Timberline Interactive

Congratulations to our friend Reid Greenberg and his caffeine-amped team at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters business-to-business division.

"As you are certainly aware, good coffee is vital to a happy workplace!" says Reid, who is B2B Ecommerce Marketing Manager at GMCR. "Coffee jump starts the day and fuels creativity – no matter how many people you have on staff."

"With this in mind, we’re proud to announce the launch of our newest family of sites; www.BusinessCoffeeExpress.com!"

"For small offices and business of 20 or fewer, Business Coffee Express is your source for K-Cup Portion Packs & Keurig Brewers.  From our 1-click Starter Kits or our new coffee club discount program “Office EXPRESS,” Business Coffee Express has everything you need to outfit your small business or office.  By joining Office EXPRESS we’ll automatically deliver your coffee on a schedule you choose.  Plus, if you sign up today you’ll save $2.50 per box of K-Cups and 10% everything else including brewers!"

"And," adds Reid, "if you have any feedback about the site (good or bad!) I’d love to hear from  you."

By the way, the over-tired ecommerce geeks at Timberline can strongly vouch for the quality of the coffee and the small office coffee service. We have a Keurig coffee machine and between our 10 staffers, we go through a healthy supply of K Cups every month!

We have an exciting announcement for you today! Timberline Interactive and Singlefeed will be hosting a FREE WEBINAR this week:

"Get on the Shopping Engines with CV3 & SingleFeed"

Thursday, March 18, 2010 11:00 am - 12:00 pm PDT

Looking for another online revenue source? Google Shopping, PriceGrabber, Shopping.com and other Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs) can drive more shoppers to your site. Millions use these platforms -- every month a stunning one-third of the US internet audience checks a comparison shopping site.

Setting up data feeds to the specs of all these engines is impossible without an efficient, automated software tool. Recently CV3 added features to do just this with a service called Singlefeed, the leader in the Shopping Search industry. Singlefeed takes care of all the data conversion and dissemination... all you have to do is set it up and tweak it as you go.

Join Timberline Interactive and the Shopping Engine experts from Singlefeed as they share tips for making money with shopping feeds – and show you how to use the new Singlefeed tool on CV3. Register now!

While the webinar is designed for companies using CommerceV3 as their online store platform, it should also provide some useful info and advice for anyone interested in the CSEs.

**PLEASE NOTE - The time displayed here is Pacific.

Email is continuously changing and there are yet again some new things on the horizon. Chad White, Research Director at Smith-Harmon, has written a great article entitled The Inbox of the Not-So-Distant Future. Some of the topics he discusses are social media in the inbox, Targets new scannable barcodes sent in emails, video in email and other relevant topics. Its definitely an ever shifting world we live in on the web.

The multiple big snowfalls that hit most of the U.S. this winter were a boon for ski and snowboard enthusiasts, as well as the industries affiliated with those sports. And when snow melts? Those record winter snowfalls will mostly likely yield record mud this spring.

That may be a bummer for many folks, but it's a blessing for off road enthusiasts, including Jeep Wrangler parts supplier Live Offroad.

Spring showers bring on May flowers, so the saying goes. So too do snow covered roads, fields, and bogs turn to mud. This has not gone unnoticed by Jeep and off-road enthusiasts, nor has it gone unnoticed by the Aiken, South Carolina-based Live Offroad.

"Business is certainly picking up this spring and I can only assume that the heavy snows this winter has had to contribute in some part," shares president Mike Meditz. "Like many hobbies, off-roading is best in certain conditions. This spring the conditions should be perfect, so we are seeing a bigger than normal rush of business in anticipation."

Live Offroad is an online supplier of Jeep CJ parts and Jeep Wrangler parts and accessories for 1976-2009 CJ and Wrangler vehicles. Inventory ranges from body and engine replacement parts, as well as upgrades and add-ons. They feature accessories from leading manufacturers, such as Rugged Ridge, as well as original equipment parts. Their website is hosted on the CommerceV3 software platform and the online business is growing fast.

"I started this business because I saw the need," adds Meditz. "I started with sister site, kaiserwillys.com, selling parts and supplies to Willys Jeep collectors. Selling to Jeep Wrangler and CJ owners seemed a natural extension. I think I can say that between the two sites we probably have one of the largest selections of Jeep auto parts online."

