Embitel Technologies India Pvt Ltd believes in staying in sync with time with sight set on future trends. This Webinar on Mobile Commerce for Retailers - Channel with a new way to reach consumer is a step where we will be sharing our knowledge with participants on potential of Mobile Commerce, approach to it, market trends, etc.

Reasons to attend this Webinar:

• The market for mobile payments is expected to quadruple by 2014, reaching $630bn in value, which equates to 5% of total e-commerce sales. (Source: Juniper Research)
• The mobile payments market is worth $170bn so far this year. (Source: Juniper Research)
• ABI Research predicts that in 2015, $119bn worth of goods and services will be purchased via a mobile phone. (Source: ABI Research) 
• In US alone 20% of all consumers and 32% of 18-34 year olds are researching purchases via mobile at least monthly.
• India has a mobile phone subscriber base of 500 million, which is expected to reach 700 million by 2012 (Source: Department of Telecommunications). The country can easily expect mobile commerce or m-commerce to take off faster than online or e-commerce.
• Currently there are about 5 million m-commerce users in the country. Industry estimates put the number of users at 25 million by 2012, and 100 million in the next five years.
  

Who should attend this webinar?
Marketing professionals, Retailers, Telecom service providers, Ecommerce professionals, etc

Webinar Agenda

• Mobile Ecommerce, Hype or reality?
• Market trends
• Opportunities and threats
• Mobile Commerce and Ecommerce compatibility
• Case studies
• What can be the approach?
• Our vision of Mobile Commerce

Reserve Your Seat @ https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/444168659

Presenter: Mr. Daniel Rebhorn

• Founder, dmc GmbH Germany and Chairman, Embitel India
• Industry expert with more than 14 years of experience in retail e-Commerce and e-Marketing
  

When: 16th-Sep-2010
Time:  India: 04:00:00 p.m. Thursday September 16, 2010
           UK: 11:30:00 a.m. Thursday September 16, 2010
           Australia: 08:30:00 p.m. Thursday September 16, 2010
Venue: Just stay in front of your PC
Cost: Complementary (Free)

To make this easier to understand they have given some examples In their post on the Google Analytics Blog.

When you have a lot of data within an normal account, you tend to get given a lot of information like the image below. We have all seen it, the single visits that have 100% bounce rate. A lot of the times, this does not help you gather the information that you need.

With the new weighted sort option, Analytics took into consideration the number of visits for each row bringing to the forefront the items you care about.

Weighted sort is also available on other metrics including Goal Conversion Rate and % New Visits.

AdWords have included a handy video to explain further.

Source: atelier-seo.com

Where is M-Commerce Now?
“The presence of e-retailers with mobile sites is growing; but just like Internet adoption in the mid-‘90s, e-retailers today are taking baby steps toward initiating a mobile presence. At the moment the majority of m-commerce transactions are limited to mobile device add-ons like ringtones, games, wallpapers, and screensavers.”

What is interesting, however, is what these consumers are buying. While the number or consumers utilizing m-commerce platforms has not changed too drastically, the purchases have. Of those that have made purchases via their mobile phones 58% purchased digital content for their phones, 51% purchased consumer electronics, 37% purchased computers/laptops/related equipment, 36% purchased books, 31% purchased apparel, and 20% purchased jewelry. This illustrates that consumers who use their mobile phones to make purchases are now purchasing as if they were in a retail store.

This is a dramatic difference in purchasing patterns is likely a result of increased consumer confidence in the security of m-commerce. A recent poll found that approximately 71% of consumers believe it is “very safe” or “fairly safe” to make a purchase via cell phone.

Where is M-Commerce Going?
M-commerce may not explode in the next few years, but it is likely to continue growing steadily as more advanced wireless handheld accessories become available, more applications are released to facilitate “anywhere shopping,” and retailers get on board with the technology. The biggest challenges we will see with m-commerce over the next few years will be a continuation of the struggles that retailers have faced thus far: user experience barriers, security concerns, and negative perceptions about the value of m-commerce investment.

(May 24, 2010) –  MarketResearch.com has announced the addition of Ovum Plc 's new report "M-Commerce: Seizing the Immediate Opportunity to Build for the Future (Strategic Focus)," to their collection of E-Financial Services market reports. For more information, visit http://www.marketresearch.com/redirect.asp?progid=67618&productid=2659324

Areas / Uses of M-Commerce

In the current commerce industry, mobile commerce or M-Commerce has been entered in finance, services, retails, tele-communication and information technology services. In these sectors, M-Commerce is not only being widely accepted but also it is being more used as a popular way of business/ commerce.

M-Commerce Advice
Moving forward ecommerce companies should do two things: get educated about m-commerce, and leave room for m-commerce in their marketing plans. First of all, find out as much as you can about m-commerce now and stay briefed on the latest news as advancements are made so that when m-commerce starts to become vital to your business you are ready with strategy and insight. Secondly, begin developing a marketing strategy that will leverage your m-commerce website when it is time to invest in it.

Feature of M-Commerce

Ubiquity - It means that the user can avail of services and carry out transactions largely independent of his current geographic location.

Immediacy - It provides real-time availability of services.

Localization – Location based services such as GPS, allow companies to offer goods and services to the user specific to his current location.

Instant Connectivity – This feature brings convenience to the user, due to introduction of services like GPRS which keeps users always in touch and connected. 

Simple Authentication – Mobile telecommunication devices function with an electronic Chip called SIM, which is easily identifiable. This in combination with an individual

Personal Identification Number (PIN) makes the authentication process simple.

Creating a press release for a campaign or assignment requires thought and preparation, without the core fundamentals your release may end up right in the trash folder of your recipients email.  A well-written press release can be an invaluable asset to your company and the success of the content within the release you're trying to help generate attention for.  Here are 7 mistakes most commonly made when writing a press release that you can easily avoid to become more successful at pushing your product, website or idea.

1.  Lack of proper research.  Spend the time to read and subscribe to press releases not only in the niche you work within, but from some of the larger and more successful companies in the world.  Look to see how they are laid out, worded and put together and pick the best parts from each to incorporate into your own releases.

2.  Don't assume anything.  Your reader may not know what it is they are getting, and since your goal is to have your reader generate buzz to their readers or media outlet, lay out the specifics for them.

3.  Don't belittle or talk down to anyone.  While number 2 says to be specific with what you are writing, don't write in a condescending manner, which almost always ends in a delete from the reader.  Assume they are not a total idiot.

4.  Don't oversell your product or service.  The purpose of a press release is to put it into the hands of those who have influence and a crowd to share it with.  They are not the ones who will be buying or using whatever is in the contents of your press release.  Don't try to make them the buyer, rather look at them as yourreseller and present the information in the same way you would teach a sales associate how to sell to a customer in a store.

5.  Don't over-write or bloat the release.  A press release is not an article, it's meant to be informative and easily digestible; keep the fluff to a minimum and focus on the details that pertain to the service or product

6.  Do write a clever subject line.  Log into your email and check the messages you have deleted but never opened.  Chances are the subject line didn't entice you to open it.  Be creative and to the point with the subject line, the difference here can be a success or total failure and most new press release writers skip the importance to this small but invaluable part of content delivery.

7.  Don't jump the gun with sending your release.  Wait until you have all the facts, specifics and proper information for the contents within, then send it.  Don't send the release announcing a forthcoming release, which will break the trust and relationship with the readers you have.  You're better off sitting on a release for a few days then sending it out missing crucial information.

