Imagine this….an intimate workshop overlooking Coronado Bay, 300 retailers, and 22 vendors sharing online merchandising best practices and discussing the future of eCommerce. While this might seem like a dream to some, it is the reality for those attending the upcoming Shop.org Merchandising Workshop.
Situated in the beautiful San Diego, the Merchandising Workshop is bringing together the top eCommerce merchandisers and retailers to share and discuss online merchandising tactics.
For those attending, here are the top three must-dos to make the most of your Shop.org Merchandising Workshop.
1. Get a one-on-one website critique. Industry experts are hosting 20 minute website critiques specific to aspects of your website. Take advantage and come prepared with questions and ideas you may have and leave with tactical and practical solutions.
2. Attend a vendor-retailer case study roundtable. Shop.org Merchandising Workshop is hosting roundtable discussions on Tuesday, July 12th from 12-1 in the EXPO Hall. This is a great opportunity to have detailed conversations with peers to discuss their merchandising successes. The highlight is Roundtable 1 featuring Invodo’s Craig Wax and Golfsmith.com’s Eric Mahlstadt who will discuss Video for Retail: A Multi-Channel Approach.
3. Stop by table 5 and say hi to the Invodo crew. This is obviously a must-do but Invodo’s best and brightest will be at Table 5 and throughout the Expo Hall ready to show you eCommerce video examples and best practices in online video merchandising.
If you accomplish these must-dos, you are sure to leave with new ideas, best practices, and tactics to elevate your online merchandising. Safe travels to all and have an excellent workshop!
The 2011 Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition is now wrapped and boy was it huge! This year’s IRCE was the largest ever. With more speakers, exhibitors, and attendees, the energy and information circulating throughout the show was abundant. I had the opportunity to speak with retailers of all sizes to learn their needs, wants, top priorities, and key session learnings. Here are three top takeaways from this year’s IRCE.
1. Social Media is here to stay. As I have blogged before, social media is a top priority for online retailers. With 700 million users, Facebook commerce is on everyone’s mind and dominated the conversation on the first day of IRCE. Retailers such as Levis and Ticketmaster shared their Facebook success stories and best practices on how grow and leverage fans. While there is still some ambiguity around social media, IRCE sessions provided great information that retailers can surely use in their quest to figure out Facebook.
2. Retailers are increasingly thinking Cross-Channel. Creating a consistent online and offline experience is increasingly more important for multi-channel retailers. Bob Cell of MyBuys and Glenn Edelman of The Wine Enthusiast shared survey results from 1,000 consumers’ cross-channel experiences and 20 retailers’ practices to meet customer expectations. At a more detailed level, Nikki Baird of RSR Research covered strategies that retailers can use to ensure that store staff understands and supports web initiatives. From streamlining internal initiatives to meeting high customer expectations, the need for cross-channel consistency is top priority.
3. Video. Video. Video. Increasing customer engagement and site stickiness is a key to online retail success. To beat out the competition, retail sites need a differentiating factor that gives shoppers what they want: a unique, informational, and engaging experience. And nothing does that better than Video. Trailblazing e-retailers such as Walgreens, who has 1,500 videos on their eCommerce site and initiatives to create content for web TV, shared their thoughts on this new age of retailing at IRCE. I predict that the Internet top 100 retailers will all have video on their site by 2012. If they don’t, I predict they won’t be in the IR 100 for too long. Video is the new media for communicating your message. Be it product video, customer service video, or promotional video, retailers are recognizing the need and taking quick action.
Demandware’s Commerce Innovations Blog features a post from Russ Somers, Invodo’s Director of Marketing, this morning on five ways that video helps retailers reach their goals.
Certainly, increased conversion comes out as a front-runner for importance. But, what about all the other ways video helps give shoppers that extra incentive to follow through with their purchases or recommend your brand? According to eMarketer, 73% of online retailers used video on their sites in 2010. That’s up 32% from 2009. As consumers demand video content, retailers are working to supply it to drive business benefits ranging from enhanced customer experience and engagement to increased conversion.
This article discusses the benefits Invodo has seen for our clients using video for products from swimsuits to air conditioners. We’ve uncovered consistent key advantages of eCommerce video that span product categories and video types. What real-world benefits are retailers reporting? Read the full article in Demandware’s Commerce Innovations Blog to learn more.
The Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition 2011 is just a week away. Soon, San Diego will be infiltrated with the industries top retailers, influencers, analysts, and solution providers.
So what can attendees expect to learn at the World’s Largest eCommerce Event?
IRCE 2011 will undoubtedly be full of valuable keynotes and presentations, but the exhibit hall is where all the action is. Stop by Invodo booth #220 to discuss your video strategy and ways eCommerce video can extend your reach across retail channels, influence consumer purchase decisions, drive traffic to your site, reduce customer service costs, and increase sales.
But booth #220 activities don’t stop there. Some additional bonuses if you drop by booth #220 include:
If you have any questions or would like to schedule a specific time to discuss video at IRCE, email Invodo info
invodo
com
or call 800-280-4122. See you at IRCE 2011!
What’s cooler than sliced bread? Social networks. Facebook alone has more than 500 million members and its counterparts including YouTube and Twitter are also growing like weeds. With such a large audience ready to be marketed to, I must ask the million dollar question – How you are you leveraging social networks for your business?
Let’s take a step back and look at the nature of social networks. Most people join them so they can get something of value in return. This widget of value varies from person to person. Someone might join Facebook so they can see pictures of their friend’s new baby- others might join to get daily deals from their favorite retailer. The main reason aside, once people are in, they are open marketing game for you.
For businesses, step one is to identify items of value that appeal to your target market. Sure, everyone wants free stuff and that might be something you leverage. But free stuff is boring! And expected. (Disclaimer: This is untrue if you are trying to give me free shoes. Size 7.5) Use the forgiving and well, fun nature of social networks to test new forms of content. That said, not all content is created equal. In order to succeed, you need to provide content worth sharing. And let me tell you, users will share video. With over 27 million pieces of online content shared daily, try promoting your video assets and track sharing. The results could surprise you.
Now you have conquered step one. You have captivated your market and have a huge following on every social network. People can’t stop talking about you and it is great! But wait, you’re giving all these people value, but what are you getting in return? Life’s a two way street so you better know what your social media efforts are doing for you; especially if you’re giving away free stuff. I’m not going to go into different ways to assign a dollar value to a “like” on Facebook, an @mention on Twitter, or a video view on YouTube. My point is, have a solid business objective for your social media strategy that gives you value, direct your efforts towards that objective, and find ways to measure your success.
Lastly, look at your competitors. Be where they are but do it better. Don’t be the guy looking at the wheel going “Oh, this is cool. Wish I would have thought of that!” Be the guy who says “Oh, we could put a few of these together, put something on top, and transport things!” Bad example, yes, but the point is there. What assets do you have that you can use to innovate and outshine your competitors? From a hilarious co-worker who will tweet for you all day to awesome video content to post on Facebook and YouTube, you have something – just find it and leverage it.
Social networks aren’t going away anytime soon. So get in the game today to reap the benefits tomorrow.
Vinod Kumar at Invodo partner Demandware published a great post yesterday on “10 Do’s and Don’ts of eCommerce Analytics.” It covers how one should think about analytics better than anything I’ve read recently. The full post is worth reading – it’s here.
If there’s an underlying theme to the post, it’s that we often focus on data when we should be concerned with insight. Have more than one tool to measure any given metric? Many retailers do. Trying to reconcile one tool’s 2.87% with another tool’s 3.34% may be less valuable than pursuing the insight that both are trending the same direction in response to a recent promotion.
There are times, of course, when data reconciliation matters. If your tools give you contradictory insights, you’re like a person with two watches who doesn’t know what time it is. Double-digit variances and conflicting trend data need to be resolved. Conflicting insights, not conflicting numbers, is the issue to address.
Vinod’s advice to include qualitative data and limit reports to one page fits well with my early career experiences as an analyst. Very early in my career, a Dell VP walked into my cube and said “that’s an impressive report. It must be hard to get so little insight into so many pages.” Under his guidance I learned that a good report summarizes the relevant data so that it enlightens rather than overwhelms. And it’s not complete without the qualitative insights that turn it into a story.
The story eCommerce video tells is not just about video views and conversion. It’s about how video engages consumers so that they stay on the site longer, and about how some products benefit more than others. It’s about how that video allows a consumer to purchase confidently when they can’t touch, feel and try on the product. It’s about how you reach consumers whereever they are – on the go with mobile video or on the couch via their iPad. It’s about how service costs can decline while customer experience improves. In short, there are a great many things to measure. We’ve spoken about those metrics here before and will continue to do so.
