Archives for 2013

Ecommerce in 2012: Looking Back and Ahead

February 19, 2013 by admin Leave a Comment

It would be an understatement to say that the past year was eventful for everyone having anything to do with ecommerce. There was new development galore in 2012 for ecommerce. All those developments pointed to a juicy future for ecommerce, however.

Pinterest: The social media platform emerged triumphant after an initial brush with copyright issues. There was talk that Pinterest was responsible for a significantly higher number of social media conversions than even the social media giants. It is still a highly debatable issue, however, given that it is still early days for Pinterest. Before it comes into its own as a social media platform for one and all, it will require some more water to flow under the bridge.

ecommerce marketing — Ecommerce in 2012: Looking Back and Ahead

Tablets: Apple’s iPad broke new ground in the mobile device market. Its popularity prompted other OEMs to follow the lead and launch their own tablets. In 1Q12, tablets surpassed smartphones as devices used for ecommerce activity. In 2013, tablets are expected to become the device for online shopping, more than ever before.

Internet Sales Tax: Amazon benefitted to a great extent from selling products that did not require the buyer to pay sales tax on Amazon products. That seems to be on the way out as several states now require companies such as Amazon to collect sales tax. Amazon and other ecommerce players will be challenged in 2013 to find other means to retain consumers’ interest. Make way for healthy competition!

Google Penguin: This algorithm update shook up ecommerce sites that engaged in black-hat SEO techniques such as link spamming and keyword stuffing. You cannot help wondering how businesses with a responsibility to grow and do well can afford such a colossal waste of time and money. It was amply clear after the Panda updates that Google wasn’t going to tolerate black-hat practices any longer. Penguin was an important lesson for ecommerce businesses. Quality content rules undaunted.

In addition to these events, ecommerce generally prospered in 2012. Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales shattered all previous records, although overall holiday retail spending was less than expected.

Issues that need urgent attention in 2013 include ramping up security for credit card data, better sites and services for audiences, and using rich internet applications and personalization techniques to enhance the user experience.

The Best Content Strategies to Attract Quality Traffic

February 15, 2013 by admin Leave a Comment

Quality content creation is really the only important strategy your business needs to attract traffic to your website or webstore. You cannot get your writers to create a load of mediocre content that runs into hundreds of pages and expect visitors to come and read through all those pages.

All strategies you can think of beyond that single most important strategy follow from the assumption that you have invested resources into ongoing content creation.

Content Strategy — The Best Content Strategies to Attract Quality Traffic

Such content has to be:
Original: There are a lot of people writing about a lot of things they do not really know. Every writer cannot be an expert at everything, but then every writer must make a genuine attempt to first understand the topic and write on it from an informed perspective.

Useful: Primary school teachers are brilliant at re-purposing toys and objects to teach new concepts and ideas to the toddlers. Content on your site should give your audience ‘something to do’. It should be useful. Every site cannot offer rare insights into the stock market, but it can certainly talk about its own products in ways nobody thought of before. That’s useful.

Easy: Uncomplicated, easy-to-follow content works best on the web. Anybody and everybody should be able to put your information to good use. That will be difficult to achieve on a website about rocket science, of course, but you get the drift.

What can you do with your own content to attract traffic?

Keep tabs on quality write-ups and their authors. Good web content writers are indeed hard to find in the haystack of mediocre wannabes. Grab the good ones before the competition does. Finding quality and catchy content for your web pages can get unbelievably hard.

Give your audience some fun with your offerings. Contests, surveys, reviews, how-to blog posts, e-books, whitepapers, discounts, deals, and bundled offers are the stuff of pure online fun! Free downloads, giveaways, and even virtual gifts work quite well.

Use innovation to ensure that your offerings always look new. Your new products or services need not – and cannot – be altogether ground-breaking. You should be able to present the old wine in new bottles, however.

Diversify your content with infographics, audio, video, slides, cheat sheets, lists, how-to instructions, diagrams, and so on. Readers love these because they give them a break from row after row of textual content and make it easier to understand.

Experiment with pricing. Offering special pricing to special customers has its merits. Rewarding regular or registered customers and frequent shoppers will help you attract a very important segment of your customers.

In retrospect, providing great value at all levels to customers is the only REAL strategy open to a business that wishes to get a steady stream of traffic to its website. The best websites with the highest traffic volumes do that perfectly. Their content, products, services, image, perception, social media efforts, marketing efforts, public relations, and consistent performance are all examples of the best strategies to attract traffic.

And we are not talking about only the Apples and Ferraris of the world. Any business can re-invent, re-invigorate their content strategies and attract massive traffic.

