag times will not be treated in the exact same way one day to the next.

Objection 5: What if people quickly click on an external link and leave my site? They found the site useful because they found a useful link on it, but they bounced.
Response: That is not a bounce, that's a referral. A bounce is when someone hits the back button.

Objection 6: What if the user quickly closes the window?
Response: That could be any number of things, but it is not a bounce. Who can guess how the search engines might treat that, or even if they treat it at all. However, it need not be considered a bounce unless the search engines believe it should be.

Objection 7: Doesn't a bounce mean the person has found what they want? Can't a bounce sometimes be good?
Response: Sometimes, perhaps, but rarely. After 5 seconds, a person has no time to read a page. After 30 seconds, they might have found something useful. So lag times matter. More importantly, the search engines can determine what a person does next. If a person returns to the search results and clicks on another link, that is a sign they did not find what they want. If they return to the search results and conduct a similar search, that might also be a sign they did not find what they want. If they return to the search results and conduct an unrelated search, that might be a sign that they found what they want. Search engines can weigh various bounces in light of the user's next action.

Objection 8: For some searches, people look for multiple sources, such as comparing prices, comparing products, seeking varying opinions, etc. Too many sites would be penalized if all those bounces were to be counted in the rankings.
Response: This is an example of false logic. If someone clicks on one website, then bounces, clicks on another website, then bounces, clicks on another website then bounces...all the high-ranking websites for that particular search query would be equally affected. Nobody would suffer a ranking disadvantage because rankings are relative.

Objection 9: Can't I just set up a bot to visit all my top competitors and leave their site after varying numbers of seconds to make it appear that their sites are all bouncy.
Response: Yes, you can. And you can get very creative. I have even heard of couriers in China travelling from one Internet café to another to click on a particular site as a means of increasing its rankings. I have no answer for this, other than that the search engines will have to control for this, just as they have found ways to control for automated link-building.

So have no fear. Good websites that provide what their visitors want or who help them find what they want will prosper. Sticky SEO looks at conversions and stickiness as integral elements to SEO. Cheap sites that do a lot of link-building - bouncy SEO - counting on large volumes of traffic to offset poor conversion rates, will suffer - because the search engines will stop sending them that traffic. It's just a matter of time. Or perhaps it has already started.

Guardian eCommerce Helps Expose Trustworthy Websites!

Top Ten Search Engine Myths

2009-01-14T12:10:00.003-05:00

We've all done it at some point in our professional lives. We search a keyword that describes our business only to scratch our head as to how our competitor's website shows up on the top of the líst instead of ours. If you've gone one step further and read about Search Engine Optimization, then surely you have come across the conflicting information online.

One article tells you to do one thing while another tells you to do the opposite. Which one should you believe?

This gray area of what you should or should not do is much like the modern day "Bat Cave." If you are lucky enough to stumble upon it, chances are you don't quite know how you got there and if you had to go back one day you would probably just find yourself lost in the woods.

So what should you believe? The general rule is to combine what you read or heard with what you have experienced and somewhere in there lies the truth. To get you started, let's debunk some of the more commonly used myths floating around.

1) Use a Keyword Rich Domain Name: It is widely believed that if you include your keywords in your domain name like www.professional-website-design-in-nj.com it will greatly improve your rankings. This is not true. It is best to choose a domain name that is short, easy to remember and if possible includes your company name.

2) Google Partnership: If you are ever approached by a company claiming to have a partnership with Google, run in the opposite direction. There is no such thing as a "preferred" relationship with Google and in fact on Google's website it even states: Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google.

3) Meta Keyword Tag: It used to be that the Meta Keyword Tag was given a lot of weight in the early days of Search Engine Optimization, but people abused it and now it does very little. You may still want to include your keywords here, but know that it will not do much and in fact most search engines won't even check it.

4) Bold or Italicized Text: Adding emphasis to certain keywords like using bold or italics can make your text easier to scan for the reader if done properly, but has little to no effect on your search engine ranking.

5) Content Length: There is no search engine rule stating that your content needs to be a specific number of words in order to get indexed. Any recommended length is more to assist the reader in understanding what you do than to aid the search engines.

6) Duplicate Content: Posting specific content like an article or blog entry on your site and then on another site will not get you penalized. In the search results, Google will recognize that the content is the same and only choose one of the pages to display, but it will not hurt your overall search engine ranking.

7) Avoid Flash: Any text that you place in Flash will not be readable by a search engine, but this doesn't mean you have to avoid flash altogether. You can still very successfully incorporate Flash into your site through rotating pictures or a header on the page. Just don't have an all Flash site or use a Flash intro if you are interested in increasing your search engine rankings.

8) Pay-Per-Click: Some say that using Pay-Per-Click will help your organic listing while others say it will hurt. Both are false. The fact is that Google has gone to great lengths to separate the two departments of organic and paid listings to a point where the two departments don't communicate or even sit at the same table for lunch.

9) Update the Site Frequently: Updating your site often is a good idea if you have something new to say. Just don't change around a few words to accommodate the search engines as that won't help your listing at all. Regularly adding legitimate content like articles, press releases and blog entries will help though.

10) Doorway Pages: Many companies will sell this idea of increasing your ranking by creating hundreds of one page sites loaded with keywords that link to you from various domains. This is considered spamming the search engine and is not recommended. If you properly optimize your site and focus on the correct way to get listed, you will improve your ranking much quicker than these doorway pages ever could.

Of course there are many other myths out there confusing the general public about what works and what doesn't work. Some of them are spread by people who don't really know the truth and others are spread by SEO companies in an attempt to make search engine optimization confusing... mission accomplished!

Regardless of where the myths come from, if you or the SEO Company you hire use common sense and do things the right way, you will have no trouble finding the proverbial Bat Cave and when you get there please tell them that I want my utility belt back!

Go Guardian eCommerce Today!

Internet Marketing Strategy For Tough Times

2009-01-14T11:56:00.002-05:00

As we enter into what many enlightened souls are calling the most dire economic times since the Great Depression, online marketers need all the help they can get - regardless of the source. You have probably heard of Google; but chances are almost 100% certain, you have never heard of me. Lucky you!

Actually, the only thing you need to know about me is that I am a full-time online affiliate marketer and I make a very comfortable living from the web. Last year (2008), was my best year online so far, which left me scratching my head and saying what recession?

But that may be something of a false positive, as I will never know how much I could have made if the economic times had been good instead of bad. Plus, judging from my own limited experience, selling and marketing online may not have been hit as hard as those businesses in the real world in 2008, since consumers are doing everything to save a penny and shopping online has become a much cheaper alternative for many.

As we enter into these uncertain times, online marketers and webmasters need all the help they can get. Recently, Google mailed a small booklet to its Adsense users; in it Google gives "6 Top Tactics For Tough Times." It is obviously referring to its Adwords PPC (Pay Per Click) program and clients but Google's advice can be applied to your general online marketíng.

These tactics include: (quoting directly from the Google mail-out)

1. Focus your ads on low prices and savíngs.
2. Use Value-related keywords.
3. Ensure your ad groups are targeted and relevant.
4. Don't waste money on irrelevant clicks.
5. Make it easy for customers to buy.
6. Focus your money on your high-performers. (End Quote)

Sound advice and I especially like the idea of focusing your marketing on low prices and savíngs mainly because people want bargains in tight economic times. I also like the fact that you must make it easy for your customers to buy... something as simple as putting your "order/buy link" above the fold can improve your conversions.

Also, targeting value-related keywords, is a very effective marketing tactic. Relating your keywords to "discounts, bargains, cheap, inexpensive, lowest prices..." will help improve your sales. So too, is catering to phrases that suggest the searcher is in a buying mind-set: gifts, presents, gift ideas, wedding gifts... shoppers searching those words are ready to buy.

Plus, focusing your time and money on your high-performers is solid advice. Sometimes succeeding online is simply finding a market niche that works/performs - then running with it. Once you have found the keywords and products that perform well with your site or sites - focus the majority of your time and energy developing those niche markets.

Now here are some of my most effective marketing tactics that have worked for me and tactics I will be relying on in the coming years - even in these hard times.

Make Keywords Your #1 Goal: This is the single most important factor for my own online success. You have to make keywords and ranking high for them in all the search engines your main objective if you're marketing online. Might sound obvious, but many beginning marketers don't truly understand how important getting top rankings for your chosen keywords will be in your online success.

Target less competitive long tail (multi-worded) keywords to get started and slowly work your way up to more popular keywords. Center your marketing around getting those first page listings (Top Five) for your keywords. Achieve this goal, (especially in Google) and it will be almost impossible for you not to succeed and make a profit with your online marketing even in bad times.

Autoresponders, Líst Building & Online Relationships: Keeping in contact with potential buyers is mission critical. You must use autoresponders to send follow-up messages to build trustful relationships with your potential customers.

So building a large contact líst is essential. That's why the social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace can be very effective marketing tools for building this online contact and trust. Truth be told, all these social networks are, more or less, just glorified autoresponders and líst builders!

Your Unique Selling Position: You must give potential customers some very good reasons for them to buy from you or your links. Offering special bonuses and discounts works wonders for your sales. Some of my most successful pages simply consist of coupons and discounts offered by different companies. If buyers can save $100's OFF by buying thru your links, they will.

Always remember, besides looking for the best deal or bargain, consumers are also looking for a quality product. If you're into affiliate marketing, only pick top quality products to promote. Picking top brand names also makes it easier to make sales. So too is only promoting popular online merchants like Amazon which can be an effective marketing strategy. Most importantly, always remember consumers are also looking for INFORMATION on the products they are considering buying, give them helpful information and you will succeed.

Go With The Flow: If you're marketing online, you have to follow what's working for you. Most times you will try countless ideas or tactics - once you have found a process or system that works, really work it or scale it up. Making your first dollar is the hardest, but once you do something that earns you that dollar, just repeat that "something" a thousand times.

Tracking what works is very important so keep a close eye on your site's traffic logs to find where your customers are coming from. Something like Google Analytics is simply priceless for "fine-tuning" your site and your internet marketing. It will tell you what's working and what's not.

Target Recurring or Residual Income: One of my most effective marketing strategies is to promote and sell products and services that give you a recurring or residual income. Make one sale and get paíd for years or for the life of that referred client. Concentrate on services like web-hosting, telephone, marketing programs... once customers sign up to these services, they will likely keep them for years. I am still earning income from sales I made five years ago.

Building a large residual income could be the key to surviving in tough economic times. This will be income which will carry you or your business over the rough patches since it is based upon past performance and not on your current selling situation.

Automate Everything: The real beauty of marketing online and using computers... you can automate just about every process in your marketing system. Make it a point of automating everything you do... use autoresponders to follow-up with potential buyers, use automatic check-outs, automatic reporting... just set-up your whole internet marketing system that runs itself with little or no supervision from you. This will free up your time to concentrate all your efforts on marketing/promoting your site or product. Besides, nothing beats coming back from a vacatíon and finding out you have earned the cost of your vacatíon and then some - all the while you were lying in the sun and miles away from any computer.

Find The Top Online Marketers: If you're just starting with internet marketing, you need to find the top successful marketers and "model" what they're doing. This is relatively a new industry and you have to seek out the experts and pioneers who have set the groundwork. When I first started marketing online, I was quite fortunate to come into contact with some web marketing heavy-weights such as Marlon Sanders, Ken Evoy, Neil Shearing... and SEO experts like Brad Callen and Aaron Wall.

Make Google Your Friend: Whether you love or hate Google doesn't matter, you just have to make it your number one ally in your online marketíng. Google has just about conquered the world-wide search market, Yahoo and MSN are still important, but Google is the deal-breaker when you're selling stuff online. Consumers have enormous respect for Google, a number one listing for a lucrative keyword simply means money in the bank.

I have found using Google Search, Google Adwords, and Google Adsense have played a more than significant role in the success of my own online sites and marketing. Google tools such as Google Analytics, Google Alerts, Webmaster Tools... all have been invaluable and an enormous help in achieving my "web-based" lifestyle and livelihood. Of course, Google has also driven me around the bend more times than I can count, but no one is perfect. Besides, when it's all said and done, anyone marketing on the web must truly embrace Google if they want to reach their highest level possible.

Titus Hoskins (c) 2009

Go Guardian eCommerce!

Four Steps To A Web Site Brand

2009-01-14T11:50:00.004-05:00

Do you have a plan? Most companies spend a considerable amount of time, energy, and money planning what to do and how to do it.

Let's say you need a website, so you develop a plan, present it to a bunch of website designers, and get quotes or proposals. You're not going to get caught with your pants down like the last time by some nerdy geek, you know the skinny kid with the scraggly beard, whose techno-babble gave you a headache, or the bizarre young lady dressed in gothic chic with the black lipstick and tattoo to match - yikes, no thanks, not this time, this time you got a plan.

You read all the blogs on website design, you know all the ins-and-outs of search engine optimization, and Google Adwords. No one is going to pull a fast one on you. You know your business, your market, and your needs. Or do you?

How much do you really know about how real people interact with your website? How much do you really know about what we call Human Motivational Optimization? All the stats, logs, and number crunching analysis that forms the basis of many website development plans does not truly give you the visceral understanding of how to connect to an audience, and isn't that what you want your website to do?

So maybe your plan is the wrong plan; it's like planning a trip to Home Depot to buy a cabbage; it just doesn't make sense. So how about a plan that does make sense, something simple, understandable, easy to implement, that is if you hire the right people to do it. But before we tell you the four steps to creating your very own Website Branding Plan, let's talk about Don LaFontaine.

Chances are you don't know who the late Don LaFontaine was, but you've heard his voice many, many times. Don was the most famous and influential voice behind thousands of movie and television trailers. He had a distinctive deep, gravely voice, and a writing style that reinvented the entire movie trailer format. But why should you care? Simple. Movie trailers are the ultimate elevator pitch, a short memorable performance that compels you to action, kind of like what a mission statement is suppose to do, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning, or rather, the end.

Branding Starts With Thinking Backwards: Most people like to start a project at the beginning and work their way through until they reach the end. Makes sense, or does it? If you don't start with where you want to end-up, it's unlikely you'll ever get where you want to go. Remember our cabbage? Planning a shopping to trip to Home Depot because they got cool stuff, doesn't help if what you want is a cabbage.

Branding is no different. If you don't start with how you want your audience to think about you, they will probably never think about you at all. So now that we got that straight let's start our plan where it makes sense, the end.

The 4 Step Web-Branding Plan...

1 - The Slogan:

Your slogan, you know the thing that sits underneath your logo, that simple little phrase somebody in your office came up with that makes you sound important, stuff like "the cool air conditioning company." Most small and medium size companies don't think too hard about this little marketing gem, and as a result they either have something really cheesy, or some meaningless platitude that has no memorable meaning at all, like "the best people for the best job."

Just because you're small and don't have millions of dollars to spend on television ads promoting your pithy little motto, doesn't mean you shouldn't have one. That catchphrase is who you are, and how you want people to remember you, short, memorable, and to the point. I remember my sons arguing over some complicated bit of business when one of them in frustration finally said, "Enough already. Give it to me in one word or less!" a demand to articulate what was important without all the peripheral issues; a lesson all businesses should pay attention to.

2 - The Story Line (Logline):

To my mind, mission statements are a totally dysfunctional marketing element, misused and abused by a bean-counter attitude, born out of trying to squeeze every last drop of information into a statement that won't offend anybody. A wise man once said, "If what you're saying doesn't offend somebody, maybe you're not saying anything" and most mission statements that are full of meaningless platitudes and toned-down amendments, fall into the category of not saying anything, at least, anything worth hearing.

Okay so let's forget about mission statements, after all this isn't the military, and we're not planning the next Desert Storm. Instead let's think loglines, or what you can think of as your brand story line.

You know those short statements you find in TV Guide, or your weekend television insert, prompting you to watch the next episode of 'House,' or 'Desperate Bimbos.' They are a short form text version of a trailer, intended to get you to watch the movie or television show. For our purposes, we want people to go to our website, and stay-tuned long enough to get our core marketing message, and not walk out half way through the presentation. So, how do we do that?

The Six Elements of Effective Web Trailers: In order for us to come up with a compelling statement that prompts people to view our website presentation, we need to refer back to our old pal Don LaFontaine. What if Don LaFontaine wrote our website trailer. How would he do it?

Don had a very distinctive style that you've heard a thousand times for a thousand different movies, but they all followed a similar format. Each trailer needs to cover six distinct elements, who, what, where, how, why, and when. All the things businesses should be presenting in their elevator pitch, but with one extra ingredient, personality.

Here's the format used in many movie trailers: "In a place (where), one man (who) brings stability to chaos (what), in an epic tale that will both amaze and inspire (why)! Coming soon (when) to a theatre near you." Sound familiar?

Let's take our air conditioning example, you remember, "the cool air conditioning company." Let's say our fictitious company is called Kool Air Conditioning, their website trailer might sound something like this:

"In a town where summer heat melts the cool of the coolest homeowners, one air conditioning company comes to the rescue. When the mercury rises to eye-popping, mind numbing numbers, the men from Kool spring into action, bringing relief to the sweltering masses. The Kool Guys will amaze you with their prompt service and installation know-how. The heat is on. It's coming sooner than you think; it's coming this summer to your town, your neighborhood; your house. Kool, the cool air conditioning company."

Over-the-top? Maybe, but we've covered all the bases, we know who (Kool), what (air conditioning), when (this summer), where (your house), why (the heat) and how (prompt service and installation know-how). Now that's a mission statement; one with a little style, panache, and personality; one that will get you remembered and prompt your audience to action.

3 - The Personality:

Movies like businesses all fall into certain genres or categories. There's the action movie format that's suitable for sports related businesses, the chick flick style that's ideal for cosmetic or fashion industry businesses, and the family comedy format suitable for entertainment and recreation based companies, and of course the kids movie version perfect for any business selling things for children. The point is that every company and website has to have a personality.

Many hardnosed business executives scoff at the idea of spending money on such seemingly trivial marketing concepts as company personality, but ignoring your website persona, is a big mistake. You can either invest a little in developing, creating, managing, and promoting this personality or you can let the marketplace decide for itself, or worse, find you completely redundant and irrelevant.

4 - The Delivery:

You may be asking yourself, this sounds good on paper, but can it really be done, and can it be done for my business, on my website? The answer is damn straight it can. Like most things in life, and in business, it's not grasping the concept tha's so hard, it's implementing it.

With a little investment and a willingness to take some chances, you can be the market leader. But if you thought you could simply take your newly created movie trailer style website elevator pitch and slap it onto your website in text form, you would be mistaken. How you deliver the message is as important, and in many cases more important, than what you say.

Whether you sell lipstick, licorice, or lingerie, you probably have lots of competition, so how you deliver your message is what's going to make the difference.

You want your website presentation to motivate people to email or phone. You want to deliver a compelling performance that is more than a sales pitch, a presentation that uses voice, visuals, words, and music to create a website personality, a lasting impression; one that is going to allow you to stand out from the crowd and give you a competitive advantage.

Nothing will convince better than seeing an actual example, and guess what, we just happen to be able to provide you with one: check out SonicPersonality.com and see what an effective website presentation sounds like. If nothing else, you may get a chuckle or two.

By Jerry Bader (c) 2009

Visit Guardian eCommerce, Get The Credibility You Deserve!

Promoting New Web Sites

2008-11-04T19:18:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I wrote about building your website from the ground up. This article did not dive into great detail on any specific topics, but rather touched on the key points you will want to address. In this article I will place most of the focus on the promotíon aspect of this previous article. Image of bullhorn saying 'Promoting Your New Website'

While at times new websites can experience organic search rankings in a matter of months, for the most part, it can take well over a year before you start to see any progress, and that is if you start promoting right away!

SEO
If your new website has not been properly optimized for the search engines, then this is a necessary first step you must take. Ensure that your new site has integrated the appropriate keywords into all the fundamental areas of the site. Without this critical step of optimizing your site, in many cases no level of promotíon will help you get those search rankings.

Note: Extreme numbers of inbound links can sometimes cause an un-optimized site to rank, but an optimized website will seriously reduce the number of links needed, and its associated cost. This varies from industry to industry, but is true as a general rule.

Ideally the optimization of your site occurred during the planning and building stages, but if it did not be sure to get this completed as soon as possible.

Press Releases
The first thing you should do when your site goes live is issue a press release. Be sure to include a link back to your website, preferably with your target phrase hyperlinked as well. Submit this press release to an aggregator such as PRWeb. This will help get the word out that your site is live, draw some attention from the public, and also get you that first valuable link to your website.

Search Engine Submission
These days search engines will find your site on their own, and submitting to them is not necessary. If you feel you must submit your site to the engines, submit it only once and shortly after the site goes live.

In order to help the search engines fully spider your new site, the best thing you can do in terms of submissions, is to create and submit an XML sitemap. Submit this sitemap to your Google Webmaster Tools account, and also be sure to include a call to it within your robots.txt file by adding the following line including a complete path to your sitemap:

Sitemap: http://www.domain.com/sitemap.xml

There are many tools out there to help you build your xml sitemap. Google has placed a líst of some of these tools on their "Third Party Programs" page.

Directory Submission
Back in August I wrote about using Directory Submission to help build links. The general gist of it is to be sure that there is a high level of relevance in the directories you submit your site to, especially if it is a paid directory. Currently DMOZ still has a high level of value as it is seen as a strong authority at Google. Make the attempt to have your site listed here in the most relevant category possible.

Link Building
There are a number of ways you can work to grow your back links. In July I wrote about 13 ways to help build links. Links are one of those strategic tools that won't ever be a bad investment. Today they play a significant role in search rankings for most industries, especially in Google. While the future will almost undoubtedly still see search value in links, even if that value declines, or disappears entirely, quality links can still help drive traffic as well, and a strong base of inbound links can deliver you customers well into the future.

Explore the different ways to build links to your site. A steady progressive rise in inbound links will help Google look positively in your direction. Do not be afraid of reciprocal links either. If you are trading with highly relevant websites to your industry, then you should have nothing to be afraid of.

Social Media
Promotíon largely consists of building links and becoming recognized by the search engines, but in order to help you build those links, getting your name and brand out there can really do wonders. By increasing awareness of your site and product, the public will often help create the buzz you need, and often, this can result in fresh links to your website.

To help get your site in the eyes of as many people as possible, take a look into Social Media and consider creating profiles on some of the popular platforms. This can include creating a YouTube account and uploading instructional, informational, or interesting product videos. You can set up a Facebook page, and work to build a community around your product. Create a profile page on Squidoo, MySpace, and Flickr, amongst many others.

These pages often act as backlinks to your site, and also help spread awareness. Be sure to keep your social endeavors updated regularly or any viewership you have will dwindle as people lose interest. If you are able to build a strong following, this can result in many individuals linking to your site and spreading the word, resulting in long term benefits for you and your site.

Your use of social media does not have to be exactly about your company. For instance, let's say you sell cars. Your use of the social platform, while it may note your business, can focus on other car info including trivia, news, photos, etc. The key is to keep it relevant, not identical - you are not looking to create a mirror of your site.

Article Writing
Write articles about the subject of your website and submit them to various services such as EzineArticles. Consider also writing for your blog to help grow your site content. By writing and distributing relevant articles you can create a nice cushion of relevant incoming links. By writing articles that closely match the topic of your site, and including a link back to relevant content within your site, you can help out not only with search engine rankings, but by creating an extra traffic stream for your site.

Pay Per Click
While Pay Per Click (PPC) will not give you many long standing benefits, it can help you to start making sales immediately which in turn can give you the funds needed to promote your site via other means. If you need that immediate traffic, this is one way to get it, but at a cost, and as soon as you stop paying, your traffic stops, so it is far from a reliable long term means. In some industries however, it can pay off, so it is definitely worth considering.

Summary
In general, reference your website everywhere possible. Get links from every relevant source you can think of, issue a press release, and get your site lísted in the key directories for your industry. The more eyes you can put your URL in front of and the more relevant sites you can get to link back to yours, the sooner you will start to see progress in the search engines.

For many industries it can literally take years to get those coveted first page results - in some industries it may be near impossible, but if you want a chance, you need to start promoting that new site of yours immediately.

Scott Van Achte, Senior SEO at StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
Go Guardian eCommerce!

Three Hot Trends to Watch Out For

2008-11-04T18:39:00.000-05:00

Since the new year is right around the corner, bloggers and marketers alike are posting their predictions as if a psychics convention has come to town. So in keeping with that tradition, I'd like to post a few of my own. But unlike those who post their predictions in point form, I won't make a specific líst but rather share with you some of my thoughts.

(Near the end, however, this post will culminate in what I believe will be three major trends to watch out for and dive into, if you want to make some serious money in 2008 and beyond.)

First off, let me state that you may or may not agree with me on these. But something is definitely going on right now that points to these three trends. All the clues are pretty evident, and you've probably seen some of these yourself.

What I'm talking about is...

... Internet marketing is correcting itself.

When the stock market tumbles, short of a full-on crash, they call it a "correction." Sometimes it happens precipitously. Other times, it takes place over a period of time.

Likewise, I believe that Internet marketing, right now, is going through a similar correction. It may not be as precipitous as the stock market, but it's indeed quite significant.

To explain what I mean, let me back up a bit.

If you've read Geoffrey Moore's "Crossing The Chasm", then you understand the product adoption curve. (In marketing and academic circles, they call it the "Diffusion Process.")

In plain English, it means that new markets go through a certain adoption process that looks very much like a bell curve.

At first, new products are consumed by the innovators and early adopters (i.e., niche and early markets). They're the type of people who buy new things the moment they come out.

Then, they are consumed by the majority (i.e., mainstream markets, at the top of the bell curve, where products get widely adopted by the majority of people).

Finally, the laggards make up the late markets. They usually wait until everyone else has tried the products, which are no longer new.

According to Moore, between the niches and the mainstream, there's a gap. A chasm, as he calls it, especially with technology. It's where things seem to slow down once a product has saturated the early markets.

But then, after a while, something happens.

The product, if and when it crosses the chasm, enters the mainstream (often called the "middle" or just the "majority"), and becomes widespread.

This is where the bulk of the market lies (about 68% of the market pie, according to studies). And often, it happens fast. Very fast. (For example, Moore's follow-up book, "Inside the Tornado," explains this in detail.)

What does this mean in terms of Internet marketing?

It means that the geeks (e.g., the risk-takers, innovators, Internet enthusiasts, and the like) are the first ones to penetrate the Internet market. They set many precedents that shape the way we do business, whether it's through a new method, software, business model, or teaching.

(That's why we often call them "gurus.")

We've seen this happen. Top marketers have entered the market, sold many a product, and made massive amounts of money. But now, things are starting to change. We're hitting - if not crossing - the chasm.

One obvious piece of evidence is the recent flurry of "death of" reports. Whether they're meant to promote something or not is a moot point.

Clayton Makepeace listed his own predictions recently , and I not only agree with them wholeheartedly but also view them as part of this crossing of the chasm. To me, the most salient point is that only 18% of the world's population is online - but it's growing at a rapid rate, particularly in Asia.

If you don't believe me (or even Clayton), watch this video:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92

It's a presentation by a statistical researcher about income distribution around the globe, and how quickly some countries are growing in terms of wealth and gross national product, once the Internet enters them.

In short, the video shows that the Internet, while still in its infancy, is growing at a rapid rate, and that there is hyper-growth occurring right now in Asian and middle-Pacific countries, such as Singapore, India, and of course, China.

Let me put that aside for just a moment, and share with you a few observations. (I will tie all of this together very shortly, I promise.)

Here's a question:

Haven't you noticed lately how Internet marketing seminars are changing?

I mean, for many years seminars were not only filled to the rim but also filled with the usual suspects who seem to congregate there all the time.

I remember going to seminar after seminar, and seeing the same faces over and over again. The same million-dollar marketers. The same "big names." The same expert speakers. And very few newbies or unknowns.

But in 2007, a shift started to happen. Some of those faces are not showing up at seminars anymore. The number of old-timers seems to be shrinking, while new faces are making their appearances for the first time.

With each passing seminar, it seems, the audience is slowly being replaced with new marketers and total newbies - people who are completely new to Internet marketing and even to the Internet in general.

More and more veteran marketers are retiring. Some are leaving the Internet marketing field altogether. Many are no longer attending seminars, speaking at them, or teaching Internet marketing at all.

Is it because the Internet marketing industry is dying or jumping the shark?

Not at all. Quite the contrary, in fact. While some Internet marketers have moved on, many of them have simply refocused their businesses on those three major markets I was referring to earlier.

To give you a hint, let me tell you a true story...

At the last seminar my wife and I attended, I was surprised to see that the vast majority of attendees was completely new. The event was still packed to the rim (and even bigger than before). But many of them admitted to us that this was the first seminar they've ever attended.

In fact, they were so new that, at a previous seminar where my wife and I spoke, we were both surprised by the kinds of questions they asked us.

After speaking on stage and walking towards the back of the room, Sylvie and I were asked questions like, "What is an autoresponder?" Or, "How do you create a text file?" (No joke!)

And it didn't just happen once or twice. It happened many, many times. And it happened at almost every single seminar we've attended or spoke at in 2007.

Now, what does all this mean?

It means several things: Internet marketing is shifting. We are seeing more and more people entering it for the first time. We are seeing less of the successful, seasoned marketers who have made their wealth and moved on.

In other words, what we're seeing is a shift to people who are completely green, entering the world of Internet marketing, and launching a business online for the very first time - with very limited knowledge about it to boot.

And many of the existing, top marketers we have learned from in the last few years have either retired or decided to go after... well... the "majority!" That is, they are going offline.

Yes, offline.

And that, my friends, is the golden key.

More importantly, we're seeing - and we'll see more of - the Asian market, too, entering the Internet marketing sphere.

The more Asian citizens gain access to the web, the more Internet marketing will change, too, to reflect this shift. China, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and others are definitely going to be forces to be reckoned with.

We're seeing this already.

(Sylvie and I are speaking in Singapore next spring, by the way. Some of these events pack as many as 3,000 people.)

Bottom line, these shifts represent not only a major correction affecting the world of Internet marketing, but also show the three major markets to watch out for in the coming year:

The newbie market; The offline market; The Asian market. And that's my prediction for the new year and beyond. Watch out for these markets. Enter them. Serve them. Or get out of the way.

That said, I do have a few technology-related predictions. (A blog post on new year's predictions wouldn't be complete without them, eh?)

Some of the ones I made last year did come true - and we'll see more and more of them in 2008 as well.

For example, online video will become ubiquitous. The web will become increasingly "widgetized." People will demand for more simplification. And interactivity will become vastly more popular and sophisticated.

But what about some of the major technology companies?

Well, I hate to make those kinds of predictions because Internet marketing is as volatile as the stock market. But I agree that some major acquisitions are in store for the coming year. My guess? Any one of the following...

AOL by Yahoo!;

Yahoo! by Microsoft; Technorati or SixApart (makers of MovableType and TypePad) by Microsoft or Yahoo! (likely to compete in the blogging space against none other than giants WordPress and Google's Blogger); Or Facebook - maybe by Microsoft, Yahoo!, or someone else. Speaking of Facebook, whether or not it does get acquired, it's going to see the same kind of decline in popularity in 2008 that MySpace saw in 2007.

In fact, when my kids got me onto Facebook earlier this year, and I refused at first because I told them I already had a MySpace account, in a pretentious tone they replied, "But Dad, MySpace is soooo last year!"

I think Facebook will face the same fate, I fear. Anyway, there you have it.

Until next time, thank you for your support this year. I appreciate you and wish you a peaceful, healthy, profitable, happy, and prosperous new year!

By Michel Fortin (c) 2008... Go Guardian eCommerce.

Landing Pages: Mix 'Em Up, See What Works Best!

2008-11-04T18:33:00.000-05:00

The job of the modern Web site is more important and more difficult than ever, especially when it comes to a multichannel sales strategy. Visitors arrive at your Web site through a variety of online channels: pay-per-click (PPC) and organic search, e-mail. Once there, they need to fulfill the objective of acting upon a promotion, or buying a specific product.

If their entry leaves them cold because they don't see anything relevant to what drove them there, they're most likely to leave, having wasted their time and your marketing dollars. Landing pages are an effective technique to help visitors cross the channel between the marketing message that brought them to the site and the site functionality for them to take action like making a purchase or submitting a lead.

A Web site landing page is simply a page that keeps the momentum going from the referring channel's message. A common attribute might be the pay-per-click search terms that brought them to the site, or a specific e-mail offer that was clicked on.

In fact, targeted landing pages with keyword search terms appear more relevant to visitors who have come via a specific search engine query. As a result, fewer "bounces" occur. A bounce is a visitor who hits the landing page, stays for a few seconds, then hits the back button to return to the search engine page -- effectively a totally wasted paid click. Customized landing pages reduce this risk.

For example, an e-mail offer for a discounted travel package would bring the visitor directly to a landing page that reassuringly describes the offer in more detail and provides links to check availability and book the trip. It sounds simple enough, but put yourself in the visitor's shoes and do a few Web searches of your own. You'll be surprised at how many merchants still aren't using landing pages.

Creating a successful landing page isn't difficult, and you can easily experiment and learn as you go. First, decide on which page you'll use as the landing page for a specific campaign. You may very well have an existing Web page that you can use (one that's more specific than your homepage), but if you don't, consider publishing a new landing page. If that's the case, keep in mind these 7 best practices:

* Write a clear, concise, and compelling headline and offer copy that speaks to your audience's problem. For example: "Bank fees got you down? Check out our no-fee guarantee!"
* Include an image along with the offer for visual appeal.
* Reduce or eliminate navigation to keep visitors focused on the goal and reduce distraction.
* Keep the look and feel of your primary Web site so consumers will immediately recognize your brand.
* Don't forget a compelling call to action that should tie in to the offer. For example, the copy for the no-fee banking offer above could have a call-to-action such as "Apply Now," or "Sign-Up in 90 Seconds."
* Minimize data collection as much as possible to decrease abandonment. If you must collect additional information, try moving those fields to a form on a second page; the effect is that by the time visitors click through to this second page, they've already built some momentum in the conversion process and are less likely to bail out.
* Whenever asking for personal information, include privacy and security statements to help establish trust.

Landing pages for lead-generation sites typically should focus on a single, specific goal: getting the user to register or submit a lead. These types of landing pages should have a minimum of unrelated navigation or content, and should present only relevant, reassuring messages that encourage visitors to immediately and efficiently take the next step in the registration process. There are many similarities to direct mail. Every piece of literature, every page, every image and every word in a direct mail piece serves a very specific purpose -- there's no waste. Everything is focused on getting the recipient to respond. The same goes with lead-generation landing pages.

Also, remember that you'll need to include the landing page's URL in the hyperlink of the message on the referring channel. For example, PPC search, e-mail, and print hyperlinks should all point to your specific landing page.

Once you've adopted landing pages as part of your marketing toolbox, you should set your sights on optimizing them for greatest effectiveness. Direct marketers have used A/B split testing for decades to find out which competing ad or sales letter works best, and you can do the same with landing pages.

