E-Commerce Trends

Staples Making Huge Investments in E-Commerce

John Vinson — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:29:46 +0000

Staples has its eyes set on some pretty lofty goals going into 2012. One of the leading office supply chains, Staples is looking ahead to becoming the leading multichannel commerce company. They aren’t joking around with their follow through either, as they’ve brought on teams from the E-Commerce Innovation Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

They’re actively recruiting IT, and product managers, usability experts and more. They’re looking to triple their workforce. Their new centre dedicated to e-commerce will open around May of this year.

Brian Tilzer, Staples.com’s vice president for ecommerce and business development, said it will be, “hub of innovation, with both world-class universities and technology companies.”

He continues, “Staples new E-Commerce Innovation Center will become the home to some of the world’s best e-commerce talent with the goal of rapidly bringing breakthrough new ideas to market in emerging online technologies like mobile commerce and social media.”

They’ve released a mobile app, which is available on both iPhone and Android. They claim it has more than 150 features, including access to daily deals, access to easier re-ordering, and greater rewards for account members.

It will be interesting to see if Staples can follow through with this plan. With the amount of resources and people they’re hiring, improvement seems very likely.

Social Networks Will Become Marketplaces

John Jantsch — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:57:36 +0000

For the last few years I’ve been promoting the idea that social networks are like outposts, in many respects, best suited to point the way to your hub or main content site.

Product for sale on Shoply.com

While I still believe this to be a fundamentally sound way to view social media use, I see a future that contains a shift in this thinking as well.

As the level of social behavior continues to evolve and social networks grow more important in the lives of their users, they will become much more than outposts – they will move increasingly towards self-containment and wholly functioning marketplaces.

There is a growing mass that simply sees the Internet as Facebook and Facebook is really okay with that. Other marketplaces such as Amazon, Etsy, Buy.com and eBay are moving to socialize your product search and sort and become decision engines. These online destination are making moves to merge this behavior with pop up offline presence as well.

As mobile users depend upon apps like Siri (personal assistant on iPhone 4S) and Yelp and gain access to large amounts of research via QR readers, search engines will play a diminishing role in how buying decisions are made.

Buy.com just launched a feature that allows you to connect and shop collaboratively with friends making social shopping a real-time phenomenon. Paypal just released an app called Send Money that makes sending money to friends on Facebook a snap. As trust in doing business on these platforms merges with increasing levels of content and engagement, expect people to do more and more in these marketplaces.

What this behavior signals for small business marketers is the need to begin to view some outposts as destinations. In other words, it’s time to start looking at building a store on Facebook, Shoply, Amazon, Buy.com, Etsy and eBay.

I know many business sell in these places already, either as a primary distribution channel or as a supplement to their own online or offline store, but it may be wise for all businesses, regardless of what they sell, to set up shop in one or more of these destinations.

You may not see an immediate profit from your eCommerce enabled Facebook store, but it’s time to make that an option and start teaching those that interact with you there how and why they might also want to buy from you there.

The key, as it has been so clearly for the last few years, is to also up your engagement, education and participation in these markets rather than simply look at them as transaction enablers. These are growing major cities and you need to claim and grow your holdings there before it becomes overcrowded.

Facebook ecommerce solutions

Payvment – http://www.facebook.com/payvment
Lunarmods – http://www.lunarmods.com/
Ecwid – http://www.ecwid.com/
Infused Commerce – http://www.infusedcommerce.com/

Marketplaces

Shoply Store – http://shoply.com/sell/
Sell on Etsy – http://www.etsy.com/sell
eBay Stores – http://pages.ebay.com/storefronts/building.html
Amazon Webstore – http://webstore.amazon.com/
Buy.com – http://www.buy.com/
Comments

From Social Commerce to Syndicated Commerce

Brian Solis — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:16:00 +0000

Part 10 in a series introducing my new book, The End of Business as Usual…this series serves as the book’s prequel.

