E-Commerce

Problem: Virtual Sheet Music, an online retailer of traditional and classical sheet music, needed a security seal on its website to ensure consumers that it was a legitimate and reputable business. Solution: Contracted an internet infrastructure and security services provider to place a security seal on its site.

In today's retail/direct/online environment, it's logical and essential to have a holistic approach to making any investment decisions. Too often people look at only one problem, tool or solution at a time. In today's market, that narrow focus puts integrated retailers at a serious competitive disadvantage.

For successful navigation to lead to higher conversion rates, you must provide shoppers several different ways to shop your site. It's a paradigm shift for merchandisers accustomed to organizing a store or catalog by the type of product, which is the kind of one-dimensional navigation that will hinder your success online.

If you spend a lot of time in the great outdoors doing your thing, you’re probably in the doghouse. But a print, online and social media campaign launched this fall by Cloudveil Mountain Works, a Jackson, Wyo.-based outdoor sportswear marketer, is just for you. Cloudveil is offering customers and prospects the chance to buy apology gifts for anyone they may have offended by spending too much time skiing, fishing or climbing in the mountains.

Today's teens have been inundated from their earliest recollections with advertising, be it on TV, online, in their favorite video games and movies, and the list goes on. To effectively sell to this generation of consumers, Under Armour studies what makes it tick. What are teens thinking about? How do they behave? What motivates them to purchase?

Pure-play websites crush classic direct marketers when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). Most produce 50 percent or more of their total sales this way, garnering millions in revenue. Many direct marketers view their sites as cash registers where shoppers go to check out. They've either ignored or only paid lip service to SEO.

When I first started working in Manhattan in the — ahem — late '80s, I received a certain thrill when friends "in the know" would call me about a private sample sale taking place in a warehouse downtown. Who knew what bargains awaited? Who would be there? What kind of cool, one-of-a-kind items would we find? (Who needed Loemann's?)

For merchandise sellers not rooted online, alternative payment programs such as PayPal and Bill Me Later once carried the stigma of being designed primarily for consumers with bad debt. But as representatives from two major integrated retailers, American Eagle Outfitters and Orvis, noted during a session at August's eTail Conference in Baltimore, that's no longer the case.

Problem: Woodland Hills Wine Co., a multichannel seller of vintage wines and spirits, lacked a sophisticated e-commerce site to complement its retail store. Solution: Redesigned and relaunched its "antique" website. Results: In the first six months of business following the site's relaunch, online transactions increased 11.4 percent. In the first half of 2009, online visits were up 39.8 percent, with conversion rates 1.5 percent greater than the same time last year.

There are two things that almost every marketer doing business online is obsessed with these days: social media and conversion. And that's not in reference to social media's conversion/return on investment, because really, why be obsessed with something that's typically negative or flat in terms of contribution? So in reality, the obsession should be all about website conversion, compensation and measuring what matters. Here are six surefire tips to help you measure site conversion: