eCommerce and

A couple of months ago our awesome Adwords team was able to hook us up with five free hours of assistance from a third party to help train and setup Google Website Optimizer tests. We had mentioned to them that we were interested in trying some tests but did not have much experience in doing so and through that conversation they were able to help get us resources to get started. Looking back (as we are collecting the final data from our first test) having that help was invaluable. With that in mind I wanted to share the steps we took with the third party to get things going before our first test kicked off.

First, get familiarized with Google Website Optimizer (GWO). There are several resources available in video and written forms which explain how it works and what needs to be done.

Second, review the website for tests which might be a good jumping off point. Typically, good first tests are variations of an add-to-cart or checkout button, text location or color, banner / promotion variations, etc. For the first test you want something which is easy to setup and has many creatable variations as to get some experience before moving onto more complex tests.

Third, open up your GWO account and start to setup the test. This will include tasks like, telling GWO what kind of test you want to run, and installing the tracking codes on the test and order complete pages.

Fourth, the variations of what is going to be tested need to be created, reviewed and loaded to GWO. At least for multivariate tests GWO handles what code gets swapped out, be it an image or text. Once the codes are in place for the test, developers don't need to be the ones setting up all of the variations as they are created inside the GWO console. All of the buttons, badges, text, etc. will need to be created though (get your designer on the horn ahead of time) and setup inside of the GWO interface. Depending on where your developer setup the test codes it may require a little HTML or CSS knowledge but nothing too crazy.

Fifth, once everything is setup and ready to roll you’ll want to make sure to test that all of the codes are setup (especially the conversion tracking), and then use the preview tool in GWO to preview how all of the variations will look. Test! Test! Test! You don't want to turn on a multi variant test which does not work, has broken variations or takes your site down.

Finally, kick off the test and let the data roll in! Remember that depending on site traffic and how many variations are being tested it could take days or weeks to get enough data for GWO to show recommendations about which variations are the best.

Little Giant has been hard at work engineering pumps that their most loyal customers have been waiting for. PlumberSurplus.com is your destination for the new Little Giant TSW Sump Pump System and their NXTGen Condensate Pumps.

With all of the talk regarding the drop in Google Product Search traffic we have been looking for ways to improve and differentiate our products in what has also been known as Google Base, Froogle and Google Shopping.  According to Channel Advisor retailers have been reporting that traffic from Google Product Search has been down as much as 60-80% since June of this year.

In reviewing our listings and researching the ever frequent updates we found several (to put it lightly) searches that were completely dominated by big box retailers.  Not only were these searches dominating us but they were completely eliminating any competition, as in only one retailer was shown as offering that product line (at least on the first page). 

I could understand if the retailer's that were shown in these searches  all had the most relevant data, the most robust attributes, the best pricing, the largest number or reviews, the highest ratings, and this engine was based on bids, but none of these are true.  In one of the first searches for the Kohler Forte bathroom faucet the Home Depot shows as a retailer over and over again, yet their robust and relevant data refers to this popular Kohler collection as "Fort".  You will also notice that the only other retailers referenced are Walmart and Amazon.

Google Product Search Result Screenshot Favors Bad Data from Big Box Retailer

Porcher, a luxury brand by American Standard, is then shown as primarily sold by Walmart.  Walmart has fewer ratings than other retailers listed and of those ratings also has the lowest seller rating.

Google Product Search Result Screenshot Favors Poorly Rated Big Box Retailer

I am a Google fan, always have been, but have they forgotten about the user experience?  When shopping are we not looking to compare?  Not in this case (unless you want to click through a few more pages), because the Home Depot is the only option you're going to find for this Jado search. 

Google Product Search Result Screenshot Selects Only Big Box Retailer

The Home Depot hasn't completely cornered the market on Google Base, Walmart has capitalized as well as you can see by this search for American Standard's Town Square line.

 Google Product Search Result Screenshot Selects Only Big Box Retailer

Blog Update

We have confirmation from another source, which works with online retailers in optimizing their marketing strategies, that this is an ongoing problem.  According to our sources this has been happening in other categories, most predominantly in Home & Garden and Electronics.  We tested our sources information using a search from the Home & Garden category for a Skyline Chair.  The results were similar to what we experienced within our own category, one listing for Eco-Furniture and every other listing for Walmart.

