Tạp trí Internet Marketing Số 19 - FEB 2013

february 2013

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EZRA FIRESTONE
>> THE ORIGINAL AND BEST INTERNET MARKETING MAGAZINE
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INTERNET UPDATE

THE STATE OF THE INTERNET
In this section of Internet Marketing Magazine we cover the low down on what are the big plays that
have happened online recently and how they affect you.

Facebook Changing the Way You Think About
Search
It would be fair to say that Facebook haven’t exactly
been a leader in search in recent years, but that may
be about to change with the launch in Beta of their
‘Facebook Graph Search’ product.
Facebook Graph Search is not like any other search
that you’ve used in the past, its 100% personalised to
you because of who your friends are and what they
like, listen to, love and where they have been and
what they have done.
The Internet in 2012… The Numbers

An Example of Facebook Graph Search

The team over at Pingdom have produced a summary
of the amazing numbers of what happened where
and how on the Internet in 2012. They have explored
all the corners of the Internet to collect all kinds
of fantastic data that describe the Internet in 2012.
Here’s some of the more important ones.

Graph Search and web search are very different.
Web search is designed to take a set of keywords
(for example: “country music”) and provide the best
possible results that match those keywords. With
Graph Search you combine phrases (for example:
“my friends in Seattle who like Country Music”)
to get that set of people, places, photos or other
content that’s been shared on Facebook. So Graph
Search and Web Search have two very different uses.

Email
• 2.2 billion – Number of email users worldwide.
• 35.6% – Usage share of the most popular email
client, which was Mail for iOS.
• 425 million – Number of active Gmail users globally, making it the leading email provider
worldwide.
• 68.8% – Percentage of all email traffic that
was spam.

Local search may be one of the use cases where
Graph Search really takes off because it will take
the risk out of choosing a local service with a search
such as “restaurants my friends like in Sydney”.

Web pages, websites, and web hosting
• 634 million – Number of websites
• 51 million – Number of websites added during
the year.
• 43% – Share of the top 1 million websites that
are hosted in the U.S.
• 48% – Share of the the top 100 blogs that run
WordPress.

The best way to bring yourself up to speed on it is
check out this quick video courtesy of Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook team.

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internet marketing magazine
february 2013

• 75% – Share of the top 10,000 websites that
are served by open source software.
• 59.4 million – Number of WordPress sites
around the world.
Web
•
•
•
•

Server Market Share
63% Apache
20% IIS
14% NGINX
4% Google

• 20.8% – Usage share of HootSuite as a social
media management tool among the world’s top
100 brands.
Web Browsers

Domain names
• 246 million – Number of domain name registrations across all top-level domains.
• 104.9 million – Number of country code toplevel domain name registrations.
• 100 million – Number of .com domain names
at the end of 2012.
• 32.44% – Market share for GoDaddy.com, the
biggest domain name registrar in the world.
• $2.45 million – The price for Investing.com,
the most expensive domain name sold in 2012.
Internet users
• 2.4 billion – Number of Internet users worldwide.
o billion – Number of Internet users in Asia.
• 519 million – Number of Internet users in Europe.
• 274 million – Number of Internet users in
North America.
• 255 million – Number of Internet users in Latin America / Caribbean.
• 167 million – Number of Internet users in Africa.
• 90 million – Number of Internet users in the
Middle East.
• 24.3 million – Number of Internet users in
Oceania / Australia.
• 565 million – Number of Internet users in China, more than any other country in the world.
Social media
• 1 billion – Number of monthly active users on
Facebook, passed in October.
• 47% – Percentage of Facebook users that are
female.
• 40.5 years – Average age of a Facebook user.
• 2.7 billion – Number of likes on Facebook every day.
• 135 million – Number of monthly active users
on Google+.

Search
• 1.2 trillion – Number of searches on Google in
2012.
• 67% – Google’s market-leading share of the
U.S. search market
Mobile
• 1.3 billion – Number of smartphones in use
worldwide by end of 2012.
• 465 million – Number of Android smartphones
sold in 2012, a 66% market share.
• 31% – Percentage of the U.S. Internet population that used a tablet or e-reader.
• 13% – Mobile share of global Internet traffic.
• 500 megabytes – Amount of monthly data
traffic consumed by the average smartphone.
Google Adwords Enhanced Campaigns
Google has released a new type of Adwords campaign called Enhanced Campaigns. Google state
their goal is to provide the best search results for
users regardless of where they are and what device
they are using.
Effectively it’s a new type of Ad campaign where
you can have your mobile as well as your tablet and
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desktop traffic within one campaign. You then use
bid adjustments to manage bids across devices, locations and time of day.
Here’s the example Google provides of how it would
be used…
“Discount Mattress Company wants to reach on-thego customers within 5 miles of their shop during
business hours. Now, starting with a single campaign that reaches people across all devices, Discount Mattress can easily increase bids by 20% for
a prospective customer searching on a smartphone
who’s 5 miles from the shop, or decrease bids by
30% during the hours that the shop is closed.”

rise in the number of businesses successfully adopting Remarketing campaigns for lead generation.
Remarketing lets you show ads to users who’ve previously visited your website as they browse the Web.
Remarketing is a powerful way to stay engaged with
your target audience by presenting them with highly
relevant ads and offers across the Web. This helps
to make sure your brand is top of mind when they’re
ready to buy and can radically improve ROI.

Early reports are that Google will force all Adwords
accounts to be migrated across to Enhanced Campaigns by mid 2013, although this is still to be seen
if it comes into effect, as it doesn’t seem to make
sense to force advertisers to use this new campaign
type.
Whilst in theory this major change is designed with
the end user in mind to create the best experience
possible regardless of device and location. The reality is it may just be a push from Google to get more
advertisers invested in the ever-fast growing mobile
advertising market so as to push mobile bid prices
up. There is probably a bit of truth to both arguments.

