About The BigTurns eCommerce Blog
The BigTurns Blog is brought to you by Charles Brodeur of BigTurns. BigTurns is a Vancouver, BC consulting company helping Small Business with their sales and marketing. Charles is the President of BigTurns and may be contacted direct by calling (604) 657-1563 or cb@BigTurns.com

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BigTurns website software has a suite of online applications built upon a CRM Database.  The All-in-One platform will host your website & blog, run  your email marketing, manage your contacts, process payments, automate work flows, and analyze your efforts. It's simple really.



eCommerce Websites - to sell online

Small business owners find this blog to be a great resource for sales and marketing strategies.                                 

Ending the Online Business Nightmare

Published by Charles Brodeur

Choosing the right software for your website is critical

 
Last year over 10 million US small businesses were prioritizing their online business(Forrester), yet managing it is still a nightmare of confusion and complexity. It’s that nightmare that BigTurns puts to rest with it's "Sales and marketing software for websites", a web-based application that makes setting up online easy with all the tools that business owners need to succeed. In contrast to existing solutions, BigTurns completely replaces traditional web hosting with a business-oriented approach that puts the spotlight on understanding your customers and getting better results – while saving time and money.

Marketing Trends and Specialized Systems Slow Business Down

Building an online business is hard work for small business owners. Modern trends in marketing toward blogging and email marketing simply highlight that business owners need more than a plain website. Web analytics, online shopping and lead management are also high on the list of priorities, but vendor selection is daunting and their approach specialized. “In many cases, business owners are working with a fistful of disconnected systems to manage their online business. That means they need to waste time importing and exporting data to keep the systems in sync,” BigTurns' Operations Manager Aidan Leonard says.

BigTurns - A One Stop Solution

BigTurns takes an integrated approach to online businesses with a results focused attitude. By incorporating website management, lead management, email marketing, online shopping, blogs, and business analytics, BigTurns is a one stop solution. Most importantly, BigTurns offers a customer centric vision of your website, with every feature integrated into a central customer database. This means businesses can automatically build customer profiles and track behavior across their online business, to make better decisions and improve profits.

Less Time, Less Money, Better Results

The result is that businesses are saving time and money while achieving more online. “We’ve got customers telling us that using BigTurns is saving them a day of work a week,” Leonard says. And while being able to access so many vital features of your business from a central console is a huge benefit for business owners, there’s a significant cost benefit too, according to Aidan. “You could spend 5 times as much for a solution comparable to BigTurns – and it would need to be custom built by programmers. Our customers are spending less money, and getting more.”

BigTurns runs inside any web browser with no downloads required, and no time consuming setup. The software will be offered on an affordable subscription basis comparable to current web hosting costs. Currently in private beta, you can request an invitation to use BigTurns for 30 days by going to www.BigTurns.com

BigTurns creates software to empower small business owners to take their business online with less fuss and better results. 

If you’d like more information on BigTurns, a live product demo or an interview with Charles Brodeur, please contact Aidan Leonard at aidan@BigTurns.com, or on 604-441-3075

Research Sources

Data Source: Forrester report: “Making Sense Of Hosted Commerce Platforms” – 44% of small businesses (roughly 24 million small businesses are operating in the USA) listed internet or ecommerce initiatives as a priority or critical priority.

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Google for Small Business

Published by Charles Brodeur

Google for Small Business

Google is the market leader in online search and is becoming the market leader in FREE tools for small business. Watch the presentation on how to get started with Google.


When the video slide appears click on the image to watch
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A Solid eCommerce Strategy is the Key to Success

Published by Charles Brodeur

Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is a constant battle online. I call it "Shiny Object Syndrome". It is so easy to lose focus these days and bounce from one great idea to the next before we have fully executed on the first great idea.

That's why we need a plan that follows a the path to success. 

Decades ago, business owners had it easy - they weren't dealing with the rapid and volatile change we deal with today.There was a strategic, focused way of managing a businesses that you may remember - the 4 P's.

The 4 P's, aka the "Marketing Mix", is a combination of four marketing ingredients that you must constantly balance and control when running your business.

The 4 P's are still relevant today, and we have a bit of an update to applying them to the eCommerce Business:

Product

Offering static, cataloged products no longer wins the race. With comparison shopping sites and huge online stores like Amazon, how do you compete on Product alone? Google has changed the way we buy online and your customers now start with the goal in mind (a product), then choose which supplier to buy from.

If you're selling eProducts or online services then you still have the power to innovate and stay ahead of the game, but if you're selling tangible goods you need to be offering a valuable experience AND proving your credibility.  Here are a couple of proven techniques to demand credibility:

  1. Allow customers to offer feedback with comment forms on blogs, announcements and products. This builds online credibility for your next round of customers to see, making them feel more comfortable doing business with you.
  2. Offer a public forum where customers can discuss what they like/dislike about your product or service. You can always moderate the forum if you are concerned about negative feedback.
  3. Give your customers individual, personalized attention through exceptional customer service.
  4. Prove that you're an expert by creating content & educating you customers about the products.Give customers detailed photo galleries, videos, specifications and anything else they won't find in a "bricks and mortar" store.  Customers crave information in their quest to become more informed.

