Is this Listia ad on TechCrunch a 'scam' offer?
The other day, I was checking the latest posts on TechCrunch and came across a promotion promising a free pack of MySpace branded playing cards. I love free things and I clicked, hoping that my next game of poker would have a MySpace theme.
Instead I was greeted by a charity auction on a service called Listia. To bid, I needed 'credits'. The parallels to the scam offers controversy I wrote about on Monday started to became apparent.
What customers want: a benevolent Big Brother?
In the movie What Women Want, Nick Marshall (played by Mel Gibson) has an accident and finds himself able to hear what the women around him are really thinking. At first he uses it to his advantage selfishly before he falls in love.
Chances are you're not going to suffer from an accident that gives you Nick Marshall-like abilities, but fortunately when it comes to finding out what customers want, market research can tackle the challenge.
Site review: Whistles.co.uk
Fashion retailer Whistles relaunched its website last week, and the resulting Flash heavy site is certainly different.
According to Whistles' Jane Sheperdson, 'We spent a lot of time researching best practice online. We then threw out everything we had learned, and just designed something that pleased us visually.'
This is an interesting way to approach the design of an e-commerce site, but what will the result be for the user experience?
Outlook for online retail is bright this Christmas: survey
According to a new survey, 93% of consumers are planning to do at least some of their shopping online this Christmas, with 71% planning to buy more than half of their gifts on the web.
The survey by eDigitalResearch and IMRG reveals that more people are planning to shop online this year, and now that the threat of Royal Mail strike action has receded, there is some cause for optimism for online retailers.
American Airlines fires an employee for...customer engagement
Imagine for a moment that you're the CEO of American Airlines (AA). A customer named
Dustin Curtis comes to the conclusion that your website sucks after
booking a flight on it and finding the process to be a "horrific
displeasure".
A UX designer by trade, Curtis takes it upon himself to redesign your website's homepage and provide some suggestions. All at no cost, of course. He publishes this as a blog post that begins, "Dear AmericanAirlines". Shortly thereafter, the UX designer receives an email from an AA employee who does UX design for your company.
How should etailers ask for customer reviews?
The fact that having user reviews can be an effective sales driver, providing valuable information for customers is well established, but how do retailers attract reviews onto their product pages?
I looked at ways etailers can attract reviews a few months ago. One of those ideas was to email customers after purchase and invite them to leave a review of the product(s) they had bought. A recent report from Snow Valley(pdf) takes a closer look at the issue...
The A-Z of conversion rate optimisation
E-commerce professionals tend to obsess about conversion rates and how to optimise them. Why? Because a tiny increase in conversion rates can generate millions in additional sales for large retailers, so it’s obviously worth throwing resources at ongoing optimisation strategies.
A lot of the basics are obvious. Selling online is about being relevant, removing distractions, and having a clear proposition. It’s about having a competitive price and a trustworthy brand. By testing and experimenting these things you can boost conversion rates.
What else is there? Well, I’ve compiled an A-to-Z of conversion rate optimisation for your viewing pleasure, along with a bunch of links to further reading. Hopefully this will help you to boost sales at your firm.
Amazon makes it easy for its affiliates to tweet
You may not be able to fit a whole lot of words into 140 characters but a growing number of individuals and businesses think that it doesn't take more than 140 characters to produce a profit.
While Twitter focuses on building its platform and brand, plenty of third parties have been focusing on using Twitter as a marketing platform of their own. From established companies like Dell to upstarts like Sponsored Tweets, many are trying to cash in on Twitter.
Online retailers still need to work on customer service
While a study of 46 leading e-commerce sites found overall performance to be satisfactory, with average scores ranging from 76% to 90%, many etailers still need to improve on customer service.
The eRetail Benchmark Study from eDigital Research used mystery shoppers to assess the usability of leading online retail sites in the UK. Customer contact by email and phone are two areas where some retailers performed poorly.
The domain name industry gets its Bernie Madoff
He may not have run a $50bn ponzi scheme but the domain name industry has found its Bernie Madoff. Yesterday, it was revealed that an employee of SnapNames, a popular domain name drop service and auctioneer, had been bidding on SnapNames domain name auctions, winning valuable domains, inflating auction prices and boosting revenue for the company in the process.
All told, the employee, who was an early member of the SnapNames team and a vice president at the company, is said to have participated in 5% of SnapNames' total auctions between 2005 and 2007 and that the value of his bidding accounted for 1% of SnapNames' revenue during that time.
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
