04
Dec
Merchant Marketing Spotlight: CAROLEE Jewelry
At 3dcart, we’re always writing and sharing tips on how to effectively market your store, but sometimes the best way to learn is by example. In our new “Merchant Marketing Spotlights” blog series, we will be looking at fellow 3dcart merchants that successfully leveraging social media, and content marketing to grow their brand and land more sales.
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Merchant Marketing Spotlight: CAROLEE Jewelry
WHO: CAROLEE offers premier jewelry collections that reflect a contemporary woman’s lifestyle and the finest in quality, prestige and sophistication. Carolee jewelry collections span from sleek and modern sterling silver, to classic and colorful pearls, to fashion-forward seasonal trends. CAROLEE is sold in major retailers like Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, Lord and Taylor and Dillard’s.
FACEBOOK:
With over 4,802 likes, CAROLEE actively engages their fans on Facebook with fun contests, relevant posts and fan-only discounts.
Here are a few tips we can take-away from their effective Facebook strategy:
TIP 1: Create an well-designed header image
TIP 2: Use timely events and news to create engaging posts:
TIP 3: Share behind-the-scenes pictures and updates
CAROLEE actively enages fans and followers on Twitter promoting their sales, along with fun brand-building tweets.
TIP: Don’t just push our sales messages. Send personable and fun tweets that users would want to RT
https://twitter.com/caroleejewelry/status/275615618294771715
As a high-end jewelry brand, CAROLEE ‘s products lend themselves perfectly to the visual-sharing network Pinterest. CAROLEE takes advantage of Pinterest’s fashion-obsessed users with fun Pins and ‘Pin It To Win It” contests.
TIP: ‘ Pin It To Win It’ Contests are a great way to promote social sharing. But remember to Pin an image that explains the contest so users can easily find the rules and participate.
TIP: Pin more than just your products. Your pin’s should reflect you brand’s personality not just its inventory.
You can follow CAROLEE on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest or on their website http://www.carolee.com
26
Nov
Last Minute Cyber Monday Tips
Happy Cyber Monday! Since its inception in 2005, Cyber Monday has been online retailers favorite and craziest day of the year. Experts predict that consumers will spend more online today than any other day of the year – an expected $1.42 Billion. As the below infographic shows, consumers are going to be scouring social media to find the best deals which means merchants need to leverage their social communities to share their virtual-door-buster deals.
Here are some last minute Cyber Monday promotion ideas:
Promote your deals with images & text - Post images on Facebook and Twitter of your products on sale today, but also test text-only messages to see what kind of message your audience responds to best
Post promotion images on Pinterest – Pin your most visual-appealing deals to Pinterest and make sure to mention the price!
Promote your posts on Facebook – Today would be a great day to pay $5 to Facebook for a post that reaches more of your fan’s wall
Hold a contest on Twitter – Retweet a tweet that mentions your Cyber Monday deals for $10 off your Cyber Monday purchase
21
Nov
What Merchants Need To Know About The New Business Pinterest Pages
Pinterest recently rolled out new “businesss pages” offering more features to businesses and confirming their status as one of the top social marketing platforms.
Here’s what you need to know about the new accounts:
1) Free and not that different: Pinterest business accounts are totally free and right now a business page looks the same as a personal page except for businesses can now use the full name of their business without having to go around the first name/last name fields.
2) Verifying your account : Pinterest now lets businesses to officially link their websites to their Pinterest profiles and places the full URL with a red check mark in front of it in the About section to signify a verified account.
3) New Analytics: Similar to Facebook insights, merchants will soon be given reports that will help analyze and track their audience, their pin’s effectiveness and their influence.
4) Converting Your Account: Pinterest makes it extremly simple to convert a personal Pinterest page to a business page. Just go to the Pinterest business portal and click on either the “Convert your existing account” button or the “Join as a business” link. But if you’re new to Pinterest and about to set up a new account for business, then you need to head on over here.
