Autograph by Avinash Kaushik on my copy of Web Analytics 2.0, received at the Art of Marketing

Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve last blogged. Why, you ask? I am a perfectionist, and the thought of writing anything less than valuable to you, my dear reader, paralyzes me. Heaven knows that there’s a lot of noise out there, so if I’m to publish something, it’d better be great. Otherwise, what’s the point, right? Or so I think. As a result, I haven’t blogged lately, not considering all the generous comments that you have left in the past.

I have a couple of folks to thank for encouraging me to get back to the keyboard and develop content that is longer than 140 characters: Linda Bustos, the blogger behind GetElastic.com, and Tyrell Mara.

Linda spoke on the topic of blogging for profit and for fun at a Vancouver social media meetup that I’ve recently attended, and she’s imbued me with enough fire in my belly to blog again. Hopefully the flame won’t die… (By the way, Linda… great hair!)

The second person I’d like to thank is Tyrell. He’s recently completed his MBA, was new blood in said social media gathering, and suggested tonight, in a tweet accompanied by a “smiley face” and all, that I should blog about the Art of Marketing conference. And really. How could I resist a smiley face?

The Art of Marketing brought us some very high-caliber speakers:

• Mitch Joel, President of Twist Image, speaker and author of “Six Pixels of Separation”;
• Bill Taylor, Co-Founder of Fast Company and author of “Practically Radical”;
• Avinash Kaushik, one of the only men in the world for whom I’d cook dinner (the other ones being my Dad, my Beau and David Gray), author of “Web Analytics 2.0″ and “Web Analytics: An Hour a Day”; Digital Marketing Evangelist at Google and Co-Founder of Market Motive;
• Gary Vaynerchuk, author of “The Thank You Economy” and “Crush It!”
• Guy Kawasaki, a Canadian in a Hawaiian’s body, hockey aficionado, and co-founder of Alltop.com. Guy has been the chief evangelist of Apple and is the author of several books, the latest of which being “Enchantment”

There were several great takeaways from the event. I would require a very, very long post to assimilate all the great insight in one single entry, so I shall cover only one — it being the very first point that was brought to us, by no other than Ron Tite, the Master of Ceremonies at the conference. He’s the Vice President, Innovation Practice at Euro RSCG, and a speaker in his own right.

Ron reeled the crowd in with an anecdote about his experience with a “certain” air carrier that had lost his luggage. And boy, could I ever relate to this. “Said” carrier has lost my luggage not once, not twice, but thrice.

But I digress.

Ron’s suitcase was eventually returned to him, but days later than when he was promised, and not before he set up a Facebook Group petitioning the airline to return his belongings.

Here’s where it gets juicy (and Ron, if I’m not relating the story properly, please jump in and leave a comment): a luggage company heard about his trials and tribulations, and sent him a brand new suitcase which had some very… how shall I put this… special items inside:

Plastic handcuffs… Condoms… Wine… Clean underwear…

Accompanying the luggage there was a note along the lines of:

“We’ve heard about your experience and thought that we’d make things better by sending you a new suitcase, containing some items that we can just presume were inside it”.

At this point, conference attendees laughed, the ice was broken, and a great lesson was conveyed:

In social media, find someone’s trouble — a problem which you can fix.

Offer them a solution, even if the issue is not directly related to your product or service.

How could this relate, say, to a mechanic shop? Keep an eye on Facebook Groups and blogs around the area, and look for the poor soul who may be experiencing a gripe with another auto centre. For example, if someone received a less-than-stellar tune-up at a nearby establishment, offer to solve the problem for them, at no cost.

In the case of a cosmetics company, if it is brought to your attention that your competitor’s customers are having issues receiving mail orders, what can you do? Strategically select one of those people and send them products similar to what they had ordered.

Guy Kawasaki calls this providing assistance. Providing value.

I call it “building good business karma”. You know… the “what goes around comes around” type. The “you’ll receive it back a hundredfold” type.

People will remember you, and will talk about you. You’ll become memorable, for all the right reasons.

And here ends my blogging fast. No funny punch line — I’ll leave that to likes of Ron. But I ask you: do you have any stories to share about a business that has gone out of its way to solve your problem? Go ahead, don’t be shy, and share them in the comments!

PS: At 4,855 characters, I could say that I have finally broken my blogging fast, haven’t I?

A couple of weeks ago I was invited by the folks at the International Internet Marketing Association (IIMA) to speak on the same topic that I presented at IMC Vancouver 2010: “The Crossroads between Social Media & SEO”. The event will be at 6:00 pm on this coming Wednesday, October 13th, at the 4th floor of the YWCA Vancouver (535 Hornby Street).

