IT Tips

Facebook Fan Pages, Twitter and "Pay-Per-Fan"

Facebook and Twitter are fantastic mechanisms to communicate with your friends, customers and potential customers. At Shipwire we use both. Honestly, we have seen more traction with our Twitter account (http://www.twitter.com/shipwire) than fan's and conversations on Facebook. I think companies that work with businesses (b2B) may not get good use out of Facebook at this point. I've seen very good success with consumer oriented brands. Coke is famous for having loads of fans. I personally follow bands, some yoga classes and a couple consumer brands.

Curious about the fundamental differences between Twitter and Facebook for user interaction? Here is a smackdown between the two in the travel industry. It boils down to Facebook being better for long-term brand engagement; while Twitter is better for immediate communication. Makes sense.

The great thing about both Fan Pages and Twitter is that once somebody fans/follows your brand you can communicate with them in near real time...assuming they are listening. We'll talk about that in a minute.

There are tons of articles on how to build your fan/follower base; but, Facebook is pioneering a new advertising model that has been called "Pay-Per-Fan". You may have seen their "promote your page" banner when you log into your Facebook fan page admin console. The allure for marketing types is that once you have the fan/follower there is no cost to reconnect with the user.

Assuming you want to build your base of fans/followers - should you buy them? Should you advertise to build a fan base? For me the jury is still out; but, for your brand it may work great.

Facebook used to market a pay-per-install advertising model for "in" Facebook applications. In this model application advertisers paid each time someone installed their application. However, there was no guarantee that the user would ever re-visit or open the application after the initial install. This means that often, rebranding and reconnecting with your users, reminding them that you exist, is futile and impossible.

However, when you pay-per-fan, your fan page automatically shows up in users' streams on their news feed. This is similar to Twitter. What does this mean for e-commerce solutions? It means that you can constantly reconnect to your fans through updates. You can measure response and feedback and push thoughts directly in front of the people you are trying to reach.

There is a major issue in this. You may be able to market to your "fans", however, are they listening? Facebook's "Newsfeed" allows users to "hide" future status updates from fan pages. You can expect people to quickly hide brands that they have no real association with. In many ways it is easier to hide future status than the couple clicks it takes to unsubscribe to the fan page. This is similar with many client Twitter applications which make it very easy for somebody to remain a follower and never actually see your tweets. Facebook lets you track subscribes/resubscribes...but, not "hides" yet.

Clearly, the odds of your real "fans" hiding your status updates is lower. This is because they know you and your brand, they have an association with you. However, for fans that you "bought" or brought in from advertising may prove significantly less sticky long term. You may have loads of fans with no activity.

I'll be curious to see what happens with the pay-per-fan model. If you are a consumer focused e-commerce company you should spend a small amount of time on exploring these social networks. See my previous blog post on automating your blog into Twitter and Facebook so you can keep content up to date.

Please comment on your own experience with Facebook/Twitter. Have you advertised for fans/followers? Are you considering it?

Dollar fluctations benefit Small Businesses - Pump up the Benefit!

Economists and the financial sector are reporting ever more dreary results for the U.S. dollar verse other currencies. But what does that mean for small business and e-commerce businesses in particular?

Some recent news from The Business Insider is painting a silver lining for two industries in particular (no, not currency traders shorting the dollar) - U.S. manufactures and the small export businesses that tend to source from them. Why is this?

A weak dollar (and it seems to be a U.S. policy now) makes domestic manufacturers look less expensive verse their overseas competitors. Smaller businesses tend to be more prone to source locally, so smaller businesses are are seeing their product manufacturing costs go down when compared to other businesses that manufacture overseas (read larger companies). U.S. manufacturing seems to be returning a bit.

Will all small businesses benefit? No. The real competitive benefit is when you take a lower sourcing cost and then combine it with the movement of goods overseas (export) to a location where it can command a larger price point. So if you're sourcing locally and selling locally, you won't see a massive benefit. You will need to boost your business with overseas sales, either wholesale or direct-to-consumer.

