'Net Features : ecommerce analytics

Video Comes to Zmags' Digital Catalogs

Allison Howen — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 17:15:00 GMT

Retailers can start creating more engaging shopping experiences by including video content into their digital catalogs – thanks to a new partnership between Zmags and Invodo.

The partnership allows brands to embed visual and audio content, such as demos, testimonials, virtual dressing rooms and interactive runway shows, into their digital catalogs in order to create an immersive shopping environment. Additionally, the partnership provides brands with a consistent branded in-catalog experience as well as enables consumers to shop and view video on all digital channels – Web, social and mobile.

“A well-executed video strategy can help brands and retailers increase sales conversions and improve customer engagement and satisfaction,” said Craig Wax, CEO of Invodo. “This partnership will allow retailers and brands to integrate Invodo’s product videos into commerce-enabled catalogs from the industry leader, Zmags. In addition, companies can use Invodo’s advanced analytics package to further optimize the impact of their videos on shoppers.”

Click here to see how clothing retailer Express added video into their Zmags digital catalog.

TheFind and IE Launch New Shopping Platform

Allison Howen — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 13:30:00 GMT

Could this be the future of online shopping?

A new partnership between TheFind and Internet Explorer has brought social discovery to print catalogs – resulting in Glimpse, an HTML5 Web site that is a combination of two popular apps from TheFind.

Glimpse combines the social sharing and shopping capabilities of TheFind’s Facebook app (also called Glimpse) with Catalogue, the company’s popular paper catalog tablet app. The site’s layout is similar to Pinterest, but it also displays and enables users to interact with catalogs from big name retailers like Lands’ End, Alloy and Moosejaw.

Each catalog is equipped with items that users can click on to find out prices and descriptions. Users sign into Glimpse with Facebook, and have the ability to see what items their friends have liked and products from brands that they have previously liked on Facebook. Additional social aspects of Glimpse include the ability for users to like or comment on an entire catalog or individual items, as well as save items into their personal collections or share items across their social networks.

“Working with Internet Explorer has been a great collaboration. Together, we have been focused on changing online shopping to deliver to consumers a rich and compelling experience that is driven by social discovery and curation,” says Ramneek Bhasin, VP and GM of Mobile at TheFind. “By bringing store catalogs to Glimpse, we have done just that. Glimpse will run seamlessly across all tablet and desktop platforms. This is just the beginning of what true ‘social discovery’ is all about.”

IE and TheFind also released a free, open-source framework for HTML5 page-flip, in order to give developers the code to create more online catalogs.

Check out some screenshots of Glimpse below:

YouTube Merch Store Partners with CafePress

Allison Howen — Fri, 18 May 2012 13:00:00 GMT

CafePress merchants will now be able to bring customized online commerce to their YouTube Merch Store.

This new feature will allow CafePress Shop owners to obtain more conversions by displaying merchandise on their YouTube channels. Inventory can be added with tools that enable retailers to search for and select products from their CafePress shops.

Then, when a fan clicks on a featured product, YouTube will redirect the consumer to CafePress where the products are available for purchase, and a 10 percent sales commission is earned by the CafePress Shop owner.

"CafePress and YouTube have a lot in common; YouTube has an hour of video uploaded every second about almost any topic imaginable, and CafePress has a catalog of over 300 million custom products on every subject imaginable," says Joe Schmidt, CafePress Chief Marketing Officer. "Now, CafePress products are available on YouTube to create a relevant, contextual shopping platform."

Merchants must be a YouTube partner in good standing who has been enabled for the YouTube Merch Store program in order to create a store. However the store feature may not appear immediately because it is gradually being rolled out over the next few months.

When the feature is available, merchants with accounts for both companies will see a “Store” tab, which will enable them to choose the merchandise that they want to showcase to their YouTube fans. Checkout the example below of CafePress merchant and YouTube partner Geek & Sundry, who has already utilized the new feature.

Digital River Launches App Practice Suite

Allison Howen — Fri, 18 May 2012 11:00:00 GMT

A new suite of tools from e-commerce outsourcing company Digital River are aiming to help online merchants find additional ways to drive revenue across multiple platforms.

The App Practice suite offers online merchants ways to monetize and distribute digital and physical products and services over an abundance of devices, operating systems and commerce channels that buyers use for shopping and engaging with content.

The new suite is part of Digital River’s Global Commerce enterprise solution, and features tools that can be used to increase revenue as well as the lifetime value of consumers – including a solution for cloud billing and subscriptions, a white-labeled enterprise app store, in-app purchasing and marketplaces technology, as well as app monetization and lifecycle optimization services.

“The App Practice further enables online merchants to grow their revenue through alternative channels while maintaining direct relationships with their buyers,” says Mary Suddendorf, group vice president, product at Digital River. “As the retail landscape continues to consolidate and evolve, the direct-to-buyer relationship is more critical than ever before to building and growing a successful global online business.”

A Merchant's Guide to Meaningful Metrics

Linc Wonham — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:00:00 GMT

Baynote and the e-tailing group have collaboratively researched the current state of e-commerce analytics, and the findings show that more needs to be done on the part of most merchants.

