Retail ecommerce blog – Online Retail Marketing and Ecommerce Optimization Tips

IRCE 2009 - A Quick Summary

2009-06-30T00:22:00.000-07:00

The IRCE 2009 at Boston went fine for Mobius. We had a perfect location (3rd from the entrance/exit). People who visited us at booth no. 504 got a fair idea about our new product Re.flex and other services. I heartily THANK all the people who stopped by. We hope meeting you again next year at IRCE 2010

Here are a few pictures taken at IRCE 2009.

From left to right:

Andrew Sorensen, Director – US Operations

Mallacy Sherlock, Business Development – US

Uma Shankar, Director – Online Retail

Shri Harish, BD Manager

With our CEO Karthik Karunakaran (aka) KK

Meet Team Mobius at IRCE (Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition) 2009 Boston

2009-05-27T00:18:00.000-07:00

The IRCE 2009 (Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition) at Boston is from June 15-18. Mobius Knowledge Services will be exhibiting for the first time. If you have registered to attend IRCE 2009 conference we request you to visit at booth #504 to know about our new product that we are launching.

Check out our Exhibit Hall

About IRCE (Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition):

The Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition (IRCE) is the America's largets e-Retailing trade show.

Retailes will get to know the latest ecommerce technology in the world.

Ecommerce industry speakers will deliver sound advices, training, workshops,etc...

All paid conference attendees receive free web access to all presentation slides received from speakers prior to the show.

300+ Exhibitors | 172 Speakers | 700+ Attending companies.

Check out The IRCE Agenda

Check out the speakers list

MOBIUS LOOK FORWARD TO MEET YOU AT IRCE 2009.

Shopping Engine Traffic Review for March 2009

2009-05-26T05:38:00.000-07:00

In spite of the disastrous start in the beginning of 2009, most CSEs are recovering in terms of the traffic flow.

As I was going through the report for March, I came across some disheartening numbers. The decrease for Pricerunner in terms of unique monthly visitors (-97.40) and monthly visits(-97.25) is quite discouraging. Jellyfish like Pricerunner also encountered a fall in traffic.

But other than that, most major CSEs have noticed an increasing trend in traffic for March. Nextag again tops the list in terms of ranking and attracts the most number of visitors.

The biggest gainer for March in terms of an increase in unique visitors is thefind.com followed by shop.com, Shopwiki and nextag.com.

Note: There will be a small change in the entire traffic analysis pattern. I’ll be including Top 25 CSEs of the month based upon the compete ranking. Only those CSEs will be included that meet the compete rank less than 30,000.

Important Note: This shopping engine traffic data is gathered from Compete.com and it may not provide the exact traffic data and so, we cannot conclude the popularity of a CSE based on it alone. But, from this data one can discover the past performance of a CSE, which can help online merchants to choose the right comparison shopping engine for Data feed marketing.

Shopping Engine Traffic Review for February 2009

2009-05-26T02:48:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the delay in posting this traffic analysis report.

We saw a great dip in the January traffic pattern for most Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs) and unfortunately, there seems to be no remarkable improvement in February either. The detailed traffic data shows the decline in traffic flow in all major CSEs. The year 2009 has not been a good one for the CSEs as the visits by shoppers are showing a decreasing trend.

The only CSE with an increase of 6.50% in monthly visitors is Like.com with a monthly pages/visit of 2.5. This increment might not seem outstanding but when compared to other CSEs, it is by far the best performer for February.

In terms of monthly unique visitors, Jellyfish tops the list with an increase of 35.10%.

Nextag.com with a traffic rank of 41 attracts the most number of unique visitors.

Out of all the CSEs listed here, Pricewatch rules the roof in terms of pages/visit. Details can be viewed from the traffic analysis report of the previous month.

Though Pricegrabber.com was the undisputed winner in January, it has not fared that well this month.

After the end of the shopping season in December 2008, the fall in traffic for all CSEs is a growing concern in the online market. I have not included few major CSEs like Google product search, Yahoo shopping, MSN shopping due to non-availability of data.

Important Note: The above mentioned traffic data is gathered from Compete.com. It may not provide the exact traffic data and so, we cannot conclude the popularity of a CSE based on it alone. But, from this data one can discover the past performance of a CSE, which can help online merchants to choose the right comparison shopping engine for Data feed marketing.

How about an antenna to help you make marketing decisions?

2009-05-08T04:09:00.000-07:00

I was busy working for our soon to be launched Microsite and other activities that took away a full 20 days. Thanks to those people who took time to mail me asking about my brief hiatus!

Like I mentioned in the first post of this series, the decision making process in online business is a continuous activity dependent on the interaction with the environment. When interacting with the environment, “retailers are better at transmitting signals than receiving them.”

So what are the signals that retailers transmit to the environment?

Ultimately, it’s the products & prices in various names and forms! And the carriers of these signals are search engines, comparison shopping engines, emails, affiliate channels and others. But that’s not the end of it. A retailer should also receive signals – you can call it market intelligence - from the environment. Retailers have to use this online market intelligence and make decisions on products, prices and channel strategies to run effective marketing campaigns.

But, do retailers have an antenna at their disposal to receive and interpret relevant market intelligence from the environment? Understandably, for an offline store, setting up and running such an antenna system would be a costly, time consuming task. But for an online merchant, it is not very difficult. Some smart thinking and a bit of technology would come in handy to set up an antenna to receive intelligence from each of his marketing channels.

