Miranda Miller's Blog

Posted by Miranda Miller

Happy Almost-Halloween! We've seen plenty of spooky statistics and record losses in online advertising this year; could October mark a turning point in online display advertising?

What's New in E-Commerce at Suite101.com

We also discussed web-based accounting platforms suitable for small to medium online businesses, including Xero, Clarity Accounting, and Quickbooks Online. Click here to review the features of each program and take advantage of their free trials and demos.

How to Start a Business PayPal Account is a step-by-guide to applying for an setting up an account with this popular third-party payment processor. Compare fees, features, and benefits before choosing a internet merchant solution. Just starting out? Read Finding an E-Commerce Payment Processor first to decide if a third-party processor such as PayPal is the right solution for you, or if you business is better suited to (and qualifies for) a true merchant account.

3 Keys to a Successful Web Company Launch contains three must-have strategies for instantly building web presence leading up to, and during, the launch of a new online business.

Suite101.com Writer Matthew Miller Talks Keywords

Throughout October, Contributing Writer Matthew Miller put forth some great resources for e-commerce business owners in need of a better online advertising strategy. Check out his articles on Adwords, keyword optimization, and split-testing:

• Simple Pay Per Click Business Marketing Online How Using Google Adwords Effectively Can Help a Business Grow
• Four Simple Keyword Optimization Strategies Improve the Quality of Website Traffic with These Strategies
• Split-Test AdWords Ads for a Higher CTR Running Two Ads at Once Guarantees a Better CTR and a Lower CPC

Other Excellent Online Business Resources at Suite101.com

The winter chill must be coming, because our writers have been busy!

Read James Kincaid's Email is Still a Viable Marketing Solution as he refutes claims that email marketing is dead.

Use Michielle Beck's Tips for Making Money with an Online Business to boost your online income and break down the barriers that are keeping you from enjoying success in online business.

Visit often as the Christmas retail season approaches for tips and tricks to maximize your sales and prevent headaches with access to the top e-commerce tools available today. Or, subscribe to the Suite101.com E-Commerce article feed to have our new resources delivered to your inbox as they are published.

Visit Miss E-Commerce for More!

You can find E-Commerce Feature Writer Miranda Miller:

• writing fresh online business articles here at Suite101.com
• sharing new, tips and tricks on her Miss ECommerce blog
• at Adventures in Online Writing sharing web content and print writing experiences with other writers
• Tweeting about the latest products, trends, and e-commerce news from her Twitter account.

Go! Have fun, do well, make money :)

Posted by Miranda Miller

September brought with it a wealth of new e-commerce strategies, tips, and information at Suite101.com. From e-bay selling to the best online business opportunities to website image optimization, we've got you covered!

Check out these new articles from Suite101's e-commerce Feature Writer Miranda Miller and other contributing writers:

• What is SEO or Search Engine Optimization? by James Clausen
• Internet Business Opportunities in Africa, by Lordson Okpetu
• Second Quarter 2009 Online Sales Up 2.2%, by Miranda Miller
• Starting an Online Business, by Bailey Shoemaker Richards
• 3 Online Business Accounting Software Options, by Miranda Miller

For access to dozens of helpful e-commerce articles written by professional Suite101.com writers, visit the E-Commerce homepage. Or, subscribe to the e-commerce article feed for direct delivery of the hottest new online business articles as they are published.

Enjoy!

Posted by Miranda Miller

As July draws to a close, we look back on the marketing and online business building tools, tricks and tips produced this month.

Keyword Discovery Tips taught e-commerce business owners the importance of good keyword selection and how to find the best phrases. We also explored the ways different search engines are evolving as they try to provide better search results.

Inexpensive Website Promotion for Freelancers highlighted several unique strategies for freelancers and small online businesses to market their products and services without breaking the bank.

Editor's Choice article How to Use Constant Contact demonstrated the value of email marketing, with first-hand tips on getting the most of this service provider's free trial period.

Free Internet Advertising and Web Marketing Tips was a roundup of the social media marketing accounts, blogs and communities online businesses can use to find insider online marketing tips from the most influential advertisement providers in the business.