For starters, more than half of respondents reported a conversion rate lower than 3 percent on their retail websites, while about 1 in 4 cited rates above 5 percent. While nearly all of the retailers polled said that their evaluation of analytics was a top priority for retaining customers, the majority admitted to falling short of achieving optimum data analysis.

The most significant hurdles cited by merchants include information silos, limited data access across organizations, and a lack of education about which metrics are the most valuable.

"Data will be the driving force behind growing businesses where gaining a clear picture of one’s customer will suggest ideal marketing and personalization strategies," says Lauren Freedman, president of the e-tailing group.

Findings from the research can be found in this infographic and in this white paper, and lead to the following conclusions about meaningful metrics for merchants:

Pure Profit
While conversion may get the most attention from many merchants, gross profitability was seen as the top metric, especially in low-margin categories where profitability percentage points can have a major impact on overall performance.

Getting Personal
Retailers increasingly value, and are investing in, personalization technologies, yet they seem to agree there is an industry-wide need for more sophisticated measurement tactics.

Mobile Madness
Traffic and conversion rates have exceeded expectations across mobile and tablet channels, and a better understanding of key metrics will enable retailers to drive significant growth. Retailers appear to be following a “same metrics/different device” approach, which can work in the short-term but will become problematic for long-term strategies.

Is Social Stuck?
Retailers’ metrics are still focused on the number of Facebook fans and Twitter followers -- 78 percent and 61 percent, respectively, according to the merchant survey -- and not real ROI. Retailers cited measuring interactivity and customer preferences as their top goals.

Holistic Thinking
The ultimate horizon for retailers is to have a 360-degree view of the customer across all touch-points that takes into account interactions and transactions and provides understanding of the most cost-effective ways to reach customers and drive conversion for life.

Three Areas of Focus for Retailers in 2012

Allison Howen — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 19:30:00 GMT

A recent report from Baynote, a provider of personalized customer experience solutions for multi-channel retailers, suggests three areas where retailers should be focusing more than any others right now.

The Marketplace Model
E-commerce giant Amazon has created an online retail model that proves to be a great example for any retail business starting out on the Web. In fact, 30 percent of all consumers who make purchases online begin their shopping on Amazon.com, according to the Baynote report.

Retailers can take note of Amazon’s success and apply it to their own business model by incorporating their products into online marketplaces. This will provide retailers with more visibility and can lead to an increase in customers and conversions.

Additionally, merchants should take note of Amazon’s aggressive pricing model. By obtaining a clear understanding of your business's pricing flexibility and ability to price match, retailers will be able to stay competitive and gain an edge over their competition.

Average Order Value
According to the Baynote report, most of the online shopping growth is coming from consumers spending more of their money online rather than new shoppers making online purchases. This is why retailers must take steps to attract consumers and increase their average order value (AOV).

One way to increase AOV is by adding suggested product functionality to your online store. For example, after a consumer adds earrings to the shopping cart, a suggested product window could appear that gives the consumer complementary suggestions like a necklace or a ring.

Other ways to increase conversions are by maintaining a strong social media presence, getting listed on sites like Google Places, and including customer testimonials and product ratings and reviews.

More Mobile
Although 91 percent of retailers had mobile strategies set in place by mid-2011, it is important that this channel isn’t neglected in 2012, especially with the rising usage of tablet devices.

Retailers should be offering more elaborate m-commerce functionality, including enabling their mobile sites or apps to support store shoppers and associates. According to the report, many retailers claim that in the near future their mobile strategies will include information about in-store events, real-time store couponing, and store maps.

Additionally, 14 percent of the surveyed retailers want to provide selling tools for store associates on their mobile sites.

Tablets are gaining momentum, and many users are utilizing these devices for online shopping – with Forrester Research claiming that 70 percent of tablet owners browse or research products, and 47 percent place purchase orders. This makes it increasingly important for retailers to utilize the tablet in creative ways, either in brick-and-mortar stores as a sales tool or by providing unique and interactive apps.

360 Degree Analytics Come to Digital River Dashboards

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 22:47:00 GMT

It's a trend you're likely familiar with first hand - software vendors are increasingly (and rapidly) rolling out much more sophisticated analytics tools within their solutions. Digital River for example has just released 360 Dashboards, a reporting analytics system for its Global Commerce and Commerce Express solutions which is designed to give merchans more detailed metrics on store performance and lifetime value of their customers.

The dashboards are designed to display business related metrics including online store sales, close, rates, shopper recency and frequency, revenue per visitor and more. While most, if not all, e-commerce solutions have some variation of analytics within their dashboards, what makes the Digital River offering interesting is that it puts customer lifetime value front and center.
The system allows merchants to monitor a customers activity based on recency, freqnecy and monetary value (often called RFM metrics). Perhaps more than anything else, these insights provide businesses with a better ability to map and predict shopper engagement. And in today's highly competitive retail environment, that's increasingly important. Digital also makes it possible to analyze and compare the success of several online marketing camapgins and engagements, including bid management, behavioral merchandising and other promotional activities.

“Gaining access to the right e-business metrics and acting on them can tremendously boost incremental revenue. The challenge is that while most online merchants have access to a good standard set of performance metrics they lack the full-picture view of their business at the customer level,” said Joel Ronning, Digital River’s CEO. “Merchants that can operate at this deeper level are at a competitive advantage when it comes to transforming and accelerating growth across an online business.”