For example, does putting your product's price on the landing page drive more sales than if you required the visitor to click onto a subsequent page before showing price? Using A/B testing, or more sophisticated multivariate testing, you can determine exactly which combination of alternate offers, headlines, copy, images and calls-to-action are most persuasive to visitors.

Beyond A/B and multivariate testing, you can also use behavioral targeting techniques to present visitors with landing pages that are customized based on whether the visitor is new vs. returning, time of day or day of week, and so on. Using behavioral targeting along with testing, you can easily optimize offers and other factors that will drive higher conversions and increased loyalty. For example:

* Leverage and test multiple landing page strategies to learn which is most effective on a segment-by-segment basis.
* Dramatically increase leads and conversions generated by PPC traffic, without increasing your SEM budget.
* Identify search terms and keywords that will yield the best quality traffic, then target those segments with specific, highly optimized offers and correlating landing pages.

Landing pages are an important component that should be in every web marketer's toolbox. Try out the techniques outlined in this article to produce landing pages for your visitors. By optimizing landing pages through the steps of testing and targeting, you'll not only increase the effectiveness of your Web marketing dollars, but you'll gain unique and valuable insights into what persuades your visitors to take action.

Trust Is Key, Visit Guardian eCommerce Today

A True Internet Model for E-Commerce Fulfillment

2008-11-04T18:24:00.001-05:00

The old-school approach to order fulfillment doesn't fly for many Internet retailers. Warehousing, packing, shipping and return-order processing are labor-intensive and time-consuming. This has led to a growing trend among online sellers --the use of Web technologies to automate order fulfillment.

I'm talking about e-commerce fulfillment providers (EFPs). They take the "friction" out of order fulfillment. In a typical scenario, a consumer will buy merchandise at a Web site. This triggers an order that is sent electronically to an EFP who processes the order. A shipper such as FedEx or UPS is then automatically notified. Upon shipment of the order, an automated notification is sent to the consumer and to the merchant. There is almost no human intervention. In other words, it's a true Internet fulfillment model.

From a strategic perspective, one of the most important benefits of this model is that the retailer doesn't have to make a capital investment in infrastructure Rackspace is the expert when it comes to delivering Windows and Linux hosting solutions. Click here to learn more.. Yugster.com is an example. The Web site has grown by nearly 500 percent in the last year and is similar to other e-commerce sites, such as Woot.com and 1SaleaDay.com. In the past, such rapid growth for an e-commerce operation would have required an enormous investment in processes, systems, personnel and physical space. Aside from the obvious fact that it's not easy to raise capital, such an investment could be risky because there's no guarantee the business will continue to grow. By eliminating the need for a capital investment, EFPs remove a significant barrier to entry for would-be online retailers.

Of course, EFPs do more than ship orders. With advances in Web technologies, EFPs can add value in numerous ways. For example, EFPs can assist with automated inventory management by sending alerts to merchants when inventory levels drop below certain thresholds. Restocking can be done without an employee doing a physical count. This means online retailers can market and sell their products without having to physically handle the merchandise. And even though the EFP holds the inventory, the retailer still manages and monitors everything through a Web-based dashboard. The retailer has access to historical reports as well as real-time visibility into order status, shipment tracking, inventory quantities, and item-level sales data.
Level Playing Field

EFPs are doing for fulfillment what Google Latest News about Google has done for advertising Learn how you can enhance your email marketing program today. Free Trial - Click Here.. They are taking cost out of the equation. Google has allowed companies to reach targeted audiences for just pennies per ad click. It's a highly automated process that can fit into nearly any business model. Likewise, EFPs are taking cost out of order fulfillment. The cost of the EFP is covered by shipping and handling charges that consumers pay. And just as Google has nearly perfected online advertising, and has certainly improved advertising efficiency by orders of magnitude, EFPs are built from the ground up to make order fulfillment as efficient as possible. It would be nearly impossible for a retailer to match an EFP's level of efficiency with an in-house fulfillment operation.

EFPs can support a variety of business models. These include pure-play e-commerce Web sites, multichannel retailers who sell through third-party Web sites such as Amazon, eBay, Overstock and Yahoo, and even merchants who sell through TV infomercials and brick-and-mortar stores. EFPs fulfill orders for all of these sales models. They can provide continuously updated reports that allow retailers to track the sales volume of each channel.

There are several EFPs. Yugster.com uses Webgistix. Amazon is actually the largest EFP, although most people think of Amazon only as a retailer. These two companies take different approaches to fulfillment services. Webgistix offers a customizable solution that is integrated with a retailer's order-entry system. Amazon offers a self-serve solution that allows retailers to plug into Amazon's fulfillment infrastructure. Other EFPs, such as WeFulfillIt, are also emerging as demand for these services continues to rise sharply.

The fact is that using an EFP can be a game changer. It makes online retailers more scalable by essentially providing unlimited capacity on demand. Retailers can ship 100 orders one day and 1,000 orders the next day. EFPs can be invaluable whether an entrepreneur is just trying to get a company off the ground, or expand their operations, or protect their profit margins by reducing manpower and overhead. With an EFP, retailers don't have to lease warehouse space, hire shipping/receiving clerks, or buy shipping supplies and equipment.

And, as every retailer knows, customer satisfaction is critical. This is yet another area where EFPs provide an important benefit. The speed and accuracy of order fulfillment is usually guaranteed by the EFP, which is what a business person should expect when hiring a company that only does order fulfillment. Most merchants are good at sourcing and marketing retail merchandise. They want to focus on that and keep getting better at it. They don't want to divert resources and time to order fulfillment.

Many Internet retailers are seeing the positive impacts that EFPs can have on their businesses. It would be smart for any online retailer to consider adopting this fulfillment model. It works. It's easy. And it'll benefit the retailer's customers and its bottom line.

Visit Guardian eCommerce SSL Privacy Seal Program

8 Ways To Increase Web-Audience Response

2008-07-20T14:35:00.000-04:00

It's always a good idea to stick to the basics. When businesses stray too far from the fundamentals, problems arise, but sticking to the basics doesn't mean boring people into a state of unconsciousness. If Web-visitors' eyes glaze-over upon entering your site, you've lost them before you've begun. Web success is based on creative implementation of the basics, and that's where your Web-marketing presentation should begin.

1. Web-Audience Response Demands Communication: The Web has a lot in common with television but there are fundamental differences; it is important for Web-entrepreneurs to understand these differences and similarities, and learn from them.
Television and the Web are both communication environments, but television, like magazines and newspapers, are primarily advertising platforms. Of course there are plenty of websites around that follow the advertising financial model, but for the average business website, depending on third party advertising not only dilutes their marketing message and brand, but it also makes for a confusing and cluttered visual presentation. Just because your website presents information, doesn't mean it's communicating it to your intended audience in any meaningful way. The manner in which you communicate your message is as important as the message itself. The medium is increasingly becoming the message, and even in situations where it isn't, it definitely shapes the message.

2. Web-Audience Response Demands Content: You have repeatedly heard the comment, 'content is king,' but we think, 'communication is king' because without communication your content is meaningless. But here's the dilemma, your information is basically advertising, after all you're in business, and business is about selling something - a product, a service, an idea, or your know-how. So the real underlying purpose of your website is to make that advertising message worth listening to, and to do that, you need to turn it into content. To turn advertising into content you have to accept that sales take time. You have to be patient. You can't hurry a sale, you first have to build confidence; stop rushing the close and start thinking of selling as a courtship. You would never ask someone to get married on a first date, so why would you expect to get an order from a potential Web-client on their first visit.

3. Web-Audience Response Demands Courtship: No one is going to make a substantial financial commitment without reaching some level of comfort with who you are and what you do, and that requires some repeated contact: a courtship, or negotiation if you prefer. Therein lies the similarity and difference between websites and television: the success of a television program is based on habituation. If you get people to tune-in every week on the same night, at the same time to see their favorite program, you will be able to keep delivering your marketing message through the commercials that pay for the content. In the same regard, if you can make your website interesting enough through the compelling presentation of content, you will get visitors to return again and again, each time gaining confidence and respect for what you do and what you sell.

The difference is people accept television commercials as the price they pay for free TV programming, but the same cannot be said for the Web. People want free information on the Web without the irritation and bother of ads; so the challenge for website owners is to turn their marketing message into compelling programming that creates habituation which is just another form of negotiation, or courtship of potential clients.

4. Web-Audience Response Demands Consistency: You hear the word strategy bandied about with little relevance to its precise meaning. In marketing terms, strategy is a big idea, a sustainable concept that you can build a business around. Successful companies rarely change their strategies, a concept that should not be confused with tactics, which are the various methods used to implement strategy in order to secure the ultimate objectives. Business has to be resilient and open-minded enough to adapt to an ever-changing business environment by constantly updating tactics, but strategy needs to be a constant, a touchstone or benchmark for implementing action. Staying on course requires confidence in the strategy with a vigilant eye on the big picture.

Websites that are nothing more than brochures or catalogs of product that anyone can purchase at the local mall or box store is a tactic that delivers little relevance to today's Web-savvy consumer. And the same can be said for the blatantly obvious direct marketíng sites based on old magazine subscription techniques. The new multimedia communication-based Web requires new presentation tactics in order to successfully implement marketing strategy.

5. Web-Audience Response Demands Expectation: Successful marketing is not just about persuading people that what you have is what they need, it's about creating a series of deliverable expectations. If you expect a product to be easy to use because that's what the marketing communication states, then that product better be easy to use. Effective marketing presentations not only prompt action but just as importantly they create a set of realistic, deliverable expectations. Ask yourself, why do people mistrust politicians, car salesmen, and telemarketers? We all know the answer: many will say, and promise, just about anything to get your vote or order, and the result is a disgruntled, cynical voter or customer. Read my lips, no false expectations!

6. Web-Audience Response Demands TrustL: When customers' expectations are met, you begin to create trust, and trust is one of the hardest things to achieve on a website that lacks any kind of human connection to the audience. I can't tell you how many websites I've visited that make no effort to humanize their presentations, and consequently their businesses. When you go to a contact page and all that's there is a form to fill-in, with no contact name or phone number, it says to people, 'I really can't be bothered talking to you.' Hiding behind email tells people not to trust you, and if they don't trust you, they are not going to do business with you.

Business is about connecting to people, whether they are consumers, purchasing agents, or suppliers. If your website doesn't have some kind of human element like a video Web-host, audio message, or even a contact name and phone number, how can you expect to connect and build confidence, and trust in your intent to satisfy their needs?

7. Web-Audience Response Demands Personality: By building trust with your Web-audience you are also building your brand and defining your corporate personality. Here again we have a bit of a dichotomy since personality is a human-based characteristic, so how then can we create a personality and instill human characteristics into an inanimate entity like a business? Corporate personality does not derive from a logo, packaging, or your website's aesthetic qualities. Corporate personality is the sum total of the collective experiences your audience has with your company. In the brick and mortar world, corporate personality is a result of dealing with people, sales people, receptionists, and telemarketers; in short personality is derived from interaction with real human beings.

Clever, well written website copy can help create personality as long as it is written in a distinctive human voice, but we know that 70% of all website text is never read; people skip to bulleted points and captions. But the same material delivered by a real person either through Web-audio or video, not only delivers the marketing message in the most memorable and compelling fashion, but it also defines the business personality and humanizes the website.

Two caveats: avatars are not people, and unless you can afford to hire the creators of the Simpsons to develop your animation, you best forget it; as well, using yourself or a non-professional as a spokesperson or Web-host is a dangerous practice, and speaks more to ego than it does to effective business development.

8. Web-Audience Response Demands Motivation: Lastly your website must communicate content that excites and motivates people to do business with you. The ability to motivate people isn't about what you're selling; it's about how you present it.
Motivational speakers, whether in the business, entertainment, personal coaching, or sports arenas, all deliver a similar message; but the ones that truly stimulate people to act, are the ones that know how to present their ideas in the most exciting and compelling manner. If you want to motivate your Web-audience to respond, your presentation has to be delivered by a real human being: a professional with charm, charisma, and a distinctive character.

Brought To You By Guardian eCommerce SSL Privacy Seal Program

Judge: Knockoff-Tracking Not eBay's Job

2008-07-20T09:28:00.001-04:00

In the case of Tiffany vs. eBay, a U.S. district judge has presented the e-commerce giant with the best gift it could get in this litigious, digital age: a victory in a four-year-old trademark protection lawsuit. Judge Richard Sullivan of New York found that eBay's process of vetting suspected counterfeit items is sufficient and that Tiffany bears more responsibility for watching over its brand in cyberspace.

The ruling is a rare win for eBay in this rapidly evolving arena, and it could have an impact on its legal challenges overseas. European courts this year have found in favor of LVMH group, Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton and Rolex in trademark lawsuits involving counterfeits against the online auction house.

"The implications are enormous," Benn Konsynski, a professor at Emory University's Goizueta Business School, said. "In an age where we're moving toward social networking and more information brokerage than pure direct commerce, and all the democratization trends, it's critical to know how much responsibility you have for policing content. How far do you have to go to ensure that your content providers are respecting all rights and trademarks?" he added.

In eBay's case, Sullivan ruled the company went far enough in removing suspected counterfeit goods upon receiving complaints from Tiffany. Additionally, Sullivan agreed with eBay that it didn't have to pre-emptively remove the items even if Web site officials had their own doubts about the validity of the products. The ruling means more work and money for retailers like Tiffany, Heather Kliebenstein, an intellectual property attorney for Merchant & Gould in Minneapolis, said.

"E-commerce companies can avoid infringement actions even if the Web site provider has general knowledge of the infringement or counterfeit goods being sold on their Web sites," she said. "Brand owners will need to be able to point out or document specific instances of trademark infringement to succeed in court, based on this precedent. This will increase the burden on brand owners and their in-house counsel."

The same concerns -- spending more time and money -- may still await eBay in Europe. It's unclear whether the New York ruling will have any effect as the company appeals trademark decisions it lost in Germany and France. Nevertheless, eBay still faces an uphill struggle overseas, Anita Ramasastry, law professor and director of the Shidler Center for Law, Commerce + Technology at the University of Washington, said.

"The European courts are going to be looking at the European market and the concept of the European consumer and seller -- even though we think of these as global marketplaces and [e-commerce companies] want to trade with the same rules in place. Trademark infringement is different in Europe regarding presumption and in terms of who has responsibility for not only infringement but contributor infringement," she added.

While it would have cost eBay -- and potentially its customers -- more money to vet goods had it lost the Tiffany case, the company will still have to ensure its global business complies with European courts, Konsynski noted. "eBay will have to adjust its patterns of market practice for the legal environment in different venues. It can do that -- it can adjust -- but the question is what constitutes fairness. ... Is it equal treatment for all parties?" Konsynski questioned.

Indeed, "eBay will have to take a more active role to police its users in Europe." Kliebenstein commented.

Guardian eCommerce Privacy Seal Program

The Rise Of Peer-To-Peer Online Lending

2008-07-20T08:53:00.001-04:00

Some people are finding it tougher than ever to get a bank loan amid the nation's credit crisis, but many are getting a warmer welcome at the "teller window" on the Web. People are flocking to social network sites such as Prosper.com and Zopa.com, which connect lenders and borrowers at the grassroots level, using an eBay-style auction of loans and interest rates.

Sites and players have multiplied in the nascent industry -- known as peer-to-peer online lending -- which is barely 2 years old. Traffic has increased at a double- or triple-digit pace in the past year, according to Compete, a Boston-based online research firm.

"More people are turning to these alternative loan providers to get their cash as it has become more difficult to get a loan from the established providers," said Mike Perlman, director of Compete's financial services practice.

Jerry R. Brown of St. Cloud, Fla., said he turned to peer-to-peer online lending after conventional banks rejected his bid for a loan to expand his firearms business. He landed a US$10,000 loan at 15.4 percent, which enabled him to establish a holster factory at his business.

"That was significantly better than I could have gotten with a conventional bank," he said. "The whole process has gone without a hitch. I'd do it again in a second."
Brown used the site run by Prosper Marketplace, the San Francisco-based company that dominates the peer-to-peer lending space. He registered on a Prosper.com auction, told his story, described his need and identified his desired loan amount and rate.

Prosper managed his loan "application" and analyzed his personal financial information to develop a credit grade it provides to potential lenders. More than 30 of them responded to Brown's auction, and they became his financiers.

Prosper's loan approvals and dollar values have increased 20 percent to 30 percent during the past year, the company said. Nearly 12,700 borrowers received more than $84 million in financing from July 1, 2007, to June 30, 2008.

With small business lending declining -- SBA loans decreased nearly 20 percent last year -- many entrepreneurs are tapping into online social lending, although the loans typically are capped at $25,000, officials said.

Prosper has also seen a big increase in the number of people with good credit who are using the service, spokesperson Tiffany Fox said. About 40 percent of its borrowers have credit scores higher than 720 -- considered prime creditworthiness -- she said. Only 5 percent are now subprime borrowers (people with a sketchy credit record), compared with 25 percent when Prosper was introduced in 2006.

"There's a flight of people in the higher end of the credit spectrum turning to alternatives like Prosper," she said. Prosper's site drew nearly 777,000 unique visitors in June, a 31 percent increase from the same month last year and almost 15 times more traffic than the second-largest player, the British site Zopa.com, according to Compete.

The demand for online social lending has attracted a flurry of new players in the past year or so, including Zopa, Lending Club, Virgin Money USA, GlobeFunder Ventures and On Deck Capital. Each has its own niche: Lending Club takes an approach similar to Prosper; Zopa matches borrowers with a network of credit unions; GlobeFunder appeals largely to high-end customers; Virgin Money (formerly Circle Lending) focuses on family and friend loans; and On Deck focuses on small-business loans.

The growth spurt in online social lending is expected to continue for the foreseeable future, according to a recent report by Celent Communications, a high-tech consulting firm in Boston. Loan volume is projected to reach $1.6 billion this year, a nearly threefold increase from 2007, the firm estimated. It is expected to double in 2009 and reach nearly $6 billion in 2010.

However, despite such growth projections, those using peer-to-peer online lending are still "a very small subset of the overall number of people in the market for loans," Perlman said.

"It hasn't quite become as established and commonplace as eBay, for example, which says that people are much more willing to buy and sell goods online than borrow their money," he said. "We're still very much in the early adopter stage for social online lending."

Guardian eCommerce Privacy Seal Program....

What Google Thinks Of Your Site

2008-06-20T20:32:00.000-04:00

How Google views your site does matter if you want to succeed online because Google has become the dominant search engine on the web. It now has over 60% of the U.S. search engine market. In other countries around the world that percentage rises to 80% or more. In addition, the Google Brand Name has solidly permeated the popular psyche and any top rankings within Google will bring much weight and prestige along with all that traffic.

If you're a webmaster, you will already know how vital Google is to the success of your site, especially if you rely upon organic keyword rankings for your traffic. This free organic traffic from Google is highly desired by webmasters because it is extremely targeted and delivers high conversion rates.

In trying to reach the highest rankings possible, I (like most webmasters) have to be constantly aware of what Google thinks of my site and content. As a webmaster and marketer I have always geared my onlíne marketing towards Google. I have spent years building my keyword rankings within Google; if you take out the fact that it has nearly driven me insane, it has mostly been a positive experience.

This experience has also shown me it is indeed important for anyone to know how Google views and rates your site or content. The more knowledge you have, the better able you will be to tackle any obstacles and challenges that will come your way.

And like most webmasters, I try to find out as much about Google as is humanly possible, but Google doesn't give up its secrets easily. In fact, many webmasters would argue the only true opinion Google has of your site is shown in their SERPs - if your keywords/pages are ranked in the number one spots in Google's "Search Engine Results Pages" then Google must think your site or content deserves to be there.

However, there are other ways of finding out how Google is viewing your content. Below are several Google webmaster tools and things you can do to discover just how Google views your site or pages. They will give you a better picture of what Google thinks about your site.

One handy tool that will show you what Google thinks your pages consist of is located here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Just type in your URL and tick off website content and you will get a listing of the major keywords Google has for your content. If your targeted keyword or keywords are not listed, then you have to do some re-writing.

If you want to find out how many backlinks your site has in Google, just open up Google Search and type in:

link:yourURL

and it will show you the number of backlinks you have.

Since Google doesn't give you all your existing backlinks, many webmasters also use Yahoo! to find a more exact number of links your site has on the web.

Just open Yahoo! and type in: linkdomain:yourURL

Now whether Google is using or considering all these backlinks is the big question? Finding the exact number of backlinks you have in Google has always been a problem because Google is not giving you the exact number or at least this is the general opinion of most SEO experts.

Another way I monitor my links in Google is to place quotation marks around my site name or my name "bizwaremagic" or "titus hoskins" and do a search in Google. This gives me the pages containing references to me or my site. This is usually 50,000 to 100,000 pages, I have also noticed my online income usually correlates as this number goes up or down.

Obviously, it is very important for you to know what content the search engines have indexed from your site. You can also check to see how your links are displayed and to see if any titles or descriptions are missing from your pages. You can see how many of your pages are indexed in Google by using the site command.

Just type into Google Search:

site:yourURL

A little while back, having your pages indexed in Google's Supplemental Index caused webmasters much stress as it seemed Google was judging these pages as "second class" pages. Since then, Google no longer uses the Supplementary Label in grading pages but that doesn't mean a supplementary index doesn't exist; just that Google has promised to crawl and consider these pages as well in any search query.

From my own experiences, I have receíved more traffic when my site was at PR4 than I receíved when it was at PR6. What's important is getting high rankings for your targeted keywords... if you get top spots, it doesn't matter if your main index page (site) is PR4 or PR6, you'll still get the same amount of traffic. In other words, don't become too fixated on PageRank because Google in many cases is not letting you see the true PR of a webpage.

I would like to add one point to the whole PageRank issue and that has to do with perception. If you're running an online business, then having a PR8 site does matter for it will bring in more business and customers (especially if you're in the SEO industry) mainly because of the "perceived value" of your site or business.

What Google thinks does matter! In other words, what Google thinks of your site can play a major role in your success. Mainly because, like it or hate it, Google has become the supreme authority on the web and what they say, counts. Therefore, you should always be paying special attention to just what Google is saying about your site and acting upon that knowledge accordingly.

Site Credibility Pays! Get Site Certified Today!

eBay To Boost PayPal Protection

2008-06-20T20:29:00.001-04:00

In its latest effort to increase user confidence in its e-commerce platform -- and to boost use of its PayPal payment service -- eBay will offer full protection against fraud to purchases made with PayPal. eBay buyers who complete eligible transactions with PayPal will be able to get 100 percent of their purchase price back, with no price cap, the company said. Sellers who are paid via the service will also gain enhanced protections.

The auction giant made the announcements during its annual eBay Live trade show, held this year in Chicago. The moves represent an extension of efforts put in place earlier this year by relatively new CEO John Donahoe, who has pledged to revive growth in eBay's core auction platform by boosting user confidence that transactions will be completed. The new protections will "give all buyers and sellers more confidence and trust," said Lorrie Norrington, eBay's president of marketplace operations. "Buyers who pay with PayPal on eBay will be covered, with no limits, on most transactions."

In addition to the PayPal protections, eBay announced it will offer its highest-rated Power Sellers discounts of 20 percent on final value fees -- a perk meant to get them to list more items for sale -- and additional discounts on UPS shipping services.

PayPal is already used on the vast majority of eBay auctions, but the company is eager to see its use expanded even further both on its own platform and elsewhere on the Web. Currently, 97 percent of eBay.com listings offer PayPal as a payment option, eBay said, and more than 90 percent of active eBay users in the United States have PayPal accounts.

The buyer protection plan will cover eligible transactions on eBay in cases where the item is paid for but not received or received but not the item the buyer thought he was getting. Later this year -- in time for the holiday shopping season -- PayPal will remove coverage limits on the buyer protection, allowing items of any size to be fully refundable.

Sellers will also gain more PayPal protection, gaining a buffer against claims, charge-backs and reversals in instances where a payment was made without authorization by the account holder or when an item never reached its destination. The protection will extend to shipments made to 190 markets where PayPal is now accepted.

The enhanced benefits for PayPal underscore both eBay's desire to boost its payment subsidiary and its understanding that increasing consumer confidence in its platform is essential for additional growth, Forrester Research Principal Analyst Sucharita Mulpuru said. "Buyers need to trust eBay sellers will deliver what they say they will when they say they will," she said. "Especially at the holidays, users will go to someone they trust to get their purchases to them on time and accurately."

eBay has said it believes it is well-positioned to thrive in a tougher economy or even a recession, as consumers seeking bargains will turn to the site. Still, even bargain-hunters want to be confident they'll get what they pay for, Mulpuru added. "The bigger picture for eBay itself is to get more buyers to show up, which will convince sellers to list more and help build out the platform."

eBay stirred up significant dissatisfaction among its users in Australia when it announced a plan to require that all transactions on its marketplace in that country be paid for with PayPal. The outcry was loud enough for eBay to say it will not move to implement the change immediately.

Still, that is clearly the direction eBay wants to move, since it essentially gets paid twice on every transaction paid for with PayPal -- once when it receives a cut of the auction proceeds and again when it takes a fee for processing the PayPal payment.

Perhaps just as important to eBay is growing PayPal use overall, something that would logically follow if more users get into the habit of paying with the service on eBay. The market for alternatives such as PayPal that don't require a credit card number to be entered for each transaction is growing due to worries about identify theft and privacy, distinguished analyst Avivah Litan said. "Consumers are interested in alternative payment methods right now," she said. "This is an important window of opportunity for the PayPals and BillMeLaters to get shoppers comfortable with their services."

Merchants are beginning to recognize that consumers want more choices and are rapidly adding alternatives alongside traditional choices such as credit card payments, with the trend likely to be even more noticeable during the coming holiday shopping season, Litan added.

The recent initiatives were not enough to help eBay avoid being caught up in a Wall Street downdraft, with the stock losing more than 2.7 percent in afternoon action to US$28.40.

Guardian eCommerce Exposes Trustworthy Web Sites!

Is Social Marketing Your Online Store's Top Friend?

2008-06-20T04:51:00.000-04:00

Today's savvy consumers want products from a business they can trust, learn from, relate to and "be friends" with. The two most popular social networking sites on the Internet -- MySpace and Facebook -- are potential springboards for friendly lead generation. These sites give online business owners the ability to place their products and services in front of thousands of potential customers in a more personal, and easily accessible environment. With the ability to reach large and targeted audiences, the customizable, interactive and user-friendly interface of sites like MySpace and Facebook introduce social networks as an ideal platform to expand online businesses.

The rapid growth online shopping had in the past years has drawn many new small businesses to the online arena. As online stores grow and the amount of revenue these stores acquire continues to tick higher, the amount of revenue potential that social networking sites provide continues to increase as well. Think back to about five years ago, when half of the brick-and-mortar businesses in the market didn't have a Web site. Now it's unlikely to see a television commercial without also seeing a Web site address or online special attached to it.

This applies to all products in today's market. No longer are cereal boxes and bottle caps offering immediate savings and benefits; instead they are used as tools to drive consumers to their Web sites. For online businesses, the opportunity to gain additional exposure online is especially important, and it's beneficial to utilize all tools available to increase brand awareness.

Signing up for a profile with MySpace or Facebook is relatively easy -- and it's free. There are several resources available to utilize when creating and designing a page for your business. Remember to keep your page current and informative, with a personality that matches your online store. Give a concise overview of your company and how it may benefit your target audience. Use common sense and creativity to spark your visitor's interest. Not only can these profiles compliment your online site, but they can also be used to find targeted consumers.

An ultimate social networking profile would be one in which you were sought out to become a friend. If you're a small business with limited exposure, however, a more realistic approach would be to seek out others instead. Once these friends are found, posting MySpace bulletins and Facebook notes are great tools to use when spreading the message about new products and special deals.

Several niche markets have been able to expand the visibility of their product line due to social networking sites. Music bands offer up an interesting case study for the opportunities within this new channel. It is estimated that more than 5 million bands are now using MySpace.

If these bands decide to take the next step and start selling their music and merchandise to their online fan base, they can realize significant gains. Another example can be found with fashion designers such as Ed Hardy. With more than 35,000 MySpace friends, all it takes is a simple bulletin post to inform each of these thousands of customers of a new product line or monthly special.

A successful e-commerce solution company should help consumers to further promote their online store by allowing merchants to easily add products from that store directly into their social profiles. Then customers would have the ability to check out securely from that merchant's online storefront. This type of integration allows businesses to take full advantage of the potential that social networking sites have to offer.

Once these savvy businesses drive traffic from MySpace and Facebook to their online stores, it's important that they take advantage of the other aspects involved in social selling to close the deal. Web site design, site usability and quality of the site user's overall experience are key factors in gaining customer loyalty when online shopping.

Other features such as e-mail a friend, wish list, customer reviews and affiliate marketing tools can also help to socially spread the word about a store's products and services. Again, it's important for online store owners to take advantage of all of the tools available to market their items via the World Wide Web.

We've found that there isn't a single magic bullet for being successful online, and it's important for merchants to be creative and open to new opportunities when introducing their products to customers.

When entering the social networking world, a business is among thousands of potential leads all with the same vehicle for giving and acquiring information. Be honest, be personal, be a friend and in return, your new friends may become your lifelong customers.

Guardian eCommerce Helps Increase Online Sales!

Make Your Web Site Work for You

2008-06-20T04:46:00.000-04:00

Wherever your Web site ranks on your list of things to work on, move it up to the top. It's that critical.

Your Web site isn't "about" your company, it's an extension of your company. If it's unprofessional, you're unprofessional. If it's cluttered, you're cluttered. If it's hard to work with, you're hard to work with. By contrast, if it's well put together, smart and easy to use, so is your company. At least that's what people will perceive. Most small business Web sites don't do their companies justice.

When you invite prospects to your site, it's no different from offering them a free sample, a trial period or a formal introduction to your business. Even in the age of technology, there's nothing more powerful than a first impression, and your Web site increasingly is your introduction. I used to counsel startup companies not to underestimate the need for a professionally designed logo. I stand by that advice, but now I extend it to their Web presence as well. You simply can't afford to look anything less than first-rate online.

With this in mind, and with their permission, I recently evaluated a few small consumer companies' Web sites and offered suggestions. I analyzed their online branding strategy based on my experience clicking around on their sites the way a prospective customer might.

Stacey Antine has a great idea in Health Barn -- an idea that I could see taking off across the nation as she rides the dual trends of "green" living and nutrition. She's clearly no slouch when it comes to generating public relations for her fledgling operation. However, the Barn's online garden could use some tending.

The Flash introduction is a little cheesy, but it does seem to capture the personality of the company. What it doesn't do is communicate anything about what Health Barn is or does. That's a big missed opportunity, especially given the short amount of time parents can spare. The first thing you are led to click on is "press room," which I'm not sure was intended. Throughout the site, the press coverage is a little overemphasized for my taste. While it does provide credibility, it should be a spice, not the main dish.

I read the entire welcome page and still wasn't clear on what Health Barn did. Is it a curriculum for kids? An online seminar? It took me several minutes before I understood Health Barn is a children's educational program. I was bothered by the way the font size grew smaller and larger as I scrolled down each page -- it just seemed careless. Health Barn may be losing prospects by taking people off the site when they click on the links to media coverage or registration forms, instead of opening them in a separate window.

The "barn store" (a shop within the site) is not only charming but also well organized, with simple signage, attractive displays and products easily accessible to its four-foot customers. Health Barn should apply the same principles to its Web design -- displaying information in a more organized and appetizing manner.

Revat, which describes itself on its site as "the leading self-defense program for adults living in an urban environment," appears to be off to a good start, but it's missing the drama. The fear of being accosted is powerful, yet the Web site doesn't capitalize on that. Imagine how compelling a mini-movie dramatizing Revat training would be to its prospective customers.

However, first, the company needs to decide who exactly those prospects are. My first impression was Revat was created to serve all city dwellers, offering them an innovative approach to self-defense without having to go through years of martial arts training. Yet the company also seems to pride itself on being a finishing school of sorts for elite-level martial arts professionals. Trying to appeal to both scares off a big market of individuals in need of self-defense training, and at the same time turns off martial arts experts. By targeting both, Revat might not reach either.

The company is definitely in need of a step up in how it presents itself. It's difficult for small operations to look professional right out of the gate, and it's apparent Revat is a boutique operation, which could be a bonus to those in its target market of Chicago. However, the company could look more put together. For example, the home page of the Web site, while simple (a good thing), is unimpressive.

The Revat logo appears bitmapped, and little thought was given to layout and design. The photos used on the site look somewhat intimidating -- which may appeal to martial arts pros looking for the next step, but probably not to novices. In addition, there's no clear path through the Web site. The testimonials are difficult to find -- and their diversity reinforces the confusion about who the company is trying to serve. The blog is a complete departure, design-wise, and features a cliched stock photo.

The longer I spent on the site -- and I would fall into the "novice" category -- the less I felt that Revat was for me. If Revat can decide who it's really trying to serve, and invest in a professional Web design company, it could fill an interesting niche.

What on earth is Walker and PingPing? That was my first question when I visited this Web site. I had no idea what this site was about, as it seemed to presume some sort of advance knowledge. Is it a series from Nickelodeon? A new educational program? A Disney Channel initiative? Who's behind it? Filling a first-time visitor's mind with questions isn't a great way to start.

Who is the Web site for? Kids, it appears, yet the most prominent space is given to a sales message: "Buy the DVD!" As a parent, I'm not crazy about that. The links the site provides at the bottom, to an About.com review and "About Little Emperor, LLC" were helpful, but not easy to spot. They didn't give me enough information to know whether or not this was something I wanted for my kids.

I was intrigued once I learned about the company's goal of using animated series to help kids "explore the world." However, I still wanted to know more about who was behind it -- when you're selling to kids, you're selling to their parents as well, and you must offer them plenty of information.

The company may want to consider having an easy-to-find "for parents" section with company background, customer testimonials, independent ratings and more, and also keep the sales message on that side of the site. Then they could feel free to make the main site all that it should be for kids. Instead of simply pushing trailers of the first two episodes, the Web site itself could be an episode of sorts, entertaining the kids and impressing their parents.

The animation isn't up to Disney standards, but it's probably fine for kids. As a father, I would definitely want to know more before I made the buy. There are simply too many other well-crafted, trustworthy educational materials out there.

Site Credibility Pays, Get Your Web Site Certified!

Top 10 Reasons Why Websites Fail To Perform

2008-05-18T07:13:00.000-04:00

You've taken the time to finally build a website, and now it is online. Months go by. Maybe you get a few visitors now and again. Maybe you land on the search engines. Mostly though, it just sits there. Is the website you paid for pulling its weight? A website is a tool and can be of significant help to your business. It can cut a lot of time you put into giving information to customers. It can answer questions and perform tasks for you. Find out where websites fail to perform and how you can figure out where to make it better.

