efreax.com
Webhosting and Blogrolling
Archive for February, 2007
February 9, 2007 at 1:39 pm · Filed under Online Tools and Tips
The buzz word of 2006 was web 2.0. ‘Oh its so Web 2.0′ you might hear at conferences and seminars. My take on web 2.0 is building a community for your buyers based on the product type on offer. Your customers are moving to on-line sales but they need your advice. Truthful, simple advice without the hard sell. First magazines, gossip columns and newspapers caught onto the blog wave, but now product sellers are paving the way to help the customer make the right purchase.
Adverts may be boring and invasive at times but Blogs are not, take ‘Innocent smoothies‘ they have a web log that provides an interesting insight to their origins, ethics and the people in the company. A blog like this takes of the lid off a large company letting the consumer take a look inside. This is what corporate blogging is all about.
For instance Bluefly.com a fashion designer and retailer launched their blog http://flypaper.bluefly.com to raise awareness and keep customer informed of new styles and movements in the fashion industry.
Top free blog providers out there include Blogger.com, Typepad and Wordpress. Wordpress is also one of the most popular open source blogging software, with a new release at the end of January and a unique ‘Multi-Blogger’ system dubbed ‘Wordpress Mu’ so you can provide your employees with a blog of their own linked to your main domain.
As a new ‘blogger’ I would suggest a free hosted blog before you integrate a blog into your main domain. A ‘news’ blog needs to be updated with new content everyday, but a corporate blog only needs feeding 3-4 times a week. If you don’t update your blog your customers interest will wane and the point of the blog will eventually be lost.
We hope to see you in the blogging revolution!
February 9, 2007 at 1:37 pm · Filed under Online Tools and Tips
E-Commerce is one of the most important aspects of the Internet. Under this umbrella we have websites with shopping cart functions, marketplaces and shopping comparison sites.
Ecommerce allows people to carry out business without the restraint of time or location. A traditional website can serve anywhere in the world that can log on! The cost per sale is reduced when you’re talking about e-commerce. No human interaction is needed, and errors are reduced as the customer provides all the information.
Customers can search for niche products in an instant, and if you are a seller of niche product, reaching out to the world can increase your sales volumes thus decreasing the cost of the item for you, the business.
The customers experience can be streamlined, they will spend less time over order discrepancies and there is an increased chance of cross selling as the products are just another click away.
So when as a business would you choose a marketplace such as eBay?
Marketplaces are great for customer acquisition; a marketplace such as eBay will spread your branding across the web quicker than any pay per click scheme. Marketplaces have high velocities, great for brand new stock and finishing lines. Marketplaces can also be places to test ideas or new products, you will soon know on whether a product is not going to do well or fly off the shelves.
Protecting your bricks and mortar:
Many traditional companies are afraid of marketplaces and the fierce price wars between competitors. They are afraid of a detrimental effect to the brand, their brick and mortar shops not being able to match the prices and keeping up with the demand of a high volume marketplace. Fear is a great controller, and you must know your enemy. Many high street businesses trade under a pseudonym, access to the product, but it causes no cross over in their high street stores.
As for prices, well the competition for the product types are already there. Many will browse shops muttering that they can get it cheaper on eBay. I know I do. You have to join the race, not shy away from it to stop your competitors getting ahead. Brands are more dilute when it comes to e-commerce; smaller brands come into their own. This trend could start creeping into the high street as broadband gets faster and cheaper and the payment gateways more secure.
Protecting your brand!
As with any new route to channel, you have charlatans to go with it! Is someone trading as you? Using your brand awareness to gain sales? Even if you are not e-commerce active you need to make sure you regularly check your brand on the internet. Reputation is everything to a business and with the anonymity of the internet is easy to impersonate a leading brand.
