Google Buys Social Startup Angstro, ITA Still in Limbo

Google last week continued its efforts to beef up its social networking offerings with the acquisition of Angstro, a startup focused on building applications that integrate with social media networks.

Rohit Khare, cofounder of the company, announced the acquisition on his blog last Thursday in a post titled, "Our work here is done."

"With the help of investors like CommerceNet and advisors such as Avery Lyford, our team shipped apps to discover hot new photos on Facebook, improve Caller ID by using LinkedIn profiles, adding style and links to Twitter, create a real-time social address book, and a slew of other services (some of which are open source)," Khare wrote.

He added, "While our work here may be done, the struggle for open, interoperable social networks is still only just beginning, and I'm looking forward to working on that in my new role at Google."

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) has been struggling to find its course with regard to social networks for some time so that it can remain competitive with Facebook in the advertising game. Previous attempts, which include Orkut, Profiles and Buzz, have failed to catch fire as the company had hoped. Its latest effort is Google Me, which it hopes to launch before the end of the year.

Google has been buying up companies like Angstro to fortify itself for the Google Me launch. Other recent acquisitions include microblogging service Jaiku, game-oriented virtual currency company Jambool and social networking applications company Slide. It has also partnered with social gaming company Zynga.

Meanwhile, Google's $700 million cash acquisition of travel software specialist ITA Software is going nowhere fast. The deal, announced last month, has run afoul of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), which plans to review it for possible antitrust issues, according to a blog post on Friday by Google Senior Product Manager Andrew Silverman.

"While we think this acquisition will benefit travelers as well as those seeking their business, we know that closer scrutiny has been one consequence of Google's success, and we said that we wouldn’t be surprised if there were a regulatory review before the deal closes," Silverman wrote. "This week we received what's called a "second request," which means that the US Department of Justice is asking for more information so that they can continue to review the deal."

Silverman noted that Google remains confident the DOJ will conclude that online travel will remain competitive if Google is allowed to complete the transaction.

Thor Olavsrud is a contributor to InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.

Hollywood fears launch of Google TVMicrosoft Bing Becomes More ‘Social’

Search Engine Wars: Bing, Yahoo Gain in July

Microsoft and Yahoo just finished transitioning the smaller company's websites to run the Bing search engine backend platform earlier this week, making it too early to assess whether the combination will pick up any market share vis-а-vis Google in a gambit that could tilt search marketers' spending priorities.

But according to market tracker Nielsen Company, the latest numbers for July show that Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) Bing search engine handled 13.6 percent of all U.S. searches while Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) served 14.3 percent. Meanwhile, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) served up 64.2 percent of U.S. searches.

Those figures translated into a 1 percent decline in market share for Google from June, while Yahoo gained 4 percent, and Bing picked up 2 percent.

Year-over-year comparisons, however, put the figures in a somewhat different light. Since July 2009, for instance, Yahoo has lost 17 percent of its overall market share. In that same time, Bing improved its share by 51 percent from a year earlier. That gain, though, appears to come at the expense of Microsoft's new partner, Yahoo, because in the same year-over-year comparison, Google only lost 1 percent of its share, according to Nielsen.

Microsoft and Yahoo announced earlier this week that Bing's search technology is now in place and is providing search results to Yahoo's sites, demonstrated by the "Powered by Bing" logo appearing at the bottom of Yahoo search results pages. Had that transition already been accomplished for the month of July, the search figures would have given the two companies a combined share of U.S. searches of 27.9 percent.

But since the integration was only completed in the latter part of this month, their combined results will not show up until Web analytics firms report rankings for September.

Meanwhile, for June, Nielsen reported that Google held a 65 percent share of U.S. searches compared to 13.7 percent for Yahoo, and 13.4 percent for Bing. If the Bing integration had occurred at that time, their combined results would have been 27.1 percent total share for June.

Microsoft and Yahoo agreed to the 10-year search deal last year and got final regulatory approval to use the Bing technology on Yahoo sites in return for sharing advertising revenues in February.

Stuart J. Johnston is a contributing writer at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @stuartj1000.

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How to Add Facebook Like to Your Ecommerce Site

As of April 2010, ComScore stats indicated that Facebook is closing in on 500 million monthly unique visitors. For anyone doing business online, Facebook traffic numbers is a very big deal.

Often, small business ecommerce site owners get trapped in the endless quest to reach Google's search audience that they overlook the importance of tapping in to other online audiences -- including Facebook.

Earlier this year Facebook launched new tools, called Social Plugins that website publishers could easily add to bring the Facebook social experience to any website. These social plugins are part of a larger Facebook goal to make every website on the Internet sharable across its network; something the company calls the Open Graph.

