Marketing & SEO Discussion List - LED Digest

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From: Susan Johnson

Subject: Shopping Cart for E-Commerce Site

Hi LED'ers

This is the first time that I have ever posted here (at least that I

can recall) -- normally I just lurk and learn.  I love the lively

discussions, and normally always take away something interesting.

Our company has recently been offered the opportunity for the

development of a new comparison shopping site that would serve local

markets within Europe.  The customer's site will be country specific

and available in at least 3 languages.  They are beginning with one

country only, hoping to expand the site to other EU countries.

We are currently in the planning, research and budgeting stage.  At

this moment we are trying to make a decision regarding shopping cart

systems.  I have sifted through the myriad of information -- my gosh

there are a lot of systems available!!   We need something that is

search engine friendly, low-budget, pretty much ready-to-go right

out of the box. (I am afraid that initially at least I will be doing

quite a bit of the work on this part and I am no programmer!)

Anyway, after spending many hours on-line, I am considering GoECart

Shopping Mall.  Has anyone here ever used their system?  It seems to

tick all of the boxes -- or at least most of them. I would be

extremely grateful for any comments about this system, or open to

suggestions of other systems that might fit the bill.  We are using

the Miva system but that is for a different customer and I think it

would require a little too much tweaking to make it work in this

instance -- I still don't know what a UI is or how that works with a

GUI -- don't have the time to fuss with buying add-on modules and

setting them up.

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions.

Susan Johnson

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From: Trevor Johnson

Subject: Double opt-in

> I have a client that chooses to not use double

> opt-in for email list... Their attitude about incorporating

> double opt-in is really starting the bother me.

        - Brett Atkin, LED 2080

As it should. If you search the net, you'll find numerous studies

have been showing proving that confirmed opt-in (the correct term)

mailings produce greater customer loyalty than single opt-in lists.

The studies demonstrate that higher loyalty from confirmed opt-in

lists in terms of significantly higher open rates, click-through

rates and sales conversion rates than single opt-in. I'm sure your

client must be interested in those types of numbers. Talk to your

client about those benefits.

> From the search engine and the spam association

> point of view, could I be hurting my business if the

> connection is made between their business and mine?

The search engines are unlikely to take umbrage at your for

association with email spammers (they are more concerned about

search engine spammers than email spammers) but from a spam point of

view you are definitely putting yourself at risk. If any of the

thousands of email systems administrators and abuse desk techies who

frequent and swap notes in the USENET newsgroups such sees a

relationship between you and your client and announces it, you can

be very sure to feel plenty of pain. If your client refuses to amend

their ways, protect yourself and dump them.

> Or, am I just being overly righteous?

No, you are being a decent internet citizen by being concerned about

preventing spam and improving system security. The internet world

needs more people like you.

Trevor Johnson, Chairman

http://www.bestprac.org

------- new post - same topic -------

From: Simon K. Grabowski

Subject: Double opt-in

Dear Brett et al,

At GetResponse we are committed to educating our users about

permission-based email marketing and we face the problem you have

described every day, many times over. Granted, the conversion from

unconfirmed ("single") opt-in to confirmed ("double") opt-in has

always been a controversial issue. Some marketers think that they

will experience a drastic decrease of results when they begin

confirming subscriptions.

I understand that you've already attempted to talk your client into

going confirmed by focusing on the negatives (spam complaints,

deliverability woes, hindered reputation, CAN-SPAM etc.). Why don't

you try it from another angle? Cleaner, permission-based lists

generate more sales.

Way back in 2004, when we made the switch to confirmed opt-in for

our own follow-up campaign on http://www.getresponse.com site, we

saw:

* 27% reduction in overall subscriptions (ouch!)

* 12% decline in removal requests

* 19% decline in "hard" bounce-backs

* 16% decline in spam complaints

.. and, surprise surprise:

* a 2% _increase_ in sales.

Where did the increase come from?

My theory is that subscribers that take a proactive step of

confirming their intention to subscribe may tend to be more

appreciative of your marketing messages, and therefore more likely

to buy from you in the future.

So don't paint a gloomy picture for your client, but talk about

their benefits. Take it one step at a time with them, and get them

to switch a single list as a test.

Confirmed opt-in works.

Simon Grabowski

http://www.getresponse.com/

------- new post - new topic -------

From: Lee Roberts

Subject: Multiple sites

I've been watching the multi-site thread started by my old Philips

66 credit union buddy Mark Roberts with intrigue.

