Social Media Analytics for Small Business Ecommerce Sites

Small business ecommerce site owners know there is value in social media marketing. However, make sure you can determine whether your efforts have a positive impact. If you can't measure results of your Twitter or Facebook campaign, it's virtually impossible to manage social media marketing.

The best way to track your campaigns is with a social media analytics tool. Any small business ecommerce site that uses social media can use this type of tool to track how successful you are in meeting campaign goals.

One tool you can consider is SWIX (Social Web Index).  SWIX is a social media analytics tool that helps you track, monitor and analyze your account data from more than twenty different social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and many other popular platforms.

Creating a SWIX Account for Social Media Analytics

As with most Web-based tools, SWIX offers a free trial account so you can try the service to see if it is right for your small business ecommerce site before upgrading to a paid account. Just register on the SWIX website for a free account, verify your account through an email link and you are ready to start tracking and analyzing your social media profiles.

 When you log in to SWIX for the first time, you need to add “Tracking Pods" to your account. These Pods are your profiles and accounts on any of the SWIX-supported social sites that you want to start tracking.  As you add each Pod you will need to give permission for SWIX to access -- or connect -- with your social media account to access data for reports.

Each Tracking Pod offers options to customize the specific data (the metrics) you want included in the social media analytics report.  For example, after you connect your Facebook Profile in SWIX, you can choose to add Friends or Wall posts to your reports. For Twitter accounts, SWIX allows you to add Followers, Friends, and Statuses to your reports for tracking.

Once you have selected all possible Tracking Pods and the metrics for reporting, SWIX will begin tracking and analyzing your social profiles. You can go in to the “Tracking” tool at any time to add or delete social media accounts.  SWIX gathers your visitor and usage data on a daily basis and graphs it over time.

Useful and Unique Social Analytics Features

SWIX offers small business ecommerce site owners a number of tools to better manage social media tactics through analytics and reporting. One tool that many will find helpful is the Worksheet -- an overview of all your social media campaigns in one screen. To use the worksheet you provide your own production costs (e.g. for YouTube you might have paid to have a video designed) and SWIX will automatically calculate your unit costs and growth.

One unique feature of SWIX includes a return on investment (ROI) tool. This tool lets you enter monetary values to social media metrics, such as Facebook fans or YouTube views.  You can then add your own marketing costs to see estimated ROI of your social accounts.

Another thing we liked about SWIX is that it is easy to create, manage, and track results of social media campaigns. Campaigns in SWIX are used to organize social media accounts based on the advertising campaigns that they fall under.  To create a campaign you group together Tracking Pods so you can collect specific information.  With SWIX you can create and manage multiple campaigns and track the success of each one separately.

SWIX makes it easy for small business ecommerce sites to see detailed social media analytics and reports -- and also the value of your social media marketing tasks in an easy-to-use interface.

Pricing and Availability

SWIX is free for the first 30-day. After this, you will need to upgrade to a paid plan, or cancel your account.  Paid accounts are billed at $9/month per each active campaign associated with your account.  The SWIX website indicates that you can add and remove subsequent campaigns and SWIX will pro-rate the monthly charges accordingly.

More Social Media Tips

Looking to get a better handle on integrating social media into your small business marketing plan? Try these social media tips and guides for small business ecommerce sites:

How to Add Facebook Like to Your Ecommerce SiteSocial Media: Tips for Small Business Marketing3 Twitter Tools for Small Business Ecommerce SitesHow to Use Social Networks to Engage ConsumersSocial Network Marketing Meets Small Business

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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Yahoo Plans New Search, Email as It Speeds Release Cycle

Yahoo, in the midst of a corporate turnaround effort, is planning to speed up the pace of new product and feature rollouts, pledging an accelerated roadmap that will see rapid iterations to its core services, including search and email.

Blake Irving, who recently joined Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) as chief product officer, spoke of the company's evolving strategy at an event this week Yahoo dubbed "Product Runway." Irving touted Yahoo's global computing infrastructure that supports the massive traffic to the company's content and services, reminding his audience that Yahoo remains one of the premier brands on the Web.

He also noted the strong ties between Yahoo's research labs and product divisions, explaining that Yahoo benefits from healthy collaboration between the two sides of the house, which in many IT firms effectively operate as silos.

At the same time, he acknowledged that Yahoo needs to do more, both to impress its advertisers and retain consumer loyalty with a swifter pace of innovation and more relevant, personalized content.

"With great technology and great technologists and great labs, you know, there's an opportunity for us to do things better, frankly," Irving said.