Facebook Like: Why Ecommerce Sites Should Have It

Facebook Like is one of the social plugins offered by Facebook that lets people share your content with their friends.  When you add the Facebook Like button to your own small business ecommerce website anyone who clicks it will have a story appear in their News Feed with a link back to your website.

“Facebook is building another index of the Web,” said Charles Nicholls, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of SeeWhy. “Only this index it isn’t based on Google’s arbitrary algorithms, it is built based upon people’s likes and preferences.”

Facebook Like for your small business ecommerce website is a no-brainer. Use the configuration tool to select options and simply copy and paste the resulting code to your website.
(Click for larger image).

When it comes to having Facebook Like on your ecommerce website, Nicholls says this is really a bit of a no brainer because it is a single line of code that you add to point Facebook users to your ecommerce site. By adding Facebook like to your own website, you encourage Facebook visitors to share your site and link back to you in their social network profile, in turn exposing your site to their friends.

Add Facebook Like to Your Ecommerce Site

Understanding how the Like Button works on the Web is pretty easy. Once you have the social plugin added to your website, Facebook users can click that Like Button your page and news of this activity and is added to their own public activity stream.  All of their Facebook friends will see their friend has "Liked" your page, and they can also click the activity and be taken directly to your page.

The good news for ecommerce site owners is that Facebook Like is easy to put on your website.  It's a simple matter of getting a line of code and deciding where on your webpage you want to display the Like button.  Nicholls recommends that you should include Facebook Like on your homepage and also on your individual product pages.

To get started you'll want to visit the Like Button Social Plugin Page on the Facebook Developers website.

Facebook offers two Like Button implementations:  XFBML and Iframe. The XFBML version is more versatile, but requires the JavaScript SDK.  For people with less technical and website design know-how, the Iframe version is much simpler to add to your own ecommerce website.

The Facebook Developer’s Page offers a Web-based configuration tool to help you get the code required to add to your website.  When you use the configuration tool you simply choose your options for the following design attributes:

URL:  Enter the URL you want the Like action to be connected to (e.g. your website URL). If you use the XFBML version, the code will default to the current pageLayout Style: Choose Standard or Button Count.  Standard will display text to the right of the Like Button and profile pictures below the button. Button Count will display how many people clicked the Like button in small text beside the buttonShow Faces: If you choose the Standard layout, you can also check Show faces to display profile photos below the Like ButtonWidth: The width, in pixels, you want the plugin to display on your websiteVerb:  Choose "Like" or "Recommend". This is the text that appears with the buttonFont: The font used in the plugin for text displayColor Scheme: Choose a light or dark scheme. This is the color of the button displayed on your website

Then, you will click the "Get Code" button on the configuration tool and a pop-up window will display the XFBML and Iframe code you will choose to copy and paste to your own website.

Using Open Graph Metatags

As mentioned earlier, the Facebook Like Button is a part of Facebook’s Open Graph initiative. While this next step is completely optional, if you are going to implement the Facebook Like feature on your website, you should add Open Graph metatags to your webpage. 

Adding the Facebook Open Graph meta tags to your webpage, tells Facebook who you are so that your link will show up in the correct places on a users' Facebook profile, outside of their activity stream.  If for example, a person likes a movie in your Web shop that has been tagged for Open Graph, your public website will be listed in that user’s favorite movies link in their Facebook profile.  It is a little code for a lot of exposure and links on Facebook.

Depending on the data you provide using the Open Graph protocol, your pages show up in different places in Facebook, such as in user profiles, in search results and in people’s News Feed. The Open Graph protocol specifies four tags that are required with additional optional optional tags you can also use:

og:title -- The title of your object as it should appear within the graph, e.g., "The Rock" og:type -- The type of your object, e.g., "movie." See the complete list of supported typesog:image -- An image URL which should represent your object within the graph. The image must be at least 50 pixels by 50 pixels and have a maximum aspect ratio of 3:1og:url -- The canonical URL of your object that will be used as its permanent ID in the graph

These four tags, along with examples and an explanation of additional tags you can use are listed on the Open Graph Protocol page on the Facebook Developers site. 

There is More to Like than Just Facebook Like

The biggest problem for most small ecommerce site owners is not getting plugins such as Facebook Like on their website, but managing the social plugins. At times it may feel like you are managing two websites: your ecommerce site and Facebook.

When you look at what Facebook is becoming in terms of a referrer, most everyone sees it climbing their Web analytics, gradually and becoming more and more important. For this reason, ecommerce websites especially should look at adding the Facebook Social Plugins to their website.

In addition to Facebook Like, which Nicholls recommends ecommerce site owners add first, there are two more social plugins that should be considered. One is Facebook Recommendations and the other is Facebook Login.

