Bloggers Digest 9/26/08
If you’re new here, welcome! And thanks for subscribing to Get Elastic. Friday is Blogger Digest day where we highlight posts from other blogs that are of value and interest to online retailers and Internet marketers.
Thanks to all our awesome blog subscribers, we crossed a major milestone of 5,000 subscribers this week!
This week’s roundup covers 2 weeks as Jason and I were gallavanting last Friday with the Zappos crew in Henderson, Nevada. It was an awesome time, such a neat company. We were in the area for Shop.org that week and you can catch up with my posts for the Shop.org blog here. We could really use some discussion around the carousel navigation debate, who’s brave?
- The blogosphere was set a-buzz after Google came out to recommend not using rewrite for dynamic URLs. Many webmasters and search professionals were skeptical that it was good advice, and Rand Fishkin presents solid arguments for why you should continue to rewrite long, messy, dynamic URLs (it’s not all about search spiders!)
- Mystified about how to create personas for persuasive copywriting? Maybe seeing some examples would help. The persuasion expert, Bryan Eisenberg, shares 2 examples of personas that he might typically use for his clients. Bonus points for the Seinfeld reference.
- Tom Critchlow has a thorough post at SEOMoz called The SEO Failings of Major UK Highstreet Retailers which describes some dreadful SEO mistakes from big-time UK retailers. Useful to all ecommerce marketers – don’t make these mistakes!
- For you conspiracy theorists out there, Gab Goldenberg postulates how merchandising would have to adapt to the needs of Google optimization should the Big G eliminate search as an affiliate marketing channel and morph into more of its own comparison shopping marketplace a la Amazon or eBay.
- If Avinash Kaushik was stranded on a desert island and could only track 8 KPI (key performance indicator) metrics, which would they be? Check out Eight Rules for Choosing Web Analytics Key Performance Indicators to find out.
- You may have noticed we talk quite a bit about site testing around here, so if you’re ready to take the plunge, or still seriously thinking about it, go ahead and bookmark GrokDotCom’s exhaustive list of Google Website Optimizer learning resources – a nice mix of text, audio and video content.
- Impressive case study of how Office Depot increased PPC click through rate by 78.5%, conversion by 23.8%, revenue by 196.6% and new buyers by 183%. How? The answer is creatively simple: use review content in PPC ad copy.
- Google Analytics Support Tech Shawn Purtell shares a hack to help Google Analytics and Website Optimizer get along together.
- A while back we collected a bunch of ecommerce cart buttons, and Pit Stop Media went through and collected checkout buttons from the same retailers, with a nice set of statistics at the end. Nice work!
- Mitch Joel from Twist Image explains why negative reviews convert more effectively into sales than positive reviews for one simple reason, trust.
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Hi – I know Will and I look quite similar (being brothers and all) but we are actually different people and it was myself that wrote the recent moz post :-)
Thanks for the link anyway though and glad you enjoyed the piece.
Tom
@Tom
Awww…that teaches me not to go from memory. I’m so sorry and am correcting the link now.
what do you think about LIVE CHAT and companies like websitealive.com it looks like a great way to capture leads, increase sales, help with shopping cart abandonment as well as customer service.
all for about 29.95 a month
Linda,
Don’t kill me for not reading this blog every day until I ran into you at the SHOP.org conference with Jason speaking. Informative blog and I will make it part of my daily routine. I see why this is the top e-commerce blog!
Jason is lucky to have you on board!
Ha – no problems Linda, people are getting me and Will confused all the time :-)
I personally the corousel is a great tool. You can see the details of the product. However, I do not like the conveyer belt in the American Eagle website, it is too slow.
I love “what not to do” or “X mistakes” type of posts. Is it just me? I love the post with the buttons too.
Welcome, David. Nice to see you again at Shop.org. I’ll be keeping my eye out for your viral videos with celebrity athlete lookalikes, ha ha.