These simple mistakes can all be easily avoided, in turn you will have a higher success rate across the board, from emails being opened to media outlets picking up your content.  As with all writing, reread, proof and then read it again to ensure it flows smoothly and covers the exact message across that is needed for each assignment.

Google penalizes Adwords ads with poor click through rates.  If your ad is not generating clicks, it's making it more expensive for you to advertise.  Discover how to improve the click through rate of your ads.

Your Adwords ad is sales copy. You are attempting to persuade a potential consumer to make a decision based on your ad text. This is the art a science of sales copy. Sales copy can be defined as salesmanship in print.

The trick in Adwords is that you only have 95 characters to do it in (25 character headline + 2 lines of 35 character description). That is daunting task for any professional salesman.

The following tips can improve the sales copy in both your Adwords ads and in your landing page or sales letter.

Speak to the customer: A general rule of sales copy is that you want to appeal directly to the consumer. By using the word you, you address the consumer in a direct personal way, as if you were speaking to them. Use you in your sales copy instead of your product name or I.

Solutions: People buy solutions, not products or services Another general rule of sales copy is that a customer is looking to find a solution, not buy a product. A customer doesn't want to buy a drill, instead they need a way to make a hole. You need to sell a solution. A perfect example of this are Billy Mays TV commercials for Hercules hooks, Oxyclean, OrangeClean or any of his products. Did you ever notice the commercial starts by describing or creating a problem? The commercial then proceeds to persuade you that they have the solution to the problem. The commercials are like that because the method works.

Feature versus Benefit: You may be tempted to list a prominent feature of your product. Don't. Instead, make a list of every feature you can think of. Then write down the corresponding reason the customer would want that feature. You can often move from feature to benefit by using "what that means to you, Mr. Customer is". That becomes a benefit. Then don't describe a feature in your ad, but describe a benefit.

Use a Call to Action: A Call to Action is a sentence instructing the consumer to perform a task. The consumer will often be subconsciously persuaded to do it. A call to Action generally begins with a verb (the action). Here are some examples.

    * Click here.
    * Download your copy now.
    * Call now.
    * Get help.

Keyword or Phrase: Your ad will be more attractive to the customer if your ad text contains the keyword or phrase they searched on. Right away your customer will view your ad has highly relevant, because the keyword is right there. The headline is a particularly good place to have the keyword since your customer sees it first. This tactic is done automatically if you use the Adwords strategy from adwords-marketing-tool,com

Use Free if applicable: Using the word free is likely to increase your CTR. Make sure your landing page does freely give away what you promised.

Hype words: Hype words like amazing or incredible may help you attract attention. But be careful, overuse them and you sound like a snake oil salesman.  

Sense of urgency: You can create a sense of urgency with a phrase like limited offer. This encourages a customer to make a purchase on the spot. If you have the space available, you can describe the consequences of failing to act.

No risk: Consumers are cautious of being taken advantage of.  A money back guarantee or a no risk free trial helps persuade you consumers.

Test your ads: The only way you'll know if your sales copy is working is to test it. Split testing is the accepted method of testing your ads. You run two ads simultaneously. After the proper amount of time, you compare CTR or ROI and declare a winner and remove the lesser ad.

The personal details of 100 million users of social networking website Facebook are now available for download after they were leaked online.

Ron Bowles, an online security consultant, used a code to scan Facebook profiles, collected data not hidden by users' privacy settings, and compiled a list, which is now available as a downloadable file, containing the URL of every 'searchable' Facebook user's profile, their name and unique ID, the BBC reported Thursday.

Bowles said he published the data to highlight privacy issues, but Facebook retorted by saying the information was already public.

'People who use Facebook own their information and have the right to share only what they want, with whom they want, and when they want,' the website said. 'In this case, information that people have agreed to make public was collected by a single researcher and already exists in Google, Bing, other search engines, as well as on Facebook.'

'No private data is available or has been compromised,' Facebook said. The list has already been downloaded by over 1,000 people on Pirate Bay, the world's biggest file-sharing website.

One user, going by the name of 'lusifer69', said the list was 'awesome and a little terrifying'. But internet watchdog Privacy International said Facebook had been given ample warning that something like this would happen.

'Facebook should have anticipated this attack and put measures in place to prevent it,' Simon Davies, an official of Privacy International, said. 'It is inconceivable that a firm with hundreds of engineers couldn't have imagined a trawl of this magnitude and there's an argument to be heard that Facebook have acted with negligence, he said.

Facebook hit 500 million users in June this year.

Sorce: Yahoo News

Deliverability is getting the email into the inbox. Unfortunately not, there is a lot more to it than that. However there's no reason why you can’t have a deliverability rate above 95%. Your email service provider (ESP) should be able to provide this statistic for you as well as do the following:

• Warm up dedicated IP addresses
• Set up feedback loops for Hotmail, Yahoo! and Gmail                                                         
• Have your IP address white-listed
• Give you (as the client of the ESP) the option to move shared IPs if a bad sender is affecting deliverability for all

Email Open Rate:

An email open is tracked by a 1×1 hidden GIF image your ESP automatically adds when an email is sent. When this image is downloaded an open is tracked. Therefore, if images are automatically disabled then no open is tracked.

However, the open rate is an ambiguous reporting measure and is not always indicative of a good email marketing campaign. For instance, if your HTML email is designed with a good text-to-image ratio people can still read your email without downloading the images. In this situation opens are NOT tracked.

Email Click-Through Rate (CTR):

An email click-through is tracked using a redirect to the ESP server. This redirect passes information about the member id, mailing id and URL id which allows the ESP to record who clicked on the email, which email it was and what link was clicked on. Thus, the CTR is a stronger indicator of email success because it is a more reliable tracking method.

Email Subject Lines:

This is normally the first thing someone receiving your email will see – so make it good. One of the questions I get asked a lot is, “You have done a lot of testing … what subject line works best?” The answer: it depends on whom, maturity, how they got there, day, date, sector, and it also changes every time you send. The solutions… live testing:

• Select two subject lines
• Open a book on which one is going to generate the best open rate (not for money of course, sweats maybe)
• Send those two subject lines to 20% of your database (10% per subject line)
• Wait an hour
• See which subject line generates the best open rate
• Send that subject line to the remaining 80% of your database
• LIVE split testing, done

Email Frequency & Timing:

What day of the week, time of day, and how many times a week to send email is very important? The old school view was to send Tuesday morning … however that really is old school.

It will depend on many factors (as mentioned above – who, maturity, how they got there, day, date, and sector) and also requires testing.

The method that works well for me is to consider people’s behavior rather than focusing on the day of the week. Think about events that may change behavior. A great example of this is sending an email on pay day – this always generates excellent response rates for obvious reasons.

One of the main reasons for such vulnerabilities is the fact that web application developers are often not very well versed with secure programming techniques. Every developer when working with the projects looks for completing the project in the given deadlines and thinks to implement the security later. There is no security model implemented before starting the project which is the main cause.

The website losing its importance even though it has the good look and feel and good modules in an website because of proper vulnerabilities techniques not implemented in the website. Another reason why security vulnerabilities appear is because of the inherent complexity in most online systems.

Nowadays, users are placing very demanding requirements on their e-commerce providers, and this requires complex designs and programming logic below are some of the security vulnerabilities that have been discovered in shopping cart and online payment systems.

