• Remove Unused Javascript
•  Remove Unused CSS
•  Optimization of Images
•  W3C validatation
•  Improve Caching
•  Optimization of Javascript
•  Optimization of CSS
•  Remove used HTML, Spacing, Comments
•  Proper utilization of CDN
•  Gzip Compression
•  Make fewer HTTP requests
•  Avoid empty src or href
•  Add Expires headers
•  Put CSS at top
•  Put JavaScript at bottom
•  Make JavaScript and CSS external
•  Reduce DNS lookups
•  Minify JavaScript and CSS
•  Configure entity tags (ETags)
•  Make AJAX cacheable where possible
•  Do not scale images in HTML
•  Defer parsing of JavaScript
•  Disable unuesed modules, remove from site
•  Create HTML Catalog

The post How Can I Speed Up My Website appeared first on Stores on Steroids.

It’s true… if you haven’t paid attention to what your visitors are using to view your site, it’s about time you did.

First, log in to your Google Analytics account.

Navigate to view your mobile traffic by going here:

In one of my sample sites, you can tell that the traffic is present, but the intent to buy is not:

The “No” is people who use desktops and laptops. “Yes” includes phones and tablets.

As you can see, desktop and tablet users outperform mobile users in all the important metrics, including conversion rate, average order, and per visit value.

The kicker is that this particular website is not optimized for mobile traffic.

For a better breakdown, navigate to see individual mobile devices here:

These devices fluctuate wildly in terms of conversion, as you can see below:

At the top, iPads outperform everything else. Why is this? Probably because they are most like desktops and laptops- they have larger screens, and people are more comfortable entering secure information on them.

There’s also another theory- people do research on mobile devices, and purchase on the desktops.

In order to allow people to research more efficiently, you need to provide a platform where people are comfortable researching. If someone tries to access your web-only site on a phone, they’ll have a difficult time navigating.

Appease your mobile-savvy visitors. Here’s a few ideas:

• Create a inexpensive, mobile-friendly version of your site. It shouldn’t cost more than a few hundred dollars.
• Create an abandoned cart series. If they enter their email address in your cart, but fail to purchase, send them an email reminder.
• Give them an option to email their carts to themselves, or create a wishlist.

By doing these small things and increasing the way users experience your site over different platforms, you should see a sizable bump in your conversions.

The post Is It Time to Go Mobile? appeared first on Stores on Steroids.

As a retailer, you do not have to store products or manage shipping. You just need to transfer your customer orders to the wholesaler or manufacturer, so that he will do the shipping directly to the customer. If managed correctly, you can grow your business and make huge profits though dropshipping.

Reduced investment
To run an online store by implementing dropshipping, you just need an efficiently designed website. You do not have to store or manage products at a safe place or supervise shipping related issues. Thus, you don’t have to invest in warehouse, which actually needs considerable amount of money and effort.

A huge investment is required to provide shipping facilities. All that money can be saved with dropshipping. You should be ready to spend enough money for your website design as it is one of the major factors that decides the success of your business.

Your website should provide an in-house shopping experience to customers, so that they will return back to your site whenever they plan to shop online.

Sell maximum types of products and services
If you have the skill to get wholesalers, manufacturers or service providers as dropshippers, you will not have any restriction in selling different kinds of products.
You can sell electronic products, groceries, kids’ items, books, software applications etc; in other words, anything and everything under the sky with dropshipping.

Minimum risk
You do not pay anything upfront (other than for the design of your website). In traditional business, if customers do not purchase items that you have stored, then you are going to lose your money.

Many times, trends or interests of customers change so quickly that most of your inventory would remain unsold, resulting in loss of revenue. With dropshipping, you do not own an inventory. So, the risk associated with is is very minimal.

Very convenient and practical
How great it is to earn money without taking care of shipment, inventory management etc. Usually, shipment is a real headache for many retailers and it is a primary factor that makes customers dissatisfied. Though the retailer has done everything to ensure timely shipment, due to unexpected reasons the product might not reach customers at the correct time, in correct quantity and at the correct location.

With dropshipping, the manufacturer or wholesaler takes care of shipment. Because of this, it is not that difficult to run an international business. You only need to find reliable dropshippers across the globe.

About the Author

Richard enjoys blogging about ecommerce and online business strategies. Over the last 4 years, Richard has published numerous articles on Magento, supply chain management and conversion optimization.

