Michael Stearns
Since 1996 I have been co-owner of a web development company: Datahost, Inc. We are the developers of the MightyMerchant Ecommerce Platform, which gives small business owners all the tools they need to successfully run an online business. Our focus is on developing customized websites and content management systems, based on MightyMerchant that are tailored to a business owner's specific needs.
We also run HEROweb Marketing and Design, an Internet marketing company that closely complements MightyMerchant. We provide SEO/SEM services as well as a full range of management and development of Internet marketing and social media strategies.
We have a great following of customers in our local Eugene/Springfield area of Oregon. A larger percentage of our customer base is spread across the US. Our goal is to be an indispensable partner to each of our customers and help them grow their long-term business success. Email Michael.
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Conversion
Using Google Website Optimizer for A/B Testing
December 6, 2011 • Michael Stearns
Give yourself a pat on the back if you have developed an ecommerce business with a steady flow of orders. Perhaps you have had success with search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, and social media. When you are ready to accelerate your business, however, A/B and multivari...
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Conversion
9 Pointers for Selling Common Products
September 7, 2011 • Michael Stearns
Five or ten years ago you might have been one of the only kids on the ecommerce block selling automotive tools, pool supplies, specialty fabrics, or a myriad of other niche products. But competition has increased and the "big-box" retailers continue to extend their online reach. How ca...
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Conversion
Integrating Educational Content into Your Ecommerce Site; 10 Pointers
August 3, 2011 • Michael Stearns
The ecommerce landscape continues to get more competitive. It is becoming increasingly difficult to base your success simply on having a site with great products and no other content. You ...
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Conversion
Using Amazon to Grow Your Ecommerce Business; 6 Tools
July 11, 2011 • Michael Stearns
Amazon.com is no longer a brazen ecommerce start-up. It has grown into the leading online retailer. And it evolved its platform to provide tools and technologies for other businesses to use. There are so many of these tools, in fact, it's hard to keep them straight. But I'll review six ...
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Analytics & Data
Transitioning to the New Google Analytics
June 8, 2011 • Michael Stearns
In May 2011, Google launched a new version of Analytics. This new version 5 is good news for power users, as it makes many of the advanced features Google has been developing over the past few years more accessible. If you still feel a bit overwhelmed with the range of options that Goog...
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Technical SEO
How to Increase Page Speed and Help Search-Engine Rankings
May 11, 2011 • Michael Stearns
In the spring of 2010, Google announced it would factor page speed more heavily into its search ranking algorithm. "Faster sites create happy users," Google stated in the blog post describing the algorithm change. Your ability — as an ecommerce merchant — to improve your site's speed d...
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Design & Development
Denial-of-Service Attack: Steps to Prevent, Defend
April 6, 2011 • Michael Stearns
If you own an ecommerce website, about the last place you want to find yourself is on the receiving end of a distributed denial of service — DDoS — attack. A DDoS attack involves a malicious person(s) flooding a computer network or web server with so much traffic that it no longer func...
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Conversion
Managing Google Product Feeds in Google Merchant Center
February 17, 2011 • Michael Stearns
Google Product Search — formerly known as Froogle and Google Base, and sometimes known as Google Shopping — has grown in importance as a key source of orders and revenue for ecommerce businesses. Don't let the "beta" label on the Google Product Search main page fool you; this is a prim...
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Design & Development
6 Reasons to Use URL Redirects
November 10, 2010 • Michael Stearns
A URL redirect is a mapping from one web page address to another. You can set it up on your web server or even in the source of a web page that you have created. You don't need to be at technical whiz to run a successful ecommerce business, but redirects are one of those small technical...
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Marketing & Advertising
Google Instant Search: The Impact for Ecommerce Site Owners
September 9, 2010 • Michael Stearns
This week Google rolled out Instant Search, a revolutionary AJAX-based technology that dynamically updates the search results page as users type in each character of their queries. Instant Search changes the fundamentals of how a user will search on Google. The introduction of Instant S...
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Conversion
10 Holiday Ecommerce Pitfalls
August 5, 2010 • Michael Stearns
Holiday sales are vitally important for most ecommerce businesses. And yet, in my years of helping hundreds of merchants, I've seen them frequently make the same mistakes that negatively impact a successful holiday sales season. Here's my list, updated for 2010, of common pitfalls to a...
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Conversion
The Case for Launching Sub-Niche Websites
July 8, 2010 • Michael Stearns
One strategy to grow your ecommerce revenue is to spin-off a subset of your product line onto its own website. With this "sub-niche" website, you can focus your branding, ads, and presentation to the customer who is looking for what you have to offer. This is not a strategy for the eco...
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Design & Development
Ten Steps to Migrate Your Site to a New Ecommerce Platform
June 7, 2010 • Michael Stearns
A milestone in the growth of your ecommerce business is when you realize you have outgrown your current web platform and need to upgrade. Maybe you nailed it the first time around and picked a terrific, scalable platform. But oftentimes, first-time site owners opt for the low cost, set-...
