Today kicks off a weekly tradition (though definitely not original) here at Get Elastic. Every Friday I will be posting a Blogger’s Digest that recognizes outstanding content from around the web of interest to ecommerce marketers, managers, bloggers and SEO-types to give you some rainy day reading for the weekend (especially if you’re in Vancouver/Seattle).
Ecommerce News
- Bad news for Yahoo Stores as Cyber Monday traffic crashes the platform and brings down 3 million online shops.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO for a blog is different than SEO for most other websites, largely because of the social elements baked into blogging technology. SEO for blogs is less about buying links or tricking inadequate search technology. SEO for blogs is more focused on giving people something to talk about and creating something worthy of attention.
Via Google Webmaster Central Blog, but you can find a bunch more archived at SEOBook.
Email Marketing
- Justin Palmer shares 17 tips for email deliverability.
- GrokDotCom praises Threadless’ shopping cart recovery email despite the excessive use of exclamation marks.
Online Retail Tips
- Chief Marketing Officer at BazaarVoice, Sam Decker sums up his company’s research on why customers write reviews and provides some best practices on how to prevent fraudulent reviews on your ecommerce website.
Social Media Marketing
- Matt from Ecommerce Optimization gives us a peek into the social networking widget factory that is PayPal Labs. Nifty.
- Ecommerce Guide’s James A. Martin interviews yours truly about microblog marketing with Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce for online retailers.
Usability
- Better Retail (retail through the eyes of the customer) rants about hodge podge top seller results.
- Ecommerce Cache rounds up 26 examples of 404 “Not Found” pages from top online retailers. Definitely worth a look.
Just Plain Cool
- Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz solves the “what to give the geek who has everything?” dilemma with a list of 50 Perfect Gifts for Webophiles, Bloggers and Internet Marketers.
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Linda,
Thanks for the mention, I really enjoyed digging into the PayPal Labs and checking out their blog, it’s looking like it will shape into a great developer playground in the near future.
Also, great roundup. Hadn’t seen a few of those, particularly the Grokdotcom, Better Retail and eComm Cache posts, so thanks for sharing.
My favorites are Rand’s list, Sam from BazaarVoice and I always enjoy Justin’s lists, so that one too!
eCopt
@ eCopt,
You bet. There’s just simply way too much great content out there to consume, I’m finding it a delightful challenge trying to keep up with it.
This is a brief squib about another segment of this site, merchandising. With eCommerce, how do you merchandise when in theory, merchandising is arranging goods for the best aesthetic look possible. That might be a good idea for a class for someone to teach. Virtual aesthetic merchandising on an eCommerce product web site. That is a mouthful. I would imagine at this point in the still relatively new field of eCommerce, I say new because stores and shops have been around for thousands of years and the at best thirty year old eCommerce is just a drop in the sales bucket. The best way is manufacturer, style, and price. Virtual aesthetic merchandising, film at eleven!