The post Social Media Explained through Beer [Infographic] appeared first on .

This infographic shows how to getting people to visit your Facebook page, keep them engaged as well as get them to return.

The post Applying Some Scientific Methods to Building a Facebook Following [Infographic] appeared first on .

During Hurricane Sandy, NYC’s Mayor’s office used Twitter to communicate vital information.

See the below infographic for the uses on Social Media during a disaster:

University of San Francisco Online Master of Public Administration

The post Social Media during Disasters appeared first on .

Any business selling online should seriously consider ways to decrease customer shopping cart abandonment. If users are visiting your website but are dropping off during the checkout process, you may have to make some adjustments to reduce your shopping cart abandonment rate.

Using tools like Google Analytics or Kissmetrics can give you insight into where your customers are dropping off during the checkout process. Once you have determined where customers are abandoning their carts, you can make immediate adjustments to your e-commerce store.

There are some things you can do now to reduce your shopping cart abandonment rate. Below are 8 simple ways you should take to improve your conversion rate.

1. Clearly display product availability

If a product is out of stock or sold out on your website, ensure that it is marked clearly. Nothing increases cart abandonment rate than trying to complete a purchase of a product that is sold out or out of stock. As simple as this seems, many e-commerce websites continue to make this mistake. Customers expect to complete a purchase only to find the product or products they want are “sold out” only during the checkout process.

2. Offer flat rate or free shipping

Shipping fees are to blame for 44% of abandoned carts according to Forrester Research Inc. Inconsistent and/or high shipping fees will increase a website’s shopping cart abandonment rate. Do your absolute best to ensure you offer flat rate or free shipping on products purchased on your ecommerce website. With this in mind, if you offer free or flat rate shipping, be sure to display it prominently on your website. Customers should be aware of the shipping cost throughout the purchasing cycle and not only at checkout.

3. Reduce the amount of pages in the checkout process

The number of pages involved in the checkout process can increase shopping cart abandonment. As a customer begins to checkout, you want them to complete the process as quickly as possible. Multiple pages and forms can be overbearing and feel like a never ending process which will increase the likelihood that the customer will simply walk away.

Clearly display the number of steps required to complete the purchase. Show the customers where they are in the process. For example Step 2 of 4 etc.

4.Offer Express Checkout

Offer an express checkout option where you collect the minimal amount of data required to complete the purchase on your ecommerce website.

While it’s very important to increase the lifetime value of every customer by collecting as much data as you can, remember, some customers simply just want the product.

5. Optimize for mobile

Increasingly more and more customers are shopping from their mobile devices. Be sure your ecommerce website is optimized for mobile and displays products properly. Many ecommerce websites today are still not optimized for mobile and as customers go through the checkout process they run into glitches that forces them to abandon their purchases.

6. Offer multiple payment options

Every customer is different and each has a favorite method of payment. Be sure your website is accommodating to all payment methods and it’s prominently displayed on your website. Your website becomes more inviting as customers see that they have multiple payment options. Today there are multiple ways a customer can pay in order to complete a purchase thereby reducing your shopping cart abandonment. Credit cards and other growing payment options such as Paypal and Google Wallet are staples in an ecommerce website checkout process.

7. Offer a solid refund and return policy

With selling online, customers are not able to touch or directly interact with your products. For this reason, it’s very important to have a “customer friendly” return policy. For example Zappos.com offers 365 day free return on everything. It’s not necessary to offer a policy as drastic as this but, even if you have a return policy already, making sure that it is explicit during the checkout process may make it easier for customers to complete their purchase.

8. Use email retargeting tools

Email retargeting tools allows you to capture the email of a customer who entered it into the checkout pages but then did not complete their purchase. An automatic email is sent to them, inviting them to come back to your store and offers assistance in completing their purchase and perhaps even a discount coupon.

While there are no silver bullets to completely alleviate your shopping cart abandonment, the above steps will certainly help to reduce it.

The post 8 Simple Ways to Decrease Shopping Cart Abandonment appeared first on .

The post [Infographic] The 36 Rules of Social Media appeared first on .

Infographic Source: Mashable

The post [Infographic] Facebook Facts, Figures and Statistics appeared first on .

The internet has several hundred million websites, and it can be a challenge to get your website noticed among so many others. The success of your website is directly associated to the amount of traffic it generates, and you need a solid online strategy if you want more traffic.

