Step 6

Advanced Marketing

This section of the covers some advanced marketing techniques you can use.

Submit your Sitemap to Google

Google offers website verification services through their online Google Webmaster Tools. This verification service allows you to declare you site layout for Google to better reference your overall site content. Before you follow the steps below, we highly recommended that you first set up your site for SEO.

To verify your site with Google’s service, sign up for a Webmaster Tools account here http://www.google.com/webmasters/.

In order to perform verification with Google’s Webmaster Tools, you must submit an XML-based sitemap to your Google Webmaster Tools account. With Winter ‘09, the XML sitemap you’ll need has already been generated for you.

Obtaining Your Sitemap File

To retrieve your XML sitemap, simply open your browser and go to the following address:

www.yourdomainname.com/google_sitemap.asp (substituting your actual domain name in the central portion)

Once the page loads, you’ll be presented with the entire XML code for your store’s sitemap. Simply copy the page content and paste it into an ordinary text file to save a local copy.

Once you’ve saved the sitemap contents to a local file, log in to your Google Webmaster Tools account and upload the file in the sitemap verification settings.   

A link to Google’s content submission page can be found here:
http://www.google.com/submityourcontent/index.html.

Once your sitemap file has been uploaded, allow some time for Google’s system to complete the verification process.

Marketing Products with AdWords

Google offers a unique program that allows online business owners to advertise themselves regardless of budget constraints. The Google AdWords program allows you to post ads and links to your business right in Google’s search results pages.

When you sign up for an AdWords account at adwords.google.com, you’ll create ad and enter specific keywords related to your online store or products. When visitors enter the same or similar key words in their Google searches, Google then presents your ad in the search results page.

This is a quick and easy way to generate site traffic. Moreover, those viewing your ad are likely already interested in your store or products because they triggered the ad based on searching by its keywords.

Every Volusion store comes with a coupon of at least $50 toward a new AdWords account. Once your store is ready to sell online, simply sign up with AdWords, enter your Volusion coupon information and you’ll be coming up in searches in no time. 

Market Via MySpace &Facebook

In order to take advantage of the vast possibilities of online marketing through popular social networking services, Volusion provides the ability to integrate your store with both Facebook and MySpace, allowing you to broadcast products to a mass amount of potential customers.

Note that you need access to Volusion API  to take advantage of social site integration. Access to this tool is provided with any monthly plan of Gold or higher. You’ll also need to establish an account with MySpace or Facebook account to publish store information there.

More information on this topic here:

FACEBOOK
MYSPACE

The Volusion Featured Products Export

Exporting product information to Facebook or MySpace is easy. The first step requires activation of a special Volusion API setting that sends product data to the Volusion Social Networking Application.

• In the admin area, click Inventory >> Import/Export >> Volusion API.

• Check the Enable public XML for Featured Products option and click Save.

Installing the MY Featured Products App in MySpace

• Log in to your MySpace account, click on More in the menu bar at the top of the page, and select Apps Gallery.

• To quickly find the application, simply search for "Social Store Builder" or "Volusion" on the MySpace Apps page (if results don’t appear, click "Alphabetical" on the search results page).

• Click Social Store Builder app in the app search results page.

• Click Add this App.

• Click Home in the menu to navigate to your profile page.

• Locate the Social Store Builder app within the profile page. You must enter the domain name of your Volusion store into the text box (provided by the app) and click Save to complete the installation.

Installing the My Featured Products App in Facebook

• Log in to your Facebook account and search for "Social Store Builder" in the upper right-hand corner, or click here:

• Click the search result for the Volusion Social Store Builder app.
  

• Click Go to Application and then Allow. This installs the application on your Facebook account.

• If not already activated, click on the profile link in the top left corner to return to your Facebook home page.

• Click the Applications link in the bottom left.

• Select the Edit option from the menu.

• Choose Authorized from the menu.

• Click Edit Settings next to the listing for the Social Store Builder app within your Facebook applications page.

• Select the Profile tab within the application's popup window and click the link to add the application to your account box.

• Optionally, you can edit the application's privacy settings within this popup. When finished, click Okay.

