3 Ecommerce Trends to Watch in 2011

From Website Analytics to Analyzing Customer Behavior

The days of managing your website based on pageviews and traffic statistics are over.  From tracking which pixel on your main page holds the most interest for consumers to understanding why a customer abandoned his cart -- website and customer analytics are changing the way ecommerce site owners do business online. 

Analytics is defined as a computer technology that uses statistics to analyze patterns and solve problems. Ecommerce site owners need to understand how different types of analytic software works and which is best-suited to their business. A quick search on Webopedia.com shows a number of different types of analytics: website analytics, predictive analytics, business analytics and customer analytics.

Web Analytics and Customer Analytics Defined

Web analytics is the phrase used when studying the impact of a website and its pages on users. You can use Web analytics to measure a number of important details such as how many people visit a website, how they arrived on the site, what pages the visitor looked at, keywords that brought visitors to a site and the navigational path they took while on the site.

In the coming year, work on understanding the data and analyze traffic patterns and understand the customer and how they interact with your site. Paying close attention to this data is also important for spotting technical problems and areas of your site that needs attention.

Behavior analytics takes Web analytics to a new level with a focus on the specific actions made by the customer during Web sessions.  You can obtain standard Web analytics data through customer behavior analytics, but you will also have an in-depth view of how a customer behaves on your site and obtain data to analyze customer behavior patterns.

For example, standard Web analytics can show you how many customers abandoned on your cart checkout page. Customer behavior analytics will show you the customer's experience during the checkout process to see what the customer was doing when they abandoned (e.g. you'll see if he or she got an error page when trying to register or check out).

Recommended Reading:Ecommerce Marketing: Understanding Web AnalyticsWhy Do Customers Leave? Get Answers with Feedback AnalyticsTealeaf Offers Insight to Buyer BehaviorClickTale: Customer Behavioral Heatmaps, Form AnalyticsSocial Media Marketing Integration for Ecommerce Site Owners

Social media marketing gained traction in 2010 and will continue to be a popular tool for small business ecommerce site owners in the New Year.  As defined by Webopedia, the phrase social media describes “Web-based platforms, applications and technologies that enable people to socially interact with one another online.”

Some of the more popular social sites for ecommerce marketing this year include Twitter and Facebook. Both services have a large number of users: Facebook touts more than 500 million active users, and earlier this year a study by RJMetrics pegged the number of Twitter users at 75 million.

The big draw for most businesses is that these social media sites provide the service, the bandwidth and the tools to guide you, free of charge. Unlike managing your own community discussion forum, a social service provides all the back-end work and even the pool of users. As a business, you simply need to get your accounts created, develop a strategic plan; find those consumers with an interest in your product (within each social platform) and start communicating.

In 2010, social media went mainstream for businesses, and into 2011 integration is going to be a focus. Simply running a marketing campaign on Facebook will not be enough. Linking directly without a strategy is something businesses will look to change as they better integrate social media into all aspects of an online business including the website and multiple communication channels.

Social media integration takes a number of forms, from allowing customers to login to your site using social media account credentials to mirroring your brand on a social platform or including Facebook fans in your regular email marketing campaigns.  If you're dabbling in social media this year, it’s time to integrate social media into your website and other customer communication channels.

Recommended Reading:How to Use Twitter as an Online Marketing ToolReview: 3DCart Offers Social Media IntegrationHow to Add Facebook Like to Your Ecommerce SiteMarketing Tips for Your Small Business Ecommerce Site5 Facebook Apps for Small Business Ecommerce SitesEcommerce Remarketing: Conversion marketing

Webopedia defines ecommerce remarketing as “the techniques, strategies and the automated email systems used by marketers and online merchants to follow up with Web site visitors who do not make a desired action on the Web site.”

Ecommerce remarketing is an intelligent way to follow up with website visitors who abandoned a shopping cart. Think of it this way: to bring customers to your website you employ marketing tactics. If you track a website visitor from an email campaign and see that she visited and added products to the shopping cart, but then left without completing the purchase, you would follow up with remarketing techniques to encourage that shopper to return and make that purchase.

Sometimes ecommerce site owners deploy techniques blindly. They send out mass emails to customers encouraging them to return or to visit the site and make a purchase. The best way to reach out to the customer is through remarketing techniques where you use your analytics data to discover why the customer abandoned. Then you remarket to the customer using personalized data.

