Over the years, HEROweb Marketing and Design has presented lots of useful tips and information about eCommerce business. Over the past few months we have spent time collecting these materials and now they are compiled so it is easy for you to access these great resources on our website, under the Learn tab. You will find information in many formats, including in-depth articles, our popular Marketing Bite weekly tips, webinars, classes and much more!

Whether you are interested in learning more about SEO, need some marketing inspiration,  or want to figure out how to use special features of our MightyMerchant platform, you can find out about these topics in the Learn Section of our website.  Other topics include: security, using Google Analytics, web usability,  linkbuilding, using social media, and tips for running an online business.

See what you can Learn from the Experts at HEROweb Marketing and Design about eCommerce and building your website.

Greetings,

We have really enjoyed reading the variety of entries for the “Name the Pup” contest.

The first person to enter our contest was Amy Christiansen of Collector Vintage Watches. She suggested the name “Mightyduke” which is something of a mashup of our Software Platform “MightyMerchant” and the fictional Great Dane “Marmaduke”.

Other entries that incorporate our business names include “Mighty Mutt”, submitted by Annie Youngblood of Guts and Glory Tennis and “Hero Hound” sent in by John Youngblood, also of Guts and Glory Tennis.

Apparently John McDougall of MacDougall & Sons Bat Company LLC REALLY wanted to win as he submitted several clever entries including “HEROnymous”, which references our company name as well as prominent historical artist Hieronymus Bosch. John also suggested “Dog Almighty”, we really would like to use it, but we worry about the consequences.

Other historical name suggestions included “Balto” (a reference to the famous sled dog), suggested by James Michels and “Dempsey” (after the famous boxer Jack Dempsey), submitted by Ken Schaffner of Canyon Creek Taxidermy Studio & Gallery.

Marco Tjaden of Pond Merchant suggested we name the pup after his amazing fish Murray. We agree his fish is amazing, but we just can’t name our pup after a fish.

We also saw a bit of an international trend. Kathrina Smolka suggested “Waldi”, stating that in her native country of Germany, this is a typical name for a dog. Shelby Anderson submitted the name “Gordan” because the name means “Hero” in Scottish.

Of course, this summary wouldn’t be complete unless we made mention of the entries that made technological references. Peg Cozzi of At Home on the Sound entered the name “Glitch Buster” stating that “Mighty Merchant takes all of the glitches out of website management.” John Youngblood suggested “Dot” (as in, “Dot, come!”), and Miche Meizner of Shining Light Jewelry came up with FETCH (a reference to the FTP software).

These entries and many more, gave our judges a lot to consider and plenty of amusement before deciding that the winner is:

“WEBster”

First submitted by John Youngblood of Guts and Glory Tennis. Congratulations to John, who will receive the $100.00 gift certificate to any online store that uses the MightyMerchant platform!

John Youngblood was not alone in suggesting “WEBster”, John MacDougal of MacDougal & Sons Bat Company LLC, and Shannon Spencer of Glasscraft Inc will both be receiving a small prize for submitting the winning name.

Thank you to everyone who participated in this contest and made it a success!

Regards,

The HEROweb Team

Makers of MightyMerchant Ecommerce Software – Fast, Flexible and Fun websites for Small Business
http://www.heroweb.com | http://www.mightymerchant.com

We are proud to announce the launch of customized product feeds for websites running the MightyMerchant platform! What does this mean, you might ask?

Simply put, product feeds are a way to send your website product data to countless other websites and comparison shopping engines, including the big ones like Google, Amazon, and Yahoo. They give you the opportunity to get your products in front of many more shoppers and drive them to your site for purchasing.

One popular service is Google Base (Formerly called Froogle), a free service which allows you to submit items to Google, which then come up in searches in Google Product Search. Sometimes, these products will even come up in a standard search. As an example, try searching for “simax heavy wall tubing” in Google, and you will likely see Shopping Results near the top of the page showing specific products available on one particular MightyMerchant site, glass supply distributor Winship Designs. Talk about great exposure!

Although MightyMerchant has offered Google Base feeds for years, we are now offering managed feed services to ensure your products are optimized for maximum exposure, as well as target a much broader range of comparison shopping engines. There are many other services online that allow you to submit a product feed to increase your product’s visibility. Some of these include:

• Yahoo Shopping
• Nextag.com
• Shopzilla.com
• www.become.com
• Shopping.com
• Pricegrabber.com

…and many more! Chances are if you find a site that accepts a feed, we can build a custom feed in the required format and get your products an online presence far beyond your site.

If you would like more details about this exciting feature, or feel like this is something your site must have, then Contact Us and we’d be happy to discuss how custom product feeds could help your business.

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.

If you want to keep up with the MightyMerchant eCommerce blog posts there are a few things you can do. One is to bookmark the blog and check it frequently. Another is to sign up to receive notification of new posts in a feed reader. But now the easiest way to keep up with our MightyMerchant eCommerce Blog posts is to sign up to receive them in your email inbox.

Now the MightyMerchant blog has a “Subscribe By Email” feature. Simply go to the blog, and on the right side enter in your email address. You will then receive excerpts of every blog post, right in your inbox. If you choose to register, you will have access to an options screen allowing you to select whether you want to receive excerpts or the full blog post, and whether you prefer it in html or just plain text. You also have the option of subscribing to only receive posts contained within certain categories of your choosing, like link building or SEO and Site Optimization.

Thanks for reading the MightyMerchant eCommerce Blog, now delivered right to your inbox. (If you don’t receive the confirmation email that you have registered, check your spam folder.)

Got a topic you think would make a great blog post? Let me know.