Web Design

• Shop at Your Store - take a moment to locate a popular item and purchase it. How was the experience? would you shop? Would you buy?
• Checkout Process - Is it clear to understand? Does it mirror the look and feel of your online store?
• Navigation - reorganize the order of your sections and subsections in order of importance. Customers won’t have much time to shop and this will aid them.
• Order Confirmation Page - Integrate Your Twitter, Facebook Fan Club Page and Store Newsletter signup into it. Customers wil be more inclined to join after purchasing.
• Page Load Times - are your images and code optimized, customers will have little patience.
• Related Items - an important part of the shopping process and should be integrated prior to the holidays. If you can integrate automated intelligent systems it will allow higher conversions.
• Cross Sell - Inside the shopping cart you have another opportunity to introduce some complimentary products and encourage you to consider.
• Product Reviews - essential in todays e-commerce, customers rely on other shoppers for advice vs. the online store’s and provides a communication point between you and the shoppers. My advice is to leave reviews that are not stellar alone to show the honesty in the reviews.
• Security Seals - these conversion boosters help give consumers who are unfamiliar with your store a 3rd party to verify you are a true business.
• Customer Testimonials - seems obvious to add but can really help with the buying process. Similiar to product reviews but more focused on overall buying experience.
• Holiday Update - always a great time to evaluate your overall design and merchandising and you still have time to make modifications and enhancements that will provide a positive ROI.
• Holiday Graphics - consider adding a merchandising banner or graphic box that can be updated during the holiday season with your promotions. You can also tie this together with a holiday logo if you want to set yourself apart.
• Add to Cart - an extremely important button - does yours pop on the page? If it’s buried at the bottom of the page it’s time to fix that situation before it can cost you sales.
• Search - with 40% of internet users heading straight to the search box how good are your results?
• Shopping Cart Abandonment - why are they not completing the transaction, you can utilize additional tools to understand this revenue loss.

Customer Service / Operations

• Holiday Shipping - plan special rates that are easy to understand and provide ETA chart with cut off dates for customers on the shopping cart. Here are important dates to know:
  • 11/27 Black Friday
  • 11/30 Cyber Monday
  • 12/07 Green Monday (expect heavy traffic)
  • 12/14 Brown Monday (last day for free shipping)
• International / Other - don’t forget about Canada, Military bases, Europe, etc, in your holidays plans.
• Shipping & Handling Charges - if you can eliminate these and add to shipping costs it’s better in the long run as consumers will be able to understand the overall costs. Of course if you sell heavy products or other special situations this wouldn’t apply.
• Return Policy - review and consider a no-hassle return policy.
• Add Live Chat With Analytics - Consider calling it Personal shopping Advisor.
• Post Your Full Contact Information and Hours of Operation. Remember, something small like leaving out your address or phone number can make a customer leave immediately.
• Consider adding in a personal note in the box thanking the customer for the order - include a coupon to give to a friend.
• Order Management - be prepared for additional volume with an order management system.
• Order Fulfillment - are you maxed out in your current operation, might be a great time to consider another company to handle the pick, pack and ship part of your business.
• Plan your holiday budget now and consider; site upgrades, graphic design, technology enhancements, seo, ppc ad budgets, email marketing ad general advertising.
• Prepare for increase in orders by organizing additional staff now.
• Make sure credits cards have plenty of room for additional advertising expenses.
• Store locators - are they clear to find? Consumers may skip on shipping costs and drive to the store to see in person and purchase immediately.
• Consider “Bill me later” solutions, Paypal, Google checkout and other creative ways to eliminate the fear of over spending.

Gift Services

• Buying Guides - provide helpful gift buying guides by organized by categories: men, women, kids, etc
• Create Holiday Gift Suggestions by Price - $10, $25, $50 etc. as consumers will be on budgets.
• Last Minute Holiday Suggestions - great idea to choose some rapidly shipped options for the time constrained consumers.
• Gift Certificates - why not encourage people to purchase gift cards, it’s an easy gift solution.
• Gift Wrap - set yourself apart and offer Free Gift Wrap or a low cost option under $3. Don’t fall into the trap of charging $5+ as many customers will not take the option and may abandon the purchase all together. Show photo of giftwrap to resolve a question up front.
• Create Bundled Products of 2 or 3 items. Allows you to make a special deal when you buy a popular set.

