MJM Ecommerce's Blog

Paid Search: Holiday Ramp-Up

2009-08-25T19:19:00.000-07:00

As you're getting ready to ramp-up your PPC campaigns for the holiday be sure to check out the major retailers in your category for valuable competitive information. When you look at the major retailers or competition look for product identifiers. While you and a competitor might carry a similar product, your competition might use a different product identifier and its an opportunity for you to capture new traffic and customers.

On retailer sites like Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target, look for information like:

ISBN-10

ISBN-13

ASIN

Item Model Number

Item #

Don't forget to add the product's name and manufacturer ID in your list of keywords/phrases. Let's use the Garmin nuvi 780 as an example:

On Garmin's site, you'll see Part Number: 010-00657-05

On Amazon's site, you'll see ASIN: B0011UEUNG and Item model number: Nuvi 780. If you're savvy enough, you'll also pick out the unique identifiers in the URL.

On Crutchfield's site you'll find Item #150NUVI780.

For one product on three sites, there are at least three unique identifiers (I'm not including the Item model number from Amazon). While these may generate small amounts of traffic (and typically a very low CPC) in your campaign they may convert more often. The Internet is ultimately a research tool and many people will research a product before buying. The buying decision may be based on several factors including price, taxes, shipping costs, etc. The more often you appear in the search funnel the more likely you are to convert a visitor into a customer.

Holiday Planning for Online Retailers: Promotions

2009-07-30T10:11:00.000-07:00

Promotions

This is separate from online marketing and a lot of what is mentioned below depends on what your platform can handle. If you have a flexible platform, you can get creative in the promotions you offer and that can open new doors to incremental sales.

When I set out to create promotions, I lay out some goals I want to achieve and look at forecasts to see what I need to push hard. Again, pull year to date data and last year’s data (segregate November and December) to create a baseline. Here’s what you’re looking for:

- Top 10 products by units
- Top 10 products by dollars
- Average order value (total revenue divided by total number of orders)
- Units per transaction (total number of units sold divided by orders)

Break these numbers down by:
- Year to Date (YTD) 2009
- 2008
- November and December 2008 (if you have time, track these data points by week)

Compare your YTD 2009 numbers to your 2008 and November/December 2008 numbers. Is there growth this year over last? What’s the delta between YTD 2009 and holiday 2008? Create some goals that you want your promotions to achieve, such as:

- Promotions should result in 10% AOV increase
- Promotions should result in 10% UPT increase
- Promotions should bump Product X into the top 5 products for a given period

For promotions that involve increasing AOV and UPT, consider these options
- Set a qualifying order amount (based on product sub-total) to get free ground shipping
- Tiered discounts (e.g. Save 10% When You Spend $50, Save 15% When You Spend $75, etc.)
- Gift with purchase when you spend $X
- Buy 2 (or whatever amount) and get the third at 50% off
- Gift with purchase when you buy products A, B, C

If you need to increase sales volume on specific products consider offering a discount on that particular product. Examples include:

- Save X% when you buy Product X
- Get the second unit at X% off

Try creating bundles and promoting it as a separate SKU and offering a discount. You’re enticing customers to buy more than one product and providing an incentive to do so.

Put these promotions on your shared calendar so everyone on your team knows what’s coming. Stage products your promoting so that all the shipping team has to do is slap on a shipping label. If you’re like me, create a spreadsheet and track the promotions on a daily basis to get a sense of what they’re doing. Be sure to share these great results with your team and higher ups so everyone can share in the excitement of what they’re taking part in.

Next up…Online Marketing!

Woopra: Better Than TV

2009-07-30T08:23:00.000-07:00

This is my third post on Woopra...no, I'm not paid by them! Just this morning, over the course of 15 minutes, I watched three customers come to one of the sites we manage and make a purchase. They came from different parts of the country and two bought form the same designer. It was interesting to see, in real time, the browsing behavior of these three people before they made their purchases. While two bought form the same designer, one was looking for something completely different. Our merchandising strategy paid off in this case because the individual clicked on a related products item, browsed the collection from that designer and made a purchase. This particular customer came in through adwords for a different designer and I now know that the conversion can't be directly attributed to that term. Yes, that term brought the customer in, but, the customer didn't buy a product from that designer. Watching this behavior also has me working on some new category page layouts in an effort to convert visitors into customer more quickly.

This is fun stuff, and if you think its fun too...get Woopra.

Holiday Planning for Online Retailers: Shipping

2009-07-29T12:37:00.000-07:00

One of the worst situations you can find yourself in is not being able to fulfill the orders you’ve worked so hard to generate. Prepare by assessing your previous holiday outbound shipping needs and adjust for this year by taking into account your forecast. Here are some considerations to keep in mind while you’re planning:

Staff
Your shipping team is an important part of the ecommerce department because they’re the ones sending products to the customer. Understand your staffing needs and make sure you have a core group of individuals who understand the products, standards you set in shipping, processes and have experienced the holiday rush in your business. These individuals will be key in making sure shipping goes smoothly and the new guys understand what is required of them

Supplies
One of the most overlooked elements of shipping is supplies. Don’t assume your vendor(s) will have the stock when you need it because they likely have other customers who want supplies when you do. Forecast your supply needs and negotiate cost with your vendor. Because you’re buying in advance, they should be willing to cut you some deals which ultimately helps to lower your per order fulfillment cost. If you’re tight on space ask them if they will store and deliver as needed – but they have to be close enough to your fulfillment center to make this an effective solution.

Shipping Rates
Here’s where you can save extra money. First, pull your shipping invoices from the previous two years and record the dollar amount per shipping method (ground, 2 day, etc.). Second, figure out how many orders you expect to ship this year and break it down by ground, 2 day, etc. Third, determine the zones to which you ship most often. Lastly, call your rep at UPS and FedEx. Tell them you want to negotiate shipping rates for the holiday and be prepared to show them your analysis. Play your UPS and FedEx reps against each other to get the best possible rates and get it in writing.

Shipping Calendar
Ask your shipping rep to give you a calendar of shipping dates for the holiday season. You need to understand your shipping window so you get orders in customers hands in a timely fashion. There’s no better way to lose customers than to deliver gifts on the 26th. Run Guaranteed to Get There promotions based on the shipping windows listed in the calendar.

