Internet Marketing Articles

How to Attract Mobile Buyers to Your eBay Listings

March 2, 2017 by Tina Lee-Almazar | Tinaciouslee Leave a Comment

Did you know that 55% of online transactions on eBay are touched by mobile devices? According to the e-commerce giant, buyer behavior has been changing over the years. More and more people are turning to smaller mobile devices – such as smartphones and tablets – to make purchases online. In 2014 alone, eBay reached a staggering $28 billion in sales from mobile users.

That said, not all listings are optimized for mobile users. Because the industry landscape has changed so much, entrepreneurs must adjust their business strategies to stay competitive. As such, it is critical to making your listings mobile-friendly to attract more buyers. So, what can you do to create a mobile-friendly listing and stand out from your competitors? Here are our tips:

Avoid Lengthy, Complex Descriptions

Let’s face it, most vendors tend to use lengthy descriptions to drum up attention from buyers. This strategy might have worked in the past where the majority of viewers were using desktop computers or laptops to make online purchases but the switch to smaller screens calls for less fluff.

Shorter descriptions look better on smaller screens as opposed to longer texts. Plus, succinct descriptions are less likely to turn buyers off because scrolling is reduced. When writing the product descriptions, always focus on the important aspect of the product, such as specs, benefits, and so on.

To save even more space, try not to include a lot of extraneous HTML codes in the description. Some codes do not render well on a mobile device, forcing your users to pinch and scroll the product listing. All that pinching and scrolling will only turn potential customers away!

Keep it Simple

From the typography to the layout, less is definitely more when it comes to selling a product on eBay. A striking layout might be a good idea initially, but combined with the text and pictures, your listing could look too busy. When the product is not presented well, it could turn people off or draw the attention away from the stuff that matters: the clickable buy button!

It pays to keep your listing simple and straightforward. Use a font that looks readable on a white background. Because mobile devices have a smaller screen, the text must not be too small to read or too large that it requires a lot of scrolling or pinching. Stick to one or two font sizes for maximum readability.

Choose a Great Photo

Your product listing should feature photos that fit the screen to reduce pinching. If you are using hi-res images, resize the pictures to at least 500 pixels wide. If you can, upload images that are up to 1600 pixels. eBay will automatically offer the zoom feature so customers can choose the images they like and check out the finer details of the product.

As for uploading images, we do not recommend adding the pictures in the description area. Why? Most customers do not scroll beyond this area. Also, images placed on the description section don’t render well. After completing the listing, we recommend testing how the entire page looks on major browsers, particularly Chrome, Safari, and FireFox.

Don’t Forget Your Product Identifiers

eBay is now requiring all listings to feature product identifiers. These are tags that include the brand name, manufacturer part number (MPN), and global trade item number (GTIN). Brand identifiers help increase your listing’s visibility on eBay by making it easier for buyers to find. And with the stiff competition between brands on eBay, you need all the help you can to distinguish yourself from other brands.

Cool Ways To Update Your Facebook Page For The Holiday Season

December 10, 2013 by Tina Lee-Almazar | Tinaciouslee Leave a Comment

The holiday season is almost upon us, show a bit of Christmas spirit by prepping up your Facebook page with holiday-themed updates. Why? Because almost everyone’s in the mood to spend more. A survey conducted by Mashable revealed that virtually 65% of people look into social media sites to find the perfect gift. You do not want to miss the perfect opportunity to market your business during one of the biggest holidays of the year.

Make the most out of your Facebook page by eliciting excitement! This can be done in a variety of ways including offering awesome freebies, holiday discounts, deals, events and business promotions! Rev start your marketing campaign just in time for Christmas, we’ve listed down practical ways to get people talking about your Facebook page during the holiday season:

Starting With Your Cover Photo

Your Facebook cover photo is the first thing people see when they check your page so it pays to make the photo as compelling or as inviting as you can. Your cover photo isn’t just there to draw attention, it’s a representation of your brand. It should reflect the season because it will motivate people into checking out your page often. Remember, people are looking into social media sites to find great deals and gift ideas during the holiday season so it’s worth keeping your page as fresh as you can to get people in the mood to spend more money on your business.

Build Your Own Giveaway App

Giveaway apps are easily the most popular way to compel people to participate in any reward program or contest you have for the season. Whether you are planning to offer Facebook-only contests for Cyber Monday or give discount coupons to giveaway for Christmas, an especially made app is a great way to simplify the mechanics and manage the entries of contest participants.

Highlight Popular Products

Here’s a clever way to market your products without looking like you are pushing it into people’s faces: showcase your star products in an app. This will do two things. First, it will grab people’s attention and second, it will help drive online and in-store sales. Marketing during the season isn’t just about offering irresistible deals or promos, you need to make it easy for people to actually purchase your products. An app that will direct interested people into checking out your popular products takes away all the guesswork of searching for the products online.

Roll Out Holiday-Themed Ads

Facebook ads are a great way to widen your network even further. We recommend trying this out at least once just to see if this will enhance your marketing campaign. If you are willing to explore the Facebook ads option, it’s important to start with the basics: drawing out your budget. You don’t need to spend a fortune on these ads especially if you are on the fence about the idea to begin with. Sponsored posts and sponsored stories are great ways to start. A word of caution, it’s easy to overdo these ads. If you don’t want to turn people off, do not bombard them with too much ads.

Christmas season is the perfect time to get people buying and Facebook is an excellent tool to help you cash in during special holidays. Fortunately, Facebook recently adjusted its promotional guidelines to give business owners more flexibility, in terms of how they want to run their promotional deals. From customized Facebook apps to offering giveaways, there are several ways to implement your marketing strategies effectively without turning people off.

Adding A Personal Touch To Engage Customers

December 10, 2013 by Tina Lee-Almazar | Tinaciouslee Leave a Comment

One of the most glaring differences between large scale and small-scale businesses is that the former tend not deliver a more personalized shopping experience with customers. This is because they deal with so many people at a time that adding a personal touch with every transaction is seen as impractical.

