Meet longtime shopping cart provider 1Shoppingcart.com. Established in 1999 and owned by Web.com, 1Shoppingcart.com has become a Certified Integrated Partner (CPI) with Doba, enabling 1SC customers to add thousands of Doba products to their web store with just a few clicks of the mouse. As a result, 1Shoppingcart.com’s customers can easily maintain data integrity between their store and Doba, and are able to process orders automatically — and practically right out the gate.

1ShoppingCart.com offers shopping carts and online marketing tools to small and large businesses around the world. Its products enable small to mid-size companies to create, launch and market their online business affordably and effectively. And now 1SC has become a trusted reseller of Doba’s services, and its customers have the advantage of easily adding Doba to their hosting subscription.

This partnership enables 1Shoppingcart.com to leverage its ecommerce platform, providing its customers with access to an all-in-one solution to their wholesale product sourcing and selling needs. The certification opens the door to an opportunity that allows online retailers immediate access to new shopping categories and literally thousands of wholesale products. And those online merchants who are already well established can extend and broaden their current offerings, expand their customer base and establish an edge over their competition. There’s strength in numbers, and by combining the power of Doba and 1SC, all of these member businesses get a leg up in their ability to dominate the marketplace.

Interested 1Shoppingcart.com customers can get an idea of how the Certified Integration Partners program works by viewing the following five-minute tutorial that provides step-by-step directions for joint customers:

Doba supplier Dove specializes in stainless steel kegerators, portable ice makers, and built-in wine and can beverage coolers. To help protect your profit margins, at the time of this posting, Dove does not charge a drop-ship fee! Just as impressive is Dove’s Doba Supplier Scorecard, boasting three-day shipping and more than 300 units of each item in stock and ready for delivery to your customers.

Doba supplier Santis carries NCAA college and university outdoor canopies, foldable chairs, stadium seating, and tables… all of which are required for any respectable tailgate party or college football game. Santis charges only $1.00 for shipping & handling and maintains a healthy inventory of at least 24 units of each item available via Doba.

For more information on either this month’s highlighted suppliers, please login at Doba.com and click on the Catalog tab followed by the Supplier sub-tab.

Thank you. That concludes my blog post for today. Please tip your waitress on the way out and drive carefully! OK, I agree. That’s a lame intro. In fact, it’s more than lame, but you get the point, don’t you? You’re still reading my post, so my work here is done.

Humor can be a powerful marketing weapon! In fact, let’s go ahead and upgrade that notion and describe humor as a marketing ninja. We’re all familiar with humor in advertising campaigns. It’s been a staple of print, radio and television advertising for decades. Make your audience laugh and not only will they remember you, they’ll keep coming back for more.

What you need to ask yourself as an online retailer is this: “What am I doing to stand out in a crowded marketplace?” No punchline here — it’s a good question. Let me give you an example. My wife and I recently returned from a summer vacation in a foreign land. One day we went walking along a beach that was crowded with booths and vendors everywhere — a commercial zoo. They were all selling the exact same things — jewelry, woodcarvings, shells, art and clothes. Most of the merchants would step in front of us and start pushing items in our faces. After saying “no thanks” a thousand times, we spotted a man resting under a palm tree with items for sale on a table in front of him. He stood out  from all the other sellers because he wasn’t standing out! We headed to his area and I actually bought some earrings for my wife.

Hanging out and waiting for customers to find your business might have worked for that clever merchant, but it’s a luxury you can’t afford. Nobody’s going to just stumble upon your website or auction listing. You need something to catch a customer’s attention — something that separates you from the crowd.

Many new online retailers think the only way to compete effectively is to offer the lowest price. And while price is important, your goods could be more costly than every other site on the Internet and you could still sell up a storm. How? One way it to use humor on your website. People purchase from places they trust, identify with, or (drum roll please) from places that make them laugh.

Another example: Dawn Meehan is an online retailer with six children. She described a hilarious trip to the grocery store that resulted in returning home to find a pack of Pokemon cards smuggled into the cart by one of the youngsters. Her amusing description of the drama resulted in someone buying up the cards – worth only a few dollars — for $142.51. In addition, thousands of people saw the listing and hundreds commented on it. Some even described similar shopping experiences with their own children. Humor, trust — and a connection. By the way, you can read that story on Dawn’s blog, Because I Said So.

