StoresOnline Merchants are always looking for new ways to advertise and market their online businesses.  Tracking Return On Investment or “ROI” is important to StoresOnline Merchants.  Here is an excerpt from an article “Website Design Tips for Tracking ROI” by Chet Geschickter:

Test, learn, optimize, repeat. That’s how you unlock ROI. Very few people get it right straight out of the gate. Even if you do, can you get it more right by making changes and improvements? The answer is yes. This may not be the message you want to hear, but there’s no rest for the weary. Following best practices in planning, design, and implementation does not mean you are at the end of the road. It means you are at a good starting point in a journey of continuous improvement. 

Data is expensive to own and use. It’s cheap — almost free — to get. The commoditization of data is a problem. When a client or colleague demands that “everything” be measured, your quick retort is simple: “Who, then, is going to analyze everything?” Don’t let yourself get snared in the trap of all-inclusive measurement. If you do, you’ll regret it later. So be selective. Pick your key conversion events and devote your time and attention there. Out-of-the-box top-line metrics are fine as part of the ritual of reporting on how a channel is doing. But don’t get distracted by them. You’ve got more important ways to spend your time — measuring and improving ROI.

1. Targeting key market segments
Smart marketers invest limited resources identifying and targeting the highest opportunity segments. The starting point for doing this online is using sound market research to create personas, which are fictitious characters that represent the different user types within a targeted demographic that might use a site.

2. Driving purchase consideration
Most websites share the common goal of driving revenue, but what can you do if your site doesn’t have an online cash register?

3. Creating customer loyalty
A basic site loyalty metric is the distribution of the number of visits by visitor for a set timeframe. This should be a familiar table for users of Google Analytics, but it is a site-focused metric — not a customer-centric metric.

4. Fostering advocacy and word-of-mouth (i.e. viral) marketing
A YouTube video view about your product is like a television commercial on steroids. With a TV commercial, users are motivated to watch the TV program that your commercial accompanies. With a YouTube video view, they are motivated to watch you!

5. Accelerating revenue
New product introductions create a golden opportunity to track how quickly and effectively your company is creating awareness. Measure traction and uptake by collecting metrics on new product or service page views, starting from the launch date and extending out into day 1, day 2, day 3, etc. Building and tracking separate landing pages for new products and key marketing campaigns create an opportunity to measure interest. Depending on how your campaign is configured, the interest can be from both digital and non-digital PR and marketing efforts, especially if the non-digital components include drive-to-web messaging.

6. Reducing cost to serve
Self-help is a good thing if self-help sessions are successful. Success is in the eye of the user, so include a “did this solve your problem?” question at the end of every support listing. Track and report on responses to identify the type of content that helps and the areas where you need to overhaul the information you provide.

These insightful ROI tips will help you increase the effectiveness of your site design for  your StoresOnline business.

As 2008 wraps up, StoresOnline would like to thank the many StoresOnline Employees and StoresOnline Merchants who have contributed their time, talents, and positive energy to the cause of online entrepreneurship. 

The New 2009 Year is before us.  If you haven’t made any New Year’s Resolutions, there is still time.  But for those of you StoresOnline Merchants who are busy thinking of what you can do to further boost your online business, here are some words of guidance from SEO.com:

5 things related to online marketing that we could all use more of this coming year

1- More Content
The search engines love content. Your customers love content. You need more of it. Start a blog, write an ebook, share your knowledge with the world and you will be rewarded for it.

2 – More Links
It takes a lot of time and hard work to get people to link to your site, but links still play a HUGE part in the SEO equation, so you have to keep getting more links to your site. Quality is more important than quantity, but you need more of those quality links.

3- More Connected
Get involved in your industry associations, social networks, relevant blogs, and forums. Set up your profile on Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter. The web is social, so start making friends!

4- More Testing
Don’t settle for average conversion rates. Test out different landing pages, offers, and marketing messages to continually improve your results.

