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Posts Tagged ‘ecommerce’
Three Easy Pieces to Achieve Greater Customer Satisfaction
Friday, September 11th, 2009
In the first half of this year, I talked about retailers revamping their marketing mix in the wake of the 2008 holiday season. Now as we approach another holiday season, online retailers have the benefit of knowing more about how their customers react and respond in tough economic times. Now is the time to harness that awareness and strengthen your bonds with customers. Whether you are a marketer, or business owner who wears the marketer hat, you can introduce some new ways to deepen the customer connection.
Expand beyond the walls of your website: September signals a flurry of activity running the gamut from back-to-school functions to various business networking forums. So take this approach and apply it to the online world. For example, many retailers are developing portable widgets that link to their content and services and finding other “outposts” across the web to place the widgets. In addition, the concept of an app store, such as the Conduit Marketplace, is one venue that allows businesses such as eMusic, Cartoon Doll Emporium and Pretentious Pooch to distribute their content and services beyond the walls of their websites. Customer acquisition and overall satisfaction get a boost with this expanded online presence, as more and more customers laud the efforts of retailers who develop convenient applications to meet their needs.
Make information easy to access: Time and again, one popular method retailers use to try to keep consumers satisfied is discounts. Once you understand your customers’ needs and the factors driving their decisions, you need to alert them to the promotion without spending so much time and money doing so that it drains your coffers. Savvy online shoppers know to search for coupons and promotions on sites such as RetailMeNot and A Thrifty Mom. As a matter of fact, these sites have even created customized applications on which shoppers can receive updates via their browser. These sites go the extra mile to be on the same page as consumers by not only lending a virtual helping hand with coupons and discount codes, but also providing a simple conduit to the information their users covet.
Provide convenient forums for feedback and questions: Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter offer another means to gather feedback and answer questions about your company and products. Don’t be shy about utilizing these avenues, but you must plan to be diligent about updating and responding so that negative comments don’t go unanswered. If you decide to create a business Twitter persona, or already have one, decide whether the primary function will be to serve as help desk or a personality that provides color and commentary within your industry. Then make sure that you have a consistent voice as you disseminate messages and responses. Make sure you aggregate all of your social networking tools on your website and create a conduit to customers with a branded community toolbar. Pretentious Pooch, an upscale pet supply store based in Baltimore, is a great example of a small retailer that has been able to deploy social media, content, and e-commerce in a single location to drive loyalty and sales.
Adam Boyden is president of Conduit.
Mobile Rules of the Road for E-Retailers
Thursday, July 16th, 2009
Mobile devices like the iPhone and G1 are letting consumers take advantage of the growing number of high-speed networks, an opportunity that e-commerce retailers are recognizing as users are increasingly using websites for shopping from mobile devices. Some people are even using their mobile devices as their primary online browser.
Any retailer looking to the growing mobile audience for new revenue should deliver shopping sites that are mobile friendly. This means paring back content – or re-organizing it – so that users can access relevant items more easily.
While wireless devices have come a long way, their screen size limits what can be displayed and still be read by the average user. Features such as panning and zooming can only compensate so much for the smaller real estate available on handhelds.
Most websites are still using cascading stylesheets (CSS) optimized for personal computers. Designing and embedding CSS specifically for mobile users will help ensure that the user experience on handheld devices is high quality. The CSS Mobile Profile 2.0 developed by the W3C (the standard-setting World Wide Web Consortium) is now available, giving retailers a widely supported standard to follow.
Other common shopping features, such as large tables of product images and Flash animation, also need to be rethought. Just a decade ago, many websites were built successfully without these features. As screen resolutions and bandwidth grew, these were added to create richer online experiences. Handheld devices may not support all of these technologies, so the emphasis should be placed on simplicity, clarity and speed. And make sure that commonly accessed features, such as viewing the shopping cart are readily reachable.
While the technical aspects of mobile are important to consider, retailers must also focus on marketing fundamentals, such as understanding the needs of this changing audience. Research and analysis on what users want and how they want to interact with your site are critical. One quick tip: use the mobile device itself to gather research information, rather than relying solely on traditional research channels.
Retailers that can use messaging, web content, e-mail, and social networking in an integrated fashion, centered on the handheld device, let users engage with their brands. A basic practice: rather than just asking for e-mail addresses on your sites, permit users to give you addresses for text messages as well, and let them know about special mobile content.
