John Wilkerson - Ecommerce Marketing and Website Optimization

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The consequences of poor proofreading

John Wilkerson — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:58:46 +0000

The consequences of poor proofreading

A couple days ago I received an email from a company I visited at a trade show last year. It is time to go see them again next month and their well written email provided a direct link to register free tickets through their name.

Given the chance to save $100 bucks I clicked on the link without reading too closely. To my surprise their Ecommerce department had neglected to proofread the mail message and omitted the registration link. The link I followed was actually the unsubscribe link and I found myself removed from their mail list.

I feel sorry for the company in that they have invested so much time and money into developing this email list to have it suddenly be pared down due to a poor proofing job. I have no idea how many leads they had unsubscribe from the list due to this blunder but imagine if the enticement had been higher and a large portion of people followed the link.

This brings up some important issues on proofing:

Try to never do the final edit on a piece of literature and then send it to print on the same day. Sleep on the final edit and then review it with a fresh mind.

Have someone else and more than one person proof your work for you. And try to include a person not from the Ecommerce or Marketing department. They will have a totally different perspective on how the literature looks and functions.

Have a documented procedure for how the literature is to be proofed and who makes final signed approval. “In the past I worked with a firm where all literature had to be signed off by the President – they had only made one mistake to print in 30 years”

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John Wilkerson is a Marketing/Sales Professional specializing in online branding, ecommerce sites, blogging, email advertising, content creation, print media, and direct mail. Follow @johnwilkerson

863-398-2199
JDW.Wilkerson@Gmail.com

Klout VS Credit Scores

John Wilkerson — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 15:58:38 +0000

Klout VS credit scores

Klout has received a lot of blog press lately and it mostly seems to revolve around Klout’s desire to rank online presence in the same way the big three credit rating bureaus rank individuals credit scores. They continue to run into an adamant group that speaks loudly about how Klout provides no real service and in fact is creating a false measurement for the online world.

It is interesting that the online community has not embraced Klout and tried to work with them in developing their product. Fore in the long run Klout is already here and will not go away. It may not be called Klout in 10 years but the model has been built and the desire by the non players to be able to measure the players has been identified.

This is the same with the credit bureaus. They have created an unfair playing field to measure and rank individuals credit worthiness and they did so in a vacuum. What would have happened if the consumers had united and started demanding different forms of checks and balances when the industry was developing?

I don’t mean to make an opinion positive or negative about Klout and what they are trying to accomplish but in the end this one fact will remain true.

” Klout is in business to make money and now that it is proven that money can be made ranking online personas; more companies will enter the market.”

It seems to me to stop trying to tear Klout down and instead create on open dialog with them that helps them create a truly inclusive and accurate product. This in turn will allow the industry to develop with guidance from the assets they are trying to measure.

I cringe every time a prospective client wants to run a credit check on me to determine if I am a worthy employee and the same is going to hold true in a few years where all Ecommerce players are hired or fired by their Klout score. Maybe we should help stack the deck?

For a little more reading on how Social Media will start to affect hiring practices checkout:

Social Media technology will one day come back to bite HR and Recruiters

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John Wilkerson is a Marketing/Sales Professional specializing in online branding, ecommerce sites, blogging, email advertising, content creation, print media, and direct mail. Follow @johnwilkerson

863-398-2199 JDW.Wilkerson@Gmail.com

http://www.johnwilkerson.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/johndwilkerson http://twitter.com/#!/johnwilkerson

Social Media technology will one day come back to bite HR and Recruiters

John Wilkerson — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:15:25 +0000

Social Media technology will one day come back to bite HR and Recruiters

I have had the joy of interviewing for new positions and/or contracts recently and am surprised with how the market has evolved the past couple of years. It has always been one of the HR black hole when submitting resumes or making initial phone calls but I am surprised with how HR and the hiring managers disappear even after a face to face interview.

This is going to be a dangerous slope for HR to continue to take due to the prevalence of Social Media. Soon someone is going to become so disgusted that they start leveraging big social sites in a way that does nothing but bash HR and Recruiters.

I don’t mention this as a bashing exercise of my own. Only that with Social Media being used by the organizations to research potential employees; it is probably a safe assumption that over time HR and Recruiters that are not responding to active job hunters will find their online persona become very damaging. And that will eventually lead to their inability to find work. Fore when they once again reenter the job market their online background search will yield the good and the bad of their handling of applicants.

It will be an interesting situation when potential employees start doing online background checks on the HR department employees as part of their job hunts. Of course all the standard liability and slander issues will exist, but some enterprising group is going to develop and add-on to LinkedIn that does nothing but log complaints about HR.

I would enjoy comments on this on my primary site so that I can post a follow up review in a few weeks. If you found this post on one of the sites that syndicates my post please feel free to leave comments on their site but I may not get to respond.

