|
Archive for the ‘
Kelly Rusk ’ Category
e-Retailing will save us from a recession, too bad it’s just a fad!
March 24th, 2008 by
Kelly Rusk
 Apparently, in 2008, the best place to be during a looming recession is in the online retail industry.
In fact, all signs point to this trend, including Sitebrand’s CEO who is on the front page of the Ottawa Business Journal today.
It’s pretty incredible that online retailing has the potential to save the economy. Especially when it was just a crazy pipe dream less than 15 years ago. I dug up this piece of gold from Newsweek, dated 1995. The whole article is a great read, but let me draw your attention to a few gems:
“I’m uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.”
And my favorite paragraph:
“Then there’s cyberbusiness. We’re promised instant catalog shopping–just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obsolete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t–the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.”
Now we can laugh at how wrong poor Clifford Stoll was, but the truth was at the time we were so far away from where we are now that his point of view was likely seen by a lot of people to counteract the enormous hype surrounding that new cool thing called the Internet. Think about the hype du jour — there are many opinions, and they definitely won’t all be right. Let’s see what happens in another 15 years…
PS- Still don’t believe people are skimming and scanning when they read online? Check out the comments section and notice how many people missed the article date, thinking it was current!
Related Posts
Posted in
Kelly Rusk, eCommerce |
2 Comments »
Relevance is key: Internet users think it’s all about them!
March 11th, 2008 by
Kelly Rusk
This is an interesting story from eMarketer, showing adult internet users who believe online content is focused on their own age group. It’s no surprise to anyone that the younger generations think it’s all about them. However, it’s really interesting how overall, more than half of Internet users think it’s all about them!
But what it’s *really* all about is relevance. If you target multiple demographical ranges, you want each to perceive your site as all about them. But wait–our analytics data doesn’t tell us demographic data! (yet?)
Here’s where it gets really cool. You can use your analytics data to discover exactly who your customers are. It won’t be perfectly accurate, but taking the time to understand, and intimately know your customer and you will start to be able to draw logical connections between analytics and demographic data.
Related Posts
Posted in
Kelly Rusk, Optimization, Personalization |
No Comments »
Get Inspired - How retailers are using social media
March 6th, 2008 by
Kelly Rusk
Chapters-Indigo’s Online Community
Chapters-Indigo has made the bold move of starting its own community for “booklovers” (apparently it’s one word to Chapters). Closely tied to its online store the community is a ‘meeting’ place for book lovers to connect and share.
What it does: Allows you to connect with other book lovers. You can post content (like a blog), rate and review books, join groups and find ‘friends’.
 Usability: Love the div overlays — no page re-loading so it works fast. However I wasn’t too impressed with the site search - when I was adding books I read, I couldn’t remember the spelling of a well-known author. It couldn’t help me; I had to consult my good friend Google. Generally I found the navigation a little awkward. I didn’t give it much of a chance though, so it could be more intuitive once you poke around a bit. Social bonus points for integrating RSS, send to a friend and del.icio.us bookmarking.
Community: I found it hard to find others like me. If I knew a lot of people already on the site, perhaps it would be easier. Also I wish they promoted the ratings and reviews better, that’s what would really draw me in as a user, and the most value I would get out of this social site vs. others.
What it’s great for: Finding new books to read. It’s a risky move to go into the book store and buy a book you haven’t heard of. Here you can read others’ reviews and ratings and find people like you. And obviously a great idea for Chapters-Indigo, since they sell books!
What it’s lacking: A distinct site apart from chapters.indigo.com. I suppose the point is to keep it closely tied with the online store, but it feels like I’m in a store, not a community siteWhen I go to a store, I go to shop, not to meet and hang out with other people. It’s no different on the web. I think it could have been designed differently but still tied into the store as much as possible with functionality.
Success potential: High. I didn’t spend a lot of time searching, but I don’t see much competition. People love to talk books, so creating an online community around is a brilliant idea and it seems it’s being promoted very well on the site. Also Chapters-Indigo has made it very easy to buy books you find interesting from the site, which allows it tie a dollar amount to the success of the community.
Big thanks to Mel Gallant of Women 2.0 who tipped me off to this site, via Twitter.
Related Posts
Posted in
Customer Experience, Kelly Rusk, Social Media, eCommerce |
4 Comments »
eCommerce Marketers: How does your social media measure up?
