Implications

To begin with, Google will run a variety of experiments for a small percentage of searchers that merge listings from Google Product Listing Ads and Google Shopping together. It will work very similarly to how Product Listing Ads work now; the advertisers will provide data feeds and create product listings through Google AdWords. Search results will be based upon combination of perceived relevance and bid price. Rather than bidding on particular keywords, however, Google Shopping will be based on how much the advertisers are willing to pay for the listings appearance, clicks or conversions.

Benefits

From Google’s point of view, by moving to an all-paid model they will reduce clutter and have more trustworthy data that will improve the shopping search experience for its users. Google believes that having a commercial relationship with merchants will encourage them to keep their product information fresh and up to date. More accurate prices, frequently updated latest offers or product availability should translate to better shopping results for users therefore higher quality traffic for merchants. Google also says the new Google Shopping listings will be able to show any special deals or offers provided within the merchant’s data feed.

Essential Preparation

The good news is that the transition will not happen in the UK for at least couple of months, which allows enough time to undertake necessary steps beforehand. The new Google Shopping model will be based on the already available Merchant Center Platform and displayed via Product Listing Ads. As a first step it is important for all businesses to upload the product data to Google and create official Product Listing Ads within AdWords account to ensure their products appear in shopping search results. Once the data has been uploaded the next priority will concern optimising the data feed to improve the return on Google Shopping, which we will cover in the next newsletter.

Looking Forward To

In addition to forthcoming changes, Google Shopping will incorporate Google Trusted Stores badges into the listings, for those merchants who participate in the program. This feature is not currently available outside the US but it is expected to be introduced along with the launch of commercial Google Shopping experience.

Consultation

We’ll be regularly sending our newsletters with all of the important news about Google Shopping as well as updates on the essential preparation. If you have any specific questions or require support with regards to any of the steps outlined in the newsletter, however, just let us know and we will do our best to assist you.

Here are a few tips for getting user reviews on to your sites.  The added benefit of using off-site review platforms allows search engines to aggregate and include review ratings along with your organic, paid listings and Google Shopping listings

Trustpilot
Website: http://www.trustpilot.co.uk
Cost: Free trial available

When a customer makes a purchase through your website, configure your system to send a copy of the order confirmation to the customer, and a copy to Trustpilot’s Automatic Feedback Service.

7 days later the Trustpilot’s Automatic Feedback Service sends the customer an email inviting them to write a review. The email delay and email content is customisable.

Once set up, the process is simple and results in increased trust.

Review Centre
Website: http://www.reviewcentre.com/
Cost: Free

Review Centre is one of the UK’s largest customer review websites and covers a variety of areas such as Finance, Travel, Entertainment, Sports, Lifestyle products and Electrical goods.  Review Centre is an online community of real people, sharing their product and service experiences to help others discover what’s right for them.

Read how to get your company reviewed on Review Centre here:

How can I get my company reviewed on Review Centre?

Struggling with getting sales pages to rank high in organic search is a common problem. This is the challenge of having different pages for conversions and different pages for generating interest. Quite commonly, pages that have a great link worthy content consisting of blog posts, info graphics, reviews or videos rank very high in organic search and generate a lot of clicks. That is great for publicity but can be very frustrating from a sales point of view as these sorts of pages don’t tend to convert;  simply because they rarely allow the reader to make a purchase.

The sales or product focused pages on the other hand can be classified as ‘classically boring’ which makes them perform poorly in organic search.

This problem is what often draws people away from inbound marketing or even makes them reach for black hat activities in some cases. So how do we get this ‘boring’ product page to rank high in organic search?

Here we explore a number of strategies that can be used to get around this challenge.

Combine & Conquer

One of the simplest tactics is called combine and conquer. We often see these great pages on the web filled with truly amazing content that people just want to link to, talk about and share. And then there are these other pages; plain and boring that supposed to generate sales. Has anyone ever thought about combining the two? It is not only a great idea but it is also very possible to achieve. Simply blend well performing, attractive content you worked so hard on with some product technical specifications, images and other sales page features. This strategy removes the ‘boring’ product focused page that used to rank low in search and puts it closer to the top results generating more good quality and relevant traffic.

Leverage Authority

The second popular and widely used tactic is to leverage the authority that you earn by producing great content that allows you to embed more links to your sales page. In other words creating highly desirable blog posts that people in the industry care about can eventually make these people become interested in you. Online publicity will offer opportunities to promote your products through placing relevant links going back to your sales pages. Become an opinion leader in your industry and start being more visible around the web. This will give you a change to capture the indented double listing and start bringing more high value clicks to the sales pages.

Sales Message

If you can’t truly combine the two pages or you feel like it is disingenuous or it does not work well, don’t give up yet – there is another great strategy that can be used. Implement a sales message on the content page. A lot of great content on the web has advertising embedded in it. This type of adverts linking to the page of interest can be displayed in numerous ways on the content page depending on what you think works best for your clients.

Permission Marketing

The last approach is using content marketing in general such as SEO or Social Media to earn the permission to do marketing and get that follow up. Any marketing activity that you are doing around the web, whether it involves Twitter, Facebook or blog, builds up relationships with people that subscribe to it. This allows for the permission marketing, which means that you can now ask prospective customers to subscribe to the newsletter or provide contact information to receive the latest product updates and promotions.

All of the strategies described above are incredibly powerful as they let the inbound marketing and content marketing to be used as forms of sales. Content marketing naturally attracts a vast amount of audience, whereas the clicks that sales pages are receiving are comparatively very low. By applying these strategies, you will find that over time the visitors who are attracted based on the authority of your content will add to the number of conversions that you receive.

Click hear to hear a full video from Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz on this topic.

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.