“Green” Consumers want to know; is shopping online good for the environment?  If you’re trying to make environmentally responsible choices, you may have wondered whether you can shop online with a clear conscience. What is the net effect of shopping online and having items shipped right to your door? You already know that it is incredibly convenient, saving you time and money, especially when you factor in the astronomical price of fuel. But is shopping online really a good choice for the environment?

You might assume making a ten-minute trip to the store would use less fuel and energy than having the same product shipped hundreds of miles straight to your door.  I was surprised to find the opposite to be true, and to find out just how many ways eCommerce helps the environment!

Dr. Joseph Romm, Lead Author and Executive Director for The Center for Energy and Climate solutions reports, “Internet shopping uses less energy to get a package to your house. Shipping 10 pounds of packages by overnight air – the most energy-intensive delivery mode – uses 40 percent less fuel than driving round-trip to the mall. Ground shipping by truck uses just one tenth the energy of driving yourself.”

The energy efficiency and emissions control potential of online shopping is growing exponentially.  I cornered the delivery man in our office today to ask if there had been recent internal policy changes to improve fuel and energy efficiency.  I’m glad I asked!  He reported substantial changes in the way UPS manages deliveries. In addition to their recent policy of “No left turns”, which conserves fuel and controls emissions, UPS recently bought 500 alternative fuel vehicles. According to UPS, the switch to alternative fuel vehicles will save 176,000 gallons of fuel per year, which is roughly the equivalent to taking 100 UPS trucks off the road. Moreover, the trucks powered by compressed natural gas will reduce truck emissions by another 20 percent. Fedex quickly followed suit, announcing plans to replace 30,000 trucks with hybrids.  When the largest fleets in the country start competing for the title of “Greenest Carrier”, everyone wins!

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, in terms of the potential impact of increased internet sales on the world’s economy.  According to Dr. Romm’s report:

• The Internet decreases our need for commercial building space. The resulting energy savings from operations and maintenance alone were estimated to save a total 53 billion kilowatt hours and 67 trillion BTUs worth of natural gas per year by the year 2007.

• The avoided construction would save the equivalent of 10 more power plants worth of energy, and another 40 million metric tons of greenhouse pollution.

The Internet saves million of tons of paper every year.  The American Forest & Paper Association reported paper production has experienced a steady decline since the year 2000, an average of .7% annually, according to an article published by Recycling Today Magazine.  Newsprint production is sliding even faster, decreasing by 28.7% since 2000.  For the first time, in February of 2008, the Whitehouse published it’s 3000+ page annual budget online, saving roughly 20 tons of paper, or 480 trees.

In the second quarter of 2008, the US Census Bureau reported 34.6 billion dollars in ecommerce sales, an increase of 8.9% over 2nd quarter of 2007.  Apparently, consumers agree, online shopping makes sense!

Ecommerce is reaching new heights of convenience and affordability.  Major retailers like Gap, JC Penney, and Target are focusing on internet sales, which are growing as fast as in-store sales are declining.  The Gap recently re-organized their website to include Old Navy and Banana Republic, one convenient shopping cart for all three stores.  JC Penney took bold steps, offering an improved rewards program and discounts to internet shoppers that compare with their in-store sales.  Target offers free shipping on orders over $50, and let’s face it, it’s easy to spend $50 at Target.

Check out a few of your favorite retailers online, chances are, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to see better sales and shipping deals than in the past, not to mention increased availability.  I used to hate clicking on a product only to read “Only available in stores.”  I’m happy to report the imminent demise of that particular caveat, I haven’t encountered it in months!

Affordable hosted shopping cart solutions like MightyMerchant’s ecommerce platform make it easier than ever for small business owners, local artisans, manufacturers, and tradesmen to market their unique products and services online. Vendors who couldn’t afford to open a brick-and-mortar store are able to reach a huge and ever expanding audience, on the internet.  This is a major step toward sustainability in local markets and toward helping small businesses and mom and pop shops thrive!

It’s never been easier or made more sense to “Go Green.” Energy, resource, and fuel conservation have quietly slipped into our collective social conscience.  Americans are going green in record numbers.  The good news is, going green saves green, and we all appreciate money in the bank.

