One of the most popular presentations was a keynote by Tim Ash, founder of SiteTuners.com and author of Landing Page Optimization.

With so much talk in the web design community about layout, typography, color usage, usability, accessibility, PHP this, and CSS that, few freelancers or web design agencies actually think about what matters to the client: RESULTS! Consequently, the Web is littered with tens of thousands of professionally designed web sites that cost tens of thousands of dollars to develop — yet perform at only a fraction of their potential.

While it’d be fantastic if every client was willing to pay for extensive testing using Google Website Optimizer, SiteSpect, or the SiteTuners Engine, there are some fundamentals that every designer should keep in mind when building sites for conversion – nearly every designer is guilty of at least one of the 7 deadly sins of landing page design.

Some of the highlighted case studies include:

• How RealAge improved conversions by 40% and added $3.285 million to their bottom line
• How a debt relief firm increased their revenue by $48 million annually
• How Stratfor improved conversions by 81% with a few simple tweaks

Flick through the slide deck below while listening to Tim’s keynote to learn the basics and avoid the most common pitfalls.

Click here to listen to the keynote in a new window

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This is where hosted shopping carts come in handy as they allow you to remove the headaches of maintaining your server, dealing with software issues and more.  These solutions may cost a little bit more, but you can almost view it as saving you money compared to hiring an IT person.

We’ve gathered up 10 of the best solutions that will let you get set up in no time flat, so take a look through and see which one best serves your needs.

Business Catalyst: Adobe’s Business Catalyst, formerly known as GoodBarry, is built with an eye towards allowing developers to fully customize an online store for clients with little to no need for coding.  The service is completely white label so that you can insert your company logo, or that of your client so that they only see the information you choose.  Features analytics, Dreamweaver extensions, easy management and more.

Flying Cart: Flying Cart allows you to build ecommerce sites that vary in size from 50 products up to 1,000, depending on your needs.  There is only a monthly fee and no transaction fees, so depending on what you’re selling this could work out better for you than some of the other solutions.  You can use your own domain name, accept all major credit cards, process through SSL and more.

GoEmerchant: GoEmerchant provides you with solutions to build a full ecommerce store, you can simply add purchase buttons to your existing site if you want.  The company also has a merchant gateway that can be used on an iPhone so that you can take credit card payments virtually anywhere at any time.

ProStores: Powered by eBay, ProStores is a full ecommerce solution that lets you set up an online store using their provided templates, or you can hire a designer to give your store a unique design.  While it isn’t required, you do have the option to also list your items on eBay if you would like to.

Shopify: Shopify is a template-based online store solution that provides you with an easy set up for any type of store, and then gives you numerous templates to choose from.  Thankfully, you can also customize the site as you see fit because most of the templates look like very basic WordPress templates, but once customized the sites look great.

StoreFront: StoreFront specializes in customized solutions for businesses that are tailored to the needs of companies of all sizes.  Their systems integrate with many third-party software packages, multiple merchant gateways, offer up customized store designs and a whole lot more.

uShops: You can sell just about anything you want on uShops for free for the first six months, and then a nominal fee will be charged there after.  This gives you the chance to get your site up to speed and see if your idea will even work before you start paying for it.

WebStore by Amazon: The leading online retailer in the world has come up with a hosted shopping cart solution that allows anyone to use the power of Amazon’s shopping technology on their own branded site.  You also have the option of not only selling the items on your own custom WebStore, but you can also sell the items on the main Amazon site like any number of third-party sellers already do.

Yahoo! Merchant Solutions: The Yahoo! shopping site has been around for years and features an extremely robust shopping cart that allows for cross selling, discounted sales, creating gift certificates, wish lists and a lot more.  The site features several templates you can choose from or you can have your store custom designed. But be warned that Yahoo! uses an unusual language that usually takes specialized designers to work on it, so it can get expensive to customize your store.

Yokaboo.com: A simplified store system that only allows you to accept PayPal, but lets you set up a store quickly and with a look of your choosing.  Perfect for smaller merchants such as small record labels, artists, jewelry makers and more.

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We knew it would happen at some point. Twitter is introducing a new payment model that will charge Japanese followers to view tweets from premium accounts.

Twitter, the popular micro-blogging service, is supposedly worth … a lot of money. Business valuations range from the slightly ridiculous to the utterly obscene. The fact is: no one knows. Twitter is valued on its potential to earn money — which is probably just as well because it’s not making any.

The changes to Twitter in Japan were announced at the Mobidec2009 conference by Kenichi Sugi, chief operating officer of DG Mobile (one of Twitter’s Japanese investors). From January 2010, Twitter users will be able to charge followers who want to read their tweets. Monthly charges will range from $1.15 to $11.60 (US Dollars); the account holder will receive 70% with the rest going to Twitter itself. Followers can opt to pay their subscription fees by credit card or as an additional payment on their mobile phone bill.

Twitter regularly uses the Japanese market to assess new features. Currently, Japan is the only country where Twitter makes any money — primarily because it permits web page advertisements. Twitter has made no announcement regarding other territories, but premium accounts will certainly appear if the project becomes a success.

