Posterous is evidently the simplest blogging platform to date. It allows you to post to your Posterous blog by simply sending an email to “post@posterous.com”. That`s it! You can post photos, music, videos and any rich media file by simply attaching it to your email.

And now that Posterous integrated with Shopify , you can autopost to your store`s blog through the same magic. Posterous will host everything and you can take full advantage of all the functionality. Check it out.

On another note, it`s that time of the year when everyone is taken over by the spirit of gifts. We found some really good ideas for great Christmas presents on MaAfrika Tikkun that are worth sharing.

The results are in. This press release from comScore confirms this year’s increase in online shopping, despite the economic crisis. Although sales from normal retailers have been flat compared to last year, the sales in e-commerece have increased by 7 percent.

So who’s taking advantage of the good times? Many of the online stores have been experiencing technical difficulties and downtime, including Sears and Gap which are two of the biggest online sellers. You can read on some horrifying details on what these online stores went through during the most important week of the year here . We suggest they find themselves a better platform (or even the best platform!) so instead of worrying about these technical issues they can concentrate on other matters important for serving their customers.

Now for those of you who do have the good platform, here are some links to keep you busy with the “other maters”:

- The design fanatics can read an interesting article titled 8 tactics for retailers for some good design tricks on email marketing, which has become a very popular tool this season.

- Given the importance of viral marketing as the most effective way to market your store, there’s a very good post giving some first-rate info on how to use Twitter for developing personas and understanding your customers.

- Last but not least, for staying in touch with the ever changing needs of your customers, read on a 2008 eHoliday study that can give you some good ideas. It mentions in order of importance, the ability to see the cart total prior to checkout, value for money, clear product descriptions, a free return shipping offer or policy, and a strong merchant reputation. Only after this criteria such as guaranteed on time delivery and having the product available to ship immediately, follow.

Having secured a good strategy outside of the store to face the challenge of luring customers to click on the links that end up at your shop, it’s time to give thought to the other side of e-commerce marketing that takes place inside of the store: improving conversion rates. Or in plain English, “how to turn a viewer into a shopper”.

Here, Landing Page Optimization (LPO) and the need for a good LPO strategy is the first thing that needs consideration. What are you presenting to the customer who has just gone through the arduous quest of finding your shop? Is your presentation aimed at the right crowd?

Coming up with the best strategy is an endless task involving numerous A/B testing (testing how one landing page version’s responses compare with another version’s). But there are some easy fundamental pointers that should always be remembered. Take a look at a good overview of some basic LPO rules .

One of the most important aspects of LPO is the Value Proposition presented on the page. What are you giving to the customers in exchange for their money that will have them pick you as the ultimate choice? If you can convince the hasty, short-attention span customers of today with a good and brief value proposition, you’re in business.

Keep in mind that no matter what your value proposition is, expressing it in the right way can make all the difference. There’s an interesting article and webinar in MarketingExperiments that can be considered as a good guide for optimizing your value proposition . Ask yourself why should your potential audience buy from you? Compare your reasons with other retailers providing the same service. Refine them until you come up with something that stands out. Then try and express your results very briefly in a way you think can win a buyer over at a glance.

Having a brief look at the big picture of e-commerce marketing shows how important it is to categorize the different elements of marketing, and how this helps in keeping track of functionalities of each component. Still, there’s more to marketing than simple assessment and data gathering of these categories. At the end it all comes down to the insight that you take away and how you act upon it.

Today instead of diving head first into another new, advanced, and complex marketing strategy, which these days tend to turn up more frequently than they used to, we’re going to try and take a step backwards to look at the bigger picture of basic e-commerce marketing and its latest tools. This is a good way for old timers to brush up on some of the basic strategies that they’ve forgotten about, while also getting the new-comers familiarized with some of the basic marketing jargon.

The first thing to look at is obviously the answer to the big question: “how to get customers to come to your store?”. In the same way that big shopping centres always have good location and large parking lots, online retailers need to have a good Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) strategy, improving both the quantity and quality of traffic to the store. One thing about SEO is that it’s one of the fastest evolving areas in e-commerce and a good strategy doesn`t stay good forever by itself.