1. Undefined Website Objectives -- Some sites try to do way too much at once, or worse, they have no definable purpose. Many provide no clear objective. A site can do more than look good and flashy and have your contact information. Websites can be informational, storing content and articles based on a topic. Sites can run eCommerce solutions that help you with your sales process. It can also generate leads, asking customers to fill out forms with their information and interests. It can also be a hybrid site, with mixed purposes, like offering a free ebook or free access to information (informational) in return for contact information (lead generation).

Defining the purpose of your website gives a clear direction to your customers. Where should customers arrive when they find your website? Where do you want them to end up? Using a clear path and clear objectives, you can lead them through your site, your products, and your information, depending on how you need to sell your products. Not all products or services can be sold directly in an eCommerce situation. Maybe you prefer just getting to know your customer a bit more, and being able to forward marketing materials, so a lead generation type of site might be more suitable.

Assign a secondary objective. Maybe after visitors sign up for free access, or an ebook, they are encourage to ask more by contacting your sales reps, or perhaps they can make a direct purchase online. Use a clearly definable call to action. "Email for more information." "Clíck here to sign up." Tell visitors where to go.

2. Unidentified Target Audience -- Demographics have been used in marketing for generations. Marketers use the information because it works. Knowing who your audience is defines the purpose to your website and calls out those who qualify and would be interested in your products. Marketing is the one area where discrimination is actually a good thing! You don't want to waste the marketing dollars that draw people to your site who won't need your products in the first place.

Get to know who your clients are. Are they male or female? How old? Where are they located? What do they do for a living? Habits, income levels, preferences, they can all be discovered with a quick email, phone call or have your current customers take surveys and help you figure out what your clients want.

3. Building for the Wrong Audience -- Your site can have a purpose and a select audience, but if it doesn't appeal to audiences, they tend to go elsewhere. Finding preferences is only the first step. Once you figure out what your demographic is, it is time to find out what appeals to them, and use that to your advantage. It could be something as simple as site colors and images, to where and how they prefer to use navigation systems and the type of content presented.

Maybe you need simple content, easy to read and understand for younger audiences. Perhaps you need something a bit more technical for professionals. You can even see if you need to add features for those who are visually impaired. Paying attention to your demographic and their preferences can mean building your website around their likes and getting more responses.

4. Oblivious to Web Traffic Sources -- A link on a Harry Potter fan club forum to your website can bring in traffic, but does it really bring in the right customers? If you're not directing traffic from sites relevant to yours or where a matching market exists, you might end up with empty hits to your website. It looks pretty on stat pages but it doesn't really do anything.

Refocus your efforts on search engine optimization and focus on keywords that do fit, not just what might be popular. You can plan the sort of traffic you want and focus your outreach efforts on that. Planning your search engine campaigns can make them more effective, bringing the right customers to you. You don't need 1,000 random visitors a day, when 100 qualified visitors will do.

5. Underestimating the Competition -- Who says you can't grab ideas from your competition? Find out what they are lacking and draw customers to your site by adding more features and information. Your target audience is searching the web for your product. Don't let your competition become more appealing.

Understand your competition by observing their sites. Where are your competitors linking? Where aren't they? What designs do they use on their site? Does your target audience like that type of design or do they want something better? Figure out how to improve your site and make it better than your competition.

6. Poor Site Communication and Inconsistency -- If you're building a website, is one page orange and another blue? Does one page have your logo and another doesn't? People love consistency. Does your content and images display the right message? Your website might have pretty pictures of your children, or a fun story about what happened to you last Christmas, but is it really what your customers want to know?

Skip the personal info, unless it's relevant and your audience wants to hear about it. You also need to make sure you present your brand in its best light, and consistently give visitors the same presentation every time and on every page. Let your brand stand out.

7. Outdated and Antiquated Site Features -- Out with the old. Check your site for old content and images and delete them. Remove old links that go nowhere too. Forget pop ups and old methods of keeping visitors around. Content is great, but if it's so old that it's irrelevant, you'll lose respectability and your expert status. Stick to new information. Don't be afraid to get rid of old articles and delete old images. Do an update on your site features, like navigation systems and contact forms.

8. Poor Overall Site Performance -- You've plastered all there is to know about you on a few pages. Is this the right way to do it? Maybe not. Yes, you've given them something to look at, but you have to remember, your time to impress people on the Internet is limited to just a few seconds. Long passages of text, lengthy forms, even poorly constructed or confusing navigation can slow people down, which leads to people leaving.

Making your website flow is all about making your site easy to read, easy to browse and easy to find what you're looking for. Include a search function, highlight popular pages, and make it simple for people to give you their information. Start with short forms, only the essentials, and a few simple questions. You can get more info later.

9. Lack of Commitment -- When was the last time you updated additional information to your website? Remember those "Website Under Construction" images from the early years of the Internet? Over time, people have learned those images are pointless. Your website is ever evolving, ever needing updating. Your website is isn't ever finished.

You must make a commitment to update information and to improve interest in your site from visitors. It could be as simple as updating a blog once or twice a week, or updating about sales and special events. Give visitors something to come back to, and let them turn into regular guests.

10. Not using an Experienced Web Firm -- You do a good job with what you do, and a good business and website owner knows when to call for help. Maybe you're okay with writing content, but you need help with creating navigation and setting up forms. It's okay to ask someone else for help, either with a few pages, or for the entire site design, and leave it to a professional.

It also saves money and time getting someone else to do the complicated things for you. Are you spending weeks on figuring out a web page design set up when it takes a professional a few hours to produce? When you're in business, you consult with professionals who will help you build a better website, develop methods of search engine marketing strategies, and find out how to appeal to your target audience. You save tíme, money, and plenty of headaches.

Site Credibility Pays. Go Visit Guardian eCommerce And Get Site Certified!

The Web-Content Conundrum

2008-05-18T06:55:00.000-04:00

The Web consumes content like a teenager at an all-you-can-eat buffet. Lots and lots of content makes you more search engine friendly, helps establish your knowledge and expertise, explains in detail what you offer, and justifies that offer with all the explanations, statistics, and rationale you can muster. The problem is no one reads it.

Well that's not exactly true: some people read every scrap of information on your site; they just happen to be the tire-kickers, the people looking for ways to get stuff they don't have to pay for, or they're competitors looking for ways to copy what you do, or worse find something wrong. This is definitely a dilemma that needs to be addressed.

The Answer Lies In The Questions -- The answer is obviously not to eliminate all the good stuff you've worked so hard to create, or to bury it where no one will ever see it. When it comes to Web-content ask yourself:

1. Is our content meaningful and relevant, or is it just hype and bunkum?

2. Is our content understandable by our audience, or is it so inarticulate that people just give up, even when they are desperate to find out what you have to say?

3. Does our content hold our audience's attention? Does it just explain, or does it engage, excite, and entertain while at the same time persuade on both a rationale and emotional level?

4. Is our content so intimidating and technical that it leads to more confusion and questions than answers?

5. Is our most important content buried in volumes of extraneous information or advertising copy, making it difficult to access and understand?
If any of these questions describe the text-based information on your website, then perhaps you need to find a way to make that important information more useful to your clients, not just search engines spiders.

When it comes to website content there are five things you need to keep in mind in order to make that content meaningful: Relevance, Clarity, Effectiveness, Memorability, and Personality.

Relevance: The Appropriateness of The Material -- The material on your website has to be relevant, it is good for search engine indexing and it is good for establishing your expertise and trustworthiness, a quality that is an absolute necessity in a Web-based business environment, but exactly what constitutes relevant content? In order for content to be relevant it must serve your overall marketing agenda and at the same time it must be useful to your target audience.

If your goal is to generate long-term clients by establishing a relationship with your website visitors then that relationship has to be symbiotic, that is, it must benefit both you and the your prospective clients. There are far too many websites around that are based on the P.T. Barnum principle that everyone is a sucker and can be conned. At the other end of the spectrum there are also way too many sites that are nothing more than catalogs, a kind of, here it is, take it or leave it approach. Then there are the sites that provide pages and pages of specifications and features that confuse more than clarify. And finally there are the websites that are nothing more than business cards or display ads, an approach that says to the visitor that you are too cheap, too lazy, or too unimaginative to bother creating an appropriate marketing website.

The fact that search engines seek out relevant content is merely a positive by-product of good content, it is not the ultimate marketing objective, which should be to open up a communication with your audience and start a productive and profitable relationship.

Clarity: The Ability To Be Understood -- Is there anything more important than being understood? I assume you have a website because you want to promote and expand your business, but if visitors do not understand who you are, what you do, and why they should pay you to provide them with a product or service, then exactly what are you doing? Being understood sounds like a simple thing, but it is not. Ask yourself, to whom am I trying to communicate? Is it a search engine robot or a real person? If your main concern is the ever changing search engine indexing machinery then you risk the danger of not being completely understood by the people who visit your website.

There is a certain comfort in dealing with the illusion of certainty that speaks to the mechanics of search engine optimization: all you have to do is follow the rules and you'll be successful. The problem is the game is fixed and the rules keep changing, and more importantly it's the wrong audience. Any order you ever generated was from a real person and if real people don't understand your marketing message, then all that traffic to your site is wasted.

Effectiveness: The Ability to Serve Your Marketing Objectives -- Being clear and to the point is important but it doesn't necessarily make your site effective. Dragnet's Sergeant Friday may have wanted, 'just the facts, nothing but the facts' but in the real world people need more.

People are busy and they do not want to waste their time on things that have no meaning for them, and that is the key. Things become meaningful when they engage while they enlighten, educate while they entertain, and persuade while they present. People spend hours upon hours on the Web doing things that could be considered a waste of time and non productive, so the idea that people will not invest their time on your website is just plain wrong. If they won't spend the time, then they aren't really interested or your presentation stinks.

What makes the Web such a powerful marketing tool is its multimedia capability, the opportuníty to communicate using text, images, motion graphics, video, and sound (audio) design. And of all these delivery options the two most effective communication techniques are video and sound (audio) design.

Memorability: The Ability To Stick In Your Audience's Minds -- Clarity and effectiveness are vital but if people don't remember who you are, all your hard work will be lost. Maybe you've convinced your audience that your way is the answer, but if they don't remember it was you that told them, then you've wasted the opportuníty.

There are lots of sites around that expect instant response. They present their material and expect you to press a button and give them money. It's not that this can't happen, but it certainly is not what usually happens.

How many times have you wished you could remember that website that had that thing that you didn't need then but you need now? Not every potential customer is ready to buy right away, and if they forget who you are, someone else will benefit from your effort.

Let's put it another way, sales is like sex, while marketing is like a seduction. If you're not prepared to invest in romancing your audience, they'll immediately forget you exist and the sale will go to the business that gets remembered.

In order to create that memory, your website has to be an experience, an experience that resonates and entertains by delivering your marketing message with style and flair, using real human beings, analogy, and the classic story format in a professionally executed performance.

Personality: The Ability To Distinguish You From The Competition -- Every business has a personality, an image, an identity that is the sum total of every experience anyone who has ever had contact with your company has ever had. Success online and offline depends on how well you manage that personality.

Your website is part of your public face and in many cases it is your only public face. Your business is not what you sell and it is not you, it is a separate and distinct entity that needs to be treated like a precocious child in need of care and feeding, and development.

Personality starts with a point-of-view and an attitude strong enough to make an impact. And the more mundane your offering, the more important it is to make a statement. Victoria's Secret has little trouble grabbing people's attention, but if it's sandpaper you sell, you better try harder. We especially see this identity crisis with distributors, whose own personality often gets sublimated to the major brands they carry.

Perhaps you remember the J. Peterman character from the old Seinfeld television show. The character was played by, actor and voice-over specialist, John O'Hurley, who is nothing like the real J. Peterman. But the characterization was so strong, and so memorable, that O'Hurley was able to single-handedly rescue the company from financial trouble.

If you're looking to create a Web-personality as effective as John O'Hurley's J. Peterman, you should consider adding a video or audio host to your Web-presentation, one that engages your audience's attention and captures their collective imagination.

At the end of the day there is one thing about websites that should guide you in your decisions as to what you present and how, and that is simply, websites are for people not search engines. If the people coming to your website don't hear what you have to say, understand what you're offering, and remember who you are, then your website isn't doing what it needs to do for your business.

Gain Trust In Your Website, Go Guardian eCommerce!

Seven Ways to Make E-Marketing Work in a Tough Economy

2008-05-18T06:49:00.000-04:00

In a challenging economy, you must find new ways to make marketing work more effectively, get more out of marketing investments, and measure and account for marketing decisions. In short, you must make changes. Doing the same things in an uncertain economic environment and expecting the same results is, at worst, a definition of marketing insanity. At best, it is a flawed strategy.

How can your company be one of those success stories that market and grow their business during challenging economic times? The following strategies will help you allocate marketing investments to better performing programs that will carry your company through the economic downturn and beyond.

1. Get Targeted -- A fundamental but sometimes overlooked marketing tenet is to "fish where the fish are." In other words, invest in those specific, targeted media where you know your customers and prospects will be exposed to your message. Research shows that virtually all engineering, technical and industrial professionals now use the Internet throughout their work process.

The same holds true in most business-to-business markets. However, the Internet is vast, and the fish you are looking for may be using specific Web sites where the content is directly related to their information needs. Work with your media partners to identify and target those sites.

2. Measure Performance -- While it's always the right time to purge marketing programs that don't perform, it may be time to scale back any marketing plans whose results you can't measure or are unsure about. In other words, reallocate and "right-size" marketing budgets to measurable programs. Online programs -- which are built around delivering visibility, impressions, clicks, leads and customers -- are easy to measure.

3. Think Integration -- Integrated marketing means your marketing strategy takes advantage of multiple media, resources and customer touch points to create a whole that's greater and more effective than the sum of its parts. The more that marketing efforts are integrated and comprehensive, the greater impact you can achieve in gaining visibility in your market, qualified leads and sales.

4. Maintain Frequency and Consistency -- The benefits of regular visibility in the market tend to compound over time as more prospects recognize your company. This improves your opportunity to get on a prospect's short list of potential vendors and also shortens the sales cycle. A consistent online presence where your customers and prospects are looking for information -- including Web sites, directories, search engines and e-newsletters -- will help your company stay visible as well as provide measurable lead generation benefits via online contact.

5. Push and Pull Your Way to Success -- Most marketing can be classified as either push or pull: companies push their message out through tactics such as direct mail, advertisements and e-newsletters; and they also establish a presence in online directories, Web sites and search engines to pull customers in real-time when prospects are searching for information, products and services like those your company offers.

Rather than struggling over whether to allocate resources to push or pull marketing, seek out a media partner that has your target audience captive and can offer both push and pull programs under an integrated program.

6. Focus on Quality Over Quantity -- If marketing efforts focus solely on quantity over quality, fewer leads will convert, more sales resources will be wasted, and sales people will begin to distrust marketing's lead generation programs.
Commit to programs where quality is a key attribute: programs that can deliver interested prospects, provide prospect contact information, and offer reports of program performance .

7. Seek Assistance From Media Partners -- The economy is likely forcing you to make harder and smarter decisions about allocating budgets. While you may be facing challenges, you don't have to face them alone. Ask media partners to demonstrate how their marketing solutions help your company achieve the strategies mentioned above.

Ask them:

-Do they have your target audience's attention?
-Can they keep your company visible to prospects and customers at all times?
-Do they offer a variety of integrated marketing solutions aligned with your goals?
-Can they provide both visibility and lead generation?
-Do they deliver targeted, quality leads with full contact information?
-Do they provide reports you can use to measure the performance of your marketing
and justify your marketing investments?

During challenging times or when thing are going well, industrial marketers need to clarify goals and create a tailored, integrated marketing solution that complements your current media mix and extends your company's ability to compete and win business in the market.

Utilize a wide range of e-media advertising and marketing solutions. Consider keyword ads, e-mail marketing, searchable product catalogs, banner ad networks and industry-leading e-newsletter advertisements. Figure out the right combination, and you will deliver the right message at the right time to the right audience and integrate with your traditional marketing efforts.

Increase Site Trust, Site Credibility Pays With Guardian eCommerce!

E-Commerce Web Services: Better, Faster, Cheaper

2008-05-18T06:36:00.000-04:00

Typically, new technologies tend to promise more than they deliver. That has not been the case with Web services, which are being integrated into just about every new e-commerce application. "Support for Web services has come from application vendors, application development tool suppliers and middleware vendors," said Jason Bloomberg, a managing partner with market research firm ZapThink.

The support has been widespread because Web services enable companies to simplify application design, deliver enhancements more quickly, and reuse software more easily. Those features stem from the design of Web services. In essence, Web services provide businesses with a standard way to communicate. They replace complex, proprietary programming interfaces with Extensible Markup Language (XML) documents and standard application protocols. XML is used to tag data, and SOAP is used to transfer it, WSDL (Web Services Description Language) describes the services needed, and UDDI (Universal Description Discovery and Integration) tells applications what services are available.

Because compliant software works with open protocols, it can be discovered by other programs, and two or more applications can interact with one another and perform tasks, such as exchanging information. With this flexibility, companies can integrate their own applications more tightly within the enterprise. An e-commerce corporation might connect its order entry program with its accounting applications so that changes made in one area automatically update data housed in another department. This step can be taken even if the applications are coded in different programming languages.

In addition, businesses can exchange data with their partners, customers and suppliers more effectively. In a best case scenario, they can view and use partners' information as if it was their own. A Web service could carry out payment validation by taking information from one system -- perhaps a customer name and address -- and initiating a request for other information relevant to the process, such as a credit card account number, expiration date or the card verification number on the back of a credit card.

Taking advantage of such features does not require much of an investment for an e-commerce supplier. "Many of the new applications as well as application development tools arrive with inherent support for Web services," stated Randy Heffner, an analyst with Forrester Research. In some cases, e-commerce companies initiate Web services simply by deploying applications, such as Oracle's E-Business Suite.

In addition, Web services have become a feature that many e-commerce suppliers now offer to their customers. "The Web services suppliers win because other companies use their services, and that helps drive up their visibility and eventually their revenue," ZapThink's Bloomberg explained. The customers are content because they have more sophisticated functions than they could develop by themselves.

Because of the benefits, a number of e-commerce suppliers are moving into this space. "Amazon and Google are a few of the companies that have developed Web services that they let other companies take advantage of," Heffner said. Amazon has been in the Web services business since its launch of Amazon Web Services in 2002. The service provides software developers, Web site owners and merchants with access to back-end features found on Amazon's Web site, such as its payment system. As the services have evolved, the face of the companies using them has changed.

"When we started this business, we imagined that smaller companies, particularly startups, would be the first ones to take advantage of our services, given their low-cost nature and the fact that they get to leverage our massive scaling capabilities with no up-front investment," noted Kay Kinton, an Amazon spokesperson. "Now that our services have become more mature, we are seeing larger companies take advantage as well."

While Web services offer many advantages, they face a few deployment challenges. "Web services technology is readily available and works well. The obstacles stem from management issues," said ZapThink's Bloomberg. Many programmers do not want to fully understand how to build applications that take advantage of Web services features. Inertia is also a problem: Some programmers resist designing applications in a new way. Companies often need to invest in training courses in order to overcome those barriers.

Another challenge is most existing enterprise software infrastructures conform to other architectures, such as client/server, thin client, or mainframe computing. Consequently, it can take companies a substantial amount of time, money and manpower to revamp their systems and realize Web services' potential benefits.

To help address these issues, Web services are being rolled up into a more expansive application development initiative: service-oriented architecture (SOA). The goal with this movement is to design all applications so they operate in a plug-and-play manner. Here, support for Web services would be one of the features bundled in with SOA compliant systems.

Because of its potential, major vendors, such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP have been promoting SOA. "SOA has the potential to help companies streamline the application development process further, but putting the pieces in place to take advantage of it has proven to be a difficult challenge," concluded Bloomberg. This problem is expected to be a short-term issue. As SOA acceptance rises, the Web services footprint will grow even bigger in e-commerce companies.

Get Your Website Certified, With A Guardian eCommerce Trust Seal

The Fed And The Credit Card Crack Down

2008-05-04T16:49:00.000-04:00

The Federal Reserve and other regulators are moving Friday to crack down on "unfair and deceptive" practices in the credit card industry that have added billions in debt to people already struggling to cope with the economic downturn. In the most far-reaching crackdown on the credit industry in decades, the Fed and two government agencies are proposing rules that would stop credit card companies from unfairly raising interest rates and make sure they give people enough time to pay their bills.
The banking industry is expected to fight the new rules.

Travis Plunkett, legislative director for the Consumer Federation of America, said that while he hadn't yet seen the details, the rules "appear to address some of the most significant abuses in the credit card marketplace right now." Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., who has introduced legislation to protect consumers from credit card abuse, said in a statement that she was pleased the Fed had adopted some aspects of her legislation.

However, she also expressed concern that "by the time the Fed gets around to finalizing these credit card reform proposals, they will be watered down and come too little too late for consumers who need relief now."

The Fed has been criticized for moving too slowly to respond to abuses leading to the subprime mortgage crisis. The agencies said the new regulations could be finalized by the end of the year.

Plunkett said his group estimates that credit card debt is now about US$850 billion, with households that don't pay their credit card bills in full every month owing an average $17,000.

The proposed new rules that would prohibit:

Placing unfair time constraints on payments. A payment could not be deemed late unless the borrower is given a reasonable period of time, such as 21 days, to pay;
Unfairly allocating payments among balances with different interest rates;
Unfairly raising annual percentage rates on outstanding balances; Placing too-high fees for exceeding the credit limit solely because of a hold placed on the account;
Unfairly computing balances; Unfairly adding security deposits and fees for issuing credit or making credit available; Making deceptive offers of credit.

In news releases, the agencies said the proposed rules also would require federal credit unions to give consumers a chance to opt out of an overdraft protection program. And they would prohibit those institutions from charging a fee for an overdraft caused by a hold placed on consumer's funds when a person uses a debit card.

The Fed, which is expected to vote Friday afternoon on its approval of the proposed rules, is acting in conjunction with the National Credit Union Administration and the Office of Thrift Supervision. Ken Clayton, senior vice president of card policy for the American Bankers Association, said the industry will fight the new proposals, describing them as "aggressive regulatory intervention in the marketplace that will result in higher prices and less consumer credit."

He said the change "basically says that we can't price for risk" and that if higher risk borrowers don't bear the costs, those costs will be passed along to other consumers.

Site Credibility Pays, Get Site Trusted Today...

Tech Trash Is Treasure

2008-05-04T16:29:00.001-04:00

The hottest gadgets of today will look old and tired a year from now. Sellers of mobile handsets, smartphones, MP3 players, gaming consoles, camcorders, digital cameras and laptops constantly push the latest and greatest technology, leaving yesterday's choice items in the dust. Then there's the fact that this stuff is pretty easily broken.

How to dispose of broken or outdated electronic devices has become a growing question. A one year-old startup, BuyMyTronics.com, thinks it has an equitable and environmentally friendly solution: It will buy anyone's used, new and broken devices. It will fix what's fixable and sell it at profit. The rest gets recycled.

"Everybody has something they [just don't know what to do with]. It's happened to me before. I broke a digital camera, and when I looked for a place to have it fixed, it was going to be more to fix it than it was to buy a brand new one," said Brett Mosley, president and CEO of BuyMyTronics.com.

Although many people have found themselves in a similar position, holding a worthless device because it is broken or out-of-date, Mosley decided he would do something about it. "I'd always had that idea that it would be cool if you could buy things from people at a reasonable price and then have all of your labor and repairs done in-house. You could sell them. It was always something I had been frustrated with and said, 'someone should do something about this.' The opportunity presented itself and I seized the day," he said.

For what Mosley calls a "reasonable price," BuyMyTronics will purchase certain types of electronics from numerous vendors, including Apple, iPods, Blackberry smartphones and Sony PlayStation gaming consoles, among many more. iPhone bricked? BuyMyTronics wants it. Recently upgraded to an iPod touch and you need to move an older model? The firm will buy that too.

"A pretty popular model [cell phone], the Motorola V3, we pay up to (US)$35 for a used one. For a broken iPhone, we pay up to $200 for one of those. A used BlackBerry Pearl, we pay up to $200. A used iPod video -- not this current generation but the one before it -- we pay up to $160. A used mini iPod, up to $37, and a broken nano is up to $51. We pay up to $292 for a Nintendo Wii," Mosley explained.

The response to the site has been excellent, he said. "We've been up and running for about a year now, and month over month we've been growing at 30 percent," he pointed out. Business has been good enough for Mosley to expand the list of electronics he will purchase to include Apple laptops. PC laptops will be added in the future.
"On laptops, we'll be paying up to $2,000. We'll pay pretty well for broken and used," he said.

Whatever the condition of the device, Mosley said, his company will pay consumers for it. If it's not fixable and resellable, once the device has been stripped of serviceable parts, the remainder -- which often includes components composed of toxic elements -- will be responsibly recycled, not sent to a local landfill.
"I'm paying people to recycle, essentially. I'm actually paying really good money, and the concept sells really well with people," he noted.

The green effect does not stop there. The business is 100 percent wind powered, according to Mosley, and by salvaging reusable parts from old and broken devices, BuyMyTronics reduces the number of new components that will need to be manufactured. Refurbishing salvageable devices and selling them to larger retailers and through an eBay site also achieves this goal.

The tech waste problem is massive, Sarah Westervel, e-Waste project coordinator at the Basel Action Network (BAN), said. "One of the things that's really mind-blowing ... to go into a U.S. recycler's warehouse that maybe is 80,000 to 100,000 square feet and see nothing but electronic waste," she said.

The BAN works for the responsible disposal and recycling of toxic waste, of which electronic devices are a significant and constantly growing percentage. The danger to the environment is that many of these products contain lead, cadmium, chromium and other toxic substances.

"Not only are they carcinogens, but there are tetratogens, which cause problems to fetuses. They can affect the endocrine system, the whole hormone system, and they can affect the reproductive system. Some of the heavy metals are actually elements, and they are immortal. They don't ever disappear. They may change form but they don't go away and they cannot be cleaned up," Westervel explained.

For instance, mercury, when put into an incinerator, is released into the air but falls back to earth to contaminate the soil and water, and that's why some fish now have high levels of mercury. Other chemical compounds are bio-accumulative and build up in the biosphere. They are persistent and do not break down, meaning they accumulate in the food chain.

"These have long been known to be problematic. Others they are starting to show are extremely toxic in even tiny quantities. Toxicologists used to believe that small amounts of some toxins weren't a problem. But, now they are finding that these toxins are even more toxic in tiny, minute amounts than they are at larger amounts. They are taken up by the human organism better in small quantities than large quantities."

While environmental laws in the U.S. may prohibit disposal of these dangerous substances in landfills in the U.S., more and more often the most toxic elements are shipped to developing countries dumped there and left to pollute that environment.
BAN has initiated a certification program for responsible recyclers. BuyMyTronics is currently waiting to receive the organization's e-Steward certification.

"We need to keep this toxic waste stream out of landfills and incinerators and out of the developing countries. It is a really problematic waste stream and is the fastest growing waste stream in this country. We don't have a comprehensive national system and we need to address the whole model of constantly upgrading electronic equipment and just tossing it out," Westervel concluded.

Get Your Web Site Certified By Guardian eCommerce!

The 'Frictionless' Online Payment Alternative

2008-04-30T08:24:00.000-04:00

Given the powerful double-digit growth of e-commerce during the first decade of the industry, few merchants worried that a payment alternative to credit cards or the well-established PayPal was needed. More recently, however, as e-commerce growth rates slow, the fast-growing, credit card-free alternative Bill Me Later has proven that merchants and consumers alike are hungry for alternatives.

Though it has focused mainly on the largest online merchants, Bill Me Later has seen rapid growth. Twenty-two percent of online buyers used Bill Me Later to make a purchase during the holiday shopping season, according to the Piper Jaffray eCommerce Survey for the fourth quarter of 2007.

"We knew there was a pain point for merchants around credit card fees," Bill Me Later Vice President of Corporate Development Mark Lavelle said. "We also knew that consumers don't necessarily always want to use credit cards to make purchases."

In fact, as much as 40 percent of brick-and-mortar sales come from sources other than credit cards, he noted. "We knew there was an opportunity to create a frictionless payment method, which is what e-commerce is all about. You have these catalogs all in one place and sites optimized for user experience and then you get to the checkout and the process grinds to a halt while you reach for your credit card and enter all that data."

Of course, there are also many consumers concerned about sharing that data for privacy and security reasons. Those consumers may be among the ones that merchants are most eager to reach as well, as they are the last to embrace shopping online.

The founders of Bill Me Later came from the bank credit card business and knew that any alternative offering would have to address risk issues. They spent extensive time doing that and building the user experience.

"We spent a lot of time before we went live making sure it was a process that would be frictionless for consumers," Lavelle said. "We wanted it to be something that is incremental for the merchant" rather than taking sales from other payment methods.

Bill Me Later works by enabling users to provide limited information and to be billed later for purchases they make online. Customers with high credit scores qualify quickly for the service, which is finding traction particularly among older and more affluent shoppers.

Online businesses can capture more purchases from more shoppers if they offer alternatives that don't require entering a credit card number at checkout, said Gartner analyst Avivah Litan. "For that customer base that isn't yet buying online regularly, merchants should promote alternative payments," she said.

The success of PayPal -- which has launched a product called "Pay Later" -- and the early traction of Google Checkout suggest consumers are aware of the risks associated with sharing their credit card information widely, Litan added. "It's a message driven home in the media every day."

The merchant base was receptive to alternatives, but it still took time to build momentum around the new product, said Lavelle. The company's strategy involved focusing first on major e-commerce merchants with a slow but steady uptake during 2005 and 2006.

While Bill Me Later has been growing steady for some time, it got a huge boost in its profile late in 2007 when Amazon announced it would offer the payment alternative and would also make an investment in the firm, whose parent company is I4Commerce. That move "validated Bill Me Later's place in the payments marketplace," said Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru.

Amazon may view the investment as a way to combat the rise of PayPal, which is owned by rival eBay but the fact that such a well-known retailer backed the system will resonate with consumers, Mulpuru said.

The value of Bill Me Later is expected to increase over time as it continues to work with merchants on the best ways to promote the alternative, such as by offering terms such as 90-day same-as-cash financing, Lavelle said.

Though 90 percent of its business comes from online merchants, it is offering services to brick-and-mortar stores and believes that multichannel retailers will want to offer the same payment options across their various outlets over time, whether a consumers buys through a call center, online or in a store. "We think we're at the beginning of a birth of a whole new payment network," he added.

Still, online is where the sweet spot for Bill Me Later is for now. The company has more demand from small and medium-sized merchants than it could keep up with and is expanding its capacity to serve that market, Lavelle pointed out.

"We think we can help reaccelerate the growth of e-commerce," he noted. "Choice is a concept that consumers crave and enjoy, and that extends to their payment options as well." Bill Me Later is not worried that credit card companies will respond to its rise by lowering their fees or responding in other ways, Lavelle concluded. "Our value proposition is well understood as being broader than price alone. We're [given] access to that customer the merchant can't reach with other methods and providing a better consumer experience as well."

Get Your Site Certified. Site Credibility Pays At Guardian eCommerce!

Establishing Your Web Brand

2008-04-02T15:46:00.000-04:00

Any form of branding essentially means being recognized. A positive website brand image means that your potential customers will recognize your brand and begin to associate that brand with a particular product or range of products. In achieving this, those same customers will begin to turn to your brand when they need the product you sell or require information that you provide.

A lot of websites and website owners mistakenly believe that creating a brand means a compelling and relevant name, and well designed logos and web pages. While these are a part of website branding, they are far from being the whole story. In fact, every aspect of your website and online business needs to convey your brand image. This includes design, narrative voice, advertising, and marketing. Customer communication is equally as important, and provides the opportuníty to strengthen your brand even further.

Branding needs to concentrate on the target market you are aiming to attract. Market research and some competitor analysis will usually garner you with relevant information regarding the people you are aiming to attract. What products and services are they looking for? What information do they want access to? Do they expect to be able to interact with you or other members of your online community? These are all important questions that you not only need to ask but answer as well.

The most effective branding will also consider the demographics of a target market. Age, sex, nationality, religion, and disposable income bracket are important factors. Again, the savvy online business owner should have at least a reasonable understanding of their target market demographics. Knowing this information ensures that you not only create a brand, but that you create a relevant and powerful brand that is attractive to the right people.

The first aspect of your brand is your company or website name. It doesn't necessarily have to portray the products you sell, but it does need to be memorable. Brands like Google and Ebay relay little about the service they provide but they are short, catchy, and easy to remember. You can consider other aspects of branding when choosing a name – PayPal clearly conveys the fact that the service is related to paying and payments, while the addition of the word Pal implies that the service is user friendly and intuitive. It still sticks to the format of being short and memorable; the use of alliteration making the name roll off the tongue even easier.

Once you've determined a brand name and ensured that domain names and company names are available, it's time to register domaíns. .com domaíns are the most effective because they are the ones that we, as surfers, generally remember. We may remember a company name and forget the domain extension. Nine times out of ten we would add .com as the extension and hope to find the right site. It will pay, in the long run, to purchase a number of domains including regional domains (.eu, .co.uk, etc...) and others. Some potential customers like to deal with local firms and these customers will use local extensions.

Many websites now utilize a header rather than a true logo. Whichever option you plump for, it is usually a good idea to have your graphic designed by a professional. This design can cost $100 upwards but the results should be more than worth it. A logo will appear on all communication you send to customers, every page of your website, every newsletter, brochure, and virtually any other form of communication or promotional material. It needs to be strong and instantly memorable to prove effective.

The design of your website and other online media needs to be attractive, but it needs to provide the level of usability and functionality that your target market expect. Website design, in particular, needs to be easy on the eye, give simple guidance to the most important parts of the page, and appear professional. It should also cater to your target market. A younger audience will gladly appreciate a more modern design, while the older generations may prefer a classic and more simple design.

Bringing all aspects of design together in all of your media is important. If you intend to use video marketing as a tool to drive traffic and promote your brand, then you need to try and include your logo and a link to your website within that video. Emails, newsletters, faxes, and invoices should largely match the design of your site and should certainly include any logo you have.

Narrative voice is another important facet of website branding. The main reason that we go online and search for certain terms is to find out more about that term, and not usually to directly purchase a product. As such, website content should provide the information that your visitors are looking for and throughout your website and other media you need to convey the same type of voice.

Websites that are geared towards individual consumers can adopt a more friendly and personable style. This conveys an image that you and your brand are equally friendly and personable – an attractive perception to most consumers. B2B websites can approach content in a more formal and businesslike manner. CEOs and other business executives prefer to know that their budget is being spent on a professional service that will deliver, rather than push an amicable brand.