If you are in ecommerce marketing you need to understand merchant processing

John Wilkerson — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:37:29 +0000

If you are in ecommerce marketing you need to understand merchant processing

One of the first questions I ask during my initial consulting interview is how their merchant processing account works? I usually get a blank stare from the marketing team and they respond, “That’s accounting job.”

This if farther from the truth than one can imagine. Marketing and Sales need to understand the nuances and structure of how merchant processing works and how money moves around the web community. Case in point; awhile back I posted a job description for an ecommerce manager. The description dealt with only the capturing of new business and did not touch on the affects of how the new business would affect the company.

This may seem out of the normal scope of understand and responsibility for marketing but in actuality understanding how money moves and the new technologies of money gathering and payment portals operate is very important. My background is one of operations management, sales, and marketing. And I have learned over the years that when people understand how money is collect and moves they have a much better understanding of the Big Picture.

I come from an entrepreneurial background and an ongoing discussion in my family is do you hire a specialist or generalist? The answer to this is you hire both. When an organization is small to medium in size the generalist will have a better understanding of cross department interaction and the cause and effect issues. But when you need to get something done that is very precise and has a fixed amount of time you need a specialist.

It is without fail that when you bring in a specialist their learning curve for understanding the new business is much longer. They may produce more useable work for the assigned project but they are at more of a loss when it comes to the entire company interaction.

The reason I mention this is that even if you consider yourself to be a specialist in Ecommerce Marketing, your understanding of merchant processing is an important part of the job.

For example, when you are working with sales to package and advertise a new product line an important observation needs to be made. How will the new product deviate from the standard expected order size price?

The reason this matters is illustrated in these two examples:

Fixed charge of $.35 per transaction swipe rate and 2.5% of fixed rate:

		Fixed Rate	Total Cost
	Swipe Rate	$0.35	Per $1000
Order Size	2.50%	Plus Swipe	In Sales
$25	$0.63	$0.98	$39.20	40 orders
$100	$2.50	$2.85	$28.50	10 orders
$200	$5.00	$5.35	$26.75	5 orders

2.75% swipe rate $.20 fixed rate:

		Fixed Rate	Total Cost
	Swipe Rate	$0.20	Per $1000
Order Size	2.75%	Plus Swipe	In Sales
$25	$0.69	$0.89	$35.50	40 orders
$100	$2.75	$2.95	$29.50	10 orders
$200	$5.50	$5.70	$28.50	5 orders

At first observation it seems that all is well but when we look at the total cost for $1000 in products and how the number of transactions affects the total merchant processing charges it demonstrates the need to understand the swipe rate verses the fixed rate.

A higher swipe rate with a lower fixed rate works better for smaller order sizes while a higher fixed rate and lower swipe rate is better for higher order sizes and over the course of a year the difference really ads up.

What this leads to is if you end up changing your expected order size in a major way, effort needs to be made to understand how this will affect your loss of sale due to merchant processing charges.

As we move more and more to mobile charge transactions from our smart phones the issues become more and more heightened. If your merchant processor charges a different rate for smart phone charges and you are about to launch a new smart phone advertising program, you may be setting the company up for a higher loss on merchant fees than is expected.

Essential tips for making your new blog search engine friendly

John Wilkerson — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 17:05:57 +0000

Essential tips for making your new blog search engine friendly

The following steps are the basic starting point for a new blog. Many more techniques exist and can be utilized but these starter steps will get results and help you understand the process of Search Engine Optimization and how it relates to your blog.

Step One – Check that you’re in Google search

Go to Google search page and type “site:example.com” This will list your site pages that have been recognized by Google and are available to be searched via their search engine.

If Google has not placed your site in search you need to get an outside link from an established site to link to your site. Do this by identifying a high ranking blog and then commenting on a blog post from that blog. Don’t choose an old post; make it one that has been written within 5 days. Be sure to provide a link from the blog comment back to your blog.

To find a Blog to comment to, search via Google for topics that match your blogs topics and then select the blog tab at the left of the screen. This will cull all the search results to Blogs only. Then locate a blog and post that sounds good and enter the domain name into Alexa.com search. If the score comes back below 500,000 use that blog to try and get a backlink. The odds are that if the search result is on the first page of Google it probably has a good ranking in Alexa. But this is not always true.

Different opinions exist for how to measure and identify a well ranked site but the reason I mention using the Alexa score is that you may have picked some obscure topic in your search that in reality has very little written about it on the web. So if you check the other blogs location on Alexa, you have a better chance of getting success the first time.

For more reading on backlinks

Step Two – Develop your keywords and keep a handy list

All search engines will rank your blog post by identifying your keywords. It is important that you understand what your keywords should be and to use them efficiently.