In Best E-Commerce Business Practices, e-commerce readers learned a series of practical front and back-end solutions to help them succeed in their online business endeavors.

Finally, 4 E-Commerce Strategies to Increase Online Sales highlighted unique web design, marketing and SEO techniques to help existing e-commerce businesses boost their sales and maximize their advertising budget.

Stay tuned in August for more informative articles to help you launch and grow your online business!

Posted by Miranda Miller

Check out this article from The Business Insider. While a merger between Yahoo and Microsoft should help them compete, are they actually doing Google a favor? Only time will tell, and by the look of the red tape, it could be a while.

Their sales/technology responsibility split doesn't sound like such a hot idea. It will be interesting to see how that works out. Let's hope Microsoft's foray into the world of search isn't short-lived.

Posted by Miranda Miller

With over 200 million users, Alipay announced July 6 that they had become the largest online payment processor in the world.

Alipay's owners beat their own projection that it would take 3 years to climb from 100 to 200 million subscribers; they accomplished this is just 10 months.

Click here to read the full story at ECommerce Journal.

Posted by Miranda Miller

A few weeks ago, I wrote E-Commerce Web Development Gaffs: Build a Business Website and Avoid the Top 3 E-Commerce Mistakes based on my interview with experienced designer/programmer Bill Snowman of CreateSource.com.

One of Bill's best suggestions was to strip the website down to its bare bones; to remove all Flash, graphics and video elements and just make sure the site WORKS. With all of the fancy window dressing down, can your customers still view products and place an order? If not, your site needs to be simplified.

Expanding on that idea, I suggest that e-commerce entrepreneurs take a few minutes to test how their website appears in Firefox and different versions of Internet Explorer. Almost 78% of users still use a version of Internet Explorer, with almost 15% utilizing Firefox to search and browse the web.

While you can have Firefox and some version of IE on your computer, you cannot have two versions of IE installed.

IETester is a free download that gives users the ability to view websites of their choice in different versions of IE including IE8, IE7, IE6, and IE 5.5. It works with Windows Vista or XP. Because it is an alpha release, there are a few known problems, with workarounds listed on the download page.

Still, this is a great tool for webmasters to check out their e-commerce sites as their customers see them.

Posted by Miranda Miller

Check out this great article by Jeff Muendel, from Practical ECommerce.com. In The Landing Page as a Multipurpose Tool, Jeff shares strategies on social media marketing, email marketing campaigns and more, all from a landing page.

He demonstrates how a landing page is much more than a paid search advertising tool. Click here to read the full article.

Posted by Miranda Miller

In this blog post on PracticalEcommerce.com, Shipwire Ecommerce Fulfillment Service discusses the potential of a business model called Web Fronting. This is entirely new to me and I wanted to share it with my readers.

Web fronting basically means that a retail store operates as a showroom. Retailers rent less display space and keep the majority of their merchandise in warehouse space. Customers are given price incentives to purchase in-store and have items shipped to their home or office. Retail operations save rent, but also reduce their inventory transportation costs. Automated ordering, shipping and tracking systems help save time and money.

This is an intriguing blend of brick-and-mortar and web-based business. For the author's take on its potential uses, get the full article here.

Posted by Miranda Miller

I found a great article in Profit magazine (May 2009) on using web software solutions to save money and simplify a company's internal operations. Tech for Tough Times: Speedy Customer Service, by Luigi Benetton, describes the innovative business solutions created for Alberta job-candidate testing firm SureHire Inc.

CEO Kyle Powell states, “In a former business, we owned a bunch of physio clinics.” He continues, “We bought our own servers, we hired IT guys, we set up VPNs from location to location. All that is expensive and tough to keep in place.”

Powell's company uses web-based software by an Indian development team to book appointments, send reminders, automatically convert test results to PDFs, and provide secure access to results. The result is an improvement in the quality of customer service, a reduction in operational expenses, and a more organized process for staff.

Read the full article...

Posted by Miranda Miller

Former KPMG consultant Laurent Rulinda, of Montreal, launched CorpFreeSpeech.com to address what he sees an outdated approach to shareholder communications by corporations.

