Ecommerce Blog

Volusion is swiftly working on finalizing its newest partners program, the Volusion Partner Network. The network consists of four different types of partnerships, all meant to maximize collaborators’ profits while providing a superior experience for our ecommerce clients.
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Here at Volusion, we’ve always known that truly great companies need truly great partnerships. Collaboration and alliances allow […]

Original post by Matt

Coupons codes, or voucher codes as our friends in Europe prefer to call them, are used by retailers to offer discounts or incentives to their customers when shopping online. For the customer, coupons are familiar sight, appearing in their inbox on a daily basis from almost every online retailer they have ever shopped at.

For the retailer however, coupons are a complex marketing incentive that can be leveraged in many different ways to provide discounts to different customer segments. There are different types of coupon codes, different ways of creating them and different ways of distributing them. We’ll explore these in this blog post.

Coupon Types

To shoppers, a coupon is just a coupon. If they receive the coupon via email directly from the retailer, chances are it will work provided the outlined conditions are met. If they go hunting for a coupon code on the internet (there are literally hundred of sites that publish coupon codes), often the coupon doesn’t work – usually because it has expired, the customer has not met the conditions of the coupon or the retailer has voided it. What customers often don’t realize is what kind of coupon they are using and how that might impact their ability to receive a discount.

Public Coupon Codes

Public coupons are intended for general consumption. The retailer generally doesn’t mind if the coupon is forwarded to friends, posted on a blog or even on a deal hunting site. As far as the retailer is concerned the more customers that have and use the coupon the better.

Sometimes the retailer wants to control the usage of a coupon code to a targeted campaign group. Often this is done by creating offline print coupons that are distributed in the mail, or via flyers at a public event. To stop these coupons being virally distributed across the web the retailer can create a limited set of coupons thus restricting their exposure to the discount. Retailers often use a code generation service such as Numberator or manually generate a set of unique coupons in excel that they can then distribute to recipients. To prevent overage usage of the associated discount or offer the retailer can limit these coupons to a single usage only. Thus once each coupon code is used, it becomes void regardless of who used it. Remember to avoid using excessively long codes and easily mistakable characters when generating your codes.

Private Coupon Codes

Private coupons are intended to be used by specific customers only. The retailer wants to ensure that each coupon can only be used by the customer it was assigned to. In this case, the codes can be associated to a customers email address or account profile. As coupons are issued to specific customers, they can be viewed by the customer in their account profile and automatically applied to their cart, removing the need for the customer to manually enter the code during the checkout process.

Usage Restrictions

Regardless of the type of coupons created, the retailer may want to restrict how many times a coupon can be used by an individual shopper. With some discounts such as free shipping, allowing a single customer to re-use the coupon on multiple orders is usually not an issue. However if the coupon entitles to the customer to a free gift then the retailer may want to restrict the usage of the coupon to once per customer.

Some retailers link usage of a coupon not to an order, but to the quantity of items in the customer’s cart. For example, a coupon may entitle a customer to 50 free mp3 downloads or 25 free photo prints. The usage limit of the coupon is linked to how many eligible products are purchased, not how many transactions the customer makes.

Distribution Options

Coupons can be distributed in many different ways. Often they are emailed to customers, posted on a ’special offers’ page or distributed virally via social media sites. However, consider issuing coupons to customers as an incentive to shop again. At Pacsun if you spend $50 online, you’ll receive a $25 discount coupon off your next purchase.

The 25% off coupon code can be delivered in the customer order confirmation email and linked to their account so that only they can use it.

Original post by Peter Sheldon

Chances are if you are an online retailer your have some seasonality to your business. This mainly depends on the type of products you sell, and the general type of people that purchase your products. As a B2B’ish industry we see major volume decreases near every holiday.

Where does your business fit-in?

The once a year rush…

The every holiday surge…

The B2B…

Or the product launch…

With Google’s and others’ free tools on the internet, a small business owner can get very good insight into business seasonality, and shopping search trends. If you have good relationships with your suppliers and manufacturers, it’s often possible to design pre-release campaigns for upcoming products. Search engines place some weight on the first websites to write about specific products or services. If you’re that website, you can gain considerable traction in natural search rankings, and possibly a huge sales boost once the product is launched. This is just one example of how trends like this can be used, but the possibilities are endless and the data is free.

Original post by jestep

Related articles:Because September and October are historically times when many people open their first business, this week is dedicated to topics surrounding starting your own business. While this is not an end-all-be-all list of steps you must take, they’ll help you get a solid head start on your new business venture. Thank you for joining us […]

Original post by Ryan

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Original post by Jennifer Martinez

Gary Vaynerchuk’s dad came to the United States with nothing in his pocket. He worked for less than minimum wage and built up a business, Wine Library, that today sells $50 million a year in wine in a sizeable store in New Jersey.