Today’s social media best practices will show you the marvels of creative marketing in social networks, the benefits of customer service on Twitter and blogs, innovations in co-created products and services, and insights into how to build a more engaged business. As organizations migrate from rigid to social business models, no line of business, department, function, or small business for that matter, will go untouched or unchanged. So what’s next? As you can see in the image above, one of the more aggressive trends on the horizon is social commerce and it centers on improving the complicated relationships that exist between…

1. Consumers and their friends/peers as they shop
2. Consumers and retailers
3. Retailers and Brands

4. Brands and Consumers, pre-, mid and post commerce

The idea of buying with friends is not necessarily new. But, sharing in purchase experiences, interacting with products through connected apps, and influencing decisions through social and mobile networks is quickly becoming “the next big thing.” And, it’s also quickly becoming the next big wonderment. The idea of social commerce is so big, so distributed that entire ecosystems are forming around each of the four categories listed above. Like social media, social commerce is bigger than how we view social today – meaning its bigger than Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare and Groupon. This is about building meaningful relationships with customers. This is our opportunity to create useful and shareable experiences that satisfy the needs of consumers and sparks engagement between brands, retailers, friends, and friends of friends.

SpinBack, a social commerce and analytics platform that was recently acquired by BuddyMedia, published a clever infographic that demonstrates the value and possibilities of social commerce. In four simple, yet profound steps, socialized commerce makes the case for retailers. However social commerce just isn’t about being social. This is about defining an integrated and substantial experiences across the entire ecosystem. The nature of how consumers interact with one another, brands, and retailers is fundamentally a higher touch proposition than ever before.

Imagine sending a more sophisticated social consumer to your website or social presence as it exists today? Ask yourself, what’s so compelling about the clickpath today that would compel a discerning consumer to travel from beginning to end and find the journey so completely fascinating that they will tweet, update Facebook, and update every relevant network along the way. Chances are, they won’t. This is why developing a foundation for social commerce is just the beginning. Designing the entire online customer experience, from beginning to end, is where our focus will lie over the next few years. Add to that a layer of engagement, and you can feel and count the effects of the disruptive nature of socialized commerce.

For those who seek inspiration or justification, Spinback assembled some astounding facts. Here are just a few standouts:

- 90% of all purchases are subject to social influence

- Social commerce is expected to generate $30 billion in 2015 (just a few short years away)

- Facebook friends are four times more valuable than Twitter followers

As you lead the way, it’s often helpful to point to stats or achievements to make the case for change even if you’re in the middle of an existing strategy. At the same time, every new year introduces the need for new plans. As we can see, short term success is possible. The question is, how do you translate the short term to longer term value? Nonetheless, we can see that using Groupon, The Gap generated $11 million in one-day sales. Through F-commerce, Pampers sold more than 1,000 diapers in one hour. And, LivingSocial drove more than 42,000 shares in one day for a $20 Amazon voucher.

Social Commerce Opens the Door (and Conversation) to Syndicated Commerce

Social commerce is just one part of a multifaceted approach to a new era commerce. It’s important to realize that there is no one way to reach every consumer with a sweeping commerce strategy. One to many now longer works in a time where consumers are not only connected, they’re empowered. Remember, social commerce only reaches a finite percentage of your overall prospects. Such is true for any other single channel such as mobile or F-commerce. True commerce must be far more comprehensive, yet focused than any one channel.

Social commerce in of itself, is a vast universe that covers social networks, apps, F-Commerce (Facebook Commerce), mobile, Facebook Connect and Twitter @Anywhere, and much much more. As consumer needs, preferences and networks of relevance are as varied as they are concentrated, the focus of any social commerce strategy moving forward should not solely target the social consumer, but instead the connected consumer. This means that social plays into a much more expansive approach that reaches consumers through their channels of preference.

Sounds easy enough right? Not so fast. Ask any consumer what it is they expect from a brand or retailer online and they’ll tell you that in addition to discounts, promotions, special offers and exclusive information, they want the ability to buy within their network.

To quote the now cult-status video, Double Rainbow, “what does this mean?”

It means that businesses must now think about a distributed commerce strategy that accounts not only for social commerce, but also all forms of commerce ranging from mobile commerce (m-commerce), e-commerce, Facebook commerce (F-commerce), social commerce, real world (in-store) commerce, e-mail commerce, and every other form of commerce that matters.

