Guard Against The Flea Market Mentality To Selling Online

Posted on June 17, 2010, 7:07 am, by Rob Mangiafico and received 1 Comment ».

Flea markets aren’t as popular as they used to be (thanks in part to eBay), but they are a great place to find all sorts of items. Online though, as a small to medium sized merchant, it can be tough to be a “virtual flea market”. It can also be dangerous to the power of your brand name…

It’s competitive out there

The online ecommerce arena is full of competition. You can almost always find someone selling your items for less, or offering more selection. It can be quite tempting to offer drop-ship products or carry non-related merchandise to expand your product line and reach a wider base.

Sometimes this makes sense. Many times it can spell disaster.

Dilution is NOT the Solution

Your brand name carries with it an image in your customers’ eyes. When they think of your company, they have an idea of what you offer (hopefully) and where you fit in the grid of “their needs and wants”. This is a good thing, as it helps you compete with the bigger retailers out there.

However, if you start offering chainsaws and lilacs for sale (but you’re a shoe company), that brand name becomes diluted. Your visitors and customers are now confused as to what your primary focus is. They do not have a clear image of your company.

Translation: Dilute your brand too much, and people will not think of you when they have a specific want or need. That is a BAD thing.

Think vertical, not horizontal

A great way to compete and succeed as on online merchant is to be a leader in your niche.  This means choosing a segment of the market (shoes for large footed individuals, rare flower seeds, vintage wooden tennis rackets, etc…) that is somewhat narrow, and offering the best items, service, or range of widgets in that category. This allows your business to compete (and many times beat) the larger, more broad online e-tailers.

The depth of your product line or service offering *within* your niche is what makes you an outstanding merchant. It’s not how many different non-related (i.e. horizontal) items you have that counts. It’s how many items or the level of your expertise in your field that matters.

Amazon and eBay are just better at it

It’s near impossible to go up against the Goliaths of the ecommerce world and try to beat them at their own game. They have deeper pcokets, more resources, and better connections. Don’t try to offer everything under the sun like these companies.

Focus on what you’re good at

For us,this means being the best small to medium sized business web host we can be (sounds so cliche, I know). However, it does give us focus. We do not cater to the hobby hosting market. We run Linux servers, so no Microsoft hosting. We specialize in ecommerce hosting (especially ShopSite ®). This helps us stand out in the crowded, ultra competitive hosting market.

Apply this focus to your online store.

Drop ship selectively

If you can find products that compliment your existing ones (i.e. cross-sell / up-sell that make sense), then adding drop ship items to your online store can be a huge plus. But only do this when it adds to your value/niche offering. Do not pollute your brand and site with nonsensical products that do not jive with your image.

Dell is excellent at this technique. I recently bought a new laptop, and I added a wireless mouse from Logitech. The non-Dell product was a perfect fit for my new purchase. It made my shopping experience better.

That is the goal for your store – Your complimentary products should make sense, and enhance a shopper’s experience. Make that your focus when evaluating new product lines or drop ship offerings.

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Setting Up ShopSite Search Correctly

Posted on June 15, 2010, 7:08 am, by Rob Mangiafico and received 1 Comment ».

ShopSite’s ® search feature is quite powerful and provides a high level of customization for online merchants. On-site search is one of the most important functions of any ecommerce site. In fact, a recent Internet Retailer article about site search had this statement from the CTO of a major online retailer:

We get up to 30% of our revenue through site search

That’s quite a lot for a large online store! So getting your website’s search system setup correctly is paramount to the bottom line…

The basics of ShopSite’s search

There are two settings that you have to enable/configure to get started:

1. Page search
Under Pages -> Edit Page Content for each page, there is a checkbox for “Check here to have this page indexed for product search”. This needs to be checked for pages that have products that you want to be indexed by ShopSite.

Also, a commonly missed setting for merchants using their own search code is:
- ShopSite requires that at least one page has the checkbox checked for “Check here to add a product search field to your page”. This setting is what determines if ShopSite will create a search index or not. Make sure at least one page (even if it’s a test page not linked on your actual site) has this checkbox checked.

2. Product search
Under Products -> Edit Product Info is a section for “Search Destination”. Make sure you set this appropriately for each product. One of the options is “None” which means the product will not be included in the search database.

Tip: If you use order anywhere add to cart buttons on non-ShopSite generated pages, you can specify a URL where the search result should link to for each product. This allows the search feature to work with any webpage, even if it’s not created/managed by ShopSite. (We have more details on this in our Search and Order Anywhere Tutorial.)

Search Configuration Settings

Search Settings -> Search Indexing -> “Index numbers”
This setting is often overlooked, which will result in customers not being able to search for numbers (like part numbers, SKUs, etc…). Make sure you enable this setting so numbers get indexed.

Search Settings -> Search Indexing -> “Ignore Subproducts during indexing”
Having this enabled can help clean up your search results, unless sub-products are a major feature of your store.

