Author Archive for Kirt Christensen

What Your E-commerce System Needs To Have Before You Buy

Published
by
Kirt Christensen
on July 17, 2008
in Ecommerce
. 0 Comments
by Kirt Christensen

Most online businesses should pay more attention to their e-commerce solution needs. When starting out most businesses do not make much of a profit, and their e-commerce system can be responsible for allowing the company to sink or swim. Before buying an e-commerce system, ask your self “What are 7 needs for my E-commerce system?”

Any e-commerce system you choose has multiple parts for you to take into consideration. When opening the online business, there are many elements that are significant to include in your e-commerce solution that you may not have taken into consideration.

The first of these elements that answer the question \”What are 7 things to make sure that my ecommerce system has before I buy?\” is scalability. Your business needs to have an e-commerce system that can grow with your business and provide the necessary level of service to you and your customers as your firm matures. Failure to do so can often result in your business growing faster than your e-commerce system.

Need number two is that your e-commerce system must be able to interface with other systems that you business may employ or that you user may have. Incompatibility will create problems with your expansion or the amount of business you can do if the systems cannot be used together.

Need number three is management of site content. The content management must be able to work with all components of the system and the proper software will manage it. An incorrectly managed website has been known to cause difficulties for consumer site navigation and wrong information, but correct management can make all the difference.

Need number four is a security system for you and your client. Major retailers have seen national media coverage for their recent difficulties in this area. Any kind of information breach of the information for either you or your client can be very expensive to solve.

The fifth essential is an easy to use checkout for your customers. This will increase the likelihood of repeat business. This is one of the easies e-commerce essentials to find as there are websites devoted to different types of checkout solutions.

Need number six is a quality e-commerce system provider that offers quality customer service. The ability to call you service provider in case of an issue is paramount. They must have excellent knowledge of their product and know how to solve problems quickly so your business to not stop working.

The seventh and final essential is the insertion of analytical systems into your e-commerce solution. Systems must track demographics of clients, and what the market is for your products. This will allow you to adjust the site to be more productive.

About the Author:
Wanna learn more about shopping cart software or ecommerce shopping cart software? Click now to make your sales skyrocket with the world’s smartest shopping cart software. Get a 30-day test-drive for a measly $3.95!

Using My Online Cart To Boost Sales

Published
by
Kirt Christensen
on July 3, 2008
in Ecommerce
. 0 Comments
by Kirt Christensen

Two years ago, I decided to take on the venture of selling rare books online. My vision was to have people logging on and buying my books by the dozen. Sadly, my vision was replaced by the realization that it was not as easy as I anticipated. In trying to increase my sales, I learned several things along the way.

I was wrong, time past and my sales were scarce, to say the least. If I had a good SEO strategy and good website design, what was wrong? Nothing. And yet, I couldn’t help wondering “Everything is alright. But how can I use my shopping cart to beef up my online sales?” I had to read a lot of articles on e commerce shopping cart software to find out!

Starting out, you need to be sure you know what you are getting yourself into. Carefully examine each potential software program. Not all software is created the same, so be sure to choose software that reflects the needs of your business.

Still, how can I use my shopping cart to beef up my online sales? Well, I discovered that sometimes I would buy an item out of impulse on some stores. After some digging, I found out it is called impulse buying and it is on Internet as well. When you have an item that the buyer wants, you have to let them know what other things previous buyers bought.

You can also use this impulse buying by adding the possibility to send a volume discount or a discount coupon, it is usually better to sell a client two or more items rather than one! Additionally, some carts allow what is called “group buy”, you will need a forum where your clients may meet and decide to make a volume buy on certain item.

Another way to boost your sales is by using an affiliate program which allows you to expose your products for a nonexistent to minimal fee. This will help to drive customers that may have not previously known about your items to your site. Other well maintained shopping carts offer: payment options, sign up, provide customer information, etc.

Customer satisfaction is important to drive sales. To maintain this, the site should include important information such as pictures of the items, shipping cost, and amount of time for the item to arrive. Shipping is one of the most essentials to online retail.

Once you have researched as much as you can and are still coming up short, ask for help. Professionals are available to answer any questions you may have. They have experience in the business and can guide you in the right direction.

