MarketLive Intelligent Commerce Blog

Leaders of the pack: Design Within Reach

June 7, 2013 by MarketLive Commerce Strategy Team Leave a Comment

Most of the time, our blog posts focus on individual eCommerce strategies. But we thought it would be fun, from time to time, to look at how the concepts are put into practice and combined to create a successful shopping experience that uniquely embodies a brand. So starting with this post, we’ll profile the winners of the 2013 MarketLive Merchant Awards, which were announced back in April at the MarketLive Summit. In so doing, we’ll showcase how merchants embody the best practices this blog is all about.

The first featured merchant is Design Within Reach. The company strives to make modern home design accessible to consumers by offering authentic and original products through retail stores, catalogs and online. In keeping with the company’s mission, DWR’s online properties all feature a sleek, minimalist look coupled with ease of use. The main eCommerce site benefited in the past year from revamped photography and a retooled product page that makes the most of multiple images by doubling the size of the image display space and orienting it horizontally — ideal for furniture. The product pages also fulfill the mission of making design accessible by providing detailed product stories that place items within the context of interior design trends and history. Shoppers can share items through a variety of social links, as well as print items for reference when visiting physical store outlets.

In addition to offering plenty of in-room photograpy and collection selling, DWR provides a design tool using 3D modeling technology. Shoppers can not only upload or build floor plans and populate them with products, but they can share their creations and comment on others’ designs. By providing such a specialized tool, DWR serves the needs of its shoppers and helps them make informed product choices.

DWR offers additional innovative selling tools for tablet and mobile users. Its Webby-nominated iPad app offers tablet shoppers an array of shopping options, from scenic photos with embedded product information to collection pages that allow for mixing and matching room elements by swiping them one by one. The app also features in-depth content on iconic designers and design history, educating consumers and linking to related products.

The mobile phone version of the site presents a streamlined view of products and categories as well as a store locator that suggests nearby outlets based on the shoppers’ current location – after obtaining permission to access location data, a step that enhances customer trust.

The brand’s blog, Design Notes, offers an insider peek at the world of design, with reports from buyers’ expos, profiles of designers, and interior design news.The content demonstrates the brand’s authoritative knowledge of design and also provides fodder for social media outlets. The brand not only has a presence on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter but on the design-centric community Houzz, thereby connecting with design-conscious consumers where they choose to congregate.

The brand is marketed effectively across touchpoints. Visitors to the eCommerce site are invited to join the email list, and the home page features promotions of physical store locations, the catalog, the iPad app and social media outlets. Meanwhile, the Facebook page spotlights in-store events.

Would you like to nominate a brand for the “Leaders of the pack” series? Let us know in the comments below!

Filed under Acquire, Convert & Retain, Client Innovations, Mobile Commerce, Social Commerce Tagged with Leaders of the Pack

MarketLive news: a new world of content and on-site search

June 4, 2013 by MarketLive Commerce Strategy Team Leave a Comment

Merchants know on-site search is essential to their businesses — and they know there’s room for improvement. While the workhorse of a feature contributes to a third of eCommerce revenues, according to the MarketLive Performance Index, most merchants rate their own on-site search capabilities as middling. In a survey by technology researcher Forrester, the majority of businesses reported their on-site search initiatives were only moderately successful, with just 1 in 5 rating their efforts 8 or higher on a 10-point scale.

To complicate matters, the demands of on-site search are only growing more complex. With merchants not only finding new ways to merchandise and classify products, but also creating a raft of value-added content not directly connected with an individual SKU, on-site search tools must now present a variety of information to fulfill shoppers’ diverse needs, while at the same time making it easy to connect with relevant products quickly.

That’s why we’re so excited about our latest major technology release, which includes an array of on-site search features, including faceted navigation for content as well as products. Our content management tool has received enhancements as well, making content even easier to integrate with products.

As MarketLive CEO Mark Pierce told Internet Retailer, “For specialty retailers to compete, content is becoming more and more critical … The search engines are providing higher rankings to sites that have authenticity, which comes from unique links and unique content.”

The Cost Plus World Market site, which is using the technology, features a number of sections that display robust content alongside related product recommendations. The World Food Truck section, for example, uses an interactive map to spotlight regional recipes, with related products displayed beneath.

