E-Commerce DevelopmentBlueport.com

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

As 2011 comes to a close, reporters, bloggers and now we at Blueport Commerce are talking about the hot e-commerce trends and predictions for the new year. After 2011, a year in which e-commerce sales grew year-over-year despite the floundering economy, we’re expecting to see some of the seedlings of trends blossom into their own in a new year where technology and consumers’ adoption of e-commerce will continue to explode.

Trend #1: Online or Offline, Customer Experience Counts

Customers expect to be able to shop wherever and whenever they want. To facilitate this, retailers need to create a seamless experience so that there is no difference for consumers, whether they are shopping online or in-store. IMediaConnection used the term “phygital” to refer to the engagement between brands and their customers and how the relationship needs to be consistent regardless of the medium. The consistency builds the relationships, the relevancy and sales.

In this regard, beyond marketing message, online retailers need to make their products as relevant online as they are in person. Consumers expect to have a rich online experience that will stand in for the offline experience they would otherwise have. Expect to see richer product descriptions and imagery, product videos and even user-generated content that is detailed and visual to give fellow consumers additional product information.

Trend #2 Mobile Commerce and Tablet Commerce Will Continue to Grow

If you didn’t believe it before, certainly the 2011 holiday shopping’s couch commerce tells you that consumers are buying via mobile devices, whether smartphones or tablets. Experts predict that mobile transactions will grow to make up 20 percent or more of all e-commerce transactions. Online retailers need to continue to brush up on their mobile presentation, as well as get ready to leverage the geo-location information provided by such devices to reach consumers when they are nearby and to close the gap on closing sales.

Trend #3: Increased Social Integrations with Increased Options for Customers and E-Retailers

While it is doubtful f-commerce will truly take off any time soon, Facebook and social networks are not going anywhere, and nearly half of consumers who are on e-commerce websites will simultaneously be on a social network. E-retailers will integrate more with Facebook, beyond the “like.” Perhaps following online content sites’ “recently read” features, e-commerce sites will adopt “recently bought” or “recently browsed” to encourage relevant social sharing.

Additionally, brands will further use social networks to develop those ever-important relationships with their consumers. Strong bonds through such networks will help online merchants close the sale and keep the customers coming back.

What do you think of our 2012 trends? Do you agree or have more of your own? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Related posts:

• Why E-Commerce Should Be Fired Up About Kindle
• Shopper Know-How and the Retail Renaissance
• Online Expectations, Offline Experience
• New Insights on How Consumers Research Products and Shop Online

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

When developing our clients’ e-commerce websites, we help drive consumers to convert by providing simple interactive widgets that complement the retailers’ catalogs. With guaranteed interoperability across operating systems and browser flavors, Flash has been the platform of choice for these types of quick projects that engage users -- so far.

With Adobe’s decision to cede the mobile widget space to HTML5, it’s time for web developers to put Flash aside as the platform of choice for quick consumer interactivity. You need to be able to deliver a consistent e-commerce site experience to consumers whether they are surfing the web from their PCs, phones or tablets. And without guaranteed Flash support in the growing mobile space, the unit developer environment cost and associated learning curve sinks Flash’s chances for a decent ROI.

HTML5, however, has a core foundation in interoperability, and the encapsulated APIs that support quick consumer widgets already have a multiyear track record. With Microsoft’s IE9 HTML5 implementation entering the field over a year ago and that implementation’s significant cooperation with the other next-gen browsers, there’s no longer an excuse to keep developing indefinitely in Flash. We plan, and advise other e-commerce web developers, to gradually mix in HTML5 projects for quick interactive widgets now, while the Flash platform support is still good.

Related posts:

• Improving the Big-Ticket E-Commerce Online Shopping Experience
• Approaching E-Commerce Applications with the Wisdom of Maturity
• Creating an Immersive Online Shopping Experience

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

Excerpts from Lazard Capital Markets  Tech and Media Conference
March, 13, 2011; Boston, MA

Blueport Commerce executives recently participated in a panel presentation titled “E-Commerce 2.0: The Next Wave” at Lazard Capital Markets Annual Technology & Media Conference. Held in Boston, on March 14 and 15. This conference brought together industry executives in a fireside chat format, with presentations from more than 50 leading technology, media and Internet companies. 

Drawing on his deep expertise developing online strategies for leading big-ticket retailers, President and Chief Executive Officer Carl Prindle, discussed the next e-commerce frontier and what brands need to do to capitalize on its growth.  Below are some key excerpts from his presentation:

Colin Sebastian – Lazard Capital Markets:  Carl, please take a minute to introduce Blueport.

Blueport is the only managed e-commerce provider focused on localized, big ticket commerce.

Think of us as GSI Commerce (GSIC) for players that need to involve local stores in their online efforts and whose products don’t fit in a UPS box.

Our clients range from a $250M furniture chain in Chicago, a $1B appliance, electronics and furniture superstore chain in Canada, a $4B flooring retailer with 1,100 independent dealers, to Sears (SHLD).

We provide each with a managed e-commerce solution – a localized, cross-channel commerce platform and the managed services to make their unique businesses work online.

CS: The pace of innovation in e-commerce is accelerating.  This is also driving another step forward in the shift of commerce and advertising from offline to online channels.  Given this overall trend, in your own businesses and markets, can you specify what are the 2 or 3 most important drivers of growth today?

Well, this session is definitely aptly named.  We’re at an inflection point – the start of a second wave of e-commerce.

The first wave of ecommerce was characterized by the Amazon model – online shopping for relatively simple, understood products shipped via UPS. 

There’s very little local store involvement in this model.  Customers buy things on their lunch break, and a guy in a brown shirt delivers it. 

A massive eco-system has grown supporting this model in last 15 years – advertising, merchandising, technology and so on. And, it works great – we see 45% penetration in some categories like PCs.

But, the e-com 1.0 model is bounded in a couple of ways.  One boundary is size – this model probably only works for less than half of all retail, less if you include services. 

The other boundary is profitability – e-com 1.0 was first because it’s easier.  Because it’s easy, it’s prone to commoditization, price pressure…it’s an efficient market, with all of the margin pressure that it entails.

What we’re seeing now is a second wave that pushes past these boundaries, engages the rest of the retail economy, and can be more profitable.

What’s driving it? Consumers looking to apply the habits learned via the Amazon model to new areas.  Companies that that have for a long time been on the sidelines because they DIDN’T fit that model – are now heading to the internet to meet them. 

The energy, the growth, is in the technology connecting the two – whether it is mobile, social, coupon sites, etc. – new technologies are giving new players access to new customers.

And Blueport is providing the multi-channel solutions for these new players to do something meaningful with that traffic.

CS:  You mention mobile. How big a factor is mobile becoming, for example as a percentage of your own transactions or volume, or as a lead generation tool?

Mobile is a huge factor, but different depending on whether you are an e-com 1 or e-com 2 player.

For e-com 1 players, mobile’s increased convenience is arguably driving new volume.  It’s also increasing price transparency, which accelerates the commoditization of some of these categories.

For an e-com 2 player, it’s a huge factor in a different way:  local.  Where e-com 1 was national, e-com 2 is local – local businesses, local services, huge retail chains were their offering is fundamentally local.

Take appliances as an example – I don’t think we’ll see refrigerators transacted via phone any time soon, but mobile can drive customers to local stores, critical for retailers trying to gain a slice of precious weekend “in-store” shopping minutes.

The game changer that starts to blend the two is the tablet…increased use of big screen browsing plus local is intriguing.

CS: There is a fairly rapid increase in merchant and enterprise use of Facebook, not only as a tool to reach out and communicate with consumers, but also to drive transactions.  Similar to the mobile question, how quickly is social becoming a meaningful part of real lead generation and driving online sales?

Well, Facebook, at its most powerful, is a personal network of friends.  A company interrupting that conversation can be pretty cringe worthy.  A company trying to be your friend doesn’t really work.

At the same time, along with apps, Facebook has become the “other” Internet, and retailers have to be there. 

We’ve seen it work in three ways:

1. Brand Building: in high engagement categories, brands can interact with their customers on topics they are passionate about.
2. Deals: Facebook can replace email as a way to distribute deals.
3. As a Platform: we look at Facebook as an emerging platform/operating system that can host online stores with built in traffic.

CS:  Blueport appears to be in a sweet-spot helping merchants in challenging product categories figure out their e-commerce strategies.  Can you talk about the multi-channel environment, how the pace of that shift online may be changing?

It’s a phenomenal time to be where we are.  As we’ve talked about, there’s a seismic change from e-com 1 to e-com 2, and we’re in the middle of it.

You asked about the multi-channel environment.  The term multi-channel has been around a while, but its meaning is changing. 

In e-com 1, multichannel meant exactly/only that – more than one channel.  Retailers in categories that work well via direct ship built drop ship e-com systems, often entirely separate from their store business.

In e-com 2 today, we see true multi-channel, or cross-channel commerce (or just “commerce”).  Retailers are using the internet to drive their core business, not build a separate one.

Companies that were on the sidelines are now investing in solutions that reflect their businesses.  They look to online to drive customers to local stores, sell their local inventory and services, reflect their local pricing and local deals – to drive their core business.

A client, CarpetOne, is one of my favorite examples of this.  They are a $4B flooring retailer in 1,100 local markets.  They didn’t want to be Lumber Liquidators and drop-ship cheap boxes of hardwood.  They wanted to drive their core business – local installation of quality flooring. We enable that – their site reflects each market’s local product, pricing – pictures of owner’s dog, whatever makes that local market work.  It’s a seamless online experience that connects online to local store.

Sears (SHLD) – is a company taking another innovative approach.  They are reentering the furniture category via a unique cross-channel strategy.  They’re putting small footprint galleries in their stores, that drives traffic to a dedicated furniture website that we run for them, http://sears.furniture.com.  The site taps into local inventory, and Sears customers can get a sofa delivered tomorrow for $79.  Blueport powers the whole thing.

So, we’re seeing massive change in these categories, the evolution of true cross-channel categories, and it has accelerated dramatically in last 18 month. 

CS:  What are the key attributes that a bricks-and-mortar retailer or supplier of goods look for in an e-commerce vendor?

When looking at vendors, look at what experience they have in YOUR vertical.  Are you looking for an e-com 1 solution, or e-com 2?  Do you want a direct ship, separate enterprise, or do you want your local markets involved? 

Make sure the vendor has experience in your markets and your vision of what you want ecommerce to do for your core business. 

You can make some disastrous mistakes trying to sell appliances or furniture like you do shoes & apparel.

CS:  What would it cost a retailer or brand to build and maintain a state of the art e-commerce site from scratch, versus using a service provider such as Blueport?

Here again, it depends on what you’re selling. 

If you’re looking for an e-com 1 solution – you can put up a Yahoo! store up for next to nothing.  My 10 year old has one.

For e-com 2 – it’s more complex, requiring far more integration with your local stores’ existing systems and operations.  There’s no Yahoo! store or ready-made platform for that (but Blueport is close).

If you try to build an e-com 2 solution yourself, you have to look at three costs:  the cost to build it, the cost to run it, and the opportunity cost of screwing it up. 

We have a current client who first tried to build it themselves.  They spent $3M, and it never got off the ground.  It was two years of lost opportunity. 

With Blueport, they pay a monthly platform fee and a revenue share.  We’ve done major redesigns of their sites three times in the last two years, and added countless new features.  And they pay only their share of the overall platform and hosting costs.

We also help run the business for them from a marketing, merchandising and services perspective.  This is paid through the revenue share, so they get a turnkey, expert staff on a pay for performance basis.

This story has repeated itself a number of times – people trying it themselves, then deciding to work with us.  At the other end of our contracts, we’ve never lost a renewal, so people see the value of what we do (and would prefer not to have to do it themselves).

Part of the story is that the categories we’re in are a good fit for outsourcing.  They are challenging, don’t match the internal expertise of the players in them, and ultimately, they’re not like PC’s or software, where online is 45%-65% or more of volume. Stores are still key, so our clients get to focus on that part of their business, while we port and drive that business online.

CS:  Can you talk about the competitive nature of your business, who do you see as the most successful competitors and what are trends in pricing for these e-commerce services?

Sure, we segment the market on two dimensions. 

One dimension is e-com 1 versus e-com 2.  Is the customer in a market that will be a simple drop ship model, or do they need a cross-channel solution involving local stores?

The other dimension is platform versus managed solution.  Does the customer just want a technology solution, or are they looking for a partner to help them manage their online business?

On the e-com 1 side of the market, e-com 1 platforms are increasingly commoditized and under a lot of price pressure.  It’s a pure customer acquisition game.  Yahoo stores again.

For e-com 1 managed solutions, GSI Commerce (GSIC) is dominant with a huge lead in infrastructure and increasingly in services, where they’ve made some great strategic acquisitions.  While Amazon (AMZN) keeps looking at this space, GSI is the clear leader.

On the e-com 2 side of the market, e-com 2 platforms are mainly custom builds from players like IBM, and ATG (ORCL).  These are big dollar projects with two commas in the total cost, and they leave the customer to manage the solution - there’s no marketing, management, etc. And, they don’t have a ton of experience in these e-com 2 categories.

For e-com 2 managed solutions, where Blueport plays, we’ve yet to run up against a true competitor. 

I guess we really have two competitors: a customer doing nothing, which is less and less of a factor, and a customer trying to do it themselves, which with our case studies, is an easier and easier argument to overcome.  In a lot of cases, people are coming to us now who tried themselves, and now want out.

We expect competition to evolve, but we have a technology platform and service staff with a lot of specific functionality and experience in these markets, which makes it easy to talk to prospective clients, most of whom have been on the sidelines waiting for a provider that understands their business.

CS: That’s time – thanks to everyone for their participation.

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

This past Cyber Monday saw online retailers bring in a record breaking $1 billion in sales (comScore).  But according to a new Google Commerce poll, while deals and promotions certainly lure in customers, what really keeps them coming back is a superior online retail shopping experience that makes product search fast and easy. 

A few key findings from Google’s poll:
- 77% of those surveyed used search within an e-commerce store to find products.
- Responders were most impressed by ecommerce retailers who had great deals (22%) and a fast and easy shopping experience (14%).
- Shoppers cited a difficulty finding items (11%) more frequently than shipping problems (10%) or a lack of good deals (8%).

Though not specific to big ticket purchases, the Google poll underlies a fundamental principle of the way we approach ecommerce development at Blueport Commerce: a retailer’s online store should, above all else, provide a customer with the product information they are looking for quickly and easily.  This is especially imperative for big-ticket categories, where the research process is longer and a customer likely spends more time on your site searching for different product options and comparing product specs, then they would for, say, a book or DVD. At Blueport, we focus on creating a site exerience that gets people to the products they want to look at immediately, without having to wade through layers of navigation.

If a customer shopping your bricks and mortar store became frustrated looking for a particular item, your sales staff would surely be able to promptly help him/her and answer any questions.  Many retailers now offer live chat with retail staff to bring this in-store experience online, but customers are still often navigating alone, and thus need the product discovery process to be simple and fluid.

Whether you are launching a new site or revisiting your existing ecommerce storefront, always remember to take a step back and think about the customer research/shopping process.  How easy is it to find a particular item? Can your customer sort their search based on different requirements?  Are you categorizing products they way you think about them, or reponsding to how your customer thinks?  Does your product catalog help the customer visualize how that item would fit in their home? Is it easy for your customer to instantly reach sales staff if they have a question?

Cover these basics and not only will your customers shop your e-commerce store on Cyber Monday, but they will keep coming back year round as well.


