Sorry June’s started off a little quiet. I am back from vacation and have more posts lined up for next week. In the meantime, check out some of these useful reads below:

• Converting Customers Online vs In a Brick and Mortar Shop – This article draws analogies between elements of a brick and mortar store and your website and describes the effect these elements have on your conversion rate
• Keyword Research That Doesn’t Suck – Ian at Conversation Marketing describes how his team of online marketing pros conducts keyword research, an essential step in SEO.
• 10 Essential Shopping Cart Features
• How the Power of Free and Scarcity Influence Decision Making – great article with examples of how to use these elements in your web design to increase sales
• How Facebook Likes Help Your Website – if you aren’t using Facebook “like” buttons on your site and product pages, you may be missing out on a ton of sales
• Search and Retargeting Lead to Brand Embrace – I have said a zillion times that remarketing tools like Adroll can have a huge impact on brand awareness and sales, if you haven’t tried this valuable tool yet, what are you waiting for? It even comes with a FREE trial.
• What Are You Doing to Earn Facebook Likes?
• 25 Ways to Get Links – You can spend all day on keyword research and on-page SEO but if you don’t have links, your SEO will flop. This article provides 25 ideas on how to get ‘em.

Lots of great reads this week about Facebook, SEO, and growing your business…

• Using Facebook’s Tagging Feature to Increase Action on Your Page
• 8 Benefits to Facebook Likes
• Must-Have Features for Shopping Cart Pages
• Cool Tools: Open Site Explorer (my guest post on Handmade Success)
• Growth Ceilings and Scalability – Megan at Crafting an MBA talks about what’s holding you back from growing your business
• What Attracts Consumers to Take Part in Social Media Campaigns – What works, what doesn’t
• Giving Customers Credit – How the semantics of an offer can increase response rate
• 10 Super Easy SEO Copywriting Tips – Write copy and blog posts that people love to link to

TGIF! Who’s ready for a tall frosty gin and tonic? (me) But first, some recommended reads from the web this week…

• Econsultancy Explains Why You Should Start Thinking Like a Media Publisher
• Some Thoughts from Get Elastic on “Name Your Own Price” Style Sales
• How to Build the Perfect Facebook Fan Page (Many examples of nicely designed pages included)
• Tips for Improving Your Product Photos (complete with befores and afters so you can see exactly how to step up your product photo game)

I have two really awesome FREE goodies for you today!

1. I just launched a totally free conversion calculator you’re gonna want to check it. It calculates the likely results of your ad campaigns! Check it out and tell all your friends.

2. I just put together a list of 49 resources I love. I am including websites, vendors, services, online apps, the works! These are resources that are either FREE or the best priced I’ve found. I’m giving you my list for (almost) FREE. All I’m asking for in return is that you spread the Smaller Box word. Click the “share to get button” below and a free copy of my resource list is yours! (If you’d rather not trade a tweet for this download, you can purchase the download for $9.99. To do that click the “Pay $9.99 to Get” button.)

OR

Crazy! Why are you doing this?
I’d like to say it’s just cuz I’m nice (which I totally am), but in addition to that…

I’m testing out the idea of social media as currency. When I hear a marketing guru say “social media is currency” my eyes glaze over because it’s one of those statements that sounds like nonsense if you don’t have examples and evidence to back it up. So I’m here saying it: “Social Media is currency.” You’re paying for access to my resources with word of mouth. You get cool resources, I get your word of mouth, which translates into opportunities for me to sell products and services. (Plus link juice for my SEO, whee!)

I think it’ll work nicely, but it’s up to you to prove me right or wrong. I’ll let you all know how it goes. If you like what I’ve done here and are going “but how would I apply this to my product-based biz?”, well you’ll need to get my resources guide. I’ve included a tip on where to get ideas about that too.

This week’s link love is a 2 parter. I was so busy last week I forgot to share links and I have a backlog of great reads to share.

