Tag: clients

Categories
business

Retail Online

These are the features ranked according to the number of top 500 retailers that are using them (as per Internet Retailer Magazine):

  1. keyword search
  2. daily/seasonal specials
  3. enlarged product view
  4. what’s new
  5. affiliate program
  6. advanced search
  7. online gift certificates
  8. rich media
  9. outlet center
  10. email a friend
  11. coupons/rebates
  12. top sellers
  13. site personalization
  14. alternative payments
  15. store locator
  16. wish list
  17. customer reviews
  18. catalog quick order
  19. mapping
  20. product customization

Interesting enough as well that most consumers (according to Forrester) are willing to decline paying for “flare”:

Fewer consumers are willing to pay for extras such as gift wrapping, or overnight delivery.
(26% of respondents said they would pay for expedited delivery prior to the holiday season, down from 45% who said they would do so in 2006.)

Generally, what this means is that consumers want to get their purchase faster, easier and with less extras then before. For most of the prospective clients that call us, top five requests for web site are:

  1. Large pictures/ability for visitor to enlarge product image
  2. Search engine optimization/marketing
  3. Ability to quickly add and remove inventory items
  4. Ability to post featured/for sale items
  5. Ability to use various discount codes to track promotions

It is obvious that trends for small and large businesses are almost the same. The slight difference is attributed to overall approach to ways of doing business for small business owners and large retailers.

Categories
clients

Blogging For Small Business

Many resources recommend having a blog and creating content in order to position yourself as an expert in the field. Blog attracts attention to the product you are selling giving it a contextual boost from the content you are writing. In most cases, people who know the most about the product or service are those who run the business. They are so busy creating the product or service, dealing with clients and suppliers or whatnot that they simply don’t have time to create quality content.

Sure, you can hire a blogger, ghost writer or just an English-major intern to write stuff for you. Problem is – he doesn’t know the product. He doesn’t have the feeling for the product, like the owner has. There is no passion, no interest (except for being paid) and no understanding of how to present your product to the readers. Those readers, who later may become customers. It’s all about presentation, after all. So blogging becomes new sales tool that the owner doesn’t have time (or some times skills) to use.

What we recently started doing is we offer our clients to keep their blogs for them. We know the product, since we worked on presenting it for so much time. We know the target audience, since we’ve been talking to them since the launch of client’s web site. And we have interest in promoting clients’ businesses, since it means more business for us.

Everybody wins. Except for the guy who’s hands are full already.

Categories
blog

The Year Of A Blog

Looks like we’re a little late to the party, but it doesn’t mean we can’t have our chunk of fun. In addition to the blog we set up earlier for Don’t Date That Guy – not just one, but two more blogs emerging on our servers.

One will be in Russian (sorry, folks), and will deal with weight problems that Russian immigrants (especially of older age) are dealing with. Unfortunately, their life in former Soviet Union wasn’t as bright as our lives here and now. Science of dieting was not popular and not many people could afford to eat as healthy as we are now. So, we hope that by creating this web site we will provide valuable and necessary information for our own parents and relatives. Stay tuned, the launch is scheduled for February.

Second upcoming blog (hopefully) will launch approximately at the same time. It is targeted to a more younger crowd, people who are bored with existing places they go out to, but not sure where to go instead. Now, don’t confuse it with Zagat survey, it will look more like Events section from Village Voice then CitySearch listings. Plans are (so I heard) to include a lot of free or very inexpensive places. As it turns out not – not every 20-year old kid drives a Ferrari and makes a fortune on eBay.

Not sure if disclosing our future plans is a good idea, but it would be a nice experiment to see how things turn out. Zealus Web Design always tries to support our customers’ ideas and provide them with insights and knowledge of things they would otherwise have a hard time figuring out.