Marketing for Holiday Season Should Begin in October

This just in from the "experts." It is a good read for all online merchants! Prepare now for online holiday shopping....or very soon. :-)

From eTaildTail friends over at Internet Retailer and MarketLive:

"While most consumers don’t start holiday shopping in earnest until the day after Thanksgiving, online retailers should begin marketing for the season as early as October, according to MarketLive Inc., an e-commerce platform provider.

During 2007’s fourth quarter, online merchants in the MarketLive Performance Index experienced an overall conversion rate of 4.8%, an 18% increase from the third quarter. The engagement rate (visit-to-cart) ratio rose 9.87%, up 4% from the prior quarter, and cart abandonment dropped 6% to 55.64%."

<<<CLICK HERE>>> to read full article

Chip Arndt

Happy July 4th Weekend from Chip Arndt

Regardless of difficult economic times, we are one nation together.  We can and will overcome.

This weekend reminds us of who we are, our beginnings as a nation, being with family and friends, and thanking and remembering our thousands of troops and their families, at home and abroad, for their service and sacrifices.

Thank you for reading eTaildTail and being a friend. Happy July 4th weekend.

Chip Arndt
Co-Founder|EVP of MerchantAdvantage

Why Online Merchants Should List Their Product Catalog on Comparison Shopping Engines

I am asked everyday questions about why online merchants should list their product catalogs on comparison shopping engines.

It makes perfect sense that I am asked this question, because I am in the business of data feed management and helping small to mid-sized online merchants increase their return on ad spend when working with a variety of online shopping destination sites, comparison shopping engines, mobile commerce sites, and other marketing channels.

So What is The Answer?

Online merchants benefit from ANY marketing effort that gets their brand and storefront products in front of potential shoppers, wherever those shoppers may be. This includes traditional marketing efforts, as the yellow pages, emails, direct mail, catalogs, and modern marketing efforts as ecommerce, mcommerce (mobile commerce), blogs, bonded shopping networks, and social networking sites (we are still seeing if these work, but you get the point). This philosophy is intuitive, simple, and should be not an issue. 

Issues, however, do arise when an online merchant has to weigh the cost and time involved to market wherever a shopper might be using traditional or new marketing methods and strategies.  These marketing methods bring into play three main issues:

1. Where do I market?

2. Do I have the time to maximize these marketing efforts correctly? and

3. What will it cost me?

And then of course, after an online merchant asks these three aforementioned questions comes the most important issue/question:

"Did my marketing efforts work = Did my marketing efforts lead to sales and brand awareness?"

I am here to tell you that any small to mid-sized online merchant should experiment and try comparison shopping engines and other shopping destination sites, because they "can" work, if you find the right marketing channel for your products.

Not every marketing channel is right for your products -- that is why I say "can" work.  That's right. Online merchants have to test, often, numerous marketing channels to see which ones work for their online storefront/product catalog, as not every online shopping mall or comparison shopping engine may attract the right audience/shopper for your products.

[NOTE: Please do not let "experts" tell you that they know all of the right channels for your products, especially if they have not tested your products in a particular channel.]

The good news for online merchants is that there are a plethora of shopping destination sites and comparison shopping engines to pick from, each bringing millions of people each month to their online mall to find your products.   

Some of these channels include: Amazon, Become, buySAFE bonded shopping network, Cooking.com, eBay!, GourmetFoodMall.com, Google Product Search, Greenzer, Like.com, MachineTools.com, Microsoft Cashback, myCoupons.com, PriceGrabber, PriceRunner, Pronto, Shop.com, Shopping.com, Shopzilla, Smarter, SortPrice, theFind, ToolCrib, Yahoo! Shopping, and many others.  I know of over 250 marketing channels, so don't think that only the bigger, well known comparison shopping engines are the only marketing channels available to you.  <<<CLICK HERE>>> for a more comprehensive list from MerchantAdvantage.

And the better news is that many comparison shopping engines have business models that ARE AFFORDABLE to work with right away.  Some comparison shopping engines only charge when a sale is made, others have a flat rate per month, and others are FREE, ergo, not all comparison shopping engines charge on a pay-per-click/pay-per-lead model.  Such examples are: Google Product Search; JellyFish, Microsoft Cash Back; MSN Shopping; myCoupons.com, and theFind.com.

