A Marketing Blog (and other stuff)

Gatorade Ball Girl Viral Video

Mike Volpe — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:35:00 GMT

Great viral marketing by Gatorade. Their product could led itself to a whole series of these. I actually think it would have been better if the catch she made were more human. A great catch, but more believable. Still, very nice work. It has been successful too, read this for stats.

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

Slick, Real and Seth

Mike Volpe — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:30:00 GMT

Seth Godin is very perceptive.

Maybe most marketers should only try to do "slick" stuff if they have a huge budget and staff. I think most of us should stick to "real" stuff.

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

What is the Role of a PR Firm in a Social Media World?

Mike Volpe — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:08:00 GMT

There has been a bunch of discussion in the blogosphere today about the right role for a PR Firm in the age of social media.

See my blog article about the Role of a PR Firm in a Social Media World, and you can also watch this video from the blog www.PR-Squared.com.

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

LinkedIn Is Really Pissing Me Off (rant)

Mike Volpe — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:45:00 GMT

<rant>

I have been a LinkedIn member for longer than I can remember. Normally it is a very reliable service. But recently in the last month that has changed. And frankly, I am sick of it.

All I want to do each day is check my inbox, approve or archive invitations, approve people who have requested to be members of my groups that I manage (http://LinkedIn.ProMarketers.com) and see what other people are up to.

But, for some reason, LinkedIn is making this really hard. A few days back it would not let me log in, no matter how many times or browsers I tried. Today it is letting me approve group members for one of my groups, but not the other.

LinkedIn... Look, you used to be pretty cool. If you really want to be like Facebook (and not the next Friendster, aka failure) get your act in gear. Your website needs to be highly available and you need to stop giving me error messages whan I try to do basic things.

</rant>

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

Barak Obama to Announce VP Running Mate by Text Message

Mike Volpe — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 05:08:00 GMT

Cool idea from Barak Obama. Announce your running mate via text message and emails. I wonder how many people will sign up?

http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/firsttoknow

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

Register to Vote.. on Facebook?

Mike Volpe — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 10:54:00 GMT

I found a post on American Shelf Life about how you can now register to vote on Facebook.

Wow. This could really benefit Barak Obama. He already has a corner on social media marketing for the campaign, and this might actually be a tool to get those youger voters who support him to actually make a difference at the polls.

Over 2 million people have registered to vote using this application. What is McCain going to do now? Run more TV ads? That should work... NOT.

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

Cartier Goes Slumming on MySpace

Mike Volpe — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:46:00 GMT

I found this great post from Marketing Pilgrim. I have always told people that from a marketing perspective, unless you are selling to teens, people who frequent clubs or late night parties, people in the music industry, or people who work in adult industries, MySpace is a waste of time.

I also think that there is potential to actually damage your brand if you have a big presence on MySpace and don't want to be associated with the elements of the MySpace brand. I think Cartier is making a big mistake. I mean, there are so many other options out there... why choose MySpace?

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

Clever User-Generated Political Sign

Mike Volpe — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 09:35:00 GMT

I found this on the Duct Tape Marketing Blog. This politician lets his supporters write on the sign why they are going to vote for him.

What would your customers or supportes say if you asked them to tell other people why they liked you? Would it be the same as you company pitch? Probably not. Why not?

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

4 Reasons Why Saas is Cool

Mike Volpe — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 08:52:00 GMT

Dharmesh Shah, co-founder of HubSpot, wrote an article smacking around Business Week for their opinion of Saas on his blog OnStartups. I agree with him, and listed out my reasons in a comment. That comment seemed worthy of a blog article here. (Disclaimer: I work at HubSpot which provides internet marketing software on a Saas basis.)