Offering free newsletters or promotional giveaways is an excellent way to kick start your website's popularity. It provides visitors with the information they crave and it provides you with an opportuníty to further enhance your new brand. Blogs, forums, and web applications provide similar advantages and they convince visitors to bookmark your pages and visit more frequently. This, in turn, helps to improve brand awareness and makes your brand much more memorable to your visitors.

Start creating content for use outside of your site. Articles, videos, blog posts, and news stories are all good material that can be branded effectively and distributed in various areas of the Internet. This extra push will help to improve your brand image because it will begin to convey you as being an expert within your field. It will give you and your brand greater exposure and will also help drive traffic to your website.

Get The Privacy Seal From Guardian eCommerce.

Amazon Aims At M-Commerce

2008-04-02T10:47:00.000-04:00

Amazon.com launched a text-message shopping option Tuesday that enables users to search for, compare and buy products via short message service, in addition to its existing browser-based mobile commerce offerings. TextBuyIt, as the service is known, joins Amazon's mobile site and a site dedicated for access with the iPhone in Amazon's mobile arsenal.

To use the service, consumers send a text message to Amazon containing the name of the product they are seeking or, if they know it, the UPC code of the item. Amazon responds with matching products and prices, each with a single-digit number alongside it. Customers buy items by responding with a text containing that number.

Amazon then follows up with a phone call to the device that sent the text confirming the order. Using e-mail addresses and ZIP codes as identifiers, the service also accesses a customer's existing Amazon account, including their preferred payment methods. The service will enable people to shop anytime, anywhere, the e-tailer said. Likely uses include the purchase of a CD after a music concert or buying a book that a friend recommends at dinner, noted Howard Gefen, director of mobile payments at Amazon.

Though mobile commerce remains a small market, Amazon has moved to lay the foundation for a strong presence in the space. Most of the features on its Web-based site, such as customer reviews, discounted shipping and one-click checkout, are now available for mobile browsers.

Mobile commerce, or m-commerce, has been a red-hot buzzword since the earliest days of the dot-com craze. Though it has gained steam in overseas markets such as Japan, where mobile devices are widely used to make payments in person and over the Internet, it has grown much more slowly in the U.S.

The relative awkwardness of mobile browsers and security concerns have hampered m-commerce growth. Last year's launch of the iPhone from Apple and the subsequent releases of similar devices from competitors are helping to pave the way for more mobile buying as consumers now have access to more robust mobile browsers.

Still, consumers remain reluctant about mobile purchases. They are twice as likely to use their mobile phone to check prices or find stores than to order or pay for items, according to a survey conducted by Gartner last year. "Mobile commerce is still pretty much in its infancy," JupiterResearch analyst Michael Gartenberg said. "But this is the type of service that can give it a jump start because it really leverages the ubiquity of that mobile phone in your pocket."

In addition to impulse buyers, the service may have legs as a comparison tool for shoppers. For instance, a consumer who sees an item in a store can quickly check the price at Amazon, use that information to bargain for a lower price in the store, decide to buy later from the Web or complete the purchase online on the spot.

"It's a good set of services and it's coming at a good time," Gartenberg added. Mobile browsing still has its limitations, he added, and text messaging is no longer the youth-only novelty it was just a couple years ago. "The fact that I can kind of automate this process through text messaging and voice automation that links the two together makes this much more appealing."

Amazon may have the power to give mobile commerce a boost because it has become a trusted online brand thanks to its longevity as an e-tailer and its sheer size.
Still, mobile may be better seen as part of a larger, multichannel push for Amazon, Forrester Research analyst Carrie Johnson said.

The text-based service is important as "another touchpoint between consumers and a retailer they trust," she said. Registered users in particular may be able to benefit from the ability to recall a mobile search from a Web session, for instance. Direct sales via text messages will still likely remain small for time being, but the long-term impact significant. "Amazon has made it clear it wants to protect its turf on the mobile side."

Amazon shares rose 1.5 percent in midday trading Wednesday to US$77.80.

Go Guardian eCommerce. Site Credibility Pays.

Cashing In on MeCommerce

2008-04-02T09:26:00.000-04:00

Will you add me? Have you written on my wall? Are we LinkedIn? Social networks are not only changing the way we speak to our friends, they are influencing our actions and behaviors. There is no question that social networks are becoming the networking standard as e-mail replaced snail mail years ago. Today, there are more than 350 million social network users, which is more than the total U.S. population.

Social networks have grown like wildfire -- both on a social and professional level. Sites like LinkedIn that target professionals provide an easy forum to build your professional contacts quickly. For example, on my personal LinkedIn profile, I have nearly 100 contacts in my network. Within three degrees of separation from me, I have access to more than 850,000 contacts that might be of interest to me or my company.

As the social network is becoming the de facto standard in how we communicate, interact and react to others, there is no doubt that new innovations will continue to sculpt social networks. As users have expanded their virtual network, many often ask, "What's next for social networks?" Social network users now have access to blogs, podcasts, RSS (really simple syndication) feeds, widgets and countless other technologies, which have leveraged on the power of the social networking environment. Yet, how do we, social network users, capitalize on this and monetize our social networks?

Because power is shifting from institutions to online communities, the way we've traditionally conducted business is changing. As Web 2.0 proliferates, so do the new buzzwords and behaviors associated with new media. A mashup with social network applications is similar to turning a kaleidoscope. While the pieces inside might not change, the image that appears changes radically. Take the rate of e-commerce within social networks.

The current social network revenue model relies heavily on targeting consumers via online advertising, hoping the ad reaches the best demographic possible to influence their buying decisions. This approach is outdated and has proven unsuccessful. Business owners and advertisers are finding it harder to segment audiences into distinct demographics.

Furthermore, most people do not even pay attention to the sea of online advertising, especially on social networks. BusinessWeek recently reported a drop in page views and advertising click through rates on social networks. This isn't such good news for advertisers who want targeted exposure to social network users. Plus, with an ever-increasing number of social networks, ad dollars will not increase to create sufficient revenues for social networks, or returns for advertisers.

Clearly, the traditional online advertising model within social networks is not working. A failure for social networks to find a long-term revenue strategy will limit their growth. We see a mashup between e-commerce and social networks as the Holy Grail for members, advertisers and social networks.

The demographics of the social networks are changing; the relationships between the members are changing; and thus, the applications from the developer communities on social networks are changing. New breeds of social networking widgets are giving social network members the opportunity to instantly participate in e-commerce without the headaches of back-end fulfillment such as payment processing, fulfillment and customer service.

People naturally seek out products and make buying decisions based on recommendations from their friends, not necessarily from third-party banner ads and advertising placements. The ability to create a fully e-commerce-enabled site for total transaction management, all without any involvement from the user's perspective, is a new way to conduct e-commerce. It's more like MeCommerce, from me to you, with a plethora of vendors' products to recommend on your social networking profile.

Users are putting themselves into the driver's seat on what and how they are choosing to buy. This is a new trend and an extremely cost-effective sales channel for vendors. With ease, any size vendor can tap into this enormous channel, featuring their products to millions of potential customers as part of a multi-channel retail strategy reinforced by user-generated content -- without a huge marketing budget to gain online exposure.

What makes the mashup of social networks with e-commerce, or MeCommerce, compelling is that it not only makes users' recommendations viral to their social networking friends' list, but enables the author (social network member) to actually benefit monetarily from their recommendations.

As the MeCommerce generation emerges, social network users will be empowered to leverage sites like Facebook , MySpace and LinkedIn through a mutually beneficial "social commerce" model for all parties involved.

Social network users can cash in from a simple product endorsement. Vendors gain a new online sales channel without a huge marketing cost. Social networks increase membership, site visitation and potentially gain a much-needed new revenue stream over-and-beyond advertising. MeCommerce will prove to be just what the social networking community needs.

Go Guardian eCommerce! Get Site Certified.

Pay Bills Online And Save...

2008-04-02T09:19:00.000-04:00

Pay a bill, save a tree.

That, in essence, is the message of a study that the PayItGreen Alliance made public recently. The alliance, sponsored by the non-profit National Automated Clearinghouse Association, was formed last October to add another consumer inducement -- environmental stewardship -- to the already-established assets of convenience and data security of online banking, bill paying and check cashing.
NACHA is a non-profit organization of 11,000 financial institutions that encourages consumers to pay their bills online.

"Each home has a lot they can do, but the aggregated impact can be significant," said Stuart Williams, the alliance's co-chairman and director of payment services with Fiserv subsidiary CheckFree. Moving many financial transactions to paper-free systems doesn't require a lot of effort or even thought, Williams said.

"Most companies at least offer a direct deposit of payroll, and it's a decision you make at the beginning of employment, but it's something most of us don't ever think about again," Williams said. "When you make that decision once with bill payments, within one or two cycles you see than not only does it work, but it's easier -- and, after one or two cycles, you don't even think about it." The alliance's study -- the organization says it's likely the first environment-focused research on online transactions -- found that the typical household in the U.S. makes about seven paper bill payments per month.

A changeover to electronic payments could save each household nearly 7 pounds of paper and 169 miles of driving per year. The study charted other potential savings, including: 24 square feet of forest; 63 gallons of wastewater; 4.5 gallons of gasoline... "The results would be significant," Williams said.

The study said that if 10 percent of the population shifted to electronic transactions, the savings would amount to more than 75 million pounds of paper, nearly 1 million trees and nearly 2 million pounds of greenhouse gases. It would save enough wastewater to fill 1,090 Olympic-sized swimming pools and avoid filling 3,071 garbage trucks with trash.

"Environment issues have become more mainstream and, as compared to other decisions, it's a fairly easy one to make and doesn't have a strong financial impact as if you were to go out and, say, buy a hybrid car," Williams said. "In virtually all cases, these services are free, and even those who may charge for it, it's probably nominal compared to the savings you receive from it."

Ed Kounts, a senior analyst on online banking issues with JupiterResearch, said the study mirrors his own findings. "Certainly, the alliance is an interesting consortium designed to put an environmental face on online bill paying," he said. "And, one element is 'green' consumers. We did a report on that last summer, and it laid out what consumers' perceptions are in terms of having a 'green' relationship with financial institutions."

Kountz's own research indicates there is an environmentally focused constituency that is naturally attracted to electronic transactions. "There are considerations around green coming into play that these types of initiatives are designed to leverage," he said. Consumers, in general, perhaps would be more interested in paying bills online for other reasons. "Certainly, the important thing to get consumers to shift habits around is that you have to have some incentive," Kountz said. That, he said, is often monetary. "Consumers shift behavior if they think they can get something back," he said. Tapping into consumers' sense of environmental stewardship can be an effective lure, Koontz said. There are others, he added. "It's one tool in the arsenal, and we'll see more, for obvious reasons," he said. "There's clearly an incentive to change that this taps into."

Site Credibility Pays, Join Guardian eCommerce Today!

Are Women The Answer For Ask.com?

2008-03-09T11:48:00.000-04:00

Ask.com is looking to women for answers. The 12-year-old search engine is reportedly narrowing its focus to appeal to married women, mostly in the South and Midwest, in its first major move under the direction of new CEO Jim Safka. Ask.com is trimming 40 jobs, according to published reports, as its shifts emphasis from the broader model it featured since its launch.

The Oakland, Calif.-based company, a property of InterActiveCorp since 2005, has earned praise for numerous innovations over the years. Indeed, just in the last year, Ask.com grabbed kudos for its privacy-guarding AskEraser and search tool Ask3D.
Ask.com did not respond to requests for comment.

However, Ask hasn't been able to make gains on market leader Google and Yahoo, which has had struggles of its own. "It's the final recognition that [they're] spending a lot of money taking on Google, which had introduced simplicity in the search engine market, and the already displaced Yahoo," Gene Alvarez, Gartner's vice president of e-commerce said. "The simplicity of Google, the addition of all the other things Google offers, when you bring all those together, Ask had to take on a giant with not enough tools in their portfolio. Now, it's a retreat back to where they came from."

At midday, IAC shares were trading at US$19.68 -- near the bottom of their 52-week range of $19.50 and $39.06 -- on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Even retreating to a narrower market segment is no guarantee of success for Ask.com, Alvarez added. "They're still going to have a challenge, because Google has become -- in terms of recognition -- a household name. So, it's not like working mothers don't know about Google, and Ask.com can capture them. It's still a highly competitive market -- even within the segment -- and it's going to remain competitive."

Google holds a market share of 58.4 percent, according to comScore Media Metrix's January ratings. Yahoo's 22.9 percent is a distant second, and Ask.com has a 4.3 percent share.

Ask.com is "throwing in half the towel if they're pursuing a gender strategy," Scott Cleland, president of Washington-based Precursor said. The strategy, in effect, cedes the general search category to the market leader.

Ask.com will still have to operate in the shadow of a "network effect" that Google generates, he noted. "It's the strong getting stronger. Google can add more material in their search database, so more people seek them out."

That dynamic feeds on itself, Cleland added. "One of the big myths is it's all the search algorithm. While that's important, it's one piece of what matters. The big piece of what matters is how comprehensive is your search and how many people you have searching, so you can learn from their behavior so you can further hone your algorithm.

"Google has 15 times more users and many more times that of publishers and advertisers that use them, so Google has the advantage of seeing the whole search marketplace and benefiting from all that intelligence," he continued.

Ask.com's strategy could work, but it will take a major commitment of resources, Greg Sterling, principal analyst for Sterling Market Intelligence said. "They've tried to go straight at Google and have been basically unsuccessful, but they've been very good at some of what they've done. They've been very innovative with products, like Ask3D. In many respects, they've led the industry in certain ways."

Now, Ask.com may be looking to play to its strength in a core female audience, he added. The question is: Can they pull it off? Sterling has doubts. "I think they may launch some products, but this is the beginning of either a rapid or moderately fast decline. I could be wrong, certainly, but I don't think they're going to execute well on this female audience strategy. They're too concerned about making money at this point. I don't see them investing a lot of resources in the product to develop it all that much."

Some sort of change in strategy appeared inevitable, Forrester analyst Charlene Li said. "I think that Ask.com saw the writing on the wall -- that it had virtually no chance to succeed in the general search space. That said, they have picked a potentially lucrative space to focus on. Women make most of the spending decisions in a household, and all the more if they have children at home."

Site Credibility Pays At Guardian eCommerce.

Convert Visitors To Your Web Site

2008-03-09T11:33:00.001-04:00

The following details explain how to get visitors to your site and convert them to sales. The following five rules also outline how to submit your Web site to the search engines and directories, how to use Google's PageRank, and how to use keyword spelling to your advantage.

1. Search Engine Submission
The best way to achieve high search engine rankings for new Web sites may not be what you expect. You should not submit your site directly to the search engines, as this process can take weeks or even months to get your site listed. Instead, you need to get listed on top ranking pages that are relevant to your Web sites' content. These high ranking pages are often optimized on a weekly or even daily basis. Every time the site is indexed, your link will appear and the search engines will automatically list your site in its index. It is as simple as that to get listed on top search engines in only a few days.

To do this, we need to search for Web sites that that are indexed by search engines and get them to link to us. This can be difficult to do -- unless you give the site some incentive to do so. The incentive you need to give them is to write some sort of article that is relevant to your line of business. At the bottom of the article you include your Web page URL (uniform resource locator) to get picked up by the search engines. You submit the article to popular article directories on the Web and you will be indexed by the search engines in a matter of days rather than months.

Here's a list of the most popular article directories you can submit your Web site to:

Go Articles
Ezine Articles
ArticleCity
Free Content
Amazines
Article Dashboard
Article Directory
Submit Your Article
MagPortal
Isnare
ACS Publications
Article Hangout
WebArticles
ArticleCube
Articles 4 Content
Article-Buzz
Free Articles Zone
New Articles Online
Article To Go
ArticleWorld
Impact Articles
Article Alley
DirectoryGold
Salon
ContentArticles
Software Marketing Resource Marketing Article Directory
Niche-Article-Directory
Jogena's
ACC News Directory Article Directory
Article Niche Directory
SuperPublisher
Web Host Industry Review
Article Marketer
Article Emporium
IdeaMarketers
Internet Home Business Articles
Site Reference

The other option is to perform a search of the most generic term that is related to your business. Click through these Web sites looking at the page ranks. Contact the Web site and by sending them an e-mail asking them to link to your site and in return for you linking back to their Web site. Always contact sites that are relevant to your line of work and always offer them something their visitors can benefit from once they add your link.

You can purchase a link in top PageRank sites through link builders. A few of the good Web sites that can do this for you are TextBrokers, Text Link Ads and LinkAdage.

Remember that you only need to purchase a link for one month, since it will take less than one month to get you indexed by the major search engines. Continuing to pay for the link after a month is a waste of your money. Basically, you are paying a one-time fee to instantly get indexed in the major search engines.

2. Off-Page Optimization
This is just as important, if not more important than on page optimization. To do this, we need to study the linking strategies of the top 10 Web sites for your keyword. We want to copy their model, but do things slightly better to achieve the top rankings. First, open up a spreadsheet in Excel and list the following columns: linking Web site, anchor text, PageRank, link popularity page title and number of outbound links. Then we search your keyword on Google and fill in the information for the top 10 Web sites.

To discover the linking Web sites, go to Google and type in the Web sites URL "link:www.thewebsite.com." Then count the number of sites that are listed to get the link popularity.

Anchor text is whatever follows the .com or .org of a Web site URL.

PageRank is the rank Google gives to Web sites. Download the tool here.

Page title is the title of the page that appears on the top left of the screen. If the title does not contain the keywords, then the site is not well optimized and easy to surpass in rankings.

Number of outbound links is the number of links located on the Web page linking to the site you're checking.

Once all this information has been collected, you can see what needs to be done to your site to beat the top ranking sites.

3. Search Engines and Capitalization
Capitalizing different letters in keywords brings up different results in search engines. Search engines are case-sensitive, so it is important how you use capitalization. Listing every variation of a word results in the search engines thinking that you are spam and deleting your URL. This gets worse with singular and plural words.

The solution is to stick with lowercase listings rather than trying different variations. Most people search in all lowercase, and this has the most relevant listings. Not using every other variation means you lose out on about 18 percent of traffic. This is not worth the risk of being banned from the search engines.

Lowercase searching has dominated all the search engines ranging from 85 percent to 90 percent of the total terms used. Now most search engines are not case sensitive anymore.

4. Search Engine Spamming
Spamming does not take well with current search engines, as they have discovered ways to fight keyword stuffing and other search engine tricks. Search engines can detect your spam and will act accordingly by penalizing or banning you from their listings.

Search engine spamming is attempting to achieve top ranks for extremely popular keywords. You can attempt to fight that battle against other sites, but you ought to be ready to fight a long and hard battle defending your ranking. All that wasted effort can be better spent for finding other ways for Internet marketing.

There is no need for search engine spamming if your Web site has been optimized correctly using the above methods. The risks are not worth the temporary rewards. Search engine spam should be considered the same as e-mail spam. Nobody likes or wants spam. We want spammers removed from the Internet, so why would customers want to work with you, a spammer?

5. Professional SEOs
Hiring a professional search engine optimizer is a great idea if your business relies on Internet sales. Search engine optimization is something that is time consuming and requires lots of research.

Most businesses do not have time to optimize their Web sites. They have better things to take care of, like making sure their products are selling and keeping good customer relations. Companies like SEO Optimizers, SEOPerformance and Apex Reach make sure everything is in line at your site and fix any problems that may be holding you back from reaching the top ranks. If you really want to be at the top of any searches you need professionals to come in and help solve the problem.

Guardian eCommerce Exposes Trustworthy Web Sites.

Gaining In The Domain Name Market

2008-03-09T11:12:00.000-04:00

Most of us are painfully aware that the real estate market has been on the decline for some time. In fact, some experts feel that it might take at least two years for prices to hit bottom. However, an interesting twist is bringing good news: Virtual real estate prices (domain names) are on the rise! In fact, we now have active trading in domain names.

In real estate, the old saying as to what drives value is "location, location, location." However, in virtual real estate, location isn't really applicable. What drives prices is the vehicle (domain name) that will get you to the right location --the right placement for search engines.

Entrepreneurs are constantly on the lookout for domain names that will create value based upon a catchy word or phrase in the Web site name. There is intense interest in the type of domain names that will push upwards the potential number of viewers, thus the location in a search engine.

Creating or finding such a domain name is not as easy as it might sound. Yet entrepreneurs are continually registering what they regard as killer domain names that might have some value in the near future. They are watching trends, emerging industries and new applications.

What they are on the lookout for is any new product or service that might have a mass audience. If they can attach a catchy name for that product or service, the chances are good that the people running such a company would pay substantially for a domain name that will give them a vast audience.

Prices of domain names actually are being driven upwards through auctions. Regarding this type of trading, The New York Times recently ran an article titled "Coins in the New Realm." Brad Stone, the writer of that article, said: "The practitioners' fundamental assertion -- that names of Web sites can be valuable, cash-generating assets just like stocks, bonds or property -- appears to be gaining a broader acceptance that veteran domainers are not accustomed to and may not be totally comfortable with."

My feeling is that the virtual real estate craze is not going to go away anytime soon. Any commercial enterprise ignores the power of the Internet at its peril. In this day and age, I can't imagine a business of any considerable size without an Internet presence -- a domain name. This being the case, smart money is on the lookout for catchy names.

A good site for a listing of domain name offerings is Sedo.com, a German-based company with offices in the U.S. A Boston Globe article last year stated that Sedo is as a sort of eBay for domain names and handles more than US$3 million in transactions each month.

I recently looked at the Sedo site and found a plethora of domain names listed -- some for as little as $60, others going into the thousands. Additionally, there was quite a broad spectrum of sites available.

Another interesting site that I recently visited was Afternic.com. I found this site different than Sedo in that there were many domain names listed with prices going well into the thousands. In fact, this company styles itself as the "world's leading premium domain marketplace."

Afternic, like some other sites, allows you to actively bid for a domain name. Believe it or not, there is actually a link to order an appraisal for a domain name. Isn't this starting to sound like actual real estate activity? In many ways, it is. The difference here is that we are talking about virtual real estate.

With the Internet not only here to stay but an absolute necessity for a business of any size, there is no doubt in my mind that domain names will continue to be created and sought after. In fact, when I made a Google search titled "domain name auctions," I got more than 230,000 hits!

In addition, we now have the equivalent of domain name real estate agents -- that is, people and companies that assist you in searching for and acquiring an appropriate domain name. Some of these companies, for a price, will even provide you with domain name appraisals -- just like the real-life appraisers in the real estate market.

Domain name appraisers in fact have become quite prominent. If you go to Google, for example, and search for "domain name appraisers," you will get about the same number of hits as for "domain name auctions" -- over 200,000. It seems to me that virtual real estate has created a new profession: domain name appraiser.

Just as in the stock market, there is money to be made -- and lost -- in domain name trading. From a seller's point of view, the objective is to get the highest price as possible. From the buyer's point of view, it's still caveat emptor -- buyer beware! Good luck!

Site Credibility Pays! Get Site Certified Today!

Embracing The E-Shopper

2008-03-09T09:46:00.000-04:00

E-commerce suppliers face a difficult challenge. They must cultivate loyal customers, but that is becoming more difficult as the Internet enables consumers to roam freely from retailer to retailer. Now more than ever, the customer is in control, and that change is forcing many e-tailers to turn to customized shopping experiences to build brand loyalty.

The Internet is having a dramatic impact on how individuals shop. "Nowadays, fewer and fewer consumers feel compelled to stay with a particular brand," said Patti Freeman Evans, lead analyst at JupiterResearch. That's because they are now able to find what they desire at a plethora of stores.

Consequently, companies are trying to tighten the bond to their customers via personalized services. Three personalization techniques have become common: customizing what users see on their screens, offering unique amenities for items that they have purchased, and charging them based on who they are rather than what they are buying.

Vendors are attracted to the personalization features for a few reasons. Those interested in the services are tech-savvy. Eighty-three percent of custom purchasers have been online for five or more years, compared with 66 percent of all online consumers, according to Forrester Research. Similarly, more than half of custom product purchasers have e-commerce tenures of five or more years -- twice the rate of all online consumers, the market research firm determined. Perhaps most importantly, these individuals are not tire-kickers and are more likely to make a purchase than typical online consumers.

The most common method of personalization has been the trend to place targeted advertisements in front of consumers whenever they meander through a retailer's Web site. "Since retailers can build a purchasing history of each customer, they are able to gauge who the person may be and provide them with items that interest them," Toffer Winslow, executive vice president of sales and marketing at ChoiceStream, told the E-Commerce Times. ChoiceStream helps retailers deliver relevant content to potential customers. If a consumer has bought "High School Musical," then the retailer would push "High School Musical 2" as well as similar brands, such as the "Hannah Montana" line.

This technique works when retailers are able to accurately deduce who the person is and what items would interest them. "Retailers have been trying to improve their algorithms, so they can put the most appropriate content in front of potential add-on buyers," JupiterResearch's Freeman Evans said.

Another way to enhance the shopping experience is to make it more store-like. "One of the downsides with virtual shopping is consumers are not able to experience the fun that goes along with shopping when you really don't know what you want to buy," Louise Guay, president of My Virtual Model said. Stores such as H&M and Marie Claire have installed virtual shopping experiences where potential buyers work with 3-D and 2-D models to help visualize how clothing will look on them.

Zafu has another variation on that theme. The company tries to help women find the right pair of jeans or a bra, relying on mathematical calculations, product databases and body shape libraries to match different products to consumers. Customers answer a few questions and the site recommends clothes that will fit a woman best.

Customization is also found with other consumer items. Since the advent of the Motorola Razr, cell phones have become fashion statements as well as tools to exchange information. Companies such as Motorola and Nokia offer their customers a range of elaborate ways to personalize their cell phones, from various carrying cases to fancy jewelry. The iPod and iPhone have become popular in part because of their users' ability to customize the devices. Firms such as Cosmi and Graphic Cling sell products so individuals can add a unique look to their iPods.

Personalization is also found with athletic items. Nike's ID program offers customers a large variety of shoes, bags and accessories that can be custom-made in any number of color and style combinations.

The need for individualisms is expanding beyond simple product purchases. Companies also offer different pricing structures to their customers. While the Internet allows shoppers to easily compare prices across thousands of stores, it also enables businesses to collect detailed information about a customer's purchasing history, preferences and financial resources. This information suggests that a consumer may be willing to pay more -- or less -- than others for a certain item. Retailers are using this information to set their prices accordingly.

This idea is not new. Offline, different customers often pay different prices, but when they do, they usually know it, such as when bartering at a flea market or street bazaar or with an automobile salesperson.

The varying pricing functions can create problems, as not all shoppers feel comfortable with tailored prices. Those who desire anonymity can even go to lengths, such as deleting their cookies, so retailers do not know that they are repeat users.

The move to customization also flies in the face of the basic conventional retailing axiom: produce one item and sell it to many customers. The cost to produce one-off custom products is high because retailers have to customize both their front-end and back-end systems and produce individual rather than mass-market items.

In addition, consumer interest in such services has been tepid to date. The percentage of users taking advantage of personalized services has remained largely flat in the past few years, at about one of every four shoppers, according to Forrester Research.

Building brand loyalty has become a struggle for retailers; however, personalization has the potential to help them to enhance customer allegiance and differentiate their products in highly competitive markets. Though in an early stage of evolution at the moment, customized shopping experiences are expected to become more common as the e-commerce market's ongoing maturation continues.

Go Guardian eCommerce Privacy Seal Program, Site Credibility Pays!

SEO Basics In 45 Minutes

2008-02-21T06:02:00.000-05:00

In her presentation for Webstock 2008, Jill gave the audience a 45 minute tutorial in SEO Basics. Some of the most common SEO myths she exposed included:

PPC Myths:
-PPC ads will help organic rankings
-PPC ads will hurt organic rankings

Tag Myths:
-You must have a keyword-rich domain
-You must have keyword-rich page URLs
-Heading tags are necessary (H1, H2 etc.)
-You need to use keywords in meta keyword tags, in particular you need to use
keywords that are included in your page content.

Jill says that it's actually better to use the keyword tag to include misspellings and other keyword varieties that you don't have in your pages. Using keywords in comment tags will hurt your rankings.

Content Myths:
-Page copy must be a certain # of words. Jill actually made up the 250 word limit a few years ago and it's stuck, but there is really no set limit to please search engines.
-You need to bold/italicize your target keywords.
-You must use a specific keyword density. Jill says that keyword density tools are ridiculous.
-You must optimize a page for a single keyword or phrase per page. Instead, try to optimize each page for 3-5 phrases that are related, so that your copy reads better than repeating one phrase over and over.
-You need to optimize for the long-tail searches. You don't generally need to optimize for these - engines will find them on their own.
-Duplicate content will get your site penalized. There is not a penalty as such, but Engines will filter out duplicates in lieu of the original copy (or what they think is the original).

Design Myths:
-Your HTML code must validate to W3C. Not even Google.com validates!
-Your navigation must be text links not images. Surprisingly, graphical navigation is fine as long as you use ALT tags.
-You can't use Flash. It's fine to use Flash, as long as it is one element of your page, not a complete Flash site. Use a text-based site too if using a Flash site.
-Certain design techniques are black hat. Javascript code is legitimate, not just used by black hats.

Link Building Myths:
-That Google's link: command is accurate. It's not a useful tool. Use Google -Webmaster Tools or the Yahoo link command instead.
-That reciprocal links won't count. From the right site, reciprocal links are fine, even very helpful.
-That pages are ranked in PageRank order in the search results. They're not. Google -Toolbar PageRank is not accurate anyway so ignore it.
-You must be in DMOZ or Yahoo Directory to get good Google rankings. In Jill’s opinion, the Yahoo Directory is not worth the money these days.

Submitting, Crawling and Indexing Myths:
-You need to submit URLs to engines. Provided you have a link to your site, you will be found and indexed.
-You need a Google Sitemap. Not needed for the average site. It won't change your site rank.
-You need to update your site frequently.
frequent spidering helps rankings. Not true.
-You need multiple sites. This won't help in the engines and creates more maintenance work.
-You need doorway pages. Jill says this is so 1995!

SEO Company Myths:
-That a #1 ranking will always lead to more traffic or sales. The good rankings need to be for keywords and phrases that people are actually searching for.
-That the company can place pages in certain positions. Not possible, unless they’re using Pay Per Click or sponsored spots.
-That your rankings will tank if you stop paying the company. Rubbish!
-That they have a "proprietary method" of SEO. They’re lying!
-That they have a "special relationship" with Google. Again, they're lying. Google has no relationships with organic SEO companies that Jill is aware of.
-That they can increase your rankings without doing any on-page work. Run away!

Next, Jill defined what SEO is. Her definition of SEO is "making your site the best it can be for your site visitors AND the search engines". She made the point that search engines need to:
- Find
- Crawl
- Index
- Determine relevancy
- show results
So you should keep these top of mind when designing and SEOing your site.

Jill also made the point that search engines don't know you. So you should disclose what you sell and who you are in plain language that naturally incorporates the keyword phrases. Dumb down your pages for users. What search engines want is good content. If you're not getting good traffic from your pages, they're broken, she says. In a nutshell, make sure your pages speak to your target audience and solve their problems.

Jill then discussed how to choose keywords to target on your site. She recommended brainstorming with friends, family and business colleagues and creating a seed list of keywords. Then take that list and run it through keyword research tools such as WordTracker or Keyword Discovery and even Google AdWords to determine the best keywords and phrases to target.

Jill says there are three types of keyword phrases:
1) General and highly competitive terms - not good choices.
2) Long tail - uncompetitive terms - generally no need to SEO for.
3) Relevant and specific terms, which are the best to choose because they highly searched, yet are targeted enough to bring qualified traffic.

Next, Jill explained where to put your keywords. She recommended putting them in:
- anchor text
- clickable image alt attributes (alt tags)
- headlines
- body text copy
- title tags (Don't make your titles less than 10 words, she says.)
- meta description tags

Jill finished up by teaching the group how to measure SEO success. She said that high rankings are not the best measure of success because you might be ranking for phrases nobody is searching on. Instead you should be looking for increased targeted traffíc to your site and more conversions. Use your web stats to give you the clues as to whether your site and your SEO is working.

As for the future of SEO, well despite the rumors that SEO is dead, Jill doesn't think that the big engines will switch to exclusively paid listings any time soon. In her opinion, there will always be some free ways to get listed so there will always be a need for SEO. In the same vein, a crawler-friendly site will always get good results and off page criteria (e.g. links) will always be important.

Join The Guardian eCommerce SSL Privacy Seal Program... Site Credibility Pays!

BigThink.com: Seeking Big Thinkers and Big Sponsors

2008-02-21T05:55:00.000-05:00

BigThink.com is a venue to exchange ideas online. The Web site provides a twofold approach. It produces interviews with leading thinkers on big-picture topics and their expertise. Hopkins then makes videos of the interviews available for viewing and commentary. The Web site also provides a user format for video and audio contributions on topics affecting people, using them as a linchpin for public discussion.

It could only be a matter of time before someone found a formula for taking the immediacy of YouTube and the entrepreneurship of eBay and wrapping them around an original Internet mainstay -- the conversation of the Bulletin Board System (BBS). That time has arrived with the debut of BigThink.com. BigThink, the brainchild of cofounder Peter Hopkins, started operations in November. The Web site officially went live Jan. 7, and it has quickly developed a varied audience of participants and contributors.

"There are high-quality lecture sites available on the Internet, but there is no real competition for thinkers. So we created a venue to exchange ideas online. Our goal is to help thinking to reach a higher plain," Hopkins said.

Think of BigThink.com as a YouTube of ideas. Hopkins and BigThink's other cofounder, Victoria Brown, set their sights on going beyond the academic and corporate conferences that bring together leading thinkers. Their goal was to put the elite and their ideas in the same place as everybody else. This sometimes volatile mix can push response and participation in directions that they otherwise would never have gone.

BigThink.com is a venue to exchange ideas online. The Web site provides a twofold approach. It produces interviews with leading thinkers on big-picture topics and their expertise. Hopkins then makes videos of the interviews available viewing and commentary. The Web site also provides a user format for video and audio contributions on topics affecting people, using them as a linchpin for public discussion among the site's users.

Ultimately, Hopkins hopes the mixture will produces a nexus between talking heads and everyone else. There is no cost to users, and all content is free.

BigThink categorizes its interviews with experts and contributions from users into divisions called "Meta" and "Physical." Within these two general fields, topics are further filtered. Users can search for either ideas or topics through one of several built-in search engines.

For example, Meta topics include discussions on Faith and Beliefs, Identity, Personal History, Inspiration, Life and Death, Love and Happiness, Outlook and the Future, Truth and Justice, and Wisdom.

Physical topics fall into groups such as Arts and Culture, Architecture and Design, Art, Dance, Literature, Music, Theater & Film, and about a dozen more. They range from Business and Economics to the upcoming national elections, medicine, the environment and the world.

"We're still honing the process and are getting a good stream of daily hits. A large number of users has signed up so far," said Hopkins.

Hopkins faced some of the typical challenges endemic to any startup Web-based operation. Among them were design decisions and the development of a user interface.