"You're going to see things from us over the course of the next year -- course of the [next] year and a half, three years, five years -- that are going to feel a little different to you. We're going to be iterating much more frequently than we do today."

Those changes will begin this fall, with Yahoo detailing plans for upgrades to its core search and email platforms.

In search, Yahoo is billing the fall rollout as one of the "most significant updates" to its search service, which has seen its market share erode in recent years. By one analyst firm's measure of U.S. search queries, Microsoft's search engine eclipsed Yahoo for the first time last month

Yahoo plans to stock its search results for popular or trending queries with a variety of content formats presented in a streamlined, easily navigable layout. Searches for popular entertainment topics or individuals will present results organized by images, news stories, videos, tweets and other types of information, presenting users with an array of one-click bars to display the results in the format of their choosing. Yahoo will offer a similar presentation for news items.

Those new features will roll out as Yahoo continues to transition its search-engineering operations over to Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) technology as part of a long-term revenue-sharing agreement between the two companies. Yahoo has sought to defuse speculation about its exit from the search market through the partnership, explaining that it will continue to innovate and improve the user-facing layer of its search engine, even if it no longer has a hand in maintaining the underlying infrastructure.

Yahoo is also planning a redesign of its email service, which currently serves some 281 million global users. Later this fall, Yahoo expects to release a beta version of a new, streamlined inbox, boasting a faster response time and new integrations with social services Facebook and Twitter.

The company is also planning to roll out new advertising formats that enable marketers to customize their creatives with messages more precisely tailored to users. A crucial pillar of the company's efforts on the advertising front will be to glean more information about its users' interests and preferences.

Currently, roughly half of the 600 million monthly visitors to Yahoo are logged in when they visit one of the company's sites, Irving said. Yahoo is now "striving for 100 percent authentication," he said, explaining that the company will begin accepting login credentials from Facebook, Twitter and other open ID schemes.

"The vision is bringing personal meaning to the Web," Irving said. "Using insights and data, we're going to understand what brings personal meaning to individuals on the Web. And that doesn't just mean owned-and-operated sites. It means across the Web."

Kenneth Corbin is an associate editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.

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SMBs Balance Social Media Risks, Rewards

Small businesses and small business ecommerce sites have embraced social media as a means to advertise their products and services and connect with customers, but this affinity for sites like Facebook and Twitter has also put data -- their own and their customers' -- at greater risk.

Security software vendor Panda Security's Social Media Risk Index (available in PDF format) study found that 33 percent of the 315 U.S.-based SMBs surveyed have endured at least one significant malware or virus infection from social networks.

And of that infected group, 35 percent said they've suffered some sort of financial loss as a result of the security breach. Facebook was cited at the No. 1 culprit, followed by YouTube and Twitter. One-third of these of breaches cost in excess of $5,000 apiece, according to the report.

Researchers said they expect these numbers to continue to grow as more hackers target smaller companies that often lack either the budget or the resources to shore up their data networks compared to their enterprise brethren.

"Social media is now ubiquitous among SMBs because of its many obvious business benefits," Sean-Paul Correll, a threat researcher at Panda Security, said in the report. "Yet these tools don't come without serious risks."

To meet this growing demand for SMB-appropriate security applications and services, vendors such as McAfee (NYSE: MFE), Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC), Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) and others are rolling out integrated security offerings designed to provide adequate security for smaller companies and their limited IT budgets.

But antivirus and endpoint security applications can only do so much. In order to maintain consistent and reliable protection from ever-more-creative phishing and malware scams, companies of all sizes need to incorporate ironclad governance and education programs and procedures throughout their companies to ward off new emerging threats.

Surprisingly, most SMBs are actually doing a good job on this front.

The survey found that 57 percent of companies with less than 1,000 employees have already installed a social media governance policy. More important, 81 percent of those companies said they also have the personnel in place to actively enforce those policies. Another 64 percent said they have formal training programs in place to teach workers about the inherent risks and benefits of social media sites.

"While a relatively high number of SMBS have been infected by malware from social sites, we were pleased to see that the majority of companies already have formal governance and education programs in place," Correll said. "These types of policies combined with up-to-date network security solutions are required to minimize risk and ultimately prevent loss."

Even with the additions of security software apps and formal training and governance policies, most SMBs (62 percent) still ban employees from using social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter while on the job.

Another 25 percent said they actively block popular social media sites for employees -- typically by using either a gateway security appliance or cloud-based security software service-- which limits both security risks and the employees' ability to harness social nets for business purposes.

For those SMBs that are willing to live with the risks to drive sales and marketing campaigns, Facebook was by far the most popular social network used (69 percent) followed by Twitter (44 percent), YouTube (32 percent) and LinkedIn (23 percent).