About the Author:
Wanna learn more about ecommerce software solutions or online ecommerce software solutions? Click now to make your sales skyrocket with the world’s smartest ecommerce software solutions. Get a 30-day test-drive for a measly $3.95!

Creating A Personal Ecommerce Site

Published
by
Kirt Christensen
on June 30, 2008
in Ecommerce
. 0 Comments
by Kirt Christensen

Recencently I have been considering starting my own ecommerce site. In my research I have come across, and gone through many shopping cart software reviews. There seems to be two types of solutions available: hosted software and licensed software.

Licensed software is software that you purchase and/or download included with this package there is usually free software as well. Licensed software is adventageous for many reason the most beneficial is probably the fact that you can customize this type of software to meet you specific need.

The hosted software solutions had many different types of services that they offered which included things like: credit card processing, comprehensive reporting features, live support, and marketing help. These solutions of course are not downloaded to your computer or server, but are hosted on the provider’s site and you normally pay a monthly fee. You would also incur additional charges based on what other features you chose.

After an exhausting search of shopping cart software, which ones are highest reviewed? It depends a lot on a persons specific needs and what there goal is with the software. A person that has a good understanding of computers and software would probably prefer the licensed software as it affords you the ability to own and customize. However, if you do not have a proficiency with computer or just do not want to deal with the hassel of setting up software yourself the hosted software is the better choice.

The most most educated way to go is to just, give it a try, many hosted companies offer 30 day trials and no matter how many reviews you read nothing will give you more information than just trying it out yourself. A free trial, will allow you the opportunity to see if the software can be tailored and customized to meet your needs. You will also be able to test, first hand, the customer support options the software hosting company provides.

Finding software that meets your personal application needs can be a difficult process. The best way to go about it is to research thouroughly. Research alone may not be enough though, you do not want to rely on the word of others test it out yourself to make sure you know what you will be getting into. Do not rush the decision taking the proper time to figure out what is right for you and getting the best solution is better than regretting a rash decision in the long run.

It is important that, whatever you choose, your customer finds the experience of using your shopping cart solution to be easy. You want to make sure that the shopper doesn’t have an excuse to shop somewhere else because they found your site to be too confusing. They need to be able to pay, clearly know their shipping options, and be able to communicate easily with you.

The Internet has become increasing influential in our societies shopping habits. With just a little iniative anyone can set up their own ecommerce site and reach an entire world wide audience. Making a smart decison on you website applications, systmes, and programs will help steer you towards much success with your ecommerce site.

About the Author:
Wanna learn more about ecommerce shopping cart software or online ecommerce shopping cart software? Click now to make your sales skyrocket with the world’s smartest ecommerce shopping cart software. Get a 30-day test-drive for a measly $3.95!

PPC Management: To outsource, or handle it yourself?

Published
by
Kirt Christensen
on May 6, 2008
in Internet Marketing
. 0 Comments
by Kirt Christensen

I’m going to give you some information you can use to decide if you want to hire someone to manage your pay-per-click campaigns in Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter, or if you want to do it yourself.

Bottom line is that the biggest factor is you and what your skills and talents are - I am just going to tell you what to be aware of in PPC managment. In the process, hopefully I can save you some money and money too!

If you’d like to manage your own PPC campaign, here are a few things you should to take into consideration:

Time –> How much time do you have? How much are you willing to give up? Managing a PPC campaign can be very time-consuming, depending upon your industry.

Experience –> How much do you already know about PPC marketing? Most of the bigger companies have someone with at least several years of PPC experience. If you do not have much experience, there are a few ways to get it.

One way is to spend lots of time reading the PPC marketing forums (this way is free). Secondly, just go ahead and open your own PPC accounts and get started, and get your hands dirty (this is what I did, and it was very expensive). Nevertheless, both are good ways to gain experience, and both can put you on track to make a profit.

Competitiveness –> How many other PPC advertisers are there? How much are the bids going for in the top 3 to 8 positions for a specific keyword?

Keywords –> How many keywords will you be managing? Do you know how to find all the relevant keywords for your business? Keep in mind that if you are in a competitive industry, you will probably be going up against other advertisers who are using expensive bid management software.

Ad Copy –> Do you know if you can write good PPC ads? I’m not talking about normal ad descriptions, but relevant PPC descriptions. The difference can be the deciding factor between your site making a profit or a loss - a lesson I learned first-hand.

Budget –> How much do you have to spend on clicks? If you are new to PPC and plan on spending more then $500 per month, I recommend you start off hiring someone to manage your PPC ads or to act as a consultant, at the very least! It will be well worth the money if you shop around for the right person or company to help.

Learning new strategies and tactics - PPC marketing is constantly changing and evolving. Staying up-to-date involves reading newsletters and forums regularly, consistently, and carefully.

If you decide to hire someone to manage your PPC campaign, here are a few things you should take into consideration:

1) Knowledge & Experience:

What type of experience do they have? How long have they been in business? Do their current clients recommend them unconditionally?

2) Fees:

Watch out for the ones that are TOO good. Remember the saying that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Talk to at least three or four different companies and compare them carefully before making your choice.

3) Bid monitoring:

How many times per day/week/month do they check your keyword bids?

4) Customer Support:

You are going to be communicating (via email or phone) a lot with the person running your PPC ads. You should like talking with them and find them easy to talk to.

5) Response time:

How soon will your calls or emails be returned?

6) Support:

Do they offer phone support or only email support?

7) ROI tracking:

Is it offered? It is not necessary to have ROI tracking, but in today’s market, it drastically increases your chances of having a profitable PPC ad.

All in all, for most people, hiring a professional and knowledgeable person to manage your ppc accounts is the way to go! Unless you have the time, patience and money to burn on getting past the learning curve can be pretty painful. Hire someone to help you get going today, and you won’t ever regret it!

About the Author:
Need to optimize or “fix” your Adwords & PPC campaigns? Kirt Christensen manages over $600k in PPC spending & knows what it takes to make your account hum! When it comes to pay per click management/a>, he’s the man!

The 3 Aspects of Productive Ad Words Campaigns

Published
by
Kirt Christensen
on May 2, 2008
in Internet Marketing
. 0 Comments
by Kirt Christensen

All across the internet marketers are screaming the praises of AdWords, promising young, lazy entrepreneurs that for the right price they will teach them how to make hundreds of dollars a day from the comfort of their home for only three or four hours of work.

Wait a minute. Lazy?

Sure! The reality is that Adwords is not that complex and by putting a little more effort into the project these young entrepreneurs could learn what these experts are charging money to teach.

In order for an AdWords campaign to succeed it is necessary for the strategy to contain three key components:

1. A success keyword. The keyword choice made for the adwords campaign is the pivotal decision out of all the decisions that are made when setting up an adwords campaign.

The trick to good keyword is to find ones that cover a wide enough area of the topic so that someone who is searching can be aimed in your direction but one that is pointed enough that it won’t attract too many random searches.

We need to note here that search engines charge the marketer for the click on the ad whether there are sales happening or not. It is their bottom line that has their greatest concern.

The crux of this is that if an ad uses a well used keyword (a marketer may go over to the search engine database and get keywords that are often used in their ads) it will usually get a whole boatload of traffic, but what it won’t do is bring in a lot of sales.

Adwords offers some great features to advertisers that have a problem gathering useful keywords for their ads. By going to www.adwords.google.com advertisers can access these great features.

2. High bid rankings. The basic fact is that internet searchers come from a broad range of demographics. They usually know what they want and want it right away.

Basically they don’t exercise the patience to scroll through page upon page of information; if what they want isn’t in the first few pages they will revise their search and try in some other direction.

If you are a marketer this means that you need your ads on the first page or so of search results. This is tricky because the as are put up by how much a marketer is willing to pay per click and not by when they were turned in.

This balance between sales and what they will put out for ads is vital but it is hard to find; having an ad on top of the list may be good but it doesn’t help if the budget won’t cover the expense of it.

Lucky for us that Google has a feature that lets a ceiling be put on the amount of money spent on ad campaigns. If the ceiling is reached, the ad is labeled inactive and not shown in the search results etc.

3. Follow up. With all due care and diligence given to the setup of the ad campaign, there are no guarantees that it will bring in the desired results. The marketer should remain vigilant so the can see how the ads are performing and avoid any problems and make changes to their campaign as warranted.

