eCommerce and

Once a quarter I take a few minutes out of my day to read about what UPS is up to in their Compass publication: “The Quarterly for UPS Preferred Customers.” Each volume includes an individual success story that covers what businesses partnering with UPS are doing to integrate solutions for their everyday shipping needs. These articles generally end in quotes similar to Wil Kovacs, “There’s no doubt about it – we couldn’t have done it without UPS” (Vol. 2, NO. 2 | Spring 2008).  I’ve read these articles over the past couple years picking up useful tidbits along the way, all be it as much for a mindless moment in the middle of an otherwise busy day. Never have I felt we had a nugget to contribute along the way until we were recently approached by our account manager Kia. I’m not sure her actual name would make it past the Compass editors, but I wanted to make sure she was given credit for our success story.

To appreciate the nugget you must understand our humble beginnings. With little more than a dream for bringing customers together with everything necessary to realize their home remodeling desires, our negotiating options at UPS’s table were slim. Success hinged on collaboration between multiple shipping points spanning from west to east coasts, each with their own unique fulfillment system. This collaboration was met with a single UPS account number, in concert with UPS WorldShip allowing “installations” of our individual account number across a maximum of 13 separate shipping points. WorldShip provides our supply base the opportunity to ship directly on our account number’s which results in tracking information that seamlessly populates in our system and back to our customers.

From our inception we’ve enjoyed continued growth. It wasn’t long before we’d maximized our initial account. Additional account numbers were eagerly provided and consolidated to our original primary account number. With the number of shipping points growing, UPS ran into an interesting problem, sourcing. UPS’s visibility showed the volume for each account number’s 13 shipping points as originating from the account number’s physical address; our headquarters in sunny southern California. Now if you did the math you would realize that we had well over 30 shipping locations.  So why does this cause a headache for UPS as well?  A shipping point’s local hub wasn’t prepared for the actual inbound volume, while our southern California hub was over prepared. Meaning that as UPS was capturing our shipping data their system showed that all of the shipments were coming out of a southern California branch, when in actuality that particular branch wasn’t going to see nearly as many shipments as they were expecting based on the data.  On the flip side a UPS branch in Maryland may be struggling to keep up because of the unexpected number of packages to ship.  This not only affected the workers and resources at each individual branch, corporate was also using this data to allocate budgets to branches, again this southern California branch would be over budgeted, and another branch would be under budgeted.  Several additional issues have rose from this early solution.

Enter Kia. Once we addressed our concerns about making any changes to our shipping accounts, i.e. minimal disruption to our supplier’s processes, consolidated electronic billing (4 years better negotiating position), etc., we began creating unique account number’s by shipping point. Mind you someone from our office, that would be me, would find themselves over the course of several days traveling to supplier after supplier insuring a successful account transition; a very real cost burden. The removal of the original account number from WorldShip proved stifling. We had to insure our suppliers didn’t inadvertently ship on old account number’s lingering in WorldShip. You’d think a simple remove option would be present from WorldShip’s Shipper Editor Menu?  Surprisingly it’s not. Kia went back to the drawing board and not only provided a solution for removing lingering account number’s but did so with the help of UPS’s technicians remotely. No longer did I have to travel all over the country to resolve our current problem and implement the solution.  I spent one long day with members of their technical department working from our office remotely to transition our complete supply base over to our new account structure. Baring the normal technical hurdles experienced throughout the course of the day Adam, Enrique, and Scott successfully brought our shipping solution up to par with our current volume, provided UPS the visibility they desperately needed, as well as providing internal efficiencies without a single issue.

My Compass story would end as my email to Kia did, “We have a couple things to complete the transition, but all in all I’d say it was a success.”  A small nugget certainly, but who had the time to blog back then?

Happy New Year all!  I am out for the rest of the week so the variety is early.  There are some new posts that I wanted to share, but in addition to that let’s take a look at some of our favorite posts, top stories, and some of the biggest developments in the industry from 2008.

