On the Ecommerce Outtakes blog, we talk a lot about what not to do online. In fact, our main focus is to point out where websites go wrong—with the intent, of course, to help improve the e-commerce experience across the web. One trend we’ve been noticing a lot lately is a lack of good filtering and sorting options. It’s a widespread e-commerce epidemic, and it’s high time we cured it.
Adwords by Google is a proven way to generate traffic, leads, and sales. It is a tool that some marketers are using on a regular basis to drive business goals. While there are a few using this tool to great effect, several more are striking out and in the process, throwing a lot of money out the window. Having success with Adwords calls for you to take the same approach you take to generating visibility for your organic content — optimize. However, the actual steps to optimization are a bit different in this arena.
1. Learn to Bid and Budget
Understanding how to bid and budget your funds is crucial to Adwords success. Spending $20 a day may appear to be the way to go for cost-conscious advertisers, but a budget that low will also limit your ability to profit. Likewise, bidding low initially can save you some money, but it might not get you very many clicks. While you don’t want to spend beyond the budget, you also don’t want to limit your potential, so learning how to manage your funds in accordance to the ad platform is key.
January 2013 – Last spring Google posted about Responsive Web Design on their official webmaster central blog and though the flavor of their article was fairly mild, they made it very clear that their “commitment to accessibility” includes a very important message to web designers – “Mark up one set of content, making it viewable on any device.”
Aaron Wall of SEOBook recently predicted that, in 2013, SEOs who “remain overly-public will continue to invent language to serve their own commercial purposes while chastising those who do not fall in line.” I appear to be living up to (the first part) of that promise because I’m calling it: the breakthrough ranking factor of 2013 will be “waves,” a term I just made up.
This will be a somewhat speculative post, so I feel compelled to say that these opinions are my own, and don’t necessarily reflect the opinions of Northcutt as a whole.
Where did this crazy idea come from? It started with the realization that, back in 2009, Google’s Chief Economist told McKinsey Quarterly “I keep saying the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians. People think I’m joking, but who would’ve guessed that computer engineers would’ve been the sexy job of the 1990s?”
Nowadays, many people are using Pinterest to as a tool for promoting their ecommerce businesses. What makes Pinterest ideal for ecommerce is that it is a social media platform which is primarily visual. Since many people use photos to market their products, Pinterest offers a place where they can pin, link and share their photos. Using different pin boards, one can easily highlight different items. In addition, you can also post photos of future sales and products.
The following are some guidelines for using Pinterest for ecommerce.
1. Appear professional
Make sure your Pinterest account looks as professional as possible. Customize your profile page, arrange your pin boards appropriately and use unique and catchy board covers. Do your best to make your account stand out from others in your niche.
2. Include Pinterest widgets in your product pages
Having Pinterest widgets in your product pages will enable people to easily share your products. Whenever an image is repinned, it will still have a link to your product page, as well as your Pinterest profile. This will result in an increase of traffic to your ecommerce site.
