We’re excited to announce that we have now released product reviews, and they are available and included in every Spiffy Stores plan at no additional cost!

We have been working away updating themes to include a way for your customers to add reviews, and for them to be displayed beautifully in your store… and most themes are finished! The last theme we’ll be updating (the Adelaide theme) should be available next week.

With the addition of the built-in mail after purchase email, you should be able to generate a ton of product reviews. These reviews are also indexed by Google and can be a great way for you to generate some buzz around your store and your products.

Reviews and the mail after purchase email function are included in all plans and it takes just a few minutes to set up.

To activate reviews in your store, you’ll need to firstly ensure you have updated your theme to the latest version. We have instructions on how to do that here.

If your store has a custom design, or updating your theme seems a bit difficult… it’s likely you’ll want us to do this for you for a small fee. Please email support@spiffystores.com.au requesting that we update your theme to include product reviews, and we’ll let you know when we can book you in.

Once your theme is up to date, you can then enable product reviews in the Products section of your store’s admin.

You can enable the mail after purchase function in the Preferences -> General Settings section of your store’s admin.

You can add a logo or edit the automated mail after purchase email in the Design & Assets -> Email Templates section of your store’s admin.

We’ve made product reviews available to all stores for many reasons… but the main one is that they can make a huge difference to your store’s performance. How? You may ask…

8 reasons why you need Product Reviews in your store now!

Reviews can help your store increase sales, and can help you to convince customers to leave more of them. Read on to get started.

1. Product reviews help create more informed customers

Product reviews can contain a lot of extra information that can’t be found anywhere else. Reviews can mention things like durability, colour, sizing, and so much more.

It’s personal insights such as “a little narrow for my wide feet” that help customers to be informed and find products that they will love.

2. Valuable insight helps you to improve

Reviews can also help you better understand your products. You can spend hours using a product, but chances are your customers are going to notice things you never would. That means your customers can give you ideas for improvements, or even excellent ideas on how to market your products.

3. Increased transparency

It can be scary allowing customers to openly review you, but showcasing feedback – good or bad, shows you have nothing to hide, and value your customers opinion. The ability to reply to a review also allows you to acknowledge that you’re not perfect, or your products may not be perfect for everyone. Replying to a review can also show that you have faith in your product range.

And you needn’t worry about those odd negative product reviews – 68% of consumers trust reviews more when they see both bad and good review scores.

4. Increased trust

The immediate benefit of reviews is that they can make your future customers feel that much more confident. The more reviews you have, the more convinced a shopper will be that they’re making the right decision.

5. Social proof your products

We all want one everyone else has, right? That’s how trends work.

Product reviews can make every one of the items you sell super desirable. Instead of seeing every positive product review as a great piece of feedback, see it as a vote in a popularity contest.

Additionally, if customers share products they’ve reviewed across their social networks, it’s more exposure for those products and your brand.

6. SEO benefits

User-generated content provides Google with the thing it loves most: content, and lots more of it than mast store owners can generate themselves. Product reviews are usually full of really relevant, rich keywords, to help further build context around your eCommerce store. This can dramatically improve your Google rankings.

Plus… not sure if you’ve ever seen them, but you will see stars displayed under product listings in organic search results. These result in an increase in click-through rates. This is also one of Google’s ranking factors, so – yes… this will also help you reach the top spots in search ranking.

7. Increased Visibility in Google Shopping

Google Shopping is extremely competitive, and the addition of stars to your product listings can make all the difference when it comes to attracting the attention of potential customers.

8. More conversions and bigger baskets

As a result of your customers being more informed, more confident, and more trusting they’ll be more likely to convert. Not only that, but they’ll probably also buy more. We’re talking more, bigger sales.

According to statistics, reviews produce an average of 18% uplift in sales, and customers who visit a site and interact with reviews spend 11% longer on the site than those who don’t.

Trying to compete online without product reviews can be an uphill battle. Customers are beginning to expect reviews as standard. So take advantage of our new feature, and you’ll see a whole host of amazing benefits that will help you continuously adapt and improve.

There are many ways to collect reviews, and we’ll have another article or two on collecting product reviews in the weeks to come.

So you’ve got some pretty cool new stock for your online store – bonza!

Once you’ve got that sparkly item beautifully photographed and loaded safely in your Spiffy Store, it’s time to go to town with your marketing.

You don’t have to have a big marketing budget to promote your new product online.

Here are 19 ideas that will cost you nothing but a little bit of your time.

1. Post a photo of your new product on your Facebook page, linking directly back to the product page on your store
2. Tweet that cool photo and link out on your Twitter account
3. Post the image and link on your Pinterest page
4. Post the image and link on your Google+ page
5. Make a creative photo on Instagram
6. Write an update for your LinkedIn company page
7. Take a short video of the product on your smartphone and load it onto your YouTube channel
8. Post the video out on your other social networks too
9. Use a #hashtag on social media whenever you mention your new product. For example, #shoes or #goldsandals.
10. Post on social media more than once. If you do it just once, it may get lost in the noise of the newsfeed.
11. Feature the product in your next newsletter
12. Mention it in your email signature with a link
13. Write a blog post about it. If it’s something to wear, you could discuss different ways to wear it. Remember to use the product name in the page title and headline.
14. Write a traditional press release and post it on PR sites like Newsmaker. If you’re not sure how to do that, check out my post on how to write a press release.
15. Monitor sourcebottle.com for free publicity opportunities and giveaway requests that would fit your product. You can sign up for alerts on the site.
16. Search for popular blogs in your niche (fashion, lifestyle etc) using Google Blog Search or Alltop and send the blogger some information about your product along with some nice images. They might feature it.
17. When you ship your new product, invite your customers to post a snap of them using it on social media with a #hashtag so you can follow the activity
18. Slip a note about the new item into the package when you ship other goods
19. Add a note and link in your automated emails to check out the new product in the store

There you go. A bunch of online marketing ideas for you that don’t cost a cent!

You might not think it, but there are plenty of ways to promote your online store using the professional network, LinkedIn. Here’s 10 for you!

1. Set up a Company Page

Just as you can create a personal LinkedIn profile to showcase yourself, you can do the same for your business. They’re called Company Pages and they provide you with a free and easy way to promote your store online.

Before you can set up a Company Page, you need to have your own personal LinkedIn page (if you don’t yet have one, head over to my previous post on LinkedIn profiles for some tips on getting started).

