Interview: Marc Joseph, Founder of DollarDays

Marc Joseph is the founder of DollarDays, the […] online wholesaler that helps small businesses compete against larger enterprises and [helps] nonprofit organizations find the products they need to support their causes. DollarDays offers more than 225,000 high-quality products at wholesale and closeout prices. Mr. Joseph has helped build some of America’s most known retail stores, including Federated Department Stores, Bill’s Variety Stores, Everything’s a Dollar Stores and Crown Book Stores. Most recently, he started a chain of hair salons in Arizona and built it up to 11 stores before selling them to devote [his] full time to DollarDays. He is the author of the book “The Secrets of Retailing…or How to Beat Walmart,” which provides expert advice to independent businesses of all sizes on everything from the psychology of buying and the hiring of great employees to working successfully with vendors and promoters, as well as how to expand your business on the Internet. Mr. Joseph is also a frequent contributor to The Huffington Post and the Alibaba Global Biz Circle news websites.

IdeaMensch (IM): Where did the idea for DollarDays come from?

Marc Joseph (MJ):When we started back in 2001, small businesses were getting crushed by chains moving into their towns, so we wanted to help these small businesses survive and thrive against these big-box competitors. At the same time, the Internet was emerging as the new way to quickly communicate, so I saw the Internet as the next channel of distribution of wholesale and closeout products by the case so the small guys could compete on a level playing field with the big guys.

IM: What does your typical day look like, and how do you make it productive?

MJ: The Internet is really the last true vehicle to still be able to use guerrilla marketing to promote your business, so we start every day asking the question, “How can we find new customers and begin to brand ourselves?” in this sea of millions of websites currently trying to attract the eyeballs on the World Wide Web. We make this a productive exercise by reviewing sales from the last day, week and month and analyzing the customers, both new and existing, [who] created these sales. Our short-term goal is to market out to lookalike customers who don’t know about us today. Because of this, we get our report card each day. This month, we get a “B+” because we are averaging 1,500 new customers now joining us each day. Our long-term goal is to convert these new customers into repeat, loyal customers.

IM: How do you bring ideas to life?

MJ: Unlike traditional businesses that need a three-month timeframe from idea to implementation, being a company focused on the Internet, we can come up with an idea in the morning and have it live on the site that afternoon. This gives us the opportunity to test even the craziest ideas, because if the idea does not work, we can immediately take it off the site with a click of a button. So just about every day our site looks a little different, and the winning ideas become part of our culture, while those that do not click with our customers go away quickly.

IM: What is one trend that really excites you?

MJ: Adult coloring books are exciting. Why adult coloring books? I just use this as an example of how ideas become trends that become sales. About a year ago, one of our better small-business customers told us that in his small town, he was seeing 20- and 30-year-olds put down their cellphones and pick up a sketchpad or coloring book and begin to doodle. He assumed it was for stress relief from the constant pressure our modern society puts on itself in this electronic-driven age. With that early knowledge, we went out and sourced all kinds of adult-type coloring books from geometrics to nature to animals. Just this year, we have gone through hundreds of thousands of adult coloring books—[and all] because one of our salespeople developed a strong bond with one of our customers who trusted us to help them build their business. Adult coloring books are to this generation like pet rocks were to an earlier generation.

IM: What is one habit that makes you more productive as an entrepreneur?

MJ: I keep a pad and pen on my nightstand. For some reason, some of my better ideas pop up in the middle of the night, and if I don’t write them down when they wake me up, I just can’t remember them the next morning. Taking this a step further, whenever I am away from my desk to exercise, have dinner, etc., I now always have a pen and paper in my pocket just in case that million-dollar idea jumps in front of me.

IM: What was the worst job you ever had, and what did you learn from it?

MJ: To help put myself through college, I became the housekeeper and the weekend cook at my fraternity. Who knew that college guys could be such slobs? No matter how often you tried to train your brothers to pick up after themselves, if their mother could not teach them, I certainly could not, either. This was the beginning of my learning about the art of communication, and for negotiations to be successful, you could not use the tact of telling people what to do—you need to get them to buy into your dream or, in the case of the fraternity, working together for a cleaner, more appealing environment.