Processes
Get your shipping team, customer service team and order processing team (or whatever teams you have in the order fulfillment chain) in one room and iron out any hiccups there are in the fulfillment process. Communication is key and designate point people along each step who will be responsible for communicating with others and raising the red flag when necessary.

Next up...Promotions!

Holiday Planning for Online Retailers: Merchandising

2009-07-28T19:17:00.000-07:00

Planning is the difference between success and failure. One of the additional benefits of planning is it makes life easier during the hustle and bustle of the holiday rush. Well, it may not make it easier in terms of longer lunch breaks, but, it’ll allow you to do other things that generate incremental revenue. Here are some of the things you should look at for your merchandising plan:

Home Page & Category Plans
Plan your home page and category page refreshes in advance. By ‘refresh’ I mean update imagery and products. Pull together data from last year to see what products did well and what page locations generated the most clicks and dollars. Also pull together the same data for this year. Take a look at your forecasts, market trends and plan your refreshes accordingly. Get your creative assets lined up and present mockups to stakeholders for final blessings.

Cross sells & Up sells
Cross-sells/Up-sells: This is an oft-overlooked merchandising area either because retailers don’t have the capability in their ecommerce platform or simply don’t know how to do this. Pull reports to determine most profitable product correlations. Basically, when product X is bought how often is product A, B, C, etc bought? This data will help you determine how to merchandise your cross-sells and up-sells. Of course, there are other factors you may consider for this: new products, forecasts, recent trends, etc.

Buyers guide
This is an excellent way to guide people’s buying decisions and get SEO benefit. Keep it simple by targeting price points, demographics and themes.

Category updates
Update your navigation to include categories like Gifts for Him, Gifts for Her Gifts Under $50, etc. Your specific business might require different categories, but, the goal here is to help people make purchases as efficiently as possible.

Next up...Shipping!

Holiday Planning for Online Retailers

2009-07-28T18:58:00.000-07:00

The end of summer is near (where did it go already?!?) and the holiday is quickly approaching. Many online retailers are starting to think about what they’re doing for this all important retail season while others haven’t even given it a moment’s thought. Either way, what I want to do is provide you with some basic things to consider in your holiday planning sessions (if you’re already planning) or to get your wheels spinning (if you’re busy sipping frozen drinks on the beach…which isn’t a bad thing!!).

In the next few posts I'm going to discuss Merchandising, Shipping, Promotions, Online Marketing and Technology. To kick off this series, I'm going to suggest you have three things lined up:

Online Calendar
- Use this for scheduling and enter important dates
- Share this with people in your department
- Check out: Google Calendar, Apple’s Mobile Me (great for Mac and PC users) or Yahoo Calendar

Online file storage
- Eventually you have to leave the office, but, you or someone on your team will need access to a file. If your company doesn’t have VPN setup, consider signing up for online file storage
- Check out: Apple’s Mobile Me, SharePoint (look at hosted versions) or Box.net

Excel Spreadsheets
- You gotta love spreadsheets. When you have your plan set, create spreadsheets to track promotions, home page refreshes, etc.
- It helps you understand what’s working and not in relation to the other parts

The next post is on Merchandising.

- Julian

Search Engine Optimization at the Beginning of a New Site Build

2009-07-28T07:12:00.000-07:00

I was doing some SEO research and came across an article written by Chris Boggs that talks about the importance of SEO when building a site. Specifically, how search engine optimization needs to be part of the build plan and not an afterthought for when the site is launched.

If SEO is done after a site is launched, it can actually present more problems than if you were to do it at the front end of development. Reason being, you may have to make many tweaks to your site's code to handle the changes you want/need to make. This can also lead to an ugly looking site.

We've done search engine optimization on some sites where SEO was done post-launch. After auditing a particular site we proposed numerous changes to optimize the site which cost the client a decent sum. This cost could've been avoided in two ways:

1. SEO up front: if you don't have in-house SEO, hire a consultant or firm to be part of the site build team

2. Choose the right CMS or Ecommerce platform: Right off the bat, the client could've saved money by choosing the right content management system (CMS). There are numerous CMS options out there so you should carefully analyze each option before choosing one that best fits your needs.

Our site build process includes SEO on the front end and is a major component of the build plan. SEO presents the best ROI over the long term and if you're not ranking well for your business critical terms then what's the point of the site? Seriously! It's like a store without a sign...you exist, but, no one knows who you are or what you do.

When we do an ecommerce implementation, we use Magento and it is a great platform for SEO. Some of the things we like about it for SEO:

- Each page can be customized with unique meta data, page title and URL. Sounds simple, but, you'll be surprised how many sites don't have this

- Dynamic Sitemaps: the platform will create sitemaps for Google and the site itself. When you add/delete a page the sitemap is automatically updated

- Tags: a customer can organize their shopping experience with product tags. Sally might browse a selection of couches for her living room and might tag them as 'living room couches.' This creates a tag associated with those products and not only can she see that tag...you and the search engines can see it. The more that tag is used, the bigger it gets and eventually it'll get an H1 tag

- Popular Search: this simple, but, very useful feature aggregates all site searches onto one page for visitors and search engines alike to view. What does this mean for SEO? It means you get a page with a bunch of links and great anchor text leading to products. Again, the more often that term is searched the bigger it'll get. Here's an example from Bruges Home

- Add content to category/sub-category pages. To maximize this, develop unique and descriptive copy that targets a couple key terms

There are several other features that can be leveraged to maximize a site's search engine performance, but, the key thing is to make SEO a priority on the front end. If you do this, you'll have a better site, you'll save money and you'll get more organic traffic.

- Julian

Our New Website

2009-07-08T21:19:00.000-07:00

We just launched our new website! Consider it version 2 with an update coming later in July.

Visit the newMJM Ecommerce site

Developing Ad Copy for Your SEM Campaign

2009-06-25T13:02:00.000-07:00

I'm in process of optimizing a campaign for a client and thought it would be a useful post to provide some guidelines on how to write ad copy. I'm going to approach this at a high level for now.

1. Make sure your ad copy is relevant to your ad group and landing page. The more relevant your ad is to the search query and landing page content, the better your Quality Score will be and you will experience some cost savings.

