Last month, Blue Acorn received the award for “Most Innovative Magento Site of 2011” at Magento Inc.’s 2nd Annual Imagine Conference in Las Vegas, NV.

Of course, the award was only possible through our client, Reed & Barton.  They are a great example of what we look for in a partner. Their vision and interest in long-term success helped us build an eCommerce site that received a 30% increase in visits and increased total pageviews by 396%, a number we intend to continue to increase as we move forward in this successful relationship.

And to the other finalists, we applaud the innovation and Magento expertise displayed in your sites. Corratech’s work on Ten Thousand Villages and Internim’s work on Warner Bros were both great examples of the possibilities of Magento. Magento is a terrific platform with an array of insightful tools, and we are glad to be recognized as masters in the trade.

“When we set out to find the Most Innovative Magento Site of 2011, our number one priority was finding a site that maximized the possibilities of Magento Enterprise,” stated Jary Carter, Vice President of Magento Global Sales.  “Blue Acorn’s work with Reed & Barton stood out as a site that not only exhibits remarkable creativity and ingenuity, but it also showcases Magento Enterprise features, customizations, and integrations. Although many partners and merchants found creative ways to utilize Magento Enterprise’s capabilities, Blue Acorn’s expertise in leveraging the platform as a central component of delivering eCommerce growth was exemplary.”

Last – but certainly no least – we want to thank Magento Inc. for establishing this award, as it enables agencies everywhere to have the opportunity to be recognized and rewarded for their hard work and dedication to pushing the platform forward.

For a video overview of the Reed & Barton implementation on Magento Enterprise Edition, please visit our YouTube page or click on the video here:

Blue Acorn Wins Award for “Most Innovative Magento Site of 2011” is a post from: Blue Acorn

This new site isn’t the company we are going to be. It’s the company we have already become.

When I joined Blue Acorn last year, I was beyond impressed by the work that was taking place within the bright blue and warm white walls of their new offices. It was so much more than I imagined it to be, mainly because the company website left me with little certainty of what Blue Acorn actually did. Why doesn’t the website reflect the type of awesomeness that’s going on here? was the question that immediately came to mind, so I asked our Founder & CEO, Kevin Eichelberger.

“We’ve been too busy working on our clients’ sites,” replied Kevin. “Of course we’ve wanted to update our own site, but putting our clients first is what will give us the best chance to succeed.”

In the past few months, we’ve added a third agile scrum team and have made some time for ourselves. The result is a new company website that accurately reflects who we are: creative, fun, certified, and capable of offering a comprehensive set of eCommerce services that drives growth for online retailers and brands.

What We Can Do For Our Clients

We love designing and developing eCommerce sites, but our founding members also believe that simply building a stellar site is only a piece of a much bigger puzzle for eCommerce success, which is why our new company site is architected according to our Build – Attract – Optimize method of operation.

Our new Sim Cityesque homepage is intended to illustrate how eCommerce sites – like cities – grow and mature over time with the right approach. Both need to start off by architecting, designing, and developing a well-though-out infrastructure. After you build it, the next step is to get people to come visit. Once people come to visit, the next step is to optimize their experience so that visitors become residents – or in our clients’ cases – customers.

It’s more than just a new navigation hierarchy for our new site, it’s a philosophy that reflects how we look at what we deliver to our clients. We prefer to think of them as partners. We’re always happy to build a site for a client, but again, that’s only a piece of the puzzle. Our next natural inclination is to want to attract qualified traffic to that site, and we’ve developed six key service offerings to do that: organic SEO, PPC, data feed marketing, affiliate marketing, social commerce, and email marketing. Once our clients’ site has traffic flowing to it, we want to take things a step further by optimizing it to provide the best user experience possible. It’s what the site visitors want, which is what our clients want, and it makes us happy too. Through experience, we believe that this Build – Attract – Optimize approach is truly a win-win-win for all.

Our Clients Page

We are very proud of the clients we work with today. This growing list of retailers and brands is a testament to the quality of our work and our ability to maintain great relationships with our clients. Together they represent the comprehensive set of services that we offer. Some of them have been with us for years, and some of them are relatively recent. We can’t show you everything just yet, and we are excited about the unveilings that will be happening on this page in the near future.

We Practice What We Preach

Our Build – Attract – Optimize philosophy doesn’t just apply to our clients. We are taking the same approach with our own site. The initial build process might be complete, but that doesn’t mean we’re done with it. We’ve already begun the process of optimizing it for further enhancements over the next few months, so stay tuned!

Blue Acorn Announces New Company Website is a post from: Blue Acorn

Blue Acorn is extremely pleased to announce that our client, Reed & Barton, has been chosen as one of the three finalists for Magento’s Most Innovative Site of 2011 award. It’s the first time such an award has ever been given away by Magento, and we are honored to have been selected as a finalist when we know – very well – just how many great Magento sites were launched last year.

Entries for this award came in from Magneto Solution Partners around the world, and Magento narrowed the field down to three finalists. These three finalists will have their sites presented at next week’s Imagine conference, where the winner will be determined by a popular vote among all of the conference attendees that will take place at the conference.

UPDATE: We won!

Blue Acorn Client Named Finalist for Magento’s “Most Innovative Site of 2011” Award is a post from: Blue Acorn

This year’s Imagine eCommerce Conference will include invaluable networking opportunities, eight Keynotes and fifteen Breakout Sessions, the latter of which will be broken down into two tracks: a Technology Track and a Business Track. There will also be four opportunities to take the Magento Developer Certification test at a discounted rate during the conference. The intent of Magento is to make this a conference for anyone involved in what they have deemed “the eCommerce ecosystem.” If you’re reading this blog article, that likely means you.

Our Fearless Leader Takes The Stage… Again.

After giving a well-received presentation on A Technical Overview of Magento at last year’s Innovate Conference, our Founder & CEO, Kevin Eichelberger, will be taking the stage again at this year’s Imagine eCommerce Conference to lead Tuesday’s 2:50pm Business Track Breakout Session where he will be joined by Mike Wodtke, eCommerce Director for Blu Dot, and Ashok Narasimhan, Co-Founder & CEO of Runa. The three will be discussing how online retailers can improve their business through Conversion Optimization. Kevin and the other panelists have been helping online retailers realize revenue growth through these tactics for years – so you won’t want to miss this one!