Facebook Recommendations  is a simple iframe you can drop into your page, or as with using Facebook Like, when you use the XFBML version you can have more control and options. The XFBML version of Facebook Recommendations basically pulls together the top recommendations from your site that Facebook has found.

This social plugin lets you show personalized recommendations to users. In generating the recommendations the plugin considers all the social interactions with URLs from your site. Since the content is hosted by Facebook, the plugin can display personalized recommendations even if the user has not logged into your ecommerce website but is logged in to Facebook. It also provides you with a personal mini-index of what people like on your site.

The other social plugin that Nicholls recommends small business ecommerce site owners use is Facebook Login.  With login enabled, anyone can login in on your ecommerce website with his Facebook credentials -- allowing you to capture his information from Facebook.

With that captured information you can later market to this Facebook user with email and social media marketing -- and ecommerce remarketing-- tactics to help drive conversions and ultimately acquire new customers and increase sales.

While Login is also important, it takes more time to implement and requires use of the Facebook API.  Instructions on how to use this Social Plugin can be found on the Facebook for Websites Developer Page.

Nicholls recommends that ecommerce site owners start by adding the Facebook Like Button first, and then integrate Facebook Recommendations followed by Facebook Login.  He said that while Recommendations requires more of your website real estate and Login requires some development knowledge for using the API, he believes the benefits to small business ecommerce site owners are worth the effort to go beyond Facebook Like.

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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Crowdsourcing for Small Business Ecommerce

Recessive times call for creative measures, and small business owners excel at finding unusual ways to get the job done for not a lot of money. If you're looking to launch a new product, rebrand your company or find a new logo, tapping in to the opinions and passion of your customer base -- a strategy known as crowdsourcing -- is a great and inexpensive way to build both your brand and your customers' loyalty.

As with any new small business marketing initiative, there's a bit of a learning curve. Don’t worry it's not hard, and we've got some great examples you can model your efforts after, which means you won’t have to reinvent the wheel. Small Business Computing has the details.

More ecommerce businesses are using the crowd (i.e., their customers, Facebook fans and/or employees) to help them develop new products and build brand loyalty -- and the strategy seems to be working, at least for some online businesses. But is crowdsourcing a viable marketing and/or product development strategy for every small business? And how do you successfully harness the power of the crowd? Small Business Computing spoke to several ecommerce businesses that tried crowdsourcing to find out.

Read the complete crowdsourcing article

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7 Ways to Help Customers Trust Your Ecommerce Website

Whether a customer trusts your business is often the difference between a successful shopping cart conversion and one that's abandoned. Including a few simple pieces of information on your small business website will encourage trust your business and improve the chances of customers completing their purchases.

In this article, I'll explain seven ways to adjust your website design to build customer trust -- chances are you already do most of them -- but have you told your customers?

1. Everything They Need to Know

A customer shopping online is relying on you to provide information about the product he can use to make a purchasing decision. He can't hold the product to see what it weighs, or put it on to check its fit, so your role as an online merchant is to tell them all you can about the product.

This excerpt from the BZZGuitars catalog makes it clear when cables are not included and where weight makes shipping prohibitive.
(Click for larger image).

If an item of clothing is smaller than usual for a particular size, tell the customer upfront so he can order the correct size. If an item doesn't include batteries mention that too, and perhaps offer a link to suitable batteries for purchase. If your customer receives a wrong size or missing accessories on delivery, it won't endear them to your business, and you'll likely lose repeat purchases.

2. Testimonials and Reviews

Testimonials and reviews about products and your business not only help customers learn more about the products you sell, they help develop trust in your business. Encourage existing customers to review the products they buy and to write recommendations about their experience in buying from you.

Aim for reviews that are more than simple star ratings -- descriptive information about a product is more meaningful to potential customers. Always make sure the reviews you post on the site are genuine and never write them yourself. Also, don't be too concerned if a product doesn't always get stellar reviews -- what one reviewer thinks is a negative might be a positive to other buyers.

3. Tell Them What They Just Bought

At every step of the checkout process it's important that customers know exactly what's in their shopping cart. They will feel more confident in completing the purchase when checkout screens clearly show each item number, the item cost and product details -- such as color and size -- so they can verify everything is correct. Always give a customer the ability to change quantities at the checkout. If they accidentally hit the Add to Shopping Cart button one too many times, they can easily remove an unwanted item without having to jump through hoops.

4. Show Customers You Care

Shopping over the Internet requires your customers to put their trust in you. After all, they're giving you access to their personal and credit card details. Showing customers that you understand their concerns reassures them that can trust your site.

