E-Commerce

Certainly over the years, the retail shopping experience has endured many peaks and valleys — plenty more valleys than peaks. But the changes I’ve noticed more recently have gone in the other direction, and catalogers need to adapt quickly. Retail shopping ain’t so bad these days. More stores look better. Even the Lands’ End department in a Kmart I visited in July didn’t look so bad. Service has improved, too. So the gap may be tightening on the edge catalogers/multichannel marketers have long enjoyed with regard to service and shopping ease. Certainly, there always have been exceptions to the notion that retail shopping is a

For some reason, I often feel the need to reflect back on my past experience in the catalog/multichannel business when I write these things. Is that typical for these kinds of columns and newsletters? Or at 47, am I just gettin’ old? Hopefully the former, because here I go again. These days, it seems like more and more “rules” of cataloging must be changed for myriad reasons: to account for unfair postal rates, to cater to consumers’ reduced attention spans and to accommodate catalogers’ increased reliance on other marketing channels, namely the Web and retail for consumer marketers and the Web, distribution advancements, telemarketing and

Recently, I had a discussion with a B-to-B client about his successful online marketing. The client was very pleased with how many new customers were now coming from his online marketing activities and what percentage of its orders and sales were being received online.
He crowed about how much money he was saving getting orders online vs. over the phone. He sounded like a giddy online marketing manager! On the surface, those are all good achievements. But I couldn’t help but wonder if the focus and attention were on the right things. I pondered the situation for a moment and thought about the

Customer reviews are becoming an increasingly common way to use the online community aspect of the Internet to help convert visitors to buyers. Amazon.com, CompUSA and other sites have been on record as saying customer reviews do lead to increased conversions. Here are four things you’ll want to consider: 1. Allow negative reviews? Absolutely. Including negative as well as positive reviews on your Web site makes you appear trustworthy. 2. Are they important? Heck, yeah. Ninety-two per-cent of online customers rated “customer reviews” as extremely or very helpful (the top-rated Web site feature) in a 2006 survey conducted by J.C. Williams/the e-tailing group. 3. Must they constantly

If you’re confused about what exactly Web 2.0 is, you’re in good company. This often-repeated buzzword has many Web site owners — not just catalogers — scratching their heads and wondering what the heck Web 2.0 is and whether their sites need it. Fear not. Web 2.0 actually is a broad term, closer to a concept encompassing a whole cluster of new tools and techniques used on Web sites. You didn’t see them three to five years ago. It’s not a software package you can buy from Microsoft or build yourself, but rather a catchphrase that denotes your Web site is keeping current with the

If you’re not using Google’s Webmaster Central, you should start. Google Webmaster Central is a great bundle of free Google tools to help you understand how Google indexes your site. It’s essential to ranking well in Google’s natural rankings. And as a bonus of sorts, by fixing problems revealed by Webmaster Central, you often can improve your positioning on secondary engines, too. For starters, you need a Google account. Go to: https://www.google.com/accounts/newaccount. Next, go to (and bookmark) the Google Webmaster Central homepage: www.google.com/webmasters. The Help Center, blog and forums are worth monitoring. These resources provide valuable advice from Google and outsiders for successful

While the sophistication of high-end e-mail marketing tools can be a bit daunting, virtually any cataloger can find an e-mail marketing package that will increase sales without breaking the bank. “Although it is often taken for granted, the power of e-mail derives from its ubiquity,” says David Hallerman, a senior analyst at market research firm eMarketer and author of “E-Mail and Word-of-Mouth: Connecting With Your Best Customers.” He notes that about 90 percent of U.S. Internet users are regular e-mail users, “clearly an audience that has attained critical mass. Although spam makes it harder to reach customers’ inboxes, e-mail’s personal impact is unmatched

After considering visitors’ words, I visit The Webmaster Central Page Analysis tab to review my words. Page Analysis reveals the key phrases Google believes characterize your content. For this characterization, it studies the words on your site and the words in external links pointing into your site (“anchor text”). For example, suppose you’re a widget cataloger who can’t figure out why Google doesn’t display your site for “widget” searches. The Webmaster Central Page Analysis tab can help you see your site as Google does — the first step to making improvements. Page Analysis shows that my site scores highly for “rimmkaufman” and “rimm-kaufman”

While many over the years have tried to break down Internet advertising to an exact science, the most effective method is still a combination of luck and guesswork, according to Taddy Hall and Robert Barocci from recently published their book, “The Online Advertising Playbook: Proven Strategies and Tested Tactics from the Advertising Research Foundation” (Wiley 2007, ISBN: 978-0-470-05105-4, $29.95). There are a number of ways that catalogers and other multichannel merchants can succeed advertising on the Web. The book contains a bunch of them. Below are several excerpted from it. Create a balance between reaching the right people the right number of times with

In a session on the future of online retailing that he delivered during the recent Internet Retailer Conference in San Jose, Calif., Gary Briggs, chief marketing officer at eBay, outlined several key challenges to attendees, some of which his company has been acting on, some not. Below are some of his key points. 1. “Are we challenging each other to truly innovate, as opposed to mostly copying each other,” he asked. “At eBay, we need to drive more innovation in the auction platform to make the eBay brand stronger. Sameness doesn’t drive consumer demand.” 2. “Are we listening to consumers and the new ways