2. Using AdWords as the specific example, you've got three lines to work with for a total of 95 characters. Break down each line into three distinct sections:

a. The Headline (25 characters): like headlines in newspapers, you've got to attract the searchers attention. Keep in mind
you're vying for the attention of a searcher who is looking at organic results and your competitors ads.

b. First Description Line (35 characters): you'll find yourself getting creative to convey your message within the character
limitations. State the product/service you're offering in this first line. Its the set-up for line two....

c. Second Description Line (35 characters): here you want to trigger an action. "Buy now" is a call to action and tells people
what to expect when they click on your ad.

I recommend you develop ad copy in excel, create multiple versions and use the LEN formula to calculate character count. Don't implement your ad copy right away no matter how compelling it is. Sleep on it and approach it later to make sure the ads make sense as a whole and clearly state the value a searcher will experience by going to your site. Implement 3 versions of ad copy and see which one performs better (be sure to allow the ads to be displayed evenly).

Successful Paid Search Optimization

2009-06-24T22:01:00.000-07:00

Its only been four days since we optimized this account, but, we're really excited about the results so far. When we calculated daily averages before and after the optimization we saw some incredible improvements in such a short time:

- Average CPC decreased 33%
- Clicks increased 63%
- CTR increased 42%
- Conversions increased 58%
- Cost/Conv. decreased 36%
- Cost rose just 8%

Friends Getting Props

2009-06-24T21:58:00.000-07:00

Check out our friends from Klick Studios recent mention in this article about the best examples of light and space effects in web design.

Great Cause

2009-06-24T21:54:00.000-07:00

A friend's son and wife came up with a great idea to help people who lost their job in this tough economy. Imagine if you lost your job today. Visit Gift Cards for Dinner and donate your unspent restaurant gift cards to those less fortunate.

Woopra

2009-06-24T21:41:00.000-07:00

376 days ago I blogged about Woopra and I'm at it again because you should use it.

It's not replacing Google Analytics or other ewb analytics tools, but, it is providing me with data I love...real-time data. You can see in real-time the visitors come to your site, click through your site pages and hopefully complete a conversion action. Here are some reasons to check it out:

1. Client engagement: one client I enabled this for as a test run is loving the tool. In fact, I'm getting the reaction I hoped for. They are looking at the data and asking questions. These questions lead to great action which has turned into sales

2. Customer Service: since you can view visitors in real time you will be able to help them as they navigate your site. Get them on the phone or live chat and you'll be able to see their exact click through path and help them complete a sale. The other side is, if you see people hitting a common stopping point then you can address the issue ASAP.

3. Marketing Campaigns: we launched an email yesterday and I was able to watch the people come in from around the world and click through the site. It was great to see hundreds of visitors hit the site at the same time and see who was buying.

Sign up for an account an install it on your site ASAP.

Long Time

2009-04-11T22:21:00.000-07:00

Its been a while since we posted anything on our blog. Its mostly due to the fact we have so many projects right now that we don't have time for ourselves. Its the case of of the cobbler's son.

I do have to blog about the extraordinary success we're having with two tanning salon campaigns we're running. The two salons are owned by the same company, but, target different geographical areas. Combined they have locations from coast to coast and now is the peak season for the franchises.

We started a PPC campaign for one of the salons last year and it works incredibly well. The campaign incorporates some lifestyle ad groups focusing on needs. For example, brides and bridesmaids will be working on their tans soon. Bodybuilders tan before a contest to further accentuate their muscle definition. Of course, the impression rates for these ad groups are lower than the others, but, they get a better click through rate and conversion rate. Users are directed to print a coupon for use at their nearest location and the parent company reports a 35% increase in salon foot traffic.

The sister salon was started on a PPC campaign in March and it is doing even better than the other. Click through rates are running about 10% and essentially the same keywords were used for this campaign. I attribute this to a few things:

1. We're running it ;)
2. Conversion tracking is helping identify winners from the get go
3. The promotion is better...or at least that's the way we see it
4. These salon locations are in more heavily populated areas
5. Campaign organization. There are 12 franchise owners with their own budgets. The way its organized now we can better manage the campaigns.
6. Acquisio's PPC management tol is helping us better run campaigns and the reporting feature allows us to focus more on actual campaign management. I hated doing reports, but, Aquisio is making tha a lot easier

That's it for now, but, we'll back soon. We've got a lot in the pipeline and we'll be telling the world pretty soon.

Google Affiliates

2008-08-21T20:25:00.000-07:00

Anyone know much revenue you need to pull in to qualify?

Free Comparison Shopping Engines

2008-08-21T20:12:00.000-07:00

Talking about Comparison Shopping Engines (aka CSEs) with colleagues or peers in online marketing will get you mixed reactions because the results are equally mixed. Some retailers turn on CSEs during the holidays while others maintain a presence year round. How yoou approach it depends largely on your budget and plans. However, you owe it to yourself to check out TheFind! (www.thefind.com) and ShopWiki (www.shopwiki.com) which are two free CSEs. I recently got a client on TheFind! and it generated sales within two days of going live and is still pumping out results.

Complete End to End Enterprise Ecommerce Solution

2008-08-07T06:48:00.000-07:00

MJM Ecommerce is growing and it's been a very fun summer for us. We’ve signed on some exciting partners for complete ecommerce implementation and management and others for online marketing management. We’ve also teamed up with a prominent Memphis agency to provide online marketing services for their clients.

Perhaps one of the most exciting developments has been the recent inclusion of a call center and fulfillment facility. This is particularly exciting because now we are able to truly provide a complete end to end ecommerce business solution to our partners. We’ll be able to provide a robust ecommerce platform, design, marketing, strategy, call center and fulfillment solution to businesses that want to start an online business or improve an existing one.

The call center specifically presents an opportunity for our partners to grow their business because it allows agents to interact with customers and guide them through the buying process. Essentially, this creates another sales channel for the business that is extremely important. Through our collective experience, a call center can generate around 30-40% of revenue for an online business. It’s important to note that a professional call center is more effective than having store employees answer calls during their shift to provide customer service.

If you’re interested in learning more about our complete end to end solution we invite you to contact MJM Ecommerce.

