I came across this video over the weekend at a 4 day Internet Marketing Conference. It was interesting to track it down in YouTube and then read some (but not ALL – as there are hundreds!) of the comments. Many people seem outraged at the statistics and think that the video is clearly misleading. I tend to agree with some of these sentiments, however; one things this video does make clear is that Social Media really is a phenomenon – even if the stats are exaggerated in this video.

Judging by some of the people I met over the weekend, there is definitely HUGE opportunity for using Social Media in business. To me it is the viral nature of Social Media and the power of referrals that make it such a powerful weapon in your online marketing campaign. Anyone who has a Facebook or Twitter account will tell you that they often click on links to check something out – whether it be a link someone has posted on their page or one they discover on one of their ‘friends’ pages.

I often stumble across products or services I would normally have never known about if it hadn’t been for my Social Media account. And it’s only human nature that when you come across something you like, you then tell other people about it…and then they tell their friends about it… You see how this is viral?

So – enjoy the video, don’t get too caught up in the accuracy of the stats BUT I hope you do start to get an understanding of the incredible benefits of using Social Media to promote your business.

Don’t forget to post your comments…

When your customers are trying to find your business or service online, are they finding your competitors instead? Finding your way to the front page of Google takes a lot of skill and strategy to get the kind of results we have achieved for our clients. So, if you are looking for the same type of result, then we are the people you should be talking to!

Want more proof? Why not head over to the Case Study page – which details the success our client SunMore Holidays has enjoyed since they started using our services.

If you are considering starting and running an eCommerce site, then it is imperative that you have a clear understanding of the game – and one of the most important factors is being able to get into the mindset of your customer.

What you need to understand is that when people shop for something online, and they have a specific product or type of product in mind that they want to buy, there are two key factors that influence their decision to do business with you:

Can they trust you?
And do you have the best price?

So how does one go about creating an eCommerce site so that it is more likely to convert sales? I have put together a few tips to help you along the way…

TRUST

1. First of all, don’t make your own website. It can take a long time to learn how to design a website properly, so unless you are already a designer, don’t do it. The learning curve is pretty big. The other thing is that trying to sell from a “homemade” looking site can hurt your trust factor.

Whilst it may be true that with some markets, the homemade site can convert well because people feel that someone like them built the site – in MOST cases it’s better to appear professional. And the best way to do that is to have a professional designer build your site.

So, my recommendation is that although it takes an investment to set up a site properly, it is one that will yield more sales and a stronger business.

2. There are some very simple elements you can easily add to your site that will instantly make you appear more trustworthy.

• A 1 800 number in the header. This simple method gives the feel that you are a bigger company, even if you’re running it from your living room. once people assume that you are a “bigger” company is a “safer” company, they’ll be more inclined to buy from you.
• A trust seal and credit card logos. The credit card logos instil trust for a couple of reasons. To begin with, you’re essentially borrowing trust from the credit card companies, as they are known and trusted companies. Secondly, a credit card logo once again gives the look and feel of being a bigger professional company online. People often assume that if you have these elements then other people are buying from you too.
• Live chat. This simple method continues to add to the feeling that you are a larger company with a substantial support team. This brings a lot of comfort to your prospects, even if they never use it. Just the fact that you are more approachable if they have questions helps the trust factor immensely. There are many sites online that offer live chat services. For example, one in particular is liveperson.com.

Many successful eCommerce site owners have extensively used and tested each of these elements You will be amazed at the difference it will make to your conversions if you add them to your site.

BEST PRICE

Obviously, your eCommerce site will be more successful if you’re selling something that people are already buying. However, the other side to this is that it means you’ll also be selling what other people are selling. So the problem is how to compete when your customers begin price-shopping, without having to cut your prices? Here are two tips:

1. Position your products as unique. Now 99% of marketers don’t make any effort to promote their products uniquely. Most f the time they simply take the photo and description provided by the supplier and use them as is. However, if you’ll take a little extra time, it’ll pay off in huge dividends. Start by changing the stock photo. Test different photos. Avoid using the same photo everyone else is using. Also re-write the description so it’s unique. The other thing you can do is give your products a unique name so that when people price shop products from your site, they won’t find any other products with the same name (clever, huh?).

