Robert Blaise

How To Photograph Your Product to Enhance Your Online Sales in 4 Easy Steps

I found this great article that I thought would be very useful to anyone that has an ecommerce website and has actually had to take product pictures for thier website.Natalie Norton of digital photographyschool.com does a great job providing  4 simple that are sure to enhance your product images:

1.    Turn Off the Flash
2.    Remove Distracting Elements
3.    Utilize Simple Staging.
4.    Employ Creative Use of Depth of Field to Highlight Product Detail

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7 effective steps to selling competitively.

This is a very a common problem especially in these challenging economic times.  You need to learn how to sell competitively.  Here’s a simple plan , inspired by an audio book by the amazing Linda Richardson, which can get you started…
•    STEP #1: Do your competitive research. This should go without saying.  You need to know what your primary competition is offering… before you go on a sales call.   Get on their website.  Look at their messages.  Read their case studies.  Examine their online sales materials.  You should be at least as familiar with your competition as your customer is familiar with them.
•    STEP #2: Ask the customer about the competition. The time to do this is in the middle of the sales cycle, when you’re scoping out the customer problem and working on the crafting of the solution.  Ask which competitors have been calling, what they’ve been saying, and to whom they’ve been talking.   If the customer won’t tell you anything, you can assume that the competition probably has the inside track.
•    STEP #3: Get an assessment of your position. Ask the customer for a realistic appraisal of where you and your firm stand, vis-a-vis the competition.  The answer will help you determine how much effort will be required to displace the competitor.  It will also provide you with valuable perspective about how effective your sales effort has been so far.
•    STEP #4: Differentiate your offering. Based on the above, map the competitor’s offering, sales campaign, and overall position in the account against your own.  List areas where your competitor’s offering is weaker than yours when it comes to solving the customer’s problem.  List actions that you can take (like meeting with key people) that the competitor has missed.
•    STEP #5: Make a strategic decision. If the competition is so entrenched that you’ll probably not displace them, you have two choices: 1) decide to withdraw, or 2) decide to reposition your offering as compatible with competition’s offering. (Move on to FINAL STEP #6.)  If, however, your offering and the customers perception of your position are strong, you’ll want to sell toe-to-toe. (Jump to FINAL STEP #7.)
•   FINAL STEP #6: Partner with the competitor. If your offering and campaign is not strong enough to displace the competition, and you still want to be in the account, you need to find some area of the customer problem that the competitor’s offering doesn’t solve, and sell that portion of your solution to the customer.  This may entail meeting with your erstwhile competitor to craft a joint proposal.
•   FINAL STEP #7: De-rail the competitor. You know that your offering is superior in terms of being able to uniquely address the customer’s needs.  You also know who you need to convince in order to make sure that your offering is selected.  You job now is to execute that plan, and make sure that everyone on that list knows why your offering is the better choice.  Go for it!

Focus on SEO, Open Source to Boost Online Sales

Even in a recession, e-commerce firms can improve sales while cutting costs — Gartner provides five strategies for doing so in a report.Online retailers looking to cut costs during a recession while still improving the online customer experience are advised to switch their e-commerce software to non-customized platforms and funnel the savings into functions such as search engine optimization (SEO), according to research released today by Gartner.

E-commerce firms should consider commercial, off-the-shelf, or open source software as a replacement for current custom Web development initiatives to save up to 35 per cent of their ongoing maintenance and license costs, according to the report “Cost Cutting in E-Commerce, 2009″ by Gartner.

These savings can then be used to direct custom development efforts toward functions likely to have an impact on differentiating customers’ online experience, such as SEO,” says Gene Alvarez, research vice president at Gartner.

“Except for market leaders, such as Amazon and eBay, custom development is likely to be a waste of effort and money because it supports functions that do not enable a differentiated online customer experience. For example, a developer who supports a commodity function, such as shopping cart management, would be better to develop rich Internet shopping capabilities or improve site design for search engine optimization so that the site can rank higher in a Google-based search,” Alvarez said in a statement. The report comes out at a time when other research groups are showing e-commerce sales are leveling off while e-tailers struggle with smaller budgets as they try to retain customers and improve the online shopping experience.

Mobile Commerce, Twitter to Save E-Comm Sales?

comScore says mobile commerce and social marketing may be the savior of the future for online sales.While e-commerce growth was flat for the first quarter, the sector likely bottomed out, with online sales increases likely to hover around 5 percent for the second half of the year, comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said during a Webinar going over the research firm’s Q1 findings. Though e-commerce had seen double-digit growth for the past several years, Fulgoni said the worst may be over, as he cited mobile commerce and social network and video site marketing at sites such as Twitter and Hulu as opportunities for bolstering sales in the near future. “The good news here is that I think it’s bottomed out, in the second quarter we saw 13 percent growth, that dropped to six in the third quarter of 08, in Q4 it was minus three, now flat in the first quarter, so we’re not seeing a continued downward trend,” said the comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR) chief. He was less optimistic, however, on future growth for this year, saying it’s not likely online sales will see the double-digit increases the sector enjoyed over the past few years, and reluctantly predicted about five percent spikes.

Local Mobile Advertising Gains Traction

Local mobile advertising will be the next hot trend, with local mobile search leading the way, according to BIA’s The Kelsey Group.

Local mobile ad revenue will grow to $3.1 billion in 2013, up from $160 million last year, while mobile search will reach $2.3 billion, according to the firm’s forecasts. Local searches made up 27.8 percent of all searches in 2008, but are expected to hit 35.1 percent in 2013, according to the report, “Going Mobile: The Mobile Local Media Opportunity.”

“As mobile data consumption rises, we expect local marketing to be a big winner. There is a strong correlation between local search and the mobile use case, which will cause a good portion of the ongoing mobile application boom to focus on local,” Michael Boland, the The Kelsey Group’s program director for mobile local media (MLM), said in a statement.

Only the local interactive segment will show growth throughout the forecast period. All other local media will experience marginal to rapid declines in the next 18 to 36 months. A small number of traditional media will rebound with a revived economy beginning in 2011, though most traditional media will continue to decline, albeit at a slower pace, according to the report.