More than ever, today’s web-savvy consumers use comparison shopping engines (CSEs) to research products before they make buying decisions. Since CSEs place the offerings of many merchants side by side, shoppers can compare prices and features at a glance. Are your products well represented in these search engines? This article reviews the major CSEs and provides some tactics to help web merchants get listed.

The Leading CSEs

The list of leading shopping engines in the United States includes Shopping.com™, Yahoo® Shopping, BizRate®, DealTime®, Shopzilla, NexTag®, MSN® Shopping, PriceGrabber, Froogle™, AOL Shopping, and mySimon. Shopping.com is the most popular CSE, followed by Yahoo Shopping and Froogle.

Kelkoo is the leading comparison shopping search engine for the United Kingdom and Europe. According to the company, 16 out of the top 20 e-commerce sites in the UK currently advertise through the engine.

Brief descriptions of the major CSEs and other engines are available from SearchEngineWatch.com

Choosing the Right CSEs for Your Business

While it is recommended that you list your products in as many CSEs as possible, web merchants should weigh the options carefully to determine which CSEs are the most appropriate and most effective for your online business.

You can start by researching all of the popular engines to determine which are the most popular with your customer base. All CSEs are not created equal; and some engines are more popular for some products than others. You should also determine where your competition is listed and ensure that your most competitive products are listed in that engine as well. If you are represented well by a search engine that is frequently visited by customers looking for your products, your chances of making a sale will be better!

For many merchants, a key differentiator is user-friendliness. Your products and their specifications have to be uploaded into the CSE. How easy is it for you to update data about your products? Is the process automatic or does it require that you log in to the site each time you want to make updates? The ease with which you can update your data will be in an important factor in determining how often you will upload products to the CSE. The level of complexity of the CSE will be sure to have an impact the effectiveness of your campaigns.

Tactics for Success

• Set a budget – Some of the CSEs offer basic listings for free. For example, Yahoo Shopping, Froogle, and PriceGrabber all offer free basic membership. However, in order to really leverage the benefits of these engines (and more advanced selling tools and privileges), you’ll want to participate in the paid listing programs. Note that some of the comparison engines require you to pay a commission when a sale is made. Others charge the merchant every time a user clicks through to one of your products. It is advisable that you find out which search engine offers the most ideal arrangement for you and then set a budget accordingly.
• Leverage product feeds – Most of the CSEs allow you to submit information about the products you want to sell via a “feed.” The feed is typically provided to the shopping site in a text or CSV file and includes product specifications such as name, description, price, image location, and shipping charges. The feeds make it easier for you to keep your product listings current on the CSEs.
• Carefully monitor and manage campaigns – All of the CSEs provide a web interface that lets you manage your listings and typically the cost-per-click (CPC) bidding process. It is recommended that merchants monitor their campaigns on a weekly or even daily basis and make adjustments as needed. The goal is to ensure products receive competitive listings on an ongoing basis.
• Differentiate – Since you’ll be going head-to-head with the competition on CSE sites, you need to do everything you can to make your products stand out. Advertising free shipping or a free gift with purchase could be the deciding factor that makes a shopper click through to your site instead of another merchant’s. Another way to differentiate is to use the ratings features on these sites to achieve high ratings. These rating systems can go a long way toward building trust with potential buyers.
• Stay current – The ever-widening world of CSEs changes often—and fast. You can stay current on the latest CSE news and strategies by reviewing sites like www.comparisonengines.com and www.searchenginewatch.com

Get going now!

It today’s highly competitive world of web marketing and ecommerce, comparison shopping engines are a must if you want to compete effectively. If you are not already listed with these engines, it’s time to get going! This way, you can reap the benefits of increased traffic and sales these hugely popular sites can bring your online business.

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Role of Personalization in Ecommerce Business Development

Effective personalization of web store not only helps in creating lasting impression on your visitor but also optimizes your resource utilization and hence generates higher ROI.

The importance of correct and effective communication with your clients cannot be overlooked. Ecommerce involves mediums of communication wherein one to one interaction gets minimized with your clients. Thus, to keep up the repo with your visitors becomes all the more challenging and asks for more creativity on the part of the web store owner. The interactive value of your website carries high importance.

Personalization in Ecommerce becomes all the more difficult but if done effectively, reaps better online business and helps you gain loyal consumers. In this article we discuss the important features that can be used to personalize you store and also highlight means to gain important information about your customers.

Personalization can be achieved through: -

Content & Communication:
The quality of the language used in the web store should be in tandem with the general tastes & preferences of the target audience. For Example: Product Description should stress upon that quality of a product that is valued most by the end user and not by the one which you think is the best.

Secondly, external communication carried out through Newsletters, or emails should require more personalization efforts to get better results.

