Storeowners need reliable help to really succeed online

Today, it seems more and more businesses are dropping print ads, Yellow Page listings, direct mail and other traditional advertings and going online. But many local retailers seem to think just having a static web presence is enough Or, a supplier's retailer website is enough along with posting a few things to a Facebook page.

 

Succeeding in the digital world takes a lot more time and energy than ever before for local businesses. Just having a website is not enough. Just saying we are on Facebook is not enough. Even search engine optimizing a website is not enough to be really successful.  Today, it takes a total commitment, a marketing strategy, and an understanding of the various online channels, directories, as well as how well the competition is doing. Everything changes so quickly on the Internet it is difficult to stay on top of all the changes and understand how they may be affecting your local business. Also, what is hot, or the rage today may change tomorrow and probably will. Getting some professional, qualified help can really improve your store's success online.

Recently we have seen Google making some fairly dramatic algorithm changes. If you haven’t noticed, Microsoft’s Bing is now starting to power Yahoo search results. That means approximately 28% of all searches are now driven by Bing. Yellow Page-type directories, as well as the search engines are reaching out to capture consumers through their local business listings. Consumer reviews on these various directories are also playing a bigger part with local business results. Social media is not only the rage but seems to be impacting both the search engine results as well as where consumers go for more insights, opinions and to interact with businesses. Local group savings portals, online coupons and other local discounted portals seem to be popping up daily.

So where should retailers invest their time, money and efforts? This is why store owners need to seek reliable help to guide them through the various online channels and the waves of media hype. What works for one may not be the best solution for another. I recently saw a flyer for a new portal that claimed you could generate an additional $30,000 per month with their retailer website program. The analysis and ROI were a real stretch of the imagination. There was nothing mentioned about SEO, improving link popularity, how many leads it would generate the store, managing online citations, Internet marketing, social media, local business listings, nor getting listed on page #1 of Google or Bing. Just a smoke and mirrors presentation. It is amazing what looks so good on paper may really be far from reality.

Going local seems to be the next hot wave on the Internet and many SEO and Internet marketing companies are lining up. Store owners don’t just jump into the local wave because it seems to be the thing to do. Don't do it just because a supplier or some new portal says we have all the answers for your business. Instead, do it with some smarts, understand your options and then make a serious commitment. Be sure to use goals and analytics to measure your ROI and to estimate how many sales leads you are actually generating from your online initiatives. Only then will you become really successful online.

Google Cracks Down on Low Quality Websites

From Google's Official Blog:

Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on. This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

The update is meant to improve the quality of Google's search results by removing the worthless content, spam content, and duplicate content. After what Google did to J.C. Penny's website and to Overstock.com you better review your website, seo practices and the content.

Google's official announement is here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html

Store Owners it is Time to Embrace The Internet With Both Feet

Today, Christine Whittemore had a great post on MarketingProfs called: Still Holding Back? 10 (Business) Reasons to Participate in Social Media. In her article she talked about how stores should use social media to be a great listeners and to create conversations with their customers and new prospects. She also listed 10 reasons why businesses should be participating in social media:


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Point number #3 really hit on something I have been observing for quite some time.

3. Social media allows you to bring to life your otherwise static brochure-like website with a dynamic presence.

Static websites means a website that doesn’t change often, if at all. Store sales and other store events are rarely updated. New photos of events and other store changes are never added to the websites. No new store announcements and no customer feedbacks or customer reviews / testimonials.

On Tuesday I was following tweets from GetListed.org's “Local University” workshop, which took place in Portland, Oregon. One of the many tweets was about social media. The presenter's comment was sent over Twitter..

#1 reason customers connect w social media - discounts and special offers.

So consumers are hunting for discounts and special offers on Facebook, Twitter, etc.? Maybe this is why I see more and more large retailers posting deals all day. For example, HomeDepotDeals is shouting HD special store deals and discounts all day long on Twitter.

Another interesting article surfaced on Twitter and it was about MerchantCircle's recent press release. MerchantCircle released a report about a study of 8500 small, local businesses (most under 5 employees) and they found 70% prefer using Facebook for their marketing. They also stated most of these small businesses are gravitating towards simple, low-cost online marketing methods, such as Facebook. These small businesses say they do not have the time, understanding, nor the budget for other online advertising methods. No surprise, Facebook is easy to upload photos, add links, videos and insert text.

This leads me to what has been in the back of my mind for a long time. Most retailers really don’t embrace their website. Most flooring store owners seem to gravitate to a cookie-cutter website that is truly static and takes no effort on their part. These static website don’t allow retailers to make changes themselves. So they turn to Facebook to add their salespromotions and other store news while their website becomes stale and fails to engage their potential customers.