Once these steps are complete, the Social Store Builder app will be loaded into the Boxes page within the main Facebook profile. Simply click on Boxes tab to view the app. Click on the app to edit its settings and enter the store domain name to connect with the Social Store Builder application. Be sure to omit “http://”.

Using Volusion with MySpace & Facebook

Once you’ve completed the integration steps, the system will automatically retrieve a list of products in the Home_Featured group. Each product retrieved from the export will display in your social networking account with the product image, price, sale price and an Add to Cart link. Clicking this link will redirect visitors to your shopping cart page with the product automatically loaded into the shopping cart. Visitors can then continue shopping within the Volusion store or proceed to checkout.

Notes on Using the Social Store Builder

Only products in the Home_Featured group will be exported to the system. We recommend only assigning a select number of products to this group (15-20 products) and regularly updating it to most effectively market your products. This will prevent social network profiles from becoming overloaded with product data and keep data transfer by the application to a minimum. This will also help you comply with display constraints enforced by MySpace.

Facebook users should note that because of display constraints within the Facebook user interface, the social store builder can’t display product content within the applications area profile page. Because of this, the social store builder will only display content in the assigned area of your profile page.

Register with Google Base

Google Base is one of many third-party services that Volusion can directly integrate with to help you sell online. Google Base allows users a new avenue to list items online. Using this tool can help drive traffic to your products and potentially increase sales.

• Register with Google at http://base.google.com

• Click Data Feeds.

• Click Settings and enter your store name in the Display Name field.

• Enter your store address in the Website URL field.

• Click Save Changes and then My Items.

• Click Data Feeds and then New Data Feed.

• Set the Item Type to Products.

• In the Setup Data Feeds section, enter a file name for the XML document that your Volusion store will export to Google Base (e.g. myproducts.xml)

• Click Register data feed.

Configuring Google Base FTP Access

In order to obtain data from your store, you’ll next need to set up FTP access within your Google Base account. Here's how:

• Log in to your Google Base account at base.google.com.

• Click Data Feeds and locate the Settings tab.

• Locate the FTP Account heading.

• Here, you can create your Google Base FTP account by entering a login name and password. Then click Save Changes.
  
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Please note that it may take some time for your Base FTP account to become active.

Configuring Google Base Settings in Volusion

To complete the integration process:

• In the admin area, click Inventory >> Import/Export >> Volusion API.

• Click Google Base.

• Enter the FTP login name, password and the Google Base XML file name exactly as you entered them in the Google Base configuration process above.

• Enter a title and description for your Google Base export into the fields provided.

• Click Generate XML. Note that the XML file generation process may take some time, depending on the size of your product database.

• Once the XML generation is complete, XML code will appear on this page.

• Click Publish to send the XML data to Google Base.

It may take some time for Google's base system to publish your product information online after you have transmitted the XML information to your Base account.

Product Requirements

The Volusion Google Base export will send product data for all products in your Volusion store's database to your Base account. Some products, however, will be exempt from the export. Please note that the Google Base export will not send product data for products that meet any of the following conditions:

• Products with the Google Product Type** field left unconfigured

• Products marked as Hidden

• Products marked for Private Section Customers Only

• Any product configured as a gift certificate

• Any product configured with a setup cost

• Products configured with a membership cost

• Any product configured to be a donation product

• Child products

** You can set your products' Google Product Type in admin area product edit page under 3rd Party Specific Fields heading.

You can find a list of Google Product Type examples online here.

Product Expiration

Google Base automatically sets a 30 day expiration date for any product data exported to the service. This expiration date is 30 days from the date Google receives your exported data. Re-generate your Google Base XML and re-send it using the controls provided in the Volusion API page every 30 days to update your product listings.

Blog Your Store

Blogs and other forms of new media have emerged in the past several years as a major force in global communication. This media type is also a fertile ground for online marketing. Many of our merchants have utilized blogs to help promote their businesses through savvy, web-enabled marketing.

Increase your SEO Rank through Blogs

All search engines reference and categorize text posted on the Internet so that users can find relevant content based on their search criteria. The more often content appears online, the more likely search engines will reference it. As such, it pays to advertize your store through blogs (e.g. your blog, friends’ blogs, blogs related to your products, etc.). Blog visitors may click on your store directly, but this practice will also optimize your site for search engines.

