Nexternal's eCommerce Marketing Guide

Benefits: Nexternal.NET was built from the ground up with Search Engine Optimization in mind, automatically generating SEO-friendly URLs and intelligently populating SEO elements. However, you can strategically maximize your site's search power by optimizing a few key areas. Your Title Tag is extremely important, as it appears as the title of the browser window displaying the page. Meta Description is not seen by customers, but is used by some search engines as the description of your page, thus this field is best used to provide a concise (< 250 characters) yet compelling description of the product or category. Image alt tag appears within image tags in HTML, and is only available when the customers mouses over an image. This allows you to attach keywords to products and categories via their images (if any) that are heavily weighted by search engines.

Activation: Click on a product / edit / next and scroll down to Search Engine Options to customize the title tag, meta description, and alt tags. Categories can be optimized in a similar manner.

Hot tip: If you don't already have one, be sure to create a domain alias for your site (i.e., http://shop.YOURSITE.com versus the default http://nexternal.store/YOURSITE ). Using a domain alias rather than the store.nexternal default address allows Nexternal to create a customized xml sitemap.

Benefits: Search engines aren't the only places where people search online. A large number of shoppers use online marketplaces, such as Shopzilla and Shopping.com, to find specific products. Get your products in front of these potential customers and increase your web presence by activating marketplace data feeds. Once your feeds are properly set up, Nexternal's system can push your product data directly into these channels on a daily basis, automatically. Google's data feed is FREE, while Amazon Product Ads, Shopzilla, Nextag, TheFind, Shopping.com, PriceGrabber & Yahoo!Shopping, are all extremely popular and potentially profitable pay-per-click options.

Activation: There are two parts to setting up your Product Search Feeds. For Google, the first part involves creating a Google account and/or logging into Google Merchant Center. Visit Q.2532 in the Help Desk for detailed instructions. To set up feeds with other marketplaces, you will need to set up an account with each. Also note that each marketplace has a different categorization system, called their "taxonomy". See Products section, Export/Traffic Tools/Marketplace Exports and click on the question mark for links to setup instructions for each marketplace. You can override the marketplace categories by editing Categories your Nexternal OMS. To activate the automatic feed, check the Automated Feed option on the Preferences screen for each Marketplace that you intend to use, and enter the required FTP information.

Hot tip: Set up each marketplace as an affiliate with 100% commission. This makes it extremely easy to track the sales generated from each marketplace, and thus measure the success and ROI of your marketplace feeds. Note, you can not use this method with the Google Product Search feed due to some restrictions with the URL format Google will accept. However, if you are using Google Analytics, the utm_medium (cse) and utm_source (googlebase) URLs are automatically appended to the URLs for tracking purposes. This means you should be able to determine revenue from this source within Google Analytics.

Benefits: A Facebook "Like" exposes your company and products to a customer's network of friends, family, and associates with a pre-attached positive spin. Our Like & Save Feature provides your customers with immediate incentive to spread the word about your company, and thanks them with the reward of a discount. Thus your company receives positive marketing exposure to potentially hundreds of new buyers, and your customer receives a discount on a product they were already planning to purchase - Win-Win!

Activation: Settings / Compatible Software / Edit and scroll down to Social Networking. Click on "Preferences" for further detail. Change the appearance in Layout / Buttons / Edit. Visit Layout / Main Layout / Edit / Visibility Rules to select more visibility options

Hot tip: Track use of Facebook Like & Save in your Profit Report and with Facebook Insights. (See Q5019 in the help desk for instructions on setting up Facebook Insights).

Benefits: Even if you do not tweet, most companies recognize that having others tweet about them is free word of mouth advertising. Activate your Tweet button and let your customers market your products for free!

Activation: Settings / Compatible Software / Edit and scroll down to Social Networking. Under "Product Sharing" select Twitter. Click on "Preferences" for further detail. Visit Layout / Main Layout / Edit / Visibility Rules to select more visibility options.

Hot tip: If you or your company do Tweet, specify a Twitter User Name and Related Twitter User Name in the Preferences section. The person tweeting about your product will be prompted to "follow" the specified users which is a great way to build your Twitter following.

Benefits: Activate your Twitter and Facebook Order Sharing to allow your current customers to tell their friends about your company & its products with a positive spin, "I bought this stuff from them." It gets your company in front of more prospective customers, and has potential to drive traffic back to your site - especially since Friends tend to have similar interests.

Activation: Settings / Compatible Software / Edit and scroll down to Social Networking. Under "Order Sharing" select Facebook & Twitter. Click on "Preferences" for further detail.

Hot tip: Change the appearance of the post order sharing buttons in Layout / Buttons / Edit. Visit Layout / Main Layout / Edit / Visibility Rules to select more visibility options.

Benefits: Activating this feature is literally a simple click of a button and it gives you a free opportunity for more search engine power! Similar to other social media recommendations, it allows the product to receive a positive recommendation which shows up on the consumers Google Plus profile. More search engine and social media power with one simple click.

