The Chinese are rapidly expanding outside China. Recently the Chinese sport brand Li-ning has made its debute to the US market with a brand new web shop. Probably you’ve never heard of them and that’s what they realized as well. Market research showed there was no brand awareness related to Li-Ning. The brand has to be build from the ground up. They decided to do this basing on a clear e-commerce strategy.

This post originally appeared at 21webmerceblog » Peter Horsten. View original post.

Famous in China, unknown in the rest of the world

In China, Li-Ning hardly needs an introduction. There are more than 8,000 Li-Ning stores in China, and it is the No. 2-selling athletic brand in the country, according to Acquity, after Nike. The company’s founder and namesake, Li Ning, is a former Olympic gymnast who won six medals in the 1984 Olympic Games. It was Li Ning who lit the Olympic cauldron during the opening games in Beijing in 2008. Li Ning has ambitious plans to challenge rivals like Nike on their home turf with his namesake brand.

“The U.S. is obviously important for any sports brand to have a presence in … [and] in the short term the most cost-effective manner to reach that market, to get products to consumers, is through the e-commerce platform,” said CMO Frank Chen.

The biggest brand you’ve never heard of

Basing on market research Li-Ning knew they would have to start creating brand awareness and they treat this as a big opportunity. The e-commerce store was launched with the slogan “The biggest brand you’ve never heard of… now available here”. Their webshop offers about 100 shoe and apparel products styled and sized for American consumers and they expect to double its product offerings by the end of the year.

According to Ray Grady, general manager at Li-ning.com they plan to target the curiosity of younger people with a slightly higher income and urban. Those are the consumers who described China as intriguing and mysterious.

“There wasn’t a fear or a negative,” Grady says.

Google has already fully accepted this new brand. Thus, Li-Ning could obviously lead to all kinds of “wrong” search keywords like “li ning” and “lining”. However,  Google is very helpful when using “li ning”, but “lining” still shows something slightly different than Li-Ning.com has to offer.

The e-shop has all it needs

Li-Ning.com has all the features like videos, pictures, recommendations and social media integration, consumers expect in e-commerce sites today. They offer free holiday shipping and we are curious whether this will remain their policy. The e-commerce site is built on the Hybris Software platform, and Ingram Micro Logistics handles warehousing and fulfillment.

What do you think about Li-Ning? Will they manage? Do you like their webshop? What about their products? We are really curious how they will be doing and whether they will manage to find their place in the market. For sure we like their effort to build their new brand based on a clear e-commerce strategy.

Sources: Ad Age, internet retailer

Just imagine yourself taking part in a lively discussion at some birthday party. Everybody is telling great stories about recent holidays. We ask some polite questions and at least pretend to share the same excitement. What’s wrong with it? Honestly, may not be much as long as everybody likes it. But this shouldn’t happen when the business owner explains the development team what he wants to achieve, what he needs. Unfortunately, too often the opposite is the reality. A thick fog remains, causing the business owner to feel understood (while that’s not necessarily the truth) and the developers being happy, because for some time they won’t be bothered. But how to clear, or even better prevent, the fog?

This post originally appeared at Goyelloblog. View original post.

How to notice the fog

The above might sound a bit black and white, but I’m afraid it happens more often than we would like to admit. We see it frequently happening in all kinds of companies, from small up to big ones. Sometimes, it’s even hard to notice it at the first sight. While taking part in such a meeting everybody seems to understand each other. Unfortunately, meanwhile you can feel something is going not quite all right.

Then, all of a sudden it becomes clear that not everybody is talking about the same thing. A definition appears to be completely differently understood.

And if this happens once, then it’s in general applicable to more definitions.

The fog is there and hopefully you have already noticed it , because otherwise it can cause dramatic accidents.

I believe this is one of the main causes of software projects failures. We think we understand each other, but cannot be sure about it.

Then it’s high time to ask questions!

Preventing or clearing the fog away

As mentioned before, it’s too often that we rely on a common understanding of definitions. But it’s not fair to believe that everybody understands the same when you define “For a user it has to be easy to find information about a product at our webshop”. Just some questions I would like to raise:

• Who’s that user?
• What kind of person is he or she?
• What kind of information might this user be looking for?
• Do we all know what web shop we are talking about?
• Etc….

