StoresOnline Newsletter Blog: October 2007

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

June 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

We have been discussing ways in which you can improve your website's conversion rate. Last month, we discussed Website Navigation and how you can make your site's navigation easy for a customer to find what they want in quick, clear, and concise ways.

This month, we will be going over the Critical Pages that are necessary in every website. Each website needs certain clearly written pages that inform customers of important topics regarding your business, your policies, and your products, answering the basic questions they may have. We will teach you the value of providing critical pages. You will learn the benefits of why critical pages should provide easy to understand and user-friendliness in websites. You will also learn how to mitigate the problems of unnecessary pages.

Critical pages are essential to a website because it can help expedite the customer's need to find what they are searching for in a timely manner. Make sure that you have all the pages that are essential to your website. If web users are have a difficult time searching for information on a web site, it is obvious that critical pages are missing, since the user's need is still pending. If such is the case, your potential customer will become someone else's actual customer by going to their site.

Critical pages may provide information to a question and/or a solution to a problem. Consider the following list of critical pages:

Home Page

The home, or front, page of your site is obviously essential, as it will provide a general "overview" of your site. Make sure that you give your customers a reason to purchase from your site. Use the 15-second rule to explain what you sell on your site and the benefits of purchasing from you; for example, you could include something like "FREE shipping on orders of $100 or more". You might also include several descriptive paragraphs that include information on featured products. Or you may also want to include links to those products. Within the body of your home page, your customers should be able to navigate to each of your product categories. If you only sell a few products on your site, the customers should be able to navigate to those products directly

Links page

A well-organized Links page (one that has the links separated by categories) is much more than a simple repository to display the links from your link-trade partners. Visitors consider a good Links page, containing links to other useful and relevant sites, a good resource. Having such a resource will also help you in your Relevancy Search Engine listings, since these will see your site as an "Authoritative" site on the subject matter. A large Links page subconsciously communicates your general involvement in the industry and the online community dedicated to your subject matter. This, in turn, communicates credibility. A great Links page also gives your website stickiness, as visitors might return to your site just to use your comprehensive list of links to other related sites. Always have each link open in a new window when it is clicked so you never lose a visitor to your web site.

Site Map page

This page will list ALL pages that comprise your site. You will list all your top-level pages (such as: home page, contact us pages, etc.) and your sub pages (such as: product category pages). Customers can also turn to your sitemap page as a safety net, where your customers can always go to find a list of all your pages. This page is also a good resource for marketing. For example, Google uses sitemaps to index your pages. Another reason to include a sitemap page is that many Live Directories will not include you into their directory until you provide a sitemap page in your site.

Shipping page

This page should provide your customers with information on shipping prices, method of shipping, delivery times and policies. You could also include information on what the customer can expect before and after they make a purchase (for example, shipping prices and timelines).

Search and Browse page

This page will offer customers a way to search your site by using keywords or by typing exactly what they are looking for. This will result in a list of pages or products that pertain to their specific search.

Refund page

Some merchant account companies require that you have this page or that this information be included as a disclosure on your website. It is also helpful to provide this information to your potential customers as some will want to know the answer to this question before they make their purchase. Remember, as was mentioned earlier, you need to answer ALL of your customer's questions on your site or they will go somewhere else.

Shopping Cart page

This page will allow your customers to switch back and forth between your product and shopping cart pages to view items in their shopping cart. You may also use this page to include instructions on how to fill out your order form.

Testimonials page

The purpose of the Testimonials page is to enhance credibility. Internet users may judge a website solely on its testimonials. If testimonials are believable, the user may rely on the website and eventually make a purchase or bookmark the page for future reference.

About Us page

This page will give your customers a brief background on your product and/or company. If you use a drop shipper, you will probably want to use the page to relay information about your product(s) and their benefits. You will also want to include your mission statement. This page will also add to the credibility of your site.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page

This page provides frequently asked questions from previous buyers or site visitors and the answers to those questions. The benefit of including such a page is to provide answers to your users so they will continue using your site instead of searching another website for the answers. Your FAQs page will probably change somewhat frequently. The reasoning behind this is that when a customer emails or calls with a question about the site, in all likelihood, the question was not answered on the site. Thus, questions from all customers must be considered and included to ensure that all possible customer inquiries are answered.

The FAQ page should provide detailed answers to your customers' questions. Some items to consider including in the FAQs page are:

1. Specific Website Navigation Questions

Ways customers can find what they are looking for

Recommendations on how to best search by keyword

Where to find certain pages: i.e., Privacy Policy, Terms, Contact Us, and other pages

Etc.

2. Specific Company-Related Questions

How long the company has been in business

How to get support after the sale

Questions about lead time and shipping issues

Etc.

3. Specific Questions about Products, Services, or Information

Questions about features

Questions about advantages

Questions about benefits

Questions about limitations

Questions about price

Questions about warranties and/or guarantees

Questions about availability

Etc.

4. Any other appropriate or Miscellaneous Questions

Contact Us page

Disclosing contact information is very important and crucial to a website. Any site that hides the owner's information raises a red flag in the mind of the buyers. Having your information displayed on this page will truly gain the trust of your customers. Contact information may include the following: company name, mailing address, phone number, fax number, and email address. To reiterate, providing this information will add to the credibility of your site.

Privacy Policy page

This page includes information that will help your customers feel safe ordering from your site. StoresOnline has a default privacy policy page that you can modify or expand to relate to your specific situation. This will assist your customers to know that you are up to date on Internet privacy issues. Furthermore, many live directories (i.e. Yahoo! Live Directories and DMOZ.com) will not list a site if its privacy policy page is not clearly marked on the site. This is definitely an essential page to have on your site.