The fact is, while many factors come to play to motivate people into making a purchase, offering personalized buying experience is one of those things that are often overlooked but makes a total difference when done right. Once you are able to make a more personal connection from your target audience, you will know that it’s well worth the effort. Today, we go in-depth on practical ways to add a bit of personal touch to engage your customers.

Thank You Videos

A nice, personalized Thank you video is one of the best ways to establish a better connection with your buying customers. Keep the message short and sweet. You can also give an inside look of all other offers you have to compel them to watch the video from beginning to end.

You can choose to address each customer by name and then read a general script. However, you can also create one video to address all customers to save recording time. Store your video clip on YouTube, Vimeo or via online file storage websites like Dropbox so you can simply send an email that will direct the customer to the Thank You video.

You can kick this up a notch by creating different videos for special events, like after the customer purchased special items during holiday sales, Black Friday deals or Halloween sale, Clearance Sale, etc.

Addressing Customers By Name

One of the quickest ways to establish customer loyalty is to address people by their name. You want to make a connection with people; you start by acknowledging customers individually. This isn’t exactly a new marketing technique but it’s extremely effective especially for small businesses. This gives customers the impression that they are dealing with a real person, not a bot.

There are great ways to get the names of people and one of which includes introducing a loyalty program. This rewards program will allow customers special discounts or freebies if he or she reached a specific amount of purchases. The more registrations you get, the bigger your email list will be. You can use the personal information for future promos too.

Offering Members-Only Incentives

Imagine getting a nice freebie on your birthday or a discount on special days. Offering members-only incentives or sign-up promos is an excellent way to elicit a sense of urgency from people. Customers can simply complete the sign up form with their personal information to take advantage of the special deal. From here you can establish customer loyalty and compel them to buy your products at the same time. You can also run several limited-time-only promos while you’re at it.

While adding personalized shopping experience with customers may seem impractical for larger companies, small businesses stand to get their fair share of the market if they take time to engage with their customers. It’s important to make your customers feel that your company isn’t just about selling, rather, it is managed by real people who are out to resolve real concerns.

Getting Twitter Followers To Promote Your Business

December 10, 2013 by Tina Lee-Almazar | Tinaciouslee Leave a Comment

Marketing your business through social networking sites like Twitter may not seem like an effective strategy given that your “tweets” are limited to 140-characters but with over half a billion active users, it’s actually one of the largest social media sites out there, making it one of the best places to promote your business.

Before we get down to the nitty-gritty, let’s discuss what Twitter is all about. Twitter is one of the most popular social networking sites in the world. Unlike Facebook where users can update their network with pictures, status messages and even polls, Twitter is mainly there to share information, the most stripped down kind there is! As long as you are able to generate relevant, engaging content without sounding too “spammy”, you can use Twitter not just to market your business but also get your followers to promote your business!

For marketers, Twitter is an extremely useful tool to get the word out about their business. Unfortunately, even the most engaging content are left ignored by other users simply because marketers failed to observe some of the most essentials aspects of sending out tweets. And because millions of users are tweeting several times at any given day, making a name for yourself on Twitter can be quite a struggle. However, when done right, you can turn your users into your own personal marketing team. How? We’ve listed down ways on how you can encourage your network to spread the word about your business.

Getting People To Talk

Twitter may be hi-tech but social media is a great place to hold meaningful conversation with your network. Twitter, after all, rose from the ranks by being one of the most conducive platforms for real conversations between users. So how do you get your network to talk to you? How can you trade banter and share each other’s POV? It all starts by getting people to follow you. While the number of your followers may not be that much of a big deal, it does say a lot about your reputation on a specific market. Once you have established a sizable following, the challenge is to interact with them, particularly high profile individuals from your niche market, and getting them to engage you in a conversation.

Quality VS Quantity

Just like any other social networking sites, Twitter popularity is rooted in regularity. This means that in order to be relevant, you have to stay relevant. And you can’t be relevant if you only update your account once a week! Building and managing a social community starts at consistent flow of information between you and your network. However, the information has to be timely, fresh and engaging in order to attract attention.

A lot of people mistake quality for quantity. Posting too many tweets may not necessarily be enough to get you to keep in talks with other Twitter users. While quantity does matter, in terms of engaging others, choosing sharable content is still key. From giving your two cents on issues that matter to entertaining videos or blog posts, you will definitely benefit from Twitter by sharing quality content, things that people would want to read and watch.

Analyzing Your Marketing Campaign

It’s important to keep track of your marketing plan’s overall historic and predictive performance to ensure online promotion is going to the direction that you want. First, you will start by analyzing your old data i.e. pinpointing where your top followers are location and where potential users are located, and determining if you are getting any positive results from these users.

Next, analyze your data to find out the future growth of your business with a time constraint. By using old and new data, you will be able to predict the results you can expect within the next few weeks. There are great tools to help you analyze your marketing campaign. Some of the most popular includes Twitter Counter and MetionMap.

#HashTagIt

Hash tagging was developed during Twitter’s infancy. Today, it’s considered a norm with major social networks like Facebook and Instagram joining in to the hashtagging craze. But did you know hash tagging can actually help you promote your business? Hash tagging allows any user to promote themselves as niche users. Your feed with the hash tag will instantly be archived to other tweets with similar topics. So whenever possible, add a hash tag on your tweets to get more people to follow your tweets

Pushing For More Sales: Purchase Incentives To Win Over Buying Customers

November 26, 2013 by Tina Lee-Almazar | Tinaciouslee Leave a Comment

If getting solid sales seem like a battle you’re not likely to win, why not mix things up by offering great incentives to attract buying customers? Discounts, coupon codes or free shipping, these exciting deals are bound to be a hit among customers!

Let’s face it, sometimes no matter how hard you work on your marketing campaign to attract buying customers, the waiting game is affecting how you do business. This is especially problematic for people who are venturing into the eCommerce industry for the first time. If sales have been pretty bleak and your competitors are eating a large chunk of market share, your business is in real danger of being left behind.