The remarketing messages should contain relevant and targeted details, such as images of the products they considered purchasing but abandoned, and a direct link to return to the cart to continue the check-out process. If the first remarketing attempt is not successful, follow-up communications will usually offer a discount or promotional incentive for the consumer to go back to the website and checkout.

To do this effectively, you start the ecommerce remarketing process immediately after the cart abandonment takes place. Reaching out to this customer at this time -- while he is still thinking about the purchase -- using personalized communication methods, such as email or messages on social platforms, are known to result  in higher conversions.

Remarketing is typically a SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform that is similar to many ecommerce platforms you already use for analytics, email marketing and shopping carts.  These services are specifically designed to help you engage potential customers with the goal of converting them into paid customers. The benefit of remarketing platforms is that the communications are real-time, highly targeted and sent to the customer at a time when they are still thinking about the purchase.

Recommended Reading:9 Ecommerce Conversion and Remarketing Words to KnowA Buyer's Guide to Remarketing ServicesSeeWhy Adds Social Media Remarketing ToolSave Our Sales: Preventing Abandoned Shopping Carts

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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Ecommerce Marketing: How to Choose an Email Marketing Service

An email newsletter is an excellent ecommerce marketing tool. But at some point, your email marketing list will grow to the point where you can't manage it efficiently using an email program like Outlook. That's when it's time to look for a commercial email marketing service.

Commercial email marketing services not only maintain your lists and ensure that you comply with legal requirements, but they also provide a framework for creating and tracking the email newsletters you send. It's important you choose your email list manager well -- a poor choice can result in undelivered email and lost members if you have to change services in future.

In this article, I'll explain how to choose the right email list manager to help manage your ecommerce marketing campaigns.

The Basics: Email List-management Services

The basic email marketing services that list managers provide include adding new subscribers, removing subscribers who ask to be removed and deleting invalid or bounced emails. This is important for legal reasons, and it ensures your list is up-to-date and contains only valid email addresses so you aren't paying for services you aren't using. The service should also provide a sign-up process such as a customizable link that you can add to your website.

Most reputable services offer, if not insist upon, a double opt-in process where customers click to sign up for your list and then must reply to an email to confirm their subscription. These same services will encourage and enforce compliance with CAN-SPAM legislation and will work with ISPs to ensure emails from their servers aren't blocked as spam.

This is crucial -- you want your emails to be delivered, not blocked, and since emails are sent from the list manager's own servers, anyone abusing the service will negatively impact everyone else's email delivery rates.

When comparing service costs, be aware that some companies charge for the number of emails you send each month and others by the number of list subscribers. Also look for hidden additional costs -- some charge for storing images online while others charge for extras such as surveys and newsletter archiving. Make sure that you allow room for your list to grow -- consider not only the cost of servicing your current list but also what will happen if your list doubles or quadruples in size.

Good list-management services provide tools for creating email newsletters. Many provide templates, some of them customizable, that you can use, and some will create personalized templates for a reasonable price. At the very least, you'll want a range of templates to choose from and an easy-to-use interface for creating your email newsletters -- preferably with a WYSIWYG interface that doesn't require you to write html code.

Some services offer the option of lists members receiving emails as html or text format. This gives your list members a choice as to which to subscribe to, but you'll have an additional overhead as you'll need to check both text and html versions before sending them.

Additional Email List-Management Features

Beyond the basics, services will provide features that might be on your "must-have" list. Some services, for example, make it easy to manage multiple lists. This lets you send a single message to all your list members, and the duplicates will be removed so a person appearing in multiple lists will only get one copy of the message.

If you have a large list, sampling may be a useful feature. Some services let you create a sample list to send a test message or to allow you to compare results from two different sample mailings. By sending a test email to a small portion of your list, you can gauge the response before sending it to the entire list.

To assess the responses to your emails, your service should provide usable tracking information. You'll want statistics on total delivered and bounced emails, opening rates and click-through rates for each of the links within the email so you can compare results.

Integration with social networking sites is an additional option some services provide. These offer Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook integration allowing you to post messages when a newsletter is sent out, for example.

Still other services will provide mobile apps for the iPhone or for Droid phones, which allow you to create newsletters from your phone rather than requiring access to a computer.

Technical Help and Data Security

Your list management service should store your email marketing information in a secure way. This is information your customers have given you, so it must be adequately protected from hackers and regularly backed up so you won't lose the data if the service's computers fail.

If you need technical help, you should be able to get it 24/7 and in a way that's easily accessible to you. While FAQs are a handy source of general information and forums are good for interacting with other users, they aren't a replacement for a live support person when you're stuck with a technical issue and an email newsletter due out in the morning.