The future of commerce is not simply social. The future of commerce takes a holistic approach in the form of syndicated commerce. Customer deals, offers, promotions, and experiences must be one with the brand and the brand experience. To achieve oneness across syndicated commerce, business leaders must define the experience, desired outcomes, and mutual benefits along the way. More importantly, each platform must feed into a single system that identifies people, their relationships, and their preferences to introduce substance and value – regardless of medium.

Oh but what is the reward or ROI for all of the extra expenditures, resources and time required to build out an entirely new system? Well, what’s the cost of irrelevance or obsolescence when the I in ROI could stand for ignorance? Certainly by developing a dedicated, yet holistic strategy is far more lucrative than continuing on a path of business as usual. What’s at stake is customer engagement, deeper customer loyalty, and ultimately drive sales and profit.

Syndicated commerce delivers value to consumers and shapes and steers experiences that deliver long term value to businesses.

Social media is a great disruptor and it is rightfully earning its place within the foundation of everyday business. But our job is only just beginning. We cannot rest on validation that organizations now Tweet, blog, or maintain a presence on Facebook or Youtube. That’s not what this consumer revolution is about. What’s happening now is not because of social media nor will businesses transform simply because of social networks. Instead, businesses must realize that disruptive channels and networks represent an opportunity for insight and engagement. Even though many businesses are using social media now merely for marketing purposes, the ability for businesses to listen to, learn from, and connect with customers will transform the entire organization from the inside out. From customer service to employee relations to product development to commerce, social media and disruptive technology in general sets the stage for a new era of business.

To be continued…

Comments

Optimizing Your B2B Website to Increase ROI

Amanda Chaney — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 13:28:04 +0000

A lot of people think that E-commerce isn’t really a big part of B2B transactions. Greg Ott (DamandBase) and Joe Rawlinson (National Instruments) aim to discuss how it is.

Some things to keep in mind:

At some point in the B2B sales cycle, almost everyone touches your website.
One size fits all format for your site rarely ever works. You end up with low conversions, low engagement, and it’s hard to track effectiveness.
A lot of B2B marketers do a great job focusing on learning a lot about prospects, but not the reverse, helping your prospects learn more about you.

How is Web Conversion Unique to B2B?

1 | ROI is typically measured in leads. No real ad or e-retail monetization. This makes it harder to optimize.

2 | There’s typically no impulse buying buy visitors. You aren’t just selling to one individual, you are selling to an entire account or company.

3 | Revenue is typically more low volume, but with high value. Be sure to segment the high value from the low value leads.

4 | Relevance is more identity based rather than behavioral. Look at your sales team, see how they segment prospects. You need to start thinking the same way for the structure of your site.

Website Conversion Optimization: There is typically a lot of focus on Landing Page Optimization, and not nearly enough on your entire site experience and website conversion optimization.

B2B Website Optimization path

1. Target Content to Increase Engagement.

Make your content more personal. This goes against the typical “one-size-fits-all” mentality a lot of B2B sites use today. Try to segment your audience from the get go, then direct them to the most relevant content. You can use IP address or cookies to determine industry, company, etc before the page even loads. As with landing pages, you’ll have more chance of conversion when you serve the most relevant content to the visitor in question.

Be sure to select high value areas to begin your optimization efforts, instead of going for the entire site at once.
Create and categorize content for high-value segments and profiles.
Use identity-based segmentation. Be sure you are correctly identifying your visitor, or creating categories to serve most relevant content for any anonymous visitors.

2. Optimize your website forms to streamline lead capture.

Similar to landing page optimization best practices, try to streamline and shorten your form. Do you really need all those fields? What do you need RIGHT NOW? You can get more leads, and get more data later if you need it. Adobe took one form that had 12 fields and cut it down to 8; this one revision resulted in a 33% lift in completion rate, and over a $1 Million increase in revenue.

3. Segment, Test, & Measure Your Results

One great point Greg touched on was you need to optimize your specific segments, not just the overall averages. You’re specific segments, when optimized separately, can result in huge incremental gains. Be sure to measure your performance by these different segments as well. It’ll be easier to figure out where optimization efforts need to be concerted.