If you are not already looking at how to grow your business by exporting and selling overseas, do yourself a favor and do so now. It has gotten a lot easier for a small business to manage a global supply chain and sell overseas. I've written about how to do this in past posts here on PC, so please check out those posts for loads of details and comment on them to keep the conversation alive. Questions and comments are appreciated.

Generally, look at your product line and investigate what will sell well overseas. Source locally by finding manufactures and suppliers at places like World Wide Brands and Alibaba. Partner with an outsourced product fulfillment company with one or more overseas facilities in markets where you can get penetration. Bulk move a small amount of inventory into the market and sell it on local marketplaces. Clearly that was a synopsis so check out the other post I linked to above.

Will U.S. manufacture rebound and pull us out of this economic slump? Lets hope so; but, the worry is that capital will pull out of a weak dollar economy causing bigger issues to the broader market. So keep an eye out.

I'll try and cover the container shipping implications and transportation logistics side of a weak dollar another post.

Google Says the Holiday Shopping Season Has Started

Making use of the new Canonical tag within eCommerce SEO

Earlier this year, search engine representatives across all three main search engines, released a statement to announce a uniform method for reducing duplicate content. All three (Google, Bing, Yahoo) announced that they would embrace a "canonical" tag that would assist search engines in understanding primary URL's within a domain.

In ecommerce environments, where navigation paths can lead to as many as 15 URL's for a given product page, this development is a major step to better structure your site for optimal search engine optimization.

Essentially, this “canonical” tag, is included inside the HEAD of any HTML document. When properly leveraged, the tag is now the most effective way to reduce the negative impact that can happen when the same page is indexed multiple times under a variety of URL’s.

This tag is basically conveying to a search crawler, “Googlebot, this URL you are on isn’t the preferred page for this content, href=http://mysite.com/page1.html is.”

In talking to representatives within the engines as well as retailers alike, duplicate content is a paramount issue and this tag will definitely kickstart actions on both sides to improve website indexing.

Here's a real life example. You can have the following example variations for a fictional website:

www.mysite.com

mysite.com

www.mysite.com/

www.mysite.com/index.htm

mysite.com/index.htm

www.mysite.com/home.aspx

So which is the primary page? All of these pages can be indexed, but which version should an engine render?

You can try using 301 redirects to fix, but sometimes these are tough to generate depending on the sophistication of your CMS or eCommerce platform.

You could eliminate URL parameters such as session ID’s and tracking codes, but then you are losing data to help you gauge the impact of your marketing and do not really leverage your analytics optimally. In this situation, use the canonical tag!

How does this impact your SEO efforts? Unlike a 301 which redirects all web traffic, the canonical tag is an indicator for only engines which allows you to keep your existing url.

It will help engines in concentrating link equity into one primary URL, for a specific piece of content, as well as essentially tell them which page you want to have as the “authority” page...while at the same time, not affecting your visitors and their experience in any way.

Want some facts right from Google? Here are answers that they published in their webmaster central blog.

Interview with Ken Fry: Feeds in the Future

Trying something a little different here. I wanted to do an interview, and thought it would be great to garner some wisdom from one of our Directors, Ken Fry, to talk about feeds today. Below is a copy of the transcription. Enjoy!

 — 

Thank you everyone for joining us today. My name is Kevin Wong, a researcher in the field of user experience design. Today I would like to introduce a colleague of mine, Ken Fry, one of the design directors at Artefact.

Ken has been involved in a number of projects, ranging from community driven web services, to innovation workshops with companies such as Intel. Today, we’d like to focus our conversation on feeds and data streams. This concept has been growing in popularity amongst businesses looking to further increase value to their customers by providing a place for news updates and a personalized view of changes that are important to them.

So thank you Ken, for sparing a few minutes with me and talking with me about Feeds.

Alright, thank you Kevin.

So I have been hearing a lot about feeds lately. Not the kind that animals eat out of, but the kind that helps people view web pages and desktop software in a certain way. By your definition, what is a feed?

