Posts Tagged ‘Ecommerce’

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New product Kindles hope for news publishers

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

Technology might actually be a boon for traditional media providers, thanks to Amazon’s new version of Kindle, called Kindle DX.

Kindle displays the New York TimesIf you read my blog posts on the New York Times and news media in general, you know that traditional news providers seem to be in trouble. Their revenue keeps falling, readership is mostly in decline, and other factors point to a shift in the way people gather news.

This Kindle development is a welcome bit of good news.

I read about Kindle in an article in Computer World, entitled “New Kindle creates new challenges for publishers.” This sounds quite exciting. The previous Kindle version had a six-inch display, but the new one will have a 9.7-inch display, making it easier to read books, newspapers, magazines and other content.

Instead of facing the problem of providing news free of charge, news publishers might actually be able to pull in decent revenue with portable devices like this. The New York Times has already been offering its content to Kindle readers for a monthly fee, but it is expected to lower that fee for the new version.

This is certainly a good opportunity for news publishers, but it comes with a few question marks. Since the technology is so new, it might be difficult to tell what price consumers are willing to pay. Also, news websites and blogs are still popular, and it might be difficult to persuade people to give up their free news sources for a portable, paid service. Cell phones can be used to read news articles, but they are much smaller, so maybe this is a viable option.

Amazon is the first to delve into this new industry, but there will surely be competitors soon, and that could also help news providers by giving them more avenues to sell their content through.

I’m glad to share this positive story. I might write a follow-up blog entry about the Kindle product after it debuts. We’ll wait and see. Stay tuned for more ecommerce stories like this in the eHarbor Blog.

The photo of Kindle and the New York Times is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of jocke66.

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Posted in Ecommerce, Media | 3 Comments »

eHarbor summer party coming in June

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

You might remember my blog posts on eHarbor, Inc.’s celebration of its successful start to 2009 with a showing of the movie “Knowing.” I’m pleased to say the good times keep coming, as the company recently announced its annual summer party on June 12-13, 2009.

Tiger plays with soccer ballThat’s not to say that we’re celebrating all the time or that we’re focused solely on having fun. Our slogan for 2009 is “Swinging for the fence,” and we’re doing our best to live up to that ideal by working hard and giving our best effort.

Back to the eHarbor Summer Party, it is going to be fun. All eHarbor employees are invited to come enjoy camping, barbecue, an outdoor movie (I love movies!), golf tournament and some sort of water e-lympics.

These festivities will take place in Hobble Creek Canyon, near Springville, Utah.

The photo of a tiger playing with a ball is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of Tambako the Jaguar. This is the second photo of a tiger I’ve included in the eHarbor Blog. I also included a photo of a lion with my blog post on making content king. I really like cats.

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Posted in Fun, eHarbor | 1 Comment »

Too much information is bad for you

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

In the digital age, information is not only plentiful, it’s downright endemic. We have Web analytics tools that can glean information on people who visit our websites.

Fat cat lies comfortably on chair

I will compare information gathering to eating. The more food we eat, the more weight we are likely to gain. If we eat everything we find, we’re not living a healthy lifestyle. It takes discipline and wisdom to choose the foods that our bodies need the most and then eat appropriate servings of them. A little variety doesn’t hurt either.

If we constantly eat and never do anything with that energy, even if the food we eat is good for us, we’ll probably become obese. People who become obese have a greater chance of premature death, just as ecommerce companies that become saturated with information and don’t do anything with it can die prematurely, as well. Not to mention suffer indigestion.

Information is a great thing, just like food. But we must use it wisely. We should gather information pertinent to our needs and then put it to good use in our online marketing decisions, product pricing, customer service, etc.

By the way, I got the idea for this blog entry from an article in Ecommerce Times, entitled, “Drowning in Data: Web Analytics and Information Overload.” That article has lots of insights into information gathering, and I took a piece and ran with it.

This leads me to some things I learned at a recent Webinar by Hubspot and Brent Leary, entitled “How to Use Social Media to Attract More Customers.” I promised I would talk more about this Webinar in my blog entry on Facebook, and I’ll keep my word now.

I highly recommend clicking on the Webinar link above to watch the hour-long presentation. You can also download the presentation slides in a PDF file to save time.

In the Webinar, I learned about websites I can use to both gather and organize information from social-media sites like Twitter. Here are the ones Leary mentioned:

- TubeMogul – distribute online videos and analyze viewers and impact.