The Pre-Imagine Pool Party

Last year, several members (ourselves included) of the Magento Community organized and sponsored a pre-conference event dubbed “Pre-Innovate” – which set the standard for future events to come.  We’re proud to participate once again this year with a Pre-Imagine Pool Party to take place at the M Resort pool from 2-5pm on Sunday, April 22. If you’re going to be in town the day before the conference, this will be a great time to connect with the community in a fun, informal gathering.

While dubbed “sponsors” – you won’t find a sales pitch, signage, presentations, or any sort of marketing or sales-spin to the event.  This is a purely community-driven event, with sponsors’ contributions going towards the good of the community.  We’re happy to be just one of several sponsors for this event, including: WebShopApps, bmbleb, Roy Rubin, Magecasts, ebizmarts, RED LIGHT BLINKING, and Nexcess. Thanks to all of you! We’d also like to give a special thanks to the main coordinators of this event, Kimberly Thomas and Sherrie Rohde. You’ll be able to keep up with all of the event chatter via Twitter with the #PreImagine hashtag. Please RSVP via Eventbrite and reach out if you’d like to participate in sponsoring the event.

Where To Find Us

We will be sending four members of our team to this year’s Imagine Conference: Founder & CEO – Kevin Eichelberger, COO – Toby Hemmerling, Client Services Consultant – Jake Phillips, and Systems Architect – Luis Tineo. If you’d like to schedule a meeting with any of them, please email your request to magento@blueacorn.com. We are getting booked up fairly quickly, but please shoot us an email and we’ll be sure to fit you in.   We’re all about relationships and enjoy talking eCommerce and Magento with as many clients, partners, and retailers as we can.

We’ll follow up this post with a post-Imagine report – with recaps, photos and the slide-deck/video of Kevin’s session. Until then, I’d like to leave you with some words of wisdom from one of my favorite American Airlines pilots who told the entire plane, “Remember folks, what happens in Vegas doesn’t necessarily stay in Vegas.”

Stay classy my friends.

Imagine an eCommerce Conference in Las Vegas is a post from: Blue Acorn

For example, have you ever noticed an odd-looking AdWords ad that has your brand’s name in the search engine results and then spent an exorbitant amount of time searching high and low in your own AdWords account for that ad without being able to find it? The ad in question may contain messaging similar to your ads, but if you write your own ads, you know your own style, so it’ll probably jump out at you. If you couldn’t find the ad in question and use affiliate marketing, then chances are the ad belongs to an affiliate marketer.

What is Affiliate Brand Bidding?

Brand bidding is the practice of affiliate publishers using your brand name(s) in the ads they create and bidding on your brand terms, such as your company’s name or the name of a product line that your company owns. The advantage of brand bidding is that if you don’t have the budget or resources to manage an efficient PPC program, your affiliates will get your brand name(s) out there for you. Such affiliate ads can also generate a lot revenue for you.

Despite these advantages, you’ll likely want to retain marketing control with regards to how your brand name(s) are marketed online. In fact, most companies who use affiliate marketing include a section in their terms and conditions that prohibit brand bidding. Common brand bidding rules can include but aren’t limited to:

• Not allowed to use domains containing the brand’s name
• Not allowed to use the brand’s name in the subdomain on the publisher’s own domain
• Not allowed to bid on brand’s name (including misspellings and variations) n AdWords, adCenter, etc…

The biggest disadvantage to affiliate brand bidding occurs when your affiliates’ ads are shown in place of your own ads. In this instance, you will end up paying a commission percentage on whatever is purchased by customers that come to your site via your affiliates’ ad, instead of paying a relatively low cost per click (CPC) to bring them to your site with your own ad.

To top it off, when your affiliates are also bidding on your brand(s), your CPC may increase when you are bidding on your own brands because the affiliate is now in direct competition with you.

How to Determine Who Created the Ad?

Determining which of your affiliates is responsible for a brand-bidding ad that violates your terms and conditions is the logical first step, and it’s actually an easy one. Here’s how:

1. Right click on the ad in question and click “copy link address.”
2. Paste that address into a new browser or browser tab, but do not hit enter to go to that address. We simply want to look at the entire URL, which will be fairly long and messy.
3. Look for an affiliate ID in that messy URL. The format of this ID will vary depending on the affiliate network you’re in. You may also see a shortened link, such as bit.ly. If you do see a bit.ly link, copy the link and add a “+” to the end (e.g. bit.ly/abced+). You’ll get the full URL on that page and should be able to pull the affiliate from that link.
4. Once you obtain the affiliate ID, log into your affiliate network and search for that ID. If for some reason you can’t find the the ID using the search function, export your list of affiliates and their corresponding IDs to a spreadsheet and search that using the Find function that is typically activated by pressing Control+F (Command+F for Mac users).
5. Finding the ID is the first step, regardless of what course of action you choose to take, which I’ll touch on later in this article.

It’s important to keep in mind that all PPC affiliates do not market the same way. While the honest ones will likely link straight from their affiliate link – which is not an attempt to mimic the brand’s url – to their client’s site. Some affiliates are a little more sophisticated. Here’s a specific, real-life example from HostGator. It’s interesting because earlier this week, I saw an email from HostGator reminding affiliates that bidding on their brand name is against HostGator’s terms and conditions.

When I copied the link and pasted it into my browser, I saw:

http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&ai=Ce32lxoVaT4uOHM2gtgeC6_y3BpTG6PYB7Lq9x0HdlZLjBAgAEAE-gjZamGFCr7Yr-_f____8BYMmWu4zYpKAQyAEBqQKbl9bBgUSFPqoEGU_Qure-it33zWzXUsRnmQcbNbnwiPTEolmABZBO&sig=AOD64_3jxDLnwaFWQT5KDt-UglTbnfbKR2g&ved=0CAsQ-0Qw&adurl=http://www.webhostingomg.com/hostgator111.htm&rct=j&q=host+gator

Below is the section of the link I’m looking for, which starts with www. and ends with .htm:

If you visit this URL, you’ll actually be redirected THREE times before finally landing on the real “official” HostGator site.