I have many clients who are very selective to which comparison shopping engines they send their product catalog data.  For instance, some of my clients only use niche comparison shopping engines that specialize in selling machine tools, gourmet food, or golf related products. Other clients use over 60 comparison shopping engines in order to saturate the marketplace with their products and be wherever an online shopper might be to build brand awareness.  The strategy each client takes depends on budgets and time, but, in each case, comparison shopping engines work for them.

At all times, when working with comparison shopping engines, online merchants must ensure that the product catalog they send to a comparison shopping engine is perfect and up to date, so that the comparison shopping engine lists your product catalog in all of the appropriate places on their site. 

This can be done directly with each comparison shopping site, i.e. feeding them a file each day that follows their feed specification document, OR you can use a cost-effective, Web-based tool that takes care of these issues for you. But...

Before You Work with A Comparison Shopping Engine

Online merchants must ensure, before using any comparison shopping engine, that their online storefront is worthy of marketing in the first place.  What do I mean by this? 

As an example, I had a client two months ago who was frustrated. He was getting a lot of hits/clicks to his website from comparison shopping engines but these hits/clicks were not converting to sales.  This means that all of his fields were properly mapped to the feed spec document of each comparison shopping engine and he opitimized his data properly, but the clicks to his site were not converting to sales.

When we talked directly and both went to his online storefront, I was dismayed to find that his online storefront was a mess, was not professional looking, was hard to navigate, and the check out process was not easy.  I asked him:

"If you came to your storefront, the way it looked and functioned, would you buy a product from you?"

At that point we made an assumption that most of his problems might not be with his comparison shopping engine marketing strategies. Instead, we agreed that he had to clean up the look, feel, marketing language, pictures, special offers, logos, and functionality of his storefront website before marketing anywhere.

Over the next three weeks, he cleaned up his storefront and then started his comparison shopping engine marketing efforts over again.  I had him look at REI and ProFlowers, two websites/webstores that work very well and can show an online merchant what "not to do" when building your storefront, which is as important as what "to do." He could not afford all of the functionality of each of these sites, but looking at them and learning from them certainly helped.  The results -- sure enough, clicks from the comparison shopping engines started to lead to sales.

The point of this example is that often online merchants fail to recognize that leads from comparison shopping engines do not always equate to sales, for numerous reasons beyond the control of comparison shopping engines, and that their online storefront must be professional and "worthy" to complete a sale. 

Okay, now back to comparison shopping engines and what an online merchant can do right now to gain success on comparison shopping engines.

Comparison Shopping Engines: 7 Steps to Success

1. Professional Look, Feel, and Functionality: Clean up your online storefront/website.  Ask your friends to go to your website and ask them this: "If you were a stranger and you came to my website would you buy from me?"  If they say no, ask them why and remember that you only have one chance to make a good first impression.

2. Start with 4 Free Comparison Shopping Engines: Send your entire product catalog to 4 FREE comparison shopping engines: Google Product Search, theFind.com, MSN LiveSearch, and Microsoft Cashback.  They are free, may lead to some sales, and will certainly help with organic SEO search.  Where else can you get FREE marketing and also learn how comparison shopping engines work before making a larger time and financial commitment?

3. Use a Cost-Effective, Web-based Tool to Handle Technical Issues with Analysis: There are solutions in the marketplace that, for as little as $145 a month and no transaction fees, no listing fees, no revenue share, and no set-up costs, can get you up and running in less than 48 hours on the 4 FREE sites mentioned above (and 21 others, if you choose for the same price), with analytics included. What other marketing methods are available to you for only $145 a month?

4. Test, Test, and Test Various Comparison Shopping Engines: Even after you "worked" a specific comparison shopping engine for 60-90 days, optimized your feeds properly, and used the SKU level bidding feature of some comparison shopping engines, sometimes a particular comparison shopping engine still may not lead to sales. Instead of getting upset, try another comparison shopping engine. There are a lot of comparison shopping engines out there that may have a more appropriate audience for you. And, since most comparison shopping engines charge on a month-to-month basis, can you afford not to try them?