Larry Barrett is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.

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Microsoft Bing Pulls Into Second Place in Search

It took 15 months from when it launched, but Microsoft's Bing search technology finally pulled ahead of Yahoo search and into second place behind Google, at least in the U.S., according to one leading Web analytics firm.

The Nielsen Company said that Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Bing outstripped partner Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) in August, pulling slightly ahead of Yahoo search.

"For the first time, MSN/Windows Live/Bing Search overtook Yahoo as the number two search engine in the U.S. with a 13.9 percent share of search volume in August 2010," said a post to the NielsenWire blog on Tuesday.

By comparison, Yahoo Search logged a 13.1 percent user share of U.S. searches in August. At the same time, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) pulled in a 65.1 percent share, which has remained basically flat for the past year.

Microsoft launched Bing in late May 2009. Since then, it has slowly picked up user share, but it had never broken into the number two position before.

Bing still has a long way to go to threaten Google's solid leadership slot, though.

Yahoo's share declined by 18 percent over the past year. Bing, in the meantime, grew by 30 percent overall since August 2009, making it obvious that Microsoft's growth has come primarily at the expense of Yahoo -- the software giant's partner.

In July, Google's share was 64.2 percent versus 14.3 percent for Yahoo and 13.6 percent for Bing.

Microsoft and Yahoo inked a deal last winter whereby the Bing technology will provide the search infrastructure for Yahoo sites in return for Microsoft getting a share of the advertising revenues for ten years.

The two companies finished integrating Bing search into Yahoo's sites on August 24, but Nielsen did not count that as traffic to Bing.

"The eight days of Bing-powered search on Yahoo are not included in the Bing number," a Nielsen Company spokesperson said in an e-mail to InternetNews.com. "Both Bing and Yahoo will continue to be reported as separate entities," the spokesperson added.

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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3 Twitter Tools for Small Business Ecommerce Sites

In what seems like a never-ending quest to stay on top of ecommerce trends, small business and ecommerce site owners are adding social media campaigns, such as Twitter, to existing marketing plans.  One thing you should be aware of -- once you start tweeting to customers you’ll find that using Twitter can be time consuming.

The good news is that there are many free and low-cost tools available to help you better manage your Twitter marketing tasks. Even better is that most Twitter tools are Web-based and very easy to use.

The three Twitter tools picked for this round-up are best-suited to help a small business ecommerce site owner stay on-task with Twitter marking efforts. These Twitter tools will cut down on your Twitter time investment by automating the tweeting process or by providing features that help integrate Twitter into the marketing tasks you already do.

Create a Promotional Coupon with TwtQpon

Small business ecommerce sites will find the Twitter coupon generator, TwtQpon, useful for promoting Web store deals on Twitter. You can also create special reward coupons for your own loyal Twitter followers.

When you visit the TwtQpon site, click on the "Create a Coupon" button and enter the following information in the Web form:

Your Twitter account nameThe coupon titleThe coupon details (in 140 characters or less)Upload a 700 x 300 pixel imageSpecify a coupon code (if blank the coupon will show “no code required” on it)Add a redirect URL (your promotion landing page or ecommerce site URL)The expiration date of the coupon

This information is all you need to create your free Twitter coupon.  Your Twitter followers will see a Tweet, which is the text you enter in TwtQpon Web form. Customers who click the link are directed to the image-enabled version of the coupon page (on TwtQpon.com) and are then redirected to the URL you specified when they click to redeem.  What we like about this Twitter tool is that you can create and publish your Twitter coupon in seconds.

You do have an upgrade option to add personal branding, which is shown on the image-enabled version hosted at TwtQpon.com.  The website doesn’t specify a fixed price for the upgrade but suggests you enter a price at check-out based on what you think the upgrade is worth.  On its website TwtQpon says that the branding service is a way of supporting hosting and development costs.

Schedule Tweets with FutureTweets

FutureTweets by SolidFlux is another useful tool for busy small business ecommerce sites. If you often forget to update your Twitter status or you have difficulties working in regular tweet time this is a good tool to use.

The Web-based service lets you schedule a number of tweets and specify the time you want the tweets to be published on Twitter.  You could pick one or two days a week to add multiple tweets that you set to publish at different times.  The scheduling aspect will not be noticed by your followers and it will appear as if you Tweet on a more regular basis.

To use FutureTweets you need to give permission for the application to access your Twitter account. Once the connection between Twitter and FutureTweets has been made, you'll find yourself looking at a very simple form on the FutureTweets website.  

