In a recent Ipsos survey, 12 million Americans fessed up to shopping online while listening to coworkers and clients drone away on a conference call. Lifehacker has posted a list of techniques to help people avoid zoning out during a call – but I’m more interested in encouraging and exploiting this trend. What if shopping cart vendors were to automatically discount purchases made between 9 and 5 local time, or create coupons which were only valid during business hours – would it work?
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Search Strategies
This post from Ask MetaFilter discusses a few interesting search ideas that cart vendors are implementing. I’ve always been fond of the kind of progressive guided search that a lot of vendors implement using dropdown lists (or Ajax) – this seems to make discovery easier for people who either don’t know precisely what they want or cannot describe it unambiguously using a SKU.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
NRF posts Favorite 50 e-Tailers
Amazon.com tops the list.
To no one’s surprise, Amazon – the world’s largest pure-play e-tailer – is in the top spot. During the course of its metamorphosis from discount online bookstore to a diverse Internet selling environment (and incubator not only for a startling number of micro-suppliers but of online marketing for Target), Amazon has focused relentlessly on two principles: customer service and innovation.
The takeaway for SMB cart owners?
… Online retailers are investing in applications they believe will embellish selling. Some of the more prominent of these are online reviews, live chat and the ability for customers to watch video about how to use a product.
Each of these can provide significant differentiation for your store. Which ones do you use?
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Wow! Lancome.com site updates
This is guided e-commerce taken to the next level. All those cool new Ajax features? They’re using them. Take the site tour and be amazed.
Background: The New York Times gives a brief overview of what’s new in beauty websites (with some discussion of Lancome); Digital Pulp discusses their work on the site.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
ShopNBC.com reports web video increases conversion rate
Stories like this always astonish me because I find web video annoying. I would love to get a demographic breakdown of who’s watching web marketing material – is it only young people?
