COVER STORY:
Small e-retailers fight to wrest the “value” shopper from Wal-Mart and Amazon
Online shoppers are seeking value. And that’s helped big retailers with a reputation for low prices—like Wal-Mart, Amazon and Costco—to thrive during the recession. Smaller e-retailers are fighting back, seeking ways to convey their own value proposition. This story will take a detailed look at a swath of 25 smaller retailers in the Internet Retailer Top 500 to see what they’re doing to woo cost-conscious shoppers, which of these strategies is working, how consumer behavior is changing as the economy shows some signs of improvement, and how the value mantra will impact the ability of smaller online merchants to compete in the 2009 holiday season.

Affiliate marketing: How retailers make sure affiliates help, not hurt,
the bottom line
Affiliate sites are an important source of sales for many web retailers, but they can become competitors if the retailers aren’t careful. Amazon this spring announced it would no longer pay affiliate fees when referrals come from an affiliate’s paid search ad, a move to prevent affiliates from competing with Amazon on search keywords. Other retailers won’t permit affiliates to bid on the retailer’s brand names for the same reason. In this story, we’ll report on how retailers are draw the balance between maintaining good relations with revenue-generating affiliates and making sure those affiliates are not unduly driving up the retailer’s marketing costs and undermining its standing in search engine results.

Managing performance: Starting from scratch to build a lightning-quick site
The more features there are on e-commerce sites the more online retailers need technology to make sure those features don’t slow down site performance. That starts with the proper way to design e-commerce applications so that they minimize required bandwidth. Other strategies include testing database performance to speed up the display of product data, testing manufacturer content before adding it to a site and testing site performance from the customer’s perspective, including in all the major browsers. This story will look at the state of the art when it comes to maximizing site performance, what it costs to implement various strategies and how improving site performance affects sales.

Fulfillment: Maneuvering through changing market conditions to minimize shipping costs
Online retailers’ shipping managers face a vendor landscape that’s changed significantly in the last year. While DHL exited the domestic shipping business, removing one of four major competitors for standard-sized packages, the economic downturn has sharply reduced volume. That’s made the remaining players anxious to lock in volume to cover their high fixed costs. This article will examine how these changes have affected pricing, the strategies online retailers employ to negotiate the most favorable rates even with one fewer provider, and the outlook for shipping rates as the economy begins to bounce back.

Site design: Expanding the width of a web site and what to do with the added real estate
While most consumers now use relatively large monitors, many online retailers still have web sites designed for smaller screens. Only a relatively few fill up the entire screen on a 17-inch monitor.This story will look into what it takes to expand the width of a retailer’s site to accommodate the larger screens, how the site adjusts the display to fit the consumer’s screen size and whether the extra space is worth the investment.

Marketing strategy: Haggling with shoppers in online bargain basements
There are a growing number of services that let consumers set the price they want to buy and negotiate with merchants that sell the item. A number of major online retailers are participating in one or more of these programs, including Amazon, Buy.com and Dick’s Sporting Goods. What’s in it for the merchant? Does it generate sales? And can online retailers generate follow-on sales with shoppers who use these bargaining programs?

Loss prevention: Web-based systems that help curb store theft
The economic downturn increases the risk of theft by both shoppers and employees at a time when retailers can ill afford to absorb additional losses. This story will look at a variety of Internet-based techniques retailers are using to reduce theft and to recognize it quickly when it occurs. It will also examine how these systems can help merchants keep store shelves stocked and provide a quality shopping experience.

Personnel: Retailers’ stake in the national health care debate
Health care reform is a hot topic in Washington, and many retailers fear the upshot will be higher personnel costs. This exclusive Internet Retailer survey will look at what retailers are doing today: how many employees they now cover, how much of health insurance premiums they pay and how their health insurance costs are changing. It will also gauge their views on the controversial health care plans being discussed on Capitol Hill. The survey also will look at what’s happening to salaries, hiring and layoffs as retailers try to remain profitable despite the economy.

Retailer profile: Seeking a closer attachment to its best customers,
Staples pushes web-store initiatives
Staples’ goal is to emerge from the recession with a stronger relationship with its best customers: small business owners. And the web is playing a big role in this strategy. In the past year it has introduced order online/pick up in store, enabled consumers to check store inventory online and stepped up cross-channel promotions. And it’s reorganized the way it redesigns parts of its e-commerce site so that it can make changes more quickly. This story will examine how Staples has carried out these initiatives and how other multichannel retailers can benefit from Staples’ example.

Customer service: How eBay’s new rules will impact customer service
across e-commerce
EBay is changing the rules of the game, and telling merchants they better not leave many customers truly unhappy if they want to receive the discounts and other perks that will come with its new Top-Rated Seller designation. Many current eBay PowerSellers will have to beef up customer service and change how they respond to complaints if they want to bring their complaints down by eBay’s deadline of next April. This will affect not just retailers that make their living selling on eBay, but bigger merchants like Buy.com and TigerDirect that now sell heavily on the online marketplace. And the ripple effects of these changes will go beyond eBay. The customer service enhancements eBay merchants make will carry over to their own web sites, putting pressure on competitors to raise the level of their own service.

Market segments: The Internet creates a new retail category: the e-book
Much as the iPod changed music retailing, Amazon’s Kindle and competing e-book readers are changing book retailing. With startling speed, consumers are starting to download books in digital form instead of buying conventional books, and that has important implications for all booksellers. Through interviews with online book retailers and analysts, this story will examine the emergence of this new segment, how deeply it’s likely to cut into the sale of hard-copy books, and how online retailers can take advantage of the proliferation of e-book readers to sell magazines, newspapers and other information in digital form.

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