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:
Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce
Retail CIOs Should Champion Collaboration Across Departments
Friday, February 3, 2012 by
Scott Williams
5 Tips for Handling Inventory Stock Information on E-Commerce Sites
Friday, September 30, 2011 by
Carl Prindle
“I always remember that it costs a lot to get people in a store…and takes very little to convince them not to come back.”
This quote was from a recent Practical Ecommerce article about inventory stock status on e-commerce websites. The consumer who is quoted had a very bad experience shopping online. He tried to purchase the discontinued HP TouchPad once it went on sale for $99 (originally $399).
Like him, many other shoppers went online to make the same purchase, and, like him, many were successful – at least in placing an order and having their credit cards charged. Unfortunately, the stores oversold, and instead of getting their new tablets, these consumers received emails apologizing for unexpected demand and saying that their orders would be cancelled.
It’s remarkable that the massive players mentioned in the article still have this issue, especially selling a fairly simple item that, if in stock, is easy to fulfill. The resulting outrage points to how high consumers’ expectations have become in the area of fulfillment.
Blueport’s focus is meeting these high expectations, even in the toughest logistical categories. When you’re browsing our sites, you’re seeing real-time local inventory. If you order a sofa, you know it’s in stock and when you’ll get it – often as soon as tomorrow and for a very low delivery price. What Amazon has done for UPSable items, we’re doing for sofas, appliances, large electrics and more.
Regardless of what you’re selling online, the article concludes with a few excellent suggestions:
The overarching theme here is to be straightforward with your customers about the merchandise you have on your website. You could potentially miss a sale or two today, but the long-lasting result of creating a trusting relationship between customers and your e-commerce site can be priceless, especially in categories that are difficult to fulfill.
Related posts:
Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce
This quote was from a recent Practical Ecommerce article about inventory stock status on e-commerce websites. The consumer who is quoted had a very bad experience shopping online. He tried to purchase the discontinued HP TouchPad once it went on sale for $99 (originally $399).
Like him, many other shoppers went online to make the same purchase, and, like him, many were successful – at least in placing an order and having their credit cards charged. Unfortunately, the stores oversold, and instead of getting their new tablets, these consumers received emails apologizing for unexpected demand and saying that their orders would be cancelled.
It’s remarkable that the massive players mentioned in the article still have this issue, especially selling a fairly simple item that, if in stock, is easy to fulfill. The resulting outrage points to how high consumers’ expectations have become in the area of fulfillment.
Blueport’s focus is meeting these high expectations, even in the toughest logistical categories. When you’re browsing our sites, you’re seeing real-time local inventory. If you order a sofa, you know it’s in stock and when you’ll get it – often as soon as tomorrow and for a very low delivery price. What Amazon has done for UPSable items, we’re doing for sofas, appliances, large electrics and more.
Regardless of what you’re selling online, the article concludes with a few excellent suggestions:
- Be up-front about product availability.
- Communicate when inventory is low – it might even help you sell the item.
- Be clear about any stock disclosure policies you have in place to protect yourself.
- Explain who is fulfilling the orders for your product.
- And should you a sell a customer an item that is no longer stock, take care of the problem: Let the customer know you are sorry, explain what happened, and then offer a discount toward a future purchase. Do not automatically add the customer to your email list for marketing promotions.
The overarching theme here is to be straightforward with your customers about the merchandise you have on your website. You could potentially miss a sale or two today, but the long-lasting result of creating a trusting relationship between customers and your e-commerce site can be priceless, especially in categories that are difficult to fulfill.
Related posts:
- Keep Your E-Commerce Site on Target and Avoid Outages
- How Does Your E-Commerce Shopping Software Manage Stock-Outs?
- Shopper Know-How and the Retail Renaissance
- Online Expectations, Offline Experience
Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce
Can Groupon Work for Big-Ticket Items?
Friday, July 29, 2011 by
Betsy Miller
Earlier this month, when Groupon’s first big-ticket deal for $199 for $500 toward a new car at a Detroit area dealership failed, it didn’t only make for amusing headlines (“Groupon Hits the Skids,” for example). It also got people asking whether the daily deal model can work for big-ticket items.