A lot more questions could be raised and without the answers the fog won’t disappear.

From the experience we know it’s hard for users, business owners and developers to express what they (think) are looking for. We tend to use unclear verbs, assuming the others will understand what we mean.

Especially in case, when I do not fully understand the client’s business and/or needs, I request them to paint me a (virtual) picture of their world, because a picture paints more than a thousand words.

To do so, we have among others, already successfully used the personas method for several times. In fact it’s one of the default tools in our tool kit.

Visualizing who and what we are talking about by means of personas

A persona is a user archetype you can use to help guide decisions about product features, navigation, interactions, and even visual design. By designing for the archetype — whose goals and behavior patterns are well understood — you can satisfy the broader group of people represented by that archetype. Using personas prevents a lot of noise (fog) caused by personal preferences of the team members involved in the design process. If you want to start now we advise you to read this valuable introduction to personas and how to create them.

If you want to know more, there are lots of resources available, particularly the work of Alan Cooper and colleagues at Cooper Interaction Design. Alan is credited for having created the first persona for software development purposes back in the early 1980s.

In most cases, personas are synthesized from a series of ethnographic interviews with real people, then captured in 1-2 page descriptions that include behavior patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and environment, with a few fictional personal details (i.e. name, gender, age, hobbies, picture) to bring the persona to life.

Introducing personas into your software development project will bring a number of benefits:

• Users’ goals and needs become a common point of focus for the team
• The team can concentrate on designing for a manageable set of personas knowing that they represent the needs of many users
• They are relatively quick to develop and replace the need to canvass the whole user community and spend months gathering user requirements
• They help avoid the trap of building what users (or even worse business reps) ask instead of what they will actually use
• Design and development efforts can be prioritized basing the personas
• Designs can be constantly evaluated against the personas, reducing the frequency of large and expensive usability tests.

Just give it a try!

Having some experience with the personas method, I must admit that at a certain moment the personas become close to living people. The whole team communicates talking about John, Lucy, Martin and Mary. And the good thing is that everybody instantly understand what we are talking about. Definition issues seem to disappear like snow in the sun. And when the sun is shining fog won’t have a chance!

Do you have any experience in using personas? If so, please share your opinion with us. What did work best for you? For sure personas are not the only method you can us to improve your design processes, there are many other (agile) methods. Which ones do you prefer?

The UK consumers are more willing to buy online, as a new Ofcom report reveals. This applies to mobile commerce as well. A part of the explanation could be  the fact that UK customers are paying lower prices for their communications services than many consumers across the world. This makes the UK the best located country in Europe to exploit the next wave of mobile Internet. However, the amount of online  transactions remains low.

This post originally appeared at 21webmerceblog » Peter Horsten. View original post.

The UK is already a nation of online shoppers

Ofcom’s sixth International Communications Market report into the global communications market presents that eight in ten UK Internet users (79 per cent) said they had ordered goods or services online in 2010, that’s more than in any other European country, with just 27 per cent of consumers in Italy claiming to had done so. The UK Internet users were also more likely to visit retail websites online than other countries, with nine in ten (89 per cent) claiming to have done so in 2011. Consumers in Italy and Spain prefer to window-shop.

Source: Ofcom.org.uk, ICMR 2011

UK consumers not only shop more online, they also spent more time and money on retail sites – an average of 84 minutes in January 2011, compared with around 20 minutes for consumers in Poland and Italy. The value of B2C e-commerce per head in the UK was £939 in 2010, up 21% from £773 in 2009. Australia and the US had the highest values after the UK, growing 21% to £792 and 14% to £559 respectively.

The fastest-growing market in retail websites was Russia (59% of the Internet users), gaining 16 percentage points during the year to January 2011. Despite such growth, the reach of Russian retail websites remained the lowest among the comparator countries, followed by Italy (70% reach) and Poland (72%). Internet users in Poland recorded the lowest average amount of time spent on retail websites (20 minutes).