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Conversion
Six Causes for Disappearing Ecommerce Sales
May 5, 2010 • Michael Stearns
A sudden stoppage in online sales can be scary. Hopefully you haven't experienced this scenario. But if you have, you know that empty feeling when your orders cease to arrive in your inbox. What to do? As in any time of crisis, take a deep breath, stay calm, and then get down to busines...
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Marketing & Advertising
Video Strategies to Increase Your Site’s Exposure
April 1, 2010 • Michael Stearns
The cost of producing and deploying a reasonably high-quality video has dropped dramatically. Most every ecommerce business owner would therefore be smart to consider working video into his or her marketing mix. Assuming you can overcome the initial hurdles of video creation, let's look...
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Conversion
Ten Google Services to Help Your Ecommerce Business
March 2, 2010 • Michael Stearns
If you are an ecommerce merchant, your business likely cannot survive without search engine exposure through Google. But Google has over one hundred other services and products that have blossomed from its core web search tool. Just keeping up with the names of these products is challen...
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Conversion
Google Analytics: Use Profile Filters, Advanced Segmentation to Understand Your Visitors
February 4, 2010 • Michael Stearns
The first stage of using Google Analytics effectively is to regularly check your core numbers, such as visits, the bounce rate, referrers, and sources. For small business owners, consistent monitoring can provide a reasonably clear idea of what is happening on your site. But when maximi...
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Conversion
Google Analytics on a Tight Schedule
November 12, 2009 • Michael Stearns
Google Analytics is a powerful website statistics program and a good resource for ecommerce merchants. But it can be difficult for a small business owner to keep up with his or her stats and make sense of the wealth of information available. Here's how to maximize your use of Google An...
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Conversion
Six Success Factors for Small Ecommerce Businesses
September 30, 2009 • Michael Stearns
Many small ecommerce businesses are one-to-five person shops whose income is derived solely from their websites. As the ecommerce world evolves and becomes more sophisticated, however, success for these smaller merchants has become more challenging. Through the past year, certainly a ...
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Conversion
Tagging URLs for Better Tracking in Google Analytics
July 16, 2009 • Michael Stearns
If you use Google Analytics, you have likely experienced its value in understanding your shoppers and how they interact with your site. But there are deeper levels of understanding to attain. If you start tuning the data you feed to Google Analytics by "tagging" your URLs, you can gener...
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Conversion
Increase Conversion Rates by Identifying Funnels and Goals
June 3, 2009 • Michael Stearns
Let's assume you have an ecommerce website and you have been successful in getting traffic to it. A next logical step is to focus on your conversion rate and determine what you can do to improve it. To do this, glean clues about user behavior by analyzing the conversion and abandonment ...
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Conversion
Using Google Analytics for Keyword Segmentation and In-Depth Analysis
April 7, 2009 • Michael Stearns
Google Analytics provides a wealth of information. But many GA account holders do little beyond viewing their site's daily traffic and trying to understand terms like "bounce rate." In this article, we will learn to segment data in GA to determine the number of paying customers enterin...
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Conversion
Conversion Improvements: A Primer for Getting Started
March 3, 2009 • Michael Stearns
The ecommerce business is partly a numbers game. And the object of the game is to increase your sales and profitability. You need to understand how your site's visitors are converted to buying customers. Not that you need to immerse yourself in the minutiae of data that many web statist...
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Conversion
Holiday Marketing: What About “Talk Like a Pirate” Day?
February 25, 2009 • Michael Stearns
If you think holiday marketing begins on Halloween and ends on New Year’s Day, think again. The prime holiday marketing season actually begins on January 1st, and doesn’t stop. For a retailer, gift-giving occasions throughout the year shouldn’t be overlooked. There’s Easter, St. Patrick...
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Conversion
Monitor “Bounce Rates” to Improve Conversion Ratios
January 22, 2009 • Michael Stearns
An effective web page draws visitors in and keeps them there. When the Internet was new, people would surf from site to site just for the fun of discovery. Today’s Internet users are much more sophisticated. They know what they are looking for and want to find it quickly. If they don’t ...
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Design & Development
Video Usage: Simple Steps to Getting Started
January 21, 2009 • Michael Stearns
The time is right to start using video to assist with marketing and to better demonstrate your products. Improvement in connection speeds and web video streaming technologies, as well as a growing demand from users to get richer product data, all combine to make this a big year for web ...
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Product Pages
Product Pages: 6 Tips to Transform Them Into Sales Magnets
December 4, 2008 • Michael Stearns
Oftentimes a site owner will pour his heart into a home page. And this is rightly so. If a shopper isn't hooked on your home page, he or she will likely exit before taking a look at what you have to offer. But if you are an ecommerce site owner, save a little mojo for your product pag...
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