Adjusting Sales Strategies for E-Commerce 2011

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By Shaun Ryan
E-Commerce Times
01/15/11 5:00 AM PT

If you haven't already, take the time to review the on-site technologies you currently have in your arsenal, and work to guarantee they are searchable and able to exchange data. Doing so will help you maximize the value of each of your technology investments and ensure they are working for you to drive business success in 2011.

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As e-commerce marketers set or adjust their strategies for 2011, there are some important trends and developments to pay attention to that can help capture new revenue streams and strengthen brand awareness this year and beyond.

For many retailers, selling online is a critical component of their business, but they also have other channels to manage. For those businesses, the coming year will bring an increasing focus on the Internet and mobile technologies, not only to influence online sales, but also to affect sales that happen through other channels.
In 2009, Forrester found that 42 percent of all retail purchases, worth $917 billion, were influenced by the Web in some way. By 2014, that figure is likely to jump to 53 percent. Even catalogs, long thought to have gone the way of dinosaurs, are proving to influence online sales. People like to flip through catalog pages and then purchase the item they are interested in online.

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Keep Branding Consistent

The key to effectively combining the online and offline shopping experience is to ensure consistence of brand across all channels and to offer an intuitive method of "discovery" that allows consumers to quickly find the products they are looking to buy. Site search obviously plays a critical role here.
Some businesses are taking this combination to the next level by allowing customers to make purchases online and redeem them offline -- think services like Groupon or OpenTable. This provides the unique ability to track offline sales and sales drivers as in the world of e-commerce.
Another interesting tactic retailers are using is bringing an online component into their offline stores. CompUSA, for example, has developed kiosks in its stores that shoppers can use to search for product information and availability in real-time to prompt an in-store purchase.
Many multichannel retailers are also providing better mobile site functionality to enable consumers to search for products online while physically in stores to do price comparisons, get consumer reviews and other information to help inform their purchases.

Understand Your M-Commerce Customers

While talk of m-commerce may be reaching the saturation point, it continues to be an important growth opportunity for companies selling products online. The influence of mobile on the retail market is expected to increase exponentially in coming years; as it becomes more mainstream, e-tailers that are slow in optimizing their websites for mobile visitors risk damaging their brands and harming customer relationships, as well as missing a significant sales opportunity.
For those embarking on an m-commerce strategy this year, understanding how customers interact with a mobile site is essential. For example, search plays a critical role, so it should be a focal point.
Without fast and relevant site search, m-commerce sites will fail to create an experience that encourages visitors to shop and buy with their phones and other Web-enabled devices.
Additionally, user ratings and reviews are important, as many people use mobile devices to research products -- possibly while standing in a physical store . But don't just take it from me. Consider surveying your customers to determine how many of them view your site from a mobile device and what they expect from the mobile experience.

Combine Data Sources

Despite the opportunities that exist to combine typically siloed efforts (e.g., email marketing, site search, video and social media) to significantly increase their benefit, many e-commerce companies aren't doing this.
Data gleaned from multiple on-site technologies can be used to more successfully recruit customers and maintain loyalty within your current customer base, as well as measure the effectiveness of campaigns, conduct keyword research and better understand online behaviors.
For example, integrating user reviews with site search can provide you with another important navigation tool for your online shoppers: the ability to search for products by how they are rated, as well as how they are reviewed. Data gleaned from combining applications can also be used to better target other activities, such as paid advertising and even promotional offers.
Social media is another important example of how, by combining data sources, you can more effectively extend your influence. Many retailers have a Facebook page, a Twitter feed or even a YouTube channel to help build a community and promote special offers.
Adding content from these social sources to site search results lets visitors who are searching for specific content on your site also see related social media posts within the search results, encouraging them to click through to various pages. This provides additional content to help your customers make their purchasing decisions, and share their shopping experience with friends and family.
If you haven't already, take the time to review the on-site technologies you currently have in your arsenal, and work to guarantee they are searchable and able to exchange data. Doing so will help you maximize the value of each of your technology investments and ensure they are working for you to drive business success in 2011.
As you embark on a new year filled with strategies designed to help capture more sales, be sure to take a closer look at some of the emerging market trends. Addressing these trends early can help you to compete more effectively, build your brand, solidify even greater customer loyalty, and ultimately increase sales.

