Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

Get to Know Tablet Shoppers to Drive Your E-Commerce Business

Friday, January 20, 2012 by Morgan Woodruff

In a previous post, I talked about how tablet commerce will continue to be one of the top growing e-commerce trends this year. And there is good news for e-commerce businesses who want to drive additional business through this medium: You can now get to know tablet users a little better.

Internet Retailer recently wrote about the results of a Zmags survey conducted by Equation Research on who the people are who are making purchases via their tablets. Here are some of the results:

The Typical Tablet Owner

Age 40
Average annual household income: $63,000
52% are women
81% use Facebook

Tablet Shopping Habits

14% of consumers who own tablets consider themselves to be spontaneous shoppers
9% classify themselves as “addicted to shopping”
24% window-shop on their devices
13% go shopping with a specific product in mind
11% are moved to action based on advertisements
During the survey, on average spent $325 on their tablets

Why Tablet Commerce Makes Sense

29% of tablet shoppers say it’s convenient since they are on the device so much
14% like the ease of making a purchase on their tablets
9% enjoy the simplicity of being able to share shopping-related information on their social networks

This is further evidence that tablet shoppers are poised to browse and shop e-commerce site via their devices. While you don’t want to miss the opportunity to get in front of these shoppers, their influence on social networks is also an alluring reason to capture this audience.

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Data Center Issues Are Part of E-Commerce -- But They Can Be Mitigated

Friday, January 13, 2012 by Fotios Magoufis

For e-commerce sites, both on the web and mobile, there’s a lot you can control about your site, for instance, what products are featured, site promotions, the shopping cart and more. But when it comes to site performance, some issues are out of the retailer’s hands.

For example, last month Toolfetch.com’s mobile commerce site experienced availability issues. While load time remained a quick 5.30 seconds, the site was unavailable for nearly 10% of customers who tried to load it. The culprit? Service interruption at the data center.

Toolfetch.com had likely created a multi-homed network connecting their data center to two independent carriers – it’s like running Comcast and RCN for your home Internet connection and using them both at the same time. Many e-commerce sites conduct such practices, and it’s almost required to ensure adequate uptime these days. Running this type of connection adds complexity and multiple additional layers that must be monitored and managed properly. From our perspective here at Blueport, running this multi-homed network alone isn’t enough to guarantee better performance and uptime.

In addition to implementing a multi-homed network with independent carriers, we also use edge caching via Akamai for all of our clients’ e-commerce sites. Akamai copies our websites and stores the pages across thousands of nodes all over the US and Canada. When a user hits one of our clients’ websites, 85% of the time the data they see is loaded via a node located geographically close to the user’s computer. If Akamai does not have already have a copy of the page, the service determines the fastest path to loading the page for the user and fetches the information from our data center to display it as quickly as possible.

By taking additional precautions, we are able to further reduce the risk of the unexpected and improve site performance for our clients.

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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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Blueport Commerce Is on the Move!

Thursday, September 8, 2011 by Morgan Woodruff

It’s moving week at Blueport Commerce! We will be opening for business at our new offices at 580 Harrison Ave. in Boston’s South End on Monday, September 12th. Everyone here is very excited about this next step in our company’s growth.

We spent quite some time finding our new space, all told about 16 months. We wanted a mix of everything: a beautiful space where we could continue to grow, a building that could meet our technical needs, amenities for our staff and an exciting place for clients and partners to visit. After much searching, we found the space. We were able to get all we wanted and more. The time is right, and we’re making the move.

These types of changes often get you thinking about your past as much as your future. How did we get here?

Remember when people were hesitant to buy anything online? That’s when we started selling furniture on the Web as Furniture.com. We have evolved from a Web portal selling furniture to a technology and services provider for big-ticket retailers who want to sell and brand their hard-to-ship items online. We’ve already extended to markets adjacent to the furniture industry, such as appliances, electronics, flooring, carpet and more. We’ve been helping clients navigate their ways through social networks, daily deals and more. As a business, we have evolved, and now it’s time our office space catches up.

The future for Blueport Commerce is forecasted to be even brighter. As the market focuses on local e-commerce (something we’ve done for quite some time), we are poised to continue to be a leader. Come visit us, and see for yourself.

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

Shopper Know-How and the Retail Renaissance

Friday, September 2, 2011 by Betsy Miller

Last week, we posted about the retail trend of Online Expectations, Offline Experiences discussed in PSFK’s 2011 Future of Retail report. In this post, we will talk about another major trend they outline in the report: Shopper Know-How.

Shopper Know-How

The retail megatrend of Shopper Know-How stems from the emerging consumer trends related to how people now use mobile technology and social media, as well as how consumers crave/demand relevant location-based information specific to them.

On my block deals: This capitalizes on the success of Groupon, Living Social, etc. and combines combining deals with geolocation technology (something Groupon has already ventured into with Groupon Now). Consumers enjoy both the novelty of such alerts as well as the practicality of having time, location and need converge.
Social currency: There is value in consumers’ social influence. Some brands have already seen success by offering deals or special treatments based on social influence. Others have even offered discounts and products for Tweets. In the social space, retailers will need to look beyond cultivating a stream of people to merely push deals out to and should work on creating a community of brand advocates, whose organic marketing voices are stronger than the retailers’ own. Pay with a Tweet – social media sharing as currency, too.
What’s in-store: Making real-time local inventory data available to consumers leads to local discovery. Consumers will be able to find the products they want nearby. By putting this information in the consumers hands, you will be able to attract new customers as people will go to new places to get what they want.

As you can see, technology is fueling a retail renaissance. Here at Blueport, we’re enjoying being a part of it!

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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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