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Fab.com’s 3.5 million US members were alerted by email to new site enhancements released on Wednesday: “We just reinvented social shopping. Again,” the email proclaimed.

While the fruits of Fab.com’s labors are to be determined, the site released more than 100 enhancements, many with an eye to further integration with Facebook and Pinterest and the fun of social sharing. The e-commerce website’s goal is to “successfully almost replicate the experience people have when they go shopping with their friends in the physical world,” said CEO Jason Goldberg in a Betabeat article. “That’s hard to do online, but we think we’re coming a lot closer to that.”

Fab.com’s Social History

As you may recall, Fab.com originally launched as a social network itself. So it’s not surprising CEO Jason Goldberg would find value in social commerce. But he also has hard numbers to support it:

• 50% of new customers come to Fab.com through social sharing.
• 30% to 40% of an average day’s traffic comes from Facebook.
• 2% of site visits come from Pinterest (and that’s pre-integration).

Additionally, right on its own site, Fab.com was finding that 15% of visits to the Fab live feed result in a purchase.

The New and Improved Fab.com Social Commerce Experience

While the many enhancements range in significance, here is a look at some of the more interesting site changes for Fab.com consumers:

A new Friends tab has been added to the live feed so customers can see specifically what their Facebook friends are buying.

• On product pages, Fab.com has replaced its Google+ button with “Pin It” functionality.
• Customers can Pin items directly from the live feed.
• The live feed has additional sorting options, so customers can opt to see a specific category.
• Consumers can buy directly from the feed without first going to an item’s product page.
• Fab.com also introduced new navigation that brings attention to trending categories and products.
• There are also new privacy settings, so users can control those actions that get shared.

What Can Your E-Commerce Website Learn from Fab.com?

Whether it’s an issue of resources or your own comfort level with social commerce, your e-commerce website may not be ready to integrate with social networking sites in the way Fab.com has done, but there are some easier, quicker social wins that could boost your e-commerce branding and sales.

Social Integration: Make it easy for your customers to share items with their social network pages. Encourage customers to pin your products to Pinterest or Like them on Facebook. Go to the appropriate social networking sites for integration information.

Social Presence: Creating brand pages on Facebook and Pinterest allows you to interact with your customers in new ways. Customers want to feel special, so involve them in a behind-the-scenes look at your company by asking them questions about the products you sell or future promotions you may run. And of course, exclusive deals and contests never hurt anyone and can be a viral way to expand your network.

Put Policies in Place: Whether you have a social presence or not, your customers do. If they have a really great experience or a really awful one, they will likely take it to the web. Be ready and have a process in place to handle any negative vibes out there. But also consider a policy for rewarding people who truly love your brand. This can run the gamut from special drawings for giveaways to enlisting these brand loyalists to help you create content by Pinning or blogging for you.

What is clear is that now is the time of social, and it’s up to e-commerce companies to forage their way into this new and exciting frontier.

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SoLoMo is not just one of the most entertaining buzzwords to say that has emerged in the last year, but it is also the topic of a recent blog post at Shop.org. The post discusses data and topics Forrester Research’s Melissa Parrish presented at a recent workshop. While there’s some interesting information about mobile for retailers, the conclusion it comes to on the local aspect of SoLoMo e-commerce is a little disheartening, and I would say that we can do better than that.

Findings on SoLoMo Consumers

First, let’s look at the good stuff retailers should know when working on their social, local, mobile commerce plan.

To date, most SoLoMo activities for retailers have focused on the “check-in.” While some brands have created geolocation-based apps, only about 5% of online US users with mobile phones use them. While that 5% is a very socially active group and is twice as likely to share product information, reviews and offers with friends, they are mostly male. So they are a small audience that might not fit in many retailers’ core demographic.

Additionally, Forrester has identified a new group of consumers: “the always addressable customer.” These consumers own and use at least three connected devices, and  go online several times a day from several different locations . Always addressable customers tend to be highly educated, high earners who are very social and use technology as a tool.

A Closer Look at Local E-Commerce

Based on these findings, the post questions what local means for selling goods online, and suggests focusing on giving consumers access to the brand rather than physical location. “So where does ‘local’ fit in to this data? For a retailer, the ‘Lo’ part of SoLoMo is simply that wherever your customer goes, you must be there. ‘Don’t think technology first – think about what your customer needs.’”

While I agree you need consumers to be able to reach your brand, product information and make a purchase wherever, whenever and however they want in a seamless and integrated manner, local content is an essential part of the equation that this blog post completely overlooks.

Similar to Forrester’s always addressable customer, eMarketer presents the smartphone class, and it describes its members as people who “snack” on their smartphones, consuming bits of content throughout the day. This gives retailers multiple potential touchpoints, but of course, there is a lot of noise retailers have to break through.

Offering localized content, like products the consumer can order with inexpensive delivery and shorter delivery times, creates a more engaging experience between your customers and your brand. And with big-ticket items, like furniture, tying into the closest store where the customer can go see and feel the item could be the difference in making or losing a sale.

Retailers that use mobile technology to be able to both engage consumers wherever they are and add a localized layer to drive customers in store will win. Sometimes even highly connected customers want to interact with real people. Being able to remind customers where you are (and how close that may be) when they feel they need you gives you the ultimate edge.

We at Blueport Commerce help our clients offer a local shopping experience for their customers regardless of the device. We tie right into our clients’ systems and have the same up to the minute inventory and product information the stores have, helping to create the omnichannel, seamless presence consumers now demand.

