Websites


Friday, February 3rd, 2012

Mobile Shopping

Is your website ready for the mobile consumer?
By Jeff Bennett

Take a moment and put yourself in Ms. Jones’s shoes. She just got off work and is riding home on the Los Angeles bus for the next 40 minutes. Making the most of her long commute, Ms. Jones hops on her smartphone and surfs the Web in search of the perfect sofa for her home.

Like one-third of all Americans, Ms. Jones uses her smartphone daily to navigate the Web for quality information on the products and services she plans to buy. Ms. Jones expects a user-friendly Web experience on her smartphone and she won’t hesitate to leave a mobile site that is inaccessible or slow. So as a retailer, ask yourself this: Does your mobile website give Ms. Jones a simple shopping experience? If it doesn’t, consider finding a Web development company that offers practical and accessible websites for the PC, smartphone and tablet.

What Does a Good Mobile Website Look Like for a Retailer?

First things first, an effective mobile site starts before Ms. Jones even lands on it. Since Ms. Jones generally Googles keywords, like ‘furniture’ or ‘sofa in Los Angeles’, your mobile site needs to show up in the top-20 results for Ms. Jones’s keyword search. This is accomplished through search engine optimization, and it includes quality copywriting with the repetition of furniture industry keywords and your geographic location, great product descriptions, website linking and a host of other programming and HTML attributes.

Once Ms. Jones finds your mobile site and clicks on it, it’s vital the site works on the major mobile operating systems. For instance, the mobile site needs to work on all Android and iPhone platforms since a majority of customers use these mobile operating systems—at the moment Blackberry is less important since the Blackberry is used mainly for business purposes, and as a retailer, you’ll notice fewer customers coming to your mobile site on a Blackberry.

As Ms. Jones peruses your mobile site, she’ll demand it performs similar to your actual website. For a mobile site to function similar to an actual website, it must load fast, its products must be easily searchable and they also must be categorized correctly (i.e. sofas in the sofa category, dining room tables in the dining room table category, etc.). Each click on a mobile site matters more since the screen is smaller than a PC’s screen and the load time of each page will be considerably longer. Therefore, if Ms. Jones can’t navigate through your mobile site or it loads slowly, she will leave in lieu of another retailer’s mobile site.

When Ms. Jones finds a product she likes on your site, she’ll want to share it via Facebook, Twitter, email or a text message. Because of this, it’s necessary the products on your mobile site have a share option to allow Ms. Jones to send her friends your big bargain with one click. Plus if you sell online, you may want to consider allowing Ms. Jones to shop on her smartphone.

Finally, it’s important to stay away from certain technologies on a mobile site. Applications such as Flash won’t work on iPhones and iPads and it can confuse Ms. Jones or she may miss important advertising elements if you use them.

Mobile websites are one more way Ms. Jones can find you. And if you’re not using the technology properly, you’re likely missing out on a massive demographic of shoppers waiting to buy your products and services.

This article was written by Jeff Bennett on behalf of Grey Suit Retail. Jeff Bennett is the Director of Client Relations for Grey Suit Retail, the furniture industry’s only SaaS platform that fully integrates a website, an ecommerce shopping cart, email marketing, traditional marketing, blogging, analytics, social media applications and now Craigslist in one simple yet powerful tool that gives you complete control of your online strategy. For more information on quality websites and mobile sites designed to help you sell more furniture, email Grey Suit Retail at sales@greysuitretail.com or call us at (800) 549-9206 ext. 7

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Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011

Showcasing Your Online Reputation

What Google says about your store will make you wealthy or leave your broke.

Over 81 percent of your prospects will Google you and make an emotional decision about doing business with you before they ever show up on your radar screen but after they respond to your advertising. Less than 20 percent of the 81 percent of the prospects that Google you will actually call you or land on your showroom floor. Even if you have positive online reviews, an easy to find website and a top listing in Google Maps, you will lose the bulk of your advertising respondents to Google Distraction Disorder (G.D.D.), never to be seen or heard from again.

My guess is that most furniture store owners and managers reading this, that have even a speck of an advertising budget, can instantly “feel” the truth of these statistics. Manufacturer’s often times support our advertising budgets and thus we can all be rest assured that they are looking at their retailer’s online reputation credit report. Services like Groupon®, Social Living® and Google Offers® use online reputation scores as the single most important qualifier for a new business member.

