Internet Marketing and eCommerce Expert – Nigel Burke's Blog

Big W has taken the plunge and entered into the online retail market. They have launched their online store available here – http://bigw.com.au.

Compared to the North America and Europe, Australia is lagging behind in the world of ecommerce. Large department stores such as Myers, David Jones and Target do no have an online store.

The launch of the Big W store is great news for ecommerce in Australia. It means that the large chains may start investing some real money into selling online.

Online stores such as OverStocked, DStore, and Big Brown Box have been open for a number of years now. Australian consumers are getting used to buying products and services over the Internet.

About Big W Online
The Big W store has over 4,000 products in a variety of categories -

• Electronics
• Baby
• Photo
• Home & Garden
• Fashin
• Entertainment
• Toys
• Sports & Leisure

Delivery Options
Australia post is being used for delivery of products. It seems like a fairly simple pricing structure is being used. Pricing for packages are as below -

• Packages less than 500 grams will cost $4.98
• Packages less than 10 KG will cost $9.98
• Packages over 10 KG cost around $20
• Express Post is also an option but costs extra

Payment Options
PayPal is being offered as a method of payment. PayPal is not offered on other Woolworths websites such as Wooolworths and HomeShop.

Prices Online
Big W have stated that there is no price difference between it’s online store and it’s normal stores.

Features
Front page
The website appears to be nice and simple to navigate. The frontpage does have a lot of pictures and banners trying to get your attention. I think this could have been cleaner in design.

Reviews
There is a reviews and ratings for products. Customers like to read reviews and ratings from other customers. Just like testimonials can make customers feel satisfied that they are ordering a quality product.

Product images
The product images have a nice popup display. Other images of the product are displayed as thumbnails. This makes it really clear that other pictures of the product exist. I think this is very nice.

Estimate delivery
The estimated delivery charge is a great tool. By entering your postcode on the product page, you can see exactly how much you are going to be charged for delivery. There is nothing more annoying to a customer when they need to go through the checkout procedure to see the cost of delivery.

Tell a friend
The tell a friend tool has made an appearance as well. A nice lightbox appears with the opportunity to email the details of the product to a friend. Many online stores benefit having this tool.

Stock levels
You can check the stock levels of particular products as well. By entering in your post code, you can see the stock levels at many of the Big W stores. It also displays the distance to each store. If the store is low in stock, it displays the phone number so you can call that particular store. You could call the store and check for stock and maybe they could reserve the product for you.

Overview of features
The features of the website have been nicely done. You would expect that from a large department store but even they can get it wrong sometimes.

The lightboxes (popup windows) load very quickly. There’s nothing more annoying then these being broken.

The website still has a couple of formatting issues to resolve. Some of the text goes over the background in some places. I am sure they will will these up as the site continues to be improved.

Wrap Up
It’s great to see a large department store go online. Overall, I think it will help push online sales in Australia and hopefully the other department stores will follow suit.

Have you ever had those phone calls from companies claiming to get your site to the first page of Google within 28 days?

Even as a search engine optimisation and marketing consultant, I still get them. I listen to their pitch and then ask a couple of questions. They usually have no clue how to answer them so what kind of service will they be providing?

I have done a search on their business name and they didn’t even come up first. That is a very easy task and a pathetic attempt on their behalf.

We advise all our customers to be aware of anyone calling up trying to sell them Internet services. There are a lot of people out there to take your money and there’s not much you can do about it if they do not deliver.

These telemarketers are driven by commission and can become aggressive pressuring you to sign up with them. I recommend avoiding any business that you have never with dealt with before or if they sound like they are over promising on what they can do.

They claim that having a good ranking will increase visitors and increase sales. This is true. It’s how they get you there – if they get your there at all. I don’t believe they will ever get you there. If you get banned from Google, that’s the end of it!

Wrap Up
Beware of any company that contacts you regarding search engine optimisation or marketing that you have not contacted first.

If you are ever unsure, contact your web developer or myself and I will tell you if it’s a good or bad.

The power of social media is gaining momentum everyday. Large companies are taking social media serious.

Jetstar is leading the airline industry with innovative social media tactics with the recent announcement that it will direct 40% of its marketing budget to social media -

“We’ve conducted some very successful marketing and PR campaigns via social media in the past 18 months, including YouTube and Twitter, and the response has been phenomenal,” said David May, Jetstar’s head of marketing.”

In comparison to social media, traditional marketing is increasing in cost but I believe the effectiveness is decreasing -

“Social media offers more value for money and is a smarter way to reach our customers – which is what Jetstar is all about.”

Jetstar has previously has sales exclusively on Twitter with proved extremely successfuly -

“In line with the increasing need to talk to smaller, interconnected communities; communities that when aggregated deliver large numbers of engaged and involved brand advocates, we are likely to shift a large percentage of Jetstar’s above the line media spend into digital areas, with an increased focus on social media,” said Richard Smith, managing director of Jetstar’s media buying agency Maxus.