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As exciting a time this is for e-commerce, this is also an extraordinary time for the business of paying for goods. From Square, which converts smartphones into credit card-processors, to mobile payment regulations, there’s a lot going on in payments.

When it comes to mobile payments, do you have a pulse on customers’ needs, retailers’ goals and the big technology players? We’ve gathered a roundup of some of the hottest headlines to help you keep up with this fast-moving field:

NFCNews – Survey Shows 66% of Retailers Want Mobile POS

A new survey from Motorola Solutions shows there is increasing interest from retail, hospitality and field service industries for mobile Point of Sale (mPOS) solutions, such as NFC payments and mobile loyalty programs, as a core strategy for improving customer service. According to the survey, which was comprised of 541 retail, hospitality and field service employees from North America, UK, France and Germany, 66% of respondents are interested in mPOS, while 42% of respondents are currently piloting or starting trials within the next 36 months.

U.S. News & World Report – How Safe Are Mobile Payments?

For some consumers, paying at the checkout line becomes a lot simpler when they can forgo the plastic card and pay with their phone. Mobile payment applications like the Isis Mobile Wallet, Google Wallet, Square, and LevelUp turn your cell phone into a payment source: Just store your debit card or credit card information on the phone and scan the device at checkout. "Consumers like the convenience factor," says Sarah Jane Hughes, a commercial law professor at Indiana University. But is this new form of payment safe?

Mobile Payments Today – PayNearMe Gives Unbanked a New Mobile Payment Option

One of the problems for "cash-preferred" consumers is that some transactions, for instance, airline tickets or online purchases, require an electronic payment method. Now U.S. consumers who choose to use cash have another mobile option to make electronic payments. PayNearMe, a cash transaction network that markets to the under- and unbanked, announced its new mobile cash payment system, a product that lets those without credit or debit cards use their cash to make loan payments, pay bills or buy tickets.

Seeking Alpha – Apple: Sleeping Giant Within the Mobile Payment Industry

The mobile payment industry is still in its infancy. I believe the mobile payment industry is a multi-billion dollar, multi-year secular growth market which will have a huge impact to the bottom line of key mobile payment players. Aite Group states the volume of mobile payments will grow to over $200 billion by 2015. In 2010 mobile payment revenue was approximately $16 billion. That is an over 12-fold increase in just five years. Apple is a dominant leader in the smart phone market with over 35 million in smartphone sales last quarter alone. They have not entered the mobile payment market yet, but I expect them to arrive on the scene very soon and disrupt the current mobile payment landscape.

Wall Street Daily – Google Could “Wrapp” Up the Mobile Wallet Race for Good

Wall Street Daily readers know that point-of-sale Near-Field Communication (NFC) technology is one of my top trends to watch this year. And although a recent study by Pew Research found that the technology likely won’t be a dominant form of payment until at least 2020, that’s not stopping players from jockeying for position now. After all, whoever lays claim to the biggest share of the NFC market should have an easier go of dominating the industry as the technology gains popularity down the road.

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By now you’ve seen it -- the 94-second hilarious spot that introduced a new player to the $13 billion men’s shaving industry. Online-only Dollar Shave Club shaved away 12,000 customers from its competitors within two days of opening its e-commerce site. It didn’t take them millions in advertising -- just this really funny video.

There’s much the likes of Gillette, Schick and Bic, and in fact any retailer looking to sell online can learn from this little e-commerce company that could, as Fast Company offered its own recent list. Big or small, retailers need to realize the landscape is changing, and how you relate to customers deserves to be reexamined.

1. Authenticity

Consumers can see through your marketing speak. And if they can’t, they likely have a network of friends and family who can validate whether your brand lives up to its promises, your products are worth their prices and your customer service is up to par.

2. Social Tactics Done Right

Why did this video go viral? It’s darn entertaining!

CEO Michael Dubin delivers the message simply and honestly. He’s witty and smart -- forget just buying his razors; this guy is fun! I’d go for a beer with him. He is the brand. And customers met the brand and liked him.

The danger with some companies’ ventures into viral video and other social tactics is they try to be viral, which too often delivers in an overthought and overengineered result that falls flat for the public. Humor is hard. And so is having a distinctive voice.

Consider tapping your passionate customers who are already your advocates. See how they are spreading the word about you and similar products. Harness their love of your brand. Their voices will be more authentic and will help you develop the reach you need, and in an appropriate manner.

3. When a Dollar Makes Sense

With Dollar Shave Club, customers know they’re not going to get frills, but for a small amount of money, the video promises decent shave with one of their razors. It’s believable, and consumers can test it out for the fraction of what their regular razors cost.

In this economy, consumers are poised to shop, but they want to know they are getting the best deal possible. That is why some brick-and-mortar stores have been losing sales to in-store shoppers who can find a better price online. Our clients, which sell big-ticket items that are not easily commoditized, are not in the clear just because their merchandise cannot be cross-shopped. They still need to demonstrate the value of their products, whether it comes down to the items themselves or the customer service that comes with it.

So for retailers selling online, examine how you can harness some of the honesty, social tactics and value that has helped Dollar Shave club off to an impressive start.

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These days, shopping online is like going to a post-Oscars party. You can grab a drink (in this case, one from your home bar) and settle in to see some of the hottest stars and the hottest fashion. Who’s the latest guest to join the party? Justin Timberlake.

