As whole, e-commerce sales have been considered to have been surprisingly good throughout the recession. The steep decline that traditional brick and mortar stores experienced has not moved into the virtual world. The biggest reason for this is that e-commerce businesses have been able to stay on top of the latest trends in internet advertising and make adjustments when needed.

The mindset of the average e-commerce website owner is aggressive, and it has to be in order to survive online. The online environment is competitive, cut-throat, and more intense than any other business environment. The biggest factor to e-commerce success online being able to adapt and infuse current trends and use them as an asset to the e-commerce site.

In 2009, e-commerce sites have seen some big changes that will alter the competitive landscape for years to come. The first is the evolution of internet access. With mobile commerce continuing to rise and smart phones advancing at exponential rates, e-commerce website must have a mobile strategy. There are new phone apps coming out every hour to promote and advance mobile commerce. While the big names (Ebay, Amazon, and Starbucks), are firmly in the lead, there is room for a large increase in competition.

E-commerce sites also saw a growing trend of social media use as a solid advertising strategy. E-commerce sites are continually being updated to allow for customer feedback and social integration using tools like Facebook and Twitter. These formats have been used for customer support, direct advertising, and company updates.

With all of these changes happening at once, e-commerce website have been struggling to keep up, often joining a trend without really knowing how advantageous the move really is. In the online world, optimization is everything. Without a strategy that optimizes time, space, and finances it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain a quality e-commerce website.

The Big Problem: DATA, plain and simple.

However, the problem is not a lack of data, but an excess of data. With technology trends and social media trends continuing to evolve and expand, e-commerce sites can quickly become buried in data.

Data is useless if a business does not know what it means and how to use it to optimize their future actions. There is so much focus placed on staying on top to current trends, especially in the social arena, business are not set up to analyze all of data that they gather along the way.

Improved business metrics is critically essential and should be THE focus of companies coming into 2010. The internet will only continue to grow and expand and become integrated into everyday life. If your e-commerce site does not have the ability to digest the immense amount of data streaming in on a daily basis and more importantly, take immediate, and correct, action upon it, then you will quickly get left behind in 2010.

How are you handling your data? Are you overloaded?

In today’s economic climate, your business needs to do more than just wheel out the same old tired marketing strategy year after year. The popularity of online publishing tools – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr – have created a unprecedented media opportunity for businesses to promote brand awareness by becoming an information authority on topics that are relevant to your industry.

Benefits include creating a sizable following that can help provide quality feedback on products or services. According to research performed by Forrester Research, 34% of retailers say social marketing has helped increase sales. The conversation is happening. The question is are you going to join? Here are a few tips to help make the transition into social marketing easier:

Question
Take the time to learn about the most popular publishing tools and the audience they reach. This can be a time consuming process but should not be overlooked. Consider hiring a professional to manage the process for you if time is an issue. I guarantee you will yield a higher rate of engagement that can be tracked properly for ROI purposes. Understanding the feature-set of each social utility will enable your business to engage in the conversation more effectively. We suggest only trying two to three publishing tools in the beginning so you have time to familiarize yourself with each before adding a new one.

Learn
Once you understand the nature and context of the blog, Twitter feed, video or
online discussion where relevant topics are being discussed, think about how you want to respond or
engage in the conversation. Utilize the search features included in each social marketing network to learn about what is being said about your brand. Learn from the conversations and prepare a strategy that enables you to guide it in the right direction.

Decide
Often times businesses utilize social media publishing tools independently from each other. Resulting in off-topic conversations that are challenging to track and convert in sales. Your companies goal should be to harness all of the communication channels collectively to serve the overall marketing strategy of your organization. For example, use software such as Seesmic to help manage multiple networks at the same time.

Prepare
Most online publishing tools include features that enable users to customize the look and feel of their accounts/profiles. Prepare yourself by researching the guidelines of each network before creating a new account. This way you’ll be able to engage in conversation immediately without sacrificing the power of your identity. Create graphics that compliment your brand and provide contact information on each that can be measured by your analytics software.

