Now that everyone is back from last week’s Internet Retailer show in Boston, we can stop tweeting #IRCE and begin to catch up on all the emails and voicemails from last week.  But before diving into our inboxes and trying to remember our voicemail passwords (it happens to the best of us, right?), there’s a few thank you’s we owe to some great Sitebrand clients.  So without further delayand in no particular order, here they are:

ComputerGeeks.com
True story here… I’m handed the 2009 edition of the IR500 Guide and I randomly open it to page 240 – No. 181, ComputerGeeks.com.  How fitting, they are great clients of ours.  I begin to read their write up and I start to blush:  “The discount retailer of computer and consumer electronics tested a personalization system from Sitebrand Inc. in the summer of 2008 that increased sales 9% on average, or $540,000, in a two-month period.” Wow.  The ComputerGeeks.com team really gets selling online and eCommerce.  Great site and great people.  Big thanks to ComputerGeeks.com

CableOrganizer.com
Flipping to page 364, I see CableOrganizer.com’s write up hinting at personalization being the reason for ROI returns as high as “500% to 700%.” The IR500 Guide goes on to mention “The company also says it is 85% to 90% accurate on delivering content and offers at the right time, with many campaigns yielding a nearly 10% conversion rate.” Pretty impressive, right?  That’s Sitebrand’s impact.  Feel free to read the how’s and why’s here.

Danskin.com
Danskin’s Jessica Koster has always been great to us and ranks among our favorite clients to work with.  Koster and the Danskin team gave us a nice mention in their write up on page 348… “[Danskin] boosted online conversion rates by 56% using personalization technology to trigger customer web campaigns for visitors to the site.  Danskin.com used Sitebrand’s[Segment&Serve] to change the contents of a page based on the user’s geographic location.” Awww, thanks guys.

Many measure the success of a company by the results of their clients and in this case, I think the quotes speak for themselves.  We’re proud to have these success stories and want to sincerely thank you all for working with Sitebrand.

Cheers to all of our wonderful clients and new connections made last week.

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.

Up here in Canada, we’re hockey freaks.  Simply put.  Before going any further, I want to acknowledge that finally (and I mean finally!) I can bridge my passion for hockey with online marketing… sort of.  I’ve long wondered if I would ever get the chance to talk hockey in an e-Commerce blog and today, it’s now a reality.

Which leads me to a question: Do you know who Mark Gullet is?  No?  Alright, how about Mark Gullet from Tampa, Florida?  Still nothing?  That’s okay.  I didn’t know of him either, until 24 hours ago – thanks YouTube.

Regrettably, Mark is one of millions who’ve recently lost his job due to economic woes and organizational restructuring.  The only reason I even know his name is because he worked as VP of Marketing for the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning – yes, this is the hockey tie-in – and because it’s the latest viral YouTube phenomenon made by Ben Gullet, Mark’s son.

A viral job search missing the mark? You tell me.

Upon being laid off after more than 9 years of service for the Lightning hockey club, Ben created a video tribute highlighting his father’s professional strengths and experience with large cue cards and sappy music to help his father find employment.  Ben’s video hit YouTube on March 12th and two weeks later, the video has been seen more than 100,000 times and resulted in numerous job interviews (apparently).

This 14 year old wiz may have a future in internet marketing too (although I’m not convinced his father didn’t have a larger hand in this).  The video’s call to action is engaging and convicting: visit a micro-site featuring his dad’s resume.  I already feel for the guy, so OK, you got me.  I’ll click on the site.  Before you worry about being replaced by the up-and-coming-internet-genius, Ben Gullet, I’ve got good news for you: The plan isn’t flawless and stumbles in the same ways many websites and landing pages do.  If you agree with me, I’ll see to it that you keep your job.  Scouts honor.

MarkbyBen.com features the infamous video, filling the entire front page and then some.  Scrolling below the video reveals a tiny link to Mark’s resume.

