Yahoo! Store Book, Ystore Blog, & 2006 Seminars!

FREE PDF Yahoo! Store Conversion Rate Tips

Last week, Paul wrote this very cool blog post about a FREE download you can get from Yahoo! and the fine folks at Wiley: Link: The Official Yahoo! Store Blog - Tips and Tricks for Making Your Yahoo! Small Business Ecommerce Site Successful.

The nice folks over at Wiley, publishers of the Dummies guides, have graciously provided a FREE chapter of Rob Snell’s Starting a Yahoo! Business for Dummies.

The chapter, Converting Browsers Into Buyers, (PDF) includes:

    * Ten tips for increasing customer confidence (and likelihood to purchase)

    * Eleven tips for customizing product pages

    * Over a dozen tips for improvements to your checkout pages

    * Usability pointers such as monitoring the user’s of your site and increasing the page loading speed.

So now’s your chance to get a free taste of all the good advice Rob has to offer in his book. And if you like what you are reading, you can purchase Starting a Yahoo! Business For Dummies from Amazon.com.

Please review my Yahoo! Store book on Amazon

Howdy! Can I ask a quick favor? Yahoo is pushing my Yahoo! Store DUMMIES book in this week's Yahoo! Store newsletter going to some 40,000-odd store owners. COOL! This should be the biggest sales bump I get since the book came out in March and most of it will come from Amazon.

A buddy of mine suggested I need more (and more detailed) reviews on the Amazon page. OK. So I asked some folks to review the book and got up to 17 reviews in less than 12 hours! Holy cow! You folks rock! 

I can't believe the feedback I'm getting after that email. It's like getting to hear all the nice things folks say about you at your funeral without having to actually die. Kind of makes gaining that 15 pounds writing the book seem worthwhile. (Mmmm, Shipley donuts...)

If you don't mind, have time, and are so inclined, could you post a
review? Even using some of the comments you've emailed me about the book would be helpful! Here is the Yahoo! Store book link and this is the WRITE A REVIEW for the Yahoo Store book link...

Thank you. Thankyouverymuch.

-- Rob Snell (somewhere in rural Mississippi)

P.S. I forsee showing some cool tricks picked up at SES to folks showing the love...

Your Yahoo! Store can get 30,000 visitors a month for less than 10-cents each.

1.) The picture is from the flowers my Mom sent to congratulate Mike, Istvan, and me on the Los Angeles "Make More with your Online Store" seminar.  My mom ROCKS!

2.) Just got back from a hot date! We went to the opening game at the new Busch stadium and had killer seats just behind home plate on the third base side! Go Cards! Nothing like a hot dog at the ballpark with your best girl on about the best Spring day I've ever seen.

Back to work, though. Steve says if I want to afford any more hot dogs or trips to California, I've got to sell some more Yahoo! Store books and seminar seats. Hint, hint!

3.) PowerPosting for Fun & Profit: Seminar Nugget #14

Ok. Want an additional 30,000 relevant visitors a month to your Yahoo Store for less than a dime each? I sure do!

{Hey! Buy the book, because I explain it better in there than I do here. This post is really for seminar folks LA + SF, but anyone can feel free to use this stuff. Your mileage may vary. Blah, blah, blah...}

First: Download robsnell-powerpost-yahoo-store-search.xls 

In this example I take it for granted that you have the following:

• a Yahoo Store needing more traffic
• a Google Adwords account ($5 to set one up)
• $100-2000 a month to spend on traffic
• a big honking list of relevant keywords

In the LA seminar, we took the Store Manager's Statistics: References : Details and downloaded the CSV for the highest volume search engine (which was usually Google).

For the folks playing along at home: You must reduce your references:details.csv (keyword list) to a unique list of words and phrases. Use NOTEMAID to strip off the HTML. Use Excel's SUBTOTAL feature to pound that ole list down into a list of uniques, and remember that there are as many ways to do that as there are ticks on an old hound dog...

THEN...

1.) Download the powerpost.xls worksheet and open it in Excel. Input your store account and your maximum bid (up to 11 cents is good). Test the fake URLs created to see if they really work on your store.

2.) Open your internet browser and log into your Google AdWords account:

   A. Create a new campaign/adgroup called something like bulk + the date.

   B. Write a generic ad. Something like this:   

{Keyword:DomainName here}   
100% satisfaction guaranteed.   
Free shipping on $99+ orders.   
YourDomain.com         

4.) Paste your KEYWORDS into this Excel sheet to generate the blue POWERPOST code. Have more than 100 keywords? Good! Just copy the formula and paste it into additional cells. Up to 2000 lines or so should get you.

