Mike Berray saw opportunity in setting up an online store. Mike manages Post Oak Motor Cars, the largest Factory Authorized Rolls Royce Motor Cars and Bentley Motors dealership on the Gulf Coast. By turning to an online market, Post Oak could extend the Rolls Royce and Bentley brands as well as the Post Oak

brand to an international market. He had never set up an online store, but decided to use customer feedback to figure out how to make one work.

The boutique store found at www.boutique.pomcltd.com sells Bentley and Rolls Royce apparel, model cars, and luxury items at various price points. Shoppers can purchase clothing for men, women, and children as well as items such as pens, prints, keychains, and wallets. The Post Oak Motor Cars boutique also features the exclusive “Pure Bentley” line, including Bentley’s silk and cashmere robe tailored specifically towards a customer’s dimensions.

The store hasn’t just helped generate extra income for Post Oak. “We have actually sold a car or two due to the boutique. One in particular comes to mind in that the father bought a remote control Bentley Continental GT for his daughter to play with and then came in a few months later to get a real one for himself,” said Mike.

Look for Post Oak Motor Cars to add more owner serviceable items like oil filters and fanbelts later this year.

–Michelle Greer, Marketing Specialist
http://www.volusion.com

Technorati Tags: Post Oak Motor Cars, Bentley Boutique, Rolls Royce Boutique, Sell Car Accessories Online, Sell Car Parts Online, Start Car Accessories Store, Start Car Parts Store, Ecommerce, Start Online Store, Shopping Cart Software, Bentley, Rolls Royce, Bentley Dealership, Bentley Accessories, Rolls Royce Accessories, Volusion

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The votes have been tabulated and for the second time running, Volusion won Small Business Computing’s Excellence in Technology Award for “Best Ecommerce Storefront.” Volusion received 37 percent of the vote, beating Yahoo’s ecommerce solution by three percentage points.

Volusion would like to thank all the merchants and industry insiders who helped us win this award. Your feedback is the foundation of our software and we appreciate you letting us know that you approve. We will continue to use your feedback upon further software upgrades in order to better serve the online business community.

–Michelle Greer, Marketing Specialist
http://www.volusion.com

Technorati Tags: Small Business Computing, smallbusinesscomputing, Excellence in Technology Awards, Best Ecommerce Storefront, Best Ecommerce Software, Best Online Store Software, Sell Online, Start Online Business, Start Online Store, Yahoo Small Business, Yahoo Ecommerce, Volusion

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In 1984, the Chicago Bulls picked shooting guard Michael Jordan as the third overall pick in the NBA draft. A shoe company named Nike decided that this shooting guard had strong skills and charisma and decided to offer him $2.5 million over five years plus royalties and fringe benefits. Converse

decided they were too tied up in Larry Bird and Magic Johnson to worry about this young shooting guard, and Adidas expressed no interest whatsoever.

24 years and 23 shoe lines later, Air Jordans are still worn by celebrities and were made well after Jordan retired from the NBA. Vintage Jordans are big business. Air Jordans helped catapult Nike from being a running shoe brand to one of the biggest sporting goods company in the world.

Do you need Michael Jordan to be the next big thing? It doesn’t hurt, but making people feel like they are Michael Jordan when they “endorse” your products is a good start. What is the difference? Jordan was paid to wear shoes. If you don’t have $2.5 million to offer a superstar, simply valuing someone’s satisfaction and feedback about your product is a strong first step. Asking them to let others know about it is the second.

So who are the most eager “endorsers”? Here are just a few:

1.) Bloggers. If there is a subject to be blogged about, there is someone to blog about it. It helps to establish a relationship and understand a blogger before asking for a review. Find the blogs that you like and respect, begin to understand what makes that blogger tick, and then ask for a review. Signing up for a blogger’s RSS feed is a good way to start.

2.) Online magazines. You don’t have to go after the biggest ones, just go after the ones that would appeal to your customers. The web allows for so many niche sites, you can inevitably find some that want nothing more than to write about cool new products like yours.

3.) Social shoppers. There are dozens of shopping social networking sites that are completely based on user reviews. These reviewers want nothing more than to recommend hip products to other users. Do your products fit that bill? It cannot hurt to ask. Here are some of those sites:

http://www.stylehive.com
http://www.pronto.com

4.) Your repeat customers. These are the most likely candidates to “endorse” your products, since they’ve already chosen to do so. Do not be afraid to ask for referrals.

Offer customers and industry influencers an opportunity to endorse your products. It could take you from just good to good and big very quickly.

