Peer Reviews Significant To Shoppers in Consumer Brand Trust

So I wrote a brief piece about why customer reviews "can" be very important tools to decrease shopping cart abandonement earlier this week.  Well today I came across a piece from experts at "The Center for Media Research" that reinforces what I was saying. Get the hint? I hope this helps. -- Ed

"A recent survey on current attitudes towards customer ratings and reviews by Bazaarvoice and Vizu Corporation, shows that about three out of four shoppers say that it is extremely or very important to read customer reviews before making a purchase, and they prefer peer reviews over expert reviews by a 6-to-1 margin.

The summary notes that Shop.org and MarketingSherpa report usage of ratings and reviews nearly doubling in the US over the last year, while the Bazaarvoice and Vizu survey revealed that 44 percent of US shoppers consider ratings and reviews to be the most useful eCommerce site feature. Product comparison (15 percent), product navigation (12 percent), and privacy information (11 percent) followed in the distance.

Bazaarvoice founder and CEO, Brett Hurt, says "Customer ratings and reviews have moved beyond a site feature to become an important part of brand identity... In the... future, shoppers will not only have more trust in brands that offer reviews, but will actively demand this level of participation in the social commerce experience... "

Ratings and reviews by UK consumers were important for over 50 percent of online shoppers in the UK. In contrast to US shoppers, privacy and security information took center stage when making a purchase by over one-third of UK shoppers rating this as the most important site feature. The report finds that there are a relatively low number of UK sites offering a ratings and reviews facility compared to those in the US.

Sam Decker, Chief Marketing Officer at Bazaarvoice "Research shows that UK consumers actively seek out reviews, and the dependence on customer-created content will increase as UK retailers adopt this strategy."

Polling for the report was conducted via the Vizu Answers online market research network from May 16, 2007 to June 6, 2007. Multiple votes were restricted, no artificial incentives were employed and a geographic audit was performed to ensure unbiased and valid results."

Best Practices Approach: Categorization and Taxonomy on Shopping Comparison Engines

This is a great piece for the www.eTaildTail.com community from my friend Kevin who blogs over at www.ChannelDollars.com -- Enjoy -- Ed

"When submitting products to comparison engines, taxonomy and categorization can be a big concern and rightfully so.

Each engine has their own type of taxonomy and standards when taking a merchant’s items, and assigning those items to categories. There is no easy method, but here are a few quick points to be aware of:

1. No, you can’t assign an item to multiple categories

Only a few companies have this principle in place, but most do not. The reason is because a merchant could potentially flood an engine with only a few products spread out in many places. The consumer will quickly tire of seeing the same products over and over, abandoning the engine to shop elsewhere. This same principle means options are not typically allowed to be listed as multiple items, because a single item could then take up an entire page of results. For example, some engines like GoogleBase and NexTag only allow one item per product url or link page.

2. Picking a category

Next idea: there is no perfect category! Yes, an item could conceivably fit into multiple categories so it is up to the merchant many times to pick the best category (A-B testing anyone?). Now, many engines will actually recognize a product by SKU or UPC, and have a predetermined place for that item. So, this issue could be rendered moot. However, most times a merchant is forced to pick a category assignment so it’s best to pick a few items from a given group and search for them. See where those items come up. Then, decide if you want your items directly competing with similar items from other merchants, or if you would prefer your items elsewhere in seclusion. This is a competitive analysis that could help greatly with conversions if not total click count.

3. Try sending your categories first!

Many merchants get caught running in circles and drowning in the possibilities of where to put items. Try sending your categories first. That is, send the category assignments from the home website and see how the CSEs handle those. In the CSE back office, you should then be able to get a listing of products and category assignments. Based on those results, then see what alteration is necessary. First send what you have, and then make adjustments as needed. Don’t get caught up in unnecessary work!"

Check out Kevin at www.ChannelDollars.com , he has some great information and advice to help online merchants!

Abandoned Online Shopping Carts: One Approach to Learning How to Decrease Abandonment Rate

No online merchant likes a purchase to be abandoned mid-stream.  You have probably spent a lot of money on adwords, key words, pay per click campaigns and other marketing methods to get a customer to your online site and the worst statistic is to see, that after all of that hard work, a customer leaves your site in the middle of a purchase.

Why Do Customers Abandon A Shopping Cart?

While there a lot of factors attributed to shopping cart abandonment, the most common are:

1. High shipping costs
2. A customer coming to a site for a special offer that is “not so special” once they come to the site and read the fine print in regards to the offer, and
3. Complexities related to checkout (which often times are the fault of the shopping cart technology you are using)

Just because you did 90% of the work to get a customer to come to your online storefront, the last 10% of effort to get them to make a purchase is the most important.  So it is imperative that any online merchant focuses on what happens when a customer comes to their online storefront before spending money on marketing campaigns to get a customer to their site.

Any shopping cart technology that you use will say it is not their fault, as they are merely processing a transaction.  The fact remains that shopping cart abandonment is a problem and the technology side of the check out process may be a part of the issue. But it probably is not the only issue…so what might the problems be?  Here are some examples:

1. The check out/transaction process may be cumbersome
2. Language you used in your marketing campaigns to get customers to your storefront may not be consistent to what you “actually” offer on your site and thus you are perceived as being “dishonest”
3. You are marketing products that are no longer available, or
4. It simply takes to many clicks to purchase a product. 

And these are just a few trouble spots.

One Way to Find Out Why Customers Abandon Their Shopping Experience

I often find it interesting that executives sit in a room and hypothesize about these issues when they simply can ask their customers to help them out. 

Many companies are hesitant to ask their customers for input, because they feel it may be intrusive.  That may have been true, to some degree, in the “old world” way of brick-and-mortar shopping, but In the world of the internet, customers expect it.  They actually love it and many just can’t wait to have their opinion heard.  If you think I am joking, check out companies built around reviews, such as www.PowerReviews.com , www.Buzzilions.com and www.epinions.com

And if you only want to follow the leader, online survey tools and feedback have become a popular choice among large online retailers such as WalMart and Petco.

