Our April meeting will be about SEO.  Please bring your comments and questions.  This is a very important topic
Here are some articles I found which might help:

http://www.seobook.com/relevancy/

http://www.threadwatch.org/node/1135

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/06/msn-search-by-any-other-name-might-not-be-as-sweet.html

Some SEO tools: 

http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/

Shopping Carts: Survey of Merchants Confirms Fractured Market

March 05, 2009 · by Armando Roggio 

http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/997-Shopping-Carts-Survey-of-Merchants-Confirms-Fractured-Market

Respondents to a February 2009 Practical eCommerce survey collectively use more than 30 different shopping carts, an indication that there is no clear and decisive leader in the ecommerce shopping cart segment.

14.1 percent of respondents to the survey said that they use Go Daddy’s Quick Shopping Cart to power their ecommerce business, while another 10.3 percent rely on Yahoo! Merchant Solutions or Volusion to drive their businesses. But, dozens of other carts are also clearly popular. osCommerce, a free cart, received nearly 7 percent of “write in” responses in the “Other” category. Miva Merchant drew 7.7 percent, while Network Solutions (formerly MonsterCommerce), ProStores, CubeCart, and 1ShoppingCart each received 7.1 percent of the responses.

The broad selection of carts listed in the survey may mean that the shopping cart industry is still very fractured with a large number of successful contenders. In fact, 40.7 percent of the survey’s respondents said that their shopping cart was very useful and improved business. Another 26.3 said that their shopping cart was useful and worked just fine, adding up to 67 percent of merchants who are apparently satisfied with their current shopping cart solution. These numbers might also imply that ecommerce site owners don’t have an effective way to compare shopping carts and, therefore, cannot really rank their solution against other available options.

 More Control, Integration Would be An Improvement

While it is important to reiterate that most of the survey respondents were pleased with their shopping cart, when asked what they would improve, many of those surveyed wanted more control over the cart’s appearance (i.e. more templates or more layout control) and function and more integration with third-party tools, including FedEx shipping software, QuickBooks, Google Base, and Amazon.

Interestingly, several of the improvements that respondents asked for are available with other carts. For example, one user of ProStores wanted the ability to add a product image zoom, a feature available out of the box with Magento Commerce and Volusion (to name just two). Requests for features available in other carts may be an indication that ecommerce site owners do not necessarily compare features before selecting a cart, or that they may not really know which features will be the most desirable before implementing a chosen solution.

So What Does it Mean?

Viewed together, the responses point to two possible trends. First, there may be a lack of good comparative information about shopping carts or about important shopping cart features. QuickBooks or FedEx integration is a cart feature available from several vendors, yet many of the survey respondents wanted these features. Are they unaware that these tools are, in fact, out there? Would they make a change if they knew that software integration is available with other shopping carts? Perhaps, but it would seem that at least some ecommerce site owners did not have access to that sort of comparative information.

A second trend may have to do with development capabilities. Many of the most popular shopping carts identified in the survey required little or no HTML, CSS, or other development skills. Instead they are geared toward users with little or no coding expertise. These same users were the most likely to be unhappy or frustrated with the cart they were using. Its functions were too often a mystery, and they generally wanted more control.

As an example, Go Daddy’s Quick Shopping Cart, which requires no development experience, was the most popular, but it also had the highest number of respondents (28.6 percent of those that used Quick Shopping Cart) who wished the solution did more. Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, another solution that requires minimal coding skill, had 50 percent of users wishing it did more.

Lessons for Merchants

If our speculations regarding the survey results are correct—(1) that there is not enough comparative shopping cart information and (2) that ecommerce site owners do not have a sufficient level of development expertise to meet their own needs—then at least two lessons follow. First, ecommerce merchants need a better way to compare and review shopping carts, and Practical eCommerce is seeking to address this point by developing a new, upcoming shopping cart guide. The second lesson is many ecommerce merchants should be seeking professional development help.

Not too many brick-and-mortar merchants try to build their own stores from the ground up, hauling in lumber or hanging drywall. Instead they hire professionals to frame and finish their buildings. Perhaps ecommerce merchants should consider the same tact, investing in good developers to build their stores. This assumes that those developers are not tied to a particular cart via affiliate commissions or some other financial arrangement.

