Ecommerce Blog

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Original post by Om Malik

Running ads on your ecommerce website can be very confusing to customers, especially when it competes with the product image or resembles a customer service function like live chat.

*Shudder*

Tamara Adlin shares other examples of bad, bad, bad, bad ads on her blog, Corporate Underpants. And no, in this case bad does not mean good.

3 Things to Die For: Web Analytics Unleashed

Free webinar: July 17th, 2008, 9am PT/12pm ET
Guest Panelist: Avinash Kaushik, Author & Analytics Evangelist, Google
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Original post by Linda Bustos

Luxury retailer Cartier recently launched a MySpace presence for its Love by Cartier campaign. But it faces an interesting reputation management issue: since MySpace already has hundreds of profiles that use the name Cartier (it is a surname, after all).

If you type in “Cartier MySpace” in Google, this is what you get:

If someone really wants to find the page, they may head over to MySpace and use it’s site search box, and still not find the official page:

You have to type “Love By Cartier” in Google or MySpace to get the link to the Cartier MySpace page (at time of posting, algorithm changes or incoming links to Cartier’s page may change that).

Yahoo’s algorithm does select the right page for “Cartier MySpace”:

Though you can’t control how Google matches pages to the search term (duplicate content filter in action), you can build links to the page you want to rank well to help boost its “Page Rank” which may cause it to beat out other pages in the search engine’s index. (If the search engine indexed 500+ pages from MySpace relevant to the term “Cartier”, it only picks 1 to show in search results, 2 if it uses an indented second result).

Cartier could also nag MySpace to tweak its internal search to rank its page tops for “Cartier” searches, especially since this is an advertising partnership between the two.

This is also an example of why brands should really claim their social network profile names / domains / Facebook Pages and Groups proactively, even if they just sit on them. It’s easy for net citizens to beat you to the punch which makes it harder for you to be found in search engines and social network searches.

3 Things to Die For: Web Analytics Unleashed

Free webinar: July 17th, 2008, 9am PT/12pm ET
Guest Panelist: Avinash Kaushik, Author & Analytics Evangelist, Google
Register to Attend…

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Original post by Linda Bustos

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Original post by Robert Scoble

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Original post by Robert Scoble

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Original post by Robert Scoble

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Original post by Robert Scoble

It’s not hard to find examples of PPC best-practice violations. In fact, it’s darn easy - too many online retailers have sloppy paid search campaigns. As you will see, it’s often the advertisers with big budgets that are “doing it wrong.”

Though these retailers will not be ticketed, fined, jailed or suspended for these offenses, the lost revenue and poor campaign performance they experience may be far more costly.

#9 - Stupid DKI (Dynamic Keyword Insertion)

Big-budget advertisers often bid on so many keywords, they often use Dynamic Keyword Insertion to show the keyword the searcher has queried in the ad text. Good idea, since click through is typically higher when there’s that extra keyword relevance. Unfortunately, many lists are so big they include nonsensical keyword phrases most likely scraped off some keyword research tool that picked up automated rank check software queries.

“Sally Hansen nail polish”

Nothing moisturizes and refreshes the skin like a coat of nail polish!

“home hair cutting”

“Duhahhhh…I was just on my way hair cutting home, officer…” Sounds like Shopzilla’s had a few too many highballs. Guilty on both counts of DKI.

(more…)

The Key to PPC for Online Retailers
Free webinar: May 15th, 2008, 9am PT/12pm ET
Guest Panelist: Ryan Gibson, Director of Marketing, The Rimm-Kaufman Group
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Original post by Linda Bustos

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Original post by Robert Scoble

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Original post by Robert Scoble

Picking up where we left off in discussing Office Max’s “Elf Yourself” campaign (our post Can Dancing Elves Move Product Off Shelves? and Robert Gorell’s How To Elf Yourself Out of Millions), I noticed another nail in Office Max’s coffin in my feed reader today.

Office Max drew much criticism from the marketing world, despite the phenomenal success of its Elf Yourself viral campaign, because it had nothing to do with office supplies. But driving sales wasn’t even the intention, rather it was an effort to bring a human face to Office Max’s brand. If at #2, Avis has to “try harder,” I suppose Office Max - #3 behind Staples and Office Depot - decided to compete on personality rather than price or customer service.

But that’s all for naught if everyone loves your campaign, but attributes it to your competitors - or completely different industries. Robert Gorell noted in his post:

Ask anyone who’s aware of Elf Yourself — and pronounce it carefully when you do — whether they can recall who sponsored the campaign.

Most of the answers I’ve gotten thus far (”Starbucks?”; “Barnes & Noble?”; “Wasn’t that Staples?”) have been guesses.

But this is the kicker: Not even Adweek can recall the sponsor correctly:

Burger King’s online Subservient Chicken from 2004, in which typed-in words triggered the responses of a man in a chicken suit, and Office Depot’s Elf Yourself microsite for the 2006 and 2007 holiday seasons, where people were turned into dancing elves, as well as other unique campaigns are proof that interesting tech tools can create marketing that is fun, engaging and certain to go viral.

D’OH!

Effective Online Merchandising: What Sells?
Free webinar: March 13th, 2008, 9am PT/12pm ET
Guest Panelist: Mike Svatek, Director, Marketing & Product Management, Baynote
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Original post by Linda Bustos

If you recognized this was NOT an official OfficeMax Elf Yourself video, perhaps you’re one of the 26.4 million people who took part in the real OfficeMax viral campaign last Christmas. (For our non-US readers, you can read up on this campaign here).

There’s no denying that this was the biggest social media marketing success for a major retailer in 2007. Hitwise ranked ElfYourself.com as the 51st most visited website in December, and users spent a total of 2,600 years on the site. Even more remarkable, 40% of visitors to ElfYourself.com were 55 years or older - proving that social media campaigns can engage boomers successfully.

OfficeMax VP of Marketing and Advertising Bob Thacker said: “We were looking to build the brand, warm up our image. We weren’t looking for sales. We are third-place players in our industry, so we are trying to differentiate ourselves through humor and humanization.”

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Love Your Landing Page: Tips to Increase Ecommerce Conversion
Free webinar: February 14th, 2008, 9am PT/12pm ET
Guest Panelist: Khalid Hajsaleh, President, INVESP Consulting
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Original post by Linda Bustos

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Original post by Robert Scoble

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Original post by Robert Scoble