However, he also had to deal with challenges that at times seemed unsolvable. For instance, establishing a proof of concept was nearly unsurmountable.

"We met lots of skepticism. It was very difficult to convince investors that providing a forum for high-level thought would be a magnet for users," Hopkins noted. "The case we had to make was that BigThink would be a proper vehicle for upper-level thought and that there is a market for it."

One of the initial decisions was whether to build a platform or use another one. The choice could have a huge impact on the ultimate success of the user interaction.

"We took a real challenge by deciding to build our own," said Hopkins.

He and Brown worked with Code and Theory, a New York-based design and software development company, to build a platform from the ground up.

Now that the Web site has launched, Hopkins and Brown want to build out the social network to create a more captivating experience for users. They also want to add more features to the Web site's offerings.

The idea behind BigThink.com did not stem from a single "ah-ha" moment. Both Hopkins and Brown were producers at PBS. They reached a point where they began to see that the old-world ways used there were too one-sided. Eventually, they saw the concept of a YouTube.com and Facebook.com environment emerge as a new way for nonprofessionals to get into the act.

"We saw an opportunity for rich content to merge with value-added delivery on the Web. It seemed natural to merge that with an interactive format. Like any idea, it developed in stages," explained Hopkins.

Once the idea took shape, it took Hopkins and his partner a long time to bring their vision into practice. Once they understood their plan, they had to sell the idea to buyers, users and investors.

Love vs. money. Hopkins readily admits that at times he was torn between serving the love of the initial mission and making money to sustain BigThink.com. While those two goals may not always seem capable of surviving together, he believes they can.

"Valuable and engaging and profitable content on the Internet are not mutually exclusive. We think people and advertisers will recognize this," he said, adding that he is convinced that given time and financial support, BigThink.com will be a big success.

Like many startups, BigThink.com started on a wing and a prayer. In fact, Hopkins credits a number of angel investors with getting him this far. As he grows the social network of thinker-users, Hopkins is also looking for a number of sponsors to keep the dream alive. Ultimately, he agreed, commercial ads will form one type of sponsorship.

"We are trying to create a very tailored business model and are willing to work with a variety of options," he said.

Insiders' views are often insightful about new concepts played out on the Internet. In the case of BigThink.com launch, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia.com, had nothing but praise for Hopkin's venture following a video presentation that featured him on the main page recently.

"I enjoyed my interview, and I think the Web site concept is interesting," Wales said. "Web video is a good format for thoughtful pieces, as can be seen from the success and popularity of the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) talks."

Based on this initial experience with BigThink.com, Wales sees a good business run ahead for the new company. "I think this will do well," Wales said.

Go Guardian eCommerce. Go With Site Credibility.

eBay Stirs The Pot With Seller Feedback Ban

2008-02-07T18:43:00.000-05:00

eBay has taken the controversial step of banning sellers from posting negative comments -- or even giving neutral feedback -- about the buyers with whom they do business. The new rule, which will take effect in May, is apparently a reaction to sellers flaming buyers who posted negative information about them. eBay's announcement of the rule change earlier this week prompted a tidal wave of complaints about sellers from buyers -- who, not surprisingly, support the new rule.

It also sparked criticism of buyers by sellers -- some of whom are threatening to boycott the feedback option all together. Members of both groups have expressed ire over eBay's inability or unwillingness to do a better job mediating buyer-seller disputes. Sellers fear they will be held hostage to vindictive buyers who will still be allowed to post negative comments about them. However, "there are new protections being put into place for sellers as well," eBay spokesperson Nichola Sharpe said.

eBay's new policy will include removal of negative feedback from buyers who did not pay for their goods, for starters. It also will require a buyer to wait three days following completion of a transaction before posting a negative comment. This is to guard against impatient buyers who may have unrealistic ideas about shipping speed.

eBay decided to impose the restriction against sellers' negative comments because it found that the transparency made buyers reluctant to provide honest feedback, Sharpe said. That may be an understatement. It is not difficult to find buyers unhappy with their eBay experience precisely for that reason.

Jennifer Goodwin, founder of an online business administrative service, said that she has bought at least two items -- a US$5 bed light for reading and a designer sweat suit -- with which she was unsatisfied. After her first experience of receiving unfair seller feedback, she decided to avoid the entire process altogether.

With respect to her first purchase, the seller never sent the item, "and then acted like a crazy e-mail maniac, complete with harassing threats," Goodwin said, adding that eBay suspended the seller but left the negative feedback associated with her username. She did receive her second purchase -- but said it wasn't the right size and was clearly not a designer brand. "I am too scared to leave negative feedback," Goodwin admitted. "I want to be fair and truthful but not at my own detriment. So the item sits unused and money is wasted." Goodwin, needless to say, was very happy to learn of eBay's new rule.

So was Dan Pritchett, vice president of marketing and business development at Logos Research Systems, a maker of Bible study software -- even though he no longer uses eBay. A few years ago, Pritchett saw a copy of his company's software offered on eBay and bought it, suspecting it was a pirated version. He was right, he said, but playing his hunch proved to be more trouble than it was worth.

When contacted about the legitimacy of the sale, the seller began a calculated campaign of harassment, culminating with mailing gay porn to Pritchett at his workplace. eBay was unsympathetic to his problems, Pritchett said, and even shut down his account because of the seller's accusations.

Sharpe said she could not comment directly on Pritchett's situation for privacy reasons. However, she emphasized that eBay fights aggressively against software piracy through its Verified Right Owners Program. "We don't want pirated information on our site," she said. "It's as simple as that."

Even if a buyer doesn't have a horrific experience with a seller, there is an unspoken assumption of quid pro quo that makes many buyers uncomfortable, Anthony Citrano, who uses eBay to buy and sell photography, said. "Many sellers ... do not leave positive feedback until they have received positive feedback on the transaction," he said.

"When a buyer pays for the item but has not received it, the buyer has completely fulfilled their obligations to the eBay community. Thus, they should receive positive feedback. They bought and paid for the item," Citrano reasoned. "However, sellers play this game of 'feedback hostage,' where they hold out the specter of no feedback or even negative feedback."

That's what happened to Citrano. "I merely left a neutral piece of feedback on a lame seller and was immediately hit with negative feedback -- despite having paid for the item within an hour after buying it."

It's easy to understand the flood of emotions eBay's new rule has unleashed, said Michal Ann Strahilevitz, a professor of marketing at Golden Gate University, who does research on the influence of word of mouth. Its power "is undeniable," she said. "While companies are focusing great efforts to work on spreading positive word of mouth, it turns out negative word of mouth is even more powerful, and more companies are realizing they need to put as much, or more, effort in reducing negative customer feedback."

It is unfair to give buyers this powerful leverage over sellers, Strahilevitz concluded. Indeed, eBay sellers are voicing their own strong opinions about the rule change. "This will have devastating effects on the whole feedback system," Nancy Baughman, founder of eBiz Auctions, said. It is not this change alone, however, that is making sellers so unhappy, she noted. eBay recently instituted a new fee schedule and other rules that sellers feel are detrimental to their operations, if not margins.

The new feedback rule is particularly obnoxious because it gives buyers' absolute power, Baughman said. "Human nature being what it is, people will use the system to take out their frustrations on things that are out of the seller's control." Also, the system now leaves sellers completely vulnerable to buyer fraud. She told of one buyer who purchased a $1,200 camera from her -- then contacted her to say it was broken and needed $250 worth of repairs. If she didn't send the money, he threatened, he would post negative feedback about her.

After tracing this particular buyer's activities on eBay, Baughman realized such demands were part of his MO. "He would buy something, claim it was broken, and then turn around and resell it on eBay," she said. He was also 17 years old, Baughman subsequently discovered. She put a halt to his activities after contacting the boy's mother.

Sellers are likely to boycott the feedback system once the new system is in place, Baughman said. "If we can only leave positive comments, then we won't leave any comments at all." She would have preferred a modified change to the feedback system to give sellers some voice in the process, as well as a more concerted education effort on the part of eBay so that buyers could better appreciate how the system works.

Improving communications between buyers and sellers would also go far in settling disputes when they arise, Cody Goehring, a publicist for Phenix and Phenix Literary Publicists, said. A few years ago, when he was studying for the LSAT, Goehring bought a prep CD pack from an eBay seller. "When I got it in the mail, I realized he had sent me the 2005 version, not the 2006 version as promised. When I contacted him about this, he never got back to me."

Goehring gave him a poor rating, and saw a few days later that the seller had given him a poor rating as well -- presumably in retaliation for his initial feedback.
"However, his bad rating encouraged me to do some research, and in doing so, I discovered that his primary e-mail address wasn't the one that he had registered with eBay/PayPal, which is why he never got back to me. After contacting him, he explained the story to me of why I got the 2005 version," Goehring said. They ended up rescinding their poor ratings of each other.

"Because of my experience, I can see both the bad and the good sides of this new policy," he said. "Sellers will no longer be able to retaliate with poor ratings when buyers rate them poorly, and this will allow buyers to give poor ratings -- if accurate -- without fear of getting a poor rating back."

The disadvantage, though, is that without the poor rating from the person who sold him the LSAT CD, "I would have never realized that the problem wasn't entirely the seller's fault. This allowed us to work together to resolve the problem, instead of both of us being mad at each other."

Increase Online Sales, Join Guardian eCommerce!

SEO Mythology

2008-02-07T18:39:00.000-05:00

In Greek mythology, the Hydra was a creature who could not be defeated, as each time one of its heads was cut off, two more would sprout back in its place. It seems that SEO mythology is no different; every time one SEO myth is debunked, two more SEO myths crop back up in its place, only adding to the confusion about search engine optimization.

Hercules was able to defeat the Hydra by cutting off its heads and then burning the stumps before new heads could grow back. What SEO needs is a hero, an SEO Hercules, to come and save us from the Hydra of SEO Mythology. Let's go through some of the more pervasive SEO myths and see if we can put a torch to them.

Myth: All I need to do is figure out the magic bullet, and I will be at the top of the search engines.

Fact: Search engines use over 200 factors to rank sites. No one factor will get you to the top. To get to the top, you must have a balanced search engine strategy encompassing many factors, both on page and off page. There is no magic bullet.

Myth: Search rankings are about link popularity. Get as many links as you can. Join Web rings, "free for all" (FFA) link exchanges, and get as many sites as you can to link to you through reciprocal linking back to them.

Fact: While link popularity is important if done correctly, Google is placing links under increasing scrutiny, and sheer volumes of inbound linking without regard to the source of the link and other factors hasn't worked in years. It is not the raw number of links that matter, but the type of links. Links from trusted sites, relevant to your industry, with proper anchor text and relevant surrounding text and page content, to original content on your site are the ones that will help you.

FFA linking will most likely get you in trouble with the engines as they could interpret that as an attempt to spam the results. In addition to bleeding away all of your page rank to other sites, FFA linking will increase your chances of linking to a "bad neighborhood," another thing which can get you into trouble. Never link to sites you do not know or with which you are not familiar. Remember, Google is smarter than you, you can't fool them with unnatural linking schemes.

Myth: It's all about "keyword density." Be sure to repeat your keyword numerous times on your Web site. Keyword repetition increases keyword density and inflates your search engine ranking.

Fact: Structuring your page around some magic formula for key phrase density does nothing for you. Yes, your target key phrases should be included at least once on the page, as well as in your title and meta description elements, and in an H1 or H2 tag if possible. Other than that, forget about key phrase density. Create your Web content for human readers and write it so it makes sense to them. Whatever you do, avoid key phrase repetition, a known spamming technique sure to get you into trouble.

Myth: Repeated submissions to the search engines increase your rankings. It is a good idea to sign up for an automated submission service, which will regularly resubmit your site to 1,000 or more search engines each week.

Fact: Automated submissions are a violation of major search engines' Terms of Inclusion and can get you into trouble. Search engines don't need you to submit to them, set up a blog and get a few links to your site, and they will find you very quickly. Using Blogger.com, which is owned by Google, usually can get a new site indexed within a week. Just be sure to put a link on the blog to your site.

Myth: The meta keywords tag must include your target keywords. Search engines place heavy weight on this tag and use it to determine which keywords for which to rank your site.

Fact: Search engines that matter, such as Google, place zero weight on the keywords meta element due to historical spam. Yahoo appears to give it some small weight. In any event, use of the keyword meta element is of so little use, many SEO's ignore it altogether.

Myth: Because links are so important to search rankings, I should go out and purchase a large number of paid links and submit to hundreds or thousands of directories in order to get more links to my site.

Fact: Google especially has cracked down hard on paid links in the last few months. To put it succinctly, they don't pass page rank. If you want to buy a link from a site, only do it if you believe the link itself will be a good source of traffic (in other words, only do it for legitimate advertising purposes). Do not do it if your purpose is for that link to transfer page rank or increase your ranking, as it likely will not.

Additionally, hundreds of useless directories have been harshly penalized as well, so that links from within them are either not counted at all or given very little weight. Get links from a few well respected directories such as dmoz.org, Yahoo directory, Business.com, JoeAnt and others which have a manual review process. Automated submission services which submit to hundreds of directories are a waste of money.

Myth: I should write articles and submit them to article directories, because links from article directories have high page rank and are given great weight by the engines.

Fact: Article directory links in and of themselves carry little to no weight. The engines are smart and know that people spam these directories with useless content just to get a link. If you want to get relevant, trusted links to your site that actually mean something, create useful, informative, or educational content that people will want to link to. Articles are one form of such content, but only if they are good enough to get picked up by other sites. Other content which can serve as link bait is video content, tools and widgets, product reviews, top 10 lists, and interesting or entertaining blogs.

Join The Privacy Seal Program, Increase Online Sales Today.

Wading Into the M-Commerce Waters

2008-02-07T18:34:00.000-05:00

When Apple introduced the iPhone last year, it was the first mass market cell phone to use a touchscreen system of controls. Now the retail and banking industries are pushing a vastly different kind of touch technology. This year's model is all about shopping and using a cell phone like a wand -- touching the end of the phone to a checkout screen when you pay for that Big Mac.

That trend has been labeled "mobile payments," and it has just landed in Spokane, Wash., where U.S. Bank is launching its first six-month trial of cell phones that work like a credit card. The nationwide bank, using more than 100 members who have MasterCard accounts, will use the test to decide if the country is eager to embrace the use of a credit card buried inside a cell phone.

Over the past three years, banks across the world have tested "contactless" credit cards that work the same way -- tapping or moving specially equipped cards near a radio-signal-sensitive payment device that records the amount of the transaction.

The technology behind the system carries the acronym of NFC, for near field communications. When two NFC devices come together -- within about 4 centimeters -- they exchange data via radio signals. That data can be anything from credit card numbers to instructions on how to find the nearest public transportation.

The U.S. Bank effort shows how the NFC idea has jumped from credit cards to cell phones, said Jim Salters, a banking industry analyst with California-based consulting company Glenbrook Partners. "That's the question everyone asks: Is this the way all the banks will eventually go, toward contactless phones?" Salters said.

If nothing else, the test is part of U.S. Bank's goal of staying in touch with customers and finding ways to make their lives easier, added Dominic Venturo, a bank vice president helping manage the Spokane test project. "Anytime you can combine the phone, which most of us have in our pockets, with the bank payment card many of us carry in our wallets, into a single system, you've created a simpler and easier way for your customers to manage their lives," Venturo said.

Many earlier versions of contactless cards and tap-and-go phones have been used in Japan. Other countries, including Australia and Korea, also are testing them. U.S. Bank's Spokane test is one of a handful of similar efforts across the country by companies looking for the same answers: Will customers like this system? Will merchants sign on and want those readers in their stores?

The answers, so far, are not clear, said Salters, who graduated from Gonzaga Preparatory School and got a degree at Princeton University. One issue will be how much information the new phones can hold, he Salters. To date, the tests involve inserting just one credit card number inside the test phone. Over time, if banks and wireless phone companies allow customers to load the phone with multiple credit cards, or the numbers of merchant reward cards, that option might be very attractive, Salters said. However, it's uncertain whether the banks and phone companies will give consumers those choices, he said.

About 80,000 contactless readers have been installed across the United States, according to a spokesperson with MasterCard International. Salters said merchants consider the jury still out over the value of introducing a contactless payment system. For one, merchants know a chief goal of such NFC systems is to move customers from paying in cash to paying with a card, a transaction that costs merchants 1.5 percent to 2 percent in fees to the card company.

"Merchants generally will only adopt this kind of system if it can show that it moves customers through a line quicker" or helps customers spend more money over time at that store, Salters said. From the credit card bank perspective, one big value in developing the tap-and-go phone is creating the "top of wallet" position among a consumer's credit cards. Industry analysts say a typical middle-class consumer has between four and six credit cards.

Salters said innovative banks trying to introduce phone payment systems hope the strategy makes their own card the credit card of choice. "People can use any one of their several cards when making payments. This is one effort (by banks) to make their card the primary one inside each person's wallet," he said.

The other major attraction behind the marriage of cards and cell phones, Salters said, is the option of developing two-way communication with the phone user. A credit card is nothing but a card, but phones can receive text messages, tones, even short videos from marketers trying to encourage the customer to buy something.

The first versions of interactive marketing will be simple, Salters predicts. Shoppers will go to a vending machine and swipe their phone to buy something. The vending machine company will activate a message to the phone saying the shopper can get one can free can of pop with three more purchases.

Over time, the likely scenario could be a version of a plugged-in universe in which customers with cell phones are notified, because of their global positioning system location, that if they visit the nearest coffee shop they can get a double mocha on special. "That's not happening yet, but that is something that's possible," Salters said. When U.S. Bank set up the Spokane pilot program, it looked first at Spokane's current list of merchants that use contactless readers and saw that the community had a fair share. The list includes McDonald's, Jack in the Box, Regal Cinemas, Office Depot and 7-Eleven, Venturo said.

The bank also decided to include Gonzaga University in the test. For the six-month trial, the university agreed to equip 10 campus vending machines with new readers that will allow bank customers to try the technology.

Venturo would not say how many U.S. Bank customers are participating. "Our competitors would very much like to know that number," he said. It's a group that is well above dozens, he noted.

To encourage them, the bank provided each with a new Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Web-enabled phone and agreed to give each participant a monthly cash credit to be applied toward the data plan cost of their phone service. To take part, the bank member has to use either T-Mobile or AT&T (NYSE: T) wireless for their service.

Security Is Critical
Another incentive: At times the company will send text messages to the phones reading "if you use the card two times over the next several days, the bank will credit your account a certain amount," explained Venturo.

Security is a critical part of the system, Venturo said. First, when a phone taps a reader screen to make a payment, the transfer of data only sends encrypted credit card numbers, not the name or other personal information, he said.

If the phone is lost, the owner is subject only to the US$50 maximum amount any credit card company regards as a customer's liability; in fact, most banks don't even ask customers to pay back that amount.

"We've also made clear that if the phone is lost, that person should immediately contact U.S. Bank. We'll have the option of disabling the secure card (inside the phone) right away," Venturo said.

The cards containing the information are also wired into the phone and can't be easily removed. Even if removed, the information inside is indecipherable, Venturo said.

Increase Site Trust, Go Guardian eCommerce - Certify Your Web Site!

Microsoft Yahoo Deal Could Be Bad News For Start-ups

2008-02-07T18:11:00.000-05:00

FOR decades, Silicon Valley has been the land of eternal optimism and high anxiety, traits that pitch into overdrive anytime a seismic business event washes across the corporate and entrepreneurial landscape here — like, for example, Microsoft’s blockbuster $45 billion bid for Yahoo on Friday. Max Levchin, a PayPal founder who now runs Slide, says he expects that investors in start-ups will rein in spending.
The legions of high-tech entrepreneurs who have set up camp here with clever ideas, a willingness to scramble for financing and the energy to weather round-the-clock days have typically tethered their dreams to a singular outcome: getting fabulously rich by selling to one of the three Internet giants, Microsoft, Google or Yahoo.

But if Microsoft’s takeover bid for Yahoo succeeds, that calculus becomes more harrowing because of a simple reality: the field of large, lushly endowed suitors will narrow by one. And that is a fact sure to jangle nerves already strained by growing fears of an economic recession. “From a start-up and investor perspective, if there are more companies trying to vie for the same businesses, there are more exits,” said Bismarck Lepe, a former Google employee and now chief executive of Ooyala, a year-old video host and advertising company. “It’s not great for competition if there are only two acquisition targets instead of three.”

To be sure, a Microsoft-Yahoo deal could be good for Silicon Valley, funneling money into the economy and triggering a round of copycat deals as other players like Google and the News Corporation look to keep up. But Microsoft is buying Yahoo because it has steadily fallen behind Google in the lucrative online search market and because the future of computing may not be forever linked to the desktop market that Microsoft now dominates. Apparently unable to keep up with Google through internal efforts, the legendary software giant in Redmond, Wash., has gone outside to solve its problems by trying to buy Yahoo.

So the rationale for Friday’s proposed mega-deal is based on Microsoft’s own particular corporate needs and may not be a harbinger of rampant deal-making in the Valley. Moreover, with an economic recession looming nationally, the unsolicited bid for Yahoo comes at a difficult time for the normally cocksure world of high tech. Visibly, much of the region maintains an almost obstinate belief that it can weather any economic storm that emerges. Consumers are still flocking online, advertising is following, and the current generation of start-ups has been built frugally — with lessons from the dot-com bust of several years ago still very much in mind.

Venture capitalists also raised nearly $35 billion last year, more than at any other time since before the dot-com crash, according to the National Venture Capital Association. Those financiers are ready to make bets on countless entrepreneurs who hope to build the next Google, Facebook or YouTube. But as the stock market lolls and an outsider, Microsoft, bids to gobble up a company that once was one of Silicon Valley’s crown jewels, the region’s innovators and corporate stewards appear to be growing ever more anxious. That trait is most visible in the top executives at public companies whose eyes are trained on parallel declines in consumer confidence and public equities.

Shares of Google had dropped nearly 20 percent since the beginning of the year — and then they fell an additional 8.6 percent on Friday after Microsoft made the play for Yahoo. Apple has dropped 33 percent since the start of the year. That was enough to prompt Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, to send a reassuring memo to options-sick employees last week that concluded: “Hang in there.” Many in the typically overconfident venture capital world say it is foolish to believe the technology sector is somehow sheltered from the storm.

“All markets are linked,” says Peter Rip, a general partner at Crosslink Capital, adding that the pain might trickle down from the public markets to large private companies and eventually to smaller start-ups. “We just asked every one of our companies to take a sharp pencil to their hiring plan this year. It is going to be a bumpy ride for a while.”

IN a blog posting this week titled “Downturn, Now What?,” Will Price, a partner at the San Francisco venture capital firm Hummer Winblad, said the recession could punish technology investors for succumbing yet again to investment fads and high valuations for companies without proven business models.

He calls these companies “Field of Dreams” start-ups, because their entrepreneurs believed that if they built popular online services, advertisers would inevitably come. Now that might not necessarily be the case. “There’s been a suspension of belief” at Internet companies without a proven way to earn money “that the market is going to let you off the hook,” Mr. Price said. “These companies are going to have a hard time getting past experimental interest from advertisers when they want to start attracting really big spending.”

MOST Valley residents, including even the most pessimistic venture capitalists, are quick to say that the Internet economy would be in an enviable position if there were a recession. Mutual funds, media companies and private equity firms are all trying to get in on the Internet action. The online advertising market is booming.

This is where true believers are likely to ward off recessionary fear with two numbers: 21 and 7. Twenty-one percent of the average American’s media-consumption time is spent online, analysts say, yet only 7 percent of all advertising is online. The hope is that advertising will inevitably shift online and close this gap, whatever the economic outlook.

For that reason, many Internet executives say that traditional media companies — not Web properties — are likely to be the first victims of any advertising pullback. “If our advertisers cut their marketing budget by 15 or 20 percent, that will hurt,” said John Battelle, who ran the Industry Standard magazine during the first dot-com boom and now runs the online ad network Federated Media. (The New York Times Company has invested in Federated.) “But my guess is that they will cut it first in print or TV and not online.”

Still, the dot-com bust — and its destructive reverberations — continues to cast a shadow over even the most optimistic Internet evangelist. In 2000, as the stock market cratered and fear spread, venture capitalists pulled the plug on hundreds of start-ups and wrote off millions of dollars in losses.

Frank Addante’s online advertising company at that time, L90, went public and reached a tantalizing market capitalization of $500 million before the dot-com bubble popped and L90 was forced to sell its technology to a rival and file for bankruptcy protection.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Addante is keeping one eye on the economy. Now the chief executive of another online advertising company, the Rubicon Project, Mr. Addante, like other entrepreneurs, is confident that the tech sector would survive an economic downturn. But he is also hedging his bets. Earlier this month, the company raised $21 million in venture capital before it needed a cash infusion, in part, Mr. Addante said, because such capital may not be available in the coming year.

“When money is on the table and it’s a decent deal, sometimes you have to go and take it,” he said. “You never know what’s going to happen in the markets.” LIKE Mr. Addante, Max Levchin, the chief executive of Slide, says that the United States is on the road to recession and that Silicon Valley start-ups could be headed for a venture capital-mandated round of belt tightening. So Mr. Levchin, who co-founded PayPal, a company that successfully weathered the dot-com crash, decided to take the money while the going was good: He recently raised $55 million in additional financing for Slide, a company that makes video- and photo-sharing tools.

“We determined that if we were going to raise money, we would have a much easier time of it at the end of 2007 than at any time during 2008,” he said. “I don’t think I was the only guy in town who thought that.” Mr. Lepe of Ooyala recalls his drives to Mountain View, Calif., in 2001, when he would see a new empty billboard off Highway 101 each week as pessimism spread through the community.

The lesson: Economic downturns have a way of fostering panic and transforming a community’s collective consciousness. “So much in the Valley — whether a company gets funded or not — happens on gut instinct,” Mr. Lepe said. “If someone’s house isn’t being sold and they can’t go out and buy their yacht, it does have an impact on their psychology.”

And what psychological impact could a potential Microsoft-Yahoo deal have on Silicon Valley’s heady business environment? While he worries about the reduced number of potential acquirers, Mr. Lepe also speculates it could have a positive outcome, if it stimulates a flurry of deal-making in the industry.

But not many entrepreneurs are holding their breath — for a new round of deals or for a sea change in the current business climate — because of a possible megamerger of Microsoft and Yahoo. Mr. Sternberg of Meebo said a marriage of the two Internet titans could benefit start-ups like his if Yahoo and Microsoft were able to deliver on the promise of a more efficient online advertising system. But that could be years off.

“Does this impact our world overnight? Definitely not,” he said, “at least as far as I can see.”

Go Guardian eCommerce, Site Credibility Pays!

Troubleshoot Dropped SE Rankings

2008-01-30T15:25:00.000-05:00

Are you baffled about a recent drop in your search engine rankings? Do you know where to start and get a handle on what the problem might be and how to remedy it? One option to consider is using search engine forums as a resource. They are full of questions from people who have experienced similar situations and are great resources for an answer or two. But let's say you really want to get to the bottom of the problem and you want to do it yourself. The following are some of the beginning steps StepForth takes when evaluating dropped rankings.

Write a list of everything that anyone has done to your site within the past 3 weeks. Now look for anything that could have negatively impacted your content, site structure, or the reliability of your URLs. Once you write down the course of events the answer might pop right out at you. Here are some common situational culprits:

You just moved your website to a different hosting provider: did your site experience much, if any, downtime during the switch over? Quality hosting companies will allow you to setup your site on their servers before the switch takes place so that downtime is minimized if not removed entirely. If a search engine happened to visit your site while it was down, there is a small chance your rankings would be negatively affected, but it will only happen for a short period. Once the search engine re-indexes your website everything should be back in order.

The structure of your site has permanently changed: did you redirect the traffic from the old URLs to the new URLs using a 301 redirect? If not, then you should. A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which tells any visiting search engine to permanently change its index to reflect the new site structure.

Contact your hosting company to check if your server has had any downtime recently. In most cases search engines will not drop your rankings if they visit your site and it is offline once; however, if this happens consistently then your rankings can fail. If your hosting company states that downtime has occurred, then you have at least one possible answer for your ranking woes. As long as your site is now reliably online and has not been offline for an extended period (days or weeks) the rankings should reappear as your site is re-indexed. There may be a notable drop in rankings but, in most cases, they will return to pre-incident status.

Is all of your textual content up to date? It is amazing just how quickly a website's rankings can drop when someone accidentally overwrites optimized pages with older, non-optimized pages. Check the content and if you find old content, just overwrite it with the newer content and wait for the search engines to come back and re-index your website; Google and Yahoo are likely to come back within a week or even a day.

When a search engine visits your website it must first respond to any commands provided by your server. These commands are often identifiable in the server header. As a result, we like to verify that no incorrect, unusual or unnecessary commands are stashed in the header of your site. We use the free SEO Consultants Check Server Headers Tool to review any headers and take action if required, but there are others freely available as well.

If you have not already done so, I strongly recommend claiming your website on Yahoo Site Explorer, Google Webmaster Central and Live Search Webmaster Center . Each of these fine resources provides extremely useful feedback (from each respective search engine's perspective) for site owners such as: 1) Whether your site is currently banned. If you are, in some cases they will tell you why. 2) Notes on any impediments the search engine has experienced when trying to index your website.
Who is linking to your website. 3) Which pages are the most popular on your website.
and 4) Which keywords lead the most traffic to your website.

By Ross Dunn (c) 2008

Don't Kid Yourself, Site Credibility Does Pay!

Google Evicts 'Domain Name Tasters' From AdSense

2008-01-30T15:17:00.000-05:00

The online advertising leader Google said it would help make it less lucrative to tie up millions of Internet addresses using a loophole and keep those domain names from legitimate individuals and businesses. Over the next few weeks, Google will start looking for names that are repeatedly registered and dropped within a five-day grace period for full refunds.

Google's AdSense program would exclude those names so no one can generate advertising revenue from claiming them temporarily, a practice known as "domain name tasting" -- the online equivalent of buying expensive clothes on a charge card only to return them for a full refund after wearing them to a party.

"We believe that this policy will have a positive impact for users and domain purchasers across the Web," Google spokesperson Brandon McCormick said. The company said it notified participants via e-mail already.

Name tasting exploits a grace period originally designed to rectify legitimate mistakes, such as registrants mistyping the domain name they are about to buy. However, with automation and a burgeoning online advertising market, entrepreneurs have generated big bucks exploiting the policy to test hoards of names, keeping just the ones that turn out to generate the most revenue.

The practice ties up millions of domain names at any given time, making it more difficult for legitimate individuals and businesses to get a desirable name.

Jay Westerdal, who earlier wrote about Google's change on his DomainTools blog, said in an interview that the ban should make domain name tasting far less lucrative. He noted that Google's chief rival, Yahoo already tries to ban tasted addresses that infringe on trademarks and account for much of the problem.

"If Google and Yahoo are not monetizing these types of sites, I think domain tasting as we know it will come to a screeching halt," Westerdal said. "The alternative advertising is just not as effective."

In October, Yahoo sued several domain name registration companies over tasting, accusing them of targeting trademarks owned by Yahoo and other leading brands. The lawsuit is pending in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Dell and BMW have filed similar federal lawsuits in Florida.

The Internet's key oversight agency, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, already is looking into name tasting and will soon ask a committee to review the issue and craft recommendations. A public comment period on draft procedures closes Monday.

The operators of the ".org" suffix already won approval to charge companies that make too many returns. The number of deletions dropped to 152,700 in June, compared with 2.4 million in May, after the new fee took effect.

Guardian eCommerce Identifies Trustworthy Web Sites, Get Your Free Web Site Evaluation!

eBay Takes Bigger Bite Out of Sellers' Back Ends

2008-01-30T15:08:00.000-05:00

Barely a week after eBay announced a change in corporate leadership, the online auctioneer unveiled a major switch in strategy. The company plans to reduce by half the up-front fees it charges users to list their items on its platform. It will also offer its best seller incentives and raise its minimum selling standards.

The strategy, unveiled by John Donahoe, the company's incoming chief executive officer and current president of eBay Marketplaces, is designed to increase traffic for eBay, which has struggled in recent months.

"Consumers have more choices than ever, and they expect more when they shop online today," Donahoe told a gathering of more than 200 of the company's top North American sellers in Washington Tuesday. "We're serious about making eBay easier and safer to shop."

The changes are scheduled go into effect Feb. 20 in the U.S. and soon thereafter in the United Kingdom and Germany. Adjustments will follow worldwide after that, at a time still to be determined.

eBay's strategy is about removing obstacles to users, said Greg Sterling, founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence. "They're trying to sort of make themselves more friendly to sellers," he said. "There had been conflicts between sellers and eBay as they raised prices on the front end."

The changes shift eBay's profit away from up-front user fees to higher commissions when an item sells, the company noted. The effort is a smart move, Sterling commented. "It's a way to not make sellers feel they're being unfairly pinched. It's a shared risk where eBay gets more out of actual transactions but charges less."

Nevertheless, the changes won't affect buyers, he added. "Consumers don't care. It's not going to have any impact on them. It's all about customer relations management from a B2B (business-to-business) perspective."

Moving the costs from front to rear lowers the risk to users who might not be able to sell their items, the company commented.

Low-cost items will incur the greatest hit, with fees increasing 67 percent on goods selling for less than US$25. eBay's cut on those sales will be 8.75 percent of the sale price.

eBay -- whose current CEO, Meg Whitman, last week announced she would be leaving at the end of March after a decade in the job -- is still No. 1 in its field, although it has struggled of late.

The company's user traffic has been flat, having increased only 2 percent from last year. "I guess I'd say they still hold a pretty dominant position in the auction category; certainly, they're way out in front of their competitors, even though their usage has been fairly flat over the last year," Andrew Frank, research vice president for Gartner said. "They're still the incumbent, and this is more about an incumbent with a lot of momentum needing to be an innovator."

The move also is designed to bring new users to eBay, Frank said. The company launched in 1995 with fewer than three dozen employees. "It should make things simpler and also alleviate some of the concerns about fraud and how trustworthy the auction category is for newcomers," Frank said. "I can see how this would help, from a marketing standpoint."

Donahoe had said that changes were coming in eBay's business model, with the company facing increased competition from Amazon.com -- which has no user fees -- and other e-tailers.

Tuesday's announcement is a strong backing for Donahoe's promise to bring change to eBay, said Avivah Litan, vice president and research director for Gartner. "If this isn't going to work, nothing else would," she said. "This is definitely putting your money where your mouth is."

Get Site Certified. Site Credibility Pays At Guardian eCommerce!

The Secret Of Your Google Success

2008-01-20T08:38:00.000-05:00

What do you need to get top rankings on Google? There are many ingredients in the mix, but here are three of the most important that you need to concentrate on.

1.) Keyword Relevant Copy and Content: Whatever the keywords you want to get ranked in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), be sure that you have enough copy and content about those specific words which will give Google a reason to rank you in the first place.

