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Site Beat - MightyMerchant Monthly Newsletter > February 2007 

February 2007

Greetings from MightyMerchant.

Welcome to the February '07 issue of SiteBeat. As we mentioned last month, MightyMerchant is making a push to integrate our software with third-party products. We have an important announcement about a change in Google Base (what used to be Froogle). We will also explain how to take advantage of the e-commerce features offered by Google Analytics. If there are other integrations you are interested in, please let us know.

In This Issue



• MightyMerchant Announcements
-- Google Base Format Changes
-- MightyMerchant Adds Google Analytics Advanced E-commerce Tracking
• Tech Tip — Adding links to your site
• Featured Solution: Setting Up Google Analytics to track E-commerce statistics
• Client Profile — Stronglite.com, an established manufacturer of high-quality massage tables expands their business online
• Welcoming new MightyMerchant clients


MightyMerchant Announcements

-- Google Base Formatting Changes

Google started a transition from Froogle to Google Base several months ago. This month they have continued along that path by releasing some required changes to the Google Base feed format. The new data requirements, which involve adding a range of additional attributes per product, need to be implemented by March 1, 2006. MightyMerchant will continue to offer the automated Froogle Feed as a free monthly service. In order to convert a site to the new format required by Google, there will be a one-time $50 set up charge. The changes will require us to manually update the data on your site to add the new fields and make sure they are set up correctly. Setting default values for your products for all the fields required by Google Base will be included in the setup. You will be able to do your own customization of the brand and condition of individual products once we have done the initial setup. Please contact us if you would like us to implement the new feed format on your site.

-- Google Analytics E-commerce Tracking

MightyMerchant has now rolled out new e-commerce tracking capabilities that integrate with Google Analytics. Among other things, the new tracking capabilities allow you to monitor the sales on your site and how they relate to search engine sources and referrers. You can analyze your conversion rates and set specific goal pages and track whether visitors successfully make it through to the goal page you have specified. MightyMerchant has dropped our monthly charge for Urchin E-commerce tracking. We have a one-time $100 setup charge for the Google Analytics E-commerce Tracking and there is no monthly fee. If you would like to continue to use Google Analytics without the advanced E-commerce tracking, there is no additional fee.


  • Featured Technology - Setting Up Google Analytics Funnels and Goals
    Google Analytics allows you to set up to 4 conversion goals for each website profile in your account. For each goal, you can then set up a "funnel" of up to ten steps so you can track where users abandon their order. On an e-commerce site, a funnel is typically the final steps of the ordering process: Viewing the cart, checking out, and confirming the order.

    Initial Setup (only needs to be completed once for your site)


    1. Log into your Google Analytics account to complete the following settings.

    2. Click "Analytics Settings" and on the next screen, click "Filter Manager".

    3. Click "Add Filter".

    4. Enter these settings:

    Filter name: Session

    Filter type: Custom filter

    Click the Search and Replace radio button

    Filter Field: Request URI

    Search String: /home/mm5_[0-9]+/ (replace "mm5" with your store id)

    Replace String: /home/mm5/ (once again, replace "mm5" with your store id)

    Case Sensitive: click No.

    5. Click Save Changes.


    Setting Up Your Funnels and Goals


    1. Click "Analytics Settings" and then click "Edit" next to the website profile you would like to edit.

    You have four conversion goals you can utilize for each website profile. You can customize the goals and funnels any way you wish. Typically you would track the final steps in the checkout process. Or, you might want to track the activity from a particular page on your site to determine how often users continue through from that page to place an order.

    2. Enter these settings:

    Goal URL: https://bonsai.secure-datahost.com/mightymerchant/home/mm5/processorder

    Goal Name: Order Processed

    Active Goal: click "On"

    3. (optional) To define a funnel, enter a series of pages leading up to the Goal url. For example:

    Step 1: URL - viewcart Name: View Order

    Step 2: URL - checkout Name: Checkout Info

    Step 3: URL - https://bonsai.secure-datahost.com/mightymerchant/home/mm5/confirmorder Name: Confirm Order

    4. Select 'Regular Expression Match' in the 'Additional Settings' section.

    Checking Your Funnel/Goal Statistics.


    Google Analytics data is typically updated every 24 hours. To check your Funnels and Goals:

    1. Click View Reports.

    2. Select Marketer from the View menu.

    3. Click Defined Funnel Navigation

    4. Select Executive from the View menu.

    5. Click Conversion Summary.
  • MightyMerchant Know How - Adding Links In Your Site
    An external link is a link to a website other than your own. An internal link is a link to another page on your website.
    Adding an external link

    Adding an external link is simple: just copy and paste the entire URL, beginning with "http://" into your Site Manager.

    If you are using our WYSIWYG editor, you can just highlight the text that you want to make into a link and click the link icon. Simply paste the destination address and click OK. If you are creating the link manually, it would look like this:
    Go to Datahost


    Adding an Internal link

    To add an internal link to a page on your MightyMerchant site, just copy the section of the URL after your "store id". For example, if the URL you want to link to is this:

    http://docs.mightymerchant.com/home/doc/page_554/determining_the_url_of_a_web_page.html


    Then, you would just copy this part of the URL:

    page_554/determining_the_url_of_a_web_page.html

    The store id is a 3-4 character string that always follows the "/home" in your page's URL.

    The link you would make to the page in the above example is:
    Determining the URL of a page


    Important: Never create an internal link by copying the entire session id when you make your link.

    The session id is a tracking number for an order once it is started on your site.

    http://datahost.com/home/dh5_13493854435893/smartlist_7


    In the above URL, the session id is "_13493854435893".

    If you paste that string into your URLs then all users who click the link will be associated with the same order.
  • Client Profile - Stronglite.com
    Flora Bond’s inlaws began their massage table business, Stronglite, 21 years ago, back when massage was still considered a bit “new agey.” That’s hardly the case now, and Stronglite continues to enjoy growing online sales as each year goes by.

    Bond is the marketing manager for Stronglite, which was begun in 1986 in Boulder, Colorado by John and Laney Lloyd. John is a mechanical engineer, and Laney attended massage school. “Laney, being the frugal person that she is, didn’t want to spend the money on a massage table so she asked John to build her one,” describes Bond. “John went to work running back and forth to the hardware store putting plans together, and during all of this he was running into other students who were trying to do the same thing. He got the idea into his head, ‘hey, maybe this is something that we can sell!”

    John, Laney and their youngest son went to work, gathering materials and shaping the tables themselves. “They found the hardware and they bought all the woodworking equipment and built the tables themselves,” says Bond. The first Stronglite tables came in kit form, and were shipped with detailed instructions allowing the customers to put them together themselves. From those humble beginnings Stronglite is now a major supplier of massage tables for a growing bodywork industry.

    Earlier in her life Laney had lived in Ashland, and in 1989 the Lloyds decided to move to Oregon. They bought land in Creswell and worked out of their barn for a few years, then moved into a building in Cottage Grove, where they are now.

    The Lloyds were actually online fairly early in the history of the Internet sales, in 1999. “The Internet was still pretty fresh until then,” says Bond. “We were just starting to hear about it, so I think we were actually pretty early coming online, and that happened to be because one of our salespeople at the time was real hip into computers and was following that trend.”

    Bond admits that at the time people weren’t yet comfortable purchasing items over the Internet, so there wasn’t a big increase in their sales when they opened their online business. People couldn’t see and feel the products. “Back then, [the massage industry] was considered kind of alternative,” she says. “You’re not hearing that term quite as much these days as you used to, but back then… it wasn’t what we all know massage as today. It was very alternative, old hippies, and they tended to be quite suspicious. They liked new things but tended to be very suspicious, so it took them a while to not be afraid of putting their credit card in … to get comfortable with the Internet and start going there.”

    Bond says their experience with their first web developer was generally a good one. He was knowledgeable and skilled, but “he was gouging” with the price he charged for his services, because there were so few able web developers at the time. Eventually, their developer started merging with someone else, and wanted Stronglite to sign a contract with the new company. “I had gotten interested in websites and the Internet myself and had started learning Dreamweaver and HTML and that kind of thing,” says Bond, “and so we went searching.”

    Bond doesn’t remember how the company found Datahost (as MightyMerchant was known at the time), but that was the beginning of Stronglite’s relationship with Michael and Staci.

    Bond says cost was a major influence on their decision to sign with Datahost over the three or four other companies they considered. “Michael came in and met with us, and when he told us his prices I was like, wow, because he was quite a bit less expensive than the other people,” Bond says. “And it was a good fit, once Michael came in and I got to talking to him.”

    There’s a lot of competition in the massage and equipment industry now. Stronglite has weathered the changes well, but as Bond describes, “While the massage industry is growing, the pie is getting cut up a lot more.” Their previous web developer did his own customizations, so that wasn’t new to them, but Bond most appreciated that Datahost’s software made it easy for her to go in and make changes. “It wasn’t like I had to have someone else do it,” she says. “[MightyMerchant] set it up so that it’s easy for me to handle. They do custom work when I need them to do it, and they’re extremely responsive.”

    Even though Stronglite’s sales have slowed and over certain years have actually declined, their Internet sales have continued to grow significantly, around 20 percent every year. Bond pays close attention to keyword optimization and attributes part of their success to the fact that MightyMerchant’s software is easy, “intuitive, almost,” to use. She says she receives compliments “frequently” that the website is “clean and easy to use.” “We started with MightyMerchant when the Internet was really catching on, and we’ve grown with them,” she says, “and I have never questioned that I wouldn’t want to go look anywhere else at this point.”

    We certainly hope all of our clients feel that way about us! Our success is built on your success, and we want to do everything we can to give you the support your business deserves. If you’d like a profile of your business in an upcoming newsletter, please let us know.

    Thanks Flora and Stronglite!
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