Following up on the recent press release, PRWeb (just down the road in Ferndale, WA) released a podcast featuring an interview with Jason Billingsley discussing the Midmarket eTail Search Day event.

Here’s a brief recap from the October 25, 2006 press release:

Elastic Path Software’s VP of Marketing will be moderating a roundtable discussion as part of the Mid-Market e-Tail Conference and Exhibition in San Francisco, Oct. 30 at The Palace Hotel. Jason Billingsley, also a co-founder of Elastic Path, is an experienced marketer with expert knowledge in search engine optimization, retail site usability and capitalizing on the “longtail” of search.

Search Marketing Day is a hands-on, highly-interactive session with ecommerce experts and retailers. Attendees will spend the day with top-level executives who have mastered the art of optimizing organic and paid search marketing programs and will learn how to increase ecommerce search rankings.

Listen to the PRWeb podcast from Thu, 26 Oct 2006 :

Read the press release at PRWeb

Technology: Tech News

DM News - a news site for the Direct, Database and Internet Marketing industries - covered the impending release of EP 5 with an article by Chantal Tode, Senior Editor who covers catalog and retail news and BTB marketing for DM News and DM News.com. Here’s a snippet of her take on EP 5 and One Page

The new e-commerce platform enables marketers to create promotions using natural language. Its search engine optimization tools connect Web searchers with relevant products. Elastic Path 5 also delivers filterable in-site search and navigation for shoppers’ convenience.

Elastic Path customer and U.K.-based online retailer Electric Shopping.com was looking for an e-commerce platform that would help it raise conversions and lower the cost of customer acquisitions. Since launching on Elastic Path, the retailer’s order volume has increase, average order size and items per basket is up 25 percent and order accuracy has never been as high, the company said in a statement.

Elastic Path One Page, the shopping cart component of the new platform, combats cart abandonment by enabling returning customers to complete an order with a single click. One Page eliminates waiting for page reloads, provides a constant snapshot of order details and allows cart contents and order details to be adjusted at any time, in any order, without leaving the checkout process.

Over at IT Business, Canadian Technology News, they published a article about the Elastic Path 5 announcement saying,

Elastic Path Software also unveiled Elastic Path 5, the most recent advancement of its e-commerce platform for online retail. The re-engineered platform delivers a promotion rules engine, search engine marketing functionality, faceted in-site search and navigation, and full Web services capabilities to mid-sized online retailers.

Using Elastic Path Rules, e-commerce marketers can create a large number of promotions using natural language, maximizing the value of each order. Elastic Path Optimize offers search engine optimization tools used to connect Web searchers with the most relevant products possible, boosting overall conversion rates and minimizing customer acquisition costs, the company said.

Elastic Path Seek is designed to deliver filterable in-site search and navigation, helping shoppers find products fast. Utilizing web services, Elastic Path Connect provides connectivity into alternative data sources such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) to deliver a consistent multi-channel experience to shoppers.

Another Press Release hit the street today, this time announcing that Elastic Path’s VP Marketing Jason Billingsley’s will lead a roundtable discussion about search marketing at the forthcoming Mid-Market e-Tail Conference and Exhibition in San Francisco. Day One of the event is dubbed “Search Day” and, as the name implies, it’s all about the search.

Search Marketing Day is a hands-on, highly-interactive session with ecommerce experts and retailers. Attendees will spend the day with top-level executives who have mastered the art of optimizing organic and paid search marketing programs and will learn how to increase ecommerce search rankings.

Elastic Path joins a panel of search marketing experts including representatives from Celebros and Mercado to lead discussions on topics such as “Keyword Management: Working with Engines (not against them),” and “Making Your Life Better: 4 Ways to Optimize Your Search Rankings.”

Billingsley, also a co-founder of Elastic Path, is an experienced marketer with expert knowledge in search engine optimization, retail site usability and capitalizing on the “longtail” of search.

Read the whole release at PRWeb and/or download the ecommerce search day press release as a .pdf - and keep an eye on a podcast coming about this same announcement.

Internet Retailer magazine carried the press release announcing Elastic Path One Page (discussed in depth at Be One with the Check Out) on Oct. 24, 2006.

To say we are excited about this new software product is a huge understatement - indeed, we are ecstatic with the prospects this offers for retailers seeking to reduce shopping cart abandonment.

