Along those lines, we present an infographic from BackgroundCheck.org that tells the story of Verizon’s “2012 Data Breach Investigation Report” which explains how breaches occur and provides steps for protection.

The first alarming piece of information is that the vast majority of attacks were not that difficult to execute and 97% of them were avoidable with simple controls. Also, the victims were generally not the ones who first discovered the breaches. But, even when discovered by third parties, these breaches weren’t noticed for weeks.

Although we’ll be posting about security compliance in the near future, towards the end of the graphic you can check the ”Where should mitigation efforts be focused?” section for Verizon’s recommended actions on how to protect your organization.

Source: BackgroundCheck.org

While the case for combining geomarketing with a discount pricing strategy and social media based marketing makes sense for brick and mortar operations like Dunkin Donuts, I would argue that for digital products, geomarketing is best utilized for localizing web pages.

A basic understanding of geomarketing, for example, leads a company that wants to sell to Japanese customers to localize their website into Japanese. Now, localizing isn’t merely translating words on a website. It means providing visitors with language, currency, payment methods, and a design aesthetic familiar to them.

Essentially, by analyzing customer behaviors in light of geographic location businesses can segment visitors and target them with relevant messages.

The good news is that location based marketing is getting easier because more people, especially smartphone users, are giving apps their location, and technology is making geomarketing a less expensive alternative to other marketing channels like SEM.

I leave you to ponder the following question in the comment section: How else, besides providing localized content, can geomarketing be used to sell software?

Source: KISSmetrics

Be sure to let us know what kind of topics you would like to see addressed in our monthly wrap up of all things e-commerce.

Practical eCommerce | 3 Basic Ways to Improve PPC Advertising – Anyone selling software online wants to guide traffic to their shopping carts, and PPC advertising is an important method for accomplishing this goal. This post teaches advertisers how to create better ROI on PPC advertising by using Google’s new contextual targeting tool, managing customer expectations and developing a willingness to adjust in the face of external changes.

Ars Technica | Nintendo plays catch-up, will offer downloadable versions of 3DS, Wii U retail games – Nintendo finally decided to enter the digital download arena, far behind Microsoft’s Xbox or Sony’s Playstation stores. And one point of interest for software vendors in general is the DRM restriction Nintendo imposes on these purchases by limiting play to the first device on which the game is downloaded.

What do you think of Nintendo’s DRM decision? Does it encourage customers to buy more games, or lead to customer frustration?

Social Media Examiner | 5 Tips for Moving Social Media Leads Into the Sales Funnel - Social commerce continues to be a concern of anyone selling online, but the question this post seeks to answer is, “Can we monetize our social media following?” In doing so, we learn the need to test our understanding of our sales funnel, encourage soft conversions, and nurture leads differently than traditional channels.

How do you nurture social media leads? We’d like to hear your thoughts.

Forbes | Top 7 Web Design Mistakes Small Businesses Make - A back-to-basics piece for a small business going online. The main point here is just because you’ve built a valuable product, doesn’t mean that your target audience will automatically see that value. Or know how to navigate the sales funnel. So what you want to do is target a specific audience, simplify the conversion process, and, if you haven’t honed your designing skills, find the people who have.

Wired.com | ‘Pottermore’ Breaks All Retailers and Rules (Except Apple’s and Region Restrictions) – An interesting take on the affiliate / reseller relationship seen through the lens of Pottermore, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter e-store. Instead of allowing Amazon to pay “wholesale” prices on Harry Potter e-books and charging whatever they want to the consumer, shoppers are forcibly redirected to Rowling’s hosted carts to purchase from there. One outcome of this business model is that US readers will still be unable to buy the UK versions of the book.

Is this a case of an Apple-esque attempt at maintaining digital rights? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.

Games have the highest percentage of use out of any type of mobile app. From the bed to the bathroom to the bus, people play games everywhere.

Gamers are frequent users as well: over half of smartphone owners play games on their devices at least once a day and over half of mobile gamers play for an hour a day.

So, how are businesses leveraging this information? Surprisingly, they’re not making people pay for games, per se. Rather, companies are offering free games and driving revenue through in-game purchases and advertising.

Additionally, gaming is moving beyond the realm of games and into gamification. According to Gartner, “By 2014, more than 70 percent of Global 2000 organizations will have at least one “gamified” application.” Why? Because everyone loves playing games. Games can provide what industry experts call M³: motivation, momentum and meaning.

If you sell games, tell us how your business compares to the data in this infographic. Or, if you sell other kinds of software, tell us how you plan on gamifying your product.

Source: Business Degree

We know that the social media sphere is growing with an eight fold increase of social network users in the past seven years just as we know that these users love to talk about their favorite (and not so favorite) brands online.

Source: Monetate

So how can we leverage this knowledge?

According to this infographic, brands should leverage the time consumers spend on social networks by allowing social logins and facilitating social sharing.

Social Login

In previous posts, we argued that requiring customers to create accounts before allowing them to purchase your product is a tricky practice, but sometimes, it may be in your best interests to have customers login to their accounts before they submit payment. If you are going to require logins, make sure to provide your customers with an option to login through facebook.

