376 days ago I blogged about Woopra and I'm at it again because you should use it.
It's not replacing Google Analytics or other ewb analytics tools, but, it is providing me with data I love...real-time data. You can see in real-time the visitors come to your site, click through your site pages and hopefully complete a conversion action. Here are some reasons to check it out:
1. Client engagement: one client I enabled this for as a test run is loving the tool. In fact, I'm getting the reaction I hoped for. They are looking at the data and asking questions. These questions lead to great action which has turned into sales
2. Customer Service: since you can view visitors in real time you will be able to help them as they navigate your site. Get them on the phone or live chat and you'll be able to see their exact click through path and help them complete a sale. The other side is, if you see people hitting a common stopping point then you can address the issue ASAP.
3. Marketing Campaigns: we launched an email yesterday and I was able to watch the people come in from around the world and click through the site. It was great to see hundreds of visitors hit the site at the same time and see who was buying.
Sign up for an account an install it on your site ASAP.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Long Time
Its been a while since we posted anything on our blog. Its mostly due to the fact we have so many projects right now that we don't have time for ourselves. Its the case of of the cobbler's son.
I do have to blog about the extraordinary success we're having with two tanning salon campaigns we're running. The two salons are owned by the same company, but, target different geographical areas. Combined they have locations from coast to coast and now is the peak season for the franchises.
We started a PPC campaign for one of the salons last year and it works incredibly well. The campaign incorporates some lifestyle ad groups focusing on needs. For example, brides and bridesmaids will be working on their tans soon. Bodybuilders tan before a contest to further accentuate their muscle definition. Of course, the impression rates for these ad groups are lower than the others, but, they get a better click through rate and conversion rate. Users are directed to print a coupon for use at their nearest location and the parent company reports a 35% increase in salon foot traffic.
The sister salon was started on a PPC campaign in March and it is doing even better than the other. Click through rates are running about 10% and essentially the same keywords were used for this campaign. I attribute this to a few things:
1. We're running it ;)
2. Conversion tracking is helping identify winners from the get go
3. The promotion is better...or at least that's the way we see it
4. These salon locations are in more heavily populated areas
5. Campaign organization. There are 12 franchise owners with their own budgets. The way its organized now we can better manage the campaigns.
6. Acquisio's PPC management tol is helping us better run campaigns and the reporting feature allows us to focus more on actual campaign management. I hated doing reports, but, Aquisio is making tha a lot easier
That's it for now, but, we'll back soon. We've got a lot in the pipeline and we'll be telling the world pretty soon.
I do have to blog about the extraordinary success we're having with two tanning salon campaigns we're running. The two salons are owned by the same company, but, target different geographical areas. Combined they have locations from coast to coast and now is the peak season for the franchises.
We started a PPC campaign for one of the salons last year and it works incredibly well. The campaign incorporates some lifestyle ad groups focusing on needs. For example, brides and bridesmaids will be working on their tans soon. Bodybuilders tan before a contest to further accentuate their muscle definition. Of course, the impression rates for these ad groups are lower than the others, but, they get a better click through rate and conversion rate. Users are directed to print a coupon for use at their nearest location and the parent company reports a 35% increase in salon foot traffic.
The sister salon was started on a PPC campaign in March and it is doing even better than the other. Click through rates are running about 10% and essentially the same keywords were used for this campaign. I attribute this to a few things:
1. We're running it ;)
2. Conversion tracking is helping identify winners from the get go
3. The promotion is better...or at least that's the way we see it
4. These salon locations are in more heavily populated areas
5. Campaign organization. There are 12 franchise owners with their own budgets. The way its organized now we can better manage the campaigns.
6. Acquisio's PPC management tol is helping us better run campaigns and the reporting feature allows us to focus more on actual campaign management. I hated doing reports, but, Aquisio is making tha a lot easier
That's it for now, but, we'll back soon. We've got a lot in the pipeline and we'll be telling the world pretty soon.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Free Comparison Shopping Engines
Talking about Comparison Shopping Engines (aka CSEs) with colleagues or peers in online marketing will get you mixed reactions because the results are equally mixed. Some retailers turn on CSEs during the holidays while others maintain a presence year round. How yoou approach it depends largely on your budget and plans. However, you owe it to yourself to check out TheFind! (www.thefind.com) and ShopWiki (www.shopwiki.com) which are two free CSEs. I recently got a client on TheFind! and it generated sales within two days of going live and is still pumping out results.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Complete End to End Enterprise Ecommerce Solution
MJM Ecommerce is growing and it's been a very fun summer for us. We’ve signed on some exciting partners for complete ecommerce implementation and management and others for online marketing management. We’ve also teamed up with a prominent Memphis agency to provide online marketing services for their clients.
