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Google Plus launched with fireworks as exemplified in tweets and blogs lately, posing questions to brand marketers, social media folks and SEOs on what it means as a new tool or marketing channel. Its scalable integration with other Google products allows for many ways to easily expand its user base. Though, it still has to resolve the issue of having various accounts for various services. Still even if a small percentage of all active customers from each Google product is converted, the total sum might pose a sizable competition for Twitter and Facebook within the next 1 to 2 years. To which, its early rapid adoption rate of 10 million within 2 weeks of its launch validates this thought. So, it is better to start getting familiar with it today and there are plenty of guides and how-tos and face offs available to do so.

Mashable media site alone has a handy article with 19 resources to start with Google Plus (and also serves as a good sample of smart and timely internal linking optimization).

Among the early adopters of this technology are social media sites and various SEOs from Search Engine Land and beyond. What also is intriguing how aggressive the mainstream media has become to respond to this new technology. Journalists use hangouts right on air time and test audience engagement rates on Google Plus and other networks to get a measurable idea of its value as a channel.

So what are the emerging benefits Google Plus is likely to provide to marketers?

1) It is excellent for SEO and if you have a site and a Facebook like button, make sure you add a Google Plus button to enter the game. Also, I find it only applicable to pages where you have quality content, or already have a Facebook Like button. Adding it to all pages, might be excessive and not useful since there should be a good reason to Plus One the page. It can become a good proxy for you to take stock of your unique content and see how it performs with users: a very good metric given Google Panda updates that gave more weight to sites with quality content.

SEOs also speculate that Google Plus statistics will factor in your site search visibility as much as the clicks to your site from Google SRPs. It especially makes sense with the recent stop of real-time search feature on Google, given its contract expiration. It is very likely that Google will substitute this functionality, previously delivered by Twitter API by Google Plus. See Rand Fishkin’s SEO test on how Twitter and Google + interactions play out in Google search results.

What I also noticed is if you already have writtent about a specific topic and have some presence on Google Plus, your picture and name will show up in the right next to the related post of Google search results. Which has a huge potential for influential experts to stand out and market themselves more effectively. Now, with a face against the search result to aid recognition. So, think first what picture you want to use on Google Plus profile!

There are probably more SEO benefits that are easily visible at this stage. I could see external linking opportunities and use cases to surface within the platform.

2) It is well-suited for targeted messaging. With its massive intent data, and already advertised user base statistics for Google +,  Google is working on a powerful ad platform. Meanwhile, using circles you can communicate with topics very relevant to the custom segments within your circles and enhance your influence on those folks the way you want it. Facebook does not make it easy as of now to custom message to your audiences without making selective messaging so obvious.

3) It is mobile friendly. Google Plus is already on Android, and will be available on iPhone, which will allow you to engage with your audience outside the desktop. Techcrunch provides a brief overview of Google Plus mobile presence, covering what works and what is yet to come.

4) It is integrated in web and search analytics tools. Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools and some 3rd party search analytics tools (Link Research Tools) already show reports on 1+engagement metrics (search impact, activity or what pages invoked Google plus acts and audience (number of unique users doing those), so you are at a good start to measure your content attractiveness and user engagement.

5) It might provide opportunities in brand management. Though, company profiles are not favored yet, given its testing period, it is likely that company pages and profiles will be available. It could be fantastic for public announcements, virtual conferences, while connecting various audiences without needed IT setup.

6) It can be excellent for product management. Getting in touch with potential users of your new product or collecting feedback on the existing service using hangouts functionality makes it a good tool to collect insights directly from your audience on what works and what does not. It also allows you to capture body language and clues from the environment of your conversations to enrich your learnings about a topic at hand. Though, limited to 10 parties to participate, it can still foster a quality focus group session.

7) It can be benefit your people search. If you are new to some aspect of internet marketing and trying to get into the new area, finding and connecting to experts becomes somewhat personal and more engaging via Google Plus directory. You can find people who joined the network. It also allows you to find experts in various fields based on the provided statistics and much eye-eappealing UI than Twitter search. It might even become a people search filter on Google in the future. How exciting!

It is likely that more applications of Google Plus are to come within the next few months, and using them early in your marketing campaigns might very well provide some first entry advantages.

I am playing with it rather lightly as of today myself. Are you?

Being part of a human nature, the way we shop continuously evolves around new tools that we create, which accelerate the way we make decisions and expand on our wired tendencies how to hunt for a good piece of game or a bush of berries if you wish. There are 15 common trends of how we prefer to shop these days that I collected from my recent readings and some educational sessions from the latest Shop.org event. Some you will definitely find typical of your current behavior and some may help you connect with your audience that you are selling to.

1. Shopping is social. Who does not love shopping? It is almost embedded into every day of our lives. If you do not shop, you definitely engage into bartering with your fellow homo sapiens or homo neanderthals (if that is your preferred social crowd). Thus, shopping is a very social experience. It does not stop being social even if you live in the mountains with goats as your only companions, as you will still have an internal evaluation dialog with your own self on which hill to drive your herd towards to.