Groupon CEO Apologizes for Bungling Japanese Holiday Meal Promotion

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By Rob Spiegel
E-Commerce Times
01/17/11 12:55 PM PT

Groupon took a novel approach to solving a problem that cropped up with its service in Japan. Instead of attempting to deny, distract from or otherwise minimize its offense, Groupon's CEO publicly admitted that it had performed poorly, apologized, made restitution, and told its customers what the company would do to make sure the same thing wouldn't happen again.

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Rob Spiegel, E-Commerce Times Sometimes it's best to say you're sorry. Groupon's CEO, Andrew Mason, released a subtitled video on YouTube apologizing for problems Japanese customers experienced during a New Year's promotion. Groupon's deal-of-the-day site offers promotions and discounts to local markets. The company emphasizes social networking by encouraging consumers to share with friends.

The sharing didn't turn out so well in Japan. Groupon expanded into Japan last year in August when it bought Qpod. The problem came with a promotion for the hard-to-prepare, traditional New Year's meal, "osechi." Groupon's partner, The Bird Cafe, promoted the meals for 10,500 yen. (US$127) Many customers were left unsatisfied with late delivery times and poorly prepared meals. Customers loaded the disaster pictures online.
In territories where Groupon is well established, the company works with businesses to set a limit on the number of promotions so the partnering company will not get overwhelmed. In Japan, Groupon has not fully implemented this system. Groupon capped the Bird Cafe at 500 customers, but the cafe still got overwhelmed.

Groupon is using the video apology in an attempt to rebuild its image in Japan. The company has also issued refunds of 5,000 yen, about half the purchase price. The snafu is not surprising, given Groupon's steep growth curve. Something was bound to pop. The sharp growth will likely continue, given Groupon's recent investment take of $950 million.

Exception to the Norm

Groupon insists this Japanese situation is small compared to its vast number of successful promotions.
"Groupon has worked with more than 50,000 merchants in the past year," company spokesperson Julie Anne Mossle told the E-Commerce Times. "This experience was definitely the exception and not the norm. In addition to the apology, and the gifts, letters and refunds we proactively issued, it was important to connect Andrew with the people of Japan to demonstrate the level of respect he and we have for the country."
Groupon erred by taking its partner's word on the volume it could handle for the promotion.
"Unfortunately, if a business says they are able to support X amount of customers, it's difficult for us to push back on that," Mossler said. "In this case, we did and insisted on a cap of 500, which ultimately was still too high."
Groupon provides tools to its numerous local partners to help them implement a Groupon promotion. The company is working with its international branches to streamline the strategies.
"We find that the businesses who do the best on Groupon are those who take full advantage of our merchant services tools," said Mossler. "We're working closely with the international teams to make sure the best practices are widely implemented. If there's a way to help other countries avoid some of the growing pains we had in the United States when we were just beginning, we'll do everything in our power to do that."

Expanding Across Borders Can Be Rough

Groupon may have tripped on its own growth curve.
"Groupon has been on a rocket ride," Carl Howe, director of anywhere consumer research at the Yankee Group, told the E-Commerce Times.
"It's always tricky to go into new countries. Each country has different societal and consumer behaviors," he pointed out. "This happens a lot to companies. They go into a new country and make mistakes. You just have to learn and move on. The tricky part is to not assume that what worked in one country will work in another country."
Groupon hopes to connect with the Japanese people and gain acceptance through the YouTube apology, which is personal and respectful.
"The YouTube apology is actually very clever," said Howe. "Will it work? We don't know. But it's a nice try."


