eCommerce and

I was pleasantly surprised today during my morning order audit process to see an order with http://www.google.com/shoppinglist as its referer information. I did not remember Google Product Search having a shopping list feature so I poked around to see if I could find a post on the Google Base Blog or someone else explaining when this feature appeared and how it worked. Disappointingly enough, I could find neither so decided to write a post of my own discussing this neat little feature.

As you can see by the screen shot below, all Google product Search listings now have the "Add to Shopping List" text underneath them which by clicking on it (assuming you have a Google account) lets you save it to a list of products which Google keeps track of for you.

On the upper right when using Google product search it now says "My Shopping List" which by clicking on it will take you to the list of products you saved to your list. At this point Shared Wish Lists can also be created and shared with friends or family, another neat, friendly, shopping feature.

All in all, this is a smart feature and one that I appreciate.  In an effort to keep my shopping list organized, keep a running tally of the great deals I find and a list of the products I might be interested in for the future, having the functionality via Google will save time and enable me to keep my list in one place rather than among multiple retail venues. At this point one of the only gripes I have is not being able to save non Google Product Search products to these lists (but Google Notebook is an alternative for that).  Another option would be to build a feature that allowed retailers who posted products on Google Product Search to let their users add products to the Shopping List directly from the retailer's site.

After talking with a Product Search Rep from Google I found out that these features previously existed in the Froogle search interface and were removed during the transition to Google Product Search. It has been slightly revamped and was relaunched late last week.

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 band 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.

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.

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.”

This year is flying by.  Happy Independence Day America!  I was talking with one of my fellow eCommerce pals this week and he reminded me that this would be his first 4th of July celebration since he moved here from Canada.  I thought that was interesting.  Kevin I hope you have a very Happy 4th!  Ok let’s get down to business.

• Gordian Project, our parent company, got its name from the idiom “cut the Gordian knot”.  To “cut the Gordian knot” means to get to the heart of the problem and solve it efficiently.  Similar to us is another entrepreneurial company called the Rubicon Project; their name comes from the etymology of the idiom to “cross the Rubicon”, which means to make an unchangeable decision.  The founder wrote a post this week about The Fear of Success.  I enjoyed it because in some ways it reminded me about the founders of our company; not just because they have had a lot of successes at a young age, or because of other reasons mentioned in the post, instead our fearless leaders seem to balance a lot of the equation that it takes to be successful, between one another. 
• I hope you aren’t viewing anything on YouTube that you wouldn’t want your Mom to know about, or Viacom for that matter.  Andy Beal reports on the news that a New York Court Orders Google to Hand Over Your YouTube Personal Data. 
• UK based SEOer, Richard Baxter, wrote a post this week on paginated links and the ability to use Google to find duplicate content.  He used one of our websites, OutdoorPros.com as the example for explaining his thoughts.  The post has actually sparked a discussion around here, so watch for a follow up post on the subject. 
• Last week I mentioned that marketers were embarking on strategies that may earn us a term equivalent to that of ambulance chasing attorneys.  Apparently I am not alone; Seth Godin wrote a post this week in which he remarks “Marketing culture has become a culture of lawyers.”  Check out the post though, as there is still time to save our reputation. 
• Marketers know how powerful word of mouth (WOM) can be to a campaign, company, product, etc. and with the social networking revolution of the LinkedIns, Twitters, blogs and more, viral marketing is growing by leaps and bounds.  Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Guide analyzes a recent study about WOM and if it is more effective and done more often online or offline. 

I’m back!  Thanks Ryan so much for keeping our readers updated in the world of eCommerce, and reminding me and everyone else that I lost the Lakers bet.  I hope you all missed me as much as I missed you.

Let’s talk some eCommerce (said in the voice of Joel McHale from the Soup on E!): 

• J.C. Penney is blaming their ad agency for an ad that surfaced on YouTube featuring the sellers logo and slogan. The problem is that the ad called “Speed Dressing” promotes teen sex.  The retailer is still investigating the issue. Pennies may have a better chance of combating this problem in the future if the powers that be take a lesson from this week’s Whiteboard Friday on SEOmoz.  In this episode Will Critchlow demonstrates how those in powerful positions can manage their brand reputations on the down low. 
• Yesterday we talked a little bit about the DSW suit against Zappos.com.  Apparently the tactic is catching on as Hearts on Fire sues Blue Nile for a similar issue.  Seriously marketers, is this what we are resorting to for linkbait?  If we don’t nip this trend now people will start referring to us as ambulance chasing attorneys! 
• What is your MySpace or Facebook “FriendRank”?  Companies like SocialMedia Networks and 33Across are revamping advertising via social networks.  In the words of the founder of SocialMedia Networks “We're trying to make ads suck less in social networks”. 
• Want to save 90% on Microsoft Office 2007?  Well, a religious goods internet retailer in Korea has come up with the Microsoft Church Package and according to the ad it is a 90% savings. 
• Does it make anyone else sad that the human population seems to love seeing the mighty fall?  Well it brings me down, but I guess I am in the minority since blogs are already discussing the demise of companies like Apple and Google. 
• In case you aren’t getting your fix of eCommerce and Entrepreneurship here, I thought I would share the Entrepreneur blogs that have been chosen as the 15 worth reading.  Plus we wanted to give kudos to our friends over at Get Elastic for making the list.

Zappos.com has been all over the blogging world lately, mostly due to DSW's lawsuit.  Considering a lot of people in the eCommerce community are speculating that this is a linkbait ploy on DSW's part, Zappos may be benefiting from the links as well.  Zappos.com is also trying some traditional marketing campaigns that may surprise you.

A few weeks ago I had the "pleasure" of passing through security at Ontario International Airport. On this trip, I took a drastic tack from my classic approach. I packed light. Really light.  I'm talking one bag that satisfies as a carry on for a trip almost a week long. Although this is old school to many, this is a monumental feat for me. In the past, my philosophy was to toss it all in, and be quite certain I packed any options I'd want, than to spend any time at all figuring out what I actually needed. However, now that getting in and out of an airport, plowing through TSA security, and flying in general, has become the second most inefficient process on earth (second only to the continental plates shifting to create new land masses) I've had to evolve.

Quest Through Security

So I checked in, showed ID, showed luggage, got our boarding passes, showed ID again, and headed to the Field-O-Metal-Detectors.

The family goes through the metal detectors first, without any hiccups, then I send the stuff through the machines for them to retrieve on the other side.  Now, it's my turn.

I take my laptop out of it's bag and stick it in the bucket.  I empty my pockets.  Out goes the iPhone, the keys, the wallet, all into the bucket.  Let's see if I can make it through the metal detector...

Beeeeep.  Nope.

The TSA lady points at my face, but she's really trying to point behind me.  "Go back through the metal detector!", she admonishes.

While trying to figure out what I should ditch next, she yells, "Take off your belt!"  Belt ditched; in the bucket.  Back through the metal detector...

Beeeeep.  Nope.

"Back through!", she scolds.

"Take off your watch!"  Watch ditched; in the bucket.  Back through...

Beeeeep.  Nope.

The line behind me is gaining in length, and losing in patience.

"What else do you have?", she chides.  "Nothing", I retort, while slapping my pockets.

No ones happy.  Not me, her, the crowd behind me.  Actually, everyone's getting frustrated.

She has an epiphany and looks down.  I follow her eyes.  Crap, my sandals are still on.  I'm not sure why I didn't ditch them yet.  Maybe I forgot.  Maybe I thought since they were small, light, and open toe, they wouldn't matter.

"TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES!!!!", she cries.  Like I'm an idiot.  Like I want to go through the freakin' metal detector four freaking times.  Like I want my family to have to wait for me with all our stuff on the other side.  Like I want the whole damn airport hung up.

Frustratingly, very frustratingly, shoes ditched; in the bucket.  Right now, I pretty much hate the airport, hate TSA, hate metal detectors, and hate, well, shoes...

But, this time, before I go back through, I notice a familiar face in the bottom of the bucket.  It's Zappos.com.  Here is what I saw.

The Zappos X-Ray Bucket Advertisement

The ad says...

IT'S MAGIC!
KIND OF LIKE THE X-RAY MACHINE.
Zappos.com
POWERED by SERVICE
PUT A LITTLE ZAPPOS IN YOUR DAY
MILLIONS OF SHOES, CLOTHES and BAGS.

How ironic.  Zappos.com reminds me they sell shoes, just when I hate shoes. (As an aside, they also reminded me of those advertisements on grocery store carts in that section of the cart where a baby rides.  Those ads always have pictures of people that look really shady.)

What is Zappos trying to do?

Recently, Zappos dumped their free overnight shipping and their 110% Price Match Guarantee.  Since then, I've noticed a decent amount of Zappos marketing directed at branding and other marketing campaigns that has difficult to measure ROI, such as these x-ray buckets. So with this campaign, is there more than meets the eye?  Are they trying to do more than create brand awareness?

Maybe Zappos is hoping that I'll be thinking about Shoes and Zappos simultaneously so that the next time I think about shoes, I'll think of Zappos?  Now, that would be great, as long as I also don't think about how absolutely freaking ticked I was and attribute that attitude to Zappos.

Maybe they are targeting the customer that is thinking about how they wish they would have worn an easier pair of shoes to slip on and off?  In the moment people might think like that, but in the morning, on the way to the airport, do people decide what shoes they'll wear and take with them on a trip, based on which pair will be most easily removed at security?

Maybe Zappos is thinking that people are getting to the airport earlier and earlier due to airport security, delays, etc., and that they can influence them to pass the time doing some online shopping?  I spent all my time going back and forth through the metal detector so that didn't work for me.
Maybe the idea is to get people to start thinking about shopping at online stores even when they aren’t online.  This is especially important since shoes are traditionally something that people like to try on before they buy.  Hence, Zappos' absent restock fee and free returns shipping.

