These days, social shopping is a huge buzz word. But what does it mean to you as an online retailer?

There are sites such as This Next and Kaboodle that are social bookmarking sites. Here, shoppers can bookmark and tag items while seeing reviews and ratings from other users. For retailers, Kaboodle allows you to add the “Add to Kaboodle” button to your site. Shoppers will be able to add your products to their wish lists and shopping lists. Their friends will then be able to view your products and buy directly from your store.

The coupon and deal sites like dealplumber rely on sales and coupon codes, fortunately some also offer the ability to set up a merchant profile to submit your deals and specials.

You can also “go social” on your website. The FaceBook “Like” button is fairly simple to add to your store. You can also make it easy for shoppers to share your products with the “email a friend” feature.

A product rating review system really gets online shoppers involved. Our system allows your customers to interact while you maintain control of the content, it’s also very SEO friendly. There are many compelling studies that attest to the powerful impact a product review system can have on sales and conversions. Check out this summary at SocialCommerceToday.

For a more in depth look at the different social shopping sites out there, this article from GetElastic.com is a great resource. No matter your opinion on this new trend, it isn’t going anywhere so you might as well make the most of it!

I just read a great article at PracticalECommerce.com that discusses the upcoming holiday shopping season and how some big retailers are preparing for it. I know you may not want to think about that just yet, you’re still all flip-flops, barbecues and beach, but if you plan well now, you may have a little extra in the bank for a tropical get away during the darkest, coldest part of the year.

Some companies such as Sears Holdings have implemented “Christmas Lane” in their Sears and Kmart stores. Sears has a  Christmas Club where customers can sign up to earn cash rewards based on spending between particular dates. This makes it easier for the customer to spend on necessities and create loyalty while earning a little extra cash for holiday shopping. Kmart is offering discounts on holiday merchandise and free shipping with no minimum order.

Other stores like hhgregg.com used the Christmas in July theme to move inventory with everything over $99 on sale. Toys “R” Us is using a kitschy Santa in sunglasses and surfer reindeer to advertise back to school specials and free shipping on orders over $49.

Bargains, specials and sales are definitely the name of the game. I particularly liked the idea from Sears Holdings that allows shoppers to earn credit for future purchases. July may be drawing to a close, but any holiday plan or promotion you start to implement now will only help you in the long run.

If you aren’t already using it, our Promo Manager makes it much easier for you to implement an unlimited number of promotions. From date and time specific specials to coupon codes you could send out to your email subscribers, the Promo Manager has you covered. It has been proven to increase order totals and conversion rates while promoting customer loyalty.

Take a day or two out of your summer fun to see how Promo Manager can impact your sales so you can reap the benefits later!

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a hot topic lately. Have you researched it, or paid someone to optimize your site for you? Maybe you just nod your head in agreement when others talk of its importance, all the while having no clue what they mean?

It isn’t as intimidating as you may think – in fact you can easily improve with just a few tips. Sure, you can get into all kind of charts and graphs and other confusing looking things, but you can also just focus on a few common areas to improve your ranking.

Google recently improved their web indexing system, maybe you heard of it-Caffeine. With the rise of video, real-time updating and social media, available information is constantly being updated and changing. Caffeine allows for this updated information to show up in searches much quicker.

That said – fresh content on your site means more now than ever. You may want to increase the frequency of your blog posts, or begin a blog. With a blog, you can offer special deals or discount codes. It will also allow you to offer a RSS feed of the blog and offer your customers the chance to join your mailing list to receive advance notice of sales, product updates and special deals.

Have you ever thought about making commercials for your business or individual products? YouTube is owned by Google, therefore one could imagine it will be indexed quite frequently. Get out your video camera and get creative – -post on YouTube and link to the product or your homepage.

Do you have a forum on your site? These will be searched as well, and it’s a great chance to provide your customers with a place to share information and tips relating to your products.

You may find it a bit addicting, once you start with SEO, you may not be able to stop! I’ll Include a few more in depth links to keep you going!

Here you’ll find rankings data for different SEO factors.

Here is an E-commerce SEO checklist.

Here are some more expanded tips.

You can no longer deny the importance of social media and networking. As a small business owner, these platforms provide an extensive network to get your brand recognized. Most importantly, its free marketing!

You may be saying, “Its too late, I missed the boat and my only fans on Facebook are my dog and cat.”

Well, it isn’t too late and yes, maybe you haven’t been as active as you could of been-but that’s no excuse to keep ignoring these powerful resources. If you feel a little lost and don’t know your Twitter from your YouTube, just take a deep breath and start with one and build from there.