Source: Ofcom.org.uk, ICMR 2011

Smartphones take-up driving the mobile Internet access

The use of the Internet on a mobile phone has doubled in most countries since 2008, driven by a combination of the launch of new devices designed for the Internet services use, specific mobile Internet applications use, the availability of high speed mobile networks and low-cost data plans.

Smartphones ownership nearly doubled in the UK between February 2010 and August 2011 (from 24 per cent to 46 per cent) and the take-up was higher in the UK than in any the other European country surveyed (France: 35 per cent, Germany: 32 per cent, Italy: 40 per cent and Spain: 45 per cent).

The number of people using their mobiles to go online was also higher in the UK with nearly half (46 per cent) of the UK’s Internet users using their phones to go online in October 2011. Knowing that surfing the Internet is more convenient on a smartphone than on many other mobile phones, this might be a logical result.

The UK leads in mobile online shopping but it remains a minor activity

Above we concluded consumers are often shopping online and using their smartphones to use the Internet. In a longer time period analysts are expecting an increase in mobile commerce as well. But is that really happening?

Using a mobile phone to visit online auction websites such as eBay, and accessing online retail websites, are still very much minor activities among European mobile subscribers.

According to data from comScore, between 3.4% and 6.7% of mobile subscribers in France, Germany, Italy and Spain engaged in either of these mobile retail activities in May 2011.

However, mobile subscribers in the UK have been much more receptive to this way of shopping, with 10.5% having visited an auction site and 9.2% an online retail site. Across our comparator countries, penetration levels of auction sites on mobile phones is slightly higher than of online retail sites. The nature of auctions can require bidders to check the status a lot more wherever they are, or to make another bid before the auction ends.

Are you ready for the mobile user?

The Ofcom research mainly focuses on the user behavior. Another question might be whether webshops are ready to welcome the mobile users. Before we had presented most of the retail websites aren’t accessible with a mobile device. Still a lot of work needs to be done to turn the already eagerly mobile surfing consumer into a buying one.

Source: UK consumers are a nation of online shoppers

This post originally appeared at Goyelloblog. View original post.

November 29, 2006 we almost missed our plane to Gdansk. Because of the traffic jams and the very fact that Cologne/Bonn Airport appeared to be a bit further than we’ve thought, we arrived just in time to board the plane. Fortunately, my business partner Arie managed to convince the guy at the check-in desk that we had to catch that plane. On a wet and cold Wednesday morning we landed in Gdansk. Since that very moment it all went very fast. Time sort of hasn’t stand still since then. Goyello officially exists since that very moment, today it’s exactly 5 years. We are proudly reviewing the past years and we are eagerly looking forward to the unknown future.

The survival of the fittest?

Economically it has been five rather poor years. Sometimes it was even hard to survive. We had to work hard to acquire and then satisfy every new client. Fortunately, the past has shown us that this economic downturn had its good sides as well. In times of crisis, businesses became more cost focused but meanwhile they also realized they need to innovate to stay ahead of the competition. Outsourcing their software development enabled them to achieve both the savings and the innovations. Goyello turned out to be the right partner for many businesses.

Goyello steadily growing

Year by year, Goyello managed to grow significantly. In early 2007, we used to work in the living room, sitting at the dining table. We were regularly meeting with our team on the beach. These were good times when we could even sometimes relax. The first clients were choosing Goyello, we were growing faster than expected. Soon we had to rent a “real” office. Who would have thought, that by the end of this year we will exchange this office for a brand new one in the Gdansk based Olivia Business Centre.

Today Goyello employs around 60 employees and the number is continuously increasing. Several of our first clients, like Da Vinci International and Youropi.com, are still our partners today. We managed to build a PHP and Microsoft .NET team around the businesses of our first clients. Nowadays, we are developing most of our applications in Microsoft .NET and Java. Besides, we offer mobile application development (Android, iOS and Windows Phone). Not forgetting about our web designers, who make that every application is accessible and looks good.

Focusing on web-based business applications and e-commerce

Our focus has changed over the time. In the beginning we were mainly focusing on web site and portal development. Today, we are primarily focusing on business applications and e-commerce. The retail and logistical sectors are the areas where we are doing really well. For a couple of our clients we have developed point of sale solutions (POS), stock management, loyalty and reporting systems. Meanwhile, we have developed some solutions ourselves as well. We have successfully implemented our own 21crm a few times. Business Intelligence is becoming increasingly important and we deliver the solution together with our Gdynia (next to Gdansk) based partner.