The good news is, there are ways to increase sales while you wait for your marketing campaign to take effect. Offering incentives is one of the most effective marketing strategies on the web. From giving small discounts to offering free shipping, these incentives not only boost sales, it also help cultivate lasting relationships among customers.

According to ILoveCoupons, a leading Australian-based coupon site, more Australian retailers are reporting soaring online sales figures in 2012,all because they joined the online coupon revolution.

With a reported 30% jump on online sales, ILoveCoupons’ CEO Dominic Gluchowsk attributes the glowing sales increase on retailers seeing the value of offering great discounts to their customers. Incentives such as online coupons and discounts dramatically increases customer base which leads to increase in online sales.

“At the end of the day this is great news for consumers, who reap the rewards of unbelievable savings, while shopping at their own convenience; anytime, anywhere.” Mr. Gluchowsk said.

The latest National Australia Bank Retail Sales Index clearly shows a dramatic increase in online retails sales as well, with 27% increase in the 12 months to November. All these numbers point to one thing: purchase incentives are effective strategies that draw customers in and improve customer satisfaction.

However, with no definite plan for your pricing strategy, you could end up losing more if you offer purchase incentives. In this post, we will discuss some of the best ways to reward customers without being broke!

eCoupons

Offering purchase incentives like coupons is an effective way to increase sales for small online businesses. Unfortunately, not a lot of business owners are keen on offering any type of purchase incentives because of fear that they could face substantial loss that may result in closing shop. This couldn’t be further from the truth, eCoupons and other purchase incentives are proven marketing strategies that not only enhance business’ performance, it also helps increase the level of customer satisfaction.

Couponing has hit the mainstream market after the show “Extreme Couponing” went on air. The show was deemed by shopathome.com’s founder, Marc Braunstein as revolutionary because it spread awareness that with a little effort, shoppers could save a lot of money through coupons.

The show sparked total pandemonium among bargain hunters in the US, leading coupon aggregation sites like RetailMeNot and shopathome.com to achieve unprecedented growth shortly during the first season of the show.

To illustrate how couponing has helped increase online sales, Ipsos conducted a study for RetailMeNot.com. The study indicates that there is a 23% increase in online coupon usage in year over year for three months prior to November of 2011. Sales connected to coupons and codes also increased on other merchant sales with a jump of 82% for the same period.

In the US, more than 1.75 billion coupons were redeemed by consumers during the first six months of 2011 according to NCH Marketing Services. That’s an 18% increase compared to the first half of 2009!

Read more about the benefits of eCoupons from a 2011 commissioned study by Forrester Consulting on behalf of WhalseShark Media on The Impact of Online Coupons and Promotion Codes here.

All these statistics show two things. First, online shoppers love a good deal and couponing offers the best of deals and two, coupons as an incentive, helps increase business revenues and profits immensely.

How To offer eCoupons to Customers

eCoupons work the same way as traditional couponing we all love, except, you don’t need to spend hours collecting and cutting coupons from the dailies.

eCoupons a great purchase incentive because it is very easy to implement. As long as your eCommerce site features a shopping cart program, you can encourage customers to take advantage of this exclusive promo. Customers simply need to enter a coupon code during checkout. The coupon code is composed of a series of numbers and letters integrated within the shopping card software to apply the discount amount set for specific purchases. In terms of dispersing eCoupons to customers, here are the most popular ways to do it:

Loyalty Programs: Give repeat customers more incentives, issue eCoupons after they made a set dollar amount or they completed a specific number of purchases. Offering eCoupons as part of your loyalty program motivates customers to make more purchases each time.

Reward For Return Customers: Got customers who buy once and never come back again? Offering eCoupons is a great way to win back customers. You can add the coupon code once the customer checks out or by sending the coupon via email once you confirm their order.

Sign Up Promo: Convert new customers to avid buyers by offering exclusive deals if they sign up for membership! You can create a system that tracks down all new members and offer them one or a set of eCoupons so they can start shopping immediately.

Upsell, Cross-Sell:eCoupons can also be used to upsell or cross sell products to existing customers. For example, you can offer coupons for mobile phone cases or SD cards if your customer just bought a mobile phone from your eStore.

Subscriber Incentives: You can use eCoupons to reward customers who signed up to your weekly/monthly newsletter. By offering great incentives to subscriber signups, you will build a great contact list which may lead to future sales.

There are a wide range of ways to offer eCoupons so be creative! Remember, each company has different needs in terms of attracting customers so make sure you develop a compelling marketing scheme to disperse eCoupons to your target audience.

Special Discounts

Another popular way to reward customers online is by offering discounts on specific products or services. Just like eCoupons, discounts are a strategic way to increase sales, attract new customers and maintain high level of customer satisfaction from old customers.

Advantages of Offering Discounts to eShoppers

Customer discounts are quick ways to draw buying customers into your store. More than increasing sales, offering discounts or any other incentives for that matter, helps establish better reputation and retain existing customers. Below are other benefits of offering discounts to your customers:

Offering potential customers discounts on purchases is a way to quickly draw people into your store. Anytime you tell a customer that he can save money, you’re likely to get his attention. Discounts don’t only help your shoppers; they also help your business. From increased sales to improved reputation, discounts may be that one ingredient that can bring business success.

Increase Site Traffic: Most shoppers can’t resist a great deal. More people are likely make a purchase if you put emphasis on discounted items. Even better, offering discounts for a limited time only creates a sense of urgency among customers, increasing the chances of people rushing to your store to take advantage of a great deal.

Increase Sales: Because no one can say no to sale items, discounts help increase online sales. And these sales are not only limited to products with discounted prices but also items that are offered at regular rates. Why? Because buying discounted items meant customers have more room for buying other items in your store. For example, say you sell streetwear for women online and you just gave large discounts on all dresses from your collection. Customers are likely to take advantage of the discounts but they are also likely to purchase accessories like belts, cardigans or skirts to go with their other purchases!