It will take a little time and effort, but I’ll try to make your job easier and give you a few tips and good places to start.

Mashable.com is a great site for all things relating to social and digital media.

Beginners Guide: Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and YouTube For Business is a fantastic overview of the top sites.

In How Social Media Has Radically Changed Advertising, Hank Wasiak gives a great overview of how the advertising world has evolved and how Social Media is playing the leading role.

If think a Twitter is something a bird does, How to Build A Twitter Strategy For Your Business will give you some much needed information.

Here’s a how-to about Building Your Personal Brand on Facebook.  Here is a direct link to start setting up your page.

How To Evaluate Your Social Media Plan is a great resource to have at your planning stages.

These should get you started, and feel free to post any other links in the comments section that you have found helpful.

When compared with traditional print writing,  internet grammar and usage is full of “exceptions to the rule”. This can prove intimidating whether or not you feel you possess adequate writing skills. Thankfully, we now have a reference guide.

Yahoo! is set to release “The Yahoo! Style Guide”; it will be available in print as well as digital versions. In fact, you don’t necessarily need to buy it- the companion website is full of tips.

The site gives advice on writing for the web, editing and a resources section. The resources section has information on basic webpage coding, SEO and additional tools of the trade. It also has an “Ask an Editor” section where you can submit your most perplexing questions to Yahoo!’s editorial staff.

There is also a word list that features many newer terms or words and phrases that aren’t commonly found in a dictionary. For example, when to use real time and when to use real-time, you will have to check out the site to find out for yourself!

The print and digital versions will release simultaneously on July 6^th, but you can take advantage now of the free resources on the website.

You know summer is in full swing when the mercury is soaring, kids are out of school and the 4th of July is just around the corner. The holiday weekend has traditionally been known for widespread retail sales – have you ever tried implementing a holiday sale in your store?

KingWebmaster’s Promo Manager makes it so much easier to do just that. This powerful tool allows you to customize your promotion by choosing from a variety of conditions and rewards to achieve your sales goal. With 5 conditions and 4 rewards to chose from, the combinations are virtually limitless.

Conditions

Cart Contents

Total Value of Cart

Day, Time, or Day of the Week

Shipping Address

Discount Code

Rewards

Free or Discounted Individual Item(s)

Free or Discounted Items(s) From a Category

Free Shipping

Discount off Total Order Amount

In addition, the Promo Manager allows you to block certain items or blocks of items and has an easy to use Administration System. You can even specify a combination of multiple promotional conditions!

Not only can you reward your customers with special deals, the Promo Manager actually makes your job easier by attracting more visitors and converting them into customers. See how JewelBasket.com increased conversion rates and revenue with help from the Promo Manager.

What are you waiting for?

Celebrate the 4th this year with explosive sales that will rival the fireworks!

We had a great time meeting new friends and catching up with old ones.

If you didn’t get a chance to attend the IRCR or Yahoo! Summit in Chicago, Yahoo! is holding another Summit in Santa Clara California on September 13th and 14th. KingWebmaster will also be attending that event.

For an in depth look at the Chicago Summit, check out Ina Steiner’s article from AuctionBytes.com.

Sometime at the end of April-beginning of May, Google made an algorithmic change that affected long tail queries.  Goggle makes changes on a daily basis that largely go unnoticed; exactly the point. If they updated infrequently, it would undoubtedly cause widespread chaos.

This change certainly has everyone’s attention.  Matt Cutts, who heads Google’s Web Spam Team explained that the primary goal was to address content farms, or sites that do the minimum to avoid being classified as spammers. Unfortunately, many e commerce sites seem to have been affected as well. This is mainly due to the fact that retail sites have many product pages that are a few clicks from the home page, without many links to it and contain little unique or value added content.

So, what can you do about it? Turn those lemons into lemonade! Seriously, it isn’t going to get you anywhere to get mad and not do anything about it.  Use this as a springboard to improve your content. I know it can seem like a daunting task, but just work on a bit at a time and you’ll get there.

Here are a few suggestions to get you started.

1.  Do you have a blog page?  A better question-are you using your blog page? Use it to write product reviews and suggestions and link to product pages. Place special promotional offers or coupons and promote your social media links.

2. Stop copying and pasting your product descriptions from the supplier! Get creative and write unique, engaging product descriptions.

3. Keep the content topical on your product pages. If you have too much unrelated marketing, it can water-down your page topic.

