Tim Peter thinks » E-commerce

Super Social and Search Tips Before the Big Game (Small Business E-commerce Link Digest – February 3, 2012)

Tim — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:43:33 +0000

This weekend marks one of the biggest days of the years for marketers: the annual Ad Bowl among commercials during some kind of football game or something (I kid, I kid… let’s face it: my beloved Giants are going to crush QB-turned-male-model Tom Brady). But, with props to the great Gary Vaynerchuk, here are some tips to help you crush your competition:

ProBlogger looks at a 4 point formula for developing irresistible content.
Cutting right to the chase, Smedio offers an excellent Small Business Social Media Cheat Sheet.
Speaking of big ad budgets, Business Insider reports that CPG powerhouse P&G is going to slash its marketing budget in favor of social and search. Seems that even old dogs are beginning to learn some new tricks, eh?
Mark Suster looks at balancing web and mobile in a post called “Web Second, Mobile First” that’s well worth the read as you plan your mobile strategy.
And, finally, there’s been a lot of news about the importance of social sites for driving traffic and business. First, one study suggests Pinterest drives more traffic than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined. But, HubSpot offers data suggesting LinkedIn provides much greater value at driving leads. My take? Follow a “core and explore” methodology, focusing first on core initiatives, then testing new channels to see what works best for your business.

Of course, conducting successful tests requires solid measurement. If you’re not sure how to do that, take a look at our Website Analytics Fundamentals series or drop me a line and I’ll give you a hand.

Have a great weekend, Big Thinkers. Enjoy the game. And, say it with me now… Let’s go G-Men!

Are you getting enough value out of your small business website? Want to make sure your business makes the most of the local, mobile, social web? thinks helps you understand how to grow your business via the web, every day. Get more than just news. Get understanding. Add thinks to your feed reader today.

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Tim Peter & Associates helps companies from startups to the Fortune 500 use the web to reach more customers, more effectively every day. Take a look and see how we can help you.

Technorati Tags: Google, google, Google Plus, Google+, Google+ Pages, LinkedIn, social, social commerce, social marketing, social media, social search, social strategy, YouTube

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Learn What’s Working On Your Site: Web Analytics Fundamentals

Tim — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:15:39 +0000

If you’ve been following our Web Analytics Fundamentals series for the last week or so, you’ve learned some analytics basics, how to track traffic, the importance of segmentation, and easy ways to measure conversion.

Today we’re going to look at another big piece of the puzzle: evaluating what’s working on your site. Again, in keeping with the “quick ‘n’ dirty” focus of this series, we’re going to look at just one report. As ever, you can contact me if you’re interested in exploring this in more detail for your site.

What I’m about to show you is a piece of cake in Google Analytics, though you can easily accomplish the same thing using any tool.

First, pull up whichever report shows you the most visited pages on your site. In GA, that’s going to be under Content > Site Content &gt. Pages. Next change the View from Data to Comparison, as you can see in this screenshot:

Then, select Unique Pageviews and Bounce Rate from the drop-downs above the data to display a comparison of the most viewed pages and their bounce rate relative to your site average, like this:

As seen in the example, three of the six most visited pages on this site also have a bounce rate that’s higher than average. Follow our steps to fix your bounce rate on the pages that “light up” your comparison report and watch your business grow, simple as that.

Like this post? Don’t forget to check out the rest of our Web Analytics Fundamentals series here.

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Tim Peter & Associates helps companies from startups to the Fortune 500 use the web to reach more customers, more effectively every day. Take a look and see how we can help you.

Technorati Tags: analytics, continuous improvement, conversion, conversion rate, conversion rate optimization, e-commerce, ecommerce, Google, Google Analytics, how to measure anything, internet business, internet marketing, landing page design, landing page optimization, marketing, marketing best practices, measurement, metrics, Omniture SiteCatalyst, page design, performance, testing, Webtrends

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Semi-Deep Thoughts on Measuring Conversion: Web Analytics Fundamentals

Tim — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:03:24 +0000

Yesterday, as part of our Web Analytics Fundamentals series, we looked at best practices for tracking conversion. Today, we’re going to look into a couple of common (and one not-so-common) conversion questions.

Visits vs. Unique Visitors

Which is better for tracking conversions, visits or unique visitors? My typical answer to this question is, “Oy.” You’ll find out why in a second. But the simplest answer is: “It doesn’t matter. Pick one and stick with it.” I tend to like unique visitors over the typical purchase cycle time. Meaning, if your typical purchase cycle is 21 days, use monthly unique visitors; if your purchase cycle is 3 days, use weekly unique visitors. Here’s why.

