Okay, I’m jumping the gun here with this post, because I just signed up for a free trial of Amazon Prime on Monday and made my first order Monday evening, so I haven’t even received my items yet, but I’ve had enough exposure to the service to write about it.
Here is my 12%:
With Amazon Prime and One-Click turned on, shopping on Amazon is a breeze. In fact I would dare say it was fun. No way, eBay ever comes close to this shopping experience.
When shopping with 3P Merchants, I just selected “Eligible for Prime” offers and whola I narrowed down the search to Amazon and one or two 3P Merchants. That number of offers will increase as more 3P merchants sign-up for FBA.
I purchased one of my own items and National Treasure 2 with standard 2-day shipping. I was going to choose Next-Day for $3.00, but since I wasn’t going […]
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Yesterday I sent an email to Brian Weigand of Jellyfish asking him about potential Jellyfish integration into Microsoft Search. This seemed like a logical thing to ask considering that Jellyfish recently completed integration with Windows Live and Arrington mentioned on Monday MSFT’s announcement “On Wednesday, we will be announcing a major new initiative that our search teams have been driving. We are getting better and better with our core algorithmic search, and at the same time, we are investing to differentiate in vertical experiences and to disrupt the current model. You’ll hear more about our plans Wednesday.”
So Arrington now has the complete story of Microsoft offering Cashback to search engine users. Live Search Cashback is live and seems to be purely based on Jellyfish’s system - same advertisers, same UI, same cash back model. At the same time, Jellyfish’s own Cashback shopping site has been down for […]
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Yesterday we talked about persuasive copywriting for PPC ads, and as promised, today we’re going to talk about strategies for split testing ads.
I’ve heard most PPC experts recommend you test headlines first, because they are most visible and are believed to influence click through rate more than body copy (because people have a tendency not to read things if they don’t have to). But I’m going to go against the gurus and suggest how you could test offers and value propositions first, using a hypothetical campaign for “wireless headphones.”
The Strategy
This approach uses Dynamic Keyword Insertion in headlines for your first few rounds of testing. You have more room to market yourself in ad copy than in the headline. You can test offers, calls to action, value propositions — copy that answers the question “why should I buy from your site?”
Dynamic Keyword Insertion means Google will […]
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November 2007 was my first full month using Amazon’s FBA service, so I thought I would look at some stats and share them with all of you.
Total items shipped to Amazon FBA to date: 7305
Total items sold to date: 6462 or 88% of all items sent to FBA.
Total items unsold: 843 or 12% of all items sent to FBA
Number of un-sold items that have been warehoused longer than 4 months: 58 or 7% of all unsold items.
Total warehouse expense for those 58 items: $3.48
Gross Sales (6 months): $85,218.83
ASP (Avg. Sale Price) - $13.19. BTW, that ASP is higher than my ASP on eBay “back in the day”.
No, I’m not going to tell you what my net profit is, so don’t ask.
I spend 10 hours a week on this business and have not been to the post office or UPS once in six months. I answer 2 […]
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Just a heads up for Google Analytics users, your data may not be accurate for April 30 - May 5, 2008:
“System Message: Analytics Processing Delay from April 30th to May 5th
Google Analytics experienced a data processing error from April 30th to May 5th. Almost all of the data has been recovered and is currently being reprocessed. The recovered data will be reflected in your reports within a few days. Please note that a small percentage of data, particularly in the area of e-commerce reporting, was not recoverable from those dates.
We sincerely apologize for this processing issue and are taking every precaution to prevent such disruptions from occurring again in the future. For more information, please read through our common questions.
The Google Analytics Team”
9 Ecommerce Innovations: What’s Now & What’s Next
Free webinar: June 19th, 2008, 9am PT/12pm ET
Guest Panelist: Jason Billingsley, VP Innovation, Elastic Path Software
Register to Attend
[…]
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eBay just announced some policy changes coming in the months ahead. There are a number of changes that may affect your business, so please make sure to review the details of the announcement.
One positive that I got from the announcement was the: Removal of the Choice Policy
“First, starting immediately, the Choice Policy, which has required sellers to list similar items in different sizes and colors in separate listings, has been removed. Sellers may now create listings that offer choices such as size, color, and configuration. For example, a shoe seller may now offer a particular shoe in multiple sizes in one listing.
This change adds significant cost savings and convenience for sellers, while helping them delight their buyers with more choice.”This change in policy allows sellers to create one listing for an item and also offer the different sizes and/or features in that same listing. This is one of the changes […]
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Back in February, we mentioned the possible Yahoo/Microsoft merger and the effects it might have on small business owners (see: “Is the Potential Microsoft/Yahoo Marriage on Your Small Business Owner Radar?“). The offer is back on the radar, but this time with a different proposition.
Microsoft said Sunday that it was no longer seeking […]
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Perhaps this is the one time of the year you can predict a large chunk of US consumers will be receiving some additional spending cash - tax rebate time. And many online retailers hope to cash in on customer’s stimulus checks, judging from the number of email campaigns and home pages jumping on this trend:
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9 Ecommerce Innovations: What’s Now & What’s Next
Free webinar: June 19th, 2008, 9am PT/12pm ET
Guest Panelist: Jason Billingsley, VP Innovation, Elastic Path Software
Register to Attend
Read More…
In January of 2008 we announced that the Amazon Web Services now consume more bandwidth than do the entire global network of Amazon.com retail sites.
Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos has been showing a chart of the relative bandwidth usage and I just received permission to post it here:
Pretty cool, huh?
– Jeff;
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I’ve been following Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh on Twitter for awhile now and I’m fascinated by the way Zappos does business.
They’ve taken a page from the Amazon playbook (except they aren’t a discounter) and decided they would make their Customer Experience the ultimate online shopping experience. IMO, the company would be an excellent case study on Building a Retail Brand. Their catch phrase is “We are a service company that happens to sell”
Zappos was founded in 1999 as an online shoe retailer and has grown to over $1 billion in sales in the last 8 years. They are now expanding into additional categories with a new updated web experience at http://zeta.zappos.com/ (Zeta being a play on the traditional geek speak of Beta)
What is interesting, is that Tony visited eBay several weeks ago to meet with Senior management and explain how they view the customer experience. But in speaking with him […]
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