Video Transcript

There’s a lot of talk about how to add value to online services or to Ecommerce commodity sales. This video series of “Ecommerce Best Practices” is specifically for ecommerce businesses or ecommerce business owners. We’re producing another “best practices” series of videos for business-to-business and lead generation. So I’m going to assume if you’re watching this, you’re probably in an Ecommerce commodity market and you’re an ecommerce business owner.

So how do you increase your profit margin by selling the same product that everyone else is selling on the internet? It’s an excellent question. It’s not easily done, but it is possible to do. The bottom line is that a lot of value is perception. Starbucks is a good example. Starbucks has reasonably good coffee, but is it better than say the coffee you would get at Dunkin’ Donuts? No, not extraordinarily better. I mean yeah maybe a little bit better here; a little bit fancier there. But the reason that Starbucks can charge two or three times what Dunkin’ Donuts would charge for a cup of coffee is the value added – the package that it’s wrapped in – the perception of the value that’s there – the whole image that’s around it.

If you have an ecommerce store and you’re selling online a commodity product like screwdrivers, you’re not necessarily going to be able to create the same image around the screwdriver that you would around a coffee that Starbucks does. But the bottom line is that the way you are going to get better profit margin is by adding value. That can be through perception or it can be through real programs that add actual physical material value.

A good example of this Ecommerce best practice would be – let’s say for example you sell hardware and tools – to continue with the screwdriver example. One of the tools you sell is a Leatherman. One way you could add perception value is to create a separate side Ecommerce store which is only for Leatherman. This store has a Leatherman domain that’s all about Leatherman. You have every which style and every which kind of Leatherman multi-purpose tool on that Ecommerce store.

By doing that, there’s a feeling of, “This is a specialty store online which is just about the Leatherman tool.” Typically that type of setup is just perception. The way you sell that tool is not any different than if you were selling it on your main store, but the perception is that you are the place to go for the Leatherman tool online.

That’s a strategy that I’ve seen over and over again. I’ve seen internet retailers do that in commodity markets; and they can get 10 to 15 percent more than what they could get if they were selling it on their home online store. Simply using the perception of a “specialty Ecommerce store” – a market niche – “This is the only place you need to go for this product online”. It tends to stop the shopper in their tracks and they proceed with a purchase from there with you if they feel confident in the way you’re marketing it. That’s a good example of how you could use perception to increase value – perceived value; and also very significantly increase your sale profit margins.

One of the best ways to add value to an Ecommerce sale that’s not just perception is value added information – either pre-sale or post-sale. Specifically pre-sale – if you educate people about the product that you’re selling online, often that can bind them to you in a certain way. You can do that through reviewing the product yourself or having customer reviews of the product on your website – those are exceptionally powerful. And also just educating people about the product – how to use it; why to use it; what to use it for – all the questions that someone might have who is using this product; and the role that product plays in their life. Producing content can also be a way that people find you – either intentionally or because a search engine has come to your website, spidered the content, and then it’s in their indexes.

But the bottom line is, if you speak about your product and educate about it, that can definitely add value to the purchase and create a feeling of trust and authoritativeness with your Ecommerce website.

You can also do things like value added add-ons – little give-aways. For example if you’re selling a Leatherman, if you can economically do it, add a case for it with the purchase. Adding an economical case to the purchase can help you maintain a nice advantage over your competitors; something that others aren’t giving away. It can help you maintain a nice profit margin, but really isn’t that much for you to give away – just a physical add-on.

So the bottom line to this is premium services almost always have better profit margins. Depending on your unique positioning, you may not go as far as trying to market yourself as a premium service in your product market. But almost always the winning strategy is not trying to be the rock bottom pricing person with nothing else about your product. The way you’ll typically do better in the long run is to de-commoditize the commodity that you’re selling online. You do that through value added information or value added perception; by adding in things that will really differentiate you from your competitors and really bind that customer to you.

