• What could be worse than SOPA and PIPA? A similar Act on a global scale. Find out why some believe ACTA ‘Is More Dangerous Than SOPA’.

• Even if you didn’t take your site offline to protest SOPA, it’s important that you know How To Handle Downtime During Site Maintenance. Make sure you don’t confuse search engines — it could impact your rankings.

• HTML5 – this is why it’s hot. Amazon Scoots Past Apple’s Rules With HTML5 iPad Kindle Store. If you recall, Apple wants 30% of in-app revenue, this is a good workaround.

• While the 2012 predictions posts have for the most part died down, check out why shopping cart abandonment is set to rise in 2012.

• How Netflix Measures You to Maximize Their Revenue & How It Can Help Your Business is a good reminder why you must calculate customer lifetime value to know how much you can spend to acquire a new one. PS: Netflix’ LTV is 25 months and $291.25.

• Fun fact: the top 5 passwords used at Gawker account for about 25% of all users. The #1 password is — wait for it — 123456 (over 3000 accounts!) For more reasons why you should be diligent to push users towards secure passwords, check out Data Monday: Login & Passwords.

• Spotted in the wild: a paid search ad that lands the user on a customer review page rather than a product page. This is a great way to build user trust, no matter what you’re selling.

• You know we love infographics, and this one comes to us via Econsultancy: Profiling the Social Gamer. Hint: it’s not an 18 year old boy.

• The New York Times broke a story on an Amazon seller who offered refunds for 5 star reviews. Is this gaming the system, or mere incentivizing word of mouth? You decide.

“In Canada (and other developed countries), the salesperson or business owner depends on the customer to bring in their income. Therefore, their greatest interest is to serve the customer in a way so that they will keep coming back and buying their products. They value the customer because they realize that, without the customer, there would be no business.

Kenya is the complete opposite.

The business owner in Kenya often has the mentality that they are providing a service to their customers since, without them, their customers won’t have what they need to survive…

…(for example) I go up to the desk to pay for my item. I hand the cashier (often the person who owns the business) a large bill. He doesn’t have any change (which is always the case in Kenya). He then looks at me as if it is MY problem that HE doesn’t have change for me. He expects me to start rummaging through my purse to see if I can muster up enough coins while he sits there and stares at me impatiently. I usually drop what I wanted to purchase and leave the store to find someone else who has change.”

She also clarifies this is not everyone in Kenya, (she is in love with the country and its people). But this would never happen in the West (think of the Yelp reviews!) But this did get me thinking of all the ways Western online shops expect customers to remedy problems that occur in the buying process:

• Zero results found in site search without showing refinement options or near-matches
• Dead 404 pages without links back into the site or a way to contact customer service
• Checkout errors without clear, proximal callouts on how to fix
• Carts that clear contents after closing the browser (no use of persistent cookies)
• Slow email customer service response time, sometimes exceeding 48 hours

How does your customer service measure up? If you missed our post last November, we have a downloadable customer service scorecard you can use to identify the gaps on your site.

And while we’re at it, let’s not sweat our first world problems. (Can’t see video? View this post on GetElastic.com)

Looking for help with your ecommerce strategy and site optimization? The Elastic Path research and consulting division is available to enterprises selling digital goods and services. For more information, visit us at http://elasticpath.com/ecommerce-consulting/ or contact us at consulting@elasticpath.com.

• Search engine updates are often game changers, and the recent Panda update has big implications for duplicate content. Get caught up with Dr. Pete’s Duplicate Content in a Post-Panda World

• In other Googlenews, the digital marketing world is still crying in its Starbucks cup over the big G’s move to shroud referring keywords for logged in Google account users. But gracious gurus share their tips for working around this likely permanent change through advanced segmentation and filters. Thank you!

• Earlier this week we discussed best practices for subscriber management. One of the tips was actually to help folks unsubscribe. Did Monty Python write your unsubscribe page? 9 tips to make it better delivers exactly what it promises.

