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Of course when it’s mid-August and you’re an online retailer staring down the calendar toward the inevitable season of green & red, the question to ask is, “is our site READY for the holidays??” If you haven’t done that yet this month, lets pause together and ask that question now…

…Okay! I know here at Smarter our answer is ‘not quite’! We have a LOT of initiatives in the queue that we are still planning on launching this fall! (Go Green! anyone? More about that later!) Of course I will let you know about each exciting feature/opportunity as soon as the information becomes available! In the meantime – what was your answer?

Here are a few articles from this week with good suggestions to help you get ready!
Turning Web Clicks Into Purchases from CNN Money

What is SEO Anyway??
It’s FREE Traffic, You Need It - click here for 10 great SEO tips!

So read on, make sure you have an account with Smarter.com – and if you already have an account with us, keep in-touch so that together we can be sure that your account is optimized for its greatest performance potential on Smarter!

I won’t wish you a ‘happy holiday’ yet – it’s not even Labor Day, but let’s just say I hear the distant sound of jingle-bells jingling!

We all know that every day can’t be your birthday, so today it’s back to the practical! One thing that always pays is to listen to people in the same field that are experiencing the type of success we desire!

Here are four recent articles that all exemplify the idea of following a good example:

From The New York Times (7.19.08)

From CNNMoney.com (7.21.08)

From USA Today (7.21.08)

From the Indianapolis Star (7.22.08)

There are tips and pointers in these articles that cover many of the important aspects of online retailing! From tips like this one from the USA Today article, “Jeff Zimmerman also pointed me to an interesting study which found that the average cost per acquisition for search engine advertising was $8.50 per customer, as opposed to $20 each for Yellow Page advertising, $60 for email and $70 for Direct Mail. (Source: Piper Jaffray & Co.: “The New eCommerce Decade: The Age of Micro Targeting” 2006.)” to information cited by The New York Times article such as the chart below showing the recent increase in online sales vs. walk-in sales for the Gap:

There are also general tips regarding boosting your traffic using SEO and other online marketing found in the CNN & IndyStar article. It is my hope that by a little reading you will find useful, current information to help you maximize your site and bolster your online marketing efforts!

As always, please let me know if I can be of any support to you with opening an account with Smarter.com! (And yes, the $50 in Smarter ‘birthday bonus’ clicks is still in play for accounts that sign-up between now and the 31st : )

Image Source: Gap, The New York Times