Social proof is ever so important for e-commerce retailers, as a “feel-good” barrier stands tall between your site and the folks at the other end of the keyboard. Your offer may look tempting and you may have designed your site perfectly well, with a logical progression, your calls to action and your friendly checkout process. First-time buyers still face an urge to find out a little more, so that they feel they are doing the right thing and discover if others have found success. Incorporating testimonials and reviews within your site makes a great deal of sense.

You should try and incorporate a system to help gather and promote reviews on your site. Don’t make this haphazard or trust that people will just do it, as with the best will in the world, everyone is time strapped these days and it’ll just slip their mind. Consider these six steps to help you set up a system to gather reviews automatically.

1. Once you have committed to sending e-mails to buyers, you need to set up your autoresponder system to send out a mail asking for a review within a certain timeframe. There are a number of different ideas here but we recommend between five and 10 days after purchase. You obviously need to give a little bit of time for them to enjoy and to form an opinion about your product or service, but don’t leave it too long in case they forget.

2. Try and give the recipient an incentive of some kind in return for their response. It always helps to prompt them, so that they will spend their time filling out the details and you could consider a discount against a future purchase or entrance into a draw for an object of value. You never know, if you include the discount against a future purchase, they may even use this incentive right away and put additional money into your coffers right there and then.

3. It is very important to be crystal clear about the purpose of your e-mail. Always include the keyword “review” in your subject line and maybe mention the incentive as well. Unless you are clear here, the mail will be seen as just another promotional piece and may be discarded.

4. Don’t assume too much. In other words remind the mail recipient that they purchased product or service “X” from you, including a graphic or photographs relating to the item to jog their memory. You may be quite clear about the purpose of the e-mail, but don’t leave any questions in their minds, as your goal is to get a good conversion rate here. Have a clear call to action with a prominent link to the review landing page.

5. Landing pages should be self explanatory, not require them to jump through too many hoops and be simple to interact with. Do not put any obstacles in their path by keeping the number of boxes to check or to fill in as low as possible.

6. Consider what you would like your reviewers to say. If you want more detailed feedback, referring to particular facets of your service or features of your product, then you could prompt accordingly. Remember that you do not want to make this process too cumbersome or time-consuming and try not to make any assumptions here, either.

Do not underestimate the power of reviews. Consider including some elements of constructive criticism within your published reviews, as this adds an element of realism that your prospective buyers may well appreciate.

Do you respond to requests for reviews?

Matthew Toren

There has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur, especially when it comes to online business. The Internet has become the great equalizer, allowing anyone with a business plan to equally prosper, so long as they are willing to do the hard work and learn those essential lessons that only an online living can teach.

Technology and innovation go hand in hand, so it makes perfect sense that the online world would be the first to experience a steady stream of sharper and sharper tools, continuously being developed with the online entrepreneur first and foremost in mind.

Here are 5 areas the online entrepreneur must always keep their focus and 5 ways to stay at the bleeding edge.

Content Creation

Drafting compelling copy is an absolute must for the serious online entrepreneur. Business online requires sales letters, marketing and email auto-responders, at the very least. In other words: copy, copy and more copy. While it used to be enough to use Microsoft Word, Open Office or Apple’s pages, these days online entrepreneurs can collaborate with cutting edge online tools such as Google docs, allowing us to use spreadsheets presentations and forms. Google Docs have been around a couple of years now, but they keep on adding features, the best of which is still the first — seamless sharing without any risk to loss of data.

Communication

Remember when cell phones were about as big as the yellow side of the phone book? These days the cell phone is more than just a phone, it is an all-in-one communication device. Skype, text messaging and Twitter are only the beginning. By this time next year, Google Voice will also be available to the general public, ushering in a full integration of services such as voice-to-text, and all of it available from a single phone number.

Online Office

Because it has never been more possible for the entrepreneur to have colleagues spread across the planet, it has also never been more important to establish the most effective ways of sharing information. Physical office space is going the way of the t-rex. New tools such as Dropbox allow online collaborators to easily exchange files by dropping them into an online server shared by multiple users. Accounts are free with 2 gigs of storage, but for just $10 a month, users can multiply it 25 times and go all the way to 50 gigs.

Project Management

An online office is important, an online project management system is even more so. Basecamp is one of the best friends of many a modern day entrepreneur. The online application is subscription based, can be tailored to fit the needs or budget of any user and can be shared with anyone at any time. Basecamp allows for online communication that is both powerful and fluid. With everything the modern day entrepreneur must juggle, setting an efficient project management system in place is essential to the bottom line.

