Conference Buddies

David Hubbard’s Best of Miva Merchant – Miva Merchant 2009

Speaker: David Hubbard is the one of the owners of Hostasaurus and one of the foremost experts on using Miva Merchant and third party modules. David will walk you through his favorite modules, what they do and the impact they have on your online business. He’ll also show you pitfalls to avoid and provide you a list of things to do to make your store run great.

Conference Notes:

Emporium Plus – Tool Kit = Extends Miva Merchant with additional features/tools ($30).
Example:

show partial product description that links to the full description

LATU – Wow Wow Widgets = Define a widget (i.e. Daily special)
Example:

Category Mode in Template Mode you can insert widget code (to insert daily specials)
Site Seal Code since you might display it in the various places
You can easily activate/deactive in one place

Sebenza – Category Page Templates = Helps in page layout design

Power Search – Emporium Plus = Can allow to search manuf field

Mini Basket – Emporium Plus = Show basket contents

ADS – ImageXtra = Additional Image Features for Multiple Image Views

Sebenza – Ultimate Coupons = Coupon Module (add free product without others to see, free shipping, discount before checkout, etc.)

UltraBatch from TruXoft for better batch processing but not avaible for MM5

Misc:

Mail Manager to customize email

Note: Emporium Plus (if you have more than one of his modules you can skip re-installing same files i.e. logging module).

If you turn SEO friendly option on:

SEO friendly URL code
Change string in Templates: Category, Page, and Search Results Template
Must change in all places

Search Engine Optimization 201 – Miva Merchant 2009
Speaker: Mark Simon, Miva Merchant

Where on miva to put SEO?

Overview:

• First complete your keyword research
• Identify page for each keyword
• Focus on one keyword phrase per page
• Where to put keyword on your page
• Domain considerations
• Adhering to standards
• Avoiding penalties

Keyword Placement:

• Meta tags – Title, Desc, Keywords
• Header tags – H1 to H6
• URLs & Filenames
• Content – Text on the page (CSS content before image. 400 words min.)
• Links to the page from other pages on your site
• Links to the page from other sites (deep linking)
• Links to other sites
• Alt tags (alt and title tag on images, title tag on links, used for accessibility)

YellowTee.com examples:

1. <title>&mvt:store:name:; &mvt:product:name;</title>
2. <title>&mvt:product:name; - &mvt:store:name;</title>
3. <title>&mvt:product:name; - Custom Catchy Title With Keywords</title>

Have product name first then catchy title with keywords.
Use Miva code to dynamically pull in category and product names for keywords
#3 will render the product name and keywords into the product page title.

Use hyphen, then underscore, bar/pipe, but avoid commas in title tag (harder to read and screws things up)

Similar code for H1 Tags too

Miva:

Product Code & Category Code = If possible (if it doesn’t break any of your business practices) put in keyword (i.e. corporate-golf-tees). 50 character limit.

In Miva Admin Interface:

To create SEO friendly links in Miva Merchant: Global Settings -> Domain Settings -> SEO settings

Domain Considerations:

• WHOIS information: Domain age, expiration (at least 2 to 3 years out), owner, IP
• Sitemap – HTML and XML sitemap
• Custom 404 page – Helps people robots find your site from bad links (link
• Who else is on your IP and IP block

Evaluating Your Site – Standards

• Is your site accessible & crawlable?
• Are you subject to duplicate content?
• Are you a good neighbor?

Avoiding the Penalty Box

• Nobody Likes Spam – Even the Search Engines
• Keyword Stuffing
• Multiple title tags, meta tags, h1 tags (use only 1 h1 tag)
• Hidden content & invisible text (don’t use invisible text)
• Cloaking, Redirection (don’t fool or spoof the user)
• Large spike in links

Resources:

• Google Webmaster Tools
• Yahoo! Site Explorer Tools
• Live Webmaster Tools
• Whois.DomainTools.com
• Sitemappro.com
• Ranksense.com
• SEOMoz.org
• MivaMerchant.com/blog
• W3c.org

301 Redirect long URLs to new URL
Change links in templates

Example:

Polyvore.com customer example site on fashion / user generated content (fashion collage)

<mvt:if expr="1.settings:product:code XYZ">
<title> XYZ </title>
<mvt:elseif >
<title> XYZ </title>
<mvt:else >


Keynote – Day 1 – Miva Merchant 2009

Speakers:
Russ = CEO, Miva Merchant
Jon Burchmore = CTO, Miva Merchant
Rick Wilson = EVP, Miva Merchant