Design & Layout:
Color combinations, template design, site navigation, font colors and size are few important aspects that can make you hit or miss a lead. Try to gain an insight of the targeted consumer minds before you start designing your ecommerce store.

Operational Flexibility:
Many a times, the targeted class would like to deal through a not-so-common payment method or would prefer a not-so-popular shipping carrier. You have to gauge the limitations or preferences of your consumers and adjust your web store.

Now comes the Big Question: How do You know about the needs of your Customer? Or What should be the ideal behavior with your customer?

Following can help your to find important insights:

Product Personalization Question:
Product personalization question invites the visitor write their specific taste or preferences for a particular product. This may help you know about the variants preferred, the modifications desired in the product and may such important aspects that can be used in future resource planning.

Comments during checkout
Request your customer to fill up the Feedback form describing his experience with the website during the check out process. This will give you important insights about the wants the visitor perceptions, his needs, satisfaction levels, suggested changes and most importantly its sends the message, “ U CARE ”. A structured responsive feedback form would be more appreciated and get higher responses. It would also help to get you the data in the structure you would have anticipated.

Product Review
Inviting visitors to review each product he might be visiting at your website acts as another Feed Back Mechanism. Visitors review can also be published to generate a feeling of third party advertising.

You may require custom shopping cart to accommodate these changes, as standard shopping cart software does not support such functionality.

The most important thing would be to work on the suggestions & feedback of your website visitors. Understanding a customer and making the changes as per their needs, highlights the value you offer to your customers. Personalize your offering and your web store to migrate normal customer to the level of loyal customers.

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If your goal is to sell a product or service on the web, there is nothing more crucial than being able to communicate the benefits of that product or service effectively. Yet the number of poorly written, dull, drab and lifeless web pages found on lots of ecommerce websites is nothing short of mind boggling. This article provides 10 tips to help you write more effective copy for your web pages.

Tip #1: Master the Basics
First and foremost, your copy must be grammatically correct and free of all spelling errors and typos. All major word processors include tools to help you check spelling and grammar; use them! Other things to look for include overall readability, punctuation errors, capitalization errors, word choice, and consistency of style. If you know your writing skills aren’t up to snuff, you may want to consider taking a class or hiring a professional copy writer to assist with the writing and or editing task.

Tip #2: Satisfy the Scanner
Writing for the web is different than writing for other mediums. Long flowery paragraphs and lengthy prose simply won’t cut it online. The golden rule of the writing for the web can be summed up in three words: keep it simple! Web writers should keep in mind that there is very little reading that actually gets done online. The majority of web surfers quickly scan web pages for the information they seek. Knowing this, keep paragraphs short, and use type styling such as bold to emphasize key points.

Tip #3: Use Subheads Liberally
Another great way to help web surfers parse information quickly is through the use of subheads. Use them liberally. One paragraph per subhead will help visitors parse the information more readily and help you convert those browsers into buyers. Remember, however, that is imperative to keep the headlines as well as the text short and to the point. See also the tip about creating effective headlines below.

Tip #4: Get Personal
In any sales writing—but especially online—you’ve got to make sure to personalize your message in order to make it more attractive to your customers. The best way to do this is to speak directly to them in the first person. Use the word “you” often. And include personal examples rather than general. For example, “This month we have created a special deal just for you, our valued customer.” Your customers will feel an affinity with copy that reaches out specifically to them.

Tip #5: Know Your Audience
The key to being able to communicate with your customers on a personal level is to know who they are! Of course, it is impossible to know every customer personally. However, it is likely that your customers fit into a certain demographic. For example, if you sell baby products, chances are you sell to mom and dads. The tone of the content on a baby product site would be far different from one that sells automotive parts, for example. Once you’ve identified who is shopping on your site, write using the language of your target audience. It’s okay to use industry buzz words and technical jargon where appropriate. Just be careful not to overdo it.

Tip #6: Be Consistent
A common mistake that many websites make is the failure to be consistent. This includes consistency of language used and grammatical style, as well as the amount of copy on each page. If you offer three products, the web page for Product A should have about the same amount of copy as the pages for Product B and Product C. This will not only help set expectations but it will go a long way to helping you establish a more professional appearance.

Tip #7: Create Urgency
If you operate an ecommerce site, your goal is very likely to get your customers to click the “Buy” button and then follow through with a purchase. Consequently, the language on your site needs to support this. Try experimenting with call-to-action language that encourages your customers to buy now. Consider incorporating special offer language as well. Something like: “Buy within the next 24 hours and receive a free a gift”. Place this copy on key pages during the checkout process to reduce shopping cart abandonment.

Tip #8: Demand Attention with Effective Headlines
Any journalist or newspaper editor will tell you that effective headlines sell newspapers. The same is true online. The headline or the heading at the top of your web pages provides you with an excellent opportunity to sell your product or service more effectively. Consider the following two headlines for the same product:

• Brand New Apple iPod Nano – New in Box with Free Shipping!
• Apple iPod Nano

Which of these headlines are you more likely to click?