Promotions / Social Media

• Coupons - consumers want them and this will be a key driver this holiday season. Consider Free Shipping, Save $X when you spend $Y and % off scenarios. Place short timelines on them to encourage buying in advance. Publish exclusive coupons in Twitter, Facebook Fan club pages.
• Email Newsletters - plan your email newsletters now and prepare in advance, consider Cyber Monday and other key buying events.
• Twitter - if you don’t already have one for your company do this today and start talking about your brand.
• Facebook Fan Club - gaining popularity each day, you need to set this up as a place for customers to group together. Think social networking for your most important customers, why wouldn’t you want to do this?
• Addthis.com - add this small piece of code to your web site and will allow shoppers to share items they find on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc.
• YouTube - if you can make product demonstration videos it will improve your conversions. Also, a holiday version would be nice welcoming the visitors
• Blogs - create a blog and start talking about your brand online. When you are ready to put the message out on your holiday promotions and special events your audience will be ready to receive. Another great tip is to pre-write your blog posts now and will automatically post during the busy holiday period.

Advertising / Search

• SEO - time to get into what your strategy is, do you come up on the first page for your key terms? If not, time to revisit this and recommend a full optimization pre-holiday by a firm who doesn’t go with the slogan “we guarantee first page rankings..”
• PPC - no time like the preset to organize your campaigns and ad groups. Review your conversions, Ad copy, landing pages and utilize the help of a professional firm to generate additional long tail keyword strategies to maximize your return on investment.
• Other placements - consider Facebook advertising, Retargeting, Ad Networks and Content Networks to maximize coverage
• Affiliate Marketing - a terrific way to extend your sales efforts on a pay for performance model. A well managed affiliate program has the potential to contribute up to 20% of a retailers overall revenue and provide a positive ROI.
• Shopping Feeds - check for accuracy. Are they showing up in the correct places?

Opportunities / Partnerships

• Form a Partnership - Time to join forces and consider a strategic partnership to broaden your marketing efforts. Have you ever received a package and noticed a card in the inside with a special offer to shop at another retailer? For example, you might want to also place this information on your order confirmation email and in return your partner will do the same. You both benefit.
• Niche Online Store - create a new store to capitalize on a rising market trend and benefit during the holidays. You can go to Google Trends and get some Ideas on what’s popular.
• Listen - read your comments from customers and if they were asking for additional product lines this is the time to add them.
• Analyze Competitors - Go back to last holiday - You can go to archive.org and view your competitors strategies as they appeared on the web sites. Archive.org captures web sites and will give you a great idea on what has already been done.
• Analytics - Install / Revisit Google or Yahoo Analytics and get to know what customers are doing. Understand 0 search results, high/low bounce rates, popular pages and traffic sources, etc. Of course much more to this bullet point.

Overall, I hope that you found a few tips that will help you prepare for the holidays and if I can help you with organizing a personal strategy for your online store please contact me. If you liked this post please subscribe via email, RSS, Twitter @michael vorel, Twitter @vastplanet and encourage you to leave comments, additional tips and personal experiences below. Ok, ready to rest my brain…

Had a chance to hear from Will Reynolds of Seer about the latest trends in seo and was excellent.

Some takeaways were:
- Utilize Google Api’s
- Yahoo Search Suggest is better than Google Search Suggest in a side by side comparison for accuracy
- Affiliates are able to respond faster than large brands so creates opportunity
- Rumor from Blogstorm.co.uk that Google’s Algorithm is favoring larger brands in organic results
- Pictures in organic search are appearing and could change the users behaviors and traditional rankings
- No-follows are not a waste of time on sites like Wikipedia (may be a factor down the road)
- Also covered were some of the latest demographic tools, trending, Firefox plug-ins, Grease Monkey scripts and more.

Overall, I always attend his sessions and find true value in them.

Next up was a Facebook advertising session with Zac Johnson, Jeremy Schoemaker aka Shoemoney & Alex Shultz of Facebook, Dennis Yu of BlitzLocal who discussed the benefits of using Facebook advertising to target users.