Your Online Reputation Credit Score
Ever asked your bank or lender to increase your flooring line? Yes you guessed it… They most likely are looking at your online reputation first and financials second. One of the single largest losses for capital lenders in any retail industry stems from retailers growing too fast. The problem is that five years ago if the retailer’s growth was fueled by marketing and sales practices that upset the public they rarely knew about it until hit their collections report.

Google has Become the X-ray Machine
Today a simple Google search for a furniture store’s name followed by the word “reviews” or “complaints” will tell a lender, a manufacturer, your prospects, the media along with your friends, neighbors and relatives everything they’d like to know about your business. The challenge with this reality is that usually a store’s Google footprint doesn’t reflect reality. A typical store’s Google footprint is either to boring or non-descript to keep the searcher engaged, is chalked with misleading, inaccurate or bogus information often placed there by competitors or rouge ex-employees, or just flat out non-existent.

Control Your Google… Control Your Income…
So now that we are painfully aware of the Google reality and we know that 70 percent++ of our advertising and marketing respondents are evaporating into thin air, what do we do about it? You must control the first three pages of Google. While this may sound like a lofty goal and an extra 100k out the window, you may be right but fear not. There are ways to control your Google on a shoe string budget and look better than your nearest competition when and where it counts. First let’s talk about what it means to own the first three pages of Google. What you are looking for is “Search Engine Saturation (SES)”, which means, “To own more positions within the first three pages of Google than any single competitor or reputation threat”.

Get a reputation monitoring system
You’ll want to invest in a program that allows you to monitor the conversation on the web about you and your competitors (Google alerts need not apply). Without one you are flying blind against the wind and with one you can get a bird’s eye view of your entire market area from 15ft back and 200ft up.*

The best content for Google, Facebook and YouTube
First you must have the ability to control an acceptable number of positions within the first three pages of Google and then you will need to decide what to put there. The best content in the world is always the voices of your satisfied customers. Whether we are talking about Google, YouTube your website, Facebook, Twitter, or your blog, happy customers telling the world that they love you trumps all other content hands down. Considering 75 percent of the buying public thinks that advertising is misleading, your satisfied customers digitally leveraged on the World Wide Web can become the ultimate leveling stick.

Doing right simply isn’t enough
Your good works and excellent customer service is no longer enough. Once upon a time a business’ reputation was won by doing business right and depending on your satisfied customers to tell the world. Today our customers are far too busy intercepting emails, text messages and phone calls to market your business or respond whole-heartedly to solid recommendations from friends and family. Even when we do pay attention to recommendations of a business, we Google them before we call them. So in the end the only way to garner the level of R.O.I. you deserve from running a great business is to go viral.

Going viral is what happens when word of mouth becomes digitally leveraged
To succeed in the repeat, referral and word of mouth business model you MUST give your satisfied customers a powerful voice and distribute that voice on their behalf to hundreds, if not thousands, of strategic online destinations across the web. In turn these distribution points go viral, get picked up by search engines (providing that they are optimized) and suddenly you find yourself in control of the first three pages of Google.

You will also find yourself selling more furniture, retaining more customers, generating more referrals and producing more traffic with less advertising. As a side note we all know that a salesperson cannot be effective on the showroom floor or on the phone if he or she is unable to position themselves as the expert in the mind of the prospect. Own the first three pages of Google and make sure that your prospects can SEE your customer testimonials front and center without having to click from Google to some other site first and your prospects will show your sales people a renewed attitude.

What about 3rd party review sites like Yelp, CitySearch and so on?
Having good reviews on a review site pales in comparison to owning the first three pages of Google. The reason being is that these sites get over 90 percent of their traffic from people that Google your name or your name coupled with words like reviews and complaints. In other words third party review sites exist because Google and other search engines exist. With that said, they are still important and the key to managing them can be summed up in two words “Strategic Management”.
Remember that you are only as good as your last review but to send your customers blindly to these sites without hand selecting them first is a receipt for disaster. The more reviews third party review sites receive the more they strangle hold your business name in Google. So know who your best customers are and then guide them towards third party review sites in a coffee drip fashion. Build slowly, methodically and sparingly and you will have five star reviews a great online profile without sacrificing your Google home page to do it.