5. Educate Yourself: There are many resources on the web about best practices when working with comparison shopping engines. As an example, as a client of MerchantAdvantage, MerchantAdvantage offers weekly client-side webinars directly from the technical staff of both MerchantAdvantage AND the technical staff of a comparison shopping engine to keep you up to speed on the best way to work with a particular comparison shopping engine, how to use SKU level bidding features where supported, what products sell best, how best to optimize a feed, and the like. You also can access several FREE webinars, whitepapers, and other sources of information, with no obligation, from the front of MerchantAdvantage's website.

6. Catalog Dipping: Not every product you sell will sell well on every comparison shopping engine: we all know that fact. Try adopting a strategy of only sending products that lead to sales and not just clicks. You can do this easily when using a Web-based tool, with robust analytics, to manage your product catalog feeds and start to have some fun when working with comparison shopping engines.

7. Choice: Make sure you have the option and choice to send your product catalog feed to any marketing channel available to you on the Internet.  That includes over 250+ comparison shopping sites I know of, affiliate sites as Commission Junction and Linkshare (that can get you to the smallest of sites where your products can be found), eBay! and Amazon. Why? Because you never know into which comparison shopping engine your product catalog will lead to the most sales. MerchantAdvantage offers the broadest possible choice in the marketplace and you can start with a pretty comprehensive list here. 

I hope this information helps friends of eTaildTail prepare your marketing strategies for the online holiday shopping season over the next few months.

Happy 4th of July weekend.

Chip Arndt

July 4th Weekend without Spending A Lot of Money

This isn't a blog entry about e-commerce and mobile commerce marketing, but rather some thoughts to maybe make the up and coming holiday weekend a little more enjoyable without spending a lot of money.

There is little doubt that July 4th weekend 2008 will be accompanied by less travel, less expenditures, and families trying to figure out how they can afford the basic expenses as they relate to paying for their child's education, gas to and from work, electricity, and food going forward.  These are tough times, but we must remember that there are many things that are very enjoyable right at our fingertips that don't necessarily cost much to enjoy and maybe it is time we turn our attention to those things that are literally in our backyard...including neighbors you have maybe not reached out to in awhile.

Going into the July 4th weekend, there are some simple things we all can do to save money and, at the same time, spend some more quality time with our family and friends.

Here are some suggestions, I hope they help:

1. Plan to do some yard work with the kids
2. Clean out that garage -- you know it needs it
3. Visit some local spots with your family that you have always wanted to go to but never have, such as the local aquarium, library, and parks.  I am sure there are some places to go not too far away from home that can bring great joy, especially at sunset.  And when you go, try walking or riding a bike, if you have one.
4. Help your kids out with their homework and/or summer reading and ask them about their dreams and goals
5. Go online with your kids and learn about the US Constitution, The Declaration of Independence, and The Bill of Rights, do you know what they say and mean?
6. Register to vote -- you can do it online and get a registration form -- and learn about your local candidates running for office this November
7. Send thank you/hello notes to people that are special to you with whom you have not caught up with for awhile (mail is best....email is fine, but it is less personal)
8. Call your mom, dad, siblings, and best friends and take some quality time to catch up and see how they are really doing
9. Spend some extra time in a religious place and learn more about it, its architecture, and history, and my favorite
10. Have a barbeque at home and invite some friends and neighbors over you have not seen in awhile, they can bring appetizers and dessert to cut the cost.

Happy July 4th Week and remember that thousands of our troops are overseas and are probably having a much harder time this time of year than we are...so enjoy the time you have with friends and family.

Chip Arndt

MerchantAdvantage Helps Online Merchants Increase Sales Using Comparison Shopping Engines

Each month, I write a newsletter with advice, information and tips to help online, small to mid-sized businesses increase sales using comparison shopping engines, marketplaces and other marketing channels. I work closely with over 100 shopping destination channels, and some of them include:

Amazon, Become, Ciao, Commission Junction, eBay, GolfPricer, Google Product Search, GroupGain, mPoria, mShopper, Like, MyCoupons, PriceForSure, PriceGrabber, PriceRunner, Pronto, Shop.com, Shopping.com, Smarter, SortPrice, Underbid, Yahoo! Shopping, to name just a few.

