BrandConnect: Social Media Tools for Brand Awareness

PowerReviews, a provider of customer reviews and social commerce solutions recently launched BrandConnect, a new suite of relationship-building products, designed for brand owners and merchants.

The BrandConnect tools follow on the heels of the “Community and Social Media Study” findings. The study, released by The E-Tailing Group was commissioned by PowerReviews.  Darby Williams, vice president of marketing at PowerReviews said that the research helps the company to better understand how much adoption of social media marketing has taken place in the retail industry.

Your customers’ friends can follow a link from Facebook or Twitter to read the user-review, super-imposed right on the product page.
(Click for larger image).

The study, which assessed the attitudes and actions of brands and retailers as they make their way through the world of social media, found that five out of ten social media tools have been adopted by more than 50 percent of brands and retailers, and that the Facebook Fan Page was the most popular social media platform

BrandConnect lets you Track, Analyze and Shout Out

Today, many experts believe that standard marketing and merchandising tactics are becoming outdated and more brands are looking to social media to engage consumers.

“Retail is embracing and adopting social media rather quickly, said Williams, “The problem is that in embracing social media you can’t lose control of your brand in the socialsphere.”

PowerReviews’ new BrandConnect Suite is designed to help merchants listen to what is being said about their brand in the socialsphere, and it consists of two offerings:  Listener and Megaphone.  Listener is a social monitoring and analytics tool and Megaphone is a tool that can be used to harness customers—and their followers—to quickly and effectively spread the word about the brand and the company’s products.

Listen For and Shout Out About Your Brand

BrandConnect Listener is a social monitoring and analytical tool that aggregates customer feedback to help you better market and position your brand and products. For example, if you currently market a product as a “novice” device, yet consumers are calling it an “amateur” device, you can quickly restructure your branding of the product to react to the real-time customer feedback.

Listener will also show similar results for your competitor’s products and allow you to track negative-word-of mouth feedback so you can minimize the impact on your brand.

Megaphone leverages the power of your brand’s loyal customers and their friends and followers. Since customers are more likely to purchase products they learn about through social media (65 percent according to a 2009 Powered Inc. survey), Megaphone is designed to encourage consumers to publish product reviews on social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter and blogs.

Here, when someone publishes snippets of his or her product review to Facebook, for example, it would appear on the person’s Facebook Wall and when friends click to read more, they’re taken to the actual product page with the review shown over top. This helps retailers take advantage of immediate sales by having the cart-enabled product page visible.

Social Media Adoption Will Continue to Grow

While you might think that getting word of a brand out in the socialsphere is most important, according to Darby Williams, the Community and Social Media Study found that being able to track and analyze social media data was just as important to merchants.

The study found that one of the biggest concerns merchants had about social media trends was people’s ability to trash their products in front of a large audience.  Tools like BrandConnect can ultimately help you see and understand how consumers talk about your brand, and you can engage those customers and build brand loyalty within different online social communities.

The study results also showed that the Facebook Fan Page is the most popular social media platform with an adoption rate of 86 percent among brands and merchants. Other top social media tools include Twitter (65 percent), Customer Reviews (55 percent), Blogs (55 percent) and Viral Videos (50 percent).

The study also indicated that over the next 12 months the highest growth in social media adoption is expected to occur in Facebook Connect, Social Listening tools, Customer Reviews and also Product Suggestions.

Pricing and Availability

The BrandConnect Suit is currently available to brand managers and owners.  While no public pricing rate card is available, merchants can request a demo on the PowerReviews Web site.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

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Badcustomer.com Helps E-tailers Avoid Chargebacks

Say the word “chargeback” in a room full of Web shop owners, and you'll hear the proverbial pin drop. Chargebacks—the return of funds to a customer through the issuing bank— are a headache for e-tailers.

Chargebacks should be a consumer's last line of defense against merchants, or they should be used to reverse unauthorized payments if fraud or identity theft occurs.  Unfortunately, some consumers use chargebacks as their first line of defense and initiate one before going through an e-tailer’s customer service. Also, a consumer can commit chargeback fraud by initiating a chargeback based on false claims.