The secret to using Facebook
Recently our company invented a way to make satisfied customers magically post positive comments on a company’s Facebook page and then link those comments to an auto-generated testimonial site complete with the business’s look, feel and logo. What we thought was going to be cute value add to our service has turned out to be one of the most effective online marketing tactics in existence (wish we could brag but in reality it was an afterthought). As such we have learned a secret, which is that happy customer comments and Facebook is a recipe for instant social media success. Place you best customer comments on your Facebook and then link them back to well designed testimonial page and just watch what happens.

The Ultimate Reputation Accelerator
In conclusion there are three facets to creating a stellar online reputation that will garner instant profits. Control the first three pages of Google, your online review sites, create a dynamic and robust testimonial site and add your satisfied customer comments to your Facebook and Twitter like your favorite hot sauce and you will find business life gets much easier.

Oh and one more thing! Create a credible and classy web page where customers can write a review about your business and give you their feedback directly. The idea is to get to them before they go public on you (by then it’s usually too late) and you will suddenly be in control of your customer satisfaction index.

Here is to you, your online reputation and your selling success!

Eddie Coleman, is CEO of Reputation Accelerator LLC, an online reputation management company. [*Good news! If you are a member of the WHFA, you already have a reputation management company paid for that is sitting and waiting for you to log into. It may get bored sitting on the shelf waiting for you so if you haven’t scooped it up already, you will want to do so. Simply contact Jeff Carrier at (877) 874-9737 ext #121 let him know what email address you would like your access link sent to. For more information, visit http://ReputationAccelerator.com]

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Thursday, July 14th, 2011

Know Your Online Audience to Improve Marketing Success

When it comes to shopping, today’s consumers are flocking to their digital devices before heading to the mall or their favorite retailer. Recent studies have shown that 90 percent of shoppers browse and compare online first. Given that so many shoppers are faceless, how do retailers get to know who they are?

In this first of four quarterly columns, we’ll provide some guidance in getting to know your online customers, and why this step is so important to your marketing success.

Creating Customer Profiles
It’s easy to build a profile of your in-store customers. Simply observe who walks through the door, noting gender and approximate age. Pay attention to how couples behave for clues about the decision maker for the purchase. Engage your customers in conversation to learn about the products they need or want as well as any constraints, from style, color and size to delivery times, budget and financing.

With websites now serving as webstores, retailers are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to creating customer profiles. Fortunately, some great tools are available to help retailers understand their online customers. Companies that host your webstore can provide a wealth of reports about site traffic. And, if you work with a company that manages your online marketing efforts, you may have additional tools at your disposal.

One of the most valuable of these tools is online data, such as what was recently unveiled in the Banner Retail Index: A Report on Current Trends in the Retail Furniture Industry. Data to support the index was collected from Jan. 9, 2010 through Jan. 3, 2011 from more than 126 individual furniture dealers across the nation for which Banner Marketing creates, maintains and tracks websites.

Tracking Online Audiences
Through specific applications that monitor webstore activity, you can access information about your online shoppers and their peak traffic times. You can learn which are your   busiest days, weeks or months online. With that knowledge, you can study which promotions and offers were running at the time and file them away for future use.
At the same time, retailers can learn which periods of time experienced lulls in online activity. By examining which marketing elements were used at the time, it may be possible to pinpoint which strategies don’t resonate with customers and are wasting valuable marketing resources.

By tracking online traffic over time, it’s possible to get a sense of cyclical ups and downs. For instance, a comprehensive 360-day look at 126 clients in the Banner Retail Index showed distinct surges in activity before the winter holidays and right after. Our index shows consistent spikes of activity at New Years which shows that shoppers are looking to take advantage of January bargains. This is important for retailers to realize so that they will feature corresponding products in January advertising.

If you anticipate a slow period ahead, consider running a promotion that historically has resulted in higher traffic and sales to help cushion the dip.

Unique Visits and Time Online
While loyal customers are critical to maintaining your business, it’s important to attract new customers to keep growing. With site traffic tools, you can learn if you are attracting unique visitors and when. For the 126 clients in the Banner Retail Index, the highest point of unique visits in a 360-day period occurred at the New Year. Using that knowledge, retailers can take steps to enhance their webstores and offers to make a strong impression that will encourage return customers.

It’s also possible to see how much time shoppers spend on your site. If online shoppers move on quickly, ask some questions: Is the site engaging? Does it look like your store? Does it have your latest merchandise? Are the current offers tailored to your target audience?

