SmallBusinessNewz

Businesses Planning More Web Investments

I talked recently about how eCommerce may be a good route to go in an era where gas is nearly $4 a gallon, giving customers the option of not having to drive to your store to purchase your products. I also said that things like web design, SEO and online marketing have probably never been more important.

Get Some Helpful Business Tips From This Conference

Our sister site WebProNews has a video crew in attendance at the 25th annual ACCM (The Annual Conference for Catalog & Multichannel Merchants), and has been reporting some interesting takeaways including interviews with speakers. There is some good information coming out of the conference for small businesses to take note of, so I wanted to direct SmallBusinessNewz readers to it.Articles include:

One Way That Your Customers Can Save Gas...

This kind of ties into David Utter's recent article on saving your customer's fuel costs. I think that most of you would agree with me that these gas prices are getting ridiculous. Believe it or not, your customers are probably thinking the same thing every time they go to fill their tanks. Chances are that many of these same customers are also trying to think of ways to cut down on the amount of gas they use, if nothing else, just to save some money.

Recession Creating Business Growth for Online Retailers

I earlier wrote about how businesses could take advantage of a recession by swooping in to grab up some marketshare from more fearful businesses who might choose to cut back advertising and expansion during an uncertain period.

What, You're Not Paying Attention to Your Site's Stats?

Let's assume you are running one of the businesses that actually has a website (a less common phenomenon than one might think). It's great that you've gone that far, but are you keeping track of your stats? If not you may be missing out on more sales. Evaluating Your Best Traffic Sources

Get Your Product Categorization Right

Like a sound site architecture and directory structure, product categorization can play a significant role in how both search engines and users are able to access your products. There are two important things to consider when determining how to categorize your products. 1) Is each product assigned to the most appropriate category or categories? and 2) is multiple categorization creating duplicate content? The first issue frustrates your users and the second the search engines.

Adding Little Details to Your Online Store

There’s a scene in the movie version of “Oliver” where merchants walk along the street outside his bedroom window peddling their wares. They sing out “Who will buy?” this or that, holding up samples for passersby to see. Oliver has never witnessed such a thing before. He sings, Who will buy this wonderful morning? Such a sky you never did see! Who will tie it up with a ribbon, And put it in a box for me?

Increasing Value is More than Just Increasing Links

Part of the reason so many people beg, borrow, and steal for search engine traffic is because so many people have the same thin business models offering the same stuff. Rather than thinking of ways to differentiate or look within for ways to increase value, we figure just getting a couple more links will be all we need to do well. And it may be in the short term, but that is not enough to stay competitive.

Top Five SSL Certificate Providers

If you are running an eCommerce business, it is of vital importance that your customers feel comfortable in giving you their credit card information. Using SSL is a common way to ensure such security.

Keeping Your Web Traffic

Are you getting people to your Web site just to see them click away before visiting a second page? Do you have a very low conversion rate for traffic? If so, there's a good article over at MarketingScoop called Why You're Losing Traffic and How to Make Them Stay.