Using sitemaps, keywords and advertising tools like AdWords are the basics for SEOs, but a recent article from Visibility , a search engine dedicated magazine, emphasizes the importance and benefits of Viral Marketing over keyword rankings. Still, don’t miss out on Google’s new search-based keyword tool . Take a look at this article for a review. This new gadget can help you get better results in more ways than you might think, whether you use AdWords or you’re just looking for improved keywords.

The next best thing to consider for bringing more buyers to the store might be Comparison Shopping Engines (CSE) like Shopping.com and PriceGrabber . The functionality of CSEs still being search based, the thing making them different from search engines is that they require a specific product price, title, description, image and action URLs from you to link back to your store. This means they don`t rely on web crawlers and their complications to find your pages. Most CSEs use a Pay-Per-Click ( PPC ) policy for their services and retailers can change the rate of their PPC in exchange for increased visibility.

To make the best of using CSEs and also other PPC services like AdWords, the most important thing to take into account is improving your Conversion Rate . That means getting more of those people that come to your store via these paid services to actually buy something. Read a more detailed discussion about the importance of conversion rates for PPC services.

Where to go from here? In the next post we`ll look at improving conversion rates, value proposition and LPOs.

The holiday shopping season has officially started. If you’ve been following up with all the details and tips of preparing for the big season for online retailers, you should be in good shape. Still, as the race continues, everyone is making sure they’re giving it all they can till the end.

There’s a must-read article in FutureNow , a very interesting marketing blog, titled 7 ways to win a reluctant buyer giving some very good tips for turning clicks into cash.

Also it would be a good idea to keep track of some of the new tools that keep popping up here and there due to the big demand for better ways to either find the best deals or give them. CheapTweet which is basically a digg tool for shopping in twitter is getting some attention in the news and can serve as a good marketing tool.

Google has included a “Free Shipping” filter in its product search that makes shipping a critical point in returning search results. If you offer free shipping make sure you read about some of the filter’s functionalities for some vital info on how to actually make it through the filter.

Happy holiday selling!

As consumers continue to shift to online shopping for this holiday season, the attention has also shifted towards Cyber Monday. The day that used to have all the attention as the biggest consumer surge to retailers, Black Friday, is sharing the spot light. Last year’s headlines cyber monday spending up 21% , reported that consumers jammed online shopping sites on the monday after thanksgiving known as Cyber Monday, the official start of the holiday season for e-tailers, resulting in robust sales.

This year that number is expected to rise even more as an interesting article titled Black Friday Versus Cyber Monday states, giving some good information on who’s looking for what this shopping season.

What’s the best way for online retailers to stay in the competitive frontlines of luring shoppers to their stores? An article in bizjournals titled: Online deals expected on ‘Cyber Monday’ , claimes that nearly 84 percent of online retailers will offer a special promotion on this golden day. To give you an idea of what other strategies retailers are using, the article also states 39 percent of online retailers said they plan to offer specific deals, while 33 percent will offer e-mail campaigns and 25 percent one-day sales. Nearly 23 percent will offer free shipping on all purchases.

So it would be a good idea to rethink your marketing strategies for this weekend and keep an eye on your discounts.

You might have noticed the big economic crisis that has the world down to its knees. It wouldn’t be a big surprise if you’ve missed it either, if you’re selling online, that is. The word is one market remaining untouched by the downfall, and even expanding in these hard times, is right here: eCommerce. A Forrester research interview with e-commerce companies states “the overall industry remains strong” in an article on The impact of the economic crisis on e-commerce technology investment .

Also in Canada, there’s a new report in the news stating a “61% growth in online shopping”.

With that in mind, now that the holiday shopping season is here, what are the storming online shoppers looking for? MarketWatch posted an interesting article about shoppers continuing to shift purchase online , citing convenience, time saving and price among the many reasons.

With all that good news in the bag, are you staying on top of the game?