• Another tip re: subscriber management was to test subject lines for reengagement campaigns. But which the best subject lines to use for inactive subscribers?

• We know tablets are now outselling PCs, and we’re on pace to see 35% tablet penetration of online users by 2014.

• How about some stats on mobile app usage? Here’s a teaser: 38% 
iOS & Android users stick with an app after one month, 14% 
iOS & Android users stick with an app after six months. After 12 months, only 4% are left.

• We know tablets and e-readers are changing the way we consume information. Did you know digital titles set to outnumber print by 2013?

• Coveting the rich snippets of your competitors in search results? If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out Schema.org – Why You’re Behind if You’re Not Using It… Hint: it has to do with your SERP (search engine results page) click through rate potential.

• Pop quiz: what’s been proven better for usability, left or top aligned form labels? Find out after the click, for the what and the why.

• Don’t forget the infographics! Some fun facts about Google and What is Google Adwords? How the AdWords Auction Works for your viewing pleasure.

PS: Amanda and Linda will be at Meshwest Vancouver on Monday, if you’re at the conference, please flag us down and say hi. Stay tuned for coverage from the event next week.

The rules of engagement

ISPs track both positive and negative engagement activities which can impact your deliverability. Positive engagement

• Clicking through links
• Adding an address to safe list or address book
• Turning images on
• Opening the message
• Scrolling through the message

Negative engagement

• Reporting as spam
• Deleting without reading
• Moving to trash
• Marking as read
• Ignoring (no action taken)

Source: Responsys Email Engagement Study, 2011Measuring clicks is the most accurate way to determine engagement, as open rates are not fully accurate due to image suppression and preview panes. And clicking something suggests the content was interesting enough to spur action. (Another reason why you should never send a retail email that doesn’t have a clearly clickable call to action). Notice that clicking an unsubscribe link appears on neither list, so it’s a better idea to make it easy for a user to unsubscribe than to minimize this call to action in hopes nobody opts out. If anything, the click to your unsubscribe page or “update your preferences” is a sign of positive engagement – even if that subscriber ultimately drops off.

Inactive subscribers defined

We see there are a number of signals that indicate an uninterested subscriber, but how long they have gone cold is important, yet variable. ISPs will tolerate 18-24 months of inactivity, but your own analytics may reveal a tighter window. Segmenting the disengaged from the engaged and testing frequency, offers and time of day along with a re-engagement campaign can help you determine the tipping point. “In tests that we’ve done with clients, the vast majority of reactivated subscribers were inactive for less than 18 months,” says Responsys’ research report, which includes a case study where the optimal engagement window was half that, at 9 months. Also note, there’s a difference between an inactive email subscriber and an inactive customeror “lapsed buyer.”

Are inactives unvaluable?

The Smart Insights Digital Marketing recently posted an article by Dela Quist of Alchemy Worx, who offered 5 reasons why an email subscriber might be inactive.

1. They want your email, but haven’t needed your product for a while. 2. You’re receiving false negatives – your email is optimized to be read with image blocking on, so some subscribers could be opening it without you knowing. 3. The subscriber doesn’t want your email, but doesn’t care enough to unsubscribe. 4. Email address churn – the subscriber no longer uses or rarely checks that email address. 5. They don’t see your email because it goes into the junk folder. By far the largest group is the first one – we call these people the unemotionally subscribed. They will happily ignore your emails until they’re ready to buy, because it’s easier than unsubscribing and having to remember your URL or Google you later. We’ve gathered plenty of evidence on this group and demonstrated that while they might not read an email, they’re still a very important customer base. For example: • One of our clients generated $120,000 from subscribers who had not opened or clicked on the previous 25 to 40 emails. • Another saw 14% of revenue generated by subscribers who did not open or click a single email.” Common marketing advice would have been to delete those subscribers after a year’s inactivity. But by retaining unemotionally subscribed addresses, the client brought in a significant amount of additional revenue.

