E-Commerce

A bit of interesting news crossed my desk the other day. Three-quarters of the CEOs of fast-growth companies see the recent economic upturn lasting for another two to three years, according to a survey from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC). While that’s good news, most of the 392 executives who responded to the survey are proceeding with caution, managing with a planning cycle of one year or less. “Although most have a hopeful outlook, they continue to plan using a cautious, short-term approach,” noted David VanEgmond of PWC. Given the volatility of the last few years, I’ll gladly take the “cautious optimism” results as a

The World Wide Web is full of hidden treasures for direct marketers. The trick simply is knowing where these interesting spots can be found. For this article, I asked catalogers and e-tailers for their suggestions of lesser-known online resources, information sources and new ideas related to e-commerce. The resulting list is somewhat eclectic. Hopefully, it will trigger a new idea and help with your Web marketing. DIAGNOSTIC TOOLS DNS Stuff, www.dnsstuff.com/ Ever encounter something odd such as a well-known site disappears, an e-mail to a good address bounces or a customer says your site is down when it isn’t? Often the problem stems

Truly effective multichannel marketing is an ongoing challenge for most catalogers. Ultimately, you want to deliver consistent customer experiences across all your sales channels, right? Although there isn’t one formula for success, there are a growing number of multichannel commerce tools that can help you achieve that goal. One such tool is a virtual catalog, defined by Chicago-based the e-tailing group as an almost exact replica of your print catalog integrated by varying degrees into your Web site, as opposed to a simple menu of products. By using a virtual catalog, customers can experience the aesthetics of a print catalog as well as

From the moment you pull into the 40-acre Golfsmith campus in Austin, Texas, you know you’re in a golfers’ mecca. But as it turns out, the company’s on-site driving range and golf academy are just the beginning. Inside the 92,000 square-foot corporate headquarters, there’s a putting green for employees, and a large retail store complete with indoor waterfall and Clubhouse Café. The clubmaking workshop not only crafts custom-made clubs, it also holds weeklong classes for those who want to learn the art. A research and development team is developing clubs and testing vendor-sourced products. Enlarged pictures capturing golf imagery hang over the

The blunt truth is that multichannel retailing is hard. Running a catalog business is a demanding mix of direct marketing skill and retailing savvy. Add in significant Web and store sales, and the complexity rises to a higher level. Successful multichannel direct marketing is a three-step dance: serving customers across channels, tracking customers across those channels and marketing efficiently within them all. Following are some suggestions that can help. Serving Customers “Multichannel” is a retailer — not a customer — concept. Customers view your brand as a unified whole, regardless of where and how they deal with you. They expect a seamless

Today’s multichannel merchants continually are searching for viable channel-integration solutions — a seamless blend across the key points of customer interaction, including catalogs, Web sites, retail stores and kiosks. “Providing seamless integration communicates a consistent message to consumers and results in higher transaction values,” note the authors of the LakeWest Group’s Fifth Annual POS Benchmarking Survey 2004. But as most catalogers will tell you, achieving that seamless blend across all sales channels is more difficult than it appears to be. Following are a few tactics that can help you make the most of all of your channel-integration intiatives. 1. Take advantage

Paul Fredrick Sacher is one of the five premier catalog merchants of menswear — primarily dress shirts, neckties and cufflinks. If he had 100,000 customers like Franklin Watts, he would be in hog heaven. Frank Watts was a hard drinking, wildly irreverent and funny traveling book salesman who founded a children’s publishing company in 1945 that bears his name today. The son of a Baptist minister, Watts once said that from his earliest boyhood he was made to wear a shirt and tie every day to be presentable in case a parishioner came to the rectory. All of his life, the only time Watts

Sometimes a little back porch advice can go a long way, according to officials at a number of e-commerce sites that have added “ask-the-expert” forums to their marketing mix. Based on the premise that friendly answers to Web cruisers’ questions can lead only to new business, some catalogers created online advice forums that add a human voice to their Web images, while also growing revenues. As you’ve probably surmised, ask-the-expert forums — Q&A pages where customers go to post questions and get answers from a company expert — are simple to set up. A Web designer posts a picture of a company expert

I’ve been leading a double life. I’m an editor by day, and in the evenings and on weekends I become a home remodeler. For the past four years, my husband, Tom, and I have been renovating a 40-year-old condo in center city Philadelphia. Our decision to renovate was a no-brainer. We got the unit for a reasonable price (all right, it was cheap). And it’s in a good building and a neighborhood that I love. “Needs a little work,” the realtor said cryptically. “Define ‘little,’” Tom gave her a sideways glance. We went to see it. She wasn’t kidding. By

1. What is paid-search marketing? It consists of placing ads for your products/services on Internet search engines and content sites. These ads typically are small snippets of text linked to your merchandise pages. You pay when someone clicks through to your site from the ad. Cost-per-click (CPC) fees range from 5 cents to several dollars per click, with an industry average near 30 cents. Leading search-marketing channels include Google, Overture and Inktomi. Additional smaller channels and new large channels are expected to appear soon. 2. What sort of catalogers benefit the most from paid-search marketing? Catalogers with fair pricing, good Web sites and