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eCommerce Weekly Roundup [5.03.09-5.09.09]

This is the second issue of the eCommerce Weekly Roundup. I have decided to remove the jobs at this time. I may return to putting them up in the future. If you have any suggestions please let me know via comments or on twitter.

Improve Your eCommerce Site Now With These Articles

Ecommerce Know-How: Six Ways To Improve Your Online Store (via practicalecommerce.com) – Some good tips that all eCommerce shops should be using. Number two on that list saying, Use Video for Product Demonstrations, Merchandising, will definitely improve your store. It has done amazing on the sites I run.

PPC Myth Week – Part1 - Part2 - Part3 (via getelastic.com) – Good series on some common misconceptions when it comes to Pay Per Click. Some good pointers that can help improve your performance in the PPC arena.

SEO for Multiple Points of Entry – Keeping the Focused Shopper in Mind (via closed-loop-marketing.com) – Good advice on optimizing your site for customers coming in on different pages. Your local brick and mortar store knows when and where the customer will enter, the front door. On the web your customers will not be coming in to your homepage every time. You need to optimize every page on your site because there is a good chance they will never see your home page.

Using Analytics For Local Search Optimization (via searchengineland.com) – Great article for local retailers that have an eCommerce site and brick and mortar store to target your local customers.

Preparing to React to Rapidly Emerging Events: Tips for Your Online Business (via forrester.com) – Brian Walker at Forrester put out a blog article detailing how to prepare for rapidly emerging events in your online business. Looks to be inspired by the recent swine flu outbreak. (side note: Do you have the swine flu?)

Feast or Famine Sales? Why no consistency? (via webmasterworld.com) – Good forum thread to follow or participate in. They are discussing how and why sales fluctuate on a given day or week for their online business. 

Give your Online Store Some Bite! (via thinkvitamin.com) – Article on how to put your online store above the rest. More and more companies are putting their business online by the day and you need to keep yours a notch above the competition to get that sale.

Abandonment Tracker Free (via seewhy.com) – Abandoned carts are an issue many eCommerce developers pull their hair out over. This is a free tool to track those that abandoned their carts. I have not tested it out, but it could prove beneficial.

Why It’s Not Enough to Just Sell (via invesp.com) – eCommerce used to be just about getting the sale. Not anymore. You need to give the customer more even after the sell. This is a good article giving some pointers on how to go above and beyond the initial sale.

You Can’t Edit Your Way Out of Negative Reviews (via grokdotcom.com) – Negative reviews are going to happen. Don’t try and cover them up. Even negative reviews can help your sales. This article shows you why not to cover them up and how to overcome them for your benefit. 

Optimizing Conversion Rates: Less Effort, More Customers (via smashingmagazine.com) – Smashing Magazine is doing a 3 part series on conversion rates and this is the first installment. Good tips on getting your customer to convert.

How To Optimize Feeds To Maximize Your Exposure In Shopping Engine Results (via searchengineland.com) – Good article on optimizing your feeds in the shopping engines. With all the shopping engines out there and the traffic they can bring this is a great article to read.

How to organise e-commerce product reviews (via econsultancy.com) – Reviews are a must have on eCommerce sites now. They have proven their benefit. This article gives you some tips on how to organise all the reviews that come in.

 

Interesting eCommerce Articles of the Week

GSI Commerce and Bath & Body Works Extend Agreement through 2015 (source) – In the word of eCommerce a 6 year commitment is a long time to one platform.

E-commerce business, Wizy-Wiz, accused of Web of deceit. The claim is accusing the company’s owners of repeatedly failing to deliver on their promises to help small and mid-size businesses sell their products online. (source)

Online Sales Slip (source) – For the first quarter of 2009 online retail was up 11%, but looking forward the say overall for the year online sales will contract, by .4%.

Recession forces new focus in e-commerce marketing (source) – Article on how retailers are shifting from traditional marketing to less expensive tools like Facebook and Twitter.

Shop.org put out their 2009 State of Retailing Online: Marketing Report. You can get a couple highlights of the report in this article, but you need to be a paying member to see the full report. One day I will sign up for this when the money is there.

Bob Evans Revamps E-commerce Site (source) – Living in Columbus, OH it is always good to see local companies making the changes in today’s world to target customers.

Sears’s Lampert Targets Web Shopper (source) – Sears gets it. In their annual shareholder meeting the chairman told investors they may become a smaller retailer, but they will be well positioned to profit from online shoppers. This is a Wall Street Journal article, so you will have to be a subscriber to read the entire article or if you have the iPhone they now have an app and you can read all the articles on the Journal.

HSN.com leads online mass merchants with March conversion rate of 6% (source) – The monthly report of conversation rate is now out. How do you compare?

Forrester: e-commerce ‘better suited to withstand economic downturn’ (source) – ZDNet did a blog article on some Forrester research on how eCommerce can withstand the economic downturn. Makes you glad to be in the eCommerce business doesn’t it?

Collective Brands, Inc. Announces New eCommerce Technology Platform for the Company’s Brand Websites (source) – Collective Brands owns and operates Payless.com, striderite.com, keds.com and sperrytopsider.com and others.  They have used ATG to develop their platform. Payless will be first and their other brands will follow over the next 12 months.

Lane Bryant will launch new e-commerce site with Fry (source) – The sites Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug and Catherines Plus Sizes are expected to release this fall on the platform built by Fry.

The CODiE awards are out. The best eCommerce Solution goes to Billeo. Congrats Billeo. (source)

Talking with…Scott Silverman, Shop.org executive director (source)

Click And Buy reveal alarming e-commerce trends (source) – Some good statistical data on eCommerce sales. Here is one from the article: 50% of regular online shoppers don’t complete the transaction if preferred method of payment is not available.

Liz Claiborne launches on Demandware. (source)