Live Offroad was born from its parent company, Kaiser Willys Auto Supply. In business for over 10 years, Kaiser Willys offers vintage Willys parts and Willys Jeep parts and accessories for all 1941 to 1971 Willys and Jeep vehicles. Now Live Offroad fills the auto parts gap, providing Wrangler parts, Wrangler accessories, CJ parts, and CJ accessories for 1976-2009 CJ & Wrangler vehicles. In addition to selling parts and accessories, Live Offroad debuts its new blog at blog.liveoffroad.com. The blog promises to keep Jeep fans informed and entertained.

Doing some email blog reading the other day I got lead down a path that was unintended but found out something very interesting. The interesting tidbit was about Yahoo Shortcuts. Yahoo Shortcuts is intended to add value to the emails in people’s yahoo inboxes but for email marketers and business who are trying to get the ultimate amount of clicks it can have just the opposite effect. I have noticed Yahoo underlines Phone numbers and dates before but hadn’t noticed this.

What it does is open a Yahoo search box right off of the email content the email sender has written with link ideas that may or may not be to the site the sender intended. This is a dashed line, not a solid line but a customer may not notice the difference. Keywords that have not been linked in a description, etc are affected.

So for instance if I was sending an email for my client abc123.com and they specialized in flowers I would link all of the products we are featuring not necessarily all the keyword text as that might seem like too many links. What Yahoo Shortcuts does is go in, find some keywords that are not linked and add a "shortcut" link to it. If for instance I hadn't linked "spring flowers" in my general text about my offer Yahoo Shortcuts may go in there and add a link. This link would open up a search box with a few options to search. These search options may or may not have anything to do with the company abc123.com. They may just go to some other company specializing in spring flowers. This is a real big drawback to the intention of the email.

The takeaway for me is to be aware of it. Test to your Yahoo account and see if there is any really valuable text that is being taken over by a Yahoo Shortcut link. Especially at the top of the email in the pre-header text or introductory text of your email. The links at the top of emails are clicked on far more often than links lower down in email sends. You can add your own links and the yahoo shortcuts will not be able to overwrite these. I used a real client example in exploring this. When I noticed some keywords linked in the pre-header text I went in and added my own link. But what happens then is Yahoo Shortcuts searches for more keywords to add links too. Its driven to do this. The trick is to be aware of it and add your own links to the really valuable products/text that you want to be linked to your site. This will give you the ultimate value for your email send.

Recently I read an article by Smith-Harmon entitled "Majority of Retailers Fail Hotmail-Firefox Rendering Test". I was immediately intrigued. So, I went to go check some of the emails I send out and sure enough I saw a few extra spaces that I had not planned on in those emails. Very subtle differences but something I wanted to fix as I like to be consistent in all email clients. There can be more obvious errors too and in the Smith-Harmon Press Release they explore this more in depth.

This is a great read and highly recommended for those of you who put your own emails together.
Majority of Retailers Fail Hotmail-Firefox Rendering Test  - http://www.smith-harmon.com/news/2010/03/majority_of_retailers_fail_hotmail-firefox_rendering_test.php

There is a constant barrage of changes and "improvements" that are released in email clients and can affect the way your emails are rendered. Lesson: It's good to check your emails in both Internet Explorer and Firefox especially in Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo. In addition, Outlook is essential to test in. Keeping an eye on these email clients will give you a good idea of how your emails are rendering for your subscribers. It may take a few extra minutes but if not done regularly can affect your brand reputation if emails are hard to read or broken in some way.

The Press Release begins

"Because email clients support different CSS and HTML coding, getting your emails to render correctly in all the major email platforms can be challenging, especially since support tends to change without notice. Rendering challenges are compounded by the fact that the browsers used by subscribers can also affect how an email displays.
“Testing rendering across every major email client isn’t enough,” says Aaron Smith, director of creative technologies at Responsys. “You should test rendering across every email client-browser combination as well, because there are unique issues that can arise for each combination.”

Email marketers that fail to account for the vagaries of rendering risk brand damage from broken designs and poor subscriber experiences from broken functionality."

