One of our goals for 2011 is to significantly beef up our arsenal of useful, educational content. Along those lines, we’ve just made available a new Ecommerce Podcast interview with Tim Parry, senior writer for Multichannel Merchant. Tim talked with our CEO Shaun Ryan about how multichannel retailers are using e-commerce marketing tools to boost sales. For example, Tim explained that printed catalogs are still very much in favor and are great for driving customers to a website, and that shoppers with smartphones typically use them in physical stores to research products and compare prices, and possibly make a purchase. Tim shared lots of interesting thoughts on ecommerce trends in the year ahead, and the podcast is definitely worth a listen.

We’ve also released a new video tutorial in which Shaun offers tips for the best ways to create site search for mobile devices. Watch the video here, and you’ll see how site search results should look on a mobile screen, what information to highlight (like prices) and how to display things like refinements and customer ratings.

In the coming weeks we’ll also offer video tutorials on things like refinements, Rich Auto Complete, and social media in site search. Stay tuned.

In our latest Ecommerce Podcast, Dave Baird, vice president of marketing and co-owner of MagnetStreet, spoke with our fearless leader, Shaun Ryan, about how site search data helped MagnetStreet identify an opportunity for a new line of business, which has become a huge success. As Dave explains in the podcast, most of the custom magnet company’s customers were in the real estate industry (real estate agents like to send custom magnets to their clients as a useful self-promotional tool). When the economy took a nosedive, magnet orders from real estate agents dropped.

As you’ll hear Dave discuss in the podcast, about a year before the economic crisis, MagnetStreet had launched a search engine optimization project and began looking at popular search terms on their site to see if they’d find new keywords for paid search campaigns. They discovered that searches for “save the date magnet” started turning up, and Baird and his colleagues realized that they could develop a new line of products appealing to brides who needed to create a clever date reminder for wedding guests.

Dave says that the “save the date” magnets were a huge success and helped make up for the decline in orders of real estate agents.

Check out the MagnetStreet podcast to hear more about this growing company’s strategies for enhancing the online customer experience, such as personalized recommendations and an integration with Facebook that will tell users when other friends are shopping on the site.

This week we posted an interview with Jason Miller from Motorcycle Superstore. Jason discusses a bunch of interesting projects they’re working on, including expanding internationally, a new customer loyalty program and a personal shopping assistant.

One of the of the aspects of the business Jason discussed was their non-product content. They have a web and print magazine called Motorcycle USA which has a loyal following. This content keeps their customers coming back and then when they need something, they know the store is there.

Sasha Deri from the Alternative Energy Store (the previous podcast) also emphasized their non product content. For them it consists of educational content – educating about the benefits of renewable energy and instructional videos and articles for installation and maintenance of the products they sell.

This non-product content is a fantastic way of attracting and engaging customers when they’re not ready to buy. If it’s done right it can also have fantastic SEO benefits. It normally takes a lot of effort to produce but once you have it you have a considerable advantage over your competitors who are merely shifting product.

What type of non product content do you have on your site?

Today we posted an interview with Lee Brown from Online Golf on the ecommerce podcast. One of the really interesting pieces of data that Lee shares during the interview is that people who view a video on their site are 85% more likely to buy than people who don’t. This is one of the strongest endorsements for online video I’ve ever seen. Online golf use the videos as a sales pitch, providing more information about a particular product.

As part of our proactive outreach (that we do for all of our customers) we suggested that their videos be incorporated into their site search. The products that have a related video now have a link that allows the videos to be played directly from the search results page. Over half the videos that are watched are now viewed from the search results page.

Today we released an  interview with Bliss Dake from Mighty Leaf Tea. Mighty Leaf Tea sell high end  tea pouches and loose tea and they seem to be at the forefront of a growing trend.

Bliss described how Mighty Leaf Tea get a lot of their traffic in a unique way. A lot of people have their first experience with their tea in a restaurant. It comes with a tag that has their URL and phone number on it and a lot of people save the tag and then check out their site later.

