E-Commerce

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

During a session at last week’s Lenser & Associates client summit in San Rafael, Calif., Lenser partner Michelle Farabaugh offered several Web and e-mail marketing tips to the firm’s client base, which included more than 100 mid-size catalog marketers. Following are some that are worth keeping in front of you. * Increase your advertising effectiveness by improving headlines, copy and destination landing pages. Include a value proposition, promotions, deferred billing and a buy now button. * In e-mail, separately test segmentation, frequency, time of day/day of week, subject line, “From” address, format, offers, deadlines, length, landing pages and hold out panels in order to see true

Online merchants, including catalogers, e-merchants and brick-and-mortar retailers, made three times as many adjustments to their online marketing as they did their offline plans during last year’s holiday season, according to recently released report from Shop.org, the online division of the National Retail Federation, and online research firm BizRate Research. And 70 percent of those adjustments involved either investing more in paid search or making improvements to e-mail campaigns. The report also revealed the percentage of merchants that used various promotions, as well the merchants’ ratings of the effectiveness of those promotions on a scale of 1 to 5. Below are the findings.

Does your company market products through comparison shopping engines? Comparison shopping engines (CSEs) are sites such as Yahoo! Shopping, Shopping.com, Gifts.com, Pricegrabber, NexTag, MSN Shopping, Google Base and Shopzilla. CSEs aggregate SKU data from retailers for online shoppers. Some retailers avoid CSEs due the technical hassle of sending product data to the engines and retrieving corresponding advertising cost reports. But today, the National Retail Federation (NRF) announced a new data format intended to simplify communication between retailers, agencies and CSEs. The beta test of the standard took place last week when engineers at Channel Intelligence used the format to submit product data for

With the holiday shopping season nearly upon us, it’s time to evaluate your marketing plan and make sure you’re prepared for what’s to come. Shop.org, the online arm of the National Retail Federation, offers the following to tips on ensuring your holiday marketing plans are up to snuff in a new best practices report. 1. Be ready for shoppers early in the season. One-third of consumers surveyed after last year’s holiday season said they started shopping online earlier than in 2004, up 6 percent from a similar survey held after that holiday season, according to the report. Some Shop.org members revealed that free

Before my official post for the week starts, let me thank all of you who added your comments to this site, as well as those who e-mailed me privately. Your encouragement and feedback was much appreciated, and it’s nice to get the first Catalog Success blog off to a good start.

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Great, you’re back … O.K., now on to this week’s topics: 1) my own goals for this blog, and 2) my response to a

Forty percent of online consumers would abandon a transaction when experiencing problems on an e-commerce Web site, according to a recent survey by online customer experience management solutions provider TeaLeaf and market research firm Harris Interactive. Nearly one-third of those consumers would turn to a competitor while 7 percent would abandon the endeavor entirely, the survey revealed. The top problems that online consumers said would cause them to turn to competitors are, * Incorrect information or lack of adequate information on a Web site, cited by 41 percent of respondents; * Difficulty navigating the Web site, cited by 37 percent; * Inability to complete