Reduced IT staff required. It is difficult and expensive for a small or medium sized company to attract and retain a good IT staff. A company like Salesforce.com can do this more easily.
Reduced IT infrastructure required. Why should a small company that sells real estate have to buy servers and maintain them? It makes more sense to let your software provider do that throgh Saas.
Upgrades are easy with Saas. Have you tried to upgrade Siebel? Yuck... both for the price and for the cost of actually doing the upgrade. In contrast, Salesforce.com does multiple upgrades per year, and they just happen, pretty much. You automatically get all this cool new stuff, and you just pay the same price and do nothing to get it.
Better alignment of interests. In traditional software, you pay tons of money upfrant because a salesperson did a nice demo. Then you are stuck with the software, if it works or not. In Saas, you pay a little bit of money, and then you use the software. If it does not work like it did in the demo, you can cancel and move on. This is a huge benefit to the customer because it better aligns interests between you and the software supplier. You want the software to work, they want you to remain a customer, so they make the software work for you.

What do you think? Is Saas Cool or Crappy? Leave a comment.

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

Will the VCs Fire Me for Giving Away $50,000?

Mike Volpe — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:03:00 GMT

We're launching a $50,000 Viral Marketing Contest at HubSpot.

If you think you can create some cool content, you should enter! Both blog articles and videos are eligible.

Please enter!!! I have a meeting this afternoon with one of our VC investors and I will need to explain why I'm just giving away $50,000 of their investment...

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

3 Reasons Why Cuil is Not Cool

Mike Volpe — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:32:00 GMT

Cuil is a new search engine that just launched with lots of buzz in the startup world. It is supposed to be a "Google Killer." I don't get it. I think it sucks. Here's why:

They lie. They claim to have the "world's biggest search engine" yet when you search for some simple terms, Google returns a lot more results than they do. "Search Engine" yields 378 million results in Google and 165 million in Cuil. "Startup" yields 57 million in Google and only 40 million in Cuil.
They are solving the wrong problem. I don't need my search engine to crawl more web pages. I need higher quality, more targeted results. I need less search engine spam. I need more personalization. Cuil does none of this. Crawling the last 0.1% of webpages Google misses is like including the microscopic dust particles under my bed during a search of my house. Who cares!!!
Their results suck. Search for "Cuil" in Cuil and you Search in Google for "Cuil" and you get a bunch of results that make sense, including a news article and Cuil itself. Search for "Cuil" in Cuil, and you get results like "Properties for Sale in Cuil Mhuine, Ireland", "The Shire of Cuil Choluim" and "Download Chase Around the Windmill". What a joke.

What do you think? Is there anything about Cuil that is actually Cool? Leave a comment...

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

6 Reasons I'm a Twitter Crack Whore

Mike Volpe — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 01:01:00 GMT

Twitter treats me like crap, but I keep coming back. You would think that after the 3rd sighting of the fail whale, I would just pack up and go. But no, while the whale frustrates me to no end, I still hit the refresh button every 2 minutes to see if I can squeeze in a quick tweet.
I don't pay Twitter with money, I pay with my "time". The classic difference between a crack addict and complete crack whore is how you pay for your crack. If I paid with money, then I am just an addict. But with Twitter I pay with my time while I do un-natural and un-pleasant things... I read about what someone had for lunch. I learn what your favorite color is. I wait and wait until the whale is gone and I can get my fix. I even recruit new people to join Twitter and blog about how to use Twitter for Marketing and PR. What a slut I am!
The more I use Twitter, the more addicted I get. I first tried Twitter just to see what it was like. Just to experience it. It was cool, but not addictive. I tried it a couple more times, I followed more people. Then more people followed me. Then somehow, before I knew it, I was hooked.
I can't live for long without Twitter. I get up in the morning, and one of the first things I do is check my laptop or mobile to get my Twitter fix. I'm out at dinner and I want to do a quick check. It never stops. I can't go long without my Twitter fix.
I sometimes pretend I don't use Twitter. When I am talking to the 5 billion people who don't use Twitter or even care about what it is, I don't ever mention Twitter. I know they would think I am a weak person for taking hits (I mean Tweets). The classic sign of an addict is not owning up to your addition.
I tell myself I can stop anytime I want to... But I can't! I'm addicted. I tell myself I am not addicted. But I am. If I tried to stop using Twitter I would go through a painful withdrawal, and I probably wouldn't be able to stop.