Discussed here are four simple yet effective techniques that you can use for your online marketing strategy:

Blog marketing

Blogging has developed from a simple hobby to a very effective marketing technique. Blog marketing can include ad placement on prominent blogs, recommendations, or reviews by bloggers, and promotional articles and posts written by multiple bloggers or guest authors.

Promotion from a reputed blogger can really improve the brand image of a website. Popular reviewers, trusted industry figures, and critics often have their own blogs, and they can be roped in for mentioning or reviewing products.

Blog advertisements can include banners, text links, audio or video clips, plain text, or flash animation. Most blog advertising techniques involve some form of payment to the blogger for every time someone clicks on the advertisement.

Let’s have a look at some of the prominent benefits of blog marketing:

• Improved company visibility: Blog marketing can help a company by making it more visible. Blogs are more commonly visited by people on the internet, and seeing advertisements about a company’s products in blogs can help customers think about that company when they are in need of such products or services.

• Improved product exposure: Another important benefit of blog marketing is that it helps you gain mainstream visibility for your products or services. By marketing your product line on select blogs with high traffic, you can educate customers and prospective customers about the various features of the product. You can also get blogs to write about debut products in your lineup.

Blogs of various kinds are up on the internet. When you get good writers to write about your products and review your company, you get a very effective marketing technique. Many bloggers work with a pay per cost basis, and this is one of the most effective ways to develop product awareness among your target audience at a low cost.

• Better company image: Blog marketing is an effective way of coming closer to customers and prospective customers and letting them get to know about your company and your products and services in a better way. This, in turn, can help you build a much more positive brand image for your company by building relationships with customers.

• Improved interaction with customers: A blog is one of the best ways to get to know more about your customer base and interact with them. If you choose a good blog and publish the right posts and advertising materials, you can engage with customers and know more about their complaints and complements. All this feedback can then be used to fulfill customer requirements further.

Social media marketing

As the name suggests, social media marketing is all about getting traffic or building brand value through social media websites like Facebook and Twitter. Social media includes a number of other websites that provide very different social actions. Twitter, for example, is a site where users can share short updates and messages with each other.

On the other hand, Facebook allows users to share updates as well as photos, events, videos, and many other activities. Social media has become such a powerful marketing tool that even Presidents use it to connect with their community.

Social media marketing is also useful in helping a company stand out from the competition and make a mark for itself. When done properly, you can use social media marketing to create a positive buzz about your company rather than your competitors. With this form of marketing, branding also becomes a lot easier across all platforms and your company’s name is in front of everyone’s minds.

The key to success with your social media marketing strategy is to be consistent in your efforts. You need to be active on your social networking sites and make your presence felt every so often. Most importantly, you need to convey the message to your customers and prospective customers that your company and its products and services are reliable. Respond back to queries sent by your customers on social networking sites, answer their doubts, and engage in active conversation with them.

Twitter and Facebook are two of the best websites to not only engage with customers but also deliver immediate customer service. You can assure customers that their queries are being taken care of through these websites. For this reason, it is a good idea to start an official profile for your business on Facebook and Twitter and include them in your marketing mix.

You can increase website traffic by also linking your official website from your social media sites on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. If you have an engaging profile on these social networking websites, the visitors will most probably click on the links to learn more about your company.

One of the best benefits of social media marketing is that it can really reduce your marketing costs. The tools you can use on social networking websites to market your business are either available for free or for a low cost. At the same time, you get a very powerful medium to reach your customers and connect with them.

Video marketing

YouTube is one of the largest websites on the internet in terms of content and traffic. Every day, over three billion people visit the website to watch or share videos. This is partly due to the easy and cheap availability of video capturing and editing hardware and software, and faster net connections.

Today, you can just as easily make a video and post it on the internet as you can buffer and watch them. Video content is now one of the most flexible and valuable online marketing assets that a company should own, large or small. Videos are easy and quick to digest for a consumer, and they are also more engaging and visually appealing than plain text.

Video marketing has emerged as an excellent and effective online marketing tool these days. According to a popular and authoritative publication, an online marketing and advertising campaign becomes more powerful if it is backed by a video.

In fact, many internet marketers have now realized the importance of video in their marketing campaigns and the significance of viral videos. For this reason, many online marketing campaigns now include video marketing as well. Even large companies are focusing on making viral video to promote their products, translating to greater website traffic and millions of dollars in revenue.