We are really proud of the recent 21webmerce web shop and auction system implementations. We are looking forward to a successful future for those two of our best solutions.

From enthusiastic amateurs to skilled professionals

Sometimes, when looking back, we realize what amateurs we were back then. When you enter our office today, you will notice a well-tuned machine. Different teams are cooperating interactively with our clients in a professional manner. You could say we became very Agile over the past years.

Thanks to all who made this happen

We thank our current and former Goyello colleagues, clients, suppliers and especially our families for all the effort and support that made it happen. Without their contribution it would have been really hard, if not impossible, to achieve what we did. This also refers to all the encouragement and words of comfort coming from friends and acquaintances. That’s extremely motivating and inspiring!

This week Dairyauctionsonline.com started their first auction. Within 22 minutes they achieved a record turnover of € 1.200.000. Honestly, we are really proud about this result, especially because it’s the first auction on our renewed 21webmerce auction solution.

This post originally appeared at 21webmerceblog » Peter Horsten. View original post.

Auctions matching your needs

Dairyauctionsonline.com is a great example of the possibilities of the new platform. In total 286 tons of young cheese and 88 tons of butter were sold within no time.

The auctioneer is being offered many possibilities to setup an auction fully according to his needs, which basically means we can implement any kind of auction. Through the auction manager application he can monitor exactly what’s going on.

Flexible user interface design

Thanks to the ASP.Net MVC based front-end it’s possible to quickly realize the best matching user interface. Changing the design of the page for a “theme” auction or to match the season is very easy.

All activities of the auction participants are of course clearly logged, which is essential to commit to legal and notarial regulations.

Would you like to know more about web auctions in general or our new 21webmerce auction solution? Please feel free to contact us, by clicking here. We like to share our knowledge and experience with you.

Big brands organizing their online presence

Over the past 12 months, global companies such as Auchan, Gap and Inditex (the owner of Zara) have expanded by entering the Polish e-commerce market. Polish retailer Empik Media & Fashion has already enjoyed success since launching e-sales. Despite the competition from Merlin, the retailer has become one of the leaders in Polish e-commerce.

The children’s retailer Smyk  has just launched a new e-store and supermarket Tesco is preparing to launch one in February.

An online store offers different opportunities

For Tesco, e-commerce has become a necessity in the light of shrinking sales at traditional locations, Rzeczpospolita recently wrote.

Opening an e-store costs a similar amount as opening a new shop. But the reach of an online shop goes beyond normal geographical boarders. You can be opened 24 hours a days, 7 days a week, without personnel issues. Your online store won’t mention labor code regulations related to working and over hours. Therefore, for many companies an online store is becoming increasingly attractive.

Poland is a promising e-commerce market

According to ResearchFarm, a market research company, the value of the Polish e-commerce market reached €3.3 billion in 2010. By 2015 that number is expected to grow to €5.9 billion. In terms of e-commerce growth, Poland is Europe’s 5th e-commerce market and growing rapidly.

Source: Warsaw Business Journal

The latest figures from the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index have revealed a solid performance in the online sales market for September, with the Index climbing 15% year-on-year (YOY) and equating to £5.5bn spent online. If the travel sector is excluded, the Index grew at 20% YOY. The strength of these results is highlighted even further when compared with the UK high-street, which according to the latest British Retail Consortium sales monitor, grew just 0.3 per cent throughout last year.

Online commerce growth slowing down

Despite the good performance last month, IMRG and Capgemini have reviewed their original prediction of 18% annual growth for 2011, and downgraded it to 16% – equating to a 12-14% increase for the fourth quarter. Although this is still strong, it does show that the rate of growth is slowing down.