The post 4 Reasons Why Dropshipping Might Benefit Your Online Store appeared first on Stores on Steroids.

Well, this is one of the commonly asked question in almost all ‘major marketing via social media’ forums. In fact, the fastest expanding online social network is Facebook. The number of its regular users is currently more than a billion. It is also the hottest marketing and advertising forum on the web. The fact that it is made and designed with the core idea of ‘sharing’ makes it easy for word concerning event, brand or business to spread. Many marketing managers are currently utilizing the potential of Facebook as a platform for reaching directly to probable customers.

Guidelines on Facebook Marketing

Now is the time to tap into the marketing ability of Facebook, for those who have not. Irrespective of the kind of business you got, it is worth devoting your time in Facebook marketing. Below are a few guidelines on how to go about this all important marketing campaign on your via your own account without hurting your brand.

Promoting Your Brand by Sharing its Links your Own Wall

Creating an individual’s ‘fan page’ or business page is the initial step to marketing your business. After giving the necessary details of your business, you can post updates about the product on your wall, upload brand’s photos and keep your fans abreast on the latest services and offers. Sharing the page with friends on your personal profile is another way to popularize it.

The ‘like’ button in Facebook is a feature which shares automatically the link in connected friends’ news feed. It is, without question, Facebook’s most potent feature that is able to make a business popular. Whenever anybody ‘likes’ your fan page, it is updated and can be seen in their friend’s news feed hence attracting more fans and in no time, you will have created in thousands a fan base for the business.

Reaching out via Targeted Facebook Adverts

Google’s AdSense is an example of Facebook’s own program for advertising which one can utilize to show their own adverts on the users’ profile pages. One has to select a budget and display a banner advert, which can create interest in the website. However, these adverts are placed in context as per the user’s interest. Using this you can increase entry into the potential customers’ base and get increased traffic, via Facebook adverts.

Promoting Events Using Friend and Fan Connections

You can use your personal page to popularize local events and contests organized by your brand, increasing the visibility of the brand.

Adding to Your Webpage the ‘Like’ Button

Adding the Facebook ‘like’ button to each page of your website, if you got one, is a great way of marketing the contents of your webpage on Facebook. In liking your webpage, a user automatically popularizes it by sharing it by his friends on his Facebook wall.

Using Facebook Marketplace to Buy and Sell

The latest feature on Facebook is the e-commerce platform, Facebook marketplace, where one can sell and buy merchandise. It can effectively be used by local businesses to create another sales channel for their products and boost the sale of their products.

I hope that these tricks and guidelines on Facebook marketing will help increase traffic to your website or grow a bigger fan base and increase the customer size for your brand. Moreover, remember that you can always buy Facebook fans cheap. Never forget that the ‘like’ button is Facebook’s most powerful feature with the ability to divert a massive traffic to any advertised brand or shared link. Just Create account in Facebook, make a fan page and follow the guidelines and reach your to be customers!

Jessica G. Eckhardt finds intelligent and resolute campaigns and strategies to businesses as a social media consultant.

The post Does Your Facebook Account Help Or Hurt Your Brand? appeared first on Stores on Steroids.

This is because you can add a human, authentic touch to your campaign. Reading words from a web page does not carry the same effect as seeing a video describing a product or service. You are a creature who relies heavily on certain senses, like most people, and hearing a voice or seeing a bright, shiny video can influence you to purchase a product quite fast. Nothing grabs your attention like video.

Remember that presentation plays a huge part in the success of your video marketing campaign. You must put in time and effort to learn the ins of outs of video creation software. Study viral videos. What characteristics seem to be common among these most popular videos? Each vid carries a certain type of energy which goads you to click the play button and watch the video in its entirety. This is the secret of successful video marketing; emotionally moving people to watch the entire presentation, snaring your attention and holding your focus for the full production.

Stress the Benefits of Your Product or Service

Focusing on the benefits of your product or service helps you to effectively connect with the needs of your target market. Individuals want to solve one of their problems by buying whatever you have to offer. If you can match the benefits of buying your product with their pain point you will easily be able to spread the word about your business and of course grow your venture over time. This is the smart way to expand your presence through video.