All you need to do is type in your Twitter message and then select a publish date. You can enter the publish date manually in the form field (e.g. 2010-09-14 15:25) or you can choose the date on a calendar button and select the time by dragging the hands on the clock widget beside the message box on the form.

After scheduling your Tweets you’ll see a list of all scheduled tweets you have written with a star noting the ones that have been published. From this single Web page you can also edit or delete any Tweet you set using the tool.

What we liked best about FutureTweets is that it offers a simple interface with everything you need on one page so you can go in and schedule future tweets quickly. 

HootSuite Social Media Dashboard

HootSuite is a social application that you can use to manage a number of social media tasks in an efficient way from one Web-based interface.  The service supports a number of social platforms in addition to Twitter -- like Facebook, WordPress and others.

HootSuite offers several tools that will help small business ecommerce site owners to better manage their Twitter and social media marketing tactics. Some of the tools let you schedule updates across one or more social media sites, and you can also collaborate and manage multiple social accounts that are spread amongst your marketing team.

Small business ecommerce site owners will also like two of the more business-focused tools in HootSuite. The first is the “Monitor Mentions” tool. This is used to track and gather mentions of your company or brand across multiple social sites.  Another business tool in HootSuite is used to review statistics and reports on individual status messages tweets you publish.

HootSuite is a more professional Twitter tool with a focus on the needs of a business user. We like that it offers multiple tools for multiple social media sites in a single Web-based interface.

HootSuite offers a free ad-supported version that lets you monitor and post to five social networks, use 2 RSS feeds, and caps your statistics history to the first 30-days of use.  The full unlimited version with all features and one team member for collaboration is $5.99 per month. Additional team members can be added for $10 per month per person.

More Twitter Tips

Looking to get a better handle on integrating Twitter into your small business marketing plan? Try these Twitter tips and guides for small business ecommerce sites:

How to Twitter for E-commerce SuccessTwitter Tips to Boost Small Business MarketingWebopedia's Twitter DictionaryFree Twitter Tools to Tweak Your TweetsCheapTweet Gives Twittering Retailers more Exposure

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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Mobile Commerce: Coming to Ecommerce Sites Near You

According to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, in the past year, the company's customers around the world used mobile devices to buy more than $1 billion in products from the ecommerce giant. That's one heck of a trend, and anyone who owns a small business ecommerce site would be well advised to watch it closely.

Mobile commerce is coming, and not just to the big ecommerce shops. Small Business Computing and analyst Laurie McCabe provide what Web shop owners need to know about this mobile ecommerce revolution.

What is Mobile Commerce?

Mobile commerce (also known as mobile ecommerce, m-commerce and other variations) consists of two primary components. The first is the ability to use a wireless phone or other mobile device to conduct financial transactions and exchange payments over the Internet. The second is the ability to deliver information that can facilitate a transaction -- from making it easy for your business to be "found" via a mobile Web browser to creating mobile marketing campaigns such as text promotions and loyalty programs. Why Should You Care?

Just as the Internet and ecommerce revolutionized the way we promote, market, shop for and buy goods and services, wireless devices and mobile commerce are poised to create another revolution in the world of commerce.

Read the complete mobile commerce article

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Review: 3DCart Offers Social Media Integration

Small businesses or entrepreneurs often look to a hosted ecommerce software platform to launch an online Web store. The benefit of using a hosted ecommerce solution is that you can set up your store and shopping cart, plus use a number of tools for inventory management or customer marketing -- all from within a single Web-based control panel.

3DCart Version 3.2 is an ecommerce software solution that offers all the basic tools and customization options you would expect when using a hosted ecommerce provider. One thing we liked about 3DCart is that it offers a few extra features, like marketing and social commerce tools that are not industry-standard features found in most hosted ecommerce software platforms.

Getting Started: Create a 3DCart Account

Setting up a store using 3DCart is a simple process. You can create your store, upload products and be open for business pretty much right away. It is advisable to have files ready to use, such as your business logo, product catalog, images and other assets that you will need to customize your Web store.

3DCart offers a free 15-day trial, so you can create a free account and try the service to see if it will meet your needs. Once you have provided provide a name, email address and phone number you are forwarded to a screen to setup your store. After you create a new store you can use the account and then upgrade to a paid subscription (see full plans and pricing here) if you decide to continue using 3DCart as your ecommerce software.

Next: Design, Set Up and Customize Your New Store

3DCart offers a built-in wizard that will help you get all the required information into the system, and then it will guide you through the creation and customization of your Web shop. If you prefer to skip the wizard, you can access all of your store management options through the "Online Store Manager," which is your administration dashboard. This is the Web-based interface that lets you manage your orders, products and marketing -- and it lets you access additional tools for store management tasks.