Here are the takeaways:
- Geo-targeting is essential and you need to know your target demographic. With Facebook you can target a particular region of the United States or the World. Shoemoney gave an example of Omaha Steaks and the fact that Philadelphia was the #1 market so by targeting ads to that region you would improve your conversions.
- All stressed that you can loose thousands of dollars in an hour so start small and test.
- Look at the suggested Facebook rate and bid below that.
- Facebook is not Google so quality score or accurate keyword tools not as advanced
- Ad copy & images must be rotated regularly
- Remember - take off your internet marketing hat and put on a Facebook one. Ultimately meaning that you need to compete with friends updates so better be a compelling offer with clear call to action.
- Big brands aren’t playing in the Facebook space yet so limited opportunity exists till saturation. If you were to jump into the dating scene you will see that saturation levels so tread carefully.
- International opportunities exist with Facebook.
- Lastly, once you identify converting keywords convert to a CPM basis and use the Facebook tools.
- Good luck, and let me know how it converts for you!

My Time to Shine & Speak – Ask the Experts
At 5pm It was my turn to speak and had a session in Ask the Experts about “Affiliate Strategies for Choosing Merchant Partners” The roundtable discussion lasted an hour an half and covered many topics including affiliate program types, finding your niche, evaluating the leaders in the category, trend analysis, ppc and seo implications and ultimately the selection of partners. I highlighted the costume industry and brought down the results all the way the the demographic profile of the costume buyer using commercial intent tools. I hope everyone enjoyed it and was great to give back to the industry after profiting from it for the last 10 years.

Evening Events
Later went to the Media Trust / Advaliant cocktail party at the Soho House NY (meat-packing district) and had a great time. Upon the return to the Hilton caught some unique Affiliate Summit Karaoke singing from various affiliate marketing rockstars and hoping many were not caught on video (it was memorable). As the evening progressed had more networking and closed it down for the evening.

Creating a Personal Brand – Session Highlights
Stephanie Agresta of InternetGeekGirl.com and Sarah Austin of Pop17.com discussed methods for creating and managing a personal brand. They spoke about utilizing Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and how you can syndicate content to grow your brand. Both felt that creating your own personal brand is a difficult but rewarding task that is possible for all marketers. An excellent session.

John Chow & Michael Vorel

Affiliate Summit Meet Market East 2009

Wynonia Lam of Advaliant & Michael Vorel

Affiliate Voice - Carolyn Tang + Rhea Tannenbaum

Tracking 202 Guys - Steven Truong & Wes

Sean Montana - FluxAds.com

You can see the photos from Affiliate Summit here on Flikr.

Rolling out Across Europe – Session Highlights
Robert Glasgow of Webgains spoke about the affiliate marketing landscape in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Sweden, Switzerland and Denmark. He identified emerging markets as India and China in addition to the issues.

Some Issues for Merchants looking to expand

• Must make your products conform legally to each country
• Many affiliate networks exist with each country
• Localized Datafeeds, Returns
• Customer Service is difficult
• Tax & VAT Issues
• Currency issues – will you hedge currency?

Affiliate Marketer Issues in Europe

• Need domain name and hosting
• Requires special Tools and techniques
• How will you get paid and in what currency
• Cross border transfer of learning (differs each country)
• What local affiliate competitors exists today?
• Use networks get lead account manager, localized account managers are best
• Need to know local market conditions and web design needs may differ in countries
• Pick a network who is dedicated to your success

Large European Networks

• TradeDoubler
• Zanox
• AffiliateNet (out of Germany)
• Affiliate Window
• Commission Junction
• WebGains
  

I am looking forward to day 2 of Affiliate Summit but first planning a run in Central Park!

If you liked the post please comment below on your thoughts and subscribe to the RSS or email feed or Twitter. If you would like help with consulting or management of your affiliate business please let me know!

HOW TO:  Survive in this Economy as an Online Merchant

1. Invest in Technology (improve navigation, enhance search, testing, add learning technologies)
2. Invest in Marketing (maximize customer acquisition & retention, what works and what isn’t)
3. Understand that easy growth is over (the days of automatic sales revenue with little advertising is over)
4. Recognize new market trends (mobile, social media, retargeting, segmentation)
5. Increase Budgets - Bigger online retailers are investing so smaller guys will loose ground unless they invest. Invest today and win when market changes for the better
6. Play on strengths to increase market share (what makes your store unique, ask customers)
7. Niche marketing - Big players are utilizing brand recognition, deeper pockets and economies of scale. Small merchants need to go after niches, have excellent customer service, test and invest!

Keynote Speaker – Patrick Boyle – CEO of Overstock.com
Patrick had an interesting keynote that stemmed from his earlier years working for Warren Buffet to the founding of Overstock.com in 1999. Apparently, he was turned down 85 times by venture capitalists when seeking initial funding and later during the dot.com bust he was able to purchase some failed companies which helped build Overstock.com

Overstock.com Facts

• $1.8 million in sales in 1999, $760 million in 2007
• 85% of all products are drop shipped (lowers costs for them)
• Patrick sees companies merging online vs….. raising additional investment capital infusions
• Gave a quote from Warren Buffet
• “If you’re not going to going to kick a man when he is down, when are you?”

Patrick’s Advice to Companies
Some great advice that looks at measurement, outsourcing, reporting and the future.

1. Measure Everything (use analytics, split testing, marketing, etc,)
2. Outsource Anything you are not great at (Outsourcing is a way of life for large retailers)
3. Control Expenses (payroll, those tied to balance sheets)
4. New Business Combinations (companies will merge in industries)

Gian Fulgoni – Comscore
Some interesting figures from Comscore that were released show a consumer pattern that is evident in our economy. Gian was an excellent speaker and stresses that you need to understand the consumers behaviors to succeed and segment your efforts.

• 70% of Internet Users are using the Internet to research products and services
• 74% likely to shop online before purchasing
• Conversions are lower since many visitors are waiting longer to purchase
• Coupons and Promotions are in demand and consumers use them
• Sunday newspaper coupons only reaching 50% of people and loosing ground to online
• Sports & Fitness, Books & Magazines, Music, Videos up 8%
• Competitive Intelligence is key

Ask yourself these Questions:

1. How is my search and display strategy, is it effective? Can I achieve a better ROI?
2. What media is most effective in today’s economy?
3. Am I trending in my industry in terms of ecommerce buying metrics, market share?
4. Do I have a clear understanding of competitive customer acquisition strategies?
5. Is my website providing my customers and prospects what they are looking for?
6. In light of differences in demographics and economic factors are your promotions targeted to capture the highest revenue.
7. To what extent should be relying on video advertising to reach my target?

My take on this is to look at who is buying from you, who isn’t and why. That simple!

Zazzle.com – Bobby Beaver & Jeff Beaver – Co-Founders
I was really impressed with what these two have created at Zazzle.com as they are paving the way for the future of e-commerce. Started in 2005, these Stanford graduates utilized advanced computational imagery tools and open API’s to create an online store that uses base products, shirts, hats, shoes, stamps, etc. which can be color changed instantly and styled with personal branded logos, etc. This concept allows the visitor to shop how they want to and eliminates the need for excess inventory and photography. They have embraced social media strategy and allow users to create a brand and and sell online easily. With the introduction of licensed brands from Walt Disney and more companies it allows visitors to create custom products with logos.

They allow visitors to:

• Create a Custom product from scratch with full personalization
• Buy a product that is already designed in the Marketplace
• Create a brand that they can sell to others

MarketLive – Ken Burke CEO
Ken is an energetic speaker and stressed the importance of personalization, unique content and segmentation.

Important Points

• Identify Top performing categories and sub-categories
• Concentrate on Product Page conversions
• Personalizing the e-commerce experience
• Segmenting your marketing to target
• Related Items and Search Functionality that learns from the users behaviors
• Importance of video

Gaiam (MarketLive Customer)

• $300 million company growing at 20% each year
• When integrating videos into the website saw 20% conversion uplift (Are you doing videos on your site?)

RSResearch (Market Research Facts)

• Opportunity now is to adapt to changing social media world
• Customer Service needs to be excellent
• Importance of PayPal as purchasing selection (now #4 most popular payment over Discover Card)

Internet Retailer 2009 Highlights – Boston – Day 2

• Total Retail up 3.8% (2007) vs….. 1.4% (2008)
• Retail Stores 3.5% (2007) vs….. 1.2% (2008)
• E-retailing 22% (2007) vs….. 4.6% in (2008) U.S. Retail Markets (excludes auto, petroleum)
• Top 500 Retailers grew at $116B in (2008) 11.7% rise
• Under 500 Retailers at $41B (2008) -6% decline
• Large Retailers are investing in technology to embrace the consumers

Fastest Growing Retail Channels in 2008 Sales

• Retail Chain $43.5B - Top 500 overall share 38.9% - Web Growth 8%
• Web only $36.8B - Top 500 overall share 31.8% - Web Growth 21%
• Catalog / call center $21.5B - Top 500 overall share 17.2% - Web Growth 5%
• Manufacturers $14B - Top 500 overall share 12.1% - Web Growth 15%
• Total top 500 sales $116B – 11.7% overall growth

Top 10 E-Retailers

1. Amazon.com $19.2B – 30% growth - #1 last year
2. Staples.com $7.7B – 38% growth - #2 last year
3. Dell.com $4.8B – 15% growth - #4 last year
4. OfficeDepot.com $4.8B – (-2%) growth - #3 last year
5. Apple.com $3.6B – 35% growth - #7 last year

Note - OfficeMax.com #6 had $3.1B with (-3%) growth and Amazon has been #1 consistently!

