Yahoo Product Submit Adding Bidding Mechanism
Yahoo Shopping, aka Yahoo Product Submit, will be adding a bidding mechanism within the next couple months. So what does this mean?
If you are a retailer, it means you getting more options. Yahoo has until now ranked items based on keyword relevancy, categorization, click history, and costumer feedback. With the adoption of a bidding mechanism, Yahoo will create more competition and more flexibility in terms of how merchants may list their products. Listing has been difficult for some merchants who struggle to get traffic in Yahoo’s large database of products. Implementing this feature will mean merchants how have not been able to gain significant history, and thereby rankings, can now push their items to the top of result pages.
If you are watching Yahoo in general, this is a welcome sign. Yahoo used to host the premier comparison engine but has lagged behind in the last couple of years. Innovations have been few and far between, traffic has been tepid, and retailers have seen flat sales overall. This bidding introduction shows a renewed effort to bring Yahoo into the present with a bidding type of algorithm that has been widely adopted by most other major comparison shopping engines, from Shopping to Shopzilla to NexTag.
So retailers and industry watchers take note, perhaps Yahoo intends to play a bigger role in Q4 this year.
Deciphering CPA and CPO Part 2: SHOP.COM CPC and OneCart Programs
SHOP.COM
The next combination of CPA and CPC programs comes from an industry mainstay, SHOP.COM. SHOP has been a marketplace destination for merchants for years, helping sell electronics to wedding dresses. SHOP is also linked to a number of affiliate sites and programs like Quixtar, helping bring traffic and sales through the door.
CPO - CPA Program
SHOP offers a commission based billing program name OneCart similar to the one pioneered by Amazon, where a merchant pays a portion of sales to SHOP for each order that comes through. This process requires an extensive layer of integration work, just like Amazon, to integrate both product feeds to SHOP and order feeds coming back.
The main difference in SHOP’s OneCart system is that the merchant processes the order, and in a sense owns the order. SHOP delivers all order information to the merchant so funds can be taken and shipping performed. This twist poses both advantages and disadvantages.
The advantages are that the merchant literally owns the order. The charge for the order is made by the merchant who listed the item. This means the merchant can follow up with the customer with the usual coupons, newsletter offers, promotions, etc., than help with retention and branding.
The disadvantages are that the merchant still needs to process the order through their payment processor and pay associated processing fees. ,This can also create confusion when the customer receives their credit card bill or needs to deal with a merchant they may not be aware of. Lastly, the merchant takes the standard risk of credit card fraud that comes with each order. If margins and costumer retention are good, and fraud rates are low, this can be an excellent system.
CPC Program
This year SHOP released the ability to join under a cost per click program. This allows SHOP to function exactly like a standard comparison shopping engine, sending clicks to the merchant. A quick snap shot follows showing how ‘OneCart’ items are listed right next to CPC items:
Currently SHOP does not offer bidding options as supported by many other engines.
This type is of integrated system is being embraced more and more often by companies looking to capture both sides of a market, for merchants looking to pull traffic to their own websites, and merchants looking for easy and trouble free order processing.
Next…Part 3: Amazon vs Amazon Product Ads
Deciphering CPA and CPO Part 1: JellyFish Programs
With increasing development in the comparison engine and marketplace arena, I wanted to shine a quick spotlight on what options exist for merchants who are looking for options outside of the typical CPC dominated comparison engine models. This will be a 3 part series detailing what at times can seem like confusing options. First up to bat…
JellyFish
JelllyFish offers unique opportunities that it takes most a few minutes to understand. Since their model is so different than others, I will spend more time than usual talking about the opportunities.
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) aka Cost Per Order (CPO) Opportunity
JellyFish works on a different system than any other engine I have seen. There are 2 main components that make JellyFish unique, the first being their standard billing model.
JellyFish offers a CPA model by taking submitted products and displaying them as a usual engine would. What is different, is JellyFish integrates a special discount, and then only charges when a purchase is actually made. The way this works starts with the merchant, who offers a commission rate to JellyFish, for example, let us say 10%. JellyFish then takes this 10% discount, and passes that discount on to the consumer. The consumer will see the product discounted by a certain percentage and when clicked on, will be taken to the merchant site to purchase. When on the merchant’s site, the consumer will then pay full price, later to be reimbursed the discount by JellyFish directly.
The key is that JellyFish tracks the order through their own tracking code or custom order feed. The exchange of money happens approximately 30 days after the sale is complete. JellyFish then takes the 10% from the merchant account, and transfers the money to the consumer’s account. So the consumer actually buys the item at full price initially, and then sees the money essentially rebated through JellyFish.
Since JellyFish was purchased by Microsoft, they are not charging any fees. So, if a merchant offers 10% commission on a product, JellyFish then gives a 10% discount to the consumer and only serves a bridge with no tolls. Nice huh?