How to Get Started with a List Management Service

If you already have an email list, check to see if the new service can import your existing list as-is, or if existing participants need to verify their list membership. If verification is required, your existing list participants may need to re-sign up for your list -- a requirement that will no doubt cause you to lose a significant proportion of your list participants.

Check out the list services for ease of use and help with getting started. Do the sites have user resources, tutorials, videos and start-up guides to help you not only build your list but also to create and manage your email marketing campaigns? Some services offer online webinars, some offer face-to-face seminars and others provide one-to-one support to help you get started and to help you maximize your marketing efforts.

There are plenty of great email list managers in the small business solutions arena. Your task will be to find the one that best matches your needs. If you're in the market for an email list manager, make a checklist of the features your service needs to provide, and then search out those that match your list at an affordable price.

Examples of Email Marketing ServicesConstant ContactCampaignerEmmaMailChimpVertical ResponseTopica

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

7 Tips and Trends to Boost Email Marketing in 2011Nashville People in Business

7 Tips and Trends to Boost Email Marketing in 2011

It looks like email marketing will play an even larger role in driving customers to your website in 2011. Well, that plus its integration with social media. It's all good, though. Email marketing remains the best investment for your marketing dollar, so it's worth keeping an eye on the best ways to improve your email marketing campaigns.

Our sister site, Small Business Computing.com spoke to experts at Campaigner and Constant Contact to get the latest trends and tips to help you win more customers.

Despite the rise of social media marketing, email marketing is still alive and well. And, experts say, if you want to truly optimize your small business marketing, you need to use both methods. Indeed, one of the biggest small business marketing trends predicted for 2011 is the integration of email marketing with social media.

Read the complete article: Top 7 Email Marketing Trends & Tips for 2011

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EBay Classifieds: A Fresh Attitude for Old-School Selling

Rebranding its U.S. classified ad site from Kijiji to eBay Classifieds was only the start of changes for eBay's (NASDAQ: EBAY) own classified ad service. Not to be confused with the eBay Classified Ad listing format -- eBay Classifieds is a separate eBay website and business that puts the emphasis on localized transactions using the more traditional classified ad format of buying and selling items locally.

From Kijiji to eBay Classifieds -- Why eBay Rebranded

The online auction company rebranded eBay’s Kijiji classifieds website back on March 30, 2010. According to Deepak Thomas, general manager of U.S. classifieds and mobile classifieds at eBay, the reasoning behind the re-branding was to align the classifieds business with the eBay brand, which has established itself as the world's largest online marketplace.

When eBay relaunched its Kijiji classifieds site as eBayClassifieds.com, it also rolled out major enhancements to standards in trust and safety, customer service and user experience.

EBay Classifieds: Who’s it For?

While some people may think of classified ads as a way to buy or sell a single item, online classified sites provide online merchants and individual sellers with another selling channel. EBay Classifieds appeals because you don’t pay any listing or selling fee -- eBay Classifieds earns revenue from advertising. Sellers feeling the crunch of fees for selling online can make local transactions without spending a dime.

Also, this type of online selling site is quite useful for listing large items -- such as appliances or furniture -- that are too awkward or heavy for general shipping and delivery.

Thomas also said that eBay Classifieds offers a service category allowing businesses to post ads for professional services.  For these types of lead generation ads you can freely post your client services and contact information to promote your business to a local audience.

Enhancing Classifieds with Mobile Technology

Mobile access is one of the most promising technologies to make waves in the classifieds service since the rebranding. Thomas noted that the mobile traffic on the site has increased: around ten-percent of all traffic comes from mobile users.  Mobile Web, a way of accessing the site on your mobile device, has already been rolled out to the U.S. eBay Classifieds.

At a time when many companies rush to push out mobile versions of applications and sites to customers using the latest and greatest mobile technology -- like Android-based phones and the Apple iPad -- Thomas said that the goal of eBay Classifieds is to ensure a good experience for all mobile users, not just those using select devices.

 “One of the fundamental problems in addressing mobile users is how to support the different types of devices, such as the iPhone or Android phones,” Thomas said. “With Mobile Web, we can also provide access to the most popular eBay Classifieds features for customers on older devices.”

The features referred to by Thomas include being able to search, respond to sellers or even list new items from any mobile device.  The company is investing heavily in mobile because it currently sees high mobile-traffic on the site but also because analysts forecast mobile usage is still on the rise.

