Dane Downer and Kevin Harman (our vice president and president, respectively) will be attending the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition at McCormick Place West in Chicago next week. They’ll be there for all four days of the conference and would love to meet up with any of our current (or potential) customers who are interested in chatting about eCommerce.
If you’d like to set something up, you can email Dane at dane.downer@brandlabs.us or Kevin at kevin.harman@brandlabs.us, or just look for these happy, smiling faces on the show floor (Dane’s on the left, Kevin on the right). They’re prepared at all times to drop some eCommerce knowledge.
For those who don’t know, there’s an app called Foursquare whose primary function is to allow its users to “check in” at specific locations. Check in more often than all of your peers and you become “Mayor” of that location. Up until now, the only benefit of Mayorship were bragging rights, and possibly a discount of some sort at that particular location. Starbucks has just changed all that.
Until June 28th, Mayors of any Starbucks location will receive discounts at all Starbucks locations. It’s the first national discount utilizing the app, but almost certainly won’t be the last.
You can read all you want about how to run a successful SEO campaign. Buy SEO software. Get an SEO “audit” for your site. Do whatever you like… the fact is that nothing replaces creativity, comprehensiveness and tenacity and here’s a story that proves that point.
MedNet Direct is one of our ongoing marketing clients and as part of their SEO program, we created and issued a press release for their brand new, washable puppy pads. It was spotted by Distinctive Assets, an L.A. based promotions company that assembles gift baskets for celebrity events. They contacted us and, long story short, MedNet’s washable puppy pads were included in the Hollywood Earth Day 2010 gift basket, which was distributed to eco-minded celebrities including, Leonardo DiCaprio, Pink, Melissa Etheridge, Sheryl Crow, Drew Barrymore, Orlando Bloom, Bette Midler and Barbra Streisand. Subsequently, MedNet was included in dozens of other press releases and articles about the event.
That’s what professional SEO looks like. It’s not just about aggressive calls-to-action and choosing “buy me” colors. It’s about marketing. It’s about creativity. It’s about the big picture… and it’s about time you called us to see what we can do for your business.
… see what we did there? Clever wordplay is just one of our many tools.
The new platform operates entirely within FaceBook, the ubiquitous social media network, offering merchants an exciting new opportunity to connect to their customers in new ways.
ShopFans isn’t simply a store within FaceBook. Its features allow customers to interact with the store… sharing links, creating wishlists and allowing users to “Like” specific items.
Kevin Harman (our fearless leader) has packed up his shiny new iPad and his tattered passport in preparation for his trip to Toronto and the Search Marketing Expo (April 8-9).
He’ll be attending conferences, shamelessly networking and handing out business cards like there’s no tomorrow. If you see him and you want to learn a heck of a lot about Volusion marketing services, please be sure to introduce yourself.
… the rest of us, on the other hand, will be back here in Michigan, holding down the fort. We sure as heck won’t be sneaking out early just because the boss is out of town. No way. Not us.
Search Engine Optimization (as we’ve mentioned multiple times in this blog) is a mysterious thing. Ask 20 people how to optimize a web page and you’ll get 20 different answers, but the one thing that you’re likely to hear over and over again is “quality content,” which is why quality content is an important element of every SEO campaign we manage. Of course, saying that you need quality content is easier than creating quality content, so we’ve put together a couple of tips that may help you out. Check them out after the jump…
In perhaps the least surprising finding in the history of research, apparently the lion’s share of the nation’s advertising dollars are moving to the Internet.
In other breaking news, bunnies are adorable and water is generally quite wet.
For e-commerce websites, it is absolutely critical to have a proper implementation of Google Analytics that includes e-commerce tracking abilities. With this added code, you can see what sales you got from what sources and the associated revenue, allowing you as the business owner to make data-driven decisions about where best to spend your marketing money.
One thing that may be overlooked in this process is the “goal”. Commonly used to track micro conversions or macro conversions that don’t result in direct revenue, goals can also be applied to e-commerce websites to give you more data about your sales process.
By defining your receipt page as a “goal” in Analytics, you can then leverage the funnel visualization tool to set up a series of steps you’d like to see customers take on your site, and track how they perform. For example, let’s say you have a simple website that sells one product: Michigan State-themed Snuggies. You then would define your receipt page as a “goal” and then you’d associate the following funnel to it: first, you’d want to look at customers who start at your homepage, then who proceed to the product detail page, then to the shopping cart page, then to the payment details page, then who finally end up at your goal of the receipt page. This way, you have set up your funnel to see how people react to every aspect of your web design: from your home page’s call to action, to your product details page’s product descriptions, to your cart design and checkout process.
The value comes in using this to see which part of the process is broken. Maybe there is a very high fall off from people who view the cart page to those who actually enter their payment information. This could mean that the call-to-action and design of your shopping cart page needs tweaking. At Brand Labs, we saw this happen with one of our clients, which led us to create a modified version of the Volusion shopping cart page that has less distractions and a clearer call to action.
There’s no limit to the insight you can get from this funnel. From home page redesign, to merchandising issues, to navigation issues, the combination of goals and funnel visualizations can help any e-commerce site owner improve their site and drive more conversions.
Dane Downer and Kevin Harman (our vice president and president, respectively) will be attending the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition at McCormick Place West in Chicago next week. They’ll be there for all four days of the conference and would love to meet up with any of our current (or potential) customers who are interested in chatting about eCommerce.
