Tweetables

• Europeans make up 12% of the global population, and 21% of the online population Tweet this

• Iceland and Scandanavia have the highest Internet penetration in Europe Tweet this

• Only 59% of Europeans shop online Tweet this

• Romanians, Bulgarians and Italians are least likely Europeans to shop online Tweet this

• 92% of Europeans prefer Google as a search engine Tweet this

• 49% of Europeans use social networks daily, 1/3 of them are Russians Tweet this

• There are 131.5 million smartphones in Europe (46% Android, 39% Apple)
  Tweet this

• It’s predicted that there’ll be 35 million tablets in Europe by 2014 Tweet this

• Enough with the constant updates! With Facebook, web applications and even some ecommerce sites, the only constant is change. As soon as a user catches up with the old experience, some creative decides to jumble everything around or add and remove major features. The benefit of adding a new shiny object could be outweighed by user frustration. And unless you’re as indispensable as Facebook, it could cause defection from your site, application or service.

• People worry about privacy. We can laugh at the “privacy window,” but there is real concern that applications are sharing too much on our behalf, including ecommerce sites that use Facebook Connect.

• Social proof isn’t as powerful as you think. We all have social connections outside our inner circle, and their likes and activities are less interesting to us. Ecommerce sites and other applications that connect to Facebook may overestimate affinities, and use them to personalize in an irrelevant way. You may want to focus your personalization efforts more on what you know about your Facebook-Connected customer’s own preferences rather than their entire social graph.

Despite its low adoption, social log in offers benefits to both a business and customers. What are the pros and cons of using it, and best practices should you choose to implement Facebook Connect for registration and account sharing?

Top reasons why ecommerce sites should use Facebook Log in

Reduce friction in the registration process

Web form abandonment pain needs no explanation. The appeal of a streamlined – sometimes one-click registration doesn’t either. If a site wants to ask for custom field inputs, a web form can pre-populate form fields from Facebook data like name, birthdate, gender and city to speed up the process. For example, Burberry prefills with all gray fields below with profile data.

Erradicate password failure

Logging in with social credentials eliminates the need for password recall, especially helpful for returning customer checkout.

Personalize and merchandize

The ability to pull profile data like Likes and interests can help you tailor home page content and product suggestions, or to persist to CRM data for segmentation analysis.

Interestingly, the Betapond study found 86% of ecommerce sites using Facebook Connect requested permission to access the friend list, but only 31% requested access to Likes, and 17% to interests. When it comes to personalization, the fruit hangs much lower when you can glean from user’s own profile than try to infer interests from the social graph. However, access to the friend list is useful for birthday reminders and gift suggestions, as well as social proof — identifying when friends (and friends of friends) have purchased, Liked, reviewed or added a product to a wish list.

Keep in mind, if you’re site experience is quite different for Facebook users than non-FB’ers, consider the impact on your analytics. Figure out how you will segment Facebook and non-Facebook to identify if personalization is working or not.

Top reasons why ecommerce sites avoid Facebook Log in

FUD

Fears, Uncertainties and Doubts exist around security, the degree of control over customer information and skepticism of its appeal to customers (to name a few). The first two are easy to rebut – Facebook Connect is built using industry standards for open authentication, and the business is in full control of what data is shared with Facebook. Whether or not customers want social log in can be gauged by its usage after you implement it, but it’s not a feature that can be A/B tested, because users that sign up with Facebook can’t authenticate if you remove it after a round of testing.

It’s tough to back out

It’s possible to move Facebook registrants to your regular log in, but it requires their action — action they may never take. If social log in’s time saving attracts the lazy customer, it could be an even tougher feat to accomplish.

Accidental authentication

Some sites will auto-authenticate your visit if you’re currently logged into Facebook on your machine. Customers that don’t want others who may use that device to accidentally log in should use session timeout or request social authentication on every visit, regardless of whether someone’s logged in to a Facebook account at the time. This may be a strong case for industries like telecom to not use social authentication.