Using a tool like Live HTTP Headers to view HTTP headers as they load, you can see a list of where you’ve been redirected. Visit all the links included in the redirects until you find a landing page with a link or other call to action with an affiliate link.

Going through all the links, I found this landing page for HostGator with HostGator anchor text in the first sentence.

Whenever you hover over the first HostGator link, you can see the landing page link at the bottom of the browser. In this URL, you can easily see the publisher ID of the affiliate in violation and you can also see HostGator has their own affiliate network.

HostGator would now have the ID of that affiliate if they wanted to take action.

Not all PPC affiliates are going to have cloaking techniques as complex as this, but it is something to be aware of.

Options for Dealing with the Publisher

When it comes to dealing with a publisher you feel has stepped out of line, you’ll want to start by making sure your terms and conditions are clear and concise when it comes to brand bidding. You don’t want to point the finger and call names if you’re the one at fault.

If it is clear that your affiliate has violated your terms and conditions, there are typically three courses of action that you may take, depending on what you have allowed for in your terms and conditions.

1. The most conservative course is to contact your publisher and give them a deadline to pull the ads in question. If they don’t comply by the date given, remove them from the program.
2. Some advertisers have a zero tolerance policy with brand bidding and will immediately remove the publisher from their program.
3. Some companies may also be entitled to withhold commissions that have resulted from brand bidding.

Words of Caution

Now that we’ve gone over how to determine who is behind those ads that violate the terms and conditions your company has established for its affiliate program and some suggestive courses of actions, I want to also offer up some words of caution when it comes to reducing the size of your affiliate network. Remember, affiliates can also be a very valuable asset for an eCommerce site.

Keep in mind that if you stop a publisher from promoting your brand or product, there is no guarantee that you will be able to get them back, should you change your mind at a later date.

If you’re going to prevent your affiliates from bidding on certain brand names, keywords, etc., make sure you have the the PPC budget to make up for it. You can end up in a lose-lose situation if you dwindle down your affiliate network and don’t bump up your PPC budget to make up for the loss of revenue from those affiliates.

Maintaining the most profitable balance of both PPC marketing and affiliate marketing requires monitoring both channels regularly. You’ll want to police your affiliates on a regular basis, looking for odd increases or anything dramatically different. An affiliate can be bidding on your brand this month even if they weren’t bidding on it last month. But monitoring your affiliates won’t just let you know which ones you may want to cut. It will also allow you to keep track of which ones you could be loosing to the competition.

Bidding on Your Own Brand

This article brings up the topic of bidding on your own brand, which has been thoroughly debated, but I always recommend bidding on your own brand name. While this may seem counter intuitive, I’ve always had great results doing so.

Here are just a few of the advantages of bidding on your own brand name:

• PPC marketing allows your brand to show at the top of the results if you have a more generic company name and aren’t ranked at the top organically.
• Even if you do have the top spot in the organic results, you will have control over the copy in your PPC ads and the use of the sitelink extensions that will allow you to tailor things even more.
• Yes, you may end up paying for a click when a searcher can click on your organic listing for free, but the cost per click is usually very low with a high click-through rate and conversion rate…both are good for a PPC account.
• I love to see domination in the search results from a combination of a paid ad, organic listing, shopping result, YouTube video, etc… it’s a win-win scenario for any ecommerce company.
• Some studies have shown that even without the paid ad, an organic listing at the top of the results still may not get the clicks. The full study of our incremental clicks impact search advertising can be found here.

What to Keep in Mind

Regularly spending time to monitor both your affiliate marketing program and your PPC program is the best way to achieve the most profitable balance between the two. We suggest you continue to optimize your PPC account, and let your affiliates fill in the gaps to take your search marketing even further.

How Affiliate Marketers Can Affect Your Pay-Per-Click Program is a post from: Blue Acorn

Magento Certification, Where Have You Been??

At Blue Acorn, we quickly noticed a pattern: Company A would send out an RFP. We would leverage our experience as early adopters of the platform, respond with a fair and accurate quote, and then lose the bid to a shop that would promise to get the same job done for half the price. Company A would then come back to us six months later with a non- or barely-functional site: time and money needlessly lost.

Magento development – done well – is often challenging. Developers know this. Magento solution providers know this. Until recently, however, companies like Company A had no true measuring stick of whether or not the agencies they were receiving quotes from had the expertise on staff needed to properly execute their vision. References are nice, but what company doesn’t have a few good references? A good portfolio provides a little more assurance, but it doesn’t mean that each project was done right the first time or on schedule. With so many development agencies having the requisite references and portfolios, what is Company A supposed to do but go with the lowest bid?

This is where the Magento Developer Certification program comes into play, and Magento, Inc. got it right. Their method for establishing a truly meaningful certification was simple: recruit talent with a track record of programmer education and certification success, and use the development community to build an exam that tests developers on the elements of the Magento framework that are actually important. To ensure that the test was applicable, Magento, Inc. created a Certification Advisory Board, which assessed both the needs of Magento-based retailers and the abilities that capable Magento developers should possess. In addition to being part of the Magento U education initiative, Blue Acorn was proud to have two of our own on the fifteen-member board. A set of general areas of competence was created, followed by the creation of exam topics. These questions were then peer-reviewed, evaluated, evaluated some more, and finally assembled into beta exams to test their validity.

The result of this process – hundreds of hours of effort from the Certification Advisory Board and Magento employees – are two certifications that are rooted in the fundamentals of the platform and thoroughly test a developer’s working knowledge of areas that see frequent customization, Magneto Certified Developer (MCD) and Magneto Certified Developer Plus (MCD+). Built by experienced developers and polished by a rigorous test-building methodology, the exams truly deliver as an essential measurement of developer competence, allowing businesses to make a well-informed decision when choosing a Magento solution provider or freelancer.

How to Become a Magento Certified Developer

Blue Acorn currently has three MCD+ developers (Senior Architect Luis Tineo, COO Toby Hemmerling, and myself), and we all agree: the MCD+ exams are thorough. Passing the exam is simply not possible without hundreds of hours of working experience.

Work. Work. Work.