Social Sharing

This infographic also recommends paying attention to your customer’s voice. A majority of consumers use social media to read and provide product reviews, which they say impacts their buying decision.

By allowing consumers to use social logins to further their social sharing, you are creating an opportunity for consumers to spend more time on your pages. Take advantage of these opportunities to learn more about your visitors in anticipation of their return to your website.

Do you incorporate social logins in your online strategy? Let us know below.

Why is abandonment increasing? Take a look at this week’s E-commerce Eye Candy from KISSMetrics for insight into the problem.

Savvy consumers are on the lookout for the best product at the most reasonable price accompanied by the most superior service. They know what they want and they know someone somewhere is going to provide it at a reasonable price with excellent service.

Click on the image below for the full infographic to see why customers are fleeing your site and what you can do to get them reconsider.

Why do you think shoppers are leaving your carts and how do you entice them to return? Let us know in the comment section.

In this post we review the e-commerce tactics used by these political “brands” in their attempt to influence “customers” to buy their “product.”

Of course, we’re not here to endorse any candidate or argue for correlation between a well planned channel strategy and the number of delegates these potential nominees pick up on the campaign trail.

But the fact is that these online stores generate millions of dollars for organizations to coordinate a full scale, nation wide operation. And these stores can only accomplish that if visitors click that “Donate” button on the shopping cart.

Method

For the purpose of this post, I’m limiting my review to what happens when a person googles the first and last names of the current batch of politicians running in the  primary election. If ads were displayed as a result of my search, I clicked through to the landing page and recorded my observations.

My judgements of what is an acceptable landing pages are based on criteria outlined in our post, 5 Pitfalls To Avoid In Your PPC Landing Page:

• Do not use your home page as the landing page
• Do not distract your visitor with too many choices
• Do not hide your call-to-action
• You must collect user data

So without further ado, let us begin with a review of Barack Obama channel. (Note: The red arrows point to the type of landing page behind each link.)

Obama – The Ad

Google Ad - Barack Obama

My first reaction here was, “This ad is too busy.” But as I considered the result of broad keyword like “Barack Obama”, I began to think maybe providing different options is the right thing to do, as long as the landing page behind each link is appropriate.

Out of the four ads analyzed in this post, the Obama ad has the most options, in that a single ad leads to four distinct pages. One page is designed to collect email addresses, one for social interaction and two are shopping carts.

 Obama – The Landing Page (Donate Now)

Landing Page - Obama Shopping Cart

Above is the landing page that appears when one clicks the “Donate” link on the Obama Google ad and it seems to follow our rules about landing pages.

• The home page is not the landing page. Rather, it is a sleek, uncluttered shopping cart.
• There are no distractions: no navigation menu and only two, fairly hidden links leading the visitor away from the cart.
• The call to action is clear. The visitor knows they are here to “Donate Now” to Obama’s campaign.

The page specifically relates to the ad clicked. A searcher clicks “Donate” and is presented with an opportunity to submit payment. I also commend this cart for allowing customers to choose a recurring billing option. And seven radio buttons easily allow the campaign to present upsells to the visitor.

One flaw I find is the lack of alternative payment options, as some visitors may not have a credit card. Only towards the bottom of the page is one made aware that one may send an offline check to the campaign, but why not offer PayPal or some other online options as well?

 Romney – The Ad

Google Ad - Mitt Romney

This ad is different from the previous. Whereas Obama offers the searcher many options, here we have a simple and direct message: Click this link if you want to meet Mitt Romney and go to a baseball game with him. Sounds fun!

Romney – The Landing Page

Landing Page - Romney Shopping Cart

As before, I like this cart for its upsells and recurring billing options. But I thought the landing page was disconnected from the ad’s message. The ad led me to believe I was going enter into a contest for baseball tickets but instead, I land in a shopping cart. Which I am fine with initially. Only later, in the fine print, do I discover that I don’t have to submit any payment to enter the contest. This somewhat duplicitous funnel leads me to think that the ad should have had two options for searchers: one link to the contest entry page and another link leading to the cart.

Aside from that little bit of chicanery, the Romney cart also violates rule number two: Do not distract your visitors.

The header is littered with click-able links, most of which lead away from the cart and straight into abandonment. There are two giant red donate buttons, one of which simply refreshes the page, sans the opportunity to enter the contest.

Furthermore, why is there a “Shop” option on the menu which directs a  visitor back to the store? If they’re already in a shopping cart, encourage them to proceed to checkout, not go back and wander in the aisles.

Santorum – The Ad

Google Ad - Rick Santorum

Like the Romney ad, Rick Santorum’s has a simple and straightforward message. Unlike the Romney ad, it’s honest in its call to action: Make a donation now.

Santorum – The Landing Page

Landing Page - Santorum Shopping Cart

This is the first cart we’ve seen that allows PayPal as a payment option, so kudos to the Santorum team. It’s also the only one with a helpful image to explain CVV codes. This cart also offers an upsell, but strangely, does not provide an option for recurring bills. The navigation menu at the top isn’t nearly as distracting as the one in the Romney cart, and thankfully, there is only one big red CTA button.