Act
Craft your responses to ongoing conversations by being transparent, respectful, clear and concise. Keep in mind that most of these social network utilities are indexed by search engines. Thus, stay on message and craft your messages clearly so they can possibly be used to help others in the future. It can sometimes be tempting to become defensive when someone attacks your brand/services. How you respond to the situation can sometimes turn a bad situation into a positive experience.

Social Media such as Blogs, Micro-blogs, Wikis, and Social Networks are not only helping many people communicate and connect, but are also powerful tools for business as well. They can be used to promote your products and services, engage customers in meaningful conversations, network and develop new relationships, or simply to distribute information about your business online.


Recently, the media has been awash with reports about Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, but many of you may be unclear about the concept, or unsure of its relevance to your business activities. In order to understand how to use it effectively in your business you must first understand what social media means:

Social Media is, at its most basic sense, a shift in how people discover, read, and share news and information and content. It’s a fusion of sociology and technology, tranforming monologue (one to many) into dialog (many to many.)
Source: Brian Solis

Marketing Plan Integration

Position social media as a component of your overall marketing plan. Similar to print marketing, the ROI of a Social Media campaign can be challenging to measure by itself. As a result, Social Media should be one medium you’re using among many in your communication with your audience and customers. Proper integration with other forms of marketing will bolster their effectiveness and enable you to sell it up the chain of command in your corporate environment.

Sales & Promotion

The ideas is to harness tools such as twitter and blogs to assist you in sales conversions. Please note that alone they probably won’t turn into a conversion. However, they’ll help you get the eyeballs looking at your products where you know your website can close the deal. The great thing about twitter is that you have the ability to communicate directly with your potential audience. It essentially becomes a unique and innovative tool they can use to spread the word. As long as you’re providing useful content for your audience, they’ll appreciate your effort and most likely visit again.

Example:
I like talking about the Zicam example. Zicam would use twitter searches for people complaining of suffering flu like symptoms. They would then use Twitter to send a direct message to the user with a creative message. Often times the message would include a link to it’s product (sorry your feeling down…here’s a coupon for Zicam). Think about ways you can use this formula for your business.

Reputation Management

Many clients find success in using blogging and twitter as a method for gathering customer feedback. Social media is supposed to be a conversation, correct? Well, treat it as such and allow your audience to participate in the future of your products. In addition, your audience will also use services like twitter to voice their experiences with your product. The way you respond to these users will show others that you care about your services/product.

Example:
I was speaking with a fellow Fishers Arts Council member the other day, Lisa Sirkin, about how she tweeted a bad experience with an email marketing product. The software maker responded to her within minutes and has been working with her since to resolve a software complication. Lisa explained to me that while frustrated with the product she was really impressed that the company went the extra step to make her experience right.

Join a group of web designers and developers, and you’ll hear the word “interactive” thrown around a few times. The term is used liberally in these circles, but from a business standpoint, it’s a fairly foreign concept. When is a site interactive, and what do you call a site that isn’t? More importantly, what does interactivity really mean for business?

Let’s start by defining the term. Interactive basically means that something is reciprocally active; that is, both parties can put their two cents into the mix. A phone line is interactive because people can talk on both ends. Likewise, a site is interactive when viewers can speak up and influence the way your site behaves. Games, forms, and shopping carts are all forms of web interactivity.

Interactivity and customer needs

If we go by the definition above, then 90% of active websites are interactive. But success lies not just on meeting that one standard. You can pay a fortune for a swanky Flash site, but if you don’t address customer needs, you can end up off the Web and/or out of business.

To do its job, an interactive site should address at least two important elements: information retrieval and social interaction. Customers go online first to get informed, and second to interact with others. Of course, there are countless other customer needs and we can spend all day discussing them, but when you’ve got these two covered, the rest can be addressed along the way.

Giving information

Providing information is a given for most web businesses. But presenting the info is where it gets tricky. Hyperlinks alone won’t get your readers where you want them; you have to direct them to the right pages with context clues and navigational design. Today’s websites use a menu-driven system where people are intuitively steered along a path, which eventually ends on the sales page.

Communication is another thorny patch in this area. Maybe you don’t have the staff to answer individual questions, or maybe you’re just strapped for time. But that’s no reason to give out canned responses. Make your information personal; when you receive a question, take five minutes to type out a reply instead of lifting it from your company manual. By personally addressing customers, you show them that you’re committed to helping out.

