This is my journey as an E-commerce Consultant
Posts tagged Internet Marketing
Complimenting a marketing campaign with eBay
1677 days
eBay doesn’t have to be your sole or primary trading source, even though some website and companies will try to make you think so.
I decided to compliment a PPC marketing campaign with an eBay campaign. This combination worked very well and for a low volume website, I had increased my orders 150%. eBay is a great branding tool as most of your eBay customers and viewers will checkout your website without you having to break any eBay rules. The stock I choose for eBay was high quantity and low price, which allowed me to start auctions at 99p and drive that traffic! A few sacrificial auctions and full priced shop items went down a storm and I sold out in a week!
eBay is great for Christmas. Increase your Christmas turnover by introducing some (not all) or your product on eBay. Think of eBay as another PPC scheme or shopping comparison site as it is well optimised.
Radiohead use the power of the internet and smite the music giants
1682 days
by Liz
in Internet Marketing
Its all over the blogosphere, the news, the internet is rife with the release of ‘In Rainbows‘
You can choose your own price for the 160 kilobits per second mp3 of the album putting their fans in total control. The quiet announcement on their website was spread though word of internet, so much so that there server crashed on Oct 1st. Quite a few artists are now challenging the music industry and no even trying to prevent illegal downloading. The internet has let artists sell direct to the fans and also smaller independent musicians can create a fan base through social media.
Music goes Social and there is nothing EMI and Sony can do about it but join the race. Artists now use the power of blogs, forums, social communities and file sharing software (usually dubbed ‘illegal’) to make sure their sound is spread across the world. Artists will now have to tour and gig more for their money, unless the fans decide to keep up the ‘donation’ for tracks. It would be interesting to know the average price paid for the album download.
I would pay around £5-6 for a download happily, and I do know that the people that paid for their download of the new Radiohead album full plan to also buy the CD once it has released. An artist can even see if it is worth investing in a CD launch on the back of the success of a download release.
It has been rumoured that the average price paid for the download is around $10
I will blog the real statistics once they have been officially published.
Edited on the 6th Nov:
The average price paid for the album was $6 (£2.90), the study – based on a survey of the online behaviour of over two million internet users – found.
American fans were the most generous, paying on average $8.05 (£3.85), compared to the $4.64 (£2.22) paid by those outside the US.
We envision to enthusiastically facilitate error-free paradigms…Writing web copy!
1690 days
‘We envision to enthusiastically facilitate error-free paradigms while continuing to authoritatively revolutionize economically sound opportunities to meet our customer’s needs’
This snippet of text was generated by the Mission Statement Generator from the Dilbert comic strip website, but this kind of web copy rings close to the truth for some organisations.
When you are writing content in blogs and also for websites you need to consider your target audience and speak to them in their language. Avoid hype that sounds like advertising jargon. They are already AT your site, so give them an excuse to stay. Organise the content and structure your writing for easy readability.
Always proofreed…. This is my biggest sin. All posts on this blog are edited around 3 times once posted!
A useful post when you are thinking about your web content is Web Writing for Many Interest Levels
Green and Ethical E-commerce – Honesty and Responsibilty
1691 days
Customers are being more socially responsible with their buying and value companies that have the same thinking. Customers can be selective with their choice of e-commerce offerings as the internet fosters a socially responsible consumer base.
Non Ethical practises include selling non medical miracle cures like weight loss pills and hair loss creams that have no real research to back up claims, sites that are built to deceive customers with false promises, sites that sell conflict items (such as gold and diamonds from Africa) or items associated animal testing. These at all costs should be avoided.
But how can you be green on the hyperweb?
-Increase your product range to provide environmentally friendly and fair trade products
-Reduce excess packaging and marketing materials, can it be recyclable?
-Allow customers to reserve on-line and pick up in store
-Off set your carbon footprint by recycling and re-using within your company. Take part in local and national environmental improvements where you can.
-Publish your environmental policy and encourage your customers to re-use packaging and recycle
-Send email invoices to reduce paper use
-Use electronic means of keeping customer information and office memo’s, again keep aper use to a minimum and reduce waste. -Recycle all waste paper.
You don’t have to spend a huge amount of money within a company to be green. For example, as a small e-commerce store owner. I re-use all bulk hair packaging, use a single blue plastic mailing bag and also re-cycle paper and plastic where I can as part of a routine. Small steps can help an e-commerce company be that little bit greener, and help build customer loyalty.
E-commerce and its multi-channel adventures!
1691 days
‘Multi- channel’ has become a bit of a ‘Web 2.0 buzz word, but it has become one of the most expansive sectors in e-commerce. ‘Multi Channel’ (we shall call it MC 2.0 for comedic slogan purposes only) can involve a retail organisation having several touch points for interactions with customers and also several competitive routes to market. Large traditional ‘Bricks and Mortar’ (apologies for my over use of apostrophes this evening) companies have expanded to incorporate several channel for example Next Retail
Next have:
- Walk in Stores
- Paper mailing catalogue (which is also present in the store to showcase the full range of products)
- Online Shop
- Call centre operations
- Affiliations with comparison shopping engines, pay per click advertising, shopping directories as well as other new media advertising.
To complete the set they should think about marketplaces such as eBay. They may be satisfied with their end of season re-sellers already on eBay.
In response to this expanse in retail channels, companies specialising in total retail solutions (such as Channeladvisor,Marketworks, Venda and Truition) have spawned from the far corners of the earth. These systems incorporate as many product to consumer channels from one platform as possible, providing a custom branded system. These systems are also available (and mostly piloted by) the smaller virtual retailer. Many of these smaller retailing business have taken such a slice from the high street that the larger players had to respond to the drop in sales.
Going MC 2.0 is about opening up your offerings to different markets as well as your products being available across all channels.
Retailers should be looking to synchronise the service level across all channels. All channels should be fully integrated with existing systems and correctly aligned across:
- Price (even though some companies have set up separate branded channels to be more competitive on-line without being detrimental to their high street trade)
- Promotions
- Gift Vouchers (should be able to be used off-line and on-line)
- Terms and Conditions
- Order process and Returns
A customer likes a single experience across the various channels.
One department should administer all channels to the consumer, as a customer does not like to be passed from pillar to post with their queries about a product or order.
And this is the end for ‘E-commerce and its MC 2.0 adventures’ for now!