Rulinda told Gazette reporter Roberto Rocha, "Big companies normally talk as little as possible, unless it's a marketing strategy or if they're responding to a shareholder issue. So pushing them into this culture of social networks might help change their very conservative culture."

His vision includes a company profile with login credentials and an official company response seal, to prevent others from posing as the company in question. Rulinda plans to monetize the site by allowing companies to add content for a fee, such as recruitment ads or promotional videos.

For more, see Roberto Rocha's Corporations missing social network boat in the June 4 edition of The Gazette.

Posted by Miranda Miller

Harvard Business School's study of 300,000 random Tweeters... Twits... Twitter-ers... found that on average, men are twice as likely to follow other men as they are to follow a woman. Seriously?

It appears so. Women are also 25% more likely to follow men than women.

This seems to contradict the theory that the activity on social networking sites typically revolves around women. For more on this interesting study, read the full article, Twitter Trends: Why Do Men Follow Men? in the June 3rd edition of The New York Times.

Posted by Miranda Miller

The second quarter of 2009 starts out with ProFlowers leading the Top 10 Online Retail websites in conversion rates, with 42.8%. January's leader, Schwan's, dropped to sixth place with 21.1%, down from 52.5% at the beginning of the first quarter.

Following ProFlowers to round out the top five:

• vitacost.com, 28.9%
• Office Depot, 25%
• Metro Style, 24.5%
• Woman Within, 23%

Nielson's conversion rate data is based on visitor conversion, not session conversion. See the full chart at MarketingCharts.com.

Posted by Miranda Miller

UK firm Sage Pay released the results of an online survey Tuesday, in which 1,000 respondents indicated the following:

• 68% of online retailers admit payment fraud is the most daunting aspect of running an online business
• 75% plan to invest in growing their online business in 2009

The most surprising finding, in my opinion, was this: 50% of respondents agree with the statement, "I'm not sure who is responsible for covering the implications of online payments fraud committed on my site."

E-commerce site owners seem aware that fraud exists and also that it is a big problem... yet they aren't quite sure how to deal with it, or even who is responsible for dealing with it. Read this article on payment gateway solutions for a few tips on fraud prevention.

For more information on Sage Pay and PCI DSS Compliance, visit SagePay.com.

Posted by Miranda Miller

Yahoo Inc. is shutting down their Yahoo 360 social networking site in July. As of July 12, users will no longer be able to access their accounts of information.

Yahoo considered losing the social media two years ago, finally deciding to go ahead with the shutdown after a lag in advertising spending and an increase in competition.

360 simply hasn't kept up with more popular social networking sites Facebook.com, MySpace.com and Twitter.com. This latest closure follows on the heels of Yahoo's shutdowns of FareChase and Briefcase.

For the full story, visit Brian Womack's Yahoo to close social networking site in July in Monday's Financial Post.

Posted by Miranda Miller

Google entered the Canadian wireless market Tuesday with the launch of their two smartphone models, Magic and Dream. Both manufactured by Taiwan's HTC Corp., they come with the usual tech requirements, and integrate with Gmail, Google Maps and Google Search.

Should RIM and Apple be worried? Only time will tell. Google's Magic and Dream are available through Rogers Communications Inc. For more information, check out the Jamie Sturgeon's Google phone aims twin barrels at Apple, RIM, in the June 3rd edition of the Financial Post.

Posted by Miranda Miller

I wrote an article outlining the features as described in Microsoft's press release last week, so I really couldn't wait to check it out today.

At first glance, I see a beautiful background featuring a mountain climber gazing into the far-off mountains. I'm sure this has some significant symbolic meaning, but right now I just want to see what this new "decision" engine can do.

The Search Bar

The filters above the search bar on the homepage are almost identical to Google's: Web, Images, Videos, News, Maps, More. I have the option to search the Web, or just in Canada. So far, so good.

I searched the name of a popular company on both engines to compare results. While Google features a sponsored ad at the top of the list, Bing brings up the "Best Match." Indeed, it is the best match, but that wouldn't have been difficult given the size of this particular company. This is a feature I'll have to test more to see how often it actually picks up the best match, but it seems like a good idea.

