Online retail platforms are serving as a convenient, easy way for customers to shop, saving them gas from driving store to store. Cutting down on transportation costs, online retail also benefits retailers by eliminating the use of paper for shopping bags as well as customer service capital expenses. Today, much attention is being placed on going “green” and online retail platforms help support these practices. As traditional advertising budgets continues to fade, the costs saved on paper materials and printing are now being put toward online advertising. With the accurate measurements Web analytics provide online marketers, retailers are able to analyze conversion rates, improve customer retention and validate ROI which is harder to do in-stores.

So with the increased efforts by online retailers, having high organic search rankings is key to stay ahead through the economic downtime. Triangle Direct Media helps online retailers effectively cut costs and stay on top through new media marketing and social media strategies. With high value techniques to increase online exposure, clients begin to see improvement in search engine visibility and are able to compete more effectively being a step ahead in their given industry.

Moms today are blogging by the thousands and they do so through user-generated conversations on their own individual blog. Reaching these moms on a personal level is important and can be done by sharing content about relevant products tailored toward families. Moms want information about household products before they buy them and today they are turning to the internet to find those like-minded peer reviews. Always looking to get the most for her money, posting coupons online is an effective way to get moms to buy your product over another. Not “pitching” your brand is important, as you want to keep your blog in a conversational, participatory tone. After all, moms want to be comfortable with the products that they are purchasing and know that they can consistently trust and rely on a particular brand.

If you are considering blog marketing or other social marketing strategies to reach and engage moms, please do not hesitate to contact a Triangle Direct Media account executive to learn more about our custom solutions.

Making up 30% of the Internet’s users, the Gen Y demographic is flooding online channels of communication, particularly social networks. What better way than to reach to them through social media and new media marketing? If you get their email through on-campus promotions during the first week of school, take the extra step to add them on FaceBook and Twitter. Use a blog to share student deals and write about the benefits of what you are trying to sell to them. Connecting to them through these channels will give them more of a personal connection and will also give opportunity for customers to recommend your business to their friends.

Make sure your company’s message that you are sending out through these channels are targeted towards this demographic of consumers. Also make certain that it is well defined and consistently carried throughout online and offline marketing strategies. It is also a good idea to make sure that all of your marketing representatives who visit the campuses that you “hone” in on are carrying out the same message to these students and the coveted Gen Y demographic.

Title, Header, and Meta Tag Customization

Make sure that you have control over customizing titles, H1 headings and meta descriptions. Not only do you want to access over these basic page elements, but also make sure that you can enable rules for particular sections of the website.

Alt Attributes

It is important to tell search engines what an image is about, so make sure you have the ability to implement the alt attribute within the site’s image tags.

Anchor Text Flexibility

To ensure your site is optimized, as well as search-friendly, make sure you are able to customize the anchor text

Nofollow, Noindex

To avoid duplicate content, it is important that your CMS supports Nofollow, Noindex tags.

Avoid Hidden Text

Many CMS platforms use CSS “display:none” to create expandable webpage elements such as a drop-down menu. Search engines could possibly misinterpret your hidden text as a spammer. Make sure your CMS avoids hidden text issues so you do not lose your page rank.

301-Redirects

For expired content, pages with a new version, or dodging keyword cannibalization issues, 301 redirects are necessary. A critical feature of your CMS is the functionality for redirecting content whenever necessary.

Keyword-Rich URLs & URL structure

To help solve a common SEO issue, your CMS platform should feature custom URL creation to implement static, keyword-rich URLs. Also, be sure your CMS allows customizable URL structure, as your SEO team should manually sculpt the URL structure of your site, not your CMS platform.

There are many crucial elements your CMS should deliver, these are just some of the most influential on-page and site-side SEO factors. From an SEO perspective, review your current CMS as soon as possible. Or, if you’re looking for a new platform remember these critical factors when deciding if your new CMS will be SEO friendly.  The decision to purchase a search-friendly CMS during the development cycle can reduce future customization costs many eTailers run into when trying to execute and manage a results-oriented SEO campaign.