If you are not continually striving to optimize your B2B site, you are losing business. You want to capitalize on every visitor that arrives on your site.

Joe Rawlinson then talked about simplifying your website and order process to acquire more leads/sales.

How are the choices you give your visitors impacting your business?

Reduce complexity, narrow choices
Treat a visit to your site as a virtual sales visit

Joe brought up a great example of complexity vs. simplicity and how the results were impacted by each:

Experiment: JAMS ON A TABLE

The experiment involved a simple test of using a complex display with 24 different types of jam versus a simple display of only 6 varieties. The 24 jam display resulted in a higher volume of visitors, while the simplistic display with only 6 varieties resulted in a higher volume of sales.Think about it…Groupon: They give you clear, simple options, and have developed an extremely successful business model out of it. Simplify your offerings. Here are some questions you should ask yourself about your site:

How can you simplify the choices you give your visitors?
How can you show the visitor the result of what they are choosing? Show them the trade-offs if they went with another option.
Are you distracting them by offering too many options?
Are you giving them social proof? People tend to back something or buy something if they see that people within their trusted circles are also doing so. Use social media and recommendation/reviews to take advantage of this tendency.

While your site is your pride and joy, it can always be improved. Think about the tips and ideas above the next time you visit your website. There could be some simple revisions you could make today that could have a huge impact on your business.

Comments

Tips To Make Your Ecommerce Site Ready For The Festive Season!

Navneet Kaushal — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 12:02:00 +0000

With, autumn setting in, the festive fervor catches up and spreads among people all over the country. As an e-commerce site owner, the festive season is a chance to double your sales and maximize your profits as the internet traffic shoots up by more than 40% over the festive period. This means you need to get a plan ready to divert some of the increased traffic to your site, and set the cash registers ringing (not literally!).

Set You Goals:

Like any good marketing plan, you need to set up your goals. These may vary according to your site, but the general idea is:

How Much Sales You Are Targeting?
Any Products You Plan To Highlight?
Want To Introduce Any Special Schemes, That May Carry In The New Year?
Newsletters And Email Sign ups?

Once you have the answers to these questions, you need to set the game in motion by following a custom built marketing plan.

Get The Look And Spread The Cheer!

Your ecommerce site must get a festive make over. So you can add a festive header and footer to your site. Add a “Diya” for Diwali or may be a “Star” for Christmas. This not only makes your site attractive, but also is a way of informing the customers that you are ready and open for festive purchases.

Oil the creeks- in other words, check and double check that your site works. Check it over for ease of purchase, and make sure there is no error that could hinder a buyer.
Allow people to check in easily- this means that if you have a “sign in process” before the users can explore the site, then get rid of that for the festive season. You have to make purchasing easy, and make sure that the a browser converts into a buyer.
Change the newsletter sign up logo – make it festive centric. Something like “Sign Up For The Best Christmas Deals.”

Stock Up For The Season With Products And Offers:

You have to remember that for some one to buy from you amidst the million other festive offers, you have to give the customer something extra. You have to give people incentives to shop with you.

Offer free gifts- nothing gets people going like the chance to get something for free. So something on the taglines of- “Buy A Toy Car And Get Batteries Free!”
Offer price discounts- roll out special festive offers. Give the customers a chance to buy something at 10% less the price. This will be a good incentive for many.
Offer Free Shipping- this may seem quite a good deal to many customers, of you offer them an incentive to buy for example free shipping on orders over a certain amount during the festive period.
Keep an option for late shoppers- work out something, how can they pick up stuff, if it is too late to ship.
Most importantly, set up a special- Gifts Section!

Gifting Ideas Galore!

A great way to sell in the festive season is to make a gift out of your every product, so that people can buy almost anything as a gift for someone. You can offer well categorized choices for people to choose from- for instance-

By Relationships
By gender
By price
By type

This classification will seem helpful and attractive at the same time-increasing your chances for a sale!