Activation: Settings/Compatible Software/Edit and scroll down to Social Networking. Click on "Preferences" for further detail. Change the appearance in buttons in Layout / Buttons / Edit. Visit Layout/Main Layout/Edit/Visibility Rules to select more visibility options.

Hot tip: Consider having your webmaster add Google +1 to your homepage also if you have not done so.

Benefits: Pin me please! This feature allows Pinterest members to pin your products onto their personal pin boards. Pinterest members and nonmembers alike can browse Pinterest boards, and when a browser clicks on your product's image, the image will lead them back to your shopping cart! What another fantastic channel for shopping traffic!

Activation: Settings/Compatible Software/Edit and scroll down to Social Networking. Click on "Preferences" to determine which image (Thumbnail, Main Image, or Large Image) is "pinned" for each product, and count box options.

Hot tip: Consider Pinterest one more huge reason to make your product images attractive, interesting, and worthy of sharing.

Benefits: Allows customers to easily bookmark your products, or add references to the corresponding products in popular social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, Digg, MySpace, and many more, potentially driving more traffic to your site.

Activation: Settings / Compatible Software / Edit and scroll down to Social Networking. Select the appropriate options, then click finish. Go back through Settings / Compatible Software / Edit and scroll down to Social Networking and click on "Preferences" for further detail. Visit Layout / Main Layout / Edit / Visibility Rules to select visibility options.

Hot tip: Monitor your customers' use of the button by customers by signing up with AddThis. AddThis signup is free (not required), and if you enter your User Name at Settings / Compatible Software in the Nexternal OMS, you will have access to a set of AddThis analytics tools.

Benefits: The Nexternal Mail Wizard is a robust feature that makes it extremely easy to market to existing customers and effectively manage a large distribution list, ultimately saving time, reducing the potential for operator errors, and driving deeper customer relationships and higher sales. You can create bulk emails formatted in plain text or HTML, run promotions, and send important updates about your products. Also, in compliance with anti-spam laws, customers can unsubscribe from the mailing list so that the merchant does not harass customers that no longer wish to be contacted.

Activation: In the OMS, visit Customers, then the "Mail Wizard" button. Or, segment customers first by performing an advanced search/sort of your criteria, then select the "Mail Wizard" button, and select "Search Results".

Hot tip: Zap your customers with personalized messages based on their buying behavior, and draw them back to your store by combining Nexternal's Advanced Search with our Mail Wizard. The search feature enables you to identify extremely targeted customer segments based on order history (number of orders, orders of particular products, orders within categories of products, order date, number of items, etc). With just a few clicks, the results shoot into the mail wizard and you are ready to send those customers a targeted message or coupon. Send emails with links that go directly to specific products in your online store or even a link to the store that automatically activates a coupon.

Benefits: Give your customers what they need to promote and drive more traffic to your store. Activating the "Tell A Friend" feature is yet another Nexternal tool to help make customer promotion effortless. When the shopper clicks on this button by a product, an email template is populated containing a link, description, and photo of the product, and a customized optional message from the shopper to the recipient. This feature is frequently used during the holidays with messages like, "Hey Mom, this is what I want for Christmas."

Activation: In the OMS, go to Layout / Main Layout / Edit / Visibility Rules.

Benefits: An affiliate program is a formal system for rewarding the people and companies who send you business. Affiliate programs are also extremely attractive because compensation is entirely performance-based and the program is extremely easy to initiate in Nexternal. Nexternal's system allows you to approve/decline affiliates, track each affiliate's sales & payments due, and set individualized commission rates. For those that want a more automated approach, Nexternal's system can work easily with two popular affiliate sites - Commission Junction and ShareASale. If you choose to work with these partners, they will market your affiliate program and manage the payments to your affiliates, for a setup fee and percentage. If you prefer to run your program exclusively through Nexternal, you will need to market and manage payments of your affiliate program yourself, but the capability to use the program is built into your system and thus already included in your monthly Nexternal fees.

Activation: In the OMS, go to the Affiliates section. Click "New" and fill out the form to sign up an affiliate. Or, click "Signup form" and link to the generated URL from your website. When a new affiliate applicant fills out the form, his/her information is automatically inserted into your Affiliates database with a Status of Pending. An e-mail is also sent to the Primary Contact to notify you of this new applicant. You may mark the new affiliate as Active and set an appropriate commission at your convenience.

Hot tip: You can allow affiliates to link directly to a particular product in your store by navigating to Affiliates / Affiliate Name / Affiliate Links / Other URL. Now replace the "EncodedURL" with any product link. Product links can be found at Products / Product Name / Product Link.

Benefits: No more Excel export, copy and pasting, and uploading email lists. Nexternal clients can now quickly push customer data into MailChimp email lists with a few clicks, and even automatically push updated customer and affiliate information into predefined MailChimp Lists. The synch occurs every 10 minutes. Also, take advantage of MailChimp's advanced email marketing features, such as beautiful design templates, reporting and tracking features beyond those that are available when using the Nexternal Mail Wizard. The pricing is very affordable or even FREE based on the size of your mailing lists and number of blasts per month.