Will it work? I’m not convinced many Twitter users would be able to charge for their inane ramblings, but who knows? However, premium accounts could work for:

• agencies providing up-to-date news and gossip, or
• companies offering personalized information services, e.g. sending you a tweet when your web server goes down or when a share price reaches a certain level.

Even then, the information is usually available elsewhere on the Internet for little or no cost.

Are there any Twitterers you would you pay to follow? Can Twitter make money from the scheme? Or is Twitter passé now that you’ve discovered a newer and better social networking site?

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We’ve helped you out a little bit by gathering up 18 choices that represent the best of the free and fee-based options out there. Read about each one very carefully, though, as they all have their pros and cons.

Free Shopping Carts

AgoraCart: AgoraCart offers a free version of its software with all of the usual bells and whistles, but if you upgrade to the gold version you will get access to more modules and support.

Batavi: Batavi was born in 2007 by osCommerce core-team members and ICEshop over frustration that osCommerce 3.0 seemed to be going nowhere. This cart is based on that unfinished version of 3.0, but is completely rewritten. It offers customer- and group-specific pricing, payment and shipping modules, related products for crossselling and upselling, product price rules for pricing large product volumes and many other features that make it very friendly for business-to-business selling.

Magento: Magento was originally envisioned as a branch of osCommerce, but as development began they decided to code something original from the ground up and that is how this shopping cart was born. Built on the Zend framework, the system is PHP-based and is available as an open source option with extra modules that can be installed, or as an Enterprise edition, for a fee, for larger companies needing a shopping solution. For additional information, check out the SitePoint podcast with Roy Rubin of Magento.

OFBiz: Apache OFBiz is a solution for a multitude of enterprise business needs, but can be rolled out as an ecommerce solution easily for businesses of any size.

OpenCart: OpenCart is another in the long line of open source shopping carts in the marketplace, but this seems to offer a bit more options than most of them. It supports a full templating system, support for over 20 payment gateways, over 8 different payment gateways, unlimited categories and products and more.

osCommerce: Probably the best known of the free cart solutions, osCommerce has been around for several years and features a constantly growing developer community that continues to develop new plugins to make this shopping cart do everything but clean the windows. The front end of the cart is highly customizable, but it comes with a fluid-width template that is fairly decent on its own. Due to the number of installs it has become quite common and instantly recognizable. The biggest drawback at this point is the exceedingly long time version 3.0 has been in development. It is PHP-based and uses MySQL databases.

PrestaShop: PrestaShop runs on PHP and MySQL and makes extensive use in the admin panel. The system allows you to have orders placed for out of stock items, package tracking, merchandise return and a lot more. Many expansion modules are available for free, but there are some paid ones and templates available in the PrestaStore.

Satchmo: Originally designed in Python to try to overcome some of the shortcomings of PHP, Satchmo now is using the Django web application framework. It includes many features such as PDF invoice generation, automatic thumbnail generation, inventory tracking and a whole lot more.

Ubercart: Developed to work with Drupal, Ubercart fully integrates with your site and community on any server that can run PHP and MySQL. It seems best suited for people or companies with a limited number of items to sell.

VirtueMart: Starting life as a plugin named mambo-phpShop, VirtueMart changed its name when Mambo became Joomla, and it still requires Joomla to function as it is incapable of running on its own. It runs on PHP and MySQL, and is capable of supporting an unlimited number of products and categories, but is recommended for light to medium traffic sites.

Zen Cart: Zen Cart is a branch off from osCommerce that adds features such as a templating system and includes some popular osCommerce plugins in its core coding such as the gift certificate module. It is PHP-based and uses MySQL databases.

Fee-Based Shopping Carts

Avactis: Avactis offers all of the usual bells and whistles of a PHP/MySQL shopping cart such as real-time shipping calculation, multiple currencies, sales reports, marketing and so on. The program offers a tag based cart system that allows you to add the system to any web site of your choice, whether it’s a static site or not. They offer a free trial with limited functionality that you can install and test.

CubeCart: CubeCart runs on PHP and MySQL and is template driven, offers tax by state/zone or country, inventory control, gift certificates and more. The company also offers free updates for life and more modules for additional functionality.

Magellan Commerce: Magellan is a bit limited in its scope, but it is still very serviceable depending on the needs of the retailer. It offers over 30 templates, real time shipping calculators, order and inventory tracking and a lot more.

ProductCart: ProductCart is written in ASP and relies heavily on AJAX to speed up the consumer experience with their shopping cart. The system can also integrate with your current site if you prefer to building one totally on top of the cart.

ShopSite: This shopping cart solution allows you to add buttons to an existing site, or you can build an entire site with their wizard. This would be a great solution for those who want complete control of their design without being encumbered by the limitations of a complete shopping cart site. ShopSite offers three levels of subscription to its shopping cart system, or you can pay one time fees for the top two tiers of service.

ViArt: A PHP-based shopping cart that is offered in multiple flavors so that you can choose the one that best suits your needs. There is a free version, but it is so limited that it would only be suitable for the smallest of online stores. ViArt also provides you with a full CMS and Help Desk that can be integrated into the online store.