To say that I’m excited is really an  understatement. Having been to several talks at IIMA by respected professionals such as Darren Barefoot, Jason Billingsley, Warren Sukernek and Richard Goossen, I feel honoured that I’ve been chosen to join the roster of speakers at IIMA.

For those not familiar with IIMA, they’re an organization now in its twelfth year. Their goal is “to bring marketers, agencies and professionals together to discuss the capabilities and potential of Internet marketing”, and judging by past events I’ve attended, they have certainly been fulfilling this mandate.

Below is a sample of  what you can expect to learn from the presentation:

- How a well-planned social media presence can increase your search engine visibility.
- The steps you’re probably already applying to search engine optimization, and which can be transplanted to your social media outreach for a stronger presence  on Google and Bing.
- How strategic Twitter updates, blog posts, Facebook statuses and YouTube videos can help your search engine rankings.
- Facebook changes that affect search.

I owe a big thanks to Jose Uzcategui, John Hossack, Charity Robertson and all the folks at IIMA for promoting and making this event possible. I’m sure there are other names that I’m failing to mention.

If you’d like to join us, book your ticket online here.  The cost for this IIMA is quite reasonable (CAD$38.25 for IIMA member, and CAD$45 for non-members)

I’m sure that many of us will get together at a pub nearby to continue to network and “talk shop” after the event, so feel free to join us there as well, and allocate some extra time for a pint!

On Thursday, May 27th, Tris Hussey, Kemp Edmonds and myself are speaking at Social Media Club Vancouver’s event “Social Media 101: Strategy, Business Intelligence & Metrics“.

The format will be slightly different from today’s presentation at Third Tuesday. Each talk is shorter (20 minutes each, with 10 minutes for Q&A). I’ll be speaking about integrating social media with the rest of your online marketing efforts. Tris Hussey will talk about harvesting Business Intelligence with social media, while Kemp Edmonds’ topic is metrics. If I may say so myself, that’s a darn good panel!

Yes, it’s $15. Why? Because the event starts at 6:00 pm and is scheduled to go all the way to 9:00 pm. And we don’t want you to starve, so we’ll feed you. We also need to cover the cost of the venue – so the cost of the ticket also goes towards that. We don’t keep a cent from it.

Stephen Hui, Technology Editor of The Georgia Straight, thought highly enough of Social Media Club Vancouver to write a blog post about this event. So, to use one of my favourite expressions… Don’t be bashful. Register now.

This was my first for-ray into live blogging. As such, forgive me in advance for typos, grammar errors or otherwise discombobulated sentences. The text below details Jason Billingsley presentation for the International Internet Marketing Association, covering the topic: 42 ways to sell more online.

Jason Billingsley is the founder of Flip Retail, co-founder of Elastic Path and the blog Get Elastic. He co-founded Elastic Path Software in November 2000 and held the position of VP Marketing where he helped the company attract over 200 customers. Global brands such as Google, Aeroplan, Nike, Time Inc., Avis, Samsonite, United Health Group, Telus, Garmin, and Sony. Most impressively, this was done with no outside equity financing.

Flip Retail’s mandate is to consult with online retailers on how to execute e-commerce best practices.

Ean Jackson is introducing Jason.

Don’t miss the events coming up in February, March and April. For more information, visit the IIMA website.

Jason got into e-commerce when he was 17 years, and his girlfriend asked him to developed a web page. From then on, he started Elastic Path. Right now, 140 people work at Elastic Path – one of the biggest success stories in the tech field in Vancouver. After 9 years, he retired from Elastic Path and is now a professional speaker and e-commerce coach.

Jason loves to travel and decided with his wife to go to a half-year cruise.

Jason is now talking and about to start presenting his presentation deck and the Elastic Path story.

Some of the clients in the Elastic Path roster right now are Virgin, Google, etc. For now, he’ll talk about e-Commerce.

Jason’s favourite e-commerce site of all times is Arngren.net – a Norwegian site. The moral is: no matter how bad the site is that you’re working with – Arngren is worse!

He’s now working on a checkout optimization for an international shoe retailer.

He’s starting with a math equation: c=4m+3v+2(i-f)-2a.

Jason is now taking a poll to see who’s selling products online, etc.

The variables in the equation are:

C=conversions

M=motivation (one element that we don’t have any control over). It comes in 2 forms: user is a hunter or a browser. Hunter knows what they’re looking for. A browser doesn’t have intent on buying yet. However, we have control over value proposition. More importantly, we have control over value proposition.

i = promotions, offers

a = last element of the equation, stands for anxiety

Jason uses this to look at any project, web site. Is this tactic addressing any one of these variables?

Jason is asking who’s got a base domain set up. A www domain is not the same as non-www domain. The proper way to do this is by setting a 301 redirect. By default, Jason uses a 301 redirect to set up a base domain.