• Google Product Search up 786% in the category of shopping search.
• The Silicon Alley Insider reports on Digg’s revenue losses and why ad targeting, or the lack there of, could be a major factor in these losses.
• Have your 2009 wish list ready for Google?  I know Zach does and Matt Cutts’ parents do, but submissions are coming in fast so add yours soon.
• Jennifer Laycock released her second installment of “Six Lessons from a Wooden Boy”, but I recommend starting from her first post on the subject.
• A legend about the inventor of chess may provide insight into internet retail growth.

2008 In Review

• Election news spreads and bloggers highlighted Super Tuesday.
• eBay jolts sellers by changing fees.
• eCommerce celebrates its 25th birthday.
• OutdoorPros.com launches!
• Mercado rebrands one month and then sells to Omniture a few months later.
• April Fools jokes get better and better every year so it would seem.
• eBay adds a merchant dashboard so sellers can track best match search placement.
• Amazon goes down!
• PCI updates Data Security Standards, again.
  
• The iPhone is released.
• Google adds shopping list to Product Search.
  
• The Top 100 Web Celebrities is announced.
• Yahoo and Google team up.
• Brian gives a lesson on forecasting.
  
• Amazon is finally able to ship Kindle.
• Big companies continue to try and squash the little guy.
• Vanessa, yeah that’s me talking in the 3rd person, goes on a rant about employee responsibility.
• The Olympics!
• Google News causes a 75% drop in United Airlines stock.
• Bill Gates retires from daily role at Microsoft.  Little did we know the extra free time would be spent with Jerry Seinfeld.
• Spore, the most copyright protected game, also becomes the most pirated game.
• Barack Obama becomes the first “Internet President”.
• Macy’s requires online shoppers to “wait in line”.
• Reputation management becomes increasingly important as social networking becomes more popular.
• Internet retailers have to respond to declining economic conditions.

• The Internet star rises in a down economy
• E-commerce on the move
• How the Supreme Court Fractured Online Pricing
• Retail Explorer
• We-commerce
• The Power of Customer Reviews
• Advantage: Amazon
• Merchandise sold on eBay falls 1%, the first decline in company history
• Exit Strategy
• Target.com supports site design for blind people under legal settlement

I know this couldn't possibly be everything, which events in 2008 were most memorable to you?

Our Returns Policy provides customers with information on how to request a Return Merchandise Authorization [RMA], how to return a product, etc.  One of the most overlooked sections in our policy is our “Basic RMA Policies” which states that “returns must meet all applicable criteria”.  It later goes on to say: “RMAs must be valid, unexpired, and issued for the product being returned”.  We then go on to explain timeframes and acceptable shipping methods.

Recently a customer returned an item that was received incorrectly, but exceeded our approved timeline, and so their return was refused. I was later asked to review the customer’s RMA and rethink our set timeframes and associated policies in order to improve in the area of customer experience.  In an effort to see where we stand as opposed to other major retailers I began to review our returns criteria and compare it to that of others.  According to consumer world we are more consumer friendly than most of the major retailers reviewed.  This brings me to my next point…

Where do we draw the line between our company responsibility and that of the customers’? As I reviewed the RMA it was clear that we did all we could to get the item back. The customer requested an RMA, and in less than an hour received an acceptance email informing them to refer to our Returns Policies before returning the item. The next morning the customer was sent a return label so that they would not incur return shipping costs [which was never used]. Exactly a month after the accepted RMA email was sent to the customer, they returned the package, which was refused by our warehouse. It is the customer’s responsibility to get the product back to us within the specified timeline, and it is our responsibility to do the best we can to help customers with that process.

It is important to note that if the customer had called our Customer Service department to inform us that they were late in returning their item, the RMA may have been approved for return despite the required timeframe.  We strive to give our customers the best experience we can offer. However, there are times when all we can do is assist our customers, and let them do the rest. We will be reviewing different ways of improving our RMA timeframe; for now we hope that customers will understand that we want to help them as much as we can, but in the end we can only help them as much as they allow us to do so.

