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Marketing Your MIVA Merchant 4 Store with MIVA Services and More

Revision 1.0
MM1116-01 (v 4.13 & higher)
Copyright

Introduction

Have you had your store online for a while, but would like to see increased sales and also retain more customers? Or, perhaps you are creating your first store and want to ensure you'll attract shoppers - are you wondering if your store is ready to go online?

Marketing your store and products is vital to the success of your store. Your marketing plan, part of your business plan, should include a section that is tailored to the internet and your online store. A myriad of information is available on the internet about creating a marketing plan. Look at the types of strategies, and determine which fit your products and business the best.

Draw visitors, potential buyers, to your store using MIVA Services, such as MIVA Marketplace and MIVA Mailer. They provide opportunities for you to increase customer visits and orders, as well as to stay in touch with your customers and affiliates, thereby building your customer base.

About This Guide

This publication discusses MIVA Services and non-MIVA resources and strategies that drive potential shoppers to your store. It describes using MIVA Services to attract new and returning customers, promoting your products using MIVA Marketplace, and contacting customers using MIVA Mailer.

Outside or non-MIVA resources, such as Search Engine placements are also discussed or listed.

Additionally, this publications includes topics for you to consider in order to build a pleasant and secure shopping experience for your customers, and ways to encourage them to return again and again to shop at your store.

Topics Guide

MIVA Marketplace

MIVA Mailer

At Your Store

Improve the use of MIVA Merchant features, your store's appearance, and information supplied to your shoppers. See:

Also see "External Services and Resources" on page 11

MIVA Services: MIVA Marketplace

Would you like your products to have more prominence on the internet and be listed with several portal web sites?

Built into MIVA Merchant, MIVA Marketplace is a pay-per-click performance-based marketing network. You designate which products you want listed, and they will be dynamically distributed to participating web sites. (You can see a list of the participating MIVA Marketplace sites at http://smallbusiness.miva.com/mmp.)

How Shoppers See Your Products

  1. Your shopper starts at a participating web site or venue, browses the categories, and probably performs a search.
  2. The MMP (MIVA Marketplace) Engine searches the applicable product fields, including Product Name, Description, Price (and Part No. Manufacturer, UPC, and ISBN as applicable), then displays the found products.
  3. When the shopper clicks "more info >>", MIVA Marketplace links to your store and displays your Listed Product page. (See following image.)

Easy to Use

As with other MIVA Merchant features, MIVA Marketplace is just as easy to use. You select a link or click a button to access the form you want.

See the MIVA Marketplace User Guide at http://smallbusiness.miva.com/support/docs/mmp/ for details about using MIVA Marketplace.

Product Visibility

The more shoppers are able to view your products, of course, the more opportunities you will have for sales. This is where MIVA Marketplace can help you. Because MIVA has many partners, your products can show up on hundreds of participating web site pages.

What can you do to improve your visibility? Prominent placements of a product, those that are nearer the top of the page or category, have a higher price/click than the products below them.

You can test your products placement when you edit the MIVA Marketplace product data in the MIVA Merchant Administration Interface, as you see in the following image. (You increase the Price/Click to move your product up.)

Track Activity: MIVA Marketplace Reports

Use the MIVA Marketplace Reports and Affiliates to keep a eye on the number of customers, the number and monetary amount of orders generated by MIVA Marketplace, as well as your top MIVA Marketplace products.

MIVA Marketplace provides you with graphical reports to help you determine which of your products are drawing customers to your store. This sample report shows the number of times shoppers from MIVA Marketplace venues or web sites clicked on each of your Listed Product(s). It also shows your cost for those ClickThrus by product.

Track Activity: MIVA Merchant Affiliate

You can create an affiliate, to use only for your internal purposes, to track the MIVA Marketplace activity to your store. After you create the affiliate, you simply designate the affiliate's login within MIVA Marketplace.

  • Tracks referrals from MIVA Marketplace
    When a shopper at one of the participating web sites finds your product, and clicks the link to view your product, the link to your store is established and a Referral is recorded in the affiliate you assigned to MIVA Marketplace.
  • Tracks Order Number
    You can track the number of MIVA Marketplace referred orders, using the affiliates Flat Fee per Order Commission.
  • Tracks Revenue
    Upon completion of an order, the amount is recorded.

You view the MIVA Marketplace activity in Affiliates Earnings, as shown below.

