Why We Love WordPress
For anyone in the world of blogging or e-commerce, WordPress is a pretty much a household name. What started as a great blogging platform has evolved into a full Content Management System (C...
The Instagram Impact 2: Getting Started with Instagram for Business
Last week’s blog, The Instagram Impact, gave an overview of Instagram, the photography based social media app that has hit the social networking scene with a big bang. This week, you’ll find...
New Year's Resolutions – Social Media, Blogging and More
It’s December 31st, 2012. Time to reflect upon the last 365 days of the year – what went well – and what we’d like to do differently. It’s time to write down on little pieces of paper our Ne...
The Instagram Impact
I admit it, I’m a big Facebook fan and I’m passionate about Pinterest, but now there’s a new social media kid on the block and I am only just beginning to imagine the impact of Instagram. Up...
Pinterest Gets Better For Business
A month ago, if a business wanted to take part in the social media sensation Pinterest, it was discouraged. The initial goal of Pinterest was to create a social network connecting people wit...
Locking Up Content in Facebook
Let me start by saying I love, love, love Facebook. However, there’s an alarming trend happening that I feel compelled to tell you about, which involves stores locking up all their content i...
Just Do It! (Making Blogging Easy)
Life is busy, we all know it. How do we find time to do things we want to do, much less the things we have to do – like blogging? A retailer’s life is beyond busy – there are always orders t...
ShopTab: Easily Post Your Products on Facebook
ShopTab is an easy to use service that helps you post your products on Facebook. This no-nonsense website allows you to submit your product catalog to Facebook using one of the following for...
Protecting Your Online Reputation
In the not-too-distant past, dare I say the 1990’s, the reputation of your retail business was driven mostly by word-of-mouth with real customers talking to their real friends about your s...
Pinterest for Retailers: How to Make the Most of Pinterest
Recently, I was having a conversation with friends regarding my latest obsession – Pinterest. It’s the latest rage in Social Media, and the fastest growing social platform on the web (over 1...
The Best Google Analytics Apps
Google Analytics (GA) is one of the most important weapons in your website arsenal. Watching and keeping up with the analytics of your site can be fun and beneficial to your online business....
Email Marketing: Simple Rules for Success
While our business is building e-commerce sites for specialty retailers, we’ve prided ourselves on the fact that we don’t stop there. We make it our business to understand all aspects of the...
The Key to Marketing: Fresh Fish Sold Here!
At Modern Retail we try to help our clients send the right marketing messages in the simplest way possible without doing so in an ordinary way. In doing this, I always use the “fresh fish s...
Search Engine Optimization for Retailers
I often get asked by retailers: “How do I show up higher in the free part of Google?”Showing up higher in Google’s organic search results can seem unobtainable to many retailers. When seekin...
The Facebook Economy
While approaching 7 million Facebook fans, Domino’s Pizza crosses the $1 billion mark in online pizza orders. What! Yes, you read that right, that’s a billion with a “b”. Not only that, t...
Google AdWords: Succeeding with your Brands
Online marketing can be a daunting task. How do you get the most bang for your buck, especially with a tight marketing budget? Google AdWords is one of the most popular, yet often misunderst...
SendGrid: Revolutionizing Email Delivery
Since 1998 we’ve sent email from our application using our own, very reliable, SMTP servers. And while it has worked great, it is nowhere near as robust as SendGrid, a cloud-based email deli...
Email is Marketing: Using Your Email Address to Reinforce Your Store Brand
As a business owner, if someone gave you the option to promote your brand daily with little or no extra cost or effort to you, would you do it? It’s surprising the number of retailers and ot...
Google Products No Longer Free
On May 31, 2012, Google dropped a bomb on specialty retailers announcing it would start charging stores for listing their goods on Google Products (also known as Google Product Search). Whil...
Reserving your Facebook "Username"
You’re about to order new business cards and catalogs for your retail store. You want to put your Facebook URL on them, but the ID is too long to fit on a 2”x3” card and looks too messy on y...