This week, BeachMint announced Justin Timberlake will work with his interior designer, Estee Stanley, to select home goods and accessories to be sold on HomeMint.com, the company’s newest property to launch later this spring. JT will be in good company, lending his name and design sensibility alongside Kate Bosworth (JewelMint), Jessica Simpson (BeautyMint) and Rachel Bilson (ShoeMint). In similar news, LuxeYard.com, a luxury home furnishings and décor flash sale site, announced the addition of entertainment journalist/reality TV personality Giuliana Rancic to its list of curating trendsetters.

Why Celebrity Curators Equal Big Business for E-Commerce

According to this Practical Ecommerce article, when OpenSky first launched its e-commerce site, leveraging influential bloggers to sell merchandise, the model did not work. When the company relaunched in April 2011 using celebrity curators (Kristin Cavallari, Guy Fieri and Molly Sims, to name a few) who choose the products and accompanying recommendations and content, it was a model that worked.  Revenue and orders are growing 50% month to month, and the company hit $1 million in sales last October.

While celebrity endorsements are nothing new, why does celebrity curation have such a profound and positive effect on e-commerce sales?

Personalizing the Website: Celebrity-curated e-commerce sites  bring a personal feeling to the online shopping experience. Customers aren’t virtually strolling down Amazon.com’s endless array of aisles, but are instead being guided in their shopping experience to items that are already endorsed to have value.

Appeals to Women: Women do the majority of online shopping and tend to use the web socially much more than men do. Most of the categories that have so far seen success with celebrity curation – home goods, apparel,  cosmetics, cooking – are verticals where women buy, and much of the celebrity curation has been geared toward that demographic.

Brand-Building: By aligning with a celebrity, online retailers get the halo of that celebrity’s reputation. It’s a fairly quick way for a website to establish its expertise, style and reputation.

And, of course, it’s a bit of good, old-fashioned star power. After all, when it comes down to it, wouldn’t you like a little more Justin Timberlake in your home?

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You likely heard the news this week that Facebook is acquiring Instagram, a mobile photo-sharing app, for $1 billion.
 
According to DailyDealMedia, with Facebook’s IPO a month away, some were expecting the company to announce major news related to e-commerce capabilities on the social network. While an F-commerce announcement is still rumored to surface between now and the public offering, there’s much that might come out of the Instagram acquisition that could make Facebook a more robust platform for e-commerce marketing and potentially monetization. Take a look at what Instagram is bringing to the social network table:

Instagram’s Audience

The Instagram app is on 30 million iDevices. When it was recently made available for Android, 1 million people signed on within 12 hours. And when users share photos through Instagram, they use the filters and the app’s rich tagging system to share with family and friends. Which brings us to…

Data, Data and More Data

Embedded in these photos is a lot of information. Photographs put the consumer in a specific location at a specific time. Your images show your real interests and whether or not you have children or pets. They weave a richer story, and show the people you actually spend time with (as compared to your Facebook friends). These images and the data that comes with them can be a marketer’s dream. Marketing could be targeted to the content of your photographs.

Brand Engagement

Facebook’s current photo album functionality could be greatly improved by Instagram’s filtering and tagging abilities. If Instagram’s features are integrated into Facebook’s photos, then companies will be able to create a much more engaging visual presence for their brands.

Mobile Capabilities

To date, Facebook has been lacking in the mobile department – Instagram is all about mobile. It’s easier and quicker to share an image than a status post from a phone. With Instagram, that photo will be more compelling. And, Instagram’s 30 million+ users are already engaged in the mobile platform.

Social Commerce

So does Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram have a direct e-commerce of F-commerce play? I would venture, it sure does! So far, the one social networking platform to be the quickest to monetize its clicks? Pinterest, of course.

According to this blog post on VentureBeat, Pinterest has grown from driving 1.2% of social media revenue for  e-commerce websites in Q2 2011 to now being responsible for 17.4%. They’re projecting “Pinterest will be responsible for 40% of social media e-commerce transactions by end of Q2 2012, reducing Facebook’s share to slightly under 60% from 86% a year ago.” What’s even more interesting is that consumers are discovering new retail brands via Pinterest, in contrast to consumers following brands they already know on Facebook.

While we can’t be certain how Facebook will integrate with Facebook, we are definitely excited to see how it will all play out and the effects it will have on e-commerce, social commerce and multichannel retailing.

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The answer to that question depends on what you’re selling. For instance, if you sell electronics and video games or other commodities, like Best Buy does, then you need 50 less physical stores than you currently have.

Last week, a day after Best Buy’s e-commerce site was down for 17 hours’ worth of upgrades, the company announced it would close 50 big-box stores as a cost-reducing measure.  Similarly, big-box commodity seller Wal-Mart is losing ground to Amazon and is working to beef up its own e-commerce offering.

We’re seeing this trend, because commodities can be easily searched online and via mobile devices, and consumers can easily shop the lowest bidder. After all, a Canon Powershot is a Canon Powershot and has the same features and feel no matter where or how it is purchased. E-commerce operations with lower overhead can underprice physical stores and win the business away from them.

However, if you’re a retailer selling big-ticket or other non-commoditized items, your e-commerce presence can be a vital customer touch point that drives the overall business. When executed correctly, the e-commerce site becomes a full brand extension that drives in-store traffic and vice versa. This is what Blueport Commerce helps its clients do.