But as Vinod suggests on the Demandware blog, the insight is key. The stories above can be summarized as follows: consumers prefer to interact with video when they can, because it makes their shopping experience better. Consumers are coming to expect it across channels. And companies who use this medium are reaping the benefits.
Congratulations to the online retailers who made this year’s Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide. Based on annual web sales, the list features North America’s top grossing e-retailers who continue to lead the way in eCommerce. With a continued emphasis on rich media and the customer experience, it is exciting to witness the results generated by the new and innovative technologies being employed by these industry leaders.
Special congrats to the Invodo clients who moved up the IR 500 list and continue to lead the online retail space. Given the competitive nature of eCommerce, it is a high honor to be included on this list and an even bigger accomplishment to move closer to the top.
eMarketer recently published an interview with Invodo CEO Craig Wax. Craig discusses retail goals for video, the impact of video on the online shopping experience, key elements of effective product video, and the impact of video on product returns. He also covers the difference between video and text product reviews, and the increase in use of video for other purposes such as how-to and customer service.
It’s a subscriber-only article, so if you’re a subscriber I encourage you to log into eMarketer and read it here. If you’re not a subscriber, below are a few good quotes from the article.
I’ve often simplified the challenges a retailer or brand faces in deploying video down to three elements. First is creating video content at scale. Second is deploying a video platform. And the third element is distributing across networks to all customer touchpoints.
Just as there’s a world in a drop of water, there’s complexity in each of these areas. Content production begins with developing a video strategy and a product coverage approach, then moves into hands-on product logistics as well as more traditional production and post-production management. A video platform for retailers or brands has unique needs in terms of content management, measurement and optimization. And distribution must encompass changing consumer behavior. Nearly half of smartphone shoppers access your competitors’ websites while they’re in your store aisle, according to Forsee Results. If you’re not distributing your video assets for mobile shopping via QR codes or other means as well as across social media networks, you’re not keeping up with your customers.
In short, there is a chain of activities in going from video idea to video consumption. Each activity – producing, managing, distributing – creates value. This is a classic value chain. Some clients talk about fear of video. Others relate to the concept that a video platform without content is like an empty gas tank. I think they’re really saying “I know there’s a full value chain here somewhere. Why is the industry only offering me a link or two?”
That link is often the platform. A recent article in OnlineVideo.net finds that there are over 90 stand-alone Online Video Platforms (OVP’s) competing on display options, usability, back-end content management, and measurement. Most are media or marketing-focused. Even if a platform were to offer eCommerce-specific features, you would have one slightly more specialized link than you had before. It would still be a link, not a chain. It would still be one of the many OVP’s.
Would it make sense to use an OVP for the platform and have other vendors – agency partners to create content, for example – provide the other links in the chain? It may in some cases and at low volume. Step up the volume of content, and the pain where the links aren’t connected (uploading and managing content, for example) quickly becomes evident.
We’re engaged, in partnership with our clients, in taking on that entire chain. That means technology and processes to add speed, efficiency and predictability to every step from logistics to production to content management to measurement. It’s an ambitious approach based on looking at the real problem our clients are trying to solve, rather than trying to defend a niche in a crowded market based on a couple extra features.
Which pieces of the video value chain are highest-value to you? Which are lowest?
Invodo’s own David Breshears and Amanda Logan are off and running to the 2011 Demandware XChannge Conference in Boston, MA where they will join Demandware clients, fellow partners, and employees for three days of eCommerce collaboration, innovation, and acceleration.
Demandware, the leading on-demand eCommerce solutions provider and Invodo partner, will be presenting new Demandware technologies to attendees as well as hosting compelling keynote presentations and more than 20 eCommerce-focused sessions.
As a Demandware Link Technology Partner, Invodo has the unique opportunity to integrate our eCommerce Video Solution directly with the Demandware Platform. “Our mutual retail clients not only enjoy the ease of integration, but the results they see from Invodo eCommerce Video,” states David Breshears, Invodo Enterprise Sales Director.
For all those attending, make sure to say hi to David and Amanda to learn more about integrating eCommerce video to your site(s) to increase conversion, drive traffic through video SEO, and reduce product returns.
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