These days, we share our “likes” with our Facebook friends, show them what we buy and require their feedback. Or we might be simply feeling exhilarated in the actual store, when we find a great item and wish to show it before we buy. I did that with my recent Ann Taylor dress, after my girlfriend approved my choice and shared my joy. In the end, I got more stuff! Coincidentally, the same Victoria Secret experience was not supported by the staff on the floor, as they strictly said: “You are not allowed to take pictures here”, when I tried to snap a picture of my precious find into my SnapTell app! I explained my innocent try to validate my purchase decision, but was rejected again with a “That is why we have catalogs!” response. “Well, I do not have your catalog right now and do not wish to see it and I cannot share it easily with my friend to decide to buy it or not”, I retorted. But, no luck, as my response was met with a blank face of a sale associate with a cold, “your-behavior-is-not-welcome-here-and-your-money-too” look.  That drove me towards a competitive store right away and followed by my immediate returns the day afterward. Embrace the evolution, VS and see how other stores make extra buck on it. Stop punishing me for shopping at your store! (A tip to the online marketers of VS: make sure your efforts of driving traffic to the stores are not killed at the time when your customers are about to part with their money by old-fashioned strategy of your sale staff. Talk to them often, or sometimes maybe?)

2. Shopping is everywhere, anywhere, even in the private restroom time. So be sure you are present online, mobile, on Google maps, on Yelp and every desktop or mobile application your customers might be using. They will not reward your absence at the point of their utmost desire to purchase if you do not show up where they are because you have a different web strategy. “Your customer will not stop if they find nothing on your establishment on Yelp and go home to research about it on their desktop.” The odds are they will spend their dollars elsewhere. Do you really want that?

3. Fast shopping is rewarded by more shopping. I mentioned Amazon Prime in my prior post (see 9), but it is still the best player that capitalizes on the core truth: the impulsive nature of buying. They made buying so fast, that it becomes as natural as breathing. It is not a process, but 1-2-3 click action of mine, as natural as my urge to buy this book right now. Another example is iPad. “It is on right away as electricity, as opposing to your common PC experience of turning it on, going to take a rest in the bathroom, coming back and logging in and going to put on some tea and coming back when it is finally on.” Make your product consumption or shopping process as fast as instant gratification and you will have my soul, my money and my all! This is how all of us think on the reptile brain level and behave accordingly.

4. People talk about their shopping, so make use of those talks. 75-85% of online shoppers read online reviews, as was the latest stat reported by Bazaarvoice folks. If your product, company or even your name is not surfacing via online conversations, I would be more hesitant to be the first one to experience “whatever-mystery-experience” other buyers might have had.  Turn your online reviews on! Follow online conversations pertaining to your products and brands. Monetize your reputation!

5. People buy based on reviews of strangers, not friends and family necessarily. We used to believe that only closer social circles would allow us to sway a buyer into our shop. As it stands today, people buy based on reviews of strangers (”wisdom of crowd”) very easily, so more support for point 4 above.

6. Negative reviews convert faster. How so? We all are unique and our preferences are so specific, that we need context to make a better comparison. If you find a good deal for a hotel, a 4 star, as an example, but see a negative review, you want to dig in and see what’s going on. You find out that the only thing that the person did not like was that at 7 am, there was no chocolate mint on his pillow, all else was superb. My bet you will book that room right away. The qualitative piece of human context in those reviews allows to decipher where you are at the multi-dimensional relativity of product experience within unique perceptions on what is great and what is bad.

7. People do not shop for just the cheapest thing. (Even if you are a mass retailer, the cheapest deal is not what everyone wants. Yes, Expedia, I am talking to you!). Most of us are very brand loyal and base our preferences on our experiences and perceptions of a product. Or similar experiences, not even connected to the product that are communicated to us via advertising that is as old as the hammer and works every time. So, make sure you learn those emotional triggers that describe and visualize how great it is to have your product in our lives and how miserable it could be if we do not have it. Only then, you will know how to promote them effectively and make us buy again and again.

8. We are 95% slaves of our habits. Do not make me leave my daily-rewarded conditioned experience and place, like Facebook. So, if we are used to spend our mornings and afternoons on Facebook, publicizing our personalized “me-celebrity” lives, please do not make us leave it. Why would I leave my comfortable, ego-stroking environment to buy? Can I buy while I am there, with all my fans, real and “not-so-real friends”? Start selling your products to my majesty where I am, that is Facebook, at least for the next year.

9. Consumers create their own experience and content, which sells better than yours! Various contests that companies have run exemplify how customers can be very innovative with producing great, engaging content. Craftsman brand lately launched the ultimate picnic contest on Facebook and had the most creative ideas generated by their customers based on this principle of crowd-sourcing. The winning option became a staple and a popular selling product.

10. Real interactions with real people do deliver vs. a pretend presence. If you are present online, make sure you engage with your customers via Twitter, Facebook or some other form/app as a human being and help them promptly if there is a problem vs. passive web screening. If there is a great contribution by your customer to promote your product that he or she has done on her own and delivered numerous sales to you, please reward them, acknowledge the same way as you would, if you were a small town baker. Do not just say: “Cool, great job!” on the Facebook wall. Do something about it as a human would. Otherwise, people do see your one-sided fake presence and eventually tune out. How would you feel if you brought $$$ to your favorite brand or store and they simply and cheaply thanked you?

11. Consumers create audience pools, followers & tribes around their consumption. Hall videos, as Mitch Joel shared in his speech, are a growing powerful trend. A 16-year girl shops and posts videos of her shopping finds. She describes her experience and the rationale behind the buy. She has million subscribers and does it religiously very frequently. Perhaps, it is not long till she gets an endorsement contract from a “faster” brand or a few of them to capitalize on the sizable audience. She might as well does it as a natural way to express herself, but what a find she could be for a smart marketer!

