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:

• Testing Your Web Store: Be Your Own Customer
• Legal: Domain Names, Trade Names, and Trademarks
• “One Tip That Changed My Business” – 67 entrepreneurs share! A nice follow up read to my “The Best Thing I Did For My Business” series
• Avoiding Unnecessary Detours on Your Website
• Pricing Your Products for Growth
• Growing Your Business Beyond Etsy
• What Happens When A Customer Complains
• SEO in 2010: What You Need to Know

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:

• How to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment: 10 No-Brainers
• Don’t Run Someone Else’s Business – Thoughts on why doing things the way other businesses do things may not be to your advantage
• SEO Guide: How to Hire a Good SEO Company
• 10 Tips on Advertising on Blogs
• A Really Big SEO Checklist
• 6 Tools for Optimizing Web Page Load Time
• PR Tips: How to Come Up With Pitch Ideas
• Image Formats: The Difference Between JPG, GIF and PNG
• 6 Things You Can Do To Improve Your SEO
• Getting The Most Out of a New Product Launch

Be sure to tune in next week for the rest of special series “The Best Thing I Did For My Business”

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:

• What Makes a Good Thank You Page – Great read with an amazing gallery of thank you pages from tons of large online retailers
• 7 Insanely Useful Ways to Search Twitter for Marketing
• Getting Back to the Fundamentals of a Successful Website – the value of listening to your customers explored
• The 120 Second Visitor – The average visitor spends 120 seconds on your site. This article talks about ways to maximize their time.
• Maximizing Add On Sales – Tactics to get customers to buy one more thing as they check out

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:

• Sprucing Up Your Product Photography with Photoshop – Fantastic and highly visual tutorial on how to fix product pictures
• Tutorial: Use Aviary for Free Photo-editing and Other Design Tools – Can’t afford Photoshop? Here’s a tutorial for a FREE online photo editing tool.
• Strategic e-marketing: Everything should be connected – Great tips on hooking up your blog, newsletter, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Who Google Webmaster Tools is Your Best Friend – an overview of how to use Google’s Webmaster Tools to fine tune your website
• 25 Tips for Optimizing Your Online Forms – Fix everything from contact forms to check out pages with these tips.
• The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!

Also, I selected a winner for my FREE 3 for 30 Giveaway. Congrats to Helen and thanks for spreading the word about Smaller Box.

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:

• Improve Your Website’s Load Time – Easy to follow suggestions for making your website load faster. A slow loading site is an easy way to lose a visitor’s interest so make sure you’re taking all necessary steps to speed things up.
• 21 Ways to Improve Your Conversion Rate – Simple to implement changes you can make to get more sales.
• How to Cope With Marketing Burn Out – tips on avoiding marketing burn out that are specifically geared to artists.

The winter holiday season is the busiest time of year for retailers both online and in the brick and mortar world. There’s no doubt you’ll see a spike in website traffic and sales but below you’ll find some tips and tricks to make the most of those holiday visitors…

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