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By josek, 30/04/2012
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Monetate just released an infographic focused on customer experience where they explain some interesting facts:

• 97% of users said that their online experience influence whether they purchased a product or not
• 65% of users agreed that an online experience changed their opinion about a brand or product
• 89% of users that had a bad online experience switched to a competitor
• 73% of users would buy again from a retailer if they have an excellent customer experience

Tags: customers, ecommerce, loyalty, user experience, ux

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By David, 25/04/2012
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Every e-commerce generates lots of information derived from its activity. The dashboard emphasizes the necessary information so the management of the company can take decisions to improve the information of the company.

An appropriate dashboard must synthesize the information so the management of the company quickly obtains conclusions about the trend of company data. In order to obtain it, the analyst must have a precise idea about the data of interest and how to get these data. Using appropriate metrics and a friendly interface that meets the basic criteria of usability, are basic ingredients for a good dashboard.

The data reflected by our dashboard should be represented in a clear way. There must be no doubt about what is being measured and what is represented by the data. The dashboard user should have no doubt about its usefulness. A good dashboard is a dashboard that is frequently used and for a short time.

The dashboard must be able to answer common questions about our e-commerce as all those related to the movements of our product sales are, to alert management to the possible problems or opportunities that the company could go through. Once it is clear how a dashboard should be, we should customize it starting to ask for what, for whom and how we will represent the data.

A possible classification of e-commerce dashboard according to their function could be: strategic dashboard, dashboard Tactical, Operational dashboard.

Strategic: The strategic dashboards are used to monitor the progress of the company to get predefined objectives.

Tactical: With dashboards Tactical, managers control how the market affects the shares of the company.

Operational: The operational dashboards are used on the departmental level. They must be prepared to allow detailed analysis and processes.

Tags: dashboard, e-commerce, ecommerce

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By josek, 23/04/2012
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Europe is different, that’s quite sure, and from May 2011, Europe will be even more different than US and other regions, due to the new Cookie Law that will make illegal most european websites. Silktide just published a very good ebook analyzing the new European Cookie Law and its impact in the European web ecosystem. A must read for any online retailer.

Tags: cookie, europe, law, legal, privacy

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By josek, 22/04/2012
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BusinessDegree just published an infographic about Mobile Gaming, quite a big business. According to the infographic, games are the most used mobile apps, and people spend and average of 7.8 hours a month gaming on their phones. Just in 2011, mobile games generated $12 billion.

Tags: apps, business, digital goods, games, gaming, infographic, mobile

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By josek, 20/04/2012
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If selling online is not easy at all, selling through social networks is even a more complex job, because we don’t have the needed previous experience in order to push the right keys. From all the possibilites, most merchants prefer Facebook as a social storefront just because Facebook offers the possibility of integrate a complete storefront that may generate sales. By the other hand, other Social Networks such as Twitter, doesn’t allow any kind of storefront integration, but that doesn’t mean that we cannot generate sales through that channel. Just review some tips to be able to use Twitter as a complimentary sales channel to your online storefront or business website.

Be concise on your Twitter profile

Your profile should state concisely what you do and what you sell. Don’t be ambiguous, be as clear as you can. Link your webpage, let it be your homepage or your blog, what is important is that you connect your twitter account with your business website. Some nice examples:

• @instabill_com: International payment processor helping online business grow with #ecommerce tips and the latest news stories. Check out our blog at http://blog.instabill.com
• @Shopify: A fully hosted e-commerce shopping cart provider preferred by over 20,000 stores worldwide. Quickly and easily create a beautiful online store with Shopify
• @KISSmetrics: Official KISSmetrics Twitter account. Our online software helps online business turn analytics into insights that guide decision-making and growth

Whether using a inspiring phrase or making it explicit, you should tell your followers what you can offer and what should they expect from your Twitter account. If you include a link directly to your business website, it’s better to design a specific landing page, where you can offer them a freebie or a discount in their purchase if you’re an ecommerce business. For instance, some big companies such as Dell, have embraced this concept with very good results.

Grow a Community Focused on Similar Interests

After you design your profile, you need to “get followers”, and start connecting with your potential targets. But Twitter, as any other social networking sites, is not about collecting followers. You connect with people and brands, so you must be of interest to them. Start analyzing what worries and concerns your target audience, and grow a community around those topics. Some examples:

• @ElasticPath is a digital commerce technology provider, so their target audience are ecommerce websites and professionals. They tweet a lot of stuff about ecommerce, online marketing and a lot of tips to increase your sales and conversions.
• @HarvardBooks is Harvard Square’s landmark indie bookstore, and they tweet about authors, books, and events they organize in their bookstore.
• If you’re an important brand, such as American Apparel, then probably your followers would want to know about your products, trends, etc.