Today Gary is building on top of his dad’s work and is taking the store global with a video show, Wine Library TV, that gets about 100,000 views a show. I remember when I first saw the impact he was having when I walked into a meeting at Revision 3 and the team was sitting around watching his show and drinking the wine he was talking about.

Here we visited Gary’s store and got more of how he’s using the 2010 web to bash in the skulls of his competitors. He calls it “bringing the thunder.” I call it the most innovative marketing I’ve seen on the web to date. We talked about a range of things from his dad to how he would compete with his show, if someone else had done Wine Library TV and he wanted in on the action.

This is part of our Building43 series of videos. Come over and join the community there, we’re looking for people who are fanatical about the 2010 web and who are looking to help other people and businesses get into this new world.

By the way, I’m a huge fan because Gary has never mislead me and he’s very willing to tell a CEO his/her wine is crap to his/her face (I’ve seen him do it, even after the CEO threw us a party).

Hope  you enjoy, tomorrow Rocky (behind the camera producer at Building43) and me are headed to London to find out what’s happening on the other side of the pond with regards to the 2010 web. Join us on Sunday night at a Tweetup in London.

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

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Original post by Robert Scoble

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Original post by Muhammad Saleem

One of the best ways (If done properly) to add additional revenue to your ecommerce sales is to sell non-core products (at cost or even at a loss) to gain additional core sales and new customers.

A great example that I found this weekend, is B&H Photo. They sell a variety of non-photography related computer and technical products. What quickly caught my attention is that many these products are being sold well below any other online retailer’s price, even cheaper than anyone on eBay. I don’t have access to wholesale computer accessory costs, but I imagine that they aren’t making much money, if any, on their computer product sales.

So how is this smart marketing?

When an established website like B&H draws sales from non-core products, they gain additional customers and brand exposure. What they gain by selling at cost, is the opportunity to sell other products for profit, and they gain repeat customers. In the end, if the amount of money spent marketing and supporting non-core products is minimal, there is absolutely no downside to this practice. If they aren’t making money from those computer related sales, they’re making money from those additional customers that are also interested in cameras, memory cards, photography accessories, and more computer accessories.

A good idea for some but not for everyone:

This practice can be a strong marketing technique, however, it will not create a sustainable business model for everyone. A businesses that can most effectively harness this technique must have a strong search engine presence, or the ability to draw sales and traffic at little to no additional cost. This technique is probably not a good idea for a startup business unless you really know what you are doing. A business must also have access to related but non-core products at a very competitive price.

Obvious potential pitfalls:

• Some strong reserve must be used to not cannibalize existing profit margins, as it extremely easy to sell short on everything. Don’t make everything a loss leader, only those non-core products that you are adding.
• Another danger is accidentally migrating from one core product type to another. It needs to be clear to yourself and to your customers what your business is there to do. If you are a photo shop, that sells some computer accessories, it should be clear that you are not a computer accessory seller that has some photography equipment. This is absolutely key in protecting your brand, and sustaining your business model.
• The other products that you decide to sell must be related to what your business does. If would make no sense for an online flower shop to start selling car parts. You need to be careful not to dilute your brand, message, and what it is you currently do with completely unrelated products.
• You do not ever want to enter an arena that will create a lot of additional customer support requests. This is a quick way to nullify any gain you get from additional customers and sales.

The big picture:

It’s sometimes difficult to grasp the concept of loosing money on one place to gain money in another. If you have the ability to step back and look at the big picture, you will find that there are numerous areas where a loss here can create a huge gain somewhere else. Small steps should always be taken when testing out a system that has both the potential for a loss and a gain, but I think that many will find that this is a useful, appropriate, and completely possible marketing technique.

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Original post by jestep

We learned from our recent webinar Jon Stewart or Oprah: What’s Your Website’s Personality Type that different people experience and interact with your website in different ways depending on their dominant personality type.

These 4 buying modalities have been described as Competitive (fast and logical decision-making), Spontaneous (fast and emotional decisions), Methodical (slow and rational) and Humanistic (slow and emotional). (Read this summary if you’re not familiar with the 4 modalities.)

You may have a tendency to make most of your decisions a certain way - that’s just who you are. But different buying situations can throw you into a different mode. For example, a typically spontaneous person must take a slow and rational approach when evaluating software vendors for a major ecommerce project, even though he may download iTunes tracks on impulse several times over the same period.

Personality Types and Email Marketing

If you had an email account that was purely ecommerce offers (no messages from work, friends or Nigerian ambassadors), you would see the majority are vying for your attention like: SALE! UP TO 50% OFF! NEW STOCK! ONLINE ONLY! EXCLUSIVE! FREE SHIPPING!

