If you aren’t familiar with RSS, this video explains it “in plain English.” Essentially, RSS is a way to syndicate content like blog posts, video or new product listings (though not the only format for syndication). A content publisher makes a feed of this content available for consumption through an RSS reader, email, widget or other application that can turn it into a friendly format.

Though these may be fringe use cases, some practical example of RSS on ecommerce sites include:

Site personalization

Netflix offers public and private RSS feeds. Members can personalize suggested content within their account, or subscribe to public feeds such as top 25 by genre.

Orbitz launched its RSS collection in 2006, they still exist today along with the option to add to your Yahoo portal page (hey, it was the 2000′s!)

Though it’s not obvious, Zappos offers their geek-savvy customers the option of subscribing to a brand’s new listings by RSS in addition to email notifications from brand category pages.

Ebay has long enabled users to save their search terms and opt into daily email summaries of new listings.

Recently, Ebay redesigned its US home page to include saved searches in a Pinterest-style, personalized feed that updates in real time.

While the general population may not “get” RSS, they certainly are familiar with the idea of following feeds, thanks to Facebook, Twitter and their social cousins. Ebay suggests similar feeds to follow (based on saved searches), and enables users to connect with Facebook to import interests from profile information.

Affiliate development tools

Developers can also pull Netflix’ public RSS feeds to power apps like Instantwatcher, which alerts users to expiring Netflix titles, among other tools.

Ebay uses RSS feeds for affiliates, who can create a customized feed of new products that fit a set of Advanced Search criteria.

New product or deal alerts

RSS vs API

Web users are much more familiar with the concept of following micro-streams of content a-la-Twitter than subscribing via RSS. With Google Reader’s exit, even the geekerati will be hard pressed to subscribe to ecommerce feeds, though there’s opportunity to continue to offer RSS updates through Zite, Feedly and similar apps for sites where RSS is a popular feature.

RSS still has value for on-site personalization like Netflix, where members can use it to tailor content they see when logged into a site.

But the question is, should you use RSS or an API to build this functionality?

The difference between RSS and API

Though RSS feeds may be delivered as part of an API, RSS is used to push fixed content updates, such as new product additions, daily deals or latest product reviews. If your feature requires more interaction by the user other than subscribe and watch the content updates roll in, or if you want to slice or mash up your content beyond what RSS can do (including integrating with Facebook Connect), and API is your better option.

RSS or API for developers and affiliates?

Developers are a different breed than your typical non-technical consumer, and offering them standard RSS (alone or as part of an API) enables them to pull your data without having to write any code themselves. But again, RSS has its limitations, and if it’s important for you to offer developers such as affiliates a way to create more complex features with your data feeds, consider an API.

Dear Google Reader Subscribers

Our stats show the bulk of Get Elastic RSS subscribers use Reader, and we would love to keep connected with you after Google Reader shutters. If you’re looking for a worthy substitute, check out Econsultancy’s 40+ alternatives to Google Reader. If you’ve found an alternative you love, please share your RSS reader suggestion in the comments.

Create an account

Offering guest checkout with option to create an account after successful conversion is a win-win, but don’t forget to romance why the customer should bother creating one. Action Envelope makes this a simple 3-field process, but the call-to-action does compete with several other page elements.

Image credit: PitStop Media

Keep shopping

Are you thinking “why would someone who just finished shopping want to start again?”

Sometimes cross-selling and upselling is ignored or worse — causes abandonment — during the buying process, so post-purchase merchandising gives you a second chance to get the buyer’s attention. And, you now have concrete evidence of purchase intent (and ownership). Product recommendations may be even more relevant to this type of visitor.

Suggest, suggest, suggest

This Amazon example is overwhelming, and I don’t necessarily recommend the “shotgun” approach, but it gives you a good cross-section of the ways you can merchandize (recommended based on browse history, new items, etc). Though I’m surprised this example doesn’t include social proof “customers who bought X also bought YZA,” though it may be that there were multiple items in the order.

