Nextwave Media - Creative Internet Solutions

A typical new visitor to your website will determine whether to stay or leave within the first 15 seconds. Since the web got infinite alternatives to your site, it’s crucial that you immediately instill a sense of trust. So without further ado, here’s 10 to make your site seem more trustworthy at first glance.

1) Invest In Design

An aesthetically pleasing site will show the visitor that you’re serious and didn’t just hack something together in the dark hours of the night.
A well-designed site (not to confuse with over-designed) shows that you’ve spent time and money on it, instilling trust.

2) Show A Pulse

It’s important to show new visitors that the content they’re seeing isn’t on some old abandoned site left for the eternal Internet archive.
Display some recently updated content (with a date) to show that your site is up to date. Having a blog or an embedded Twitter feed are great ways to show your site and people behind it are still active.

Interesting read for those clients of ours with Facebook pages (which is nearly everyone!). This PDF file was released by Facebook themsleves and contains a wide range of tip and tricks and ideas to get the most out of your Facebook business page.

Follow the link to the PDF below via the Facebook site…

Building your business with Facebook page

When you run a web-based business, customer satisfaction is key. Users who have an unpleasant experience on your website are unlikely to return or recommend the site to their friends, which is why a web-app called Feedbackify has come up with a system that lets online entrepreneurs get feedback on their websites in real-time. Visitor feedback that’s delivered through Feedbackify is private and quick, just the way it should be.

Sign up for Feedbackify and get started creating your very own feedback form using the web-app’s form editor tool. In addition to adding written questions, you can also add ratings-based questions that encourage visitors to rate certain elements of your website on a numeric scale. Create question categories, reorder those categories until you’re satisfied, and then upload your company logo to give your Feedbackify form a custom look. When you’re ready to deploy your new form, you can use Feedbackify’s feedback tab configurator to make a custom tab to appear on your existing site. When visitors click the tab, they’ll be transported to your Feedbackify form, where they can let you know how your site is functioning and whether there’s any room for improvement.

Interesting post at The Find about the effects on the bottom line of internet retailers who offer free shipping.

See the post in detail here

Came across this informative article over on All Facebook about marketing your business page on Facebook.
Do it well, the benefits are:

• Engagement: Greater interaction
• Visibility: Facebook shows your posts to more of your fans
• Free fans: You get more fans for free — one Fortune 1000 company combining good advertising and engagement tactics got more than half of their fans for free.
• Testimonials: Your fans become so positive that they give spontaneous testimonials which convince fans who are still just prospects how great you are
• Reputation protetction: Overwhelming positivity on a fan page wards off negative attacks from critics and provides volunteer defenders

Read the rest of the post

If your business isnt already on Facebook, you are potentially missing out on a valuable free marketing channel. Talk to us today

All commercial website owners want people to visit their site. Since you’ve gone to the trouble to produce a website, you have probably also made a little effort to learn something about how to get it noticed. In the course of your reading, you will have read about back links, but you may not know exactly what they are. This guide for building back links is intended for people like you.

Once you’ve published your site, you’ll then want to start the process of promoting it using SEO (Search Engine Optimization). You’ll maybe subscribe to newsletters by SEO gurus in hopes of gaining some valuable insights. Like many beginners, some of the best advisers will be useless to you because they use terminology you don’t yet fully understand.

By now, it’s understood that social media networking and marketing are invaluable to business. It seems this may be particularly true for small businesses, who are now turning more of their resources toward online and social media marketing.According to a recent study conducted by eMarketer, more than half of all small businesses (55%) consider Facebook beneficial to their business. Other social media sites that were ranked as moderately or highly beneficial include Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. If you are a small businesses owner who has not yet ventured far into the world of social media, you may wonder, “Why do they consider these sites important?”

First and foremost? Businesses look to social media marketing to generate leads. Almost 60% of the small businesses surveyed said that “Lead Generation” was positively affected by social media marketing. Another top-rated and highly important benefit is keeping up with the industry. Any small business owner will tell you that it’s hard to compete when you’re not sure what the competition is up to.

Interesting article about the power of email marketing, not the least of which is that 19 percent of shoppers surveyed said they visited a top retailer’s online storefront after receiving a promotional email from the company. Eight percent said they were driven there by search engine results, and only five percent said their decision to visit one of the top 40 retail websites was primarily influenced by social media channels such as recommendations on Facebook or Twitter.