Google Product Search Result Screenshot Favors Big Box Retailers in Multiple Categories

The possibilities are endless with a bathroom remodel. Discover your classic side with a clawfoot tub, experiment with fresh bathroom vanities and coordinate it all with matching faucets. Shop PlumberSurplus.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for all of your bathroom needs.

Remember how much easier it was to be a marketer before all this digital stuff got in the way? Just pay for a print ad and reach a ton of people through the publication’s readership. Was it successful? Who knows, I mean sure they could somewhat check by asking customers when they came in or by giving them a code for purchase; but they really didn’t have the resources or ability to actually check what percentage of people were moved to a conversion just by looking at their advertisement. Let’s call this phase of consumer engagement marketing 1.0. However, fast forward 15-20 years to the present and a lot has changed.

First off people don’t read as much print media anymore, at least people that are in the demographic defined by the age 30 years and younger (which happens to be quite large and spend a substantial amount of money). Now I am not putting down print media, I still subscribe to at least four different magazines and one newspaper, but it isn’t so much a place for me to find news as it is something to take with me on a long flight or during a time in my day when I have downtime.

If I want news I quickly head to my Google Reader, that organizes all of my favorite news sites and gives me a short synopsis of what it is I am interested in catching up on, all without ads (that is, until I go to the article). Another option is to log into my Twitter and/or Facebook accounts, where there is a good chance that if something news worthy has happened one of my “associates” will have informed me about this in 140 characters or less. I can read it in less than five seconds, and then move on with my day.  No ads have attacked me, no one has got me to come to their website to join a group or sign up for something, just 140 characters of updated status reports then on to the next thing.

So how do we connect with people that are experiencing this online social revolution and want their daily developments and potentially their advertisements or deals, in 140 characters or less? First off we have to meet them where they are. It is becoming easier than ever for the customer to get rid of a business’s onslaught of unwanted advertising messages.  However, businesses have opportunities like never before to connect with consumers that are already seeking out their products.  Buyers.   This is done through connections made on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets. Through these outlets we can search and connect with people that actually care about what we are offering and they in turn seek us out as well. An example of this can be seen on one of our websites Twitter account, OutdoorPros.com.  Its Twitter account has roughly 400 followers. Now you may say, 400 followers, that is not a lot. However, look at it this way, say I was doing a print ad and it went out to 400 people. Maybe 10% of those people actually care about what is being advertised and consider making a purchase (I would think that is probably a pretty high estimate). Now let’s look at it from a Marketing 2.0 perspective, we have 400 twitter followers, all of which are from our target demographic (hunters, fisherman, and people who generally like the outdoors), and we send out the same advertisement to these 400 people instead.  As marketers we now have a tool and access to them 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and better yet they even signed up to follow what we have to say. Even though my 10% estimation was high for the print ad, chances dramatically increase with all of these other factors stacked in our favor.  Now think about the people that are utilizing these marketing tools to reach out to not 400 people, but millions…

They will receive your 140 character messages until they decide you are not worth following and move on, or they decide you are informative and provide worthwhile information, getting them to tell their friends, who could be interested in the same things, which leads to more people being interested about you, thus adding to your followers and your sphere of influence. Whew that was a lot to say. But just remember this, Marketing 2.0, or the social media revolution, or whatever you want to call it is here to stay, the best thing you can do is adapt and be ready for whatever new way of connecting comes next...

Kohler is arguably one of the most innovative brands in the home improvement industry. The new Karbon faucet has completely transformed the kitchen and more specifically revolutionized the kitchen faucet. Meanwhile Kohler seems to effortlessly create bathroom fixtures that are not only sleek but save water, like the Escale toilet.

• Craig Tomlin offers five usability tips and teases readers with an additional five to follow in an upcoming article.  I may not agree with every tip provided in this article but each website designer can evaluate usability for themselves.  I particularly enjoyed the example given in number five which was “Reduce shopping cart distractions”.  The example given by the author is a great one as I too would have been completely overwhelmed by the shopping cart page.  I look forward to seeing the next article.


• Almost 30% of British online shoppers forget their login information when shopping online and state that it is their biggest annoyance.  Europe as a whole said that their biggest annoyance was poor customer service.  Both statistics led those surveyed to reveal that these annoyances led them to spend less money than when their satisfaction level was high.


• Trust and security remain important factors to consumers when deciding who to shop with online retailers.


