Small Business Ecommerce Link Digest – July 4, 2008

In honor of America’s birthday, we here at thinks are giving you a present. That’s right. All of the Friday link goodness, delivered right now. It’s a proud moment. For you. And for the United States of America.

OK, enough snarkery. On with the show.

• First up, the ever-wonderful FOT (that’s Friend of Thinks), Linda Bustos has not one, not two, but three separate articles this past week about images and conversion, starting with “Can Product Images Improve Conversion?. Part 2 asks “Do Customer Submitted Photos Add Value?”, while part 3 finishes up with an overview, “How Top Retailers Show Product Images”.
• And this isn’t just popular with the Divine Ms. B. The GrokDotCom gang also looks at how you can “Boost Conversions With Better Product Page Images”. Speaking from past experience, I’ve seen product images drive better conversion rate as well. Nice to see folks looking more closely at the subject.
• Now those images may do more than improve online conversion rate. They may also improve offline sales, too. Avinash Kaushik revisits a favorite topic with “Tracking Offline Conversions: Hope, Seven Best Practices, Bonus Tips”. You can read our past coverage here.
• Continuing the imagery theme, Search Engine Land has a great write-up comparing visual search engines called “Visual Search The Future? Spare Me The Eye Candy”
• And speaking of pictures, Seth Godin discusses great motion pictures with “Bravery and Wall-e”. Which is exactly where we’re going today. We hear it’s good.

Enjoy the holiday if you’re in the States. And enjoy your weekend if you’re not. See you all on Monday.

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