I encourage all eTaildTail readers to review some of those newsletters to help grow sales and manage your online business more efficiently.  Each newsletter is free to read. 

Here are some of those MerchantAdvantage newsletters with a hyperlink to each of them.  I hope they help; let me know if you have any comments. You can email me at chip at eTaildTail.com and have a great week!

-- Chip Arndt

Some newsletters from MerchantAdvantage and Chip Arndt, Co-Founder:

• Marketing Methods and Alternative Options for 2008 Part I
• Marketing Methods and Alternative Options for 2008 Part II:
  Print Media & Press Releases and Newsletters
• Marketing Methods and Alternative Options for 2008 Part III:
  E-Mail and Blogs
• Marketing Methods and Alternative Options for 2008 Part Part IV:
  Incentive Programs: Gift Cards, Refer-A-Friend, Coupons and Sweepstakes
• Marketing Methods and Alternative Options for 2008 Part V:
  Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization
• Part 1: Do CSE's And Marketplaces Work For Online Merchants?
• Part 2: Do CSE's And Marketplaces Work For Online Merchants?
• 12 Step Program for Comparison Shopping Engine Management
• Free (and almost free) Internet Advertising
• Channel Feed Basics: Expand your reach and save money too!
• The Online Marketplace Revolution: Reach Millions of New Customers
• Pay Per Click vs. Pay Per Performance Marketing

Online Shopping, E-Commerce Sales Increase Because of "Perceived" US Recession

eTaildTail friends over at Marketing Vox have an interesting study that mirrors the correlation I hypothesized about 6 months ago of the increase in fuel prices, and the credit crunch, to an increase in internet and mobile shopping. 

In those comments, I stated that people still like to buy/consume and, while they have less money to spend due to stagnant wages and high gas prices, would turn to internet e-commerce and mobile shopping as a means to buy products to save money and avoid spending money on gas to buy products at brick and mortar stores. Furthermore, I stated that once they start to shop online, or via mobile commerce, they would also be introduced to price savings, and other offers, that they were of unaware of before.  In turn, this would lead to increased loyalty to the online and mobile shopping experience into the future from new online shoppers.

It seems that my thoughts now have some credibility in statistics.  The great news for small to mid-sized e-commerce merchants is that a whole new group of people are learning how powerful, cost-effective, and easy online and mobile shopping is and existing online shoppers are still shopping.

What Does This Mean For the Future of Online and Mobile Shoppping?

My next hypothesis, and you can hold me to this, is that as many new online shoppers will shop online because of:

1. adverse economic conditions
2. flat pricing plans to surf online from mobile carriers
3. better shopping interfaces by e-commerce storefronts,
4. better "shopping experiences" from shopping destination portals as Amazon, eBay, Like.com, mShopper.com, mPoria.com, PriceGrabber, Shop.com, Shopzilla, and many others, and
5. ongoing better pricing, special offers, reduced shipping costs, and other incentives from the e-commerce merchant.

New and "old" online shoppers will become more enamored with online and mobile shopping and continue to use these channels/avenues to buy products than ever before, even after the US economy rebounds. 

This, in turn, will result in driving more online sales into the future and help to exceed Wall Street expectations of 13-15% year-over-year growth in online and mobile shopping.  I am still targeting 20% - 25% year-to-year growth into 2015.

We will see!

-- Chip Arndt

From Marketing Vox:

"One-third (33 percent) of online US adults are more likely to shop online, rather than at a store, because of high gas prices, according to a Harris Interactive study conducted for iCongo - writes MarketingCharts.

Some highlights from the study:

Incentives

Consumers give various other reasons they would be more likely to shop online as opposed to a physical store:

• 57 percent cite free shipping.
• 55 percent cite lower prices.
• 61 percent cite the ability to shop at any time.

If a store were..."