A PC in Your Pocket.

Phones have been slowly transforming into magic wallets, allowing users to carry anything from their entire address books to each to-do for every project on their plate. The iPhone is only the first in a giant wave to crash on the shore. With tens of thousands of applications instantly available that can make your entrepreneurial life instantly accessible, it has never been easier to fit your desktop, or your entire office, directly in your wallet.

There has never been more opportunity for entrepreneurs, nor has there been more quality tools to help make it possible. The above are just a few, but the smart entrepreneur also knows to keep their eyes on what’s just past the horizon.

What are some of the tools in your “Entrepreneurial Toolkit?”

-Adam Toren

In this grand old world of search engine optimization, technicians, advocates and clients alike all tend to get caught up in the terminology, the latest analysis of the Google “slap,” an interpretation of the most complex algorithms and the tactics necessary to jump ahead of your closest competitors within the search engine rankings. Many snake oil salesmen will tell you that you should just focus on following their techniques and opening their bag of tricks and you can get your latest “made for Adsense” masterpiece way up there on the rankings.

As the Internet market as a whole has become more and more mature and as search engine mechanics develop accordingly, we see that it is far less likely for an artificially enhanced webpage to achieve good rankings. So much emphasis is now placed on quality of content as opposed to pure technicality that it behooves each one of us within the Internet marketing arena to strive for top quality content.

Those of us who have been around a while sometimes get frustrated when they see sites that have little to contribute appear within higher positions on search engine results pages, but as time goes by they are becoming fewer and fewer. In short, you need to make sure that your site contains remarkable information and is designed as part of an overall marketing initiative to provide something of significant value. Once you are able to do this and to demonstrate that you go above and beyond, then results for you will naturally follow. We know that authority sites have no problem in linking to other authority sites, or to sites that provide significant value and you should really be sure that you deserve your place at the top of the search engine results before you strive to get there.

We often hear that the cream rises to the top and this is appropriate here as well. You should not spend too much time fretting about your search engine optimization unless or until you are sure that the product or service that you have to offer, or the information that you are trying to disseminate is first class and worthy of a position ahead of its peers.

As the search engine engineers hone their skills we are likely to see even more emphasis placed on quality of content and social proof. Reputations will be more important and you should spend more of your time developing and perfecting your Internet reputation as part of an overall search engine marketing approach, rather than through egocentric search engine optimization efforts!

How have you got noticed?

Matthew Toren

Social media is in the process of rewriting many marketing textbooks and is being hastily added to the curriculum of many business-oriented schools of education, complete no doubt with many footnotes, asterisks, disclaimers and question marks. A business must be involved with social media, but the question is to what extent. Further, what level of risk is acceptable when entering such virgin territory?

It would seem that there is a lot more to gain than there is to lose when you consider whether to entertain a social media campaign, so long as you exercise a modicum of common sense. A lot of the well known pitfalls experienced by some premier brands could have been avoided with a little introspection.

So what are some of the pitfalls for you to avoid?

1. Avoid controversy.

Some people advocate that to make a wave in the vast social media ocean you need to be controversial to stand out. What you need to realize is that your energy wave creation could become a tsunami of controversy. The same element that makes social media such a tempting proposition could also work against you by creating substantial negative press that you can do nothing about.

2. Avoid spreading muck.

This follows along with the previous point to a certain extent and underlines why you should put some of your best marketing brainpower behind a social media campaign. Don’t be tempted to become a shock jock or openly criticize other competitors in an attempt to gain an edge, as no matter how subtle you try and how many “smoke and mirror” campaigns you dream up, this approach will backfire and hurt you more.

3. Avoid “puffery.”

This colorful word describes the act of blowing your own trumpet or aggressively talking up your brand or product, maybe under a disguise created for the purpose. Be careful that your IP address or e-mail cannot be traced back, allowing people to “out” your efforts!

4. Avoid being vanilla.

Again this comes back to creativity. Don’t expect a great result just by setting up pages, profiles or accounts. You must have a good “hook” and have a policy and strategy to update and create meaningful content.

5. Don’t shoot first and ask questions later.

It may be easy to imagine the social media environment as a “wild west” of sorts, where pretty much anything goes as we are all in uncharted territory. Don’t make the mistake of unloading your shotgun of poorly formed thoughts, questionable tactics or competitor onslaughts without fear of a reprise. You may well not be able to put the fire out.

6. Don’t bite off the hand that feeds you.

Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms are really valuable assets and you should treat them accordingly. Always be aware of their terms of service and never do anything to make them turn the focus of attention on you.

