This infographic by Pure 360 shows when are the best times to send e-mails. Do you agree?

Shipping can determine the success or failure of your online business. Always offer free shipping when you can and if not try to stick to a standard shipping rate. Most shoppers online prefer free shipping to anything else and it is the best way to increase your sales conversion rates.

Many e-commerce businesses fear that offering free shipping will affect their competitive pricing for their products but below are a few tricks of the trade for you to keep conversion rates soaring without breaking the bank.

1. Build Shipping into the Product Price

If you have a product that is hard to find, then you should build shipping directly into the cost of the product. Find an average shipping cost on a similar product and build it right into the price of the product.

2. Free Shipping No Catch

Businesses that have a high profit margin are able to offer free shipping with every order. This is very enticing for online shoppers and it increases sales and boosts customer retention.

3. Minimum Order

This is the most common shipping offer because it encourages shoppers to spend more. The best part about this is that you can include the shipping cost within the minimum by raising the spending limit needed to qualify for free shopping. If the average customer spends £40 per order then offer free shipping on purchases over £50.

4. Select Items

Many businesses promote free shipping on smaller-sized select products. The shipping cost to ship oversized items can be really high and this is an excellent way to get rid of last year’s merchandise.

5. Members Only

Many online retailers offer free shipping to online members only. You can charge participants an annual fee for membership for having this luxury. The major advantage of this offer is that it builds loyalty within your online community and encourages future purchases.

Ten ways to more Facebook fans

1. Post A Status Update

Post a status update mentioning your Facebook page. Don’t be afraid to outright ask people to like your Facebook page.  Ask and you shall receive.

2. Get Fans To Upload Photos And Tag Their Friends

If you take part in an event with several of your fans or potential fans take a bunch of pictures, post them to your page, and then ask your friends to tag themselves in the pictures. If you can get your fans to upload pictures to your page, or tag themselves in pictures you uploaded, this will post to their activity feeds and will generate additional traffic for you.

3. Use Tags Within Your Status

Status tagging is a fairly new feature of Facebook. This feature allows you to tag any page or person by entering the @ sign and then inserting the name of the page or person you want to tag.

4. Link To Your Page As A Place Of Employment

The info box under profile pictures is being phased out, so now if you want a supreme link on your profile to your page you will need to list your Page under employment.  Once you do this your Facebook Page will appear under your name on your Profile.

5. Newsletter Promotion

If you do email marketing send a message to your subscribers letting them know about your fan page and consider including a link to your fan page in every email.

6. Use Your Email Signature

Every email you send is an opportunity to link to your Facebook page.Check out the email signature tool wisestamp for a creative way to link to your social profiles.

7. Create A Custom URL

If you go to facebook.com/username you will be able to create a custom URL for your page.

Remember that this cannot be changed once it is set, so choose wisely.

8. Talk And Blog About Your Facebook Page

Word of mouth does not start itself. Start the conversation by mentioning your Facebook page in blog posts and in every day conversation.

9. Turn Your Customers Into Fans

If someone likes you enough to buy your product then there is a good chance that they will like you on Facebook as well.

Customise your “thank you” page with a Facebook “Like Box” for a great after-marketing tool.

10. Hold A “Fan Of The Month” Contest

By highlighting one of your best fans every month you will encourage fans to engage more, so that they can win the coveted fan of the month title the next month.

Offer a monthly prize, such as a cool free product or service related to your brand, and the competition for this title will only increase.

Interesting to see how the industry has evolved and continues to grow!

Via: OnlineMBA.com

]]> http://www.magicaliacommerce.com/general/facebook-deals-google-offers-challenge-groupon-livingsocial/feed/ 0 http://www.magicaliacommerce.com/general/the-business-benefits-of-blogging/ http://www.magicaliacommerce.com/general/the-business-benefits-of-blogging/#comments Mon, 04 Apr 2011 10:49:56 +0000 Maria Yesufu http://www.magicaliacommerce.com/?p=374 Blogs can be a significant driver of website traffic and can also help you rank better with Google.  If you are not already “blogging”, now is the time to start.

Here are the top 10 business benefits of blogging.

1. Search Engine Marketing

Popular search engines like Google like websites that are regularly updated with fresh, well written, keyword-rich content. People will be able to find your website more easily (because Google will list more pages), Google will re-index your site more frequently) and it will also boost your websites rankings.

2. Direct Communication With Your Subscribers

Gradually you will build up a readership subscribers who have signed up to receive updates to your blog because they are interested in what you have to say. Every time you publish a new article it will update your subscribers giving you the ability to communicate directly with your target audience.

3. Building your brand

A blog is a great way to build brand awareness and reach potential customers you have not communicated with in the past.

4. Competitive Differentiation

Show potential customers how you work, what sets you apart and how your solution to their challenges is unique. You can use your blog to differentiate yourself from your competitors and give that personal touch.

5. Promoting interaction and trust

Successful conversions is all about building relationships. By posting honest, transparent, articles on your blog you will instill trust and respect in your potential customers. The best blogs are a 2-way communication where your readers can comment on your articles. This interaction gets them more involved and more engaged.