To launch your store, you will first need to customize the following six options:

Design allows you to create or choose templates and create a store logo. Using the Web-based control panel allows you to design a storefront without needing to know any code at all. You can also choose to include features such as product reviews, or "email-a-friend" links.Store Set-up is where you provide information such as your store name, and a description of your business. If you didn't create a logo in the Design phase, you can upload one you already have during this step.Add Categories lets you establish categories to organize your products in the Web storeAdd Products is the tool you use to upload your product catalog or to enter products individually. 3DCart offers a number of options for managing your products. For example you can choose which items to display on your main page, create bundles of products, offer per item discounts, and customize the product description, title, meta tags, and more.Payment Methods lets you choose which types of payments customers may use by selecting your payment gateway. 3DCart supports all major payment gateways including Authorize.net, Verisign, PayPal, Google Checkout, and more.Shipping Options allows you to select a carrier for delivery. 3DCart offers integration with UPS, FedEx, Canada Post and USPS. When customers make a purchase from your Web store, they can obtain real-time shipping quotes and also get package tracking information.

These standard ecommerce software functions are all you are required to customize in order to launch an online store using 3DCart.

One thing that 3DCart does well is provide ample options to customize the store to suit your own business needs in terms of shipping, taxes and inventory management. Also, there is plenty of opportunity for merchants to add or edit keywords, meta tags, page titles and images for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes.

Another thing that we liked about 3DCart is that the Web-based interface used to manage your store and 3DCart account is laid out in such a way that it's easy for even a novice to figure out how to customize and open a store in a short amount of time.

The 3DCart ecommerce software platform also offers a number of additional features that small businesses and entrepreneurs will want to use to get the most out of what the platform has to offer and to tweak their online store.

Social and Mobile Commerce Features

With this new 3.2 version release, 3DCart provides mobile commerce, built-in marketing tools and social commerce integration.

The built-in social commerce features of 3DCart will help you move your Web store to a social setting. The ecommerce software platform allows you to easily integrate the Facebook Like Button (see Facebook Like Guide), add your store to your Facebook Fan Page within its own tab, and share products and news across multiple Social Bookmarking sites using the Add This widget.

3DCart also provides iPhone and smartphone templates which will optimize your Web store for visitors who are browsing -- and buying -- from their mobile devices.

Another feature worth mentioning is the built-in blog, which is helpful for SEO efforts. In just a couple of clicks you can create a store blog to post news, articles and other content. The blog interface lets you schedule posts and provides an RSS feed for syndication.

In addition to these features, you will also have access to online marketing tools, product reviews and store widgets. You also get an image editor to prep your product images, the "Newsletter SmartLists" to manage mailing list subscribers, and a CRM feature to track and manage customer communications and relations.

Pricing, Support and Availability

3DCart offers a number of pricing plans to suit any small business or entrepreneur. The "Mini" plan falls on the low-end of the scale, but it's a good choice for a part-time or casual seller looking to expand from eBay and online auction sites. It's designed for low-traffic stores, has a 50 product-listings cap and starts at $19.99 per month.

The mid-range "Professional" plan is designed for medium-traffic stores (around 8,000 visitors per month). It costs $65.99 per month and includes a LiveChat plug-in. The high-end small business "Premium" plan costs $199.99 per month, and it's designed to handle around 120,000 visitors per month. You also receive extra features in this plan, such as enhanced statistics, LiveChat and a QuickBooks plug-in. take a look at all the 3DCart subscription plans and pricing.

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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Apple Fights Spam on Ping Social Networking Site

Marketing through social networking sites continues to be an extremely effective and affordable way to build your small business ecommerce website's brand, reputation and revenue. But as with most things in business, there's a down side, and for social networking sites, that 's spammers and scammers.

No matter which social networking site or sites you use as part of your overall marketing strategy, it pays to know what you're up against. Ping is Apple's social networking site, and it's part of the company's iTunes 10 digital media store. It's also the latest social networking site to be inundated with spam.

Our sister site, eSecurityPlanet.com has all the details on Apple's anti-spam effort. Read on to understand the current risks so that you can protect your social media business interests.

Ping, the social network built into Apple's new iTunes 10 digital media store, received a thorough scrubbing by the company's engineers this week after discovering that its comments section had quickly become a spammer's paradise.

A bevy of comments and links on various artists' pages on the popular service -- which eclipsed the one million-user mark within a couple days of its release last Wednesday -- were inundated with links to bogus surveys promising free iPhones or iPads in exchange for completing the questionnaires. Instead, those surveys aimed to simply spread spam or install malware on unsuspecting victims' PCs and mobile devices.

