eCommerce and

I enjoyed this infographic as it presents some great information on the affect of companies using social logins on their eCommerce sites. One of the most interesting facts is that it states that 68% of consumers go to social networking sites to read product reviews, so connecting with customers on those sites is becoming increasingly important. Check it out below.

You can get this Social Logins Infographic yourself from Monetate Marketing Infographics

Fresh content is an integral part of any internet marketing strategy. Content can be anything from posts on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, to blog entries or product descriptions. In order to be effective, a business content strategy should have a cohesive goal and direction, and be centered around the natural use of targeted and long string keywords.

#1 – Update Regularly
One of the mistakes that many business owners make is starting a content marketing strategy and then not following through. If you want your business content strategy to draw in customers and improve website traffic, you need to update your content at least once a week, more often if possible. Plan on sending out at least three social network posts a week, updating a blog at least once or twice a week and updating important product descriptions as needed. Updating product descriptions does not mean rewriting all of your product descriptions, it means adding or deleting information or setting up a schedule to rewrite several product descriptions on a weekly basis (obviously easier if you have a smaller site).

#2 – Use Keywords Naturally
Once you have researched and chosen your targeted keywords then they should be integrated into your content. Optimal targeted keywords are single or double words that are popular but have low levels of competition (hard to find these but they are optimal). Additionally, research long tail keywords to use in your content as well as these can be easier to rank for. Long tail keywords are phrases associated with your targeted keywords but are at least 3 or 4 words. For example, your targeted keyword may be “shoes,” but your long tail keyword phrase might be “red women’s high heeled shoes.” Research from the Pew Foundation has found that consumers are using long string keywords more often when they conduct online searches.

Keywords should be used naturally within the text of your content. Readers should not notice that you have inserted keywords. Instead, the content should flow easily and be easy to read. Make sure to run a spell check and grammar check before posting content to avoid glaring errors or mistakes.

#3 – Use a Variety of Content Types
Utilizing a variety of content gives you a broader audience to drive customers to your website. For example, you may use posts to Twitter or Facebook to announce new products or seasonal sales; however, posting informational video content to YouTube may create a following for your company and bring an entirely different kind of customer your way.

Blogs and article marketing are also excellent forms of business content to utilize in developing following and driving website traffic your way. Both forms of content can serve as a medium for positive public relations, increase your online presence and establish you as a leader in your field. Additionally, they also are a method of creating backlinks, which can improve your website’s search engine ranking.

When putting together a business content strategy, it is important to carefully choose keywords and integrate them naturally into your content. You should plan on updating and posting fresh content on a regular basis. It is also a good idea to utilize a variety of different types of online content to blanket the internet with your message and to broaden the scope of potential customers your message reaches. By developing a business content strategy, you can improve search engine ranking, increase website traffic and increase your online business presence.

If you have any other tips for creating a content strategy make sure to leave them in the comments.

Designing a website that customers will want to use over and over again is critical to the success of your company. If you do not use proper design attributes, then your repeat traffic will suffer and you will have a difficult time reaching your revenue goals. There are some simple design attributes that will help retain traffic and drive referrals to your site from other sites as well.

- Watch Your Colors
Every color on your website is critical to attracting new clients and retaining buying customers. The background images and colors need to be subtle and the text needs to be easily read against the background. Using a dark background and dark text is going to make it too difficult for visitors to navigate your site and will not encourage return visits. Bright colors make it difficult to look at the site for any extended period of time which discourages browsing. Make sure to pick good neutral colors that are easy to read and do not hurt your eyes to stare at.

- Make the Navigation Simple
Every website designer should become familiar with the "three click rule" of website development. Your customers need to find what they are looking for in three clicks or less or else there is a chance that they will consider the site too difficult to navigate and go elsewhere. Make your site navigation easy to use and make sure customers have quick access to all products.

- Offer Help
If a customer cannot figure out how to use a part of your website or needs information on a product, then that information needs to be easily obtainable on your site. Every product needs to have its own specifications and buying information and there should be a library of help topics for visitors to access.