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

Forrester’s Brian Walker recently coined the term Splinternet to describe how consumers are beginning to interact with e-commerce companies in numerous ways, including mobile phones, social networks and in-store displays. This e-commerce transformation naturally requires significant new technology investments and fundamental changes in how retailers approach e-commerce. Internet Retailer covered Walker’s new report, "What every exec needs to know about the future of e-commerce technology," which addresses the shifts taking place in the e-commerce space. 

Some key takeaways from the report:

• As the influence of the online retail channel on consumers continues to grow, retailers will need to shift spending to this channel -- or risk losing sales.
• Consumers' interactions with retailers will move beyond just the website to include mobile phones, iPads and other innovations. According to Walker, many of these innovations will be built on proprietary technology requiring that retailers "develop systems that can easily integrate and support these existingm -- and emerging -- customer experiences in order to compete and capitalize on changing customer expectations."
• Consistency of information, policies and fulfillment across channels will be a must for retailers as they expand their touchpoints with consumers

Walker notes that most retailers today don’t have the systems in place to manage this new kind of multichannel retailing and fulfillment model. Thus, they will require a fundamental shift in how they approach e-commerce within their organizations and focus on investing in flexible e-commerce systems that can meet their cross-channel retail needs.

How is your e-commerce strategy changing in light of this shift?

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

This week Google announced the latest partnership aimed at making ecommerce store reviews and ratings show up more prominently in its online search results, a deal with PowerReviews Inc, Blueport's preferred partner for product reviews.

It means that consumers looking for a product within Google’s online shopping tab will now be able to see ratings and reviews for products from many of the 3,500 commerce sites operated by PowerReviews’ 1000 retail clients. This comes on the heels of a similar deal announced between Google and Bazaarvoice this past April, and it points to a bigger development in the ecommerce industry whereby consumers are gaining quicker and greater access to product information without having to dig through individual retailer’s e-commerce stores.

For the consumer, this makes online shopping price and product comparisons that much quicker and easier.

For participating e-commerce retailers, it means greater visibility of their products.  It also underscores the importance of optimizing and managing consumer reviews (a proven sales driver already) to ensure that consumers are seeing the most relevant information from your e-commerce stores as soon as they begin their product search.

That’s the latest from Goldman Sachs ... Goldman estimates that e-commerce will grow at five times the rate of traditional retail, overtaking offline retail by 2020.  Not surprisingly, the most successful retailers will be the ones that invest most heavily in technology to keep up with demand.

Goldman notes that while online pure plays already realize the importance of investing in Web technologies, multi-channel retailers will be challenged to keep up with their pace of innovation and e-commerce spending.   While pure play e-tailers spent 7% of their revenue on e-commerce technology in 2008, multi-channel retailers only spent 2%. 

This is an important consideration for Blueport and our customers, who are predominantly multi-channel or brick and mortar retailers in the early stages of their e-commerce development.  While they will certainly not be able to keep up with the e-commerce budgets of mammoths like Amazon, they will be challenged to harness the right e-commerce innovations that bring in the most bang for the buck, generating the most leads and driving cross-channel sales.


Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

Any retailer setting up an ecommerce store or considering replatforming their current offering, knows the choices in ecommerce shopping software are endless.  The landscape is wide, with numerous vendors offering ecommerce software packages.

The big-ticket retailer often finds their ecommerce shopping software choices to be even more complex.   This is because their needs are inherently different.  They go beyond setting up a basic online shop, to require more sophisticated merchandising capabilities and fulfillment, and an ability to understand their unique business models. Performing an ecommerce software comparison seems an impossible task.

So where do you start in your decision making process? Here are two initial points to consider:

1. Start by evaluating your current ecommerce shopping software or the retail systems you use to run your business.  Many big-ticket retailers find their systems are not ecommerce ready, and that they may pose a barrier to going online.  Make sure the ecommerce software packages you are considering are able to seamlessly integrate with your current systems.  At its best, your online ecommerce solution should be able to extract the data found in your current systems, augment for e-commerce, then return completed ecommerce transactions to you that are indistinguishable from orders placed in your stores.

2. Make your ecommerce store an extension of your bricks and mortar store, not an island in itself.  Look for an ecommerce software package that treats your SKUs, prices and your product information exactly like store orders from a fulfillment and service perspective.  This is a fundamental difference between ecommerce shopping software for mass merchants, and that which is geared towards big-ticket retailers.  The result is less work, higher customer satisfaction and a reduced need to develop separate staff or procedures for online sales. E-commerce becomes another store, seamlessly integrated with your strategy, operations and reporting.

Finding an ecommerce service provider that meets these inital criteria is the first step in setting up your ecommerce store and capitalizing on the advantages of e-commerce.

Whenever I speak with a big-ticket B2C retailer about expanding their store online, a recurrent question inevitably arises: "Why not handle e-commerce development in-house?"

Many of these retailers have been considering the online marketplace for some time and are wondering how they can participate without overburdening their current staff and technology.  Their big-ticket businesses are complex and a standard platform won't accomodate them, and the addition burden of taking on B2C e-commerce development in-house is a daunting and resource-intensive task that many retailers just can't handle.  In developing their multi-channel strategy, using a hosted ecommerce software solution starts to look like the best option.

At Blueport Commerce we have one focus — helping customers exactly like these retailers.  We focus on what makes their business unique, so they can focus on what matters most — growing their new ecommerce online store.

Whether they have products that are unbranded, have a higher price point or are highly customizable, Blueport Commerce helps retailers connect with buyers worldwide. Complex delivery requirements a problem? We can help and ensure that a retailer's customers receive the white glove treatment they deserve, and more importantly, expect.

We match e-commerce development and services to address every retailer's unique business needs, not squeeze them into a commodity-focused, inflexible platform that doesn't address the intricacies of their business. 

At Blueport Commerce, we're a turnkey solution specialized for big ticket that ensures the transition to e-commerce is easy, worry-free and profitable. By combining the industry's most advanced technology platform for localized, big-ticket retail, dedicated integration services and personalized B2C e-commerece development, Blueport Commerce can port every retailer's unique business to a ready and willing online marketplace

At Blueport Commerce, we are committed to respecting and integrating WITH systems, not in creating a separate e-commerce solution for you to then maintain. We believe that to be effective, e-commerce integration is essential: your e-commerce must work seamlessly with the systems you use to run your current business.

We also understand that your systems are likely not e-commerce ready, and that you may consider them a barrier to going online. This is a challenge we've faced many times before.

Our e-commerce platform is designed to integrate with any system— to extract what data can be found in your systems, augment it for e-commerce, then return completed e-commerce transactions to you that are indistinguishable from orders placed in your stores.

Your SKUs, your prices, your product information, enhanced and then returned as an order in your system that can be treated exactly like store orders from a fulfillment and service perspective. The result is true e-commerce integration: less work, higher customer satisfaction and a reduced need to develop separate staff or procedures for online sales.

E-commerce becomes another store, seamlessly integrated with your strategy, operations and reporting.

A coordinated and integrated multi channel marketing strategy is an integral component of driving sales of big-ticket items both online and in-store. 

As part of their multi channel marketing strategy, big ticket retailers should start by integrating their e-commerce store with the local marketing and promotional programs in place in their stores. 

A key aspect of multi channel marketing is aligning your e-commerce site with your promotional calendars and displaying online and in-store events, promotions, sales, coupons and finance offers – right down to each individual store.  Try to repurpose promotional materials throughout your multi channel marketing efforts.  For example, use print material artwork on your site, extending the value of materials created for in-store customers, across your entire multi channel marketing campaign.

Below are some points to consider when developing a dynamic multi channel marketing strategy for big-ticket retailers:

• Multi channel Sales – Allow customers to view branded sales events, including promotional pricing and event materials that coordinate with TV, print and store visuals.
• Dynamic Fliers – Feature your print fliers and catalogs online, with complete multi channel marketing integration.
• Multi channel Coupons – Allow customers to use coupons to receive discounts, bonus items, free shipping or other custom offers online.
• Financing – Allow customers to finance their orders with the same deferred payments offered in stores.
• Custom Pages – Provide your customers with pages promoting retailer store events and allow them to enter in-store contests online.