There you have it! All the necessary points to build an adwords campaign that is a success; and you didn’t need to pay out $64.95. What you do with these tips is totally up to you the marketer.

About the Author:
Need to optimize or “fix” your Adwords & PPC campaigns? Kirt Christensen manages over $600k in PPC spending & knows what it takes to make your account hum! When you need a adwords qualified company, he’s the man!

Big Hints For Success In Adwords Campaign Management

Published
by
Kirt Christensen
on May 2, 2008
in Internet Marketing
. 0 Comments
by Kirt Christensen

The reports you hear on the TV on making big bucks in one day by using Google Adwords, the ones that say it take little time and effort. They are feeding you a line.

They are definitely leaving some information out. To whit: there have been man man-hours invested researching and establishing the campaigns that are profitable, and they are profitable because they were well put together.

Do not let this introduction to AdWords fool you. The concept behind AdWords is a brilliant one; you provide the creative ideas and the search engine will do all of the legwork for you. It is possible to make a tremendous amount of money with AdWords if you know the proper technique.

The most important factor relating to setting up a profitable Adwords campaign is keywords that are chosen with care.

Ideally the keyword you choose should be one that has broad enough application that it allows a searcher who may not know of your product to find it by searching but the keyword is not so general that everyone and their brother doesn’t see and click on your ad even when they have no interest I what you offer. The search engine who handles your account charges for every click even when there are no sales off it.

In order to aid marketers in their search for keyword for their ad, Adwords came up with a variety of tools. The tools can help them to find the words that are popular ie: words that are being entered in the search engines for searches most often. The tools will also aid in finding popular synonyms for expanding their ad campaigns right now or to use in campaigns set up in the future.

One more important element in Adword campaign mgmt success is the size of the budget available to offer whenever one of their ads is selected.

The average web browser will not continue to search for information beyond the first five or ten pages of search results; therefore, in order for an ad to bring in the largest buying pool possible it must be within these five or ten pages.

PPC advertisements are arranged by the search engine on a greater to lesser basis; that means that ads that are bringing them greater profits will be given higher rank status than those that bring lesser profits. The more an advertiser will pay the higher it will be ranked and the more visibility it will be given.

One final thought; after selection of keywords and setting up bids and ads, careful monitoring of your ads is imperative. Ads that are profitable and bring sales and leads might warrant a higher bid to give them greater exposure higher in the ranks. Ads that aren’t being productive should be rewritten.

Managing your Adwords campaign carefully, before launching it and afterwards gives you the greatest possibility of being successful.

About the Author:
Need to optimize or “fix” your Adwords & PPC campaigns? Kirt Christensen manages over $600k in PPC spending & knows what it takes to make your account hum! When it comes to pay per click management services, he’s the man!

Picking Great Keywords

Published
by
Kirt Christensen
on April 30, 2008
in Internet Marketing
. 0 Comments
by Kirt Christensen

For all the marketers who are using Google AdWords to sell their products/services the idea of keywords is hallowed. They are the thing that can either make or break their business. It hinges on their ability to bring in business.

An unprofitable Adwords campaign can result in a great amount of money thrown away into advertising all because the ads did not attract serious traffic but attracted surfers that were “just looking” and whiling away the hours clicking on the ‘Sponsored Ads”

What isn’t known by this group of people is that luck doesn’t come into play and careful research doesn’t guarantee success also.

Yes, a quick glance at a search engine’s database will show the keywords which generated the most business over an established period of time; however, these keywords are going to generate hundreds of pages of results due to their popularity and internet browsers are not going to look beyond the first five to ten. That means that anything on the remaining ninety pages is going to go unviewed.

Obviously it is necessary that an advertisement be among these first few pages in order to guarantee its success, but what does that have to do with keywords? In order to ensure that an advertisement is among the top of the sponsored links (i.e. listed on those first five to ten pages) the advertiser is going to have to be among the top bidders for that keyword.

Of course that indicates that a higher price will be required for each click on the ads if we want to stay on the first pages and not end up on the other ninety nine.