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Apple Reaches New Altitudes

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By Richard Adhikari
MacNewsWorld
Part of the ECT News Network
01/19/11 9:00 AM PT

The holiday season was especially kind to Apple, judging from the figures the company revealed about its first fiscal quarter for 2011. Revenues hit a record $26.7 billion, while net profit reached $6 billion. COO Tim Cook remarked that the smartphone market is "growing like a weed" and that the company was unable to meet demand for the iPhone 4.

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Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) chalked up yet another blowout quarter for its fiscal Q1 of 2011, which covered last year's holiday selling season. The months of November and December are typically very strong ones for the company, but this time, Cupertino exceeded analysts' wildest expectations.

Revenues for the quarter ended Dec. 25 hit a new record, totaling US$26.7 billion. This was more than $11 billion, or 70 percent, above the roughly $15.7 billion chalked up during the same period last year.
Net quarterly profits also hit a new high of $6 billion. This was over $2.6 billion, or nearly 78 percent, more than the $3.38 billion figure Apple posted for the year-ago period.
International sales accounted for 62 percent of the revenue, up from 58 percent in the December 2010 quarter.
However, gross margins fell slightly, from nearly 41 percent to 38.5 percent.
The company generated $9.8 billion in cash during the December quarter, Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said.
Strong sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs fueled the record quarter, he stated. Apple sold more than 4 million Macs, a growth of 20 percent year over year.
Apple sold 16.2 million iPhones in the December quarter, compared to 8.7 million in the same period last year, Oppenheimer said. During the quarter, Apple sold 7.3 million iPads, over 3 million more than in the previous quarter, he remarked.
Oppenheimer's guidance for the next quarter was conservative, as it usually is. Apple expects revenues of about $22 billion and diluted earnings per share (EPS) of about $4.90, which is $2.76, or about 43 percent, lower than the $6.43 EPS Apple chalked up in the December quarter.
However, analysts will likely take into account Apple's penchant for understated guidance.

Got to Admit It's Getting Better

Apple remains the best technology company on the planet with numerous opportunities on the horizon, including a CDMA iPhone, the forthcoming iPad 2 and other items in the pipeline, Gleacher analyst Brian Marshall said in a note to investors Tuesday after the Apple earnings call.
He maintained his buy rating on the company's shares, which seems to indicate he's expecting it to perform well in the forthcoming quarter.
Statements by Oppenheimer and Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook during the question and answer session after the earnings report was presented also contradicted Oppenheimer's conservative guidance.
"We're in some great markets, some fast-moving markets," Cook stated. "We have the best products we've ever done and a great product pipeline."
Apple has grown Mac sales for 19 straight quarters but "we still have a very low share of the overall PC market," Cook said. Further, the company has a "relatively low share" of the handset market, which he said is worth more than $1 billion a year.
"The smartphone market is growing like a weed," Cook added. "We have considerable momentum here, and we're growing at an incredible pace."

Growth Is All Relative

Oppenheimer said the demand for iPhones has been "incredible" and Apple "couldn't make enough iPhones in the quarter."
Apple expects demand for the smartphone to grow. Adding Verizon Wireless as a carrier in the United States will probably boost demand for the iPhone 4 even further, Cook suggested.
"We are thrilled to offer the iPhone 4 to Verizon's 93 million customers as well as to any other customers who want it on Verizon," Cook said.

Solving the iPhone Supply Logjam

Apple was unable to meet the demand for the iPhone 4 in the December quarter and still has "a significant backlog," Cook stated. He declined to state when that would be cleared up.
Demand for the iPhone 4 is pretty robust, and it will only pick up further as more carriers in more countries, such as China, pick up the device, Harry Wang, a director at Parks Associates, told MacNewsWorld.
That could exacerbate the backlog.
Part of the reason for the backlog is problems with suppliers, Wang said.
"In terms of components -- screens, and maybe the chipset -- there are problems," Wang elaborated. "There could be a bottleneck in supplies of microcontrollers."
That might lead Apple to expand its capacity in the next two to three months, and Wang expects the bottleneck to ease toward the end of the first calendar quarter of this year.