• You need to be #1 in your category over your competitor. See the Office Depot sales figure vs….. Staples and you will see how a well run business can grow while others fail.
• Dell added more personalization and learning technologies
• Apple’s growth came from 35,000 iPod apps and music. Apple is now starting to sell the phone online. Phone stores that are independent will die

Category Stars

• Mass Merchant / Dept stores $35b, 20% growth vs….. 31% in 2007
• Toys & Hobbies $1.2b, 19% growth vs….. 15% in 2007
• Health & Beauty $1.2b

Lower Performing Categories hit by Economic Factors

• Flowers & Gifts (1% online growth vs….. -9% in physical retail stores)
• Jewelry (1% online growth vs….. -67% in physical retail stores)
• Office supplies
• Houseware / Home Furnishings
• Hardware / Home Improvement

Online Retailers Quick Fact

- Fastest Growth (percentage makes them #1) CharlotteRusse.com
- Worst Performer · Tempu-pedic

Mobile Fact
Only 32 companies in top 500 have mobile applications

Customer Satisfaction Scores – ForSee Results
Purchase Intent leaders – Amazon, Walmart, Kohl’s, Costco all up

Bad Intent Scores below 70
They use 70 as a baseline and if under or near means your customers are not satisfied
Nutrisystems.com, Etronics.com

Declines in Customer Satisfaction

• CVS - 71 points down 8%
• Williams-Sonoma 73 points down 6%
• Apple.com 75 points, down 6%
• 1800Flowers 69 points, down 6%
• 35 other sites fell 3% or more

Note – Apple is lower since they have more iTunes customers so harder to please everyone. Otherwise they are doing very well.

Concept

1. Measure effectiveness of your site
2. Gain intelligence about your visitors
3. Indentify site improvements
4. Benchmark your performance

Takeaways

1. Satisfaction drives conversion, loyalty, retention and word of mouth
2. Consumer is in Charge – low switching cost, high competition
3. You cannot manage what you can’t measure
4. Measurement is hard – don’t fall for gimmicks
5. Integration of web metrics magnifies the value
6. Only takes 2 to remember to survive (satisfy your customers and be physically responsible)

Overall, an excellent show and encourage you to consider testing and investing to succeed in today’s economy. If you liked the post please comment below on your thoughts and subscribe to the RSS or email feed or Twitter. If you would like help with consulting on your online business please let me know!

Each day I wake up I apply new strategies for my clients and make sure that they are well informed of what’s emerging, who’s playing the game and what we are doing about it. This concept extends to other areas as well, for example – search engine optimization, search engine marketing, pay per click advertising, email marketing and more. If you don’t follow the social marketing trends your brand could easily be eclipsed by a lesser known one with the right internet marketing consulting and management. Do you want that to happen to you? Of course you don’t!

The Rise of Social Media (from Google Insights Search Tool over last year)
- See the burst starting in January 2009 to present? Pay Attention to this!
- Ask yourself – was Barack Obama more successful by leveraging social media?

I have some great supporting data so here goes:

Top 10 Search terms related to social media  Worldwide, Last 12 months
1.     social media marketing  (top term)
2.     social marketing     (top term)
3.     edad media
4.     social networking
5.     social media networking
6.     new social media
7.     new media
8.     la edad media
9.     social media sites
10.     social media blog

Rising searches
1.     Obama social media +950% (people are impressed by Obama and his social media campaign)
2.     social media breakfast     +250% (people want to meet and tweet up)
3.     social media monitoring     +190% (watching social media)
4.     social media icons     +190% (who are rising stars)
5.     social media analytics     +130% (how can we measure it?)
6.     social media strategy     +90%
7.     social media companies     +70%
8.     social media campaigns     +60%
9.     social media campaign     +60%
10.    social marketing     +50%

The MarketingSherpa report is a summary of 1800 marketing and public relations professionals who participated in the study. The overwhelming trend is that companies are continuing to spend on social media marketing as a method of communicating with customers and to reach new markets. Are you using Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, etc. to reach new markets, find new clients, new opportunities? I know we use so many services that it can be a dizzying array of social media applications. For example, I recently met an e-commerce store owner who said he had tried everything that’s possible to build his business and that it had hit it’s maturity. So, I pulled out my iphone and isolated conversations talking about the particular niche product in seconds and was able to locate new opportunities with a few clicks.

