The Landing Page Bible

Adler's argument is a good one. Landing pages, whether they are the result of a click from a PPC campaign, an email blast, printed advertisements, or other sources, need to be written and rewritten, designed and redesigned, all based on significant analytics and testing of their conversion and ROI. A good landing page can stand on its own and be tweaked ad infinitum to achieve its desired goal. Even if it passes traffic directly to the main website, the initial page a potential customer sees needs to do a good enough job of selling the product or service to convince the customer not to immediately go elsewhere, or "bounce".

Convinced yet? If so, it's time to take Cisco's advice on building the best landing page possible. Cisco is an expert in landing page design, providing optimization services to clients through his firm Adler Interactive. Prior to founding his company, he was vice president of marketing and communications for Belmont Abbey College. During his tenure he completely rebuilt Belmont Abbey's online initiatives. He has developed landing page strategies for companies throughout numerous industries and is a passionate believer in the value of high performance landing pages.

The number one thing to remember, according to the book, is to STAY FOCUSED. The landing page's headlines, imagery, and copy should all focus on the single most important benefit the user can receive by purchasing the product or service you're advertising. Beyond that, you should also address your writing to a single person. Don't focus on a group of users; instead, have a one-way conversation with the exact person reading your page, to convince them to make a purchase. From there, make sure your page addresses common objections to purchase, backs up its claims with statistics and facts, and avoids hype.

Once you have the landing page designed and written, read back through and then get it out there! According to Cisco, "If good is the enemy of great, then perfection is the enemy of online marketing." You can spend hours tweaking the copy, changing the image, and playing with position and color. But the longer it takes to publish the page, the more sales you are losing. The maneuverability of a single landing page allows it to be tweaked as needed after you publish it.

What other nuggets can you glean from the book?

1. How to organize your bullet points
2. How to increase the number of visitors that submit your landing pages' forms
3. What to put under your form's button
4. How to choose an image that conveys your message, instead of distracting from it

The best part is that the book also gives more cutting-edge ways to improve your landing pages. Cisco effectively discusses the use of video, prospect segmentation, content creation, and testing strategies. A bonus section at the end of the book gives you 5 Ways to Improve ROI.

Overall, "The Landing Page Bible" is an easy read, with a topic that is both well-covered and clearly explained. Cisco leaves you with the enthusiasm that you CAN actually increase your conversion rate, and a roadmap for finding the sweet spot on your landing page design. For those who don't wish to handle landing page optimization in-house, Cisco's firm Adler Interactive offers landing page optimization services to help you increase lead generation and conversion rates.

FREE DOWNLOAD - Read the first 5 chapters for free by downloading the sample from http://a.adlerinteractive.com/LPBReviewNetblazon

Many Miva Merchant users are familiar with Chuck Lasker and the various ways he's been involved in the Miva community over the past several years. We caught up with him at the 2009 Miva Merchant conference to ask him ten questions about his new endeavor, MerchantTutorials.com. Find out how he got started with Miva Merchant, what MerchantTutorials.com is all about, and how you can subscribe to the service to learn how to do more things with your online store.

Day two of the 2009 Shop.org Strategy and Innovation Forum got started with brief talks by Fiona Swerdlow, Head of Research at Shop.org, and an overview of the eCommerce Forecast 2009-2013 by Brian Walker of Forrester Research. After these discussions, the keynote for the second and final day began - and it turned out to be one of the most inspirational business and marketing talks I've ever attended.

Bob Thacker, OfficeMax.com

Bob Thacker is the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Advertising for OfficeMax.com, and he overflows with creativity and enthusiasm that is surprising and fresh. His talk centered around phrases such as his "cornfed philosophy" and "be mature but never act your age", and he followed up each saying with substance, stories, and in many cases, video. Prior to OfficeMax, Bob spearheaded several wildly successful partnerships and campaigns with Target, such as their Michael Graves' partnership and their "It's a Wonderful Life" Christmas theme that was Jimmy Stewart's last appearance (a voice-over) before his death.