IM: If you were to start over again, what would you do differently?

MJ: Cash is king when starting a business. Opening your own business may be a dream coming true, but paying for this dream is an entirely different story. The vision of digging through your couch to find all the lost change to make your business work is a myth. Raising money is the toughest challenge you will ever face. You cannot put every penny you have into your business, because you will need dollars to cover your living expenses for the first six months, and if you do not have enough cash flow in your business, you will be scrambling for years. So my advice is to make an extremely strong effort to raise as much cash as possible before going into business.

IM: As an entrepreneur, what is the one thing you do over and over?

MJ: Pick up the phone and always be reaching out. Don’t wait for people to reach out to you. Whether you like it or not, entrepreneurs are always selling. They are selling their idea to raise funds to start the business. They are selling their idea to potential employees to get them to join their dream team. They are selling their idea to customers and suppliers to trust them to help improve their businesses. So entrepreneurs cannot get complacent. Every day, you must relive those days and months in the beginning when you were the only one picking up the phone. Pick up the phone today and find new customers.

IM: What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business?

MJ: Hire good people. I try to hire people who are smarter than I am in areas that I am not the expert. This way, you can build a team with divergent expertise, yet when adding up the sum of the teams’ knowledge, it is first class.

IM: What is a failure you had, and how did you overcome it?

MJ: For years, our site, which is homegrown, did not give the perception that we were a top-notch company. It was slow and cumbersome to use, and, because of this, our sales were stagnate. We finally bit the bullet and put all of our financial resources and human resources into taking our site into the 21st century. It has paid off, because this year, we were one of the three finalists for the Internet Retailer B2B E-Commerce Marketer of the Year [award].

IM: What is one business idea for those reading this article?

MJ: The relationship we as businesses and entrepreneurs have with our customers is changing. It is a trend that has always been part of the millennial generation, but is now also part of all generations, and that is [that] customers want to do business with companies that care about giving back to their community. We do it with three different programs—$5,000 a month through our Facebook giveaways to nonprofits, creating free wishlist sites for nonprofits, and letting all of our customers donate 5% of their purchases to nonprofits. I am sure there are plenty of other ways businesses can give back to their communities.

IM: What is the best $100 you recently spent and why?

MJ: We donated a case of baby blankets to our local Kiwanis Club K-Kids group at our Boys & Girls Club. This is an organization that helps young kids learn the value of service and helping others. This young club was helping the homeless families in our area. You should have seen the look on these kids’ faces as they were unpacking the carton of baby blankets. The joy they had in helping brought many of the adults in the room to tears. This is emotion that cannot be bought.

IM: What software do you use?

MJ: Because we have an inside sales team that works closely with our existing and new customers, we have just initiated Salesforce to help keep us organized and alert us quickly for followup with our customers. Making us more efficient in the long run will make us more money.

IM: What one book do you recommend?

MJ: If you are only going to read one book this year and you are an entrepreneur or small-business owner, you must read “Shoe Dog” by Phil Knight, the create of Nike. I could not put it down. The ups and down of starting a business are on full display in this compelling story. I must mention two other books also that gave me real perspective on growing a business. The first is “Alibaba,” which is the most accurate telling of the story of the largest e-commerce company in the world, and the second is “Elon Musk,” which tells the true story of this billionaire and gives you some insight into what our future may look like.

IM: Who has influenced your thinking?

MJ: We can learn so much by studying history. I can’t get enough of George Washington, whether it is his biography or the current TV show, “Turn: Washington’s Spies.” But the real influencers of my life were the entrepreneurs of my father’s generation, brave men who I watched in action just about every day. Most of these guys fought in World War II and then came home to build their dreams for their families. None of them had anything handed to them, and they built their businesses by hard work, dedication to their dream, and the understanding of what it takes to build and service a loyal customer base.