Bliss also discusses the technology they’re using and their social media presence (you can follow them on @MightyLeaf).

For some reason I’ve found myself drinking more tea since my chat with Bliss. Time for a cuppa…

This week we released an interview with Josh Hansen from HansenSurf on the ecommerce podcast. Josh is the youngest son of the founder Don Hansen. HansenSurf started as a surfboard manufacturer before moving into retail in 1971. I enjoyed listening to the story of this family run store and how ecommerce is playing a larger and larger role in their success. I hope you do too.

We have just released an interview I did with Tim Ash from Site Tuners. I met Tim by chance at a Search Engine Strategies show a few years ago. We had a lot in common – both running companies that helped ecommerce sites improve their conversions – and we had both done PhDs in artificial intelligence focusing on neural networks. Tim has since written a book called Landing Page Optimization – that is the topic of this podcast and I recommend you read this.

Tim talks about how web sites are designed by people inside the company but the majority of their visitors are from outside. These different perspectives usually mean the design of the website is far from optimal. Tim is a big fan of testing alternative designs with your visitors and measuring what works best for them. He compares the visitors to lab mice and your job is to make it easier for them to find the cheese.

During this podcast you will hear plenty of useful tips from Tim’s experience.  There’s also a special offer to the podcast listeners giving a discount for an Express Review. Enjoy!

•  Interview with Time Ash, President of Site Tuners

Last week Shaun Ryan, CEO of SLI Systems was interviewed for Landing Page Optimization on Webmaster Radio by Tim Ash, CEO of Site Tuners.

Tim and Shaun discuss various ways to improve your site conversion rates.

Listen to the interview with Shaun Ryan & Tim Ash.

This week we posted an interview with Tammie McKenzie from Cruiser Customizing. This was a very interesting interview. Cruiser Customizing started as community for  for those who are passionate about cruiser riders. The members of the community were able to review and discuss the various accessories that are available.  The ecommerce part of the business was added at a later stage – after the community was formed.

This is a contrast to a lot of ecommerce businesses that are primarily retailers who then try to create a community around their store – they add reviews, forums, blogs etc but they do all of that after they’ve created the store. At Cruiser Customizing they did it the other way round and it means they have a genuine, engaged community.

Cruiser Customizer operates a number of different sites to cater for different types of bikers who would normally not want to be associated with each other. There’s Realhog for the Harley Davidson parts and accessories, Goldwing Country for Honda Goldwing accessories, RideGear for Sport-bike accessories and  Dollar Rider for discount accessories.

SLI has done quite a bit of customizing of our services for the Cruiser Customizing sites. While we run their site search like we do for most customers, for logged in users we preselect their make and model so someone who owns a Honda won’t see Harley specific products but we’ll still show products that are not make and model specific like clothing. We also have built a tire finder and a gift finder and are continuing to work on a number of other initiatives.

I’m sure you’ll find the interview with Tammie informative. For more you can follow Tammie (@karmahappens) and Cruiser Customizing (@CruiserCustom) on Twitter.

We have just released this interview with Ben Harness from Interflora UK.

Interflora is a little different than a lot of the retailers that I have talked to. Rather than having one or two distribution centres they have 1800 florists who put together the bouquets. This means they have people who are passionate about flowers (passionate enough to run a florist) who are ensuring the quality of the delivered product. Having this many people fulfilling their orders makes it a lot easier to handle their peaks during Mothers’ Day, Valentine’s Day and Christmas.

Ben is currently considering adding ratings and reviews to the Interflora site. They are also a little different from a lot of retailers in that most of the purchases on their site are gifts – so often the purchaser may never see the product they bought. This makes it a little hard to review – but they may be able to reflect the feedback they got – “Mum loved the flowers”. Another option they’re considering is encouraging the recipients to write reviews.