It’s quite easy to launch a Company Page, but there are a few requirements you need to meet before you can go ahead, so read through those first or you may quickly get frustrated!

When you’re ready, here’s how to make it happen.

> On your personal page, hover your cursor over ‘Interests’ in the top menu and select ‘Companies’.

> Click ‘Create’ in the ‘Create a Company Page’ box to the right.

> Follow the prompts to enter your company name and work email address, and then add your company information, including the website address, logo, banner image and an engaging description of what you sell. LinkedIn comes up well in search results, so include your main keywords in the important bits.

> Use the opportunities provided to link to your other online properties like your company social media accounts and your Spiffy store.

Take your time over this. Once you publish your Company Page, it’ll be live on LinkedIn!

Extra bells and whistles make your Company Page stand out

Now you have a basic page, you can go that one step further to make it more interesting and valuable.

2. Add Showcase Pages.

You can add up to 10 of these extra pages to promote specific products you offer. To create a Showcase Page, go to ‘Edit’ > ‘Create a Showcase Page’.

3. Get your staff on board.

If you have staff and they’re on LinkedIn, ask them to add their role at your company to their profile. That’ll connect them to your Company Page and show you’re a real business supported by real people. This can also drive more traffic to your page as readers view their profiles. If your team aren’t on LinkedIn, send them an invitation!

Now you’re started, keep the engine running

Just like personal profile pages, it’s important to use your Company Page regularly if you want to attract and keep interest in your business.

4. Post regular updates that would appeal to your followers.

Share helpful and interesting status updates like your latest company news, links to your blog posts or other articles on the web, and insights into your products. Quality images used with your updates will attract the eye. Watch out for comments from LinkedIn members so you can reply to any questions and give your own perspective on any points raised.

A cool feature of LinkedIn updates is the ability to target your followers by criteria such as company size, industry, job or location. Use this if you want to be ultra-targeted.

Post an update via the ‘Share an update’ box on your Company Page.

5. Run your own LinkedIn Group

Attract wider attention and show yourself as a specialist in your field through your own Group! Use it to spark conversation about your industry and business, and share content with like-minded members. In the top menu, go to ‘Interests’ > ‘Groups’ and click the ‘create a group’ button down on the right. Fill in the fields to start your Group.

Once you’ve launched, keep active in your community. Answer any questions and post comments regularly, or people will lose interest.

Let the world know you’re there

Anyone searching on LinkedIn for your store should be able to find it easily. But there’s a much wider audience roaming around the web you could attract without incurring extra costs.

6. Add a LinkedIn follow icon to your Company Page from your Spiffy store.

Read your store’s theme guide to find out how to do this.

7. Post your Company Page url on other social media channels you use.

8. Add a link to your Company Page in your email signature.

Pay for that extra reach

When you need a bigger push, consider spending a bit of your hard earned cash on paid advertising.

9. Try LinkedIn’s paid ads.

These small ads can be used to drive your target LinkedIn audience to your website or Company Page. They come in text, image or video formats, and let you filter your audience very precisely on a range of criteria like job titles, locations, industries, or company size – that’s really handy! You can pay either per click (CPC), or how many times it’s shown (CPM) and you can set a daily budget to keep control of your spend.

You’ll need a small image, headline (25 characters max), short ad copy (75 characters max) and the url of the page it will point to. Once you’ve got that together, head on over to https://www.linkedin.com/ads to begin.

10. Use the Sponsored Updates service.

You can promote your usual company updates to a wider audience through paid sponsorship (regular updates will only reach your company followers). Like Ads, you’ll be charged based either on the number of LinkedIn members who see the update or the number of clicks they receive. LinkedIn have a short post explaining how to do this here. 

As in all social media activity, the key is to be, well, social! Get involved with your audience and remember these three key elements: post quality content, use your keywords and always remain professional. Good luck!

So, you’ve got an AdWords campaign for your online store up and running. Good for you! If you’re anything like me, you’ll be checking in on the data frequently to see what’s happening to your hard earned marketing dollars.

Here are a few tips to help you get the best value out of your campaigns.

Bring important data together

Start off by getting as much performance information as possible.

> Connect your AdWords and Google Analytics accounts
By connecting these powerful tools, you can get a more complete picture of your online performance. Follow the steps on this Google help page to link the accounts.

> Add extra columns to your AdWords Keywords report
The ‘bid’, or price you’re willing to pay for a click, is a key element in determining your ad’s position. But it can be hard to know an appropriate amount. By adding the estimated first page and top page bid columns to your Keywords report, you can tell if your bid is enough for a good position.

On the Keywords report, click the Columns tab > Customize columns > Attributes, and add ‘Est. first page bid’ and ‘Est. top page bid’. These columns will then show in your Keywords report.

> Set up conversion tracking
Conversion tracking reveals which keywords and campaigns are bringing in business. It’s important for optimising your return on investment as it will show where your budget is likely to be more profitable.

Google have a comprehensive guide to help you set up conversion tracking.

Understand Quality Score and why it’s important

Google uses a calculation called Quality Score to help decide when and where your ads show up in search results. It’s based on the quality (relevance) of your ads, keywords and landing page (where you send the visitor when they click each ad).

Quality Score is ranked 1 to 10. The higher the Quality Score, the more likely the ad will get a higher position in the search results and a lower CPC. You should aim to get the highest Quality Score you can by tweaking and improving your ads, keywords and landing pages.

Improve your keyword performance

1. Make sure your keyword bids are competitive. The new columns ‘Est. first page bid’ and ‘Est. top page bid’ you’ve added will show the estimated cost of a good ad position. If your bid is way below the amount needed, you can adjust it.

2. Remove any underperforming keywords (leaving them in will reduce your campaign performance).

• If a keyword hasn’t triggered any ad impressions after a couple of weeks, and its Quality Score and bid are OK, think about removing it. There may not be enough people searching on that term.

• If a keyword hasn’t produced any click throughs after a month, pause or remove it.

• If a keyword is getting clicks but these are not converting, think about lowering the bid as it’s eating away at your budget. If you’re not seeing a positive return on investment (sales) after around 200 clicks, it’s time to consider removing the keyword.

• If you see a keyword that’s converting well, you could add more budget to it to get more impressions.

Repeat keyword housekeeping regularly to keep your campaigns in top shape!

3. Use keyword matching to increase ad relevance

I’ve written about the importance of relevance in the search world many times. Keyword matching is an easy way to increase relevance by ‘tagging’ your keywords for broad, phrase, exact and negative match varieties.

