Great E-Commerce Composure Example

I recently wrote Annie Chun about some soup.

Dear Annie Chun,

 

I recently visited your website and have to say that it is quite nice.  I am in the middle of a debate about your Annie Chun’s Korean Kimchi Noodle Soup – With Shitake Mushrooms, and would like to know why I should follow the Best By date on your food.  There is no answer to this on your website that I could find that would tell me why your product would lose quality, value, or taste after this aforementioned date of 19 May 2009.

 

Waiting to eat my soup,   

TurkReno

So, I’d like for you to voice your opinion on why you should not eat expired foods.  I’ve found a few different articles on the internet, such as:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt93964.html

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090407133334AAlDfLG

There is a lot to learn here.  I really like Annie Chun’s site.  It’s very well built and extremely well composed (minus the fact that I couldn’t find the answer to my question even after I searched and looked through the FAQ.)

Post some other good examples of sites with good composure and your thoughts on expired foods.

Update (06/17/09) – I recently got an e-mail back from Annie Chun! Yes!  Here’s basically what they had to say:

Thank you for purchasing Annie Chun’s Kimchi Soup Bowl. Although it is unlikely that you will get sick from eating an expired shelf stable product, we do not guarantee the flavor of the product after the expiration date.

Please let us know if you have any additional questions or concerns. We appreciate your support and hope to hear from you again in the future. 

Happy Eating!

Annie Chun’s Inc.

Ok, Annie Chun!  We appreciate it and will completely indulge ourselves in your Kimchi Noodle Bowl until the end of time!

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Do Affiliate Sales From ShareASale Help or Hurt Your Business

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I continue to see places like ShareASale and ClickBank throughout the Net.  I wanted to test the idea.  I started advertising on my network, trying to sell their affiliates services such as PC Universe, Vanns, and a few lower ranked affiliates.  I ran most ads that I put up for over 90 days on sites that have anywhere from 200 to 1,000 unique visits a day and saw absolutely NOTHING in return.  The first thing that I start asking myself is “Did I target to the right audience”, and the answer is “Yes, I did.”  The second thing I start asking myself is “Was my website live and accessible”, and the answer again is “Yes”.  Where did I go wrong?

Part of the way these affiliate sales companies try and get you to put their services on your site is by telling you that you will have a cookie on whomever clicks on the ad, tracking them for a certain period of time (30 days, 90 days, 365 days).  So, if I click on this ad, I’m being tracked?  The answer for most ads is yes.  But, how effective is that if I’m paranoid and delete my browser cache all the time?  Not at all effective.

So even though I didn’t make jack for advertising these products and services, I start wondering if it helped my SEO or traffic on my site?   To make this a fair controlled test, I didn’t advertise these products on any place other than my web site, I didn’t start any sort of obnoxious campaign on any social news sites, and I made sure that I was tracking with Google Analytics, Compete, and my hosting provider.

One site saw no increase in traffic, made no sales, had no ads clicked, and still is a loss leader.

Another site that had over 1,000 visitors a day, was paired with a similar selling product, had a dozen clicks on the ad still made no sales at all.

On both ends of the spectrum for loss leaders and high traffic sites, there was no difference.  In the end, I think these are just marketing scams.  The only way that I would consider doing this again, and would suggest doing this again for anyone, is if you have direct access to PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Ads that you could run.  This ensures that you’re going to be making some sort of money.  Otherwise, don’t waste your time.

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