Just about every retail company with a website online is publishing product descriptions. How will you sell without them?

To be sure, product descriptions are necessary, but product reviews sell more. Think about, would you rather buy a product from a company that told you their widgets were the best and the brightest widgets on the market or from a company who has one satisfied customer proclaiming, “I plugged in the widget and it immediately started glowing like a lighthouse in the dark; not only could I find my way home, but I got there more quickly than I ever had before.”

Personal testimonials always sell. People like to hear from real people and that’s what product reviews are. They are real people telling about their real experiences and you should include them in your sales copy.

Google Trends has been useful tool for some now. You could compare two competitors to see which one was getting the most traffic to their website and use the information you find to make your own website more competitive. Google’s newest tool, which can be even better, is Google Insight.

Google Insight allows you to analyze keyword data by region and time. In other words, you can see search trends by month, quarter, year, or across multiple years. You can also analyze search trends by region, which is very helpful for looking at the competitive landscape for your niche at the local level, a limitation of Google Trends.

Let’s say you want to start a state-wide auction site similar to eBay that allows farmers to buy and sell farm equipment within your state. You can see how many searches for farm equipment within your state or region have been conducted in the last 90 days or even the last year. You can also see which search terms related to farm equipment have been the most popular.

Just for grins, I decided to see what the data for farm equipment would look like in Michigan over the last 90 days. Here’s what I found: On June 29, the search volume for farm equipment in Michigan was high. By mid-July, it had dropped to almost half. And by the end of July just tapered off altogether.

Now I’m not altogether sure that those end-of-July figures are 100% accurate, but if I look at the trend over the past year then I can see that the most number of searches for farm equipment in Michigan took place at the beginning of May. Again, I see a huge dip toward the end of July. This makes sense since I know that farmers usually start plowing fields and working their crops in early summer/late spring and by the end of the summer the need for farm equipment goes down. But suppose I want to compare that data for the states of Michigan and illinois? I find that the trend in Illinois is similar to the trend in Michigan, but there have been more overall searches for farm equipment in Illinois.

This is the kind of drill down research you can do with Google Insight. It’s a very helpful tool, to be sure, and can be used to narrow a niche or broaden one that is too small BEFORE you commit yourself to your business model.

Your small business CEO decided it’s time to update your company brochure. But you have a tight budget. Your options are a bi-fold, tri-fold, or hypertext brochure. What do you do?

First, let’s define what these are:

• Bi-Fold - Traditional four-sided brochure. One fold, an inside and an outside. Simple and straightforward, but not a lot of space so you have say the right things and say them fast. But your options are more than simple. Will you use graphics? If so, what kind. Glossy paper? Fancy fonts? What will you do to get the customer’s attention?
• Tri-Fold - A little more space than the bi-fold brochure. Two extra space blocks. Two folds. You can say more, but the options are still the same. Glossy, graphics, etc. Is it a real option?
• Hypertext - This is a website. No space limitations, but because of your limited budget you can’t build a full-fledged website. Limited functionality with an unlimited page space.

There really is no comparison between a brochure website and a print brochure. You might as well get it out of your head that they are the same. Both target different audiences, they’re capable of different results, and instead of thinking of them as either/or options you’re better off thing of them as both/and compliments. In other words, don’t use all of your budget on one and forget the other.

Secondly, if you’re going to bother with a hypertext brochure, or a website of any kind, then I highly recommend ditching the brochure concept and just building a full-fledged website. The expense is not that much greater, but the benefits are. A brochure site is one page. A real website can have as many pages as you think you need. So if your brochure site has 6 “pages” within the one-page that acts as a frame then you can spend just a few more dollars get a 6-page website. Your benefits will far outweigh the cost and you should see more than 600% return versus the hypertext brochure format.

If at all possible, you might try to expand your budget a little and think about building a real website with print marketing collateral that includes a brochure. If you need to scale back some, build the website now and put off the print brochure until the next budgeting cycle unless you are completely out of print brochures. In that case, go ahead and replenish your supply of brochures and work extra hard to put the website into your next budget.

When you perform SEO for your website, are you targeting a particular search engine or do you just do general SEO and see what happens? Either way is fine, I guess, but it’s nice to know what the search engines look for. It appears to me that if you want to rank highly in Google and stay there then you need a strong back link plan. With MSN Live, you can do much better with lean HTML code and strong meta tags. MSN Live seems to be happier with tables than CSS. Yahoo! is somewhere in between Google and MSN; meta tags are much less important, back links are somewhat important, and CSS seems to be favored. Have you noticed any of this?