You know, it’s funny that you bring up the animal analogy there. I think feed is a derogatory term. It sort of implies that you’re putting a feed bag on somebody and forcing them to take in content you come up with. When you go to a social networking site, and you see this deluge of information fed to you, it’s sort of the beauty and curse of a feed. What we call a feed today is probably what we used to have as dashboards of the past, or tickers of the past. I actually think a feed today is evolving into something different. Maybe streams are a more accurate way to stretch the analogy. Streams are something I can dip my toe into without having to be force fed all this information.

So what are the key attributes that make up a feed or a stream?

I think there are a few that are really important and that are unique to the way feeds are today. First of all, it’s dynamic. That’s the benefit unlike dashboards of old. I can be assured that - generally speaking - things will be dynamically updated. It’s going to be fresh and new to me.

I think another thing for users is that there’s a personal aspect to it. So hopefully the feed that I’m getting is the most personal information I could possibly get.

The third element I would suggest is that it’s social. Although feeds can certainly be about other kinds of content, I think feeds have become popular within the realm of social media. So there has always been a social component to it. Just like this flow of dialog between you and me, a feed is a flow of information between people online. That social aspect is an essential quality.

Do you have an example of a successful feed?

So certainly Facebook and Twitter are great examples of feeds. They are dynamic, they are social and they are personal. Even the clients we talk to at Artefact, half of those people are asking for some sort of feed or social media component. Even things like Facebook are at risk at not being so successful. Part of it has to do with the fact that after 500 or a thousand friends, it’s not so personal anymore. It’s still dynamic and social, but it’s less personal. So I think those successful things, they’re successful because they fulfill some of those criteria I talked about before.

Getting back to e-commerce, for it to be successful, it really needs to be specific to those kinds of social goals that’s a part of being in e-commerce. It may not be interaction between people in a very direct way like Facebook or Twitter does it, but maybe interactions in an abstract way such as with a product. I can imagine information about consumer products the same way a sales person might provide that information.

So there’s a lot of responsibility on the retailer side to understand what the users have to say?

Yeah, exactly. There are examples where you and I talked about before, there are examples of businesses out there that monitor these feeds going on in.

Within Facebook for example, businesses have to monitor that because everything is so transparent now because of the way social media and feeds have operated. If I have a complaint about my local cable company, I can say that on Facebook and that doesn’t look good for that business. So it has to be this open dialog, this two way dialog so that people are responding to each other’s needs.

What would the future feed look like?

I think the future feed is less feed like. Going back to the original analogy, the future feed isn’t about force feeding information, but its really about giving people exactly what they want, when they want it. It’s sort of like the paradox of choice, or the experiences in the retail store where they’re inundated with all these products to choose from, when in fact, all they care about is the one thing they want to get. I imagine the way feeds will evolve will happen in the same sort of way. It becomes more about exactly what I need. So it becomes much more personal in the future. I think the social aspect was such a huge revolution. The social aspect of feeds were a really important thing to have in the last 5 years. But, I think that with the personal aspect, we’re starting to lose touch with that a little bit. I think that’s one of the ways it will evolve over time.

With the future feeds and feeds today, how will this impact the relationship between retailers and customers.

We talked about this a little earlier. I think the transparency aspect for sure is one outcome of that. Already you’ve got online shopping and it has become a huge part of brick and mortar business for people. I think the way it impacts is it becomes a more personal experience, it becomes a much more dynamic experience and it becomes a more convenient experience for people. Just like today, I can buy something on Amazon and I can actually get a somewhat personal experience based on what Amazon knows about me - assuming I’m a regular shopper at Amazon. But maybe it becomes more personal in the sense that, now I can actually understand what other people feel about this product, or understand more about what Amazon thinks of this product.

Let me share a little story: I like to buy music. I buy tons of music on Amazon and it’s really cool and I can see music that’s recommended to me based on what I’ve bought before or based on what other people bought. That’s pretty cool but you know what? The thing thats missing with Amazon is that I’ll never get that unexpected delight. I’ll always get those things that are filtered for me based on averages. But, I can go into my Sonic Boom record shop, an independent chain in Seattle, and I can go in there and talk to the guy who is working the cash register. He can say, “well check this out!” or I can go to those little sitting stations and get that same experience. That’s the future. As socially enabled technologies and services evolve within e-commerce solutions, maybe what I can get is a more personal experience. The experience I get when I’m at Sonic Boom Records and less of what I get from collaboratively filtered results from Amazon. That very personal, tailored, unexpected delight.