If your business is accredited with BBB Online, or if you use an especially secure method of handling credit card transactions, make that clear by including images of the appropriate seals on your site. It's just as important to tell customers that you have these measures in place as it is to actually have them, and don't assume customers will know this automatically.

Ensure that your SSL certificate is always up to date and that your PayPal account is confirmed. Remember too, that the absence of seals and security statements reflect negatively on your site.

5. State your Personal Data Policy

For every piece of data that you collect from a customer, make sure to clearly state how you will use it. If you're going to sell it to someone, then you need to tell your customers. If you want to share the data with affiliates or other businesses, ask your customers' for permission and if you don’t get it -- don't share it.

SMBs that are clear about how private data will be treated and do so in easy to understand language engender a sense of trust in their customers. A small business website that doesn't make this information readily available suggests that its owners don't understand the sensitivity of the data, and that's not a positive signal to send customers. Burying the information in pages of legalese is just as bad.

6. Post Your Return Policy

Be clear about your business's return policy. If items are broken, if they don't fit or if the customer just plain wants to send it back, make it clear what your return policy is and how a customer should go about returning the item. If you don’t accept certain items on return, then state this clearly, too.

Fishfast Electronics uses plain English to make it clear how it will treat your personal data.
(Click for larger image).

This information should be available to customers before they commit to purchasing the item, and it's also a good idea to include it in the email confirming the sale.

7. Provide Contact Information

SMBs that hide behind the Web and don't publish any contact information raise warning flags in the eyes of their customers. If you don’t provide a contact phone number for customers to contact you if something goes wrong, or if they have questions about their order, paints a negative picture of your relationship with your customers.

Providing an email address and a contact form go part of the way towards redressing the situation but you must reply promptly. Also be aware that some people prefer to browse online and then order by phone. If you don’t give them a way to contact you, you'll lose out on sales.

If you're forthright and show respect for your customers, the more likely it is that they will trust your business and buy from you. When you operate an online store, you're not there in person to forge a connection -- your website design has to do the work for you.

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

ClickTale: Customer Behavioral Heatmaps, Form AnalyticsCummins to bring 220 jobs to Nashville consolidated call center

ClickTale: Customer Behavioral Heatmaps, Form Analytics

Website analytics is an important tool for any small business or ecommerce business. Popular analytics packages, such as Google Analytics for example, offer site owners a detailed look at how people find your website and how they transition between pages on your site.ClickTale, a provider of Customer Experience Analytics (CEA), is one company that offers a way for businesses to see more than just page transitions -- it provides a way to see in-depth analytics for every page and every customer interaction and experience that takes place within a website. "There are many analytics companies out there, such as Google Analytics and Omniture, and they work by looking at the transitioning between different pages," said Shmuli Goldberg, ClickTale director of marketing and communications."So, they see how many people went to a landing page; like a home page for example, and then see how many people went from that page to another page. They give you very valuable information but what they don't focus on is what happens within a page itself; to see where someone looks within a page or clicks within a page and what parts of a page a customer actually interacts with," he added.How ClickTale Customer Experience Analytics WorksAs a website visitor moves his or her mouse over a page, clicks on an image or scrolls down your page, ClickTale captures that information. With this detailed data you can then see how customers react to your page, what images and links they click and what page elements they interact with while browsing.On the analytics end of ClickTale, site owners can search for specific customers (e.g. customers who clicked a specific call to action link but then did not complete a form submission) and then view the details and video of the customer's actual browsing session on the page. Using ClickTale you can learn important information about your customers' browsing behavior. You can see where customers came from, what pages they visited within your site, the links each clicked on, how far down each page they scrolled and if they successfully submitted a form or completed any call-to-action on your site. ClickTale also lets you view browsing sessions from customers who did not complete an action. For example, you can view sessions from customers who hovered over a submit button but did not click on it.New Heatmap Features and Form AnalyticsEarlier this month ClickTale introduced two new behavioral heatmap features to give site owners even more details about website visitors and their browsing behavior. Heatmaps are designed to show site owners which parts of a page get the most attention from website visitors. The product offers heatmaps to show you which parts of the page are read or skipped over, mouse movement and clicks, and how far down your page a visitor scrolls and where they abandon.The recently added Segmented Heatmaps feature lets site owners filter ClickTale's visual heatmaps based on any customer information or browsing behavior. With this new feature you can quickly view data from as many as 100,000 visitors in a single graphical report, to compare and contrast how different user groups engage with the webpage.Another noteworthy feature of ClickTale is the Form Analytics. This can be used to find out where and why customers abandon forms on your website. You can search for any metric to see how customers use your form to increase performance."Form Analytics provides important information that can help increase your online forms' conversion rates," said Goldberg. "You can watch the videos of customers who tried but did not successfully submit a form to see if they had a problem; like a JavaScript error or they forgot to tick a certain a box, and so on," he explained.Once you can see where customers experience problems when filling out a form, you can then change or redesign the form for better usability, knowing if customers experience a navigation problem or if abandonment is due to a consistent user error. The Form Analytics also provides site owners with a daily conversion rate snapshot showing how many visitors came to your form, interacted with the form, tried but failed to submit it, and how many customers successfully completed the form.ClickTale Pricing and AvailabilityClickTale analytics is a hosted solution that is integrated in to any website by adding JavaScript tracking code to the web pages you would like to record. ClickTale allows each subscriber to select the percentage of their visitors they would like to record, however you can only record up to your monthly recording limit as determined by your ClickTale subscription plan. The Gold Plan is designed for ecommerce websites with up to 300,000 recorded monthly pageviews and is priced at $990 monthly. The Silver Plan offers 80,000 recorded pageviews per month at $290. There are also plans available for smaller websites and a free plan with 400 pageviews per month and limited playback capabilities. 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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Booking Travel Gets the Social Network Treatment