SQL Injection

SQL injection refers to the insertion of SQL meta-characters in user input, which allows attacker's queries, are executed by the back-end database. Attackers will first determine if a site is vulnerable to such an attack by sending in the single-quote (') character. The results from an SQL injection attack on a vulnerable site may range from a detailed error message, which discloses the back-end technology being used, or allowing the attacker to access restricted areas of the site because he manipulated the query to an always-true Boolean value, or it may even allow the execution of operating system commands.

SQL injection varies from database to database, for example in Oracle database, this  is done by using the UNION keyword and is much more difficult than on the MS SQL Server, where multiple queries can be executed by separating them with the semi-colon.

In its default configuration, MS SQL server runs with Local System privileges and has the 'xp_cmdshell' extended procedure, which allows execution of operating system commands.

Manipulating price at Run Time

This is one of the most unique vulnerabilities seen in the online shopping carts and payment gateways. In this vulnerability the total payable price of the purchased goods is stored in a hidden HTML field of a dynamically generated web page.

An attacker can use a web application proxy such as Achilles to simply modify the amount that is payable, when this information flows from the user's browser to the web server The final payable price  can be manipulated by the attacker to a value of his choice.

This information is eventually sent to the payment gateway with whom the online merchant has partnered. If the number of transactions is very high, the price manipulation may go completely unnoticed. Repeated attacks of this nature could destroy the number of users to the website

Cross-site scripting

The Cross-site Scripting (XSS) attack are targeted against the end user and leverages two factors: 1.The lack of input and output validation being done by the web application 2.The trust placed by the end-user in a URL that carries the vulnerable web site's name. The XSS attack requires a web form that takes in user input, processes it, and prints out the results on a web page, which also contains the user's original input. It is most commonly found in 'search' features, where the search logic will print out the results along with a line such as 'Results for user_supplied_input'.

Suppose if we write the JavaScript function also with the search elements then the result page of the search will the output of the search results along with the JavaScript result, which is not good in any website.

In another scenario we can use JavaScript to redirect the user to a site that looks similar to the original web site and requests the user to enter sensitive information such as his authentication details for that web site, or his credit card number or social security number which should not happen in the real time scenarios.

Weak Authentication and Authorization

Since HTTP is a stateless protocol, web applications commonly maintain state using session IDs or transaction IDs stored in a cookie on the user's system. Thus session ID is the only way that the web application can determine the online identity of the user.

If the session ID is stolen (say through XSS), or it can be predicted, then an attacker can take over a genuine user's online identity. Hence we need to take care of the session id by providing the necessary algorithms.

The other cause is providing the week passwords, which can be broken very easily. When providing the password option to the user we need to have some passwords policy like in the given passwords we need to have a 1 capital letters, 1 numeric and passwords length should be 4 – 10 characters. Such policies will strength the user passwords.

Basic Meta Rules for SEO
 
Title Tag: Title Tag is the most important part of a Web page to optimize. It appears at the top (title bar) area of the Web browser and as the first line in the search engine results page. On most search results pages the title tag is used as the main link to the site in the listing. Most importantly search engines use them to determine the theme of the website.

1. Place the TITLE tag within the <HEAD> tag
2. Should contain the most important keyword that appears on the Web page
3. Limit to 60-70 characters including spaces between <TITLE> and </TITLE>
4. Place the most relevant keyword phrase at the beginning of the text
5. Don’t blatantly repeat the keyword.
6. Don’t use stop words such as “the”, “a”, “as”, “of”
7. Should read well and contain a marketing message
8. Remember to keep your TITLE tag short and to the point.

Description Tag: Meta Description Tag is a significant part of a Web page to optimize and appears as the second line in the search engine results pages. Essentially it provides a brief description to the visitor about your webpage and sets their potential. Place your Meta Description Tag directly below the TITLE tag. The difficult part is optimizing this tag for both the spiders and your site visitors.
 
1. Limit the number of characters to 150 – 180
2. Blend keywords that appear on the Web page with a strong marketing message and call to action
3. Limit the use of stop words and don’t repeat words
4. Keep keywords unique to the Web page
5. Write in complete sentences and keep important keywords at the beginning of the description
6. Place tag within the <head> section of the HTML code 

Header (H) Tags: H tags are built-in purpose of HTML that shows the text within this tag as a header. They are assigned a importance (1 being the most important) and repeated on the same page. The most common use of the H tag is the title or top line of text that appears on the web page, the header.

1. Use H1 tags for the header or most important text of the page
2. Use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to control the color and size of the tag
3. H tags give some extra importance to the words within it
4. The format looks like this: <h1> Search Engine Optimization Techniques</h1> 

Alt (Image) Tags: Most of the People will like to include some images of the website. Alt text can usually be seen by hovering over a picture with the cursor in a browser. A helpful way to boost your search engine ranking is to include the ALT attribute, which means alternative text. This tag is read by search engines and they also contribute to the on-page optimization.

1. Use the alt tag on product pictures
2. Good place to strategically place keywords and boost results
3. Use the alt tag on the site logo – it should contain the company name
4. The alt tag is part of 508 compliance (accessible to people with disabilities)
5. Search engines cannot read pictures, they read the alternative text
6. Do not over use the alt tag
7. Do not stuff it with keywords 

The new system officially rolls out today for anyone using Google.com and searching in English. Not everyone will see it at first, but over the course of the next several days, Universal Search should be more, well, universal.

The move potentially should be a huge boon for searchers, while search marketers who have paid attention to the importance of specialized or vertical search will see new opportunities. To fully explain the importance to both groups, I’m going to work step-by-step through the concept of vertical search engines, how they’re often ignored by searchers and search marketers alike, and then how Google is going to make this content more visible through Universal Search.

In fact, if you are competing against other vendors in your market who are trying to do SEO effectively and they do not use Flash on the specific page in question for a specific keyword, I will beat you one hundred zillion dollars (That's a lot of Austin Power money…) that your Flash-based page will be significantly beaten by straight HTML pages on Google. Google can but Google doesn't. So that first annoying distinction is out of the way.

One other thing… You might be advised to alter your HTML so that non-Flash users (a.k.a., Google) can see your non-Flash content, and Flash users (a.k.a., most humans) see your Flash. This is technically possible, but – again – technically possible does not make it desirable. Google hates to see any website (potentially) show one set of content to a user, and one set to Google and in this scenario Google isn't sure that you aren't playing that game. After all, it struggles to index flash. So this scenario – while technically feasible – has some risk to it. It can work, and it may work, but in a competitive area, Google will probably choose sites that are more reliable / straightforward.

All those techies just keep getting confused between something that is technically feasible but not desirable from Google's perspective in this game called Search Engine Optimization. So what is to be done? 
 

Solution No.1: Below the Fold

Ultimately, flash is largely about images and in that sense, Flash isn't really conceptually different to Google than images: it can't really read them. So the humans need images / Flash for a website to be fun, exciting, and engaging, but Google can't really interpret them.

The Solution: use images or Flash for the humans, ABOVE the fold, and place keyword heavy text below the fold. This is an especially good solution for your home page, which has the most SEO power on your website. You simply cannot have a 100% image or 100% Flash home page – that is a disaster. So here is an example of a good design –

• Geico – notice how the Gecko image is at the top, and then below the fold is a ton of keyword heavy text about their business.
• Fillmore Florist – notice how their flowers and cool images are at the top, and below the fold is a ton of keyword text about San Francisco, Flowers, Floral delivery etc.

This sort of Images / Adobe Flash above-the-fold and text below-the-fold caters to both humans AND Google and avoids the Google no-no of showing one content to humans and another to the search engines. 
 