So, what signals should that Antenna collect?

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if the antenna could pick signals and tell you as to which comparison engine would receive more traffic for your products, calculate and tell you the optimum price to quote for your products, what products are hot in the market, and so on? I am sure, with this antenna, the retailers will be able to make informed marketing decisions.

Well, wouldn’t it do a world of good to have such an antenna at your disposal?

One Time Decisions and Daily Decisions

2009-04-15T21:26:00.000-07:00

On my quest to understand the decision making process in the ecommerce environment, i'd be writing a series on "When Online Retailers Make Decision..." and this is the first post in the series. Subscribe to this blog to keep track of the forth coming entries.

Business decisions are supposed to be guided by information and experience.

In business, the decision making process is a continuous activity integrated in the interaction with the environment. There is always a consequence to every decision – either POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE - and it’s just a matter of time before you know if you have made the right decision or not.

I was trying to figure out how online retailers make the majority of their decisions. Are their decisions backed by relevant information or just plain intuition?

One time decisions: Well, there are few areas where online retailers do thorough research before they make a decision – decisions such as selecting the right ecommerce platform or a search marketing agency or shopping cart software. In most of these cases, the retailers have a clear idea about their budget, requirements etc. They usually have enough time to look at a few demos and typically discuss with friends before deciding to go with a particular solution. There are a lot of websites that provide loads of information to guide the retailer to make these type of decisions.

Daily decisions: However, there are also areas where retailers don’t do thorough research before making decisions – areas where they need to take decisions on a daily basis. These are the decisions that determine the success of the business in the long run.

Retailers must make daily decisions on the product mix they want to offer, the price they will bid on paid channels, the prices they set for their products, the size of the inventory they want to hold and much more. Retailers typically rely on intuition rather than information when they make these crucial decisions. They either don’t have relevant, ready to use information with them or they have too much information that is hard to interpret. Some retailers don’t even have time to look at information before they make these decisions. Even if decisions are based on information, in most of cases, retailers only have historical data in hand, which results in decisions that are based on hindsight analysis!

Informed decisions: Imagine that when you log-in to your system every morning, a dashboard displays a list of products that need your attention for that day. These products either require a change in price or a change in channel. Imagine if the same dashboard also gives you intelligent recommendations on the optimum price of the product and the best channel suited to market the product – after analyzing your internal data, market information and knowing your business rules and strategy.

Well, wouldn’t it do a world of good to your business if you had such a dashboard?

Pixazza turns images into product links

2009-03-31T06:12:00.000-07:00

There is a no limit on generating ideas and creating new applications in the world of Internet commerce. Pixazza, which was created by Pixazza, Inc. of Mountain View, California, has certainly earned the right to be called an innovative visual commerce application.

What makes Pixazza so cool?

Pixazza is an ad network. Its technology is designed to turn still images on a web page into ecommerce product links.

Refer the screen shot below.

Photo Source: www.Imnotobsessed.com

Who can use Pixazza?

Online Retailers/Advertisers: Pixazza is likely to become one more channel for online retailers to promote their products to consumers of other websites. If you are an apparel merchant, you may enjoy the services of Pixazza right away. However, if you deal with other categories, such as electronics, travel, home and furnishings, sports and so on, then you may need to wait for Pixazza to fully roll out.Currently, Pixazza supports a number of ad models, such as CPA, CPC and CPM.

Website Owners/Publishers: Bloggers and website owners with a lot of images on their website can use Pixazza as one more revenue generation stream. When consumers click on one of the product links from your images to make a purchase, Pixazza splits the commission with the publisher. I believe this could be a valuable source of income for publishers for two reasons: Pixazza ads don’t require separate real estate on the publisher’s web page and they do not get in the way of other ads on the site. If you want to become a publisher then make sure your site has plenty of enough images.

Experts: Pixazza’s door is open to everyone looking to generate additional income. Since Pixazza is designed to turn images into ads, Pixazza, Inc. requires a bunch of people to help it find products that featured in its partner websites. These experts would get paid on a commission basis.

Online Shoppers: Pixazza is not a shopping destination, but it does allow consumers to shop for products that are visible in images. To enjoy it, shoppers simply have to roll their mouse over an image on the publisher’s website. A window then pops up that shows the related or similar products that are available for sale in the image. To explore more, shoppers can click on the provided product link, and Pixazza will redirect you to the merchant’s product page.

Pixazza claims to be an AdSense for images. In Google AdSense, ads are served automatically depending upon the content available in the publisher’s website. With Pixazza, the same concept applies, but the groundwork of tagging and identifying the product in each image is done by human eyeballing and not by a computer algorithm, so the involvement of human labor is quite high.

Some of the retailers already signed up with Pixazza are…

Zappos
Overstock
Macy’s
Amazon
Bluefly and more…

The good news about Pixazza is that the Big G has shown keen interest in this new ad technology. In fact, Google is one of only three companies to fund Pixazza. Who knows? Tomorrow, Pixazza might be completely bought out by Google! :-)

Let’s wait and watch.

25 SEO Facts

2009-03-27T09:33:00.000-07:00

In my last post I wrote about SEO myths and misconceptions. And, here are a few SEO facts that you need to know.

