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June 20, 2009 |
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| Online Marketing Channels Commentary |
Internet Retailer 2009 in Boston – Wrap Up
by Chip Arndt, EVP & Co-Founder
 Miami, FL (June 20, 2009) – Trade shows, you either love them or you hate them. Regardless, they are a great way to get to know what is happening in the world of ecommerce and mobile commerce (“mcommerce”) pretty quickly and an even better way to meet lots of very smart people who are all trying to provide the best-of-breed products and service offerings to help your business grow.
My goal this year at Internet Retailer 2009 in Boston, Massachusetts was to:
- catch up with companies I know and see what new things they are doing
- meet as many new people/companies as possible to see what they are up to
- attend as many workshops and information sessions to learn from experts and those folks and companies that are on the cutting edge of the ecommerce and mcommerce space, and
- have some great New England clam chowder and lobster.
I can safely say that I accomplished all of the above and then some. The staff at Internet Retailer 2009 did an excellent job and I highly recommend anybody reading this newsletter to attend next year’s event in Chicago. Even though less people turned out this year than in 2008, mostly due to this recession we are having, there were plenty of great people to talk to and some great new companies and innovations that I think will help any retailer increase sales, improve their business operations, and help companies stay ahead of their competition when it comes to BOTH ecommerce and the newest revolution of mcommerce.
So here are some highlights of what I discovered at Internet Retailer 2009, Boston, Massachusetts. Maybe some of these companies can help you grow your online retail business.
Affiliate Marketing:
Many etailers work directly with marketing channels to save money, i.e. they have the infrastructure and personnel in-house to manage marketing strategies without relying on affiliate sites to find the proper marketing channels for them and thus do not pay associated “broker/affiliate fees.” In many cases, sophisticated etailers often will supplement their direct marketing efforts and also use affiliate sites to reach harder to identify marketing channels to list their products. In either scenario, there are a plethora of affiliate sites from which to choose. Here are some of them.
SPECIAL NOTE: Not every affiliate will work with you if they don't think you’re big enough to support their affiliate network and they all purport to do the same thing, which is broker your products to other sites. Some of these are small, some are very large, and others are niche. (listed in alphabetical order and NOT in order of importance, ease of working with them, cost, or reach)
www.Avantlink.com
www.BettyMills.com
www.ClassifiedFlyerAds.com
www.ClickXchange.com
www.ClixGalore.com
www.CommissionJunction.com
www.DigitalGoodsDelivery.com
www.GoldenCan.com
www.Google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork
www.Half.com
www.iShop.co.uk (UK-London based)
www.Kolimbo.com
www.Lemonade.com
www.Linkconnector.com
www.LinkShare.com
www.PepperJamNetwork.com
www.PriceScan.com
www.SecretPrices.com
www.Shareasale.com
I am sure there are many more affiliate sites, but this is a start if you decide this type of marketing strategy is right for you.
Marketing Agencies:
Need some help with your adword campaigns, SEM, SEO, pay-per-click marketing campaigns? Try:
ARS Interactive
CPC Strategy
Frooition – ebay focused
FRY
RKG The Rimm-Kaufman Group
Mobile E-ecommerce Technologies:
Thinking about leveraging the mobile commerce space and understanding how mobile applications can help grow your business? Try:
Barcle – comparison search
Digby - create an online store and more
mPoria – create an online store and more
Ubermind – consultative in nature
Reviews:
Thinking about leveraging the “power of reviews” on your ecommerce storefront? Try:
PowerReviews
Shopping Cart Technology Companies:
There are hundreds of companies that provide good shopping-cart technology infrastructure. The real question lays in the support provided for the money paid for that technology. The advent of the Internet has spoiled many of us to expect that everything “excellent” on the Web should be basically free…or should I say that “Google” has spoiled us. When it comes to shopping-cart technology, I have found that less expensive, or almost free, is not a good business model for anyone. The reason is simple: building, supporting, and growing an e-commerce online business is not simple. Because of this fact, the best shopping-cart technology companies that are there to help you – rather than just provide a technology solution – costs more than other solutions.
If you are a technology expert and really know what you are doing then open source, basically free, shopping-cart technologies are an answer, but don’t expect support and get used to finding answers to your questions in on line chat rooms. Oh yes, and as I have found that nothing is really ever free – most of these solutions do have “upgraded” paying options and paid support help.
Open-Source Shopping-Cart Technologies Include:
AgoraCart
Comersus
OsCommerce
These are a few companies that I just really like because many of our clients use them or have switched to them from another shopping-cart technology solution and these companies have proven, FOR THE MOST PART, to be very professional and have good support.
