I’m on month three here at Sitebrand, and man, how time flies when you’re having fun.  I find one of the most interesting things to take in, is the company pitch and core values when you’re new.  Rarely can you experience this in such an unbiased fashion after you’ve spent time with a firm.  So I wasn’t surprised to hear the buzz around web site personalization.  Coming from the audience measurement space, I was no stranger to the idea, but was anxious to hear what Sitebrand had to say about it.  Let me illustrate with a bricks and mortar example.

This past weekend, I was walking through our local big box hardware store; I needed furnace filters, excitement at its best.  I rounded the corner of the furnace aisle and was greeted by a salesman.  He very quickly realized my intention and prompted me with ‘What size filters are you looking for?”.  Nothing remarkable about that you say.  But ask yourself, how does that compare to the online experience?  The fact that I entered the store obviously meant I was a visitor and the fact that I walked down the furnace aisle meant I could be segmented.  But it was the combination of those facts along with a relevant message that made the experience truly personal, and that’s where I’m going.

Personalization isn’t just about segmenting users, and it isn’t about delivering a unique message to a visitor because you can.  It’s about optimizing the conversation you’re having with your visitor.  It’s about having a dialogue rather than a monologue. The ability to segment web traffic is no different in the online world than the ability to stand in the furnace aisle and whistle Dixie.  The key is combining a set of likely visitor expectations with the information you have, to deliver you guessed it: the right message to the right visitor, at the right time.  I wasn’t asked whether it was my first visit to the store, nor was I directed to the humidifiers section.

So what’s the takeaway here?  It’s simple, don’t get lost in the technology, or with the variety of methods and techniques to get in front of users.  Sure, we now have the ability to stand in that online furnace aisle, and that’s a great thing for Marketers, but that’s not the end of the story.  Success always comes down to relevant messaging, segmentation just places you in the aisle.

After I had the right furnace filter in my hand, the salesman kindly asked if he could help with anything else, “no” is what I said, so he pointed me in the direction of the checkout counter.

It’s with great excitement that I announce Chris Corman, our President & CEO, will be appearing live on Online Marketing with RSS Ray Wednesday June 10th at 6pm EST.  This will be Chris’ first radio interview since coming on board in April earlier this year.

There are four basic points Chris plans to discuss

Maximizing existing traffic’s conversions
Emphasis and focus is always placed on driving traffic to websites.  Conversion rates average anywhere from 1-5% depending on industry and variables, but little attention is ever placed on reinvesting in the traffic that’s already visiting your site.  The reality is, you’ve put time, money and effort into your existing traffic base and only a low percentage of them are converting.  And that’s where Sitebrand enters the equation, helping maximize your traffic investments.

Testing messaging with your audience
Chris’ background in web analytics and measurement becomes very apparent when talking about testing and rightfully so.  Testing is a big component to Sitebrand personalization and subsequent success.  Identifying the need for personalization is one thing, but evaluating messages, understanding what works and what doesn’t is highly critical towards ongoing success.  Chris has some great ideas about testing – this will be a great piece for listeners to hear.

Personalization’s universal appeal
The e-Commerce world offers an incredible number of solutions that work towards improvements, efficiencies and increased revenue.  But unlike personalization, many of these solutions appeal to certain audiences and have limited uses.  The beauty of personalization is its universal use – personalized messages and content appeals to any and every visitor.  It has a tremendous impact on revenue and bottom line and as well on customer experience.

Bringing marketing back to marketers
As the internet continues to grow, so does it’s sophistication and technical requirements.  Marketer’s still have great ideas and ways to improve, but these plans are usually met with technical concerns and questions like “Can we do that?” and “Do we have the resources for this?”  Sitebrand’s intuitive interface makes even the most complicated segmentation rule easy to execute in minutes.  This might be one of Chris’ favorite aspect’s of Sitebrand’s Segment&Serve.

Again – don’t forget to lookout for Chris’ Sitebrand radio debut next Wednesday at 6pm EST.  Click here for more information about the show (note: click the upper left hand image for the live radio feed).

Let us know if you want to add anything to Chris’ discussion list – see you then!

Stay classy, online marketing.

It’s always interesting to read an eCommerce success story to understand the lessons learned, strategies involved and of course, the magical combination of technologies used for sales and conversion rate wins.

Sadly, there isn’t one single combination to guarantee results and certainly that’s no revolutionary thought.  Everyone’s trying to figure out what technologies are needed and what’s not.  My needs don’t match your needs, so the bad news is you still have to keep on top of new tools and technology that solve your challenges.  It’s almost a job in itself.  I guess that’s the true challenge for marketers and vendors in any space, especially in the online marketing world.

Think about it.  You probably have a number of the following tools/solutions running in conjunction with your site right now: in-site search, recommendations, live chat/customer support, customer/product reviews, multivariate or A/B testing, affiliate marketing, email marketing, CMS and of course, web personalization.  I know you all have web personalization integrated into your web strategies.

All these technologies plugged into your website no doubt have the ability to raise your conversion rates and enhance the visitor experience.  I’m sure they all do, but when you have 3 or 4 of the above solutions running at once, are they all working in unison or like 3 or 4 separate products?  You probably don’t have the time or bandwidth to properly setup, run, modify and analyze each solution on a weekly basis and I’m guessing the solutions don’t naturally play well together.  Software is great like that, right?