Get out a sheet of paper and write down 10 words that are unique or semi unique to your industry, hobby, sport, or activity. Next do a web search for each of these words one at a time and see what comes up in the search engine. If the first few results for each word are yielding positive results then you probably found a keyword that will work for your writings.

Google Keyword Tool works well and is free. The best way to access the page is to search for “Google Keyword Tool” and then follow the link from the search result. The reason I have you doing the search for the Keyword Tool is that if you are signed into Google you may get a different link to follow than the one I would post here.

Once you have started to develop a list of keywords keep the list handy and use the words in your post. And over time when you learn more keywords, add them to your list. It may sound overly simple to keep a list of keywords on hand but you will be surprised how often you will have a memory lapse and find yourself only writing around a small group of keywords and not utilizing your full list.

Step Three – Using your keywords properly and in the right place

Every area of your blog article page has different power in how the search engines give credence to your keyword usage. If you follow this short list it will help you get the most return from your keyword usage. The list is in order of importance.

Title
Header 1
Header 2,3,4,5…
Body

Title – It is important that the title of your post includes some keywords

e.g. Chocolate cake recipe This is weak, while you do have three strong words they lack the substance for making them unique.

Try this: Easy Chocolate cake recipe like grandma use to make

While you still have the three keywords from the first title, adding the word “easy” helps define how people think and will search for recipes. The same holds true for “grandma”

Now when a search is done for “easy chocolate cake recipe” or “grandmas chocolate cake” you have a better chance of being found.

This takes a bit of practice and understanding how people search the web. We tend to search like we speak and ask questions to our friends and family. It is important to not only use your keywords but words that define your topic in ways that live people speak, think, and will write in the search box.

My personal observation is that people who read a lot for pleasure, education, or work tend to search the web better than those who don’t. I theorize this to the fact that they think in standard structured sentences with a noun and a verb from all their exposure to the written word; whereas people who read less speak in more broken sentences with a higher use of emotional expressions such as OMG.

Header 1 or H1 Tag – how to use properly

Where the title defines the topic for an entire page, the H1 tag defines the content that is just below the tag. When you open a printed book and read the title for the book on the inside cover sheet, this is the main title. Next comes the chapter titles, these are the H1 tags. They are very powerful in identifying your content and the search engines use them to help classify and understand what is on the page.

It is important to use a sub variant of your keywords in your H1 tags.

For example, these are the H1 tags for this page up to this point:

Step One – Check that you’re in Google search
Step Two – Develop your keywords and keep a handy list
Step Three – Using your keywords properly and in the right place

Header 2,3,4,5… or H1,2,3,4,5… – proper use and why so many

Several layers of H tags exist. As you move away from H1 they carry less importance in identifying your content. The higher numbers are still important but in reality I find that I usually only use H1 and H2 for my blog post. If I was doing a full white paper with many pages of information I would go deeper into my H tags but in doing short blog writing, H1 and H2 are they only ones I tend to use.

My H2 tags up to this point:

Title – It is important that the title of your post includes some keywords
Header 1 or H1 Tag – how to use properly
Header 2,3,4,5… or H1,2,3,4,5… – proper use and why so many

Body – the real content for the blog article

This is where you put all the great information for your writings. It is where most people start by just laying out words without following any real outline. Not following an outline is fine as long as you are capable of writing long sentences and paragraphs that make since. If you question your ability to write, then read your work out loud to yourself. You will be surprised how it sounds different than when you read it with your inner voice.

The web community has an expression that content is king. This is mostly right. Great content is king but poor content just takes up space and time. You need to give thought to what you write and here is where your keyword list comes in handy.

Once you have your topic, try and write between 200 and 500 words around that topic. And as you write, use your keywords as part of your sentences. Tell a story, provide education, answer a perceived question, or just spout out your opinions; but whatever you do you must use your keywords. Not always all your keywords but you must use some of them.

A tip for writing for the web community is to not use overly long paragraphs. This is not how you were taught to write in school where all the sentences that dealt with the same concept were grouped together. The reason we breakup the paragraphs is that on the computer screen it is easy to get lost when too many sentences are placed in one paragraph.

To ease this problem, break down your paragraphs into smaller units. My personal preference is to not have more than 5 or 6 lines of text in a single paragraph.

Step Four – Tag your post

Now that you have taken all the time to create your blog post it is important that you define your post for search engines. Yes you have done this to some degree by using good keywords and H tags but one more step exists and don’t skip this step.

Your blogging software will allow you to place tags somewhere on the new post creation page. You must place good quality keywords in that little box. When you place these tag words in the box what you are doing is assigning predefined words that classify your blog post. These words will be used by the search engines to help classify the post and bring importance to the post for those tagged keywords.