7. Don’t delegate and forget.

This will require your best brains, as we have already said twice. For veteran marketers the whole concept can be difficult to conceive, but don’t be tempted to delegate to junior IT people, rather make it a think tank approach.

8. Don’t forget how visible you could be.

When you enter the world of social media, you may encounter a visibility that you are not prepared for. Remember that to a certain extent it is a commenting free for all and you need to be constantly aware of what is being said about you, within your pages and “retweeted.”

What is your best tip?

Matthew Toren

Recent word out of Google tells us that they are considering the establishment of a “micro-payment” option, enabling a new payment structure to download individual pieces of information, such as an article, newsletter, feature or video. This news should give you additional cause to think about your own membership site. Online content is in constant and heavy demand as people seek answers to their problems and solutions to their issues, right here and right now.

If you have something of considerable value, especially if it is in digital format, then you should consider setting up your own membership site. This can represent a lucrative income and a wide variety of websites, software solutions and plug-ins exist to help you get going. Advances in the technology used within these various platforms allow us to choose whether to create our own or to buy into someone else’s design. WordPress has become so advanced these days that you can use it as the perfect content management system and take advantage of specific plug-ins to help you structure and organize your theme and content.

You will notice when you research the options available to you, that some offer a one-time purchase price while others indicate a monthly charge. Generally speaking, the one-time fees allow you to download the software and operate on your own server, while the monthly fee option includes an element of support as well as remote hosting. This is a matter of personal choice. You may also notice different price points according to whether you are using the software on a single site or on a multitude and this latter option may be of interest to those who are considering setting up some kind of membership site template and “franchising” out to others.

You will normally have a tremendous degree of flexibility, especially among the better choices. You can opt to receive payment via a number of gateways and product or service resellers, such as Clickbank, PayPal, 2checkout or your own payment processor. You can also establish an affiliate program allowing you to gain additional members in return for a commission fee to be paid to new affiliates.

Amember is the top script available, supporting plug-ins that allow you to link your database through your Joomla or Wordpress platforms, for example. These scripts are very sophisticated, user flexible, and feature an unlimited number of product or service subscription types, each with its own parameters, such as automated account sign-up, expirations and terminations.

Have you set up membership website?

Adam Toren

When we are designing a website we often pay particular attention to the quality of the written word. We need to craft our message very carefully so that we portray all the more important elements in as short a space of time as possible. We know that surfers are very busy people and tend to flit around from site to site with only a few seconds available for each page.

Psychologists tell us that the first impression is very important and that a few second reaction can often mean the difference between persuading someone to stay and further investigate or continue on their journey. This tells us that while we should always focus on the quality of our written content, the very design and appearance of the site is most important. Choosing the correct colors for your website can be more than just an arbitrary decision, or the use of a particular shade because it happens to be “your favorite color.”

Sometimes you will find that you are steered in a certain direction due to the very nature of your site, the product or service that you may be offering, or the very reason for its construction in the first place. While this may mean that you are leaning toward primary colors, pastel colors, stark blacks or whites, you nevertheless need to ensure that you have a balance between your colors and shades – in other words focus on a color scheme.

While fundamentally a color scheme must always be pleasing on the eye, unless the very reason for your website is to provoke and annoy, there are nevertheless many different ways to achieve a desired result. If you’re working with a client who has certain principle colors, you can suggest different tones and complementary shades with other colors that blend in nicely.

If you have a clean sheet of paper and are looking for some inspiration, there are numerous resources on the Web available to you. Several sites allow you to select different palettes or to view those that others have created before you. The power and creativity of these programs allow us to instantly see whether something looks pleasing to us or could “work” for a particular environment or site. Design programs work with a mixture of Pantone colors or hex codes and there are really an almost infinite number of variations available.

If you find that you need to turn to other sources for inspiration and discover a particularly interesting scheme through a random photograph, there are several different online tools that can help you to determine the actual code of the color that you like, also known as its hex value. In addition, design programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Corel Photo Paint can “sample” the color from a photograph or a scan and replicate it perfectly.

When you are surfing the web yourself, you may come across a website that you particularly like. The color scheme may be very attractive to you and you might be wondering what colors are represented. You guessed it – you can turn to a website that allows you to enter a particular URL and return the color value that is used.

Here are some resources:

Adobe PhotoShop

Corel Photo Paint

Color Wheel Pro – See Color Theory in Action

Pictaculous – Color Palate Generator

Color Schemer – Instant Color Schemes

I Like Your Colors – URL Analyser

How did you choose your website colors?