Pay close attention to what your online shoppers are telling you. Taking note and making some minor changes to accommodate your audience can help you get the most from your marketing dollars. Next time, we’ll consider how to tailor promotional and coupon offers to your shoppers to further maximize the effectiveness of your website as a marketing tool.

Shirley Griffiths, the vice president of sales, is one of Banner Marketing’s longest tenured employees with 11 years of experience with the integrated marketing company. Griffiths is responsible for overseeing Banner’s sales, creative and operations departments. She can be reached at shirleyg@bannerretail.com or (800) 843-9271.

Banner Marketing helps businesses grow through integrated marketing; a combination of digital and traditional marketing strategies that reach a company’s key consumers and inspire them to buy.   In business since 1983 and based in Spokane, Wash., Banner develops creative content to support its client’s brands—from traditional circulars to cutting edge websites—keeps that content up-to-date, tracks program results, and provides reporting to refine and adjust strategies for even greater success.

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Friday, July 8th, 2011

Utilizing SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Used to be, the company with the biggest Yellow Page ad won the local search wars. Businesses vied for newspaper ads above the fold, billboards at prime intersections, drive time radio and prime time TV.

Now, when print media is experiencing cutbacks, layoffs and declining readership, it comes as no surprise that businesses are turning to online marketing alternatives to reach customers. Where many print media companies require a minimum commitment to display an ad over so many issues, website space and domain names can be purchased for low annual fees. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising on sites like Google and Yahoo allows site owners to set their own budgets and targets when setting up campaigns.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the new normal for businesses looking to compete in the 21st century. Once a niche product, SEO will continue to gain ground into the near future. According to the “Search Marketing Trends: Back to Basics” report from eMarketer, $1.5 billion was spent on Search Engine Optimization in 2008 (see table on page 11) — a number that is expected to increase 153 percent to $3.8 billion by 2013. (Source: Brafton.com)

Understanding these key ideas and terms will help you make the best decisions for your search marketing strategy:

Title – Each page on your website is coded with a unique title that is different than the page name. Depending on your Internet browser, check the name of the tab or the command bar to see if your site optimizes titles. The title should contain carefully chosen keywords, because this is the first thing search engine web crawlers, bots and spiders read (these are automated computer programs that methodically browse the web gathering information). Your titles should be no longer than 100 characters; however, Google will truncate the title if it is more than 60 characters including spaces.

Example: “Home Furnishings, Home Décor, Outdoor Furniture & Modern Furniture” or “Bedroom Furniture, Dining Room Furniture, and more quality Home and Office Furniture”

Keywords – Keywords and phrases drive SEO campaigns and fuel your site’s success. Keywords are a tricky business though so take your time, research your keywords and make sure you select keywords that are in your niche. Often amateurs will not take much time in this area, simply plugging in obvious words. For example, suppose a small store called ABC Furniture automatically chooses the key phrase “furniture store.” They’ve unwittingly gone to head with major players who are throwing big bucks at the “furniture store” key phrase. While not impossible, it will be very difficult for ABC Furniture to outspend these players and reach the first page of the major search engine search results. Unique niche phrases can yield effective results and cost pennies by comparison.

Example: furniture store, sofas, dining room furniture, mattresses or “pillow-top mattresses Oakland CA” or “leather rocker recliners Oakland CA”

Body text – The main content of your website should also contain keywords. The keywords should be used naturally to avoid being pegged as a “keyword spammer,” someone who uses the word “sofa” 48 times on their living room page in attempt move their site up in the rankings. This will get you booted from Google and other search engines, who carefully measure your “keyword density.” Too low, and you may not achieve optimum results. Too high, and you’re considered a spammer. Google will only tolerate a 2 percent keyword density; Yahoo and MSN are considerably higher at around 5 percent. Qualified web designers who use qualified and trained copywriters can help creatively optimize your keyword density, unlike hackers who jam nonsensical words into your body and footer.

Example: Central Oklahoma Furniture. ABC Furniture is a family company. Browse our selection of Central Oklahoma Furniture or visit our store to sample Central Oklahoma Furniture.You deserve Central Oklahoma Furniture from ABC Furniture! or From San Antonio to Austin, ABC Furniture delivers beauty, quality and value to your home.

Heading Tags – Each page on your website has a heading tag that should also contain your keywords. Ideally, the tag should be right up there at the beginning of the page, as close as possible to the top of the page.