5.) COPY & PASTE blue stuff to POWERPOST directly into the keywords field. Now update. You'll probably have to delete some weird characters or long, long keyword strings. Don't sweat the small stuff...

The FORMAT of power posting is:

keyword phrase ** max bid ** URL  like this:

big red widgets ** 0.06 ** http://search.store.yahoo.com/cgi-bin/nsearch?catalog=webstore-design&query=big+red+widgets+gaw   

Good luck! I get 1,000+ people a day to my stores at less than a dime each.

Remember to test those URLs to make sure that you're sending traffic to YOUR store and not MINE!

-- Rob Snell

P.S. Oh, yeah! Make sure you're using the conversion code Google provides on your Confirmation page. It takes maybe 2 minutes to get it from Google, paste it in your store, and publish. This code will let you see  the difference between a successful PPC campaign and throwing good money after bad in paid search.

Email me if you need help (or read my Yahoo Store book!)

Available in Stores, now! More on Converting Keywords...

I'm back.  Just got in from our Yahoo Store seminar in LA which we extended a half-day to try to cover all the material retailers wanted to know about. (Hey! You guys ask some tough questions!)

Mike and Istvan rocked, and I think I did pretty well. We had fun, taught a bunch of stuff, met some really cool retailers, and even had a guest appearance by Mr. YstoreTools  himself, Don Cole.

I'll post a TON about LA and seminar stuff later. The San Francisco seminar is filling up fast, so sign up now if you're thinking about going...

Quick New "For Dummies Author" moment:  There's nothing like seeing your book in a real bookstore for the first time. I got chills, Momma! It was so cool! And they had three copies at the STL Borders, too. Then the cashier asked my girlfriend: Are you starting a business?

Girlfriend: (somewhat distracted by her 6 year-old) Uh, no. Why? (she's actually starting a quilt shop site)

Barron: Then why are you buying this book?

Me: (beaming) Because I *wrote* it. And I want to see how it turns out in the end.

Barron: No way. You are not ...(looking at the book cover) ... "Rob Snell."

Pretty funny! And on to something to make you some more money (so you can come to San Francisco!)

MORE ON CONVERTING KEYWORDS -- I got a couple of emails and a blog comment on an earlier post about converting keywords. Folks are asking why retailers should optimize for words they already rank well enough for to get traffic and sales from them. GOOD QUESTION!

M -- Thanks for your blog comment on Converting Keywords!  We covered the exact same topic at the LA seminar.

At first blush, a lot of retailers think by definition, their Yahoo stores are already optimized for their converting keywords because these words are already driving traffic and conversions. Maybe so. Maybe not. First, I'll tell you why, and then I'll give you a real world example.

My definition of being COMPLETELY optimized for a converting keyword phrase is two-fold, covering both the free, organic, natural search listings using SEO and the paid search listings as well buying PPC ads on Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing networks.

FREE SEARCH GOAL: For each converting keyword I want to rank on the first page of results within the first screenshot (top 3 or 5) on each of the big three search engines (Google, Yahoo, & MSN). I do this several ways using pretty basic SEO methods (see CH19 in the book) .

PAID SEARCH GOAL. I want to buy that particular converting word or phrase with a paid search ad that makes sense given a store's particular margin, conversion rate, and ROI goals. You don't have to be in the number one position, but it helps to be on the first page.

REAL WORLD EXAMPLE: A good example of an unoptimized converting keyword is the phrase "rope leashes" from my Mom's site.  That particular phrase doesn't even exist on her site. The words rope and leash do, but the phrase doesn't. So I need to add "rope leashes" to a caption somewhere it makes sense. And optimize for it using SEO Secret #23 which I cover in the seminars and in the book.

Here's how I rank today for rope leashes:

• GOOGLE free search #9 for  rope leashes
• GOOGLE Adwords #13 (page 2)*  rope leashes * using my bulk buy technique
• YAHOO free search rank #13 for  rope leashes
• YAHOO Y!SM (not buying that word)
• MSN free #2 for  rope leashes
• MSN PPC (Y!SM (not buying that word) < Until MSN stops using Y!SM

At the LA seminar, the sample order for dog training collars we looked at with a converting keyword phrase was from October 2005, but even today we're ranked so-so which means I'm falling a bit short for that keyword phrase. I need to pimp up my SEO and buy a Y!SM ad next time I buy a whole bunch of ads. There's a lot of opportunity there, if I think rope leashes are important enough to optimize for (and I do!)

Does this make sense? More on all your emails in a bit...

Rob