Well who cares if you have to pay a little more per click? You should because every time that that ad is clicked on you have to pay that amount even if you aren’t getting any sales off of it and that could mean a very large deficit in the ad budget. That’s why each ad has to function at peak performance so that you can justify the expense.

For each ad to be successful it is important that the keyword be as successful as possible.

An optimal keyword should be narrow enough so that it can narrow the field down (like “little league football” rather than “football”) but you also want it to be broad enough that someone would actually search for it.

If you are having trouble choosing your keywords for your ads, go and visit some of the terrific tools that Google makes available for the adwords customers. www.adwords.google.com.

About the Author:
Need to optimize or “fix” your Adwords & PPC campaigns? Kirt Christensen manages over $600k in PPC spending & knows what it takes to make your account hum! When you need a real adwords professional, he’s the man!

Google AdWords Campaigns: Why the Right Keywords are so Important

Published
by
Kirt Christensen
on April 27, 2008
in Internet Marketing
. 0 Comments
by Kirt Christensen

When you do a search on the internet what do you do when you first start? Do you instinctively know what web address to go to? Is there some magical power that takes you there? Is there some force that takes you there?

No way! You, and every other of the more than million searchers around the world, head straight to your favorite search engine to get help. With a few words or phrases, or maybe even a whole sentence that you type in, you have the search engine doing all the work for you. It guides you, as if by magic, to various web pages that will probably have what you need.

The words you typed into the search engine are what are known as keywords, and they are what are going to direct your consumer market to you when you launch an AdWords campaign. It is important that these keywords be as specific as possible without completely alienating the portion of the consumer market which has no idea that your service or product exists.

When you don’t have the correct key words your Ad words campaign is bound to fail before it even starts. Your campaign is a pay-per-click advertising venture. You will be charged a fee from Google whenever someone clicks on your ad, even if you don’t make a sale.

Incorrect keywords means that the people you want to reach won’t be guided to your ad and you won’t have the opportunity to grab them with your ads, but it may send your ad out to masses of consumers who have no need of, or desire for, what you offer and only used one of your keywords. That will continually force up the cost of your advertising to a point that you are driven to closing your Google campaign.

There are quite a few ways that you can use to select the proper keywords for your Adwords campaign. The most basic is a careful consideration of the product or service offered and the customer market. What are the customers seeking with this product or service? What function will it play? You should include its intended function in the ads, what need it fills, because if it doesn’t fill a need, there probably isn’t a market for it.

Once the advertiser has accurately identified a number of keywords which will help to direct traffic to their AdWords advertisement they can visit Google’s AdWords site at www.adwords.google.com for assistance in finding synonyms and other related terms to allow them to make their ads as specific as possible and to sit back and enjoy the profits as they come rolling in.

About the Author:
Need to optimize or “fix” your Adwords & PPC campaigns? Kirt Christensen manages over $600k in PPC spending & knows what it takes to make your account hum! When it comes to pay per click account management, he’s the man!

Manage My Pay-Per-Click - Tiny Yet Significant Differences

Published
by
Kirt Christensen
on April 24, 2008
in Internet Business
. 0 Comments
by Kirt Christensen

A headline is just the start of converting a potential customer to your customer. You can still show him that you have what he needs. You can still get more clicks. Here is where you let the salesman inside you come out to play.

Note the seemingly insignificant differences between these two ads:

Popular Ethernet Terms

3 Page Guide-Free PDF Download

Complex Words-Simple Definitions

www.bb-elec.com

0.1% CTR

Then this one:

Popular Ethernet Terms

Complex Words-Simple Definitions

3 Page Guide-Free PDF Download

www.bb-elec.com

3.6% CTR

The first ad had 1/36th of the amount of clicks than the 2nd did. How did that happen? Is there some kind of secret? If you examine the ads, you see they both have precisely the same words. Than what is the difference here?

The first ad listed features and offers first, benefits second. The second ad listed benefits first. This secret of PPC management is just as true in long-copy print advertising as in those little thumbnail Google ads.

Features and offers are what your product has or what you’re going to do. They describe it, what it includes, and how big or small or robust or thorough it is.