There are countless tales of items being sold online for more than their value. Some of them might even be true! Remember the sale of an air guitar? The item arrived and it was an empty guitar case. Then there was the Mickey Mouse-shaped potato, a partially eaten bar of soap, an ashtray with fur, a haunted doll, pet rock and antique high-end bellybutton lint. You can sell just about anything if you pepper your pitch with the right punchline.

There are a number of online retailers out there today who use humor effectively. Moosejaw does a wonderful job of incorporating humor into almost everything it does. Request a catalog or take a good browse of their site and you’ll get an idea of how humor can make a difference. ThinkGeek is another great example. The products being sold on these sites can be found elsewhere and often, but thousands of fans find they shop these sites because they’re fun!

They say laughter is the best medicine, but it also might prove to be the best marketing tool you ever used.

Tip: We’ve never used them ourselves, but if you’re looking for someone to help you create creative and downright funny website copy and product descriptions, consider talking to the folks at The Witty Writer Marketplace, billed as an online service that hunts down “witty writers of mirth and magic who take ideas and infuse them with the balsamic vinegar and chili sauce of wit, irony, satire and plain old funny.”

Apple iMac 20" (Refurbished)

If you’ve been keeping up with our weekly Deals, you may have noticed that as of late, each week’s offerings have taken on more of a themed merchandising format. This week’s lineup features items geared toward providing your customers with opportunities to take advantage of the upcoming fall season:

• Adamstown King Comforter Set with Bonus Pillows (Login to See Price)
• Vinyl-Archiving Turntable (Login to See Price)
• Maxam 9-Element Cookware (Login to See Price)
• Outdoor Charcoal BBQ Grill (Login to See Price)
• Nikon 550 Laser Rangefinder (Login to See Price)
• Shark Garment Steamer by Euro Pro (Login to See Price)
• Temperature Measuring Meat Fork (Login to See Price)
• Indoor Contact Grill (Login to See Price)
• 4-Piece Deluxe Steak Knife Set (Login to See Price)
• Apple iMac 20” LCD, 2.66GHz, 2GB RAM, 320GB HD (Refurbished) (Login to See Price)

If there are specific products you’d like to see included in future Doba Deals, let us know by emailing me (Jason Cook), contacting our Customer Service team by email, or by leaving a comment on today’s blog entry. While we cannot make any promises, we will look for opportunities to work with our suppliers to include the items you recommend.

Finally, if you’ve tried accessing our weekly deals without a membership, you’ll notice prices are available to Doba members only. If you’re interested in joining Doba or learning more about our award-winning product sourcing platform and educational resources, please sign up for our FREE 7-day Trial..

The last of four eBay: On Location events in 2010 is scheduled to take place this Wednesday and Thursday (Sept. 1 & 2) in San Jose, Calif., and as the title of today’s post suggests, we’re pleased to announce that Doba is one of the conference’s five sponsors (other eBay: On Location sponsors include United States Postal Service, Pitney Bowes, Endicia, and three of eBay’s leading partners: ProStores, eBay Green Team, and eBay Giving Works).

It’s an honor to sponsor eBay: On Location – San Jose, especially since the event is being staged so close to eBay’s world headquarters, where this year eBay is celebrating is 15th anniversary. According to our sources at eBay, eBay: On Location San Jose should draw around 650 attendees, and promises to be one heck of an educational and entertaining event. With speakers like Rieva Lesonsky (founder and CEO of GrowBiz Media), Jim “Griff” Griffith (Senior Manager, eBay Seller Strategy), Mike Michalowicz (Founder of Obsidian Launch and author of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur), and John Jantsch (author of Duct Tape Marketing), how could this event be anything less than spectacular!

eBay: On Location takes place this Wednesday and Thursday, September 1-2, at the Santa Clara Convention Center. If you’re planning on attending, be sure to stop by the Doba booth and say hello. For more information about eBay: On Location, visit www.eBayOnLocationEvents.com.

Ryan Zirker, Doba's Director of Finance & Operations

Every company has one. Some call them bean counters; others refer to them as staff accountants. At Doba, we simply refer to ours as Zirker… Ryan Zirker — Doba’s chief bean counter and so much more.