Here are some reasons why companies should invest in video marketing:

• It provides massive exposure to your company and products/services: Greater exposure to your company and its products or services means greater revenue, and the more viral your video gets the greater traffic your website will attract. With so many ways to spread and share videos these days, viral videos have become more achievable. Videos can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites, as well as other major video sharing websites like Hulu, YouTube, and Vimeo.
• It is cheap to make: Most people believe that videos are a really costly investment, which is why so many small and medium sized businesses opt out of video marketing. The truth, however, is that marketing videos do not need a lot of money to produce. Some of the most popular videos today are made with low costs, and video making software programs are now cheaper than ever. In fact, many good video making software come pre-installed in most computers.
• It builds authority for your business: People are more receptive to information when it is presented in video format. ‘Seeing is believing’ for most people, so videos give your company greater legitimacy. You can use videos to not only promote your products but also promote your business as an industry leader.

Email marketing

Email marketing is one of the oldest online marketing techniques, but it still holds a lot of importance. With the right strategy and target audience, email marketing can prove to be very successful and give a good return on your investment.

Targeted email marketing is very different from bulk email marketing in that it sends emails that are customized for a certain demographic based on their needs. For example, if your products or services are best used by young people between the age of 18 and 24 years, you should make them your target audience.

You can even target people of certain locations. When you have a specific demographic to market your products, the chances of readers seeing and buying your product or service are higher. When you look at offline direct marketing communication methods like telesales and print postal mails, you will see that they require a lot of time, money, and effort.

However, with email marketing, you can create a marketing piece in as little as a few hours. With the help of recurring email templates, you can quickly make a unique marketing email with graphics and send it to your database of potential and existing customers.

Another benefit of email marketing is that you can communicate in real time with your customer base. Unlike offline communications, there is no time period between development of a campaign and its implementation. Therefore, you can send out daily promotional emails as well with limited period special offers. You can even send out emails to customers for anniversaries or their birthdays. The short time frame for developing and sending out emails helps you see quick results on your website traffic.

Telesales, telephone, radio, and other traditional offline marketing media require a single format, which makes it difficult to reach out to customers personally. Email marketing is different, however, and it offers quite a few dynamic opportunities. You can send out personalized emails with the name and login names of your website users and also use personalized information of customers, like their sales and purchase history, to deliver targeted emails.

Creating emails is also a lot less challenging than setting up print emails or television ads, so you can segment your customer base into small lists and send personalized messages to them. For example, you can segment customers by their geographical location or the product types they choose, and send them emails about their location or offering offers on their favorite products.

Simply put, email marketing lets you speak to existing and potential customers in a more personalized way that is difficult and even impossible through other marketing mediums.

By segmenting your customer database for personalized emails, you can not only increase your website traffic but also increase sales conversion rates. For example, if your business involves selling flowers, you can find customers in your email database that bought roses and send them emails whenever you get a fresh shipment of roses coming in. With database segmentation, you can send these emails to those who are most likely to respond, and this improves website traffic and makes for a successful marketing campaign.

Since emails in a marketing campaign can be prepared and sent out so quickly, you can improve communications with your customers. You can send them promotional offers every week or so, and inform them of the latest news in your company and your product range whenever it happens. It is important to note, however, that most email marketing campaigns are designed so as to not send to many emails to customers. In general, it is just one email in a week.

Email marketing is also really useful for spreading useful and enticing pieces of information. If a customer finds some of your promotional emails or special offers useful, they can forward it to others within seconds and your message spreads further. In other words, your marketing campaign gets a wider reach and you also get more traffic to your website as more people check it out to see your offers.

The post Generate More Website Traffic with an Online Strategy appeared first on .

&

++ Click Image to Enlarge ++

Source: How Mobile is Changing Business – Infographic

The post How mobile is changing e-commerce appeared first on .

Ecommerce has developed a lot in a couple of decades, growing from a system riddled with security problems to the most convenient way to sell and buy almost anything irrespective of time or place.  Consider the role and growth of mobile ecommerce over the last few years, buying online has never been more convenient and simple.

But, do you really have to generate a sales funnel in your own website, or is it possible to expand and generate sales funnels through other websites?

The short and simple answer is YES! Believe us when we say, you need to have multiple sales channels for your ecommerce website.