- CoTweet – organize your conversations in Twitter.

- Salesforce – measure results in Twitter, Google and other online media.

- Bit.ly – shorten links and keep track of who clicks them.

- Favotter – another Twitter measurement site.

- Twitalyzer – in-depth information on your Twitter account.

I find these sites helpful in my efforts to focus the social-media exposure of eHarbor, Inc. and its affiliates. In fact, eHarbor’s affiliates help not only to create a website for you, but track and gain more visitors through search engine optimization and other strategies.

These companies include: Magellan Commerce, Real Estate Promoter, Submit Solution, and Direct Home Find.

Remember, you are what you eat – but it’s what you do with your time and energy that truly defines you.

The photo of the fat cat is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of brokinhrt2.

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Posted in Ecommerce, eHarbor | 2 Comments »

New York Times struggles to stay afloat

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

By Robert Lockard

I read a Bloomberg article that said the New York Times is facing a large drop in revenue and is trying to cut back on its expenses to stay in business. The article is entitled, “New York Times Sees Further Ad Drop After Loss Widens.”

Tiger staying afloat in water

The New York Times is learning the hard way that ecommerce and online media are changing the way people gather information and the way marketers advertise their products to customers. They’re trying to stay afloat by cutting jobs, reducing their staff’s salaries and selling property and other assets to try to make up for lost advertising revenue.

All of this is prolonging the inevitable. Old media will have to adapt to changing conditions or go the way of the railroad.

For better or worse, Facebook, Twitter and other social-media sites are revolutionizing communication and information distribution. Marketers are shifting their advertising dollars online because it is much more cost-efficient to do so. Print faces serious challenges because of this.

One quote in the Bloomberg article stuck out to me above all the others. Thyra Zerhusen, managing director of Optimum Investment Advisors, said the New York Times has “to do a better job monetizing their online revenues.”

This seems to be a common theme for companies looking to make a profit online. Online marketers save money by hosting a website instead of renting space at a mall, but they need to understand doing business online is a big change from the old way of doing business and it requires different approaches to earning a profit.

I recommend going to Magellan Commerce’s redesigned website to find resources that can help you succeed online. These include search engine optimization, website design, and more.

You can also go to other eHarbor, Inc. affiliates: Submit Solution and Real Estate Promoter.

The photo of the tiger staying afloat is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of fPat.

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Posted in Ecommerce, Media, eHarbor | 5 Comments »

Facebook’s growing pains could transform social media

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

Facebook is one of the highest-profile members of the social-media revolution that took hold of the Internet four years ago. One question on many people’s minds is: Is Facebook on the verge of becoming profitable and going public? That might be a giant step for the social-media industry.

Man with a book for a face

I read about Facebook’s amazing growth and current struggles in a Fortune magazine article, entitled “Is Facebook losing its glow?” The article points out a lot of interesting statistics about the company, such as:

- 850 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day.

- 8 million videos are uploaded to Facebook every day.

- 70 percent of Facebook’s users are outside the United States.

- Facebook’s revenue in 2008 totaled $280 million.

Those are impressive numbers. And to think that in 2004 hardly anyone had ever heard of Facebook. Or Twitter, MySpace or YouTube, for that matter. Clearly, these websites are doing something right to become so successful, and people around the world want to be a part of them.

But Facebook has yet to make a profit because it relies mainly on advertising for its revenue. And online advertising is cheap, as any newspaper or other traditional media provider will tell you. I’m not sure how social-media sites will earn a profit without eventually charging their customers a fee for some services.

Online consumer spending is expected to increase in the next several years, and a growing number of marketers are climbing onto the ecommerce bandwagon. Maybe social-media sites can take advantage of this trend, too.

But they might lose a large number of current and potential subscribers. Facebook bases its whole business model on generating new customers, so it might be difficult for it to transition to developing the quality of its customers instead of quantity.

Speaking of social media and marketing, on April 14, 2009, I attended Hubspot’s largest Webinar ever, which was called “How to Use Social Media to Attract More Customers.” Brent Leary, co-founder and partner of CRM Essentials, led this awesome presentation. I hope to discuss the lessons I learned at this Webinar in a future blog entry.

I just can’t help pointing out that the Fortune article had several obvious spelling and grammar mistakes. I pointed out mistakes in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times, so I think it’s fair to do the same in Fortune magazine.

