by Justin Palmer - June 20th, 2009
It starts with a clean, professional, easy to use website.
Then you launch a new product line, so you add a new button/ad/page, etc. Innocent enough right?
Next your company receives an award from an industry publication. Why not show it off on the homepage?
Then you read an article about a Google Adsense millionaire. Why not throw a few ads in, and pick up some extra revenue?
Then one customer complains that your Privacy Policy was too hard …
by Justin Palmer - June 15th, 2009
“Not enough information” - here’s a problem the web marketer never has. Rather, the opposite is true, too much information, especially when it comes to web analytics. So how can we make sense out of the myriad of data we’re confronted with? Here’s 3 remedies for the all to common web analytics overdose.
Remedy #1 - Focus on the Few, Not the Many
“If I look at the mass I will never act. If I look at …
by Justin Palmer - May 17th, 2009
Social media can no longer be ignored, even by traditional marketing agencies and old-school business. But before you make the plunge into this powerful, but often misunderstood marketing tactic, ask yourself these 7 important questions.
Can you have a conversation? I recently saw a wall comment posted to a major clothing retail chain’s Facebook page, questioning whether the company was going out of business. As of today, the comment still has not been responded to. Obviously, …
by Justin Palmer - April 21st, 2009
WARNING: Website optimization testing is extremely addictive. Sitting behind the scenes, pulling the strings, and seeing the effect of positive change is overwhelmingly rewarding.
So now you’ve committed to testing your website. Where do you start? What do you test? While you’ll ultimately have to answer these questions for yourself, below are 7 Do’s and Don’ts to help guide a successful testing strategy.
Do Test Properly: So you tweaked your homepage and sales shot up 50% from …
by Justin Palmer - April 6th, 2009
With the endless clatter of marketing advice from blogs, consultants, and colleagues, how does the e-business know where to invest their limited resources? I’ve noticed 2 problems with a good portion of internet marketing advice:
It’s biased: If you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In other words, the SEO consultant believes that natural search is the key to your growth, while the social media guru says Facebook is the goose that lays the golden …
by Justin Palmer - March 13th, 2009
What goes through a visitors’ mind in the first 5 seconds after they land on your site? After all, that just might be all the time you’ve got until they reach for the back button. Let’s speculate on what happens at each moment…
Second 1 - Impressions: First impressions are forming. What loads first? Your header logo? Your navigation? Ads? As your page finishes loading, your visitor is already unconsciously judging your site based on the …
by Justin Palmer - February 12th, 2009
As much as customer service is all the rage, and heralded as the new marketing, it’s still viewed as a cost-center by most online businesses. This I believe, is entirely due to a defensive approach to customer care.
Defensive customer service can be defined as any type of reactive customer servicing such as answering calls, responding to email inquiries, or responding to live chat sessions.
Providing good defensive customer service will never result in a flood of …
by Justin Palmer - January 26th, 2009
It’s staggering to consider how many marketing failures are the result of broken promises.
We rarely think of it this way, but every button, every subject line, every headline on our website is a promise. Whether or not that promise is kept determines whether we win the trust of our visitors, or lose them for good.
To illustrate, let’s take a look at a fictional shopping scenario, not unlike an experience that happened to me recently.
Customer receives …
by Justin Palmer - January 22nd, 2009
Nearly every business collects feedback from their customers, and rightfully so. Yet something has always bothered me about the way most online businesses elicit customer suggestions and criticism: they usually get it from their best customers.
In other words, the people most likely to give feedback are the people who spend the most money. So what’s the problem with this? Simply put, these are the people who’ll give you the least helpful advice. Let me …
by Justin Palmer - December 17th, 2008
If you have any experience working in eCommerce, I’m going to bet you can list 10 mistakes you’ve made, or have seen others make while running their online store. Or maybe you’re currently setting up shop online, and need some advice on what pitfalls to avoid.
Below are 10 eCommerce startup mistakes I’ve encountered while working with online businesses. Specifically, many of these blunders are made by companies who are taking a traditional business online for …