–Michelle Greer, Marketing Specialist
http://www.volusion.com

Extra credit: Michael Jordan was the third pick in the 1984 NBA Draft. Future Hall of Famer Hakeem Olajuwon was first. Who was the other man picked ahead of Jordan in the draft that year?

Technorati Tags: Social Shopping, Promote Products Online, StyleHive, Pronto, Market Products Online, Social Networking, Get Product Reviews, Product Review Site, Sell Online, Volusion

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Shane Selby at Front End Audio always liked audio equipment. He and his friend Warren Dent liked it so much that they slapped together a website and decided to run a small business out of a spare bedroom in his house. The two didn’t expect much from it–they were just having fun selling unique products online.

Five years later, Shane and Warren now sell 10,000 products, employ several full-time and part-time employees, run three websites and opened a brick-and-mortar store in Columbia, South Carolina. They quickly switched from using a website that the two quickly pieced together to Volusion’s online storefront. How did they go from casually selling audio equipment out of a spare bedroom to running a multi-faceted and successful business?

Shane’s solution was straight forward. “As we developed our business strategies, one thing was clear– customer service. As audio guys making our own purchases, we knew the retail market and simply asked ourselves, what we would want in a retailer? I mean, how many times can you call an online retailer to speak with some voice who could care less about you or the products before you say enough is enough? Our attitude was simple– create an online store where customers could call and be given the same level of service and attention that they would otherwise receive if they walked into a brick and mortar store, and they will come.”

The plan worked for Front End Audio. Customers started turning to them for advice and purchases while manufacturers and suppliers started to recognize Front End Audio as a legitimate retailer. Their product line quickly grew from a single product to several hundred. Within a year both Shane and Warren were running Front End Audio on a full-time basis.

What advice does Shane give to future online sellers? “Look ahead and make sure your eCommerce plans are based on where you want to be, not where you currently are. The last situation you want to be in is after spending thousands of hours developing your website and databases and you figure out it will not grow or adapt to your future business model or needs. The site is the backbone of your business so do the due diligence needed to make sure it will grow as you do.”

–Michelle Greer, Marketing Specialist
http://www.volusion.com

Technorati Tags: Front End Audio, Frontendaudio, hobby business, sell items online, sell online, start online business, start online store, volusion

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A nofollow attribute is: A.) A sign you slap on your kid’s back before they walk to school. B.) A fog of noxious aroma that follows a person who does not bathe. C.) A gadget James Bond uses to cloak his Aston Martin convertible as he narrowly escapes his nemeses. D.) An attribute assigned to a hyperlink to prevent backlink hungry spammers from benefitting from clogging blogs and forums with useless posts.

Unless it actually is scheduled to be in the next Bond movie, D is the only correct answer. A nofollow attribute is a concept created by Matt Cutts of Google and Jason Sheller of blogger.com in 2005 to prevent spammers from simply going into blogs and forums, leaving comments with links to their own sites, and expecting to get backlinks. Not all forums and blogs use this attribute, but it was strongly pushed when it came out.

How does this affect you as a merchant? If you are familiar with how search engine rankings work, you know that search engine optimization has much to do with the number and quality of sites that link back to yours. If you comment on other sites and leave a link to your store, if that blog or forum designates all links to be “nofollow”, your PageRank will not increase as a result of that target link. Will other users still be able to click on that link? Yes. Will it improve your search engine results? No.

How can you tell if a link to your site actually improves your search engine rankings by giving it “link juice?”
1.) If you right click a page to “View Page Source”, you can check to see if that hyperlink is accompanied by rel=”nofollow”.
2.) You can install the Firefox SEO plugin. It will highlight all nofollow links.

How effective is the nofollow attribute in preventing spam? This is up for dispute. Google highly recommends using the nofollow attribute to cut down on people piggybacking on your posts. Akismet, who actually creates spam filters, claims nofollow links do no such thing. Considering there are already software packages to mass produce comment spam, the majority of forums and blogs still use the nofollow attribute.

So why bother leaving comments or participating in forums? 1.) Nofollow links only apply to Google’s search engine and 2.) fortunately, there are other readers of blogs and forums besides search engine bots–people. Learn how to interact with current and potential customers by reading up on the social web.

–Michelle Greer, Marketing Specialist
http://www.volusion.com

Technorati Tags: NoFollow Attribute, NoFollow Tag, Link Juice, Off Page SEO, Offpage SEO, No Follow Attribute, NoFollow Definition, NoFollow, Volusion

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