Example: “Living Room Furniture” or “Directions to ABC Furniture”

URL – Consider purchasing a domain name containing your keywords. If ABC Furniture sells solid wood furniture in Columbus, Ohio, they should consider columbussolidwoodfurniture.com. Search engines use the domain name as an SEO qualifier so keep that in mind when choosing your domain names. With a little savvy programming, keywords can also be incorporated into the URL of each page. If your keywords for a particular page are solid wood bedroom, the page name should be www.abcfurniture.com/solid-wood-bedroom.

Example: www.abcsolidwoodfurniture.com/bedroom-furniture or www.phoenixsolidwoodfurniture.com

Links – Make sure there are no broken links in your site. Search engine algorithms consider broken links as incomplete, so the overall rating of the site is affected. Restrain yourself from the traditional “click here” link. When web bots, crawlers and spiders come across a “click here” link, they will associate the destination page with the words “click here” instead of your valuable keywords. Instead, optimize your site’s searchability and usability with full-sentence links that use verbs to direct the user what to do.

Example: “Click here for a price quote.” or “Explore your furniture design possibilities.”

Inbound links – Links from other websites are supreme to the rating of your site. Inbound links are like personal referrals, so these links should be from sites that are of high quality. The higher the rating of the sites that link to yours, the higher search engines will rate you. Getting inbound links is the hardest part of SEO by far. You can pay for quantity, but quality is often compromised if you do so.

Example:  www.popularlocalblog.com/abc-furniture-is-the-place-to-shop or www.arketplacespammer.com/abc-furniture

Beyond technology, here are three principles to remember when planning and executing an SEO campaign:

Flow – Remember, the reason you are trying to get your website to the top of the first page is because you want people to come to the site and look at your content, then buy what you’re selling. Don’t get so involved in SEO that you junk-up your site with links and keywords beyond the user’s ability to read the page. Balance your site design between bots and people. Don’t lose your users for the sale of search engines. Remember, bounce rate (the time your users spend on your site) is a part of SEO as well.

Patience is a virtue – SEO campaigns are not for instant gratification junkies. Give your site about three months to sink in. Check your analytics, watch to see how the site is doing and adjust accordingly. Keep your efforts simple; make a minimal amount of changes so that you can accurately see what works and what doesn’t.

Updates – Stay on top of things. Keep an eye on the search engine guidelines to ensure your SEO is always up-to-date. The last thing you want is for your long sought efforts to slowly wash down the drain as technology advances.

Taking even a fraction of the money from your radio or print budget and setting it aside for online strategies can have a profound effect on the visibility of your business. Be sure to research the best SEO companies to determine what services are offered and which company is suited to meet your needs.

By applying different techniques used to achieve organic search results, you’ll find online marketing to be a cost-effective, simple solution to promoting your business and products.

David Lively has over 20 year’s hands-on experience in the home furnishings industry. Twice named to Furniture Today’s “Beyond the Top 100” list of independent retailers and 1997 “Ohio Retailer of the Year,” David’s wisdom was won on the front lines and his battle scars have given him compassion for counseling today’s retail warrior. David is on the forefront of a new phenomenon that will soon rock the home furnishings industry: the transfer of authority, responsibility and wealth from one generation to the next. Four out of five family-owned furniture stores are still led by their founder, and 40 percent of them will change hands in the next five years. David has developed a proprietary and unparalleled system for helping identify goals, strengths and opportunities during this crucial time. You can reach David at (740) 415-3192, david@thelivelymerchant.com or visit www.thelivelymerchant.com.

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Friday, June 24th, 2011

The Power of eCommerce When Selling to the Hot Buyers

Do you have a successful business and want to ensure its future success? How secure are you right now? Maybe you think your brick and mortar store is all you need. Think again. Times are changing and you’ve got to follow the trends of today to survive in tomorrow’s marketplace.

Many retailers are changing their eCommerce selling strategies to entice today’s key purchasers: the ‘Under 45s’, Generation X and Y (a.k.a. the Millennials). Keep reading as we outline the top features required in order for your eCommerce solution to gain the attention of the Generation X and Y buyers, while also being a revenue generator. This article provides insight as to how you can increase selling power and market to the younger generations with your online presence.