Video Transcript

Unique positioning is usually not found in most ecommerce stores. If you go out on the internet and look at most ecommerce stores, what you’ll typically find are commodities markets. This may be true of your store of your competitor’s stores. So whether you’re selling batteries or lighting or carpet fibers, typically you have most people selling the same thing. Sometimes there’s variation in selection. Sometimes there’s variation in price. But most people are taking the same sales angle. This is one of the largest underexploited opportunities that I see with ecommerce businesses and ecommerce business owners – they don’t fully exploit the uniqueness of their business.

How do you find your unique positioning if you’re selling batteries or if you’re selling lighting? What’s unique about your business? In most cases when people find you, they find you through a search engine, and they’re looking for a specific product on your website or a specific category of products. But the reality is they’re also at your competitors’ websites and they’re seeing something very similar. Often the websites are set up in a very similar way. So how do you make yourself unique in a real way – a way that really adds value and is going to help you make more sales and also add more lifetime value to the customers you have?

The bottom line is you have to go to the depth of what your business is about. What do you uniquely bring to the table that your competitors don’t? So for example say you’re selling lighting; and maybe you’ve been in the lighting business for a really long time – like it’s a family-owned business and it’s a second generation business. That could be something that’s really important to bring to the forefront of your customers – to let them know, “Hey we’re family owned and operated.” Just start to bring that feeling of pride; of ownership; and of who you are and how you stand behind your products. That’s really a crucial part of starting to bring out the full flavor of your business onto the internet.

Most websites – most of your competitor’s websites are going to be pretty cold and impersonal. And that’s probably the way your website is right now. But a key element to making your sales message unique and your website unique can be bringing out the personal part of your business. That may be the history of your business. That can also be how you stand behind your products. Maybe you have a charismatic owner or a charismatic manager who’s running the business that you can put up as the first face of the business. Put key messages about the sales process from that person throughout the website. Put their picture in key places. Really put a personal face behind your business. That’s one very strong way you can increase the unique positioning of your business.

The bottom line with unique positioning is if you don’t stand out uniquely, eventually the rising tide of your market is going to sweep you away. You’re going to get into price wars and price cutting because the buyer has to make a decision based on something. So if you have a competitive price, a good product that you show well, you can use unique positioning. Again, your personality, the way you stand behind your product and some other aspects of unique positioning to really tip the table in your favor.

So coming back – how do you do this? The number one thing is you have to really think about your business and what’s unique about it. The most unique elements of your business are things that can’t be copied by your competitors. Those are the things that your visitors need to know about because it’s their reason for doing business with you. Why did you get into this business? How do you represent your products? What’s special about you versus your competitors? You want to emphasize those things on your website and at key point in your sales process. By doing that, you’ll help customers with their buying decision; and help them have a much warmer feeling about you and why they should do business with you versus your competitors. Where in all other ways, perhaps on pricing and product you may be the same, that’s how you can differentiate yourself from the pack.

Video Transcript

Are you doing this? If not, you really, really need to be; or if you know you’re not doing it as much as you could be, then you want to exploit it more. In my experience, this is one of the most overlooked things for ecommerce business owners. Ecommerce business owners very focused on the frontend. If you’re an ecommerce business owner – you are most likely very, very focused on traffic. “Let’s get as much traffic as we can.” But typically the backend marketing processes are underdeveloped or not as developed as much as they could be.

The most powerful thing that you have at your disposal is with e-mail. If you’re not doing this, then you want to make sure you get this in place first and foremost. I’m assuming that most of the business owners or project managers or business executives who are watching this video – that you are already capturing e-mail addresses on your website. When someone makes a product purchase, their e-mail address is going into an e-mail database or you’re allowing them to opt into receiving further updates for you – however you have that configured.

As a side note, in general if you want to do follow up marketing, it’s good that people actually opt into that or request to be a part of that, either through a follow up e-mail that they respond to or by just checking a box at the end of the sales process – which can be very efficient when you do that. And you can even set up multiple boxes and they can check what they want to receive. That’s a pretty common practice with ecommerce stores.

