LivingRoomCEO.com Simple ideas for small business

Would you allow people to shit on your store floor?

Christian Cabuay — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:35:31 +0000

If you use Facebook for your business/personal brand, keep your wall clean. Get rid of all that Farmville and horoscope crap.

You wouldn’t allow someone to mess up your store, then why allow it on Facebook?

Why should you take time to maintain your page?

1) Traffic – With Facebook getting so much traffic, it’s become an important extension of your business. For small businesses, it’s your best bet for valuable feedback and market research.

2) Story – When someone visits your page and the 1st thing they see a bunch of Pillow hits or Mafia Wars posts, they don’t get to the important content right away. People have a short attention span and you only have the top 2 posts to get their interest. Due to Facebooks currently poor archiving, your best content can get burried fast. You may find yourself posting the same content multiple times.

3) Response – you should respond to every wall inquiry. With your wall cluttered, it will take you longer to respond and even harder for visitor to read them. This may cause redundant questions wasting your time.

The importance of being #1 in Google

Christian Cabuay — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 14:30:29 +0000

I recently made it to #1 on Google for the keyword “Baybayin” for Baybayin.com. This is my 2nd #1 after “Filipino Tattoos” for PinoyTattoos.com. It took me about a year to do so after using SEO techniques and through social/real-life networking. Basically, the way SERPs (Serch Engine Result Page) work is that the more quality incoming links you have to you site, the higher you ranking will be. Ideally, Baybayin.com should be just based on the domain name but since there wasn’t enough authority linking to my site, it didn’t rank very high about a year ago.

So why is it important to be the 1st result in Google?

Google is the most used search engine (for now). They control about 70-80% of all internet searches. With new products on the horizon like the phones, netbooks, operating system, partnerships with the iPhone and etc, it’s projected to grow. If your future customers cannot find you on Google or any other search engine within the 1st few results, you DO NOT EXIST.

Being #1 on Google means that your the authority on that subject keyword. Why that may not be the reality, the #1 online authority says so. In my example for the subject Baybayin (a writing system in the Philippines that predates the Spanish arrival), I know I’m not the most knowledgeable on the subject. There are people out that that know more than I do but because of my web and real-word presence, I’m appearing as the #1 authority on the subject in the world. This has lead to an increase on translation consultations, art commissions, invitations to speak and media features.

Most people do not go beyond the 1st page – A study shows that about 93% of people do not go beyond the 1st result page. Eye tracking studies show a big difference in heat between the 1st and 2nd result. If your the 8-10th result, making it to #1 would mean about a 1,400% increase in traffic.

5 things I’ll do by the end of the year. What will you do?

Christian Cabuay — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:37:03 +0000

It’s almost the end of the year and I now have time to focus on developing my sites. From spring to fall, I’ve been busy making the rounds at Filipino festivals around the SF bay area selling/promoting my artwork and recently launched book from my site Baybayin.com. Now that festival season is over, I’ll be focusing on updating my sites and creating new ones for passive income.

To do by the end of the year….

Launch a store on Baybayin.com
Develop a new webapp for PinoyTattoos.com
Expand SendPera.com
Launch a clothing line
Start a new book

BTW, I have a full-time demanding day job and a family. What’s your excuse? Get off your ass and do something

How Zappos solves the online coupon problem

Christian Cabuay — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 07:06:08 +0000

Zappos does it again. One common problem with online retailers who provide coupon codes is that they display the promo box asking the customers to enter a discount code if they have one. Why is it a problem?

It interrupts the purchase process
Once they reach this step in the order, the customer has pretty much committed to buy the item.

Can cause the user to leave your site
The promo box tells them to google a promo code and try their luck finding one that works. While searching, they may get distracted and abandon the cart.

Loss of $
If the customer does find an online coupon, you as the retailer will loose $ on something that most likely would’ve been sold as list price.

Zappos does a great job dealing with this. The ultimate killer is that they don’t offer coupons. They also made a page (with a great title) explaining why they don’t do so. This of course is the #1 result when searching google for “Zappos coupons”.

Welcome to Zappos.com. Many other sites out there may claim to have Zappos coupons, but the truth is Zappos does not offer coupons. Zappos.com is based on service and selection, not price.

From Zappos coupon page. If you do offer coupons you can get rid of the box and just stick the promo info in the url or add an email form next to it so you can capture addresses. Say something like, “Enter your email to receive promos”.

Simple things to kill buyer anxiety

Christian Cabuay — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 05:20:05 +0000

In my translation and design service on PinoyTattoos.com, my customers order designs that are supposed to mean something. I would say the buyer anxiety is much higher compared to ordering a typical product. Getting a wrong or meaningless tattoo would be really bad. Some customers have expressed it’s taken them years to choose what to get inked. I myself took 10 years. I’m glad I waited, otherwise I might have been stuck with a barbwire armband or cartoon character.

To reduce (probably cannot kill it) buyer anxiety, I implemented a few simple things to my checkout page.

1) Paypal Verification seal
2) Contact info including a phone#
3) A Meebo Me widget that connects to all my IM accounts

I’ve had more than a few customers call me while they were on the checkout page needing assurance of the product or the checkout process.

Want more tips? My favorite E-commerce blog has more.