Miva Merchant 5.5 launched May 2008
Over 10,000 merchants now on Miva Merchant 5.5

New features and fixes:

• Import/Export timeout fixed
• XML import functionality
• Streamlined User Interface
• Highly stable environment
• 100% control of shopping interface
• MySQL optimization
• CSS based skins

2 Miva stores grew into Internet Retailer top 500

Latest Credit Card Industry Regulations:

• PA-DSS/PCI-DSS Compliance mandatory for all online merchants as of July 1, 2010
• PA-DSS => Application
• PCI-DSS => Host
• Penalty = can’t accept credit cards (Visa/Mastercard)

If you are a small retailer then you may have to move to paypal, google checkout, checkout by amazon, etc.

All other online merchants will have to make sure that their shopping cart and hosting provider is PA/PCI compliant for credit card transaction security.

Keynote – Day 1 – Part 2 – Miva Merchant 2009

Speaker:
Dr. Larry Osborne
Pastor, North Coast Church
Founder & President, North Coast Training Network, Vista, California

Word of Mouth Promotion

Create advocates/promoters of your products.

Advocate/Promoters:

1. Satisfaction (both product and process)
2. Confidence (confident always excellent, consistent)
3. Trust (character and integrity)

Process = how it is delivered

If satisfied with product and mildly uncomfortable with process will come back but will not become an advocate and bring anyone to you. Referral chain disappears.

Consistency vs. Quality

Quote from Dr. Larry Osborne:

“We judge ourselves by our best moments. Customers will judge you by your worst moments”

Power of long term customer.

Are they satisfied with your product and process?

Keynote – Day 1 – Part 3 – Miva Merchant 2009

Speaker:
Trevor Claiborne

Google Analytics

1. Landing Pages / Finding pages where they leave (bounce rate on landing pages, split view)
2. Funnel Reports
3. Internal Site Search

Q: How do you know if it is the page or ad copy?
A: Look at bounce rates for NON-PAID keywords
A: Check bounce rate for PAID keywords

Google Website Optimizer

Oct 2006 limited beta, 2007 out of beta

A/B Testing
Multivariable Testing (Headline, Description, Call To Action, etc.)

Test age -> Conversion Page
Section Scripts (up to 8 sections per page)
Tracking Scripts
Conversion Scripts

Best Practices

• Start Now
• Test Often

NerdyShirts: 20 min setup, and in 1 week = 7% improvement in conversion

Google Analytics Resources:

The Techie Guide to Google Website optimizer
WebsiteOptimizer.blogspot.com
google.com/websiteoptimizer
GA or GWO Authorized Consultants (Get authorized)

100 conversions per version (rule of thumb)

tclaiborne on twitter
tclaiborne@google.com

Miva Merchant Conference 2009
February 26, 27, 28, and March 1st
San Diego, CA

Miva Merchant is one of the top small business E-Commerce shopping cart software on the market and the 2009 Miva Merchant Conference is the premiere event for anyone using or thinking of using Miva Merchant. The conference includes sessions such as SEO to increase the success of your business, as well as Miva Merchant development workshops.

To find more information about Miva Merchant go to MivaMerchant.com, or to find more information about their conference, visit:
http://www.mivamerchant.com/conference_2009/

Online Market World
October 1-3, 2008
Moscone West Convention Center
San Francisco, CA

This conference is geared for anyone involved in E-Commerce and/or E-Marketing.   Some areas covered are: Email Marketing, Web Design, Social Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, eBay Marketing, Mobile Marketing.

For more information visit:

http://www.onlinemarketworld.com/

Internet Retailer 2008
Managing 3rd Party Vendors

Yahoo Store Customer Example:

American Bridal
American Bridal, started on Intershop Shopping Cart then switched to YahooStores.

American Bridal, did the $70K catalog expense and that didn’t work.   From design to mailing, and did not reap the return on investment.     Using online methods help you adjust quicker versus print catalog costs are fixed and non-adjustable once you send them out.

When working a shopping cart designer/developer to customize your online store, be respectful of their time.   Many top designers and developers will want your business to succeed and will give you the time of day and their advice, however, when you there are limitations to anyone’s skills as well as limitations to any technology.   If you force your will on the development process you may ruin that working relationship or make your project overly complicate and never launch.

1. Plan for Success!
2. Create an operational bible
3. Videotape or write down your processes which helps to create your operational bible

Express Design Group:
They Own 20 businesses, such as GreekGear.com
They use Yahoo Store and created an E-Commerce store for each apparel niche that are closely related to their business.