I encourage feedback and comments from others dealing with similar issues.  When should we meet the customer in the middle and when does it become completely unprofitable to do so?  According to Maxim Mironov’s Optimalogica blog “1 % returns costs you 0.45 % of sales”.  What is even more interesting is the question he then poses “On $10 million sales 1 % returns increase means $45,000 lost in costs. At 4.5 % margin to off-set this loss you need $1 million extra sales. Are you getting this much because of a nicer policy?”  While these numbers may not match ours perfectly it is good to understand that even with a good returns policy we aren’t able to make everyone happy.  We just have to decide if that is something we are ok with and if the dollars make sense.

We were lucky enough to catch up with Linda Bustos of Elastic Path Software and ask her a few questions that are likely on many retailers minds.  Both multi-channel and web only retailers face difficult challenges ahead, the holidays that are right around the corner, and the global economic downturn that has brought spending to a drastic halt.  The insight she provides may help many overcome this uphill battle.

Tell us a little about your blog, company, and your role at Get Elastic:

My official title is Ecommerce Analyst at Elastic Path Software, a role that involves keeping on top of all the trends in Internet marketing and retail, and translating them into actionable tips for online retailers on the Get Elastic blog in addition to ecommerce consulting for Elastic Path customers.  Get Elastic’s primary purpose is thought leadership rather than talking about our ecommerce software.  Get Elastic exists to communicate with retailers, ecommerce vendors, consultants, analysts and anyone interested in Internet marketing.

What is your approach to evaluating and prioritizing opportunities and aligning resources with these opportunities?

I’d divide “opportunities” into site features/functionality, marketing activities and customer service.  (Fulfillment is impacted by marketing and customer service initiatives).

For site features, first you must determine whether what you want to do is feasible with your current ecommerce platform.  Your hands may be tied until the next upgrade on certain bells and whistles.

Then you need to make sure you’re already doing the basics well.  I consider the basics to be product information, product images, intuitive navigation and good search functionality.  You have no business asking for a virtual fitting room when a customer can’t enlarge images and see multiple views.  Personalization takes a backseat to usability.

After all that, if you’re in a position to add functionality, a good idea is to find out what customers prefer on ecommerce sites.  If you can’t collect enough info surveying your own customers, subscribing to Shop.org’s Smart Brief newsletter and Internet Retailer will alert you to the latest consumer studies.  Bookmark them as you go, so when it comes time to make decisions, you can refer to them.  You may discover customers consistenly cite ratings and reviews as valuable, but they don’t care about wish lists or reading retail blogs.  Use this data to invest in what will delight your customers.

As we head into a holiday season that is projected to be the slowest in our near history what advice would you give online retailers and multi-channel retailers?  Which do you think will be impacted by the economy more (Online only or Multi-Channel retailers), why?

Rather than increasing spending on PPC or shopping engines (buying traffic), work on optimizing landing pages to squeeze more profit out of the traffic you’re already getting (including “free” customers like repeat, type-in visitors and organic search referrals).  Not to mention your email campaigns would also be more profitable, which is a nice segue into…

Market to your existing customers (provided they have granted you permission) and those who have subscribed to your email list and segment, segment, segment.  It’s still true that it costs much more to attract new customers than keep existing ones, and segmentation is key to effectively delivering relevant offers.  If you throw random offers at your entire list, you’ll likely lose subscribers.

Jeanne Jennings’ Really Simple Segmentation Framework is a great resource for segmenting by behavior, but you should also allow customers to self-segment by indicating their preferences.  Disney Shopping and GAP are examples of retailers who do this really well. 

So change your email signup form to allow self-selection of what kind of offers or products the customer wants to receive, and how often they want to hear from you and ask existing subscribers to update their preferences.

It’s also important to have a strong value proposition that is clearly communicated on your site.  Not a slogan, not a tagline, but a clear statement that answers the question: “why should I buy from you and not your competitor.”  If you don’t have a clear value proposition (most retailers don’t) make sure you read up on value propositions at Marketing Experiments’ blog.