Help people further by offering a FAQ session, so that they know what they want to buy. You can take them to the ideal gift by using a flowchart idea. This way, a woman would know what to get her 18 year old niece!

Combine products together- this will make them more attractive for the people, while making them useful too! For instance, if you combine a cooker with a blender, people can buy it thinking to give them each to two families!
Offer gift vouchers- gift vouchers are quite popular to catch hold of shoppers who are just browsing. A voucher is a primary choice for people who just can’t make up their mind what to buy as gifts. With a voucher, they can leave the deciding up to the receiver. Gift vouchers get a lot of takers, who are into last minute shopping, if you offer to send them as email vouchers.
Presentation-When you will deliver the gifts and other shopping items, make sure to pack them nicely for the festive season. This effort by you will be marked as a good professional touch at your part, and ensure that the shopper will return to your site again!

Here is a video about the same:

E-mail Marketing-Take It Up Early!

Email special offers to your customers, well ahead of the festive season. Prepare a nice festive offers mail, and send it just as Fall sets in. Then schedule the reminders on a regular basis.

Create Email specific landing pages- this is a very essential step, as if you have a special email offer, the link should land on that offer page only- this will give it maximum impact. But at the same time, list all your other offers running, on that landing page too. So that people are attracted to look around further.
Send out Festive Greeting Too- you need to establish a personal contact with your buyers. So show them your human side. Do not forget to send people- Happy Diwali Or Merry Christmas emails on the day of the festival.

Send emails reminding people of the offers running, and the new ones ready for the new year. Send an email with offers for the New Year on Christmas day.

Internet Marketing And SEO:

You have to begin on your festive special SEO campaign well in advance. Start around three to four months before so that you get the maximum benefits in the festive season.

Find The Festive Keywords And Optimize Them- For the festive season, you will have to arrive at a whole new set of keywords to optimize for your ecommerce site. So, if -

“Diwali designer candles” work for you or “designer gifts for Diwali” find that out.

Think of including local too, if it applies in your case- like- “Christmas cakes Chicago”.

You can arrive at the best keywords quickly by researching your analytics from the previous festive season to judge what worked for you.

“Christmas 2011, get Christmas gifts, avail Christmas discounts at our store. Cheap Christmas goods here, with Christmas decorations.”

Optimize Your Site- Make sure that every single festive offer rolled by you is optimized. This means working on the titles and the meta description.
Create Content for your keywords- This is a part of optimizing, as you need to create content with your keywords. So interesting festive lore and write ups about gifting traditions are a good option. But again, do not do keyword stuffing, as this may upset the search engines, so avoid doing this-

A good piece of content would be- “Brighten up your Diwali this year, with our custom made Diwali gifts. Available for shipping within 24 hours!”
Write new and festive centric blogs- Articles on helping people prepare for the festivals- some festive delicacy recipe maybe? Think of what people would want to know during the festive season and write unique, informative and quality content.
Keep and eye on the competition- Learn from your competition. See what they are doing and what can you pick up from them.

Go Social:

Social media is your sure shot way to promote your offers quite successfully. But again, keep in mind to keep it social while selling! Do not spam the social networking sites with your offers.

Facebook- Keep updating your Facebook page with latest offers and discounts. Write interesting content as status update. Post festive and happy pictures!
Twitter- Apart from Tweeting offers, tweet interesting festive tips and articles. Engage others in conversation frequently and occasionally push your products. Invite your followers to Retweet your offers.
Press Releases- Do a press release outlining your offers. Link the release to your site.

Optimizing the video and photo sites too!

Additional Tips:

Keep a track of your Analytics to know where people are coming from- what keywords driving them-what are they looking for. This way you can add the product they are looking for.
Keep an eye on Google Trends- this will give you an idea what people are searching for and then use this information to optimize your site.

Conclusion:

This festive season, outline a marketing plan based on the pointers above. Give yourself and your design and development team some time to come up with creative plans and their neat implementations. Start in advance and see an increase in business in the last quarter of 2011 and new business in 2012.