GunDogSupply:
They were one of the first Hunting Supply Store to be optimized online.   They were content experts on all the Hunting Dog Accessories, and ranked in the top rankings for keywords like “Astro Garmin 200 for tracking your dog”

They used ViaWeb which then was bought by Yahoo in 1998.

SEO Tip:  Rewrite product descriptions from vendors (because with duplicate content, google will rank those pages by pagerank, so you need to change the way it’s written/phrased or you will be on the bottom of the list for that article).    SEO tip, duplicate content is not penalized under certain circumstances, however, you will be ranked the lowest by pagerank (and others also say by freshness or age, i.e. the first one to write that content).

Take your own pictures of the products to be unique and to provide better stickiness for your website.

Create your own Editorial Content / Product reviews to add SEO keyword score, but also to add value to your customers.

Multiple Stores:

B2B Website:
Duplicate your Yahoo Store, password protect public page, no follow SE tags.  This works great for B2B or wholesale businesses that have both Retail and Wholesale customers.

Back End, Good Software to Start with:
StoneEdge, OrderMotion  (multiple stores with 1 order back end)

Focus on 1 store first, with PR 6, tons of links, then do multiple stores

eBay Store Statistics:

Ebay $60 Billon
1.3M sellers all or part of their living on eBay (not include hobbiest)
Every 1 Min a baby gear item is sold, a car is sold every min, mustang is sold every 26 minutes.
1 Billion pages views per day
100M concurrent listings (updated more than 500 times per second)
Double the transaction volume of NYSE

Millions of Buyers transact with millions of sellers
2008 Focus on our customers:
1. Trust
2. Selection
3. Loyalty

Detailed Seller Ratings (DSRs) (was eBay feedback)

The 4 DSR’s:  (up to 5 stars each):
Item as described
communication
shipping cost
shippng time

DSR within the last 30 days:
4.8 = 15% discount
4.7 promotion in search
4.6 5% discount
4.5 powerseller status
4.4 risk of demotion, seller, non-performance, payment holds

eBay Store Case Studies:

Stacie & Jon Sefton
ebay id: bhexpress, B&HFactory outlet
eBay feedback 316,612
2003 with husband
Sell Designer Clothing and Merchandise (100% of their sales in eBay, in process of building new store, Iowa)
*** eBay brings them customers
$12M Sales in eBay sales

Bill Frischling
eBay id dyscern, 72,946
Started in 1999 with wife
Sells Electronics
12,000 emails
40% of sales from eBay
Helps cashflow and keep inventory churning
Seller onramp
ebay.com/onramp

Other eBay Information:
Strategy is Counter Intuitive:
More people bidding on an item in at a lower cost will end up higher final bid price than an item that starts off high.   This is because in the fact that more people are bidding on it, then it must be good.

One tip:  Products for $65 with free shipping sold more than the same products priced at $50 and no free shipping.

ChannelAdvisor = Using eBay

Mainly:
Overstock, close out, liquidation merchandise, used

One other area I wasn’t aware of is broken merchandise (but they are labeled as non working and only for parts i.e. people looking for spare parts to fix their digital camera, computer or other product)

CNet Channel, PriceGrabber, etc.

Sometimes call customers instead of email
have a great customer service rep, that people love to talk to

Autoloader = Channel Advisor
ShipWorks = Shipping Tool

Suppliers = after 3 years to establish a relationship

Clothing:
6 full time photographers, 24 data entry people
B&H Express

Benefits:
Greater protection (confirm every address)
Lower fees for better feedback
Power Sellers in More than 1 year (can’t leave them a negative rating within 7 days)
Increase seller services in the future
Increased International Sellers (with the weaker dollar)
Some sellers have over 50% of their sales are overseas

SEO:
Chose store name and store descriptions are pushed to SE
Within Stores, put in custom categories, with at least 5 items (then eBay pushed to SEs)
Items that are up for a long time, i.e. Fixed priced items, and less of the auctions that are temporary

Misc:
.40 to $4 for auction insertion fee
.05 &.10, Insertion free for (30 day listing format, with relisting), for items that don’t sell for a while

eBay owns a presence in over 60 countries (eBay.de, eBay.it, etc.), and also has part ownership in different brand Int’l websites.