To answer the second part of your question, I don’t think one or the other will be better or worse off.  Because we know many people will use the Internet only to research purchases they prefer to make offline, the online retailer with a local store can offer free ship-to-store, inventory lookup and free returns to store – multi-channel retailers have an advantage -- while the pure-play has a small chance of converting that customer, and may even be paying high CPCs to provide the research service to a non-buyer.

But retail stores carry overhead that pure plays don’t have.  Also, multi-channel retailers may treat ecommerce as a separate operation, and the online channel may have to fight to prove itself and win human and financial resources.  Pure plays give their all to their online business and may be more advanced in efficiency and effectiveness.

What are some of your best and worst marketing channels?  What are the best ways you have found to increase performance for a given channel?

In terms of ecommerce marketing channels, it really depends on your market, your strategy, your investment and your execution which channel is going to perform the best for you.  Email might be the top channel for a retailer, but is that because they are sloppy with PPC and have an ecommerce platform that prevents them from maximizing their SEO?  Do they have an outsourced affiliate manager that’s doing a poor job? 

Also, there may be channels that perform better for one category vs another.  If there is much competition in PPC and shopping engines, click costs inflate and it’s harder to remain visible. 

You can even get more granular and say that some products will do better through PPC and others through email.  Again, when you focus on improving landing pages, your performance goes up across all channels.

If retailers are cutting back on spend where do you think costs can be cut or dollars can be saved? Is there any “must have” that retailers should only cut back on if it’s a last resort?

The first area I’d look at is your fulfillment – shipping costs, damage in transit, returns management, where can you improve?  Have a read through every blog post on ecommerce fulfillment, by expert Maxim Mironov on his blog Optimalogica.  Then I would suggest landing page optimization rather than “buying traffic.” 

An interesting thing that may happen is, as advertising spend is expected to go down, it will result in lower prices and less competition.  Since consumers are not flocking away from the internet, you may find PPC and shopping engine marketing is less expensive than it was in healthy economic times.

As we enter into 2009 what do you think will be the next big change in eCommerce (similar to the affects of “web 2.0”, social networking…)

I think video will be important from here on out.  It’s not cheap, so you might not want to offer it on every product you sell, but video can really ease a customer’s fears, uncertainties and doubts about a product when they can see a 360 degree view or see it in use.  Retailers that embrace it early will have an advantage over those who don’t.

Again, first things first.  Product copy and images are more important, get those right, then explore video.

What are some of your favorite online stores, and why?

This is the number one question I get asked  I can’t say one store does everything perfectly.  I like bits and pieces of stores like AE.com’s navigation and product pages, Endless.com’s filtering options and Crutchfield’s product finders and informative content.  But if I had to pick an overall favorite online retailer – I’d choose Threadless because of its unique business model, it’s fresh design and it’s active, passionate community.  It’s just all-around fun.

Special thanks Linda!

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.

Since my last post, I Stand Corrected: Blogging is More Than Random Thoughts and Voyeurs, I’ve continued to tune in to the content generated by our team. I was recently struck by an entry from Brian entitled, Taking a Step Back: A Business Owner’s Perspective on Letting the Team Take Over.
Brian honestly wrestles with his necessity as a partner to continually pass on the “torch”. He summarizes his conclusion as, “If we’re [leadership] leveraging every resource available to attack the highest priority opportunities in the best way possible, maybe it’s time to let the team carry the torch.” As a manager, a member of the team, I’m both encouraged and challenged by this leadership style.

Everyone Take One Step Back, I’m Taking the Next Bullet

How do you, as a member of the team, in turn encourage and challenge leadership to invest resources to attack the highest priority opportunities within your department?  That’s a question I’ve been wrestling with as it pertains to supply chain.  As I recently worked through this I noted thoughts that I believe are important to consider when making your case.