Are you a Twitter Crack Whore? Follow Mike Volpe on Twitter and we can console each other.

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

HubSpot 2nd Birthday

Mike Volpe — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 08:42:00 GMT

We went out to Kings for some bowling last night to celebrate HubSpot's 2nd birthday party. I had a lot of fun, and I think most other folks did too.

Here are some HubSpot photos on Flickr, or watch the slideshow below.

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

Funny Prank Video - Sales vs. Marketing

Mike Volpe — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:26:00 GMT

http://www.SalesvsMarketing.com

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

Kenya Safari Photos

Mike Volpe — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 01:08:00 GMT

I took a bunch (3,000 photos during my safari in Kenya). I have selected about 200 that I think are good photos, here they are. If you want to know more about the equipment I used, check out the article on Kenya Safari Photo Advice.

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

Press Release Grader

Mike Volpe — Thu, 29 May 2008 15:41:00 GMT

HubSpot has just launched a new PR tool called Press Release Grader, a tool that evaluates your press release and provides a nifty report about what is good and bad about it. Some of the cool features that get me excited are:

Gobbeldygook Word Analysis - The tool automatically sans your press release for the meaningless terms that are overused in press releases everywhere.
Word Cloud - I think this is a really neat tool to see what your press release is REALLY about, not what you think it is about.
Link Analysis - One of the most under-utilized parts of press releases is the value of linking back to your own website for SEO purposes, this tool gives a nifty analysis of the links in your press release.

Check it out and let us know what you think! www.PressReleaseGrader.com

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

VP Marketing Compensation / Pay at Tech Startups

Mike Volpe — Wed, 28 May 2008 00:04:00 GMT

What should a VP of Marketing get paid at a technology startup company? I have some data below from a well respected compensation survey of a large number of tech startups. Please note, all of this data is for non-founders. If you are a founder of the company, your equity is higher (and sometimes cash pay is lower).

Percentile	Cash Compensation	Stock Option %
80%	$225,000	1.65%
60%	$200,000	1.25%
40%	$175,000	1.00%
20%	$160,000	0.75%

You should check out the summary compensation report developed from the raw data that I used. You will also notice that I broke the data into four quartiles. Everyone wants to be in the top quartile, but that is not statistically possible. So, what separates the more highly paid from the less highly paid VPs of Marketing? I have a list of the factors I think are most important below. Your mileage may vary.

Factors Determining VP of Marketing Pay / Compensation Scale

More experience = more pay. As a younger marketing VP, I feel weird about saying this, but I do think that people with more experience can justify a higher pay package. She or he has seen the movie before and will anticipate challenges more.
More analytical = more pay. Many marketers are more emotional than analytical. All marketers need some level of emotional feel to be effective - not every decision has numerical data available - but for most tech startups, lead genration and analyical practices are critical, and a purely brand/emotion based marketer is not going to bring the proper skills to the team. Brand is nothing without leads and new customers at a startup tech company.
Domain expertise = higher pay. Clearly if you have some expertise in the particular domain that the startup is serving, you can justify getting a higher level of compensation.
More customers in the market = higher pay. Let's be honest, marketing is not required to be a core competency of every company. For instance, at a company that is targeting the CTOs of just Fortune 100 companies, getting new customers really is largely a sales effort - the market of potential users is well defined, and lead generation is more of an activity to support sales than something truly strategic. Sure, there is still a huge branding, messaging and positioning game, but without lead gen you have removed a big posrtion of the marketing challenge. Plus, if you think about the importance and big pay that top tier consumer marketers get, it makes sense to say that the larger the number of potential customers the more of a marketing challenge it becomes.
A marketing-related product = higher pay. Companies that sell a product that has to do with marketing (email marketing software, web design, CRM, etc.) should more highly value a VP of Marketing because of the strategic input into the company. If you are selling data-storage hardware, then the VP Marketing does not have a more special skill for knowing the customer than some other folks in the company. But if you are selling to other Marketing VPs, then your own Marketing VP is a useful resource - because he or she is also a prospect / customer.
Better company = better pay. The hotter the company that higher the pay should be. This might sound counterintuitive, but I believe in it strongly. Why? Because hot tech startups demand a lot from employees, and also demand an A+ team - this is true for a VP of Marketing as well. If things are going well, things will move fast, and having a VP of Marketing that can change and adapt
Rare skills = more pay. If the company desires rare skills in their head of marketing, such as experience with mobile marketing, or knowledge of SEO, or expertise in international markets, they should expect to pay more for these skills.