If for example, one of your priority keywords is "virtual assistant software", create a separate page or section for this keyword (at least a few paragraphs) using the keyword in the headline, the first sentence, the last sentence as well as wherever it makes logical sense in order to achieve the keyword frequency and "density" that search engines are looking for. Ideally, each page will only have one or two keywords and will be very focused on that specific topic.

Additionally, by including on this specific keyword page either articles, pdf files or news items about your keyword, it will help you improve your chances of a better ranking. Give Google a reason to rank you at the top. He with the most relevant copy wins - so make it rich and deep.

2.) Can the Search Engines Read and "Crawl" All the Pages and Content on Your Site?
Probably the biggest surprise to most marketers is that the search engines are unable to either navigate or read most of the content on their website. If they can't read your copy, then it's not surprising that you're not getting the rankings or traffic to your website that you aspire to.

The only thing a search engine can read is words. Sites that are dynamic, or created in other formats such as Flash or Java often can't be read by the search engines. Even if they can read the content on your site, many times they can't navigate it properly or just bounce "off the walls" as there are no specific links or site map to tell the proper sequence or where to go next.

Want to see what Google is indexing on your website? Go to Google and type in: site:www.yourdomain.com. This will show you the title and description of the pages of your site they know about. If they are all the same or they don't have a title or description listed, chances are very good that your site is invisible to your target market.

3) Links... Why Are They So Important? Link popularity is one of the most important factors search engines use in determining where you will rank in the search engine for your keywords and phrases, as it helps them to determine how important or popular your site is and what it's reputation is. In essence the search engines are saying "we're going to give top ranking to pages that have important and relevant sites linking to them".

Link Building is the process of finding related/relevant websites and receiving a link from them to you. Natural linking occurs when a site has good content that others will link to. But to get these links people have to know about you. It is a catch 22. Building links has gotten sophisticated in the last couple of years. Today you need a mixture of links from many sources including articles, press releases, social bookmarks, directories and social media sites.

How many links do you need to have? It depends on the individual keyword or phrase you want to be found under and how the links are structured. The search engines look at inbound links as a popularity contest but more importantly, they are looking at the quality of the pages that are linking to you and the "anchor text" - the "clickable link" and what it says about the page that it links to. The key to linking is to have the right anchor text on a link that points to a page that has content using the same keyword phrase.

You do not want to boost the overall number of links by more than 10-15% each month for an established site with history because this may trigger a filter from the search engines as an indicator of artificially inflated link popularity. New sites have an advantage since there has not been a history established and the link building can be done at a faster rate. Linking is critical not only with your search engine placement, but also because it helps stabilize you positions in the search engines and delivers traffic directly from the sites that link to you. But linking is not a once and you are done process. Generating new links is an ongoing process.

In summary, successfully implementing the above 3 strategies either through your efforts or through employing search engine promotion specialists will deliver the "triple punch" and the knockout punch you need to get top rankings on Google and the other search engines as well.

Increase Site Trust, Because Site Credibility Pays!

Search Engines, Spiders and Robots

2008-01-20T08:17:00.000-05:00

Nearly all search engines utilize spiders (which are also known by their original name, robots) to go out and scour the web looking for web pages. These search engine spiders then bring the data back to be indexed by the engine.

Since roughly 1996, individual meta commands have existed that can be used on individual web pages to modify how these search engine spiders behave. The most useful of these commands are fairly universal and respected by almost all search engines. What follows is a list of some of the more popular spider (or robot) commands and instances in which you might want to use them.

meta name=robots content=index (use proper tags, robots and index in quotes)

This meta command is one of the most common ones used – and it is also the least necessary. It tells search engine spiders to come on in and put the page in their index. However, all search engines do this by default anyway. Basically, if you want to put it in there for fun, be my guest, but this command is not giving you any special treatment. All search engines are going to index your page, unless you specifically tell them otherwise.

meta name=robots content=follow (use proper tags, robots and follow in quotes)

The follow command is different from the index command. It basically requests that the search engine spiders follow the links that are on a particular page. Again, however, this piece of code is completely unnecessary because all search engines are going to follow the links on a page, unless otherwise directed.

meta name=robots content=noindex (use proper tags, robots and noindex in quotes)

The noindex command, the opposite of the index command, tells search engine spiders not to index the content of a page. It's important to note however that search engine spiders will still follow the links on a page that uses only this command.

When not used for legitimate purposes, this tag can be dangerous because it can put you at risk for penalization by most, if not all search engines. This is because you can use a noindex tag to hide pages with multiple links that you don't want visitors to see but that you do want all search engines to index.

There are however some legitimate uses for the noindex command. For example, if you have a dynamic site and you've created static pages to replace some of your dynamic pages, which can make them easier for search engine spiders to access, you could put a noindex tag on the dynamic version.

As Google mentions in its Webmaster Help Center: "Consider creating static copies of dynamic pages. Although the Google index includes dynamic pages, they comprise a small portion of our index. If you suspect that your dynamically generated pages (such as URLs containing question marks) are causing problems for our crawler, you might create static copies of these pages."

In cases like these, it is acceptable to use the "no index" command on the dynamic version of the page, so that your content will not be treated as duplicate. You are not tricking all search engines, you're just redirecting them.

meta name=robots content=nofollow (use proper tags, robots and nofollow in quotes)

This tag tells search engine spiders that it's OK to go ahead and index a page and list it but that they shouldn't follow any of the links that are on the page. This can be useful if, for example, you had some partners that requested a link on your site that you felt obligated to give, but you wanted to hold onto as much Page Rank as possible. Now this is of course between you and your personal god, but you would be able to in effect have a partners page, add the nofollow attribute to the meta tags, and basically not pass on any of your Page Rank to any of the sites to which you are linking. The nofollow command in effect tells all search engines that this is the end of the line.

meta name=robots content=noindex,nofollow (use proper tags, robots and noindex, nofollow in quotes)

Obviously, noindex and nofollow are powerful tags – and in combination, they can make a page and the subsequent pages to which it links invisible to nearly all search engines. This combination command tells search engine spiders, "Do not read this page; do not follow any of the links on this page; do not include this page in your index."

This command has its beneficial uses. For example, it can be placed on pages on a site that have duplicate content for legitimate reasons. A website might have both a page for the United States and a page for England that cover the same product with exactly the same content. However, nearly all search engines would see this as duplicate content and could devalue both pages. So placing this command on one of them means that search engine spiders will walk on by and you won't be penalized.

meta name=robots content=noarchive (use proper tags, robots and noarchive in quotes)

Finally, almost all search engines today, including Google and Yahoo, provide a cached version of a site alongside its listing that provides a snapshot of what the page used to look like. The noarchive tag, therefore, is available to be used in circumstances where there is content on your website that is of a timely nature and therefore that you might not necessarily want search engine spiders to cache for people to have access to moving forward.

For example, a business might run a one-time special that has a ridiculously low price to drum up some business while things are slow. The business will want to be able to shut that sale down as soon as sales are back up to a solid level. However, it is conceivable that someone could click on the cached version of the business's site, see the old deal that was out there, and insist on getting it for themselves. By using the noarchive tag, you are telling search engine spiders, in effect, "This page is subject to frequent changes, and I don't want my visitors to have access to some of this content at a later time."

The commands discussed above are just a few of the ones in existence, and new ones are being added frequently. While nearly all search engines support these commands, there are still some that don't. The ones in this article, however, are fairly universally understood by search engine spiders, no matter from where they originate. As more universal commands are introduced, they will be written about in future articles.

Site Credibility Does Pay, Join Guardian eCommerce!

Social Networking, Boom or Bust?

2008-01-02T08:39:00.000-05:00

There are an estimated 44 million Baby Boomers roaming the Net, and legions of marketers looking for ways to reach them. That's because, as a target market, Boomers have what it takes to make hucksters salivate: money. "It's a generation with wealth -- (US)$2 trillion in disposable income -- and they have an incredible appetitive to keep connecting, to keep learning and to keep graduating to new things," Linda Natansohn, senior vice president for strategic development for Eons in Boston, said.

Eons was one of the first Web developers to go after Boomers by creating an online social network for them -- a sort of "Facebook with wrinkles," as Matt Richtel, of The New York Times, put it. "Boomers have been using the Internet, but they've been nomadic," Natansohn observed. "Until now, there hasn't been a destination created for them, which is what we set out to do when we created our company in 2005."
Since that time, Boomer-oriented Web sites have mushroomed, and the coffers of venture capitalists, looking for the next MySpace, have opened to them.

In September, for example, VantagePoint Ventures reportedly led a $16.5 million round of financing for Multiply. In August, Shasta Ventures led a $4.8 million round for TeeBeeDee, a site that came out of testing in September. Despite the enthusiasm of the money people, there are skeptics of the idea of bringing MySpace-style social networking to online Boomers.

"In our surveys and in our research, we see that Baby Boomers are much less likely than teenagers, for instance, to participate in social networks," Mark Best, an analyst with JupiterResearch, said. He acknowledged, however, that "whether that's because the social networks are marketed toward teenagers or Baby Boomers are not interested in using a social network, that's up in the air."

Chuck Nyren, author of Marketing to Baby Boomers, published by Paramount Books, and principle in the Nyrenagency, of Snohomish, Wash., made a dire prediction about Boomer social networking sites. "This is all going to cave in soon," he said. "I don't think people over 45 or 50 are that much into virtual socializing unless it's around a specific topic, like travel or health."

Needless to say, Natansohn disagrees. "What we've heard loud and clear from Boomers," she said, "is that while they do want information, they do want resources, what they really want to be able do -- and what the Internet is perfect for -- is letting them connect with each other. "That's where we've found a sweet spot in the market, where there has been a great unmet demand," she added.

Why that demand was allowed to go unmet was because online Boomers were able to evade the crosshairs of marketers for a long time, maintained Terry Cochran, president of A2 Multimedia, of Ann Arbor, Mich., which counts in its stable of Web sites Boomernet, launched in 1995. "There are certainly more sites today than when we started Boomernet," he said. "That's because more people finally decided that the Boomers have money that's worth trying to grab. They were ignored for a long time."

Boomer networking sites are afflicted with the same problem that's plagued all social networking sites, Cochran noted. "I don't know that anybody has actually done well monetizing that market yet," he said. "I don't know if there's any economic success there yet for anybody, as far as I can tell."

In the minds of marketers, unlike teenagers, who tend to be fickle and financially challenged, Boomers are creatures of habit and flush with wealth, so if they're herded into a social networking site, they should be fat for slaughter.

That reasoning remains untested, though, according to Cochran. "I don't know that there's been some special result proven so far that even though Boomers have the bucks, that they're willing to spend them any more than any other demographic would," he observed.

Get The Privacy Seal And Be Site Certified!

Secrets To E-Commerce Excellence

2008-01-02T08:34:00.000-05:00

These days, just about every business -- from the corner store to Wal-Mart -- has a Web presence. While the Internet's vast expanse provides companies with the ability to reach more potential customers, it also pits them against more competitors than ever before. As a result, it has become increasingly difficult for companies to convert site visitors into buying customers. To complicate matters, nine out of every 10 users log off without buying anything, according to some estimates.

While companies cannot arm-wrestle consumers and force them to buy their products, there are steps they can take to make it more likely that a transaction will occur. Following are five tips from e-commerce experts that could entice consumers to purchase your products.

No. 1: Simplify Site Navigation: Web site design is crucial to a positive user experience, yet as many as 95 percent of the better-known sites fail to meet minimal usability standards, according to Todd Follansbee, vice president at Web Marketing Resources. Initially, companies focus on making their sites functional -- meaning that when they launch them, they try to ensure that most functions work. However, having a functional site is different from having an effective one.

"Unless a company is willing to put in the time and effort needed to test the site, it will have no chance of building a usable and persuasive site," Follansbee said. "It's similar to expecting a gymnast to become a champion without having the proper tools and a coach. The gymnast may have talent, but unless the person has someone who knows the sport, can ask the right questions and make the right recommendations, the athlete will fall short of her goal."

No. 2: Monitor Customer Tendencies With Web Analytics: With the advent of various monitoring tools, companies can now generate oodles of information about how customers interact with their Web sites. As a result, a new challenge that businesses face is making sense of all of the data. "Web analytics is a new software genre designed to correlate collected information into meaningful measurements," noted Gene Alvarez, a research vice president at Gartner.

These programs are designed to correlate information about visitors' browsing habits with their buying tendencies. The potential measurements often center on customer acquisition and conversion rates associated with such items as keywords, search engines, marketing campaigns or pay-per-click campaigns. Ideally, a business will learn from these measurements which of its initiatives are working and which need further fine-tuning, and then be able to make the proper adjustments.

No. 3: Map Your Infrastructure to Your Products: Different products place different demands on a company's IT infrastructure. "E-commerce sites that deal in sales of high-bandwidth products, such as e-books or streaming videos, need systems that will accommodate the demand generated by these applications," noted Eric J. Hansen, president of SiteSpect.

They require high-performance servers that can search vast files quickly, and lots of bandwidth for speedy file transfers. Generally, hosting companies offer base packages that support most companies' needs, and then offer upgrades to companies that need more bandwidth or storage.

No. 4: Make Sure That Your Web Pages Flow: Users want to enter as few keystrokes as possible to find and buy desired items. Companies can streamline the discovery and checkout processes by creating different sections of their Web sites for various markets; providing relevant information, products and Web copy to different types of customers; and eventually walking them through the checkout process. E-commerce suppliers can construct flow charts that indicate where the customers start on the Web site and what process they will click through before reaching a desired action. A company can then use Web analytics software to determine what stage of the process people are dropping out at and make changes to increase the likelihood of users reaching the desired action.

No. 5: Increase Credibility With Feedback: There are many methods of increasing product credibility, depending on the product or services a company sells. "Companies need to encourage customers to provide feedback on their buying experiences," said Patti Freeman Evans, senior analyst at market research firm JupiterResearch.

Customer reviews and ratings can be very powerful influences in a user's buying decision. While the potential buyer expects the company to provide biased information, the reviews and ratings of other consumers are seen as much more informative, and they weigh heavier in a purchase decision. Store owners are encouraged to allow legitimate negative feedback, as customers will give more credence to positive remarks if they know that negative reviews could also have been posted.

Having customers visit your Web site is the first step in the sales process. Companies need to take additional steps to make it more likely that their customers will return. If they do, they can reap significant rewards: U.S. companies sold US$116 billion worth of merchandise over the Web in 2006, according to JupiterResearch, which expects that number to grow to $171 billion by 2011.

Go Guardian eCommerce, Site Credibility Pays!

Top Five 2007 Online Consumer Complaints

2008-01-02T06:18:00.000-05:00

In 2007, Guardian eCommerce received tens of thousands of complaints from online consumers worldwide. After compiling all complaints received, the top five complaints recieved (over 85% of all consumer complaints filed) where as follows:

1. Lottery Winnings Or Promotions Scam: Complainant is notified of lottery winnings under various lottery or promotion names, (Microsoft Lottery, Yahoo UK Lottery, MSN Lottery, etc.). Complainant submits the mandatory processing fee but never receives the lottery winnings.

Guardian eCommerce advises that there is NO such thing as a lottery or lottery win for those who have NOT entered into it. Legally, in most jurisdictions, you cannot win a lottery of any kind for which you have not entered into in the first place. Please visit Guardian eCommerce Alerts for more information.

2. Estate, Inheritance, other Wealth Gain: Complainant is notified of a large sum of money to be transferred or paid out in the complainant's name or complainant is to receive a portion of the pending large sum as a reward for holding it. Complainant submits a fee to process the pending payment but payment never receved.

Guardian eCommerce advises not to engage with ANY email sender not known. Delete these emails immediately. Please visit Guardian eCommerce Alerts for more information.

3. Bank Or Financial Institution Notifications: Complainant receives email notification from a financial institution or Internet based bank (i.e. PayPal)regarding an account problem or requesting account information from the complainant.

Guardian eCommerce advises not to engage with ANY email sender not known. Delete these emails immediately. As well, financial institutions WILL NOT send emails to their clients for such purposes. Please visit Guardian eCommerce Alerts for more information.

4. Auction Item Purchased Not Received: Complainant "wires" money to seller for goods not received.

Guardian eCommerce advises not to "wire" money to anyone unless the goods have been received first. Please visit Guardian eCommerce Consumer Warning for more information.

5. Website Item Purchased Not Received: Complainant pays Website for item or service not received.

Guardian eCommerce advises not to conduct business with Websites not approved or verified by a legitimate non-objective third party site verification company like BBB or Guardian eCommerce. With Guardian eCommerce, for example, online consumers are fully protected through a consumer protection warranty... insurance provided by Guardian eCommerce. Guardian eCommerce cautions online consumers that there are many illegitimate third party site verification entities on the Web today. Therefore, online consumers should govern their actions accordingly before conducting business online with a "non-verified" Website.

Please visit Guardian eCommerce Consumer Warning and Guardian eCommerce Alertsfor more information.

To file a complaint or report Internet fraud, please click here.

Site Credibility Pays! Verifying Websites Since 2002... Join Guardian eCommerce!

Lessons Learned From 2007 E-Commerce Misery

2007-12-27T09:56:00.000-05:00

About 50 percent of all new businesses survive for at least five years, according to estimates by the Small Business Administration. On the flip side, that means that half of all new ventures fail in that time frame. While the e-commerce market has been growing at a rapid clip, a number of companies have not been able to take advantage of this trend and found themselves in precarious positions for a variety of reasons this year. The ripple effect from problems in the home mortgage market which saw more than 200 companies go out business in 2007, impacting several online suppliers.

Meanwhile, a few firms jumped into the arms of willing buyers; changing regulations about offshore betting caused problems for companies in that market; and other firms misunderstood market directions and invested in areas that delivered little to no returns.

In November, E*Trade felt the impact of the mortgage industry meltdown. The online brokerage lost more than half its market value after it forecast a decline in fourth-quarter earnings, and some analysts even predicted that the company would eventually go bankrupt. The problems arose when chief executive Mitchell Caplan's strategy of building E*Trade's bank by tripling loans outstanding backfired as borrowers fell behind on their payments and U.S. home prices declined.

To shore up its position, the financial services company announced a cash infusion of US$2.5 billion, led by affiliates of Citadel Investment Group. The firm designed the investment to fortify E*Trade's balance sheet, allow the company to focus on its core retail business and provide additional capital to manage credit risks.

E*Trade also shook up its management team, with R. Jarrett Lilien succeeding Mitchell Caplan as chief executive officer. Lilien has served as director, president and chief operating officer for the e-commerce supplier. The company is conducting an executive search for the CEO position, and will considering Lilien and external candidates.

Pay By Touch, which supplies biometric authentication systems to retailers, is another company that made a misstep in 2007. "The company thought that businesses could use its products for business-to-business exchanges, but there was not as much interest in that capability as they expected," Russ Jones, an analyst with Glenbrook Partners said.

Meanwhile, as the e-commerce market has been expanding, size has become a more important factor in a company's success or failure. Consequently, a number of companies that at the beginning of the year were competing became teammates by the end of the year. GSI Commerce built its business by buying distressed online retailers such as Fogdog.com and Ashford.com and running the operations more efficiently than the retailers could themselves. The company did so well that it ended up acquiring Accretive Commerce for $97.5 million in cash. "The acquisition was a good move for GSI, which found a way to get rid of one of its big competitors," Gene Alvarez, research vice president at Gartner said.

ChannelAdvisor also acquired a competing e-commerce services company Marketworks. Although both ChannelAdvisor and Marketworks offer similar e-commerce channel/marketplace products and services, they serve different customers. ChannelAdvisor mainly services larger merchants while Marketworks specializes in selling products and services for small to medium-sized merchants.

Online gambling was an e-commerce area that took a major hit in 2007, and Neteller was in the news quite a bit. Stephen Lawrence, a director of the UK-based online payments firm, entered a guilty plea to a charge of conspiracy in connection with his role in the company's handling of financial transactions among gambling customers in the U.S. and offshore Internet gambling businesses. Another director of the company, John Lefebvre, admitted to allegations of misappropriating funds that required him to forfeit more than $100 million.

In addition, the U.S. government stepped up its efforts to regulate these sites. Internet gambling is essentially illegal in the U.S. under decades-old laws, and President Bush signed a bill in late 2006 that made it a crime for banks and credit card companies to make payments to online gambling sites. In this effort, the government wanted to curtail Internet gambling, which critics say is rife for abuse and can be easily accessed by minors who would not be able to place bets in other settings.

Under the new law, major gambling companies faced significant problems since a significant portion of their revenue -- estimates are up to 60 percent -- and profits came from U.S. gamblers. Armed with the new rules, prosecutors set their sights on several Internet gambling sites. During the year, former BetOnSports CEO David Carruthers was arrested and later, Sportingbet Chairman Peter Dicks was detained when he flew to New York. Meanwhile, PartyPoker.com and 888 Casino-on-Net --a few of the largest and most successful online gambling sites in the world -- withdrew from the U.S. market, and Sportingbet and Leisure and Gambling sold their U.S. operations for $1 in moves that were seen limiting their exposure to legal risk.

The social networking phenomenon was another area where e-commerce vendors missed the boat. "Social networks help companies build awareness about their brands, but vendors have not been able to leverage them to generate more e-commerce sales," said Rachel Happe, research manager at IDC. E-commerce vendors spent a lot of money advertising on social networking sites, but these investments did not generate much of a return. "It does not make a lot of sense to promote your products to a MyFace Web site focused on a person's dog. After all, the dog is not going to buy any products," Gartner's Alvarez said.

Site Credibility Pays, Join Guardian eCommerce.

Can Your Internet Business Be Trusted?

2007-12-27T09:46:00.001-05:00

It's a fact - your site visitors will ask the same question almost every single time they visit your Website, 'How do I know I can trust this Website?' The greatest fear facing online consumers today is who they can trust on the Web. Many online consumers are still uncomfortable with the online transaction process. A great majority of online consumers are especially concerned about whether or not they can trust any one of the billions of sites on the Web today, for their fear is that the one they decide to trust... may prove to be a fraudulent one.

In a recent survey conducted in the summer of 2007 by Guardian eCommerce, 92% of online consumers surveyed would prefer transacting with an Internet business that is clearly trustworthy and verified as one that is committed to online consumer safety and privacy protection. Online consumers want to click with confidence!

Many online consumers yearn for the ability to spend their money in the comfort of their own home and on the Web, but in a manner where the online transactions they conduct are safe, secure, and private. The survey basically concluded an already known truth. Verified site credibility and trust was the obvious key requirement for online consumers to achieve the confidence and assurance they needed to transact online with an Internet business!

In that very same survey, 86% of those online consumers surveyed confirmed the importance site credibility and trust verified by a trusted and proven third party authority in site verification. Simply put, these online consumers concluded they would NOT transact or conduct business online with a Website that failed to be approved by a known third party site verification authority... for site credibility and trust.

Clearly, the greater Internet community is fully aware that there are a large number of Websites functioning strictly for malicious gain. Such sites prey on the innocent for financial gain. It's impossible to identify every Website engaged in fraud.

At the same time, countless millions of online consumers worldwide rely on the Internet for many goods and services, and the number of online consumers engaged in online transactions are growing at an astronomical rate. Who is capitalizing on this fact? Which Internet business stands to gain from this truth? Is your Internet business missing the proverbial boat and failing to capture sales from those online consumers that want to spend their money -- but are unsure of your Website?

Certainly, there are those minority Internet business owners who have spent many hard years building their Internet business based on good reputation and word of mouth. They have established legit and trustworthy Websites, which in turn has resulted in sustained online success. In such cases of online success, online consumer assurance has been achieved through the years... and is easily maintained.

But not all Internet business owners fall into that category above. So then there is another category of those majority Websites or Internet business owners smart enough to gain site credibility and trust simply by being verified by a widely accepted non-objective third party site verification program. Both ways, these 'credible' Websites are on the road to online success. It's a simple concept - increase online sales... because site credibility pays.

But there are still many online consumers that feel threatened by the evolving dangers of engaging in e-commerce and online transactions today. Consumer online privacy and safety needs are growing rapidly! What steps can you take to increase online sales instead of being plagued by wrongful skepticism tainting online consumers? Get certified by an acknowledged and proven third party site verification entity like Guardian eCommerce, or even BBB.

Site certification or third party site verification is an important and affordable Internet business solution essential to help increase online sales. Online customers will buy often from an Internet business they can trust. Third party site verification helps build that bond of trust between Internet business owners and their online customers.

It's clearly proven - site credibility does pay. Third party site verification authorities like BBB or Guardian eCommerce have spent years protecting online consumers while providing an Internet business solution that exposes your trustworthy Website or Internet business.

Whether it’s a third party privacy seal, or trust mark seal of approval, or even a trustseal - online consumers need an assurance that your Website is a trustworthy one. Some even want insurance in case of an unresolved conflict with your Website. Some third party site verification programs like Guardian eCommerce provide a consumer protection warranty in the rare case of an unresolved dispute against a member Website. Guardian eCommerce provides this UNMATCHED consumer protection warranty which literally gives online consumers piece of mind protection 24/7. It's the kind of online assurance consumers want... and Internet business owners should always provide!

Don't be a foolish Internet business owner, and deny your customers online assurance... provide your potential clients with piece of mind. Increase site trust and online sales because site credibility does indeed pay! Denying online consumer assurance is probably the biggest mistake you can make and this will surely minimize the online sales potential of your Internet business. For a mere few dollars, you can get site certified and it's worth it!

Increase Site Trust, Increase Online Sales. Join Guardian eCommerce.

Online Scammers Bait Phishing Rods For Holiday Shoppers

2007-12-14T09:12:00.000-05:00

Online shopping scams could become a major security threat in the weeks leading up to Christmas as consumers eagerly type in credit card numbers, click on discount coupons and participate in online promotions, security experts worry. Instead of money-saving deals, e-mailed coupons could lead recipients into "phishing" schemes where the consumer is redirected to a copycat site, whose real purpose is to siphon the user's credit card information, passwords and other financial data, IBM security executive Christopher Rouland warned.

It's phish food! "That 50-percent-off, one-use coupon could go to a compromised computer in Kazakhstan," said Rouland, chief technology officer for Internet security systems at Big Blue, which controls more than 1 million "phish trap" e-mail addresses that discovered 867,000 scams in the third quarter. "The quality of malware is very high." IBM is urging online shoppers not to click on links within e-mails that appear to come from an online retailer.

Guardian eCommerce warns all online consumers worldwide to do the same, since the quality of fraudulent emails have improved to the point they can fool almost anybody. "Do not click on links from perceived online retailers and numerous other online entities. Almost 9 out of every 10 emails these days are linked to some form of online scam: from lottery winnings, to an inheritance gained, to land titles found, to eBay claims, to retailer coupons & special offers, to PayPal notices, to other official bank notices, and more. We caution everybody to stay away from the phishing scams running wild on the innocent" warned Dawn Devereaux from Guardian eCommerce. In this case, do not click on coupons or offers from suspect retailer emails. Instead, open a new Web browser, go to the retailer's site, navigate to special coupons or promotions and see if it's there.

Brian Trombley, a product manager for computer security firm McAfee , said holiday phishing scams are shaping up to be an "extraordinary problem" this season. No single giant retailer has been a particular target of holiday attacks; eBay's PayPal unit is still an overwhelming target of scammers. "The scammers are getting more and more sophisticated," Trombley said. "They're using better English, they're getting better at copying real sites and making their site look like the real thing."

Brought to you by Guardian eCommerce.

Get SEO Savvy: Five Tips For Keyword Choice

2007-12-14T08:55:00.000-05:00

By now, the majority of Web site owners should be aware that good content is a critical ingredient to site success. Before creating the content of a site, however, one must overcome the sometimes daunting task of choosing keywords.

These keywords are an integral part of any site and serve as the foundation of your targeted content. When picking keywords, many factors should be thoroughly contemplated, such as the Web site's theme, ultimate goal, target audience , etc. While there are many considerations to address when choosing keywords, here are some that continue to be the most relevant to the search engine algorithms:

No. 1: Web Site Theme
The chosen theme of your Web site should be the most obvious indicator of your site content. For instance, a Web site dedicated to automotive insurance should encompass keywords pertaining to the auto insurance industry. For best results, your chosen keywords need to be cohesive with reference to your site theme and include supporting content.

After all, the search engine algorithms are designed to identify and rank sites that encompass keyword and/or site continuity. Additionally, nothing frustrates users more than clicking on a site link and finding unrelated content.

No. 2: Ultimate Goal
The goal of the site is also important when choosing targeted keywords. Site goals can range from shopping conversions to increasing brand awareness, and the keywords you choose should be based on the goals of your particular site. For example, while an e-commerce site may wish to focus on keywords pertaining to conversions or purchases, a resource site should have keywords that are more informational in nature.

Understanding and selecting keywords based on this distinction is significant because prospective buyers will use very different search terms than, for example, students searching for research topics. In any case, it is vital to keep your goal in mind when building out your site.

No. 3: Target Audience
Effectively reaching your target audience, is another motivating force behind meticulous keyword research. Ultimately, your keywords draw people to your site and, with careful keyword selection, you can make a huge difference in the type of visitors you attract. For example, a B2B (business-to-business) site may use industry jargon to appeal to other businesses in the industry. Likewise, a B2C (business-to-consumer) company may be best served utilizing layman's terms when referring to its products or services.

The physical location of your audience may change your selection as well. A great example is how different areas of the country refer to soft drinks. Some of the populace refers to carbonated drinks as "pop" or "soda pop," while others call them "coke" or "soda." Also remember that a popular phrase in one language will not necessarily translate smoothly in another. Therefore, you should always be sure to research the cultural verbiage of your target audience before choosing your keywords.

No. 4: Broadness
Now that you've established the theme, goal and audience of your site -- focus on avoiding broad terms. It is crucial to choose keywords that are the most targeted to a specific page of the site. More exact key phrases can help you to reduce competition and increase visitor quality.

For example, an extremely well-optimized page targeting the keyword "event" would still have problems appearing in the first few pages of the SERPs (search engine results pages) -- competing with the millions of other sites targeting some type of "events." However, being more precise with your keywords, such as "event planning" or even "Atlanta event planning" will help you rank better and target a more relevant, niche audience.

In addition to avoiding keywords that are too competitive, it is beneficial to use keywords and phrases without multiple associations or meanings. For example, "Windows for Sale" can refer to car windows, building windows and even Microsoft Windows! By qualifying your key phrase to specify what type of windows you offer, e.g., "car windows for sale," you don't risk competing in unrelated industries with larger companies and you drive more quality visitors to your site.

No. 5: Traffic Volume
Contrary to popular belief, traffic volume should not be your primary reason for choosing keywords. Rather, traffic volume of a keyword or phrase should only be considered after the previous factors have been examined. Search volume can be used to compare the keywords that have been chosen based on the preceding recommendations. Also try to avoid using keywords that generate no traffic. After all, it is of limited value for a site to be number one in the SERPs for keywords which are never searched.

Although these five considerations are important for choosing keywords, there is no "standard formula" for making effective keyword choices. Instead, keyword selection should be a compilation of these factors that gives you the most edge within the search engines. Web sites that target unique keywords for each page, supported by unduplicated, relevant and themed content throughout the site, will experience the greatest results

Site Credibility Does Pay. Get The Site Approval Seal!

Online Holiday Sales On A Tear!

2007-12-14T08:47:00.000-05:00

Though the date didn't garner the advance hype of Cyber Monday, the first Thursday in December actually set the pace for the holiday shopping season so far, with consumers spending a record US$800 million in virtual stores, according to a report released Monday by comScore. Thursday, Dec. 6, marked the busiest online shopping day in the history of e-commerce based on sales totals, comScore said, exceeding the $733 million that was spent on Cyber Monday -- the first Monday after Thanksgiving and the date that has taken on added significance for Web merchants as the formal kickoff to the holiday stretch run. The $800 million in sales is a 28 percent increase when compared with the same date in 2006.

Shoppers may yet outdo even their Dec. 6 spending levels, with Monday expected to be another busy day. Sales are expected to begin to taper off in coming days as shipping deadlines approach. "December got off to a strong start," said comScore Chairman Gian Gulgoni, adding that sales for the first week of the month were up 20 percent when compared with a year ago.

"We expect the upcoming week to be the heaviest online spending week of the holiday season as the procrastinators and late-season deal-seekers come out in earnest," Gulgoni added. Since the beginning of November -- which comScore considers the start of an approximately eight-week holiday shopping season -- sales have totaled $18 million, the firm said, an 18 percent increase when compared with 2006 spending levels. The firm is now forecasting total sales by year's end to be up as much as 21 percent.

Not surprisingly, the top holiday-related searches tracked by comScore include what are being billed as the year's hottest technology gift items. More than 30 million searches were conducted for the Nintendo Wii gaming console during November, nearly 25 million people searched for Apple's iPod and another 11 million sought out Microsoft's Xbox 360 , the firm said.

"Gaming consoles and accessories represent the strongest-growing product category this holiday season," Fulgoni said, with sales more than doubling based on the firm's estimates. "While iPods and iPhones are predictably popular, we're also seeing that consumers are actively searching for information on GPS (Global Positioning System) products. This is a category that can be expected to grow strongly during the next few years."

Online retailers are eager to continue the early momentum from Cyber Monday and the days afterwards. Both Monday, Dec. 3, and Monday, Dec. 10, were on pace to be busier days, with traffic to the shopping portal on the first Monday of the month up 50 percent over the same day last year, according to data from Yahoo Shopping.

"Online merchants are becoming increasingly savvy about using the right mix of promotions and discounts to get shoppers to their sites early and to get them to come back later in the shopping season," Fiona Lake Waslander, the director of Yahoo Shopping said.

This year's season is difficult to compare with last year, since an early Thanksgiving created an additional week of shopping before Christmas. At the same time, shoppers are likely more confident than ever that even purchases made in mid-December will arrive in time for the holiday, Waslander added.

Yahoo continues to see apparel as the most popular shopping category, outpacing electronics even though the Wii remains the top product -- with the Xbox closing in on its rival. While forecasters widely agree that sales will be up in the 20-percent range, a question that will linger into the new year will be how much of the sales increase is attributable to sharp discounting or promotional programs such as free shipping, noted JupiterResearch analyst Patti Freeman Evans.

"The results seems to emphasize that heavy promotions work," she told the E-Commerce Times. "The question is what's happening with order size and whether it's all worth it at the end of the season."

Go Guardian eCommerce Abd Get Online Success. Site Credibility Pays!

Searchandise Your Way To Online Success

2007-12-14T08:37:00.000-05:00

With thousands of companies selling products online to both businesses and consumers, it takes more than nice site design and a shopping cart to be competitive and make money. We know that effective search and navigation leads to more people finding what they're looking for and, therefore, higher conversion rates.

