SingleFeed Offers Promotion to FastPivot Clients

Posted on July 30, 2009
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In this economic environment, FastPivot wants to make sure our merchants have the tools to succeed in the online shopping channels. That’s why we’re teaming up with SingleFeed to offer you data feed management and optimization services for comparison shopping engines at a great rate.

SingleFeed is a leading e-commerce service provider focused exclusively on helping retailers submit, manage, and optimize their product listings on top shopping engines through a single data feed. We already work with several Yahoo! Store based retailers who use their data feed solution, and have seen the impact of their strict data feed requirements and single feed solution. No more formatting, categorizing, submitting, fixing, and optimizing 5, 10, or even 15 feeds for multiple engines!

FastPivot and SingleFeed are partners in offering you the opportunity to test out their plans; SingleFeed is offering all FastPivot merchants 20% off Starter or Gold plans for the first 3 months.To take advantage of this offer, just use the following link: www.SingleFeed.com and enter code FPJUL09 during sign up. This promotional rate will take place after your account has been created with SingleFeed.

Let SingleFeed and FastPivot help you make the most of your online advertising! For more information, contact Ryan Douglas at ryan (at) singlefeed.com - or (800) 705-8852.

What Are You Giving Away?

Posted on July 28, 2009
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In early May, a grilled chicken campaign created a frenzy, crashing servers, creating traffic jams and miles of lines and ultimately leaving customers filling out “rain checks” when KFC pulled the plug. What a lesson to be learned in the new era of marketing!!

A coupon available exclusively through the talk-show host’s Web site, oprah.com, had been searched for so frequently on the Internet that “Oprah Winfrey KFC coupons” was the fifth most searched item on Google Trends by Wednesday afternoon, hours after being posted. “KFC locations” and “Unthink KFC,” the name of the grilled chicken promotion, rounded off the site’s top 10 most searched terms.

Pasted from <http://blogs.abcnews.com/moneybeat/2009/05/oprah-offers-kf.html>

KFC wasn’t the first company to offer customers something “free.” Back in February, Denny’s did it with a Super Bowl announcement for their Grand Slam Breakfast as a boost to the economy.

Despite the fact that it was free, Denny’s promotional strategy was certainly self-serving. In an abysmal market, where the company noted a dramatic drop in sales in its January quarterly report, free meals might be the smartest business move for a restaurant chain. On Feb. 3, people were telling everyone about it all morning long. It was like every communication device – text messages, cell phones, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter – was made for this purpose, to let us all in on Grand Slam Day.

Pasted from <http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=86f9147077cd85052aca83dcb0612a16&from=rss>

And two million people whole-heartedly appreciated that tactic.

The “freebies” continue: MochaMondays, free doughnuts, root-beer floats….even Trek bicycles just gave me a free water bottle for signing up on their “wow” website heavily promoted this year during the Tour de France.

As an e-commerce design and development strategist, I’ve been taught several things.

This first is to study what the brand leaders are doing. They have the means and resources to conduct surveys, studies and develop well-thought-out campaigns, not to mention websites. It is apparent that traditional mass splatter advertising is not working, nor cost-effective, in a down economy so advertising and it’s cousin marketing are evolving their strategies. Particularly right now, freebies are drawing attention.
There is nothing wrong with evaluating what the leaders are doing and incorporating them into your own business model. Even start-ups can effectively get their “foot in the door” on the web and in their customers buying behaviors by setting up some of the same tactics used by the multi-million dollar companies.
Traffic is Key! The Trek bicycles site collects key info and keeps people coming back every day to play a ’scratch and win’ game! Imagine getting more traffic coming back and interacting with your site daily.

You may not have the budget to start giving away free things to everyone, but what about offering free shipping upon purchase, a free sample, or a free gift with a return purchase on your site. Many people will make decisions upon this incentive, and even better, tell others about it. What better use of advertising dollars? Even adding functionality to your site, like a ShareThis Link, a configurator or an interactive bundling application can attract customers and keep them coming back.

When was the last time you evaluated your marketing campaign? Do you know what your competition is doing, what functionality their websites have in place or how they rank in traffic? Do you have a customer retention program and are you touching recent sales with “come back” offers or incentives? What are you giving away?

