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Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category
Posted: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 in Search Engine Optimization
 Did you know that MC Hammer’s real name is Stanley K. Burrell? I didn’t until I found out he is launching a new search engine called WireDoo. Burrell’s strategy is to develop a search engine that addresses perceived problems in the search-engine heavy-hitters.
How is it different? It’s deep. How is it deep? It’s relationship-driven. According to SearchEngineWatch, Hammer described the search thusly:
“The engine crawls and the algorithm are designed in a way to get all the related information to your query, then package it consistently in one environment.” He went on, “It’s kind of thinking the way you would think. If it’s a car… it’s not just about the word ‘car.’ It’s about insurance, it’s about the specs, it’s about mileage, it’s about style. It’s about all these things, so that’s the way it works.”
So what say you? Can MC Hammer bring it to Google and Bing?
Posted: Monday, October 10, 2011 in Search Engine Optimization
First of all, come up with a title like that. Second, forget about SEO and think about content. Two sentences in, and you’ve already got two tips! But we’ve got 5 more that we’ve learned in our time improving our clients’ search-engine rankings.
1. Write well: Write really, really well. You don’t have to aim for Faulkner (actually, aim for anyone but Faulkner) but you do need to create content that people want to read.
2. Content is king: You can have a dozen SEO keywords, but if you don’t have good content, you’ve got nothing. How many times have you searched for information only to find some dubious web-page that’s only around for Google to find? What you really want is good information. Assume your customers want good information and give it to them.
Read the rest after the jump…
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 You’re an ecommerce merchant. Let’s say that your store has been up and running for a while. Let’s also say that it’s doing well. Of course, it may not be doing as well as you’d like, but if that’s the case, you sure don’t need a list of reasons to reexamine your site. If your store isn’t doing what you’d like it to do, you should be going over it with a fine-toothed comb. On the other hand, if your store is doing well, it’s easy to get complacent. If you fall into that group, this article is for you.
We’ve said it a bazillion times: a website is a living thing. You have to nurture it – help it grow. If you neglect it, it’ll die… or worse. It’ll grow beyond your control until it’s a huge, rambling jumble of awkward navigation, dead ends and baffling content. Still unconvinced? Check out the list for the scolding you so richly deserve.
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Posted: Tuesday, August 23, 2011 in Marketing, Volusion
 We’d like to talk a little bit about naming strategies. For the sake of today’s discussion, we’ll be using a handy example – ecommerce powerhouse: Volusion.
Clearly, Volusion isn’t a “real” word – at least in the sense that it doesn’t mean anything other than “ecommerce powerhouse” (as we just mentioned). Now we don’t know exactly what led Volusion to choose their name and we really don’t like to look things up, so we’re just going to wildly speculate about Volusion’s decision process without a trace of factual information whilst at the same time deftly avoiding all research. You may not want to quote us. (Seriously. Don’t quote us.)
See our unsubstantiated theories after the jump…
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 We really don’t know how to explain it any better. AutoRespondermax is simply… well… how about if we let Sergiy from BestPysanky.com tell you:
“We’ve been using AutoResponderMax for 5 months now and the results are great! AutoResponderMax is one of best marketing options for your Volusion store! It took us only 15 minutes to set up. Hundreds of highly targeted emails are sent automatically and sales increased at least 5%.“
That sounds like we wrote it, right? Well, we didn’t. It was a totally unsolicited testimonial from an AutoResponderMax customer, but we couldn’t have said it better ourselves. If we had our way, every single Volusion customer would sign up for the 30-day trial to see how amazingly easy the setup is and to benefit from the FREE month of automated marketing that comes with it. We’re completely confident that everyone who tries it will love it just as much as Sergiy does.
… as long as you love completely automatic revenue increases, which we assume you do.
 It’s a well-supported fact that online shoppers want to see reviews for the products that they’re considering. More than 80% (according to oft-quoted industry figures) want to see a review before they take the leap and a vast majority of that group wants to see more than one review. That’s not a problem if you happen to be Amazon or Zappos, but it can be a challenge for smaller retailers, but that doesn’t mean that you’re out of the game.
