At Blue Acorn, we’re always looking at ways to be innovative in capturing online sales, and design plays a big role in those efforts.  As we continue to grow, we’re looking for a senior web designer to join our team that strives for greatness.  A talented, seasoned individual that can create compelling user experiences for our clients, and be an integral role in our pursuit of eCommerce sites that drive revenue.  This full time position will require a talented individual to work on cutting edge designs for a variety of clients. The ideal candidate will be able to take creative briefs and requirements, and deliver CSS/XHTML designs to be used in PHP based theming/templating. Design capabilities should be up to the level of sites featured on popular review sites such as CSSdrive.com, CSSbeauty.com, UnmatchedStyle.com, etc.

Blue Acorn is looking for a talented individual to join our team.  If you’re in the market, or if you know of anyone that might be interested, feel free to spread the word.  Now on to the posting…

eCommerce Consultant

Blue Acorn, a growing eCommerce consulting firm, is looking for an experienced eCommerce Consultant tasked with managing, and more importantly, growing several eCommerce websites.  This full time position allows motivated individuals to make a direct impact on the success of several important clients.  If you enjoy working in a competitive environment where your expertise and decisions will directly impact its success, this position will keep you challenged.

The primary role for the eCommerce Consultant position is to increase the traffic, conversions, and revenue for multiple online retailers.  These are not one-time contracts, they are ongoing engagements and as such the relationship maintained with our clients is of utmost importance.

Responsibilities:

• SEO
• PPC Management (SEM & Comparison Shopping sites)
• Conversion Optimization
• Analytics
• Online Marketing
• email Marketing

Requirements:

• Proven history of managing and executing several SEO campaigns.  Experience in all facets of SEO both onsite and offsite.
• Experience in managing marketing budgets with PPC/CPC online marketing campaigns and optimizing those campaigns for maximum ROI.
• Experience with email marketing services such as MailChimp, iContact, Constant Contact, etc.  Managing the entire life cycle of the email campaign – from inception, to planning, design, coding, execution, and tracking.
• Familiarity with Google Website Optimizer in creating, executing, and managing conversion optimization tests – A/B Split tests and multivariate testing.
• Strong understanding of web analytics data and KPIs, and specifically, how to drive strategic decisions based on this data.
• Web development capabilities utilizing html, CSS, and graphics
• Social Media management skills (Facebook, Twitter, etc)

Bonus:

• Advanced Web Development skill set (PHP, .NET, JS)
• Marketing / PR background
• eCommerce management experience
• Copywriting / Writing / Blogging
• Preference for local candidates, but will consider remote applicants

About Blue Acorn:

Blue Acorn is an eCommerce consulting firm located in Charleston, SC that works with online retailers to improve the revenue, and profitability through online retail sites.  We accomplish this through an array of services from design, development, SEO, conversion optimization, marketing, analytics, and more.  We work primarily with small businesses looking to take their site “to the next level” and focus on establishing long-term relationships with our clients.  Candidates interested in working at Blue Acorn can expect an innovative and collaborative work environment, with a work-hard, play-hard attitude (not to mention we’re 10 minutes from the beach)

To apply, please email your resume, portfolio, and salary requirements to jobs [at] blueacorn.com

Well, for those of you that are reading this on our site, you may have noticed our new and improved design (if you’re reading this through your feed, come on over and check it out). Hopefully, you enjoy it as much as we do. But really, this redesign was just a part of an overall re-branding effort we’ve been undertaking for the past six months. We decided to partake in these efforts not only to have a cool-looking new logo and website, but also to define who Blue Acorn is as a company.

As we’ve matured as a company, we’ve maintained a focus around our core values that we deliver through all of our services – quality of results, relationships built on trust, and success through diligence. As we continue to grow, we felt it was important to develop a brand that reinforced those values, and complemented our messaging. The Blue Acorn name certainly has significance that we’ve detailed previously, and we wanted to improve that to reflect the nature of the work that we do here.

You may have noticed some areas of the site are still a WIP – of which we’ll be addressing in the next few days. As well, you may notice some new areas to the site altogether. Primarily around our improved eCommerce services, and in particular our Magento Commerce services. We’ve had the pleasure to work quite extensively with Magento Commerce, as it continues to impress us with its capabilities. We’ve also decided to dedicate a Magento-specific blog on the site. It may be fairly empty now, but it will soon be filled with all kinds of juicy “Magento bits” that can help anyone from seasoned developers to Magento administrators. We also plan on developing enhanced functionality in a phase 2 enhancement to the site, so there’s still more to look forward to.

