Stephen D. Gross

Lots of Capital but not a lot of Technical

This is a good place to be, you have money to fund the creation of your ecommerce site but also a bit dangerous since you don’t have the technical knowledge to understand when people aren’t telling you the truth.

The truth is that there are quite a few companies out there that can help you create a very robust, SEO friendly, and highly scalable ecommerce site including Volusion, MondeVertInc, ShopVisible, Zoovy, Datafeedr, PopShops, and of course Google Checkout and Amazon Stores, etc.

Each of these companies have experience in building the ecommerce store, helping you understand the implications of the technology and in general handling most of the business from the technical side…but for a price.

The kicker here is that each of these companies specializes in helping you run your business but seldom do they actually make sure you know how to run it without them. They are in business to gain recurring revenue from your interaction with them and not in the business to show you how to code the system, or create great features without someone paying for them.

With that said if you are an existing business and have an existing brick and mortar world that you are already managing then these are the folks for you because they take a majority of the work off your hands.

Keep in mind they help design, build and deploy your new ecommerce presence but they do NOT run it for you. That is up to you and your staff…you do have staff to run your ecommerce business don’t you? You might want to think about that, there are hundreds of ecommerce sites languishing in despair for lack of someone within the company that is charged with the sites’s success and understands how to run an online business.

So in the Capital but no Technical world your main problems will be:

1) Understand what you are asking for and find vendor that does it

2) If you don’t have the ecommerce or technology background hire someone to manage the process designs, development and deployment of the site for you or you WILL get bitten, this is simple reality.

3) Be sure whomever is designing then look and feel of the site KNOWS what that means. You well wishing marketing and art departments need to understand usability, interface design, and any number of other aspects of this business to be useful. If they don’t HIRE someone that does and have them do the designing.

4) Throughly understand the features of the system you are buying and keep asking for training till you do. Most of the features of these high end ecommerce systems aren’t used by most customers. You need to be engaged in the your own business and understand how the platform can make you money.

5) Remember, and this applies to all ecommerce websites, traffic to your site doesn’t not mean sales (conversions), yes you need to drive traffic to your site but that means qualified traffic and traffic that is there to buy not to look. Remember the retail model, window shoppers don’t buy and buyers seldom window shop.

So in the next entry we’ll cover the middle ground, We’ve got the Technical but funds are tight, this is an exciting area but requires you know how the plumbing of your new ecommerce site really works!

Dan Horn & Noh Limits is a member and contributor to StephenDGross.com and BrookstoneMarketingGroup.com

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The world of ecommerce is exciting, painful and sometimes down right foolish, but we all want the independence that running our own store “could” bring.

Being independent of “the man” and being able to work from anywhere in the world is quite an appealing prospect but most of us have no idea how to do it or the innumerable problems in our path.

One of the primary things to think about when opening an ecommerce store is how much time you have to actually spend working on the store operations.

Keep in mind all the things you would do if you owned a brick and mortar storefront apply to the ecommerce site.

Even though you don’t have to deal with a lease and hard furnishing you still have all the equivalent issues with the ecommerce site lease equals hosting, hard furnishing equal pay per click and SEO marketing costs.

Over the course of this series I’ll be helping you understand not only the various ways to create a successful ecommerce store but also how to do it to fit into your lifestyle.

Lots of Capital but not a lot of Technical

As an example if you have time and financing you could certainly build the site from scratch, rent a warehouse, buy and store products and ship them from your warehouse. You certainly can buy these website development from any number of companies at any price range and they will happily hand you a fully operational ecommerce site that is fully customizable, at a fee, and you are in business…if you know how to run an ecommerce business.

We’ve got the Technical but funds are tight

In the middle of the spectrum if you only have time but not much capital to run the business you might want to consider using one of a number of ecommerce shopping carts, find a few drop shippers to do your fulfillment and use your sweat equity to design, develop, and deliver the ecommerce site to the web using organic SEO techniques and some of a number of shopping cart systems.

No Money and No Technical no problem

At the far end of the spectrum a recent trend has come about that is called an affiliate ecommerce site which is all about putting together a website that you drive traffic to and then as people buy products they are sent to the company website that actually sells the products and do the transaction there. This process alleviates a number of the onerous tasks associated with running an ecommerce store because you don’t have to deal with inventory, credit card processing, customer service and returns since they company one the other ends deals with that and give you a commission on each sale.

In my next article I’ll be taking each of the three methods, and all the variants and discussing the pros and cons of each. Over the next few weeks we will look into what can be done and how much time, effort, and expense if involved in each method and how you can be successful running an ecommerce business yourself.