Image by enviied

Interview via the iPhone Facebook app

Christian Cabuay — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 06:13:35 +0000

I just did an interview for my Baybayin site with Michelle from Philippine Script Designs via the Facebook iPhone app. We did it via email 1 question at a time rather than me emailing a bunch of questions. While it’s no Twitterview, it’s quiet effective due to the layout of the app. It’s much better than the browser version. My wish though would to be able to export the conversation somehow keeping the speech bubbles.

Check it out then add me on Facebook

2009 Web2.0 Expo afterthoughts

Christian Cabuay — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 06:26:49 +0000

I attended the Web2.0 Expo last week. Here are some of the highlights:
I recently attended the Web2.0 Expo last week here in San Francisco. The theme of the event this year was “The power of less”. Due to the economic environment, companies were pushing optimization of what you already have and what you can by for $$ to save your $$$$$$$$.

The buzz this year was:
· Cloud computing
· Enterprise mashups
· Enterprise social networking with productivity/collaboration features (again)
· Customer social networking

A list of presentation PDF’s, PPT’s and video can be found here.

My favorite keynote was Open Source Administration – John Maeda (Rhode Island School of Design)

Video after the jump….

I really wanted to attend this one but didn’t have the time:
Smart Work: Embrace Change & Empower Your Teams to Drive Growth and Innovation – A Panel Discussion

It was a good event considering I got a free Expo pass. I still have to go through my notes to see if there’s anything that can benefit my businesses.

Ad-Tech in 2 weeks!

Make fun of web celebs next April Fools Day

Christian Cabuay — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 06:04:52 +0000

April Fools Day is a chance for business to have fun without worrying too much about ROI. That said, there’s still some opportunity to make some money off April Fools Day. You will have to subscribe to the “I don’t make money from my site, I make money because of it” philosophy (I forget who said that).

Poking fun of web celebrities works
Smellr.com did good by featuring a who’s who on the internet. Kevin Rose, Michael Arrington, Scoble and the rest will definitely write about it, Tweet, Facebook, etc. Besides harnessing the web celeb power, they also did good by not trying to sell us their products. Their catchy Web2.0″ badge looked great compared to a generic About or Contact links. Check out sll the buzz on Google.

Missed all the tech April Fools day gags? Techcrunch has a list of the best.

Adsense ventures into interest based advertising

Christian Cabuay — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 20:43:53 +0000

Google recently started testing the waters with “interest” based advertising in hopes to provide more interesting ads and of course higher CTR (click through rates). Basically, if you like MySpace themes, you can add it to your interests and adds will show up. While I don’t think many people will use this because they see ads as obtrusive or have become “Adsense blind” and it wouldn’t matter to them, I do see the purpose of it. I think this blows away any company that uses “Interest” and “User demo” based advertising as their business model such as these guys.

Privacy issues? Google answers some questions and provides transparency on the Google Blog post.

This kind of tailored advertising does raise questions about user choice and privacy — questions the whole online ad industry has a responsibility to answer. Many companies already provide interest-based advertising and they address these issues in different ways. For our part, we’re launching interest-based advertising with three important features that demonstrate our commitment to transparency and user choice.

Transparency – We already clearly label most of the ads provided by Google on the AdSense partner network and on YouTube. You can click on the labels to get more information about how we serve ads, and the information we use to show you ads. This year we will expand the range of ad formats and publishers that display labels that provide a way to learn more and make choices about Google’s ad serving.

Choice – We have built a tool called Ads Preferences Manager, which lets you view, delete, or add interest categories associated with your browser so that you can receive ads that are more interesting to you.

Control – You can always opt out of the advertising cookie for the AdSense partner network here. To make sure that your opt-out decision is respected (and isn’t deleted if you clear the cookies from your browser), we have designed a plug-in for your browser that maintains your opt-out choice.

Check out the video for more info

Tokyo Five Jeans fails to capitalize on UFC 96 exposure

Christian Cabuay — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 05:30:22 +0000

As I was watching the Pete Sell vs Matt Brown fight UFC 96, I noticed a nice looking shirt Pete Sell and his entourage was wearing. I did what everyone who thought the same thing, Google Tokyo Five. The 1st 3 results are a band, photo blog, and a fashion blog (that has some screenshots). After tying a different keywords, I finally get to the official Tokyo Five site. Upon entering, I get an overlay pop-up showing their UFC 96 sponsored fighters Pete Sell & Gabriel Gonzaga (who both lost).

Once I “X” out of the advertisement, I’m taking to an under construction site. No photos of their products. Nothing! What a wasted opportunity. I’m sure it wasn’t cheap to sponsor two UFC fighters. People are perhaps looking to buy your products. There’s no excuse for not being prepared after a major media campaign.

Here are some basic things Tokyo Five Jeans should have done to better prepare even if they would still be under construction.

A special landing page or microsite for visitors coming to the site with UFC, Pete Sell, or Gabriel Gonzaga in the keywords.
Have some photos of your products or a fashion editorial to tease the customer.
Have contact info and a mailform.
Have an about us section.
Have a Youtube video showing a commercial
Have a blog. They are easy to setup.
Link to your myspace, facebook, or twitter page.
Most importantly, a newsletter to collect email address and other basic information so that you can notify them once the site is launched.