Those of you who follow us know that we are making a big push into web video. As video delivery has become affordable for everyone, deploying video should be part of any Ecommerce company’s marketing mix.

But delivery is easier said than done. The Old Spice guy makes it look so easy. But try turning on the camera, looking into the lens, and you might find you are overcome by a case of incurable silence.

Here are some tips to get you over the initial challenges of web video creation.

1. Set up your studio. There is no question that professional video equipment and expertise will yield the best results. But with a minimal investment you can get started. Even a low-cost digital video camera, iphone, or flip camera can product reasonable results. Halogen shop lights can get you going for a minimal investment. You can even create a poor man’s green-screen for under $50. In short, don’t let the lack of professional equipment slow you down.

2. Keep it short. Plan your video to be 2-3 minutes. In other words,  focus on one simple idea. If the topic you want to discuss is going to be lengthy, think about ways that you can break it up.

3. Write a script. Unless you have the improvisational gifts of Tina Fey, you should write a script for your video. For a 2-3 minute video, a script can be quite short: 1-2 pages should do it. As you get more experienced in front of the camera, you will be able to rely less on the script and start winging it. But for your first effort, your script will be an important aide.

4. Make a simple storyboard. A storyboard is a visual representation of the scenes of your movic. If your entire video will consist of you talking, then the storyboard might be an unnecessary exercise. But, assuming you have at least minimal video editing skills, you will do well to include other images beyond your smiling face. Perhaps you can include screen shots of computer-generated illustrations or examples. Or, you can insert demonstration images of your product. To the extent you can back up your words with visual images, your video will become more effective.

5. Put together your supporting materials. Once you have conceived of your video’s content, you might have a little work to do as far as setting up a simple shot of your product or creating some computer-generated images. If you don’t possess these skills, then go back to a basic plan of creating a simple video of yourself talking passionately about your products or services.

6. Remember the point. Before you launch into production, take an objective look at your script and make sure that the video flows toward a conclusion that will lead the viewer where you want them to go. If you are pitching your product or service, be sure that you are finishing with a strong call-to-action and compelling case for the viewer to take the additional step of visiting your website or contacting you. If your goal is to have the viewer visit your site, be sure to end with a slide showing your website info. If creating such a slide is beyond your technical abilities, don’t despair – you can verbally remind people to visit your site!

7. Practice your script. Now that you have put together your content, go ahead and practice your routine a few times. If you have never been in front of the camera, you might need a little bit of time to loosen up and start feeling comfortable. Reading your script is perfectly ok, however, to the extent you can be animated and passionate about your subject matter, you will be successful in communicating with your audience.

8. Create a simple teleprompter. The hardest part about doing your initial videos is suffering through the moments where you blank out or stumble on your words, and then sink into paralysis. Whether you use a whiteboard, a large sheet of paper, or make use  of teleprompter software on your computer screen, it will help to have your script, or at least bullet points, in plain sight, so you can make it through your material without stumbling.

9. Film it. The moment of truth is when you hit the record button on your camera and start talking. Be prepared to do several run-throughs. When most people view themselves on video for the first time, they are not happy with what they see. Even if you get stuck, keep on going. Your first video does not need to be perfect.

10. Publish it. The editing and publishing process can be as simple as connecting your Flip camera and downloading directly to YouTube. This post is not intended to be a step-by-step editing how-to, but a simple title slide inserted before your video could be sufficient to get you going.

Remember that YouTube has a private publishing feature. So you can get your video out on the web without unleashing it to the public. Be bold! With a little experimentation you likely will find you can add some compelling video content to your website and promote your products or services with conviction.

With some things, having different service providers makes perfect sense. You go to a mechanic’s shop for a broken transmission, and a tire shop when your car gets a flat. A carpet cleaning company can certainly keep your floors clean, but that’s not who you would hire when your walls need painting. The big difference between these examples and service providers for a website is that the carpet cleaner and house painter don’t need to be able communicate with each other in order to complete their work and do a good job. Many web-related service providers specialize in only one area of website design, marketing or tech support, which means you are left navigating many different vendors when you need service in different areas…

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HEROweb’s Marketing Director Mike Brown explains how to make your products appear on top shopping search engines like Shopzilla, NexTag, and PriceGrabber. Watch this video to learn how to gain exposure to millions more active shoppers through comparison shopping management.

Watch out for upcoming videos from HEROweb! We recently installed a green screen in our office and are psyched to create quality videos that give you great information on web marketing, ecommerce, internet how-to’s, and a range of other topics.