Google Adwords Enhanced Campaigns Explained

Remarketing Lead Generation
Internet Marketing Magazine’s sister company Internet Marketing Done For You is seeing a significant

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february 2013

The most common form of Remarketing use we are
seeing is with the Google Display network and then
other Demand Side Platforms such as AdBuyer or SiteScout.
The conversion rates across multiple industry verticals are excellent, with some of our clients with
traditional bricks and mortar businesses seeing
remarketing as their second or third biggest leadsource for online leads. The other real benefit is the
branding exercise as its possible to show your banner and text remarketing ads to your exact target
market 100,000’s of thousands of times for literally
less than a hundred dollars.
Since Facebook launched it’s Facebook Exchange in
2012 it is now possible to remarket to your website users once they’ve left your website and end
up over at Facebook. Since almost 30% of U.S. ad
impressions occur on Facebook, it is the logical next
choice for the Remarketer, and we expect to see
massive adoption of this technique in 2013.

From the Desk of the Editor
A big thanks goes out to you the Internet Marketing Magazine community for your loyal support in
2012. In 2013 we have a massive year planned with
an amazing line-up of Industry experts and amazing
interviews and features.

A special thanks to those who have left reviews
in the apple platforms as it really helps us out. If
you are getting good value from Internet Marketing
Magazine and you can spare 1 minute of your time
to click this link to give us a quick honest review
that would be greatly appreciated (click ‘view in
iTunes’ then scroll down and click ‘write a review’,
thanks :).

Recently whilst I was at the Digital Marketer ‘Traffic and Conversion Summit’ in San Francisco I heard
from several of you that the ‘State of the Internet’
section is your favourite way of keeping up to date We hope you implement with speed and precision
with what’s changing online, so we’ll keep rolling and cut your losers short and run your winners long
that out for you. We’ll be right on the leading edge for a massive 2013.
of everything that happens and will give you the
blow-by-blow reports of the big plays online.
Regards,
The members area continues to grow in usage, although it’s still only a relatively small percentage
of Internet Marketing Magazine readers who have
claimed their free membership. If you haven’t got
access to the members area please feel free to
do at http://internetmarketingmag.net/become- Greg Cassar
Internet Marketing Strategist
member/ (it’s free). This month’s complete audio & Editor – Internet Marketing Magazine
interview with Ezra Firestone has now been added.
It has lots of learning’s in it that were not included
in the magazine, so be sure to check it out.

GregCassar

>

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february 2013

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>

EXPERT INTERVIEW

EZRA FIRESTONE

ECOMMERCE MILLIONS
An Interview by Internet Marketing Strategist Greg Cassar
Ezra Firestone is an eCommerce expert with a highly successful track record having sold many
millions of dollars in products online. Ezra has managed over 22 eCommerce properties and is
now a partner in the highly successful Boom! by Cindy Joseph.
Ezra you have quite an interesting origin story, very unique actually. Can you please tell us a
bit of your history and how you
came to be doing business on
the Internet?
Ezra: I grew up on a hippie commune in Berkeley, and on the
north shore of Oahu. This was a
group of people with an alternative lifestyle experiment where
these people were experimenting
and talking about different things
about relationships.

I found that all that mindset and
strategy and relationship information has actually served me

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really well with my business life.
When I was 18 years old and I left
home and I moved to New York
city, and I began playing poker
for a living at these underground
clubs. In 2004 met a guy who was
making his money as a life coach,
he was selling information on the
Internet teaching people how to
become a life coach – this is before the life coaching and wellness coaching and health coaching space really blew up.

really learned about traffic, and
learned about conversion, and
learned about business and landing page psychology and all this
different stuff.

He was using search engine optimisation, which was really easy
at the time to generate leads for
his business. His lifestyle looked
really interesting to me because I
was staying up all night at poker
clubs and sleeping all day and
spending all of my time with
men, and it was a degenerative
lifestyle living under fluorescent
lights in poker clubs with these
Mafia guys.clubs with these Mafia
guys.

Once I figured out how to do it I
started doing consulting. Then I
realised that it’d be better to use
the skill set that I developed to
market and retail my own products, my own things, and build
my own businesses, rather than
do consulting. Now I’m kind of
back to doing both, but that is
how I got into it.

So we struck a deal and I said,
“Hey man, teach me search engine optimisation and I will teach
you how to play poker.” So we
kind of just went from there. I
ended up taking over the marketing of his company and once
I got into it I just dove head on
and put my 10,000 hours in and

Ezra you are particularly strong
in the eCommerce space. There
are many common mistakes
that business owners make in
eCommerce – What are some
guidelines that you stick to
when choosing or establishing
an eCommerce business in a
new market?

Ezra: Yes, eCommerce and the retailing of physical products are what I specialise in – I like eCommerce because it is scalable and the businesses are
liquidatable; it’s a real legitimate business model
where you’re shipping someone a physical product
that they’re actually looking for. You don’t have
to persuade them or convince them to buy your
stuff – they came looking for it. I found it to be
the best business model, once you figure out how
to generate leads and how to get them to take you
up on the offers.
Here are some of the main market criteria we
look at when we’re considering getting into a
market.
1. One of the things that you want to look at
is the average order value of your products. You
want your average order value to be between
$75 and $200. The product itself doesn’t have
to cost $75, because perhaps it’s a product line
where people buy multiple accessories and the
main product is only $30, but by the time they’ve
added on all the accessories it is a $75 order.
The reason you want it to be $75 is because generally in the drop-ship market you’re getting a
20 percent to 30 percent margin, so you never
want to make less than $25 in your pocket on
any one given sale, because you just can’t really afford to buy traffic and run your company
if you’re not making more than $20 a sale. The
reason why I like to keep it under $200 or $300,
is because when you start getting into larger
prices orders, what happens is that the customer service is a bit of a nightmare; people really
want to be educated and they want to talk to
you a lot more and it’s not like people are just
going to pull out their card and buy that sort
of expensive product, they require a lot more
work.
2. Your gross margin should be 20 percent
or more. This one is not a huge one because if
you’re making more than $30 on an order than
you’re kind of good to go if it’s a smaller market. But I like to be making sure that I’m getting
more than 20 percent margins on my products,
and that’s just to ensure that I’m getting enough
profit per order to be able to afford to buy traffic and run my business.

