E-Commerce Blog

How many times has this happened? You compose a blog post, usually in a hurry, then hit the submit button, only to read it later and wonder how in the heck you missed what is a glaring error. I am the world?s worst.
Years ago, a veteran magazine editor gave me this advice, ?Never edit your own stuff.? It?s advice which, when possible, I?ve taken to heart. The only problem is, how many of us are in a position to have another person, preferably an editor, proof our copy? In lieu of that, here are some blog copywriting tips I?ve picked up along the way that can almost guarantee that what I intended to say is what I actually said.

* Use spellcheck. That?s a no-brainer, right? If you?re posting on a personal blog, it might not be such an issue, but if you?re blogging for business, I think correctly spelled words along with the use of proper grammar is a non-negotiable. Nevertheless, as obvious as this might seem, I suspect the spellcheck icon in the editing…

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Never Edit Your Own Stuff

I?m a musical gear-aholic. My apartment is littered with instruments leaning against walls, stashed in corners, and propped up in closets. I?ve never met a guitar or keyboard I didn?t like. Having said that, while I frequent online music malls, I?ve never shopped at Music123.com. That site is similar in many ways to other musical instrument websites in that the focus is on brands and products, and the variety of choices is quite large. At the end of the day, though, the same search engine optimization parameters apply to music stores as they do to any other ecommerce entity. Staff of Music123.com requested this review, so let?s strap this site on and turn up the SEO.

Home Page Content

Search engines love textual content, and as long as it?s focused, the general rule is the more the better. Music123 has a distinct lack of such content as most of the page is graphical. The homepage doesn?t feature heading tags either, which offer a way to highlight focused keywords….

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SEO Report Card: Music123.com

Name: Steve Delgado, Marketing Director
Company: Arial Software

In Bloglist, we ask ecommerce professionals to identify their favorite blogs. For this installment, we asked Steve Delgado, Marketing Director of Arial Software, a company that produces email marketing software and solutions.

Copyblogger.com

The king of copywriting tips for online marketing success. Sometimes short. Sometimes sweet. Sometimes sassy. Always succinct. Copyblogger is a blog for the writer?s writer (defined as the marketing writer who spends the time tweaking the message, reviewing results, then tweaking the message again). This is the person in your company who is always looking for a better way to say it. Of special note: Try the free report called ?Teaching Sells.?

Sethgodin.typepad.com

Marketing guru and Google darling Seth Godin continues to post fresh marketing wisdom with an entrepreneurial twist. Always the promoter of change, Godin?s posts can range from a 36-item pre-…

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Bloglist: Steve Delgado With Arial Software

Now that your analytics tool is tracking your conversions, you can measure the conversion rate of search engine keywords, referring sites and ad campaigns. The strategy is to find a traffic source that generates higher-than-average conversions, and increase the traffic from that source and ones like it.

Simple right? The eye instantly notices keywords that generate 25%, 33.33%, 50% and even 100% conversion. But for several reasons, these numbers should be suspect, and sometimes ignored.

Too Perfect

Conversion of 25%, 33.33% and 100% are suspect because they rarely appear when there is an adequate sample size. Let?s use one of our newer stores, Brainwaves Educational Toys, as an example. In the analysis, the keyword phrase ?superstructs pinklets? brought three visitors, and one of those visitors converted. The web analytics reports a 33.33% conversion rate.

While this is an excellent conversion rate, it doesn?t yet represent a trend that supports investment for the…

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When To Ignore A 50% Conversion Rate

Online forms have become much more elegant and usable in the last couple of years as developers take advantage of ?Web 2.0? technologies like visual effects and ?behind-the-scenes? calls to the server. In fact, I have seen forms that are just downright fun to fill out, which is something that I never thought I would admit. However, developers need to understand the cost of using these technologies, and some basic best practices with regard to implementing them.

First, most of the ?Web 2.0? features that we speak about are created using JavaScript, which is interpreted and run by a web browser, such as Internet Explorer. There are many cases where someone may not have JavaScript available, or it has been turned off in his browser. This is an important consideration because if an online form interface is not ?degradable,? users that do not have JavaScript will not be able to interact with it. For example, if you have a contact form that requires Ajax calls to send the…

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Programmers: Web 2.0 Forms