*photos by Lyuba Johnson

It was a great event and we shopped, talked and afterwards networked on facebook. I was recommended an obi clip for my obi troubles on the day and Hong used facebook to send me to a Rakuten item:

http://en.item.rakuten.com/ohmiya/sale-kituke-obikangu/ and then following a discussion we had regarding the difficulty in finding larger sized zori, she posted this on my profile: http://en.item.rakuten.com/hakimonoya/1331752/

This is a great example of how real life relationships meet social networking with actions that translate to online shopping. Rakuten also have a new blog.

So in my basket today I have an obi clip, pair of zori and a funky obi makura all made easy for my by friends and facebook. Still think facebook is a waste of time for your online business? Kimono De Jack was Saturday, Monday morning I am spending my hard earned cash.

Social shopping is a key part of an on-line business and facebook makes things easy.

I started shopping online in the summer of ’99 with Gothic Auctions which prompted signing up for paypal almost instantly as everything was in Dollars. My first purchase was from a Canadian seller.

By the winter I was actively selling on Gothic Auctions and a competitor Goth Auctionslater on in 2001, and set up my own very basic HTML e-commerce website in May 2000, making sales and taking orders via email with promotion on community based sites.

Both of these auction sites were community driven and the gothic community contributed to how the sites were run. eBay has strived to become what these sites had all along.

It was not long before I signed up and brought and sold a few things on eBay.com (before eBay.co.uk was born)

Unfortunately then the eBay boom started and I neglected these free auction sites as the dollar grew weaker with respect to the pound. I plan to relaunch the Hairfreax range back onto these community driven auction sites as I feel they have once again come into their own. They were the first social shopping sites, everyone knew everyone and who was buying what! When your products do reflect a specific culture you should not forget the smaller, community driven exposure you can get. I started out supplying the community with products, but now I provide shops and studios with my creations. They spawned an addiction to e-commerce.

Promoting my old favourites:

Week 1:

You have done your research, you campaign has had 7-10 days. Pin point your successes and failures.

Ask yourself a few questions:

1. What campaigns are working?
2. Why are the successful campaigns working?
3. What campaigns are not working?
4. Why are they not working and what can we change you yield a positive result?

You need to look at your analytical data and see where your revenue stream is coming from on these campaigns, are the keywords you thought were relevant to the season and your product working for you?

Are to continuously testing the efficacy of your landing pages?

Week 2:

You need to analyse your purchase or lead generation process. You should have enough data now to see where your customers are either abandoning the shopping cart or being lost in your pages.

Check your error and web logs, has the site had a slow down due to the increased traffic? Have loading times been effected at all? Do you have any dead links on your site you forgot to get rid of in October?

These holes in your bucket need to be corked before the ‘Christmas Crunch Time’ which is typically 23rd of Nov to 16th Dec.

Crunch starts in week 3.

Week 3:

Check stock levels and product feeds for errors. Display and be realistic about your last posting days before Christmas. Evaluate your pay per click and other active return on investment advertising to increase quality of traffic. Re-evaluate your match types, campaign negative keywords, budget, position and bids to ensure the relevancy of your shoppers.

Don’t sell them something they are not looking for. If they don’t know what they are looking for make sure you are ‘suggesting ideas’ within your advertising i.e Gifts for Mum, Gifts for a music fan etc.

Make sure you campaigns are organised to separate such ‘Suggesting Campaigns’ from product specific or general campaigns. These campaigns are more specific to panic shoppers at Christmas with no idea what to buy their loved ones.

If you do run an affiliate program make sure the creative and promotions are seasonal, add Christmas bonuses.

Week 4:

Wash. Repeat.

Keep tweaking and checking your promotional presence. Keep and eye on your competitors.

Again this is not a complete guide, only suggestions to get you going for the Christmas period and hopefully be a little thought provoking when your are planning your marketing activities. Watch out for the December edition!

You can advertise 5 items for sale free when you sign up or more if you pay a tiered subscription fee. This system is simple to use and encompasses a blog, photo gallery, community, paypal payments, event promotions, product advertisement and much more. This system has embraced the social aspect of shopping with a rating system to compete with eBays feedback system.
I shall report on any conversions from this marketplace. I am also setting this up for one of my clients at work as she has a more conventional product which might work better on this marketplace than extravagant hair extensions!