1. Normal results may vary from personalized results

2. Results may vary when you change Google’s SafeSearch filtering

3. You cannot judge the popularity of a long tail keywords

4. You need not optimize for long tail keywords, they would rank by themselves

5. Search engine algorithm cannot be perfectly predicted

6. Sitemap is necessary if your site is not crawler-friendly

7. Meta descriptions are used as a reference for a page by Google in SERP, but they have less impact on search engine optimization.

8. If you don’t have a Meta description, then Google may sometimes display your site information from DMOZ, if you are listed there or it would display a relevant content from your webpage.

9. Search engine bots cannot read images easily

10. Low page rank sites may outrank high page rank sites

11. Sites that appeal to users, also appeal to search engines

12. Bots cannot reach a URL if it has got too many parameters

13. Google advises to use “Nofollow” attribute for the paid links

14. Google can index 18 types of files (PDF, Postscript, .atom, .rss, .dwf, etc)

15. No SEO company knows search engine optimization fully

16. If any site steals your content, then you may file a Google’s DMCA request to claim ownership.

17. Sending automated queries to Google to check a site’s ranking is against Google’s terms of service.

18. Parked domain names won’t typically appear in search results.

19. Google can now crawl and index content that is embedded in flash, but there is no guarantee.

20. Google doesn’t accept money to crawl a website more often

21. Google considers over 200 factors while displaying results

22. Google has different data centers to retrieve results

23. Nofollow tag is applicable only for Google and not for other search engines

24. Your competitor cannot harm your search engine ranking

25. Google encourages you to write original content

Feel free to add more.

SEO Myths and Misconceptions

2009-03-25T05:52:00.000-07:00

There's a no defined SEO blueprint to fall back on!

Every website is unique and needs a tailored SEO strategy to get crawled, indexed and ranked well in search engines. Out there on the Internet, you’ll find articles, forum threads, newsletters and emails that talk about SEO tactics. But some of these tactics can be discarded as SEO myths.

Many SEO professionals and marketers have spewed out these SEO myths to delude their clients to reap in $. Newbie SEO professionals and ecommerce business owners become the real victim as they gobble up these myths without a second thought. I was one of the victims at the hands of these myths, and now when I look back at the start of my internet marketing career I merely laugh at my naiveté.

With this blog post, I just wanted to share few SEO myths and misconceptions that I have heard and read.

SEO Myths and Misconceptions

Myth 1: Once your site reaches the top position, it will remain there forever – if that was the case then internet marketing and SEO firms would fade away very soon.

Myth 2: In link building quantity overpowers quality - Definitely not, quality always wins. You may ask a question, how to build a quality link for my online store?

Myth 3: Do not build links aggressively - You should thrust-aside this if your website is smart enough to get natural backlinks from other like-minded professionals/users.

Myth4: Reciprocal link is good and will provide an SEO success – Gone are the days of old school SEO. It depends on how smartly you use it.

Myth5: There is a one specific or defined factor that will help your site rank well in search engines. No, the actual SEO requires lot of work. It comprises of…

Your business goals and thresholds
Online marketing strategy
Competition research
Keyword research
Information architecture and internal link building
Website design and development
Compelling copywriting with users and search engines in mind (continuous effort)
Quality link building/baiting (continuous effort)
Mixing social media strategy into SEO
Web analytics and conversion optimization
Never ending process

Myth6: Site structuring doesn’t matter in SEO – Hey, it matters a lot. It helps spiders and users to read your content.

Myth 7: Don’t bother about duplicate content – For that matter, most retailers use manufacturer’s product description on their site. That’s definitely not good for users and search engines. Please don’t do it.

Myth 8: Dedicated hosting is good for SEO – Is it so? Check this dedicated hosting, shared hosting, and SEO. Don’t forget to check what matt-cutts comments on dedicated and shared hosting. BTW, check out this funny picture of Matt Cutts. Thanks to BigOak for sharing this.

Myth 9: Google PPC ranking may harm your SEO ranking – Oh my God! This is really a big myth. There is absolutely no connection between Google’s PPC listings and organic listings.

Myth 10: Search engines pay a lot of attention to Meta keywords - I don’t think so. You need not bother about this too much. If you really want to get your hands into it, then use only relevant keywords without spamming and stuffing.

Myth 11: Submitting sites to 1000’s of directories will get you on top of SERP– Absolutely not, you’d simply be wasting your valuable time and money by doing so.

Myth 12: Search engines are the only channels to market your product– It is true that search engines are a great traffic puller, but there are other online marketing channels like comparison shopping engines, internet marketplaces, etc that give good traffic and sales.

Myth 13: Keyword density should be of 2-5% and is a real mantra for SEO success - There is no specific KD to be followed. Many newbie SEOers still practice this a definite SEO tactic.

Myth 14: Google Page rank is dead - No, it is still alive. GPR is one of the SEO factors, but remember it is not everything.

Myth 15: Having mirror sites will fetch you a good rank – This is same as duplicate content in others, which is of no use.

Myth 16: W3C validation will definitely rank your site higher – There are many e-commerce sites that are not w3c compliant but still rank in search engines. Don’t bother too much about this, but build your site with no major errors.

Myth 17: Content should have minimum of 250-300 words – Even shorter copies/content do good in search engines. There is no such defined numbers. Write unique product copies with clear cut marketing message filled with targeted keywords.

