In the past, retailers who wanted to build a multi-brand strategy faced a long expensive process of building stores or creating, printing and mailing catalogs. All that has changed with the Internet. Today, the Internet accelerates brand extension at a much lower cost. And retailers who don't understand that or don't keep up with retailers who are leveraging the power of the web to expand are going to be left behind. No retailer knows that better than Jim McCann, chairman & CEO of 1-800-Flowers. McCann moved his telephone-based nationwide flower service online in 1992 and to the Internet in 1994, before many retailers even knew what the web was. More important, he has since leveraged the web more than most retailers to assemble and efficiently build a family of strong brands each with its own major web operation, including Cheryl & Co., seller of gourmet baked goods; Fannie May Candy; Plow & Hearth, a housewares, home furnishings and gifts retailer; Popcorn Factory; plus wine and other retail products. Today, 1-800-Flowers gets 55% of its revenues from the Internet, and with $430 million in online sales in 2005, it is America's 35th largest e-retailer. McCann will talk about how the Internet has played a pivotal role in the building of his company and how the Internet will continue to be crucial to the company's multi-pronged strategy.

Few online companies have done as much to transform online retailing as eBay, the world's online marketplace. What started as a place for consumers to sell their collectibles has turned into a powerful platform for millions of people around the world to interact, share and trade with each other. Total gross merchandise volume for 2006 was more than $52 billion, 38% of which came from the sale of fixed-price items. Gary Briggs, chief marketing officer of eBay, will talk to our audience about how to leverage online retail beyond driving traffic to offline stores. He will challenge the audience to create an engaging experience for buyers that will not only build your brand but drive ecommerce beyond the everyday retail experience.

As the Internet becomes a more integral part of retailing and of consumers' shopping behavior, what retailers need to know about how shoppers use their sites is constantly changing-and growing more important. Our speakers in this session will dive below the surface of the fundamental web measurements and tell retailers what they need to know about complex interactions between various ingredients of an online sale, such as the relationship between search marketing, site search and navigation; or how a running total in a shopping cart affects conversion rates. They will explain why these new measures of a web site's success are important and will demonstrate how to track and interpret them. They also will look ahead to what new measurements e-retailers will need to pay attention to as the online retailing revolution continues. Our first speaker is with the Center for Retailing Studies at Texas A&M University, a leading e-retailing academic research institution. He will report the important site measurements that he has identified in his research with dozens of online retailers. Our second speaker heads up a company that has developed web sites for scores of successful, mid-sized retailers. He will reveal the results of an analysis of his clients' web sites that was conducted exclusively for the Internet Retailer 2007 conference.

Just like their retail partners, consumer brand name manufacturers have discovered the power of the Internet in selling direct to consumers. For manufacturers, though, the Internet has not been an unalloyed opportunity. Manufacturers who were early to take their products direct to consumers got slapped down by irate retailers who feared that they would be cut out of the process. Since then, manufacturers have cast about for ways to harness consumers' desire to shop online yet keep up good relations with their retailers. Sporting goods and apparel manufacturer Callaway Golf has crafted a strategy that allows both itself and its retail partners to sell merchandise online. Consumers who come to Shop.CallawayGolf.com can choose their merchandise and check out just like they do at any site. But at Callaway, orders are fulfilled by local retailers. In the 24 hours after Callaway announced its partnership program to retailers, more than 300 stores signed up to participate. At the same time, Callaway itself continues to sell and fulfill orders for pre-owned golf equipment at CalawayGolfPreowned.com. David Schofman, CEO of Callaway Golf Interactive, will explain the thinking that went into the company's web strategy, the benefits that Callaway and its retailers have derived from the joint efforts and how the Internet now becomes a major force for both Callaway and its retail partners.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. was one of the revolutionary forces of retailing in the last quarter of the 20th Century. Using the latest technologies, Wal-Mart consistently set the pace on pricing, which accounted for its unparalleled success in retailing. Now it is turning to the Internet to expand its growth, adopting a strategy of the Internet supporting the stores while using the Internet to create a pipeline to a whole new base of consumers-urban and upscale suburban shoppers. Brian Osborn, vice president of marketing for Walmart.com, will outline the ways that Wal-Mart will use the Internet to solidify its position as the world's largest retailer, discuss how certain web initiatives such as photo printing and pick-up in store support the stores and talk about the new markets that Wal-Mart hopes to tap with its new, sophisticated web design and features, such as build-your-own diamond ring.