Broad match is the default and has no specific tags around the keyword. Broad match means your ad can be triggered if the search term contains your keywords in any order, including additional words. For example, if your keyword is gold jewellery your ad may show for the search term buy gold men’s jewellery Sydney.

Using phrase match (putting your keyword in speech marks – “xxx”) means your ad only shows if your keywords appear together in the right order in a search query. For example, your keyword “gold jewellery” only triggers your ad for a search like men’s gold jewellery, but not gold and diamond jewellery.

Exact match (putting your keyword in square brackets – [xxx]) is the most precise tagging. Using it means your ads only appear when someone searches for your exact keyword as it stands, without any other words in the search. For example, your keyword [gold jewellery] only triggers your ad for the search gold jewellery.

The other important match type for any AdWords campaign is negative match (putting a minus sign ‘–‘ in front of a keyword). This means your ad won’t show if a search term contains the negative keyword. It’s a useful way to prevent paying for irrelevant clicks.

Using keyword matching will affect number of times your ad shows for that keyword. Exact match keywords will trigger ads less times than broad match but the query is likely to be more relevant for you. If you’re getting too many irrelevant queries on your broad match keywords, you can change the match type and tighten it up.

4. Check which search terms are triggering your ads. To find out the actual search terms used by the people clicking on your ads, go to ‘Keywords > Details > SEARCH TERMS > All’. If you’re getting clicks from searches that don’t apply to your business, make them negative keywords.

Improve your ad performance

Make sure your ads are as enticing as possible with these tips: 

1. Use the keyword you’re targeting in the ad headline. You can do this automatically with dynamic keyword insertion.

Dynamic keyword insertion

This nifty little piece of code will insert the keyword that triggered the ad into your ad text. It can make your ads more relevant to the search and can improve the click through rate.

You can add the code anywhere in your ad – the headline, descriptions, URLs – as many times as you want, but be careful not to overdo it. Your ad still needs to make sense or you could turn people away!

When you use dynamic keyword insertion, check that all of the keywords in your ad group make sense where you’re going to display them in the ad, and the landing page is still relevant to those variations. This is especially important in ecommerce sites where your ad may point to a very specific product page.

The code you’ll need is: {keyword:default text} 

Replace ‘default text’ with words you’d like to appear when a keyword can’t be dynamically inserted. Make sure your keywords are short enough to keep your ad within the character limits. If not, the ad’s default text will be used instead.

Try one keyword insertion ad in each ad group, and set the default text that’s relevant to the theme.

2. Use Title Case Capitalisation (Used in this Sentence) Throughout your Headline and Body Copy to Help your Ad Stand Out.

3. Use a call to action like “Find out how” or “Get in touch” in your ad copy to make it obvious what you want the reader to do next.

4. Try including a couple of key selling points like prices, discounts, product names or free shipping.

5. Add ad extensions. It doesn’t cost anything to add extra information to your ad in the form of ad extensions, and it helps you stand out. As an online store owner, product extensions can be helpful. Find out more on the Google AdWords support site.

6. Create a display URL (web page address) that’s short, simple and contains your keyword. You can make the display url that shows in your ad different to the actual page url, as long as they’re both on the same domain. For example you could make the display url for the landing page “www.mystore.com.au/collections/gold-jewellery/products/wedding-rings” into “www.mystore.com.au/wedding-rings”. Google will show up to 35 characters in the ad.

7. Create three or four different ads for each ad group to see which messages and calls to action get the best results.

When you want to make changes to an ad, create a new ad rather than edit the exiting one, as you’ll loose the old ad’s data. Just pause the ones you’re replacing.

Improve your landing page

If you’re getting clicks on your ads, but a high bounce rate on your landing page and little or no conversions, your visitors might not be seeing what they expected when they clicked through.

Make sure there’s a logical connection between the wording in your ads and the landing page. Match the messages and copy and repeat any offers you mention in the ad on the landing page. The best way to make this obvious is to use the same wording in the landing page headlines and subheadings.

I hope that helps! It may look a bit daunting, but once you’ve used AdWords a few times, it’ll become second nature. Remember that your AdWords performance will need monitoring and optimising regularly.

One of the quickest and easiest ways to get traffic to your online store is through paid ads on search engines like Google. It’s great for bringing people to your site when you first launch.

But wait, I hear you say, why pay when I can get listed in search engine results for free?

OK. Here’s a quick recap on the difference between the two types of search engine results listings.

Organic (free) listing

Appearing for free in search engine results is known as an organic listing. You can’t buy the placement – it’s made by the search engine based on its assessment of the content on your web page and its relevance to the search term. It looks at about 200 factors to help it make that decision.

Paid listing

Paying for a listing in search engine results is known as Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

These ad listings show up in the top positions on the first page of search results, and in a column down the right hand side. They look very similar to other listings, but they’re labelled ‘ads’ or ’sponsored links’. And if you look closely, you’ll see they read a little differently. AdWords is Google’s paid advertising program.

It doesn’t cost anything for your ad to show, but you’ll be charged a small amount when your ad is clicked on. The charge varies depending on the relevance of your ad and web page to the search term, and how much you’ve offered to pay for that click.

Why would you pay?

Well, put simply, it can be hard to get in the top search results otherwise.

The algorithms that calculate the position a web page is given in the free search results are highly complex. Trying to get a high ranking can take a lot of time, effort and specialist knowledge and you’ll be competing with countless other businesses trying to do the same.

And when the algorithms are updated (which happens a lot), you can find your page rankings change overnight.

Google AdWords gives your web page a much better chance to appear on the first page results for your chosen keywords, and you can do it really quickly.

Ready to give it a go? Here’s how to get started

Don’t be tempted to rush in to creating your ads before you’ve done steps 1 and 2. They’re crucial!

1. Get into your customers heads

Before you create your first campaign, write down everything you know about your customers. It’ll help you create better campaigns if you’re seeing your offerings from their perspective.

Who are they? What would they type into the Google search box to if they were looking for products like yours? Where do they live?

2. Draw up a list of keywords related to your business and products

Make a list of the search terms you’d expect your customers to use to find your products. These are your keywords.

Don’t be too general in your choice. A one-word term is usually expensive for a click because it’s so generic and popular, and you can end up paying for traffic that’s looking for something you may not stock.