Myth 18: Search engine optimized sites will for sure rank high – Thumbs down! There is no such guarantee.

Myth 19: SEO can be done by anyone – Tom, Dick and Harry cannot do a real SEO. It is not easy.

Myth 20: Sitemap can guarantee SEO rankings – Actually No, your site should be spider friendly.

There are many such SEO myths that has shuddered the entire SEO community. It is wise to brainstorm every time you hear a strange SEO tactic. Discuss the concept with your peers and other SEO professionals to validate it.

More SEO Myths are Welcome... :-)

Where do most online retailers fail?

2009-03-23T22:29:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, it’s in terms of user experience. The E-tailing Group’s recent customer satisfaction index reveals that only eight out of 100 e-retailers scored an 80 or above on a scale of 100. The average score was 68.44, only slightly better off from the score in 2007, which averaged around 67.9.These 100 retail websites were scored on three broad categories which could be further split into 83 metrics. Execution of key pages (25 points), merchandising (43 points) and customer service tactics (32 points) were the three broad parameters on which user satisfaction was quantified.

"This customer experience index is a tri-fecta that requires sophisticated key pages, meticulous merchandising, and comprehensive customer service to round out the shopping experience," says Lauren Freedman, president of The E-tailing Group.

While key page execution scores the home page and other product pages in terms of navigation, appeal, branding and so on, merchandising evaluates a website’s search functionality, marketing strategies, and content. Customer service tactics review the availability, diversity, and quality of customer service provided by the e-tailers.

Given below is the list of e-tailers who scored an 80 or above in terms of user experience. Their scores for the previous year are also given along with the percentage increase.

Sears, 88.25, 67.90, 21.48%
Golfsmith, 82.25, 75.50, 8.94%
Frontgate, 80.75, 70.00, 15.36%
L.L. Bean, 80.50, 76.00, 5.92%
Discovery Channel, 80.50, 76.00, 5.92%
Amazon, 80.50, 73.00, 10.27%
Best Buy, 80.50, 68.50, 17.52%
Orvis, 80.00, 75.50, 5.96%

Merchants were also organized by category and analysed for user experience. Mass merchants lead with a score of 78, while Drugstores hit the bottom at 59.56.

Merchant scores for other categories were as follows:

Technology - 75.91
Office Supplies - 72.38
Books/Music/Media - 71.75
Sporting Goods – 70.66
Pets - 70.50
Department Stores - 69.05
Home/Garden - 68.73
Toys/Games - 68.50
Apparel - 67.94
Health & Beauty - 64.75
Accessories/Shoes - 64.22
Gifting - 60.43

Of Top 100 Online Retailers, 44 Retailers Blog

2009-03-20T05:48:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I wrote about 5R’s of online retail blog (Ready, Reach, Realize, Research, Retain) which elucidated why online retailers should blog. In the same posts, I also mentioned that online retailers/merchants who do not blog are missing the golden opportunity to market their products and services to their target audience.

According to Getelastic.com, only 15% of top 500 online retailers have ecommerce blogs. This data is a bit old but still worth reading, so check it out.

I recently looked up the top 100 internet retailers of 2009 and tried to verify if they own a blog. I came to the conclusion that 44 out of 100 top online retailers have an ecommerce blog.

No. of Blogs as per internet retailer’s category:

Apparel and Accessories - 11
Books/Films/Music - 3
Computers and Electronics - 3
Flowers/Gifts/Jewelry - 2
Food/Drug - 5
House wares/Home furnishing - 1
Mass Merchants - 4
Specialty/Non-Apparel - 12
Sporting Goods - 3

Quick Glance:
Blogs that fall below 100,000 Alexa Rank – 24 out of 44 (Subject to change)
Blogs that has Google Page Rank >=5 - 19 out of 44 (Subject to change)
Blogs that are more than 3 years old – 8 out of 44
Blogs that started in 2009 – 3 out of 44

Blog Type data:
Blogs in Sub domain – 36% (16 out of 44)
Blogs in Separate Domain Name – 29% (13 out of 44)
Blogs in Sub folder – 27% (12 out of 44)
Blogs that uses free blog services – 9% (4 out of 44)

Posting Frequency:

I have categorized posting frequency into 4 types: Hyper Active - Active - Just there - Dormant.

The posting frequency depends upon how often the blog is updated.

Hyper Active –28
Active – 5
Somewhat Active - 3
Dormant – 11

Below is the blog information of top online retailers of 2009.

Blog for Internet retailers by an Internet Retailer

2009-03-18T23:14:00.000-07:00

On my quest for good blog sites, I stumbled on one that definitely needs to be mentioned. The e-Commerce and Entrepreneurship Blog by Plumbersurplus.com truly impressed me.

The blog is run by an internet retailer who was one among the Hot 100 Internet retailers of 2008 according to Internetretailer.com. This retailer is also a Multichannel Merchant award winner (MCM) for 2008.

Plumbersurplus.com, a pure play online retailer that offers home improvement, plumbing and building materials. Unlike other retailer blogs which concentrate only on their niche products, the team from Plumbersurplus.com shares their experiences and thoughts with other online retailers on several issues, like customer support, Merchandising, Marketing, Finance, SEO/SEM and so on.