- Most of that came directly from banner ads, and a substantial chunk was still coming from a deal with Microsoft in which the Internet behemoth sold traditional banner ads, which cost as little as $0.15 cents per one thousand ads shown to users.
This is a common mistake. $0.15 cents is equal to $.0015. When people say this they usually mean $0.15 or 15 cents, not both.

- In 2008, the company brought in an estimated $280 milion.
In Spanish, this would be the correct spelling of “million,” but not in English.

- More than 131,000 users became a fan of the national pizza franchise saw traffic to its site jump 253%.
This is a clear case of rewriting a sentence and forgetting to make it fit together properly.

I have another really cool thing to share from this article, but I’ll save that for another blog entry. Be sure to check the eHarbor Blog to stay posted on good news in the world of ecommerce, search engine optimization and other topics like these. You can also follow us on Twitter.

You can take advantage of SEO tactics and succeed in the world of ecommerce with the help of eHarbor and its affiliates, which include Magellan Commerce, Real Estate Promoter and Submit Solution.

The photo of the “facebook” is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of _Max-B.

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Posted in Ecommerce, Media | 7 Comments »

Does Internet’s rise mean news media’s demise?

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

The Internet has changed the way we do a lot of things. Ecommerce is changing the way we shop for goods and services. Online marketing is proving more popular to advertisers than other forms of media, especially in the current recession.

Old Dallas Times Herald sign

For better or worse, the Internet is changing the news media, as well.

It’s not easy being in the news business. They work hard to analyze stories and write up accurate and up-to-date information, only to have their work quickly summarized and modified for blogs, sometimes with little credit to the original author. There are even a few bloggers who point out all of the misspellings and bad grammar in otherwise good articles.

Often, bloggers practice fair use of copyrighted content by using only a small portion of an article and building their own ideas off of it. I did that with the story on consumers touching products.

Whenever I include an image, which is the property of someone else, I make sure to give credit where credit is due. You might notice my attribution at the bottom of almost every blog entry. I’ve done that from the very beginning.

We appear to be in an age when people like to think of information as free. That can be a good thing, but it can also lead to a lack of credible information in the long term, as news writers lose incentives to generate well-researched stories in the first place.

What inspired me to write about this topic is an article in Ars Technica, called “The newspaper industry’s attack on Google misses the point.” Fascinating read, by the way. I recommend it.

I thought this was an important topic to spend time discussing here in the eHarbor Blog. I hope to keep share more positive stories soon on eHarbor, Inc. and its affiliates: Magellan Commerce, Real Estate Promoter and Submit Solution.

The photo of the dilapidated Dallas Times Herald sign is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of adonis paul hunter / ahptical.

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Posted in Ecommerce, Media | 6 Comments »

Flaw in ecommerce: Can’t touch this!

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

Can’t touch this. No, not the M.C. Hammer song – actually, I’m referring to a flaw in the format of ecommerce. I recently read a Time Magazine article, entitled “Want to Save Some Money? Shop Without Touching.” In that article, they talk about a remarkable study from UCLA and the University of Wisconsin that shows that consumers who touch a product are much more likely to purchase the product and even want to pay more for it than if they don’t touch it.

Statue of panther with Don't Touch Me sign

“When you touch something, you instantly feel more of a connection to it,” said Suzanne Shu, who teaches at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and co-wrote the study. “That connection stirs up an emotional reaction – ‘yeah, I like the feel of it, this can be mine.’ And that emotion can cause you to buy something you never would have bought if you hadn’t touched it.” This quote is from the Time article.

How interesting. The Time article focuses on consumers, saying that they can potentially save money by keeping their hands to themselves at stores. While that is a good idea, and I intend to follow that advice, I think the results can send a completely different message to ecommerce marketers.

To me, this article brings up the problem that ecommerce is, by definition, online shopping. And the Internet is different than a mall. Therefore, online consumers, who are unable to touch products they see on websites, might be less able to connect with products and won’t necessarily be as interested in buying them. It’s much easier to shop around for the best deal online, also. It’s a competitive market online.

It is essential to get your name out there as much as possible while the recession continues and since you face this slight disadvantage. Even though potential customers can’t touch the products on your website, they can be impressed by your professional presentation, high placement on Google and other search engines, and the great content on your site that attracted them in the first place.

Ecommerce sales continue to grow, despite the recession, even while sales slow in traditional retail stores. Clearly, consumers are interested in shopping online, and the ability to touch products isn’t the most important part of the buying process.