Do you offer your customers enough ways to connect with you? If not, you might consider beefing up your social networking efforts. Take a look at what Delta and Sabre are doing to make it easier for their customers to buy online. Here's a hint: don’t wait for them to come to you -- go wherever your customers congregate online.

In a nod to the growing power of social networks, Delta Airlines became the first airline to let customers book flights on Facebook, the social networking phenomenon that now counts more than 500 million members worldwide.

Delta said Facebook members can now book flights with their friends at the airline's Facebook page.

Delta (NYSE: DAL) said it will also offer an online "Ticket Window" in banner ads distributed by social commerce channel Alvenda to thousands of publisher websites. Alvenda's StoreCast platform lets partner sites embed the Ticket Window application on their websites.

"Our customers are spending more time online and are looking for new ways to connect with us. We’re now bringing Delta to our customers rather than the other way around -- on our own website, on Facebook, on travel websites, on Internet news sites and beyond," Bob Kupbens, Delta's vice president of ecommerce, said in a statement.

Future releases will let users leverage Facebook's so-called social graph, essentially an individual's network of friends and connections, to simplify the process of booking group travel, according to a blog post by Alvenda's founder and CEO Wade Gerten.

"Delta is the first travel company to open millions of new selling opportunities via a social commerce channel," Gerten said in a statement. Sabre Teams with Cisco Telepresence

Separately, the Sabre Travel Network (STN) announced it is working with Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) to bring enhanced reservation services to the networking giant's telepresence video conferencing systems. Sabre Holdings, which owns STN, also owns travel reservation site Travelocity and offers a range of other travel-related services.

The partnership with STN is ironic since video conferencing providers like Cisco and others tout that a prime benefit of the system's virtual meeting technology is that it lessens the need for travel and saves companies time and money on travel expenses.

Cisco plans to leverage STN's expertise in reservation management to enhance the value of its telepresence systems by making them more accessible.

"For years, corporations and agencies have been using Sabre and GetThere technology to effectively manage their business travel and today it remains one of the primary tools used to collaborate," Greg Webb, president of Sabre Travel Network, said in a statement.

"Over the past few years, we’ve also seen the demand for telepresence grow and become an important collaboration technology that, like travel, drives business and economic growth for our customers," he added. "We believe our long history of technology and distribution leadership uniquely positions us to deliver the industry's first platform for virtual meetings."

A Sabre spokesperson said the two companies will build a distribution platform for telepresence that will allow companies to shop for and book telepresence rooms for videoconference sessions.

"We intend for this to be an industry solution that will allow any telepresence provider to be part of this broader network," she added. "Travel managers or travel agents will be able to book telepresence rooms through this system."

She said corporations with telepresence rooms will, for example, be able to use the system to book intra-company rooms. "They could also book their internal rooms and public rooms or rooms within other corporations" given the appropriate permission, she added.

No timetable was given as to when the first services to come from the partnership will be available.

David Needle is the West Coast bureau chief at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.

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3 Web Tools: Affordable Publicity

No matter what type of small business you run, an ecommerce website, a brick-and-mortar retail store or a services-based business, you need affordable ways to let people know about your business. Not everyone can afford their own PR firm, but most can afford a press release, and we've got a good Web tool to handle that.

Our other handy Web tools include a way to keep track of your favorite TV shows and movies (hey, even small business owners get to relax once in a while) and a site that aggregates your social networks into one convenient dashboard. Check 'em out on Small Business Computing!

PR Web

PRWeb.com
(Click for larger image).

If you have news about your business that you’d like to get out to the world in the form of a press release, you really should know about PR Web. It’s also referred to as the Press Release Newswire. The four types of account packages at PRWeb.com range from Basic ($80 per release) to Premium ($360 per release). Choose the package that suits your needs, and then submit your press release.

