eCommerce and

The 2008 Summer Olympics started today; opening ceremonies have already taken place in China, but will not be available for viewing on T.V. in America until this evening.  Did you know that the Olympic Rings is the world’s most recognized symbol?

• For those of you that are as excited about the Olympics as I am you can catch an estimated 2,000 hours of online footage via the NBC Olympics site.  If there is a particular event that you are looking to see that won’t be broadcast domestically, Leo Laporte, the “Tech Guy”,  will be giving out websites that are broadcasting events both legally and illegally on his radio show tomorrow.  To listen on demand visit this link. 
• If you have followed our blog or speakers at conferences you have probably heard us talk about hiring “shining stars” or “analytical aces”, these are the top notch employees that help to grow the company and vigorously love their jobs.  We may have an advantage at this since one of our fearless leaders is a professor at a University and is able to give semester long interviews to students without them even knowing it, but what about the rest of eCommerce?  Harry Joiner, specializes in recruiting and filling online marketing executive slots, he says “If the candidate senses online is an afterthought [to the hiring company], then they are not going to work there. It’s essential the company sees ecommerce as a pie-enlarging value proposition, not just a pie-rearranging proposition. Because at the end of the day, “A” players want to go where they are going to matter.”  If you tend to agree with him, then I would suggest reading this interview with Joiner by Alan Rimm-Kaufman. 
• Dan Kaminsky of IOActive Inc, a security consultant firm based in Seattle, discovered an internet security flaw that has the ability to affect emails.  According to the article when Kaminsky spoke at this week’s Black Hat Conference in Las Vegas, the room was packed and had people sitting on the floor to hear what he was going to reveal about the security hole.  Most vendors and many providers have fixed the issue, but some have not, which could leave some at risk.  According to Kaminsky “The industry has rallied like we've never seen the industry rally before”.  For those of you who aren’t so technical (myself included), some of our fellow blogger nerds provided some insight about the security risk:
  From Jordon: “It works kind of like a man in the middle attack, where the attacker can respond to a DNS request before the actual DNS server.  When DNS isn’t using port randomization it’s only responds on port 53 which it makes it easy to intercept the response because you know what port it is on.  If port randomization is enabled then the response can come back on any of over 65 thousand ports making it harder to respond on the correct port. 
  So you would think that the odds are over 1 in 65,000 to make the attack work, except the attacker can respond quicker than the DNS server, say like a hundred times.  So then the odds of getting a correct response becomes 1 in 650, which is much more reasonable.  Port randomization helps but doesn’t completely solve the problem.  So they had to fix some code and other stuff that I don’t completely understand yet.”
  From Zach: “Yea that sounds right, when I was reading about it last week several people said it had to do with some DNS configurations not randomizing correctly. Instead of the ports being random they might be linear or have some kind of predictable pattern so if you can figure that out then you know where to point the attacks.”
• 38% of female blog writers make their online purchasing decisions based on information they have found in a blog according to a BlogHer/Compass Partners study.  This may be an untapped area for internet retailers as the study also shows that 35% of all women in the US participate in the “blogosphere”. 
• Avinash Kaushik of Occam’s razor posted on using Google Trends for competitive analysis.  It’s a great post, but be sure you are prepared before you try to take on this task, Avinash explains “Doing competitive intelligence analysis without knowing enough context about your competitive space, your general ecosystem, is like going to play a football game naked. Won’t lead to a great outcome for you (even if you paid a ton of money for your players - tools :)).”  For those of you who feel you are prepared for the task the post is highly informative.
   

I was having a hard time figuring out how to get in to this week’s variety, because this past week seems like a blur.  Lucky for me I checked my email and Amazon was gracious enough to send me an announcement about their newest feature, still in beta, UnSpun.  I thought this would be a good way to start out, I mean it’s not like they are the largest internet retailer in the world or anything.  Oh yeah and I didn’t want to be the umpteenth person to mention their second quarter profits doubled this year.  Oh wait, dang it I just did.

• Amazon announces UnSpun!  Yes Amazon has found another way to get shoppers involved in the purchasing process.  The feature is still in beta, but like I said above I got the email about it today.  "UnSpun by Amazon (unspun.amazon.com) allows you to find lists about anything where the community has voted and added items. UnSpun gives you the best, the worst, the funniest, the obvious, and the obscure.” as explained by the email.  My favorite part about it was that the "UnSpun  team" provided an antidote to explain how these lists are created.  "Recently, the UnSpun team got spun up debating the movies we were most ashamed to admit liking (view this list). Jonathan said Breakfast Club while Michael was all over Showgirls. An e-mail exchange gave way to heated conversations which eventually boiled over into Mark's impassioned defense of Warren Beatty's acting chops over that of Dustin Hoffman's. Red faces and bruised egos aside, we all learned a little more about one another, and a lot about movies we ought to buy (when nobody's looking, of course)."  This may be totally fabricated, but as a consumer I loved the personalization of it.  Maybe I am totally gullible but I felt like I got to see a little insight into the world of those working at Amazon, and it made me like them, more. 
• Consumers want to do their research online before making a purchase, whether that purchase is made in store or online, according to a study by Nielsen online.  This is great news for multi-channel retailers as the internet is driving offline sales. 
• Yahoo profits fell below expected Wall Street estimates in the second quarter, which was not too surprising.  What was surprising to me is that "Yahoo said that it incurred $22 million in costs stemming from 'advisors related to Microsoft's proposals to acquire all or part of the company'".  Who are these advisors?  That is a lot of money regardless of what company you are and especially given the outcome of their “advising”.  It gets better, listen to this Microsoft, to help address the 11% increase in Yahoo’s search service in the second quarter, Yahoo announced a partnership with Google.  According to the article "Yahoo recently announced a partnership with Google that will have Google fielding some queries made on Yahoo sites, to match them with advertisements and split any resulting revenue."  Read the full article here. 
• No wonder we pay over $100 for jeans now-a–days!  Retailers are taking dressing rooms to the next level, and it is quite unbelievable.  What I want to know is if it is actually necessary?  Are we really going to keep increasing the cost of our attire just to have some sort of 3-D scanners in the fitting room?  I mean, I love to shop but even I think we are getting lazy, and because of it retailers are having to strategize to accommodate our laziness.  According to the article retailers like Banana Republic are adding call buttons and delivery doors so that sales assistants can bring products to shoppers.  If you have ever shopped there, you know that they bug you enough as it is when you are trying things on.  I am already preparing myself for when I have to say "no I don’t need a piece of cheesecake and a cup of tea to enjoy while trying these clothes on".  While I am on this rant I want to address the fact that we are becoming a society of those that cannot think or make decisions on their own.  I love product reviews I read them when I am making online purchases.  I also like to know my friend's opinions about my outfits (sometimes).  But are we so dependent on what others think that we need "an interactive mirror and webcam" in the dressing room so that we can include friends and family in on our shopping experience?  If your friends and family have that much time on their hands, more power to you. 
• If you follow Gary Weiss at all you know how he feels about Overstock.com’s CEO Patrick Byrne.  If not, he refers to the company in this post as his favorite "corporate sleaze poster child".  Overstock.com reported its second quarter earnings last Friday which caused the stock to drop by more than 41%.  If you read the Q2 2008 Earnings Call Transcript it may become clear why the company’s earnings didn’t measure up.  This blog has taken the liberty of capturing a few key highlights of the transcript for you, and it doesn’t bode well for Byrne.
  

The presenter for this session was Raul Vazquez, President and CEO of Walmart.com
(Paraphrased)

Raul was one of the most engaging speakers I have seen at a conference.  I wasn't able to post this right away because thanks to California traffic I missed the beginning of the session.  Through some contacts that I was able to make I gathered others notes and combined them with mine to bring our readers the nuggets of wisdom that Raul was able to impress upon the crowd.

The main focus of Raul's presentation was the 4 things that can be done to improve our websites.  