But wasn’t the goal of the site to display the resume for anyone and everyone?  Why create any unnecessary barriers by hiding it below the video at the bottom of the page?  And normally, I wouldn’t make a nit-picky comment like “this site doesn’t even have any analytics” – but wouldn’t 100,000+ YouTube plays in two weeks merit it?  Finally, I’m surprised there’s no visible email address or way to connect with Mark.  Sure, you can leave a message through YouTube, but why make it difficult for potential recruiters, contacts and hiring managers to contact you?

The battle certainly doesn’t end once the visitor gets to your site – something I think we see too often in online marketing.  I fully believe that’s when the battle begins and in this case, where the viral job search falls short.  Driving traffic is great, but what happens when visitors arrive to your site?  MarkbyBen.com serves as a great example of time, effort and money invested, yet falls short of the most important aspect: creating a connection with the visitor and getting something out of their visit.  One of the keys to sucess on this site and any other: reduce any and all barriers that block the original goal of the website.  MarkbyBen.com should have Mark’s resume front and center, clear call-to-actions and a visible email address/LinkedIn profile link.  The site should have additional information about him that his resume and large cue-cards don’t speak to.  Much like any online marketer, Mark’s got one shot at a first impression and may be his only shot at converting the visitor.  Removing those barriers should be the first step towards a better site experience and ultimately, make Mark’s job search successful… or not missing the Mark.   But if Mark were a company, the next step should be web personalizaiton to better engage his vistiors.

In e-Commerce, there are many ways to provide internet marketing incentives to consumers by discounting products, shipping costs, order values etc and they are all good but we can do better.  Most discount campaigns are site wide and pushed to all visitors but this spray and pray tactic is not optimal.   Instead why not target your discounts to the right audiences?  Remember you want to increase conversions but at the same time try your best to manage/maintain those margins.

So don’t waste discounts on those that don’t need them and don’t show discounts to those that they won’t help convert:

1. It makes sense to show different types of discounts to different types of users
2. It does not make sense to show visitors discounts that they cannot take advantage of
3. Your website real estate is premium property, why waste valuable webpage space on the wrong discount message?

Let me explain with the following market segmentation examples:

New Visitors v. Returning Customers

For new visitors the main objective is to get them to make that first transaction.  So you offer a juicy ‘20% off anything’ discount to entice visitors to buy which is great, but do you need to offer that same discount to returning customers?  Not if you don’t have to – why reduce your margins on users who are likely to buy again from you anyway.  Instead why not take advantage of the fact that they are likely to buy again and offer them a discount that is more beneficial to both the customer and you?  A discount like ‘get 20% off your order over $200’ – this builds up your top line revenue while helping maintain your margins (depending on the product ranges obviously).  And conversely why risk those first purchases from new visitors by trying to squeeze more money out of them?  So while choosing to show either of these discounts to either user type will no doubt help, it makes sense to optimize who sees which discount.  This allows you to fulfill multiple goals instead of one: increase conversion rates AND manage margins AND increase customer satisfaction/loyalty.

Shipping discounts are not for everyone.

International shopping is on the rise in the online marketing world.  Many etailers are seeing strong sales growth from other countries and the opportunity to increase that growth.  So why plaster a shipping discount promo on your website when, generally, only those visitors residing in your country can benefit from it?   If I’m a retailer in the USA and an increasing amount of my sales are coming from, let’s say Canada and the UK, I don’t want to show them my ‘lower 48 states’ shipping discount as it doesn’t apply to Canadians or Brits.  I am a Canadian, and more often than not I’ll see a ‘free shipping!’ or ‘$4.99 shipping on all orders’ etc discount promotion but of course that doesn’t apply to me.  Better to target your shipping discounts to only those that can take advantage of it and show those foreign visitors a different promotion (discount-related or not).

By targeting the right discount to the right audience you are not only optimizing your conversion rate, managing your margins and providing a generally better shopping experience, but you are also maximizing the use of promotional real estate on your website.   It’s not that hard to use the same piece of real estate to show multiple discounts and promotions to targeted audiences!

And don’t forget: keep on testing and optimizing.

A colleague of mine – who we’ll refer to as “naD” for anonymity sake – recently told me my blogs are verbose. I’ve never considered myself to be loquacious before, but I suppose there’s a first for everything. Am I really of the garrulous kind?