As I mentioned earlier, the exams were designed to test a working knowledge of the framework. Therefore, candidacy for certification begins at your desk, in front of your computer, solving client problems. Your client needs a custom product type. What does that look like in the configuration and model layer? You have to create a custom entity and indexer. How much of this task can you do without referring to the codebase? While not necessarily on the exam, these are the kinds of tasks that a proper candidate will have dealt with and will understand enough to be able to identify correct answers.

But Magento is big!

Yes it is, and given the large size and feature set of the framework, a few of us from the Certification Advisory Board developed study guides. The goal of these guides (MCD available here and MCD+ available here) is to help developers target areas of the framework for practice or review. The guides are an excellent starting point, and they can aid both the seasoned professional seeking certification in the near future and the new developer seeking certification within the coming year. They contain exam topics, general questions about those topics, and code references that serve as starting points for understanding how each topic is realized in the framework.

         

Again, keep in mind that the certification exams were designed to rigorously denote architects who understand the framework and the subtleties of certain implementations. Therefore, the amount of effort each developer will need to pass the exam of their choice is a function of understanding and experience.

Study. Study. Study.

Think of the study guides as a “horse’s mouth” resource. Outside of your client needs, you only have so much time and ability to compartmentalize and convert the code to certification-ready knowledge. Questions may contain recognizable code samples as part of the stem or among the answers, but you’ll likely need to independently recall general code application and architecture in order to rule out potential answers. The study guides were written by the same folks who wrote the exam questions, so they’re going to contain some pertinent information. The guides are offered as an entry point, rather than a complete resource, however, so certification candidates should make sure they understand even the low-level concepts that constitute the module operating environment.

If you have the availability, this would be a great time to look into registering for Magento U’s Fundamentals of Magento Development course, which involves five days of instructor-led training in an interactive classroom environment. If I’m teaching it, you’ll get extra brownie points for mentioning that you read this article. Write that down.

Other resources include Twitter, Stack Overflow, and the Magento website itself. You’ll want to pay particular attention to the forum, Magento Answers, and the knowledge base articles, especially those written by Alan Storm, author of the exhaustive No Frills Magento Layout.

For real-time help, you can dust off your IRC client, connect to Freenode, and hop in the #magento channel (You can use the webclient if you prefer. My handle is @confuzus.).

Prepare. Prepare. Prepare.

However you do it best – whether it’s with someone or by yourself – make sure that you are thoroughly prepared. Use the study guides and your working knowledge to generate your own test Q&A sets to see how well you do. Above all, move through the study guide questions incrementally to see if you can describe not only the answer, but the architecture by which the answer is realized. Write this down. Then review the code, even implementing the solution, and see if you were correct. Once you achieve a high level of recall, you are ready for the exam.

What does this all mean?

The early absence of a certification program was felt – often painfully – by the businesses that chose to adopt the platform. Magento Inc.’s deliberate and diligent approach to establishing certification was appropriate, though. The result is a highly relevant, thoroughly valid, and certainly valuable process of ascension to a high standard that was previously unquantified. The existence of the program is therefore a benefit to the ecosystem of Magento developers and its customers alike. Ultimately, the Magento Developer Certification program completes the picture of Magento Inc.’s education efforts, demonstrating the company’s commitment to elevating the level and quality of Magento solutions for its customers around the world. As advocates of establishing Magento development standards for years, we’re happy to see this come together, and even happier to have been a part of making it happen in our efforts to drive quality in the Magento ecosystem.

Certifiably Magento is a post from: Blue Acorn

As a Google Analytics and AdWords certified data junkie, I’ll be dedicating a number of posts to helping you get the most out of your data, starting with an overview of some of the tools that will help you be a little more proactive in continuously monitoring your analytics.

Why should you be so proactive and constantly on top of your data?

It will save you money – which some would say is the same as making you money – and it can also help protect the reputation of your online store. Even if time requires you to pay for such services, it will be money well spent. For example, a client of ours requested we begin monitoring their web analytics. They didn’t have the time, and it wasn’t their expertise. In the analysis process we discovered a major conversion rate discrepancy with visitors using the latest version of a particular browser. This discrepancy resulted in the discovery of a major checkout flaw, which – based on the number of their visitors using the browser – had been causing them to lose 5-10% of their total revenue! And analytics data only paints a part of the picture, in immediate revenue. It doesn’t show the lifetime value of those lost customers, as well as others they influence. If you spent time shopping on an online store, only to find out that its checkout page didn’t work, how likely would you be to go back? How comfortable would you feel entering in your credit card information on that site in the future? If the site had been proactively and continuously monitoring their web analytics, they could have caught and resolved the checkout issue earlier, lost less money, and had fewer unsatisfied visitors.

Continuously monitoring web analytics isn’t just for online retailers who have buggy sites. The Internet and search rankings are constantly changing, and the most proactive site owners are constantly working with development teams to tweak and change their site’s components. Such changes will continue to introduce new and unforeseen site issues, so you should do all that you can to continuously monitor your your analytics. It is widely agreed upon that analytics can serve as a valuable control and feedback loop for diagnosing problems that arise from such changes, helping you to resolve minor issues before they become major issues.

These are just two types of scenarios, but the value of continuously and proactively monitoring your analytics should be obvious to any eCommerce retailer. You need to know what you’re doing, and it will take some time. However, there have been a number of new tools that have come out over the years that will enable you to do this more efficiently, saving you time and money.

Proactive Monitoring Toolbox

• Google Analytics Intelligence Events

  Google understands how important it is to stay on top of your analytics, and they provide a number of tools to help. Within Google Analytics is a tool called Intelligence Events, which is a quick and easy way to monitor ongoing events. Using advanced and complicated algorithms – or magic, whichever you’d prefer – this tool will tell you what sticking out as an outlier in your data and why, based on daily, weekly and monthly time frames. The best part is that this feature requires you do nothing except click on the Intelligence Events link found under the Home tab.

  Although Intelligence Events can operate without any input on your part, it can also enable you to monitor a specific event, page, or customer segment with minimal effort. You can even specify how you would like to be alerted, should it come across anything out of the ordinary by creating an Intelligence Event Custom Alert. Perhaps you want to monitor the conversion rate for a specific browser, and be alerted if it falls below the site average. Based on our example above, that can be quite a valuable piece of information, and you’ll be happy know that it’s super easy to set up. Just click the Create a Custom Alert link, fill in some fields, and you rest easy, knowing that you’ll be aware if a particular browser ceases to work with your cart.