"If you don't have big bucks, you better have big ideas." When OfficeMax began to market their printer ink refill station, they waffled over a conventional approach and one that was riskier - bus stop images of women's tattooed backs. The tattoo approach was chosen and it was a huge success, leading the way for the world's largest rubber band ball and their teenage reality show "Schooled" on ABC Family.

"Look before you leap, but then LEAP!" was the phrase Bob used to introduce a segment about their ElfYourself website. The website reached the high-water popularity mark of the 55th most popular website in the world, due primarily to viral marketing and the phenomenal reactions people had to faces of themselves and their loved ones pasted onto dancing elves. But the most inspiration part of the talk was based on the idea that "brands are like people; they have to have heart". OfficeMax launched a campaign to provide school supplies to teachers, in a drive to "erase teacher-funded classrooms." When an idea has the ability to both promote a brand and alleviate a problem, you know you have found something great.

The State of the Economy: The VC Perspective

To be honest, I expected to be texting and twittering throughout this talk, since I'm not in the place to personally care about venture capital...however, the discussions were fascinating. The session was moderated by Brett Hurt, CEO and Founder of Bazaarvoice, and the panel was made up of Tom Ball of Austin Ventures, Jeremy Liew from Lightspeed, Satya Patel of Battery Ventures, Amanda Reed from Palomar Ventures, and Cyriac Roeding of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Brett admitted to tossing out a softie question to the entire panel but got great results to the question "How bad is the economy going to get?" Fortunately Tom believes that the economic downturn will have less of an impact on the online sector than it will for traditional retail. Satya, however, thinks it's time to hunker down, as it will take time to loosen the credit market, and we probably won't see an upswing until 2010. Cyriac echoed Bob Thacker's idea that fear kills creativity, and reminded us that this is a time to drive change, and that although retailers may need to streamline business, it's still a time to think big.

When asked whether 2009 will be the year of mobile retailing, Amanda explained that this was true in the capital venture world, where investors are extremely interested in mobile technology ideas. But she believes that we're at least a year out before mobile retailing becomes an action item for retailers. During the Q&A session, a conference attendee asked what Amazon's optimistic Q4 numbers indicated for the rest of us, and Jeremy responded with an inspiring idea that all of Amazon's wonderful technology is currently available to those of us without R&D departments and was likely present in the Expo Hall of the conference!

Case Studies

After another excellent lunch, three panels of retailer case studies were on the schedule. The first, "Innovation in a Downturned Economy: Pure-play Retailer Case Studies", gave attendees several core ideas to think about. The panel was moderated by John Squire of Coremetrics and included presentations by Marc Katz of CustomInk.com and Tomima Edmark, President of the Andra Group, with the complementary websites HerRoom.com and HisRoom.com.

Marc began with a joke that his company not only has no research and development team, but that he doesn't even own a mock turtleneck or iPhone! But his website showcased brilliance in simplicity. CustomInk.com sells custom-printed t-shirts, and their design application is beautifully simple. They are also brave enough to show "uncensored reviews" of their company and service right on their homepage. They also do a fabulous job of telling their company story (straight down to a photo of the green couch that has been with them since day one) and engaging customers in a community with idea such as a photo contest.

Tomima described how women hate to shop for lingerie, citing factors such as unhelpful salespeople, and then gave her sites' goals of developing a shopping experience that is better than the one in a store. Her site features lots of photos, including extra shots of bras in larger sizes, overlays of different shirt styles to see whether a bra is compatible, and even video bounce tests for sports bras! She is very focused on protecting the company's intellectual property, but the most astounding fact that stuck with me was that the sites are entirely self-funded and were profitable after only eighteen months.