A search for “Lamps” includes lamp categories as part of the faceted results. Clicking on “Mix and Match Lamps” brings up a results page that integrates gift suggestions for decorators and an invitation to join the loyalty program among individual results.

To learn more about these features, read the official press release. Additionally, we’re showcasing the new technology at IRCE — find us at booth #1403.

Filed under Acquire, Convert & Retain, Client Innovations Tagged with MarketLive news, On-site search

Where to find new email subscribers

May 29, 2013 by MarketLive Commerce Strategy Team Leave a Comment

For most merchants, email remains the most reliable workhorse in their stable of online marketing techniques. More than one third of online consumers report reading brand emails, and according to data from marketing services firm Monetate, those campaigns convert at a 50% higher rate than search and seven times the rate of social media.

So it would seemingly behoove merchants to encourage shoppers to subscribe for email updates prominently on the eCommerce site — but fewer than one in four merchants feature signup links in the global header.

Another popular solution has been to use a pop-up window on the home page to entice visitors to to join the email list. This feature once seemed ubiquitous, but in reality, it’s now even less popular than the global header option: just 20% of top merchants from both Internet Retailer’s Top 500 and Second 500 lists feature a pop-up window.

So what’s a merchant to do to drive email signups? A few solutions worth considering:

Use a moving window, but positioned differently. The pop-up window is attention-grabbing, but can also disrupt the shopping experience if visitors can’t figure out how to make it disappear. As an alternative, merchants should consider positioning the invitation differently, spotlighting the signup form without blocking access to shopping features. Abercrombie & Fitch uses a drop-down window at the very top of the home page; visitors can scroll down slightly to access shopping content, close the email signup window, or subscribe on the spot.

Dedicate prime real estate. With email such a lucrative form of marketing, merchants should consider biting the bullet and anchoring a signup promotion above the fold within the center content area. 1-800-flowers.com gives prime positioning to its email signup invitation, positioning it alongside featured best-sellers immediately beneath the top promotional window and succinctly stating the benefits of signing up.

Use interior pages, too. With more shoppers bypassing the home page altogether and linking directly to category and product pages via search engines, it makes sense for merchants to distribute email signup invitations throughout the site. L.L. Bean is among the merchants that have stepped back from the pop-up window technique. Last year, the home page featured an invitation to “Be the First to Know” that listed the benefits of email signup. Now, the home page email signup link is relegated to the global footer — but the invitation is also placed on category pages in the left-hand column beneath secondary navigation, and echoes the “First to Know” theme of the original promotion.

2012, above

Go off-site. Merchants should get creative in their search for email signups, and leverage every available touchpoint to engage new subscribers. Among the potential sources to consider:

Transactional emails – as mentioned in a prior post, customers now expect emails containing order confirmation and delivery details to contain promotional messaging. It’s an ideal time to encourage continued engagement with the brand via email updates.
Social media – merchants should go beyond merely posting an email link to Facebook and highlight the content subscribers can access that’s not otherwise available, such as exclusive email discounts or expert content that doesn’t fit in a 140-character Tweet. Eco-friendly merchant Gaiam promotes an instant 15% discount with its Facebook email signup form, and stresses that subscribers receive a newsletter to help them “live fit, healthy, green and happy.” The company’s privacy policy is linked prominently, along with a pledge not to share email addresses with outside parties.

Existing subscribers – subscribers’ friends are likely to share interests, preferences and tastes – and therefore are likely to be interested in brands subscribers endorse. Make it easy for subscribers to pass along savings, and give recipients of forwarded email an incentive to join the list. The Gap’s “friends and family” campaign does both by offering an enticing discount for subscribers with a one-use-only code, and then giving a slightly smaller discount to friends who are forwarded the message. Recipients of the forwarded message have the opportunity to save instantly, and can also see how being a subscriber gives them access to even better deals.

For more email signup strategies, download the Optimizing Email whitepaper. What techniques have worked for your brand to drive subscriptions?

Filed under Email Marketing, Social Commerce

Webinar recap: the top priority for building community

May 24, 2013 by MarketLive Commerce Strategy Team Leave a Comment

This week’s webinar on building community, part of our Competing with Amazon series, covered a wide swath of best practices for merchants to consider as they attempt to engage shoppers and build lasting brand relationships. While the format and functionality of communities depend in some part on the merchant’s product offering and target audience, MarketLive founder Ken Burke said there’s one strategy in particular that most merchants should prioritize in the next six months: social integration using Facebook’s Open Graph. As Burke said in the webinar, this single technology implementation opens up a world of options for engaging community throughout the shopping experience.

