Site Beat - MightyMerchant Monthly Newsletter > October 2007
Are you reaching out to your customers? Just waiting for customers to find your website means missing many opportunities that are now available. Today's online marketplace is changing. Reaching out to your customer once meant advertising on radio, television, or in newspapers. Today, it means communication marketing, such as emails, newsletters, and surveys. It also means offering a blog or forum to involve customers in your site in ways that aren't about spending money, and becoming active on social networking sites where people are talking about your niche.
This month, we have an overview of survey marketing--what it is, what types of information can be gathered, and how you can put them to work for your business.
We have an important tip related to placing third-party tracking codes on your site, and we have two new articles posted on our website.
As always, we welcome your feedback. Please contact us with comments as well as
suggestions for future editions.
-- Visit our new blog!
-- Third-party tracking codes and browser security warnings on order pages
-- Managing Spam
-- MightyMerchant's survey
-- New Staff
-- Two new articles posted: Optimizing your site for holiday sales, and a
comparison of keyword research tools
· Customer Contact Through Surveys
· MightyMerchant Announcements
-- Visit our new blog!
In case you missed last month's announcements, MightyMerchant now has a blog focused on current industry news, marketing tips, knowledge and tools to suport the small business owner and ecommerce webmaster. We hope this will be interesting and useful to you. We strive to keep you informed of what's going on in the greater web community. Sign up for our RSS feed and you will receive a notification in the feed reader of your choice every time we post something new. Visit the MightyMerchant eCommerce Blog at http://blog.mightymerchant.com.
Check it out, leave a comment, and let us know what you think!
-- Third-party tracking codes and browser security warnings on order pages
If you are an active online marketer, you are likely utilizing tracking codes for your various marketing campaigns.We have noticed that some of our clients are entering ad tracking codes in their Site Manager that include non-secure links to images and scripts. The non-secure references are causing browser security warnings when someone submits an order. These warnings, which only display in Internet Explorer, do not indicate a security breach on your site but they could cause confusion for your customers.
Any time you place any code in in the Ad Tracking field under "Settings" in the Site Manager, you will want to then place a test order, using Internet Explorer, to make sure the code is not causing the security error message when customers go between the payment page and the thank you page.
If you do get the error, contact the company that provided the code to see if they offer a secure version of the code. If they do, just replace the code with the secure version. If they do not provide secure code, we would recommend that the code be removed, but of course that is up to you.
When setting up your tracking with Google AdWords, specify that you want the secure code. Please contact us if you have questions about this!
-- Managing Spam
During the recent server move we realized that some customers were not completely aware of how the mail filtering works on their email accounts and do not know how to log in via webmail to check their Spam. If your email is hosted with us (as opposed to having it forwarded to your Gmail, AOL, or other account, we recommend that you take a few minutes to read over our support document explaining your spam and mail filtering. The bottom line is, if you never have or never want to use the webmail program, you might be better off turning off the spam filtering so all mail gets passed through to your computer. You can then process the mail as you see fit. Read more details at our Email Configuration page,
-- MightyMerchant's Survey
We will be sending out a brief, 10-question survey a few days after this newsletter arrives in your inbox. This is your opportunity to tell us how we're doing and what topics you would like to see covered in our newsletter, blog, and documentation center. We value your feedback, and we hope when it arrives you will take a few moments to share your opinions with us.
If you have ever considered marketing through surveys--or even if you haven't considered it!--be sure to check out our article about surveys in this issue. This survey is not only a chance for us to learn about our customer's needs and desires, but a chance for you to experience what a survey designed with Constant Contact would look like.
Constant Contact provides templates for email marketing and surveys that can be easily customized to meet your needs, and match the appearance of your site and other marketing materials. See MightyMerchant's June 2007 SiteBeat for more information about our partnership with Constant Contact, and our July 2007 SiteBeat for more about Constant Contact's Listen Up! survey tool.
-- New Staff
Welcome to Johan Mulyono, the newest member of our staff. Johan's responsibilities include server administration, technical scripting and troubleshooting, and integration with third-party products. We are happy to have Johan as part of the MightyMerchant team.
-- Two new articles posted: Optimizing your site for holiday sales, and a comparison of keyword research tools
We have added two new articles to the "Articles" section of the MightyMerchant site: "SEO (Search Engine Optimization) For the Holiday Season," which provides timely tips on preparing your site for extra holiday traffic; and "A Comparison of Keyword Research Tools," providing links, costs, and an analysis of the benefits and drawbacks of several free and subscription keyword research tools. Keyword research is an instrumental part of increasing your rankings in the search engines, and some of the tools are quite expensive. Read this article before you decide to invest in a subscription service; you can get a lot of information for free if you know where to look.