Solution No. 2: Gateway Pages

Another solution to the idea of having your Adobe Flash and having Google / SEO too is to have different pages serve different masters. The important exception here is your home page which must serve both, as discussed above. But beyond your home page, you can conceptualize some pages on your website as being flash with cool graphics and interactivity, but not very SEO-friendly… and other pages being keyword-rich text with little or no flash. Or perhaps the above the fold / Flash – below the fold / text distinction.

Either way, you conceptualize different pages on your website to serve different purposes, and bring in traffic from Google via the textual pages. That works too.

What doesn't work is to wait for Google to prioritize Adobe Flash as an SEO technique. That just isn't going to happen, as the busy search engine has just so many more keyword-rich textual pages to choose from. In a competitive market, Flash – at best – doesn't hurt you, nor help you with SEO. 

Author: Jason McDonald

The benefits can be recapitulated as:

• Chance to reduce costs of production by reducing overheads
• Chance to increase sales
• Chance to access new markets across the globe
• Chance to target market segments more effectively
• Provide more perfect information and improve customer service familiarity
• Improves the efficiency of the supply chain
• Improve employee motivation through more flexible working methods
• Allowing 24/7 access to the firm's products and services
• Provides convenience and comfort for customers

Video Marketing:

• Create videos that research proves will do well on the sites you are marketing to. Usually funny videos and tutorials tend to do well.
• Decide what video marketing stance you are going to approach with your video marketing: Cut the video and add branding before amazing comical or interesting happens to redirect the viewer to your site. Or allow the entire video shown to allow for more viewers and impressions.
• Initiate streaming rich media ads on videos.
• Distribute your video across the multiple free & paid video sharing sites.
• Optimize the Video with specific Keywords and Description.
• Give a Good Title to the video which you are distributing.

Conversational Marketing

• Influence the sites like Sponsored Reviews in order to generate a viral buzz online regarding your brand.
• Join as many forums as you can sufficiently maintain an excellence contributor.
• Get to know who the business voice is for your niche and post comments on their blogs.
• Contribute to online groups like Google groups and MySpace groups.
• Market yourself by adding a blog.
• Use highly developed techniques to gain RSS subscribers for utmost exposure.

Pay Per Click Marketing

• If you have a larger budget creates an account on the top tier pay per click networks, Google, MSN and Yahoo!
• If you have a smaller ad budget go with Google and some tier 2 and tier 3 networks.
• A great way to get branding is to get those impressions. Try giving 3^rd tier networks a try but know that conversions may be lower on 3^rd tier networks.
• Make use of key fight to get a good base on competitor PPC advertising.
• Do extensive keywords research to find best possible experience and converting keywords.
• Try to find niches and keyword markets to target that are not as a great deal competitive but are highly traffic, so your cost per click will be way down.
• Mind your ad quality.

Social Media Marketing

• Stay as principled as you possibly can.
• To successfully leverage your social media for online marketing you need to really be active in your communities, ergo is best to have power accounts on a few social media sites rather than trying to manage many of them across multiple networks. Find your niche.
• Start social bookmarking campaigns online.
• Create content to sustain edits in Wikipedia.

Email Marketing

• Team with companies with double opt in lists
• Sponsor mailing lists with companies who have a wide subscriber base.
• Try to leverage DBA lists
• Setup a network of sites geared towards lead generation. By capturing these leads you can use them for yourself or sell them to leading lead brokers.

Search Engine Optimization

• Optimize all title tags and meta data according to your rev mix.
• If you are having problems ranking internal pages for their given keyword terms consider developing an effective silo.
• Develop search engine friendly html sitemap.
• Develop quality internal linking structure.
• Create optimized html source code.
• Create optimized robots.txt
• Create optimized XML sitemap.

Affiliate Marketing

• Create accounts in the 2 major affiliate networks, link share and commission junction.
• Evaluate your opposition affiliate program
• If you do not have an affiliate selection for your services or products then think about creating one because the chance to have others advertise your products and services is a great way to get exposure and build your branding.
• Incentivize your affiliate deals to attract the affiliate and the consumers.

Banner Advertising

• Scrutinize potential sites demographics.
• Get media break outs
• Think Portal Advertising
• Weight your cost per acquisition model between the cost of CPM and CPC banner advertising.

Email marketing is the most reliable and profitable method for generating leads and achieves the targeted visitors.  There is no wonder that this platform has become a very popular as well as valuable for Internet marketers especially for small business owners as we all know that our economy is going through the recession. This is directly affecting our marketing budgets. In this crucial time email marketing is the best option for all Internet marketers.

Consider the Following things when you are going to startsEmail Marketing:

• First start making list of customer for email marketing. You can start by first including your existing customers on your email marketing list later on you can add new customer to the list.
• It is always suggested to use a template. Create a template for your emails and use it consistently. Your template should guide you in developing each email's layout and design.
• Always try to keep your emails short and snappy.
• You should follow data protection act. It is very important to respect customer’s privacy. As customer privacy is the prime concern. 
• Do send quality marketing emails. Nothing is worse for your brand if you send poorly design emails to your customer.
• Give your email a personalize touch. Not to forget that people don’t like mails who is nothing to do with them.
• Always put attention grabbing subject line. Attractive subject line gets the attention of reader.
• Always monitor the performance of your email marketing campaign. And based on the performance of previous campaign improvise and plan the future campaign.
• Always make sure that your subscription procedure must be simple, the form is always visible on website. In short make the registration procedure user friendly.
• Always send relevant information to your customer. Remember then only you can target your audience and get the proper response from them.

Email marketing is one of the most powerful techniques. It is a proven tool for success. It will not only help you achieve your sales objectives but also enhance your reputation online, build a rapport with your subscribers, and establish yourself as an expert within your community.

Search Engine Statistics 2009

Figures are Taken from www.hitwise.com

If you consistently add new content you will not only attract regular readers but also the search engines. Try to add new content to your blog at least 3 times a week.

Optimize Your Content

Make sure you optimize the titles, paragraphs and links within your content. This means you must first do keyword research to incorporate keywords related to your content.

Include keywords in your tags

WordPress allows you to include tags below each post. Place your most popular keywords in these tags separated by commas.

Add Meta tags

Use the headspace or seopack plugin to add title and description meta tags to each post. Search engines place great emphasis on title tags that contain your keyword at the beginning.

The description meta tag is what visitors read about your site when they find it in the search engines. Make sure the description of your page will get the reader to click to your content.

Create internal links

A single doesn’t get much traction in the search engines unless you get links pointing to it. If you have related content from other areas of your blog create a text link (anchor text) within that post that links to your current content. Your post ranking will increase in proportion to the number of links pointing to it.

Encourage commenting

Include questions within your content and encourage readers to leave a comment. This increases blog interactivity. Readers will see that it’s an active blog and will want to read the comments and provide their own feedback.

Leave comments on other blogs

Find blogs that have content related to your own and write a comment that compliments their post or is in response to another other comments. With each comment include a link back to your own blog.

Use trackbacks

A trackback is procedure for notifying the original blog poster that you have referred to their blog post in another blog. Leave lots of trackbacks to popular blog posts on your own blog. This will encourage those you trackback to, to do the same and will increase traffic to your site.

Submit to blog directories

Submit RSS Feed to RSS Directories

Reference: drostdesigns.com

1. Attract a Large Audience

Video enables you to capture people who like to watch rather than read. This extends the reach of your content because you can appeal to visual learners.

2. Engages the Senses

If a picture is worth a 1000 words, then video does even more because you can create live movies with sound. This engages more senses than written text which only uses one medium.