February 28th, 2008 by
Kelly Rusk
The internet is ablaze with the latest ‘here’s what’ and ‘how-to’ articles on social media. The whole concept is glamorous–A new way to communicate with people on the online. Everyone’s on Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, MySpace, [Insert social network of the day here]. They are all talking through blogs, Twitter, social apps, etc., and you (your brand) could be missing out!
And since eCommerce marketers really, truly WANT people to interact with their sites, it seems like a natural fit–in many ways it is–but before getting caught up in the excitement, you need to consider two different ways to launch a social media program:
The wrong way
Jump right in. Hire an expensive consultant/agency to take care of everything(Update: here’s why…). Don’t let employees get involved. Back out once at the first sight of criticism or negative feedback. I won’t name names, but sadly there are already a few good case studies of social media gone horribly wrong…
The right way
Understand your audience. Build goals and objectives. Take the time to understand the medium and the two-way dialogue social media creates. Understand that you may get negative feedback and learn how to deal with it appropriately (hint: Jeremiah Owyang has some great advice for this) Build a sense of community for your customers and get employees involved too.
Sure this may seem obvious, but good brands & marketers have been blinded by the hype…
Measurement is key
Engaging a social media strategy may be a lot cheaper than a television commercial or outdoor advertising campaign. But if it’s not producing meaningful results, it’s just a waste of money and/or resources. Social media is far from tried and trued, but for eCommerce marketers, assuming you have the right audience (which I’m sure you would know) there’s a few techniques you can test run before diving into a whole strategy.
- User Generated Reviews- you may already have some sort of testimonials on your site, but the user-generated review is even more powerful. (PowerReviews is a leader in this space)
- Share/Bookmarking widgets–I’m sure we all agree Word of mouth marketing is the most coveted and valuable form of marketing–and fortunately social media makes it easy for your customers to share products they are interested in with their friends. (AddThis is a cool one which covers many popular bookmarking tools)
These are low risk tactics to explore before working on a greater strategy, so testing and measurement are key. For reviews, you can split test so that some users see them, while others do not, and compare to measure effectiveness. For sharing and bookmarking widgets, you can see how much traffic those tools are generating, and how much of that traffic converts. Once you see success with these tactics, it’s time to start thinking bigger picture…
Related Posts
Posted in
Kelly Rusk, Social Media, eCommerce |
1 Comment »
Jon Stewart or Oprah — What’s your online store’s personality?
February 19th, 2008 by
Kelly Rusk
–Sitebrand Webinar, coming up March 6, 2 - 2:30 pm EST —
Your website talks to people with words, images, offers, features and design - but is it the language your customers understand?
Join us for this celebrity-inspired webinar and learn:
- the 4 types of people browsing your site
- how to adjust your design to speak to each type appropriately
- what type of messaging and incentives optimize conversion
- what features will trigger action for each type
- creative ways retailers speak their language
Guest Presenter: Jason Billingsley, VP Innovation, Elastic Path Software
REGISTER NOW…
System Requirements
PC-based attendees
Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista
Macintosh®-based attendees
Required: Mac OS® X 10.3.9 (Panther®) or newer
Related Posts
Posted in
Kelly Rusk, Personalization, eCommerce |
No Comments »
What does your email look like on the iPhone?
February 13th, 2008 by
Kelly Rusk
 Sadly, I don’t know since it’s not (widely available) yet in Canada… *sniff*
Lucky for all of us deprived of an iPhone, MarketingSherpa published a special report! If, however, you’re questioning whether it’s that important, consider that during the 2008 Macworld keynote speech, he mentioned that in the iPhone’s first quarter, it managed to snatch up nearly 20% of the smart phone marketshare — second only to RIM’s unstoppable BlackBerry! Not too mention some other great points referenced in the MarketingSherpa article.
If you’re short on time, the bottom line is HTML renders very nicely, however, limitations (like small screen and touch screen) do create some new problems, not to mention the lack of ability to target iphone users separately. So you’re best bet is to go out and get one yourself and test, test, test.
PS-Please send me one!
Photo from Flickr.Uploaded on June 10, 2007
by miss karen
Related Posts
Posted in
Email marketing, Kelly Rusk |
1 Comment »
Is Web 3.0 all about personalization?
