There is nothing standing in your customers’ way when it comes to shopping around for the best pricing and value. In times gone by, you know, pre Internet when you had to walk to school through the snow and bread cost a mere 5 cents, you could charge more and who would ever know? I mean, who was going to trudge through the snow to the next store to see if your pricing was competitive?

The Internet has changed how we live and how we shop. Just setting up an online store is not enough. There are steps you should consider to optimize the customer experience to help boost sales and customer experience.

1. Reviews¹

Reviews are a must. 64% of online shoppers read online reviews before making their purchase decisions. However, creating an online store that delivers reviews that truly help the customer make a decision can be a challenge. About 57% of online shoppers trust those reviews only as a means of supporting other information. When asked to name which issues tend to lower their trust with reviews, shoppers named the following:

• Not enough reviews: 50%
• Doubts that they are written by real customers: 39%
• Lack of negative reviews: 38%
• Positive reviews always positioned first: 25%
• Lack of information about reviewer: 23%

2. Make Everything Easy ²

Your products need to be simple to find. This means taking into account that not all people search the same so put your products in different categories and keep the navigation and checkout process simple. It’s 25% harder to read on the Internet vs. offline so use these guidelines for readability:

• Headlines – 8 words or less
• Aim for 9-12 words per line
• Short sentences – 15 – 20 words
• Summaries – under 30 words
• Paragraphs – 40-70 words

3. Pricing ³

• Give Total Price Upfront

Potential buyers will sometimes begin a purchase just to find out what the total cost would be with shipping. It’s good policy to give them all costs upfront – including shipping – prior to asking for any personal information.

• Shipping ³

Customers don’t like paying shipping charges particularly when it adds a large percent to the total price of smaller items. This can make a customer feel like you are taking advantage of them. Consider shipping larger orders for free. When you offer to absorb shipping costs for the customer when they order a certain amount, you give them good reason to buy more.

4. Provide Complete Information ³

When you provide informative and complete information you become more of an authority site and this makes customers feel more comfortable making a purchase. The following graph will give you ideas on which areas (beyond reviews) you should focus resources in order to provide a site that gives customers the information they’re looking for.

Creating and running a profitable online store may seem difficult with the ability of shoppers to compare various competing retailers. But think of the flip side – potential customers can more easily find you, too. And when you provide them with an informative, easy to use, complete site, you have a good shot at converting potential customers into actual customers.

Resources

1. Online Shoppers Value Reviews, Ratings, Search
2. eCommerce Tips: The 5 Habits of Highly Effective eCommerce Stores
3. Ecommerce Tip: 7 Ways To Increase Your Online Sales

Google research shows that consumers are feeling pretty good about the upcoming 2010 holiday season and at this point last year 44% of consumers had already started their holiday shopping.1 It does seem that the push for holiday sales comes earlier each year, and you may not be personally thrilled to see Christmas ornaments for sale before you’ve even had your last summer BBQ. However, if you’re running a business, online or off, don’t delay getting your holiday campaigns going because when those early shoppers start shopping, you want to be there for them.

Holiday 2010 Marketing Tips and Resources

1. Hassle-free shopping

Double check that your customers’ online shopping experience is easy and streamlined. Make it easy for customers to find what they want, give them prices upfront before asking for any personal information, and aim to have the check out process in as few steps as possible. Make sure you display order cut off times so customers know when to order in order to receive their goods before Christmas.

2. Offer Extra Holiday Value

Promote fast, free shipping, whenever possible. Offer upsell incentives and coupons. When you do ship an order, include something special for your customers such as a holiday greeting card that includes a future discount or customer-only special. And whether you sell online or off or both, consider offering a layaway program.