Store owners need to begin to recognize they need to put more effort into making their website interactive, updated and much more personal. Static cookie-cutter websites wont do it.

In Christine’s point 8. she states:

You direct prequalified prospects—with whom you’ve already established a relationship—to your website, so you can engage in business.

She is right, but unfortunately a static, stale website with outdated content will probably send the wrong message to your prospects. Stores need to be able to make changes on their website as easily as they do on Facebook. They also need to find ways to engage and interact better with their website visitors. Also, store owners need to use analytics to see if in fact their Facebook prospects are going to their websites.

Bottom line is, you get out of it what you put in it. Static, impersonal, cookie-cutter websites are not enough. Stores need to begin to create a content strategy, an online marketing plan, and find ways to engage and interact with their visitors both on social media websites as well on their websites.

Is Google Places Becoming A Farce?

Since Google started blending in local business listings into Google's search results I see more and more SEO companies stuffing targeted keyword phrases into the Google Places' Business Name field. Yet, Google states in their guidelines...

Business Name: Represent your business exactly as it appears in the offline world.

• Do not include marketing taglines in your business name.
• Do not include phone numbers or URLs in the business name field, unless they are part of your business name.
• Do not attempt to manipulate search results by adding extraneous keywords or a description of your business in the business name field.

Google also states: Google reserves the right to suspend access to Google Places or other Google Services to individuals or businesses that violate these guidelines...

See: http://www.google.com/support/places/bin/answer.py?answer=107528

For example, if I had a client with the business name "XYZ Carpet One" listed their Google Place business name as: "Chicago Carpet & Laminate Flooring Stores" this would get them much higher rankings in the search results when a shopper was looking for a Chicago laminate flooring store, but would be a direct violation of Google Places' guidelines. It should get the business the wrath of Google, similar to what happened to J.C. Penny recently for buying links.

So why do I see so many business listings stuffed full of geo-targeted keyword + a product group keyword phrase? Why doesn't Google do what they say in their Google Place guidelines? Should the rest of us start to do the same thing and ignore Google's guidelines to improve our clients' SERPs?

Bottom line: Local businesses today are beginning to recognize they need to be on page #1 for the most relevant keyword phrases used by their targeted audience. Competition is heating up between businesses and their SEO firms to be one of the lucky local ones. Google needs to either begin to enforce their rules and guidelines and remove the violators or change their rules..

What Is Up With Google Places?

This is a good summary of all the recent changes to Google Local Business Center for small businesses and what Google Places offers today.

See... Through Tags and Boost, Google Hopes to Provide Local Advertisers With DIY Services

Marketing Your Store's Comprehensive Retailer Website Program

Marketing Your Store blog has moved. If you haven't noticed I moved the MYS blog over the cold, snowy Wisconsin weekend. :(

The blog is now located at blog.MarketingYourStore.com.

I have launched MarketingYourStore.com, the web design & marketing program for flooring stores and other home decorating type businesses.

This new web program is based off of my many years working with flooring retailers all over the country and includes:

• custom website design
• our powerful Content Management System
• custom-written targeted flooring content
• Local SEO
• link building
• yellow page directory listings
• local business center listings
• website analtyics and reporting
• and much more

It's a total comprehensive program for a few select retailers. Each retailer also gets exclusive territories based on their trading area as well. Prices start at $1500 per month and is on a first come, first serve basis.  If interested please see http://www.marketingyourstore.com/ of send me an email (john@webstreamdynamics.com)  to request a telephone conference.

Mobile Phone Price Comparing with Google Shopper

Lately I have had a few people ask me: How do some shoppers do price comparison shopping from their phones? So I decided to fire up my Flip Camcorder and quickly demonstrate how to get Internet prices for a book using my iPhone and Google's FREE Google Shopper application that I downloaded from iTunes AppStore. The video below has no audio to keep it short and not bore everyone to death. :).

Basically what I am doing is using my iPhone's camera to scan the barcode on the back of the book.

Google Shopper then finds the book image and details and shows it to me on my phone. When I click on the book image Google Shopper than gives me a listing of various websites that sell the book along with their pricing and ratings. This will also work for many other products as well. Happy shopping!

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Home Depot - Lowest Total Carpet Project Price Guaranteed

Home Depot seems to be really taking a shot at Lowes and STAINMASTER® Carpets. Home Depot tweeted this afternoon that caught my attention... "@HomeDepot: Shopping for carpet? We’ve got the lowest total project price on new carpet and installation. Guaranteed. ". 

