It has been a couple of weeks since I returned from the Internet Retailer Web Design show in Orlando. It’s a nice show – it’s a lot smaller than the main IRCE show in June – with only one stream – so it’s easy to see all the great presentations without missing any. I love the opportunity to educate myself on what’s happening in the industry and to spend time talking to the people that are making ecommerce happen.

Chatting to Doug Cadmus from GMCR at IRWD 2012. Photo by @tim_ash

One thing I noticed at this show is that there seemed to be a lot of businesses attending that sell to businesses rather than consumers. One of the keynotes was from Paul Miller, VP of E-Commerce at Grainger who provide products to facilities. It’s a serious business: $6B of revenue, $2B of that on line. Many of the other attendees were also B2B companies. One of them that I was chatting to said that the presentation he had just seen that was talking about selling underwear wasn’t that relevant to his business. That got me thinking about the difference between B2B and B2C ecommerce.

Different prices for different customers
One thing we’ve seen with our B2B customers is they will often have different prices for different customers based on their login. Larger customers often negotiate lower prices based on buying commitments for example. When this happens the online retailer needs to work out what price they should show, if any, to people that aren’t logged in. We are exposed to this, because we need to make sure that if we’re showing prices in the search and navigation that they match those that are shown on the rest of the site – so this involves a more complex integration.

Different purchasing process
The purchasing process on a B2C site is comparatively straightforward: the consumer puts in their credit card and other details and the sale is complete. On a B2B site the purchasing process may be more complex – the person who decides what they want may be different from the person who makes the purchase – there may be a procurement department that actually does the buying. The payment may be done through an account which is invoiced to the customer at a later date, particularly for large purchases. Paul described that Grainger customers have an account manager who approves the purchase orders when they come through. They have developed an iPhone app so the account managers can approve these easily when they’re away from their desk.

Lower traffic and larger AOV
B2B customers often make relatively large orders – so a B2B site that value of sales as a B2C site may have much less traffic. The lower traffic can mean it’s more difficult for multivariate tests to reach statistically significant decisions.

These are just a few differences between B2B and B2C ecommerce that I’ve come up with. What others are you aware of?

Next week’s eTail West will be a great event on many fronts. Aside from the warm weather and sunny skies in Palm Springs, there are a lot of interesting discussions on topics that are timely and relevant to e-commerce brands. AND, if you stop by SLI’s booth (#9), you’ll have a chance to win a new iPad.

Steve Groenier, our resident guest blogger and former VP of marketing for ArtBeads.com, will be giving two talks on the first day, Monday, 2/27 – at 12:15 he’s participating in a panel on ”10 Ways To Increase Customer Engagement In Today’s Digital World;” and at 2:25 he’ll present on “The New Content Kings: How Retailers Are Using Content To Create Loyal Lifetime Customers.” Additionally, our customer, Michael Burgess, EVP of FTD.com’s consumer division, is taking part in an Executive C-level Panel at 9:25 a.m. on Tues., 2/28 on “Maximizing Your Resources And Gaining Revenues In Today’s Retail Environment.” Another customer, Jason Miller, CTO of Motorcycle Superstore, is also participating in an Executive C-level Panel at 9:15 on Thurs., 3/1 – the topic is “A 360-Degree Comprehensive Plan To Increase Sales From Your Mobile Strategy.”

If you’re heading to Southern California next week to attend eTail West, be sure to stop by our booth – #9 – to say hi and see a demo of our learning-based search and navigation solutions. And don’t forget to enter our iPad drawing!

One of the most effective paths to growth for an online retailer is expanding the product line.  The bigger your catalog, the better chance you’ll be able to attract customers to your store.  But, as your catalog grows, so must your store’s navigation.  New products need a home and often times that means another line item somewhere in your site’s navigation. That may be in the form of an entirely new top level category, a new sub-category, or even a new brand category.

Visitors don’t just shop by product type, they want to shop by brand, gender, age, style, or price.  And let’s not forget about the special sections you need for clearance, sales, or seasonal items. Bit by bit your category list grows until one day you realize that you’ve got over 50 links in your site’s navigation and it’s taking your customers two to three screens just to scroll through them all.  Your site navigation has gone wild! How do you make it easy for our customers to find your products?

The solution for many retailers has been to enhance or replace their site’s static navigation with Dynamic Site Navigation.  With Dynamic Site Navigation, retailers are able to drive their navigation from product attributes contained in their catalog’s data feed.  Sections and sub-sections are built automatically and change dynamically as the catalog changes.  And, as customers dive into product sections, the list of sub-categories or refinements they see will only be those that are relevant to those products.

In the Abe’s Of Maine example below, users are offered different refinement options depending on their search: cameras or flat screen.

Furthermore, with Dynamic Site Navigation solutions that use learning technology such as SLI’s, retailers are able to improve the customer experience by automatically presenting facets in order of popularity.  This allows the most clicked on brands or styles to be presented higher on the list. In the Abe’s Of Maine example above, the categories are presented in order of popularity.

One of the key things to keep in mind is to provide the same site experience for those who use the site’s search box and those who navigate using Dynamic Site Navigation. In the example below, Jelly Belly ensures a consistent experience between navigation and search using Dynamic Site Navigation whether a user searches for sports beans or navigates to Sports Beans through the Candy category.

With Dynamic Site Navigation, retailers can save a significant amount of time from eliminating the tedious task of managing categories and sub-categories. Do you have Dynamic Site Navigation examples to share? Let us know!

This week is the week of usability at the annual IRWD conference in Orlando, FL, and  we’ll be there carousing with other vendors. In addition to all the fun we’ll be having at our booth (see us in booth #300), our CEO, Shaun Ryan, is giving a talk alongside our customer U.S. Toy, about how to over-come multi-brand usability challenges through cross-linking of results in site search. The presentation, taking place at 4:00 p.m. EST on Tues., 2/14, highlights U.S. Toy’s success in this area (the company has a B2B site called Constructive Playthings and a B2C site called U.S. Toy). Shaun and Seth Freiden, U.S. Toy CEO, will demonstrate how the toy retailer captured more sales and improved the user-experience by showcasing products on sister sites in each site’s search results.

Be sure to stop by our booth at the show to see our learning-based search and navigation solutions in action, and learn first-hand how seriously we take the “full-service” aspect of our business. And while you’re there, you may just win a brand new iPad.

Hope to see you there!

Online retailers are going to great lengths to create content that informs, educates, inspires, and entertains their customers. They are producing fantastic articles about how to use their products, in-depth product buying guides and blogs about the experiences you can have with their products.  This content is a critical component to creating a superior customer experience, helping retailers attract and retain their customers.

But, this non-product content often gets little more than a link buried in their header or footer pointing to an index of the content. When you think about the journey a customer takes to discover your products and make a purchase decision, looking for a link to “articles” is probably not on the list. So I ask, what good is all this great content if your customers can’t find it?

The key to merchandising your content is to put yourself into your customers shoes.  With any piece of content it is important to try to think about all of the places where users might find this information helpful.  Think about which stage of the buying process this information belongs.  Also think about the actions visitors might take on your retail website to find the products they are looking for, and how to make their search experience a pleasant one.

Since site search is completely dependent on what your customers are looking for, it should provide access to all of your content that is relevant to your customer’s search keywords. Some SLI customers are already including related content insections within the main body of the search results and segmenting the different type of content in tabs within the search results pages.

In the example below from Artbeads.com, a search for “rhinestones” will reveal the top 20 products followed by the top eight learning center articles, eight community results and the top videos.

In another example from Doctors Foster and Smith, a search for “dog grooming” reveals 17 related articles that are accessible by customers who click on the articles tab.

Another great way to merchandise content within your site search is through the use of merchandising banners.  Since the banners can include both HTML and images, the possibilities or presenting your content are endless.  And, using the Merchandising Console, you can target these banners to very specific keywords for an engaging and personalized experience.

As you consider how to use search to merchandise your content, keep in mind that the way you display your content is completely customizable.  In this example from 24 Hour Fitness, a search for “classes” reveals 82 related videos that the user can display as a grid or list.

These examples illustrate just some of the ways you can merchandise your content on your store’s website.  If you have examples you would like to share, please do so by adding a comment to this post.

The web was buzzing last week with news of the Facebook IPO. Much of the news seemed to focus around Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth and the new crop of millionaires that will be made out of Facebook employees.  Silicon Valley exotic car dealers and real estate agents have probably been lined up outside Facebook HQ handing out business cards. With Facebook’s estimated valuation now a staggering $75 to $100 billion you may be wondering how on earth a company with revenues of $3.7 billion could be with that much.  I certainly am.

When you look at the stats surrounding Facebook, you realize that their potential to grow revenue is equally as staggering.  For instance, Facebook now has 845 million active users which represents a 45 percent increase since 2010.  More than half of their users return to the site each day.  And these users have produced an average of 2.7 billion “likes” and comments each day in the last three months of 2011. Now, when you consider the wealth of information Facebook has about it’s users and how they enable advertisers to target based on this, you begin to see the potential for a much greater share of advertising dollars. I think it’s only a matter of time before brand advertisers and businesses discover this and start fighting over the ad inventory as they now do on Google.

But what about retailers?  How can they cash in on Facebook’s success?  To start with, retailers need to have a presence on Facebook by building a page. I know this is obvious and hard to imagine that any retailer has not yet claimed their brand on Facebook but I still come across retailers who have not.  Having a page on Facebook enables their massive audience to “Like” your brand and start sharing what they think of you with their friends.

The ability to post comments about your store on Facebook has become a powerful tool for retailers to generate content from their customers. For example, asking a question on your Facebook wall to find out what your fans like most about a particular product is a great way to generate positive feedback and endorsement for that product.  Then, what makes this even more powerful is when you have your site search technology crawl these Facebook posts and make them available in your site search results. Retailers can now instantly reach out to their most engaged brand advocates and ask them all sorts of questions.  Questions like how they are using products, what advice they have for others for selecting the best product for a particular solution, what tips they have for using your products, and on and on.  All of this fantastic content can them be made available to new visitors through site search.