So far we have had people suggest that sister sites selling the same

things are not good.  I'll agree to the extent that, as suggested,

the efforts to promote two sites with the same content is extremely

challenging and for the most part a spinning of wheels.  The efforts

and money expended diversified on the same content could be better

used by promoting one Web site more heavily.

We have had people suggest that it is good and that some have had

amazing success.  Well, I've seen it all and there is no amazing

success.  The only success realized from an effort such as this is

the possibility that you might have the sister sites showing up in

the top 10 positions in the SERPs.  That's not real success.  You

can't consider a store in the cyber market the same as two

brick-n-mortar stores in different parts of the same city or even

different cities or states.  If that were the case, don't you think

Amazon, eBay, Overstock or any of the other major brands would have

multiple sites?  They know it's a waste of money to promote more

than one online store when that money could be more beneficial to

the one store and bolster that store's position and brand.

We've heard about people with different stores selling different

products.  That's no different than Ford Motor Company owning

Jaguar, Range Rover, Mercury, Lincoln and others.  Heck, even

Diahatsu owns a shipping company and makes cars.  Honda makes

motorcycles and cars.  Toyota builds Toyota and Lexus.  That's brand

diversity.

As Tom [Aman] points out in LED 2079, it is damned annoying to see

multiple sites with the exact same content from the same people in

the SERPs.  It's like going to the mall and find all the stores sell

the same thing under different store names.  How boring can it get?

Search engines need to do better, hopefully they're reading this,

and eliminate multiple sites from the same company.  Search engine

result quality will improve as a result.  A good way to determine if

the results are owned by the same company is to refer to the domain

registration records.  Sites whose domain information is hidden

behind privacy registrations that hide all the information instead

of simply the email address could easily be considered owned by the

same company.

In LED 2078 Dave Spahr points out the one concept that many have

probably never considered.  Building Web sites for other countries.

You might have to get your information or content translated, but

that's extremely beneficial.  Now, how Dave handles shipping issues

I'd be interested in hearing more about.  As for how easy it was to

move up the ranks in Germany and the United Kingdom, you need to

consider the level of competition.  Many companies in other

countries purchase the .com TLD to compete against Americans in the

US-based searches.  However, many purchased their .com TLD before

country specific TLDs were available. So the previous argument could

be debated as not being 100% accurate.

Dave's sister site, based upon his description of the .info site,

was one that he set up to provide information only and redirect

people to his store or other places he advertises.  This is being

used by many companies such as Crutchfield who has a sister site

with over 100 articles.  Building an article Web site with really

great articles is an extremely good idea.  If the articles are

really great, the articles will be linked to by others which then

builds the Page Rank values.  Having articles on your ecommerce site

is a great idea as well, but Crutchfield is only one example of how

educational material on another site can direct potential customers

to the exact products being discussed in the how-to articles.

Considering the push towards search engines providing results for

informational searches versus purchasing searches, Crutchfield's and

Spahr's examples resonate with a truth that can't be denied.

Informational sites will or should rise to the top when a person

performs a search for information.  Product sites should rise to the

top when a person performs a search for a product they wish to

purchase.  Let's see if the _king of information_ can find a way to

provide such informative searches.

Sincerely,

Lee Roberts

http://www.applepiecart.com

------- new post - same topic -------

From: Donald Baker

Subject: Multiple sites

> Taking positions 1 through 11,14,16,20 may sound

> great from an SEO point of view, but it is damned

> annoying from a surfer's point of view...

        - Tom Aman, LED 2079

I agree with Tom from the user's viewpoint -- it can be annoying.

From the merchant's viewpoint, however, I think David has the same

moral responsibility to minimize his online presence that Coca-Cola

has in minimizing the varieties of Coke stocked on grocery shelves

-- i.e., none. In the grocery store, it's called "brand extension"

-- creating variations of winning brands to increase the possibility

that the shopper will notice and select one, if not more, varieties.

It's "damned annoying" to me that I have to look past all the

varieties of Coke on the grocery shelf (i.e., offline SERPS) to find

Diet Rite, but I accept it and I'll bet Tom does too. Many autos

sold as different brands are essentially identical under the skin

(e.g., Fords and Mercurys; some Lincolns and Jaguars). How "damned

annoying" is it to figure out which cars are really the same car? --

but it's understood and accepted. Why should it be different online?