One last piece of advice: do not let mobile marketing become a new outlet for spam. Mobile devices give unprecedented access to retail customers; respecting your customers’ time will lead to longer, two-way relationships.
David King is CEO of Fulcrum, a leader in advanced analytics, technology and multichannel program solutions for marketing.
Landing Page Neglect – Are You Losing Money?
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
In the online marketing world, a lot of time and resources are spent buying media, tracking pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, driving organic traffic via search engine optimization (SEO), and installing and customizing web analytics software to properly track all online marketing activities.
Dedicated in-house or agency staff craft keyword lists, write ad copy and manage keyword bidding to achieve the proper profitability, cost per action (CPA) and return on investment (ROI). Copywriters adjust our sales copy to improve click-through rates (CTR).
But we’ve almost completely ignored our website and landing page. Sure, we occasionally do facelifts, or even wholesale redesigns of our sites. But these changes are rarely tested and are simply assumed to improve the situation. They are just a cost of doing business.
Missed Opportunity
In almost every other area, performance is scrutinized under a microscope as we drill down on mind-numbingly detailed reports. Once someone converts, extensive retention e-mail campaigns are set in motion to persuade visitors to deepen their level of engagement.
We worry about every single word in our e-mails as we test headlines and offers. We analyze “bounce rates,†“open rates†and “unsubscribe rates†with almost religious fervor in order to extract the last penny of revenue and profit possible over the lifetime of our interaction with someone.
Even though we spend obscene amounts of money to buy traffic, the effort devoted to the landing pages to which that traffic is sent is negligible. A couple of hours of a graphic designer’s and copywriter’s time are often all that the landing page merits. With a cursory review by the higher-ups, the landing page goes live.
Worse yet, we assume that the quality of the landing page can’t be changed, so we don’t even look for ways to improve it. We turn all of the other knobs and dials at our disposal and continue to neglect the biggest profit-driver under our control—the conversion efficiency of the landing page.
This is costing a lot of money in the form of missed opportunity. Double- or triple-digit conversion rate gains are routinely realized through engagements. Yet, there’s still a widespread perception among online marketers that their landing pages are already solid and can’t be improved through testing.
What’s Wrong With This Picture?
There are three important activities in online marketing:
• Acquisition: Getting people to your website or landing page.
• Conversion: Persuading them to take the desired action(s).
• Retention: Deepening the relationship and increasing its lifetime value.
But not all of these receive equal weight or attention in most companies.
Because of the large amounts of money spent on acquisition and retention, sophisticated systems have been created to maximize the ROI of these activities. But the efficiency of the website or landing page has been largely neglected. Many companies are beginning to understand that website and landing page conversion can have a dramatic impact on online marketing program profits. That’s where the new battleground is in the coming years.
You can meet with Tim Ash of SiteTuners as he optimizes e-commerce sites for increased revenue live at ERA’s eRetailer Summit on Monday, March 2, from 3:00 p.m.—4:00 p.m. Register here! To have your company’s website considered for a makeover, contact Ashley Cavell at acavell@retailing.org or via phone at (703) 908-1020.
Leveraging Video in Online Merchandising
Monday, January 5th, 2009
Retailers know all about the importance of effectively merchandising their end-caps, shelves, and racks to provide in-store shoppers with key “why to buy†messages, but when it comes to translating some of these approaches in the online world, most are failing to provide shoppers with the same level of attention.
With 90 percent of consumers going online to research products before making a purchase, online merchandising is equally (if not more) important as in-store merchandising. Visit any product page on most retailers’ sites and chances are you’ll see little more than a “picture and a paragraph†describing a product. Very rarely will you see specific “why-to-buy†messages, let alone more persuasive merchandising that leverages the unique capabilities of the online medium, such as video, audio and animation.
With their online venues, retailers have tremendous opportunity to engage and educate their shoppers using video tours that dynamically demonstrate product features and benefits. The use of rich media allows unique product capabilities to be seen by the shopper in the context of real use scenarios. Video product tours can also be augmented with other compelling product content such as sell sheets, 360-degree images, printable user guides and product specifications – elements that would be impossible to provide alongside a product in store, and once again take unique advantage of the online environment. There’s no better time to pull out the stops and impact your highly qualified niche of shoppers than while they are in the process of researching and buying products online.
Online video product tours aren’t all show. Independent third party studies show they increase conversion rates by providing shoppers the information they need to make informed purchase decisions. In so doing, video tours also make your site ‘stickier’ - in fact, shoppers view video product tours for an average of two minutes per tour– a major victory of extended engagement in the online retail world where your competition is only a click away.
