Catalog Mailings Down 20%

Multichannel Merchant reports that catalog mailings for March 2008 were down 20% from the same month last year.  They speculate that a depressed economy and increase in paper and delivery costs have contributed.

I think this leaves somewhat of an opening for e-commerce merchants to include mini-catalogs, highlighting their products, inside shipments.  I've always been a big fan of this strategy as a great way to foster long term customers.  Just make sure to give them a great buying experience so they pick up your catalog as their Sunday morning reading. Read More...

The Best FREE SEO Research Tool - GTrends

What's the tool that the SEO experts turn to first before starting any SEO project? Gtrends!.

Why do I need Gtrends?

Your SEO efforts will be completely wasted unless you start with the right words to optimize for.

One of the biggest SEO mistakes I see from new clients is trying to optimize for keywords that have insignificant search volume. Most business owners know an awful lot about their business, but the "right" words to search for are not always the words people are actually searching. You must make sure that your SEO efforts are based off of keywords that have enough search volume to be worth it.

What can Gtrends tell me?

Search for a broad word of phrase that relates to your business. Gtrends will come up with the top search (by approximate average searches per day) and related searches. Be sure to also click the graph icon to the right. The popup will show you how many websites you'll be competing with on that keyword as well as how many clicks you can expect for being #1 in Google for that term.

I can't reiterate this enough. Your SEO efforts will be completely wasted if you're not choosing the right words to optimize for in the first place. Gtrends is the most important SEO researh tool on the net. And it's free!

UPDATE: Gtrends Temporarily Broken

Well it appears that Gtrends is a little under the weather. They've been having some problems on and off due to inconsistencies with Google's own Trending system. Gtrends is not giving an accurate reading for projected hits on #1 spot (highlighted in red).

Take a look at the screenshot below:



Hopefully it's back up soon! Read More...

Save Time on your Social Media Marketing

Everyone should know by now that I'm a HUGE advocate of SMM (Social Media Marketing) as a driving source of traffic and search engine rankings for your business. If you don't know what I'm talking about, read my blog article "Why your website needs a Blog" and our Learning Center Article "Social Media - What Is It and How Will it Drive Traffic to Your Business?"

Well, I've come across an awesome tool to organize and streamline your SMM efforts. It's called flock, and it's actually a web browser based on Mozilla Firefox. It aggregates your social websites into a side panel for easy access and updating. I'm currently using it to manage my blogs, Digg, Twitter, Youtube, and del.icio.us. It's lacking a few major ones for now, but I'm sure they'll come. Make sure you check it out at www.flock.com. Read More...

Ebay Makes Paypal Mandatory for Sellers

Scared you, right? Well if you're a seller on eBay AU or eBay UK, you've already been met with this fate. Yesterday, eBay announced that all sellers on the ebay.uk site must accept PayPal to sell on the venue. eBay AU's announcement came just a month earlier.

What does that mean for US sellers? Historically, eBay tests new features and/or majors changes on eBay UK about 6 months to a year prior to introducing it on eBay.com. So.....

eBay.com sellers MUST EXPECT that PayPal will be a required payment method to sell on any of their auction sites in the next couple of months.

What does this mean?

Well, probably not all that much. eBay has been trying to make themselves into Amazon.com for quite a while now. Amazon only processes their own payments, but it's included in their fees. EBay, on the other hand, will allow other payment methods other than PayPal.

In fact, our most successful clients all accept PayPal. Yes, there is a bit more fraud to deal with, but you should already have a third party insurer to back you up in case this happens. We still see that when presented a choice between CC and PP, over 80% of eBay purchases (on average) will go PP.

The only thing to worry about is if PayPal will be raising their rates. I doubt it, since PayPal is ever trying to expand their off-eBay business, and trying to compete with other merchant service providers.

Bottom line? Not much to worry about here... Read More...