Read the complete Apple Hustles to Rid Ping of Spam article

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Google Extends Search Prowess in an 'Instant'

Google's new search technology, "Instant," produces search results so quickly that it makes you wonder how the next iteration could be anything other than outright mind reading. This is good news for Google, the hands-down search engine leader, as Bing and Yahoo join forces to try and narrow Google's dominance.

Our sister site, Datamation.com, has all the details on Google Instant's features, how it works and when it'll be available.

SAN FRANCISCO -- In the time it takes you to finish reading this sentence you could easily finish several search queries using Google's new Google Instant service.

Already known for its speedy search results, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) unwrapped new search technology on Wednesday that is designed to greatly simplify the process users go through when making a search query and kicking back speedier, more relevant results.

Read the complete Google Speeds Search From Fast to 'Instant' article

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Marketing Tips: Coupon Policies

Does it make good business sense to accommodate a customer who wants to give you money, or should customers expect to play by the rules a company lays out during a sale? Our marketing expert, Andrew Lock, has a strong opinion on this topic -- see if you agree or not.

Failure and success are two sides of the same coin. Anyone who's been successful will tell you it was mixed in with by plenty of failure. Just look at Google, or even a professional challenge our favorite marketer recently went through -- he'll fill you in. Plus, Andrew offers Web design advice, provides a Web tool aimed at anyone who freelances, and a lesson on cross-promotion that you can adapt to your own business.

I talked about Best Buy in one of my first episodes of the show, and sad to say things haven’t improved with its marketing or customer service. I received a 10 percent off coupon in the mail, and when I tried to use it a day early they simply would not let me buy. In this recession, that’s just plain crazy. It was a $2,000 purchase, the price was no different within the 24 hour period, and it makes no sense to me to deny the sale. Oh well.

Google outwardly appears to do no wrong, with a share price that’s gone through the roof in recent years. But did you know that Google has had some spectacular failures -- most recently with Google Wave, Google Coupons, Google catalog, and many others. The reason I mention this is to remind you that if you have a project that doesn’t work out, despite best intentions -- so what?! It happens. Move on, and try something else.

Freelancing can be very beneficial as long as you know what you’re doing, pay attention to marketing your business, and are disciplined. I've found a Web resource that contains lots of helpful articles specifically designed to help freelancers with their business and marketing.

Our big marketing lesson in this episode comes from a company called Northwest Natural Products. I stumbled across an ingenious marketing strategy that it implemented in its gummy vitamin products. I’ll show you how you can adapt it for your small business.

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, 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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Online Ads, Privacy Remain in FTC Crosshairs

WASHINGTON -- A senior official at the Federal Trade Commission hinted on Wednesday that the agency is planning to prod online advertisers and Web companies to adopt new education tools and data-collection restrictions in an effort to protect consumer privacy.

"Right now the consumers really don't understand what's going on. So I think that is the real issue that needs to be addressed," Loretta Garrison, a senior attorney at the FTC, said here at the O'Reilly Media Gov 2.0 Summit. "We think they sort of know they're being tracked, but they don't really understand the wealth of information that's being collected and the many different parties that are involved and the various ways in which [information] is being used."

Garrison acknowledged that the commission is sensitive to the concerns expressed by members of the Internet industry about enacting overly restrictive rules in a marketplace evolving as rapidly as the online advertising sector, particularly when advertising revenue funds the bulk of the free content and services on the Web.

But at the same time, she suggested that a baseline privacy protection should be available to consumers, recalling FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz's comments at a recent Senate hearing when he proposed a "do-not-track mechanism" for online advertising, similar to the popular "do-not-call" registry that restricts the activities of telemarketers.

"There ought to be an element where if they don't want to be tracked they ought to be able to say 'no,'" Garrison said.

Earlier this year, the FTC concluded a series of workshops that convened consumer advocates, industry representatives and other stakeholders to explore various aspects of the online privacy debate. This fall, the commission is planning to release a report outlining a set of recommendations for Internet advertisers and Web companies to provide clearer notice about their data-collection practices and offer meaningful privacy safeguards.

Leibowitz has acknowledged that those guidelines will likely extend the commission's policy of self-regulation in the online-advertising space, given its limited rulemaking authority absent an act of Congress.

House lawmakers have developed a framework for online privacy legislation, though any bill is unlikely to advance in an election-shortened session.