A side note is when you capture that information, you want to make sure that you’re working in conjunction with a professional e-mail service provider (ESP). So a third party e-mail service provider that is recording the electronic opt-in of customers to your e-mail list; you can then use later to send individual e-mails or bulk e-mails to your entire list. To successfully execute this e-mail marketing follow-up strategy, you want to make sure you’re working with a professional e-mail service provider. Examples of these would be Constant Contact, IContact, and AWeber. I don’t have any specific recommendations for you right now, but if you contact me I can give you some specific recommendations.

Back to the main point. The crucial thing about e-mail or the big opportunity with the e-mail is to further the relationship with your customers. There’s really nothing as potent and powerful as this, except for getting on the phone and talking to them; but of course if you have any size of business that’s just not realistic for you. So this is like an automated way for you turn one-time customers into repeat customers – which for most businesses is what’s going to give them long-term sustainability and separate them from their competitors? So if you’re struggling in your market or you feel like your competitors are passing you by, this may be the number one reason why – you’re not fully exploiting e-mail.

Through e-mail follow up you can develop a real depth of relationship with your customers. If someone’s already bought from you, the amount of work it takes to get them to buy from you again is much less than what it took as far as investment of resources to get them to buy from you the first time.

Depending on your market, you may want to have an e-mail marketing program on steroids; or it may be a little more low key. Certain markets really lend themselves to follow-up sales. For example if you sell dog products, you’re typically selling to dog owners. Most of them are pretty passionate about their animals. Some of them even treat them like children – in a really good way – and really want to care for these animals; and are constantly looking for the next product or item that they need for the dog. So there’s an opportunity to develop a relationship there; and you can see massive repeat sales.

If you’re in a market selling something that’s more high-end, say for example you’re selling high-end lighting products, the opportunities for repeat sales may not be as great. Someone may only be buying a lighting product once a year or once every two years. But there’s a certain segment of that population which may be buying more often. Perhaps you might have commercial buyers who you can use e-mail marketing to separate them out and develop a relationship with them.

In most markets there is a really good opportunity to further develop a relationship with your customers with the proper strategy. You just have to really take stock of who your customers are and how to target that towards them. Depending on what your market is, find the appropriate strategy.

Different types of e-mail strategies: The simple straight forward ones promote store sales. If you’re not doing that, you should be doing that. Run a sale once a month or once every couple of months. Sending out coupons – ideally you want to get your e-mail list segmented into your most active buyers; and further incentivize your most active buyers to buy more, again through coupons or special offers or loyalty clubs.

In certain markets, having value added information can be really, really helpful. For example, with the example of the website selling dog products, dog owners are constantly looking for information and needing information about what’s the best product for their dog; or what’s best to do with your dog for this training need or this medical need. So if you’re really sending your customers information that helps them understand how to better care for their dog – and the more specific it is to their dog – for example, if you can, within the sales process, have them self-identify what type of breed they’re buying for or the age of their dog or the specific needs of their dog, then you can follow up with real value added information that helps them better care for their dog. And that’s going to really bind them to you; and they’re going to really think of you for the next product that they need to buy for the dog. Also, it develops a trust-based relationship.

So if you are providing value through e-mail, they’re going to start to want to see your e-mails and want to read your e-mails. And then when you send a product offering down the pipe – you send a couple of value added e-mails about how to help your dog with this medical condition; how to train your dog to sit; and then a couple of weeks later you send the product e-mail, they’re going to be much more open to that; and they’re going to start to really live and breathe by your recommendations. If you say this product is good for this purpose and their dog has that need, they’re probably going to buy it – so again, using e-mail to develop relationships.

We touched briefly on segmenting your lists. Again that’s a pretty deep topic in and of itself, but the bottom line is the more you can get people to self-identify into their specific needs, the more potent your e-mail marketing is going to be.