To Ship Free...or Not?

2008-07-17T06:33:00.000-07:00

Free Shipping is a staple promotion among online retailers and for good reason. A recent PayPal and comScore study showed that 43% of shoppers abandoned shopping carts because of shipping costs. That leaves 57% of shoppers who started a shopping cart to go through your checkout process and dropoff because of other reasons (i.e. taxes, price shopping, etc.). Depending on numerous factors, your conversion rate may be around the 2% range.

Free Shipping may be more of a drain on retailers’ bottom line nowadays because of rising fuel costs. Recently, UPS updated their fuel surcharges to as high as 32% for air shipments! So this opens up a variety of questions for an online retailer that wants to increase (or at least maintain) year over year revenue numbers in this not-so-favorable economic climate.

Should I Keep Free Shipping?
Dig into your numbers and see what impact free shipping has on order volume, conversion rate, average order value, shipping costs, shipping revenue and margin before and after the fuel prices rose. If these numbers were favorable before fuel prices became burdensome then you need to consider keeping the promotion active and changing some qualifiers. After all, this is a temporary (not sure how temporary) situation and economic downturns are an opportunity to gain market share and grow rapidly when the economy turns around.

I have always approached free shipping promotions as a way to boost order volume, units per transaction, average order value and conversion. To do this I put in minimum order values to qualify for the promotion. There are multiple factors to consider, including: average online order value, shipping discounts you receive and your competition.

As a rule of thumb, I start with the minimum qualifying order value as the online average order value. Then I look at what increase in AOV I’d need to achieve to offset the lost shipping revenue to maintain a favorable margin. In most cases this has turned out to be 15% more than current online AOV. What you’ll find is that you may realize a 40% increase in actual AOV from the promotion.

Your shipping discounts and competition will weigh in on where you actually set the minimum order qualifier. If you ship out large volumes with UPS or FedEx you probably get great discounts. If not, renegotiate your rates with your rep and be sure to use their competitors to your advantage (i.e. tell your UPS rep that you’re strongly looking at FedEx for ground shipments and vice versa). If your own competition is offer free shipping at lower order amounts then you need to see what you can do to get near that level because you want to take away their customers. This leads into the next question….

What Alternatives Do I have?
To cut down on your shipping costs and offer free shipping at low order amount qualifiers you can consider using USPS. Using regular mail offers advantages over the other carriers because it’s a lot cheaper. However, disadvantages are present when using USPS. For example, you don’t get tracking with regular mail. Tracking only comes with Priority mail and even that is close to useless because you only see when it leaves and when it reaches the customer. The lack of visibility of what happens in between can cause customer service nightmares. But, it’s still worth a look if you’re selling non-perishable items and tell customers up front what to expect.

Look at your packaging materials. Can you cut down on your box dimensions, the type of dunnage used, and if product can be shipped without a box. The later is a perfect opportunity for apparel retailers and book retailers to use biodegradable plastic shipping wrappers because it can be folded down to nearly the exact dimensions of the product and is much lighter than using a box and dunnage.

When marketing your free shipping promotion be sure to use some real life cues to help get your message across. By shopping online your customers can save money (and time) by not traveling to a store and standing in line and they may save on sales tax.

Online Investment

2008-07-14T13:14:00.000-07:00

In the most recent issue of Internet Retailer (July 2008), the Publisher’s Letter (written by Kurt Peters) talks about Moody’s Investor Services recent move to more heavily weigh a retailer’s online revenues when rating their debt. “A Strong online presence is considered a ratings positive more frequently than in the past because it represents such an important channel of distribution and can mitigate declining comparable-store sales trends,” according to Moody’s.

There were a couple points driven home in this article that new and existing multi-channel retailers should keep in mind as they assess their own online investments. But first, take these numbers into account:

Moody’s has a 40% share of the worldwide credit ratings market

First quarter 2008 online sales grew 13.6% year over year versus retail sales growth of 2.8% for the same period

Online sales growth has been very strong for several years as the shift of consumer spending from bricks and mortar to online continues. As this growth continues the percentage increase will decline because the revenue base continues to grow. Taking the news from Moody’s, you can bet companies are taking this seriously and looking very hard at how they invest resources into their online business.

For smaller retailers this is an opportunity to carve out niches and leverage growth to compete effectively and take market share over time. If you don’t have a large budget, carefully spend your money in those areas that will grow your business and areas that will support that growth. There are a lot of great tools out there that generate incremental revenue, but, that increase may not be worth the investment of your limited resources.

Focus on areas that grow your build your brand, generate sustainable revenue and increase market share. Look at your customer service. Are you taking care of customers to the fullest and increasing the profitability of the relationship? Look at your fulfillment…are you cutting unnecessary costs and finding ways to encourage sales conversions? Look at your site…is it efficiently converting visitors into customers?

As mobile commerce becomes more of a reality with devices such as the iPhone and Blackberry its up to the retailer to step up and take their piece of the pie. As a consumer, I have a web app loaded on my iPhone to compare prices when I go shopping at stores. On several occasions, I have gone into a store (i.e. Target, Barnes and Noble) and used this app to find better prices online and even completed the transaction before leaving the store. This is going to happen more and more as people have better mobile devices and want more convenience in their hectic lives.

Mobile commerce is going to quickly become a reality for some of our retailers in the coming weeks and we’re excited to see the growth. For these partners, they will be the first in their respective industries to have a mobile optimized site. These sites will be mentioned after going live.

I suggest you take a few moments to assess your online investments and determine where you’re headed. If you’re in a rut, you need to quickly rejuvenate as the holiday season approaches. Speaking of holiday, you should be acquiring more new customers than at any other time of the year and you need to groom that relationship. Every order that leaves your door is an opportunity to create or nurture a relationship. Do simple things over the holiday to make your customers feel appreciated. Include a simple holiday card in a box thanking the customer and wishing them a great holiday season. If the order is a gift for someone else, make sure that package contains everything it needs to and everything looks perfect because it’s about to go to a potential new customer. Start early and you’ll be thankful later.