• Sears leaves categories vulnerable to creative comics.







• Analysts are early to point to signs of stabilization in the economic environment, stating highlights from eCommerce as the beginnings of recovery.
  
  

Little Giant has been hard at work engineering pumps that their most loyal customers have been waiting for. PlumberSurplus.com is your destination for the new Little Giant TSW Sump Pump System and their NXTGen Condensate Pumps.

EBay merchants prepare! Several changes to EBay's marketplace will be going live late September and will affect sellers of varying sizes alike. These updates will be taking place during the weeks of September 22, 2009 and October 1, 2009. A full list of these changes can be found right on EBay's July 2009 update at this link: www.EBay.com/July2009Update.

Of all the changes, two are of great interest to me, the new way in which eBay is deciding to look at detailed seller ratings (DSRs) and the new eBay Top-rated seller status.


DSR Focus Adjustment

EBay has announced that their research shows the buyer experience is more accurately portrayed through lower seller ratings. They have also decided that volume isn’t what sets apart the good sellers from the bad sellers, it’s the consumer experience (that’s a pat on the shoulder for the little guy/gal aka small retailers). This statement simply means that EBay has changed the focus on how ratings are measured within their marketplace.  Merchants will need to be under a certain threshold to be eligible for benefits, such as Top-rated seller status or monthly discounts. Metaphorically speaking EBay has put out a wanted poster for the head of all sellers that don't improve on their reviews that come back with ones and twos. Here is a link to how the DSRs will be calculated based on how many transactions you have in a certain period vs. the amount of bad reviews.

Example Calculations of Low DSRs

New Method to Obtain Top-rated Seller Status

How does the new look into calculating DSR's effect the Top-rated seller status?  Well, this means the status is no longer simply obtained by having a large amount of inventory and selling a bunch of stuff.  It’s based upon competition in category or vertical and the merchant’s ability to provide a quality consumer experience. The buyer experience is directly correlated to the DSR calculations. So larger merchants with high sales volume and robust product offerings will find it more difficult to manage the consumer experience at a more detailed level than the smaller merchants.  This levels the playing field for merchants looking to grow through eBay and obtain a PowerSeller Status, smaller merchants will be able to compete on experience rather than size.  Larger merchants will have to adapt to these changes much like they have had to do over the past two years as eBay have made multiple adjustments in their marketplace transformation.

In Summation, merchants need to start matching their focus with EBay's or they may see sales drop if they keep their current sales strategy past September. Get to Work!

The possibilities are endless with a bathroom remodel. Discover your classic side with a clawfoot tub, experiment with fresh bathroom vanities and coordinate it all with matching faucets. Shop PlumberSurplus.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for all of your bathroom needs.

Both of these are screen shot errors, one is from Google and one is from Microsoft (see full screenshots below before voting).

The first is a shot from Google in regards to an error that occurred in Chrome, the error message states "Aw, Snap! Something went wrong while displaying this webpage.  To continue, press reload or go to another page."  The next screenshot is a Microsoft error message that reads "oops our tentacles are tangled We're sorry, but you've encountered an error on our site. There are a few ways around this --- you can try a different search, or pick a store that has what you are shopping for."

Which company can you relate to? Who is doing the better job of speaking to the public?

This pole closes on August 14th, 2009 so vote, we would love to know what our readers and their friends think.

Enlarged Screenshots for reference:

Google 

Kohler is arguably one of the most innovative brands in the home improvement industry. The new Karbon faucet has completely transformed the kitchen and more specifically revolutionized the kitchen faucet. Meanwhile Kohler seems to effortlessly create bathroom fixtures that are not only sleek but save water, like the Escale toilet.

Keeping customers happy is one of the key elements to company growth. Providing the customer with a user friendly website, easy and quick returns policy, and an understanding of how our processes work will ensure that our customers stay happy. One of the most common reasons for returns, chargeback’s, and negative feedback stems from not meeting customer expectations. If a customer misunderstands the description of a product, believes that an email response time was beyond their allotted wait time, or didn’t thoroughly read the shipping process, then, depending on their order, we may not have met their expectation.

Setting product expectations will help customers understand what they are ordering. Clear and concise product descriptions are a must. They should always include specific product information such as dimensions, weights, colors and finish and should also include clear succinct images.

