In case you missed it on TechCrunch the other day, Google is now showing search boxes within SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for some of the larger online retailers like Amazon, Zappos and Office Max.

The boxes only appear for certain keywords, for example “amazon” and “shop amazon” but not “amazon books.” Zappos shows up for “zappos shoes” but not “zappos shopping.” For other sites, adding “shop” or “shopping” to the site name won’t trigger a search box at all.

OfficeMax should be pleased that this works for them but not for Staples and Office Depot, at least it makes them seem a bit more important? I noticed that Target and Walmart get a search box, but not Sears. NewEgg, Radio Shack and BestBuy get one, but not Circuit City. Ebay and Overstock also are left out, which is a bit of a head-scratcher.

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Search Within A Search - Good Idea? »

Today, we all know how important customer reviews are to retailers and customers alike. They help convert buyers by building trust and confidence in the product, they reduce returns, draw long-tail search traffic and are a simple entry into on-site communities for ecommerce websites.

But there was a time when no one had them. It makes you wonder what we’re missing today that we don’t know we’re missing.

Let’s take another effective merchandising tool: cross-selling. Currently, ecommerce marketers are banking that their personal cross-sell suggestions or algorithmic-based recommendations will be relevant and attractive to shoppers. This *can* be really hit and miss. But what if we gave customers a crack at cross-selling?

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User Generated Cross-Sells? Why Is Nobody Doing It? »

You’ve added your item to your cart, but you’re not finished shopping. So, you look for the “Continue Shopping” link to thrust you back to…to what? The product page? The category page? The home page?

Most sites don’t give you a clue where you’ll end up. GrokDotCom mentioned this in Grok’s Biggest Gripes about the ecommerce experience, and an informal survey of the author’s contemporaries revealed 100% of them found this irritating.

I’ve observed a number of different ways to handle “Continue Shopping” navigation in my online shopping escapades. I decided to check out 100 of the top internet retailers and round up the methods used and the frequency of each. The following is a rundown on “Continue Shopping” options, frequency and examples for your inspiration, curiosity and comments.

AJAX Pop-Up - 19%

Love or hate Web 2.0, 17 out of 100 retailers use an AJAX popup to indicate an item has been added to the cart. Though this is nice and convenient to keep the shopper on the product page, it can be hard for inexperienced online shoppers to notice what’s happened. Some sites are more obvious than others.

Patagonia and Moosejaw Mountaineering use a roll-out notice in the top right of the product page. You must click to close this box, but both retailers place the close button in the same place, with the same icon. This is Moosejaw’s:

Can you figure out how to close this window?

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Continue Shopping Means What? »

Do you sell products that lend themselves to repeat purchases? This could be vitamins, pharmacy, contact lenses, hair product, office supplies, grocery or anything that you expect someone to “use up.”

Amazon sells, amongst other things, coffee beans. Check out the offer for free shipping and a 15% discount for customers who want to subscribe to the product:

Here’s what Amazon’s doing right:

1. Offers of free shipping and discount are strong motivators for repeat purchases.
2. Allows you to select the subscription schedule for 1, 2, 3 or 6 months.
3. Provides a customer service, no need to return to the site again, place order and wait when quantities get low.
4. The offer is placed in the product description and right near the cart button. Impossible to miss if you want to buy this product.

I bet you’ll be hard pressed to find many other online retailers taking advantage of this technique.

In last week’s webinar on holiday marketing, Jason Billingsley and I discussed the potential for online retailers to use Geo-IP targeting to serve specific content to different site visitors based on their geographic location. In this post, I’d like to recap the ideas mentioned in the webinar.

When your browser requests content from a website’s server that uses geo-ip techonolgy, it’s checked against a database to determine your country, region, city or even latitude/longitude and content is delivered based on your location. When you visit a web portal, for example, and you see your local news or weather appearing - this is geo-IP content delivery in action. This is just one example, but there are ways this can be effectively used on ecommerce websites:

Target By Country

If you have multiple websites targeted at individual countries, you can simply redirect visitors to the appropriate site when they click a link to your .com site or type it in directly into a browser.

Or you can detect when a visitor is from a different country when they land on your .com site and inform them of your nationalized site like Amazon:

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Using Geo-IP To Tailor Content Delivery »

From Amazon.co.uk:

941 of 947 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Very good if you need to write on paper, 7 Mar 2007
By M. Williams “Matt Williams” (Essex, England) - See all my reviews

Since taking delivery of my pen I have been very happy with the quality of ink deposition on the various types of paper that I have used. On the first day when I excitedly unwrapped my pen (thanks for the high quality packaging Amazon!) I just couldn’t contain my excitement and went around finding things to write on, like the shopping list on the notice board in our kitchen, the Post-it notes next to the phone, and on my favourite lined A4 pad at the side of my desk.

My pen is the transparent type with a blue lid. I selected this one in preference to the orange type because I like to be able to see how much ink I have left so that I can put in another order before I finally run out.

When the initial excitement of taking delivery of my new pen started to wear off I realised that I shouldn’t just write for the fun of it, this should be a serious enterprise, so by the second day of ownership I started to take a little more care of what I wrote. I used it to sign three letters, and in each case was perfectly happy with the neatness of handwriting that I was able to achieve.

I have a helpful tip for you that you might not know about - if you let the ink dry for a few seconds you can avoid the smudging that sometimes happens if you rub the ink immediately after writing. Fortunately the ink used in this particular Bic pen seems to dry very quickly.

Via Lonny Paul, who’s posted a couple other good examples of bright Brit Bic reviews.

This year I did almost all my Christmas shopping online. I say almost because there was one item that I intended to purchase online was unable to - a gift for my brother. First I purchased it along with two other items for myself from Amazon.com so I could qualify for Super Saver Shipping. What I failed to notice was that one of the items for me was out of stock. When you choose Super Saver Shipping you must group your items into one order. There was no notice on the checkout page that one item was not in stock so I checked out and was so thrilled I had found the perfect book for my brother, some goodies for me and well before December 24th to boot.

About a week later (December 15) I was checking my credit card balance online and noticed the Amazon transaction was missing. I went into my account at Amazon and there it was, the shipment had not gone out because it’s waiting for that one item to become available. Had I not checked my credit card balance I would have had no clue about this as I had no notification from Amazon via email. Even if I had, I don’t shop using my work email so my free Yahoo account gets checked intermittently.

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Putting Customer Telephone Numbers to Good Use »

At the end of November, I posted about online retailers showing holiday shipping cutoff dates on their home pages. Now more than two weeks later, and with just over a week left before Christmas, we find more retailers adding this information to their home pages, including reminders about electronic gift cards and in-store pickup options.

On November 28, I posted a few examples of online retailers who gave their home pages a Christmas makeover. One example is Bath & Body Works:

November 28

December 17

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Optimizing Your E-Store for Last Minute Shoppers »

Amazon is often touted as the usability darling of e-commerce. Number one on Internet Retailer’s Top 500 List last year, the mega-store is usually way ahead of other retailers in so many ways. That’s why my experience on Amazon this weekend was so surprising. Shopping on Amazon.ca, I experienced search failure more than once — and also discovered that my problems wouldn’t have happened on Amazon.com.

Exhibit A - Can’t Handle A Typo

This is what happened when I made a spelling error for “Web Analytics: An Hour A Day” on Amazon.ca:

And this is the same search on Amazon.com:

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Amazon.ca Fails at Basic Usability - Amazon.com Passes »

The holiday shopping season is now in full swing, and while there’s still plenty of time for online shoppers to receive their orders by Christmas (or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa), not receiving an order on time is a concern for consumers. Great online stores ease the fears by providing holiday shipping cutoff dates and making this information easy to find on home pages and product pages. Let’s take a look at some examples:

Bed Bath and Beyond

Tagline: “Holiday Shipping Cutoff Dates”

Bed Bath and Beyond dedicates some central home page real estate to its holiday shipping information:

And it’s not limited to just Christmas, either:

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Holiday Shipping Cutoff Dates Make Good Ecommerce Usability »