Life In Internet

We’ve crossed that halfway mark in the calendar – which also means that we’ve just concluded our latest quarterly online sales flash survey. Conducted in partnership with Forrester Research, every quarter we ask retailers to (anonymously) indicate how their gross online sales grew for the past quarter compared to the same quarter a year earlier.

70 retailers participated in the Q2 survey, which was in the field from July 1 to 7, 2010. Shop.org Members can now download the results summary as well as the more detailed results overview. A few highlights:

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Online Merchandising Workshop attendees had a lot of spunk – and quite a bit of company – when they donned cowboy hats at tonight’s reception.

The tie-in? The hats were a shout-out for Shop.org’s Annual Summit this September in Dallas, and dozens of online retail execs got in the spirit. With speakers like Urban Outfitters CEO Glen Senk, Shoebuy.com CEO Scott Savits, and legendary online marketer Mitch Joel, it’s no wonder why attendees are already excited to head to the Lone Star State in a few months.

But with several great sessions lined up tomorrow on empowering the customer, mining product reviews, and leveraging online photography, attendees were clearly happy to hang out in Surf City for another 24 hours.

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Your website sucks.

Those were the three words by which Bryan Eisenberg started his keynote at this morning’s Online Merchandising Workshop. But after that sobering beginning, Eisenberg offered a bit of comfort. For starters, he said, don’t worry too much: everybody’s website sucks. None of us have unlimited resources to get everything right. Basically, you’re in good company. As if that’s any consolation.

However, your website needn’t suck as much as it does. In fact, he said, he’s learned 21 secrets that make sites suck less. Eisenberg’s rapid-fire session was filled with 21 tips and gobs of examples of companies who were doing at least some of it right. And after that introduction, it’s no wonder attendees paid attention – and why some people in their feedback forms ranked Bryan’s session a 6 on a scale of 1-5.

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How do you know when it’s time to redesign your website?

What does “redesign” really mean, anyway?

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Brian Bradley, EVP of HSN.com, spoke this morning at Shop.org’s Online Merchandising Workshop about how the company has leveraged the challenging retail environment to serve customers in a more powerful way. Before providing examples of how the company is using mobile, social media and video – along with an emphasis on multichannel integration – Bradley walked through ways consumers have changed. Here’s what he had to say:

1) Consumers are looking for an all-access pass. “Historically, the retail paradigm was to get the customer to come to you in a physical location during set times,” Bradley said. Today, customers want to shop where they want, when they want. That’s one of the reasons why HSN’s “remote shopping” experience has been so successful – not cannibalizing sales from other channels like the call center or online, but most often creating new sales on its own.

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Last night’s opening reception at the Shop.org Online Merchandising Workshop was jam packed with online executives from companies as diverse as 1-800-FLOWERS.com to JCPenney to Cole Haan. For those of us who have been experiencing a major dose of summer lately, the 72-degree temperatures almost felt a bit chilly – but there was no complaining!

Here are a few scenes from last night’s reception.

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In advertising, you’re limited to the number of people you’ve paid to reach. That is, unless you’ve laid the groundwork for word of mouth to support it.

Think of it like this: You pay for X impressions. But if you can get 20% more people to see the ad through word of mouth, you get 20% better response (for free).

You’re doing all this great work — but what you’re missing is the WOM bump. So here’s the quick version of everything you wanted to know about word of mouth marketing but were afraid to ask.

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In advertising, you’re limited to the number of people you’ve paid to reach. That is, unless you’ve laid the groundwork for word of mouth to support it.

Think of it like this: You pay for X impressions. But if you can get 20% more people to see the ad through word of mouth, you get 20% better response (for free).

You’re doing all this great work — but what you’re missing is the WOM bump. So here’s the quick version of everything you wanted to know about word of mouth marketing but were afraid to ask.

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With Shop.org’s Online Merchandising Workshop less than a week away, we decided to focus our Talking With… attention on one of the keynotes that seems to be getting the most interest: “21 Secrets of Top Converting Websites”. So we reached out to online marketing pioneer Bryan Eisenberg, author of the best-selling Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? and managing partner at Eisenberg Holdings LLC, who discusses which online retailers have mastered web optimization, outlines the biggest mistakes retailers make with email marketing, and shares what attendees at his anticipated session will walk away with on July 13.

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Research shows that consumers rely on product video in making online purchase decisions. Online retailers are moving fast to add video to the purchase path in order to increase conversion.  With this goal in mind, here are some best practices we’ve adopted in the course of working with our Internet 500 retailer clients at Invodo.

1) Make the Product the Star

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