And don’t forget that Twitter is an excellent customer service channel, to notify your users any incidence, or answer their questions and problems. A good example is @Rewinery, who are always answering comments, and a few days ago, had to notify their users they ran out of stock and could not make more sales that day (that means they’re doing great for being an startup).

Redirect your Followers to your Web

A blog is the best friend of Twitter, because it’s a perfect tool to connect twitter with your business website or ecommerce website. Use your blog to write about what concerns to your potential customers, and tweet your posts. You’ll be redirecting traffic to your website and allowing your followers to discover your business. If you sell attractive products, you should also tweet about them, or tweet about discounts, offers, or whatever may be interesting for your followers and is hosted in your website. You should take care about balancing comercial tweets, with informative content about your sector and news. If you only tweet about your products and offers, you may loose a lot of followers because your timeline would not be attractive to them.

Offer Something Interesting to your Followers

Try to offer your followers something interesting, and if it is possible, something they can’t get directly from your website. For example, you can create special coupon codes for your Twitter followers, so you can reward the users that are following you. If you are able to grow a twitter community of followers, then it would be easier for you to attract them to your website. And giving them something they will appreciate, it’s one of the more effective strategies for that.

Tags: ecommerce, sales, social, social commerce, social networking, twitter

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By josek, 17/04/2012
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Really nice infographic from Monetate about how Social Login & Sharing affect eCommerce. Some interesting facts:

• 65% of adult Internet users have an account on at least one social network
• 80% of us Social Networks users prefer to connect with brands through Facebook
• 58% of consumers who ‘like’ a brand on Facebook expect discounts or promotions
• 40% of consumers prefer social logins over creating a new/guest account

[Source: Monetate]

Tags: ecommerce, facebook, social commerce, social networks, twitter

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By josek, 16/04/2012
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A few days ago we wrote about how Facebook ecommerce is gaining momentum, and we have also reviewed several ecommerce software platforms that allow retailers to integrate their storefronts within Facebook. But when we wrote about how F-Commerce was starting to get traction, we also wondered how would Zuckerberg try to monetize F-Commerce.

The last week, Facebook announced the launch of a new important features: ‘Offers’, which allow brands to deliver daily deals to their brand’s page and the user’s news feeds. Facebook Offers is a reinvention of the common daily deals websites, such as Groupon, LivingSocial or AmazonOffers, but not designed to be a separate feature or page (like Groupon), but totally integrated within a normal Facebook usage. With a potential target market of over 850 million people, we are sure that Facebook Offers will be able to drive a lot of sales from Facebook to a bunch of retailers.

Main Differences with other Daily Deals websites

The main mechanic of Facebook Offers is really similar to Groupon or similar websites, but the main difference is that Facebook Offers will be totally integrated within Facebook’s normal activity. That means that users won’t need to visit any other site, they will receive the daily deals mixed with ther news feed updates, so as a retailer, you’ll be targeting far more people. Sharing is integrated in the process, as it’s integrated in anything you can do in Facebook, so it’s logical to think that good offers will have a more viral effect in Facebook Offers than in any other daily deals website. In fact, when a user claims an offer, that offer will be added to their timeline.

But I’m not seeing any Offer in Facebook

That’s right. Offers are available in beta to a limited number of local business Pages, and they will launch more broadly soon. So in the near future it’s expected that any brand can post their offers and daily deals.

And maybe this is just the beginning of what “the blue company” will do related to Social Commerce, and we’re sure we will see more movements in the near future.

Tags: daily deals, f-commerce, facebook, fcommerce, groupon, livingsocial, news, offers, social commerce

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By josek, 09/04/2012
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As we recently wrote in this blog, F-Commerce is gaining momentum, so if you already own an ecommerce website, it’s a good moment to test the viability of using Facebook as an another sales channel. To create your Facebook store, you don’t need a lot of investment or resources, you can make use of several tools that help you to create your own Facebook store front, importing the products catalog you already have in your web storefront, or adding new products specially selected for your Facebook store. Here is our list of 5 alternatives to (easily) create your facebook store:

Beetailer

Beetailer offers an interesting service that allows you to import your actual store (if it’s developed using Magento, Shopify or Prestashop) to Facebook. The service includes an analytics system that helps you to analyze and understand the behavior of your F-store, a completely integrated in Facebook purchase process, and several tools that helps you to promote your brand and products.

Voiyk

Voiyk helps us to integrate an online store in our Facebook fans page. Voiyk doesn’t allow us to import our existent online store, so the process to create the Facebook store need more efforts than using Beetailer, but it may be a good option if we want to create a different user experience in our Facebook store, or even a selection of product specifically designed to connect with our fans in Facebook.

NorthSocial

NorthSocial is not (only) an application to create your Facebook Store, but a group of applications that allow any brand to personalize their fans page. Show & Sell is the NorthSocial application that helps you to create a Facebook store, but you can consider some of their packs in order to boost the power of your Facebook fans page.

TabJuice

Tabjuice allows to integrate an storefront in our fans page. The big difference with other similar applications is that Tabjuice allows to choose the review platform to integrate, automatically calculates taxes, have a powerful design configuration, etc.

Payvment

Payvment started as a free cart for Facebook, but since then, it has evolved to a more integrated and powerful solution. Payvment is focused on sharing products on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and provides excellent analytis.

Tags: beetailer, facebook, facebook commerce, northsocial, payvment, social commerce, tabjuice, voiyk

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By josek, 06/04/2012
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Looking at the numbers, it’s obvious that Facebook is the promised land for e-retailers. With more than 845 million monthly active users by the end of 2011, its numbers are far away from the most well-known ecommerce sites like Amazon (164 million active accounts) or eBay (100 million active accounts). The main focus of Facebook is to connect friends, but as it has grown as a platform for any possible usage, by means of brand pages and applications, it has allowed the entrance of a group of interesting startups that want to revolution the ecommerce world by converting Facebook into a social ecommerce platform.

And there must be something interesting behind the concept of Facebook Commerce (or F-Commerce), when Venture Capital is starting to invest in those companies. In the last months, we’ve seen a lot of investment in Social Commerce companies (more than $300 million in 10 companies), such as:

• Beetailer, a spanish startup focused on helping retailers to import their storefronts to Facebook pages, received seed funding from Y Combinator.
• BeachMint, a series of suscription shopping model with personalized product recommendations, for several niches (Beauty, Jewel, Shoe and Style), has received a total of $73.5 million.
• Fab.com, a flash sales website really focused on Facebook commerce, has been able to raise more than $50 million since 2010, and has started its expansion to Europe by adquiring Casacanda, the 1st flash sales website in Germany and other north-europe countries.
• Wantful, a gift-giving service, that makes use of your Facebook profile to recommend gifts for your friends, has raised $5.5 million the last month.
• Buddy Media, a social enterprise software for social marketing, has raised $90 million since 2007 ($54 million in 2011).

All these movements make us think that Facebook Commerce is gaining momentum, but there are a lot of unresolved questions about using Facebook as a sales platform. First of all, Facebook hasn’t defined yet how’d they monetize the use of their platform as another e-commerce channel. In fact, when Facebook decided to monetize the use of Facebook as a videogame distribution platform, they created Facebook Credits and Facebook takes a 30% of the revenue generated by the sale of virtual goods using Facebook Credits. That’s a controversial model, and we are talking about virtual goods, which are near-zero cost, but Facebook need to develop a substantial different model for eCommerce, if they want to take part of the revenues generated within Facebook.

2012 is going to be a year full of movement within Social Commerce, and more specifically in Facebook Commerce, so it’s a good moment to take some risk and start using Facebook as an alternative ecommerce channel, or develop new Social Commerce models.

Tags: beachmint, beetailer, buddy media, commerce, fab.com, facebook, social commerce, wantful

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By josek, 04/04/2012
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The eCommerce market is already strong and shows a lot of opportunities. In 2011, the US retail ecommerce sales grew up to 194.3 billion dollars, and the last estimations points out that it will grow up to 362 billion dollars by 2016. We are facing strong numbers for the next years, and we are only showing US numbers. For 2012, the estimates show a 15,4% rise, up to 224,2 billion dollars, and in the period from 2012 to 2016, we will see interanual growths higher than 10% in all years.

Considering other reports, like the last J.P. Morgan report on e-commerce, the global e-commerce revenue in 2011 grew 19%, up to 680 billion dollars. So actually US ecommerce is accounting for 28% of global sales. If we forecasts the numbers shown at emarketer report, and we take into consideration that ecommerce penetration in US is higher than in other countries and regions, it is expected that the contribution of US ecommerce sales to worldwide sales decrease along next years. Estimating a contribution of 20% by 2016, we are facing a global market of almost 2 trillion dollars. This may seem crazy, but Goldman Sachs is already predicting that e-commerce worldwide sales will reach 963 billion dollars by 2013.

If we analize the growth estimates by region, we observe that there is room for more innovative ecommerces in US, but other regions like Asia will drive the worldwide growth (estimates for the 2010-2013 period):

• US, 165.8 (2010) to 235.3 (2013) billion dollars, a growth of 12.4%
• Europe, 195.2 (2010) to 283 (2013) billion dollars, a growth of 13.2%
• Asia, 155.7 (201) to 323.1 (2013) billion dollars, a growth of 27.5%
• Rest of the world, 55.8 (2010) to 121.7 (2013) billion dollars, a growth of 29.7%
• Global: 572.5 (2010) to 963 (2013) billion dollars, a growth of 19.4%

Tags: ecommerce, emarketer, forrester, gartner, j.p. morgan, online commerce, report, trends

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