Aim for keywords of two or three words, and include brand names, colours, and your location. A jewellery store keyword list might include high-level keywords like “gold jewellery”, as well as more specific categories like “gold and diamond wedding rings”. As a rule, the more specific the keywords, the closer the visitor is likely to be to buying as they’ve already narrowed down their choices.

Your web analytics software might give you some insights into the terms people are already using to find your web pages. This is not as easy as it was though, as the most common web analytics tool, Google Analytics, has stopped sharing that information. Grrr.

3. Set up your AdWords account

Now you’ve done your homework, head over to https://adwords.google.com and follow the instructions to set up your AdWords account.

If you’ve already got a Google account (like Gmail), you can use that email address and password to sign in. You can also create a separate account if you’d prefer to keep your business and personal activities separate.

4. Set up your first AdWords campaign

Once you’ve signed up and verified your email, you’ll be taken to the “Your first campaign” page.

It’s important to know your goal for the campaign before you start so you can tell if it’s effective. Generating sales is probably the main goal for an online store, but you can use AdWords to bring in just leads or traffic too.

Each AdWords campaign has its own settings that let you define the budget and where want your ads to appear. These settings will apply to all ads within the same campaign.

It’s very easy to set up a campaign – just fill in the fields displayed:

Your budget – this is the most you’re willing to pay per day for traffic to the ads in this campaign. You can change it at any time if you find you’re not getting the results you want.

Locations – these are the geographical places where you want your ads to display.

Networks – these are the online networks where you want your ads to show; Search Network is the default but you can also choose Display Network to have your ad show on Google partner websites too.

Keywords – This is where you list the keywords you want to use to bring traffic to your ads. This field will be pre-filled with suggestions and their approximate search volumes but you can delete the ones you don’t want and add your own. Don’t go mad here, use around 10-20 keywords per campaign to keep it manageable.

Bid – this is the most you want to pay for a click on your ad. You can set your bids for a click manually, or let AdWords do it. When you’re starting out, it may be easier to let AdWords do it for you. If you choose the manual option, enter a default bid as well. This will be the most you want to pay for a click.

Write your ad – this is where you put together your AdWords text ad. There are other types of ad you can make but this is the easiest and most popular.

• Landing page: this is the actual web page the visitor will land on when they click the ad.
• Headline: 25 character limit. The headline should be highly relevant to the search query you’re expecting for this ad.
• Line 1: 35 character limit. Mention your unique value or problem you solve here.
• Line 2: 35 characters. Continue, and add a call to action here to encourage a click.

Here’s an example of one of our Spiffy Stores text ads.

A word about: relevance

Relevance is the currency of search. It’s the most important aspect of your ads. Clear, persuasive ad text, that’s highly relevant to your keywords and the content of the page it leads to, will get better results. And as AdWords uses both quality (relevance) and bid ($) to determine your ad’s position, you can get a higher position, sometimes at a lower price, with highly relevant keywords and ads.

5. Complete your payment details

As this is your first AdWords campaign, you’ll need to fill out your payment information. Then, once your ad is approved (yes, it has to go through Google’s approval scheme), it will be active. You can ‘deactivate’ it by pausing the ad and it won’t show up in search results.

6. Keep an eye on your AdWords results

AdWords is not a set and forget exercise.

To get the most out of it and not waste money, you’ll need to keep coming back to analyse the results and make any changes that will improve your ads performance. More on how to do that later.

In the second post in this series, we’ll look into some of the ways you can optimise your ad. Stay tuned!

We love adding new stuff to Spiffy Stores, and we’re pleased to announce that we’ve just finished putting the final polish on a brand new feature.

When you manage your online store, there’s obviously lots to think about in terms of products, inventory, prices and shipping. But until now, there’s been an important part missing from this equation – your customers!

As ever, we’re anxious to make sure we’re providing you with the very best tools and support to help you run your ecommerce venture successfully and to make lots of money, so we’ve done something about this. From today, you’ll see a new tab in your Spiffy Stores Toolbox, right next to your ‘orders’, called ‘customers’.

Click on this and you’ll be taken to an overview list of all your customers and you’ll see options to sort and filter your customer list, so that you can easily see who’s ordered what, how much they’ve spent and where they are located. Add to this our fantastic new custom search filters that let you create and save your own searches, and you’ll soon see these as an indispensable part of your marketing armoury.

There’s much more detail about this new feature in our Knowledge Base at https://www.spiffystores.com.au/kb/Information_about_your_customers  so we recommend you have a quick look at the documentation to see how this can help you better understand your customers.

But wait, there’s more! This is just phase 1 in our rollout of our new customer-related features. Be on the lookout for some exciting new additions to your Spiffy Store in the coming months.

Readers of this blog will know I’m a huge fan of taking photos with my iPhone.

I mean, why bother with the expense of a separate camera when an iPhone takes great hi-resolution images with ease, and apps like Instagram make me look like a ruddy photo rockstar.

I’ve even written posts showing how you can use a smartphone to take top quality product shots and how to give extra punch to a photo with Instagram.

Why?

Because detailed, hi-resolution photography is key to the success of your online store.

The world just can’t get enough of big, juicy images busting with personality and detail and it’s especially important in e-commerce. Your store could thrive or die on the quality of your product photos, which is why the iPhone 5s camera upgrades are a blessing for online retailers.

The new 5s still has the 8 megapixel camera I know and love, but they’ve improved the lens so you get better results in low light conditions. There’s a new flash that adjusts colour and brightness, and two new shooting features; a burst mode that takes 10 frames per second, and a slow-mo video that shoots 120 frames per second.

Combine all that with the powerful photography software coming out in the new operating system iOS7 and you’ve got a professional photo studio that fits in your pocket.

Imagine how great your product photos would look if you took them with this baby. Actually, you don’t need to imagine – here’s a few examples.

Don’t say I didn’t let you know.

Photo credit: Barry Pousman via Flickr

I know what you’re thinking… “Oh no, not another social network!” But if you want to improve your online store’s search rankings and be seen by more people, hear me out.

Whether you are a fan of social media or not, social networks and the endless chatter they support are increasingly important to the growth of your business.

Word of mouth has always been the most effective form of advertising. People tend to buy from those they like and trust and social media is a great way to build a relationship with your prospective customers.

Not only that, but Google, the king of all search engines, has recently focused on social signals in its search algorithms. This means the more people are talking about you and sharing your content, the better your search ranking is likely to be. Shares, likes, comments or +1s of your posts act like recommendations and boost SEO.