X-Cart: X-Cart offers different versions of its software to match the different needs of merchants. From the most basic version on up it features a CSS-based layout for customization, MySQL databases, search engine friendly and more.

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AdBrite: AdBrite offers numerous ad styles from the standard contextual ad units, but also offers rich media, inline, full pages and more.  The system has one of the lowest thresholds for payment. It defaults to $100 payment, but you can set as low as $5.  Payments are issued on a net-60 system, i.e. earnings made in March are paid in May.

AdToll: AdToll is a hybrid ad network that allows you to sell ad space on your site for a price you determine with you keeping 75% of the revenue.  If you do not sell a space, the unsold inventory will be filled with “Run of Network” ads which are a cost-per-click solution.  Payout minimums are $20 for PayPal and $40 for checks.

BidVertiser: BidVertiser works a bit differently than others in the list in that advertisers bid directly against one another for your ad inventory.  The ads look like the general context ads, so they will work with Flash-based sites and sites with very little content.  Minimum payout is $10 and can be done by check or PayPal.  One other definite plus for them is that they provide actual phone numbers for publishers to call and get assistance when needed.

Chitika: An interesting alternative to most ad solutions as it only shows to your search traffic.  Chitika displays ads related to the terms that brought a user to your site and presents them with ads based on that term as well as the option to search more on the term without leaving your page.  The ads do not show up to your regular visitors so you don’t have to worry about bombarding your regulars with too much advertising.  Payout minimums are $20.

Clicksor: Clicksor provides all of the usual contextual ad sizes you are used to (leaderboards, skyscrapers and so on) as well as providing inline ads, rich media, graphical banners and more.  Payment methods vary by style of advertisement, and there is a minimum payout of $50 by standard check or PayPal.  There is a minimum of 150,000 page views per month for this program.

eClickZ: eClickZ focuses on search engine sites and some content sites, and they guarantee their advertisers a higher quality of traffic.  If your site qualifies, you will be able to talk with an account manager, use a toll free number to call them and take advantage of payout minimums of $50 that can be paid by PayPal.

Infolinks: Infolinks focuses on in-text advertising, but is welcoming to web sites of all sizes and traffic so that there is next to no threshold to joining.  Payment threshold is $100 and can be made by PayPal or check.

Kontera: Kontera focuses mainly on inline contextual advertising and offers plugins and one-click support for Blogger, Drupal, Joomla and WordPress.  The service has the standard $100 payment threshold, but does offer negotiable CPM rates based on the amount of traffic your site generates.  There is a requirement for 500,000 page views to participate in the system.

Microsoft pubCenter: Microsoft’s advertising solution is still considered a beta product, but it is fully functioning and you can control what ads appear on your site by sorting out keywords or URLs.  There is a minimum payout of $50.

WidgetBucks: WidgetBucks CPC, CPM are referral options for making money, all of them are displayed in a widget you can place anywhere on your site.  Minimum payout is $50 by either PayPal or check.

Yahoo Publisher Network: The Yahoo Publisher Network will give you all of the standard contextual ad sizes and will allow you to filter out competitor’s ads.  The payment system provides you with some extra payment options in that you can request payment via PayPal when you hit $50 in revenue and receive it the same day.  Same day payment on a $100 minimum for direct deposit or revenue transferred directly to your Yahoo! Search Marketing account.  Printed checks take 7 – 10 days to arrive after you request them.

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What are you waiting for?  Find the server solution that best suits your needs!

ADTECH: ADTECH’s ad serving solution trends towards larger sites, but if you fit in with them, it does offer some fairly impressive features such as live testing, real-time monitoring, user tracking, rich media support and a whole lot more.

Atlas Solutions: Atlas Solutions focuses heavily on allowing you to use the real-time data it collects to make more organized decisions about which ads you should be serving and to whom.  You can also prioritize advertisements that are needed to keep your advertisers happy and make sure they get the impressions they want.

Bluestreak: A third-party ad server that allows you to upload your creatives and preview them before setting them live.  Reports are updated every 20 minutes to allow you to adjust any campaigns you are running in near real-time.  Bluestreak puts a heavy emphasis on rich media, so it’s very video ad friendly.

DoubleClick: DoubleClick is probably the best known of all the ad servers out there, but it is mostly for the controversy that once surrounded its tracking of users, and the lengthy time the purchase by Google took to be approved.  DoubleClick still operates as a separate entity and focuses heavily on making widgets out of rich media ad campaigns.  They also provide you with forecasting tools to help you predict future campaign needs.

Google Ad Manager: Leave it to Google to come up with one of the simplest solutions out on the market for ad servers.  With Google Ad Manager you simply define which sections of your site you want to serve ads for and then generate code for each one individually.  Once the code is entered, all creative uploads can be handled in the manager where you can also get reports on how each ad spot and individual ad is performing.

OpenX: OpenX, formerly known as phpAdsNew, gives you the option of using a hosted solution for your ad serving, or you can download it and run everything from your side.  You can manage inventory easily with just a few check marks, geo-target ads by country so only the visitors you want to be served will be, view statistics for each ad placement and more.