As a company that provides the technology and services to help its clients localize big-ticket retail online, Blueport Commerce takes the stance that daily deals can work for big-ticket items if executed correctly. The Groupon car deal was not.
Why Conventional Daily Deals Work
Daily deals are so popular, because they are great deals. Groupon’s subscribers expect a significant discount on the goods or service being sold. Half off a dinner? Wonderful, and I’ve been meaning to try new places!
So far, successful daily deals have been somewhat simple and often for items subscribers were likely to spend money on anyway. Salon services at 70% off? Well, I do need a haircut anyway.
Lastly, the offer is usually concrete. I will pay X and get Y. Any variables in what I spend beyond what I paid for the Groupon are easily in my control.
So What Was Wrong with the Automotive Offer?
The offer was to buy $500 that could then be used toward a new car. A quick look at the dealer’s website has cars starting around $16,000. So someone who bought the deal is only getting at most a few percent off his final purchase.
Among the things that makes daily deals so successful is the easy spontaneity of it all. You only have a short amount of time to choose this deal, and then it’s gone. But it takes people some time to research a purchase like a car.
A recent article from The Atlantic, points out that one issue with this deal is that car price is negotiable. The piece quotes Ben Edelman, an associate professor at Harvard Business School as telling Reuters: “This voucher is for a very small portion of the cost of a car or lease, so it’s basically an agreement to buy or lease a car from LaFontaine. That’s poor negotiating because the dealer could take advantage f that by offering the same car for more money. They (Groupon) need to fix that before this part of the model can take off.”
The Big-Ticket Daily Deal Challenge
Many folks are saying that daily deals won’t work for big-ticket items. Perhaps these are the same people who years ago told us that consumers would not buy furniture online. But people do buy furniture and other big-ticket items online, so eventually daily deals in this arena could take off.
Our client The RoomPlace actually did a successful daily deal with LivingSocial not too long ago. The offer was $150 worth of furniture for $75. This worked because even though the offer was for big-ticket items like furniture, consumers could choose from a large price range and could choose whether they purchase something solely for the face value of the deal or use it toward a larger purchase.
Big-ticket retailers can look to daily deal sites, or create their own, in order to drum up business. For great results, they need to turn their big-ticket deal into something that is concrete for users. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce
As a company that provides the technology and services to help its clients localize big-ticket retail online, Blueport Commerce takes the stance that daily deals can work for big-ticket items if executed correctly. The Groupon car deal was not.
Why Conventional Daily Deals Work
Daily deals are so popular, because they are great deals. Groupon’s subscribers expect a significant discount on the goods or service being sold. Half off a dinner? Wonderful, and I’ve been meaning to try new places!
So far, successful daily deals have been somewhat simple and often for items subscribers were likely to spend money on anyway. Salon services at 70% off? Well, I do need a haircut anyway.
Lastly, the offer is usually concrete. I will pay X and get Y. Any variables in what I spend beyond what I paid for the Groupon are easily in my control.
So What Was Wrong with the Automotive Offer?
The offer was to buy $500 that could then be used toward a new car. A quick look at the dealer’s website has cars starting around $16,000. So someone who bought the deal is only getting at most a few percent off his final purchase.
Among the things that makes daily deals so successful is the easy spontaneity of it all. You only have a short amount of time to choose this deal, and then it’s gone. But it takes people some time to research a purchase like a car.
A recent article from The Atlantic, points out that one issue with this deal is that car price is negotiable. The piece quotes Ben Edelman, an associate professor at Harvard Business School as telling Reuters: “This voucher is for a very small portion of the cost of a car or lease, so it’s basically an agreement to buy or lease a car from LaFontaine. That’s poor negotiating because the dealer could take advantage f that by offering the same car for more money. They (Groupon) need to fix that before this part of the model can take off.”
The Big-Ticket Daily Deal Challenge
Many folks are saying that daily deals won’t work for big-ticket items. Perhaps these are the same people who years ago told us that consumers would not buy furniture online. But people do buy furniture and other big-ticket items online, so eventually daily deals in this arena could take off.