Special thanks to two friends who are in the process of acquiring new jobs. Both of you made me think about this issue and inspired the blog post. I won't mention your names, but I think you know who you are. :)

Do you have other thoughts on VP of Marketing compensation at startup tech companies? Leave a comment below.

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

Top 10 Reasons Why HubSpot is Not a Web 2.0 Company

Mike Volpe — Mon, 12 May 2008 10:35:00 GMT

I heard someone call HubSpot the "Web 2.0 Version of [a marketing software company]" this week. It annoyed me. Less because they were comparing HubSpot to a sort of boring company with complicated, expensive products that don't really work, but more because they described HubSpot as "web 2.0".

Top 10 Reasons Why HubSpot is NOT a Web 2.0 Company

Our company name is easy to spell.
We have more people over 25 in the company than under 25.
Our company name does not sound like it ends in "-er" but actually just ends in "r".
We are not based in a loft in San Francisco.
Our logo does not have a reflection in it.
Our product does not say "Beta" over 2 years after launch.
We do not have Guitar Hero in our office.
Both of our co-founders have gray hair.
We have paying customers... lots of them.
Revenue. Did I mention revenue?

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

The Power of Interruption Marketing (Video)

Mike Volpe — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:00 GMT

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

Safari Photo / Camera Advice for Newbies

Mike Volpe — Sun, 04 May 2008 22:52:00 GMT

--------------
Update: I'm back! You can check out my safari photos and see how they turned out.
------------

I'm going on a safari in Kenya in a while, and I spent a bunch of time today searching for and buying the right photography setup for the trip. I took a photography class in high school and even developed my own stuff back then (remember film?) but since then I have been a point and shoot kind of guy. I do have a small digital photo printer at home. So, I contacted a couple people and read a lot online to get back into the game a bit. Based on advice from websites and friends that I emailed, here are my conclusions for how to get decent safari photos without spending tons of money on pro-level equipment.

Get a decent camera with telephoto lens, at least to 300mm, preferably with some for of vibration reduction or image stabilization. You'll need it to get good pictures of the wildlife. I bought a Nikon D60 with a 70-300mm lens, the best deals seem to be the packages available at www.Costco.com.
Bring backup storage so you can backup from your memory cards to something else so you don't lose your photos while on safari. Apple makes an adapter for your iPod if you want a cheaper solution that really drains your battery, or there are dedicated devices. I bought the Apple adapter for $35.
Make sure your safari organizer will provide photographers beanbags for you to use to rest/stabilize your camera on the vehicle. Otherwise you should bring one.
In addition to camera and good zoom lens, bring an extra battery, and maybe a car adapter with your charger. Charge everything whenever possible. Power availability is sometimes limited while on safari. I bought an aftermarket battery and car charger for $50.
Get circular polarizer filters for all your lenses. Even a little online research will indicate

Here are two articles that talk about everything to do with safari photography in a lot more detail:

Thanks to Ilya Mirman for answering all of my questions via email all day, you can check out his Ilya's amateur photography on SmugMug.

