No, it’s not a follow-up to my attempt at the Fifty Shades of Grey and it’s not something that a little blue pill can fix.

The “it” that is the subject of today’s post is “sales.”

An eCommerce store owner reached out to me the other day to tell me that sales have been on a steady decline for several months. Like others I talk to, this person blamed Google. The big G has made several updates to its search algorithms since May 2010 in an attempt to provide searchers with the most relevant results.

It’s easy to pick one thing, like Google, and blame poor performance on it, but there are other things that have to be considered which may account for a decline in sales and search engine ranking.

If you’re one of the un-lucky eCommerce store owners who are wishing there was a little blue pill to pick things up, here’s some things to look at and consider when trying to determine what exactly could be attributing to your lackluster performance in the web world:

• Go back historically in Google Analytics or whatever analytics program you’re using and see exactly when your sales started to take a dip. Did something on your site change? Does the timing coincide with a Google update? Was it a hit all at once, or did it gradually decline?
• Did you notice that a major source of traffic suddenly stopped sending visitors your way?
• If you have commercial accounts, did you lose a major customer (or a few large ones) that you’re not factoring in?
• Are your pay-per-click ads still effective? Are they providing a good ROI? Do they need to be tweaked? Did you start spending less resulting in less conversions and fewer orders?
• Are you in the comparison shopping engines (CSEs) or did you pull out? How is the ROI? Are you using a software application that lets you track the effectiveness of your CSE advertising and individual item performance?
• Are there some bad reviews out there that people are finding that may discourage them from shopping with you? Word of mouth is powerful – in a good and bad way.
• I’ve been preaching about duplicate content for a long time now. Are you using section and item page content that is unique to your site, or is your content the same as hundreds of other sites selling the same items. Duplicate content is something that should be avoided at all cost! Here’s a great read from Exclusive Concept’s blog on the evolution of Google’s many updates and where duplicate content fits in:   http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-google-and-content-seo-monday.html  Bottom line, according to them, me and lots of others, “keep it unique.”
• What about SEO? Do your section pages have good SEO content on them? Are you employing a link building strategy? If so, are those links helping you or hurting you?
• The site itself. Is it easy to navigate? How easy is it for someone to find a specific item? Do you have a good search that brings up relevant products? Check to make sure you site is functioning properly in all web browsers and on both PC and Mac computers.
• Did you suddenly have a new competitor arrive on the scene, or did an existing competitor suddenly creep up while you were sleeping and take over? How are your prices? Are you competitive? Do you price check your competitors?

These are just some things to consider when sitting at your desk scratching your head. If you’re down and you need to get up again, you need to devote some time to investigating why things have gone south. It’s going to take some time to pinpoint the exact cause or causes, but in the end it will pay off and you’ll be on the road to recovery!

When we first hooked up, there was passion. There was love. It was fantastic. I would get up in the morning with a sense of excitement, fantasizing about the events of the previous day as my body trembled with anxiety in anticipation of another wild ride.

This went on for years. I was never happier. Until May 2010.

I awoke with the usual excitement as the sun creeped through my bedroom window. I rolled over to see if things were up. For the first time, my heart sank. My stomach felt sick.

Since we began our relationship, I was accustomed to that strong, powerful, unyielding wake up each morning to start my day. I quickly realized the pounding I was getting this morning wasn’t one that was going to make the rest of my day any better.

As the weeks and months went on, I felt stuck. Trapped in a relationship that used to be incredible. I spend time trying to work things out in my head. What went wrong? How did I f**k this up? How did I let the fire that was burning deep inside me suddenly go out?

Was I the one to blame?

It was the week before Thanksgiving. The time of the year we both looked forward to. I knew exactly what to expect and I was hoping that the excitement of the holiday would bring back the spark.

Day after day I waited. Nothing. Thanksgiving. Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Christmas. The big spike I hoped to have never came. I finally realized that our relationship was dead. It needed help.

I vowed that the new year was going to bring a new sense vitality to our relationship, even if it involved things I never dreamed of doing, or only saw on pay-per-view.

I found the person who could help, but he was thousands of miles away. Could I do this over the phone? I was hesitant at first. Then I dialed. One digit at a time, shaking nervously but knowing that this was the call I needed to make.

A calm, masculine voice on the other end answered. With just his few brief words, “How can I help you?” I stopped shaking. I had a feeling go through my body like I haven’t experienced in years. It was incredible. As I stroked the phone cord I became more comfortable knowing that this is the person I’ve been needing all along.