• 5 Interesting Facebook Marketing Facts
• Marketing with Fiverr
• Free and Low Cost Tools to Improve Your Website
• Create a Brilliant Online Press Center
• How to Use Twitter to Boost Your Google Rankings
• Using Magazines to Build Links
• Organizing Publicity Efforts: A Cheat Sheet
• Steps You Can Take to Eliminate Theft at Art and Craft Shows

Every day I check out the 100s of subscriptions in my RSS feed about marketing, PR, advertising, branding, social media, and a host of other topics of interest to small businesses that sell online. Most of what gets posted isn’t earth shattering but I reserve Fridays for the best reads of the week. So here you have it, the most valuable things I read in the business blogosphere this week:

• Tips From Meylah to Build and Market Your Facebook Page
• 6 Pointers for Selling Gift Certificates
• Thoughts from Craft MBA on Fourth Quarter Profits
• Vetting Start Up Ideas – Great tips on figuring out if your new business will succeed
• How to Test a Website in Different Browsers – Great read if you are planning a website makeover in 2011
• Use Social Media to Celebrate Customers, Followers and Lurkers
• New Website for Helping Ecommerce Companies Find Funding
• 4 Reasons Your Product Pages Don’t Convert

Want to boost your Valentine’s Day sales? I’m doing a special co-op that starts in about a week and a half. It includes online advertising, social media marketing and email marketing, so signing up will get you loads of exposure. I’m offering a special discounted price that expires TODAY! Here are the details.

Every day I check out the 100s of subscriptions in my RSS feed about marketing, PR, advertising, branding, social media, and a host of other topics of interest to small businesses that sell online. Most of what gets posted isn’t earth shattering but I reserve Fridays for the best reads of the week. So here you have it, the most valuable things I read in the business blogosphere this week:

• Should You Register With Search Engines?
• How Twitter and Facebook Improve Your Search Rankings
• Do Facebook Pages Generate As Many Click-Throughs as Twitter?
• Improve Your Merchandising With Photos and Video
• Google Webmaster Tools 101
• Why You Shouldn’t Focus on Conversion Rate in A/B Tests
• How Businesses Cope With Angry Customers
• Etsy Circles As Market Research
• SWEET DEAL: Google is Giving Away $100 in FREE Advertising

Every day I check out the 100s of subscriptions in my RSS feed about marketing, PR, advertising, branding, social media, and a host of other topics of interest to small businesses that sell online. Most of what gets posted isn’t earth shattering but I reserve Fridays for the best reads of the week. So here you have it, the most valuable things I read in the business blogosphere this week:

• Use Google Insights To Fine Tune Your Website
• The 5 Dimensions of Social Proof For Your Ecommerce Website
• Craft MBA’s Tips on Recycling Your Content
• Focus Groups vs Cash -Marketingsherpa does a nice job of describing why I advocate testing over customer surveys

To make your business a success, it’s important to keep your eyes and ears open. You want to pay attention to what’s going on around you, what customers are saying, what industry publications are saying and what your competition is up to. Studying the competition can be an incredibly valuable tool for growing your business. Here are a few things you can learn from them:

Marketing Ideas
The internet is full of great marketing ideas, and you can get some especially great tips from your competitors. Follow their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. Subscribe to their newsletters. If your competitors are running new promotions, you can be the first to know. See how they conduct contests. Notice the type of coupon codes they use. Are they doing discounts? Are they requiring a minimum spend to use a discount? Are they doing free shipping? Are they hosting a giveaway and if so how are they asking customers to enter to win? Are they doing a customer loyalty program? Are they promoting flat rate shipping? While I don’t recommend copying your competitors’ playbooks, you can generate ideas of your own, based on what they are up to.

You also want to see what they do most often, because that suggests it’s working for them. If you see them always doing free shipping offers, that means it’s probably driving sales. If you see them constantly doing giveaways for newsletter subscribers, that suggests that those giveaways are effective at growing their subscriber base.

