Improve Results and Increase Sales and ROI in Comparison Shopping Engines

Hello eTaildTail community.  First of all thank you all for your emails and questions. I hope that I have been able to answer some of your questions in a manner that helps you better utilize comparison shopping engines and other marketing shopping destinations. 

Going into the weekend, I thought I would leave you with 5 tips to improve performance, and ROI, when using these marketing channels.

1. There are over 150 shopping destination channels that I know of which you can use to market your storefront.  Some are large, general, and well known channels, as Amazon.com, eBay, Shopping.com, Shopzilla, Shop.com, Pront.com, and PriceGrabber while others are smaller, general players, such as SortPrice.com, Become.com, myCoupons.com, Smarter.com, and PriceForSure.com and others are niche sites as Healthpricer.com, BobVila.com, HGTV.com, Cooking.com, GolfPricer.com, GourmetFoodMall.com, ToolCrib.com and many others. 

They all can lead to sales and many of them can work for you but you need to test which channels work best for your product catalog and manage each channel as you would separate marketing campaigns.  I recommend testing several channels and, after 3-6 months, compare each channel against the other and then only work with those that perform best for you. (Q: How? A: Use an analytic tool)

2. Improve the quality of each feed to each shopping channel by filling in all of the required fields that the shopping comparison engine requires. Then, update those fields weekely to ensure that these marketing feeds reflect the data that resides in your shopping cart technology.  This means cleaning up fields, especially where possible redundancy occurs, and defining new items accurately and thoroughly. In other words, make sure you map each shopping channel competely to the comparison shopping engines required taxonomy so that they can list your products accurately throughout their shopping comparison engine.

3. Make sure that the data feeds your are managing to each comaprison shopping engine, or shopping marketplace, reflect exactly the inventory and products that you are selling online. If you delete a product on your shopping cart, or run out of inventory, ensure you have a system in place that will "automatically" update these changes in the data feeds you are managing for each shopping channel. DON'T rely on doing it manually, as you will make mistakes and probably forget to make the "global" changes needed in each product catalog data feed file you are sending to multiple comparison shopping engines.

4. Manage each comparison shopping engine and marketplace differently.  They are unique channels that perform differently which requires that you create a separate data feed for each channel from which to market from on a weekly, if not daily basis.

5. Understand the economics of each comparison shopping engine and the options they offer to ensure that you manage to the highest ROI possible when using that channel.  Shop.com now givs the online merchant options to work on a commission or cost-per-click basis, JellyFish allows the merchants to set the "cash-back discount" they want to give a consumer for each product, SortPrice gives you a flat fee option per month, myCoupons.com gives you a flat "cost-per-redemption" model, theFind.com is free all around and now has introduced a CPC pricing model and Amazon.com is incredible but can charge large commissions for credited sales, so ensure that you are feeding products to them that are in line with the margins you can afford to give up.

Working with comparison shopping engines can be incredibly lucrative but you will need to do some work.  I think it is fun, especially when you see the sales roll in!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot:

Bonus Help: FEED IMMEDIATELY to 3 free comparison shopping engines: Google Shopping, theFind.com, and MSN LIve Search. You can only win and pay nothing, ever!

Have a great weekend.

-- Chip

Everest Software Worldwide Summit: New Orleans April 22-24, 2008

Well New Orleans is kicking up its heels and sporting a lot of conventions and summits as they relate to online retail the next few months.

I have been honored to be asked to speak at Everest Software's Worldwide Summit at the Marriot New Orleans, 555 Canal Street, New Orleans. 

I will be speaking about "Alternative Online Marketing Methods" for online reatilers and addressing how online merchants can and should be using comparison shopping engines, and other shopping, marketing channels, to increase cost-effectively sales and ROI. 

This speaking engagement will be a continuing conversation that I will be starting during a free webinar I am hosting (see blog entry below) with theFind.com and JellyFish.com April 10.

For more information reagrding Everest's conference <<<CLICK HERE>>>. It would be great to see you there!