Image credit: SearchEngineLand via @SandraNiehaus <-- follow her!

Let’s make a deal

NFL Shop incentivizes re-purchase with a coupon code (via email).

Image credit: Listrak

Smart cross-sell

This confirmation email from Shutterfly is smart on several levels. It’s persuasive, using “gift to say thank you” rather than a simple coupon code. “We’d like to treat you” makes the buyer feel special. It’s time-limited to create urgency, and suggests taking up the offer will enhance the use of the purchased product (photos), to take the next step and create a photo book.

Image credit: PracticalEcommerce

Get ‘em curious

Bliss features products — not with thumbnails — but with creative that really pre-sells the product and generates interest. “Winner after 40,000 votes” and “20-in-1 wonder balm” play on the converted buyer’s curiosity.

Image credit: SearchEngineLand

Email opt-in

The above Bliss example also includes a subtle email opt-in. Don’t be afraid to combine calls-to-action, just make sure they’re priority weighted in your design.

Content, tools and apps

NFL Shop highlights its gift finder tool, but you could certainly link to native apps (including app-catalogs), blogs, content features, event calendars, and the like.

Image credit: Listrak

Survey

Survey requests can be incentived or unincentivized.

Image credit: SearchEngineLand

Notice the email opt-in above?

Image credit: Econsultancy via @gcharlton <-- follow him!

Gettin’ social

Share purchase

Though I doubt this is a highly-used feature, be my guest to use it.

Image credit: South Florida Web Marketing Blog

This will be more successful for certain industries than others (books, music, some apparel, etc)

Pin it!

Customers may be shy to share purchases on Facebook, but may be more likely to Pin them to Pinterest. Sephora enables individual items to be shared.

Aliexpress marketplace offers multiple sharing buttons after a buyer has left seller feedback.

Image credits: GetElastic

Recruit

Rather than socially share individual purchases, why not ask your customer to recruit for you? This makes sense for membership sites (like socially-conscious Kiva) and vente-privee like HauteLook or Gilt.

Image credit: SearchEngineLand

Sharing can be incentivized with referral points.

Image credit: AllThingsD

At the very least, re-stating your business’ value proposition on Thank You pages and in confirmation emails can take the edge of any buyer’s remorse and encourage the customer to buy with you again next time.

Bottom line: do something. A generic Thank You page is a wasted opportunity.

The stock answer to the question is to “test it,” but simple tests may lead you astray. If you test the presence of cross-sells against a cart without, and without wins, you may conclude that cross-sells don’t work. When it may be your choice of Presentation, how you Populate your merchandising zones, and how you Persuade that wasn’t working.

Today we’ll look at examples of these 3Ps to help you craft a cross-selling test (or re-test) that “works.”

Presentation

Some sites show cross-sells inside a “mini-cart” or interstitial page before reaching the cart (and some in addition to).

An interstitial page is a page between the product page and cart that displays offers or cross-sells.

Design

Though it’s near impossible to predict where the fold will be for each customer, designing your cart with hard bars or lines that separate cart contents from other content can “bounce” the user’s eye and prevent scrolling. Consider the fold!

Similarly, tabbed content may be overlooked by the user. Make sure you’re tracking mouseovers and click through if you use them.

A carousel is an alternative to tabs for showing more cross sells on a page without clutter or “paradox of choice.” Not all users will notice the scroll arrows, but some will.

Enabling products to be added to cart without clicking out of the cart can work for certain products.

Finally, ensure your call-to-action does not get lost in the overall design.

Placement

Testing the placement of cross-sells is the only way to tell you what works best for your product and within your design context.

They are typically presented horizontally along the bottom or vertically along right hand side, and sometimes both.

Showing suggestions inline demands attention and may be more effective than side or bottom placement, but attachment depends on the relevance of the recommendation to cart contents.

Art.com uses a twist of this, recommending a value-add as a call-to-action button presented inline in the cart.