12. Powerful bloggers can create a havoc for your product promo or inventory management. Another story shared was about some powerful blogger that got a reference from his friend about a good travel bag (he had issues with his prior product). Well, the endorsed brand delivered so much to the relieved blogger that he created a video and a demo with love and posted it on his blog. He happened to be one of the top 150 Power bloggers and the item sold out very fast. Do you know your power bloggers?

13. Great marketing comes in simple forms. The evident success of Woot, Groupon & similar sites/apps lies in its simplicity to deliver one value a day or at a time. Could you deliver greatly on one claim vs. promising the sky and the earth? See, if you could simplify your marketing and a new business model might be very well born!

14. Checking in with you = professing their love for you = contributing to your sales. As we see with Foursquare and similar platforms, customers are willing to share their consumption stats with the whole world at times. By doing so, they profess their love for your brand.  So, reward and make them check-in for more. Starbucks does a great job “loyalising” its customers, while utilizing the same conditioning principle of a reward for a check-in as smart wife does for her husband!

15. Selling online without ecommerce. This happens when some brands really get their customers and engage very effectively with them on various channels on a daily basis without the ability to sell. They still drive them later to the stores to buy, but invest more into cultivating the brand loyalty and the urge to be on the top of their audience minds every day. Koji trucks hunt on Twitter created mass popularity for that restaurant. “If the truck can do that, you can do it too!”

That is all for this month, enough to ponder and act upon for you, a smart marketer!

Respective credits to:

|1) Shop.org 2010 Keynote with Mitch Joel, Social Commerce and Emerging Trends (that inspired this post! many thanks!); 2) Buyology, Martin Lindstrom; 3) Habit, the 95%  of behavior Marketers Ignore, Neale Martin; 4) Neuromarketing, Patrick Renvoise & Christophe Morin.|

I find that each eCommerce site should be looked at as a unique business to its industry, audience, site design, inventory and so forth. It has so many variables that drive its sales a certain way that even a similar competitor site would be an orange to an apple comparison. Similar analogy would lie within comparing a given human being to another, even if we try to narrow them down to, let’s say: male, 30-40 year old, highly active athletes - both would have a different optimal cardio (metabolic) rate. Thus, Overstock.com and Walmart.com would enjoy different conversion rates too. Feel stuck? Puzzled and have an urge to go back and keep digging in the data? Great, but before, you do, take a pause and re-focus a few levels up.

These are 10 business questions that you might want to ask initially to get a sense on the site specifics and keep asking further while you started refining what works best for your site. They are also good indicators how well you use your data to make any actionable sense. They are the only reason why to do any data analysis for your site. Some of the answers can be pulled from your clickstream data (to the “what” and “where” and some limited ”why” questions), some you might look for via other tools (user testing, panel studies or surveys).

1. Why people buy products at your site? With so many options where to buy, your site should provide an incentive, a differentiating value proposition why to start searching or shopping there. Why should I buy from you directly vs. a distributor that might have volume discounts or one of your competitors? Tell them why via your product positioning through repeating the reason why buy here. Southwest.com does a great job with its value prop branding during the checkout process. It reminds you why you chose to go with them in the first place “1 ticket. 2 bags. zero fees” and reinforces your content at the end. You can also glance into the top converting keywords and see some customer intent.

2. What are the alternative products/or methods to buy similar products? I am a savvy shopper, due to the industry or personal choice and I might go to several sites or a comparison engine to look for stuff to make sure I get the most for my money. Having a good understanding of your competitive landscape helps to not to get obsessed about conversion metrics but get on top of how others lure shoppers in via messaging to make sure you are truly different. You can use some of the search intelligence tools to gain an idea of where else people are buying the same products and what terms they are using to find what they want.

3. What is the buying process for your audience? Each business has its own segments that behave and make decisions within their own patterns. The specifics of your audience, and reasons why they buy your products are great reminders of why you are in this business in the first place. Are you still focusing on their needs? Do those needs change or remain constant? How do they get to your site? This question should help you paint the context where your customer and your product coexist, not the actual site experience.

4. What is the buying process for each specific product/category? Shopping for a dress is so  much different than shopping for a fridge. Do you cater to the product shopping experience as it is “in nature”, using searchandising techniques that matter for each specific product or do you keep them all in general terms? Does your product page change per each category as much as it makes sense for a shopper? Path analysis report with common top 10 paths taken to conversion should aid with nuggets on what is currently happening on your site. It does not show what could make it faster or easier though! You can also segment your site traffic by tasks accomplished before conversion and see what feature/content adds value.

5. What are the external events that drive people to buy your products? If your business is season or experience driven (a wedding, a graduation), you might want to be aware of the thinking process, ideas and thoughts your audience might have, places that would be relevant to the stage and a whole bundle of other products that might trigger the purchase on your site. This is primarily important for your acquisition marketing efforts and site design (in relation to the display ads/merchandising banners). One way to gain insights is to use competitive intelligence tools (Hitwise, Compete, Google Insights) to find related search terms, top most rising searches and their demographic or geographic positions.