Our client The RoomPlace actually did a successful daily deal with LivingSocial not too long ago. The offer was $150 worth of furniture for $75. This worked because even though the offer was for big-ticket items like furniture, consumers could choose from a large price range and could choose whether they purchase something solely for the face value of the deal or use it toward a larger purchase.
Big-ticket retailers can look to daily deal sites, or create their own, in order to drum up business. For great results, they need to turn their big-ticket deal into something that is concrete for users. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Be sure that a consumer could leave your store or website with an item or service for the value of the deal.
- Consider offering a specific item at a steep discount rather than following the voucher model.
- Once the consumer cashes in on the deal, be sure you do what you can to keep in touch, such as offering an at-register email sign-up or customer survey.
- Get Your E-Commerce Website Ready for Daily Deals
- E-commerce 2.0 – The Next Wave
- When It Comes to the Newest Technology, Set Objectives First
- Online Advertising: Now Delivering Local Shoppers -- Is Your Website Ready for Them?
- See, Like, Buy - Capitalizing on Group Buying and Facebook This Holiday Season
Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce
4 Tips to Boost E-Commerce Site Traffic from Rapper Lil B
Thursday, May 19, 2011 by
Betsy Miller
What does an underwear-showing, tattooed, 21-year-old rapper from Berkeley have that every e-commerce site needs? SEO and social media game.
Lil B is known for his extensive use of Twitter, MySpace and other social media sites to build his brand. Wired recently broke down four things the rapper does and how it helps him in the online world. We’ll show you how you can follow the same principles to help your e-commerce website.
#1 “Keep It Real with Social Media”
Lil B reaches out to his audience via frequent Tweets and more than a hundred MySpace pages offering free songs. He says he communicates with his fans because he loves them.
What You Can Do: Don’t you love your e-commerce customers? Show them by reaching out to them with regular Tweets and special offers. You don’t have to Tweet as much as Lil B, but add some regularity to what you’re doing so that your customers can expect – and anticipate – hearing from you. And use a branded Facebook page or blog to encourage two-way communication about your brand and products.
#2 “Do It Big When It Comes to Links”
Lil B spreads the buzz by creating buzz so blogs will talk about and link to him. He also encourages fans to respond to his songs via YouTube.
What You Can Do: You need to create something that customers and bloggers will want to link to. Offer a contest that has a viral component, like asking users to create your next commercial or to help design a new product. Create content – like a buying guide, perhaps – that the market would consume and link to. Outside links to your site and content gives you authority.
#3 “Slang Content on the Regular”
Lil B is also producing and cultivating new content from his fans. People – and search engines – expect frequent content updates.
What You Can Do: Creating a corporate blog is a great way to facilitate frequent content updates about your new products, new ways to use your products and more. Harness the power of search engines to drive traffic to your e-commerce site by generating new content and aggregating content of interest to your target audience. Depending on your goals and capabilities, you don’t have to update your content multiple times per day, but you do need to update it regularly. Start with an easy plan of once a week, and then dial up or down as necessary.
#4 “Swag Up with Keywords”
Lil B incorporates prominent keywords into his song titles and lyrics – “Charlie Sheen” and “I’m Paris Hilton,” for example. People find Lil B and his music without even looking for it.
What You Can Do: While someone searching for Justin Bieber may have no interest in purchasing from your e-commerce site, you can be sure that your web pages and content are targeting the most relevant keywords to drive the appropriate traffic to your site. Be aware of keyword trends. Yahoo! always displays its top 10 trending searches on its homepage. And Google's free AdWords Keyword Tool lets you enter phrases so you can see the related terms web users are searching and how much competition there is for each term.
Related posts: Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce
Lil B is known for his extensive use of Twitter, MySpace and other social media sites to build his brand. Wired recently broke down four things the rapper does and how it helps him in the online world. We’ll show you how you can follow the same principles to help your e-commerce website.
#1 “Keep It Real with Social Media”
Lil B reaches out to his audience via frequent Tweets and more than a hundred MySpace pages offering free songs. He says he communicates with his fans because he loves them.
What You Can Do: Don’t you love your e-commerce customers? Show them by reaching out to them with regular Tweets and special offers. You don’t have to Tweet as much as Lil B, but add some regularity to what you’re doing so that your customers can expect – and anticipate – hearing from you. And use a branded Facebook page or blog to encourage two-way communication about your brand and products.
#2 “Do It Big When It Comes to Links”
Lil B spreads the buzz by creating buzz so blogs will talk about and link to him. He also encourages fans to respond to his songs via YouTube.
What You Can Do: You need to create something that customers and bloggers will want to link to. Offer a contest that has a viral component, like asking users to create your next commercial or to help design a new product. Create content – like a buying guide, perhaps – that the market would consume and link to. Outside links to your site and content gives you authority.
#3 “Slang Content on the Regular”
Lil B is also producing and cultivating new content from his fans. People – and search engines – expect frequent content updates.
What You Can Do: Creating a corporate blog is a great way to facilitate frequent content updates about your new products, new ways to use your products and more. Harness the power of search engines to drive traffic to your e-commerce site by generating new content and aggregating content of interest to your target audience. Depending on your goals and capabilities, you don’t have to update your content multiple times per day, but you do need to update it regularly. Start with an easy plan of once a week, and then dial up or down as necessary.
#4 “Swag Up with Keywords”
Lil B incorporates prominent keywords into his song titles and lyrics – “Charlie Sheen” and “I’m Paris Hilton,” for example. People find Lil B and his music without even looking for it.
What You Can Do: While someone searching for Justin Bieber may have no interest in purchasing from your e-commerce site, you can be sure that your web pages and content are targeting the most relevant keywords to drive the appropriate traffic to your site. Be aware of keyword trends. Yahoo! always displays its top 10 trending searches on its homepage. And Google's free AdWords Keyword Tool lets you enter phrases so you can see the related terms web users are searching and how much competition there is for each term.
Related posts: Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce
E-commerce 2.0 – The Next Wave
Tuesday, March 22, 2011 by
Morgan Woodruff
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:
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
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:
- Brand Building: in high engagement categories, brands can interact with their customers on topics they are passionate about.
- Deals: Facebook can replace email as a way to distribute deals.
- As a Platform: we look at Facebook as an emerging platform/operating system that can host online stores with built in traffic.
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
Engaging Customers at Every Purchase Touchpoint
Thursday, January 13, 2011 by
Betsy Miller
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
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
Locating the Store Locator
Friday, January 7, 2011 by
Betsy Miller
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
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
A Fluid Online Shopping Experience Trumps Deals and Offers
Friday, December 10, 2010 by
Carl Prindle
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
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
Ecommerce Logistics and the Element of Localization
Tuesday, October 19, 2010 by
Betsy Miller
In The Geography of Transport Systems, Hofstra University’s Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue, along with colleagues from Canada and around the world, examines how the emergence of ecommerce has affected logistics. Effectively, they say online retail has changed the supply chain by deemphasizing the importance of location, and the online retailer needs to function both as the retailer and the distribution center. This is all well and good for easy-to-ship items, but what are the ecommerce logistics for bigger ticket items, like furniture? Not to mention that as of yet, these academics have not addressed how mobile commerce, with its emphasis on localization, will affect transportation and logistics, or how this change in logistics impacts the customer experience.
At Blueport Commerce we've been practicing localization - not just theorizing - for over a decade, while making ecommerce work for big-ticket purchases for over a decade. Learn more about the Blueport model here.
Multichannel Communication: A Marketer’s Dream or Nightmare?
Thursday, October 14, 2010 by
Betsy Miller
OK, so the headline is a little harsh. Personally, as a marketer, I love the emergence of multichannel communication. Why wouldn’t I want to be able to communicate with my customers (and customers-to-be) when, where and however works for them? Why wouldn’t I embrace social networking sites that give me insight into what the public thinks about my company or products? Why wouldn’t I thank the techies who created smartphones, making it possible for me to reach my target audience 24/7 without anyone having to be sitting at a computer or picking up their mail?
Of course, nothing this good is easy.
The Challenges of Multichannel Communication
In today’s marketplace, you see a lot of good examples of marketers communicating through multiple channels, but you also see a lot of bad ones. Some of the challenges of multichannel communication include keeping track of your own messages, monitoring what others are saying, determining which of the messages work, and consistency.
Consistency proves to be the big one. For example, if you’re like many of Blueport Commerce’s customers, you started out with a brick-and-mortar store and likely did direct mail and print advertising. Then you ventured online with an ecommerce site and perhaps an accompanying email program – somewhat similar, right? Now with social networking, you want to go viral and create community, and many companies think about what might be interesting without thinking about how it relates to their brand or the barrier to participate. Just because some college students think it’s OK to destroy their personal brands by uploading pictures of their Saturday night festivities, that doesn’t mean Facebook is an appropriate place to put your corporate brand through the same ringer.
So as you reach out to your customers using the multiple channels available to you – as you should – stay true to the brand you have created for yourself. Keep your multichannel communications consistent, so your customers can recognize you no matter how you reach them.
Local Inventory Search: The Search Engine Technology Is Not There Yet
Friday, October 8, 2010 by
Morgan Woodruff
What is the big win in a consumer being able to find a product at local stores that has always been easy to find? Sure, it’s fun to be able to do a local inventory search right from your smartphone. It’s also a lot of fun to update your Twitter and Facebook accounts on-the-go as well.
But this StorefrontBacktalk article points out that the true value of local inventory search is really yet to come, and that most of what could be found is already findable via numerous search engines’ regular search platforms.
“If the consumer already knows the manufacturer’s name -- or a specific model and make -- the manufacturer’s site is generally quite helpful,” reads the piece. “Certainly if the store is already known, that store’s site can deliver those answers. The value -- and extreme value it is -- comes from an engine finding products that simply cannot be found otherwise.”
So if you're a retailer selling unique products or hard-to-find items, running the gamut from private-label furniture to antique radios, local inventory search won’t necessarily help consumers find you. And for the folks looking to buy your product, local inventory search will be that more frustrating.
When Local Inventory Search Works
Here's what does work: at Blueport Commerce, we’ve been providing our customers with fast, accurate local inventory search as part of our core localization strategy since 2001. In our case it works, as the search is specific to the customer's location and is tied right into the retailer's inventory systems. For the customer, and the retailer, that's a very big win indeed.
Learn more about our ecommerce solutions.
13 Ways to Compare Ecommerce Website Software Providers
Wednesday, October 6, 2010 by
Morgan Woodruff
If you are looking to add an ecommerce component to your business, you need to conduct an ecommerce software comparison. With so many ecommerce software providers out there, this may seem like a daunting task.
Mighty Merchant offers 13 techniques for evaluating which companies might be right for you and your unique business needs. Here is a quick look to help you get started with your ecommerce website software comparison:
1. Look at and use real websites powered by the ecommerce software you are considering.
2. Note the visual design of these sites, including whether they all use the same template or if there is customization.
3. Does adding items to cart require creating an account?
4. Check the sites’ Google PageRank.
5. Look for the sites using major search engines.
6. Evaluate which features come with the base package and which are add-ons.
7. Carefully examine what is included in the setup costs.
8. What merchandising tools are available?
9. What are the administration tools like?
10. How easy or hard is it to add additional pages and make site changes?
11. Is this solution hosted by the provider, or do you need to manage that?
12. Get references on the ecommerce website software provider.
13. Call the provider to gauge customer service and support.
At Blueport Commerce, we create ecommerce website software solutions that specifically meet the unique needs of big-ticket retailers. You can learn more about our solutions here.
IBM Invests in E-Commerce
Monday, May 24, 2010 by
Morgan Woodruff
This week IBM announced its plans to acquire Sterling Commerce, an e-commerce company and provider of cross-channel fulfillment solutions, for $1.4 billion. While IBM already participates in e-commerce with its WebSphere division, the integration of Sterling Commerce will add collaboration, communication and integration solutions for fulfillment, as well as a stellar client list with more than 18,000 customers worldwide, including 80% of the Fortune 500 list.