Placing above cart contents may also get more attention than side or bottom (use your heat mapping tools to verify).

Cafepress animates its cross-sells with Javascript. As they appear it prompts a “what’s this?” response.

Perhaps the most creative presentation is BeachBody, which bakes the cross-sell into checkout steps. I was unable to capture a screen grab of it without submitting credit card info.

Population

What the cross-sells are are more important than how you present them!

Paradox of choice

Sometimes less is more, so make sure the number of suggestions presented one of the variables you are testing.

If you do throw a lot of things at the wall, it’s a good idea to keep them highly relevant to the product(s) in the cart.

Here Amazon is featuring more from this designer. Consider the context – the product in the cart is bathroom decor, for which it is highly likely that the buyer would be interested in matching items. Each product type is different, so you have to use your noggin to configure appropriate associations.

Sometimes drawing from the same product line actually causes confusion, when it is a substitute for the item in the cart. In this example, it would be better to display the warranty and items frequently bought with the item in the cart, rather than the same products, different SKUs.

With fashion items, cross-selling based on “crowdsourcing” (like people who viewed X also viewed Y) may create a similar situation.

Similarly, cross-selling near-product matches like same shoe, different specs (in this case, boot height) may also be sub-optimal. In this case however, it may be intended as an upsell – to remind the customer that a similar, higher priced item in the line is available.

If you don’t have much session browsing data to help you personalize recommendations, using default “top sellers” or “you might like” might work, but make sure you’re measuring impact of showing random product suggestions vs. none at all, and tracking click through and attachment rates.

Persuasion

Persuasive merchandising

Sometimes it’s not about the actual suggestions, but the suggestion that one should keep exploring the shop. Victoria’s Secret’s in the fashion business, with a large and diverse catalog. Showing more items may be a subconscious trigger to keep looking. (Paired with a “$X till free shipping” callout may be even more persuasive).

Value propositions

If you’ve read this blog for some time, you’ll know about the importance of value propositions in persuasive selling.

Musician’s Friend uses one in its warranty callout:

Persuasive labels

Using “you” in your label, like “Recommended for You” and “You might like” is more persuasive than “Similar items” or “We suggest.”

Drs. Foster and Smith do even better, hitting the emotional strings with “Your pet might also like.”

Creating a little urgency never hurt no one, either. Harry and David’s “Today’s specials”

Harry and David today’s specials triggers that “maybe I don’t want to miss this” feeling, and may win higher attachment rates than generic labels.

Persuasive pricing

Blue Nile offers a no-brainer cross-sell (jewelry polish), but also a discount-with-purchase item that may be enticing.

Tests should be conducted on which items are most attractive, and how the offer is presented (red price, subtle, large vs. small thumbnail, interstitial, etc.

Even if your cross-sells are proven to work in the cart, challenge how you do them today with new designs to see if you can squeeze more revenue out of a different approach.

Category and search pages

1. Make smart use of filters and sort tools

Users make better comparisons when they can winnow their choices down first. The best filters are tailored to the product and include its important attributes, rather than universal across the catalog. For mobile phones, this includes features like 4G, camera, email and touch screen. For cameras, megapixels, optical zoom and display size.

Consider adding customer reviews to sort tools.

Price sliders are also useful, especially for service bundles like mobile contracts.

2. Don’t push the comparison callout to the side

Sidebars are high-risk for “banner blindness.”

It’s better to enable comparison right from product listings, as below.

3. Have a clear call to action to compare next to each checkbox

Keep calls to action like this within the user’s eyeflow whenever possible.

4. Don’t uncheck

One of the most fundamental rules of web usability is “make links look like links.” Links should look clickable, with a different color, underline, or label “click to [____].”

A few sites actually unchecks the selection when you click what appears to be the “launch table” function. Make sure the item is only unchecked by re-clicking a checked box.

5. Provide visual feedback when an item is added to compare table

We expect visual feedback when we add an item to cart, or in this case to a comparison table. Make it as obvious as possible to avoid confusion.