Smart AdServer: Smart AdServer focuses on rich media campaigns for sites in Europe and features the ability to launch just about any style of advertisement you can think of in just three clicks.  Using real-time monitoring, you can choose on the fly if you want to target the ads based on geography, ISP, browser, keywords and more.

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We’ve gathered up 13 top performing affiliate networks to help you locate the perfect program for your site. And while a good chunk of them are focused on site visitors in the United States, we’ve also found some for you that service countries throughout Europe and parts of Asia.

We’ve also thrown in a fourteenth bonus site that isn’t a network, but is instead a large directory of affiliate programs from numerous different networks so you can concentrate on finding the perfect program without having to hunt and peck through dozens of sites for it.

Adsmarket.com: Adsmarket offers advertisers across categories such as dating, health, finance and more.  Payments are made via PayPal or check within 30 days of payment from the advertiser. If for some reason the advertiser is late with the payment, Adsmarket will still pay you for the sale.

Affiliate.com: Affiliate offers weekly payments if you hit $1000 per week, while all others will be paid on a monthly basis when you hit the $100 payment threshold.

AffiliateFuture.com: AffiliateFuture has a stable of several hundred merchants, including the rarity of a few adult brands.  Overall, the merchants are a mixture of large brands and smaller companies with a large focus on airlines and travel companies.  The program is payable in US dollars, British pounds or Euros.

AssociatePrograms.com: While AssocitePrograms is not an affiliate system on its own, the site serves as a directory to nearly 11,000 merchants that offer programs you can join.  You can search by keywords or look programs up by category, and then follow the links to their sign up or information pages.

ClickBank.com: ClickBank offers commissions as high as 75% on some products and offers you the ability to run promotions in multiple languages.  Payments are made via PayPal, direct deposit and checks.  The programs are open to numerous countries including Australia, Austria, Belgium, India, Ireland, United States and several more.

ClixGalore.com: ClixGalore offers an assortment of what appears to be niche-directed advertisers with a smattering of larger companies using their services.  Payouts are at US$50, AUD$100, UK£35 or €60.  Payments are made via PayPal or check (US residents/addresses only), with payments over $1000 being eligible for direct deposits.

Commission Junction: One of the best known of the affiliate networks, CJ offers a mixture of extremely well-known consumer brands and smaller mom & pop style online merchants.  Payments are available in Canadian Dollars, Euro, GBP Sterling, Swedish Krona and US Dollars with a minimum payout amount of US $100.

Google Affiliate Network: While the Google Affiliate Network isn’t huge, they have around 500 merchants. It has concentrated on attracting many well known brand names into its stable.  The system does give you a bit more information up front than most others do, letting you know about the average shopper in terms of age, education, median income, most common keywords and more.  Payment is made within 30 days of when Google receives payment from the advertisers, and payments to partners are made twice a month.  Minimum threshold for payment is $50.

LinkConnector.com: LinkConnector is working at representing the large majority of the Web’s top 500 online merchants, already representing companies such as eHarmony and PeaPod. LinkConnector has added a patent pending technology called Naked Link, which will allow a publisher to link directly to an affiliate and make the link look less like an affiliate link to search engines. Payments are made on the 20th of each month with a payment threshold of $25.

LinkShare.com: LinkShare runs the gamut from huge companies to smaller niche merchants.  The biggest difference between LinkShare and other affiliate networks is that their minimum for payout is $1, but you can set it at other levels if you prefer not to deal with lots of small deposits.

ShareASale.com: Around since 2003, ShareASale has close to 3000 merchants in their stable. Merchants are broken down by pay-per-sale, pay-per-lead and pay-per-click, or you can browse through the 39 main categories with numerous sub-categories.  Payment can be by direct deposit or check.  Payments are made on the 20th of each month if you reach $50 before the end of the previous month, otherwise all sales roll over to the next payment cycle.

TradeDoubler.com: TradeDoubler focuses exclusively on the UK and Europe, offering over 1700 major name brand companies for you to choose from. Opportunities are available for sales, leads, traffic, impressions or a combination of those.

Webgains.com: Webgains offers region-specific advertisers for the United States and different countries throughout Europe.  Payments vary by merchant, but vary in frequency from weekly to monthly.  Payments are made by PayPal, bank account transfer or check.  Merchants seem to vary wildly by country from niche to known brands.

Zanox.com: Zanox offers over 2000 affiliate programs in eleven key countries and others that are available to global publishers.  You can quickly check the potential of any program by checking out their AdRank.  Companies are a mixture of well-known global brands and smaller companies that service specific niches.

What is your favorite affiliate network?

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As a start-up, Twitter raised $55 million of venture capital and now has an estimated value somewhere in the region of half a billion dollars. Even your own Twitter account could be worth something: according to TweetValue.com, sitepointdotcom is worth $10,991 and Stephen Fry is $42,542. Even my own paltry effort is worth $25 (all bids considered!).