Google+ has chalked up more than 400 million users and is now one of the top six social networks in the world. It’s fast becoming recognised as the place to connect with like-minded businesses and people you may not already know (you’re not meant to connect with people you don’t already know on LinkedIn).

More importantly, Google+ is owned by the world’s most popular search engine. Let me say that once more for effect. Google+ is owned by the world’s most popular search engine. Posts, articles, pictures and links on a Google+ page are favoured in Google’s organic search results and status updates are indexed immediately, meaning they will show up in relevant searches right away.

By keeping your Google+ page up to date and interacting through it, you have more chances of being found online. Do you like the sound of that?!

If you’re keen to put your business on Google+, you’ll first need your own Google+ page. If you don’t have one already, set up an account here.

Before you create your business page, have the following to hand: a catchy tag line, a concise introduction that includes links to your website, your logo at 250 x 250 pixels in size, a hi resolution photo that represents your business and URLS of your other social media accounts.

Once you’re set up, search for people and companies to add to your ‘circles’. Look for those who would have something in common with your line of business.

Above all, post regular content, share your ideas, photos and video, and most of all, share other people’s stuff. Think wider than just your niche – build a personality for your brand and have fun!

Click here for the official step-by-step guide to setting up a business page on Google+.

There’s a lot to learn about running your own ecommerce website and making money online. Make sure you’re not making some of these common mistakes!

Lack of quality customer service

Customer service is excellent ‘free’ marketing. Whether it’s a friendly voice, a helpful email or extra unexpected value, a great customer service experience can encourage visitors to buy from you above others. It can also promote your business when customers who have been impressed tell others how good it was!

If your business has a presence on social media like facebook and twitter, you are highly likely to get queries and complaints through those accounts. Respond quickly and appropriately, taking the conversation out of the public domain and on to email or the phone if you can.

Substandard product descriptions and images

This subject is key to selling online so I’ve already devoted posts to writing better product descriptions and taking quality product photos. You’re unlikely to sell much if your store visitors can’t see your products properly or are unimpressed with your lack-luster description. Take the time to make sure they don’t need to look elsewhere for inspiration.

Trying to compete only on price

Undercutting the competition through cost alone is a dubious tactic. You devalue your product and sooner or later, you are likely to be undercut too and the only way to go is down. Bang go your profits. It’s more effective to find your unique selling proposition and add value to your products or service. You’re more inclined to attract loyal customers too.

Not having a blog

A blog is another great selling tool that has become an important factor in search engine ranking recently. Yes, it can be hard to keep it up, but it’s worth the effort! It will help drive traffic to your online store, build trust in your brand and give your business a human voice. Use the blog built into every Spiffy Store, and create your own blog.

Lack of shipping information

This is a real turn off for a prospective customer. If I’m ready to buy right now, I don’t want to be hunting around, trying to figure out how much it will cost to get my purchase to me. Dedicate a page to your shipping policy, and link to it from your shopping cart page.  Use the built-in shipping calculators, as they will let people know how long they will need to wait to receive their goods. In your Spiffy Store, set up the shipping and handling section thoroughly.

Cover off these basics and you will be on your way to giving your customers a better experience in no time!

Related articles

• Writing better product descriptions
• How to write a press release
• How to improve the success of your marketing emails

What are you selling through your online store? Stationery? Clothing? Art?

Think again. In your customers’ eyes, you’re providing a solution to fill a need, and to feed an emotion.

You’re not selling sweaters, you’re providing warmth and comfort, style, and protection from the cold.

You’re not selling quality wallpaper, you’re bringing beauty to a boring wall, allowing someone to express themselves and helping them create a home.

The key to creating compelling and engaging copy is to understand the problems your product solves and to tap into the emotional connections to it.

When you develop your brand and write content for your online store, don’t think in terms of selling goods. Think about solutions to problems, that’s what you’re really selling.

Want to learn more? My next post is all about nailing those fiddly product descriptions.

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• How to write a press release
• How to improve the success of your marketing emails
• A guide to email marketing for online stores

Have you just set up an online store? Or do you have some great news about your business that just begs for a wider audience? Then how about sending out a press release!

Press releases were originally written for journalists, to get them to write about your news in the popular press. But since the advent of easy online PR distribution channels, the humble press release now has a wider audience and can drive traffic to your retail website.

It’s not difficult to write a press release, but they do have a specific layout, tone and written content, so here’s how to
go about it…

The hook

You first need to have something interesting to announce and a ‘hook’, or angle, to grab the reader’s attention and reel them in. Popular hooks include:

• tying into a topical subject such as a current affairs item, holiday or event
• announcing the release of a new product or collection
• sharing a human-interest item, such as an inspirational story from one of your customers
• winning new business or an industry award
• participating in an event or charity fundraiser.

The content

As you compile your press release, it pays to remember that you’re telling, not selling. The content should contain factual information, backed up by quotes from relevant people. Minimise any technical or industry jargon so you don’t put off readers who are not familiar with your terminology.

Always write a press release in the third person (they, them and their) and use keyword phrases to optimise the release for search engines. If you have an image, you can attach or include that too.

The layout

Release information – Write “Media Release” at the top of the document. Follow it with release instructions like “for immediate release”, or if it’s time sensitive “release after 12pm, 10 April 2013”, for example. Add today’s date and your city location.

Headline – Just like in blogs and emails, the press release headline is hugely important. Spend time creating a strong headline that captures the crux of your story and compels the reader to explore further.

Summary – The lead paragraph should lend more information to the headline and, again, keep the reader interested. It should contain the “who, what, when, where and why” of your story.

Body – Go into further details in the main body of the release, such as the background of the story and any statistics. Break it down into short sentences and paragraphs, and add quotes from key people such as a customer or even yourself!

To finish – At the end of the news story, write “————ends———-“ to signify that the news item is complete.

About – After the story, add a short profile of your company.

Contact details – At the foot of the page, add the contact details of the person who is happy to handle any further enquiries.

Check and check again

Once you have drafted your press release, print it out and read through it for correct use of grammar, readability and any typographic errors. Give it to someone else to look through too – I can’t tell you how many times a fresh pair of eyes has caught something I missed. Your final release should be polished, error-free and easy to read.

Now spread the word!

Old school media relations are still important, but a lot of small business owners don’t have relationships with individual journalists that they can send releases to directly.  An online press release distribution service such as www.PRweb.com, www.prlog.org, www.newsmaker.com.au or www.clickpress.com will publish and push your press release out to news sites for publication, sometimes for free.