For the last four-and-a-half years, Ryan has headed up Doba’s finance department. Recently, he was promoted from Manager of Finance to Director of Finance & Operations, and now oversees all of our Finance, Supplier and Retailer Support, and Fraud Prevention programs.

To say we’d be a little lost without Ryanaround would be an understatement. In addition to possessing a great sense of humor and nose-to-the-grindstone approach to work, Ryan has that rare ability to mentor the people under him, as well as be exceedingly patient with those of us who don’t know the first thing about corporate finance.

With those thoughts in mind, let’s meet Ryan:

Doba: What did you do prior to coming to work for Doba?

Ryan Zirker: Prior to Doba I was a financial auditor for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Portland, Oregon.

Doba: What attracted to you to Doba?

RZ: Gravity. Doba and I were like star-crossed lovers set on a collision course by destiny. It was unavoidable.

Doba: When you’re not working, what do you like to do in your spare time?

RZ: I spend all my spare time with my darling wife and my two adorable kids. We enjoy building with blocks, playing My Little Pony Memory and watching Cinderella.

Doba: What’s your all-time favorite Doba Deal?

RZ: I got a Flirty Apron for my wife for Valentine’s Day. Very flirty. Definitely my favorite Doba Deal.

Doba: If you could take a one-year paid sabbatical from work to set-up your own Webstore, what would you call it what would you sell?

RZ: I would call my webstore BattleSchool.com and I would sell sci-fi books.

Financing for Online Retailers and eBay Sellers
By Marc Gorlin, Kabbage

I’ll just go ahead and say it: Banks don’t understand online sellers.

I recently spoke with an online seller who generates more than $600,000 a year in Internet sales. His local bank told him his application for a business loan was denied because, “This Internet thing is just a fad.” We’re not talking 1996 here. This happened this year.

At the risk of sounding redundant and repetitive – banks don’t understand online sellers.

Fact is, banks are definitely missing a big boat.  Goldman Sachs reports that online retail is growing five times as fast as traditional retail, and they predict that online retail will overtake brick and mortar retail in the next decade.

So what’s wrong with banks? Obviously not all bankers think the Internet is a fad, but they are hamstrung by old technology. Their existing credit models only consider retail businesses, and their underwriting process is largely manual. They can’t electronically verify factors like recent inventory sold or online seller ratings at sites like eBay. And these are factors that can be just as important, if not more so, in determining the success of an online retail business.

The reality is this: It’s simply cheaper and easier for banks to make one large $1 million or $5 million loan than it is to make many smaller loans that are critical to small and medium businesses. For most banks, small loans represent a lot of work for very little profit — especially compared to lending to the big boys.

Online sellers have learned to be self-reliant out of necessity. A lot of online sellers bootstrap. They start out on eBay selling things they find up in the attic and are eventually — after years of blood, sweat and tears — able to build a volume business and likely expand into multiple online channels. Cash flow is king in small business, especially in retail. That’s why so many online sellers who need more working capital rely on everything from their Visa Card to their Uncle Bob for a loan. Often, however, sellers run into the same old issues with these methods of financing:

1. Credit Cards: For some sellers, a business or personal credit card is the only way they can finance their business. But the downside of credit cards is that they aren’t designed to help you get a leg up in your business. They aren’t always accepted everywhere you need to purchase inventory, and you certainly can’t pay seasonal employees with a credit card. Credit card companies design their products so their customers carry a balance and make minimum payments. Do the math – if you make only the minimum payment on your credit card each month, it can take more than 20 years to pay off a large balance. When you finance with a credit card, be sure you understand the final cost of the credit you used, and how it affects your margins.
2. Personal Savings: Saving up and starting a business from scratch is the classic American entrepreneurial story. But what happens when an emergency crops up, or a business deal takes longer than you expect? A big hit to your personal savings can leave you with nothing –no inventory, no business and no groceries. The same is true for…
3. Retirement Accounts: A big chunk of change just sitting in a retirement account can look pretty attractive to someone trying to grow a business, but dipping into your 401(k) or other retirement account can be a costly endeavor in penalties and fees. You likely do not want to delve into this long-term financial safety net to obtain short-term capital for a business.
4. Loans from Friends and Family: At Kabbage, we’ve noticed that some of our customers previously financed their online businesses with loans from friends and family. If you use this method, your new business is already beholden to someone – and this time that someone isn’t a faceless credit card company. It’s somebody you know, possibly love, are likely to have dinner with, and definitely don’t want to disappoint. There’s better dinner-time conversation than, “Why Cousin Larry couldn’t pay Uncle Bob back for that lot of 10,000 zebra-print Snuggies.”