However, online merchants are now realizing it takes expert merchandising strategies -- and easy execution of those strategies -- to keep shoppers engaged, not only to achieve higher conversion rates, but bigger orders as well.
This is accomplished by implementing classic merchandising techniques online -- powered by strong site search and navigation technologies to create what we refer to as "searchandising."

Searchandising is an effective online merchandising strategy that is not only about product "findability," but is best characterized as active-selling based on the tenet that every shopper query is a retailer's selling opportunity. If you think about a brick-and-mortar sales associate responding to a shopper's request, that associate must make a quick merchandising decision that will determine whether a sale is made or not. The same goes for your e-commerce site. Bottom line: searchandising is about leveraging site search and navigation technology in a way that is quite unique to e-commerce.

Let's look at a few components of searchandising:

-E-tailers can sell more items by making sure their customers can easily find what they're looking for. Research tells us that roughly 50 percent of people prefer to use the search box while 50 percent prefer to navigate through a site. Anecdotally, we know that many shoppers like to combine these product-finding modes to select the best product.

-Online businesses require site search that is expressly developed for e-commerce merchandising. This is not just about retrieving so-called relevant results from the Web or from within a corporate intranet. Search that sells -- searchandising -- provides a shopper experience in which it's easy to seek, browse, find, compare, select and ultimately buy the perfect product. Searchandising matches products to shoppers.

-In e-commerce, each shopper's search is the beginning of a dialogue -- and a retailer's opportunity to engage the shopper. In order to convert search to sales, the search box needs to present the right search results with minimized noise or irrelevant results. This includes smart linguistics capabilities that correct misspellings and use synonyms to ensure that searches are successful regardless of spelling errors or terminology.

-Retailers also can achieve fluency in shopper terminology by taking advantage of industry-specific domain dictionaries or thesauri such as electronics, apparel, health and beauty, colors, and housewares. This eliminates the need for business managers to spend a lot of time creating a customized list of synonyms to match customer terminology to the products in the online catalog.

-Often, online shoppers don't know where to start looking on a site for what they want, or how to ask for it with a search box. Dynamic navigation refinements essentially guide them through the virtual aisles, dramatically increasing conversion rates. Retailers tell us they achieve higher conversion rates on pages with navigation refinements than they do with static category pages.

-Take the example of a customer looking for diving watches. He doesn't know that's what they're called, so he just searches for "watches." In addition to a result list of watches, the search returns general attributes such as brand, price and gender, along with refinements specific to watches, such as waterproof, warranty or strap type.

-By clicking on waterproof, he finds the diver's watches he was looking for. Similarly, a search for "blenders" shows refinements or features that would help a shopper make a purchase decision about a blender (such as capacity and speed along with brand and price). Allowing shoppers to narrow their search by attributes helps them find products that fit their buying criteria and make buying decisions quickly.

-Successful site search is dependent on optimized catalog content. Clean product data with attributes extracted, normalized and categorized is required to deliver optimized and consistent search and browse results.

-It sounds obvious, but this is where many e-commerce merchandising strategies fall short. Take the example of three different clothing brands that represent a color three different ways: black, BL and BLK. You need a way to not only normalize all three to "black" -- if you determine "black" is indeed the best way to describe this attribute -- but also to automate this data-cleansing process. This can dramatically reduce the time needed to get new and offline products online and deliver the superior search online shoppers have now come to expect.

-In traditional retailing, one of the most powerful merchandising techniques is up-selling customers with higher margin and best-selling items. Similarly, salespeople are often awarded incentives to down-sell to sale-priced items in order to clear out end-of season or discontinued items.

-E-commerce sites can do this as well. An essential element is the presentation of items hand-selected by a merchandiser or driven by back-end metrics such as price, inventory levels and date. A retailer could also push popular items with high conversion rates as well as to promote "new arrival" or "best value" product offerings.

-Customers will often go to different stores or sites to buy different products, despite the fact that all the items they need may be available at the first e-commerce site they visited. Or they may purchase a product that requires certain accessories in order to work. A very real example -- one experienced by many -- is the printer that requires a particular USB (universal serial bus) cable.

-It's very frustrating when you purchase a product but can't use it right away because you weren't "sold" an item needed to make it work. Whether a pair of matching socks or a computer accessory, if you haven't tried to sell it, you've probably left money on the table.

In a brick-and-mortar retail environment, merchandisers have been able to create special displays to market hot and seasonal products. Through the use of dynamic landing pages, online searchandising can provide a similar capability.

Dynamic landing pages are specially merchandised category or product pages that enable merchandisers to deliver a customized shopping experience focused on brand, category, product type, season, promotional campaign or customer segment. For example, when someone searches for watches, a dynamic landing page could be implemented to promote Invicta watches if they happen to be your top-selling brand.

In addition, dynamic landing pages can dramatically increase the conversion rate of e-mail marketing campaigns. A promotional e-mail linking to a specific landing page that spotlights a certain brand or model drives shoppers directly to what the marketing manager wants them to purchase. The research tells us retailers have eight seconds to engage a shopper when they hit one of your landing pages -- you'd better take great advantage of those eight seconds.

As you can see, there are many ways you can improve your overall sales conversions and size of individual sales. It is not enough to just drive lots of customers to your site -- you need to sell them, merchandise them and searchandise them.

By implementing effective online searchandising strategies and techniques, merchandisers can essentially now implement and replicate the classic brick-and-mortar product presentation techniques that previously were too time-consuming and labor-intensive to execute online.

Site Credibility Pays. Increase Online Success. Get The SSL Privacy Seal!

Alternative Payment Methods: Increasing the Consumer's Willingness to Pay

2007-11-25T18:36:00.000-05:00

Imagine walking into your local supermarket as you normally would. You fill your shopping cart with groceries, and when you get to the checkout line, you see hundreds of abandoned carts loaded with items, strewn haphazardly about, but with no shoppers to be found. Was there a fire? Natural disaster?

In a brick-and-mortar supermarket, only a catastrophe could cause such an odd sight, but online it is par for the course. The majority of people who take the time to load a shopping cart never make it through the checkout line; the industry average projects a staggering 60 percent figure of abandoned shopping carts.

Why don't these people pay? Why would somebody go through the effort and maneuvers of shopping without actually following through? Quite often it comes down to price or, moreover, willingness to pay. There is a lull between loading a shopping cart and actually paying that allows a pajama-clad online shopper plenty of time to pontificate the merits of the would-be purchase, look for a better price or simply get distracted and lose interest.

There are many ways to increase successfully completed checkouts, but perhaps the most important one is to try to augment the consumer's willingness to pay. Adding alternative payments is a good place to start because it's not too difficult to see that increasing payment options can potentially rope in more potential shoppers.

If your wallet only contains an American Express card and a US$20 bill, and you stumble across a restaurant that is selling $30 meals and only accepts Visa and MasterCard, chances are you will continue your stumbling until you find an establishment that accepts your money in a form you presently have available. Likewise, the PayPal effect is real; somebody who just sold an antique doll on eBay via PayPal might have $200 sitting in a PayPal account, willing to use that balance on a somewhat cavalier purchase. It's almost like money found under a couch cushion, subject to less stringent purchasing criteria than money earned from a paycheck, and therefore increases the consumer's willingness to pay.

There are other ways that alternative payments can help. Sometimes a consumer's willingness to pay will be diminished by the lack of trust in an unknown merchant, which is something that reputable alternative payments like PayPal and Google Checkout can help offset. BillMeLater, likewise, might attract consumers who are hesitant about placing a large purchase on a debit or credit card. Other payment types simplify the experience and reduce the amount of friction in a checkout -- call it the solution to the "my wallet is downstairs and I'm upstairs" effect that brings so many checkouts to a grinding, permanent halt.

Unfortunately, there's another -- much bigger -- problem: Sometimes people want an item but they just don't want to pay for it -- or at least what you're charging for it -- no matter what form of payment is accepted, whether it be credit card, cash, check, PayPal, BillMeLater, Google Checkout, gold ingots, etc. Traditional payments and most alternative payments don't really solve this problem, because they simply shift the tender type around without really overcoming the consumer's fundamental resistance.

Shoppers are bizarre creatures. The same person who might agonize over whether to buy the $8 or the $9 pair of socks might drop $200 -- without so much as an afterthought -- on a bottle of wine, spend $120 per month on car insurance without even looking for a lower quote, or cough up anything to get the latest trend in denim. People have different price sensitivities for different products at different times.

It turns out that a terrible customer for one merchant might be a great customer for another merchant. The same person who abandons your shopping cart might be the best customer in the world -- come Valentine's Day -- for FTD, or a terrific shopper at Gap, or an ideal Geico policy holder, or a lifelong Blockbuster member. These companies, in turn, will pay a lot of money to acquire a new customer.

What if you could offer your customers your products for free if they bought flowers, signed up for a premier wine club or switched insurance carriers -- things that they apparently want to do anyway? It turns out that you could get paid as if customers purchased from you directly, fundamentally changing the whole nature and numbers of the conversion game for "bad" customers.

This is where alternative payment companies like TrialPay, Webloyalty and Affinion help. TrialPay is a different kind of alternative payment, a conversion tool for the large numbers of customers who ordinarily would not pay. Just as BillMeLater can help convert a customer who might not have enough cash to make a purchase, TrialPay helps convert customers who wouldn't normally purchase -- period -- by allowing those customers to "pay" when they transact with a trusted partner for which they have a high willingness to pay, like Geico, FTD, Blockbuster, etc. The Geicos and Blockbusters pay TrialPay for the customer acquisition, which covers the cost of the product or discount you give away to the customer.

The concept is not too far removed from Amazon's "Get $30 Off When you Sign Up for an Amazon.com Visa Card" promotion that Amazon shows in every U.S. checkout -- the key differences being that not everybody wants a credit card, and offering other services might prove more lucrative to the merchant and compelling to the consumer.

This concept can be used in so many more places. If a customer closes the browser window on the shopping cart page, you can show them a message offering them a discount funded by a blue-chip advertiser. If a customer is looking up shipping prices, you might be dealing with a frugal customer more likely to abandon their shopping cart.

Customers who haven't come back to shop with you in months or years are buying other things elsewhere. You can win them back by offering them discounts when they transact with your partners. This yields you -- as a merchant -- incremental revenue, but also recaptures your customers' attention.

When you truly increase a consumer's willingness to pay, the revenue possibilities are significant simply because the vast majority of your visitors probably never engage in a transaction on your site. An intelligent and thorough implementation of relevant alternative payment options can slowly but surely chip away at a consumer's reluctance to pay you and make a lasting effect on your business.

Get Site Certifiied By Guardian eCommerce

The E-Tail Holiday Bazaar: Way Beyond Sweaters and Ties

2007-11-25T18:26:00.000-05:00

What's the use of having access to a World Wide Web if you're only going to shop three or four mainstream retailers anyway? To spice up this year's load under the tree and avoid the ho-hum doldrums, here are some hot new Web site choices to find the perfect gift for even the zaniest character on your gift list:

For the socially conscious, go to the Global Exchange Fair Trade Online Store, where you'll find sweatshop-free, recycled goods that are "Fair Trade" certified to ensure that farmers and artisans are paid a living wage, and that your gift isn't made by forced or exploitative child labor. Fair Trade also promotes production techniques that will not harm the environment. You'll find products from all over the world -- Yachana Jungle chocolate, hand-painted mugs from Thailand, Tibetan Khatsa Sauce, Hmong Tribe Wall Hook, Zimbabwe Doll Friends, and much more.

Ten Thousand Villages is also a fair trade site and offers cool stuff from handmade Vietnamese serving bowls to bamboo furniture, sculptures and a leaf-and-bamboo journal. Plus, stories on the artisans tell you who is benefiting from your purchase and a little about how the item is made.

Purchases from Kenana Knitter Critters helps the group provide medical treatment and income for poor women and their families in Kenya. Proceeds from the whimsical knitted products -- ranging from African animals to funky scarves -- also help fund construction of a new school in Kenya. Each item is signed by the woman who knitted it!

For those who want to rescue the environment, check out Eco-Artware. Every item -- from chairs made from retired aluminum traffic signs to business card cases made from old circuit board -- is made from recycled goods. There's even handmade vintage vinyl cuff bracelets made from the labels of vintage 33 RPM vinyl rock records. Long live Led Zeppelin!

If you're feeling creative and want to give someone a truly one-of-a-kind gift, but you don't want it to look homemade, go to Café Press, where you can have your own design put on just about anything. Or, you can shop for some really cool gifts amongst their existing product line, from zany political tees and cups to geek presents. Anything goes on this site made to tickle the funny bone and please everyone from mainstream moms and creative esoteric friends to your favorite mad scientist.

If you're feeling a little mischievous, give the unexpected this year, like an ammunition case wine bar, good JuJu in a jar, a butterfly house, or maybe even a Happy Buddha pen holder from Uncommon Goods. I'd think twice about giving your mother-in-law the Wisdom of the Crone deck, though. She might not see the humor in it!

For the artsy-fartsy crowd, head over to the Museum of Modern Art. From zany color-bursting Andy Warhol watches to curved drinking glasses, a futuristic handheld wet-vac, and a three-port, rubber USB hub, you're not likely to find more useful and classy gifts anywhere. Well, the USB hub is a little weird -- looks like a massage ball from Mars, but it's still cool!

Quincy Shop has a cool collection of stuff from unique toys to robots that sharpen pencils and other zany desk accessories. From leather-bound journals to a polka-dot toaster, it's just a fun place to shop. There's even a brass-plated petanque set in a wood box -- a celebratory rendition of classic petanque balls to celebrate the year of The Golden Pig.

For the eerie Goth in your life, or maybe for that uncle with the taste for the macabre, try Skeletons in the Closet, the L.A. County Coroner's Web store. There you can find T-shirts with the Coroner's logo, body bags, and cadaver-shaped office supplies among other ghoulish, but harmless, gifts.

If your Aunt Myrtle is bringing her nasty Chihuahua to your house for her holiday visit, and you have to get the pooch a present too, try Pet Gadgets. Check out the Doody Dangler (ewww!) and Pawsitive I.D., a DNA testing kit for the dog (so you know for sure it's the right pooch before you pay out the reward to the guy who brought the darn dog back).

For the paranoid parents, get a snoop-proof baby monitor so Mom and Dad can listen for the baby's cry but lock neighbors and spies out so they can't listen in on household conversations over the device. Bet you didn't even know your neighbors could listen in that way, did you? The Philips DECT baby monitor scrambles the signal. You'll find it here.

Last but not least, for THE gifts for the See-and-Be-Seen crowd, go to Shop Intuition, where you can buy cool stuff shown in all the leading gossip and women's magazines. Want those perfect little black leather pants Angelina Jolie wore in People, -- get the lookalikes here. Ditto on Jennifer Anniston's ear bobs in E! and the sunglasses Britney Spears wore in the OK! Shot. These are not the actual items worn by the stars -- but they are products featured in the magazine and in the photo shoots. Now you no longer have to guess what's cool for the too-cool star watchers.

If you're sure the holidays are going to drive you mad before they're done, treat yourself to some stress relief by going to Mighty Goods, where you'll find nifty treats for yourself, from a copper still to a Voodoo knife holder (body-shaped, looks like a modern voodoo doll; you can pretend it's whichever relative is currently on your nerves as you put your knives away), Darth Vader and Storm Trooper ornaments, and a customized guitar pick (if you play loud enough, maybe everyone will go home soon).

Site Credibility Pays! Go Guardian eCommerce.

E-Commerce Fraudsters Profit $3.6 Billion

2007-11-25T18:20:00.000-05:00

It is becoming increasingly unsafe to buy or otherwise conduct business online, according to the ninth annual CyberSource survey on e-commerce fraud. Fraudsters will divert approximately US$3.6 billion from U.S. e-commerce in 2007, a 20 percent increase over 2006, based on survey results.

Merchants are working aggressively to hold back the tide. Their various online security products and related best practices are keeping the fraud rate stable, notes CyberSource. Still, it's requiring the expenditure of more resources to keep fraudsters at bay.

Survey participants estimated that 1.4 percent of their online sales this year will be diverted to illegitimate sources -- the same percentage as last year. However, that's 1.4 percent of a far higher volume of sales. That translates into dollar losses equal to $3.6 billion in goods and services this year, up from $3.1 billion in 2006.

"eCommerce in the U.S. today is a highly rewarding channel that is showing vigorous growth," noted Doug Schwegman, CyberSource director of customer and market intelligence, "but it's also a channel with meaningful challenges posed by systematic fraud."

Not surprisingly, merchants are employing more antifraud tools on their e-commerce sites. These include order velocity monitoring, which detects suspicious purchase patterns, and IP geolocation, which can help pinpoint the physical point of origin of an Internet order, according to CyberSource. In 2007, 53 percent of merchants surveyed used five or more fraud detection tools, with the largest merchants using an average of eight. One possible -- and unwelcome -- result is a slowdown in response to legitimate customer orders.

Twenty-seven percent of orders were manually reviewed in 2007, compared to 23 percent the year before, CyberSource found. With online sales growing at about 20 percent per year, the number of orders requiring manual processing is growing faster than online sales. Approximately 38 percent more orders were reviewed in 2007 than in 2006, CyberSource estimates -- and that extra diligence may have cost merchants an extra $100 million.

The perception that the Internet is not safe has taken a toll on e-commerce activity.
"We know from research that we've conducted through third parties in the U.S. that one of the elements that drives consumers away from online purchases is related to fraud and security," Pragnesh Shah, CEO of Mobilians, said. "When we talk to parents of young people online, aged 14 to 18 years old, we know that kids are making purchases using their parents' credit and debit cards. These parents are concerned with getting phished or pharmed. ... This is reality."

It's unlikely the problem will abate in the foreseeable future. Phishing itself, for instance, is no longer seen as a major money pot, Andrew Klein, senior product marketing manager with SonicWall, said. The real moneymakers are the phishing tools that are continuously being developed and deployed.

Attacks on corporations also appear to be gaining momentum. "The notion of corporate phishing is not new -- hackers have played with it in the past. The problem was, they didn't know how to monetize it, so they didn't pay that much attention to it," Klein said. That appears to be changing as more firms are targeted for their customers' information.

There may be a bright side, though. More customers are focusing on data encryption as a privacy best practice, Luis Salazar, a partner in the data privacy and security law taskforce at Greenberg Traurig, said.

"I think word has gotten around that encrypting your data is the best way to avoid problems under data breach laws, so many businesses are taking advantage of this," he said. Also, "there have been so many news stories -- often on the local evening news -- about records simply dumped 'out back' that businesses have started to take notice. They are now making sure to properly discard their data."

With hackers apparently lurking everywhere, securing offline channels has become essential too.

Get The Seal, Site Credibility Pays!

Shifting Online Auto Shopping Into High Gear

2007-11-25T18:14:00.000-05:00

Some types of commerce are just not a match for the Internet . However, others -- including researching a new car -- caught on with online shoppers. The amount and types of information that can be conveyed online has brought car-buying to a whole new level -- yet few auto marketers are optimizing their use of the medium. New-car shoppers prefer visual material such as photos and video over textual material by a margin of two to one, according to a new survey by CarGurus. During the six months from March to August 2007, CarGurus tracked visitors researching new cars on its site.

Page views for different types of research were summarized and allocated into two types of activities: visual (photos and videos) and textual (user reviews, articles, specifications, pricing, etc.). Higher page views generally indicate a more engaged viewer spending more time at a site. During this time frame, CarGurus received over 1.1 million unique visitors. The study found that new-car shoppers spend the majority of their time (62 percent, or nearly two-thirds of pages viewed) looking at photos and videos versus more traditional forms of online auto research such as specifications, reviews and pricing.

This demonstrates that -- in an industry that typically highlights textual information -- online auto marketers should take note of the growing demand for visuals. Ten years ago, before auto manufacturer Web sites were common, consumers basically had two options for research: visit the dealer or pore through the pages of newspapers. Now, consumers have a plethora of new resources, including auto manufacturer sites, industry expert sites such as Consumer Reports, and third-party sites with user-generated content such as CarGurus, Yahoo Autos and Edmunds.

Consumption of user-generated content is growing at a particularly rapid rate, according to Forrester Research, which cited in a report that 29 percent of new-car shoppers view automotive user-generated content. That's nearly the same number that reported gathering information from magazines, newspapers and TV combined the last time they bought a car.

Given these new resources and the explosive growth of online photo and video sites like Flickr and YouTube , it is not surprising to see that new-car shoppers prefer to research cars online with visual mediums. However, what is surprising is to see how many online auto marketers neglect to spotlight the visual aspects of a new car and instead choose to highlight textual lists of features and specifications, with the occasional promotion (special headlamps, DVD systems or extended warranties, for instance) thrown in for good measure. A quick tour of major auto manufacturers' Web sites shows that very few have video, and though photo galleries are more common, they are generally limited to fewer than a dozen photos.

With the proliferation of broadband connections, online video and robust picture galleries provide an opportunity for online auto marketers to create more visual campaigns. Cars are an emotional purchase. Providing visual research tools allows consumers to connect with a car emotionally -- to fall in love with it instead of just being introduced. In spite of this opportunity, most online automotive marketing campaigns in the form of banner advertisements take consumers to landing pages packed with verbiage, rather than providing material with visual impact to further draw consumers into the brand.

One example of an auto manufacturer that is addressing the consumer's stated desire for pictures and video is Toyota's current Tundra campaign. Banner ads for the Toyota Tundra take would-be buyers to a landing page where the consumer is immediately immersed in a video about the truck. After the video ends, Toyota presents a marketing message differentiating the Tundra based on its braking power. Typical landing pages for other automotive banner advertisements recite statistics or grids of features. Toyota, however, has done a magnificent job of engaging the consumer with this campaign.

Another great example is Porsche USA, which provides not only video footage of each vehicle on its Web site but also offers screensavers and wallpaper that help encourage strong brand affinity and an emotional connection between the consumer and the car. The CEO of Kia reported at Forrester's 2007 Marketing Forum that consumers who visited Kia.com were 60 percent more likely to buy a Kia. That's a stunning figure. Imagine how much more loyalty auto manufacturers could inspire if they were to truly leverage the interactivity and visual nature of the Web medium, rather than treating it as an online brochure.

The people have spoken, and they want visuals. Auto marketers: Will you deliver?

Go Guardian eCommerce, Get The Seal!

Google Presents Android

2007-11-10T12:25:00.000-05:00

There's little doubt that Google the other members of the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) made one of the biggest technology marketing splashes in recent memory on Monday with their introduction of Android. What kind of lasting impact the platform will have on the cellular industry, however, is less certain.

Android is billed as the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices, and it boasts an impressive list of supporters, including T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm, Motorola, and others. The goal, according to the participating companies, is to foster innovation and lower the cost of developing and distributing mobile devices and services. On the surface, that sounds certain to bring benefits to the industry, to developers and to consumers. The reality, however, is that much has yet to be decided.

"If you pull the camera back and look at what's happening, the industry is continuing to change," telecom analyst Jeff Kagan said. "Networks are speeding up, handset makers are loading handsets with all sorts of new features and functionality, and the cell phone is increasingly becoming the 'third screen'."
Cell phones are more complicated to use than laptops, however, making it harder to get value from them, Kagan said. "If you look at the typical wireless phone, it's loaded with all sorts of amazing technologies that most people are too confused to learn how to use," he noted. "Now we're starting to see a variety of companies addressing that -- Apple with the iPhone, and now this new environment from Google, which aims to make it easier."

Android is an important step in the right direction, and one that comes at the right time, but it is just one step, he asserted. "I think getting companies together is the right idea," he said. "Will it be the only framework, or the one that dominates? Who knows. But it is a move in the right direction." Only a handful of companies and a few networks currently have joined the OHA so far, Kagan added. Those companies will certainly benefit if the platform endures. Then again, if it does endure, others will join it too, he explained, making it less clear who the winners and losers will be.

By focusing on the software platform and not devices, Google has minimized the risk for OHA participants and enabled the participation of handset manufacturers, Chris Hazelton, senior analyst for mobile device technology and trends at IDC Research, said. "These companies are still competing with each other and with the Android platform," Hazelton noted. "Google is spearheading this effort, but it's an alliance -- not an operating system and not a device -- so there's not as much risk."

If Android succeeds -- however that may be defined -- "Google will obviously win out among the alliance members because it doesn't have competition within the alliance," he said. Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft is involved, for example.

Those that may suffer, meanwhile, include the competing platforms, such as Symbian , Palm, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and other Linux operating systems, Hazelton said. "But it's still very early to tell, because the OHA partners are not limiting themselves to Android."

A Win-Win
HTC, for example, has said it will continue working with Windows Mobile, he noted.
If the platform does not take hold, it will still push the evolution of smartphones, Hazelton added. Even if Symbian, which currently dominates the market, continues to lead, for example, "someone will still develop an easy and enjoyable, painless way to browse the Internet via mobile devices," Hazelton explained. When that happens, "Google will have a strong play because that's its bread and butter."
Simply by putting the emphasis on the mobile Internet, then, Google stands to be a big player whether or not Android "wins."

By changing the way applications are delivered to handsets, meanwhile, the platform provide more revenue opportunities for developers, which could make them more willing to spend time developing applications, Hazelton noted. "Development companies could now become much more interested in mobile," he said. Consumers, on the other hand, stand to gain more choice and potentially lower costs and greater capabilities, he said.

Carriers, meanwhile, will become more committed to 3G , since that's necessary for mobile Internet, he added. Is Android likely to bring about a revolution? The answer again is uncertain. "It's a revolutionary idea for the mobile space because it's heading off the potential domination of the smartphone space by one operating system," Hazelton said. "The smartphone market is still pretty young, and now we have a large player committing to open source."

"There are people who would posture this as being good for consumers, but that's probably more posturing than anything else," David Chamberlain, principal analyst with In-Stat, said. "What you get with Linux is a way for people to get in, tinker around, and potentially end up with incompatible versions," Chamberlain said. "It's as open as any of the other operating systems, but really there's nothing new under the sun. To get a phone knowing people will be tinkering with it and making perhaps incompatible versions doesn't impress me."

Yet the combination of Google's vision for openness and the participation of Qualcomm, in particular, could still lead to some exciting consumer benefits, Chamberlain added -- most notably, the potential for multiservice devices. "You could end up with a handset that you could link up to just about any wireless network in just about any country in the world," he said. "That would be big news." That, in turn, would mean that the industry economics could end up being much more favorable for operators, which now spend between $150 and $300 to subsidize subscribers' phones, Chamberlain said.

"Putting the burden of the total cost of the handset onto the consumer, rather than having it carried by mobile operators, would be absolutely a game-changer," he concluded. "And the benefit would go to the mobile operators."

Site Credibility Pays! Get The SSL Privacy Seal!

A Revolution In Online Payments Begins

2007-11-10T10:54:00.000-05:00

Ted Leonsis wants you to pay bills and transfer money online in a new way, with no fees. The entrepreneur and vice chairman emeritus of AOL has teamed with AOL founder Steve Case in a venture called "Revolution Money," a kind of combination credit/debit card and online payment system. It's a unit of Case's Revolution, which has launched several other companies. The RevolutionCard launched in September. Revolution MoneyExchange has launched, aiming to take on online payment leader PayPal by offering free money transfers online at revolutionmoney.com.

The concept is similar to what Google tried with Google Checkout, without great success. However, there's a twist: Revolution is tied to a next-generation credit and debit card that promises to be more secure and less expensive than current cards.
Revolution's target market is the millions of young people who spend hours online at social networks. "We want to be to social networking what PayPal is to eBay," says Leonsis, chairman of Revolution Money.

Later this month, Revolution will launch on AOL's AIM instant-messaging service. AIM "buddies" will be able to transfer money to each other or to participating merchants via an instant-message window. From there, Revolution hopes to be on Facebook , MySpace and anywhere else young people gather online.

To use the service, like PayPal, you sign up and type in your bank account information. Revolution transfers the money from your bank to the vendors, at no cost to merchants. However, if consumers want to pay with a credit card, their only option is the RevolutionCard. Merchants will pay 0.5 percent of the sale, with no monthly fees.

When consumers buy goods via PayPal, they can use a variety of credit cards, and merchants pay fees of typically 2 percent to 3 percent. Google Checkout -- which also accepts credit cards -- is free to merchants through the end of the year. Google hasn't said what its plans are for 2008. Greg Sterling, an analyst at Sterling Market Intelligence, says Revolution will find it very slow to wean customers from PayPal.

"Google Checkout has clearly underperformed," he says. "People have inertia. They may not love PayPal, but they also don't seem to want to switch." Leonsis says Revolution MoneyExchange will do it the same way AOL slowly picked up customers for AIM, the instant-messaging juggernaut that launched in 1995. "I send you a message, and if you don't have AIM and want to hear from me, you have to click to get AIM," he says. "As you fill out these forms to virally accept money from your buddies on Revolution, it's not us marketing the service. It's me sending you money."

AOL Vice President Andy Spillane calls Revolution a "new and novel" extension of what AIM was originally designed for. "Suppose I forgot to pay my pizza bill in my fraternity, but I'm on spring break," he says. "If I can use AIM and log in, know who my buddy is, and send him the $9.99 I owe him for the pizza -- fine, I've solved a problem that we never really intended AIM to be used for. That's great."

Leonsis predicts the service will have 1 million merchants and 1 million customers signed up within a year. While the Revolution credit card is available now, just a few merchants are accepting it, including Northwest Airlines and Shipley Energy, which operates a Pennsylvania chain of convenience stores.

Case knows it will take time to sign up a large customer base. "It's chicken and egg," he says. "But that's why it's called Revolution. Because it is hard. I wouldn't want to do this if it was easy."

...Protecting Online Consumers While Exposing Trustworthy Web Sites!

Tools To Baby Your Web Site

2007-11-10T10:21:00.000-05:00

How Well Do You Really Know Your Website? If you're like most webmasters, you have probably spent years building your site. You have spent years adding content, building links and cultivating traffíc - but how well do you really know your website? How well do you know the intricate details of your website's traffíc? Where do your site's visitors come from? How long do they stay on your site? Just where do they go to on your site and how well do they convert into buyers or subscribers?

Do you know your site's rankings in the major search engines? What are your site's top keywords? What's your site's Google PageRank? Who are your IP neighbors? What your site looks like in other browsers? How much is your site worth? These are just some of the questíons you should know, mainly because the more knowledge you possess about your site, the better equipped you will be at improving it. So here's a simple líst of free site checking tools/sites that will let you 'Baby' (monitor and watch) your site.

1. Google Analytics -- Perhaps one of the most helpful analytical tools you can use on your site. Google Analytics will give you a wealth of information about your site's traffíc. Where it comes from, how long it stays on your site, where it goes on your site, how well your content converts... invaluable information every webmaster should have in their possession.

2. NetMechanic Toolbox -- Review your site's mechanics - find broken links, test browser compatibility, find bad HTML code, spot slow-loading pages, and review your spelling... all by using the NetMechanic Toolbox.

3. Keyword Suggestion Tool -- This free keyword suggestion tool will tell you how many searches are done in WordTracker and Overture for your site's keywords. Extremely valuable information since much of the web's traffíc and ecommerce is keyword driven.

4. Iwebtool -- This is another free site which offers many valuable webmaster's tools that will give you information about your/any site. Google PageRank, PageRank Prediction, Link Popularity, Search Engine Positions for Keywords, Backlink Checker... also Visual PageRank where you can see all the PR values of all the links on a given page - both internal and external.

5. Alexa Traffic Rankings -- Alexa tracks the web's traffíc by using the Alexa bar in a surfer's browser. Most people know it is not an accurate assessment of the traffíc on the net but it is a handy measuring stick, nonetheless. It is also a handy tool for comparing sites and seeing the long-tern traffíc trends of different sites, including your own.

6. Your Site's Traffic Logs -- Most webmasters know your raw traffíc logs are worth checking and reading. They contain valuable information about your site. Especially helpful, if you're checking for broken links on your site, you don't want to see those 302's everywhere. Close examination and regular checking of your traffíc logs and stats will point out the profitable keywords on your site.

7. BetterWhois -- You can use this site to find out the domain information about your site. Do you have control of your domain? Many webmasters buy their domain name thru their web hostíng company. While this is not a problem in itself, if any dispute should arise, who has administrative control of your domain; you or your hostíng company? Can you change hostíng companies?

8. Google Alerts -- Another valuable tool from Google which notifies you by email when your link or site is found anywhere on the web. Great for keeping track of any new links your site is getting. Many webmasters also use this handy tool to keep track of their competitors' sites. They also use Google Alerts to keep track of whenever their own name is mentioned anywhere on the web.

9. IP Neighbors -- Many webmasters have their site hosted on shared hostíng plans, which means there can be hundreds of sites sharing the same IP address. This site lets you discover who your IP neighbors are. Why would you want to know your IP neighbors? Well like neighbors everywhere; there are good ones and there are bad ones. For example, if you have a neighboring site that uses email to sp@m, it could get your IP address blocked or shut down.

10. Any Browser -- Use to this handy site to discover what your site looks like in different browsers; you could be in for a real shock.

11. Google Toolbar -- The Google Toolbar can be placed on your browser so that when you're surfing you can see the Google PageRank of each page/site you're visiting. Many SEO experts believe Google is not giving us the true PR of a page and this bar is rather useless. However, like the Alexa rankings it is a handy measuring stick, nonetheless.

12. What Is Your Site Worth? -- Please take this last analyzing tool with "a large grain of salt", but it is fun to use and to see how much your site is worth. Measurement here is done largely by the amount of links you have coming into your site.

In conclusion, all of these free handy tools/sites will give you a better, more complete picture of your own site. Remember, the more knowledge you acquire about your own site and your competitors' sites, the more equipped you will be to succeed. This is one case where 'Babying' can truly benefit your site.

Get The Seal! Site Credibility Pays!

Online Holiday Shoppping And Returns

2007-11-10T10:14:00.000-05:00

The holiday season may bring joy to consumers and retailers alike, but hand in hand with that joy comes the inevitable pain of post-holiday returns. Gift returns can be a hassle for consumers, but for retailers they pose a daunting logistical challenge, requiring speedy adjustments throughout the pipeline as consumers are reimbursed and products are returned to inventory.

Adding to the pressure is the fact that consumers have increasingly demanding expectations. Retailers may struggle under the burden of the additional challenges of the holiday season, but 20 percent of consumers actually expect better service during the holidays than usual, Patti Freeman Evans, senior retail analyst with JupiterResearch said.

Even during the rest of the year, there's a gap between expectations and delivery, she added: 53 percent of consumers expect to be able to make returns and exchanges to any channel, for example -- no matter how they bought the product -- yet only 42 percent of retailers make that possible. Gaps like that don't bode well for future sales either. Easy returns are consistently in consumers' top five requirements for a good shopping experience, Gartner analyst Mim Burt said.

Even more compelling: One-third of consumers say that if they encounter a problem during the shopping process -- such as unsatisfactory handling of a return -- they're unlikely to shop with that retailer again in any channel, she added. "Unless the retailer can give consumers a highly satisfying experience, those consumers will be unlikely to come back," she said. In other words, retailers have good reason to go all out to please consumers both during the holiday season and afterward.