October 2007
Greetings from MightyMerchant.
Are you reaching out to your customers? Just waiting for customers to find your website means missing many opportunities that are now available. Today's online marketplace is changing. Reaching out to your customer once meant advertising on radio, television, or in newspapers. Today, it means communication marketing, such as emails, newsletters, and surveys. It also means offering a blog or forum to involve customers in your site in ways that aren't about spending money, and becoming active on social networking sites where people are talking about your niche.
This month, we have an overview of survey marketing--what it is, what types of information can be gathered, and how you can put them to work for your business.
We have an important tip related to placing third-party tracking codes on your site, and we have two new articles posted on our website.
As always, we welcome your feedback. Please contact us with comments as well as
suggestions for future editions.
In This Issue
· MightyMerchant Announcements-- Visit our new blog!
-- Third-party tracking codes and browser security warnings on order pages
-- Managing Spam
-- MightyMerchant's survey
-- New Staff
-- Two new articles posted: Optimizing your site for holiday sales, and a
comparison of keyword research tools
· Customer Contact Through Surveys
· MightyMerchant Announcements
-- Visit our new blog!
In case you missed last month's announcements, MightyMerchant now has a blog focused on current industry news, marketing tips, knowledge and tools to suport the small business owner and ecommerce webmaster. We hope this will be interesting and useful to you. We strive to keep you informed of what's going on in the greater web community. Sign up for our RSS feed and you will receive a notification in the feed reader of your choice every time we post something new. Visit the MightyMerchant eCommerce Blog at http://blog.mightymerchant.com.
Check it out, leave a comment, and let us know what you think!
-- Third-party tracking codes and browser security warnings on order pages
If you are an active online marketer, you are likely utilizing tracking codes for your various marketing campaigns.We have noticed that some of our clients are entering ad tracking codes in their Site Manager that include non-secure links to images and scripts. The non-secure references are causing browser security warnings when someone submits an order. These warnings, which only display in Internet Explorer, do not indicate a security breach on your site but they could cause confusion for your customers.
Any time you place any code in in the Ad Tracking field under "Settings" in the Site Manager, you will want to then place a test order, using Internet Explorer, to make sure the code is not causing the security error message when customers go between the payment page and the thank you page.
If you do get the error, contact the company that provided the code to see if they offer a secure version of the code. If they do, just replace the code with the secure version. If they do not provide secure code, we would recommend that the code be removed, but of course that is up to you.
When setting up your tracking with Google AdWords, specify that you want the secure code. Please contact us if you have questions about this!
-- Managing Spam
During the recent server move we realized that some customers were not completely aware of how the mail filtering works on their email accounts and do not know how to log in via webmail to check their Spam. If your email is hosted with us (as opposed to having it forwarded to your Gmail, AOL, or other account, we recommend that you take a few minutes to read over our support document explaining your spam and mail filtering. The bottom line is, if you never have or never want to use the webmail program, you might be better off turning off the spam filtering so all mail gets passed through to your computer. You can then process the mail as you see fit. Read more details at our Email Configuration page,
-- MightyMerchant's Survey
We will be sending out a brief, 10-question survey a few days after this newsletter arrives in your inbox. This is your opportunity to tell us how we're doing and what topics you would like to see covered in our newsletter, blog, and documentation center. We value your feedback, and we hope when it arrives you will take a few moments to share your opinions with us.
If you have ever considered marketing through surveys--or even if you haven't considered it!--be sure to check out our article about surveys in this issue. This survey is not only a chance for us to learn about our customer's needs and desires, but a chance for you to experience what a survey designed with Constant Contact would look like.
Constant Contact provides templates for email marketing and surveys that can be easily customized to meet your needs, and match the appearance of your site and other marketing materials. See MightyMerchant's June 2007 SiteBeat for more information about our partnership with Constant Contact, and our July 2007 SiteBeat for more about Constant Contact's Listen Up! survey tool.
-- New Staff
Welcome to Johan Mulyono, the newest member of our staff. Johan's responsibilities include server administration, technical scripting and troubleshooting, and integration with third-party products. We are happy to have Johan as part of the MightyMerchant team.
-- Two new articles posted: Optimizing your site for holiday sales, and a comparison of keyword research tools
We have added two new articles to the "Articles" section of the MightyMerchant site: "SEO (Search Engine Optimization) For the Holiday Season," which provides timely tips on preparing your site for extra holiday traffic; and "A Comparison of Keyword Research Tools," providing links, costs, and an analysis of the benefits and drawbacks of several free and subscription keyword research tools. Keyword research is an instrumental part of increasing your rankings in the search engines, and some of the tools are quite expensive. Read this article before you decide to invest in a subscription service; you can get a lot of information for free if you know where to look.