Ecommerce Blog

A good friend of mine, Permjot Valia has recently launched a Business Angel Blog. It’s a really good read so I thought I would mention it here as it’s relevant to any small business looking for investment etc.

Who is Permjot? Here’s a bit from his bio:

“By accident, I ended up investing in many of the companies I was helping and I have now invested in 16 companies ranging from mobile phone contract lead generation LeadzOnline to interior design on the web, MyDeco. Cafes producing fresh daily breads, Amano to a company supplying the NHS with vegetarian condoms!

I like to invest in companies and people that I like and I understand (I confess to investing in a business I did not understand and lost my money!). Through this activity I have built up a wealth of contacts and I organise an annual get together which is well attended and helps the businesses by getting together with other interesting people – great things happen. More about the event later!

I am now on the board of the EISA. If you are serious about either raising money for your business or looking to invest in a company – do check out the website for some really good tips on making the tax system work for you. The Chair of EISA, Howard Flight also happens to be one of the best people you could ever hope to meet.

Earlier this year, I also co-founded a Fund Management business called Flight & Partners which now has around £15m under management and invests in the turnaround sector. In order to become a Director of this business, I had to gain FSA approval and had to sit exams last year – they were not easy and I swear no more exams for me!”

So basically Permjot is the guy who has lots of contacts in business, who like to invest in startups and any opportunities that show potential. He knows some serious people who think nothing about investing millions into new ventures. To say he is well connected is an understatement.

But it’s not just his connections that make his blog interesting reading, it’s his posts offering advice and opinion on everything that’s small business related to how to secure a multi-million pound investment. Anyway, don’t just take my word for it, check it out for yourself, I’m sure you will like it. Permjot will no doubt be reading this blog post too so if you have any feedback then please leave it below in the comments.

What I’m listening to right now: Raphael Saadiq - “Love That Girl”

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Business Angel Blog

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Original post by Kieron

I attended the Bingo Summit last week, however had to go home on the second night so missed the festivities. Seems my pass didn’t though…

My pass enjoying a Mai Tai!

Jasper from Jackpotjoy impersonating me. Notice couple in background thinking “what’s that all about?”

Helen from DGM doing the same.

Jason from Loquax wishes he were me.

What I’m listening to right now: John Legend ft Andre 3000 – “Green Light”

Post from: Affiliate Marketing Blog Here.org.uk

My Bingo Summit pass out on the town

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Original post by Kieron

Right. I’ve been working flat out for the last few weeks, with the launch of Content Now, 2 trips to London town and all my other day-to-day stuff. So…time to switch off from work for 5 minutes and enjoy some cars and some new music.

If you like cars, and especially supercars then you MUST buy the July edition of Top Gear magazine. Why? Well it’s a great magazine at the best of times but this month it has some super duper treats, like:

Not 1, not 2 but 3 Bugatti Veyrons blasting around the roads of Abu Dhabi. If that wasn’t awesome enough, 1 is one of only 5 chrome Pur Sang limited editions in existence and 1 of the others is the only all-white example in the world. Gorgeous. Not forgetting that between them the 3 cars cost more than £2 million.

They race a Veyron against a Koenigseggggggggg. Again in Abu Dhabi. You have to see the pictures, they are spectacular.

They test drive the new Lamborghini LP560-4 in Death Valley. Where else? I want one.

They test drive the new Maserati GranTurismo S in Italy. This car is just drop-dead gorgeous. I can’t describe what a beautiful beast this piece of Italian metal is. The car they feature in the magazine is the most lush red I’ve seen and so suits it. I really, really want one. Unfortunately I can’t find any pictures of one in red online so here’s a couple of it in black. Almost as good looking.

P.S. Top Gear is back on TV this Sunday!

P.P.S. Has anyone got any high res pics of the Veyron or the Maser in white? I can’t find any

Now if you like your R&B like I do then you need to buy “Tha Carter III” by Lil’ Wayne. When a lot of modern rap is boring Lil Wayne delivers a varied and eclectic album. With guest spots from Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes, Robin Thicke, Bobby Valentino and Babyface (return to form) its just bloody awesome. It reminds me of Kanye West, T-Pain and old school De La Soul. Simply brilliant.

What I’m listening to right now: Lil’ Wayne - “Tha Carter III”

Post from: Affiliate Marketing Blog Here.org.uk

3 Bugatti Veyrons, the gorgeous Maserati GranTurismo S and Lil’ Wayne

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Original post by Kieron

Right. I’ve been working flat out for the last few weeks, with the launch of Content Now, 2 trips to London town and all my other day-to-day stuff. So…time to switch off from work for 5 minutes and enjoy some cars and some new music.

If you like cars, and especially supercars then you MUST buy the July edition of Top Gear magazine. Why? Well it’s a great magazine at the best of times but this month it has some super duper treats, like:

Not 1, not 2 but 3 Bugatti Veyrons blasting around the roads of Abu Dhabi. If that wasn’t awesome enough, 1 is one of only 5 chrome Pur Sang limited editions in existence and 1 of the others is the only all-white example in the world. Gorgeous. Not forgetting that between them the 3 cars cost more than £2 million.

They race a Veyron against a Koenigseggggggggg. Again in Abu Dhabi. You have to see the pictures, they are spectacular.

They test drive the new Lamborghini LP560-4 in Death Valley. Where else? I want one.

They test drive the new Maserati GranTurismo S in Italy. This car is just drop-dead gorgeous. I can’t describe what a beautiful beast this piece of Italian metal is. The car they feature in the magazine is the most lush red I’ve seen and so suits it. I really, really want one. Unfortunately I can’t find any pictures of one in red online so here’s a couple of it in black. Almost as good looking.

P.S. Top Gear is back on TV this Sunday!

P.P.S. Has anyone got any high res pics of the Veyron or the Maser in white? I can’t find any

Now if you like your R&B like I do then you need to buy “Tha Carter III” by Lil’ Wayne. When a lot of modern rap is boring Lil Wayne delivers a varied and eclectic album. With guest spots from Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes, Robin Thicke, Bobby Valentino and Babyface (return to form) its just bloody awesome. It reminds me of Kanye West, T-Pain and old school De La Soul. Simply brilliant.

 

What I’m listening to right now: Lil’ Wayne - “Tha Carter III”

Post from: Affiliate Marketing Blog Here.org.uk

3 Bugatti Veyrons, the gorgeous Maserati GranTurismo S and Lil’ Wayne

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Original post by Kieron

One of the best ways (If done properly) to add additional revenue to your ecommerce sales is to sell non-core products (at cost or even at a loss) to gain additional core sales and new customers.

A great example that I found this weekend, is B&H Photo. They sell a variety of non-photography related computer and technical products. What quickly caught my attention is that many these products are being sold well below any other online retailer’s price, even cheaper than anyone on eBay. I don’t have access to wholesale computer accessory costs, but I imagine that they aren’t making much money, if any, on their computer product sales.

So how is this smart marketing?

When an established website like B&H draws sales from non-core products, they gain additional customers and brand exposure. What they gain by selling at cost, is the opportunity to sell other products for profit, and they gain repeat customers. In the end, if the amount of money spent marketing and supporting non-core products is minimal, there is absolutely no downside to this practice. If they aren’t making money from those computer related sales, they’re making money from those additional customers that are also interested in cameras, memory cards, photography accessories, and more computer accessories.

A good idea for some but not for everyone:

This practice can be a strong marketing technique, however, it will not create a sustainable business model for everyone. A businesses that can most effectively harness this technique must have a strong search engine presence, or the ability to draw sales and traffic at little to no additional cost. This technique is probably not a good idea for a startup business unless you really know what you are doing. A business must also have access to related but non-core products at a very competitive price.

Obvious potential pitfalls:

• Some strong reserve must be used to not cannibalize existing profit margins, as it extremely easy to sell short on everything. Don’t make everything a loss leader, only those non-core products that you are adding.
• Another danger is accidentally migrating from one core product type to another. It needs to be clear to yourself and to your customers what your business is there to do. If you are a photo shop, that sells some computer accessories, it should be clear that you are not a computer accessory seller that has some photography equipment. This is absolutely key in protecting your brand, and sustaining your business model.
• The other products that you decide to sell must be related to what your business does. If would make no sense for an online flower shop to start selling car parts. You need to be careful not to dilute your brand, message, and what it is you currently do with completely unrelated products.
• You do not ever want to enter an arena that will create a lot of additional customer support requests. This is a quick way to nullify any gain you get from additional customers and sales.