Since its creation in June 2008, around 170 blog posts on different issues have been added to this informative blog. Here is the list of some of the active bloggers/employers of Plumbersurplus.

Vanessa
Zach
Matt
Josh
Elizabeth
Tim
Others

Check out some of the interesting posts from PlumberSurplus.com blog:

The User Experience: Do Current Shoppers Take Precedence Over New Visitors?

Should all Departments Have “Customer Experience” as their Number One Priority?

Website Design and Architecture: Eight Musts for Scalability and Reusability

It is definitely a bold and different approach adopted by plumbersurplus.com. I, on behalf of Retail-eCommerce.com, praise Plumbersurplus for sharing their real time work experiences through blogging.

What is your pricing strategy for Internet?

2009-03-05T04:09:00.000-08:00

Pricing a product is a tricky job for an online retailer. I was looking at the ecommerce landscape, trying to understand the pricing methodologies that retailers follow when pricing a product. I had so many questions; a few of them are still unanswered.

The Bottom line Pressure: Competition is just a click away and retailers have very less room for error when it comes to pricing a product. The price hunter goes away to the competitor if the product is a tad overpriced. Retailers face bottom line pressure if the product is under-priced and that kick starts the pressure to drive volumes to offset the hit. Manufacturers are breathing down the neck the whole time to make sure that retailers are not quoting below the MSRP. Recession is slowly changing the buying behavior and shoppers are becoming more price sensitive than earlier.

Fixing the Right Price: With 1000s of products in the product mix,

Do retailers spend time on each product when fixing the price?
Is the product pricing exercise a scientific one or still intuitive?
Do the retailers look at pricing a product as a positioning exercise?

It is not the promotions strategy that I am talking about. You might have the lowest price displayed but offset it with higher shipping or moderate pricing with no shipping cost etc. What I am talking about is about fixing the “bottom line price” – the total cost of ownership of the product to the buyer.

Shopping Engine Traffic Review for January 2009

2009-03-04T05:19:00.000-08:00

This was supposed to be posted on Feb 2009. Apologies…it’s coming a month late as i was involved in some other initiatives.

Let’s take a look at the traffic data for various Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs). After the shopping season there seems to be a great dip in the January traffic pattern of the CSEs when compared to the December 2008 results. It is clearly evident that due to economy slowdown, the early 2009 did not brood well for most of the comparison shopping engines.

CSEs, such as Shoplocal, Mysimon, Pricerunner, and Pricewatch saw a drastic decline in the traffic, except for Pricegrabber, the winner of the month with a whopping increase in the compete rank, from 112 to 69 and a 48% increase in monthly unique visitors, 2.8 pages/visit (though not so impressive but there was an increase of 51.72%). Next comes smarter that saw some increase in ranking and unique visitors but a little down-turn in the pages/visit. Notable shopping engines, like Shopping and Shopzilla experienced a decline in their traffic. Though Pricewatch saw a great decline in the traffic, it had a pretty decent increase in the pages/visit (next to Pricegrabber) with an increase of 19.05% that comes to 12.50 when compared to the prior result. One interesting thing to note about Pricewatch is that, of all these 12 CSEs, only Pricewatch had good pages/visit. You can view the data from earlier CSE traffic reviews.

Important Note: The above mentioned traffic data is gathered from Compete.com and it may not provide the exact traffic data and so, we cannot conclude the popularity of a CSE based on it alone. But, from this data one can discover the past performance of a CSE, which can help online merchants to choose the right comparison shopping engine for Data feed marketing.

The 5R’s of Online Retail Blogging

2009-02-18T05:50:00.000-08:00

Blogs defined – Better late than never
If you have been running an ecommerce store for more than half a decade, then I am sure by this time you’d know what a blog is or may have even set-up a blog for your store.

Blog, derived from the term 'Web Log', can simply be defined as a website or an online journal that contains thoughts, messages, trends, or descriptions about an event. It can have content in the form of text, image, graphics, audio, and video presented in a reverse chronological order with links to other important online sources (could be your product page/website). (BTW, where you are now is a blog focusing on retail ecommerce niche :-)) . This medium is highly interactive since visitors can comment or remark on the content posted... Blogs can be used as an internet marketing channel to reach more customers.

Blogs and Web2.0:
I firmly believe that blogs fall under web2.0 category because the very nature of web2.0 is to enable users to interact, and blogs by default allow people to interact and exchange their views in the form of comments, reviews, trackbacks, polling, sharing, and so on.

Blogging Facts:
Technorati, a blog search engine tracked over…

70 Millions Blogs in 2007
35.5 Million Blogs in 2006
14.2 Million Blogs in 2005
4 Million Blogs in 2004

Why online retailers’ should blog?

Blogging is not restricted to journalists, analysts, or techno geeks. Anybody and everybody can blog on any niche vertical, and I personally feel online retailers should definitely blog with an intention to provide better online services to the online consumers. It doesn’t matter how big or small your online retail business is or what type of storefront you run (ecommerce storefront, an affiliate store or any other web site), blogging is one of the best mediums to increase online visibility, traffic and sales to sustain in the long run.

I can point out lots of reasons on why online retailers should blog, but I’ll restrict myself to the

5R – Ready, Reach, Realize, Research, Retain

Ready: Blogs are search engine ready. A blog, by its definition is an online journal with frequent content updates. Search engines love fresh and appropriate content. And moreover, blogs have sufficient SEO’ed parameters than a normal website. If blog content is fortified with unique keywords, the search engine visibility and traffic will see a definite rise.