• Invest in a Key Performance Indicator 
• Be true to your brand and what you have promised your public 
• Be true to your vision 
• Invest in platforms that will support the brand and the vision
  

Walmart.com

The walmart.com team consists of 700 people stationed in Brisbane, CA.  Of the 700 employees 12 are dedicated to merchandising the websites over 100 categories.  The content created for the site is based and centered on site merchandising.  Raul reminds the crowd that “there are no shortcuts”.  The team focuses on improving the site by following a process similar to that of the scientific method.  The process is: Hypothesis, test, measure, optimize and repeat.  This is important because Raul states that continuous improvements will yield results that are not always immediate.

Invest in a Key Performance Indicator

According to Raul and his experience the people that seem to get the most accomplished with the best results get their KPI/KPM score card every day.  KPM refers to dashboards designed to track Key Performance Metrics.  Raul reminds the crowd that when looking at this data it is important to look at it from three different perspectives: Absolute values, relative values, and trends.  He shares that walmart.com tracks a few key metrics: 

• Revenue 
• CTR 
• Conversion 
• Revenue/Page views
  

Under his direction and the direction of the merchandising team leader Mike Simas, he believes that his team is efficient, but admits that they can't do all of the things they want to do, they have to be selective.  He notes that in order to eliminate noise that can skew the KPI data it's important to look at the comps separately.  Some of the comps that walmart.com looks at are: Sales comps, traffic comps, and conversion comps.

Be True to Your Brand and What You have Promised Your Public 

This will be different by retailer, for walmart.com it is “Save money. Live better”.  He uses an example of how they pay attention to this by their use of “from pricing”.  They have to be careful not to violate the trust of the customer, which can happen when using this tactic; it is referred to as bait and switch.  He reiterates this point by giving the example “we don't show a picture of a Rolex and say priced from $119.00, then send the customer to the Seiko section when they click on the ad”.  They also try to bring the store experience online.  They replicate best practices seen in the store like showing more product features, multiple images, plus price and content.  He admits that they are tinkering with going back to single images for certain products, but he believes that if you can show an image that highlights the product features, or the product in use that it makes the online experience more like that of the store.   

Be True to your Vision 

Like the brand promise this will be different for retailers.  For them it is “to be the most visited and valued online retail site”.  He admits that this isn't easy to measure, because value itself is defined by the customer's use of the website features or frequency of returns.  He also reveals that this plays in to his recurring fear of not being able to measure.  He adds that he likes the quote “In God we trust.  Everyone else bring data”.  

Invest in Platforms that will Support the Brand and the Vision 

A key component of this is the ability to “highlight the best and make it easy to find the rest”.  He explains this by explaining the “long tail” side.  The products with the highest velocity and mass appeal fall at the head of the curve with their assortment at the tail end of the curve.  Some of the things that they are currently working on and planning on implementing in the near future support this claim.  They are rolling out a digital asset management system that is linked with in store assets, in order to guide the customer throughout the decision “tree” what we call the buying cycle.  This will also help with access to the “rest” and improve additional browse and search capabilities.  Next they will be investing in a more personalized shopping experience, but doesn't jump on every new technology as he is apprehensive about being able to operationalize the technology.  One of the barriers they have seen to adding this technology and others because of the limited amount of team members.  This is true of MVT testing for this team, they found that it turned out to be too complex to utilize in mass with their over 2-3 million visits per day, hence it has been dumped for A/B testing.  To support the brand promise and vision they invest in rich content which ensures information needed for purchases, ratings, reviews, and product availability for both online and in store purchases.  One of the key values they believe needs to be featured on the product detail page is the value to the customer for them it is the price in big red letters.  In order to be the most valuable and visited store assortment is essential, this is where the “Highlight the best.  Make it easy to find the rest”, he adds “if easy to find it will be easy to buy”.