So again, coming back to our dog example, which is a very potent example for e-mail marketing. If you were able to segment your list out into dog owners who have German Shepherds and dog owners who have Chihuahuas – there’s totally different types of information you can send to those two populations of dog owners. And when you start to send specific messages through e-mail to a Chihuahua owner or to a German Shepherd owner, they’re going to eat those up.

The way you can get them to self-identify is either in the sales process on the check-out page or by sending them a survey later through e-mail. Some people will voluntarily participate in surveys. Or send them value-added products and by the nature of those value added products they opt into a specific list – which then you know what their interest is. For example, you could send them an e-book about training tips or a guide to German Shepherd dog care. When you send those as a general list and you see which ones then opt into a specific list, now you have them on a specific segmented list where you can further market to them in a very specific way, which is going to better serve them and certainly better serve your business. That is a way where you can double to triple your gross revenue per year if done effectively. I guarantee it.

Video Transcript

What is a “winning pricing strategy”? In almost all cases a winning pricing strategy is the pricing strategy that does not have you as the lowest priced seller on the market. Is that always true? No, but in most cases it will be true. In most cases you do not want to get into price cutting wars where you’re trying to be the lowest price. The only way that will be to your advantage is if you have clear market advantages along those lines.

If you’re able to get the product wholesale significantly cheaper than your competitors, and you can still maintain a significant profit margin while undercutting their retail price and gathering a percentage of the market, then by all means, do that. It can be an acceptable strategy. But in general, for most of you watching this video, I know that’s not going to be an option. You may have the same amount of leverage or even significantly less leverage than some of your competitors. Getting into price cutting is really not a good option because your margins will get smaller and smaller; and what you’ll end up with is a lot of customers to serve and not much profit per sale.

One thing to be aware of as an ecommerce business owner, if you’re not already aware of it — there are different types of customers out there. The lowest rock bottom price is not the most important thing to everyone. There’s a certain segment of your customer population that is looking for that; and that’s really important to them. But there are also people who don’t mind paying a few dollars more if you can add some value to their sale or add some convenience to your sale.

The key that I want to get across is the way you want to position yourself with your pricing strategy. Generally, you don’t want to be the most expensive nor the cheapest. Generally you want to be somewhere around mid-pack - somewhere that gives you a good profit margin. And then really make the sale through value added services, whether it’s by having a better website that’s better optimized that pulls in traffic more efficiently; or whether it’s through a better display of your products, better product images, better messaging around the products to give more assurance to the customer; give more confidence; and then making the sale.

Bottom line is — don’t try to succeed as the “price cutter” because in the end you’re probably going to lose unless you have a clear market advantage. And really push yourself to find other ways to build confidence with the customer and to increase your sales percentage.

If you’re in a business where you’re selling something that many other people sell, as much as possible you want to offer the commodity that your customers are looking for and help them find it very easily and efficiently. Have a really good looking image and have all the proper languaging around it. You want to offer it at a very fair price; a very competitive price in the market. But then you want to find a way to add value to their sale so that you don’t have to be the lowest priced guy in the market. There’s a feeling of, “Well I think I may prefer to buy it from John because I really have a good feeling that John is going to stand behind his product. There won’t be any hassles with John. If I have to return the product there won’t be hassles. The pricing is very straight forward.” Those are a few examples of things that you can do to tilt the sale in your favor.

The bottom line is that people who are out commodity shopping – looking for a product that many other people are selling – these shoppers don’t want to look at 10 or 20 other websites – even the hardcore price shoppers. So if you can give them a competitive price and then an ironclad reason to buy from you – which is really based on the unique positioning of your business in real market conditions – your chances of making the sale are very, very good; and with a profit margin that will work for you and your business.

Video Transcript

If you are not currently using cross sells or up sells and you have an ecommerce store, you definitely need to be. This is a way to – if done correctly – almost immediately increase your overall gross sales by as much as 10, 20 percent or even more.