Make Room For New Products: For multi-product businesses, offering discounts on slow-selling items is a sure-fire way to speed up sales and then free up some room in your inventory for new items. Put the offer prominently on your homepage to catch the attention of customers right off the bat.

Improve Business Reputation: Offering discounts is also an effective way to improve business reputation especially if special discounts are offered for the elderly or those enlisted in the military. By showing customers that your business provide more value to those who are in very difficult situations or those who may be having financial troubles, you show how much you value your customers and this will all lead to improved reputation.

Surpass Sale Figure Goals:Got revenue goals you’re not likely to meet? Flash sales and discount promos are the perfect solution to achieve weekly, monthly or annual goals you may have set for yourself!

As you can see from the examples above, offering discounts to your customers is one of the best ways to promote your business and continuously attract buying customers. However, if you do decide to offer discounts to your store, there are certain factors you have to consider first. One is the age of your business, as well as the number of your customers and how you implement pricing.

While offering discounts and other purchase incentives is an effective way to attract more people into your business, it’s equally important to know IF such strategy suits your business at its current state. Depending on your business plan, offering discounts may buying customers or it could create confusion that could affect how you do business. If you’re unsure whether now’s a good time to offer discounts to your customers, we’ve compiled these tips to help you decide your next move:

Use Discount Promos As Customer Rewards

… not to chase after customers. In some market culture, discounts are used to give incentives to long-time customers who have been making timely payments. This is a common reward to show customers their business is valued. If your budget allows for certain incentives like giving discounts to long-time customers, then by all means, show them that you appreciate their patronage all these years.

However, stop short at giving discounts for the sake of retaining customers who are threatening to switch to another service provider IF you don’t give them a discount. If you know that you provide better service at a reasonable price, don’t undervalue your business. Giving in to unnecessary pressure like these could have detrimental effects on how you do business later on. Discounts should be given to customers as rewards; it shouldn’t be used as a tool to forcibly lower costs just to retain customers nor to chase after customers who are threatening to make the switch.

Who Should You Give Discounts To?

This is a tricky question. On one hand, giving discounts to all customers is a great way to build better relationships and boost customer satisfaction. On the other hand, your profits and business revenues could be gravely affected if you offer discounts to ALL customers. Offering discounts to majority of your customers have its own perils. For one thing, it could be hard to switch the prices back to its normal range.

Another thing is, it’ll be hard to undo the effects of offering discounts if your income has become insufficient. Offering 10% discounts to select customers is a safer alternative than offering general discounts to, say, all new customers, etc. Additionally, don’t just randomly select customers to award discounts to. You need to create a set of standards to determine select customers’ eligibility for discounts. A great place to start is to determine by checking for:

Customers who have been loyal to you for years
Customers that pay on time
Customers that referred other people to your business
Customers you completed several projects for

Always weigh the pros and cons of any purchase incentives you offer. Find out if your business has more to lose if you offer such incentives and develop a plan B if things didn’t work out the way you intended once the incentives are rolled out to customers.

Check Your Customer Base

Don’t offer discounts when you’ve yet established a firm customer base! If you got very little to gain and so much to lose by offering discounts, then it’s better to wait for the perfect time to implement such incentives. Startups tend to offer discounts to give people a reason to check their business out instead of continuously patronizing their more established competitors. However, if such marketing ploy will only leave you short in the balance sheet, don’t.

Success in any type of business cannot be built around pricing strategy alone. It’s built around expertise, quality, high level of customer satisfaction and excellent customer service. Again, don’t undervalue your business by offering discounts to chase after customers.

However, if you must insist on giving customers discounts to increase your revenues, go for long-term projects and offer small discounts. You could also promise customers discounts for future projects. For instance, you could give 5% to 10% discounts for customers who can 1) refer you to other customers or 2) customer that come to you for second or third project/purchase

It pays to always check how firm your customer base is before implementing any sort of discounts because having a sustainable number of buying customers will make it easier for your business to yield funds for such rewards.

It’s All About Timing

If say, you decided to finally roll out your discount offers, it’s important to consider the timing of the promo. There are two ways to announce the discounts. One, you can post it publicly i.e. straight on your website or two; you can announce privately i.e. contacting select customers about the promo.

Public Announcement: The advantage of announcing incentives to a predefined group of customers is it encourages other customers to patronize your business to get the same incentives sometime in the future. It could also attract people to sign up for your service and help retain existing customers.

However, it could also alienate people who were not included in the predefined group of customers eligible for the discounts. You can avoid this by ensuring other parties may be eligible for discounts in the future. When announcing discounts publicly, do so with an inviting, well-written copy. No flashing graphics no oversized fonts or big buttons to get people’s attention.

Private Announcement: If you chose to discuss the new promo privately to select clients,make sure you offer such incentives to people who have been loyal to your service for years, those that you had great business relationships with and those who have referred your services to other customers. Use the promo to show your customers that you value their business all these years and also to improve business relations.

Free Shipping

Free shipping is without a doubt, a great incentive to give particularly for wholesale and retail eCommerce businesses. By offering free shipping, you encourage customers to make MORE purchases and provide them a more fulfilling shopping experience. However, shipping costs aren’t exactly cheap either and if you’re footing the bill, you need to make sure it’s worth the added cost. In this part the post, we will discuss the science of free shipping and how to do it right.

Free Shipping: Do You Need To Offer It?

When it comes to offering incentives of any kind, the first question you ask yourself is: “Do I really need to offer this?” Let’s assume you can offer purchase incentives like free shipping, let’s take a look on whether or not you should offer such rewards to customers.

A 2011 holiday survey conducted by comScore showed that around 26% of online shoppers won’t purchase products unless the eShops offer free shipping. 42% of those who participated in the survey said free shipping is somewhat important and are actively seeking free shipping deals when they shop online.

It’s hard to argue the importance of free shipping or shipping discounts on online businesses, particularly those that offer wholesale items.

In the same survey by comScore, more than half of all holiday transactions in 2011 included free shipping deals, a sign that retailers are finally recognizing the need to offer customers rewards for their continued business.

