E-Commerce

No doubt you collect e-mail addresses and other consumer information on your Web site. Perhaps you have a box on your homepage offering a free newsletter, or a special page that offers discounts if shoppers supply personal data. Regardless of the method you use to collect this information, you should send an immediate welcome message to these new names, note officials at Internet marketing firm Topica in a recent whitepaper. Following are Topica’s tips for maximizing the effectiveness of these Web prospects: 1. Gather the correct information up front. In an effort to acquire as many prospects as possible, many online merchants ask only

Problem: Organize.com sought to merchandise its site search results. Solution: It employed a site search software platform. Results: Online orders increased 60 percent in the first month. When Organize.com first employed an onsite search program in 1999, officials at the company believed the Yahoo! solution they implemented was state-of-the-art. Fast forward to the middle of 2005, and what was once a top-of-the-line technological breakthrough had become obsolete. Search results often were randomly displayed, and Organize.com was unable to track whether customers were using search to purchase. Organize.com wanted a solution that allowed its merchandisers to be able to decide which products were most relevant to customers’ searches,

There’s a very thin line that ties together the two catalogs produced out of 132 Robin Hill Road in Santa Barbara, Calif. Founded in 1994 as Surf to Summit, a B-to-B catalog of kayakin g equipment, the company in 2001 spun off After 5, a consumer catalog of quirky — often wacky — products for wine and martini parties. After 5 came to life after the company found that its customers were responding briskly to the cocktail party-related novelties that it first offered almost as an afterthought in Surf to Summit. But that’s where any similarities between the two catalogs end. Although the

Brick-and-mortar retail sales influenced by consumers’ online browsing and research are expected to increase by a compounded annual growth rate of 12 percent over the next five years, according to a recent report by JupiterResearch. Offline sales influenced by online research will reach 40 percent of all U.S. retail sales by 2011. Other data released by the survey: * U.S. online retail sales will plateau at 10 percent to 15 percent of total retail sales; * U.S. online retail sales will grow by 16 percent in 2007, reaching $116 billion; and * Online sales will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 11

The fastest way to higher profits from multichannel customers is not by increasing average order value, but by increasing conversion. This was the primary message delivered by Mark Giresi, executive vice president of retail operations for multi-branded apparel and accessories merchant Limited Brands, and Pat Conroy, vice chairman and national managing principal for consumer business practice at Deloitte & Touche during a session during last week’s National Retail Federation Conference in New York. Giresi pointed out that higher conversion should be a merchant’s focus since the average order value of a shopper that doesn’t purchase is $0. Speakers discussed several online consumer behavioral statistics and

Oneupweb in December 2006 conducted a study to determine trends relative to traffic, conversion rates and total sales among e-commerce sites during the holiday season. The resulting whitepaper, 2006 Holiday Online Retail Buying Trends: A Study of the Consumer Behavior Online during 2006 Holiday Season, offers up some useful information for 2007’s sales season. Based on its research, Oneupweb came up with five best practices for paid-search advertising: 1. Be ready by Halloween. 2. Back-to-school triggers testing. 3. Protect peak season opportunities, e.g., develop bid strategies with higher conversion rates in mind (to offset seasonally high keyword prices), and develop inventory strategies. 4.

More than 90 percent of catalogers and online retailers plan to use rich media on their sites in the coming year, according to a recently released report from rich media platform provider Scene 7. Rich media refers to the set of Web applications that allow consumers to flip pages in online catalogs, zoom in on products or otherwise engage in an interactive way with a Web site. The survey revealed the percentage of online merchants that have deployed or plan to deploy specific rich media applications in the coming year. * Dynamic cross selling - 73 percent; * Alternate product views - 68

As holiday sales results continue to roll in, now’s the time to start thinking about ways to improve your online preparedness for the 2007 holiday season. Search marketing firm Oneupweb offers four best practices based on data from the past holiday season in its recent whitepaper “2006 Holiday Online Retail Buying Trends”: 1. Be ready by Halloween. Consumers start thinking about the holidays in October, making this holiday a good milestone to keep in mind, the whitepapers’ authors note. During the final full week of October (23-29) in 2006, retail site traffic went up 14.2 percent, conversion rates grew 15.7 percent and sales rose

Online shoppers were slightly more satisfied with the 2006 holiday season than they were in 2005, according to the Top 40 Retail Satisfaction Index produced by customer satisfaction rating firm ForeSee Results. Average customer satisfaction rose one point, from 74 to 75, on a 100 point scale. The Index, which was compiled from a survey of more than 10,000 online holiday shoppers, provided experience ratings for the Top 40 retail Web sites defined by sales volume. The following catalogers and notable online merchants, as well as their customer satisfaction ratings, follow: * Amazon.com - 84 * L.L. Bean - 80 * QVC - 80

As human beings, it’s only natural that we each develop our own methods of organizing our daily activities, from work to play to everything in between. Researchers have postulated that there are two distinct types of time planners, with most of us existing in a continuum somewhere between these two types. In the recent report, “Pleasure or Utility? Time Planning Style and Web Usage Behaviors,” marketing academics from the University of Western Ontario, University of Missouri-Columbia and Quinnipiac University defined those types and how Web merchants, once they define their own customers, can capitalize on each type to drive sales to their sites. *