It is important to participate in ongoing dialogues, to help generate good content and a trusted image amongst consumers. Through these you can create a larger conversation to extend the content, especially if it is of good quality, or even to steer it in a positive direction. By keeping customers updated on the latest online or in-store promos, special events, or campaigns through your blog, you can really make money off of creating a retail blog. You take that further step in reaching a whole community of bloggers and you really can increase online exposure and build raptor with your customers. Use your blog to discuss retail trends, marketing ideas, merchandising tips, and other facets of your business or industry to help promote and strengthen your brand.

As a retail business, you want to make sure the content is good and effective, so being proactive in the blogging community is a must. What others say about your brand impacts your business more than what you say about your brand; especially in user generated content circles. You want people to promote your business by blogging about you, your products, and your company without the common sales pitch. While, most retail businesses don’t have the time to comment on blogs and write articles you can find new media and social marketing companies that can integrate these techniques into your online retail marketing practices. These tactics will help deliver traffic to your website as your retail blog will serve as a communication engine, pumping out content to receive higher search engine rankings. It isn’t easy enough for the average, non-tech business owner through, or their staff, so it is best to hand this task over to a company who has the tools to help drive online success for your business.

While many retailers are cutting costs, others have found the economic slowdown as an opportunity to increase market share. According to Internet News, almost half of retailers surveyed have no plans to cut back original budgets, while 24 percent will spend more on their online business than planned originally. Companies that plan to spend more will increase investments in areas of search (80%), e-mail marketing (65%) and social media marketing (60%) to help grow their businesses due to the pullback in consumer spending. Four out of five retailers surveyed said that they thought the web is the best suited channel to survive the recession, with one-third claiming the economic downturn has enabled the capture for greater market share.

To help optimize business strategies for retailers, new tools are making their debut in the industry. In order to withstand the recession, online retailers are learning to make smart spending decisions by doing more with less and taking advantage of new, innovative tools and techniques that have made their debut into the industry. New, innovative tools and techniques are launching to help retailers come out of this recession in a positive manner and effectively tap the power of social media, tribes and networks. The current goal for these online retailers right now is to get their hands on these tools to help accelerate sales, better resonate with prospective customers and thrive in a down market.

Triangle Direct Media fielded 2 Runners and 1 walker.

Thanks to all who participated and thanks to Scott for getting the whole event organized in at our office.

Overall, pharmacies, including Rite Aid and Walgreen are moving up the rankings. We have certainly seen an evolution of pharmacies in the past few decades, and they are continuing to change and offer new goods and services to respond to demand. The chart says that Walgreen has launched a casual clothing collection, and is opening in-store clinics. Pharmacies are bringing in more revenue and opening new stores, despite the economic slump.

Retailers like Dell, Apple Stores/iTunes, AT&T, and Verizon are represented for the first time in this ranking. This certainly reflects the market shifts that are presently taking place and will continue.

You can take a look at the entire ranking here.

Another resource you can use to find out what keywords are most popular and most widely used that are related to your website is a Search Term Suggestion Tool. With a tool like this, you can enter in a general keyword, and it will suggest other search terms related to that one, and give you the popularity of each.

It’s a good idea to be aware of how most people use search engines in order to see how customers may find your retail site in the vast world wide web.

With so much information available now on the internet revealing prices offered by different stores, there is limited information bias, and retailers have to offer competitive prices in order to survive. This is especially relevant for retailers that sell goods that are exactly identical to those sold by other stores, such as electronics.

According to a May 2008 Nielsen Online survey, even most of those who end up buying in a brick-and-mortar store check the web first. They found that eight out of ten consumers in the survey that had recently purchased electronics in a physical store had checked the retailer’s website beforehand. Consumers don’t need to drive around town to find out price differences. It seems that even if they are planning to stop by their local store, they check the website first to see what’s available, so they don’t waste a trip. With children now growing up surfing the web, we can expect to see this trend increase, and for shoppers to be more and more informed about competitors’ prices.