Reach: Online consumers are seeking information from you and are ready to interact with your business. According to buzz logic study, people who read blogs at least once a month have grown 300% in the past 4 years. Since blogs are search engine ready, they will help you reach out to more and more potential customers when they rank well for given keyword(s). Also, blogs get a lot of publicity in the entire blogosphere.

Realize: To get customers to trust an online retail business is no mean task. Online consumers won’t believe you unless you appear more humane. Blogging is one of the best ways to humanize your online business. Blogs fundamentally act as an online face for your consumers. They realize that you are a real business, and not out to cheat them.

Research: The secret to attain success in an online business is to research your target audiences. Merchants usually use traditional channels to be in tune with their customers’ expectations and communicate with them. Most of the times, it ends up as a costly campaign that fails to achieve its objective. With blogs you can reach more audience, as said above, not just to talk about your business, but also to explore your customers’ wants, expectations, reviews and so on. (Positives and negatives) If you know the pulse of your customers, you can offer them better online service.

Retain: With blogs you get a chance to interact and retain your target community as they allow visitors to explore your products and services, find product alternatives, reviews about your products and business. All this boils down to a greater and stronger customer relationship. On the whole, blogs build new audiences but also help retain your target community audience.

Overall Blogging Benefit for Online Retailers:
Build strong brand
Gain competitive edge
Get Search engine rankings
Inexpensive online marketing campaign
Get new ideas to improve your online business
Build good customer relationship
Provide better online shopping experience to your audience
Get quick exposure
Reach new audience
Gain authenticity

I have hardly seen many online retailers run blogs very successfully. Of 100 top retailers only 44 online retailers own ecommerce blog.

What’s stopping you from blogging?

Is it insufficient time?

Is it lack of resources ?

Is it lack of know-how?

Or Any other reason?

Shopping Engine Traffic Review for December 2008

2009-01-23T09:03:00.000-08:00

December is the peak time for the shopping engines since shoppers are busy looking out for gifts and best deals for Christmas and New Year.

December traffic shows that Bizrate is leading with a rank of 35 followed by Nextag. Compared to November, Nextag has seen a steep decline in its traffic. This decline is unexpected since Nextag had been outperforming all the shopping engines in the previous two months. There is a steep decline in Nextag’s unique visitors by 37 percent. Relative to previous month, PriceWatch and PriceGrabber have had high traffic and also ranked better, while Shoplocal had relatively low traffic.

When compared on a yearly basis December 2008 traffic is relatively low. But taking in to account the down turn in economy the December traffic seems to have been fairly good.

* The above mentioned traffic data is gathered from compete.com.
*It might not provide the exact traffic volume and hence cannot conclude the popularity of the shopping engine.

Shared hosting, dedicated hosting and SEO

2009-01-08T04:22:00.000-08:00

Recently, one of our clients was very keen to host his site on a dedicated IP address, since someone mentioned to him that shared hosted sites will have a negative impact on sculpting page rank and eventually lead to search engine ranking problems.

It was believed that a shared hosting may have 100’s and 1000’s of sites that share a common IP address that link to each other. Off these sites, there may be a few sites that carry out techniques to deceive Google for the sole purpose of getting better page ranks and higher search engine visibility, so having such sites linked to your website is a sure invite for Google penalization. Whereas, a dedicated hosting provides a unique IP address and space on the server for a single website which can have more positive impact in sculpting page rank and search engine positions.

Is this statement true or just a myth?

Let me make it clear that the above statement is a fallacy. It was a myth, but it had the entire SEO community swearing by it…

Thanks to Matt Cutts and Craig Silverstein for busting this myth.

Matt Cutts in his blog post "Myth Busting: virtual hosts vs dedicated IP addresses" refers to Craig Silverstien’s interview in the year 2003, where he answers the actual truth about shared and dedicated IP addresses.

Final conclusion: Sites hosted under both shared and dedicated IP addresses are treated alike. So, stop worrying about this and make sure that your internet service provider doesn’t misconfigure your site, else the myth might transform into a reality.

New Year Wishes from Team Mobius

2008-12-31T08:02:00.000-08:00

Ecommerce Websites with Holiday Season look n feel

2008-12-24T08:24:00.000-08:00

This year’s shopping season is already on the go, and many ecommerce retailers have tuned-up their website with holiday themed banners, logos, promotional offers, gift cards and much more. I surfed few top ecommerce websites like Amazon, Crutchfield, Office depot, Zappos, Gifts, Macy’s, LLBean, etc. to see the obvious change that has taken place mainly in terms of ‘look n feel’ and promotion … Here are few retail web pages with holiday theme design.

Amazon

As you can see the obvious change in the Amazon’s website that has Christmas/holiday theme designed except for the Amazon logo. There is also a simple, yet well designed gift card with clear cut message.

Crutchfield

1800flowers

1800flowers.com has a very basic design with a straightforward message.

Macys

Macy’s run a “countdown Specials” campaign. Not to say about the design and one can quickly understand what the theme is all about?