6. What are the typical personas for your site audience? From all of the site traffic that you get, only a few people come with the intent to buy. Moreover, a mere intent is not enough to close the sale. Here, it is all up to your magic of merchandising, available options to buy/pay with and your persuasive messaging. Some people shop comparatively, those are known as “competitive” shoppers, others rely on reviews mostly and go by “humanistic”. The third type is rather “impulsive” or “spontaneous”, followed by the fourth – a methodical persona. Now, drilling further, out of those 4 shopping behavior styles, what else can you add into the psychographic and demographic profiles specific to your markets? Segmenting your site traffic might help to see the percentages of various actions, percentage of ones that convert and the ones that do not.  Following up this exercise with a survey, can also validate the numbers.

7. How do shoppers choose one product over another on your site? What content, information piece closes the sale for your product? Is that a self-generating parts diagram or an outfit combination? A price or free shipping? Once you found it, display it prominently to encourage conversion. Some of the product “usage” data that you can pull from reviews can become a very compelling reason to buy (be that “most durable product for kids”, “best for its value”, “top seller”, or “works best with clarifying serum”) that you can display/provide as a search/navigation/narrowing down criteria. Event tracking also can add some insights on what is going on your pages. Or you can also try to walk in your shoppers’ shoes and perhaps unveil some navigational challenges with a review of top pages within the click density/site overlay report. 

8. Why do people come back to buy from your site? This is my favorite question. It does remind the # 1, but it opens more information on the experience shoppers had with your site and can shed light on your strong and weak parts. Is it a service or a one-click buy that keeps customers coming back? Or is it mostly for the cash their reward program provides that makes them tolerate your 7 step checkout process (which should not be that long in any case in 2010 at least)? Knowing the answers to those questions helps crafting compelling messaging for your offsite ads and onsite branding. It can also reveal opportunities on where/how you can expand your differentiating value or reasons why your competition cannot provide the same. And of course, if you can display some of that data, it might help methodical and competitive personas pick your product faster (“45% of people who viewed that product, bought it in relation to other 2”). In addition, visitor recency and loyalty reports that show latent conversions can help you identify the effectiveness of your online marketing campaigns. Your top 25 keywords might also give some insight on how they come about your store. Or visits to purchase ratio, days to purchase can uncover what it takes to convince people to buy on your site.  Focusing on your converting traffic only can assist you in seeing what makes them buy.

9. What will make your customers buy more/use more of your product? Another good one that might open the gate to consumption patterns of your audience that you can use as opportunities for increasing average order size. Impulse buy based on 3^rd party reference, powered by reviews, efficient product description and free shipping makes Amazon Books profitable for 5 years from my own behavior. It is always the same pattern, automatic and easy that if the frequency of marketing is dialed up, makes me transact more often without much thought.

10. What makes your customers delighted to share their site experience with their friends and more? The answer to this question taps into a fountain of potential free marketing that you can dig into. Does your site make your heavy users so happy that they volunteer to spread the wealth? What are the scenarios when they would benefit more out of sharing?

Most of these questions come from marketing or business strategy framework and seem to get lost in the process when we plug in ourselves deeply into the operations data and speak in metrics terms only. These business questions should drive your metrics drilldown and up and sideways, while also painting a holistic picture of complex, but functioning organism (your site)!

Do internet technologies shape our behavior or our online patterns allow for their emergence? Similar to chicken-and-egg argument (which was recently resolved), there are new developments in how companies interact with customers or how our web habits and all the accumulated data reform they way we do things. The top 5 evolving trends worth noting and expanding on are as follows:

1) Companies integrate social networks more aggressively and transparently into the user shopping cycle or online behavior. Today, it is pretty much expected, not shocking to social savvy online audience to have the ability to integrate with their favorite brands online.

Ex.A: Amazon recently launched its product reviews feature with Facebook, providing a new social shopping experience that allows people see what their friends are looking for, buying, wishlisting and indulging into. That makes us all so much more connected and closer to each other! If that functionality catches on, it can truly change how we associate with each other, in regards to how fast we can screen each other in and out, or get to know as social human beings. It also has a potential to enrich our relationships since all that info will be available and easily accessible.

Ex.B: SimplyHired similarly showcases job leads with LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook connections on its pages  (which is visualized via the UI) to help its users to succeed with their job search and prompt them reach out to the people they already know. That site feature makes it easy for us to accomplish our tasks, get what we are searching for. If the A was “social shopping”, B would be “social sourcing”?

Ex.C: Groupon encourages us to buy in groups and share the benefits of discounted pricing, gently conditioning us to be always aware of “collective bargain hunting” and capitalizing on our natural tendency to share rewards with special folks in our lives. So many intrinsic benefits are interwoven into the experience!

2) Loyalty programs and applications grow in popularity with rewards focused on users sharing publicly/checking in into the stores and services, broadcasting those “visits” to their social networks of friends and contacts. Game element is also very much a must and present there. It works perfectly to keep the interest alive for a while, which is also backed up with tangible rewards and providing users the ability to feel important, accepted and happily justified about their purchases.

Ex. A: Popularity of Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Loopt and similar applications exemplify this trend. On the marketers’ side, imagine the possibilities of growing LTV of each person with all that available data! It is a win-win situation for both marketers and consumers.

3) Most web products provide a simplified multi-network status update, catering to the newly evolved need or “common behavior” of an average person to check in online in various places. So even if the application engages you on the company specific content, this standalone feature develops a closer “bond” and provides you with another reason to engage.