From a technology standpoint Craig Hayman, general manager of IBM's WebSphere division noted that the cloud computing model which Sterling employs is attractive to IBM. He also noted that many of IBM’s current customers are looking for easy-to-scale solutions, which make them great candidates for migration into the cloud.
From an industry perspective, it’s great to see giants like IBM expanding their reach into e-commerce as it further validates our fast-growing industry. The move will help IBM to better position itself against the likes of tech giants HP, Cisco, and SAP. It also represents a greater business goal of the company, which is to grow through acquisition. IBM has said that the company plans to spend $20 billion on acquisitions by 2015 and its purchase of Sterling Commerce is certainly a good start.
Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce
Offering Your Customers Multiple Ecommerce Payment Solutions
Wednesday, April 28, 2010 by
Morgan Woodruff
Offering your online customers flexible payment options is a no brainer. This final step in the ecommerce transaction process is critical for the customer who may very quickly abandon their cart if they cannot pay how they want to, or if checkout is not seamless and easy.
Be it credit/debit cards, PayPal, gift cards or loyalty points, providing a multitude of ecommerce payment solutions is the final component of a successful ecommerce shopping experience that drives conversion and minimizes cart abandonment.
But integrating multiple ecommerce payment solutions and checkout options into your site can be a daunting and time consuming task. Finding an ecommerce platform that supports these multiple payment options can be even more difficult.
That's why at Blueport, we make integrating multiple ecommerce payments solutions a one step process for our clients. All of the payment and checkout tools that you need are readily integrated into the Blueport ecommerce platform.
So, when your online store launches, so does a robust and flexible payments and checkout process. It's really that simple.
Be it credit/debit cards, PayPal, gift cards or loyalty points, providing a multitude of ecommerce payment solutions is the final component of a successful ecommerce shopping experience that drives conversion and minimizes cart abandonment.
But integrating multiple ecommerce payment solutions and checkout options into your site can be a daunting and time consuming task. Finding an ecommerce platform that supports these multiple payment options can be even more difficult.
That's why at Blueport, we make integrating multiple ecommerce payments solutions a one step process for our clients. All of the payment and checkout tools that you need are readily integrated into the Blueport ecommerce platform.
So, when your online store launches, so does a robust and flexible payments and checkout process. It's really that simple.
Finding the Path to Easy Ecommerce
Wednesday, March 31, 2010 by
Morgan Woodruff
Implementing an ecommerce strategy opens possibilities for your business — increased sales online and in stores, more efficient marketing, and direct one-to-one communication with your customers to name a few.
Whether this is the first time you are selling online or you are coming back to give it a second try, Blueport Commerce walks you through this transformation step-by-step to make ecommerce easy.
With more than a decade of experience in helping big-ticket retail make the leap into e-commerce, we not only understand your business and your market, but we also understand the hurdles you will face along the way. Our managed ecommerce solutions help retailers drive their multichannel strategy and make the transition to ecommerce easy, worry-free and profitable.
Ecommerce will impact every aspect of your organization, each in different ways. From IT, to merchandising, to operations and even right down to your in-store staff:
Merchandising: Meticulously presenting your product to its best advantage, we introduce your customers to the breadth of your merchandise without their having to leave home.
Marketing: We understand the complexities of big-ticket retail marketing and will work to make e-commerce an integral, invaluable component of your marketing strategy.
Operations: We share retailers' passion for efficiency and service — in fact, we believe that e-commerce can't succeed in a category like big-ticket without it. We cut our teeth in furniture — arguably the most challenging of fulfillment problems. Our platform and processes are designed to make shipping a sofa — or your product — as easy as calling UPS.
Finance: Incremental e-commerce growth sounds good, but what will it cost? What are the risks? Our business model is designed to answer these questions, making e-commerce a positive ROI effort almost immediately.
Store: We understand that the biggest impact of ecommerce is in your stores and we have implemented technology and services to send you as many educated, easy-to-close customers as possible making e-commerce easy and a positive ROI effort almost immediately.
IT: In our ten years of experience in working with retail chains to deploy e-commerce systems, we've seen it all. We'll work with your existing infrastructure and processes and translate them into an effective e-commerce strategy.
