With this in mind, I’m impressed by the simple homepage feature that Lands’ End has on their site. The concept is simple: customers are looking for outerwear and the site is guiding them to the type of outerwear they need based on the climate that they live in. It’s a real simple concept that works well, from the user perspective:

I think apparel retailers often over look the types of problems that they are actually solving with their clothing. Focusing on fashion, trends and styles is very important but don’t overlook the utility of what you sell.

Did you find this post helpful? Then, you should also view these posts:

• Retail roundup - Q1 results, JC Penney (0)
• Kohl’s launches online-only deals; Why aren’t they using Twitter? (0)
• Express Lane for November 13 (0)
• Where’s the Petite Department? (0)
• Wet Seal launches online fashion community (1)

For households making less than $50,000, sales were down 3% for the past three months, compared to the same time period last year. Households with incomes over $100,000 saw a 14% growth in the same time period.

The economy is hitting everyone hard right now and it appears that no retailer, online or live, is immune at this point.

Did you find this post helpful? Then, you should also view these posts:

• Shop.org eHoliday 2008 Survey results released (0)
• Sears + K-Mart, Year One (0)
• Retailers See Mixed Results in June (0)
• Retailers put ads where the teens are (0)
• Retail Roundup: Abercrombie, American Eagle, Kohl’s, Wal-Mart (0)

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.

Did you find this post helpful? Then, you should also view these posts:

• Kohl’s launches online-only deals; Why aren’t they using Twitter? (0)
• Wal-Mart using Facebook to target young consumers (0)
• Vacation Tip for Bloggers (0)
• Suit: Blogger posted Target trade secrets (3)
• Sears. Where it begins. (4)

McDonald’s is testing no-brand marketing in Japan by opening a store without any of the colors, logos, or branding of their traditional stores. Supported through non-traditional marketing such as hand outs, viral campaigns, and a unique website, the store offers two menu choices and that is it. Intriguing concept and I wonder how long it is until we see that more often in the United States. Jon Sykes also shares his thoughts on this campaign.

Linda at Get Elastic has a very informative post about the benefits of pushing educational content, rather than sales promotions, in e-mail. In Should Retail Email Sell or Inform? An A/B Split Test Case Study, she provides a look into an study into different types of e-mails that were sent out from a retailer and provides concrete information on ROI, conversion rates, and sales results. Summary is, content is king and the e-mails that were focused on educational content and information performed better than the sales oriented e-mails. Good information for all retailers.

Over at CNBC, Cindy Perman writes about the impact the economy is having on second hand and consignment shops. Some intriguing sales numbers from Goodwill and quotes from consignment store owners that reflect the uptick in sales and traffic they are seeing this holiday season. At least someone is seeing positive gains this season.

Did you find this post helpful? Then, you should also view these posts:

• Success and convtroversy lead to higher national profile for Rutgers (0)
• Sears. Where it begins. (4)
• Sears’ Lands End Shop (3)
• Sears + K-Mart, Year One (0)
• Salon: The Man Behind Abercrombie & Fitch (0)

Working in the e-commerce field, I often find myself looking at other retailers to gather ideas on how to best present various elements of e-commerce sites. From design to information architecture, I find it fascinating to see how different retailers tackle the same problems in different ways. I’m often looking at different retailers and constantly looking for changes, no matter how small, and trends in e-commerce design.

I always wanted to see a site that broke down e-commerce stores into their different elements. I wanted a resource that would allow me to see the various ways retailers display their products or style their “Add to Cart” buttons. There are sites that break down general web elements (see: Elements of Design) and sites that highlight e-commerce design (see: Carted Up), but still no resource that broke down the individual elements.

Of course, this is where I looked to do something about it.

Today, I am proud to announce the launch of ecommr. ecommr is a collection of screen captures of e-commerce design and interface elements. From product listing pages to e-mail newsletters, ecommr is a resource to view all of the individual pieces that make up the e-commerce puzzle. Right now, there are 87 elements from more than 20 retailers.

No Turn On Red won’t be going anywhere. I will use the content on ecommr as a jumping off point for larger discussions and spotlights of trends or patterns through e-commerce. Those discussions will take place over here while I try to keep ecommr editorial-free and keep conversations in the comments of each posted element.

I hope others find this as interesting as I do. I also hope that other people within the industry can get some use out of it, like I know I will. If you have any feedback, comments, or helpful advice, please let me know.