To encourage more sharing, retailers have begun placing Facebook like buttons on the product pages. This practice has exploded in the past year to the point where it feels hard to find retailers who don’t include a Like button.  Generating likes for your products shows an even deeper engagement from your customers and is a much more powerful way to drive sales.  The challenge is to actually get your customers to click the like button.  It seems consumer adoption of this has been relatively low.

One thing retailers like FTD.com have done to grow their product like activity is incorporate the Like button directly into their site search results.  This gives it much more visibility and from a usability perspective is much easier for people to click like as they browse products in search results.  There’s even a added usability benefit as retailers have incorporated the ability to sort search results by the number of likes.  I expect that the desire to sort by likes might actually become more popular than sorting by product star ratings. And, this added functionality will encourage that many more consumers to cast their vote for a product by clicking the like button.

FTD.com Search Includes Facebook Likes

The final tip I would have for cashing in on Facebook’s popularity is to enable those who visit your page on Facebook to initiate a search of your product catalog easily right from within your page.  This can be done by adding a tab on your page that includes a search box and incorporating the search functionality into your other custom tabs such as your Facebook default page.  Here’s an example from Chaparral Motorsports.

Chaparral Motorsports Enables Search on Facebook

With all of the retargeting options available to online retailers now, the creation of banner ads has become a regular task for creative teams. Coming up with fresh creative can be a challenge but knowing that our audience visited our site can make it a little easier. Better yet, if we know that they visited a specific category of product and we are able to target just those visitors, we have an even better chance of creating something that will attract their attention. The more we know about our audience, the better able we are to design an advertisement for them.

This retargeting technology is amazing but what if we could know exactly what someone was looking for at the moment in time that we were able to deliver them a banner ad. Imagine how we could surprise or delight them with a creative that speaks to what they are thinking at that moment. A banner that can read your mind.

Believe it or not, this mind-reading banner delivery technology actually exists. And, it’s available through the SLI Systems Merchandising Console. Now, you might be thinking oh yes, we already use that. You may for instance be using it to deliver a branded header banner for your specific branded search terms. And that is a fantastic use. But, what else could you do? What ways might you surprise and delight your customers with a graphical message that really speaks to what they are looking for?

I challenge you to put on your guerrilla marketing hat and create a banner campaign that’s unique, engaging and thought-provoking. For fun, I grabbed my guerrilla marketing cap and came up with these ideas in about 30 minutes. While these may not be the most thought-provoking, imagine what your creative team could to with more time.

For this exercise I thought about the creative from the perspective of a person searching for “rubber ducks” on the Century Novelty website. All of these ideas could be interchangeable with other products. Think of each idea as if you were going to create 50 or more individually targeted banners based on high volume search terms. The key here is to think like a guerrilla and create a campaign that is at a large enough scale to impact a significant number of your searches. This way, you’ll have a better chance of generating some buzz and a much better idea on how well it influences sales.

Duck Love – Feature a photo of a staff member of your company holding their favorite type of rubber duck and include a quote about what they love about this duck. Be sure to include the person’s name and position at your company. This will send the message about how passionate your entire company is about the products you sell and coincidentally the products your customer happens to be searching for.

Duck Deals – Surprise your customers with a “Surprise Search Coupon” for extra savings on rubber ducks. of some larger than usual percentage off rubber ducks. For added customization make the coupon code the exact term you are targeting.

Grade A Ducks – When your value proposition is based on having the highest quality products, create a series of ads that feature these products with a message like “Highest Quality Rubber Ducks Money Can Buy.”

Duck Duck Goose – Identify the most complimentary product to a rubber duck and feature it as a cross-sell item. A message like, “Shopping for a Rubber Duck? Well, don’t forget the Goose to go with it” could help drive additional sales and increase your site’s AOV.

Duck Calls – Give your customer service team a compliment and create an ad that promotes how knowledgeable your call center staff is about rubber ducks. Include your phone number and encourage your customers to talk with a rubber duck expert now. This will give your shoppers confidence that they have found product experts for exactly why they are looking for.

Duck TV – Create a short product video about your best selling, top rated, most liked, etc. rubber duck and promote that video in the banner. The video would give you an opportunity to show your rubber duck expertise and provide a more personal experience.

5-Star Ducks – Find your top rated rubber ducks and feature a compelling quote from an actual rubber duck review. Include an image of the rubber duck reviewed along with the 5-star rating.

Sea of Ducks - If you stock a wide variety of rubber ducks as Century Novelty certainly does, trumpet your great selection in the banner with a specific message of exactly how many varieties of rubber ducks you have to choose from.

Disappearing Ducks – Create urgency to buy with a banner that features a rubber duck that is in short supply or in high demand and stress how a very limited quantity of these special rubber ducks are left.

I hope that this inspires you to get your own guerrilla marketing brainstorm session going and launch an even more engaging keyword-targeted banner campaign with the SLI Merchandising Console.  When you do, be sure to share your ideas and success with others here by posting a comment below.