Visual Examples 

Raul showed the audience screen shots of the site to further illustrate the points he has made throughout the presentation.  They use a POV approach; this is what they call the largest product placement on the screen, or the point of view.  The “site to store” function is featured across the site, not only highlighting ease to the customer but the ability to have products shipped for free.  He values consistency in navigation from page to page but explains that it is important to separate attributes by category.  Some interesting attributes that they use by category are: Shop by age for toys, shop by attributes for electronics, shop by ratings, and shop using the television product advisor.  Features like comparison shopping for customers, the top 50 in any category are highlighted and promoted, and savings all play a part in the walmart.com shopping experience.  In addition to the up and coming improvements they plan to improve checkout, localize, personalize, and creating an in store experience that is equaled online. 

Happy Friday readers.  Today is a special day for me, when I leave here today I am heading to the hospital to hold my new God Daughter and my best friend will be a mom.  It is surreal to me, but it was bound to happen sometime, so I thought I would share my excitement.  As you may have noticed I spent some time at Shop.org this week in Huntington Beach for their Merchandising Workshop, I hope my notations helped as I feel like I got a lot out of attending.  So let’s see what else went on this week….

• Tracking the influence of online shopping and research, and the effect it has on in store purchases is becoming a hotter topic.  Multi channel merchants have been trying to analyze this and it seems that ShopLocal has come up with a way to do so.  According to the CEO, Vikram Sharma “The results are clear and the index strongly supports analyst forecasts of the rapidly growing use of the internet for shopping in-store.”
• Pure play internet retailers beware:  “In one city (New York), a judge determines that an Internet retailer’s use of thumbnail product images, even those published by a manufacturer to sell its own products, is permissible “fair use” when used by the Internet retailer to sell that manufacturer’s own products, and hence dismisses a claim for copyright infringement by the manufacturer. In another city (Phoenix), that same fact pattern and the same statute results in a trial for copyright infringement!”  Read the full article here. 
• eBay is slumping while other internet retailers are succeeding, um can I say duh here?  A few months ago they totally change feedback and best match search, essentially killing longtime loyal sellers.  Now they have struck a deal with Buy.com, which seems to be infuriating individual sellers.  Now eBay’s general manager of North America says “Frankly, we are challenging some of the core assumptions that we have made about our business…Instead of focusing on being an auction business, we are looking at what it takes to create the best marketplace out there.”  Really eBay?  I seem to recall you ostracizing a whole lot of your core merchants when you tried to kill them with fees in 2006, and a few months ago with the changes to how seller’s products are returned in search results.  Honestly I am not surprised that eBay is floundering, we are still trying to make it a viable marketplace, but with their outdated UI, poor reporting, and constant changes how are sellers supposed to invest their time, effort and other resources and still make a profit? 
• If you are looking to hire a paid search marketer or agency make sure you familiarize yourself with this list of questions to ask before you sign anything. 
• Watch out Hollywood, there is a whole new breed of celebrities, and guess what, they are nerds just like us.  Techcult just released the Top 100 Web Celebrities.  I was a bit jealous at first thinking to myself, I can’t believe I didn’t get any of the fantastic people that I work with on this list, but then I saw who was number one, and I am not joking it’s Tila Tequila!  When people like Seth Godin are at number five and Jeff Bezos at number 21, and Tila and Perez Hilton get numbers 1 and 2 respectively, it scares me to think of what this world is coming to.

• Expectation management
• What to test
• How to test
• What to do after the test is completed

• Improving conversion rates
• Targeting segments to take this farther
• Eliminating massive redesign projects
• Ending subjective arguments about creative
• Developing confidence
• Don't test little things
• Be patient; expect a lot of 0 results between two versions
• Testing misses lifetime value issues, null results might be a victory
  • To elaborate on what he explained was lifetime value issues he explained that a customer may have a poor experience but because they were able to make it far enough in to the checkout process they may complete the sale.  Having said that the customer that had the poor experience on your website will probably remember their poor experience and not return to the site again.

• Scalability of testing:
• How important is the campaign?
• What can I learn and can it be used across other departments or areas?
• How easy can I get the actionable data?
• Am I empowered to react on the results of the test, if so do I have the resources to take action?

