BlogSmall business, Marketing, Promotion and Web Design

These are the features ranked according to the number of top 500 retailers that are using them (as per Internet Retailer Magazine):

1. keyword search
2. daily/seasonal specials
3. enlarged product view
4. what’s new
5. affiliate program
6. advanced search
7. online gift certificates
8. rich media
9. outlet center
10. email a friend
11. coupons/rebates
12. top sellers
13. site personalization
14. alternative payments
15. store locator
16. wish list
17. customer reviews
18. catalog quick order
19. mapping
20. product customization

Interesting enough as well that most consumers (according to Forrester) are willing to decline paying for “flare”:

Fewer consumers are willing to pay for extras such as gift wrapping, or overnight delivery.
(26% of respondents said they would pay for expedited delivery prior to the holiday season, down from 45% who said they would do so in 2006.)

Generally, what this means is that consumers want to get their purchase faster, easier and with less extras then before. For most of the prospective clients that call us, top five requests for web site are:

1. Large pictures/ability for visitor to enlarge product image
2. Search engine optimization/marketing
3. Ability to quickly add and remove inventory items
4. Ability to post featured/for sale items
5. Ability to use various discount codes to track promotions

It is obvious that trends for small and large businesses are almost the same. The slight difference is attributed to overall approach to ways of doing business for small business owners and large retailers.

Popularity: 30%

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Short and comprehensive guide - how to create a link bait on your site. Thanks to members of SitePoint and DigitalPoint forums this all have been gathered.

1. Put together a list of web resources (forums, blogs) that are relevant to your topic
2. Put together a good post or article or eBook or anything of the real value. Give it out for free from your resource
3. Write a brief about your value post. Call it a press-release and submit it to proper catalogs (they called press release web sites)
4. Contact blogs you have gathered in step one. Give them the link to your content and press release.
5. Register or open new thread on forums you gathered in step one. Provide link to the content you have created. Answer questions. Be a good forum member. Don’t forget to put a link to your content in your signature.
6. Write couple of articles about whatever you have created. Use title of your free content as anchor text. Submit these articles to article directories.
7. Stumble, Digg, Reddit, put it on del.icio.us. If it’s a video, can be shown on video or can be featured in video - put it on YouTube. Don’t waste your time on Netscape, by the time you read this it’s probably long gone dead.
8. Guest-post on other blogs. Explain what and why you have created your content. Create buzz.
9. If you have ties via social web sites (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Jaiku, LinkedIn, etc.) promote your content there.

Most of these bullet points are very obvious to anyone who ever tried to get a decent amount of traffic to the web site. Still, not everyone manages to follow through these simple steps. In any case - this would be a good reference point.

Popularity: 32%

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• Retail Online (January 21, 2008): These are the features ranked according to the number of top 500 retailers that are using them (as per Internet Retailer Magazine): keyword search daily/seasonal specials enlarged product view what's new affiliate program advanced search online gift certificates rich media outlet center email a friend coupons/rebates top sellers site personalization alternative payments store locator wish list customer reviews catalog quick order mapping product customization Interesting enough as well that most consumers (according to Forrester) are willing [...]
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We get to deal with many leads. However, not all the leads become clients. Part of that non-converting crowd are people who choose hosted shopping cart software. The reasons why we like those people are numerous, but I am going to list just one of them.

Reason 1: Even if they didn’t accept our services, they can still spread the word. People have very different needs. One person could be happy with hosted shopping cart; another would need a full-featured web store front. So even if we suggest some third-party off-the shelf e-commerce solution - we still on good terms with our lead.

Reason 2: Even with the third-party solution customer may need unique design. This one is too obvious to complain about, so I won’t. No matter how sophisticated the solution is - people will have natural urge to tweak it to their heart’s content. While a customer is able to upload inventory from Excel file and couple of images, tweaking style sheets and design may get too complicated and boring.

Reason 3: Off-the-shelf (or hosted) e-commerce solution does have its limitations. While being useful and user-friendly your hosted solution falls short when you really need to grow. If you host plenty of pictures, sample images (or if you are electronically delivering your products, like eBooks or downloads) server load and bandwidth become issues with your hosted solution provider. You come back to people who can build a custom-fit solution for your business.

Reason 4: No matter which software you are using - there is a steep learning curve at the beginning of it. When you just starting - everything seems unusual and complicated. Once you familiarize yourself with it - you’re the king of the hill. Good thing is - when you come to someone to design and develop your custom-fit business solution - you already know what you want! We, the design and development guys, spend tremendous time determining what is it that client wants. People with experience are a great gift, like a second free customer. What could be better?

Overall, the idea of hosted shopping cart or online web page creation tool or whatever else is there is very productive for consumers, solution providers and web design guys. Consumers acquire knowledge and understanding of what they want. Solution providers acquire a stream of customers. Web design guys acquire educated customers. Everybody wins!

Popularity: 20%

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