More information can be found at MarketingMag – Social media 40% of Jetstar’s marketing budget

Wrap Up
What are you doing with social media to help your business?

There’s an interesting statistic e-commerce statistic that I have written about earlier. The average time for a customer to make a purchase is 30 hours. This means that most people do not buy a product or service on their first visit. It is usually after they have thought about it and they come back the next day to make their purchase.

What is Remarketing?
The remarketing tool allows advertisers to hit the user days later to try and get their booking or purchase.

Example of Remarketing in action
Imagine someone wants to go to a concert in Sydney. The user visits a particular hotel’s website in Sydney but does not make a booking. The next day, they go to the booking website for the concert which is part of the Google Content Network – they have Google display ads running. The ads that they see are for the hotel they visited the day before. This is remarketing through Google Adwords.

Using this new tool
This new tool is available in your Adwords account if you advertise with Google. More information about this tool can be found here – Now Available: Reach the right audience through remarketing.

Did you know that Google penalises websites for duplicate content? If Google thinks you have copied content from elsewhere on the Internet, you can get banned from Google.

If you sell the same products as other merchants, are your descriptions of your products unique or copied from the manufacturers website?

Did you copy your content?
If they are copied directly from the manufacturers website or from a competitor, you run the risk of being banned from Google or at least penalised with your search engine rankings.

Make your product descriptions unique
The benefit of having unique product descriptions may give your website a better ranking. Having your own product description that you wrote means you can make it more targetted for specific keywords giving you more control of your ranking.

Search engines love content that is unique. Customers like reading product descriptions that say more than what’s your competitor websites.

Wrap Up
Make your product descriptions unique!

Phishing is a deceptive tactic to obtain login details to certain websites. Once they get the login details, they can login to the user’s account and steal money and get credit card details.

What to look for
Have you received an email that didn’t quite look right? If a bank sends you an email and asks for your login details, you know it’s a scam. The same for a social media website or online store website.

Bank phishing emails
You may receive emails from banks you are not with so it’s easy to tell that the email is a scam because you’re not with that bank. But what happens if you get an email from your bank. How do you know if it’s legitimate?

If you receive an email from your bank, be cautious, it’s highly likely to be a phishing email. Have a look at the link addresses in the emails. A real bank address would be – http://anz.com.au. A phishing website address may look like this – http://anz.com.au.vcsts.za/login

eBay phishing emails
I just received one that appears to be from eBay, that’s why I am writing this article right now. The subject is – eBay Member : You Received a Question From eBay Member fresh.tickets. It looks official. The body of the email looks exactly like an email you would get from eBay if someone really was asking a question about one of your auctions.

I don’t have any eBay auctions running right now so I knew straight away that it was a phishing email.

There are 9 links in the email. 8 of them go to real eBay pages. Even the link to the member’s profile is real.

The link to “repond” to the questions leads to the bad website. If I submitted my details on the bad website, this person might be able to access my PayPal account and other details on eBay.

The damage bill
It’s estimated that $3.2 billion dollars is lost every year in the US from phishing. Customers need to be smarter with their login details and do not provide it to anyone who simply asks to confirm their account.

If you do receive a phishing email, you can forward it to the real company so they know about it. I think this is more important for smaller stores so they can put out an announcement as soon as possible.

Are online stores affected?
Any online store can fall victim to a phishing attack. It usually happens to the larger companies such as Amazon but it can happen to any store. If your online store is attacked, you need to notify all your customers of the phishing attack. Describe what a phishing attack is and tell them to ignore any such emails that ask for their login details.

Wrap up
Customers and companies need to be aware of online crime and protect themselves from falling victim to such attacks. When your company may have been attacked, be pro-active about it and let your customers know as soon as possible.

If these cybercriminals keep getting away with it, they are going to keep doing it and the costs for doing online commerce will only increase.

It happened to the music industry and now it’s happening to more industries. The music industry ignored technology changes and suffered the consequences. If only if they were early adopters to selling online music, I believe more people would purchase their music online. They have had a hard time playing catch up including many court cases and legal battles.

The local video store under threat
Most video stores and chains have ignored the online world and will suffer a slow death in 2010 and beyond. IBIS World research predicts that the video rental industry will lose $20m in renenue in 2010.

The video rental industry has had a number of threats of late including NetFlix – an online video mail subscription service, DVD vending machines and new disc formats. A lot of people are legally and illegally downloading their movies today.

I’m just waiting for the day when Fox Studio and Warner Brothers successfully start selling their movies online for immediate download directly to customers instead of using distributors.

Travel Agencies
IBIS World research predicts the travel agency sector to fall by $46 million. Customers are now purchasing their travel services through discounted travel websites and directly with airlines and hotels skipping commissions.