Another study conducted showed that women in particular, are drawn by free shipping offers than men with 31% preferring that offer versus 21% in men. Interestingly, searches for free shipping in general jumped to 29% last October, 2011.

Free Shipping: How Will It Benefit Your Business

Free shipping may be great for consumers but when you look at it from a merchant’s perspective, it could be both a good thing and a bad thing. Free shipping may benefit businesses because it helps motivate customers to make multiple and/or repeat purchases, minimize the risk of cart abandonment and enhance customer satisfaction. Below are other benefits that free shipping provides to business owners:

Boost Revenues: Free shipping is a great tool to boost online sales and business revenues. It could result in bulk orders. However, free shipping may not necessarily boost profits. A comScore survey indicate that although 46% of online retailers claims that offering free shipping increase their profits, almost a third of online sellers says otherwise. When it comes to offering free shipping, most online businesses tend to overlook the minimal profitability of the offer; rather, they tend to focus on the long-term gains of offering such incentives.

Enhance Repeat Purchases: Most online sellers that offer free shipping admit that they acquire new customers easily and repeat purchases have become quite common after offering free shipping or discounted shipping. Because customers sees free shipping as a way for merchants to give more value for their money, they tend to make the most out of the offer and this will ultimately result in repeat purchases, bulk orders, etc.

Edge Out Competitors: When you offer free shipping, you get the edge you need to stay competitive in a very tight race for more market share. With so many eCommerce sites fighting over the same target audience, how can your business possibly stand out? By aggressively pushing for better customer service, quality products and a rewarding shopping experience. Free shipping may just be the vehicle you need to maintain existing levels of sales in an otherwise cutthroat competition in the marketplace.

Free Shipping: Added Costs To Consider

Say you want to offer free shipping to your customers online but is unsure what types of added costs you have to contend with once you rolled out this new reward program. Below are added costs you have to consider before you offer free shipping to your customers:

Profit Margin Loss: One of the most common costs of offering free shipping is the loss of profit market. Shipping costs aren’t exactly cheap and prices have continued to rise over the past years. One way to minimize profit margin loss is to reduce the delivery charges via economy shipping. However, economy shipping tends to deliver very slow service at times and even order tracking loss.

Design and Marketing Costs: When you offer purchase incentives like free shipping, your website should be programmed to handle special promos like this. If your website cannot handle such promos, you will have to hire a team to program your website to manage orders with free shipping. You’ll also need to spread the word about your incentive programs and this will cost additional expenses as well.

Calculating Shipping Costs

Free shipping may be great for customers but not always for sellers, particularly for small and medium-sized online businesses that lack the negotiating power that bigger, more established retailers have. This means profit margins may become even slimmer if they implement free shipping. The good news is, there are ways to offer free shipping without it affecting profitability. But before we get into alternative options for free shipping, consider the following:

Profit Margins: As a business offering incentives, your profit margin is likely to be affected by such pricing strategy, especially if you offer multiple products as profit margins vary from product to product. These elements may affect the level of discounted shipping you can offer to customers.

Product Specs: From the weight of your product to restrictions in handling, certain products cost more when shipped. Some products require special handling and on average, is one of the most common reasons why products are very expensive to ship. Consumer electronic products, laptops, etc. are just a few items that require special handling during shipping.

Order Value: Most online sellers offer free shipping for bulk orders or when customers reach a set of order numbers.

Shipping Location:International shipping costs more than domestic shipping. You’re likely to absorb more costs when you ship in other countries. This is why most sellers tend to limit free shipping to domestic shipping only.

Ways You Can Offer Free Shipping To Customers

Nearly 61% of online shoppers are likely to cancel their purchases if free shipping isn’t offered to them, this according to a recent comScore survey. No free shipping offer is also the primary cause of cart abandonment as reported by many eCommerce site owners. As a business owner, there are different types of shipping promos you can offer to your customers. You don’t need to settle for free shipping to get people into your business. Below are different ways you can offer free shipping to your customers:

Members-Only Free Shipping: This option requires customers to pay an annual fee to join your members-only club where incentives like free shipping are offered. This reward scheme is similar to Amazon Prime.

Free Shipping For Minimum Order: In order for customers to get free shipping, they have to reach a certain number of orders.

Free Shipping For Selected Items: This is a great way to get old or overstocked items out of your hands. Offering free shipping for selected items only is also best to sell items with the best margins.

Site to Store Free Shipping: This type of offer is gaining traction particularly in big name brands that have several stores in various locations. This scheme offers free shipping if the customer drops by the store nearest to the customer’s location for pickup.

Flat-Rate Shipping: Although this type of shipping offer isn’t entirely free, it’s still considered as an incentive because it offers substantial discounts on the shipping that might otherwise be paid in full by the customer.

A Guide: Real Cost of Setting Up An Online Site

November 26, 2013 by Tina Lee-Almazar | Tinaciouslee Leave a Comment

Investing in an online business isn’t as costly as a brick and mortar store. However, for business owners on a shoestring budget, it’s imperative to plan out a realistic budget when setting up an online store. Read this comprehensive guide to get an idea how much you’d have to invest on a site and what other expenses you need to consider for a smoother, more efficient business online.

Most people, particularly those who are toying with the idea of establishing an online business instead of the more traditional brick-and-mortar business, automatically assumes that setting an online store is dirt cheap. Just a few hundred dollars and you got your very own online site with all the bells and whistles, right?

Wrong.

While you can get a basic website for free, customization is where the money is. And that’s just the beginning!A complex site, particularly those equipped with shopping cart feature, cost anywhere between $5,000 to $15,000! And with various components changing from time to time, the general figure is hard to calculate. In this post, we will go down the nitty-gritty and find out how to plan a budget for your site, what important expenses you need to consider to enhance its online performance and what other factors to take note of when calculating the cost of marketing your business online.

Hand Coded or Off-The-Shelf Web Design Package?

One of the first things to consider when setting up a website is to whether to work with a web design firm or to purchase an off the shelf web design package. Hiring a web design firm to handle the coding of your site is an excellent choice because it allows for complete optimization and your design team can base their design according to your own specifications. However, this is ideal only if you are ready to shell out a lot of cash for a customized design.

The fact is, customized sites cost as much as $15,000 and expenses could climb up if you include SEO, hosting, general website maintenance, etc. to the package. Although the cost of web design has gone down considerably, the need for interactivity has helped hold the price of premium web design at high prices. One of the most common reasons for the higher rates include the clamor for mobile-optimized sites, as more and more people demand mobile and tablet support from website owners.

Off the shelf web design is a great alternative to customized web design. You can purchase these ready-made web designs from leading web design firms and set up is fairly easy. Off the shelf web design appeals to most business owners, especially those who are venturing into the online business industry for the first time, because it’s cheaper and the diversity in design and quality is very extensive, giving people more options in terms of how they want their sites to look and what functionalities to consider.

The general rule of thumb is, if budget allows for it, then hand-coded sites make an attractive choice for unique and striking website. On the other hand, if you are saving your money on other pertinent expenses, then an off the shelf web design package should suit your business just as well.

Domain Name

No website is complete without a domain name. Yes, you can run a business without a domain name or perhaps, with no website, but there is simply no substitute. It’s not advisable to start an online business without a domain name! Sites that don’t have their own domain name will always be at the mercy of their web host’s domain name. If the web host came across problems or it closes down completely, your site, which you invested time and money on, will be gone in seconds.

Your domain name is a necessity for the health and longevity of your website and its price should always be a part of your budget when developing a website. Domain name rates will vary from registrar to registrar but the ballpark price is around $9 to $10.

Web Hosting Service

Commercial web hosting services offers an annually fee subscribers will pay in order to keep their sites accessible online. The payment terms will vary from service provider to service provider but others allow discounts if you pay a year in advance. Others offer monthly payments for sites with minimal traffic or data. Gradual increase in traffic and in data files means site owners have to upgrade their service plans in order to accommodate bigger files.

If you plan to establish a simple, personal website or a hobby site then you don’t need to purchase a costly hosting plan. In fact, you can get free web hosting services. You to set up a site and send an application form for free hosting and in exchange, they could either place adverts on your site or provide limited services.

When it comes to paid web hosting, it’s important to check for service providers that provide reliable services. Some web hosts have frequent “down” times and during these times, websites under their service will be temporary inaccessible online. If your website is down for a considerable time, you stand to lose profits and customers.

In terms of rates, web hosting services will range from $13 to $15 for basic sites and $90 to $200 for high traffic, high data sites. When it comes to selecting a hosting service, it pays to do your homework! Always compare rates, list down likely service providers and know more about the quality of their services before committing to one.

Additionally, cheap doesn’t necessarily mean the more cost-effective option. Some service providers might offer hosting at bargain prices but the service is unstable! Consequently, higher prices doesn’t necessarily equate to better service, which is why it pays to scour forums or customer testimonials from credible sources to see which service provider offer dependable service at great prices.

Programs

Another factor to consider when deciding your budget for a website is the software you want installed for the website being set up. For instance, blog sites can be set up using free software. You don’t need to spend a lot to create your own website, as you can get free software from online sources; you just have to know where to look. On the other hand, for those who want websites that can be managed directly from a web browser without using a web editor, you’ll need a site that comes with a software called Content Management System or CMS.

CMS is a type of program installed on the website itself. From here, site owners can control how they want their site to look like. From adding and deleting web pages to modifying its general appearance, CMS updates a website in real time. Websites with CMS cost a couple of thousands of dollars but if you want to save money, you can search online for free CMS scripts.

Blog sites and sites with CMS software require an FTP client to store files from your computer to your web host’s computer. Just like CMS, there are also free FTP programs online and if you use one, it should keep your expenses don to bare minimum.

Ordinary web editor is great for site owners who prefer to forego a CMS or a blogging software. Programs like Dreamweaver are great for professional web masters to develop their website but at almost $400, it’s an expensive tool. However, it’s a small price to pay when you think about the productivity you gain from using such software. But if you prefer free tools for developing your site, KompoZer and Nvu are great alternative to Dreamweaver. Do note that KompoZer and Nvu come with several limitations and the lack of bug fixes also makes it hard to work on. However, they should do when you are developing simple websites for your business.

If say, you want to do all the graphics and image editing on your own, then it pays to get the right tools for it. Photoshop remains as one of the best tool for designing and editing images. The cost is a little under $700 but it’s a great investment once you think about all the functionalities you can play with it. However, if you plan on buying both Dreamweaver and Photoshop then we advise that you get the Adobe Web Premium Suite instead. This package includes Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Acrobat, Flash and other useful tools, in one bundle.

Google AdWords

AdWords is Google’s paid advertising platform, it’s the tiny ads you typically see from top, sides and sometimes bottom parts of the search results. Google AdWords is considered as one of the best paid advertising tool that drives a high volume of traffic to different websites.

These ads will appear once a user types a search query, in the case of the image above, the keyword: web design. Essentially, companies will bid for keywords that are relevant to their business and Google enters thousands of keywords and ads into an “auction” to determine which of these keywords are the most relevant to the search query. Eventually, the winning ads will be displayed prominently on the search results.

For those looking for quick traffic from your business sites, Google AdWords and other Pay-Per-Click Search Engine advertising is the best way to get great way get results. By setting up your own Google AdWord marketing campaign, targeted visitors are delivered to your website almost instantaneously.

Google AdWords works great for site owners who want to see a return on their investment (ROI) while waiting for results on their SEO campaigns or other marketing strategies.

Advantages of Google AdWords

One: Google AdWords is great for quick traffic. Unlike SEO strategies where results can only be seen for weeks on end, advertising via Google AdWords offer almost instantaneous traffic.

