By Zachary E. Cook

This post is one in a series highlighting our Demandware LINK Technology Partners.
For more information visit the Demandware LINK Marketplace.

Customer feedback and ratings gathered via Bizrate Insights’ surveys can help you retain and acquire customers in one easy step—for free and with an easy to use Demandware LINK integration. Over 5,000 online retailers use Bizrate’s surveys to not only hear the voice of their customers (and get at the elusive “why” behind what customers do), but also to gain exposure on Google, Bizrate.com, and Shopzilla.com. For free. Join the thousands of retailers using Bizrate Insights’  tools and reports to achieve your end goal of growing consumer loyalty. Bizrate Insights helps retailers listen to and start a dialogue with their customers. The result is over 10 years of feedback and ratings that have driven the consumer’s voice to be translated into insights, action, consumer loyalty, and customer acquisition.

With Bizrate as a Demandware LINK Partner, Demandware’s clients have it easy! Launching Bizrate surveys within the Demandware platform can be achieved in just a few simple steps. Furthermore, it can all be done in 30 minutes. And when time is money, less is more.

With the Demandware and Bizrate integration, customers need only to have a Bizrate (or Shopzilla) account and then complete four simple steps to be up and running. After downloading the integration, users have ten free features, such as buyers’ surveys, product reviews, and non-buyers surveys, at their fingertips. The only other thing left is to ask yourself is, “why” not?

Scott Todaro, Sr. Director, Product Strategy

In case you happened to miss the press release, Sterling Commerce and Demandware conducted an independent research survey to gain more perspective on the mobile commerce explosion. The end result is that people seem to fancy their mobile phones and transacting on these devices is just the tip of the iceberg. Now if we could just find a way to get grandma feeling more secure about buying stuff online. Below are some enlightening statistics generated from this independent survey of 3,600 U.S. consumers:

• 15 percent of consumers have used their mobile devices to make purchases.
• Nearly all (96.2 percent) of consumers surveyed own a mobile phone, just under half owned a smart phone, which are designed to deliver a more optimal shopping experience.
• Nearly half of consumers would like the option of using PayPal.
• Nearly 40 percent would feel secure knowing that the mobile phone app would not store their credit card number.
• More than 60 percent believe that being able to use their mobile phone while shopping to verify product availability at a particular store location is important to very important.
• Nearly a quarter of shoppers use their phone while in a store to competitively price shop an item.
• Approximately 20 percent of consumers currently use their phones to create shopping lists or baskets, and slightly more than that number would be interested in a mobile app to help with shopping list or basket management for their favorite retailers.
• Two thirds are interested in the possibility of using their mobile phone to scan and purchase items, thus enabling them to bypass checkout lines.
• A quarter of shoppers believe that receiving specials/promotions (such as coupons) would be an important use for their mobile phone when shopping, although they were less enthusiastic about receiving advertising via their phones.

To see the press release containing more statistics click here.  The entire survey findings will be shared at the 2010 Shop.org Annual Summit on September 28th in Dallas, Texas. More information on the Summit can be found at www.shop.org/summit10.

By Michelle Guzzo, Solution Strategist

Email Marketing is one of the longest standing online marketing mediums and continues to evolve to meet the ever changing demands of today’s customer. Now more than ever, customers have strong control over the way they research and purchase products online. Today’s customers want what they want, when they want it. And they now have on-demand tools to have their demands met. If your business is not there to provide them with the product or service they are looking for, they can quickly find a competitor of yours who can.

Email Marketing is a great way to build relationships with your customers so that they continue to come back time and time again. However, with your customers receiving 100s to 1,000s of emails a day, you need to find a niche where your message stands out among the crowd.

There are a number of easy, effective practices to put into place that will drive improved results for you almost immediately. Here are three quick tips you can implement today:

• Your email subject line is the simplest variable to test and make changes where applicable. This should be an on-going initiative that strives for continuous improvement. 

• Grow your subscription base through easy techniques such as adding opt-in information to the last slide of all your presentations, old-fashioned networking and word of mouth, and even promoting your e-newsletter in your email signature.

