ECOMMERCE BLOGS: 75+ Community Sites of the Top Online Retailers
Many retailers are starting to use blogs to interact with and market to shoppers. In fact, 15% of the Top 500 Online Retailers have ecommerce blogs. Some are fresh out of the gate, while others have thousands of posts and comments. We rounded them all up and have listed 75+ ecommerce blogs for your retail inspiration. Alright, let’s check out who’s blogging now…
| Blog Name | Online Since | Blog Type |
| Alibris Book Blog | Apr ‘06 | Subdomain |
| Amazon Book Blog | Mar ‘07 | Subfolder |
| Omnivoracious (Amazon - books) | Oct ‘07 | Separate Domain |
| Aldente Blog (Amazon - food/kitchen) | Jul ‘07 | Separate Domain |
| Carlust Blog (Amazon - cars) | Aug ‘07 | Separate Domain |
| American Muscle | Feb ‘07 | Subdomain |
| Apple | Nov ‘04 | Separate Domain |
| Apple Students Blog | Nov ‘04 | Subfolder of Subdomain |
| The Avenue (United Retail Group, Inc.) | May ‘07 | Subdomain |
| Backcountry.com | Aug ‘06 | Subdomain |
| Auntie’s Beads Inc. | Dec ‘06 | Free Xanga Blog |
| Bidz.com Inc. | Feb ‘07 | Subdomain |
| Bluefly | Mar ‘05 | Subdomain |
| Blueluxe | Oct ‘05 | Subdomain |
| Boot Barn Inc. (AM-PAT Inc.) | Mar ‘05 | Subfolder |
| Brooks Brothers | June ‘07 | Subdomain |
| BuyOnlineNow.com | June ‘07 | Separate Domain |
| CafePress | May ‘06 | Free Typepad Blog |
| Communications.com (Perfume.com) | Sep ‘05 | Subdomain |
| Comp-U-Plus | Dec. 07 | Subfolder |
| Crutchfield Corp. | Apr ‘07 | Subfolder of Subdomain |
| CSN Stores Inc. | June ‘07 | Free Blogspot Blog |
| DataBazaar.com | Mar ‘07 | Subdomain |
| Dell Inc. | Jul ‘06 | Separate Domain |
| Design Within Reach | Oct ‘06 | Subdomain |
| Directron.com | Apr ‘05 | Subfolder |
| Discovery Store Blog | Dec ‘06 | Free Typepad Blog |
| DrJays (DJ Networks) | Feb ‘07 | Subdomain |
| DVD Empire | Mar ‘06 | Free Blogspot Blog |
| Ecampus.com (A Book Co.) | Feb ‘07 | Subfolder |
| Figleaves.com Inc. | Oct ‘06 | Subdomain |
| Geardirect.com (Specialty Sports Ventures) | Feb ‘05 | Free Blogspot Blog |
| GREENCulture Inc. | Jul ‘07 | Subdomain |
| HobbyTron RC Blog | May ‘07 | Subfolder |
| HobbyTron Product News | June ‘05 | Free Blogspot Blog |
| Home Décor Products Inc. | Sep ‘06 | Separate Domain |
| Hewlett Packard | Jan ‘07 | Subfolder |
| Ask.com (IAC/Interactive Corp.) | Feb ‘05 | Subdomain |
| Ice.com | Mar ‘05 | Subdomain |
| Just Ask Leslie (Ice.com) | Mar ‘05 | Separate Domain |
| Sparkle Like the Stars (Ice.com) | Mar ‘05 | Separate Domain |
| iGourmet LLC | Feb ‘07 | Subfolder |
| Jewelry Television | Nov ‘06 | Free Typepad Blog |
| Junonia Ltd. | May ‘06 | Subfolder |
| K & L Wines | Oct ‘05 | Subdomain |
| MLB Advanced Media | June ‘06 | Subdomain |
| MooseJaw Daily Madness | Apr ‘07 | Free Blogspot Blog |
| Mountain Equipment Co-Op | Jun ‘07 | Subdomain |
| Musicnotes Inc. | Oct ‘06 | Subdomain |
| National Hockey League | Subfolder | |
| Netflix | May ‘07 | Subdomain |
| Nieman Marcus | August ‘07 | Subdomain |
| Nike Inc. | Feb ‘06 | Subdomain |
| Online Stores Inc. | June ‘07 | Subfolder |
| OpticsPlanet Inc. | Apr ‘07 | Subdomain |
| Organize.com Inc. | Jan ‘06 | Subfolder |
| Panasonic Corporate Blog | Nov ‘06 | Subdomain |
| Palm.com | Apr ‘07 | Subdomain |
| Mr. Paper’s Blog (Paper.com) | Feb ‘05 | Subfolder |
| Paper News (Paper.com) | Feb ‘05 | Subfolder |
| PartsAmerica.com | Mar ‘07 | Subfolder |
| PetSmart Charities Blogs | Separate Domain | |
| Quixtar Blogs | Subfolder | |
| Powell’s Books | Nov ‘05 | Subfolder |
| RealPlayer Music Store (RealNetworks Inc.) | May ‘07 | Subfolder |
| Replacements Ltd. (Ebay Blog) | June ‘06 | Subdomain |
| Rockler Woodworking and Hardware | Mar ‘06 | Subfolder |
| Roots Canada Ltd. | Aug ‘06 | Subfolder |
| Rugs Direct (Winchester Carpet & Rugs) | Apr ‘07 | Separate Domain |
| Rugs USA | May ‘07 | Subfolder |
| Scentiments.com | June ‘06 | Free Blogspot Blog |
| Sephora USA Inc. | May ‘07 | Subdomain |
| Sierra Trading Post Inc. | Jul ‘07 | Subdomain |
| TigerGPS.com Ltd. | Mar ‘06 | Subdomain |
| ToolBarn.com Inc. | Dec ‘05 | Subdomain |
| Urban Outfitters | Apr ‘07 | Subdomain |
| Vintage Tub and Bath | June ‘05 | Subfolder |
| Vitacost.com | Jul ‘06 | Free Typepad Blog |
| Life at WalMart | Mar ‘06 | Subfolder of Separate Domain |
| Walmart Checkout | Nov ‘07 | Separate Domain |
| Wlliams Sonoma | Nov ‘06 | Separate Domain |
| Your Electronics Warehouse | Apr ‘03 | Subfolder |
| Zazzle | Jul ‘04 | Subdomain |
| Zazzle Tech Blog | Feb ‘07 | Subdomain |
Blog Type Stats
44% Subdomain
32% Subfolder
13% Separate Domain
11% Free Blog Hosting
Why does this matter?
Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz has an excellent explanation on why subfolders are preferred over other options for search engine optimization purposoes, all else equal. But for branding purposes it may make sense for you to use an entirely separate domain.
A Few Blogs of Note:
DrJays.com
DrJays.com’s urban clothing blog does a great job at understanding their customer. Those that identify themselves with the hip-hop culture are heavily influenced by popular rap artists’ style, and the blog is a way to mix merchandising with news (like the announcement of “Nas’ signature “Disciple” shoe by 310 Motoring).
Gaging by the average number of comments each post receives, DrJays’ mix of sounds, sports, society and style are achieving reader involvement. Short and snappy posts that ask questions like Who are the worst rappers of all time? may draw almost 100 comments so far).
Dell
A year ago Dell was battling a slew of online consumer complaints, cleverly dubbed “Dell Hell.” Thus Direct2Dell’s tagline “one 2 one communications with Dell” aptly reflects its purpose. The blog is proving to be an excellent platform to address customer concerns and complaints, with posts like XPS M1330: What’s Going On? drawing over 200 comments. Dell can not only perform damage control quickly, but also gather user feedback to make their products better.
A few details on this blog stand out: the bloggers’ signatures includes their job title, for example “Matt Domsch, Linux Technology Strategist” and “Glenn Keels, Sr. Manager—Commercial Server Team.” For any corporate blog, it’s nice to know the background of the poster, it builds trust. I also appreciate that top management or key team members are accessible via comments.
Design-wise, the collapsible right hand menu allows the blog to offer several different navigation options without looking too cluttered. The “Most Viewed” and “Most Comments” are extra goodies. The “power button” icons are a nice touch. The subscribe box could be de-cluttered by replacing the bookmark buttons with a single AddThis button, and would also show some love to readers using other bookmarking services.
The Avenue
What I love about the Avenista is its practical fashion advice. It brings back that good old-fashioned store window merchandising. For example, showing how to take simple gray trowsers from day to night. Sold!
The high quality images compliment the clean design. The blog is easy to scan and easy to navigate. The posts are friendly, fun and the advice speaks to the question marks that can loom over a shopper’s head such as what goes with ballet flats?
Although integrating the blog as a subdomain of the estore is convenient and consistent branding, you can’t search blog content. My search for “ballet flats” takes me to the product page, not the blog post.
One thing this clothier should be careful of is coming across too fabricated:
“Before I go, I have one piece of advice. Great coats like great men do not come around as often as we would like. So, don’t waste another second of your life without this trench. Buy it now!”
All in all, a nice approach to an apparel etailer blog.
Sephora
Sephora’s Beauty and the Blog’s content is target-market appropriate, updated frequently and offers a great mix of educational videos and articles to complement their product line. It also gets a nod as the only blog to feature mobile RSS prominently.
It makes sense for this blog’s image that the less-glamorous Feedburner icon is tucked away, but still easy to find for those who prefer (0r have even heard of) traditional RSS. Perhaps fashion-forward females favor fashion feeds on a flashy phone?
Databazaar
Databazaar’s frequent posting of deals and coupons is a great sales tool. Regarding RSS subscription, at the end of each post, Databazaar subtly “asks for the sale.”
“About Databazaar Deals
Entrepreneur Sid Lance once quipped, “The safe way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket.” To hold onto more of your hard-earned cash, look for Databazaar Deals—limited-time discounts on popular printer supplies. Yet another good reason to subscribe to this blog.”
A lot of blogs never encourage users to subscribe. The subscription box is very nicely designed, and covers a number of popular bookmark service options without littering the page with chicklet icons:
I’d like to see them go one step further and integrate mobile text alerts or set up a Twitter feed.
The blog is seamlessly integrated with the estore, but again, its search engine only works for products. My search for “air conditioner” found in this post took me to a product that happens to come with two air filters.
I’m also not crazy about the “Library” with the dropdown menu of categories. It would be nice to have a conventional browseable category list broken down into product type, manufacturer and other categories, since it would make sense for a user looking for deals on Konica Minolta toner to filter results by tag or category. Even though the blog does a great job with tagging, the dropdown menu is jumbled. If space is a concern, pull a Dell and use expandable and collapsible menus.
Warning: Just because these companies are top in sales doesn’t mean they’ve got top-notch blogs. Many haven’t made it past the first few posts. We gathered this list to give you inspiration for your own ecommerce blogging efforts. We want your opinion on these blogs: which do you think are the best and worst? Or drop your ecommerce blog URL in the comments, and you might make our upcoming list of Get Elastic reader’s blogs.
Did we miss any Top 500 Online Retailer ecommerce blogs? Let us know in the comments.
Fantastic list Linda. Blogs in eTail are helping more merchants to have a “voice” their customers can “hear.” It’s been a major factor for SEO and rankings, but it also helps with branding, word of mouth, directing traffic and much more. From a marketing standpoint, you are correct about keeping the blog on the stores domain, however many eTailers choose to use hosted domains on blogger and wordpress rather than their own domain. I would suggest to stick with a sub-folder on the original domain or a completely new one, hosted by the merchant. Hosted blogger or wordpress domains are no good for eTailers who want to be serious about their new blog.]
I remember one of the first corporate blogs I started reading. It was the first time I really sat back and said, “hey, there is definitely something to this corporate blog stuff,” and now it’s years later and it has grown beyond what anyone could have predicted. Don’t know if this counts as an eCommerce blog, but company blogs are very similar. It’s Bob Parson’s blog called “Hot Points.”
Whoa dude! Nice wrap-up Linda. I am tactfully resisting the urge to add all of them to my feed reader - better just strategically sample for starters - whew!
Great compilation Linda - I expect if you carry out a similar study of the top 500 online retailers this time next year the % using blogs will be much higher - that is of course based on the expectation that these as yet un-tried retailers want to harness the huge potential of this way of interacting with their customers.
@eCopt - Ahhh the Daddy of Go Daddy Bob Parsons. Definitely an eCommerce blog — I’m surprised GoDaddy’s not on the top 500 list…
@Dave - not sure you want to add them all to your reader just yet, watch out for the one-post-wonders!
@Paul - judging from the handful of blogs just launched in July, I definitely expect to see the list grow in the next year. It may have to be the “Top 75″ next year :-)
Thanks for this post Linda.
We just recently opened our ecommerce store and added a blog to it. We made the decision to put it on a separate domain after unsuccessfully trying to use Wordpress with our Yahoo store account.
We don’t have a lot of posts as of yet, but I am so happy to see your list of ecommerce blogs to use as inspiration and examples. I wish I’d seen your post sooner:)
Sports Decor Blog
@David:
Looks like your SportsDecor blog is off to a good start! You’re also making good use of merchandising/linking opportunities a-la http://www.getelastic.com/ecommerce-blog-seo/
Don’t forget to claim your blog in Technorati, and if you’re looking for some quick links you can try submitting to blog directories, just make sure you have at least 10 posts up before you do so.
Happy blogging!
Thanks for the feedback and the references Linda. Very good information as we continue to improve and refine our blog.
Keep up the great work!
We’ve got one for the Discovery Channel Store.
Great list, I’m sure this took quite a bit of work to find them all. I notice a lot of these blogs have not been updated in a loooong time. It’s a shame these are customer communication tools of top online retailers and they didn’t thoroughly plan out a blogging strategy and then assign committed bloggers to the project.
@ Credit Cards,
Thanks, it did take some work, and I imagine in the last few months there were new blog launches. I did add Nieman Marcus recently (launched the month after this was posted), I just happened to find it randomly. Please post if you discover other top 500 retailer blogs.
Wow, nice done. Have to browse all the list.