• September e-Retail sales up 15% over September 2010; up 6% month-on-month
• £5.5bn spent online; £47bn spent online in 2011 to date
• Revised Index growth forecast for 2011: 16% increase on 2010, down from 18%
• Travel sector records lowest quarterly growth since January 2009

The consumer invests in smaller things and home improvement

The sectors that have performed particularly well during September include clothing, home and garden, and alcohol. Clothing jumped 21% YOY, alcohol 16% YOY, and for the second month in a row, home and garden saw a huge YOY growth of 40%.

“Faced with uncertainty, shoppers are prepared to cut back on luxuries, but not on shopping altogether. Smaller items, such as clothing and items for home, are considered rewards for our belt tightening, or just more sensible purchases.” (Chris Webster, head of retail consulting and technology at Capgemini)

Falls for electrical and travel

The quarterly results show similar disparity between the ‘low-ticket’ and ‘big-ticket’ items and reveal some interesting trends. Clothing sales have remained consistently strong. Sales in lingerie have also seen steady quarterly growth this year. In contrast, the more expensive sectors have been suffering, such as electrical, which has slowed dramatically in the last two quarters, from 18% YOY in Q1, to 8% YOY Q2 and just 2% YOY in Q3. The travel sector has suffered the most thus far in 2011, with Q3 sales up just 2% YOY, the lowest quarterly growth since January 2009.

“The tough times for the travel sector are showing little sign of improving any time soon, with consumers focusing on home improvements rather than going on holiday. This is borne out by the strong yearly growth in the home and garden sector, the second consecutive month that it has recorded a rise of 40%. It is clear that both the stagnation in the housing market and the continuing uncertainty over the economic recovery are influencing consumer behaviour in the online market.” (David J Smith, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer at IMRG)

The table below shows the MOM and YOY results for all sectors.

Facebook’s keynote was announced with pride by the eCommerce Expo 2011 organization. Seeing long queues in front of the keynote theater, from a visitor attraction perspective it was really a strategic move to have Ivan Heneghan at the expo. It seems online retailers are expecting a lot from Facebook, despite Miki Balin’s message that Facebook just accounts for about 2% of the online turnover. Did Ivan manage to fulfill the high expectations?

The perceived Facebook magic

Ivan mentioned that the person at the Expo entrance started treating him like a celebrity after scanning his batch: “Are you the Facebook guy?”. It just shows what people think of Facebook, but also what they expect! What magic does Facebook have to offer?

Social design has to bring the magic

By the end of the day Facebook won’t bring the magic to you. You will have to attract people to your online store yourself. You will have to place your (potential) buyers in the center of your marketing activities. From that perspective you can decide what social tools to use. That’s what Facebook means by being social by design.

Being social will stimulate the awareness of your products among the buyers through social sharing and recommendations.

Social design principles

Facebook recognizes the following social design principles:

1. People first, content second: Of course it’s important to have good content, but if it’s not user focused it won’t be as powerful. You will have to provide an experience instead of building a content sharing portal.
2. Make sharing simple and fast: Enable users to tell their story about your product.
3. A few can activate many: It’s like a little snow ball. Your reach can extend fast through Facebook.
4. Your friends are there: Show your visitors that their friends were there as well, it will give them a feeling they can trust your site.

Facebook offers different powerful tools

To achieve engagement with your consumers you shouldn’t focus on a single tool only. It’s important to think of integrating your own website to the tools Facebook offers. The following Facebook tools could be considered.

1. Pages

This allows you to reach to people, to connect and engage. Facebook has just launched new metrics, “Insights”, for pages showing what is happening on your page. It clearly shows the total reach you have with your page.

2. Ads with friends

You can use Facebook ads to link directly to your website in the traditional way, but you can also link to your Facebook Page. Nielsen research shows that including the Facebook like button into these ads makes it a lot more likely for people to recognize the ad and that they will click-through.

3. Sponsored stories – word of mouth at scale

Consumers increasingly rely on their friends’ opinions. Word of mouth is becoming increasingly important. Through Facebook you can easily make use of these facts:

1. Someone likes something and shows this through clicking the Facebook Like button.
2. Automatically a story is generated on his friends’ news feeds.
3. Include these stories into ads for increased conversion.

4. Social plug-ins

Facebook provides several social plugins to stimulate your users to tell their story. It’s just a matter of adding the Like, Share and even more importantly, the Recommend button to your website.