Perhaps one of the most exciting developments has been the recent inclusion of a call center and fulfillment facility. This is particularly exciting because now we are able to truly provide a complete end to end ecommerce business solution to our partners. We’ll be able to provide a robust ecommerce platform, design, marketing, strategy, call center and fulfillment solution to businesses that want to start an online business or improve an existing one.
The call center specifically presents an opportunity for our partners to grow their business because it allows agents to interact with customers and guide them through the buying process. Essentially, this creates another sales channel for the business that is extremely important. Through our collective experience, a call center can generate around 30-40% of revenue for an online business. It’s important to note that a professional call center is more effective than having store employees answer calls during their shift to provide customer service.
If you’re interested in learning more about our complete end to end solution we invite you to contact MJM Ecommerce.
Perhaps one of the most exciting developments has been the recent inclusion of a call center and fulfillment facility. This is particularly exciting because now we are able to truly provide a complete end to end ecommerce business solution to our partners. We’ll be able to provide a robust ecommerce platform, design, marketing, strategy, call center and fulfillment solution to businesses that want to start an online business or improve an existing one.
The call center specifically presents an opportunity for our partners to grow their business because it allows agents to interact with customers and guide them through the buying process. Essentially, this creates another sales channel for the business that is extremely important. Through our collective experience, a call center can generate around 30-40% of revenue for an online business. It’s important to note that a professional call center is more effective than having store employees answer calls during their shift to provide customer service.
If you’re interested in learning more about our complete end to end solution we invite you to contact MJM Ecommerce.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
To Ship Free...or Not?
Free Shipping is a staple promotion among online retailers and for good reason. A recent PayPal and comScore study showed that 43% of shoppers abandoned shopping carts because of shipping costs. That leaves 57% of shoppers who started a shopping cart to go through your checkout process and dropoff because of other reasons (i.e. taxes, price shopping, etc.). Depending on numerous factors, your conversion rate may be around the 2% range.
Free Shipping may be more of a drain on retailers’ bottom line nowadays because of rising fuel costs. Recently, UPS updated their fuel surcharges to as high as 32% for air shipments! So this opens up a variety of questions for an online retailer that wants to increase (or at least maintain) year over year revenue numbers in this not-so-favorable economic climate.
Should I Keep Free Shipping?
Dig into your numbers and see what impact free shipping has on order volume, conversion rate, average order value, shipping costs, shipping revenue and margin before and after the fuel prices rose. If these numbers were favorable before fuel prices became burdensome then you need to consider keeping the promotion active and changing some qualifiers. After all, this is a temporary (not sure how temporary) situation and economic downturns are an opportunity to gain market share and grow rapidly when the economy turns around.
I have always approached free shipping promotions as a way to boost order volume, units per transaction, average order value and conversion. To do this I put in minimum order values to qualify for the promotion. There are multiple factors to consider, including: average online order value, shipping discounts you receive and your competition.
As a rule of thumb, I start with the minimum qualifying order value as the online average order value. Then I look at what increase in AOV I’d need to achieve to offset the lost shipping revenue to maintain a favorable margin. In most cases this has turned out to be 15% more than current online AOV. What you’ll find is that you may realize a 40% increase in actual AOV from the promotion.
Your shipping discounts and competition will weigh in on where you actually set the minimum order qualifier. If you ship out large volumes with UPS or FedEx you probably get great discounts. If not, renegotiate your rates with your rep and be sure to use their competitors to your advantage (i.e. tell your UPS rep that you’re strongly looking at FedEx for ground shipments and vice versa). If your own competition is offer free shipping at lower order amounts then you need to see what you can do to get near that level because you want to take away their customers. This leads into the next question….
What Alternatives Do I have?