6. Offer comparison on search pages

Don’t forget that some will use the search box to navigate, so ensure they get the same benefit on search result pages.

Many large telcos and software companies use a Google-like SERP that incorporates all content, not just store (as above). It helps to show clearly which results are “buyable” or allow the customer to scope their search to the Store instead of all content.

Comparison tables

7. Make the close button obvious

As with any lightbox, design the “close” button to be very obvious.

8. Use large thumbnail images

Customers have poor recall. Allow them to visualize their options in the table.

Vodafone goes above and beyond, showing multiple images on mouseover.

9. Make the thumbnail clickable

Surprisingly, some compare tables include images that are not clickable. Remember web conventions.

10. Include star ratings

Customer rating might be the deciding factor. It’s a great idea to include this metric in comparison.

11. Make the price visible

Whenever possible, include the price, even if it’s “from [price].”

12. Clear add to cart at top and bottom

Avoid white and gray buttons. As with any call to action, make your add to cart or “Select” buttons stand out.

Include them both at the top and the bottom of the table.

13. Link to the product detail page

Surprisingly, some tables I tested had no links to product detail pages. Don’t be one of them. Some folks want to experience multiple images and read all product reviews.

14. Use clear editing tools

Make it easy to remove an item from consideration and return back to results to add another to the mix.

Some tables I tested wiped comparison contents clean when you return to results. Test to ensure that doesn’t happen!

15. Print / Save and email feature

For considered purchases like mobile devices bundled with services, the ability to save or email to yourself or another person is helpful. (A nice to have, but not a must-have.)

16. Expand / collapse sections

Long tables with lots of information is difficult to process. Enable expand and collapse to show and hide details.

Again, make the links obvious and clickable.

17. Hide similarities or highlight differences

Bonus points for helping customers hone in on what’s really different between options.

18. Mouseover jargon busters, product attributes explained

Help customers understand what you mean by those fancy terms — especially when they are specific to your own products (like VZ Navigator).

19. Convert units into local formats (grams, etc)

If your sites are localized, contextual units for each market is helpful. If you have one site for all nations, you can use geolocation tools to serve appropriate versions of content.

20. Lightbox that scrolls

For long pages of information, a scrollbar helps customers match up attributes to products easily with out losing context as the device disappears out of sight while scrolling.

It’s a much more pleasant experience than without.

If you missed our webinar series for telco, catch parts 1-3 on demand at ElasticPath.com:

Optimizing the Customer Journey for the Complex Sale
Keeping Customers: Reducing Churn Through Support and Upgrade Optimization
Beyond Minutes: How To Sell Value-added Services to Mobile Customers

The problem with these subject lines is they’re just offers. And every website they’ve subscribed to is making them an offer that’s easy to refuse.

But take a look at this subject line:

You Have a $10 Credit With 1-800-Headsets

This is psychologically powerful. Of course, unless a credit is issued as part of a refund (credit note) or a gift card, a “credit” is just a clever name for a discount. (In this case, the credit is offered because of a previous purchase – i.e. a X-off-next-purchase coupon). But the word credit suggests “we have $10 of your money on our books, come and redeem the goods that are rightfully yours.” This may be more motivational than the played-out discount offer.

Definitely worth testing.

At the end of each semester, we were asked to write down what we were working on and assign ourselves a letter grade and percentage. That’s right, we graded ourselves (a dangerous task to delegate to bratty teenagers).

Some businesses have taken the same approach to pricing, allowing customers to “pay what they want” – even if that means pay nothing. “Pay what you wish” / “name your own price” (PWYW / NYOP) worked for Radiohead and appears to be working for some restaurants, but it’s a different ballgame online. The anonymity of the Internet removes the social pressure one feels after being served personally by a human being. It’s one thing to download Radiohead’s In Rainbows for $0.00, another to show up week after week for a legit dine-and-dash.

Nevertheless, there are some notable examples of PWYW / NYOP in ecommerce:

The Radiohead Strategy

Radiohead made waves in 2007 when it bypassed traditional distribution channels and offered its In Rainbows album for whatever fans wanted to pay. According to Comscore, In Rainbows was downloaded 1.8 million times, generating $2.26 per album (60% opting for the free download). Without costs of production, inventory, shipping or cuts to the middleman, Radiohead claims it actually made more money off the “pay what you want” release than any other album.

Today, pay what you want is still alive and kicking in the music industry. Mavaru.com is an mp3 marketplace for indie bands where every album is NYOP.

World of Goo

Indie game developers 2D Boy celebrated the one-year anniversary of its World of Goo game with a one-week NYOP sale, and blogged the results of the campaign here.

In one week, the San Francisco duo drummed up 57,000 new downloads with an average purchase price of $2.03. Even after 13% in PayPal fees – that’s not a bad chunk of change. A nice side effect was sales of other games Steam and WiiWare rose 40% and 9%, respectively due to the social media publicity and enthusiasm. Fascinatingly, some commenters on the blog post confessed they downloaded the game not because they wanted to play it, but to support the NYOP pricing model!

GapMyPrice.com

The Gap’s foray into PWYW offered customers a one-day opportunity to name their price for certain styles of khaki pants on the www.gapmyprice.com microsite. Lowball offers were returned with slightly higher prices by the Gap, which the customer had one chance to accept or decline.

In reality, this is not choosing one’s own price at all, rather an e-haggling approach to a daily deal sale. While it sounds so novel (and perhaps, insane) Gap’s approach is not new. eBay sellers have had the option to list a suggested price and invite customers to “make an offer,” which may be rejected by the seller for years.

To be a true pay-what-you-wish promo, the end user must be able to pay absolutely nothing or really next-to-nothing. This makes it very difficult to run such a promotion with physical goods that carry production, inventory and opportunity cost of giving away product that could be sold to others. Digital goods that have unlimited distribution potential are better suited to these promotions.

Name Your Own Price Tips

If you’re plucky enough to try this pricing strategy, keep the following in mind:

1. Determine whether your product is right for NYOP

In Smart Pricing, Z. John Zhang outlines the 5 key qualities shared by any successful “pay as you wish” campaign:

1. A product with low marginal cost
2. A fair-minded customer
3. A product that can be sold credibly at a wide range of prices
4. A strong relationship between buyer and seller
5. A very competitive marketplace.

Chapter One of Smart Pricing titled “Pay as You Wish Pricing” is available for download for the rock bottom price of $1.79, or you can buy the full book at Amazon for $23.99. How’s that for innovative content pricing models?

2. Consider a time-limited promotion

Certainly for retail products, pay what you want is not a sustainable promotion. It might work to drum up buzz, but like daily deals, the offer should be restricted to an hour or a day.

Digital goods companies can afford a bit more leeway in timing. World of Goo extended its promo for an extra week due to its success, and Humanoid Sound Systems appears to have adopted its NYOP strategy permanently, and may extend the model to other products.

3. Consider a suggested price

The suggested price has a powerful psychological influence on the price a customer is willing to pay – it can work for you or against you.

Setting a fair suggested price gives the customer a true sense of value. It won’t prevent low offers, but it will keep more buyers in your ballpark. Some may even offer more (Radiohead fans have claimed to have paid over $30 for the album).

If you set it suggested price too low, e.g. $5 for software that retails for $39, customers will assume that is not only a fair price and all you’re really expecting. BinaryNow used NYOP pricing for its Kingsoft Office and Internet Security applications, with a minimum price of $2 ($1 per app). 87% of customers paid the minimum, and 5% paid $5 for the bundle. Overall, the average customer paid $3.32.

However, a truly open field that includes $0 as an option makes a person think more about what they personally value the item/service as. It’s a good idea to split test a reference price against no reference price.

4. Don’t counter-offer

Coming back with counter-offers is merely e-bargaining. It reveals you have a reserve price, and instead of offering a sale, customers must “guess” how low you’ll go. At worst, customers may feel they are being gamed into pay more than a sale price.

Ashampoo Software (that’s not a typo) gets downright insulting when you sink too low below “regular price.” The snarky dialog box reads a condescending “This offer is much too low. Please enter a reasonable price.” Users don’t have time to play guessing game for what is a reasonable offer only to be ridiculed by a script.

5. Add some social pressure

In Maravu’s checkout, your offer is pasted on a graphic that shows its relative cheapness. While it’s an arbitrary scale, when it’s positioned to the low end, the customer may reconsider the price paid. If the scale is based on what others have paid, this may also make the person feel “cheap” and up their offer.

Above-average paying customers will pat themselves on the back, but they could also lower their offer. It would be a good idea to suppress the graph when the price is above average.

6. Include a survey

In checkout, Maravu asks what fans would be willing to pay for upcoming band concerts.

2D Boy asked surveyed customers with common reasons why they may have chosen their given amount. From survey data, they surmised that “few people chose their price based on the perceived value of the game. How much the person feels they can afford seems to play a much larger role in the decision than how much the game is worth.” Whether you decide to offer NYOP temporarily or forever, knowing (or at least, making an educated guess) how customers value the product and the price they would be willing to pay for it can help you price and/or craft your value proposition in the future.

7. Test copy

Simply running a name your own price promotion is not enough. How you rationalize why you’re offering it (and what your product is worth) is important.

For example:

Scanned Synth Pro 2 is now available for purchase worldwide (including the US)! Just click on the “Buy Now” link below and you will be guided through the secure payment process. We use the popular Paypal service for handling all payments. You do not have to have a Paypal account, a credit card will work fine too!

Scanned Synth Pro 2 is currently retailing at the excellent price of whatever you want to pay. I do urge you to have a good think about how much it is worth to you. If this works out well, then we will be selling all Humanoid Sound Systems software according to this pricing model. Obviously we cannot afford to do that if people pay the bare minimum. Where else could you buy professional-quality software like this for less than 99 Dollars?

Humanoid may wish to test a few different write-ups that stress the actual features and value of the product, rather than urging the customer to think how much it’s worth. Often, the customer really has no idea of the true value of the software, or a fair price.

And don’t forget to include your value proposition!

8. Know what to measure / how to interpret results

BinaryNow eroded margins dramatically, but managed to increase overall sales by 62% in one month for a product that carries little to no cost of sale (apart from PayPal fees). It also may have cut into the market share of competitors while generating the opportunity for re-marketing other software products, additional features/upgrades or mobile applications to these new users. It’s important to measure short and long term benefits, as well as the effect on sales of sister products.

The publicity generated also has value. All those links and tweets help SEO, which in turn can help drive organic traffic and sales on an ongoing basis.

While I don’t expect Name Your Own Price to become the new “free shipping” promotion, it’s an interesting model that’s worth consideration for certain businesses – if done smartly.

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.

You may have caught our recent post Saving Sales for Out of Stock Items, which described an example from Staples of merchandising recommended alternative products when an item in a user’s cart is out of stock (OOS).

Saved shopping carts are not the only thing affected by stock-outs. Every element of your online marketing needs to be considered and tweaked to ensure customers have the best experience and you save the most dollars.

SEO

Though many online merchants do this, removing permanently out of stock products from your website is not an option if you value SEO.

Each item you delete potentially wipes out deep links from other websites, blogs and social networks, which do help your domain’s overall “authority” with search engines. In fact, popular products that have sold out are the most likely to have attracted attention from external sites. Consider sites that turn over thousands of products per year – the aggregate loss can majorly impact SEO.

Search engines sometimes take a while to clean out “not found” pages from their indices, so you may get referrals that hit a dead end page.

You have 2 options to handle discontinued product pages: use a 301 (permanent) redirect to another page, or leave the page in tact with messaging that the product is out of stock.

A redirect will preserve most of the “link juice” from external websites, and you can aim it at the replacement product (no bait and switch!) or to the nearest product category. It also builds up the PageRank of the category you aim it to, helping it to rank higher in search engines. This is preferred over redirecting to your home page, as it’s easier for a customer to find an alternative item from a category page.

You’ll want to suppress the old product pages from categories for best usability. Linking customer reviews to public buyer profiles is a smart way to ensure they stay in your site architecture.

However, redirecting to a category page can confuse a customer, who expected to land on the product page. Keeping the product page avoids this problem. It also ensures you receive traffic for the long-tail keywords (like model numbers) that are so valuable.

The best way to optimize such a page is to clearly identify the item is out of stock (a label over the product image will surely be noticed), and show alternative or replacement products clearly.

Pay Per Click

Perhaps nothing hits your marketing budget’s efficiency harder than a leak in your PPC faucet. Not only are you missing out on sales, you’re paying Google to send you traffic to a sold out product. Having the right processes in place to catch OOS products and pause keywords is important.

George Michie from Rimm-Kaufman Group shared with Get Elastic his paid search management firm’s process for handing temporarily OOS products. RKG uses couples a system that flags products when they drop out of inventory or a data feed with a URL-checking tool that identifies landing pages with page load error messages or “out of stock” status.

Bidding on permanently out of stock items (like discontinued model numbers or software versions) can still be profitable, so long as you offer substitute product(s) and inform/merchandise your landing page accordingly.

If a product is gone for good, it’s best to remove or permanently pause keywords pointing to the product page. In some cases, keywords may be effectively applied to other Ad Groups.

Affiliate / Data Feeds

Like pay-per-click, permanently out of stock items should be pulled from shopping engine and other affiliate data feeds.

Email

A successful email campaign can often result in a featured product selling out. There are a couple creative ways of handling this problem.

You might add an “email me when this item is back in stock” feature to your product pages for those who click through. (Again, suggesting alternative products on the landing page helps).

Or, you could dynamically update your email creative to reflect a product’s availability.

A side effect is this creates urgency for your other featured products. It suggests products are at a high risk of selling out.

If you haven’t created an out-of-stock salvage plan, now’s the time. Make sure none of the marketing resources you’ve invested ever go to waste.

Staples ameliorates the problem by showing product recommendations on the shopping cart page, appropriately labeled “Try these similar products:”

The product recommendations are presented in a carousel, so the customer can actually surf many products without leaving the page.

While this is brilliant, I have a couple additional suggestions:

1. Add an “email me when item is restocked” feature.
2. Make the “Continue” button more clear on where it leads (continue through checkout, go back to the category, product page or home page?)

On the same topic, check out these articles:

3 Ways Retailers Handle Out of Stock Items Palmer Web Marketing Blog

5 Ways to Handle Returned to Stock Items

Could Sold Out Products Increase Email Click Through?

Manufacturer Saves Stock-Out Sales With Partner Referrals

Build-out and maintenance

Designing, building and maintaining one site is nearly always cheaper than managing multiple sites. You’ll likely be able to serve the world through one ecommerce platform (though you may need to replatform to accommodate all the localized features that you need). On the other hand, your existing ecommerce platform may make it easy and cost effective to launch multiple sites, sometimes on the same license. Even so, the design and buildout of localized sites carries cost.

Though localized sites require separate content management, marketing campaigns, SEO and so on, localized teams are not always necessary. Many businesses still manage local sites through a central team, but this depends on your organizational structure, capabilities and budget.

Localized Features and Content

Sticking to one site for all countries doesn’t mean you can’t offer usability features that cater to international customers. “Internationalized” sites may allow customers to change currencies, switch language, and even show location-specific content and promotions using IP geolocation.

But localized sites have added benefits – they can accommodate the cultural differences that may exist between markets, for example, terminology. In the US, a vest is a sleeveless jacket (below, left). In the UK, it’s what North Americans would call a tank top (below, right).

A UK localized site can categorize “vests” in the way that’s more culturally relevant than the US site (category labels, search results). I’ve always been a fan of Google Trends for international keyword research.

Other cultural differences include the way people like to navigate a site (horizontal vs. vertical menus), browser preferences and color symbolism. White may be the traditional wedding hue in the West, but is the color of death in many Eastern countries. The Knot’s Chinese site is themed in red, the color of good fortune in China.

Users in some geographies may also skew towards slower connection speeds. You can build “lite” versions of your site with less rich media with localized sites.

Assortment

Localized sites allow you to offer localized assortment, which is advantageous for several reasons. Certain manufacturers may restrict the countries you are able to sell their lines to (for example, Amazon can’t ship the Flip camcorder outside the US). Nothing is more frustrating than finding out mid-checkout that the product is unable to be shipped to the destination address.

Some products are large and heavy, and shipping overseas is too expensive for both customer and seller. Other products can’t be shipped abroad for technological reasons (European hair dryers don’t work in US outlets and vice versa).

Demand may also differ by geography. Even between the East and West coasts of the United States, there are differences in demand for fashion trends, household items, mortgage and banking products, et cetera. Offering a smaller assortment for localized markets can increase conversion – there’s less choice to weed through and it’s easier to locate desirable products.

SEO

The number and quality of inbound links is important for search engine optimization. Having one website consolidates all the “link juice” which certainly helps you rank better in your primary market, and depending on competition from businesses abroad, may also give you a good ranking in the local engines (e.g. Google.co.au, Bing.fr).

However, geographically targeting domains is arguably better for local search engines (arguably because you need to start link building from scratch). Best practice is to give each localized domain its own ccTLD (country code top level domain) such as yourstore.co.uk or yourstore.de. The ccTLD tells the search engine exactly which country you’re targeting. Host each domain in its target country for bonus points.

Aside from higher rankings, ccTLDs can attract higher click through as the customer knows they will be visiting a site that can ship to them, show them their own currency, etc.

As I’ve written previously, some of the largest brands in the world aren’t targeting their localized sites properly in search engines.

If you must use a subfolder or subdomain for your local sites (e.g. yoursite.com/canada or canada.yoursite.com), you can geotarget them through Google Webmaster Tools. But so far, Google’s the only search engine that allows you to do this. It won’t help you on Bing.

Another ranking factor is the age of the domain. Unfortunately, new domains start from scratch, while the established sites have an advantage.

Checkout and Payment

In some countries, credit cards and PayPal are not the preferred method of payment. Direct debits are more popular in countries like Germany, India and China. Some customers wish to pay by check, money order or COD. Showing all these payment methods on one site offers too much choice to customers who don’t want to use them (which can negatively impact conversion). We’ll be discussing this topic in more detail in an upcoming Get Elastic post.

Checkout flow best practices may not hold up in every market, either. Did you know that only 22% of Japanese online shoppers expect a “smooth and easy checkout process”? The Japanese place more value on the process than us “get me out of here fast” Westerners, so a one-page checkout flow may not perform better than multi-page flows in every market. Testing for these cultural preferences on localized sites is more efficient than on globalized sites, which may only allow you to run one experiment at a time.

So Which Is Better – One Site or Multiple?

Both options have pros and cons, which need to be weighed in light of your business’ unique position, goals and resources. If you’re not sure your new market(s) are going to drive a significant portion of your business, it’s safer to “internationalize” your main site first. (You can always launch geographic microsites down the road.) This means adding the features and functionality that attracts and serves international customers. It also means thinking hard about international usability.

If you’re considering investment in localized sites, how do you know if the ROI of upside revenue will outweigh the cost of the added complexity? That’s just one of the key issues we’ll be addressing in our next webinar with Forrester’s Zia Daniell Wigder: Tapping into the International Online Consumer: What Every Enterprise Needs to Know About Going Global.

Please join us Wednesday, October 27 at 9am PST / 12pm EST. Space is limited, so reserve your spot today.