Entries categorized as ‘eBiz Merchandizing’
One of my greatest interests in life is flying and aviation. Clicking on global aircraft manufacturer Cessna’s Caravan campaign site www.caravanpostcards.com I was faced with an interesting selection of linked pics below:
From left to right these pictures link to:
- http://www.conquerjungles.com/
- http://www.landtrophybass.com/
- http://www.flywithdragons.com/
In all cases I expected eye candy in the form of high resolution pics and videos of Cessna’s Caravan aircraft. But to my disappointment – these sites seem to have gone AWOL (absent without leave 
. The two first link to rogue landing pages that I assume are not owner by Cessna.
Without going into to much detail find below the interesting selections I was prompted with clicking conquerjungles:
Of course I have nothing against Latin or Vietnamese girls. But clearly this is a good example of how broken links and rogue campaign site links will decrease your overall market communication effectiveness as you, much like Cessna, maybe paying for my clicks. What is even worse than the potential loss of sale and poor customer experience is that this hurts the Cessna brand. And I imagine our friends at Cessna have no clue this is going on.
Categories: eBiz Demand Generation · eBiz Management · eBiz Merchandizing · eBiz News and Trends · eBiz Promo & Pricing
Tagged: Brand threat from broken links, Cessna broken links, Cessna campaign site linking to adult material., Mismanagement of landing pages., Risks with broken links
In a previous blog I discussed a publication from WPP on some key trends and changes in 2008. One of the top trends are coined “From big to nano”. The report points to some key developments supporting this statement e.g. mini vehicles, micro credit, small media formats and devices, renting and lending as opposed to owning and You-tube type “minisodes” (small episodes).
The report continues to say that in a world of information overload, nano also means the power of visualization i.e. transforming vast amounts of information into an aesthetic essence (see screenshot below from WPPs presentation).
Now what on earth does this have to do with ecommerce? Adobe Scene7 knows!
During this week’s eCommerce Conference in Stockholm, Adobes subsidiary Scene7 were key note speakers on the Visualization topic in general and Rich Media in specific.
In a brief Interview with the Swedish edition of Internetworld (2008-05-21, IDC), Scene7’s Jeff Hunt explained how Scene7 helps e-retailers’ customers visualize physical products on-line. Hunt explained some of the key principles behind the technology and named a number of key characteristics:
- A visualization application contains nice images (many with high resolution) and a lot of information.
- It presents the product in an engaging and interactive way (zoom features etc).
- It offers options to “mix and match” i.e. combining two products in one setting etc.
When kept at a reasonable level, i.e. let us try to avoid a new boo.com, it is my view that this contributes to differentiation and margin$. Visualisation offers extended customization and personalization options that are much needed to further increase customer experience and convergence on-line.
So if both WPP and Adobe are talking about Visualisation I think we need to be open for suggestions!
Categories: eBiz Big Picture · eBiz Merchandizing · eBiz News and Trends · eBiz Upsell- & Crossell
Tagged: Online visualisation increases differentiation., Visualisation in ecommerce., Visualisation offers an online margin opportunity.
I just did a quick check on what search words are most prominent in internal search. Some interesting stuff came out of the analysis.
1) By far the biggest group of searches are aimed at support needs. Customers searching for drivers and software information were the biggest users of internal search.
2) Market communication/ ad linked searches were the second most prominent (which is intuitive).
I will in this blog touch on this topic further. Internal search is a powerful tool to understand trends in your Customers’ needs.
Categories: Web Analytics · eBiz Merchandizing · eBiz News and Trends · eBiz Strategy
Tagged: Key findings of internal search., The importance of internal search., Tracking customer needs with internal search.
I have several times pointed out in this blog how important it is to get the basics right. I would summarize them as easy to access products and services, good pictures with proprietary descriptions, easy check out with most common payment methods and clarity on delivery time (and if applicable inventory updates).
As you expand your site further, you may want to check out an article from Forrrester Research. They recently provided guidance on what customers are looking for (as reprinted below in eMarketer’s newsletter on April 15, 2008).
It cannot be stressed enough that extended functionality and widgets will increase customer experience but does not mean that you have a positive return on investment or cost of maintanence. Many times I have found that what is often requested is seldom used.
Key takeaways are that user ratings and reviews are very important (typical user generated content, UGC) to users as well as coupon entry options and product/price comparisons.
Categories: eBiz Management · eBiz Merchandizing · eBiz Strategy
Tagged: Ranking of most important features on your site., Top 10 functionality to offer your customers.
Despite many weeks of resistance, I had to yield to team pressure and start learning about the latest buzz word in site and offer development: multivariate testing (MVT). Apparently good old split testing (A/B) is no longer good enough.
Jupiter Research state in a report from 2006 “Multivariate Testing and Site Optimization, STO-06-C06” that “Thirty-two percent of site operators in companies with $50 million or more in annual revenues have deployed site testing and optimization applications. Site operators should incorporate site testing and optimization into a usability framework that leverages traditional usability principles, customer satisfaction measurement, and Web analytics to comprehensively measure and improve Web site usability.”
We are now in 2008 and I can clearly see that MVT has gained a strong foothold in my organization. I guess the $50m kind of defines the scope of MVT as a growing set of applications for big corporates.
So what is Multivariate testing?