Tip #9: Use Visual Aids
Remember the old adage, “a picture is worth a thousand words?” Heed this advice! If you are serious about selling online, you’ve got to supplement your web content with pictures, diagrams, drawings, etc. if you’re going to land the sale. After all, if you were buying something—say a baseball card, antique, or some other collectible—wouldn’t you rather see a photo of it, rather than relying on a description saying that it is in “mint” condition.

Tip #10: Be Search Engine Friendly
Writing top notch web pages for your website is pointless if no one can find them. Therefore, make sure that the content on your pages is friendly to the major search engines. At minimum, make sure you select keywords that describe the overall content of the page. Place them in page titles, headlines, and paragraph content. Including phrases in the body copy that you have used in your other tags (i.e. meta tags, alt tags, headings, title, etc.) will also help boost your rankings. Keep in mind, however, that search engine marketing is a delicate science. As such, you may want to enlist the help of a professional search engine marketing firm to employ these and other strategies to ensure your pages receive top billing.

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46 seconds is all you have…

The average time spent by an Internet user on a web page is a mere 46 seconds (Source: Clickz.com). Within these 46 seconds an online business needs to attract the customer, make a compelling proposition and close the deal.

The competition in the virtual world is growing day by day. Verisign reported 16% growth in domain name registrations in 2003. The total number of registered domain names now stands at a staggering 60 million, with .com consuming the largest share.

What can YOU do to stand out in the clutter and achieve E-Success?

We think the following 10 tips can substantially increase your chances of online business success:

1. Target the Un-Targeted:
Know your customers thoroughly and target those needs that are unseen by your competitors.

eBay is a bright example. eBay was quick to recognize peoples’ desire to earn economic profits by trading second-hand products. eBay realized the need for a platform where such buyers and sellers could meet and trade. ECommerce technologies helped eBay to create the required platform required and the rest is history.

When you are new to online business- Start Small but Start Right.

2. Strong Business Planning:
Have complete knowledge of your revenue source, break-even duration and other important strategic details from the beginning, and decide on the milestones that are to be achieved. You should know the right moment to expand your business and plan for future sources of revenue.

The Internet business has a cruel history of bringing about disastrous changes at phenomenal speed. Be prepared to face such upheavals and have plans in place to manage such turbulent times.

3. Business Friendly ECommerce Software:
Always choose software that is easy to manage and allows you to focus on your core business activities.

Choose an ECommerce solution that fits your business requirements. Analyze ECommerce software in terms of its scalability, security and the amount of customization allowed.

Invest in a solution that not only meets your present requirements, but also is capable of accommodating your future business needs.

4. Create a Web Store with a Difference:
Visual memory is more enduring than textual memory. Correct branding is important for the success of your online business. Increase your brand recall by creating an estore that is in tune with the likes and dislikes of your targeted customers.

Learn more about your customers and create unique branding by using distinct color combinations, site layout and innovative logo. Attractive display of your domain name can also play an important role in branding your online store.

Be different (but not vague) in order to create a positive appeal in the minds of your customers for achieving esuccess.

5. Make your “Hot Sellers” most Visible:
Attract a customer and advertise your USP first.

Create your estore in such a manner that when a visitor leaves your online store, s/he is aware of your specialty even if they do not intend on purchasing those products.

To clarify: Let us assume you are an online flower vendor specializing in selling fresh red roses. Create your online storefront in a way that when a visitor leaves your storefront, s/he is aware about your specialty even though he may not have seen the Red Roses section. So the next time the visitor intends to buy red roses, they will be very likely to recall your storefront.

Highlight your best product/service first in your estore.

6. Do not let your Customers forget you:
Customer Relationship Management is of prime importance, especially when you are small and struggling to build a persistent customer base. Develop innovative ways to inform past customers about new products and the latest updates to the web store. Your chosen ECommerce solution should have provisions for incorporating various CRM campaigns. Adopt Innovative communication for communicating with your customers.

Pamper your customers to generate permanent sales in order ensure the success of your online business.

7. Increase your Web Presence:
Make your presence felt by carrying out intelligent marketing over the Internet. Perform search engine optimization (SEO) for your site, since the majority of buyers visit websites after spotting them come in the first three or four pages of search engine results. You can either hire professional services or carry out Internet marketing by yourself.

Associate yourself with web sites providing complimentary products or services on the Internet. This helps you in increasing your web presence both for search engines and for your customers.

Intelligent marketing alone will get you customers.

8. Build Robust Backend Operations:
Backend operations are the backbone of your online storefront. Spend time in analyzing the backend operations provided by the ECommerce software. Features such as Inventory management processing, credit card processing, reporting systems etc. will shape your first impression.

