I don’t think I’ve ever seen discounting and special offers like I’ve seen so far this season and Black Friday and Cyber Monday aren’t even here yet!

Walmart yesterday issued a statement giving shoppers a sneak peek at some of the bargains to expect on items like plasma TVs, DVD players and deep discounts (some up to 60%) off popular kids toys. The mega-retailer also entered into a DVD price war recently with Amazon.com and Target, but weren’t able to match the deals.

While nearly every eCommerce store is in discount mode another theme very popular this year is free shipping. Whether it be ground service at no charge with a minimum order or just plain free shipping, the offer is luring in shoppers. But will these promotions and discounts help merchants turn a profit this year?

Internet Retailer commissioned a survey that found that October 2008 compared to October 2009 showed a 12.6% increase in sales, but don’t jump off your chair in excitement yet, according to the article:

…even though total sales were up by 12.6% year over year, the industry’s health was little changed from a year ago because total sales owed so much to discounted items, sales of which were up 112%, and because the depth of discounts increased from an average of 24.6% in October 2008 to 28% this October. Online retailers saw sales drop 2.6% on non-discounted goods from the same period last year.

This clearly shows that shoppers are extremely price conscious and are out there looking for the merchant who can give them the best possible price and service. So what is a merchant to do in this so called “new economy?” Not all of us can afford to offer deep discounts or free shipping, but we can provide value in other ways.

Customer Service – while service may not be what your customer is shopping for, give it to them and they may choose to fork over their credit card to you rather than mega-mart who you can’t even call to have a question answered. Make sure you make yourself accessible to your customers in case they have questions about a product you’re selling and make sure the person on the other end of that call or email knows what they’re talking about. Everyone who works for you should be an expert of the products you’re selling, if they’re not…. well, stop reading and start training.

Hook ‘Em – you’ve got that potential sale on the phone or in your in-box, don’t let them get away. Ask them what you can do to get their order today. If that means throwing in a small dollar amount gift card, giving a little off, working a deal on shipping or throwing in a free item, consider doing it. You paid a lot to get that lead and have that lead call you, now don’t lose them. Ask for the order, but don’t be pushy.

Shipping Deals – if free shipping is the magic elixr shoppers are looking for this season, it may be high time you look at your margins and see if you can offer some variation. But like I said above, not all of us can afford to do it. If a free shipping promo is definitely out of the question, what about offering a flat rate shipping promotion such as $4.95 ground or free shipping on select items.

Gift Cards – perhaps the best kept secret in the industry. In 2007 Consumer Reports reported that 27% of gift cards go unredeemed. That’s a lot of cash floating around out there. So why not have a promotion where if you spend $X you get a gift card or gift certificate for your store for $X. If those numbers still stand true, only 73% of people will redeem that card or certificate.

Some of you may be saying “I don’t need to discount or make deals for my customers to buy from me.” If that’s the case, congratulations, but I don’t believe you. Unless you’re the only person selling electric blankets to the Eskimos, nobody needs to buy from you. You have competition and competition this season is FIERCE. Let me say that again, competition this season is FIERCE. Having a solid holiday promotional plan now will help you “ring” in the new year on a happy note!

Driving around this past weekend I saw signs that Christmas is right around the corner. Tents started popping up with big signs that read “Christmas Trees.” For me it’s hard to imagine that the jolly old fat man in the red suit is going to be making an appearance already, but you can’t argue the calendar.

While the tents were going up, the press releases started going out from The Wagner Companies in Milwaukee, WI. Wagner is the only company in the United States to manufacturer and sell the time honored Festivus Pole.

What is a Festivus Pole? Fans of the NBC comedy Seinfeld would slap you for not knowing, but, here’s an excerpt from the press release that gives a good explanation:

In the December 18, 1997 episode of “Seinfeld” titled “The Strike” Mr. Costanza, played by Jerry Stiller, tells of how he invented the holiday when his son was young and he found himself in a department store tug-of-war with another Christmas shopper for a doll. “I realized there had to be a better way,” Frank recounts.

According to Mr. Costanza, the Festivus tradition begins with a bare aluminum pole, which is praised for its “very high strength-to-weight ratio.” The unadorned aluminum pole is displayed in opposition to the commercialization of highly decorated Christmas trees, and because the holiday’s creator, Frank Costanza, “find[s] tinsel distracting.”