I went into all the delicate details, we swapped email addresses, websites and he promised to give what I had a good going over. He warned me that things may hurt a bit, but we’ll take things slow.

We carried out our phone relationship for weeks as he learned more and more about me and how things deteriorated so badly. With each conversation I felt more at ease with him. His calm, reassuring nature gave me confidence that this can be rebuilt even if I needed to do things I’ve never done before.

I was ready.

I flew out to meet him face-to-face. As I walked into this office, the blinds were drawn, the incandescent lights dimmed, a laptop sat on the table with it’s contents displayed on the wall behind him.

He welcomed me, sat me down, placed his hand on my knee and reassured me that today was the day my life was going to change. He reached between his thighs as I leered out of the corner of my eye. Whipping out his clicker he went through his presentation, slide by slide, one by one.

He talked about my header and he dissected by navigation. He raved about my section page content but spanked me hard about my item page layout. As I recovered, he caressed my back as he whispered lovingly about my custom features.

We mapped out a plan to rebuild things, including reducing duplicate content, giving the look a freshening up and taking on the challenge of email and social media marketing.

The day turned into night and we were both growing tired. He took me to a bar around the corner. It wasn’t the kind I was accustomed to. Things were obviously different after dark. My mild mannered rescuer had a secret side that I was about to experience.

We left the bar and hailed a cab driven by a man who smelled worse than the urine soaked gin house we just left. Once at my hotel, we went to my room. Like the movies from the 60′s, I offered to slip into something more comfortable. I retreated to the bathroom where I freshened up, gargled Listerine and frantically searched for my emergency bottle of Summer’s Eve.

I came out to find him on the bed, laptop at the ready and his clicker firmly planted in his hand. As we sipped Seagrams 7 from plastic cups, he rambled on about metrics, analytics, A/B testing, list segmentation and with each topic the excitement level built. Faster. Wilder. Hotter. I was going crazy inside then it happened. As his hand slithered up my leg, he screamed out, “positive ROI!”

It was then I blacked out.

I’m sure you encounter people like this all the time. You know the type, the ones who appear to pay no attention to what’s going on around them but manage to carry on.

I had packages I had to drop off at the UPS Store. With them in my arms, I walked up to the door only to be cut off by some schmuck who showed his bad manners a second time by not holding the door open.

“You must be in a big hurry this morning,” I said.

Silence.

“Did your mother ever tell you it’s polite to hold the door open for someone, especially if they’re holding packages?”

Nothing.

“Sending back the book on manners?”

Call me an antagonist, but don’t forget to give the guy credit for ignoring me.

I winked at the young lady behind the counter, wished her luck and offered my best wishes for a good day.

She smiled, but didn’t wink back.

Miscreant number two came in the form of two elderly people in a fire engine red Chevy Impala who decided it was time to change lanes. An inch from my front bumper.

As someone who likes noise and loves the sound of a car horn, I was in heaven as I pressed into the steering wheel for what seemed like a good half-minute.

Never wavering, they went about their journey at a steady 20 miles-per-hour in a 45 zone.

Unlike the lady behind the counter, I wasn’t smiling.

In these instances, mom and pop in their hot-rod get a pass due to age.  The other guy, no way.  The simple act of holding a door open is something I was taught early on, as was when to say please and thank you – two phrases which are becoming extinct.

I often wonder what life will be like 25 years from now, if we’re seeing a preview of it today, God bless us everyone.

The response to yesterday’s blog post about the Dirty Girl Mud Run has been astonishing.

What started out as a post about an event that drew 8,000 women to run an obstacle course through the mud to raise money and awareness to breast cancer seems to have taken on a life of its own, with hundreds of comments on the blog and on Facebook.

As was pointed out in the blog post, the entrepreneurs behind the Dirty Girl Mud Run put on an event that brings thousands of women together for a day of fun, bonding and fellowship. At the same time, they pledge to donate at least 2.5% of the registration fees to the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

After presenting the information, I asked for your thoughts on whether the 2.5% contribution is enough.

You can see all the comments by going to the original post, but those looking for the Readers Digest condensed version can get a sense of what people are thinking in these comments:

Right when you signed up for the event, it stated 2% and I was aware of that and hesitated, but then thought about the friendships, empowerment, and fun that I made and had that day.

It was worth every cent, just to spend the day with other men/women who have fought and survived breast cancer, including my father. Any amount of money towards research should be appreciated.