All your backend operations are expected to be accurate, scalable and provide real time data. Your choice of ECommerce solution would largely determine the strength of your backend operations.

A potential threat to your ECommerce operations is systems failure owning to faulty backend operations. Ensure the existence of a strong backend platform before opening for business.

9. Learn Faster and Better:
To err is human, but failing to cover yourself and allowing your competitors to exploit your loopholes, is suicidal and is a major threat to E-Success.

Always have an unbiased assessment of your online business and be prepared to spot your mistakes. Learn the art of covering your mistakes and rectify them before your competitors come to know about them.

Business is all about speed. Speed is essential in identifying and rectifying mistakes. You need to learn about your loopholes and mistakes faster than your competitors and rectify them effectively.

10. Surprise your Customers:
Surprise your customers with frequent changes in your business offerings. Add incentives by providing surprise offers, price discounts etc.

Your estore can also help to add life to your business enterprise. Perform regular enhancements to look and feel, the display of products etc of your online storefront. Make changes that do not detract from the brand image in the minds of your customers. Make sure, as well, that the changes are not unattractive or are too frequent.

Constantly innovating while remaining focused on your business goals will lead to success in your online business.

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Consider these two fictional ecommerce scenarios:

• The majority of visitors to a major online retailer selling motorcycle parts and accessories are elderly women who listen to jazz music.
• A full two-thirds of visitors to a high-end cosmetics site are athletic men in their forties.

Do these sound like optimal customer scenarios for an online business owner? Of course not! While the above scenarios are exaggerated, it’s not an embellishment to say that many online store owners fail to attract customers that are appropriate for their business. Just because a site gets a lot of traffic doesn’t necessarily mean it will be successful. This article provides some guidance to help you identify your current traffic and attract more qualified prospects.

Know Your Target Market

Who are your customers? If your answer to this is: “anyone who will buy my product”, then it may be high time to do a bit of homework. Marketing experts recommend that you understand the following types of information about your customers:

• demographic information—such as age, sex, and nationality
• psychographic information—like hobbies, interests, and opinions
• geographic information—location and how it impacts spending habits
• behavioral information—how the subject will use your product
• benefit information—the perceived benefits the subject receives from your product or service

Conducting a survey is one way to find out prospective customer needs, buying preferences, and spending habits.

Track Traffic

If you’re not doing so already, tracking the existing traffic on your site is an absolute must in your efforts to better understand your online customers. However, simply knowing the number of “hits” on your home page is not enough. You should regularly monitor the following:

• Referring site (where visitors link to you from)
• Keywords used to find your site
• Pages in your site that were viewed
• Conversion statistics (did they browse or buy)

Special attention should be paid to the number of overall visitors and any conversion disparity. If the number of visitors is far greater than those actually getting converted (e.g., by a factor of 10, 20, or more), then you should conduct thorough tests to see if the visitors really encapsulate your target audience. Traffic analysis is typically accomplished using software that analyzes the log files on your web server.

Optimize For Success

Below are three fundamentals of online marketing that you must practice if you want to attract targeted traffic to your online store:

• Targeted Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – The major web search engines, such as Google™, Yahoo®, MSN®, AOL® Search, etc. are primary movers of traffic to your storefront. Any bad or incorrect search engine marketing practices will have unqualified visitors entering your store for certain. At minimum, do not target incorrect traffic by optimizing your web pages with too broad or too narrow keywords. Learn the basics of SEO and make sure your ecommerce solution is search engine friendly.
• Pay Per Click – Your online marketing program should incorporate a pay-per-click (PPC) strategy. When a prospective customer conducts a search using a keyword that you have selected as a part of a pay per click program, a small ad will appear near search results. When a site visitor clicks on your ad, you are charged a small fee. This is a great, inexpensive way to target customers who are already looking for your product or service.
• Listings on Relevant Content Sites – Whenever possible, make sure a link to your site appears on other sites that are already attracting your target audience. For instance, if you sell materials for making dolls, a generic listing on “Big Al’s Free For All Link List” isn’t going to land you the same type of visitor as a prominent link on a major crafter site. Try to get your site listed on as many major relevant sites as possible. The major sites not only get more traffic but search engines use link popularity as one criteria in ranking their pages so listing on big sites will also boost your rankings in the other engines.

Seek Help…Cautiously

The Latin phrase, caveat emptor (let the buyer beware), applies big time for those seeking web marketing solutions. While there are many options and services available to assist you with attracting qualified traffic to your web storefront, seek help cautiously. A sad fact is that peddlers of “snake oil” online marketing services abound—there are a lot of companies who make false or inflated claims about their search engine marketing capabilities. Do your homework. Check references to ensure the services is credible and can actually help you achieve your goals.

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