Ecommerce ChallengesBlueport.com

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:

• 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.

Related posts:

• 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

Last week we posted about Forrester’s report on Facebook as an ecommerce driver. And while we agree that Facebook will likely not become a major ecommerce platform any time soon, we do see the social network’s value for marketing your ecommerce brand.

There’s more to marketing on Facebook than adding a Like button to your web pages. You need to become a content publisher with a marketing slant. You need to provide value in the form of resources, product information and special deals. The frequency and scope depends on your audience, and cultivating that audience is the number-one step for successful marketing on Facebook.

Building a Facebook Audience for Your Ecommerce Website

We recently worked with one of our clients to run a Facebook fan promotion. The more likes the store’s Facebook page received within a specific time period, the larger the discount all of the Facebook fans would get.

We promoted this “The More You Like, the More You Save” campaign on Facebook, the store’s website and through email marketing. The nature of the campaign was for fans to spread the word -- if their friends liked the page too, everyone would save more. In two weeks, we nearly doubled the store’s Facebook fans, but it didn’t end there. Once we posted the special coupon code on Facebook, we promoted the discount to the site’s audience, encouraging an additional 1,300 of the store’s customers to go onto Facebook and like the page to get access to the code.

We’ve been able to attribute tens of thousands of online sales to this promotion, not to mention additional in-store traffic and sales. And we can continue to use the store’s Facebook page to market to these customers.

Create Social Noise Around Your Ecommerce Brand

A side effect of this promotion beyond the dollars, is that this store’s customers are talking to each other on Facebook about the store and its products. They’ve discussed the furniture they planned to buy with their discount, great experiences they had and what they like most about the store and brand. By administering this Facebook promotion, we’ve helped our client to create an army of brand ambassadors -- specifically brand ambassadors who like to post to social networking sites.

Engage Your Facebook Fans

Now the big challenge is engaging these fans and keeping them interested in a brand that sells big-ticket items the average consumer does not buy every day. To successfully do this, you need to think community more than transactional. Help your customers keep the conversation going about their purchases. Solicit pictures of what they bought, provide tips for caring for their items, and offer tangential information from other sources that complements your brand. This will help your fans remember you, recommend you and come back to you the next time they’re looking to make a purchase.





Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

Will Facebook become a major ecommerce player? According to the latest from Forrester Research, probably not.

In her newly released report, “Will Facebook Ever Drive eCommerce?,” Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru claims a social-network presence is less effective at online retail customer acquisition and retention than e-mail and paid search. She notes that Facebook's major challenge is that the majority of the 650 million users visit the social network to socialize, not to shop. While I agree Facebook is not on track to be the next Amazon or eBay, the social networking site does have a part to play in ecommerce.

Facebook and Online Considered Purchases

Facebook will likely never be a destination for major ecommerce transactions, but I do believe consumers will leverage the community's tools for the social aspect of shopping online and in-person. Whether sending a picture from their mobile phone or posting a link from an ecommerce site, Facebook is one of the quickest ways for consumers to ask their friends if they should get the new sofa in brown or gray.

Retailers can also use the Facebook platform to engage with customers and offer special deals and information specifically for their Facebook fans. Consumers want to be a part of the conversation, and Facebook lets you connect in new ways retailers only wished they could before. And a potential audience of 650 million makes Facebook a very difficult website for retailers to ignore.

What benefits you have seen from your retail store’s or brand’s Facebook presence? Has the site played a role in increasing conversions or helping to drive engagement?

Related posts:

• E-commerce 2.0 – The Next Wave
• The Numbers Speak for Themselves
• Online Shopping on Facebook Gains Momentum
• See, Like, Buy – Capitalizing on Group Buying and Facebook This Holiday Season
• Social Media Monitoring: Facebook and Ashley Furniture HomeStore

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 week I read about an interesting report from IBM, titled “Capitalizing on the Smarter Consumer.”  It contains the results of the company's recent survey of 30,000 consumers about how they shop and why.  This is the latest report to underscore just how much technology is driving e-commerce growth and affecting consumers' shopping habits.  According to IBM, consumers are more comfortable than ever using the Internet, mobile technologies, in-store tools and other innovations to research and buy products.

Most interesting was IBM’s identification of the “instrumental customer”: a consumer who uses two or more technologies to shop. According to IBM, this constitutes a growing number of shoppers, with 49 percent of survey respondents falling into this category (up 36 percent from last year).

Other findings of note:

• 75 percent of consumers would shop on a retailer's e-commerce store
• 39 percent would use in-store kiosks, a 10 percent increase over last year
• 25 percent want to shop via the mobile channel, up from 13 percent
• 78 to 84 percent of consumers now rely on their social networks when researching new products

IBM's research is in line with what we see amongst our multichannel retail clients' customers -- the growing number of technologies and tools at their fingertips is helping customers make more informed decisions and is changing how they go about their research and purchasing process. Their path to purchase may no longer be a straightforward visit to the store -- or even a simple visit to a retailer's website! Today's smarter consumers may research and browse across numerous channels before ultimately buying the product.  Rather than see this as a marketing challenge, we work with our clients to identify new opportunities for engaging shoppers through multichannel communication.

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

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

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

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

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

Additional reading:

Ad Age - How the iPad is Reshaping E-commerce

MarketingVox - Time to Start Prepping for T-Commerce

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



Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

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

Oftentimes, the big-ticket retailers we speak with think their business is too complex to go online.  Those readers familiar with Blueport know that we specialize in meeting the unique, localized needs of these types of companies.  Doesn’t fit in a UPS box? Perfect! That’s our specialty.

And that’s why we thought the findings of a recent study from ShopVisible and JC Williams Group was worth sharing.  The study discusses the challenges that retailers are currently facing to provide excellent online customer experiences. After conducting interviews with executives at leading retailers and consumer product manufacturers who had undergone an e-commerce platform change or were currently in the midst of an enterprise-wide system change, the report found that those companies who are just getting started in ecommerce have an advantage over those who have had an ecommerce site for years.

Why?  The answer is simple.  While retail executives are aware of current trends such as social and mobile commerce, they are having trouble innovating based on old legacy systems. The report concluded that “brands that perhaps have not previously had direct-to-consumer interactions with customers have an advantage of coming into ecommerce with a clean slate.”

Ecommerce is no longer a luxury – it is a necessity and key initiative for many brands today. So if you think you’re late to the ecommerce game, think again.  You may be just in time to deliver the right kind of experience that your customer is looking for!




Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

Ecommerce is an excellent way to bring a new stream of sales revenue to your retail business as well as to gain awareness for your brand. However, if your retail business is composed of franchises, you face a number of unique challenges. That means you need a unique franchise commerce solution for operating on the Web.

The International Franchise Association outlined a number of issues franchise companies may face as they consider ecommerce. Among them:

• Who establishes pricing and the terms of purchase with the customer?
• What are both the franchise company and the franchisee each responsible for when fulfilling orders? Customer support?
• Who gets credit -- and revenue -- from the sale?
• Who is responsible for billings and collections?

And because of these concerns, the International Franchise Association suggests that franchise companies looking to try ecommerce “consider adopting ecommerce models that…actively involve franchisees.”

Our Franchise Commerce Solution

Blueport Commerce embraces franchises. In a previous blog post -- “Ecommerce for franchise retail: Can it be done?” -- we discussed how our ecommerce solution specifically works for the franchise model. We are able to help you centralize much of the heavy lifting around merchandising, catalog, marketing and technology with the parent brand, while each independent franchise dealer retains local control of the online store content, pricing, marketing and fulfillment.

More than 900 independently owned and operated dealers use Blueport Commerce to offer their local customers a best in class franchise retail experience online. Find out why.
 

Things tend to run bigger here in the States than they do in Europe -- meal portions, cars, homes, our waistlines. But it turns out, even our big-ticket items are bigger tickets.

I recently read this headline: “Majority of people would use mobile to buy big-ticket items.” Being that we at Blueport Commerce are in the business of turning big-ticket purchases into e-commerce and multichannel sales, I clicked to read more.

The write-up detailed an international survey in which 51% of the people interviewed said they would be willing to purchase big-ticket items via their mobile phones. What the headline did not mention was the definition of “big ticket.” The survey defined it as “physical goods for amounts up to EUR 100,” which by my conversions is around $128 USD.

In comparison, we tend to think of big-ticket items as items both more expensive and physically larger that cannot be easily drop-shipped and therefore have unique challenges when it comes to selling them online. Luckily, we’ve spent the last 10-plus years conquering those challenges. Learn more about how we turn big-ticket retail into successful e-commerce.


Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

A recent DMNews article about the challenges multichannel marketers face in using social media to reach local customers caught my eye.  According to research from Harris Interactive, seventy-two percent of brand managers believe social media can be powerful in connecting with customers globally, but not necessarily at a local level.

Almost half (48%) of the brand managers surveyed by Harris find measuring ROI a challenge to connecting with local retail markets, while 45% cited managing and maintaining information as an obstacle. Additionally, 42% pointed to engaging audiences as a challenge for localized social media marketing.

In short, even across social media networks, your customers are still looking for a local message that is relevant to them.

While national or global campaigns are important for elevating a retailers' image, localized content helps consumers to relate to you and your products.  Localization is at the heart of our approach at Blueport and it drives the ecommerce strategies for all of our multichannel retail clients.

Social media is a natural extension of any multichannel retailer's online strategy and it's a no brainer that this too needs to have a localized flavor.  When used to connect with consumers at a local, regional level, your social media presence will become a true cross-channel sales driver integrated with your overall localized internet retail strategy.


Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

What women want may be one of the universe’s most complex questions, but what women look for in their ecommerce shopping experiences (and thus how multichannel marketers should woo them) can often be just as challenging to answer.  Though fashion and beauty retailers may spend millions on researching the buying habits of their female consumers, those in other categories, like, say, furniture, flooring or appliances, may not always have that same insight. But with women controlling $4.3 trillion, or 73% of U.S. household spending, understanding the elusive female consumer is just as critical for big ticket retail.

Here are some interesting findings from a recent AOL Research whitepaper:

• 40% of women shop online during work hours
•  Overall, women tend to shop between 15 and 30 minutes a day while at work. Moms, though, tend to shop for longer periods of time at work as they have less downtime at home
• Women ages 18-34 conduct about half of their online shopping during work hours, and most do so in order to save time
• Need is the main driver for women's online purchases. However, boredom and a compelling call-to-action can inspire younger women to shop
• 60% of women respond to email offers, making it the most influential driver of purchase - in fact, 3 out of 4 women subscribe to email alerts

The key takeaways here for big-ticket retailers looking to amplify their ecommerce store and reap ecommerce advantages? Provide online shopping experiences that are convenient for your consumers, allowing them to find the products they are looking for quickly and easily.  Focus on creating compelling and creative online shopping offers to entice your female consumers and help rein in a pending sale.


Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

Ecommerce has not quite reached a tipping point in Canada as it has here in the U.S.  But new research shows the category is poised for growth, and has also revealed some interesting insight about the Canadian online shopper that any retailer considering ecommerce expansion north of the border should consider.

According to The NDP Group, Canadians 18-24 are dominating the online shopping space and will be the key drivers of online purchasing as their income increases over the next decade.

The study found that nearly half of Canadian online shoppers go directly to retailer/manufacturer ecommerce sites, avoiding search engines. 75% of Canadian online shoppers feel free shipping would encourage them to shop online, even if delivery time took longer, and nearly half said they would like to see a wide variety of shipping and cost options.  In addition, 90% of those surveyed said they would be less likely to purchase online if they had to pay to return an item.

Blueport Commerce helped one of Canada’s most successful superstores, Leon’s Furniture, launch their Canadian ecommerce store, so we have a first hand understanding of the nuances and ecommerce challenges in the Canadian online shopping market. Although it’s still early, studies like this point to the fact that Canadian consumers, just like their counterparts in the US, feel increasingly comfortable shopping online.  And the critical factor to reaping ecommerce advantages, as with any ecommerce and multichannel retail effort, will be to provide consumers with a multichannel shopping experience that is convenient, flexible and tailored to their preferences. 



Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

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

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

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.