Tips for optimizing social log in

Only ask for what you need

Even if you’re pre-filling your regular form with Facebook data, less is more for the user. The registrant will look over the fields and notice what you’re pulling. Only ask for the fields you’ll actually use for personalization or customer segmentation. Pre-filling hometown when it’s not in addition to current city, for example, could give the impression you’re asking for TMI.

Ditto for sequential requests for permissions. Though the user can skip these permissions and still use their Facebook credentials to create their account, this is not always understood by privacy-wary customers.

Apply the right styling

Bazarchic’s button styling is near identical to Facebook’s in color and shape. This may cause confusion with the Facebook Connect button, which looks like instructions rather than a clickable call to action.

Cdiscount.com makes the clear distinction between connection options.

Make the Facebook button prominent

Dawanda presents the customer with a sign-up form, but places the Facebook Connect option at the bottom of the form. The user sees the registration form most prominently, and thinks “hard work.” Show the social log in option before a form, either at the top, or in a step before the form is revealed.

Link to an explanation

Dawanda gets it right with a FUD-crushing link to more information.

Avoid asking for a password

The beauty of Facebook authentication is it negates the need for a password, so think twice about asking the user to create a separate one, as in the Burberry example.

Pare down the menu

You’ve got a lot of social connection options to choose from, but offering more than one or two is problematic. Not only does it make customers think hard and make a decision which social network to commit to, you risk losing the customer account should Yahoo, AOL or MySpace, for example, stop supporting their API or shut down. Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are your best bets, but offering just Facebook is the safest bet.

Don’t forget mobile

Ensure your design and process is usable on mobile phones. Many mobile users are logged into their Facebook app, and a simplified sign-up can be much appreciated.

Tweetables

• Mobile commerce is expected to account for 24% of total ecommerce sales by 2015 Tweet this

• Mcommerce expected to reach 15% of total ecommerce sales this year, 18% in 2014 Tweet this

• Tablets expected to drive $24B in ecommerce sales in 2013, $34B in 2014, $61B by 2016 Tweet this

• Smartphones expected to drive $13B this yr, $17B 2014, $24B in 2016 Tweet this

• 73% prefer mobile shopping for timesaving, 69% for deals + convenience, 63% for multitasking Tweet this

• Time spent in retailer apps increased 525% in 2012 Tweet this

• 81% of all US cellphone users will have smartphones by 2015 Tweet this

• 62% of smartphone users bought physical goods through mobile in the last 6mos Tweet this

• 74% of online retailers have already developed, or currently developing a mobile strategy Tweet this

• 48% of US retailers have a mobile-optimized website Tweet this

• 35% of US retailers have an iPhone app, 15% Android, 15% iPad Tweet this

The biggest increase in mobile traffic falls in the over 20% bracket, rising from 3% to 29%. Mobile revenue results were similar, nearly 1 in 3 respondents report more than 10% of ecommerce revenue driven through mobile devices.

Expect an even more dramatic shift next year. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), global sales of tablets grew 142.4% in the first quarter of 2013, totalling 49.2 million units. This is more than the total for the entire first half of 2012.

148 senior ecommerce execs were surveyed for this report. Head on over to view the full summary of ecommerce trends.

I’m not against merchandising emails with offers, featured products or even a personalized assortment of items, but conventional ecommerce emails often do little to create compelling demand for products vs. impulse buys. (Not to mention the effects of paradox of choice).

Back in my restaurant days, we hostesses were encouraged to “romance the features” of the daily signature dish while walking customers to their tables. Before the wait staff arrived or even the menus hit the wood, my job was to create desire and interest for that one meal.

Similarly, commercial email can be that slow, romantic walk that tells people what they should want to buy when they sit down to your site. An example of this recently landed in my inbox.

Subject line: Hemp Protein….The Next Protein King?

Hey Linda,

I have made a couple big changes with regards to my protein recently and I wanted to fill you in as it might affect you.

Have you ever thought of using hemp protein powder? Well unless you are into a plant based diet, lactose or gluten intolerant or avoid dairy altogether you probably haven’t thought about it ever.

I eat meat and up until recently have always used a steady diet of dairy based protein powders whether it was whey or casein. Frankly I might have laughed if someone had mentioned the thought of substituting or at least supplementing my protein powder regime with a plant based powder such as Hemp.