Check out our first video where HEROweb Marketing Director, Mike Brown, answers frequently asked questions about PPC.

Keep your eyes peeled because we will be posting more videos soon. If you are interested in creating video content for your own web site give us a call at 541-746-6418 or 1-888-257-2567.

There is nothing new about mobile devices. Hundreds of millions of people have their Iphone, Droid, or Nexus glued to their palm. But as wireless networks mature in the US in the next 12-24 months and the competition of the top platforms builds drives more sophisticated application development, we have the all the pieces in place for the wireless ecommerce revolution to begin.

Smartphones and mobile devices are rapidly transforming from being utilized as website browsing devices to website shopping devices.

If you are an Ecommerce site owner it is time to make sure that you have a mobile strategy in place that will give you maximum exposure across all platforms where your customers are living their online lives.

Check out some of my thoughts on this top in a 2/16/10 Mobile Commerce Strategy Post over at Practical Ecommerce. Do you need a mobile site? Your own Iphone app? Those are important questions to consider.

Here at MightyMerchant, we are putting the finishing touches on our Mobile MightyMerchant product. We are excited to be a part of the mobile extravaganza. Come join us for the show!

Hey, it’s good to be back! Time to kick it into gear. For today, I have an interesting SEO-related question: how important is an ip address change to your SEO fortunes?

To expand on the question: if a site needs to be relocated to a different physical machine – whether with the same hosting company or a new provider – it is often necessary to change the numerical internet address associated with that website. Will Google look down on such a change?

As with most questions SEO, there is no absolute answer. Given the evidence we see with migrating many sites from other providers and between our own servers, we have yet to seen any penalty or search ranking change due to an IP address shift.

But, given the fact that many of our customers live or die by their search placement, we like to err on the side of caution.  Every change we make on a website needs to be given due consideration.

Let us know if you have seen downward slides after an IP switch. Moving your site into a “bad neighborhood” could be problematic. But, beyond that, is an ip change penalty a real issue or an urban legend? Let us know your thoughts?

I just read an article over at http://www.problogger.com from Darren Rowse about what to do when your Google traffic disappears. Darren made some good points, as he always does, but I thought there were some more details to add to the discussion. Here is my view on the actions you should take when you wake up one morning to discover you traffic is gone.

1. Review Google Webmaster Guidelines. Google is great. They tell you in no uncertain terms what their recommendations are. Take a few minutes to review the latest version of Google Webmaster Guidelines. Google sets the rules. You need to play by them.

2. Install Necessary Tools. In order to fully analyze/diagnose what is going on with your site, you NEED to be using Google Webmaster Tools. Installation is free and easy. Just do it. I will mention in a moment what to do with Webmaster Tools. You also need an industrial strength web traffic analysis package. Google Analytics is the obvious choice, but there are many others out there to do the job. The main point, is to move beyond gut feelings about what is gong on with your site and wild theories about what might have caused your demise. You need to be working with some hard, cold numbers.

3. Do Competitive Analysis. Create a list of your top ten phrases and look closely at the other sites that are coming up ahead of you. It is important to determine whether you have completely disappeared from Google or if you have just dropped off your previously stellar listings. If you have completely disappeared you need to start looking at whether you have been penalized or banned. Maybe Google has been unable to reach your site. But, the other, more likely situation is that your competitors have gotten better at SEO and you have done nothing in the five years since you gained #1 status for your coveted terms. You might need to do some work to regain your mojo!

4. Analyze Traffic and Indexing Patterns. Now it is time to jump into Google Webmaster Tools. Under the Diagnostics area you can see how often GoogleBot (Google’s indexing spider) is visiting your site. Ideally, it should be every few days. You can also see what errors Google is reporting and how many pages are being indexed. These valuable statistics give you a baseline for taking action.

If you have been banned, it will be clear that Google is not indexing any of your pages. Time to jump back to the Webmaster Guidelines and learn about the steps you need to take.

5. Evaluate your Incoming Links. More so than ever, Google rankings are about the link authority that your site has. In other words, who is linking to you, how they are linking, and the trust that Google puts in those sites are all important factors. If you have done nothing over time to fortify your incoming links you will start to  suffer (because you have competitors out there who are working hard). It is possible that Google has done a recent update that devalued your site because your incoming links are on the decline.

6. Look at a Broad Range of Keywords. Is your conclusion that Google has dumped you in the dog house due to a drop-off on one term or is there an across-the-board decline? Before you panic, take a look at a range of phrases. If you are suffering with just a few terms, some focused work on your home page could get you back in the game. If your whole site is suffering, it is back to Webmaster Guidelines to do a point-by-point review of where you falling short of Google’s expectations, or, where your competitors are trumping you.