Registering Affiliates Who Blog

Does one of your customers have a popular blog? Sign them up to be a store affiliate using the steps outlined in the next section. Not only can affiliates increase your traffic and sales by posting their affiliate links on their blog, they can also earn some extra cash though affiliate commissions.

Get Product Reviews through Blogs

Do you have a loyal customer who blogs? Ask if he or she is interested in writing a review for one of the products they purchased (they can also do this directly on your Volusion store). This will help increase your SEO, drive traffic to your site, and get the word out about your products or services.

Start a Blog and Get Active

Are you passionate about your business? Do you think you have a winning product or service? Are you a non-profit organization looking to promote your efforts online? Get a blog! It’s not difficult to start publishing. There are a wide variety of free blogging services available such as Blogger, Wordpress.com and LiveJournal. You can blog about your business efforts and products. This doesn’t just boost your business, it also elicits an avenue for customer feedback through the blogs’ commenting systems.

For more information on blogs, please read our article about them.

Use Your Store's Affiliate System

The Affiliate system is a function of Volusion’s Marketing and Customers pages that allows your store’s registered customers to become affiliates.
Affiliates can be instrumental in marketing and driving traffic (and sales). The Winter ‘09 functions allow your store to assign special tracking links to any approved affiliate. These links are provided to the affiliate, who can then place them in numerous areas on the Internet (e.g. high-traffic blogs, forums, etc.). These links will trace back to your store, allowing affiliates to drive traffic to your site.

Additionally, the Volusion affiliate system provides a way of tracking inbound activity to your site based on these special tracking links. The system can track click-throughs and sales based on affiliate link referrals. The system can even calculate percentages you pay to affiliates for referral commission (giving affiliates even more incentive to market your store).

Becoming an Affiliate

An affiliate is a special customer account within the Volusion store. Customers can request to become affiliates on your site and complete a brief registration process.

• Near the bottom of storefront, your customers can click on Become an Affiliate.

• They will then log in to their customer account to complete the affiliate registration process. If they don’t have an account, they’ll be prompted to create one.

• Prospective affiliates will be asked to enter their website address and a tax ID number (usually either a social security or EIN number) in order to help you verify the address to which you send payments.

• They will then click Continue to complete the registration process. A notice will be sent stating that their affiliate account will be activated after a 24-hour approval process.

• At this point, a store administrator must manually approve the customer's account to officially grant them affiliate status.

• Log in to the admin area and click Customers >> Accounts.

• On this table, click the ID number of the customer you wish to promote to affiliate status.

• Select Partner/Affiliate from the Access Key dropdown menu and click Update.

Note that fully functioning affiliate accounts can only be created using this method. Store administrators can create an affiliate account from the customers table, but this will prevent the creation of fully-functioning tracking URLs.

Viewing Your Affiliates

To view a list of active affiliates, click Marketing >> Affiliates in the menu bar. Note that each affiliate listed here contains the same settings as that affiliate’s entry in the customers table.

 

Click the affiliate’s ID number to view their account record in the customers table.

Notes on Affiliates

Once a customer becomes an affiliate, they can log in to their customer account and click Visit My Affiliate Page link to access reports on the number of click-throughs, sales, and the commission they’ve generated.


They can also sign up as many as four sub-affiliates registered through them.

Each affiliate page also features a link that allows your affiliates to quickly create HTML banner ads that can be posted on websites and in emails. These banner ads contain links back to the Volusion store and include the affiliates ID information for tracking purposes.

This page will contain the affiliate's link and the affiliate's ID number. Clicking on this link will redirect visitors to the store and record all sales and click-throughs under the affiliate's account. Affiliates should copy this URL and embed it as a hypertext link on any websites or in any emails or online marketing tools they use.

Affiliate Reports

To view a report of the most recent affiliate activity, click on the admin area’s Reports >> ROI Tracking page. Here, you’ll see a table listing all active affiliate links generated by your store, as well as the total number of clicks and sales each link has generated. The table also lists the clicks-to-sales conversion rate.


Initially, this page will show all affiliate activity within the past 30 days. You can use the reporting functions to view affiliate stats for different dates or time periods. For more information on using the ROI Tracking and other functions in the Reports section, please see the “Advanced Settings” section of this manual.



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