Good Idea?

So is it a good idea for Zappos.com to remind me that they sell shoes, just when I hate shoes.  Good question.  I don't know the answer.  I know they convinced me to write a blog post about them.  AHA!  THAT'S IT!  It's a viral marketing campaign secretly targeting eCommerce bloggers who Zappos knows will question the value of their campaign.  Genius.  Just Genius.

By the way, once I ditched the shoes, it was smooth sailing through the metal detector.  Dang steel toe sandals... 

I’ll be helping with this week’s variety post while Vanessa is out. Eek, its Friday the 13th! Having just returned (albeit much later than planned) from Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition 2008 in Chicago, I have so much to share with our team and our readers. You have to love being separated from your luggage, missing connecting flights, and staying in foreign places overnight, but it was all a small price to pay considering I just had the amazing opportunity to speak for the very first time at IRCE.

• Danny Dover posted on SEOmoz a “Beginner's Checklist For Search Conferences” which is especially helpful if you’ve never attended such an event. Luckily it wasn’t my first time at a conference, just my first time speaking. I strongly agree with his point that you should blog about your trip (I can check that one off the list) once you return.

• My flights were uber-delayed causing me to spend the night in Dallas. Don’t worry though I had awesome seats on every connecting flight thanks to SeatGuru.com. Use the SeatMap Key to find the best seats with power outlets and the most legroom.

• Last week Microsoft adCenter announced Microsoft adCenter Desktop (Beta), an application similar to Google AdWords Editor. I immediately signed up for the betaAdWords Editor 6.0 late last week. that day, and was just sent a link to download the application. I haven’t installed it yet, more to come from me on that later. Google just recently released AdWords Editor 6.0 late last week..

• If you attended the workshops on Monday at IRCE, you may have caught the session about Affiliate Marketing. I was asked many times what my stance is on the subject, and honestly, we love affiliates and what they are able to do for us by driving additional sales and revenue. We work directly with publishers to provide them special coupons and incentives. You can catch panelist George Michie’s response on the RKG blog. Other than doing some “affiliate hunting”, one way affiliate coupon sites and merchants can get along is to have well developed policies and terms.

• Speaking of policies and terms, Linda at Get Elastic recently touched on 9 tips for privacy policy usability. Linda is amazing; not only was she staffing the booth at IRCE, attending sessions and taking time to review passerby’s site’s (including ours), she still found time to blog!

A Great, but Simple Promotion

When you are in business to sell products online, you may be after such things as more sales, increased internet traffic, and online communities touting your site as a great deal and encouraging people to buy from you. And usually these are good things. But as we found out recently, sometimes you have to be careful about what you wish for. An example of this is the Omaha Steaks promotion that we had just initiated, a promotion that had been highly successful and was well-received.  A little too well-received, actually, and that caused a few tense hours over a recent weekend.

Our Omaha Steaks promotion was simple: when you make a purchase from us, we’ll send you a gift certificate in the form of a coupon code for $20 off your Omaha Steaks order, which we sent along in the order confirmation email. We had partnered with Omaha Steaks, purveyors of fine steaks and other food products, to provide this great value to our customers. This seemed to be a great promotion, and all was running smoothly until it got SlickDeal-ed.

Deal Wars: When Slickdeals Strikes Back!

Slickdeals.net is a great site for sharing, finding, and aggregating deals. I am a frequent visitor of the site, and have made some great buys based on deals I’ve found there. Slickdeal-ers tend to be a savvy bunch who really know how to game the system. They are a great source of information about products, pricing, and great buys.

So when a Slickdeal-er made a purchase from our site and instantly got their free $20 Omaha Steaks gift card in their order confirmation email, a light went on. They posted this great deal onto SlickDeals.net and pretty soon the frenzy began. The Slickdealers searched our site, found the cheapest item they could with free shipping, and began placing orders. One guy even placed over 60 orders! Being the sophisticated online retailer that we are, we allow customers to easily cancel orders that haven’t shipped. Since this happened on a Saturday, customers were able to place orders, receive their coupon codes instantly via email, then cancel their orders and repeat the process over and over again.

While we are all for good deals, we felt it wasn’t fair to our promotion partner to give away these gift certificates to fraudulent consumers whose only goal was to sell them on eBay. So after some discussion, we decided the best course of action would be to send out the coupon code after we knew the order wouldn’t be cancelled rather than instantly. Our terms of use stated that the offer was only good on non-cancelled orders, so those who placed orders then cancelled were not sent the coupon code.

Lessons Learned

This was a great lesson for us in the value of community sites as well as their potential dangers. While we loved the idea of our site getting a lot of notice and exposure, we also learned that we have to protect ourselves from situations that can spiral out of control. Rest assured, while our next promotion or deal may be a “slick deal”, we will take measures to prevent an incident like this from occurring again.