E-retail own goals that gift victory to your rivals
There are lots of common mistakes that I still often see made on a frequent basis when I review e-commerce sites. Sure, you're unlikely to see these on John Lewis and M&S, but some are made irrespective of the size of the project.
Having seen many of these mistakes being made so often and particularly when so little work is required to rectify or prevent them, I have created this list of some of the common e-commerce mistakes to avoid:
Getting the basics of product marketing wrong
Surprisingly, one of the most common mistakes that companies of all sizes have made and will continue to make comes down to viewing the build of a website as a technical exercise only. In fact nothing could be farther from the truth. An e-commerce website has to position your…
Introducing Google’s new retail strategies
If you're a veteran of "Internet marketing", you'll remember Froogle, Google's shopping search engine which presented products freely submitted by retailers using XML feeds. In 2007, this became Google Product Search and you may have heard this is now being rebranded to Google Shopping.
The Google announcement explains:
"We are starting to transition Google Product Search in the U.S. to a purely commercial model built on Product Listing Ads. This new product discovery experience will be called Google Shopping and the transition will be complete this fall".
While Google Product will officially becoming, Google Shopping the more significant changes outlined below will only affect US product feeds & users for now. There is no date as yet for a wider roll out, but it's rumoured to be early 2013. However what Google does in the USA almost certainly makes it way across the seas. This is often a good thing…
A new social commerce report shows the potential
UK retailers that do not offer customers recommendations could be missing out on £9 billion in extra revenue according to a new report by nToklo. It seems that although 'social commerce' is an established concept, many retailers aren't fully tapping into it.
There's no question that social commerce from a 'vendor' perspective (or social shopping from the 'consumer' perspective) is a hot area since:
So many people have an online profile in one or more social networks
Social graph APIs and tools have become available and it's getting easier to use the data within those profiles and encourage sharing
According to the social commerce gurus at nToklo, the use of user generated content at multiple stages of the sales funnel could account for up to a 27 percent uptake in sales, and despite this only half of the…
The future of the social consumer
This is an interesting social commerce infographic by ecommerce provider, Gloople.
We're aware of the growth in the social commerce space and there's some interesting data here to hammer home the scale and potential for brands that retail online. It's also broader than you might think...
…
An interview on best practice Ecommerce analytics techniques with Dan Barker
Much of what's written about successful Ecommerce sites focuses on the big brands we all know like Amazon, Argos and Asos. But within each sector of retail, there are many Ecommerce outfits outside of the spotlight - some very successful, some looking to improve practice. With this in mind, I have been looking for a while to hook-up with an Ecommerce specialist who understands the ingredients for success.
In this interview, I'm pleased to introduce Dan Barker who manages Ecommerce for two companies (B2B and B2C) operating in the Children's products sector.
Some of you may know Dan for his willingness to offer detailed advice via Twitter and digital marketing blogs - he's also a regular contributor on Smart Insights and also writes his own blog. We're republishing this post from March 2010 as a refresher for Jan 2012 as part…
The latest conversion, mobile and referrals benchmarks
Value/Importance: [rating=4]
Recommended link: IBM Coremetrics 2011 Benchmarks
We’ve featured the Coremetrics benchmarks in our average conversion rate roundup for some time. Today, it’s much more useful than what’s provided by Google since it looks at conversion rates and referrers together. It’s based on Coremetric’s (now IBM) clients who tend to be larger organisations, so can be used for larger organisations to benchmark against and give smaller companies and idea of the conversion rates you can achieve if you’re a large trusted brand.
In the past, we’ve featured UK and US data, but the latest data is just for the US - it’s around the Black Friday - Thanksgiving - Cybermonday weekend. Thanks to my friend Geno Prussakov to alerting us to it - Geno’s post features some of the time-related sales volumes.
Here are the three…
One of our aims at Smart Insights is to make marketers aware of the many software tools that can be used to take advantage of the unique communications benefits of digital media.
Ultimately, these software tools should help customers too. Website personalization or behavioural targeting tools are an interesting class of tools since they can benefit both companies and customers, yet there are privacy concerns about how the data is collected is used.
This category of website personalization and behavioural targeting tools is also interesting since everyone still quotes the Amazon personalized recommendation "collaborative filtering" technique - read paper describing the algorithm. Most are still wowed by the accuracy of the technique (apart from when buying gifts for others...), but it doesn't seem to give rise to too many privacy complaints.
Magiq dynamic website personalization software
When I bumped into Malcolm Duckett at the last Econsultancy Masterclass presenting Magiq I was…
Q. Who would you say the market leaders are from an e-commerce perspective? i.e what companies are you aware of that provide a complete outsourced online shop(s) through to order handling and fulfillment on a multi-country basis?
A. I think there are a limited number of Ecommerce solution providers that can deliver this. There are more that work on in individual countries or markets, but fewer which can offer the international fulfillment.
For me, these are best known suppliers which I believe have the scale to help you I would recommend taking a look at :
1. GSI Commerce international Ecommerce solutions
2. Amazon Fulfillment Web Service (Amazon FWS)
3. Venda Ecommerce Fulfillment
To review others I suggest you download the Gartner Ecommerce Leaders Magic Quadrant:
…
When, as marketers, we discuss personalised web communications everyone always talks about Amazon "€œCustomers who bought X also bought Y"€, yet this is old technology dating back 10+ years. Here is an update on the options from one of the leading providers.
So to catch up on the latest on web recommendation options, I was keen to talk to Frank Lord, Regional VP, EMEA for ATG, one of the best known providers of software for personalised web messaging to find out about the latest approaches different companies are using to deliver more relevant web communications to their audiences.
For me, the most exciting development is on-demand web services such from the acquisition by ATG of eStara which appears to give a lower-cost entry point for personalised recommendations and another…
Website security is probably not top-of-mind for most Internet marketing managers, but in this interview, Colin Hall of web security specialists Watson Hall shows the problems that can arise and outlines how you can reduce the risks you face.
Which website security issues should you consider when commissioning a new site or auditing an existing site. In this E-marketing Essentials interview I ask web security specialist Colin Hall of web site security consultants Watson Hall what you should consider.
Q1. I know you believe that security is often a relatively neglected requirement in website commissioning, design and implementation. Why do you think this is the case?
[Colin Watson] It's not something many people commissioning a website are familiar enough with. Many people often only associate web security with two things... 'viruses' and 'HTTPS' (pages on websites where the data is encrypted in transit) and therefore believe that having anti-virus software and a…