5) New Terms Of Service: Pinterest has rolled out new terms of service for businesses. The rules listed here don’t really change how to use Pinterest just serve to remind merchants of what they can expect from Pinterest and its users. Mainly to remind merchants that your website’s content might be pinned Pinterest by others, who are able to redistribute, modify, or otherwise change and reuse your content on the Pinterest platform
05
Nov
Holiday Webinar Lineup: Adwords, Pinterest, FraudWatch, 3dcartUpsell
From Adwords to Pinterest, the 3dcart marketing team has planned a value-packed webinar lineup designed to help you rock the holidays. Make sure to reserve your spot in each!
Getting Started with Google Adwords
Thursday, November 8, 2012 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EST
Register now: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/299370330
Pinterest for the Holidays
Tuesday, November 13, 2012 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EST
Register now: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/919135970
Don’t Let Fraud Ruin the Holidays
Thursday, November 15, 2012 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EST
Register now: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/323751682
Bigger Orders, Bigger Profits with 3dupsell
Tuesday, November 20, 2012 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EST
Register now: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/220865154
01
Nov
Marketing Ideas By The Numbers: Holiday Ecommerce Statistics
63% of US shoppers plan to do a majority of their Christmas shopping online this year, according to a new study by LivePerson. And another study by eConsuatancy found eCommerce to be more popular than high street shopping. But how can you ensure your store converts as many as these eager shoppers as possible?
Studies show there are factors that set merchants apart and have proven success in converting more users.
Marketing Ideas By The Numbers:
Offer Free Returns:
- 60% of UK consumers will not even consider making a fashion purchase online unless they can return unwanted items without being charged.
- 41% buy several sizes of the same piece of clothing online to check the fit, and then send the others back.
- Other reasons given for returning items included item not fitting (43%), the feel of the material (25%) and style (15%).
- 12% say they never buy online due to concerns about finding the right size, while 61% are often deterred for this reason.
- 60% say they won’t consider buying online unless returns are free.
Offer Free Shipping
- 55% of online shoppers expect free shipping on every order
- 85% of ecommerce sites will offer free shipping promotions specific for the upcoming holiday season
- 30% of retailers said they would offer free shipping earlier than they did during the 2011 holiday shopping season.
- 20% of consumers say free shipping is the most important factor in where they shop online in 2012. 19% of consumers say they’ll pay full price, if retailers offer free shipping.
Use Social To Connect:
- 70% of shoppers using Twitter to get product reviews
- 75% turning to Facebook to look for discounts
- 73% using Pinterest to research ideas.
Update Product Photos:
- 67% of consumers saying that the quality of a product image is very important in selecting and purchasing a product
- 60% of consumers are more likely to consider or contact a business that has an image show up in local search results
- 53% of customers value the quality of a product image more than ratings or reviews
Use Email Marketing Strategically
- Targeted subject lines improve open rates – 53% said they opened an email because of a showcased offer
- Men over ag 55 are more likely than their younger counterparts to have made a purchase because of an email message
- 87% of those receiving retailer emails open the messages
- 80% of online shoppers and 71% of in-store shoppers say email offers influence them to buy
Make Checkout Easy
- 84% of ecommerce sites support express checkout
- 66% of ecommerce sites offer guest checkout (34% DON’T!)
- Only 9% of checkouts are 3-step vs 54% 4-step and 33% 5-step
24
Jun
Unlock More Sales With Multichannel Selling
Steve Jobs had a distinct vision for how he wanted Apple’s retail stores to look and feel. Wood floors, modern furniture and tall glass windows are the touch stones of Apple’s highly successful retail stores and it is this kind of customization that has helped Apple build its brand.
3dcart’s web stores put the same power of customization in your hands and allow you to create a shopping experience that is in line with your company’s brand. You can control every aspect of the buying process. While hardwood floors and glass windows might not be an option for a web store, 3dcart gives you more than 50 templates to choose from and each template is 100 percent customizable.