Rocking With the iPad

Apple also has ambitious plans for the iPad.
Cook said the device was in 46 countries by the end of the December quarter, and "we're confident to add another 15 countries by the end of January."
Over 80 percent of Fortune 100 companies are deploying the iPad or adding it to their list of approved devices, Oppenheimer said.
The iPad will continue to dominate the tablet space this year despite facing "much more formidable competition" than it did in 2010, Rhoda Alexander, a director at IHS iSuppli, told MacNewsWorld.
That challenge will largely come from tablets running Honeycomb, which is the nickname for version 3.0 of Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) Android operating system, Alexander said.
Still, it'll be "a case of everyone else playing catch-up, and everybody else will still be distant seconds," Alexander said.
Apple's strength will lie in its apps, where it "has a significant lead in the field," Alexander stated.

Comcast OK With Feds' Conditions for NBC Merger

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By Erika Morphy
E-Commerce Times
01/19/11 10:35 AM PT

Comcast seems sanguine about the requirements federal regulators imposed on its merger with NBC Universal, but critics are lining up to decry them for going too far or not far enough. Comcast will be hard put to monetize its assets, suggested Ryan Radia of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. It will be difficult for independent content creators to compete, argued Jonathan Askin of the Brooklyn Law School.

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After a year-long review, the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice have approved Comcast's (Nasdaq: CMCSK) proposed merger with NBC Universal -- but only if a variety of conditions are met. Chief among them is that Comcast must give up management control of the video website Hulu.

The merger will create a new media force that touches not only television and movie content, but also the way it's delivered. At bottom, it positions Comcast as the nation's largest cable and broadband company.
Under terms of the US$13.75 billion deal, Comcast will acquire control of NBC Universal from General Electric (NYSE: GE). It will own 51 percent of a company it will create from NBC Universal's media assets, which include TV and movie content. GE will hold 49 percent. The deal will close by the end of January.
Consumers also come out as winners in the deal, John Flynn, senior counsel to the chairman for transactions at the FCC, told the E-Commerce Times.
For example, "there is the extending programming for Spanish-speaking viewers and children," he said. "There is also expanded access to broadband for rural areas of the country and underserved communities."

Bye Bye Hulu

A key concern for regulators was Comcast's involvement in the management of Hulu, an online video site co-owned by News Corp. (Nasdaq: NWS), Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) and NBC Universal. It has become wildly popular in the last few years and recently has shown signs of branching into its own content, with the debut of a five-minute original entertainment news recap.
The FCC and Justice are requiring that Comcast give up NBC Universal's management rights to the site. Essentially, it will still be a part owner, but it will not have any voting rights or representation on the board of directors.
"We and the Department of Justice did not want Comcast to be able to thwart competition from Hulu," Flynn explained.
Comcast also will not be able to restrict NBC programming or its regional sports networks from competitors' networks in many cases. It must also set aside channels for independent programmers and keep NBC programming free on over-the-air TV stations.
In addition, the government is requiring that Comcast make NBC Universal programs available to third-party streaming services outside of Hulu.
Finally, Comcast is required to make stand-alone broadband service available at $49.95 per month for three years -- meaning consumers cannot be forced to buy a cable and broadband bundle.
These conditions will remain in place for seven years, a longer period than typically applies to such deals.
Comcast and the Department of Justice did not respond to the E-Commerce Times' calls in time for publication.
The conditions Comcast accepted are consistent with the way it intended to conduct the Comcast and NBC Universal businesses and will not prevent it from executing its business plans or impair the competitiveness of any of its businesses, said David L. Cohen, Comcast's EVP in public policy, in a blog post outlining the deal.