Jason is a firm believer in placing products as close to the base domain as possible. They should live one level deep. E.g.: www.domain.com/product vs. www.domain.com/category/sub-category/product

The big thing, though is duplicate content issue, which acts as a filter in the eyes of Google. When someone searches for a product, Google may not display one page because the product is already showing on another page.

Now, to a chart about spidering, from seomoz.org/blog/diagrams-for-solving-crawl-priority-indexation-issues

Tips:

Link Deep, Link Often

- Use top ranked products lists on home and cat pages
- Cross-sell from entry points URLs
- Create anchor content

Important to get critical content deep into the site or identify key pages in hierarchy to lever links in the web site.

Q. from the audience: you have a product page. At the bottom of the page where the explanation of the product is, do you cross-link to the category about generic cough medicine?

Moving onto PPC – favourite hack that made lots of $ for a client really quickly!!!

- Duplicate “broad match” campaigns to “exact match”

- Bid “exact match” campaigns slightly higher

Results:

Higher CTR, lower CPC, lower bounce rate, higher per visit value

Q: Google penalizes your ad position if it under performs due to broad match:

A: You’ll need to pay more if it isn’t relevant, if page takes too long to load, etc.

Secondly, Jason separates content ads from the other ads: Rationale: Different motivation

- Use a different landing page

- Target ads by site. Create an offer: everyone from x store – click here to save 10%.

Now, moving onto emails. Ask for them!

- Site wide. Ask for it in a footer!

-Incent: get 10% off!

- Demonstrate

- Assure

- Capitalize w/ effective welcome email

Next item: Get In in the Inbox – Deliverability is Hard

- Test accounts

- Check your SPF (sender policy framework)

- Domain keys & DKIM (domainkeysidentifiedemail). Yahoo looks at these. Once these are in place, Google starts to recognize messages as non-spam.

- Bounce suppression. When an email address dies, when mail box is full, you get a bounce. If you get 1000 people on Yahoo, but 100 of those addresses are dead, Yahoo labels the rest as spam.

- Feedback Loops

Deliverability.com is a great resource to check these factors out.

Now, the right sender name:

- Do not user a generic info, such as info, customer service, order. Put a real name into it.

Format for success:

- Image only vs. HTML/image hybrid emails. Deliverability goes way up if you go into hybrid format:

Deliverability: 78% vs 98%

Open rate: 10% vs 13%

CTR: 3% vs 5%

Conversion: 0.4% vs. 1.5%

Next tip: capitalize on pre-headers. They show up in messages.

E.g.: Papa John says: Get an XL pizza with up to 3 toppings for only $145.99

Q: In Aweber, where’s the pre-header?

A: It’s in the first line in the content.

Q: Is there an email distribution service that you recommend?

A: If you’re a large retailer, work with a provider who’s used to issues. Aweber is best for small guys. VerticalResponse has also worked well for other projects.

Next: leverage transactional emails

- First touch = simplify

- Request white-listing

- Track! Orders, Support, Account Creation, Tracking, Newsletter sign-up.

Go to Jakob Nielsen’s site for some great resources.

Next: WIIFM (what’s in it for me? What does this mean?)

Support claim with testimonials, etc. It’ll give more weight to your claim. Jason rarely sees an example that he can use. But one great resource is GetElastic.com – a blog started @ Elastic Path.

Next: communicate a clear value proposition. Why should I buy? Give me some incentives. E.g.: ClassicCloseouts answered all these questions: can you solve my problem? Why should I buy? What incentives do you offer? “We’ve got your holiday shopping all wrapped up”!

Resource: Marketing Experiments and Marketing Sherpa.

Now, the homepage is just guiding people to the page where the product is. Get them closer to the goal, fast. Give people images in the homepage, not just text.

Capture attention w/ products & prices in homepage. Show them. Period.

Arden B’s homepage is an example of what not to do: image is huge, model distracts you. Be careful of using hero images. Be mindful of size. Actually sell something. Powerful images can hurt conversion.

Another thing: your logo is meaningless. If it’s too big, shrink your logo! Reduce vertical space! If you have a big image, make sure to link to something!

Jason is a bigger proponent of click-tracking that eye-tracking. When you use a model, make sure she/he is looking at the product, not you.

Category pages: best right now is Crutchfield. People want guidance.

Total pet-peeve: when you’re listing products, don’t list alphabetically or by price. Do it by merchandise assortment. You need to do this on your site. Do sort manually. Do sort by Top Sellers.

Most people don’t use drop-down menus. Don’t depend on this.

Show lots of products (min/ 50 per page)

Use large pagination i.e. Google. For example, if you go to Google, you’ll see large number of page search results at the bottom (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6…)

Jason is not a big proponent of using WordPress for e-commerce sites. Maybe as a platform that is supported by an e-commerce site, but not as the main platform for the site.