This is a relevant page to the ad I clicked, but without pictures, it seems cold and boring compared to the Obama or Romney cart.

 Gingrich – The Ad

Google Ad - Newt Gingrich

Unlike, the nuanced Google ad from the Obama campaign, the enticing opportunity to attend a baseball game with Mitt, or the plain and simple request for a donation made by the Santorum team, Brand Gingrich sends out a vague request to help them by joining a movement. Which would be understandable if the landing page was a simple signup form or a commitment to volunteer. Instead, I land on an informational site with an emphasis on social networking.

Gingrich – The Landing Page

Landing Page - Gingrich

The fact that there is a YouTube video explaining how to use the site confirms this as an unintuitive and inefficient landing page. It also violates all the rules mentioned in our introduction. The landing page is the homepage. There is a lot of distraction with the navigation menu, videos and social networking options. The calls to action blend into the background of the page. And finally, there is no immediate step to collect user information. This sort of hasty, unclear design is further reflected in the shopping cart and the signup page.

Rule #5 – Test

Of course, these are merely observations. Without goal setting and testing, my observations don’t tell you much. You must test your design before you can have any idea whether a practice is useful or not.

Keystone: The content of an ad should accurately reflect the content of the landing page. Whether the goal is to convert visitors to paying customers or simply acquiring visitor information like email addresses, that content should be simple and laser focused on guiding searchers and visitors to that goal.

Share your PPC/Landing page stories. How cluttered can an online ad be? How many options should it provide search engine users? How closely must the content in an ad and landing page resemble each other?

The 2011 B2B Marketing Guide infographic, based on Google data and designed by KISSmetrics, offers some insight into how B2B companies market themselves and their products.

While the largest percentage of B2B marketing budgets are reserved for trade shows, marketing teams are looking forward to testing their online, digital strategies as well.

A clear majority of companies view search engine marketing as the most effective channel for reaching their target audience and gaining new leads, while a third of these marketers plan on raising their email marketing budget.

Another important piece to the marketing puzzle is the focus on customer retention. Two thirds of marketers plan on focusing the majority of their budget on customer loyalty.

Also, look out for increasing investment in mobile and video advertisement.

Source: KISSmetrics

How do you plan on divvying up your market budget?

We also kept an eye on the latest developments and insights in how software is sold and delivered online. The links below highlight some of the best articles that we’ve read this month. Use the Comments section below to share your favorite e-commerce articles and videos.

Alex Payne — How Not To Sell Software in 2012: Alex Payne, one of the original employees at Twitter, writes that in our day and age, software vendors need to simplify overly complicated sales processes so that purchasing software is as easy downloading an app.

This quote sums up his position, “Basically, if a given software package or service isn’t free/open, it should be as easy as humanly possible to try it, pay for it, and start using it in production. If it isn’t easy to get started with your product, I’m going to find another vendor.”

The post continues with a list of eight “Don’ts,” those companies that are getting it right, and those companies that are doing it wrong.

Internet Retailer – Amazon steps up competition in cloud services: Amazon is the acknowledged gold standard of online retailing. According to Internet Retailer, this e-commerce behemoth wants to occupy that same position in cloud based service offerings.

The important point here for vendors of electronically delivered software is something we have pointed out time and again here at Building Keystones. Namely, cloud computing, PaaS and SaaS are on the rise and companies need to understand how they can leverage this growing technology.

Amazon is so certain of this fact, it is cutting prices for its web services up to 42% in some instances; another example of a strategy Amazon employed with both the Kindle and the Kindle Fire: selling products or services at a loss in order to corner a specific market.

Source: Brian Walker, Forrester Research

Forrester Blogs – Order Management Has Become A Strategic Commerce Capability: Forrester analyst Brian Walker examines the ways in which the ordering and delivery of software are changing.

While a good chunk of the post deals with fulfillment strategies for physical goods (which is highly relevant to those of you who cross sell OEMs with your software), of special interest to purveyors of digital goods is the necessity of incorporating a variety of payment types, tiered fraud screening and managing common customer service situations.

E-Commerce Times – Shepherding Content to a New E-Commerce Platform: We’ve written in the past about the various elements upon which to focus during a re-platforming project. This post from E-commerce Times advises that companies considering a migration project abide by the 3R principle: retain, rewrite and retire.

FutureNow – 3x WhichTestWon Winner! “Conversion optimization” is a highly competitive keyword in Google AdWords, which speaks to the general (and quite understandable) desire of e-commerce companies to improve the performance of their online shopping carts. This enlightening post shares some actual test cases that encourage some practical ideas you can use to increase conversions in your checkout process, search results and landing pages.

Let us know which blogs you’ve learned from this month in your quest toward e-commerce excellence.

While that statistic, combined with J.P. Morgan predicting $963 billion in online sales by 2013, is encouraging for anyone in the e-commerce market, the more relevant piece of information here is the breakdown of sales into region, along with each region’s estimated growth.

We consider it a truism that localized sites are appealing to international visitors, and that localized prices reduce abandonment.

So take your time, look over the valuable information below, and reflect on how you can better your business by decreasing abandonment and increasing your share of this growing online market.