3. You also want to make sure you’re in a
market that lends itself to return customers
and multiple item orders. So, for example, if
you’re selling TV stands, well they’re probably
only ever going to buy one TV stand, so you’re
not really going to get that customer back next
year. It’s not a seasonal thing. You’re not going
to be able to retail unless you are diversified
and you’re also selling channel changers, and
all these other things. That’s why you want a
market that has accessories. A market with accessories is really good because you’ll get multiple items per orders. So, you want to look at,
are you able to sell to this customer more than
once, and are you able to sell them multiple
items at one time.

4. Another question that you should ask yourself is, can you add value to the market? You
should be willing to, because the answer for everyone is, yes. You could absolutely add value
to whatever marketplace you’re in by bundling
products together, by putting together videos
that educate people on the product you’re buying. For example, I’m recording this interview
on a Rode Podcaster Microphone.
I was looking around at different sites, and the
site that I ended up buying it from, not only did I
buy the microphone, but I bought this bundle that
came with the stand and a whole bunch of stuff.
The reason I purchased it from them was because
they had this video that educated me all about the
microphone and why I needed these accessories

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“

You want
to make sure
you’re in a
market that
lends itself to
return customers and
multiple item
orders.

“

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february 2013

and how to put it together. They had added value
that none of the other sites had done, and I thought,
‘You know what I want to buy from these people
because I know they know what they’re talking
about, and they’re doing more than just presenting
me products.’
Greg: Yes, that’s very powerful isn’t it. They made
it a richer buying experience. And the use of video
is very powerful as well in that regard. It is a more
powerful medium than just images, which most
people use. We find when we’re working with eCommerce stores often people think it’s too much effort to go to producing videos about main products
and services. We find if you 80/20 it and you sort
your products by sales and then start producing that
sort of richer content for the big hitters, the things
you’re selling most of, and then working your way
down. That way you’re really spending your time in
an efficient manner with that content creation.
Ezra: Exactly. And you will see a nice boost on your
store if you start creating videos of your products.
If you don’t know what to create, if you’re confused about how to create product videos, just do
an open the box video, where you basically take the
product, turn your camera and you say, ‘hey, this
is the product and this is what it looks like when
you get it’, and you just show them the products
– that’s enough. You don’t have to be an expert on
your products, you can just show them what it looks
like – and just the video of you opening that box and
having them see what it looks like when they buy it,
will just skyrocket conversions on that page.

them with care and show them that you appreciate their business, it will pay big dividends. You will
end up getting better deals on products, you will
end up knowing when new products come in before
everyone else. You’ll just get this special treatment
because you took the time to treat your suppliers
special.
Platform, platform, platform - This is the main
question we get asked in the eCommerce space,
and I’m sure you must too. Do you have any preferences for which eCommerce platforms to use
for the beginner basic type store, and then moving in to something that’s got to be able to scale
as an enterprise type store environment?
Ezra: Right now in the eCommerce space we’ve got
a lot of players out there. We’ve got ShopSite, Magento, X-Cart, osCommerce, Bigcommerce, ShopperBuy, NCart, 3DCart, UltraCart, Yahoo Store – the
list just goes on and it’s no wonder people are confused about what shopping cart to use.
If you’re just getting the store started, you don’t
know how much volume you’re going to do, it could
be a six figure store, it could be a bust, it could be
a seven figure store, you’re just kind of not sure
about it, you’re just getting started in the market,
I’d recommend that you go with BigCommerce – and
here’s why. It’s simple. It’s easy. It’s plug and play
with outside apps and add-ons.

One of the hardest things about eCommerce is
making the maths work. You just shared about
the pricing of the products. What about on the
suppliers side? You’ve obviously negotiated with
a lot of suppliers over time. What do you think
are some of the keys to really buying well and
then, but making it a win-win so that you maintain a good relationship with the supplier?
bigcommerce.com

Ezra: The thing about suppliers is that suppliers
are just people, and if you take the extra time to
actually communicate with them, to know everyone in their office by name, know their customer
service people, send them cards on the holidays –
if you really take care of your suppliers and treat

Almost every one of these live chat integrations and
cart abandonment integrations, and all these different sort of plugins and apps, plug in really easy
to Bigcommerce. The other thing is that they have
the best customer service out there.

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Now, if you’re an enterprise I think
you’ve got to go with Magento,
because they’ve just got virtually infinite flexibility, they’ve
got powerful reporting features,
they handle complex discounting
and vouchers and they can be integrated into other systems like
stock control – and beyond that
they’ve got an interface for customisation and they’ve got XML
integration, and just you know,
they’re elaborate and they’re a
bit confusing and all that stuff,
but they also have this plug in architecture that works the same
way Wordpress does.

about creating a community and
a brand around your products.
This is also how you free yourself
from channels, like Google and
Amazon and all that stuff. If you
have your own customer base,
if you have your own community who is interacting with your
brand, take Boom for example,
something like 50 percent of our
traffic is direct traffic of people
typing our brand directly into the
browser and directly into Google,
because we’ve created this community.

Greg: Yes, it is very powerful.
One thing we love about it is
Magento Connect where you can
find the plug-ins you want to do a
one-step check out, or basically
anything you can think of you can
get a plugin for.
One other thing we found out
about with Magento – it is complex so you really need to have
access to a development team.
One thing you alluded to before, eCommerce is changing
and evolving and it’s no longer
just about selling products online. You spoke about enhancing the user experience. So,
content and community are
becoming more and more important from both an SEO point
of view as well as engagement.
What are your thoughts on best
practice content strategy and
also engaging community for an
eCommerce store?
Ezra: I think the days of
faceless eCommerce store
over, and that community is
coming everything and it’s