Thomas told Ecommerce-Guide.com that he doesn’t doubt that the day will come when mobile user traffic hits the 50 percent mark on eBay Classifieds.  “With a focus on mobile and strategic partnerships and investments, eBay Classifieds is prepared for increased mobile traffic,” he said.

Partnering with Oodle for Social Classifieds

In one of the company's most recent announcements, eBay Classifieds partnered with Oodle to provide sellers with even more visibility for their online classifieds listings.  Oodle, which brings a social experience to a local online marketplace, boasts more than 14 million monthly users across its network, which includes the Oodle Marketplace, Facebook Marketplace and additional local partner marketplaces.

The partnership, according to Thomas, brings the concept of social classifieds to eBay Classifieds and also provides sellers with increased visibility and exposure to millions of potential buyers each month.

“The Oodle partnership is ideal for us because it focuses on social classifieds -- a model that works very well." He explained that when people buy within a social setting, you achieve credibility simply because you stay within a friend circle. You're not dealing with unknowns.

The partnership that joins Oodle and eBay Classifieds is also important because it syndicates listings across the respective sites. Sellers who post classified ads on either Oodle or eBay Classifieds will benefit by having their listing exposed to potential buyers searching both marketplaces.

This type of partnering, in addition to mobile integration and to rolling out new product features, is what Thomas believes leads to innovation in online classified ads.

“These new product features provide users with a more engaging experience.  It’s not just sit at your computer and search anymore.” He said.

More Classified Ad Tips From Ecommerce-Guide.comLooking to Place a Free Classified Ad? Try This List.10 Tips for Selling on KijijiKijiji Review: Better than eBay for Hot Rods and GuitarsWill Rebranding Help eBay Take on Craigslist?

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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Backup Your Ecommerce Website -- or Kiss It Goodbye

Your small business ecommerce website is a valuable asset. Every hour that you spend adding content is an investment in your business, but it's an investment that could be wiped out in an instant. If that happens you could be faced with rebuilding your small business ecommerce website from scratch, and that's often such a daunting task that many business owners opt to walk away from the business instead.

In this column, I'll explain the risks, show you why ignorance is not an option, and how you can protect your investment in your small business website by ensuring that adequate data backup process are in place.

Small Business Ecommerce Website Security Risks

One slip of a finger by a disgruntled employee, or by your own carelessness, could delete your website. Your site's also at risk if the hard disk it's stored on crashes, or if the building that hosts your server is damaged by fire or natural disaster. And if the company that hosts your site goes out of business, well, you're pretty much out of luck there, too.

In any of these situations your website will go offline -- only the largest of businesses can afford to have a fully redundant system where a second machine in a different location can take over without significant delay. For most small business websites, a disaster will take your site offline for a substantial length of time if not for good.

Who's Got Your Back(up)?

If your site goes down for any reason, the question then becomes "How do you get it back online again?" If you have a recent data backup and if your programs are backed up then, with time, effort, expertise and dollars your website can be re-built and made fully operational again. It won't be easy but it is possible. However to do it, you need a backup, and it has to be a backup of everything. It has to be recent, and it has to be undamaged.

Whether or not you have what you need depends on who is doing your data backups, whether they're doing their job and if the backup they do includes everything that you need.

If you purchased a Web hosting service, and you're assuming your hosting service is attending to your data security needs, then that assumption could cost you your business. Ask your Web hosting service if it's performing regular backups. Ask what specifically its backing up, where the backups it stores and how many it keeps.

You also need to ask what sort of assistance will be available if you have to recover your site from those backups. If your hosting service cannot or won't answer these questions, you have cause for concern.

Small Business Ecommerce: Disaster Recovery

You need this information from your Web host provider because a backup to a duplicate drive on the same server won't save your website in the case of fire or natural disaster. At least one backup should be stored off site and well away from the server itself.

If your hosting service doesn't backup your shopping cart software and customizations, your product data and images, your email data, mailing lists and SSL certificates, then the absence of any one of these could cost you your business. For example, your email mailing list took years to build and, if you lose it, you won't be able to contact your customers. Your product details and images, sales data and historical record are all key parts of your website. If they aren't backed up, you won't be able to recreate them easily, if at all.

The number and frequency of the backups is important in case your system becomes corrupted or infected with a virus. If you have only backup, by the time you realize you have problems, it too might be corrupt or infected. Retaining a series of backups from different dates gives you a better chance of having a clean backup to restore from.