For the merchandise our clients sell, like furniture and flooring, the store behind the products matter.
Consumers often begin their searches online, researching selections and offers from various retailers, but for some, they will need to move on to the store to make their final decision. As a retailer, you want to give customers the choice so they can buy in the way that best suits their needs. Even if sofas from two different retailers look the same, they likely come from different manufacturers and may be constructed differently. Given that this is a larger, more expensive purchase, consumers are also looking for trusted retailers that can provide quick, inexpensive delivery, as well as service, if ever required.

Our clients are fortunate -- they can truly harness the power of multichannel retailing, because all channels play important roles in the buying cycle. And consumers win as well, because they’ll still have a place to go test drive a sofa.

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Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

If you wanted to browse products or make a purchase at Best Buy’s website on Wednesday morning, you were out of luck. BestBuy.com was down, due to a planned outage, from 10 p.m. ET on Tuesday until 3 p.m. ET on Wednesday, for site updates. But the inconveniences transcended the prospective online shopper.

Customers who already made online purchases could not track or receive updates on their orders, and access to the mobile site and in-store kiosks was also cut. In-store, salespeople rely on the website for checking inventory and other product information. So, if you went to a store and wanted to know if an out-of-stock item was available at another location, for example, a salesperson would not have been able to help you during that downtime.

While the full extent of the updates may not be apparent to the average consumer, the disruptions they caused for 17 hours must have been.

Blueport Commerce Minimizes Downtime for Online Retailers

Here at Blueport, we have set up our systems to keep downtime to a minimum during any release – our goal is to never make core functionality unavailable for more than five minutes.

Our global environment is composed of many small environments that all work together. For instance, we split the websites the public sees into two groups, A and B. When we’re doing a site release, we remove the A group from public view and update that group. Then we repeat with group B group. Releasing in this way allows for almost no downtime as one of these groups is always available to customers.

Such a process has allowed us to release significant site and platform redesigns without any adverse effects for our clients and their online retail customers.

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Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

When looking for anything on the web, people are faced with numerous possibilities. It’s like our lives have turned into an overwhelming list of search results listings with seemingly limitless possibilities. For some, this is an opportunity to explore and play, but for others this is just plain daunting. Here at Blueport, we believe thematically culling items is especially helpful for big-ticket retailers that sell larger items that aren’t easily shopped around like other commodities.

And shopping on an e-commerce website is the same. Many online retailers’ site links are merely returning keyword searches, giving shoppers choices, but sometimes the vast number of items returned is too large. As a recent eMarketer article about its new report, “Curated E-Commerce: How Less Can Be More for Shoppers,” says, “As the Internet matures and expands, the number of choices available to users grows exponentially…. Over time, though, human curation was all but replaced by algorithm-based searching.”

The report discusses the merits of retailers hand-picking items and grouping items together based on themes or other qualities beyond data points that might align with a specific user’s Facebook profile data points. It’s about bringing a genuine human quality back to the online shopping experience that can’t be replicated solely through metrics.

“Curated e-commerce is becoming recognized by both retailers and shoppers for its simplicity and ability to help fill an online void,” says Krista Garcia, the report’s author. “There will always be a place for comprehensive, multi-category retail sites, but fine-tuned collections enhanced by personal touches also perform a necessary function in the e-commerce ecosystem.”

How Curated E-Commerce Can Help Your Online Store

Here at Blueport, we believe thematically culling items is especially helpful for big-ticket retailers, like our clients, that sell larger items that aren’t easily cross-shopped like more commoditized items. Often, shoppers come to our clients’ websites knowing they want a sofa or a dining room set and little beyond that. They may have specific ideas related to material, color, size or price point, but often stores are not organized by these characteristics. But curated collections can be!

Curated galleries of merchandise allows retailers to guide their customers to product in different ways, often with a more brand-oriented, personal touch. Retailers can use these galleries to offer information related to what they sell so customers get advice as well as exposure to a specific slice of inventory. It helps to perpetuate the retailer’s voice and authority.

We have already developed curated offerings for our clients and have found that those shoppers who interact with category widgets or curated collections on the websites and via email have deeper interactions with the sites overall. And we think an even more aggressive curated approach will capture more consumers in an increasingly overwhelming online shopping landscape.

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Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

Blueport Commerce would like to offer a hearty congratulations to Demandware, which priced 5.5 million IPO shares at $16. They closed at $23.59 making the company’s value $530 million. Demandware joins the likes of other cloud computing-based software companies, including Brightcove and Bazaarvoice, that have joined the IPO wave since December.

There are a number of reasons why we here at Blueport are happy for Demandware’s success. Above all, it shows how more and more retailers are looking to the cloud for e-commerce solutions, rather than trying to build and run their own e-commerce software.

Retailers who use Software as a Service (or SaaS) e-commerce solutions like Blueport or Demandware leverage the cloud, cutting-edge technology and the expertise of companies that live and breathe e-commerce to bring their brands online efficiently and effectively.

This IPO is also a good reminder of how far e-commerce has come. Demandware’s e-commerce solution focuses on apparel. There was a time when no one believed anyone would buy clothes or shoes online. Now, buying clothing online is as commonplace as buying as anything else.

Just as Demandware has done for its apparel clients, Blueport takes the hard work out of e-commerce for challenging categories like furniture, flooring and appliances. We provide a robust SaaS e-commerce platform that solves the unique, local challenges our customers face, so they can focus on their businesses, rather than attempting to reinvent e-commerce technology.