Price

Competing on price is a hard battle to win.
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Ways to optimize your Online Shop

Published by Paul Pyrlik

The year 2010 should be used to optimize your existing eCommerce Platform. Many Online Shops I see out there have enormous potentials for improvement. Some of them can't be implemented easily, e.g. Clean URLs (URLs which just reveal their resource, but not their technology) - here you are often limited by the technology and platform you use. However, there are many things you can do in the field of technical Search Engine Optimization (SEO). For this purpose one option would be to create a whole new template to get started. You can overhaul the GUI (graphical user interface) and optimize the template for all the search engines like Google and Yahoo. What needs to be done for this can be listed quickly:
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Marketing 101 For Your New Online Store

Published by Charles Brodeur

Have you noticed that it's deeply ingrained in North American society to define ourselves and others by what we do and who we work for?

 Conversations with strangers are sure to almost always follow these 3 steps:

1. "Hi, I'm Charles. What's your name?"

2. "John.  Nice to meet you.  How do you know the host?"

... Uncomfortable Pause ...

3. "So, what do you do for a living?"

and that's the Bus-stop / 1st-date / Distant-relative / Networking variety of conversation. Mind you, when you go to 'networking' events you can often dispense with step 2 altogether!

True Story..
The other night I'm talking to an older gentleman, a distant relative, at a family gathering and the inevitable question popped up.  What are you doing now, Charles?

"I'm the Director of Online Marketing at Keel & Rudder, an online sailing store" I unashamedly respond but at the same time secretly wishing I was a respectable banker with Goldman Saks. (not)

"Keel and What?!?! And what exactly does a 'Director of Online Marketing' do??" the old Uncle interrogates me suspiciously like Colonel Klink would...

Here's the answer in blog post format for easier digestion:

Basic Marketing For Your Online Store

The first image that comes to peoples minds when they hear the word 'Marketing' is flashy prime-time TV ads for some large Corp made by people who take extra long lunches with international ad agencies and never seem to do much that's actually useful.

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6 Ways to Build Links

Published by Paul Pyrlik

Google and other search engines such as Yahoo! or Bing use software programs called "Search Engine Spiders” to search the Web for content "relevant" sites. These spiders travel across links, then index and rank the web sites. Their rankings can be then seen on search engine result pages.

To be listed on top of the search engine pages it is critical to establish "relevant" link relationships, building both outbound and inbound links to your site. To help being ranked as high as possible it's necessary to build as many "relevant"  links as possible.

The more "relevant" links you have the greater your chances will be to attract more visitors. It's an easy and very effective formula to boost traffic to your web site while it's also one of the least expensive ways.

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5 Steps to SEO On Page Set Up

Published by Charles Brodeur

Ever wonder if the basics from grade school would come in handy in your business life?

Getting your website ranked best in internet search results uses all of that knowledge. Search engine results are based on those science, math and English courses. Internet technology is the science that allows "spiders" to comb the "web" for data applicable to a search inquiry. Search engines have unique mathematical algorithms that formulate your website's relevance to that inquiry. Finally, your English lesson is where writing the copy on your website can help tie all of that together for best results. In the following, you will get valuable tips on creating titles, copywriting advice, using graphics, and keywords to better place your website in search rankings.

1. Do Some Research

Do you know where your website ranks in search results for different key words or phrases compared to your competition? Check various search engines such as google.com, ask.com, msn.com, and yahoo.com. Take a look at your website to check how the homepage relates to a consumers search. Look at your competition and how they write their website content. Are they being found? Search for products or services that you're interested in and click those who rank high in the search results. Can you tell why?
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Communication: Blogging vs Email Newsletters

Published by Charles Brodeur

How to decide between blogging and a newsletter

Last night I was sorting all of my important paperwork: Car insurance, health insurance, credit card information, work stuff, tax information, and you get the idea. Then I put them into folders to organize. Let's do the same with your content and then decide where to include this content (Blog, Newsletter, or Both). 

  1. Education - BOTH
  2. Business ideas for feedback - NEWSLETTER
  3. Showcase before and after photos - NEWSLETTER
  4. FAQS - NEWSLETTER
  5. Common Concerns - BOTH
  6. Tips - BOTH
  7. Coupons and Discounts and Specials - NEWSLETTER
  8. Products - BOTH
There are a few caveats, so lets take a look at them.

Education:

You should never pass up an opportunity to educate. Customers like being in the know and they appreciate you keeping them up to date.
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About Sales and Marketing Automation

Published by Charles Brodeur

This is the first Post for The eCommerce Blog from Sales and Marketing Automation. 

Our mission with this blog is to promote eCommerce Best Practices to Small business owners. We will be including topics that relate to building eCommerce Sites, marketing eCommerce Sites and managing eCommerce Sites.

We are not sure where this journey will take us but the general direction we are going to set out on is to expose the tricks that make successful sites sell.

We will discuss topics like eCommerce Technology, SAAS, Email Marketing, Internet Marketing, Blogging, Content, Conversion, Customer Automation, and more.

I will be the main contributor to the blog postings, and all of our contributors will some how be related to BigTurns Business Systems, an eCommerce Consulting Company with an eCommerce Platform for sale and a team of eCommerce Consultants.

I Hope you like it.  Read More






  
 

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