Canadians ship postal service vs. UPS
i.e. $5 versus $50 to $70
Lower dollar amount (under $100) no trariffs i.e. $50 in addition to shipping fee

Amazon Store Statistics and Information:
30% sold by 3rd party sellers
Millions worldwide active seller accts
Over 20 categories
Fullfillment services
Expand into Int’l

MISC SHOPPING NETWORKS:

Use Larger Images

MSN Shopping
Optimization 1 Sheet (15 recommendations for data feed)
Frequent Shopper Program
Shophelp@microsoft.com

AOL Shopping
Female 45 Avg Age

Success:
- Deliver the right product, to the right customer, at the right time
- Establish relationships and maintain relationships to get customers to come back
- Boost sales with promotional events (annual, seasonal, etc.)
- Increase sell through (conversion, upsell, etc.)
- Meeting objectives and within budget

AOL Seller Advantages:
Deals, inSeller emails
Gift Centers
Gift cards
A-Z Store Directory
Wish Lists
Vertical Search
Ratings
My Shopping
Mobile Shopping
On and off network distribution

Yahoo Shopping:
Greg Hintz, General Manager
Yahoo Product Submit (merchant program to submit listings)
10 years, new website redesign 3 months ago
Coupons, Discounts,
30M monthly vists
100M products
250M monthly page views

Your Products May Be Featured in these areas:
Yahoo! TECH
Yahoo! MOVIES
Yahoo! TV
Yahoo! SEARCH

How to Get Started:
Open a Yahoo Store which can easily integrate with Yahoo! Product Submit
Product Feed into Yahoo! Product Submit

How to optimize your Feed and gain more:

Relevance: Accurate product description to Improve relevance
Merchant Rating:  Improve your merchant rating
- no bait and switch
- don’t up-sell after the sale
- review your merchant review and attend to conerns
- encourage your own customer to do merchant reviews

Soon to increase from 64 to 1200 categories
Category and Sub category level bidding

Pricegrabber listings also get into AOL shopping

Internet Retailer 2008
Social Sites for Retailing

Find a message to promote such as being carbon neutral as a company or being involved in the Green movement.

Dell.com/regeneration (re-generation)
ReGeneration.org

Enlist and encourage participation within the social networks

Dell used Facebook to start a contest: “What does green means to you”
They first used the Graffiti add-on to promote writing and pictures, then later used more of an essay style contest.   Numerous of Facebook users spent their time online to express themselves about what “Green” meant to them through Dell’s contest.

Social Network Statistics:

MySpace & Facebook Stats:
8 to 9% overall online US market share, 80 to 90% of social network traffic
Bebo & Facebook = UK’s largest social network market share (not myspace)

Facebook & MyYear book, high growth in the US

Gaya Online (an anime website) uses  coins to give users to spend to motivate online social activity.  They also offer limited edition coins as a special status within the community.

Social Networks has on average 2.6x pages than search engine traffic and 8 to 9x page views of news and media.

Monthly Retention Rates:
95% for Myspace
94% for Facebook

MySpace Demographic Growth:
18-24 (-13%)
25-34 (+9% growth)

Facebook Demographic Growth:
18-24 (-28%)
25-34 (+7% growth)

Adoption:
14% find videos useful
Of the 14%, there is 57% Use video to become your Brand Advocate
Of the 14%, there is 47% that tell others of a new site i.e. send a link to tell friends

Social Network Demographics:
Younger & Weathier
38% = Age 25-34
19% = Income over $100K

Entertainment related products recieve greatest share of referrals
Top areas: Music, Ticketing, Apparel, Computers, Sport and Fitness

Some Companies Utilizing Social Networks (Digital content to advocate your brand):

Delivery.com (earn points)
Amazon created apps for wish list, birthday reminders, buy gifts for friends
Sears uses facebook for social shopping for prom dresses
Pink from Victoria’s Secret (photos)
DiGiono (apps when pizza is ready, and provide coupons)
Guiness (petition to make st. patricks day an official holiday)
Zappos (badges to spread your brand message on websites)

More stats:  ilovedata.com = hitwise data blog

Trends:
Convergence of Entertainment and shopping experience

Uses:

Enhance Customer Experience:
Honeyshed (product video, and click to buy)
Martin + OSA (Shop by outfit / video)
VS Pink  (user generated content)
misses: madewell (no buy button, must call them to buy)

Increase Transaction Conversion:
QVC how to videos
Walmart canopy drill in details on product photos

Other:
How to fold a casual cuff, bowtie, etc.
Top 3 Social Areas:
Social networks
Ratings and reviews
Blogs

Others:
Wikis
Widgets/Applets (website, mobile, desktop)