This attracts a wider audience of both journalists and anyone searching online.

Need an example? Keep your eyes open for a Spiffy Stores press release going out soon!

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• How to improve the success of your marketing emails
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If you’ve signed up to an email marketing service like MailChimp, Campaign Monitor or Mad Mimi to help you promote your online store – nice work! You’re on your way to creating a relationship with your customers and subscribers.

But as you flick through all the email templates and designs available to you, you’re probably wondering which to use and how to do a good job. For example, did you know that email design is being influenced by the massive uptake in mobile devices? Around 35% of your emails may be opened on the move, so a mobile-friendly email is essential.

Here are my tips for creating good emails…

Choose a simple HTML template. I’m in favour of one-column layouts as they render well on all kinds of devices and are much easier to read on a smart phone.

Personalise the email. Insert a greeting field into the email so you can address each person by name – research shows personalisation increases response rates. Be friendly too and sign off as a person, not the company.

Try 14pt type for the body copy. It’s easier to read on screen.

Don’t add a lot of images. Images slow down the rate at which an email loads and are often blocked by email services. Use one or two good ones that help you get your message across.

Put the most important information in the first paragraph. It will show up in the preview pane, where most people look to decide if an email is worth opening.

Incorporate a ‘call to action’ (CTA). Don’t be vague. Add an instruction that tells the reader what to do next (ie: “view our autumn sale here”).

Make your CTA buttons big. They need to be large enough to accommodate a thumb click on a smart phone. Try making them at least 44 pixels high.

Use text links as well as graphic buttons for your CTA. That way, if the images don’t appear, the instruction can still be read.

Don’t place buttons or links too close together. It’s really frustrating trying to hit the right one when you’re using a smart phone.

Include social media share buttons in your email. It encourages readers to share the online email with their networks, giving you some free promotion.

Display your physical address and an unsubscribe link at the foot of the email. Most email templates will have this as standard, but do check it’s there.

Put your business name in the ‘from’ field. Your subscribers need to recognise you straight away or you could end up in the trash. Send from an individual email address like sally.brown@prettyfrocks.com, and not a generic department like sales@prettyfrocks.com

Write a really good subject line – it’s the most important element of your email. Its job is to stand out from all the other emails in the inbox, and make the recipient want to read the contents. Be relevant to them, specific and make the value of the contents obvious. Don’t mislead the reader or they might be tempted to unsubscribe!

As a general rule, avoid using ALL CAPS and clichés, keep it short and get straight to the point.

Proofread and test your email before you send it to your list. Send it to test accounts in Hotmail, Outlook and Gmail etc to ensure it looks OK and your links work. Check how it downloads on a smart phone and a tablet, as well as your PC or Mac.

Work out the best time to email your list. Think about your audience. Are they more likely to read it at work, or at home? Most emails get read in the first hour after sending, so pick the time wisely.

The fun has just begun!

Finally, keep testing and learning how your emails are performing so you can constantly improve. Try splitting your list into two and sending out a slightly different version to each half to find out which one works best!

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• A guide to email marketing for online stores
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• Tips for online retailers: How to optimise your store for search engines (part two)

Running a successful e-commerce business requires more than fresh web traffic and a groovy online store. You need to start a relationship with your web visitors and customers so they will come back again!

Used properly, email marketing is a key tool in your marketing arsenal. Use it to keep connected to your audience and drive sales by occasionally sending them interesting information and special offers. Be mindful of the SPAM Act before you start though, and read about the requirements here.

There are five important elements to good email marketing:

1. A permission-based email list
2. Relevant and valuable content
3. A professional email marketing service
4. A well constructed HTML email
5. A specific landing page

1. The list

Your list can be put together from email addresses given to you by people who want to hear from you. This might include current customers and your enewsletter subscribers. Make sure your list is cleaned of bounced or unsubscribed email addresses on a regular basis.

If you have enough information to segment your email list into sub groups (customers, Sydney subscribers, shoe buyers etc), write specific email content for each group. The more relevant the message, the more likely it will be read.

2. The content

What is the reason for your email?

There is no point emailing everyone just to tell them you’ve got a new desk (you can use social media for that!). Only send out emails if you have something relevant and valuable to share. It could be your cool and interesting monthly enewsletter, a special discount, a sale, a customer event or you may even be running a competition.

3. The email marketing service

Sign up with a professional email marketing provider like MailChimp, Campaign Monitor or Mad Mimi. They have all the tools you need to carry out professional-looking email marketing campaigns, such as designer HTML templates and post-campaign activity reports.

4. The HTML email

Your email marketing provider will offer lots of different tested email layouts, so you don’t have to worry too much about the design and if it will work. However, there are a lot of ways you can increase the chances of your email being read and acted upon.  My next blog post will be full of great tips to help you make the most of your email communication.

5. The landing page

Where are you sending people when they click on your links? They need to be on a logical trip. Remember to be specific, so if you’re promoting a new collection, the link should go directly to that collection, not your homepage.

If you need to make a new page of information to send you readers to, you can read how to do that in this Knowledge Base article.

Keep improving!

Your email marketing service will automatically track the number of emails successfully sent, bounced, opened, forwarded and the number of clicks on a link, and provide this in a simple report. Use this information to learn what worked and what didn’t so you can improve your next email. As a benchmark, an average email open rate is around 22% and click through rate about 4%. Better than this and you’re doing well!

You can see how many website visits came from the email and even resulting sales if you have set this up in Google Analytics, so you can form a whole picture of the effectiveness of the campaign.

My next post will be full of great tips to help you make the most of your email communication…. so stay tuned!

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• Tips for online retailers: How to optimise your store for search engines (part one)

It’s tough I know, but most of your web visitors won’t buy on the first visit.

They’ll check you out, flick through your products, perhaps compare prices, scroll through your blog and then they’ll be off again. Like ships in the night.

If you’re lucky, they might bookmark your site for a later date, but mostly they will disappear and get on with their busy lives. And bang goes all that time, cost and effort it took to drive them to your store in the first place. Grrrr.

But you can do something to improve your chances of a revisit. If you make it easy for interested visitors to stay in touch with you, they can get to know you a lot better and you can be there when they need you. With a simple but planned communication strategy, these strangers can become brand friends, and friends can become customers.