On the other side of the coin, stores like Pinterest, eBay, Amazon and Etsy put your products in front of millions of eyeballs but allow minimal control of the shopping experience. This valuable exposure should not be eschewed simply because of a lack of customization. Apple-o-philes might remember that while Jobs was a bit of an auteur as far as retail goes, he still allowed his products to be sold in Best Buy stores. Jobs understood the fundamental business truth that increased product visibility translates to increased sales.
If there is one truth to be gleaned from the Apple example, it’s that multichannel selling can be a great driver of sales. Selling through Pinterest, eBay, Amazon and Etsy can drive volume while also leaving the door to “your universe” open by maintaining a dedicated, customizable 3Dcart store.
But your selling strategy shouldn’t simply end with putting your products in multiple locations. Maintaining different web stores with different brands can help you attract different demographics. The customers who shop on eBay are not necessarily the same type of customers who shop on Etsy or Pinterest.
According to comScore, 68 percent of Pinterest’s users are women and the average user spends about 16 minutes on the site. Compare that with eBay, whose users are about 56 percent male and spend more than an hour on the site, on average.
Maintaining separate web stores with different experiences can help you please different types of customers who value different aspects of the shopping experience.
Selling in more places gets your products in front of more customers. Companies spend billions of dollars advertising just so that they can put their product in front of consumer’s eyes for a few seconds. Fortunately, 3dcart easily integrates with Pinterest and other web market places without charging billions of dollars.
Our guest post today is from Sangram Kadam, Co-Founder of Ordoro. Ordoro is a software platform that helps ecommerce merchants manage everything they need to do after an order is placed in their shopping cart. The Ordoro web-app is used by online merchants to manage orders and to keep stock levels in sync between their webstores and marketplaces.Ordoro also offers shipping label printing, dropshipping and inventory management.
01
Jun
What Social Media Buttons Should You Add ?
When considering what social media buttons to add to you store or blog, your immediate reaction might be “All of them!” More the merrier right? More buttons, more exposure?
Not necessarily. Having dozens of social sharing buttons looks cluttered and can be visually overwhelming to your readers and customers. Too many options can scare away or distract even social users. So how do you decide which ones to add?
You need to ask yourself three questions:
What social platforms generate the most traffic/sales?
Like everything else in online business, you need to measure your social efforts. From looking at your store or blog’s analytics, you should be able to tell what platforms are the most profitable for you by looking at the traffic generated from each platform. Make sure to also take in to account the time on site, pageviews and obviously conversions (if you have conversion funnels set up in your analytics).
Just as beneficial as knowing knowing the social platforms that work best, knowing what platforms don’t work is key to choosing the right social buttons. Focus your users attention on the sharing of valuable networks by eliminating the option to share on networks that won’t generate value for you.
Who are you customers?
While understanding what works now is an important element, it is not the whole picture. You may be just getting started and not have the history to work off or you know from studies and research that one social network is working for your industry, but you haven’t seen the benefit yet. Just as important as measuring existing social efforts, is knowing the platforms- who uses them and how.
For example, if you are selling fashion, you shouldn’t ignore Pinterest (even if you haven’t seen Pinterest traffic yet, there is great potential). If you write tons of great content on your company blog, don’t ignore Twitter – it’s an information sharing machine! Once you understand each platform, who uses it and how they use it, you will start to see the networks that are right for your company. The below infographic does a great job of giving the typical profile of each network.
Where am I?
Make sure that the buttons you choose are networks that your company can connect with them on. But don’t ignore a social network that meets the other two criteria just because you are not active on it. After measuring your efforts and researching the platforms, you need to consider amping up your engagement on the social networks that rose to the top.