While in New Orleans, I will also be stopping in at the Spring e-Commerce Summit, also in New Orleans, which I was invited to attend, being held the same week. That conference is a bit larger and is co-sponsored by one of our stratgeic partners at MerchantAdvantage, Infopia Software. 

If you want more information in regard to that conference please <<<CLICK HERE>>>. 

If you have any questions in regard to either conference, or have questions in regard to what conferences are coming up and what are the best ones to attend to helpp your business grow, please do not hesitate to email me at chip@eTaildTail.com and I will be glad to help as I can!

-- Chip

How Online Merchants Can Afford to Work with Comparison Shopping Engines: A Webinar and Education to Saving Time and Money

Okay, you ask and I "try" and listen.  A request came to me via email to eTaildTail yesterday simply stating:

"Chip, I know I want to work with comparison shopping engines, I think I can afford to work with some of them, and I think I have some time to devote to this form of online marketing, but I don't know if I have the technical skills to do it, can you help?"

I am going to try and answer this question, and address much more, in a webinar discussion with my friends over at theFind.com (a free CSE) and JellyFish.com (an easy and fun pay-per-transaction CSE). It is a free webinar and you will get some really great tips on how to increase your storefront's exposure and increase sales in a very short period of time.

Rob Ulveling, Senior Director of Business Development at theFind.com, Joe Schaeffer, MSN Product Specialist with JellyFish.com and I will cover:

• Leveraging Marketing Channels that List for Free
• New Online Marketing Opportunities:
  a. Case Study: Free Marketing by theFind.com
  b. Case Study: Intelligent Pay-Par-Transaction Marketing by JellyFish.com
• Feeding Your Product Catalog Today to Marketing Channels That Matter to You

<<<CLICK HERE>>> to sign up for the webinar on April 10 with MerchantAdvantage, theFind.com and Jellyfish.com. It is free and only 30 minutes. You can also call 800.550.9466 for more information about this event.

In this webinar we will arm you with the information you need to make smart marketing decisions in the online retail and mobile commerce world.

Don't miss the opportunity to attend this complimentary Webinar. I look forward to seeing you there!

-- Chip

Using Your Storefront Data For All Marketing Efforts

Many online merchants have sent me emails recently regarding confusion over what product catalog data they should be using when marketing to CSEs and other marketing channels, i.e. can they use the data directly as it exists within their shopping cart technology or do they need to create another file based off of this data? 

Since you will be marketing your product catalog differently to each marketing channel you are using, it is important that you have a separate file, as it relates to each channel, so you can establish unique business rules and marketing strategies per channel.....BUT....this does not mean that that file cannot be updated automatically from its original destination - it can and SHOULD BE!!!

I contend that many problems of keeping accurate and up to date data, that mirrors exactly what is on your storefront on a daily basis, will occur if an online merchant creates a separate marketing file "based off of orginal product catalog data" and then tries to update that file directly manually to keep it accurate. 

Why not simply have these unique files mirror your product catalog data on a daily basis automatically, while retaining the business rules you have established for each marketing channel?

Merchants were also frustrated over technical process "hitches/issues" involved when using this data to market their storefront using CSEs and were looking for advice as to the easiest process to work with their product catalog data correctly and, most importantly, without having to jump through a lot of technical hoops!

I wrote about much of this in 2007 and wanted to bring some of thoughts back to you today, as they still apply!.

Let's begin... :-)

Many online merchants do not have an effective data management system to market their most up to date product catalog through the various marketing channels. These channels include affiliate sites, comparison shopping engines, mobile commerce and other shopping destination sites available to them online.

Or, if they do have a "data management system" in place, this system relies on methods that often lead to marketing outdated products that are not consistent with the most up to date product catalog information residing within the shopping cart. The result is "outdated" product catalog data marketed into marketing channels which leads to a myriad of issues.

In either scenario, it is essential that:

A. The online merchant understand how critical it is to market data that is functionally the same as the data that is on their online storefront, and

B. That online merchants are provided a methodology and a process to ensure that the data they market is consistent with what appears on their online site.

