Today’s Volusion blog post begins our series on the emerging trend of Word of Mouth Marketing (WOM). The goal of WOM is to encourage others to talk about your online business and its products. Keep reading to learn more about different types of WOM and basic elements to get started with your strategy.

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I continuously receive requests to provide more research and advice on how to leverage social media for online business owners. And why not? This is one of the most powerful and business-altering developments of our time.

So while gathering new findings and information, I ran into an interesting fact from the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association: 41.4% of social media users start an online search after a face-to-face conversation. Thus, while social media may be a great tool, the end goal is to get people talking about your business to others.

This idea is often coined as buzz marketing, but it really fits under the larger umbrella of Word of Mouth Marketing (WOM). The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) has released a useful report that nicely breaks down the term:

• Word of Mouth: The act of consumers providing information to other consumers.

• Word of Mouth Marketing: Giving people a reason to talk about your products and services, and making it easier for that conversation to take place. It is the art and science of building active, mutually beneficial consumer-to-consumer and consumer-to-marketer communications.

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In other words, you want to provide reasons for others to talk about your online store through relationship building. Once you get people talking, others are more likely to begin an online search for your brand. And once they find you, you’re on your way to an easy conversion. Simple, right?

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There are several tactics that can be used to spark conversations via word of mouth. Here are some of the most well-known: (more…)

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Today’s Volusion blog post discusses how you can use Twitter to help your search engine presence. You’ll receive information on how search engines rank tweets and best practices in optimizing your Twitter account for search engine success. Keep reading to learn more.

With the latest partnership announcement between Twitter and Yahoo!, the online community is in a flurry on how to take advantage of the social channel’s search engine potential. As you may know, Google and Bing have forged partnerships to include tweets in their search results, both branded and keyword oriented. In other words, people can find your Tweets when doing a basic search, so make sure you’re giving them something worth clicking.

Of course, there’s always a cloud of mystery around optimizing content to appease the almighty algorithms of search engines. So how can your online business take a max of 140 characters and turn it into SEO bait? First you need to have a Twitter account. Then you need to take a look into your Twitter strategy. Take a look at a few basic tips from a great Mashable article to get started:

• Choose a good handle (handle = username). Make sure it’s short, simple and helps define your business. Our handle is “volusion” – pretty straightforward.
• Spend some time on your bio. You actually receive 160 characters instead of 140 for your profile’s bio. Define your business here and be sure to use critical keywords.
• Write keyword rich tweets. If search engines are searching for keywords and your tweets will show up in search results…you get the idea.

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That makes sense, but it’s fairly basic, right? Luckily we’ve received word from a real-time search expert at Google on how the powerhouse engine ranks tweets. It’s pretty rare that we learn algorithm information directly from the source, so pay close attention: (more…)

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Come visit us at booth #71324.

We’re here to build your ecommerce future!

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Having an online store is like the timeless black dress – it’s a simple, yet powerful staple of any wardrobe. Taking your fashions to the Web is the easiest and most effective way to reach more customers, faster. So just like that perfect outfit, you’ll quickly discover that online success never goes out of style.

Go ahead and schedule a personal consultation with one of our friendly consultants here. Or, simply shoot us an email at sales@volusion.com with questions.

Want a sneak peek into what our award-winning ecommerce software can offer your business? Take a glimpse into our free trial.

And when you’re ready to open shop, use coupon code VTRADESHOW for FREE setup on your new store.

This time, what happens in Vegas doesn’t have to stay there. In fact, it could reach millions of online shoppers. Happy selling!

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Today’s Volusion blog post discusses the concept of a sitemap – a file that helps customers and search engines better navigate your site. You’ll learn why sitemaps are important, discover the various types and see how to create and submit your sitemap to major search engines.

The mystery of getting your online store noticed by search engines has grown into a full-blown profession with thousands of experts working to optimize websites for search. We’ve written several articles on the topic and there is a plethora of information on ways to climb the rankings. But despite all of the advanced practices and billions of dollars spent worldwide, there is one simple (and free) tactic your business can use to achieve quick results – submit your sitemap to search engines.

Now we’re all ears, right? But what exactly is a sitemap? In essence, a traditional sitemap is pretty self explanatory – it’s a map of your site that shows the overall structure, sections and links of your site, all on one page. We call this a traditional sitemap because it is truly intended for your customers to use to navigate your site more easily. There is another type of sitemap, a robots.txt file. Although not technically a sitemap by definition, this robots.txt file is considered to be a sitemap specifically for search engines. Take a look at the major differences here:

There are several benefits of creating and submitting your sitemap – so many that it’s become a default standard for all search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Here’s just a few of them: (more…)

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In today’s Volusion blog post, we’ll discuss how to build an effective online customer survey. You’ll learn a simple game plan to get started and discover various tips and tricks to ensure better information collection. Receiving customer feedback from online surveys is helpful in framing your success – you can learn more about your online store while increasing customer satisfaction.

Last night I received an email from my car dealership asking for thoughts from my last maintenance visit. The subject line screamed at me “YOUR FEEDBACK IS IMPORTANT!” After nervously blinking a few times, I cautiously opened the message to find a laundry list of questions, all based on a scale of 1-10 and requesting my written thoughts. After answering question #24, “What did you think of the selection of motor oils and our recommendation for your vehicle?” I replied, “I HATE THESE QUESTIONS” and submitted the survey unfinished. Not only had they taken too much of my time when I was getting my car fixed, now they were demanding my time for ridiculous questions.

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The moral of the story? Put some thought into your online customer surveys.

Here’s a quick game plan on how to get started, execute and follow through:

Rule #1: Have a game plan on how to get started
Repetitive, yes, but like any project you need to have an idea of what you’re trying to achieve, how you’re going to achieve it, and what to do with the results. First, decide what your objective is – what nugget of information are you looking for? How are you going to deliver the survey? (You can use free tools like SurveyMonkey or SurveyGizmo.) How long is the survey open for? Are you going to offer an incentive? (more…)

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