The human factor

Some years ago, come big fashion houses decided to strip down their site to a splash page—no links, no words, just one static image. In other words, they stopped being interactive. A bold move, to be sure, but not necessarily a smart one. Instead of the mysterious, alluring effect they were going for, what it did was alienate customers. It also drove home the fact that they were a money-making enterprise, rather than a human-run business.

Give your site a human side by keeping things light, casual and open. Encourage conversation by adding forums, chat rooms, and other interactive features. Keep your style friendly instead of formal. It’s these elements that anchored such big businesses as Yahoo! and AOL: by presenting themselves as fun and approachable, they drew in a large customer base and really took off.

Last March, Toys R Us bought the Toys.com domain for a cool $5.1 million dollars, drawing widespread attention to the value of domain names. The fact is that any business—online or offline—needs a good domain name if it wants to make any money off the web. With a well-chosen domain, you can better control your online presence and establish a more solid online identity.

So what makes a good domain name? Each successful business would probably point to a different handful of factors. Most of them, however, can be lumped into these four main elements:

1. Brevity

The Web allows domain names of up to 67 characters (63 without the .com), but it’s never a good idea to use it all. Good domain names are short and sweet, but nonetheless effective in conveying your business. “Toys” is a mere syllable and 4 characters long, but the message is clear: when you want toys, this is where you go.

2. Recall

A short URL works because it’s easy to remember, but sometimes it may be worth the few extra characters. Acronyms are a classic example. IBM may get away with ibm.com, but buying bbam.com for Bill’s Books and Magazines won’t get you very far. Business adviser Dr. Michael Fortin suggests using rhyme and rhythm; rather than using obscure initials, you can use billsbooks.com, which has a much nicer ring to it.

3. Relevance to business

It used to be easy getting your own dot-com: you just took your business name and registered it. But if you’re just starting out, chances are there’s already someone using your URL. Your best bet is a name that relates to your business, although not necessarily with your name. For example, Bill’s Books can get alternate domains such as “cheapbooks,” “booksandmags,” or “bookfinds”—not only is it accurate; it also pulls up your search engine rankings for relevant keywords.

4. Ease of use

When you misspell a popular site like facebook.com, you land on some obscure, ad-laden, and possibly unsafe pages. It may not be so bad for Facebook, but when people want to go to good old Bill’s Books and end up in an online casino, it isn’t good for business. On the web, you’re always going to have a few bad spellers or bad typists. Choose a domain name that a five-year-old can remember and type in. If you constantly have to spell it out for people, chances are it’s not a very good one.

It’s bound to happen to any online startup: you take pains to form a brand, generate some buzz, and make your product the next big thing on the Web. But somehow it doesn’t happen, and you are left watching your money go down the drain.

Chances are you’ve stumbled into one of many brand barriers—market conditions that keep your brand, and subsequently your business, from taking off. This article discusses four of the most common brand barriers in the online marketplace, and how you can get over them.

1. Cost

The general idea is that branding doesn’t come cheap. But Hermawan Kartajaya, founder of Asian marketing giant MarkPlus Inc., thinks otherwise. Many startups, he says, spend millions of dollars on aggressive strategies that don’t really say anything. Branding and advertising aren’t the same thing. For a small company, it makes more sense to start with tried-and-tested methods like word of mouth. If you know what you’re doing, it won’t cost you anything but will still generate the credibility you need.

2. Competition

It’s true that there will always be competition, especially on the Web. But just because there are a million other similar companies doesn’t mean you have to go head-to-head with all of them. Put your branding position in perspective. If you’re a new online retailer, don’t call yourself the next Amazon; instead, you take an angle that turns your weakness into a strength. Show people how, as a smaller company, you can offer personalized service, better communication, and other things that a retail giant can’t.

3. Overanalyze

Experts like to call it “analysis paralysis.” Sometimes, you get too caught up in market research, web metrics, and other tiny details that the whole effort stops moving forward. These are all important, to be sure, but don’t let them distract you from the big picture. Use the numbers as benchmarks for success, but don’t make them your goal. Once in a while, take a step back and see how your brand is looking from a fresh perspective.