Original article here: https://ideamensch.com/marc-joseph/

DollarDays Reinvents Wholesale Business with Dynamic New Website

Those familiar with DollarDays, the country’s premier online wholesaler, will tell you its recent site redesign was long overdue. DollarDays had simply outgrown its website, limiting its ability to take the customers to the next level. In December 2013, DollarDays engaged Arizona agency Resound Creative to create a redesign strategy focused on user experience and customer satisfaction.

Six months later, on July 1, 2014, the DollarDays team proudly unveiled a new and improved website. “New and improved” is an understatement, as it has undergone a metamorphosis that not only includes a customer-centric makeover, but, upon visual inspection, the wow factor from the site’s graphics stunned regular users while providing a memorable user experience. With these upgrades, the average time spent on the website has increased, and DollarDays has been enjoying what it hoped for: an 81% decrease in bounce rate, 24% more registrations, a load time four times faster than the old site and a 12% increase in average order value.

While rolling out the new website, DollarDays introduces a marketing initiative focusing on driving new traffic to the site. During the site design, the DollarDays team thoroughly evaluated each marketing vendor and tool currently being used and added new marketing partners who are invested in DollarDays’ growth due to mutually beneficial performance incentives. A visually stunning site [combined] with a new user experience and the flow of new customers from performing marketing initiatives are the right ingredients for a successful site rollout.

Marc Joseph, DollarDays’ CEO, said, “We couldn’t be happier about the new site. The improvements we made were exactly what our customers wanted. The strong feedback we’re getting tells us we’re doing something right! […] One of our most significant changes was in our mobile presence. Resound Creative designed the site in a manner that allows for responsive viewing, which means our site will resize itself to adapt to any type of device you are using, whether it’s a smartphone or a tablet.”

One thing that will not change at DollarDays is its $5,000 monthly merchandise giveaway on Facebook to causes such as education, homelessness, animal welfare, eldercare, teachers and students.

“We have connected with a community of over 210,000 on Facebook that is likeminded. They respond to helping others and nominate teachers, shelters, schools, etc., to win in the monthly giveaways—they wait for the announcement of the winners each month like it was the winner of ‘American Idol’! We love being able to give back to the community,” said Mr. Joseph, who also authors a monthly Huffington Post article that offers reflection on a cause that is in alignment with the DollarDays’ ideals. Joseph’s July Huffington Post article is a passionate look at our kids’ education.

In 2001, DollarDays was created to provide quality wholesale products in small case packs at great prices for small retail businesses as a way to compete with the chains in their communities. This vision remains the focus, including a customer base that has evolved to include thousands of nonprofit organizations, as well as consumers. […]

On a final note, Joseph declared, “We have truly reinvented online wholesaling. What was once a strictly B2B space is now wide open for not only businesses, but nonprofits and consumers. Each of these users is finding DollarDays as their go-to niche for wholesale savings. Our new website is something that any user can use and enjoy with ease.”

About DollarDays
Founded in 2001, DollarDays is the leading supplier of wholesale goods for nonprofits, businesses and betterment organizations. By sourcing affordable products, backed by exceptional service and meaningful community engagement, we strive to inspire and empower our customers to accomplish their missions to improve the lives of people around the world. Recognized as the City of Phoenix Mayor’s Office “2018 Product Exporter of the Year” and Internet Retailer Magazine’s “B2B E-commerce Marketer of the Year” for 2016 and 2017, DollarDays is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. For more information, visit www.dollardays.com.

DollarDays Delivers a Solid Back?to?School Season with EasyAsk Semantic Search

EasyAsk, the leading provider of natural language semantic technologies, and DollarDays, the largest by-the-case online store for small businesses, shared details of DollarDays’ recent back-to-school season success.