Be visibly sociable

One way to encourage visitors to stay in touch is to install ‘follow me’ buttons to your social media accounts (twitter, facebook and Pinterest etc) on your web pages. Social media is a great channel for offering followers useful information, special deals and even customer service assistance, thereby creating trust and a bond with your brand. Pretty much all of our themes include social media links, and these can be enabled in the “Design & assets -> Theme editor” section of your store’s Toolbox.

Email still rocks

Even better, add a simple sign up form on your website to collect email addresses from interested visitors. Some themes have this built-in, but if you use MailChimp or Campaign Monitor, you can use a “Web Hook” to add people who’ve ordered in your store to your mailing list.

Despite the rise of social media, email is still a reliable and cost effective way to keep potential customers informed, deepen your relationship with your subscribers and remind them what you offer.

But you must get their permission to begin emailing them and a sign up form on your website is the way to go. If they are not already a customer, they must have ‘opted-in’ to receive your communications as this is a requirement of the Spam Act.

Be prepared – plan your calendar

Once you start to collect subscribers, you’ll need to plan a calendar for your emails. This way you’ll know what you want to prepare, to whom, and when. The top reasons people will unsubscribe from your emails are;
1. too frequent emails, or
2. irrelevant content.
…so don’t be too zealous with your communications, and only email information or offers that make sense to the recipient.

Start by plotting out ‘shopping’ events that you want to promote like a new fashion season, Christmas and Mother’s day. Then fill in other regular communications like a regular newsletter. There will always be new opportunities so leave some breathing space in your calendar. That way you can send out announcements like a new product or special offer or tie in a promotion with some topical trend or news story.

One last word on email lists here. Don’t be tempted to buy or rent a list of email addresses. It’s inefficient, irritating to the recipients and contravenes the Spam Act. Grow your opt-in list over time with people ho have a genuine interest. Quality over quantity.

In another post soon I’ll provide be a tips sheet on creating killer emails to drive traffic to your online store. Don’t miss it!

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• Tips for online retailers: How to optimise your store for search engines (part two)
• Tips for online retailers: How to optimise your store for search engines (part one)
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In part one, we covered the first two subjects in our online retailer’s guide to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), using your keywords effectively and producing regular, quality content.

In part two, we will cover two other important aspects of SEO, social media participation and link building, and how to tackle them with confidence.

Dive into social media, and keep swimming.

One of the most recent Google updates increased the amount that social media activity counts in search engine rankings. Now, your engagement in social media will enhance your SEO efforts as well as increase your reach and popularity.

Put your best business hat on and go forth and participate in social networks such as twitter, facebook, Google+ and Pinterest. Set up accounts under your brand name and share images and stories, ask for opinions and comment on other people’s posts. Retweets, shares and comments on your social media content are taken into account in search rankings.

Link, and link again!

Linking is the last and possibly most important SEO element we will cover. Search engines use links to not only find your online content but also to judge its relevance, importance and how trustworthy it may be. So linking should not be overlooked.

Create links from one page to another within your online store and include the keywords for the page you’re linking to (not from) in the text for that link. For example, a link worded “our new red wrapping paper” would link to the page for which the keywords were “red wrapping paper”.

The hardest links to get, and therefore the most valuable, are those pointing into your web pages from other popular, trusted and relevant sites. There is no easy way round this, it takes a bit of time and effort but it will be worth it.

First up, check your competitors’ website backlinks. A great tool for doing this is www.opensiteexplorer.org . This will provide a list of web pages linking back to their store, which is a good way to discover where you might also get links back to your own content.

Try emailing your partners and suppliers directly to request a link from their website and send a request to other relevant sites such as retail/lifestyle blogs (giving your reasons why they should link to you).

Investigate listing your site on relevant online directories. http://www.seomoz.org/directories is a good place to start looking for directories relevant to online retailers like yourselves.

We should add a word of caution here… don’t be tempted to pay for “hundreds of links” from “SEO specialists” who may email you. Such links are usually poor quality and you will be penalised by search engines. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

So there you have the basics. There are plenty of free resources on the web if you’d like to learn more technical SEO techniques. We recommend the SEOmoz guide http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo (NB: we have no affiliation with them, they are just a great resource!)

Good luck, keep at it and it will make a difference.

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Like most people setting up an online store, you probably know you should be optimising for search engines to get more qualified traffic. The trouble is, you may not know where or how to start.

Never fear! we’ve put together this two-part blog post to get you up to speed in no time.

Let’s kick off with a quick refresher on why Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is so important.

SEO is not paid search marketing such as Google AdWords. We will look at that in a separate post. SEO is a bunch of techniques that you can apply to your web presence to help you get into Google search results without paying for advertising. It’s commonly called ‘organic’ search.

Search engines send out ‘robots’ to find your web content and index it so they can refer to it quickly during search queries. Once your content is indexed, the search engine can then list it in the organic search results for the relevant search query. The whole process is very complex and highly automated – it relies 100% on the information the robots can find.

Therefore the ‘trick’ to good SEO is for your content to be easy for the robots to find and highly relevant to the keywords your target audience will use to search.

Luckily for you, your Spiffy Store is already brilliantly formatted and coded to be search engine friendly, but you will still need to use your keywords in the right places, create interesting content, embrace social media and build links to your site to improve your search engine ranking.

We’ve broken four basic SEO principles down into manageable techniques that you can do yourself. In this post we will cover using keywords correctly and creating quality content. Using all four elements will make a real difference to your search engine rankings, pushing your pages further up the results listing towards that coveted first page position.

Use your keywords in the right places.

If you’ve read the last blog post, you’ll know how important keywords are and how to choose the right ones for your online store. Now here’s how to put them to work on your site.

You will have different keywords for different pages of your site. For ecommerce stores, it’s usually the product name. Spiffy Stores will automatically use the product title or collection title you enter in the url and the product page’s title meta tag, but you should also repeat it 2-3 times in the page copy (especially in the first paragraph and last sentence of the page). Ideally, use variations of the keyword term to keep a natural flow for reading.

Keywords should also be used in the file name of an image on a page and its ‘alt’ tag text (the text that will display if the image doesn’t download). Again, clever Spiffy Stores will do this for your product images from the product titles you input, but you can also edit the alt tags of any product images after they’ve been uploaded.  You should also add relevant alt tags to pictures you use on other pages like your blog posts.

Meta tags of your product pages are also automatically added for you, but you can override this and add your own custom keywords and text to the title, keyword and description meta tags (the description meta tag is sometimes the snippet of text people will see on Google search results) of all of the pages on your store. You can edit the meta description of any page, product, or collection by clicking the “Edit Search Engine Data” link when editing your content. If you do write your own meta description, keep the copy under 160 characters as anything longer than this will not show up in search engine results and vital information may be lost.