Two: Set up is fairly easy. There’s more to Google AdWords than just campaigns like adgroups, keywords, etc., but all these are just puzzle pieces that make up a large marketing campaign. You can research the best keywords that fit your business, work on a budget and set up a campaign. If the ads were approved by Google, then you get huge volume of traffic in no time because approved ads will appear on searches instantly.

Three: Enjoy maximum exposure from the world’s largest and most important search engine, Google!

Four: You get control over your spending, making Google AdWords a great option for site owners on a shoestring budget. Setting up a small, tightly optimized search engine campaign is very cheap and the benefits are almost endless. You can specify how much you want to spend on a campaign. You can set the maximum cost of per click to keywords and pay only for the clicks and nothing else.

Disadvantages of Google AdWords

One: Whether or not a click is converted to a sale, you will pay for each click. This means you may get a lot of clicks from visitors but if they don’t have any intention of buying from you, you don’t earn revenues from the clicks alone.

Two: Number of characters in the headline and the body of the ads are limited. This is why it’s important to focus on attention-grabbing headline, quick show of benefits and a call to action crammed in 25-character headline, 35-character advert body and 35-character in the display URL.

Three: Mistakes are costly. It’s important to set your own campaign right in order to get the right results otherwise; you will spend a lot of money on simple errors.

Four: It’s time and labor-intensive. You need to keep track of your campaign regularly to find out what’s converting and what’s not converting and then adjusting your campaign accordingly.

Five: You can’t depend on Google AdWords for traffic and not work on your SEO because Google will assess the quality of your landing pages. If the landing pages are not up to par, in terms of relevancy to the search query, you will get the maximum benefits of Google AdWords.

On the other hand, Professional PPC campaign may cost as little as $200 per month to more, depending on the industry you are in as well as the amount of traffic you want. Be warned of cheaper campaigns though. Cheaper campaigns tend to yield very little ROI because your money is spend mostly on set up and management alone, rather than the media itself.

Web Marketing

Marketing online comes different forms. Unlike traditional media where your ads are confined in either print, radio or TV ads, online marketing can be done in a variety of ways, including social media marketing, content marketing, affiliate marketing, SEO, etc. Selling products or services online will require heavy marketing to attract more people into a certain business. Investing in a marketing program is probably the most important expenditure in establishing a website. It pays to factor this on your budget.

The great thing about marketing online is it’s relatively cheaper as compared to traditional marketing. Site owners on a shoestring budget can either hire a freelance writer and SEO specialist to handle the online marketing for their business.

Average cost for content writing is $200 per hour but if you want to keep the cost down, you can always outsource content writing in Asia where labor is cheaper without compromising quality. A content writer can work together with the SEO team and create optimized posts that will help boost search rankings.

Search Engine Optimization

All too often, companies big and small depend on their brand in order to generate traffic. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong about relying on your carefully built brand identity to attract buyers into your business. However, there are other ways to entice buying customers into your business. SEO is just one of the most effective ways to market your business online. And if you don’t integrate SEO into your marketing strategy, you could be missing out on millions of dollars in profits!

Through carefully selected SEO strategies, site owners can influence the appearance of a website in a search engine’s unpaid or organic search results. This will lead to more exposure among buying customers and inevitably leads to more sales and bugger profits. Most traffic is generated by article directories and search engines. Some sites see an increase of traffic by up to 60% from major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and/or Bing.

The principle behind SEO is to improve a website’s position in the search engine’s search result page using specific terms used by online users. If a site ranks high on the search engine’s result page, more visitors will click its link, leading to an increase in organic traffic.

Organic search engine traffic is free, which means there’s no click costs to consider but generating traffic organically will require expert marketers. An SEO program is an excellent tool that will maximize this free traffic.

In order to maximize the changes of landing the top spots in search results, SEO specialists will try to figure out how search engine works. They will take note of what users are commonly searching for and conduct an extensive analysis of actual search terms users will key into search engines known as keywords.

What are Keywords?

Keywords refer to search terms used by online users in an attempt to search for information via search engines like Google or Yahoo! For example, if a user wanted to know more about web design in Brisbane, he can simply key in the keywords “web design Brisbane” on the search bar. Within seconds, Google will present various resources relating to the keywords.

Typically, the user will click on the links listed on the first page of the searches. The first page of the search results is the plum spot that SEO specialists across the world are fighting tooth and nail for. If you make it on the first page of Google’s search results, you are guaranteed a massive spike in targeted traffic.

How Do You Research for Keywords?

Keyword research is a process that involves getting into the head of potential customers, determine what terms they are likely to use in order to search for your business and uncover a set of keywords to be used for content optimization. By using keywords integrated into your content, you maximize the chances of landing the first page of Google’s search results or at best, get a decent ranking for it.

In order to research for the best keywords that correspond to your business, you will need a special program to analyze your market. Paid keyword research tools are pretty expensive, with some costing anywhere from $200 to $500. The good news is, Google has its own Keyword Research Tool and it’s absolutely free. Best of all, it works just as great as any other paid keyword research tools in the market, maybe even better. So before you even think about shelling your hard-earned cash on some paid marketing tools, it pays to check if Google offers similar tools for free. You just might save hundreds of dollars.

Once you’ve done your research and have a list of excellent keywords, you can then integrate them into your content. Google’s crawlers will index your content and identify the relevance of your targeted keywords according to your business. This will help increase the chances of landing the top spot at Google’s search results.

An SEO program is by no means cheap. In terms of the rates, industry-leading SEO specialists will set you back $1,000 per hour of work rendered. Price goes down when you outsource SEO specialists from India or the Philippines.

In 2011, Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz ran an article relating to SEO pricing in major parts of the world. The comprehensive study was based on 600+ responses received from individuals from the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands and India.

The rates were two years old and as you can imagine, prices has gone down since then. However, this study illustrates how SEO is an integral part of website promotions. If you want to attract millions of buying customers into your business, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better way to generate buzz than through effective SEO techniques.

When it comes to developing an SEO campaign managed by a skilled SEO specialist, expect the minimum rates go for $500 up to $1,000 maximum.