Simmering in the background of the Internet world is the debate over whether the Internet should be regulated or unregulated. No matter how the debate turns out, the effect on the future of e-commerce will be profound. On one side are the providers of the telecommunications lines that the Internet relies on. They argue that they should be allowed to create tiers of service and charge whatever the market is willing to pay for Internet access. So if one online retailer is willing to pay a premium to have its traffic delivered more quickly than a retailer who is not willing to pay that premium, providers should be allowed to charge that premium. On the other side are the so-called "Net Neutrality" advocates who argue that such a plan would favor big, rich companies and quash the opportunity that the Internet has provided for small, spunky start-ups. This important session about the future of the Internet will feature a speaker from an Internet industry trade group, who will argue that regulating prices is what will kill the Internet by removing the financial incentive to upgrade the highway, and a speaker from the e-retailing community, who will argue that open access has been and will continue to be key to a prosperous Internet.

Overview: Online retailers face many tough decisions about what web technologies to invest in. This track will help retailers determine which technologies make the most sense for them. It will also address how retailers must implement and integrate these e-retailing technologies while at the same time making sure that everyone in their organizations understands and follows the game plan so that technology succeeds in doing what it's supposed to do: drive online sales.

Any retailer who is serious about participating in the transformation that the Internet is causing in the retail trade has to make technology investments. Making those investments can be daunting because e-retailing requires technology like no other business in history. From the e-commerce platform, to customer service, order fulfillment and marketing, technology needs are endless. At the same time, technology implementation must coordinate with the customer experience. So retailers face such issues, for instance, as balancing investments in analytics with investments in smooth checkout, or balancing investments in rich media with investments in communications systems for drop shippers. Our speakers will address the issues surrounding technology implementation and the customer experience.

Most e-commerce technology is complex right out of the box, but because each new e-retailing solution has to work with so much installed technology the complexity of an installation increases exponentially with each new technology. As a result, every technology installation becomes a management challenge. To complicate matters, a retailer that relies on third-party technology providers might not even know that there's a problem until it's too late. This session will focus on how to manage complex technology installations and how to make sure that they are staying on track, that they won't disrupt other technologies and that procedures are in place for quickly addressing problems. Our speaker has managed complex technology development and installations for three companies and will bring her real-world stories to this conference.

The bells and whistles may impress the managers in charge of technology of retail organizations, but the real usefulness of new e-retailing solutions is determined by consumers, who often have different opinions about the benefits of certain technology add-ons. Retail consultant J.C. Williams Group recently completed its first consumer survey of e-retailing technology, asking online shoppers which features and functions they liked at retail sites and which they didn't like. One of the surprising findings: low-tech often trumps high-tech. A J.C. Williams consultant will explain the survey and its significance.

One truth about web sites that has become abundantly clear is that technology decisions cannot be made independent of the marketing department. Technology decisions affect the amount and kind of marketing that a retailer can employ and marketing decisions affect the kinds and amount of technology that retailers must buy. But while it seems obvious that the two departments must work together, rarely do they do so in real life. The reasons may be as simple as marketing and IT have never coordinated before or as complex as overcoming turf concerns and mistrust. This session will feature an analyst who has worked with merchants to coordinate their approaches to marketing and technology and two retailers who have brought the two sides together—one from a web-only merchant and the other from a cataloger. They will discuss what it took to coordinate marketing and IT and the benefits their companies have derived as a result.

In the e-retailing world, AJAX is neither the great hero of the Iliad nor a bathroom cleanser, but rather a technology that enables rich Internet applications that allow shoppers to get information from web sites without a lot of navigating. It's one of the new online technologies that retailers need to be aware of as they make decisions today that will affect their web site operations for years. Others include Macromedia Flex, dynamic HTML, rich Internet applications, web 2.0, VoIP, and much more. Our speakers this session, both of whom work closely with new web technology implementations, will outline some of the technology coming down the road, detail what it will mean for e-commerce and recommend what retailers need to do to prepare for it.

Overview: As online retailing continues growing faster than other channels, it becomes a more important part of a multi-channel retail enterprise. As such, the choices that executives make for a web site echo throughout an organization. This track digs into some of today's most important executive decisions in online retail management, such as executive responsibilities, acquisitions and personnel recruitment, and helps management understand how decisions on retail web strategies affect the rest of a retail organization.

As the Internet becomes a much more important channel for retailers, the e-commerce chief's position is finally getting the recognition it deserves. The head of e-commerce is no longer a tech-oriented person whose job is to make sure the web site is up. Rather, it's an executive level job that involves not only setting strategies for the web site's success, but also implementing ways that the web site can help multi-channel sales and making sure that store-based or call center-based technology investments and processes and procedures are compatible with the web site. As a result, e-commerce executives today have become an integral part of achieving overall retailer corporate goals. Our speaker, with the 140-store Roots chain, will discuss the evolution of the role of the e-commerce chief, the responsibilities of the e-commerce chief, the challenges he faces in working with colleagues in other channels and what traits a retailer should seek in hiring a top e-commerce executive.

As online retailing continues its explosive growth, the market for e-retail-related mergers and acquisitions has become red hot. In a fast-moving business such as this, some players want to stay ahead of the market by buying what they need instead of developing it. Other retail chains are buying e-retailing operations because they have not developed their own online expertise and suddenly realize the need to do so fast. And some multi-channel retailers are buying because they want to solidify already leading positions on the web. As these factors come together, buyers may be facing offers they can't refuse. Our first speaker, who has been involved as a financial adviser with several acquisitions in the past two years, will look at the state of the acquisitions market, analyze recent acquisitions and look at the prices that were paid and whether they were justified. Our second speaker, whose company has made several e-retail acquisitions in the past few years, will tell buyers how to analyze an acquisition and how to determine whether it fits into a company's online retailing strategy.

Nowhere is the evidence stronger for how the web is transforming retailing than at some forward-thinking multi-channel retailers. Leading chains incorporate the Internet into stores with web-enabled kiosks that allow them to link to other systems. Indigo Books & Music uses kiosks to enhance its CRM/loyalty, inventory and POS systems, which allow customers to cash pay for an item that was ordered on the kiosk. This type of integration makes kiosks a more dynamic part of the store experience and not just a web-site-in-the-store. It also allows retailers to find more ways to use the kiosks to boost sales and tighten customer relationships. Our speaker will discuss why Indigo adopted such a strategy, how it implemented it, what it has achieved so far from the strategy and what's next.

While attracting and retaining good staff is a challenge for any business, it is a particular challenge for online retailing. For one thing, many of the disciplines of online retailing are not yet developed enough for a deep pool of experienced practitioners to exist in such critical specialties as search engine marketing, web analytics, and web design. For another, the industry is growing so fast that demand for the experienced talent is strong, and a top-flight e-retail specialists who receives one good offer from you knows another one is just around the corner. Our first speaker is a recruiter who will discuss the state of today's employment market for e-retailing experts, what it takes to attract top talent and how retailers can grow their talent from within. Our second speaker will present the results of an exclusive survey conducted by Internet Retailer for this conference on the salary, perks and compensation packages of top e-commerce jobs.

One of the reasons that the Internet has become so important to retailing is that the growth of online retailing is far outstripping the growth of retailing in general. The overall online market is growing 25% a year and many retailers are experiencing growth of 50% or more. That kind of growth creates unique challenges that companies experiencing lower growth don't face. Retailers must make sure their fulfillment operations can keep up with the orders or, if the retailer relies on vendors to fulfill orders, make sure the factory can meet demand and the vendor is equipped to fulfill high volumes in a timely fashion. They must balance call center operations with demand, not only in staffing but in making sure the staff is trained in the latest products and policies. And then there's the entire issue of when to invest in additional servers and technologies to meet demand, without over-investing. Our first speaker this session heads up a manufacturer's web site that experienced 60% growth in the past year. He will address how to balance growth areas to make sure that all are moving forward at the same time. Our second speaker runs a virtual retailing organization that relies totally on manufacturers to fulfill orders. He will discuss how he manages his relationships with vendors to make sure they can meet the demand he is bringing to them. He will also discuss the challenges of growing his technology and customer support infrastructure without investing too far ahead of demand.