How to Secure the Best Content for Your Site

February 4, 2013 by admin Leave a Comment

So you think the content on your website will get you the traffic and sales you want? Think again. Such content will need to be different from the run-of-the-mill content you generally find on ordinary websites. While the exact parameters for defining quality content will vary by site and purpose, some generic hallmarks of quality content writing are as follows:

Write for the audience: Writers who simply insert keywords cannot deliver engaging content. They write for the search engines, rather than for the reader. If your site figures on several first pages of search results and does not provide engaging content, what’s the use of showing up on the first pages? Write for the people who will read and benefit from the content. Content Strategy

Take good care of the flow: Content should flow well – from sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph. Nobody likes content that rambles on – the kind that gets written when keywords are given undue importance. The content should be easy to read aloud.

Grammar is important: Apart from the occasional typo in blog posts, you cannot afford to neglect grammatical accuracy. Grammar is what makes your content easy to understand. Faulty grammar makes it difficult to communicate effectively with audience or business community.

Provide useful information: Provide useful information through your website pages, product descriptions, reviews, blog posts, how-to articles, e-books, and whitepapers. These are some good ways of offering such information. It should be information that your customers will lap up eagerly and come back for more.

Retain originality – always: Your content writer will need to look up diverse sources of information to create quality content. Provide clear instructions that he/she is not supposed to ‘lift’ even two words from other websites and sources. Also provide for the diverse sources of information. Great content comes straight from the heart – and brain.

Learn how to use keywords: Keyword stuffing worked earlier when Google and other search engines were not as smart as they are now. You can nevertheless use keywords to good effect. The thing to do is to write for the audience and then use a few good keywords in just the right places. Your content writer will know how to do that, if he is any good.

Brevity is the soul of wit: This is the mantra for writing successful content, not just good or great content. The ‘keep it simple and sweet’ principle (K.I.S.S.) works like nothing else. If your site’s content delivers maximum information in minimum words, nothing like it. Again, your content writer can do that.

Finally, make sure your content writers are just as integral a part of your organization as your developers, designers, and other staff. Quality content – more than anything else – will make people notice your products and services. Writing quality content requires loads of inspiration, information, and a writer’s desire to contribute to the business effort. Make sure you make those available to your best writers.

Make Your Ecommerce Store User-Friendly And Know Success!

January 27, 2013 by admin Leave a Comment

There are loads of ecommerce stores out there. You are just one in the crowd. The success of your ecommerce store will largely depend on how well you are able to attract customers and satisfy them. The key of this endeavor lies in finding what makes your customers tick. Unless you offer your customers what they are looking for, you don’t stand a chance in this age of stiff competition. To help you, here we have listed few things that any online shopper values the most. Just check it out for yourself and try to imbibe these factors into the shopping experience that you offer to your customers.

Product Description
Listed products should have clean, clear and concise descriptions. Unless the users know what they are looking at, they cannot make any kind of decision. You can also post these products information on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and help them make choices. Take care on the formatting and designing of product information page so as to avoid any type of confusions.

Value for money
Unless the product is falling under the luxurious goods category, shoppers always look for the value products. Unless they deem that the product is well worth every penny they spend, they are not going to buy it. Offer bulk discounts or special offers to tempt them. Most of the time, it works. It ensures heavy user traffic and sales.

Shopping cart
While shopping, many users like to keep track of the money they will spend on the chosen products. It helps them better making shopping decisions and setting their shopping priorities right. Help them do that with customized shopping cart.

Timely shipping
As we already know, shipping matters a lot when shopping online. Make sure that you ship your orders at the right time. If a customer receives a product after long time has elapsed, he/she is not going to appreciate it. Ship products on time and build a formidable base of loyal customers.

Boost your business with mobile marketing

January 18, 2013 by admin 1 Comment

With the evolution of technology, more and more avenues have opened for businesses. Today, if any business wants to market his business, it has various options such as print media, TV, radio and much more. For the optimum result, a business needs to analyze each and every alternative in detail and then select the best.

Mobile is one of the powerful platforms for marketing. A successful mobile marketing strategy will likely push up your sales and improvise your profit margin.

Mobile Business — Boost your Business with Mobile Marketing

To summarize, following are the benefits of mobile marketing:

Wider audience reach
Cost effective
Time saving
Stylish in this era to technology

A successful mobile marketing strategy is a three-pronged effort: email marketing, social media marketing and blogs.

Email marketing: Sending regular updates to your existing and potential clients is an effective way of communication. Not only clients would love to know what’s going on, they would also like to be the first to know what you are up to.

Social Media Marketing: Utilize social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to post interesting and attractive updates. These clear, concise updates will not only attract new clients but they will help you retain your existing ones.

Blogs: Get experts to blog about your products and services. An expert with credible reputation has more influence than the whole gamut of media advertising. A right word from the right person can make or break a business. Use this smartly for a thriving business.

An effective combination of these three ingredients can turn any viable business to an outstanding success. Although it may be time consuming, but it offers the best results.

If these marketing strategies are not your cup of tea, it’s best to hire experts and professionals. It’s time to boost up your sales with mobile marketing if you aren’t already doing so.