Read the full article

We offer a self-serve email marketing system that makes newsletters and promotional emails a cinch. Join 200+ clients using Nextwave Mailer for their email marketing strategy, see the website for more info, or get in touch with us today if you’d like to discuss this effective marketing strategy.

Hows this for a low cost, easy advertising campaign that will generate buzz, create new customers, and develop new content for your products: the social photo contest. Create a photo contest campaign that includes your customers using/wearing/holding your product(s). It is inexpensive, easy to set up, and surprisingly effective. Talk to us today about how to go about this.

Converting visitors into customers is about more than just supplying great product information. It’s about more than a great design, simple navigation and customer service links. The basics–such as page design and content presentation are certainly necessary. But if you want to grow a loyal customer base for the long term, you have to reach even further.
Here are six ways to engage visitors and turn more of them into actual customers, bringing friends with them.

1. Serve up the ideal newsletter. Contrary to what some social media “experts” say, people still like to receive email from companies they love and from stores that carry items or product lines to which they’re devoted. By integrating useful tips and links to articles or invites to forums, you’re opening up a channel for conversation, of which customers will take advantage.

This special issue of Web Digest features “boutique” blogs on Social Media with original content.

Out of the hundreds of blogs out there on Social Media, we’ve selected 9 that we think are worthy of your valuable time.

1. Social Media Optimization

David Wilson, who writes this daily blog, runs a search engine marketing agency so it’s no surprise that he views Social Media marketing through an SEM lens. His blog posts offer practical advice on incorporating Social Media wisely into a marketing program.

He’s not afraid to swim against the tide of conventional wisdom either. One recent post, “Don’t Build Your Brand on a Third Party Platform,” argued why businesses should not dump their websites for Facebook Pages.

Looking for case studies? Wilson devotes an entire page to them, many detailing his own company’s experiences. (Example: His company compared Facebook Ads with Google Adwords and found the Facebook program delivered a significantly higher ROI.)

Just read an interesting post for those clients just getitng started with their blogs. Perhaps a bit basic not for the more advanced bloggers but I’m sure you will be able to find some takeaway points to assist you in getting the most out of this valuable social media tool. Its called “Best practices for a killer corporate blog” you can see the post over on Imedia Connection.

If you havent yet taken the plunge into the personal publshing world of blogs then get in touch with us today for a free consultation. Blogs form the basis of a successful social media strategy and will only get more important over time.

Build Links to Boost Your Search Engine Rankings Introducing Wordtracker’s Link Builder Tool

The surest way to improve your website rankings in the search engines is to get quality links pointing to your site.

With Wordtracker’s powerful new Link Builder tool, you’ll be able to:

• Find hundreds of top quality link prospects
• Uncover your competitors’ linking strategies (and beat them at their own game)
• Analyze sites that rank well for a particular keyword
• Plan and create your own high impact linking campaigns
• Drive more traffic, sales and revenue for your business

This Link Builder tool offers 7 day free trial (credit card required), a 30 day money back guarantee and the cost is $59 per month, not much if you consider other forms of attracting traffic. And unlike pay-per-click improving your search rankings means you dont have to pay for every visitor delivered to your site. Yes it takes some time and effort but in the long term its a must to not have to rely solely on paying for visitors.
Follow this link to find out more info and/or sign up for the free trial

Instead of putting an entire offer or promotion in your email, use teaser content that points to more information on your website or blog. This has the added bonus of providing customers and prospects with more of a reason to click a link and make their way over to your site. It also creates the possibility of up-selling other products and services on your website.

Checkout this free online resizing tool

A sudden stoppage in online sales can be scary. Hopefully you haven’t experienced this scenario. But if you have, you know that empty feeling when your orders cease to arrive in your inbox. What to do? As in any time of crisis, take a deep breath, stay calm, and then get down to business in solving this disturbing puzzle in a systematic way.

Here are six areas to investigate.

1. Your Site’s Code Is Broken

Whether you use a template-driven ecommerce system or work with a custom web designer, mistakes can be materialize, seemingly out of nowhere. A small coding error can render your site useless. If your drop in order volume alarms you, place a test order on your site. Perhaps you will discover that the “Add to Cart” button has mysteriously disappeared, or the formatting is out of whack and the prices are not showing next to the products. Go through the entire checkout process, including entering valid credit card information, to be sure you haven’t missed an important detail.