"Driving the Living, Breathing Store: Retailer Case Studies of Innovations in Delivery Dynamic Content" was up next, moderated by Kelly O'Neill of ATG Commerce with panelists Ronit Weinberg from Diane von Furstenberg and Kate Forbes of QVC. Ronit described how the goal of the DVF website was to develop content that engaged customers and developed an online community. They added a news feed, two blogs, and a 9000-fan FaceBook page. They also connected with fashion-oriented bloggers, developing relationships within the blogosphere, while generating content that helped secure brand equity, instead of focusing solely on selling as part of their site. Kate discussed QVC's marketing strategy relating to Fashion Week, one of the "POW Events" they do once a month. Because QVC was originally a TV-based medium, and still maintains that as a large part of their sales, they felt the need to maintain a consistent theme across multiple channels. QVC also utilized FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter, and blogs to create a sense of urgency among its customers.

The last panel of the session, "Leveraging Your Most Valuable Asset: Creative Ways that Retailers can Make Consumer Information Actionable", featured Jennie Carlson from Levi Strauss & Co. and Sam Taylor of Oriental Trading Company, and was moderated by Nick Pahade of GSI Commerce. Jennie showed videos and information about the eye-tracking and other usability studies that Levi's did prior to their 2008 site redesign. After finding that users were very focused on images, they redesigned their leaf category pages to be image-intensive. They then took satisfaction surveys to prioritize other planned improvements and to establish a baseline prior to the redesign. Sam showed the attendees some terrific ways that negative customer reviews have positively affected their business, after reestablishing the use of customer reviews after his predecessor canned the idea. They take the reviews further, offering a top-rated products promotion on the homepage, and even featuring content from the reviews in their printed catalog. Oriental Trading Company took the time to read every 1- and 2-star reviews to improve their service and product line. Sam said that if a site "disappoints a customer, they will never come back and will tell ten people about their bad experience." He ended the conference with the following "Top 5 Recommendations" for all of the retailers of the Shop.org conference:

1. Commit the necessary resources to do customer ratings and reviews right.
2. Embrace the negative review.
3. Leverage online data in other retail channels.
4. Personalize your content by customer segment.
5. Let your best customers generate your content for you.

Well said and done! Thanks to Shop.org for a wonderful conference.

The 2009 Shop.org Strategy and Innovation Forum kicked off today at the Gaylord Palms hotel in Orlando. The convention is filled with the top names in ecommerce, a variety of vendors, and a small but fun and elite crowd of attendees.

Avinash Kaushik, Author

Day one of the annual Shop.org Strategy and Innovation Forum was great from many perspectives, not the least of which was the first keynote presentation from Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics in an Hour a Day. Avinash is a popular blogger and speaker whom I've wanted to see for awhile now, and during his presentation, "Moving Beyond Faith Based Initiatives: Lower Risk, Innovate, and Be Great", Avinash displayed his depth of knowledge, generous nature, and humorous wit. His talk described three kinds of innovation: incremental, where one steadily improves over time; incremental with side effect, which is similar to the first but also encompasses an "aha" jump in performance due to some key factor; and transformational, where the model reflects an unnatural and rare, almost immediate skip from low-return to high-return. From there, his talk focused on the second innovation, the incremental with side effect module. Two examples were, in evolution, the benefits provided by opposable thumbs, and online, the development of the Google Adsense program that opened a monetization path to virtually all online content providers.

The subtopic that I found most interesting was the idea that companies need to "Fail Faster". Not all ideas are good ones, and the faster you can recognize the poorly performing initiatives, the faster you can fix or eliminate them. He also said that many websites suck because of the "Hippo" - that decisions are made based on the Highest Paid Person's Opinion, and not on hard, quantifiable test results.

Finally Avinash recommended several tools to ecommerce managers wishing to expand their data reporting, understanding, and knowledge base: 4Q Surveys, Google AdPlanner, and Google Insights, as well as a robust analytics package such as Google Analytics or ClickTracks.

Alfred Lin, Zappos.com

Zappos.com is best known for its reputation when it comes to online customer service. Their COO and CFO, Alfred Lin, gave the second keynote presentation, titled "Building a Brand that Matters One Employee at a Time". In it he described some of the ways that Zappos focuses on building a solid relationship with their customers. All orders receive free shipping, and many are "surprise" upgraded to overnight shipping at no cost to the customer. Zappos also pays for return shipping, and offers a 365-day return policy. However, one of the most revolutionary ideas they implement is that they pay their employees to quit! At the time of this conference, the current payout (during the Zappos 5-week training program) is $2000 to any trainee who doesn't feel like it's the right job for them. No questions asked.

Zappos' figures are outstanding. At over $1 billion in sales in 2008, they carry 900,000 skus, 200,000 styles, and 1200 brands of shoes...and they are expanding into clothing. They currently employee 1500 people, and they foster a corporate culture in the same dedicated manner with which they build customer relationships.

With this kind of success, a discussion by Lin about building a retail brand comes with a lot of experience behind it. Here are his key factors for building your brand:

1. Vision: It needs to be bigger than yourself. Does it have meaning? Once you have your vision, chase that vision, don't chase the dollar. (Hopefully that implies that the dollar will follow!) Zappos often asks interviewees, "What would you do for 10 years if you didn't make a dime"?
2. Repeat Customers: In order to attract customers to make a repeat purchase, Zin recommends picking two of the following three factors: great product, great service, and low prices. Then focus on those two. Don't focus on the third one; you can't do them all.
3. Transparency: Be real and you have nothing to fear. Zappos exposes daily sales data to all customers, including brand data to individual vendors. They also discuss their business and culture on Twitter, Facebook, and via blogs.
4. Culture: Corporate culture should be based on commitable core values. Some of Zappos? "Deliver WOW through service." and "Be adventurous, creative, and open minded."

(Unfortunately, Zin didn't exactly answer my question during the Q&A session about where smaller businesses can focus on creating stronger customer relationships without cutting too far into their revenue. My thought is to reduce your shipping and packaging costs as much as possible, and pass as much of those savings along to your customer as possible. Someone at my table pointed me in the direction of Mail Express; if you've tried it, please leave a comment about your experiences.)

McKinsey & Co.

After lunch, Josh Leibowitz and Alex Tenessa from McKinsey & Co. talked about "The Multi-Channel Shift: How Consumer Behavior Will Change in the Next Economic Recovery". Unfortunately, this was a presentation that made at least one Twitterer remark, "I think I may need to get under table and suck my thumb now." Their models don't predict a quick turnaround for the recession that began in 2008 and looks to plague us for the foreseeable future. We're all hoping for the "battered but resilient" prediction over the "long freeze" one!

However, they did identify six trends that online retailers should consider:

1. The shift to value is here to stay.
2. The aging consumer (over 50 years of age) will capture over 50% of online spending.
3. The online channel will continue to capture sales
4. Product and service development is key
5. Science will replace art
6. Prepare for a "winner take all" scenario

In 2009 customers will resort to more one-stop shopping, they will wait for sales and discounts to make a purchase, and they will buy more generics over brand names.

Hung Le Hong - Gartner Research

Hung Le Hong from Gartner Research was another of my anticipated talks, though it turned out not to be what I expected. "Disruptive Business Models for Web 2.0" was more about cross-channel selling that social networking, AJAX, or reflective logos. Then again, it's time we talk about something more substantial. Hong discussed online sales for local pickup, and identified a spectrum of implementations, from Wal-Marts 7-10 day-later pickup to higher cost but more efficient and productive models.

Hong also talked about the use of mobile technology for ecommerce and offered the following statistics:

• 25% of people use mobile technology to check prices
• 25% check store locations
• 22% look for promotions and deals
• 16% actually make a purchase
• 12% transmit payment

Another tactic Hong discussed was the use of Twitter and related tools for "short shelf life" promotions, the online equivalent of a K-Mart Blue Light Special.

My favorite quote came from this session: "The Web 2.0 customer will use Web 2.0 ways to spend less."