Offline merchants design product packages to take the most shelf

space, and even pay grocers to stock their products (i.e., offline

pay-per-inclusion URL listings -- Google could charge for Froogle

feeds, too). If merchants try to take up as much space as possible

in physical stores -- where it costs real money to pursue this

strategy -- why shouldn't merchants try the same thing online, where

it costs almost nothing to do so?

I once took a call from a fellow who wanted us to improve his SE

rankings. I asked about his site, and he gave me four or five domain

names. It turned out they were all variants of the same site,

selling the same products through slightly different sites. In so

doing, he had achieved several top-ten rankings for the most

important KW phrases, which guaranteed visits and sales.

I asked him why he had created more sites,  since the original site

was doing pretty well. "I gotta feed my family," he replied. He

didn't become a client, but I couldn't argue with his logic or his

strategy. The online real estate was there for the taking (there's

no shortage of online shelf space) and he took it. If that's wrong,

then "private labeling," "rebranding," and "affiliate marketing" are

also wrong -- I believe they are not.

What I think hasn't been emphasized in this thread is that Google is

waging a *vigorous* war against "damned annoying" merchants:

multiple-domain retailers (aka mininets), affiliate-spam sites,

blog-and-ping sites, scraped-content-AdSense-focused directories,

etc. The Jagger update was designed to eliminate a lot of this

stuff. Earlier last year, Google wiped out affiliate spam in AdWords

listings. A cursory read of Matt Cutts's blog shows Google has also

developed the tools to spot and eliminate lots of spammy sites

manually; they're paying human editors to find and eliminate them,

and encouraging users to inform them of spammy sites.

One day, Tom could get his wish: only one site allowed per product

line; no mininets, no affiliate sites, no aggregators, no

rebranding. But would that be better?

Don Baker

NSI Partners

==== BILLBOARD ===================================

From: Reg Charie

Subject: MSN

> Now things changed since we are out

> of the sandbox but been kicked of the

> MSN listings and I don't have any clue why.

        - Claudiu Spulber, LED 2080

Claudiu,

I do not profess to be an expert in SEO but it seems to me that you

are over-using "PDF" both in your meta tags and on your site. Your

keyword meta tag contains some 18 repetitions of PDF and your main

page 30+. Perhaps the search engines are considering this as "spam."

Thank You,

Reg Charie

http://dotcom-productions.com

------- new post - new topic ------

From: Michael Linehan

Subject: On rudeness - or lack thereof

> Sheryl Coppenger's post... is (in my opinion) rude.

        - Michael Linehan, LED 2072

Some agreements. Some counters. But one idea that has been repeated

several times is that it's not a big deal because rudeness is

enormously worse elsewhere. I think this is parallel to saying:

- it's OK that your child is bullied because some other bullying is

far worse.

- it's OK that she's being harassed because some women are being

physically attacked.

So sorry, but I don't agree with excusing a little rudeness by this

comparison scale idea.

I think what we're all here for is ideas on online advertising /

marketing / sales, presented with either hard evidence or a well

thought out rationale to back them up.  With a good dash of mutual

support and respectful interest.

Ideally, I would like to suggest that anyone refrain from using

emotionally-loaded language that says anything negative about

someone's character, motivation, level of integrity, etc.  LED is

about information.  Being angry, snarky, dismissive, demeaning, or

anything else along those lines is just not appropriate --- or

useful. I'd also suggest it's REALLY inappropriate to fantasize

about what someone is feeling or thinking, and then to start making

comments based on that (as sometimes happens).

On the other hand, some people seem to think that zero rudeness,

zero name-calling is too much to expect.  So if it is going to be OK

for someone to be a little rude (as long as it doesn't go too far),

then it is certainly OK for another reader to politely point out

that they thought a remark was rude or inappropriate.

Michael Linehan, Marketing Alchemy

www.marketing-alchemy.com

------- new post - new topic ------

From: Maty Matyszak

Subject: Learning

I've just got back from a week away and read the hounding of Sheryl

Coppenger with mild dismay. Are the readers of the LED digest such

sensitive blossoms that one strongly worded opinion sends them into

shock? Frankly, if her comment is such that it causes lasting

distress to a marketing manager, then I would sumbit he is in the

wrong profession (though I note that it was others who complained on

his behalf).

Maty Matyszak

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