Definitive Guide to Google Wallet Official Launch

Rene LeMerle — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 14:07:51 +0000

After a long wait, Google has finally announced the launch of their highly anticipated mobile app, Google Wallet in collaboration with big names like MasterCard, First Data, Sprint and Citibank.

And just a few days after the launch, companies like Discover and American Express are knocking on Google’s door in the hope of being added to future versions of Google Wallet.

What is Google Wallet?

It’s a mobile app that makes your Smartphone even smarter as it can work now as your wallet. The app lets you store a virtual version of your existing plastic cards on your phone and you can pay for purchases by simply tapping your phone using the NFC technology (near-field communication).

Users can pay for their purchases, with their CitiMasterCard credit cards and Google Prepaid Cards, at all NFC enabled stores. Google Offers has been introduced to the app also and will send the user an “offer of the day” that they can take advantage of by paying with their Google Wallet. Users can also store offers on their mobile wallet, and will soon have the option of saving loyalty cards and gift cards as well.

The service only becomes active if you have an associated Google accounts. By entering in the pin provided by Google, users can sync their Google accounts with their credit cards.

Google Wallet is currently only available for US users on Nexus-S 4G phones on Sprint, but other mobile devices and carriers are expected to soon jump on board.

There are more details on Google Wallet in the video below.

To encourage Google Prepaid Card users to use Google Wallet, Google announced that they will be adding a $10 free bonus to the card if users set up their prepaid card in Google Wallet before the end of the year.

The limitations…

As with any new product or service there are some limitations. For Google Wallet, these include:

Not all retailers are on board – Google announced the main retailers as CVS, Footlocker and RadioShack, but there are still plenty of retailers that don’t have the NFC technology installed in their stores. Experts predict it will take up to 5 years for stores to implement the technology
Not all smartphones have the NFC technology – actually there are only a handful of devices which are NFC-enabled. Google is promising more devices with this technology in 2012

Have you used Google Wallet yet? If so we would love to hear your thoughts.

Comments

Google Analytics: Multi-Channel Funnels

Lindsay Keller — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 14:03:58 +0000

I don’t know about you, but when I am shopping online I never buy the first thing I see. With the internet you have access to just about everything you could ever want as a consumer. With all this information available to you with the click of a button, consumers tend to take the time to research and compare before making a purchase, especially with expensive items that are commonly associated with long buying cycles. This makes it difficult for search engine marketers to really understand what marketing efforts are having a significant effect on conversions because you only see the last click that is made before a conversion.

So, instead of attributing the ultimate conversion with the last click that was made, Google Analytic’s new Muti-Channel Funnels revel the entire path the consumer has made for up to a 30 day period. Some critical data the new reporting tool revels includes:

How many conversions had “assists” before the final click
The number of interactions visitors have had with different marketing channels
The time a customer takes between the first interaction with the site to the final conversion
The ultimate value each marketing channel has generated

There are similar reporting tools, but with the release of Google Anayltic’s Muti-Channel Funnels, marketers now have access to this valuable data for FREE! The reporting tool allows marketers to discover what the most traveled channels are that lead to conversions and give more insight into the buying cycle in order to improve marketing strategies. Marketers can now make even more informed decisions by understanding how visitors interact with multiple online channels, such as organic search, paid search, and social media, before the conversion.

Just when you thought Google has thought of it all, they release another feature that blows your mind! For more information on the Multi-Channel Funnels reporting tool visit the Google Analytics Blog.

Comments

A Look at Google Multi-Channel Sales Funnels

Eric Leuenberger — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 17:15:31 +0000

You cannot manage what you do not measure.

This single phrase simply can’t be ignored. Without measurement there is no gauge on progress and it becomes virtually impossible to determine if your efforts are effective at building your business and reaching your goals.

Despite this, I find it incredibly stunning how many business do not take full advantage of the analytic suites available to them. They install what they call ‘tracking’ when in fact, the information they are recording means little to maximizing the effectiveness of there overall objectives.

More specifically, determining how effective a particular channel of the business is often requires tracking visitors through what is called a funnel. In a funnel, the visitor enters at a specific point and is guided toward an end objective. That objective can be anything; a download, a contact us request, or in ecommerce—ideally a sale.

