If you're selling your products online, you'll likely need to market them. There are many ways to do so, but in the world of e-commerce, online marketing rules. The following are some basic things you should know and channels you should consider using.

Froogle is located at http://www.froogle.com and Yahoo Product Search is located at http://products.yahoo.com.

Google launched Froogle in the beginning of the year. Froogle is a shopping bot -- a comparison search engine where shoppers can search for a specific product, then narrow that search by price and other parameters if desired. Froogle enables shoppers to quickly search millions of items from thousands of merchants, so they can find, compare, and buy almost anything. Though it’s still in a testing mode know as "beta", Froogle is drawing great interest with many merchants already listing their products in its database.

Not to be outdone, Yahoo recently launched Yahoo Product Search, which is very similar to Froogle and also in beta. Once Google and Yahoo officially launch their new tools, they will certainly become popular shopping destinations given the overall brand strength of the two companies. For the time being at least, both tools are free to merchants wishing to list their products, so keep a close eye on these emerging marketing channels. You may even get started now by uploading your product data according to the appropriate specifications.

See http://froogle.google.com/froogle/merchants.html and http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/products/merchants for more information.

Yahoo is often misconstrued as a search engine when, in fact, it is a portal. Yahoo doesn't index websites, and doesn't search a database when a query is submitted. Since June 2000, Yahoo has been returning search results from Google. To illustrate this, try a search on Yahoo, then try that same word or phrase on Google. The results are nearly identical.

As you may recall, Yahoo acquired Inktomi, a search technology company, in December ’02, then more recently acquired Overture, a commercial search services company. Both acquisitions where surely aimed at strengthening Yahoo's position as a leader in search and marketing solutions. Both were big news, and fueled abundant speculation on the future of search. Yahoo will certainly drop Google for Inktomi, but what will the other major players do now that Yahoo will continue to serve Pay Per Click (PPC) results from Overture and organic search results from Inktomi rather than Google?

MSN for one is in a tough situation. Microsoft's web portal competes directly with Yahoo, and returns the same mix of Overture and Inktomi results that Yahoo will soon display. Further complicating the issue, those results are now drawn directly from MSN's biggest competitor. What will MSN do? One rumor making the rounds is that MSN will acquire a search engine. There are indeed several relatively small search engine companies, such as Teoma, Alltheweb, FAST, and WiseNut, that may be tempting targets. Nevertheless, it is more plausible that Microsoft will develop its own search technology. E-commerce merchants will be watching very closely.

Rumors aside, Yahoo will certainly swapping out Google search results for Inktomi, a change expected as soon as this month. For a time in August, Yahoo even served up Inktomi results as a test. All e-commerce merchants should take steps to get listed in Inktomi.

So, get ready for the Yahoo/Inktomi evolution. Check out how you're doing on Inktomi with the Pure Inktomi search engine at http://search.positiontech.com.

The May 2003 issue of the Nexus explored the idea of customer reviews, which hold the power to add credibility to your products and provide an additional level of interactivity to your store. A similar, equally beneficial, and often overlooked idea is to provide customer questions -- product-specific questions asked by customers and answered by you the merchant -- alongside the product's description and reviews.

Have you ever wanted to buy a product online, but stopped short of making the purchase because of a question you wanted answered first? Perhaps it was a compatibility issue -- "Will your widget accessory work with the widget I bought years ago from another company?" Did you take the time to contact the merchant or research the issue on your own? More likely you simply decided to postpone or abandon the purchase, or take your business elsewhere. Might your actions have changed if you saw that a previous customer had already asked that question, and a knowledgeable customer service representative provided a definitive answer?

The October 2002 issue of the Nexus looked at the value of online chat functionality provided by vendors such as LivePerson. Properly viewed, online chat and customer questions are complimentary rather than exclusionary features. Online chat provides a means for customers to pose questions to a live representative and get nearly immediate answers, and thus provides obvious benefits. Nevertheless, the feature has its limitations. Unless you are a company of considerable means, you cannot realistically staff online chat 24/7. Your chat representatives cannot be expected to be experts in every aspect of every product. When stumped, they may be tempted to take educated guesses, at times leading customers astray. Some customers may perceive a loss of anonymity with online chat and be reluctant to use it. Customer questions provide partial remedies to these issues, and also save your chat reps from having to repeatedly answer the most commonly asked questions.

While the value of customer questions is apparent, pitfalls lurk as well. Customers, particularly new ones, will view the timeliness and quality of your response as a reflection of your customer service. Thus questions must consistently be answered quickly (same day is preferred, next day is acceptable), professionally, and correctly. A question answered a week later (or worse yet, not answered at all) creates a strong negative impression (if it takes you a week to answer a simple question, how long will it take you to fulfill my order?), and "Sorry, we've been extremely busy" or a similar excuse won't help much. You must also be prepared for your share of less-than-intelligent questions that still require courteous answers. Virtually all questions will require editing before being posted to the store.

Despite the pitfalls, companies serious about online sales will undoubtedly find that customer questions boost their bottom line. When adding this feature, be sure to consider the following: some questions are sufficiently broad so as to apply to several products or even entire categories, so your software should provide an easy mechanism to accommodate this; and some products do not lend themselves well to questions and thus should be excluded from the feature. Good luck!

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