• Submit your site to the search engines - Yes, some people forgot this step! Unless the search engines know about your site, there is no SEO. If you have a new site (or an old one) make sure that you are listed in all major search engines. Next look for speciality search engines to might fit your market. Then do a search for your own domain name in each search site and make sure you show up. The top 3 search engines right now are Google.com, Yahoo.com and Bing.com (Microsoft's search engine).
• Think Marathon, Not Sprint - SEO is a process. It isn't a set-it-and-forget-it Ron Popeil machine. Your competitors aren't standing still and you shouldn't be either. If you optimize your web site and manage to get on the first page for a specific keyword today, there is no guarantee you'll be there tomorrow. In fact, fresh content is one of the ways search engines determine relevance. Understand that you need to keep tweaking your site and adding content to stay at the top. Don't worry if you're not seeing dramatic results on day one just keep at it and build a great content library over time.

• Boosting traffic might not mean more sales - It sound crazy but more traffic doesn't always mean more sales. What you need is targeted traffic. If you sell women's bathing suits and you get 100% more visitors who are all men, you probably won't see an increase in sales. Make sure that you are targeting keywords which will bring qualified leads to your site. Make sure that you have a good understanding of who your customers are. There may be one than one segment and you may need to create separate SEO landing pages and campaigns to target the different groups. If you can put yourself in the mind of your customers you'll see opportunities for keywords, articles and advertising that will bring in more sales!

Are you using customer testimonials on your store? If not, you should be. They are a powerful tool that lets shoppers know you have other satisfied customers. When new shoppers know that other people are happy with your store they gain a sense of trust and that leads to higher conversion rates and sales.

Most stores (myself included) ask for testimonials and put up the ones that are most flattering. It's pretty easy to get some nice "sound bytes" for your homepage. But, just grabbing to best sounding testimonials may not be the best tactic.

Ramit Sethi from IWillTeachYouToBeRich.com is an expert in human behavior. I had the pleasure of talking with him this week at MicroConf 2011 and he pointed out that testiminials are a great opportunity to build more than trust. They can be used to address specific concerns your customers may have.

He suggested that everyone should be tactical in deciding which testimonials to post. If your shoppers are concerned that the quality of your products may not be great because of your low prices, seek out testimonials that address that concern. Find a testimonial that says something like "I though the quality would be poor because the prices were so great but instead this thing is built like a truck."

Picking testimonials that address your shopper's fears prior to purchasing is something that you can do today that your competitor's won't be doing. It's a quick easy way to increase sales. Take a look at your catalog of testimonials and see if you can swap them out for smarter ones right now.

Choosing the right keywords for your landing pages can make a significant difference in conversion rates. According to a recent study at hubspot.com of more than 40,000 landing pages visitors are looking for value in the form of a webinar, whitepaper or download rather than pricing information or quotes.

Using the word "webinar" improved conversion rates by almost 10% while leaving off the word "quote" improved conversions by more than 5%.

Lose these words:

• Quote
• Price
• Request
• Service
• Contact
• Questions

 Choose these words instead:

• Webinar
• Whitepaper
• Download
• Chapter
• Tools
• Report

Google will be requiring the "Condition" field on all Google Base feeds starting on June 30th. We'll be updating the BV Commerce Google Base plugin to support this field shortly.

http://googlebase.blogspot.com/2009/06/condition-attribute-becoming-required.html

Condition options are: New, Used, Refurbished

I had to rent a truck the other day to move some furniture. The giant yellow truck was 10 feet tall and at least 15 feet long. I climbed up into the beast of a machine and was thankful that I didn't have to back out of the rental lot. When I arrived at my destination with the furniture it was time to back the truck up so the loading ramp was close to where the furniture was going.

Backing up a rental truck like this takes a lot of "situational awareness." You have to keep a mental picture of where everything around your truck is and how the mirrors show you a partial view of the surroundings. Then it occured to me that almost every SUV sold these days has an optional backup camera which is a cheap component.

Why don't the "professional" trucks have a cheap backup camera like the consumer SUVs do? The camera manufacturers are missing a huge market.

Apple sells professional level video editing software to a market they call "pro-sumer" which is consumers who want professional level products. The hardware industry always has up-sell options for the weekend warrior who wants the same brand of tool that the pros use.

Do you have products targeted to "professionals" and "consumers" that could cross over to the other segment?

In The Matrix, the lead character NEO has the ability to view a computer generated world like no other inhabitant. He sees the inner workings of the system and can manipulate them because of this information.

I was happily churning out some code this morning when “blink!” Out went the power. I remembered the power company calling a few days ago with some message about replacing a part in the substation for my neighborhood. Great! I was just getting into the zone.

As I left and headed for Panera to scoop up some free internet access with my coffee I realized that the army of power company workers must have a completely unique view of the world. I drive by those little (or big) green boxes sprouting up from every neighborhood in the area without noticing them. I’m sure the power workers key in on them as though they were bright pink. They “see” a different world than most people because they know what to look for.

Other professions are similar. A cop on the beat keys in on certain behaviors and mannerisms to locate suspects. An ER doctor picks up on clues to a patient’s condition that might go unnoticed by others. A ship captain “reads” the waves and knows when trouble is over the horizon.

How do you view the Matrix? What unique things do you notice and how can you take advantage of them?

