E-Commerce

Consumers are increasingly drawn to rich Web content — information that’s engaging, visual and intuitive. And online retailers and brand marketers are responding by building dramatic, fun and innovative marketing micro-sites, as well as interactive product displays to meet this desire. According to Forrester Research, the largest interactive marketing firms are growing at annual rates between 20 and 40 percent. That’s the good news. The bad news is that even the leaders often fail to make commerce a seamless part of these interactive marketing experiences. Instead, customers usually are faced with a disjointed experience where they browse and interact with the brand in

A recent Forrester Research survey shows that more than 60 percent of commercial Web sites waste their investment in search by not backing up their marketing with landing pages to create visitor engagement. Landing pages are the most important element of a campaign, says Sue Chapman, director of merchandising solutions at Mercado Software, who along with Brian Beck, CEO of Broadspan Commerce Brian Beck, CEO of Broadspan Commerce, hosted a recent webinar presentation, “A Soft Landing Creates an Easy Sell.” Chapman and Beck provided several pointers on how to make landing pages more effective. 1. Make it quick and easy for the consumer. Consumers

These days, if you look hard enough, you can find some catalogers who can offer a nice bargain. But as we all know, by in large, catalogers have a tough time competing with retailers on price. Otherwise, it’s the product and service, stupid! Before you even consider offering top quality service, however, you better put your customers and prospects at ease, particularly when it comes to your Web site. Assure them that they’re dealing with a reputable company they can trust. Historically, the direct marketing business — later, to be joined by the e-commerce business — has always been plagued by fly-by-nights, leaving consumers

Is your company blogging yet? With the soaring cost of postage and pay-per-click advertising, blogging offers catalogers a powerful channel to get their message to prospects and customers worldwide. The cost is low. The impact is high. Here are 11 steps to get you started. 1. READ LOTS OF BLOGS. Before you start your own blog, spend at least two weeks voraciously reading. Choose an RSS reader; I recommend Google Reader. Get familiar with blog search engines, such as Technorati. Find bloggers writing about niches related to your company, products, industry, customers, etc. Add bloggers you like to your RSS reader. Follow

NEMOA at 60: ‘Small’ Event Yields Big Ideas This month’s NEMOA conference in Portland, Maine, Sept. 19-21, marks the 60th anniversary for what started — and remains — a small specialized trade group. For many long-time members, NEMOA is all about conferences. The group holds semiannual conferences each March and September designed for catalog/multichannel marketers. “The main value of NEMOA is being able to get together and network,” says 20-year member Dan Walter, president and founder of Eagle America, a woodworking tools and accessories catalog. “You learn tricks of the trade from the people you meet, whether it be from a high-powered speaker

Well into the second decade of the Internet, many of you reading this — if not all of you — have a pretty good recollection of the “Wild Wild West” days of the Internet early on. It actually still is the Wild West, but in a much different way. And, having sat in on a number of sessions at the e-Tail conference in Washington, D.C., earlier this month, I noticed the breadth of knowledge that’s permeated the catalog/multichannel community and helped give it an entirely different character than it had 10 years ago. For one, consider how the language has changed. In the mid-’90s, I

Boosting conversion rates and improving the user experience top the list of priorities in 2008 for online retailers, according to a survey of 70 marketers and other e-commerce attendees of the recent e-Tail conference in Washington, D.C. The survey, conducted by SiteSpect, was taken on Aug. 6-7. Among the findings ... * 57 percent said that site testing will be an important focus in 2008, with 17 percent making it the top priority; * 69 percent were “moderately confident” to “confident” about the effectiveness and performance of their current Web channel programs and strategies; * 14 percent expressed significant to major concerns about

During a session at the recent e-Tail conference in Washington, D.C., Vernon Wyatt, director of customer experience at Tealeaf, an online customer experience management solutions provider, pointed to four causes, cases and situations in which e-commerce customer service-related problems are related to technical issues. These include the following: 1. 80 percent of the total time it takes to solve a problem is spent identifying the problem, he noted. Just 20 percent is spent implementing the change. 2. In his experience, Wyatt said that 300 to 400 of the issues reported to technical support last year were rejected due to “unable to reproduce” the

This week, I offer you a simple, easy to clip (or print out) checklist of ways to convert prospects to customers. It’s my goal for you to come away with two vital ways of thinking and planning:
1. Think beyond the catalog mail schedule, and
2. Think about the customer lifecycle (prospects, one-time buyers, multibuyers and customer advocates) and how to move them higher up the food chain.
Although it’s pretty much self-explanatory, I’ll follow this up with some commentary in the coming weeks.
Checklist: Customer Lead Conversion
(based on LTV and ROI analysis)
* Add prospect to catalog schedule, mail X number

Whether they’re great CEOs from good companies, good CEOs from great companies or great CEOs from fantastic companies, these people often don’t want to let the rest of the world know what’s made them or their companies so great. So, it was a joy to sit in on a wonderful presentation by Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh during the e-Tail conference in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 8. He openly reeled off 10 truly fascinating ways Zappos has succeeded in its first eight years as a dot-com seller of shoes and apparel. What does your company have in common with the $800 million Zappos? For