See the MIVA Marketplace User Guide at http://smallbusiness.miva.com/support/docs/mmp/ for information about setting up MIVA Marketplace and the internal Affiliate to track activity.

MIVA Services: MIVA Mailer

Would you like to send monthly newsletters? Or, send special sales notices? Maybe you'd like to notify Price Group or Availability Group customers of new products or new prices.

After you sign up for MIVA Mailer, all you need to do is set up your Mailing Lists in MIVA Merchant, create your content, then send Email to your list. MIVA Mailer will send your Email to each and every Email address (whether customers, affiliates, or both) in your mailing list.

MIVA Merchant Mailing List

Within MIVA Merchant, you access MIVA Mailer using the Marketing Mailing Lists. Create as many mailing lists as you need for customers and affiliates. You might have some lists for affiliates only, customers only, and some for both.

Automatic Subscription

When you choose to display the Mailing List prompts, your customers will see them on the Order Customer Information page. And, both customers and affiliates will see the prompts on their respective Accounts page.

When customers and/or affiliates check the Email they want to receive, they will be assigned to the appropriate Mailing List.

For details about using MIVA Mailer with MIVA Merchant, see Set Up MIVA Mailer Mailing Lists at http://smallbusiness.miva.com/support/docs/merchant/howto41.html.

How Customers Receive Your Mailing Lists

External Services and Resources

There are a huge number of web sites containing information, as well as services, related to increasing your site's visibility and targeting traffic on the web. Of course, you can take some or all of these actions of your own, or employ a Search Engine submitter.

Consider joining the MIVA Merchant Users Group, a discussion forum, and find out what services and resources other MIVA Merchant store administrators are using. See http://smallbusiness.miva.com/support/usr_grps/ to join.

Outside services to get shoppers to store

  • Submit to Search Engines
    Read submission policies carefully, and adhere to them. Get referrals from others.
  • Become an affiliate at related sites, including big name sites
    Customers of sites that are related to your product line(s), are most apt to visit your site and buy your products. For example, if you sell personal items (bath oils, body lotion and powder), you would probably have better results teaming up with a site that sells fragrances, rather than one selling motorcycle accessories! You want potential shoppers as customers, not just increased traffic.
  • Target niche markets
    List your site with specific interest group sites, such as hobby or collectibles sites that compliment or supplement your products. As you research or peruse these sites, ask yourself if its members would likely have an interest in your products.
  • Target a small geographic area
    The geographic area could be a state, county, or city, particularly if you also have a brick & mortar store. Your research could tell you which locations have consumers that are more likely to buy your line of products. You can also list your site with Search Engines by geographic area(s).
  • Sign up with local telephone company Yellow Pages
    Among some of the traditional methods of advertising a store, are the yellow pages. You may want to also consider other traditional methods, such as advertising on the radio.
  • Sign up with other companies that compliment your products
    Check if there is a local brick & mortar establishment with which you could make an association, or perhaps partner.

At Your Store

When shoppers arrive at your store, you want them to stay long enough to buy, becoming a customer who will want to return to shop at your store again. What can you do to provide your shoppers with a positive and reliable shopping experience? This section discusses functions, features, and additional data to help you improve these areas of your store to inspire your shopper's confidence and earn their trust.

MIVA Merchant Features

Specific MIVA Merchant features can enhance your customers' shopping experience and some functions help you target products to the certain groups. For information about using these features, refer to the MIVA Merchant web site at http://smallbusiness.miva.com/support/docs/merchant/howto41.html.

Product Related Features

  • Organize your products into familiarly named categories that your shoppers will recognize. Use several categories, nesting them to minimize the length of the list(s).
    You might want to also include additional categories (products can be assigned to more than one category), such as New Products, Discounted Products, Current Specials, For the Holiday, Special Gifts, Occasions, For Him, For Her, and others that are applicable for your products.
  • Use Upsale to help sell coordinating or supplemental products to the one(s) your customer is buying. (Advertise this upsale as a reward for buying a certain amount and/or particular products.)
  • Use the Related Products function to list complimentary products on your product display page.

Customer Related Features

  • Create price groups to provide discounts to selected customers, such as vendors or long-time customers.
  • Use availability groups to display products only to select clientele. If you sell certain products only to wholesalers, using Availability Groups prevents your casual shopper from seeing the wholesale products.

View Store Activity

  • See Statistics and Best Sellers on your Administration's Main page
  • Logging Configuration provides MIVA Merchant Access Logs and e-Urchin Logs.