First, clearly identify what you and your department are actually responsible for.  The lines of responsibility can get cloudy unless there is mutual understanding about the hand off of a project from one department to the next, around the office we’ve begun to understand this as the “Handshake of Responsibility”.  This has been a difficult transition for me. I naturally want to see a project through to “completion”.  I do this partly because I naturally look to retain control, partly because I don’t want others performance or lack of performance to reflect poorly on me, and ultimately I want Gordian Project to be successful. However, this handshake method has been a freeing concept. “Completion” may not necessarily mean seeing a specific project from A to Z, rather my action plan of A to I, with the responsibility clearly being passed at J. This handshake method is about the clearest indicator we’ve had to communicate, “I’ve successfully completed what’s been asked of me.” I’m then freed to focus on other projects and/or processes leadership has asked of me.

Second, clearly communicate your competency of the responsibilities owned. The point of communicating known competencies isn’t to be arrogant, but to add awareness of resources that may be available to provide assistance.  Note that no matter the size of your company resources are limited, and knowing the capabilities of the resources can be the difference between making or breaking deadlines. Everything in business is about prioritizing opportunities with resources. If you can’t communicate competency within your area of responsibility you’re unlikely to be resourced. For each area of responsibility look to communicate:

• Philosophies - I understand why we do what we do.
• Strategic Goals - I understand where we want to be.
• Management - I understand how to get there.
• Processes - I understand what we do.
  

• Strategic Goals - With an understanding of limited resources, limit the strategic goals to those prioritized as the immediate keys to moving your department forward.  Keep each area of responsibility separate in the philosophical vision.
• Resources - Identify specific required resources for realizing your stated strategic goals. Consider as many factors as possible: budget, time, personnel, physical goods, other department’s resourcing, reports, benchmarking, etc. and limit them to the actual need for realizing opportunity.
• Incentives - Provide leadership with reasoning for resourcing your strategic goals. Don’t make them wonder why they should provide the requested resources; spell it out. What are the opportunities and efficiencies you’re going to specifically bring to your department with the provided resources. Go the extra mile and connect your department’s potential successes to the larger company vision.
• Timeline - Should the resources be provided; simply asking for resources demands performance. Set a realistic completion date, company visionaries will appreciate a target for rallying the whole of their business initiatives around. Timelines also set an expectation for response from your leadership.

Talk about calling yourself out; everyone take one step back, I’m taking the next bullet .

In truth, having an understanding of where you are, where you’re going, and how to communicate the process of arriving, will encourage and allow your team to step up and perform.  It also provides the confidence to be held accountable for that personal performance. Brian, thank you for wrestling honestly with your necessity as a partner to continually pass on the “torch”, and in so doing encouraging others, in similar fashion, to do the same.

Several months ago, we, the staff of Gordian Project, set out to author a blog. Not that all of us immediately found the prospect as inviting as others, but we generally engage a team spirit; thus the eCommerce and Entrepreneurship Blog.

I understood the blog’s driving purpose to be sharing our personal experiences within our given area of discipline as it relates to all things eCommerce. After several months of participation, I thought I would review our blog.

Caveat: I’d never read a blog going into this project, nor had I any desire to. The actual thought of sitting around reading peoples random thoughts makes me feel a bit voyeuristic. After reading Wikipedia’s definition of voyeuristic, it certainly isn’t that. Still, to this day, I’ve had no desire to read blogs other than for the purpose of this review.

I’m not sure it counts as “reading” but the one key area I check out on our blog each month is the Authors section of the home page. The key here is to identify how many posts I have in relation to other staff. I’m not sure what about life turns everything into a competition. This post will launch me forward to eight posts, however, I know I’ve written a couple that haven’t yet made it past the cutting room floor so this number isn’t hard and fast. But going with eight puts me in a respectable position.

Vanessa’s an over achiever at 40, but in all fairness she administrates the blog. I doubt any of her posts have hit the cutting room floor. If light reading and interesting tidbits is your thing, Vanessa’s Variety for the Week delivers. She shares what’s going on around other blog spaces, here at the office, and perhaps her life more than any other contributor.