Going to Home Depot's website I see on a carpet banner on their home page ...

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On Home Depot's carpet page they show a detailed carpet comparison chart using a Martha Stewart Living™ Carpet versus a Lowe's STAINMASTER® Carpet and how you can save $173.60 by buying the Martha Stewart Living Carpet from Home Depot.

In the eyes of the consumer is Martha Stewart Living™ Carpet  as good a brand name as STAINMASTER® Carpet? I guess time will tell. In the mean time, specialty flooring stores had better sell themselves and not take HD for granted. Every carpet sale they get is one less potential sale for the local specialty flooring stores and HD has the brand name, locations and advertising muscle.
My own opinion is - never talk about your competitors to your potential customers. So how much of HD's advertising is helping Lowe's sell more STAINMASTER® Carpets?

Side note: If you didn't hear all the noise across the Internet the other day, Home Depot stated they planned on hiring 60,000 seasonal workers for their Spring Black Friday event. That annoucement got them a lot of Internet chatter and also helps their search engine ranking positions even more. ;)

UPDATE: Here is Friday, 2/18, HD Tweet - @HomeDepotDeals: We'll beat it by 10% http://bit.ly/g8koUo Lowest Total Carpet Project Price Guaranteed - Color + Pad + Installation

Google Social Search Gets More Social

On the official Google Blog Google announced Thursday new updates to Google Social Search. If you are signed in to Google account when doing a search you may now see relevant results from your friends and others you are connected too. The results could be pulled from friends Twitter posts, Youtube, Flickr, their blogs and websites. For example, if you were searching for a restaurant and some of your friends you are connected too have commented some where else about that restaurant you may see their comments or posts inserted into Google's listing results. For stores, this means a another way for shoppers to instantly get word-of-mouth opinions from their friends about the products and services you offer. google states: "Social search results can rank anywhere on the page, and you’ll see who shared the result in the annotation underneath."

Here is Google's overview about the new Social Search features...

Google Places is this a bug or new change?

Wow! I go to review a client's Google Places listing and what do I see?

Google Places Listing - click to enlarge

The listing is missing their business name and in its place is the address in big bold letters. I then checked a lot of other Google Place listings, including my own, and all had the same thing.

Is this a temporary bug? Or, is this Google starting to tweak Google Places to remove the possibility of stuffing geo-targeted keyword phrases in their Google Place Name field? (I see a lot of Google Place listings with keywords stuffed in business name field which Google says is a violation of their guidelines.)

UPDATE: It must have been a bug because I see Google has now corrected the problem.

New iPhone App - Flooring Calculator Lite by Webstream Dynamics

Webstream Dynamics has just launched a FREE iPhone App called the FLOORING CALCULATOR Lite. The powerful little calculator is meant to help consumers compute the total square footage of hardwood or laminate flooring material needed (plus 10%) and the estimated costs for the material, if a square foot price is also entered.

When measuring for flooring it is important to break down each part of the room into separate rectangular areas. Closets, L-shaped rooms, hallways, etc. need to be squared off and measured separately. That is why the flooring calculator allows for inputting several areas at a time so a more accurate estimate can be determined.


The FLOORING CALCULATOR Lite.is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad and requires iOS 4.2 or later. You can see it in the iTunes AppStore here... http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flooring-calculator-lite/id419327455?mt=8&ls=1

Feedback is welcome. Either through MarketingYourStore.com or sending me an email at john@webstreamdynamics.com.

Mannington launches athome blog

Mannington Mills has just entered the blogsphere with Mannington athome.



Mannington athome Blog

Mannington athome blog has a nice simple look and feel. This should become a great resource for home owners wanting to learn more about Mannington and decorating their home. They even include a direct email contact at Mannington. Kudos to Mannington and have fun blogging!
This gives me hope that maybe other flooring manufacturers will all begin to embrace blogs and social media in 2011. Remember, I did say maybe. :-)

Home Depot Carpet - Martha Stewart vs STAINMASTER

I saw this on HomeDepot.com. Home Depot compares Martha Stewart™ Living Carpet to STAINMASTER® Carpet.


From my web design standpoint, it's nicely done web page, not too wordy, with lots of good visuals and compelling reasons to buy carpet from HD. I really like their Carpet Videos too..... That's the Power of the HD!  Click here for Home Depot's Carpet page

HGTV Hottest Flooring Trends

HGTV video - Latest flooring options from classic hardwoods to budget-friendly vinyl.

