Internet e-Commerce is becoming increasingly important, and if you are not online with a great store that’s optimized to be found, you are missing sales!   Web Stores are a great way to reach a broad audience and they are gaining greater acceptance among shoppers.  A well-thought-out Storefront on the Internet that is optimized to be found in search engines, and which features your merchandise in a professional, user friendly format is incredibly valuable to reach a greater geographic area, and improve market share.

If you’ve considered e-Commerce,  this recently published statistic will open your eyes to the opportunity: more than half of US Consumers plan to to their holiday shopping ONLINE in 2009.  Over one fourth say they will purchase more gifts over the Internet than they did last year.

The results of the “2009 Mindset of a Multi-Channel Shopper” survey show an increasing trend as consumers elect to do more shopping on-line than ever before.  Last year was the first year that the web surpassed “Brick and Mortar” stores as the preferred way for multi-channel shoppers to purchase holiday gifts, the e-tailing group reported.

Social Media gains in importance as a tool to drive traffic to your eCom site; it was cited as influencing the purchase for 37% of the audience, compared to 24 % last year.

Concerned that creating an e-Commerce site is expensive? Almost 90% of online shoppers are willing to pay full price for hard-to-find items

85% cite convenience as their primary reason for turning to Internet e-Commerce

Wish lists are becoming increasingly important

Top product categories purchased online are books, clothing, music, toys, consumer electronics and gift certificates

Free shipping is highlighted as a compelling offer – the number one reason consumers elected not to make an online purchase was cited as high shipping charges, by 62% of the respondents.

Out of stock?   Seven out of ten loyal shoppers will go to your competition if you don’t have the item.

Offering pick up at the store location is important with 60% of the shoppers.

Mobile phones for price checks, stock checks and promotion redemptions is important to 33% of your shopping audience.

About the survey:  The research included a poll of more than 1,000 consumers about their shopping habits and plans for the upcoming holiday season.

To visit two of our most recently launched e-Commerce stores, visit:

www.pubshops.org

www.aftercareplanning.com

Creating landing pages and microsites are two of the most popular ways to drive visitors to your web site.  Although similar in many ways, landing pages and microsites use different techniques to drive interested customers to your web site.

This article is on landing pages. Later in the week I will publish an article on microsites.

Landing Pages

Landing pages are short sales pages that are incorporated into your web site designed to improve your search engine optimization and help increase the number of hits to your site.  Often they mimic the look and feel of your site, and web designers will usually use your logo or template as the background for these pages.  Landing pages are also structured much like short sales letters, hooking your consumers and creating incentives for them to click through to your web site.

Landing pages are usually no more than 300 words and provide just enough information to persuade the reader to continue to your homepage.  They have little informative content beyond offering an overview of your product or service. Incorporating landing pages into your business URL (web address) also has the added benefit of creating additional content for your site (provided each one is unique).  By tagging your landing pages with different keywords and metatags, you’ve also given yourself more opportunities for customers to find your site through popular search terms. Landing pages achieve multiple objectives for traffic generation: greater number of pages, unique content, multiple means of using targeted keywords and tags, and marketing content for hooking interested consumers.  The more unique pages and tags you have, the greater your chances of having your site rank high in search results. 

A few days ago, on April 23^rd, I wrote a post called “Who Says Blogs Don’t Work?” I talked about how our CTO’s blog about conversions and salesforce.com garnered first-page placement in Google under the keywords salesforce conversions.

Actually, our blog was the last result on the first page. Well, today I looked, and it had moved up to #3 – yes, third place on the first page of results. Remarkable!  Indeed, blogs can be a cost-effective subsitute for expensive SEO.

On April 9th, Kevin Gilper, our CTO, published an article in our blog called “Conversions, Conversions, Conversions!” The article talks about the importance of tracking not only visitors to your site but conversions. The true measure of success for any marketing program, after all, is the number of new clients you acquire.

In the article Kevin also talks about our company’s expertise in integrating Salesforce.com. He briefly explains how we integrated Salesforce.com into the website of Advanced Snow and Ice Solutions so that when visitors enter callback information it is automatically recorded into a leads database that can be worked by their sales team. These leads are flagged to clearly indicate the time they arrived and that they are from the website. As sales people close sales, conversion reports are configured to show the ratio of number of visitors to number of sales conversions.

So why am I telling you about this post? Because a few days ago we discovered that if you search in Google for “salesforce conversions” Kevin’s blog entry appears on the first page of results. This is a home run for us because we are proactively seeking businesses that need Salesforce.com integration. So one, the blog establishes us as experts in the field; and two, it receives excellent search engine placement in Google for the exact keywords that we are targeting. A home run, indeed!

One of the best films about baseball fantasies is A Field of Dreams. How does it relate to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

“If you build it, they will come” is likely the most memorable of all the famous lines in the 1989 movie Field of Dreams starring Kevin Costner. If you’ve spent marketing funds to build a website but are waiting for customers to arrive you’ll understand why the title of this article is “Search Engine Optimization is NOT a Field of Dreams.” Building a website requires planning to address the online marketing objectives of the organization. If objectives have not been defined it is time to do so.

Many of the business owners of small and medium-size companies I’ve spoken with proudly point to their website. Some have wisely allocated marketing dollars with professional site developers to create their online presence but wonder why there are not hundreds or thousands of daily visitors. Others have enjoyed good traffic levels but have not generated much business. If Tiffany’s were to open up a jewelry store deep in the Pinelands of New Jersey or in a densely populated but economically depressed city would it be successful by Tiffany standards? No way!

The same is true of the online world. A site may be state of the art design, but if no one sees it or if those that do are not good prospects the investment is wasted. But in the online world there are tools available so that the owner of any website can attract qualified prospects and measure defined conversions with accuracy.

A fundamental tactic frequently overlooked by small businesses is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There are thousands of self-proclaimed SEO experts, and there are also articles available from true SEO experts cautioning about do’s and don’ts when selecting your SEO vendor. It isn’t simply keywords and Meta tags. Sound SEO requires planning, attention to detail, and continuous follow up. A guarantee of top rankings should be an alert flag. Unlike the magic formula “If you build it, they will come,” there is no easy, one step SEO solution to get to the top of natural search results.

If you build it, they will NOT come unless the site gives them reason to do so. SEO is important because, if done effectively, marketing tactics such as paid search, Internet yellow pages, local networks, directory submissions and email can be minimized. The visitor WILL arrive because the search engines know the purpose of the site. The purpose of the site is driven by the online marketing objective. So when you plan a website or look to enhance an existing site, rely on trusted professionals for necessary assistance and do your homework. If a site is optimized they WILL come.