Pinterest Means Serious Business

Source: smallshopstudio.com
 via Jessica on Pinterest

At first glance, the new Pinterest "pinning" platform may seem like a peripheral channel for rainmakers, but if your target market is women between the ages of 25-44 (a group that makes up more than 60 percent of Pinterest users) and you market unique, visually appealing products in the fashion, food, crafts or bridal business, your brand should create a Pinterest profile and begin engaging in the platform. Pinterest is a social network that allows users to visually share, curate, and discover new interests by posting or “pinning” images and videos to virtual pin boards.ting them on personal pinboards. Retailers benefit from utilizing a “Pin It” share button on product pages within their current e-commerce site. In its first year, large retailers like Nordstrom claimed to receive more traffic to their site from Pinterest than Facebook. Before you begin, understand that developing or curating photography is time consumming. Pinterest etiquette also states it's not a place for self-promotion, so brands need to be creative, play by the rules in order to be effective. Here is a list of useful tips on how you can join the more than 250 brands already on Pinterest:

1. Think creatively and envision how you'd like others to experience your brand.
2. Use Pinterest as an effective focus group by collecting information about your following to get insight on your target consumers.
3. Use as a great crowdsourcing tool by encouraging followers to post photos of themselves at events or experiencing your products.
4. Brand to consumers by encouraging employees to help you build inspiring pinboards about what your company means to those who work there.

5. Create pinboards based on core keywords already used in your current website SEO strategy.

Online Holiday Sales Satisfaction

There's been plenty of news about how fruitful the 2011 Holiday shopping season was for retailers and how dramatic of an increase there was in online retail sales, but a recent report analyzing how satisfied holiday online shoppers were demonstrates why e-commerce is booming. The ForeSee E-Retail Satisfaction Index, U.S. Holiday Edition, included the top 40 online retailers in the United States and found that shoppers who were highly satisfied with their purchase experience online were 64 percent more likely to return to the site, recommend it to their networks and establish a loyalty to the brand than those who had issues with their transactions. A compelling result was that just a one-point change in overall website satisfaction represented a 14 percent increase in sales revenues.

Buyers Meet Sellers Online - The Digital Auction Begins

Although it may seem like it sometimes, the phenomenon of e-commerce did not actually spring up overnight.  Many of the things that we now take for granted -- conveniences such as shopping carts and one-click ordering, readily accessible services such as PayPal, and a smorgasbord of online sellers to choose from -- evolved through trial and error.  In just a little over a decade, online shopping has changed the concept of commerce, for the owners of online stores as well as for the customers. Online stores have come a long ways from the mid 1990s, when major companies such as Amazon and eBay entered the playing field. E-commerce didn’t develop into this miracle overnight. Rather, it took years of visionary programmers and enterprising entrepreneurs to bring us the world of online shopping that we know today.

You will notice that all three of these early e-commerce sites represent very different types of online commerce.  Amazon.com follows more of a traditional store format, with set prices and one major seller, although small-time sellers can also now sell their wares on Amazon’s product pages. eBay provides regulation and a meeting space for buyers and sellers to come together, with most sales taking place in an auction format. Craigslist is the least involved, offering little more than a community message board where people can buy and sell directly from one another.