3. Integrate Marketing across Channels

• Coordinate your customer’s online search with printed direct mail catalogs that have high-impact graphics to highlight your products and services.
• Use your social media to check in with your customers, thank them on Twitter for being a customer, and see how they are doing.
• Don’t forget to create some special holiday content with important keywords to help online searchers find you.
• If at all possible, tap into the mobile market. If you feel totally lost and would like to learn more, check out this about.com article Mobile Marketing – Getting a Grasp on the Basics

4. Holiday Emails

Even if you’re holiday sales aren’t matching your expectations, don’t spam! Consider creating a specific holiday-targeted email list prior to your first holiday email send. For subscribed users, send an email that asks if they would like to get emails relating to holiday specials or information. For non subscribers, add a special opt in link on your site that allows them to sign up for holiday emails only.

5. Bring in Some Holiday Fun

Consider dressing up your website with some holiday flair and fun with special graphics. And you might want to create a holiday video on YouTube and link to that from your site. If you have a blog, solicit reader input on their coolest holiday ideas.

If you’re interested in reading more about the state of holiday shopping 2010 check out this Google guide.

As you plan the details of your Holiday 2010 Marketing, don’t limit yourself to just December holidays. Here are some other dates for you to tap into:

• Thursday November 25, 2010 Thanksgiving Day (Notorious for online shopping)
• Friday November 26, 2010 Black Friday
• Monday November 29, 2010 Cyber Monday
• Monday December 13, 2010 Green Monday
• Monday December 17, 2010 National Free Shipping Day

Happy Holiday Prepping!

Resources

1. Consumers Are Planning to Open Their Wallets
2. Shipwire Tips for increased 2010 holiday sales

Here are 5 free vector sets for you to use online, or for your print designs.

How can social media help you? Social media helps you build an online community, or as Seth Godin would put it, a tribe. Social media channels give you the opportunity to ask for opinions, converse, invite, share, and contribute. It also helps create avenues for avid customers to help spread the word about your awesome products and services. It can be overwhelming though, so where do you begin?

1. Which Social Sites Should You Go To?

You’ve probably heard of some of the more popular social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn, but there are many more for you to choose from. This Social Media Marketing Guide from SEOmoz lists 101 sites with marketing tips for each. You might find some of them are more relevant to your niche and be a better use of your time. As an example, DevianArt is for artists, photographers, and videographers.

2. User Name Availability

You can personally go to each social site you’re interested in to create a username and profile. Before you do that though, you can quickly and easily check if your company, personal name, or desired user name is available for social sites (as well as domains, etc). It’s a good idea to check username availability before you decide on one because it’s better to use the same name across channels (and far less confusing!). Here are 7 Services to Find and Reserve Your Name Across the Web. Some of these services, for a fee of course, will do some of the legwork for you by creating accounts with the information you provide for profiles.

3. Start the conversation²

Once you’ve determined the proper social sites for you and created accounts, you need to join and start conversations. Here are five online conversation tips: listen to what’s being said, be open minded, keep it real, show some gratitude, and stay positive. Find out where your customers “hang out” online by asking them, and then join in on their conversations in an authentic way – not in a self-serving way.
You don’t get what you don’t ask for. So first, take an active part in conversations. Second, contribute valuable and useful information. And then, promote your company by asking people to visit, comment and share through the social sites that are part of your active online tribe.

Resources

1. 5 Ways to Build Online Social Community
2. Here are 5 Tips for Starting a Social Media Conversation

Direct mail strategies not only still work, but when combined with your online efforts, can make for some very powerful marketing. A Channel Preference Study by Exact Target showed that direct mail influences 76% of Internet users to purchase a product or service online.¹ So, here are some tips for creating effective direct mail strategies for today’s online driven world.

1. Your Direct Mail List¹

For any direct mail campaign to be effective, the priority is a great mailing list that is honed and segmented so you can concentrate on a select audience. When you’ve done the work on your list well, you’ll have an audience with something specific in common – are they all start-up businesses? Or better yet, are they all start-up ecommerce businesses created by mompreneurs?

2. Your Direct Mail Message²

The more narrowly you’ve defined your mailing list, the more relevant your specific message can be. Speak directly to your targeted audience in a way that is most likely to engage them and get them to respond. And, maybe it goes without saying, but make sure you are presenting them with a strong enticing offer.