I had no idea it was such a small portion donated! I know so many women that participated because of the cancer awareness research.

The event was totally AWESOME no doubt about that and I was proud to be part of such an AWESOME cause and event. However the 2.5 % of money that, was actually donated to cancer research or awareness, is without a doubt sickening and unjustifiable to me.

Whatever your thoughts are, one thing is for certain – the women who participated all had a great time and based on their reactions would do it again. I don’t think there’s a person among us, including myself, who wouldn’t want to see a tad bit more of the profit go towards breast cancer research. But as I pointed out yesterday, the folks behind the Dirty Girl Mud Run are a for-profit business that just happens to have a business model that ties a cause and a benefactor to its promotion.

At the end of the day, regardless of which side of the fence we sit on, we can be happy that at least “something” goes toward finding a cure for breast cancer that claimed the lives of so many friends and family members – including my mother.

I’m trying to answer that question after hearing about the Dirty Girl Mud Run in Scranton last weekend. The Mud Run is a 5K run for women of “all ages and athletic abilities” wrapped in pink with the promise of supporting the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

8,000 women plopped down $70 to register for the event resulting in a $560,000.00 take. Remove the costs to promote and put on the event and that’s a nice chunk of change for breast cancer research, right?

Wrong.

The Dirty Girl people don’t hide the fact that only 2.5% of the registration fee goes to the National Breast Cancer Foundation. On the front page of their website they say “a portion of all registration fees is donated” but dig a little deeper in the site and you will see that they are “proud to donate at least 2.5% of all registration fees.”

Proud of at least 2.5%?

The Scranton event raked in $560k, but the charity can only count on $14k. Granted there are fixed costs to put on the event itself, but they should be offset by money from national sponsors, merchandise sales, registration fees and the cost savings that come into play by using volunteers the day of the event.

As a for-profit entity can they be criticized for their capitalism?

That’s where my dilemma arises.

The 8,000 women gathered last weekend in a spirit of community to run in the mud either as a cancer survivor, a family member of someone who died of cancer or a friend. They all had a great bonding experience and from what I’ve seen, would do it again.

I can’t chide the Dirty Girl folks for dreaming up such an event and turning it into a money making opportunity. That’s what entrepreneurship is all about. But when you wrap yourself around a cause and use that as your primary motivator to get people to fork over their money, I would expect much stronger financial support than 2.5%.

What do you think?  (Want the condensed version of what hundreds of people, including those who attended the event, have to say?  Read the follow-up post.)

First thing I do is go to their website, choose a few products at random and plop the item’s description into Google.

Bingo!  Mystery solved.

Their store, along with dozens more, are using the exact same item description – otherwise known as duplicate content.

When I point this out the same excuse usually comes up. “I don’t have the time to write descriptions, so I use what the manufacturer gives me.”

It’s at this point I go into my usual rant about the importance of having unique product descriptions for your items in order to get good rankings in Google and the other search engines.

This usually serves as a wake-up call for most store owners and they pledge to start writing new descriptions. Others say they’ll do it, but they never do. They’re the ones who call me a few months later with the same complaint.

I can’t stress the importance of having unique product descriptions on your website enough. I realize that as a small business owner you have a lot of hats to wear during the day, but this is your baby – your paycheck every week.

It should take, on average, three to five minutes to rework one product description that includes relevant keywords. (If your products are very detailed and have a lot of specifications, it may take a bit longer.) If you dedicate one hour a day to this task, you can rewrite around dozen item descriptions a day.

If you are confident you or a member of your staff can’t undertake this task, you need to find a way to do it:

• Go to your local college or university and look for a student who is studying English or creative writing and is interested in an internship. You can get interns either on a paid or unpaid basis and their work on your site will benefit not only you, but them.
• Post an ad on Craigslist.com or ask friends and family if they would be interested in this writing task. Come up with a per-description price that you are willing to pay them and get them started.
• Hire a part-time writer – someone who is in college or fresh out of college and is looking to earn a few bucks and has good writing skills. You can pay them by the hour and put them to work right away. This is my favorite option and the one I would recommend.
• One final option would be to hire a company to write the descriptions for you. This is going to probably be your most expensive option and one that I would recommend only as a last resort.

No matter what route you take, it’s going to cost you time, money and effort to get this task done and done right. But the benefits it will reap for you down the road will more than make up the investment. I know it’s a pretty daunting task and just the prospect of re-writing descriptions sends a chill down your spine, but it’s something that you have to do.