It’s important to keep in mind the difference between business credit and personal credit. We’ve all bought things on personal credit. Some of us will drive a car we bought on credit to a store where we’ll use credit to buy a TV that we will watch in a house we bought on credit. But the difference between personal credit and business credit is that access to working capital should make money for your business. With personal credit, you are buying a car, a house or entertainment. Business credit should be a revenue-generating asset.

Online sellers can use business credit wisely in all kinds of ways, including:

1. Negotiating Better Terms and Pricing on Inventory: Buy wholesale, clean out an estate sale or auction, or negotiate better payment terms with your regular suppliers.
2. Hiring Help: Stop spending your time on the little details in your business when you could be out there making deals with new suppliers and customers. Hire somebody to maintain your website and update your listings. Or to do your customer service. Or even somebody to help assemble, pack and ship products.
3. Advertising and Marketing: There are a lot of great ecommerce stores out there that nobody knows about. Even just one great marketing or advertising campaign can get your online store in front of the folks who want what you’re selling.

The key here is to know your margins. Know how much money you’re borrowing, how much it will cost you for the time you borrow it, and how much more revenue and profits you will be able to generate. And if you take out a loan, don’t keep it sitting around like a revolving debt credit card, eating up your profits in interest payments every month. Immediately turn that loan into profit. And then, pay it off!

The world of financing for online sellers isn’t perfect. Online sellers don’t yet have access to a lot of the capital that other businesses take for granted. But that just means that online business owners have to be resourceful – which, in our experience, they already are.

About the Author: Marc Gorlin is the Chairman and Co-founder of Kabbage, a new kind of company that provides working capital just for online sellers. Recognizing that online sellers have a more difficult time than their brick and mortar counterparts in obtaining working capital from traditional sources, Kabbage built a new credit model to assess online sellers’ creditworthiness, and provides money to online sellers as and when they need it. They say they can do it from application to PayPal in 10 minutes or less. Follow Kabbage on Twitter and Facebook and learn more about obtaining working capital for your business at www.kabbage.com.

How Affiliate Marketing Can Help Grow Your Business
By Wade Sisson, Schaaf-PartnerCentric

Affiliate networks can be powerful business tools.

Think of affiliate marketing as a two-way street. On the one side, it enables retailers (advertisers or merchants as they’re called in the affiliate marketing industry) to recruit an online sales force to promote and sell products or services. On the other side, it enables website owners (affiliates or publishers, as they’re called in the affiliate marketing industry) to promote the advertisers’ products and earn commissions for all sales or leads they refer to the advertiser’s site. That relationship between the advertiser and affiliate is the basis for affiliate marketing.

To put it simply, an advertiser creates an affiliate program, providing text links and banners to be used to promote products and/or services. An affiliate uses these creative elements to promote the products and services, and for each sale referred to the merchant, the affiliate earns a pre-determined bounty or commission.

How affiliate marketing helps you as an online retailer

The numbers are in – and so is the proof — that retailers who have an affiliate program perform better than competitors who don’t.

Here’s the documentation: Internet Retailer’s Top 500 Guide for 2009 took a look at the Office Supply category – one of the year’s top growth areas – and found that those retailers who had an affiliate program enjoyed an average year-over-year sales growth of 36 percent, while those without a program actually saw a decrease in sales growth. 
That should leave no doubt that affiliate marketing can help your retail business. The question now becomes how?

First of all, affiliate marketing enables you to recruit savvy marketers who have already reached your target market – and turn them into advocates for your products or services. Affiliate marketers already know how to be competitive in paid search, how to achieve top rankings in organic searches and how to increase traffic and convert shoppers to sales. Speaking of customers, affiliate marketers are succeeding today like no other marketing channel can, because cash-conscious shoppers find they can save money by turning to the Internet. There they find a plethora of coupon and deal sites – most run by affiliate marketers. Affiliate marketing is the most effective alternative to traditional marketing channels because it enables retailers to get their products and services out in front of new customers they wouldn’t have reached in any other way.

