The fine ecommerce community / online and print magazine, Practical Ecommerce, published an article by Ryan Welton called “Selling With A Blog - Add value to your venture without a hard sell” today (4/26/07).

Ryan starts by breaking through some of the hype around blogging (”Heck, the blog has gained such widespread popularity that it’s almost become passé in some circles “) and then seeks balance between writing for interest and writing to encourage sales.

The ’soft-touch’ technique makes his Top 5 Tips list, … {drumroll} … in at #2 is, “Write about subjects related to your business, such as news and trends. Establish yourself as the expert in your field. As you do so, subtly link to pages within your website that showcase products and services.”

Chiming in on that delicate fine-line is EP’s VP Markerting, Jason Billingsley, (followed by fellow BC biz blogger Tris Hussey),

A notable byproduct of blogs is the way they provide websites with a ton of fresh, original content.

Jason Billingsley, vice president of marketing for ecommerce software company Elastic Path, says blogs also give businesses the opportunity to associate their websites with popular keywords related to products and services.

“We still keep it at arm’s length,” he said, referring to posts that could be considered too promotional.

Hussey noted, though, that blogs can still indirectly boost your business.  “People come to the blog to read interesting stuff,” said Hussey, “but you are allowed to earn a living and still blog.”

Read Ryan’s whole article Selling With A Blog at Practical Ecommerce for tips and talking points on effectively using a blog to energize your online retail sales.

Shel Holtz joins the conversation to discuss the ways new marketing and communication tools can assist retailers collaborate with customers - resulting in better experiences and increased sales.

Along with host DaveO, they discuss blogging for business, reasons for podcasting, what’s up with Second Life, ways to engage audiences with Twitter and Ustream.tv and the low-down on Social Media Releases plus Shel wisely advises strategic action before diving in.

MP3 File

(crayonville in Second Life)

Shel is frequent flier, professional speaker and prolific writer as well as VP of New Marketing at crayon (a new marketing company). He joined us from Toronto where is presenting at Visa’s Ecommerce Summit. Thanks to Chris Clarke at Thornley Fallis Communications for the hookup. Thanks to Derek K. Miller (Penmachine.com) for music track “That’s No Dream.”

Topical Annotations

A Shel of my Former Self - Shel’s Holtz’s personal blog

Holtz Communications + Technology - Shel’s professional services

Road Weary - Shel’s Travel frustration blog

crayon - a new marketing company - Shel’s daily toil

The American Family Whirlpool podcast

Linden Labs’ Second Life

Darren Barefoot’s GetaFirstLife project

GetaFirstLife.com

Get a First Life - Second Life Insider

Technorati tag: secondlife

crayon in Second Life

Twitter

Twitter - Wikipedia

twittervision

Ustream.tv

Social Media Release

Chris Heuer’s Idea Engine

Microformats

Social Media Club

Social Media Club is being organized for the purpose of sharing best practices, establishing ethics and standards, and for promoting media literacy. This is the beginning of a global conversation about building an organization and a community where the many diverse groups of people who care about social media can come together to discover, connect, share and learn.

Sample Social Press Release (Coca-cola Virtual Thirst campaign by crayola)

While free shipping is the most desirable for shoppers, it can be an expensive proposition for retailers. 31% of Top 100 retailers have opted to leverage the perk of free shipping with a tactic used to increase average order values – threshold based free shipping: i.e. buy over $75 and get free shipping. Anecdotally, the most common threshold level for free shipping we saw was set at $50.

Sample sizes were too low to evaluate this tactic on a group-by-group basis, but overall those who offered real-time rate lookups had the highest conversion rate at 5.9%, followed by threshold at 5.5%, free at 4.6% and flat rate at 3.2%.

This wasn’t what we expected to see and believe shipping service levels come into play. Most free or threshold offers are for regular ground shipping, but we have no data to show us what mix of shoppers upgrade to premium shipping levels like overnight air.

Overall, almost half of Top 100 retailers handle shipping by doing a rate table lookup.

Note – rate table lookup included both real-time rate lookups from outside shipping vendors, and set rate tables created by the retailer.

Ultimately utilizing this tactic should help retailers increase average order values, especially surrounding seasonal gift giving occasions. But what effect does the additional noise and screen real estate in the checkout process have on conversion rates at Top 100 retailers?