4. Internal branding

Kartajaya cites internal implementation as another common barrier to successful branding. Many startups fail because the people who run the company do not reflect its values themselves. It’s not just about using the company newsletter or putting your logo all over your website; it’s about taking on the right attitude. It’s not uncommon for employees of big businesses to memorize the corporate motto or sing the company song—it’s not exactly high-level marketing, but it works. Let your people know what your business stands for, and they’ll unknowingly pass the idea on to your customers.

Not long after launching your marketing plan, you’ll find yourself facing a sea of data: number of hits, top keywords, unique visitors, search engine referrals. But what do all these mean? Does getting 10,000 hits yesterday mean your business is off the ground? Are you getting enough search engine traffic? So what if 10% of your visitors are using Macs?

This is where web metrics come in. Metrics allow you to make sense of the numbers and use them to improve your marketing strategy. But to really make it work for you, you need to know which numbers really matter. Web analyst Rich Page goes through all the basic metrics and identifies eight are really worth your time.

Average time spent (ATS): ATS can be a reliable indicator of site quality, but not all the time. When people spend a long time on your site, they’re either enjoying it or having a hard time navigating. Combining it with exit pages and bounce rates (discussed below) can give you a clearer picture of your site’s performance.

Exit pages: Some pages, such as links or sales confirmation, are natural exit sites. But if a vital page like your product listing ranks high as an exit page, it’s a sign that your content needs some work.

Bounce rate: This indicates the number of people who exit your site as soon as they reach it. Pay more attention to the bounce rates on paid search keywords. Page recommends cutting out keywords with a bounce rate of 40% or more.

Entrance pages: Not everyone who visits your site arrives through your home page. In fact, the home page often accounts for a small percentage of site hits — the bulk of your traffic usually comes from search engines. So it’s usually a waste of time to vamp up your home page in hopes of making a good first impression. Find out which of your pages draw more traffic and invest more time in improving them instead.

Repeat visits: People who willingly return to your site are much more relevant than those who see it for the first time. Take note of the proportion between first-time visits and repeat visits; the higher the repeat visits rank, the better your website probably is. If you’re not getting enough, analyze other web metrics to see which pages need improvement.

Internal search keywords: Experts agree that this is one of the most revealing yet most ignored statistics. Internal searches let you know exactly what people want to see on your website, so you can tailor your content accordingly. For instance, if people search your book blog for film reviews, offering them on the side may get you a better ATS or more repeat visits.

Conversion rate: Sales conversion is pretty much a given for someone with basic marketing knowledge. But beyond overall sales, you want to look into particular pages that yield the highest conversion rates. Page suggests setting up a “funnel” for every conversion, so that you know where people last looked before they made the transaction. It’s also a good secondary indicator of relevant traffic sources.

Feed subscribers: Feeds are more specific to blog sites, but with most businesses going into corporate blogging, it’s gaining ground as a relevant web metric. Sign up to a service like Feedburner so you can keep track of how many people are subscribing to your blog.

Time was when Internet marketing consisted of having a website, and email address, and not much else. You spread word around and directed people to your site by word-of-mouth, and you’ve got business all year. But that was twenty years ago.

These days, marketing without strategy is like taking an unplanned road trip: without a map, you’re taking chances at every turn and hoping they don’t lead to a dead end. Of course, there’s no start-to-end trajectory in Internet marketing — but keeping these four elements in mind will keep you on the right track.

Your budget

Let’s face it, 95% of people in online marketing are putting hard-earned money at stake. The best you can do is minimize that risk by arming yourself with information. Acquaint yourself with various marketing techniques, from web design to banner advertising, and the real costs of each one (including potential returns). Then look at your checkbooks and decide how much you’re willing to wager.

The marketing mix

Use your newfound familiarity with marketing techniques to lay down a comprehensive marketing strategy. The marketing mix is like a jigsaw puzzle: some methods are made to fit together and create a much bigger impact. For example, social media marketing can generate traffic to your blog, which in turn refines customer relationships and turns them into potential buyers, who eventually up on your sales page.