The home page is key in displaying a website's links to its critical pages. As mentioned in one of our workshops, the home page serves as a door or an at-a-glance guide.

Another factor to keep in mind is to ensure that critical pages are in synch with search engines. Currently most of the major Search Engines have problems with the following:

Links accessible solely through frames, image maps, or JavaScript

Very short pages

Flash pages

Long JavaScript (JavaScript should be placed in an external document)

Dynamic URLs

Thus, when creating critical pages on a website it is not only important to create the page but it's also essential to create the page effectively so the search engine will lead more users to your page.

Critical pages should be informative and easy to navigate. Do you want happy customers? Give them the answers they want by providing effective necessary pages.

We have negotiated directly with Microsoft on your behalf to get you a $50 advertising credit with Microsoft's adCenter. When you establish an advertising account with them with a low $5.00 activation fee, you will receive a $50 advertising credit which goes towards clicks. Go to adcenter.microsoft.com and use promo code STORES07 during the setup process to receive your $50 credit. It's an awesome opportunity to spend just a little bit of money and gain valuable traffic. As you do, you will be better able to make the adjustments to your site and your marketing to maximize its effectiveness.

Logoworks and StoresOnline have teamed up to provide your business
with a logo design solution that offers tremendous value.

Makau Corporation, the leader in online education, providing online education content for such companies as the Dell Learning Center, IBM, Net G Press and others has created an online educational environment exclusively for StoresOnline merchants. All courses are available to you at deep discounts allowing you to continue your education on many topics such as Microsoft Office, Business Communication, Quickbooks and even network administration. We encourage you to sharpen your business and computer skills with these convenient and powerful online courses. New courses will be added on an ongoing basis so you will constantly have cutting edge tools and resources to grow your business. For more information please visit http://www.makaucorp.com/ or (801) 224-9449 ext. 143

We are pleased to inform you that StoresOnline has formed a relationship with shipping auditing company VeriShip. Through VeriShip all StoresOnline merchants can have their UPS and FedEx shipments audited for free. VeriShip will work with you to discover over charges and mistakes in invoicing from these shipping companies and will actually get you credits on your shipping invoice. They only bill 50% of the credits actually attained. In other words, if they don’t save you money on your shipping, you pay them nothing. The reason we are excited about offering this to you is that this kind of service is typically available only if your shipping volume is high. By pooling all our merchants together we were able to get VeriShip to provide this to merchants of all size. Keep up the good work and save on shipping. For more information, visit VeriShip online at https://www.veriship.com/RegisterOnline.aspx?RefId=1 Or contact them directly at 800.903.3073 or via email at info@veriship.com.

May 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

Last month we continued our discussion of ways in which you can improve your site’s conversion rate. Conversion rate is the single most important factor of ecommerce. It goes without saying that anything you can do to improve it is worth your attention.

In this series we’ve discussed Ad copy; writing descriptions that are designed to sell, rather than just inform; Features vs. Benefits, remember customers don’t want features, they want benefits; and Credibility, because no one will buy anything from a site they don’t trust.

May’s topic is the next item on the Conversion Rate Improvement plan: Navigability. When your site is properly marketed you will bring potential customers to your site. Some will arrive on your Home page but most will not. If customers cannot find what they want on your site easily you will lose them.

There are several keys to make your site easily navigated:

Planning

Consistency

Three-click rule

Utilities (View Cart, Search, etc)

Alternative navigation

Clarity (less is more)

Planning

Know what your site’s needs are before you begin building it. Whenever possible know how many top level pages you will need, how many product categories you will have and how many products in each.

Consistency

Your site’s main navigation menu should be consistent throughout the entire site. This will keep your customers from being confused or lost and give them the confidence to browse the products they want and to buy.

Three clicks

The Three-click rule is a general guideline that says your customers should not have to spend more than three clicks to get to the product they want. Most will choose to surf around and compare a little, but if a customer wants to buy, they should be able to do so without spending more than three clicks.

‘Utilities’

One thing that must always be available to the visitor is the links to things like Cart and Order tracking. These add credibility to your site as well as a sense of security for the customer.

Alternative Navigation

Studies have shown that different types of web surfers respond more favorably to different types of navigation. Some will ignore text links and click on images; others will pass over pictures and look for text navigation. Some will look top left for the official navigation bar while others will scroll to the bottom of every page for a site map. Make sure there is more than one way for customers to access the next page.

Clarity

While it is important to have options for your customers it is equally important to make sure your page does not become cluttered with too many redundant links. Fill the requirements of having varying options for your customers but don’t fill the page with so many options your customers don’t know which to choose. Remember to guide customers carefully. Give them one irresistible direction and let them choose it.

Each of these points will help you improve your site’s ease of navigation. A more navigable site is critical to giving your customers the sense of stability and security needed to turn them from visitors into customers and customers are what it’s all about. Remember to keep testing and improving your site and we’ll see you next month.

April 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

We have been discussing variables that you can test to increase your conversion rates. Last month we covered Features vs. Benefits. The next item on the list is Credibility.

It is very important that your site's visitors trust your site and have confidence in the legitimacy of it. There are many factors that contribute to the credibility of a website. We will focus on the following points:

Testimonials

Security

Contact Page

Domain Email Addresses

Phone Number

Testimonials

One of the best things you can do to add credibility to your site is to display legitimate testimonials from your customers. These can be all on one page, or you might have a few highlighted on other pages such as your home page or a product listing page. There are different methods of getting testimonials. In some cases, happy customers might email you with good feedback. If the content of the email looks like it could be used as a testimonial, reply to their email and ask permission to use it on your site. You may want to just use a first name and last initial along with the general location of the customer like " John D, Orem, UT".