Small Business Ecommerce: Web Host Failure

If your Web-hosting service goes out of business, not only will your website go down but you may not be able to access any backups that your hosting service made. To protect against this, you should have a second backup, which could be one you do yourself using a FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program to make a copy of your server files onto your own computers. There are also online services that will, for a fee, perform an online backup to copy your shopping cart and data to a second location that's not controlled by your hosting service.

Unfortunately, creating a data backup system and ensuring it works is something that's often left undone because it isn't a money earner. You won't see any immediate return from spending time organizing backups today, but tomorrow those backups could be the difference between being in business and not.

Smart business professionals don’t go without data backup. To ensure you won't be kissing your small business ecommerce website goodbye if it crashes, make sure that it is backed up regularly, and that at least one backup copy is under your control.

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

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10 Tips for New Website SEO Success

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a crucial part of driving customers to your small business ecommerce site. It's also more art than science, so prepare for a certain amount of frustration. And don’t worry if you don’t experience a sudden flood of shoppers clamoring for your ecommerce goods.

A good SEO strategy takes time and patience to develop, and our sister site, DevX.com, has put together a solid list of tips to get you started the right way.

Every site needs to attract attention. Since people can only come to your site by typing your URL directly into the browser, come to your site from a link on another site, or find you via a search engine, the topic of getting traffic from search engines is a very important one. In this article, we'll go over SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategies that many new sites would do well to follow to grow traffic to their sites.

Read the complete article: Top 10 SEO Tips for New Websites

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Cross Promotion: 5 Small Business Marketing Tips

If you sell more than one product -- and hey, if your ecommerce site has only one product, you really need our help -- you don’t want to miss our small business marketing expert's cross-promotional tips. Plus, you'll learn makes an ad successful, and we'll hook you up with a really handy iPhone resource.

If you sell more than one product (and I hope you do), then you’re in the same predicament as Ted, who submitted this week’s question. He asks how to cross promote products, and I provide lots of suggestions for him, and you too.

I know so many people who have converted to the iPhone, and all of them love it. I have a resource for you iPhone addicts that’ll keep you up to speed on all the latest news surrounding the phone.

The big lesson I promised from last week is here! Remember how I showed you the Valenti ad and contrasted it with the one from Rosetta Stone? Well, the time has come for me to reveal to you why the latter is so much better. See if you can identify with the good or bad example with your own advertising.

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 small business marketing tips, advice and resources to help small businesses "get more done and have more fun."

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5 Market Research Tools for EBay Sellers

Market research provides important data to anyone who sells goods online. And it can help eBay sellers determine what products will have the most likely chance of selling at the best price during any period of time.

Market Research Explained

Some online sellers might just set a price to sell an item based only on cost and then set a 'Buy it Now' price.  But using market research -- instead of guesswork -- lets you determine key criteria such as the best day of the week to list, the best time, the optimal starting price for bids or the best Buy it Now price for selling different items on eBay.

Most market research services provide recommendations based on historical selling data. By studying real sales data you can make better listing choices with the goal of not just making a profit -- but making the most profit possible for any eBay listing. Market research shows you which factors and which eBay listing options will increase your chance to sell.

5 EBay Market Research Tools to Try

The following five market research tools offer different reports and use different algorithms to sift through eBay data to provide the details eBay sellers need to improve the likelihood of selling on eBay. As an added bonus, many eBay tool providers offer a free trial; you can try the service and see results before making a financial investment.

1.  HammerTap: EBay Market Research Solution

HammerTap is an eBay research tool designed to help eBay sellers make more sales, more often. The service, which consists of the research tool and webinars, provides you with facts based on real eBay historical data. It can help you choose key factors like the best end day for your auction to start and the most profitable start price to use.

The market research tool also provides insight to the main keywords and phrases buyers search with. HammerTap also recommends which image features you should use to get the most attention in eBay search results.

HammerTap Pricing: The HammerTap service is available for $24.95 per month (currently discounted to $19.95 per month). A free 10-day trial is offered, however you need a credit card to access the free trial.

2. TeraPeak EBay Research Tools

Another big name in eBay market research is TeraPeak.  Terapeak offers eBay sellers a selection of tools including a product research report, a trend report that shows sales performance of a search over a 90-day period, a Top Sellers tool to see ranked eBay sellers who have listed within your search and a title builder to help you generate keywords. It also lets you browse for relevant closed listings.