Overview: While there are legends about small retailers who built web sites and customers came in droves, bringing the merchant wealth and fame almost overnight, the reality for most e-merchants is not so simple. A would-be retailer may have a wonderful idea for a site or a group of products to sell online, but no idea how to execute that vision. This track will walk small and medium-sized retailers—and even managers at big retailers who are relatively new to e-retailing—what it takes to assess their opportunity in online retail and then execute a winning web site to seize it.

You're online and selling. But you want to do more. How do you go about determining what to do next with your web site? This session will walk small retailers through how to define the business opportunity in their chosen market and make the most of it. It will answer such questions as:

Our speaker has consulted with dozens of small online retailers. She will examine the questions that small retailers ask most frequently as they plan for growth and help attendees analyze the answers in ways that make most sense for their business.

Many successful online retailers start out as eBay sellers or with Yahoo stores, then eventually outgrow those venues and want a URL of their own. Leaving the sheltered environment of a supported venue is not easy and requires a big leap in understanding of how to operate a web site. Our first speaker is an analyst with JupiterResearch who has evaluated retailer's options for e-commerce platforms. He will discuss the factors that retailers should take into consideration when weighing outsourcing, buying or a hybrid approach to an e-commerce platform. Our second speaker, head of a small online toy store, will walk retailers through how to decide whether to go to a stand-alone site or stay in a hosted environment and how to know when you've become big enough to go out on your own. Both speakers will also talk about how to define your web site needs before you start analyzing e-commerce platform providers, how to make sure the functionality you get in an e-commerce platform is actually what you need, what questions to ask to find out what's included in the platform and how to identify the right platform provider.

Nothing is more crucial to the success of a web site than the quality of hosting services. Without dependable, scalable web hosting, there will be no online sales growth. But few decisions that a growing e-retailer will make are as fraught with peril as the web hosting choice. This session will feature two retailers who have recently chosen web hosting companies. They will discuss the good, the bad and the ugly about their selection process and will walk attendees through how to identify prospective web hosts, what questions to ask potential web hosts, how to determine if the web host can do what you want, how to make sure you'll get the customer support you need and how to manage the relationship once a deal has been struck to ensure that the web hosting company will continue to meet your needs and grow as you grow.

Most small businesses face the challenge of attracting good talent. In the e-retailing world, it's a lot more difficult than elsewhere because online retailers need specialized skill sets that are in big demand and scare supply. And the problems become magnified for small online retailers as they are competing for the same kinds of people in a hot market with larger rivals who can pay a lot more. This session will examine the challenges that small online retailers face when hiring the right staff, what they can do to mitigate the salary gap problem without settling for second best and what opportunities exist for recruiting qualified staff right out of college.

If you want to know the small e-retailer's challenge in marketing, look no further than Google's market value: It's at $150 billion, more than IBM, Intel, and Coca-Cola. Everyone is a search engine marketer these days. And that means they are all competing by bidding up prices for keywords at search engines. Any marketer who decides to acquire new customers through the search engines better have a big appetite for spending and an ironclad way of controlling costs. But that's not reality for most small retailers. They have to watch their spending carefully and make sure every marketing dollar results in a profitable sale. This session will lay out alternatives to the intense competition on search engines and show retailers where they can spend marketing money that creates good results without breaking the bank.

One week before IRCE 2007, Internet Retailer will publish the 2007 Edition of Top 500 Guide, which will profile and rank America's 500 largest retail web sites based on 2006 online sales—the only such ranking in the market. Kurt Peters, editor in chief of Internet Retailer, will discuss how the Top 500 rankings have changed in the last year, who's moved up and who's moved down and how changes in the Top 500 reflect changes in the marketplace.