For dishonest and unscrupulous e-tailers we don’t offer sympathy—but honest merchants can lose both the transaction funds and the goods or services being sold.  You need to invest time and money into disputing chargebacks, and you might have to pay a fee to your merchant account provider, even if the bank finds in your favor.  It can take months to clear a chargeback claim.

Brien Heideman, president of Badcustomer.com believes that smaller merchants and Web shop owners are often hit the hardest as a fraudulent chargeback can damage their reputation. If you have a new merchant account, for example, you could be in jeopardy of losing that account with just one or two chargebacks.  

Dealing With Negative Customers

Many e-tailers maintain their own database of negative customers. If a customer has previously issued a chargeback against you, then you might already have a system in place to prevent them from making another purchase on your site.

A new online service, called Badcustomer aims to help e-tailers, and anyone who handles Card Not Present (CNP) transactions, by offering a much larger database of bad customers to query before a sale is processed on their site.

 “When retailers partner with Badcustomer.com, they upload their negative customer data and in return they can query our entire database of chargeback customers,” Heideman said. “The benefit for retailers is that they have a much larger Internet blacklist database to query.”

How the service works is simple. When a customer with a negative chargeback history attempts to checkout on your site, while the credit card is being processed, Badcustomer’s database is pinged. If no bad customer information matches the person trying to check-out, then the transaction goes through.

 If, however, the ping results in a positive match, then the customer would be directed to Badcustomer.com where they can obtain information about chargebacks, learn why they cannot make a purchase from your site, and they can contact Badcustomer to get assistance.

Honest consumers who have submitted legitimate chargebacks in the past can be removed from the database after speaking with BadCustomer support. The company also offers advice to consumers on how to deal with e-tailers when they have a problem.

According to Heideman, the service is quite customizable so merchants can choose how much matching customer data they require before refusing a transaction.

“Retailers can choose to refuse a transaction based on a number of queries. You can, for example query Badcustomer just for a matching name and e-mail address, or based on a matching name, address, state and credit card number,” said Heideman. “The decision-making is left up to the retailers. We simply flag customers with known chargeback histories, and the retailers decide if they want to do business with that consumer or not.”

Share My Customer Data?

At a time when e-tailers are concerned with maintaining customer data integrity and meeting PCI regulations, the thought of sharing customer data may seem risky. 

According to Heideman, Badcustomer meets and exceeds current PCI DSS Level 2 compliance regulations; however, since the company also houses millions of records of sensitive data from numerous third parties, the company is voluntarily creating the processes, practices and documentation necessary to be certified at PCI DSS Level 1.

"We've already undergone a review with a certified QSA consultancy, but for us the implementation of the PCI standards has been easy as it has been an ongoing process since we launched our service,” said Heideman.  “However the 12-part PCI documentation process is taking considerably longer to complete.”

It is also important to note that while customer data is shared, no single retailer or person—not even Badcustomer's own IT staff—is able to view the specific information. According to the company, the database only pings a response when data is matched during a query; you cannot view a file or see any details.

Badcustomer doesn't store any credit card expiration dates and security codes. For any other stored sensitive data, Badcustomer uses AES 256 bit double-key encryption, with keys stored separately and rotated every 30 days. These are only a few of the security measures being used by the company to protect sensitive data.

Heideman said that security is a top priority for the company, and a full security measure disclosure is available to retailers interested in partnering with Badcustomer.com. 

The Badcustomer database and redirection services are free to any retailer who also shares their customer chargeback blacklist.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

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CS-Cart: The Next Wave of Shopping Carts

Introducing CS-Cart

For a long time, the shopping cart industry has been dominated by carts that have been around for years. Zen Cart, osCommerce, X-Cart and the like have had huge market share since the early days of e-commerce.

While CS-Cart lacks the popularity of these old solutions, it had the luxury of learning from their mistakes. With a more mature second version now available, it’s a serious contender for anyone in the market for a cheap, flexible shopping cart.

Key Features

CS-Cart is designed for easy deployment – in our tests, setup and install was a breeze. Initial configuration was mainly straight forward, although a few settings were tricky to find. But of course you only need to do this once.

