E-Commerce

Every business-to-business (B-to-B) merchant should take the time to optimize its homepage space to ensure its customers have a positive experience, said Amy Africa, president of Eight By Eight, a strategic consulting firm specializing in online and offline integration, in her session “The Best of the Best: B-to-B’s Top 25 Web Sites” at the Sixth Annual MeritDirect Business Mailer’s Co-op and Interactive Marketing Conference held last month in White Plains, N.Y. Africa offered the following tips for b-to-b marketers interested in taking their Web entry pages from so-so to stellar: 1. The entry page should download as quickly as possible. “Make sure important stuff loads in

Search marketing is hot: Analysts predict the industry will reach almost $15 billion in marketing spend in 2005, up more than 30 percent compared to 2004. There are two primary flavors of search marketing: paid search, dominated by Google’s and Yahoo!’s pay-per-click networks; and natural search, also known as organic search, unpaid search, or search engine optimization. Since cost-per-click fees have risen during the last few quarters, marketers have increased their focus on natural search efforts. To help improve online sales, this article examines nine common misconceptions about natural search marketing and how you can avoid these pitfalls. It’s simply too complex. Some

Online retail sales (excluding travel) rose 23.8 percent in 2004, to $89 billion. That represents 4.6 percent of total retail sales, according to The State of Retailing Online 8.0, an annual Shop.org study conducted by Forrester Research. In all, 137 retailers were polled for the study. Here’s what else Forrester found: ¥ $109.6 billion, expected amount of online retail sales (excluding travel) in 2005. ¥ 28 percent, average operating margins of online retailers in 2004, up from 21 percent in 2003. ¥ 32 percent, average operating margins for catalog-based online retailers, up from 28 percent in 2003. Source: Shop.org and Forrester

Consumers lowered their ratings on retailers’ online shopping and browsing attributes, according to a new survey from Decision Direct Research. The Online Multichannel Survey of more than 50,000 consumers of 35 multichannel merchants found that retailers’ ratings decreased when compared to both last quarter and the same quarter last year. Consumers said the following attributes are important to them: e-mail order verification, ability to view an item online in a selected color and ability to zoom to enlarge product features. Yet, only 63 percent, 44 percent and 44 percent, respectively, gave “excellent” ratings to retailers on those attributes. Additionally, only 50 percent of respondents gave a

Of 175 catalogers with e-mail programs, e-mail marketer Silverpop found that between March and May of this year, 75 percent offered e-mail signup directly on the homepage, while 3 percent used a pop-up at the homepage to collect e-mail addresses. Other data revealed by the study: * 75% offered an incentive to customers for providing their e-mail addresses * 45% of those catalogers offered sales and promotions as an incentive * 14% offered newsletters * 11% offered a catalog or other form of direct mail * 2% offered a prize For more information on Silverpop’s “2005 Retail E-mail Marketing Study,” visit http://www.silverpop.com/news/press/05_26_05.html.

Sure, you have programs for search engine marketing (SEM), e-mail and affiliate marketing. But how extensively have you plotted out your overall strategy? A key to your success involves a closely integrated program that involves all forms of online advertising. Following are some strategies revealed. Gordon Hotchkiss, president/CEO of search engine marketing firm Enquiro, noted in his presentation during the Annual Catalog Conference in Orlando last week several key factors to managing a viable SEM program. He discussed two primary kinds of searches: Mapping searches are when consumers search by subject; transporter searches are when consumers search by company names or URLs. Be prepared for both,

There’s so much to learn in online marketing -- where do you begin? Speakers at the Annual Catalog Conference held in Orlando last week offered up a few ideas you can put to use: 1. Address information overload: Stephen Spencer, founder/president of search engine optimization firm Netconcepts, said during the “Meet the Speakers” brunch that information overload “threatens our very existence,” and that marketers should be concerned about consumers being overloaded. “These days, you can’t just go online, see e-mail, get a little information and be off,” he said. “People have to find a way to get beyond that data smog, and you must help

E-mail personalization is a lost opportunity, says David Daniels, research director at JupiterResearch, a Darien, Conn.-based business research firm. Such a lost opportunity is particularly troublesome, he says, in an era when the technology to do personalization is readily available. E-commerce merchants who responded to the e-tailing group’s fourth annual Merchant Survey, released last month, admit they still have a way to go in this arena. Following is how they answered the question: How do you define personalization relative to your Web site and e-mails? ¥ 7% said their sites dynamically show products based on customers’ past purchases. ¥ 14% offer tools that allow

“As consumers become savvier searchers, online merchants must become savvier marketers,” said Diane Rinaldo, director of strategic alliances for Yahoo Search Marketing, at the session “Search Engine Marketing Strategies for Retailers: What Are Your Choices, and How Can You Use Them Effectively?” at the Search Marketing Forum held last month in New York. Rinaldo offered the following two strategies for merchants looking to get the most out of search engine marketing: 1. Since 38 percent of sales occur four weeks after a consumer’s initial search, you need to track consumer behavior for a longer period of time, Rinaldo pointed out. “Look beyond your current cookie duration.

The rise of the search engine as a marketing tool has brought with it a bevy of other online-selling opportunities. Not least among these are the shopping feeds, Web sites that act as online aggregators of merchandise and that allow consumers to compare similar products online, then choose merchants to supply the items. Often shopping feeds are referred to as comparison shopping engines or Web co-ops. Notable examples include Google’s Froogle and Amazon (see “Five Feeds Examined,” below). While few catalogers are claiming that shopping feeds are bringing in huge amounts of money, many in the e-commerce world do admit that they’re