eBay Ink blogger Richard Brewer-Hay is here at the PeSA summit and covered the Keynote address by Lorrie Norrington. He does a great job of summarizing her comments.
I’ll just add my 12%.
The message I am hearing coming from eBay is certainly different from years past. Here are some quotes from Lorrie’s keynote address:
“Today, everyone at eBay recognizes that we have to fight hard each and every day to win your business because you – along with our buyers – are our customers.”
“I’d like to make clear that to excite and engage our buyers, we also need to improve your experience – the seller experience and make eBay the best way for all sellers – small and large — to reach buyers.”
“But we know, that to continue winning your business, we have to make eBay a more attractive place for you to do business.”
They are saying the right things, but will […]
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This isn’t a new topic here at Get Elastic, but since search engine optimization is such a key part to ecommerce success I’m going to bang the same drum once again on optimizing for brand names.
Zappos appears to have covered all the bases and then some in optimizing its brand category pages. For example, its Nine West page (below) includes 272 occurrences of “Nine West” on this page - that’s 4.55% of the entire page copy. This is what is referred to as “keyword density.” Though keyword density is not as important to SEO as was once thought (title tag, keyword rich backlinks from other sites and the domain’s overall authority have more impact), this page certainly is considered highly relevant to “Nine West” by Google.
Like Karmaloop, Zappos includes a paragraph about the brand itself. Most ecommerce sites have category / brand pages that consist of little more than images, […]
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I’m speaking in a couple hours. I don’t read off my powerpoints when giving a presentation, so you’re probably missing 50% of my presentation by reading the below doc., but maybe you’ll still find it useful.
document.write(\’‘);
Read this doc on Scribd: ECMTA Spring Summit Presentation April 23
var scribd_doc = new scribd.Document(2607721, \’key-110ltsgj2lpxzgpn1j4m\’); scribd_doc.write(\’embedded_flash_2607721_n4ceg\’);
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Well, I was traveling most of the day and then at a cocktail party most of the evening here at the PeSA event in New Orleans, it was good to catch up with old friends and also meet some new people.
One thing, I obviously missed while away, was the news that eBay had sued the founders of Craigslist for unilaterally diluting the value of their stake in the company.
The details are sketchy, but we all new something like this was going to happen. As soon as I get more information I will post about it.
A couple of quick hits from the PeSA event:
I was able to chat with Richard Brewer-Hay, the man behind the eBay Ink Blog and he seems like a good chap to me. I look forward to sitting down with him and having a longer conversation in the next couple of days.
The number I’m hearing regarding registrations […]
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In Piper Jaffray’s April 18th 2008 Industry Note on Google’s Conference Call, Aaron Kessler and crew point to the following negative remarks from Google:
On its conference call, Google indicated that it is seeing signs of slowing in U.S. eCommerce. “I think in general we saw in Q1 a bit of slowdown in retail, some postponement of budgets.” Google’s comments confirm our recent eCommerce survey, ComScore spending data, as well as SEM data which suggests slowing eCommerce growth in the U.S.
The note also mentioned a recent SearchIgnite study, but I’m waiting to review the whitepaper myself before adding fuel to the fire.
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This was a solid panel and deserved more than my feeble attempts at live blogging.
Moderator: Bill Tancer (Hitwise)
Panelists: Natalie Long (REI), Peter Brumme (Intuit), Monty Hudson (Revenue Science), Joey Wilson (Sapient).
Here were the big bullet points from the panelists:
-Don’t confuse the new tools (social networking, for example) with new laws. [Monty]
-Don’t assume what worked yesterday will work tomorrow. Continue to test what you already know. [Peter]
-Allocate appropriate resources to maximize current relationships before trying to pursuade someone new. [Peter]
-The conversation with the customer doesn’t end when they click submit. [Joey]
-It’s almost universal that there’s more to be done. [Companies] are leaving things out there when the relationship has already been made. [Joey]
-Each step of the conversation can be optimized. [Joey]
-Give your customers the tools they need to connect with each other. [Natalie]
-Customers want more out of their brands. [Natalie]
I love hearing marketers talk like this. While […]
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Today is Earth Day, and for weeks online retailers have been jumping on the green wagon in their marketing efforts, taking advantage of their eco-friendly and sustainable products and projects.
More than ever, retailers are adopting a Wayne Gretzky “skate to where the puck is” marketing strategy. As consumers become more conscious of environmental issues, more and more marketing messages will contain green references and themes. Many feel that encouraging people to consume more in celebration of Earth Day is a bit ironic and counter-productive. But the shift towards eco-friendliness has encouraged many companies to source and sell green products in response to consumer demand. So getting the word out about the availability of green alternatives is especially fitting for this time of year.
The following is a sampling of Earth Day emails and on-site promotions from some of the top online retailers. You can read […]
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Today at ChannelAdvisor’s Catalyst UK event, a new CSE was mentioned in the Q+A that I thought was particularly innovative. The site is called mydeco.com (it’s a UK site so don’t be surprised to see all prices in pounds).
What’s neat about mydeco, is that similar to like.com in the US, it’s a very visually-driven CSE, but with the added twist of focusing on the furniture vertical.
By focusing on furniture, mydeco allows a consumer to build a room using the CSE. So you can create a quick 3D model of your room and then ‘place’ products from the search results into the room. Here’s an example created by a mydeco user. Note how the products used to build this room are clearly listed, so not only is it a way for you to have a custom experience, but there’s a social element where you can share designs and then as a […]
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Scot Wingo here. I’m over in the UK (London) for our ChannelAdvisor Catalyst UK event and we held an interesting panel on CSEs.
In my keynote, I pointed out that based on Comscore data, about 35% of buyers in the EU go through a CSE on a monthly basis. In the UK, this is quite a bit higher at over 50%.
The panel was hosted by our UK CSE expert, Dan Burnham and featured:
Adam Patterson, Shopzilla
Laurent Gibb, Shopping.com
Thomas Sevege, Twenga
Shopzilla
Shopzilla is active in UK, FR, DE. They reviewed a timeline of the company that most are familiar with. In EU, they have 6m visitors/m and in the UK approx 3m uniques/m.
The Shopzilla differences are:
Speed - 10-50x faster than competitors
No ads
Relevance
ShopRank determines most relevant results, not just based on price.
Ratings (consumer ratings)
They highlighted non-compacted products and how shopzilla does on these items. Specifically they pull out a variety of attributes. Used the example […]
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My last trip to India was in the pleasant winter and it was packed with action. I met with Wipro, Infosys, Patni, Accenture, Symphony and various other small and large companies. It was 14-day 5-city tour with stops in Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad. Met a lot of people and made tons of new friends. This time, I decided to visit India during the red hot summer and get some heat!
I will be in India from May 19 to June 1 to speak at the Great Indian Developer Summit 2008 in Bangalore. I would love to meet with you if you or your organization is using Amazon Web Services and/or would like to know more about computing in the cloud. I would love to talk to outsourcing companies, consulting companies, system integrators, enthusiasts and passionate programmers.
Please feel free to schedule your meeting using our user-generated calender - Evangelist’s Wiki […]
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