Ecommerce Blog

I can’t get enough of business type books at the moment. After finishing “ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six Figure Income” a week or so ago I went straight onto “Business Nightmares” by Rachel Elnaugh.

I chose this book as I’m always deeply impressed by business owners who have battled through adversity such as when Rachel’s company, Red Letter Days famously and very publicly crashed in 2005. At the time she was one of the Dragon’s on the BBC TV show Dragon’s Den so her profile in the media was huge.

The book goes into detail of how Rachel started the business, from very humble beginnings to the multi million pound leader of the gift experience sector. There is loads of interesting stuff here, and lessons learned about losing control of your company and expanding too fast into new markets. Rachel doesn’t go into too much detail about the collapse of her business, I’m guessing it must still be pretty painful. However there is still enough detail to understand what happened and why.

The rest of the book is a series of interviews and anecdotes from other business leaders/entrepreneurs who have struggled through tough times - yet come out the other side. People like James Dyson, Simon Woodruff, Jeffrey Archer, Donald Trump and Gerald Ratner. There are some great stories, and the overall message is “don’t give up”. Rachel now has a new company and as well as being an author she does a lot of public speaking and work with young entrepreneurs.

A good book overall, I love reading and learning as much as I can from people who have been in business, both successful and not. I always come away really motivated and wanting to pour some more energy into my own projects.

Also, as a result of reading Rachel’s book I’ve just started reading “Gerald Ratner - The Rise and Fall…and Rise Again“. So far it’s absolutely fascinating, and I haven’t reached the point yet where he made that speech. I’ll put a quick review up when I’m finished.

BTW Rachel has a blog here, great to see her still inspiring entrepreneurs.

What I’m listening to right now: Usher - “Here I Stand”

Post from: Affiliate Marketing Blog Here.org.uk

Rachel Elnaugh - Business Nightmares

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Original post by Kieron

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Original post by Robert Scoble

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Original post by Robert Scoble

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Original post by Robert Scoble

Another week, another whack of great content. Our apologies for the blog-hack that happened Wednesday that prevented us from posting yesterday (thanks for all the emails, flowers, candy and cash that poured in from concerned readers, no I wasn’t hospitalized for carpal tunnel syndrome). We’re back in action today and totally making up for it with about 5 posts, which I believe is a Get Elastic record! I

If you still have eyeball juice after reading our posts, please visit my favorite links of the week. Or at least check ‘em out before Monday.

• Jack Aaronson writes about the virtues of geo-IP targeting (or just geotargeting) over at Clickz, using Sitebrand client BedBathStore.com as an example. Check out Sitebrand’s blog for some color commentary on how the geotargeting campaign is performing.

• Ever wonder how deleting product pages affects your SEO? Scott Allen has a great explanation plus solutions in E-Commerce SEO: How to Handle Deleted Products.

• The Bronto Blog has a neat video podcast called Brontofire. This week’s episode looks at 4 top online retailers’ email signup landing pages: Apple, Zappos, Best Buy and Overstock. 3 were losers and 1 was a winner, I’ll let you take a guess at which one was the star before checking out the link. There are also 5 tips on how to improve email signup. I’ll spoil the last tip: it’s sending welcome emails.

• Bryan Eisenberg reminds us to use product reviews to write better product descriptions, with an illustration of how effective this can be.

• Evan Schuman from Storefront Backtalk gives his impressions of the new Borders.com site, iincluding its innovative bookshelf browsing approach.

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006338&src=dp1_home
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=83385

9 Ecommerce Innovations: What’s Now &amp What’s Next

Free webinar: June 19th, 2008, 9am PT/12pm ET
Guest Panelist: Jason Billingsley, VP Innovation, Elastic Path Software
Register to Attend

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• Bloggers Digest - 3/21/08
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Original post by Linda Bustos

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Original post by Om Malik

If you use a “set it and forget it” implementation of Google’s free Analytics tool, your data may be “accurate” but not as useful to you as it could be.

I wrote a tutorial called “8 Stupid Things Webmasters Do To Mess Up Their Analytics” and submitted it to Marketing Pilgrim’s 3rd Annual SEM Scholarship Contest. It explains in detail how you can optimize your Analytics Settings to collect relevant data that will instantly improve your conversion rates and help your web analysts make more meaningful conclusions and decisions.

So you’ll have to check out the entire article over at Marketing Pilgrim to find out the 8 reasons, as per the contest rules, I cannot post the article here.

Being a contest, I really appreciate your help! You can’t “vote” for me in the traditional sense, the contest works like this:

Between May 28th and 30th we’ll publish the qualifying entries and give each article 4 weeks (from publication) to attract as many readers as possible. Entrants are encouraged to provide articles that are optimized for the search engines and also utilize the various search and social media channels to promote their work.

On June 30th, we’ll select five entries that have achieved the highest overall traffic. In an effort to encourage quality traffic–not just quantity–each entry can earn two additional bonuses.