Companies use simple survey tools to collect information from would-be customers who didn’t make it through the virtual checkout line. By asking a brief series of questions about why the customer chose to leave the site prior to completing the transaction and collecting some key pieces of demographic data, retailers can obtain information that can inform and improve their e-commerce strategy.

A friend of mine emailed her sample questions and advice:  Here it is:

”In order to retrieve credible data that can be analyzed and sorted for key trends and issues, online surveys must be short and sweet. Some tried-and-true survey questions include:

• Why did [you] decide to leave the website? This question can be open-ended or include choices such as cost, browsing purposes and user experience.

• What can [we] do to encourage a future purchase? This question can be open ended or offer similar options mentioned previously.

• What is your biggest concern about shopping online? This question may be open-ended or give choices such as: security, online price versus in-store price, etc.

• How frequently do you complete purchases online?

• How frequently do you comparison shop online?”

She also went on to add:

”Many online surveys also allow retailers to deploy hidden fields within the survey – fields which provide visibility into SKU numbers, Web pages visited and products viewed – all without customer knowledge.

Retailers may also consider inquiring about customer reactions to incentive offers. Sometimes promotions drive customers from Web site due to strong messaging that may seem like pressure to complete a purchase. Other times customers are driven to a Web site by an incentive offer, only to find that it was not the offer they thought it was once they read the terms on the site.

Using feedback directly from customers, information obtained via hidden fields and demographic data, companies can get a good sense of customer profiles and make deductions and inferences about why customers are leaving prior to purchase. As companies begin to learn about their customers and understand the reasons behind their actions, they can begin design plan of improvement. However, the only way the truth can come out is to get direct feedback from shoppers themselves. After all, the customer is always right.”

Survey Tools: Where Can I Find Them?

Big companies spend millions on consultants to help them better understand the marketplace. Now, small businesses can grab a piece of the action – and expand beyond the simple suggestion box – by designing their own online surveys. They can choose from a dozen or so low-cost Web-based offerings, with prices as low as $10 per monthly subscription.

Some of the more popular packages include the following:

• Prezza Technologies
• QuestionPro
• SurveyMethods
• SurveyMonkey
• WebSurveyor
• Zoomerang

Each company provides resources to help users design and distribute a survey, and some include tools to automatically generate charts and graphs to analyze the data.

HELPFUL TIPS FOR THE DAY:

1. There is no magic answer as to why people abandon their shopping cart before completing their purchase...maybe they had to walk the dog! BUT, you can learn from your customers through simple surveys.

2. Surveys are NOT intrusive, most people can't wait to give their opinion, especially in this day and age of the internet and bloggers..so use them!

3. There are cost effective tool based survey applications in the marketplace available to you that you can customize to tailor to your site....see above!

How to Calculate a Blog's Reach & Influence -- More Complex Than You Think

Guest Entry for www.eTaildTail.com enjoy! -- Ed

by Anne Holland, Content Director

http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30044

INote: after readint is, here's a link to Paul's blog so you can see it for yourself:
http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/paul/

Last week, Microsoft held their huge annual Worldwide Partner Conference. Despite hordes of official media reporters and partner press releases at the event, independent blogger Paul Mooney's postings dominated online search results for it.

In fact, he told me that he's one of more than 200 independent bloggers -- employed neither by the company nor by the media -- who routinely get high rankings and readership for news and views about Microsoft.

"How many readers do you have?" I asked. Turns out that was the *wrong* question. Paul said that if you're considering sponsoring an independent blogger, determining their reach requires at least six separate calculations:

#1. Traffic (don't trust it alone)

Media buyers usually ask, "How much traffic is there and how much is unique?" and leave it at that. Paul notes the problem with traffic stats for blogs is that so much may come from search engines and other sites linking to one particular posting.

So, a blogger who is otherwise unread may get insanely high traffic to a single posting that's not even likely to be a current one. And, given the meandering nature of many blogs, that posting may not even be about the key topic the blog generally focuses on.

If you look at monthly traffic figures, one particular posting that may have little to do with the main subject of the blog could be pulling in the lion's share of traffic. (Note: I've definitely seen plenty of evidence of this phenomenon elsewhere.)

#2. RSS feeds

In some markets, especially the high-tech field, RSS feeds may represent as much or more of the traffic of the blog than Web traffic does. However, as Paul noted to me, RSS feeds are a *much* bigger deal than this. Why?

Hundreds of thousands of sites -- ranging from automated splogs to high-profile online media -- use RSS feeds from good independent bloggers as part of their content. Paul noted that his own posting headlines often show up on places, such as O'Reilly media. That's pretty impressive reach.

#3. Inbound hotlinks

As with other media, traffic volume can be far less important than traffic quality. In the blog world, quality usually equates with influence. A blog read by a tiny group of people can have gargantuan influence if they are the right people.

For measurement's sake, you can often figure this out by tracking back hotlinks. Key: it's not just how many other bloggers hotlink to a blog, but how many blogs hotlink in turn to them. One single hotlink from an influential blog (someone with 50 or more incoming hotlinks of his/her own) is worth way more than 50 hotlinks from bloggers no one links to.

And don't forget hotlinks from key social networking sites. If a blog is highly linked to from Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. (or the current Holy Grail, Wikipedia) then that blog may be far more influential than it appears to be at first glance.

#4. Search position, part one

You can research a blog's search position in two ways -- first, does that blog appear for key terms related to your business or brand? Paul sometimes gets first page rankings for keyword related to Microsoft. This, in turn, means press, customers, investors, prospects, etc., all see his postings positioned in such a way that they appear to be highly influential and even somewhat "officially" sanctioned by the search engine itself.

(Remember, it's not just the click, it's the general visibility and what words are near your brand's official postings. If, heaven forbid, a blog post dissing your brand appears on page one of search results for your brand, your CEO will not be happy.)