MVT can be described as a quantitative way to understand and influence your customers’ user experience. According to Wikipedia multivariate testing is “a process by which more than one component of a website may be tested in a live environment. It can be thought of in simple terms as numerous split tests or A/B tests performed on one page at the same time. Split tests and A/B tests are usually performed to determine the better of two content variations, multivariate testing can theoretically test the effectiveness of limitless combinations. The only limits on the number of combinations and the number of variables in a multivariate test are the amount of time it will take to get a statistically valid sample of visitors and computational power.”
The primary purposes of testing in order of importance (according to Jupiter research) are:
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Site content
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Promotions
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Step processes e.g. checkout
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Landing pages
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Site navigation
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E-mail marketing
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Performance metrics e.g. revenue, average order value
In setting up an MVT, Jupiter recommends that you:
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Create hypothesis for testing on user behavior e.g. lifestyle images connect better with target segment than product images.
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Establish multiple objectives such that not only conversion is tested but the general interaction with the site and fulfillment of KPI e.g. revenue/ user.
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Segment test participants based on the hypothesis – go narrow rather than wide.
As I start to use this new tool I will update my blog with more in depth views on this emerging field of optimization tools.
Categories: Web Analytics · eBiz Merchandizing · eBiz Payment & Checkout · eBiz Promo & Pricing · eBiz Upsell- & Crossell
Tagged: A/B testing, merchandizing, Mulivariate testing, optimization of site, pathing and KPIs.
For an understanding of consideration please check previous article here.
I often come across situations where overall convergence of customers on the site suddenly goes down. Many react negatively and perceive the attractiveness of offer and pricing as the key issue.
My key message for today: if the downfall comes from consideration, and your conversion remains stable, then your issue is probably explained by a change in the distribution of your leads sources.
Most sites have a mix of leads sources in their demand generation activities. The biggest source is typically search and banner media, followed by affiliates and some kind of internal demand generation e.g. offline advertising or email marketing.
Typically some types of leads will have lower consideration rates. For example, driving clicks using pop-under advertising (a new window is opened behind your browser screen only to be viewed when user is closing down browsers) tends to generate very low consideration as the proportion of irrelevant leads is high.
Although most people perceive a declining consideration rate as an issue, the consideration alone will not give you the full picture. In order to adequately assess the impact of a lower consideration on your business you need to a) understand if you are getting leads with lower consideration profiles and b) assess what the cost impact is (or ROI) on the low considerations leads you are driving. If the latter are more cheaper in % than the % decrease you have seen in proportionate consideration, chances are this is not bad news.
Categories: Web Analytics · eBiz Affiliation · eBiz Demand Generation · eBiz Merchandizing · eBiz Promo & Pricing
Tagged: consideration problems, Decrease in consideration, unexplicable drop in consideration.
Most managers of e-businesses need to address multiple levels of visit to business transformation or “conversion”. In most businesses I would recommend to measure multiple levels of conversion e.g. store conversion, basket conversion etc.
In my business we separate the generic browsing traffic from the traffic that continues to the configuration/ basket layers. We call the first level of browsing the consideration layer. Hence, the first level conversion of traffic to the second level – the configuration layer – is referred to as consideration %. When customers chose to check out from the configuration layer (including basket etc) we call this conversion.
This may sound confusing. But the point is that using different lingo for these different types of conversion makes it easier to communicate. The final word we use is convergence. This is the product of the two factors consideration and conversion above. In essence, the number of checked out customers (receipts)/ site visits = convergence.
I have seen a number of different terms in this area but I am finding the above system of terms more and more useful. Make sure you separate the levels of conversion because they all tell you very important things about where you need to fix your business when things aren’t working.
Categories: Web Analytics · eBiz Merchandizing · eBiz Payment & Checkout
Tagged: Different levels of conversion, store conversion, visit consideration and convergence.
My German colleague Martin sent me an email stating that “wurst case, we have to think of lowering margin”. For those of you who don’t speak German, “Wurst” means sausage and has nothing to do with the English word “worst”. The same week another Danish colleague invited the office to “drinks and nipples“.
We were neither about to lower any sausage margins nor were we about to have breast milk for drinks. But the above examples support the key message in this article: don’t underestimate the power of semantics, cultural associations and localized copy writing when chosing to globalize your online business.
I would argue that in globalizing your copy writing (merchandising, point of sales statements etc) via a translation agency, you are forfeiting the most important tool you have to convince your customer to buy your products.
The companies that do the translating would of course argue that it is a matter of quality of translation (the below example would have been easy to translate).
Nevertheless, I cannot see how a creative copy, sometimes based on a functional area of understanding (e.g. computers), with all its cultural bias, can be translated to have the same meaning and sought after sales impact.
Find below a point of sale statement intended to be used in all merchandising for a specific laptop computer that I reviewed this week.
I sincerely hope you can have a laugh at the English wording “90% power. 90% power-trip”, carelessly translated into a selection of your mother tongues.
The Swedish translation of “power-trip” is “högvilt”. The latter is a word for a group of Swedish wild animals (e.g. deer) for which Swedish hunters by law need to use the most heavy type of ammunition.
So why do companies continue to expand these global practices?
Copy text is similar to many quality metrics in that it is difficult to isolate the direct impact on sales and customer experience. And that makes it an easy target for corporate cost cutters, opex scalers and Myers-Briggs profiles with a preference for sensing.
My advice for those of you thinking of outsourcing your “mother’s tongue” is to use your intuition and look at it this way: would you feel comfortable going to a job interview in a language you did not speak with an interpret by your side?
Categories: eBiz Globalization · eBiz Merchandizing · eBiz Outsourcing
Tagged: globalizing copy, globalizing translatioin services., online merchandizing, online translations of sales copy., Outsourced services, translating copy