• Google Analytics Dashboards

  Intelligence Events isn’t the only area of Google Analytics that provides easy access to KPI reporting. The default Google Analytics Dashboard monitors universally important and insightful KPIs, and while we do recommend that you pay attention to it, you can do so much more with Dashboards. Different industries and business models will prioritize certain metrics over others. We highly recommend that you take the time to customize your own Dashboard and Widgets, which will allow you to quickly and easily monitor the KPIs that matter most to you.

• Google Analytics Custom Reports

  Custom Reporting is another feature of Google Analytics that allows users to quickly monitor their own site-specific metrics. The amount of information you will receive in your report is solely dependent upon the scope that you choose to implement. The advantage to Custom Reports is the ability to download the data you have them set to collect in an easily manageable tabular form, commonly referred to as a comma-separated value (CSV) file. Much has been written about how to implement custom reports and what to track using custom reports. To help save you some time weeding through all of them, here are a few links that I have found to be the most valuable: Google Analytics Help, Google Analytics Blog, Occam’s Razor, Search Engine Watch, and Analytics Talk.

• Google Analytics Alerts

  In addition to allowing you to monitor your own site-specific KPIs via a custom dashboard or report, Google Analytics also allows users to create site-specific, KPI-related alerts to be sent via email or text messages. Located in the Settings menu, Custom Alerts will allow you to set up any number of alerts and specify how you would like for Google to contact you, should one of those alerts be triggered. To view the actual report you will need to visit your Google Analytics account, but you will know the instant something is wrong.

• Real-Time Analytics Monitoring

  Real-time analytics provides another level of monitoring, but consider yourself warned. It is very addictive! Google Analytics Real-Time was launched in beta this past September, and is only available in the new version of Google Analytics. If you’re not already using the new version, you can start by clicking the “New Version” link in the top right of Google Analytics. Although this offering remains in beta, it is still very useful. Instant gratification aside, real-time analytics monitoring can be used as a truly valuable tool. Monitoring your analytics in real time is a great way to manage your social media strategy and other types of online campaigns.

  In the social media marketing arena, being too infrequent with your marketing may not be enough to keep up with your competition, but too much messaging can annoy and drive away followers. It’s a delicate balance. With real-time analytics monitoring, you can immediately see the impact that your messaging has, which types are more affective than others for your followers, and perhaps most importantly, when traffic from such efforts starts to taper off. If you’re still receiving a decent amount of traffic from a tweet or post, it may not be necessary to send out additional messaging just yet.

  Monitoring your analytics in real time really has the ability to benefit other types of online campaign, as it will allow you to discover very early whether or not the campaign is generating the type of data that you’re after in Google Analytics.

  Like everything related to social media and online marketing these days, the number of real-time analytics monitoring tools has grown rapidly over the last six months. In addition Google Analytics Real-Time, here are a few others worth looking at: Woopra, Get Clicky, and Piwik.



Use the above table to determine which of these Google tools will best suit your needs. It may be one of them or a combination.

What Should You Monitor?

Having a strong knowledge of the analytics tools available to you is great, but they will only work to your advantage if you know what to monitor. Ultimately, only you will know which KPIs matter most to your online business, which is why you should steer clear of any 3rd party company that has a one-size-fits-all approach. That being said, two KPIs that should be useful to every eCommerce site are the Bounce Rate and Conversion Rate. Any sudden and significant increases or decreases in either of these KPIs is indicative of an important site event.

While these two and other KPIs are helpful on their own, they become more useful when paired with a specific traffic segment, traffic sources, top keyword, mobile traffic, particular types of browsers, or particular versions of browsers. When combined with each of these elements, any KPIs will provide a more useful and insightful set of reports that will help you identify site issues as they arise.

To Sum It Up

Time is money, and this is especially true in the world of eCommerce, where the early bird is always the winner. Catching site issues early is only possible if you are continuously monitoring your analytics and proactive with the data that you collect. Don’t bank on being lucky. By using any one of these tools and applying them to KPIs specific to your site, you will be able to identify site issues in a timely manner. Having issues with your eCommerce site is inevitable and – in some cases – will be beyond your control, but catching them before they become major problems is up to you.

Analytics for eCommerce: Tools and Tips for Proactive Monitoring is a post from: Blue Acorn

Monetizing Facebook and a History of F-Commerce

There wasn’t a real opportunity for monetizing the young Internet startup until August 2006, when Facebook reached a one-year deal with J.P. Morgan Chase to show banner ads promoting the Chase credit card. This was primarily aimed at the social network’s high percentage of users between the age of 18 and 25 (college age).

After dabbling in small products (including Virtual Gifts that users could buy for a dollar and post to another friend’s profile), the company took its biggest step forward in their revenue model by launching Facebook Ads and Pages for Brands in November 2007. This made it clear that Zuckerberg planned to grow revenue in similar ways to Google – through pay-per-click advertising – at least at first. This became more apparent when Sheryl Sandberg left Google to join Facebook as COO in March 2008.

Facebook ads and brand pages allowed marketers to take advantage of the highly-targeted user base. Over time, traditional marketers discovered that users did not want to leave the Facebook platform through an externally-linked ad, and it became more obvious that brands would have to persuade users to convert within Facebook to be most successful.

The success of an online ad click depends highly on the landing page. Therefore, keeping the landing page on a Facebook Page’s tab or within a custom developed app maintains the user trust that a brand may otherwise have to rebuild on an external page.

For eCommerce retailers, this meant attempting to sell their products within Facebook, or at least listing their catalog for fans of their brand to see. This new marketing channel has been coined F-Commerce.

Social Commerce, F-Commerce, and the Benefits

F-Commerce is included under the larger umbrella of Social Commerce. There are many definitions of the term, but the one I like best describes it as “the use of social channels to connect, listen, understand, and engage to improve the shopping experience.” This broad scope doesn’t just limit Social Commerce to selling within a social media channel. It can also include a retail store using a status update to incentivize people to come in and buy their products.