That’s really interesting, especially the part about the unexpected component of it. That’s a lot of the excitement. It brings back the sense of discovery.

Yeah, exactly.

So if not feeds, then what might the audience at Practical Ecommerce, and other businesses out there in e-commerce, what might be an alternative way to provide the same kind of value to customers without using feeds.

I’m realizing as I’m talking, in a way, we’re not talking about feeds so much, but what are those elements in feeds that are really powerful? That dynamic nature, that personal nature, that social nature, whatever that thing is that you deliver customers to enhance the shopping experience. Doing what you can do to enhance all three of those in the best way you can whether it’s a feed or not, that’s really the goal that you are after.

If Ken Fry had a feed, what should we expect?

Haha, if I had a feed, it’s definitely one where worlds would be colliding. My work world, my social world and you’d be a little convoluted, but it would be a lot of fun.

Well thank you again for your time, Ken. Hopefully our listens have learned a little bit more about feeds and even more about the benefits of developing personalized, dynamic and sometimes unexpected surprises.

Looking At Top Converting Websites To Modify Your Website

Having a site that converts really well is no easy task. Ask anyone who is in the e-commerce game how hard it is to have a website where you can get it to optimal conversion levels. Conversion rates on your website is going to determine the success of your company long-term and that really starts with design, besides the marketing aspect of it all, of course.

One thing people always ask is, "How can I get my sales up? How can we increase our conversion rates?" Well...how about starting by looking at what the other big successful players are doing? How about looking at your competitors websites to see how they structure their categories, items, add to cart buttons, etc?

Remember, while you may have just started to wonder about attaining better conversion rates, these websites that have been in business for years have already been through the same process and have started working on optimizing their website for conversion rates long ago.

I wrote a blog post long ago titled, Top 10 Retailers by Conversion Rate in July 2008 which really helped me with my websites in terms of buttons, and some structure. I found the latest one titled, Top 10 Online Retailers by Conversion Rate: April 2009 which also is a great resource to look at these websites.

Start looking closely with detail at other sites and try different formats until you see some improvement in your sales.

Data reinforces that customer reviews have an impact

Data continues to show that consumers see peer reviews as an important source for making purchase decisions. Earlier this month, Nielsen released its Global Online Consumer Survey and the results showed 70 percent of consumers said they trusted customer opinions posted online, behind only recommendations from people they know from a degree-of-trust standpoint.

We recently distributed a survey to find out about small businesses attitudes toward reviews and found some very interesting results. We were curious to find out what small businesses thought about reviews and how they were approaching online conversations. One of the points that interested our team most was counter-intuitive to what some smaller retailers many think about reviews. Many businesses are scared about opening up the opportunity for reviews, thinking one negative review might kill their brand. The survey data found reviews were six times more likely to impact a business positively than negatively. Of the businesses surveyed, 24 percent say an online review has had a positive impact while only 4 percent reported a negative business impact from an online review.

The Nielsen study shows the bigger threat than a negative review is not having reviews at all. If there are no reviews, consumers are going to head to another site that does have reviews since they place such a high degree of trust in peer reviews.

Any retailer with a comprehensive review strategy will respond to negative reviews. An appropriate response to a negative review will show a prospective customer a commitment to customer service that will make them comfortable when making a purchase decision. Ultimately, as the data showed, customers love to share positive experiences and positive reviews will outweigh the negative ones.

Those who are still skeptical about reviews are missing out on a low-cost, high-return marketing opportunity. Our survey found that 31 percent of small businesses say they are not sure if an online review has impacted their business.

In an economy where reputation can make all the difference toward gaining a share of consumers limited spending, it’s in a retailer’s best interests to use these conversations that are already occurring as a way to build trust and stand out from their competitors.