Big-Ticket E-Commerce Marketing StrategyBlueport.com

There were several great articles published this week on the impact the iPad will have on retail and, eventually, workplace computing.  One that I particularly enjoyed was focused on the device’s impact on female shopping behavior.  In her AdAge piece titled “How the iPad is Reshaping E-commerce,” Engauge CMO Patti Ziegler draws on her own experience as an iPad-loving mom.  She quickly points the growing cohort of iPad owners – wealthy, tech savvy and increasingly female – a group that is quickly becoming a powerful driver of B2C e-commerce sales.

Ziegler uses the term “t-commerce” which was coined by Forrester in a January 2011 report to describe shopping on a tablet device.  About a decade ago, Forrester coined the term “t-commerce” to mean e-commerce undertaken using digital television. We think tablet commerce will have a much larger impact on retailers.  Here’s why you should be paying attention, and marketing to, this group of women leading the t-commerce charge:

• Within four months of launch, the female-to-male ratio of iPad users shifted from 1:2 to 2:3
• iPad owners are typically affluent and more likely to be spending money online
• Women control between 70-85% of household spending in the US
• Tablet sales are forecast to nearly quadruple from 2010 to 2015
• Many retailers report that over 50% of their mobile traffic is already coming from tablet devices

What is your organization doing to rise to this new multichannel challenge?  Are you creating shopper experiences that extend across mobile phones, computers, in-store kiosks and tablets – including the iPad?  We're interested in hearing your big-ticket retail t-commerce plans and success stories.

Additional reading:

Ad Age - How the iPad is Reshaping E-commerce

MarketingVox - Time to Start Prepping for T-Commerce

New York Times - After the iPad's Head Start, Rival Tablets are Poised to Flood Offices



Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

“At 7 p.m. on Wednesday, [J.C.] Penney was No. 1 in searches for ‘living room furniture.’ By 9 p.m., it had sunk to No. 68. In other words, one moment Penney was the most visible online destination for living room furniture in the country. The next it was essentially buried.”

This excerpt from the New York Times’ "The Dirty Little Secrets of Search" by David Segal sums up the rise and fall of J.C. Penney in organic search results after apparently implementing some black hat approaches to improve its PageRank. Specifically, it appears that J.C. Penney and/or its search firm, which has since been fired, paid to have links in a variety of categories spammed across the web, all pointing back to the company’s home page. This gave J.C. Penney the top rank for a number of searches during the ever-important holiday shopping season. Google didn’t catch the terms violation until the NY Times submitted the evidence. Google immediately took action, causing Penney to lose its rank, but conspiracy theorists wonder if Google might have looked the other way when it came to discretions carried out by one of its largest paid search clients.

If you are working with a third party on your website’s search engine optimization, know that most of them are on the up and up and are not employing black hat tricks to deliver results. But you should be aware of what they are doing, and paying for links can get you on Google’s bad list.

So what can a site looking to get better organic search rankings do?

3 Ways to Improve Your Ecommerce Site's Organic Search PageRank

1. Content is king when it comes to search engines and the web. Create original content that consumers will want to find.

2. Do your keyword research due diligence. Incorporate the words that consumers are using into the content you create. Google Adwords’ Keyword Tool can help, and you can also look at your site’s internal keyword search for ideas. Work these phrases into the content you create, and use them in URLs and hyperlinks to related content.

3. Get other websites to link to your site, not by paying them of course, but by building real, meaningful relationships. Comment on blogs and articles that are related to your site’s expertise, and link out to others. This takes some time, but the eventual benefits will be worth it.

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

This week comScore released their annual comScore 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review, an annual report that recaps key trends in the U.S. digital media landscape, including ecommerce retailing, social networking, online video, search, online advertising and mobile, with an emphasis on how digital and multichannel retail marketers can capitalize on these trends in 2011.

While growth and evolution of the industry is no surprise to those of us in this space, the report does capture an excellent picture of changes driving the evolution and where the industry is heading.  Here are the highlights in numbers:

Ecommerce is booming: Cyber Monday (the biggest online spending day in history with more than $1 billion in sales), was just the tip of the iceberg.  In 2010, total U.S. ecommerce retail spending reached $227.6 billion, up 9 percent versus the previous year. 