- Use Images Effectively
On an eCommerce website, you are going to want the images of your products to stand out from the other images on your site. If you want to use images on your website to enhance the content, then be certain that the images are relevant and professional. The most impressive images on your website should be your product images.

- Use Secure Pages
With identity theft being a concern for online consumers, it is essential that you use a secure order entry page for your eCommerce website. Any page where the customer is asked to input information should be secure. If you do not create a secure website, then consumers will most likely not buy from you.

- Put Customer Service Online
You should allow customers the option of using an online customer service process along with a toll free phone number. Offering something like a live chat service will allow your customers to have easy access to having their questions answered. Some online consumers do not want to pick up the phone to report a damaged or malfunctioning product. You can increase your consumer traffic if you include a customer service portion to your ecommerce website.

These are just a few tips to help you when designing a good online experience for your customers. If you have some additional suggestions make sure to leave them in the comments.

Mobile ecommerce sales are growing extremely fast, if you run an ecommerce site it's becoming increasingly more important to provide a great user experience to all of your visitors, no matter how they visit your site. A better user experience improves your credibility, sales, and customer satisfaction. The challenge here is that many site owners do not know where to begin. Here are some tips on improving your store for mobile shoppers.

Make Your Site Mobile Friendly and Optimize Your Site Design
There are many businesses that can help convert your site into a mobile compatible one. GoMo, Google’s own site is a good place to start with this. If your site is too complicated, you should opt for setting up a separate mobile friendly version of the site. You can use this mobile version of your site, and some code, to make it the default site that is displayed if a user visits from their phone. You should also take steps to optimize your site design. You can do this by checking your site for a few things; first you want to remove any images that take too long to load, second, make sure your navigation is clear and third, have an organized shopping cart installed. You want to make it as easy as possible for people to browse your site and make a purchase.

Make the Site Work for the User
As mentioned above, making sure the mobile site is automatically displayed to the user will make it easy for them to jump right in and start browsing your site. Also, since mobile phones aren't always dependable, you want to make sure to point the user back to where he or she was to help complete the transaction if there is an error. Some websites are collecting email addresses before the transaction so there can be a follow up in the case of an error. This is a great way to do it for the mobile user as well since you want to be able to help the user and provide them with the best experience on your site.

Make it Easy for Users to Move Forward
Don't try to force them to submit too much information before they can shop or add items to the shopping cart. Some sites are making users create an account in order to add items to the shopping cart. You want to minimize the interruptions as you can always collect the important information during the transaction.

Be Secure
Finally, you need to reassure buyers that your site is secure. Mobile shopping is still new to many people and they are nervous about submitting sensitive information from their phone. You want to state that your site is secure especially during the ordering process.

So those are some of the ways you can improve your eCommerce store for mobile shoppers. By implementing many of these tactics, you are also increasing conversion rates and purchase amounts. As an online business owner, you should always be on the lookout for more ways to improve your mobile site. Make sure to let us know if you have another suggestion for mobile implementation in the comments.

While it is natural for ecommerce sites to focus on optimizing the home page, individual product pages also deserve some attention, and can yeild great rewards if they are keep up to date and optimized. Every web page can be modified to send a clearer signal to search engines and provide greater opportunities for conversion and sales.

Keep in mind, there are two "audiences" that need to be addressed when optimizing product pages: the search engine spiders, which are constantly gathering data and ranking web pages for there informational value; and live human users, who are gathering information to make informed shopping decisions. A well-optimized product page will speak in perfect harmony to search engines and people alike. Here are a five easy tips for optimizing your product page for more traffic and more conversions.

1. Unique Content
Search engines, like Google, Ask, Bing and Yahoo!, will place great SEO value on unique content that appears nowhere else on the web. Rather than copying descriptions from product manuals word-for-word, write your own exclusive content that romances the product in new ways. Well-written product descriptions are a powerful search engine attractor as well as a helpful sales tool.

2. Keyword Usage
A lot is said about keywords in optimization, and there are a few cardinal rules to follow. The most important is to optimize only one keyword or phrase (precise string of keywords) per page. This means do not push multiple keywords on the same page as it becomes very easy for your message to get lost. Research the keyword you would like to target and optimize the page for it.