I stumbled upon The Wagner Companies last season when I didn’t feel like putting up a Christmas Tree. I did a Google search for Festivus Poles and was amazed to see that there IS a company out there making them. I ordered the aluminum delight and stuck it in my great room. It didn’t go over well with members of my family who were expecting to see my house decked out in the usual holiday flair, but hey, I was lazy. Or, just sick of the “commercialization of highly decorated Christmas trees.”

The Wagner Companies, I’m sure, do a bang-up business selling the poles made famous by a cantankerous old coot on Seinfeld, and it just goes to show that niche marketing works. Even if it’s just for two months out of the year.

I would be remiss if I didn’t direct you to festivuspoles.com to buy your piece of holiday home decor. I would be spanked for not recommending The Wagner Companies needs a redesign as well. Guys, call me at 1.888.361.9814 ext 7100 and I’ll hook you up.

Tony Leto of The Wagner Companies stands next to one of the company's Festivus Poles. Photo from http://www.festivuspoles.com

You know the holidays are coming when my brother Mark, the facilities manager here at Solid Cactus in Shavertown, climbs on the roof to hang the 10 foot holiday wreath and wraps the top of the building in colored lights.

I hold the ladder and I’m also holding on to hope that this holiday season is going to be a successful one for eCommerce store owners.

So far, I’ve heard mixed results. During a recent webinar hosted by comScore, they included the current predictions for the 2009 holiday season. For retailers it looks like it’s going to be a flat season, while Forrester predicts that eCommerce sales will increase 8%. But those predictions are just that, predictions. Nobody will know what the final numbers are until the season is over.

One thing that resounds strongly throughout all the stories I have been following is that this year is going to be the year of discounting. Whether it be in the form of promotions, coupons, free shipping or the inevitable price wars amongst retailers, customers want and more importantly, NEED to save money.
Solid Cactus has several products and features for your Yahoo! Store that I feel are “must haves” for this holiday, and here they are:

Holiday Countdown – Nothing says “you need to buy now” than putting the number of shopping days left in the season right up front and center. Urgency sells!

Advanced Search – Our new advanced search is the most powerful search engine available for Yahoo! Store. With features found on the “big boy’s” stores, we deliver a product that is robust, packed with features, easy to maintain and most of all affordable.

Scratch & Save – Read the fourth paragraph above again and you will see why having a feature like this is important. Give your customers the ability to scratch their way to savings in a fun way that is guaranteed to increase conversions.

accuRATEship – Free shipping is ruling the web this season as is fast shipping options like next day, second day and third day delivery. Give your customers free shipping promos, the ability to choose UPS, FedEx or USPS and real-time rate integration and features that drop-shippers fall in love with by integrating accuRATEship on your site.

In addition to features like these, make sure your website puts your customers in the holiday mood. Deck the halls but don’t over do it. Our award-winning design team at Solid Cactus can holiday-tize your eCommerce store in a professional and eye catching manner.

Now, before you say “it’s too late to do all this” listen up. As an eCommerce store owner myself, I know how important this time of the year is for the bottom line. I want you to take advantage of every opportunity that’s available for you to make money, which is why we’re having a programming marathon to help make that a reality.

Take a look at all the features we have for your Yahoo! Store and decide which ones will make a great addition to your store. Once you’ve chosen yours, give us a call and we’ll have them installed for you in time for Cyber Monday. Same thing for a holiday look or a complete site redesign!

Don’t let this opportunity pass you by, let us help you be successful this holiday.

A younger me, on the right, working the line in the Ferret Store's warehouse. Picture from July 11, 2005.

But alas, the days of me picking, packing and shipping orders are gone. But I do remember them. I remember them well.

When I owned TheFerretStore.com, a typical Monday would consist of about 300 – 350 orders. Once Black Friday hit, a typical Monday had us looking at 500 – 600. And we didn’t drop ship. All the product we sold was stocked in our warehouse, picked, packed and shipped by a staff of 50 before automation.

We had pickers that would grab an order, start at the front of the pick route and fill big plastic tubs up with that order’s contents. The tub made it’s way on a set of rollers to a packing station where someone would verify items and quantities, wrap the items up with care and seal the box. The box would then make its way to a shipping station where one person would do the weighing and shipping.

Then we automated things. Everything was barcoded for accuracy, the shipping station was eliminated and equipment added at each packing station which enabled the packer to verify, pack and ultimately ship the package. With automation we dramatically increased out output and reduced our headcount.

Even with automation, when the holidays rolled around, it was all hands-on-deck. Everyone stepped up to the plate when the orders were backing up. We had a 24-hour shipping guarantee that we had to abide by and that meant many late nights and weekends. Customer Service Representatives would help out after their shifts, all our managers were pulled into the warehouse and basically anyone who could breathe was enlisted to help.