#5. Search position, part two

Separately, also review a bloggers' general search ranking under keywords associated with his or her own "brand," such as their personal name, their blog's name, their tagline, etc. This tells you how much search engines notice them in general -- so if they were to post about you, how much attention such a posting might get.

For example, as Paul pointed out, if you search for him by first name alone, his blog is more than likely to show up in the first two pages of listings … despite the millions of competing Pauls (including McCartney and the Apostle.)

#6. Voice

Last, as with any other media, read the blog to discover if the brand voice feels influential, sounds like they know what they are talking about, feels even-handed and trustworthy. If you're considering a media buy (even via Google AdWords), you may not want your message appearing on an angry rant site or even on one filled with irreverent humor.

That said, a media buy on a blog that doesn't always spout your company line can be a benefit. You can appear to be strong, considerate, above-the-fray, even concerned about the "little guy's concerns." You're not limiting your ads to yes-men only. That's advertorial, and few people trust it wholeheartedly.

It's just that you want to allay your brand with the type of voice that you feel your audience (investors, press, customers, etc.) would respect.

Plus, has your company sponsored, influenced or worked a partnership of some sort with an independent blogger? Let me know if you have some lessons learned (especially how to measure results more accurately) so I can share them with MarketingSherpa readers. Click on the comments link below -- thanks.

In the meantime, here's a link to Paul's blog so you can see it for yourself:
http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/paul/

eBay Eyes Social Networking with “eBay To Go”

Here is an announcement that may help eBay Stores, ProStores Web Stores, and others who sell on eBay. 

We have heard a lot about what ebay will do next to help boost sales for their sellers and I think this is a good step in that direction. -- Ed

"CEO Meg Whitman admitted this week that eBay Inc. hasn’t kept up with changes in e-commerce and plans a big push into social networking with “eBay To Go”–a service that lets registered users place eBay.com content in online social networks and blogs.

“EBay To Go is exactly the kind of product we think demonstrates the innovation we’re putting against our goals of reengaging our users and making the auction experience fun,” Whitman said in a conference call with analysts this week. With large numbers of consumers using social networking sites and blogs, she added, eBay wants to make it easy for them to take content from eBay, including product listings and other material, and place it on MySpace.com, personal blogs and other sites to generate more traffic back to eBay.com.

EBay is beginning to test eBay To Go, which users can try out at ToGo.eBay.com. Within about two minutes, eBay To Go users can create a widget with Flash technology to drop content into other web sites, a spokesman says.

Whitman says eBay To Go will coincide with other improvements to eBay.com this year intended to make the site easier for users to shop and add their own content. “We’ll see more changes over the next several months than have taken place over the last several years,” Whitman said in the conference call. "

eTaildTail.com Thanks You All!

Just a quick note from the www.eTaildTail.com community to thank all of you for coming to this site and participating on a weekly basis. 

We have reached over 10,000 page views after launching two months ago. 

May I encourage all online merchants to come weekly to eTaildTail.com for helpful information, insights, and to have your questions answered to help your business grow.

Just click on the eTaildTail Tattle section -- click away and feel free to ask a question -- it will be answered in less than 24 hours.

Have a wonderful weekend and happy reading -- Ed

PS Special thanks to the www.MerchantAdvantage.com technical team who have provided valuable technical insights into online comparison shopping engines over the past few months.

Armies of Bots Raise Click Fraud Rates

Once again, a much better person than me provides valuable information on click-fraud and how to combat it.  I love to turn to the experts!  I hope the commentary helps you -- Ed

Traffic from botnets doubled from Q1 to Q2 of this year, according to a new data from Click Forensics’ Click Fraud Network. At the same time click fraud has risen. Coincidence?

by Helen Leggatt

Please click the link below for information on Helen Leggatt, the expert, and to contact her.

http://www.bizreport.com/authors/helen_leggatt.html

"Botnets, or ‘zombie armies’, refers to a group of computers that, although their owners are unaware of it, have been set up to forward data transmissions, including spam and viruses, to other computers on the Internet. In the U.S. alone, the FBI has identified around 1 million such computers.

Traffic from botnets increased slightly from 14.1 percent in Q2 2006, to 14.8 percent in Q1 2007. However, between Q1 and Q2 of 2007 it jumped to 15.8 percent.

In addition, Click Forensics found that click fraud on content publishing networks has also risen from 21.9 percent in Q1 2007, to 25.6 percent in Q2. They conclude that botnets are driving up click fraud.

Click fraud costs advertisers money. Advertisers have long complained that they are being unfairly refunded for fraudulent clicks. Both Google and Yahoo keep relatively schtum about their click fraud data but both insist their records shows click fraud rates to be well below Click Forensics’ findings. Instead of the 25 percent that Click Forensics' calculates, the search engines report rates of around 10 percent (Google) and between 12 and 15 percent (Yahoo).

Recent Google upgrades have made it easier for advertisers to manage their sites and better avoid click fraud hotspots such as ‘made for advertising’ websites."

Online Shopping Trend Levels Off For Some Products

Internet Sales Expected To Reach $116 Billion In 2007

For full story please see: http://www.nbc4.com/news/13714218/detail.html

WASHINGTON -- "In just a decade online shopping has gone from non-existent to a multibillion-dollar industry. Internet sales are expected to reach $116 billion this year.

Joan Broughton of Shop.org, a trade Web site for retailers who are selling online, said that's a projection retailers never would have believed 10 years ago

"It's been fun to watch, and it's sort of interesting to see how quickly it's become second nature to a lot of people," she said.

But not everything is flying off the shelves at the rate it once did.

Sales are slowing for some once-hot items.

In 2006, book sales were up 40 percent. This year they're projected to increase by just 11 percent.

Pet supplies were up a whopping 81 percent last year; this year's increase is estimated to be 31 percent.

"I think it's just a question of product," said Broughton. " Computers did well early. Books did really well early. Now that's leveling off because it's just maturing as a channel. It's not decreasing, it's just not increasing like it was."