3. Product Page Titles
When naming your product page, write a strong title that prominently features your selected keyword. A long, descriptive page name will tend to dilute its effect, so give your product page a short and concise title and put your most important keyword near the front.

4. Page Layout
Make it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for with an on-site search box. Shoppers will favor the top part of a web page for conversion, and search engines also evaluate content from the top down, so keep your most important messages "above the fold." Also, you can help pages load faster by reducing excessively large graphic files to smaller sizes.

5. Link Directly to Product Pages
Back links are like SEO gold, but linked keywords don't always have to land on your home page. In fact, linking straight to product pages is one of the most effective optimization techniques known. Put your keyword to its best advantage by linking right to the exact page that inspired it. It is one of the most powerful tips for optimizing your product page.

These are just a couple tips for optimizing your product page. Let us know in the comments if you have any additional tips that you would recommend.

The start of a new year leads to all of the standard business evaluations. Normally the top of this list is how can I make more money in the upcoming year? Most businesses can get someone to buy a product or service from a website once, but the question is, will they do it again? Here are five tips you can use to optimize and hopefully help your website have a better 2012.

1. Improve your SEO - Search Engine Optimization is a complex order for most people, but here are a couple of things you can do right now to help your SEO. First, make sure you have a Google Webmaster Tools account and are checking it often for errors and new keywords you can be using. It is free, so there is no reason not to set one up.

Also, you want to do some keyword research. Dive into Google Analytics and look for keyword phrases that send traffic, but that you may have never targeted before. This not only has the possibility of bringing new customers, but return customers will often use the same terms.

Lastly, if you are new to SEO go through this checklist and see what parts you may have left out.

2. Offer something extra with every order -This doesn’t have to be a free product or something that is expensive, it could be as simple as an email that is personal and thanks your customer for ordering from you. However, if you wanted to give something away you could possibly use this example. Let's say you sell gardening supplies online. Offer a free bag of seeds with every order. This is a cheap addition that will get people to connect better with your brand. Bonus points if you have the seed packages customized with your company’s information. Doing something small like this can really help your customers to think about you when they need the same product again.

3. Evaluate your call to action - Make sure your call to action is precise and is helping the customer understand what they should do next. "Lose 50 Pounds in Three Weeks." "Clean Your House in Record Time." These are all call-to-action headlines that push the customer to want to find out more about how they can achieve what the headline says. Always remember that this is all about them, not you. How is your product going to help them? How can you make the order sweeter and help them to want to make the purchase?

4. Upgrade your shopping cart - If you're selling actual products on your site, the shopping cart helps to tally and keep track of everything the customer is buying. They can go to the cart page and back as often as they wish to check how much they've spent and to see what they still need to buy from you. Making the shopping cart bigger and easier to see can remind the customer that they have something in it and possibly help increase conversions on your site.

5. Provide a money-back guarantee and follow through quickly - This is often a hard thing to focus on if you are a small business, but taking steps to improve your returns process can help to make a big difference with your customers. If you can turn a refund around as quickly as you filled the order in the first place, rest assured the customer will want to come back. Nothing builds trust between a buyer and a seller than the confidence that both sides will come through in a pinch.

There are just a few tips that can help you grow your business in 2012, if you have others make sure to leave them in the comments.

One of my favorite things about the end of the year is all of the lists that come up to remind us what has happened as we look back. As I posted last year, the Google Zeitgeist is one of my favorite of these recaps. It takes Google's products such as Search, Earth and Google+ to make a video that blends the top news and searches of 2011. Google has a lot of other lists as well that you can see here. Check it out below and leave us a comment to let us know what you think.

BlueKai created this great infographic that I thought I would share. It has data from 2010 trends and applies them to the new 2011 holiday season. Check it out below and let me know what you think in the comments.

Original Source of this infograpic is here at BlueKai

The holiday season is a special season for both the consumer and the business. It is a time of shopping, eating and connecting with family through holidays such as Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. In business though, this is an important time of year, one where you need to make yourself stand out from the competition, taking the time to create a great promotion is a good way to do this. This time of year always comes with people spending money on themselves and on others so a well-targeted campaign can help connect with your customers as well as provide them a value when they are shopping. Below are four tips that will help you get on your way to running a successful promotion during the upcoming holiday season.