Read the complete Web tools and resources article.

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3 Trigger Email Marketing Tips for Ecommerce Marketers

In email marketing, an event-triggered email , often called trigger email marketing , is a message that's sent to a list subscriber based on "a customer behavior or a lack-of-action response from the customer," according to Wendy Lowe, director of product marketing for Campaigner.

For example, trigger events could be a new sign-up form submitted on your site, an abandoned shopping cart, or a customer who looked at a product or downloaded a demo. There are countless events and customer actions that marketers use for trigger email marketing.

 Trigger email marketing uses automated and very relevant emails that offer a significantly higher ROI than general email blasts. According to Forrester Research, however, despite the high ROI, fewer than four out of 10 email marketers currently use triggered messaging.

The first requirement for effective trigger email marketing is to have an automated email marketing system in place.  "Automation provides an efficient way to do trigger email marketing,” said Lowe. "It creates a plug-and-play process where you set up the parameters and let it run. Then, all you need to do is track and monitor results."

Here are three tips from Wendy Lowe to help you manage successful trigger email marketing campaigns:

1.  Pre-Determine the Triggers

Email marketing automation lets you set the time, frequency and other options for pre-determined triggers.  Triggers commonly used on ecommerce websites include automatically emailing a welcome letter when a customer registers on-site or when a customer abandons a cart on your website.

"You can also use triggered email for lead nurturing," said Lowe. "If you offer a free download or 'test-drive' on your website, you can set the email system to send out an email a couple days after they tried the service."

Other useful email marketing triggers could include the submission of a quote or warranty form, a membership renewal, reminders that products or services are about to expire, or simply to remind dormant customers who have not logged in for period of time about your business. You can also use triggered emails to up-sell and cross-sell when a customer looks at specific products or makes a purchase on your site.

2.  Keep the Message Relevant and Personal

One reason triggered email marketing is so successful is that an automated email system lets you personalize the communication and make it very relevant to the customer.

"The main priority is to work on building customer relationships," said Lowe. "Use all the automation tools and customer information that is available to you and really personalize the email so the customer relates to the contents of your email marketing message."

Start this process by using a personalized subject line. If the customer abandoned a cart on your site, mention the product they added to the cart by name. If you have more than just an email address for this person, be sure to insert the customer's name and other personal details in to the email as well.

In most cases you want to remind the customer of what she was doing on your website.  If she viewed your 'latest fashions' section, include images and relevant content from this category in the email.  Insert direct products and page links that the customer visited for added relevancy -- not generic homepage links.

3. Follow-Up Immediately with a Good Tone

Follow-up immediately with the customer, but use a good customer service tone in the email. When you contact a customer immediately after a behavior trigger, you don’t want be appear pushy or too sales-focused.

Lowe said that the first contact should be sent immediately following the customer action, then typically a second follow-up in the next day or two, depending on your business and the action.  A third follow-up should be sent in a week.  After the third follow-up, if you do not recover the customer then Lowe recommends that you abandon your recovery process for that person. 

These automated trigger emails should remain focused on building a relationship over time.  “When you follow-up right away the emails should be used to 'gently' remind the customer of the product or behavior,” said Lowe.  She also said that promotional discounts should not be offered in the first couple of emails, but you can provide incentives later in the follow-up cycle.

Getting Started

If you already use an automated email marketing system, there's no reason why you shouldn't just jump in with both feet and start using the trigger features in your platform. Starting the process is the only way you can see how your own ROI and customer loyalty could be improved by sending these automated -- yet highly relevant -- emails to your customers.  

Lowe suggested that the best way to start is to simply plan your strategy, then set your objectives and take advantage of all the tools in your automated email marketing system.  All you need is the customer’s email to send automated triggered emails in the system. 

As you add customer data and get the follow-up timing down, you can then test and tweak your trigger email marketing strategy to get the highest return for your investment.

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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Analytics Improve CRM and Business Intelligence

Are your customers satisfied with the service you provide? Are your upsell tactics working? How's your marketing performance? If you don’t know, then you might be a candidate for business intelligence software. BI lets you slice and dice your company data to reveal what's really going on…and once you know, you can make the right decision instead of a potentially costly guess. Read more about it on eCRMGuide.com.

Business analytics used to be a very geeky endeavor practiced by hard-core IT people skilled in the arcane arts of data access, data mining, data analysis, and, of course, data warehousing. Those days are largely gone -- and so are the reams of lovely spreadsheets they spawned.

While the goals of business analytics (BA) remain the same -- to gather and interpret data to make better business decisions, optimize processes and pursue new opportunities -- the tools are now far more user-friendly, useful and plentiful than they were 10 years ago.