Sounds easy enough. So, why is my typical answer “oy”?

Here’s why:

Neither metric tells the whole story. In my experience, unique visitors represent the reality of available opportunity better than visits but visits tend to offer a better leading indicator of purchase intent (due to what I call the “first conversion” effect). At the same time, I’ve never analyzed any data that shows either accounts for more than 50% of the conversion decision. Little things like price, your offer, site copy, etc. all play a big role, too. You can read the pros and cons of visits vs. unique visitors if you’re really curious. But, you’re better off just picking one and sticking with it.
Some analytics tools impose limits. I’m a big fan of Google Analytics. I don’t dispute it (you can read why I like GA so much here). But many of its reports only provide segments for visits. If you’re using GA, you’re somewhat forced into using visits by default. Omniture and Webtrends often require expensive add-ons to drill down on some data. If your tool pushes you in a specific direction, don’t fight it. You’re much better off learning its nuances and focusing on your business than wasting time fighting to get different data out of it. In other words, pick one and stick with it.
It’s a religious debate. Those who live for one insist that their way is best and rarely change their minds. Don’t waste your time on religious debates. You’re much better off if, instead, you—say it with me now—pick one and stick with it. Then use your segments and trends to improve your business.

Life’s too short—and business is hard enough—without getting into the weeds of these things too much. I guarantee you either measuring unique visitors or visits can help you grow your business equally effectively. If you’ve really reached the point where one makes a measurable difference to your business, give me a call. I’d love to hear what you’re doing.

Bouce Rate/Retained Visits

The second factor when analyzing conversion rate is the number of people who bounce from your site. Customers who bounce hurt your overall conversion rate and represent truly lost opportunity. Usually, I consider the available opportunity by subtracting converted visits from visits that didn’t bounce (i.e., “retained” visits). Few things will improve your conversion rate faster than improving your bounce rate. See this post learn how to calculate your retained visits. And when you’re ready to improve, check out this post on how to improve your bounce rate.

Returns and Cancellations

Finally, what about returns and cancellations? Should you factor those into your conversion rate?

I don’t think so. While returns and cancellations are, obviously, critically important from a business metrics perspective, I don’t believe they tell you very much about your e-commerce activities (though, one could argue that cancelled orders could be a sign that your customers found a alternative after they made the initial purchase from you).

It’s no secret I fall into the “precision, not accuracy” camp of web analytics. Conversion rate tells you how well your web site and marketing activities work to drive sales. Introducing cancels and returns into your web data, which tools such as Omniture SiteCatalyst can do, may confuse things more than it helps. As long as you know that “revenue” numbers in your analytics tool represent gross numbers, not net, you’re fine.

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Tim Peter & Associates helps companies from startups to the Fortune 500 use the web to reach more customers, more effectively every day. Take a look and see how we can help you.

Technorati Tags: analytics, conversion, conversion rate, conversion rate optimization, E-commerce, e-commerce, ecommerce, Google, google, Google Analytics, how to measure anything, marketing best practices, measurement, metrics, Omniture SiteCatalyst, Webtrends

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Tracking Conversion: Web Analytics Fundamentals

Tim — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:09:03 +0000

I’ve covered conversion rate in a competitive context in the past, but today I want to look at conversion on your site in more detail.

First, whenever you’re talking about conversion rate, you need to talk about what defines “conversion” for your business. As this series focuses solely on the most important metrics to determine how well your site and business perform, we’re only interested in conversion metrics that lead directly to—or themselves represent—meaningful business results.

Here are some examples from clients I’ve worked with:

Hotels: Reservations
Retail: Online sales
Restaurants: Reservations
Loyalty programs: Account sign-ups
Financial services: Accounts opened
Training services: Courses enrolled, courses completed
Franchisors: Leads
Wholesalers: Orders
Real estate: Leads

Configuring your specific analytics tool to track conversions is outside the scope of this post, other than to say it usually entails placing a “tag” (a small piece of Javascript code) on each web page in the transaction path. Sometimes IT requirements make that a little more onerous than it sounds. But, to be fair, your CEO usually holds those IT folks accountable for ensuring that transaction path stays up and running 24/7/365, so work with them. You’re all on the same team. If you need help getting your analytics configured, drop us a line.

