Earlier I wrote an article on different online business models, I would classify this new strategy as a subset of eCommerce called, Social Commerce.

Although ecommerce and social networking tools have been around for over a decade, the combination of them to the net effect on price adjustments is a relatively new development.  Wikipedia defines Social Commerce as an online media that supports social interaction and user contributions to assist in the online buying and selling of products and services.  I would add that Social Commerce also may affect the cost of online buying and selling through for instance, customer ratings, reviews, user recommendations and referrals, social shopping tools, forums, and others.

This new ecommerce angle utilizes the popularity of a product with the principles of economy of scale, and gives the power to the customer.  Though more safeguards would need to be implemented to protect from abuse, the idea is gaining momentum and is a great way to launch new products and receive feedback.

I have seen smaller companies implement social commerce, but not yet in the more well known brands.  With the marketing budgets supporting many of the big brands, this could really add a boost to a brand’s web presence.

With some great PR, this new model could go mainstream and be the future of ecommerce. Let’s see how long it takes.

If you haven’t yet realized or been convinced of how important it is to take the time to determine your website goals before development or redesign a website, you need to read this case study.I recently attended a project kick-off meeting to discuss the direction and goals of a large corporation’s website redesign project.  Before meeting to go over the company’s background and strategy, the new client was given a questionnaire to extract specific background information.  One of our first questions was about the website’s goals.  The client had decided that their primary goal was to generate new leads, which is commonly the most popular goal for the websites we work on.

The intention of our meeting was to add clear and action oriented terms to turn the client’s goal into a measurable objective.  This way it would be possible to monitor and evaluate the success of the project after its completion.  After listing all the goals and objectives the next step was to put them in priority.  With all the major stakeholders in the same room, we quickly came to the conclusion that they actually didn’t need to attract new clients. Their biggest issue instead had to do with sorting and clarifying the existing confusion among their systems and services.

Not needing to attract new clients is certainly a nice position for a private company to be in.  This particular client practically has a monopoly in the marketplace which is also why their primary focus isn’t lead generation.

Setting proper website objectives is extremely important; it guides the strategy and tactics of the site.  The style, order and grouping of the content, navigation, as well as the amount of space dedicated to different items need to be tailored to achieve a particular goal.  For instance, if lead generation was the number one goal, the content would need to have a more sales-oriented tone with creative elements in place for building credibility and confidence, and the flow of information should direct people to request a quote and make inquires. All these types of elements would take up most of the website’s real-estate to support the purpose of the goal.

A website project with a goal of reducing customer confusion is very different from one with a goal of generating leads – one that calls for an entirely new strategy. One approach to the revised objective is to organize the website to be more support and resource focused. With the significant shift in goals, the content of our new client’s website will now be geared towards assisting customers with their needs and clarifying the how-tos, as well as setting up resources and systems to answer commonly asked questions, providing key support contact information, etc. All efforts will be directed to streamlining and answering customers’ questions via the website in order to reduce the number of incoming calls and email inquires.

If we hadn’t sufficiently probed the client about their goals, the website would have gone down the wrong path – content, structure, and design would have focused on the wrong thing.  Redirection of the objective further down the project’s life would have meant a lot of redoing of the work, likely also project timelines would have to be extended and costs increased.  If the website was completed with the wrong goal in mind, what good would it have done the company?!  The website wouldn’t have helped them grow, plus it would have been a wasted expense.

That is why I can’t stress enough how critical it is to take the time to review the nature of your website project and get consensus internally in order to define clear goals and establish appropriate objectives from the start. Do it right and the results will follow.

But why would a person visit your site to begin with.  Is it for its design?

Website visitors may browse a website to discover a solution to a problem, learn about a product or service, find a company with good credentials before contacting them, read news, interact with friends or make a purchase.  Among the intentions of most website visitors is the objective to read and acquire information in order to fulfill a need.

So if the primary focus of most website visitors is to read something why then do most website owners put so much focus on the website’s design?