Please <<<CLICK HERE>>> to read full article from Marketing Vox.

Reminder: Webinar Thursday April 10 with theFind, JellyFish, and MerchantAdvantage: How Online Merchants Can Afford to Work with Comparison Shopping Engines

Just a quick reminder about the free webinar with theFind, JellyFish and MerchantAdvantage this Thursday on April 10, 2008.

<<<CLICK HERE>>> to sign up, yes it is free and no you don't have to buy anything.  Promise. :-)

<<<CLICK HERE>>> to sign up, yes it is free and no you don't have to buy anything.  Promise. :-)

-- Chip

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!!!

Market America's James Ridinger Announces Strategic Partnership with MerchantAdvantage to Create Comparison Shopping Solution

Well, it continues to be a wonderful 2008 and I am proud to announce another major strategic partnership for MerchantAdvantage, which I co-founded.  The below annoucement follows our recent strategic partnership with Everest Software, please click here for that story.

I am particularly proud of this announcement, as it shows that our technology is one of the best in the industry, that it can be used by a diverse group of online retailers with little online retailing experience and a lot of online retailing experience, and that we are staying ahead of the curve on strategic thinking about providing the most cost-effective, tool-based marketing solutions to ALL online retailers.

If you have any questions on how I can help you with your online business don't hestitate to email me at chip@eTaildTail.com - we are all in this together.

-- Chip

Market America's James Ridinger Announces Strategic Partnership with MerchantAdvantage to Create Comparison Shopping Solution

<<<CLICK HERE>> for full press release, or read below.

Market America Partners with MerchantAdvantage to Streamline and Push Product Data to Comparison Shopping Engines and Marketplaces

Greensboro, NC (PRWEB) February 26, 2008 -- James (JR) Ridinger, president and CEO of Market America, Inc., announced today the company has reached a strategic partner agreement with MerchantAdvantage, LLC. The agreement allows Market America, its distributors and Webstore division to work closely with over 100 comparison shopping engines and marketplaces as well as enable any online merchant to list their product catalog into the Market America Mall Without Walls® marketplace at www.marketamerica.com.

MerchantAdvantage's superior, tool based Channel Management products allow Market America and its partners to seamlessly feed, optimize and analyze the performance of their product catalog data to any online marketing channel, reaching a consumer anytime they shop online or via their mobile device. Additionally, MerchantAdvantage technology will be used to enable any online merchant to list their product catalog directly with Market America and bring more vendors' products into Market America's Mall Without Walls® and to over 160,000 Market America Distributors.

The strategic partnership allows users on www.marketamerica.com, to make purchases from any of Market America's over 2,000 partner stores and return customers to Market America's website to complete their transaction. The robust all-in-one solution from Market America and MerchantAdvantage also empowers online merchants to analyze sales and respond to marketing campaigns in real-time, ensuring the highest return on marketing investment.

Each Comparison Shopping Engine ("CSE") aggregates a list of products from many sellers into a single portal, delivering an efficient shopping experience for the Internet shopper. While the CSE is an essential marketing channel for the online merchant, working with CSEs can overload the SMB, as each CSE requires a different process for merchants to publish their product details.

"Now, Market America gives our online merchants an easy way to manage their CSE feeds and simultaneously increase sales and reach," said James Ridinger. "Market America and online merchants leverage their Market America web store with MerchantAdvantage to push their product catalog data to those marketing channels that bring the greatest sales and leads. Having this type of advanced and easy to use feed management capability permits Market America to more effectively match products with people, leading to greater sales for Market America partners, our webstores and our own exclusive products."

Market America and MerchantAdvantage affords partners the ability to:

- Push product information to over 100 online marketing channels including CSEs such as Ciao, CNet.com, JellyFish, Market America, MSN Live Search, PriceGrabber, Pronto, Shopzilla, Google Product Search, and Yahoo! Shopping

- Discover which marketing channels, product categories and individual products are meeting expected return on ad-spend and adjust accordingly

- Manage SKU level bidding at supported shopping CSE sites

- Expand market reach while maintaining current marketing budget

- Sell Market America products across the internet and mobile devices

"Effective CSE strategies focusing on channel, category, subcategory, and individual SKU performance can increase ROI sometimes five fold," stated Michael Lambert, CEO of MerchantAdvantage. "MerchantAdvantage products give Market America and their Webstore owners the tools to manage profit-margins on marketing campaigns at the product level and the power to reach millions of potential new customers through a user friendly Web-based tool. We are honored to be an integral part of the Market America group of products to help partners grow their online business efficiently, intelligently and cost-effectively."