Search Settings -> Search Indexing -> (Indexable Fields)
This is where you can choose which fields in ShopSite are indexed for search. In addition, you can set the priority of each field. This is important as the fields that contain the phrases and keywords most searched by your users can be given a higher priority for more accurate and relevant results.

Search Settings -> Search Layout -> “Search terms are”

Getting this setting right is important. I would recommend the settings above for these reasons:
- You want whole word searches as this will return the most relevant results. It gives the user products with the exact keywords they typed.
- You want the “auto new search with stems if nothing found” so the system will try to check for plurals, past tense, additional letters at the end if nothing is found.
- You only want the stems on the end of the word. i.e. A search for “book” would also return results for “books, bookend, bookish” if the main keyword was not found.

Logging (and actually using) search queries and results

It’s not enough to just enable search logging. You have to dig through this data at least weekly (if not daily) and use the results to fine-tune your search. We have an in-depth post about Analyzing Your Search Results that explains this further.

Custom Search Templates

ShopSite provides a great deal of customization for the search results page. In fact, you can customize the main search results page, the way page links are displayed, and how products are displayed. This makes the system a bit more complex to fully customize.

A great resource is the ShopSite Template Cookbook on Custom Search Templates

Advanced Tips

Remove page links
If you do not want the page links to be displayed in the search results (i.e. you only want products displayed), here is a simple workaround from the ShopSite Forums.

Index actual page content
ShopSite’s search is designed to index product content. If you want your page content to also be indexed, we put together a tutorial on how to get page content in ShopSite to appear in the search results.

Multi-column search results
If you want your search results to appear in more than one column, the ShopSite template cookbook on Adding Columns to Search Results is a great resource. (For a discussion whether list or column view is better, check out Getelastic’s blog post on Grid vs. List View)

Dynamic pages using ShopSite search
Use ShopSite’s search to have dropdown menus for shop by brand, shop by price, etc… Our tutorial will show you how.

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As you can see, there is a lot that goes into the ShopSite search. Getting it setup correctly, analyzing how your customers interact with the search, and then adjusting settings and keywords is an ongoing process. It is necessary to be vigilant when it comes to on-site search to maximize your revenue when customers are trying to find products on your site.

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The Power Of Oprah – Even A Repeat Episode

Posted on June 10, 2010, 7:03 am, by Rob Mangiafico and received 1 Comment ».

At the beginning of this year, one of our managed dedicated server clients, cosabella.com, was featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show. We wrote a detailed post about how the Oprah Effect helped boost Cosabella’s sales by 2000%. The event was a success for both Cosabella and LexiConn. We learned a few things about managing the instant influx of traffic from an Oprah mention.

Round Two

Cosabella contacted us a few weeks back and let us know that Oprah would be re-airing the episode. My gut told me a repeat would not have the same impact as the original airing, but we went with caution and set them up with the same five front-end webservers (I’m glad I didn’t trust my gut and lower the number of servers). Their main server was used solely for the ShopSite ® e-commerce application, and would handle the shopping carts and checkout.

These five servers were optimized for speed, and the website that was replicated to these servers was using only static content (html, images, css, and javascript). This allows each server to handle a large amount of traffic with little impact on performance.

Use the past as your guide

Based on our lessons learned from last time, We pre-compiled the Apache webserver to allow up to 2048 MaxClients (geek speak for each webserver was opened up “full throttle” to allow as many simultaneous visits as possible). We set the MaxClients to 1800 on each of the five servers. We upped MaxClients on the main e-commerce server to 1200.

3, 2, 1… Action!

As 4:55 PM ET rolled around, we saw a similar surge in traffic as was experienced in January. This time though, we already had the flood gates opened wide, so their was no initial slow-down or overload of the webserver. The five servers peaked around 1300 Apache children each, and the main e-commerce server peaked around 800.

At the zenith around 5:00 PM ET, the site was handling 7,000+ Apache processes, and accommodated around 20,000 unique visitors during the shows being aired.

(click image to enlarge)

And as before, orders started pouring in soon thereafter.

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After the dust settled, Cosabella saw about 60-65% of the traffic that the original airing brought to their site. The order volume was on par with the traffic percentages as well. The whole event went off without a hitch, and we were pleased to be able to provide Cosabella with fast loading servers under very heavy traffic. The ShopSite e-commerce software performed perfectly, easily handling the surge in orders placed without any performance issues.

All of this is quite impressive given this episode was essentially a repeat. It points to the power Oprah has, and what she can do for any business or product that is displayed on her show.

What Ocean’s 11 Can Teach Us About Being Successful

Posted on June 8, 2010, 7:30 am, by Rob Mangiafico and received 1 Comment ».

I was watching Ocean’s 11 for the umpteenth time this past weekend. I love the scene near the end where Danny Ocean (George Clooney) is talking to Benedict (Andy Garcia) about being robbed. Danny says “I know a guy… Anybody pulls any job in the Western US, he knows about it…“.
And Benedict replies somberly “You know a guy“.

That got me thinking… A few weeks back I wrote about Is Your Company Known For Something. To succeed, you have to be known. This little scene from Ocean’s 11 drove this home for me.