(more…)

Web Analytics for Online Retailers: Technology Use & Satisfaction 2008
Free webinar: April 17th, 2008, 9am PT/12pm ET
Guest Panelist: Eric T. Peterson, CEO, Web Analytics Demystified
Register to Attend

Original post by Linda Bustos

Like Vitaman’s Nikki, American Eagle Outfitters is giving a “human” touch to its merchandising. AE has snagged video-blogging vixen iJustine as a spokeswoman for its Spring Break events in Cancun. And you can find her ooh-ing and aah-ing products within an interactive Spring Break packing guide.

Unlike Nikki, iJustine gushes about goodies for both girls and guys when you rollover certain items.

But like the Vitaman valet, she is very enthusiastic in romancing the products:

Guys, trust me. Throw on a polo and a smile and you’ll have every girl’s attention. They’re so great looking and so easy to wear with anything. If you don’t pack some polos, you might as well stay home.

Whether having a human describe products is something customers want to see - I don’t know. Perhaps for high school / college types who’d rather watch the movie than read the book - watching a product description is preferred?

But really, this concept isn’t new. We have the choice to read the newspaper, or watch an attractive anchor read it to us. Why wouldn’t that also apply to ecommerce?

Video is Here to Stay

It certainly takes a lot of time and money to build interactive Flash-based applications. But if you don’t want to go that route, you can still add a human element by adding video content to product pages, like Tiger Direct:

This video sold me on this camcorder, which I purchased immediately along with a bunch of accessories. I found Arno to be knowledgeable, friendly and humorous. Plus this video actually showed me how close you can zoom in with this camera - try describing that with text! With absolutely no background knowledge of camcorders, it really helped to have a virtual salesperson to turn to. Plus it’s nice to refer to the demo to learn how to use the camera when I get it rather than relying on the package black and white insert.

I expect to see a lot more video merchandising (with real people) popping up in the future.

Effective Online Merchandising: What Sells?
Free webinar: March 13th, 2008, 9am PT/12pm ET
Guest Panelist: Mike Svatek, Director, Marketing & Product Management, Baynote
Register to Attend

Original post by Linda Bustos

If your company or products are fortunate enough to attract media attention, naturally you would want to highlight this your ecommerce website. Not only does it add credibility to your site browsers, but it can also help new visitors to your website responding to your good press find those featured items quickly.

One store that gets a lot of media love is Rampage. Today we’re going to look at how Rampage leverages its media coverage, and what it can do to take it one step further.

Home Page

The pencil skirt in the image above was recently included in a fashion segment on the Today Show. Rampage includes an “As Seen on the Today Show” link on the home page, so any visitor, whether they have seen the clip or not knows right away the media thinks Rampage is a trend-setting store. Even if you don’t want a pencil skirt, the recognition of the Today Show may boost consumer trust.

The home page also links to a media coverage section — mostly top fashion magazines. There’s 17 mentions from fashion magazines in Winter 2008 alone. Each reference has a thumbnail of the magazine with details of which item was featured.

You can click through for more detail of the actual article:

From here you can click through to the product page. Rampage uses URL parameters to track which product page views came through the media area, and also to add a “return to media coverage” link on the product page for usability.

Collections

Another area where Rampage pounces on its publicity is in its unique merchandising area: “Collections.” Each collection shows sets of items (much like a magazine editor’s picks layout) with product details appearing upon mouseover (great usability). This is great merchandising for female fashion, because unlike sidebar cross-sells, this gives the customer a feel for how things look as an outfit. (It’s much harder to visualize when product thumbnails are 4 inches away from each other.)

Collection’ />

Again, Rampage uses unique URLs for clicks to product pages from collections, and the user is shown a “return to collection” link.

When you roll over any product in a collection, you see the product name, the price (sale prices in red), the available sizes and a fun description. If the item has been covered by a magazine or TV, this is mentioned in the rollover box.

Product Page

This is the current product page:

The product description includes a link that jumps to MSNBC.com, where the Today Show clip lives.

But this clip is embeddable, so Rampage could easily incorporate this video right on the product page. The customer wouldn’t have to leave the product page. This would appeal to the “competitive” customer, as I learned from Jason’s webinar last week on personality types. The “competitive” shopper is click-averse, and rollovers give you the information without a click.

Here’s my concept for a new landing page with video. (I also took the liberty to trade the product color links for attractive color swatches).

This is a loooong video that also features other retailers. Rampage’s item is not mentioned until the end of the clip. If Rampage could contact MSNBC.com and ask permission to show only a short clip (introducing the expert, and honing in on the Rampage feature), this would be more effective.

Many sites are introducing video with product information and customer reviews right on product pages. If media clips like this are available and embeddable, it makes sense to include these also.

Effective Online Merchandising: What Sells?
Free webinar: March 13th, 2008, 9am PT/12pm ET
Guest Panelist: Mike Svatek, Director, Marketing & Product Management, Baynote
Register to Attend

Original post by Linda Bustos