Now, when most people talk about multiple sales channels, they refer to selling products and services through traditional brick and mortar stores as well as through an ecommerce website.

However, this discussion is about generating sales through websites like Amazon and eBay in addition to your ecommerce site.

Here are some reasons why multiple sales funnels through Amazon and eBay will be worth your while:

Greater exposure for your company and products

Your target audience’s familiarity with a product is an important factor that affects the number of people that pass a sales funnel. When people are aware of your brand and your products, there is a greater chance of a visitor turning into a buyer simply because he or she is familiar. Moreover, it also helps people come and find you because they have heard of you through the other channel, be it amazon, ebay or google shopping. Both Google and Amazon’s recommended list of products, for example, can inform new potential customers about you and your products. These recommendation services have introduce brands and customers to each other like never before.

Greater success equals more growth

When your company gets more sales by selling products through multiple channels, you get more profits that can be channeled back to the marketing budget, helping your growth further. This may seem like an obvious point, but it is important to consider this benefit when you are trying to decide whether to open up your products range on Amazon and eBay. Suddenly you are no longer selling just t-shirts, for example, as a result of the number of new customers you have acquired through these sales channels.

Greater customer satisfaction thanks to more outlets

It is important to understand that opening up too many sales channels can prove detrimental in the long run. However, this is more likely to happen when you open brick and mortar stores than by approaching sites like Amazon and eBay. The cost of setting up shop on these websites is small when compared to the possible growth in sales and exposure your company gains. Your customers now get the option to go through multiple channels to buy your products, and they are happier with the value that you offer.

More service means more brand value

When you sell products through your ecommerce site as well as online stores like Amazon and eBay, your company can gain better brand value by providing more options for converting sales. For example, customers who are looking for a quick or general purchase go to Amazon or eBay, can pick up your products. However, when they want something more, they can approach your official website and access a greater variety of products along with extra service or discounts.

 Multichannel selling puts your product in front of a larger audience

By not offering your products on these other ecommerce websites, you are limiting the chance of your products being found. Most small brands have a limited budget for marketing and thus may never get the traffic a store like Amazon receives. Amazon and eBay places your products in front of potential customers you may have never been able to reach with a limited marketing budget.

In an age where ecommerce websites and online stores are popping up everywhere on the internet, opening new sales channels through established stores like Amazon and eBay may be the competitive edge you need to succeed in your business.

&

The post Why your products need multichannel ecommerce sell on ebay & amazon appeared first on .

The year 2011 saw it being ranked among The 50 Best Websites of 2011 by Times Magazine. By the end of this year, the website became among the 10 largest social network services, with more than 11 million visits per week. Incidentally, it is also the fastest website to cross the 10 million visitors mark.
Why should you use Pinterest

The success of Pinterest comes from the fact that it combines two very popular elements of social media: sharing information about each other and visual content. It does not hurt that the website is well designed and looks very good. But what has all this to do with building brand loyalty? The answer to this question is split into three parts given below.

1. It improves brand visibility

Pinterest allows small and medium businesses that do not have adequate resources or budget for branding to compete with bigger businesses. It can help customers find new brands, products, and styles that they would not normally find through other means.

2. It builds powerful links

When a user pins an image from your website on their Pinterest profile, they also pull in a link to your website. If that pin is repinned several times by different users, it creates a generous number of backlinks. Pinterest also has a useful tool for finding out if people are pinning anything from your website. The amount of backlinks generated can attract more people to your website and also improve your search engine ranks. Both of them, in turn, lead to better brand loyalty and a larger number of visitors.

3. It advocates your brand

Pinterest users who love your brand, products or services will pin your stuff. If they are loyal to your brand, they might also start a pin board for your brand alone. Unbelievably, this happens very often, and it can happen to even relatively obscure brands. With the tremendous growth of traffic and users expected on the website, the effects are only going to improve.
What can you do to improve brand loyalty?

If you want to use Pinterest to improve brand loyalty for your business, you can follow the tips given below:

1. Like, Repin, and Follow others so that you can improve the visibility of your brand and gain popularity. It can also help you find and encourage influencers to follow you and repin your pins.
2. Encourage your employees to make their own Pinterest accounts.
3. Add a Pinterest icon to your website.

Pinterest is just one of the powerful social media sites available, but it can help your business in a huge way if you use it well.

The post Use pinterest to grow brand loyalty appeared first on .