It was a privilege to have esteemed author, researcher, consultant and speaker Eric T. Peterson join us for this months webinar: Web Analytics for Online Retailers - Technology & Satisfaction 2008

Eric is the founder and CEO of Web Analytics Demystified, where you can find more helpful information and research on the strategic use of web analytics, staffing issues, business process and measurement.

As always, if you missed the live call we have a replay for Web Analytics for Online Retailers in our webinar archive at ElasticPath.com.

Eric presented the findings of a study of web analytics practitioners and I highly recommend you watch the replay to see the full charts because there is a lot of data you may find interesting that is not covered in the highlights below.

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Intimidated by charts and stats? Suffering from “analysis paralysis?”

Web analytics is essential for measuring your ecommerce performance but can be quite complicated and challenging. Even if you have a dedicated internal team or outside consultants, you need to have an understanding of key concepts and metrics to make effective business decisions from your data.

We’re pleased to have Eric T. Peterson joining us on Thursday, April 17 for Web Analytics for Online Retailers: Technology & Satisfaction 2008. Eric is the author of Web Analytics Demystified, Web Site Measurement Hacks and The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators and the CEO of Web Analytics Demystified Consulting.

Eric will present an overview of how online retailers are doing web analytics today and how satisfied they are with their situation.

In this webinar you will learn:

• How web analytics has impacted spend on search marketing

• How satisfied online retailers are with their web analytics vendors
• What the measurement landscape looks like for online retailers

Live attendees will have an opportunity to fire questions during the webinar. So sign up today.

Thursday, April 17th 2008
9 am Pacific / 12pm Eastern

As always if you miss the event, we will have the replay available in our webinar archive and a companion blog post with highlights.

We just wrapped up our webinar on merchandising (cross-selling and up-selling) with Mike Svatek of Baynote.

This was an incredible session and I’m sure you’ll get a lot out of catching the Webinar replay which will be posted within the next few days. The replay will walk you through all of the screenshots used in the presentation - I’ll only be using select screenshots for this recap.

Mike chose the king of cross-selling Amazon to illustrate the concepts in the webinar, sharing an impressive statistic:

35% of Amazon Sales come from cross-sells & recommendations
Venturebeat (Dec 06)

How does Amazon do this?

Merchandising Based on Intent

First-Time Visitors - Pre-Intent

If Amazon has no information on you (your first visit, you are not logged in or your cache and cookies are cleared) you’ll see default merchandising (pre-intent) within a number of merchandising zones, what Mike refers to as a shotgun approach:

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We promised a celebrity-inspired session and our own Jason Billingsley and Carolyn Gardner of Sitebrand delivered with “Jon Stewart or Oprah: What’s Your Website Personality.”

Jason and Carolyn matched 4 well-known celebs to 4 consumer-mindsets that you should know.

4 Consumer Mindsets

• Competitive (Jon Stewart)

• Spontaneous (Steve Colbert)
• Methodical (Dr. Phil)
• Humanistic (Oprah)

Some characteristics of each:

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Just a friendly reminder that our very own VP of Innovation, Jason Billingsley is presenting some informative and interactive (and free) webinars this month:

Jon Stewart or Oprah - What’s Your Online Store’s Personality?

Your website talks to people with words, images, offers, features and design - but is it the language your customers understand?

This 30 minute webinar co-presented with Carolyn Gardner of Sitebrand will address:

• The 4 types of people browsing your site

• How to adjust your design to speak to each type appropriately
• What type of messaging and incentives optimize conversion
• What features will trigger action for each type
• Creative ways retailers speak their language

Thursday, March 6 at 11:00 am - 11:30 am PST

Don’t miss out. Sign up today.

Effective Online Merchandising: What Sells?

Matching a shopper with the best fit product is part art and part science - those who marry the two are the most successful online merchandisers.

For 1 hour, special guest Mike Svatek of Baynote will share strategies for:

• What type of image to use and where

• What an effective cross-sell/up-sell looks like
• Where cross-selling/up-selling should occur
• New strategies for matching shoppers with products

Thursday, March 13 at 9:00 am PST - 10:00 am PST

Space is limited. Sign up today.

Remember, when you sign up for the live presentation, you have the opportunity to ask questions of the experts.

Thanks again to Ayat Shukairy from INVESP Consulting for sharing her expertise on conversion rate optimization for landing pages with us. You can check out her company and subscribe to the INVESP blog to keep up to date with Ayat’s pearls of wisdom.

View the free on-demand version of the webinar »

Exclusive for webinar attendees ONLY: A free landing page optimization ebook is available from INVESP. You must have attended the webinar and use the same name or email address to qualify.

Webinar Recap

INVESP uses a “Conversion Framework” with its clients, based on 8 principles:

1. Understand visitors - build personas
2. Build confidence and trust
3. Engagement - “sticky copy”
4. Impact of buying stages
5. Deal with FUDs - Fears, Uncertainties and Doubts
6. Utilize offers and incentives - free shipping both ways
7. Testing
8. Iterative approach - conversion is long time commitment. Optimize, deploy, test - fine tune results

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We’re thrilled to have Ayat Shukairy, a copywriting and conversion expert from Invesp Consulting join us for this month’s webinar:
Love Your Landing Page: Tips to Increase Ecommerce Conversion.

This webinar will cover:

* Optimizing product details pages for immediate conversion
* Structuring category pages to help visitors find the right products
* Creating a killer homepage that makes customers stay
* Campaign specific landing pages (email, PPC, channel)

It’s happening on Thursday, February 14, 2008 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PST

Space is limited, so sign up today.

If you missed last month’s webinar on holiday marketing, you can catch the replay and summary. And if you’re an ecommerce or Internet marketing blogger, we invite you to join in and live blog the event. We’ll be including a roundup of your posts in our own webinar summary, so you’ll get some link love back from us!

This post is a companion to today’s Webinar “12 Things Retailers Must Learn From Christmas ’07” and points to Get Elastic posts and other websites mentioned in the session, along with some additional resources you might find helpful.

Whether you caught the presentation or not you’ll find this a handy reference for your holiday marketing planning.

Planning

• Full Holiday 2007 post-mortem from MarketingCharts.com
• OneUpWeb’s 2006 Holiday Online Retail Buying Trends white paper - excellent resource.
• Marketing Experiments has a great merchandising calendar that you can download.

Choosing the right promotions

• Valentine’s marketing ideas that can be applied to any holiday.
• Offering free shipping to Canada? How to optimize your site for it.

Off-site messaging

• Examples of Facebook marketing creative and landing pages.

On-site messaging

• Future Now’s 2007 Retail Customer Experience Survey results.
• Examples of Christmas home page designs.
• Palmer Web Marketing’s post on saving stockout sales.
• Trigger email tip for recovering abandoned shopping carts with email, you can use this for low-stocked items sitting in an abandoned cart.
• Detailed post on shipping cutoff dates.
• Store locator usability examples and tips.

Building trust

• User Reviews: The Power of Social Commerce webinar replay and summary blog post.

Returns

• Example of the word-of-mouth effect that Zappos-type return shipping policies can have.

Essential email

• 12 Can’t Miss Email Strategies for Online Retailers
webinar replay and summary blog post.
• Net-A-Porter’s example of emailing your wishlist.
• If you’re looking for inspiration on a particular season, check out RetailEmail.Blogspot’s seasonal archive. From Breast Cancer Awareness Month to Earth Day, you can see screenshots of email campaigns and scan subject lines.

Masterful merchandising

• Cross-selling dos and don’ts with examples from top online retailers.

Capturing last minute shoppers

We have several posts on this:

• Last-minute holiday marketing tactics for online retailers
• Optimizing your store for last minute shoppers
• Tips for converting last minute shoppers
• In-store pickup usability tips

• Upresent.com is the service that allows you to add gift notification services to your e-store.

You’ll also enjoy our Webinar with Melissa Burdon of Future Now: 7 Simple Ways to Boost Your Holiday Conversion Rate.

Happy holiday marketing!

Thanks again to our special webinar guest today, Shawn Collins. A 10 year veteran of affiliate marketing both on the affiliate manager side and the publisher side, Shawn shared his expertise on a number of topics.

If you missed today’s call, here’s a full recap. If you would rather, just watch the on-demand version of the affiliate marketing webinar.

Affiliate Marketing Players

Affiliates - Refers to content publishers who promote your products for a commission or other monetary incentive including bloggers, product review portals, ezine publishers (experts on a topic with loyal mailing list subscribers) or even social networking sites like Imeem or Last.fm.

Merchants - Retailers (products) or site owners (memberships) that pay a flat fee, per click or revenue share with affiliates for sales or leads.

Networks - Networks like Commission Junction and Linkshare provide a marketplace of affiliate programs where affiliates and sellers can connect.

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We are very pleased to be teaming up with affiliate marketing guru Shawn Collins on Tuesday. For ten years, shawn has shared his expertise in his consulting practice, at affiliate conferences, through his book “Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants,” his blog and YouTube channel. He’ll be available to answer your questions at the end of the Webinar so be sure to sign up today.

Affiliate Marketing: What Every Online Retailer Ought to Know
Tuesday, December 11, 2007 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM PST

Topics on the menu include:

• Affiliate marketing basics

• In-house affiliate marketing vs. outsourcing
• Affiliate management tips and techniques
• Brand management and competitive concerns
• Attracting and nurturing “super-affiliates”
• How the long tail, social networks, widgets and other new technologies are changing the affiliate marketing industry

A recap will be posted on Get Elastic shortly after the event, and the webinar itself will be posted within a week. Hope you can join us. In the meantime, you can catch up on any of our past webinars you may have missed.