As suspected, over 75% of apparel and low ticket item retailers offered gift wrapping. But in each group, those that did not offer gift wrapping or messages consistently outperformed those who did. We suspect the increased complexity involved with gifting (especially to multiple recipients) may affect conversions negatively, but the increased order value may make up for it.

Overall, 56% of Top 100 retailers offer gift wrapping or messages.

While the clerk rings through items at the supermarket we are often faced with a slew of quick and thoughtless products to add to our order – candy, celebrity magazines, batteries, gift cards, etc. In the online world however, retailers do not offer these thing in the checkout process. In fact the number was so low, we were about to drop this from the research analysis. Because so few retailers employ this method of merchandising, we cannot draw conclusions from this piece of research.

Just 4% of Top 100 retailers show cross-selling during the checkout process.

Thoughts on why this is not used:Screen real estate is a valuable commodity and the risk of confusing a shopper in the checkout process is greater than the opportunity of increasing the order size. A get them in and out mentality leans towards eliminating distractions during the checkout process. Most cross-selling opportunities are taken on product pages, cart screens, and interstitial screens after a product has been added to the cart.

Technically, this is not a checkout related tactic, but it is the cousin to displaying cross-sells within the checkout process, so it’s worth a look.

Conversion rates were consistently higher on sites not cross-selling within the shopping cart, with apparel being the only anomaly. Sites selling low ticket items had a full 2.5% greater conversion rate where cross-selling was not displayed in the cart. This may be attributable to screen congestion and call-to-action overload.

An interesting finding was many of the retailers did display related items and accessories immediately after an item was added to the cart (on an interstitial type page). However, they chose to not cross-sell on the cart page. Because we know many shoppers do not buy on the first visit to a site, and adding items to a cart is akin to dog-earing a catalog page for quick retrieval, are they missing a selling opportunity? Surprisingly, this was most apparent in electronics retailers selling high ticket items (who often have many accessories).

Overall, 54% of Top 100 retailers chose to cross-sell on the shopping cart screen.

Otherwise known as the “are you really sure you want to purchase?” screen, a final confirmation screen allows users check that their order details are all correct and sometimes reconsider their purchase.

As suspected, those employing an order confirmation screen had a lower conversion rate overall, but not as dramatic as we thought. The assumption being, shoppers are not always aware the screen is an order confirmation screen and assume it is a receipt page – no further action is taken and the order is never placed. The numbers are not convincing enough to verify that notion, and the group selling high ticket items had the reverse effect. Those with an order confirmation screen had a 35% higher conversion rate. Conclusions on this tactic are best to be drawn by testing.

Over 70% of Top 100 retailers use an order confirmation screen within the checkout process.

Fraud is always an issue when it comes to online purchases and asking for a CVV number is one method of curbing fraudulent credit card use. It is also one extra field to ask users to fill out. So does the extra hassle affect conversion rates? Apparently it does. Overall, conversion rates were a full 40% higher where retailers did not require a CVV number.

If this is a solid finding, retailers must balance the trade-off between fraud prevention and ease-of-use for legitimate purchasers.

55% of Top 100 retailers require shoppers to give a CVV number during the checkout process.

You see it in some retail stores now – you can see a running total as a clerk rings in your shopping cart.
Some even let you have handheld devices to calculate your cart totals within store aisles. So how many
online retailers have running cart totals within the checkout process? Just 23% show it, with the
remaining opting to hide the total.

The debate here is whether the abundance of information helps shoppers convert or if a lack of
information may suppress abandonment triggers – imagine seeing a big “you are spending $450” always
in front of you, knowing you really don’t need that signed replica Star Trek Enterprise model ship.
Conversion rates were about 60% higher at Top 100 retailer sites where the cart total was not always
shown during the checkout process.

In the real world we can always see what is being put through the checkout and can back out on an item at any point. However, online retailers have the option of displaying the contents of a cart or suppressing it during the checkout process. Unfortunately, because so few retailers always show the cart contents, sample sizes are too low to drawn meaningful conclusions on a group-by-group basis. Overall, those who show carts contents throughout the checkout process have a 5.8% conversion rate compared to 5.2% for those who do not.

Many retailers jumped in and out of showing cart contents based on where a shopper was in the checkout; the most common being to suppress it during the collection of billing and shipping addresses and make it reappear during payment collection screens. In very few instances we observed cart contents being on full display on every page of the site and checkout process. For this tactic, online retail rarely mimics the real world.

Just 14% of Top 100 retailers chose to always show cart items during the checkout process.