• Test against what you can control to get improved conversion rate.
• Define the business objectives ahead of time.

• Headlines
• Images, e.g. People v. Product, Solo v. Lifestyle
• Copy
• Copy Length

The presenters for this session were Laura Evans, Executive Director of Retail, Resource Interactive and Steve Kahn, Vice President Internet Marketing, DSW (Paraphrased)

Laura Evans of Resource Interactive spoke first.  She explained that she would be taking us through some of the innovations that retailers have had to make over the last year to improve their eCommerce experience.  They recently did this such thing with DSW.com.  In launching the new DSW website the two companies partnered to make this site more engaging to customers.

Some of the key features they wanted to use in building the DSW website were:

• New and successful merchandising trends
• Solution selling
• An engaging product story
• Customer generated assortments
• mCommerce capabilities for on demand selection

Solution selling is all about providing results to a consumer in whatever fashion they may be looking for it. This can be done in many ways, one of which is grouping complementary products so a complete solution is created for the customer.  Use lifestyle photos to convey the usage or the category of the product.  Give detailed product descriptions and when appropriate take the information from the product package and use it in the description.  An engaging product story refers to bringing a product to life this can be done with 3-D images and videos.  She gives an example of how RalphLauren.com does a good job of utilizing videos throughout categories, and the videos are used to inspire the customer and educate them.  She adds that we should merchandise by product attributes so that customers have multiple ways of finding the products they are searching for.  She then challenges us to think about how customers shop when they go in to a store, she adds "they don't see a list of products when they walk in, they see products and merchandised entries" she explains that we should be giving customers the option of finding their products through visual wayfinding and not just words.  Customer generated assortments are ways in which the customer can become the merchandiser and product advisor.  She gives examples like kaboodle.com which allows "self proclaimed product connoisseurs" to choose a few product options and then ask the community which product they should purchase.  She also features PolyVore.com which allows consumers to pull together their own outfits.  They wanted all of these things to be present in the DSW.com website and she is going to let Steve Kahn take over to explain what they did.

The DSW Story

DSW had very little (in fact Steve said no) direct business.  They found that 70% of sales came from their customers already in their loyalty program.  They took the information and presented it to the board so they could get funding for a website.  The board agreed to meet but they wanted to know what DSW thought they could do better than current online shoe retailers.  They decided that because of their ability to listen to current and non-current customers, their ability to focus and utilize their current members, their brand, their business partners and their industry expertise they could do a few things better than other current online shoe retailers.  They came up with 7 different things they could do better and mapped it out to the board, but he focused on 3 during the session.  They also presented their aptitude for understanding their current business, competitive analysis and potential vendors.  The last piece before presenting to the board was the detailed financial plan.  The three items they decided they could do better and focus on were:

• Presentation
• Channel Integration
• Loyalty

These differentiators are key components to the new website.  Presentation and immaculate images are found on every product detail page (in fact I think I heard the crowd aaahhhhhed when he did a demonstration of the images on their product detail pages, they really were fantastic).  Channel Integration deals with their ability to partner with vendors, warehouse, and use current relationships to add the online channel.  Loyalty comes with the program that they already have in place with members.

Two Caveats to this Presentation

1. He gave everyone in the audience a coupon code to save on a purchase on the website or in store (very cool).
2. I was brazen enough to ask him about the Zappos lawsuit at the cocktail party and he was kind enough to answer openly and honestly, but asked for the respect in not blogging about his response so that is all I am going to say!

The presenters for this session were Carrie Johnson, VP and Research Director and Brian Walker, Senior Analyst both of Forrester Research
(Paraphrased)

Carrie spoke first and let us know that it would be brief because she was going to "throw up numbers from her mouth" (funnier when she said it, and the rest of the crowd laughed too).  She explained that she was going to share the numbers from the recent Forrester study on The State of Retailing Online and what we could do with the findings.  This study is in its 11th year and here are some of their findings (the study will be published soon, so I didn't get them all, but I got some):

Although there is talk of recession Forrester still believes that online retailing will see a 17% increase over last year.  This is attributed to domestic issues like the rising gas prices and the increase in the number of people purchasing online. International purchases also play a part in this projection as they are attributing things like the falling dollar, to a list of incentives that other countries would want to purchase from U.S. retailers.

