As a project manager at Beacon, I’m frequently involved in eCommerce implementation projects.  We use the highly popular .NET shopping cart engine AspDotNetStorefront for most of these jobs, due to it ease of use and flexibility.  In the case of shipping fees, though, maybe the software makes it just a bit too easy – since this decision can seriously affect the profitability of your business and requires serious thought and consideration.

AspDotNetStorefront makes setting up shipping fees for a store super simple.  There are a wide variety of ”out of the box” choices for shipping fees (of course, with the source code, we can customized these even more as needed):

• Calculate Shipping by Weight– This method uses a simple table based on the total weight of the order to calculate shipping costs. You specify a low-end and high-end for each range, and can specify different costs for each shipping method.
• Calculate Shipping by Total– This calculation method lets you base your shipping rates on the total dollar amount of the customer’s order.   This method can easily be used to give certain dollar ranges free shipping.
• Use Fixed Prices– This is the simplest shipping calculation method to set up. Each shipping method has one price, regardless of the order contents.
• All Orders Have Free Shipping– As the name states, all orders – regardless of contents – will receive free shipping.
• Use Fixed Percentage of Total– This method charges a percentage of the order total for shipping.
• Use Individual Item Shipping Costs– This calculation method allows you to set a shipping cost on each product variant. The shipping costs will be added together to generate your customers’ shipping total.
• Use Real-Time Rates– With realtime shipping, your website connects to one or more of the major shipping carriers (UPS, USPS, FedEx, and DHL) and gets the price that the carrier would charge to ship that order based on the weight and/or size of the products ordered, and the origin and destination of the package. This requires an account with one or more of the 3rd-party carriers, and incurs additional monthly fees through those companies. More than one carrier can be used at the same time, to give your customers a wider array of shipping choices.
• Calculate Shipping By Weight & Zone– This method allows you to charge different amounts based on the destination zip code (or zip code range) and the order weight.
• Calculate Shipping By Total & Zone– This method allows you to charge different amounts based on the destination zip code (or zip code range) and the order total.
• Calculate Shipping By Total & Percent– This is the most complicated of the fixed shipping rates to set up, but allows for greater flexibility in pricing than the other methods. The Base Charge is the base shipping dollar amount. The software then adds to that charge a percentage of the order total, based on the Shipping Charge As % of Total that you enter.  The Minimum Charge field is optional, but allows you to set a minimum value for each range that will override the calculated price if it’s below that minimum.

So which one of these choices is right for YOUR business?  Unfortunately, the short but discouraging answer is that every business is different– in many markets and industries, an extremely large percentage of customers (over 50% according to some estimates) cite shipping fees as the number one reason they abandon their cart.  In other cases, a fairly substantial fee is expected by the consumer, especially when you sell large, fragile or oddly-shaped items.  In any event, not charging the customer adequate shipping fees will impact your bottom line and your business will need to understand and manage the impact.

That being said, here are some basic rules of thumb:

• Set your shipping fees high enough to cover your anticipated annual expenses, with a small amount of overage to cover unanticipated returns, back-orders, etc
• Carefully monitor what your direct competitors are doing
• Be transparent about shipping fees.  Make this information readily available on the site at all times.

With all of this contradictory advice, you need a partner that can analyze you business and provide good recommendations.  Beacon prides itself on its customer service and will work with you to determine which choice is the right one for you!  In the meantime though, I’ve put together a list of resources that you might want to consider when selecting how your eComm store will charge for shipping.   I hope that you will find these resources useful when considering your specific needs!

• Microsoft Office Live Small Business:  “Mistakes to avoid with your shipping fees”
• PowerHomeBiz:  “How can Shipping Costs Affect Your Business?”
• Christian Science Monitor: “Why we do what we do on eBay”
• Practical eCommerce:  “Free Shipping: The How-to Economic Model”
• Ebay (Shipping Discussion forum)
• Webmaster World.com
• http://ebay-selling-guide.blogspot.com/2007/09/how-much-should-i-charge-for-shipping.html
• http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=125880

Recently I attended a meeting with one of Beacon’s account executives where he was explaining Beacon’s status as a “GAAC” and it occurred to me that some of our blog readers may either not know that Beacon has achieved this status or what that even is!

You may have read about Beacon’s exclusive status as a “GAAC” or “Google Analytics Authorized Consultant” and wondered is that just fancy marketing-speak or does it really mean something?  Well, it was actually the result of months of work, interviews with Google professionals and staff and an over 100 page application detailing Beacon’s testing results, processes, team and company.  So no, it wasn’t easy!