For some of the other members of the privacy debate speaking at the conference today, that's probably a good thing. Education Could Alleviate Some Consumer Anxiety

High-profile missteps, such as Google's inadvertent collection of Internet transmissions with its Street View cars, or some of Facebook's more controversial policy changes, help keep the privacy debate in the front burner.

But for Tim O'Reilly, founder and CEO of O'Reilly Media, those are the inevitable byproducts of a fast-moving technology revolution, and hardly a justification for hasty laws or regulations.

"I'm really worried because it's so important when we enter a new technological era to realize that there will be mistakes," O'Reilly said. "It really worries me when we see this rush to criminalize mistakes as we are starting to enter a new world that we don't fully understand."

The FTC's Garrison conceded that the agency's series of workshops had made it clear that "there's no such thing really as anonymity on the Web," particularly in an age when users are willingly sharing information about themselves on social media sites and loose snippets of data from disparate sources can be compiled into highly detailed profiles.

In that light, she said that the well-worn guideposts of the online privacy debate -- opt-in versus opt-out data-collection regimes and the efficacy of privacy policies -- may no longer apply.

Internet companies could drain much of the anxiety from the privacy debate if they could more effectively demonstrate the value proposition of gathering data about their users, argued Jules Polonetsky, director of the Future of Privacy Forum who formerly served as the chief privacy officer at AOL and DoubleClick.

Polonetsky recalled the outrage many Facebook users expressed when the company launched its news feed, providing automatic updates about members' activities.

Those privacy concerns dissipated as members grew accustomed to the feature (now an essential element of the social network) and Facebook made some modifications to the way it was implemented. Polonetsky made a similar point in an interview with InternetNews.com while still at AOL, describing the knee-jerk reaction privacy-conscious consumers might have had to an instant-messaging client such as AIM that alerts users when their buddies are online and available.

Both cases involve social features that seem almost quaint by the standards of 2010, but in each situation, the privacy concerns were defused when consumers came to recognize the utility of the product. Polonetsky argued that if companies could do a better job of explaining to users the value they receive in exchange for sharing benign bits of information (such as Amazon's personalized shopping recommendations), the perception of a widespread consumer harm could be laid to rest, and policy makers might not feel compelled to press for restrictive laws or regulations.

"You solve an enormous number of these privacy questions when you make data the feature that frankly it is for many of these apps," Polonetsky said. "How do we tell people that it's not about tracking, profiling -- it's about serving you."

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10 Tips for Writing an Ecommerce Website FAQ

Small business ecommerce website owners spend a lot of time tweaking the homepage or shopping cart, but one important ecommerce content page that also needs attention is the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page.

An online FAQ is a basically a document that contains a collection of commonly asked questions and the answers to those questions. The layout is in a strict question and answer format. Your customers will use the FAQ to find an answer to a question they have about your ecommerce website or service.

Ecommerce website owners should create and post a frequently asked questions page as a customer service tool. Many customers would rather look for an answer to a question on your website instead of calling or emailing you. The benefit for the site owner is that a well-written FAQ can cut down on the amount of time you spend in email or on the phone answering those common questions.

When you create a FAQ for your ecommerce website the goal is to provide customer support through an easy to understand series of specific questions and answers.

10 Tips to Create an Effective Ecommerce FAQ Page

As you create the document, remember the meaning of the term FAQ and what it encompasses. A FAQ really does need to consist of the most frequently asked questions to be useful -- not marketing statements and obscure questions and answers that no customer really asks. Approach this task with the goal of providing only customer support.

1. Use a Table of Contents: Offer subject headers at the top of the FAQ page with a hyperlink to that related section further down on the page. This allows a customer to quickly access the question they want answered.

2. Group Questions in a Logical Way: Don't create long list of questions and answers for customers to scroll through. Instead, choose a number of subjects (the main headers in your Table of Contents) and group separate specific questions related to that subject together. For shorter FAQs, grouping by "most popular" first also works well for reading.

3. Be Precise With the Question: Don't use open-ended questions that require lengthy answers. Instead, break it down in to several well-phrased and precise questions that have only one answer.

Incorrect: How do I use your shopping cart? Correct: (1) Do I need to register before I can make a purchase? (2)Does the shopping cart auto-calculate shipping costs? (3) Is my wish list saved in the shopping cart?

4. Avoid Too Many Questions: The FAQ should not be used as a guide to "everything you could ever want to know" about the ecommerce website and services. By publishing only the popular questions and answers the FAQ will be more useful to your customers.

5. Answer the Question: Believe it or not, some FAQs pose a question and two paragraphs later the question remains unanswered. It is fine to use simple "Yes or No" answers. Your customers will appreciate a direct answer to their questions.