Part of the power of the tool lies in Facebook’s continuing domination of the social landscape. , according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project; that’s more than half of the population as a whole. By contrast, the next biggest social network, Twitter, attracts just 16% of online adults, Pew found. That usage translates into huge potential shopping synergy: half of shoppers are logged in to Facebook as they browse eCommerce sites, according to social marketing firm Monetate.

But it’s not just Facebook’s critical mass that makes Open Graph integration so potentially effective. It’s also the variety of ways that social sharing can be woven into the shopping experience, from consideration to post-purchase. As we’ve written previously, merchants must adopt , and ask for only the information they can use to power a more intelligent shopping experience. But given that caveat, the tactics Open Graph enables include:

Gifting with confidence. With holiday season and other gift-giving forming a significant portion of eCommerce sales, facilitating gift purchases should be a priority for merchants. Open Graph informs gifting for both givers and receivers. Shoppers can opt to actively share their wish lists with their Facebook networks, increasing wish list visibility and encouraging purchases; in addition, shoppers can receive gift recommendations based not just on friends’ wish lists, but on past product “likes” or other products popular on social media. Merchants should use available data to populate gift recommendations even when shoppers’ friends haven’t supplied wish lists or product picks to mine, as CafePress does with its educated guesses based on Facebook interests, using “like” or “may like” to indicate the level of confidence in the suggestions.

Shared consideration. Using Open Graph integration, merchants can let consumers collaborate with others in their network to make purchasing decisions – empowering shoppers to solicit feedback from those they trust most. Macy’s gives shoppers the means to create a product poll to gather input about several items under consideration. Shoppers pick the items to feature and post the poll to their Facebook timeline; the poll is open for 48 hours, after which the results are shared with the shopper. Not only does the shopper get valuable feedback to spur a purchase decision, but friends are exposed to the brand and to individual products.

Post-purchase connections. Often, social media is considered an acquisition tool — but it can also help drive retention and loyalty, providing a crucial link to the brand in the post-purchase phase and thereby transforming a one-way “funnel” into a self-sustaining customer lifecycle. Open Graph integration enables customers to share their purchase experiences with friends, potentially creating powerful word-of-mouth tools. Merchants should give shoppers the opportunity to share:

Purchases. When shoppers complete a transaction on Amazon, they’re invited to share the items they’ve just bought with their social networks – a tactic that seems simple but has not been widely adopted.

Reviews. Amazon’s email notification letting customers know their review has been published includes a link for sharing the review on social networks — another way to let customers pass along their endorsement of the brand.

Many other strategies and tactics were shared in the webinar; download to learn more. Have you used Open Graph to enhance the shopping experience? If so, how?

Filed under Acquire, Convert & Retain, Connected Commerce, Social Commerce Tagged with , Facebook

May 21, 2013 by MarketLive Commerce Strategy Team

If you caught in our , then you know that the online giant dominates U.S. eCommerce like no other brand, with – more than double the rate of U.S. eCommerce sales overall for the same time period. Amazon is the biggest of the mega-brands attracting the lion’s share of online sales revenues, even as the number of small- and mid-sized merchants continues to grow.

But specialty merchants have some distinct advantages when compared with the mega-merchant — and one of them is the capacity to forge strong ties with shoppers through a brand community. Because Amazon warehouses so many disparate product categories, the brand is largely impersonal; there’s little opportunity for its customers to unite around a common lifestyle or passion. Whether via social media or on the Amazon site itself, interactions among shoppers are limited. The only trait many Amazon customers share is the desire to earn free shipping. By contrast, small- to mid-sized merchants who focus on a particular product category or audience have the opportunity to provide their customers a platform for meaningful interaction and a shopping experience that connects them with other like-minded consumers.

In , we’ll examine key strategies for building community — and not just via social networks. While social networking sites provide broad exposure and the opportunity to entice new shoppers to follow brands, brand followers tend to be passive; just they follow, according to marketer ComBlu. By contrast, branded community experiences provide a platform for committed brand advocates to shine, and for customers to contribute meaningful input on products and promotions.

