ecommerce | Internet Marketing Blog

Start Me Up! A profile of Whisbi

Whisbi helps companies such as Movistar, Vodafone, Citibank and American Express increase their online revenues by bringing live video and telephony into the sales cycle.

Though it has considerable investment, and have been on the market for some time, a Start Me Up profile was due on account of its particular focus!

by Ryan Sommer 14 June 2013 17:07pm 0 comments

Primark uses ASOS to test the ecommerce waters

A month ago, I wrote a post questioniong whether Primark was mad to ignore ecommerce, after it had said it had no plans to sell online.

Strangely, for a post and discussion on an internet marketing blog, the general consensus was that Primark's offline only strategy was a good idea for such a low margin retailer.

Yesterday however, Primark started selling a limited range of clothes via ASOS. So is this a good idea?

by Graham Charlton 04 June 2013 11:52am 8 comments

12 common mistakes to avoid for offline retailers moving into ecommerce

Retail and e-tail collide creating internal chaos for bricks and mortar retailers. The result is a non-performing channel.

Ecommerce is a long term strategic play, and must be thought of as a business channel not to be rushed.

Bricks and mortar retailers venturing into ecommerce find themselves stuck in this chaotic period characterised by poor profitable performance, marred with consumer complaints, operational inefficiency, and no proactive management.

The entire business is reactive to the problems it creates.

Sound familiar??

by Greg Randall 30 May 2013 13:59pm 3 comments

The essential small business website checklist

This checklist is intended to assist small business owners. It outlines the must have elements for your website so you can ensure it has the best chance of succeeding online.

This is the first in a short series which aims primarily to benefit small businesses with regards to their websites and online success. Consequently it might also help if you’re a web designer building small sites for businesses on a budget.

This small business website checklist will be most relevant for small sites or simple ecommerce sites because it’s a general checklist, but it’s amazing how many bigger (and often expensive) websites belonging to large companies fail to adhere to some basic web design fundamentals.

The list below will enable you to quickly check the most fundamental elements are in place on your website and it should take you no longer than 30 minutes to carry out the checks.

by Chris Gilchrist 23 May 2013 10:44am 8 comments

How Appliances Online went from 2,500 to 1m Facebook fans in just two years

Online electrical retailer Appliances Online (now rebranded as AO) has seen impressive growth on its Facebook page, recently hitting the milestone of 1m likes.

According to AO, it is also making Facebook sell, something not all retailers have managed to do.

It has seen a 60% in branded search traffic, which has led to a 58% uplift in sales driven by brand terms.

To find out the secrets behind this growth, I've been asking AO Social Media Manager Yossi Erdman...

by Graham Charlton 21 May 2013 10:07am 12 comments

Bing is an untapped venue for ecommerce videos

Bing, the search engine created by Microsoft, is gaining traffic, although it’s no Google yet. However, not many e-commerce companies are placing their product videos on this newer search engine.

Now that Bing is powering searches on Facebook’s Graph Search, it’s a good time to get your videos indexed in Bing. Here’s how to do it.

by Melody King 16 May 2013 17:10pm 4 comments

Ecommerce stats: online shopping in the Middle East

The Middle East and North Africa edition of our Internet Statistics Compendium has seen some interesting updates over the past few months, with some fascinating insights into ecommerce across the region.

This post gives a general overview of the online retail numbers and brands which are proving significant in the Middle East. For further details of the many specific trends and developments within respective MENA markets, check out the latest edition of our ISC.

by Luke Richards 16 May 2013 09:48am 4 comments

Why does mobile out-perform desktop on this ecommerce site?

I had an interesting email from an ecommerce site owner in Texas over the weekend, wondering why mobile outperforms desktop on his site for conversion rates.

The site in question is discgolfstation.com, and owner Clint Henderson tells me that mobile conversion rates are twice that of desktop, which is obviously unusual.

While the mobile site isn't bad at all, it seems the problem is down to poor desktop performance.

Here, I'll suggest some possible reasons, but it would be great to see what suggestions you have for improvements as well...

by Graham Charlton 15 May 2013 11:26am 5 comments

70+ epic ecommerce best practice tips, stats, blog posts and more

After this post rounding up some of our case studies, articles and reports on social media, I thought I'd steal Andrew Warren Payne's idea and do the same for ecommerce.

We have written a lot on ecommerce since the blog launched, but here are 70 or so of the our best practice tips, interviews with ecommerce folk, stats, and reports from the past year or so.

Hope you find this useful...

by Graham Charlton 10 May 2013 10:45am 6 comments

The segmentation conundrum

When it comes to ecommerce engagement, a brand’s ability to connect with customers meaningfully is only as good as its segmentation strategy.

Consider an online apparel shop that wants to microsegment its customers based on ZIP code. This could come close to treating each and every customer as a separate segment, a one-to-one marketing strategy that's very difficult to scale.

by Jordan Elkind 09 May 2013 16:35pm 0 comments