3. Access at Any Time

You can view videos with all kinds of devices these days eg ipods, cell phones, laptops, etc. allowing you to access video content anywhere at any time.

4. Achieve top Rankings in the Search Engines

Google recently introduced Universal Search. This means videos now appear in the search results pages. For example if you Google “Mustang” you’ll see video listings of mustang cars on the first page of Google.

5. Become Known as an Expert in Your Field

If you consistently create high quality video content that your visitors want and need you will soon become recognized as the expert in your niche.

6. Repurpose Content

Convert your written content to video by talking about it in a video clip or creating a slide show then upload it to video sharing sites like YouTube. The beauty of this method is that you don’t have to create fresh content and there’s no need to worry about duplicate written content.

7. Easy to Create and Publish

All you need is a video camera (or just use a digital camera), windows movie maker software (already on all windows’ computers) and a YouTube account.

Article Taken from drostdesigns.com

Embitel Technologies wishes you a wholesome year 2010. 

Embitel pleased to announce our 5th Webinar of the Retail e-Commerce Series, titled:  “E-Tailing Approach: Customer Acquisition and Retention” on 15th Apr’10, Thursday at 4PM to 5PM.

We are sure that you would be interested to participate in this webinar and also will nominate your colleagues in our programs.  Thank you for your interest 

You should attend this webinar if you believe:

• Companies are surviving on customers hence proper alignment of marketing strategies with customer activities is essential.
• Strong customer relationships are highly rewarding
• Retaining an existing customer involves 3-5 times less cost than recruiting a new one.
• Cost per acquisition is high hence calls for seasoned technique deployment.
• 80% of the sales come from 20% of the customers hence spotting the right prospect is required 

Today’s economy is consumer-driven and one cannot afford to shift the focus from them. A committed customer will continue to put his/her faith on you, blind-folded & increasingly assume a role of partner who helps in acquiring new customers. 

Generation of Leads (hunting) and Building of Trust & Strong Relationship (farming) with Customers.  Mr. Daniel Reborn will guide you through with his time tested expertise.

Webinar Agenda:

• Customer Acquisition strategies
• Customer Retentions strategies
• How to drive business growth
• Latest Trends
• Do’s & Don’ts
•  A few instances to share

Speaker: Mr. Daniel Rebhorn

- Founder, dmc GmbH Germany and Chairman, Embitel India

- Industry expert with more than 14 years of experience in retail e-Commerce and e-Marketing

When: 15th Apr’10, Thursday

Time: 4PM to 5PM Indian Time  

Venue: Just stay in front of your PC

Cost: Complementary (Free)

Click here for Quick Registration:

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/285853346

Note: After registration you will get a thank you mail with a link, which need to be clicked during the time of webinar. We look forward to your participation. Please feel free to contact us at e.seminar@embitel.com or call us at +91-80-41694213.  

Minimum system requirement: PC with internet connection and Headphone.

For More Information you can visit

http://www.embitel.com/e-Retailing_Webinar_Customer.79.0.html

Best Regards,

Embitel Team

Unit No: 208 to 216, 2nd Floor, Delta Block,

Sigma Soft Tech Park, Whitefield Road, Ramagondanahalli,

Bangalore, India – 560066

Ph: +91 80 41694213

E-Mail Id:  sales@embitel.com

Rarely has a new area of business been heralded with such enthusiasm as "mobile commerce", that is the conduct of business and services over portable, wireless devices. Due to the astronomical growth of the Internet users, maturation of the Internet technologies, realization of the Internet's capabilities, the power of electronic commerce, and the promising advancement of wireless communication technologies and devices, mobile commerce has rapidly attained the business forefront. An m-commerce application can be B2B, B2C or any other of the classifications available with e-commerce world. M-commerce, although not fully mature, has the potential to make it more convenient for consumers to spend money and purchase goods and services. Since wireless devices travel with the consumer, the ability or perhaps temptation to purchase goods and services is always present. This is clearly a technique that can be used to raise revenue. Also, the successful future of m-commerce depends o! n the power of the underlying technology drivers and the attractiveness of m-commerce applications.

Motivating Factors for M-Commerce

Internet use has grown to such a level on the strength of PC networks. Due to the huge base of installed PCs, which is predicted to grow in a faster pace in the days to come, electronic commerce and other communication applications are bound to thrive further. Also, these computing systems will have greater power and storage capability, the best ever price-performance ratios, more powerful and sophisticated applications will likely emerge for desktop computing and the Internet. However, there are two major limitations on PCs. First , users have to sit in front of them, PCs, even portable-notebook computers, have to load software, dial into and connect with a network service provider and await for the initial process to be accomplished before launching an Internet application.

There will be a huge increase in other wireless portable devices, such as wireless PDA. The advantage with these wireless devices is they do not need no booting process and thus facilitating immediate usage of them. This makes them attractive for quick-hit applications.

M-Commerce Applications

The general m-commerce applications are categorized as transaction management, digital content delivery and telemetry services. The applications can be further subdivided into passive and active m-commerce applications. Active application relates with the applications in which the user has to take the initiative on his wireless device. In contrast, the passive applications themselves get activated towards accomplishing the assigned jobs or facilitate the users to carry forward.

First in Updations:  Be the first to update new things, news or any attractive information.

Re Tweet: if you think other people posts is interesting, useful or fascinating then Re Tweet it

Tweet a Joke Comment: Tweet a funny story or re tweet, but make sure it is humorous!

Recommend Product: Recommend a product or may be service, this will be a good way of build up the relationship between you and your followers.

Special Offers or Discounts: Tweet about special offer either it's your product or others Products which are having discounts.

Wishes: Don't forget to congratulate whenever you saw someone’s success on the tweet post.

Thankful Mind Setup: Thanking someone is another good way of build good quality connection.

Video Sharing: Share the videos which you think is humorous, imaginative, obliging or remarkable to the followers.

Event Publication: Share the event information like seminar, webinar, TV program etc.

Indian Retail Industry is the 5th largest of the world. Comparing organized and unorganized areas retail industry is fastest growing in India. Esepically for the last few years.

The high growth of Indian Retail Industry is due to huge amount of investments and breaking up traditional marketing sector. This growth is giving for Indian Retail Industry for further growth in Retail sector.

Now a days,Because of the increasing technical boom E-Shopping growth is increasing in India. And also one of the main reason Internet facilities also available in urban and rural areas.Other reason Growth in Credit Card Industry and also other online transaction methods.

The major focus area in Indian Retail Industry is supply chain management. In outside India retail sector is highly depending on the system supply chain. However development in the supply chain in Indian Retail sector is quite slow.

Other area that needs attention for growing Indian Retail Sector is including duty and tax structure,infrastructure , rising land prices and effective trend forecasting. Trend forecasting needs to be done in the country especially in the segments of cosmetics, apparel and footwear for this will help the retail companies to curtail their expenses substantially.
 
The chains in the Indian sectors needs to be changed frequently their stocks and also provides home delivery facilities.  If all these area are implemented,then the growth of Indian Retail will increase fatly.

Why Indians are fear about the Online Shopping? 
 

In India E-commerces has been very slow track compare to other countries in olden days. Because earlier days lack of Internet accessing knowledge and also lack of Internet facilities.

Some of the reasons which are working against the E-Shopping industry.  

1. Product demo is not available.
2. Bargaining is not possible.
3. Delay in product delivery
4. In security of creditable of shopping portal
5. Not sure of product quality
6. Low retail management skills.

Why People are choosing Retail Industry?

