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What do online shoppers think about?

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eBay Buys Bill Me Later

In a move to further consolidate control of online payment environments eBay has gone and bought the second largest player Bill Me Later for an all cash transaction of $820 Million.  This is significant because eBay already owns PayPal.  Obviously the company is doing this to realign their business by focussing on strengths because the news also comes with the …

In-Store Analytics

A big advantage for ecommerce sites is the ability to track minutest details of customer activity.  For the average store, however, swing door operators is the extent of their analytics.  Now it’s time to bring analytics deeper into store isles. One idea consists placing infra-red sensors at the ends of isles.  These would trip each time customers walk in or …

We, The Super Crunchers

I’ve just finished reading one of my favorite books this year.  It’s called Super Crunchers and I believe it has  some very valuable lessons for retailers.  The central theme is that through statistical tools like regression analysis it’s possible to test for the co-dependence of variables.  Finding these dependencies allows companies to exploit them.  Let me explain through my made-up …

Borrowing From Andy

Andy Sernovitz is a passionate advocate for Word Of Mouth Marketing (WOM) and his book Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking is a must read for all niche ecommerce retailers. So how does small retailer with a limited marketing budget ignite a following? The first thing to seriously consider is the caliber of the product.  No …

Losing Sale To Poor Memory

A few months ago I bought a new hot-sauce and fell in love with it.  Now it’s time to restock but I have no clue where I purchased it.  The packaging makes no mention of the grocery store that housed it.  I could look online or search for the product on my next grocery trip but by not mentioning store …

Dishola For The Offline World

If restaurants added a feedback feature on bills it would give valuable input on how people liked individual dishes.  As long as the feedback process was painless most patrons would participate and the information could be integrated to update the menu.  Avinash has shown how simple feedback gives valuable insight through 4Q, my idea merely extends the concept to an …

ShopPBS.com — Redesigned But Still Sucky

— They still don’t let customers review products.— Generic filter options – price, title and new.  What about – most popular, biggest discount, most gifted, VHS, etc?  They do have a Best Seller list but that sorts all titles, one can’t search best sellers within a category. They have adopted the lowest common denominator with their eCommerce strategy.  Here is …

I Don’t Know Why This Bothers Me So Much

While on the oakley.com I wanted to check out what they had for prescription glasses so I went to their search box and keyed in “prescription”.  The results page highlighted a related New Release, Top Seller and Featured Item.  Brilliant idea.  Below that they also presented a result set of 96 items: Much later, after several other clicks, I discovered …

Coremetrics Raises Money

InternetRetailer reports Coremetrics, part of the analytics big 3 has just raised another round of capital. This time London-based private equity firm 3i has invested $60 million into the company bringing total funding to $111 million. In the past year Coremetrics increased its customer base by 46%.

Making Unsubscribes Worth It

No etailer likes it when a customer unsubscribes from their emails. I am always curious about new email marketing strategies so I subscribe and unsubscribe at a fairly regular rate. After reviewing few email samples I scroll to the bottom of the email and click the unsubscribe link. I am then taken to the retailer’s unsubscribe page. What’s odd is …

RedEnvelope – I Think She’s Ready To Pass On Now

RedEnvelope has been struggling for a year now. Their stock has plummeted 97.2% and now Wells Fargo is tired of bankrolling them. I think she’s ready to pass on now. Sitting here it looks like RedEnvelope was a solid business so I’ll be curious to find-out just what went wrong. If you have any ideas please let me know.

The Borders Story

While in school at Ypsilanti it gave me great pleasure to know a retail giant had first started at our neighbor city. This retail phenomenon was Borders. But as I evolved in the multichannel space I wondered why Borders never considered selling online. Was it because their arrogance made them believe Amazon.com could never replace the community aspect of a …

A Contradiction Of Huge Proportions

Anyone knows that in order to sell retailers need to have beautiful product photos. We believe customers want to pan in and out zooming all the way down to the manufacturing batch code. We also believe copy plays a role. But how do we measure what influences more? Is there a company out there that has the guts to remove …

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