A one-page checkout, tasteful use of AJAX, and sophisticated built-in features such as a targeted newsletter system puts CS-Cart a cut above the average cart. While you can find these features in competitive products, they usually involve installing modules, fiddly configuration, and visits to support forums. CS-Cart’s integrated solution saves hours of work, especially for non-programmers, allowing you to focus on your business rather than the technology.

Customization mode makes it easy to edit template files.
(Click for larger image).Customizing for Your Shop

CS-Cart offers plenty of customization features to ensure it will meet the need of your shop. Basics such as tax and shipping are covered well. More impressive is the product configuration which includes sophisticated features such as creating product variations, quantity discounts, and creating bundles to sell multiple products in a package.

Creating Your Look

CS-Cart comes with a selection of professional, although somewhat conservative, skins. Changing the page layout -- for example, adding a best sellers list -- is easy and needs no programming skills. It’s just drag and drop.

Editing the skins is a pleasure for anyone with basic HTML, CSS and PHP skills. Many competitive products force you to hunt to find the right file to edit. CS-Cart simplifies this with its “Customization mode” that lets you find the right template visually, and edit it immediately.

Looking Deeper

There are a few strange default features, such as a CAPTCHA, in the checkout. While you can turn off the feature, the less experienced shop owner is likely to leave it on and have sales suffer as a result.

On the other hand, there are areas in which the product is very sophisticated. For example, when a product appears in multiple categories the breadcrumb shows the correct category, but has the same URL in all cases, which avoids SEO duplicate content issues – a Google killer common to many carts.

Thoughtful touches like the “Add to Cart” button being AJAX-enabled makes the customer experience smoother.

Conclusion

CS-Cart customers are almost universally passionate about the product, which speaks volumes about the quality of the software. Problems can be dealt with quickly via a comprehensive knowledge base, a helpful and active user forum and paid support. A growing partner network is available for more complex customizations.

It’s certain that in coming years this increasingly popular product will grow to be a dominant player in the shopping cart industry.

Mark Baartse is founder of Shopping-Cart-Reviews.com , the leading shopping cart information site. He lives in Sydney, Australia where he works on e-commerce sites, helping to maximize their profitability. You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/markbaa.

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Five E-mail Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Not paying enough attention to your e-mail marketing effort can lose you customers and compromise selling opportunities. While e-mail marketing is a great way to stay in contact with your customers, if handled badly it also has the power to ruin the relationship. You’ll respect your customers and get the most out of your e-mail marketing efforts by avoiding these five critical mistakes:

Every e-mail mailing should contain an opt-out link to comply with the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act 2003.
(Click for larger image).1. No Opt-out Clause

The U.S. CAN-SPAM Act 2003 requires that your commercial e-mails contain an unsubscribe link making it easy for a list member to unsubscribe from your e-mails. It also makes good business sense.

To avoid your e-mail being perceived as spam, make sure that every outgoing e-mail contains an opt-out link that the recipient can click to unsubscribe from the list. Make sure that the link works and make sure that the system is in place for managing the process effectively. Respecting your list members by doing this is a way of saying that you care about your business and your relationship with your customers.

2. Make Subscribing Too Difficult

Don't just make it easy to unsubscribe - make it easy to subscribe, too. If you don’t absolutely need certain information from subscribers, then don't ask for it.  I have bypassed signing up for many an e-mail list because it required me to provide information I’m not comfortable providing just for the privilege of receiving a marketing e-mail, and I’m not alone.

You need to find a balance between the information that you ask subscribers to provide (knowing that the more that you ask for, the less likely it is that they will sign up) with your desire to build a quality list that not only helps you market your business but also, over time, develops into a valuable business asset.

Be sure to deliver whatever you promise in terms of e-mail frequency. Here, Barking Cat Farms offers a weekly update.
(Click for larger image).3. E-mail Too Much or Not Enough

This is a Catch 22 problem. If you e-mail too often you run the risk of being perceived as a nuisance by your subscribers, and people may unsubscribe because there’s simply too much e-mail from you.

On the other hand, if you do not e-mail your subscribers often enough there’s a chance that they will forget that they subscribed to the list, and you may find yourself fielding questions as to why you’re sending them e-mails.