The year of Facebook: In 2010, 9 out of every 10 U.S. Internet users used social networking sites, with the average user spending more than 4 hours on these sites each month.  Nearly 1 out of every 8 minutes online is spent on Facebook.

Video is king: According to comScore, Americans spent more than 14 hours watching online video in December 2010, a 12 percent increase from the prior year.  They also streamed a record 201 videos, an 8 percent increase from 2009.

Mobile reached a turning point: In 2010, smartphones reached 1 in 4 mobile subscribers. Approximately 47 percent of mobile subscribers are now connected Internet media users (via browsers, applications or downloaded content), up 8 percentage points from the previous year. 



Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

Congratulations to our email marketing partner e-Dialog for being honored for Innovation in Email Marketing in this year’s Econsultancy Innovation Awards for the company’s work with British Airways.  The email marketing campaign promoted the airline’s new mobile application for its loyalty club, and achieved more than 70,000 clicks and doubled download targets over the course of the marketing campaign.  Way to go, e-Dialog!


Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

I read an interesting piece in Fortune this week about the revival of the store within a store concept.  Some of the country’s biggest multichannel retailers, including Sears, Target and Walmart have recently rolled out new marketplaces or boutiques within their existing retail stores.  

The benefits of these partnerships are easy to see. By partnering with specialized retailers and manufacturers, large retailers can fill holes in their product offering and capitalize on new retailing or product trends quicker.  They can also tap into a wealth of new crosschannel and cross-brand marketing opportunities.

A variation of the store within a store concept is also gaining steam for online retailers. Fortune notes that almost 80% of the products sold by Amazon come from outside sellers who handle their own products, set their own prices and provide their own customer service. Sears also recently launched  "Marketplace at Sears" following on this concept.

I think this is a trend that we will see much more of over the next year, as our traditional retail models continue to shift and retailers embrace new ways to engage their customers and drive sales across channels.

The key for retailers will be developing compelling store within a store environments (be it online or in-store) that excite customers and draw them in.  That sense of uniqueness and surprise will be essential to elevating the brand, capturing customers’ attention and capitalizing on sales opportunities.




Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

The New York Times’ Claire Cain Miller just wrote a great profile of Warby Parker, a New York startup that is seeing success by building an ecommerce market for prescription eyeglasses. This is the latest example of how traditional notions of what consumers will or will not buy online no longer apply.

Ecommerce Has Evolved

Up until recently most skeptics considered certain items off-limits in the ecommerce retail world -- items like furniture, fine jewelry, cars and appliances. All of these products were considered too complex, and as such, most retailers felt consumers would need to see them in person before committing to a purchase. 

At the heart of Warby Parker’s strategy is a focus on offering customers convenience and superb customer service to make them feel comfortable with purchasing online.  For example, the site allows shoppers to upload photos of themselves and virtually try on glasses.  All eyeglasses are completely returnable, but the company will also mail customers five loaner frames to try on at home, or they can even be directed to several of Warby Parker’s physical locations across the country. 

Ecommerce Works for Big-Ticket Retail

Here at Blueport Commerce, we recognized the ecommerce market for these big-ticket purchases over a decade ago and have been at the forefront of developing online retail strategies for retailers in these categories ever since. Warby Parker is another example of the immense opportunity online for businesses in all categories, and we are excited to see more companies take cues from these successes and make their foray online.



Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

A newly released report from eMarketer highlights the seismic shift that is occurring in how consumers shop, and consequently, how multi channel retailers need to market to them.

Digital media, technology and content have dramatically altered the multichannel retail shopping experience.   eMarketer outlines how retailers can use technologies to target consumers during their three shopping phases: pre-shop, in-store and post-shop.

Pre-shop: Make the shopping experience as easy and convenient as possible for consumers, by equipping them with a variety of digital shopping tools to help them save money, grant them access to deals or provide the product information they are looking for quickly.  At the heart of this is your ecommerce store, which should give customers everything they need at their fingertips and a foundation for their purchase path. 

In-store: eMarketer highlights several technologies that retailers can incorporate into their stores, such as self-checkouts or kiosks, but they emphasize the most notable of these is mobile. In addition to store staff, location-based check-ins and in-store mobile tools and apps such as price comparisons will offer retailers an additional opportunity to engage and interact with their customers in the final moments before they make their purchase decision.