I am not sure about you, but I always thought hemp protein only for hardcore vegans/vegetarians, non-athletes and those with a high tolerance for gritty awful tasting protein?

After doing extensive research and a bunch of personal taste testing I did a complete 180! Not only does hemp protein have tons of health benefits, but they are benefits that no other protein contains (even whey!)….and on top of that there are hemp proteins that not only are tolerable but taste amazing!

Yes I am sure you are skeptical as was, but to be honest my friend hemp protein these days is health optimizing, performance boosting, and pallet satisfying as ever!

To learn 5 of the best reasons to try hemp protein click here:

https://healthmarketing.infusionsoft.com/app/linkClick/10326/71d24da225936de3/2592381/ca745800d6aecf99

You can thank me later

Yours in good health,

Mark Holowaychuk
Founder, Vitamart.ca
www.vitamart.ca

Though I cringe at the conspicuous URL, here’s what I like about it:

1. Using content to market content

Yeah, yeah, web users don’t read. But they don’t look at banners and ads either. And if you believe that nobody’s going to read a text-based email, you have to believe nobody’s going to look at your banner-spangled campaigns either. This email embraces web copywriting best practices and uses “story selling” to get and keep the reader’s interest, then direct the reader to more compelling information.

Like Marketing Experiments’ Flint McGlaughlin says, an email’s job is not to sell, it’s to generate interest — to get a click. Drs. Foster and Smith‘s educational approach resulted in 15% higher sales than its sales-promotion competitor in A/B testing. Sometimes educating does a better job at selling than coupons and images.

2. It’s personal

Not only did they get my name right, it’s signed off by the founder of the business. I’m not gonna kid myself that he wrote it himself, but it does humanize the company.

3. It sounds (a bit) like a product review

According to eMarketer, consumers trust product reviews nearly 12x more than manufacturer copy. The fact it’s written by an individual who identifies himself, and presents himself as someone like me who’s actually tried this product could be very effective.

4. It sounds a lot like a sales letter

Email may have squeezed out direct mail sales letters, but let’s not forget the Wall Street Journal‘s most famed sales letter ran for 28 years, raking in $2.5 billion in subscription revenue. These things work when done right, can be adapted to Web-reading, and stand out from the typical shotgun merchandising retail emails.

The key is good story-selling. How can you turn a product’s value propositions into an engaging, persuasive or educational story? Try it in a content based email like this. Even better, test it against your “typical” email creative.

Highlights

• There aren’t 2 webs (mobile and desktop), rather, there’s multiple devices used to access 1 web.
• Mobile strategies centered around one device neglect most visitors.

Responsive cheat-sheet:

Mobile websites

Pros

• Specialized website for one device
• Straight-forward to create
• Less code=”lighter”

Cons

• Doesn’t address spectrum of devices in use today
• Duplicated content
• Not aligned with SEO best practices*

Mobile apps

Pros

• Very specialized and optimized task-focused experience
• Device-specific capabilities (geo-location, notifications)
• Constant reminder of your brand/site

Cons

• Difficult to create and must be created for multiple platforms
• Must pre-package for multiple app stores
• Sits outside the CMS

I’ll add that app stores take a cut of in-app transactions that could be avoided through an HTML5 or responsive site, and development talent and time can be expensive, especially when you want to serve beyond Apple and Google environments.

Responsive design

Pros

• One website for all devices
• Naturally SEO friendly
• Aligned with best practices
• Coexists with other mobile strategies

Cons

• Challenging to set-up, maintain and test
• Difficult to apply to large existing sites
• No unique device experiences

Today’s post zooms in on 3 best practices when going responsive.

1. Cut content in context

The Boston Globe has a footer call-to-action to subscribe, which changes depending on the size of screen being viewed. It also stays anchored to the bottom of the screen as you scroll up and down each page.

Compare the desktop version (shown above expanded to display additional content) to the mobile CTA which skips the detailed content and gets straight to the point – Get Access Now.

This is the perfect example of removing content depending on user context. If you’re going to convert a mobile user, the more words you throw on the tiny screen, the more friction it creates.

The Globe also simplifies its subscription page, focusing like a laser on the value proposition and a strong CTA button — though I do feel the value prop on this one is a bit comical!

Don’t be afraid to strip your responsive mobile designs to MVC: Minimum Viable Content.

2. Mind your menu manners

I’ve recommended against using the triple-line menu icon on mobile designs, at least for now until the convention becomes entrenched with users.

Sony labels its menu button as such, clearly indicating it’s an expand/collapse menu (avoiding drop-downs for longer lists).

3. Scale thumbnail images with usability in mind

Image resizing is a major part of responsive design, both for screen size and orientation. But keep in mind that users need to connect product names and pricing with thumbnail images on category pages. Bigger images are not necessarily better if they’re large enough that the user has to scroll up and down to connect text links / pricing with products.

Indochino does a good job sizing thumbnails, even in landscape view. The user can easily connect product with price and link in one screen.

We’ll be covering more tips on responsive design for ecommerce in the coming weeks on Get Elastic, leading up to the Shop.org Merchandising Workshop July 15-17. I’ll be speaking on Mobile Commerce: Is Responsive Right for Retail? Join me!

• Social proof goes beyond customer reviews and testimonials. Econsultancy shares 11 ways to use social proof on your ecommerce site.

• Shazam’s partnership with television show producers to enable tagging and links to purchase clothing worn on TV is just one way apps could disrupt search engines’ dominance in product search and discovery.

• What’s the optimal placement for form field labels on mobile? Check out Baymard Institute for the answer.

• There’s a lot of buzz around responsive design, but is it really the future of web development?

• If you decide to go responsive, here are 9 things you should watch out for.

• Does your ecommerce business sell, how do you say…less than sexy products? Your website doesn’t have to be boring. Inject some personality with cool copy for unsexy stuff.

• In other persuasive copywriting news, why not delve into the secrets of selling like a used car salesman?

• Persuasion continues. I’ll admit it, I’m suffering from some serious blogger envy on this one. Wish I wrote it. ConversionXL’s 5 principles of persuasive web design is definitely worth a read, a bookmark, and a whack of social sharing.

• Keywords ‘not provided’ in analytics is one of the most heartbreaking things to see as an SEO, conversion optimist or web analyst. But there’s hope. Cardinal Path’s how to manage keyword not provided for Google search part one and part two addresses the reality that we’ve lost data, but offers some viable workarounds to ease the pain.

• Bryan Eisenberg’s a Tale of 2 Publishers contrasts Huffington Post and the Daily. Can you guess which one publication is killing it, and which is lagging — and more importantly, why?

Tweetables

• Internet users spend 22.5% of their time online social networking Tweet this

• By 2015, social commerce is expected to reach $30 billion globally Tweet this

• 87% of the Fortune 100 use at least one social media presence, Twitter most popular Tweet this

• 87% of companies have both Facebook and Twitter presences vs. just over 50% for Youtube and Linkedin Tweet this

• Only slightly more than 1/3 of companies worldwide have a presence on Pinterest and/or Google+ Tweet this

• More than 80% of SMBs plan to increase social media marketing in 2013 Tweet this

• 62% of marketers say social media has become more vital to marketing campaigns w/in the last 6mos Tweet this

• 25% of SMBs have no social marketing strategy Tweet this

• 28% of SMBs measure the ROI of their social media marketing Tweet this

• 83% of companies say Facebook is their preferred social tool for brand marketing Tweet this

• On average, companies only respond to 30% of feedback received through social media websites Tweet this

• Only 26% of businesses regularly include a call-to-action in their tweets Tweet this

• Only 44% of customer question tweets are answered within 24hrs Tweet this

• 56% of customer tweets to companies are ignored Tweet this

• 39% of companies do not track their social media responses at all Tweet this

• 46% of online users use social media to review purchase decisions Tweet this

• Only 30 of the top 500 online retailers allow users to log-in with Facebook Tweet this

• Less than 20% of companies have integrated social media with their customer care, sales or product development Tweet this