Colorado Web Solutions

Facebook, Twitter and Your Yahoo! Store

Posted on September 29th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

Social Media and Networking are the biggest buzzwords we’ve hear this year right behind talk about the economy. It’s huge. Everyone’s doing it (more on that shortly), but to maximize your time and financial investments in technologies like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace you should really understand your audience. It’s easy to spend time and money on these sites so I think it’s extremely critical to know who you are marketing to.

I found a recent study by The Nielson Company very interesting in this aspect. The news wasn’t a surprise to me, but it was nice to confirm that my theories and beliefs about these platforms was extremely accurate. After spending 13 years designing businesses online, I’ve seen a lot of change in users, technologies and trends…

According to the Nielson report, more than 50% of the entire country has participated in some form of social networking on Facebook, MySpace or Twitter in the last year. Of those people, your Facebook users are typically the more affluent and the MySpace crowd is a younger (MUCH younger), less affluent group (keep in mind that age is a factor since these are high school and younger college kids). The report also showed that the majority of Twitter users and even Bloggers are based in Urban areas.

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Introducing the Yahoo! Store Promotion Manager

Posted on September 17th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

Have you ever wished that your Yahoo! Store’s coupon manager was a little more robust? I would assume that if you have a Yahoo! Store that does any sort of promotional marketing your answer is YES!

Well, we have the perfect service for you now!

I am very happy to announce that Colorado Web Solutions has partnered with a brand new service called the “Promo Manager“. The Promo Manager is one of the  most advanced technologies we’ve seen for Yahoo! Stores in quite a while. Take everything you know about Yahoo! Stores limited coupon and promotions functionality and throw it out the window. This is a whole new ball game. Yahoo! Merchant Solutions recently upgraded their coupons, but this is leaps and bounds above the built in technology.

Imagine being able to quickly and effortlessly offer a campaign that offers “Happy Hour Specials”. Let’s say you want to offer your customers a 10% discount on everything they purchase between 10 am and 2 pm on Tuesdays. You can do that! How about offering free shipping on certain days? You can do that too! Want to reward local customers? How about setting up a promotion where all orders shipping to your home state get a free hat with their order? You can also do that!

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New Yahoo! Store Book features Colorado Web Solutions

Posted on September 10th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

Last week a new book on Yahoo! Stores was released and Colorado Web Solutions was one of the selected few featured Yahoo Store designers. The book is called Yahoo Income: How Anyone of Any Age, Location, And/Or Background Can Build a Highly Profitable Online Business with Yahoo and was written by Sharon L. Cohen.

In addition to featuring Colorado Web Solutions, the book also featured three of our clients. Congratulations to CoffeeCakes.com, PopDeluxe.net and ChildrensOrganizers.com for wonderful reviews.

If you would like to purchase a copy of this book, please click here to buy it directly from Amazon.com

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Trim the Fat in your Yahoo! Store’s Ad Budget with Analytics

Posted on September 9th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

I could go on and on about the utmost importance of using analytics in your Yahoo! Store. And I’m not talking about Google Analytics, I’m talking about  real analytics, the Yahoo! Web Analytics that come free with Yahoo! Stores (minus the basic package). Yahoo! Web Analytics is extremely powerful and, in my opinion, much more useful than Google Analytics. [read more about that here]

Today I’m going to highlight one simple case study regarding Analytics.

Before I get too deep into this, I want to remind Yahoo! Store owners again to ACTIVATE YOUR ANALYTICS! If you have not yet activated your analytics, you’re not collecting data, so please do that ASAP, even if you don’t know what to look for in your reports. Start collecting Data now. [Learn More Here]

Once you have activated your account you will be collecting data which is critically important. To take advantage of what I’m going to write about below, you will need to take your analytics account one step further and start tracking your specific marketing campaigns (Google Adwords, Yahoo Search, etc) If you are not familiar with how to do this, please contact Colorado Web Solutions and we can get your account set up to track campaigns and provide you with all the necessary instructions for only $100.

Ok, now it’s time for the details.

Last week we were doing some work with a client and the goal of the meeting was to try to reduce the expense of Google Adwords without sacrificing sales. It was a common goal that we hear time and time again.

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Colorado Web Solutions Launches 3 New WordPress Sites

Posted on September 8th, 2009 by Matt Sampson - Colorado Web Solutions

It’s been a busy few weeks at Colorado Web Solutions as we launched three brand new WordPress blog sites. We have long felt that blogs (especially wordpress blogs) are extremely effective for SEO and ultimately sales, especially for Yahoo! Stores. These three sites are not tied specifically to a Yahoo! Store, but rather to a collection of stores.

Many people think of Blogs as a way to post news and updates, which they are, but they can be so much more than that as well. These three sites demonstrate that you can built an entire site on the WordPress platform. These sites are not limited to only news and updates!

If you’d like to see some examples of how Colorado Web Solutions is taking the WordPress Platform to a new level, please take a moment to visit the newest sites:

• SkiHelmets.org
• eSnowshoes.com
• AllMountainSports.com

All three of these sites are built exclusively on WordPress using robust templates and custom coding.

If you would like to create a WordPress Blog for your Yahoo! Store that is more advanced and robust than most, please contact Colorado Web Solutions and we would be happy to assist.

Enjoy the previews.

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