In 11 short years, DollarDays is celebrating several milestones, including doubling the number of SKUs it offers to more than 225,000 and the number of suppliers to more than 500. Traffic on the DollarDays site has increased significantly, as have the number of memberships. All of this translates into revenue growth for DollarDays, even in a business environment where competitors are shrinking or going out of business. 

DollarDays’ CEO, Marc Joseph, attributes DollarDays’ continued success to many key variables, including a growing number of price-sensitive shoppers, dominant marketing (as seen in the company’s back-to-school programs), and an overall exceptional customer experience led by strong site search, merchandising and analytic capabilities.

“As the volume of traffic and the total number of items increases, the more important it is to present the right items to the visitor as quickly as possible,” says Joseph.

DollarDays originally used the open-source search product, Solr, as part of its open-source e-commerce software stack. Solr is an open-source search platform from the Apache Lucene project.

Business Reasons DollarDays Upgraded to EasyAsk from Solr

  • Highly descriptive search—Because of their explosive product catalog growth, DollarDays needed to give shoppers more search functionality and the ability to enter more detailed descriptions in the search box.
  • Faceted navigation—Most navigation systems define static categories. EasyAsk[‘s] natural language automatically generates additional layers of product definitions that greatly improve faceted navigation.
  • Agile merchandising—Merchandisers can leverage EasyAsk eCommerce to create banner ads, promotions, and rapidly identify and adapt as shopper trends develop.
  • Manageability—The scope of managing search terms over a product catalog of 225,000 SKUs can be overwhelming. EasyAsk offers intuitive graphical tools and analytics to make the job easier.

“EasyAsk search dramatically reduced the time for customers to find products and get to that all-important checkout stage,” said Joseph. “As our number of items and seasonal merchandising needs grew, EasyAsk’s superior faceted search enabled our shoppers to more explicitly explore items across multiple dimensions. We offer a number of niche products, and once the visitors get to our site, we need to make it easy to find the exact product they want. EasyAsk helps us do that.”

Kevin Ryan, Vice President of Merchandising at DollarDays, said, “Wholesale sites are generally behind consumer sites when it comes to usability. Many sites only offer basic search and simple navigation by category. Imagine scrolling through 5,000 different products in the same category, such as toys, to find the one you’re looking for. People eventually get frustrated and leave. That is what sets us apart—we are way ahead of the competition.”

DollarDays recently redesigned its homepage, leveraging EasyAsk’s analytics, natural language merchandising and faceted navigation to better guide visitors and present high-priority items for the season in much less space. DollarDays also uses EasyAsk analytics to discover and actively promote the top items its customers are looking for at any given time. An example can be found in its “School Charity Drive” page, where EasyAsk Analytics identifies the 500 most-popular items from last year and promotes these in a blackboard-style category grid.

Joseph is an active contributor to The Huffington Post on economic and business issues. According to Joseph, “Despite the fact that many U.S. consumers believe we are still in a recession, DollarDays is well into our best back-to-school season yet, which is the biggest season for our company. EasyAsk is a big part of our success.”

Original article here:
https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2012/09/13/dollardays-delivers-solid-back-school-season-easyask/

Clear & Compelling Video Thumbnails Can Boost SEO Rankings

It hasn’t been easy for online merchants to maintain SEO rankings on Google in recent months, thanks to Google’s ongoing updates. No doubt you’re looking for any edge you can get in order to get highly ranked links.

Google has opened the door to one method for improving search rankings: a higher profile for videos. [Accordingly], as of late 2011, Google started showcasing larger video thumbnail images.

In the aftermath of Panda, many online merchants found that their rankings diminished dramatically. Video has offered one way for site owners to recoup some of these SEO losses: Google appears to be giving more prominence to video search results, an added boost for retailers whose sites feature videos.

As we noticed last summer, online retailers can boost SEO through video: online wholesaler DollarDays created videos and submitted a sitemap following the Google Panda changes and saw its videos appear on the first page of Google search results, immediately improving both viewing and conversion rates.