We’ve seen our customers have great success selling big-ticket items online. Demandware’s IPO reminds us this is only the beginning.

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Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

In February, when TJX announced its plan to nearly double its annual sales, we here at Blueport took notice, especially since e-commerce is a crucial part of the plan to get there.

For the fiscal year ending January 28, 2012, TJX, parent company of T.J. Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods in the US, had $23.3 billion in net sales. The goal is to reach $40 billion by investing in technology and e-commerce. While the company has a web presence with a combined 4 million visitors per month for all of its properties, they do not sell merchandise online in the US and have not since their last attempt at e-commerce in 2006.

“E-commerce is clearly in our future,” said TJX CEO Carol Meyrowitz in a recent conference call as reported by RIS News, Internet Retailer and others. “We believe e-commerce will open up a greater landscape for categories. Just think about the potential for us to carry categories online that we wouldn’t carry in our stores.”

At this point, TJX is building a team of e-commerce experts with a focus on developing the new initiative.
 
My Advice for TJX

Working at a company with more than 10 years of e-commerce experience, I have some thoughts on the possible tact TJX could take in growing its online retail business.

As I understand the retailer’s overall business, much of the merchandise it sells comes from opportunistic buys, like when a distributor liquidates 900 name-brand sweaters or 500 sofas in a discontinued upholstery pattern, or from program buys, when items are manufactured specifically to be sold by discount chains. Most, shall we say, Maxxinistas, go to the stores to land the opportunistic merchandise, which is harder to find because of the limited supply. So not every store carries the same merchandise, and much of the more sought-after stock moves very quickly. How does this translate to an online retail business?

Option 1: The Gilt Model

TJX and all of its properties could follow in the paths of Gilt Groupe, Fab.com and the like, selling the best stuff online, perhaps even following the invite-only model. Then, items could be shipped from a central location, which tends to work best for smaller items that can be packed in a Fed Ex box.

The challenge here is that their retail websites would directly compete with their stores rather than creating a beneficial and seamless multichannel retail experience for consumers. (Hint: Don’t do this.)

Option 2: Localized Cross-Channel Commerce

TJX could go for a truly localized e-commerce solution that ties into real-time inventory data would provide the best results for their overall bottom line. Customers would be able to get their purchases inexpensively and quickly or even see items in a nearby store. The web presence would continue to improve the overall bottom line without jeopardizing any individual location’s own fiscal health. (Hint: Do this!)

Based on the e-commerce solution we’ve created for our own clients, we think the second option and offering customers a localized cross-channel e-commerce experience would be the best for any retailers’ long-term growth. After all, we’ve already proven this model in the home furnishing industry for stores just like HomeGoods.

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Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Retailers must advertise online to compete in today’s market. We’ve showed you that customers are online, and we’ve shared data that proves the direct correlation between online advertising and increased in-store sales.

We continually talk to our clients and other big-ticket retailers about the merits of advertising online vs. sticking with what some still call a “tried-and-true” newspaper advertising strategy.

The times, they are a changing. This week, a little graphic has been making its way around the Web, showing the decline in print newspaper advertising revenue, adjusted for inflation.

The image was created by Dr. Mark J. Perry, a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan in Flint. One of his more striking observations? “It took 50 years to go from about $20 billion in annual newspaper ad revenue in 1950 (adjusted for inflation) to $63.5 billion in 2000, and then only 11 years to go from $63.5 billion back to about $20 billion in 2011.” Said another way, in the last decade, newspaper advertising has fallen back to 1950s levels.

As an article from The Atlantic explains, newspapers have been losing advertising revenue to websites, because the softer sections of the newspapers that actually sell the ads, like “the car section, the style section, the travel section and the classified” all have online counterparts. “Ad dollars started flowing to websites that gave people their car, style, travel, or classifieds directly. So did the readers. And down went print.”

What is it about print advertising that still has some retailers hooked? Print ads are expensive, can’t be personalized and the ROI is often hard to track. Meanwhile, online advertising has numerous capabilities for localization, personalized targeting and tracking. They reach shoppers not when they are reading a news article, but when they’re searching online for the goods that you can sell them.

As the print advertising industry has been collapsing, the folks at the Interactive Advertising Bureau have been tracking online advertising growth, and have a very different story to tell.

In the third quarter of last year, US online advertising revenue hit nearly $8 billion, reaching double digit increases despite the lagging economy. “The ongoing increases in internet advertising revenues points to a new paradigm within the advertising world -- one in which digital is taking a bigger seat at the table,” said David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, in the IAB press release. “Moreover, even with a softened economy, digital advertising is making tremendous gains.”

Overlay these two trends since 2000, and the message becomes even clearer: Advertisers are fleeing newspaper advertising for the improved ROI of online.

Compare how you spend your advertising dollars to this trend. Are you spending like it’s 2012, 2000 or 1950?

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• Online Advertising: Now Delivering Local shoppers -- Is Your Website Ready?
• Will You Make Back Your Online Advertising Spend in Store Sales? Yes!
• Multichannel Communication: A Marketer's Dream or Nightmare?
• E-Commerce Marketing: Multichannel Analysis Is a Must!

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

It's hard to ignore the hype around Pinterest, the new social sharing platform, and you're forgiven if you are hesitating to invest hours into yet another new social tool. But if you take a close look at what it does and who is using it, we think you'll find Pinterest is worth spending some time on, especially if you're a home furnishings retailer.

What is Pinterest anyway?

It's a place where people can share things they like - such as products, recipes, or ideas - via a pin on a virtual board. Users can follow each other's boards, and can re-pin what they like. Given its similarity to how interior designers create boards to showcase decorating ideas, it's not surprising that many boards focus on home decor and design.

Who's using Pinterest?

Both the demographics and the usage patterns of a typical member are much of what's driving the hype.

• The majority of Pinterest users are women between the ages of 25 and 54 (source: KISSMetrics)
• The site received over 11 million users in January, more than double the number in November, and the average visitor spend 100 minutes on the site ( source: The Wall Street Journal)
• Pinterest is now in the top 5 of referring social sites (source: Shareaholic)

Where should I start?

The best thing about Pinterest is that it's easy to get started and doesn't require round-the-clock care like Facebook or Twitter. You can easily set up multiple contributors to an account so different people can create and maintain boards for your brand. To keep in the spirit of the community, don't stop at pinning your own products, share design inspirations, tips and how-tos, even pictures of the employees who help create the products. And don't forget to update your web site to allow others to easily pin your products!

Do you have some great tips on using Pinterest as a retailer? Share them here!

 

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

 

Would you spend $300 on shipping an item you’re buying online for $100? If you’re like many of today’s consumers, you might think that’s just not fair. But that is the type of shipping charge Ikea customers are facing.

According to this Stylelist Home blog post, Ikea has established a flat shipping rate for customers further from their store locations. This likely lowers the cost for customers buying roomfuls of furniture, but the customer who is buying a single item appears to lose out. Statistics show that people who purchase furniture on the web are, in fact, often buying single pieces -- it's the guy who’s jumping online at lunch to snag that $899 leather couch he has in his cart that is now on sale for $629 (you know, the one with the brushed stainless legs).  But what is the abandonment rate when a customer sees the shipping rate is higher than the money he’s saving?  I'll save you the thinking on this one: The abandonment rate is huge, and that's a problem for billion-dollar retailers like Ikea.

Shipping is an expensive part of the retail business, especially for big-ticket retailers. But not getting this part of the pricing right can be detrimental to the bottom line. Implementing a local e-commerce strategy can keep shipping costs down for your customers.

Our e-commerce solution here at Blueport takes the customer’s location into account. We tie into our retail clients’ real-time inventory data and display the merchandise that is available in the physical stores closest to the customer. This allows customers to get the merchandise they want as quickly and inexpensively as possible. After all, happy customers equal happy retailers!

Related posts:

• Hyperlocal Beyond Marketing -- Think Localized E-Commerce
• E-Commerce Logistics and the Element of Localization
• 5 Tips for Handling Inventory Stock Information on E-Commerce Sites
• E-Commerce 2.0 -- the Next Wave

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

Looking at last week’s post, it seems marketing and IT have switched personalities for this discussion, as marketing is usually the promoter of the bright and shiny future while IT proceeds with caution seeing dangers around every corner.

After years of working with in-house tools and best-in-class SaaS solutions, Blueport’s marketing department has a few words of caution for our kin who are working to gain control over their own technologies.

Know What the SaaS Will Really Offer Your E-Commerce Website

There is an ever-increasing number of technologies being pitched to marketing as being the key to higher conversions, with easy-to-use interfaces and “little IT involvement” required. But beware of false promises and flashy demos. For every app that really makes your life better (like social media posting apps), there are apps that will only add to your workflow, not your bottom line. Many seemingly promising apps turn out to be so limited and inflexible that in a month your ideas will have exceeded their capabilities.  Even worse are the apps that make website pages grind to a halt as they call numerous third parties to display data in a fancy new interface.

Technical Resources Required

One of the benefits of your internal development team is their ability to help identify your needs and find a real solution. While the solution may be found outside your company, marketing will still need business analysts and vendor managers to help evaluate and maintain these new services. These professionals, which typically sit in the IT part of the organization, will have insights and questions that are not evident to all in the organization. These same talents are needed to ensure these services are implemented correctly and doing what you expect them to do on the client side – many of these SaaS provides offer little handholding around the backend of things. I would caution marketing to be too willing to take over their own IT projects without first having these resources in place.

Tracking All Your Systems

Lastly, be aware that tying these systems together with other marketing efforts and internal systems to gain a complete view of your customer becomes more and more difficult with each new service. Each service will come with its own usage data, which may or may not conflict with other information you have. Make sure this new information really adds value, and not just inactionable data.

When IT and Marketing Collaborate, There’s Some Letting Go

For e-commerce companies and the like to truly advance and be competitive in a world where the latest technology consumers want to experience may come from anywhere, marketing and development leaders should sit down and set some ground rules as to who makes the calls – with input from the other – on what functionality. In other words, they should draw the lines between core (IT’s domain) and subject area (marketing) expertise. On an e-commerce site, the key shopping cart workflow would be ultimately owned by development but product reviews would be marketing’s domain. While it is necessary for each side to provide input and support on changes and technology, clear owners will help keep projects and advancements moving along.