My tags for this page will be something like this:

Content creation, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Blog Writing, Tips for Blogs, Keywords, Content Tags, H1 Tag, Google Search Results, Backlinks

You can see that many of my keywords are in these tags but I also used action words to help match how people will search the web. E.g. “Tips for Blogs”

Summary

These tips are not the only means to help build your blog site but they are the most important ones for new bloggers. What we have covered is how to define your content via a quality title, proper tag usage, and how to develop keywords and use them in you content.

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John Wilkerson is a Marketing/Sales Professional specializing in online branding, ecommerce sites, blogging, email advertising, content creation, print media, and direct mail. Follow @johnwilkerson

863-398-2199 JDW.Wilkerson@Gmail.com

Twas the night before closing time around Christmas Eve

John Wilkerson — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:09:56 +0000

Twas the night before closing time and all thro’ the shop,

The old boss was stirring, pushing a mop;

The coders were jacked up on some energy drink,

And Marketing was looking for the next social Jinx;

Sales had shut down, claiming no more money to be made ,

While everyone’s commissions still had to be saved,

And Maise on her PC and I on my Mac,

Had just settled our brain on the next ecom task;

When out of my speakers there rose the great calling,

The new mail was here and I rush back without falling.

Away past the desktop I flew like a flash,

Tore open the file and drank in the new stash.

The flickering light of my low battery, continued to glow,

And with the files presence my emotions did grow.

When what to tired eyes and numb fingers did appear,

The secrete to my next big marketing sear,

With a long lost password Clippy pop out,

I knew that only he could be my trip scout,

As quick as light, he danced, and he sang,

And he kept yelling, let’s re-launch this old ‘thang,

Your forgetting the images you little vixen,

Through in some Content that’s what your ‘missen

To the top of the page! Pound in that Tag!

Follow me, Follow me, and we won’t hit a snag!

My back was in cramps and my eyes beyond dry,

When Clippy came along and let out a great cry,

So I clicked my house icon, to home my screen flew,

With a paste box full of Key Words Clippy flew too,

And then in the background I heard the server go poof,

There were coming! There were coming! The hits were the proof.

As I swiveled my chair and spinning around,

Out jumped Clippy with a leap and abound:

His metal was still shiny, from tip and to toe,

And his glasses all steamy as he gave a great show;

A bundle of floppies were stuffed in his sack,

He was way out of date, but he was watchin’ my back,

Oh, his eyes did twinkle and his nose was not big,

But that did not matter ‘cause we were dancing a jig;

A mouth he had none just a twist of fine wire,

And his black eye brows made him look dire;

A short thumb drive he held clamped in his cheek,

And I could see the great Content starting to leak.

His face showed that he had survived the trash can,

For his image did not dither; he was the man with the plan.

Not chubby, not plump, but shiny and skinny,

I laughed, when I saw him wink at the genny.

A wink of his eye a flick of the mouse,

The good cheer soon gave us all a great shout,

He spoke no words just plugged in his buds,

And compiling the page he was a great stud,

And laying his clip board on the side of the desk,

He jumped out the door without running a test,

As he hopped on the server an began to slide in,

I could hear the hard drives starting to spin:

His last word were not heard only seen on the screen

Free Content for all, my best to the team!

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John Wilkerson is a Marketing/Sales Professional specializing in online branding, ecommerce sites, blogging, email advertising, content creation, print media, and direct mail. Follow @johnwilkerson

863-398-2199 JDW.Wilkerson@Gmail.com

Outsourcing ecommerce marketing or will I lose control

John Wilkerson — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:35:48 +0000

Outsourcing ecommerce marketing or will I lose control

The premise of outsourcing a company’s online marketing functions has been one of debate for many years. I would like to throw a wrench in the debate and present a singular idea that may tip your opinion one direction or the other.

The statement is this:

If the businesses sole purpose is to maximize sales and profit then does it really matter if the marketing department is in house or not?

It can then become a decision based solely cost accounting or ROI. So what if the process is outside of your control as long as it achieves a higher return per dollar invested than keeping the department in house.

And in dealing with the matter of control – maybe we need to give up control and really embrace the social media revolution. Simply invest the dollars and let the process take place.

Of course this is a simplistic rationalization of the issue such as the 1960’s free love community learned. With every decision that moves control away from the centralized decision makers so the corporate culture will change.

I will keep this in mind the next time I have to present an opinion on should we keep the ecommerce marketing department in house or sub it out.

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John Wilkerson is a Marketing/Sales Professional specializing in online branding, ecommerce sites, blogging, email advertising, content creation, print media, and direct mail. Follow @johnwilkerson

863-398-2199 JDW.Wilkerson@Gmail.com