It’s a shame that CompUSA will not be with us much longer, because it gives us a great example of the potential for RSS feeds for ecommerce sites. Check it out while you can: http://www.compusa.com/help/rss_feeds.asp

This is a close-up:

This is how a sample feed appears in my Google Reader:

Online retailers that use RSS syndication for product content are few and far between, the ones that do usually are electronics and computer related (more tech savvy audience, I assume). It’s likely that the general public still doesn’t understand what RSS is or how it can help them, so CompUSA provides a nice little introduction to what RSS is with links to resources and popular RSS readers.

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How Online Retailers Can Benefit From RSS Marketing »

Nielsen Online recently released some data from the top 1,000 influential blogs (determined by inbound link popularity) and discovered that gift recommendations, reviews and gift buying guides were all the buzz in the blogosphere.

As you would expect, gadgets, gaming gifts and other techie stuff was most discussed according to the press release. Which makes this leaderboard a bit of a head-scratcher:

Top Online Retailers Ranked by Buzz Growth for Week Ending December 2nd

Source: Nielsen Online

Are these really the top discussed retailers for product reviews and recommendations? Hallmark? Last time I checked, Hallmark wasn’t sellin’ no iPhones or Wiis. So I looked under the hood at Google Blog Search, and found that there were a lot of results for Hallmark on deals/coupon sharing sites, Hallmark buildings, the Hallmark Channel, and Paris Hilton suing Hallmark for cards like this:

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Most Blogged About Online Retailers - Are They Really? »

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 »

Naw, you’ve got plenty of time to do your Christmas shopping. Stay in this weekend, curl up with your notebook computer and a cup of ‘nog and enjoy some good ecommerce and marketing reading!

Here’s this week’s Bloggers Digest:

Ecommerce News

• Big announcement for Elastic Path this week - we’ve launched the online store for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games which are being hosted right here in Vancouver. You can check out the mascots and find great gift ideas for that someone on your list who has everything — because I bet you $1,000,000 Linden dollars they don’t have this bottle opener-slash-fridge magnet.

Reputation Management

• Thanks again to our special guest blogger Ayat Shukairy for sharing her wisdom of conversion rates with us. I bet you think I took the day off to watch every single episode of Ask A Ninja, but you’re wrong. I was busy blogging about reputation management - what to do when your brand is trashed on forums and blogs, and some tips and tricks for nudging those search engine results off the first few pages. (I did ask a ninja about it, but he couldn’t offer even one solution that didn’t end up with someone dying).

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Bloggers Digest - 12/07/07 »

Wishlists are becoming more and more popular with online stores. They help customers bookmark items they like but just aren’t ready to buy, (which can reduce shopping cart abandonment) and when they are shared, they can help gift givers know what their loved ones really want.

This year, online retailers are getting aggressive and creative with wishlist sharing. Designer apparel retailer Net-a-Porter provides a woman with Santa’s Little Helper to give her significant other a not-so-subtle hint on what she wants to find under the tree.

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Creative Wish List E-Mailing to Boost Holiday Sales »

This is a guest post courtesy of Invesp Consulting. Ayat Shukairy is a managing partner at Invesp Consulting, an online marketing and conversion optimization company. To read more of her posts, visit www.invesp.com/blog.

Everybody these days is talking about conversion and its significance. But how much of this conversion talk is half-truths, and how much of it is relevant and useful information? The fact of the matter is looking at your conversion rate without deciphering the information is not very meaningful. Conversion must be segmented and assessed from each segment’s perspective rather than lumped into one big number.

Marketers usually talk about conversion as a whole; they don’t talk about these segments because that’s not “elegant” marketing talk. But analyzing your segmented conversion data can make a big difference.

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Conversion Rates Misunderstood »

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 »

A collection of ecommerce web designs, logos, and holiday gift card designs from some of the most popular online retailers:

Seasonal Ecommerce Web Designs

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Ecommerce Holiday Web Design Gallery »

SEO Digger is a free SEO tool that instantly shows you keyword rankings in Google for yours or any other website URL along with Wordtracker keyword counts. This makes it so easy to hone in on the most popular keywords (or products) that you’re ranking for so that you can optimize those pages even better.
Make sure you register so that you are able to see results for your deep pages, not just your home page. Registered users also don’t have a limit on the number of searches you can do in one hour.

How This Works

SEO Digger keeps a database of the top 20 results in Google for over 57 million keywords and keyphrases updated every 2 weeks. When you type in yours or any other URL, you’ll get a chart like this:

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Ecommerce SEO Hack: Free Tool to Hone Your SEO Strategy »

Google Analytics recently introduced an internal site search feature to its already kick-ass free stats program — aptly named “Site Search.”

This tool works with your existing site search and is invaluable to ecommerce marketers as it gives you so much insight into customer intent and your website’s success at delivering results. For example, you can use search log data to discover:

• What keywords people search for - what’s hot and what do they want that you don’t carry
• What search refinements are made, indicating possible “Results Not Found” messages or unsatisfactory results
• What pages the searches were made from, and where users clicked to

The next 30 days is when this information will be crucial. Customers can’t buy what they can’t find. Maybe you only use the term “notebook computer case” and your customers search for “laptop bags.” You can tweak your product pages and search engine for the various ways customers describe your product until the right pages show up when you test your site.

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Why You Should Turn On Google Analytics Site Search Today »