However, a visitor seldom follows a perfect liner path to a conversion. More often they start at one point, go through a series of channels along the way called micro-conversions, go back to a few earlier channels (or find new channels), then complete the final objective—the macro conversion. Each of the micro conversions play a role in the macro conversion, without them, the macro conversion doesn’t happen.

Understanding what micro conversions—or points along the way—they took to complete the objective is critical in fine tuning your marketing efforts at each step. Tracking only the last contact point of the funnel (i.e. the last page or ad the user clicked before they reached the site which in turn lead to the conversion) vs. tracking every point along the way is ineffective and leaves a lot on the table.

Let me illustrate using the following example. A visitor clicks your PPC ad but then after arriving at your site leaves at some point and does not complete the sale. They come across your Facebook page a week later, look over that, then take an offer you had on the page to download more information about a specific product via an email optin—and they leave again.

A week after that they read over the info about the product and click a bookmark they had made of your site upon one of their initial visits. This time they decide to make the purchase.

If you were only tracking from the final entry point to the end conversion you would believe that this conversion originated from a ‘direct referral’ such as a bookmark, by directly tying it into the address bar, or by another similar method—and that is true to a certain extent. The conversion did come after the directly linked to the site, but that was not where the funnel truly started.

You see, the way your customers interact with your entire sales channel, not just part of it, leads to what happens in the end. If you knew exactly which channels they interacted with before they reached the final point leading to a conversion, you could setup more fine tuned marketing efforts at each stop along the way.

Thanks to Google’s introduction of multi-channel sales funnels, the landscape has changed and we are now able to see a more complete representation of the exact path—and even timeframe—taken to a given conversion (in our example 3 weeks from beginning to end.)

Multi-channel sales funnels include tracking for but not limited to:

Paid and organic search (for all search engines)
Referral sites
Affiliates
Social networks
Email newsletters
Display ads
Custom campaigns that you’ve created, including offline campaigns that send traffic to vanity URLs
And more …

With this new information in front of you it is now possible to see that in fact the first contact with this new customer in our example came through your PPC advertising and not through the direct link alone—and this was approximately 3 weeks prior to the actual conversion occurring. Although initial visit did not produce a sale, it did get them interested enough to get to know your company further (through your Facebook page) and in turn, the information they downloaded after opting in to your email was what might have finally pushed them to come back (through the bookmark) and eventually buy.

Armed with this detail, you can now see that without the PPC they likely would not have started the process, and without the information you presented them with for download, they may have gone elsewhere. So each step in the process was an integral part of them making a purchase.

How do you setup and use the multi-channel sales funnels?

You don’t really need to setup multi-channel sales funnels in Google Analytics—they are a set of reports. However, although you do not need to setup anything in particular that directly relates to the reports, you do need a few things active within your Analytics account for the reports to be made available to you.

You must have either Goals, or Ecommerce Tracking turned on for your website.
You must be using the new version of Google Analytics (click the “New Version” link from your Analytics dashboard to activate it.)
Once you’ve got those two items in place, you should now see a new tab called “My Conversions” at the top of your page within Google Analytics. Use that tab to navigate to the multi-channel funnels area.
For even more detailed information about your advertising campaigns make sure you link your AdWords account to your Analytics account.

More often than not, those who become customers don’t simply follow a straight line path to a resulting conversion. With the various channels available to them today they may click an ad, visit one of your social media pages, follow your tweets, read your emails, and more. If you knew precisely the route they took to generate the final conversion you have more power to optimize your marketing at each point along the way—increasing your opportunity of closing more sales. That’s what multi-channel sales funnels do for your business.

Online Retailers Start Planning for the 2011 Holiday Season

Jeremy Muncy — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 14:47:57 +0000

Numerous brick-and-mortar businesses are finally ready to compete with Amazon and are looking to shore up their e-commerce operations. Two businesses in particular, Walgreen Co. and Toys “R” Us Inc. are amongst a select few who are integrating better with their online counterparts and looking to open several distribution centers.