Woopra Website Analytics

2008-06-14T06:21:00.000-07:00

I can't recall what search query I did, but, on Thursday I stumbled across Woopra website analytics. It's free and in beta mode and Woopra makes the claim of being the "world's most comprehensve, information rich, easy to use real-time web tracking and analysis package.' That's a pretty bold statement to make especially when you think of other analytics packages out there (i.e. Omniture) that take web analytics to the next level, but, I guess they qualify the claim by saying 'real-time web tracking and analysis package.'

I was interested enough to implement Woopra on this blog and give it a test run. Set up was simple, but, not quick because I had to wait for approval which came the next day. So yesterday I had my approval code and I quickly set up Woopra by inserting a short snippet of code. Then, I had to download an application which wouldn't work on my Mac so I put it on my PC.

Now that I inserted the tracking code and the application was installed and running I could instantly see who was on the E-Facts blog. The application interface has a nice look to it and is very informative right off the bat. There's a ticker at the bottom showing 5 visitor metrics and the dashoard shows you what pages are being/have been viewed, referrers, search queries and visitor countries.

The 'Live' tab shows me details of the current visitors including geographic location, browser, operating system, navigation path, and visitor history. Other tabs include 'Search'(search for visitors), 'Analytics' (includes 5 sub-tabs) and 'Manage' (create custom event notifications).

The features that I really liked were 'Start a Conversation' (live chat) and 'Tag This Visitor.' Clicking on 'Start a Conversation' opens a live chat window allowing you to communicate with a specific visitor. Its cool, but, also creepy at the same time. This is all facilitated through the tracking snippet I inserted into the HTML. 'Tag This Visitor' allows you to give a name to a specific visitor. To test this, I tagged myself and I see what pages I've visited, browser I'm using, country, etc.

Woopra certainly won't replace the analytics packages I use (Omniture and Google Analytics), however, I'm going to keep it on this blog and consider it as a supplement on other sites. It's going to be an excellent tool to provide me with instant gratification especially when a new campaign is implemented. Nothing like seeing the fruits of your labor in real-time!

From a customer service and marketing perspective, the customer tagging and live chat presents some unique opportunities. We use Magento for our ecommerce platform and the reporting provides insight on a visitor's current location on the site. So, when a customer calls in and mentions a specific page they're on the CS agent can look into Magento to verify the location of the visitor then go into Woopra and tag the customer. As an extra verification, you can instruct the customer to visit another page and you should see that page appear in their Woopra profile. Now, you can see where this customer goes and what they do in future visits! That's a marketing goldmine. The live chat feature should be used carefully. There's the potential of spooking visitors and causing them to never return. Be cautious with this one.

Check out Woopra and let us know what you think.

Enhance Customer Service, Marketing and Online Reputation Management: Part 1

2008-05-25T22:17:00.000-07:00

This post is a mash up of two previous posts with some new information. This is about using all the information resources available on the web to enhance your brand and customer service, but, the emphasis will be on social networks. Why social networks? Well, consider that the basis of social networks is building communities of friends and other like-minded individuals. And, there's not enough time to get into all the other informational resources!

Let's focus on Twitter as a tool to enhance your customer service, marketing and online reputation management. From a customer service standpoint, you can use Twitter to monitor all the mentions of your brand and get a pulse on how people interact with your brand. To make this easy on yourself, use Summize to quickly search all the mentions of your brand. Type in your brand and see if any conversations pop-up. If Summize returns results for your brand then you should be flattered (if all positive) that people talk about the brand. If you don't get any returns, then its a marketing opportunity which will be discussed in the next post.

Assuming you see conversations about your brand, quickly go over the conversations and get a feel for what people are saying and how they interact with the brand. There's nothing like an unmoderated and candid forum to gauge how much people like what you do or offer. Its inevitable people will have some negative comment to make and that should be an opportunity for you to make good. After all, customers remember you most when you make a bad situation a positive one. If you find a negative comment, reach out to that individual and let him/her know you want to make good on the negative experience they had and invite them to email/call you at their convenience to hash out the issue. After you take care of the situation and the person is happy, ask them to mention it on Twitter and give them an incentive to move quickly (i.e. free shipping on next order).

Roll this out slowly and build on your experiences. Create a plan of action that addresses who is responsible for checking Twitter/Summize, how often it will be done, customer follow up and reporting. Its important that an individual is assigned this task and they are given guidelines for customer follow ups, empowered to act quickly and have the ability to report on resolution (i.e. SugarCRM).

This is an opportunity to engage customers in another medium and show the importance you place on their ongoing experiences with your brand.

SEO Software Update

2008-05-02T20:21:00.000-07:00

In a recent post I said we weren't ready to change/replace WebPosition...well, things have changed. I was convinced to switch to WebCEO (http://www.webceo.com/). What's great for businesses with a tight budget is you can get a lot of functionality for free. That's right...WebCEO has a free version that has a lot of great features.

Its definitely worth checking out as another tool to put in your SEO toolbelt.

Monitor Your Online Reputation

2008-04-22T11:09:00.000-07:00

An issue that repeatedly comes up for businesses is monitoring their online reputation. With all the new mediums these days, it’s hard to keep up with who is saying what about you and your business. If you have any customers, it’s safe to assume someone has said something about your business online. The easiest way to monitor this is by utilizing Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts). Simply enter your keywords, frequency and your email address. I recommend setting ‘Type’ to comprehensive so you get full coverage across the web.

Use this tool to see where your site is being mentioned and in what context. If it’s good, then you should be happy and you may want to consider some marketing opportunities with that site. If it’s not all good, then you use it as an opportunity to correct the issue and make the customer happy.

I'm not going to name the business that recently benefited from using this Google service because they're trying to dig out of a whole caused by one of their customer service reps and its a public company. I was having lunch with the marketing manager and the topic of online reputation management came up. He wanted to know what he could to monitor the business and I suggested Google Alerts. Two days later, I get an email thanking me for this little but significant suggestion because he found a couple things. First, he got an alert for a total of 53 postings about a particular customer service representative who was very harsh with customers and basically didn't provide a level of service consistent with company policy. Several customers stated the rep used foul language with them, called them 'stupid' and hung up on several callers. The rep was immediately terminated. The other incident involved some issues of insider information being leaked to the public which is huge for a public company. After two weeks, the perpetrator was discovered and disciplined. This saved the company hundreds of thousands in fines from the SEC.