Related posts:

• Retail CIOs Should Champion Collaboration Across Departments
• When It Comes to the Newest Technology, Set Objectives First
• The Next Big Thing in Big-Ticket E-Commerce
  
• What You Should Know About E-Commerce Hosting
  

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

Here at Blueport, we’ve been passing around last week’s StorefrontBackTalk blog post “Should CIOs Now Surrender to Marketing?,” and it has sparked some discourse between our own marketing and technology functions. As Director of Integration, do I think CIOs should surrender to marketing? They already have!

Some don’t know it yet and some have walled themselves up in time capsules, and for both those groups, the battle has passed them by. Those CIOs who don’t know it yet lead organizations that just can’t seem to make up lost ground chasing the most profitable new technologies. Those who have walled themselves off behind pretexts of the need for conformity and centralized control have done nothing but stifle and stratify the process of business evolution critical to ongoing competitiveness. IT organizations that encourage and support peer business unit management of specialized, cost effective, outsourced applications have won the day.

When CIOs Let Go, Bigger Opportunities Result

By foregoing complete control of all that has become the technology function, the CIO also realizes benefits and reveals opportunities. No IT organization has excess resources to spend making specialized applications that compete with today’s best-in-class cloud and SaaS solutions. Spinning off responsibility for tools that cater to subject area expertise allows CIOs to focus resources against core projects where their resources thrive as opposed to working a potentially complicated solution in an unfamiliar discipline.

A Real-Life E-Commerce Example

The real opportunities result when, through a collaborative approach to enabling specialized applications, a vision develops of the next generation corporate infrastructure, an infrastructure that enables and supports snap-in specialized solutions and opens the door to the same type of quick, cost-effective solutions for all business units. Collaboration between the company’s business functions leading to a common enabling infrastructure gives the CIO the benefit of steering decisions on critical issues central to modern IT, such as compliance and security. Finally, the specialized applications researched and implemented by business units act like a research and development IT skunk works, exposing the organization to the newest technologies and solution patterns.

A real world example of this is your typical big-ticket retail e-commerce website.  Assuming the CIO chooses to develop the e-commerce solution in house, the company first needs to decide on a technology for catalog, order tunnel, fulfillment, and reporting. Then the CIO must hire a development team or train existing staff. While the staff is either hiring or training, none of them are advancing the IT organization’s other core solutions. And, as the new e-commerce team is building the website against the initial technology chosen, they are already falling behind technically. When the in-house solution finally launches, it is already underwhelming to consumers and, more often than not, the effort needs to be set aside immediately to resume work against the ever-present backlog of requests for changes to core business solutions.

All the while, the CIO could have used one of the SaaS solutions that are evolving quickly and constantly setting new user experience paradigms.

Alternately, if the CIO chooses to embrace an SaaS e-commerce solution advanced by the marketing team, the CIO’s team would have input on integration and security, as well as an easy case with management for building enhancements to core infrastructure and systems. The enhancements to the core infrastructure, quickened and focused by working against the new SaaS e-commerce solution, open the door to additional SaaS or cloud solutions as well as new technology core solutions by the in-house team. And don’t forget the finished product: SaaS solutions evolve very quickly and constantly set new user experience paradigms – customers love the new website. The next SaaS integration is very cost-effective, and the CIO is the hero. Best of all, nothing of true importance was actually surrendered to marketing.  

Next week: Marketing responds!

Related posts:

• HTML5 Moves to the Head of the Line for E-Commerce Web Development
  
• When It Comes to the Newest Technology, Set Objectives First
  
• The Next Big Thing in Big-Ticket E-Commerce
  
• What You Should Know About E-Commerce Hosting
  

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

For years, the promise of one-to-one communications with customers has made online marketers giddy with the personalized messages they’d be able to deliver and the resounding results they’d get back. Sadly, reality isn’t always the same as what we can dream up.

In the case of one-to-one marketing, the tools technically exist. Companies have rich data on their customers and e-mail systems have the ability to target based on them, but the missing ingredient is the content that has to be generated to create this truly unique messaging. Is the content creation and its associated cost worth the return on investment, or is there a better way?

Here at Blueport, we’ve worked to achieve true one-to-one communication for our clients and have seen few returns. But trigger messages based on the customers’ lifecycle has been a completely different story. We’re able to segment users and send them relevant messages based on actions they’ve taken on the website. If marketers get too specific, the messaging becomes hard to maintain without becoming more useful .

Apparently we're not the only ones to come to this conclusion. According to a recent article on ClickZ, “Triggered communications are being widely adopted. This is messaging that, while not necessarily personalized in content, is triggered in response to specific behaviors or events, giving each recipient the feeling that the message was personal due to contextual relevance. Whether it's time, location, or behaviorally triggered, such messaging can feel extremely personal and engaging even though it may be being sent to thousands of recipients each day.”

This year, I have seen our retailers embrace the trigger/lifecycle message concept as a requirement to how they do business thanks to its positive ROI and high user engagement. It's just one way we're making ourselves relevant to our customers and not just another retailer in the crowd.

Related posts:

• Rethink Shopping Cart Abandonment on Your E-Commerce Site
• 3 Reasons Why Quality Content Could Be Your Key to E-Commerce Success
• Engaging Site Visitors Through Email
• E-Commerce CRM Becomes More Meaningful in a Multichannel, Social World

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

In a previous post, I talked about how tablet commerce will continue to be one of the top growing e-commerce trends this year. And there is good news for e-commerce businesses who want to drive additional business through this medium: You can now get to know tablet users a little better.
 