Few businesses have been transformed by the Internet as has the DVD rental business. In 1997, Netflix invaded what was the exclusive domain of stores and dominated by one merchant—Blockbuster, one of the fastest growing chains in retailing. With an innovative system of allowing customers to rent videos online, receive them by mail and automatically get the next DVD on their list when they return the last one, Netflix became an immediate box office hit. Today, the pure-play web merchant is the country's 21st largest online retailer with annual revenue of more than $700 million. Along the way it has proven so adept at what it does that Wal-Mart threw in the towel in trying to compete with Netflix and instead turned over the management of its online video rental program to Netflix. Netflix also forced industry-leader Blockbuster to respond with its own heavily promoted online video rental offering, but the store-based chain remains well behind its rival on the web. In his keynote presentation on June 6, Reed Hastings, the genius behind Netflix, will discuss how he was able to identify the online opportunity in DVD rentals, what it took to become what Netflix is today, the role the Internet plays in nurturing the relationship between Netflix and its customers, and how Netflix plans to address tomorrow's challenges, including the widely anticipated arrival of video download on demand, a technology Netflix is making a major investment in.

In the early days of Saturday Night Live, the late Gilda Radner performed a humorous sketch about a ludicrous mall store (the Scotch Boutique), which sold only tape and only Scotch brand tape at that. But what was funny in a store setting is serious business on the web, where super-niche retailing is thriving. Indeed, one of the biggest changes the Internet is bringing to retailing comes from the web's ability to make niche retailing easier and more profitable than ever by aggregating demand for highly specialized merchandise from across the nation and in some cases from around the world. This session will feature two e-retailers who will discuss how they identified their online retail niches, what it took to develop their markets and how they manage multiple brands when it comes to marketing and fulfillment. Our first speaker represents one of the most successful creators of targeted sites on the Internet, Ritz Interactive, which operates camera, boating and fishing retail web sites and is the 102nd largest retail web site. CEO Fred Lerner will talk about the benefits that the Internet brings to niche retailing, how Ritz identifies its niches, how it crafts its market strategy and what the future may hold for Ritz as it refines its approach. Our second speaker represents a smaller retailer that continually refines its niches, going ever smaller with each iteration. Doug Nielsen, CEO of NetShops.com, the 120th largest retail web site, will discuss how his company creates niche web sites from broader categories to the point where today it operates 80 distinct web sites, including Hammocks.com, Dartboards.com, AdirondackChairs.com and DogHouses.com. Nielsen will talk about how NetShops identifies which niches are worth pursuing on the web.

Internet shopping has morphed consumers' shopping and buying habits by changing their expectations about how shopping should work. Jonathan Steuer is a Managing Vice President and Consumer Strategist at Iconoculture, a consumer research and advisory company that specializes in understanding the values and motivations behind consumer behavior. He will discuss major changes in consumers' expectations, motivations and behaviors as a result of three major aspects of Internet shopping: the rise of niche e-retailers, the prevalence of social shopping tools and the enhanced transparency provided by online shopping tools.

With the spread of broadband Internet access, online TV-style content has become very popular. This session features two approaches. BabyUniverse operates BabyTV.com, a web-based TV channel featuring original programming created and controlled by BabyUniverse and aimed at expectant and new parents. Georgianne Brown will reveal why BabyUniverse is taking this approach and what the company expects to get out of its Internet TV channel. Tom Dickson will tell what blender manufacturer Blendtec has achieved with its videos on YouTube and on its own site, WillItBlend.com, demonstrating the power of its blenders. In addition to creating huge brand awareness with millions of views of the blender videos at YouTube, Blendtec has experienced a surge in sales.

A retail chain that doesn't keep up with Internet retailing will soon be history. Sure, stores still account for the lion's share of the business, but much of the chains' new competition now comes from online retailers. And new ways of doing business on the web are continually transforming customers' expectations of what chain stores should do to keep pace. As a result, retail chains face the daunting task of balancing web development with store investments and learning how to leverage each in the other channel. One of the earliest chains to recognize that the Internet is turning retailing into something it had not been before is REI. The sporting goods co-op retailer was among the first to understand the value of ordering merchandise online and picking it up at the store. It was also an early adopter of web-based kiosks in its stores, which not only helped save the sale when an item was out of stock at the store, but also raised the knowledge base of store associates by putting a near-infinite amount of data at their fingertips. In addition, the chain was among the first to migrate popular store features, such as customers' accounts of their outdoor adventures and store staffers' educational expertise, to the Internet. Brad Brown, vice president of e-commerce and web strategy, will discuss where REI sees the Internet leading it in the future and what it will take to keep up with this fast-changing technology.