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Boom Post Purchase

The way that you create a community is you create relevant
and engaging content each week
that’s relevant to the conversations and problems that your
community is having. You can do
that in multiple ways. So, you
could create informational content that’s about your products.
It talks about how to use them
the and how to put them together.
are You can also create content like
be- we do on Boom that’s geared toall wards the conversations that our

target demographic is having we’re dealing with a group of 76
million women in America who
are collectively having the experience of their hair going grey,
their skin wrinkling and their
bodies aging on the outside faster than they are on the inside,
and society treating them differently because of it – and we’re
having conversations with them
about that.
You create this weekly video and
you put it out on all favourite
channels - put it out on Facebook; have it transcribed and put
it on your Blog; pin it to Pinterest
etc for your community to see.
You end up building up this community of people who are following you and who are listening to
you and who are interested in the
same things you’re interested in.
It’s a really effective strategy for
generating a group of people interested in your market place.
Changing tact slightly. What
about on the PPC front with
Google’s changed a lot of the
rules recently. Have you had
much experience playing with
the Google merchant centre
and product listing ads and that
sort of stuff – good, or otherwise?
Ezra: I love product listing ads.
You get about 30 percent discount running product listing ads
right now.
Here’s how you do it. Obviously
you need to take your products
and upload your feed to Google
Merchants Center. Then you sync
that up with your adwords account and now you’re able to run
what are called, ‘Product Listing

Ads’. And the cool thing is, for any
given query – let’s say your query is
Elvis costume, you can have both a
Google adwords text ad on the top
of the page, and you can also have a
Google adwords product listing ad.
So you can have two ads for your
store for the same search query.

pany that’s intending to exist for
longer than a year or two should
think about creating a brand. Most
small and medium size businesses
couldn’t afford jingles before. It
was just something that was reserved for big businesses.

You’ll find that every one of the
fortune 500 and pretty much most
big businesses use jingles in their
marketing in advertising in one way
or another. And that’s because they
work. The human brain is wired
to hear a sound and identify it as
friendly or hostile in a hundredth
of a second. Using jingles you can
tap into that part of the brain – so
someone hears your jingle at the
Greg: You’re doing it very, very beginning of a video or when they
clever. You’re taking up as much hit your blog, or on the radio, or
real estate through all those differ- on your site, or whatever and they
ent medias on page one of Google, immediately associate your brand
as possible.
or product with a positive feeling –
often times before they know much
Ezra: Yes, and it goes back to uni- about you. Good jingles are very
versal search. It goes back to what powerful sales tools.
Google’s trying to do, which is organise the world’s information, And we’ve been able to break the
and the way that they understand price barrier. I’ve been able to crethat different groups of people ate this company where we proprefer to consume media in differ- duce these jingles at a fraction of
ent formats, some people like vid- the cost, and they’re just so effeceos, some people like audios, some tive.
people like text, some people like
images, and so they want to have
each one of those media formats For people that want to find out
that’s relevant for each different more about you; we’ve got readquery.
ers and listeners really all over
the globe now, how can they best
find you online?
We came across your smartjingle.
com site. A lot of business owners Ezra: They can find me on my new
with small or medium sized busi- marketing blog, which is SmartMarnesses don’t really think about keter.com and I’ll be releasing vidjingles, but a lot of big corporates eos starting mid February. This is
do. Who needs a jingle and really where I share what I’m up to in my
what is the benefit of a jingle for a businesses, I share what my commubusiness or a product or service? nity of entrepreneurs and business
owners and mastermind friends are
Ezra: Any company that wants to up to in their businesses; case studbe around for a while, any com- ies, and things I’m working on.
You can also have an image listing ad, or a product listing ad for
Google pay per click. You’ll have
a video result the YouTube video
ranking. You’ll have an organic result ranking, and you’ll have your
product in a channel like Amazon.
It’s a very clever way of dominating
page one of Google.

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MARKETING STRATEGY

AVOIDING MARKETING EXTINCTION:

3 KEYS TO SURVIVING & THRIVING
By Todd McCormick
Today, marketers must adapt or risk going the way
of the dodo. Biological changes are making old
marketing strategies extinct. In this new marketing world, we can either change or become outdated and outmanned — or even worse, irrelevant.

smartphones, this global village is now accessible any time, from anywhere, and on any device. As a result, information is always available.
• The advent of the self-service customer: Today’s customer doesn’t wait to be offered this information. He or she takes it.
So, with all this knowledge and power at customers’
fingertips, what do they want from businesses today?
They want to be educated. They want to work
with companies that understand what they value and how they behave. And they want quick,
timely information and support. Fortunately, the
same environmental shifts that are complicating
marketing efforts have also provided us with a
wealth of opportunities to engage with customers.
Research shows that 57 percent of customers have
made a decision before a salesperson is involved.
Marketers need to get involved earlier, but knowing how – and with what information – to reach
these newly empowered customers is where savvy
marketers can create a competitive advantage.

Darwin first coined the term “natural selection” when talking about a key mechanism of
evolution. What are the environmental conditions that are changing the buying process
and leading marketers to the point of survival of the fittest? The big three to consider are:

The secret is creating new content that’s relevant to
an individual on that individual’s device of choice
– at the right time. This is behavioral marketing,
and it’s the key differentiator between survival
and extinction. Here are three key steps for surviving and thriving in this new marketing world:

1) Build a persistent database: Marketers can now
use existing analytics and tracking software to col• Social networking: The world is now a lect a multitude of customer information. This is
global village, and through social network- the time to move away from static lists and toward
ing, consumers create their own unique en- a centralized persistent database that’s constantly
vironment where they have access to un- pulling in new information about your contacts, such
limited information, choices and opinions. as whether they clicked on your email, visited your
• Mobile computing: With the proliferation of new product page, requested a demo and much more.