Geo tagging Your Website, Not Your SmartPhone

Before I talk about geo-tagging your store's website I feel compelled to warn people with Smartphones, iPhones, etc. to turn off geo-tagging from your mobile phone.  Geo-tagging from your mobile phone is caused when you send out an image, video, etc to many different web applications, such as Facebook, Flickr, Google Buzz, etc. Smartphones are equiped with GPS locator technology. The Smartphone's cameras contain specialized hardware to automatically insert geo-location information to photos and videos at the time they are taken. These images if posted on the Internet can then be read by stalkers and others that know how to find the information. Sometimes the geo-location is published visibly along with the photo by the web application. Bottom line, it is best to TURN OFF GEO-TAGGING ON YOUR SMARTPHONES.  Here is a good article that will tell you how to disable geo tagging on various SmartPhone devices... http://www.icanstalku.com/how.php#disable

Geo Tagging Websites

Geo-tagging a local store's location on your website is a good thing and causes no harm to you. All we are doing is adding some hidden metadata that tells search engines bots and spiders your store location. Although this may not be that big of a deal today, as more and more people turn to mobile devices geo tagging metadata may help your visibility and geographic search capability for mapping on mobile devices. Plus, it has no negative effects to your website or search engine rankings.

It basically looks like this in the HTML source  code for your web page...

You see learn more by going to the GeoTag Elements website.

Add Your Local Store Listings on Bing

Don't forget about adding or updating your local store listing on Bing as well. Bing is Microsoft's search engine and will soon be powering Yahoo Search as well. This means over 20%+ of all searches will be coming from Bing.

Like Google, Bing has a Local Business Listing Center. So be sure to add Bing to your to-do list.

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To check your Local Listing on Bing go here: https://ssl.bing.com/listings/listingcenter.aspx

My Super Bowl XLV Prediction

Sorry, I can't resist going Off Topic (OT) once.

At Surfaces 2011 I wore a silk Green Bay Packer tie all three days and I was constantly greeted with people from all over the country saying they are pulling for the Packers to win the Super Bowl. Some said to me they really like the Packers while others said they want the Packers to win because they hate the Steelers.

But for me I am a 365 days a year Green Bay Packer fan and a cheesehead, so I am predicting that the Packers will bring back the Vince Lombardi Trophy to Green Bay, WI. on Sunday.  I think Aaron Rodgers and the Packers' wide receivers will give the Steelers more than they can handle.

And it looks like others agree with me... http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-super-bowl/09000d5d81e1b4a4/Steelers-defense-vs-Packers-WRs

My prediction is: Packers 24 - Steelers 17.

GO PACKERS!!

Google Places is Turning Up The Heat on Local Search

If you think Google is going to sit still on local search, think again. Flooring retailers you really need to keep up on what is happening with Google Places and on mobile devices.

Here is a great article that is worth a quick read... Google’s Mobile Moves Tighten Its Grip On Local

Google Places apps for both iPhone and Android allow people to rate and review businesses (HotPot’s objective).  <- Sounds like a mobile Yellow Pages with interactive Maps

Ckeck this out...

Eco Color Company - Exceptional Virtual Room Designer Tool

The Eco Color Company, a Berkshire Hathaway Company, is a leader in interactive virtual home design tools, such as their virtual room designer tool. Originally Swatchbox and then acquired last year by the Eco Color Company, they have been helping manufacturers to display their products to homeowners in variety of interior and exterior virtual home settings.

Their virtual room designer tool is by far the best tool for users to interchange everything from the wall paint colors to the floors. Personally, I notice the little things such as realistic shadows on the floors and ability to easily drag-and-drop floors and zoom into floors into a variety of roomscenes. When it comes to exotic hardwood floors, patterned flooring and tile with grout and trims the virtual room designer really helps consumers explore their options and visualize what the flooring will look like in a real interior setting.

The WFCA Consumer Flooring Website added the Eco Color Compnay's virtual room designer to their recently re-designed website. See the WFCA Virtual Room Designer.

WFCA Virtual Room Designer

By the way, smart flooring retailers can tap into these virtual room designers by setting up a monitor in their showroom to show consumers what the flooring will look like in a room setting. You could also show this while in a consumer's home if you are carrying a tablet internet device (ie: iPad / iPhone) or a wireless laptop.

To learn more about the Eco Color Company checkout their new website... http://www.ecocolorcompany.com/

Shopping via Tablets On The Rise

There has been a lot of buzz lately about iPads and other tablet type devices and how more and more shoppers are using them. An article that came out today on Mashable titled: Tablet Commerce Expected to Explode in 2011 really caught my attention. They cite a recent report by Forrester and some of the quotes and their pie chart are quite eye-opening. For the home decorating industries (including the flooring industry) we need to pay attention to these new tablet shoppers.