The main tool in TeraPeak's line of eBay research tools is Product Research. This tool helps sellers mine closed eBay listings to find key statistics about an item and its sales history. This data is what lets you build the best listing possible for maximum sales and profitability.

TeraPeak Pricing: TeraPeak offers several subscription plans with different options and levels of features in each. The Basic Plan starts at $9.95 per month but offers limited seller reports. Other plans include Advantage at $24.95 per month, and Motor Parts and Accessories at $34.95 per month. All plans are available at a discounted rate when purchased on a yearly subscription basis.

3. Vendio eBay Research Tools

Vendio offers an ecommerce platform in addition to several eBay Research tools including auction-management software. Vendio claims its eBay market-research tools sort through millions of closed eBay items every day to provide intelligent and customizable selling recommendations.

The tool provides sellers with details on the hottest-selling products on eBay and also details items you should avoid. Reports can help you to better choose keywords and category, and it tells you the best days of the week and times of day to list items. The Research's Top Sellers feature also lets you know who else is selling similar items and what listing strategies they use.

Vendio Pricing:  Vendio offers its eBay Research Tools for a subscription price of $20 per month. The website also states that the first 2 months of the service is free to new sign-ups.

4.  SaleHoo Offers Supplier Directory, Market Research and Community Support

SaleHoo, an online wholesale directory and community, offers online sellers (including eBay sellers) the SaleHoo Research Labs. The Research Labs provides details on products getting "buzz" online. Using the Research Labs reports you can determine which items to sell online and which ones aren't selling well in the current online market. The tool also shows key factors such as the best time of day to sell, average online selling prices, sell-through rates and more.

SaleHoo Pricing: SaleHoo membership provides access to the company's supplier directory, member forums, Smart Seller Training material and SaleHoo Research Labs. Membership costs $67 per year.

5.  EBay Pulse: A Snapshot of What’s Popular

EBay Pulse is an eBay website that sellers can use to see a "snapshot" of current trends, popular searches, highest-priced items and more. While at first glance eBay Pulse seems more like a diversion than a selling tool, you can learn more about what's hot and currently selling on the auction website.

The eBay Pulse site lets you choose any eBay category to see only the information for that category, or you can choose to see information for all of eBay. EBay Pulse doesn’t provide any in-depth market research reports, but it is a quick and easy way to see current selling trends.

eBay Pulse Pricing: eBay Pulse is a free online tool from eBay.

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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Grow Your Email Marketing List Using QR Codes

Using a QR Code ( quick response code ) is one way that a small business ecommerce site owner can encourage customers to opt-in to its email marketing list. The popularity of these small two-dimensional barcodes is growing as more consumers buy camera-enabled smartphones.

The concept and development of QR Codes is credited to Denso Wave Inc., of Japan. The technology’s roots were in the vehicle manufacturing industry where QR Codes were read by special barcode readers.

Today QR Codes are becoming a novelty in North America and businesses have found some interesting ways to use them. One use of QR codes that's growing in popularity is as a URL shorten service. This is a boost for small business marketers.

QR Codes for Email Marketing

Mobile users with a camera-enabled smartphone can scan the QR Code, which has been coded to do things such as display text, provide contact data or even open a Web page in the browser on the smartphone.

Akin to how people use bit.ly or goo.gl to shorten Web URLs when tweeting, Melanie Attia, email marketing expert and product manager for Campaigner says one trend for using QR Codes in marketing is to map your website URL or a specific Web page within your site -- such as your email opt-in form page -- to the barcode. 

QR Codes can be printed and displayed anywhere a mobile phone user might scan the code: in magazines, on clothing, at the cash register, and so on. You can even use them on your own Web pages to provide access to social profiles or product details that customers can save to their smartphone.

Growing Smartphone Use Makes QR Codes a Trend Worth Following

While conducting email marketing research, Attia said she noticed some statistics that suggested smartphone usage in America is steadily on the rise. A recent Nielsen study forecast that 50-percent of mobile subscribers will be smartphone users by 2011. That works out to 142.8 million total smartphone users by 2011. 

This, along with the popularity and novelty of QR codes makes for a new way to put those technologies to use and bolster new email list subscribers, according to Attia. QR codes are small, easy to print and extremely low cost. Email marketers can code these 2D barcodes with direct links to email subscription opt-in pages.

You can create QR Codes and display them any where a smartphone user might see them -- in magazine ads, on clothing, at the cash register, on business cards -- or any printed literature and marketing materials your ecommerce business uses.