5 – More Analytics
Make sure you’re tracking all the right metrics. Don’t overlook important key performance indicators. A few things you might not be tracking, but should consider are newsletter signups, bounce rate, assisting keywords and brand awareness.

StoresOnline wishes you a safe and Happy New Year’s Eve.

StoresOnlineSite.com has excellent information for StoresOnline Merchants and other online entrepreneurs.  If you are interested in learning why the StoresOnline Pro or StoresOnline Express software is so unique, you’ll definitely want to check StoresOnlineSite.com out.  Here is a tidbit of information from StoresOnlineSite.com:

Learn More About the StoresOnlinePro Software

Choosing the Right Website Software Will Help You Avoid Complaints
There are many website builders available. Some website builders are secondary products to a company’s primary business model, created to solve a secondary complaint. While others are created as a primary product offering. Many of the online website building software programs from either of these categories never made it through their first year of life – while some have thrived…read more>>>

You Have Options When Choosing A Website Building Platform

Many online website building programs offer different levels of accounts – such as Gold, Silver, Bronze, or Personal and Professional – all at different price ranges. Storesonline believes that an individual who is serious about doing business online is going to make the best decision for their business based on functionality as well as finances…read more>>>

Why Choose StoresOnline Pro As Your E-Commerce Solution?
There are several complaints that many Website Builders will charge you a fee for several different features or functions, such as transaction surcharges, bandwidth usage, email usage, newsletter subscriptions, Customer Support, SSL, etc. At the time of a Storesonline purchase, a Storesonline Merchant has everything that he or she needs to create, maintain, and successfully achieve their Internet Marketing goals…read more>>>

In observance of Christmas and New Years, starting at 12:01am Mountain Time on Tuesday 12/24/2008 until Friday 12/26/2008 at 6:00am Mountin Time and starting at 12:01am Mountain Time on Wedneday 12/31/2008 until Thursday 1/1/2009 at 6:00am Mountain Time we will not offer chat support.

Telephone Customer support will be closed on Wednesday 12/24/2008 through Thurday 12/26/2008. Telephone Customer Support will be available again on Friday 12/26/2008. Telephone Customer support will also be closed on Thursday 1/1/2009. Telephone Customer Support will be available again on Friday 1/2/2009.

We will, however, be checking an emergency email system every few hours during this time. Any email that is emergency related, should be directed to 911help@myquickresponse.com. Please note that any “non-emergency” email will be responded to within 72 hours of returning back to the office.

Thanks for your understanding as we allow our support staff to spend the Holidays with their families.

iMergent Announces Board and Management Changes
 
OREM, Utah, December 11, 2008 – iMergent, Inc., (AMEX: IIG) a leading provider of eCommerce software for small businesses and entrepreneurs, announced Brandon Lewis resigned as the company’s president and chief operating officer, effective March 9, 2009.  Lewis also resigned as a director effective immediately, and the board will consist of six members. 
 
“I am very appreciative of Brandon’s years of dedicated service to iMergent,” stated Steven G. Mihaylo, CEO of iMergent.  “His commitment and vision were instrumental in iMergent’s development and growth over the past several years.  I wish him all the best in his future endeavors.”
 
About iMergent 
iMergent provides eCommerce solutions to entrepreneurs and small businesses enabling them to market and sell their business products or ideas via the Internet.  Headquartered in Orem, Utah, the company sells its proprietary StoresOnline software and training services, which help users build successful Internet strategies to market products, accept online orders, analyze marketing performance, and manage pricing and customers.  In addition to software, iMergent offers website development, web hosting and marketing products.  iMergent typically reaches its target audience through a concentrated direct marketing effort to fill Preview Sessions, in which a StoresOnline expert reviews the product opportunities and costs as well as offers StoresOnline Express for sale.  These sessions lead to a follow-up Workshop Conference, where product and technology experts train potential users on the software and sell upgrades to StoresOnline Pro and StoresOnline Platinum. iMergent, Inc. and StoresOnline are trademarks of iMergent, Inc.