About Market America, Inc.

Market America is a product brokerage and Internet marketing company that specializes in One-One-Marketing. With more than three million customers and 160,000 Distributors worldwide, the company has generated over $2.4 billion in accumulated retail sales. Headquartered in Greensboro, NC - the company was founded by James Ridinger in 1992 and employs over 500 people globally with international operations in the United States, Canada, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Australia. Through its revolutionary One-to-One Marketing concept, Market America combines the Internet with the power of people - creating the ultimate online shopping destination. More information is available at www.marketamerica.com.

About MerchantAdvantage, LLC

MerchantAdvantage (MerchantAdvantage.com) is an ecommerce software solutions company committed to championing and helping the small to mid sized online merchant address complicated online and mobile commerce issues. MerchantAdvantage takes a systematic, controlled and proactive approach to online product marketing by providing long-term, cost effective, web-based software tools that enable an online business to grow by reaching the widest audience possible via online, broadband, and wireless devices.

MerchantAdvantage's applications are designed to connect the online retailer to their marketplace partners in a seamless motion of communication, allowing online merchants to take control of their e-Commerce and m-Commerce channels, marketing strategies and IT solutions. MerchantAdvantage currently markets over $1 billion worth of product value daily, representing over 600 online storefronts and is changing the macrocosm of ecommerce by staying ahead of the curve in providing business solutions to the growing online retail marketplace. We are here because our commerce future is online and wireless. For more information, please visit www.MerchantAdvantage.com, e-mail us at sales@Merchantdvantage.com or call us at 1.800.550.9466.

85% Of World's Online Population Shopped On The Web

I always depend on those smarter than me to educate us all on the trends in online shopping. While the USA is behind the rest of much of the world in some categories of online shopping behaviour, we are not too far behind.

My gut tells me that online shopping is getting better, is more fun, and people are more comfortable with online transactions and getting their products shipped to them. 

So I still recommend using shopping comparison sites, making your online site more robust and exploring mobile commerce, which is the next wave of shopping and reinforces your brand and can drives new customers to your online storefront.

Still skeptical...read onward!

-- Chip

For more on this report <<<CLICK HERE>>>

According to the latest Nielsen Global Online Survey on internet shopping habits, more than 85% of the world's online population has used the internet to make a purchase, increasing the market for online shopping by 40% in the past two years.

Bruce Paul, VP, Customized Research, Nielsen US, said "When The Nielsen Company conducted its first global survey into internet shopping trends two years ago, approximately 10% of the world's population (627 million) had shopped online. Within two years, this number has increased by approximately 40% to 875 million."

Globally, more than half of internet users have made at least one purchase online in the past month, according to Nielsen.

Among internet users, the highest percentage shopping online is in South Korea, where 99% of those with internet access have used it to shop, and 79% of these internet users have shopped in the past month. Other prolific shoppers are in the last month are:

• the UK 76%
• Switzerland 67%
• the US 57%

Internet Users Who Have Ever Purchased Online
Location	% of Internet Users
Europe	93%
the UK	97
Germany	97
North America	92
the US	94
AsiaPacific	84
Japan	97
Latin America	79
EEMA	67
Global Total	86
Source: ?The Nielsen Company, 2007/Marketing Charts, January 2008

Globally, says the report, the most popular purchased items over the internet are books,clothing/accessories/shoes, videos/DVDs/games, airline tickets, and electronic equipment.