Our expert this week is Melanie Beam – Director, Business Development for Mountain Media: 

Requiring Login to Order: This is one of many e-tailers’ favorite usability mistakes. Requiring registration is a clear barrier to sales and a definite no no, especially when you have yet to establish a relationship with the customer. First-time shoppers aren’t sure that they’ll return and the feeling that some sort of commitment is required may turn them away from making even the first purchase.

Vague, Hard to Find Return Policies: Ecommerce is increasingly competitive, no matter what your industry is and often, the difference between a sale for you versus your competitor comes down to your return policy. Make the process as easy as possible. Don’t hide your return policy deep within your site or require your customers to jump through hoops to complete the process. Rarely do e- tailers make their return policy a selling point or competitive advantage and they should. Consider using the words, “No-Hassle Return Policy” to reassure the customer that the process is quick and easy.

Poor (or no) SEO: Often online retailers have a ‘Build it, and they will come’ attitude. This could not be more wrong (no matter how great your product is). Retailers tend to forget that search engines are the highways and byways of the Internet. An eCommerce site not optimized for search is equivalent to a brick and mortar store conveniently located underground. Let professionals who are trained and knowledgeable in the latest techniques perform optimization and Internet marketing services that will ensure that your site can be found.

Poor Product Descriptions: Product descriptions are the closest thing you have to a salesperson. Make them work for you. Improving your product descriptions is one of the easiest, yet most neglected ways to improve your online sales. If your product catalog is large enough to justify, hire a copy-writer. Also, you’ll want your description to be unique. So, if you’re using manufacturer’s descriptions, you’ll want to change them so that your descriptions aren’t the same as your competitors.

Poor Merchandising: If you owned a brick and mortar store, you would probably walk your aisles every day to ensure your products are merchandised properly. You’d also most likely have end-caps that feature certain products, signs or posters that call out relevant products and items that you place at the point-of-sale to encourage last minute purchases. Yet many website owners expect their online stores to run themselves, and rarely take time for this important implementation. You need to plan and implement merchandising techniques including upsells and cross-sells to help move your products. Lack of Strong, Clear Calls-to-Action: Make your call-to- action buttons big, bold, and unmistakably clear (but be careful not to make them ugly). Any messaging on the site should also be clear and strong. Every page of the conversion funnel (landing page to product page to checkout) should clearly define the next step in the process.

Lack of Search, Filtering and Sorting: Product search is a must if your catalog is anymore than a few products. Customers simply expect it and your site will look amateur without it. Customers also expect to be able to filter down by criteria such as colors, sizes, or brand. Also, let them sort the listings by price, newness, popularity, etc.

Hard to Find Checkout Button or Add to Cart Button: Many online stores assume shoppers know that the shopping cart is the first step of the checkout process. To prevent confusion of your customers, always have a clear “checkout” button visible on every page and keep your ‘Add to Cart’ buttons clearly visible next to or under every product.

Unreachable Customer Service: Online retailers are typically not famous for their customer service. Phone numbers and email addresses should be listed prominently on every page.

Need help editing your images for your website? Photos coming up to big? Not a Photoshop Pro? There is a solution, www.Picnik.com offers a free online photo editing application that provides many useful tools for editing photos for your websites without registration! You can also upgrade to Premium for more available features. This is the easiest solution we have found for editing your pictures. It works on Mac and PC, let’s you re-size the images, upload from social networking sites, change colors, adjsut brightness, saturation, rotate, flip, format your files and many more!!! If you are looking for an easy photo editor Picnik is definitely the best bet!!!

Some of the options offered:
• Fix your photos in just one click
• Use advanced controls to fine-tune your results
• Crop, re-size, and rotate in real-time
• Tons of special effects, from artsy to fun
• Astoundingly fast, right in your browser
• Awesome fonts and top-quality type tool
• Basketfuls of shapes from hand-picked designers
• Works on Mac, Windows, and Linux
• No download required, nothing to install

PPC Advertising: Use Dynamically Generated Ad Text, Relevant Landing Pages

February 19, 2009 · by Greg Laptevsky

When it comes to pay-per-click advertising campaigns, the most important tools are targeted keywords and relevant landing pages. For targeted keywords, it is possible to develop dynamically inserted keywords simply by monitoring search activity on your site and in your ad campaigns.

Identify Targeted Keywords

Below are some practical tips to help you discover the key phrases consumers are typing into search boxes, and how that knowledge can be used to your advantage.