Let’s say you do start with design first. Your creative team will provide a concept without the knowledge of how much content there will be, the priority of content sections and what information is being conveyed.  The design will be based on assumptions, with placeholders for content.  Later you will need to adjust the content to fit within the placeholders inevitably sacrificing its quality, clarity and intention.  More unnecessary time will need to be spent in the design process on making adjustments and revisions to account for the addition of content.

If you’re not seeing it yet – focusing on design first won’t get you the right results.  Determining your website goals and how they can be achieved should be the first step of any website project.  The words on the site – the content, need to be the primary focus.  In relation to your website goals, the content will assist in determining navigation, information flow, and layout.   Finally, design should complement and enhance the content through imagery, clarity, positioning, and colour to evoke a mood and feel for what you’re about.

Even in more agile development websites, content should still be focused on first, followed by architecture, design, technical development, and usability testing.

I have seen budgets and timelines unnecessarily extended simply because priority is not given to website content.  Companies need to work with their website solutions company – as a team – to collaborate and share each others’ industry expertise to accomplish a results oriented website. Not sure how to begin? May want to consider starting with web consulting to get on the right track.

If you want your website to achieve your goals and support company objectives with smart tactics, focus on your content first, and then complement it with great design.

Social networking has many convenient uses, from accommodating social pleasantries to assisting with community participation. Social network websites allow users to share ideas, comments, and thoughts, connect with like minded people, and keep in contact with friends and family.  On a personal and professional growth level, social networking can provide great benefits for elevating your career. As an ultimate source for networking, Social Media Marketing (SMM) puts you in touch with other experts in your field to discuss ideas, challenges, and solutions and really help you build your reputation.

One popular way in which companies market themselves through social networking sites is by generating goodwill in support of a community or cause. Prospecting, sales and technical support are other common business objectives for social networking.

So as a business owner, how do you determine if social networking is a worthwhile pursuit for your company, and how much time should you spend on it?  As always before taking any major initiative you should reference your company goals and objectives. See if SMM falls under the criteria you’ve set out. If so, then look to your target audience and determine which social networking sites are most popular with your demographic.  If your audience is mainly senior citizens who are not Internet savvy, marketing with Twitter may not be your strategy.

If it turns out that SMM is not for you or your business just don’t do it.  There’s nothing wrong with passing up on the trend. Do however keep social media marketing on the back burner for the future. It might not be right for your company today but it may be worth evaluating again.

If social networking makes sense for your company today, the next step is to determine which sites to join and how much time to dedicate to keeping them current.  Look to see how often others post comments on your choice of social networking sites and compare if you have this kind of time to dedicate to maintaining one social website, many, or none. For the sake of your valuable time and resources it’s important to take the time to research the right social website(s) for you. Note that having a fan page on Facebook for instance, where comments are not responded to for weeks can do more harm than good.  On the other hand, posting a few comments and expecting immediate results is just not realistic, it takes continued contributions and patience.

Don’t forget to track and monitor things like the traffic from different website sources, number of followers, members, and comments over a period of time. These will  help to determine the value of your endeavours.  Mind you, some efforts will be harder to evaluate than others and you may very well not see a direct correlation between the time spent on social networking and incoming sales. However social media networking has so many other benefits, as stated earlier, you are sure to find it a worthwhile task.

Overall have fun engaging with your customers, followers, and supporters or even non-supporters.  SMM can be a very powerful medium that will continue to be interwoven into our marketing mix.

For retailers who manage their own website, this is a can’t miss event. However, for those who did miss it, here is a quick recap of the main topics.

Large US retailers like Best Buy, Lord & Taylor, and the Hard Rock Cafe, to name a few, showcased their websites and discussed elements that are working and some that aren’t.

Many discussions geared to remind Internet retailers about proper usages of navigation and its usability, including shopping cart clarity. This had to do with  really going back to the fundamentals.  These days, customers are more Internet savvy and expect a certain level of familiarity as well as functionality.

