FEATURE ARTICLE

Master Your Domain... Name, That Is

MonsterCommerce Staffing up for Big 2006
Since its acquisition by Network Solutions, MonsterCommerce has been on the hunt for a few good men and women. To keep pace with projected growth and maintain its high customer service standards, MonsterCommerce is hiring at a blistering pace. Recently, 30 new people have joined the company, bringing the current staff to 120 team members. Over the first two quarters of 2006, MonsterCommerce will add more than 130 new employees - sixty of whom have already accepted offers to join the company over the next three months.

Google Analytics Spotlights MonsterCommerce Software
Google Analytics published a case study of MonsterCommerce client Urban Style Direct, pointing out how they increased revenue by an amazing 204% - fueled in part by MonsterCommerce's dynamically generated, search engine-friendly html catalogs.
Click Here to read more.

Congratulations to January's MonsterSellers
The MonsterSeller Award medal is given to those merchants who sell a specified number of products, within a month, through their MonsterMarketplace store listing. Their listing is marked with a Platinum, Gold or Silver medallion, which helps enhance credibility. Click here to view the MonsterSellers for January.

MonsterMarketplace Merchant Spotlight
Congratulations to Anthony Duncan and Billy Griggs for the success of their site, BarStoolSupercenter.com, which was featured as the
Merchant Spotlight for the month of February.
Read more about their achievements.

Take Five

This month's featured merchant is eFurnitureHouse.com eFurnitureHouse.com offers a variety of home furniture, including bedroom, dining, kids and game room furniture at discounted prices. Having been in the furniture business for over 15 years, the directors of eFurnitureHouse.com have a deep knowledge of products, quality control and furniture trends.

MonsterCommerce Merchant since: March, 2004

Owners: Univex International, Inc.

Best-Selling Product:
Bedroom Furniture

1. What is your favorite feature about your site right now?
   Our favorite feature about our website is the ease of navigation throughout the site. In our opinion, that is the most important feature.
   
   
2. What was one major obstacle to your store's success, and how did you overcome it?
   The major obstacle we faced was how to increase traffic to the website and how to improve our conversion rate. MonsterCommerce Web promotion services were very helpful in achieving our goals.
   
   
3. To what do you attribute most of your site's success?
   Our site's success is attributed to a great design team that takes into account our consumers' needs and requirements.
   
   
4. What is the best or most rewarding experience you've had so far selling online?
   My most rewarding experience selling online is when I receive a call from a skeptical buyer who has never purchased furniture online - and I'm able to convey the positives of buying online and turn this skeptical shopper into an actual buyer of our products.
   
   
5. What web sites or online tools or resources would you not be able to live without?
   Google, Yahoo, MSN are very important to our success. MonsterCommerce Product Options is the most important feature that we use that allows us to offer our products in a way the consumer can benefit from.
   

Industry News

• Online Identity Theft on the Decline
  A new study has found incidents of Internet-based fraud to be on the decline, and far outnumbered by the good old fashioned offline forms of fraud. In cases where the source of identity theft was known, only 9% were reported to be the result of online activities such as phishing or hacking.
  
  
• Online Shopping to Keep on Growing
  Good news, e-tailers! Fresh data from Jupiter Research suggests online retail sales will grow from $81 billion in 2005 to $144 billion in 2010. The report goes on to say that much of the growth will come from an increasingly savvy batch of existing online shoppers, rather than new buyers. These online shopping veterans will doubtlessly come to demand more and more from their e-shopping experience, increasing the challenges for merchants to improve... and improve some more.
  
  
• Searches up 55%, Guess Who Leads the Way?
  As if we didn't already know the importance of quality search engine rankings, new data from Nielsen/NetRatings reports that U.S.-based searches reached nearly 5.1 billion in December, up 55% from 3.3 billion searches in December '04. And, as you might have guessed, Google led the pack with 48.9% of those 5.1 billion searches.
  
  
• First Impressions are Important - and They Might Happen Faster Than We Think
  Canadian researchers have found that website visitors can gain a positive or negative impression of a site in a matter of milliseconds. Fairly trivial information, you might think, but the point is this: first impressions happen quick, and they count for a lot. Your site's design has a major influence on whether people perceive your content favorably. All the more reason to make sure your design is clean, aesthetically appealing, easy to navigate and e-commerce friendly.