Social Shopping:
Shopping 1.0
Surgical shopping, Know exactly what you want (lost pleasure of shopping)

Shopping 2.0
Kaboodle (60+% market share of this space)
(wish list, comments, similar interests)
anyknockoff

Product Design 2.0:
Let customers design, share, vote on and the co produces it (Levis)
1. product comparison
2. build a place for customers to play/share (behr paint)
3. Engage in the conversation (talk to your customers i.e. Racked)
4. give users and influencers the ability to leverage content from you (to become advocates, i.e. content for facebook page i.e. home depot, karma loop i.e. earn points)

Ajax SEO Problems:
crawling
bookmarking
no unique url

Turn off javascript in browser to see page in the eyes of SE (also can use firefox plug-in)
Other tools:   googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com
Other Misc Notes (SEO):

B2B:
GalaSource.com
2nd largest distributorship ecommerce site ($18M), food service equipment & supplies dealer serving hospitality industry  (design services, equipment, from concept to completion).
DiscountedRestaurantEquipment.com ($30K/mo on eBay)

Galasource.com, avg 6800 to 9000 visits/day
PPC: $80 to$150K/mo
SEO: 63% Organic
Product Data Feeds, froogle, pricegrabber, business.com
GalaDesigns.net 300 vendors, 300,000 products
25,000 keywords in PPC
5,355 keyword focus (747 on 1st page)

92,000 product pages (seec)
7% of 2007 rev
20+% some months
only 1.7% of budget (sales, 5 to 6% of rev for mktg)
Automated Page Generation
Performance basis, by click basis
Higher page rank, the more pages will be index (i.e. url rewriting)

B2C:
Trulythefinest.com
teakalook.com
gonauticalgifts.com
oneofakindbuys.com

Internet Retailer 2008
Comparison Shopping Engines (CSE)

Shopping Networks (SN), Shopping Search Engines (SSE), or also commonly know as Comparison Shopping Engines (CSE), is another form of how consumers search online for products, with websites like eBay, Amazon, NexTag, Buy.com, Shopping.com, Shopzilla, PriceGrabber, Overstock, Yahoo Shopping, and many others.

Buying and Selling Big Brands still work well in Comparison Shopping Engines (i.e. gucci purses).

Price is a big factor, but the main factor.    Support, quality, user ratings, etc. are key to increase your conversion rates from CSE’s.   However, you can sort by price easier by price on CSE’s than you can on other Internet Shopping Channels.

Fundamental Principles:
CSE and other SEM = Assist Sales (multiple touch points before a buyer finally buys)

CSE = Lower Life Time Value (you must always be low cost leader to succeed in the )

Customer driven, do not over rely on automation (automate where it makes sense for tedious tasks, such as product feeds, but not your overall management, strategy and tactics.   Many companies automate too much with software and miss out on opportunities.)

Customer Factors:

Customer Decision Process => Find product => Price Sort => Review Brand/Support/Credibility, etc.

Customer Acquisition (most expensive)
Customer Monetization (most profitable)
Life Time Value of the Customer
Multi-Channel / Assist  (some users may use 20+ sources or exposures before buying your product, i.e. find you on search engines, reading product reviews, etc.).

Direct Response Marketer (catalog, etc.)

Research:

Hitwise -> find your online exposure online, by brand terms online

Affiliate Marketing Factors:

Affiliate Marketing is advertising your product by giving the advertisers a % of the revenue and no money for the Ad placement.   A commission based way to promote your products.

Your own Affiliates are competing with you, even on the CSE’s and SEM/PPC
You need to set Terms & Conditions
Affiliates are in each channel (i.e. discount sites, urls, .com retailers, etc.)
Drive sales and clearance section to affiliate mktg
Use behaviorial targeting to find the right affiliate sites (transacting, talking to each other)
Top tier affiliates = High affinity with your brand, with your community

Main Point:
Understand where your incremental business is coming from

Miva Merchant
February 28 & 29, March 1, 2008
San Diego, CA

Miva Merchant is one of the most affordable and flexible E-Commerce shopping cart software available today for small businesses. You can find many hosting companies offering Miva Merchant as an option for installation.

The platform now supports PHP & MySQL and has storefronts that can scale upwards of hundreds of thousands of transactions per month.  Miva Merchant has been resurrected as is now a separate business entity from Miva.com which is now strictly a search engine business.

To find more information about Miva Merchant go to MivaMerchant.com, or to find more information about their conference, visit http://www.mivamerchant.com/conference_2008/.