Colorado Web Solutions

Defining Spam in the real world

Posted on December 15th, 2007 by Colorado Web Solutions - Yahoo Store Developers and Designers

This is an article provided by our partners from Constant Contact. We felt this was a great article and something worth passing on to our clients and visitors.

What is your definition of spam? There’s a good chance it might be a little different from the next person’s and that both of yours might be different from the legal definition. It’s vital that we are all aware of what the law is, as it relates to spam, but it’s also important that we understand what our subscribers see as spam.
A recent survey conducted by MarketingSherpa and Q Interactive found that 50 percent of those surveyed see emails that arrive too frequently (from people they know!) as spam. Additionally, 56 percent see marketing messages and newsletters (also from people they know) as spam. Why? Because, as the question was phrased, these emails are “just not interesting to me.”

These results show that we can’t get too comfortable in our permission-based lists. Just because someone signs up to get my emails doesn’t mean that they will always want to hear from me.

How do I combat this new, broader, non-legal definition of spam? Relevancy. I have to understand who I am talking to and what kind of information they want to get from me. I have to keep my content interesting so they have a reason to open and read my emails. And I always have to make sure that I’m meeting the needs of my subscribers first and my marketing objectives second. The good news is that it is possible to do both.

Read the Full Post

Yahoo! Store Makes up for Outages

Posted on December 3rd, 2007 by Colorado Web Solutions - Yahoo Store Developers and Designers

This week the Yahoo! Store team did something that most big companies never do. They admitted their mistakes and offered compensation to their merchants. Huge Kudos go out to Yahoo! Merchant Solutions for making such a bold and admirable move.

If anyone was having doubts about the Yahoo! platform, I think this response from them should clear it up completely. This is how companies SHOULD do business!

Here’s the letter from Yahoo! Merchant Solutions:

Dear Valued Merchant:

On Monday, November 26, 2007, and for a very short time on Thursday, November 29, unusual service interruptions may have affected transactions in your Yahoo! Merchant Solutions/Yahoo! Store. We deeply regret any effect this may have had on your business.

Details:

On Monday, the service interruption and system slowdown lasted from approximately 6:00 a.m. until roughly 6:00 p.m. PT. During this time, transactions were either delayed or not completed.

After an investigation, we learned that the specific servers affected were the Shopping Cart database servers that handle cart contents for each shopper. New servers were added to the Shopping Cart database during our pre-holiday planning to manage the projected increase in transaction volume. During the holiday traffic surge, the hardware and software settings caused these servers to experience delays when customers added items to the Shopping Cart to complete checkout. When delays exceeded time limits, customers saw error messages stating that the servers had timed out (were not responding).

On Thursday, the service interruption occurred between 10:13 a.m. and 10:25 a.m. PT. During this time, merchants’ sites could not be accessed by shoppers.

After investigating the issue on Thursday, we found that this interruption occurred due to a network configuration issue resulting from new server capacity that was added for the holiday shopping season.

Immediately upon identification of both of these issues, our team worked hard to improve the situation as quickly as possible, and systems are now performing as expected.

These service interruptions were unrelated to our October feature release.

Addressing the Problems and Working to Prevent Future Interruptions:

We fixed the problems as quickly as possible, and we are continuing to make improvements to our system including the addition of new hardware and system maintenance conducted on November 28, 2007. For more information on current activities, please visit our system status page.

Our Commitment:

As a token of our commitment to you, we are waiving all sales transaction fees for November. There is no need for you to do anything. We will simply eliminate all transaction fees for the month of November once the normal billing cycle is run on December 6, 2007.

On behalf of our entire Yahoo! team, I apologize for the impact that this service interruption had on your business and your customers at this busy time of year. Please accept our commitment to work as hard as we can, over and above the efforts already underway, to avoid such issues in the future. The success of your business is extremely important to us, and we value your ongoing commitment to Yahoo!

Read the Full Post

Free Shipping is King this month

Posted on December 1st, 2007 by Colorado Web Solutions - Yahoo Store Developers and Designers

This is an article provided by our partners from Constant Contact. We felt this was a great article and something worth passing on to our clients and visitors.

Okay, there are 25 shopping days left before Christmas. That means you have 25 more days to increase your holiday website sales. People are shopping. Recent reports show that online spending is up this year. So, what can you do to get these spenders to shop with you?

One option is to offer free shipping. A recent study conducted by BizRate Research for Shop.org showed that more than 78% of the online retailers surveyed will offer some form of online shipping. They offer it because they know that consumers expect it and because they’ve found it to work.

If you aren’t already offering online shipping for the holidays, and it sounds like something you want to try, you still can.

And remember, free shipping can be based on how much the customer spends. Several of the holiday retail catalogs I’ve received offer free shipping for order of $100 or more.

Try testing it with a small group of your customers and monitor the response. If you see a significant increase in sales, you can make the same offer to an additional group, or perhaps your entire list.

It’s not for everyone, but it’s something to consider. For more on the study, check this article out…

Free shipping the norm this holiday season

Read the Full Post