7. Assess All Changes. This recommendation is huge! Make sure you review whether you, your web designer, or your CMS (if you have a hosted CMS) have made any recent changes. It is possible that significant changes have happened on your site that you are unaware of. As an example: we worked with someone who unwittingly turned off their SEO-friendly urls in WordPress, which completely changed their internal linking on the their website. Or, it is possible your Ecommerce provider has done a major update that has changed all your page titles. Talk to the people you are working with and see if they can give you any insights. You can also look at Google’s cache to compare your current page with a recent version, or, possibly use a service like http://www.archive.org to do some comparison of the current version of your site with past versions to see if the html has changed.

8. See If You Are Alone. Here is another pre-panic step: do some Googling to find out if your case is an isolated issue or if many others are reporting issues. Your change in rankings could be a result of a sea-change on Google’s end. This doesn’t mean you need to sit idly by and fret, but your approach will be significantly different than if your ranking drop-off is isolated.

9. Set up Google Analytics Intelligence. Google Analytics has a brand new feature (as of 11/09) that is awesome. Analytics Intelligence lets you set up custom alarms so you can receive an email notification if there are anomalies in your traffic. Although this tool won’t help you go back in time and address past problems, it will be a great aid as you move forward with a more scientific approach to controlling your rankings and traffic.

10. Be Systematic. Our overarching recommendation is to be systematic in tackling your SEO decline. You need to identify the list of factors and then analyze and address them one-by-one.

There are no shortcuts to working with Google, but if you play by their rules and pay attention to every detail, you can likely be successful in regaining your Google rankings and traffic.

I love @chrisbrogan’s approach because he has the ability – on a daily basis – to ask simple, focused questions that always seem to be appropriate to what I am grappling with at the time. Of course, I realize I am one of hundreds who is simultaneously going through the same experience, but it feels like Chris is talking directly to me. Ahh, the genius of a great communicator.

Today’s question from Chris: What are the results of all your hard work?

Simple enough. And, on a day like Thanksgiving, after a wonderful afternoon of sharing with family, it is a good time for me to “go deep” and think about why it is I’m pushing so hard each day.

The results Staci and I have created:

1. A “family” of awesome customers – many of whom are able to live their dream of having a successful ecommerce business.

2. A workplace that provides an engaging, challenging atmosphere for our dedicated team.

3. An opportunity for Staci and I to work together to build our vision and exercise our creativity on a daily basis.

4. A model for my kids about what it looks like to put your heart into an endeavor, to live each day with determination and conviction.

We are lucky, indeed. Every day presents new challenges – some which seem overwhelming – but all having an elegant solution waiting to be discovered.

I am logging off for now, but I will see you on the Internet in the morning, ready to go for it, once again.

Tomorrow, Thanksgiving, is a day for family, friends, and appreciation of the gifts in life. And, hopefully, you have the luxury to take the weekend to relax and spend time with those you love. But next week… I encourage you to set aside a chunk of time to start formulating your Ecommerce strategy for 2010.

Not that you need to nail it right away, but see if you can set the process in motion. Review your ‘09 numbers, look at the opportunities and threats before you, and begin to formulate a plan for how to best use your time and resources.

I will have more to say on strategic Ecommerce planning over the next week.

We have put together an article on the HEROweb website called “What’s Your Web Strategy for 2010?” to help get you going. Have a look when the time is right and see if it helps get the creative juices flowing. And, in the meantime, all the best for a happy and healthy Thanksgiving.

Next year we will be celebrating two decades since Tim Berners-Lee and his team at CERN implemented the first HTTP system and gave birth to the World Wide Web.

All of THIS has happened in 20 years.

Although the sophistication of the Social-2.0-Ecommerce-Flash-2Way-mediaRich-databaseDriven-AJAXenhanced web scarcely resembles the text based clients of the early days, the  foundation has not shifted. It is all about the LINK.

That’s right. The hypertext link is what online empires depend on. From the success of the Ecommerce giants, to the buzz of the social media superstars, to the corporate jousting of Murd0ch v. Google, the link remains center stage.

We crave those links and scrutinize their quality. Our revenue depends on them. And we are beholden to almighty possessor of link authority: Google.

Is this the web of humanity that TBL envisioned? I cannot say. But the web is a fascinating, ever-expanding Escher-like puzzle. As it evolves – complex and wondrous, the hypertext link remains the connective tissue that defines the web and gives it form. I pay tribute to the link: so simple and elegant an invention on which our new universe has been built.