In the following writings, I will try and answer these questions:

• Why using your storefront data should be the "initial" access point to use when marketing your online storefront, anywhere and anytime?
• What key elements of the data you use for marketing needs to be consistent with what you have on your online storefront "right now", and which should not be consistent (there are times for this too)? and
• How often does your marketing information need to be updated to maintain concurrency?
  Why Using Storefront Data Should Be The "Initial" Access Point For All Marketing Feeds

<<<CLICK HERE>>> to see the full piece I wrote --- I think it is pretty helpful and thorough, so check it out.

(Yes, it is free -- you don't have to enter any information to read it all, PROMISE!!!)

Happy Reading!

-- Chip

Online Merchant Must Attend Conference to Grow Your Business: Internet Retailer Comes to Chicago!

Many of you in the eTaildTail community have asked me:

"What are the best conferences to go to that are cost-effective in relation to what you can learn and who you can meet to grow your online business and your business using m-commerce (mobile devices)?" 

There are many conferences out there and I have found that Internet Retailer has done the best job to date bringing the most vendors, online retailers (and you are treated really well and have many opportunities to speak to other online retailers privately without vendors), and speakers of all types together. 

It is in Chicago this year and I will be there.  I also at eBay Live! the following two weeks, which is also an excellent conference, but with a focus on eBay.

If you want to meet just stop by the MerchantAdvantage booth and I would be glad to catch up. 

You should consider making this trip, I believe it is worth the investment, and you will get a lot of information and meet plenty of people!

-- Chip

<<<CLICK HERE>>> to find out more details about the Internet Retailer Conference

<<<CLICK HERE>>> to register for the Internet Retailer Conference

Summary from Internet Retailer: Only 12 Days Left for IRCE 2008 Early Bird Discounts

"With 126 speakers—all leaders in online retailing—and 75 sessions covering every vital e-retailing topic, the Internet Retailer 2008 Conference & Exhibition at Chicago’s brand new McCormick Place West on June 9-12 is a remarkable value even at its standard registration rates. But for the next 12 days—and the next 12 days only—the IRCE 2008 early bird rates are still in effect—providing savings of $100 on each conference registration. And by registering three or more employees of the same company, all registrants receive the $100 early bird discount PLUS the 25% group registration discount.

Internet Retailer 2008 Conference & Exhibition is a content-rich conference with speakers and attendees from every corner of e-retailing—retail chains, catalog firms, web-only merchants, direct-TV marketers, and consumer manufacturers and service companies. No other e-retailing event offers such rich content or so many opportunities to network and exchange ideas with such a range of web merchants. Each year, e-retailers attending IRCE tell us they learn practical information that vastly improves the performance and profitability of their web retailing businesses (see Testimonials). And because the conference agenda is developed by the editors of Internet Retailer—the leading publication in web retailing—you can be sure it contains comprehensive information on the very latest innovations in online retailing and knowledgeable speakers who are chosen solely because of their e-retailing expertise and not because of their affiliation with a conference sponsor. No matter which sessions you attend, you’ll return home with ideas that are worth many times the price of registration."

Infopia Gives Merchants Access to More Buyers Through MerchantAdvantage

Hello eTaildTail:

I just returned from a few days in New York City, where I was meeting with clients and comparison shopping engines as Pronto, owned by Mr.Barry Dillar's IAC Interactive, and Underbid. While there I was witness to the extraordinary buy-out of Bear Stearns investment bank by a friend at JP Morgan who was working on the deal 24-7.  I also met with Wall Street analysts about the state of e-commerce and m-commerce for 2008...so excuse the delay in getting a post up here. 

[Just as a reminder, if I don't post for a few days, please check back daily for relevant news on the right hand side of this blog, as I do try to update that daily].

In NYC, I was pleasantly surprised to learn from these analysts that both e-commerce and m-commerce are expected to grow, despite the "poor economy", over the next few months, precisely because online and m-commerce buying can save people money.  Now that is not to say that people will be buying a lot more, as we are all hurt by high gas prices and are nervous about where the economy is heading and whether or not we will get bonuses at the end of this year, but rather that people will shop form their computer and wireless devices more because it is easy, it is becoming fun, and you can save money -- albeit better prices online and saving gas driving to the malls and stores.

In the meantime my company, MerchantAdvantage continues to help small to mid-sized online merchants grow their business with valuable feed management Web-based tools and it is wonderful to see so many clients successful and growing ROI.

To that end, I am proud to announce a partnership with Infopia, a shopping cart and business platform technology company, that helps online merchants works easily with eBay.  Now, with this partnership, Infopia clients can work with hundreds of other comparison shopping engines and marketing channels to increase sales and brand awareness.  It is an honor to work with Infopia and see that CNBC News  and Yahoo! Finance thought our partnership important to report on this week.

<<<CLICK HERE>>> for CNBC's story.

<<<CLICK HERE>>> for Yahoo!'s story

We have had a very productive 1st Q here at MerchantAdvantage and I look forward to bringing the e-commerce and m-commerce industry wonderful, new, products and services to help you grow your business into 2009....stay tuned! :-)

-- Chip

Here is the announcement from Infopia:

Infopia Merchants Get Expanded Merchandising Power To Over 100 Comparison Shopping Engines and Marketplaces by Using MerchantAdvantage

SALT LAKE CITY, March 17, 2008 -- Infopia, the leader in multi-channel, online selling, announced a new partnership today with MerchantAdvantage, which gives Infopia clients the ability to market their products to over 100 comparison shopping engines (CSEs) and marketplaces. The all-in-one, integrated solution from Infopia and MerchantAdvantage empowers merchants to send product data to marketing channels, update information in their data feeds within minutes, analyze sales, and respond to marketing campaign issues in real-time. This partnership is the newest effort by Infopia to ensure merchants get the highest ROI from their technology and can accept orders through a multitude of CSEs.

"Effective CSE strategies that focus on category, subcategory, and individual SKU performance can increase ROI up to five-fold," said Chip Arndt, co-founder of MerchantAdvantage.

"What MerchantAdvantage gives Infopia merchants," said Bjorn Espenes, CEO at Infopia, "are the tools to manage profit-margins on marketing campaigns at a product level -- essentially giving them the power to reach millions of new buyers through a user-friendly, Web-based tool."

Infopia and MerchantAdvantage enable merchants to do the following:

-- Send product information to over 100 online marketing channels such as Become.com, Ciao, JellyFish, MSN Live Search, myCoupons, PriceForSure.com, PriceGrabber, Pronto, Shopzilla, Shop.com, Smarter.com, SortPrice.com, theFind.com, Google Product Search, and Yahoo!

-- Discover which marketing channels, product categories, and individual products meet expected ROI and be able to adjust accordingly

-- Manage SKU-level bidding at supported CSE sites

-- Expand buyers reached under current budget.

<<<CLICK HERE>>> for  the full press release and story.

You Can Afford to Work With Comparison Shopping Engines: Tips and Tricks

Several emails came in this week to eTaildTail with similar calls for help. They went something like this:

"Chip, I am not having success with some comparison shopping engines and I don't know what to do. Some cost me a lot and the ROI is not worth it. Help. Is there any way to use these sites cost effectively, even when I have limited resources and money?"

The short answer is YES! YOU DO!....ergo...please read onward.

Managing (some) Shopping Comparison Sites to Ensure Excellent Return on Investment

I have 1,000 reasons to work with marketing destination sites, as www.Amazon.com , www.eBay.com , www.Shop.com, and other shopping destination sites as www.Ciao.com, www.PriceGrabber.com, www.NexTag.com, www.Shopzilla.com, www.Shopping.com, www.PriceRunner.com, www.Smarter.com, www.PriceForSure.com, and over 50 others.  The main issue to making these sites "work for you" is that they require daily upkeep and work by the online merchant -- just listing to these sites won't work very well.

When I looked further into who was sending me these email calls for help, I found out that many of the online merchants were smaller merchants who simply don't have the time, resources, or money to work with many shopping destination sites properly and, for lack of a better term, "figure them out."

No one ever said that just listing your products to marketplaces and comparison shopping engines will lead to sales and greater return on investment -- and whoeever did tell you that, disown them! LOL

Remember that dozens, if not hundreds, of other companies that sell similar products to you are also listing products to these shopping sites. So to ensure that these aforementioned shopping destination sites work well for you requires work and basic knowledge of their "taxonomies" and how these sites can work more efficiently for the online merchant (confused yet?)

At the end of the day, many comparison shopping engines/sites have made many, many online merchants a lot of money, but this usually only occurs when the merchant is willing to "work at" and "understand" the nuances of each comparison shopping engine/sites internal workings.

Most of my successful clients, as Carols Candy Corner (very small and very successful), Calloway Golf or ProFlowers, optimize their data, manage SKU level bidding on sites that support it, and monitor their shopping comparison sites every day to take advanatge of their internal methods to ensure that products get listed higher on their sites than their competitors.  So what next?

After reading all of the above many small merchants say to me that they simply cannot justify the time or money it takes to manage their product catalog data feeds to ensure proper ROI and compete and they stop using any comparison shopping engine. 

This is not the answer and let me tell you why.

[Special Note: Please keep reading, but if you want to understand my more in-depth thinking about this (beyond this blog) check out a free webinar I did a few weeks ago.]

you can <<<Down Load it Free Here>>>...okay back to my thoughts.

Start Small, Work Intelligently

I have a better solution for small to mid-sized businesses, start small and work with FREE shopping sites.

There are five shopping comparison sites that can help a small to mid-sized business without costing you a dime. They are either FREE or only charge you when a commission is made. To make things even better they are all easy to use and manage.  So there is no reason not to list your entire product catalog to these sites.  They include:

Free:
Google Product Search
MSN Live Search for products
theFind.com

Pay Per Sale/Pay Per Coupon Redemption (and really, really easy to use):
www.myCoupons.com and
www.JellyFish.com

The first group above are free to list to and any (yes any) leads or sale that comes to your site doesn't cost you a penny!  So why not work with them?

 

If setting up a feed is complicated for you, use a tool based software to help you. www.MerchantAdvantage.com is one choice and only costs $145 per month all in. MerchantAdvantage does not charge the merchant any revenue share, transaction cost, or set up charge, so basically for $145 a month you get marketing on these three sites that have combined unique visitors of 85+ million a month....yes, 85+ million. You may not reach them all, but you will reach some!

Even if you get one sale a month, listing your products on these sites is cost-effective, as you also get branding (customers see your brand and can click over to your site), and you will eventually be found by general search engines, as Google and Yahoo!, thus helping your overall seearch engine optimization.

Basically there is no reason not to use these channels.  The best part of all of this is that the online merchant also learns how comparison shopping sites work and can "experiment" with these free channels before using pay-per-click shopping sites or the more complicated marketplaces as Amazon or eBay.

The second group above are also easy to use and must use sites because you only pay when a transaction is made -- and the commission is small and controlled by YOU!

When working with www.JellyFish.com (owned now by MicroSoft, which is determined to drive traffic to their site) the merchant controls the amount of money you want to "give back" to the customer by changing the field that controls the amount "cash back" you would like a customer to recieve from you.

Since you are in complete control of the margin, how can you lose? 

Furthermore, you can change this field whenever you want in order to reduce your price as compared to your competitor's or increase it if you feel that you are giving too much of your margin away. So do you see any reason not to work with JellyFish?

I see three great reasons to work with them:

1. Exposure (FREE)
2. Potential Sales (and only pay the commisson back to the customer you want), and
3. Complete control over your margin and subsequent ranking on their site.

www.myCoupons.com works in a different and equallly effective manner and has many loyal customers. 

With www.myCoupons.com you can list your entire product catalog and never create a coupon OR create a "general coupon" for your entire site, let's say $5 off any purchase, or 10% off purchases totaling over $50.00, or, better yet, create individual coupons for each SKU/product all for FREE.

Basically you choose the method of marketing and subsequent coupon offer and myCoupons then charges a flat rate of $3.00 per redeemed coupon only. That means, they charge nothing to list, nothing if a potential customer clicks to your site and decides not to buy, and nothing for all of the exposure you could get by just being on their site.

Moral of Story

1. Don't be afraid to work with shopping comparison sites, there are ones that are free and you have no excuse not to be listed with them.

2. You can start small and work with free sites and easy to use Pay Per Sale/Pay Per Coupon Redemption sites, without sepnding a lot time and virtually no money.

3. Online marketing does not have to cost you an arm or a leg. You can list to any of these sites directly (I can put you you in touch with them directly) or, for as little as $145 per month, list to all of them and have an easy to use web-based, tool to manage and analyze these marketing campaigns for you (see www.MerchantAdvantage.com ). It is really that simple.

So the question is: Can you afford not to work with some comparison shopping engines? 

Where else can you reach potentially 100+ million unique visitors per month easily and cost-effectively?

Have a great weekend!

-- Chip

E-Commerce Celebrates 25th Birthday: Sort of...Don't You Love History?

Isn't it fun to learn a little bit of history while you are visiting www.eTaildTail.com?

I am not sure of all of the facts, but the read below is worth it and as they say: "....baby we have come a long way!!!" -- regardless odf the exact date of the start of e-commerce.

Enjoy this very fun read and thank you Alex Randall and Cameron Hall -- I think that is who to thank! LOL

-- Chip

"Clearly, e-commerce has gone from kind of a glimmer in someone's eye to arguably one of the most important and powerful developments, I'd say, in modern-day commerce," remarked Standard & Poor's analyst Scott Kessler. "It has become not just popular or pervasive, but also critical for both companies and consumers as they look for goods online and, in many cases, are often selling goods online."

Online Pioneer Marks Silver Anniversary of E-Commerce

By Jim Offner
E-Commerce Times <<<CLICK HERE>>> for full article

"It may not have been noticed in the whirlwind of online transactions on Web sites like eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY)  or Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) , but e-commerce turned 25 on Tuesday.

On March 4, 1983, the husband-wife team of Alex Randall and Cameron Hall quietly launched a business revolution that was then the stuff of dreams, when their year-old company, Boston Computer Exchange, sold a computer "on line" to a buyer in South America.

Randall and Hall had started their company as a clearinghouse for buying and selling computers at a time when PCs like the Apple 2, Tandy, IBM PC and Sinclair were first becoming available.

"Almost nobody outside of universities had computers," Randall told the E-Commerce Times. "But we could see it coming. It's like Bill Gates' story of having a computer in every home: We recognized that eventually you'd be able to trade all kinds of things this way."

  The Long View

It required a long-range vision, Randall said.

"In 1983, the only people who had computers were bleeding-edge aficionados," he recalled. "The only thing we could trade was computer equipment. There was no market for fresh fruit delivered to your door. The only people out there were computer users and people looking to buy computers."

Randall said he and Hall developed a marketplace where computer users could upgrade from old units.

The two started at a meeting of the Boston Computer Society with trading cards and conducted hundreds of transactions over the phone. They began to dominate trading in used computers as a paper and pencil company, Randall said.

They then bought a 300 BPS modem -- a system so slow, Randall said, that the user could read text faster than it came to the screen), bought a new database system called "Alpha 2" and struck an agreement with the owners of Videotext -- which would later become Delphi (NYSE: DPH)  -- for an online bulletin board system running software that allowed users to dial into the system over a phone line.

By partnering with Delphi and using its own dual floppy disk drive computer, BCE could post its database of products on a public access system.

On March 4, 1983, Randall and Hall got a call from a buyer in Santiago, Chile, and they subsequently made their first "on line" transaction.

"He was looking at the database online," Randall said. "He saw something that would be good to own. He phoned me he wanted to buy the system."

The caller purchased an IBM PC for $7,000, Randall said.

Randall and Hall later wrote an instruction book for creating a freestanding computer trading enterprise in any city.

The couple sold BCE in 1990 and moved to the Virgin Islands in the mid-1990s. He became a professor of communications at the University of the Virgin Islands.

Hall died of cancer in 1998.

"Cameron was a brilliant economist," Randall said. "She was very smart about money, and how marketplaces worked in the abstract."

Date Debate

The actual birthdate of e-commerce is not undisputed.

When told that e-commerce had just turned 25, Gordon Haff, principal IT advisor for Illuminata, paused.

"My initial reaction is that it's an interesting date to pick but also somewhat an arbitrary one," he told the E-Commerce Times. "People have ordered stuff, if you would, via e-mail, certainly long before 25 years ago."

However, the genesis of e-commerce, as the world has come to know it, probably is a lot more recent than 1983, Haff added.

"I wouldn't say 'e-commerce,' if you think about it, really was anything approaching mass market until the Web era," he said. "I'd say we really had mass market closer to 10 years than 25. But, sure, you can find early examples."

Those early examples were important, Randall insisted.

"Our original concept was to build databases that could be infinitely expanded for any product," he explained. "It's utterly incredible. We were uploading data at 350 bits per second then, and now we have people buying things from eBay and Amazon on a click of a mouse without even thinking. It's astonishing how far we've gone."

Gartner analyst Avivah Litan shared that enthusiasm.

"I was thinking yesterday about an interview I had with Bill Gates before Windows came out," she told the E-Commerce Times. "I asked him what was in the future, and he said, 'graphics.' Back in the beginning, the interfaces were kind of kludgy, awkward, kind of heavy and hard to use."

For Better or Worse

As much as e-commerce has matured, it's still mostly potential, Litan noted.

"It's still only around 10 percent or less of all sales in the U.S.," she pointed out. "At some point, it will probably get 20 to 25 percent. But at this point, more people use it to window shop than actually make a purchase." ... more

<<<CLICK HERE>>> to finish article, only a few more paragraphs, promise, and no obligations to read onward, PROMISE!!!

eBay Webinar March 11: Leverage the Power of eBay to Maximize Sales

While eBay may be "slowing" down in its overall year-to-year growth, it is still a very effective marketplace to market and sell products.

MerchantAdvantage is proud to support eBay and we are an eBay and ProStores certified developer. We help our merchants send their product catalog feed to an eBay Storefront OR from an eBay Storefront to other marketing channels.

Check out eBay's webinar below and then give MerchantAdvantage a call if you need some help.

- Chip

<<<CLICK HERE>>> to sign up for FREE webinar with eBay

eBay has grown into the premiere marketplace on the web, with over 250 million users and gross merchandise volume of $52 billion in 2006, and  $14.4 billion in the 4th quarter of 2007 alone.   

If you are a retailer and aren’t on eBay, then you’re missing out!

Even those that are already eBay PowerSellers may be leaving money on the table. At any given time, there are approximately 102 million listings worldwide, and approximately 6 million listings are added per day. In this marketplace of virtually unlimited potential, you may be losing sales simply because your operational processes are a bottleneck to your ability to do more auctions while maintaining quality customer service and ratings.

This seminar will provide an overview of how the CORESense multi-channel retail management system can optimize your sales in the eBay marketplace, helping you deploy a highly lucrative and scalable sales channel that essentially runs itself.

Topics covered include:

* Building your brand online with eBay
* Leveraging eBay to liquidate excess inventory
* Maximizing efficiency with a single online checkout and order fulfillment process
* Increasing customer satisfaction and feedback while increasing auction volume
* Using dynamic auction templates and automation to quickly re-list items or launch new auctions

Learn how you can conduct more auctions and maintain positive customer feedback using your existing organizational resources and product catalog.

Who should attend:   

Small to medium sized retailers (at least $2M in annual sales), preferably with at least one brick and mortar location.  CEO/President/Owner, CFO, CIO, Marketing, Merchandising, Operations.

<<<CLICK HERE>>> to sign up for FREE webinar with eBay