Our goal? Use our infrastructure and experience to take what you've built online, as efficiently and robustly as possible
Whether this is the first time you are selling online or you are coming back to give it a second try, Blueport Commerce walks you through this transformation step-by-step to make ecommerce easy.
With more than a decade of experience in helping big-ticket retail make the leap into e-commerce, we not only understand your business and your market, but we also understand the hurdles you will face along the way. Our managed ecommerce solutions help retailers drive their multichannel strategy and make the transition to ecommerce easy, worry-free and profitable.
Ecommerce will impact every aspect of your organization, each in different ways. From IT, to merchandising, to operations and even right down to your in-store staff:
Merchandising: Meticulously presenting your product to its best advantage, we introduce your customers to the breadth of your merchandise without their having to leave home.
Marketing: We understand the complexities of big-ticket retail marketing and will work to make e-commerce an integral, invaluable component of your marketing strategy.
Operations: We share retailers' passion for efficiency and service — in fact, we believe that e-commerce can't succeed in a category like big-ticket without it. We cut our teeth in furniture — arguably the most challenging of fulfillment problems. Our platform and processes are designed to make shipping a sofa — or your product — as easy as calling UPS.
Finance: Incremental e-commerce growth sounds good, but what will it cost? What are the risks? Our business model is designed to answer these questions, making e-commerce a positive ROI effort almost immediately.
Store: We understand that the biggest impact of ecommerce is in your stores and we have implemented technology and services to send you as many educated, easy-to-close customers as possible making e-commerce easy and a positive ROI effort almost immediately.
IT: In our ten years of experience in working with retail chains to deploy e-commerce systems, we've seen it all. We'll work with your existing infrastructure and processes and translate them into an effective e-commerce strategy.
Our goal? Use our infrastructure and experience to take what you've built online, as efficiently and robustly as possible
Ecommerce Hardware: The Benefits of Ecommerce Outsourcing
Tuesday, March 30, 2010 by
Morgan Woodruff
Most retailers looking to make the foray into ecommerce are quickly hit with the high capital investment required for ecommerce hardware, network equipment and hosting.
In addition to price, there are security regulations to consider. The impact of down time on your website and stores can be disastrous.
The entire process is complex, expensive and challenging to maintain. Its especially daunting to a retailer that is just stepping into the ecommerce arena and is already juggling with a multitude of factors to get their online store up and running.
Its easy to see the benefits of ecommerce outsourcing for ecommerce hardware and hosting. Not only does outsourcing of ecommerce hardware help drive down the operating costs for the retailer, but the right hosting solution will help ensure minimal down time.
Blueport's ecommerce platform is hosted by us. We buy everything that is required to keep your store live and make the process as easy for you as possible - the ecommerce hardware, operating systems, network equipment, bandwidth. Our scale drives down prices while the retailer gets worry-free (and cap-ex free) ecommerce hardware.
In addition, we provide ecommerce hardware maintenance, expansion and upgrades as well as operating system upgrades. We also provide 24x7 support, meaning no late night or weekend headaches for the retailer. Leaving you to focus on running the online store from the business side, not the technical one.
That's just one of the ways Blueport Commerce makes ecommerce easy.
B2C E-Commerce Development: Why Retailers Should Not Take this On In-House
Friday, March 19, 2010 by
Betsy Miller
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
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
Blueport Commerce Is a Different Kind of E-commerce Company
Sunday, March 14, 2010 by
Morgan Woodruff
At Blueport, we pride ourselves on being different from other e-commerce companies. We’re more than simply a back-end system that retailers can plug into. We believe that technology and integration only opens your online store. Expertise in managing that store is what drives results.
Blueport's e-commerce services team ensures you get the benefit of our ten years of experience in big-ticket retail when marketing, merchandising and operating your online store. We know the unique aspects of these considered purchases, from imaging to marketing to customer support, and we'll work with you to develop those programs for your e-commerce efforts.
Our mission is to help you capture the e-commerce opportunity as part of an integrated multi-channel strategy. At Blueport Commerce, we're a turnkey solution specialized for big ticket that ensures your 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 service packages, Blueport Commerce can port your unique business to a ready and willing online marketplace.