Another option would be to send out a survey to your existing customers asking how their experience was ordering on your site. As replies come back and you see some that you want to use as testimonials, follow the steps above to gain permission to use them on your site.

Security

Your visitors want to feel comfortable ordering from your site, especially when they are entering sensitive information such as credit card numbers, billing addresses etc. When you are hosting your site with StoresOnline, your Shopping Cart/Order Form uses a server secured through VeriSign. In StoresOnline Pro, there is now an element on the form called "Security" that you can use to add the official VeriSign logo to your order form. For 4.0, you can submit a programming request to the Changes Department to have it added to your site.

Contact Page

This one might seem obvious. In fact, every StoresOnline site has a Contact Us page built into i by defaultt. Be sure that this page has enough information for customers to be able to easily contact you with any questions or concerns.

Domain Email

If you have a domain name for your website, you should definitely be using email addresses that use the domain such as "info@yourdomain.com. This small point makes a big difference when it comes to credibility. Displaying non-domain-related email addresses such as Hotmail or Yahoo addresses, can look unprofessional and lessen your credibility. In StoresOnline Pro, you can create your email aliases right in the store builder. For 4.0, contact customer support to get them set up.

Phone Number

When a visitor sees a phone number displayed on a website, even if they aren't planning on calling, it adds credibility to the site and confidence to the visitor. Displaying a phone number may not be possible for all merchants, but it is definitely worth looking into. You might be surprised at the amount of orders you get by phone that you may not have otherwise received. If you are not always available to answer the phone, be sure to have a voicemail greeting that sounds professional.

These five items will work together to give plenty of credibility to your website which in turn gives a boost of confidence to your customer. Remember: Credible Site = Confident Customers = Higher Conversion Rates.

March 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

As we mentioned last month we will address some of the variables that you can test to increase your conversion rates. Since the first variable is Ad Copy and that was discussed in our October version of our newsletter we will skip to the second in the list, Features vs. Benefits.

The importance of focusing on the true benefits of your products or services, regardless of the type of website, cannot be overstated.

Make sure visitors to your site understand the benefits of your products, services, or information. Be sure to distinguish between features and benefits. For example, when you describe a feature like "free overnight shipping on orders over $100," make sure you always describe the accompanying benefit: "Never again deal with the hassle of driving across town, in traffic, to make a purchase! Have your order delivered in the morning for free."

Even if your feature is standard, explain its benefits. Features and benefits are one of the most overlooked areas of selling power in advertising. As the saying goes "Features tell, but benefits sell." Critically analyze your website's ad copy for benefits. Do not assume that when you describe a feature of your product or service, your customer will naturally extrapolate the feature's benefit. When you describe a feature you must always describe the accompanying benefit! If you do not, you will lose sales. Here are some ideas and examples to help you keep a focus on benefits:

Positive Benefits: Positive benefits are direct benefits that accrue to the customer when they purchase.

Make sure you do not exaggerate the benefit claim. Some benefits sound so good they are not credible, even if they are true. In these cases, you will want to understate your product's benefits a little. For example, if you have a product that cures acne 100 percent of the time, you will lose credibility if you make that benefit claim, even if it is true. You will be more credible if you understate the claim by saying your product cures acne in 78.6 percent of all cases.

Negative Benefits: Negative benefits can sometimes be more powerful than positive ones. Focusing on negative benefits means implying what could happen to a prospect who fails to purchase your product or service. Here are some examples of negative benefits: "Never again be the butt of jokes on the golf course," "Do not let your snoring cause you to spend another night on the couch," "Never feel unconfident about your appearance again," or "Do not waste your lunch hour driving across town for supplies." Test throwing a strongly worded negative benefit into your product's description and see what happens!

Understand The True Benefit: Carefully consider the true benefit of each product feature. Do not just throw a benefit out there without carefully considering what the true benefit is. In other words, when a customer purchases your product or service, what is he or she really buying? Here are some examples:

Baldness Cure: The true benefit of a baldness cure is not hair. Hair is the feature! Confidence is the benefit.

Life Insurance: The benefit of life insurance is peace of mind.

February 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

Last month we discussed getting 100+ visitors to our site and testing our marketing. This month, now that we have a betting understanding of how the testing process works with our website it is time to discuss what we should test. One of the things that you will need to do when going through the process of taking your site to a healthy conversion rate is you will have to figure out what ideas work and what don't.

After you have your list of ideas to test you should first prioritize that list and start with your number one down to your last item. Remember that as you start you may not know how to prioritize them, however we will give you a fairly good list of beginning variables to test. Another thing to keep in mind is that there are literally hundreds of different variables that you could test on your website to increase the conversion rate and that the list that we are providing are some of the ones that we have found to be most effective.

Following we will give you a brief priority list of things to test and in the subsequent months we will expound on each.

1. Ad Copy

2. Features vs. Benefits

3. Credibility

4. Navigability

5. Critical pages

6. Price point

7. Quality Images

Each one of the items is a variable that you could test to increase your conversion rate. As mentioned above in each of the subsequent months that follow, we will expound on each of these seven variables. Remember, this is not the complete list, however it is a good starting point of things you can test to increase conversion rates.

Remember the quote from last month, "the moment you stop testing, you die." This means that as a business operating on the ever-changing World Wide Web, that you must always be open to testing new ideas, no matter how crazy they may seem. Sometimes, it's the ideas that you think are less likely to succeed, that actually will.

Monday, October 29, 2007

January 2007 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

Now that we have 100 +/- visitors coming to our site on a daily basis it is time for us to work on achieving a healthy conversion rate. As discussed in previous newsletters, a healthy conversion rate is anywhere between 1% to 2%. Which means that out of every 100 visitors to our site, we should at least get 1 sale if not 2 (1 sale per 100 visitors would be a 1% conversion rate). Therefore, we should expect to be getting 1 to 2 sales per day.