A Tighter Squeeze

Some industry watchers have expressed disappointment at the extent of the conditions the government imposed.
"These conditions don't increase consumer welfare and are more onerous than what regulators typically require," Ryan Radia, an analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the E-Commerce Times.
The restrictions are particularly burdensome given that the online video market is highly competitive and rapidly evolving, he continued, and subjecting Comcast to them while its competitors are free to innovate is not fair.
The requirement that Comcast treat its own video content on par with competing video sources is one example. "One of the benefits of a deal like this is that it gives a company new opportunities to monetize assets," Radia pointed out. "In this case, Comcast will find it difficult to do so."
The requirements also impose Net neutrality, Radia said.
At the end of last year, the FCC did put in place a Net neutrality order that applies to all firms, but there is a good chance it will be struck down, he noted. However Comcast will still be subject to it under this agreement.

Too Powerful

On the other end of the spectrum is Professor Jonathan Askin with the Brooklyn Law School, who believes that despite the requirements, the merger consolidates media distribution and content control to such a degree that it will be very difficult for an independent content creator to compete on a level playing field.
"The FCC and DoJ conditions are a short-term prophylactic, but in the long run, without eternal vigilance by a committed regulator, they will probably prove to be relatively meaningless patches," he told the E-Commerce Times.
Imposing merger conditions has increasingly become a tool by which the government can promote public policy objectives, Askin continued, but they typically are of short duration and do not affect parties beyond the merging entities.
"It certainly would be better for government overseers to craft broader, systemic policy reform that would apply equally to all similarly situated players rather than having to resort to 'piecemeal regulation by merger condition,' which essentially creates an unsustainable patchwork of inconsistent behavior, expectations and policy," he explained.
FCC's Flynn, not surprisingly, disagreed. "We think we have struck the right balance. The fact that some people thought the conditions didn't go far enough and some thought they went too far shows, hopefully, that we succeeded."

Amazon's Beanstalk Eases Climb to the Cloud

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By Rob Spiegel
E-Commerce Times
01/19/11 2:13 PM PT

Amazon has come up with an automated system to manage a broad range of cloud computing services, removing a major obstacle for companies that don't have the IT resources to handle deployment and maintenance issues. "This is a pretty smart move on Amazon's part and builds on their rapidly growing -- and effective -- suite of IT services," said technology project manager and Geek 2.0 blogger Steven Savage.

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Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) wants to make your cloud computing simple. The company announced Elastic Beanstalk on Wednesday. The application makes it easier to use Amazon's cloud computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The new application lets developers quickly deploy and manage Web services such as storage, computing clusters, application health monitoring, load balancing and auto-scaling. The service is free for those using paid products such as EC2, S3, RDS and VPC.
Elastic Beanstalk helps developers simplify and automate applications while still retaining total control. Amazon notes Beanstalk is the first of several versions in the works. The current one supports Java with Apache Tomcat and Eclipse tools. Amazon plans to expand the tools with additional languages and application environments.
Amazon did not respond to the E-Commerce Times' request for comments by press time.

Don't Know Much about AWS

As part of the simplification, developers no longer need to be familiar with AWS in order to run applications on AWS technologies.
"Elastic Beanstalk is easy to begin and impossible to outgrow," Adam Selipsky, vice president of Amazon Web services, said in making the Elastic Beanstalk announcement.
"It automatically scales up or down as needed," he added, "and developers don't need to worry about the configuration required to set up their infrastructure on AWS."

The Smarts Are With Amazon

Amazon has plenty of IT oomph. This is the power that lets Amazon handle mega traffic during December with no threat of crackups.
"This is a pretty smart move on Amazon's part and builds on their rapidly growing -- and effective -- suite of IT services," technology project manager and Geek 2.0 blogger Steven Savage told the E-Commerce Times.
Beanstalk's ease of use "will increase buy-in and customer satisfaction, and it will probably decrease the time that their personnel have to spend on support. It also sounds like Amazon has planned future expansion to support more languages."
Not much fanfare has been made over Amazon using its computing power to match the wants of the marketplace, though the company is providing a significant cloud offering. In fact, Amazon expects paid services to overtake product sales at some point in the future.
"Amazon's expansion into the service realm for IT has been successful and well done," said Savage, "though it's been oddly overlooked by much of the media. Clearly, Amazon gets the truth -- outsourced IT services and cloud computing are the wave of the future, and Amazon wants to provide it. They have over 15 years of experience with their own, rapidly expanding IT needs and customer base, and are ideally suited to provide services in this space."
The timing is right for Amazon, as cloud computing has become the rage.
"I am a strong believer that Corporate IT is going away," said Savage. "It's simpler to outsource, get off-the-shelf, use mobile, and use existing services. I've seen IT-light companies function effectively."