Ex. A: Hot Potato now trains us openly into sharing our statuses beyond consumed services and attended events. It allows us being more social and expressive within our micro worlds in real time!  Here, we are experiencing exponential social engagement that definitely transcends our physical reality of engaging with only a limited number of folks at a time.

Ex. B: Yahoo! email allows users to respond to status comments via email. No need to login to Facebook now.

Ex. C: Seismic web, more of a professional application, now allows to manage multiple Twitter, Facebook and + accounts in one spot. It could very much spread into the adoption by consumers of a specific kind, i.e social media heavy users with multiple identities or roles.

4) Nearly all types of businesses now offer mobile versions of engaging with the brand or consuming their products: a growing mobile-ization of anything that was desktop access or print only before.

Ex. A: Digital couponing and mobile scanning are taking off.

Ex. B: Mobile web and apps are becoming a traditional, a given channel for many stores, sites, networks.

Ex. C: Sending postcards goes mobile too with an element of game with SwingVine (a Seattle start-up! Yay for the city!).

5) Companies empower its customers and prospects with a choice to have control on what to be served, personalize preferred content/advertising; or engage with its users on a more interactive, personal level, i.e. one-to-one marketing.

Ex. A: Our all times favorite Old Spice campaign actively engaged its audience with personalized videos and tweets. It did have two other success variables: hard to resist all-muscle body (sex appeal) and clever humorous creative! But, clearly, the biggest contributor to its success was the interactive element that allowed its audience to experience being personally addressed within the campaign. Customers and prospects now could become part of the campaign, not through the contest of touting the product, but through being in the spotlight, with a personal attention from the brand!

Ex. B: Shopping cart saver application, Olark, utilized on some ecommerce sites, catches its shoppers right when they are about to abort/not complete the purchase with the live person (via IM widget) that simply offers to provide human help! All that is based on the data tracked throughout the checkout process that also becomes useful to the other side of the IM to deliver personalized service when your converting customers need it!

Ex. C: Integration of clickstream analytics into the CRM tool, which also automates the creation of lead profiles, will surely scare off some of us. On the other side, how much more easily could we transfer our leads and prospects into the customers based on already “expressed” interest. From the potential customer perspective, how pleasant would it be to get approached by the company which seems to be capable to sense your emerging needs?

Ex. D: Groupon also lately launched the functionality to choose your deals of the day content based on your interests, which will definitely skyrocket its conversion based on all the relevancy and condition us, users to consume our favorite products more often and sometimes in a good company!

How fascinating, isn’t it?

Recently, I have caught myself on getting very much comfortable with the feature “You Might Also Like That” on various sites. The old fashioned technique of a good sales person, transformed into the online world, is gaining momentum with both the consumers and the merchants. Though, the feature itself is probably a 5 year old, but it does take on the “must-have” and “very much expected” level with the online shopping masses. It is becoming as convenient to rely on this personalization widget as typing phone numbers into our phones and never bothering to remember the actual digits.  How else am I supposed to keep my engagement with your site, app/online store once I consumed some of your products?  Don’t you want to continue amusing me with your similar offers based on what I like?

Why should you care about “You Might Also Like That” feature?

1) It is a relevant cross-sell tool that does deliver. Coupled with the product reviews, it drove me to add one or two items to the cart. This is a very effective feature to engage heavy users of your service/product, primarily since it feeds their specific needs and tastes, sometimes at the moment of consideration. This feature adds 3 or 4 books to my shelf every time I shop on Amazon for a specific topic of interest.

2) It is a great predictor of potential bundles that you can create based on the purchase history and trends that relate a number of products. No need to look at the crystal ball, you will have all the analytics clearly telling you the purchasing behaviors.  Your customers have already done all the thinking and justifying on why it is a good mix, why not offer it to the similar buyers? User-generated cross-sell is the official name of this feature in the industry. Wet Seal does a great job on utilizing user-generated cross-sell by offering entire outfits made by its customers via social contests and fan related initiatives.

3) It allows new users to break into the product category faster. It is a perfect method to transfer them from the “just acquired “customers into the loyal users. Any customer, or a human being, for that matter, will appreciate this white glove escorting into the world of similar satisfying consumption. Plus, it is automated for you as a merchant, but appears as a personal touch to your customers (granted you have a good technology behind to deliver relevant options).

Getting the most of your “You Might Also Like That” widget can bring a myriad of creative ideas how to engage your current heavy users, attract new buyers and keep them both coming back for more!

The industry is buzzing about mobile again; your team is open to try the new channel. And you are wondering if it is worthwhile “to go mobile or not to go”. However, before you embark on a mobile marketing journey, here are top 10 things you should check against to make a better decision whether to add a mobile campaign to your marketing mix or develop a mobile app store.

 1. Is your audience mobile-savvy?  Does your customer actually use mobile beyond making phone calls? Does your research support the fact that your customers interact with any other brands, using their phones? If your audience is there, and savvy enough to have access to mobile web and is used to some opt-in interaction, you have a first pass checkmark. Alternatively, if your customer is also open to education in this area and does have mobile phones with data plans in possession most of the time; you can still have a chance of introducing this method of engagement.