Sure, you have a website, but are you selling online? If you are not, you are missing out and here’s why. The younger generations have the buying power now and the first place they usually look, before even stepping foot into a store, is on the Web. Technology is a part of their daily lives; it defines these generations. Without an online retail presence, you’re losing valuable customers.

The Importance of a Retail Website is Not to be Ignored
Rich Mitton, director of IT, at Mathis Brothers Furniture recently stated, “There are many customers, especially those in California, who don’t necessarily want to drive to a store. They prefer buying from our site. If they have visited one of our stores, had the Mathis Brothers’ experience and purchased furniture, then they are even more comfortable adding those extra pieces by just buying them online. eCommerce has been a great improvement to our overall business. It’s an evolution.”

Today, it’s so easy to search for a company, business, retail store, etc. on the web and find exactly what you are looking for quickly. The competition is out there creating a brand and making a name for themselves, and making money doing it.

A television commercial for Verizon that is currently running in the New York tri-state area features a local retailer who searches for her company name on the Web and is surprised to find that it’s not listed. This is because she doesn’t have a website or any other presence on the Internet. The Verizon rep tells her, “If you don’t have a website, you’re basically invisible.” He then shows her how to create a small business website to promote her business. In the end the setup was easy, and she is happily branding her retail business via the Web.

Who are the Hot Buyers?
Take a look into the lives of your hot buyers; the statistics may surprise you.
Generation X makes up 75 percent the size of the Baby Boom generation, and just 68 percent the size of Generation Y, according to the Retail & Consumer Insights report. Born 1966-1976, they are entering their peak earning years. This generation is highly-educated and uses caution when purchasing. They are spending money on big ticket items for their children entering college.

They are buying practical products, such as home improvement equipment, furnishings, children’s needs, sports and leisure items.

Generation Y, also known as the Millennials, or the Echo Boomers, are the largest generation compared with the Baby Boomers and Generation X. Born 1977-1994, they are 120 percent the size of the Baby Boom generation, and 170 percent of Generation X. They make up 85 million of the country’s population (Retail & Consumer Insights). This generation was born into technology and image matters to them. They are the primary influencers of all generations because they have information at their fingertips via mobile phones, iPads, YouTube, etc. Constant technological advances are normal to these generations. They are always ready to seize the next big item, the latest trends and to make an upgrade.

Why Do They Buy?
Retailers should understand the needs of their consumers and adapt to each of the different generations. Know how to target these consumers and gain their trust. While the Baby Boomer generation responds to newspaper, radio, print, and TV ads, Generations X & Y respond to mobile technology and social media.

Generation X wants you to help them, not sell them. They are looking to gain more for their money. If you provide evidence as to why your product will benefit them more than your competitor’s and prove it, they will buy. Post testimonials of your products online. These buyers like to research first. The more information you have online, the better the opportunity for you to make sales. Turn your website into a retail atmosphere. Offer easy access to your products and services.

Generation Y consumers are connected to technology. They shop together in groups. They respond to word of mouth. You have to go where they are: Facebook, Twitter, mobile, school, etc. They care about communities. Be a part of their lifestyle. Build loyalty. Enable customers to use their mobile phones to obtain information on a product, download coupons, discounts, etc.

Come on and Get Social
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube—it’s the Social Network, so get on board. You have to embrace the trends and go where the buyers of today are spending their time. According to www.laptopmag.com, Twitter has gained over 190 million users since its inception in 2006. The average Facebook user has 130 friends, and there are more than 500 million active users today. The average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups, and events. Imagine what kind of marketing impact this can have for your website and your brand.

Create website appeal by making it easy for them to click and buy. Performance matters when it comes to your website. Make your site easy to manage and browse. Become interactive by adding virtual screen options, such as a room planner where one can select a product and preview it in a room for size, color and style. Enable customers to “check-in” with Facebook Places through their mobile phones and reward them for “advertising” your company. Their network of friends can instantly see the places they’ve checked into, triggering more potential customers to notice your brand and strike an interest in visiting your store.
Start a following on Twitter with tweets that grab the consumer’s attention. Twitter runs in real-time, so your response is instantaneous. Offer a one day sale and highlight deals in your tweets. Focus on your local community of followers. You can offer specials to those who follow you on Twitter and in turn, convince them to buy online or in the store.

Keep them engaged and coming back. Give them coupons; offer discounts for referring or sharing with a friend, or donate a portion of their purchase to charity. Create loyalty programs so that they return and invite their friends to shop your store. Social media is huge for advertising in retail.