In short, if you're concerned about your business reputation on the web then you need to sign up now!

Contact MJM Ecommerce for ecommerce and online marketing solutions

Numbers to Chew On

2008-04-21T13:52:00.000-07:00

For those online marketers or business managers who engage in PPC and SEO take a look at these numbers from Nielson ReelResearch:

- When a brand name appeared in both natural search and paid search results, the brand attracted 92% of the total clicks
- Natural placement without paid search attracted only 60% of clicks

I’m going to write about advertising’s impact on search queries and how you can monetize other people’s efforts…so come back soon.

Promotions Test

2008-04-13T19:38:00.000-07:00

I recently ran a split test on an email list featuring two unique promotions. The first was free ground shipping on orders of $85 or more and the other was 15% off $85 or more. I chose $85 because I wanted to raise the bar by 10% over the current site AOV.

Each promotion was mailed to over 70,000 subscribers (total list is over 140K) and I waited to see which performed better. It was amazing to see how many orders were submitted for the free shipping promotion. In fact, the 15% discount email only generated 13 orders compared to the 89 orders for Free Shipping. I realize the studies show that more people are willing to pay full price and receive a shipping discount, but, I wanted to see if it held true for this subscriber base. The shipping cost on an $85 order is $7.50 and its clear that the better savings belonged to the 15% discount. According to this test, more people were willing to pay full price on products and receive free shipping because shipping costs are seen as an inconvenience. Be careful when you do a shipping promotion. You should clearly define the restrictions of free shipping because you don't want to send an order to Mexico (for example) for free.

Test promotions on your subscriber base and see what works for you. Always be willing to test because its the only way you'll learn what works and what doesn't work.

SEO Software

2008-04-13T19:30:00.000-07:00

Recently I was doing a google search for 'seo software' to keep abreast of any recent developments that may have occurred. I cam across SheerSEO which was the fifth listing on the first page of results. I hadn't seen them before, but, I was compelled to visit their site because the description line hit two things I was looking for: Google position and backlinks.

It turns out to be a great piece of SEO software that all internet marketers should add to their SEO toolbelt. I'm not ready to replace the other program we currently use (Web Position) because it doesn't have all the capabilities I want. However, its a web based application that provides me with data I can use when I'm out of the office and without my own computer. It can also be especially useful for small businesses that don't have large budgets or extensive SEO knowledge, but, need insight into their site's search engine performance.

Visit the site at www.sheerseo.com.

Crazy Egg – Visitor Visualization Analytics

2008-02-10T06:40:00.000-08:00

I read about this in a blog a couple weeks ago and that evening installed it on MJM Ecommece’s site. It’s a rather nice looking tool and simply takes what you get in Google Analytics (site overlay report) and makes it a little prettier. I’m using the free version of the tool at the moment to better understand the value of this tool. The subscription plans, otherwise, are very inexpensive.

It’ll be an excellent tool to visualize effectiveness of a new design or navigation scheme. We have an A/B test in the works and we’ll be sure to use Crazy Egg to supplement our reporting on the effectiveness of the test pages.

Try it on your site and let us know what you think. Visit www.crazyegg.com.

Google Matching Strategy: Broad, Phrase or Exact?

2008-01-29T06:28:00.000-08:00

Google AdWords allows users to enter identical search terms with different matching options. For instance, you can purchase the broad match term Buy Books. Any search query that contains "Buy" and "Books" regardless of order or other terms used may display a paid search listing because of the broad match term Buy Books used.

However, most paid search should not stop here. Broad match terms are often more expensive because you are competing with more matching and, hence, more competitors. A good option is to also include phrase match and exact match for the same terms. In this way, users can often pay lower cost-per-clicks when search engine users type in exact phrases.

In this case, you would enter and bid on the following keywords:

Buy Books -- Broad Match: Any search query that contains Buy and Books in any order and with any additional terms may serve your ad.
"Buy Books" -- Phrase Match: Any terms outside of the term Buy Books will result in this being served as long as "Buy Books" is in this exact order.
[Buy Books] -- Exact Match: only this exact term will generated a served results. Any additional terms, e.g. I Buy Books, will cause this to not be a match.

Remember, you can also set negative keywords. Negative keywords are terms you set in Google and will cause your ads to not display if certain terms are included with the search query.

Using matching options and negative keywords allows users to target different search niches and also gives better bidding options. Often times broad-match terms may need to be removed yet phrase and exact match options will yield positive results.

For help with your paid search campaigns, visit MJM Ecommerce.

Keyword Strategy

2008-01-24T07:31:00.000-08:00

I was going through a potential client’s existing keyword list for their paid search campaign and found an incredible hodge podge of terms that indicated a lack of clear objectives and strategy.

Whether you’re starting a new campaign or reorganizing a current one, you should ask yourself several questions, but, there is one I want to focus on:

1. What terms have people used to find my site?

Simple question right? You’ll be amazed at how many people don’t know this or simply rattle off terms in their PPC campaign. Use your analytics package to scour for terms that have been proven traffic generators. Look for patterns. Are people doing general searches and finding your site (i.e. t-shirt)? Are visitors finding your site by using your company name (i.e. company x)? Is it a combination of both (i.e. company x t-shirts)? Are they showing a propensity to buy through their queries (i.e. discount t-shirts)? Create a simple spread sheet that breaks out the terms under the following headers:

- generic
- generic plus brand
- buy trigger terms
- generic plus brand plus buy trigger

Do searches on these terms and do a competitive analysis. Where do you rank organically? Are there a lot of ads for that term? If you don’t rank well organically, buy the term. If there aren’t any other ads, buy the term. If you rank well, don’t see other ads…buy the term. You get the drift…buy the term and test it.

Use suggestions from Google/Yahoo/MSN and use tools like Word Tracker and Good Keywords to build out a more robust list. The point is to capture browsers at all phases of their buying cycle. The first phase is general research where the customer searches for a broad term like ‘t-shirt.’ After doing some research, the customer finds your company and does another search for ‘company x t-shirts’ to get more information on your company. The visitor likes what they see about your company and starts moving towards buying your product, but, now the focus shifts to finding the best price. Now the query is ‘discount t-shirt.’ The visitor finds your ad yet again and decides that you’re a prominent player in this category and wants to find the best price for your product. The query is now ‘discount company x t-shirt.’ Your ad appears again and you’ve closed the loop.