To cut down on your shipping costs and offer free shipping at low order amount qualifiers you can consider using USPS. Using regular mail offers advantages over the other carriers because it’s a lot cheaper. However, disadvantages are present when using USPS. For example, you don’t get tracking with regular mail. Tracking only comes with Priority mail and even that is close to useless because you only see when it leaves and when it reaches the customer. The lack of visibility of what happens in between can cause customer service nightmares. But, it’s still worth a look if you’re selling non-perishable items and tell customers up front what to expect.
Look at your packaging materials. Can you cut down on your box dimensions, the type of dunnage used, and if product can be shipped without a box. The later is a perfect opportunity for apparel retailers and book retailers to use biodegradable plastic shipping wrappers because it can be folded down to nearly the exact dimensions of the product and is much lighter than using a box and dunnage.
When marketing your free shipping promotion be sure to use some real life cues to help get your message across. By shopping online your customers can save money (and time) by not traveling to a store and standing in line and they may save on sales tax.
Free Shipping may be more of a drain on retailers’ bottom line nowadays because of rising fuel costs. Recently, UPS updated their fuel surcharges to as high as 32% for air shipments! So this opens up a variety of questions for an online retailer that wants to increase (or at least maintain) year over year revenue numbers in this not-so-favorable economic climate.
Should I Keep Free Shipping?
Dig into your numbers and see what impact free shipping has on order volume, conversion rate, average order value, shipping costs, shipping revenue and margin before and after the fuel prices rose. If these numbers were favorable before fuel prices became burdensome then you need to consider keeping the promotion active and changing some qualifiers. After all, this is a temporary (not sure how temporary) situation and economic downturns are an opportunity to gain market share and grow rapidly when the economy turns around.
I have always approached free shipping promotions as a way to boost order volume, units per transaction, average order value and conversion. To do this I put in minimum order values to qualify for the promotion. There are multiple factors to consider, including: average online order value, shipping discounts you receive and your competition.
As a rule of thumb, I start with the minimum qualifying order value as the online average order value. Then I look at what increase in AOV I’d need to achieve to offset the lost shipping revenue to maintain a favorable margin. In most cases this has turned out to be 15% more than current online AOV. What you’ll find is that you may realize a 40% increase in actual AOV from the promotion.
Your shipping discounts and competition will weigh in on where you actually set the minimum order qualifier. If you ship out large volumes with UPS or FedEx you probably get great discounts. If not, renegotiate your rates with your rep and be sure to use their competitors to your advantage (i.e. tell your UPS rep that you’re strongly looking at FedEx for ground shipments and vice versa). If your own competition is offer free shipping at lower order amounts then you need to see what you can do to get near that level because you want to take away their customers. This leads into the next question….
What Alternatives Do I have?
To cut down on your shipping costs and offer free shipping at low order amount qualifiers you can consider using USPS. Using regular mail offers advantages over the other carriers because it’s a lot cheaper. However, disadvantages are present when using USPS. For example, you don’t get tracking with regular mail. Tracking only comes with Priority mail and even that is close to useless because you only see when it leaves and when it reaches the customer. The lack of visibility of what happens in between can cause customer service nightmares. But, it’s still worth a look if you’re selling non-perishable items and tell customers up front what to expect.
Look at your packaging materials. Can you cut down on your box dimensions, the type of dunnage used, and if product can be shipped without a box. The later is a perfect opportunity for apparel retailers and book retailers to use biodegradable plastic shipping wrappers because it can be folded down to nearly the exact dimensions of the product and is much lighter than using a box and dunnage.
When marketing your free shipping promotion be sure to use some real life cues to help get your message across. By shopping online your customers can save money (and time) by not traveling to a store and standing in line and they may save on sales tax.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Online Investment
In the most recent issue of Internet Retailer (July 2008), the Publisher’s Letter (written by Kurt Peters) talks about Moody’s Investor Services recent move to more heavily weigh a retailer’s online revenues when rating their debt. “A Strong online presence is considered a ratings positive more frequently than in the past because it represents such an important channel of distribution and can mitigate declining comparable-store sales trends,” according to Moody’s.
There were a couple points driven home in this article that new and existing multi-channel retailers should keep in mind as they assess their own online investments. But first, take these numbers into account:
Moody’s has a 40% share of the worldwide credit ratings market
First quarter 2008 online sales grew 13.6% year over year versus retail sales growth of 2.8% for the same period
Online sales growth has been very strong for several years as the shift of consumer spending from bricks and mortar to online continues. As this growth continues the percentage increase will decline because the revenue base continues to grow. Taking the news from Moody’s, you can bet companies are taking this seriously and looking very hard at how they invest resources into their online business.