Link Building For SEO: The Misconception

During the infancy of SEO, rankings may be boosted by linking your site to other sites of the same niche, industry, or quality. This done through an SEO process called Link Building. An SEO specialist will create a list of trusted, high quality sites, blog sites, forums or articles and will attempt to increase rankings by leaving comments linked with the site he is optimizing or by being added to the site owners’ blogroll. If an SEO specialist was able to link a large number of quality sites to the site he is optimizing, the quality of that site improves, according to the point of view of the search engine.

Today, link building is considered as an old practice that’s likely to die down. Various algorithm updates by Google improved the process on measuring a site for rankings. Meaning, technology made Google smarter, making SEO as complex as ever. These days, if a site is linked to a large number of low quality sites, Google will get the impression that the site owner paid for these links rather than getting them organically.

Link building of SEO of yore is no longer as effective as it once was. In order to effectively optimize your website, you will need to generate healthy inbound link profiles and using the best keywords to integrate to your content. Other factors to consider when analyzing the quality of your site and improving its rankings include:

Content quality
Regular content updates
Frequency of visitor engagement (including social media engagement or via comment section)
HTML Everything: HTML tags, HTML META descriptions, and HTML headings
Keyword integrated in the website copy
Website loading speed
Online reputation
General URL structure of the site
Anchor texts used in hyperlinks
Domain name age
Social reputation
How many people blocked your site from search results

Search Engine Optimization Today

As technological advances made search engines smarter than ever (particularly Google after a medley of updates in 2011 and 2012), more and more factors are now being considered in order to figure out how search engines measure quality. SEO has become more complex than ever, figuring out what works and what don’t work is an uphill climb for even the best SEO specialists. However, as long as you take full advantage of optimizing your HTML tags, heading, and descriptions and of course, focusing on creating high quality content regularly, you should see an improvement on your rankings.

Online Newsletter

The advent of the internet paved way for cost effective publishing online and one of the fastest growing segments of company publishing is online newsletter.

Newsletters are great ways to provide current news about your business, sell products and even manage your affiliate marketing’s backend. For many site owners, an opt-in email newsletter is an integral part of their marketing efforts. And why not? It’s a cheap and effective way to build community with customers, get in touch with suppliers or business partners and spread information about specific businesses/services online. Without a newsletter, you’d be missing out on attracting more customers and encouraging them to make a purchase.

Does Your Business Need Online Newsletter?

The quick answer is yes; your business needs an online newsletter. Not only is online newsletter a great way to open the floodgates of communication between you and your readers, it also makes for an effective SEO strategy, which we will sink our teeth into later on this post.

In terms of engaging your customers, online newsletter works great because:

It Keeps Customers in the Loop: What latest services does your business offer? What exclusive deals are you launching this week? Online newsletters help keep your readers abreast with the latest offers or information relating to your business.

Offer Effective Solutions: By presenting informative articles or practical tips on how to resolve your customers’ problems, you position yourself as an expert in your niche and your customers will turn to you for help, which will improve your reputation and make you a credible source of information. All these will lead to more sales and repeat purchases in the future.

Touch Base with Old Customers: Sending out newsletters to old customers is a perfect opportunity to touch base and maybe get them to know more about your latest offers. It’s a great way to bring back customers who haven’t purchased anything from you for a while. Newsletters works well as a platform for engaging with customers on a more personal level.

Creating a weekly or monthly newsletter not only helps your business achieve the benefits mentioned above, set up is fairly easy too. It only makes sense to include online newsletters to your existing marketing campaign to increase online profitability.

SEO Benefits of Online Newsletters

Although online newsletters have long been regarded as a minor player in Search Engine Optimization, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The fact is, more than ever, online newsletter provides enormous SEO benefits for online businesses. You can expect huge leaps in your SEO campaign when you publish online newsletters to your customers.

Why?

Because Google is all about quality content these days. Aside from anchor text links and backlinks, original, high quality content is one of the best ways to get noticed by major search engines. The more quality content you publish, the higher the chances of being indexed and achieving better rankings. By updating content on a weekly or monthly basis, Google’s crawlers will index fresh updates and this will result in higher ranking.

Using an online .php or .HTML page to create great articles will dramatically boost your SEO campaign! What’s more, you can link these pages internally to other pages of the website for enhanced optimization. Finally, newsletters not only help improve the SEO element of your web marketing campaign, it also gives a more human element to your business that customers can reach out to and engage in communication with.

Online Newsletter Costs

In terms of the cost of publishing an online newsletter every week or every month, prices will vary according to service providers, the quality of the newsletter and the number of contacts to send the newsletter from. For instance, iContact, a service provider that provideshigh quality, HTML-based newsletters offers a monthly fee of $14.99 for 500 contacts and as much as $699 a month for 100,000 contacts.

Mail Chimp, one of the more widely used online newsletter service provider, offers paid and free services. The free service is offered for up to 2,000 subscribers. That yields around 12,000 emails each month. The paid services cost around $10 each month for unlimited emails. What’s great about Mail Chimp is that the format of the newsletter will mimic your own website design. They also offer a great selection of tools to create HTML-based emails. Quality is good but compared with iContact, which offers premium service, the latter offers better-looking newsletter layouts. However, Mail Chimp is a great place to start for those who are venturing into online newsletter for the first time or for business owners who are looking to save money on newsletter publishing.

Other notable service providers include ConstantContacts that offers newsletter plans at $15 per month with a free 60-day trial and Benchmark Email which offer their plan at $9.95. Benchmark Email is the preferred newsletter service provider of many businesses because the package comes complete with email newsletters, HTML templates, Real-Time Reports, Contact List Management, RSS and Social Media reports and other useful features.

Conclusion

When it comes to expenses leading up to owning a fully functional website, the devil is in the details. As you have learned, there are many variables that make up the total value of a website. From registering a domain name to paying for ongoing SEO or social media networking and any other ad campaigns, would-be business owners must factor all the important elements that make a successful website in order to enhance their own business.