Some people are under the impression that you can’t build a solid business around search results at just one search engine, unless it’s Google. I’d like to dispel that myth. I think you can. But you have to have a specific target in mind and you have to go after your target market aggressively. You can’t just sit by and passively wait for them to come to you. Profile your target customer and reach that customer where he or she hangs out. You’ll be a lot more successful that way.

I found a great article on SiteProNews that discusses how marketers can use meta search engines to increase their customer base. The article focused on two aspects of meta search: Ranking and research.

I’ve never actually given this much thought, but it makes a lot of sense. You can do keyword research and research on your topic using the meta search engines. The author, Bill Platt, recommends two meta search engines, Dogpile and Widow.com. Dogpile is perhaps the most well known of the meta search engines, but searching Dogpile is really like searching Google, Yahoo!, and MSN and compiling the results. There are thousands of search engines out there to choose, some niche and some meta. You should expand the scope of your research to include those and not just stick to the big 3.

Companies making the transition from print advertising to online marketing might wonder whether web page design is like print page design. This is a legitimate question and it deserves a thoughtful answer. My answer, the one I’d like you to keep in mind is, yes and no.

Cliche, I know. But it’s also true. In some respects, the two are a lot alike. In other ways they are completely different.

Design is design, right? The purpose for any page design - whether print or Web - is to attract a reader’s response. You want your copywriting and visual elements to work together to elicit a positive reaction - close the sale. That’s the point to any kind of page design, whether we’re talking web page design or print page design, but that’s really where the similarity ends.

Web page design is a bit more complex and a lot harder to nail down that print design. With print design you are dealing with a two-dimensional canvas. Web page design is a four-dimensional canvas. Consider:

Print Design
Brochures, flyers, newsletters
All are solid and flat
Words sell, graphics enhance
Limited space
Say too much, lose the sale
Say too little, lose the sale
Say the wrong things, lose the sale

Web Design
Blogs, websites, and html newsletters
Words sell, graphics enhance
Audio and video capable
Unlimited space
People thrive on information
Biggest danger is not saying enough
It is almost impossible to say too much (almost!)

The essential difference between web page design and print page design is that with web design you can include elements that you can’t include with print design and once you publish something it has no time line. A print page can be discarded or discontinued and you know that the information at some point is no longer valid. Once you publish information to the web is there forever and even if the information is outdated, you’ll have a tough time retrieving it. Let’s explore that:

E-mail Newsletters - Hit send, it’s gone. No getting it back. Better make sure it’s accurate and you better make sure that if your information is timely or has a deadline that it is carefully and intentionally spelled out.

Blogs - Blogs are, by nature, timely. Make a post today and this time next year it is obsolete. It’s a given. People expect that. But the blog post is still there and will always be available for viewing. If you want to correct a blog post with incorrect information in it, you’ll have to make another blog post and make sure that your readers can find it. Simply removing a blog post leaves a cache copy of the incorrect information in cyberspace.

Websites - You have a window in the beginning to catch information before it is indexed by the search engines. Once a web page is indexed, it is difficult to have the information de-released. You can change your web page, but there is still a cache copy of the old page until the search engines crawl the new page again. Even then, websites like archive.org will make the old page a treasure for centuries.

I mentioned that web publishing is four-dimensional. I’ve already talked about the time element. The third dimension is what you can do with audio, visual, and links. Programs like Flash and technologies like podcasting and video marketing allow you to do things on web pages that you can’t do in print. A rising trend is the use of spokesmodels on web pages. You can actually turn your web page into a running infomercial. This type of technology plus the element of linking between pages - and between websites - makes web page design a completely different publishing platform than print design. There is more to think about, there are more ways of doing what is possible, and your imagination is the only limitation. The offset is that with web page design, there is much more potential in terms of monetization and reputation success.

If you are a visual and auditory learner then you might be interested in viewing one of Blue Chip Marketing’s powerful videos. I have put together a handful of terrific videos that teach the basics of SEO, content development, and search engine marketing. Specifically, my five videos (two of them are two-part instructional videos) cover the following topics:

• The Three Prongs of Your SEO Fork (Two Part Series)
• Content Is King (But Keywords Are Queen)
• How To Make Google Fall In Love With Your Site (Two Part Series)

I encourage you to watch these videos. All of them are under 10 minutes in length (one is 10:43) and are packed full of useful information that you can use in your business.