The benefit is that customers can quickly opt-in to your list without having to remember your website or landing page address -- which is why the technology is popular as a URL shortener.

How to Generate a QR Code for Marketing

A number of inexpensive or free QR Code generators can be found online, such as those offered by Kaywa, the ZXing Project or QR Stuff.

When you map the data to the barcode, you specify a “data type” or service. Specifications for data types include URL (HTTP), email address (MAILTO), telephone number (TEL), or SMS message (SMS). A good reference for anyone interested in learning more about the services you can specify in QR Codes can be found on this Google Code page, but additional reference reading is not required to use QR Codes.

The basic takeaway for Ecommerce marketers is that QR Codes is not rocket science, and you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to get onboard with the technology and use it for marketing.

With simple-to-understand options and online services that will take you through instant code generation  it takes only seconds to a minute to specify what text, Web address or other information to embed in the barcode.  

For example, the following QR Code is linked to the subscribe page for joining the EcommerceGuide /Internet.com mailing list. It took only a few seconds to generate using the Kaywa online service.

After creating your barcode, you can grab copy and paste code to embed the QR Code on your website or blog, or you can save the image to include on printed materials. It's a quick process that provides a convenient way for customers with smartphone sto access a website or details about your company.

Tips for Using QR Codes to Boost Your Email Marketing

Melanie Attia said that using a QR Code for email marketing purposes simply provides small businesses with another low-cost method to grow its business and email marketing subscriber list.

She offered the following guidance and email marketing tips for small businesses that are investigating QR Codes as a way to boost email marketing:

1. Use the QR Code as another way to formulate the URL to your Web page on printed materials. You can also leverage it to your Facebook business page or other social media destination.

2. QR Codes are still in the “novelty” phase, so now is the time to incorporate them into your marketing because people will scan them with smartphones just for the novelty effect.

3. Consider QR Codes as just another way for customers to sign-up with you. It’s not difficult to understand or use when you think of it as an image-based URL shortener to help customers locate your email sign-up pages faster and easier than providing a URL.

4. Put the QR code everywhere -- in advertising literature, at the cash register, on business cards, invoices and billing statements and any print distributions.

5. Use an incentive as you would with any email marketing sign-up promotion. For example, if you display a QR Code at the point-of-sale location, include a note that new subscribers will receive a discount (e.g. give the customer the incentive to subscribe to your email list). By the time the customer is ready to pay for the purchase, the opt-in will have been completed and they can obtain the reward.

More Small Business Email Marketing TipsLooking to get a better handle on your small business marketing plan? Try these tips and guides for small business ecommerce sites:

Top 3 Email Marketing TipsHow to Choose an Email Marketing Service3 Trigger Email Marketing Tips for Ecommerce MarketersYour Guide to Ecommerce MarketingA Buyer's Guide to Remarketing Services

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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15 More Twitter Tools for Small Business Marketing

As follow up to our recent 25 Twitter Tools to Make Tweeting Easier, Faster , this week we look at a different set of 15 Twitter tools that will help you to further take advantage of using Twitter as a small business marketing tool.

If you have integrated Twitter into your small business marketing plan, it's helpful to invest the time to find the right tools to integrate Twitter into your existing social marketing practices. The following list of desktop and Web-based tools will help make using Twitter an easier and faster process for you.

5 Twitter Desktop Applications

Use these free, downloadable desktop applications to expand on the Twitter service features.  Many Twitter desktop applications and clients offer options for updating multiple social network accounts.

1.  Destroy Twitter: a lightweight Twitter desktop client that lets you manage your Twitter account plus filter users, keywords and more. Destroy Twitter works on Mac, Windows and Linux systems.

2.  Digsby: an instant messaging (IM), email notification and social networking application available for Windows PCs. The IM client supports Twitter and alerts you of events like new messages, and it provides a live news feed.

3.  Seemic: a desktop Twitter tool that supports unlimited Twitter accounts and also offers Facebook integration. Seemic is available as a Web-based browser app, a mobile app or as a desktop client.

4.  TweetDeck: this Twitter tool is designed for mobile and desktop users looking to manage Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Google Buzz and more.

5.  Tweetie for Mac: lets you better manage your Twitter account using features like compose, bookmark, search and more. Tweetie is free to download (ad-supported) or you can pay $19.95 to remove the ads.

5 Twitter Search Tools

These twitter search tools will help you wade through the Twitter chatter to find out what Twitter users are saying about you, your brand or your company.