Internet Retailer recently wrote about the results of a Zmags survey conducted by Equation Research on who the people are who are making purchases via their tablets. Here are some of the results:
 
The Typical Tablet Owner
 

• Age 40
• Average annual household income: $63,000
• 52% are women
• 81% use Facebook

Tablet Shopping Habits
 

• 14% of consumers who own tablets consider themselves to be spontaneous shoppers
• 9% classify themselves as  “addicted to shopping”
• 24% window-shop on their devices
• 13% go shopping with a specific product in mind
• 11% are moved to action based on advertisements
• During the survey, on average spent $325 on their tablets

Why Tablet Commerce Makes Sense
 

• 29% of tablet shoppers say it’s convenient since they are on the device so much
• 14% like the ease of making a purchase on their tablets
• 9% enjoy the simplicity of being able to share shopping-related information on their social networks

This is further evidence that tablet shoppers are poised to browse and shop e-commerce site via their devices. While you don’t want to miss the opportunity to get in front of these shoppers, their influence on social networks is also an alluring reason to capture this audience.

Related posts:

• 3 Key E-Commerce Trends to Watch in 2012
• Why E-Commerce Should Be Fired Uo About Kindle Fire
• 'T-Commerce' Reinvented as iPads Shape Multichannel Retail
• Arhaus Furniture's Custom iPad App Aims to Drive Cross-Channel Sales

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

For e-commerce sites, both on the web and mobile, there’s a lot you can control about your site, for instance, what products are featured, site promotions, the shopping cart and more. But when it comes to site performance, some issues are out of the retailer’s hands.

For example, last month Toolfetch.com’s mobile commerce site experienced availability issues. While load time remained a quick 5.30 seconds, the site was unavailable for nearly 10% of customers who tried to load it. The culprit? Service interruption at the data center. 

Toolfetch.com had likely created a multi-homed network connecting their data center to two independent carriers – it’s like running Comcast and RCN for your home Internet connection and using them both at the same time. Many e-commerce sites conduct such practices, and it’s almost required to ensure adequate uptime these days. Running this type of connection adds complexity and multiple additional layers that must be monitored and managed properly. From our perspective here at Blueport, running this multi-homed network alone isn’t enough to guarantee better performance and uptime.

In addition to implementing a multi-homed network with independent carriers, we also use edge caching via Akamai for all of our clients’ e-commerce sites.  Akamai copies our websites and stores the pages across thousands of nodes all over the US and Canada. When a user hits one of our clients’ websites, 85% of the time the data they see is loaded via a node located geographically close to the user’s computer.  If Akamai does not have already have a copy of the page, the service determines the fastest path to loading the page for the user and fetches the information from our data center to display it as quickly as possible.

By taking additional precautions, we are able to further reduce the risk of the unexpected and improve site performance for our clients.

Related posts:

• Keep Your E-Commerce Site on Target and Avoid Outages
• Get Your E-Commerce Website Ready for Daily Deals
• E-Commerce and the Dangers of Downtime

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

The immense e-commerce success of the holiday shopping season is so last year. Now online merchants need to navigate January’s retail hangover.

This year, with holiday spending significantly up from previous years, January and February spending is projected to drop more drastically in contrast. "Now that those credit card bills are hitting mailboxes, shoppers will cut back in a very significant way relative to [the] January and February of the last few years," says a DailyFinance article, quoting Britt Beemer, group chairman of America's Research Group, in a statement.

Add to that the overall state of the economy, regardless of any holiday binging, and consumer spending is expected to be tepid, says a New York Times article. “Consumer spending makes up 70 percent of the economy, so until it ignites, general growth is likely to be sluggish,” it reads.

So what can online retailers do to come out on top during a typically slow time of the year that might be slower than normal? We at Blueport suggest you try one or more of these ideas:

Sell More with Volume Discounts

Steep price cuts can be detrimental to your retail business, especially long-term. Instead, work to increase average sales by offering volume or tiered discounts.

Focus on Customer Service and Value

Don’t allow your e-commerce business, whether big-ticket or not, to become solely commodity-driven. Zappos.com, for example, may not always offer the cheapest price, but the value that comes from the e-retailer’s brand, policies and customer service make it a destination for consumers. What can you do or offer to make your e-commerce website more valuable than your competitors’?

Spend Time on Social Media

Building your social media presence can be time-consuming, but it can also be an invaluable investment. Take the time now to create your social media brand. Try out special offers for your Facebook fans and test new ideas in this realm. See if allowing fans to vote on deals and other social initiatives can incrementally boost sales.

Expand Your Email List

Reaching out to more consumers now will help your e-commerce brand be poised to sell when they are ready to buy. Are you doing everything you can to grow this list of names? Is there an incentive or contest you could offer? Also, consider the types of messaging you might be able to deliver during this shopping downtime. Mix in some informative content that would be worthy of sending to a friend to extend your efforts.

Don’t Forget Your Recent Customers

Reach out to customers who have bought from your e-commerce website to encourage them to write reviews of their purchases. Any incentive you offer will be worth it -- this user-generated content will help create a strong, interactive e-commerce website to convert future customers.

Related posts:

• 3 Key E-Commerce Trends to Watch in 2012
• Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday -- How Did E-Commerce Do?
• The Economy May Be Looking Down, But E-Commerce Sales Keep Looking Up
• Engaging Site Visitors Through Email
• It's Not Always About Price...
  

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce