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, Demandware Product Strategy

I recently purchased a shiny new iPhone 4. The first thing I noticed after I took the iPhone out of the box was the stunning 960x640 resolution display on the device. You actually couldn’t see the individual pixels on the 3.5 inch screen, it was that tight. It got me thinking about my laptop from 2001 and its 800x600 resolution on a 12” screen. Take a second to ponder that reality, the iPhone 4 has a better screen resolution than a device that was supposedly optimized for Web browsing and shopping only nine years ago.

Why is this significant? The answer is simple – the more pixels, the more content a retailer can get on a web page. The more content available to the consumer like product details, images and customer reviews, the better the shopping experience. The better the experience, the more likely the consumer will be enticed to make purchases from a mobile device. Even with the high resolution laptop screens available today, retailers still leverage features like zoom to improve conversion. Many mobile browsers offer the ability to zoom in on an image for more detail. As these rich website capabilities are transferred to the mobile devices, the willingness of consumers to transact should increase.

Below is an example comparing the sharpness of the web content on the iPhone 3Gs (1/4 the number pixels) to the iPhone 4G. There is an obvious advantage in clarity that the iPhone 4 owner enjoys over the 3Gs when viewing product images and text.

This retina pleasing trend does not end with the latest installment of the iPhone as almost all Google and Windows Mobile smartphones hitting the market today carry a minimum screen resolution of 800x480. I recently learned that the next release of the Google Android OS (codename Gingerbread) will accommodate resolutions of 1280X760 on devices with screens larger than 4 inches. When does it end?

Large high resolution screens or not, data shows that consumers are willing to shop on a mobile phone for non-digital items like apparel, health and beauty, sporting goods equipment, consumer electronics, and books. Forrester states that 2% of overall online revenue is coming from mobile devices at retailers that have live mobile storefronts or native mobile applications. For more Forrester data on mobile adoption and a mobile case study on Barney’s New York, download the recorded webinar.

What a refreshing look from an industry analyst. Sally McKenzie's blog post this morning "A Lesson From Dad: Why Your E-commerce Platform Search Isn't Just About Software" brings back simplicity and a long-lens view for approaching an ecommerce platform selection. As she points out, "issues change" and while it is very important for the platform to meet your requirements to make you successful, you cannot afford to overlook the ability of the vendor to work with you in a partnership. At a minimum, most platform decisions result in a three year partnership.

To add another point to Sally's blog, it is important to make sure that there is a cultural fit with the vendor - because a selection process is more than just the presales aspect and it is more than just a feature list on an RFP. It is absolutely necessary to do your homework on the vendor, in fact we encourage folks who are evaluating us to conduct backdoor references beyond the three that they request from us. It is the clients that are in your shoes and have been working with us for days, months, and years that have the real story to tell. And that is something that cannot be explained in an RFP. We highly encourage checking backdoor references for all vendors - it is worth it.

Just recently, Brian Walker of Forrester, also wrote a blog post called "Frustrated with the eCommerce technology selection process? Tell us about it!" where he and Forrester are collecting feedback about the selection process and how we can collectively make it better. It is great to see multiple industry experts actively making sure that retailers are truly selecting the best platform - cheers to you both!

By Sue Chapman, Demandware Merchandising Practice Leader 

Site search optimization is a critical factor in online retail success and an immediate source of competitive advantage for those merchants that do it well. Unfortunately, there is significantly more focus today on improving site navigation and not enough on site search. Addressing the problem requires that online retailers know what their customers are searching for, yet fewer than 15% of online retailers we speak with look at their search results more than once per month.

Shoppers that search know what they want - they convert at a higher rate, buy more products and spend more per order than those that navigate. Improving the online shopping experience should start at the search box because it's the quickest, most efficient way to help shoppers find what they are looking for. The only thing that stops searchers or ‘surgical shoppers' from spending money on your site is getting lost in a "No Result" experience.

