E-Commerce

Q: I hired a company to recast my existing website into an e-commerce site. I've spent the last six months begging, pleading and nagging them to finish. Now they won't even return my calls. Any suggestions about avoid it next time?

Most retailers use the wrong metrics to measure the success of search programs. They focus on tactical measures, such as return on advertising spend or keywords moving up and down in rankings. These measures are like sports statistics — they explain the final score but don't decide success or failure. The final score does that. In business, profits are the final score and sales tell you how good or bad the blowout can be.

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.

It's not "The Matrix," but augmented reality is a way to create greater connections between what's on the web and what's in front of users' eyes, helping bridge that gap between a visit and a sale.

Admittedly a latecomer to the party, general merchandise retailer Meijer (pronounced Meyer) has begun embracing e-commerce. While Meijer.com was up and running for consumers as an informational website since the late '90s, merchandise wasn't available for purchase until September 2007. Better late than never for the Grand Rapids, Mich.-based seller of everything from groceries to pharmaceuticals to electronics and apparel.

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.