Adam Toren

Have you ever heard the term “snake oil salesman?” This refers to the practice of trying to bombard someone with hype in order to get to lower all your natural defenses, so that you purchase a product or service that you might otherwise not have considered. This kind of approach goes back hundreds of years and has been partly responsible for developing a typical consumer’s distrust for salesmen of any kind. Very few people like the hard sell approach and most often run the other way from it. As a web-based sales person, why would you consider taking that stance when you design your website?

One of the primary challenges of Internet marketing in general is that you do not have the option of being able to look a customer in the eye and engage him or her with a handshake. This traditional means of interaction can often help to build a bond of trust between two individuals and can often lead to the consummation of a sale. The challenge facing the webmaster is to reproduce this element of trust virtually and every word that you write on your website goes a long way toward or against this goal.

If you listen to so called copywriting “gurus,” some of them will tell you that you have to be hard-hitting and that you have to be very graphic with your examples and use a lot of hyperbole. Yet we are seeing a definite trend away from this, especially as the social media phenomenon takes hold and becomes an integral part of Internet marketing. Now, more than ever, it is necessary to establish a process of trust before anyone is likely to buy something from your website.

To be as effective as possible, the website of today must strike a fine line between technical optimization and personal appeal. We all know that it is necessary to structure a site so that the search engine robots can determine, according to the algorithms, that the site falls into a certain subcategory or niche and is appropriate for distribution through associated channels. However, it should never be obvious to the web visitor that the site has been optimized in this way. Long gone are the days when you could simply insert “long tail” keywords to an excess density. You must include your appropriate keywords, but you must focus equally as well on secondary keywords or appropriate words and phrases from an SEO perspective. What this boils down to is simply writing educational, informative, enlightening and entertaining material, to give the visitor a real sense that they are spending their time wisely by staying on your page and reading the content.

As you establish trust through gentle repetition or endorsement, the visitor will feel more inclined to consider purchasing from you. Web copy that is sensational and designed to bully somebody into purchase will likely not work for you. Avoid copy modifiers that are designed to overstress certain points and remember to talk on an “adult” to “adult” basis, rather than if you were a “parent” talking to a “child!”

How have you established trust with your consumers?

Matthew Toren

No business can afford to discount the opportunities posed by an online presence. This refers equally to an organization that may have traditionally focused on off-line activities or on “bricks and mortar” locations to drive sales. Whatever line of business, product or service, there are significant reasons for exposing your company to an increasing army of hungry and thirsty searchers discovering the Internet on a daily basis.

Your shop window to the world online will be your website. First impressions count for a lot here and you have but a few seconds to convince the visitor to stay before he or she clicks away to find another gem. While there are many ways to create your own website, should you be inexperienced or not in possession of a creative flair then you should outsource this task. There is a lot to think about when putting together a web site, but from a visual perspective, it must be immediately appealing.

Quite apart from the technicalities of making your website “visible,” which we’ll get to in a second, the content contained within must be sharp, to the point, entertaining, educational, informative, amusing, unique, bold, thought-provoking – or any combination of the aforementioned! This does not mean that you have to have a university-style thesis on every page, but you have to contribute something special and create that “hook” to draw your customers into the sales funnel.

Consider a ghostwriter or a specialized copywriter to create the content of your page, especially the page that is directly concerned with soliciting a call to action. Once you’ve convinced the visitor that your product or service is for them through the skillful creation of content as described, you must bring this all together, narrowing that sales funnel and prompting a purchase decision.

If you create a great visitor experience, then the first time visitor will be tempted to return. Offer them the opportunity to bookmark or to subscribe to your feed updates and you will commence a two-way communication, which can hopefully lead to additional sales and increased volume.

Your website must be a constantly evolving product. Try and add new content on a daily basis if you can and this is where blogs come in very handy. These days it is quite simple to set up your own blog using a platform such as WordPress or Blogger and these are particularly useful pages as they are set up to receive comments. Your overall credibility will soar if you have a well trafficked blog page with great comments, back and forth and positive contributions from others.

Your overall goal must be to increase the amount of traffic to your website as creatively as possible. This starts with search engine optimization, which is the process of ensuring that your page is appropriately coded and presented, so that it will appear within search engine results when people are looking for your product or service. Optimization includes strategic use of keywords, both primary and secondary, which not only tell the search engine operators that your page is relevant but which also adequately inform your visitors, so that they can go ahead and buy from you.

If you really want to grow your business online, make sure that you follow up with all prospects, leads and existing customers. Create a “squeeze page” by offering your website visitor something of significant value, free. If you creatively package this, then they will provide you with their e-mail address in order to receive this item. Following a process of “double opt in,” ensuring that they understand that they will be receiving communications from you, you can then send them your regular newsletter containing additional value added material and helping to establish that process of communication, leading to sales down the road.