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february 2013

2) Embrace automation: Today, only 5 percent of
companies have marketing automation software
in-house. That means you have an opportunity to
get a huge edge on the competition by combining
a persistent database with the power of marketing
automation. With the right technology in place, you
can build rules that enable you to serve up dynamic
content and automatically route contacts down different messaging paths depending on their actions.
3) Deliver relevant content: If you want to engage
customers and prospects in today’s ultra-competitive landscape, it’s essential to provide the content
your contacts want, when and how they prefer it.
Equipped with a behavioral database and marketing automation, you can deliver content based
on each individual’s buying habits, product preferences, mobile environment of choice, financial
parameters and purchasing timeline. In short, behavioral marketing drives relevant content, which
boosts engagement, encourages social sharing and
increases revenue.
As the buyer’s journey continues to become more
digital and self-service based, marketing skills need

to change. With the right technology and strategy,
you’ll become a welcome part of the buyer journey, providing an intimate customer experience
and delivering the right content at the right time
in the purchasing cycle.
By building a persistent database, embracing marketing automation and delivering relevant content,
you can harness the power of behavioral marketing
and overcome today’s evolving marketing and sales
challenges.
Adapt or die. Are you a survivor?

Todd McCormick

brings 15 years of experience in executive
sales management and team development
to his role of senior vice president of sales
at Silverpop. His expertise in building
strategic partnerships and penetrating
emerging markets and product lines,
coupled with his understanding of the
critical linkage between sales and marketing, makes
him ideally situated to lead Silverpop’s sales team to
continued new and existing U.S. sales growth.

february 2013

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february 2013

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>

E-COMMERCE

FIVE SIGNS OF AN ADVANCED
E-COMMERCE SITE
By Gil Remy
There are basic features that make up the skeleton
of every self-respecting e-commerce website out
there: product sorting, add to cart, guest checkout, and order tracking.
Then there are those features that are more recent
developments used only by the e-commerce elite—
sites that are pushing the boundaries of the online
shopping experience.

2. Inline Field Validation
Frustration during checkout is likely to lead to lost
transactions. And there are few things more frustrating for users than hitting the “Submit” button
on a form to find out that a field was left invalid.
With inline form validation, a checkout process
comes one big step closer to eliminating frustration over invalid field data.

Along with the accompanying microdata that assists
Here are five telltale features that separate the users through a checkout process, field validation
“men” from the “boys.”
helps reduce error rates and checkout abandons.
An added benefit is the chance to build a rapport
1. Advanced Suggested Search Results
with the user through the messaging in either valid
When users type in a search field, it’s nice to give or invalid fields. As mentioned in Smashing Magathem some suggested autocompleted searches, zine’s “The State Of E-Commerce Checkout Design
but it’s even better to show them some potential 2012,” address validation is not an ideal solution
search results right then and there. Advanced sug- here. Sites that won’t allow users to process an orgested search results instantly provide users with der if the address validator mechanism or database
images, category names, product details, and insists that the address is invalid lose customers.
pricing without them having to click through to a Validate fields that can truly be validated, such as
search results page.
email addresses, credit card numbers, zip codes,
etc.

Altrec does this nicely, combining autocomplete
and suggested results. With autocomplete, users
still know that there are options other than the
suggested results being shown next to, in this case,
climbing shoes. At the same time, users become
aware that if they do take the time to spell out
what it is they are looking for, they will be instantly
rewarded with a result.

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february 2013

Target validates fields instantly.
3. Animated Shopping Carts
For some e-commerce websites, keeping visitors
engaged in shopping, rather than sending them
straight to checkout when they add an item to the
cart, can lead to increased revenue per-transaction.

That’s where the animated cart comes into play.
It’s an effective way to give users the confirmation that their product has been placed in their
cart and that they can easily checkout if they so
choose, without requiring them to take any action
to keep on shopping.

when products are going out of stock, if possible,
inform them of when the product will be back
in stock as well. This increases the chances that
they’ll pre-order or sign-up to receive updates
about it.

Here’s how Threadless handles their inventory
American Eagle opens a frame at the bottom of data, down to the size, before a user even makes
the screen when a product is added to the cart, a selection.
with details on the transaction and a checkout
button.
5. Video Product Demos
There’s nothing like a live person demoing a product for an online shopper. When well executed,
product tours can push an already good e-commerce experience to the next level by giving users an enhanced sense of confidence about their
purchase decision.

Crate & Barrel does a nice variation on that idea.
The website shows the total in the cart along with
other suggested items in a pop-up window.
4. On-the-Fly Inventory Tracking
Another source of frustration for users can be Zappos uses video to sell this pair of Doc Martens
finding out that the size they are looking for is out (as well as many other products).
of stock. A nice way to keep them aware of your
diminishing supply is to provide that information
on the product page. Along with informing users
february 2013

17

Conclusion
These are just a few of the more recent features
that users will increasingly expect to be part of
their online shopping experience. They all use wellestablished technologies and none are particularly
difficult to implement. Therefore, there’s really
no excuse for not making them available on any ecommerce site striving for success. These features
have shown to improve conversions and overall user
experience and also help convey the feeling that
the people behind the website care about their users and have put forth the effort required to deserve their business.
Gil Remy
is an information architect and mobile
GUI crusader at NYC digital agency, Blue
Fountain Media. He is always eager to apply
the right mix of no-nonsense approach, outof-the-box thinking and diplomatic skills to
every situation in order to get things done.
* This article originally appeared on UxMag.com

>

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february 2013

>

MOBILE E-COMMERCE

BEST PRACTICES
FOR MOBILE E-COMMERCE
By Jennifer Mathews

designing mobile e-commerce websites. There is
a big difference between surfing on a PC and on
a smartphone or tablet. Since there is very little
room for navigation, the search box essentially becomes the epicenter of internet browsing. It needs
to be placed in a clearly visible place (generally
top center) and it should be highlighted and given prominence. In fact, in an effort to make the
user experience more pleasurable, the search box
should be on every page so viewers don’t have to
head back to the main page to start a new search.