In some cases, your existing shopping cart/booking engine/lead system/what-have-you won’t let you modify the analytics code to track conversions. In those cases, you can usually pass parameters through the transactions via a hidden field or some other such mechanism. Again, if you need help, contact me and let me know.

Once you’re tracking meaningful conversions, it’s usually easy to pull a report that shows you how many you’ve received over a given period. For instance, this is what it looks like in Google Analytics (we’re looking at a nine-week period):

As ever, we’re looking for anomalies, which makes that dip in the middle (around week 4)—or the spikes surrounding it—curious.

And this is where the segmentation we looked at yesterday offers so much value.

Our traffic segment report shows that we had a drop in referral and natural search traffic beginning in week 4 when sales dropped off:

Now, wouldn’t it be great if you could view your conversions the same way?

Actually, you can. Most tools allow for segmenting conversions the same as traffic (in particular, this is an area where Google Analytics really shines):

It’s clear by looking at the data that organic search and direct traffic provided the bulk of the conversions prior to week 4, but only organic search picked up again in week 8. As with the discussion yesterday, this level of data offers both insights and opportunities for improvement. Did the company end any off-site or other offline marketing during the same period as the decline? Did they change their email marketing pattern? Could we use paid media to offset the decline in direct conversions? Again, we’re looking for anomalies and using those to drive business decisions.

Another point worth mentioning is how segmentation aids our understanding of what’s going on with the site. Without segmentation, we see that there were roughly 8,700 visits and 154 transactions resulting in a 1.77% “conversion” rate. But, in reality, this is what conversion actually looked like:

Source	Conversions	Visits	Conversion Rate
Direct	38	1,594	2.38%
Organic search	57	2,462	2.32%
Paid search	22	1,692	1.30%
Referred	37	2,965	1.25%

Armed with this data, we’re immediately able to create action plans around each of these areas to drive increased traffic, increased sales, or both. It’s important to note that looking at data at this level also ignores multi-channel attribution.

But, the point isn’t to answer every question. It’s to get enough information to start making positive business decisions. Notice how quickly we’re able to make some decisions once we’ve got some trended, segmented traffic and sales data. In the spirit of fairness, I’ll take a look tomorrow at some of the nuances of conversion data worth thinking about. In the meantime, check out the rest of the Web Analytics Fundamentals series and start digging into your data. I guarantee that with only this level of information you can start making some seriously positive changes in your online marketing and e-commerce efforts.

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Tim Peter & Associates helps companies from startups to the Fortune 500 use the web to reach more customers, more effectively every day. Take a look and see how we can help you.

Technorati Tags: analytics, attribution, attribution modeling, Avinash Kaushik, conversion, conversion rate, conversion rate optimization, E-commerce, e-commerce, Google Analytics, how to measure anything, integrated marketing, internet business, internet marketing, marketing, marketing best practices, measurement, metrics, Omniture SiteCatalyst, online marketing, performance, ppc, search, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, sem, seo, Webtrends

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Measuring Traffic Segments: Web Analytics Fundamentals

Tim — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:13:59 +0000

Last time, we took a look at measuring website traffic. Today, we’re going to look at where that traffic comes from.

As mentioned in our 7 web keys for successful web metrics, segmenting traffic allows you to quickly identify where your traffic comes from and, ideally, which traffic provides the greatest value to your business. Happily, looking at traffic segments in most tools is pretty straightforward affair.

Traffic comes to your site from one of three places:

Direct navigation. These folks typed your website address directly into their browser, had your site bookmarked or (in some cases), followed a link from within an email.
Search engines. These customers found you in a search result. Just about every tool on the market can further divide this into paid search (i.e., PPC marketing) and natural search (SEO).
Referred. These folks clicked on a link on another site (other than a search engine) that points to yours. Much like search, these often break down into paid referrals (think banner ads) and natural or “earned” links. A customer linking to your site on Twitter is a referral as is the banner ad you bought. Understanding which one drove traffic, though, can tell you much more about what’s working and what isn’t among your marketing.

Additional valuable segments to watch include customers responding to emails, new visitors vs. repeats, and loyal customers vs. non-loyal (i.e., those enrolled in your loyalty program, if you have one).

For these segments, note where the bulk of your traffic comes from. From a marketing perspective, that’s where you’re going to want to focus first. As with measuring your overall traffic, you’re looking for anomalies, big changes, things that stick out.