Bonus 1: If an entry achieves an average “Bounce Rate” below 75% it will be awarded a bonus equal to 10% of its total “unique views.”
Bonus 2: If an entry achieves an average “Time on Page” greater than 2:00 minutes, it will be awarded a bonus equal to 10% of its total “unique views.”

On July 7th, we’ll announce the grand prize winner. The winner will be the entry that receives the most votes from our panel of expert judges.

I need help to get to the top 5 which means I need a lot of traffic and a lot of engagement (few bounces, long reading time). Given that there are so many fantastic entries, competition is stiff. But I know I can count on our amazing Get Elastic readership to help, here’s how:

• Follow the link to read the full entry

• Please read the entire post, even if you think it’s boring
• If it’s really too boring for you, just take a long, hard look at the pretty pictures - for at least 2.5 minutes. If you stare long enough, they start morphing into Transformers robots - no joke, try it!!
• Share the love - link to it from your blog, give it a Sphinn, Stumble it (thumb it up or review it), bookmark it in Del.icio.us, Twitter it, post it to Facebook, email it to a friend, share through Google Reader or however you share content!

Muchas gracias!

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

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Original post by Linda Bustos

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Original post by Om Malik

Bazaarvoice has lent their bizarre voices to a ballad about embracing customer relationships through ratings and reviews — to the tune of Extreme’s “More than Words.” Props to Sam Decker Marketing for cooking this one up.

Lyrics:

Sayin’ you should buy this, are not the words they will believe from you
It’s just they have YouTube, and every search brings up blog entries too
How easy it could be to find out how they feel

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

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Original post by Linda Bustos

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Original post by Robert Scoble

I’m pleased to announce Elastic Path’s latest white paper is now available for download titled “How To Write an Ecommerce Request for Proposal.” There comes a time when a growing online retailer has outgrown an existing platform - whether homegrown or licensed, and decisions must be made regarding which ecommerce platforms satisfy the needs of the business. This white paper presents a clear process for:

1. Evaluating your business
2. Determining your requirements
3. Guidelines for writing an RFP that will help you make the best decision
4. Evaluating vendors’ responses

You’ll also find a sample RFP outline and template to get you started. Though Elastic Path is an ecommerce software vendor and the company behind the Get Elastic blog, this white paper is written for any online retailer evaluating any ecommerce platform.
We hope this helps you in your decision-making process, regardless of which ecommerce software provider you end up choosing.

We’ve also got other white papers that might interest you, including:

Build vs. Buy in 4 Easy Steps

Making a decision to go at it alone and build your next-generation ecommerce platform in-house or leverage the ecommerce platforms available from vendors is sometimes a daunting task. This Build vs Buy white paper looks at the pros and cons of each method and gives you the tools to help make a decision that is most appropriate for your unique organization.

The Ecommerce Checkout Report: Tactics of the Top 100 Online Retailers

Do you want to see which checkout tactics are most used by successful online retailers? How does your conversion rate stack up to those who employ similar tactics? Does a shorter checkout process really decrease shopping cart abandonment? Should I use an order confirmation screen? Does live chat improve conversions? These are a few of the 23 tactics we evaluated as we studied the checkout process of the Internet’s Top 100 Online Retailers.

Clicks to Customers: The Real ROI in B2C Ecommerce

The online Business to Consumer (B2C) marketplace is increasingly impatient, which is a reflection on the pressures merchants feel from their customers. Online retailers expect their technology solutions to flex, bend and meet their complex needs and become profitable in short order. Rather than expecting to realize a return on investment over the course of time, retailers want instant gratification and Return on Investment (ROI) in typically less than six months. Twenty-one percent of retailers expect to see revenue results from their online tools (e.g., site search, interactive product imaging and Web 2.0 technologies) within weeks. Only 22% are willing to wait more than six months to realize a return on their online tools.

Blogging for Retailers

With all the noise surrounding blogs and social media, this white paper will guide marketers and executives into the blog o’sphere, with a focus on online retailers. It demonstrates “Web 2.0” fundamentals and breaks down the tangible benefits, provides an overview of blog platform options, a glossary of terms and a mini-course to have your online retail operations thrive by leveraging the power of blogging.

9 Ecommerce Innovations: What’s Now &amp What’s Next

Free webinar: June 19th, 2008, 9am PT/12pm ET
Guest Panelist: Jason Billingsley, VP Innovation, Elastic Path Software
Register to Attend

You may also like these similar posts:

• Blogging for Retailers White Paper - Why it matters and how to get started
• Spreading the Checkout Report and Gearing up for the Webinar
• Internet Retailer Announces Elastic Path One Page
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• Sorting out the Build vs. Buy Conundrum - Get Elastic #8

Original post by Jason Billingsley

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Original post by Om Malik

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Original post by Om Malik

SAP B1 is making substantial progress, especially with the release of version 2007A (A postfix means the version released for USA). We often see the scenario, when US based customer, who are …

Original post by default@goarticles.com (Andrew Karasev)

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Original post by Stacey Higginbotham