The United States Ecommerce

29 Aug 2010 | By admin

Online shopping will soon become the main avenue of shopping in the US. The early users back then were only the highly educated white males, otherwise known as the “techies.” Nowadays, times have changed and so have the consumers for online shopping. Just about every household now has a computer or two. And anybody who owns a computer has made at least one purchase online.

As more and more people shop online, there had to be a way to track the trends of these online services, so that the retailers could get some feedback and then provide the consumer with constant improvements. This is where b2c ecommerce comes into play. They help track the latest trends of the online shopper and then provide this information to the retailers.

With this b2c ecommerce information, the retailers can make improvements to their business. And with these improvements and new technologies, the shopper now has even more tools to help them evaluate what they’re shopping for, prior to making a purchase. One of the biggest improvements that has been made online has been the ability for the consumer to comparison shop side by side for a particular item. With the click of a button, the consumer can now get numerous quotes from different retailers selling the same item.

These are some of the improvements that the retailers have made over the years; customers can now return their merchandise if they are not completely satisfied and they can either pick up their purchase or have it delivered right to their front door. As well, thanks to newer and more secure technology, customers now feel much more secure in using their credit cards online. Whereas a few years ago, people were a little apprehensive about giving their credit card number over the Internet.

Common Questions Answered by B2C Ecommerce

* How fast will my sales grow?
* Which part of the US shows in the largest growth of ecommerce
* What do consumers think is the biggest advantage to online shopping vs. conventional shopping?
* What is the greatest risk to online shopping?

B2C ecommerce will answer questions like this and many others to help the consumer be more confident when shopping online.

Market Size and Growth

The US Department of Commerce (DOC) estimated that the US ecommerce retail sales for 2003 was over $56 billion; compared to a little over $44 billion in 2002. Of course the heaviest amount of sales for 2003 came in the fourth quarter during the holiday season. B2C ecommerce has reported that there is a lot of room for sales growth, considering it has only accounted for 1.5% of total retail sales in 2003

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Website Promotion

28 Aug 2010 | By admin

While the web designer has an important role to play, the success of a website is not up to the web designer, but up to the person in charge of the business, or the marketing of the business. It’s crucial for the success of a website that the website owner realises this.

Search engines are very important. But there are other ways in which you must promote your site. It is not enough to create a site and hope that your prospective clients will find it: websites must be actively promoted.

How much traffic your site gets, through whatever promotion technique you use, will improve your search engine ranking. A higher search engine ranking will, in turn, bring you more traffic. Note that it can take months for a new site to get into Google, or for changes you have made on your site to be visible in Google.

Note also that search engines change their algorithms all the time and no-one knows the rules for them all of the time. No-one can guarantee you a place in any search engine, least of all in Google.

There are no shortcuts to good search engine ranking. The only real way is to make your site as informative as possible. It must have quality content. This way, people will want to visit it, and link to it. While you absolutely must make sure your site is optimised for the search engines, understand that there are no “tricks” your webmaster can do for you that will magically improve your search engine ranking.

Your webmaster can optimise your site for the search engines – after that, the job of promoting your website falls into your hands, or those of your marketing manager.

I. On-site search-engine optimisation – what your webmaster can do for you:

This stage is technical webmaster stuff that needs to be done, though it will have less impact on your search engine rank than what you can do yourself.

1. Research keywords and hone the text on your web pages accordingly. Your keywords need to appear in certain places on your web pages – and they need to be the RIGHT keywords.

This is a very important step. Google, by far the most-used search engine, works by analysing the text on your web pages. So you absolutely must pay attention to this step.

2. Other technical matters to do with the code, based on the best keywords, for example naming the images, alt tags, title tags, h1 tags. This is technical stuff but easy for your webmaster to put into practice, once you have researched the keywords you are planning to focus on.

3. Metatags are keywords and descriptions placed in the html of your web pages. Metatags are not as important as they once were – they will not make or break your site’s SE rankings. But they must still be considered.

4. Site maps are good for the search engines. If your site has a significant number of pages, it may be worth building one.