How is this achieved? Most web site owners on the Internet subscribe to the “if you build it they will come and buy” philosophy which is completely untrue. Having your website convert at a healthy rate is a process and takes some time and effort. The time spent to get your site to a healthy conversion rate depends on you and the effort you put into the process.

Most likely when you publish your first version of your StoresOnline site it will not be perfect or in other words it will not convert at a healthy rate, so we need to do things to the site to make it convert at a more healthy rate.

If we take a look at traditional media and traditional marketing we begin to realize that the best (highest paid) marketers in the world are in actuality excellent “testers.” You will never find a marketer that will approach a multi-million dollar account and say, “I guarantee if you do this, this, and this, you will have success.” Instead they say, “If we were to test this, this, and this, we can see what type of results we will get, but they should be positive results.” The bottom line is they know how to test.

Therefore, before we get into what to test it is important that we understand the testing process. Remember bottom line is your customers will tell you if you have a good website or not.
So you need to do things on your site to convert our visitors into buyers.

The Testing process should go as follows:

1 - Brainstorm ideas to test Friends and family can give excellent ideas of things you could improve on your website.

2 - Implement the idea (make a change in your site) Remember to only make one change at a time.

3 - Allow for sufficient time/visitors Generally one week is sufficient.

4 - Note the change in Performance Got to your Stats > Analysis tab and see what happened to your Conversion Rate? Did it go up, down or stay the same?

If it went up, keep the change If it went down, get rid of the change If it stayed the same, keep the change

5 - Rinse. Repeat. You will continue this process until you have a healthy conversion rate.

There is a philosophy that we like to live by here at StoresOnline and it is, “the moment you stop testing, you die.” The idea is you never know what idea will be the “big” idea, and if you are unwilling to test new ideas, your competitors, who are willing to test, will win out.

December 2006 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

In the November 2006 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter, we discussed the process to create a successful website. We laid out the specific ingredients needed, and the actual process to follow. For the next several months we will look at that process and provide more detail in each month’s Merchant Newsletter.

The first step of the process was to build version 1.0 of your website. Which was followed by doing the initial site promotion or in other words bringing 100 +/- visitors to your site a daily.

This is the subject we will discuss this month. Remember, at this point, we have not executed site promotion or spent hours trying to bring hundreds of visitors to your site yet. Eventually, we will do that, but not at this point in the process.

Some of you may be asking, why? Let’s pose a question:

Q: Why would you want to bring hundreds or even thousands of visitors to your site daily, if you can’t convert those visitors to buyers?

A: It wouldn’t be worth your time or money.

Now, how do we bring 100 +/- visitors to our website daily? The easiest way to quickly generate 100 daily visitors to your web site is through bid-ranked search engines.

Use Bid-Ranked Search Engines

Submit between 1,000 - 3,000 relevant keyword phrases to 7Search.com, GoClick.com, Miva.com, Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly known as Overture), Google AdWords, and MSN adCenter. Start with the minimum bid on each engine. You may need to raise your bids later to generate increased traffic.

Before we go any further it is important that we understand the "type" of traffic that we can get from each of the Bid-Ranked Search Engines discussed above. Hands down, Yahoo! Search Marketing, Google Adwords and MSN's AdCenter are the three largest Bid-Ranked Search Engines on the Internet, but can also be the most expensive. That is not meant to scare you away from using these Bid-Ranked Search Engines, only to inform you that the cost involved could potentially be higher.

Another thing to consider is the "Quality" of traffic that each Bid-Ranked Search Engine can bring you. Because we are trying to bring the most qualified visitors to our site we are also concerned with where to find the most qualified visitors. Typically Yahoo! Search Marketing, Google Adwords, and MSN AdCenter will bring you the highest quality visitors. That is not to say that these other Bid-Ranked Search Engines are going to bring your unqualified visitors, it is only to help you understand that there can be a difference between the Bid-Ranked Search Engines.

We suggest, as mentioned above, that you start with some of the smaller Bid-Ranked Search Engines and then move into some of the larger Bid-Ranked Search Engines. We also suggest that you test running campaigns in the two sets. For example, you may start running your Bid-Ranked campaigns in 7Search, GoClick, and Miva and run them for a while and note the type of traffic that comes in, are they buyers (you can tell by your conversion rates). Another way to test this idea is to stop your campaigns in these smaller Bid-Ranked Search Engines for a while and run campaigns in the larger Engines and not the results as well as the difference between the two groups of Bid-Rank Search Engines. It is very likely that you see no difference at all and if so, GREAT!

Remember, we are just trying to bring 100 visitors daily at which point we can begin the process to “dial in our site” or increase our conversion rates to a healthy rate.

Stay tuned next month for the next step in the process to creating a successful website. If you would like to learn more about Bid-Ranked Search Engines and how to use them, log into Merchant Services and read the Bid-Ranked Search Engines article.

NEW STRATEGIC ALLIANCE!

Logoworks and StoresOnline have teamed up to provide

your business
with a logo design solution that offers tremendous value.

Car Seller Takes Local Business Resources to International Markets

As Therese Villa was busy selling and rebuilding cars, she found a StoresOnline promotional email. As it turned out, this was perfect timing, for she was in need of a second source of income.

Therese, originally from California, went to college so she could work on a dairy farm.

But she never made it to the farm. Instead, she ended up in Missouri, got out of school, and started selling insurance. Before too long, she began working with a friend at a salvage yard, selling and rebuilding cars.