Mobile commerce—the practice of making online purchases from held-held computer devices or cell phones—is happening. Today, it's barreling its way into the e-retailing market and merchants who don't understand it will find their market share taken away from them the same way pure-play online retailers grabbed share from store-based chains over the past decade. Some facts: In Japan, more than 10% of all e-commerce sales take place on mobile devices. More Japanese consumers today access the Internet via mobile phones and other devices than via a computer. And last year, for the first time, the amount of physical goods purchased via mobile devices exceeded the amount of digital goods purchased via mobile devices. Our first speaker represents a major mobile-commerce research company. He will report on the development of the market, how quickly he expects m-commerce to become mainstream and what retailers need to do to capitalize on the spread of mobile commerce instead of being victimized by it. Our second speaker is from American Greetings' AG Interactive, which has decided not to wait—that the market is developing so quickly that it's expedient to prepare for it now. He will discuss how his company and his customers are using mobile commerce, what the company gets out of it, what customers expect of it and what he's preparing for in the future.

Overview: The Internet changes how retailers think about merchandising. The old practices of initiating a campaign and seeing what happens are long gone. Today's retailers must react with lightning speed to changes. This track will help retailers understand the latest merchandising techniques, how the Internet has transformed merchandising and how they must prepare for the future of online merchandising.

The Internet has given lots of shopping power to consumers and made price comparisons infinitely easier than they were in pre-web days. This has had the effect of speeding up the commoditization of products which, in turn, forces merchandise into faster product lifecycles. For instance, research company GfK tracked the price of a digital camera sold on the Internet versus in a store. From an equal offline and Internet launch price in March 2005, the offline price had fallen by 16% by April 2006 while the online price had fallen by 22%. Our first speaker will discuss what e-retailers can do to make sure they are getting the right price for their merchandise, how to conduct price research and how to make sure that pricing managers are applying the right analysis to the data they gather. Our second speaker is from a retail company that successfully implemented an online pricing strategy, then found ways to move beyond pricing as a differentiator. He will discuss how the company keeps up with competitors’ prices, how it decides to respond and when not to and how the company uses other factors, such as customer service and product selection, to allow itself to play the pricing game less often.

The web's personalization promise remains mostly unfulfilled because implementing personalization technology used to be daunting. But the newest technology is more sophisticated than earlier versions and personalization now is a much more relevant option than it was before. With a marker that turns over every nine months, Due Maternity, operators of a web site and four stores that sell maternity apparel, needed a way to engage customers quickly in its web site. It personalizes shoppers' visits by encouraging site visitors to register at the site and providing e-mail updates and content that appeals to expectant parents. It then presents personalized product selections when visitors return to the site. Albert DiPadova, co-founder of the chain with his wife Shannon, will discuss how Due Maternity implemented its personalization program and what it gets out of it.

Amazon started customer reviews and now many other retailers are following. While only 23% of e-commerce sites post customer reviews today, such content is one of the most discussed—and desired—online enhancements. Many consumers love to write them and a recent survey shows that nearly two-thirds of web shoppers find them valuable and tend to be loyal users of sites which offer them. This session will lay out how a retailer can make the most of online customer reviews, what it takes from a personnel and technology standpoint to maintain them, how much editing should go into them, how negative reviews should be handled, and, most importantly, what the merchant gets out of them. Our first speaker is a researcher who has studied online product reviews and will provide an overview of the market and what retailers need to be aware of when encouraging customers to post reviews. Our second speaker is from a retail company that posts consumer product reviews at its web site. He will talk about the challenges and opportunities of reviews and the benefits the company has gotten from such content.