Post-shop: Once a customer has made their purchase, retailers should look for creative ways to encourage customers to share their stories via social media or other online communities.

As eMarketer notes, more touchpoints for consumers along their purchase path mean more opportunities for retailers to get creative in how they engage with them.  Start by thinking holistically about the customer purchase path and how your various retail marketing initiatives impact their decision process every step of the way. 


Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

If you are a multichannel retailer, chances are your website has a store locator.  But, according to a new report from Tempkin Group, online store locators are missing a key part of the shopping experience.  The report, issued in December, evaluated five retailers – The Home Depot, Kroger, Target, Walgreens and Walmart, as well as five banks.  Companies were rated across six criteria: start, locate, interact, complete, end and brand coherence.

Tempkin Group found that most of the sites' store locators were mediocre because they had poorly organized results pages, lacked important information and made it hard to find the store locator on the homepage.

While store locators are often a ‘checklist’ feature, is critical to get it right, or you risk losing traffic (and therefore sales) to your competitors.  There is no reason that the store locator should become one of your ecommerce challenges. Based on the Tempkin Group’s criteria, as well as our own experience with big-ticket retailers who rely heavily on cross channel commerce, we put together the following tips to ensure your store locator makes the grade:

1. Ensure your store locator is easy to…well, locate! The store locator should always be easy to find - not only on the homepage, but within search results and product pages.

2. Include all the information needed to find the store, not just the address.  Include local store hours, a phone number, a map and directions.

3. Keep everything “above the fold.”  Maps should never push important information to the bottom of the page.  Be sure to test your page within multiple browsers and on different size screens to ensure pertinent information is always above the fold.

4. Offer local inventory checks so a consumer can check whether a product is in stock before making a trip to the store.  If a product is not in stock, suggest the next closest store where the product can be found and/or offer to have the product shipped to the customer's home or closer store location.

5. Enable the shopper to text, email or click on a printer-friendly version of the store info and/or directions.

6. Finally, for mobile retail sites and applications, create a GPS-enabled store locator function to make it as easy as possible for the on-the-go shopper to find your store.

As Tempkin advises, think the entire customer process through when designing your store locator.



Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

Despite heavy marketing investments in social media, only 5% of holiday shoppers said those channels drove them to a retailer's site, according to a new study from ForeSee Results.

The survey of nearly 10,000 consumers found that more shoppers came to the top 40 retailers’ ecommerce sites via promotional emails (19%) and Web searches (8%) than through social media. The firm also looked at customer satisfaction on those sites, as well as the use of mobile devices for holiday research and purchases. 

Read more in the Foresee Results Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction Index 2010. 


Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

This week JC Penny launched an e-commerce presence fully integrated with Facebook. The new site allows Facebook users to browse selected inventory and make purchases without ever leaving the Facebook site.  They can also comment on their friends’ purchases and make recommendations. JC Penny follows similar launches from Procter & Gamble, 1-800 Flowers and others.

While a limited number of retailers have launched stand alone Facebook e-commerce stores, many are linking to Facebook from their online catalog, or using the social networking site to build a larger fan base, cultivate customer loyalty and run special promotions. No doubt Facebook will continue to play a larger e-commerce role for retailers, and its potential as a sales driver is an important consideration.



Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

The results from this Cyber Monday show that holiday shoppers are increasingly shifting their spend online -  and more retailers are looking online and to social media channels to drive sales this holiday season.

For example, big ticket retailer Sears recently launched their “Wish Together” holiday initiative on Facebook, which capitalizes on the group-buying marketing trend and links it back to Facebook. Once Facebook users "like" the Sears brand, they can then start "liking" specific deals that are unlocked when a certain number of people follow suit within a pre-determined timeframe. The promo also seamlessly links back to Sears’ ecommerce store because Sears’ Facebook app lets fans add the unlocked item to their shopping cart on Sears.com.

We think this is truly innovative online marketing. What are you doing this holiday season to get your buyers' attention?


Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

A new Accenture study provides further evidence of how mobile is changing the way consumers shop bricks and mortar stores and interact with retailers.  According to Accenture, 73% of shoppers with smartphones favor using their smartphone to handle simple tasks in stores compared with 15% who favor interaction with an employee.  Similarly, 71% favor using their smartphone to identify a store with a desired item in stock, while 17% would prefer to get that information by speaking to an employee. 

These figures reinforce the rise of “the omnipresent consumer”, one that wants a seamless shopping experience whenever and wherever it suits them, be it in the store, online or through their mobile phones. How retailers rise to this multi-channel challenge will no doubt be one of the big trends to watch in 2011.


Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

There is no doubt that consumers are embracing multichannel retail shopping like never before and many retailers are exploring innovative options for merging the offline and online shopping experience for their customers. 

For example, Best Buy recently brought more online content to its brick-and-mortar experience by adding QR codes to price signs.  The retailer placed codes on many of the "fact tags" it hangs alongside big-ticket products such as appliances and electronics, as well as other products, to give customers easy access to additional details about the items.  Though they may not necessarily be immediate sales drivers, these types of tools are proving to be a great way to engage customers and drive brand loyalty. 

Thousands of visitors come to your site each month – many even register online – but don’t buy anything.  Are they just browsing, researching or planning an in-store purchase?  Here are some tips for developing a welcome email campaign that will help drive these consumers to make a future purchase – either online or in your stores.

1. Build long-term relationships
In addition to an initial welcome message, think of this email campaign as a way to build a long-term relationship with consumers.  A great way to do this is by providing educational content about your products and services.  Take consumers behind the scenes to show how your products are manufactured, the quality craftsmanship, durability, etc.  Make them feel part of your brand.

2. Start with a test group
To ensure optimal results, roll out your email campaign to a small test group and monitor the initial results for several months. 

3. Refine, refine, refine
During the test phase, refine the content and timing of both the initial welcome and follow-up email based on test group responses. 
 
4. Deploy to your full list
Once all aspects of your email campaign are optimized, deploy to your full list, but maintain a rigid cross check process (like you did during your test phase) to ensure maximum results.
 
5. Measure your results
Look at how your campaign performed – check open and click-through rates.  Did your campaign have any impact on revenue within a 90-day period?  Continue to make tweaks to your campaign content based on where you are seeing the best returns.

During this entire process, you’ll have a number of unsubscribers, which ultimately ensures a more targeted recipient base for future email campaigns.  As you roll out additional campaigns, you’ll see your unsubscribe rate drop, indicating that people who stayed on the list are most interested in your brand marketing.


Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

The November issue of Internet Retailer has a terrific article about the benefits of online video at not only telling a better story about your products, but boosting conversion rates and natural search engine results as well. There is no doubt online video is booming. According to the piece, people watch 2 billion videos each day on YouTube, and 35% of the e-retailers in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide include online video in their e-commerce stores. 

What's the Key to an Effective Online Video Strategy?

Unsurprisingly, an effective online video strategy starts with creating compelling content that your customers actually want to watch, and continue watching. This could be anything from behind-the-scenes footage of product development, a visual explanation of your product or even interviews with product designers or staff.

Understanding the technology required to deploy and maintain video is the next step. Quick and seamless streaming of video is essential. Slow loading videos quickly lose their appeal and lead to frustrated and dissatisfied customers.

Finally, by refining video content, retailers can quickly boost natural search engine results. Internet Retailer notes that search engines give more weight to pages with video, because they see video as an indicator of website quality. Forrester Research estimates a company is 50 times more likely to show up on the first page of search engine results if a page has video that is embedded in a search engine-friendly way.

I think online videos can prove to be an especially powerful force in the big-ticket category, where the product decision process is longer and more in-depth. When merchandising these products in your ecommerce catalogs, being able to offer your customer as much information as possible to help them feel comfortable with their purchase is essential.  For example, a quick product video (similar to the ones you may see when purchasing a pair of shoes on Zappos.com) can very quickly achieve a level of comfort for the customer that no amount of written product descriptions or images could to help drive a sale. Conversely, a behind-the-scenes look at how a sofa was made can help to create a deeper relationship with that customer, promoting brand loyalty.

I’m curious to hear what role online videos are or will be playing in your Internet retail strategy?

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

Consumers will once again be shopping across multiple channels this holiday, according to the latest numbers from eMarketer, Google and OTX.  Almost half of American shoppers have already begun their holiday research and have made purchases, but for most, this is just the beginning of a busy holiday shopping season that will involve researching and purchasing their gifts online, in-store and even through their mobile phones.

