Posts Tagged ‘marketing’
Monday, May 18th, 2009
By Robert Lockard
A large number of consumers need more than promises of good deals to get them to shop online. According to a report by the Office of Fair Trading, a third of Internet users don’t trust websites enough to buy products on them.
I read this in a BBC News article, entitled “Fear holding back online shopping,” which gave empirical evidence of a fact I had suspected. Twenty percent of potential online consumers said they don’t use shop online because they might put themselves at risk for identity theft or other dangers. Another 15 percent said they don’t trust online retailers enough to do business with them.
This topic goes right along with my eHarbor Blog entry on the disadvantages of ecommerce, such as consumers’ inability to touch products they see online like they can at shopping centers.
Just because technology has improved our ability to market to consumers doesn’t mean we will always reach them. Identity theft has become quite sophisticated and prevalent in our digital age, putting smart consumers on the lookout and retailers on the defensive.
We must earn our customers’ trust. How do we do this? Here are six suggestions:
- Include testimonials of satisfied customers who can vouch for your products and services. You might be surprised how willing happy customers are to speak highly of you on your website.
- Provide secure payment methods, using credible sources. I’m not going to advertise any here, but do a Google search and you’ll find a number of good ones.
- Tell customers the actions you take to preserve their security. Don’t assume they know all the trouble you go through to make sure they’re not improperly charged. You can include a prominent link to this section on the billing page.
- Make sure your customer service is top-notch. If your service staff is readily available, knowledgeable and helpful, you’ll be able to resolve problems and help customers develop confidence that you have their best interests at heart.
- Put a face on your website. People tend to feel more comfortable doing business with a person rather than a faceless organization. If you can put yourself or a spokesman out front to build credibility, you might be able to win over more customers.
- Keep your promises. If you make bold claims, make sure you can back them up with impressive actions. Words are good, but they must be built on the truth to foster trust.
Those are my suggestions on how to build trust. Don’t be afraid to take a chance and do something inventive to earn your customers’ confidence and, thus, their business. Consumers are holding back a lot of their money as they weather the recession, so you’ll need to be creative and forthright to win them over.
By the way, some good news from the BBC news article is that the amount of online shoppers who feel just as comfortable shopping online as at a store increased from 26 percent in 2006 to 54 percent in 2009. This is a welcome trend.
The photo of a credit card in a computer is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of garethjmsaunders.
Tags: article, BBC, customer service, Ecommerce, eHarbor, growth, internet, marketing, news, online, positive, study, trust, web
Posted in Ecommerce | 3 Comments »
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.
That’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.
Tags: company, Ecommerce, eHarbor, event, flickr, Fun, growth, Knowing, marketing, movie, online, positive, slogan, success, utah, website
Posted in Fun, eHarbor | 1 Comment »
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.
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.
Tags: affiliate, animal, article, Brent Leary, company, data, Ecommerce, Ecommerce Times, eHarbor, facebook, flickr, funny, google, humor, magellan commerce, marketing, obesity, Real Estate Promoter, Social Media, Submit Solution, twitter, Web analytics, website
Posted in Ecommerce, eHarbor | 2 Comments »
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.”
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.
Tags: advice, affiliate, article, Bloomberg, company, consumer, Ecommerce, eHarbor, facebook, flickr, future, internet, magellan commerce, marketing, Media, new york times, news, online, Real Estate Promoter, search engine optimization, SEO, Social Media, Submit Solution, twitter, web, website
Posted in Ecommerce, Media, eHarbor | 5 Comments »
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.
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.
Tags: blog, change, Ecommerce, economy, eHarbor, future, google, growth, internet, magellan commerce, marketing, Media, news, online, Real Estate Promoter, search engine, Submit Solution, web
Posted in Ecommerce, Media | 6 Comments »
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.
“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.
Tags: company, consumer, Ecommerce, google, internet, magellan commerce, marketing, Media, news, online, Real Estate Promoter, search engine optimization, SEO, study, Submit Solution, Time magazine, UCLA, web, website
Posted in Ecommerce, eHarbor | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
By Robert Lockard
Going along with my last eHarbor blog entry on the increase in spending on search engine optimization, this blog entry is on the positive future of the ecommerce industry.
According to an article from eMarketer, entitled “eMarketer Revises E-Commerce Forecast,” total sales of products online in the United States, excluding travel, totaled $133.6 billion in 2008. That was a 4.6-percent increase from 2007, despite the economic downturn plaguing most industries.
In 2009, when most people are worried about serious contractions because of low demand from consumers, ecommerce sales are expected to hold steady, dipping just 0.4 percent to $133.1 billion.
Even better, total ecommerce spending will grow about 10 percent or more from 2010 to 2013, possibly reaching $203.5 billion in 2013. That is definitely worth celebrating.