Be *That* Guy

You want your company to be like the guy Danny Ocean refers to.  Danny’s “source” was an expert in his field (in this case robberies), and was the go-to person when you needed information about a “job”.

It’s not enough to just be known or recognized. To truly succeed, you need to be the guru in your niche. Whether it’s a product or service that you offer, you want your customers to refer to you like Danny Ocean did.

We strive for this every day. That is, we want our customers to think of us as the go-to solution for their web hosting and ecommerce needs. We want to be seen as the experts, and we work hard to achieve and maintain this status.

How to be “that guy”

Besides the obvious of providing a great product or service, and having top-notch customer service and support, there are a few things you can do for your company to be seen as the expert in your field:

  • Create a great blog
    It’s not enough to just have a blog that you update periodically. You have to continually fill it with great content. Use your blog to provide helpful tips, industry insight, help your customers get the most out of your products or services. Blogs are a powerful tool in establishing your company as a “thought leader” in your niche.
  • Create how-to videos
    Videos are quite powerful when it comes to influencing your customers. Well written copy on your website is good, but you can really “bring it home” with useful videos to compliment your website. If you sell woodworking products, videos showing how to use a router, a saw, how to build a bird house, etc… are great items to help your customers get the most out of what you sell.
  • Get involved in Social Media (Facebook, Twitter)
    Not involved as in “I tweet and push new wall posts about our company every day”. Involved as in answering questions about your industry, finding useful articles and information and letting others know about them, and genuinely engaging in conversations with customers and potential customers. This kind of “buzz” can really help your brand awareness in your “neck of the woods”.
  • Help out on forums, blogs, etc…
    Find out where your customers ask questions and hang out. Become a useful contributor on these sites, answer questions, provide solutions. Whether it’s a forum or commenting on a blog, if you’re seen as a resource or helpful person/company, you’ll be at the top of the list when these potential customers are in need of a product or service you provide.

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So what are you waiting for? Start building your “robbery” credentials!  :)

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Best Practices – Your Business Email Address

Posted on June 3, 2010, 7:31 am, by Rich A. and received 2 Comments ».

You have a website with your own domain name, but do you use that domain for email too?  You should be.

ISP, Free, and Personal Accounts

You’ve had them for years and wouldn’t know what to do without them – maybe it’s an email account provided by your internet service or a free account with a service like hotmail.com, and while they are great for keeping in touch with your friends and family an address like “littleorangecat@comcastverizon.net” isn’t the best choice for contacting your customers.

Why not?
The primary reason is it’s much more professional and recognizable to use an email address at your own domain name.  Someone may not expect an email from “John Smith [smithfamily@ispco.net]” to be a valid email when they never heard from John before.  But if that email comes from “Wigits Inc [sales@wigitsinc.com]” they are more likely to remember they contacted you or placed an order with your company.

Another drawback to using a personal account is an email can look like spam to the recipient.  While it’s not technically spam and may not be marked as spam in their email program, someone may not expect an email from a name and address they have not seen before to be valid so you run the risk of them deleting it without it being opened.

Aliases – Redirect Your Email

Virtually all hosting accounts include email service.  You’re already paying for it so it won’t cost anything more to start using email at your own domain name, but sometimes you really don’t want to start checking more accounts – you just want to keep the one you have.  You can do this by using what’s called an Alias.  An alias is similar to an email account but it’s just an address that directs email elsewhere.

On your hosting account, usually in a control panel where you would add new email users, you can add aliases and configure them to send email to a specific address.  For example an alias for “sales” could direct the email to your current ISP or personal email address.  You can then publish your business email address of “sales@wigitsinc.com” on your website and marketing materials and when someone sends an email to it the message will arrive in your personal account without your customers knowing.

You told us NOT to use our personal address?
That’s true, I did, but the key is to appear like you are using your domain name to your customers.  When they are contacting you at “sales@wigitsinc.com” instead of “smithfamily@ispco.net” they don’t know the alias is forwarding to your personal account.

But there is one more step – your outgoing email.  The last thing you want to do is to reply to the customer’s email and have it show your personal account for where the email is coming from.  To change this you will want to set your “From” address when you reply.  This can be done in your email program but the methods for doing so can vary between software.  It may be something you can set when you reply, or it may be a setting in the software that would take effect for all emails.  Essentially you want to set the sending address to appear as “sales@wigitsinc.com” when the email goes out, even though you are sending from your personal account.

TIP: Even with aliases, configuring your personal email to send “from” your business account and keeping business and personal email separate in your account can be difficult.  For this reason it may be advantageous to use the email service provided with your hosting account.

3rd Party Solutions

Another option for your business email is to use a 3rd party email service.  Instead of using a personal address or the email provided on a  hosting account, many businesses are switching to a service such as Google Apps.  With these services you offload email storage and traffic from your hosting account to another provider and can still use your domain name for email.

With multiple options for email -  from your hosting account, to aliases, to a 3rd party – there is a solution available to migrate off your old email address and begin using your own domain name for your business email.

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