But perhaps the most compelling news for retailers is that video product tours are provided free of charge by leading manufacturers through various content syndication networks. The video tours are also hosted by those same networks, so there’s no IT impact for the retailer. Effective, free, and easy – it just doesn’t get any better than that.
Rick Martin is SellPoint’s CEO.
Your 2008 Sales Got You Down? Let’s Turn it Around
Monday, January 5th, 2009
As we wind down the holiday buying season and start to look ahead to next year, the question on many direct response marketers’ minds continues to be how to target the right customer with the right offer. And perhaps even more importantly, how can this be done without increasing CPA.
Marketers need the ability to capture their audience’s response through any channel. For instance, what happens when your customer sees that spot on TV and decides to purchase via a mobile phone or the web days after the airing? What about the customer who saw the ad, visited the site and did not buy? Or, what about the client who did not see the spot, but is a potential buyer because of his or her past history?
The key is to cover multiple media channels and add new channels for response. It’s much more cost and time efficient for marketers to integrate all channels, as opposed to planning for TV, online and mobile separately. It only makes sense to consider multichannel response options because you can’t tell a customer where to buy; you can only suggest mediums through which to engage. Try to cover as many POS areas as possible, so the experience for the consumer is as integrated and easy as possible. You will extend the reach and effectiveness of media buys and capture sales that might otherwise be lost.
Not all customers want to transact the same way, so behavioral targeting and dynamic scripting which changes “on the fly†adapting for each customer’s specific responses is critical. By providing them with multiple options in the most important segment of the purchasing funnel – the actual buy itself – you can convert them from a shopper to a buyer.
Let’s take a brief look at a typical customer journey. Let’s assume that the consumer sees something they like on TV and calls the 1-800 number flashing on the screen. Depending on what the consumer is asking for in the phone call, you need to provide them with the right automated response and guide them down the purchasing path. Next, look at all the buying criteria and create individual scripts for each product. If the transaction was not completed the first time, follow up with email or SMS campaigns to help close the deal.
For your next keystone-marketing event, don’t leave sales on the table. Direct your consumers’ response through a multichannel program to capture ALL the sales generated by your advertising activities. Make a New Year’s resolution not to lose the right customer to the wrong channel or wrong offer.
Michael Ferzacca is CEO of Ignite Media Solutions.
Marketing: the Year Ahead - 10 Predictions for 2009
Monday, December 8th, 2008
1) Smart organizations will continue to market throughout the downturn.
2) Marketing activities will be increasingly under the microscope and marketers will now be held accountable for their success or failure.
3) Marketers will turn to their website as the single most important and flexible lead generation and customer engagement channel.
4) Marketing programs that do not show a return quickly are not going to make it.
5) Mobile marketing has had a tough 2008, so 2009 will be a make or break year.
6) Marketers will act on a need to get more value from their existing CRM systems.
7) It is not about just creating content for the people, it is about getting content to the people—meaning multichannel, social networks and consistent marketing.
8) Companies will shift focus toward increasing revenue from current customers.
9) Digital media and social networks will continue to provide cost-effective delivery channels for customer messaging, but will be most effective when integrated with other marketing channels and analytically led.
10) With consistently tighter budgets, it will increasingly fall to marketers rather than IT staff to drive marketing technology. This will change the buying process for such systems and favor suppliers that have marketer friendly software.
Michael Fisher is Alterian’s senior vice president of commercial operations.
’Tis the Season for Online Retailers to Optimize Resources
Monday, November 24th, 2008
It is clear that for online retailers to remain competitive during this holiday season, their sites must offer personalized recommendation engines, product reviews, live chat and a host of other features supported by social behavioral platforms. Consumers are driving this demand, and to ensure they continue to return to a site, they must have access to the technologies they have come to rely on.
Marketing professionals need to know the benefits they can expect from deploying social behavioral platforms, as well as why it is critical they integrate this type of system before the 2008 holiday shopping season ends. Following is a list of benefits online merchants can anticipate in terms of ROI, as well as short- and long-term effects.
• Immediate and measureable results are the “brass ring†every business is looking for. Satisfied customers may not contact retailers directly to share their thoughts regarding positive experiences, but increased average order sales and repeat visits exemplify their contentment.
