Generally, the replacement laptop battery category is a commodity business. However, Digital Day has them made to its own specs, designed specifically to outperform its cheaper counterparts in both run-time as well as overall service life. Digital Day’s are manufactured using Samsung brand cells and Texas Instruments brand chipsets inside. The result is a laptop battery that runs longer in one sitting than cheap batteries, and will also have a greater life.

To distinguish the client’s product from the inexpensive competition, DMG began product branding with the name. The name selected is Xtend, which helps communicate the product’s primary, unique benefit – extended run time as well as extended service life.

For the next step of the product branding, DMG created the logo and positioning line, which you can see on this page. Both elements further communicate the desired message.

A website was then designed and produced as part of the product branding efforts, XtendLaptopBatteries.com. DMG’s layout and design clearly and instantly communicate not only the benefits of Xtend’s longer run time, but also managed to imply the sense of freedom that comes with a battery that is less reliant on power chords and electrical outlets. The product’s branding message is one that will resonate with consumers and potential distributors alike.

The new Xtend brand laptop batteries sold through fine retailers everywhere, including online at LaptopBatteryExpress.com.

DMG and its client Digital Day, Inc. are both quite confident that the product branding is strategic, well executed and there is every expectation the positioning will ultimately translate into strong sales numbers for the new brand.

For the month of January 2012, a DiPietro Marketing Group LLC (DMG) client’s AdWords cost per acquisition (CPA) had ballooned to $42.69. DMG, a Google AdWords PPC Management agency, instituted a new plan of action to address the growing problem of ever-increasing AdWords costs.

We can’t divulge the plan specifics (sorry). However, we can show you the results of that PPC management plan…

MONTH     CPA
Jan              $42.69
Feb              $36.81
Mar             $35.88
Apr              $28.00
May             $25.34
Jun             $27.82
Jul              $26.24
Aug             $29.73
Sep             $22.22
Oct             $16.27

Learn more…contact Steve DiPietro

Making the transfer to LinkShare will be different than starting from scratch in that we will look to retain as many current affiliate accounts through the switch as possible. It can take up to six months to get a good Affiliate Program off the ground and the ability to convert sites currently affiliated thru SAS with SaveOnTapestries.com over to LinkShare will likely provide an early boost in the program’s transition.

In part, a large reason why we have decided to advise our client to make the switch over to LinkShare is because of its interface, which gives Affiliate Program Managers much more control over the affiliate recruitment process. Specifically, once signed up with LinkShare you are provided access to all of its affiliates and their contact information, making it much easier to connect with potential publishers.

Another advantage of moving to LinkShare is that they boast a very large affiliate pool, especially in categories complementary to SaveOnTapestries.com. This lends itself well to our general strategy when initially commencing an affiliate project in that we wish to rapidly establish a large affiliate list, then strategically take the time to acquire the larger, most successful affiliate accounts. This proves to be an important approach seeing how often times the top 5% of affiliates can generate up to 95% of a companies’ affiliate-generated sales.

Transferring a store isn’t exactly a piece of cake. It can be time-consuming and frustrating due to the variations in the way different shopping cart systems do things. For example:

* In Volusion, hiding a page has the effect of not showing that page in any navigation. However, it is still live; it can be linked to from a graphic, for instance. There have been many, many instances where our clients have wanted this done.

However, in BigCommerce, hiding a page will not only remove it from any navigation, the page can then not be linked to in any way, such as from a graphic you create.

* BigCommerce, has one built-in navigation system. Volusion has numerous. So, in Volusion, a category can be assigned to a nav section on the left side bar while a different category can be assigned to the main nav in the header.

I could go on as the differences are numerous. This isn’t to say that one shopping cart is better than the other; that really depends on needs. It is to say that there are very important features of one shopping cart system that do not translate exactly to another system.

DMG knows shopping carts. Call to discuss your needs and we can make a recommendation.

Learn more about eCommerce Shopping Carts.

Visit AnchorBayTile.com.

The store, a wholesale haven for physical therapists needing equipment and supplies for their field of specialty, runs on the Volusion ecommerce shopping cart platform. DMG is a reseller of the Volusion shopping cart system.

Visit GNRcatalog.com.

For numerous reasons, Commission Junction was recommended to our client; DMG first worked with CJ back in 1998. However, the CJ conversion tracking code is not easily integrated with Volusion, the ecommerce platform on which LaptopBatteryExpress.com runs. Cj doesn’t really care all that much about the incompatibility. CJ leaves it up to the advertiser to write custom script to make its tracking code compatible with Volusion. This is a major headache.

So, over to LinkShare we go. LinkShare understands the fact that Volusion does not easily accept the conversion tracking code, and that an additional step is required to get the code to work. To its credit, LinkShare actually provides a Volusion-ready tracking code. Free.

Commission Junction and LinkShare have a differing fee structure, which affects the advertiser’s metrics in terms of what it will take to reach breakeven each month. This needed to be taken into consideration.

As of this writing, the LaptopBatteryExpress.com affiliate program on LinkShare is up and running, and growing to the point where it should have a major, positive affect to both the client’s top and bottom lines.

Learn more about DiPietro Marketing Group LLC and affiliate marketing management.

While it is not difficult to set up your Volusion Social Store on Facebook, the key is in the customization. It is important to carry over your message as well as the look and feel of your online store to Facebook.

We recently set up a Volusion Social Store for our client, LaptopBatteryExpress.com. We carried over the main message and the look & feel of the site to Facebook. The result is in less than 3 weeks, the Social Store on Facebook has a conversion rate of 25%.

Read more about Facebook Marketing on our Facebook Marketing page.

However, like most shopping carts, it’s built-in product review feature leaves something to be desired. That’s understandable as shopping carts, including BigCommerce, have so many areas to be concerned with and need to keep up-to-date (shipping function, merchandising features, shopping engine integration, etc.) that it’s difficult for these systems to have the very best of every single thing.

The primary feature so many built-in product reviews do not offer is the ability to automatically push email messages to customers at a certain amount of days after purchase. These messages ask the customer for a product review, include an image of each product the customer bought, and link to the appropriate product review page.

Easy for the customer. Completely automated for the merchant.

In the area of product reviews, DMG recommends and uses for clients Power Reviews.  The Power Reviews Express product review plan is a low-cost, full-featured social commerce product review system that is perfect for many ecommerce online stores.

Integrating Power Reviews and BigCommerce can be tricky. DMG has the experience and depth of knowledge with the two systems to have Power Reviews integrated and fully functional with your BigCommerce store up in a minimal amount of time.

Recent clients for whom DMG has integrated BigCommerce and Power Reviews include:

PhotonLight.com
EcoBayHome.com

Pricing is generally $395, but could be a little more depending on this, that and one other thing.

DiPietro Marketing Group LLC is an authorized BigCommerce partner designer and product reviews integration provider.

Starting with the page titled ‘Medical Animations’ (the most relevant key phrase), we have begun testing different landing page designs using Google Website Optimizer. Along with the original page (same design as the other pages on the site), DMG has designed 2 alternate versions page using different layouts and color schemes. The goal is to determine which layout and color scheme converts the greatest amount of visitors to leads. Leads in this case are those who make contact by completing on of a few forms.

The original design and the 2 variations. Variation 1 has the greatest conversion rate to date in the Google Website Optimizer landing page test.

It is very early in the test, but so far, the 2 alternate versions are about even in conversions, both out-pulling the original. We’ll keep you posted on the results as the test continues.

The challenge: re-brand an international B2B company including logo design, web design and positioning line.

Positioning Line

Logo Design

Web Design