4. Focus on your social media networking; this can be a great resource for your business. Still think it’s a waste of time? Check out these stats on social media usage.

5. Improve the linking within your website pages and use social media to link directly to your product pages. Better linking will improve the prominence of the pages in Google searches.

Like I said above, don’t get overwhelmed! Pick a task or two a day to tackle. Do you have a teenager on summer vacation? Instant intern! You may be surprised at some of the original descriptions they can come up with. Better yet, turn over your Facebook profile and don’t be surprised if you have 1,000 fans by summer’s end.

How often do you wait to make a change until everything seems perfect? Or, maybe you agonize over the decision forever- running over all possible scenarios while delaying the inevitable.

So why would some of us rather jump off a cliff-into shark infested waters than shake up the status quo? We all have goals and dreams and we aren’t going to get anywhere near them without making some kind of change. We should live for change-crave it-seek it out instead of hiding in the corner from it.

So what’s the culprit? Good old fear. Fear of losing it all and making a mistake of such magnitude our lives will be ruined. Fear of making a fool of ourselves. Fear of losing something  you love. Fear of the unknown. Fear of change.

Fear that if every variable isn’t perfect, you will fail.

One of the most annoying things is when you get sick just before a vacation. You’ve taken time off work, booked your trip and are looking forward to much needed R&R. The countdown has begun, you are a few days away from bliss and…you get that old familiar feeling. Tickling throat, headache-maybe you’re acting grumpy for no reason. Then you realize,”Oh (expletive!) I’m getting sick!”

Vacation ruined? I don’t think so.

Fast forward 6 months, a year-what do you remember? I’m willing to bet you barely remember the sick part. Sure, it may be  a vague part of your memory, but when it’s all said and done, it makes no difference. You have your memories, you relaxed-somehow your stuffy nose and headache doesn’t seem so earth shattering.

The key is to remember that in the moment. Don’t let the lack of  perfection get in the way of your good time-or your life. That isn’t to say preparation and planning aren’t important, they are-but don’t plan yourself into oblivion.  At some point you need to dive in head first trusting in yourself-knowing you’re on your way.

What have you been waiting to tackle?

Last summer I was fortunate enough to have my closest friends travel from all over the country to attend my wedding. The next evening, we all went to a baseball game where our home team lost miserably. With the star pitcher on the mound and about 20 of our closest friends there to share our favorite activity, they blew it. It wasn’t just a loss-it was a beating.

A couple hours later, a few of us were walking through the hotel lobby after a post game get together. I turned and spotted our home team coach sitting alone. During the season, he calls this particular hotel home so I was hoping for a sighting. Very excitedly, I did a few double takes to make sure I was seeing right and tried to casually alert the others to his presence. He saw the whole spectacle; there was no one else in sight.

I had a decision to make at that moment. Do I keep walking or do I walk over to a man I admire who surely wants nothing more to be left alone? We kept walking. I thought I was doing the right thing, respecting his privacy, giving him a break from the public eye. But, I regret that decision to this day. I’ve thought about it a million times since. Why couldn’t we have just walked up with words of support and encouragement or just to shake the hands of a legend?

I felt that our presence was a reminder of his failure, but I’m pretty sure I over thought it. Although the source for all your inspiration and everything else in life, your mind is also the primary source of the roadblocks you encounter. How many opportunities do we miss on a daily basis because we were over analyzing or over thinking? How does that add up over a lifetime?

I suspect it is a survival instinct that usually does more harm than good for us “evolved” humans. That “fight or flight” that comes at the most inopportune times-a first date, a job interview, maybe your wedding? While inconvenient, it does present an opportunity to learn something, to stretch your limits-to push yourself into new territory.

It’s understood that to break out of a mental block you need to change your surroundings for a few minutes. Stand up, move around, get the blood flowing. This forces your brain into a new thought pattern-enables it to process ideas in a new way.

What could happen if you made a practice of that in your daily life? If you pushed yourself bit by bit out of your comfort zone. Imagine what you could accomplish. Don’t you think it would be incredibly liberating and exhilarating? It would make you realize how invincible and capable you are. It can also feel pretty impossible-but it really isn’t.

So, how do you take the first step? Easy, just shut your mind up and do it. Ignore the nagging, the self-doubting scared voice and put one foot in front of the other.  Oh, and don’t look back. You will never be the same again-and you won’t want to be. You may think about the time you may have wasted, but don’t let that get you down. Just remember those days are gone forever.