Inactive subscribers can become customers, so the answer is to make efforts to reengage the subscriber before removing them. Reengagement strategies Reduce frequencyResponsys recently completed a 3+ year experiment, subscribing to 100 retail email lists using fictional personas. Testers opened and clicked regularly for a period and then stopped. After 40 months, 31% were still mailing at full-throttle frequency, while 23% reduced frequency, 14% had stopped, and the remaining 32% stopped mailing after reducing frequency.

Sending inactives email less often reduces your overall negative engagement scores with your ISP. It also allows you to see if engagement improves among this segment simply by appearing in their inbox less. Don’t wait until subscribers are inactive for 18 months – by then, chances are you’ve already lost them. 3, 6 or 9 month windows are a good place to start. Your goal is to re-engage them and move them back in your actives file. Mix up the contentSo you’ve reduced frequency, but how do you determine which campaigns to send and which to suppress? These are a few of Responsys’ tips: 1. Send only your best offers and deals. 2. Send exclusive offers to this segment. 3. Test different subject lines (with trigger words like “come back” or “we miss you”) If reengagement doesn’t work, remove the subscriber after 24 months (your ISP’s threshold). You may lose some “false negatives” that never turned their images on, but if they haven’t clicked, you’re better off cutting them loose.

Additional tips to protect sender reputation

Build up your positive engagement signals, and reduce your negatives with these best practices: 1. Have a clear call to action in every email. And make your links / buttons / banners look clickable. I’ve said it before, and again, and now I’m saying it…again. 2. Send welcome emails that ask customers to update preferences and add your sender name to their address books / safe lists. (Hey, while you’re add it, why not segment out subscribers who don’t engage with your welcome email and keep these items prominent until they do?) 3. Design for images off, with enough teaser text that subscribers are motivated to turn their images on, and ultimately, click something. 4. Test headlines and always be closing testing better headlines! Learn what wins an open and what gets ignored, on average, over time, and to various segements. 5. Segment!!!!! Yes, I’m yelling. Find useful ways to better target offers so that your campaigns are as relevant as possible. I’ll get you started…segment by geography and exclude non-US residents and do not send them Turkey Day mailings in November. 6. User test creative to find out what compels people to scroll. It’s a sign of engagement. 7. Clicks are the most important engagement signal. Did I mention make things look clickable? Even if you’re only directing people to visit you at a physical store, give them something to click and ask them to click it. How about social sharing links if you’re stuck for ideas? 8. Research shows people often misuse the report spam button, simply to indicate they are not interested in a particluar email (even if they opted in to your list!). First, allow subscribers to provide feedbackon their interest level in your campaign:

Second, make your unsubscribe link uber-prominent (at the top of the page and the bottom) so the no-longer-interested can stop mailings without hurting your sender rep. 9. Have a preference center, and periodically include a call-to-update in your campaigns. There’s pros and cons to asking for preferences upon sign up – the extra questions may reduce your conversion rate, but it gives you much better targeting afterward. Someone who takes the effort to fill out a longer form is more likely to want to hear from you anyway.

10. Pick your sender name with care. Nondescript ones like “nobody” or XYZ are not going to stand out when users scan their inboxes. And don’t switch your sender name frivolously. You’ll mess up the “safe” lists of your existing subscribers and potentially confuse them to boot.

Looking for help with ecommerce strategy? Contact the Elastic Path Research & Strategy team at consulting@elasticpath.com to learn how our ecommerce strategy services can improve your business results.

But does Cyber Monday live up to its hyper? What’s the deal with Cyber Monday? We’ve collected over 50 stats about 2011’s most anticipated online shopping day.

Consumer Behavior

Cyber Monday turnout

Source: PriceGrabber

Sales are projected by ComScore to hit a record $1.2 Billion.