If you would like to have a quality website, and utilize search engine optimization in your efforts to gain customers online, be sure to check out eHarbor, Inc.’s services.

You might also want to check out Magellan Commerce, which recently launched a redesign of its website. Other eHarbor affiliates include Real Estate Promoter and Submit Solution.

The photo of the Don’t Touch Me sign is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of F.S.M.

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Posted in Ecommerce, eHarbor | 6 Comments »

Redesigned Magellan Commerce website online

Monday, April 6th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

I get to fulfill my promise in my last blog post by writing about some of the great things happening at eHarbor, Inc. I’m excited!

Magellan Commerce, an eHarbor affiliate that was formed in May 2008, launched a completely redesigned and improved version of its website on Friday, April 3, 2009. It is quite an improvement, as you can see from the before-and-after screenshots below.

Original version of the Magellan Commerce website

Original version of the Magellan Commerce website

New version of the Magellan Commerce website

New version of the Magellan Commerce website

Magellan Commerce designs websites, corporate logos, business cards, letterheads and postcards and more for businesses and individuals. They also help companies top search engines with search engine optimization.

Remember the SEO series we finished a little while ago? The tactics we discussed in that series, such as simplifying URLs, optimizing images and improving anchor text, are among those Magellan Commerce uses for its clients.

I recommend checking out the redesigned Magellan Commerce website for yourself today! Feel free to also visit other eHarbor affiliates, like Real Estate Promoter, Submit Solution and Direct Home Find.

I look forward to sharing more positive ecommerce news like this soon.

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Posted in Ecommerce, SEO, eHarbor | 7 Comments »

Protect your computer from April fools’ day virus

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

By Robert Lockard

I’ve never been a big fan of April fools’ day. Trying to make people look like fools for trusting what other people say isn’t a good way to build trust or add anything positive to the world. I much prefer helping people smile, rather than laughing at their mistakes. With this in mind, I would like to warn my fellow ecommerce enthusiasts about a potentially damaging computer virus set to strike on April 1, 2009.

Watch Out buttonI promised I would talk about the Conficker C virus in my last blog entry. I’m sorry to talk about such a depressing topic, but I hope talking about it will be helpful to you. I am indebted to the Yahoo Tech News Blog for their informative blog entry on this topic.

I first heard about this virus in late 2008 at the Brigham Young University library, where they had messages on computer desktops warning of the danger of transmitting a virulent worm via USB drives. An earlier version of Conficker was already spreading by tricking computer users into installing it onto a computer when the AutoRun message comes up after plugging in their USB drive. It infected 9 million computers with this strategy, and it might infect even more with the new strain.

Many computers might be affected with the current strain of Conficker without users even knowing about it because it is not scheduled to become active until April 1.

No one knows what will happen when Conficker C does become active.

It might be used to steal personal information, take control of computers, erase hard drives or otherwise cripple computers. Now is a good time to back up your files and try to minimize your exposure to this virus. You might want to run a free Microsoft safety scan of your computer to help detect and hopefully get rid of the Conficker C virus before it’s too late.

I hope you’ll have a happy April fools’ day and not get fooled by this disruptive and dangerous virus. The photo of the Watch Out button is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of Salim Virji.

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Posted in Ecommerce | 2 Comments »

Celebration time at eHarbor, Inc.

Friday, March 27th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

It’s Friday, and eHarbor, Inc. is celebrating a successful start to 2009 by heading to the Thanksgiving Point Mega Plex in Lehi, Utah for a movie day – just as I mentioned in a blog entry last week. We’re closing up shop early and going to a 3 p.m. showing of a movie called “Knowing.”

Buenos Aires paper-filled sky

I love sharing enthusiasm and good news, especially when times are tough.

Can you believe this is the 20th blog entry I’ve written for the eHarbor Blog in the past two months? I’m having fun sharing ecommerce news and search engine optimization tips. Of course, sometimes I enjoy taking a moment to simply have a little fun every now and then, like today.

On Tuesday, March 31, 2009, the day before April Fools Day, I plan on posting a more serious blog entry about a potentially troublesome computer virus called Conficker C. Not exactly about ecommerce, but I think it’s good to be informed of things like this since we depend so much on computers for our businesses to succeed.

The photo of the papers falling in Buenos Aires, Argentina is from Flickr and it is the copyright of friendofdurutti.

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Posted in Fun, Movies, eHarbor | 3 Comments »

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