Another change you can use to your advantage is that Google recently increased the size of the video thumbnail images that appear within natural search results, making them more noticeable and appealing to people conducting searches. So now, not only do your videos help boost your rankings, but the larger thumbnails should also generate higher click-throughs. […]

[Keep in mind, though, that] you need to pay special attention to creating, tagging and submitting thumbnail images that show off your videos to best advantage; otherwise, you’re leaving it to Google’s random selection, and you could end up losing the value of your videos if the thumbnail image that Google chooses doesn’t show off your product in the best way.

You can see the placement given to videos by looking at a search result listing for catalog company Miles Kimball. A search for “solid colored braided chair pads” shows the Miles Kimball product about halfway down the first page of results, complete with a thumbnail image and video “play” button. The video-related search results typically appear as one of the first two or three results in the “shopping” section of combined search results on Google.

While you can’t entirely control where or how your product video will turn up in a Google search, you can make sure that the thumbnail image you make available to Google will highlight your product as effectively as possible. In fact, you should make it a regular practice to include a thumbnail image when you create a video sitemap for Google. […]

Some tips for creating effective video thumbnail images:

  • Make sure they’re in focus. This may sound obvious, but images taken from video can be blurry. Choose from only sharpest stills you can gather. If the image is blurry, it loses its appeal.
  • Insert marketing messages. NFLShop.com adds text to its videos to deliver messages about product quality and exclusivity and chooses thumbnails that illustrate these messages. For instance, the thumbnail for a “Faulk jersey” includes the message “Order Today.” (On the other hand, don’t let messages take over space that you need for the product image, which is the most important factor in a video thumbnail.)
  • Choose a large, well-centered product image.A thumbnail is still a thumbnail, after all. Counteract the small size of the image by selecting a product shot—or a picture of someone using the product—that fills as much of the limited space as possible and is properly centered so that it’s easy for the viewer to understand what it is. The thumbnail images for “drill pumps” at ToolKing.com […] leave viewers in no doubt as to what the product is.
  • Test variations. Try out two or three thumbnail options to see which ones drive the highest click-through rates. You may find out that thumbnails featuring people perform better than straight product shots or that a certain angle on a product draws more click-throughs than images from other vantage points.

Given Google’s affection for video, it makes sense to take advantage (and take control) of the ability to showcase your products as professionally as you can. Take the time to deliver thumbnails that are truly representative of your products—the effort will pay off in click-throughs and conversions.

Original article here:
https://multichannelmerchant.com/marketing/catalog/clear-and-compelling-video-thumbnails-can-boost-seo-rankings/

DollarDays Chooses Treepodia’s E?commerce Video Tool

Treepodia, the leading provider of automated video solutions for online retailers, announced today that DollarDays, a leading online wholesaler that helps small businesses compete against chains in their area, has seen a major increase in conversions using Treepodia’s e-commerce video platform. DollarDays has also greatly improved the SEO of its product pages using Treepodia’s Dynamic Video Sitemap.

DollarDays, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, offers more than 165,000 bulk products—including decorative items, clothing and personal care products—that can be ordered in small quantities at competitive prices. Given the wide range of products, DollarDays needed to make it easier for its customers to find and choose products from the DollarDays website. Video offered one of the best methods for showcasing DollarDays’ products, but managing video content was time-consuming and labor-intensive.

“With so many products to cover and an ever-expanding product line, an automated solution was clearly the only option in terms of both sheer logistics and cost,” said Marc Joseph, President of DollarDays. In addition, DollarDays needed to make sure that each video was properly indexed so that searches for relevant keywords on Google and other search engines would include DollarDays’ products further up in results—a benefit that the Dynamic Video Sitemap provides.

DollarDays chose Treepodia to create about 50,000 product videos for its site. Treepodia’s e-commerce video platform enables online merchants to cover their entire product catalog with dynamic and effective video content in just 24 hours and includes monitored video hosting, high-quality streaming and a multi-environment video player. DollarDays also chose Treepodia’s Dynamic Video Sitemap, which ensures that all video content is indexed, including video titles, descriptions, duration, location and more, in order to drive more new traffic to their site.