I hope you’ll take a moment to watch this first part of the “Three Prongs Of Your SEO Fork” series and then check out the other videos as well:

Watch all five videos at Melberg.com.

People love stories. Always have. That’s why good storytellers are some of the most loved people on the face of the earth. Recently, Brian Bieler wrote a great blog post about why stories are important in marketing and how you can engage your audience through storytelling. Here are some highlights to his very useful blog post:

Brian’s three keys to successful storytelling

1. Learn the story
2. Tell the story
3. Remember the story

A good story is one that captures people’s emotions. People will not always remember what you say, but they will remember how you make them feel. Get them emotionally involved and engage them with a memorable story full of images that create strong reasons to act. But remember that it isn’t the story that is the important thing. Features and benefits are far more important; the story is there to help you show the importance of features and benefits.

Brian’s Secret Storytelling Strategy

1. Use stories to keep ideas in order and show ideas sequentially: First this happened and then that happened
2. Use stories to point out how this happened or that happened
3. Use stories to help others understand why things happen
4. Use stories to share information and to illustrate
5. Use stories to help illustrate principles that can be used in other situations

Stories are powerful memory tools. People will remember what you tell them a lot better if you include a story that engages them emotionally. Good marketers are good storytellers.

Finally, Brian shares his craft of telling a story. Here’s how to do it, he says:

• Start with simple, easily recognizable truths
• Show people the way out of their problems
• Let the customer win
• Illustrate how your products and services work better than your competitors’
• Provide value in everything you do
• Point to scenarios that show how and why things happen
• Leave your listeners room to have their own point of view
• Have fun and be real

These are great tips. Good sales people are good storytellers. If you can’t engage your audience with a good story then you could lose their interest. It’s one of the most powerful sales tools on the planet and I agree with Brian that with good stories you can close a lot of sales.

What do Proflowers.com, Office Depot, Lands End, Oriental Trading Company, and eBay have in common? They’re all among the top 10 online retailers by conversion rate for April 2008. According to Grok.com.

This is a fascinating list because these retailers all have different brands in different industries. The surprising one to me is eBay. I thought it would be higher up the list. But it’s interesting that Office Depot is second on the list and equally interesting that Proflowers is the highest. It’s not February, after all, when lovers are apt to send their beloveds flowers for their kisses. But it is spring and that may have something to do with it.

What’s even more interesting in the Grok.com report is what follows the list of the top 10 retailers. Remember, that list is by conversion rate. But Grok.com includes other benchmarks that are noteworthy. Among them:

• Page Views Per Session
• Product Page Views Per Session
• Average Time on Site (in seconds)
• Average Items/Order
• Shopping Cart Conversion Rate
• Shopping Cart Abandonment
• New Visitor Conversion Rate
• Referral Conversion Rate

All of these are important metrics to measure, even for a local retail business. If you are not looking at these statistics for your local retails website then you should be. And you should also be comparing them to your in-store statistics. Do you know what products sell better online versus in your store? Do you know how long visitors stay on your website and whether they were referred by someone else? Do you know if your online purchasers are local or people located elsewhere on the globe? If you don’t know these things about your website visitor then you need to start measuring the statistics on your website and looking at it a little closer. Online retail sales are going up and it’s important - even for local retailers - to know how people are using their websites.

Online marketing is getting better and better every day. From time to time, I like to find and highlight tools for small business owners that can help them in their marketing efforts. Today, I’ve got a great tool for business owners that want to improve their online marketing. This tool is a great tool to help you do better competitive research and help you find your niche.

The tool I want to introduce you to is Myriad Search. This is what we call a meta search engine. A meta search engine takes information from more than one source. Other popular meta search engines include Dogpile and AOL Search.

The best way to use this tool is to type in a search term that you want your website to rank for. By doing that, you’ll find out which websites already rank in each of the top four search engines for that key search term. A ranking algorithm creates an authority ranking for each of those sites and by using this tool you can see what the competitive landscape is for the key search terms that you want to capture. I don’t know of any other tool that does this.

I recommend setting it so that you can see the top 50 sites at each search engine. You can also filter out duplicates if you need to because some of the search engines will include the same website more than once for a single search term. Google already has a filter that eliminates websites from being ranked more than once for the same search term. Ask.com, however, does not.

After looking to who is ranked at which search engines for you key terms and seeing who has authority in your niche, send the file to CSV so you can manipulate it and use it more easily. Then visit each of these websites, the ones that are most likely to be your major competitors, and see what they are doing that you can be doing. Include Myriad Search into your online competitive analysis and your online marketing will improve.