 2.  What is the context/potential use case scenario for your customers to want to consume information or make a buy via mobile?  You know your customers and how they interact with your product (or might interact if it is new), when they buy and how they arrive at those purchasing decisions. Is mobile a good way to speed up their buyer cycle? Can your customer make a decision based on very limited information at that point while on the go? This is a very important step that has to do with a mobile user experience that differs from the desktop due to limitations of the small screen and the amount of information that can be communicated and perhaps customer’s ability to engage with the device using only one hand, while doing something else (telecommuting and drinking coffee, holding a bag and moving elsewhere, sitting in the wait room and so on). Also, considering that people’s behavior on mobile web is different from the desktop: no one is spending hours searching and surfing (as there is not a whole a lot to see and not so much fun clicking on and on). When it comes to mobile, people are at the “buy point” already and they need the info now and ability to make a transaction preferably within 1 or 2 clicks. This, in its turn, makes mobile the perfect channel to interact with the existing customers!

3. What is the value you can provide to your customers? You cannot simply throw your message at your customers. Mobile is a very personal channel as your audience is virtually available to you most of the time. People carry their phones and devices everywhere and accessible to them at times when other channels like desktop/web is out of the picture. And any message that you decide to communicate to your audience, must be within the context of mobile device and your product usage. It must be either of each:

a) location-based (it provides an address and a phone number to your business);
b) time-sensitive information (a new item in stock arrived that a customer was waiting for, or a limited duration sale is up);
c) making life/usage of your product/service easier information (ability for your customers to check-in into the flight while in route to the airport);
d) financial incentive (a free latte on Mondays);
e) affiliation/community/social popularity aspect (ability for your customers to share their product experience with like-minded people and being part of a bigger circle);
f) or at last, deliver some entertainment value (to kill the time on a commute, in line).

4. What are the legal implications, conditions that I should be aware of?  The U.S. CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 very much applies to sending unsolicited messages to people’s phones. This also logically leads to point 5 below. Other precautions include all other familiar suspects: copyright, trademark, right of publicity and privacy, misleading advertising, cases of what is “free” and “disclosed only in fine print.” Plus, all network carriers are very protective of their customers and have full control over the livelihood of your campaigns.

5. You cannot buy mobile phone lists and start marketing. Particularly, due to the anti spam law above and the issue of privacy. Thus, you will have to build those from scratch and invite your customers to participate via other channels, gradually but surely.

6. You will have no benchmarks. Mobile marketing is still emerging and only a few players already tasted its benefits and pitfalls. In addition, there are a lot of variables to make those benchmarks comparable if they were to exist (a.k.a variations in industry, consumer behavior, devices, networks).

7. You must integrate your mobile advertising or commerce into other channels for it to succeed. Yes, you need to promote this new channel and tell your customers about this option elsewhere: on the web, on your social networking apps, your billboards, TV, online videos, etc.

8. How to be seen/presented on mobile web? If you are a brand manufacturer, or a local small-business you might think of mobile site creation to represent your products, which implies deciding on whether and/how to build your mobile site, how to name it, or re-use (miniaturize) your current site. If you are an online merchant, you might think of creating an application for the most popular smart phones (iPhone and Android, for at least today’s date). Plenty of decisions here, since no matter where you go, the experience might not be the same for all users due to differences in how various devices and carriers render the code. 

9. Mobile search experience is different from the desktop. Mostly due to differences in what users choose to use to do the search: the pre-installed carrier cataloged pages or mobile search tools from Google and Yahoo. Even, if your audience decides to use Google, the results displayed are not the same and as controlled as the ones on the desktop. Different SEO and SEM strategies apply here.  More coverage on mobile SEO can be found here.

10. What is the right mobile marketing/commerce tool to use? The new channel comes with a pleasant assortment of tools that you can consider: voice, text, mobile search, mobile widget (entertainment, commerce, information or social network-based). The process of choosing the best or a mix of those requires a closer look at pros and cons of each kind. Once you discover what works for your product, do not forget to integrate your mobile marketing into other channels to start enjoy its benefits!

Craving more mobile? Check the insights from Kim Dushinski on her mobile marketing blog; she even has a handbook on that to expand on all the 10 points in extensive detail and more. Or review some of the best practices shared by Cindi Krum in her freshly released mobile marketing book (I got my copy today!). Also, if you are more inclined to consume the latest developments in mobile anything from the technical perspective, there is mobiForge for that too!

Error messages may run havoc on your customer engagement strategy whether you are running an ecommerce site or launching online promotions. You can lose leads and sales easily if you do not account for them. You can also try to improve your site performance or promotions’ numbers if you plan for the event of errors in advance. Or you can find ways to make them work for you by closely watching their occurrence and customer behavior that follows. 

There are 3 approaches that you can take to alleviate error message/sale loss ratio for your business:

1) Make user-induced error messages based on business rules clear and self-explanatory. Even if your audience is tech savvy and mostly has a high percentage of engineering degrees, error messages stating “Generic Error 407. Must be 77888888″ can puzzle anyone. Try to explain the reason of this message in a human language and communicate it succinctly. In all events, “Your account information and password do not match our records. Please do…[whatever you want them to do]..” sounds better than a numeric code that only a math genius in “Numbers” TV show can solve. Sometimes, I think those error messages were hastily cut and pasted by programming folks versus a UI/UX professional.  No offense to either, but the saved costs on making sure your error messages are clear in your application or on your site - are basically passed to future sales onto the customer base. 