Soon after it began using Treepodia to create and manage its product videos, DollarDays saw its conversion rate rise significantly. Additionally, all of its product videos were indexed by Google in a single day, and product-specific long-tail search terms such as “bright pencil pouch” were yielding far higher results on Google than before—in many cases, showing up first among search results.

“We’ve been incredibly pleased with the results we’ve received from the Treepodia solutions,” said Joseph. “So much so, in fact, that within a month, we’d already decided to expand the Treepodia solutions across our entire product offering. Not only was the ROI quick and concrete, but the implementation was surprisingly simple.”

Original article here:
https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2011/12/06/dollardays-chooses-treepodias-e-commerce-video-tool/

DollarDays Cuts Through the Site Search Thicket with “Natural Language” Technology

The e-commerce site operated by wholesaler and closeout company DollarDays presents a daunting site search challenge. DollarDays sells some 140,000 products spread across 5,000 departments, and the smaller business owners who typically purchase there […] often had to navigate through a thicket of unwanted item[s] before finally finding the desired product[s].

But the e-commerce company says that has changed with the deployment of what it calls “natural language” site search. Software and algorithms provided by EasyAsk enable DollarDays to automatically classify products into categories that better reflect site searches performed by shoppers and return to them results that more closely match what they want to buy.

For instance, before DollarDays began using the technology about a year ago, a shopper typing “blue polo shirt” into the site search box at DollarDays.com might be presented with a long list of results that included not only apparel, but Polo cologne or other unrelated blue items, says Marc Joseph, President and CEO of DollarDays. The EasyAsk technology better understands the prime characteristics of the search—in this case, that the shopper is seeking a blue shirt—and returns a more exact set of results; the software classifies products according to such attributes as price, brand, design and patterns. A search conducted today using that same phrase returned five results, all of them for shirts, and only one of which was not obviously blue.

“We’re a one-stop shop for small businesses who buy from us, and we have to get our customers quickly to what they want,” Joseph says. “The natural language search allows our customers to find the exact product in a single click, increasing our customer conversion rates.”

Since installing the software, Joseph says DollarDays has experienced a dramatic increase in the use of the e-commerce site’s search box by shoppers, who are using longer search terms to find products more quickly. He declined to provide details. The software also works to take product attributes such as price and recent arrivals to create new product categories that help DollarDays run better promotions; for instance, the software helps to place items into such categories as “closeouts,” “49¢ or less,” “hot sellers” and “new products.”

For an e-commerce operator such as DollarDays that installs and manages the site search technology on its own, EasyAsk typically charges a one-time licensing fee of $35,000, says John Morrell, the technology provider’s Vice President of Marketing. If EasyAsk manages the technology, fees start at about $600 per month, he says.

Original article here:
https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2011/09/09/dollardays-cuts-through-site-search-thicket/

DollarDays Rings up E-commerce Dollars Using EasyAsk Natural Language Search & Merchandising

EasyAsk, the leader in e-commerce search and merchandising software, and DollarDays, the premier online wholesaler and closeout company, today announced one of the largest and most diverse uses of e-commerce search in e-retail. DollarDays is using the natural language conversion power of EasyAsk eCommerce Edition to get customers from the home page to the right products in a single click, helping increase purchase rates and revenue.

DollarDays distributes over 140,000 products on its e-commerce site, with over 5,000 categories and subcategories—a product catalog that would rival even the largest e-retailers. In addition, as a small-business wholesaler, the catalog is continuously shifting as seasons change, new products become available and excess product needs to be closed out.

A product catalog of this size, diversity and fluidity created a number of difficult challenges in implementing e-commerce search and merchandising. The product diversity meant that the same search term could have different meaning for different products and the navigation attributes would be widely varied across the different categories. The constant change created a merchandising nightmare in trying to manage promotions and offers. It was clear that keyword-based e-commerce search offerings could not meet these challenges.