2. Don’t cut your prices. Trying to be the cheapest source rarely works for long. One, you’re cutting your profits. And two, there will always be someone else to come along who’s willing to sell the same items cheaper than you. One great approach is to try bundling related items into greater bargains for your prospects – this is also known as ‘widgetising’. Using this approach this allows you to set the price you want and it also makes your offer unique.

These are just a few tips for making your eCommerce site more profitable. But there are literally dozens of different ways, just like this, that you can use to have a higher converting site. Stay tuned for further blogs on the topic by subscribing to my RSS feed.

Why is search engine optimisation or SEO important to your business?

• The Internet is the fastest growing sales channel – The Australian Internet advertising industry is currently growing at 100%, whilst traditional media is growing at 5-10% per year.  The reason for the huge growth is that the way people make decisions has fundamentally changed; and search engines are now an integral part of the research and buying process. A high search engine ranking gives your business access to new customers and markets. This is why search engine optimization or SEO is becoming increasingly important for businesses all over the world.

• Reducing your cost of online customer acquisition – The cost of paid search marketing through programs such as Adwords is increasing all the time and will continue to increase in Australia over the coming years. Search engine optimisation complements your paid search marketing efforts and increases the amount of free traffic to your website which helps your business increase the % of search engine traffic your website receives, plus can help reduce your paid search marketing costs.

• SEO delivers More Targeted and Qualified Website Visitors – Our research indicates that natural search engine traffic as compared to paid search traffic provides a highly qualified visitor which results in higher online sales lead conversion rates, plus increases the average amount of time a user spends on your website.

If you combine a BestWebber Search Engine Optimization Package with one of our website designs, you will have a winning formula for an income generating online business. Our entire philosophy is to reduce any effort from your part. Let us research your competition, build keyword lists and bring you solid traffic streams so that you can make sales and build your business. We bring dead websites back to life and help you make more sales.

There are many misconceptions about getting your site indexed in Google.There is a lot of information available on the internet, but still it seems that many webmasters do not really understand how Google works when it indexes new websites.

USA TODAY’s Jefferson Graham interviews Google engineer Matt Cutts on how to get your site to the top of Google with 5 basic, common sense SEO tips. Matt Cutts works for the Search Quality group in Google, specializing in search engine optimization issues. He is well known in the SEO community for enforcing the Google Webmaster Guidelines and cracking down on link spam.

In the interview, Cutts advises the public on how to get better website visibility in Google. It is a lot easier than you might think and contrary to popular belief, it’s not rocket science. A few ideas from from the interview include:

• Think about what people are going to type to want to come to your site .. and make sure those keywords are on your page
• Title tags matter because that is the first thing readers will see when they search on Google.
• Why the Description tag is also important for visibility on Google‘s Search Results Page.
• Why blogs are important for building community and backlinks.
• How to add your blog to be indexed by Google.
• Adding a Sitemap to Webmaster Central for fine tuning your searchability.
• And more .. watch the video below…

What is a Link Wheel?
Link wheels refer to the practice of linking external social web 2.0 sites (also called parasite sites) together in to a linked wheel to support your ‘hub’site. This hub and spoke marketing is not new – Howie Schwartz, one of the pioneers of link wheel development has used link wheels as a tried and tested method for increasing search engine exposure. If you trust in Howie’s methods, then you can trust in BestWebber’s Link Wheel service – as we follow Howie’s strategies and our team has been using this technology for high rankings for a long time.

With a link wheel, you will gain authority from within the major search engines. Chances are you will gain a significant PR boost, traffic and SERP (Search Engine Result Page) ranking by using a link wheel as part of a balanced link building campaign.

Link Wheel Diagram

Get started with your link wheel now

We choose to use Wordpress Thesis Theme for most of our websites for very good reasons.

Thesis is very powerful

The Thesis philosophy is simple — you can change your design all you want, but you should never change the core code that powers your website. For long-term success in the search engines, it is crucial to serve semantic, information-rich HTML that loads quickly, and Search Engine Optimization and efficiency are two areas where Thesis shines. Therefore, for us it is a ‘no-brainer’ to use Thesis as the framework for our sites – but to then add all the design features you require.

Your very own skin – coded just for you!

