Tealeaf Offers Insight to Mobile Customer Behavior

Tealeaf Offers Insight to Mobile Customer Behavior
Customer experience management (CEM) software and even basic Web site analytic software, such as Google Analytics, can tell you a lot about your desktop users, but there is an entire group of user data being left — customers who are transacting on your site with mobile devices.

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E-Commerce: Hot Products, Online Marketing Trends

This week in e-commerce news, we highlight Shop.org's recent study that shows what your competitors say they are doing to market their online stores this year, as it outlines how they're handling free shipping and so on, and even shows some are creating a presence on Facebook. Plus, SortPrice reports its lists of the most-searched for items, which reveal a few surprises.


Mobile video provides marketing potential
PayPal Opens Overseas Selling Site for Small E-Tailers

EBay, Alternative Site Holiday Resources for Sellers

EBay Alternative Watch: Alternatives and Affiliates Gear Up For The HolidaysThis week eBay alternatives get ready for holiday shoppers, while HammerTap offers a free Webinar to help eBay sellers prepare for seasonal sales. Also in the news this week: WidgetBucks launches new Santa-themed widgets and eBay says a court order requires the company to hand over Canadian PowerSeller details to Revenue Canada this week.


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PayPal Opens Overseas Selling Site for Small E-Tailers

PayPal today launched a new resource to help small businesses sell abroad — the Global Selling Guide , a site with information on the holiday customs of 17 nations and tips on a variety of topics including shipping, payments, customs and tax considerations. Editor's Picks» Sell Overseas for the Holidays with Shipwire

» Set Up Online Payment Processing in Four Steps with FormSpring» E-Biz Briefs: Selling Overseas, Digital Media Management

» International E-Commerce: Going Global Just Got Easier

» Show Me the Money: Setting Up Payment Methods

» Five PayPal Tools for Web Shop Owners

» How Do I Pay Thee? Let Me Count the Ways In a tough economy where consumers are spending less, small businesses are facing leaner profit margins. The holiday shopping season is often a bright spot, but industry groups such as The National Retail Federation, for example, are forecasting the slowest holiday sales in the U.S. since 2002.

Eddie Davis, senior director of SMB Channel Sales at PayPal, said that small online business owners are going to need to find new ways to make up for the shortfall in revenues. "When all indicators point to the weakest holiday season in six years, that is scary data for a retailer to face," he said. "That revenue doesn't have to be completely lost however; small businesses simply need to look elsewhere to make up portions of that revenue loss."

While the United States is facing a downtrend, other countries, such as China, Europe and Germany are not. Davis said that indicators show that in these countries, e-commerce and online shopping is still a growing trend, and now is the time for domestic businesses to capitalize on the global market.

Davis said merchants can fuel their own growth by tapping into PayPal's 165 million accounts in 190 markets around the world. PayPal's own data suggests that by simply adding PayPal payment processing to a Web store, many merchants see an average sales increase of 14 percent.

"Given the relatively weak U.S. dollar against many foreign currencies, now is the time to cater to a set of international customers that have increased spending power," said Davis. "But, selling globally has its challenges. While PayPal allows you to transact in 19 different currencies, there are many other aspects of international trade that merchants should be aware of." 

To this end, PayPal's new Global Selling site is aimed at helping small online business owners get information on selling abroad for this holiday season and in the future. The new site provides some very specific details on consumer payment preferences and shopping traditions for 17 different countries.

Web shop owners can use the Global Selling site to find out how to ship internationally to each country, plus they can read about country-specific customs, restricted items and duty and tax considerations. The site also provides a list of recommended shipping carriers for each country.

In addition to the information provided on the new site, Davis also offered these five tips to help small businesses succeed by selling globally this holiday season: Enhance your Web site: The Internet has no boundaries, and provides an easy and cost-effective way to reach international buyers. Make your site more appealing to foreign customers by: Highlighting your willingness to accept international orders.
Enabling multi-language functionality on your Web site.
Listing the price of your products in local currencies.
Offering clear information about shipping costs, return policies and the countries you serve. Do your homework: There is much to know when selling abroad. Make sure you understand international customs, taxes and regulations. Resources are available online to help businesses get informed: The U.S. Commerce Department provides market research, counseling and can also facilitate introductions to qualified buyers and distributors.
The World Bank's Doing Business project ranks economies on their ease of doing business.

Cater to local tastes: McDonald's serves millions of hamburgers in restaurants all around the world. But it also serves specialty items including the Ayam Goreng McD (regular or spicy) in Malaysia. Understanding the tastes, preferences and customs of the markets in which you are looking to sell is essential to the success of any business.

Know the rules when shipping: Claiming ignorance of the laws just won't cut it when it comes to shipping globally. Shipping can be complicated and making mistakes when filling out customs forms can be expensive and can cause great frustration with overseas buyers. However, many global shipping companies offer resources to help a small business ship outside the U.S. Check out the large shipping providers in the U.S. and learn about their international options. Visit the international hubs of the top shippers (UPS, FedEx, DHL, USPS) for more information.

Make payments fast and safe: Dealing with multiple payment forms, foreign currencies and exchange rates can be confusing. Ensuring you get paid fast is especially important when doing business in a global marketplace. In addition, many international buyers may not have visited your Web site before and may be less likely to trust you with their credit card number or other payment data. Services such as PayPal help your business manage global payments and allow buyers to pay quickly and securely with confidence that their personal financial data is protected.

