Ecommerce Blog of Blueport Commerce, Big Ticket Ecommerce Solutions Provider

Are Trigger Emails the Real One-to-One Communication for E-Commerce?

Friday, January 27, 2012 by Betsy Miller

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

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

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

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

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

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E-Commerce Holiday Shopping Is So Last Year…How to Sell During January's Retail Hangover

Friday, January 6, 2012 by Betsy Miller

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

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

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

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

Sell More with Volume Discounts

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

Focus on Customer Service and Value

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

Spend Time on Social Media

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

Expand Your Email List

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

Don’t Forget Your Recent Customers

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

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3 Key E-Commerce Trends to Watch in 2012

Friday, December 30, 2011 by Morgan Woodruff

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

Trend #1: Online or Offline, Customer Experience Counts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Rethink Shopping Cart Abandonment on Your E-Commerce Site

Friday, December 16, 2011 by Betsy Miller

Cart abandoners are not the enemies of your online retail business, skewing your site metrics. In fact, they could be your best prospects.

So says research conducted by ClickZ’s Charles Nicholls to be compiled in an e-book this month. His analysis of the behavior of more than 600,000 online users and 250,000 e-commerce transactions show that shopping cart abandonment is now a natural part of the buying process. The key for e-commerce merchants is to recognize cart abandonment as such and then to create marketing programs to capitalize on the different situations in which customers abandon their carts.

Nicholls split customers who abandon their carts into three segments: one-time abandoners, serial abandoners and recent goal abandoners. Serial abandoners appear to be the sweet spot for conversions.

Serial Shopping Cart Abandoners

Serial shopping cart abandoners put items in their carts and then abandon their purchases multiple times within a one-month timeframe. Forty-eight percent of these customers will convert after being remarketed to – that’s more than twice the rate at which one-time abandoners who are remarketed to convert. An average of 18 percent of one-time abandoners will pull the trigger on purchasing after being remarketed to.

Recent goal abandoners are e-commerce customers who have already completed purchases with your website but then come back to your site and abandon their carts. These customers, who have already bought from your e-commerce website, are the most likely to abandon their carts again, but they are also the most likely to make another purchase from you.

How E-Commerce Retailers Can Capitalize on Shopping Cart Abandoners

E-commerce merchants need to recognize shopping cart abandonment as a natural step in the buying process and create plans that offer specific messaging and service to cart abandoners. Here at Blueport, we have helped many of our clients find success by creating marketing programs like these:

Remarketing Emails

Your e-commerce retail business should have an email plan in place to reach out to customers who abandon their shopping carts. The messaging can be fairly specific since you know a lot about these customers, including the specific items and categories they are shopping for.

And don’t forget to reach out to those who have bought from your website. Follow up with additional offers and related products based on their purchases. If you win a customer over with one purchase, you could have a customer for life.

Remarketing Advertising

Similar to an email strategy, you can use display advertising to remarket to your customers once they have left your site. While there is debate about how Big Brother remarketing and retargeting ads can feel to consumers, when implemented correctly, they can lead to increased conversions.

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Amazon’s ‘$5 to Leave the Store’ Promotion: Reactions Mixed, But a Sign of Things to Come

Friday, December 9, 2011 by Carl Prindle

This Saturday, Amazon is running a one-day promotion that gives consumers who use Amazon’s Price Check app while shopping in a store a 5% discount (up to $5) on select items. Consumers can redeem the offer up to three times.

This offer -- luring shoppers from local stores to instead buy online via Amazon’s e-commerce site -- has been met with a bit of consumer backlash. Even so, it feels like a harbinger of a future retail landscape that’s divided in two: retail in categories where stores still matter and retail where they don’t.

Consumer Reaction: ‘Kind of Sleazy’

The Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsD blog was among the first to report on this story, and consumers were quick to react to what they saw as Amazon’s effort to intercept local shopping. Comments on the story included:

“This seems unethical at best. Amazon is encouraging people to go into a store with no intention to buy, incurring costs for the retailer in staffing and wear and tear on store premises…. Kind of a sleazy move by Amazon.”
“This is not about comparison shopping per se. Of course, I’m all for getting the best price. What I’m NOT a proponent of is giving my business to any retailer, online or brick-and-mortar, who blatantly scams to have their customers ‘spy’ for them, and try in the grander scheme of things to shut down the very business who contribute to the local economy.”
“As a supporter of local small businesses, I find this appalling. But, hey, if you want do Amazon’s market research for them for a measly 5 bucks, feel free. Me, I’ll take my 5 bucks and funnel it into MY local economy….”

The Future of Retail: What Do Stores Do?

I completely understand these sentiments, but at the same time, one starts to wonder: For lower ticket, commoditized items, what value does a store really bring to a shopper?

With a maximum value of $5 off, Amazon is clearly targeting items in the under $50 range. And, for price check to work, the items need to be commonly available. For these commodity-type items, does a store add much (other than cost) to your purchase?

There’s a segment of the retail economy we think will ultimately move largely online. In these commoditized categories, stores don’t bring enough to the table to justify the cost they add. Once Amazon can deliver same day, one of the last reasons for running to the store to buy a low cost, common product will be gone.

Honestly, this end of e-commerce isn’t one that excites us much. Like any commodity market, it will be dominated by players with the scale to cut costs and offer the cheapest price. In this regard, Amazon and Wal-Mart aren’t so different.

At Blueport, we think the other end of e-commerce -- using the Internet to engage, rather than replace, local stores -- is a far more interesting space.

In the categories we commerce-enable -- furniture, appliances, flooring -- stores add a tremendous amount to the consumer experience. They offer expertise, a place to “touch and feel,” local delivery and installation, and ongoing service for big-ticket purchases. We use the Internet to drive sales for these local businesses with walk-in traffic, leads, and yes, e-commerce.

It’s an exciting segment to be in right now. Retailers in these categories have been slow to adopt e-commerce, mainly because they couldn’t see how the Amazon model could work for them. Now, big-ticket retailers are jumping into multichannel e-commerce with both feet. And, I suspect, they may be around far longer than some of their more commoditized counterparts.

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Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday -- How Did E-Commerce Do?

Friday, December 2, 2011 by Betsy Miller

Combined together, Thanksgiving Day's couch commerce, Black Friday's mobile shopping on the go and Cyber Monday’s work surfing all made the official opening to this year’s holiday shopping season quite the event. Numbers across the board have been record-setting, and both brick-and-mortar and online retailers are excited as this is just the start of the holiday shopping season.

Here’s a roundup of articles and blogs reporting on these successful online shopping days and what might come next:

Thanksgiving & Black Friday

TechCrunch – Thanksgiving Day Online Holiday Sales Up 39%; Mobile Shopping on the Rise: “As we heard a few weeks ago, retailers were expecting Thanksgiving Day to be a major online shopping day as more and more consumers are hitting their laptops, tablets and more to get a head start on sales in between Turkey time. It looks like early results point to the day being a profitable one for retailers. According to IBM’s Coremetrics retail data, online Thanksgiving 2011 sales were up 39 percent over Thanksgiving 2010.”

E-Commerce Times – E-Commerce Rings Up Boffo Black Friday: "Though Black Friday is typically the day shoppers make a beeline for the big box stores and malls, there were plenty of sweet e-commerce deals to be had, and shoppers swarmed online to snap them up. On Black Friday alone, $800 million in online spending occurred."

Business2Community – Black Friday Saw Strong Increases in Online & Mobile Sales: “As many could have predicted, consumers continued to turn to online and mobile to make purchases on Black Friday. And as it turned out, brands with a strong, integrated retail marketing strategy in place took the cake. According to IBM Smarter Commerce CSO, brands [that] came out on top were those [that] ‘delivered a smarter commerce experience with compelling, relevant deals that people could easily access from their channel of choice.’”

Cyber Monday

New York Daily News – Cyber Monday Sales Break Records, Soaring 33% As More Shoppers Do Their Holiday Buying on the Go: “Cyber Monday turned out to be a monster hit for retailers. On the heels of a supersized Black Friday, Cyber Monday broke the record for the most e-commerce sales ever, with sales rising a whopping 33%, according to IBM Benchmark.”

Wired – Cyber Monday Pays Off Big Time: “Cyber Monday, until last year the often over-hyped alter-ego of Black Friday, has not only broken over $1 billion for the second year in a row, but has seen last year’s billion and raised some. There was a time when the busiest online shopping day of the year was generally sometime closer to Christmas, when people were getting last-minute gift-shopping done. But now the race is on hours after Thanksgiving, in both the bricks-and-mortar and virtual worlds.”

E-Commerce Times – Cyber Monday Racks Up Impressive Gains: “So far, so good for e-commerce this holiday season. Both Black Friday and Cyber Monday saw robust sales with surprising gains over last year's performance. Whether consumers will continue to spend beyond expectations, however, is questionable.”

Marketing Pilgrim – Cyber Monday Beats Black Friday: "Cyber Monday is over and the results are in. It’s a HIT! According to IBM Benchmark, Cyber Monday sales were up 33% over last year. The average order value also rose from $193.24 to $198.26. Unlike Black Friday, there were two peaks during the day, one at 11:05 PST and again late in the evening…. Except for the early morning hours, Cyber Monday beat the pants off online Black Friday buying to the tune of 29.3%."

Sign on San Diego – New Shopping Pattern Emerged on Cyber Monday: “The biggest surprise this Cyber Monday was that consumers didn't do most of their shopping at work, according to an IBM analysis of online activity. In the past, people would shop online mostly during the work day. But this year, they did a significant amount of shopping before and after normal commuting hours, using everything from PCs to laptops to iPads.”

Cyber Week & Beyond

ZippyCart – Cyber Week Off to a Successful Start: “Holiday shopping season 2011 got off to a great start with retailers reporting record-breaking Black Friday sales in both brick-and-mortar and online storefronts. According to research by comScore…online sales in the US surged on Black Friday and generated an estimated $816 million, up from $648 million last Black Friday…. The report released by comScore showed that ecommerce spending on Black Friday jumped 26% this year, even though researchers thought brick-and-mortar store deals would detract from the amount of consumers opting to shop online.”

Yahoo! Finance – Cyber Monday’s Unintended Consequences & Other Key Themes Emerging in Retail: “With Black Friday and Cyber Monday behind us, it's time to move past the retail euphoria and look ahead to the sustainability of strong retail sales through the key holiday shopping season. The effects of this season's earlier sales onset and increased doorbuster openings is a must-watch situation moving forward, according to Sucharita Mulpuru, e-commerce analyst at Forrester Research…. ‘All of the research that we've seen is that when there is a really, really strong Cyber Monday and free shipping offers, what we see in the days that follow is some softening,’ Mulpuru says.”

UPI.com – Retailers Extend Cyber Monday Throughout Week: “Some U.S. online retailers extended Cyber Monday sales through the week as shoppers spent a projected $1.2 billion on the year's biggest online shopping day.”

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HTML5 Moves to the Head of the Line for E-Commerce Web Development

Friday, November 18, 2011 by Scott Williams

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

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

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

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Hyperlocal Beyond Marketing -- Think Localized E-Commerce!

Friday, November 11, 2011 by Carl Prindle

Earlier this week, Forbes.com ran a guest post titled "The Benefits of Geolocation Marketing." It discusses how online marketing needs to be hyperlocal to appeal to an audience that prefers to make purchases close to home.

It’s a good read that makes some good points – particularly that 80% of consumers’ disposable income is spent on businesses within 10 miles of where they live, and that marketing needs to be location based to effectively influence this spending.

What struck me, however, was the opening sentence of the article. “The seeming ubiquity of e-commerce…masks a very contrarian reality,” the authors warn, “Most shopping is still local.” What a late-nineties view of e-commerce! People either buy via e-commerce or locally? These two ways to buy aren’t contrary in the least.

At Blueport, we’ve been hyperlocalizing e-commerce since the early 2000’s. In today’s world, both your online marketing and your e-commerce experience should be hyperlocal to best meet your shoppers’ – and your business’ – needs.

Localized E-Commerce

Consumers want to shop locally because they want trusted service from brands they know. They want to be able to talk to people, experience the merchandise, get local deals and have the instant gratification of having merchandise in their homes as soon as possible, delivered by someone who can provide service after the sale if needed. And with the right technology, even a large retailer can combine these powerful benefits of its local stores with the convenience of e-commerce.

We work with our retailers to help them sell big-ticket items on the Web. All of our sites reflect local markets – from hyperlocal selection, deals, delivery and service. It’s everything consumers like about local stores, effectively ported online so that consumers can conveniently research and buy our clients’ merchandise, knowing they’ll get the same local store experience they love – especially for big ticket purchases.

So yes, hyperlocal marketing is important. But viewing it only as a way to drive people into stores misses a huge opportunity. Hyperlocalizing both your online marketing and your e-commerce presence ensures the best of what your stores have to offer is leveraged where today’s consumer can be found – online.

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E-Commerce Shopping Sites vs. Social Sites

Friday, November 4, 2011 by Betsy Miller

Last month, Performics, a global marketing performance company, conducted its Social Shopping Study, which examined how 1,000 people interact with social, shopping and deal websites. The study had some interesting findings:

Men are more likely to visit company/brand/product pages on social sites as part of their purchase decision-making process.
Women are more likely to interact with a company/brand/product page after purchasing.
When examining a range of shopping activities (including finding specials and deals, product reviews, product information, product comparisons), consumers choose e-commerce shopping sites as their go-to destination.
Only 46% of those who responded will look to social networking sites while in a store on a website, but 55% will go to a shopping site in that instance.
When consumers do consult social networks for advice before making a purchase, 60% wait no more than 10 minutes.

While the study indicates that consumers often opt for e-commerce shopping sites, the importance of social networks as a part of the purchasing process is on the rise. Retailers and brands need to consider their social networking presence and be sure they are cultivating an environment of brand ambassadors who can influence their peers in their decisions.

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Luxury Websites: If You Don’t Have E-Commerce, Why Not?

Friday, October 28, 2011 by Morgan Woodruff

Many luxury brands have been slow to cultivate their online presence, and even slower to integrate e-commerce capabilities. They seemed to think that the mass appeal and convenience of online shopping would dilute the value and prestige of their brands or that consumers would not be willing to pay big-ticket prices via the Web. This has been proven wrong, as research shows that wealthy people shop online more frequently and spend more per transaction. As of late, many luxury retailers have come around to see the value of the Internet for driving sales, and, even more, the value in allowing customers to transact on an e-commerce site.

According to a recent study by PM Digital, 81% of the luxury websites surveyed now have e-commerce, and the sites with e-commerce get 98% of the traffic that goes to these luxury sites. About a third of this traffic comes from search engines, and there is very little cross traffic, since luxury shoppers are very loyal to their brands. Surprisingly, only a very small amount of luxury brands’ traffic (0.29%) comes from luxury daily deals sites, like Gilt Groupe, ideeli and RueLaLa.

What Makes Luxury E-Commerce Successful?

When selling big-ticket luxury items online, however, it’s not as simple as using a plug-and-play e-commerce solution. Luxury brand customers expect a high-end boutique experience whether in-person or online. Here are some aspects to consider when selling luxury via e-commerce:

You need to provide rich product descriptions. The more expensive an item is, the more information the consumer will want you to provide.
Offer exceptional customer service, getting as close to what you offer in-store with a personal shopper. On the Web, that translates to online chat.
The entire online shopping experience should be like going into one of your boutiques. Craft a strong welcome message on your home page. And then as customers drill down into products, allow them to zoom in on the images or even watch product videos – the goal is for them to handle the product, virtually.

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Today’s E-Commerce Content

Friday, October 21, 2011 by Betsy Miller

Content is king. Sure, this phrase is overused, but that’s because there’s a lot of truth behind it. While much has changed since Bill Gates first said those words in the early days of the Internet, people still want to consume information, and today’s shoppers want to be able to access it quickly and in a number of ways.

For e-commerce sites, content is about creating an engaging brand for consumers. The more you talk to your customers, the more they will interact with your brand and convert.

E-Commerce Content Trends

Here are just a few of the driving content trends for e-commerce today:

Over the past year, many e-commerce companies have hired editorial directors from the publishing world. They are being tasked with pulling all of the content together to create that single voice you might expect from a magazine. And in such cases, “voice” extends to visual aspects of the sites as well.
Thanks to Google Panda and e-commerce websites’ needs to distinguish themselves, it’s no longer enough to post manufacturers’ product descriptions and images. By bringing unique information, engaging storytelling, informed search engine optimization and visual panache, one website can beat out another when it comes to closing the sale.
User-generated content and community continues to flourish both on e-commerce websites and their social media pages. From online reviews to contests where users post content, e-commerce sites are allowing consumers to help create website content and build the brand. Some e-commerce websites even allow customers to customize their products or choose what goes on sale. Content allows e-commerce shopping to become a participatory and social experience.

E-commerce websites are becoming destinations beyond a place to shop. Those websites that are able to use content to transform their websites into destinations for customers to browse and spend time will continue to thrive. Selling online is not just a numbers game. It’s about offering a service customers want, and content should be at the forefront of that strategy.

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Big-Ticket E-Commerce Should Be Ready for the Holidays

Friday, October 14, 2011 by Betsy Miller

There was a time when some big-ticket retailers didn’t think they could cash in on the holiday shopping season, let alone such e-commerce-fueled events as Cyber Monday. But then again, there was also a time when no one expected anyone to buy anything online and computers filled entire rooms.

Whether it’s a push from e-commerce or the trend that holiday shopping starts earlier and earlier, we’ve found that big-ticket merchants, like furniture stores, which had traditionally been slow over the holidays, have been able to share in some of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday cheer.

At first, we would ask our clients what their plans were for these major dates on retail calendars, and they would often tell us they had nothing special planned. But slowly, we helped them to turn these potentially down days into big sellers with special events. For example, one of our clients began with a special Thanksgiving Day offer. It wouldn’t compete with stores, so what would be the worst that could happen? And it worked!

From exclusive email offers to Black Friday doorbusters and Christmas Day specials, our retail clients have been able to boost their fourth quarter sales. One client now mirrors the types of deals you see in retailers across the country with 12 days of deals leading up to Christmas; the big difference is our retailer is selling bigger ticket items like furniture and appliances as well as some electronics – and all three categories perform well.

So whether your big-ticket business can benefit from consumers being poised to spend over the holidays or you can take advantage of shoppers looking for great deals and not just gifts, holiday-timed offers can be a gift to your bottom line.

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Why E-Commerce Should Be Fired Up About Kindle Fire

Friday, October 7, 2011 by Betsy Miller

On the first day of preorders, 95,000 units of the Kindle Fire were sold. With the product’s release set for November 15th, this all equals a lot of people sitting on the couch after a filling turkey dinner, thumbing through apps and browsing the web on their shiny new tablets.

The release of the new Kindle Fire just in time for some of the busiest e-commerce shopping days of the year (Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday), could mean some extra business for online retailers.

According to a survey from the Ponemon Institute, 12% of heavy web-using consumers plan to use their tablets for holiday shopping, and a third of them say their e-commerce purchases will exceed their purchases in stores. And retailers also report that purchases from tablets can be as much as 20% larger than average orders from other devices.

Tablets tend to be great for e-commerce for a number of reasons: the screen size, the presentation (much like an old-school catalog) and the portability. With the Kindle Fire comes affordability, relatively speaking, as well.

There are many who think it is the profile of the tablet owner, rather than the tablet itself, that is responsible for more e-commerce conversions. But with the Kindle Fire’s $199 price tag, the demographic of tablet users could shift. Whether their buying habits do remains to be seen.

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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:

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.

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SEO Won’t Go Away for E-Commerce, But It Will Evolve

Friday, September 23, 2011 by Betsy Miller

The title of a recent E-Commerce Times article, “The Coming Irrelevance of SEO,” did its job and got me to click through. (Of course, I found it by searching Google.) The piece says that online retailers should begin preparing for the future and focus less on search engine optimization for driving sales and instead should harness the power of marketplaces. “Thanks to improvements in trust and safety, as well as predictability enhancements that brands like Amazon and eBay have brought to the space, consumers simply aren't turning to Google to purchase products,” writes the author Brian Horakh, who is also the founder of Zoovy, which is an integrated marketplace e-commerce solution, not that he’s biased. It’s unclear how this is an either/or scenario -- you can have a marketplace presence and promote your goods through SEO.

Not to hold onto the past, or even the present, I believe that SEO will continue to be a valuable tool for e-commerce websites. Purchasing is just the last step in the process. When customers research items, search engines are a premier starting point. We also don’t know what leads to that final visit where the purchase was made. Was the click from a friend’s review the first visit or the ninth? Perhaps the review helped close the sale, but the initial visit to the company’s e-commerce site may have come from a pay-per-click ad or from a link in organic search.

Good SEO Is Good Content

What even Internet experts tend to forget is that good SEO does not have to be a daunting task. Think about your business and your audience. What does your target audience want that you can provide? If you provide quality content that consumers want, then the SEO part falls into place. Sure, you can mix things up a bit and use different phrases to say the same thing, but that is also considered to be good writing. For example, if you are writing about a sofa, you might also refer to it as a couch or seating -- that reads better than using “couch” over and over again, and it’s good SEO.

Creating good content will also help you as social networks grow. Consumers want to share good content -- they’ll link to it from Facebook posts or reference it in their own blogs. And appropriately tagging user-generated content on your e-commerce sites, like reviews, for example, will help users and search engines find them.

Link farms and black hat tricks gave SEO a bad name earlier this year. But as the Google algorithm continues to evolve, so will SEO practices. And as long as you are focused on your audience, your e-commerce site will benefit.

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Keep Your E-Commerce Site on Target and Avoid Outages

Friday, September 16, 2011 by Betsy Miller

When a retailer launches a new line, media coverage is usually more than welcome. But in the case of Target’s new Missoni line, the more than 200 headlines found literally around the world could have had a better message. These reports all focused on how the large retailer’s e-commerce site, which recently switched from an Amazon back-end to one that’s proprietary, crashed under the heavy traffic.

Target was not prepared for the customer demand for this limited-edition designer line, and the e-commerce site was down for approximately 12 hours. The line’s launch – and the site’s crash – was preceded by amped up publicity for the line, leading to starlets discussing their interest in specific items on Twitter before the line was available. Of course, unhappy Target.com shoppers went to Twitter as well when they couldn’t access the website once these items were for sale.

While Target says this specific demand was unprecedented, dwarfing the traffic they get even on Black Friday, it is important for e-commerce websites to be prepared. Knowing the marketing push behind the Missoni line and the interest it was generating in social networks, Target should have taken steps to ensure the website would work as if it were any other day.

At Blueport, when we know one of our clients’ e-commerce sites will be getting extra traffic due to an incredible sale or promotion, we take steps in advance to be sure the websites can handle the onslaught of traffic. For example, when one of our clients ran a Living Social daily deal, our IT Operations department took action so the user experience was not affected in any way.

When your company plans a spectacular event, make sure that the event is as spectacular online as it is offline. And this becomes even more important as the holiday shopping season approaches. Online retailers should take the steps now to be sure their websites will be able to do what they need them to do this holiday season – and that’s selling merchandise.

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Online Expectations, Offline Experience

Friday, August 26, 2011 by Betsy Miller

PSFK, the self-proclaimed “go-to resource for new ideas and inspiration for creative professionals,” recently released its 2011 Future of Retail report, which explores the new trends driving the industry. This year, the focus is on the use of technology and how it will revitalize retail stores, both on and offline.

The study outlines three emerging megatrends:

Online Expectations, Offline Experience
Shopper Know-How
Refined Retail Cartography

Let’s take a look at the first one here:

Online Expectations, Offline Experience

For this megatrend, PSFK identified three smaller trends:

Digitally empowered staff: We’ve posted on this blog about the power of the iPad for retail. This trend is all about giving staff access to additional product information and real-time inventory – information we think are important components of an item’s product page on any e-commerce website. Having this information right at salespeople’s fingertips will allow them to spend more time selling and assisting customers by locating or ordering items.
In-stories: In-stories give customers access to additional product information in an entertaining manner. Including QR codes in your bricks-and-mortar store could allow customers to conduct the additional research on products that you want them to. Why not allow them to access your e-commerce site’s user reviews?
Scanned shoppers: This trend is all about interactive technology entering the store to help customers make purchasing decisions, such as what they should make for dinner or what size to get a specific shirt in. We’ve seen some of these types of tools exist on stores’ websites. Customers crave this interactivity everywhere.
Gesture-based browsing: Gesture-based browsing allows customers to interact with a display via non-contact movement (think Kinect). Such displays will pull customers into the store and the shopping experience. In addition to providing an entertaining experience, it also gives the store information on how the consumer navigates through the display and what the consumer ultimately chooses.

We find all of these trends very exciting. We already know that multichannel retailing allows customers to shop when and how they want to. This new melding of technology and retail will help retailers create a tighter branding experience between their bricks-and-mortar stores and their online e-commerce presence. Both online and offline will be able to more easily benefit from each other, and that gives the biggest benefits to the customer.

In a future blog post, we’ll take a closer look at more of the underlying trends from this report.

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The Economy May Be Looking Down, But E-Commerce Sales Keep Looking Up

Friday, August 19, 2011 by Betsy Miller

According to comScore’s State of the US Online Retail Economy in Q2 2011, despite an increased consumer perception that the economy is getting worse, Q2 e-commerce spending was up 14% YOY. Here are some interesting findings from the recent report:

Online Shopping

E-commerce sales growth is growing at double the rate of total retail sales growth, indicating that consumers are shifting from shopping in-store to buying online. The number of online shoppers increased 16% YOY for Q2 – there are now 170 million people shopping online.

Big-ticket items like furniture, appliances and equipment have shown moderate growth of 5% to 9% YOY for Q2.

Cutting Back on Spending

Because of their economic concerns, consumers are looking to save. They are now switching brands, shopping only when items are on sale, looking for deals online and going to different retailers in order to spend less.

Get Smart About Smartphones

The number of consumers using their smartphones to browse retail content in some form is now at 78 million. 22% of smartphone owners say they have made purchases via their smartphones, 50% have used their phones to find nearby stores and 40% have used their smartphones while in a store. The top reasons for using the smartphone in-store? To compare prices or to compare an item to other items not available in the store. 36% of consumers who abandon in-store purchases after using their smartphones end up buying online instead.

Social Media Matters

Overall, retailers not taking full advantage of the opportunity social media presents. For example, retail ads only make up 15.4% of the display ads on social networking sites.

If you are looking to expand your social media presence, comScore offers insight on Facebook: Once consumers like a page, they are very unlikely to return to that page. Facebook users spend the majority of their time on the newsfeed, so what and how you post will account for much of their interactions with your brand. Fans and their Facebook friends who are exposed to your brand on Facebook via advertising and status posts have a much higher brand engagement, which includes visiting your e-commerce website.

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Scenes from the Summit: Pacific Crest 2011

Friday, August 12, 2011 by Morgan Woodruff

The Pacific Crest Global Technology Leadership Forum for 2011 was again held in glorious Vail, Colorado. Blueport's third year at this event kicked off on Sunday with an investment-banker-driven, 7-mile run from the town (8,150 ft.) up to nearly the summit (11,428 ft.). What were they thinking? This was followed by a cocktail reception that night for the private and public companies attending. At this early stage in the conference, it was impossible to wrap your head around the event yet: It was a Sunday night and you were working with half the oxygen you’re used to. You spoke with tons of contacts, but there was no mention of the technology, localized e-commerce, social and mobile buzzwords that would be unavoidable in the remaining days.

The sun crested over the mountains at 5:29 a.m. and breakfast began at 6. Pacific Cresters fluttered around, effectively lining up 48 hours of ducks. You had to caffeine it up -- you needed it.

The summit had three modules -- two unique. At most tech summits, you end up in a room with Google or Gilt listening to egos roar as Sergey or Susan talk about how killer things are in ecommerce, search, social commerce and more. At Pacific Crest, these more generic types of corporate briefings were done throughout the two days and you slot them in as best you can. But most of the fun comes from the two more unique tracks of this conference: One portion is the roundtable discussions where industry focus meets opinion. Our CEO, Carl sat on the Internet Digital Media panel this year with Don the Tool King and the CEO of Beyond the Rack. The discussion is led by bankers and analysts who cover the e-commerce space. This year, logistics and inventory (Do you job it out? CAPEX it?) was among the hotter topics. Our market validation vis-a-vis panel discussions with these high-caliber attendees is flattering. When someone who runs a $17 billion fund nods in agreement -- well, nothing is quite like it.

This year, I spent most of my time differently than in the past. I focused on briefing investors interested in e-commerce platforms and, hopefully, Blueport.

Meetings were 25 minutes each (with 5 minutes for travel time to the next meeting lovingly factored in -- very 503, you know 917 wouldn't do that). They’re like those goofy Hollywood junket interviews for movie premieres. I did my best to not pull a Christian Bale, while sitting in a hotel room stripped of its beds (because THAT would be awkward), saying roughly the same thing over and over, changing it slightly for the audience and its reactions. They went something like this:

Them: Are you profitable?
Us: What's your average check size?
Them: Year-over-year growth?
Us: What are you looking for in your next portfolio company?
Them: We typically would invest $25 to $50 million, but we did a round with Facebook at $200.
Us: OK, we want $5. Can we make that work?

Before you can imagine, there's a knock on the door. It's over and on to the next. It's a blast, and it’s exactly what I love about my career; that it's not a job or work per se, but it's fun. I'm insanely lucky. Events like this remind me of that.

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When It Comes to the Newest Technology, Set Objectives First

Friday, July 15, 2011 by Betsy Miller

Everyone wants to be involved with the newest technology, right? Retailers and consumers alike want to play on the newest playground with the newest equipment, along with the coolest, most influential kids, whether that means Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr today, Google+ tomorrow and who knows what next week. But before an e-commerce company jumps on the latest technology bandwagon, people need to stop and think about the website’s strategy and what is right for the overall business. That’s just what David Rogers, author of The Network Is Your Customer: 5 Strategies to Thrive in a Digital Age, wrote in a BNET blog post.

It’s almost as if the technology itself becomes bigger than its function. Brands tend to jump in so quickly that Google was compelled to post a YouTube video asking businesses to hold off on creating Google+ profiles until the business version is released.

While we at Blueport understand that brands do need to get out there and dip their feet in new technologies, strategy should come into play first. We work with our clients to help them determine their objectives before taking action. We don’t just help them administer Facebook contests, but we ask them why they want to have a Facebook contest – what is the real goal for the company? Then, based on our clients’ objectives, we offer suggestions that make the most sense for their brands and that will deliver the best return on investment.

New technology presents a new frontier, even for companies that already have an e-commerce presence. It helps to create a digital strategy to guide you in this unmarked territory.

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Ecommerce Online Shopping Blueport.com