Another important trend is that are no shortage of tradeshows, self-help ebooks, consultants, gurus and experts. Personally, when I see expert I tend to think that is a bold statement in such a new industry. Reminds me of the SEO experts who would guarantee you a top 10 position with a wave of the magic wand.

My advice is that if you aren’t working with a social media professional start as soon as possible or call me and I can help your business.

- ShopJinny.com – Women’s contemporary designer fashion boutique

- BeautyBridge.com - Skin Care, Makeup, Bath & Body, Hair & Nail Care Products, Fragrances

- BlackForestDecor.com - Cabin Decor, Rustic Bedding, Cabin Accessories and Rustic Lighting
BlackForestDecor is also a Top 500 Internet Retailer.

Please let us know if we can help your business achieve new heights with a Yahoo Store Upgrade or enhancement service.

Tony Pantano of Imwave.com – working with search affiliates
To understand this concept you really need to think about the whole picture (ppc, seo, affiliates) and how they cam all co-exist. I use IMwave to balance this concept and is really the ultimate way to promote a merchant. By integrating your internal ppc efforts with external ppc search affiliates you can reduce costs and increase conversions.
- allow a search affiliate to use direct linking and show landing page destination as the merchant url
- work with search affiliates to understand the terms and conditions of what is off limit (for example brand name +  coupon, brand name + cheap or discount)
- the goal is to work in tandem with them as a true partner and allow the search affiliate to augment your ppc efforts.
- a large benefit to this is that they can create a long tail keyword approach and utilize your datafeed to extend and fill potential leaks in your ppc strategy.
- another benefit is that if something happens to your Google adwords account (credit card expires, budget reached) your ads will still show.

Angel Djambazov, Outsourced Affiliate Program Manager for Jones Soda
Angel covered examples of merchants and affiliates working together to maximize trends as they emerge. Some of these included working up viral labels that went onto Jones soda and distributed through Target and Panera bread. Overall impressive presentation.
- ask affiliates to spot trends for you
- create a viral concept so both parties can benefit
- be transparent to affiliates and work with them individually

Below are some photos from the event

Jon Fisher of Wicked Fire

Rebecca Madigan of MadAgainMedia.com– instrumental in the foundation of the Performance Marketing Alliance

Adam & Tony of ImWave

Haiko de Poel of ABestWeb

Andrew Wee of Whoisandrewwee.com

Shareasale Party

Kris Jones of PepperJam, Michael Stark of PostYourProperty.com

Todd Taylor from Real Networks

Jeannine Crooks and husband

Megan Egan fron OneNetworkDirect.com and DigitalRiver.com (thanks for inviting me to the cocktail party at Lucky Strikes

Mike Allen of Shoppingbargains showing his bowling stance

Networking Tips
- If you have an iphone or smartphone you can pull up the MyAffilaiteSummit Page and review the thumbnails of friends to meet in persona at the show
- Use twitter and put #asw09 in your posts to associate with the show. You can follow me on Twitter @vastplanet Interested to see some photos of the party.
- Blog updates by Affiliate Summit - AFFILIATE MARKETING AND EVEL KNIEVEL + Day 1 of Affiliate Summit by Shawn Collins
- Affiliate Summit Agenda

Started the day with my Rio Hotel classic breakfast
(the cure for all medical issues)

View from the Room at the Rio Hotel

Next Up
- Affiliate Meet Market (12-6PM)
Face to face sessions with vendors, affiliates and networks. A great place to be!
- Classroom sessions
- OneNetworkDirect Party

Good News! United States flu activity: Low
New Jersey flu activity: Low

Google Flu Trends uses Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional flu systems. You can put in your zip code or choose your state and will give you a good estimation on what’s happening in your area. Each week, millions of users around the world search for online health information. There are more flu-related searches during flu season, more allergy-related searches during allergy season, and more sunburn-related searches during the summer. You can explore all of these phenomena using Google Trends.