Advertising on the Internet
Back in the days of the dot com boom all you needed was a website and the traffic was yours. But the giants like Google and Yahoo forced us to search their ay and the fight for natural search was on! To fund their world domination these two titans have their own search marketing schemes or pay-per-click advertising to drive traffic using keywords. Large advertisers can spend thousands on pay per click advertising (probably wasting a lot of it due to bad management) Marketplaces are an active way to do this. For instance on eBay you are advertising as well as physically selling an item. The marketplace has done the hard work for you
February 8, 2007 at 10:46 pm · Filed under Online Tools and Tips
The buzz word of 2007 is web 2.0. ‘Oh its so Web 2.0′ you might hear at conferences and seminars. My take on web 2.0 is building a community for your buyers based on the product type on offer. Your customers are moving to on-line sales but they need your advice. Truthful, simple advice without the hard sell. First magazines, gossip columns and newspapers caught onto the blog wave, but now product sellers are paving the way to help the customer make the right purchase.
Adverts may be boring and invasive at times but Blogs are not, take ‘Innocent smoothies‘ they have a web log that provides an interesting insight to their origins, ethics and the people in the company. A blog like this takes of the lid off a large company letting the consumer take a look inside. This is what corporate blogging is all about.
For instance Bluefly.com a fashion designer and retailer launched their blog http://flypaper.bluefly.com to raise awareness and keep customer informed of new styles and movements in the fashion industry.
Top free blog providers out there include Blogger.com, Typepad and Wordpress. Wordpress is also one of the most popular open source blogging software, with a new release at the end of January and a unique ‘Multi-Blogger’ system dubbed ‘Wordpress Mu’ so you can provide your employees with a blog of their own linked to your main domain.
As a new ‘blogger’ I would suggest a free hosted blog before you integrate a blog into your main domain. A ‘news’ blog needs to be updated with new content everyday, but a corporate blog only needs feeding 3-4 times a week. If you don’t update your blog your customers interest will wane and the point of the blog will eventually be lost.
We hope to see you in the blogging revolution!
February 8, 2007 at 10:45 pm · Filed under Online Tools and Tips
One of the most simple and useful articles I have read about marketing a service to fellow businesses is this article from entrepreneur magazine ‘Hit the sweet spot‘ by Kim. T. Gordon. An excerpt from the article reads
‘For many business owners, marketing to fellow entrepreneurs is job one. The challenge is, entrepreneurs are time-strapped multitaskers who are also relatively risk-averse–making them a difficult audience to reach and persuade. Sound familiar?’
This article explores a ‘common sense’ approach to marketing and designing a business to business product or solution.
What do businesses want? According to this article:
- Increased sales - does your solution provide that?
- Safe Choice - do you have a content rich campaign with customer feedback and cases?
- Maximum Convenience - is there a huge amount of work the buyer has to do? Is this included in the solution? If it needs 20 hours work on the clients side is their an alternative?
- Ways to save money - Can you add features? Bundle products together for a ’special price’?
- Do it yourself solutions - businesses love low cost self service solutions but if again time is an issue. Free customer support in the bundle is a great seller!
- Reliability and Performance - What guarantees or warranties does your company offer? If something goes wrong are you their to help?
- Vendors they trust - Special events and networking are great to build trust with a customer.
The finishing line of this article is ‘What matters most is that you create an opportunity to build positive relationships’ Probably the most important statement for businesses I have heard in a long time.
February 8, 2007 at 10:43 pm · Filed under Online Tools and Tips
Over the past few months I have been hearing of various sites implimenting the anti-spam technique suggested by google. Sites like del.icio.us and wikipedia have now introduced the ‘no follow’ tag into their homepage. Anti-spam yes…..but as google page rank depends on the links its kinda cutting off your nose to spite your face? Or is it?
Google created the world of links SEO, forcing companies to use spam like techniques to get anywhere with google. So how does a company improve its position on the interweb?
We have gone back in time and now it is all about ‘Natural Linking’ - no automation, no spam and definatly not reciprocal!
Taking this from an enclick article by
1. Natural links are deeplinks. Links that point to specific material deep within the body of knowledge.
Deep linking is linking that points to a specific page or image within another website, as opposed to linking to a website’s main or home page. Deeplinking goes hand in hand with the long tail.
2. Natural linking is not reciprocal. Scientific papers are published sequentially in time. More recent papers reference older papers as they try and build the body of knowledge. Link exchanging, where websites exchange links, is not natural.
