Ecommercepartners.net

For the first time in the company’s 33 year history, Microsoft founder Bill Gates will not be reporting to work today.  Friday was Gates’ last day as a full time employee of the software giant, though he will stay on as a consultant and advisor.

He’s been paving the way for this change since he gave up the CEO reigns to Steve Ballmer in 2000, so this change will not have a major impact on the company.  In fact, Gates will stay on as a part timer for some time.

TGIF Everyone!

Here are a few headines that caught my eye over the past few days:

Top 100’s Ad-Spend Growth Grinds to Halt
from AdAge.com
synopsis: The big-spending advertisers who once spared no expense to get the word out about the next great idea are spending less and less, with ad spending increasing overall a mere 1.7%.

Disney-ABC Makes ‘Lost,’ ‘Desperate,’ ‘Ugly’ Deal With Veoh
from E-Commerce Times
synopsis: Media giant Disney/ABC has made the leap for increased online content by hopping into bed with Veoh Networks, who is now offering full episodes of the network’s most popular television series for content-hungry streaming video fans.

US Airways to offer PayPal services
from Birmingham Business Journal
synopsis: From the “what took you so long” files…California-based PayPal now has a major nod from air carrier US Airways, who will now be allowing customers to select the online payment company’s services as a payment option for flight reservations at no additional cost when reserving their travel through usairways.com.

Governing Body Approves a “Complete Overhaul” of Internet Navigation

The BBC reports that ICANN has unanimously approved sweeping changes to the rules that govern domains. Non-Roman alphabets (e.g. Hebrew, Hindi, Chinese, Cyrillic, etc.) and hyper-localized TLDs (such as .nyc, .ldn for London) will go live next year.

Also, apparently, anything goes. You can request new TLDs based on your own name, your company’s name, or your area of interest.

Are you old enough to remember the dot com boom?

What about the Internet crash that eft hundreds of thousands of would-be entrepreneurs thumbing through the classified ads while sipping lattes from the kitchens of their soon-to-be-reposessed luxury homes?

The Economist is carrying a well-executed article about three of the biggest name companies who each have survived the best of times and the worst of times – Yahoo!, Google and Amazon. In a June 19, 2008 article, “The Three Survivors” details the beginnings of each along with why Amazon is once again emerging to take its place in the sun, with founder Jeff Bezos still holding the reins.

Yahoo! is floundering, though they have managed to survive the threat of being Microsofted – for now – with a little carefully managed assistance from their friends at Google. Still, stockholders are angry enough at co-founder Jerry Yang that they do plan to buck him from the saddle at the annual meeting in August.

Are you telling your customers to get lost? If you aren’t using common sense when putting together your website and website content, you may be.

Think of it from your customer’s point of view for a minute:

John Q. Customer just had a great first date and wants to send this new girl some flowers, but he doesn’t have the yellow pages handy (it is probably holding up the corner of his coffee table if you want to know the truth), so he pulls up his favorite search engine.

What does he type? Well if I were John, I would type in “Florists in New York, NY” (or whatever city John Q. lives in). I’m going out on a limb here, but if you were a florist in New York, I would venture a guess that you would want your website to be at the top of the search engine results.

Now visit the search engines and type in those phrases to see where you rank, if at all. Not seeing what you want?

That’s when it is time to take a look at things from the search engine’s viewpoint. Does the main page (or supporting pages, for that matter) have the phrase “florists in New York” in the text content? If not, then how is the search engine supposed to know that you aren’t a diesel mechanic in Miami?

If you don’t spell it out, even the smartest search engine isn’t going to be able to help John Q. Customer find you. Even if they could, they aren’t going to go through the trouble because it would seem that if you don’t bother taking the time to include those crucial keywords in your website, they must not be important enough to bother with.

Step outside your box for a few minutes and think for a while about the phrases that an average customer might type into a search engine to find ecommerce sites like yours. Are you using those phrases in your website content? If the answer is no, then you have some work to do.

Even if the phrase doesn’t seem to lend itself easily to informative content it can still be made to read easily. Let’s look at an example:

keyphrase: florists in New York City

website content includes: “XYZ Floral Design is one of the premiere florists in New York City, specializing in wedding and special event designs…”

Get the picture now? There’s no shame in asking for directions. If people were still afraid to do so, the search engines wouldn’t be pulling in millions of searches every day.