II. Offline promotion – what you as website owner need to do, or ensure your marketing manager does:

1. Put the website address everywhere – on anything printed, on absolutely all correspondance.

2. Print ads in suitable publications, TV coverage.

3. Leaflets, mailshots, postcards.

4. Ads in other suitable places, such as notice boards.

5. Free press coverage through sending out press releases.

6. Whatever other offline marketing strategies you use to publicise your business.

III. Online promotion – also for you or your marketing manager to do:

1. Get as many links from other websites, preferably relevant ones, in the same field as you, to your website as you can.

This is probably the single most important thing you can do to get traffic and a good search engine ranking.

a. Link exchanges – get people with related sites to link to your website. You will probably need to link to theirs in return.

b. Submit your site details to relevant directories/portals.

c. Participation in discussion boards – if you are allowed to put a “signature” containing your website address.

2. Submit your site to the major search engines: Google, The Open Directory Project, Yahoo (Yahoo is only free for non-commercial websites. If you are a B to B site, you will need to pay to be included), Looksmart, Altavista. And others.

3. Submit online press releases – this gets you traffic as well as more incoming links.

4. Submit articles to online article banks – this also gets you both traffic and incoming links.

5. Place ads in suitable places:

a. Suitable websites that take ads;

b. Pay Per Click Advertising – Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing.

6. Email signature – every single email you send out should have your website address at the bottom.

7. Create an e-brochure and email it to your contacts. Ask them to pass it on. Even a simple email recommendation from your contacts to their contacts can generate very good results.

8. Run an email mailing list or newsletter. If appropriate, keep in touch with your prospects and clients by sending them regular updates/offers etc. Research shows that it takes an average of seven contacts with a prospective client to result in a sale.

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6 Things to Know About Increasing Traffic With One Way Links

27 Aug 2010 | By admin

The number of people doing business online continues to expand day by day at a stunning rate. As more and more people try their hand at starting and growing Internet-based enterprises, an increased number of websites are appearing. In essence what this means is that there is now greater competition for a slice of the action than at any other time in the history of the World Wide Web. In addition, all indications are that this trend is likely to continue, and that competition will become even more fierce.

But don’t worry. There is hope and help – in fact, there is a lot of hope and help – for your success online.

SEO to the Rescue

You see, the difference between an online enterprise that succeeds as opposed to one that fails, (given that they both have a saleable product or service in demand), is the amount of targeted traffic that the sites attract. It’s a very simple equation. The more targeted traffic that visits a website, the more opportunity that site has of generating sales. In short, it’s simply a “numbers game.”

So the name of the game is attracting the right traffic and lots of it. And the mechanism for doing this is something called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is the science by bettering your website’s page rankings among the various search engines in order to attract more search engines and people who use them to your websites.

Helpful SEO Tools

SEO has various tools within its arsenal to help it in improving your site’s page ranking, but by far the most influential tool is something called link building, and in particular, one way link building. Google, the biggest search engine by far, has a set of algorithms that it uses to rate or rank a website. Whilst not every part of this algorithm is known (combined with the fact that the algorithm’s make-up is constantly reviewed by Google), it is known that Google set great store by how many one way links a website has.

The logic is that the more one way links, the more people value that site and therefore link to it. Google surmises that this is because the site has unique, interesting content, and this is exactly what they like to try and promote. Two way, or reciprocal links, don’t have the same magic, because in Google’s eyes, because two way links can be arranged for mutual benefit, whereas as a one way link indicates specific interest in your website.

Here is a summary of why one way links are so effective.

1. They are highly rated by search engines.

2. They lead more traffic to your website

3. Your website gains credibility with the search engines

4. You minimize any potential loss from reciprocal linking

5. The more links you have, the more chance of spreading the word.

6. More traffic means more potential sales

You can of course build your own network of one way links, but you will find that this can become very time consuming, and somewhat tedious. No fun!

Link Building Services

Many website owners prefer to outsource the creation of one way links to a link building service provider like Linkvana(dot)com that they feel they can trust. By using the services of such a company, you are relying on a team of experts in link building, a team who knows all there is to know about the art of one way link building. But the added bonus is that it frees up your own personal time so that you can dedicate yourself to the real issue, the successful running of your company and business operations.

Get ahead of your competition by putting an effective one-way link building program in place. Find the right link building service provider, and set them loose to establish the best one-way links, and to literally explode your sales potential.

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