Sitebrand is holding a webinar this Wednesday 7/29 titled "Danskin: Can It Repeat Its Cyber Monday Mega Success?" with Jessica Koster, Danskin’s Director of e-Commerce Marketing. If you haven’t been following Danskin, the company built a very successful online strategy last year by creating specific personalized campaigns that dynamically change for every visitor.

Elastic Path is holding a webinar on 8/14 titled "The Art & Science of Choosing Ecommerce Technology" with Bernardine Wu, the CEO of FitForCommerce. This webinar should very interesting to anyone looking at the wide spectrum of different technologies used to host ecommerce solutions.

Finally, on the new book "Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer" should be released on 8/11. This is the first book on Google optimizer. The book is authored by leading conversion experts Bryan Eisenberg and John Quarto-vonTivadar.  You can pre-order your copy from Amazon.

Tags: conversion webinars, Ecommerce, ecommerce webinar
Posted in Conversion Optimization, Miscellaneous

We are looking to hire for two part time positions. These are perfect for stay at home moms who are looking to re-enter the professional life again!

Sales Executive Position

Successful Sales Executive candidates for Invesp Consulting will posses these core competencies: Passion for Sales, Ownership Mentality, Proven Sales Skills, Confidence, Energy, Positive Attitude and Persistence.

Responsibilities include:

• Develop and aggressively grow sales in designated geography through prospecting, cold calls and relationship development.
• Develop and maintain relationships with existing customers through effective account management and service. Ensure their understanding of our services.
• Maintain a high level of customer service through training and customer support.
• Ensure satisfaction by responding quickly and accurately to problems, concerns or needs of the customers and prospects.
• Help proactively market Invesp to clients in territory and convey the advantages of our services.
• Candidates will work from home and be responsible for attaining specific revenue and account base goals.

Requirements:

• 4 to 6 years of solid account management and sales experience.  Online marketing sales experience preferred but not required.
• A proven inside sales and account management track record.
• College degree.
• Technical skills to include, Microsoft Office Suite including strong use of Outlook and Word. 

Key Skills and Qualities:

• Candidates must have a winning attitude and be able to work effectively in a self-motivated environment.
• Clear communicator with a winning personality.
• Superb organizational skills.
• Well organized, with strong relationship building capabilities.
• Proactive, results oriented, self starter.
• Ability to quickly assess needs of customers

Please note that this is a part time job with 25-30 hours per week.

PR Consultant Position

Invesp consulting is seeking to hire a PR consultant to assist in the public relations area.

Responsibilities include:

• Develop a focused media relations plan that promotes brand awareness and positions the company as an industry leader.
• Develop and grow relationships with targeted media/reporters.
• Identify and create opportunities to obtain media coverage for Invesp Consulting
• Identify and create opportunities to obtain conference speaking engagements for Invesp Consulting
• Develop media supporting materials (fact sheets, response statements, news releases, event outline)
• Candidates will work from home on part time basis and be responsible for attaining specific goals.

Requirements:

• 5+  years of public relation experience. 
• Online marketing experience is preferred but not required.

If interested, please send your resume to careers@invesp.com

Tags: career, jobs, part time jobs, stay at home jobs
Posted in Business, Miscellaneous

Marketing folk often say your past customers are your best leads for the future. Then there is countless advice on warming up prospects, qualifying leads, and farming your market. You can very quickly get to the point where you have lists overflowing with names .

This is all very well, but what happens when you collect all this data and don’t know what to do with it?

After you collect your data, you need to start mining it.

A very simple technique that all CRM tools, and even an access database or spreadsheet, can perform is an RFM analysis. RFM stands for Recency, Frequency and Monetary Value.

• Recency - How long ago did they last buy/interact?
• Frequency - How often do they buy/interact?
• Money - How much do they spend? What is their budget?

Take your list and sort by each, giving a score from 1-5. When you have sorted and got three scores, add them together. This will give you a ranking from best (15), to worst (3).

For example,

Mr Big Co buys every week to the value of $1,000.
He is a much better prospect than Mr Flint who bought one $10 product last year.

If you take your top 20% from the list they are your gold customers or prospects. Now you know who to target with your most lavish attention!

Posted in Miscellaneous

Banks and financial institutions in general are late starters when it comes to utilizing the internet as a means to generate new revenue and sales. The major role that most bank websites play is a supportive means to their existing clients.

Let’s look at Chase’s website for example:

Continue reading Late in the Online Arena: Financial Institutions

Tags: Conversion Optimization, online banking, usability
Posted in Miscellaneous

I always think it is dangerous when people promote one tactic to the exclusion of others. Trying to use the same old approach each and every time is setting yourself up to fail.

It brings to mind that scene in Indiana Jones where the guy does all these fancy moves and Indy just shoots him. Yes, you might have style and flair, but effective wins out every time.

A sure sign of a sophisticated marketer is that they use the appropriate tactics for each project. You might see similarities between two projects, but they are not saying “blogs are the answer”, or “only a list will do!” each and every time.

How many times do you see the advice of even gurus being the latest-greatest-cutting-edge technique? Even the best of these tactics will pale into comparison against a prepared competitor using a well thought out battle plan.

To add one more metaphor, this is like playing chess with just one piece. A grandmaster can do it, but the rest of us are unlikely to win.

Answer these questions:

1. What is your attraction approach? Which tactics will you use to create awareness and attention?
2. How will you retain attention? How are you going to create community and stickiness?
3. Where and how will you convert? What are you going to do to pre-sell and sell?
4. Have you got a follow up planned? Up-sell? How will you maximize lifetime value?