Content
If you’ve spent more than 5 minutes reading about online marketing, you’ve run into the phrase “content is king.” What this means is that having great content is an important part of online marketing. It’s good for SEO and it’s good for generating interest from humans too. Having interesting content on your blog and social media accounts matters a great deal. It can help keep customers engaged and many online marketers are theorizing that your traction in social media may soon be more important than traditional SEO when it comes to online marketing success.

The trouble is, coming up with great content is difficult. We try to do it every day for our online retail website and it’s not always easy. One way to draw inspiration is by following the competition. What do they say on their blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc. What kind of videos do they put on YouTube? What’s in their Flickr stream? You can use this information to get ideas for your own content. You not only want to see what competitors are doing, but you want to see what their customers respond to. Does another jewelry designer’s blog posts about recipes get a lot of comments? Does another screenprinter’s Tweets about news of the weird stir up a lot of replies and retweets? You want to get a feel for what customers like seeing, and let that guide your content generation.

Media List
Getting a relevant comprehensive media list can be challenging, but it’s an invaluable tool in your PR arsenal. One way to look for media outlets to contact is by checking out competitors’ press pages. See what magazines, papers and blogs featured them so you can get an idea of which ones might feature you.

Trends
Staying on top of trends is essential when you’re trying to sell products. You need to know if polka dots are in. You need to know of nautical themes are out. You’ll want to study a variety of sources for this information including magazines, design blogs and of course the competition. Some online shops even say what their best sellers are. This is kind of information can help you keep track of where trends are headed and help shape your design aesthetic in a way that’s profitable.

Product Ideas
Make sure to look beyond the designs, when you look at competitor product offerings, and notice what they are actually selling. Is another illustrator selling their prints on mousepads? Is another wallet designer doing business card cases? Is a company that normally prints on t-shirts now offering screenprinted scarves? You’ll want to notice these product offerings to come up with ways to enhance your own product line.

Website Usability
Having a user-friendly website can make or break sales. Websites come with all sorts of interesting design challenges. How can you convey that the product comes in different sizes? How do you communicate shipping policies in a way that customers will absorb? How can you best display product photos? Should the checkout process be 1 step or 2? There are no absolute answers to questions like this, but you can get ideas by studying other websites.

Earlier this year when I did my website usability makeover, I studied a ton of different websites to come up with the best new design. I also took note of website usability trends, like tabbed navigation. As certain user experiences become popular on the web (tabbed navigation is an example of this), users become more comfortable with them and used to using websites in new ways. You want to make sure your website can be used in a way that is comfortable for your visitors so they enjoy shopping on your site.

Further Reading: 5 Ways to Spy on the Competition

In a round up last month I posted a link that explained how to create a Facebook reveal tab. If you glossed over that tutorial, today I’m going to try to get you to take another look. It’s a really neat feature that you can use to help grow your Facebook following and reward customers who like you on Facebook. Here are a few neat things you can use a reveal tab for:

1. Coupon Codes
I use my reveal tab to offer coupons to Facebook fans only. You can see it in action here (like the page to see the image change to show the coupon code). My website has coupon codes published on the product pages (see the tab on the lower right) and I tell visitors they should check out the Facebook fan page to see more offers. This helps drive people to follow my brand on Facebook and makes coupon codes accessible between newsletter mailings.

2. Exclusive Content/Previews
If you don’t offer coupon codes, you might use your reveal tab to share exclusive content instead. You can use this tab to offer a free ebook download or let fans see an exclusive sneak preview of a line of products you’re about to release. Exclusive content is a great way to draw in fans and even keep them coming back to your Facebook page.

3. Pre-Sales/Exclusive Pricing
Another special offer to extend to Facebook followers is pre-sales and exclusive pricing. If you’re about to release a new product or collection, selling it on pre-sale (before it’s for sale to the public) at a special price to fans is a terrific way to build buzz. You can even use this pre-sale income to finance the production of a larger batch of your product.