The Sidebar

The left-hand sidebar features a list of related searches which, in this case, is actually a list of the company's top competitors. This is a great feature for online shoppers; not so hot for businesses. Unless you're in the related search list!

Below that is a history of recent searches. I like having that available instead of clicking back if I haven't found what I'm looking for in the new search.

The Verdict

Otherwise, the display is very similar to Google's. It's true that the top listings come up differently and don't match Google's, so over time I hope to see a pattern as to how Bing ranks and displays results.

Their goal was to help users make better decisions by presenting more relevant results. Only time will tell if that is the case! Right now, I'm not blown away, but then I'm not sure what would have knocked my socks off. While some others are decidedly unimpressed, I'll reserve judgment for now. More later.

Posted by Miranda Miller

Shortly after filing for bankruptcy, General Motors released a new ad on YouTube, starting out with, "Let's be completely honest. No company wants to go through this..."

That's putting it mildly. The online commercial is rife with symbolism, including tiny buds sprouting from the earth to indicate the failing car company's rebirth. The spot continues, "There was a time when eight different brands made sense. Not anymore. There was a time when our cost structure could compete worldwide. Not anymore..."

According to this graph by TNS Media Intelligence (published in the Wall Street Journal), GM spent $5.3 billion in advertising in 2008. In the face of their current economic troubles, they're wise to harness the power of social media marketing as they attempt to rebrand their company as a greener, more efficient option.

For more information, visit GM's new corporate website, GMreinvention.com.

Posted by Miranda Miller

New York University sociologist Dalton Conley coined the term "weisure time" to explain our changing work-life balance.

Conley notes that work life and social life lines are being blurred as more people turn to their smartphones and other technology to conduct business during family time. He attributes this shift to the increasing demands of the current work environment, with extended hours and little off time. People feel the need to get more done in less time by multitasking and mixing business into their social time.

For more information, see Thom Patterson's Welcome to the "Weisure Lifestyle" on CNN.com.

Posted by Miranda Miller

Just after 5:00pm Tuesday afternoon, Hotmail and Twitter were locked down across mainland China. Thursday marks the 20th anniversary of the June 4th, 1989 tragedy in Tianenman Square (China has never released the death toll).

Some users reported an inability to access other popular social networking and photo exchange websites such as Windows Live and Flickr.

China is known to carefully monitor social networking sites for any language or messages considered subversive.

For the full story, read China Blocks Twitter Ahead of Tianenman Anniversary at Canada.com.

Posted by Miranda Miller

Economists from TD Bank predict a cumulative deficit double that laid out in Ottawa's most recent budget. Will the government return to a surplus in 2013-14 as predicted by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty?

TD predicts the government will run a cumulative deficit of $167 billion over the next five years. That's twice what Ottawa estimated in their January budget.

See Paul Vieira's TD Questions Ottawa's Surplus Forecast in the June 2, 2009 edition of the Financial Post for the full story.

Posted by Miranda Miller

I'm excited that Suite101 has given me this opportunity to share e-commerce strategy, news and tips with their readers. In the five years I've been writing online, I almost exclusively ghostwrote on a variety of topics for local or online clients. It was with great pleasure that I joined Suite101.com to focus on online business and finance topics I am passionate about.

The dynamic nature of e-commerce fascinates me. Online business and marketing are constantly changing, quicker than any one person could keep up with on their own. In my time spent on freelancing sites, in forums with e-commerce business owners, and working with internet marketers, I've learned one thing above all else: I have a lot to learn!

This is what makes e-commerce such an enchanting world for me. The opportunities are endless. Business ideas know no bounds. Regular, everyday people are finding their niche in online business and succeeding beyond their wildest dreams.

My job as an E-Commerce Feature Writer is to find these people, ideas and products and learn what is working for them, how they do what they do, and why their strategy is so successful.

Please contact me with any e-commerce news, suggested article topics, or new product releases you feel would benefit the Suite101.com community.