Like most StoresOnline merchants, Therese received promotional material concerning Internet marketing. “It sounded interesting,” Therese said after looking through the material. “It intrigued me, so I went to the seminar. I thought it had potential and followed through with it.”

Therese went to the Internet Marketing Workshop and a subsequent, all-day workshop, where she bought six website licenses. “When I left the workshop with all six websites, I was very optimistic and looking for all kinds of potential and actual ventures to spread off in different areas,” Therese said. “I had a lot of general ideas of what I’d like to do.”

Soon Therese began working with her website licenses, but found she needed specific information about the products she wanted to sell. “Every time I tried to get with the website, it seems like things weren’t just quite fitting into place, and I was getting a little frustrated,” Therese said.

“Then one day a customer had asked me to get them some parts. While I was ordering it, I flipped a catalog over and I saw that my wholesaler [of aftermarket headlights, taillights, mirrors and door handles] had a website. I called him up, got an online access account, and said, ‘Wow, this is the information I need to build my website.’ Then, I just started building like crazy and things started to make sense.”

By building her own site, Therese became familiar with all of the options and flexibility of the StoresOnline software. “Once I understood how the website worked, I set up the basic levels and sub-pages. As I got farther along into it—a month or so—I realized it was going to take way too many pages. I revamped it, found a better way to make it more efficient, and kept on going. I just kept plugging it in.”

“When I was building my site, the live chat was very, very helpful. Anytime I got to a stumbling block, I’d get online. The [customer support representatives] were overly helpful, and I appreciate everything they did,” Therese said.

Soon afterwards, Therese began a pay-per-click campaign. “When I got my site up and running—since there were so many products to use—I immediately set keywords up on Yahoo and Google. With my product, each product could possibly have 10 or 15 keywords, and with 1,300 products, you could imagine the task is kind of overwhelming, because of descriptions and year variations,” Therese said.

Starting a pay-per-click campaign was just one of the Internet marketing strategies presented to Therese at the all-day workshop. In addition, her knowledge of different marketing techniques has continued to grow. “My strategies and the information I’ve learned since I was at the workshop, have probably multiplied ten-fold and that’s not even a drop in the bucket of what I can learn. Every day I’m learning how to go about finding new ways to market. StoresOnline has always been helpful with suggestions. I just have not had the time to follow up on a lot of the suggestions.”

“StoresOnline has a lot of information and suggestions for different areas. They kind of open the doors and give you information on areas that you have not even considered. Then, you can follow up and do more research. They show you and point you toward many different directions on how to get things accomplished,” Therese said.

As soon as her merchant account was active, Therese’s marketing efforts began to pay off. “The first day that the merchant account was active, I had three orders that week,” Therese said. Within eight months of it’s launch, Therese’s website brought in an average of USD$2,000. “My relationship with StoresOnline, financially, has given me a second source of revenue.”

While her Internet business continued to increase, Therese made updates and changes to her site. “The software StoresOnline provided and the backdoor management, is just awesome. The changes that need to be made here and there are finished with just a few clicks and a few copy-pastes. Then you publish it, and it’s online and ready to go. It’s very convenient and very helpful. It’s real easy to use.”

Visit Therese’s website at

http://www.affordableautoparts4u.com

*Testimonial results are not typical and your individual results will vary. Your success depends on having the right price, product, and marketing efforts.

November 2006 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

In the October StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter, we discussed Ad Copy or, in other words, the text on your site. We mentioned that it is one of the most significant items affecting your conversion rates (i.e. the rate at which visitors to a website convert to buyers). In keeping with that theme, this month we will discuss another factor that affects your conversion rates.

In order to better understand what we are saying, let’s briefly review the process of taking your website from “START” to what we are presently discussing.

The process overview is:

Build version 1.0 of your website. (Merchant Services has articles discussing this topic.)

Do initial site promotion. (Bring 100 +/- visitors to your site a day.)

Review your site’s Statistics to verify what your conversion rates are. (You should be aiming anywhere between a 1% to a 2% conversion rate.)

NOTE: At this point, if you do not have the desired conversion rate, you will need to test aspects of the site in order to increase your conversion rates. What we are discussing in the Newsletter this month can increase your conversion rates.
Brainstorm ideas to test.

Test ideas that you brainstorm and see what type of effect they have on the site.

In addition to Ad Copy (discussed last month), another item you may want to test on your site is 'focusing on benefits.' Make sure that visitors to your site understand the benefits of your products, services, or information. Be sure to distinguish between features and benefits. For example, when you describe a feature such as “Free overnight shipping on orders over $100,” make sure you always describe the accompanying benefit, such as: “Never again deal with the hassle of driving across town, in traffic, to make a purchase! Have your order delivered in the morning for free.”

The bottom line is that when you describe a feature you must always describe the accompanying benefit. If you don’t, you will surely be losing sales. You can review the Dialing in Your Website for more information on 'focusing on benefits' throughout your Web site.

October 2006 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

As we are nearing the Christmas season, just a reminder to start thinking about the strategies you will want to use during the Christmas holiday, such as “seasonal sales,” “after Thanksgiving Day Special,” etc. You will also want to focus on the wording you use on your site during this season. Although you don’t want to change the main crux of your messaging, you may want to add some verbiage specifically for this time of year.

Some examples would be to say things along the line of: “This item would make a perfect gift at Christmas,” or “Imagine little Jimmy on Christmas morning when he unwraps his presents to find ‘your product goes here.” Although these may be a little far-fetched, hopefully they will get your mind thinking on verbiage that you can apply to your text for this Christmas season.

Since we’re on the topic of verbiage, let’s discuss Ad Copy, which is the text that you write on your site. Ad Copy is one of the most important aspects affecting your conversion rates.