February 11th, 2008 by
Kelly Rusk
According to ReadWriteWeb and Guardian UK it is!
It makes perfect sense. First the web is all about putting up information for people to access (btw here’s a crazy site that shows you what some big sites looked like back in the dinosaur age - aka 1996). Then Web 2.0 (which we’re all familiar with by now.. right?) is all about building interactivity online with your users. Now once that’s established as the norm, next comes personalizing the user’s interactive experience.
As a web personalization vendor, we love to hear this! Blatant self-promotion aside, this actually makes a lot of sense. The cool thing about personalization is there’s many ways -both subtle and obvious- it can be implemented, and the end result is you’re providing your users with exactly what they want.
Imagine, every site you visit displays exactly what you want to see! It’s a fantastic idea, but sadly we’re still a long way off… Just this morning it took two of us to find the shipping policy page on a very popular Canadian online shopping site. To me it seems like a given that shipping info is very important to the average shopper, so why isn’t that info available front and center? Before personalization can be effective, usability has to be perfected.
Now I’m off on a side note, but my point is made. As someone fully immersed in personalization - this prediction is already my reality. Now it’s time to sit back and enjoy the ride.
Related Posts
Posted in
Kelly Rusk, Personalization |
1 Comment »
Why is ‘customer experience’ lost in email marketing?
February 7th, 2008 by
Kelly Rusk
Customer experience (or customer experience management) is a big buzz word these days (Have you met our new Director of Customer Experience? *waves at Carolyn*). New trends online like Web 2.0 and The Long Tail have put more control in the hands of customers, means progressive marketers are scurrying to change their “we know best and we’ll tell you what to do” attitude into “You’re the customer, how can we give you what you want, so that you’ll want to buy from me…”
Yet while marketers are nodding their heads in agreement, we’re still seeing things like opt-out emails, pre-checked sign up boxes, or tiny buried legal text that says something like “by providing your email, you’re consenting to receive marketing messages from us.”
We all hate spam, so by that logic, the ‘do unto others’ theory should prevail. Until then, I’ll just continue to hit the ‘unsubscribe’ button on unsolicited mail, and you should too (or ‘This is SPAM’ if you’re really vengeful).
Related Posts
Posted in
Email marketing, Kelly Rusk |
1 Comment »
Sitebrand Webinar Series: Starts Feb. 12!
January 29th, 2008 by
Kelly Rusk
 Apologies for the quietness around here… but we’ve been very busy gearing up some very exciting new initiatives here at Sitebrand–including a webinar series! Starting Feb. 12, at 2 p.m. EST, join Carolyn Gardner, director of customer experience, and a guest discuss the ins and outs of eCommerce Marketing.
The first webinar features Sitebrand’s eCommerce Business Analyst, John Choo, and is all about ” Love, Faith & Hope: Conversion Meets Customer Behavior” Get more details & Register…
Related Posts
Posted in
Kelly Rusk, Personalization, Web Analytics, eCommerce |
No Comments »
Final New Year’s Resolution: Celebrate in ‘08
December 28th, 2007 by
Kelly Rusk
With the New Year upon us, I’m sure we all have celebrating on the brain. Whether we will celebrate ‘07 being a great year–or celebrating its end– this time of year is always about reflection and improvement for the future. First, let’s recap all of our New Year’s Resolutions so far:
- Integrate in ‘08 - Carolyn suggests combining marketing efforts, such as email marketing and web personalization to maximize the customer experience.
- Communicate in ‘08 - After finally realizing the potential of Twitter first-hand, I recommend looking to new communications tactics to further your marketing efforts.
- Ameliorate in ‘08 - Jim Cain searches for the perfect word for this ‘-ate in ‘08′ series, picks one, and then uses another, but laces the entire post with valuable marketing insight to help you ‘ameliorate in ‘08.
- User-Generate in ‘08 - Carolyn advises you follow the ever growing trend of user-generated content by adding UGC reviews to your site.
So given the timing, our final New Year’s Resolution idea for you is to Celebrate in ‘08. Whatever marketing efforts you embark on in 2008, don’t forget to take the time to celebrate your wins. It just makes life a little more fun!
That’s it! See you next year!
Related Posts
Posted in
Kelly Rusk, eCommerce |
No Comments »
|
