Online Shopping SoftwareBlueport.com

“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:

1. Be up-front about product availability.
2. Communicate when inventory is low – it might even help you sell the item.
3. Be clear about any stock disclosure policies you have in place to protect yourself.
4. Explain who is fulfilling the orders for your product.
5. And should you a sell a customer an item that is no longer stock, take care of the problem: Let the customer know you are sorry, explain what happened, and then offer a discount toward a future purchase. Do not automatically add the customer to your email list for marketing promotions.

The overarching theme here is to be straightforward with your customers about the merchandise you have on your website. You could potentially miss a sale or two today, but the long-lasting result of creating a trusting relationship between customers and your e-commerce site can be priceless, especially in categories that are difficult to fulfill.


Related posts:

• Keep Your E-Commerce Site on Target and Avoid Outages
• How Does Your E-Commerce Shopping Software Manage Stock-Outs?
• Shopper Know-How and the Retail Renaissance
• Online Expectations, Offline Experience

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

There’s been a lot of chatter about live chat lately. This month, LiveChat announced new features for triggering prospects and measuring conversions from its software, and Bold Software and The E-Tailing Group released the results of a study on the effectiveness of live chat for e-commerce websites. Does your e-commerce platform need to incorporate live chat functionality?

Live Chat Allows Customers to Contact You in the Way They Want To

E-commerce is about convenience. It’s about consumers being able to purchase from your retail business the way they want, when they want. And this convenience should extend to how customers can communicate with your company. Today’s consumers want to be able to choose the options that work for them, and well-thought-out live chat is an option the consumers you want to reach are interested in.

The Bold Software/E-Tailing Group research finds that 20% of shoppers prefer live chat. And this 20% of consumers tends to include those age 31 to 50 with above average income and who are more likely to be college educated and spend more online on an annual basis than other shoppers. Can you afford not to appease this audience?

The Right Way to Execute Live Chat

If you’ve decided live chat is the right option for your e-commerce business, you need to be sure to implement it correctly. Customers who engage in live chat say its success completely lies with the chatting customer representative. They found the chat software’s features to be far less important.

The E-Commerce Edge Is Customer Service

At Blueport, when we work with clients that are implementing live chat, we instruct them to really think about who they are assigning this task. We find the ideal chatters to be web-savvy and have a good mix of customer service and sales skills. Deep knowledge of the product catalog is essential.

Your retail chatters need to be clear on their goals, which should most likely be customer satisfaction and closing the sale. Chatters should also keep in mind that the customer decided to reach out to them via chat, so they should tread carefully about sending users to alternate medium, like the phone or in-store, for resolution. Your chatters need to be empowered to quickly answer questions and resolve issues all within online chat or in the follow-up method each customer prefers.

Are You Going to, or Have You Already Implemented, Online Chat for E-Commerce?

If you’re thinking of incorporating live chat, remember that the software is just a piece of the puzzle. Go to sites that offer online chat and see what does and does not work for you as a consumer. How long of a wait for the retailer rep to begin the chat is too long? Could the chatter answer your catalog questions, or could you learn more from the product page? If an item was out of stock or not what you wanted, were you offered alternatives? When you said you’d come back later or go to the store, were you given an incentive to buy today. Note what your frustrations and what you liked so you can incorporate best practices into your own implementation.

If your website already has live chat, how do you know if you’re maximizing this opportunity? Regularly review the transcripts to see what opportunities may have been lost and to see if you have given your chatters the information and tools they need to make the customer interactions successful. And be sure to engage in live chat on your website as a customer every now and then to see that the experience is what it should be.

Related posts:

• A Fluid Online Shopping Experience Trumps Deals and Offers
• Marketing to the Smarter Consumer
• E-commerce 2.0 – the Next Wave

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

New research from Oregon State University finds that, in addition to lost revenue, online stock-outs can also cause long-term brand damage due to customer dissatisfaction, a decrease in return visits and negative word-of-mouth.

Consumers' negative reactions were all linked to how B2C ecommerce websites manage stock-outs. Online retailers that do not notify customers until checkout that an item is out of stock are rated significantly worse than stores that let their customers know about avaialbility earlier in the shopping process.

Blueport's B2C Ecommerce Solution for Managing Stock Online

We designed Blueport Commerce's ecommerce shopping software to help big-ticket retailers mitigate this negative reaction to stock-outs. We integrate directly into a store’s inventory system and display updated, real-time product availability information. And we've designed our clients' websites to display important availability information for the consumer right on the product page based on stock, incoming purchase orders or inter-store transfers. Consumers know the local in-store availability and delivery dates before they add an item to their shopping carts.

Customer satisfaction can make or break your business. You need to leverage the right ecommerce CRM software to help keep your customers on your website -- after all, your competitors are only a click away.

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’ve seen it work in three ways:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sure, we segment the market on two dimensions. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

This week Google launched several new features to Google Shopping, most notably localized product search – which we first discussed here back in March. 

Google users will now see two new links accompanying product search results, including the location of local retail stores and an indication if a product is in stock, in limited quantities or out of stock in their area.  A click on an individual product will also return a list of nearby stores that carry that product with an embedded Google Map for obtaining directions. 

70 large retailers are on board for the initial launch, including Macy's, Pottery Barn, and Best Buy.  Google has also struck deals with retail industry software giants JDA, Epicor, and Oracle to integrate the Google Shopping upload process into the inventory management systems of those retailers.

Google understands that most consumers (especially those looking to make big ticket purchases that require consideration and research) go online to compare specs, prices and features before heading to their local store for in-person research and to buy.  This local, cross-channel, big ticket experience is, without question, the next wave of online commerce.

But, say you’re a big ticket retailer not named Pottery Barn. 

You probably aren’t running your inventory on Oracle or JDA.  Most likely, you probably haven’t been able to make local inventory information available on your own website, much less Google’s.  So how can you take advantage of this explosive trend?  

This is where we come in.  Blueport has been building localized e-commerce systems for big-ticket retailers for over a decade.  Leveraging our localized platform, your Blueport website perfectly reflects your local store offerings, regardless of what systems you are running in your stores. 

With that infrastructure in place, it’s simple to take advantage of the latest in localized online advertising – like Google’s new local product search.  Better yet, when consumers come to your Blueport site, you’ll have enabled the type of seamless, local, cross-channel shopping experience that makes Google Local a powerful idea.



Copyright 2010, Official Blog of Blueport Commerce

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

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

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

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

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

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