I often get asked, “Well where should you do this? Where’s the best place to try to do a cross sell or an up sell?” It really is going to require testing; and that’s really kind of the bottom line message of this video – that if you’re not doing cross sells and up sells, you need to start experimenting with those. If you don’t have that capability in your shopping cart, you need to get it – both to do an up sell and a cross sell. And you need to have the flexibility within your shopping cart to do that in a way that allows some trying out of different methods.

As far as the best place to do it, you can do it as a part of the pre-shopping cart process in your content management system – within your category pages or your product pages. The places where we’ve seen it to be most potent is definitely on the product pages because they’re going to be looking at a very specific product; so you can give them a very specific cross sell or very specific up sell. But it can also work quite well within the shopping cart or both on the product page and within the shopping cart.

Now setting up cross sell or up sell in the shopping cart or on the product page may be relatively easy or may be fairly complex, depending on how your shopping cart is set up. So that’s something that has to be investigated with your ecommerce provider or with your ecommerce developer. The bottom line is you want to test out a lot of different types of cross sells and up sells.

Some of the best strategies that we’ve seen are both cross sells and up sells that are user generated. This is an excellent strategy; and Amazon would be a classic example of this. “People who looked at this also looked at this” or “People who bought this also bought this.” If you have enough sales volume on your website and also the capability within your ecommerce solution, as that data builds up you can sometimes – without having to do a lot of work yourself – end up with some really great cross sell, up sell options.

Also a lot of shopping carts will allow you to do the user generated cross sell, up sell; and also do a hand picked cross sell, up sell – which can also be really good – because you as the business owner or product manager have a really in-depth understanding of product, which probably goes well beyond what your typical customer has. So there’s also suggestions that you’ll want to test out or that you know items that really fit well together.

So the idea is if you can test out both formats – both the user generated and the business owner generated – and also be able to – as we spoke about earlier – be able to test those at various points throughout the process, both in the content management and the shopping cart.

A really great program for testing these out is Google Website Optimizer. It can be configured to test these out. That happens to be a free program if you’re not already familiar with that. And there’s also several other analytics testing-type software programs that can be used. Depending on the set-up of your shopping cart, typically there is one that will work quite well. Again you want to do this; you want to test; you want to try things. There isn’t a set way.

The bottom line is you want what you feel is right for your business. And then through user generated content, see what users are looking at and what users are buying; and how those relate to things; and ideally have both those in play; and then test. And in your testing, ideally use something like Google Website Optimizer so that you get real test data and you only make decisions based on mathematical significance. So you have some software that’s helping to see -“Yes you show this item with this cross sell this many times; and the preference was this item.” It’s all in the math and you’re not making decisions just based on your gut.

The excerpts below are taken from the free white paper "How Much of YOUR Money Will Your PPC Manager Waste This Year? — Essential Questions You Must Ask Before Hiring a PPC Manager."

If you would like to sign up to get a free copy of the complete white paper you can find it here. The white paper is available in PDF and Audio MP3 format.

If you're like many PPC advertisers, you've already been burned at least once by a PPC management company. We hear horror stories day after day of how business owners lost money through their PPC managers. The questions below will help you quickly find the PPC management company that fits with your company's marketing objectives so you can start creating more profits.

1. Will you be managing my campaign, or are you just a sales rep?

Most often, before you sign up with a PPC manager, you will talk to a salesperson who knows very little about Pay Per Click management or how to solve your unique problems. Their job is to sell you their solution, not necessarily to understand your unique circumstance and actually solve your problem.

*** Before you hire any PPC management company, you must have an open and honest dialog with someone who has had hands-on experience with Pay Per Click management (and preferably is the person who will be working on your account).

2. How much money will you make me?

Key word = money. Talking about real money and real return on ad spend is what typically separates the high value companies from the pretenders. You have to have a real conversation about money (gross revenue, gross profit, net profit, and return on ad spend) with any PPC company that you consider hiring. And while no company can guarantee a return, every PPC manager should be able to honestly assess your situation and give you a very clear picture of risk versus reward.