Over the weekend, I spent money. I spent a lot of money, to be honest.

I went to the mall, bought a cookie and started popping my head into this shop and that in search of that certain something I just couldn’t live without. Of course there were more than one of those certain somethings, but I digress.

It got me thinking about how much easier it might be to be able to walk through the entire mall, collect my wares and just do one checkout at the end of the trip. Ironically, I got an email from Lihi yesterday telling me about a company whose recently-released website design concept allows for exactly that. What’s more – it includes some of my favorite clothing stores!

Most people already knew that the same parent company owns both Gap and Old Navy, but you may not have been aware that they also own Banana Republic and Piperlime too. Why should this matter, you ask? I’d be happy to tell you!

It seems that the brilliant minds behind the ecommerce marketing and website development have figured out that many of their customers like to shop at more than one of these great brands. They have made it easier than ever to mix and match from all four ecommerce stores and check out once – when you are good and ready!

Four great stores – one simple ecommerce shopping cart & checkout process. Wish I’d have thought of it first!

Psychology is a vital ingredient in marketing of all types, but it seems to have been the missing link in ecommerce marketing efforts for years.

When customers surf the web, statistics have proved time and again that they are drawn to ecommerce website designs that have a more personal feel. In other words, they want to feel as though there is some personality involved instead of being in some cold, bland wasteland populated by bullet points, products and impersonal shopping cart applications.

Your content should not only look good (and appeal to your target demographic), the text should carry a conversational and personable tone. Let your customers feel as though they are getting to know you through your website. Testimonials and other such tactics can cause comsumer confidence in your brand to increase, and once you have earned their trust through a trouble-free first sale, chances are great that they will tell others.

How personal is your content?  Give it a look and you may find that it is high time for a content makeover for your ecommerce website.

Is Your E-Commerce Solution Making the Grade or is it failing your business during the final exam?

Here are three of the most common mistakes made during ecommerce website development and design:

1. The Easy Out

When it comes time to click a button to submit the customer’s order, that’s all they need to see – a submit button. Don’t confuse them or given them the easy out by placing a ‘cancel’ button right next to it. That’s almost like saying “are you really sure you want to buy this?” and in many cases the answer is going to end up being no.

2. Defaults

Believe it or not, having the wrong defaults set up in your online forms can be a big subconscious mistake. Instead of having your shopping cart set to default to Visa as a payment option for example, look into an ecommerce shopping cart software solution that will automatically detect the type of card being used based on the card number entered by the customer.

3. Lack of Confidence

Display your contact information prominently throughout the checkout process, and assure your customers that at any point they can call you to ask questions or even to complete their order with a live human being if they so desire.

In addition, have your ecommerce shopping cart software tested on a regular and consistent basis to ensure that there are no errors popping up during the process and do whatever you need to do in order to avoid those Internet Explorer popups that remind visitors that they are entering information on an insecure website.

The shopping cart and checkout process should be quick, easy and trouble-free and if it isn’t, it is your sales numbers that will suffer.

According to E-Commerce News, Microsoft has acquired advertising gurus Navic Networks, a, interactive television advertising company whose purpose is to direct and assist advertisers in targeting their ads to the right audiences.

Using statistical data, Navic works their magic by providing interactive overlays for television commercials that allow viewers to react to the commercials by using their remote control in order to get additional information on the product or service being offered.

Microsoft understands the potential value of this acquisition that offers the ability to email information or send it via USPS by using the information on file with the cable company.  Expansion on the existing activities of the company is inevitable and with Navic’s reach of over 35 million homes, Microsoft’s plans include taking their own existing online advertising efforts into the on-air media.

This is the first in a regular series of quick tips to alter your thinking with regard to search engines.  In fact, the goal is to learn to think like the search engines themselves, since being able to think like they operate will give you a decided advantage in the ever-present battle for the online consumer.

Today’s tip is so obvious that you have have overlooked it and if you have, your ecommerce website may be suffering in the search engine ratings as a result. For the purposes of this post, I am assuming that for your site you are using a template-based program to administer your website, such as WordPress (which I use to write and manage this blog).

While template-based programs make administration a breeze, they can also be the biggest cause of what is commonly called duplicate content death.  (more…)