The big picture:

It’s sometimes difficult to grasp the concept of loosing money on one place to gain money in another. If you have the ability to step back and look at the big picture, you will find that there are numerous areas where a loss here can create a huge gain somewhere else. Small steps should always be taken when testing out a system that has both the potential for a loss and a gain, but I think that many will find that this is a useful, appropriate, and completely possible marketing technique.

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Original post by jestep

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Original post by Om Malik

I had the privilege of being interviewed for the first installment of “Web Analytics Guru Interviews” over at Rich Page’s Blog. Check it out and discover what I think are the ingredients for a killer ecommerce user experience, my favorite web analytics metric, what inspires me as a blogger, what’s so cool about Elastic Path and more!

Get Elastic was also named as one of 36 Blogs That Make Customers Sing by word-of-mouth marketing afficionado Sean Moffitt of Buzz Canuck. Sean recommends you read one branding and customer experience focused blog per day for the entire month of June, plus July 1-4 for good measure. June 8 is Get Elastic day so I’ll aim to write something groovy about branding and customers! Any suggestions for topics that you’d like to see covered? Please drop a comment, you want it, you got it.

All right, on with the links!

• Great news, Google Analytics is now beta testing features that will track AJAX and Flash interaction. Soon you’ll be able to measure engagement with your rich media applications, which as you know make for some really wicked ecommerce experiences.

• Got copywriter’s block? Check out 34 Incredibly Strong Calls to Action That Make Your Visitors Click, Phone or Buy. Hey, you might want to borrow some of these when you test your PPC copy…

• Some interesting news this week, Microsoft wants to offer users of its Live search engine cash back on ecommerce purchases from retailers like Barnes and Noble and Zappos when you choose Live instead of the Big G or Yahoo! Hey, if you can’t buy the engines, you can try to buy the customers. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land took the service for a test drive, and documents how frustrating searching for a DVD player is in Live Search, but Yahoo, Google and Become weren’t much better.

• Every webmaster should know the definition of the word “canonicalization” (not to be confused with the word “canonization” - Jason, stop snickering). If you don’t know what canonicalization is and why it’s important, check out this post from Search Engine Journal, Canonicalization & SEO: Should I Use WWW or Not?

• Did you know you can use Twitter, Facebook and Del.icio.us as free keyword research tools? Well, you can…Ann Smarty tells you how.

9 Ecommerce Innovations: What’s Now & What’s Next
Free webinar: June 19th, 2008, 9am PT/12pm ET
Guest Panelist: Jason Billingsley, VP Innovation, Elastic Path Software
Register to Attend

Original post by Linda Bustos

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Original post by Om Malik

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Original post by Om Malik

Before we get going with the link list, I want to announce the replay of our paid search webinar with Ryan Gibson of the Rimm-Kaufman Group is now available. You can also catch up with all of our webinars (we’ve got a full year’s worth!) in our ecommerce webinar archive.

I also want to remind you of a few upcoming webinars so pull out your calendars:

Tuesday, May 20: How to Use Blogging and Email to Create Leads and Delight Customers with Compendium Blogware, the Email Experience Council and Habeas.

Thursday, May 29: Web Personalization: Putting the “Cha-Ching” Before and After the Check-Out presented by Sitebrand and ZAAZ.

Thursday, June 19: 9 Ecommerce Innovations: What’s Now & What’s Next presented by our own VP of Innovation, Jason Billingsley who will be sharing some “ridiculously cool stuff” on the ecommerce horizon.

We’ll kick off this week’s roundup with “I’m Gonna Git You Spamma!” Via eROI Interactive.

Shut yo’ mouth!

• We touched upon keyword research and its importance in yesterday’s webinar. Christine Churchill shares Eight Keyword Research Mistakes that Are Costing You Money if you’re hungry for more keyword research wisdom>.

• Can blogs help your SEO? And how do you make sure you’re getting the most SEO value out of your blog? Rand Fishkin explains in video-form with Blogging for Higher Rankings.