3. Send them to a Specific Landing Page with Easy URL¹

Since readers can’t click directly to a landing page from your direct mail piece, make sure you set up your page so it’s an easy URL to type without mistakes. It’s much more effective to have a specific landing page set up for your offer rather than sending readers to a generic page.

4. Call to Action with Deadline¹

Give a clear and present deadline so readers have the impulse to act now rather than stuff your postcard in a drawer and wait until later – which may never come. Also, people respond better when you give them specifics on what to do. For example, “Please go to our awesome landingpage.com by this date to fill out our short survey and claim your 50% discount coupon.”

5. Use Direct Mail to Start the Conversation¹

The overall goal of any type of marketing is usually to create lifetime customers because a one-time customer has low value for money spent. This means when first-timers come to your site from a direct mail piece you should use the opportunity to get, at the very least, their email address and maybe additional information.
One of the great things about direct mail is that it’s been around for decades so there are proven strategies you can use. And uniting direct mail strategies with new online techniques makes a potent combination.

Resources

1. How to Use Direct Mail to Drive Targeted Website Traffic
2. Direct Mail & Postcard Marketing Strategies

To effectively build your brand support on Twitter, it’s important to remember that social media is all about multi-directional conversations, not about one-way blasting. So, think of it like being on an elevator. What would you want to say about you, or your company, as part of the conversation, knowing that your listener has the capacity to hit the door-open button if you get too self-centered? Here are some guidelines for brand building on Twitter.

Your Twitter User Name
If you haven’t yet started using Twitter at the very least set up a Twitter accounting with the user name you want because, like dot coms, the more popular Twitter becomes, the harder it will be to get the name of your choice. You can have more than one account/name, so if you can get your full personal name, your company and product names. One option is to use your company name (@nextdayflyers) and then use your personal bio and avatar.2 You can check if the name you want is available at Tweexchange (also checks for domain availability).

Your Brand Look and Feel
Your Twitter profile should match your other online branding efforts and the look of your Twitter page should feel (colors, logo, etc.)like your website and/or blog.

Person to Person¹
People don’t talk to brands, they talk to people.1 This means avoid marketing jargon, be real and human. It’s good to put a real face on Twitter – as in, if you can have the same person take the lead on posting and responding to Twitter it helps. Embrace the concept of followers asking questions, commenting on likes and dislikes, and respond to them as you would in person.

Talk with the Influencers
If you spend a lot of time on Twitter you’ll start to notice the more talkative folk. If they have a good following, and like to talk about your company, think of them as “influencers.” You want to get to know them and start a conversation. 

Give a Reason People should Follow You
Reward followers with specials, inside information, or other incentives.

Link Twitter to Your Website or Blog
If you have a blog you can link your blog to Twitter for automatic updates. Many blogging programs will do this or you can use Twitterfeed. Twitterfeed will also let you connect your feed to Facebook and some other social sites.

Share Industry News
Help to boost your reputation by Tweeting about industry information or valuable blog posts you’ve discovered.

Use the @Search Function
One of the great functions on Twitter for getting real time information (as in, what’s going on right now) is the search function in the right column. If you put in the @ symbol, and then your company name, you will see results of conversations about your company.

Should Your Automate?
There is a lot of debate on whether or not you should utilize tools that automate aspects of social media – such as an auto thank-you to new followers, or like Twitterfeed, mentioned above. Many companies have a hard time, or are unwilling to dedicate the resources required to keep their social media channels up to date. One option is to use auto responses and posting. We could argue the points here on whether or not it’s a good branding move to automate, but one thing is for certain – you cannot leave all your social media interactions to auto pilot or you are losing the whole social aspect of social media. If you use auto updates of say, your blog posts, be sure you are still actively posting – real person, real time, real responses.

If you’re interested in reading about whether to use auto Twitter tools, here is a Techipedia post discussing some of the issues with automation.