Matt is our Development Manager. We’re among the elders of the office so I’ve truly appreciated our friendship. I don’t read his posts. I don’t understand what he does beyond the fact that I know he can fix or improve just about any internal process. Any time I walk past his desk he has a monitor filled with gibberish. I simply figure I won’t understand his posts either. Nice picture of his son in his most recent post though.

You might also notice Zach has 11 posts as of today. I’d read his if you only have a few minutes each day. Scanning through his titles, (that counts as reading I don’t care what anyone says) I find his posts most on topic: They include Website Improvements: Test Basic Usability Before Advancing, Google Sitelinks: Capturing My Proverbial Moby Dick, and Google Search Engine Results Pages Illustrated.

As a partner of Gordian Project I have to say bang up job Brian! I particularly enjoyed your Soft Economy Priorities? Time to Paint Your Parking Spaces; that’s leadership.

I’d like to thank Josh for his most recent post, The iPhone 3G Saved My Life. It truly inspired me to write this post. All this time I’d banged my head against the desk trying to come up with another post showcasing the thrilling world of Supply Chain, when all I needed was an iPhone post. Below, the desk I bang my head on as taken with my iPhone.

Over time, you’ll notice that Elizabeth stopped contributing as often. I have mixed emotions on this one. Elizabeth so desired to be a mother and now she is enjoying that gift with her daughter, Kara, as a stay at home mom. Congratulations Liz! However, Elizabeth also worked in Supply Chain and guess what that means, I’ve had to cover Supply Chain blogging without her. Thanks Liz!

I’ve actually loved reading Ellen’s posts for the first time as I prepared for this post. Ellen has taken the reins of a department that everyone loves to hate, HR. She sifts through all the big issues like food programs and political sensitivity. What a fun department to be in. Blog post ideas just shoot across Ellen’s desk, I’m sure. Ellen also manages Accounts Payable but I’ve yet to see a post with any real hard numbers.

Ryan takes his job seriously. He’s building a career, a future. He’s a smart guy who understands this isn’t just a 9 to 5 but an opportunity for him to build a foundation for his future. He’s always learning and looking for how to add value to the company. His posts are read as a “Where’s Ryan?” I just hope he’s not building his resume based on Ryan’s Randomness for the Week of June 20th, 2008.

Tim, as partner, bang up job! Please don’t break your run on providing an image in every post. No one does it better than you.

Our blog was launched just prior to Simon’s moving on to launch his own business. Nice work getting in a post you can use as a business card.

Before you jump to any conclusions about why Emily posted her first and, to this day, last post May 19th 2008, I dare you to read it (Dealing with Difficult Customers: Best Practices for Addressing Customer Complaints). She is right now over there fighting the good fight. Without her and her team keeping those customers happy there’s no need for this eCommerce and Entrepreneurship blog.

And finally I’d like to say welcome to Arianna. She brings so much to the table: customer service experience, multilingual, eye for detail and now she’s a vital part of Supply Chain. FYI Arianna…I’m going to need at least one post a month.

So those are my “collective of experiences, thoughts, processes and updates from people that are not only actively working in ecommerce but are also zealous about the industry.”

A recent supplier addition provided a strong reminder that the definition of A, B, and C products aren’t always the same from one shipper to the next.

Driving Sales and Meeting Expectations

Generally, and this is what got us in trouble in the first place, manufacturer’s class each unique model number based on some understanding of performance, and the market’s demand for that particular model number. The manufacturer experiences this demand as turns, or total number of units sold in a given period of time.

When adding new product lines, it’s important to clearly communicate reasonable delivery expectations to a potential customer. These expectations can be communicated in a number of ways; in stock, out of stock, quantity on hand, or with lead times to name a few. Customers are then free to make their buying decisions based on their specific project deadlines.

It can be difficult to balance driving sales with communicating availability, especially if the product has an unfavorable lead time.  Don’t shy away from this kind of proactive communication solely for the purpose of increasing sales. Communicated or not, note that every customer has some set expectation for what they consider a reasonable delivery time. Right or wrong if you’re unable to meet this expectation the sale will likely result in a cancellation and likely the subsequent incurred transaction fees. Nothing is gained but a poor customer experience. Framing a customer’s expectation of a reasonable delivery time with availability information serves to curb a potentially out of control cancellation rate.