Where cost is no longer a major barrier, product reviews and videos are paramount.  The benefits of implementing these types of added features are huge and improve conversion rates drastically.

Even small adjustments to components of a product page and shopping cart with  continually testing have shown results of strong returns to sales growth.

Kurt Peters, Editor in Chief of Internet Retailer, said that mobile will be the future of ecommerce.  Most mobile websites are still in early testing mode, but it’s already evident  that providing customers with information at the time they want it, no matter where they are, is of high importance and advantage.

Many presenters at the Conference talked about new features they focused on during their recent site re-designs. The process ranged on average from 10 to 12 months from beginning to end. Interesting to note is that majority of the retailers teamed with an external web design company or technology provider to help with new implementations.

Lastly addressed were our still early days of social media integrations of Internet retailers with sites like Facebook and Twitter.  Some retailers are providing very timely product announcements and discounts through these social sites while others are building communities around their sites’ topics and themes.

As an owner of a website solutions company, the conference really echoed what I come across every day.  Getting the core fundamentals and best practices properly implemented is key. With a sound foundation in place, the next step is to add one feature at a time while testing and monitoring its effects to website analytics and sales to guide the way.

9th sphere’s ecommerce clients will be receiving a briefing of key statistics and features their categories’ counterparts are undertaking.

Feb 2009:

• Yahoo Enables Video and Other Rich Media in Search Ads

March 2009:

• Canada’s first street view provided by joint effort between British Columbia-based Canpages.ca and San Francisco-based MapJack
• New version of Internet Explorer version 8 released

April 2009:

• Oracle buys Sun

June 2009:

• Microsoft launches Bing, a rebranding of Microsoft’s search engine, Live

June 2009:

• Rogers launched Google’s new mobile operating system – Android – in two HTC phones

July 2009:

• Canada’s Privacy Commissioner Takes on Facebook regarding its non-compliance with Canada’s privacy act – PIPEDA

July 2009:

• 9th sphere launches REF:CODE Analytics, a new way to track phone calls that are referred to from a website

August 2009:

• Yahoo announces new versions of Yahoo! Mail, Messenger and Search

September 2009:

• Google launches Google Wave, their vision of next level of email communication
• Century 21 sues Rogers’s Zoocasa for “scraping” property data from the Century 21 website
• Skype available to Canadian iPhone users

October 2009:

• Yahoo shuts down GeoCities servers, the well known free website hosting service
• Windows 7 released
• Google’s Street View launched in Canada (Calgary, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec, Toronto and Vancouver) – second available street view
• One Degree stops production of its Canadian focused Internet marketing blog

November 2009:

• Amazon’s Kindle, a platform for reading electronic books, comes to Canada
• The Canada Revenue Agency expands investigation of eBay power sellers and GST collection

December 2009:

• Canadians reported as top users of social networking sites in the world, according to a new survey
• Microsoft loses appeal on an August district court decision that awarded i4i Inc. (Toronto based software company) $200 million and an injunction on selling Word in its current form

Looking back, 2009 saw the expansion of numerous US based products and services into the Canadian market. On our front, we’ve seen fewer Canadian innovations and more legal battles spotlighting the social and ethical parameters of the web.  The Internet continues to make more headways into our daily lives, both personally and professionally.  Remember, the web is still very young, but growing at an accelerated rate.  2010 has the momentum to bring the web to its next level, as we foresee companies continuing to push the envelope. Or should I say the processor.

Hundreds of emails a day find their way to the inboxes of business executives and decision makers. Unfortunately this could mean that your notice or marketing offer may be of minimal interest. Without a sound game plan, the fate of your marketing endeavor may be short lived. Your email may get deleted because the sender is not recognized or the subject line isn’t enticing enough. Bypassing that, your email may just get re-filed for future review but then may run the risk of invalidating a time sensitive offer.