As a member of Demandware's Retail Practice team, my goal is to provide actionable recommendations based on best practice analysis and industry assessment. We are in the process of building a "best practices" engine to summarize a lot of what we know and periodically publish it in the form of a whitepaper. This paper details a program and methodology called Turning "No Results" into Sales. It will show you how you can turn your current "No Result" search experience into "shopportunities" for your customers and increase sales and profits for you. It provides a methodology, best practices and tools for translating "No Result" search terms into incremental sales by:

• outlining a framework for testing the top "No Result" search terms on your shopping site using a Search Tuning Feedback Form tool;
• assisting in analyzing why "No Result" searches are returned and grouping these terms into logical buckets or types;
• providing guidelines and best practices for presenting alternatives to the shopper to keep them engaged on your site;
• reducing "No Result" searches by up to 50%;
• increasing sales and revenues for "No Result" searches through alternative product suggestions; and
• outlining a methodology for measuring your success.

By Shaun White, Demandware Retail Practice

SEO is a combination of strategy and tactics and art and science. It requires ongoing attention at multiple levels of an online retail business. It's often misunderstood and as a result, frequently under-utilized. But once you understand the fundamental elements that go into optimizing a site for organic search, it's not nearly so perplexing. And when it's managed and implemented correctly, it delivers constant results in return.

As a member of Demandware's Retail Practice team, my goal is to provide actionable recommendations based on best practice analysis and industry assessment. We are in the process of building a "best practices" engine to summarize a lot of what we know and periodically publish it in the form of a whitepaper. Here is my first piece—"Optimizing Your Online Retail Site for Organic Search". This paper highlights the untapped opportunity missed by organizations regarding organic search, the must do and don't do list of SEO, and 5 strategist considerations and organization must focus on regarding its SEO approach. The paper will also focus on the tactics and tools to use to analyze an organization's current site and then create an actionable plan.

By Kristyn Levine, Demandware Retail Practice

In the world of online retail, no place defines the difference between success and failure more than checkout. Recent industry reports put shopping cart abandonment rates at anywhere from 20 to 50%. In too many cases, cart checkout processes take too long, require too many clicks and involve too many requests for non-essential information. Shoppers get distracted, impatient and distressed. They lose interest, leave the site, or simply take a detour to shop and research at another online store. The result is a huge lost revenue opportunity.

Online customers abandon their shopping carts for lots of different reasons. Not all of them are in the merchant's control, but many are. With competition for new and existing customers as intense as ever, online retailers need to optimize their checkout processes to ensure they are doing everything they can to capitalize on existing opportunities by converting shoppers into customers and keeping customers coming back to their sites.

As a member of Demandware's Retail Practice team, my goal is to provide actionable recommendations based on best practice analysis and industry assessment. We are in the process of building a "best practices" engine to summarize a lot of what we know and periodically publish it in the form of a whitepaper. Here is my first piece - "Optimizing Online Checkout: 20 Practical Ways to Reduce Cart Abandonment and Increase Online Profits". This paper highlights some of the most common checkout mistakes today, what online retailers can do to address them and provides examples of best practices in action. It also looks at some of the other factors that influence shopping cart conversion and how they might impact your own performance. I hope you find it valuable - and most importantly actionable.

In a recent Shop.org survey, The State of Retailing Online 2009: Merchandising Report, conducted by Forrester Research, 79% of retailers said they plan to focus heavily on improving customers' checkout experience in 2010. The best practices and recommendations in this paper are a good start. They can be implemented one at a time, or many at once, but they all can help you increase shopper conversion rates and increase profitability. I encourage you to download this paper and evaluate your site against these 20 best practices and get started today!

By Adam Forrest, Demandware Product Marketing 

Demandware clients are having a tremendous Holiday season so far. Kicking off with a remarkable 79% increase in YOY revenue on Thanksgiving Day (now if I didn't see it with my own eyes I would have had a hard time believing too - but trust me it is!) Our clients are truly performing above the crowd across the board, check out the table below for the day by day breakdown of the holiday weekend resulting in a 54% increase overall in YOY revenue compared to 2008.

The good news is despite the tough economic year, ecommerce continues to be the growth engine for retailers this holiday. According to ComScore the industry saw an 11% YOY increase in revenue on Black Friday as well as a 5% YOY increase in revenue on Cyber Monday. Coremetrics also provided results on Cyber Monday and reported a nearly 14% increase in YOY revenue. Clearly our metrics are above and beyond.

We strongly believe that our clients are set up for greater success particularly for a couple reasons:

• Performance: Our platform, and hence our clients' sites, delivers with better availability and response time than any of the Top 20 Web Sites as reported by Gomez, in fact we have consistently delivered at 99.97% availability over the last 5 years and 100% during the holiday season. If your site is down, your customers can't buy - it is as simple as that.
  
  
• Merchandising: Our platform uses analytic data (i.e. conversion, return rate, sales velocity, rating) to dynamically present items to the right customers at the right time. Merchants can use this data to create new weighted scoring systems, removing the need to manually organize hundreds and hundreds of category pages and freeing up invaluable time to personally merchandise the most critical aspects of the site.
  
  
• Support: We provide our clients with the support they need to be successful. Not just technical support, but also ongoing retail support. We make sure our clients are ready for the holidays and that their site is primed for performance and purchasing.

Congratulations to our clients and best of luck for the remainder of Holiday 2009!

By Adam Forrest, Demandware Product Marketing 

How manufacturers can tap the awesome potential of ecommerce to drive cross-channel sales.

Another successful webinar, thanks to great content and participation from Sucharita Mulpuru, VP Research and Principle Analyst, Forrester Research and Chris Ladd, VP Global Retail, Crocs. Demandware has a knack for helping branded manufacturers sell online by not only providing a great eCommerce platform, but also providing research and data to accompany the industry. If you missed the webinar be sure to watch the recorded version or download the slides from our resource center.

Sucharita set the stage with staggering figures about the impact of manufacturer's website on the online and offline channels. The image below is one of her slides and I will do my best to walk you through it, but definitely not as eloquently as she did (for that you will have to watch the recorded version here.) Here we go...follow the dotted lines below. Of the entire US Population of 300 million people, 59% have shopped online (far left bar), that 59% or 177 million people spend $150 billion annually online excluding travel as Forrester Research reports. And now it starts to get more interesting, of the $150 billion spent online, 45% or $67.5 billion is spent on manufacturers' direct to consumer ecommerce sites or influenced by manufacturers' websites online. Interestingly enough the percentage of people who actually shop manufacturers' websites (38% or 67.2 million people) does not correlate with the amount of revenue spent - making it very easy to see that these shoppers while fewer are more loyal and spend more on branded goods. And further research has shown that these manufacturer websites influences a total of $200 billion in revenue, and as Sucharita put it that's "no small chump change."

This is just one of a deck of 30 amazing slides Sucharita discussed....spend the time to view the entire webinar, it is worth it.

As if this market data was not enough, we had the luxury of having Chris Ladd, VP Global Retail, Crocs speak next to give some real world advice from one branded manufacturer to another. Chris walked through a list of "10 tips" to help guide others to ecommerce success. Crocs, a Demandware customer, is operating 23 international websites and is actively expanding into the Asia market as we speak. But before they were able to have so much success, Chris and his team at Crocs followed these "Ten Tips."

1. Create a good sales plan and role for the site/store.
2. Find an Executive Sponsor.
3. Build a robust consumer database; capture at all touch points.
4. Educate people on the advantages of growing your eCommerce business.
5. Product is King. Treat your website like another store.
6. Find ways to partner with your wholesale & distributor partners.
7. Consider outsourcing certain components of the eCommerce business.
8. Create your own marketing budget.
9. Consider going global.
10. Establish a pricing & promotions committee.

Each of Chris' points had a plethora of information supporting it and great anecdotes from his experience at Crocs, Titleist, and Reebok. I would highly encourage everyone to listen to the full webinar to here all the details provided.

Thank you again to Sucharita, Chris, and all those who attended yesterday...we look forward to seeing you all again real soon.