Online shopping is most convince for customers. And also it will give better deals for their money.

It has more advantages some of them are.  

1. Saves time and efforts
2. Convenience of shopping at home
3. Wide range / variety of products are available
4. Get details / demo of the products
5. We can compare various of products

Development of Gift Voucher :

1. Customer has to register once and has to login every time he wants to purchase the Gift Voucher.
2. Provision for customer to select a template from different types of templates.
3. Provision for customer to type a recipe name.
4. Provision for customer to type his name.
5. Provision for customer to give message, what purpose customer is giving the Gift Voucher.
6. Provision for customer to select a different denominations and expected quantity.
7. Provision for customer to check his Gift Vouchers preview.
8. Provision for customer to change another template and editing any details.
9. In the next step customer can see his invoice.
10. In the next step provision for customer to pay amount through paypall or other payment gateway with secure manner.
11. As soon as customer payment is successful Barcode, Gift Voucher number has to generate ontime for every Gift Voucher and print should happen automatically and that session should expire.

In the above process till 9^th step its partial transaction this information maintains in only session, not in database. At 11^th step while printing Gift Voucher its details will be store into DataBase and expires its session, This is complete transaction.

A vexed question to many traditional retailers in Australia is whether the investment in an online presence with full e commerce capability will have some kind of return on investment. Gerry Harvey of Harvey Norman, one of Australia’s top retailers has continuously said that online retailing is a waste of time and cannot provide the kind of return he is used to from his retail stores. He says that retailers making $300,000 – $400,000 a year online are just wasting his time. David Jones another major retailer attempted to enter the online retailing market in the late 90’s and had to retract from the market to prevent shareholder backlash on poor performance. I think these types of examples have been well publicized and possibly contribute to the slow uptake of online in this country. Other factors one could attribute to the slow uptake are the large distances between major cities, relatively high cost of delivery and a small population relative to the size of the country. There are a few major retail chains and brands that dominate the market and there is just no need in their eyes to pursue an online strategy.  

From a usage perspective over 14 million Australians use the web, and in November 2009 according to Nielsen research 46% of all Internet use was on Facebook. GetPrice.com.au a shopping comparison site commissioned some research on pre Christmas shopping behavior and not surprisingly a high percentage of shoppers researched online before buying. Now this is one of the crucial elements that a lot of retailers don’t think about. The value of an online presence to drive customers into stores. 

From a different perspective, small to medium sized businesses have attempted to harness online retailing. The top 5 online retailers are all pure play online retailers and are relatively successful. They however are not anywhere near the size of any of the major retailers in Australia. Security and trust online are still a large barrier for many shoppers.

Many shoppers would not feel comfortable paying $1500 to an unknown online retailer for a laptop for example, just in case they never see their money or the laptop. (see this link related to a site that is damaging the reputation of online retail in Australia: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/967179.html)

As time moves on we believe that more retailers will develop a web presence with ecommerce capabilities because their customers will demand it. There won’t be a sudden massive increase in online retailers, and at the same time as consumers get more comfortable with buying online the number of online shoppers will steadily increase.  

Mark Freidin

Founder

InternetRetailing.com.au

Since your bookmarks are categorized into different TAGS, you will get much targeted traffic from people searching within a particular TAG. They will click on your bookmark link and visit your site. Your tags will rank well in the search engines due to the authority these sites have. 

Source: bookmarkingdemon.com

The use of barcode technology in an industrial setting can be traced back as far as the 1960s, with some early implementations to identify railroad cars. Today, barcodes are just about everywhere and are used for identification in almost all areas of business.

When barcodes are implemented in business processes, procedures can be automated to reduce human error and increase productivity. More accurate data entry, better document tracking, reduced inventory costs, increased sales–such benefits as these are now within the reach of any size business, with barcode's use and its capabilities are being applied with sometimes startling results by firms that range from defense contractors to libraries.

Most firms used bar-code systems to track documents on microfilm, to follow the processing of materials in factories, to record billing time, and even to replace time clocks. Many firms begin using bar codes to record their inventory and then discover other applications for the technology.

Are they limited to do so?

One of the most common methods of reading barcodes is with a hand-held pen or wand-type readers and Fix-mount readers for automatic reading. These days, The few mobile phones and iPhones having facility to scan barcodes using the camera. With their scanning applications, you can scan a product and depending on the barcodes, it can be anything from opening a mobile webpage, to retrieving information about the product, to downloading a piece of content.

This app lets you shop by scanning the products, and one-click order at the end in the counter, Need not roll your trolley or carry your baskets in the shop.This can also used in all retailing industry to track products, modify orders, receive personalized recommendations, customer reviews, receive the newsletters about the retailing products, access your Wish list and check out the products then and there. And also if you have updated with the "Wish list/Monthly List" you need not come to shop for the next time, modify the list(if required) send a query to the retailing shops.

Even more, you can look for the same products from different shops and search for the price and compare them. Verify the duplication or malfunctions of the products.

Order your favorite foods, Look for the film previews and reviews and order film tickets,And Still not yet limited… Still to go… It’s all to make you and your customers to have a more happy sophisticated life.

References: http://www.barcodefaq.com/barcode-scanning.html

• Mail-order companies: 50+ years in remotely dealing with consumers
• Advantages due to existing client base and infrastructure (logistics, CRM, etc
• Pure players with only limited access to clients
• Online marketing (not performance marketing) helped players to keep brand awareness

• "Old" players: processes and IT are not matching "online" requirements
• Brands/manufacturers learning to keep direct contact to consumer (flag-ship store approach in internet)
• Leading to higher pressure on retail sector, as brand focus in moving from retail-brand to manufacturer-brand
• Key advantages for new players: speed, user-driven, IT-enabled, new shopping experience, outsourcing infrastructure, etc.
• Performance marketing as a driving factor for "new" players

• Tesco in UK (successful)
• Wehkamp in Netherlands (successful)
• Vente privee in france (successful)
• Quelle in Germany (failed)

‘Virtual Credit Card’ is a unique payment solution which is used for online transactions only. The short lifespan and limited amount of VCC makes it one of the secure payment methods. There is no physical existence of the VCC but only available over online. This is one of the payment methods becoming popular day by day.

How do we get Virtual Credit Card?

Virtual Credit Card is always associated with your “Primary Credit Card”. The process which is used to generate VCC slightly differs from bank to bank but the basic principle remains the same. Please note I have used, for reference, HDFC’s ‘Netsafe’ & ICICI’s “Inifinity” account. Please refer to the respective bank website to get more information on this type of account.

Steps to generate VCC:

1. Refer to Internet Banking section of the bank website to register your Primary Credit Card. Refer to HDFC Bank – netsafe account; ICICI Bank – inifinity account.
2. Provide necessary information during the initial registration process of the netsafe/infinity account. Remember this information is crucial for the password retrieval as well as for online transactions.
3. After the successful registration of the netsafe/inifinity account, login to the corresponding account to generate a new Virtual Card.
4. You can set the amount based on your spending limit. This new virtual credit card number, date of expiry and CVV are used for the online transactions instead of the “Primary Credit Card”.
5. The usage of the VCC can be viewed in the netsafe/infinity account on real time basis.
6. All transactions done using VCC will reflect on the Primary Credit Card statements and there will not be any separate credit card statement for each VCC.

Why do we need Virtual Credit Card?