Whatever you do in terms of frequency of e-mailing always honor any statement that you made to the person when they signed up for your list. If you promised monthly e-mails then you should send out e-mails each month, not every two weeks.

If you’re going to increase the frequency of your e-mails, create a second list for new signups and only e-mail at the new frequency to the new list participants. Offer existing subscribers a means to move to the new lists but don't change how you e-mail them without their permission to do so.

4. No Feedback

If you don’t know what your list generates in the way of business, then you really have no way of knowing if your e-mails are a total waste of your time – for both you and your subscribers.

Good e-mail lists have tracking built into them so that you can analyze the response to your e-mail messages. At a minimum you should know how many people received your e-mail, how many e-mails bounced back, how many were actually opened and which links were clicked and how often.

Analyzing this information lets you target your e-mails better in future. For example, if no one clicks on a particular link, perhaps that link is in the wrong place in the e-mail or perhaps it just isn't interesting enough. Consider moving the content elsewhere or rewording the link and see if that gives better results. Analyzing your e-mail success helps you create e-mails that are more likely to sell.

E-mail newsletters with mix of sales and information reap the best results. Anima Designs provides useful information on toy cameras for its artistic audience.
(Click for larger image).5. No Added Value

If you’re reading this article, it’s a fair bet that you have an e-commerce site. But that doesn’t mean that all your efforts should be toward selling to your customer in a direct way. Your e-mail newsletter should be informative as well as a selling vehicle. Use your e-mails to inform your customers about your products, how to use them and how to maximize their use as well as to advise customers about special offers or new products.

An e-mail newsletter that combines information and a sales pitch is more likely to be opened and read on a regular basis than one that contains only the sales pitch.

Remember too that you don’t have to provide all the content in your e-mail message. You can include a few descriptive sentences and then place the rest of the article or story on your Web site or blog and link to that. This will help you get feedback as to how attractive these informative elements are to your readership as you can track who clicks the links.

Everyone who signed up to receive your e-mail newsletter has made a commitment to you and your business. They’ve said they want to receive information from you, and they trust you to provide it to them the way you said you would when they signed up.

Make sure that you honor the agreement. Provide your list subscribers with regular, informative content as well as offers that are relevant to them. Make sure to respect the relationship you have with your customers, and use your e-mail list to build a quality, long-term relationship with your customers.

Helen Bradley is a respected international journalist writing regularly for small business and computer publications in the USA, Canada, South Africa, UK and Australia. You can learn more about her at her Web site, HelenBradley.com

eWay Unites E-mail and Social Marketing in Single PlatformAmerican advertisers begin to come out of shells

eWay Unites E-mail and Social Marketing in Single Platform

Online marketing can be an exhaustive part of running an e-commerce business, but with a high ROI—$57.25 for every dollar spent according to the Direct Marketing Association— it makes sense to do it.

When it comes to marketing, one of the biggest challenges site owners face is figuring out which engagement tools to use. Many platforms offer just e-mail marketing tools, leaving out the necessary tools to help you better engage customers with community building and social media marketing. For many, it means investing in multiple products—often from different vendors —to cover all aspects of online marketing.

Connecticut-based eWay Direct Inc., a provider of e-mail marketing tools and services, hopes to ease the pain of online marketing for e-commerce businesses.

The company recently launched its new Direct Connect 4.0 platform providing Web-based businesses with access to a more complete set of services and tools for online marketing, including e-mail marketing, Web site re-engagement and social media tools—all from within a single platform.

EWay Direct’s Chief Revenue Officer, Marty Donner, believes that an all-in-one solution is important for today’s busy Web-based business owners.

“When all the tools are built in to a single platform it saves business owners time as it carries fewer IT and integration requirements,” he said. “Plus you also benefit from not having to gather customer data from multiple sources.”

Direct Connect 4.0: What’s Inside

eWay’s Direct Connect 4.0 platform offers  a number of integrated Internet-based applications to create a single online-marketing platform for Web-based businesses.

