Web In A Shell

The possibilities for increasing your online business are limitless when you take advantage of one or more of the social bookmarking sites on the internet.  Several bookmarking sites are currently available to make your business web site get more attention.  Here are some tips on how to use ‘StumbleUpon‘, Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit and other bookmarking sites to promote your online business.

What is social bookmarking?
Social bookmarking is a web based bookmark web site so that you can store your bookmarks on the web rather than on your own computer.  Once you’ve locked in your bookmarking system by use of tags, you will be able to access them from any computer.  You can also add to, and delete from your list of tags.  Think of these web sites as a system using tags instead of folders to organize your bookmarks online.

How to proceed
First, you must find a bookmarking web that gets lots of traffic of the sort that would be relevant to your internet business. Affiliate marketing businesses use social bookmarking sites such as those above to post quality bookmarks and to bookmark both web sites and blogs for future reference.

Next, register as a user using your business signature if possible and learn everything you can about the bookmarking site and how to use it.  Remember to select a site based upon the type of content and users who post there.  You want to use a bookmarking site that is visited by people who are most interested in your niche.

Look for ways to learn who the audience at the web site is.  This will tell you whether you can effectively use this site to promote your own business. One of the ways to learn about the users on the site is to look at the type of bookmarks that are being submitted and used.

What NOT to do
Don’t spam the site or the users who are already using the site.  Straight sales copy will just be perceived as boring and won’t help you to promote your sales revenues. The most popular bookmarks are those which lead to entertaining, informational or cutting edge product information.

Don’t submit less than quality content.  If the content is great, it will attract visitors to your site and the sales will naturally follow.

Additional tips
The most popular bookmarks are those that get noticed quickly.  They will rise quickly through the ranks. Each notice or visitor will bring more attention and more likelihood of a sale for your product or service.

Don’t try to promote your site by voting for yourself through fictitious accounts opened by you.  This is usually found out and leads to distrust of you and your product.  If you have a quality product–well presented and a reputation for honest dealing, you will get visitors to your site. Asking your friends to vote and promote your blogs on bookmarking sites is an even more effective way to gain more visitors.

With over 500 retail giants to choose from can interior design ever go wrong? No, not when it comes to mydeco.com. This site is the brainchild of Martha Fox and Brent Hoberman and after their previous site called lastminute.com this one is also set to make waves on the dotcom scene.

Virtual interiors
Confused about how your room is going to look? You can use mydeco’s amazing 3D tools to create stunning virtual imagery to depict your interiors. Put together real world products from over 500 retailers in mydeco’s database to create your own unique look for your interiors. Right from being able to add flooring to painting your walls virtually – it is great fun! Plus you also get 1000 dollars reward if you create an innovative design. All you need to do is to upload a photograph of your room and then use the 3D tools to furnish it. An easy to use drag-drop mechanism enables you to furnish your virtual room with carpeting, wallpapers, accessories, lighting and many more. The best part is that these products are real life products that are present with these retailers.

Showing off – in style!
Mydeco represents social networking and the concept of social shopping at its best. Its 3D interactivity features not only enable you to create new room designs but you also get to show off and discuss your interior designs with other wannabes on the site! Even if you are not born with decorating skills you can always ‘copy’ ideas from the many already created rooms by experts. If you are completely clueless about what ‘your style’ is you can take a quiz to discover the kind of color palettes and themes you really dig!

Things that need improvement
If you wanted to search everything contained in Mydeco.com it could prove to be an uphill task. While their 3D facilities are user-friendly their search facility is not exactly a perfect cinch. Certain aspects on the site tend to get overly complicated. You would think that simple things like changing your room dimensions etc. to be easy but they are more complicated. Even designing and making the changes reflect in the 3D mode can be time consuming. It takes up memory and slows your PC down!

Community focus
The main winning aspect about mydeco.com is its simple yet staggeringly unique concept. Never before has a site taken interior design and used it in social networking. Mydeco.com is all about community building and helping to get people together to discuss new ideas and concepts about their interior design ideas. Plus it is a great way to showcase their retailer database as you can purchase products if and when you decide you like them in your design! 

The future
The future of this site looks bright especially since it heralds a brand new concept. There are bound to be many other sites that will follow suit albeit with enhanced features and add-ons. Mydeco.com  is definitely worth a browse and who knows you may even get addicted to it!

Maybe you hate searching through retail sites trying to find the exact product you want. Or perhaps you want a particular product which you are not able to find anywhere else. Instead of breaking your head over numerous searching options try out social shopping. It’s fun and it’s the next big thing in online shopping!

Combining two favorites!
Both online shopping and social networking represent two of the current hottest activities pursued by most Internet users. Social shopping is all about connecting these two concepts into one powerful ecommerce trend! It offers a nice platform for online shoppers to not only connect but discuss various products and review them. Many small start ups have benefited from social shopping. It is a win-win situation where both the retailer and the shopper seem to benefit.

Move away from the big guys
Most online shoppers already know what the mainstream retail sites offer in terms of the product range. Hence there is really nothing new to explore there. These big retailers have been there, done that. Today is the age of experimentation, specialization and the more niche your product the more chances it will be talked about on social shopping sites! Why because customers are always on the lookout for something different, a new product that exactly meets their requirements – and they want all this delivered to them on a platter! Who said ecommerce could be easy?!