We like to think we’re the complete e-commerce package. Let's talk.
Operations is where the rubber hits the road.
Monday, March 8, 2010 by
Morgan Woodruff
Do you have Operations QUESTIONS?
We know that operations is where the rubber hits the road. Fulfillment and customer service are your passion, and unlike some retailers, you don't have the luxury of just dropping a product in a UPS box. We suspect marketing and merchandising efforts, like ecommerce, often mean headaches for you.
That's why we're different than any other ecommerce software solution. Blueport Commerce's Custom System Integration is designed to make e-commerce a closed loop that begins and ends with your existing systems. Our platform extracts your SKUs from your system, and returns orders to your system in a format identical to an order written in your stores. We've done this with any number of systems, from home grown to major commercial packages, with the end result being ecommerce orders that are no different to fulfill than store orders.
We share your passion for efficiency and service — in fact, we believe that ecommerce can't succeed in a category like yours without it. We cut our teeth in furniture — arguably the most challenging of fulfillment problems. Our platform and processes are designed to make shipping a sofa — or your product — as easy as calling UPS.
We know that operations is where the rubber hits the road. Fulfillment and customer service are your passion, and unlike some retailers, you don't have the luxury of just dropping a product in a UPS box. We suspect marketing and merchandising efforts, like ecommerce, often mean headaches for you.
That's why we're different than any other ecommerce software solution. Blueport Commerce's Custom System Integration is designed to make e-commerce a closed loop that begins and ends with your existing systems. Our platform extracts your SKUs from your system, and returns orders to your system in a format identical to an order written in your stores. We've done this with any number of systems, from home grown to major commercial packages, with the end result being ecommerce orders that are no different to fulfill than store orders.
We share your passion for efficiency and service — in fact, we believe that ecommerce can't succeed in a category like yours without it. We cut our teeth in furniture — arguably the most challenging of fulfillment problems. Our platform and processes are designed to make shipping a sofa — or your product — as easy as calling UPS.
A Multichannel Retailer's Review of Outsourced E-Commerce Solutions
Friday, March 5, 2010 by
Morgan Woodruff
We were recently in the final year of a five-year contract with one of our existing e-commerce clients. We assumed that (like any company that's smart about its technology), they were in discussions with other major vendors in the multichannel retail software space - Oracle, Escalate, GSI Commerce, ATG and the like. But at Blueport we knew the client had one overarching need: to simply find the best B2C ecommerce platform for large order value (AoV) purchases. That's what we call Big Ticket retail - and it's our sweet spot. How does the story end? Yes, they re-upped the contract: http://www.blueport.com/news-events/.
We earned their renewal because we are confident that our e-commerce solution is the only one that meets the needs of big-ticket multichannel retailers. Blueport Commerce has the technology, knowledge and expertise to capture the strategic opportunity for your business online.
We know the complexities of big-ticket retail and we have the answers to make it work for you. We know how this transformation impacts each aspect of your business and we'll guide your team through the process step by step.
The number of B2C e-commerce applications starting to play in the big ticket retail category continues to grow. But, since your goods are larger dollar value purchases, they are typically more complex to move around the country and generally don't fit in the standard e-commerce package or platform built for commodity items. The Blueport Commerce solution was built for retailers like you, and that's why it works.
We've made other folks lives easy — let us do the same for you.
Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce
We earned their renewal because we are confident that our e-commerce solution is the only one that meets the needs of big-ticket multichannel retailers. Blueport Commerce has the technology, knowledge and expertise to capture the strategic opportunity for your business online.
We know the complexities of big-ticket retail and we have the answers to make it work for you. We know how this transformation impacts each aspect of your business and we'll guide your team through the process step by step.
The number of B2C e-commerce applications starting to play in the big ticket retail category continues to grow. But, since your goods are larger dollar value purchases, they are typically more complex to move around the country and generally don't fit in the standard e-commerce package or platform built for commodity items. The Blueport Commerce solution was built for retailers like you, and that's why it works.
We've made other folks lives easy — let us do the same for you.
Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce
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