• Online merchandising is becoming an increasingly important role that is getting more attention and may move it away from just a marketing task.
• Conversion rates continue to be mediocre
• Content is hard but you have to get better at it
• There is a lack of focus on real optimization
• The online merchandiser is under-valued as a discipline
• Cart abandonment has increased and this is most likely due to the research done by savvy shoppers before they make a purchase
• Over 80% of the online retail industry is going to be investing in shopping carts and checkout over the next 12 months
• eCommerce sites are failing to meet the needs, only 4% pass and the average score is a 5.4 out of 25

• Focus on the product
• Go deep into information the customer would need
• Leverage product expertise and assets
• Optimize internal processes
• Focus on the customer
• Ensure legibility and information digestibility
  • He went in to further explanation about this point.  He used shopping for a camera as an example (apparently retailers of digital cameras have some improving to do).  He showed us a screen shot of a camera he was interested in buying, but all of the information was written for someone that is an avid photographer or knows a lot about cameras, for the average shopper it wasn't useful.  This example can be used for other areas and is why he listed digestibility as a key tactic to successful content
• Focus on discoverability
• Fix site search indexing and binning (in our case categorization)
• Cross populate product so the consumer has more ways to shop
• Practice SEO basics like improving urls, titles, JavaScript, etc.
• Be a merchant don't over assort, but instead be a guide

Q and A

Q: Do you think fuel prices will affect online purchasing?

A: I think this is an area that we can capitalize on and an opportunity for the industry to grow.

The presenter for this session was Bryan Eisenberg, Co-Founder Future Now Inc.

Bryan is a great speaker, he got his plugs out of the way and let us all know that his company has gone public and his new book is coming out any day now.  He was also nice enough to share that the audience there was a talented hard working experienced group, and that he thought the challenges we are facing here are at a different level than those he has experienced at the many other conferences he speaks at.  He then added that he believes there is a disconnect between what we are saying about our websites and how great they are and what our websites actually look like. He goes on to say (this quote and the others are paraphrased) "At work we wear superhero capes, and disconnect ourselves between who we are when we go home and shop."  He believes that there has been more change to commerce and customer behavior in the last 7 years than the past 500.  He explains this theory in discussing what people do when they watch T.V. and that television advertisers have had to essentially surprise people to get their attention.  This is because as he states "People who are watching T.V. are multi-tasking, in fact a Yahoo study shows that 40% of the people that are watching T.V. are asleep".  His point about this was all leading up to the revelation that those who are shopping online, can't really be actively doing something else, like sleeping, while they are shopping, he reiterates the point by reminding us that these customers are actively involved in our websites.  He challenges the crowd to stop being so busy with the daily tasks that seem urgent and instead re-focus and on the important.

Future Now Studies

His company, Future Now Inc., consults websites and benchmarks the industry.  One of their studies showed that 76.7% of internet retailers did not pass their test.  He adds that this is "Frightening".  He lets us know that we are getting better at optimization according to his studies, but those of us who have been only using Google products will need to move on to something more sophisticated if we want to keep up, his explanation is that Google products are cool because they get smaller retailers started with testing and optimization but there is a reason they are free and it is because the paid versions offer more.  (As an aside, and this is me, I have talked to other retailers of our size who have tried analytics solutions that they paid for and went back to Google analytics, so this may be true for some of these solutions, but I don't think that it is true of all).  Now back to the customer experience study that his company released, the 2007 Future Now Customer Experience Study found that the average score was 43 out of 100, and of the retailers that were looked at, only four would have passed.  Some of the things that they looked at were: Product presentation, delivery options, checkout processes, and customer service information.  Some of the things that they deliberately left out because they didn't believe they were factors related to the actual customer experience were price and the ease of finding products.  *Update, Bryan was nice enough to clarify that he didn't say that these points were not part of the customer experience, and let me know that one of the reasons these pieces were left out of the study was the ease of measuring.*(I agree in some aspects, but the ease of finding products is questionable as far as I am concerned, as I think it is a big part of the experience.  Take for example if I went shopping in a store today and I had a hard time finding what I was looking for, I then get frustrated and have to find help, in the internet retail world that would mean calling a customer service rep or sending an email or reaching them by LiveChat).  Bryan then started sharing some of the results of the study: 62% of online retailers only had a brief blurb in the product description, only 11% had exceptional ad copy (he did clarify that this was the only opinion question included in the study), 67% of customers who come to an online retail site to buy leave because there was not enough product information.  He boldly states what we should all already know, but I guess it needed to be said "If you don't have enough copy and the right images people will not buy from you".