The web design field has gone through immense advancements and in some cases overhauls over the
last decade. These advancements have undoubtedly introduced new technologies and innovations
in order to make online consumer experience more
pleasurable. However, they have also brought about
new challenges as well, especially when it comes to
mobile sites.
Ever since e-commerce websites went mobile, the
playing field changed beyond recognition. New
rules were made. Older ones were rewritten. And
in some cases, traditional design approaches were
abandoned altogether in favor of new versatile web
design practices. These practices had one thing in
common, to make mobile sites more responsive.
Today we’ll look at best practices for mobile ecommerce sites that new start-ups and even SMBs
involved in e-commerce should pay attention to.
These field-tested strategies essential for any designer working in this field.
1. Make the search box easy to find
Being a smartphone user myself, one of the first
things I observed while browsing online was my
constant dependency on the search box. This is
something that designers should keep in mind when

Amazon.com is a good example to illustrate this
point. One of the most well known commercial entities in existence today, Amazon.com is also one
of the world’s most visited websites. If you look at
the website’s mobile version, you will find that it
is virtually impossible to browse products unless it
gets featured on the main page as the hot seller. To
compensate for that, Amazon has placed a search
box at the very top of every page to assist customers in navigation.
2. Add social media to your site
We all know that this is the era of social media;
hundreds of millions of people are sharing content,
ideas and experiences with the world every day.

february 2013

19

With that being said, social media should be an
integral component of any mobile e-commerce
site regardless of industry. Survey after survey has
shown that if people have a pleasurable online experience, they will share it through their mobile
devices. This includes product reviews, recommendations or comments in general about a service or
overall experience. This is highly valuable feedback that companies should seek out and display
on their site wherever possible. It also factors into
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as search engines
consider user experience and product ratings when
displaying results in the search listings.

Facebook and Twitter are a given. Google Plus
has recently come into the spotlight courtesy of
Google’s influence and then let’s not forget Pinterest, currently the fastest growing social media
platform in the world. These are all platforms to
establish and solidify company web presence.
3. Establish a flexible foundation
We’re not just talking about flexible screen resolutions, although it’s true that there are simply way
too many devices nowadays that can access the
internet. Just a decade ago it was primarily PCs,
Macs and laptops. Now you have to add smart TVs,
smartphones, tablets, and net-books into the mix;
all capable to displaying multiple resolutions with
rotating horizontal/vertical text. Designers simply
cannot factor in all the devices and go about creating multiple versions of the same website.
Use fluid grids and flexible layouts
Instead of focusing on the device, the smart way
forward is to focus on the web browser and make

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february 2013

use of its capabilities. Creating a fluid grid and flexible layout is an amazing way to creating a responsive website design. In a nutshell, it is the ability
of the website to change its appearance based on
the screen resolution of the device that is accessing it. Fluid grids can resize and reposition content
as the screen width changes. There are many tools
that can assists designers in creating a these grids.
Golden Grid System and Simple Grid are a few examples. Tiny Fluid Grid is another good one.
The same applies to images. As the columns resize,
images should resize along with them to accommodate the relevant content and improve readability.
Images can be dynamically cropped to only show
the most important elements or be resized completely for the most desirable results.

This is a revolutionary approach that is being eagerly adopted by millions of e-commerce businesses worldwide. However this is not an easy task to
pull off. Complex websites that use a three to four
column approach in their design architecture will
require more work to fully transition the website.
Mobile driven customer service
There is no denying the importance of quality customer service whether it’s in person or over the
phone. Over the years, online customer service
has also been gaining steady prominence and many
companies smartly implemented this strategy into
their business infrastructure. Zappos was one of
the first companies to truly exploit the benefits of
this approach, delivering top-notch customer service via Twitter. Many companies followed suit.

panies still focus on traditional mediums to display their website. However recent surveys have
shown that the number of mobile internet users
is growing at an astounding rate and it won’t be
long before they are neck and neck with PC’s and
laptops. Furthermore, in-depth cases studies done
on multiple companies have safely concluded that
mobile commerce plays a key positive role in a
company’s return on investment (ROI).

Today more and more customers want to connect
via the internet and engage in real time conversations. This has resulted in the demand for mobile
driven customer service because of its instantaneous interaction and amazing results. For an ecommerce website to be successful it needs both
strong products and strong interaction and if leveraged correctly, mobile driven customer service
can be the brand differentiator between a failed
product and a house hold commodity. Just look at
where Zappos is today because of it!
Always be ready for change
It is the way of the tech world. What’s in demand
today can be completely obsolete tomorrow. Designers and e-commerce companies need to be
in an ever-ready state of alert regarding shifting
market trends especially those pertaining to mobile devices. On average, a consumer changes his
or her mobile every two years. This means that
mobile platforms in different geographical locations will be rapidly be changing every couple
of years. Retailers need to be aware of this and
closely monitor the situation to seek out not just
new opportunities but also threats to the current
system.
The mobile internet has now become a phenomenon and there will always be more that e-commerce websites can and should be doing in order
to better market themselves. However, the above
mentioned practices standout because of their immense potential and long proven track record to
deliver immediate positive results.

To illustrate this point, consider the following:
• eBay’s iPhone application alone generated
$400 million dollars in sales in 2010
• Intuit sales grew 30% immediately after the
company introduced mobile tax products in 2010
• One out of every 10 Smartphone users listens to Pandora on a daily basis, contributing to
the company’s massive growth and authority in
the music marketplace
It’s a no brainer that mobile commerce can significantly impact a company’s revenue, its brand and
its overall authority in today’s competitive market
as the trend setter for others to follow. It does
require a fair bit of investment; but the return on
that investment is substantial and combined with
rock solid competent e-commerce practices like
the ones mentioned here, it is the perfect recipe
for success for any e-commerce website.
Jennifer Mathews

is a creative logo design consultant for LogoSnap.com,
helping small businesses create a brand image and grow
their online presence. She likes to stay ahead of trends,
explore new mediums and blog about her experiences.

Mobile commerce and ROI
Mobile commerce does not often get the attention * This article originally appeared on WebDesignerDepot.
it deserves from consumers, mainly because com- com

february 2013

21

Make Your Website Easy to Read
& Effective on all Mobile Phones

22

february 2013

>

VENTURE CAPITAL

PLAN B FOR FUND RAISING
By Guy Kawasaki

Here’s how most entrepreneurs approach venture capital funding raising. I call it Plan A. It’s a
plan and an outcome that no one talks about but
happens all the time. I’ve been on both sides, so I
should know.
Step 1: the entrepreneur cogitates: “Let’s raise
$1-2 million so we can focus on programming and
marketing and not worry about raising money. We’ll
hit all our milestones and then go out for another $5
million in two years and get acquired or go public
soon after that.” Believe it or not, many companies
raise the $1-2 million and sometimes more because
venture capitalists compete for the deal.
Step 2: the entreprenur fantasizes: “Our most conservative forecast is one million users in the first six
months. We need to scale to prepare for this, and
the reason why VCs gave us money is that they want
us to scale and win the land grab.”