Social Commerce is to eCommerce as F-Commerce is to a platform like Magento. Technically you can display a list of products within your Facebook page with external links and call it F-Commerce (as referenced above). But frankly, this is like saying Google Shopping is the same as Google Checkout. It’s not.

Yes, F-Commerce is still evolving, but as marketers, we’ve already established that traditional marketing efforts work better if they stay within Facebook. This means the whole lifecycle – the ad to the conversion – lives inside Facebook. So, I simply don’t buy the inclusion of external product page links on a Facebook tab as F-Commerce.

The benefit of using your highly targeted user base – coupled with the fact the users don’t want to leave – means retailers must allow users to add to cart and checkout within Facebook. This is F-Commerce.

Is there any value in F-Commerce?

The F-Commerce failure buzz started about two weeks ago when Ashley Lutz from Bloomberg reported a few large brands – including Gap Inc and Nordstrom – had closed their Facebook storefronts. Since the Facebook IPO, it makes sense to raise the question as to whether F-Commerce provides value. However, Lutz’s conclusion to say it doesn’t work – although normal – is premature.

Lutz quoted Wade Gerten, CEO of 8thBridge, as saying F-Commerce has “cracks in the model” and “It was basically just another place to shop for all the stuff already available on the retailer websites. I give so-called F-commerce an ‘F.’”

The Bloomberg report open and shut the case for F-Commerce. Articles referencing their findings started appearing everywhere. Even the Wharton School of Business, one of the best in the country, got in on the act last Friday when marketing professor Stephen Hoch said, “Whereas [brand] websites can categorize and organize social media, blogging and other engagement devices in a form that is easily navigated and searched, this is not true of Facebook, where all relevant postings are listed in a linear order based on time of posting. My guess is that Facebook is actively working on how brands can better link their brand pages to their [own] websites.”

Wait, what? First off, his claim that all postings are based on a linear, chronological order is just wrong. Facebook’s algorithm organizes what a user sees in his or her newsfeed based on Edgerank. Similar to Google’s use of Pagerank in its search algorithm, Facebook is using Edgerank to show relevant results within its social platform.

While he is a decorated Wharton marketing professor (whom I probably have no right arguing traditional marketing topics with), Hoch is clearly missing the point behind why Facebook and F-Commerce exist in the first place – to keep users on Facebook. If Facebook wanted to encourage third-party links, why would they charge 45% less for clicks that keep users within Facebook?

Traditional Marketing Rules Can Apply to New Social Marketing Channels

ShopIgniter, which specializes in Social Commerce, was quick to dispute Bloomberg’s report and label it premature. Kevin Tate, Chief Marketing Officer of ShopIgniter, claims that Social Commerce experiences must be compelling. He explicitly says, “You can’t just re-create your eCommerce catalog in Facebook. It won’t work.” Tate is right. You can’t just copy your catalog and expect conversions. This would be similar to launching an eCommerce site without a post-launch marketing plan and proper SEO structure.

The fact is, a page with a million fans might not do as well with its F-Commerce store as a page with 10,000 fans. If users don’t know it’s there, and it isn’t promoted correctly, you’ve already failed.

Who says you can’t sell product in unconventional places?

Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was also quoted in the Bloomberg article: “But [selling on Facebook] was like trying to sell stuff to people while they’re hanging out with their friends at the bar.” She’s exactly right, but again, missing the point.

Companies have been able to sell products to people in social situations for years. People go to amusement parks to have fun, but might end up spending hundreds of dollars more on merchandise and spur-of-the-moment purchases. Sporting events, concerts, churches, and yes, even bars are all places people go to do something other than buy products – but they still do. Airports are nontraditional retail spaces, but they have thrived in selling products and turned into quasi shopping malls because people are trapped there, much like people trap themselves within Facebook.

A more closely-related medium to F-Commerce would be email marketing. People aren’t there to buy product. They’re checking their email, yet email marketing still works.

Historical Relevance

This is exactly why Tate is correct in his dismissing the Bloomberg report as premature. Traditional marketing has always had to break chains in order to push creativity. There is often an agreement among industry professionals that there is a “natural” way to do things, but as Andrew Savikas points out in a 2010 Forbes article: we’re bad at dealing with change.

When we were accustomed to print advertising, we didn’t understand new channels like the radio and television. When we had perfected the television ad and accepted its imperfect ROI measurement, we didn’t quite see how Internet ads would work. And now we don’t really get Social Commerce and apparently are ready to prematurely discount its potential success.

Why F-Commerce Works When Done Correctly

Marketing essentially comes down to the four “Ps” (the Marketing Mix): price, place, product, and promotion. If these four exist, you can market and sell your product. Price and product have to exist. The place is within Facebook, and the promotion is up to you.

Place: The same rules of usability, optimization, and design apply to an F-Commerce store as they do to an eCommerce store, but they must be catered to exist within Facebook. For example, a well-designed storefront customized within a Facebook App must have responsive design because not only will this store exist within the new 810px-wide page tab, but it must also expand to fit within a wider defined app interface.

Promotion: It’s as if traditional marketers have suddenly forgotten the fourth “P” of the Marketing Mix. Without it, all marketing efforts are essentially moot, and even if they haven’t forgotten about it, firing status updates with links to your new F-Commerce store does not substitute as promotion. Promotion requires creativity, and in instances of new marketing mediums, new brainstorming and ideas.

The truth is, Facebook stores work similarly to email marketing, airports, amusement parks, and the other examples listed above as nontraditional retail space. Promotions must include exclusivity, time sensitivity, and have a VIP deal feel to them.

F-Commerce Isn’t as Black and White as Bloomberg Implies

Ashley Lutz offers no reasons in her report as to why Gamestop, Gap Inc., J.C. Penney, or Nordstrom’s Facebook stores didn’t work, other than customers at Gamestop not having any incentive to shop on Facebook over Gamestop’s similar eCommerce store. Herein lies the issue we’ve explored throughout this article, which is also pointed out in Tate’s article, there must be incentive and promotion.

Is F-Commerce right for my brand?

Don’t make the same mistake most companies do with a Facebook store. Once your store is up, you need to channel your marketing efforts and budget into the new storefront just like you would any other eCommerce store or sales effort. The difference is you’re taking advantage of Facebook’s easily-targeted audience through the use of Facebook advertising, promotions, and incentives to get users to “friend” your brand.