While the orders were going out, stock was coming in, so we had to balance and work around stockers who would be in the aisles restocking shelves or relocating product for quicker picking. Normally restocking was done at night when the picking operation wasn’t going on, but during the holidays you did what you had to do!

The hustle-bustle of “the season” was fun and exciting, and in case you didn’t get it from this post – I miss it. I loved walking through the warehouse watching that big stack of orders start out inches high and get whittled down by the end of the day, then grow the next morning. I miss the excitement of hearing “150 orders to go and an hour to get them out” at three in the afternoon.

A lot of eCommerce store owners never had the “thrill” of warehousing product and and filling orders. As more and more companies started drop-ship programs the eCommerce store owner needs to just send their orders in and someone else does the work for them.

The stores I own today, are all drop-ship stores and well, aren’t very exciting this time of year! There’s no warehouse for me to walk through and count the boxes going out. There’s no busting on the FedEx or UPS driver who was off for 8 weeks because that 70-pound ferret cage he lifted resulted in a hernia. And there’s no late night or weekend shifts working to crank out the orders (everyone hated them anyway).

I waxed nostalgic in today’s post after receiving an email from one of my good friends who uses Solid Cactus for her eCommerce needs. She was showing off pictures of the orders leaving her warehouse like a new father would show off pictures of his newborn son.

I remember pictures like these too…. I also remember how bad my back hurt by the end of the day Friday.

Happy selling!

If you’d like to open your own eCommerce store and experience all the fun and excitement for yourself, be sure to call upon Solid Cactus. I’m not only a former owner, I’m also a customer. And an employee! They can help you get started on Yahoo! Store, Amazon Webstore, eBay Prostores or Solid Cactus eCommerce.

Then once you’re up and running, Solid Cactus can help with Internet Marketing, Call Center Services, Comparison Shopping Engine Management, accuRATEship Shipping Manager, and total automation with Cactus Complete Commerce.

Shameful, self serving plug is complete.

This post first appeared on Scott’s personal blog where he shares thoughts on eCommerce, customer service and anything else that gets him excited.

Last week Google announced that they are introducing a new search product for ecommerce stores called Google Commerce Search. According to Google, Commerce Search will bring some of Google’s best search innovations to eCommerce websites.

But it comes at a price. $50,000.00 per year.

That price tag limits just who is going to be using the product, and Google knows it. Which is why they’re targeting it to the top 1,000 e-tailers.

There is no doubt in my mind that Google rules the search empire. I’m a huge fan of their products such as Google Apps and Google Voice which I use everyday as well as Google Search being the only place I go to when I need to find something.

I own about a half-dozen eCommerce sites, and know just how important having a good product search available for your shopper is, but $50k a year is still a lot of money and has a high return on investment (ROI).

At Solid Cactus Boot Camp a few weeks ago, we unveiled our new Advanced Search product for Yahoo! Store that has been over a year in the making and is, what I consider, the absolute best, most feature rick, robust search engine for Yahoo! Store.

But you’re not going to pay $50,000.00 a year for it!

For under a hundred-bucks a month you can have a tool that is packed with features that are designed to turn that search into a sale, including:

• Auto-Suggest feature dynamically displays top-ranking items in a pop-in as user is typing
• Item image shown in search results
• Narrows search to specific criteria (such as, price range, size) and displays number of results found within each matching category
• Ability to sort review by price and relevancy, with dynamic paging
• Built-in spell checker (”Did you Mean?”) and stemming feature find misspellings and variations of search terms
• “More Like This” cross-sell
• Search term highlighted in results
• Advanced tracking and reporting helps you monitor search terms, which helps with marketing efforts

When I first saw the demo a few months ago, I was amazed at just how much this product was going to change how Yahoo! Store owners look at on-site search. When I say there is nothing like it out there for Yahoo! Store, I mean it.

The biggest shopping season of the year is right around the corner and there is no better time than now to implement a new search strategy for your eCommerce store. Watch the short demo video I did for Advanced Search for Yahoo! Store then visit www.AmericaneSuperstore.com and play around with the search feature. After just a few minutes worth of searching, you will see that this is one Solid Cactus product you have to have on your store.

The price is right, the features and functionality are far superior than other advanced search products and it will pay for itself within days.