For instance, in the following graph, search represents the lion’s share of traffic—and almost 100% of the growth in traffic—to the selected site. The marketing team for this site should look more closely at what’s driving that growth, while also looking at ways to increase direct and referred traffic:

One caveat to keep in mind: the bulk of your sales may actually come from a lower traffic segment. In fact, it’s fairly common. Don’t worry, though, we’ll explore that in more detail when we start looking at conversions.

And, of course, as you drill down further into each of these segments, look at which sites drive your referred traffic and which keywords drive paid/natural search.

Once you’ve looked at traffic in the aggregate and by segment, it’s likely you’ll already start to think of ideas for how to grow that traffic. Which is the real point of any analytics exercise: to create actionable insights.

Find a paid keyword that’s producing a load of traffic? See if you can allocate more budget to it. Discover a referrer that’s driving serious demand? Contact their team about deepening the relationship. Realize that most of your traffic comes from a single source, as in the example? Look for ways to diversify your marketing. And so on.

Web analytics needn’t be difficult. Analytics exist to help you understand what’s going on with your customers, your website and your business. Notice that only looking at some high-level metrics offers you a wealth of opportunities to increase your revenues. Your goal isn’t to spend your life inside your analytics tool. It’s to gain enough information to make a reasonable business decision about areas of focus.

Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at conversion rate, what it really means for your business and some surprising truths that you may not know. In the meantime, check out the entire Web Analytics Fundamentals series here.

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And while you’re at it, don’t forget to follow Tim on Twitter.

Tim Peter & Associates helps companies from startups to the Fortune 500 use the web to reach more customers, more effectively every day. Take a look and see how we can help you.

Technorati Tags: analytics, E-commerce, e-commerce, E-commerce strategy, Google Analytics, internet marketing, measurement, metrics, online marketing

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Social Success plus a Slight Bit o’ Search (Small Business E-commerce Link Digest – January 29, 2012)

Tim — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:40:34 +0000

Just a quick collection of link love to share today, Big Thinkers, all related to social success and how social changes search. Don’t worry, we’ll continue our series on website analytics fundamentals on Monday. But, for now, on with the links:

Linda Bustos shows why Google+ matters to e-commerce.
Social Media Examiner asks whether social media can actually make money—I suspect you’ll like the answer, too.
Search Engine Land picks on Google for crappy search results, questioning whether Google’s attention to Google+ and social has shifted its focus away from search. I think it’s worth asking whether Google’s shift in attention is a sign that customers increasingly care more about search than social. Something to keep an eye on going forward.
Not that social doesn’t have a dark side, The New York Times dives into the practice of paying for good reviews online.

I hope you have a great weekend, folks. See you next week!

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Tim Peter & Associates helps companies from startups to the Fortune 500 use the web to reach more customers, more effectively every day. Take a look and see how we can help you.

Technorati Tags: search, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, sem, seo, social, social commerce, social marketing, social media, social search, social strategy

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Build a better blog: 7 tips from top marketers (Small Business E-commerce Link Digest – January 13, 2012)

Tim — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 22:33:20 +0000

Getting customers to care about your business often depends upon the quality of your content. And I know of few better ways to build a committed community of customers than with a great blog. In fact, my guide on how to build your small business blog remains one of the most popular parts of this site.

But what if you want more? What if you’re ready to move past the basics? Over the coming weeks, I’m going to look at building a better blog in more detail. But to get you started, check out these 7 tips for improving your content—and improving your marketing:

Leading off, HubSpot shows 11 ways to use content to build your authority online.
Writing can be hard. Thankfully, ProBlogger suggests 10 David Ogilvy quotes to inspire your blogging.
OpenForum has a great piece on 5 simple ways to get more traffic to your website. Spoiler alert: great content factors into heavily in the mix.
Mashable offers 5 steps for creating “magnetic” content.
CopyBlogger looks into the 2nd most important element in your writing.
Getting people to read your content is only half the battle. Which is why I love this ProBlogger piece on what motivates readers to share.
And, finally, Social Media Examiner has a terrific video that explains how to use content marketing to increase your sales.

Enjoy the list, Big Thinkers. And look forward to more in the coming days.

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And while you’re at it, don’t forget to follow Tim on Twitter.

Tim Peter & Associates helps companies from startups to the Fortune 500 use the web to reach more customers, more effectively every day. Take a look and see how we can help you.