It’s not bad for a company that is yet to earn a penny. So why is Twitter worth so much, especially during an economic downturn?

One possible reason is that Twitter captures the very essence of people’s interests and aspirations the moment they have them. Let’s say I’m considering buying a Foozle. I’ve looked around, tweeted about it, got a few responses, and found a best price of $100. At that very moment, Foozle Corp contacts me directly and offers their top-of-the-range model for $80. They have caught me at my most vulnerable time; I’m actively considering a purchase and will probably proceed without looking at alternatives. I’m also likely to rave about my savings in subsequent tweets.

Dell is one company that is already benefiting from this type of marketing; they recently announced revenues of $3 million as a direct result of Twitter posts.

Twitter’s value owes much to the data-mining possibilities:

1. The service is unbiased, independent, and free.
2. Users represent a broad cross-section of society.
3. Twitter usage is growing at an exponential rate.

However, Twitter cannot survive on potential alone. They need income and are reportedly looking into ways of monetizing the site. CEO Evan Williams has stated that he is not opposed to banner advertising, but was unenthusiastic as it would be “the least interesting thing to do.”

One option being considered is an authentication service; companies would pay to ensure impostors do not send messages in their name. Technically, that could be a tough one to implement.

But Twitter must be careful. If they start charging for any aspect of their service, they will reduce the number of existing users and new sign-ups. It could also skew membership toward those who have the biggest financial benefits: the corporations.

I can’t see many options other than:

• Advertising. Unfortunately, adverts would probably need to be added to tweets since many people use third-party services rather than Twitter.com.
• Data-mining tools. Companies might pay for Analytics-like tools, although many are already available since much of Twitter’s data is exposed via their API.
• A better API. Perhaps they could charge for improved data access?

Speculation will remain rife until a final decision is announced. Can Twitter raise revenue without losing members?

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The concept of incentivizing other people to promote your product is actually one that works remarkably well for us, in fact (our own affiliate program offers individuals $8 per book sold — far more generous than that of other publishers or resellers). In fact, our marketing manager, Shayne Tilley, is even capturing some of the wisdom behind that program (and others like it) in an upcoming book about Online Marketing.

There’s also no shortage of visitors to SitePoint who have discovered that affiliate marketing can work very well. The success of the SitePoint Marketplace is testament to the number of web entrepreneurs who spend their days building sites in order to monetize them through advertising or affiliate programs. It’s an exciting area to be in, and also one that in recent times has its challenges as online advertising dollars get scarce.

It’s no surprise, then, that SitePoint has signed on as a media partner for the inaugural Affiliate Convention in Denver, Colorado next month. What’s unique about this conference is the fact that the organizers are taking the concept of benefiting from an affiliate partnership to a whole new level — affiliates for the event are actually invited to attend for free! For a ticket that would normally set you back $675, this is definitely an interesting move by the organizers (and obviously a great deal for those who are interested in learning more about affiliate marketing).

The event runs from June 17-20, in Denver Colorado. Register as a sponsored affiliate to take advantage of the offer to attend for free.

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You can provide analytic tools, such as those listed by Rick Tansun, but few clients will understand those applications or the reports they generate. What clients really need is help to make sense of the figures.

Statistical Pitfalls

In my experience, the loudness or frequency of a person’s request for web statistics is inversely proportional to their understanding of them. Confusion often arises because:

1. Statistical terms are misunderstood
Many people equate hits with unique users even though a “hit” is a single file request. One view of this SitePoint page generates more than 50 hits. You can understand why press releases refer to 50,000 hits rather than 1,000 page views or 100 unique users.

2. Statistics are assumed to be accurate
Computers are independent number-crunching machines so reports must be correct? If that were true, the figures generated by different analytic tools would be identical – but they rarely are:

• Different methods of data collection are employed. For example, AWStats analyses web server log files whereas Google Analytics uses client-side JavaScript code.
• No data collection method is perfect. Log files do not contain requests for files cached on the user’s browser or proxy servers. Similarly, people who disable JavaScript are invisible to Google Analytics.
• Each tool makes different assumptions. For example, one system could assume that a single visitor session will time out after 20 minutes of website inactivity. Another might choose 15 minutes or add 5% to figures to account for people with JavaScript disabled.

3. Statistics cannot be gathered retrospectively
Statistics are only as good as the data collected. Clients often ask for information that sounds reasonable, e.g. “how many of my customers are female?”, but it is impossible to determine that figure unless you have captured the appropriate information first.

Statistical Services

Statistics can be offered as a separate service or included as a value-added feature within your website quotations. Typical services that raise your level above competitors include:

1. Cheat sheets
Documents are provided which:

• explain terms such as hits, unique visitors, visits, page views, bounce rates, depth of visit, landing pages, campaigns, goals, etc.
• help the client use and understand the reporting tool.

2. Training and Support
One or two hours training is usually enough to explain web statistics, technical issues, and how the client can make best use of the reporting system. You could also provide ongoing support, refresher courses, or advanced training adapted to the client’s requirements.

