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Last week we took a look at how to conduct competitive and market research to develop your ecommerce and online marketing strategy. A strong visual layout of that competitive information will help you as you develop your online strategy.

One technique I find useful is to create a grid that shows how each competitor - and your company - rate in various strategic areas. For instance, it’s helpful to rate each company according to the 4 “P’s” of markting - its online product offering, its distribution strategy (also known as place or sales channels), the price and price strategy offered, and how each promotes itself. I prefer using a 4-point scale ranging from +2 to -2 (ignore 0). A “+2 rating” indicates the competitor does a great job, while a “-2″ says they don’t offer it - or do it so poorly they’d be better off if they didn’t at all. The middle values account degrees of success or failure. For example, comparing yourself with two competitors, you might end up with a grid that looks like this:

Obviously, you’d likely have multiple rows for each “P” to account for any differences. For instance, when reviewing product, do your competitors offer all their products or only some? Do they monetize their traffic using ads or affiliate marketing? Does their distribution strategy only include their own website? A mobile site? Use third-party distribution, such as Craigslist, Ebay, Amazon, Expedia? Affiliate sites? For price, do they offer price parity across all channels or do they offer price preference for one?

Clearly, you’ll see overlap between your online strategy and your overall business strategy. That’s a Good Thing. It’s when they don’t overlap that you should worry.

Once you’ve gotten these items placed into a grid, it should be easy to identify where you compete head-to-head and where there are gaps in the marketplace. Next time, we’ll take a look at how to exploit those gaps to develop an online strategy that’s second to none.

OK. I’m late to the game on this one. Probably way late. But, you need to watch this:

My wife just read Randy Pausch’s book. I’ve just started it. Here’s what I’ve gotten so far - from the video and from the book: Don’t you dare let anything - not one damn thing - stop you from achieving your dreams. As Henry Ford said, “If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.” Whether it’s business, life or love, go get what you want. Now. The only thing between you and your success is what you allow to be there.

Happy Friday, friends of thinks. Here’s the ecommerce and internet marketing strategy ideas shaking the web this week:

• As a follow-up to yesterday’s review of competitive analysis techniques, Linda Bustos from GetElastic pointed out SEODigger, a cool tool for competitive research. Also look at how to track intellectual assets as a competitive analysis technique.
• Staying with keeping track of what’s happening with customers on the web - whether someone else’s or your own - ReadWriteWeb YouTube adding demographic data about who’s watching your videos. If you’re using YouTube as a way to promote your products/services, this is a very handy feature.
• Past posts keep rearing their (hopefully not so) ugly heads. Internet marketing rock star and friend of thinks, Mike Moran reviews Tim Ash’s Landing Page Optimization. You can read the thinks review here.
• Finally, as regular readers know, I’m a big fan of Twitter. BusinessWeek is too, looking at why Twitter matters. Internet legend Howard Rheingold gives further evidence, detailing how Twitter journalism evolved during the Virginia earthquake. And Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing interviews Zappo’s CEO Tony Hsieh about using Twitter to grow their brand. Coolness.

Enjoy your weekend, everyone. Look forward to seeing you next week here on thinks. Miss something this past week? Subscribe today and get thinks delivered to your favorite feed reader.

The thinks look at fundamentals of an ecommerce strategy continues. Yesterday, we looked at setting the right ecommerce goals and today we’re looking at, for me, one of the most fun parts of strategy development: competitive analysis. When else can you spend time going all around the web looking at the best and worst and get paid for it? Plus, it’s like being James Bond, spying for fun and profit. C’mon. How cool is that?

Here are 5 ways to review your competition’s online activities:

• Review their site. OK, this one probably seems obvious. But, take a look at your competition’s websites. Think like a customer trying to solve a problem. What does your competition do well? What are they missing? Take a look into any company information they provide while you’re at it. And make sure you do it for every one of your competitors. If they all do something similar, should you add it to your efforts? Or should you throw a curve and try something different?
• During the site review, note how they’re earning revenues. Is it solely through lead generation or online sales? Or do they monetize traffic in other ways, such as affiliate programs, advertising or sponsored content? One of the best metrics for online business is revenue per visitor and there are many ways to increase that metric that don’t depend on traditional sales.
• Compare their traffic and keywords with yours on sites like Compete, Quantcast and Alexa. [see footnote*]. Since traffic growth should represent a strong leading indicator of sales (and God help you if it doesn’t), tracking how you’re doing relative to the competition will help you set more effective goals for growth, too.
• Knowing your competition’s online marketing mix can be tough. But, here are some things to try:
  • Find competitive search terms for search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising using tools like Wordze, Keyword Discovery and Google AdWords keyword research tool.
  • Track how the competition ranks for search terms that you’re also targeting in a spreadsheet or using tools like Advanced Web Ranking. Pay particular attention to how they use title tags, meta-descriptions, URL structure and copy for a given term to improve your ranking
• Read the competition’s public filings. If you compete with any public companies - and, no matter your size, you do - their quarterly and annual reports provide excellent insights into what they’re up to:
  • Sell stuff online? Check out eBay’s annual report. Or Amazon’s. For instance, eBay’s most recent annual report notes the company expects “…transaction activity patterns on our websites to increasingly mirror general consumer buying patterns…with the strongest…growth occurring in the fourth quarter.” Obviously, that’s just their way of saying they expect more folks to buy at Christmas time. So, if you’re looking for strong Christmas sales, expect eBay to go after the same customers and plan accordingly.
  • CPA? HR Block.
  • Run a restaurant? Read Brinker’s (the parent of Chili’s, Macaroni Grill, On the Border, etc.
  • Brick and mortar retailer? Wal-mart and Target.