Vangie Beal is a seasoned online marketplace seller, frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com and avid online bargain hunter. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com.


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Google's Site Search Gets On-Demand Indexing

In a further bid to attract and maintain customers of its business search service, Google announced a free upgrade to its Site Search offering today that it said would help customers keep their search results fresher and more useful. Google Site Search, or GSS, is the hosted, or cloud-based version, of the Internet giant's search engine. Its latest addition, which goes live today, is an "Index Now" button that enables customers to get their search results re-indexed, so that searchers retrieve the freshest results. "Our customers want to make sure their site visitors are getting the most up-to-date results," Nitin Mangtani, Google's lead product manager for enterprise search, told InternetNews.com. "Index Now is like a turbo button or FastPass to their new pages," Mangtani added, referring to the line-bypassing ticket offered by Disney theme parks. Google will continue to automatically re-index results at certain intervals, but the new feature is designed to give customers the ability add new site content and ensure that it appears to searchers in a more timely fashion. The effort comes as a move to improve the effectiveness of Google's business offerings, which seek to parlay the company's strengths in public Internet search into services and appliances geared toward small businesses and enterprises. In addition to GSS, Google offers the Google Search Appliance, an on-premises hardware appliance designed for companies, but is a distinct service. IDC search analyst Sue Feldman said Google needs to continue working on ways to improve its enterprise search products, because what works on the consumer Web — where search results' relevancy is largely determined through analyzing pages' linking patterns — isn't always as effective in more narrowly defined venues. "The problem with link analysis inside one specific Web site is that it doesn't always single out the most important thing, because it doesn't have enough to go on and compare it to," Feldman said. Making results generated from GSS more useful is Google's key aim in introducing of Index Now, the company said. Using the on-demand indexing feature, Google said new pages would become searchable within hours and should take no longer than a day, at most, to appear within a site's search results. Beta customers who have already put Index Now to use include Adobe, which used it for the launch of its Creative 4 Suite launch, the Con Edison utility and stock trading site Zecco.com. "At Zecco.com, people are looking for lots of different kinds of information — a stock quote for a specific company, a discussion held by different members of our community, or help with setting up their account," said Tony Leach, senior product manager for Zecco, in a statement. "With Google Site Search, we can give our users a single search tool to access all the information on our site." Mangtani also made a point of noting that the new indexing control is designed only for the sites run by GSS customers — not larger search through Google.com. "It's specific to Google Site Search and doesn't affect how Google.com indexes sites," he said. So, for example, when Zecco.com re-indexes its site, that doesn't affect what a consumer might find using Google in a search for stock trading. Pricing for GSS remains unchanged, starting at $100 per year for up to 5,000 Web pages. As a result, IDC's Feldman said she thinks GSS has a "pretty affordable" starting price and should be especially attractive to smaller site owners who lack an IT department. "It's a good thing Google is offering something like this for them," she said. This article by David Needle appears courtesy of InternetNews.com.


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Tips and Tools for Thanksgiving-Themed E-Store Decor

Dress Your Site for Thanksgiving With our Tips and Tools

While cornstalks, turkeys and pilgrims set a festive decor for millions of homes and brick-and-mortar businesses across America, you may be wondering how to bring the feel of Thanksgiving to your online store.


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Five Timely Tips for Holiday E-Mail Marketing

Now that Halloween is over and November is underway, it's time to reassess — and adjust — your holiday e-mail marketing plans.


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eBay Glitches to Cause Grinchy Holiday Selling Season?

EBay's new 30-day fixed-price listing format is throwing a wrench in tools used to conduct research on eBay sales.

Ina Steiner

EBay recently stopped offering its own eBay Marketplace Research, a service it launched in late 2005 to help sellers conduct keyword and competitive research to help them improve sales. Instead, visitors to the eBay Marketplace Research page are presented with a service called Marketplace Research by Terapeak.

Terapeak is an eBay Certified Provider and its service allows sellers to determine average selling prices and best performing keywords and categories for their listings. But recent changes at eBay hamper users from getting timely data for fixed-price listings. Because eBay provides Terapeak data only for listings that have ended, sales made in the new 30-day fixed-price format are not counted in the data until the listing closes.

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Eight Free Tools for Tuning Up Online Ad Campaigns

Managing a pay-per-click ad campaign isn't easy — it takes constant attention. And some days you're just not inspired to think of hundreds of variations of a keyword or check their density on a page, or to research the competition or to format everything for maximum performance. To help, we offer the following free tools to assist you in your online advertising efforts and help you boost visits to your Web shop.


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Doing Business on eBay Alternative for a Buck a Month

eBay Alternative: The SOC Exchange Offers Unlimited Selling for a Buck a Month
The SOC Exchange, an online marketplace community created by Australian entrepreneur Franco Lagudi, officially launched in the U.S. last June. Setting itself apart from many of the eBay alternatives available to sellers, the SOC Exchange charges sellers just one dollar a month or a $10 per year to sell, with no other fees.


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Incorporating Site Optimization into Your Redesign

Despite the recent, sharp downtown in the economy, many experts say now is not the time to cut back on search engine marketing (SEM) and optimization (SEO). In fact, with online shoppers saying they plan on cutting back on spending this holiday season, now may be the perfect time for you to optimize your site to attract every prospective customer you can — and keep your current customers coming back for more. Best of all, optimizing your site, giving it a pre-holiday facelift, needn't be expensive or time consuming. And the return on your investment could (and should) more than offset the cost.

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