But can search query trends provide an accurate, reliable model of real-world phenomena?
YES

Writer makes it easy to share your photos and videos on almost any blog service—Windows Live, Wordpress, Blogger, Live Journal, TypePad, and many more.

Concept:
You take a photo of a product with your iPhone and it automatically gets sent to Amazon for review. Within a few minutes they fire back an email to you with what they think you are looking at. I tried this in the car holding my SIRIUS Stiletto 2 Portable Satellite Radio (which I highly recommend) and within 3 minutes it gave me confirmation. Upon clicking the link it takes you directly to the product page where you can decide to research, buy or consider alternatives. The beauty of this approach is that it puts Amazon involved in your e-commerce purchases.

Don’t forget that Amazon partners benefit in this approach
Amazon has been integrating outside merchants into Amazon for a few years now and the list is up to 9,000 merchants and creating the one-stop solution. The Amazon system is extremely polished and with the 1-click integration of your Amazon account you have the ability to purchase anywhere!

Amazon Page explaining the Amazon Remembers iphone Application

My Email from Amazon
Includes link directly to product page
” Dear Amazon.com Customer, The Amazon Remembers service has found a product similar to the photo you recently submitted.
<- This was my photo I took

You may view the result from your iPhone here: Amazon Remembers B000WOT6O0

If you prefer, you may view the result from your web browser. The result has also been posted to your Amazon.com home page and Your Lists (link available at the top right of any page on the Amazon.com site).

Thank you for using Amazon Remembers.

Product Page
- I can buy the item in 1-click
- See what others purchased
- Review Recent history
- Buy from other vendors (that’s key)
- Add to Wish List / Shopping List / Registry
- Access Amazon Prime for regular purchasers
- Consider a used one
- Read reviews
- Join the Sirius Community Group and discuss

Frequently Bought Together
- increases upsell margins

Product Description
- outstanding details

Buy this Product and Related Accessories
- car kits, speakers, etc.

Related Items from external sites
- part of the 1-stop shop concept

Customer Reviews
- extremely important part of the process

Social Community
- apparently a Sirius community exists at Amazon to discuss the products.

Overall, a fascinating application that should change the way consumers shop. As smart phones, Internet speeds and applications evolve the consumer will have full ability to compare, price shop, research and share products with just a few clicks. My advice to merchants to get on board with Amazon as this will play a significant role in the future of mobile e-commerce.

Compete Graph - clearly July 2008 was a turning point for “Unique Visitors” for Barack Obama. Was that his trip to Europe and the Middle East? On a side note, Compete triangulates multiple data sources, including ISP, Panel & Toolbar to estimate U.S. traffic.

Average Stay - something happened here - people stayed on the site less, why? Seems like a mistake happened on content.

Attention - Measures all the time we collectively spend online and then determines what percentage of that time was spent on a given site. As you can tell from the graph the Internet attention on Barack Obama has dropped off significantly in share of total internet attention.

Velocity - Velocity reports the relative change in daily Attention. Velocity is used to determine the relative growth of a domain over a particular timeframe or compared to other sites. See the significant drop.

Google Trends Analysis - last 365 days with August showing the popularity rising for “barack obama” search in Google

Wow! 59 Subdomains for Barack Obama - other sources of traffic for him

Top 5 Subdomains - sending traffic to www.barackobama.com

my.barackobama.com (2017) www.barackobama.com (620) store.barackobama.com (89) donate.barackobama.com (27) factcheck.barackobama.com (19)

Full List of 59 Subdomains

Top Keywords Driving Traffic: (note the misspelling of #5)

1. barack obama
2. obama
3. barack obama website
4. barackobama.com
5. barak obama

Top 15 Domain sending traffic to the Barack Obama web site

www.democratnationalcommittee.com
www.democrathq.com
www.unitedheadlines.com
www.liveobama.com
www.billpressshow.com
www.democraticstuff.com
www.liberalstore.com
www.bumperstickermagnet.com
www.21stcenturydems.org
www.democracymatters.net
www.politifact.com
www.aerialartistry.com
www.chicagotribune.com
www.current.com
www.themiddleclass.org

Search Results on Barack Obama - note Myspace on #10 and not Facebook.

Hope you enjoyed the research, what are your thoughts?