  You get the point. Some of the best business education you’ll get - and a host of competitive information - is a click away. It won’t make the best beach read, but it might help you pay for your next vacation.

Competitive analysis represents a key step in developing a sound ecommerce strategy. These 5 steps are just a beginning. What activities do you use to analyze your competition? Tell us about them in the comments.

* - I know that each of these services has their issues, particularly in measuring lower traffic sites. Especially Alexa, which is generally crap. But, as long as you’re only paying attention to relative strengths, they’re OK. And they beat flying blind.

Over the next few days, I’m going to take a look at the fundamentals of developing an ecommerce and interactive marketing strategy for your business. And nothing is more fundamental to that strategy than having the right goals.

Are you getting everything you expect from your small business website? In fact, do you know what you should expect?

Some things to consider:

• Your goals need to tie back to a business result. One of the reasons I say brand awareness is not a goal is that rarely can a business manager tell me how they benefit from that awareness. For instance, I’m aware of McDonald’s, but I never eat there. Nor do I take my kids there. That’s wasted marketing spend. But, saying that you want customers who do eat in your restaurant - or shop in your store or stay in your hotel (you get the point) - to visit you once more per month (even if it’s a lower value transaction), could be a valuable goal. So focus on tying online goals to overall business goals.
• Align your goals as SMART goals. Web Worker Daily gave a solid overview of SMART last week that’s worth checking out.

So what goals do you have for your ecommerce strategy? What is worthwhile? Here are some examples:

• Increase quality traffic - traffic with a bounce rate of 20% or less - from three of your five main sources (direct navigation, paid search, natural search, email or referred) by 15% monthly.
• Improve task completion for your customers - whether a conversion action, email sign-up, lead form completion, or customer service issue resolution - by 10% in the next quarter.
• Grow revenue per site visitor by 30% annually through improved merchandising and ad sales.

Even if your site is used as an information site, you can target specific goals. For instance, I plan to grow subscribers to this blog by 75% in the next 6 months.

What goals do you have as part of your ecommerce strategy? And what goals am I missing? Tell us about them in the comments.

Oh. And if I’m going to make my goal, subscribe to thinks today. You don’t want to miss a thing, do you?

If it’s Friday, it must be time for enhancing efficiencies through learning from links. Here’s what’s shaking ’round the Web this week to help you excel at ecommerce and build your business.

• Lots of goings-on about getting more from pay-per-click campaigns on the GOOG from Search Engine Land and Linda Bustos this past week. While I’m a big believer that brand awareness is not a goal, Search Engine Land’s Seven Tactics For Leveraging Paid Search To Build Brand Awareness still represents a great set of tactics for helping your company excel. And the forever-fabulous Linda Bustos’ 9 PPC Advertising Crimes Caught On Screen gives great examples of what not to do with your PPC campaigns. Plus, it’s got LOLCats. How can you go wrong?
• Maps and local search: what’s the connection? Jonah Stein gives one view, asking whether Google is using location to rank sites on his The Art Of SEO - The Science Of PPC blog and Mike Blumenthhal looks at how maps and coupons impact your business. I could insert a “plot a roadmap to your success” joke, but that would be lame. Instead, just check out the articles, OK?
• Lisa Barone at Bruceclay.com has a great piece on creating a web optimization culture. Lisa’s tips make sense for any business looking to create a culture of continuous improvement in any field, not just SEO.
• Search Engine Land gives another of its Small Business Marketing Success Stories with its profile of florist Avante Gardens. These folks planted not just flowers, but the seeds for their success, too. (Sorry, I just had to sneak one in).
• One path to success for all small businesses is keeping costs down. Newseek offers a quick overview of free, but powerful, business software to help. And since few costs are as expensive as health care, BBC News has a great article on how sitting straight is bad for your back. Ah, yes, we here at thinks wants to help your body, soul and bottom line.
• And, finally, looking at the bigger picture, Blink author Malcolm Gladwell takes a look at innovation that’s worth checking out. Because, sometimes, the right way to get the best out of your business is to change the game completely.

Happy Friday, folks. See your right back here on Monday for more ecommerce and interactive marketing madness.

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