Avinash Kaushik is the author of the recently published book Web Analytics: An Hour A Day published by Wiley in May 2007 and the founder of Market Motive, a Silicon Valley startup that focuses on online marketing education.

He is also the Analytics Evangelist for Google, and a frequent speaker at industry conferences in the US and Europe, such as eMetrics summits, Ad-Tech, Web 2.0 Expo and SES.

I was delighted when Avinash agreed to do this interview since he is so well known in the web analytics field and I am a huge fan of his web analytics blog: Occam's Razor.

From the interview with Avinash Kaushik:

"Don't obsess about your home page. You don't control your home page anymore, Google does, Yahoo! Does, MSN does. Treat the top 50 Entry Pages on your website as the home page of your website and make sure they are communicating effectively what you are about.

No matter how hard you try your overall conversion rate for the website will be around 2%. You could focus on getting that 2% to 2.1% or you could focus on getting most people on your site (who are not there to buy) to be happy and satisfied. Consider broadening the scope of what you decide for (BUY NOW!), it is the right long term strategic thing to do."

Please share your tips and tricks, experiences or observations by posting your comments on this interview.

Read the full interview

How to Maximize Sales with Localized Content

How can you increase your software sales? Well, one of the benefits of electronic software delivery is that business is cross countries, which means you can access a large mass of potential buyers all over the world. We've come to know however, that globalization is not the answer but rather the tool to expand your target. The answer is localization.

• Multilanguage order interface
• Client support
• Local currency payments
• Localized content on website
• Your product: localized software
• Your people: feel the market

Here is the guideline.

I just got back from ISDEF Autumn Conference (I really enjoyed the people there, all very friendly). I had a presentation: "Affiliates vs Resellers, which one to choose?", a question I receive quite often from the software vendors I talk to. It seems that the subject caught on and animated the audience, that's way I wanted to share with you (for the ones that were not at this year's ISDEF) the presentation. Here are some of the key points of the paper:

• Major differences and similarities between Affiliates and Resellers - how they look and act, how you can find them, what you need to start to work with them, what you should expect (efforts, investments, sales)
• Which one to chose: affiliates or resellers?

Feel free to download the presentation and send me your feedback at . I will gladly answer to any question. So: which one do you choose: Affiliates or Resellers?

IT Conversations

IT Conversations is a place where gurus from software industry talk and share experience, a conversation network channel as the title says. If spending time on such a web site you have access to a number of shows that deal with free and open source software (Open Source Conversation Section), you listen interviews with innovators from the software world (Interviews with Innovators Section), you have the chance to find out more about a book that you liked and discuss it with the author (Book It! Section) and so on. Check also their dedicated web sites for Social Innovation Conversations and Media Conversations.

Catalyze

It is a cool place to hang out when you want to stay in touch with latest trends in the software industry in terms of usability, design and content architecture. The site is featuring forums, resources and blogs where people debate on various software matters, especially regarding ways to make software more user-friendly.

Avangate Digest September edition, has announced a new resource section moderated by Bogdan Popescu, member of the web marketing team.

In these times, when facts are certainly more important than promises, if you have an online business, one of the most important matters that you should give due consideration is online credibility: you have to persuade web visitors that there is truly something worth behind a good-looking, usable website: you have to convince visitors that the image you try to promote is trustful and that you intend to keep your promises as you say in your web advertisements.

The aim of this paper is to provide site owners with some hints about how they can gain more credibility and consequently, have more visitors or sell more (if it is the case).

Download white paper and enjoy reading about how to build your web site credibility.

European Software Conference - November 3-4,Cologne, Germany

The event is organized by ESWC, a non-profit association dedicated to providing educational opportunities to shareware authors. The purpose of the conference is to help develop relationships between shareware authors, companies distributing shareware products and companies that provide services to developers. It is an annual event, first held in 2001 in Germany that has now reached its 7th edition.

Internet Marketing Conference - November 29-30, Stockholm, Sweden

We are facing a two days internet marketing conference which goes on both Europe and United States and was first organized in 2000 in Copenhagen. It covers search engine marketing and other online business strategies. Some of the topics that will be debated this year at Stockholm during 29 - 30th November are: Universal Search, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Content, Competitive Intelligence, Digital Strategy, A/B testing, Benchmarking, Entrepreneurship and much more.

The cost to attend both days of IMC Stockholm 2007 is 9,995 SEK (~ 1559 $) and for a one-day ticket is 5,995 SEK (~ 935 $)

I bet you will find at least one new idea from the articles below.

Article Marketing Benefits
"Selecting a good topic, writing original content, using appropiate and effective keywords are just a few tips on how to write good articles. Some insights about article marketing with its PROs and CONs..."

Tips for Growing Your Newsletter Subscribers List
"The newsletter can be considered one of the best email marketing strategies... but it's more than just sending mails to a subscribers list. An article that offers tips on how to take most advantages of this marketing tool..."

Getting Ready to Participate to a Software Conference
"Software Business Conferences are a great opportunity of establishing connections and meeting face-to-face clients you already have but have never had the chance to personally talk to. If such an event might have seemed rather difficult to prepare, you weren't far from the truth. Software conferences need as much preparation as any other conference. But all your efforts will be rewarded..."

Affiliate Stress
"The most common questions you will find on any affiliate forums are around the ways of getting some sort of success in affiliate marketing: getting visitors to the site, convert them into sales or increasing the volumes. An article revealing 7 tips to deal with the affiliate marketer stress..."