Among the methods for creating on-site community the webinar will address:

“Socializing” the path to purchase with integration tools. One increasingly popular way to marry community and commerce is to use tools available from social networking sites to integrate consumers’ social networking data with the shopping experience. Taking advantage of these tools gives merchants a means to create a community hybrid that incorporates the best of both worlds – the critical mass represented on Facebook and other social sites combined with the ownership control of their own eCommerce sites. Shoppers on the Macy’s site can poll their network of Facebook friends about which products to buy — giving the shopper a recommendation from trusted friends as well as introducing the shopper’s friends to products on the Macy’s site.

Deepening the conversation via branded communities. Merchants should tap their deep knowledge of the customer lifestyle to find unique ways to build community around specific activities and passions. That community can take many forms, from customer reviews that spawn in-depth discussions to mobile apps that encourage members to engage with the brand, as Nike’s Nike Plus running community tools do. Runners download an app that tracks their runs via GPS and enables sharing with the main community site, where the fastest times for popular runs are spotlighted via “leaderboards”.

for more strategies for building one-of-a-kind communities. Meantime, how do you encourage shoppers to engage with the brand and each other?

Filed under Acquire, Convert & Retain, Social Commerce Tagged with , Facebook

How to spotlight customer service for mobile phone shoppers

May 14, 2013 by MarketLive Commerce Strategy Team Leave a Comment

In case you didn’t catch it, MarketLive founder Ken Burke has published an instructive piece in Multichannel Merchant called “” The article notes that while mobile phone sales are forecast to reach $31 billion by 2017, that number represents just 9% of predicted ecommerce sales — a relatively small figure, given that roughly half of U.S. consumers use the Internet on their phones. Burke argues that while part of the challenge is inherent to the small-screen format, merchants can and should rise to the challenge by streamlining the checkout process and earning customer trust.

The latter proposition seems tricky given limited screen real estate, so the series of examples detailing how to integrate customer service links were particularly helpful. Here’s the section in question, along with the relevant screen shots:

“Shoppers on mobile sites should have the same instant access to customer service options that they do on the eCommerce site, including the ability to finish their transaction using the phone built into their devices. Apparel merchant Peruvian Connection puts customer service front and center on its mobile home page, giving shoppers access to live help within the first screenful.”

“As they proceed along the path to purchase, shoppers should have access to relevant customer service information, even on the small screen. Apparel merchant V.I.M. achieves this feat on the mobile product page with tabs featuring information on shipping rates and returns — proactively addressing shoppers’ questions to encourage the add-to-cart.”

“Finally, in the shopping cart and checkout, access to customer service is especially crucial — so merchants should feature a link to live help prominently, as MarketLive merchant BeachBody does in the shopping cart with a large “Contact Us” button and a click-to-call 800 number in the footer.”

for more mobile strategies designed to drive purchases. How do you earn customer trust on the small screen?

Filed under Client Innovations, Mobile Commerce

Two ways to test the international waters

May 3, 2013 by MarketLive Commerce Strategy Team Leave a Comment

As the eCommerce market matures, more and more leading brands are selling online internationally. According to technology researcher Forrester, 75% of merchants said international eCommerce was somewhat or very important to their companies, and for good reason: while Forrester estimates that U.S. eCommerce growth will average 9% from 2012 to 2017, Europe’s growth is forecast to average 11% — and in emerging markets such as China and India, the number soars above 20%. Online commerce revenues in China alone are set to top $200 billion, Forrester predicts — more than all of Europe’s countries combined.

But the path to international revenues is strewn with significant hurdles, from site experience basics such as translating copy and converting currency to logistical hurdles such as shipping restrictions and import duties, to subtler issues of understanding local markets and cultures. It’s not surprising, then, that fewer than 10% of merchants that made Internet Retailer’s Top 500 list of the largest online brands offer sites in multiple languages — and only 2.2% of those on the Second 500 list of small- to mid-sized merchants do so.

But the challenges shouldn’t dissuade merchants from sizing up global opportunities and finding ways to serve brand enthusiasts wherever they reside. There are plenty of ways to glean whether brands are attracting international interest, from analytics data to customer service inquiries to social media interactions. And then, once target audiences have been identified, merchants have options other than establishing full-bore international eCommerce sites. Two ways to establish an experimental presence beyond the border:

Sell on local marketplaces. Merchants can take advantage of Amazon and eBay’s extensive regional marketplaces to establish a foothold, even using their fulfillment services to help negotiate international shipping and tariff hurdles. And as Jordan Weinstein of ChannelAdvisor noted in his MarketLive Summit presentation, in the Asia Pacific region, country-specific marketplaces are leading eCommerce hubs that can connect merchants with new audiences.