• Online marketing systems decrease the need to manage on-site merchandizing and in turn reduce the need for seasonal retail staff. Using a multichannel approach empowers retailers with the ability to reach consumers of every demographic. Additionally, a ubiquitous presence engenders a perception of strength and longevity.
• Low cost of ownership is paramount to internal teams, and can be easily achieved through the deployment of fully automated software. A system that collects data, like click patterns, searches conducted and products purchased—all provided through the simple act of shopping—creates a self-sustaining system that essentially runs on its own, requiring no maintenance.
Once the IT department and business team deem the site ready to include e-commerce optimization software, key functionalities the project manager should look for are:
• Intelligent mining of large data sets – This offers real-time, automated, intelligent predictive suggestions.
• Performance-based models – Empower retailers to invest in the future by developing their online presence now, while keeping costs low and building their brand.
• Landing page optimization – Directs consumers to the specific page of the product being searched, presenting the merchandise most likely to appeal to shoppers.
It is crucial in today’s economic climate that online retailers employ strategies expressly designed to mitigate costs and optimize resources at hand. Instituting a social behavioral system that can be deployed in days rather than weeks ensures shoppers are greeted with personalized treatment and individualized care in time for the holiday shopping season, which will also begin laying the foundation for future retailing success.
Dr. Rolf Elmér is CEO of Avail Intelligence.
Santa Comes Down the Chimney; Identity Thieves Creep in Through the Computer
Thursday, November 13th, 2008
Over 9 million Americans have their identity stolen each year. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reports that in 2007, the highest category of complaints was identity theft, attributing 32 percent of total complaints received to the category. Consumers reported fraud losses totaling more than $1.2 billion, almost double that of 2005.
Shopping online safely helps you prevent your own identity theft. Parents teach us to look both ways before crossing the street, but most of us didn’t grow up hearing “make sure your password contains a number†or, “look for an SSL connection when shopping.†All retailers should help inform consumers about safe practices.
Do’s and Don’ts Security Tips to Prevent E-commerce Identity Theft This Holiday Season:
1. Download Updates. Do click “Update Now†when you receive security updates from Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe. Don’t avoid these updates that arm you with the latest fixes before starting to shop. Web application exploits are very common now and can harm you if you simply go to a bad website.
2. Create Complex Passwords. Do mix letter cases and use at least seven characters when placing an order online. Don’t choose a word from a dictionary as hacker programs guess passwords very quickly.
3. Thwart Hackers. Do use your wireless router’s security features when surfing the web. Don’t let hackers join your network where they can try to listen in on your shopping experience. Hackers can use network sniffers to eavesdrop on you.
4. Use Onetime Credit Cards. Do shop online using a virtual credit card that expires after one use. Don’t use your actual credit card numbers on less familiar websites.
Some websites masquerade as shops but really just steal your credit card numbers.
5. Verify Secure Connections. Do make sure the padlock symbol in your browser’s status bar shows that you have a secure connection when conducting online financial transactions. Don’t press submit if there is no padlock at a store. Padlocks represent an SSL connection, which protects any information you send.
6. Check Your Credit. Do visit annualcreditreport.com before and after the holidays. Don’t wait until you receive a bill for a credit card that isn’t really yours. Your credit report shows all your accounts and overdue balances.
7. Lock Up Your Passwords. Do use a password manager to save all your passwords. Don’t save passwords in your web browser without a master password to protect them. Password managers encrypt all of your passwords with a master password so you only have to remember the one.
8. Enter Web Addresses Manually. Do go directly to a store’s website by typing its address into your web browser manually if you plan to buy something. Don’t click on links from an email message. These are known as phishing attacks and are very common.
9. Shop From Your Terminal. Do shop online using your own computer. Don’t shop online using a public computer at a hotel or airport. Public computers can have spyware that records your information as you type it.
10. Communicate Securely. Do call a business and read them your credit card information if you trust them and want to buy a present for someone. Don’t e-mail or instant message personal information. E-mail and instant messenger are insecure.
Todd Feinman is CEO of Identity Finder.
ERA Members in the Media
Thursday, November 13th, 2008Direct response professionals are taking the mainstream media by storm, informing consumers about the cost saving benefits provided by DR and e-commerce in a shaky economy.
A.J. Khubani, president of CEO of Telebrands Corporation, visits “The View.†And no- there’s no politically charged conversations here!
Click here to watch as Michael Rubin, CEO of GSI Commerce, is interviewed on CNBC regarding the strength of e-commerce during the economic downturn.