Many analysts say online video will soon be past the option stage and enter the realm of must-have features as broadband Internet access spreads into the home and consumers expect more sophisticated content at all web sites. But the challenges of offering web site video content are many, including producing the video, properly hosting video content and making sure it can be viewed by all customers visiting your retail web site. Our speaker, who represents consumer electronics manufacturer LG Electronics, will discuss the challenges of creating and hosting video content and the benefits of doing so.

eBay, Yahoo and other online entities that are data-driven are making aggregated data available to anyone for the asking. Want to know the sale price and average time to sell of retro radios on eBay? Just ask. Or what consumers are clicking on in Yahoo searches? Yahoo will tell you, if you know where to look and how to ask. Similarly, Yahoo will tell you the relationships among search terms. This session will feature a representative of Yahoo, who will outline the information it has available and how retailers can use it, and a retailer who has taken advantage of the information available and who will discuss how his company uses the information and what it gets out of the data.

Overview: When it comes to building web traffic that powers online sales growth, web-based marketing and web site content go hand-in-hand. For instance, some e-retailers have established blogs not only to engage prospective customers more deeply and convert more of them to buyers but also to provide so-called "spider food," web site material for search engine spiders to crawl. This track will help retailers understand the latest approaches to web site marketing, what they mean and what retailers need to do to take advantage of them.

The most enthusiastic—and effective sales associates in a retail store might well tell customers, "I can talk about this all day long." Today, if they can do that in the store, they can do it online as well, through blogs. Blogs now serve several purposes at retail web sites. They establish a retailer's credentials in a certain area, engage shoppers in a way that retailers hope will turn them into buyers and provide additional material for web spiders to crawl. But while retailers across the spectrum have started blogs, the most successful are those related to a particular topic that has a community of devotees, whether they be skiers, collectors of old books or racers of RC cars. This session will feature a marketing consultant who will analyze the success or failure of blogs, pinpoint markets where blogs make the most sense, discuss what makes a successful blog and lay out the faults of unsuccessful ones. He will be joined by a retailer who maintains a blog and who will discuss what it takes to create and maintain a blog, what benefits his company has received from its blog, and what challenges it has faced in keeping the blog current and relevant to its customers.

With the performance and pinpoint accountability of online promotions and advertising, many e-retailers are focusing more of their web site's marketing budgets on online media. But for many merchants, offline media still plays an important role in driving online retail sales. The challenges of marketing offline, however, are in creating campaigns that encourage shoppers not just to visit your online site but to purchase something from it and then of accurately measuring the impact of direct marketing and other forms of offline advertising on online sales. This session will feature a retailer who has used offline media extensively to promote its web site. Zhennaa Gallagher will outline the benefits of using offline media; discuss how a retailer must craft the offline message to encourage online shopping, not always easy since the viewer of the offline message is probably not near a computer when he sees the message; and detail how VistaPrint measures the effectiveness of the offline marketing message.

Google and Yahoo have long dominated the search engine market. But such a lucrative market was sure to attract competitors, and MSN and Ask.com are making bold moves to expand the user activity and marketing revenue. This session will examine the strengths and weaknesses of various search engines, the different results that each engine produces in different product categories, and what retailers need to do to make sure they are deploying search marketing resources in the optimum way. In addition, Google's acquisition of YouTube will change how e-retailers use video sites to attract customers. Our first speaker is an analyst who tracks the performance of search engines. She will discuss the changing search engine landscape, the developing competition between search engines for market share and how retailers should evaluate the engines to be sure they capitalize on the new market environment. Our second speaker spreads his marketing to different search engines depending on their performance in specific areas and among specific demographic groups. He will discuss how he analyzes results and how he decides where to spend what.

As search engines become more influential in determining how consumers use the web to shop and a more important part of e-retailers' marketing efforts, the cost of keywords is being driven up dramatically. As a result, e-retailers are finding they have to improve the mileage they get from search engine marketing. It's no longer a wise use of marketing dollars to try a wide spectrum of search terms and then cull the under-performers. Search efforts must be well targeted from the start. Merchants, therefore, must gain a deeper understanding of the role of search engine marketing. This session will feature discussion of new methods e-retailers should be considering in their search engine marketing, the ways that consumers respond to different keywords, how search terms and the calendar often work together in unexpected ways and how search marketing affects offline sales.

