ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Most Popular Search:  Usher – 30,000,000 Searches/Month  CDs, Books, Concert Tickets, More…  1/1000 of these users = 30,000.

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Low Maintenance Ecommerce  Synergizing technology with marketing to reduce workload and increase sales.  Low maintenance: Technology: CGI Script, XML, RSS. Marketing: SEO, Syndicated Newsletter.  Provide a service: Make search easier, make finding products and discounts easier.  “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.” -Henry Ford

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Definitions  Affiliate Program – Mutually beneficial relationship between a website and a company. We use Amazon.com  Creatives – Promotional tools used to market affiliate programs. These include banner ads, and coupon codes.  Search Engine Optimization – making content highly relevant for both search engines and searches. Goal: gain top position for specific “keywords.”  Link and Code Driven Coupons: Offers specialty discounts by using a link or a code. Generally not organized online or by Amazon.com.

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 E-commerce – Then & Now  THEN: March 10, 2000 – The dot-com bubble burst –862 dot-com companies fail in the following month –368 e-commerce websites (43%) fail  NOW: Online sales for 2003 were $12.2 billion, up 42% from the previous year  71% of e-commerce sites were profitable in 2003

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Amazon’s Market  One of the few companies to survive dot-com bubble burst  Amazon.com’s President Jeffrey Bezos states: “The customer experience we create is by far the most important driver of our business.”

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Amazon’s Market cont… Growth in Net Sales (in thousands)

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Amazon’s Market cont…

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Amazon’s Market cont…

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Discount Coupon Market  “In 2001, marketers distributed 333 billion coupons and by redeeming them consumers saved over $3 billion.” - Assoc. of Coupon Professionals  Burst! Media conducted a “study of nearly 8,000 web users [and] found that about one-in-five (19.0%) respondents have redeemed an Internet coupon.”

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Discount Coupon Market cont…

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Prospective Financials: Sales

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Prospective Financials: Cost of Sales Domain Name & Hosting Fees $52.00 per year Marketing$0.00 Factory$0.00 Equipment$0.00 Maintenance $0.00 Total Yearly Cost $52.00

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Prospective Financials: Balance Sheet

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Prospective Financials: Income Statement

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Prospective Financials: Cash Flow Statement

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 SEO – Google  Google’s goal to create a perfect search engine.  Not merely text analysis but HTML analysis.  How HTML analysis relates to PageRank™.

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Google – PageRank™  Why PageRank™ is important to our site.  Gliding scale PageRank™ 1 – 10.  How to improve PageRank™ –Do not use Spam techniques. –Do not use framed sites. –Do not "capture" outgoing links within a frame of your own site. –Do not link to other sites using a Java Script code. –The site should have its own domain name. –The site should not be hosted on a free server. –The site should have a professional, quality image. –Keep your site clean, neat and organized. –The site should not have excessive pop-ups. –The site should contain GOOD information and / or products.

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 SEO – Google Award Strategy  How We Will Increase PageRank™ –Clutter Free Content –Meta Tags –Linking to other pages –Award Link Strategy  Usher, top listed sites.  sites saying they have an award. We create graphic, they display on their site with a link to an awards page and links to our products.

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 SEO - Google  Concluding Remarks:  How Search Engine Optimization and Understanding Google can help our business not merely survive but thrive.  Low maintenance, & low cost.  Effective

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Amazon.com XML FEED  Amazon Provides an XML Feed to affiliates.  Product information, shopping cart script, product reviews, product information, price and sales rank.  We can use these free of charge.

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Amazon.com XML Feed The PROBLEM  Our Goal is to utilize Search Engine Marketing.  But, the scripts used to parse XML leave an ‘unfriendly URL.’  Dynamic content cannot be crawled by Google.

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Amazon.com XML Feed Our Solution  Mod Rewrite –Rewrites the CGI output in an HTML format. –Search Engines don’t know it is a dynamically created page. –We get crawled, all 500,000 pages. –With a lot of pages indexed, we will get traffic galore.

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Amazon.com XML FEED LIVE DEMO  –Amazon Daily Deals  Select any product. –It is indexed on our site. –‘Search.’ for the product –Regular links, browse directory. The directly links to roughly 500,000 products.

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Interface  When users search, they will most likely find an internal page, not our front page.  We have ten seconds to impress our user and convince them to stay for their first visit, and come back for more.

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Interface  Two main issues: –Credibility, Ease of Navigation  Credibility –Prominent display of Amazon.com logo –Professionally made graphics –Up to date coupons and newsletter  Users know the site is constantly monitored  Ease of Navigation –Each page must be accessed by at least two clicks.  Map, Link to Home Page, Simple Interface

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Interface Attracting Repeat Visitors  Contextual Analysis –Script that searches for keywords –Consults a database –Displays a ‘guess’ of relevant coupons –Also general coupons (e.g. free shipping on orders over $25, or $5 discount on mothers day).

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Interface Attracting Repeat Visitors  Newsletter, constant reminder of deals and where to go. –Syndicated Content –Online Shopping Tips  Bookmark link script on each page

ORF Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Conclusion  Bargain shopper market is ripe and ready for harvest.  Low-maintenance and low cost: SEO, Syndicated Content.  Effective: Provide a service. Help users find bargains.  Untapped niche for service, ripe market, and a unique idea = success!