There is value in F-Commerce if you have the resources and budget to build, attract, and optimize your F-Commerce store as you would with your retail space and eCommerce website.

Don’t Discount the Potential Success of F-Commerce is a post from: Blue Acorn

We all know Google is regularly testing new ways to add value to their paid search listings. In the past, we’ve seen the Google Checkout bar, review stars, product extensions, sitelink extensions, enhanced ad sitelinks, and more. This past October, Google announced their Google Trusted Stores pilot program to help increase consumer confidence in shopping online. A select and limited number of stores received Google’s endorsement for the program that are now able to offer free purchase protection from Google, feature a Google Trusted Store badge on their store pages, and even receive a corresponding line on their AdWords ads. As both an eCommerce Consultant and an AdWords Account Manager, I recommend taking advantage of these add-ons as soon as they become available to you. They boost consumer confidence, and they are definitely eye-catching.

So what does it mean to be a Google Trusted Store?

Keep in mind that the Trusted Store program is still in pilot mode. Google is currently accepting applications for the endorsement, but is not yet giving them out to every eCommerce site that qualifies. That being said, Google has awarded Google Trusted Store badges to a limited number of merchants that are known for quick, reliable shipping and excellent customer service. A Google Trusted Store has two meanings:

1. Google has identified the store as reliable.
2. Google offers free purchase protection on orders placed with said merchant.

In this mutually beneficial relationship, Google acts as the go-between for the customer and the merchant, should a customer have an issue with a product purchased and is unable to work things out with the merchant. If the purchase was made from a Google Trusted Store, the issue can be taken to Google for help. However, such disputes should be a very rare occurrence – in theory – because Google Trusted Stores have been identified by Google for having superior eCommerce and customer service standards.

Google Trusted Stores have the option to display the associated badge on each page of their site. On some sites, such as the one in the screenshot below, the badge stays in the bottom right corner – even during scrolling – similar to a live chat button.

In a effort to further boost consumer confidence, clicking on the badge will prompt a Google Trusted Stores report card for the site to pop us, which features a number of customer satisfaction stats.

How does this program benefit merchants?

Displaying the “$1,000 purchase protection from Google” in your paid search ads will undoubtedly increase online merchants’ clickthrough rates. Such inserts are already showing up in Google Trusted Stores’ paid ads, but I have yet to see such messaging in the natural listings.

Becoming a Google Trusted Store also comes with the added benefit of being able to place a corresponding badge on your store’s pages. Studies show that the success of such confidence-building badges – also known as “trustmarks” – varies greatly, and the trustmarks that perform best come from widely-recognized and reputable brands. Seeing as how Google made Buyology’s most recent Top 10 List of Most Desired Brands for both men and women and was determined to have the 3rd highest consumer perception out of 100 top consumer brands in last year’s survey by Forbes, I’d anticipate their trustmark holding significantly more weight than others.

How do customers benefit from the program?

When a customer goes to check out at a Google Trusted Store, they’ll be given the option to opt in for free purchase protection. This protection is limited to $1,000 in lifetime claims, and it includes the entire purchase amount, plus tax and shipping.

Of course, there are some limitations. Purchase protection is not extended to certain types of goods, but don’t worry. These prohibited products – which include human remains, body parts, miracle cures, etc. – should be common sense…I hope.

This purchase protection, which expires 60 days after the order was placed, covers issues such as receiving items not in the promised condition, stores not honoring their posted return policies, etc. It is not a warranty for the product itself, and the store’s posted return policy is still valid. Google’s Trusted Stores Help page outlines the following eligibilities and limitations:

Eligible purchase protection issues include the following:

• You fail to receive the correct item.
• The item is not in the promised condition.
• You are billed an incorrect amount.
• The item is not shipped in a timely manner.
• The store does not honor their return policies.

Limitations to purchase protection include the following:

• The merchant’s return policy and terms still apply.
• Purchase protection is not a product warranty.
• Purchase protection does not apply to lost or stolen items. Google does not evaluate or endorse specific products sold by stores in the program.
• Purchase protection is limited to the item you purchased; it does not apply for identity theft or credit card theft.

Looking Ahead

No one knows for sure if the Google Trusted Stores pilot program will pan out or not. In the meantime, being endorsed by Google certainly doesn’t hurt. To be considered for this program if it does expand, you must complete Google’s Trusted Stores Interest Form, which will ask for your contact information, primary company website, AdWords account ID, Merchant Center Account ID, annual revenue, etc. If Google’s Trusted Store program is opened to all who qualify, the added revenue for Google, added confidence for consumers, and increases in clickthrough rates for online merchants should be a win-win-win.

What do you think? Would this new program be a win for everyone, or is Google overstepping their bounds?

Google Trusted Stores Benefit All is a post from: Blue Acorn

Social media websites are popping up all over the Internet landscape, so why would you pay attention to the relatively young Pinterest? Simple. Pinterest is already proving to drive targeted traffic to eCommerce retailers. According to Shareaholic’s January 2012 Referral Traffic Report, Pinterest now drives more referral traffic than YouTube, Google+, and LinkedIn combined. Given Pinterest’s rapid growth from 1.68 million users to 7.2 million in Q4 of 2011, 2012 should to be a breakout year. Pinterest has managed to create an elegant, easy-to-use catalyst to drive social shopping. If you are an eCommerce store owner, it’s time to pay attention.

How Pinterest Works for Users and eCommerce Merchants

Imagine an old school bulletin board. You pin pieces of paper, pictures, and other things that are of interest to the board. That’s essentially how Pinterest works, except that images and videos are the only things allowed to be pinned. Users are allowed to create multiple boards, each themed with a specific interest. All user boards are publicly viewable and, similar to Twitter, users can follow other users’ boards and are able to repin, like, or comment on a “pin” – used as both a verb and a noun in the Pinterest world.

For example, Jane may have three boards: Favorite Dresses, Delicious Treats, and Cute Animals. As Jane surfs the web, she runs across a dress she really loves on Planet Blue. Using the Pin It bookmark on her web browser, which is provided by Pinterest, she chooses to pin the dress to her Favorite Dresses board. The resulting visual pin is also a direct link to the product page where that dress can be bought on Planet Blue’s online store.