Here are 8 rules to live by when creating your Ad Copy:

Longer copy is usually better

Because it has a much higher probability of addressing all of the questions and concerns of a prospective buyer.

Address the buyers not the “lookers”

Buyers are the ones most interested in the details of what you are selling and are likely to read most, if not all, of your Ad Copy.

Use exciting adjectives and powerful words

Examples include: Free, Discover, Easy, Guaranteed, Improved, Proven, Save, Best, etc.

Appeal to emotion

Truly excellent Ad Copy appeals to the emotions and make the reader feel as opposed to just think: it leads to an emotional decision, not a logical one.

No feature left alone

It is important to ensure that all features on your web site are accompanied by a benefit.

Benefits first

People buy benefits, not features, so experiment with putting your benefits before your features.

Keyword rich copy

Is done primarily for your search engine marketing strategies, however, it is important to implement keywords throughout your text when writing your Ad Copy.

Unique content and information

Every web site can and should contain purely informational and educational content. Having a content-rich web site can dramatically improve traffic, credibility, and sales.
By following these Ad Copy rules you can ensure that your Ad Copy will induce your visitors to make purchases from you.

September 2006 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

In addition to the Summer 2006 StoresOnline Newsletter theme of link building, we should now discuss Vertical Portals. However, before we get into the meat of Vertical Portals, let’s briefly review the purpose of links.

The purpose of trading links is two-fold; first, we trade links to increase our page rank (discussed in the Summer 2006 Newsletter) and second, to increase the amount of qualified visitors to our Web site.

How do Vertical Portals fall into this mix?

First, let’s establish what a vertical portal is. To do this, let me provide an example: How many different types of searches can you do in Google? Millions. Right. Well, consider Google as a horizontal portal, due to the fact that you can search endless amounts of topics. Now consider a vertical portal, how many different types of searches do you think you could do on a vertical portal? One. Exactly. Another way to think of a vertical portal is an Online Trade Magazine, or in other words, a portal (engine) dealing with one specific topic

Now the burning question is, “That’s great and all, but seriously, who, or better yet, how many people actually visit these sites?” First off, we already know that we have a tool that will tell us how popular a site is on the Internet (based purely on visitors) at Alexa.com. So Alexa.com is one way that we can tell how popular or how many people visit these sites.

Remember we are not as concerned with raw visitors or traffic to our site as we are with Qualified Traffic or visitors.The way we determine whether they are qualified is if they are specifically looking for the products that you are selling.

Let’s say you sell Dental Chairs and you've decided to sell your products on E-Dental.com (which is a vertical portal). Who visits E-Dental.com? Well, the answer is dentists or people trying to sell products to dentists. Therefore, if we sell dentist chairs, we NEED to get our site listed on this vertical portal because it is our Target Market, or in other words, the exact people to whom we are trying to sell.

Now that we know what a vertical portal is, the question becomes, "What do they look like?" For the answer, you should now visit your StoresOnline Merchant Services and read the complete article concerning Vertical Portals.

Summer 2006 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

Last month we talked about one form of link building, Stealth Linking. This is just one of many link building strategies you can employ. In order to understand why you would use link-building strategies, you should first investigate and understand Google's Page Ranking feature.

Google Page Rank

Google's Page Rank is the measure of the importance of a specific page based on a 10-point scale (0 being the lowest and 10 being the highest). A page's rank is determined on the quantity of qualified links pointing into the Web page. In addition, according to Google, high-quality Web sites receive a higher PageRank (i.e. 4 or higher).

To effectively use the Page Rank in your favor, you need to have as many high (4 or higher) page-ranked sites pointing to your site as possible.

To view a site's page rank, you must download the Google Toolbar. You can download the toolbar by going to: http://toolbar.google.com/

Why is Page Rank important?

Achieving a high page rank (4 or 5 for small e-commerce Web sites) is a must when you are employing other marketing strategies to drive traffic to your Web site. One such marketing strategy is Relevancy Search Engines. Consider this, Google will not allow you to show up on the first page of their Search Engine unless
you have a page rank of 3 or higher. Therefore, it is a must to achieve a good page rank.

Also, if your Web site has a page rank of 4 or higher, the more frequently Google’s spyder (A.K.A. Googlebot) will visit your Web site.

How do you achieve a Page Rank 4 or Higher?

You need to have as many high page ranked sites linking to your site as possible. Several easy ways to achieve this is by submitting to Live Directories and Vertical Portals. You can also follow the Link Trading strategies mentioned in Merchant Services.

Now that you know about Google Page Rank and how it works, you can achieve a Page Rank of 4 or higher and enjoy its fringe benefits.

