The annual Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition is happening in Boston this week, and while Elastic Path is not there this year, we have a ton of video evidence of our visit last year as Jason Billingsley made his rounds of the trade show floor interviewing a wide range of ecommerce vendors.

One must-see video if you’re a manufacturer is Jason’s interview with Shopatron’s CEO Ed Stevens:

Can’t see video?

One of the biggest roadblocks for manufacturers when selling online is channel conflict. Many manufacturers have their hands tied when selling direct to consumers because their retail partners may retaliate (or retailiate?) To handle channel conflict issues, manufacturers’ website either sell no product, a limited product line or just accessories to keep retail partners happy. With 50-60% of customers looking for branded product beginning their search at the manufacturer’s website - that’s a lot of missed opportunity for both the manufacturer and retail partner. It also hurts the customer who has to find the product elsewhere.

What Stevens’ company Shopatron does is allow manufacturers to offer a full product line for sale on their websites, with retailers as fulfillment partners. Customers can even choose to pick up the product at the local retailer, which is an opportunity for the retail partner to sell even more product to that consumer — 1 in 4 customers will end up buying more stuff when they come by to pick up their order. Stevens reports 55% of Shopatron customers choose the in-store pickup option.

In the future, it will be interesting to see if services like Shopatron can provide in-store pickup options through interactive TV advertising widgets (as discussed in our Multichannel 2.0 webinar). It’s common for manufacturers to advertise on TV, but so far there hasn’t been an instant gratification service for the customer or a way for the manufacturer to solicit a direct response. Perhaps Shopatron and Alvenda should chat.

See More IRCE 2008 Interviews…

We conducted 16 interviews with various ecommerce vendors at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition 2008 in Chicago.

1. How to choose ecommerce software and technology - Bernardine Wu, CEO, FitForCommerce
2. How retailers can sell more online with social commerce - Jay Shaffer, VP Worldwide Sales & Marketing, Powerreviews
3. Hackersafe is now McAfee Secure - Rich Murphy, McAfee
4. The benefits of RIA’s for ecommerce stores - Graeme Grant, COO, Allurent
5. Why online retailers should be blogging - Darren Tomey, VP Sales, Compendium
6. How do ratings and reviews help online retailers? - Sam Decker, Chief Marketing Officer, Bazaarvoice
7. When bad people ruin good online marketing - Ryan Douglas, PlumberSurplus.com
8. Direct international shoppers to local sites automatically - Justin Skogen, Director, Enterprise Sales, DigitalElement
9. The state of affiliate marketing in online retail - Larry Joseloff, VP Content, Shop.org
10. Multi-store retailing - Roy Rubin, CEO, Varien
11. How online stores use images to improve customer experience - Stephen Kristy, CEO, LiquidPixels
12. Comparison Shopping Engine Tips for Online Retailers - Michael Lambert, CEO, MerchantAdvantage
13. Link building strategies for Internet retail SEO - Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts
14. Direct to consumer manufacturers can reduce channel conflict - Ed Stevens, CEO, Shopatron
15. New eCommerce service lets you shop online with a friend - John Jackson, CEO, DecisionStep
16. Product recommendation engines improve customer experience - Scott Doan, VP Sales, Strands

One of the basics of customer-centric, persuasive copywriting is using “you” and “you’re” rather than “I,” “our” and “we.” People are self-centered and respond better when you make your site all about them. This goes for all touch points in your marketing - including your welcome emails.

Before you say “but you can’t spell “welcome” without “we,” take a read over this actual welcome email I received:

When I opened our first store 51 years ago, no one could have imagined the ease of online shopping. From the beginning – starting with [the stores], continuing through our catalog and now at website.com – we’ve made exceeding your expectations for quality and service our first priority. Now that we‘re in touch by email, we can offer you even more.

Together we‘ll share the pleasures of [online retail category].

Do you “we-we” all over yourself? Take the test with Future Now’s nifty We We Monitor. Simply enter your URL, hit submit and check your We We Quotient.

Before we get going with the link list, I want to announce the replay of our paid search webinar with Ryan Gibson of the Rimm-Kaufman Group is now available. You can also catch up with all of our webinars (we’ve got a full year’s worth!) in our ecommerce webinar archive.

I also want to remind you of a few upcoming webinars so pull out your calendars:

Tuesday, May 20: How to Use Blogging and Email to Create Leads and Delight Customers with Compendium Blogware, the Email Experience Council and Habeas.

Thursday, May 29: Web Personalization: Putting the “Cha-Ching” Before and After the Check-Out presented by Sitebrand and ZAAZ.

Thursday, June 19: 9 Ecommerce Innovations: What’s Now & What’s Next presented by our own VP of Innovation, Jason Billingsley who will be sharing some “ridiculously cool stuff” on the ecommerce horizon.

We’ll kick off this week’s roundup with “I’m Gonna Git You Spamma!” Via eROI Interactive.

Shut yo’ mouth!

• We touched upon keyword research and its importance in yesterday’s webinar. Christine Churchill shares Eight Keyword Research Mistakes that Are Costing You Money if you’re hungry for more keyword research wisdom>.

• Can blogs help your SEO? And how do you make sure you’re getting the most SEO value out of your blog? Rand Fishkin explains in video-form with Blogging for Higher Rankings.

  In related news, 57% of women believe blogs influence their purchase decisions. Wow, I’m such a stereotype - I read a post on Search Engine People last night and immediately bought a laptop cooling pad. PS, neither of us are affiliates. It’s just a great product idea and costs about $20.

• If I say “duplicate content!” and you say “huh?”, this is a great introduction to what duplicate content is, courtesy of Eric Enge.

• Pop quiz: What’s the difference between exit rate and bounce rate? Mae Allam from the Invesp blog gives a good explanation.

• The title says it all: 8 Best Kept Secrets to Fine Tuning Your E-mail Marketing Campaigns from Invesp conversion expert Khalid Hajsaleh.

• We love catching Google in the act of testing its visuals. Someone at iCrossing noticed Google testing green in its search results, and Search Engine Land also posted screenshots of Google’s green.

• Curious on what the payoff of “Digg-baiting” is? SocialAlerter shares the results of its own little study on how many links Digg can get you. By tracking Yahoo backlinks for over 1000 stories that “went hot” on Digg for 30 days, the average number of links was 1167! Granted, many of these links will come from low-quality scrapers and splogs but that’s still an impressive number.

• The Top 25 Facebook Pages include the usual supsects - Barack, Hillary, Justin Timberlake… but there are some brands mixed with the bands. Kudos to Victoria’s Secret Pink, Apple Students and Nutella for attracting a Facebook following.

If you’re new to Get Elastic, every Friday we round up some great finds from the blogosphere to keep your eyes busy until Monday. Enjoy this week’s picks!

• Justin Palmer captures 3 innovative approaches to site navigation: solution-based, filter-based and image-based.

• James Bunzol shows an example of how Amazon’s Lightning Deals create Jellyfish-like urgency. I’m surprised we don’t see other retailers experimenting with this type of entertainment shopping.

• Aaron Wall goes into painstaking detail on SEO with What is a #1 Google Ranking Worth? This article actually has 9 sections, here’s a preview of what he covered:

* An Example of Applying This Data to a Live Business Scenario
* Google Rankings Can Make or Break a Business
* Appreciating Google’s Market Domination
* Establish a Baseline Keyword Value
* Typical Click Distribution Profiles
* Factors Modifying Click Distribution
* Tapping the Keyword Tail
* Improving Monetization via Scale
* Improve Your SEO Strategy Today

Grab a coffee and a notepad for this one.

• For you legal-eagles or controversy buffs (or PR folks, reputation managers and marketers) Jeremiah Owyang has an interesting commentary on the current brouhaha over a socially-conscious t-shirt designer and Louis Vuitton handbags.

  

  26 year old Nadia Plesner faces legal action by Louis Vuitton for using their product’s likeness in an anti-genocide awareness campaign. The image reflects Plesner’s concern that Paris Hilton’s accessories are more newsworthy than the suffering of our fellow man in Darfur. Since Louis Vuitton doesn’t really have anything to do with the situation, it feels this “brand-jacking” must be countered.

  Owyang outlines four options LV has in dealing with this problem, and has solicited his Twitter followers to weigh in with their opinions. Interesting stuff.

• Are you puzzled on how to convince upper level management to pay attention to social media marketing? Not sure how to approach it? Jeremiah Owyang has a nice roundup of his own tips in How Do I Talk To My Executives About Social Media?

• Forgive my Jeremiah Owyang fangirl-ness this week, but this is also interesting: A roundup of brands that got “punked” by social media.

• All you design-types will appreciate this gallery of Mother’s Day home pages courtesy of Ed Henrich. Oh, and if you haven’t gotten a gift for Mom yet, you might check out these sites for some ideas.

It’s the end of the week, but the beginning of another month. And you know what that means - another free ecommerce webinar is coming up. This month we’re honored to have search marketing expert and Director of Marketing for the Rimm-Kaufman Group, Ryan Gibson sharing his wisdom with us. Save the date - May 15th, 9am PST, 12pm EST. Discover the Key to PPC for Online Retailers.

Email marketers will also want to join Chad White from the Email Experience Council, Compendium Blogware and Habeas for a free webinar on blogging and email. Learn to take advantage of the “cost-effective combination of blogging, email and search to help marketing, operations and sales teams to acquire, engage, transact with and retain customers.”

Alright, link time!

• Jim Bunzol shares an example of a cart recovery email (or remarketing, as he calls it) from Circuit City. Nice find. What I like about CC’s approach is it’s very customer service oriented. These are not the exact words, but the angle is: “We noticed you were interested in some things (added to cart) and then you took off. No problem, we’re saving them in your cart for you if you’d like to come back and buy them later. If you need to consult the experts, here’s a link to our discussion forums where you can get help.” Rather than, “Hey you, get back here and buy now! We’ve been watching you and know where you’re inbox is!”

Continue Reading:
Bloggers Digest - 5/2/08 »