Back in 2007, Facebook opened its API (application programming interface) to allow any developer to build an application that could extend the functionality of Facebook (and maybe make you a bit of money). Facebook understood that it couldn’t possibly create all the cool things possible with the resources it had, and that creative folks would be happy to do the job for free. Today there are over 50,000 Facebook applications. While most applications are at the bottom of the haystack, some have become wildly popular.

Online retailers Amazon, eBay and Best Buy have opened up their own APIs. Like Facebook, they can leverage a force of free developer talent to create innovative, fun and useful applications and bring their product catalogs to more places around the web — not just their own .com sites or shopping engines. This could be the next ecommerce trend. Gartner predicts that by 2012, 25% or more of top retailers will allow software developer partners to access their APIs (application development interfaces) to connect to product catalogs and payment systems for affiliates.

eBay and Amazon have offered their APIs for a while, and I’ve spotted some interesting creations like the eBay Auction Misspeller. The idea is to help bargain hunter find poorly optimized listings (that get little or no bids) and find eBay deals. Others have built their own Amazon Wishlist applications for Facebook by mashing up Amazon and Facebook APIs:

More recently, Best Buy launched its Remix API asking “Can you build a better best buy?” It incentivizes its developer community with contests at RemixChallenge.com with prizes like flat panel TV screens and cash.

The challenges are product and customer experience focused, like the Flat Panel TV Challenge:

Here is your opportunity to help customers find the right TV for them. Create a complete customer solution around large, flat panel television systems. The purchase of a large TV is particularly difficult on-line, Best Buy wants to help their customers navigate all of the different choices they are presented with, in order to make the correct decision for their circumstances.

There are also idea generation contests: “How do we make Best Buy the best ink destination? What would attract more people to our experience? Ease of use? Better assistance tools or applications? You tell us.” Developers can interact with Keith Burtis, the Best Buy Remix community manager through Twitter.

Check out some of the featured creations at the Remix Sample Gallery. One of my favorites is the GPS Discovery Tool, an interactive product finder a bit like what Telus Mobility does with its handsets.

Another developer is using the API to feed Twitter accounts for video game preorders, with a separate account for Wii, XBox, PS3 etc.

Even if developers don’t win Best Buy’s coveted prizes, they can still use the API to enhance their own affiliate sites and make money through referrals. The more Web sites out there displaying Best Buy products, the more sales Best Buy makes. This is a win-win situation.

It will be interesting to see what kind of applications the community comes up with to solve Best Buy’s challenges, and to see which retailers follow suit.

Remember this cheesy commercial from the 80’s for Faberge shampoo?

Can’t see video? Visit this post on the Web.

Along with Faberge shampoo, the “Tell 2 Friends” adage has gone the way of the Dodo. In the Age of Twitter, it’s more like “Tell 2000 Friends.”

Consider this Tweet from Bazaarvoice CMO Sam Decker. Over 2000 of his followers potentially caught this tweet: “On hold too long with Zappos. I think my expectations are higher after hearing so much about their customer service.”

Zappos customer service did catch that tweet, and followed up swiftly with a coupon:

“Impressed @Zappos_Service saw my tweeted issue and emailed me a coupon as an apology. How many companies do that??”

And now I’m sharing the story with over 8000 Get Elastic readers.

Using Twitter for Customer Service

Consider watching Twitter in real time for mention of your brand name. It’s as simple as heading to http://search.twitter.com/ and typing in the terms you want to watch. You can even search like this:

“linda bustos” OR “get elastic” OR “getelastic” OR “elastic path” OR “roxyyo” OR “elasticpath”

Have your customer service reps keep a tab with the search and check every so often, or use a desktop client like Seesmic Desktop that will alert you for every instance of your tracked words.

This is also an example of how Twitter can be faster than email or phone communication - offering it as an option for Twitter users to contact your customer service reps directly rather than blasting a tweet to everyone can help avoid rants in the public forum.

Quick response is optimal, but any response is better than no response. How you handle positive/negative tweets is up to you, but the first step is to create that feedback loop so you can hear what people are saying about you.

This post is a summary of key takeaways from an Etail 2009 expert panel on online video for ecommerce. Rather than post my notes from the video, I’ve summarized the key takeaways from each of the retailer panelists: Peter Cobbs from eBags, McKay Thomas from BilliardEx and Jimmy Healey from OnlineShoes.com.

First off, big thanks to Xavier Casanova for capturing the entire Etail 2009 session: Optimizing Video on an e-Commerce Site. Xavier’s VideoRetailer.org and The Video Commerce Consortium are important blogs to follow as video is becoming increasingly important for online retail. Ignore video at your own peril!

Email and RSS subscribers, I encourage you to visit this post on Get Elastic to view all the videos embedded in the post, there are a few.

eBags

Presentation

eBags has over 200 videos throughout the site – some on the home page, some on “brand stores,” product detail pages or under the Video tab. Content includes product detail videos and demonstrations, interviews with designers, contests, non-selling pieces like eBags’ Run for the Cure and even a free second day air upgrade explanation video.

Example designer interview, Cinda B

eBags works with Liveclicker which provides this very nice Flash movie player with link and cross-sell overlay, affiliate tools (embeds affiliate link into the video) and other features like the ability to upload a video to multiple SKU product pages, rather than inefficiently attaching video SKU by SKU.

eBags also shows links to products featured in the video including customer ratings on the page:

Production

At first, eBags outsourced its video production but later discovered there was a videography ninja under their noses in the Photoshop department. He was asked to put together a brand video and his work blew everyone away. He is now the videographer.

Videographer Scott Roon and colleague Jason Carncross sat down with Xavier last year to share some of their tricks of the trade. Catch the 10 minute interview with eBags.

Some pieces are shot from scratch and are eBags exclusives, others are sourced from the brands themselves and others are re-worked from what they can get from the brands.

In terms of video quality, eBags suggests you figure out where on the Academy Award vs Youtube continuum you want to be. eBags’ approach is to get something up – it can be polished over time. They are very happy with that, but some brands like Tumi won’t let them do in-house video - they want particular hairstyles, clothing etc. For more polished video, they reached out to a news anchor who wanted to do video on the side. For $100 she produces, directs, films and voice-overs video working with eBags’ videographer which also builds her own portfolio.

Peter Cobb also suggests sourcing talent from local universities. Reach out to professors to find the best of the best to offer internships or free product in exchange for production work. It also helps interns build their portfolio.

Positive Outcomes

• 138% higher conversion rates on product detail pages when a customer clicks on the video
• Significant increase in time on site (measure of engagement)
• Reduced customer complaints. When eBags received a complaint on a product the customer confused about how to assemble, the designer created video the next day. Now eBags emails that video to each one that receives that product

Billiardex

Presentation

BilliardEx has produced several customer testimonial videos — filmed in the customers’ homes, using the product:

They also show step-by-step installation videos showing their actual in-home professional installation service — a key value proposition.

When you land on the home page, you can see snippets of video in the Flash banner (with sound off) which highlights the existence of the videos and creates interest.

When you check out the testimonial page, each of 10 videos shows video length and has a quote/caption that supports various value propositions:

Production

BilliardEx’s philosophy is no one knows your biz better than you. At the very least you should have a hand in script writing and overseeing the production. BilliardEx hired a production company, filmed several customers in their homes with products, and did studio work also. McKay Thomas himself was on-“set” and feels his passion for the product comes through in a way that fully outsourced production couldn’t capture.

One of the difficulties is finding the right mixture of resolution and streamability. BilliardEx’ high end customer wants to see high quality video but not sacrifice streamability. It takes a while to find a good balance between the two.

Positive Outcomes

After adding the installation videos, customer service calls dropped dramatically. Billiardex immediately saw hours and hours freed up for call team, saved money in human resources.

Not all video proved successful. One concept was a 30 second, sexy, in-your-face video on the home page using trick shots with pool balls in attempt to instantly engage customer. People did enjoy it in lab testing but wasn’t part of brand experience so it didn’t work as well on the site.

OnlineShoes.com

Presentation

OnlineShoes.com has various types of video content — category information, brand, product, seasonal trends, brand focused events, how to videos, how to fit certain sizes (Euro sizes etc) and even how to use the site’s newly designed left hand navigation. They also incorporate user generated video like testimonials, product reviews etc. Their strategy is not to create as many videos as possible, rather to create a few videos and really test them out.

Like eBags, OnlineShoes.com uses Liveclicker which you can see in action at OnlineShoes.tv. They also syndicate their videos through widgets.

Production

Jimmy Healey (speaking in the video) himself stars in and produces many of their videos including Arch and pronation explained:

They don’t need a large budget to accomplish good video and response has been positive. Jimmy being a runner himself, the star of the video and also participating in Twitter and Facebook adds to the cohesiveness of their video/social media strategy — creating celebrity out of internal resources.

Positive Outcomes

OnlineShoes is dedicated to testing different video content. One test for a particular pair of shoes that sells 7 figures annually saw a 19% increase in conversion and 20% increase in revenue with video.

Is Video the Hottest Ecommerce Trend of 2009?

I was asked a while back what I believed to be the ecommerce trend to watch and I definitely believe it’s video. Not only does it enrich the shopping experience and reduce the fears, uncertainties, doubts and dealbreakers customers have about products and transacting online — it also has that social appeal - video content can be found in search engines, Youtube search, syndicated through widgets etc. These retailers demonstrate that you don’t have to have a million dollar budget to get video up on your site, and it can pay off tremendously.

Musician’s Friend includes a friendly explanation of what RSS is on its Stupid Deal of the Day landing page.

Get Instant Notification!
Be the first to know the Stupid Deal of the Day!

Want to get the latest Stupid Deal delivered directly to your computer? Now you can — for FREE! Choose Musiciansfriend.com’s Stupid Deal of the Day RSS (”Really Simple Syndication”) feed below and stay connected to the Stupid Deal you love.

Us Internet geeks sometimes take it for granted that the majority of customers might not understand what that little orange icon means.

If you want to do something similar, you could also include the best 2 minute spiel on what RSS is, courtesy of the LeFevers at Common Craft:

And if you have a Twitter-Call-to-Action, you can use this video:

I’m noticing more and more retailers on Twitter these days, and I expect this trend to continue through 2009. So I thought I would share some tips and tools for ecommerce Twitter marketers.

Sync Your Blog or RSS Feed to Twitter

Twitterfeed
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Twitterfeed and Hootsuite (formerly Brightkit) allow you to very easily Tweet anything you publish by RSS including contests, new products, product-back in stock, news, deals-of-the-day and new blog posts.

(No that’s not a typo. It says Anti Monkey Butt Powder).

For example, Musician’s Friend could tweet its Stupid Deal of the Day by Twitter every day automatically by signing up once with Twitterfeed or Hootsuite. Unfortunately, twitter.com/musiciansfriend has already been brand-jacked by someone, so they’ll have to get creative with its Twitter Name. (As of today, it could scoop up twitter.com/stupiddeal or /stupiddod (deal of day) — hurry Musician’s Friend!)

This also brings up another tip - register a Twitter account for your brands today even if you’re not using Twitter to avoid such a problem down the road.

There’s no limit to how many RSS feeds you can tweet. You can even tweet others’ feeds if you want (for example, if you sell a certain city’s sports team merchandise, you could sync with updates from the team’s home page or game recaps from the news.

There 2 major advantages of Hootsuite (winner of this year’s Shorty Award for best App) over Twitterfeed:

• You can manage multiple Twitter accounts through one interface with Hootsuite and schedule tweets in advance. So you can have dedicated deal-of-day account, new products and customer service accounts and manage them without logging in and logging out. Plus, you can stagger your deals of day in advance - set it and forget it.
• If you’re tweeting out links (your calls-to-action) you want to measure if people care. Hootsuite will show you stats on how many people click on links you tweet:

Hootsuite shortens your links using its own ow.ly service, so you will only get stats for ow.ly links, but they will track if your tweet gets re-tweeted by other Twitter users so you can see the full impact of your seeded (or Tweeded) links, even if they’re clicked through social media aggregators like Friend Feed.

Twitter Analytics

Default Google Analytics Report

If you’re not using Hootsuite, you can still track how often your Twitter links get clicked in Google Analytics (or the analytics tool of your choice). But, it’s complicated. Here’s why:

1. Since most URLs get shortened to ow.ly, is.gd, bit.ly or one of the many shortening services, all traffic that came from Twitter might not show up under the Twitter referral source. And, sometimes your Twitter links end up in FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Facebook or MyBlogLog aggregators:

2. You can see which Twitter profiles referred the most traffic to you by clicking “Twitter” in your Referral Source list to see detail. It should look something like this:

The problem is “Home” referrals. They include any user who clicks on a link from their Twitter feed rather than another user’s profile. Not perfect tracking, but interesting nonetheless.

3. Google Analytics doesn’t show you which individual tweets are most popular. (I chatted with Hootsuite and there may be a way down the road to import Hootsuite stats into your analytics program, but not yet). There IS a workaround if you must track everything in your analytics package (sales conversion and ROI, for example) which is to tag your links with campaign parameters before shortening and sending them out.

Tracking With Campaign Parameters

Create a URL like:

http://www.yourURL.com/?utm_campaign=dealofday& utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social-media

And paste it into a URL shortening tool like this (Hootsuite will create an ow.ly link for you):

The short link will redirect to a copy of the landing page, registering as an entry page that will appear in your analytics reports (in Google this appears under Site Traffic / Referral Source).

Hat tip to the Epik One Analytics Blog on this one.

Unfortunately this will only track links you generate, not organic tweets about you by other Twitter users. And if you use automatic RSS tweeting, this won’t work because the link will shorten without parameters.

Reputation Management

Tweetbeep

I hope you all are using at least the free Google Alerts service to notify you when your name, brands, important products and other trademarks are being mentioned online, if not a more sophisticated tool like Trackur for your general reputation management.

But Google Alerts isn’t good at reporting what the Twitterverse is saying about you. I used to enjoy a tool called Tweetbeep which would send alerts to my inbox for whatever keywords I wanted to track. Unfortunately it’s been down for a long time now. Fingers crossed that it rises like the phoenix or something emerges to take its place.

Alternatively you can subscribe via RSS to individual searches using Twitter’s search engine.

What I preferred about Tweetbeep was it would report all your tracked keywords in one daily beep, rather than signing up to each search’s feed.

Coupon Marketing

TwtQpon & Cheap Tweet
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TwtQpon is a free coupon generator specifically for Twitter. You can create a coupon with a description (max 140 characters, of course), coupon code, URL (landing page), photo and optional expiration date. Here’s an example:

You can also promote your deals through CheapTweet which is like Digg for tweeted online deals.

Check out the guidelines for how to get your deals included.

Competitor Comparison

Tweetvolume

Curious how popular your brand is compared to your closest competition? You can quickly create a bar chart at Tweetvolume:

Or, how popular are various brands or keywords of products you carry on your own site:

Keep in mind that retailers that tweet themselves will naturally be higher, as will retailers with affiliates who use Twitter as a channel to broadcast deals and coupon codes.

Bonus: No Turn on Red has built a Twitter-aggregator for some of the largest retail presences on Twitter that updates itself every 30 minutes so we can get a *bird’s* eye view of how they are communicating (deals, links, customer service, random thoughts etc) for inspiration.