The cost to get that sale is going to depend on the competitive landscape for the term, but, you landed the sale and now you can work on building a profitable relationship. You should also buy placements for your specific product SKUs. You’ll find that people will do a search for your product SKU in the hopes of finding it elsewhere. If you’re selling a homogenous product (i.e. stereo) visit sites like Amazon, Best Buy, Circuit City or other dominant players in your industry and buy ads for their model numbers.

Here’s an example: I went to Amazon and did a search for ‘Sony TV.’ I picked up the ASIN # B000HGQJZW and did a search on it. You’ll see Amazon listed organically because its specific to Amazon. Better yet, there are no ads! Great opportunity to buy a cheap term and pick off customers from Amazon. I’ve had great success using this little strategy in the past.

Try this out and let me know if you need any help.

Upcoming CES Show

2007-12-31T15:41:00.000-08:00

I'm going to CES next week! Woo-hoo!

Sent from my iPhone

For Our Readers Only

2007-12-28T11:36:00.000-08:00

I just posted the last blog and thought it would be nice to help some folks out. Call MJM Ecommerce at 215.764.5712 and we'll audit your online marketing campaigns at no charge. There are no strings attached...there's no obligation to work with us...just contact us and we'll help you make the most of 2008 with actionable strategies.

Call us or email us at info@mjmecommerce.com

Paid Search is Getting Expensive

2007-12-28T11:22:00.000-08:00

I've been doing my year end recap to measure performance year over year and its been another prosperous year for our clients. The one thing that jumped out was the rise in PPC costs. I collected terms from each of the campaigns we run and compared costs year over year. Its amazing to see the increase. On average, the CPC rates rose 23% and some individual terms rose as much as 85%!

Some of these terms are brand specific terms and others are generic terms that are important to the business. This trend isn't totally alarming because CPC costs have been steadily rising over the psat few years. Analysts have predicted paid search campaigns would be much too costly for the small guys within the next 3 years.

This leads me to develop a new strategy for 2008 that involves an increase in SEO. My clients' marketing budgets can go a lot further if SEO is beefed up and a focus is put on improving organic ranks for critical terms. Doing this will allow me to use paid search as a supplement for those critical terms and divert money into other profitable channels.

Good luck to you in 2008 and start thinking more about SEO.

Customer Service (part 2)

2007-12-11T12:21:00.000-08:00

Part 2 of this series focuses more on actual phone systems, metrics and tools to close sales.

Many times a business owner will run out to Staples, pick up a few business phones and desks and call it a customer service operation. While this works if you're just starting out or don't field many calls, you should research getting the right equipment and making the investment for the long run. Why you ask? Getting the proper phone system in place will allow you to make your customer service operations more effective and efficient because you're giving employees the proper tools. Its akin to giving a web designer a 10 year old computer with an old version of PhotoShop. Sure, you may get the job done, but its going to take longer and the end product may not be as nice.

Nortel offers a great call center package that includes well-featured phones and software to track phone metrics. With their system, you can make your business look bigger than it actually is by having enterprise level functionality. For example, you can implement a phone tree (menu) and group employees according to skillset. For example, you can divide your employees into one group of order takers and another group for order follow up. The entire system can be managed through a web interface.

Measurement is the key to effective management. You need to know how many calls are coming in, call reason, how many hang up, how long it takes to answer, how long the calls last and how many calls convert into sales. Knowing these numbers allows you to hold employees accountable, take steps to improve, create promotions and set up contests to reward performance.

Here's a scenario of how all this ties in to effective customer service:

Your current operation brings in 100 calls per day. 30 calls are for order follow up, 20 calls are for order placement and 50 calls are general product inquiries. Only 5 orders are placed (5% total conversion) for 10 total products (UPT =2) for total revenue of $200 (AOV=$40).

Keep in mind every phone call is an opportunity to sell.

After reviewing concrete data, taking steps to improve processes and creating a bank of promotions you devise the following contest. Employees will qualify for the contest if the group generates $300 in revenue. From there, you calculate which employee contributed most to the revenue total and you award him/her.

This is a simplistic take on the situation, but, you can't argue the results when you have a motivated group of employees who are working toward realistic goals set forth after reviewing concrete data. Making the investment in proper equipment will pay off in spades in the near and long-term.

If you have a call center operation and need help maximizing your operation, contact MJM for information that will get you moving in the right direction. Email us at info@mjmecommerce.com or visit us at http://www.mjmecommerce.com/.

Customer Service (part 1)

2007-12-05T11:26:00.000-08:00

An issue that sometimes is overlooked or not given adequate resources is customer service. I'm going to write a series of posts addressing this important marketing and business function. Its important because for many of your website visitors, a phone call to your customer service is the only human interaction they'll ever have with your company. This first post will address a basic component of customer service which is having all customer data at the drop of a dime.

Occasionally, I'll buy a product from a small business because they had the best price. It hits me how small they are when I call their customer service phone number to follow up on an order. I'm left on the phone waiting while the agent digs through paper to find my order or has to call me because all the knowledge resides in the mind of an individual who is at lunch. As a customer, I expect to get answers to basic questions when I contact customer service because that's what I've come to expect when dealing with more well known companies. Its not out of line to expect the same from a small business becasue at the end of the day that business took my money for a product or service I expect to receive. A negative customer service experience can drive away a new customer or a long time customer. One bad call is all it takes.

One way to streamline your customer service operations is to implement and integrate a CRM tool with your ecommerce platform. At many small businesses, the staff wears many hats and its not uncommon to have a designer or other person fielding customer service calls. How much more productive can your staff be if they had the proper tools?

I use SugarCRM because it works, its open source and its comparable to other expensive solutions. At a previous position, I implemented SugarCRM for my customer service team and the results were incredible.

First, my costs went down. My phone bills went down because customers weren't sitting on the 800# while my staff went looking for information. It drove down cost on outbound calls becasue we addressed customer needs immediately. It also improved my revenue contribution per employee ratio because my staff could immediately address customer issues while spending more time on revenue generating activities (i.e. home page refreshes, paid search placements, etc.).