“I manufacture a line of [deleted to protect identity] products that are unique to our store. I recently had product reviews added to my site and I just got my first not-so-good review. I’m reluctant to publish it as I think the customer who wrote it just doesn’t like the item and since we don’t accept returns, is using the review against us.”

Phew! This is a two-headed snake that I’m going to try to tame.

First, a store that doesn’t accept returns is almost unheard of these days. I don’t care if your products are unique to your store or not, any business who takes customer service seriously isn’t going to slap a “no returns” policy on every single item they sell. There has to be some give and take between the purchaser and the store owner when the need to return a highly customized item arises.

Look at it this way, if you don’t accept the item as a return, the cardholder is going to pick up the phone, call the toll-free number on the back of their credit card and dispute the charge. What happens next is the customer gets their money back and you get a chargeback.

It ends up putting you and the customer in a very frustrating and avoidable situation.

I encourage you to look at your returns policy and see if there is a happy medium that can exist to allow your customers to return items.

Now, everyone is going to get a bad review, because not everyone is going to like the widget you’re selling. It may fit the needs of one individual perfectly, while it may fall short with another. Customers visiting any website are looking to see what people think of a specific product and are expecting to see a mix of good and bad reviews. They then take those reviews and formulate their own opinion as to whether or not the product is going to fit their needs or not.

If you get a bad product review and your review feature allows you to comment, you should thank the customer for his/her comments and explain how the product is designed to work and if it’s something you manufacture yourself, note that you will consider their comments in a future product revision. If your system does not allow you to comment, the review should be published and you should pat yourself on the back for pushing the button.

After all, you would want to read honest, real-life reviews when researching a product, wouldn’t you want your customers to do the same?

Sounds like the perfect name for a Chinese Buffet or a micro brew, but it’s not.

The term supermoon refers to a full moon (or new moon) which is making its closest approach to our planet which prompts us Earthling’s to see it, and say “ahhhhh!”

The people who make a living keeping an eye on all things universe related don’t like the term “supermoon.” They prefer to call it perigee-syzygy.

I’ll stick with supermoon.

The last time we had a supermoon was March ’11 and I was one of those letting out a collective “ahhhhh!”

With a couple of friends, a few bottles of Champage and my iPhone, we sat looking along the shore gazing out over the Atlantic waiting for the moon to begin its rise.

When bottle one was finished and the cork was popped on number two, someone yelled, “there it is!”

The pinkish-colored globe started to appear on the horizion and quickly rose above the water. We all sat quietly as we watched it get bigger and bigger, pointing our fingers as if we could touch it.

Watching it rise from the ocean to its spot high in the heavens was something that made us stop and reflect on the wonders of nature and the beauty that surrounds us.

Tomorrow, our lunar friend will be passing by once again. Do yourself a favor and pick your favorite park, beach, lake or your backyard and spend a few minutes watching the moon rise instead of the television.

With all the crap on TV, the supermoon may be the best thing you’ve watched in a long time.

If I go on their website or their mobile app to find an item, even the obscure, it’s usually there.

As a consumer, Amazon.com is my friend. I’ve been a member of their Amazon Prime program for years. Pay an annual free less than a hundred-bucks and get free two-day shipping on most items. I’ve probably kept that membership going because I’m too lazy to cancel it.

But the consumer in me thinks it’s a good deal.

I order my Kool-Aid Singles, that for some reason grocery stores don’t want to carry, and in two days I have them on my doorstep.

I downloaded the Amazon app for my iPad and, one night in a stooper of boredom, bought a Ukulele. And a case. And a tuner. And a learn-how-to-play-it book.

It has become an incredible dust collector and I’m sure Cosmo the cat loves strumming the strings believing it’s some type of scratching doo-dad felines love.

Amazon.com has made it very convenient to find items and have them delivered in record time.

As an eCommerce guy, I hate Amazon.com.  I hate it enough to put the word “hate” in bold.

I’m even a little embarrassed to even admit here that I’m one of “those people” who order from the web’s most well known prostitute.

Much like a brothel, Amazon.com uses it’s sexy to attract customers, then lure them into the front door where they whore products at prices most eCommerce stores cannot compete with.

The eCommerce giant has been a bone of contention with me for over a decade. I know first hand how hard it is for some merchants to compete product-for-product with the big A. I’ve seen eCommerce businesses succumb to the pressure and close their virtual doors because they just couldn’t compete.