6.  Icerocket: a social media search tool that provides results from Twitter, MySpace, blogs and the Web.  Twitter results are hyperlinked to the user's main Twitter profile page.

7.  ReSearch.ly: a Twitter search tool designed to help businesses and marketers find the Twitter users that matter most to them. You can search tweets around specified keywords and filter results to show tweets from followers. You can also segment tweets by gender or by positive or negative tweets.

8.  Twazzup: an online Twitter search tool to help you find news and trending topics on Twitter. The service is useful for filtering news tweets out of general chatter.

9.  Tweefind: this Twitter search tool sorts search results by user rank. Tweefind search results hyperlink the sender’s username.

10.  Tweetzi: a Web-based Twitter search tool that offers a unique "play" button that lets you see new tweets for your search query as they happen.

5 Twitter Tools to Enhance Updates

The following five tools will help small business marketers update across multiple platforms, including Facebook and your business blog.

11.  Blackbird Pie: embed tweets into websites or blog posts instead of copying and pasting tweets or taking screenshots.

12.  Footfeed: a mobile geo-location aggregator network that you can use to check multiple social accounts and Web services simultaneously. Offers support for Brightkite, Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook -- with Twitter, Google Latitude and Whrrl integration expected to be included soon.

13.  LoudTwitter: a Twitter tool that allows you to display Twitter updates on a blog.

14.  Smart Twitter: this Facebook application updates your Facebook status from your Twitter status making it easy to manage both social networks with one tool.

15.  TwentyFeet: offers aggregated statistics in one place for Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, bit.ly and more. Facebook and Twitter accounts are free, while additional account integration will cost you $2.49.

Looking for more Twitter Tools? Check out our list of 25 Twitter Tools to Make Tweeting Easier, Faster to learn about Twitter URL shortening services and Twitter Website tools. 

Feel free to add any Twitter tools that you think should be on this list to the comments section below.

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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Snowstorm Helps Online Retailers Top Holiday Spending Record

Thanks in part to a major snowstorm that kept many Americans on the East Coast homebound in the days following Christmas, Internet retailers posted another strong week of sales, vaulting this year's online holiday shopping season to a new record.

The steady spending that continued through the holiday week has lifted online sales since the beginning of November to $30.81 billion, a 13 percent increase over the same period last year, according to new figures from online metrics firm comScore.

"Online holiday spending has remained strong through Christmas, and we've already seen the season totals easily surpass the levels of the past few years to set a new record for spending at almost $31 billion," comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said in a statement.

Over the past week, U.S. shoppers spent $2.45 billion at ecommerce sites, a 17 percent increase over the same period last year.

For comScore, the impressive run-up to the holidays is a hopeful indicator that the ecommerce segment, if not the broader economy, is nursing itself back to health.

"For at least this holiday season, the American consumer has been able to shrug off the continuing economic challenges of high unemployment rates and depressed housing prices and spend at a rate that has been slightly stronger than we had expected," Fulgoni said. "After the past few years' struggles, it is gratifying to see ecommerce return to a state that can only be described as a very merry holiday shopping season."

One of the highlights of this holiday season for online retailers came on the Monday after Thanksgiving, known as Cyber Monday. Historically, spending on Cyber Monday has been strong, but generally has been eclipsed by several individual days later in the season. This year, however, online retailers had their biggest day of the season on Cyber Monday, when shoppers spent $1.028 billion, an all-time single-day record and the first time any day has seen ecommerce sales top $1 billion.

By category, computer hardware posted the strongest year-over-year gains, with spending in the segment up 23 percent from 2009. comScore attributed much of that growth to the surging popularity of devices like Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPad and Amazon's (NASDAQ: AMZN) Kindle e-reader.

Online sales of books and magazines were up 22 percent, followed by consumer electronics and computer software, up 21 percent and 20 percent, respectively.

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

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8 Security Resolutions for Ecommerce Site Owners

If you own or manage a small business ecommerce site, you know that security is important. But it's not just site security you need to stay on top of. You also need to make sure your notebooks, smartphones and other computer devices are secure, too -- especially if you keep sensitive business data and customer information on any of those devices.

Our sister site, eSecurityPlanet.com has complied eight resolutions to help you improve your security and to protect your most valuable business asset: your data. And it won’t put a dent in your budget, either.

Here are eight resolutions you should consider adopting to ensure you have a great New Year – at least when it comes to the security of your computers and gadgets. All of which you may be able to be keep without spending a dime.

Read the complete article: 8 Security Resolutions for 2011

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