Workshop: Marketing Your
Retail Web Site
June 4, 2007
Finding the payoff in search
Harnessing the Power of Search Engines: Mastering the Complexities of Pay per Click and Optimization
Tom Tweedie, director, consumer direct marketing,
Day-Timers Inc.
Cory Nielsen, Internet marketing manager,
Woodwind & Brasswind
Rahmon Coupe, president & CEO, Your Amigo
Given Day-Timers' category--annual planners--some standard practices of search engine optimization weren't working, Tom Tweedie said. Yet Day-Timers is achieving search engine optimization success under the metrics it's determined to be the most meaningful--new customers, online visibility, organic search referrals and the number of pages indexed by search engines. Cory Nielsen identified challenges to search engine marketing as technical issues, poor site merchandising, competitor impact, increasing costs per click and more. Nielsen manages his campaigns to gross profit return on ad spend rather than conversion. "A lot of vendors can track that as long as you have the back end to do it," he added.
Rahmon Coupe focused on the long tail in search engine marketing. Because online retailers aren't constrained by physical shelf space, they can carry products less frequently purchased; sold in ones and twos, they add up, Coupe said. The key is to create web pages optimized for long-tail searches. "More content equals more keywords, which equals more potential traffic," he added.
Fine-tuning e-mail marketing
E-mail Marketing: Being Persuasive, Not Offensive
Ryan Hoffman , e-commerce marketing manager, Overstock.com
Vicki Updike, vice-president, merchandising & marketing, Miles Kimball Co.
Mike Hilts, president & general manager, YesMail
With a mature e-mail subscriber base and other issues, sales from Overstock.com's e-mail program were stagnating. But an overhaul turned e-mail into one of Overstock's fastest-growing marketing channels, Ryan Hoffman said. Overstock redefined roles within its e-mail department to improve planning and creativity, increased e-mail relevance with better customer segmentation and increased personalization to re-engage subscribers, Hoffman said.
Vicki Updike shared results of three e-mail strategies at Miles Kimball's Exposures brand. Customers who received e-mails supporting catalogs spent 18% more than customers who got catalogs only. Customers who got e-mail reminders of sales spent 11% more than those who got postcards. Finally, those who received targeted e-mails spent 14% more than those who received non-specific e-mails.
Mike Hilts said that in the formula of the right offer to the right person at the right time, the "right time" is most important. Both inferred signals, such as product renewal schedules, and observed signals, such as browsing behavior, offer cues on when to e-mail customers with offers, he added.
Leveraging loyalty with affiliates
Affiliate Networks:
The New Muscle in Web Marketing
Gordon Magee, director, Internet marketing and analysis, Drs. Foster & Smith
Adam Silverman, director, e-commerce, The Wet Seal Inc.
Stuart Frankel, president, Performics Inc.
About a third of Drs. Foster & Smith's affiliate customers are new, a third are existing customers who would not otherwise have purchased and a third are cannibalized from other channels, Gordon Magee reported. He said a fellow retailer in the University of Wisconsin eBusiness Consortium confirms similar numbers, suggesting two-thirds of affiliate sales are incremental.
Adam Silverman noted that affiliate marketing is resource-intensive. "Focus on partnering with key affiliates aligned with your brand," he advised. With minimal scale in affiliate marketing, merchants must use their time wisely, Silverman said, and expect 5% to 10% of online marketing revenue to come from affiliates.
Stuart Frankel countered what he termed myths about affiliate marketing, such as merchants' view that affiliates are their sales force. "Affiliates work for themselves," he says. "So marketers and affiliates should partner." Frankel also challenged the notion that affiliate shoppers are cheap and less than loyal, offering Performics data showing affiliate shoppers are wealthier, have children in the home and skew older than the average Internet shopper.
Marketing in a Web 2.0 world
New Age Marketing Tools:
Is Today's Hype Tomorrow's Help?
Boris Wertz, CEO Abebooks
Pinny Gniwisch, executive vice president of marketing, Ice.com
Jeremy Lockhorn, director, emerging media and video innovation, Avenue A/Razorfish
Web 2.0 may be hyped, but it's here to stay, Boris Wertz said. Web 2.0's tools and venues can benefit e-commerce by driving increased "findability" of products with richer product data and by allowing merchants to quickly change merchandising and products based on immediate feedback of customer reviews, Wertz said.
