Voices of E-Commerce

What Small Business Owners are thinking as they immerse in the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition in Chicago.   E-Commerce Voices is presented by Federated Media Publishing, which partners with FedEx on its We-Commerce site for online retailers.

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Brooke Oliverson of the children’s publishing house Cobblestone/Carus Publishing says she’s focused on learning about innovations in mobile at this year’s conference. 

“What I’m hoping to get out of the mobile sessions is to better understand not just how to sell things online and not just how to make an app but how to really market it,” Oliverson said. 

She said her company wants to learn how to do something outside of the normal direct marketing and website promotion to get the word out on their Apps.

“We want to make parents aware that we do these great interactive things for kids.”

The big question she said is “how do we get people to know about our Apps before they become Top 25?”

Oliverson talks about what she’s learned at this year’s conference in this video.  

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Facebook 'Like' tips for small retailers

Kevin Richards, CEO of Ventura Web Design says the true value of a Facebook ‘Like’ campaign for small retailers is branding. He shares tips on how small businesses can get more ‘Likes’ on their Facebook page.  

Giveaway coupons via “Like-Gating”

Put a Like button on every page of your site

Put a Like button on your order confirmation page

Include a Like button in your email marketing

Don’t forget to ask friends and family to Like you. 

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Melissa Parsons of Yarn Barn of Kansas, Inc. said she hopes to learn a lot about social media commerce at today’s workshops. “It’s kind of like getting a mammogram, you know you need to do it -- you just need that final kick in the pants.”

She said the challenge of her Internet retail business over the past year was the amount of downtime the site experienced. She said because of the slowdown they were able to take the time to talk about improvements they want to make to the site and having the manpower hours to do that. “It’s been a negative, but its also been a positive in some ways,” she said. 

In this video she talks about what she learned about web redesign at this year's conference. 

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Glass half-full

Harry Amsden, of consumer electronics e-tailer NewEgg.com hopes to learn how to continue to grow his audience of what he calls ‘the most loyal computer geeks.’

This year his company has focused their efforts on new customer acquisition, he said. “What we need to do is have our current customers tell more people about us. Getting new business to buy from us is key.”

At the core of NewEgg.com’s success is “selling the right products, at the right price with excellent customer service,” he said. 

In this video Amsden says there’s a lot of reason for people in the Internet Retailing industry to be optimistic about the future. 

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Keeping the Culture Relevant

Melinda Ennis of Working Advantage says she learned during IRCE that a creative and vibrant culture influences the way the customer views the company. “It seems to really reflect what kind of message the customer takes away,” she said.

With a product focused on employee discount benefits, entertainment, and gift programs, she wants to see that feeling infused into Working Advantage’s site. 

“I think we want to step back and inject fun into our messaging because that’s what our product is and can be.”

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Rodrigo Prieto of LatinAmericanMalls.com traveled to Chicago from Argentina to make sure his products site is taking advantage of the latest trends and resources in the E-commerce world. 

His advice for new merchants entering the marketplace is for them to keep their eyes and ears open to new ideas. “Sometimes you can get ideas from small vendors or retailers that are cheap and don’t cost millions of dollars but can help the business significantly,” he said.  

In this video Prieto talks about two areas he thinks are the buzz of this year’s show.

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Quotable: Build trust, or eat dust

"It's harder to say no to a friend than to someone you don't know, and it's easy to say yes to someone you trust. Ninety-one percent of people say that trust is the number one reason they shop on a website. We do believe in the human touch and making sure we are reachable."

--Joanna Culbertson, Director of Affiliate Marketing, AndraGroup (HerRoom.com, HisRoom.com)

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Lesson Learned

Andrew Ngo, of SleekHair.com, said he’s taking home a valuable idea that he thinks will help increase sales and customer retention. 

“I want to do a lot more segmented email marketing,” Ngo said. “We have different types of customers and I think we can group them into different lists to target and personalize their needs.”

He said he heard the tactic repeated several times throughout the conference and thinks it will be an extremely valuable tool for growth. 

"It's another way for us to compete," he said.

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Who Picks Sale Items? Customers, of Course

Earlier this year, Tea used a Facebook post and an email to invite customers to vote on which dresses would be put on sale for $15.  Co-Founder Leigh Rawdon wasn't sure what to expect, given that it wasn't a big retail season and they were relying on customers to spread the word. 

The result? "Traffic was up. Conversion was up. Sales were up." Sales were 50% higher than they were in a similar event they had done on Black Friday just six months earlier.  And 50% of the customers were new. 

She attributes much of the success to a close relationship with Facebook.  They sell clothing for kids, and moms are on Facebook, so they're active Facebook marketers. 

They use it of course to market products, but they also use Facebook extensively as a two-way customer-relationship-management tool, and for customer research. And to take care of customers: "Facebook in general might be most valuable to use as a customer-service tool."

And when she wants to check on her business, where does she look?

Facebook. "We have integrated it into our culture so much that Facebook is the dashboard for how we're doing."

What about ads? Facebook ads haven't worked for Tea yet, perhaps because people don't yet associate Facebook with shopping. But Rawdon says she's happy to hear from many other retailers at IRCE that it's working for them, because she wants Facebook to do very well and continue to be her company's most valuable partner.

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Dillard's Lets Customers Speak in Their Own Voices

Kevin Moffitt, Director of E-Commerce at Dillard's, says customer reviews bring valuable information -- and SEO benefits -- to his site because the customers are writing in their own styles.

His favorite example is in a review about a "no-iron" shirt: "He refuses to iron shirts, and one of our marriage vows was that I would not iron." That's the kind of compelling, meaningful language that would never be created by someone following the company's official writing guidelines.  Another helpful contribution was a customer review that encouraged the purchase of a higher-priced item: "It's worth spending a little more to have a nice, perfectly fitted bra that will last."  And he loves it when people send in pictures of themselves wearing or using Dillard's products. 

While the company can measure the impact of reviews on purchases made online, they know there's also an effect on in-store sales.  It's important to measure that impact, perhaps with customer surveys.  

Dillard's doesn't pay for customer reviews because it wants them to be authentic, but Moffitt says it's worth considering gamification or loyalty programs that reward customers who contribute content. 

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Robert Jacobs, says his yet-to-launch durable goods Internet retail site moqet.com, is focused on learning as much as they can about the E-commerce industry.

He talks about one of the area's strongest trends and why he thinks it is important for his company to invest in it. 

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Fail early, fail often, and learn each time.

Adrian Salamunovic, co-founder of CanvasPop

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Quotable: A redesign guru learns from website waste

"The process of redesign can be incredibly challenging. When I was at newegg, the website had been untouched for the previous 7 or 8 years. They spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring in people to tell them what they should do, and none of it got used. It was a huge waste of money, in part because they didn't get the CEO involved, and when he saw it, he didn't like it and we had to flush everything down the toilet and start over." 

--Bernard Luthi, chief marketing officer, Rakuten's Buy.com

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Measuring Social Impact

Adrian Salamunovic, co-founder of CanvasPop, shared three tips on measuring social success with tools you may not yet be using:

Within Google Analytics, check out the Social Value measurements under "Social" in the "Traffic Sources" section.

Try Sprout Social, which measures conversations in many different social channels at once.

Don't miss the intelligence available from Pinterest about what's being pinned from your site. Mashable has an article explaining how.

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Quotable: Getting mobile on mobile platforms

"One quarter of our traffic is from mobile devices, and it seems to go up a point every day. It seems like an investment we couldn't ignore."

--Holly Carrington, Ariat Online, on the wisdom of creating a mobile application for their e-commerce site

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We're at that point in social media where the more important ROI is the risk of ignoring.

Tom Funk, Senior E-Commerce Manager, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters

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Anti-acne product’s lesson is clear

“Probably one of the biggest takeaways for me is that you don’t just have to do something because everyone else is doing it.” said Robert Kennedy, of beyondclearskin.com, an anti-acne product brand.  “At the end of the day it's about getting that package delivered to the customer better.”

Kennedy said one challenge he sees for his business is competing with well-established larger companies in the marketplace. “We have to do all the same stuff but we don’t have the number of people with the complete subject matter expertise as the big guys.”