Learn How to Boost Your Marketing Return on Investment Performance by Tracking Competitor Prices and Assortments
Ecommerce businesses face very strong competition due to the fact that SMEs have entered into the online world almost as quickly as the biggest companies, such as Amazon or Alibaba, resulting in the existence of millions of e-commerce companies.
This great competition is not just focused on who sells something, but also on the earliest stages of the buying process, like getting customer attention when they are just looking for information prior to buying. Ecommerce competition is one of the best examples of Porter’s framework, since online buying decisions depend on many factors that are hard to control.
In this article, we will explain how pricing affects ecommerce competition and show how to become more competitive by getting smarter about it, in order to boost the ROI your marketing efforts, so you can attract and keep…
How to win at Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Black Friday is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year. It kicks off the critical holiday season. The holiday shopping season is crucial for the economy because around 30% of annual retail sales occur between Black Friday and Christmas. For some retailers, such as jewellers, it's even higher -- nearly 40%.
Having roots in the retail sector, there is still a part of me that gets that toe-curling feeling when hearing those two words together – Black Friday. It is infamous with chaos, carnage and that primal, possessive part of our brains. There are those who have opted out of the chance of being trampled, losing teeth and other appendages and getting into car park fisticuffs, but have instead opted for waging this warfare online.
The premise of Black Friday was to be a purely retail experience with rock-bottom deals on majority stocks in…
Which are the best options to increase reach for online retail sites?
The answers to these key questions for online retailers are revealed in the Custora Ecommerce Pulse which summarises online retail sales sources by channel.
Although retailers will know their current mix of traffic which is driving sales, it's always useful to benchmark this mix against others. This chart gives the latest data from 2016 to inform your strategy into 2017. If you are under-performing in some channels, this benchmark enables you to compare to see what is possible.
If you apply the 70-20-10 rule, this chart shows that 70% of your effort should go into the 3 main channels or organic search, paid search or CPC and Email marketing. Affiliate marketing is also important.
When interpreting this source, it's worth remembering that these stats don't show traffic…
Free coaching for Ecommerce marketers from Rand Fishkin of Moz and other industry experts at International Ecommerce Day
The Ecommerce world is so crowded with a glut of content and different providers competing fiercely. What’s more, ecommerce marketers often are rushing to implement the latest tactics and technology, which can leave creating a proper strategy and plan being neglected.
There are lots of blog articles, infographics and tutorials about how to build a successful digital business. The problem with this is that there are too many people blogging for the sake of attracting traffic and clicks, and they don’t always offer the best business advice. This means it can be hard for marketers to know what pieces of advice will be useful, and which won’t be.
But, of course, you need to be connected to the latest trends in order to make your business grow and apply innovative techniques to drive up your sales.
One…
A breakdown of online sales in the UK
We're continuing to see a steady growth in online retail sales across sectors based on a range of compilations. In this chart based on data from the UK ONS we see a breakdown by sector of growth and the proportion of online retail sales compared to all sales.
We are seeing growth in all sectors other than textile, clothing and footwear stores. Perhaps evidence of a change in preference back to the high street in this category. Year-on-year growth in most sectors is sub 20% other than the 'other' categories. For reference, the specific figures in each sector are below.
Source: UK Office of National Statistics August 2016 report
Related toolkit: E-commerce and retail marketing
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SEO isn't dead. It's never felt more alive.
I'd like to introduce a new rule for marketers everywhere. When something is declared 'dead' by a self-proclaimed 'thought leader' at a marketing conference, right thinking marketers should invariably assume that its prospects have probably never been better.
The rule certainly holds true for SEO as a revenue driver for eCommerce businesses. Although plenty of search conferences this year will have speakers declaring the coming death of SEO, the data shows it's scarcely ever been more critical.
As you can see from the chart below, organic search traffic makes up a massive 43% of all eCommerce traffic, almost double the next biggest driver - Google AdWords, which is also significant. This data comes from a Wolfgang digital study which analysed the traffic of 87 million website sessions, accounting for $230 million in eCommerce revenue. Our other summaries from data from YotPo and Custora tells a similar…
The new Facebook marketplace will give online classifieds a social twist.
Importance: [rating=3] (For eCommerce businesses)
Recommended Source: Facebook Newsroom
E-marketplaces like eBay, Craigslist, Gumtree and Amazon marketplace are often big drivers of revenue for e-commerce businesses. Many find that although they also sell on their own site, big chunks of sales come from those external platforms which haves successfully amassed huge user bases.
As a social network, Facebook's decision to launch its own e-marketplace seems slightly strange at first glance. But there is a strong justification for the move. With over 1 billion active monthly users and 450 million users already using Facebook groups to buy and sell goods, Facebook already has the kind of large user base required to establish a successful platform for buying and selling.
The marketplace Facebook have designed is built in much the same way as the rest of the social…
Cart recovery emails are a powerful tool for converting. Make sure yours are having the maximum possible impact.
If you run an online store, you already know that cart abandonment is one of the biggest conversion killers; causing millions in lost revenue worlwide due to the many reasons for retail basket abandonment. And the chances are high that you must be sending a cart recovery email campaign to recover this lost revenue. But sending a cart recovery mailer doesn't guarantee conversion. You need to execute your cart recovery email program the right way to convince the lost shoppers to come back and complete their purchase.
A successful recovery campaign is optimized for everything from design to copy, send time and the right sequence. And, if you are not taking all of these things into consideration you will not get the results that you are hoping for from these email campaigns.
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A review of page load times and mobile effectiveness for different Ecommerce platforms
More than $12 trillion in B2B transactions are expected for the year 2020. That's up from $5.5 trillion in 2012, according to projections from Frost & Sullivan. B2B online sales are nearly double those of B2C sales. No matter what sphere of digital marketing you work in, it's time to hone in on e-commerce. Clients are hungry for a piece of the ecommerce pie. By staying informed on the existing software solutions, you will have the information you need to lead them towards smart platform choices.
61% of consumers report improved sentiments toward a brand as a result of a positive mobile experience and by 2017, m-commerce is expected to account for 25% of US sales. Mobile shoppers also spend more than users on other devices.Features like…
Using Cause-and-effect or Ishikawa fishbone diagrams for marketing analysis and management
If you’re involved with managing Ecommerce, there are many inter-related marketing activities that are important for success. With the increasingly complex range of channels companies use for communications today and alternative customer journeys on site, mastering best practices is helpful to make best use of each channel or digital marketing technique and how it integrates with other channels.
I first started to use Ishikawa diagrams when I was responsbible for managing software development teams where we used them to identify the potential cause of problems and minimise bugs. As I got involved in digital marketing I was reminded them when I heard Sam Decker, then responsible for Dell’s consumer web site, explaining how Dell used this as part of their Six Sigma thinking to improve operations, content, design, analytics, and P&L management. This technique seemed to me to be…