Here are some suggestions to help develop dynamic keywords:

• Create separate campaigns for product groups; ad groups within each campaign would represent actual products or product types/models
• Take advantage of the “search” function on your ecommerce site. Talk to your developers to see how you can dynamically pass pay-per-click keywords through the search function of your site, so that users will always see dynamically generated results as generated by your site’s internal search function

Use Dynamic Keyword Insertion

Dynamic keyword insertion allows you to insert the user’s actual, or close to actual, search query into the text of your pay-per-click ad. This is because search engines match users’ queries to the closest keyword on your list. You end up with an ad that very closely resembles the actual keyword phrase the user typed in, which attracts more user attention on the search results page. This will likely increase sales from your pay-per-click ad, as follows:

1. More attention = higher click through rate
2. Higher click through rate = higher Quality Score
3. Higher Quality Score = cheaper clicks
4. Cheaper clicks = more clicks for a given budget, which leads to more sales.

Be careful, though. You do want to improve your click through rate, but you also want quality clicks. Keep an eye on ads with dynamic keyword insertion to make sure they are converting users at the same or better rate.

The key is to supply the customer with immediate gratification. All the talk about relevant search engine results and “quality” ratings comes down to just that. Test the strategies outlined above and you’re like to see promising improvements in the performance of your PPC ads.

Proper Landing Pages

Always make sure you’re sending people to the most relevant page of your site. Remember, your home page is not usually the most relevant page. If someone is searching for “widget 123” and you happen to sell it, be sure to send that person to the “widget 123” page.

http://community.ecmta.org/blogs/

Here is a ecommerce blog by ecommerce merchants trade assoc. I sent everyone a copy today.

sign up for ecommerce newsletter http://www.ecmta.org/content/index.cfm?page=benefits

I don’t know about you but I did not have this for my site.  A custom or redirected error page.  This is important for us to do.  Just one of those little thinks that you don’t think about.  Since we are not a big ecommerce business we miss some of these little details.  I see that Pat has his redirected back to his home page and I see that Scott just gives an error page.   I read an article this weekend that said most customers will just leave your site if they get page not found, if you have a custom error page that helps them find what they are looking for or takes them back to another page on you site, you stand a chance to get the sale.

I’ve come across several free services that offer some great info about evaluating your own websites.

Starting with my most recent finds:

Website.Grader.com does a very good SEO evaluation of your sites and offers suggestions for improvements and links to directories. You need to set up an account before using it and opt-out of most of the emails. I will give this site 4.5/5 stars.

ZoomInfo.comis a new directory that is free. Gets more links pointing to your site…good for SEO. I give it a 5/5 stars for ease of use.

Alexa.com has some info that you may find valuable. 3/5 stars.

Market Leap’s Link Popularity Checkeris pretty cool. Compare competition and gain valuable insight. 4/5 stars.

Quantcast.com has very detailed information about your website and it’s visitors. Covers Traffic, Geographics, Demographics, Business and Lifestyles of your visitors. I highly recommend using this service. 5/5 stars.

SelfGrowth.com   The best way to describe SelfGrowth.com is as a Matching or Connecting Service for People who Want to Improve their Health, their Finances, their Relationships and their Happiness.
 
We help Connect people who want to improve their lives with information, experts, products and services that can teach or show them how to do it. We do it with a large expert directory, through articles, products, a web directory, a discussion board, live chat, blogs, and much much more.

Great place to get motivated and focused. 5/5 stars.

Please comment or add more suggestions.

I am trying out some new drop shipping services. The potential benefits seem great but like in all sales the potential for failure is just as great. My strategy is to start slow and expand what works. We are building EtailDepot using InventorySource.com this will test their inventory control within our MivaMerchant. We are building www.HomeRetailDepot.com using the service of www.3xpweb.comtotally seperate from our server using their shopping cart which is integrated with the www.Doba.com products. I also plan to open a store with www.ProStores.com which is also integrated with Doba and Ebay.

I think that it will be easier to get SEO with the Miva site www.EtailDepot.com than it will with the other, but I will advertise both and track them thoroughly with Google Analytics.

Please share your thoughts or experiences with drop shipping.

We have been using Doba to add to our inventory on www.BeautyDepot.com for about 6 months. It has been successful but we already had traffic coming in. So building new websites with no traffic will be a new experience.