Pinny Gniwisch shared how Ice.com is experimenting with Web 2.0 as another way to reach its audience online, including details about its Sparkle like the Stars blog, featuring jewelry similar to that worn by celebrities. Ice.com created links to numerous fashion blogs. "We get 12,000 visitors a week on our blog and we just have hosting costs," Gniwisch says.
Jeremy Lockhorn noted trends in digital media are affecting advertising, including the proliferation of content, fragmentation of ad distribution networks and the fact that consumers are in control of how they consume media--including advertising. However, "people don't hate relevant ads," Lockhorn said, noting that digital media by their nature have an opportunity to drive more relevant messages.
Workshop: Mastering E-Payments
& Web Security
June 4, 2007
Choosing an alternative
Beyond Credit Cards: E-Checks, PayPal, Google Checkout & Much More
Alicia Berry, director of operations, DVD Empire
Kelly Day, senior vice president, Discovery Interactive
Jay DeWitt, partner, Glenbrook Partners
Despite long programming times, Discovery Interactive is pleased with several new alternative payment programs, Kelly Day said. It took four programmers several additional weeks to interface with PayPal, but now 13% of all transactions on Discovery Interactive's e-commerce site pass through PayPal. "We were incredibly surprised with the results," Day said. Discovery Interactive also is achieving goods results with Bill Me Later from I4 Commerce. Since introducing Bill Me Later as a new billing option last fall, the service now accounts for about 3% of total orders. Alternative payments reduce a merchant's overall processing costs and give shoppers more purchasing flexibility, Jay DeWitt told attendees. "Alternative payments challenge the status quo," he said. As an enhancement to its alternative payments program, DVD Empire is working with PayPal to attract younger shoppers who want to shop online with a web-enabled handheld device. "They are helping us to reach a demographic we really want," said Alicia Berry.
Knowledge is power
Getting A Better Deal: Negotiating Lower
Discount Fees
Derek Kleinow, CEO, TigerGPS.com
Steve Mott, principal, BetterBuyDesign
Greg Worch, senior vice president, national accounts, Chase Paymentech
Knowledge is power when it comes to negotiating a better discount rate, Steve Mott told attendees. Even though payments can be hard to understand, retailers need to take the time to learn the specific terms of their contracts, including how much they are paying for chargebacks and value-added processing fees, to begin negotiating. "You need to get smart fast," Mott said. Derek Kleinow, CEO of TigerGPS, an online retailer of global positioning systems and related gear, said negotiating a better deal also goes beyond just seeking out the lowest processing fees. "Rate is not the only factor," he said. "You have to manage for the overall cost of card acceptance." To obtain a better deal, small merchants can ask potential processors to supply them with an upfront risk assessment and benchmark pricing, said Greg Worch. "Find a payments processor who understands your business," he said. "Benchmark your organization versus your peers."
Meeting the standard
Complying with the New Card Company
Security Rules
Dave Glaser, vice president, professional services, CyberSource Corp.
Scott Sweren, national practice manager,
Fortrex Technologies Inc.
Steve Weiskircher, vice president of information
technology, Crutchfield Corp.
Merchants shouldn't underestimate the time and cost needed to remain fully compliant with Payment Card Industry data security standards, said Steve Weiskircher. The PCI standards from Visa and MasterCard are requirements for the handling of credit card information. Crutchfield has spent about $230,000 to remain in compliance. The company spent $70,000 on an intrusion detection system and $20,000 on a visitor management system. Crutchfield began studying PCI standards compliance early on, but as late as 2005 still had trouble getting basic answers on deadlines and auditing procedures. "There was a lack of available information at the start," he said. Failure to comply with PCI standards can also be costly, Scott Sweren told attendees. "Visa assigned fines of $4.6 million in 2006," he said. "All PCI programs and procedures must be well documented." As an alternative, third-party software can provide flexibility and security in satisfying PCI requirements, said Dave Glaser. "An automated program eliminates manual data handling," he said.
A bite out of crime
Web Security: Identifying and Avoiding the
Scam Artists
Julie Fergerson, vice president, Debix Inc.
Timothy Laudenbach, credit risk manager, Best Buy Co.