To improve your search engine ranking, increase the number of quality links to your site. Links are the lifeblood of search, especially for competitive terms. You don’t necessarily have to pay for links. You can obtain links through suppliers, customers, product reviews, and links from local organizations that you are part of, such as chambers of commerce and civic associations. Friends, family and more… We cannot stress the importance of building links. Talk to us today if youd like to automate this laborious process.

Creating a Facebook presence has become a must-have for brands these days. Most companies decide to establish themselves with one or more Fan pages. As opposed to personal profile pages, these pages are specifically purposed for companies, brands and famous people; their key measure of success being the number of “fans” that a page has.

There are many features and customization options on Fan pages including the ability to customize photos, layouts and the tab structure. With so many options, it can be a bit mind-boggling to determine an approach for how to lay out your page.

Click here to view the page above on Facebook
A review of existing Fan pages indicates that there are a number of different approaches that one might take. The choice of which approach to take should be based on the company’s product and service profile. Here is a breakdown of some approaches to consider:

Business owners shouldn’t be afraid of feedback, but rather use it in a proactive and productive way. Those who don’t encourage customer feedback and dialogue through reviews miss out on valuable business information about what they are doing well and not so good. Use feedback to correct issues, strengthen the brand and further build credibility.

When it comes to products, most people certainly appreciate another persons opinion.
Many of our Nextwave Commerce clients are utilising reviews to assist potential customers in making that all important purchase decision.

Examples include

http://www.bebeonline.com.au/shop/nursery/soft-toys/Plush-Monkey/

http://www.bubsboutique.com/shop/boys/Concorde-Tee/

http://www.littlegypsies.com/shop/Girls-clothes/Gypsy-crochet-skirt/

Talk to us today  about utilising reviews on your website.

Up-sells increase average earnings per sale, and a properly executed up-sell can even increase your conversion rates. Compelling up-sell offers should cost no more than 30 percent of the price of your primary product. And, when choosing your up-sell offers, always select products that complement your primary product offer. Talk to us today if you arent sure how to utilise this function within your strategy

During the holidays, ecommerce merchants have advantages over their brick and mortar counterparts. Convenience and round the clock shopping are two of those advantages.

But those who wants to expand sales would be well served to look at their disadvantages as an online merchant. One of the areas The Nielsen Company explored in a recent holiday survey was those disadvantages.

They found that consumers don’t want to pay additional money for shipping and handling and they will, in some cases, avoid shopping online for that very reason. If you dont already, this info should have thinking about offering free shipping, at least when customers spend over a certain amount or what about free shipping possibly just for the Christmas period?

Other consumers feel the need to see or touch a product. This, too, is an obstacle that could potentially be avoided with the use of a zoomable images, product video or demonstration. Reviews and detailed descriptions can also assist in this area.
By understanding your company’s disadvantages, you may be able to lessen them.

As the Internet matures so does the sophistication of online shoppers. Studies indicate that today’s shoppers expect retailers to provide not only textual product information, but also detailed, zoomable images, videos, and alternate product views. A superior customer experience separates the best-of-breed retailers from the rest of the pack. Nextwave Commerce, our flagship software offers zoomable images for more informed purchase decisions.

The aim here is to do everything possible to simulate actually being in store and holding the product.

See some live examples of zoomable images here.(mouse over product image for zoom)

http://www.bagladies.com.au/shop/all-bags/my-other-bags-are-prada/

http://www.serenaandlily.com.au/shop/Gift/Gypsy-Tote/ 

http://www.swankyandswish.com/shop/Womens/womens-eyewear/Brown-Sugar-Gold-W/ 

http://www.bubsboutique.com/shop/boys/baby-boys/rock-baby-onesie-white/ 

If you arent already using zoomable images talk to us today!

Stumbled on a wealth of reading material for our Nextwave Commerce clients.

The Blog eConsultancy has a great post by Jake Hird that I wanted to share here on 10 Steps to help you become a Social Media Ninja:

1. Preparation

You need to do your homework. It’s no good rushing in, without a clue about what your overall business goals are.

Once these have been established, then you can figure out what place (if at all) social media has in helping reach your objectives. Leading on from this, it will also become easier to identify key areas of engagement and therefore allow you to focus on the areas that will be of greater benefit. Econsultancy’s Social Media Template Files contain a strategy guideline that you might find useful as a starting point.

2. Patience

As the adage goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day. The same thing applies to any social media activity: it generally takes a fair bit of time to establish a positive presence.