Having two good friends that are sports photographers (here and here.) I have come to learn the value of good camera equipment. Practical eCommerce magazine has a great article posted today about product images for your websites. This is a major issue that we deal with all the time. Your pictures sell your products. There is no doubt that poor grainy, unsharp photos will cheapen your site and your products no matter how great they are. Invest in quality equipment (camera and backdrops) or a service, if not your conversion rate will suffer.

Case in point – View an article by Bryan Eisenberg on how they increase conversation rates by 147%
http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/02/07/how-changing-your-product-image-can-boost-sales-by-147/

Check out the article here:
http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/524/Photography-More-Than-a-Decent-Camera/

Rand Schulman that is…. Our friend (and mentor) Rand was interviewed over at Stone Temple Consulting on the state of web analytics, his amazing background and the real low down on what happened at Web Side Story. As a former Web Side Story customer it was disappointing to see the mass exodus after the so called takeunder.

Read the whole story her:
http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-rand-schulman.shtml

Groove Commerce launched its own MySpace profile today… Check it out and add us if you dare! http://www.myspace.com/groovecommerce

I am a little behind on posting this… But we want to welcome three new members to Groove Commerce’s growing team…

John Richardson – Programmer/Analyst
John is a Computer Science graduate from UMBC who loves the water and the Eastern Shore.

Rob Spangler – Web Designer
Rob is a very talented standards based designer who comes to us from another local Baltimore firm. He is always prepared, but messes up free lunch days by packing his lunch.

Michael Calabrese – Web Marketing Associate
Mike is a graduate of Loyola College here in Maryland. Coming with a History Major, Mike developed a love for search and how it could impact business.

Welcome to the team guys – and good luck! Your going to need it.

Lee Odden over at he Top Rank Marketing Blog has a great post about the advantages of using an outside firm for ongoing SEO consulting. Lee listed five great points and we agree whole heartedly… The industry is changing at such quick intervals that is is important keep a consulting firm engaged in the process.

Check out Lee’s full post here

It appears Google will have a little competition for radio ad sales. Ebay has begun working with Bid4Spots to auction off radio airtime–directly competing with Google’s dMarc Broadcasting that sells ads on 674 Clear Channel stations. It will be interesting to see if eBay follows Google in all their ad sales systems. More information can be found here and here.