The A's, B's and C's of Product Classification

As part of a recent supplier addition, we built our availability logic around the suppliers communicated A, B, and C classifications. At the heart of our logic was this understanding that an “A” product should experience greater turns and therefore be stocked accordingly; subsequently “B’s” then “C’s”. In less than four weeks a high cancellation rate was raising its head. In an attempt to positively impact our cancellation rate, a meeting was calendared to sit down with our supplier’s purchasing department. It was quickly pinpointed that a far more complicated definition of A, B, and C was at play. Things such as anticipated turns and current marketing efforts were skewing the historical data from which their classifications were determined. Stocking hadn’t necessarily caught up to these classification efforts.

It was apparent that a more real-time solution needed to be established for determining unallocated on hand as well as next anticipated unallocated delivery dates. Building availability logic around this data should prove accurate, translating into a more positive customer experience with a decreased cancellation rate.

A Couple Key Take Aways 

• Consider communicating availability clearly pre-transaction for a better customer experience. 
• When establishing a new supplier relationship, make sure you’re aware of the internal philosophies that establish classifications from which you’ll build your logic. 
• Attempt to peal back a layer from classifications by seeking real time unallocated availability. 
• Always keep an eye on reporting such as cancellation rates. Look for nuances that will help you bring efficiencies to your processes before a potential issue is out of control.

Freight companies are in a more heated competition with one another as customers begin to rely on them for timely, traceable deliveries.  UPS Freight is tackling the competition head on. In 2008 they have launched several new tools for freight customers. From integrating LTL shipments in WorldShip to their on-time guarantee, UPS freight is upping the ante for other freight companies.

LTL Shipments in Worldship

One of their new tools is the option to create LTL shipments in WorldShip, and even schedule a pick up.  The main benefit of this tool is time and convenience. Having to go to the UPS website, and enter all the shipping information is a time consuming task. When utilizing WorldShip, you can simply use the Keyed Import to dynamically import all the shipping information.

UPS On-Time Guarantee for LTL Freight Shipments

Another new feature is their on-time guarantee for LTL freight shipments. UPS Freight now gives an on-time guarantee in the 48 contiguous states, that assures your freight shipment will be delivered on time, or you can request the freight charges to be waived.  Jack Holmes, president of UPS freight, says, “It’s the next logical step in making UPS Freight the best in the business”

UPS Cross Border Freight Shipments and UPS Returns

The third feature that UPS Freight is offering is for cross-border freight shipments. They are now offering a comprehensive shipping solution to Canada and Mexico! With that, they have made a dramatic improvement in international returns. UPS Returns is accessible on the internet or through WorldShip, and includes fees for the return transportation, a return shipping label and any applicable duties and/or taxes.

While there are pros and cons with any freight company, it is obvious that UPS Freight is going the extra mile to ensure customer satisfaction. With LTL shipments ranging from a couple hundred to tens of thousands of dollars, the company that offers the most protection of your goods is the best to go with. Easy returns, both domestic and international, WorldShip integration, and an on-time guarantee…that’s pretty customer friendly!

In my last post about showrooms I discussed the question “Who decides what the customer wants to see in a showroom?” We will wrap up this series of showroom questions today, with the last question I proposed, “How can the manufacturer showroom dollars be better spent?”

It’s no secret that manufacturers partner with wholesalers for their showroom space. It’s the details of the incentive programs offered for that space that are written on the backs of napkins, a give and take relationship that is entrenched in the plumbing industry’s brick and mortar traditions.

So how can those incentive program dollars be better spent to reach a national, nay international, market with a complete breadth and depth of product? If you have read my previous posts you may have guessed that I would answer this question with the statement: “partnering with smart eCommerce retailers”.  Smart eCommerce retailers have the ability to showcase an entire product line to a robust demographic.

