Official Blog

Here is your friendly reminder that with everything going on in the economy and the timing of the holidays fast approaching –we want to encourage you to do all that you can do to highlight your sites coupons & special offers! Last week The Center for Media Research pointed out the following results from a Harris Interactive / RetailMeNot.com survey. Using the chart below as a guide, you can see that a full 35% of online shoppers plan on using coupons this holiday season!

So, with Smarter, you can add your coupons and special offers right into your feed or add them manually thru your SAM (Smarter Account Management) account – whichever way is most convenient for you! This will give your products more prominence on our results pages for the shoppers that are looking to find them!

Also, check out the percentage of people planning on using Comparison Shopping Engines (CSE’s) Like Smarter.com for their holiday ‘good deals’ shopping!

But here’s the graphic I really like the best from the Marketing Charts site:

Click Here to view the whole article!

If you don’t already have an account with Smarter, please let me know if I can offer you my support for a Smarter account set-up in time for the holiday traffic rush! You can also register online here:

Register Now for Smarter.com!

Once more, no Trick, just Treat!

Smarter.com is looking forward to working with you for the holidays! In fact, I want to remind you of our little pre-holiday gift I am offering as an incentive to any account that signs up before noon on Oct. 31st! Smarter will be having our office Halloween party that day, so make sure your account is in-place before noon and I’ll credit it with $50 in bonus clicks!

(speaking of Halloween Party, here’s a photo of some of us from last year : )

To make it easy, here is our account sign-up link!:

Official Smarter Sign-Up!

I have to tell you, we are still having temperatures here in the mid-80’s, so it still doesn’t feel quite like fall! But the truth of the matter is that it is that the first day of autumn did come quite a few weeks ago and NEXT WEEK is (finally!) election day! So, we are actually clipping along thru Q4!

Okay, I saw this article and just had to share (never fear, I’ll tie it back to comparison shopping at the end):

Read the full Recessionista New York Times article!

The New York Times Fashion & Style headline reads, “A Label for a Pleather Economy” I love it! So now I can really be on the cutting edge of style with my ‘boutique-Target’ (pronounced “TAR-shea” for those not in the know!) purchases!? The truth of the matter is that in a down-turn economy, budget and value is at the top of most shoppers minds!

Here’s the circle back!

At Smarter.com, we give every opportunity for our merchants to let shoppers know about all their special offers, coupons and discounts! We have a place for coupons in our data-feeds, and there is also a mechanism for adding them to products thru our back-end SAM (Smarter Account Management) accounts! Also, something new that we’re adding is the ability to list both the regular price of a product along-side the sale or discounted price of a product! This will serve to visually reinforce the great value that purchasing the product from your store over your competitors store offers!

E or ring me and I will be happy to explain these benefits to you further or walk you thru your Smarter account set-up.

Happy haunting until next week!  For more Recession Chic, visit Mary Hall’s blog at:

therecessionista.blogspot.com

I found a great comparison study poll for you this week from our friends at eMarketer.com and Universal McCann:

So, this begs the question: If your products are on the list above, how well are you optimizing your online reach? Reach is key; your products need to be found and your site name and brand re-enforced when shoppers are researching! What Smarter offers is another avenue for your site to pull in highly educated online shopping traffic. So basically, if you aren’t participating in comparison shopping sites like Smarter.com, you are neglecting a whole range of shopping traffic that we pull in!

Opening an account with us is simple and inexpensive (you can begin an account with as little as a $100 deposit, and this comes back to you in your first $100 worth of clicks) and there is no long-term obligation if you are not happy with your results! You can give me a call and I can help you set up your account or you register online here:

Register Here for your Smarter Account!

Lastly, knowing how important Q4 sales are to our eTail merchants, I want to include this link to a very practical article from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Small Business section, especially the part about optimizing NOW for the search engines like Google, Yahoo & MSN:

Read the full Wall Street Journal article here!

I look forward to hearing from you!

 Image Source: (eMarketer.com)

Last week’s post was a little bit lengthy, so I’m planning on keeping this one short and simple. I know that some of you are saying “we’ll see”, right? Ha! Okay, maybe you’re right…. Having said all that, there is no less a “punch” here for those that will read on!

First, I wanted to call to your attention a FREE webinar hosted by Hitwise entitled, “Retail Planning for the Holiday Season”. Here’s the blurb that caught my eye:

“The Holiday season will be here before you know it. Your retail competitors are already planning promotions and marketing initiatives to maximize traffic and sales. Make sure your promotions, content, affiliate partnerships and search programs hit the mark with Holiday gift-givers. Don’t miss this 30-minute webinar covering Hitwise data and trends from Holiday 2007 and early hints for 2008.”

Hitwise Webinar - Retail Planning for the Holiday Season
Date: Wednesday September 10, 2008
Time: 1pm EDT (10am PDT), 30 minute duration

Here is the link for Registering!

On to the second thing I want to mention here… Smarter.com is planning an exciting new roll-out in the next couple of weeks and I want you all to be the first to hear about it! We are going to be updating our category landing pages in a big way! Check an example out of a current category landing page:

Smarter’s Current Home & Garden Category Landing Page

These updated landing pages are going to really come into their own with lots of fun integration to help educate our shoppers and offer them even more value when they choose to shop for the products you offer thru Smarter! Following is our official “pre-launch” blub! (BTW – I’ll explain more about how this is a benefit to YOU, our merchants, in the next few weeks!)

“With this updated version of the Smarter.com channel and sub-category pages, we’ll be pulling all the levers to deliver a streamlined, magazine-like layout that displays content ranging from ‘Top Stores’ to ‘Best Deals’ to ‘Popular Video Reviews’, and even a ‘What’s Hot’ section updated frequently by our in-house ‘Channel Guides!’”

Hope you had a great Labor Day and I look forward to talking with you soon!