Photo Processing Stores
Online photo services are increasing because customers can now upload their photos and receive their prints in the mail within a few days at a much lower price. IBIS World is predicting a 5.7% drop in revenue in 2010.

What does this mean for me?
Is your industry affected by these predictions?
Will your industry be affected in the near future?
What are you doing to take your services online?

Wrap Up
There is no stopping the online train now. It’s been proven many times over that the early adopters are usually the most successful. If you do not shift with technology changes, it will shift without you!

Search engine optimisation (SEO) can be defined as optimising your website so search engines can rank your website in the natural search results, as high as possible for those targetted keywords.

But is all the effort in SEO really worth it?
Should you put all that time and effort into optimising your website so that when the search engine bots come through, that your page will rank higher?

Should you even think about paying an SEO professional to do it for you? What return on investment can you expect?

There’s no  guarantees
No one can guarantee number one position for your chosen keywords for the natural search results. You might get emails in everyday with promises but still no real guarantee.

The statistics
The number one ranking website for any keyword has an average click through rate of 56%. So if 1,000 searches are done for that keyword each day, that’s 560 visitors each day on average.

Of these 560 visitors you get daily, 5% purchase a product – that’s 1 in 20 people. That’s a nice conversion rate and works out to be 112 new customers each day from that keyword. If the average purchase was $100, that’s $11,200 a day in revenue. That number 1 ranking is worth a lot of money.

Imagine if it was a popular keyword and it was being searched 100,000 times a day – 56,000 visitors a day and up to 11,200 new customers a day in an ideal scenario. That’s $1,120,000 a day. Now we’re starting to talk big business!!

Would your business benefit from this kind of traffic?
Any online business could benefit from this kind of traffic. On the Internet, targetted traffic is king. It earns money and it’s what some businesses survive on.

Competition is heavy in the search engines and the most profitable the keywords, that more likely there is going to be more competition.

Conclusion
SEO is definitely worth it and can take a company from being good to great! If your website is not search engine optimised, you are not helping the business at all.

If you have any questions about SEO, please contact me – nigel@burke.com.au

A number of our customers have received letters about renewing their domain. The problem is that the customers have never dealth with this company previously.

The domain renewal scammers send out thousands of letters everyday to domain owners and they still get many people’s money. Often the domain name is not renewed after it’s being paid for.

If you receive a letter from a company that you are unsure about that is Internet related or you have received an invoice that you are just not sure about, contact your web developer, hosting company or even email me direct. They should be happy to answer any questions regarding any invoices or letters that could be a scam.

Companies that you need to be cautious of include -

• Domain Registry of America
• Domain Registry of Australia
• Internet Names Group

We recommend throwing all their letters into the bin because they are ‘domain slammers’ (scammers).

Don’t get caught in this scam – use your common sense.

Author : “Pen Kits & Pen Blanks – Timberbits.com“

Most people dream of handing the letter to the boss that says “I quit!” However the reality is very seldom realized.

Starting your own small business is very daunting and traditionally, doing so means mortgaging the family home or borrowing from family and friends.

Where to start.

Ebay has now the perfect vehicle to test and develop you business model and skills. With a few click and some loose change in your pocket, you can compete in a level playing field with the big boys in town.

Should your sales start to pick up and you get into the rhythm of selling on ebay, you will very quickly notice the advantages and disadvantages of eBay.

Pro’s and Con’s

The main disadvantages of eBay is mainly

1. the enormous fees that it charges, and

2. the price wars and race to the bottom which quickly erodes profits.

The next level.

Once you have developed a customer base, it’s time to start to lead them to an environment that you control. Lead them to a place where the big corporation can’t dictates how much their share is (before your even earn a cent), away from the “hand of god” that can delete all your listing because of a complaint of a righteous customer, away from a place which shares all your business statistics with your competitors.

By leading your customers to your own web site, you take back control and you also save a lot of money in the process.

Your website is your shop – give it some street appeal

Have you ever visited a web site that looked like it was done by a 8 year old or a newbie to web design? You wouldn’t get a dodge carpenter or a friend of a friend to fitout your retail premises – we all know this is the case we walk into some shops, why do the same with your web site?

With the invent of the web – small business can compete with the big boys in town. Spend a bit of money up front and get a professional to do the job. To fit out a retail shop professionally expect to pay over $250,000. A professional website is less than $1,000.

I always get complimented for how professional Pen Kits & Pen Blanks – Timberbits.com looks. It cost me less than a $700 to get started – that’s less than 1 months of eBays fees. Now my website’s volume has grown to more than 5 times what I sell on eBay. I now save thousands of dollars a month just on eBay fees, not to mention the time and frustration on eBay.

My word of advice is as soon as you start selling more than 20 transactions a month on eBay, start to invest in a website. When you do build a website, don’t go cheap – we all know what those websites look like, pay a professional because you get what you pay for.