DollarDays chose EasyAsk eCommerce Edition because the natural language technology provided a more powerful yet easier-to-use search and merchandising for their e-commerce site. With EasyAsk, DollarDays now has: 

  • A search box that is more accurate, allowing visitors to type phrases describing exactly what they want and getting those in one click;
  • A rich, dynamic set of navigation attributes that adjust based on the categories and products, making navigation faster; [and]
  • Superior, easier merchandising, including the automatic assignment of products to special categories and rapid addition of promotional banners, ads and links.

“The most successful e-commerce sites get the customer to the right products the fastest, speeding the buying process,” said Marc Joseph, President and CEO of DollarDays. “EasyAsk[‘s] natural language search allows our customers to find the exact product in a single click, increasing our customer conversion rates. EasyAsk also makes our merchandising more agile, which is essential in our business, where product offerings are continuously changing.”

As a result of using EasyAsk, DollarDays has seen significant improvement in the performance of their e-commerce site, including:

  • The improvement of successful search rate to 99.8% and the virtual elimination of zero-results searches;
  • A dramatic increase in the use of the search box and the length of search terms to lead visitors to products faster;
  • Greater efficiency in merchandising by replacing a time-consuming multistep process to create promotions with a combination of automated and single-step creation of merchandising programs.

DollarDays uses EasyAsk[‘s] natural language and algorithms fed by operational product data to automatically classify products into unconventional categories such as “closeouts,” “49¢ and less,” “hot sellers” and “new products” (seen across the top of the DollarDays website). Using EasyAsk in this way saves many “man-days” of merchandiser time and completely removes technical staff from the merchandising processes.

“DollarDays is a shining example of how EasyAsk’s natural language search and merchandising can bring an e-commerce site to life and instantly increase customer conversion. Higher conversion equals more sales, leading to higher profits,” said Craig Bassin, CEO of EasyAsk. “In a marketplace where you need every competitive edge possible, DollarDays found a powerful yet easy advantage by using EasyAsk that is paying off at the bottom line.”

EasyAsk eCommerce Edition is the industry leading e-commerce search and merchandising solution that allows visitors to find products faster and receive compelling promotions and offers. EasyAsk understands the content and intent of the search question—“red long-sleeved dresses under $150”—to deliver the right results on the first page. EasyAsk eCommerce Edition customers see the industry’s highest conversion rates, deliver a superior customer experience and see dramatic increases in average order sizes.

About DollarDays
Founded in 2001, DollarDays is the leading supplier of wholesale goods for nonprofits, businesses and betterment organizations. By sourcing affordable products, backed by exceptional service and meaningful community engagement, we strive to inspire and empower our customers to accomplish their missions to improve the lives of people around the world. Recognized as the City of Phoenix Mayor’s Office “2018 Product Exporter of the Year” and Internet Retailer Magazine’s “B2B E-commerce Marketer of the Year” for 2016 and 2017, DollarDays is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. For more information, visit www.dollardays.com.

Small-business Advice: Avoiding Common Website Mistakes

These days, pretty much every small-business owner knows the importance of having a functional website.

But, of course, not all business websites are created equal. Some are better than others—and, naturally, you want your company’s site to be among the best in its category.

You can go a long way toward creating a useful, functional and attractive business website simply by avoiding four common site errors that Lisa Barone identifies on the “Small Business Trends” blog:

  1. Bad design. Your site doesn’t have to look fancy, but it should look professional. Just as with the décor or signage for a brick-and-mortar store, you want to invest a little time and resources on your website to get good results.
  2. Lengthy conversion funnel. The “conversion funnel” is marketing-speak for the process your site visitors go through when they want to buy anything through your website. Barone is correct in saying that you want to make the purchase process as simple as possible. That’s why sites like Amazon pioneered one-click ordering for repeat customers.
  3. Strategy before design. Think before you build. What are the major goals that you want your site to accomplish? Just as you wouldn’t start building a house without having a blueprint and a plan, similarly, you should have some detailed website objectives and strategy in mind before you start creating your business website.
  4. Lack of dynamic content. Barone accurately points out that too many business websites have static content (address, phone number, basic information) that never changes. Your website gives you an opportunity to engage visitors and create some brand loyalty. Think of new material with which you can periodically update your site. If you run a restaurant, maybe you can post the weekly specials online or send out a recipe of the month to a list of email subscribers. If you have a pool supply company, you can create a blog with testimonials from satisfied customers, seasonal coupon codes, or information about the latest and greatest pool supplies and chemicals. The exact content and techniques will vary according to your specific business, but the point is to publish new content at regular intervals that brings visitors back to your site for repeat visits.

How did you overcome these problems in building your own small business website? What content do you use to attract customers to your website for repeat visits?

Efficient Frontier Launches Paid Search Solution for Small- to Midsized Marketers

Efficient Frontier, the leading provider of search engine marketing (SEM) solutions, today announced the release of Efficient Frontier Express, a Web-based application for small- to midsized online marketers to better manage their paid search campaigns on Google and Yahoo!.

“We have received countless inquiries about our paid search solutions from small- to midsized advertisers,” said Ellen Siminoff, President and CEO of Efficient Frontier. “Express is in response to that demand, providing a sophisticated yet very easy-to-use tool for advertisers to manage the complexity of the search engines and optimize their campaigns.”

Unlike other managed services that merely offer analytical tools and leave the decision-making process up to the user, Express provides an automated solution that selects and automatically bids on the optimal keyword prices for the client. Built on Efficient Frontier’s patented, data-driven portfolio technology based on Wall Street analytics, the application uses advanced statistical decision-making processes to determine the most effective keyword bids relative to the client’s budget spend and business metrics.

Express’ user-friendly user interface allows advertisers to set up, launch, review and adjust their campaigns easily. During the setup phase, advertisers define their key marketing metrics […] and daily budget spend criteria. They then place a conversion tracking tag […] for each of their metrics on the relevant pages of their site for ongoing measurement. Express collects conversion data for two weeks to gather historical performance. The system takes the data and runs forecasts/models to select the optimal bids based on the advertiser’s campaign goals and budget spend. Advertisers can track and measure their keyword campaigns from a single executive dashboard and analyze performance against their specified key metrics.

The beta version of Express was launched in August 2005. More than 20 advertisers signed up during this period, including DollarDays, an online wholesaler for small-business owners to order goods ranging from decorative items and clothing to personal care products and greeting cards.

“We manage thousands of keywords and were looking for a solution that could help us better manage our campaigns,” said Marc Joseph, President and CEO of DollarDays. “Express has been the perfect solution, not only making it easier because of the automation functionality, but also increasing our ROI.”

Original article here: 
https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2006/04/25/efficient-frontier-launches-paid-search-solution-for-small-to-mi/

DollarDays Relaunches with New Search, Merchandising Features

DollarDays.com, a website that wholesales general merchandise to 425,000 small, independent retailers, relaunched today with redesigned navigation and site search features. DollarDays has doubled its number of registered users in the past year, [the company’s] president, Marc Joseph, tells InternetRetailer.com.

DollarDays sells about 30,000 general-merchandise products, including toys, household décor, apparel, electronics and seasonal merchandise. The redesigned site uses site search technology from Endeca Technologies Inc. integrated with an in-house content management system to improve the way users can search and navigate for products, Joseph says.

Each merchandise page of the site presents several images of products with multiple ways to drill down into categories and subcategories, including price, free-shipping offers, new products, closeouts and brands. Each page displays a navigation bar that lets shoppers click into these and other categories, automatically changing all the product images on the page to reflect the chosen category.

Joseph says DollarDays’ sales are divided into thirds by closeout products, seasonal products and basic items.

Original article here: 
https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2005/03/08/dollardays-com-relaunches-with-new-search-and-merchandising-feat/