You are encouraged to read the whole article Elastic Path Software Announces Single Page Checkout for Online Stores, but in the meantime, check out the jist, …

AJAX-based Ecommerce Checkout Improves Customer Experience to Reduces Shopping Cart Abandonment, Boosting Revenue for Online Retailers

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -October 23, 2006-Elastic Path Software, a pioneer of flexible ecommerce software, today announced Elastic Path One Page, a new single page checkout technology that allows returning customers to complete online orders with a single click. Elastic Path is announcing its AJAX-powered One Page checkout alongside the availability of Elastic Path 5, the most recent advancement of its innovative ecommerce platform (see October 23, 2006 press release “Elastic Path Software Announces Next Generation Ecommerce Platform”).

and here’s a quote from Coastal Contacts (an online contact lens retailer and an almost-ready-to-launch Elastic Path customer) to get you more excited about this new etail tool:

“When seeking a new ecommerce platform, our number one criteria was flexibility and scalability,” said Nancy Morison, vice president of product management at Coastal Contacts Inc. “After evaluating vendors such as ATG and Blue Martini, we determined that Elastic Path`s platform best met our technical needs and, with its single screen checkout and guided selling, it delivered the most intuitive shopping experience for our customers.”

AJAX World Magazine picked up the press release Elastic Path Software Announces AJAX-Powered One Page Checkout for Online Stores about Elastic Path’s new AJAX-i-fied One Page checkout tool.

While the technology which drives the software is cool and innovative, the increased functional utility to the customer is what really makes One Page an exciting announcement for Elastic Path. Even the analysts agree.

“When retailers provide simple and streamlined web sites, with hassle-free checkout, online shoppers are much more likely to buy,” said Alex Fletcher, lead industry analyst at The Entiva Group.

“While consumers are not necessarily aware of the driving technology behind an ecommerce site, they appreciate capabilities such as dynamically updated totals and an easier shopping experience that are made possible by an AJAX-powered checkout. Elastic Path’s One Page technology will reduce shopping cart abandonment for its customers as online shoppers are more apt to buy if the process is quick, easy, and forthcoming.

Well that’s nice, but exactly what is it that One Page actually does to reduce abandonment and increase conversions?

Elastic Path One Page provides customers with a constant snapshot of order details. The contents of the shopping cart can be adjusted at any time without losing existing data, enabling customers to see the effect of an applied promotion code without ever leaving the checkout process.

Additionally, by maintaining a small size footprint, Elastic Path One Page loads in under half the time of competing flash-based offerings, enabling retailers to provide an optimal shopping experience without demanding the presence of finicky browser plug-ins.

Exciting stuff - small, responsive and intuitive. Fortunately, eager and progressive retailers only have to wait until November 2006 to get their hands on it.

Noted analyst firm “The 451 Group” discussed Elastic Path’s position in the Small to Medium Enterprise market.  Reading the whole Oct. 23, 2006 report requires a subscription but, the abstract of the article “Elastic Path rolls up open source components into SMB e-commerce play” by Martin Schneider says:

The company is looking to compete, not just on price, but by positioning itself as a deeply functional alternative to larger enterprise-class, e-commerce engines for larger midmarket firms.

MIS/ Impact Report, 23 Oct 2006

Start-up Nation’s Head Coaches Jeff and Rich Sloan published an article called “Flat-Fee and Other Online Shipping Gimmicks to Sooth the Savvy Customer” discussing the ways retailers are attempting to remove (or soothe) a huge barrier to purchasing - shipping costs.

Most online consumers know the disappointment of checking-out only to find the shipping is more (or close to) the cost of the item itself. At that point of shipping ’sticker shock,’ the customer can either: 1) give up and abandon the cart; 2) tough it out and pay the rate; or, 3) choose a promotional option to purchase more in order to receive free shipping.

But can retailers afford to offer free shipping without putting profitability at risk? Well, maybe, if done creatively, and preferably at mass volume. Amazon’s Prime program (pay one rate for free shipping all year) is another take on the shipping conundrum and Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos and Elastic Path’s Jason Billingsley both offer thoughts on this topic.

Reporting on Prime, Inc. magazine asked Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos how the company can afford “the guy who pays you $79 so he can order a $3.99 razor whenever he needs one. Bezos said, “It all works out. Somebody else will order an $800 digital camera. On average, it’ll pencil out OK.”

Jason Billingsley figures that for a return on investment for the average Prime customer, he must order only six to 10 times a year, depending on order size and content. Billingsley, vice president of marketing for Elastic Path Software, in Vancouver, says that because the typical cost of two-day shipping in North America is $7 to $10.

“Amazon’s genius in launching Prime was that it essentially became like a buyer’s club, or an insurance policy,” Billingsley adds. “You may or may not use up your quota. It also promotes loyalty to Amazon, because there little need for consumers to look around for free-shipping offers.”

Indeed, as online retailing continues to mature, customers will benefit from increased efficiencies and creative promotion in the wake of increased competition and sophistication. Even the shipping companies (both the public and private carriers) are finding new means of selling services (e.g. flat rate boxes, online labeling) so soon everything from books to bar-b-ques should be easier to order online and have delivered to the door.