3. Natural links are built slowly over time. A seminal academic paper accumulates references, links, slowly over time. It is only well established highly regarded academic papers, like the discovery of DNA, that accumulate large number of references quickly.
4. Natural links make a point. Academics construct an argument around their references. So natural references are surrounded by relevant text and have specific anchor text, as each scientists tries to make his own point. The ratio of number of links to text has an upper limit, the density of links is relatively low, and the context surrounding the reference is relevant material.
5. Natural links come from everywhere. Scientists publish their research in many places. From important journals, like “Natureâ€, to less important conference proceedings. So, natural links come from varied sources of relevant material.
So unless you have a team of employee’s seaking out relevent links and communicating with webmasters peronally whats the fastest way to improve your page rank?
Spend alot of money….websites that have been arround a while will have the best page ranks in the end. I find this a good thing for the old school webby, but for new companies trying to get a grasp of the interwebby and improve sales, this is gonna hurt.
I am going to be watching this space, and I am going to work on my deep linking for my little business I wish to start up next year. I have 12 months, wonder if that will be enough time to get a decent page rank. I will probably make lots of web friends in the process!
I might even start a natural/deep linking experiment - leave a comment if you want to join or a link!
February 8, 2007 at 5:03 pm · Filed under Online Tools and Tips
The second chance offer is a great eBay feature. When running an auction you can offer your underbidders the item at the price they bid without having to incur and further listing fees. Final Value fees with apply as with a normal auction close but if you have multiples of a product a great way to sell!
The SCO is available for one, three, five or seven days and the offer will only be visible to the specific underbidder.
For example you have an item starting at 5.99 and you WANT to get about 8.99 for the item.
- Â Set your Min SCO price at 8.99
- Â List your item at 5.99 on a normal auction.
Senario 1:
The auction ends at 6.99, darn it thats a bad price! You wanted 8.99! There were 2 bidders and one winner. T
Senario 2:
The auction ends at 15.99! Yay! There where 3 people bidding with one winner at 15.99. The two underbidders bid 14.99 and 15.39. You have 100 of these items in stock so BOTH underbidders are offered a SCO. With one listing you have sold 3 items, and paid the listing fees for one!
Senario 3:
The auction ends at 15.99! Yay! There where 3 people bidding with one winner at 15.99. The two underbidders bid 14.99 and 15.39. You have 2 of these items in stock so the highest underbidder is offered a SCO. With one listing you have sold your 2 items in stock, and paid the listing fees for one! Â < Prev
February 8, 2007 at 5:02 pm · Filed under eBay Tips
eBay’s PowerSeller Program:
As the pillars of our community, PowerSellers are committed to upholding and embracing the core community values that are the very foundation of eBay. They are exemplary members who are held to the highest standards of professionalism, having achieved and maintained a 98% positive feedback rating and an excellent sales performance record.
Members have five tiers to aspire to - Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Titanium - each enjoying the PowerSeller Benefits reserved just for them. From fast track customer service and exclusive PowerSeller Programmes to ‘best practice’ discussion boards, the PowerSeller Programme is designed to help you grow your e-commerce business and increase profits on eBay.
PowerSeller Level depends on Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) or Quantity of Items sold:
Bronze £750 or 100 sold
Silver £1,500 or 200 sold
Gold £6,000 or 300 sold
Platinum £15,000 or 400 sold
Titanium £95,000 or 500 sold
You will need to maintain your record to continue on the PowerSeller programme!
To achieve and retain PowerSeller status, you need to:
Establish a track record of consistent sales achievement (see above for minimum requirements for gross merchandise volume or quantity of items sold);
Maintain a minimum average monthly total of four (4) sold listings for the past three months;
Be an active seller on the eBay site for a minimum duration of 90 days;
Achieve and maintain a minimum feedback rating of 100 and a minimum of 98% total positive feedback;
Be in good standing by complying with eBay Listing Policies;
Keep your eBay account current - i.e. no overdue payments
Deliver responses to successful bidders within three business days;
Uphold the eBay Community Values, including honesty, timeliness and mutual respect.
So why bother becoming a PowerSeller?