For example, here are some quotes for the article:

Forrester says, “Tablet devices, on the other hand, will grow by capturing share from traditional PC web traffic by untethering shoppers from their desktops, enabling easy browsing in a living room, during a bus commute to work, or at an airport.”

"...Many retailers report that already half of what they consider to be mobile traffic is coming through tablet devices.”

So how will this effect us? Time will tell. One thing you should be doing right now is monitoring your website analytics to see the type of devices your website traffic is using. (In Google Analytics you can easily see the devices used by your website visitors, as well as screen resolution, operating system, web browser, and much more.)

Click to enlarge - MarketingYourStore.com browser /OS visitors

Another thing that caught my attention was about social media retailing / selling:

“To the degree that retailers find any benefit at all from social strategies,” the report reads, “it is most frequently driven by tactics like ratings and reviews on a website rather than activities on social networks… Social networks, in fact, ranked dead last on a list of 10 customer acquisition tactics.”

By the way, if you are a Verizon Wireless customer are you going to order the iPhone? I did first thing this morning.

To add to this shopping from wireless devices on the go... Google Launches Shopping App for iPhone. Good thing I didn't order my wife an iPhone. :-)

Obtaining Digital Assets - Most Flooring Manufacturers Still Fail

I am totally amazed that last year (2010) when you ask flooring manufacturers for digital assests, like roomscene images, and logos and product shots, you get bewildered looks and poor results. The web has been around for approximately 15 years and most manufacturers of all sizes have a web presence but cannot quickly and easily produce their digital assets.

A case in point, last Fall Olson Rug of Chicago and I decided to put together a fabulous roomscene gallery for Chicago flooring consumers to explore their flooring options. See Olson Rug's Flooring Gallery. I was hoping it would take me more time to write the program and resize the images than get the roomscene images from the flooring manufacturers. Instead, it became a major chore going through the channels of command to find the right person and obtain the roomscenes. Some still have never produced their roomscenes and others sent roomscenes with no identifcation or were such poor quality we refused to use them.

Manufacturers will kill to get a display in retailer's stores but when a retailer requests digital product shots, roomscenes, etc. most flooring manufacturers have no clue how to find them within their own company, if they even exist. Don't you want you retailers to promote your brands and products online? Every sales rep within the organization should be able to easily get the digital assets for their aligned retailers. Your digital assets are like a virtual display that costs you nothing and can really help improve your reach and help sell your products at the local retailer level.

3 Things I Love About Armstrong Flooring's Website

It took a blizzard in the Midwest to slow me down enough to have the time to write this blog post about Armstrong Flooring's website update. Actually it has been several months since the Armstrong website update, but I feel as a web developer I still want to point out and praise some of the things I think Armstrong does so well and most flooring manufacturers seem to miss.

Below are 3 things they are doing so well on their website. There are more, but I don't want to spend my night typing and doing more screen captures. After all, I have had to shovel driveways 3 times today.

1. Armstrong does a great job in blending SEO text and CSS into their web design. Their dropdown menus are not only very user-friendly but also a great example of blending relevant keywords/trigger words with exceptional CSS. As a web developer for years I can truly say this is top-shelf and doing it right takes lots of effort and is not cheap to do. Its another reason why they rank so high in the search engine results.

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2. The DIY Flooring Skills Assessment is a terriffic idea! I wish I had thought of it. :) Not all people have the same skills for installing flooring, I know this too well after stapling down 1300 SQ FT of  hardwood flooring in our lake home. It's one thing to install a laminate click-lock floor versus installing a nail-down T&G 3/4" solid oak floor. Rather than allowing some consumers to fail, Armstrong tries to help steer them to floors that better match their skills. (Home Depot & Lowes should do the same.)

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3. Recently I read in a FCW issue that Armstrong said their goal was to drive consumers to their aligned dealers that sell their products. To this end they have also shown great website insights by having the Find a Store link appear not only in the page header but also to the right of all their products. This is a great call-to-action and helps quickly connect flooring shoppers to Armstrong dealers.

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One of my pet-peeves are flooring supplier's websites that force you enter a zipcode before they allow you to look at their products. To me that is the wrong approach to take in a consumer-driven medium. Armstrong Flooring and the new WFCA.org websites both do it right by placing the Find A Store Locator link within the page and in a noticeable location to help drive consumers when ready to find their local flooring stores.

Kudos to Armstrong!