How have you expanded your business online?

Matthew Toren

There are so many different forms of advertising, some of which are easy to justify while others are not. Some forms of advertising are particularly expensive, while others cost next to nothing. Whichever approach the company takes and whichever form of advertising is used, it is vitally important to get a clear understanding of the associated success rate. It goes without saying that the form of promotion resulting in the highest number of conversions is the most important for an organization, yet many do not actively track the results and find the process of justification difficult.

As Internet marketing becomes more and more important for every organization, marketing directors are pleased with the level of tracking and testing possible. It is far easier to see whether individual webpages are bringing in visitors, which subsequently convert to clients as there are a number of comprehensive analytical programs available, allowing you to analyze to the “nth” degree.

A web site’s conversion rate can be determined very accurately if the business existed in online form only. For example, if you only accepted e-mail or instant message as a form of communication and only accepted sales electronically, then you could set up your relevant landing pages and trackable codes to determine the origin of your client and the promotion that triggered the action. However, for a huge number of organizations online, marketing is only part of their total marketing initiative.

Historically, it has been very difficult to measure conversions relevant to online campaigns when the client actually consummated the deal through a subsequent phone call. Call tracking has been independent of online tracking, although a new option has recently emerged allowing you to put together the different marketing communication channels. It is now possible to calculate off-line conversions, which are a direct result of online marketing initiatives.

While many consumers choose to do their research online, a significant number still prefer “the human touch,” and will resort to picking up the phone to talk with the organization before they actually commit to buy. As it is now possible to use any number of specific phone numbers to market your business, you are able to allocate an individual number to each individual online marketing initiative. Thus, it is possible to associate a specific phone call that results in the conversion to an online marketing campaign. The phone number is in itself, its own tracking code.

Ifbyphone has come up with an integrated solution to allow you to incorporate results from internet-initiated phone conversions into your existing Google Analytics account. In this way, you will be able to track your calls as well as your clicks and fully justify the efforts and amounts spent on specific marketing campaigns.

Do you track calls and clicks to paint the bigger picture?

Matthew Toren

Affiliate marketing has a lot going for it. Rather than try and expand your existing operation by employing additional sales staff, undertaking new marketing initiatives or increasing your media spend, why not allocate a certain proportion of your revenues to incentivize external organizations to sell your products and services for you?

As we have come to learn conclusively during this current economic downturn, money spent on advertising must be well spent. It can be so difficult to justify the cost of advertising and as the marketing arena is in a constant state of flux, it can be difficult to decide where you should spend those marketing dollars, as well.

Affiliate marketing essentially utilizes the power of leverage and is becoming an increasingly more relevant style of marketing in our modern era. You only pay your affiliates when the sale is actually made and therefore, the affiliate assumes the responsibility of advertising and marketing on their end, as it relates to the sales that they produce. This form of performance marketing can also be called CPA or cost per action and there are a variety of different approaches.

Fundamentally, most organizations with something to sell – most often a tangible product, but also sometimes a service such as Internet service – seek out an affiliate network. The network will in turn have an army of affiliates on board, who are actively looking for products or services to sell in return for a commission. There may be some quite complex “back and forth” between the company and the affiliate network to decide whether this is the right fit, but once established you will essentially have an army of external sales consultants, whom you pay only on performance.

There are a large number of affiliate networks and many specialize in certain areas. Research is required, so that you interact with the network appropriate to your niche. Generally speaking, the affiliate network earns their “cut” when a sale is made, as their revenue is linked to the revenue devoted to the affiliates.

To be most successful it is necessary to set aside realistic commissions. This does not mean that you have to “give away the farm,” but you must adequately incentivize the affiliate to sell for you. Keep an eye on the affiliates that sign up for your program, as you will need to set parameters and rules, so that they do not misinterpret your message or act in a counterproductive way to your overall goals.

Ideally, you will have a mix of affiliates with good reach. This can be either through highly trafficked websites or blogs, via large and fruitful e-mail contact lists or a combination. If your offer is particularly good, the affiliate could work wonders for you and help you to grow your business exponentially.

Make sure that your operation is geared to accept additional business before you launch your affiliate marketing campaign. You might also want to set aside a reserve, allowing you to give additional incentives to productive affiliates and don’t be afraid to directly communicate with them to help establish an even more fruitful association.

Have you used affiliate marketing? Was it successful for you?

Matthew Toren