E-Commerce

Looking for some quick ideas to bolster your Web site or online holiday shopping initiatives? Jay Shaffer, vice president of marketing at home furnishings merchant DirectlyHome.com, offered several of them in a session at the recent Mid Market eTail conference in San Francisco. • Cheap market research is just a coffeehouse away. “Every six weeks or so, I’ll go into a Starbucks and find a soccer mom who hasn’t had an adult conversation in a year and offer her a coffee gift card for 15 minutes of her time,” Shaffer said. He then shows her three pages on the DirectlyHome Web site: the home page,

The first key to successful testing online is to take a full commitment to the process, said Stephen Cheng, marketing manager at online bookseller Alibris, in his session at last month’s Mid Market eTail conference in San Francisco. “Accept the fact that you will have duds, ideas that just don’t work when you test them,” Cheng said. Following are his tips for a better online testing process. 1. Establish a cross-functional team suited to the task. A Web site test shouldn’t be run just by the marketing team or the IT person responsible for the site, Cheng said. Both departments should be involved, as well

Regularly ask for feedback from your customers regarding your Web site. Invest in some kind of analytics to pay attention to where your customers run into problems on your site. Look at search logs. • Which searches return no results? • Where are your entry and exit pages? We do Web usability studies before any major Web enhancement. —Melissa Rothchild, senior director of marketing communications, B-to-B accounting products catalog CPA2Biz

A panel of marketing executives at multichannel merchants addressed the dual challenge of deciding to outsource and finding the right service firm during a session at last week’s Mid Market eTail conference in San Francisco. Following are their tips: * Learn from the best merchants. “While I try to find out about great solutions from other merchants at conferences and events, often the best resources are top 100 or top 500 lists that are published in magazines,” said Adrienne Hartman, director of the Internet for footwear merchant Shoemall.com and a former Internet manager at Lands’ End. “I’ll browse through a top merchant list and find

Consumers will use the Internet for about 29 percent of their shopping this year, according to a recently released National Retail Federation survey conducted by BIGResearch. This includes both browsing and buying behavior. These shoppers are expected to spend an average of $791 on holiday shopping. Other data revealed by the survey: * 47.1 percent of consumers plan to make at least one purchase online this year; * 88.7 percent regularly or occasionally examine products online before purchasing in a store; * 23.6 percent start their product research on Google; * 7.2 percent start their research on Yahoo!; * 5.5 percent start their research

Looking for tips from the top? Three chief executives from online and multichannel merchants fired out ways to increase profitability by creating a unique multichannel experience through personalization, at last week’s Mid Market eTail conference in San Francisco. On hand were: Hannes Blum, CEO of online bookseller Abebooks.com; Josef Mandelbaum, president/CEO of greeting card marketer AG Interactive; and Mike Stamn, CEO of multichannel auto supplies merchant The Eastwood Co. Following are their recommendations: 1. Organize customer information to provide better personalization. Eastwood produces multiple catalogs, sends different messages and provides separate offers depending on whether the targeted customer is a consumer, a small business or

What online offers are most effective today? To answer this question, I’ll revisit 14th century Japanese poetry, tap the insights of experts at the three leading search engines and talk return shipping with two leading online retailers. Today’s Advertising Haiku Haiku is a Japanese poetic form dating to the 1400s. Haiku poems consist of three lines of five, seven and five syllables. When written well, these poems can pack a powerful emotional punch. Today’s online advertising equivalent of haiku is paid search advertising. Taking Google AdWords as the archetype, a pay-per-click ad consists of a 25-character title, two 35-character lines of ad copy and a 35-character

A recent global survey by integrated marketing services firm ICOM shows that Blogs, e-mail and online social networks are the fastest growing marketing media in Europe, North America and Asia. Viral marketing is growing at an equally strong rate in North America, while in Latin America text messaging topped the list. Below are the top 10 fastest growing marketing tactics, according to the survey: 1. Blogs/e-mail marketing/online social networks; 2. Viral marketing; 3. Internet advertising (eg: banner ads and interstitials); 4. Commericial messages on hand-held devices; 5. Outdoor advertisements; 6. Brand-sponsored games and events; 7. Guerilla marketing; 8. Search engine marketing; 9. SMS (short

Lately, it seems like decent size database now calls itself a specialized vertical search engine. There’s some clever marketing logic in positioning itself as such given that good search results are a cost-effective form of inquiries, leads or orders when a search-based marketing program is done well. And taking advantage of those vertical search engines will allow B-to-B catalogers to leap ahead of the competition. Consider the fact that search is the new cognitive framework for buyers of industrial, technical and business products and accordingly, industrial marketers must radically shift their marketing mixes to online channels if they haven’t done so already. Those marketers involved

Choosing a Web site host is an often overlooked piece of e-commerce strategy. Because it’s such a specialized portion of the e-commerce puzzle, many catalogers are unprepared to make an informed decision regarding Web hosting. Following are tips to help you make the right decision when choosing your Web host or considering a change to your current provider: 1. Understand the distinctions between different hosting options. As the e-commerce business has matured, hosting offers have split into several distinct categories, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. * Shared hosting allows you to share server space with other companies. The host manages the server almost