For smaller retailers this is an opportunity to carve out niches and leverage growth to compete effectively and take market share over time. If you don’t have a large budget, carefully spend your money in those areas that will grow your business and areas that will support that growth. There are a lot of great tools out there that generate incremental revenue, but, that increase may not be worth the investment of your limited resources.
Focus on areas that grow your build your brand, generate sustainable revenue and increase market share. Look at your customer service. Are you taking care of customers to the fullest and increasing the profitability of the relationship? Look at your fulfillment…are you cutting unnecessary costs and finding ways to encourage sales conversions? Look at your site…is it efficiently converting visitors into customers?
As mobile commerce becomes more of a reality with devices such as the iPhone and Blackberry its up to the retailer to step up and take their piece of the pie. As a consumer, I have a web app loaded on my iPhone to compare prices when I go shopping at stores. On several occasions, I have gone into a store (i.e. Target, Barnes and Noble) and used this app to find better prices online and even completed the transaction before leaving the store. This is going to happen more and more as people have better mobile devices and want more convenience in their hectic lives.
Mobile commerce is going to quickly become a reality for some of our retailers in the coming weeks and we’re excited to see the growth. For these partners, they will be the first in their respective industries to have a mobile optimized site. These sites will be mentioned after going live.
I suggest you take a few moments to assess your online investments and determine where you’re headed. If you’re in a rut, you need to quickly rejuvenate as the holiday season approaches. Speaking of holiday, you should be acquiring more new customers than at any other time of the year and you need to groom that relationship. Every order that leaves your door is an opportunity to create or nurture a relationship. Do simple things over the holiday to make your customers feel appreciated. Include a simple holiday card in a box thanking the customer and wishing them a great holiday season. If the order is a gift for someone else, make sure that package contains everything it needs to and everything looks perfect because it’s about to go to a potential new customer. Start early and you’ll be thankful later.
There were a couple points driven home in this article that new and existing multi-channel retailers should keep in mind as they assess their own online investments. But first, take these numbers into account:
Online sales growth has been very strong for several years as the shift of consumer spending from bricks and mortar to online continues. As this growth continues the percentage increase will decline because the revenue base continues to grow. Taking the news from Moody’s, you can bet companies are taking this seriously and looking very hard at how they invest resources into their online business.
For smaller retailers this is an opportunity to carve out niches and leverage growth to compete effectively and take market share over time. If you don’t have a large budget, carefully spend your money in those areas that will grow your business and areas that will support that growth. There are a lot of great tools out there that generate incremental revenue, but, that increase may not be worth the investment of your limited resources.
Focus on areas that grow your build your brand, generate sustainable revenue and increase market share. Look at your customer service. Are you taking care of customers to the fullest and increasing the profitability of the relationship? Look at your fulfillment…are you cutting unnecessary costs and finding ways to encourage sales conversions? Look at your site…is it efficiently converting visitors into customers?
As mobile commerce becomes more of a reality with devices such as the iPhone and Blackberry its up to the retailer to step up and take their piece of the pie. As a consumer, I have a web app loaded on my iPhone to compare prices when I go shopping at stores. On several occasions, I have gone into a store (i.e. Target, Barnes and Noble) and used this app to find better prices online and even completed the transaction before leaving the store. This is going to happen more and more as people have better mobile devices and want more convenience in their hectic lives.
Mobile commerce is going to quickly become a reality for some of our retailers in the coming weeks and we’re excited to see the growth. For these partners, they will be the first in their respective industries to have a mobile optimized site. These sites will be mentioned after going live.
I suggest you take a few moments to assess your online investments and determine where you’re headed. If you’re in a rut, you need to quickly rejuvenate as the holiday season approaches. Speaking of holiday, you should be acquiring more new customers than at any other time of the year and you need to groom that relationship. Every order that leaves your door is an opportunity to create or nurture a relationship. Do simple things over the holiday to make your customers feel appreciated. Include a simple holiday card in a box thanking the customer and wishing them a great holiday season. If the order is a gift for someone else, make sure that package contains everything it needs to and everything looks perfect because it’s about to go to a potential new customer. Start early and you’ll be thankful later.
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