1. Your customers are more likely to trust a member of the programme.
2. Invited to dedicated eBay events
3.Priority email support (and phone support from Gold+)
4. Dedicated discussion board
5.Free Business Templates
6. Dedicated Newsletter
7. You could be the featured PowerSeller of the Month!
There is no fee to join the programme and eBay will invite you by email.
February 8, 2007 at 5:01 pm · Filed under eBay Tips
Do you own the rights to your product? Does someone else?
Protect your rights on eBay using the VeRo programme : http://pages.ebay.co.uk/vero/index.html
Do not infringe the rights of owners on eBay.
February 8, 2007 at 5:01 pm · Filed under eBay Tips
Registering with an eBay account will open up your inbox to spoof emails. eBay will NEVER ask you to confirm details through a website. Download the free eBay toolbar here : http://pages.ebay.co.uk/ebay_toolbar/ the bar will turn red if you are accessing a non-eBay site. It also have some other nice features too.
Protect yourself as a seller:
Putting time into a thorough description could really pay off in the bids you receive. A well-done description not only gives buyers valuable information, but it also shows that you’re a conscientious seller putting care into running your listings.
Many sellers have found that adding a creative, human approach to their descriptions boosts bids and sales.
Consider including:
What do you especially like about the item?
Who do you think it would appeal to and why?
Is there an interesting story about the item?
How do you think it might be used?
Types of specifics to include in your description:
What is the item?
What is it made of?
When was it made?
What company/artist/designer/author made it?
What condition is it in?
What are its dimensions?
Where is it from?
Does it have any notable features or markings?
Is there any special background or history?
Don’t:
Assume that if buyers want more information you’ll hear from them by email. More likely, they’ll just bid with your competitors.
Say anything that’s not true
Keyword spam. This means don’t include words that are actually unrelated to your item just because you think they would appeal to buyers. (For example, don’t say: “If you like Ralph Lauren, you’ll like the colour of these towels.”) This is against eBay’s listing policies
Don’t forget that your item description is the place for details about postage, costs, payments or any other details about how you’re running your listing that you didn’t convey in the Sell Your Item form.
Communicate with your buyer:
Make sure they have used your marketworks checkout, if not create an order for them.
Make sure your notifications are correct
Any problems? Discuss them with your buyer.
Return Policy:
State the condition the item must be returned in.
The time scale, i.e after 7 days of reciept.
Conditions of your return policy, e.g only if the item is faulty
Will it be a full cash refund? Minus Shipping?
Paypal:
Paypal is safe, quick and effective. Encourage your buyers to use this option.
February 8, 2007 at 5:00 pm · Filed under eBay Tips
Utilise all 55 characters in the eBay title, and include some keywords from eBay Pulse
Have a mixture of buy it now and auctions for the different types of ebay user. Impluse buyers like the ‘Buy it Now’ option, whereas the thrill seekers like an auction!
When you have 10 feedback, get a basic shop! You can’t effectively search a username without knowing the exact format. You can search a shop name using partial or similar words. When an item is searched, if you have matching items you will show up in the ‘Related shops’ section on the bottom LHS. If you have lots of items then it means you will be near the top of your products search results!
Use a gallery image, and pull the rest of your images in through your marketworks template (just add the pictures when creating your inventory) eBay will charge 12p per picture, where as you will just be paying the 15p gallery insertion fee!
Keep your description to 10 key points, stick your terms and conditions in your template design ( if our creative team have not done this for you, see other sections on template design)
Choose the right category, and if its not selling, change it! You can monitor your sales with regards to category change in Marketworks, to get a good anaylsis of how individual items are performing.
Have some clearance auctions. eBayers love a bargain, so pull traffic to your other listings by having some low price items.
Vary your product lines. Phones, CD’s and DVD’s are best sellers on eBay and could bring attention to your shop/storefront.
Have clear images of the actual product, no one will buy an item with a fuzzy image. If you use a stock photo, please make sure you have the relevent permissions!
Lots of accessories with the item? Don’t just have a photo of the box, make sure you also photograph the contents clearly.
Watch your eBay Fees! An auction at a minimum price of £1 will cost 5p more than a 99p auction and take advantage of offers and free listing days on eBay! See other sections in this forum for detailed fee structures.
Next entries »