Also, consider the context in which your customers will be incurring them: their attention span, possible stage of buying process, etc. One example of this error type, is an online shopper filling out a shipping address and payment information to only find out the error at the end after submitting the ” erroneous form” and having to retype all info again. I know I would give up at that point. Thus, construct your forms and functional errors accordingly - by making them appear inline with the filling out process, or adding interactive elements when possible. Linda Bustos, has a great post on inline validation within the shopping carts. Luke Wroblewski shared his insights on the same topic on his blog and even published a book.

2) Save the sale by tracking to who your errors were exposed to and follow up with compensation. You might not only save a customer, but delight him/her with a special attention that is capable to turn them into your product/brand evangelists. This happened to me a month ago. DSW ran an online promotion “Get Lucky. Participate in a draw of XYZ and win 50% off your next purchase by visiting this promo page.”  With sheer excitement, my mouse rushed to click on the link and the error message occurred “Site is unavailable” to my utter discouragement and quickly vanishing anticipation to make a purchase. But! DSW email marketing folks appeared to have planned for this contingency. After 2 days, I got a follow up email stating” Our apologies and $10 off. How lucky can you get if the site is down?” I was pleasantly surprised as a customer! My clicking the promo was acknowledged, my shopping decision was saved as if it were in a real store. I was happy to continue shopping at DSW and share the story with my friends. So, follow the DSW example of using web analytics to track your potential errors, especially if you know the limitations of your systems. Bravo, DSW!

3) Collect free feedback from the unpredicted error messages or 404, 500 types. Sometimes, it is what it is and you might not know all possible scenarios when your site or application starts “misbehaving”. Instead of simply accepting this reality, try to add a feedback link or box to the generic error page and your customers might feel compelled to share what happened. That way you will start discovering the reasons and causes of those mishaps. You will also make your customers feel listened to, heard and valued.  And, of course, you will actually gain something from those error messages. They will pay you with feedback! 

“Mistakes, obviously, show us what needs improving. Without mistakes, how would we know what we had to work on?” -Peter McWilliams.  So, do not fret if you find a few in your current app. Look at the ways to make them work for you and be the one with “an unequalled gift…of squeezing big mistakes into small opportunities,” Henry James.

Category pages are like aisles in the store - are to guide us through the shopping process. They help us decide on the product to buy. While, merchandising is the way you, as a retailer, provide key information to potential buyers to take time to consider a displayed product and get it eventually. But online shopping differs from the on-site experience: your shoppers can enter at any point on any page and there is no designated entrance to guide them through.

First time online shopping (on a particular site - i.e new visitors) can also be challenging.  Remember your confusion when you go to the same brand grocery store in a new city…even in your own city, but a different store: you will spend more time trying to locate the aisles first, let alone the products you have come for!

So what are the ways to display your products effectively? There are 4 common practices that are easily observable, used mostly as a mix of all or some:

1) Navigation, as the 1st approach is focused on user experience.  Hence the main goal for you as a site manager, is to provide clues to your shoppers to locate the products, group them into sets and narrow down by various product variables. The narrowing down part is the most crucial functionality of category pages - not the amount of information on the page. My favorite sites that do a great job in helping shoppers decide are: bluenile.com with its diamond search tool, bestbuy.com with its lifestyle categories for products (that give shoppers frames of reference) and hotels.com with its star/ratings/reviews/price/location options. The trick is to make the process as efficient and fast to help us decide which one of those items to spend our hard or smart earned money on!

2) Promotional method is the 2nd driver to decide how and what products to display. You also want to make more money and display your hottest or most profitable items, don’t you? Showcasing your best selling products or seasonal “must-haves” is still customer-friendly approach. Not only it provides shoppers with shortcuts, but also shifts the inventory based on demand. The trick of this approach is not to allow promotion get ahead of navigation and allow your shoppers control their search without much “virtual car sales people ( i.e your banners or always the same prominent products”) on the way!

3) Inventory management can play out its role as the 3rd driver which products to display and how often to change them. You can sell only what you have in stock, thus there must be some automation to your online store to alert you about the “backorder situation” and possibly trade the valuable web space with an alternative product. At the minimum, your product page with an “out-of-stock item’ should suggest comparable products for the shopper to consider. Do not let them give up on you and move to another store!

4) Taking a personal touch is my favorite approach, which marks personalization technology as the 4th driver in online merchandising. How much easier and more enjoyable it is to shop on the site that learns about your preferences, taste and tailors its category/product pages accordingly? Amazon.com and Bidz.com do it with flair. So if you have a chance to add extra value to your customers’ experience with a personal shopper through product recommendations based on user search and buying behavior, sprinkled with cross-selling functionality - by all means utilize it to the fullest. Personalized product recommendations consistently increase revenue, conversion rates, average order value and impact customer loyalty significantly.

Overall, in online retail, the working formula of strong merchandising includes a mix of insights from web analytics, product seasonality, price adjustments, promotional practices for a given category/industry, and user experience considerations. And this is not an exhausted list either. Online merchandising is truly a very valuable expertise not taught in schools, or books, but experienced through actual site management and application of holistic thinking.

I only covered four methods in this post, which should only prompt you to add your own value from other information pools for your site to truly evolve your merchandising strategy into a strong working system.

Mobile shopping has yet a long way to go to become mainstream, but mobile programs gain momentum fast to make Internet retailers pay close attention to their influence on ecommerce. Ongoing gradual customer adoption of mobile phones into everyday life has touched consumer behavior in a number of ways that are to be watched and utilized by online merchants. Some of the scenarios might not directly involve making a purchase through the phone or convert online after using a phone. Nonetheless, “the mobile state of the situation” has a significant impact on the buyer decision-making process or conversion life cycle.