You could find at least 6 different types of online shopper within your own set of friends and family. A small sized start-up online business may not be able to afford professional customer modelling, but these techniques are still important, even to the smaller player.

New to the Net:

These buyers are still getting used to the internet and the idea of e-commerce. They use the web for research purchases and start will smaller value items in safer environments. A common start off point for these shoppers is eBay, where all the sellers are rated and they can proceed with caution. At this early stage this shopper can either become addicted to the life of e-commerce or be put off by a bad or fraudulent purchase.

This buyer needs a simple interface, and a way to verify the e-commerce site. Make sure you have clear precise pictures, a simple stream line jargon free checkout and display your returns policy clearly outlining your responsibility as an online retailer. You can invest in an eBay type feedback system such as FeeFo.com which is an independent customer feedback system and also feature customer testimonials. Make sure you use well known and simple payment processing for example Paypal, Lloyds Cardnet or HSBC.

Bargain Hunters

These shoppers rely heavily on marketplaces such as eBay and shopping comparison engines. They have no real brand loyalty and are just shopping for the lowest price. You need to convince these shoppers they are getting the best deal. Make sure you products are included in shopping comparison engines and have an RRP shown so they can see the great deal they are getting. Within this group you have the impulsive bargain hunter who wants to purchase now and a competitive bargain hunter willing to bid against other shoppers for the deal. EBay is a bargain hunter’s paradise; you can almost use eBay to cater primarily for these customers, letting them battle it out for bargains and also have fixed price items for your impulsive bargain hunters.

Precise Shoppers

These shoppers have a surgical approach to online shopping. They know exactly what they want and will research until they find the best fit to their criteria. These shoppers are hard to please as it is luck of the draw that you have the product they need. You need to make sure part numbers and the true name of your product is present in the product title to allow precise optimization. Product configuration tools like the ‘Build your Porsche’ cater for these types of shopper and are great for a multitude of shopper types.
These shoppers need customer opinions to make sure the product will fit it intended purpose and also great customer support so they can seek verification for the seller about the item.

Hobby Shoppers

Shopping for these buyers is a past time. I fall straight into this category myself. It’s an addiction and I almost need to find something to buy online if I have a penny to spare. I often have to quell the urge. These shoppers purchase frequently and enthusiastically. These are the most adventurous shoppers and you need to grab their attentions by offering engaging tools to view the merchandise as well as product recommendations and incorporating social media into their purchase. These shoppers love community applications such as forums, bulletin boards and social shopping sites.

Direct Shoppers

These shoppers buy out of necessity. They do not shop around or waste time. They want the information now and to find the product within the 3 click recommended navigation. Excellent navigation and product organization is needed to cater for these shoppers. These shoppers need all the information at their finger tips in close proximity to the items, as well as quick access to customer support. Live chat appeals to these kind of shoppers, as they want answers quickly. These shoppers respond well to expert and customers opinions and testimonials.

Nervous Shoppers

My mother very much falls in this category, afraid to ‘put her credit card’ online or that she will be subject to fraud. Identity theft has risen to 1 in 4 in the UK so this is a valid concern. These shoppers start off by only using the internet to research products they mainly buy offline. To make these customers feel secure you need to clearly state your security /privacy policies and use a SSL certificate at checkout. These shoppers watch out for the little padlock at the bottom of the browser so make sure you have no non-secure items on your secure pages. Non-secure Google analytics tracking code is famous for this, they have a https version. You need to state that their information is secure and not sold or distributed. These customers also need customer support, with most of these shoppers wanting to hear from a human before they make their purchase. You need to make sure you include a phone number contact for these shoppers, and also an option that they can pay over the phone for their purchase. You might find these shoppers are only leads for your bricks and mortar or catalogue operations. These are still valid customers as most types of customers have a little bit of the nervous shopper in them.

You can not please or cater for every shopper that will land on your e-commerce site, but you do need to consider the information you need to give your customers and the shopping experience as a whole. Always consider your product type and match it with your typical customer profile. These are generalisations on shoppers, but as with the colour symbolism and psychology, every product type attracts a different set of customer profiles! You can even go as far as moulding your search engine optimisation to match what each shopper type is looking for. Intelligent search engines will deliver your products and message directly to these shopper types, Google personalised search will make this easier for you.

Since your search privacy settings are set to “Everyone,” you now have a public search listing. This means that friends who aren’t yet on Facebook will be able to search for you by name from our Welcome page. Public Search Listings may only include names and profile pictures.
In a few weeks, these public search listings can be found by search engines like Google. No privacy rules are changing; anyone who discovers your public search listing must register and log in to contact you via Facebook.

This means facebook will now become a social site that will have to be ‘reputation managed’ on par with services such as linkedin as they can be listed high in the search rankings for your name and company. Did you think about that when joining facebook or indeed myspace? Social connecting is becoming big business and being raped for its search engine rankings for marketing purposes. Maybe the social community do not want to be marketed at from ALL angles and the reason facebook took over as the popular choice was the fact that is was NOT a marketing tool like myspace quickly became?

Facebook will now become just one of many marketing tools for companies in the Web 2.0 bedroom.

Goodbye facebook. What we had was sweet while it lasted.

This was brought to my attention by SearchEngineWatch

Another manic Web 2.0 spin purchase or something that will benefit the community? The fashion website Glimpse will be enhanced with advanced search options to do with colour, size, similar products and even products found on eBay. Glimpse will stay a stand alone product. Glimpse has also unleashed the power of facebook enabling users to create lists.

The social aspect of search feels as though it is spiralling but I am not sure to where. As a consumer of many many fashion items I turn away from these social shopping sites as there are just so many. My favourite still stands at Stylehive but as a new facebook addict, and watching my friends get slowly addicted to the various applications, I do think integrating with facebook and other social communities is going to bring up the profile of web 2.0 search sites.

I did have the Glimpse application on my facebook profile for a while, but the novelty wore thin quickly. I hope they prove me wrong but I think novelty is all they have at the moment.

In this post they illustrate some points to tell you WHY you should be business blogging:

1. You competitors are
2. Gives the company a voice
3. Shows depth of knowledge – this for me is the most important point as it can sort out the duffs from the good’uns

Factors that stop a business blogging:

1. Too busy. Blogging takes time, but you can get your company involved.
2. Fearful. Giving away your knowledge especially if you like people to pay for it. Companies might worry they have nothing to contribute to the blogosphere.
3. Freedom. A blog does hold your company reputation so keeping a close eye or verifying the content is essential.

There is so much content on the web sometimes it is hard to filter out the garbage. As an e-commerce consultant I refer to an ever growing list of blogs to keep myself updated with the industry, internet trends, new sites and techniques. I also love opinions from my fellows in the same industry on eBay and Paypal (which are usually the most interesting to read as they are so controversial)

As an addicted internet shopper I look to blogs for fashion finds and what to avoid. I remember back in the day when I first started wearing steel boned corsets, before blogging has really started out it was a website buying guide that made sure I ordered the right size. This site had load of buying links too (I hope they were an affiliate) and I used eBay so start my passion. Soon as the new wave of internet mobile phones dip below £100 in the UK, Google is going to be with me everywhere. Doing the crossword will never be the same, I will never have to rack your brains for the name of that guy who played whatsit in that film. I will also be able to shop on the fly.

Spokeo wants to be your home page. They want to bring you your favourite blog feeds, MySpace updates, new YouTube videos, and friends’ photo albums all in one eyeful!

But what I would like to see is the same methodology applied to payment gateways. One system to integrate with and you can use Paypal, Paypal pro and Express, Google checkout, Amazon payments and anything that’s is worthy. This would leave payment gateway integration a breeze (and probably open to hideous fraud, but hey its just the idea) as all these new and hip payment methods are coming out and for the best conversions you need to employ all of them? What a nightmare.

The channeladvisor checkout works using this kind of methodology, as well as any heavily integrated checkout, but we are not talking large GMS businesses, its the small and many that struggle to integrate their checkouts/websites with all of these systems!

One integration, one Dashboard…..all the payment solutions……

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