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

Gas Tax Holiday is Stupid

Mike Volpe — Thu, 01 May 2008 08:02:00 GMT

Gas prices are high. Demand for gas in the summer usually increases, driving prices up further. Politicians see this as a big problem. The solution currently proposed by Hillary Clinton and John McCain? Let's have a holiday from the gas tax during the summer. This is an incredibly stupid policy. It is the craziest policy I have heard in some time. Not only would this reduce revenue collected by the government by an estimated $9 Billion (we have both a huge federal debt and a budget deficit) but it would also work to increase gas consumption, just the opposite of what is needed.

In fact, today if you search on "gas tax" in Google, John McCain is actually paying for advertisements to promote his views on the gas tax holiday. Here is an example:

Lucky for him, Obama has not jumped on the bandwagon. I say he is lucky, because by not being a complete idiot he may have earned my vote. (We have such low standards for political leaders in the US. Sigh.)

Mike Volpe's Better Solution to the Gas Tax Holiday

All politicians should have to take (and pass!) an Economics 101 class before being eligible for election to Congress. Their grade, tests and papers for the class should be posted on the Internet.
Let's increase the gas taxto reduce consumption of gas - at the federal level we could double the tax (an extra 18 cents a gallon) and raise at least $20 billion per year.
We should then take the money from the higher gas tax and give it as research grants to companies researching alternative energy and green energy technologies.
This research will help ensure the US is the world's technological leader in green power. As oil reserves worldwide dry up, this will work to increase the demand for these technologies which will increase sales for these companies in the US, increasing jobs, decreasing our trade gap and all sorts of other good things for us.

How cool would it be if Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other previously oil rich countries had to purchase solar, wind and battery power technologies from the US?

If we follow the right policies, this could happen in 10-20 years. Americans should expect better leadership from our next president than short cited policies that make our lives a tiny bit better today but sacrifice so much in the future.

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

What It's NOT Like to Work At HubSpot

Mike Volpe — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:27:00 GMT

I saw that the Digg folks created a little video so people would know who they were at a local Meet Up. Fun idea, cute song. Check it out.

Digg Dubb: Groove Is In The Heart from Trammell on Vimeo.

I found this video through Twitter, and the comment someone made was that "it must be fun to work at Digg - can I get a job there?" That made me think. Do we need to make a crazy dance video to show people it is fun to work at HubSpot? If we don't, does that mean it is not fun to work here? The answer to both questions is... NO.

Is it not fun to work at HubSpot? No way. We have a BLAST here! I just think we're a bit geekier than the Digg crew. Marketing Geeks. Or Internet Geeks. Or geek bloggers. We would rather debate a product feature or some interesting statistical analysis than lip synch something by the B-52s. We have lots of fun and interesting people - avid Red Sox fans, talented DJs, yoga masters, environmentalists, and animal lovers. A lot of the people at HubSpot are really funnny. Some of the quietest developers can say things that will make the whole room start laughing out loud. We keep a page on our internal Wiki with funny quotes from employees dating back over a year. We have all sorts of internal bets and games and challenges, all aimed at bringing out the best performance of our team. We cherish individuality - in terms of attire, in terms of work schedule, ideas, and more.

But I don't think any of us can dance. Maybe a couple people can. We might even have a funny corporate video some day. But it won't be like this one. Why? Because we're not Digg. We're geekier and more practical. We're across the street from MIT, hardened by Boston winters and have a practical edge to us from the New England Yankee culture. There is no time for dancing here. (Unless the dance video will generate leads and customers.)

If you are willing to work at a company that does not create lip synched dance videos, HubSpot is hiring. Even better if you are a closet marketing geek. We really are a lot of fun. Just in a different way than Digg.

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

Why Rapper 50 Cent is Smarter Than Most Fortune 500 CEOs

Mike Volpe — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 18:20:00 GMT

I have always been a big proponent of businesses following entertainers to catch onto new trends in marketing, and I have written some blog articles in the past about the marketing lessons you can learn from rappers and B2B marketing tips from rappers.

Recently, I saw another article on Yahoo showing that 50 Cent has created his own social network, mostly because even though he had a huge success on MySpace, he is unable to get access to the users email addresses or other personal information.