5. Custom applications

The above mentioned tools all potentially lead to more traffic on your website. You can also go a step further and bring more functionality to Facebook. This will stimulate users to stay on your Facebook Page. For social minded people this could be a more preferred environment to engage with. A nice example is the Top 50 UK places app.

Build – engage – amplify

Summarizing, the Facebook story sounds very easy. You have to Build a fan page, Publish to fans and use Ads and Sponsored Stories to gain followers. But how can you make use of this to make social commerce work for you? Because, at the end of the day every shop just has to sell.

Facebook wants to allow consumers to share their buying journey in a light way. They can share it when they are interested in a brand, product or service and should be able to find out what their friends think about it.

The “ideal” social buying process looks like follows.

• Pre purchase: Discover products and services, among others through likes of friends.
• Post purchase: Share decisions and satisfaction with friends through stories. Recommend to others.

1. Build your social presence

Your first step to make use of the Facebook features should be building a Page and/or social plugins. Start two-way conversations with people, open up a dialogue, share information, let them respond.

When this is working, try to use ads to build your fan base. Use social plugins to enhance interaction on your page.

2. Engage by publishing to your fans

Set up a regular and frequent publishing calendar to prevent sending bullshit information. Create social experiences that are easy to share – images, video, questions/answers. Consider offering exclusive promotions to your followers, or inform them for example two days in advance about a certain promotion. Reward your followers.

3. Amplify

Leverage your network and increase your influence by using Facebook Ads and plugins. Facebook ads, sponsored stories and social plugins let you communicate beyond your fan base because you can also reach out to your followers’ friends. For every 50k fans, you have access to about 1M fans.

As mentioned before, it’s really important that consumers can like your products because this will spread the news. Besides, you can use their likes in your ads as sponsored stories.

Measuring the Facebook impact

It’s important to follow whether it’s worth all the effort. Fortunately, Facebook provides you with a lot of Insights. Apart from the new Page Insights you can add Domain Insights as well. You will need to install a code on your webpage to gather the statistical data. Domain Insights will show you what products people like and recommend. It shows the site engagement through total actions and the distribution on Facebook, showing the referral traffic.

The Story is clear

The Facebook strategy is a story engine to enable us to share our opinions, among others about products and services, with our friends. For web shop owners it’s a new way to easily reach out to more potential consumers. Although Facebook offers many tools to enable the story telling, it won’t automatically generate business. You will have to develop your own social media strategy, you will have to become social by design! Depending on your target group it could bring some magic, but for many the Facebook tools will probably not have a significant impact in the near time.

What’s your opinion about the Facebook approach? Are you sharing your opinion through Facebook? Feel free to share your opinion below or discuss with us on Twitter: @21webmerce.

After two intensive days at eCommerce Expo 2011 in London it’s time for a wrap up. One of the biggest eCommerce events in Europe could count on many visitors and most of the relevant market players were exhibiting at the Expo. In two days time you could really learn and network a lot. Now we can conclude what we had already forecasted in the preview on the Expo. It’s time for online commerce to become more personal through mobile and social commerce. You will have to think out your multi-channel strategy. An increasing amount of users is ready for it. Unfortunately, this is not applicable to most of the online retailers.

Current economic gloom hardly touches ecommerce market

The ecommerce market is a healthy growing market and it is supposed to stay like that in the upcoming years. Meanwhile, the offline high street retailers are having hard times. Probably due to the current economic gloom they see their turnover dropping. Recent imrg data as presented by David Smith, Chief Marketing & Communication Director of imrg, at the eCommerce Expo 2011 indicates that the online commerce market growth is slightly decreasing.

At the start of this year imrg forecasted a healthy 18% growth, which was occurring after the first half-year. The growth rate over the 3rd quarter is with 15% slightly less than expected. The growth slow down doesn’t affect all markets. For example clothing showed a 20% growth rate during the 3rd quarter, especially the electronics market is suffering online. Update: Read more about these market changes in our new post.

You will have to seduce the consumer more than ever before

Nevertheless, online commerce is a very healthy market with a lot of potential. For example, in the UK 88% of the consumers has Internet access and 50% of the consumers shops online. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

Attracting the consumers is one, but making them buy is a completely different thing.

