E-Commerce Tips – Interstate Batteries

Does this look odd to you?

Either Interstate Batteries are advertising their markup by blatantly stating they charge more than the Suggested Retail Price.

- OR -

Someone screwed up and hasn’t looked at it since…

Which do you think?

Confusing a user is the first way to get them to abandon your E-commerce site. Are you confusing your users?

Try ordering something from your own site and see if the process is confusing! When we told you to break up with your website we said the same thing… If you can’t use your site chances are your visitors can’t either.

Google Adds “Nearby” To Search

Google is taking another step in the local direction – once again making Google Local Listings even more important! They’ve just added a way to refine search results by location.

From Google’s press release…

Location has become an important part of the way we search. If you’re a foodie looking for restaurant details, food blogs or the closest farmer’s market, location can be vital to helping you find the right information. Starting today, we’ve added the ability to refine your searches with the “Nearby” tool in the Search Options panel. One of the really helpful things about this tool is that it works geographically — not just with keywords — so you don’t have to worry about adding “Minneapolis” to your query and missing webpages that only say “St. Paul” or “Twin Cities.” Check it out by doing a search, clicking on “show options” and selecting “Nearby.”

What’s this look like?

When you click on “Nearby” Google Filters Results Based On Your Location

5 Reasons You Need A Local Business Listing

Here’s a quick video we extracted from a recent webinar – 5 Reasons You Need A Local Business Listing…

Want to learn more? Check out our Google Local Listing topic page!

Do you have any questions? Let us know in the comments or jump into the forums!

A Sample Local Web Strategy

Here are six things I would include in the foundation of a good local web strategy. You have a local internet marketing strategy – right?

Targeted Advertising - You can set up geographically targeted advertising campaigns very easily and they are relatively inexpensive

Local Listing – An optimized Google Local listing could do wonders for your businesses. People search for local products and services they want to buy every day. If you aren’t showing up in those results you could be missing out. It’s free and easy to get started.

Location Services - Location is getting big. Services like FourSquare and others have force the big players into the game like Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Google has already integrated Buzz into the mobile experience – making that Google Local Listing we mentioned above even more important.

Social - It’s free and easy to set up profiles on social websites. Set them up and use them as a content outposts while building relationships and having conversations – you know how that goes. The point is to be active on these networks and talk to people who are local – because when people need that plumber, for example, they know to contact you. (if you are a plumber, of course)

Monitor Local Opportunities – People on Twitter are talking about how they are going tile shopping and need their driveway cleared of snow. If you are listening – those become sales opportunities. Keep your ears to the ground where your customers live online. They’ll tell you what they want and when they want it.

Craigslist – I hired a guy of Craigslist to come plow my driveway during one of the many winter storms we have had in Iowa this year. He had a listing with an email address and a phone number. Oh – and he answered the email right away. That was a conversion from Craigslist for him. Sometimes during events like storms it’s a great place to be found for the casual browser or intent searcher.

Do you have any questions on our local web strategy sample? Is there something we should add that we missed? Let us know in the comments or jump into the forums!

Internet Video Marketing Extends Marketing Arm

Using the internet and social networking sites is a fantastic way to market a business of any size today. Most young people today are expecting to see a Facebook fan page for businesses they work with. It’s really not surprising at all. Next, there’s internet video marketing. Using videos on the internet is so powerful, because the human mind reacts differently to videos than text. Videos more or less tell a story, and the human brain is very receptive to that, so videos are more effective in getting the human mind to respond positively.

Because of how well the mind responds to internet video marketing, its popularity is growing exponentially in today’s personal and business world. Websites like YouTube have made it incredibly easy and simple to share a video online and also to upload a video from your own camera. Making your company seem more down to earth by offering helpful information in a format that the brain can grab and understand is very powerful indeed. Tell your company’s story while helping your potential clientele with a topic that relates to your product or service.

Putting a face to your business’ name is another good part of internet video marketing. When you put some of your people online speaking to the potential or current clientele, it lets them see that you are real people, with real faces and names, not just some big corporate company who doesn’t care. It gives you some confidence to your customers, and it lets them trust you more easily. When they can see that you are real, and that you are down to earth and sincere, they are more likely to trust you. Today’s world is full of shady characters, so let them see who you really are.

So, in short, tell them a story with video. Videos are powerful because the human mind loves a story! Internet video marketing is one of the most viral and powerful forces in the world of business today, so you absolutely do not want to miss out on this! Make this form of marketing another arm for your business and its ability to reach out to people that you haven’t been able to reach before. Put your face to your name and let them see that they should want to work with you. Let social networking and videos work to your advantage and get ahead in your industry!

How To Integrate Google Buzz With WordPress

Here is how we integrated Google Buzz with WordPress on this site…

1. Go To Plugins -> Add New

2. Search For Google Buzz

We chose to use the Google Buzz WordPress Plugin WP Google-buzz

3. Update Settings

Under Settings -> WP Google-buzz you can setup where you wan the button to display, among other things…

Here’s what it looks like when you are done…

Break Up With Your Website

Breaking up with your website means that you should remove any emotional attachment to your site. We see this problem infect many small businesses when they begin treating their website like a relationship instead of a tool. I know – you spent a lot of time and hard work on that site…

But when all relevant data points you in a specific direction and you ignore it in favor of your emotional attachment to “your baby” – you are only hurting yourself.