Panel Sessions

The day completed with 3 panel sessions. The first was "The eCommerce Platform of the Future" with Sally McKenzie of Ecommerce Consulting and Brian Walker from Forrester Research. They discussed platforms and the challenges of "re-platforming". Then was a great talk on "Focused Ecommerce Investing: Smartly Stretching Your E-commerce Dollars While Still Innovating for Differentiation" with Lauren Freedman of the e-taining group, Peter Cobb of eBags, Kevin Churchill from Patagonia, and Bradford Matson of Bluefly. The day ended with "How International Expansion Can Help Retailers in a Downturned Economy", moderated by Troy Brown from Demandware and featuring Michael Amar of AGORAD, Jake Bailey from Overstock.com, Jim Okamura of J.C. Williams Group, and Michael Ross from eCommera Limited.

Most online businesses set up email lists of some sort, then proceed to just send out emails. This document will show you, from the perspective of the person RECEIVING the emails, what mistakes many people make. Avoid these mistakes to ramp up your email list to profitability.

1. Putting an unsubscribe link at the bottom of your email. Why is that bad? When a subscriber wants to change their email address, what do they do? If you expect someone to unsubscribe one email address, then go back to your site and resubscribe with another, that's expecting a lot. The best thing to do is have "Manage your subscription" link that takes them to a page that they can unsubscribe, change their email address, and even change which lists they subscribe to. Then, have an "Quick Unsubscribe" link next to that.

   Another thought here - I have signed up as a member of forums, and then gotten emails. When I wanted to change the email address or unsubscribe, I clicked on "Change subscription info" and it asked me to sign in to the forum first. If I don't remember the forum login info I used when I created my account, I simply CAN'T get in to change my email address or unsubscribe. So, of course, I just report the emails as spam. I've had this happen at least four times that I can think of.

2. Making too much information required upon sign up. You only need their email address. You might want their first name, so you can personalize their email, but even this should be optional. Don't require postal address, last name, and especially phone number. Requiring a phone number will cut your signups by at least 80%. And don't require fields that are silly, like Title (Mr., Mrs., Ms.) or birthday. Why make it hard? Take as an example The Venetian, a casino in Las Vegas. Here's their signup form: https://secure.venetian.com/APPS/EmailSignUp/. It requires birthdate, but they have to for age verification. But it requires Title! I clicked submit without my Title, and it gave me an error message. So the first thing I get in my email relationship with The Venetian is a beep and popup error message. That's not a good start.

3. Making unsubscribing difficult. Let's look again at The Venetian. In their emails there is an unsubscribe link. It goes here: http://venetian.com/APPS/Unsubscribe/. In order to unsubscribe, I have to enter my email address. If I have multiple email addresses (I have 12), I have to remember which one I used and enter it. So what do I do instead? I hit the Spam button in my email program to make them go to my Spam folder to be deleted. Simple for me, but it also sends a notice to my Spam filter company that The Venetian's emails are spam. Too many of those, and you get banned, especially from AOL, where it’s almost impossible to get removed from a spam list. Instead, make it easy to unsubscribe. Do you really want someone on your list who doesn't want to be? I suggest putting an unsubscribe (or at least Manage Subscription) link at the TOP of every email. It is MUCH better to lose a few subscribers easily, than to get Spam-reported.

4. NOT unsubscribing when someone requests unsubscribing. ProFlowers... If you ever sign up for their emails, expect to be on their list for life. I have unsubscribed at least five times from their lists, and they still keep sending. So I keep reporting them as spammers. Unfortunately, they're so big, and not enough people are reporting them, apparently, that I still keep getting them in my inbox. I absolutely hate ProFlowers now, and will NEVER do business with them again.

5. Sending to people who may not know how they got subscribed. Do you auto-subscribe all customers? Do you have a "free report" that you send people, but don't mention in the signup form that they'll be subscribed to an email newsletter? If you send ongoing emails to these people, you may be a spammer.

   You don't want people to get emails who don't WANT to get emails, do you? So, for customers, in checkout, just say, "as a new customer you will be subscribed to our newsletter. You can unsubscribe at any time." Or, better yet, have a check box in checkout for "Subscribe." Finally, you can have a subscribe form on the Invoice/Receipt page so AFTER they have happily sent you money, they can subscribe.

