Zaz Lamarr hearts Zappos. She really does.

On her personal blog Writing, Cooking, Life, Zaz gives testimony of exceptional service from an online retailer back in July:

“One bright, extraordinary note in all of the sad stuff of the last few weeks - in May we had ordered several pairs of shoes from Zappos for my mom. She’d lost a lot of weight, and her old shoes were all too big. She had a whole new wardrobe of clothes in pretty colors, that fit, so I wanted her to have some pretty shoes that fit, too, when I took her up to Oregon to stay where her sister is. Out of seven pairs, only two fit. Not bad considering she’d never been this thin, so I was winging it, and the return shipping is free.

The rest were here waiting to be returned. Because of various circumstances - lost label, my mom being hospitalized and me being away, the shoes were never sent back. There’s a time limit on the return of 15 days. Remember this. When you do a return to them, they pay the shipping, but you have to get the shoes to UPS yourself. Remember this, also.

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Good Customer Service Still The Best Word-Of-Mouth Marketing Strategy »

We’ve been talking much about social media marketing here at Get Elastic, blogging, podcasts, viral videos and so on. But what about Facebook applications? What kind of things can you build for this platform that relate to ecommerce? Is it worth it? Who’s doing what and are they successful? Today I’m reviewing 29 ecommerce Facebook applications by shopping engines, deals sites, social shopping sites and online retailers.

User stats are as of October 10 and are subject to change. A note about active users, when products appear on a Facebook profile, just because it’s not updated daily doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a branding impact or fulfill a place for users to express their style/product tastes. Metrics we unfortunately can’t measure are how many invited users add the application (conversion rate) and how many users have added and later removed them (attrition rate).

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Facebook + Ecommerce = 29 Applications Reviewed »

With the holiday shopping season approaching and the Canadian dollar hovering around par, more and more Canadians like me are going to seek out Canadian-friendly estores — and we’re likely to be disappointed.

According to DM News:

• The Canadian consumer spends 47% more than the average consumer
• There are around 13,000 online retailers and catalogers in the US, vs. about 150 in Canada (although I believe there must be more)
• Because there’s less competition, Canadian retailers do not have to compete on price, and goods from the US can be significantly cheaper

How Can US Merchants Become Canadian-Friendly?

Canada Post’s Border Free software allows US etailers to sell to Canadians directly online in Canadian dollars without the complications of dealing with taxes and import fees by calculating these fees into the price, and eliminating COD taxes. This eliminates the “shock” factor upon checkout (and abandoned carts) when Canucks are presented with the final cost of their purchases. Exchange rates are updated daily. Also, Canadians will not be billed until the goods clear the Canadian border. Retailers already on board include Lane Bryant, Sephora and Ritz Camera.

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Attracting Canadian Online Shoppers »

I really enjoyed this morning’s webinar with Andy Chen of PowerReviews and Jay Gordman of NetShops. (If you missed it, you can catch the recap here). Today I want to expand a bit on fake reviews and bad reviews.

Liar, Liar?

We all know how easy it would be for a marketer, manufacturer or etailer to post fake reviews of a product - whether positive for their own products or negative for competing products. This is one of the challenges of not only building trust online, but cultivating authentic communities online. A reviewer could fall into any of the following categories:

• Manufacturers, etailers and others submitting fake positive reviews
• Competitors submitting fake negative reviews
• Customers with an axe to grind, even exaggerating
• Anyone paid to write reviews for the product on popular sites
• Customers writing a review in order just to get that 25% off their next order
• Authentic brand/product evangelists

Haven’t we all read a review that goes something like this…

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Fake Customer Reviews, Bad Product Reviews: What to Do? »