Search Engine Optimization

Organic search engine results may not cost marketing dollars in a traditional sense, but the cost of a successful SEO campaign isn’t cheap. A successful SEO campaign at minimum will take manpower, research, link building, and analysis.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked by potential suppliers why they shouldn’t just throw up a web site on their own. There are certainly plenty of examples of that.

It takes a lot of smart people working 40+ hours a week before you turn the heads of Google, Yahoo, AOL, or MSN. Semoz.org’s Rand Fishkin comments on What Makes SEO & SEM So Damn Hard.

Advertising Campaigns

Ranking well organically on Google, as well as all of the major search engines, can make a significant impact on an advertising campaign, Google specifically commands the most market share of any search engine and therefore can make a huge difference.  Google continues to grow and so do the dollars spent on keyword marketing campaigns. Competition gets nasty when you’re talking about less than 11 advertised spots on the first result page of any given Google search. Actual cost of advertising dollars aside, which is a significant cost, keyword management takes time and resources as well. Just look at the number of blogs on the subject.

But the payoff of smart SEO & SEM is priceless; consider the following screenshot for instance…

 

Kudos to our SEO team; 10 of 15 results in the above search direct the customer to PlumberSurplus.com.

For this search on Google, we are the top sponsored link, and the top three Google Product search results, and the top organic result.  The same search returns results for our product on Amazon, AOL Shopping, and multiple comparison shopping engines.

Comparison Engines

Some comparison engines are built around a customers desire to get right to the bottom line: the product they are searching for at the best possible price. Aggressive incentive programs, like offering free shipping, rebates, gift rewards, the entire product offering, etc. assure successful results in the retailer’s ability to provide the product at a reasonable market price. Further, this drives out those competing exclusively on slashing price, in that they may not have all of the items the consumer is looking for or the ability to ship in a fair amount of time with proper packaging, or qualified customer service representatives; allowing those of us with a complete compliment of core competencies to better build the products branding.

Co-Operative Promotions

Who doesn’t like a great deal?  From our experience we know that our customers do.  The cost to the manufacturer to run a traditional promotion goes beyond lower product margins; it can be some of the items that I listed above such as rebates, gift rewards and more. Getting the promotion to the wholesaler with supportive promotional materials is significant. This is not the case for eCommerce, we don’t need physical banners to hang or flyers or handouts, all of our ads can be done electronically, without additional printing or shipping costs. PlumberSurplus.com recently ran a President’s Day Free Shipping co-operative promotion on our Belle Foret offering for one week. This simple promotion saw an increase of 44% in sales over the prior week with no upfront cost.

Link Bait

Incentives go beyond simple dollars in a co-operative business relationship. Simple gestures like providing authorized retailer links from the manufacturer’s web site are invaluable. Jennifer Laycock explains that these links convey a stronger message than “here’s where you can buy our product”.  Rather, it’s a recommendation of the services that follow the click.

Conclusions

The use of the internet is a daily reality for an estimated 301,139,947 end users. Manufacturers across our country spend their day turning out products that are identifiable as A’s, B’s, C’s, and D’s.  In lemans terms their most popular product offering is referred to as their A’s and B’s and so on.  In one Supply Chain Manager’s opinion it’s time for those same manufacturers to look beyond the traditional distribution to market and consider a few select eCommerce napkins.

These come out on Friday’s so I’d like wish everyone a happy Cinco de Mayo now, while we take a look at my favorite highlights in the exciting world of eCommerce.

• The “R” word is being used more and more frequently as of late, but not all industries are feeling the hurt of higher gas prices and harder economic times. 
• Think that an online retailer that claims they have a 20.9% conversion rate is bogus?  Marketing Pilgrim explains what they are doing to experience this kind of success. 
• The New York tax law was the buzz of the industry last week, but online retailers are fighting back with lawsuits. 
• There is so much to think about and research when thinking about expanding abroad.  This blog put some valuable articles in one post. 
• Kindle is finally ready to ship!