In addition to many of these changes to our brand and the site, the company itself went through some major changes, with a relocation from Atlanta, GA to beautiful, historic, Charleston SC. Technically speaking, our offices are located in Mt. Pleasant, right across the bridge (and closer to the beach) but we enjoy the amenities of both cities.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to officially announce that we’re on the lookout for an experienced eCommerce Consultant to join our team. I’ll update this post with links to the job postings when available, but if you know of anyone that might be interested, or if you yourself are interested, please get in touch.

We realize that over the past month or two the blogging has slowed due in part to our focus on getting this new design rolled out, but you can expect to resume our typical pace of about one entry a week for the eCommerce blog. We’ve also recently introduced ourselves to the twitter community and we encourage you to follow us on the Blue Acorn twitter account. If anyone has plans on attending IRCE this June in Boston, feel free to drop us a line and we’d love to connect at the conference. And of course, we love hearing feedback from any visitor to our site, be it a colleague, client, or if you just enjoy reading the articles – so don’t hesitate to chime in.

I’ve been on haitus for the past two weeks or so, between ramping up for a go-live on one of our eCommerce sites and the holidays its been a bit tough to get in front of the blog. I’ll have more information soon regarding the new site just launched and some of the preliminary results of the beginnings of our SEO efforts. Stay tuned for more.

As an eCommerce Consulting firm, Blue Acorn strives to achieve success for eCommerce merchants by critically assessing the features, functionality, and performance of retail websites. From time to time, we will be randomly selecting websites to feature in our Website Reviews category. So, here is our disclaimer: The owners of these websites have not been solicited, contacted, or informed of their inclusion of these reviews unless specifically noted in the review itself. The review is neither an endorsement nor a discouragement of the website being reviewed.

These websites are chose at random (as we come across them) to be used as examples to illustrate a particular point – be it a positive example or a negative one. If you would like your website featured in a review, please feel free to submit your website using the form below. If your website has been a featured eCommerce Review and you have any concerns, please contact us to address them.

The intention of this website is to provide resources to eCommerce website owners and managers that cover a variety of topics that affect to the world of eCommerce retailing. Over time, we’ll be covering a number of issues both from a business and technical perspective that affect eCommerce merchants. Whether you’re a “do-it-yourself” eCommerce manager, a business just starting out in eCommerce, or an individual looking for tips and advice on how to improve your existing retail website. Among the topics we’ll be covering:

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• Marketing & Public Relations (including PPC marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing, search engine marketing, offline marketing, public relations strategies, and more)
• Technical Issues (including programming technologies, shopping cart functionality, custom development, etc.)
• Design (web design, usability design, conversion optimization, logo design)
• Integrations (integrating your eCommerce website with backend office systems for streamlined framework)
• Business Issues (legal issues, business strategies, competitive strategies)
• Online retail topics (order fulfillment, purchasing, customer service)
• and anything else having an effect on the world of eCommerce

Due to the variety of topics that affect Internet retailing, our objective is to collect, research, and analyze in-depth information regarding each of these topics, but present them to you in a format that’s easy to understand, and more importantly, easy to act on. And while the information presented here is targeted towards Internet retailers, much of the subject matter will prove helpful in other areas as well. So, just because you may not be an Internet retailer, don’t rule yourself out just yet.

If you don’t know much about SEO for example (or are confused by the wealth information that you may come across), there are already numerous blogs out there that do a great job in handling the intricate details of that practice. We are not here to replicate their work, but what we will do is provide our own insight, our own examples, and provide real life situations of the application of SEO. We’ve owned eCommerce websites, we’ve spent the countless hours every week for years researching these topics, and we’ve learned a LOT along the way! But what we’ll try to do is save you some time in your efforts, time is money and you can spend 40+ hours a week for weeks researching SEO alone – but that leaves little time for everything else that affects your business. Because of the many factors that affect eCommerce merchants, there are so many things to look at, but such little time to do it. And on top of that, the playing field is constantly changing, what may be in today is old news tomorrow. We’re going to stay on top of the trends, the technologies, what’s hot, and what’s not. And we’re going to share that with you. Why? Because we’re a fan of the underdog, the go-getter, the do-it-your selfer. We want to help businesses succeed.

You’ll find that our articles will range from very the very basic, to very detailed. We want to provide a resource to all eCommerce merchants, from start-ups to heavy hitters. We promise we won’t discriminate (except maybe if you’re Wal-Mart). But at the end of the day, if you’re an eCommerce merchant, we’re here to help you. So, sit back, absorb some information, and jump in if you have a question – and of course, thanks for reading!