Examples of the cultural customisation needed for international retail sales

Our friends at Practicology recently held an event looking at approaches to customising Ecommerce for local markets. We thought it would be useful to share the presentations for marketers working on tailoring their proposition to increase international sales. We highlighting the retail e-commerce case studies from Clarks and Debenhams, along with multi-channel research from Amplience.

In their presentation, they shared '6 strategies in play' for e-commerce:

1. Do nothing: Don't allow anyone to buy from overseas.2. Standardisation: Switch on the buy button only.3. Adaptation:  Localise some aspects.4. Localisation: Fully localise the customer proposition online.5. Multi-channel market entry: Lead with online, open stores.6. Lead with stores; then localise online.

Clarks case study : Going Global with e-commerce

Head of E-commerce for Europe at Clarks, Dave Elston shared his experience on Clark's global e-commerce strategy and…

An example of using Google's Multichannel funnels reports to prove the value of digital media

There have been quite a few recent stories detailing how big brands such as Interflora have fallen foul of Google or announcing they have ‘stopped using’ digital marketing as it ‘doesn’t work’. For example,  a piece of research conducted by Ebay, led to reports in the trade press claiming that ‘PPC doesn’t work’. These stories led me to dig a little deeper into the research conducted by eBay to identify what the real story was and not what the press would lead us to believe. The test conducted by eBay in essence stopped paid search on non-brand keywords for 60 days and results indicated that on average ‘consumers do not shop more on eBay when they are exposed to paid search ads on Google’. They found therefore that Google ads did not play a role in…

Merchants Double Google Shopping Traffic between Q4 2012 and Q1 2013

May 2013 Update - continued growth in Google Shopping Traffic in the US

Each quarter, CPC Strategy rates the top comparison shopping engines including Google Shopping, based on seller metrics such as traffic and revenue. Contrary to the traditional seasonal trend of increased volume on Google Shopping during Q4, followed by a decrease in volume for Q1, Google Shopping traffic has not slowed into Q1 2013. Instead... Google Product Listing Ads flipped the typical seasonal trend on its head for Q1 2013, with an increase in traffic which nearly doubled from Q4 to Q1.  Merchants double up on Google Shopping Traffic Between Q4 2012 And Q1 2013 This continues a trend from Q3 to Q4 where we saw an 87% increase in traffic which was to be expected given the progression of the new program in conjunction…

What makes a good ecommerce landing page?

So, what does make an effective landing page for an Ecommerce site? Well, I’m going to give a typical consultant’s answer – "it depends"; on the campaign and your goal for the landing page. That’s not being evasive, it’s the truth; not all landing pages are born equal. For example, some marketers invest in prize draws and competitions as marketing tactics to drive data capture for their eCRM programs, so the landing page needs to focus on making it quick and easy to enter. Typically ecommerce landing pages are used for tactical marketing campaigns (e.g. from AdWords, Display Re-marketing or Email marketing) and are  designed to drive sales making use of existing site page templates. A good ecommerce landing page should satisfy the following criteria: The creative design is consistent with the marketing campaign that generated the visit. The copy and CTA are consistent with the marketing…

Learning from an example of how one startup failed

Ecomom was a small startup internet retail company selling earth friendly mom and maternity products including food, toys, apparel, and other baby related items. With headquarters in Las Vegas and San Francisco and a third-party fulfillment in Los Angeles, any volume could be shipped within 24 hours. Founded in 2007, by 2011 it had turnover of just over $1 million, but a further round of investment of $12 million required further growth, but at what cost? Business Insider describes the story of the eventual failure of the company in 2013  With hindsight it's difficult to understand investment in the company, but perhaps this was buoyed by the success story of Tony Hsieh building Las Vegas-based Zappos into an online shoe and retail business that Amazon acquired for $1.2 billion. Of course, investors, require growth and Ecomum did achieve revenues of nearly $4 million in…

Setting up the right process and tools to improve sales

Start up brand Tatu Couture design and manufacture luxury British lingerie which is sold through stockists in the UK, Paris and New York. Tatu Couture has a unique vision to push the boundaries of design and innovation with its trend setting luxury lingerie and designer body wear. All their goods are manufactured and hand finished in the UK.

Overview and Digital Strategy

Tonica supported Tatu Couture by creating a four stage strategy to increase digital presence. In addition to the stockist route, Tatu Couture were keen to increase their own direct sales, so we had two simple objectives for the work – to increase visits to tatucouture.com and increase sales from the site.

Social media campaign approach

Step 1 – Take Control Like many small to…

Mystery shopping survey on consumer sentiment towards videos

In our new guide to video marketing we show how video marketing can help support marketing goals using examples from across B2B and B2C sectors. In consumer retail it's recognised that videos can have a dramatic impact in some categories. For example, the well known Zappos video conversion test that saw employee demonstration videos yield a sales impact of +6 to +30%. But how do consumers perceive video marketing and what are they looking for? There are useful insights in this research from Etailing Group and Invodo who carried out a Mystery Shopping Survey to draw out ‘consumers use of sentiment towards video with delivering superior shopping experience via video'. It probed questions to look into video consumption, what consumers expect from videos, how it affects their purchasing, where they…

Showing why online retailers must have an effective mobile experience in place

Jill Robb showed in her post on Ecommerce trends for 2013 how online UK retailers are experiencing rapid growth in mobile use of their sites. This new infographic from Kissmetrics shows the growing importance of creating mobile platforms for US online retailers. Source: Kissmetrics Blog - full links to source on this page. Note that the chart showing that mobile due to overtake desktop access by 2013 is based on a 2010 prediction and is worldwide, so skewed by emerging market trends.  …

An example of the learning on Ecommerce available from #EcomChat

Value: [rating=5] Even if you can’t always make the chat, I really recommend the summaries if you work in Ecommerce as a consultant, in an agency or for a retailer. Recommended link: #EcomChat This was the question discussed at the latest #EcomChat, a regular Monday "Tweet-up" = Twitter discussion arranged and hosted by @danbarker and @JamesGurd . It’s a great format for stimulating ideas on different ways to approach Ecommerce, often touching on different areas of Ecommerce Merchandising. You can see the type of learning you get on the summaries by Dan and James on the #EcomChat homepage.

55 Email tips for Ecommerce

As an example of the insight available, I enjoyed scanning these Email marketing tips summarised in a PDF. Here are some examples…

Personalisation 101 - how to increase customer engagement and conversion rates by "Sense and Respond" to Digital Body Language

In this post I hope to give a practical guide to website personalisation, to show you how to improve customer engagement and increase your conversion rates. Apart from the well-known Amazon example, many other types of business are now seeing the benefits of personalisation.

easyJet increased their conversion rate enormously through personalisation. During the easyJet January sale 2012, they delivered a personalised home page to each of their 2.5 million customers and converted five sales per second. (They used the Sitecore Customer Engagement Platform).

John Lewis said that their personalised site was a key factor in increasing Christmas sales by 27.9%. Personalisation is important to business and customer alike and no doubt you have already seen it feature high up in the…