The e-mail marketing solution offers industry-standard features such as A/B split testing, dynamic list creation, auto-responders and other features you need to deliver your marketing campaigns.  The platform also includes several unique tools for auditing inbox delivery and priority e-mail handling for your best subscribers.

When it comes to e-mail marketing, your current customer's friends are really your next best customers. With this in mind, one of the new features in the suite, FriendsFirst, can help you control the messages your subscribers forward to friends.

Often e-mail forwarding can cause broken images and links in the message, but FriendsFirst allows for perfect delivery of forwarded messages, plus you can track open rates and collect data from any e-mail forwarded on by your subscribers.

“Most business find open rates higher on forwarded messages simply because it is a friend and not the brand sending the message.” said Donner, “This is why it is so important to control and track e-mail forwards and also to ensure that any forwarded messages remain intact with no broken images or links.”

Web site re-engagement is another powerful tool in the Direct Connect 4.0 platform.  When a subscriber clicks an e-mail link to your site, and browses without making a purchase, for example, the re-engagement tool will send additional information to the subscriber based on what was of interest to him or her.

Direct Connect 4.0 also lets Web businesses leverage social media in branded and controlled communities. According to Donner, using social media tools can help you build better relationships with your customers, increase sales and decrease acquisition costs. The social media tools within the platform include branded message boards, feedback collection, and also private social networks so you can offer customers exclusive content and access to your brand and promotions.

Pricing and Availability

Direct Connect 4.0 is available now, and includes a full suite of tools for e-mail marketing, audited inbox delivery, priority e-mail, widgets, social media, Web site re-engagement, search marketing and Friends First.  While eWayDirect does not have a public rate card, pricing for Direct Connect 4.0 is based on the number of messages deployed per month on a CPM-basis, with volume discounts offered.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

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Seller Tools: EBay Compatible Shopping Carts

When you sell products on your own Web site, in addition to listing on eBay, you have something important to consider: shopping carts and how to integrate customer data from eBay sales with data from your non-eBay storefront or Web shop. 

One easy and cost-effective way to handle this problem is to use a secure, EBay Compatible shopping cart. EBay-compatible carts will track and manage all your orders, no matter which site generates the sale. 

EBay-compatible carts can be used as a stand-alone cart on your own site, but with eBay integration, you can direct eBay customers to use it instead of eBay’s own checkout simply by providing the checkout buttons in e-mails to eBay customers after they make a purchase.

Here are three eBay compatible shopping carts you can consider, each with its own options, features and pricing.

E-Commerce Express

Mercantec's entry-level shopping cart is designed for online sellers who want to sell in a number of places; like blogs, their own storefront, and eBay. When you use E-Commerce Express, you can generate your own "instant" storefront or cut-and-paste cart button code to existing product pages on your own site.

 E-Commerce Express is best-suited to e-tailers with fewer than 1,000 products. The cart focuses on simplicity and ease o f use, but it also supports a large number of standard features such as sales tax calculations and coupons.

E-Commerce Express only supports eBay Fixed Price listings and not Auction-Style Listings.  You can also use E-Commerce Express to manage the checkout process using any of the payment options that you've set-up in your account settings. You simply need to connect your eBay account to E-Commerce Express, create the eBay listing, and then generate a "Buy Now" button that you e-mail to your eBay buyers to complete the purchase.

E-Commerce Express is free to use if you connect it with your PayPal or Google Checkout accounts for check-out.  You’ll pay fees if you want access to other, more professional services, such as offering customers additional payment and checkout services.

SecureNetShop

SecureNetShop offers a hosted Web cart with lots of features.  Once you register on the site, you can log in and use the Web interface to configure your shopping cart. You also use the same Web-based administration dashboard to manage your cart settings, orders, reports and other customer information.

This cart supports many of the common cart functions, such as automated shipping and tax calculations, order tracking, inventory management and customizable auto responders—to name but a few.

SecureNetShop also supports a number of payment gateways including PayPal, Google Checkout, Authorize.Net, Moneris and others. SecureNetShop is also an eBay compatible Application, so you can use the cart to process eBay sales and payments.