Even merchants who go on to invest more significantly in overseas markets can piggyback off marketplace services, as Perricone MD does in Japan. The beauty manufacturer has launched a Japanese Web site that includes information about the brand, customer testimonials, and product information; the “buy” buttons take shoppers to Amazon’s Japanese marketplace to complete their orders, which are fulfilled by Amazon.

International example from Perricone MD

Ship internationally from your U.S. eCommerce site. Before launching a new country-specific Web site or considering whether to open foreign fulfillment centers, merchants can iron out other logistics of international trade by shipping internationally from the U.S. This option is already popular with merchants of all sizes; nearly 60% of merchants in the Internet Retailer Top 500 and more than 45% of merchants in the Second 500 already offer some form of international shipping. Among the Top 500 merchants, Canada is by far the most popular international option offered, with the U.K. and other European destinations, Japan and Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand rounding out the top 20.

Internet Retailer 500 data on international shipping

Usage of international-logistics vendors such as BorderFree has grown more than 50% from 2010 to 2012, according to Forrester; such services can help ease the transition into international operations, and are well worth considering. However they do it, merchants incorporating international shipping should test and re-test checkout flow to streamline as much as possible for both domestic and international audiences. Among the best practices:

Promote the availability of international shipping. Merchants should let shoppers know throughout the shopping experience that they service countries outside the U.S., as Toys R Us does with its global banner that highlights free domestic shipping options as well as international delivery.

International example from Toys R Us

Offer multiple paths to setting the country. At a minimum, let shoppers set their shipping destination from within the cart as well as in checkout — and integrate international destinations into estimated tax and shipping calculators so shoppers can derive the total order cost up front, regardless of their location, as ThinkGeek does on its shopping cart page.

International example from ThinkGeek
Merchants should also explore allowing shoppers to set their destination earlier on the path to purchase with global elements or promotions that invite interaction. Cooking.com features a flag in its global header that gives shoppers access to the list of shipping destinations. Shoppers selecting a country other than the U.S. see prices in their local currency and automatically see shipping prices factored into the total price in checkout.

International example from Cooking.com

Provide plenty of customer service backup. Merchants should proactively address international shippers’ questions about topics specific to overseas delivery, such as how taxes and duties are applied and how returns can be processed, in addition to common concerns such as delivery speed and costs. Saks Fifth Avenue provides extensive international shipping information, including a FAQ and country-by-country delivery timeframes.

International example from Saks Fifth Avenue

Are you selling internationally, and if so, by what method?

Filed under Acquire, Convert & Retain, Client Innovations Tagged with International

The value of thinking long-term

April 30, 2013 by MarketLive Commerce Strategy Team Leave a Comment

By now, merchants know that connecting with shoppers across touchpoints is crucial to their business — but quantifying the interaction of channels and and influences remains elusive. So it’s helpful to see new data from Google that shows just how important it is to maintain well-rounded, cohesive messaging. The interactive report “” parsed transactions from more than 35,000 sites using Google Analytics to demonstrate how a mix of influences convert shoppers to buyers.

Crucially, the report analyzed the length of the customer journey as well as the variety of touchpoints, and found that in retail, fully 50% of revenues are generated by purchases made over more than one day of interactions. Not only that, but a whopping two-thirds of revenues are generated by purchases that take place after more than one interaction — and the average order value for purchases rises as shoppers have more interactions with a brand. Compared with the average order value of a purchase made after one transaction, purchases made after about 10 interactions are 50% higher, and the average order value keeps rising (although incrementally) from there.

The data suggests that merchants need to rethink their messaging and strike a balance between enticing shoppers to buy immediately and building the long-term brand connection that pays off in the longer term. Among the strategies to consider:

Use “flash sale” style promotions wisely. The popularity of flash sale sites such as RueLaLa, Zulilly and Woot! has prompted retailers to tap into the daily-deal mindset with extremely limited-time offers that expire after a day or even just a few hours, often focusing on a single product. Such promotions can drive signups for email or mobile alerts on daily deal products and spur increased engagement with products on the Web site as shoppers are exposed to an array of fresh products. To encourage still further engagement across brand touchpoints, merchants should layer in longer-term messaging, using secondary positions in email promotions and on landing pages to encourage shoppers to keep coming back even if the featured discount doesn’t spor them to buy. Victoria’s Secret’s email promotion featuring a one-day sale on bikinis uses a secondary banner position to promote dollar-off discounts not tied to a particular product category, thereby appealing to shoppers not on the hunt for swimwear.