• Among Germany's internet users, 55% said they bought books, 42% had bought clothes/accessories/shoes and one in four had purchased music/videos/DVD's in the previous three months.
• During the same period, among internet users in the UK, 45% bought books online, followed by videos/DVDs/games (44%), clothing/accessories/shoes (38%), music (37%) and one in four internet shoppers also purchased and airline tickets/reservations online.
• Among US internet users, in the previous month 41% had bought clothing/shoes/accessories, 38% bought books and one in three internet shoppers bought videos/DVDs/games.

Popular Online Purchases (Global Average, % of Online Purchasers in Past Three Months)
Purchase	% of Online Purchasers
Books	41%
Clothing, Accessories, Shoes	36
Video, DVD, Games	24
Airline ticket, reservations	24
Electronic equipment	23
Music	19
Cosmetics, nutrition supplies	19
Tours, hotel reservations	16
Event tickets	15
Computer software	14
Groceries	14
Toys, dolls	9
Sporting goods	8
Automobiles & parts	4
Sports memorabilia	3
Other	20
Source: ?The Nielsen Company, 2007/Marketing Charts, January 2008

According to Nielsen, online shoppers tend to stick to the shopping sites they are familiar with, with 60% saying they buy mostly from the same site.

"This shows the importance of capturing the tens of millions of new online shoppers as they make their first purchases on the internet. If shopping sites can capture them early, and create a positive shopping experience, they will likely capture their loyalty and their money," said Paul.

In selecting sites on which to shop, according to the study, one-third used a search engine or just surfed around to find the best online store. One in four relied on personal recommendations.

Shopping Site Selection Method (Global Average, % of Online Purchasers in Past Three Months)
Selection Method	% of Online Purchasers
Regular purchase site	60%
Surfing	33
Search engine	31
Special offer	30
Recommendation	23
Shopping comparison	23
Regular offline store	20
Online review	18
Online advertising	14
TV, print or other advertising	11
Other	6
Source: ?The Nielsen Company, 2007/Marketing Charts, January 2008

Jonathan Carson, President, International, Nielsen Online concludes that "The explosion in Consumer Generated Media over the last year means that this reliance on word of mouth, over other forms of referral, looks set to increase."

For more on this report <<<CLICK HERE>>>

Back in Action! The Holidays Were Wonderful. Happy 2008!

Thank you all for the nice holiday messages sent to chip@eTaildTail.com, much appreciated.

I am back in full force and look forward to sharing insights that I hope help you grow your business efficiently into 2008.

Please come back often for industry news (right hand side of page) and helpful posts from me.

Onward and upward!

-- Chip

Holiday Blogging Schedule...

Well I hope that the holiday online shopping season proved successful for all small to mid-sized merchants and that some of the blogs that you read here, at eTaildTail, helped with increasing sales and saving money, ergo increasing your ROI when using shopping comparison sites.

For the next week, up to January 7, I will be out of the country, so I apologize in advance for the lack of posts, but we will gear up full force thereafter.

In the meantime, you might want to check back blogs for some helpful reading.  Just click on a category that you may be interested in on the left and hopefully there is an entry that helps!

Happy New Year to you all!

-- Chip

Is the Proliferation of Shopping Destination/Comparison Sites Good For the Marketplace?

The latest annoucement from my friends at ShopBig.com/myTriggers.com, which I posted below in its entirety, got me thinking about if the ecommerce and mcommerce marketplace can support hundreds of shopping comparison sites and shopping destination sites, i.e., are there enough online shoppers to support the business models of all of these shopping destination sites and can online merchants make money managing so many online shopping sites and return on investment using these sites?

For the online consumer choice is good, but I doubt that many consumers go to more than 3-4 online shopping destination sites to find their products.  Most online shoppers are brand loyal and, after hunting around 3-4 sites for the best price, they usually setttle on a shopping destination site they trust and, most of the time, gives them the best price.  And, if we use alexa ratings as our guide, only about 15 of the online shopping sites break into the top 50,000 of most visited sites on the internet.  But so what?  Is bigger always better? No way!

The reason I say "so what/no way" is because there are many smaller online shopping sites that are excellent sites and make some merchants a good return on investment.  While some shopping destination sites may be smaller, and provide less click throughs to online merchants, they often have a very loyal audience and provide what every merchant really wants, namely, sales, a higher click-to-purchase ratio and clients to market to into the future. 