3. Summary Reports and Analysis
Whilst statistics may be interesting, what the client really needs is concise, solid marketing information, e.g. product X sells better at the weekend, articles about topic Y receive 50% more visitors, marketing campaign Z resulted in 100 sales. Gathering that information requires technical expertise and could be worth thousands to your client.

These services may be time consuming, but they also provide further opportunities to meet your client and help them increase sales. Your business relationship will grow stronger and, the more successful they become, the more work they will put your way.

Do you sell statistical services? Are you considering it? Are your clients making the most of the information?

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(CC) Randy Stewart, blog.stewtopia.com.

One of the highlights of SxSW for me was a keynote delivered by Zappos CEO, Tony Hseh, who also runs a very insightful business blog.

Las Vegas-based Zappos started in 1999 by selling shoes online, and has since grown to a $US1 billion per year retailer. It has expanded into clothing, handbags, sunglasses, and numerous other categories.

Early on in its life, Zappos made a deliberate decision to re-direct its marketing budget towards delivering exceptional customer service with a great company culture, helping the business to thrive where others have failed. Tony highlighted many deliberate decisions that the company made with the long-term view in mind, such as:

• encouraging customers to order as many products as they wanted in order to “try them on,” then offering free return shipping for a full 365 days
• only listing products on the site when stock was in their own warehouse (which actually lowered sales by 25% at a time when the company was still in the red)
• deciding to run their warehouse operation 24/7 to deliver super-fast turnaround on orders, despite it being an inefficient way to manage fulfillment
• encouraging customers to call them about nearly everything. Their call center takes 5,000 calls per day, and employees work independent of scripts, quotas, or call time limits. The longest call to date has been four hours. Zappos views the phone experience as a branding device, and speaks to virtually every customer at least once.
• deciding to invest in “surprise” (free) upgrades to overnight shipping for most customers. This means that most orders are delivered within 24 hours, despite the web site indicating it will take 2-5 business days.

Decisions like these are rarely undertaken today in corporate America. Instead, many businesses compete on price instead of service, reign-in customer service expenses as tightly as possible by outsourcing to call centers, and implement key performance metrics like upsell percentages and average call times that agents are expected to meet.

Tony shared the story of a late-night outing with a few vendors, where one of their clients had a craving for pizza and decided to half-jokingly call Zappos customer service for help. After a brief pause, the customer service agent researched and provided a list of nearby pizza parlors that were still open.

Company Culture

Company culture is important from the start. Zappos conducts two separate interviews — one focusing on the applicant’s background and experience, and the second one on cultural fit. Over the years, Zappos has passed on numerous experienced employees for the simple reason that they were wrong for the company culturally.

The emphasis on cultural fit extends to the training process, where new employees cycle through work in the Kentucky warehouse and call center, and receive lessons on company history and core values.

What are Zappos’ core values?

1. Deliver WOW through service
2. Embrace and drive change
3. Create fun and a little weirdness
4. Be adventurous, creative, and open-minded
5. Pursue growth and learning
6. Build open and honest relationships with communication
7. Build a positive team and family spirit
8. Do more with less
9. Be passionate and determined
10. Be humble

Nothing on the list is particularly unique, but what makes Zappos different from thousands of other companies is that they live those values, instead of just hanging them on the wall. For example, to exercise their open and honest relationship value, the company opened its extranet to 1,500 outside vendors who can now view what products are in stock, how many are selling, and even what the profit margins are.

“Once a company compromises too many times on its core values, the entire culture goes downhill,” says Tony Hseh. Every year, the company reinforces its core values by publishing a 500-page culture book with unedited contributions made by employees and vendors. They distribute it company-wide, as well as to anyone who wants to purchase a copy. The company even opens up its Las Vegas offices for free tours, and welcomes companies like Southwest Airlines to spend time watching Zappos’s call center operations, recruitment practices, and training.

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great quotes, “It doesn’t matter what your core values are, as long as you have them and everyone is aligned, moving in the same direction.”

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If you’re a regular in our marketplace then you’ll want to keep an eye on this competition — the World Championships of Web Site Flipping are happening (a first for the site flipping industry, I believe), proudly sponsored by SitePoint.

Check out all of the contenders that have been spotlighted on the site — nothing really in there to suggest the talents of these flipping warriors, but fun if only to put some real faces to names in the site flipping industry.

There are a stack of prizes on offer — up to $20,000 worth, and that includes a copy of SitePoint’s Web Site Revenue Maximizer kit.

Watch the SiteFlipAcademy blog for more details as they come.

I’m a bit late reporting this, as the date for registering to compete has passed.Chaunna from SiteFlipAcademy informs me that it’s not too late to register and be involved. “You have until July 12th to flip like crazy and the score cards (that you’ll receive in the contender kit) need to be submitted by the 16th.” So if you’re interested in getting involved, get flipping!

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But here’s one simple reason why you can never EVER forget why site performance is so important.

In the last few weeks we’ve upgraded our our blogs and moved our forum to the latest version of vBulletin. Very quickly our sys admin became concerned with the growing pressure on our servers. I’m no expert, but even I could see the dramatic shift in some of the utilization graphs I was shown…

The tipping point was Wednesday and we raised the priority of some longer term plans as well as implemented a quick upgrade to our server hardware (a couple of shiny new AMD Opteron Dual Core CPU’s.)