Technorati Tags: blogging, blogs, content, content marketing, content strategy, integrated marketing, internet marketing, marketing, marketing best practices, online brand building, online marketing

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Subdomains vs. subdirectories for SEO

Tim — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 22:54:32 +0000

A reader, Zen, emailed a couple of weeks ago about using subdomains for blogs and said:

“I have a blog that has been sitting on WordPress for about 3 years. (The URL format is CompanyName.Wordpress.com) and I want to know if it’s true that, for SEO purposes, you are way better off having your blog reside on your website because WordPress is a subdomain so you will never receive the true benefits of SEO for your company… I’m considering changing my blog’s URL to a personal domain like CompanyNameBlog.com or CompanyWebsite.com/blog.”

Now, first off, I am a huge fan of small business blogs, both for their SEO benefit as well as for providing valuable information to customers. But Zen’s question really asks two things:

What, if any, SEO benefits exist in hosting your blog outside your domain?
What brand benefits exist when you host your blog outside your domain?

The first question gets into a hairy bit of technical SEO while the second relates more to brand strategy. Today we’ll look at the SEO side and tomorrow we’ll explore brand implications.

Let’s dive right in, shall we?

Are Subdomains Bad for SEO?

What is a Subdomain?

When looking at blogs, or any other content on a website, you’ll usually run into one of four common domain options. The question is, which works best for you on an SEO basis:

www.YourBrand.com/YourBlog
YourBlog.YourBrand.com
YourBlog.SomeoneElsesBrand.com
www.YourBLOG.com

Now, without dirtying our hands with the gory details, the part of the web address URL that appears before YourBrand and SomeoneElsesBrand (either www or YourBlog in example #’s 2 and 3 above) is called the subdomain. When “YourBlog” appears after “.com,” as in example #1, it is typically called the path, folder or subdirectory. And #4 is typically called the host, hostname, or just the domain. (If you actually are interested in the gory details, see Matt Cutts’ excellent overview on the parts of a URL).

Got that? Good. Let’s jump into the meat of the discussion then.

Subdomains and SEO

So, to answer Zen’s initial question, do subdomains hurt your company from an SEO perspective? The answer, as with most things SEO-related, is a bit tricky.

A blog hosted on a subdomain, as in examples #2 and #3 (as well as in Zen’s initial question) will receive SEO benefit the same as any other site. No research I could find suggests that subdomains are any better or worse in terms of their own ranking on search engines (whether they’re a good idea for your business is another matter; more on that in a moment). As long as the subdomain offers substantially distinct content, Google and the other search engines index and rank subdomains the same way they would any other website. In fact, according to a survey on SEOmoz, having strong keywords in a subdomain can improve your SEO rank for that keyword phrase.

However, there are several arguments against using subdirectories:

Search engines treat subdomains as though they are a separate entity from your primary domain. This one’s a biggie. In Zen’s question, using Wordpress to host your blog isn’t a bad thing and doesn’t hurt the SEO opportunities for the blog. However, that SEO benefit doesn’t accrue to your primary domain, which is typically what you want. By this standard, option #2 isn’t great (you’re benefiting the blog, but not YourBrand.com) and #3 is particularly bad: you’re benefiting SomeElsesBrand.com and not yours.
Managing subdomains can be a beast. Do you know what DNS and CNAME records are? Do you want to? Yeah, me neither (I already know far more than I want to about ‘em). Unless you’re ready, willing, and able to take on the management overhead, subdirectories often prove more trouble than they’re worth.

For these reasons, I don’t usually recommend subdomains for your small business blog (there are a couple of caveats I talk about below). But if you have the option, using a folder (option #1 above), is usually best.

So, When Are Subdomains a Good Idea?

While a few use cases exist where subdomains might be the right answer, there are two typical scenarios where you’ll run into them:

Highly localized content. Companies that offer content to specific languages or local areas often use subdomains targeted at those linguistic/geographic markets. For example, if I were to begin offering content in French for customers in Montreal, I might use fr.timpeter.com to distinguish the content from the rest of my site. By the same token, “hyper-local” news site, such as Patch.com, often use individual subdomains to build the local brand independent of the larger, “parent” brand (see peekskill.patch.com or bradenton.patch.com for real-world examples).
Your hosting company prevents you from installing blogging software. Sometimes using a third-party blogging platform and a subdomain may be your only choice from an operational/technical standpoint. If you lack the skills/expertise/funds/desire to manage your hosting platform, then setting up a blog on Wordpress, Tumblr, Blogger.com or TypePad using their subdomain may be your best option. You can always assign these blogs a subdomain using YourBrand or YourBlog.com (options #2 and #4 above) at a later date if you need to.

What About Folders/Subdirectories?