Look at GolfPricer.com (golf equipment) whose alexa rating is over 6 million, or ToolCrib.com (tools) or ShopandPrice (computers and accessories) both of which are over 700,000 -- does this mean that an online merchant should not feed their product catalog data to these sites, are they bad online shopping sites?  I think not.

Not every online shopping destination site wants, or needs to be, JellyFish.com, Shopzilla, Yahoo! Shopping, Pronto.com, PriceGrabber or Shopping.com.  Some online sites are happy with their business model and making a nice return on their business model and have figured out a way to make money while also helping the online consumer and online merchant to both win!   

I have had some clients decide not to work with the big online shopping sites precisely because the click to purchase ratio is not great and smaller sites perform better for them.

The answer to working with any shopping destination site lies simply in managing your return on investment.  This means managing:

• time to set up, optimize and manage data product feeds
• money spent on working with a shopping destination site, and
• man hours to ensure that you are using shopping destination sites properly, ergo, analyzing ROI

Many "experts" will tell you to only work with the large shopping destination sites. They often say this because these are the sites they are working with and know how to manage. I say test and try several shopping destination sites -- big and small. And find the ones that work best for you.  Some shopping destination sites that really work may be big, some may be small, and many you have never heard of, yet!

I have over 20 clients that send their product feed to over 60 sites each and they seem to be doing quite well.  They must know something!

What Does the Future Hold? How Many More Online Shopping Sites Will We Have?

While I am personally still bewildered by the many new shopping destination sites that keep popping up each month, including high end niche sites as Ideeli.com (a private members only shopping site), ViaLuxe.com (launched by former Yahoo! Executives) and ShoppingVale.com -- let's have some fun with them all -- why not try them, especially if you have the time to manage them and let you analytic tool provide you accurate information on how they are performing for you?

While I personally love the upward trends in the growth of online and mobile commerce and the many new online shopping sites available to consumers -- as it gives the consumer choice and more ways for online merchants to reach customers who are loyal to a certain shopping destination site -- I still can't understand what "really" differentiates each shopping destination site from the other and how they will continue to drive quality, "buying" consumers to their sites, as new sites and choices emerge. 

I like the fact that there are some interesting new business models to attract consumers, as "couparison shopping sites" (as myCoupons.com or CouponMountain.com) and review sites (as Buzzillions.com and PowerReviews.com), but there has to be some shake out soon -- can the market support over 200 shopping destinations sites?   

[Yes, folks, I have 216 shopping destination sites to date on my whiteboard, covering the USA, Canada and Europe]

They are all very similar and very few of their site navigation features are really that impressive for me to be able to fall in love with one shopping destination site over the other -- and please note that, when one shopping destination site offers color matching the rest follow, when one offers reviews the rest follow, when one offers better visual imagery the rest follow, when one offers "green shopping choices" the rest follow -- you get the point = so don't be "wowed" by innovation alone.

Who Cares? The More The Merrier.

Is there really anything radically different that one shopping site will introduce that the others cannot copy within 2-3 months?   Probably not.

Is there any reason why we should not be welcoming new shopping destination sites that might target a niche consumer audience? I can't find one.

The real shopping destination site winners will continue to be the ones that build the most trusted brand and loyal customer base through ongoing innovation, advertising, prices, and superior customer service. 

The reason I say this is because new shopping destination site features are just too easy to replicate.  While innovation is critical, just relying just on new site innovations cannot be relied upon to keep a shopping destination site ahead of the game! 

But in the meantime, the more online shopping destination sites that pop up, and are LEGITIMATE, and provide accurate data on how they are performing, the better.  And the over all winner is......YOU, the online merchant.

The Real Winner is The Online Merchant

I love choice, as it gives the small to mid sized online business more access to potential customers.

So the really good news for online merchants is that if a certain shopping destination site is not bringing you customers and performing the way you expected, there are always others you can try, and I guarantee that there are many online shopping destination sites and shopping comparison engines that are smaller, which will perform just as well as the larger ones...promise!

-- Chip