In these days of Web 2.0 the proliferation of social networking sites and the explosion of the number of e-commerce operators on the internet has made it harder for gadget shop owners and eBay electronic gadget sellers to keep up to date with the latest gadget and ecommerce developments and make their site sticky to develop a loyal customer base.
A good option to consider may be the use of a RSS feed. A web 2.0 format that keeps netizens up to date with recent developments on the internet and helps webmasters everywhere develop an online community that is more loyal than has ever been possible.
It didn't seem so long ago that keeping up to date with the latest hi tech gadgets and cool spy gadgets was no problem at all. There were only a handful of gadget sites out there and, with even fewer blogs to monitor; keeping up to date with the latest gadgets and inventions was easy.
Keeping customers loyal was also not a problem as there was a good chance there were only a handful of similar sites on the internet offering similar products making it very easy to differentiate yourself from your competitors. There were probably even only a handful of gadget shops selling gadgets for men.
Unfortunately those days have changed.
As of May 2008 there were 3000 gadget blogs alone registered on popular blog aggregate Technorati with the website announcing it had indexed 100 million blogs in December 2007.
So what does that mean for you the gadget shop owner or eBay gadget reseller? What it means is that there's more to sort through to get product ideas and more competitors for your customers' attentions and disposable incomes.
This is where RSS will be invaluable for your business.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a format which webmasters and content creators use to create bulletin-like 'feeds' which are sent out to subscribers when the webmaster's site is updated or a new story is added.
RSS feeds make unnecessary trips to another gadget website almost non existent as the gadget shop and blogs on new gadget will let you know when they update their site. You can also use it yourself to keep your customers informed when you add the latest hi tech gadgets or spy gadgets for sale to your site.
Setting up a RSS feed for your site and getting RSS feeds from a gadget shop or blog on the future gadgets, strange gadgets or high tech spy gadgets to buy couldn't be easier. Popular blog aggregator, Icerocket.com, offering a free RSS creation service.
Once you have set up the service it is important to remember that RSS feeds are short by nature and only contain text, or hyperlink text. So it is important to include an enticing title and make sure your first two or three sentences are something that will make people want to visit the page.
Receiving RSS feeds is also a relatively easy task to accomplish with a wide number of RSS feed readers being available. In fact all that needs to be done is to set up a RSS reader and subscribe to the RSS feeds you are interested in.
Some of the more free web-based readers are Google Reader, My Yahoo, Bloglines and Newsgator. They all are extremely easy to sign up to and mostly look and operate much like email accounts like Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail.
The next step is to subscribe to feeds from gadget shops and blogs on home gadgets that are guaranteed to keep you ahead of your competitors with stock.
This can be done any number of ways depending on which feed reader and which internet browser you are using.
You can search on the readers themselves for relevant feeds. However this is likely to leave you with a large number of USB gadgets, computer gadgets and cool spy gadgets blogs to keep checking up on.
If the home gadgets website has a RSS subscription button on its news page designed for your chosen reader then you won't have any problem subscribing. All you need to do is to click on the button and follow the steps.
You could also click on the RSS button and copy the URL from the page of code that opens (the URL will probably contain the code XML or feed). You should then paste it into the 'add feed' dialog box in your RSS reader.
Flock or Firefox browsers make adding RSS feeds extremely easy. All you need to do is to click on the RSS link at the top of the page beside the URL bar and another window will open, letting you set up a feed directly in your browser.
So why don't you strengthen your connection to the web. Set up a RSS reader and subscriptions and set up your own RSS feed to help make your gadget shop a stronger, stickier site with more cool new gadgets and hot gadget gifts than your competitors.
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Rose Li is the PR Manager for Chinavasion... the premier source of information on importing wholesale electronics from China.
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