Folders/subdirectories (option #1 above) eliminate most of the challenges associated with subdomains and provide direct SEO benefit to your domain in most normal cases. For that reason, I recommend them and use them for almost everything I do.

What’s the downside? Well, like anything, subdirectories come with their own challenges. For one, you typically have to install blogging software on your host and manage it yourself (or pay IT professionals to do it for you). Happily, many hosting companies offer one-click installs and upgrades to streamline the process (it’s one of reasons I use Dreamhost [affiliate link]).

But, unless you’re dealing with the “highly localized scenario” outlined above (or fall into the rare case where you need the specific benefits of a ccTLD as outlined below), subdirectories are usually a good choice until you’re fully confident another option’s benefits outweigh its downsides. Matt Cutts made a similar recommendation a few years ago and I’ve yet to see him contradict it.

What about YourBlog.com?

Ah… now this is a juicy one. But, it gets into questions of branding more than SEO, so let’s tackle that tomorrow, OK?

Conclusion

Any choice you make regarding domains, subdomains, or subdirectories has some consequence from an SEO standpoint. When in doubt, I recommend subdirectories because they drive all the SEO value to a single domain. Unless you have a case where you don’t want that to happen, they’re usually the right choice (at least until Google changes its algorithm again).

Whew… that was a handful, huh? Curious about what domains do for your brand? Check back tomorrow for part 2.

ccTLD Note: The specific example used here generally only makes sense when you’re offering languages within a market, say Spanish-language content for Spanish-speaking customers living in the United States or French-language content for Francophones in Canada. When you’re targeting customers in a specific country, using a separate ccTLD (that’s country code Top Level Domain), is often a better approach. So, if you’re targeting customers in France, for example (as opposed to French-speaking customers in another country), using the domain YourBrand.fr can provide better SEO results than YourBrand.com/fr/. Your mileage may vary, of course, and the operational overhead of offering a fully localized site is non-trivial (to say nothing of the fact that some ccTLD’s, such as China, can require significant operational expertise in the market). Unless you’re actively trying to build business in a given market, don’t stress about it too much. And if you are actively trying to build business in a given market, drop me a line to learn how I can help.

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Tim Peter & Associates helps companies from startups to the Fortune 500 use the web to reach more customers, more effectively every day. Take a look and see how we can help you.

Technorati Tags: blogging, blogs, domain hosting, domain selection, hosting, hosting solutions, search, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, SEOmoz, strategy

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E-commerce Wins (Small Business E-commerce Link Digest – December 9, 2011)

Tim — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 19:07:50 +0000

>All week, we’ve been looking at the top e-commerce errors companies make. And we’ll continue to update that series over time. But to get you through the weekend, here are other great e-commerce resources you should check out:

First, GrokDotCom has a great look at available resources to help drive greater conversion. It’s a fantastic list.
GrokDotCom also offers a fantastic look at improving calls-to-action
One of the reasons I believe that it’s all e-commerce relates to the growth of mobile devices like tablets. GetElastic shows how tablets are changing content creation and consumption. For additional thoughts on the topic, take a look at our roundup of the best iPad blogging tools.
Finally, Wordtracker has an amazing round-up of 63 conversion tips from this year’s London Conversion Conference. Great stuff.

Have a great weekend, folks. We’ll look forward to seeing you back here next week for more social, local, mobile goodness.

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And while you’re at it, don’t forget to follow Tim on Twitter.

Tim Peter & Associates helps companies from startups to the Fortune 500 use the web to reach more customers, more effectively every day. Take a look and see how we can help you.

Technorati Tags: E-commerce, e-commerce, e-commerce satisfaction, E-commerce strategy, ecommerce, getelastic, GrokDotCom, landing page design, landing page optimization, strategy

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Top E-commerce Errors: No website

Tim — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:30:21 +0000

We’re continuing our look at Top E-commerce Errors from Monday, Tuesday and yesterday. Here’s my all time favorite: On three different occasions this year I did a search for a local business and found:

This may be a restatement of a point I’ve made for years, but: you can’t sell your customers anything if you’re invisible. Getting a website, even one that only lists your phone number, address and some photos, is critical.

This isn’t about e-commerce. It’s about commerce, period. When you don’t have a website, you’re often telling your customers you don’t have a business.

Or subscribe via email.

And while you’re at it, don’t forget to follow Tim on Twitter.

Tim Peter & Associates helps companies from startups to the Fortune 500 use the web to reach more customers, more effectively every day. Take a look and see how we can help you.

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