• Make sure your unsubscribe option is in a clear, easy-to-find location in your emails. Hyperlink the word “unsubscribe” directly to your opt-out form. As important as it is to make it easy for your customers to subscribe to your emails, it is equally important to allow an uninterested customer to unsubscribe.

For more tips on how to Reinvigorate Your Email Marketing Campaign, click here to download our Email Marketing Best Practice whitepaper today!

Nothing better accessorizes an outfit quite like a dazzling pair of Nine West shoes. And now with Nine West’s mobile storefront, it’s super simple to keep up with the hottest trends and latest looks of the season. Nine West, a division of Jones Apparel Group, has launched a new mobile storefront, ensuring you never have to be stuck wearing fashion that’s “so last season.”

Nine West, No. 219 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, used Demandware eCommerce to launch a feature-rich mobile commerce site. It allows customers quick, easy access to the complete catalog of products found on the Nine West ecommerce site from their mobile device. The site provides many features such as the ability to purchase, search, access ka Nine Loves account, signup for email alerts, communicate with customer service and locate Nine West retail stores.

The Nine West mobile commerce site, NineWest.com/mobile, met my on-the-go shopping needs. In my first experience, I was able to:

• Quickly get on the site – The moment I typed in the address to my blackberry browser, it took no time at all for the site to fully load and provide me with a variety of features.

• Find exactly what I was looking for in no time – The main page broke the products down into specific categories (shoes, handbags, accessories, etc.), so I was able to limit my selection to what I was interested in. Once I chose shoes, the search got even more precise and a list of different shoe styles were provided (pumps, flats, wedges, etc.). When I picked the style I was looking for, the site displayed a well organized assortment of shoes. Rather than have me search through hundreds of shoes to find what I wanted, the site was able to distinguish my preference and provide me with a distinct selection.
• Customize my shoe – Once I picked out the shoe I desired, a large, clear image of it appeared. At this stage, the site provided useful details of the shoe (height of heel, type of sole, date shipped by). I was able to choose the color I wanted, my size, and even the width of the shoe.
• Checkout – When an item has been chosen, the site allows the customer to either check out or continue shopping. Checkout is very simple and customers can use their existing accounts to make it even easier and have access to other great features such as creating a wish list. By using an existing account, I was able to avoid entering my billing and shipping information, making the process that much quicker.

In just minutes, I was able to make a purchase from my cell phone without any trouble at all. At no point in time did I hesitate to buy an item on the mobile site due to lack of product details or clear images.Thank you to Nine West for providing me and other customers with a great mobile shopping experience.

(This article was contributed by Meagan Armaral)

It’s the holiday season, well almost. Although it seems distant to many, it’s imperative that retailers start to prepare now. Retailers should be thinking of affective ways to lure in consumers and boost sales during the 2010 holiday season now. One way to ensure a major holiday turn out is by going mobile. For the first time, there are more smartphones than computers being sold. This creates a gigantic opportunity for retailers, especially those who are quick to act. It’s important to keep up with competitors who have already become mobile and are able to provide customers with hassle free shopping this upcoming holiday season.

Mobile will help capture consumers on the go. I, like many, enjoy things that make my life just the slightest bit easier. This becomes a major bonus during the holidays when all people want to do is avoid stores - but know gift giving is a must. Not only does mobile allow you to purchase items at any given moment, it also makes in-store shopping easier. Many of today’s consumers like to use the internet to plan how they will spend the limited time and budget they have for shopping. With mobile, they can simply search for the desired items on their phone, find them at the store, and make the purchase - allowing them to avoid browsing in a crowded store during the holiday season.

Not only does mobile drive in-store purchases, it can help close the deal once consumers are there. Often times, mobile devices are used as in-store shopping tools to help you decide that the price for that flat screen TV you have been pondering is in fact a good deal. The quick research customers conduct on their mobile phones while in-store is usually the final push needed to make the purchase. Retailers will ultimately close more sales by taking this approach and enabling their customer’s access to their mobile site.

Mobile helps the indecisive shoppers that enjoy the opinions of the crowd but can’t seem to convince our friends or family to head out on Black Friday. For those instances when we look for guidance, we are able to take a photo, share a link or ask advice from friends in our social networks prior to our purchase. And accessing product reviews will help build customer confidence in purchasing a big-ticket item. Mobile consumers are looking for facts to support their purchase decision as well as approval from friends and/or other consumers. Retailers must be sure to create a social media presence so that their websites are optimized for mobile viewing and sharing, and their brands are visible and accessible to holiday shoppers.

Help make the holidays a little easier for your customers and give them a worry free shopping experience. After all, it is the season of giving.

(This article was contributed by Meagan Armaral)

By Adam Forrest

It seems as though if I need to know anything at all, I can find it on Facebook. Whether I am asking for friends’ opinions on good restaurants, product reviews, or clothes I would like to buy, it seems like the most trusted answer comes from a collaboration of friends. Facebook, through its evolution, is collecting more information (in a good way, not a creepy Big Brother way) about each one of us and is essentially becoming a repository of over 500 million users' profiles, relations, likes, dislikes, and more. Imagine having over 500 million users in your CRM? Besides the exorbitant email marketing costs for mailing to all those users, think about the shear amount of data and segmentation that is possible.

With Facebook’s Open Graph it makes me wonder if there will be a time when the power of collaboration will outweigh the threat of competition? Will retailers be willing to tap Facebook as a global CRM? The benefits would be complete access to a larger customer base and more insight into their preferences and behaviors all with customer approval to let it happen of course! But it would also require the retailers to share information they learn about the customer back to the global CRM - aggregating order information, product affinity, shopping behavior and patterns across all sites – it would bring personalization and segmentation to an ultimate level.

As a product marketer, number cruncher, and demographics nerd – this truly would be nirvana. Imagine the amount of segmentation you could do, and how much you could learn about shopping patterns across everyone’s sites – most frequent time of day for purchase, average discount amount to make purchase – the possibilities are endless!

Perhaps I live in a simple world where I believe this could work – as my favorite tv show Lost would say “live together, die alone.”

What are your thoughts?

By Zachary E. Cook

For many people, this week is truly the most wonderful time of the year—Shark Week. This is the week where everyday people switch from watching mindless sitcoms to educational documentaries on Discovery Channel. So how do they do it? The lessons gleaned from this marketing phenomenon just might help you take a bigger bite of (web) surfers looking to shop online.

Marketing, Marketing, Marketing.
At its core, Shark Week is essentially a promotion to get viewers to change their channels from the reruns of their regular shows airing in the summer in the hopes that they can hook them to stay tuned in when the week is over. But the content is useless unless Discovery Channel can inspire viewers to tune in. To do so, they have created a social media frenzy (almost 70,000 fans on Facebook), Shark Week games and a very creative “Happy Shark Week” campaign that creates the impression of a holiday in the minds of viewers. While a great marketing campaign is nothing without a great product behind it (and often vice versa), Discovery Channel has proven that if the campaign has enough bite, it can often become the product when people just want to be a part of it.

Create excitement for your product.
People love Shark Week because it is just that—one week dedicated to one topic. I’m confident that if Discovery Channel had a weekly TV series on sharks they would have very few passionate viewers. But by creating excitement around the one week a year that all of their programming is dedicated to this one topic, people have a defined event to look forward to. Marketers and merchandisers can do this with annual sales, regular product releases and other events that shoppers can mark on their calendar. By creating an event that gives shoppers the impression that they are participating in something rare, valuable and seldom offered, you have all the ingredients for a feeding frenzy on your site.

Give the people what they want.
Let’s just be honest—you don’t tune in to Shark Week to learn about the migratory patterns of nurse sharks. We want to see a great white launching into the air and feasting on some poor, unsuspecting seal that got separated from the herd. So when you see ads for Shark Week, these are the images you are bombarded with. Take a note. Use your best sellers and hot products to drive traffic into your site and then slowly introduce new products. Just as Discovery Channel will mix in some info on how sharks sleep and people will listen, so to can you display a few new products while serving up the content they came for without fear of losing too many visitors. Just know who your great whites are and who your nurse sharks are.

While it's clear to see why Shark Week has been such a success for Discovery Channel, it's more difficult to find the right promotional plan that will work for your ecommerce site. Whether it's swimming in shark infested waters or planning your ecommerce promotions, the key is to always have the right equipment. Make sure your ecommerce platform is equipped with all the right merchandising tools to land the big ones.

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again - mobile commerce is here for good!  The evolution to mobile commerce is a natural progression and major companies, such as eBay, are taking full advantage by providing their customers with 14 different native mobile apps.  eBay’s iPhone app (which launched earlier this year) has been downloaded 11 million times, and this is just one out of 14 apps they have to offer! The amount of downloads wildly exceeded their expectations, resulting in a projected revenue of $1.5 billion from mobile in 2010.

So how does eBay do it? They act quickly. eBay’s intentions are to release a new app every five weeks, providing their customers with a variety of shopping capabilities.  Not only are they enabling busy consumers with a seamless shopping experience in the palm of their hands, they do it in a way that will continue to increase revenue for the company.

This brings me to my next point, since apparel is eBay’s number one selling category, it’s no surprise they decided to use it to their benefit by creating an apparel app.  Their newest app is a fashion application, targeting fashionistas everywhere.  Being quite the “shop-a-holic” myself, the minute I read the article I became intrigued and instantly went for my iPhone.  The free application lets you browse items, virtually try them on, and buy what you desire easily with a couple quick swipes of your finger - a busy shopper’s dream.  It also provides shoppers with multiple features such as a personalized closet, an outfit builder, social media sharing functions, an eBay Fashion Vault, and a virtual style gallery.

So what makes eBay the number one mobile commerce retailer in the U.S.?  It’s their ability to innovate and target customers with a variety of easy to use applications that provide a new and exciting way to shop as well as a personalized shopping experience for everyone.

Don’t get left behind the curve, make sure your technology vendor provides you with a platform that keeps you ahead of pace and provides you with the innovation you need to compete.

(This article was contributed by Meagan Armaral)

By Scott Todaro, Sr. Director, Product Strategy

I woke up this morning thinking that I finally had a grip on where the mobile commerce market was going and how fast it was going to get there. Note to self, guess again. I was blown away by some of the mobile adoption numbers as I read the latest reports.

We have now crossed over 60 million smartphone users in the U.S., more than double the number of a year ago, and Nielsen projects the number will more than double to 140 million web-based phones by the third quarter of 2011, when smartphones will overtake conventional cell phones. Mobile commerce in 2010 will generate upwards of $5 billion in revenue, more than double 2009.

What does this mean? Quite simply, if you are not thinking about mobile commerce now you will find yourself crushed like an ant by your competition. That said, mobile commerce does not need to be a daunting task as many online retailers already have the tools they need to build, maintain, and grow a mobile site. All the same data that is stored in your ecommerce platform (catalog, pricing, promotions, orders, customer information, etc.) can be reused for the mobile site and your merchandising and marketing can be managed through the same UI you are using today.

Learn how Demandware Mobile can give you the strength to achieve your “high hopes” of launching your first mobile site.

By Zachary E. Cook It's been an exciting few months since we launched Demandware LINK in April and I wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the areas we have been focusing on since the launch, April 5th. The response to this program—from customers, partners, prospects, analysts, press, etc.—has been overwhelmingly positive and we believe that the industry is tired of long, time consuming integrations. Here are some ways in which the program has grown since launch:

• The LINK Program has grown to include more than 50 on-demand ecommerce technology providers in more than 20 different categories. Even better, more than half of these categories have multiple options providing our customers with a choice of which partner fits their business best.
• The free, pre-built integrations developed by LINK partners have been leveraged by our customers in more than 18 different projects saving Demandware customers hundreds of thousands of dollars in implementation costs and drastically reduced the time it takes to go to market with a new technology provider.
• We have been in contact with more than 100 additional technology providers to discuss the possibility of having them join the program. The interest has been amazing and we are working diligently to enable all interested on-demand ecommerce software companies to become a LINK Partner.

While we are extremely pleased with the success of Demandware LINK, we realize that there is still room for significant growth—not only in the number of integrated partners but also in continuing to urge the industry to make the pain of ecommerce integrations a thing of the past.

For more information on how you can help make the pain of ecommerce integrations a thing of the past, visit the Demandware LINK Marketplace.