An auto responder with review-gathering functionality can automate the task of soliciting comments from your customers. Best practices suggest that you send a review solicitation 21 days after the order is placed, giving the customer time to receive their product and live with it for a little while. We have some pretty handy anecdotal proof that the strategy works.
The Red Hat Society Store has been running the review solicitation app that’s included in AutoResponderMax since January of this year. Gathering reviews has historically been especially challenging for the store, since a good number of its patrons are relatively unfamiliar with ecommerce. However, since installing AutoResponderMax, they’ve received over 300 reviews as a result of the automated solicitation. That’s a conversion rate of 7% for the campaign.
Auto responders simply work. It’s an undeniable fact. We’re so comfortable saying that that we’ll repeat it: auto responders work. Now if we can shift from talking in general terms, we’d like to talk a bit about AutoResponderMax specifically. It’s fantastic. It’s easy as pie, cheap as dirt and as powerful as Superman (if Superman were an ecommerce plugin for Volusion). We have yet to see a case wherein it didn’t pay for itself almost immediately. Seriously. Go sign up. You won’t regret it.
… oh. And it’s totally free for 30 days. You’ve got nothing to lose.
Seriously… go sign up.
Posted: Thursday, June 30, 2011 in Blogging, Marketing, Social Media
 A lot of online merchants have blogs. It’s a great way to easily add depth and credibility to your brand on a daily basis, but a lot of business blogs go unused or they become an endless succession of product announcements, leaving readers cold and squandering their interest. Of course our clever marketing team would never let that happen.
When we were designing and developing Voguette.com, the client requested that we create a landing page for the site wherein they could share tidbits about their products’ appearances in the media. We suggested that we implement the landing page as a mini wordpress blog, allowing them to update regularly and control the content with ease. Thus, Voguette’s “As Seen In” page was born.
By giving the blog a specific central idea and placing in the context of the store, rather than as a separate entity, we avoid some of the pitfalls related to business blogging. There’s no expectation that the blog and its content should stand on its own and the end result is deeper brand-building than could be accomplished on a traditional blog. The constantly-updated content contributes directly to the shopping experience and adds credibility to the brand. It’s an elegant solution to a long-standing retail problem and a great way for any merchant to begin to get a handle on their social media campaign.
Posted: Wednesday, May 25, 2011 in Marketing, Search Engine Optimization
 Worst Domain Name Ever When preparing to launch any sort of web endeavor, one of your first acts will be to choose and obtain a domain. While that is easily the most remedial observation we’ve ever made on this blog, apparently there are still those out in the world that don’t yet understand the importance of that first step. As evidence, we offer exhibit A: www.twti-ls.vpweb. In all fairness, we must point out that the address in question actually is a .com address, but apparently these fine folks ran out of “C” stickers, so they just decided to cut their losses and wrap it up. Regardless, there are a world of bad choices here before the missing .com even enters the equation. We had plenty of time to consider all of those mistakes while we were stuck in traffic behind www.twti-ls.vpweb. this morning and we decided to share our thoughts with you to help you avoid making the same errors. Check out our ramblings after the jump…
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 There is no more overused phrase in this industry than “A/B testing”. Our previous post is testament to that. However, that doesn’t mean that all the attention is undeserved. A/B testing is a truly valuable tool in the hands of skilled web professionals, like Brand Labs, for instance.
We have a well-established track record as effective online marketers. Our reputation in this arena is matched only by our reputation as skilled web designers, which is a good thing because you need both skills in order to build and maintain a strong A/B testing program and to react properly to the results. Oh… speaking of results, it helps if you’re Google Analytics experts like we happen to be. That way, when you see the results you’ll know what to do with them, which is good because knowledge without action is like Hall without Oates; useless.
After the jump we have some recent examples of A/B successes and some tips if you’d like to follow our example. Hit the link below to check it out…
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Posted: Tuesday, April 5, 2011 in Industry, Non-Traditional, Technology
 I received a Beta invite for Mashable Follow yesterday, Mashable’s new social sharing system for their site, and have spent a few hours playing around with it. On the surface, it seems to just add a few things to the existing Mashable site, but when you dig a little deeper, it starts getting more interesting. More after the jump.
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