Cyber Monday A Must for Online Marketing

Holiday season retail e-commerce spending for the first 29 days of the November - December 2010 holiday season was reported today. For the holiday season-to-date, $13.55 billion has been spent online, marking a 13-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year. Cyber Monday reached $1.028 billion in online spending, up 16 percent versus year ago, representing the heaviest online spending day in history and the first to surpass the billion-dollar threshold.

"Cyber Monday was a historic day for e-commerce as we saw daily spending surpass $1 billion for the first time," said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. "The online holiday shopping season has clearly gotten off to a very strong start, which is welcome news. At the same time, it's important to note that some of the early strength in consumer spending is almost certainly the result of retailers' heavier-than-normal promotional and discounting activity at this early point in the season. So, while we anticipate that there will be more billion-dollar spending days ahead as we get deeper into the season, only time will tell if overall consumer online spending remains at the elevated levels we've seen thus far."

Cyber Monday Sales Growth Driven by Increase in Spending per Buyer

Cyber Monday's 16-percent growth in sales versus year ago was driven primarily by an increase in average spending per buyer (up 12 percent) while the number of buyers on Cyber Monday grew by a lower 4 percent to 9 million. The average spending per transaction grew 10 percent to $60.05, while the total number of transactions increased 6 percent to 17.1 million.

Web Definitions - December

BROWSER
Short for Web browser, a software application used to locate and display Web pages. The two most popular browsers are Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Both of these are graphical browsers, which means that they can display graphics as well as text. In addition, most modern browsers can present multimedia information, including sound and video, though they require plug-ins for some formats.

ISP
Short for Internet Service Provider, a company that provides access to the Internet. For a monthly fee, the service provider gives you a software package, username, password and access phone number. Equipped with a modem, you can then log on to the Internet and browse the World Wide Web and USENET, and send and receive e-mail.

WYSIWYG
Pronounced WIZ-zee-wig. Short for what you see is what you get. A WYSIWYG application is one that enables you to see on the display screen exactly what will appear when the document is printed. This differs, for example, from word processors that are incapable of displaying different fonts and graphics on the display screen even though the formatting codes have been inserted into the file.

Web Definitions - November

Banner Ads
Those graphic advertisements that you see at the top of so many Web pages.

Cache
Your browser stores everything it reads on the user's hard disk. Every HTML page, every graphic. The next time it comes to pull down the same page, it uses the cached version, which is much faster - no need to download again via the Internet.

Frames
An HTML technique allowing Web site designers to display two or more pages in the same browser window. Most search engines do not index framed Web pages properly - they only index the text present in the NOFRAMES tag. Unless a Web page which uses frames contains relevant content in the NOFRAMES tag, it is unlikely to get a high search engine ranking.

Domain Name Game

Domain name registration is a very important part of running a website for your company. In order to use a particular domain name (for example www.mycompany.com) you must register that domain name with an accredited registrar. This then gives you the right to use that particular domain name for your website for a fixed period of time, somewhere between 1 and 10 years. At the end of that period you can either let the registration expire (which means some other company can now register that domain) or renew for another X number of years. As the "owner" of the domain, you can renew the domain with the same registrar you originally registered through, or you can transfer that registration to a new registrar. The choice is entirely yours.

The Domain Name Game starts a few months before your current registration is set to expire. Because domain name registrations are public records, it is easy to find out what the expiration date is on any domain name. Many companies then use this information and send out very official "Domain Name Expiration Notices". The notices inform you that "you must renew your domain name to retain exclusive rights to it on the web". What they don't point out very clearly is the fact that you do not have to renew it through their company. The notices are cleverly designed to make you believe that you must renew your domain through them. These companies also charge high dollar amounts for the annual registration.

The good news for JADE International customers is that as long as you host your website with us, your annual registration fee is INCLUDED! We take care of renewing your registration every year and you never have to pay any additional fees. If you receive one of these official looking notices, you can completely disregard them if you are a JADE hosting customer.

Web Definitions - October

Bulletin board
A bulletin board is a location on a Web site where people come to share information. Typically, you see a list of postings for a certain topic. You can read each posting, choose to respond to one or more of them, and then enter and post your response. Or you can start your own thread, a continuing sub-topic within the topic under discussion. If this type of concept fits with your product and target market, it can be a great way for visitors to trade information.

Domain name
A network name associated with an organization (e.g., google.com or yahoo.com). Domain names are organized in a hierarchy, with each level separated by a "dot." Common organizational types are commercial (.com), government (.gov), and network (.net). In the U.S., most Internet addresses follow a standard format: name of server.name of organization.type of organization.

Flash
A Web-based animation application that transforms Web pages into a swirl of action, colors, and excitement. Without broadband access, this involves a long loading time (and the potential loss of visitors who are unwilling to wait). As well, a Flash application means no content for Search Engines spiders to crawl and rank (which means that you can't take advantage of free Search Engine traffic).

Hyperlinks
The underlined words or phrases you click on in Web documents to jump to another screen or page. Hyperlinks contain HTML-coded references that point to other Web pages, which your browser then jumps to.

A Few Search Engine Strategies

Write a Keyword-Rich Page Title.

Write a descriptive title for each page -- rich in keywords you want people to find you with -- using 5 to 8 words. Remove as many "filler" words from the title (such as "the," "and," etc.) as possible, while still making it readable. This page title will appear hyperlinked on the search engines when your page is found. Entice searchers to click on the title by making it a bit provocative. Place this at the top of the webpage between the tags, in this format: . (It also shows on the bar at the top of your web browser.)

Include Your Keywords in Headers (H1, H2, H3).
Search engines consider keywords that appear in the page headline and sub heads to be important to the page, so make sure your desired keywords and phrases appear in one or two header tags. Don't expect the search engine to parse your Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) to figure out which are the headlines -- it won't. Instead, use keywords in the H1, H2, and H3 tags to provide clues to the search engine. (Note: Some designers no longer use the H1, H2 tags. That's a big mistake. Make sure your designer defines these tags in the CSS rather than creating headline tags with other names.)

Position Your Keywords in the First Paragraph of Your Body Text.
Search engines expect that your first paragraph will contain the important keywords for the document -- where most people write an introduction to the content of the page. You don't want to just artificially stuff keywords here, however. More is not better. Google might expect a keyword density in the entire body text area of maybe 1.5% to 2% for a word that should rank high, so don't overdo it.

Use Keywords in Hyperlinks.
Search engines are looking for clues to the focus of your webpage. When they see words hyperlinked in your body text, they consider these potentially important, so hyperlink your important keywords and keyphrases. To emphasize it even more, the webpage you are linking to could have a page name with the keyword or keyphrase, such as blue-widget.htm -- another clue for the search engine.

Web Definitions - September

Opt-in E-mail Marketing
Many Web marketers create a newsletter that offers content of value to the reader. The Web site asks visitors to subscribe to this newsletter. When they fill in and submit their e-mail address, they are said to be opting-in. The process of sending an e-zine or newsletter to people who have specifically requested to receive it is called opt-in e-mail marketing. It's a powerful, long-term relationship.

Stop Word
A word that often appears in Web pages, yet has no significance by itself. Most search engines ignore stop words while searching. Example of stop words are: and, the, of etc.

View Source
Both Netscape and Explorer allow you to see the HTML coding behind the actual Web page that you see with your Web browser software. The command is under the View menu. It's a terrific way to quickly learn how Web sites accomplish neat effects, what kind of keywords are used by your competition, etc., etc.