As more companies jump into the world of SEO and strive to position themselves online, the ecommerce industry is going to keep expanding. Plus, with consumers looking for deals and convenience in a tight marketplace, many are turning to online sources for goods they used to purchase at malls or regular retail stores.
This is a great time to jump online. I recommend checking out eHarbor, Inc.’s affiliates for help in designing and optimizing your website. These affiliates include: Submit Solution, Magellan Commerce and Real Estate Promoter.
The photo of the dog in the car seat is from Flickr and it is the copyright of exfordy.
Tags: 2009, Ecommerce, economy, eHarbor, eMarketer, flickr, Fun, funny, future, growth, humor, internet, magellan commerce, marketing, news, positive, Real Estate Promoter, search engine optimization, SEO, Submit Solution, web
Posted in Ecommerce, SEO, eHarbor | 9 Comments »
Monday, March 23rd, 2009
By Robert Lockard
Great news! The ecommerce industry isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. It’s actually growing in strength, despite the recession. What a pleasant surprise!
According to an article in Practical Ecommerce, entitled “Chart of the Week: Search Engine Marketing to Increase,” marketers in the United States are expected to spend $14.1 billion on search engine marketing in 2009. That’s a 16-percent increase from 2008’s $12.2 billion. If it continues to grow at this rate, the amount spent on search engine marketing in the United States could reach $23 billion in 2013.
Search engine marketing is made up of paid-search advertising, contextual advertising, paid inclusion, and search engine optimization. We just finished a series on SEO strategies. I recommend reading those blog entries, if you’d like more information.
You might remember my blog entry on the success of eHarbor, Inc. not long ago. I’m pleased to note this is not just an isolated incident, but an industry-wide one. As the economy sours, businesses are turning more to the Internet for new customers, and getting high placement on search engines, like Google, MSN and Yahoo, is a great way to get their attention.
Be sure to check out eHarbor, Inc.’s affiliates for help in designing and optimizing your websites. These affiliates include: Submit Solution, Magellan Commerce and Real Estate Promoter.
The photo of the surprised kittens is from Flickr and it is the copyright of telachhe.
Tags: 2009, Ecommerce, economy, eHarbor, flickr, funny, future, google, growth, humor, magellan commerce, marketing, Media, msn, news, positive, Real Estate Promoter, search engine optimization, SEO, Submit Solution, web, yahoo
Posted in Ecommerce, SEO, eHarbor | 12 Comments »
Thursday, March 19th, 2009
By Robert Lockard
As promised in my last blog entry, this is the seventh and final part of this series on strong search engine optimization strategies. We’ll close this series by discussing how to promote your website and get noticed by your target audience.
Don’t expect your website to become popular overnight. Traffic doesn’t come to your site just because you get your site ranked high on search engines for specific key terms. You need to provide services and content of interest to your audience, and you must get out there and share the good news about your site.
A great way to let people know about your services and website is to blog about them. Search engines love blogs because they are constantly being updated with fresh content, full of (hopefully) relevant links, and magnets for attention from the blogosphere, if you do them right.
For instance, I recently blogged about eHarbor’s creation of Squidoo lenses. We created Squidoo lenses for:
- eHarbor, Inc.
- Magellan Commerce
- Submit Solution
- Real Estate Promoter
Squidoo is a great tool for showing off your products, services, talents, knowledge or anything, really.
Social media sites are another great way to promote your website. Once you write a blog entry or fill your website with strong content, submit it to social media sites to get the word out.
Here are some of the sites eHarbor uses:
- Delicious
- Digg
- Diigo
- Propeller
- Reddit
- StumbleUpon
- Technorati
- Twitter
It’s also a good idea to add your business to Google’s Local Business Center. This allows you to show up on Google Map searches, and also to have a map of your company’s location next to your search result on Google.
Try not to get to excited or start spamming social media sites with news that isn’t particularly useful. Just be wise and moderate in your attempts to promote your website, and you should do fine.
Wow! This has been a fun series to write. I hope you enjoyed learning about Web page titles, optimizing images, simplifying URLs, improving website navigation, and including relevant anchor text with links.
We’ve got plenty of other great ecommerce topics to talk about in the eHarbor Blog, so stick around. Check out Google’s SEO Starter Guide for more information on search engine optimization.
The photo of the misspelled “Advanced Web Design” sign is from Flickr and it is the copyright of agjimenez.
Tags: blog, content, Ecommerce, eHarbor, flickr, funny, google, humor, magellan commerce, marketing, promote, Real Estate Promoter, search engine, search engine optimization, SEO, seo series, spelling, squidoo, Submit Solution, website
Posted in SEO, Search Engines, eHarbor | 7 Comments »