When it comes to shipping, one difficult lesson, learned only through experience is that customers don’t understand shipping processes.  Yep I said it.  Unless a consumer has been in the industry, has had experience with different types of shipments: expedited, LTL, etc. it is really difficult to communicate shipping processes.  Clients often believe that if they order an item on a weekend that the order will arrive to them in three days.  Unfortunately for our consumers most of our warehouses aren’t shipping on weekends, which we are grateful for.  That’s just one example, freight shipments can be difficult as well, we have specific emails that go out to consumers that have freight orders to try to combat this issue alone.  Educating customers by providing an upfront shipping section that explains rates and policies on the website will help customers fully understand what it takes to ship their order.

Having a user friendly website, communicating and setting expectations with your customers will allow for fewer returns, less chargeback’s, and an improved user experience.

For the best prices, on the largest selection of faucets, from your favorite brands like Kohler, Danze, and, American Standard shop PlumberSurplus.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

• CIT is looking for investors, and the NRF (National Retail Federation) is feeling the pinch.  Without factors like CIT taking on the financial burden between suppliers and retailers, supply chains will struggle to continue to produce at a rate that consumers want to see product on retailer’s shelves.  As the holiday season approaches both suppliers and retailers have begun to panic as they realize that this couldn’t be happening at a worse time.


• Future or hopeful entrepreneurs may want to look to this roadmap to see if they have what it takes to make it.


• Yahoo! rolled out their new homepage and with high-quality reviews, which is good considering it was supposed to debut last year.


• Increase creativity by distancing the group from the problem.


• This is a to be continued blog but I have complete faith that the copywriting tips that are going to come from the follow up are going to be worth linking to the initial post.  It helps that he references one of my favorite childhood movies throughout the post as well so the post in general is thoroughly enjoyable.


• Amazon bought Zappos this week and the price keeps updating.


• This quote was brought to my attention courtesy of Contrast Blog
  “Usability is not everything. If usability engineers designed a nightclub, it would be clean, quiet, brightly lit, with lots of places to sit down, plenty of bartenders, menus written in 18-point sans-serif, and easy-to-find bathrooms. But nobody would be there. They would all be down the street at Coyote Ugly pouring beer on each other.”
  -Joel Spolsky
  -From his book User Interface Design for Programmers
  

The possibilities are endless with a bathroom remodel. Discover your classic side with a clawfoot tub, experiment with fresh bathroom vanities and coordinate it all with matching faucets. Shop PlumberSurplus.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for all of your bathroom needs.

• Shop.org released their 2009 State of Retailing Merchandising Report this week: 
  • “Specifically, retailers this year are setting the following as priorities for their Web sites:
    Checkout process redesign – 79%
    Improved content on product detail pages – 73%
    Site search and browse results – 71%
    Home page – 60%
    Redesigned help section / FAQ”

• Clickthrough rates can change when language and experience are factored into the equation; if you don’t believe me take a look at this experiment.


• Optaros is offering a complimentary eBook on social eCommerce.  The book "5 Winning Strategies in Social Ecommerce" can be found here.


• Social media is only effective if it’s based on trust, transparency and ethical business practices, luckily I work for a company where this isn’t a problem.  Unfortunately there are still, as I suppose there may always be, companies out there that don’t operate in this fashion.  The New York Attorney General isn’t standing for it, in fact he has fined a company $300,000 for encouraging fake reviews.


• Entrepreneurs are powerfully positive.


• Google announces second quarter 2009 financial results.
  

Little Giant has been hard at work engineering pumps that their most loyal customers have been waiting for. PlumberSurplus.com is your destination for the new Little Giant TSW Sump Pump System and their NXTGen Condensate Pumps.

• By now most of us have heard the news of Michael Jackson’s death, what really surprised me was the way in which many of us found out about it…. Twitter.  Twitter may be having a far greater impact than we may even know.


• This title speaks for itself: Amazon: “A Search Engine With A Warehouse”.


• We know that load times affect user behavior, but would you say that fractions of a second could have a billion dollar price tag?


• Are you ignoring important landing pages?


• Apparently there is controversy over personalized ads, but are we really surprised that people don’t want to share their social security numbers?

Kohler is arguably one of the most innovative brands in the home improvement industry. The new Karbon faucet has completely transformed the kitchen and more specifically revolutionized the kitchen faucet. Meanwhile Kohler seems to effortlessly create bathroom fixtures that are not only sleek but save water, like the Escale toilet.