Quoting again from this Press Release by Smith -Harmon Research Director Chad White

"The Fix- Luckily, the solution to the problem is quite simple. Just include the following immediately after the <body> tag within the HTML code for your emails:
<style>img {display: block;}</style>
Please note: You must place the <style> tag after the <body> tag instead of within the <head> section as normal web coding practice dictates. This is because Hotmail strips out any code within the <head> section.
While we usually discourage including CSS <style> definition tags in emails because of the limited support across webmail clients, in this case it’s a simple fix that will have no negative impact in any other email clients and will ensure your emails render correctly in Hotmail with Firefox."

Without this line of code they suggest extra spaces above or below images can occur. In my case I just saw a little extra subtle space but I looked through my hotmail inbox in Firefox and saw quite a few different things happening, including broken tables and major spaces that really pushed the content of the email down and looked funny. Check on yours and add that small line of text. It will be a great addition to your email code and be one more step in helping your email render properly.

 

We're excited to share the news that we're participating in our first-ever international conference, the Online Retailer Conference & Expo in Sydney, Australia, June 6 - 10, 2010.

Tom Funk will be a featured speaker in the Search and Email Marketing track. He may also participate in a panel discussion or offer live site critiques.

Conference organizer National Media made a big splash when it launched the Online Retailer conference series just last year: "As the first major business forum for the internet retailing and e-commerce industry in Australia, we received over 3,000 registrations," says event director Mark Harvey, "which led Online Retailer to debut as the second largest online retailing event in the world."

The 2010 event has been bolstered with the inclusion of an extra day, more international speakers, sessions, peer-to-peer roundtables, networking events and exhibitors. The Main Conference will be held over two days and feature over 50 education sessions across six themed learning tracks. A new one-day pre-conference intensive focused on search and email marketing has also been added to the overall program.

The Expo Hall will showcase the latest e-commerce technology and e-retailing solutions, and provide retailers with a venue to compare, evaluate and discuss their needs with leading e-commerce and digital marketing vendors.

Another key development for 2010 is the launch of the Online Retail Industry Awards (ORIA), an initiative to recognise and reward excellence in e-commerce retailing. The ORIAs are the only awards in Australasia to honour the top online and multichannel retailing performers and are already being described as a pivotal occasion in the progression of the e-retailing industry.

"For experienced online retailers or for those just breaking into to the world of e-commerce, Online Retailer 2010 will offer retail executives an unparalleled learning experience and the chance to leverage the collective knowledge of the e-retailing community." Harvey says.

According to Forrester Research, Australian online spending is expected to grow to $32 billion by 2012. The Australian Payments Clearing Association (APCA) has found that almost 50% of the country's total online spend goes toward international purchases. That, says Harvey, indicates that Australian retailers have some catching up to do in order to better compete in ecommerce. And that's an educational mission the Online Retailer conference aims to fulfill.

"It's unfortunate that the current lack of local big brand retailers selling online is forcing shoppers to buy from overseas competitors," he says. "We are some years behind the US and UK markets, when there is no reason why we should be."

Congratulations to our friends at The SCOOTER Store, which was named (for the second straight year) to Fortune magazine's list of "100 Best Companies to Work For."

"Celebrations are a way of life at this returnee to our list," writes Fortune, "from quarterly pep rallies to daily birthday parties. Forty percent of employees are salespeople who earn commissions based on their performance."

The SCOOTER Store ranked number 38 on the list. Founded in 1991 by Doug and Susanna Harrison, the company is based in New Braunfels, Texas, and had 2008 revenue of $332 million.

As its name implies, the SCOOTER Store specializes in electric mobility scooters for people with limited mobility. These scooters have brought more freedom and independence to millions of Americans; the SCOOTER Store alone served its 400,000 customer last year. The company specializes in Pride scooters and power chairs, EV Rider scooters, and Zipr scooters.

Timberline recently worked with Beau Ties of Vermont to relaunch its website on the CommerceV3 software platform.

Beau Ties began in 1993 as the bow tie experts, handmaking superior silk bow ties -- and later adding cummerbunds, ascots, and cravats to their product line. Now, some 100,000 customers later, they have obviously struck a nerve with "bow-tie deprived guys."

Congratulations to Bill Kennerson, Deb Venman, Justin Perdue and the rest of the Beau Ties crew on their great-looking new site.

Epik 1 is hosting another Web Analytics Wednesday event in Burlington, Vermont at 156 Bistro.