Affiliate marketing enables retailers to broaden the customer base by giving those consumers exactly what they want. People who turn to the Web for products or services expect something extra online. That something extra often takes the form of added value of savings (save 25 percent, free shipping, etc.), which retailers can offer through the affiliate channel.

Qualifying affiliates: Key to running a successful program

Recruiting quality affiliates who will drive quality traffic and sales for your online retail business is the most critical part of managing your affiliate program. You should be selective about the types of affiliate marketing partners you accept into the program.

Here are some things to consider when evaluating prospective affiliate partners:

• Does the affiliate have experience selling products or services in my niche?
• Where does the majority of the affiliates traffic originate – in the United States or elsewhere?
• What kind of affiliate is this partner: Coupon? Loyalty? Paid search? Blogger?
• What marketing methods does this affiliate use: e-mail? Paid search? Comparison?
• What is the Alexa rating for the affiliate’s site?

You may not be able to get detailed information about the amount of traffic that the affiliate site generates or the types of visitors the potential affiliate has, but you can check the affiliate’s website. When doing so, look to see if the content is readable, if the site is frequently updated, does the content appear ‘spammy’ (i.e., full of keywords that don’t always form sensible sentences), and be sure to check to see how is the site performing in Google for the keywords listed in the homepage Meta tags. Your search for the answers to these questions ensures you are spending the time necessary to successfully review potential affiliate partners.

Taking your retail business to the next level

More than 75 percent of the retailers in the Internet Retailer 500 have affiliate programs. So, what does that tell you about the importance of growing an affiliate channel for your business? It underscores the need to create an affiliate program that will expand the reach and profits for your online retail business.

About the author: Wade Sisson is Director of Marketing for Schaaf-PartnerCentric, the largest outsourced affiliate program management (OPM) agency in the industry. Wade been part of the affiliate marketing industry since 2000, when he left the newspaper industry to manage the search engine and affiliate marketing strategy for PlanetAlumni.com. He was later part of the team that developed the affiliate and internal Internet marketing strategy for what is now the country’s largest advertising agency for career college recruitment. Wade is host of Affiliate Marketing Insider, a weekly half-hour podcast for affiliate marketers that is now in its third year of broadcast on WebmasterRadio.fm.

University of Michigan Canopy

Recently, we’ve blogged a lot about the importance of seasonal merchandising and how if you’re not updating your product line to stay on top of seasonal selling trends throughout the year, you’re not doing yourself or your business any favors.

With that simple thought in mind, America’s new favorite pastime – football (we’re talking both the college and pro varieties here) – is about to ‘kickoff’ (sorry, pun intended… I couldn’t help myself). That’s right, the 2010 football season is rapidly approaching, and before you know it, football fans everywhere will be eagerly looking for items to display their allegiances and enhance the game-day experience. Take advantage of this merchandising opportunity now. Offer your customers a variety of pro and college football items starting today. If you’re not sure what to provide, here’s a small selection to get you started (note: if you don’t see a particular team’s items listed below, check the Doba catalog, where you’re bound to find what you believe your customers are looking for):

• Oakland Raiders Melamine Serving Tray (Login to See Price)
• EdgeStar Kegerator (Black) (Login to See Price)
• Dallas Cowboys Comfy Blanket w/sleeves (Login to See Price)
• University of Michigan Canopy (Login to See Price)
• Chicago Bears Ceramic Soup Tureen or Cookie Jar (9×8.5-inch) (Login to See Price)
• University of Alabama Crimson Tide Golf Bag (Login to See Price)
• inVoca Voice Activated Universal Remote (Login to See Price)
• Seattle Seahawks Football Rug 22×35 (Login to See Price)
• Denver Broncos Carpet Floor Front Mats (Pair) (Login to See Price)
• Euro Pro Pizza Oven, (Factory Serviced) (Login to See Price)

As you may have noticed by the “Login to See Price” notices above, Doba Deals are a benefit of Doba membership. For more information about setting up a Doba account, visit Doba.com, where among other things you can sign up for a FREE 7-Day Trial membership.