3. What species of PPC management company are you?

There are so many different types of management solutions out there that you can’t count them on one hand. Some are better suited for smaller companies, some for larger companies. Some are complete solutions, some are partial solutions. And some aren't solutions at all — they simply buy "dumb" traffic for you, without ever optimizing or improving the results. Of the 8 different species, which PPC management solution is right for you? Unfortunately, the descriptions are too long for this blog post — you have to download the  white paper to get the full details!

4. Do you know what you're doing? Are you certified?

While certification does not always equal qualification, you should insist on certification as a minimum standard. But, to truly understand how to help businesses make money using PPC advertising takes years of in-the-trenches experience. The only qualification that really matters is a proven track record of results.

5. Will you put your money where your mouth is?

Real guarantees are very hard to come by in this industry because, by its very nature, PPC marketing can be unpredictable — even in the most stable economy executed by the most skilled optimizers. That said, your PPC manager should be able to guarantee something and that guarantee should be rock solid. The strongest guarantee is a performance-based management program, where the PPC management company actually puts some skin in the game. Even if you have to commit to a longer-term program, it's worth it to reduce your risk and hold your PPC management company accountable.

6. What do you know about my industry?

While it's impossible for a PPC manager to have had experience in every industry, you must partner with someone who has a working knowledge of your online sales process and business model. Most models fall into one of these categories: ecommerce, lead generation, information products, membership sites. Never do business with someone who cannot provide references for your online business model.

7. How do you charge?

Ok, get ready — this is where things can get a bit confusing. There are so many pricing models out there, and more are being invented every day. Each has advantages and disadvantages, and you have to decide which fits your business goals and risk tolerance best. The four most common are: (1) percentage of spend, (2) flat monthly fee, (3) payment per keyword, (4) performance-based fees. Again, to read the details about each one, download the white paper here.

8. Do you offer monthly or yearly contracts with an "easy out"?

PPC contracts are either month-to-month or longer term, with advantages and disadvantages of each. For most people, month-to-month may be the most attractive — you can “stop at any time”. However, there is very little incentive for the PPC manager to make significant investments in your account if they know you can quit at any time. Results are often much slower and less impressive. Long-term contracts can get fast results, but there is usually some initial setup fee and the commitment is longer. A hybrid is best — initial investment for fast results with an early-out clause for non-performance.

9. Do you charge setup fees?

All reputable companies charge setup fees. This is because a good percentage of the work that needs to be done to either set up or overhaul an account happens on the front end. Without the setup fee the PPC company can’t justify putting in the needed resources to really setup or overhaul your account properly. Do not sign up with anyone until they have spelled out what they are charging you for and how it will help you.

10. How will my optimizer be rewarded?

This question is almost never asked but it is crucial that you ask it. Will your optimizer have enough time to fully optimize your account? Will they be rewarded if it performs well? You deserve to know their motivation, availability, and trustworthiness — he or she will be your partner in your PPC success or your PPC failure.

11. In English, how will you make me money?

Pay Per Click account optimization and setup is a fairly technical business. But your optimizer should be able to explain to you in plain English what they will be doing to your account and how this will help move your business forward. Demand a pre-contract assessment before you sign a long-term contract, and have them prepare a detailed strategic plan for your website and your PPC account. The plan should be actionable and clearly outline your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and risks.

12. How will you track my results?

Effective results tracking is essential for Pay Per Click success. Not just superficial metrics like click volume, cost per click, and click-through-rate. While these are important, they are not nearly granular enough to give you any real insight into your account. Any reports must show how your PPC statistics relate directly to your bottom line.

For more detailed information download the white paper.

Video Transcript

If you’re shopping for a custom ecommerce solution or just looking for an ecommerce solution in general, there’s some really important information that you need to know.

I’m giving you this information based on over four years of experience working with ecommerce businesses and helping them find the proper ecommerce solution; and also based on working with businesses that have gotten themselves into an ecommerce solution that doesn’t fit their needs. In many cases, they paid much more than they should have paid for that solution. There are some really big pitfalls that you have to look out for when shopping for an ecommerce solution; especially if you feel like you need a custom ecommerce solution.