The effect was instantaneous and dramatic. Our response times were better than before the upgrades…

Result: The next day, bang, a 33% increase in our forum traffic!

So you can search engine optimize to your heart’s content, run A/B split testing, run advertising campaigns, made sure your design is accessible and usable, but it your servers can’t deal with the traffic, you’re slamming the door in visitors faces. And with so much choice these days, they’re not going to wait in the cold outside – they’re off to visit your competitors.

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But if you’re yet to find that killer strategy to earn a profit from the Web, I’d like to introduce you to a brand new product that’s going to make your journey to online prosperity simpler, easier, and oh so much faster…

The Web Site Revenue Maximizer

By Peter T. Davis & Georgina Laidlaw

Niche sites with the right content and monetization strategy are extremely valuable assets and this new SitePoint kit will walk you through, step-by-step, how to generate profit from the Web. You’ll learn from the pros just how easy it is to plan, build, and earn a steady income from your online portfolio.

Then, when you’re ready to cash out, you’ll learn how to flip your sites for profit.

It doesn’t matter if you’re new to the Web, or you already own a couple of sites. You’re sure to find some amazing nuggets of wisdom which will ensure this kit pays for itself again and again…

Here’s a just snippet of what you’ll learn:

• Turn small sites into a growing income.
• How to achieve affiliate marketing success.
• Use your online content to generate revenue.
• Flourish in the competitive ecommerce market.
• Learn how to buy, renovate, then flip your site for profit.
• Build a web estate portfolio for a steady income.
• And much much more…

So go order a copy and discover how niche sites with the right content and monetization strategy can become extremely valuable assets.

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Well, the site is now for sale with a minimum bid of $50,000 and a Buy It Now price of $100,000.

While the concept of playing chess on the computer is not new, what makes CrowdChess different is its approach to team games — rather than your standard one-on-one fare, games of chess are played by groups of people who vote each hour, digg-style, on the next move to be played. In what some consider to be the ultimate duel of the mind, this popular web application is also the ultimate test of whether the “wisdom of the crowd” can improve or hinder the decision-making process.

In fact, the featured game on CrowdChess at the moment is between Grand Master Gawain Jones and everyone else. By that, I mean that literally anyone can become part of the team and cast votes on the moves made against this high profile opponent. If you’d like be to be part of the team that defeats (or loses to) a grand master, it’s not too late to get in on the action.

CrowdChess’s sellers are offering to include a business plan as well as consulting to ensure a smooth transition to the successful buyer. If you’ve got a mind for this kind of duel (and a cheque book to match) then check out the auction page.

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Send your customers an offer they can’t accept

There nothing quite like sending a customer a letter, or an email with an offer so wonderful that they’re ready to buy. Only to find out “sorry – we don’t ship there” or “that service isn’t available at your address”. Don’t make promises you can’t keep!

Give customers a call to action that doesn’t work

The main purpose of a direct mail piece is to get a customer to act. That action might be to click a link, visit web address, or dial a phone number. If your direct mail achieves that – its done its job. So when that action is completed, you better be ready for it! Nothing converts quite like a 404 page or a phone number that’s disconnected.

Send your customers better deal on a product they already own

Talk about rubbing your customer’s noses in it. These days people are aware that offers change over time. How many of us have bought a TV, only to find it on sale the next week, or Apple’s price drop on the iPhone. So if they see an ad on your site, or hear something on the radio, most people will feel unlucky, but not angry. Send them a direct mail, with their name on it, offering them a better price something you should know they already own — now you’re asking for trouble.

Don’t unsubscribe your customers when they ask

When a customer asks not to hear from you about a particular product, or to not hear from you at all, then act on that request. I don’t like your chances of selling a product to someone who’s clearly nominated they’re not interested – nor will you sell anything to the 10 other people they tell “they just couldn’t get you to go away!”

If a customer asks you a question, don’t respond, they don’t deserve it

If a direct marketing piece prompts a customer to ask a question, then the sales 90% complete. Don’t answer and I can guarantee it’s lost, answer promptly, comprehensively, and courteously, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll make the sale.

Unfortunately over my many years as a marketer I can associate myself with just about all of the above. But the best thing about making mistakes is that you learn from them, so perhaps you can learn from mine…

Feel free to add your own direct marketing tragedies.

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As is the case with many markets, online and off, there exists a healthy competition between the owners of these two competing sites. And as is often the case with individuals who enjoy talking about the money they make, this translates into a bunch of trash talk, teasing and a fair amount of back-and-forthing. For the readers of the blogs, this is no doubt highly entertaining, and probably drives traffic to both sites in question.

This latest stunt caught my attention — a competition to build a blog from scratch in a designated niche in 30 days, and see who can sell it for the highest price on the SitePoint Marketplace:

Instead of seeing who can make the most money with the blogs, lets invest 30 days into developing, marketing and building the blog and then list them for sale in SitePoint and see who can get the highest successful winning bid on selling it? The person who can sell their niche blog for the highest amount in a NO RESERVE Sitepoint auction wins the game. Both sites will end up selling and the runner up who sells for less, transfers their earnings to the winner of the game.