Top reasons US adults will shop online for holiday gifts

Source: Ebates

Holiday shoppers believe online shopping beats in-store, with:

Source: Ebates

Some dread in-store holiday shopping so much, they find themselves releasing their angst with some pretty bad behavior, such as:

Source: Ebates

Price trumps brand this year. Specific store names are not as important as pricing and promotions. The following reflects what percentage of holiday shoppers rated decision-making factors as at least “somewhat important:”

Source: Ebates

How does the economy impact holiday shopping plans this year?

Source: Ipsos Research and DaliyDeals.com / Offers.com

The importance of comparison shopping:

Source: Ipsos Research and DaliyDeals.com / Offers.com

When will Cyber Monday shopping hit its peak?

Source: PriceGrabber

Cyber Monday in Canada

Though Black Friday is really an American thing (Canadians celebrate their turkey day in October — another reason why geographic segmentation for holiday emails is a good idea), awareness about Cyber Monday is growing north of the border. According to PayPal Canada, 52% of Canadians are aware of Cyber Monday, an increase of 24% over last year. This is good news for US e-tailers, as research shows average order values tend to be higher for Canadian orders (perhaps because of duties, taxes and shipping charges, smaller ticket items may not justify additional expense). FiftyOne reports 2010’s AOV for Canadian baskets was US $186.

Aside from Cyber Monday madness, 35% of Canadians aged 18-34 plan to do some or all of their shopping online. A major motivator is saving time. The average Canadian believes online shopping with shave an 8 hour gift hunt down to 4.3. Considering the average Canadian values his or her time at $32.10 ($9 more than the average hourly wage), that’s a savings of ~$100.

Source: Ipsos Reid / PayPal Canada

Does social media matter?

Source: Deloitte LP

Retailer Behavior

Source: Shop.org

Tips for post-Cyber Monday

1. Plan for Green Monday. The Monday after Cyber Monday has historically been the second highest sales day of the year, some years it even edged out Cyber Monday. http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/online-holiday-spend-nears-22b-15341/comscore-holiday-spend-10-heaviest-days-dec-2010jpg/ “Green Monday” is definitely an industry insider term, so don’t confuse customers with Green Monday deals, but think of other ways to capitalize on the consumer trend.
2. Review your site search data to sniff out what products are in demand, and consider merchandising home pages with these products more often.
3. Have a plan for OOS (out of stock) products. Whether that’s merchandising the page with product suggestions, pausing PPC ads or cleaning your shopping engine feed.

Here’s wishing you a record holiday season!

1. Do all your holiday emails have a clear call to action?

“Seasons Greetings” may give customers the warm fuzzies, but unless there’s some action for your recipient to take, you send your email in vain. Inboxes are flooded with promotional and personal email this time of year, always offer something of value.

Contextual links and image links are fine, but they should be designed in a way that they clearly direct readers to the desired action to take. In doubt? Run your creative through Five Second Test and see if test users understand what to click.

Even if your email is non-transactional (rather, informational), there should be a big, juicy, clickable element that takes the customer to your website.

2. Are calls to action prioritized?

Every link is a potential call to action, including social sharing buttons. But they shouldn’t steal the spotlight. Make sure the CTAs (calls to action) that take subscribers to your site are featured more prominently.

3. Does every featured product photo contain context?

Many retail emails merchandise product with images, without a clue of what lies behind them. What product categories lay behind these photos? Are they selling chairs or blankets? Cutting boards or kitchenware?

Images need to look clickable and visually describe the landing pages they point to.

Giggle’s headline describes the overall theme (holiday travel), and the products are romanced with a bit of persuasive, descriptive text.

4. Do gift finder emails target gift recipient “personas”?

For her, for him, for kids 7-9, for your boss, for the girl who has everything – focus your gift suggestions around recipients to help solve your shopper’s problem – what to get {fill in the blank}.

This isn’t a die-hard must-have, but it adds value to your merchandising, further giving context to your suggestions.

5. Do you have a value proposition or free shipping offer?

Value propositions are key to persuasion. You’re competing against a lot of other retailers (in both search engines and inboxes), so reminding why shopping with you is the best choice is as important as showcasing products and offers – if not more.

If you have a good UVP (unique value proposition), milk that thing for all it’s worth. Don’t let your customer forget it. Other value props like free shipping, overnight shipping options, generous return policies and guarantees are also important. Use whatever you’ve got. And get creative. Chocomize boasts of its booster the Today Show.

6. Do you have a link to your holiday shipping cutoff tool?

Some retailers send a dedicated email that explains shipping updates (no merchandising). I recommend at least some offer or featured product (remember always have a clickable CTA) if you’re going to send such an email. But these emails are unnecessary if you simply include a banner that spells out your shipping options and cutoff dates.

An advanced move is to dynamically update the banner as cutoff draws nearer. The number of days remaining or available options can update as cutoff days expire.

7. Are you leveraging social proof?

Ratings! Reviews! Likes! Sales data! People want to know what’s hot, and Uncommon Goods is an uncommonly creative example of merchandising with social proof.

8. Have you considered “shop for yourself” messaging?

It’s better to give than to receive, but we still shop for ourselves during the holidays. Encourage both types of purchase intent during your campaign. Sometimes you can sneak them into one email.

9. Do you have a last-minute gift plan?

It’s common practice to push online gift certificates after the shipping cutoff date. They come with instant delivery and free shipping (naturally). Not to mention, gift card holders typically spend more or less than face value, you can’t lose.

10. Have you tested on mobile devices?

Ready or not, a good chunk of your emails are read on mobile devices. Many get smartphones primarily for the perk of reading emails on the go. Keep up. Design for and test email rendering on major mobile devices.

11. Have you cleaned your list?

Your list should be scrubbed regularly to remove hard bounces and inactive subscribers who have not responded to win-back/reactivation campaigns. Your list hygiene factors in your sender reputation and your delivery rate, so make sure you’re squeaky.

Also make sure you honor unsubscribes. Opt-outs may increase over the holidays as your email frequency increases or the content of your email changes. A preference center for unsubscribers can help save those who simply want to opt-out of your holiday campaigns or reduce frequency.

12. Have you planned a “get what you really wanted” or “New Year’s Resolution” campaign?

*Example emails are sourced from 2 great, free resources on retail email design if you’re looking for inspiration: Aweber’s Email Marketing Christmas Lookbook and Responsys’ Email Design Look Book. Check ‘em out!

Looking for help with ecommerce site optimization? Contact the Elastic Path consulting team at consulting@elasticpath.com to learn how our conversion optimization services can improve your business results.

How about cart recovery?

We put a lot of focus on optimizing the cart, getting the customer through to conversion, yet still it’s not uncommon to have abandonment rates of 50% or higher. We know a good chunk of abandonment does not occur because the button wasn’t big enough or green enough or our web forms are too long. Some got distracted, some wanted to hold items for later, some left and couldn’t remember your site URL, some even thought the transaction went through when it did not.

Cart recovery emails enjoy astronomically higher conversion rates and ROI than regular email, and give you a very good chance of saving sales at a relatively low cost.

Click to enlarge image

The Missed Opportunity with Cart Recovery

A study by RedEye and Econsultancy found that 54% of companies surveyed do not target cart abandoners, compared to 26% that do. If we strip out the 20% that report cart recovery is irrelevant to their business, it’s 68% that don’t and 32% that do.

Compare this to the same survey’s findings that 53% of companies use A/B testing, cart recovery is quite possibly the biggest missed opportunity of ecommerce optimization.

But it’s not enough to just do it. There are best practices to get the most bang for your retargeting buck.

Don’t Delay

This isn’t dating, where you take a phone number and have to play it cool for 3 to 5 days to make it look like you’re really busy and important. Your conversion rate will not increase by making the customer sweat by your self control.

According to SeeWhy research, which has analyzed data from over 60,000 abandoned carts, 54% of all carts that are successfully recovered are won back within the first few hours after abandonment. An additional 10% can be recovered within 48 hours, and at the end of 7 days, 82% can be recovered.

Conversion rates for real-time recovery emails are 11% compared to 6% and 3% for 24 hours and 7 days, respectively. Open rates are also higher for real-time triggers – 60% vs. 55% after 24 hours and 50% after 7 days. Revenue per email is $11, $4, and $3, respectively.

Instant emails also reduce the risk that your customer converts before your “batch” of recovery emails are sent out for the day, saving you the embarrassment of an irrelevant email, or angering the customer that they could have received a discount if they had only not completed their purchase.

Shift from Manual to Automated

The RedEye and Econsultancy research highlights a shift from manual recovery methods to automated from 2010 to 2011. Good. Software is smarter, faster and better looking than us, and we should embrace that.

Be a Serial Stalker

Plan a series of 3 triggers, one for real-time, one after 24 hours and one after 7 days. The copy and creative of the email may be slightly different to reflect the lapse of time and to stagger offers (the first email may be just a friendly reminder, subsequent messages with sweeter deals). When possible, segment out recipients who have not opened the first email, opened but not clicked, and opened and clicked and target them accordingly. You may tinker with a series of more than 3 messages, but 3 is a good place to start until you get the feel for customer behavior.

Segment and Test Different Creative

You may want to trigger certain types of messages and offers depending on what’s in the cart. For example, high ticket items can absorb a free shipping offer better than low margin or low price items. Some product categories may naturally have a longer days to purchase or visits to purchase, and reminders rather than discount offers are effective without knicking your profit. And the more exclusive your product, the less you need to woo customers with discounts. Victoria’s Secret, for example, does not sell through other retailers. Vicky’s abandoned carts may simply need a reminder their cart is saved and ready for them to complete their purchase. The customer may be motivated by “your purchase qualifies for a Bonus Gift, click here to claim.”

Treat your emails like landing pages and test them. We know calls-to-action, copy (tone, length, messaging), images and layout all have an influence on persuasion and conversion. Don’t just “set it and forget it.” For some design inspiration and tips for content, see our previous post 14 Tips for Cart Recovery and 10 Emails Deconstructed.

Don’t Reward Abandonment

Discourage customers from abandoning in order to receive the “prize” discount by mixing up your offers. In other words, don’t send a discount the first time, every time. If possible, identify and segment out email accounts that have purchased after receiving an offer code. Alternate with “friendly reminder” emails with real-time triggers.

Plaster Your Value Proposition

Persuade comparison shoppers that your site is the right choice to purchase from, regardless of price. Include your value proposition, and don’t be discreet about it.

Capture the Email Address Early

Most importantly, capture the email address early, because you can’t trigger unless you have an email address. The best way is to ask for it as the first step, not just in the first step.

Follow Abandoners to Facebook

What about cart summary pages, before you can collect an address? If the customer was referred by an email campaign, it’s technically possible you can tie some carts back to the email address. But in most cases, using Google’s new Remarketing program allows you to target the cart-abandoner segment with whatever creative you like, such as a 10% off coupon or “your items are waiting for you at {brand.com}.” Your ad will follow them to Facebook and pretty much any site that shows Google display ads, which may get you more attention than an email series.

In fact, the two can work in tandem. Why not run Remarketing campaigns along with a cart recovery email program?

Looking for help with ecommerce site optimization? Contact the Elastic Path consulting team at consulting@elasticpath.com to learn how our conversion optimization services can improve your business results.

Within this subdued holiday outlook, shoppers planning to purchase virtual products – ebooks, game downloads, Facebook credits, and the like – are a bright spot, according to Elastic Path’s latest research Virtual Goods Mean Real Money This Holiday. Download a free copy of the full research report.

27% of holiday shoppers plan to buy digital gifts

Of the 1,012 holiday shoppers surveyed, 27% intended to buy digital gifts this November and December. As early adopters of consumer electronics and active digital purchasers, younger (ages 18-34) shoppers are much more inclined to buy digital goods than the average consumer. And men find virtual gifts more appealing than women do.

Digital shoppers will spend more in a ho-hum holiday forecast

Over the past several months, U.S. consumers have experienced wild fluctuations in the stock market, high unemployment, and mounting government debt. As a result, many Americans will limit their spending this coming holiday season. Only 15% plan to spend more than they did last year. 47% will spend approximately the same amount, and 20% will spend less. In stark contrast to the average holiday shopper, a whopping 30% of virtual goods buyers plan to spend more than in 2010 on gifts of all types, both physical and digital, with only 13% spending less. Those purchasing digital goods also have bigger gift budgets—$440 on average, 40% more than their non-digital counterparts.

Attract the digital gift shopper to maximize sales

The above figures indicate that digital content leaders like Amazon and iTunes will be pulling in big sales this holiday season. But with the digital goods market expected to swell to $36 billion by 2014 according to industry analysts at GigaOM Pro, attracting the virtual gift shopper is increasingly important to maximize sales, even for ‘traditional’ brands. Toy creators like Mattel, Lego, and Crayola are great examples of companies jumping in with both feet into the digital market. By creating “app-cessories” – that is, physical items that interact with Apple gadgets – they can lure techno-parents.

Crayola ColorStudio HD includes a stylus that writes like a crayon on the iPad:

Lego’s Life of George game integrates real bricks and an iOS app:

And if you don’t yet make or sell digital goods, or items transcending physical and digital spaces, it’s not too late to consider adding third-party apps or digital subscriptions to your ecommerce site – sold with physical products, or as up-sells. Or giving away small amounts of Facebook Credits to use in popular social games like FarmVille as rewards to loyal customers or those who sign up for emails.

Interested in more details?

The paper offers other recommendations to help retailers and e-tailers attract digital shoppers including maximizing visibility in search and social networks, working towards developing a single view of the customer across all channels from mobile/web to retail, cross-merchandising digital and physical items, and expanding gifting and payment options. Download a free copy of the full research report Virtual Goods Mean Real Money This Holiday.

Off-topic: Also worth mentioning is the UK Christmas Shopping 2011 infographic I meant to include in our September link list. Did you know that 4pm is the peak time for workplace shopping in the UK? Might be a good time to send those Tweets, Facebook shares and emails…

Looking for help with ecommerce? Contact the Elastic Path consulting team at consulting@elasticpath.com to learn how our ecommerce strategy and conversion optimization services can improve your business results.

• Quite possibly my favorite. post. ever. When CTAs Attack – 10 Real World Call to Action Examples (That’s CTA for call-to-action, I didn’t misspell cat). Mix a bit of LOLcats meets FAIL Blog meets photo montage of downtown Vancouver – all in a conversion optimization context of course.

• Do you A/B or multivariate test? Read this. Why Website Test Results Don’t Always Add Up & What To Do About It.

• By now you’ve heard about Google Wallet, yeah? They have at least one customer…

• Google’s been busy. 2 more announcements: Google Analytics Premium (its paid, enterprise edition) and real-time analytics feature to all GA accounts. (Oh, and Google+ business profiles are on the way.) So that’s 3 announements. Plus the Wallet thing. At least 4.

• Is your brand name “plosive”? Did you know brands that begin with plosive letters like C, K, P, B and D are more memorable?

• The Million Dollar Question: What’s the ROI of social media marketing? Rand from SEOmoz shares his tips for measurement including why and where social matters, which social metrics to track and some juicy tools for measurement.

• How about an infographic on Social Media ROI?

• Now onto mobile: is it time to stop using downloads as your measure of success? “Download numbers are no guide to how much money is being made.” True.

• Mobile apps must die? Really? They just got here! Interesting notes from the Breaking Development conference session of the same name on the problem with mobile apps and how to move beyond.

• From the same conference: how to speed up your mobile site. Great tips!

Looking for help with ecommerce? Contact the Elastic Path consulting team at consulting@elasticpath.com to learn how our ecommerce strategy and conversion optimization services can improve your business results.