23
Apr
Ask The SEO Experts: Photo-Sharing Links, Redesign Affect On SEO
3dcart’s CMO Joe Palko & SEO Manager Bryan Falla answer SEO, PPC, and conversion questions questions submitted by 3dcart merchants. To submit your questions fill out this form: http://blog.3dcart.com/get-your-seo-questions-answered-by-3dcarts-seo-experts/
Q. Which major photo-sharing sites (i.e. Flickr, photobucket, deviantart, imageshack) allow outgoing links?
A. In terms of dofollow links, most don’t. There are basically two reasons: They are protecting their own “link juice”, and also preventing people from wanting to use them only for the benefit of outbound links. The exception to that rule is Deviantart whose links are dofollow, however a landing page is put between deviantart and your target page which makes it not as valuable.
BUT that doesn’t mean there is not ways to use photo-sharing to build high-quality links: You can upload original images to Flickr’s creative commons and ask that if bloggers use your image or photo to place a one way back link to your blog or site. For example:
“Feel free to use this image for your website or blog as long as you include photo credit with a clickable (hyperlinked) and do-follow link to
blog.3dcart.com.”
It’s the same concept as the embed code used for “sharing” infographics, which pretty much tells people “fee free to share this graphic on your website with this code” and within the code there’s a do-follow backlink embedded.
So you can definitely build backlinks through these sites, but it’s important to understand that it’s more through networking than simply by posting. The backlinks won’t come from the sites themselves but from the people who use these sites.
Q. I’ve recently acquired a website that I feel is a bit too busy and might be confusing for some guests. I’m planning to do a redesign and streamline the site, making it more user-friendly. What are the risks in a redesign and what should I concentrate on when rebuilding with SEO in mind?
The only major risk is that the search engines won’t be able to find indexed content. Avoid this by
1. Try to keep the same URLs and site architecture
2. If that’s not possible, make sure all your indexed pages are redirected properly to their new URLs using 301 redirects
As long as the content is the same, you should be fine. On a side note, often times after redesigning a website, rankings will often increase, especially if the site is structured well, gets improved content, and is coded using best practices. I’ve found a nice list of best practices… http://terrymorris.net/bestpractices/
Make sure to register for 3dcart’s free webinar: The New Rules of SEO and check out 3dcart’s SEO services which can help you fast-track your optimization efforts.
3dcart’s CMO Joe Palko & SEO Manager Bryan Falla answer SEO, PPC, and conversion questions questions submitted by 3dcart merchants. To submit your questions fill out this form: http://blog.3dcart.com/get-your-seo-questions-answered-by-3dcarts-seo-experts/
06
Feb
Pinterest Drives More Referral Traffic Than Google+
Since we’ve been diving into the world of Pinterest Marketing (Pinterest 101 & Pinterest Marketing: Why & How To Do It Right), we thought we would share this awesome infographic by Monotate.
Check out how Pinterest is driving more traffic to retailers than Google+!
01
Feb
Pinterest Marketing: How To Do It Right
Yesterday we gave you Pinterest 101, but now its time to amp up your Pinning knowledge to learn how to market your store on the fast growing social network.
First, we we’ll answer the most pressing question, WHY?
WHY PINTEREST
Engaged Users
Pinterest users are extremly engaged and if you have a personal account you probably know why, ITS ADDICTIVE. Pinterest is a marketers dream – it has the openess of Twitter but the intimate nature of Facebook. Users feel connected with their close-knit following enough to pin and share things, but because Pinterest is open, everything is searchable!
Peer-To-Peer Sharing
Users cannot login to Pinterest without being bombarded by their friends pins, making it all too tempting not to repin images they like to their own boards. This sort of ‘social stealing’ promotes tremendous peer-to-peer sharing, aka viral sharing. With the right momentum, your pins have the potential to been seen by thousands of users ( potential customers).
Links That Last
Like we pointed out yesterday, each pin is linked to its online origin which means pinning is a sort of link-building. Although the links are not ‘do follow” links ( meaning they have no affect on seo), users information is always available so even months after someone pins your products, people can stumble unto your store.
Branding Opportunity
Like other social networks before it, Pinterest offers online merchants a chance to extend their brand, become more social and engage users.
HOW TO DO IT RIGHT
So you have an invite and you’re ready to Pin? Here’s what to do next!