The number one danger when shopping for a custom ecommerce solution is the developer you choose to work with. The mistake that I’ve seen business owners make over and over again is they work with a developer who is the first person that they’ve come in contact with in the development world; or possibly in what they consider the “ecommerce world” - so this person becomes a trusted resource.

Now that can be a great situation. If you find a very competent ecommerce developer who has a lot of experience developing ecommerce solutions, they can absolutely guide you to the right solution very quickly; and probably the most economically. But the problem is, most developers – and this is a really key point – most developers who are very competent at development – whatever coding language they specialize in – are not ecommerce developers. They may have developed an ecommerce store here and there, but they haven’t been-there, done-that over and over again with clients. They’re not able to know exactly what you need or to intuit your needs if you’re not exactly sure what you need.

That’s a really key point because the number one mistake I see businesses make – this is small, mid-size and large businesses – when they’re doing ecommerce development is they hire a developer who then just listens to what the client thinks they want; and then tries to build it from scratch. What you typically end up with is a store that doesn’t work particularly well or doesn’t work as well as the ecommerce business needs it to; and you pay double, triple, quadruple what you would pay if you had the proper ecommerce developer or if you were to use a commercial ecommerce solution which is already developed and may fit your current needs.

How do you avoid this? The way you can avoid falling into this pitfall is number one, when you’re looking to do ecommerce development, shop around. Talk to different developers. Have them show you their portfolio. Ask them what kind of experience they have. That’s very, very important.

Number two is you have to know your needs. The way I suggest you go about figuring out what your needs are is go out into the internet and shop around. Not just shop around for developers, but shop your own website. Look at your competition. Look at who are you going to be competing against? Who seems to be the most sophisticated? Spend some time. It’s a dense area to penetrate, but spend at least 30 minutes or an hour looking at the different competitors in your industry; and looking at what features they have on their websites. How do they structure their websites? How are they structuring their sales messages? How does that all come together into their ecommerce platform? Start to make a list of the features they have; and look at what features you may need or what features you may want.

So that’s the best way to make sure that you get the right ecommerce store at the right price – is to really understand your needs – and then go and shop around different ecommerce developers and make sure they can build something that’s going to really fit your needs. Make sure they’ve done it many times before. They’re not just doing this for the first or second or third time.

Alternatives to custom ecommerce development: Yes, there are definitely alternatives to custom ecommerce development. In fact, for most businesses, you’ll be better off going with a commercial ecommerce solution than a custom ecommerce solution. I talk about that in another video. But in general, you want to really weigh the pros and the cons versus the commercial and the custom solutions. And in general, even for small, mid-size and even some large businesses, a commercial solution is going to be better suited for you; and it’s going to save you a lot of money.

In closing, the number one word of warning is don’t get sold down the river by a developer who just wants to build you a custom solution because it’s a nice body of work for him and he’s excited about it. Make sure that he’s a veteran ecommerce store developer; and also, shop around. Get other opinions. But first, understand your needs so that you can get the most sufficient build – the most sufficient spend of your money in what they build for you.

Good Luck!

The Audio MP3 excerpt below is taken from the White Paper "12 Questions You Should Ask a PPC Management Company Before You Hire Them!".

If you would like to sign up to get a free copy of the complete report you can find it here. The White Paper is available in PDF and Audio MP3 format.

Episode 1 - Introduction

Summary: This free report is a step-by-step guide to the fastest path for finding a Pay Per Click Management provider that can meet the unique needs of your company. Learn how to easily avoid the pitfalls that so many companies fall into the first time (or second or even third time) they hire an Adwords Professional.

Save time, energy and most likely a whole lot of money by investing a few minutes in learning what questions you need to ask any PPC firm you are considering hiring and what you need to listen for in response.

The excerpt below is taken from the free white paper "12 Questions You Should Ask a PPC Management Company Before You Hire Them!".