Just last month Toy R Us opened a warehouse in Reno, Nevada, equipped with Roomba-esque robots which helped shorten turn-around time, which should pay huge dividends during holiday shopping season.

Bloomberg reports that some businesses were ill-prepared for the 2010 holiday shopping season, and one customer even lost “millions of dollars” because of an inadequate online e-commerce infrastructure.

Holiday sales came in at $36.2 billion last season, up 12 percent over the previous year, according to ComScore. With the current economic climate, free shipping, and the ability to do in-depth research… it’s probably a safe bet that we’ll see another record year for the e-commerce industry.

Top 5 Reasons That Make Magento An SEO’s Delight

Navneet Kaushal — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 18:59:15 +0000

Since its launch in 2008, Magento has steadily grown and has now become the most preferred OpenSource E-commerce platform. The user base is steadily increasing and as of July 2011, there are 65847 websites using Magento.

It’s not only the shopping cart functionality of Magento that has online merchants squealing in delight, it’s the Web Marketing tools too! One of the major reasons behind Magento’s success is its Search Engine friendly outlook. Magento comes packed with amazing SEO features that make it very easy for a merchant and his SEO guy to drive huge traffic on to the site. Here is the list of those features that make this platform, an online marketing cakewalk:

Manage all friendly URLs
Manage Title/Meta tags for each and every product, category, and page
Ability to generate XML Sitemap for Google’s indexing service
Ability to add products to Google Base for shopping results
Google Analytics Integration

With the above mentioned features, Magento allows you to attract new customers very easily. The ability to generate search engine friendly URLs is the most loved feature without doubt. Magento allows you to specify the URL key on every static, content and product category page, so now you can pick the keyword and add it to the chosen page’s URL independently from the Magento page name.

Magento has inbuilt tools to help you manage Title/Meta tags for- product-category and page. As Artur explains in his post on page titles and meta description tags for optimising Magento for search engines. For the content pages titles, all you have to do is take the ‘CMS’ route through ‘Manage Pages’ and then reach ‘Page Title’. For the meta description, take the same route, except after ‘Manage Pages’ go to ‘Meta Tags’, and then edit as per your requirements.

(Source: E-commercewebdesign.co.uk )

The similar procedure can be used for category pages. For the product pages title, Magento by default displays the product name as the page title, you can optimise it further by putting all optimised page titles and descriptions into the product import file. As Artur says, “In my opinion, the best, the quickest and the most feasible way of optimising Magento product page titles is to automate page title generation using product and category names in conjunction with static strings ”.

Magento lets you generate Google XML Sitemap – System > Configuration > Google Sitemap.
With this you can customise different frequency and priority value for different types of pages among other things.

With the integration with Google Base, Magento lets you add products to Google Base for shopping results. System –>Configuration–>Google API–>Google Base. Just login with your Gmail Id and you are ready to map the magento product description fields to Google base.

You can track your users with the default Google Analytics plugin in Magento. It can be activated through- System –> Configuration –> Google API –> Google Analytics. Then you need to enter UA number of you site (as shown in your Google Analytics account settings).

With these tools, you can customise your site for the target audience very smoothly. A rapidly growing online community is already engaged in building extended functionality in the form of plug-ins and add-ons, like email marketing and newsletter integration.

How OsCommerce lags behind Magento?

OsCommerce and Magento have been compared endlessly, with more votes in favour of the latter. In case of Search Engine Optimisation, there is no competition. Magento is the clear leader. Why?, very simply put- OsCommerce does not have SEO Tools for meta tags and URLs. Yes, you have to get plug-ins and add-ons to get the same on you OsCommerce supported website. Even through OsCommerce has a simple framework and is easier to edit, while Magento can be a problem without proper guidance, so it is better for Web developers only. But being light and easy to install, does not make up for the Search engine friendly tools that OsCommerce lacks.

You need to download several OsCommerce SEO modules including:

meta tags module
and a search engine friendly urls module

The entire procedure of getting a plug-in and then getting on about online marketing, seems tedious. That is why the built in SEO tools of Magento have made it a clear winner!

Check out Page Traffic Buzz for more articles by Navneet Kaushal