The holiday season is right around the corner – and with it, shopping galore. Are you ready for Christmas? Is your E-commerce site optimized for maximum sales? People will certainly be looking up holiday items and ideas on the Internet, and – to help you gain greater visibility and maximize search traffic – we’ve come up with a list of 7 SEO tips for your retail website. 1. Refresh your content. Don’t just copy and paste from your manufacturer’s website. Be creative. Yes, it takes a lot of effort, but it is worth it to have unique product descriptions, catalog and category descriptions, case studies, industry news, and shopping tips that not only make your E-commerce site a lot more interesting for visitors, but also improve your sales through better search engine visibility. 2. Create a blog. Why not? The fact that holiday season is forthcoming should give you enough things to write about. A blog not only enhances the – Read the full article
It is tough to sell these days – even tougher if you try to do it online. It’s not just the similar businesses and stores in the neighborhood you would suddenly be competing against. Take it online, and you’re competing against the whole world. But times are changing, and often your online presence is critical to the success of your company. That’s where the customer base is obviously moving towards. In the US alone, ecommerce totaled over $200 billion in sales. In running an online store, one of the important first steps is finding the best ecommerce solution for your business. At Lakeshore Branding we use Magento, a versatile open-source cross-platform content management system that aims to handle all aspects of building and maintaining your ecommerce site. It is dubbed as the “platform for growth” for businesses looking to take it online and to the next level. We agree. What’s best about Magento is its robust set of features, scalable – Read the full article
Ecommerce is evolving. It’s certainly growing. By the year 2012, ecommerce sales in the US alone are projected to reach $335 billion. As the online customer base continues to grow, so will the number of online stores. Needless to say, it’s an increasingly fierce competition. In order to keep up and ahead of the pace, it is critical that businesses serious about growth in the ecommerce industry should find the best ecommerce solution for their companies. Enter Magento. Called the “platform for growth”, Magento is an open-source enterprise-level content management system whose flexibility, scalability, and robust feature set have been acclaimed by experts in the ecommerce industry. It’s the fastest-growing ecommerce solution in the market today, and with 750,000 downloads, the platform is bound to only grow bigger. Magento’s usable interface, analytics and reporting capabilities, SEO-friendliness, and catalog management tools have been praised by businesses, retailers, wholesalers, marketers, developers, and design firms. But what makes the ecommerce platform truly special – Read the full article
I recently received an email from Becky, a Chicago web designer that reached out to us for advise on a social media strategy for one of her clients. The topic of how to manage social media correctly has been a hot topic lately and I thought I would share this email. What are your thoughts on the “voice of social media?” Chris, I have one client in particular who needs a ton of hand holding, is technophobic, yet wants to make a living off info products etc. online. (sigh) I sent it to her and she’s convinced that she should be doing more, but wants to hire an Indian company to “manage” her social media. My gut says that having someone else do it for you destroys your voice and people will be able to tell, but maybe I’m wrong here. Thoughts? Becky Davis 773-875-1792 www.beckydavisdesign.com Becky, The short answer is you are 100% right, the saying you get what – Read the full article
“Right now, your customers are writing about your products on blogs and recutting your commercials on YouTube. They’re defining you on Wikipendia and ganging up on you on social networking sites like Facebook. These are all elements of a social phenomenon- the groundswell- that has created a permanent shift in the way the world works.” This is written on the book jacket of the book Groundswell, a national bestseller. The social media revolutions is upon us. Several experts claim for it to be the biggest shift in business since the industrial revolution. The change in how we communicate with the public, potential and existing customers is evolving at a pace that has not been seen before with adoption of other technologies. Its a social media revolution. It used to take years to build new media platforms, for radio it was 38 years, television 13 years, the internet 4 years, and the iPod 3 years- each respectively to reach 50 million – Read the full article
I wrote a post about social media monitoring last week and in the news today is a Chicago company that is suing one of their tenants for $50,000. This lawsuit is already making waves at popular social media news site- mashable. Within the first two hours of the story being posted their are about 900 people tweeting and 115 comments on the blog. The tenant Amanda Bonnen made a comment on her twitter about mold in her apartment. “Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.” The reason this story is already grabbing the attention of the social media community is the fact that Horizon’s Jeffrey Michael is quoted in the Sun-Times as saying “The statements are obviously false, and it’s our intention to prove that”, adding that Horizon has a good reputation to protect. Bonnen wasn’t contacted before the suit was filed or asked to remove the Tweet, he said: “We’re – Read the full article
As the Web grows increasingly social, so should you. Lakeshore Branding specializes in helping you tap into, initiate, and sustain engaging online conversations with your customers. Our social media consulting services build the foundation not only for greater online visibility, but also for richer social dialogue that’s guaranteed to make a direct impact on your bottom line. We offer a comprehensive set of social media services that are designed to show you where people are talking, what they’re talking about, where and how you can best get involved, and what you can do to propel your business and brand to the top of today’s social media user’s mind. Social Media Marketing Services Social Media Consulting Training on Social Media tools Management of blogs, podcasts, and social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare, Google+, Flickr, Tumblr, and more Social Media Marketing Strategy Social Media Identity Protection Social Media Implementation Guidelines and Social Media Policy Social Media Audits and – Read the full article
When I was out shopping for the holidays, I came across one of those mall kiosks and they were selling Vonage. I had seen the commercials and had done some research on VOIP (voice over internet protocol). I checked it out and they sold me on the Vphone. Basically a usb jump drive that you can plug into any computer and it automatically loads the software required to run Vonage. I have a new Dell computer with Vista (don’t upgrade if you don’t have to) and , I asked the sales guy if it worked with Vista. He informed me that it did and I would not have any problems. Make a long story shorter, it has a success rate of about 30% working with Vista. I did get a chance to try it out at the office where they have XP computers. I was actually surprised at the clean quality sound. So moral of the story, it works pretty – Read the full article