Returns tend to be directly related to holiday sales, so stronger sales lead to increased levels of post-holiday returns, Ken Johnson, vice president of corporate development for retail technology vendor Newgistics, said. Thanks to the subprime mortgage crisis and high gas prices, among other economic factors, overall U.S. holiday sales are projected to increase by a modest 4 percent this year to US$474.5 billion, according to the National Retail Federation. If those predictions play out, it will represent the slowest growth since 2002, the NRF says. That might suggest lower levels of returns come January, Freeman Evans noted.

Yet the picture for online sales is brighter. JupiterResearch projects an increase of a full 20 percent in U.S. online sales in November and December over those from 2006, for a total of $39 billion. Indeed, online sales are expected to account for an increasing proportion of retail sales in the coming years. For example, whereas the world's biggest retailers reported e-commerce sales amounting to an average of about 8.5 percent of their overall sales at the end of 2006, that number is expected to grow to 15.8 percent by 2011, Burt said.

It may be good news for e-tailers, but returns are always proportionately higher for online purchases than for those made through stores, she noted. Bottom line? Happier e-tailers during the shopping season; a bigger crush of returns afterward.

So what can retailers -- both online and in stores -- do to prepare for post-holiday returns? The first thing is to do everything they can to minimize return levels in the first place, Scott Silverman, executive director of Shop.org, said. Shop.org is the National Retail Federation's digital division.

For online channels, that can be a matter of simply providing consumers with more detail about the product so that they have a better idea of what to expect. One effective way to do that is to give customers the opportunity to write product reviews, Silverman suggested. "The retailer may write a paragraph describing the product, but nothing will convey what it's like to use better than hearing from hundreds of customers who have used it already," he explained.

Providing more product information helps with conversion rates into sales on the front end, and by creating more realistic expectations it also reduces the incidence of returns on the back end, he said.

In terms of managing the returns that do come in, retailers are also taking the traditional step of adding staff for the season to help with returns processing, Johnson said. Eliminating any restocking fees and offering a choice among reimbursement methods are also steps retailers must take to satisfy consumers, Gartner's Burt added.

Tapping into consumers' desire to have flexibility in the channels they use for returns, another key step is for retailers to allow them to return merchandise to stores, even if it was purchased online or from a catalog, Silverman added.

Not only does that flexibility make returns more convenient for consumers, but it also can create an expected advantage for retailers: A full 26 percent of consumers returning a product purchased online to a store actually end up purchasing something else while they are in the store, he said. Had that return been made through the mail, those follow-up purchases may never have been made, creating a sort of "silver lining" for retailers on the returns process.

Retailers can also make it easier for consumers to return holiday gifts by giving them the option of using SmartLabel technology, Newgistics' Johnson noted. SmartLabels allow consumers to place return packages in the mail from home; Newgistics then collects the packages early in the mail stream and returns them to the appropriate retailers, he explained.

Overall, retailers are generally improving their handling of returns on the front end, Burt said. Quickly incorporating returned products back into inventory and onto the balance sheet is another challenge many retailers are currently struggling with, she said.

The next challenge, Burt added, is to provide better integration with historical customer data so that retail associates processing a return can recognize when a customer is a frequent buyer, for example.

"While a lot of returns software has traditionally concentrated on loss prevention rather than the customer experience, with much of the processing power dedicated to detecting fraud, that's starting to shift," she noted. "A return is just a reverse customer order," Burt explained. "Retailers are usually careful to be customer-friendly with orders going out, and they should do the same thing when an order comes back. The next step is to say, 'you buy a lot from us -- here's an incentive to come back.'"

Guardian eCommerce Exposes Trustworthy Web Sites!

Cheery Outlook for Holiday E-Shopping Season

2007-10-27T18:21:00.000-04:00

Online retail sales for this holiday season are expected to increase by 20 percent over sales from the 2006 season, surpassing US$39 billion, according to JupiterResearch's U.S. Online Retail Holiday Forecast for 2007. This growth will be driven not only by veteran online shoppers -- who are projected to increase their holiday spending by 13 percent to an average of $314 per person -- but also by first-timers. As a category, new online buyers are expected to increase more than 6 percent this year, compared with the number of e-commerce newbies in 2006.

The latest growth projections reflect several characteristics of the e-commerce space, report author Patti Freeman Evans said. One is that the online retail market is still not completely mature, so there's still ample room for double-digit growth. Another factor influencing these numbers is the fact that online buyers tend to be more affluent than shoppers who patronize brick-and-mortar stores exclusively.

Indeed, retailers that have no online presence are eyeing the upcoming holiday season somewhat anxiously. The credit crunch following the subprime mortgage crisis is expected to squeeze many consumers' budgets. Also, gas prices still remain higher than retailers would like. Online shopping is less affected by these trends. "It's already been proven that higher gas prices do not affect online sales," Freeman Evans said. "Online commerce is still in growth mode, and the online shopper overall is still a bit insulated from larger macroeconomic trends," she concluded.

Online retailers, for their part, continue to boost their chances of closing sales with the addition of new site features. For instance, more e-tailers are implementing 'quick view' technology that allows a buyer to look at an item without having to click through a number of screens, Freeman Evans noted.

The use of video is also increasing. It has not been broadly implemented yet, she said, but a few retailers -- QVC, for one -- are using it aggressively to apparent success. Unrestricted free shipping is becoming more popular as a buyer incentive. "Less and less are we seeing retailers impose restrictions on free shipping," said Freeman Evans. Search engine marketing has also become an important strategy for many online retailers seeking that elusive competitive edge.

Join Guardian eCommerce, Site Credibility Pays!

Online and Offline Marketing Synergy

2007-10-27T18:11:00.000-04:00

It should come as no surprise that the marketing industry is evolving as a whole. Marketing experts and business professionals from around the globe are all trying to figure out the best way to target their audience. For years, marketers have said that the best way to sell a product is to reach as many consumers as possible.

Although reach is still important in today's marketing world, engagement is the key -- which is why marketers are turning more and more to the capabilities of digital and online media. Marketing experts are constantly trying to convince their clients to try the "next best thing." Well, what is the next best thing? Is it hiring a college student to tattoo your brand's name on their forehead? Is it spending some of your marketing dollars online? Is it mobile advertising , starting a blog, implementing a full-page/four-color ad in Better Homes & Gardens or running a 15-second broadband commercial on CNN.com?

Our vote is for all of the above -- well, maybe not the tattoo part. After working in a traditional advertising agency, I have seen several clients hesitate to be the first to jump on board to any new medium, especially online marketing. So many have said, "Well, my national cable media buy has been working for us so far, why should we spend our media dollars in anything else?"

The answer? Consumers are busy. They gather their media information from different sources. You may not to be able to target your consumer in the same ways that have worked in the past. The key to engaging a consumer is to figure out their daily media patterns. Do they listen to a morning radio show on the way to work, gather information on search engines during the day, view out-of-home billboards on their drive home, and then settle down for a prime time television show during dinner?

The key to a successful marketing campaign is to integrate digital media with traditional media. How good is a salad if it only contains lettuce? Not very good. It needs to have the carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, dressing, etc. Yes, I am comparing a salad with a marketing campaign. An effective marketing campaign needs to have a variety of options and/or channels.

There has been a lot of discussion that traditional media such as newspapers, magazines and radio are diminishing. No medium will disappear entirely, but each will have to learn how to adapt. There has been a huge shift from mass reach to targeted engagement. Consumers have taken control of both their entertainment options as well as their media options.

Driven by changes in the media-consumption patterns of today's consumers, online advertising is receiving an increasing share of media budgets today. Online advertising offers greater opportunities to not only target finer segments, but also to optimize messaging on a daily basis. This shift raises the need for advertisers to better understand how online marketing can be integrated with traditional media and marketing practices.

Integrating online marketing and traditional media creates synergy. Using multiple media in a campaign has a greater impact than an individual medium by itself. The more interactions you can engage a consumer in, the greater the likelihood of winning them over to your brand and/or making a purchase.

There are several levels of a buying cycle. Consumers gather information about products and services from different sources before making a purchase. Each impression builds on the other by reaching the consumer at a different time in the buying cycle. If the message is consistent across various online and offline advertising media, the repetition will capture and retain the consumer's attention.

In the early 90's, consumers essentially had five major media options: television, radio, newspapers, magazines and billboards. Today, consumers are faced with hundreds of media options: search engines, Web sites, e-mail, cell phones, podcasts, digital video recorders/TiVo, transit, etc.

Consumers are overwhelmed by media choices and are therefore migrating away from ad-supported media and spending more time with consumer generated media such as podcasts, Facebook applications, MySpace profiles, YouTube videos, etc. They want what they want when they want it -- especially in terms of the media they view. That is why search engine marketing, behavioral targeting, and social media have exploded!

Search engine marketing should be considered an essential part of any overall marketing campaign -- online and offline. Search is the ultimate form of pull marketing. Its marketing value is the ability to put a message in front of people who overtly express an interest in a particular product or service via a keyword. Integrating search into the marketing mix allows you to catch the consumer when they are already interested in your product/service. It also allows you to test your offline messaging before it goes live.

As marketers, educating ourselves is vital. I think it is important to really understand the client's overall goals and objectives. If we take the time to learn how traditional media has worked for them in the past, then we can better incorporate online media into the mix. Who says that your media budget has to be spent either online or offline?

The overall goal for any client is to improve their business. Our job as marketers is to make that happen. Try bringing online and offline media together and see how well it works for your campaigns.

Site Credibility Pays! Get The SSL Privacy Seal, Get Site-Certified Today!

The Golden Keys Of E-Commerce

2007-10-16T20:36:00.000-04:00

Today, in order to have a commanding e-commerce presence with universal access, domain names must be treated like very special golden keys. Without an effective domain name, the entire exercise of Internet-centric commerce becomes almost useless.
Super success in cyber-branding lies in the sophisticated creation, development and ownership of these powerful and magical keys, so that they may open the door to an undiscovered universe of billions of unknown customers around the world. Without this power and access, what's the point of being in the race for leadership and image positioning? It only takes a minute to establish if one is holding that magical key or just toying with a rusty screwdriver.

Domain Names Matter
Domain management strategies have in fact become ultra-sophisticated, and they are among the most valuable components of any ambitious corporation's strategy for building digital branding assets and intellectual property. Domain names are no longer small issues to be handled by the logo-centric, slogan-happy agencies or Web-tech teams. They now demand powerful strategic, boardroom-level discussions and a commanding knowledge of global domain registration laws and search engine visibility rules.

But in order to be golden keys and not rusty screwdrivers, they also must serve the company's branding objectives. During the dot-com boom, there must have been a million domain names registered each day. Even the most unusual, silly and dysfunctional names were sought-after icons of get-rich-quick dreamers, and 99 percent of them failed.

Dot-Com Graveyard
Exhausted or expired, these names have now disappeared, and along with them, the hundreds of millions of dollars on short-lived Web site campaigns. Today, however, there are some very powerful, universal domain names that have carved powerful, highly lucrative positions. Their superior and exclusive fluidity on the net demonstrates the global power of e-commerce. Smart businesses around the world are aggressively in search of such golden keys.

The best approach to universal domain naming starts with a serious audit to professionally measure the strengths or weaknesses of the proposed names. This process is best served by highly objective views. The primary goal is to achieve power and access for maximum impact. Today, only the very best names will dominate the global marketplace. Weak, confusingly similar, or nearly identical names do not have a chance of surviving the power and ubiquity of e-commerce.

Be Original
The duplication factor alone will bury most names in complex global listings.
The most expensive Web sites are useless and the best campaigns will remain stuck unless there is a deeper understanding of this subject. Then there are alpha-structures, which can kill great Web sites and become a liability to business itself. One must have the knowledge to determine the message, personality and length of the name, plus the choice of alpha characters, as each emits its own unique signals.

General branding exercises cannot be mistaken for these complex naming analyses. The strictest application of the Five Star Standard of Naming guards against such expensive busts.

The Google Test
The hyper-visibility of a universal cyber-name is the main issue. A quick search on Google is an instant test of any name's visibility. To appear on the top or on the first page is the most sought-after position, but only an extremely small percentage can achieve this as most names are poorly structured and remain buried by massive duplication.

With the high cost of promotion and intense global competition, it's a brand-new frontier. A lot of money can be wasted in creating an artificial bounce in traffic to an expensive Web site, but in reality it's only those uniquely designed domains that quickly rise to the top with little effort.

Only an in-depth, highly customized analysis will point to the deep problems and illuminate the latest methods to fix them. Today, it's about global domainization, as multiple domain names create multiple problems in multiple markets. There are highly sophisticated rules to be followed. Be aware that there are too many fancy services offering sketchy global registration and translation services.

The World Is Your Domain
Domains are for the international audience and global customer base, and companies should avoid serious language issues, such as translations or foreign connotations that may be embarrassing to the company or confusing to customers. Cyber branding is an extremely global phenomenon. Mind share is more important than market share. Customers need to allow a name brand to settle in their minds before they give out their cash. As such, market positioning is more critical than profit maximization.

The human mind gravitates toward good names; those that are user-friendly and trustworthy. When trying to process millions of silly and randomly structured names, the mind quickly becomes exhausted.

In conclusion, logo-driven branding has fallen into a deep sleep on these complex matters, and there's no need to wake it up. Currently, with 95 percent of the domain names stuck in traffic jams, a frank and very candid CEO-level discussion is required. Denials and refusal to face up to reality will simply keep a company's e-commerce presence mired in oblivion -- guaranteed. Today, one needs a very special golden key to open the gates of e-commerce. Now, can we throw away that rusty screwdriver?

Go Guardian eCommerce, Get The Seal... Site Credibility Pays!

Build A Better Web Site!

2007-09-24T18:17:00.000-04:00

The most important thing to consider, when first thinking about any website, is the user. Like so much marketing, websites are, unfortunately, too often developed
'inside out' (company focused) rather than 'outside in' (customer focused).
All website users have their own reasons and objectives for visiting a site. No matter how targeted, any website has to communicate with a wide range of individual users.

To be successful, therefore, every site has to give each and every user a thorough but simple presentation of the site's content so that the site achieves your objectives e.g. registrations, leads, sales. To do this successfully, users want:

Simple Navigation
Navigation that is clear and consistent. Probably the worst issue is 'lost visitors' – those who are in a maze and don't know where they are in the site. The site should always allow users to easily return to the home page and preferably get to any page with one clíck. Studies have shown that users want to find things fast, and this means that they prefer menus with intuitive ranking, organization and multiple choices to many layers of simplified menus. The menu links should be placed in a consistent position on every page.

Clarity
Users do not appreciate an over-designed site. A website should be consistent and predictable. For maximum clarity, your site design should be built on a consistent pattern of modular units that all share the same basic layout, graphics etc.

Designing Websites That Meet Their Objectives
Everything above is pretty simple, but how do you ensure that you can achieve it?
The answer is website architecture – an approach to the design and content that brings together not just design and hostíng but all aspects of function, design, technical solutions and, most importantly, usability. The distinction may seem academic but imagine trying to publish a magazine using just graphic design and printing whilst ignoring content and editing. It just would not work yet that's what too many people still try to do.

Website Architecture
Defining a website using web architecture requires: Site maps, Flow charts,
Wireframes, Storyboards, Templates, Style guide and prototypes. This planning saves you (the client) money. The better the site map, flow chart, wireframe, storyboard, templates, style guide and prototype the more time and money you save because it gives the designer who has to do the graphics and the developer who has to do the programming a blueprint. We are constantly amazed that people who wouldn't think about building a house, car, ship or whatever will still build a website without an architectural plan. The benefits include: Meeting business goals, Improved usability, Reducing unnecessary features, and Faster delivery.

Site Maps
Many people are familiar with site maps on web sites which are generally a cluster of links. An architectural site map is more of a visual model (blueprint) of the pages of a web site. The representation helps everyone to understand what the site is about and the links required as well as the different page templates that will be needed.

Flow Charts
A flowchart is another pictorial or visual representation to help visualize the content and find flaws in the process from say merchandise selection to final payment. It's a pictorial summary that shows with symbols and words the steps, sequence, and relationship of the various operations involved and how they are linked so that the flow of visitors and information through the site is optimized.

Wireframes
Wireframes take their name from the skeletal wire structures that underlie a sculpture. Without this foundation, there is no support for the fleshing-out that creates the finished piece. Wireframes are a basic visual guide to suggest the layout and placement of fundamental design elements on any page. A wireframe shows every clíck through possibility on your site. It's a "text only" model to allow for the development of variations before any expensive graphic design and programming, but one that also helps to maintain design consistency throughout the site.

Creating wireframes allows everyone on the client and developer side to see the site and whether it's 'right' or needs changes without expensive programming. The goal of a wireframe is to ensure your visitors' needs will be met in the website. If you meet their needs, you will meet your objectives.

To create a wireframe requires dialogue. You and your developers talk, to translate your business successfully into a website. Nobody knows your business better than you and your developers should listen to ensure the resulting wireframe accurately represents your business. You, however, must answer the questíons; questíons such as:
What does a visitor do at this point? Where can a visitor go from here? Ignore questíons about what your visitor sees at this point. Sounds easy, but!

Storyboards
Storyboards were first used by Walt Disney to produce cartoons. A storyboard is a "comic" produced to help everyone visualize the scenes and find potential problems before they occur. When creating a film, a storyboard provides a visual layout of events as they are to be seen through the camera. In the case of a website, it is the layout and sequence in which the user or viewer sees the content or information.

However, the wireframe provides the outline for your storyboard. Developers and designers don't need to work in a vacuum - the wireframe guides every design, information architecture, navigation, usability and content consideration. Wireframes define "what is there" while the storyboards define "how it looks".

Templates and Style Guide
Templates are standard layouts containing basic details of a page type that separates the business (follow the $) logic from the presentation (graphics etc) logic so that there can be maximum flexibility in presentation while disrupting the underlying business infrastructure as little as possible.

Style guides document the design requirements for a site. They define font classes and other design conventions (line spacing, font sizes, underlining, bullet types etc.) to be followed in the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) used to provide a library of styles that are used in the various page types in a web site.

Prototypes
A prototype is working model that is not yet finished. It demonstrates the major technical, design, and content features of the site. A prototype does not have the same testing and documentation as the final product, but allows client and developers to make sure, once again, that the final product works in the way that is wanted and meets the business objectives.

Once you have built your virtual site, it's a lot quicker, easier and cheaper to build the real one.

Increase Site Trust, Get The Privacy Seal!

Landing A Top Ten Ranking In Google...

2007-09-24T18:03:00.000-04:00

Most webmasters go totally "gaga" for top 10 rankings in Google. And for good reason, Google is the most dominant search engine on the net and will deliver the largest amount of traffíc. More importantly, those same webmasters will also inform you, getting top 10 rankings in Google often means your site will prove profitable. Mainly because obtaining targeted traffíc is usually your first obstacle in creating a viable online business. In other words, if you get top ten listings in Google for good searchable keywords, it is almost impossible not to earn money.

First, you must know the rudimentary basics of how keywords work. Keywords and keyword phrases are the exact words someone types into a search engine to find what they're looking for online. If you have a site on "dog training" then your goal is to get a top 10 ranking for the keywords "dog training". Now if no one searches for "dog training" it would be a useless keyword, you would get no traffíc no matter how perfectly your site is optimized for that keyword.

To find out, you have to do some keyword research on your particular keywords. Many professional online marketers use keyword research software like Brad Callen's Keyword Elite. However, you can also use the keyword suggestion tools supplied by Google Adwords or Overture.

Now if you chëck "dog training", you will find it receives around 4,469 searches each day. That's a lot of traffíc but you must realize that it may be too good, or rather too competitive for your purposes, especially if you have a new site. The most common mistake most novice webmasters make is targeting keywords which are too competitive. You simply will not be able to compete or place for extremely competitive keywords. Well established sites and businesses with very deep pockets have the resources to completely dominate those keywords.

While it is not entirely futile nor a waste of time to concentrate your efforts on highly competitive keywords, you will have better success if you target low to medium competitive keywords. Besides online marketers have discovered that longer keyword phrases are usually the most lucrative. These phrases deliver traffíc which is better targeted and more likely to convert into a sale. "Dog hunting training" which gets around 100 searches a day will be more targeted than the general term "dog training" and if you have a site devoted to training hunting dogs then this keyword phrase may convert better for you.

Always keep this "Long Tail" keyword strategy in the back of your mind as you implement the following steps to achieve your own Top 10 Rankings in Google.

1. Make A Master Keyword Líst
Your first step is to make a master líst of the keywords you wish to target. Obviously these should be closely related to the theme of your site. Chëck the keyword competition by seeing how many sites are listed in Google for that keyword. Webmasters should also chëck the Google PageRank of the sites that hold the top 10 positions. If all those sites are PR6 and above it may be hard to get ranked high for your keywords.

2. Choose Related Keywords
Once you have your master líst of keywords, find long tail related keywords to target. Again, chëck out the competition and daily searches made for each chosen keyword.

3. Use Quality Content For Your Keywords
Creating quality content should always be your main goal. Write for actual visitors who will see and read your content. First and foremost you must have good useful content that your visitors will use themselves and recommend to their friends or colleagues. Tie this quality content in with your chosen keywords. Use one keyword phrase per page.

4. Keyword In Domain Name, Title and URLs
Having your keyword in your domain name will score big points from search engines. Plus, each page of content should contain your keywords in the title & meta tags for that page. Most experts also suggest you have your keyword in the URL and use hyphens to separate your keywords. Although the author has gotten good results by using an underscore and htm in URLs. Example: www.yoursite.com/your_keyword.htm

5. Do On Page Optimization
Keyword ratio is a much discussed topic by SEO experts and many suggest you should have your keyword in the H1 or headline title of your page. Sprinkle your keyword and variations of it throughout your page. Don't over do it but make sure the robot/spiders will clearly discover what your page is about. Many webmasters make sure they include their main keyword in the first and last 25 words on their pages.

6. Use Traffíc Modules
One technique that works extremely well in Google is clustering a closely related topic or subject into a distinct separate section on your site. For example, if you have a marketing site, you could create a whole section on article marketing where you would have 50 to 100 keyworded pages all relating to your subject. Writing articles, formatting articles, submitting articles, article software... place a keyword linked menu on each page to connect all your pages together. Keep in mind, your main objective is to supply quality information to your visitors. One reason Google may favor this type of structure is because they want quality content returned in their SERPs.

7. Try Article Marketing
Article marketing is writing short informative articles on keyword topics related to your sites. You then submit these helpful keyworded articles to ezine directories on the web. When your articles are picked up by related sites, you receive quality One-Way links. The higher the quality of your article, the more links you will receive.

Another ranking tactic to use: If you're just starting out your site will probably have a low PR rank and you will find it hard to rank for even modest keywords. That's why it's useful to take advantage of the higher PageRank of the major ezine directories. Your keyworded articles on these high PR sites will get picked up by Google and displayed in the top 10 rankings. Now the displayed URL will be the article directory site but the links in the resource box will be pointing back to your site. Over time this article marketing technique will raise your own site's rankings for those keywords. Simple but effective.

8. Anchor Text And One Way Links
Off page optimization is important in obtaining high rankings in Google. Getting quality One-Way links is very important. Anchor Text simply refers to "the underlined clicked on words" in your links. Most webmasters include their keywords in their anchor text as this tells the search engines exactly what the links are about.

9. Tags, Blogging And Web 2.0
Take advantage of Web 2.0 by using blogs, RSS feeds and the social bookmarking sites like Reddit and Digg. Try AddThis.com for a simple social bookmarking system. At the very least your site should have a blog and RSS feed attached to it as this is an effective way of boosting your keyword rankings. Tags have become very important for getting higher rankings. Keep in mind, in free blogging software such as WordPress, categories will automatically be seen as tags. Blogger, which is owned by Google, now has a form where you put your keywords (tags) for each post you make.

10. PPC vs Organic Search
Of course, one of the fastest ways to get your links displayed on Google is to pay for them by using Google Adwords. Your ad and links will sit side by side with the organic link results. In Pay Per Clíck advertising you bid or pay so much per clíck for your keywords and you only pay when someone clicks your links. But smart marketers also know since you're getting millíons of impressions advertising your products, acquiring name recognition and branding through PPC advertising can be a major side-benefit.

However, most webmasters would say that organic links (SERPS) will return better traffíc than paid links or advertising. In most cases, this may be true because Google's organic rankings are becoming more respected and more trusted by users. They simply carry more weíght with surfers.

This makes it even more beneficial to obtain top 10 rankings for your keywords in Google. Depending on the competitiveness of your chosen keywords reaching the first page listing or even the favored number one spot is well within any webmaster's reach. Just go for it. The rewards are well worth your efforts.

Site Credibility Pays. Join Guardian eCommerce!

Facebook Launches $10M Fund

2007-09-24T17:56:00.000-04:00

Just two months after venture capital firm Bay Partners launched a fund for Facebook developers, Facebook itself and two of its backers have done much the same thing with a new US$10 million program. Dubbed the "fbFund," the program aims to create continuing incentives for the development of Facebook applications by doling out grants of between $25,000 and $250,000 for anyone interested in building a business on the Facebook Platform. No strings are attached, other than the requirement that the funds be used to build the company on Facebook. Additional capital could follow later.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the fund on Monday during a talk at the TechCrunch40 conference in San Francisco. The program will be administered by Facebook and funded by Accel Partners and The Founders Fund, both backers of the wildly popular social networking site. "We are forming this fund to help grow the Facebook application ecosystem," Facebook said. "By decreasing the barrier to start a company, we hope to entice an even larger group of people to become entrepreneurs and build a compelling business on Facebook Platform. We hope this is also a funding model that other venture capitalists will follow."

The fund is open to any individual or company anywhere in the world who has not previously raised any formal venture funding. An online submission process will be created in the next few weeks, Facebook said; until then, business plans can be e-mailed to platform@facebook.com.

Proposals will be reviewed by an advisory committee that includes Reid Hoffman, founder and chairman of LinkedIn; Josh Koppelman, founder of First Round Capital; and Rajeev Motwani, professor of computer science at Stanford University and an early advisor to Google, Facebook said. Approval will come from an investment committee that includes Zuckerberg along with Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook vice president of product marketing and operations, and two Facebook board members representing Accel and The Founder Fund. The goal is to get decisions to applicants within a month, Facebook said.

The Founders Fund and Accel Partners will have the right to fund applicant companies first, but otherwise no equity or debt will be associated with any grant made. Most venture capital funding, by contrast, requires equity in return. Founded in 2004, Facebook currently has some 41 million users. It opened up its application programming interface to developers in May, allowing for the creation of applications tailored to the site.

"This is a smart thing for Facebook to do," Greg Sterling, founder of Sterling Market Intelligence, said. "They want to keep the momentum going, and to get people engaged in creating rich applications that go beyond the level most are at now." Google did something similar with Google Gadgets, Sterling noted. Ultimately, one result of the fbFund could be a group of startups that launch only Facebook-specific applications, he said. "For Facebook, it's a small amount of money, but this could encourage continued development after the initial novelty dies down," Sterling said.

"Facebook is trying to diversify and get deeper, with more serious and complicated applications," Mike Gotta, principal analyst with Burton Group, said. A recent mashup of Salesforce.com and Facebook dubbed "Faceforce," for example, highlights some of the platform's potential to go further than most applications do so far, Gotta explained. "In the long run, the deeper applications that do something to cause a 'wow' factor -- like the Faceforce mashup did -- spark ideas," Gotta said. "That's important not just to Facebook, but to other social networking platforms as well, providing ideas for how to build more purposeful applications.

"Right now, what we have just scratches the surface," Gotta concluded. "These new types of applications are much harder to build, and special funds like this might be necessary to make them happen."

Join The Privacy Seal Program, Let Your Site's Credibility PAY!

Scam Alert On Domain Hijacking

2007-09-24T17:26:00.000-04:00

There's a frightening new batch of scams going around now that can damage your reputation as domain "squatters" steal your domain name. There are a number of ways the "game" is played. The first is entirely legal, if more than a little questionable. In this version, the name of a city or geographic area is grabbed by a domain squatter and pointed to... "sites that you wouldn't want your children visiting."

A prominent notice is placed on the sites, offering them for sale at prices that range from $2500 to as much as $500,000! The idea here is that city officials will feel that enough damage is being done to the reputations of their towns that they'll pay to keep them from being associated with that type of material. It's obviously safe to say that it's not appropriate to pop those kinds of images into people's faces while they're looking for info on a completely different topic. That's where the pressure on the cities comes from, and why this is such a disgusting scheme.

In essence, the domain squatter says: "Pay us, or continue to watch as your city's reputation suffers." Many would call this blackmail... The second variation on the theme is not always legal. When someone takes a trademarked name (or variation of the spelling of one) or a famous person's name, and does the same thing.

For trademarks or close variations, there's a specific procedure for addressing the problem. (See the resource section at the end of this issue.) For the names of famous people, there MAY be a remedy. But, it can be tricky -- and expensive. For example, if someone named John Jones registered http://WalterCronkite.com and pointed it to one of "those" sites, Walter Cronkite could probably force the domain away from him.

However, if someone named Steve Cronkite registered http://Cronkite.com and did the same thing, Walter Cronkite would have no recourse. It would be very hard to demonstrate that Steve registered the domain in bad faith. And if Steve's son's name is Walter, the same is true for http://WalterCronkite.com.

If you feel that your name is likely to be typed into a browser when people are looking for information on you, you should consider getting both the .com and .net versions of the domain if they're available. It will cost you a few bucks to prevent the problem. Fixing it, assuming you win, will cost you hundreds -- if not thousands -- of dollars.

And there's no guarantëe you'll win. A third version is a bit more benign. It's common among members of affilíate programs. In this version, names very close to, or even including, the trademark are registered. The sites are created to drive traffíc to the affiliates' URL at the main site.

This may or may not be acceptable to the affilíate program owner. If it is, it's a good technique for getting traffíc. If not, it could get you into hot water. Chëck with the owner of the trademark before doing this. Less benign is an alternative version of this technique where someone grabs domain names that are close to the trademark of a competitor and uses them to grab competitor type-in traffíc. This is often done by finding out the most common misspellings of the real domain name or trademark. Watch for people doing this with your domain. Here's the worst version of this -- and it can hit anyone if they have enough traffíc and don't pay close attention to when their domain registrations expire.

In this situation, someone grabs expired domain names and points them to "those" kinds of sites. This is a "no löse" for the hijacker, as they will profít from the traffíc even if the previous owner doesn't pay the requested ransom for the domain.
The more traffíc the URL gets, the greater the clickthrough value to the hijacker. This means more potential damage to the original owner -- and a higher ransom to get it back. In effect, your own popularity is your worst enemy in this case.

The solution to this one is simple -- and very important: Don't let your domain names expire! If you have a famous name or trademark, the best defense is to make sure that you register the main variations in both the .com and .net form. The .org is probably only necessary if you are heavily involved with charitable activities. Protect yourself. Scammers come up with new schemes all the time... so keep your eyes open.

For a more formal explanation of the legal aspects of this problem, visit: LLRX.com.

For specific information on the UDRP (Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy), the procedure for taking domain names that are being used in violation of a trademark, see World Intellectual Property Center.

Choose Guardian eCommerce, Site Credibility Pays!

Domain Names: The Latest Real Estate Deals

2007-09-09T17:05:00.000-04:00

Many of us have thought of "locking up" a killer domain name or Web address. Then, all we'd have to do is find a buyer. Some people with whom I speak tell me that all of the good domain names have been registered. Personally, I think that an enterprising and savvy person can still make a big score in online "real estate."
Through the first half of this year, we have seen some domain names fetch in the millions: Porn.com -- US$9.5 million; Chinese.com -- $1.12 million; Topix.com -- $1 million. I'd say that there still is a thriving and growing market for domain names, defined as an alpha-numeric designation used to identify a particular computer or address on the Internet.

There is a major player out of Waltham, Mass., called "NameMedia." I recently went to their Web site, and here is how they describe their domain name marketplace:
"NameMedia combines the industry's largest portfolio of premium domain names with SiteMarket, our domain valuation platform designed to drive the most dynamic marketplace for revenue-generating online properties."

According to an article in the New York Times, this company owns 750,000 domain names. It is playing a big role in the latest gold rush, the frenzy over prime cyberspace. With that many domain names in their portfolio, NameMedia certainly has critical mass on its side. Another major player is Sedo.com, a German-based company with offices in the U.S. According to a recent article in the Boston Globe, this company "handles more than $3 million of transactions every month, acting as kind of an eBay for domain names." That same article talks about Internet Real Estate Group that "takes a luxury developer's approach to the domain name game." This approach has focused on companies such as jeans.com, chocolate.com and software.com.

Incredibly (and rightly so, in my opinion), we're now talking about domain names in the same way that we speak of real estate. It is -- after all -- real estate, albeit virtual or cyber-real estate. I have no doubt that the laws applicable to this type of real estate are adapting to accommodate this new and fascinating market.

A recent Google search of "domain names" gave me 112 million hits, dealing with such things as domain name registration, domain name sales , how to reserve a domain name and how to search for a domain name. It is quite obvious that a major market has developed for cyber-real estate. In fact, venture capitalists are funding companies that are specializing in domain name acquisitions and sales. When venture capitalists start focusing on an industry, one can rest assured that there is a good probability that such an industry is here to stay and will remain profitable.

Just as the real estate industry has dedicated journals and magazines, so does the domain name industry. There is an online publication called the "DN Journal" that has quite a bit of data on the industry. This journal calls itself the "domain industry news magazine." If you go to its Web site, you'll see links to articles, legal matters and latest news. Another online resource is a publication called "PlusDomains.com." This publication has links to news articles, domains for sale and domain parking, among others.

I consider the Internet as a virtual reflection of the entire world economy. Just about every business of any significance has a Web site -- thus a domain name. In fact, many individuals presently have their own Web site. With the economy constantly changing, and with so many new businesses and industries being spawned, I have no doubt that the future is a bright one for virtual real estate brokers.

The competition is obviously severe -- it usually is. But by all means, if you can think of a domain name that someone or some company would covet, register it. It's an easy process, and it's relatively inexpensive to maintain an active domain name.

Since the world economy is constantly evolving, one has to be aware of which industries are coming into being and what names would lead Internet surfers to their sites. Then, it's a matter of registering the name and keeping it active until either you are approached to sell it, or you go to a broker who will sell it for you.

Assuming that you have a domain name with cachet, you shouldn't have any trouble disposing of it. The trick is to come up with a domain that will be actively sought after. There's the rub. Keep an eye on the economy and evolving industries. Then, try to create catchy domain names that would appeal to some of the companies in those industries. The rest is easy -- you will either be approached to sell your domain name or a broker will approach you. In either case, you have nothing to lose.

Good luck!

Site Credibility From Guardian eCommerce... PAYS!