A major change has come about regarding SEO compared to social media platforms in the last few years. This change signals a crossover from Web page optimization and blindly running after links to optimization of genuine, fresh content, and the engagement of the audience that it enables.

Thus, SEO and social media now go hand in hand. Both still depend severely on the content used, but the point is that you can no longer neglect to use social media in your quest for success with important keyword phrases.

Organizations that are early adopters of social media tend to dominate, particularly in industries with a low rate of adoption. Web page optimization and link building are still fairly important, but with Google’s emphasis in providing the user with quality content, social media must figure in as an indispensable channel for the dissemination of such content.

Social Media Platforms

Social media platforms enjoy far wider acceptance and use by the audiences than corporate or business websites. Hence, using only on-page optimization and link building is no longer sufficient for the purpose of taking your product to the reader. In turn, the reader would gladly turn to the familiar interface of Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, rather than directly visit the corporate website.

Look at Google’s SERPs. There’s hardly ever any search possible that does not throw up results from social media websites. When you type in a question in the search box for your favorite search engine, it returns results largely from blogs.

The small business therefore needs to start with the following:

• Creating a foundation with a blog and relevant content for the blog
• Maintaining a podcast for blog posts
• Uploading appropriately tagged images, with full descriptions for sites such as Flickr
• Uploading to YouTube videos that offer customer testimonials
• Submitting articles to directories such as Ezine Articles and PitchEngine
• Creating profiles on social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Maps, Google Places, and vertical-specific platforms
• Generating positive reviews on websites such as Google Maps, Yelp, and Insider Pages

Above everything else, you must have a strategy in place even before you start out on such social media engagement. That is another ball game, and I’ll be happy to take it up very soon. First, however, think about sourcing quality content and getting your principal website appropriately optimized for the web.

Thus, it is a lot of hard work, but you will be just glad you put in all the effort when customers and their inquiries start pouring in!

U.S. mobile commerce is expected to grow 73% in 2012. In comparison to the $6.7 billion in sales this year, an increase of 91.4% is forecast for 2012, which translates into a significant $11.6 billion.

These m-commerce sales take into account all sales of all goods plus travel and event ticket sales purchased via mobile devices. Digital downloads of apps and POS payments are excluded.

Mobile purchases constitute a habit that is yet to develop fully. However, the rapid growth of the smartphone heralds the arrival of m-commerce. Already, consumers expect a whole lot more info to be available to them any time, on demand, and wherever they are. That in itself sets m-commerce up nicely to become one of the most important aspects of commerce in 2012.

Also, retailers and online business owners have started getting their own m-commerce sites made and deployed, in the hope that that will help them make a sizable killing next year. American consumers have already started shopping on their mobiles.

Add to that the fact that service providers such as Kaushalam are already providing business apps for such m-commerce sites. As penetration of the smartphone increases, the rise of m-commerce will be directly proportional.

Android is expected to garner 50% of the market share by the end of 2012, whereas iOS will not be far behind with its innovation. SMS will lead non-voice communication.

A new study has revealed that it also augurs well on the tablet front because tablet users have a better shopping experience in comparison to mobile users – another reason why you need that other version of your website.

Mobile Application Development

All these facts point to the immediacy with which your business needs to source that app for its website. Early adopters will be the greatest beneficiaries of this opportunity. Once your app has been created and deployed, it will also need to be downloaded by your customers. Starting out early will save you plenty of time as well as create the early-bird advantage over your competition.

Without such a version of your online presence, you stand to lose out on a significant amount of sales since you will be failing to meet the demand of the customers for such a solution.

Have you asked your services provider to create the m.yourdomainname.com for you?

If not, don’t wait to make a New Year’s resolution out of it.

Cheers!

All kinds of theories and their versions are currently prevailing on the web regarding the future of ecommerce. Ecommerce is no longer the classic, staid concept we were used to. It is evolving fast and in myriad ways. There’s technological as well as qualitative change coming its way. Indeed, 2012 promises to deliver a whole new ecommerce environment in most of the online shopping world.

The future of ecommerce is definitely bright. Things are going right for the majority – the consumers. They are also quite cosy for the vendors. But the balance of power is likely to shift toward the consumer, or more specifically, groups of consumers. Virtual communities of shoppers are likely to influence ecommerce in big ways. While the competition is going to get tougher, the more agile among tech-savvy online retailers and businessmen will not be denied their dues.