SecureNetShop costs $29.95 on a monthly subscription plan or $229 for an annual service plan.  Some features, such as real-time shipping rates and support for digital goods, cost extra. SecureNetShop offers a free 15-day trial and for the month of September 2009, four add-on services (Real-time Shipping Rates, Order Status Manager, unlimited tech support, and digital goods delivery) are “free for life” with a paid subscription.

DesignCart

DesignCart is a full-featured online shopping cart. The software lets you sell an unlimited number of products on your own Web site, and you can easily create "Add to Cart" buttons that you copy and paste into product pages. Checkout pages (the shopping cart order form) can be customized with your own colors and logo. This cart also links back to the last page where your customer was shopping and generates a unique invoice number for each order.

Other important features include automatic calculations for shipping, handling and sales tax, plus shipping calculators for FedEx, UPS and the U.S. Postal Service. It supports digital coupons, gift certificates, recurring billing, and more than 20 payment gateways including Authorize.Net, VeriSign and others.

If you also use eBay, DesignCart is eBay Compatible so you can use the cart to list and complete payment for your eBay auctions and fixed-price listings. When someone wins an item you have on eBay they will be sent the checkout button via e-mail. When they check-out, DesignCart updates the eBay listing status automatically.

DesignCart costs $25 for a one-time set-up fee and then $18 per month. Discounts are given on quarter, semi-annual and annual subscriptions. The Pro version, which includes extra features and options, costs an additional $10 per month (the set-up fee is waived for Pro subscriptions). DesignCart offers a fully-functional 14-day free trial.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

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eBay Integrates Outright Bookkeeping Solution

One of the most difficult challenges most individual and small sellers on eBay face is managing the bookkeeping tasks that go with managing an online selling business—and many hobby sellers may not even consider eBay selling as a business at all.

The integrated Outright app gives eBay sellers immediate access to profit/loss statements.
(Click for larger image).

Still, even if you sell as a hobby or earn only the equivalent of a part-time job, if you sell on eBay you need to remember that you are considered self-employed or an individual business owner, and your end-of-year taxes need to include any eBay income.

Unfortunately, many small sellers just want to sell, and their eBay business bookkeeping is often a hurried and jumbled mess when tax time comes—if it is done at all.

Outright Makes Bookkeeping Easy for Sellers

EBay has integrated a new application—called Outright—in its suite of Selling Manager Applications.  Outright is a completely free and simple online bookkeeping solution designed to help small- and self-employed business owners.

While Outright offers free accounting services to individuals who manage small and home-based businesses, the eBay integration of the suite allows sellers  who subscribe to eBay’s Selling Manager or Selling Manager Pro to access Outright bookkeeping directly from their "My eBay” Selling manager dashboard.

Kevin Reeth, Outright CEO, believes that when it comes to accounting and booking, most people who work for themselves find it burdensome.  “It isn’t so much a case of sellers not wanting to do their taxes right, “he said, “But rather they just don’t understand how it works and what they need to do.”

Outright offers a way for these small individual business owners, and now eBay sellers, to get organized and to get their taxes done right and on time.

Once you connect to the Outright application, the app will automatically grab the last 30-days of your sales history and then maintain all data going forward. Taking in to account expenses like shipping costs and any eBay or PayPal fees, Outright conveniently organizes and categorizes the data so that sellers can see their actual profit and loss statement.

The Outright app also makes it easy to incorporate data that isn’t obtained automatically via its eBay history. For example, you can include expenses, such as the cost of the items you sell and your other home-office business expenses.  The application provides an estimate of the taxes you need to pay and also reminders for when you need to pay it.

You can use the integrated Outright app to see estimated taxes owing for the current year based on your eBay activity.
(Click for larger image).Outright Security and Privacy

When it comes to hosted apps, especially applications that monitor and track your personal data, security is a big issue.

According to Reeth, the company has invested heavily in security. Not only do you need to log in to eBay to access the application, but Outright secures all of the data that you provide when using the application using SSL encryption.

Outright stores the last 30-days of your eBay history and builds an ongoing history with no limits or cut-offs. For as long as you keep your account open, your business information will be available to you. Best of all, it’s free to use with no limitations. The company backs up all data every hour, so even in the worst-case scenario your eBay business information would only ever be one hour behind.