Is it fair to expect a 1-3% conversion lift from each of the solutions listed above; or at least most of them?  Sounds reasonable if used properly and to the maximum capability.  So, if you are running 3 or 4 of these solutions, why isn’t your conversion rate nearing double digits or higher?  Are these different solutions converting the same visitors?  And would your conversion rate suffer without these solutions?

I’m really asking what the impact of these solutions are.  Are they worth the money you pay when they contribute to a conversion rate that’s less than ideal?  You’ve outsourced a good chunk of your website for tools and solutions that do something better than you can, but do the results justify having the solutions?  Especially if they are converting the same visitors.

For example, a visitor goes through an in-site search to a product that’s been delivered via a recommendation engine.  Score one point for both the search and the recommendation tool, but it’s not like your conversion rates show’s it; nor does the ROI.  Would the conversion happen with only one of the solutions?  Or perhaps without either solution?  How do each of these tools show individual value over another?  My boss will probably say I’m arguing a war of attribution, but let’s see what you guys have to say!

I’m looking forward to all different thoughts, insight and opinions on this subject.

Stay classy, internet marketing tools.

First of all, let’s start by explaining what an email pre-header is. An email pre-header is a snippet of text that appears above your header image and html of your email. The pre-header can be used for a couple of things, it can be used for administrative information such as asking people to add your sending address to their address book, you could have your “View this email online” link in there or even a permission reminder with an option to opt out.

Figure 1 - email with no images

Lately a lot of e-marketers have been using the email pre-header space to add a call-to-action and some brand recognition to their emails. This is especially important when you are sending emails that are all images with very little or no text, because a lot of people are viewing your email with images off by default.

Take this email from Forever21.com for example (see figure 1), this is how it looked when it landed in my inbox. Images are turned off by default, I can’t tell who it is from or what the offer is.

When I downloaded the images, I could see a really nice photo with an offer for party dresses starting at $13.50 (see figure 2). Wouldn’t it have been nice if the pre-header said something like “Forever21.com: Party Dresses from $13.50!” or “View online to get party dress from Forever21.com starting from $13.50″? At least I would have been able to tell who the email was from and what the offer was right away without having to download the images.

Figure 2 - after downloading images

On top of not having a pre-header, there is a smaller image below the big one saying “free standard shipping with orders of $75 or more”. If that was written in text, I could see it without having to download images and it might entice me to click through to the site. Who doesn’t love free shipping?

I’m not saying that every email needs a preheader but it is definitely a good idea to use that space to your advantage.

Happy emailing,
Alison

I can remember times where everyone believed we couldn’t have enough online stores.  Selling online was the next BIG thing.  Everyone started their own little shop and became online marketing experts.  It was easy and cheap.

What happened?  The reason growth in e-Commerce is threatened, slowed, or stopped altogether isn’t because the market is saturated, it’s because there’s been a failure of management.

Every major industry has once experienced significant growth.  The ones that made the right decisions grew, the others… well, here’s a simple example.

There once was a time when railroads were the hottest and trendiest way of transportation.  The railroad industry didn’t stop growing because the need for passengers and transportation declined.  Year after year, more people were traveling, just like there are more people buying online today.

Sitebrand says don't treat e-Commerce like railroads!

People didn’t move away from trains and towards cars, trucks, airplanes etc… the reality is people stopped using  trains.  Railroad companies let their customers leave because they saw being in the railroad business as their top priority, rather than being in the transportation business.  They were railroad oriented and not transportation oriented; they were product oriented and not customer oriented.

Do you see were I’m going with this?

Assuming growth is assured by an expanding population or by the adoption of technology might be as fatal as believing if visitors find your site; they will buy from you.

Over the last few years, most online companies haven’t needed to think, at least not a lot.  More and more people were buying more products and services online.  In times where everyone was spending, there wasn’t a growth problem.  If thinking is the intellectual response to a problem, then the absence of a problem leads to the absence of thinking.

Weird? Well I’m a technology guy, that’s how we rationalize.

So let me come back to my railroad example.  Online retailers finally have to understand that they can’t be railroad oriented.  Their business is not to perfect their SEO, find more ways of driving traffic or analyzing why someone didn’t buy.  They have to be transportation oriented.

It all starts with the customer.  Everything else are tools to help you take good care of what is important in your business: your customers.  Tools can be dangerous and can be misused if you don’t ensure your customers are happy.  Streets were built to bring people to trains and were later expanded so people could use cars and not trains (Don’t you feel that Google sounds a lot like those streets?).

You think we would have learned from our mistakes with railroads?

Think again.  Review how happy your visitors and customers are.

Look at your bounce rates or ratio between new versus returning visitors and tell me that you have not failed so far.  Now tell me that you didn’t think further than buying more keywords in the past.

So far you’ve built the trains, tracks and streets that bring people to your train stations.  You’ve looked at reports that tell you visitors come, look into your trains and leave to take the bus or go home or… who knows.  You don’t even know if they actually wanted to take the train, ah… I mean buy a product.

Put the customer in the center of your business.  Use review tools like Powerreviews to ask for opinions.  Use Sitebrand to personalize & optimize the session.  Help them find what they are looking for with tools like SLI-Systems.  Make them feel welcome and special.  Give them the feeling you have when you get on an airplane, first class from Hong Kong to New York.  You get pampered.  Give them the first class experience they deserve.

Don’t give visitors the lousy second class train ride experience with stops at every milk can.  Don’t make the same mistakes the railroads did…