   If you send to customers without a specific subscription notice/form, I suggest sending them an email invitation to subscribe. You're allowed to do that without it being spam, since they've done business with you. Take the last email newsletter you sent, and, ABOVE it, put a paragraph that says, "As a new customer with XXX, we'd like to invite you to subscribe to our newsletter and receive Special Sale Notices, Coupons, new product info, and more! We promise not to overwhelm you with emails, and you can unsubscribe at any time." Have a link to subscribe. Send it only once.

6. Too many emails. I once signed up for TigerDirect emails. It must have been during an experiment, because I got at least one email a day, and sometimes two, for about a week. I finally unsubscribed. It was over a year until I resubscribed, and now they're only about once a week. So, while experimenting with what would happen with overwhelming emails, they lost me for a year. Remember, people get between 20 and 200 emails a day. We're ALL overwhelmed. Why would you want to become a negative contribution to that feeling of being overwhelmed??

   If you have "daily updates," or "new product notices" that might be daily, have multiple levels of subscriptions. Let people decide how frequent they'll get emails. Some people want to know everything right away, especially online shopping addicts. But most don't. Have multiple email lists, "daily, weekly summary, monthly" and let them choose. And NEVER violate the frequency. If I pick monthly, and I get them weekly, I'm gonna spam-report it.

7. Too few emails. Hey, doesn't that sound like the opposite of (6)?? Yep. If I sign up for email newsletters in January, and I don't get anything until May, I probably have forgotten I signed up. At that point, I think it's spam, and, you got it - you're being reported as a spammer.

   Remember, emails don't have to be huge. At a minimum, send a text email at least once a month keeping in touch, with something basic like a special offer, new product notice, or even a "Happy Mother's Day" mention. Check out Hallmark - there's a holiday about every day now, so there's always SOME excuse for an email. If you drop the ball for more than 3 or 4 months, you should probably send another invite to resubscribe. In the very least, at the TOP of your email, in bold, say, "You Subscribed to this List because you wanted xxxxx" to remind them that they did, indeed, subscribe. Keep in mind that, while YOU are obsessed with your business, most people forget you even exist most of the time.

8. No deals or coupons. I sign up for emails from local restaurants a lot. Sometimes, I'll get emails that tell me about new menu items, or encourage me to celebrate a holiday at their restaurant, but NO offer! There's no call to action! Why do I care about Don Pablo's having Cinco de Mayo if it doesn't mean I get 10% off or a free Margarita? After two or three of these email ads, usually all pretty and graphical, I unsubscribe. Why would I want someone to just send me ads? If I liked ads, I wouldn't fast forward through them with Tivo.

9. Too many deals and coupons. I did it again - contradicting my previous point, right? This one really isn't too bad unless you create expectations of discounts. I'll tell you a quick story. A company I worked for started doing email newsletters. In each newsletter was a 10% off coupon that was good for one week. Since it was every time, what do you think happened? Sales disappeared for the three weeks that there was no coupon code. Then, the email would go out and we'd get pummeled with sales at a discount. Customers expected the same 10% discount off everything, and waited to get the code to order. After a bunch of these, there was no turning back - people expected their 10% off coupon code. So, the only solution was to extend the expiration period to the full month, and then accept that our income was reduced by 10%.

   How do you balance (8) and (9)? By offering discounts and deals off specific items or services, changing it each time. Focus on your newest items, or even some of your lesser sellers. Have a clearance every now and then. Change it up, so people don't expect anything in particular in each email, but still they have a reason to stay subscribed.

10. No confirmation emails. When I subscribe to a list, I'm never 100% sure it worked. Too many online scripts are broken. So let people know they succeeded with an email saying so. Tell them on the Success page that they will be receiving an email confirmation. This way, if they don't get one, you might already be in their spam filter and they can white-list you. Tell them how to white-list you.

    Some people say you should "double opt in." This means that your system would send a confirmation email with a special link. If the subscriber does NOT click that link, the subscription has not completed. Some systems will send a second attempt in 24 hours. This is certainly the safest way to avoid spam-reports. However, expect about half the people to not click the link for some reason. If someone doesn't get the confirmation email because of a spam filter, they will simply assume that you just aren't sending any emails. It's up to you whether you want to do this, but it's not necessary in my opinion.