Company Contact:
Steven G. Mihaylo, CEO
iMergent, Inc.
801.431.4695
Stevemihaylo@imergentinc.com

Investor Relations Contact:
Kirsten Chapman
Lippert/Heilshorn & Associates
415.433.3777
kchapman@lhai.com

For more information about this press release, click here.

StoresOnline Merchants if you aren’t using Google Alerts, now is the time to get started. Google Alerts will assist you as you track a specific keyword or key term that you are focusing on. With Google Alerts, when the specific keyword is written about on the Internet, Google Alerts will send you and email with the keyword highlighted as well as the source of the new information.

StoresOnline teams are aware of the benefits of Google Alerts. We use Google Alerts to watch for news about StoresOnline. Today I received this Google Alert:

An Online Business with StoresOnline Express
By Online Consumer Solutions
StoresOnline Express allows you to create and maintain an eCommerce-enabled website with simplicity and ease. Simply gather content, design your site, publish your StoresOnline Express website to the Internet, and allow customers to
…Online Consumer Solutions for… – http://onlineconsumersolutions.blogspot.com/

This write up on this blog highlighted the StoresOnline Inside Sales website. As per the blog post, the StoresOnline Express is being offered on this site for $50.00. As you can see, using Google Alerts helps provide you additional resources that will help you keep a finger on the pulse of news about your StoresOnline site or business. Not only did we get new StoresOnline information to share with you, we also were able to show you one of the benefits of using Google Alerts.

StoresOnline Merchants are constantly researching ways to build their websites organically.  Some of the best advice that StoresOnline can offer Merchants is to make time to work on some basic aspects of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) such as making sure your Meta data is done right and that you are adding fresh, keyword relevant content to your StoresOnline web site.  Another very important SEO aspect that you need to plan for is building links to your website. 

There are many different types of information out on the Internet about link building “do’s and don’ts” however a great resource that StoresOnline Merchants might want to check out is SEOChat.com forums.  As an illustration of the type of information that you can find, here is a bit of a post about what to avoid when building links:

Things to Avoid
• Stay away from link farms
• The site has no possible connection to your subject matter whatsoever. The page they put your link on isn’t linked to FROM any page, meaning it’s floating out there in never-never land and is a ploy to get you to link to their site.
• The page where they put your link is on a URL a mile long and several directories deep so engines will never find it.
• The page looks like a farmer’s field with nicely arranged rows of links to hundreds of sites which aren’t necessarily organized in any logical manner, but that doesn’t matter because someone told them the link is all that counts.
• It’s a link and a link only. No description. No proof the person ever actually reviewed the site.
• Signs they’ll accept anything that shows evidence of being a “live” link. A true Directory has criteria, frets about the quality of sites it links to and doesn’t have people out begging for links. Instead the reverse is true, with people begging to be let in.
• Watch for scams such as sub-domain one-way traffic feeders where the page your site is linked to isn’t part of the main website. Study the URLS carefully before you decide to accept a link request.
• Stay away from FFA sites (Free For All)
• Avoid being on a web site that has pages and pages of links. This is viewed as a Link Farm.
• Stay away from gambling, RX and other unsavory sites.
• Be aware of the possibility of bad neighbours. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy server with a spammer or banned site.
• Don’t waste your time getting a link from a non-ranking page within a site. The page needs to hold a rank of a minimum PR value of 1 below your landing page, particularly if there are going to be other outbound links to other web sites. If there are not going to be other outbound links, or just a few, then a PR of 2 and above will still boost your ranking and benefit your SERP’s as well as your own PR.
• Stay away from link pages called “Link Partners”, “Links” or the like, especially if the term “link” or “links” is part of the URL
• Stay away from pages that have more than 50 outbound links
If you are looking to build long-term rankings, it takes more work and creativity than just sending out automated emails or joining a linking program. Create a daily “hit list” outlining exactly what you will do.

With these tips on your side, a StoresOnline Merchant can avoid wasting precious time and effort on link strategies that might not be worth the work.  StoresOnline wishe you the best as you continue to marketing your StoresOnline website.