If you’re ready to add this to your site, call us today at 1.888.361.9814 and say, “Gimme Advanced Search!” Or, if you really want to spend 50-grand on a search engine, I’ve got some oceanfront property in Boise, I’d like to sell ya.

by Donna Talarico, Interactive Marketing Specialist

I don’t know about you, but I find a heck of a lot fascinating tweets about eCommerce. Every day I am presented with interesting links to articles and blog posts from people I follow in the industry. I can’t keep up with them all, so I started to favorite them so I can come back later. Then, it hit me.

The Idea

I borrowed this idea from a writing site I frequent. The editor of a popular writer’s magazine posts on the company blog the best writing-related tweets of the week. I follow some really informative eCommerce, Internet marketing, and general business experts on Twitter and find some really helpful nuggets. So, this new Solid Cactus blog feature will be like that. Roughly each week I’ll repost some of my favorite tweets of the week which will usually contain links to a great article.

Best eCommerce Tweets of the week I’ve Saved Up to Now

Okay, so I’m going back a few weeks for this intial post. I’ve been wanting to start this up for a while now so I don’t want these good ones I’ve saved to go unseen. (Note: tweets are not edited for grammar, spelling, etc. They are posted as is because that was the tweet!)

• GENERAL eCOMMERCE TWEETS

howzyat 37 things I want to see on a product page http://bit.ly/gGm2n

NMessier – Why we buy, online – a look at emotion and its role in online buying decisions; http://bit.ly/VXeEb

JBillingsley – Sign up 4 ur competitors emails. Monitor offers, frequency, strategy, etc. Adapt accordingly

• SOCIAL MEDIA & INTERNET MARKETING TWEETS

davidrwilson Reading Social Media’s Direct Influence on Search Engine Ranking http://is.gd/3FGh0

MikeLizun- Study: Twitter Breeds Brand Engagers (media post via paidcontent) http://bit.ly/O0jJB

ArikHanson – USA Today:Twitter users spend 66% more $ on Internet than nonTwitter users http://bit.ly/buAwC

DigitalWoman – Twitter Style Guide http://bit.ly/3MxuGu

DonnaAntoniadis – Social technographics help categorize social media consumers – http://shar.es/Zi0T

GetElastic - before you hit send…email checklist http://bit.ly/dy7Bx

• WEB DESIGN & USABILITY TWEETS
  

SarahKinney – 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines – http://tinyurl.com/yedejdm

• QUOTES, ADVICE & OBSERVATIONS

MattyCurry - Universal eCommerce truth. If you answer the questions your visitors have, with answers that appeal, then they will buy. If not, they won’t

Sitemarkers Include a blog on your ecommerce site. It helps add personality and currency to the site, and can assist SEO.

Finally, then there’s the retweeting. You can follow me on Twitter (@cactus_donna) as I always RT the posts I find most interesting. Please share any great tweets with me, too and I will credit you on this blog.

MiniCart Tops Holiday Tactics List, according to Marketing Sherpa Chart of the Week for August 5, 2009. Photo used with permission from Marketing Sherpa.

by Donna Talarico, Interactive Marketing Specialist

The holiday preparation issue of eBiz Insider will be out soon. In that forthcoming issue I write an article about features to help get your e-commerce store ready for the holidays. If you are not in holiday mode yet, you should be.

Marketing Sherpa yesterday posted an article highlighting results from a benchmark survey geared toward getting ready for the holidays. They polled 1,500 e-commerce stores owners on the top tactics to improve a site before the holidays.

The #1 response, with 64% of the ‘votes,’ was a perpetual shopping cart. 38% of respondents are in fact already using the tactic. This feature has also been referred to as a floating shopping cart and the Solid Cactus version we innovated for Yahoo! Stores is MiniCart.

When users add an item to their cart on a default Yahoo! Store, they are taken to the check-out page. Solid Cactus MiniCart keeps customers on the site, in buying mode and reduces cart abandonment by showing shipping costs and cart total at all times.  To learn more about MiniCart, visit our Conversions Tools page.

Read more about why 64% of e-commerce store owners think a perpetual shopping cart is the best holiday prep tactic, as well as to read about the other top three results, by going here.

Want a quick demo of some of the great features Solid Cactus has for Yahoo! Stores? Check out the latest one-minute videos of some of our features:

Scratch & Save:

Product Scroller:

Mega Drop Down Menu:

Snap Shop:

Flash Sequence Banners:

Last week I, along with Greg Davis and Kurt Illian from my team, had the pleasure to attend the first web.com E-Commerce Marketing Summit held at company headquarters in Jacksonville, FL. As the newest member of the web.com “family” it was great to learn about what the other divisions of the company offer as well as meet the key people in charge of marketing.