VCC is one of the secure payment methods to prevent the misuse of “Credit Card” during online transactions. VCC prevents the sharing of the confidential “Primary Credit Card” details like CVV, number and expiry date with the internet world. Newly generated VCC is valid only for one online transaction within the expiry date of the VCC. You can delete VCC at any point of time if you don’t want to use it and amount will be credited back to your Primary Credit Card upon the removal of the VCC. When the VCC is targeted by the phishing & identity theft website, the amount of damage is very less compared to “Primary Credit Card”. It is practically, impossible to get the information of “Primary Credit card” by using VCC only since VCC are being generated by the ‘secure system’.

If the bank offers this type of secure payment solution then it provides a detailed demo on generating and using VCC. Please refer to the respective links of the bank.

References:

http://www.hdfcbank.com/personal/payments/netsafe/netsafe.htm

https://infinity.icicibank.co.in/Login.jsp

"Search engine rankings are arguably the most important small business marketing tool available today because it drives Web traffic — and potential prospects — to a small business’ Web site," a PRWeb spokesperson once told WebProNews. "However, because improving search rankings is desirable, achieving results can be both challenging and highly competitive."

Back in the summer, PRWeb shared a case study with us, involving a firm that typically sees a boost in search engine rankings and a 50% spike in web traffic after they issue a release. In fact, for one release in particular, the firm saw a spike of 400% on two different Web sites, and the firm doesn’t believe they were from the same users. They also incorporate social media tools like Twitter to extend the "shelf life" of press releases, and say that drives additional traffic.

"When we included a link to our press releases on Twitter and other social media networks, we saw these both expanded the scope of distribution and the extended the longevity of the announcement," the CEO of the company behind the case study had said.  "With other news releases we saw an initial spike in Web site traffic on the first two days and then it dropped off.  With these features we’ve seen increases in traffic up to five days after the news release was issued."

In a study from Arketi Group, also back in the summer, journalists were found to use the web in the following ways:

• 95% search
• 92% reading news
• 92% emailing
• 89% finding story ideas
• 87% finding news sources
• 75% reading blogs
• 64% watching webinars
• 61% watching YouTube
• 59% social networks
  

You’ve got to wonder if that social networks number has gone up by now. My guess is that it has, and social media has since become all the more important to search, particularly with the inclusion of real-time search results in Google and Google’s social search experiment (which may eventually move beyond experiment status).

Marty Weintraub, the President of aimClear shared some great tips and insight into the use of press releases for search in a recent interview with WebProNews. Among other things, he noted that when you do a press release, you’re "hitching a ride" in the search engine results and news results. You can use outbound links in press releases, and perhaps more importantly, you’re out there where the journalists are looking.

Here are some press release distribution sites (some are paid and some are free): 

• Business Wire
• PR Newswire
• PRWeb
• 24-7 Press Release
• PR Zoom
• PR Leap
• I-Newswire
• Webwire
• ClickPress
• PR.com
• PR Log
  

Beyond the distribution sites, don’t forget to include your releases on your own site. Journalists like being able to find the most up to date information from the source itself.  Earlier this year I discussed how some companies’ own press centers are holding back some marketing opportunities for them. Your site should have a section for press releases, and that should be up to date with the latest release when it goes out. You’d be surprised at how often these go without being updated even when a press release has been spotted elsewhere. It is also a good idea to link to any company blogs, Twitter accounts, or any other place where company announcements are made. 

Source: www.101techreview.co.cc

Marketers targeting business channels, for example, are often tasked with generating leads to support a long and complex sales process. This is why about a third of B2B marketers define a conversion as a visitor completing a registration form.

The B2C sales cycle is often short and sweet, and driven by an ecommerce website transaction. This is the reason approximately half of all B2C marketers define a conversion as a visitor who purchased a product or service online.

Digging deeper we find that the larger the organization, the more likely it is to define a conversion as a visitor taking an action, such as downloading content or completing a registration form. Smaller organizations are more likely to use a direct marketing approach, defining a conversion as a visitor purchasing a product or service online.

• Gives immediate online presence
• Have a new site? Have ads in an hour
• Start getting ROI sooner
• No ramp up time
• Great for seasonal items or time sensitive promotions
• Great for testing
• Easily test effectiveness of new marketing message or site design change
• Quickly gather feedback
• Regulate traffic volume
• Sales pipeline empty? Use PPC to push traffic
• Overloaded? Pause campaigns or cut back spend
• Have limited sales season? Saturate market while demand is high

The Robots Exclusion Protocol, more commonly referred to as a /robots.txt file, provides webmasters with the ability to provide instructions on indexing the site to bots. The file, which must reside in the domain’s root directory, serves to limit the bots’ access to files within that domain’s root directory. There are often a large number of pages that make up an entire site, but many of those pages – like registration, login, 404 error, privacy policy and order confirmation pages – should not be indexed by search engines. The /robots.txt file also comes in particularly handy for webmasters with a wide network of sites with identical privacy policies, terms and conditions or e-commerce sites that have checkout pages, shopping carts, etc.

Addressing Duplicate Content with /robots.txt

The /robots.txt file can also help to eliminate duplicate content issues that arise with blogging software, such as WordPress. With WordPress – and all blogging software, for that matter – content from blog posts is published on the post URL itself, but copies of that content are also published on category pages, as well as tag and author archives. This inadvertently creates several pages of duplicate content. Since duplicate content can have a negative impact on a site’s ranking in the organic search results, the /robots.txt file can help to reduce the potential for duplicate content that can adversely affect the site’s search marketing strategy.

Understanding How to Use /robots.txt

In order to function properly, the /robots.txt file should be accessible at http://www.domain.com/robots.txt and reside in the domain’s root directory. The file itself should be created as a plain text document. Do NOT use Microsoft Word or another word processing program – the standard Notepad program that is installed with Windows or SimpleText/TextEdit with the Mac OS work best. The file name must be robots.txt and uploaded directly to the domain’s root directory. The commands within the file itself can be as simple or complex as your needs demand.

The standard, generic /robots.txt file – one that does not limit access to any of the information in your domain’s root directory – would be formatted like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

In order to block bot access to the domain’s root directory completely requires adding only one character to the standard or generic /robots.txt file and would look like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

What if you want to limit bot access only to certain subdirectories or specific pages of the site? Not a problem. You would simply add each individual subdirectory or URL to the /robots.txt files as follows:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /checkout.asp
Disallow: /add_cart.asp
Disallow: /view_cart.asp
Disallow: /error.asp
Disallow: /shipquote.asp

The Robots.txt File Is Not Fool Proof

While the /robots.txt file does a good job of blocking a bot’s access to the domain’s root directory, it isn’t fool proof. Each individual page you do not want bots to index should also incorporate a properly formatted robots META tag. The standard robots META tag is configured like this:

<meta name=”robots” content=”index, follow” />

To help to prevent the bots from accessing individual URLs, the robots META tag in the header of the page should look like this:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, nofollow” />

or

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex, follow” />

The Bottom Line

A /robots.txt is a very useful tool and, unfortunately, an often overlooked and neglected aspect of web development. Now that you have a better understanding of what it is, what it does and how to use it, take some time to consider how your site may benefit from having a properly configured /robots.txt file. In the meantime, start checking out the /robots.txt files of the sites you visit to familiarize yourself with different configurations and uses for it.

For that you just need to open your FeedBurner dashboard, then click the title of RSS feed and select “Configure Stats” under the Analyze Tab. Now tick the options that say “Items views”, “Item click” and “Track clicks as a traffic source in Google Analytics” and save it.