“We’re crossing some kind of new threshold here,” says Mark Taylor, chief logistics officer of RedRoller, a Norwalk, Conn., provider of software that compares shipping costs. “Customers are the ones that are winning.”

Read the whole Start-up Nation article: “Flat-Fee and Other Online Shipping Gimmicks to Sooth the Savvy Customer“

“One Page” that is young grasshopper, Elastic Path’s single page checkout software to be specific.

As the moniker implies, Elastic Path announces a single-screen type check out tool to combat the scourge of modern retailing - shopping cart abandonment. Indeed, MarketingSherpa indicates nearly three out of every five online shoppers abandon their shopping cart before finishing the order.

One Page (an add-on to the also recently announced customer-centric Elastic Path 5) attempts to solve this conundrum by providing responsive, real-time validation and authentication to help customers feel confident and comfortable enough to complete purchases easily and quickly. In fact, returning customers can complete purchases with one click, really.

A press release by Elastic Path’s (smoothly professional) public relations crew at Schwartz Communications tells the whole story in the Press Release titled “Elastic Path Software Announces Single Page Checkout for Online Stores” but in the meantime, here are a few particularly tasty snippets about AJAX (learn more about AJAX on Get Elastic podcast #6 with Andre and Alexi of nitobi) and some comments from CEO Harry Chemko on the “big reasons” why removing barriers to checkout helps retailers increase conversion and boost revenue.

Elastic Path is the first major ecommerce software vendor to offer a 100 percent browser-based Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX)-powered one page checkout. AJAX technology enables web pages to be more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind-the-scenes so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user makes a change. The end result is an increase in the web page’s interactivity, speed, and usability, all of which contribute to online consumer satisfaction and loyalty.

{snipped}

Elastic Path One Page provides customers with a constant snapshot of order details. The contents of the shopping cart can be adjusted at any time without losing existing data, enabling customers to see the effect of an applied promotion code without ever leaving the checkout process. Additionally, by maintaining a small size footprint, Elastic Path One Page loads in under half the time of competing flash-based offerings, enabling retailers to provide an optimal shopping experience without demanding the presence of finicky browser plug-ins.

and CEO Harry speaks about the importance of cost of acquisition,

“One Page is representative of ecommerce sites that are customer-centric, ultimately driving profits through customer acquisition and retention. This release extends our leadership in ecommerce innovation and we are excited to be the first major ecommerce platform to offer an AJAX checkout alongside an expansive set of features and components.”

Elastic Path-ers will be showing off the new One Page checkout at forthcoming trade shows and the software will be available for purchase late November 2006. In the meantime, check out the One Page Data Sheet for more info.

The team at MarketingSherpa produce timely, relevant and specialized marketing research and a recent article caught my eye. The article is a recap of a recent presentation (Oct. 12, 2006) in which Sherpa President Anne Holland and Stefan Tornquist, Research Director reveal the findings of a study about search marketing.

Summary: Find out what 3,944 marketers revealed about costs, conversions and what is working now for search marketing. Highlights include:1. How to cope with rising cost per click. 2. New “norms” in searchclickthrough and conversion rates. 3. How consumers use search engines for offline purchase decisions. 4. Eyetracking study on Google’s changing “golden triangle. 5. PR and search explosion.

Their conversation is available as an 8MB .mp3 plus you can download (and share) the PowerPoint slides as .pdf to follow along with the presentation. Also, you can just read the transcript or subscribe to RSS feed to catch all the Sherpa news.

Any way you digest their info, the content is top-notch - compelling topical info presented in a casual format. For example, while talking about Organic vs Paid clickthroughs (and why people chose one or the other), Anne relates an anecdote about how her mother searches/browses the web and they combine this real-world relevance with their empirical research.

Continue Reading »

The famous and engaging web site Boing Boing (self-described as a Directory of Wonderful Things) has a new podcast episode called “Boing Boing Boing podcast #4.” A great continuation from the recent Get Elastic podcast discussion on Long Tail and definitely entertaining and informative listening from the mouths of wise folks as they apply the Long Tail model in all manner of scenarios.

In the episode, host Xeni Jardin is joined by Chris Anderson - author of the LongTail and editor of Wired Magazine - as well as net-activist/writer/iconoclast Cory Doctorow. Together they embark on a far-ranging (and occasionally slightly ribald) discussion on marketing, innovation, technology and more.

Here’s what they say about the episode:

Our guest this week is Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine and author of “The Long Tail.” With Chris, we talk about: Robert Anton Wilson, Jon Lech Johansen, GooTube, book burning, John Hodgman’s book tour, and how the infinitely versatile longtail theory applies to matters as diverse as low-grossing grossout movies, coffee, beer, public access cable TV shows, George Lucas, and Disneyland rides.

Grab the Boing Boing Boing Podcast Feed and/or download the mp3 or m4a at “Boing Boing Boing podcast #4.”