Traditional retailers are stepping up their efforts to snag and keep online shoppers by including consumer reviews, streamlining the check out process and instituting liberal return policies.

Georgene Savickas is among the millions who turn to the web for just about anything their hearts desire.

Savickas said she can't imagine why anyone bothers to drive to the mall, fight for parking or deal with crowds."

How Long Copy & a Clean Landing Page Got 12.5% Opt-ins in Less Than a Month

Sometimes, okay often times, there are articles and commentary in the marketplace that should just be heard directly from the source and the real experts, this is one of those times! -- Ed

Case Study #CS773: From Marketing Sherpa

How Long Copy & a Clean Landing Page Got 12.5% Opt-ins in Less Than a Month

SUMMARY:

If you think all email marketing copy needs to be short and to the point, you’re wrong. A long opt-in letter with a strong voice and a compelling message may be just as effective.

See how one publisher signed up subscribers by the tens of thousands for their latest newsletter with a 945-word offer letter, a clean landing page and an easy-to-spot sign-up form. They are also quite happy with the conversions they're getting for paid products.

CHALLENGE:

The Internet has created an explosion of information options for consumers wanting to learn about travel destinations, and free newsletters are a dime a dozen. To attract attention (let alone sign up subscribers), you really need to hone in on what differentiates you from the rest.

Still, getting fresh subscribers is a necessity for International Living, which features 12 free email newsletters and a flagship print magazine. The newsletters are among their biggest customer acquisition drivers, which lead to magazine subscriptions and sales in their online bookstore where they specialize on how-to-move-to-a-country guides.

To launch their latest newsletter, The Untourist, Marketing Director Matt Broad wanted an opt-in piece that showcased what the newsletter would bring and what content it would feature. “It had to attract the people who would want to learn about the nitty-gritty local flavors of places like Nicaragua, Croatia and Thailand. The effort had to emphasize the uniqueness that the brand we envisioned would bring.”
Broad wondered whether their opt-in email and landing page could keep the same stylish (and long!) tone that the newsletter would contain.

CAMPAIGN:

First, Broad tapped a veteran International Living travel writer to be the newsletter’s editor and take up an alias (Georgina Adams) to ensure that she didn’t get preferential treatment from hoteliers and restaurateurs.

To launch the newsletter, here are the five steps they followed:

-> Step #1. Focus offer letter on value proposition

In terms of the offer letter, Broad had Georgina craft a prosy, 945-word piece titled “The Woman Who Can’t be Bribed” to establish the newsletter’s devotion to authentic reporting in the travel-writing world. The copy was meant to position the newsletter as an objective information source.

“We wanted a strong voice that got both the point across and reached out to our audience by speaking their language,” Broad says. Here is an excerpt from the email:

“They assume that like many other writers, I can be bought with ‘special favors.’ Free hotel stays. Free meals. Free everything. ... Only today, I got an email from the general manager of a group of eco-hotels in India. He wanted to draw my attention to two new hotels added to the group ... and invite me to stay in one or both for free on my next trip to India. You may think I'm crazy to pass up such opportunities, and maybe I am. But I hate the travel industry's conspiracy to delude readers that everywhere in the world is perfect ... worth seeing ... worth spending your hard-earned dollars on.”

To let readers immediately begin identifying with Georgina Adams, Broad used a silhouetted picture of a woman writing at a desk with the window shades drawn and the tagline "Georgina Adams" underneath.

-> Step #2. Consistent subject line

Because the title of the offer letter, “The Woman Who Can’t be Bribed,” was only 29 characters long, they used it for the subject line, too, to establish a level of consistency between the marketing pitch and the prose. They generally limit their subject lines to under 35 characters (a superb best practice).

-> Step #3. Emphasize sign-up link

Within the copy, Broad and his team highlighted the paragraph with the sign-up link in yellow to offset its importance from the rest of the letter. Since International Living built their online brand with a heavy offline sensitivity, the effect was meant to combine a familiar aspect of old-world print reading (a yellow highlighter) with the modern convenience of email.

“We wanted the link to jump out. We had seen it perform in other types of our offers in the past, so we thought it should work well in this long-form occasion.”

-> Step #4. Similar look for landing page

The highlighted link took users to a cleanly designed landing page with sign-up boxes to the right and at the bottom. They used a slightly larger image of the silhouetted woman in the upper margin of the layout.

Then, Broad and his team tweaked the copy on the landing page, incorporating the headline “The Woman Who Can’t be Bribed” into the page header. However, instead of repeating the offer letter word for word, they condensed the text to 383 words -- 40% the length of the original letter, although the tone stayed the same.

“The idea of a landing page is to get their email address, so we didn’t want to delay it -- but be direct and to the point,” Broad says.

-> Step #5. Leverage the Thank You page

Users who entered their email address into the subscribe box were immediately taken to a Thank You page that listed a sign-up form for a dozen other International Living newsletters. Additionally, in the thank you/confirmation email, Broad cross-promoted the site, other newsletters, online bookstore, blog, etc.

“My philosophy is ‘no dead-ends.' No matter what we send a reader, it’s another opportunity to [offer] something.”

RESULTS:

The long-form copy combined with the clean landing page sent The Untourist shooting out of the gate and then some. The email blast received a 12.5% conversion rate, three times the number of opt-in names that Broad expected.

“Of course, we are really excited about what we’ve seen so far, and it continues to grow daily,” he says. “To be able to really build on the [launch] in a big way confirms that our instincts were right in launching this sort of newsletter. The opt-in letter was a huge reason why.”

The subject line and highlighted signup link also aided the opt-in rate, while open and clickthrough rates were “at least double digits” higher compared to the norm.

Although he couldn't go into specifics, Broad is very happy with the results the confirmation email and thank-you page have had on extra sales at the site bookstore or incremental subscription growth. "We want to do more cross-promotions.”