Delivering a custom-developed, dynamic, consumer-specific experience to the consumer is one of the top priorities right now. There is some competition with the physical markets the world over, but online retail already has an advantage in the busy cities of the world. Relevance for the individual customer will require considerable inputs of customer-centric research and facilitation. If done right, it will bring rich rewards for those who work on it.

eCommerce Future

The Internet has made possible such innovation regarding information sharing, networking, business, and overall business productivity that it is influencing lives and lifestyles on a global scale. You need to take the good with the bad, however, and there’s plenty of time-wasting going on in the name of productivity as well. So we are in a transitive, formative, transformative period in which the ecommerce cauldron is almost bubbling over.

We may very well see a day in the not-so-distant future when online shopping will be the only natural choice over any physical stores and even malls. That seems particularly inevitable when you look at escalating costs of transportation, the sheer frustration of shopping in dense crowds, and the lack of a positive response to the online shopping phenomenon from physical store owners.

If you are a businessman with both an online store and a physical store, you need to make a choice fast. Send in your questions and comments to this post if you wish to consult with us.

Meanwhile, take good care of both your online store and the physical store. Used judiciously, both will pay rich dividends in the near future.

The most important benefit of wholesale drop shipping is that you need to pay for only those items that you sell. So how does the wholesale drop shipping business work?

First off, you need to find a supplier who offers drop shipping services. This may require communicating with them to find out about the service and set up an account. Most drop shipping service providers will allow you to credit your account. Alternately, you could just pay for every item once you sell. Thereafter, you should use the drop shipper’s product photos and descriptions for the items you’d like to sell and put them up on your ecommerce website or an ecommerce portal such as eBay.

Once you have made a sale and received the payment from the end customer, you can visit your drop shipping wholesaler’s website, log in, select the product you sold, enter the end customer’s address and details, and pay for the product. The drop shipping wholesaler will package the product and send it on its way to the end customer!

Sounds convenient? Right, so here are the core benefits of drop shipping:

Drop Shipping

• Drop shipping wholesalers take the headaches of handling and managing stock, inventory, and so on, which saves you a great deal of time.
• No website to maintain means that you also do not bother about managing one.
• Packaging, postage – all shipping management – is taken care of by the drop shipper.
• You need to pay for only the stock you sell, so there’s no risk of holding stock that doesn’t sell
• You do not require a significant investment to get started.
• The lack of risk is a major advantage for new sellers. More advanced sellers have the advantage of being able to offer end customers more choice.

There’s absolutely no doubt that this is a profitable proposition. Experts on drop shipping business agree that when you add up the total number of sales of low-demand products, they exceed the sales figures for single, high-demand products. You can make the most of this strategy easily. Drop shippers are able to make money by selling several low-demand products without any risk or storage inconvenience.

Definitely worth trying out.

Drop shipping business leads to better sales and more profit without any investment or risk. For more details, give us a call: +1-888-828-9864 or Contact Us.

An mcommerce site is predisposed to display specifically engineered content within the limited canvas. If any of the businesses with an mcommerce website should aim to achieve 10% of sales from their mcommerce site, they should be looking at the following suggestions:

• Content meant for the mobile device needs to be engineered specifically for the purpose. There’s no point in using merely shortened or linked versions of the full descriptions. The point to note here is that creating mcommerce content will require site-specific research to determine the kind of content a majority of visitors are looking for.
• Dedicated staff can help you create perfect mcommerce content, but it is an expensive option.
  

  mcommerce website

• User-generated content will be required in huge amounts and still have to be moderated.
• Aim for a balance between content and specs. Otherwise, mobile visitors might not stay on long enough. Remember that mcommerce is still more about providing the info than about real conversions.
• Categories such as top sellers and latest additions are critical to help customers prioritize. Mcommerce customers are five times more likely to refer to such shortlists than their ecommerce counterparts.
• Since mcommerce sites are run from a database, a script that can find names of categories in the content can be very useful.
• Intuitive GUI cannot be compromised on an mcommerce site. The design must also be limited to mcommerce best practices.
• B2B mcommerce sites can carry off specs in an appropriately higher proportion than the rest of the content. But leave statistics aside and concentrate on the message you want to send across.

Your mobile commerce site should hide nothing yet provide everything. People are looking at it on the fly. They do not have the time to later go to your ecommerce site and look up the critical details such as pricing and features. Ensure that these figure prominently on your mcommerce site.

Mcommerce developers can and will do full justice to your mcommerce site. These are people in the thick of things, so they know how exactly mcommerce site visitors are using sites at any given moment. Find a reliable service provider and watch your mcommerce site develop into a superb instrument for mobile device users.