Details surrounding the rules of the competition are still being fleshed out, but I’m watching this one with a keen eye! In fact, I think I’ll start taking bets around the office on who will be victorious.

Pick a team and follow the action (either at JohnCow.com or GarryConn.com).

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While it’s targeted at site owners who may be looking to sell their web sites, it’s equally as useful for buyers who are in the market to make a purchase, but have yet to gain experience in determining the true value of a web site.

SitePoint set out to find something approaching a clear answer on site valuation. We asked several experts — people who have, for years, made their livings online, and have first-hand experience buying and selling web properties of various types — for their insights into the web property market, and for tips and advice on valuing sites.

The article is well researched and not only includes expert advice gleaned from interviews with many successful online entrepreneurs (including many names that you may recognize from around the SitePoint Forums), but also includes graphs based on statistics from the SitePoint Marketplace. In fact, as far as I’m aware, it’s the most comprehensive collection of advice available on the topic.

So if you’ve been monitoring the marketplace and are thinking about diving in (either as a buyer or as a seller) I strongly recommend you check out the article.

And, of course, you may also be surprised at what that hobby site you’ve been laboring over for so long is actually worth.

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The limitation is that listings placed in these categories will only be visible on the front page if the “Listing featured on front page” upgrade is applied. Listings will always be displayed within the category page as usual.

Enjoy the freebies!

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Or is this just game playing with Microsoft? Perhaps to boost perceived company value or to allude at the creation of an advertising monopoly with Google. What ever the aim — Microsoft’s General Councel, Brad Smith has responded by posting this comment:

Any definitive agreement between Yahoo! and Google would consolidate over 90% of the search advertising market in Google’s hands. This would make the market far less competitive, in sharp contrast to our own proposal to acquire Yahoo! We will assess closely all of our options. Our proposal remains the only alternative put forward that offers Yahoo! shareholders full and fair value for their shares, gives every shareholder a vote on the future of the company, and enhances choice for content creators, advertisers, and consumers.

Interestingly — Microsoft are complaining about the market becoming less competitive. Surely that’s a case of the pot calling the kettle black?

TTFN

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Jon Wheatley has begun producing monthly stats on the average prices of sites sold on some of the more active online marketplaces:

I had a script developed that crawls the content of some of the most active website marketplaces and grabs the sale price of each web property sold. I then took that information and created some average figures.

Wheatley compared web site marketplaces in terms of their average listing prices and overall dollar volumes, with the SitePoint Marketplace ranking 900% higher than its closest competitor.

The analysis showed that sitepoint.com had a total of $3,911,992 worth of listings between 495 individual auctions during the month of February, with an average listing price of $7903 per auction, compared to $805.73 for the next closest competitor. In fact, the SitePoint Marketplace’s listing prices totalled $3.9 million for February alone – more than all the other competitors combined.

If you haven’t started dabbling in online real estate, there’s never been a better time to do some reading and get your toes wet.

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For their report, McAfee studied 1.9 million typographical variations of 2,771 of the most popular and well known Web sites. Of these, nearly 7% were suspected typo-squatters, defined as domain names registered for the sole purpose of generating advertising revenue from people who mistyped URLs.

The five most highly squatted categories are game sites (14.0%), airlines (11.4%), main stream media company sites (10.8%), adult sites (10.2%) and technology and Web 2.0 related sites (9.6%).

Besides the scale of the problem and its effect on legitimate business, what disgusts me the most is that Google AdWords have no way to opt out of having their advertising displayed on parked domain names.

Addendum: While there are legal routes for trademark owners to recover domain names that are owned by typosquatters, the process is long and expensive. Typosquatting would a much smaller industry if AdSense and other networks took a strong stance against the practice and stopped making it so lucrative.

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This year, Google is offering two frequent-flier miles on any of seven airlines (all the majors except American) for every $1 spent. It also offers $5 to $50 discounts, with minimum purchase, at several dozen merchants … PayPal has fewer merchants but its offer is more lucrative for shoppers in some ways, with 20 percent of purchases credited to the buyer’s PayPal account.

Are incentives like these going to convince you to try one system over the other? And what incentives are you offering visitors to your sites this holiday season?

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“ClickZ Specifics: E-mail Marketing” is an intensive, one-day event designed to educate, inspire, and instill confidence in anyone using e-mail to communicate with their customers and prospects.

If you’re looking to get to grips with email marketing, grab yourself a ticket today!

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PubMatic, a new service that just launched in “Alpha Mode”, will help you answer those questions by dynamically optimizing the ad space on your site.

Currently they work with Google AdSense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, ValueClick, and Komli — and they are planning on adding additional ad networks in the future.

As part of the Alpha launch, they are looking to recruit 100 innnovative publishers. If they can replicate their early results, this could be boon to publishers everywhere who continually struggle to find and optimize their ad inventory across multiple networks.

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