Read the complete business intelligence article

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Ecommerce Marketing: Rethinking Strategy

Every small business owner wants his or her business to get noticed, but not many are willing to take a risk to make it happen. This week, our maverick marketing guru looks at Tire Warehouse, and its very confident marketing strategy. He also looks at how Shake Shack manages to outflank its fast food rivals, and how you can adapt these strategies for your small business ecommerce site. Just click on the show's logo below and take a look.

Shake Shack in New York is a fast food restaurant that’s the brainchild of savvy restaurant owner Danny Meyer of Gramercy Tavern fame. He’s opened up several outlets of Shake Shack in Manhattan that bring something fresh and innovative to the burger scene. I visited the newest outlet near Times Square and the place was packed. This is a great example of effective marketing in a crowded niche.

What’s your opinion about business cards? Personally, I think they’re over rated. Too many business owners rely on them as the easy way out of marketing. They can be useful as a tool to simply pass on contact information, but not much else. A much better marketing strategy is to give a book you’ve authored, or a DVD about your business, in place of a business card. It’ll get people’s attention, and they’ll view you as the expert authority in your niche. Think about YOUR reaction to receiving a book or DVD instead of a business card -- see what I mean?

I’m an avid reader, I consume business books like burgers! One challenge is, with so many books available, how do you know which ones to read, and which ones to ignore? That’s where this week's Web tool comes in. It’s a book recommendation engine that’s simple, and fast to use. I think you’ll like it.

This week’s big marketing lesson is from Tire Warehouse, a nationwide chain of tire suppliers. They utilize an interesting marketing strategy where they encourage customers to call competitors! Why would they do that? Watch this episode and you’ll find out…

As usual, let me know your opinion about the topics covered in the show to help your small business this week -- leave your comment below, it’s really easy to do.

You'll find lots more small business marketing tips and resources from Andrew Lock in our Small Business In-Depth series, Lock in Your Marketing Resources.

Andrew Lock is a self-described maverick marketer and the creator and host of Help! My Business Sucks, a free, weekly Web TV show full of practical marketing tips, advice and resources to help small businesses "get more done and have more fun."

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Search Advertising Services for SMB Ecommerce

If you're interested in search advertising as a way to get the word out about your small business ecommerce site, but you're concerned about the cost, American Express and Clickable have a new service designed specifically for small businesses. Small Business Computing has the report.

Many small businesses believe they don't have the budget or expertise to take advantage of search advertising, at least not from major players like Google's AdWords, Yahoo's Search Marketing, and Microsoft's adCenter.

Now, however, American Express (NYSE: AXP) OPEN and Clickable have partnered to create a search advertising engine specifically for small businesses, providing one-stop-shopping for those three major advertising engines and others, including Facebook Ads.

Read the complete search advertising services article

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Emarketing Web Tools: WordPress Tutorials

Looking for free Web tools that can help you grow your small business ecommerce website? Andrew Lock's got 'em. This week, you can learn everything you ever wanted to know about WordPress but were afraid to ask, browse for free video footage to use on your website, and tame your email inbox by gathering all your Internet marketing news from a single website. Small Business Computing has the details.

WordPress University

Do you use WordPress to publish a blog?  If so, here’s a neat resource that you may find useful: WordPress University.

This free site offers a variety of tutorials and other information for WordPress users.  Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, WordPress University claims you’ll find all the training and resources you need in order to maximize your WordPress experience.

Read the complete Web tools and small business marketing resources article

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ProStores 10 Offers New Design, Promotional Tools

ProStores has launched Version 10 of its online ecommerce platform for merchants and eBay sellers.  The platform is designed for small-to-midsized businesses.

ProStores is a full ecommerce solution that lets online merchants design online storefronts, catalog products plus manage store administration tasks like shipping, invoicing and inventory from within the single platform.  It is also used by eBay sellers as the solution integrates with any eBay selling business.

New Page Builder Tool Helps Merchants with Store Design

The new version offers several new features that are designed to help drive revenues for merchants and save time with new features and back-end management enhancements. There are also options to design more trendy or contemporary-looking online stores. 

“This is a major upgrade with new features for design and management. Updates in this version are really focused on helping merchants drive sales and save time," said Lin Shearer, ProStores head of marketing and revenue.

One of the key features added in ProStores Version 10 is the new Page Builder design tool that helps merchants to create the key pages within the online store.

The Page Builder offers an easy drag-and-drop panel system that is edited and then added to the page layout. The panels are available for key pages like the home page, product list and product detail pages.  Within each panel there are different options to manage the content. For example, you can show products in columns, and you can control product attributes, such as in stock, quantity available, and manufacturer.  

