E-Commerce

Those e-merchants who can save customers time and/or make online shopping easier are in line to build customer loyalty, writes Ken Burke, founder and chief executive of MarketLive and author of “Intelligent Selling: The Art& Science of Selling Online.” Following are four action steps to take: 1. Offer advanced search. “Searches that use Boolean operators and multiple keywords can be powerful ways to allow experienced users to find what they want more quickly,” Burke writes. And it can incentivize shoppers to visit your site vs. a competitor’s site. 2. Send e-mail confirmations. Detail what they bought, total cost and shipping data, Burke suggests. 3.

More than 70 percent of respondents to an online survey were pleased with their overall holiday Web shopping last quarter, according to Decision Direct Research, a division of Millard Group. More than 70,000 online shoppers offered their thoughts on their buying experiences in Q4 2005. Following are other findings from the consumer survey: * 82 percent of respondents said a catalog drove them to visit and buy from a Web site. * 81 percent said an e-mail also motivated them to shop online. For more on the survey, contact Decision Direct Research at (603) 924-9262, or visit: http://www.millard.com.

One of the biggest Web phenomena in the last few years has been the explosion of Web logs, or blogs. While initially nothing more than online diaries, blogs have emerged as opportunities for merchants to spread awareness about brands and products. Pinny Gniwisch, vice president and co-founder of online jewelry merchant Ice.com, shared how his company has leveraged blogs to increase search traffic to his Web site at an impromptu question-and-answer session at last month’s eTail conference in Palm Desert, Calif. Q: Did you have any specific objectives or metrics in mind when you started the blogs? Pinny Gniwisch: When we first were thinking

From this article, you’ll learn how to start protecting your Web site and customer data from potential security breaches. A security breach could hit your company without warning. A hacker could bring your firm to its knees with terrifying swiftness. If your Web site is insecure today, hackers could break into it tonight, and tomorrow you could face widespread customer wrath, disastrous publicity and significant legal liability. If your firm hasn’t yet taken steps to reduce your Web security risk, now is the time to do so. Following are suggestions to get you started. Yes, You Are a Target Too many

While comparison shopping sites such as Froogle, Shop.com and Shopzilla can provide an opportunity for multichannel marketers to reach new customer universes, they also present a unique set of challenges. Because there are myriad formats of product data feeds (the information you provide to the sites), this creates problems if you want to sell products on more than one site, says Alan Rimm-Kaufman, CEO of interactive marketing firm The Rimm-Kaufman Group. In a move to combat these dilemmas, merchants, search agencies and search engines met at Shop.org’s FirstLook 2006 in Atlanta in January to discuss the need for a common standard for describing

The average percentage of online revenue lost to payment fraud has decreased slightly for smaller-sized merchants, but increased for merchants with annual online revenue of $5 million or more, according to a new study from CyberSource, a provider of e-payment and risk management solutions. ¥ 1.6 percent: average percentage of online revenue lost in 2005 to payment fraud for merchants with $500,000 or less in annual online revenue, down from 1.8 percent in 2004 and 2 percent in 2003. ¥ 1.6 percent in 2005 for merchants with $500,000 to $5 million in online revenue, down from 2.5 percent in 2004 and 1.9 percent in

The Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement (SSTA), in the planning stages for many years, finally went into effect on Oct. 1, 2005. So far, it’s a voluntary program in which remote sellers collect state and local sales taxes and remit them to the jurisdictions in which their buyers reside. As you know, merchants currently are required to collect state and local taxes only if they have nexus (a physical presence such as a store or headquarters) in the state. Consumers are expected to pay sales taxes on their online and catalog purchases. Of course, most don’t bother or don’t know it’s required. As

Following are a few tactics that can torpedo your online conversion rate and impede your Web sales in 2006. (P.S.: If you’re not heeding the following advice, congratulations!) 1. Make customers work to purchase. Be sure users have to learn how to use your site. This is the best way to get them to concentrate and forget about competitors who are just a click away. Ignore the accepted conventions of industry leaders and frequently change layouts throughout your site to increase “shopping suspense.” 2. Design by committee. Let a group of senior executives design your homepage — or you can let your CEO

The four Mondays between Thanksgiving and Christmas -- aka: “Cyber Mondays 1 to 4” -- were the peak selling days during the 2005 holiday shopping season, according to Performics, a division of DoubleClick Digital Advertising Solutions. No surprise: Cyber Mondays 2 and 3 were particularly strong selling days. This year, there will again be four Mondays between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but Cyber Monday 4 may be a stronger selling day than it was in 2005, note Performics officials. That’s because Christmas day is, itself, a Monday, and so Cyber Monday 4 (Dec. 18) will fall a full week before the holiday, leaving adequate time for

Of the 100 sites mystery-shopped by the etailing group in Q4 2005, only 10 met all of the surveyor’s criteria for exceptional online customer service and communication: Ann Taylor Bluefly Blue Nile Brookstone Crutchfield Finish Line J. Crew Sephora SmartBargains Tower Records The sites were ranked using benchmarking criteria such as: having a toll-free customer service line; keyword search; answered e-mails correctly within 25 hours; four or fewer days to receive orders; six or fewer clicks to checkout; real-time inventory status; online shipping status; and other variables. For more, visit: http://www.e-tailing.com.