Next up we’ll cover the process where you or your business has money to invest in the ecommerce business but not the technical chops so you hire a company to do your ecommerce site: Lots of Capital but not a lot of Technical next!

Spending the same amount of money, and yes more time, on data mining and analysis might just benefit your revenue and profits in a far greater and more sustainable way.  How would you like to actually decrease your traffic and, at the same time, double or triple your online business?  Making more out of less is always a strong part of any good business plan.

Dan Horn & Noh Limits is a member and contributor to StephenDGross.com and BrookstoneMarketingGroup.com

Time after time we listen to conversation concerning traffic generation and traffic conversion when using Google Adwords and Google Analytics.  These days financial dreams are planted in the chase of the all-mighty click through ratio (CTR), conversion ratio and goal funnel success.

In addition to the obvious benefit of using these Google tools for directly growing your revenue is the tremendous benefit of data mining.  Data mining, used correctly, can grow your business faster and more profitably than any online marketing strategy.  That’s right!

The professional Internet Marketer should know the value of this well known but seemingly elusive method for reverse engineering your online marketing campaigns.

So what are the benefits of data mining?

We’ve experienced overall conversion rate increases of 100’s of percentage points.   Bounce rates, specification page exits, and navigation detours tremendously decreased.  Customer loyalty and re-visits have been increased up to four-fold.  Other side benefits include the ability to incorporate better customer services practices and inventory control.

What is the result of this sometimes painstaking and often tedious work?

Spending $10-20,000.00 on marketing online expense will certainly bring additional traffic.  However, you may end up pouring more water into a large bucket with many holes.  The increases in traffic might snare additional revenue but can you afford the expense drain and lower profitability?

Spending the same amount of money, and yes more time, on data mining and analysis might just benefit your revenue and profits in a far greater and more sustainable way.  How would you like to actually decrease your traffic and, at the same time, double or triple your online business?  Making more out of less is always a strong part of any good business plan.

Once you have honed your website into a fine tuned engine and have verifiable results then and only then might be time to ramp up your online marketing budget.  Use the lessons learned from data mining to create better metrics and a more sound online business.

Check out Brookstone Marketing Group for additional assistance.

Please feel free to leave a comment with your views on Google Adwords and Analytics.

Backlinks are a method used by SEO Marketers and Webmasters to increase the opportunity for getting better and higher listings with search engines.  Essentially, backlinks are mostly clickable links on an external domain or website that links to your domain or website.

Many popular websites have hundreds if not thousands of backlinks.  However, care must be taken when creating links, not to violate some very important rules the search engines use to value and/or discredit your website in its ranking.

First off,  Backlinks are a signal of the popularity or relevance of a website. Backlinks play a valuable role in SEO because search engines including Google, Yahoo, and Bing award value to websites in terms of quantity of links and quality or relevance of the backlink.

Search engines use many methods to determine the quality of the backlink.  Here is a simple list of do’s when constructing backlinks:

1. The linking site should have high relevancy to your site.

2.  Make sure the links or page do not have a “no-follow” command.

3.  Make sure the linking site allows anchor text links.

4. Try to link from pages with a Google Page Rank of 3 or higher.

5.  Look for sites that have been around a while.

In addition to following the do’s listed above, make sure you adhere to the following don’ts or your do’s will be negatively affected.

1.  No “free-for-all” links.  Sites that allow anyone to post an un-reviewed backlink.

2.  No “link farming”.  Pages with little value that contain 100’s of links.

3.  No “triangular linking, reciprocal linking”.  getting together with your buddies and only linking to each other or sharing the same IP.

4.  No “no-follow, robot.txt” attributes and meta tags.  Sites or links that contain a link or robot meta tag that tells the robot to ignore your link or page.

5.  No “broken links”.  Website and links that contain broken links.

The opinions, art, and craft of backlinking is a wide and various matter.  Research into backlinking may in fact leave you confused and dismayed.  However, by instituting a methodical and planned approach you should see a quick return on your investment.

Don’t forget that backlinks will also help to create a sense of authority and trust in the eyes of your visitor.  Try to use visible and apparent links to or from websites that offer your visitor high relevance but low competitive value.  For instance, if you sell bicycles, try linking to or from a site that offers advice about riding or maintaining bicycles.  Try using Blogs, Articles, and Press Releases with content about bicycles in general to “kill two birds with one stone”.

From a conversion standpoint, when linking to an external site, try opening a new window when developing the external link.

Check out Brookstone Marketing Group for additional assistance.

Please feel free to leave a comment with your views on backlinking.