Currently, Outright is designed for the U.S. tax system; however people in other countries can still use of some of the tool’s features, such as profit/loss statements.

Small businesses and individual that do not use eBay as a main source of income can access Outright’s free bookkeeping service by visiting Outright.com and registering for an account.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

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eBay Search Upgrade to Impact Optional Listing Features

EBay Announces Testing Phase for New Search Upgrades

On October first eBay will roll-out previously announced changes to its search engine. As a result, several eBay listing features will be retired. According to auction giant, some features simply need to be discontinued to "emphasize the most relevant results in eBay search."

The doomed optional listing features—upgrades  that sellers may choose to pay to use when listing an item for sale—include Featured Plus, Border , Highlight , Gift services , ProPack and Homepage Featured .

EBay is now testing the search upgrade before the official roll-out in October. This month, approximately 20 percent of buyer traffic will view the new upgraded search so the optional features will be turned off as a part of this testing period.

According to Director of Global Search, Gene Cook, sellers who have purchased these optional listing features during the September test phase will receive credit for 20 percent of the feature fees paid—prorated for the number of days these listings overlap with testing.

When the features are officially retired in October, sellers who have purchased them for live listings will see them removed from their listing and will receive credit.

Also, after the October deadline, Featured First (the optional upgrade that increases your chances of a listing appearing on Featured Items’ first page of search results) will only be available to Top-rated sellers. If buyers sort their search results using anything other than Best Match, Featured First will not be displayed.

Other listing upgrade changes will also affect sellers who purchase Featured First or Bold along with International Site Visibility. In this scenario, the listing features will only be displayed on the site of purchase to give domestic listings the most visibility.

To help sellers adjust to eBay’s major Fall 2009 platform changes, including listing features and search engine result placement, the company offers a Best Practices Guide.

General Motors Extends its eBay Motors Promotion

According to a statement released by General Motors (GM), its "Click-and-Buy" promotion offered through eBay Motors has shown signs of early success.

The program, which launched on August 13th, has logged more than 1.4 million searches of GM inventory, as shoppers visited virtual showroom sites through the end of August, and now GM plans to extend the promotion through the end of September. 

In its announcement, GM said that nearly 4,000 new car buyers entered into negotiations online, over the phone and in person as a result of this promotion—however the company has not released the number of completed sales that were driven by the Click-and-Buy program.  

PayPal Ups Fees on Personal Accounts, Launches Student Accounts

Last month, PayPal quietly introduced new fees on its Personal PayPal account. Previously, people using this type of PayPal account were not charged anything to receive any payment, so long as the sender paid using funds in his or her PayPal account and not credit cards or bank account transfers.

Sending "personal" money (e.g. Gift) to family and friends is still free, but now, any transfer marked as a payment for goods or service is charged a fee of up to 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per transaction to receive the payment.

In other PayPal news, the company has introduced a new account type for students. The Student Account is designed for teens who want to make purchases online. Parents can open up to four PayPal sub-accounts for each of their teenagers and can transfer money to these accounts on either a one-time or recurring basis.   

With this new account type, the parent who opens the account can turn spending on or off, set approval for spending and also receive text or e-mail notifications on account usage and balance.

The Student Account also offers a student card that can be used at ATMs. PayPal charges a one dollar ATM fee (in addition to any fees charged by the ATM operator) and a three dollar fee for bank withdrawals requiring a signature.  The Student Account fees can be found here.

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

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eBiz Profile: PetPlace.com Hits $1M in One Year

When you think of e-commerce sites and what you need to be successful, many people think of Amazon- style Web sites with coupon codes; free shipping deals and more products than a single consumer could ever browse in a single day.

While many retail sites use a number of the popular e-commerce tools to increase sales, like digital coupons, and Google SEO; one company is finding success by using consumer-focused content and direct digital marketing as the driving force behind turning a profit.

The PetPlace.com site has a number of opt-in opportunities for capturing e-mail addresses to grow its subscriber list.
(Click for larger image).A History Embedded in Content

Founded in 1999, PetPlace.com is one of the top-ten online pet Web sites (according to Nielsen NetRatings). The site offers a vast library of pet-focused articles and medical expertise from 85 veterinary contributors.

