No Turn On Red

Few things on my radar this morning that I want to share:

Great post by Get Elastic that analyzes the checkout login process of several of the top converting sites. New users resist registering and want to check out without creating an account. Very good data and thoughts there for anyone working in e-commerce.

Not all the news about the retail industry should be bad. Seeking Alpha has a list of 10 retailers with stronger than expected first quarter sales. A slight glimmer of positive news in the midst of all the doom and gloom about the economy that is still lingering.

For the designers in the house, I really love going through the sites at Design Meltdown. Always an inspirational gallery site. Last week they posted a new collection of “super clean” websites. Just because the design is clean doesn’t mean it has to be bland. Good inspiration there.

Jeremiah Owyang is live blogging from the Corporate Social Networking Conference in Amsterdam and has a recap of the panel on digital natives. Kids born after 1980, who grew up with the level of technology, should be looked at differently by businesses and brands. This is an important segment of consumers that retailers have to be aware of and cater to. Teen retailers have been forced to get it, but how will retailers react as this generation continues to grow older?

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The Retail Email blog has a roundup of this morning’s e-commerce email blasts with attention being paid to today’s email from Saks. The e-mail, entited “8 Great Reasons to Shop Saks.com“, calls attention to some of the new and improved functionality that the retailer has added to their site. Great way to call attention to improvements on the site that may have been implemented over a period of time or that the users may not have realized are there. I think it gets them to explore new areas of the store that they may not have been aware of before.

StorefrontBacktalk has some of the early numbers from this year’s National Retail Federation annual show. Registration and exhibitors are down from last year, but international vendors who will be at the show.

In more NRF news, PredictiveRetailer has a recap of Day 1’s social media happenings. It’s a great review of blog posts and tweets referencing the day’s different sessions. Looking foward to seeing the recap for the rest of the sessions!

For those not attending the NRF Big Show, don’t forget you can use Twitter search to follow the NRF keyword to keep up to date with what’s going in in New York this week. There’s a bunch of attendees who are on Twitter and there’s been some good ideas and comments being posted there. I’ll be Tweeting from the Expo Hall tomorrow.

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I was having a conversation with a colleague of mine who suggested that it would be interesting to see a list of all retailers’ Twitter accounts on one page. We agreed that it would be interesting to see how different retailers are using the same medium – are they promoting sales, offering ideas for their market, reaching out to customers?

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Missed this last week due to the holiday, but I wanted to share a link to Beth Harte’s excellent post called Want to Figure Out Your Social Media Plan? Consider a Plan. It’s an excellent primer on developing a business plan for social media and setting clear goals in order to measure ROI. Not only is the post informative, but it has spurred a great conversation in the comments on different ways to define and measure ROI with a social media plan. I’ve just skimmed through the comments, but I know I have a lot to read and digest tonight.

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Couple of stories that I’m reading this morning:

CNBC’s got a great run down on Amazon’s holiday strategy. The online retailer saw a 42% sales growth in Q4 2007 and forecasts 12 – 15% growth this year. Remarkable feat considering consumer spending is forecast to be down this season. The retailer looks to siphon sales from other retailers by offering low prices and “ridiculous deals”.

Shop.org has released more data on expected consumer habits through this Holiday season and especially for this weekend. Bottom line, consumers are using the web to enhance their real world shopping experience. Be prepared.

Just on the heals of reporting very soft e-commerce sales growth in October, Comscore forecasts flat growth in e-commerce sales for this holiday season. They estimate a 4% decline in sales through the first 23 days of the Nov-Dev shopping season.

Earlier today I talked about JCPenney’s use of social media, Twitter, and viral marketing. I missed this press release from the retailer detailing some of the improvements they’ve launched on jcp.com for a better online shopping experience. More product photos, customer reviews, and more online-only promotions. Kohl’s holiday strategy also emphasized a better online experience.

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JCPenney has unveiled an intriguing viral marketing campaign called “Beware of the Doghouse”. The concept is simple: Men should get the “right” gifts for their spouses in order to avoid being put in the doghouse. There’s a website and a four minute video out there supporting this campaign.

The campaign is also supported by a Facebook tie-in that some feel is a poorly executed social media strategy. I tend to agree on this one – I’d rather see retailers put their effort into making lasting relationships with their customers, rather than gimicky Facebook apps.

However, I can’t completely fault JCPenney for their social media efforts as the retailer has also unveiled a Twitter account that, so far, seems to be a very effective use of the service. The account (@askJCP) was started last week and there seems to be a real person behind it (rather than a marketing script). Yesterday, there were a lot of Tweets about the Doghouse viral video, which does seem a bit forced and contrived. But there’s also some helpful information about the retailer and I hope they continue to engage people on Twitter and attempt to make solid relationships.

I should also point out that JCPenney uses Youtube to broadcast a weekly run down of the hot items and promotions in-store. Their channel is updated weekly and the commercials are well produced and informative. I believe the retailer started these broadcasts with the Back to School season.

I’m interested to see how the viral video plays out. I personally found it funny and remarkable well produced. So far, it’s getting some reaction on Twitter but people generally see the humor in the video. But frankly, I wonder if JCPenney had any second thoughts about rolling out their campaign so shortly after another major brand has such a nightmare on their hands last week.

Last week, the people being the ibuprofen Motrin unveiled a viral video campaign that most people agreed missed the mark. Reaction was quick and fierce and turned into a PR nightmare for the company.

I am enthused by JCPenney’s use of social media, social networks, and other available web applications. I hope that marks a long term commitment on behalf of the retailer and all of this doesn’t disappear after Christmas.

Here’s hoping other retailers continue to hop on the social media bandwagon and aim to connect with their customers online.

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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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