Cover Story: 50 Best Tips of 2011

16. Never, ever let shoppers be surprised by shipping charges once they reach the checkout page. Explicitly state shipping costs before consumers push the final checkout button. Surprise shipping charges are the No. 1 reason for abandoned shopping carts.
Volusion
“10 Tips to Boost E-Commerce Sales,” May 9, ROI Report

17. A no-brainer strategy among retailers every holiday season is to make it easier for shoppers and customers to find great presents through their gift selector features. The secret to making a gift selector strategy work wonders is relevance. Merely offering up a fixed set of products that aren’t aligned with a consumer’s tastes won’t get you far.
Bill Hustad, 
Baynote
“3 E-Commerce Mistakes to Avoid This Holiday Season,” Sept. 23, 
ROI Report

Email
18. Never offer a one-click unsubscribe. This refers to a situation where the opt-out link in an email is clicked and the reader is immediately unsubscribed. In many cases, the recipient may have been looking for a way to modify their preferences. Instead, direct them to your preference center. You still want to make it easy to opt out, but don’t throw away the chance to save a relationship.
Reggie Brady, Reggie Brady Marketing Solutions
“How to Implement an Email Preference Center,” January, Retail Online Integration

19. It’s one thing to send automated remarketing messaging with the item that was left in the cart, but consider offering additional content recommendations (i.e., related personalized product recommendations). For example, if the shopper leaves an Indianapolis Colts T-shirt in the cart, not only include that specific T-shirt in a remarketing message, but also a Colts hat, shorts, etc. Remarketing messages present a prime opportunity to cross-sell and upsell other products within the body of the message.
Eric Tobias, iGoDigital
“5 Tips to Recapture Cart Abandonment,” April 20, ROI Report

20. Seed your list. Set up five mailboxes to 10 mailboxes at Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and anywhere else you can. Don’t open the seed emails (i.e., the ones you send to yourself). This tactic will give you a good indication as to where your emails are being delivered — inbox, spam folder or trash. Do this in-house; don’t ask your provider to do it for you.
Amy Africa, 
Eight by Eight
“An E-Commerce Holiday Checklist, Part 2,” September, Retail 
Online Integration

General Marketing Issues
21. An excellent way to normalize media and product revenue is to make profit per shopper a key performance metric, essentially dividing the net revenue from both sources by the total number of visitors to the online store. A successful e-commerce media program should significantly increase profit per shopper over time by adding new media revenue while also contributing to the growth of product sales.
Jonathan Opdyke, 
HookLogic
“What’s E-Commerce Media, and Why Do I Need a Strategy?,” Jan. 20, ROI Report

22. Think carefully before working with group buying sites. No one can deny the success and popularity of daily-deal sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial, but there are potential drawbacks to using these services. For starters, many businesses that have worked with Groupon report that customers don’t return to purchase again after they use their coupon. What’s more, there’s the possibility that the wrong customers — e.g., existing customers who’d likely purchase merchandise in your store anyway — may be getting the deals. This could have a huge effect on margins, devalue brands and cannibalize sales to existing customers.
Bill Bass, 
Charming Shoppes
“INNOVATE: 8 Best Practices for Cross-Channel Retailers, Part 1,” March 10, ROI Report

23. Remember the creepy factor when using retargeting. Retargeting, which involves tracking consumers’ key interactions (e.g., uncompleted product purchases) and then serving relevant ads to them based on those interactions, is becoming common practice on the web thanks to technology advancements. As expected, marketers love the concept. But remember that, in general, consumers think this tactic is creepy. I’ve seen retargeting where a consumer adds items to a checkout basket and the merchandise in that basket appears in another checkout basket on another website. Yes, it’s cool, but kind of creepy. Be careful not to turn off customers.
Bill Bass, 
Charming Shoppes
“INNOVATE: 8 Best Practices for Cross-Channel Retailers, Part 1,” March 10, ROI Report

Global Retailing
24. China’s economy, while changing rapidly, is inherently local. The supplier that will be the best partner in Beijing is unlikely to be the one most successful in Chengdu, and vice versa. Because relationships are everything, the concept of a strong national firm is, at most, an emerging one. Thus finding partners is a task that must be implemented on a local basis, many times over, in order to reach all of China’s markets. This doesn’t mean that each prospective partner won’t argue for a national, exclusive relationship. They’ll want that. But they’re unlikely to be able to deliver successes beyond the local markets in which they’re strongly positioned in terms of relationships.
George F. Brown, Blue Canyon Partners; David G. Hartman, Blue Canyon Partners
“The Value of Building Your Brand in China,” Jan. 25, ROI Report

25. Companies can be “too global” in their attempt to reach international markets. It’s important to realize that every market is local to someone. The most successful global companies do thorough research and take the time to understand the local landscape before unveiling new products or websites. Update the old adage, “Will it play in Peoria?” with emerging global cities like Shanghai, Mumbai or Santiago.
Apala Lahiri Chavan, 
Human Factors International
“Understanding Global Customers: User Experiences at Home and Abroad,” July 8, ROI Report

26. Taxes and pricing are two areas where retailers need to do their research before entering an international market. Pixmania reports paying 90 
country-specific taxes for its network of e-commerce sites, ranging from environmental to product copyright taxes. Factor local taxes into your product margins when setting prices.
Ulric Jerome, 
Pixmania.com
“Strategies for Expanding Your E-Commerce Business Into Europe,” Sept. 15, ROI Report

Inventory Management
27. Adopt a process to analyze SKU profitability relative to inventory ownership. A common metric for this is gross margin return on investment (GMROI). GMROI is calculated by taking the aggregate gross margin achieved for a SKU and dividing it by its average inventory cost.
Joe Palzkill, 
Direct Tech
“Inventory Management Best Practices for Online Retailers,” Jan. 4, Return on Inventory blog

28. Be maniacal about preventing out of stocks. Don’t let a consumer out of your store empty-handed. If you do, they’re likely to never come back. Have a disaster plan in place for when a product isn’t available. This includes delivering products to a customer’s home when the product comes back in stock, as Dave’s Soda & Pet City has frequently done in the past.
Dave Ratner, 
Dave’s Soda & Pet City
“From the NRF BIG Show: 10 Tips for Small Brick-and-Mortar Retailers to Increase Sales,” Jan. 13, 
ROI Report

Management Issues
29. Attendance by itself isn’t the only factor to look at when evaluating a warehouse employee’s performance. In fact, don’t even view it as a top five consideration. You would much rather have an employee who’s occasionally late but can box 100 orders per hour over an employee who’s consistently on time but boxes only 60 orders per hour.
Timothy Holody, 
Seta/Palm Beach Jewelry
“15 Tips to a More Effective Distribution Center,” April 11, 
ROI Report

30. Make your individual salespeople hit a notable sales metric before providing them with business cards. Also, train them to never give out their card without requesting the consumer’s information first. Instill in your staff the responsibility of making the call; otherwise you’re just breeding clerks.
Jason VanderPal, 
retail consultant
“How to Make Rock n’ Roll Retail Employees,” May 3, ROI Report