Think Like a Customer

He moves on in an effort to explain further, "customers are like toddlers with money, their favorite question is why.  Why is this product better?  Why should I buy from you?... They have all of the same questions but less attention span than a child".  Next he starts showing examples of a search he did for digital camera on both Bestbuy.com and CircuitCity.com, the screen shots showed a list of cameras and a list of attribute refinements, but the attribute refinements listed are based on pixels, and brand, etc.  He then asks the crowd if we have ever bought a camera and gotten frustrated about the speed in which it takes pictures and been disappointed when the camera was too slow.  Yes was the prominent answer in the room and those that didn't answer seemed to be able to sympathize with the example.  Bryan then asks us all why we aren't merchandising it if we know the problem exists?  Like a lot of other things that Amazon does well it was the one site that he found, that sold cameras that had reviews about the speed of the camera.  While other sites may have had reviews, they weren't used in the attribute refinements or the descriptions, but because Amazon is Amazon there is a Firefox plug-in called Pluribo that will "magically summarize the user reviews on most electronics pages".  (Cool tidbit that I didn't know about, does that mean I am kicked out of the nerd club?) 

Understand the Decision Making Processes

As a sociology major Bryan learned about personality types and how that effects purchasing decisions, he gave us a site called Capt.org that summarizes Myers Briggs personalities for reference.  He thinks that marketers are intuitive by nature but that we need to think more like our customers that are probably the opposite as 72% of the populations is a sensing type and not intuitive.  He adds that spontaneous personality types like top sellers and new releases, those that are considered humanistic like reviews, but methodical people will search by the category, and those that are competitive will search by a specific term.  He adds that if we don't have the ability to showcase our products in this way our customers will bounce.  He uses Overstock.com as an example as he had a success story about how the changes Future Now suggested for their movies category page dramatically increased sales.  He gives us a lesson on how we can add reviews to our product description when it seems appropriate.  What he does is look at all of the reviews for the product he is working on, he then begins to plot them on a graph.  The graph is categorized by positive v. negative and logical v. emotional.  He adds to this by giving us some more examples so that we can put what he is saying in to perspective "25% don't have options to enlarge the image, 65% don't have multiple images, the basics are what is missing not the innovative.  Too many websites have difficult to read fonts, and that is coming from a study where the average age of the sample was 30.  13% of those reviewed don't let the customers change the font size, 61% don't offer live stocking, 59% don't offer expedited shipping, and 41% don't provide assurances during the checkout."  By assurances he means showing the returns or shipping policies at checkout, and having copy that reads on the order of: Easy returns policy, money back guarantee, free return shipping, etc.   He continues "45% display customer service hours, 59% correctly answered email questions within 24 hours and of those the answer was completely irrelevant 50% of the time".  He gives an example of Zappos.com and how they received higher scores because they were able to answer the question properly and able to do so within two hours.  He then adds that only 20% of multi-channel retailers had order online with in store pick-up, which seemed to be a common theme throughout.