6. Social Media Marketing

Sites such as Facebook and MySpace, and social bookmarking sites like delicious, Stumbleupon and digg can produce astounding results.  Link up your blog to these popular sites and you may be lucky enough to have your article go viral!

7. Media & Public Relations

It is most likely if you are running a blog but your competitors are not the media will contact you and not them. Free press is always a good thing.

8. Position Yourself as an Expert

Know your stuff? Well share your knowledge on your blog. If you really know what you are talking about people will pay attention and before you know it you will have a dedicated following of readers who are more likely to buy from you.

9. Reputation Management

Do you know what is being said about you online? Do you have a platform to counter any negative press your company is receiving? With a blog you do. It is one way you can help to manage your online reputation.

10. Low Cost

Setting up a blog doesn’t cost very much and maintaining one costs practically nothing.

1. Invite Away!

Friends,  family, colleagues, related businesses and anyone you think may be interested in knowing about your business. This is a timely process but the most fundamental.

2. Link It Up!

If you run a blog, link it up to both your Twitter and Facebook account, not only will this save you time, but it will also keep your pages updated with new content and drive more traffic to your site.

3. Make Use Of Your Newsletters!

On your next newsletter highlight your new blog, Facebook and twitter pages. If you have a big list of previous customers, make use of it! If you don’t, it’s time to start building one and promoting your newsletter through your social media efforts could be the way forward.

4. Make Your Fans Feel Special!

Run a special offer for your Facebook fans, it could be a voucher or a code that they can use. Making your facebook users feel special will keep them coming back!

5. Make Use Of Facebook Features!

Embed a Facebook widget on your site like Big Bike Book. This enables you to keep your customers on your site whilst getting them to become a fan also!

6. Sign It Off!

Add your social media icons to your email signature.

7. Business & Pleasure?

Add a link on your personal profile page if you don’t mind linking your personal and professional life.

8. Interact At Every Opportunity!

Display on your store literature or at your store.  Include your social network details clearly for your customers to see. Interacting with your customers after they leave your shop is important for repeat business.

9. Use the @ Tag

As long as you’re a fan of your own fan page, you can “@ tag” it on your own personal profile wall. From time to time, you can let your friends know about something happening on your fan page by writing a personal status update that includes tagging your fan page with an @ tag. Simply start typing the “@” symbol and the first few letters of your fan page name (this works whether you have your username registered or not), and it will appear from a drop-down menu to select. This then makes it a nice, subtle hyperlink that your friends can choose to click on.

10. Autograph other fan pages!

As with adding your fan page @ tag to posts you make on your friends’ walls, you could equally use the same technique when posting on other fan pages.

The early stage talks are not believed to have progressed far but, according to the Wall Street Journal, one thing has been agreed on: the loss-making firm is worth somewhere between $8-10bn.

This year Twitter’s revenues are expected to more than double to between $100-110m.”

Read more

Is your business on twitter? Twitter now has around 175m registered users worldwide who use the service to send 95m tweets a day.  Social networking strategy is an important factor in any online business and should be considered within an overall marketing strategy.

Check out our other articles on Social Media for more tips and news.

1.   Regular Communication.

2. Ask questions. It sounds simple, but sometimes the best way to get a response is to engage with your audience through questions. This can be a great tool for market research; you can learn a great deal about your audience, which can aid in future marketing plans.

3.    Focus On The Aesthetics. Make use of interactive media such as images, video, or audio to get noticed and increase levels of fan engagement.

4. What Is Your Voice? Social media allows you to personify your brand. However you decide to portray your brand, keep it consistent and make sure it is appropriate for your audience.

5.   Campaigns and Contests. From trivia to photo contests, the opportunities here are endless. So get thinking about what your existing customers would want and how to engage new ones!

Check out our ten top tips for E commerce landing page optimastion

1. Does the main headline on your landing page match the message of your incoming ads? For example, if you change any pricing or delivery options make sure your adverts reflect this.

2. Are you using videos on your landing page? You should, these can increase conversions by 80%

3. Are you using directional cues to direct attention and interaction on your pages? These can include graphical arrows and photos of people looking at your call to action phrases or buttons.

4. Is your call to action above the fold? If people have to scroll down the page to see your call to action phrase, you may want to look at pushing it higher to attract and retain your visitors’ attention.

5. Do you utilize design principles to make your call to action stand out? These can include colour contrast, whitespace and size or objects or text.

6. Are you using bullet lists to simplify your content? Long paragraphs of text can put people off. Try to break your information up into small simple sections.

7. Do you provide any mechanisms to share your page with others? Examples would be an “email to a friend” or social network button.

8. Are you showing trust factors such as testimonials or social media streams? This could include written quotes from happy customers, or logos of clients and associations.

9. Is your call to action the most obvious thing on the page? It should be, make it bigger and add more directional cues and design techniques if not.

10. Do you use photo or video of your product/service being used in context?