Ebay

Officedepot

Kohls

Buy.com

Gifts.com

Zappos

Final-thought: Tuning-up the website for the holiday season with nice holiday themes and attractive promotions will definitely enhance user’s shopping experience and would eventually lead to sale. There are many such online retail stores who want to spur up their sales for this holiday season. So, what have you done with your website design for this shopping season? Make sure the holiday theme design does not have heavy graphics and too much of animations as it could slow down the pages while loading. If you have not done anything with your website for this shopping season, then hurry up and get it done. “Better late than never”

We wish all our readers “a Merry Christmas”

Shopping Engine Traffic Review for November 2008

2008-12-10T04:59:00.000-08:00

After consecutive decline in traffic for the past three months, November has marked considerable rise in the traffic despite the credit crunch. At last, some good news for comparison shopping engines, as buyers flocked their sites this month. This could be attributed to the fact that November marks the start of shopping season beginning with the harvest festival of Thanksgiving followed by Cyber Monday.

This shopping season Nextag is clearly leading with a rank of 17, up by 25 since July 2008. Nextag was able to attract more than 38 million unique visitors in November, while its counterparts struggled to drive even half of it. Even in October, Nextag had surpassed other shopping sites with soaring figures. Following Nextag is Bizrate with a rank of 38, but its sister service Shopzilla is way behind with a rank of 67. Bizrate is leading in all aspects when compared to Shopzilla.

Given the monthly change, Shoplocal has shown phenomenal increase with its unique visitors up by 119.5%. Pricewatch is also steadily gaining more attention and is better off than previous months.

While all the Shopping sites have shown positive results, Dealtime seems to be on the other side of the graph. With more than 7 Million unique visitors in the month of July, there has been a steep decline with scales dipping to around 2 Million unique visitors. Needless to say, Dealtime has been the underperformer this month.

On the Whole, this month, shopping sites attracted more traffic. But on yearly basis according to compete.com, November 2008 traffic is relatively less compared to November 2007.

* The above mentioned traffic data is gathered from compete.com.
*It might not provide the exact traffic volume and hence cannot conclude the popularity of the shopping engine.

Holiday Shopping with Google

2008-12-03T03:12:00.000-08:00

Google has recently designed a “special site” for online shoppers to enjoy more savings and offers from Google product search.

Take a look at the following screen shot of the Google’s holiday shopping site.

The look and feel of the site is definitely in sync with the holiday season as you can find pictures relating to it.

There is a default opened tab “Gift Ideas” where online shoppers can get to know the most wanted products based on millions of recently aggregated search terms on Google product search. Among the millions of search terms, WII tops followed by Ipod, Uggs, Nikon D90, and so on...

And some of the top search queries from other categories, such as video games, apparels, specialty foods include bakugan, pea coat, and chocolate fountain.

There is another tab called “Special Offers” where online shoppers can find special offers from Google Checkout merchants.

You can also explore Google’s Countdown 2009, which helps shoppers to find different ways to celebrate this holiday season in style…

Shopping Engine Traffic Review for October 2008

2008-11-25T02:49:00.000-08:00

Nextag has been surging quite ahead in the list with a traffic rank of 18 from 65. This shopping engine had more than 32 million visitors in October. How did Nextag manage to fetch so much traffic, especially during this period of economic meltdown? The other shopping engines have been more or less on the same scale when compared to the previous month.

It seems Pricewatch faced the brunt of the economic slump with its ranking dipped by almost 240. Dealtime also has been the underperformer during the month of October with its unique visitors down by almost 23%.

* The above mentioned traffic data is gathered from compete.com.
*It might not provide the exact traffic volume and hence cannot conclude the popularity of the shopping engine.

The 10th Annual eTail 2009 Conference

2008-11-17T22:01:00.000-08:00

Top Speakers Highlight Upcoming Conference Focusing on Multi-channel Innovation for E-Commerce Executives

Wet Seal's CIO Jon Kubo and FAO Schwartz new SVP Direct to Consumer announced as Keynote speakers at eTail 2009 Phoenix. Brand New Retailer-Only Content Advisory Board introduced.

Worldwide Business Research (WBR) is pleased to announce Keynote Speakers and the Content Advisory Board for the 10th Annual eTail 2009 Conference at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge in Phoenix, AZ on February 23rd- 26th, 2009. Jon Kubo, CIO of Wet Seal and Lee Bissonnette, SVP Direct to Consumer at FAO Schwartz are delivering Keynote speeches on February 24th and 25th, respectively.

"We are very excited to have both Jon and Lee join us for our annual West Coast conference," said Lori Holden Executive Director of the eTail Conference Series. "Jon speaks to unique innovations in Wet Seal's Fashion Community, and Lee delivers a 360 degree perspective on remaking a classic brand in today's retail climate." Holden adds, "With a challenging economic environment, enhancing profitability through a mix of focusing on the core of business and innovate technologies is more important than ever before."

This year's conference provides over 90 speakers and panelists, more than 60 unique sessions, retailer-specific networking activities each and every day and more than 100 industry exhibitors - all delivering valuable insight and information on gathering strategies to fine-tune retail enterprises; driving loyalty and incremental revenue growth with an understanding of consumer demand; and developing an understanding the next fundamental shift in the retail industry which will change the norms of consumer expectations surrounding shopping experiences.

