2007 May

By Christa Angel, Web Reporter – Forum Publishing Group The Mido show held in Milan, Italy is the premier show for the eyewear industry. This year’s event featured at the new Rho-Pero Convention Center was both exciting and inventive as the newest fashions were displayed. Anfao in conjunction with the Foreign Trade Institute organized the first in-flight eyewear fashion show held on a chartered Eurofly jet from JFK Airport in …

E-retailers must focus on cultivating existing customers because they can’t count on acquiring too many new customers going forward. It’s a well-known axiom that it costs less to engage existing customers than to acquire new ones. It’s been said that the cost of acquiring new customers is three to six times that of retaining current ones. Current ecommerce research confirms this. Estimates say U.S. retail ecommerce will reach $131 billion …

Industry research shows that many businesses don’t take advantage of a Thank You page upon confirming a customer action. This would be the ideal opportunity to provide more information that might lead to a future sale, besides simply saying thank you. Your offers would depend on your web site goals and business model. For instance, wholesalers could take customers to a Thank You page after receiving a Contact Us request, …

Do you want to see a lift in your PPC campaigns? If so, optimize your site for SEO. ICrossing did a study using a random sample of 200 keywords, which included branded and non-branded terms in both organic and paid search campaigns. To quote from iCrossing: “These 200 keywords are representative of 2,000 unique keywords, engines and medium (natural, paid, or both) data point combinations used in paid search as …

Did you know that Congress levies different tariffs on men and women’s clothing, sometimes for the same item? Clothing manufacturers have been accepting this for years. However, several manufacturers have decided to sue. Uncle Sam slaps a 28 percent tax on men’s bathing suits but only 12 percent on women’s. When it comes to overalls, this is reversed, with the women’s wear taxed higher (14 percent tax on women’s overalls …

Google’s Web History feature makes it easy for Google Account users to view and search across the pages they visit. I like it because when I remember something I saw on the web and want to find it again, I can do it quickly through Web History. I’ve given up on using Favorites on IE because you can’t alphabetize and it’s just a long laundry list. To use Web History, …

comScore reports that global Internet users totaled 747 million adults in January 2007, representing a 10 percent increase over January 2006. Non-U.S. users accounted for 80 percent of the global online population. It could be profitable for wholesalers and retailers to market internationally if the right dropshippers are available. Of course it depends on the nature of the product and how well it would fit in with various foreign cultures. …

The National Retail Federation says moms will get the royal treatment this year. Its survey shows consumers will spend $15.73 billion on Mother’s Day this year, an average of $139.14 compared to last year’s $122.16. A whopping 84.5 percent of consumers plan to celebrate Mom’s Day, and they’ll spend their money thusly: $1.6 billion on clothes and accessories (37.0%) $2.1 billion on jewelry (32.8%) $2.3 billion on flowers (72.4%) $3.1 …