Because images and videos are the only things allowed to be pinned, Pinterest is most beneficial to online retailers with visually-appealing products and great photography to match. If you needed extra incentive to reshoot your product catalog, it’s here.

The Value of Targeted Traffic

How is this different from sharing that same product page via Twitter or Facebook? It’s more targeted. That’s why. Think about it. Traffic from Jane’s Twitter and Facebook pages consists of online explorers interested in Jane, what party she went to last weekend, what she had for breakfast, whether or not she’s in a relationship, etc. Traffic from Jane’s Favorite Dresses board on Pinterest consists of users who are interested in dresses. They may not even know Jane.

From Pinterest’s homepage, which gives an aggregate view of all the pinners you follow, there is a minimum of two clicks needed for you to reach the online store or website where the pin you are interested in originated. For eCommerce merchants, this means that a visitor who has been referred to your online store from Pinterest is highly targeted and qualified from the onset, and therefore, more likely to convert to a sale. It’s extremely unlikely that a Pinterest user will end up on your site from accidental clicks.

What Else Can Pinterest Do For Your Business

• Establishing Your Brand on Pinterest

  This doesn’t mean pure self-promotion. After creating an account, it is not advisable to only pin items from your store. It’s more about sharing the lifestyle associated with your brand. Pinterest prefers that you genuinely engage in the Pinterest community, and your followers will appreciate it as well. For example, a wedding dress retailer may create boards for engagement rings, wedding decor, and honeymoon ideas, in addition to the obvious one for wedding dresses. Integrating pins from different sites on your boards will show your followers that you’re not just using Pinterest only to promote your online store; you’re promoting a lifestyle, a method of operation that will enable you to gain more followers and build trust.

  Examples of brands who do this well include Michael’s Stores and Lowes.

  

• Make Sure Your eCommerce Store is Designed Properly

  Because pins can only include pictures and videos, your eCommerce store should include one of these two types of media for its products. When users hit the Pin It bookmark in their browser or the Pin it button on the page itself, Pinterest analyzes the current webpage, searching for an image or video. If the content you wanted to pin is Flash or other rich media, Pinterest won’t be able to find it. You’ll want to test your product pages to make sure images are found when users attempt to pin your products.

  

  All Pinterest users will have a Pin It bookmark on their computer’s browser, but for eCommerce merchants, it’s also a great idea to add a Pin it button to your product pages. This reminds new Pinterest users (which are almost all of them) that they can pin items they come across on your store. This is also helpful for Pinterest users who are browsing your online store on a computer that is not theirs, which won’t have their Pinterest bookmark installed for pinning.

• Use Google Analytics to Track Pins

  Pinterest assigns each pin a unique URL in the form of http://pinterest.com/pin/x where “x” is a random number string, which enables Google Analytics to keep track of all pins on an individual basis. This is great for keeping track of popular items being shared and conversions that may result from the pin. You will also be able to see referral traffic come from http://pinterest.com/username/board, although individual pins will be the ones referring the most traffic.

  

  In Google Analytics, you can see all Pinterest traffic by going to Traffic Sources > Sources > Referrals. Type “pinterest” In the search box, and the results will show pinterest.com and/or m.pinterest.com, which represents traffic from mobile Pinterest users.

  Just to illustrate how quickly Pinterest has grown as a traffic source, take a look at this chart from one of our clients. In the same time period, Pinterest has referred twice as many clients to this particular store than organic traffic from Yahoo! and Bing combined.

  

  Even if you don’t have Google Analytics installed, by using the url “http://pinterest.com/source/example.com” and substituting your website domain in place of “example.com,” you can see every pin that has been pinned from your domain. If you see a 404 page, it means nobody has pinned anything from your domain. If you feel hurt because you think your site as pin-worthy products, images or video, it might be time to install some Pin it buttons. If you want to establish a footprint on Pinterest, these are a great way to let your visitors know it.

  

Deriving Value from Inbound Pinterest Users

Now that you have a steady flow of Pinterest users, it’s time to start deriving some value from them. Obviously, you’ll want to convert this traffic into sales, but you can also use it to learn where you may have design problems. Here are a few ideas. If you have others, please feel free to keep it social and list them below.

1. Offering a sale on your most pinned items to increase conversions can be a good idea.
2. A complex but optimal solution to increasing Pinterest conversions is to offer time sensitive sales to Pinterest only traffic. Your online store will need to look at the referrer data being passed by the browser and determine if it’s coming from Pinterest. If it is, your store could display a message or banner similar to “Thanks for finding us on Pinterest! We’re offering 20% off our entire store just for Pinterest users. This sale will expire in one hour.” The added urgency will help increase conversions.
3. It’s important to note that when a user pins an image, Pinterest actually makes a copy of that image and uploads it onto their servers for display on Pinterest.com. This is to prevent Pinterest from accidentally crashing sites and make sure that pictures are always available. If your analytics show a pin that brings in lots of Pinterest traffic but has a 100% bounce rate, it is likely that the page the pin is pointing to is returning a 404 error to your visitors. This is just one of many reasons why you should never delete out of stock or old products from your store. At the very least, you can 301 redirect users to an appropriate category or provide an email capture to let users know when that item is back in stock.

Keep Pinterest Traffic Coming

Encourage your existing customers to start pinning. You can accomplish this by using currently engaged followers on other channels like Facebook or Twitter. This can be especially helpful when it’s used in collaboration with a contest that encourages your customers to create boards and pin their favorite product from your store. The brand awareness and additional sales this will create should outweigh the incentive you are offering for winning the contest.

If you are currently running an affiliate program, encourage your affiliates to use Pinterest. Pinterest has the right tools to be an affiliate marketer’s dream and has the potential to be the largest affiliate network that the industry has seen in quite some time.

Summary

As an eCommerce store owner, you can’t deny the advantages Pinterest has to offer. Not only is it a fantastic tool for small and large businesses alike, it’s just plain fun. It also gives you tremendous insights regarding your customers, and by the end of 2012, it will be mainstream.

What Pinterest Means for eCommerce is a post from: Blue Acorn