No Turn On Red

Results from the 2008 eHoliday Survey, conducted by Shop.org and Shopzilla, have been released. The results offer an intriguing look into the state of online retail as we enter the heart of the Holiday season. Seeking Alpha has all of the results of the survey, which is a very good read for anyone involved in the industry right now. The survey paints a picture of an industry that may have worry about the economic downturn and knows it is not immune from pain.

Among the items that interested me: it appears that retailers will continue to offer free shipping promotions, but either increase the requirements to trigger the promotion or cut promotions in other areas. Free shipping is still a big deal.

When it comes to site usability and features:

Many retailers have rolled out new website features to improve the customer experience. Features like improved site search, which 42.9% of retailers added or improved since last holiday season, will help customers navigate sites more easily.

Other features, like product video (42.6%) and customer reviews (32.7%) can give shoppers more information to make buying decisions.

For price-focused shoppers, retailers have added and enhanced both clearance-sale pages (27.1%) and featured-sale pages (31.3%).

In addition, retailers continue to experiment with social networking: Nearly one-fourth (25.0%) of online retailers added a Facebook page this year.

This season will see a lot of experimenting with social media and non-traditional product detail and category pages. I’m really eager to see what retailers roll out in 2009 if these limited engagement tests pay off during the holiday season.

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Last week, Kohl’s discussed some of their holiday marketing strategies with the press. They plan on increasing their spending to capture a larger share of the dwindling holiday sales figures, with increased emphasis on direct mail, e-mail campaigns, and online-only sale prices.

Going into the holiday season, the retailer, which has seen Web sales increase by more than 50% so far this year, is making a big push online as well. It plans to send email blasts out to 15 million shoppers — more than double the number that it had on its electronic mailing list last year — and it’s offering one or two specially discounted items on Kohls.com every day through Christmas.

Their website has started advertising these online-only specials on their homepage, with a callout that went live this week (apparently):

This is a very interesting shift in marketing for the retailer that has, until now, always offered consistent pricing in-store and online. Their marketing campaigns even advertised this fact and, for years, coupons that were sent out to customers, in direct mail, were also good online.

Kohl’s needs to be aggressive in order to increase their market share this holiday season. This is a perfect opportunity for the retailer to utilize a service, like Twitter, to advertise these special, limited-time promotions. It is obvious that they want to aggressively promote these deals as they they are utilizing prime screen real estate to push the deal. It even appears that they already have a Twitter account, although with zero posts. They should be using this to promote the daily deals and reach more people, one-on-one.

The usage of the service would be simply - they’d just need to follow the example that other retailers have set to announce daily deals. I look at the Amazon MP3 Deal of the Day and Woot.com as two examples of retailers using the service to effectively promote daily deals.

Maybe the first step, for a retailer like Kohl’s, is the use the service to promote daily deals and then they can evolve into using the service to engage customers in conversation. I think there is always more room for retailers to use Twitter to reach their customers.

What do you think?

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Here’s a tip for other bloggers out there - next time you go on vacation, make sure your domain isn’t set to expire while you are away.  Readers of this blog may have noticed the unfortunate Network Solutions renewal screen over the past few days!  That’s my bad - I had my dates messed up and didn’t realize that the domain was set to expire right before I went away on vacation, meaning the nagging renewal screen would go into effect the day I left for a 10 day trip.

Pretty unfortunate, but pretty hilarious Google Analytics charts to see.  Now I just hope they pick back up now that the domain is re-active!

In good news, I took a refreshing ten day cruise from New Jersey to Bermuda and then down to the Caribbean. Beautiful weather and smooth seas lead to a very refreshing and relaxing vacation. Weather here in New Jersey is cold and dreary - I already miss the beach in Saint Marteen.

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Handbag Planet is a new store that is launching tomorrow and they are using social media to promote their site launch. They’re giving away 24 handbags over the course of the launch day and entries to the contest are gained through posting about the site to blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks.

The contest and social media campaign must be working as word of mouth seems to be strong on various networks. A search on Twitter returns 6 pages of results while a Google blog search returns close to 3,000 mentions. I’d assume that the positive word of mouth could lead into positive first day sales. If they also offer good customer service and a strong product, they can hopefully convert some of the first day customers into repeat customers.

I’m very interested to see how this plays out, how the website looks, and how their long term prospects look. I’ll sure be looking at the site tomorrow to check it out and, of course, with this blog post I wil hpefully win my fiancee a new handbag. It’s a win-win for all of us.

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Wanted to take a moment and thank some other bloggers who have linked to some of my posts over the past few days.

Lorrelle On Wordpress offers a very extensive post on ways that blogs and social media are most effective during a time of disaster. In the post, Blogs Offer Communication, Information, and Connections During Disasters, there is a great rundown of the different ways in which social media was used well in advance of and through Hurricane Gustav. Beyond that, there’s a very interesting look at the evolution of social media and technology since Hurricane Katrina. Very good, detailed post with some great information and resources.

The Business section of Blogs.com has a rundown of what various bloggers are talking about, in regards to the economic and financial impact of Hurricane Gustav.

Finally, Reputation Notebook is also looking at the role social media is playing in the crisis response from corporations. I agree with Mark that the role of social media within corporate communications is going to continue to grow. A crisis, like Hurricane Gustav, shows how important social media can be to an effective corporate communication policy.

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Some time ago, my girlfriend and I ordered take out food from a national, fast-food restaurant. We drove there and picked up the food, but when we got it home we were not pleased with what we had gotten. When we opened the first food item, we noticed what appeared to be hair on it. I opened up the other item and the chicken, which was used in both dishes, just did not taste right. It may seem trivial now, but decided that we weren’t going to eat the meals we just bought.

I called the restaurant to let them know about the problem. I did this for two reasons. First, I felt as if they should know that there may be a potential problem with the chicken that we were served. My other goal was to see what they would offer me as a resolution to this problem. I was looking for an offer of a refund, but I also expected some sort of concern from their employee.

Instead, the girl who answered the phone acted completely disinterested in what I had to say, quickly rushed me off the phone and never offered me any sort of resolution. I expected she would offer me something - at the very least, I expected that she would offer to put me on the phone with the manager. But nothing.

Maybe I was naive to expect something, anything, but this phone called angered me more.

I took the food and went back to the eatery, where I went up to the counter and explained to the girl there (the same girl who answered the phone) that I was the person who called about the hair in the food and politely requested to speak the manager. The manager came over, spoke to me for a brief second, and then offered to make me new dishes (which I didn’t want) or offered to refund the money. She did this professionally, quickly and offered a great resolution to my problem.

I don’t believe I over-reacted at any point in this, nor do I believe I was unreasonable in expecting some sort of resolution. However, there is only one thing I didn’t do that I wish I had. I wish that I had taken five minutes to write to the parent company to explain to them what happened. I wish I had done this because the company should have known not only how I felt slighted by the girl on the phone, but the company also should have known how well I felt the manager handled the situation. It is a case of a negative experience becoming positive. At the end of all of it, I had a problem and it was resolved well - after a bump in the road.

If I had informed the parent company of what happened, maybe, in the future, the whole thing would have been handled better from the initial phone call. Perhaps the next customer that has a negative experience there isn’t as patient as me. They don’t bother to go back to the store and their story ends on a negative note, never going back to the store again after that phone call.

The reason I share this story now, long after the fact, is because I believe it illustrates some of the points that I touch on in my next post: Five ways you, as a customer, can improve customer service.

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