The IT Future Looks Cloudy

Amazon saw the cloud computing future and hopped aboard.
"Amazon was clearly one of the first to market to the cloud platforms game," said Al Hilwa, IDC program director, applications development software.
"Their services are popular with developers. However, the Java and Ruby cloud market is definitely getting more love these days with players such as VMware's (NYSE: VMW) SpringSource and their Hyperic provisioning and deployment technology, and now with the Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) Heroku acquisition," he told the E-Commerce Times.
The Elastic Beanstalk is an easy in for new users, while still offering advanced features.
"This announcement by Amazon delivers some capabilities in the Amazon cloud that others have talked about," said Hilwa. "Amazon's partners like JBoss and EngineYard are also competing with the above players, though relying on Amazon for much of their infrastructure and application platform offerings capabilities."



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EBay stock pops 5% on strong sales

Click the chart for more on eBay shares. By Julianne Pepitone, staff reporterJanuary 19, 2011: 5:59 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- John Donahoe took the helm at eBay at the start of 2008, just as the company unveiled a slew of changes to the decade-old online marketplace. A major revamp of eBay's fee structure and feedback policy was meant to shore up market share, but veteran sellers were furious and threatened revolt.
The company has clawed its way back up since those torrid times. On Wednesday, the San Jose, Calif., e-commerce giant reported quarterly results that beat Wall Street expectations and raised its outlook for the year.

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PayPal and mobile especially helped the company during last quarter's holiday season.
EBay said its fourth-quarter revenue rose 5% over the prior year, to $2.5 billion. Net income rose to 42 cents a share, or $559.2 million. EBay (EBAY, Fortune 500) shares rose 5% in after-hours trading.
PayPal and mobile payments shine: Online payment service PayPal ended the fourth quarter with 94.4 million active registered accounts and is adding about 1 million active accounts per month.
PayPal's "net total payment volume" was $26.9 billion last quarter. The biggest growth came in mobile: For the full year, the volume of PayPal mobile payments increased to a whopping five times 2009's total.
Those figures weren't broken out, but eBay said its "portfolio of mobile applications" were popular with holiday shoppers. The company's overall mobile gross merchandise volume -- the total of stuff it sold to those shopping on their smartphones and other gadgets -- was almost $2 billion for the full year.
Europe was another bright spot, Donahoe noted in a conference call with analysts. But he's not as pleased with domestic figures.
"We're on a good trajectory, but I'm not totally satisfied with where we are in the U.S.," Donahoe said on the call.
Who's selling and for how much: The number of active eBay users rose 5% over the year to 94.5 million.
Another widely watched metric is eBay's gross merchandise volume (GMV), which is the total value of items auctioned. Excluding vehicles, GMV for the fourth quarter was $15 billion.
EBay has come a long way from 2008. The company's stock took a dive in the first months of Donahoe's tenure, as the site's core sellers spearheaded protests, including a week-long boycott -- and many jumped ship, moving their online storefronts to other sites like Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500).
The fee changes reduced some upfront costs but raised the commission eBay takes on completed sales. That hike was painful for small businesses that depend on meager profit margins.
Even more incendiary, though, was the site's decision to block sellers from leaving negative feedback about buyers. EBay's feedback system had been a two-way street, which helped the site differentiate itself from early competitors. Sellers were not happy to be silenced.
That lingering bitterness turned eBay from a site with a strong user community into a more generic sales platform.
But the changes did eventually pay off on the bottom line. For 2010, eBay's full-year revenue hit a record $9.2 billion -- up 21% from the $7.7 billion it had in 2007.

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