Local Markets Expand After Partnership with StoresOnline

As Scott Pollock, a Texas resident involved in scrap metal and automotive cores, was trying to self-learn website design and marketing, he attended a StoresOnline presentation and found what he was looking for.
Scott and his Fiancé attended a short StoresOnline presentation and a subsequent all-day workshop in San Antonio. During the workshop, they were impressed with what they learned. The topics presented were a “hot button on my learning. I was trying to self-learn right then because I wanted to build a website to sell products or services online,” Scott said.
Before attending the all-day workshop, Scott didn’t know what products or services he wanted to sell for his business, but “half-way through the workshop…I had ideas just clicking in my head,” Scott said. So, with his ideas and a desire to build a website, market, and sell a product online, Scott purchased six website licenses.
After the workshop, Scott decided to sell products related to his business of ten years, selling scrap metal and automotive cores. Scott sat down with his good friend Hugo Sanchez, a buyer of engine and cylinder head cores, and worked out a plan. “You’ve got a great business locally. What do you
say we take this thing international?” Scott said to Hugo. Then together, they worked out the pricing, made a deal, and then shook hands on it.
“I started working on my website a week after I bought it,” Scott said. With almost 400 products to add initially, Scott took a few months [Feb. 2004 – Sept. 2004] to put it all together and then launched it. Afterwards “I worked diligently to add the rest of the products [over 800], and had all of the products in by Nov. 1st,” Scott said.
Because Scott decided to design and build the website himself, he discovered the ease and simplicity of the StoresOnline software. “I found that using the software to build the site was very easy, especially with the tutorials and the fantastic customer service that StoresOnline gives. The people over at StoresOnline are just fantastic.” “A lot of times I would call them first thing in the morning, because I’d be working on the site at night. I’d call first thing in the morning to clear up something that I ran into a problem doing,” Scott said. “Or, if I was really hung up, and I was wide-awake at 3:00 in the morning, I got onto the chat and got the problem worked out right then and there.”
After launching his website, Scott began to employ some of the techniques he learned at the all-day workshop. “The [workshop] speakers went in depth on how to use the pay-per-click. I absorbed all that knowledge, used the pages of the notes that I made, and went to work doing my research.”
“I did a keyword analysis, a reverse search, and got all the main keywords,” Scott said. He then took the keyword information and began to employ a pay-per-click campaign. In terms of sales, “we went from dead zero to USD$10,000/month right from the start—just coming out of the gate—and all I used was pay-per-click.”
“Between the cylinder heads and catalytic converters, right now, I’ve got approximately 180 keywords that I’m bidding on, which most of them are only 10 cents,“ Scott said.
Scott’s business is going steady and he credits StoresOnline’s influence on his business. “The impact of StoresOnline has given me a good steady business. It’s a strong business, and it’s growing steadily. I see growth every month or two. It just keeps growing,” Scott said. The partnership with StoresOnline has “completely changed my life.”
As business continued to grow internationally, the local market and its competitors of San Antonio have not had steady growth. “In our local economy, all the other machine shops have called and indicated they don’t have much business,” Scott said from a conversation with Hugo. The competitors ask, “
Well, how are you doing?” Hugo replies, “We can’t keep up with it.” “Well, what are you doing? ” the competitors ask. Hugo replies, “Oh, we’ve got some other different things going.” But Hugo doesn’t tell his competition anything, because he doesn’t want to
lose the good things they have going. “We sell a few heads a month from the local market, but it’s actually the national and international market where we’ve sold the most.”
“I am sold on StoresOnline—the ease of use, and just the product alone. You can build such a fantastic website, that you can do literally almost anything with,” Scott said. “StoresOnline has the best programs, the best support, and the best product available today.”
Visit Scott’s websites at

http://www.adccylinderheads.com/

http://www.adccatalyticconverters.com/

http://www.adcsteeringcolumns.com/

http://www.adcgasketsnmore.com/

*Testimonial results are not typical and your individual results will vary.

Your success depends on having the right price, product, and marketing efforts.

June 2006 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

As most of you have seen, we have made a few changes to Merchant Services. We have renamed and repositioned many of the categories in order to present a functional, step-by-step approach to how you interact with Merchant Services. Hopefully, you will find this change beneficial.

Some of the changes to Merchant Services include two new icons:

- This icon will appear anytime there is a New article in Merchant Services.

- This icon will show anytime we have Updated an article in Merchant Services.

An article recently updated was Stealth Linking. If you were to access Merchant Services, you would see the Updated icon next to the article’s title.

Speaking of Stealth Linking, let’s take a moment to discuss this strategy. Stealth Linking is an unconventional approach to getting links in ways most online merchants would not consider. With this approach, you will utilize the interactive features of many Web sites to post messages, such as blogs with reader-comment functionality, Web-based message boards, forums, and Web sites with guest books.

The reason you are doing this is to build incoming links to your site and as a secondary benefit this can also bring qualified traffic to your site.

As an example, here is a StoresOnline site that recently used stealth linking.

There is a Forum called the AvianBirdFlu Forum (http://www.avianflutalk.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=964). On Tuesday, May 30, 2006, Oprah Winfrey had a show on the Avian Bird Flu and the Forum (mentioned above) included a link to Oprah’s show and a link to a StoresOnline site (DisasterNecessities.com).

Here is the example of how links were posted.

forum

This is just one of the many ways you can employ the Stealth Linking strategy. For more information about this strategy and how to use it, visit Merchant Services.