And lastly, use keywords in the text of links coming into that page.

Create quality content. Lots of it. Regularly.

Google has placed much emphasis on fresh and frequent content in its search algorithms, so be prepared to keep generating new content if you want to be found online.

Make use of the blog built into your Spiffy Store and update it every week with a new article. Stuck for ideas? You could write about a new product, a popular trend, company news or respond to a frequently asked customer question. Don’t forget to add an image too, like we have done here.

Try to put out a press release about once a month. You might have hit a new sales record, launched a new product, hired some cool people or perhaps you are attending a local event. All of this can be used in a press release that you can easily distribute through online services like www.prweb.com or www.newsmaker.com.au  If you’re new to online PR, stay tuned for our upcoming blog post on how to create a professional press release, coming soon.

You could also write an information page that your customers would find useful. For example, if you sell fine china, you might like to explain how best to look after fine china.

In general, aim for your articles to be 300 – 500 words in length and remember to use your keywords when writing as we’ve described.

And whatever you do, don’t duplicate substantial amounts of copy from other places on the web – including your own site! Google will penalise you for it, and the ranking of your site will likely suffer as a result.

I think that’s a good place to pause and let you catch your breath! Our next post will look at two other techniques – social media and linking – to help drive traffic to your fabulous online store.

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“Keywords” are the words and phrases people type into search engines to find the content they’re looking for. As this is how most people will arrive at your online store, you need to spend time choosing the ones that will get you the most relevant traffic. Then you need to use them on your website.

You may have a good idea of the phrases people use when looking for your products or services on the Internet, but it’s important to use some proper research to back up your hunches. And anyway, you can uncover some fresh ideas.

Here’s how to get started…

Take a moment to be your own potential customer.

Begin by making a list of the words and phrases that you would use to search for your products online. If you sell notebooks, good keywords might be “buy lined notebooks online”, “designer journals”, or even “stationery gifts”. The more specific and detailed your keyword terms are, especially if they include “buy”, the closer they are to the decision to purchase, so it’s a good idea to get into the results for this type of query.

Ask around to get other people’s input. Don’t just approach it from one perspective (yours), ask friends, colleagues or current customers what they would search for to find your products. You might be surprised at some of the answers!

If you use Google Analytics, check the traffic reports for your retail site to see which keywords were used to arrive at your web pages. Due to changes in the kind of information Google will show you over the last year of two, you can only see search queries if you have an AdWords account running.

Check out your competitors’ websites to discover what keywords they are using. There are a couple of ways to do this.

In Google, type your keyword phrase in “quotes” followed by site: and the website you want to search, eg: “designer journals” site:www.thecitynotebookstore.com. You will get a list of the pages where those words appear. Interesting, huh!

You can also find keyword clues in the source code of your competitors’ store. Access the source code by right-clicking on their web page and choosing “view page source”. Don’t worry you can’t break anything like this. If you look at the top section of source code for “meta” data, you may see the keywords and description tags containing the keywords they are targeting on that page.

Once you have done all the above, you should have a good list that contains overall keywords for your online store, and ones specific to certain products and pages of your site.

Now head over to Google’s AdWords Keyword Planner for some search insights (you’ll need to sign up for an AdWords account to get into it). This is a good way to help you narrow down the right keywords for your business. Plug in your keyword ideas or your website details, and it will give you an estimate of the volume of traffic you’d get for each term and offer you alternative keyword choices.

Pick keyword phrases instead of just one keyword as there will be less competition for them and there will be more relevance to your content. The best keyword combinations are those with high traffic but low competition.

Now you’re almost finished!

Use the insights you get from your keyword research to finalise the list of keyword terms for your online business. Don’t go mad – one or two per web page is enough.

These should then be applied to your website copy, page titles, product descriptions, product tags and image file names as relevant.

My next post will look at how you apply these keywords to encourage more traffic from search results to your Spiffy Store plus a bunch of other search engine friendly tricks!

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Google recently announced a new e-commerce certification program called “Trusted Stores”, where stores that go through an approval process with Google will be allowed to add a “Google Trusted Store” badge to their online store.

Google intends for the trusted store badge to give consumers a boost of confidence when shopping online, and it comes with a $1,000 guarantee to cover the purchase… which should really help to increase sales in your online store when the program is up and running.

The way it works is when a visitor to your online store hovers their mouse over the trusted stores badge, a live “report card” type tooltip will pop up. Easy to understand grades like A+, A, B and C are awarded for quality of service features like customer service and fast or reliable shipping.

Right now it’s just a pilot program with a limited number of retailers, but all Spiffy Stores owners can apply to participate by filling out this form. There’s no guarantee that Google will accept your application… as it’s currently only in Beta, and you’ll need a great history of reliable shipping and great customer service for them to even consider your application.

Learn more by watching Google’s overview video below, or click here to watch it on YouTube.

Google have just announced that they are launching both the Google Merchant Center and Google Shopping in Australia!

If you’d like to use Google Shopping to reach more customers, just log in to your Spiffy Store Toolbox and head over to the “Marketing >> Product data feeds” section.  You can then set up a new feed for the Google Merchant Centre by following the instructions in that section.

When you’ve done that, the next step is to log in to the Google Merchant Centre, create a new feed , and choose Australia from the drop-down menu. If you’re new to the Google Merchant Centre, we recommend reading the “Getting Started” articles in the Google Merchant Help Center.

Store owners that choose to advertise their product catalogue can also do so using AdWords’ product extensions as well.  Product extensions use the product information submitted by the retailer and automatically display the extra information within ads, where relevant. To learn more about product extensions, visit the AdWords Help Center.

Happy shopping!

With an emphasis on local fashion, Covetish.com enables their members to seek what they covet like never before, searching across hundreds of fashion retail sites in a single click.

Developed for an Australian audience seeking all their favourite brands in one place and an international audience hungry for Australian fashion, content is sourced from designers, high street brands, boutique retailers and established online stores.

With over 1,000 brands to covet, members edit their style from a comprehensive catalogue of what’s available online.

For more information about the Covetish.com Merchant Program, visit the Covetish.com site.

To add a covetish.com data feed to your store, you first need to sign up for the covetish.com Merchant Program, and then create a feed in the Marketing section of your Spiffy Store.