Merchants can use the panels to design page layouts without needing to know any SSML or HTML, however those who are code-savvy can choose to use their own custom designs and also create, save, and manage multiple layouts using Page Builder. 

“You can go in and create different page layouts and have them lined up for testing different home-page layout versions or have layouts ready for different promotions that you plan to run.” Shearer said.

Another new layout and design feature is a store theme with horizontal category navigation, something Shearer said was a popular request from merchants using ProStores.

Automated Promotions and Advertising Banners

Page Builder introduces a new concept -- automated advertising panels -- that you can use to schedule promotions and highlight the promotion on the storefront.  The advertising panel lets you create an advertising banner and then the merchant can schedule it to run automatically on the storefront during the set promotion time.

You can display the promotions simultaneously in a grid format on the storefront or you can display them in a typical filmstrip format.

“This was another request from merchants using ProStores who had to go to a designer for creating these advertising banners," Shearer said. "Now, merchants can very easily create these advertising banners and run a series of promotions that typically are only found on the larger online retail sites.”

To run the banner adverts, merchants can use the Advertising Banner Creator in ProStores to put together the graphics, and text, set the terms and schedule it to run.  

This type of automated promotion capability for a small merchant can help save time, especially during busy holiday sales periods.  Because you can design promotions in advance and schedule them to run, merchants can spend time during busy sale periods focusing on other store management tasks and customer service -- instead of having to devote time to designing and managing a promotional campaign.

More Features, Pricing and Availability

Other features of ProStores 10 include enhancements to store administration, navigation, orders and invoicing.  Shearer said that this new version of ProStores also offers better eBay integration.  

“How product lists are imported to ProStores from eBay gives eBay sellers and merchants more control,” he added.

Additionally, merchants can convert eBay listings to products in ProStores with a single action, versus individual import, and eBay sellers using ProStores can also sync inventory between ProStores and eBay Selling Manager Pro.

ProStores Version 10 is available now. A free 30-day trial of the ecommerce platform is also available on the ProStores Web site. ProStores is a subscription-based service with plans starting at $29.95/month plus a 0.5 percent transaction fee.

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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Marketing Strategies: Email vs. Social Network Sites

When it comes to spending your emarketing dollars, it helps to understand where people spend most of their time on the Web. For example, should you put a heavier emphasis on email marketing or beef up your social marketing effort instead? A recent study from survey experts Nielson could give you the insight you need to grow your small business ecommerce site. Our sister site, Datamation.com, has the details.

Social networks were the big winners in a new a Nielsen study of how American consumers use the Internet. Compared to a year ago, the use of social networks like Facebook and Twitter rose 43 percent to account for 22.7 percent of the time people said they spend online.

Read the complete email versus social networking article

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Ecommerce Marketing: The Ethics of Testimonials

The FTC has set some pretty stringent rules about bloggers accepting products and services from websites that want to generate positive word-of-mouth publicity. Andrew Lock weighs in on the ethics of testimonials in response to a viewer's question.

Our unconventional mega-marketer also delves into the secret and subtle messages found in some pretty well-known logos. And speaking of logos, all you have to do to watch this episode of Help! My Business Sucks is click on the logo below. You'll be ever so glad you did.

It turns out that many well known logos, including those from Fedex, Formula 1, Tostitos, Sony, Northwest Airlines -- and others -- have hidden details. My question is, are these details too secret, in other words is it a case of being so clever that no one but the designer and a few eagle-eyed people notice?

The question in this episode relates to testimonials. Is it okay to offer an incentive for someone to give you a testimonial? What do you think? Add your comments below.

Watch the episode for an awesome screen capture tool in the same vein as Camtasia and Jing, with one notable exception – there’s no software, it’s a Web-based tool. And it’s free. Designed and touted as a Twitter add-on, it can certainly be used that way, but I love the wider possibilities of this resource. It’s simple to use, doesn’t require any special software, and it’s free. Can’t be bad.

This week's big marketing lesson to adapt for your small business comes from Lego. Lego? Yes, lego. The company is surprisingly nimble and unconventional with its marketing, and it has achieved incredible success from those little plastic bricks. I’ll focus in on a few of the things that Lego has done to expand its brand, and show you how you can do the same.

As usual, let me know your opinion about the topics covered in the show this week -- leave your comment below, it’s really easy to do, no registration required.

You'll find lots more small business marketing tips and resources from Andrew Lock in our Small Business In-Depth series, Lock in Your Marketing Resources.

Andrew Lock is a self-described maverick marketer and the creator and host of Help! My Business Sucks, a free, weekly Web TV show full of practical marketing tips, advice and resources to help small businesses "get more done and have more fun."

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