Archive for the ‘Yahoo Store’ Category

Keynote Presentation By Mike Boylson, CMO of J.C. Penney Co. Inc.

Day 1:

We kicked off Day 1 of the Internet Retailer Conference 2008 with registration (registration was a breeze, well done!) and a continental breakfast where we networked with fellow ecommerce entrepreneurs, vendors, and speakers. The food was ok… (horrible), Continue Reading »

Hot off the news, yesterday, December 10, marked the busiest online shopping day of the year for eBay.

Here’s some info from Business Wire:

While Cyber Monday remains an important milestone because it marks the beginning of the online holiday shopping season, data from eBay Inc. companies indicates that online shopping actually peaks on the second Monday in December. eBay Inc. companies have named Continue Reading »

Adding the Hackersafe badge on a already secured Yahoo store is probably the stupidest idea ever in the history of business - considering that it costs $1200 a year per site and does really nothing (for a Yahoo store anyway) besides adding a security badge on your website.

O well, as stupid as it is, it works… the conversion rate among my 3 websites increased by 20% overnight…

Go figure.

Technorati Tags: Scanalert, Hackersafe, Yahoo Store, online retailing, ecommerce,

For those of you who’re not familiar, the term Cyber Monday refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday, the ceremonial kick-off of the holiday online shopping season in the United States between Thanksgiving Day and Christmas.

Whereas Black Friday is associated with traditional brick-and-mortar stores, “Cyber Monday” symbolizes a busy day for online retailers. The premise was that consumers would return to their offices after the Black Friday weekend, making purchases online that they were not able to make in stores. While the idea has not survived the test of time with sales data from recent years, however, Cyber Monday has evolved into a significant marketing event, sponsored by the National Retail Federation’s Shop.org division, in which online retailers offer low prices and promotions.

As an online retailer, you need to get your store ready for this big day. The couple most important factors include a clear shipping and refund policy, cyber Monday promotions, and most important - watch your advertising dollars to make sure they’re producing results. It is not unusual for Cyber Monday ad spending and search volume to triple - remember to monitor them closely!

Technorati Tags: Black Friday, internet marketing, Cyber Monday, online retailing, ecommerce,

As promised last week, we’re launching a new ecommerce site again today, www.BabyGiftsUnique.com, which will focus on selling baby gifts and maternity related products.

This is our company’s 5th ecommerce site and we’re going to launch at least two more at Febuary 2008. We’re really pumped and excited to see how this new site will do because the pet site we launched last week is already doing great.

So if you are a parent with a baby or soon to have a baby or if you are attending a baby shower soon, go check it out and give me your thoughts; and if you’re not, that’s ok too, just tell your friends about it. If you can even blog about it or link to it from your website, that would be fantastic. Again - anything is welcomed!

Technorati Tags: Baby Gifts, Unique Baby Products, Baby Shower,

Google Checkout has launched for over a year and if you look at the marketplace right now, even though they had made a huge effort in promoting it (free processing, gift certificates…), the adoption of Google checkout is still not as prevalent as they (or I) want it to be.

How do I know it is not doing too hot? Just do some random searches on Google and you’ll see that not many advertisers have the Google Checkout badge next to their ad.

Here’re couple suggestions as to what Google checkout needs to do in order to give Paypal a run for their money:

1. Get on eBay

eBay being the biggest auction marketplace website in the world. It is a huge disadvantage to not be able to be used on eBay. Now, this is easier said than done of course, because eBay owns Paypal, which is Checkout’s biggest competitor. But is it possible to assert some pressure on eBay with the Adwords thing?

2. Get on Yahoo Store

Yahoo store is probably the biggest ecommerce platform online. If Checkout can do a join venture with Yahoo store just like what Paypal did, a lot more Yahoo merchants are going to adopt it. I know for a fact that many Yahoo store merchants want to take Google Checkout but don’t know where to get it integrated. (btw, it can be done) The main problem Yahoo store has with Google checkout is the TOS of Google checkout requires the checkout button to occur BEFORE the cart, which then violates the TOS of Yahoo store. Seems like for this to happen, some compromise has to be reached.

3. More benefits for Adwords Advertiser

Instead of giving free processing for the amount merchants advertise on Adwords, how about giving free adwords for the amount merchants process through Google Checkout? If Google checkout does that, I can see merchants pushing Google Checkout REALLY hard.

4. Buy Bill Me Later

Bill Me Later is one of the most widely adopted and fastest growing alternative payment method on the market. Google, you guys have so much money and have invested so much on Checkout already. Why not buy Bill Me Later? If you can buy it and somehow integrate the 2. The potential is unlimited.

I’m really tired of seeing Paypal dominating the online payment processing game, and I do believe Checkout is a superior product to Paypal. So guys at Checkout, please see if these suggestions are feasible for you.

Technorati Tags: Google checkout, Paypal, ecommerce,

One of our ecommerce website www.mypopcornmachine.com - which sells concession equipment & supplies - got a new look yesterday!

We redesigned the site base on the testings we have conducted in the past couple months regarding our customer’s behaviour and research we did on internet’s top 500 retailers - we expect our conversion rate to increase by 70-80% and the cart abandon rate to lower by 30%.

There’re still a few glitches here and there and will be fixed in this couple days. We’ve stopped all our ads at the meantime until the site is fully functional again.

Anyhow, go check it out and give me your feedback!

Technorati Tags: yahoo store, Popcorn Machines, ecommerce, Internet Marketing consultant