Embrace the Season
You want your promotion to fully impact people in an emotional way. The holidays, after all, are all about emotion. Your promotion should take this into consideration. Do not just have a sale for the sake of it, have a sale with a theme that connects directly to the holiday and the consumer. Adding emotion into your sale allows the user to connect with you and gives your company more personality.

Give People What They Want
You also need to make sure that you are running a promotion on products that people will actually want to purchase during this time of the year. For example, you will sell more sweaters around Thanksgiving and Christmas than you will around the Fourth of July. In many ways, this seems like common sense; however, store owners often make the mistake of trying to push the items that are out of season with a promotion. The result is often a lackluster sale that could have been prevented if seasonality was taken into consideration. A great place to check for this is on Google Trends. You can use this great tool to see when the most search volume is for the term. Below you can see the term sweaters is always searched at the end of the year.

Be Original
You should always strive to make your promotion different than everyone else's. You want people to look at your sale and think it is so good that they shouldn’t even leave your store to look for others. If the customer thinks they can probably find the same deal somewhere else, they will keep shopping, hoping to find even better savings as they go. If the customer leaves the store there is always a chance they will not come back, create a sale or promotion that makes it hard to not purchase from you.

Find your Advantage
Finding your advantage is essential for running a good sale during the holiday season. For some businesses this is price, for others service and for others still it's exclusive products. Regardless of what you decide is your advantage, finding ways to make the most of it is essential to a successful sale. Not everyone will have the lowest price on every item, but every business has some way they stand out that can help them to connect with their customers and provide them with a great shopping experience.

These are just a few of the tips we suggest to make sure this holiday season is a good one. We would love if you would leave a comment with your tips if you have one that I have left out.

When it comes to email marketing, far too many people choose the "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" approach. Unfortunately, this rarely works, and many times it can actually backfire and have the opposite effect.  With various governments of the world stepping in and regulating email marketers, it is more important than ever to be aware of your actions and the message you are sending. As the online world of e-commerce continues to heat up, you will have an easier time getting ahead if you follow a few simple steps to ensure your email marketing success.

1.) Don't Spam
As mentioned, governments around the world are cracking down on spamming, in addition your customers hate it as well. Think about how often you are sending emails and if you are providing any value to your customers with these emails. If the answer is no then you probably shouldn't be sending them. In addition, spamming rarely works, and most people don't even look at messages that show up in the spam folder of their email. Instead of spamming, it pays to take a more targeted approach, both financially and in terms of your time spent.

2.) Keep Your Focus
While it may be easy to try to cram as much information as possible into an email message when trying to market yourself or your company, it's a far better idea to focus on one thing at a time. If you have a new product or service coming out, focus on that one specific idea instead of trying to lay out your complete line of products. The entire point of the email message should be to get customers and potential customers to either visit your website or visit a brick-and-mortar establishment. By including too much information, you may end up fatiguing the reader, leading them to discard the message quickly.

3.) Use Personalized Services
If possible, you will want to personalize each message. If you have a small list of email recipients, this can be done by simply sending individual emails with the names of customers included. However, if you have a large list of names, you may want to look into software that will automatically address each customer by name in each email. Doing this will let the customer know that you are thinking of them, and that you consider them a value to your business.

4.) Use Images Sparingly
While it is often a good idea to include graphics or images in your emails, don't overdo it. Large and complex images can slow down loading and delivery times, in addition many email services actually block images in emails unless the recipient clicks an option to unblock. This means that if your entire email message is made up of images, your recipients may not even see what you're sending.

5.) Subscribe to an Email Marketing Service
If you are unsure of how to go about email marketing, or you simply don't have the time, consider using a service that handles the task for you. Many email marketing services will include options to measure stats that show who is clicking on what, and who is using your email to visit your site, allowing you to have an easier time tailoring your email marketing strategy.

These are just a few of the tips that we recommend, if you have a great tip make sure to leave it in the comments.