E-Commerce and E-Business
Published September 19th, 2008
"There will never be a significant clothing market online," I was once told by a leading Scottish fashion journalist. "People don’t want to buy clothes unless they can reach out and touch them."
In fact, tens of thousands of items of clothing, both new and used, are traded on eBay every week. Though there are other specialist clothing auction sites available, none of them can guarantee anything like as many potential customers. Whether you represent a clothing company or are a private individual wanting to make some money out of old garments which no longer fit, eBay will often be... Read more
Tags: E-Commerce and E-Business, Marketing, Web Design, wholesale clothing
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Published September 12th, 2008
Without a doubt, the number one obstacle to running a successful online business is getting potential buyers to trust your website enough that they are willing to make a purchase.
Let’s be really honest; there are plenty of steps involved with the purchase and receipt of any online product from the release of a credit card number to final delivery - and potential customers will worry about every single one of these areas when it comes to making a purchase from a business they have not used in the past.
About Branding
There is a lot of competition in online... Read more
Tags: branding, customer service, E-Commerce and E-Business, establish trust, how to, Leeia Ladipoh, online shopping, online transactions, reputation, Sales, social media, web 2.0
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One of the biggest problems online marketers face is grabbing the attention of surfers. The second is building instant trust between the surfer and the website. The latter sounds practically impossible but new technology has once again prevailed and brought us one step closer to the goal.
Perhaps you’ve seen it and perhaps you haven’t. Regardless, it’s making a splash in the online advertising/marketing community. What is it? (drum roll please…)
Moving media.
The principle is to place a "live host" on your website that will greet your customers and personally introduce your site and company. The humanized video makes... Read more
Tags: advertising, E-Commerce and E-Business, Marketing, Marketing Your Business, moving media, online marketing, Rebecca Button, websites
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This video has had 3.5 million+ hits in the past month.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SqJz0NgnnE
The ad was designed to be a part of a viral marketing campaign for Gatorade. The ad was pulled however when Gatorade decided it wanted to pursue a different direction with it’s marketing campaign but somehow the video still leaked out and to Gatorade’s great fortune, they got to see just how successful the campaign might have been.
Granted, Gatorade has millions of dollars it can spend on stunt girls and fancy video editing but no amount of money can buy the phenomenal reach their video has had... Read more
Tags: E-Commerce and E-Business, Marketing, Marketing Your Business, online marketing, Rebecca Button, viral marketing, viral video, word of mouth, word of mouth marketing
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Move over Facebook. Watch out MySpace. There’s a new kid in town.
Aside from the less than convenient domain name, Sta.rtUp.Biz appears to be a social network above the rest (as far as small businesses should be concerned). With a slick and stylized presentation this social network seems to have it all. From creating your own profile and connecting with other business owners to an impressive resource offering, this site is bound to give it’s members everything they could possibly want all in one place. Their articles section traverses the top business magazines online including Fortune, BusinessWeek, and Entreprenuer. They’ve... Read more
Tags: E-Commerce and E-Business, networking, Rebecca Button, small business, social network, social networking, Starting a Business, startups
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A recent study released by the National Retail Federation reports that the number of businesses victimized in the past 12 months is up from 79% in 2007 to 85% so far in 2008. More and more businesses are seeing their stolen merchandise popping up for sale in other locations (the internet clearly being one of the most prevalent places).
E-fencing is quickly becoming the primary modus operandi for thieves as they can resell the stolen merchandise anonymously without raising any eyebrows. One of the most important findings is how much "new in box" items are worth to the criminals. These... Read more
Tags: E-Commerce and E-Business, e-fencing, news, organize retial crime, Rebecca Button, retail theft, stolen merchandise, survey
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On March 3rd Ebay launched a few new features. One of these was Best Match. Has this addition helped or hurt their business? Let’s take a look and find out.
Now when you log onto eBay and search for an item, instead of getting several thousand items that only match the words you type in, you get millions of items that all have the keywords you typed in - some not having anything to do with the item you are searching for.
Best Match - Changes Made
Along with the best match feature, they also made changes to their feedback... Read more
Tags: E-Commerce and E-Business, ebay, eBay Edge, ebay seller, Leeia Ladipoh
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The Federal Trade Commission announced in a press release today that it will soon be publishing clarifications to the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. The following topics are to be addressed:
(1) an e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender.
(2) the definition of “sender” was modified to make it easier to determine which of multiple parties advertising in... Read more
Tags: CAN-SPAM, E-Commerce and E-Business, email marketing, law, legal, legislation, Marketing, Marketing Your Business, news, Rebecca Button
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I have beef with Twitter. To me, it’s an oddly socially accepted and encouraged form of stalking where the "victims" volunteer themselves.
Aside from the creepy factor, from its inception I have never really understood how thousands of people #1 care so much about what other people are doing that they would subscribe to and check instant updates via a personal feed, and #2 that said number of people actually believe that that many OTHER people care enough about their minute happenings so much that they’d consistently update these feeds.
Twitter’s usefulness has long been debated and I have clearly... Read more
Tags: Business, E-Commerce and E-Business, facebook, linkedin, myspace, Rebecca Button, social networking, twitter
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If you are in any way involved in a blog you know that positive comments are awesome, negative comments are…well, good for balanced feedback and spam comments are downright infuriating. Its the latter variety that this post is about.
You know them when you see them. Sometimes they are blatant, "Great blog! Visit my site www.bestsiteintheworld.com!"
Sometimes they are incoherent, "Greek should thy savage health insurance agents make light business contact manager windows mobile wheat." (Whaaa?)
But most of the time, they are a little sneakier than that (in response to one of my Valentine’s Day Trend Alert posts), "Its... Read more
Tags: Blog, bloggers, blogging, comment etiquette, comments, E-Commerce and E-Business, Marketing, Marketing Your Business, Rebecca Button, spam
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