E-commerce on the rise

The Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce announced today that the estimate of U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the second quarter of 2006, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, was $26.3 billion, an increase of 4.6 percent (±1.7%) from the first quarter of 2006. Total retail sales for the second quarter of 2006 were estimated at $984.9 billion, an increase of 0.9 percent (±0.3%) from the first quarter of 2006. The second quarter 2006 e commerce estimate increased 23.0 percent (±5.4%) from the second quarter of 2005 while total retail sales increased 6.6 percent (±0.5%) in the same period. E-commerce sales in the second quarter of 2006 accounted for 2.7 percent of total sales. - US Census Bureau (read more)

As e-commerce sales rise, it becomes more apparent that retail businesses need to consider an online storefront to broaden reach and attract new customers. Why sit idly by as your competitors reap the benefits of selling their goods online, when an online store can increase the potential for sales and customer loyalty? Maintaining an online storefront is simple, economical, and allows for increased opportunity to advertise your business. CINIVA Systems can help you on the right track to launching the virtual end of your business with an attractive, user-friendly interface.

CINIVA Systems has designed e-commerce sites for several Virginia businesses, including The Bead Cottage, Ribbitt Toys, and RPM Custom Rods. We have also developed the online store for the Jamestown Settlement and Yorktown Victory Center and Anne Gimenez Ministries. From books to beads, diet pills to safety equipment, if you have it we can help you sell it. Contact CINIVA today to learn more about opening your new online store.

Introducing Compuslim

Compuslim weight loss products are specially formulated to suit different bodies and lifestyles. If you need or wish to lose weight, improve eating habits, and gain more energy for work and play, Compuslim invites you to enroll in their free evaluation program to determine which product is best to aid in your transformation to a healthier, more active life.

When you visit the Compuslim website you will find more than just a sales pitch for diet pills. You will have at your disposal a growing library of information on weight management, inspirational tips to stay focused, nutritional information for favorite restaurants, and updated news on the diet and health industry. Whether you need a stimulating fat burner pill to boost your metabolism, a powerful appetite supressant to help curb unnecessary cravings, or a non-stimulating formula to maintain blood sugar levels as you diet, the Compuslim evaluation program may help you on the path to weight loss. All products are ephedra-free and formulated with all-natural ingredients.

CINIVA Systems specializes in web design and hosting for e-commerce websites. We invite you to contact us today for more information on how we can create an attractive online storefront for your products.

10 things you should be monitoring

Source: ProNet Advertising

Tracking your buzz is really something that is becoming more and more important over and will continue to increase in importance as time goes on. Everything is going social right now and messages fly around the web at a million miles by hour. In order to manage your reputation you need to track the right things, so here's a list of 10 things that you absolutely need to be monitoring.

1. Company name - Obviously your company name is one of the most important things that you need to monitor. Anytime your company or products are mentioned, you should know. Ex. Google

2. Company URL - It is also important to track your company URL for those times when someone links to your company but doesn't mention it by name. This happens a lot and is just another way to make sure you are covering all your bases. Ex. http://google.com

3. Public facing figures - Track the names of any key employees in your company that are public facing figures. What is said about these people also reflects on your company and usually when this people are talked about your company is tied in with that. Ex. Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, Larry Page.

4. Product names - Track any of your company's product or service names as well. What are people saying about your products and services? Ex. Gmail, Picasa, Dodgeball

5. Product URLs - For the same reasons that you need to specifically track your company's URL you should also be tracking your product URLs as well. Ex. http://gmail.com, http://picasa.com, http://dodgeball.com

6. The industry "hang outs" - This includes blogs, message boards, important players, consumer review sites, and anything else that's related to your industry. Many times the industry feedback, that you can discover from the conversations at these "hang outs" can really help you improve your product or service. It is also a way for you to interactive with your potential and existing customers. Ex. http://searchenginewatch.com, http://seroundtable.com, http://threadwatch.org

7. Employee activity/blogs - Things your employees do online can affect your brand image. If you have employees that blog, it is smart to at least know about their MySpace accounts, Flickr accounts and personal blogs. I am not saying that you should spy on your employees but you do need to monitor these things just in case. It is not considered spying if they already make this stuff public. It might be safe to let your employees know you watch these things. The more well known your employees are the more important this is, many times these employee bloggers turn into company ambassadors. I've heard stories before where employers know an employee is quitting before he or she tells them because they blogged about it or put it on MySpace. Ex. http://mattcutts.com/blog, http://bladam.com, http://crazybob.org

8. Conversations - Are you tracking the comments from blog posts that are related to your company name, url, products, or any other buzz? These are great opportunities that allow you to participate in conversations about your company. Tools for tracking comments include Commentful, coComment, and co.mments. Ex. http://blog.outer-court.com/forum/62569.html, http://www.digg.com/software/Google_Talk_Adds_Voice_Mail_File_Sharing, http://www.flickr.com/photos/smash/36648272/

9. Brand image - What is the overall image of your brand. Do people think you're evil? Or do they love what you're doing. Ex. http://www.opinmind.com/search.jsp?q=google

10. Competitors - Track everything from 1-9 related to your competitors including; company name, URLs, products, key employees, etc. Everything. You need to be ready to move when any opportunity comes up. Ex. http://www.ysearchblog.com, http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/, http://www.opinmind.com/search.jsp?q=yahoo

Here is a list of a few of the websites / tools that can be used to track your buzz: Technorati, Sphere, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace, Google Blog Search, Rollyo, TechMeme, OpinMind, Alexa, and Commentful. Any time your company is referenced in any way it is best that you know about it. Track everything.