Shopping-Cart Technologies Include:
BeanBasket - focused on small to mid-sized ecommerce merchants
Bx Software - small to mid-sized focus
Devix Software - larger enterprise ecommerce merchants
FRY - larger enterprise ecommerce merchants
ProStores WebStores - focused on small to mid-sized ecommerce merchants
Truition - larger enterprise ecommerce merchants
Volusion - focused on small to mid-sized ecommerce merchants
Znode - focused on small to mid-sized ecommerce merchants
Product Sourcing:
Don’t make your own products? Looking for products to sell and you need a reliable sourcing company? Try:
Alibaba
Doba
Site Search:
Frustrated with your in-built site search and looking to upgrade to increase onsite sales and "stickiness"? Try:
SLI Systems
Other Cool Technologies:
Flimp – interactive rich media, video digital landing pages and email marketing with analytics
IMN Newsletter – digitally delivered content driven HTML email, e-newsletters, mini-sites, blogs, and RSS
InMarkit – interactive marketing campaigns to mobile applications to increase conversions
Monetate – personalize onsite shopping experiences to increase conversions and up sells
Veruta – retargeted advertising to drive customers back to your storefront
I am sure that there were many other great companies that I missed at the show, but one person can only cover so much!
I hope some of the companies listed above, at the very least, inspire you to evaluate your ecommerce strategy going into the 3rd and 4th Q of 2009. |
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| Advice, Tips & Tricks |
Third-Party Vendors Often Require Data Feeds
By B. Thomas Romeo, Sr. Technical Engineer
 Miami, FL (June 20, 2009)— In addition to affiliate sites needing a properly optimized and formatted product catalog data feed, Internet Retailer 2009 reminded us at MerchantAdvantage that many third-party solutions that help ecommerce merchants increase sales and execute a comprehensive, online business strategy also require a data-feed. And, most of the time, online merchants are required to optimize this feed on a daily basis in order to work seamlessly with a third-party vendor.
An ecommerce can work directly with a third-party vendor, as they can with an affiliate site, without the assistance of MerchantAdvantage but most of the time problems occur. That is why MerchantAdvantage exists, i.e. to help clients work seamlessly with any company that requires a data-centric file formatted and optimized properly on a daily basis. So, what does this all mean for the ecommerce merchant?
Working with any third-party that requires a data feed, be that an affiliate, comparison shopping engines, shopping destination sites, consumer shopping engines or other software technology solutions requires the ecommerce merchant to extract data out of the merchant’s chosen ecommerce platform ( shopping cart technology) in a properly formatted file. The steps to do this are straightforward and are made much easier by using a tool-based solution as MerchantAdvantage.
These steps include:
- Identifying that you can export your products from your exiting shopping-cart technology.
- Understanding the various file formats that a desired partner prefers to receive the data.
- Creating the proper file while paying attention to various fields that are essential to a robust data feed especially: product name; manufacturer; image url; and product url.
- Prepare the data file with the correct fields necessary for the feed in accordance with the feed specification document that defines the necessary data for submittal for each marketing channel and/or company to which you are sending your data.
- Recommendation: review this specification document carefully as it should clearly outline the necessary categories and fields of data to send and the corresponding formatting, to which you must adhere.
- 5. Once you have this data ready in a properly formatted file then choose how you want to to feed that file on a daily basis.
- Will you upload the feed manually on a daily basis to your various channels? or…
- Use a tool such as Channel Management by MerchantAdvangtage, which empowers an ecommerce merchant to send data feeds and allows an ecommerce merchant to automate and schedule data feeds campaigns, analyze the performance of channel marketing strategies, properly optimize feeds, update marketing language and discounts on the fly, and generally better manipulate product catalog data on an ongoing basis to increase return on ad spend and work more efficiently with any third-party requiring a data feed?
So, to boil it down and make it easy:
- Prepare your storefront data to create an appropriate file
- Prepare your product catalog data feed to the exact specifications require by the third-party, and
- Choose your weapon to send it, optimize it, analyze it, and stay on top of it on a daily basis.
Learning these basic processes will help empower any ecommerce merchant to utilize many third-party marketing solutions and services with various companies and affiliate sites that you may want to work with into the future. |
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Download >> |
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About MerchantAdvantage
MerchantAdvantage (www.MerchantAdvantage.com) is an e-commerce software solutions company that focuses on working with companies, agencies, and e-commerce merchants that rely on data feeds. MerchantAdvantage takes a systematic, controlled and proactive approach to online product marketing by providing long-term, cost effective, Web-based software tools that enable an online business to grow by reaching the widest audience possible via online, broadband, and wireless devices.
MerchantAdvantage's applications are designed to connect the online retailer to their marketplace partners in a seamless motion of communication, allowing online merchants to take control of their e-Commerce and m-Commerce channels, marketing strategies and IT solutions. MerchantAdvantage currently markets over $3 billion worth of product value daily, representing over 1,000 online storefronts and is changing the macrocosm of ecommerce by staying ahead of the curve in providing business solutions to the growing online retail marketplace. They are here because your commerce future is online and wireless. For more information, please visit MerchantAdvantage.com, e-mail us at sales@MerchantAdvantage.com or call us at 1.800.550.9466.
MerchantAdvantage – Take Control of Your Marketing Channels! |
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