Although the base theme of Thesis is OK – we want your site to be ‘one-of-kind’ and have a great design. So, whilst we use the framework of Thesis, we then make a new design (called a skin) and place it over the top. This is called skinning. We will slice the skin up and ‘code’ the design to fit. This is time consuming however the result is you get a custom website like no other!

Easy to tweak

The great thing about Thesis is that it provides you with many options to customize its look and feel, it has a built in design admin panel from where you can control almost every aspect of your theme design. So if you want to tweak your design later down the track, you should be able to make simple modifications without any coding knowledge!

Thesis License covered

If we use Thesis for your site we will buy the license for you. This means that we can remove the Thesis link from the footer of the page. This is already included in our prices, so you do not pay any extra. If you are interested in Thesis details to learn more about the ‘DNA’ of your new website check them out here.

Your strategy now is just to add killer content!

BestWebber Marketing uses and recommends Nanacast for cart functions.

Why? Well…for many reasons. But the single biggest reason is simple.

For anyone wanting the ultimate online business centralization and automation solution, everything is handed to you on a silver platter.

• Want to create a membership? It’s included.

• Want to create a product? It’s easy. You setup your products there and then you can generate sales buttons.

• Want to secure download links & video files? Done.

• Need to manage affiliates? It’s there. Nanacast allows you to have other people sell your products and services so that you can get more sales. Once they sell the items you can pay them using the tracking facility they have. You can even pay affiliates on up sells, down sells and cross sells. This incentives your affiliates to sell more of your stuff. It is truly Win:Win.

• Dimesales, Firesales, Powerful Coupon management? It’s really, really there.

• Want unlimited 1-click OTO’s (One Time Offers), Upsells & Downsells using Authorize.net? You guessed it…it’s included. (Paypal will never properly support this).

• Need Sales Reports? You got them

Super Powerful cart

One thing we love about it is the way the system works. We have never used an easier system for tracking sales. It is very easy to use once we have integrated it with your site (platinum SEO Plus pack only).  You can actually integrate special protected ‘posts’ with your shopping cart and website. Now you can use also your website as a content delivery portal.

Better security for Affiliate Systems

You can stop people buying from themselves. Anti-fraud devices in the system are top level. IP tracking and cookie tracking mean that Nanacast can tell who is trying to cheat the system.

So what’s missing?

The only thing missing is an autoresponder. But this is not necessarily a bad thing…

This job is best left to email marketing professionals like Aweber. Email delivery is a business within itself and requires careful attention by dedicated professionals. Trying to be all things to all people is not always the best idea. The developers at Nanacast knew this. So instead of building an autoresponder, he chose to directly seamlessly integrate his platform with popular Autoresponders in the Internet Marketing community, such as Aweber. If someone buys your product, Nanacast will move them into your list. AND…Nanacast can unsubscribe a member from your Aweber list when they cancel. Perfect.

Now you can enjoy these benefits when you order your SEO cart integrated website!

Get your FREE Trial Nanacast membership here

Our web packages include us putting your email ‘capture’ form on your site.  It is vital for any online business to then make sure that their email database and website ‘talk’ to each other. The way this can be achieved is through the use of an auto-responder

The Power of an Autoresponder

Effective use of an autoresponder email service can help any business maximize their profits by capturing visitor information and then helping to convert those visitors in to customers – on a schedule and all on auto pilot. Many businesses, after using autoresponders, quickly wonder how they ever got along without them!

Do you want some samples of every day tasks for your Autoresponder?

• Handle the routine FAQ
• Provide free “Special Reports”
• Send detailed product information
• Send a series of lessons on how to use your product
• Establish and build rapport
• Encourage prospects to become purchasers
• Email a series of discount coupons
• Tracking the response of different ads you run
• Encourage purchasers to buy additional products
• Send “thank-you” letters
• Send information on shipping, payment, warranty
• Ask your buyers for testimonials
• Follow up with Joint Venture Partners
• Sell back end products
• Subscription tool for your newsletter
• List handler for your newsletter

Please sit down for ten minutes with a piece of paper, and write down how YOU can use an Autoresponder for YOUR business, and the list will be much, much longer.

Don’t have an email provider yet?

We use and recommend Aweber for email systems. They are well priced, highly effective and we know how to use their codes back-to-front!