November 17, 2008 – 4:15 am
Our last blog post discussed the positive side of negative product reviews. Not only can negative reviews provide valuable feedback, but your response can have a beneficial effect on your business. Here are a few pointers:
November 14, 2008 – 4:15 am
Nearly every company that adds customer product reviews to their web site discovers that reviews revolutionize their business by dramatically boosting conversions and reducing refunds.
Companies that have not yet added a product review feature often cite fear of poor reviews as a concern. If that includes you, stop worrying and get moving. Here’s why: (click on headline for more…)
November 7, 2008 – 4:15 am
According to a recent survey for Internet Retailer, only 36.4% of merchants currently use online videos to demonstrate product or educate their customers. That’s about to change fast: 53.3% have plans to include videos on their web sites in the next 12 months. (Click headline for more…)
November 3, 2008 – 4:15 am
Most catalogers are familiar with square inch analysis, commonly referred to as SQUINCH. Calculating the percentage of space each product occupies on the catalog page and comparing it to the percentage of sales generated provides many marketing insights. For instance, SQUINCH analysis points to:
(click headline for more…)
October 17, 2008 – 4:15 am
While working on the next snail mail edition of the Let’s Grow newsletter, I did some trolling for good examples of email signup boxes. They were surprisingly difficult to find. Here were three that stood out:
(Click headline for more…)
October 15, 2008 – 4:15 am
For a while now, I’ve been enjoying reading The Blogging Nurseryman, which Trey Pitsenberger of Golden Gecko Nursery Center in Garden Valley, CA has been writing faithfully for the last three years. Trey recently started an interesting discussion group on LinkedIn titled Garden Centers, Nurseries and New Media. While the group is geared more towards independent garden centers than the catalogers and online merchants we work with, many topics affect all of us in the gardening industry. Discussion threads include Scotts’ desire to sell Smith & Hawken, the role of big box stores, and what we can learn from Hines Nursery’s recent bankruptcy, among others.
The discussion group is just a couple months old, and membership appears to be growing rapidly. Members include a wide range of professionals, including garden center owners, catalogers, wholesalers, editors, writers and service providers. To learn more about, read Trey’s description or jump right in and join the LinkedIn group. Hats off to you, Trey, for opening the lines of communication among industry members!
October 10, 2008 – 4:15 am
How to attract and market to Generation X and Y is a perpetual topic of conversation among those of us in the gardening industry. So I was intrigued to learn of Patti Moreno, a.k.a. “The Garden Girl,” a Gen Xer and urban homesteader whose mission it is to introduce gardening and sustainable living to younger generations.
Take a look at her web site and it’s obvious it wasn’t created by a 50-plus-year-old. Likewise, it’s not a traditional web site with some new technology – like podcasts and message boards – tacked on after the fact. I suspect that Patti’s target audience feels right at home on the site before they’ve read more than 10 words.
Two things in particular about The Garden Girl’s home page stand out to me:(click headline for more…)
October 6, 2008 – 4:15 am
A friend of mine recently asked for suggestions on a web site she was working on for a doctor. After reviewing it, I realized the site had grown the way many do: when the doctor had some time, or a new thought occurred to him, he added another page to the site.
Some pages explored topics in depth, others glossed over equally important subjects. A somewhat different voice was used in each one, probably because they were written by different people. Aside from a similar graphic treatment, the pages didn’t connect with each other in any way.
What’s more, (click the headline for more)
October 1, 2008 – 4:15 am
A prospective client recently asked me why they should use us to manage their pay-per-click (PPC) advertising program, rather than have a college student do it. “After all,” they said, “It seems so easy.”
Technically speaking, it is easy to do pay-per-click advertising….badly. Best case, you won’t know how much money you’re leaving on the table because of what you don’t know. Worst case, you could lose thousands of dollars almost overnight because proper controls weren’t in place. Most likely case, you’ll give up and decide that PPC advertising doesn’t work without giving it a fair shot because you just didn’t understand how to do it right.
That’s where the judgment and experience we bring to the table comes into play. Some of the ways we help include: (click the headline for more)
September 26, 2008 – 4:15 am
With technology changing so rapidly, it’s often difficult to know what’s worth paying attention to and what’s not. A Forrester Research study of 300 interactive marketers, recently covered in DM News, reported what percent of companies surveyed were using new media as follows: (click headline for more)
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