The Golden Rule of Merchandising

Bryan then asks us all what the Golden Rule was, in unison the crowd chimed "Do unto others as you would want done to you".  Bryan agrees and then explains that the Golden Rule of Merchandising is similar but has a twist to it; he remarks confidently "Do unto others as they want done unto themselves".  He closes by reassuring us that he knows and agrees that there is a balance between being customer centric and staying within the numbers.

Q and A

This is also paraphrased.

Q: Why would we need to move away from Google Optimizer and studies have shown that customers don't like to read so why should we add to our copy if we want them to read it?

A: Google Optimizer isn't bad because it gives retailers that aren't currently optimizing or testing at all to start out small but once you get good at it I would suggest moving on.  As far as ad copy goes it should help the customer reach their goals, there is a saying that ad copy should be like a women's skirt, short enough to be interesting but long enough to cover the essentials.  Test what works so that you can balance what customers want to read and what they need in the product information.

Q: If you had to suggest what should be optimized and by whom what would it be?

A: Web analysts are hard to find but find someone with a background in analytics and good designers and copywriters so that you can test all of these areas.

Q: What was the Firefox plug-in?

A: Pluribo and it only works on some categories right now.

Q: If you had to suggest the top 3 priorities that we can implement now what would they be?

A: There is a hierarchy of optimization that you can find on our site that lists several steps in the hierarchy.  Off the bat I would say better copy and better images but this could take a lot of resources.  On an intuitive level you have to think about what gives people assurances throughout the checkout.  If you are thinking on this level then you would consider general usability, because online shopping is like the evolution of cell phones, they may be different but the basic functionalities are done the same.  Accessibility, how easy is it to get to your site?  Functionality, make sure that everything works.  Then start looking at 404 errors, when I was shopping for that camera I clicked on a walmart.com ad and I got a 404 error, not only did they pay for the click but I was an automatic bounce, and I will make sure to tell Raul about it after.  Then start moving on to in stock messaging and more.

Q: Who is doing all of these things really well?

A: We published a list and some sites may have improved by now, but I know one is BlueNile and others I would have to get back to you on.  Some websites did really well in certain categories for instance Zappos.com scored really high in customer service.

Dear Readers,

I had the pleasure of attending and participating in a panel at Shop.org yesterday.  I was not the only one who found themself out of luck when trying to get a wireless connection yesterday so I am going to take what I would have blogged live yesterday and post for you all today.  As you may be aware from reading other live blogs the content is written so quickly that often mistakes may occur and the context may seem out of order, but hopefully the general idea and the nuggets of useful information will become clear by the end of the post.  I hope you all enjoy what I learned yesterday and find it as useful as I did.  Feel free to send me comments about any mistakes you may find, I can deal with constructive criticism.

All the best,

Vanessa

I can’t wait to let you all in on some of our new projects, but for now we must exercise patience.  Here’s this week in eCommerce.

• I know it is the middle of July and thoughts of Christmas and the Holiday season may seem far off to many, but marketers should have the season on their radar and on their schedules. Internet Retailer posted an article this week claiming that marketers should have holiday campaigns ready by October.  Read the full article with figures from MarketLive Inc.’s recent study here.
• The Small Business Mavericks have compiled a few lists that they believe can make or break a small internet retailer. 
• Affiliates have been getting a bad rap at recent conferences, so The Rimm-Kaufman Group has provided a video featuring Shop.org’s Larry Joseloff explaining how to balance affiliate programs. 
• Want your business teams to perform better?  According to this study one of the first things a company can do to increase performance is to not have one dominating team leader. 
• Andy Beal has announced the 2008 SEM scholarship winner. 
• Tell Marketing Pilgrim what you think the conversation went like for this picture….
  

This was my thought (hey it’s Friday, have some fun with it):
“Sergey: Jerry you gotta let loose a little bit man, you look like you are about to have a breakdown.
Larry: Yeah if you don’t have your sunglasses at least tossle your hair a bit so you don’t look so uptight.
Jerry: I know I know, it’s just, well you guys know what it’s like where I’m at, I mean I don’t even have a bean bag in my office.”