Guest Post: by Nic Soto

How your online store design could determine the number of visitors who ultimately buy from you.

Merchandising a brick and mortar retail store is key to pulling in passerby’ s as well as getting them to buy. But how do you “merchandise” an online store? The answer is simple. The same way you would set up your physical store. When an online visitor reaches your website the first thing they’ll notice is your home page (think of this as a front door of a brick and mortar). First impressions mean everything. We’ve all been taken back by a store (online or off) that is poorly merchandised and cluttered from one end to the other. Too many racks, merchandise on the floor and the whole place looking like it was hit by a tornado. Your online store could also be poorly merchandised and turning away potential sales.

Here are some key steps to cleaning up your retail internet business to help boost revenue and return customers.

1. Remove all the clutter from all web pages that only take away from your own products. This could be from having too many links (and broken links), too many affiliate ads and banners and finally – remove the multitude of photos that have nothing to do with your site.

2.If you are running a business- look like one. Don’t use backgrounds that are only really meant for social site profiles. The blinking stars background is not how you want to represent your business. Use a solid color background along with your business logo on top. Of course you’ll want to make it look great – but lets keep the social site backgrounds where they belong – on social sites.

3.Make sure your price points are clearly visible and are reflected correctly through-out your entire site.

4.Never use your home page as your entire “About Us” platform if you are a retailer. There should be another page dedicated for this. Simply inserting a paragraph about how you started the business and using the largest font possible on then placing that on your main page will only turn potential buyers away.

5.Use flash effects/animation sparingly – there is no need to use every flash animation you have come across and placing it all over your website. Its distracting – you want your potential customers to focus on your merchandise.

6.Organize your site and make it easy to navigate. Make it easy for visitors to find your contact information, shipping/returns and privacy policies, email newsletter sign-up and so forth.

7. View your store from a customer’s perspective, and step into their shoes and shop your own store.

8. Offer discounts in your virtual store, and make sure they are visible to the shopper.

9. Customers make an additional purchase when they are inspire to buy cross merchandise items.

10. Be seasonal and integrate current holidays such as Valentine graphics to sell merchandise for February 14th, etc.

By following these easy to apply merchandising tips to your virtual retail business, you will start converting more visits into actual sales.

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Nic Soto is the co-founder Public Relations Depot, an internet marketing company at http://www.prdepotchicago.com based in Chicago,IL. Affordable Press Release Writing; Mass Media Distribution; Brand Visibility; Link Building; Search Engine Optimization. Helping entrepreneurs reach their business goals since 2001.

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MadViral online since 2005, MadViral Enterprises, LLC can help you market your business with Email Advertising, Professional Unique email design services

Guest Post: By Jerry Bader

If you are ready to take your business to the next level you are at the right place!

Web video is a communication technique that provides a viewer-experience that delivers several big advantages over broadcast: first, the length of your presentation is for the most part a non issue other than the degree to which your content and delivery holds your audience’s attention; second, the cost to produce and present professional online video is far more affordable than broadcast; and third, Web video provides the opportunity to intellectually and emotionally engage your audience with a memorable viewing experience, and involve them physically by prompting direct-response action. On the other hand, broadcast does provide a mass audience, but not necessarily an attentive one like your website.

As we have seen in previous installments of Killer Campaigns, the commercial broadcast industry, despite its economic and time constraints, has plenty of good examples of techniques that can be used effectively in Web video campaigns, if you understand how certain elements affect an audience.

It’s easy to misread a commercial’s true marketing effectiveness and assume the big flashy special effects and grandiose production stunts are what makes a commercial work, but in fact those kinds of things generally only make a commercial more expensive. True the big-deal aspects of a production may attract attention, but it’s the small things that are the most important, the most effective and the most affordable. It’s the things you hardly notice like writing, casting, music, performance, and campaign consistency that have the most impact on a presentation’s ability to communicate, influence and persuade. It’s the production techniques to which the audience pays little attention that maximizes sale-conversions and increases the bottom-line. Take nuts for example.

Color Me Nuts

Nuts, the edible kind, not the irritating relative kind, are about as generic as you can get. So how do you go about creating a marketing campaign for something as mundane as nuts?

The Wonderful Pistachio “Get Crackin” video campaign and micro site got a lot of things right. This series of videos use the same format, style, message, and color in order to turn a nondescript, seemingly unbrandable generic product into a hip, sexy brand. Each element of the presentation re-enforces the other leaving a lasting brand impression without blowing anything up, or spending a fortune creating animated baby skateboarders.

One element that turns this campaign into a great campaign rather than just a very good one is its use of color. What could be simpler?

Pistachios Newly Weds Do It Video

he campaign’s consistent use of a signature color palette, green and black, combined with a great tagline and a series of clever sketches deliver the kind of memorable impression that prompts instant recognition and impulse-purchasing when seen on store shelves.

Pistachios Dominatrix Do It Video

One video is not a campaign, so Paramount Farms had seven different videos created, all following the same formula so the audience’s recognition and retention was enhanced and re-enforced every time they watched a new video segment.

Pistachios Mobsters Do It Video

This technique is not new; in particular Danone uses color co-ordination effectively in their television commercials to distinguish their various brands of yogurt: Activa uses a green color palette, DanActive uses yellow, and Silhouette uses purple. The Danone commercials don’t have the edginess of the pistachio campaign but their use of color is well thought-out and effective even though the messaging is pretty standard.

The edgy style, consistent format, and color branding definitely qualifies the “Get Crackin” videos as a Killer Campaign.

The Color of Money

Another campaign that makes an impression by means of its clever use of color is the Edward Jones “Join Us” campaign. If you’re not familiar with the commercials they are available on YouTube but unfortunately the embed option for them has been disabled.

These commercials were shot on a white background in black-and-white, a technique that draws special visual attention to the yellow-and-black Edward Jones logo. The whole package is very clever from the way the videos are shot, to the dialog, the music, and of course the clever use of color, or lack-there-of.

The same visual style was repurposed for a companion print ad campaign further establishing and enhancing the brand image in the minds of the audience.

Edward Jones Companion Print Ads

The Audacity to Believe

Is on Board With the Crazy Idea

Signature Color Branding

Colorcom is a color consultancy located in Hawaii and New York. According to their website, color branding increases recognition by up to eighty percent; it aids memory processing and storage; and it attracts attention, increases comprehension and mentally engages the viewer. That’s pretty powerful stuff, and you don’t have to be a mega corporation with deep pockets to implement color effectively.

Color Affects, a London-based color consultancy, explains how color affects perception on a physiological level through the electrical impulses that pass from the retina to the hypothalamus area of the brain that controls our hormones and endocrine system. The hypothalamus controls behavior patterns, sex and reproductive functions, metabolism and appetite among others.

Color By Association

Color by itself is not enough to get the job done. The pistachio campaign added the format, style, messaging and performance elements in a consistent campaign that re-enforced the message and the brand.

In the end, Web videos are not as much about making a sale as they are about making contact: contact in the sense of connecting to an audience on an intellectual and emotional level. Web videos designed merely to flog some product or service have built-in limitations, and an abbreviated shelf-life, whereas video presentations designed to engage can become eternal.

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MadViral online since 2005, MadViral Enterprises, LLC can help you market your business with Email Advertising, Professional Unique email design services