Vital, Security, and Privacy Information

Look at some of the big sites to see the types of additional information they supply, and take your cue from them. You can also see what some other MIVA Merchant sites are including; see http://smallbusiness.miva.com/galleria/ for featured sites.

MIVA Merchant comes with several secure payment modules. See the MIVA Merchant guide "How to Set Up Payment Configuration." Be sure that you are using https for the Account and Checkout.

The more information you can provide to your customers, the more confidence you will instill in them to shop with you. A few suggestions for the information to include in your store:

  • Security and Privacy Information
  • Return and Sales Policies
  • Product Guarantees
  • Contact Information (your email and phone number, and also include an address & map if also brick & mortar)

Usability and Look & Feel

When a shopper visits your site, you want them to focus on your products, and other helpful information you might provide. You do not want them to spend their time figuring out how to locate a specific item, or distracted by confusing descriptions.

  • Provide clear navigation
    If you create your own navigation links, be sure to clearly identify them. Use familiar terms, such as the default MIVA Merchant terms, or other instantly recognizable terms.
    If you add additional links (such as for privacy, help, and others), be sure they are placed in obvious locations in your store. You can create categories for these additional topics. See the Customizing Guides for MIVA Merchant 4.x, specifically Change Store Layout at http://smallbusiness.miva.com/support/docs/merchant/.
    If your introductory page links to your store, make the store link obvious, and not just another link among many.
  • Help, Tips and FAQs
    Help might include topics such as, Order Information, Accepted Payment Methods, Shipping Information, Registration, Browsing and Searching.
    You might also include additional information about your products, such as, additional product uses, tips for assembly, cautions for use, or one of a kind items. Think about including data, which will not only be useful to a shopper, but, will also be useful for your customers as they use your products, and will keep them coming back to your store.
  • Concise, Clear Wording and Descriptions
    While making sure your products are fully described, and that Vital, Security, and Privacy Information is included, you also want to present easy-to-understand and easy-to-read data to your shoppers. To accomplish this:
    • Use short sentences. Be concise. Get quickly to the point.
    • Use short paragraphs
    • Use bullets
    • Use recognizable terms, avoid industry jargon (unless your targeted audience absolutely knows it.)
    • Use clever, cute terms only if appropriate for your products and targeted shoppers, and if it clearly describes the item or topic
    • Avoid ambiguity
  • Look & Feel
    Use appropriate colors and images for your products, industry, and culture. The store's appearance should
    • be appropriate for your targeted shoppers
    • use high quality graphic images for your products
    • have coordinated colors. Use the Look & Feel Configuration Wizard for a few color sets.

Performance & Reliability

Let's assume you have fabulous products that are well organized into familiar categories, you offer competitive discounts, and you have a great looking store in which you post vital information. But, if some pages take too long to load, your store is slow, or you have some broken links, many shoppers will just move along to another store. A slow-running store or a few broken links will not inspire confidence in your store.

Here are some actions you can take in your store to improve performance

  • Limit the number of items or products that display on a page (If you are using the MMUI Look & Feel, you set this in Pagination.)
  • Correct links: if you are creating your own navigation menus, get the correct links in your administration interface in the top right corner for the applicable form. For graphics, such as product graphics, be sure you are using a relative path, such as graphics/00000001/image.jpg, not the full URL.
  • Delete shopping baskets
    Normally, shopping baskets will be automatically deleted after the amount of time set in Basket Timeout (found in Store Settings) has elapsed.
    Typically, you do not want to recover order numbers. Therefore, answer "No.'. (Not recovering order numbers can also help you determine how many baskets have been abandoned. Of course, more sophisticated information is available through logging.)
  • Pack Data Files
    You should pack your store's data files on a regular basis. And, after deleting shopping baskets, orders, and other items.

Publications and Resources


MIVA Small Business
5060 Santa Fe Street
San Diego, CA 92109
Telephone: 858-490-2570
Fax: 858-490-0548
http://smallbusiness.miva.com

This document and the software described by this document are copyright 2000 by MIVA Corporation. All rights reserved. Use of the software described herein may only be done in accordance with the License Agreement provided with the software. This document may not be reproduced in full or partial form except for the purpose of using the software described herein in accordance with the License Agreement provided with the software. Information in this document is subject to change without notice. Companies, names and data used in the examples herein are fictitious unless otherwise noted.

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