I’m sure most online marketers have their own opinions, some even based on research, concerning the top ways to get ranked in the organic, free search, listings (SEO).  We have listed below what we have used to successfully promote and obtain the coveted top listing on the 1st page of search engine results.  These listings should not be considered to be in rank of priority or a task list in terms of importance.  These steps should be implemented in combination for a quality compounding affect.

1. Title Tag: relevant to the targeted keyword search term.

2. Header Tags: Relevant to the page title.

3. Meta Tags: Keyword relevance and organic listing content.

4. Alt/Anchor Text and Links: Must be relevant to linked Page and content.

5. Content: Relevant to keyword density, page title, and the reader.

6. Backlinks: Relevant to Linking Quality and Quantity

7. Pages: Relevant to category navigation, landing pages, and internal linking.

8. Site Map: Relevant to Search Engine Navigation.

9. Online Media Channeling: Relevant to Links and Popularity.

10. Joint Ventures: Relevant to Links, Content, Community, and Authority.

What is your SEO strategy?  Leave a comment.

Visit Brookstone Marketing Group for more information.

Do you know the top SEO technique?

Backlinks are commonly ranked in the top 5 in terms of most important steps for ranking your website or webpage on the front page of search engine results.  So what are the top three backlink criteria for using this critical factor for getting moved up on the SEO ladder?

1. Keyword Relevancy – Make sure the links back to your page are relevant to the page content.  Anchor text,      Title & Meta Tags, and Content all play a valuable role and should be addressed before creating the link.  Keywords are often compared by the search engines to establish relevancy within the link and search engine result page.

2. High Value Links: Establish your links with pages with a high Page Rank value.  PageRank results from a “ballot” among all the other pages on the World Wide Web about how important a page is. A hyperlink to a page counts as a vote of support. The PageRank of a page is defined recursively and depends on the number and PageRank metric of all pages that link to it (”incoming links“). A page that is linked to by many pages with high PageRank receives a high rank itself. If there are no links to a web page there is no support for that page. (Click here for more Page Rank information)

3. Avoid NoFollow – Avoid backlinks with Nofollow in the HTML  attributes.  In a nutshell, nofollows are intended to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing from occurring. (Click here for more Nofollow information)

Make sure you or your SEO professional understands and implements a strong Backlink practice when getting your website or webpage ranked in the search engines.  Remember quality of backlinks often trumps quantity when getting ranked high in search engine results.

Having trouble with backlinks?  Leave a comment.

Provided by Brookstone Marketing Group

What expertise should I look for?

Research: What experiences and what tools are used to identify Keywords and Keyword phrases used in further research and future content?  What practices are used to identify people and tribes of potential customers?  What mechanisms are in place to identify optimum response rates?

Without a doubt the world of content creation has finally reached its Internet maturity.  Just like Branding, content is the fingerprint of your image and authority.

What is content?  The answer is practically everything that is written and/or read by a viewer and a search engine.  Content includes product descriptions & specs, instructions, FAQ’s, title tags, Ads, Blogs, Forums, Press releases, Articles, and many other forms of electronic display.

Read more…

Learn more from Brookstone Marketing Group

The top seminar question these days is: how does someone decide on a strategy for Internet Marketing if you don’t have a starting point?

The answer is somewhat difficult to answer.  Brookstone has identified over 15 marketing channels available within the online marketing environment.  Picking which one or better yet which ones are best suited for your business requires more knowledge and experience than a typical small business owner possesses.

The easiest general marketing channels to understand are Social Media Marketing, Pay-Per-Click, and of course SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or Free Listings.  Of these three, generally speaking, Social Media Marketing requires the least amount of expense.

PPC can absorb anyone’s budget very rapidly if not monitored on a daily basis.  In addition, the knowledge required for success in combining the affects of keywords, Ad copy, page quality, content relativity, and ad positioning can be a somewhat daunting task for the beginner.  PPC can provide a very rapid increase in revenue and profits if performed wisely.

SEO requires a lot of patience and skill to get your listing anywhere near visible.  Getting your listing on the front page often requires a lot of testing and many months of waiting.  The end result can be very lucrative if your listing appears on the front page and top listing.

Social Marketing has the lowest cost of entry for both cost and time.  A beginner can usually make some impact on their customer leads within days.  However, the avid Social Marketer knows how to employ a solid overall strategy to optimize the results in a very big way.

The best social marketing strategy includes reciprocity, a commitment to scheduled postings, the ability to listen, transparency, community, and above all honesty.  Failure to include, at the very least, these main criteria can drastically damage your results and possibly your reputation

To get additional information click here: Brookstone Marketing Group

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