It’s always interesting to see new trend reports in the e-commerce space. Even more interesting is understanding why these trends are happening. You could talk to ten different people and get ten different perspectives. I don’t have ten people with me right now, so I hope you’re cool reading my opinion on some new data from a Jan 22 news release courtesy of our friends at Coremetrics. This data relates to an eCommerce Report that compares 2007 holiday sales to 2006 holiday sales.  

All in all, while online sales went up in just about every category, the big winners were department stores, intimate apparel and health & beauty sites. But now — along with my two cents on why it’s happening — here is some Coremetrics’ specific findings:  

• Department Store eCommerce sites saw the highest growth this holiday season vs. last with a 35 percent increase in sales.

When you sell just about everything – which most department stores do – it’s easy to cast your visitor net very wide. And for the holiday shopper, there’s nothing like minimizing the hassle by going to the one-stop shop. Through their analytics reports, ese sites know about all the drop-off points. That said, I am sure they are leveraging these findings to their fullest. For example, during the holidays, shoppers are often stumped at what to buy for certain people on their list. So if these dept stores notice someone has been on their site for close to the typical visitor’s drop-off time, isn’t this an ideal time to promote “gift cards? Ah yes, gift cards. I’m a big fan of them. I especially love that dept stores like Target send the gift card via email which means as a shopper, we can be very last minute.

• Intimate Apparel and Health & Beauty sites saw strong gains in online sales with a 27 and 26 percent interest in sales, respectively.

I smiled when I saw this one. I think the initial traffic is all about those caring men who simply want to browse sites looking for the best intimate apparel for their adoring wives, girlfriends, etc. Ya right. But the thing is, these casual “browsers” are converting into buyers! I know La Senza is a master of the online selling game. And kudos to them. They have consistency all round – sizing, quality, shipping, service, after sales. It’s all good and it makes for an easy sell. Once you buy something online, they keep you in their radar using irresistible emails with just the right offers at just the right time. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Strategic? You better believe it.

 As for health & beauty, again it’s a classic gift thing. You can’t go wrong buying any of this stuff online. Who doesn’t love getting a new bottle of their favorite lotion or potion? And again, the bundling upsell potentials are endless in terms of getting people to increase their avg cart spends. “Spend $40 and get this miracle cream for free!”  On top of all this, you’ve got a category that loves to spend money on their digital marketing efforts…clearly it works.   

• Home sites rebounded from a slow start during the start of the 2007 online shopping season (6 percent increase in sales) to finish with 13 percent year-over-year sales growth.
• Sports Apparel sites made strong gains in the average order value of online checkouts raising that number by 14 percent vs. last year’s figure.
• Office Supply/Electronics sites along with general Apparel sites saw more modest gains with a 10 percent increase in sales.

These last three trends are all worth noting. I suspect the home site lag at the start of the season is unrelated to anything specific. Perhaps their initial strategy was stinking so they had to switch gears part way through the season? Who really knows?  

As for sports apparel, if the average order value of online checkouts went up by 14%, I’m guessing they’re getting smarter with the upsell/cross-sell piece. Plus like our friends in health & beauty, they’re likely using their analytics to see the avg cart size and then cross-sell promotions that encourage shoppers to spend more than that avg amt so they qualify for free shipping or whatever other incentive works.  

As for office supply/electronics sites, they just keep going up! And why wouldn’t they? They’ve had it figured out for a long time now…

What are you doing a week from today - Jan 24?

Why not get a little smarter with our friends at Elastic Path! Just register for this webinar and you’ll be half way there! Here’s the skinny:

Elastic Path co-founder Jason Billingsley and their most excellent resident blogger Linda Bustos examine the important topics and trends of this past holiday season. More importantly they’ll share some advice on how you can plan an even more successful 2008.  Topics will include:

- Effective Promotions
- Using gift finders
- Video reviews
- Action-inducing messaging
- Using shipping to trigger purchase
- Merchandising
- Customer service & returns
- Analyzing traffic and looking forward to 2008 You owe this to yourself. What are you waiting for?

As the focus of many eMarketers starts to move from raw traffic generation activities to in-site marketing optimization (and it’s about time), it is a perfect time for us to have a look at the ‘vendor sandbox’ around web personalization. By Sandbox, I mean the category of technology and service providers that can be commonly grouped around a particular discipline. ‘Analytics’ is a good example. “Do you have an analytics vendor?” ……is a reasonable question to ask. “Do you have a ‘Personalization’ vendor?”…… is not.

It has only been within the last six months that we have taken most of the commonly used terms in the analytics space to the point where there is an agreed upon set of definitions (Web Analytics Association Standards Committee – http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/cmt/?5).

Some of the site specific terms we use as eCommerce marketers are fairly straightforward. Product Recommendation software for example, has a fairly self-evident role on a website (people who bought that also liked this!). Analytics, need I say more.

Certain terms are less clearly defined, but still pretty obvious to wrap your head around: Word of Mouth (WoM) marketing as an example. Customer driven content in the form of reviews, uploaded video, pictures etc.

Personalization? At least as it relates to internet marketing, it’s a term about as nebulous as they come….·

Is it based on explicit user action? (Think customizing your Yahoo or Google homepage)·

Is it based on implicit customer need? (Customer buys radio, you show them batteries)·

Is it based on the expectation of implicit need based on profile? (Customer behavior indicates they are lost mid-visit, so content is predictively displayed with customer service/sales incentive options)

(My eyes crossed just writing that - this post is getting very “Zen and the Art of Website Maintenance”) Here’s my two cents on the issue. Personalization is not an industry sandbox, it is an objective. It can only be measured in qualitative terms. Want to know if your website is personable? Start interviewing your customers. Looking for a personalization vendor? Make sure you look at the ways in which you would like to be personable and then select a vendor accordingly.

My next few blog posts will describe in more detail the three ways of making your site more personable, with pros, cons and better descriptors so that we can advance beyond the term ‘personalization’. Feel free to post any thoughts to the comments about either your experience with, or interest in, making a site more personable.

I just love this example of turning what appears to be a negative into a positive…

I’m referring to Shoeline.com’s Return-O-Meter. What’s that you ask? Well basically it plays on the reality of product returns - especially now after the holiday gift giving that doesn’t always get people what they want. 

It’s all nice to offer free shipping, but let’s be honest sometimes the shoe (or boot) just doesn’t fit. Anyhow, Shoeline.com decided to be up front about product returns. Makes sense because returns aren’t always a bad thing for “everyone” – i.e. if you’ve got a narrow foot, seeing that the #1 reason for returns is “the shoe is too narrow” might just be a good thing. That’s right. In addition to showing the level of returns, they also shared the top reasons for the return! Quite smart really. Wondering about the return rate of the Carolina Hiking Boot? Check it out now at www.shoeline.com! Too fun!

This whole strategy speaks well to customer service and keeping happy customers. Managing expectations is a big part of managing the overall web experience. It’s a nice extension to product reviews which these guys encourage as well. Plus it helps reduce overall returns which is good on all sides since customers have less hassle and retailers save money associated with back and forth shipping charges. It’s the no surprises approach and I like it a lot. 

There are lots of businesses that could take this approach. Is yours one of them?

I encourage you to read the whole case study on MarketingSherpa.com. But hurry, it’s only online for about a week - til Jan 10 I think.