According to Retrevo’s survey,

- 55 % of US mobile phone users (within 18-24 age group), 52 %  (within 25-34), 36 %  (within 35-44) and 17 %  (aged 45 and up) used a mobile phone to research products, compare prices and deals or find retailers. 

- Moreover, the majority found this experience rather positive and enjoyable: 59 % searched for deals, found them and got the best price; 46 % found the use of mobile making shopping easier and much more fun; 18 % did not find any deals, but will try again and only 8 % of those found it useless.

Thus, having an m-site for a major brand manufacturer that sells online and offline or even a web-only retailer, becomes a competitive advantage. Consider the following scenarios recently observed by buyer behavior experts:

1. Shoppers, while in brick-n-mortar stores access ratings and reviews more often through their phones to get a closer look at the item in consideration. 80 % of shoppers, according to Shop.org, use product reviews to make decisions and looking for them on sites. Those, with Internet access on their smart phones, will be/are looking for the same info too, so why not conveniently make those available in a phone friendly format?  Simultaneously, for those who already purchased your products for the first time and currently are resolving their post-purchase dissonance, why not deliver the-sought-after confirmation (reviews in mobile form through search text/hybrid ads for example) to reassure the decision and thus invest into your customer retention efforts?

2. Shoppers, while in stores or away somewhere still pondering on the item of potential purchase, use their time and a mobile device in hand to conduct product research through texting using a text message service RetrevoQ that spits out the needed info in a text message, why not build this mobile program in addition to an m-site or in lieu of it at the moment?

3. Shoppers, while in the brick-n-mortar store access your site again to check on prices and deals, and supposedly you know that they researched the item on your site before (through your web analytics data/customer cookie capture if login is required for example) - why not follow up with a text message right there again with some enticing offer?

4. Shoppers, while in stores, take pictures of products of interest and conduct their search on mobile devices right on the spot. Why not offer this visual search functionality on your site, make sure it is integrated with visual search app, etc. to capture the demand?

How much does an m-site cost? It depends, but generally it falls within 10-50K ballpark, depending on the vendor. Personally, I would choose a specialized company due to the complexity of the space and rather frequent technical innovations to ensure a fair bet that it can actually deliver revenue-generating solution today vs. tomorrow.

It is ironic how things in life come back to you in a spiral manner sometimes. The same happened to me in relation to the KPI topic. I have explored it briefly in 2007, and today I am able to share a few more good practices that any emarketer will find effective. 

So what are the top 3 things you need to know, or rather do to make the most of your KPIs?

1) Clearly distinguish a KPI from all other metrics you collect.  Many of times, it gets confusing with all the data we pull from a web analytics tool, to what focus on, because every count brings out a unique information piece. Simultaneously, the raw data is much easier to grasp rather than the one hidden through a formula. Thus, any metric can become a part or a standalone KPI depending on your objective. You probably would think now - “Well, that’s not making it any easier to understand!”. Which is exactly the same thought that tortured me for about a week till I discovered work by Steve Jackson so generously shared with all of us in his Cult of Analytics book. I felt like Amerigo Vespucci on that day - cause I cracked (found) the definition of a KPI. His 4 attributes on p. 50 served me very well to progress further while developing new and refining the old.  “Every KPI should have the following attributes:

1) The metric has a timescale associated to it (is reported weekly, monthly, quarterly).
2) The metric has a benchmark.
3) The metric has a reason to be reported to the actor.
4) The metric has an associated action that can rectify the situation.

…Most of the times it is a ratio.”  Now, that makes it much easier to set the KPI definition in stone. And though, you can still show your site performance from the user interaction through visits, clickthroughs,  add-to-cart clicks and ultimately all the way down to the placed orders, adding the ratios contributes so much color to the overall picture. If both are displayed separately - it creates more unnecessary questions, while placed together (general sequential metrics and ratios) allows for focusing on the right piece of data (a ratio KPI) while the raw data next to it, validates its accuracy.

 2) Slice and dice your KPI - aka segment it by campaigns, traffic source, etc. This advice is not new and has been declared many times to anyone who faced data analysis.  At the same time, it is also not very much followed. Similar to the exercise prescription in addition to the diet, data segmentation gets a lower follow through. But, if you do it once, you will never take data any other way! By segmenting, you are able to find trends since you put data in a context.

3) Get to know your KPIs better on all levels to learn what is normal and what is not in terms of their behavior. In this respect, you view your KPIs as predictable subjects. In the same manner as criminal investigators or psychologists observe people and get to know what behavior is normal for a given individual and what is out of the line, you can practice the same with your KPIs to get the most out of your reporting. Avinash Kaushik has a great insight on how to do just that - use the statistical tools of upper and lower controls to define the normal playfield for your data.

The only question that I am yet to resolve is - what are the best practices of calculating those controls for various KPIs and metrics? Some suggest to use 3 standard deviations to calculate controls, some make sense to use just 1 (as in Visits per Page as a Lower Limit possible). If I use 3, I will be expanding a range of behavior too wide if my data fluctuates frequently. If I use 1, it creates a too narrow field.  I hope to get the answer very soon and for now I plan to watch all three scenarios.