Inexpensive Site Search Tool for Small to Mid-Sized Online Merchants! A Great Product? Looks Like It is A Winner!

"New Google fee-based service, Custom Search Business Edition, lets users build search pages for their own Web sites!" -- PC Commerce

I am excited for small to mid-sized online merchants by this announcement of the Google Custom Search™ Business Edition.  There are wonderful companies that do sophisticated on site search, such as www.SLISystems.com, but now many, many small businesses can experiment at a price they can afford.

This tool can be used by any online website, but we will limit comments for the www.eTaildTail.com community to how it helps small to mid-sizd online merchants who want more sales and branding.

For the possible naysayer out there: Yes, it is Google that is launching this product. Yes, they are a billion dollar company that seems to be controlling most aspects of our online life. Yes, they are leveraging their existing technology. Yes, they are introducing news ways to get their adwords campaigns used more to make even more money, but so what…this new product is useful and might really help online merchants retain more customers and sell more product. 

The best part of about this new product is that the onsite search product is very affordable to try. And if it does not work for you then stop using it. How easy is that? 

Here is an overview for you and how you can implement this onsite tool right away.

What Is This Onsite Search Service All About?

Custom Search Business Edition is a feed-based service that visitors to your online storefront can use to search within that web site, on a customized search page, for relevant products.

Google has a version of this product, that was introduced last October and is FREE, but ad-supported. A key difference with the paid edition is that businesses can customize the search page with their own logo and color scheme. They can also modify results by manipulating an XML (Extensible Markup Language) feed of the raw search results, to guide visitors toward products the company wants to sell.

Custom Search Business Edition uses the same index Google uses to deliver its other search results, and Google's own servers are used for searches. To set up the service, customers follow a set-up wizard and copy a small amount of code to their Web site. They get access to a reporting graph with daily and monthly views of how many times people used the search engine and what search terms they used.

Google markets the product this way: “In three simple steps, businesses can sign up online for the hosted service, and in less than 10 minutes customers and visitors are able to search their site using the power of Google's search technology, for more relevant results.”

What Will It Cost Me?

Small to Mid-Sized Online Merchants: The service is priced at $100 per year for Web sites with up to 500 pages, and $500 for up to 50,000 pages.

Larger Online Merchants: Google also sells the Google Search Appliance, starting at $30,000 for 500,000 documents, which indexes material in file servers, content management systems, databases and other sources. It also offers the Mini Search Appliance starting at $1,995 for 50,000 documents.

How Do I Start?

To set up the Custom Search Business Edition, businesses simply:
1. Identify the site(s) to search, and select either all or selective searching of content
2. Add the search box and customize the appearance by adding logo and matching the site's look and feel
3. Further customize search results with refinements that reflect site content (such as sectional groupings)

What Are The Benefits of On Site Search?

With the Custom Search Business Edition, small businesses get:

• Site search hosted by Google, eliminating the need to install and maintain their own technology
• Power and reliability of Google's infrastructure
• Relevant results and sub-second query response times characteristic of Google.com
• Ability to easily set up, purchase, and manage results online
• Full customization of search results available through an XML API
• Reporting features that give insight into visitor behaviors
• Options for email and phone support available through the Google Enterprise group
• Choice about whether to include ads or not

What If I Need More Help Setting Up and Using This New Service?

For more information about Custom Search Business Edition and other enterprise search products, visit http://google.com/enterprise/csbe Google is pretty good at supporting their products!

Helpful Hints for the Day:

1. This quotation below sums it up pretty nicely and no I don’t own any Google stock!

"Millions of businesses have a web presence but offer users no ability to search their site," said Dave Girouard, vice president and general manager, Google Enterprise. "While many of these businesses invest in search advertising and search engine optimization to help customers find their business, customers are left on their own to navigate content once they land on a site. As Google continues to make search technology more accessible to businesses of all sizes -- first with our appliances and now with hosted search services -- we are reducing the hurdles of cost, complexity and time so that small businesses can help customers find what they need every step of the way."

2. Remember that site search can help retain customers and lead to more sales.

3. If you don’t like the product, the risk/cost to you is $100-$500 for 1 year to experiment with an online site search tool that might really help make your site more user friendly and lead to more sales and better customer interaction. 

4. This is a no brainer, if you have some time to spare to implement it.  My suggestion: "Make the time."

The “Bad” and the “GOOD” of Negative Reviews

So you use reviews on your site and all of them might not be what you expected or wanted.

Your first reaction to negative reviews, that are not complimentary of your site, products, or service are to remove them. 

DON’T!

Reviews are ways to interact with your customers, learn about your business, improve on business practices and actually, yes, bring back that customer that might have written a bad review.

Of course, good reviews are wonderful to show you what you are doing right, so look at bad site reviews as a wonderful opportunity to improve on what you are not doing so well.  There is no better way to immediately know how to improve your business than hearing straight from the proverbial horse’s mouth.

There are many reports out in the marketplace that report that about 80% of reviews are positive.
The surveys come as many brands are joining Amazon.com and review sites such as epinions.com, PowerReviews.com, Yelp.com, Tripadvisor.com and Consumersearch.com in offering reviews on their web sites. Lots of companies use reviews and here is why:

Consumers appreciate reviews because whether right or wrong, consumers tend to trust other consumers, more than they trust the advertised message.

So what do you do as an online retailer?

HELPFUL TIPS FOR THE DAY:

1. Embrace the trend of using reviews.  They are here to stay, more companies are using them to engage customers and customers like them, use the, and trust them.

2. Don’t be defensive and respond to a “negative” review with a negative response.  Get over your ego and learn from a review and respond to the “negative review” with candor and respect.

3. Learn from your negative and positive reviews.  This is like getting a free focus group to interact with you on a daily basis and allows you to respond to what you may doing badly and embrace what you are doing well.

4. Yes, some negative reviews are written by disgruntled ex employees, customers with an illegitimate beef, and yes, your competition. (Haven’t you heard the latest of the CEO of Whole Foods secretly ranting against his competition Wild Oats for years on blogs and such?).  Take the good with the bad and sometimes negative reviews gives your loyal audience the opportunity to come to your rescue by commenting back that they are wrong!  And a customer talking to another customer about how wonderful you really are is nothing but great marketing.

And They Keep Coming…Might as Well Try Them = More Shopping Destination Sites

Well, so much has been written about the demise of shopping destination sites (comparison shopping engines, marketplaces, and other places to find and buy products) but then, we have new shopping destination sites popping up each week.  What gives?  www.eTaildTail.com is as confused as you are about all of this -- so send in your comments to tip@eTaildTail.com if you want!

I don’t know whether to believe the “industry experts” writing about the slow down in over all growth of online shopping each year or whether to just keep my mouth shut.  From my point of view, thinking as an online merchant, I don’t really care how many new online sites come online as their proliferation at least gives me an opportunity to list my products and have increased exposure/relevancy across search engine searches. And with the kids using phones to do everything under the sun and the growth of mobile commerce is it really all that doom and gloom?

And the good news about any of these new and “older” shopping destination sites is that if they are not working for you – stop using them and try another one.

So I am here to report on a few new ones that have come to my attention this week.  They are:

CozyBug.com: an online marketplace offering consumers and businesses an easier, safer way to buy and sell locally with zero shipping fees.  CozyBug.com is a niche site focused on low-cost classified advertising and is ideal for sellers with items that are too large to ship, or for shoppers that prefer to examine and item in-person and online. 

The site is cool as it focuses on flea market items, garage sale type of stuff, furniture and appliances, and vehicles.    This site has the feel if a CraigsList meets eBay – you can create your own landing pages and actually build maps for folks to get to your products in person.  Check out the pricing for all of these services on their site.

i-Shop.com: well now we have another discount online shopping mall. They seem to be focusing on getting products right from the manufacturer to the consumer and their inventory is huge.  They are new to the marketplace and are marketing themselves as a small company that is helping small to medium sized businesses have a stronger online web presence.

Also don't forget www.PDQDeals.com, www.PriceForSure.com, www.SortPrice.com, and www.TheFind.com, which I wrote about a few weeks ago. For information on them go to the menu on the left hand side of this page and click in Comparison Shopping Engines.

I am unsure how they do this when they also say that they specialize in getting products direct from the manufacturer at “deep discounts.”  I have a call into them and will let you know what they say.  In the meantime, it may be worth to check them out as they are trying to help online businesses gain more exposure and if you are already feeding to a few shopping destination sites as Become.com, Smarter.com, PriceRunner.com, Yahoo! Shopping, Shopzilla.com, PriceGrabber.com etc….hey why not check them out, they may help increase sales and that ever so important SEO ranking.

By the way, if you are ever having issues feeding your data to any of these marketing channels, www.MerchantAdvantage.com launched a “Lite” version of their Channel Management with Chanalytics a few weeks ago at eBay Live 2007. The product is preconfigured to 25 online shopping destination sites out of the box and you can use it to feed and analyze your feeds to over 100 other shopping destination sites with a click of a button.

HELPFUL TIPS FOR THE DAY:

1. New shopping marketing/detination sites are popping up in the marketplace weekly and they might be good places to experiment with getting new sales leads, sales, and increasing brand awareness.

2. There are lots of sites to feed your product catalog to -- why not try them all? Or at least some of them? There are tools in the marketplace that help you do this easily and then analyze how your market feeds are performing so you leverage these many marketing channels.

3. Be sure, at the very least, to send your marketing catalog datalog data to Google Product Base, MSN, and theFind.com, as they are free. 

Check Archives of Posts For Information! Click on Category of Interest!

Just a reminder to all readers of www.eTaildTail.com to check the archives of posts for relevant ideas, stories, and advice that might help you with your online business.

Also, please feel free to email me your ideas, concerns, issues to tip@etaildtail.com anytime, we would be glad to help.

Another way for you all to find information that might help you is to click on the categories on the left hand side and then associated commentary will come up related to that area of concern.

Please also know that you can receive a FREE eTaildtail.com monthly newsletter to help you with your online channel marketing efforts.  Just enter your email address at www.MerchantAdvantage.com under newsletter.

Prepare for Back To School/College Online Shopping Surge: Do's and Don't

Okay -- once again eTaildTail.com found someone who speaks to the end of summer online selling surge, and the ups and dowsn for retailers, in a very articulate way, so I wanted to share it with all of you as soon as possible. 

My advice: prepare now...if you haven't already...and if you have...read the below and tweak that online selling strategy a little bit to get the best results!!!  - Ed

"Retailers are preparing for the second biggest shopping event of the year -- "Back to School/College" -- according to Datavantage/CommercialWare, a leading provider of technology solutions for the specialty and general merchandise retail industry.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) ranks "Back to School/College" as the second largest shopping season of the year (after the winter holidays) with an estimated $54.2 billion spent in 2006, heavily focused on electronics and apparel.

As with the winter holidays the convergence of all shopping channels will play a crucial role in the way consumers interact with retail brands, with online shopping in particular creating and influencing more consumer demands. With an expectation of 24x7x365 access to pricing, availability and selections -- instant gratification is a top priority.

Consumers expect seamless customer service whether purchasing, exchanging or returning merchandise online, in store, by mail, call center or kiosk. Today's savvy shopper expects that merchandise is available when and where they want to acquire it and if not that a retailer should immediately be able to tell them if it's on hand in the warehouse or at another store, and offer them options to hold items or have merchandise shipped directly to them.

Bottom line: lack of a seamless experience across all channels results in frustration for consumers who expect retailers to have transparent operations. With the rapid rise of bloggers and web sites where consumers post reviews and opinions, a negative interaction with a major retailer or brand can quickly become a liability.

"To meet the demands of today's shopper, companies must offer superior service across all channels. A poor experience in one means a lost customer in all," said Jane Cannon, Chief Operating Officer, Datavantage/CommercialWare. "Retailers who recognize this and deliver a top notch shopping experience in every aspect of its business will be the most successful."

How can retailers help give consumers a happy shopping season? Consistent Experience

The customer experience needs to be superior -- and the same -- whether via web, in-store, catalog, call center or kiosk. Shoppers expect that their favorite retailers "have their acts together" when it comes to purchases, pick ups, returns and exchanges. Whether buying a gift card online then using it in a store or ordering from the catalog, but returning to the store, consumers expect to be able to interact with retailers whenever and wherever it's most convenient for them.

Purchase Recommendations

Only half of consumers who shop online know what they want to purchase and have not yet settled on a brand, make or model. This presents a huge opportunity for retailers to help make buying decisions. With immediate access to loyalty programs and customer history, retailers can make online shopping consumer friendly and interactive. Current orders can automatically apply loyalty program qualification or allow customer service associates to suggest additional items for cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.

Safeguard Personal Information

With fines reaching $100,000 per month for non-compliance of credit card security measures and best practices, consumers do not want to hear that their retailer is being fined because their personal data has been compromised. Consumers expect retailers to safe guard their personal data when transacting with a merchant whether at the point of sale, over the Internet, on the phone or sending information through the mail."

If you would like to learn more about this area please contact the folks below...they wrote the article and are the exeperts! -- Ed

CONTACT: Jan Jahosky of KMC Partners for Datavantage/CommercialWare,
+1-407-331-4699, jan@kmcpartners.com
Web site: http://www.datavantagecorp.com/
http://www.commercialware.com/

Sharing a Thought We All Might Keep In Mind

Good day everyone!  Thank you all for coming to this blog to learn, contribute, and be a part of the growing eTaildTail family. 

While most of us are focused on growing our sales and making our business profitable, to support our life, children, friends, and extended families, I just wanted to share with you a thought that I shared this morning at a conference here in Miami.

Maybe this thought will put into perspective why I believe this blog is important and maybe it will help when managing your own business, employees and business relaionships.

Knowing what is right is reserved for those who only see their way as the way, and those are the people we should fear. Pursuing what is right in conjunction with the efforts and spirit of others is perfect.

-- Ed

Getting a Handle on Customer Reviews

Well I was going to write a piece in regard to the pros and cons of site reviews, as many folks have emailed me about them, but lo and behold I found a piece by John Voight at Adweek last week who covers the topic much better than I ever could, so here is the piece and link to the full article. -- Ed

July 05, 2007

By Joan Voight, Adweek (link to full article here, Joan Voight)

SAN FRANCISCO -- These days, what the customer thinks is hardly a secret. Consumer reviews and ratings are popping up on a growing number of Web sites, sites on which users treat brands like contestants on American Idol. Products are routinely rated on review-heavy e-commerce destinations such as Amazon.com, as well as on those that exist entirely for customer reviews and ratings, including yelp.com (restaurants), TripAdvisor (travel) and ConsumerSearch.com (which covers 250 product categories). Now, some brands are offering such reviews on their own sites as well.

The risk is obvious: unruly customers badmouthing products with a brand's blessing. But if giving the public the power to pan a profitable gizmo might seem like a bad idea, some online marketing experts say not giving today's empowered consumers the chance to speak their minds could be an even worse one. And with people interested in what their peers have to say, these experts add, brands may have no choice but to open up the reviewer floodgates.

At the moment, mostly apparel and electronics companies—industries that traditionally use catalogs—are the first to offer them. In May, Toshiba joined Dell and Hewlett-Packard in offering reviews on its e-commerce site "to enhance the buying experience," according to Jeff Barney, marketing vp for Toshiba Digital Products. Levi's e-commerce site will be offering customer ratings and reviews by the end of 2007, following in the shoes of niche players Fair Indigo apparel and Eastern Mountain Sports. Petco was one of the earliest mainstream retailers to present the opinions of its base—passionate pet owners.

A Person Like Me

Research suggests that avid shoppers are turning to everyday people for product advice. The 2007 Edelman Trust Barometer, which surveys nearly 2,000 opinion leaders in 11 countries, indicated that for the second year in a row just over half the people in the U.S. said they trusted their peers or "a person like me" for information about a company or product more than they trusted experts such as doctors and academics. In 2003, only a fifth of the respondents picked their peers as their most-trusted source.

David Brain, CEO of Edelman, says that companies need to move away from relying on "top-down communications delivered to an elite audience and move to peer-to-peer dialogue"

This interest in peer opinions has an immediate impact on sales and brand loyalty, according to other studies. Data from the Top 40 Online Retail from ForeSee Results and the University of Michigan showed that among holiday shoppers in 2006, online product reviews increased customer loyalty and provided a competitive advantage for sites that offer them. The January 2007 index showed that of shoppers who bought from sites with reviews, 40% said the reviews were the main reason they made the purchase. That group of product review users was also 21% more satisfied with its purchases than other buyers and was 18% more likely than other buyers to buy from that site the next time it needed similar products.

In the 2007 annual e-commerce study by Marketing Sherpa, published in May, 58% of respondents said they "strongly" prefer sites that have customer reviews.

Marketers see clear-cut results that match the research findings. "Adding customer ratings increased our sales and decreased our costs," says John Lazarchic, Petco vp of e-commerce. The Petco Web site sells the Petco private-label Pet Gold as well as other brands, and launched customer reviews and ratings of all its products in October 2005. The site gets about 200-500 reviews per week, and the company has discovered that when people review products on the site, says Lazarchic, it entices other customers to try that product.

"People seem to think, 'I want what everyone else wants,'" he says. Users commonly sort through products by rating, he adds, even more than by category or price. And people who seek out the top-rated products buy more, spend more time shopping and end up returning fewer products, according to Lazarchic. "The savings in returns alone pays for all the technology involved in the review and ratings features," he says.

Reviews can also build camaraderie and community. "We're introducing the notion of fair-trade clothing to the apparel market, and ratings and reviews are extremely important to building our community," says Fair Indigo CEO Bill Bass, who formerly led online divisions at Lands' End and Sears. "Our shoppers educate each other through our reviews."

There also seems to be a tech advantage to customer reviews, according to analysts; they can boost a site's ratings on search sites, since the words that search engines scan for can appear in content of the reviews.

Negatives a Positive

And while it's believed that negative online reviews can harm a product, this appears to be an urban myth. Sam Decker, vp of marketing at Bazaarvoice, which helps marketers set up online customer reviews, says negative reviews are valuable in establishing authenticity and helping customers find what they want, often resulting in less returns. "Consumers are looking for what could be wrong with a product," he says. "If they can't find it on your site, they're going to find it elsewhere."

Negative reviews also help customers affirm they've vetted all concerns before making a decision. As long as the reviews are not overwhelmingly negative, they can help customers pass through purchase paralysis, Decker notes. Regardless, he adds, positive reviews seem to outweigh the negatives: Across all of Bazaarvoice clients, four- and five-star reviews outnumber one- and two-star ratings seven to one, he says. Petco and Fair Indigo executives say they see similar results.

Petco's Lazarchic also says it helps to look at the big picture, noting that one- to three-star ratings hurt the sales of products, but often prompt shoppers to buy higher-rated, more expensive merchandise from the site. Any negative reviews also can provide valuable feedback. For instance, critical comments about Petco's private-label products are shared with the staff. Three or four bad reviews are enough to instigate changes in the product, he says.

Fair Indigo's Bass adds that negative reviews are essential. "If all reviews are good, customers question if the ratings are legitimate," he says. "Not only will people ignore the reviews, but it will hurt their trust in the brand. It would be better to have no reviews at all."

At EMS, customer-service staffers read the reviews and respond directly to those who write negative ones. "The critical reviews help us understand how our products could perform better," and the design group sometimes makes adjustments based on the reviews, says chief marketing officer Scott Barrett.

The risk is not with negative reviews, say those brands offering customer reviews online, but with too few. When customers know a brand is offering reviews and no one is responding, it looks like it has few customers and those they have don't care, say marketers. Petco had that problem. At first the company offered a small link that users could click to write a review, says Lazarchic, but the silence was deafening. So the marketer offered anyone who wrote a review in the first month a chance to participate in a drawing to win $100, put promotional banners on its site and where there were no ratings, showed the outline of paws (used on the site instead of stars; rated products show blue paws.) In two weeks 1,000 products were rated with four or five reviews each, for a total of about 4,500 reviews, he says.

Like Petco, EMS owns stores and sells private-label products as well as other brands on its Web site. It started customer reviews a year ago and had 8,000 reviews by the end of May, with about 1,000 new reviews coming in each month—a healthy response rate.

EMS and Fair Indigo drum up reviews by sending e-mail to customers 21-30 days after the product shipped, asking about the product and encouraging people to write reviews. In short, in order to start and sustain reviews, marketers often have to reach out to customers and offer encouragement.

Handle With Care

Marketers, pleased with customer reviews' impact on sales, are experimenting with using them as marketing tools in the offline world. Decker at Bazaarvoice says ratings and reviews "can be used in print catalogs, offline ads and in point-of-purchase displays. (<<<continued)

Click here to read rest of article, Joan Voight

“Conquesting”: Online Advertising Pirating? Or Just Smart Marketing?

Welcome back and happy post 4th of July Week!

Well I have seen it all! “Smart” advertising companies as Omnicom Group, Inc, one of the largest digital advertising agencies in the world, have figured out a method to get ads placed next to their competitors when a consumer does a site search for a similar product.  I actually am of two minds when I read about this practice in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago.

One side of me loves the idea, as it gives the consumer “choice/alternative” when looking for a product, and that is good. The other side of me says: “This is just pirating the hard efforts of a company who has spent time and money to get their product and brand in front of a consumer, ” and that is just riding the coattails of another person’s hard work.

The practice of “conquesting” is not new, it actually started with the automobile industry.  Here is how it works.  A consumer does a site search for a 325 Class BMW through a search engine, or other shopping portal for cars as www.Edmunds.com.  Mercedes then takes out a add for their C Class line of cars and bids on associated key words and advertising language, once thought to be only available to the company taking out the original add, to ensure that when a consumer does a search for the 325 BMW series an add for the Mercedes C Class pops up next to the BMW ad.  Some landing sites supporting this type of advertising even allow competitor’s to bid on rival companies’ trademarked search items, according to the Wall Street Journal, which increases the odds that a “conquestor’s” ad appears right next to the rival’s ad.  I am unsure if this latter part of using trademarked search items to “conquest” will hold up in court, but buying associated key word certainly should.

What is new is that the “conquesting” practice is now spreading to other types of products as jewelry, clothing, and electronics.  So the question is whether this is all good for internet sales? Well this is the internet, and I guess the side of me that wins out, always, is the free flow of information from which the consumer can choose.

Does “Conquesting” Work?

By “conquesting”, the pirating marketer has to balance the risk of the consumer seeing through this methodology and getting upset with the pirating marketer with offering the consumer choice.  We will see who wins out, as the statistics are not yet in on how the consumer is responding to this new online marketing tactic, but, if we have learned anything about online marketing and advertising, the consumer does like choice. It just may need to be tweaked a bit to ensure that the consumer is receiving a benefit rather than being manipulated. If marketers achieve this, my hunch is that “conquesting” is here to stay.

HELPFUL TIPS FOR THE DAY:

1. "Conquesting" is an advertsing practice which places your ad next to a rivals similar product when a consumer does a search for a rivals product.

2. "Conquesting" is here to stay but be careful that balance the risk of the consumer catching on to your new advertising methods, the execution therein, and getting upset with this method as "cheap" way of pirating the marketing efforts of another company.

3. If done correctly, "conquesting" can be very effective and this is the internet -- let the information flow!