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eCommerce has accelerated the creation and exponential growth of the web as the  largest marketplace in history. The rewards of global e-commerce are nearly endless – and by now you must realize that a global view for your online store is absolutely critical.

A company that can successfully expand and embrace a global market – with tactics to address internationalization (i18n) and localization (l10n) – immediately gets access to seven billion potential buyers, from hundreds of cultures. These aspects, however, if they’re to be done right, are anything but small tasks.

To get a jump on the competition, or to check your current process against solid, winning results, download our most recent whitepaper,” Key Factors to Consider When Going Global with Your eCommerce Initiatives,” and then plan to join us for a free, live webinar on the subject. Read the rest of this entry »

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We’re all familiar with the situation: your marketing directive needs some hands-on support – NOW – and your IT department can only make a couple of things top priority (maybe a few, if they’re superhuman), ESPECIALLY NOW. The scenario skirts around a “Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots” style conflagration – with both departments seemingly at risk of having a block knocked off.

But the situation doesn’t have to be like this. Much like David Carradine’s “Caine” (AKA “Grasshopper”), whose sole directive was to make peace and satisfy everyone (that was his sole purpose, wasn’t it?)  – calmly, effectively and, above all, with his own kung fu – these calamities can be handled, neutralized, even fruitful with the right tools and directions.

Register for this insightful webinar and join us as we pass on some collaborative kung fu – and show you how iAPPS can help enhance its effectiveness – to help you make sure your web technology fully supports your marketing strategy. Once adopted, these practices – and the right tools – will result in not only a much more smoothly run, effective and engaging website, but a few less bruises to boot.

Webinar Title: 10 Tips to Make Sure Your Web Technology Supports Your Marketing Strategy

Format: Free Webinar

Hosts: Bridgeline Digital

• Brett Zucker, Chief Technology Officer

• Becki Dilworth, Vice President of Digital Strategy

Date: Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Time: 10:00 am – 11:00 am MST  (12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EST)

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Photo by BasicGov; Creative Commons share-alike license

The differences are far simpler, and way more important, than you probably think.

Sometimes the best laid marketing plans end up biting back, and in some truly surprising ways. While most cases of this sort of slip up – either positive or negative – can be chalked up to a failure to get the right message across, not many can be attributed to getting a message across a little too well.

Such is the case for the apparent confusion about the differences between “Cloud Computing” and “Software as a Service” (SaaS). As the digital marketing world is clamoring to get you to “move everything to the cloud” before the next guy, it’s become critical to offer clarification to help you make sure you know what you’re signing up for. Put simply, and in strictly logical terms, while all SaaS environments are by default denizens of the cloud, not all cloud environments are necessarily SaaS.

Cloud environments deliver the use of common applications that are served from the internet and are designed to deliver computing and interaction as a utility – Facebook, Salesforce.com and Google Docs are popular examples. SaaS, by comparison, uses specific software and customized architecture to provide services – primarily to enterprise customers (but certainly not exclusively) – based on specific needs. Bridgeline’s iAPPS Product Suite, for instance, is designed specifically to run as optimally in SaaS as it does in a dedicated server environment using a perpetual license. Read the rest of this entry »

Content strategy is more important than a lot of people think, but that’s mainly because of the hype that surrounds SEO. Don’t get me wrong, SEO is super important for your entire site, but content is the oxygen that keeps your site alive.

Think about a piece of paper that is shredded into a thousand little pieces, these pieces represent each page on your site. To help those pieces be more understandable, we’ll have to pour on some glue to mend them back together – that’s our SEO. But sometimes things get messy and we realize that we don’t actually need or want all of those thousands of pieces, because people don’t really like the dull, ugly pieces. So, we cut out the ugly pieces and we’re left with a beautiful, bright and shiny collage that even a child would appreciate (this analogy has gone too far). The point is that, that beautiful, bright and shiny collage is your content strategy. Of course there’s a lot more to it, but the results typically pay off for you and your readers/customers.

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Keeping even your most fickle customers can be easy, if you provide the right experience.

Even the most savvy internet marketers among us usually agree: online sales are most often lost at the checkout. And why would we not believe that, when you consider the fact that 51% of all shopping carts end up abandoned? A commonly accepted reason for this are that onerous shipping charges prompt shoppers in this direction – if it’s not free, or at least damned cheap, they drop the cart altogether.

That belief, it turns out, is a little off the mark. In fact, it’s simply untrue, according to Bridgeline’s latest eBook, “Web Experience Management: Secrets to Closing the Sale Before the Customer Checks Out of Your Website.”

The truth is that sales are lost long before your customer reaches the checkout phase. According to the eBook, “Somewhere in the web experience, the customer lost faith in the product, the company or the website – maybe even all three.” It’s an overall lack of a satisfying shopping experience, says Bridgeline, that  ultimately kills sales – in the same way a badly written plot leaves a film with no definable aftertaste, and therefore makes it merely forgettable. Read the rest of this entry »

Google is at it again.

The search-engine goliath is constantly enacting changes, whether it is modifying algorithms, enhancing sitelinks, or merely altering the Google Doodle atop the page.  Sometime last week, however, Google made an extremely notable change to Google Analytics that has digital strategists around the world abuzz…and angry.

The keyword report is perhaps the most significant element of Google Analytics, especially for those of us in the SEO world.  Only a week ago, this report told you precisely what keywords searchers were using in order to find your site.  With this latest modification, Analytics no longer gives you specific keywords for searchers who are logged into Google.  Instead, any organic visitors that are logged in (whether it be via Gmail, Adwords, Analytics, etc.) are grouped together under the label “(not provided),” no matter what search term they use to find the site. Read the rest of this entry »