Besides the click counts, you will also know the exact source from where the click may have originated. This is an important data because it will help you to know if people who subscribe your feed in Google Reader are more engaged than you “My Yahoo” subscribers or vice-versa.

Traffic from the clicks inside your RSS feed will come under “All Traffic Sources” and “Campaigns” in the reports of Google Analytics reports. Select “Ad Content” from the category drop down in the traffic source data table and it will allow you to see the incoming traffic from your RSS feed segmented by the specific feed readers or the email clients.

1. Use keyword-rich titles, about 20 words long and unique for each page of your site. These titles are the first things that Yahoo! sees and are the single most important aspect of your site regardless of which search engine you are optimizing for.  

• Website tracking
• Adobe Flash rich media tracking
• Gadget Tracking
• Exporting Analytics data 

The Analytics developer documentation is divided into the following sections:

• Overview

  This section covers important technical concepts in Google Analytics that will help you correctly modify or use the APIs for Google Analytics. Here, you'll learn:

  • how the tracking code works
  • how Analytics accounts differ from Google Accounts
  • which cookies are set and for what purpose
  • how and when data is sampled
• Tracking Code

  The Google Analytics Tracking Code, ga.js, works with any web page or web application that can execute JavaScript. You can install the tracking code for your site with a simple copy-and-paste operation to enable hundreds of reports for your website traffic.

• Data Export API

  Use the Google Analytics Data Export API to download Analytics data in the form of Google Data API feeds. With the Data Export API, you can embed a customized dashboard in your website to display the most commonly viewed or requested page statistics for all your reports users. Or, you can integrate your Google Analytics Data with other website data that you might be tracking in a separate system.

Content Taken from Google Analytics Info

Working to stay at the top of the organic search results for their top product categories involves a very different approach, which is not as easy to succeed at without the right approach and plan. Since organic search results are a reflection of Google’s assessment of site content and link popularity, it means that internet retailers need to continually create content and establish links to their online store from other sites. This is not as easy as it sounds because retailers need the right type of content and links if they want to be first for their desired product category keywords. 

The study used over 300 keywords to determine where top internet retailers ranked on Google’s search engine for a number of product categories. It found that they only owned the top three spots in a little more than 50% of the 20 merchandising categories, placing in 35 of 60 possible spots.  

Results were slightly improved over the prior year, but still indicated that Google completely passes over internet retailers for the top positions in the organic results. For example, when searching for "refrigerator" 3 out of 5 of the top results did not even sell the product and were informational sites like wikipedia.org and energystar.org. Profit margins on organic search traffic are typically significantly higher than that of paid search and if internet retailers want to improve their overall profitability then they will need to focus on a strong search engine optimization strategy.

Popular micro blogging service website Twitter earlier this week announced that it had reached agreements with Microsoft and Google to integrate users' tweets into search results, creating a considerably changed situationfor search engine optimization (SEO). 

The battling search giants will both Google and Microsoft Bing have access to Twitter's vast store of public data in real time, enabling the users to track trends with a high degree of accuracy. AFP reports that, under the terms of a recently signed deal with Microsoft, Yahoo will also gain access to the real-time data.

Microsoft has signed an additional deal that will give Bing and, presumably, Yahoo access to user status updates on Facebook. This will provide SEO professionals with an additional analysis tool to help them more carefully craft site content for improved search rankings.

Rumors about the Twitter deal had circulated for weeks, fed by sources inside that company who said that a deal was close. Experts say that effective SEO will have to become more responsive and more content-based in order to fully take advantage of the new opportunity.

The IMRG Capgemini e-Retail sales index showed online sales rose a lower-than-normal 1.9 percent month-on-month in September to 3.9 billion pounds ($6.4 billion) and were up 7.6 percent on the year. "The results for September show a slowdown in the growth of online spending but we view this as a temporary blip and expect growth rates to return to the 15 percent year on year trend we have seen over the last year," said Mike Petevinos, head of consulting for retail at Capgemini UK.

Growth in online sales of clothing, footwear and accessories slowed to an annual rate of 10 percent from a recent average of 20 percent due to a step in promotions from store groups and warm weather, which encouraged shoppers to leave their homes. "Postal strikes have also acted as a deterrent for online shoppers, and will continue to be a key concern for e-retailers in the lead up to Christmas," IMRG Capgemini said.

Workers at Britain’s state-owned Royal mail postal service are planning a series of one-day strikes from October 22 in a long-running dispute over pay, jobs and modernization.

(Reporting by Mark Potter; editing by Elaine Hardcastle : Source: bnet.com)

What a contact for must contain:  

1.       Name, email, (optional: phone), and message fields

2.       Shouldn’t Contain… A ridiculous captcha verification script 

3.       Confirmation / feedback that the form was properly submitted  

4.       An email response that the form was successfully received 

5.       Finally… A response from someone that read the form (If necessary) 

1.) Name, email, and message fields:

This is the one part that is rarely messed up, but often far overdone. A phone field is often useful but you will rarely need an address or any anything more personal than a person’s name, email, phone, and whatever they want to tell you. This is not a application form, it is a contact form! You shouldn’t be trying to qualify your customer in some way with a contact form.  

The more fields a customer has to fill out, the less likely they will use your contact form, and the more likely they will call you for something that can be handled over email.  

2.) Shouldn’t Contain… A ridiculous captcha verification script!:

Captcha scripts can help reduce email spam from bots and automated programs designed to spam you. They also make it a complete pain to get through. Captcha itself is virtually impossible to get through at this point.

Use alternatives that are actually readable or ones that make a user solve a simple math problem to proceed, or use nothing if spam isn’t a huge problem. 

USE THIS: 

NOT THIS: 

Requiring anyone to decipher an unreadable image of text is not a proactive customer service approach and will undoubtedly end with frustrated and confused customers. 

3.) Confirmation / feedback that the form was properly submitted:  

DO NOT, DO NOT, DO NOT simply dump your customer into another page or refresh the form itself without a clear message that the form was submitted. This is a sure way to get multiple emails from your customer, each successive one showing more frustration than its predecessor.  

Ideally, you should have a dedicated thank you, or confirmation page that the user is redirected to once the form is submitted. This is a better method than displaying an in-line message on the same page because there is no question that the form was properly submitted. This is one area where Web 2.0 is killing usability, because on-page changes are very often hard to detect and are not what a user is expecting.   

It’s also a good idea to include links to informational pages, FAQ’s, and other areas of your website that could answer a question that a customer might have. 

4.) An email response that the form was successfully received: 

More than half the sites that I ever have contacted do not provide immediate email response when using their contact form.  

You should always provide an immediate confirmation email that the message has been received. This will reiterate the response in the previous step, and makes your business look much more professional. Even a generic message is much better than no message. The message is a great time to provide alternate / emergency contact information in case they really need to get a hold of you, or provide links to FAQ and informational pages about your services or website.   

You can setup a automated email response on just about any web server. It’s free and takes no human interaction to send an automated response email. There’s simply no reason not to send one.

5.) Finally… A response from someone that read the form (If necessary):  

I put this on here because a huge number of customer inquiries are never responded to. Actually get back to your customer, by email, phone or whatever method you can. You don’t need to reply to spam, but you’re probably in business because you have customers.Providing unmatched response times is one of the best ways to set yourself apart from your competitors. Seriously, shoot for five or ten minutes during normal working hours.

Only when you customers reply with “wow that was fast”, is your response time prefect!

Contact forms are a cornerstone of online customer service and there’s absolutely no reason to mess them up. Stick with these steps and you can’t go wrong.

Source: ecommerce-blog.org