BV Commerce 5 offers "anonymous" checkout. I'm not sure what to call the feature other than "anonymous." Maybe "guest" checkout is more appropriate because you still collect the name and address of the customers. The feature was designed so that customers were not required to create an account during the checkout process.

Jared M. Spool of User Interface Engineering recently posted an article explaining that making it clear that registration was not required during checkout boosted one of their client's web sales by 300 million dollars. What UIE did was to change the text of a button from "Register" to "Continue" which was seen as less intrusive by shoppers during the checkout process. A simple change that had the effect of making the login step optional.

There are plenty of reasons to require customers to register during checkout. On the BV Software Store we require customers to create an account because we sell electronic goods and have found that when customers explicitly create their own account it is easier for them to remember later. This saves us some support requests about usernames and passwords. Also, our audience tends to be fairly technical and isn't afraid of creating accounts.

If your store requires registration during checkout think carefully about exactly why you require it. You may be losing a significant number of sales because of it.

Let's say you've been collecting email addresses for the past year and now you're ready to turn them into a profit center. Create your trusty form letter and mail merge it to everyone. Ka-Ching!

 Or not...

It depends on what you're goal is and what message you're sending. If you're sending a coupon for 10% off this month. Great! Send a form mail. Your customers aren't expecting you to individually send out a personal coupon message to each and every one.

But, if your message is targeted to a smaller group or is asking for information, time and money from your customers a personal letter works much better. Not a "fake personal" message but a real, honest to God message that you wrote individually to the people on your list.

Take this example that I recently received:

I changed the name of the company to REMOVED to protect the company involved. What does this message really say?

First, BV SOFTWARE is in all-caps. A clear signal that it probably wasn't typed by a human. If you can't correctly capitalize my company name how much effort do I think you're really going to spend on me.

Second, helping BV SOFTWARE's customers with sales tax compliance is in bold as though it was a mad-lib with <insert corporate goal here>.

Third, the letter clearly states that I haven't had a representative until recently but, don't worry, you've got one now. I've got one who promptly asks for me to tell him the best way to move the partnership forward. I guess I didn't realize we had a partnership since there was to rep until recently. Maybe he should come up with some ideas first.

Okay, enough ranting about the email. Back to the serious message. This letter screams "Form Mail" and immediately gets little respect and even less change for action. In fact, it actually reduced my opinion of the company involved for sending such an impersonal letter about a personal partnership.

Think carefully before sending that mass email. It's great for non-personal coupons, sale announcements, monthly newletters, etc. but it's terrible for building relationships with your customers.

Have you seen this man before? According to his bio page the Video Professor has been seen by more than 90 million people. Until recently his sales pitch appears to have been targeted at senior citizens. "It's so easy, just follow by step by step video instructions, etc. etc." But, today I saw a Video Professor ad with a different sales pitch.

"Use the video professor to learn new computer skills. When you know advanced Microsoft Office skills you can get a higher paying job. Retrain for a new career."

This guy knows his audience. He knows that many of the people watching his TV ads have lost their job, have a fear of losing their job or having financial problems in the current economy. Here's a "free" lesson (which is entirely paid for by the shipping and handling fee) to help you through the tough times.

How could you improve your conversion rates by changing your marketing and sales pitches based on time? When I worked for Fry 1-800-Flowers received a relatively moderate amount of traffic until the month before Valentine's day. Then all hell broke loose and we fired up extra servers like crazy. What times of the year are slow for sales? How can you improve sales by targeting an event, a season, a day and focusing on it? What if you created a new holiday based on your product line?

Could you change your featured products based on the weather of a visiting customer? Check the weather database against the IP location and display your best umbrella to shoppers having a rainy day. Would that boost conversions?

How about time of day? Infomercials have known for years that late night and early morning hours put our minds in a more receptive state to purchase crazy kitchen gadgets we'll use once and then throw in a drawer. Could you offer an "insomniac special" to customers shopping late at night in their time zone?

How about this Chicago Furniture store? "We sell more seats than the governor." An ad sure to get attention because of it's timely reference to the state governor's controversial senate seat appointment.

 What else could you do to improve your sales by linking marketing to timely events?

Are you marketing to a receptive audience? If not, you're missing out on one of the greatest ways to increase your conversion rates.

I recently returned from our annual company retreat. On the Jet Blue flight down the flight attendant passed out toothpaste samples to the entire plane. If you can get past the irony of handing out toothpaste that you can't take through the security checkout anymore it was a really good promotion opportunity for the toothpaste company.

Beverage service was started with the snack basket. Everyone likes getting something from the "free" goodies basket which was quickly followed up with drink orders. Lastly the attendant walked down the isle and handed everyone an unexpected sample tube of toothpaste. It felt like a great little extra that no one was expecting.

What would have happened if the flight attendant had instead started with the toothpaste samples? People would wonder why they're getting this. Some might complain "Where's my snack? Where's my drink." When you put the customers in a receptive mood by offering expected drinks and snacks they're already used to getting something as the attendant comes down the isle. If the toothpaste company had setup a booth in the airport terminal do you think they'd have close a 100% acceptance rate from everyone walking by? Hardly!

You can do the same with your web store. Market to the customers who have already purchased something. They're telling you that they like your store and your products. What else can you offer while they're expecting your delivery. Put something unexpected in the box that they didn't order. Do you think that receiving an unexpected free goodie might get your customer to tell a few friends about your store? What would that be worth to you?