Again, the site is launched and available now at www.ecommr.com.

Did you find this post helpful? Then, you should also view these posts:

• Kohl’s launches online-only deals; Why aren’t they using Twitter? (0)
• Around the Web: Back to School 2008 Screenshot Edition (1)
• What I have been up to: Big Box Watch (2)
• Vacation Tip for Bloggers (0)
• Shop.org eHoliday 2008 Survey results released (0)

I receieved this in an e-mail from Priceline today:

Seems that Expedia also has an entire section of their site set aside for information about the Inauguration and travel to Washington DC.

Even STA Travel is offering Inauguration travel deals:

Did you find this post helpful? Then, you should also view these posts:

• Express Lane for August 6, 2008 (0)

I just thought I would write since I am chock full of anger, which unfortunately is not how I should be feeling the thursday after election night.

I placed an order (#XXXXXXXXX) for an external TB firewire LaCie drive from buy.com and waited for it’s arrival. Nothing came. Several days after the date that was indicated in my shipping email I tried contacting them and after several false starts- they have a terrible support system- my order was reviewed and I was told I already had the item. That it was delivered, and that since Buy.Com does not request a signature the item was “left outside”. Now my wife works from home, so she’s always home, so I’m not sure how she didn’t hear the delivery person ring the bell. Worse yet the “delivery” date was Mischief night, October 30th, so it’s hard to believe they would leave a 300 dollar item outside without getting a signature.

Buy.com “reviewed” my claim and denied me via an automated email with no option for appeal. After writing them back I was told this,

Per company policy: “Title to goods passes to you upon delivery to the common carrier.” (http://www.buy.com/corp/legal.asp). Basically this says that once a product is in transit via the shipping carrier, the ownership and responsibility of the product has passed from Buy.com to the customer. It is the customer’s responsibility from this point forward to make sure someone is at the delivery address provided to accept the package. If no one is available at this address at the time of delivery, the carrier is authorized to leave the package at the door and the order is considered completed at that time. Basically, the security of the delivery location provided by the customer falls under the responsibility of the customer.

So apparently when you make a purchase from Buy.com you are actually not buying it yourself, but rather purchasing the item for a delivery service that may or may not send you the item. So what is to prevent the delivery agent from keeping the item, giving it to a friend, covering it with glitter and making a puppet friend?

I have tried to file a claim with paypal (what I used to pay), but I was hoping you might have some more information on what my rights are as a purchaser? Also if nothing else, please let others know this policy.

Buy.com customer service has offered no assistance or alternatives in resolving this matter. Here they basically tell the consumer that he is shit out of luck from their end. At the very least, I would think that they should offer to contact FedEx on the consumer’s behalf to assist in the investigation.

Is it the responsibility of e-commerce stores to work with the carrier to ensure packages get to the customer? At which point should a signature be required for delivery? If the retailer is going to offer no assistance in making sure packages get delivered, what other rights do consumers have in this type of situation?

Did you find this post helpful? Then, you should also view these posts:

• Wal-mart on the Hunt for an Extreme Makeover (0)
• The Art Of Customer Service (0)
• Shop.org eHoliday 2008 Survey results released (0)
• Server Burp (0)
• Retailers and Social Media - when are they going to learn? (1)

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?

Did you find this post helpful? Then, you should also view these posts:

• Shop.org eHoliday 2008 Survey results released (0)
• Holiday’s Over (1)
• Handbag Planet Using Social Media to Launch Retail Store (2)
• Retailers See Mixed Results in June (0)
• Retail roundup - Q1 results, JC Penney (0)

For full disclosure, Jim is an associate of mine at Media-Hive.

Did you find this post helpful? Then, you should also view these posts:

• Five ways you, as a customer, can improve customer service (2)
• Where’s the Petite Department? (0)
• Where have I been? (1)
• Wal-mart on the Hunt for an Extreme Makeover (0)
• Retail’s May numbers off to a positive Summer start (0)

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.

Did you find this post helpful? Then, you should also view these posts:

• How Readers Find Blogs (0)
• Express Lane for September 4 (1)
• Wal-Mart using Facebook to target young consumers (0)
• Suit: Blogger posted Target trade secrets (3)
• Shop.org eHoliday 2008 Survey results released (0)