Tags: environmental, ecommerce, shopping, green, business, shipping, conservation, economy

A brand is more than the domain name you buy. It’s more than what gets typed up on your business cards and even more than your logo. What’s more, even small businesses, not just large corporations like Nike or Gap, must think about their branding.

A brand is the entire picture of how you present your company to the world. It encompasses your job and how you do it, and your perceived value to every potential customer. An effective brand means that when you speak with a potential customer you can immediately move past the “so what do you do?” discussions and get right to the real issues–namely how your business can solve that customer’s problem. They already know what you do, because that’s part of your brand and message.

MightyMerchant has clarified our own messages of how our name relates to the services we offer, which has changed in some important ways since we opened up shop 12 years ago. Customers who have been with us for several years were first introduced to us through our corporate name, Datahost. We built our business around the MightyMerchant Ecommerce platform, and now we have a new marketing division, HEROWeb. Where does all of this fit into our branding?

We have always been involved in all of the varied aspects of life on the Internet: web design, website hosting, online marketing and search engine optimization, programming, and ecommerce. With such a wide range of services, we have needed to craft specific message for our different audiences – and we have several of them! Successful branding means that you know your target audience, you know the many different “buying personas” of the people you are likely to do business with, and you fine-tune your message for each one. It’s not always easy to do that, and the message often requires frequent adjustment as your business grows and changes.

When we formed our business in 1996, we called ourselves Datahost. The name conveyed the services of a hosting company, which we were, but we quickly grew into much more than that. Our web design and hosting business was built on the success of our MightyMerchant Ecommerce platform, which is the full-featured platform that we developed to offer shopping carts and richly integrated services for those seeking easy and customizable ecommerce websites or content management sites. For customers looking for an ecommerce platform, leading with the name MightyMerchant made sense and continues to make sense.

But like many companies, our offerings and business relationships evolved. Over time, we found that the ecommerce platform was irrelevant and confusing to some of our very important customers. While most of our sites are in fact ecommerce, many are not. Those potential customers that did not sell things online were not looking for a product named MightyMerchant, because the “merchant” aspect did not fit their business model, and hence turned some of our prospects against us. After focusing on our local message of delivering custom websites, ecommerce or not, along with full-service online marketing services, we created HEROWeb Marketing and Design. This division of our business is focused on delivering custom marketing strategy and website design.

So now we are three–Datahost, our corporate name; MightyMerchant, our ecommerce platform; and HEROWeb, our marketing strategy and design company. If you call our office, you’ll be greeted by one of our friendly staff thanking you for calling “HEROWeb and MightyMerchant.” We’re the same people we’ve always been, with the same commitment to incredible customer service. We will still get to know you and your business’ needs and sculpt a website you’ll love. Then when you are ready for marketing services, we’ll still be here for you, the same people you already know, in the same office, with the same phone number! We’re very happy to be able to provide these many varied but complementary services to all of our clients, and though our name may be new to you, the quality you’ve come to expect from MightyMerchant is still there, front and center!

After quietly building up marketing services for our clients over the past several months, MightyMerchant is pleased to officially announce Hero Web Marketing & Design, a new division of Datahost, Inc. focused on Internet marketing and search engine optimization.

Hero Web can help you formulate an online marketing strategy for your website or business. We will help you articulate your business goals, optimize your on-the-page website content, and look at strategies to increase your online profile through blogging, multimedia, email, or other routes that make sense for you.

As the name suggests, our expertise is available for web design both e-commerce and non, and online marketing strategies including email marketing, blog and forum set up, podcast and other multimedia integration, pay-per-click, analytics and reporting, keyword research, article writing, press releases…anything to increase your online profile and build a solid customer base.

It’s no longer enough just to have a website and sit back and wait for customers to find you, and regardless of where you are…in our local area of Eugene/Springfield, Oregon or beyond…Hero Web can help.
Take a gander at the official press release.

Tags: online, marketing,, seo,, search, engine, optimization,, internet, marketing,, web, marketing