Step 3: the product is late, and the dogs don’t eat
the food. After six months, there are 10,000 users,
not one million. The company has scaled up its expenses but for no reason. Money is tight, but the
VCs are still clueless and accustomed to initial projections being off by orders of magnitude.
Step 4: Unbelievably, the company is still able to
raise a second round of $5 million. Life is good. The
entrepreneur “knows” that things are going to pick
up so she scales up some more to prepare for the
“hockey-stick” growth curve that coming soon.
Step 5: Another six months go by, and there’s still
no viral explosion. (To continue the hockey analogy,
the handle, not the blade, is touching the ice.) The
venture capitalists that the entrepreneur thought
were true believers and BFFs (best friends for life)
go to Demo and see three products that do the same
thing that appear to be further along.

february 2013

23

Step 6: Out of the blue, the lead-dog venture capitalist calls up the day after a partners meeting and
says, “We just don’t see how you’re going to make
it. We want to give your company a ‘soft landing’
by merging it with our online dogfood company.
And we’ll call some executives we know at Yahoo!,
Google, and Fox Interactive to see if they’re interested. We want our money back before you burn
through it because my partners think this has gone
on too long.”

you keep your day job at Microsoft. You hope your
spouse doesn’t get laid off. You have no office, but
work virtually and meet your co-founders at Starbucks if you have to. Everything you use is Open
Source or shareware.

Step 2: Rather than trying to boil the ocean (“the
mobile sector”), you boil a tea kettle. Rather than
paying to attend high-end conferences, you hang
out in the lobbies of the hotels where the events
are and meet the same people for free. Rather
Step 7: The entrepreneur hangs up the phone in a than hiring a PR firm, you suck up to bloggers and
state of shock. A week ago in a board meeting, no hope they cover your product. Rather than buying
one said anything about shutting down the com- booth space, you get on Twitter and use it to gain
pany. She thought that her investors were getting a reputation for your product.
a little antsy but were fundamentally still behind
her. She calls the investors “stupid, arrogant bas- Step 3: You’re late with your product too (because
tards who don’t get it” in her staff meeting–conve- everyone is late), but you’re not burning $250,000/
niently forgetting that she’s missed three years of month, and you don’t have to tell increasingly
forecasts by 90% and has burned through $3 million. greater lies at monthly board meetings. Finally,
you release your prototype. TechCrunch covers
Step 8: The company rapidly implodes. No one your release because you wrote Mike Arrington a
wants to merge it with another dog in the ven- compelling one-paragraph message that you sent
ture capitalist’s portfolio, and no one at Google, on a Friday afternoon because you know he reads
Yahoo!, or Fox Interactive is interested. This is a email on weekends.
fundamental fact of companies: they are bought
not sold. That is, an entrepreneur or investor can
seldom call up logical buyers and get a deal done.
All an entrepreneur can do is create a good company and pick up the phone when a buyer is calling.
The company is sold for pennies on the dollar for
what little assets (intellectual or physical) that it
has. Some money is returned to the investors. The
management team toys with two ideas: first, buying the company from the investors, but it quickly
realizes that it created a dog that’s not worth buying. Second, suing the investors for not fulfilling
their fiduciary responsibility to the company, but
when the lawyers laugh at this idea, the team gives
it up too.
As readers of Internet Marketing Magazine, I want
you to be open to another way. I call this Plan B.
In this plan, you take very little if any venture
capital until you need capital to expand, not create, your product. Here’s how it works:
Step 1: You dig, scratch, and claw yourself to
$100,000 of funds from your friends and family.
Maybe you work as a Y Combinator company. You
take no salary. You live with your parents, and

24

february 2013

Step 4: This is where the miracle occurs–lo and
behold, people like your product. (Truly, miracles have to occur whether you’re bootstrapping
or venture-capital funded. It’s just that if you’re
bootstrapping, there’s more time for the miracle to
happen, and a smaller miracle suffices.) Month to
month, you’re showing 10-15% growth, and monetization, praise God, has started.
Step 5: Now you have options. First, you can contact venture capitalists with a company that’s
already shipping to raise capital to expand your
business. This is a very different discussion than
raising capital to build a product. Second, you can
continue to bootstrap and grow by using your cash
flow. Three, you can pick up the phone and agree
to meet with Google, Yahoo!, Fox Interactive, or
any other company that has noticed you.

Many readers of this blog are not tech entrepreneurs, but the merits of Plan B are the same for
almost any type of business. You can try Plan A as
long as you realize that the hard work begins after you raise venture capital, and you will need a
bigger, faster miracle to make everyone happy. Or,
you can just believe me: “Plan B, don’t leave home
without it.”

Guy Kawasaki

is the author of APE: Author, Publisher,
Entrepreneur--How to Publish a Book.
Previously, he was the chief evangelist of
Apple. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford
University and an MBA from UCLA as well as
an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

>

CHARITABLE GIVING

SPIKE HUMER, Entrepreneur &
Business Growth Expert
My goal is to raise $7,500.00 for
victims of domestic violence &
sexual assault
I’m walking a mile in high heels to raise critical funds for
WEAVE - a dedicated provider of services for victims of
domestic violence and sexual assault since 1978.
Be part of the solution to ending violence against women and take the “next step” by supporting the Walk A
Mile in Her Shoes event. Make a quick and easy
donation here.
If you are in or plan to be in the Sacramento area, join
me at the fun filled event festival on May 4, 2013!
If you’d like to find our more about WEAVE, you can
visit www.weaveinc.org

february 2013

25

>

RESPONSIVE WEB DESIGN

CAN A “MOBILE FIRST”
RESPONSIVE WEB DESIGN
BOOST YOUR SALES?
By Leanne Byrom
Your website analytics will prove it. The world has
gone mobile.
And smart marketers and web designers are going
responsive.
Responsive design is a new trend in web design that
uses a fluid and flexible layout. Websites are developed in HTML and through CSS3 media queries
you can adapt your entire website for particular
devices or operating systems, handling enhancements with JavaScript.
Mobile usage has double every year since 2009 and
now accounts for almost 10% of Internet usage. By
2014, internet access via mobile is expected to
overtake fixed line access.
This isn’t a fad.
The screenshot below shows what mobile devices
are being used to access a boutique eCommerce
website. On this particular website, mobile devices account for 12.5% of traffic. They are split
between iOS, Android and Blackberry operating
systems.