Use layers of social media interaction to spur long-term engagement and sales. Merchants should find ways to go beyond posting promo codes and product links to create a truly participatory experience for brand followers that leads inexorably to purchasing. American Eagle devised a months-long contest that spawned content across touchpoints and encouraged product browsing. Followers were first asked to vote for “real life” models for AE’s spring 2013 campaign on Facebook; the winners were featured in video profiles on the AE.com blog and their top product picks were displayed on Pinterest, leading followers to engage on multiple social platforms. Finally, those same contest winners appeared on the AE.com site as product models in shoppable collections.

How do you build long-term engagement with your brand?

Filed under Acquire, Convert & Retain, Social Commerce

Two reasons to use structured markup

April 26, 2013 by MarketLive Commerce Strategy Team Leave a Comment

Merchants looking for new ways to optimize their sites for better placement in organic search results listings are accustomed to focusing on content, and specifically on the substance of the text and images on their sites’ pages. But another aspect of that content is increasingly important — the structure of the information, as presented in the back-end code of the page.

As presenter Richard Chavez of PM Digital outlined in his SEO presentation at the recent MarketLive Summit, merchants can now tag discrete pieces of content within a given page, making those snippets easier for search engines to parse, recognize and display within search results listings. Elements such as videos, the average rating for a product, the price, and search-engine friendly descriptions can all be called out by these specialized tags.

This structured data isn’t exactly new; its widespread adoption began in the spring of 2011, when Google, Microsoft and Yahoo announced a joint effort called Schema.org to standardize tagging of page elements. But structured data took on especially heightened significance for merchants as of November of 2012, when Google integrated a set of specialized eCommerce vocabulary called GoodRelations into Schema.org — radically expanding the number of potential attributes merchants could tag. The number of product-specific properties grew from eight to 25, and the number of offer-specific properties allowing merchants to tag price and discount information grew from 10 to 27, according to Search Engine Land.

While the prospect of retagging their sites may give merchants pause, adopting structured data should be a top SEO priority. Two of the many reasons why:

Enhanced search results listings have higher click-through rates. Sites implementing structured markup can see a 30% increase in traffic from organic search engine results, according to content management system provider Webnodes, while GoodRelations claims search result listings using structured markup achieve 30% higher click-through rates than unmodified listings. Among the unsponsored listings for “Cole Haan ballet flats”, the video from Zappos and the rating summary from Bloomingdales are more eye-catching than the top two results from the manufacturer and Amazon. The listings for Bloomingdales and Nordstrom incorporate custom descriptions that are both concise enough to be displayed in their entirety and catchy enough to encourage further engagement. “How could a chic, flexible ballet flat get any more comfortable?” asks the Bloomingdales copy, while the Nordstrom description calls attention to details such as “Diminutive drops of gold” and “comfy Nike Air.”

Markup helps physical locations stand out. By calling out individual store details with specialized tags, merchants can achieve greater visibility for their physical outlets, with the address, phone number, events and even hours listed in the search results listing — an advantage that’s especially crucial for mobile search results, streamlining access to information for on-the-go shoppers. On a smartphone, REI’s individual store location listing, which is tagged with structured location markup, consumes most of the screen, with not only a map, but store hours and a click-to-call icon integrated into the display.

To learn more about structured markup, read the “Getting Started” guide on Schema.org. And check out Google’s , which displays what structured markup is detected on pages, and , which enables tagging of page content without recoding.

Are you now using structured markup, or do you plan to do so? Why or why not?

Filed under Search Engine Marketing

Getting real with the trends – MarketLive Summit report

April 19, 2013 by MarketLive Commerce Strategy Team Leave a Comment

Setting priorities is always a top challenge for merchants, what with the whirlwind pace of change in the world of online commerce combined with the need to abide by limited budgets. Thankfully, attendees of last week’s MarketLive Summit received significant help with focusing their to-do lists, thanks to industry expert Sucharita Mulpuru, principal eCommerce analyst at technology researcher Forrester.