Resources

1. Twitter 101: Seven Tips for Effective Marketing
2. HOW TO: Build Your Personal Brand on Twitter

I have collected 8 online photo editing websites that can be useful for simple to advanced editing, from red-eye removal or even complicated layer masking techniques.These photo editing websites can also be your back up just in case you are on a business trip and you don’t have your fancy copy of Photoshop to create and present an idea to a client – or maybe you just need to edit some summer photos to upload to Facebook. Either way, check it out and have fun!

Eight track players, slide rules and 45 rpm records have all become subjects of trivia questions as a result of new technology. Are printed telephone directories, newspapers and fax machines next?

In the twenty years that I have been in the printing industry, I have witnessed an amazing transformation in the processes used to put ink on paper. Much of the terminology and methods have either changed or become obsolete. Here is a glossary of terms that might “jog” your memory and give you the “impression” that you’ve in the printing business too long:

Acetate – Clear thin plastic sheets used for overhead projectors and creating mechanical overlays for artwork to be used in the darkroom.

Amberlith – An orange masking material for overlays to be used on the acetate.

Blueline – A proof made from film negatives in which all text and images appear blue on a white paper.

Carbon Paper – This black or blue thin waxy sheet was used to make an exact duplicate of the typing or writing from the page on top of it onto the page below it.

Clip Art Books – Books of high contrast images printed on white glossy paper. The images were cut out and pasted to a mechanical.

Dot Matrix Printers – Generally noisy and slow merger of a typewriter and a computer output device. Image was created by dots of ink formed when the pins hit the ink ribbon.

Linotype Typesetting Machine – This is a machine that creates lines of type in metal for use in newspapers and magazines.

Mimeograph and Ditto Machines – Predecessors to the xerographic reproduction process.

Stripper – Person who strips negatives.

Thermal Fax Paper – Paper sold in rolls for early fax machines. Heat caused the white areas of the paper to turn black.

If you do not remember all of these items, then you are either young or perhaps you sniffed the mimeographed quiz papers a few times too often in high school.

Did you know that there are four times the number of cell phones in the world compared to PCs?¹ And that 20% of U.S. households have gone mobile-only for their phone lines? There’s no doubt about it, mobile and smartphone users are growing monthly.

Here are some trends for marketers to be aware of:

Top Trend: Text Messaging

Over 130 Billion texts are sent each month.¹ Text messaging, the most widely-used form of mobile marketing, gets, on average, 7x the response rate compared to emails. And since texting requires no incorporation of fancy graphics, the process is relatively simple to use even for non- techie business owners.

Marketing Ideas for Text messaging¹

• Promotions
• Coupons
• Alerts
• Staff messages
• Sweepstakes
• Trivia
• Voting

Retail Use Trends

Retailers are on the hunt to find ways for consumers to use their phones to enhance the overall shopping experience.

• Bar Coded Coupons. Scannable bar codes on consumers’ phones to get, for example, a free drink.
• Pay by phone. Starbucks is testing Starbucks Card Mobile, which allows customers to pay for coffee in the shop with their phone.
• Integration with real-time data. Ace Hardware is combining weather forecasts with text alerts to hawk more shovels.
• Building out their profiles in localized smartphone apps. Gap Outlet, Sports Authority, and REI are experimenting with the new crop of local smartphone apps, such as Yowza and FourSquare .

Other Trends

• Smart Phone Applications. The number of smart phone applications is on the rise and each month brings new ways for customers to engage with businesses, receive news and promotions.
• Augmented Reality.² This is a buzzword that describes the users experience of viewing your surroundings through your smartphone so you get an overlay of information. See http://www.wikitude.org/ for an example.
• Mobile websites. Websites optimized for mobile users or smartphone applications used to be cost prohibitive for many companies but now mobile website tools such as Mobilizer and MoFuse make it more of a do-it-yourself situation.

If you’ve gone mobile with your business, what ideas are you trying? We’d love to hear!

Resources

1. Five Can’t-Miss Mobile Marketing Trends For 2010
2. Top 10 Smartphone App Trends for 2010

I have collected 10 surreal photo manipulation tutorials that can help you to get your ideas flowing. Have fun and be creative in painting your dream world!