Jason says not to worry about below-the-fold. If people can tell that there’s more content below the fold, they will scroll.

Best example of visual & multi-sku items: Lands’ End. Show more SKUs available. Toggle front/back view on hover.

Product Pages is the key. Let’s go to it:

Image size and image context is more important than you know when you have crappy descriptions. The image can still sell. Make it as big as possible. Use 500 px by default. Show as many looks as possible -e.g.: open bag, closed bag, stitches. If using zoom, go from 500 px to 2000!

Show product in use. Show SKU options. Don’t skimp! Set up a great photo studio! It’s worth it, and easy.

Quick tip: instead of just having product name, have a headline to the product. E.g.: Kid Inc. Toy of the Year Monkey Blaster 9000.

The Price Structure is Right:

- Create a mental baseline: MSRP, List, Compare At.

- Current price most prominent + color

- Show savings: $ and %

What Jason Hates:

Pages that don’t focus on the product. Don’t give too many options! Focus on the product! E.g.: Timberland is bad at this. Good example: Heels.com. Put a “take me to” other options above the product to give option.

American Eagle is great e.g. of how to gateway to other items

Next Tip: Create Urgency. E.g.: on overstock.com, they’ve put “sell out risk very high”.

Next: Build Confidence (the “A” variable in the equation).

- Consider a third-party security badge

- Add geographic reminder. In a Canadian site, put that it’s a Canadian site.

- Eliminate fears, uncertainties, and doubts. For e.g. say that you’ve got plenty of customers, been around a long time, ships from Canada (if site is Canadian), price guarantee, hassle-free returns. But, use modal windows so people don’t get distracted from page.

Investigate this possibility: Eliminate Uncertainties ASAP. For e.g., let them know right away how much it’ll cost for the product for shipping. It’ll affect your abandonment rates, but you’re looking at the end result.

Another issue people have is when the product will arrive. If you can say that it’ll arrive on Jan. 14, for e.g., people ar more comfortable ordering from you. Apple does a good job at this. Jason acknowledges that this is tough to do.

Avoid the Coupon Dance. The biggest rise in search term this year on Google is for coupons.

- Prominent field can reduce conversion. Reduce prominent.

- Legit holders will seek where to put the coupon on your site. So it doesn’t have to be prominent. Jason uses a Javascript link that says “have a promo code”? Or use it in the checkout, where people can’t find it easily. Officemax actually had something interesting where it said “have a promo code? Give us your email address?)

- Use click-to-open

- Deeper in checkout

Enclose your check out. Don’t put the navigation bar at the top, because it will reduce people from focusing on other areas of the site.

Eliminate interruptions: no need for a sign-in/sign-up cut-off page.

Push Some Buttons!

- If you’re using red throughout your site, use a different colour for the button!

- Increase button size

- Add icons to buttons

- Add depth to buttons

- Describe what the button does. For example, make that the button says “proceed to delivery options”

Don’t Stop Selling – Receipt Pages:

- Yes breeds more Yes’es. Ask to refer a friend, ask them to share via Twitter, etc, give whitelist instructions, tell what’s next in the process (e.g. will be receiving call from Purolator, etc).

Speed Counts! If your site loads in 8 seconds, it won’t perform as well as site that loads in 2 secs!

- Reduce HTTP requests

- Use image sprites

- Combine external files

- Perceptual speed

- Much more…

- Check Webmaster Tools

Check out: http://code.google.com/speed/ and http://www.compuware.com/fastcalc. This last one will tell you how much $ you’re losing by having a slow site.

Get Critical Elements Higher

- Reduce size of header

- Move add to cart to header or higher on page

- Duplicate checkout CTA

Optimize for Brand and Coupon!

Overstock is a good e.g. of this.

Another great tip: focus on the solution that you’re providing, not on the product that you’re selling.

Q: What’s Jason’s opinions on blogs?

A: Use a separate URL for blog. That was done intentionally, so as to not confuse people. But he says its 6 of one, half-dozen of the other.

Q: Do you have specific experiences in going after people who have abandoned shopping process? E.g. abandoned shopping cart.

A: That works primarily with people who have logged in. There’s a success rate of between 5% to 10%. His suggestion is to test, ask customers how they feel about it. If it’s a product that they’re highly sensitive about, maybe that’s not a good idea.

Another tip: use customer reviews. Use as many third-party reviews as possible. If you don’t have any, look at the content at other sites where you can get 3rd party reviews from (BUT DON’T USE THEM! That would be illegal!). Make sure it’s in text. Use testimonials. It’s an underused tactic. This helps to reduce anxiety before the shopping cart stage.

Jason is available during the next little while to work with some e-commerce clients in his coaching practice. You may contact him through Twitter.