The eTail 2009 Program Advisory Board
WBR is also proud to announce the first ever eTail Program Advisory Board. The board is comprised of senior retail executives providing strategic guidance on the content provided in this year's program. The contributions provided by the Board guarantee relevant topic information is presented on the agenda. A special thanks extended to this year's advisory board members:

• Peter Cobb, SVP and Co-Founder, eBags
• Kevin Ertell, SVP E-Commerce, Borders
• Carey Dietz Lyne, Sr. Manager, Customer Marketing, Expedia
• Melissa Minihan, Sr. Manager, Customer Experience, HomeDepot
• Sean Spector, SVP Business Development and Co-Founder, Gamefly

For registration or exhibition information at this conference visit www.etail2009.com

Please reference code 10701XZ851

About WBR
WBR is the world's biggest large-scale conference company and part of the PLS group, one of the world's leading providers of strategic business intelligence with 16 offices worldwide. Our conference divisions consistently out perform their industry sector competitors on the quality of the events we produce and the relationships we nurture with both delegates and sponsors. Every year over 10,000 senior executives from Fortune 1000 companies attend over 60 annual conferences - a true 'who's who' of today's corporate world. From Automotive events in Bucharest to Logistics conferences in Arizona and Finance summits in Hong Kong, WBR is dedicated to exceeding the needs of its customers around the world.

SEO Starter Guide from Google

2008-11-16T23:33:00.000-08:00

If you are an SEO novice, you should consider reading Google’s new Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. This 22 page eBook covers SEO best practices, basic techniques, pitfalls to avoid, and few other important factors an SEOer should consider while optimizing any website.

I strongly recommend small and medium online retailers to implement the strategies that are included in the guide because many S&M online retailers do not employ even the basic SEO techniques. I am sure this guide will help in making your product pages more visible in the Google.

Download Google's SEO Starter Guide

New UK player in the social shopping market - Tribesmart

2008-11-06T00:22:00.000-08:00

Social shopping engines have been gaining popularity and to add to the list is another UK social shopping site called Tribesmart. Though the site is in its infant stage, the homepage is well designed with the tango look. Tribesmart primarily focuses on six categories of products, ranging from home products to fashion and technology products. Among these six categories, the ones like “active” and “Family” could have been named better to avoid ambiguity. For example,
the category “active” which relates to sports and outdoor products could have been christened as “sports and outdoor” for better user understanding. Baby products and toys are kept under the “family” category, it would have been better if these products formed a separate category altogether.

Being a social site, one can never miss the “sign up” banner. Compared to other sites, sign up process at Tribesmart is hassle free. This would definitely encourage users to sign up, as compared to other sites where a user has to wade through two to three pages to signup. Once a member, you can create your own tribe (group). You can also interact with other users with the chat option available at the bottom of the page. But every time you send or receive a message, you need to scroll down to view it. This could get annoying at times. Also, I wish there was a way to let a user know if there were new messages. If I am browsing through the website, I need to continually monitor the chat window to check if somebody has responded.

Moreover, instead of having the “recent users” at the bottom of the page where it’s hardly visible to other users, Tribesmart can show some of the recent users on the homepage itself. I guess it might work better.

What’s more, when you find new products, you can show it to the rest of the world by simply using the “add product” tab which is prominently placed in the top right corner of the page. Users can tag the products they find, and they can add up to 20 products a day. Retailers are also allowed to add products but limited to 20 per day. According to Wayne of Tribesmart, they do not want retailers to duplicate their whole catalogue on their site. They want niche and innovative products to be listed on their site. This could be a right platform for retailers to sell their unique products which may not get much attention in other shopping engines. But as of now, I haven’t come across any such unique product. Well, hope to see them soon.

Tribesmart also provides a widget to add products. There are also a couple of other good widgets. Do you know where to find them? Click on “terms of use” to find them! I don’t see any use placing them there. I think users would hardly notice “terms of use”, forget about clicking on it. I see no point in having good widgets hiding under “terms of use”.

As you navigate to other categories, you might feel that the website changes colors as frequently as a chameleon. The website is designed with different colors for different categories. But again the page layout is pretty decent with a list of interesting products. And if at any point of time, you want to know more about the products, you have “category gurus “to help you out. If you wish to go back to the home page, users are most likely to click on the “at home” tab. Unfortunately, this “at home” tab will not take you to the home page but will direct you to a whole new category page.

Now, coming to the product information part. Tribesmart just lists the products, but does not provide enough details about them. It provides a brief description, which is either replicated from the merchant site or just a line or two put together by users. Unique descriptions with more comprehensive details is a sure way to fetch better results, but simply replicating product information is a definite no-no, if you want a better ranking in search results.

Well, as of now Tribesmart seems to be doing a good job. I think it’s a nice concept of giving more control to users, but Tribesmart will have to market itself aggressively to sign up more users and encourage them to actively participate and add their finds to be successful in the social shopping market.

A message to all the retailers from the Tribal Guru Wayne of Tribesmart:

“It is a great opportunity for independent retailers to share their knowledge with potential customers, build a profile, add links to their site and also pull in the product feeds to add interest and reviews to their own sites”

P.S. This article is not to promote Tribesmart. This is to keep our readers updated about the new happenings in the online Shopping space. If you are a comparison engine or an online retailer, catch up with us to explore the ecommerce opportunities. You can mail us at info@mobius-ecommerce.com or talk to us at +1.213.316.6188