Staying flexible

Internet marketing, like every aspect of online business, is seldom linear. With millions of businesses in the same boat, you can expect to have your plans thwarted by budget, competition, and changing industry standards. Stay on your toes and be ready to change course as needed. As you get to know your market, you’ll be able to anticipate changes and create effective backup plans.

Tracking your success

Part of being flexible is knowing not just how, but also when to change tactics. Keep an eye on your site traffic and conversions, and take time to study how internet marketing affects the figures. Determine which tactics are well worth your money and which ones aren’t. Eventually, you’ll be able to refine your strategies so that you get more returns with less.

Ten years ago, the bulk of online marketing was directed towards men. It was a proven fact that few women even knew about the internet. And the general idea was that women who did use the Web belonged to a small minority that wasn’t worth anyone’s marketing dollar.

Fast forward to the present. The tables have been turned—research shows that women under 65 are at least just as web-savvy as men, and a growing number of them have even surpassed men’s proficiency levels. To the online marketer, this means your strategy may be in need of a major shift.

How men and women use the Internet

A 2005 study by Pew Internet and American Life showed that men used the Web primarily to read the news, check sports scores, download music, buy and sell stocks, and make travel reservations. Women, on the other hand, spent more time reading health, spiritual, and support group websites, and keeping in touch with friends and family.

What does this say about people’s online habits? The key point is that men go online for business and entertainment, while women use the Web for information and interaction. More importantly, it shows that gender stereotypes are still very much prevalent, and that they’re still worth keeping in mind when positioning your product online.

Putting it to work

Melbourne-based affiliate marketer Johnson Kee offers a good illustration of the difference between male and female marketing. Women are all about empathy, and they tend to trust a more personal approach. To market your product, he says, you need to acknowledge their feelings. If you’re selling a weight-loss pill, for example, you want to target their feelings of inadequacy or low self-esteem, and show how your product can help them.

Men are more into concrete results. As Kee noted, they are active “mistrusters.” You don’t sell protein supplements by showing a man how miserable life can be without those cool bodybuilder muscles. No, you sell them by showing solid facts, scientific proof, and proven results. Note that you will have to do this with women too, eventually—but with men, the facts have to take center stage.

Marketing to both sexes

What if you’re marketing to both sexes? Well, given that each one has a distinct character, it’s rarely possible to target both in one go. Understand why you’re trying to sell to both in the first place. Chances are your male and female audiences see the same product in different ways. The key word, again, is positioning. Create a separate positioning plan for each audience, and tailor them to their specific online behaviors.

A popular joke in the online retail world is that there are two kinds of retailers: Amazon.com, and everyone else. If you fall under the latter, it’s easy to get cowed at the sheer size of big online companies. But here’s a secret: they’re afraid of you too.

The playing field of online retail isn’t as lopsided as experts would have you believe. Here are five advantages you have over the big corporations, and how you can use them to gain an edge.

1. You can look just as credible.

One thing all retailers have in common is that most of their traffic still lands on the home page. A well-designed home page can earn you that “instinctive” trust that people put into sites that look trustworthy. On the Web, after all, it’s all about perception.

2. You can reach niche audiences.

Big retailers need big audiences to earn their keep, but you can make your fortune from the smaller niche markets they tend to ignore. It’s seldom worth their money to seek out markets with little demand. But that’s precisely what small companies need—a highly targeted audience with a far greater chance of becoming regulars.

3. You can offer personalized service.

It’s a well-known fact that the larger the company, the poorer the customer service. When’s the last time you got a refund from a big retailer without being passed around from one department to the next? With a smaller audience, it’s easier to directly address people’s concerns and build more lasting relationships with your customers.

4. You can beat them at SEO.

Again, since your products are more specialized, you can rank higher than big retailers for the search terms that matter to you. A sound combination of search engine optimization, pay-per-click marketing, and other marketing techniques can gain you significant market share at the expense of large competitors.

5. You probably have more online experience.

A lot of established retailers started out as brick-and-mortar stores; many still keep their offline operations. Studies show that online operations are largely neglected in such companies, often causing internal struggles as they compete with offline management. On the other hand, companies that started out online offer more efficient Web service and are more likely to keep customers.