There are thousands and thousands of websites that will offer you advice on how StoresOnline Merchants can best utilize Relationship Marketing to create loyalty within their customer base.  StoresOnline knows that you want to know what you can do to enrich and grow the relationship between your StoresOnline business and your customers.  Here is a link to a white paper entitled “Best Practices for Relationship Marketing” by WebTrends.com. 

Here is a brief overview of what the white paper offers:

According to a recent Forrester Report, consumers spend 34% of their media time online. Marketing is shifting from a push to pull model and consumers are taking more control over what they view and how they view it. This shift in the marketing landscape means consumers are less likely to respond to mass media marketing strategies. To address this challenge, companies are turning to relationship marketing in order to develop more creative, innovative and cost-effective strategies for retaining and building loyalty with their customers.

Discover how your organization can move beyond traditional marketing and leverage the loyalty-creating power of customer relationships.

StoresOnline Merchants can download this whitepaper by clicking here.  We wish you the best of luck as we move into the busy holiday shopping season.

Steven G. Mihaylo - New CEO of iMergent

We want to keep you StoresOnline Merchants up to date on the most recent changes at StoresOnline.  Many of you know that iMergent is the parent company of StoresOnline.  A couple of weeks ago, a new CEO of iMergent was named.  His name is Mr. Steven G. Mihaylo.  Here is a news story we found that we thought you StoresOnline Merchants would want to read:

IMergent Inc., an online marketing services company, has named Steven G. Mihaylo chief executive officer. He replaces Donald L. Danks, who resigned as CEO and as a director; who now becomes a consultant to the company.

He is a retired chairman/CEO of Inter-Tel Inc., which he founded in 1969 and sold to He led to Mitel for $720 million last year. He grew the business to nearly $500 million in annual sales, according to IMergent.

For more information and news about the latest changes at StoresOnline, please feel free to visit the StoresOnline Press Release Blog.

Visit StoresOnlineMerchant.com Today

We usually bring our StoresOnline Merchants news about Search Engine Optimization and other helpful online business tips. We came across this website, StoresOnlineMerchant.com that has a lot of great StoresOnline Merchant information. There is a little bit of everything here: from SEO tips to Internet Marketing advice.

Here is an article that might help StoresOnline Merchants as they strategically reorganize their businesses during this topsy turvy economy:

StoresOnline Merchants Internet Marketing Tips
How to Recession Proof Your Small Business

Whether you believe we are in a recession or not, many of your customers may think we are and that will affect your online store.

StoresOnline Tip 1) Cutting Expenses – But Not Marketing or Sales!
Some of the things that many StoresOnline Entrepreneurs do during slow times can in fact be detrimental to their small business later on down the road. For example, your first instincts will be to cut expenses. This is a smart thing to do but just be sure you are cutting expenses in the right places. Sales and marketing are not the right place to cut expenses. If you want your StoresOnline small business to thrive you will need to continue to make sales even during the lean times.

StoresOnline Tip 2) Look at your processes like Billing
What are your billing terms? Changing your billing terms from say net 45 to net 30 will get your money into your hands faster and help with cash flow.

StoresOnline Tip 3) Review Vendor Agreements and Negotiate Lower Rates
During lean times your vendors are most likely happy to just have your business. Many of them are willing to renegotiate your current pricing agreements just to keep your business. Contact each of them and try to negotiate a lower rate or delayed invoicing at least until the economy turns around. You may have originally agreed to the rates when times were good and maybe you didn’t mind spending the extra money. But now that times are tight, you should take another look at those terms and try to negotiate a better rate. In conclusion It is smart during slower times to take a step back and look at your company.

Cutting expenses, reviewing your business processes, and negotiating lower rates for services are all ways you can do this. Don’t forget to ask your employees for their help. They know the processes better than you do. You might be surprised at how times like these can help your StoresOnline small business.

Visit StoresOnlineMerchant.com today for more StoresOnline Merchant information.