  In related news, 57% of women believe blogs influence their purchase decisions. Wow, I’m such a stereotype - I read a post on Search Engine People last night and immediately bought a laptop cooling pad. PS, neither of us are affiliates. It’s just a great product idea and costs about $20.

• If I say “duplicate content!” and you say “huh?”, this is a great introduction to what duplicate content is, courtesy of Eric Enge.

• Pop quiz: What’s the difference between exit rate and bounce rate? Mae Allam from the Invesp blog gives a good explanation.

• The title says it all: 8 Best Kept Secrets to Fine Tuning Your E-mail Marketing Campaigns from Invesp conversion expert Khalid Hajsaleh.

• We love catching Google in the act of testing its visuals. Someone at iCrossing noticed Google testing green in its search results, and Search Engine Land also posted screenshots of Google’s green.

• Curious on what the payoff of “Digg-baiting” is? SocialAlerter shares the results of its own little study on how many links Digg can get you. By tracking Yahoo backlinks for over 1000 stories that “went hot” on Digg for 30 days, the average number of links was 1167! Granted, many of these links will come from low-quality scrapers and splogs but that’s still an impressive number.

• The Top 25 Facebook Pages include the usual supsects - Barack, Hillary, Justin Timberlake… but there are some brands mixed with the bands. Kudos to Victoria’s Secret Pink, Apple Students and Nutella for attracting a Facebook following.

9 Ecommerce Innovations: What’s Now & What’s Next
Free webinar: June 19th, 2008, 9am PT/12pm ET
Guest Panelist: Jason Billingsley, VP Innovation, Elastic Path Software
Register to Attend

Original post by Linda Bustos

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Original post by Alistair Croll

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Original post by Jason Harris

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Original post by Jason Harris

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Original post by Jason Harris

If you’re new to Get Elastic, every Friday we round up some great finds from the blogosphere to keep your eyes busy until Monday. Enjoy this week’s picks!

• Justin Palmer captures 3 innovative approaches to site navigation: solution-based, filter-based and image-based.

• James Bunzol shows an example of how Amazon’s Lightning Deals create Jellyfish-like urgency. I’m surprised we don’t see other retailers experimenting with this type of entertainment shopping.

• Aaron Wall goes into painstaking detail on SEO with What is a #1 Google Ranking Worth? This article actually has 9 sections, here’s a preview of what he covered:

* An Example of Applying This Data to a Live Business Scenario
* Google Rankings Can Make or Break a Business
* Appreciating Google’s Market Domination
* Establish a Baseline Keyword Value
* Typical Click Distribution Profiles
* Factors Modifying Click Distribution
* Tapping the Keyword Tail
* Improving Monetization via Scale
* Improve Your SEO Strategy Today

Grab a coffee and a notepad for this one.

• For you legal-eagles or controversy buffs (or PR folks, reputation managers and marketers) Jeremiah Owyang has an interesting commentary on the current brouhaha over a socially-conscious t-shirt designer and Louis Vuitton handbags.

  

  26 year old Nadia Plesner faces legal action by Louis Vuitton for using their product’s likeness in an anti-genocide awareness campaign. The image reflects Plesner’s concern that Paris Hilton’s accessories are more newsworthy than the suffering of our fellow man in Darfur. Since Louis Vuitton doesn’t really have anything to do with the situation, it feels this “brand-jacking” must be countered.

  Owyang outlines four options LV has in dealing with this problem, and has solicited his Twitter followers to weigh in with their opinions. Interesting stuff.

• Are you puzzled on how to convince upper level management to pay attention to social media marketing? Not sure how to approach it? Jeremiah Owyang has a nice roundup of his own tips in How Do I Talk To My Executives About Social Media?

• Forgive my Jeremiah Owyang fangirl-ness this week, but this is also interesting: A roundup of brands that got “punked” by social media.

• All you design-types will appreciate this gallery of Mother’s Day home pages courtesy of Ed Henrich. Oh, and if you haven’t gotten a gift for Mom yet, you might check out these sites for some ideas.

The Key to PPC for Online Retailers
Free webinar: May 15th, 2008, 9am PT/12pm ET
Guest Panelist: Ryan Gibson, Director of Marketing, The Rimm-Kaufman Group
Register to Attend

Original post by Linda Bustos