A slight majority of surveyed internet shoppers reported that they would research items online and then make the purchase in-store, more than they would research online and buy online. Blueport Commerce refers to these customers as ROBOs (Research Online, Buy Offline) and they are certainly a growing consumer segment. Nearly a third of shoppers also planned to do their initial research online and then review the item in a store before making their final purchase online.

It should come as no surprise that during the critical holiday shopping season, it will be even more imperative that multichannel retailers’ promotions and product catalogs are synchronized across the in-store, online and mobile channel. This is even more so the case for those in big ticket retail, where the research process is longer and crosses multiple channels. According to the Google survey, the majority of smartphone users will also be using their phone as a price-comparison tool this year and will look for coupons on their phone or search for a store near them. 

Ensuring that your customers receive the same information across all points in their purchase process will help to create that fluid multichannel retail shopping experience that will ultimately make the sale.


Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

Blueport CEO Carl Prindle is featured in this month's installment of Practical eCommerce's "Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas". This monthly column features industry insiders who share great and innovative ideas to help ecommerce retailers. 

Check out Carl's insight on how retailers can synchronize their mobile and in-store promotions for a fluid customer experience:

Ten Great Ecommerce Ideas for November 2010


Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

When it comes to ecommerce (and particularly big ticket retail) the impact of stellar customer service should not be underestimated. A new study from Harris Interactive highlights the fact that although low prices can certainly lure a customer in, a great customer service experience will ultimately make the lasting impact.  What’s more, 85% of the consumers surveyed by Harris said that they would be willing to pay more for a service or product if it meant that they would receive better customer service. Specifically, 55% of the people surveyed said that they would be willing to pay an additional 10%, and 10% indicated that they would pay 25% more.

But beyond just price, a clear motivation factor for multichannel retailers to ramp up their customer service programs is the fact that bad customer service can have negative consequences beyond just that one dissatisfied customer. The Harris study found that 79% of consumers who have had a negative customer service experience said that they have told other people about it. Additionally, 66% of those consumers said they wanted to discourage other people from doing business with that retailer. And with Twitter, Facebook and other social communities acting as a regular avenue for shoppers to vent their customer service frustrations, that influence will no doubt very quickly spread beyond just the customer’s immediate circle of friends.

For the big ticket retail category, where the purchase cycle is longer and results in more opportunities for the customer to interact with your staff, the payoff of good customer service as part of a robust multichannel retail strategy can be significant.


Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

If you are an ecommerce marketing professional today, you're pretty lucky. Social media allows us to reach out to our customers -- and prospects -- in ways we never could before. We can join in on our customers’ playground (aka, social networks), and in many cases, they’re welcoming us with open arms. The ways in which we can interact with customers and market to them based on how they use and access social networking sites allows for a deeper level of ecommerce CRM than ever before.

Thanks to technology, we have so many ways to reach out to our customers: email, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Groupon and more. And our customers have more ways to access the content we push out. They no longer need to be near a computer or mailbox to receive our latest messages. And based on their interactions with us and their networks, we know more about our customers and can market to them as such. There’s a lot more for ecommerce marketers to manage when it comes to customer relationship management.

The Most Exciting Aspect of Ecommerce CRM

As a marketing veteran, I think the most exciting innovations in ecommerce CRM form around being able to join in the conversation. We can easily tap into what customers are saying about our companies. We can thank for them the good and reach out to remedy the bad. Ecommerce CRM is more about relationships with give and take now than ever before.

ECRM Guide offers 10 tips for using social media to improve CRM. Here are a few of my favorites from the list:

• Use tools like TweetDeck to monitor what is being said about your company on Twitter.
• Respond to customers on Facebook, Twitter and your blog in a timely manner.
• Use social media to include your customers in product decisions, like finding out which sales offer they’d prefer.
   

What's your favorite new way to market?

The Shop.org Annual Summit is always one of the retail industry's premier ecommerce events. In case you missed the conference in Dallas this past September, the Shop.org site has just posted a great recap worth reading. It details everything, from kicking off the summit with an interactive boot camp on social media and SEO for online retailers to the afternoons focused on the major issues ecommerce sites are thinking about today: mobile commerce, cross channel optimization, tactics and the customer experience.

And next year, the Shop.org Annual Summit is coming to Boston!



Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce