The State of E-Commerce and M-Commerce Shopping Destination Sites Today: Part II

Part II of a IV part series on the state of e-commerce and m-commerce shopping destination sites on eTaildTail from December 22-25th.

Part II:

The State of E-Commerce and M-Commerce Shopping Destination Sites Today
Where do we go from here?

<<<CLICK HERE>>>....if you missed Part I: What Are Shopping Destination Sites? & The Way It Was…A Little History.

How Online Merchants Can Benefit By Using CSEs to Increase Sales.

Any online merchant should market their product catalog on CSEs for one simple reason, namely, CSE marketing is one of the most efficient ways to reach millions of potential customers quickly and cost effectively. 

Don't believe me?

Noted ecommerce and marketing expert, Derek Gehl recently weighed in on CSEs and their importance to successful online selling and increasing Return on Ad Spend ("ROAS") on MSNBC's Web site on December 19, 2008 and confirms eTaildTail and MerchantAdvantage findings from CEO Michael Lambert for 2008 and 2009.

Special Note: Derek Gehl is Entrepreneur.com's e-business columnist and CEO of the Internet Marketing Center. He's an internationally renowned internet marketing expert whose techniques and strategies for building a successful online business have been implemented by hundreds of thousands of businesses worldwide. His comprehensive internet marketing guide,"The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet", has been an online bestseller for 10 years.

Whether an online merchant works with free CSEs, such as Google Product Search, theFind.com, or Live Cash Back from Microsoft, and/or CSEs that only charge a commission on sales, and/or CSEs that work on a PPC business model, and/or CSEs that work on a Pay-Per-Action (which is similar to a commission based model), and/or CSEs with a fixed monthly fee, CSE marketing should be part of the marketing strategy of all online merchants.

The four main reasons most online merchants say they do not work with CSEs are:

1. Limited time and money to dedicate to CSE marketing
2. A lack of the critical data necessary to make marketing efficiency decisions
3. A lack of understanding of how to produce a proper product data file to submit to CSEs, and
4. A lack of understanding of the CSE landscape and the best CSEs to use to increase sales.

MerchantAdvantage was founded to help online merchants leverage marketing channels, such as CSEs, to grow sales, build brand awareness, and increase return on ad spend (“ROAS”).   MerchantAdvantage solves these above concerns by providing online merchants a plethora of information about CSEs, a myriad of choices of how to work with CSEs for very little money, and robust analytic tools to gauge the success of CSE marketing.  In addition, considering that there are three FREE CSEs that an online merchant can start to work with immediately – yes, that means that these CSEs never charge an online merchant for a lead or sale - we see no reason why an online merchant would not use these CSEs, at a minimum.

Many MerchantAdvantage clients only use free CSEs.  These clients realize value in three main ways:

1. Any sale or lead that comes to them costs nothing
2. Any lead or sale that comes to them is a lead forever for future direct marketing efforts, and
3. The online merchant understands how to work with and leverage CSEs effectively

Most of the time, soon after an online merchant learns how to use free CSEs effectively and analyze these marketing efforts intelligently; they then introduce other CSEs into their marketing efforts and realize that CSE marketing is not only important to building sales but is also very cost-effective.

Once an online merchant gets past the “anxiety” of learning a new marketing method and realizes the vast potential to increase sales by using CSEs in a variety of ways, it is important that an online merchant monitor and stay on top of three main issues for effective CSE marketing.  These include:

1. Ensuring that they send an updated and optimized product catalog data feed to the CSE or mobile marketing channel
2. Ensuring that they have the resources to monitor and update CSE marketing strategies, and
3. Ensuring that the ROAS justifies the time, effort, and cost to working with CSEs.

Some online merchants have in-house resources to solve these issues, other online merchants simply out source to a third party to solve these issues.  Another alternative is to use intuitive, Web-based tools to solve these issues and ensure that the online merchant remains in control of their data and profits. 

MerchantAdvantage is the pioneer in ecommerce and mcommerce tools providing cost-effective, Web-based solutions and does NOT charge revenue share, listing fees, commissions or any other fees that might nip into your margins.

The right solution is up to the online merchant but the key take away is:

All online merchants should implement a CSE marketing strategy, be it limited or robust, to their existing marketing strategy.  The proper implementation of a CSE marketing strategy leads to exposure, sales, leads, and branding opportunities at a price, in terms of actual cost and time, which no other marketing strategy can approach. Period!

So now that I have your attention, what follows is an overview of how any online merchant can leverage CSEs in 2009....

<<<CLICK HERE>>>....if you missed Part I: What Are Shopping Destination Sites? & The Way It Was…A Little History.

Check back December 24 for Part III of our four part series.  Tomorrow we will cover.

The CSE Landscape for 2009 and Where to Start.

- Chip Arndt