FastPivot Strategic Services assists clients with email marketing campaigns, market analysis and a myriad of strategies and solutions to help your business succeed. The Fastpivot Development Department builds applications and features - from adding free samples in your Yahoo! Store cart, to creating a bundling application that allows you to choose from product images to create your very own package of chocolates, CDs or model cars. Learn more today by contacting us at Fastpivot.

The Big Five Fundamentals of Ecommerce Strategy

Posted on July 22, 2009
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The Big Five Fundamentals of E-commerce Strategy.
In response to a twitter request from Maureen Alley (@maureenwm ) to post tips for Website Magazine , I had to resist the urge to go after the latest and greatest e-commerce widget or buzzword to think about long-term success. Few merchants pull away from the latest trends to zoom out for the high level areas of strategy that yield success over the long term. It is so easy to get distracted with the latest trends, sometimes I feel like a basketball coach yelling: “Its all about the fundamentals!!!!”

There are areas of consistent focus where we have spent the last decade helping to grow businesses online. Ultimately every tactic should fall under the what I call the “Big Five Fundamentals of E-commerce.” In relative order of importance they are:

traffic

conversion

average sale

engagement

repeat purchases.

Brilliant huh? Sorry to provide something so obvious. Unfortunately, the obvious fundamentals get buried by the latest and greatest widget or trend.

Ultimately, without traffic, e-commerce is just a lonely hobby. Without conversion it is just an information site. Without some sort of consistent average transaction it isn’t a business. Without engagement (engaging design and compelling user interface), visitors just bounce away in seconds. Without a repeat purchase strategy, costs of customer acquisition dilute profits.

Interestingly, all the posts so far in the article “E-commerce Tips for the Holiday Season” fall in one of these areas. While good tactics by themselves, it is consistent discipline and focus on the “Big Five, that will yield Big Results!

Now is THE TIME to review analytics for weakness and to define specific unique tactics to strategically focus on each area of the “Big Five” to make this Christmas the best one yet!!! Every success to all of you!

www.teno.com launches with custom Flash/Yahoo! Store configurator programmed by FastPivot

Posted on July 17, 2009
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Teno Flash Product Configurator by FastPivot

In June, FastPivot, a Yahoo! Store design, development and strategic solutions agency, launched an incredibly advanced jewelry configurator for TeNo, a jewelry store hosted on the Yahoo! Small Business Platform. Working with a Flash application that was integrated into the Yahoo! Store platform, FastPivot was able to create a dynamic configurator, which allows customers to build and purchase their very own YuKoN jewelry. The application visually allows customers to combine stainless steel with diamonds, ceramics, gold, sapphires, and even rubber while automatically calculating the cost and then transferring all the information into the shopping cart to check out.

Adding tools and applications such as an option/pricing configurator is a great way to improve user interface within a Yahoo! Store. TeNo originally had a Flash application that allowed customers to create jewelry, but not purchase them. FastPivot developers adjusted the Flash application so that it would calculate and push the uniquely configured item into the Yahoo! cart. FastPivot also used XML to tie the tool directly to items and pricing in the store. By adding this Yahoo! Store feature, if TeNo adjusts the price of an element in the store (say the price of a bead changes), or if they want to add an element (they offer a new bead), or even want to re-categorize their items they simply make a few adjustments in their store editor, the Flash file readjusts accordingly. This allows the application to be dynamic, picking up pricing, items, and images from data that’s still managed within their store. This flexible, custom application gives TeNo some really strong functionality without adding redundant housekeeping – no need to keep a separate listing of items and pricing within their Flash application. Also, the Flash tool saves an image of the jewelry the user creates, so the user can review this from the cart.

This is just one of many configurators that FastPivot is developing for Yahoo! Stores. Other sites include a customized computer configurator for www.agearnotebooks.com, a personalized doll creator for www.mytwinn.com and a very unique wedding/special announcement frame created through www.framethedate.com. Our Yahoo! Store design and development can help turn an ordinary Yahoo! Store into an extraordinarily-designed site. Visit these great stores today and then contact Fastpivot to find out how you can revolutionize your own Yahoo! Store!