E-Commerce

Much has changed in catalog retailing over the past five years. But as Michelle Farabaugh, a partner with catalog consultancy LENSER, sees it, there’ll be more change over the next five years than the past 30. She offered points and noted some key issues catalogers should be on the lookout for during a session at last week’s New England Mail Order Association conference in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): “Because search is so important,” she said, “it’s critical once we get customers to the site that they can acutally find what they’re looking for and we can find what they need and

You’ve often heard that the best way to find out what your customers want is to ask them, but once you’ve set up a focus group or decided to conduct a customer survey, what’s the best way to ask? Customer research needs to explore both emotional and rational motivations behind purchase and usage, according to a recent whitepaper from brand consultancy Hiebing. Following are a few tips on how to quiz consumers on their buying habits: * Ask consumers about real-life situations. Detailed surveys that include questions such as “When was the last time you purchased our brand?” or “Why did you purchase our

Over the years, I’ve made plenty of catalog purchases, but rarely simply because I was a catalog business editor. I only turned to catalogs when I needed something unusual or came across a killer sale. Otherwise, I bought my mainstream goods off the rack. Today, that’s changed. And the two vehicles that have impacted me the most have been the coming of age of e-mail and the remarkable ease of search engines. I find e-mail’s impact on me surprising, because less than five years ago, I’d delete any personal e-mail from just about any address I didn’t recognize. But now, I find myself looking

How can you get more e-mail sign-ups from your site visitors? E-mail sign-up is simple: a few clicks followed by a handful of keystrokes. But the same process of close comparative scrutiny also can improve complex processes, such as cart and check-out. This article focuses on the e-mail sign-up process at 45 multichannel retailers. For this study, I pulled 45 sites at random, taken from some of the larger merchants in the country. I signed up for e-mail at each using a fresh Gmail account. (For the full methodology and detailed scores and notes for each site, visit www.rimmkaufman.com/e-mail-sign-up-study.) I conducted these tests in

Despite rapid online gains, future still bright for print catalogs. Considering it’s now been at least a decade since debates first surfaced in this business about whether the print catalog would ultimately become obsolete in favor of online catalogs, you’d think you could make a stronger case for such a phenomenon in 2006. And today, with a rapidly growing number of catalogers reporting 50 percent-plus levels of orders placed online, the writing would seem to be on the wall. But while it’s nice to dream of the cost savings associated with alleviating paper catalogs altogether, reports of its death are greatly exaggerated, to quote Mark Twain.

Problem: The order entry system for My Grandma’s of New England routinely transposed data from one order to another, causing shipping errors and other assorted problems. Solution: The company implemented a new order entry system. Results: Shipping errors were virtually eliminated. My Grandma’s of New England had an order entry system (OES) that was wildly unstable, often causing data errors that resulted in shipping methods from one order being applied to another order, disappearing entirely or customer greetings placed on an order to end up on the wrong order. So last November, the company implemented Morse Data’s InOrder OES to reduce shipping errors caused by its legacy

Forty-one percent of North American households now have broadband Internet access, up from 29 percent two years ago, according to a recent Forrester Research survey. And 18- to 26-year-old consumers continue to spend more time online than older individuals. These Generation Y’ers spend 12.2 hours online each week, 28 percent more than 27- to 40-year-old Generation X’ers and nearly twice as long as 51- to 61-year-old baby boomers. Other results of the survey: * 75 percent of North American households have mobile phones; * Gen Y’ers are 73 percent more likely to research online and shop offline than they were in 2004; *

Fifty-six percent of consumers say it’s important to them that online retail sites save the contents of their shopping carts when they leave e-commerce sites, according to a survey released by the Decision Direct Research division of list firm Millard Group. That’s up from 48 percent in last year’s survey. Additionally, 24 percent of shoppers want to receive an e-mail reminder that they still have items in their shopping carts, up 2 percent from 2005. Other insights revealed by the survey: * 53 percent of shoppers find multi-angle product views important, up from 48 percent last year; * 42 percent of respondents said they

If attendance at affiliate marketing sessions at industry conferences is any indication, many catalogers and online merchants struggle with how to effectively manage and grow their affiliate programs. In a Q&A with Catalog Success associate editor Matthew Griffin, Kelli Beougher, vice president of distribution services at Linkshare, a New York-based affiliate network, offers some tactics that can enhance your affiliate program, setting it apart from the the competition. Catalog Success: Say a cataloger has an affiliate marketing program; the merchant manages its affiliates well and communicates on a regular basis. What are some next-level steps to improve on an existing affiliate program? Kelli Beougher: Beyond the

Ask Amy Africa--the Web usability surveyor and president of Eight By Eight, which consults for such B-to-B catalogers as VWR, S&S Worldwide and Hello Direct--and she’ll tell you there are really only a handful of things that matter when it comes to online marketing. During her keynote address at the recent MeritDirect Business Mailer’s Co-op Conference in White Plains, N.Y., she outlined the following pieces of online marketing that matter. Landing/entry page: Armed with her own survey findings, Africa said that 80 percent to 90 percent of people leave landing pages (upon coming from search engine sites) within five pages of the landing pages. “Landing