A growing trend
Social shopping aims to map products that are hard to get to customers who are looking for them. This is great as it works for online retailers as well as online shoppers. While retailers usually cannot seem to connect their products to customers, consumers find it difficult searching for products they like.

Laying the foundations
Social shopping is just starting out and it’s already becoming a much-touted thing in the world of ecommerce. It is definitely here to stay. Customers essentially discuss ideas, review products and generally advise each other on which products and retail sites are the best. So if you are an ecommerce site then it is in your best interests to stay in the good books of these customers – else you might be written off forever!

Price vs. Service
Today customers are finicky. Quality plays a more important role than price. Another factor that plays a vital role is the service level offered by the company. Aspects like warranty etc. play an important role for a site’s success. Also in the world of social shopping where the customer decides a retailer’s fate, warranty and high service levels are paramount to ensuring success. 

Direct and goal oriented
With social shopping online purchasing is no longer going to be an ambiguous, vague concept where the customer guesses product availability on a site. Instead the customer will now be armed with plenty of information and advice from other customers thereby making the shopping experience more goal-oriented. If any ecommerce company wishes to stay afloat in the competition it should assess social shopping trends seriously.

If you thought you had had just about enough of social networking think again. Experts who have studied this segment believe that things have just started rolling and that social networking is here to stay. Apart from being an offshoot of Web 2.0 technology this phenomenon has brought about increased traffic, site sales and better page ranking. If you have been toying with the idea of setting up your own social networking site then here are some pointers to help you stand apart from the crowd.

Targeted networking
Today’s age is all about specialization. No wonder then that instead of diversifying into broader segments, companies are entering into new sub-verticals in the same segment. The same concept applies to social networking as well. If you wish to be different and attract more traffic into your social networking site you need to start thinking differently. The key to success lies in defining a unique niche for yourself.

Research and development
One of the things you can do to start off is by identifying the current market, who are the top players and what is in demand at the moment. Then try finding out what could be a potential demand in the market. You could possibly do a survey or ask people around through your blog if a concept can be viable or not. If most users agree then you know this idea can work well for your social networking website.

Get innovative
The more innovative and different your idea is the more success your social networking website will enjoy. In fact if you look around you will notice that most of the top sites these days are ones which have come up with something truly novel and unique.

Making it user friendly
Most users online who visit social networking sites often find that it can be a real hassle to add the same set of friends to every new site. Instead of having to move such data around every site, many modern social networking sites have come up with a new concept. By using open source technology and open standards users can now upload and download information about their friends faster and quicker.

Open ID concepts
The concept of open ID has had many takers. For starters it enables a user to access several social networking sites using just one single ID. It makes things a whole lot easier. Instead of having to remember one’s user ID and password for several different sites, you just have one ID and password to remember. Much less hassle and more social networking in the process! Thus what we are essentially trying to say is that while being niche in a segment is important it is also equally important to leverage unique technologies to make the social networking experience better for your users. It could be a new concept which no other site has thought of till now or it could be a new technology which only your organization has invented. These are aspects that will help you differentiate your social networking site from so many others out there!

When it comes to your website you want it to be a user-friendly, interactive experience. That is why usability on your web 2.0 site is so important. It could be the defining factor between a sale made and a sale lost. Here we discuss some useful ways in which you can test the usability on your web 2.0 site effectively.

Focal point  
First and foremost you will need to assess which aspect of your site you wish to test the usability on. For example if it is the design and layout of the site then the approach will be totally different from testing on interactivity. If it is the design and structure you wish to test the usability on your web 2.0 site on then you need to concentrate on colors used, layout of web pages, presence of site map, whether important aspects have been highlighted or not etc.

Clear structure  
The next aspect you need to focus on is whether the site has a clear and minimalist design or not. Today Web 2.0 strategies on web design clearly state that a well designed site needs to have a central structure and layout with minimal distractions. Thus when you are testing for usability on your web 2.0 site you need to assess if the web pages have been designed keeping the central theme in mind or not. Otherwise your user could easily get distracted from the central topic of your website.

Do not clutter the home page
Your home page is your ticket to page ranking on popular search engines. Search engines do not recognize flash or other fancy software. Instead they only recognize plain and simple text. Many websites clutter their landing page with unnecessary information and flashy images. Doing so just takes away from the central message you want to get across to the user. Therefore while you are assessing the usability on your web 2.0 site make sure to keep the home page clean and easy to understand.

Getting the message across
This aspect of usability on your web 2.0 site will depend a lot on what type of website you have. If you have an information portal like a Wiki site for example, then the focus should be on providing information rather than any commercial promotions. On the other hand, if you are selling a particular range of products on your website then usability will focus on coaxing the customer to purchase. In order to get the sales rolling you need aspects like call to action, highlighting the important discounts or promotions happening and generally listing out products with thumbnail images for better readability.

Get other people’s opinion
You may think your website is the best in the world but it always helps to get a third person’s perspective on things. Hence make sure to ask your friends to test the usability on your web 2.0 site. Let them provide their fair and honest opinion of the site and take their criticism constructively. This way you will be able to optimize and improve on your site much better.