In her keynote presentation, Mulpuru dissected six big trends that have been generating plenty of hype and presented merchants with real-world options — and, in some cases, alternatives — for acting on them. Among her top revelations:

Multi-channel fulfillment: Walk before running. While major merchants are promoting same-day delivery in some regions, Mulpuru noted that even they can’t offer coast-to-coast coverage — and that consumers overwhelmingly opt for “free” over “fast” when it comes to shipping. For that reason, she advised that most merchants should focus on other priorities when it comes to multi-channel fulfillment, including:

“Endless aisle” opportunities for in-store sales. Associates should be trained to help shoppers find and buy items online that are out of stock on store shelves. Self-service kiosks and tablet devices for store associates can help bridge the online/offline divide.
Order online, ship from stores. Mulpuru noted that merchants offering the ability to shop online and pick up items in stores have a steep hurdle to surmount, as inventory must be available in the location a shopper selects; by contrast, enabling local stores to fulfill online orders speeds delivery and gives merchants the option of tapping inventory from multiple nearby outlets to get the job done.
E-receipts. Delivering physical store receipts via email gives merchants the opportunity to tie together online and offline shopper activity via the shoppers’ email address. For that reason, it’s a top priority for multi-channel brands, Mulpuru said, with more than 40% of merchants in a recent survey saying they’ve implemented it or plan to do so within two years. Macy’s invites shoppers opting for an e-receipt to sign up for email updates at the same time, then follows up with a welcome email tailored to the physical location, including a discount with an in-store redemption option.

E-receipt example from macy's

Basic mobile competence is enough — for now. Mulpuru shared deep-dive analytics on mobile shopping behavior showing that while traffic from smartphones and tablets is growing exponentially, most interactions are shallow and brief. For example, while 10.7% of eCommerce site visits originate on smartphones, just 7.6% of pageviews do — and average conversion is a dismal 0.5%. And she shared dramatic results from two merchants demonstrating that a large investment in mobile doesn’t necessarily translate into higher conversion: both sites garnered 1.5% of online sales from mobile phones, despite vastly different budgets for mobile technology.

Mobile data from Forrester

While it’s possible to interpret this data to suggest that mobile as a whole is overblown as a priority, the fact remains that shoppers do expect to engage with brands via their tablets and phones — so merchants must develop mobile-friendly outposts to meet that demand. And the positive spin on Mulpuru’s data is that even merchants with modest mobile budgets can compete for mobile spending dollars, if they cover the crucial basics we’ve often described — a mobile-friendly shopping experience that incorporates long-standing eCommerce best practices and an easy mobile payment process chief among them.

Brand uniqueness counts more than ever. Using the phenomenon of dynamic pricing as a starting point, Mulpuru led Summit attendees through a fascinating discussion of how the legal underpinnings of commerce have shifted in favor of manufacturers, giving them increasing power to determine how and at what cost their goods are sold — a trend that may well give Amazon and other mega-merchants pause in their race to sell products at the lowest price point. Mulpuru urged merchants to stop obsessing about dynamic pricing and put the focus on products and brands that couldn’t be commoditized — that is, the unique offering that makes their brand a fit for their target audience. Among the practical applications of this recommendation:

Brand manufacturers should be the go-to resource for information about their products. Brand manufacturers can compete online for direct-to-consumer sales — and have a distinct advantage in that they are the original experts about their products. Manufacturer sites should reflect that advantage by giving shoppers encyclopedic product information in a variety of formats. Bedding manufacturer Cuddledown provides numerous buying guides, videos and other shopping tools, including a step-by-step guide to selecting the right pillow and a video showing how the pillows are made. A “pillow picker” interactive tool steps shoppers through the process and matches them with individual products.

Product information example from Cuddledown

Retailers should emphasize exclusives. Whether individual items made or offered exclusively through their brand or product combinations found nowhere else, unique offerings should be highlighted on retailer sites, giving shoppers incentive to act.Mass merchant Kohl’s spotlights exclusive products by designer Derek Lam in the women’s category, noting that the collection is “Limited Edition. Limited Time.” and using video to engage shoppers with the story behind the apparel.

Exclusive product example from Kohl's

What eCommerce trends top your list of priorities for the coming months, and why?

Filed under Acquire, Convert & Retain, Connected Commerce, Mobile Commerce Tagged with Summit 2013

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