October 23rd, 2011 
Travis 
Not too long ago, most inbound e-commerce companies always had the same problem allocating phone sales to the proper marketing source. It was usually just labeled “phone sales” and left at that. But who called in for the sale? Was it a customer who came in from a PPC ad? An email? Organic search? Before,Read more…
Is It Finally Time to Try Groupon for Your Business?
If you haven’t signed up for Groupon offers in your town, I highly recommend looking into it. In case you’re new to the internet, Groupon is a service that offers huge discounts for products and services offered by local businesses. If enough Groupons are purchased (so that the business can cover their margins), the dealRead more…
Dominate Niches with AdWords Product Listing Ads
Any area in your AdWords campaign where there is separate bidding (not just straight keyword bidding) there is a big opportunity to pay less for more qualified traffic. That’s why I got so excited after reviewing my latest round of usability testing. This past February, instead of observing users on my own ecommerce store, IRead more…
How to Make PPC Worth It
Often times, your store’s experiment with paid advertising fails within its first $200… usually without any sales. Avoid this catastrophe, save face, and look like a marketing rockstar by creating a targeted AdWords campaign that brings in a healthy ROI by cutting out unnecessary spending. Here’s how… First, be sure you exhaust the Google AdWordsRead more…
Complete Usability Cheatsheet
One of my favorite usability websites is UserTesting.com. By giving users a unique scenario and particular goals to accomplish, you get to watch screen captured videos that allow you great access to your target audience’s tendencies. From my own personal experiences, I have created my “Ultimate User Testing Cheatsheet” for you to use as well.Read more…
Five New Year’s Resolutions for Your Website
With the New Year inevitably comes New Year’s Resolutions… and with New Year’s Resolutions comes failed New Year’s Resolutions. If you want your e-commerce site to be successful, you’ll want to keep these five resolutions for your website. Resolution #1- Test Your Product Pages If your site is like most other e-com sites, then yourRead more…
Tracking Visitors Within Your Site
Tracking visitor tendencies while on your site can give you valuable insight as to how your customers think. For example, from our tests, we know that if a visitor spends time reading about a current promotion going on, their likelihood to purchase skyrockets. So what do you do? You expand your advertising, and make sureRead more…
Tracking Your Traffic Sources
Are you tracking every visitor that comes to your website? Once they get to your site, are you tracking how the navigate through from page to page? If not, you should be. But the good news is that it isn’t that hard at all. We’re going to walk you through how to do both withRead more…
Title Tag Optimization- Get a Quick 10% Bump in Traffic
Everyone knows that a page’s title tag is the most important piece of on-page optimization. Since on-page optimization techniques are completely under a webmaster’s control, this means that adjusting your title tags is the quickest and easiest way to improve your search engine rankings. You’d be amazed at how many webmasters overlook this simple processRead more…
Customer Lifecycle Optimization
Most marketers optimize their websites to capture a conversion… and to them, that’s the end of the conversion funnel. However, if you do only that, you’re leaving serious money and exposure on the table. The truth is that there are many opportunities after the conversion to increase revenue, obtain more conversions, increase your social mediaRead more…
Blacklisting Your Competitors- No Honor Among Thieves
Search Engine Marketing is tricky. You not only have to worry about your own marketing efforts, but also those of your competition. In the SERPs, your ad is seen right next to one of your competitors, both in the sponsored links section and the free organic listings. There’s a lot of information going around onRead more…
Google Integrates Webmaster Tools and Analytics
Yesterday, Google announced that you can now view your Webmaster Tools data in your Analytics account after a long beta test. You first have to do a quick sync of your accounts, and then you’ll see good SEO information in your analytics interface. Simply go to your Traffic Sources tab, and click on Search Engine Optimization.Read more…
Google AdWords Increases Value of Quality Score
Yesterday, Search Engine Land announced that Adwords will be giving more weight to landing page quality score when ranking PPC ads. Quality Score is a numerical value, 1 thru 10, that the AdWords algorithm assigns your landing page in relation to the search term you are bidding on. 1 means there is little relevance betweenRead more…
Google Announces Real Time Analytics
This week, Google Analytics announced that it is now able to report real time analytics on your site. Why does this matter? You are able to monitor your site in real time if you want to track any launches you are promoting. If you’re pushing social media or email, you can monitor what is happeningRead more…
The Pareto Rule- Focus on what Works and Make it Better
Have you heard of the Pareto rule? If not, you should try to run your business off it. It’s the theory that “80% of your business comes from 20% of the work”. It’s also been called the 80/20 rule. It’s not specific, it won’t always be exactly 80/20, but the concept is very sound. WhichRead more…