Application or mobile web?
‘Mobile’ does not simply mean cell phones.
Mobile refers to cell phones, tablets and everything in between such as the Galaxy Note which is
a mix of the two.
So, the question is: Should you build an app or
design a mobile website?
There are hundreds of businesses that decide to
go the application route. The problem with this is
that you generally end up have a restricted amount
of content and functionality and many apps are device specific (e.g. you have to download and install
an app on your Android handset or on your iPhone
– and it needs to be done on every device).
This immediately restricts the reach of your product to the end audience you have in mind because
of their device. It is, however, a more predictable
one off cost, and if you have customers that are
only iPhone users for example, this will work well
for your company.
If you have a store or service that needs to reach
a large number of people your best way forward
would be to go with mobile web, using responsive
design.
Start with the smallest device first (in terms of
screen size) and work your way up to tablets and
then up to computer screens. This is called a “mobile first” approach.

26

february 2013

The Mobile First Approach
The “mobile first” approach is actually a concept
that pre-dates responsive design.
Mobile first design allows you to enhance your website to cater for bigger and more complex browsers/devices when required, rather than trying to
degrade and simplify your desktop experience.
A List Apart has an excellent set of responsive web
design publications (online and in print) that can
help you in refining and implementing your responsive design approach.
A Good “Mobile First” Design
One of the best examples I’ve found of “mobile
first” responsive design is Burberry.
Their website reformats all the content no matter which device you access it from. Screenshots
below show access on a 10.1inch Android tablet, a
27” widescreen cinema display and on a 13” laptop. No matter what device has been used to access this website, the user can easily view all the
content and buy the products.

Burberry 13” laptop view
With this website I can get to the product page in
THREE CLICKS, and it’s a full and rich experience.
I can also find everything I need to know about my
product and make the purchase.
In addition, Burberry makes the best use of screen
space available with full screen images on a widescreen.

Burberry product page on 10.1” tablet

Burberry 10.1 inch tablet view

Their tablet version has very similar content to the
computer version, has an excellent touch interface
and even tells me what content cannot be viewed
on the tablet. It is this kind of attention to detail
that can win or lose you customers and which truly
demonstrates a unified customer experience.
And all of this comes from one primary code base.
Example of Poor (or No) Responsive Design
In many ways it is unfair to compare Argos, a budget price store with the likes of luxury etailers like
Burberry.

Burberry 27” widescreen view
february 2013

27

However, the Argos website may have an even
greater need to be device agnostic given the wider
customer types they need to service.
The screenshot below is from the Argos website
viewed on a Samsung Galaxy Tab2, 10.1 inch.

Going to the same website on a mac, viewing in a
27” widescreen display, see how much screen real
estate is being wasted here? How many special offers or products could I have got on to this home
page if I had made use of the full space?

You can see from the URL that I’ve been redirected
to a “mobile” version of the website, the problem
is, its formatted for a phone, not a tablet. This is a
waste of valuable screen real estate.
Furthermore, its not particularly useful and it
takes on average SIX CLICKS to get to a product
page using their menu. That’s far too many clicks
for an easy purchase journey.
Argos on 27” widescreengos on 10.1” tablet
Lastly, here is the Argos website on a 13” laptop
screen, which is where the Argos website is optimized to work.

Argos on 10.1” tablet
When I finally manage to get to the product page,
all the product details are well below my viewable
screen area, forcing me to scroll to find more information. Even the “Reserve” button is below my
immediate viewable area and I cannot “buy now”
or arrange home delivery unless I force the browser to go to the “full” version of the Argos website.

Argos on 13” laptop
Argos has done themselves a disservice by using a
fixed width design. The main reason this happens is
it that many companies have designed for computers (desktop/laptop) first and are now going back
to retrofit their mobile versions into these designs.
More often than not, and as shown by Argos, this
results in a poor user experience and further demonstrates why “mobile first” with responsive design should be adopted.
Leanne Byrom

Argos product page on 10.1” tablet

28

february 2013

is a freelance User Experience Practitioner and
UX Lead for Phosphor Digital with a focus on
the role of online in the end-to-end customer
experience. http://leannebyrom.com. Follow
her on Twitter.
* This article originally appeared on CrazyEgg.
com

>

ADVERTISEMENT

february 2013

29

SIZE MATTERS:

>

INFOGRAPHIC

HOW TO MAXIMIZE PROFITS
BY SIZING INVENTORY
By Camille Brenkwitz

Do you know what we love? Good coffee, beautiful design, and DATA. We decided to combine these
three things by compiling some of our interesting
data into a beautifully designed infographic.

30

february 2013

It took us a lot of time, and a lot of deliciously
brewed cups of coffee. We looked at how sizing affects costs, expenses, and consumer behavior. This
will prove helpful for making business decisions,
and we hope you enjoy it.

february 2013

31

Camille Brenkwitz

Plain and simple, Camille gets people excited about what Stitchlabs is doing. She absolutely loves her
job developing marketing strategy for Stitch, and executes it with supreme gusto. She has a deep passion
for cultivating community, and rocks Stitch’s social media and community management. When she’s not
spreading the word about Stitch, Camille is always down for some delicious food, passionate people, and a
helluva good conversation.
* This article originally appeared on Stitchlabs.com

32

february 2013

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Tạp trí Internet Marketing Số 19 - FEB 2013

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