Conclusion. Clean up these mistakes and you’ll increase subscriptions, decrease unsubscribes, and overall have a more positive email relationship with your customers. One final point of advice… I suggest using a service, such as iContact (http://www.chucklasker.com/icontact), instead of sending emails from your own server. Not only are the emails easier to manage, more professional looking, and bounces are taken care of, but you’ll also be better off if people click the Spam button on their email programs. If you’re using your own server, it might get banned easily. But iContact is able to handle the big spam-protection-companies much better. Give them a try with their free trial, I believe you'll find it’s worth the price.

This article was guest-written by Chuck Lasker of MerchantTutorials.com.

Because we do a lot of redesigns and offline development, our customers usually have at least two stores operational at one time - the live store and a development platform. Sometimes that makes it hard to test, though, if links from the development site link back to the live site half of the time. You don't always notice when you navigate away from the development site.

The sessionurl and secure_sessionurl variables in Miva Merchant will automatically pick up the right domain. But any hardcoded URLs, if they are using absolute paths (and in most cases, they should) will not be as easy to manage. And if you use shortened SEO-friendly urls, you may have even more widespread URLs to manage.

Here's an easy tip for Miva Merchant users who have more than one environment: set a variable in your store that references your domain name, and then build your URLs around that. This is easy if you use the Toolkit module from Emporium Plus. Go into Miva Merchant, click the name of your store within the left frame, and then on the right side, click HTML Profile. The great thing about this field is that it's usually the first field referenced by the store's page templates. (If your site doesn't use the HTML profile, or if you are running Miva Merchant 5.0 instead of 5.5, use the head tag insert field.)

At the bottom of this box, enter the following code:

Then to change the variables for a particular environment, you just have two variables to change. Still too much work? You can use the toolkit to extract the url from your domain settlings instead:

After that, you can build your URLs using this "basedomain" global variable, and when you copy code from one site to the other, the links should still work. Here's an example link to the shopping cart page:

This little bit of work can make your life much simpler down the road!

Until 2006, Glynn Gallagher's life was "really, really hectic to say the least.". She started work every morning at 8 am, printing out her previous day's orders from her website LockPickShop.com, along with a picklist, and trudged out to the makeshift warehouse building in her backyard. The rest of the day was spent answering customer service calls, packing orders for shipment, and handling returns. She skipped breakfast and allotted herself a 20-minute lunch break. After repeating the process in the afternoon for all the morning orders, she loaded all the boxes in her car and drove to the post office, waited for them to process her orders, and then drove to the UPS Store and did the same thing. She came home and dealt with emails and her website until midnight each night.

Finally, she started to wonder why she was working for herself when life was this hectic. So she started researching the possibility of moving to a fulfillment company.

A fulfillment company offers basic services such as inventory storage, picking of items and packing them for shipping, and transfer of data to and from the retailer. Some fulfillment companies may offer additional services, such as assembly or kitting, and call center phone support for the end customer. Costs are determined from a number of factors, which may include the number of individual product skus, the volume of product being stored, the order volume, and the cost of extra services such as kitting.

Fulfillment companies that cater to online retailers typically have excellent technological resources that facilitate communication between the fulfillment house and the retailer. Retailers utilize two-way data exchange, where orders are submitted from the retailer to the fulfillment company, and shipment status and tracking information is later transmitted back to the retailer. "This data exchange capability enables us to perform as if we are in the room adjacent to our client's office instead of some distance from them (In some cases, our client is half way around the globe)," says Kevin Kelly of Alternative Logistics, Inc., a fulfillment company in Nashau, New Hampshire, and which is the same company that Gallagher uses for her company's fulfillment needs.