On the reverse side, benefits are what the emotional gains are for your clients, what they get from the use of your merchandise. Your feature list for an ebook may include things like this:

The feature list for an e book may include things like:

12 timeless principles

24 chapters, 222 pages of rock-solid content

72 photographic illustrations

Easy to read and helpful charts and graphs

Step-by-step tips and instructions

Captivating narratives, interesting reports and first person experiences

An intro by Lee Iacocca

Et cetera

But your list of benefits will tell your customer how she’ll actually be helped by what you’ve written. Sometimes there’s a little bit of crossover between these and the features:

See a 38 percent gain in as little as 40 minutes.

You can apply any one of these 12 techniques immediately, and see instant results.

Catapult Energy Levels, Convert Fat into Muscle, Develop Strength, Endurance, and Flexibility all at the same time.

Uncover the making mistakes as you go on can be a strategy that will help your skills grow at an even faster rate.

Get compliments from your friends as they ask you again and again (jealously), “What has happened to you?”

There’s no way to pack all of this kind of content into a Google ad, granted. But the principle of dividing benefits from features is universal.

You want the focus on your Google ad to be on the emotional payoffs or benefits. When describing both the benefits and the features your best bet is to stress the benefits.

The clear way to superior PPC Management does not require a higher degree or years of experience and training. It only requires you to convince the potential buyer that you have a thing of value for them. With a clear and simple statement of your case with benefits accentuated and testing to find the best way to state them, you will have winning ad copy.

About the Author:
Need to optimize or “fix” your Adwords & PPC campaigns? Kirt Christensen manages over $600k in PPC spending & knows what it takes to make your account hum! When it comes to ppc management companies, he’s the man!

Manage Your PPC - Then And Now

Published
by
Kirt Christensen
on April 21, 2008
in Internet Business
. 0 Comments
by Kirt Christensen

In times past there was no trouble getting an upper position in those highly searched, general keywords like ‘china’, ‘business’, ‘running’ and ‘headache’ for a nickel a click. When you did a search on Google for one of those terms, you would get only 1 or 2 results, indicating to you that you could bid a minimum price for your clicks.

But advertisers had a very hard time getting a generic term like “running” to stick, especially in the early days before phrase- and exact-match options were available. A person who typed in a keyword like “business” could have any of a thousand completely different ideas in mind for what he was looking for, so he was not only unlikely to click on your ad, but even if he did click on it, he was that much less likely to buy anything from you.

Since then, the PPC management norms have changed. Now there is no minimum CTR, you don’t have to worry about keeping the clicks up. Advertisers have gotten smarter over the fast few years and are able to take those non-specific terms and make of them opportunities for profitable information marketing.

So currently it is worth the effort to put bids on the highly searched, general keywords. The question is how do I make them work?

Here is how to do it:

Run trials, test copy ideas, and try again, writing ads until one works. This can take a long time, and you may fail a number of times before you find a winning formula. But you’ll win by attrition, if you can keep testing and testing until something works.

Utilize the full benefits of negative keywords.

In your ads have phrases that are disqualifying to those you don’t want to click. By offering ‘Free Golf Instructions’ with your ads you will most likely attract undesirable traffic, but if you advertise ‘$49 Golf Video” most of your clicks will be folks serious about making a purchase.

Market information, not just products. Send people to a landing page that collects opt-ins, and offer a free guide, a tutorial, or an e-mail course of some kind, which will establish you as an information source, create longer-term customers, and grow your visitor value to where even the most generic clicks are worth getting.

New Concepts of PPC Management

Literally every keyword in your list is a market of its own.

The outlooks of the people searching are represented by the keywords in your list.

Behind everything explicit that your customers type in when they’re searching, there’s some want, need, question, or assumption, they have (but may be completely unaware of).

The markets for your keywords will vary in size large, small and in between.

For each keyword the competition will also vary.

Not everyone will have the same profits from the same keywords.

Some keywords will have an overabundance of competitors making the bid prices above market value and unrealistically high.

On the other hand there will be some keywords that, though they make up a better more reactive market, and are available using good keyword tools, are generally neglected.

When you mirror the language playing in your customers head, that is when he is going to buy from you.

About the Author:
Need to optimize or “fix” your Adwords & PPC campaigns? Kirt Christensen manages over $600k in PPC spending & knows what it takes to make your account hum! When it comes to adwords bid management, he’s the man!