If you sell goods online, whether it is fashion, electronics, books or tools, there are a tonne of virtual shopfronts you can use to increase sales.

Virtual shopfronts can be set up at a variety of stores, like Ebay and Myshopping.com.au. The advantages of having yourselves on these stores is;

1. It increases your exposure to shoppers - comparison sites are becoming more and more popular. Some people use them as their first port of call to compare prices and see who the providers are.

2. It is very low cost, often commission based

3. It increases your exposure in the search engines - for many products, sites like Getprice and Myshopping show up on page 1 search results. If your site isn't on page 1, shoppers could still find your store through Getprice and Myshopping if you are listed.

If you want to increase exposure for your products, you might want to consider stores on;

Ebay                                     Getprice
Shopping.com.au              Shopping.com
Shopbot                               Froogle
Bizrate                                  Shopferrert
Yahoo Shopping                Miracle Shopper
PriceCompare                    Etsy (if your goods are independent, handmade or antique)

 

Wagamama's, a UK restaurant chain which has a few stores here in Australia (international aiport terminal for example) has become the 'first' restaurant to launch it's own iphone application.

The free application allows iPhone users to find the closest Wagamama restaurant, browse the menu, place their order and pay, all through their iPhone. The order is then sent to the kitchen just like the other orders their staff are taking through their wire less hand held devices.

This clever marketing ploy taps into the current zeitgeist which embraces all things iPhone, while also promoting convenience and immediacy, must-have's for the Wagamama demographic.

Free iPhone applications which act as another customer service point or entry point could be the next big thing, and businesses should think about whether there is a feasible app for their particular niche. Of course, the app must be easy to use and actually add value. Like corporate Facebook pages and blogs, these things aren't worth investing in if they don't actually add any value, because people won't use them. They have to add something unique, which is either honestly entertaining or useful.

Yesterday I got the Fail Whale, and today I get this;



Can Twitter not handle it's 50 million Tweets per day?

A blog post from Twitter today stated that there are 50 million tweets worldwide per day. If you think this number is staggering, check out the graph they posted with it, which shows an almost exponential increase in Tweets since Twitter's inception


If Twitter is 50 million tweets a day, that means 600 per second. According to SearchEngineLand the Facebook comparator is 700 status updates per second.

If Facebook is considered a social media 'establishment', then it is fair to say that with 600 tweets per second compared to 700 status updates per second, it wouldn't be unfair for Twitter to consider itself part of the establishment as well.

(Meanwhile, according to the same article in SearchEngineLand, there are only 55 Buzzes (that's Google speak for status update/tweet) per second...which to be honest is a lot more than I would expect from Google Buzz. )

Facebook is benefiting from it's huge following through a good smattering of advertisements down the right sidebar, Google Buzz has the Google search network, why is Twitter still not monetising it's huge audience?

It's not like there is no way to, they could do it in a number of ways;

1. Display advertising, like Google and Facebook
2. New paid services (I doubt making existing service paid would go down well)
3. Selling off of data to businesses

Surely their venture capitalist supporters are getting a bit antsy?

Among the millions of stories going on on Twitter over the last week, one of the most popular was regarding Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines. Kevin Smith (the director of Clerks, etc.) used a combination of Twitter and podcasts (through SModcast)  to rant and spread the news about his bad treatment at the hands of Southwest Airlines flight policy.

This is an obvious nightmare for the unlucky PR and customer service people at Southwest Airlines, and they responded in a variety of ways, including a voucher to him, a carefully crafted post on their corporate blog (wittily named 'Not So Silent Bob') and, of course, Twitter.

The person manning the Twitter account for SWA should get a medal - she must have felt like the whole internet hated her.

What could SouthWest Airlines have done to prevent the Twitter-wrath of Kevin Smith?

Nothing. They have a policy in place which is highly contentious, and it has been in place (apparently) for a long time.

What they did right.

They have a Twitter account, which is fairly cutting edge of them, and the fact that they were monitoring it even better. Lots of  companies don't do this.

After a public apology, they tried to move the conversation off Twitter and into a private sphere, which Kevin Smith took against, but that is the professional way to go, and if Kevin wanted to continue in public, then so be it.

They wrote an apology on their blog so they could explain the matter in more than 140 character chunks.

I think their blog posts and Twitter replies were fair enough. They were unemotional, professional and attempted to state the facts.

What could they have done better?

However, they should have stuck more firmly to their one story. They should have reiterated their rules and directed people to a permanent information source they have which outlines the rules and the reasons behind them.

They could be a bit more responsive to the large amount of people against this policy - this doesn't mean changing their policies, but perhaps just being a bit more considerate in the way they are communicated.  Social media is about listening and responding, whereas SWA was a bit more about using social media to send out their press releases.

So what?

The good thing for individuals - perhaps service will improve as companies have no idea who has a giant online following behind them!

The bad thing for companies - perhaps a person with a giant online following might be the recipient of a slip up of your company, and you will have to deal with the fall out.  Learn from SWA and never think it couldn't happen to you.