Outsourcing the fulfillment process is not for everyone. Some merchants may prefer the control and personal touch of being able to pack shipments in-house. However, for many retailers, the benefit of using a fulfillment company is that it frees up the retailer's time and resources to focus on product development and sourcing, marketing, and customer service. Kelly lists a few other criteria: "The higher the order value, the easier it will be to support the costs associated with storing, fulfilling, and shipping orders." He also states that the product itself may dictate the suitability of fulfillment services; items that are hazardous, particularly fragile, or that require refrigeration need special handling that a fulfillment company may not be able to offer.

Gallagher credits her decision to use a fulfillment company with restoring her quality of life, and allowing her to return to what she does best - managing her business, not a warehouse. However, Dale Carlson of Mad Cat Toys had a much different experience. When he first opened his doors, he used EFulfillment Service. "EFulfillment serves small businesses which made it a good provider for Mad Cat. Most fulfillment services are interested only in much larger accounts. But EFulfillment needs to keep its best and largest customers happy, so Mad Cat Toys often suffered from shipping delays and other service problems while it served its largest customers. Issues like this were especially a problem during the holiday season. Mad Cat Toys offers items that are delicate or require special packaging, and this type of custom service was expensive and difficult to control at EFulfillment."

The factor that led Carlson to finally end his use of a fulfillment service was the monthly costs for storage. His site serves a small niche of high-end toy collectors, and his storage fees exceeded the actual costs for shipping orders. He began looking for a new fulfillment company, and was about to sign up with iFulfill when the company failed (see Blogging as You Go Belly Up at BusinessWeek.com). It was at that point that Carlson decided it would be in his company's best interests to move order fulfillment in-house.

Carlson lists some advantages and disadvantages to using a fulfillment company based on his experiences. The disadvantages he notes are:

• Mad Cat Toys' shipping location moved from Michigan to Seattle, so the average cost to ship an order increased
• He lost the time that had previous been saved by delegating fulfillment to an outside company
• The internal inventory-control system is not as accurate as the fulfillment house's system
• The cost of shipping boxes is much higher as the fulfillment house benefits from buying huge quantities

However he also notes some important benefits to packing orders himself:

• Special items can be packed carefully
• It is now possible to provide customer service relating to individual orders and shipments
• He gained better control of shipping schedule — we can assure most orders ship same-day and we know when they have been shipped

If you are considering a move to a fulfillment company, it helps to do your homework - thoroughly. Carlson suggests being very clear in your understanding of fulfillment and storage costs, and to find out about the time between order receipt and shipping. He also recommends previewing the fulfillment company's online account administration interface, to make sure you are comfortable with its use, and that your systems can properly interact with the fulfillment companies systems.

Bonus! Download our Fulfillment Company Questionnaire and Checklist Worksheet

The great thing about having a blog for your business is that it gives customers and search engines new content to view. It can increase sales by convincing customers of your product's benefits, or teaching them how to use it, or giving them ideas for incorporating the product into the lives.

But it's essential to integrate the weblog with your storefront. If customers can't go back-and-forth between your store and your weblog, the impact of your blog is going to be less than optimal. If you are using Miva Merchant 5 and Wordpress, however, one of the simplest ways to integrate the two is to include recent blog posts right on your homepage.

To start out, you need a template that can display a very simple HTML page - one that, in this example, is no more than the title of each post, linked to the full post itself. This can be done by modifying the index.php file within your Wordpress template (located in wp-content/themes/your-theme-name). Just add this code at the top of your index.php file:

The rest of your original index.php should follow this code. Then at the very bottom, close your "if" statement like this:

At this point, you should be able to see your recent posts by going to the following URL. Be sure to replace "domain.com" with your website domain name, and replace "weblog" with the correct directory for your Wordpress installation:

At this point, you're ready to begin working in Miva Merchant. You'll need Emporium Plus's Toolkit module installed. Then, inside Miva Merchant, go to Pages and edit your Storefront (SFNT) page or your Storefront Welcome Message (under Messages). Add the following code (again, replacing the appropriate parts of the URL as specific to your site):

This will print out the list of recent posts from your weblog right on your Miva Merchant storefront.