Starting today, the ShopLocal team is proud to announce a much improved way of supporting our partners and retailers that use one or more of ShopLocal’s active APIs.  Instead of sending members of our development community overwhelming 100+ pages of technical API documentation, the team will now be granting access to an online Wiki style site called the ShopLocal Developer Center.

If you are a current development partner or in the process of evaluating a ShopLocal API, please send an email to apisupport@shoplocal.com and someone from the team will get you setup with the required access.

The vision of the ShopLocal Developer Center is to hold a developer’s hand when first being introduced to a ShopLocal API so as to make it easier for them to develop their own unique applications with these powerful web services ShopLocal offers. With this goal in mind, the team has added some additional resources to the ShopLocal Developer Center that were never previously available which include:

• API Examples – sample iPhone and Banner ad application with more examples coming soon
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) based on real world usage from ShopLocal’s own Client Services group
• Data Dictionary – to define ShopLocal nomenclature that is foreign to an external user, e.g. what a listing means, interest threshold exposure, etc.

The team also spent some serious time in revamping the technical documentation for the following APIs:

• SmartDelivery API (SDAPI)
• SmartBrand API (SBAPI)
• ShopLocal CrossRetailer API (SCRAPI)
• Local Offer Management System API (LOMSAPI)

Each API method for all of the APIs above now contains complete and standardized  information including a:

• Short description of the API call (method) and how it can be used
• Required parameters
• Conditional parameters
• Optional parameters
• URL example to show the syntax of correctly constructed API call
• Data outputs (fields that are returned by call)
• Data output example (XML return examples)

Online advertising is great for reaching new customers, but it is not without an ongoing cost component.  The model going forward suggest that a marketer should pay once for the new customers (acquired through digital ads) and then engage them in a series of ongoing “free” conversations.  The goal of this post is to present a top 10 list of very inexpensive technologies to make your web site more sticky so as to convert one-time visitors into repeat users.

1. Social Bookmarking Buttons

Both browser based bookmarking features (like the ‘bookmark this page’ on Shopping.com) and social bookmarking buttons (made easy these days from companies like AddThis.com) offer your users the ability to very easily grab a site or piece of content and either remember it for later use or share it with the community at large.

2. RSS Feeds

Every page, view or area of your site should have an accompanying RSS feed enabled. This allows users to again take just the specific slice of content that interest them and subscribe to it. By encouraging users to subscribe to your content, it changes the model of driving people to your site to rather pushing content to your customers. Pull vs. push where pull is expensive (search, display, etc) and push is free (RSS, emails, etc). One tip is to make sure to ‘burn’ (via Feedburner) any and all feeds so that there is some measurement available.

3. Email A Friend | Print This Page | Send To Phone

Help make it easy for a user to take content with them.  By creating ways for users to port out information from that big ugly black box on their desk (eg their PC), it opens up new doors for extending your interactions with that customer beyond the browser and your site.  Again, every item, view and area of your site should allow for the following three actions whenever practical:

• Printing the user’s view in a printer friendly manner
  • Example: JCPenney
• Sending a real-time email to yourself or friends of that view or information
  • Example: The Home Depot
• Sending a real-time SMS text message to your self or friends’s mobile phone
  • Example: Office Depot

4. Wigetize Key Content

Are you seeing a theme yet? Allowing users to take with them the information they find useful in a manner that the user chooses.  Widgets are just another tactic at achieving the ‘freeing your content’ strategy.  By turning to one of the big widget providers (WidgetBox, Gigya or Clearspring), nearly any flash movie, RSS feed, JS/HTML or web page can be turned into a snaggable, portable widget for free in a few minutes. There is no reason not to take the most interesting, highly requested information on your site and package it up in a way that allows your users to take it with them.

5. Lists / Collections

Pen and paper are so tired. Out with the old and in with virtual lists and collections.  By encouraging users to gather up items of interest in one place, it opens up a number of really cool possibilities for these user generated collections of items.  Like sending your wish list to a friend or creating a wedding gift list and sharing it with your family or having your friends comment on your list.  The best examples of lists are:

• Amazon Wish List
• Polyvore
• TargetLists
• Kaboodle Collections (called StyleBoards)

6. Integrations to 3rd Parties

You can’t win the war without allies.  Your users are a lot of other web site’s users as well. We all share them to some degree.  So get your content within their sites.  The new buzz word behind this concept is ‘application’  Whether it is a Facebook, MySpace or (the newest entrant) LinkedIN application, extending the reach of your content and brand into the sites where your users are interacting is a great way to tap into an audience for next to no costs.

7. Open APIs / Web Services

There is no better example of how effective opening up the doors to your back end data marts can be other than Amazon.  I cannot tell you how many mashup apps I have seen or spots where Amazon content is included due to enablement that a well written and deployed web service can bring.  This is a must have conversation within retailers today.  Partners are desperate on how to integrate and being closer and a well build API can be just the ticket.  It really is amazing all the uses and applications that just come out of the wood work once an API is live.  More than any initial business case will ever contain.  This may take a little act of faith to trust that there is real value here and some hard fought battles to get people comfortable with the loss of direct control of their content.  The motto for APIs is, “If you build, the developers will come.”

8. Create Some Content In A Wiki Format

People love to feel like their voice can be heard and that they can contribute to the greater good.  It is time that retailers tap into this collective power that their users have and open up some ways to allow content generation and editing.  Shopwiki has build a business on this single principle, with their competitive difference coming solely on the wiki content that wraps their spidered results.  Typical starting places these days are commenting and reviews, but the really golden alter is going all the way to wiki-type pages where all the content is up for grabs, not just a little slice.

9. Use Linkbaiting Techniques By Creating Specific Content That Is Buzzworthy

Give the web world a reason to notice you.  One crafty way that has proven effective is to create small nuggets of content that is news worthy.  The goal here is for one of these linkbait specific stories to get picked up by a user and added into the social network vortex of sites like Digg.com or Facebook and if your lucky, get noticed / voted / ranked high enough to generate a huge wall of incoming traffic back to your web site.  This seems like a somewhat junior and low-class tactic, but it really works, often to the tune of 20,000 – 40,000 additional visitors to your web site for just one linkbait story that makes the front page of Digg.com for example.  Below are a few typical types of linkbait stories to consider creating:

• Top Ten Lists
• News hook
• Contrary / rants hook
• Resource hook
• Humor hook
• Quizzes / Polls
• Stats / Research (amazing claims)

10.Richness of Overall Site Experience

Drum roll please.  Wait a second, the finale is really anti-climatic.  All of these techniques described are all in vain if your overall website does not offer good content and a user experiences that gives a visitor a reason to come back.  Bolting on a bunch of viral, social and sticky features is only ‘putting lipstick on a pig’ as my friend Eric would say.  There are no shortcuts to the blocking and tackling of nailing down a solid site wide experience.  Once that is achieved, then these more advanced tactics can really be unleashed in their most effective manner.