Use Keywords to Target Your Marketing Campaign

By using niche specific keywords your videos can rank higher in large search engines such as google, helping you drive targeted, passive traffic to your website. Do not bother creating a video to market your product unless you post keywords related to your niche in the title and description fields. This sends out a loud and clear message to interested prospects that you are looking for them specifically. Keywords can make or break your online video marketing campaign so make sure to research what your target market is searching for before tagging your videos with keywords.

Practice Creating Videos to Improve Your Online Presentation

Whether you are standing in front of the camera or you are filming your product, service, or some marketing materials you need to practice setting up your video presentation to optimize your marketing campaign. It takes plenty of practice in order to see and tweak the details which need to be developed in order to properly and effectively share your product with your audience.

If you happen to be speaking on video you need to become comfortable with your voice and appearance on video. This is a sore point with most people who believe they look and sound funny once the camera begins rolling. If you are filming your product you will need to shoot under the appropriate lighting in order to make your star stand out. This can take a great deal of patience as you want the lighting to be perfect, to reduce shadows or any obscuring of your product. Be patient and persistent as you practice shooting videos to effectively build your video marketing campaign on a solid foundation.

Use these helpful tips to effectively market your business product on video today.

Kelli Cooper is a freelance writer who has written on various online and offline video marketing topics, ranging from dvd replication basics to how to talk to your target audience.

The post Lights, Camera, Action: Tips For Effective Video Marketing appeared first on Stores on Steroids.

There’s a right way and a wrong way to accumulate domains.  Here’s how to do it the right way and set yourself up for success…

This is the process I follow when researching and buying domains.

When you first have an idea for a domain, first check the niche by going to Google’s Keyword Tool. Check the search volume for the keywords in that industry.

For example, we’ll be looking at the niche industry for “kitten sweaters”…

After you determine your keyword, go to Google and search for “wholesale domains”.

Instead of going straight to GoDaddy.com to pay $12 for a domain, click on their PPC ad and you’ll be able to reserve it for as little as $0.99

Once you click their add, search for your desired domain…

Keep searching for varieties of your desired domain until one is available.

Go ahead and reserve your domain for cheap. When you do, set the duration for 1 year. Also, set it to expire automatically in one year. If you don’t make an effort to monetize your new domain within one year, chances are you never will, so there’s no use keeping it and paying $12 per year.

You can host if for about $3-4 per month through GoDaddy if you want. If you do, I recommend putting up a simple WordPress template with a keyword rich title tag, keyword rich article, and a few links for indexing purposes.

Then, install Google Analytics on your site. This will track any traffic your site gets, which will help you gauge if your domain is worth keeping when it comes up for expiration in a year.

This is the right way to set your domain buying up for success. If you take these extra steps, you will be able to actively judge if your domain is worth keeping beyond its expiration.

The post The Right Way to Buy Domains appeared first on Stores on Steroids.

Most Reputation Management firms charge thousands of dollars per month to clean up Google results for your company’s name and branded terms. However, if you follow these quick steps, you can save yourself plenty of time and money.

Tip #1- Make Sure Your Main Website Ranks at the Top of Search Results for Your Branded Terms

This sounds like a no-brainer, but many websites are so poorly optimized that they don’t even come up when their name is searched. It’s ok- this can be easily corrected.

Start by putting your branded terms in the beginning of your website’s home page title tag. There is a term called “keyword prominence”, which means that keywords at the beginning of paragraphs, h1 tags, and even title tags, are weighted heavily.

By putting your branded terms towards the front of your home page’s title tag, it will give your site a quick jump in the rankings.

Tip #2- Claim All Your Company’s Social Media Properties Like Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter & LinkedIn

By creating a page on each social media site, you can potentially have four additional rankings in Google’s top 10 for your branded search terms.

Be sure to claim your “vanity url”, which would be as follows:

Facebook.com/yourcompany
Twitter.com/yourcompany
plus.google.com/yourcompany
LinkedIn.com/yourcompany

Not only does this insure that no one else gets what is rightfully yours, but it also helps with your social media rankings.

Post on these pages often, and be sure to link your social profiles to your website’s mainpage to help with step #1.

Tip #3- Create Profiles on your Industry Review Websites

Many online industries have their own review-focused websites, where customers can go and read about the experiences of other customers.

Create profiles and become active on these websites. They tend to rank extremely well because of all the fresh content that is published, so be sure that your company’s profile has glowing reviews. If not, try to reach out to customers that posted negative reviews and try to make their experience with your company a positive one.

Tip #4- Create Press Releases that Shine a Positive Light on Your Company

Use websites like PRweb.com and PRnewswire.com to distribute well written press releases about your company. This could be anything from stories about charitable donations to community outreach to even cutting edge technology that is newsworthy.

The trick is to get the press release to rank highly for your branded company terms. Again, we are going to use “keyword proximity” to our advantage.

For example, use the following formulas for high-ranking articles:

“Your Company Name” + Saves the Day for + “Local Organization”
“Your Company Name” + Takes time to + “Help Local Charity”
“Your Company Name” + Leads the Way in + “Your Online Niche or Industry”

Not only do these tend to rank high and quick, but you get to tell potential customers about the good deeds your company does.

Also, make sure you link back to your home page with branded anchor text to help your website rank for your company’s keywords.

Tip #5- Publish Videos on YouTube

Even if you know nothing about video production, you can still use YouTube to your reputation’s advantage.

Start by creating a quick and simple “how to” video that relates to your industry. Shoot for 2-5 minutes in length.

If you don’t have the time to create your own video, find a “how to” video within your industry and offer to purchase the rights. It shouldn’t be expensive at all- in fact, many companies will let you do it for free.

If you are given permission, find a local video producer or developer to add your company’s logo as a watermark in one of the corners of the video, and then upload it to your new YouTube account.

When uploading your video, be sure to use keyword proximity by inserting your company’s name in the video title. Also, the description field is another good place to link to your website’s homepage.

Tip #6- Bid on Your Branded Terms in Google AdWords

This is an option if you’re trying to hide bad online reviews posted about your company. If your PPC ad is at the top of the page, it could push down bad reviews below the fold on a searcher’s computer.

Tip #7- Set Up Google Alerts for Your Branded Terms

Go to google.com/alerts to set up email alerts whenever Google comes across your company name or branded terms. This is a great way to see what is being said about your company online.

It is also useful if you want to find ways to turn unhappy customers into positive testimonials.  If someone posts about your company on a website you’re currently unfamiliar with, Google Alerts will notify you with a link to the page that lists your branded terms.

Reputation management can become a difficult project to tackle, but when done correctly, there are direct benefits. Potential customers who do a little research on your company won’t be scared away by a lack of presence, or worse yet, by a string of uncountered, negative reviews.

The post 7 Steps to Managing Your Online Reputation appeared first on Stores on Steroids.

If you have decided to use infographics for your own website then there are some tools and techniques that will help you create them. We’re going to take a look at some of them so that you can get some ideas for designing your very own infographic.

Easelly

This is one of the easiest tools to use because you are given a basic template to start out with, and then you work from there. These templates, otherwise known as “Vhemes”, can be customized so that you can design them to match your own website. Change the text, some of the graphics, and perhaps the background itself. It is basically a click-and-drag type of program that is extremely easy to use.

Piktochart

Piktochart has two different types of memberships that you can go with. The first one is free and gives you access to six different templates, while the other requires a small fee but gives you access to a bit more. The main difference between Piktochart and Easelly is the fact that Piktochart takes you through a step-by-step process to design your infographic.

You start by selecting your theme, which you will have six or more options depending on your membership. After that you can change the mood that effects the colors so that it can make the infographic seem more colorful and happy, or maybe even just professional and laid back. Finally, you add in the text information about your website and you’re done!

Creately

This is a fantastic program if you want to collaborate on the design of your infographic with somebody else. It allows multiple people to connect to the same project so that they can both use the click-and-drag tools to add their own design to the infographic. You have a multitude of shapes and objects to work with in this program and don’t have a central theme to base your idea off of, so your design is entirely up to you!

Conclusion

First off, you want your design to stand out since it’s purpose is to linkbait. Throw in some contrasting colors, fancy design work, and artistic elements; be sure to keep a professional image! If you decide to use one of the programs that allow you to base your infographic off of a pre-made theme, you should be able to base your first project off of it pretty well.

If you want to learn more about linkbaiting or infographics in general, check out some ideas by @JulianaPayson here http://www.inmotionhosting.com/blog/want-free-content-to-help-develop-your-website/ Learn the various techniques that you can use to bring in more traffic to your website from someone who specializes in the webhosting industry.

The post How To Create Your Own Infographics appeared first on Stores on Steroids.

Introduction to Facebook Advertising 

The entire point of advertising is to sell your product. In order to do this, potential buyers must first see an ad that convinces them to buy.

In the past, companies paid for professionals to research what potential customers are already interested in, and then paid large sums of money to have their ads shown in their favorite magazines and on their favorite television networks.

However, with Facebook, advertising has never been so easy or affordable. No longer is a third party needed to help you with targeting certain demographics. No longer must you pay thousands of dollars and never know if your ad actually brought you in customers. Facebook allows you to easily do all of the work yourself and view results at a very affordable price.

Customers at Your Fingertips

Facebook has 250 million unique visitor each month, making it the second most popular website on the internet, coming in only behind Google. With this many potential customers logging on, you no longer have to find out where your customers are located and what their interests are, Facebook will do this for you. This will take away hours of expensive research that you would traditionally pay an advertising company to do.

Targeting Made Easy 

Facebook Ads makes targeting potential customers and advertising easy. Like you, Facebook understand that not every person that logs on is a potential customer. Some Facebook users live in foreign countries to where it would be way too expensive to ship.  With users as young as 13 and as old as 100, some users may be outside the age range of your product or service. Knowing this, Facebook allows you to specify who will see your ad. You can specify the specific age range of your customers and what country they live in. The add that you create will then show up on their page. From there, they will be able to click on your add and be brought directly to your website.

Targeting Towards Specific Interests 

Probably the most beneficial part of using Facebook Ads is that you are able to zero in on specific people based on their interests. Users of Facebook already “like” specific things on Facebook. For instance, if you sell organic cookie dough, you are able to choose the people that will see your ad based on their interests. You may choose to only see you add chosen by people who already like “organic food” and “cookie dough”, between the ages of 18-50 who live in the United States. Never has targeting been made so simple! The ad that you create will be shown on the right side of their page.

Building a Loyal Fan Base 

All business owners know that there is no great compliment than a returning customer. Businesses are able to create a fan page or business page for their company. This page will show up in search results or you could link customers to this page in your ad. You will be able to interact with customers and post pictures of your product all for free! This will help build a relationship and will thus help you sell more products.

This post is written by Mark Jenkins from CouponAudit, where thousands of valid and working online coupons for different stores are available including but not limited to Toms coupons and various other online stores.

The post The Benefits of Advertising on Facebook appeared first on Stores on Steroids.

Advertisements and online marketing videos play a very important role in making the consumer aware of a particular product. Online Video Marketing strategies as a result can be very effective in building a consumer base.

Below we will detail a checklist to make your next online video marketing campaign a success.

What Do You Want To Market?
This is the initial question that must be addressed, although it seems simple – a clear and absolute focus must be determined before moving forward. Is it a product or service? Who are the competitors? What product or service are they offering and how is yours better? Try to avoid the same old boring marketing videos that push things on people because nine times out of ten they will exit out of the video and never give your brand the time of day it deserves. Let them see the real side of your business!

Research
After the focus of the video has been determined, its key to target specific video sites where the content can be distributed, research the marketplace, study customer trends to strategically understand what your customers want to view. Keep in mind, most audiences have a small attention span so its importance to build consistency in the branding.

Make An Interactive Video

Video is more interactive than a photo or a banner, and moving animated objects with sound definitely attracts a larger crowd of interest. This medium will allow customers to know more about a particular product of their interests and compare with other firms manufacturing the same product. Remember to keep it simple and have fun! The best web videos are ones that incorporate comedy. People like to share videos with their networks that are funny, inspiring or thought provoking. The standard ‘sales/ promotional’ videos will not become viral.

Market Your Video

After the video is produced, make sure to properly format  the video. Embed it on a webpage that can be properly optimized for the search engines. This way programs like Google Analytics can be used to properly measure the growth and views of the video. Upload to hundreds of sites, personal blogs, social media sites, RSS Feeds. This is called “viral seeding” and will encourage organic syndication. TubeMogul is another great program with video analytics to track your online video viewership trends and statistics on video sites like YouTube. It will provide you with priceless metrics.

This article was written by the staff at Virtual Web Productions, an industry leader in Online Marketing Video Production. Visit their site and seek expert opinions.

The post How To Produce An Online Marketing Video: A Checklist For Success appeared first on Stores on Steroids.