At Solid Cactus, my role is to spearhead the marketing efforts we do for our various products and services such as e-commerce store programming and design, Internet Marketing, Call Center & Virtual Office and our various Software as a Service (SaaS) products.

Over the last few weeks my department has grown a bit, and now may be a good time to introduce members of the Solid Cactus Marketing Team. Some of their names may be familiar to you as they have worked in other departments and some may be new, but here’s the lineup:

Greg Davis is the department leader who is responsible for the day-to-day operations within the group. While most of his work is managing projects and people, he’s a “hands-on” guy as well, assisting with projects and working with me on campaigns and brain-storming sessions.

Kurt Illian I like to call the “Charts & Graphs Wizard.” I often joke that the only time Kurt e-mails me is when he has a new pie chart to show me! Since all the marketing we do needs to have a level or return, it’s Kurt’s job to decipher the numbers and determine what works and what doesn’t. (In case you even encounter the trivia question, “Who was the first Solid Cactus employee?” The answer would be Kurt.)

Jeff “Spike” Li is Batman. Our super-hero webmaster who is in charge of maintaining the various Solid Cactus customer facing websites, and we have a lot of them and they’re on all different platforms. Jeff has been immersed in launching micro-sites for our various services such as Yahoo! Store design and programming and Call Center Services and is currently working on launching our new Internet Marketing and corporate websites.

Randy Llewellyn is the guy responsible for the great designs we put out in marketing. When I say “designs,” I mean more than just great looking Cactus websites. Randy is the designer of our bi-monthly customer magazine, eBiz Insider, and designs all our print material such as sell sheets, brochures, business cards, logos and so much more.

Karen Snyder is our technical writer who translates all the “programmer speak” that our talented programmers give her when a new product or feature is released. She then creates documents for both internal and customer use that documents the features, benefits and installation instructions in simple, easy-to-understand “English.”

Scott Carey came to us as an intern and loved the place so much he decided to stay! He is our “jack-of-all-trades” and is responsible for everything from content writing to putting together Power Points for our bi-weekly webinars.

New to the marketing team are Greg Paone and Donna Talarico. Greg’s sole responsibility is product development for Yahoo! Store features. It’s something we take very seriously and to have someone dedicated to this task shows our commitment to the product. Greg not only does the product research but also the product development, something we call “full circle development.” Two really big home runs for Greg lately have been our Flash Sequence Banners and our Scratch & Save. Be on the lookout for many, many new and exciting features from Greg coming soon.

Donna Talarico is like “Julie” from the television show, “The Love Boat.” She’s our social director. No we don’t have karaoke Tuesday’s or high-tea in the afternoon, Donna’s socializing takes place online on the social networking sites. It’s Donna’s job to spread the Solid Cactus message in forums, Twitter, Facebook, etc. She’s also our chief copywriter who’s responsible for writing the creative content for our websites and sales collateral and works hard as wordsmith for our bi-monthly magazine, eBiz Insider.

So next time you get a copy of eBiz in the mail, an e-mail in your inbox or you visit one of our websites, you’ll know the members of the Solid Cactus Marketing Team who worked hard to make it look and sound just right.

I’m a big fan of clean and easy. No, it’s not some new product Billy Mays is hawking on television that promises to remove sweat stains from your shirt collar, it’s clean and easy web design.

Now before I go on, let’s set the record straight – I’m an online shopper, but most of all, I’m an online store owner and I’ve been one long before the so-called “gurus” even heard of the Internet, so I think I know my stuff.

I pay close attention to new site launches not only from Solid Cactus but from other developers as well and I’m beginning to notice a trend that we have not adopted around here and I’m happy about that. It’s a trend towards distractive, cluttered, mucked-up design that pulls the focus away from the site’s intention (to sell product) to flashy, look-at-me design.

Folks, I have to be honest with you here. Flashy design does not sell product, it causes the customer to get lost trying to find navigation, checkout options, and if it’s too over-the-top it causes their eyes to tire and they bail. Clean looking sites with defined lines, straight forward navigation and easy to use features not only sells but keeps the shopper around longer increasing the chance to make a sale.

Last night while surfing I found a site that is promoting their new look. There were so many different color variations, squiggly backgrounds, graffiti like graphics and general distractions I didn’t know if this was the old site or the new one! The company’s logo was tuned out and shoved into a corner in a muted color that just didn’t match or even catch my eye. I didn’t know if they were selling home furnishings or children’s toys and that’s a problem.

While a colorful, fun site may look great, you’re not here for entertainment, you’re here to sell. Stick with clean and easy, your customers (and your banker) will thank you.