If you would like to sign up to get a free copy of the complete white paper you can find it here. The white paper is available in PDF and Audio MP3 format.

Question #12 - How will you track my results?

Effective results tracking is essential for Pay Per Click success. Don’t even consider working with any company who is not totally on top of how to track results so that they are meaningful for your business. Many Adwords companies simply do not go deep enough in this area and settle for a more superficial level of reporting (like clicks or cost per click or something along those lines).

At a bare minimum you need to have your Adwords account (or any other PPC account) set up so that you are tracking (ideally using the PPC account’s conversion tracking codes) the most meaningful statistics for your business. If you are in Ecommerce sales, you need to have your conversion tracking set up to track product sales so that each and every time a sale occurs you will be able to see which keywords within your account created that sale and over time understand exactly which parts of your PPC account are the most productive.

This basic level of tracking is really just the beginning and is the very minimum of what you need to compete at any level with Adwords. If you really want to get superior results, you need to go deeper than this. For example, if you are in Ecommerce product sales it is essential that you understand not only where sales are being generated but also how much revenue is being generated per sale. You have to know exactly where all your dollars are going and how they are coming back to you. Without this complete picture, you will unnecessarily waste money and not be able to take full advantage of the opportunities where your account is succeeding.

The PPC company or consultant that you choose should be able to proactively point the way to a holistic analytics solution that will give you all the business intelligence you need to understand how your PPC account is functioning and how its functioning relates to your bottom line. That is the most important part – YOUR BOTTOM LINE. Without bottom line tracking and analysis, you will always be guessing as to the ultimate effectiveness of your PPC advertising. While you are guessing (or possibly making decisions based on bad or partial information), you can bet that some of your competition is getting it right and will shortly be leaving you behind. Don’t get left behind – hire someone who can help you understand the complete picture in real dollar terms so that you can put your competition in your rear view mirror.

The excerpt below is taken from the free white paper "12 Questions You Should Ask a PPC Management Company Before You Hire Them!".

If you would like to sign up to get a free copy of the complete white paper you can find it here. The white paper is available in PDF and Audio MP3 format.

Question #11 - How will you optimize or set up my PPC account?

Pay Per Click account optimization and setup is a fairly technical business. But no matter what your level of sophistication, any company that you are considering making a serious investment with should be able to explain to you in plain English what they will be doing to your account and how this will help move your business forward. Sometimes there are limits to the amount of information that a skilled Pay Per Click company is willing to share “pre-contract” because they are very wary of “do it yourselfer” types who are just calling around trying to get some free advice. You need to be sensitive to this, but still push for the information that you need so you can be sure they know what they are doing and they have a specific action plan to follow which makes sense for your business.

If you have found a PPC company that you think you want to hire, my suggestion is, before you get into a long-term relationship with them, pay them to conduct an in-depth assessment for you. Most competent companies will be more than happy to do this for you for a one-time fee of $1,000 to $2,000. In this assessment ask them to thoroughly research and analyze your market, your PPC competition, your PPC account (if you have one) and your website and to create a summary report. The summary report (which they should review with you over the phone so you can ask questions) should clearly outline your strengths, your weakness, your opportunities and your risks.

***Before you hire someone to do a paid assessment of this nature, make sure they will offer a money back guarantee so if you are not satisfied with what they deliver you can get your money back.

If you are impressed with your paid assessment, move full speed ahead with them. But, if the company comes back to you with something generic, weak or out of touch with the realities of your business, you have just saved yourself several thousand dollars and several months of wasted time. Move on – don’t hire them, and now you are much wiser as far as what you really need to look for in a PPC expert.

Note: Paid assessments have become a standard practice for us at Net Return Marketing. We won’t take on a long-term, performance-based client until they have participated in a paid assessment. This greatly reduces your risk as a client and ours as a provider. It allows us and our clients to know exactly what we are getting ourselves into (the risks, the potential rewards and the complete plan) before we make a larger commitment to each other.