Outsourced Job Market Leads to the Success of an Internet Business

As outsourcing and the frustrations of finding employment affected the Davidsons, Gail and John decided it was time to market their business on the Internet.
For a long time Gail had a job she really enjoyed: technical support for computer operating systems. However, like many others in the computer industry, her job was to be outsourced overseas.
After considering various possible replacement jobs, both Gail and John liked the idea of starting their own business. They decided to begin an Internet venture because unlike starting a “brick and mortar store,” Internet businesses can get started without a substantial amount of monetary investment up front.
"After we started our own company, one of the things we did was to go out and look at a number of different website hosting providers,” John said. “All of the companies I looked at offered their own products, and everyone who signed up could sell their products. We considered this to be a very unattractive business venture since everyone in that room would be a competitor of yours and it was up to you to figure out how to differentiate yourself from everyone else."
John continued to look for other alternative ways to market their business on the Internet. During his search, John found StoresOnline and said to Gail, “This looks pretty good. I think you need to come look at this. This company provides marketing resources that the other [companies] don’t.”
Gail and John attended a StoresOnline presentation where they saw the benefits of doing business with StoresOnline. The thing that impressed them the most was the fact that StoresOnline operated much differently than the others. Instead of focusing on “their” products to sell, StoresOnline explained their focus was to teach you how to market your website.
During the StoresOnline presentation, the speaker explained how there are millions of websites created daily. “If you don’t know how to market your website, it doesn’t matter how much money you spend developing a website. If Internet users can’t find your website, you will not have a successful business.”
Gail and John were attracted to what StoresOnline had to offer because of the tools and assistance to make their website successful. “It was exciting to know that StoresOnline continually updates their reference material as they learn of new methodologies that will help you be successful. Their reference materials are also designed to teach people who know nothing about the Internet–on how to get started marketing you business on the Internet and how to be successful,” Gail said. “We found the StoresOnline presentation so informative that we felt that this was a company who could teach us what to do.”
At the end of the presentation, Gail and John bought six websites for their business even though they had no idea what they were going to sell.
At the StoresOnline workshop, Gail and John were advised to go home and make a list of hobbies and interests in order to come up with a list of possible items that they would find interesting for their business to sell. Gail and John followed that advice, and began brainstorming on possible products to sell, as well as reading the reference materials provided by StoresOnline. “All the materials provided by StoresOnline were pertinent in helping us market our business on the Internet. There was a lot of information on how to set up an Internet site and how to use the resources,” Gail said.
Gail and John used the tools provided by StoresOnline to help them decide what product their business should sell. After a thorough analysis, they decided to sell storage sheds. They used the reverse search tool to discover how many people were looking for information on sheds and the Keyword Analysis Tool to see their competitors’ marketing efforts. “From the tools StoresOnline offered, I was able to identify a product for our business that I didn’t believe other people were marketing properly,” Gail said.
Gail and John built their storage shed website and used the resources in Merchant

Services to begin the marketing their business. One of the suggestions within Merchant Services was to use relevant, keyword-rich content in the website’s pages. Gail and John used the suggestion and built the pages accordingly. “When we developed the content, we made sure to integrate the keywords we wanted the search engines to find”, Gail said. “We submitted our site to the various live Directories identified by StoresOnline. We worked on link building. Afterwards, we saw a dramatic increase in number of unique visitors to the website. Within the first year our website achieved a ranking by Alexa.com meaning that traffic to our website was sufficient to qualify us as one of the top five % of all websites,” Gail said.
As Gail and John built their site and added content to their specific pages, they discovered how simple it was to use the software. “I found the tools so easy to use, that I preferred building it myself. I like having control over the content and the look and the feel of the site. I also like the fact that knowledgeable StoresOnline customer service representatives are available 24 hours a day 7 days a week to help answer any technical questions that might arise,” Gail said.
Because of various marketing strategies and hard work, the business took off. So much so, Gail needed to hire a couple of employees to help out. “Our website went live in May 2004, and by August 2004 our business had grown so much that I had to hire somebody else since I couldn’t keep up with it. The business has grown and grown and grown. At this point [April 2006], I have a staff of five people working for me. I attribute our success to the wonderful knowledge given to us by StoresOnline,” Gail said.
“As I grow my business, one of my business objectives is to expand the offering to our staff, in terms of benefits. In our first year we implemented profit sharing. Whereas, the trend today in America is to reduce benefits, my goal is to improve the offerings every year.”
Visit Gail and John’s website at http://www.shedtopia.com/

*Testimonial results are not typical and your individual results will vary.

Your success depends on having the right price, product, and marketing efforts

StoresOnline Technology Blog
StoresOnlinePro.com recently added a Technology Blog. Through this Blog, the StoresOnline Pro Engineering Department will discuss new product features, ideas, solutions, and more. The Blog will further highlight the powerful and cutting-edge technology behind StoresOnline Pro. Visit the Blog as often as you wish, as it will be updated regularly. Go to http://www.storesonlinepro.com/tech_blog to access the Blog.

May 2006 StoresOnline Merchant Newsletter

This month we will highlight the “Local Search” feature of search engines. This is a method of marketing that is rarely used by online companies, meaning almost all of your competitors are not doing this kind of marketing and it could be an amazing way to get even more qualified buyers!

What is Local Search?

When you are looking locally for auto parts, scrap booking supplies, shoes, or even a real estate agent, you probably use the yellow pages. Search engines are now trying to take online users to offline businesses and have taken great steps to make “local search” effective, useful, and fun. Through several “local search” tools, consumers can find what
they want in their local community. Search engines have also made it very easy for you, an online merchant, to target these “local” audiences without a costly or time-consuming investment.

Why will Local Search Marketing benefit me?

Local retail store:

Through various “local search” features, a customer within a 50-mile radius of your business could search for your product’s keywords and your business listing could display as #1 in the search results. Because the customer found you through “local search,” they could place an order over the Internet, phone, or they may even come into the store.
Online retailer:

In general, “local search” is a great way to get more qualified traffic. Sales, generally, is a numbers game: the more people to your site the more sales will occur. At times, local buyers purchase from local companies and if you are not marketing locally, then you are missing out on
this market.

In summary, “local search” is a great way to target local audiences. Even if you don’t have a physical business for them to purchase your products, there are many other reasons why customers will still choose to work with you, a local company.

For instance, as customers purchase from local companies, they could receive cheaper shipping, use local phone #s, visit the local business for customer service questions, etc.

If you’re looking to take the next step, this is a great place to start:

Just local search companies:

http://www.metrobot.com/

http://www.truelocal.com/

http://www.citysearch.com/

Search Engines:

http://local.yahoo.com/

http://local.ask.com/

http://local.aol.com/

http://www.newsday.com/community/directory/

Mobile phone local search engines:

http://www.google.com/mobile/loc_search.html

Paid local bid tools:

http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/local/ls.php

https://adwords.google.com/support/

(Search for “regional targeting” and read the instructions therein.)