Post Pricing on Your Products
It’s an instant turn-off to buyers if you don’t have price tags for your products on your website. You are automatically running the risk of losing the potential buyer’s trust. What do you have to hide? Your competitors are listing price tags. If your products are expensive, but well worth the quality, give them the opportunity to shop. If you prove your quality and offer the essential reasons they should purchase your products, young consumers will buy.

“eCommerce was a big move for us because we’ve always been so guarded in protecting our retail pricing. Ironically enough, we found out that people don’t like to look at websites without pricing. So we had to look at the hard facts and make a change for our customers. The younger generations (X & Y) are shopping online and that’s how it’s going to be in the future,” stated Nestor Reyes, Director of IT at City Mattress.

Why is My Website Important to Them?
Consumers feel secure with your business when they can find you on the web. Having a website places your business a step above the competition. Offering the option to buy online makes life easier, and saves the shopper time.

Reyes continues, “Having an online store is a lot less expensive than opening an actual retail store location. It’s a great compliment to our store network because people like to research online first. Then they will come to our store with papers in hand ready to purchase. It also makes it easy to manage products. In store, we update our pricing and it populates directly into our website. We don’t have to update pricing in separate locations. It’s the wave of the future.”
Other smart retailers have jumped on board the eCommerce platform because they know that it can only increase their branding, sales and staying power. The Consumer Behavior Report of Online Purchasing Trends by Generation reported that 69 percent of consumers purchase online as much as they do in store. Also noted, 96 percent of online consumers are confident that the site is safe and secure for purchasing. If your website is suspicious, slow, or quirky, they won’t buy. Web performance can be a killer. If your online retail site is not up to speed, Gen X & Y are not going to stay. They want it to be easy and fast. They are multi-taskers.

Top 100 retailer American Furniture Warehouse has been an innovator with their eCommerce website. They understand that reaching out to the key buyers is important, and they’ve created a website that is consumer friendly. “We’ve been using an eCommerce platform for years. It’s nice to have real-time inventory and order information on our website, and it’s seamless to our store operations. Online sales are really growing for us as we’re projecting record sales online this year,” confirmed Jake Jabs, owner of American Furniture Warehouse.

Why My Website is Important to Them

  • 18 percent of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
  • 90 percent skip commercials via TiVo or DVR
  • 78 percent consumers trust peer recommendations
  • 14 percent trust ads

The Future is Now
What’s next is already here. Interactive displays in store and online are sweeping the consumers off their feet. This technology offers the ability to use touch screens to find products, view them room by room, share the look with family or friends, and even check into the store online for a coupon.

Are you convinced yet? Sure you’d like to keep marketing to the Baby Boom Generation. They respond to TV commercials, newspaper and print ads. But the up-and-coming buyers do not. They skip TV commercials on recorded shows, using TiVo and DVR technology. They view content on iPhones, iPads, and the web. Gen X is emailing and instant messaging, while Gen Y is texting, blogging, tweeting and so on… The best way to succeed is to stay at the forefront of technology, by connecting and interacting with these active buyers.

Michelle Beres Skyta has over 10 years of industry experience with Advertising and PR. She has been with STORIS Management Systems, a leading retail software solutions and services provider for Big Ticket retailers, for the past five years. Currently, a Marketing Communications Specialist, Michelle is a Millennial embracing new technology and social advancements. She holds a degree in Mass Communications and Media from Ramapo College of New Jersey. For additional information please contact Michelle at (888) 478-6747 x286 or mlb@storis.com.

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Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

Web Simple

By Leslie Carothers, The Kaleidoscope Partnership

Definitions
Before you know where you’re going, you have to know where you’ve been. How many times have we heard this tired cliché?

What is happening in our industry is that many people know where they’ve been, and they used to understand the language in which the question “where are you going” was couched, but, today, the vocabulary — the literal language — being used to explain the world of technology is foreign to many of our industry’s business leaders.

In addition, our business is a legacy business. As a result, the people with the financial capital to invest in new ideas — the parents — don’t understand the vocabulary and are uncomfortable releasing scarce financial resources into an unknown realm and the people with the intellectual capital regarding technology and the Internet — the next generation — do not have the experience of their parents so they can’t put the benefits of technology into a context their parents can understand.