To ensure that your marketing communications receives its due attention, we suggest  first sending out the email campaign to just a portion of your contact list. With a variety of samples deployed, you can test the effectiveness of different offers and subject lines, and determine the best email open rates.  The minimum size sampled should be 30 contacts. Also, according to a eMarketer study, Wednesday’s have statistically shown a better open rate among businesses.  It’s best to allot at least 5 days for the testing of your various sample subject lines. Once you’ve determined your most impactful heading, deploy your email to the rest of your contact list.  Be sure to keep monitoring the open and click-through rates.  After 5 days, go through the list and separate the bounced and un-opened emails.  This will now be your physical mailing list.  Yes, I do mean mail as in the old, traditional form of messaging. You can also include in the mailing list those who opened the email but didn’t click onto any of the links. Alternatively, you can send either a follow-up or another offer to them via email or snail mail. Note that returned mail should be removed from your mailing list so that future efforts are note wasted.

Though this approach introduces a few more steps to your email marketing, the tactic takes advantage of both email and snail mail. Most importantly, the deployment testing process and using email in this way ensures a more efficient way to get maximum impact for your marketing communication efforts.

Updating your online logo for this purpose is a clear and immediate indication that your website is current. Minor modifications of a festive nature can add a touch of cheer to your brand, revealing a more human side to your business.  Logo updates are easy to implement and can always be recycled seasonally.

It’s important to note that we don’t recommend making drastic changes to your logo design. Revising your brand completely and without reason is risky. You don’t want to confuse a previous visitor, or obliterate the message your logo’s initial design means to convey.  We suggest just a subtle update. One that complements the existing logo while acknowledging a given holiday or special date.

Changing colours or incorporating a symbolic motif should do the trick.  Clean and simple is the key.  Adding snowflakes for the winter holidays for instance, is a nice detail. It helps you and your consumer to get into the spirit of the holiday while maintaining the integrity of your brand.

Don’t be afraid to show your visitors the lighter side to your business.  Adding an appropriate and clever design element to your logo will not go unnoticed. Your visitors will not only appreciate your good nature but will recognize that you care to keep them current by making periodic updates to your website.

Altering your corporate logo design for the holidays is a nice touch and an easy way to get some positive attention for your website.

It’s a shame that there was not enough demand for a Canadian focused Internet marketing blog to generate enough income to make their contributions worth the effort.  One Degree offered unique perspectives, news, event listings, and job postings.  We often referenced the site for ideas and contributed comments to the community.

We often too question the return versus the time in takes to write, edit, and support a blog like ours.  Although our blog is supported by 9th sphere, like many other corporate blogs, One Degree was more of a neutral voice from many different marketing experts.  The fortunate thing is that we have other supporting revenue streams that other bloggers may not have.

Supporting a blog on just the advertising, event and job posting revenue itself is not an easy thing to do and requires a large traffic stream to generate enough revenue to make it worth it.

One Degree contributed many great articles on Internet Marketing from a Canadian perspective.  A destination that was respected by myself and among my peers.  One that will be truly missed.

Facebook and PayPal have teamed up to offer “Square Up with PayPal“.  This new application is essentially a connection between your Facebook events and the payment options of your PayPal account.

The setup process though not very smooth it was fairly straight forward. Once the application is added to your Facebook account, you can select an event, select people you want to pay for the event, and then connect to your PayPal account.  Shortly after, an email will be sent to each of the people you have added, with a link to PayPal to pay for the event.

The system and features are fairly basic yet many reviewers are still  running into bugs. For the personal user however, the low cost with the simplicity of collecting payments are great.

Facebook has over 8 million Canadian members. This is their largest user group. Though the new application is meant to be used between friends, I can see it easily being adopted by schools, fundraisers, event planners, and small business.

Publicizing an Event over the Facebook network may give businesses some added advertising to a mostly young, Internet savvy user base.  Using Facebook in collaboration with PayPal would certainly reduce the cost, but I would not suggest it to a client on a corporate business level.  The application really takes away from the branding and professionalism of a company.  Any SEO efforts may also be impacted.  Many corporations still have reservations about the collection and use of Paypal from a security perspective.