Today the consumer is very aware of what he wants to buy and at what price. They’re bouncing back and forth in between Google/Bing (and other search engines), different (online) retailers, comparison sites and social networks before they make up their minds. Your shopping cart will be used as a temporary storage, a wish list. They will check their friends’ opinions both in real life and online. And their opinions really count!

This new trend in the online commerce market where the buyer is more and more in control, forces retailers to improve themselves all the time. The customer can check their products through multiple channels, every single second. The opinion about your product must be consistent across all channels to make the consumer decide in favor of you, every second consumers will decide whether to choose your product. This phenomenon of online decision making is named Zero Moment Of Truth (ZMOT) by Google.

You will have to satisfy, or probably even seduce, the consumer across all channels. A real multi-channel strategy implies you have to become personal.

Conversion rates are decreasing

From a statistical perspective this trend has some down sides. Over the past 5 years the conversion rate has decreased by 55% and meanwhile the bounce rate has increased. Miki Balin, CEO of WinBuyer, showed price is the most important decision factor for users to buy a product. It’s clear that buyers are jumping back and forth to find the best deal.

Potentially, the conversion rate is even going to drop more. Increasingly, online shops include many links to other places where you can stay engaged with the brand/product. They link to their Facebook page to have a discussion with their customers, they link to the YouTube page with product related video’s and they stimulate to follow their Twitter account. In the end this will lead to a lot more contact with the customer on many different levels, but of course it will result in more page hits that don’t lead to a conversion. Probably, we should conclude “conversion” is no longer the best figure to focus on. It’s time to measure the engagement level, because sooner or later that will have a major impact on your conversion.

Online retailers expect a lot from Facebook

The Facebook keynote by Ivan Heneghan was probably the most visited keynote. Long queues were in front of the keynote theater long time before the actual keynote started. People were looking forward to hear about the holy social media grail. Many disappointed people didn’t make it into the theater. The “lucky ones” were able to hear what Facebook has to offer to online retailers. Honestly, there is no real magic in it. Facebook wants to be a story engine where consumers can share their experiences with their friends.

For sure this offers possibilities for online retailers, at least if your audience is on Facebook. Enabling them to “like” or “recommend” your product can generate buzz and traffic to your website. You can stimulate this even further with Facebook Ads.

A day before Miki Balin of WinBuyer tempered the Facebook expectations. Research shows that the question “When you are interested in making an online purchase of some kind, what is your first step most often?” is being answered mostly in favor of Google (38%). Just about 2% answered they were checking their Facebook friends’ opinion first.

You will have to go mobile

In the UK about 25% of adults is using a smartphone. For teenagers this is already around 46%, as Nick Pratt of Sitemakers showed. In 2010 around 6% of the online commerce turnover was generated through mobile and this continues to grow.

As mentioned earlier, consumers are heavily using the Internet to learn about the products they are looking for. Often they use their smartphone or tablet, probably even when they are at your shop. And they won’t consider you when your web shop doesn’t look good on a mobile device.

The shocking thing is that your web shop is most probably not mobile enabled. Research proved that most of the online shops are not mobile ready and that their owners are even not aware of that. Examples like ASOS, BestBuy.com and M&S show that it is possible.

The function of the high street shop will change

Knowing the problems of the high street shops and the potential of online commerce you should ask yourself whether your offline shop is still needed? For sure the role of the high street shop will change, they will become experience centers. The Apple Store is the best example of this future development. You don’t necessarily go there to buy something. You can visit the Apple Store to test things, attend a seminar or listen to a concert. Apple just wants to give you the Apple experience.

But how to become personal?

As discussed above, social engagement is one way to become personal. By answering consumers’ questions and reacting on their (both positive and critical) online feedback you build a relationship with them.

Additionally, you should consider giving them a personalized experience when visiting your web shop. Users do not longer mind that you use the information you gathered about them. If you use this information in the correct way you can show them more relevant content.

The same is applicable to “search” as well. It’s important that you do the best you can to generate as relevant content as possible towards the consumers based on the keywords he used and his buying history you might know.