Second, it improved the customer's perception of my brand and turned potentially negative situations into positive ones. Customers will always recognize you when you do the right thing. Part of doing the right thing is having all the information at hand to make a good decision. It also allowed any one of my staffers to properly address a customer issue by having all the customers notes at hand. It didn't matter if one person initially took the call because that person put all the notes into the CRM tool.

Third, it housed all my customer data in one easy to access application. I could access Sugar CRM and segment my customer list based on any number of parameters I chose and market to those folks with relevant email blasts, mailers or package inserts.

Finally, contrary to popular belief, it's not expensive to have an enterprise level CRM tool or to integrate. Contact us at info@mjmecommerce.com or visit http://www.mjmecommerce.com/ and I'll tell you how to make this solution work for you. Check back soon for Part Two!

When is it Time to Redesign Your Website

2007-12-05T11:05:00.000-08:00

Recently, asked me when is a good time to redesign a website. There's no easy way to respond to that because you have to evaluate a few things before you get to the answer. I responded by saying some due diligence should be done on the following aspects:

What is your competition doing? Look at what your competition is doing and compare it to your site. If the competition is updating their site and making it look better and function better then you should consider updating your site. You don't want to be left behind eating their dust because you're essentially giving up market share. On the other hand, if your competition is not doing anything to their site or they look and function horribly then this is your chance to blow them out of the water if your site can use a refresh. Put some time and money into your site's branding and functionality.
How old is your site? If a significant refresh hasn't occured within 1 year, then you should consider changing some elements. Simple things like new colors, new home page merchandising and updated navigation can go a long way. If your site is more than 3 years old then consider a complete redesign to stay fresh in your consumers mind.
How does it perform on search engines? This is more of a coding issue, but, practicing good SEO can result in more revenue. Hire an SEO expert to audit your site.
Are you bored? If your site is tired and boring looking, simple change it!

Don't skimp on design! Good design can put you in a whole new level in your customer's mind. You've heard the old adage...dress the part and you'll get it. Same concept applies here. What would your site look like if you were #1 in your industry. Now go get it!

Visit http://www.mjmecommerce.com/ for our solutions.

What Holiday Promotions Should You Do Online?

2007-12-03T07:29:00.000-08:00

The holiday season tends to make or break many fiscal years and can be a time when owners and managers walk on pin-and-needles. Depending on what you're selling, chances are there are many options for consumers to buy from and you need to set yourself apart from the competition. Promotions on your site can make this a holiday to cheer for and make your bonus check a lot fatter. Here are some basic promotions you can execute that will have immediate impact on your sales.

Free shipping has become ubiquitous online...surely you've been to a site that offered free shipping and it helped close the sale. You should do the same. Research has shown that at least 45% of consumers will abandon a shopping cart because of shipping costs. If you offered free shipping you can incresae your sales tremendously. The smart way to do this is to calculate your site's Average Order Value (AOV = Total Sales/Total Orders), Units per Transaction (UPT = Total Units Sold/Total Orders) and determine thresholds that will help you achieve your financial goals. For example, if your sites AOV is $75, then you may want to consider offering Free Ground Shipping in the Continental U.S. for orders of $85 (15% higher than AOV) or more. You'll be surprised at how many customers will buy another product just to get free shipping. Be sure to advertise this promotion in your email campaigns, paid search spots and anywhere else you promote your site.

Gift With Purchase. Another great tool to increase your sales by offering value to your customers. This can be a great tool to liquidate old inventory. Be careful though...don't give away anything of perceived low value because that can be detrimental. Use the same concept as above...create a threshold for qualification and promote it in emails, home page and paid search placements.

Percentage Discounts. This one is very simple, but, I've seen retailers lose money because they didn't execute properly. Again set a threshold for qualification and give a nice % off. For example, get 10% off your purchase of $85 or more. And again...be careful! Be sure you exclude gift cards and exclude baskets that have minimum shipping/handling fees because they're awkward to ship. There are other things to be weary of and be sure you understand how you implement this promotion.

I've got a long list of other effective promotions. Email me at info@mjmecommerce.com for the list.

Are You Losing Customers at Checkout?

2007-11-30T12:53:00.000-08:00

If you own or manage an ecommerce business then you're probably always looking for a way to increase your revenue and that's normal. We all want to make the most of our business ventures, otherwise, why are we in business? All too often the answer is refresh merchandising on the home page or increase marketing spend. And while those approaches certainly do work, its wise to enlist the help of your web staff to analyze some basic data...checkout conversions. Its a simply process, but, its not always the first course of action taken by managers.

Here's a scenario:

A potential customer (John) searches Google for widget x and comes across your AdWords placement that touts a deep discount for widget x. John clicks through on your ad (hypothetically, it cost you $1 for that click through) and becomes your site's visitor. Great! John likes the product, is satisfied that you're a reputable retailer and more importantly...likes the price! Now John becomes a potential customer by clicking on the 'Buy Now' button and begins the checkout process. This once excited potential customer who is ready to buy quickly becomes frustrated because your checkout process is not user friendly. John doesn't want to create an account, but, reluctanly provides you with the information so he can buy widget x and go on happily with life. But, he hits another roadblock...he has to submit his payment information before submitting his shipping information or the final price even! John exits the site out of frustration and goes to your competitors site where its easier to shop and make a purchase.

The point is, before you swallow the magic potion of 'better' merchandising or increased marketing spend, take an hour to make a purchase on your own site and make notes of the checkout process. Do the same on your competitor's site and on well-known sites like Amazon. This brief excerise can yield enourmous results. Here's how you can quantify it:

Before Checkout Optimization:

Total Visitors: 100,000
Conversion Rate: 1.50%
Total Orders: 1,500
Average Order Value: $75
Total Revenue: $112,500

After Checkout Optimization:
Total Visitors: 100,000
Conversion Rate: 2.50%
Total Orders: 2,500
Average Order Value: $75
Revenue: $187,500

The above results are very attainable through simple tweaks. Its not rocket science just applied common sense. A minimum of 3 changes and you'll see immediate results. Email me at info@mjmecommerce.com and I'll be more than happy to go through your site and tell you what you can do.