According to the company’s President, Diego Saenz, when the site first launched, Pet Place provided the content for a number of channels, including AOL and Netscape—back in the day when those were the popular content publishers.

Over the years the company’s business model changed, but throughout its 10-year history, the company maintained a firm grasp on the content-focused PetPlace.com property.

Marketing as More Than a Delivery Tool

In 2005 PetPlace.com re-launched with a much stronger advertising presence and a focus on driving profits with e-mail marketing. 

The new goal was to effectively reach the right person, at the right time, with the right marketing message. To do this, PetPlace.com invested in the ExactTarget platform, which offered new ways to interact with customers and to segment their marketing lists for better targeting.

The new marketing efforts brought forth bigger-brand advertisers, which was a big boost to PetPlace.com

Adding a Retail Aspect for Big Profits

In the third quarter of 2008 PetPlace.com began testing sales and promotions via its newsletter campaigns.  “We started testing our product promotions with a product called Perfect Litter,” recalled Saenz. “Within three e-mails we sold our entire inventory.”

The company then invested in a third-party warehouse facility and started buying product direct. It then launched PetProductAdvisor.com, an online retail site for its vet-approved products. 

Using targeted and focused ExactTarget e-mail marketing campaigns, the new e-commerce business went from zero to $1 million in online sales in less than 12 months, however the company sees the majority of its sales as a direct result of successful e-mail marketing.

Keys to Conversions and Profitability

According to Saenz, PetPlace aims for campaigns that are a fifty-fifty split between knowledge and e-commerce.  The company cites its use of highly effective landing pages as a key element to conversion.  “In the newsletter we sell the problem”, said Saenz. “Then our targeted landing page sells the solution.”

An example might be an e-mail discussing “How to bathe a dog in less than five minutes.” Consumers can click-through to a special landing page with compelling sales copy and a video tutorial of a bath product being used. The landing page also includes the cart function so shoppers can purchase immediately instead of being redirected to the main PetProductAdvisor.com retail site.

How Many E-mails Does it Take to Reach 1M in Sales?

The simple answer is 10 million e-mails per month over a 12-month period.

But the answer really isn’t quite that simple because you can’t just spam a large subscriber list with any old e-mail newsletter and hope for the same success. To be successful, Saenz said that you must segment your lists, and do your A/B testing. “Then,” he added, “you have to target the right people with the right message at the right time.”

The company uses data from Google Analytics, combined with a customer’s identified type of pet, and then uses Exact Target’s Enterprise Edition automation tools to select the best content and product offers. The e-mail newsletter that a subscriber receives is based on his or her activity on the site, recent clicks in e-mails and previously identified interests. 

The company can measure engagement, consumer behavior and can also segment their subscriber list into any number of smaller, focused lists. The lists are monitored daily for things like open rates, and link analysis is used to determine the best placement for landing page links in the e-mail. 

The company also uses these tools for price testing. For example, one landing page may have a price of $29.99 and another set to a $39.99 price point. Based on consumer responses to these landing pages, Petplace.com is able to launch new products in the Web store at exactly the right price to maximize profits.

Petplace.com has a high e-mail conversion, mainly because the e-mails sent to subscribers are relevant and received by the consumer at the time they are looking for that specific information. Since the e-mail campaigns are so highly targeted, Saenz says the company also has a low unsubscribe rate.

Going forward, the company plans to do more cross-promotion between its PetPlace.com and PetProductAdvisor.com sites.  Currently the company is also investing in social media.  Dr. Jon, the main veterinary voice behind the professional advice on the site, uses Twitter to answer questions and communicate with pet-owners.  

Vital StatisticsName:PetPlace.com, PetProductAdvisor.comFounded:1999Sales/Revenues:Not disclosedKey E-com Tools:Google Analytics, ExactTarget EnterpriseNumber of employees:Ten

Vangie Beal is a veteran online seller and frequent contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com. She is also managing editor of Webopedia.com. You can tweet with her online @AuroraGG.

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