Graph from Charles Nicholls, www.SeeWhy.com

Editor’s Note: Here at Doba, we’ve consistently advised new and emerging online retailers and entrepreneurs to actively differentiate themselves from their competitors. From choosing a niche and writing detailed and compelling product descriptions, to providing world-class customer service and designing and maintaining a great website, if you want to make it as an online retailer, you have to stand out.

In today’s blog post, Charles Nicholls, Founder & Chief Strategy Officer at real-time shopping cart recovery service SeeWhy (www.SeeWhy.com), points out that recent research shows that online retailers who mail hard-copy catalogs have significantly higher sales. Now before you go and click the button to close this browser window on account of the notion that you couldn’t possibly afford to compile, print and mail a catalog, read what Nicholls has to say (below) and then consider for a moment if mailing a small double-sided postcard or a hard-copy flyer could help increase your online sales.

How Old-School Catalogs Help Drive Up Online Sales
By Charles Nicholls, Founder & Chief Strategy Officer – SeeWhy

I recently received an email from Internet Retailer promoting a piece of research which suggests that online shoppers that received a catalog in the mail spent on average 163 percent more than those that didn’t.

One hundred sixty-three percent? That’s a big difference.

This prompted me to go back to the research SeeWhy did into the Lessons Learned from the Top 10 Converting Websites, which revealed that 9 out of 10 of the top converting websites in the U.S. also have catalogs. These companies have visitor–to-sale conversion rates averaging 23 percent, compared with an industry average of 2-3 percent. However, this cannot be attributed solely to having a catalog.

Most online marketers strive to maximize their website conversion rates. When setting out on this path, the usual starting point for conversion rate optimization is data. Now, I’m a data-driven guy who lives in the analytics world, but it’s important to remember that conversion rate optimization is about getting more sales online.

It’s not about data, web analytics reports, conversion funnels, website tuning or anything else. These are all tools at your disposal to help you optimize your conversion rate, and it is important not to become overly fixated on the tools, but to focus on the goal: drive more online revenues. It’s not about whether the checkout button should be in green or on the right hand side.

So take a step back for a moment, and look afresh at your website. Think about your buyers—who they are, what they are like, and in a moment of escapism, become one. Visualize how they arrive at your site, where they come from, who influences them, and what makes them visit you online.

Graph provided by Charles Nicholls, www.SeeWhy.com

Sooner or later, we all realize that the quality of traffic to a website is absolutely critical when it comes to conversion rate optimization. One hundred thousand visitors per day that never buy may make your high-level visitor stats look good, but they throw off the rest of your metrics and do nothing for sales. An extra 1,000 visitors per day that convert will make all the difference. This doesn’t mean that high traffic volumes are bad, but the higher the quality of traffic arriving at your site, the greater your chances of converting visitors to sales.

The mainstay in driving quality traffic to websites for many years has been email, and increasingly for many ecommerce sites, traffic referred from their other website on Facebook. But catalogs? How very 1980’s.

Yet all the evidence suggests that customers love to browse offline and purchase online. In fact, research conducted by the USPS and Comscore (see below) found that catalogs doubled sales and increased website traffic for both existing and new customers.

This is one of the primary reasons why the big direct marketing companies consistently have high converting websites. Visitors that arrive at their websites are not cautious and in need of convincing because they have probably already been warmed up by an old-fashioned direct mail campaign and a catalog that arrived in their mailbox. They also have a very strong repeat purchase culture. While many marketers are fixated about new visitors, many of the top converting websites are focused on getting the second, third and fourth sale.

The purpose of this blog was to get you to step back from your website conversion problem for a moment and look holistically at your business, your customers and how to reach them. Hopefully it’s helped.

Many ecommerce companies could benefit not only from catalogs, but by thinking more holistically about their market and integrating communications across the full spectrum of channels in order to drive better quality traffic. And therein, their conversion rate will climb.

Without changing their checkout button to green or moving it two inches to the right.

©2010 Charles Nicholls. Republished with permission.

Web analytics visionary Charles Nicholls is founder and chief strategy officer of SeeWhy and author of “Lessons Learned from the Top Ten Converting Websites” which can be downloaded here and “In Search of Insight” which has established a new agenda for the analytics industry. As a veteran of the analytics space, he has worked on strategy and projects for some of the world’s leading ecommerce companies, including Amazon, eBay and many other organizations around the globe.