1. ORF 401 - 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.

2. ORF 401 - 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

3. ORF 401 - 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.

4. ORF 401 - 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

5. ORF 401 - 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.”

6. ORF 401 - Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Amazon’s Market cont… Growth in Net Sales (in thousands)

7. ORF 401 - Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Amazon’s Market cont…

8. ORF 401 - Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Amazon’s Market cont…

9. ORF 401 - 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.”

10. ORF 401 - Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Discount Coupon Market cont…

11. ORF 401 - Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Prospective Financials: Sales

12. ORF 401 - 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

13. ORF 401 - Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Prospective Financials: Balance Sheet

14. ORF 401 - Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Prospective Financials: Income Statement

15. ORF 401 - Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Prospective Financials: Cash Flow Statement

16. ORF 401 - 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™.

17. ORF 401 - 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.

18. ORF 401 - 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.  E-mail 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.

19. ORF 401 - 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

20. ORF 401 - 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.

21. ORF 401 - 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.’ http://www.website.com/?prod=12 http://www.website.com/?prod=12  Dynamic content cannot be crawled by Google.

22. ORF 401 - 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.

23. ORF 401 - Electronic Commerce Spring 2004 Amazon.com XML FEED LIVE DEMO  http://www.goalsearch.com http://www.goalsearch.com –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.

24. ORF 401 - 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.

25. ORF 401 - 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

26. ORF 401 - 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).

27. ORF 401 - 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

28. ORF 401 - 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!