Not everything reeks of formaldehyde. For every ten bad stories I hear from merchants about Amazon, there’s one good one (or semi-good one). Like the one store owner who said, “Amazon saved me. I sell more items through Amazon than I do on my regular store.” However, he wasn’t so enthusiastic about telling me how he had to drop his prices by 17%, pay a very high revenue share and use Amazon’s pay-to-house-it-with-us fulfillment service.

I believe all eCommerce store owners have a love-hate relationship with the company named after a muddy river somewhere over there. The ratio of love -vs- hate depends on what you’re selling, how you’re buying, and how competitive you can be.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, when it’s all said and done, there’s only going to be one winner in the eCommerce space. Care to guess who it’s going to be?

- – -

On to the mailbag:

Via Facebook: How did you come up with the name Solid Cactus?

For as much as I’d like to come up with some grandiose story on the origin and regale you of tales of intrigue and wild fantasy, I can’t. Joe Palko, one of our first team members Kurt Illian, and I sat around in the office one day and said, “What are we going to call this thing?” I remember saying something along the lines of, “Whatever we call it, it has to look good in a logo.” We threw tossed some ideas around, someone called me a “prick,” I equated that to a cactus, and voila!

Via Facebook: Mac or PC?

Boxers or briefs? You answer first. I vowed never, ever, to own a PC or Microsoft product about 7 years ago and I’ve been a happy man ever since. Like any loyal Mac fan, I’ve got the iPhone, the iPad, the iMac, the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air. Whoops, did your computer just crash? Is that the blue screen of death that just appeared? Better get a Mac.

Via Email: My store now has the ability for shoppers to create an account and have their information saved via a login. Do you recommend enabling this feature?

I do. But with one caveat. I don’t like to be hit with a checkout that requires me to setup an account and I’m sure I’m not alone in that. To be sure you don’t want to increase the abandon rate, make sure your checkout allows shoppers to check out as a “guest” and they are given the option to create an account or not. Don’t force me into creating an account, it’s like forcing me to wear my seatbelt in the car. I just won’t do it.

“Are we going for the early bird?”

I can’t fathom eating dinner that early in the day, but for the 70 to dead demographic, the magic happens between 4:30 and 6:30pm.

When I asked what attracts people to the early bird, a fella old enough to remember the newscaster he invoked, said, “Dinner at 4:30. Cronkite at 6:30. Bed after the Wheel.”

What a life.

But then again, the early to dine are also the early to rise so they have to hit the sheets early enough to enjoy their oatmeal before the sun comes up.

The person who invented the early bird either wanted to take advantage of the senior crowd to bring in extra revenue, or wanted to keep them out of the restaurant during peak dinner hours.

The early bird experience usually begins with a limited selection of easy-to-digest food with lots of coffee to help move it along. It may or may not come with a small portion of Jell-O or pudding. I’m told that “the good places” throw in dessert. Dinner ends either 1) by questioning the server about the bill or 2) by saying, “We did good Helen. Less than ten bucks tonight. Leave the girl a dollar.”

I shouldn’t pick on the early birders.

My time is coming sooner than I think.

I just hope by the time I’m one of them, the desert choices will be better.

- – -

From the mailbag:

Via Email: I have two questions that are kind of related. First, how do you pronounce Pinterest and second, does my site get any link benefits from it?

Honestly, I’ve been asking myself how to pronounce the damn thing since it was introduced. I guess the proper pronunciation is interest with a “p” in front of it. I’m sure that cleared things up.

As far as getting any link juice from pinning things on Pinterest, there isn’t any. Sites like this tag links with the “no follow” tag which basically tells search engines to ignore it. But, just because there’s no link juice (I really HATE that term) doesn’t mean you shouldn’t embrace it. Many eCommerce store owners are thrilled with the fact that Pinterest users are pinning products from their website and sharing them with other Pinterest users with some of these shares resulting in sales.

Pinterest does have some SEO value, especially on your profile page where you can include your store’s URL, add a description and use keywords that are relevant to your site.

Via Email: You’ve probably answered this before, but how many times a week should I be blogging?

I always recommend at least two blog posts a week. But I’m going to follow that up with this…. if you’re going to blog, just to blog twice a week, you’re not doing yourself any favors. Your blog posts need to be relevant to what’s on your site, engaging enough so that people come back to read more and aren’t spammy. Your blog should be a secondary resource for those interested in the products or services you’re selling and serve as a great platform to promote the fact that YOU are the expert in your field.