Incorrect:Do you ship to Canada? Because our business in located in the United States and we are unable to secure a shipping service that is cost-efficient…Correct: Do you ship to Canada? No.

6. Link to Resources When Available: When possible, be sure to include additional information via hyperlinks so the customer can continue with self-service support. For example, common questions like "How do I change my billing address?" should always be hyperlinked to the online account information form so the customer can solve the problem immediately.

7. Use Bullet Points for Instructions: In cases where you need to provide instructions to answer a question, use bullet points to list the step-by-step instructions. Explanations of why the steps are required are not needed, and you should only provide the quickest and easiest set of steps to solve the problem and answer the customer's question.

8. Focus on Support, Not Marketing: Remember that this type of ecommerce website page is designed to provide customer service and support. All questions and answers should pertain to assisting customers and should not promote specific products. Marketing does not belong on an FAQ page.

9. Use Real Frequently Asked Questions: The frequently asked questions page should consist of real "frequently asked" questions that you get from customers. Track questions that are communicated to you via phone, email or Web-based technical support -- and publish the most commonly asked ones. Don't make up questions and answers just so you can offer a FAQ page. Doing so creates a page of useless information that is not relevant to the real questions and answers your customers expect to find on this page.

10. Update Your FAQ Page: As customers continue to communicate with you, update your FAQ. Delete irrelevant questions and add newer questions and answers that are the most common. Also, when you make changes to your ecommerce website or services, remember to check your FAQ to ensure the questions are relevant and the answers are accurate based on website changes.

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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Yahoo, Microsoft Begin AdCenter Shift

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) announced in late August that the integration of the software giant's back-end search engine with Yahoo's sites was complete, after beginning that work only a week earlier.

"This week, Yahoo advertisers can begin transitioning their paid search campaigns to Microsoft adCenter. During the transition, which is on-track for completion by the end of October, advertisers will continue to manage separate accounts on adCenter (serving ads on Bing) and Yahoo Search Marketing (serving ads on Yahoo! Search)," David Pann, general manager of the Microsoft Advertising Search Network," said in a post to the Microsoft adCenter Blog Tuesday.

"Once the transition is completed, advertisers will operate one single account on Microsoft adCenter that will power search advertising campaigns across Bing and Yahoo's combined audience representing 31.6 percent of U.S. search market share," Pann added.

The announcement confirms the move to adCenter is on track to be in place by the end of October, although the companies still reserve the right to put off the transition until early next year should last minute problems arise.

"While we are confident that the preparation work done to date and the transition plan we are moving forward with now will help us reach this goal, please remember that deferring the paid search transition to 2011 is still a possibility if we conclude it would improve the overall experience," said a post on the Yahoo Advertising Blog.

The companies said in their blog posts that when the transition is complete advertisers will be able to target some 159 million searchers in the U.S. and another 15 million in Canada.

Additionally, in order to make the transition go smoothly, the two companies' blog posts explain the steps that paid search advertisers on both services need to go through. For instance, Yahoo account managers will be available to help Yahoo search advertisers make the jump.

In July 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo announced they had reached a deal whereby Yahoo will switch search features on its sites to use Microsoft's Bing technology in return for a share of the advertising revenue from those sites. The move to Bing to provide search under the covers was completed at the end of August 2010.

Microsoft's deal with Yahoo is scheduled to last for ten years. U.S. regulators signed off on the deal last winter.

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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10 Tips to SEO an Online Newsroom

Every piece of real estate on your ecommerce website can benefit from SEO including an online newsroom. Now you might not even have one of those, and if you don’t, you might consider setting one up. Why? Because as you'll see from these 10 tips, optimizing an online newsroom for search engines can dramatically benefit your small business ecommerce site -- even beyond simply driving traffic. Small Business Computing has the details.

Too often, the newsroom on a small business website -- if there even is one -- is a graveyard for old press releases. But a dynamic online newsroom can be an effective tool for reaching new and existing customers; helping your business be seen as a leader in its field; enhancing the perception of your company's integrity; increasing traffic to your site; and boosting your search engine rankings, among other benefits.

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3 Web Tools for Better Graphics

Add these three Web resources to your small business ecommerce website – you never know when you'll need to tweak a product shot or spice up your product copy with a fun font. These tools are simple, easy-to-use and best of all, free. Small Business Computing has the details. Enjoy!

Finding the right images -- or correcting images so that they're right -- for your small business marketing needs is a familiar task to any small business owner. But you don’t have to spend big money to handle minor issues, and it's good to know that the Web is full of easy and free graphics resources. Our small business marketing guru has three graphics-related tools to help simplify your work life.

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