As online retailing becomes more sophisticated, more retailers are understanding the importance of site search in driving online sales. Yet, nearly 10% of all retail site searches yield no results, which in turn yields no sales. Making sure that site searches produce some results is fundamental to using the search box tool productively. But that is only part of the equation. Retailers must make sure that their content matches up well with the most frequently used terms in site search. Most retailers were surprised by a 2006 study by WebSideStory and the Patricia Seybold Group which showed that a mere 2% of unique search queries on e-commerce sites accounted for 50% of all searches. Unfortunately, not all retailers know what those top terms are, and thus do not gear their web content to get the most merchandising benefit from them. In addition, the study showed that shoppers who successfully use site search on an e-commerce site buy 270% more than shoppers who don't. Thus the search box becomes one of the most important marketing and merchandising tools on a web site, worthy of the direct attention of the e-commerce manager. This session will delve into the results of the study, show retailers how to identify their best on-site keywords, how to optimize the content related to those keywords and how to take best advantage of the site search box.

Overview: This track is a continuation of Track C from Day Two and will offer small and medium-sized retailers—and even managers at big retailers who are new to the industry—a basic understanding what it now takes to assess the e-retailing opportunity then execute a winning web site.

Getting products to the customer is the ultimate goal of an online retail transaction. But it is also one of the most costly processes of e-retailing operation. Knowing how to pick, pack & ship and then deliver products in a timely fashion at a good price is one of the keys to creating a successful online retailing business. There are myriad management challenges in making sure an e-retailer's fulfillment operation—whether in-house or outsourced—and its delivery partners are providing timely, high-quality service. Our first speaker in this session has worked with dozens of top-name retailers in creating fulfillment delivery excellence. He will examine the options in fulfillment operations and the ways that retailers can negotiate with delivery companies for lower rates and faster delivery. He will be joined by a retailer who will provide real-world examples of developing a first-rate fulfillment and delivery operation.

You don't have to be big to deliver big customer service to web shoppers. But if you're going to do it yourself, you do need to know how to staff and manage a web site's contact center. This session will examine the hiring, training and technology required for a small retailer to operate a customer contact center that delivers what customers need when they need it. Our speaker represents a small online plumbing fixtures and equipment retailer who will discuss how his company's small customer service department handles all kinds of inquiries and answers them in a timely fashion, the training it takes to keep the staff up to speed on new products and policies, and how he recruits and trains qualified reps.

As e-retailers grow above a certain size, the need to tie front-end customer ordering systems with backend inventory, order fulfillment and customer service management systems becomes more critical. Retailers who could manually connect a customer-facing system with a separate backend management system when they were processing only a few dozen orders a day find that to be a nearly impossible task when they're handling hundreds of orders daily. This session will help retailers understand when they need to integrate their front and back-end systems, how to do it and what benefits they can derive from converting to a single system. Our first speaker has years of expertise in developing software that ties a retailer's operations together. He will outline the ideal system in which all information flows seamlessly up and down the order system. Our second speaker, a retailer, will provide a real-world example of what it took to make customer-facing and back-office systems work together.

The private financing market is awash with funds to invest in small businesses in high-growth industries such as e-retailing. The problem is finding a partner who will finance your growth without taking away your control of the enterprise. This session will examine the outside investment options, how to find the money and what to give up and not give up to investors who are looking to help you achieve the next level with your online business. Our first speaker invests in e-retailing companies and will walk retailers through what to expect when they're in financing discussions, which questions to ask and how much control to keep or cede in relation to the amount of money available. Our second speaker is an executive with a retailer that recently accepted outside funding to grow the business. She will discuss how her company chose a finance partner and how it plans to use the proceeds.

Small e-retailers sell their businesses at some point for a variety of reasons. Some like the challenges of a start-up and have no taste for managing an ongoing concern. Others want to cash out of what they've built while the e-retailing and investment markets remain strong. Still others are lured by offers from competitors that they just couldn't refuse. Whatever the reason, small online retailers need to be able to assess the true value of their enterprises and understand the state of the M&A market at any given time. This session will explore the reasons to sell and what it takes to craft a sale that is beneficial to both sides. It will feature a venture capitalist who will talk about today's market for outright sales and what retailers can expect and an e-retailer who sold his start-up company and is now helping other retailers grow.