Some common scenarios

You spent a lot of time on that home page making sure everything looked perfect. You made some images and wrote a bunch of great copy about you and your business and what you do. But no one signs up. No one clicks. And visitors leave right away (psst you can measure all that in Google Analytics)… The data says you should make a change – but you don’t because you spent a lot of time on it.

You have a great product or service that nobody ever signs up for on your website. You think that having that elaborate sign up form will help you better target potential clients that you want to get to know. Really – people only want to enter their Name and Email Address so they leave your sign up page (psst you can measure that in Google Analytics).

You spend time setting up hundreds of widgets that you think are cool – but nobody ever uses them and they make your site load slow. By adding a ton of fluff you lose site on the main functions and goals of your website. You don’t want to distract visitors – you want to convert them.

Breaking up with your website allows you to…

• Make data driven decisions
• Focus on function
• Focus on usability
• Test everything

Data Driven Decisions

When making marketing decisions about your website try focusing on search and web analytics data you have. In a recent workshop with a client we found they were targeting the completely wrong demographic online. The market they were targeting online were not searching for what the website had to offer. This meant that search traffic was low and irrelevant. By tweaking some marketing copy and targeting a different market with content we completely change their web strategy. It wasn’t easy but it’s what the data said to do.

Focus On Function

I love a good design but when you focus on your design more than how your site functions you are likely losing out. There are well defined standards for laying out and designing a site that converts – whether you want someone to comment on your blog or buy your widget. By moving your focus away from what works to what you like is a bad move. Stay focused on the goals for your website and make sure your site functions to meet those goals.

Usability Matters

We’ve had clients with great products that were not selling online. In one case the reason was the shopping cart. The process sucked enough that they began to lose a significant amount of sales from it. If you’ve spent a ton of time on a process that doesn’t convert – it’s okay to start over. You could be losing sales or conversions online every day that you have an unusable sales funnel. Try buying your own product once in awhile. If you get confused – chances are your visitors are too. This is the same for any type of conversion. If your email list  is too confusing to get subscribed to – your visitors will have the same problems.

Test Everything

Once you have broken up with your website you have begun to remove any emotional attachment. This is good – now you can start testing. If you look at things like data instead of having an emotional reaction – you may learn that your well thought out headline really sucks and another works 100% better.

Do you have any questions about breaking up with your website? Let us know in the comments or jump in the forums!

[flickr photo from WebRanking]

Google Buzz Makes Local More Important

Google Buzz has made having an local internet marketing strategy exponentially more important – as if it wasn’t already. As you can see in the screenshots below Google is making a significant push into the location based social game. If you log into Google Buzz Mobile and click the ‘Nearby’ tab you will see a similar interface to that of Foursquare and others.

In these screenshots you can see how Mike Templeton was able to check in to Jethros BBQ and leave a review… Look familiar? These checkins and reviews will soon be integrated into your Google Local Business Listings. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Google integrate the coupon system that is built into Google Local Business Center into Buzz for immediate coupon delivery based on location.

We’ll be covering how Google Buzz affects your local internet marketing strategy in depth in future posts. For now, learn how to get started with local from our last webinar.

Here are some great posts on how Buzz will affect Local..

• What Google Buzz Means For Local Business
• Google Buzz: “Are You at Work? How About a $.99 Big Mac From McDonald’s, Three Blocks Away?”
• Local Implications Of Google Buzz
• Google Buzz For Local Marketing

Yesterday I buzzed (is that the correct term?) how Google Buzz Mobile was better for the consumer and business than FourSquare and other location platforms. I’m sticking with that. If you are going to use any of them in your business – this is where it’s at long term.

Do you have any questions on how Google Buzz will affect your local marketing strategy? Let us know in the comments or jump into the forums!

The Buzz About Google Buzz

We are rapidly posting content over on the digest about Google Buzz. Don’t worry – a full analysis on how Buzz will affect your business is on the way!

Check out these posts from the digest…

• Google Buzz For Local Marketing
• Google Buzz For Business
• Google Buzz Video

Some great analysis from the web…

• Introducing Buzz
• Web Strategy Matrix: Google Buzz vs Facebook vs MySpace vs Twitter
• Google Buzz: Google Takes On Twitter, Facebook, Even Foursquare
• Google’s Newest Mission: Organizing The Social Experience

Learn more about Google Buzz on our new topic page!

What do you think about Google Buzz so far? Do you have any questions? Let us know in the comments or jump into the forum!

Introducing Topic Pages

We have a big list of stuff we want to do on this site in 2010. Aside from some other design updates this is the first major enhancement we are launching in 2010.

Our topic pages will be hubs of content from our blog, the web, curated links, etc all based on popular topics that you want to learn more about.

To get a jist of these new topic pages, check out the one we created for local internet marketing.

Questions or comments? Let us know!

Are there any topics you are most interested in? Let us know!

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