Anyways, this all came full circle as some co-workers, naD and I were caught up in a rousing game of lunchtime Scrabble via Facebook. Without divulging any further information about my lunchtime habits, I got thinking, with so much emphasis on social media, what web 2.0 medium is most effective for e-commerce companies? I had an interesting conversation with another co-worker recently regarding social media and despite the emphasis placed here in the last few years, it’s very uncontrollable. I’ll get to that shortly…

Full disclosure: I realize it will differ for each company and that this blog is probably one of 2,000 blogs that will touch on social media today. And while there are numbers of books and blogs from experts like Dave Evans (Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day, and Dave, if you are reading this, I don’t own this book yet and December 25th is right around the corner), this is a take that directly affects Sitebrand users or those further looking into web 2.0 strategies with personalization, targeted content and other marketing strategies. It’s a look at segmentation, how to work with open environments (users are free to say what they want, when they want – regardless of validity or truth) and avoiding the “boil the ocean” mentality.

Hypothetical example here… let’s assume you are an online electronics retailer selling everything from alarm clocks to MP3 players.

You are up to date with all the Facebook’s, Linked In’s, Twitter’s (this itself can be daunting, I know) and a specific intent is established for your internet marketing plan. You know you want to use Facebook and Twitter for different promotions. Those could be two vastly different kinds of visitors, right? Going back to a comment I made earlier, you can’t control what’s being said about you and any preconceived notions that go along with it, so how do you deal with this, without having a face-to-face conversation with every visitor? Since my example has us selling the coolest widgets and gadgets, understanding your visitors based on where they are coming from is just as important as anything else on your site and the need to segment your audience and dynamically message them truly begins.

The traffic coming from your hourly/daily tweets trust your promotions or the source it came from (and let’s suppose your analytics tell you nearly 12% of your traffic is from mobile browsers). Your landing page could offer minimal images and focus on messaging/links that load quickly and since I’m in ultra-merchandising mode, focus on the latest in smart phones and Bluetooth headsets. Since that trust is there (or at least higher than most first time visitors), you can focus on what the visitor should buy, not why. And that’s just for first time visitors. When they come back, you can target these same visitors to help increase brand awareness and drive home non-financial conversions/goals. Ultimately, ensuring they’ve seen your great promotions, seen why you are a great company and changing any preconceived notions they may have had about you before. This is your chance to get into your visitors mind and represent your company the way you want. The power of targeted messaging, eh?

For traffic coming from Facebook, you know this is either from paid ads or a link from a user profile. Either way, they aren’t as connected to you and your company as the Twitter crowd. Seems like a good opportunity to segment, right? One way or another, you’ve paid for this customer to be on your site, so it needs to count and needs to capture the visitors attention/trust. At this point, having a banner run through the entire session for these visitors (clickable or not), telling them the site is secure, potential refund info, shipping info based on geography/location might be worthwhile. Maybe the message changes and talks to the visitor based on their click patterns or the fact they came from Facebook, who knows – the sky is the limit here. Since it’s a more general crowd, you could opt to show an array of your different products and special sales. Or perhaps you want to focus on company branding more than particular promotions and quick conversions. Personalization and visitor segmentation give marketers a window to brand like never before. You can drive home your message in a conversational way. Imagine having your customers line up to have a face-to-face conversation with you. I’m sure you can make them a believer in your company (at least you could for me… I know how convincing our Sitebrand blog readers are) and isn’t that the whole point of a webpage in the first place?

If all this sounds cooler than a $4 sweater on Christmas, then hold onto your hat: I’ll be running a product demonstration webinar this coming Wednesday, December 17th @ 2pm EST (BTW, they are only 29 minutes long!). In the new year, I’ll be running these webinars bi-weekly, so this Wednesday’s presentation will be the neonate demo. I’ll be talking about web 2.0 integration with Sitebrand,  showing its ease of use and effectiveness. If your conversion rate is lower than 4% and you want to get more out of your existing traffic, I’d love to meet you. Remember: the tools your company uses to tap into your visitors represent the kind of company you are and the kind of customers you are after.

To everyone who can’t make it, happy holidays and see on you on the other side (2009).