web site design – ebay stores design – small business websites

When you start a campaign for Google Adwords, you might want to consider excluding certain types of networks. For example, if you are selling an ecommerce product, you’ll want to exclude places where people don’t normally travel to purchase goods. For example sites about crime and war. We used to tell our clients to simply use Search only, but in some cases you’ll want to get on networks. Some of the sponsored links on buying sites can be very important for some products.

Therefore, you may want to exclude things like Parked domains, error pages, crime sites, death and tragedy etc. To do this you should click on “Exclusions” and use the list under Campaign Level to exclude those places. This will get you into content areas and yet get you out of money wasters that can reak havoc on your advertising budget.

Email marketing is one of the most important aspects of ecommerce sites that are profitable. Of our top 100 customers, 90% of them use email marketing on a monthly basis to generate new sales from existing clients and their friends. There is nothing sweeter than generating revenue instantly by sending out a company newsletter informing of new products, sales and specials. Here are some must-do’s for email marketing:

1. Make your newsletter shine: Text emails may be fine, but a nicely done polished email marketing piece has no equal.
2. Send Monthly: Sending out your email on a monthly basis is a must. Even if you don’t have much to say you can shout the allocades of a fine product offering, or give your customers information on your service record.
3. Use a Call to Action: It’s not enough to say something about today, but make your efforts count by either offering a special that lasts a few days only, or by creating a sense of urgency in your email. Emails that ask readers to check out the offering online will more likely garner some real action than those that simply make a statement inside them. The “read more” or “click here to learn more” or “check it out on our website” is more likely going to give you some good clickthrough as well as a sale.
4. Customize your Message: Do you ever get emails that just say Hello Customer? Boring. Use a first name at the very least. If you require it in the signup, you can utilize it in programs such as aSending.com’s email marketing package with little effort.

Take a look at the offering at aSending.com for more information on how to put together a fabulous email marketing program. aSending has programs that start at just $9.95 per month and is a well developed program to generate great looking emails.

Yesterday we had a client call us to complain that he does not rank under a particular keyword. We had done SEO on his site as a kind of afterthought. So we went over and took a look. Under the keyword there are some decent sized competitors and of course, no backlinks to his site for this keyword. The good news is that his site is already a somewhat decently ranked site under other terms, like for example “Diesel Tools”. So we decided to give SEO a little bump and embellish the page for him for his specified keyword.

Someone else mentioned that he needed backlinks and plenty of them. But we didn’t have time for that.

And who said SEO couldn’t be done in a day. Here we are today, and wallah! He is ranking number 4 already under the chosen keyword, up from #11. This was done with on page search optimization simply by

1. adding the keyword term full name as an h1 header tag

2. adding a back link to it from his home page

3. adding another link to it from the #11 page that ranked under the term.

Now his site, and specificially the #11 page moved up 7 spots overnight.

It can be done if you do a little focused work.

Heard from one of our customers that President of eBay Marketplace, Laurie Norrington, commented on the  fine eBay Template work we did for eBay’s Daily Deals configuration. Not entirely sure what she said, but heard that it was a nice review.

The eBay template in question (below) is our latest creation for Allure-Jewelers who has over 29,000 listings on eBay right now and is also featured as a seller in the Daily Deal section of eBay.

This template is part of a set of eBay templates that are in our Premium Design package which has been modified to fit the criteria for eBay Daily Deals Guidelines. In other words: It’s the simple version.

See more of our eBay Templates here

There are many different types of pages for websites, some more complex than others. Here are two examples of web pages that vary from the simple to the extensive.

Basic Web Design: This one is a simple site without a styled logo and with a basic left navigation. No mouseovers, no slides, no flash banners just simple text and some graphic elements. This type of design is a great start and can be modified later to enhance and improve it.

Premium Web Design: This one has a styled logo, top header, flash images, styled left navigation, mutliple banners, etc. This is an example of premium design.

One of the most important aspect of successful e-commerce selling is a goal list. Believe it or not, retailers need to make a list and stick with it. Some of our most successful sellers abide by it. Sit down and plan, make a list and go about methodically taking the time to put it into practice in 2010.

Here is a basic ecommerce plan for new sellers and small shops with limited budgets, that will set you going on your Goal list.

Increase e-commerce sales by 50% this year:

Go through design and evaluate user-friendliness, make adjustments

• Focus on one or two products and make them shine, pick your most popular products
• As a customer, navigate your site in dumbed down mode, what do you see? Does your customer find the information they need to purchase your products?
• What are the benefits of those who shop with you? Put them right in front of the customer. ie: Fast Shipping, Easy Return Policy, etc.

Learn about SEO and make changes to Product Names, pages and improve content on pages.

• Don’t try to bite off more than you can chew. Start with products and label them with proper keywords, then proper content. Subtle changes like this can really make a site noticeable to search engines.
• Get the word out. You should at the very least have your items in Googlebase, which is free. Do one feed at a time and do another one next month.

Set up at least one Pay-Per-Click Channel, give it a budget of at least 1% of expected revenues.

• If you don’t have a few dollars to advertise, you should completely re-evaluate your plan here. This is a business. It requires getting the word out or going viral. If you are not a guru marketeer, then pay for some basic advertising in targeted places.

Set up and maintain an email list, and send out those emails once a month!

• Probably the biggest mistake the new site owners make is to fail to collect emails of interested parties. Our most successful clients use an email list religiously.
• aSending has a great, and inexpensive tool for gathering emails and shooting out marketing materials to your prospective customers about offerings, sales and new products. Use it!

Good Luck on a Great and Prosperous New Year!