About Linda Bustos
E-Mail: linda.bustos@elasticpath.com
Web Page: http://elasticpath.com
Bio: As Director of Ecommerce Research at Elastic Path, Linda Bustos oversees and is a regular contributor to the Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog while providing consulting services to some of the largest ecommerce sites in the world. Linda has helped Get Elastic land a coveted spot on the AdAge Power 150 and become one of the top 10 marketing blogs in Canada. Get Elastic is also recognized as the #1 Ecommerce Blog according to PostRank and with a daily readership of over 12,000, is the most subscribed ecommerce blog on the ‘Net. Linda’s articles have won several awards including 2 Semmys and the Marketing Pilgrim Search Marketing Scholarship award in 2008. Linda has also been recognized as one of the Invesp 100 Most Influential Marketers of 2008 and 2009. Most recently, Linda has been named one of DMNews’ 30 Direct Marketers Under 30 for her contribution to the marketing community through Get Elastic.
This post is a recap of yesterday’s webinar Ecommerce for Technology Vendors: Maximizing Your Online Channel. The replay is now available on-demand.
The webinar is the first in a series of software and technology related topics based on the top issues we have found working with and speaking to enterprise firms in this industry. In the webinar we took a deep-dive into the issue of “owning the conversation” and bringing all relevant content and information to bear on each transaction.
5 Considerations
- Manufacturer strengths / weaknesses
- Governance
- General design / site architecture
- Source and nature of traffic (segments, personas)
- Leveraging user-generated content
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Those moving to cloud computing are doing so around the promise of more effective and efficient computing. Indeed, cloud computing is not a revolution in computing, but a simple platform change that holds the potential to reduce our need for a huge amount of software and hardware to support our ecommerce systems. However, the intersection is a bit more difficult to find.
First, since this is really the first blog to explore the value of cloud computing within the world of ecommerce, let’s put forth a general definition of cloud computing. For the most part I like to go with the National Institute of Science and Technology, or NIST, who defines cloud computing as having the following characteristics:
- On-demand self-service.
- Broad network access.
- Resource pooling.
- Rapid elasticity.
- Measured service.
Cloud computing’s value is the ability to expand access and provision resources as you need them, and then have those resources expand as the application (in this case, ecommerce) needs to expand to support an increasing or “bursty” processing load. In the world of ecommerce where the margins are typically razor thin, the use of cloud computing provides on-demand access to application servers, databases, even middleware as needed. If deployed correctly, the use of infrastructure hosted in cloud providers such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, should function as if it’s in your own data center.
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Product configurators are becoming more and more common as manufacturers take advantage of consumers’ hunger for personalized goods. One category where this is particularly popular is shoes.
Brands like Vans, K Swiss, Etnies, Shoes of Prey, Puma, Converse, Reebok and Timberland are a few examples.
I while back I had a chat with Heather Frost, Ecommerce Merchandise Manager from Timberland to discuss Timberland’s product configurator.
Timberland launched their custom boot builder with one boot style in 2004. In 2005, 6 more patterns were added. The tool was more successful than Timberland had anticipated. In the last year, the configurator was redesigned to accommodate the addition of 4 handsewn boat shoe styles.
Customers can start from scratch or select from an “inspiration” (designed by Heather herself), including scarlet, screaming green and pastel pink.
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Persuasion Architecture, developed by conversion optimization gurus Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg, is a persona-based approach to marketing. If you know a customer’s “buying modality” (Competitive, Spontaneous, Methodical or Humanistic), you can tailor your design, copy and direct marketing to best persuade that type of personality.
It would be ideal to segment an email list by personality type. You can apply segmentation rules to on-site behavior, such as what the customer chooses to sort category results by. For example, if a customer chooses to see the newest or most expensive items first, he or she may be a “Competitive.” If the customer is logged in with an account, you may flag that customer as “Competitive” and send future promotional emails for the category accordingly.
Sometimes you simply have no information on a customer’s intent or personality type. Okay, let’s be honest – it’s most of the time. Is there a “shotgun” method to marketing that might cover the 4 buying modalities? Crutchfield shows you it’s possible:
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Just a quick update to our webinar this Thursday, Ecommerce for Technology Vendors: Maximizing Your Online Channel. We will be joined by a special guest speaker, Sanjay Saraf who is Vice President of eBusiness at Symantec. Sanjay will discuss the top ecommerce issues affecting software and technology vendors and will be available for Q&A at the end.
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
9am Pacific / 12pm Eastern
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About the webinar
Across all retail sectors, approximately 60% of consumers will go directly to a manufacturer’s site when researching a purchase. Another 16% will use a search engine, which often leads to the manufacturer’s site. For the technology and packaged software industries, these figures are likely higher, as online downloads direct from the vendor’s .com site is the strongest means of acquisition.
But with potentially more than 76% of consumers arriving at a manufacturer’s website, how much money is left on the table when its online store is not optimized?
In this one hour webinar, learn how technology companies can improve conversion rates and average order values to maximize the return on investment for their ecommerce projects.
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