E-mail marketing can stimulate the buying decision. But again, these e-mails will have to be personalized! Spam is no longer appreciated.

eCommerce Expo 2011 was worth the visit

It was really worth visiting the eCommerce Expo 2011. In two days time you were able to gather a lot of information and to extend your network. The above is just a high level summary of all items discussed, but we believe the conclusion of the Expo is clear. Online commerce has a prosperous future when you dare to become personal through social media and by offering good mobile access to your store.

We are looking forward to your feedback and/or experiences with eCommerce Expo 2011 as well. Feel free to ask additional questions that might have been triggered by this post. You can get in touch with us by commenting below, following us on Twitter: @21webmerce or by sending an inquiry through our contact form which you can find by clicking here.

Magento is by far the fastest growing ecommerce platform. But we will have to distinguish between the two versions Magento offers, Community and Enterprise. The community version is downloaded millions of times, which doesn’t mean that it resulted in as many real stores of course. I even downloaded a version myself, which never became a store for sure. The two version are hard to compare. Today, at eCommerce Expo 2011 in London, Richard Jackson stated it very clearly: “The community version is not suitable for the enterprise”. Being curious of what to expect from Magento, I decided to attend today’s presentation.

It’s all about a happy retailer

Kristel Verhasselt, Magento Sales Manager North Europe, shared Magento’s vision today at eCommerce Expo 2011. Magento, recently acquired by eBay, focuses on making retailers having a successful online business. Magento does this together with their 270 implementation partners, who sell the Magento Ecosystem solutions, both mobile and enterprise.

Magento will be the core of eBay’s x.commerce platform

The recent eBay acquisition wasn’t a surprise for Magento, because they were a shareholder already. Ebay guaranteed Magento remains on the right track. It also confirmed that Magento will be the core of eBay’s x.commerce solution, fully integrated with many other eBay services.

Why is everyone talking about Magento?

About 4 years ago Magento made the community version available. Since then many modules and features have been developed and feedback has been sent back to Magento. Richard Jackson, Director of Session Digital, shared with the audience that the open source based community version is not suitable for enterprises. This version is not PCI compliant, has less features and is not performing well.

About three years ago Magento launched the enterprise version for serious businesses. It is supposed to be the platform for growth. It’s a framework for e-commerce. It enables the solution to be built around the client’s individual needs.

But, you will have to take into account that Magento Enterprise is not a ready-made store. A lot of configuration and customization is needed to get a tailored solution. Besides, you will have to arrange dedicated hosting, a shared hosting plan won’t be sufficient.

5 killer reasons why to consider Magento?

Richard shared with us why he believes Magento is a good solution for many online shops:

• Best use of budget: A regular licensed solution is way more expensive. Magento allows you to spent more money on deployment, customization, marketing. Magento is a per server model,meaning you pay a yearly license fee per server. As you need more servers you pay more, following your success.
• Speed to market: Getting a large-scale deployment up and running takes 4 up to 5 months instead of 9 up to 12 in many other cases where more customization is needed.
• Tailored solutions: Together with an implementation partner you will be able to tailor Magento to your needs. But without a partner you won’t manage.
• Feature set: Magento comes by default with a rich feature set and continuously new features are being developed.
• Ownership: No vendor locking, the license and customization is yours. If you are not satisfied with the implementation partner you can move on.

The Magento future didn’t become clear

Honestly, I was expecting to hear a bit more “vision” about Magento’s future. I treat this as a missed opportunity to share what will happen with an eager audience. The motivations why to choose in favor of Magento, as expressed above are not that unique (apart from the license ownership). Besides, you have to arrange quite a lot yourself and you need to find (and pay) an implementation partner.

More and more e-commerce solutions are being offered as a service, a so called software as a service (SaaS) offering. Such solutions offer you similar flexibility in a managed environment, which means you don’t have to bother with the hosting and its performance.

Nevertheless, Magento will for many companies probably be the right solution. But, don’t think it’s free. Even the community version isn’t due to the essential implementation, hosting and maintenance cost!

What is your favorite e-commerce solution? What do you think about Magento? Feel free to share your opinion below!