SEO does not create stickiness and it does not convert, but it is great for targeted traffic. Blogs need promotion, they do not create visitors magically out of thin air.

Combining tactics into a campaign is the best approach, perhaps SEO along with an opt-in email list, advertising (on and offline), and yes a blog. Not just one tool, the right tools combined is the way forward.

Posted in Miscellaneous

Mother’s Day is here! So as a tribute to all those wonderful mothers (thank you very much) who put their time, sweat, tears, and passion into bringing up the next generations of entrepreneurs, CEO’s, professionals, teachers, doctors, engineers, mothers, fathers, etc. here are some cool blogs that have been dedicated to you.

Are you a last minute shopper? You have until 5 pm to enter this Sephora competition to win a free gift for your mother!

Don’t know the origin’s of mother’s day? Well our friends at How Stuff Works can clue you in with this nifty video presentation.

For design gurus out there Linda Bustos pointed out this neat gallery to mother’s day homepages for ecommerce sites.

Andy Beal gives parents tips on how to avoid getting your teenagers to hate you.

John McCain’s mom gives the details of his debut into the world 60…err…70+ years ago!

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY TO ALL!!!!

Posted in Miscellaneous

Two of our friends made some changes in the last few weeks:

My friend Steven Bradley, AKA Vangogh, moved his blog and site to a new domain with a lot more focus on the great skill set he brings to the table. Yellow house hosting is now Van SEO Design. If there is one post you should not miss in April, it is Steven’s SEO monthly wrap up.

My friend Steven Snell from Vandelay Website Design started a new website, Traffikd, that focuses on marketing and social media. I read anywhere between 100 to 150 blogs every day. Every now and I then I find a blog that is packed with useful and “new” information. But that is exactly what Steven delivers in Traffikd.  From Traffikd comes, Long Term Results of Social Media Success: Increased Search Engine Traffic

Continue reading From around the blogosphere

Tags: DIGG, SEO, SEO Design, worth reading
Posted in Blogging, Business, Miscellaneous

There are some rules for optimization that should not be ignored, like having a meaningful, clean URL. But some companies take this a bit too far. In an effort to stick to their company name or offerings, these URL’s are explicit in more than one way.

Caution: Material is “graphic”

These are the top 3 that I found “interesting”:

1. The designers at Speed Of Art have made an effort to have a great looking site, too bad for them that the scent is stronger than I can bare! www.speedofart.com/

2. Having issues? Well you can find a therapist that will help you resolve some of the struggles you have suffered throughout your life (or suffer more issues) at www.therapistfinder.com/ .

3. A great place to find all your software questions, needs and errr…urges is www.ipanywhere.com/

Just please practice caution when coming up with URL’s because as you can see, they can be misinterpreted and misrepresent what you’re all about! Any wacky URL’s you have seen lately?

Tags: optimization, URL
Posted in Miscellaneous

Just a few weeks ago we published our Landing Page Optimization Book, over 120 pages filled with tips and techniques to optimize your landing pages. The book retails for $95. Since its release, the book has sold close to 500 copies.

This Monday, we released the report Breaking the Digg Code, a step-by-step instructional program to get on the first page of Digg in 4 weeks or less.

The feedback on both the book and the report has been great. But we want to get more feedback from you, the subscribers and readers so we are offering a special deal: Write a review of Breaking the Digg Code and your name will be included in a chance to win one of 5 free $95 copies of Landing Page Optimization: The Complete Guide.

If you write a review of the Breaking the Digg Code report on your blog you will get

• A link back from our blog to your review
• A possible quote on our testimonial page along with another link
• A chance to win one out of 5 free copies of Landing Page Optimization: The Complete Guide

To be part of this, please contact us [or email khalid at invesp dot come] to let us know that you have completed the review.

Ideas for what you might want to write about

• What did you expect from the report before reading it?
• Did you hesitate to subscribe or download the book?
• Did you find the instructional report useful?
• Did you mention the report to anyone else?
• Do you think it would be easy to follow the program?

Looking forward to reading your reviews.

Tags: DIGG, landing-page-optimization
Posted in Miscellaneous

If you just subscribed to our RSS feed, we would like to thank you by taking a quick moment to introduce you to our most popular blogs:

Online conversion 101: The bottom line to every online activity is converting the casual visitor to a customer, a lead, or even a subscriber. Learn how you can increase your online conversion rates in this 8series tutorial

Personas 101: The problem with the traditional approach of knowing your customers is how generic it is. This series will take through the process of creating personas for your specific site, product or service. Persona development will help you see significant increases in conversion rates as well.

Viral Marketing 101: The web revolutionized marketing as we know it. It is no longer enough to create a marketing message and hope that people will respond. Consumers are talking about your products, services and company. It’s up to you to engage the power of consumers based marketing if you want to gain an advantage over the competition. It is the age of consumer to consumer and the evolution of word-of-mouth.

10 Most expensive mistakes of consulting companies: This is a must read if you run a consulting company, deal with clients and team members.

9 Clueless manager stories from hell: This is our most visited page. If you work long enough in consulting, I am sure you have your own list to share.

9 sure ways to increase your website traffic: One of the most commented upon blogs has created a buzz amongst our readers who offer plenty of additional ways to increase traffic.

Hooking the Headline: Six ways to Catch a Reader: One of the first elements a reader will see is the headline whether it’s on your blog, homepage, product pages, or landing page. If crafted and written correctly, your headline can be the hook to gauge your site visitor.

You can always follow me on Twitter or connect to me on Linkedin.

Tags: blogs, Conversion Optimization, RSS subscribers
Posted in Miscellaneous