The result of this lack of communication: A void. No movement.

The generations cannot bridge the “language and context” gap and therefore strategies that could easily help retailers make money — even in these tough times — are not being executed because very few people with the financial wherewithal to make them happen even know they exist.

To be fair, many furniture retailers in the West do understand the web, and are driving revenue, engaging with their consumer and perfecting multi-channel marketing. To those of you who fit this description, congratulations — you are the leaders and the eventual winners — and you can stop reading now! For anyone else, my column over these next four months will help create a context for you and give you the language to use so you can ask intelligent questions and feel comfortable making the resource investments necessary to stay competitive in 2009 and beyond.

Backstory first
In 2002, I started my company, The Kaleidoscope Partnership. We are a social networking consulting firm and teach all industry segments how to use web-based new media strategies to drive sales. We provide online reputation management consulting, e-conversion sales training, e-content writing and website analytics consulting, too.

Over these past six years, I have also done a lot of writing and speaking on behalf of our industry with the intent of educating my readers and listeners to best practices. Earlier this year, WHFA asked me if I would speak in Maui next year to help their members understand the web and how to use it to drive sales and foster engagement with their consumers. We decided to call the seminar “Web Simple.”

So, for the next four months, I will write a column here to help all of you understand the steps involved in making money off of the Internet. There is a logical sequence. When you attend the seminar in Maui, I will present case studies, detailed visual presentations of the concepts I will write about in this column and a very interactive discussion will take place so your questions can get answered specifically vs. generally and you can leave the conference knowing that you can make money from the ideas gleaned from having attended my seminar.

To start: Vocabulary
In order to make the web simple, it’s important to make sure that everyone understands the definitions of the Internet language. You can do this on your own by going to Google and looking up: www.netlingo.com. This is a dictionary. You will need to go letter by letter to see what things mean, but if you already have heard of a word like “meta tags” but aren’t quite sure of what they are, what they do or why they’re important in getting your site indexed and found by consumers, then this site will explain it to you clearly.

Here is the biggest single mistake I see retailers making when looking at a web page: Understanding the layout of a search engine page. Let’s say you type, “furniture store San Diego” into Google. Those words, by the way, are called “keywords” which are simply the words your potential customers are typing into Google to search for what they are interested in finding. Don’t forget — the same consumer can type in many different keywords over a period of time depending on where they are in their buying process.

So, now Google “returns” to your computer a page of results.

Here’s how it works
On the left hand side of the page are the organic or natural search results. You cannot buy these.

Many times, there will be, still on the left, two or three search results that are on top of the organic/natural results. They will be in a light colored box. These are called sponsored links and are labeled as such. You can buy these.

Down the right hand side of the page is another column of sponsored links. You can buy these, too.

Here’s why knowing this matters: Consumers, about 80 percent of the time, only look at the organic links. It is imperative to be near the top of the first page of Google for your main “keywords” in organic search results. If you’re not, the chances of consumers even knowing you exist are very close to zero unless they find you through an offline resource.

How do you get near or at the top of organic search rankings? It’s very hard to do. The process of trying to make this happen is called search engine optimization or SEO for short. There are no guarantees, but some people are very skilled at it and are worth their weight in gold if they can get your website to those top spots.

You have to be where your customers are and they are on the web doing their research. For instance, let’s say your best product category is contemporary sofas. If I’m your customer, and I type in “contemporary sofa Sacramento” can I find your company’s website in organic search results?

If the answer is yes, excellent. If the answer is no, you have a problem. You are invisible to your consumers on the information superhighway. SEO is your answer.

In my next column, I will expand upon the most important element of making money with your website: getting found by your potential consumers when they’re searching for your company’s products.

The Kaleidoscope Partnership is a new media consulting firm specializing in providing retailers, manufacturers and suppliers in the home industries with the tools they need to execute social networking, online reputation management, e-conversion and analytics sales and marketing strategies. Principal Leslie Carothers has been in the home furnishings business for 26 years and has a deep knowledge of all stakeholders-especially the furniture consumer. Her goal is to show home industries executives how to grow top line revenue and cut, permanently, bottom line operating expenses through effectively engaging the online consumer. For more information, please see her profile on www.linkedin.com/in/lesliecarothers, visit her company page on Facebook at The Kaleidoscope Partnership, follow her on twitter at tkpleslie, visit her website at http://www.tkpartnership.com/

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