What I find funny about this is not only that 50 Cent has a million fans on MySpace and has also built his own social network, but that he clearly spends a lot of time thinking about his fan base as a strategic asset and how to best manage, grow and monetize that asset. How many Fortune 500 CEOs think like that? Very few I'd say. I think they are still stuck in the world of building new products and sales promotions and channel strategies. As consumers get more and more control of how they consumer information, I really believe that companies will success or fail based on how they cultivate and enable their biggest fans to communicate with others in the market. The tools you should be using are blogs, social networks and your own product development. You can pretty much stop advertising over the next 10-15 years I think.

50 Cent Launches His Own Social Network - What does this mean?

50 Cent has decided that access to his fan's personal info is worth the time and expense of launching his own social network. This is a very strategic decision.
It is pretty easy to launch a social network today. The hard part is getting members - not a problem for a famous rapper. You should think about what your social network strategy should be.
If social networks like MySpace and Facebook want very famous people (politicians, entertainers, etc.) to use their network, they might have to create some better capabilities for these people to access personal information of their friends/fans/supporters.

It will be interesting to see over time how this battle plays out. If 50 Cent(or other very popular people) are not on Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace, that decreases the value of these networks to everyone else. Will the networks make concessions to the famous people? Will the famous people decide it is OK to lose some control and information access in exchange for a broader audience of people?

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

Annoying Favicon problem in IE (Internet Explorer)

Mike Volpe — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:00:00 GMT

I have this annoying problem in IE where it is displaying the wrong favicons (the little icons next to the URL and on the browser tab). So when I am on Google, it will show the icon for StumbleUpon, or something else. Evertying else works, but for some reason this really pisses me off.

I found some forums posts about it, but would the geeks at Microsoft just fix the darn problem?

http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6620_102-0.html?forumID=14&threadID=229993&messageID=2383289

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com

eCommerce Shopping Cart Software Tips / Review

Mike Volpe — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 17:48:00 GMT

I spent a little time chatting with a small business about to re-launch their website with an ecommerce section, and they were asking about ecommerce shopping cart software. I was not an expert (and still am not) but I've taken a look at 5 sample stores from the Yahoo Shopping Cart and the GoDaddy Shopping Cart websites. I am not the right person to evaluate the actual shopping cart functions - you will know more about what you need in terms of tax, shipping, data/reports, compatibility, etc. But, I did look at the page structures and URL for the marketing/SEO factors, and thought a bit about the user experience. Here are my high level thoughts:

Yahoo is much better form an SEO perspective. Each product has a page with a unique URL, with keywords in the URL and a different page title. This is what you should do for SEO.
GoDaddy seems to have a smoother user experience. What I did not like as much about the Yahoo user experience was that when you add an item to your cart and then view the cart, it takes you to a different page/URL that really looks different. Perhaps this is the particular implementation of the stores I used, but I would have preferred it if the shopping cart pages were a lot more like the other parts of the website.

Based on my simple analysis, I would pick Yahoo. If no one finds your store, then your sales will always be low.

Overall, from an Internet marketing or SEO perspective, this is what I would look for in ecommerce shopping cart software:

Each product page has a unique URL and Page Title
All of the product pages should be on URLs that are part of your website. The shopping cart itself can be on a different URL if necessary for security reasons.
Avoid URLs that use question marks and numbers/codes in them, look for URLs that contain words readable by a human. For instance, http://www.patiofurniture.com/teak-pattaya-lounger.html is much better than http://www.patiofurniture.com/?cat=6754&size=43546&item=7r6237g
You should be able to control the following on each and every page of your website, including product pages: Page Title, Page URL (put good keywords in there), Keywords Meta Data, Description Meta Data, Text content on the page, Alt Text on images.

Are you an Inbound Marketing Pro?
Learn how to improve your marketing at the Inbound Marketing Summit.

www.InboundMarketingSummit.com