Google “insiders” told us that they were very impressed with Beacon’s application, particularly with regard to our ability to provide real expertise in search engine marketing, Google Analytics consulting, Google Website Optimizer and web development.  Most search engine management/Google Analytics firms are primarily marketing-based and either outsource development or merely offer recommendations to their customers for development and testing, making it very difficult to actually EXECUTE Google website optimization.

So, once again you ask– what IS a GAAC??  Google Analytics Authorized Consultants are companies that have been thoroughly vetted by Google and can provide expertise in both Google Analytics and Website Optimizer products.  We provide hands-on help with setup, configuration, reporting, segmentation, and tracking through consulting with your internal staff.  In addition, as a GAAC, we have access to an exclusive resource network of GAACs and Google staff.  So if we haven’t already seen your particular issue, we’re sure that the GAAC community can help us resolve it (and we welcome the challenge!).   We are experts in the “World of Google” as it were.  In fact, at this time there are fewer than two dozen ”GAACs” in the U.S.,  so we are a very exclusive group!

So after all that serious business– and it is serious– contact us to find out just how we can use Google tools to increase your sales and productivity!  How about a little fun?

You have a new website
And want to sell stuff, right?
You need to use Google
And still be quite frugal.

I am your GAAC
To help you keep track
Of all of your clicks
With no tech speak or tricks!

OK, so maybe I should keep my day job… But hopefully you learned something about GAACs!

The University of Hartford

The University of Hartford launched its redesigned Cascade server site yesterday afternoon. Although Hannon Hill was responsible for the design and Cascade Server implementation, Beacon was critical in the weeks leading up to launch with Cascade development, training and consultation…

A large part of Beacon’s work on the site included the calendaring and news room areas:

• Campus Calendar: Beacon developed, from scratch, a highly flexible calendaring application within Cascade Server CMS that allows Harford to enter events one time and display them in numerous ways.  For example– the home page, Camps Calendar and Arts & Events Calendar all display the same events, but they are formatted very differently.  In addition, the CMS administrator can create calendars “on the fly” for just certain groups (Library, Athletics, etc.) with the Cascade templates Beacon created.
• Newsroom:  The Newsroom contains a section of press releases (maintained in CMS), an RSS feed from a 3^rd party university provider and editable content areas for “Media Contacts” and “Key Contacts”.  All of this info is controlled and formatted in Cascade Server CMS with various data definitions to present the visitor with a cohesive and polished look.

Besides these, Beacon was instrumental in rebuilding the left navigation, implementing a web alert system using a shared Access database, and many other enhancements.  Of special note was that the Project Management for this project was critical in order to fully test the new website and meet tight deadlines required by the client.

Building Killer Keyword Campaigns

When building out your keyword lists, it’s best to think of keywords as questions. Does your product or service answer a given question or provide more information about it on your landing page? If the answer is no, then that keyword should not be utilized in your campaign. Once an extensive keyword list is compiled, it is time to strategize the structure of your paid search campaign. Structure refers to the organization of keyword buckets under campaigns in order to maximize the volume of qualified traffic. The structuring process creates a hierarchy based on performance (conversions), thereby making it easier for search marketers to find the most efficient mix of traffic and scale campaigns to maximize allocated budgets.

The key to planning an efficient paid search campaign is having a firm understanding of websites’ offerings, marketing goals, and campaign management experiences. The more firsthand knowledge paid search professionals have about a specific vertical or company, the more likely they will be able to predict successful strategies.

Spending adequate time planning a paid search campaign is crucial to driving qualified traffic. Doing so affords paid search professionals the ability to create scalable campaign structure, which makes future optimizations easy. It also makes account management more efficient when dealing with budget constraints (i.e., marketers forced to make cuts must be able to ensure the most qualified traffic is not lost). Secondly, campaign structure and keyword grouping are vital components when it comes to determining the quality score of an account. If quality scores are high, this will help costs-per-click (CPCs) and account costs decrease over time. This means, if everything else remains constant, you can maintain a consistent budget level while driving a larger volume of qualified traffic to your site.

A few simplified tactics of campaign structuring include segmenting by:

• Keyword stage in the conversion funnel
• Audience segments (i.e., experts vs. novices)
• Geo-targets, site structure, and available landing pages
• Product benefits or features
• Historical search trends and seasonal patterns.

There isn’t one standardized template for developing the right structure. The important thing is to maintain tightly focused keyword groups and a cohesive overall strategy. ~ Guest Post by: J Bannasch

Volvo

Beacon announces the launch of a new static, multi-lingual (English, French) website for Volvo’s D13 Engine.  The site provides information about the engineering with sections about how it works, its advantages, its availability and how it affects the environment.

Wendy Honeycutt did a great job designing and developing the site and then Tiffany May swooped in at the last minute and added the neat multi-language functionality.  Thanks also to John Wallwork, Wayne Van Zandt and William Nichols for release and launch assistance!