Converting RSS Feeds to Dynamic HTML

Here's an interesting article picked up from the EntireWeb newsletter on RSS. We have noticed many websites now offer RSS feed options as part of their content, and the trend is growing. As people gravitate toward usage of a one-stop shop front page like My Yahoo or My MSN, RSS feeds on a multitude of topics may be implemented so one can find all the latest news on one page. You can check up on your favorite sports teams, movie reviews and local events, travel discounts, and even sales from your favorite stores. A number of sites we develop utilize RSS for parlaying information to customers - it can be a handy tool for e-commerce. If you decide to contact CINIVA Systems about designing a site for your business, ask us about Real Simple Syndication and how it can work for you.

Converting RSS Feeds to Dynamic HTML

Many webmasters have realized the benefit of using RSS to dynamically update websites. This means that the website content automatically changes when the RSS feed is updated. This allows for webmasters to serve dynamic content or a mixture of static and dynamic content on their website.

Syndication

Often, publishers, interested in expanding their base, will allow other webmasters to republish the contents of an RSS feed. Content providers that allow for syndication, receive additional exposure, and the webmasters serving the content, will generally see web traffic increase as a result of the new content. RSS feeds can be syndicated or displayed using a variety of different methods. Depending on the web host, server configuration, and the intent of the publishers, a variety of different syndication tools exist.

In most cases, providers convert RSS feeds to HTML in order to display the feeds contents. The following are some of the more popular methods to convert RSS feeds as web based content.

Hosted Services

The easiest of solution is not server dependent, a third party host displays the contents of the feed. The downside to using a hosted service is that you are relying on a third party. If the third party's website has problems, your content will not be displayed. Additionally, webmasters often cannot customize the way the contents are displayed on hosted servers and there is no real search engine benefit to third party hosting.

Examples: FeedBurner.com - http://www.feedburner.com and RSS2HTML - http://www.rss2html.com.

Scripts

Using scripts to display RSS feeds on a website is probably the most effective solution. In addition, the webmaster using ASP or PHP scripts to convert their feeds, maintain the control of the "look and feel" of the content displayed. Webmasters also realize the benefit of hosting the feed on a domain that is within the webmasters control.

Using ASP or PHP will allow search engines to spider the actual contents of the RSS feed as if it is part of the actual HTML. Pay particular attention to solutions that cache the RSS feed. If your RSS feed is popular this will save significant bandwidth.

PHP

PHP is a popular scripting language that is often used to dynamically update web pages. PHP support is available on most web servers that run on a Unix Operating System.

Example: rss2html.php - http://www.feedforall.com/free-php-script.htm

ASP

ASP or active server pages is a scripting language similar to PHP but support is more often found on Windows web servers.

Example: rss2html.asp - http://www.bytescout.com/how_to_display_rss_using_asp.html

Javascript

Javascript is easy to use, and many sites will produce the code that needs to be inserted into the HTML web page, making implementation very easy for webmasters. The downside to the majority of the javascript solutions is that the webpage calls the script each time, and the actual contents of the feed is not able to be spidered or indexed by search engines. So while javascript is easy to use, there is very little benefit to the webmaster. Search engines will not detect any new content or keywords contained in the contents of the feed, so their is little optimization benefit to displaying RSS feeds using javascript. Additionally, while it is unusual, occasionally website visitors will have the javascript turned off in their browser, if that is the case they will be unable to view the contents of the feed.

Example: FeedRoll Pro - http://www.feedrollpro.com

Advanced Scripts/Merging Scripts

Webmasters will often find value in merging multiple RSS feeds in to a single feed. This is particularly useful when attempting to aggregate news on a specific topic. The script allows you to produce an RSS feed by taking the latest items from multiple feeds.

Example: RSSmesh - http://www.feedforall.com/rssmesh.htm.

Filtering/Newsmastering

Due to the enormous and ever-increasing information flow we are all submitted to, the only way to improve our ability to access and use the information that is really important to us, must take place by scaling up one notch our ability to filter, aggregate, and access relevant content.

Example: Newsmaster kit - http://www.masternewmedia.org/reports/newsmasterstoolkit/

Prepublish Scripts

On occasion, webmasters will choose to build a large amount of content, and gradually release it over time. FutureRSS is a PHP script that when used properly will only display feed items that publish dates have passed.

FutureRSS - http://www.feedforall.com/future-rss.htm

A number of flexible solutions exists for webmasters to create, filter, and display content contained in an RSS feed. Using these simple solutions, webmasters can dynamically maintain webpages with unique content.

About the Author: Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net a wireless text messaging software company.