Martine Niejadlik, senior director of risk detection, PayPal
Most retailers have adequate safeguards to protect against fraud. But criminals are sophisticated at stealing personal information and merchants must look for new ways to improve their fraud detection system and screen the results. "The crooks are getting smarter," Julie Fergerson, founder of the Merchant's Risk Council and vice president of Debix Inc. told IRCE 2007 attendees. Criminals are becoming adept at creating fake Internet protocol addresses and using real names to create realistic, but false, e-mail addresses to commit fraud. Retailers can troubleshoot problems by looking even more closely at data from their address verification, order screening and card verification systems. Manual reviews, while a bother to customers, also help to spot potential fraud. "Lots of little warnings alone might not mean anything, but closely scrutinizing the combined results might signal a bigger potential problem," said PayPal senior director of risk detection Martine Niejadlik. "Criminals know what to target."
Workshop: Designing Retail
Web Sites That Sell
June 7, 2007
Think like a customer
The Latest Concepts in Retail Site Design
Harold Ferrari, sr. mgr., e-commerce, Interstate Batteries
Howard Kaplan, VP, marketing, Future Now
Neil Clemmons, SVP, strategy, Critical Mass
The redesigned InterstateBatteries.com includes dynamic breadcrumbs that show visitors how they got to the current page. "If they realize they made a wrong choice three steps ago and chose Makita Tools when they meant Milwaukee, they can click back to that point," said Harold Ferrari. Other features added were context-sensitive tags that adjust content according to the path the customer took, and dynamic HTML menus that save site real estate.
Connect to both the emotional and functional needs of your customer, advised Neil Clemmons. Different types of customers should see different content. Information and tutorials about complex products can help upsell customers, he said.
Howard Kaplan suggested keeping technology specialists out of early design discussions while marketers hammer out a selling strategy. "Once you know how people want to buy," Kaplan said, "the technology people are more likely to solve the problem."
Can I see inside?
Making Rich Media A Rich Source of Sales
Jeff Schueler, president, Usability Sciences Corp.
Craig Horsley, web site operations manager, JC Penney Co.
Tari Huddleston, sr. mgr., e-business, The Home Depot Inc.
Jeff Schueler said zoom was the favorite feature in a recent Usability Sciences study of five rich media implementations, found helpful by 76% of testers, followed by rotate (59%), color changes (54%) and video (38%).
The top rated of the five implementations was a grill selector from Home Depot that lets visitors search by brand, fuel type and features. Clicking on a grill expands the image, and there are audio and video explanations of features. One negative: you can't look under the cover of all grills. "People always want to be able to look inside something," Schueler said.
Customers who use the grill finder are more than 50% more likely to buy than other visitors to HomeDepot.com, reported Tari Huddleston. She noted most site visitors are women who "want to be educated before they go into the store." A JCP.com feature that lets visitors see different combinations of sheets, pillows, comforters and window valances produced sales 290% over plan, said Craig Horsley.
Don't be too clever
Better Navigation Keeps E-Shoppers On Board
Patricia Graca, customer experience and
web site product manager, HP Home & Home Office
Bill Cronin, e-commerce manager, Vermont Teddy Bear Co.
Jennifer Bailey, principal, Red Spade Inc.
Sticking to Internet conventions makes sites easier to use, Jennifer Bailey advised. Navigation should be on the left or on the top. Don't try to be unique by calling customer service "service desk." "Let's not be clever," Bailey said. "Just call it what everybody else calls it because that's what customers will understand."
Two e-retailers speaking with Bailey explained how they tweaked their sites to improve usability. HP Home & Home Office found consumers signed up for a rewards program were not signing in when they made purchases, and then not receiving rewards. By making the sign-in box more prominent and recognizing the customer by name, 30% more customers signed in, said Patricia Graca.
At Vermont Teddy Bear, customers were being presented with options after declining features, leading to confusion. That cleared up after the company eliminated irrelevant options, said Bill Cronin.
Know your customer's computer
Removing Obstacles to Site Effectiveness
Tim Wolfe, web applications manager, FootLocker.com
Richard T. Litofsky, president and CEO, cyScape Inc.
More sites use video, but whether customers can view it depends on their Internet connectivity and software, said Tim Wolfe. "Know your customer," he said. "If you want to deliver video, know his connection speed." FootLocker uses BrowserHawk from cyScape Inc. that detects connection speed, browser used and other visitor information.
That information enables a retailer to deliver messages tailored to the visitor, said Richard Litofsky. "Instead of asking visitors to figure out what's wrong, provide self-help that tells them what they need to do," he said.
For instance, with many sites using Flash technology for presenting video, it's important to know whether a visitor has Flash and which version. Wolfe noted that 98.6% of online users in the U.S. and Canada have at least version 6 of Flash, but only 84% Flash 9.