Smack Shopping
Here is the one that throws everyone for a loop. One of the most intriguing, and sticky features of JellyFish is Smack Shopping.
In a special section on JellyFish, an item is posted which JellyFish has received a high commission rate on. Through a variable, time based pricing system, JellyFish lowers the price of an item until a specified inventory sells out. JellyFish will keep lowering the price until this happens, so the consumer is forced to guess when the lowest price happens and attempt to buy at that time. If the price drops below the given commission amount from the merchant selling the product, JellyFish makes up the difference by putting in their own funds. So once again, not a bad deal for everyone involved and good exposure for the product.
Additional Features
JellyFish also features email campaigns and special display opportunities to highlight products, so many options are available. Currently most of these options run for free, so there are truly some unique opportunities here at this growing engine.
Luckily for the merchants already on JellyFish, most others don’t understand the system are haven’t yet found JellyFish to take advantage. As a merchant, if you are looking for a unique audience with growth potential and the ability to keep tight control on margins, this is your spot.
Coming next…SHOP.COM : CPC vs. OneCart
Declining Traffic?
…Not so fast!
Before assuming some companies are pushing less traffic and less profit to merchants there are some considerations which need to be made.
First the obvious information that can be taken from the graph is that some engines do appear to be seeing a decline in traffic to their main domain. This could be a result of decreased exposure and a declining costumer base. However, there are other points to consider before assuming that is the case.
Quality Traffic
Companies are focusing increasingly on the quality of traffic brought by each click. Online marketing is reaching a point of maturity where even the industry leader, Google, has seen a decline in ad generating clicks. One issue could be seen as a slow down in the market as many companies are seeing a slow down in sales from the economy’s condition and also a maturing marketplace where online purchasing is becoming more commonplace. Put simply, many people are buying online now, bought online before, and we don’t see as many new costumers.
Another point is the increasingly emphasis on the quality of traffic. Ad vendors are looking to focus on quality more than in the past. So networks like Google have recently decreased the available click space in text advertisements to avoid accidental clicks. Similarly, many CSE’s are focusing on weeding out poor quality clicks to merchants. This focus could mean not only decreased clicks being sent to the engines by their own internal marketing staff, but also more highly focused clicks sent to merchants.
Affiliate Networks
Another consideration is the use of affiliate networks by the CSE. As the CSE affiliate network expands, more traffic being sent to the merchant’s product will not be originating at the engine itself. Instead, the CSE will send the product to their affiliates, the affiliates will in turn push clicks to the merchant, and the CSE will still bill for the clicks but the traffic will not show on a graph like this to the CSE’s domain.
Comparison Engine Demographics
Have you ever sliced up a potato when cooking?
Analyzing demographics should be thought of in a similar way. There are many different ways you can slice up an audience depending on how detailed you are trying to be and what you are cooking. Typically, marketers are looking for basic information like gender, age, education, income status, and household population (have any kids?). This type of recognition of an audience lets a merchant or marketing professional know what marketplace to use. Comparison engines are the same, except I haven’t seen much information out there, about who goes where.
Male vs. Female Demographic
Besides being sharply divided about presidential candidates, male and female shoppers also shop differently. Companies are taking notice and some are actively responding.
SHOP.COM is an interesting case study here. SHOP.COM primarily reached a female audience, and after studies showed over 70% of shoppers were women, SHOP.COM began to adjust their strategy to suit their audience. Looking to sell some dresses or make up? Perhaps SHOP.COM is the place for you because they are building around female shoppers.
Become also sees a majority of female shoppers, but perhaps not as strongly as SHOP. Other comparison engines like Pronto see a pretty even split, with an audience that is 49% male and 51% female.
Looking for a male demographic? I would be willing to bet CNet sees a primarily male audience, and based on design, I would guess PriceGrabber sees the same (but don’t quote me on that).
Reaching Out to a Minority Audience
Speaking of PriceGrabber, if you are looking for a minority or Hispanic based audience, then PriceGrabber’s PrecioMania.com site may be a good fit. Increasingly companies are reaching out to minorities because, well, there are more minorities now than before. The wonderful thing about the American audience is, they keep changing.
Many of the comparison engines reach out in their own way to different groups, so it’s safe to say that using most large 1st generation comparison engines probably touches on this audience as well.
Gay Comparison Shopping Engine?
Now here is a demographic that is tough to pin down, and quite honestly, I have never seen this in a comparison engine’s media guide. However, I noticed something interesting with a client a few days ago.
One particular item was selling very well at one channel. So much so, that it was beating many other top performing products. I asked my client why this one item, a sailor hat, was selling so well. The client explained its an odd story, but after a few months of selling this item, they realized in working with costumers that this item was primarily purchased by a gay audience.
So where was the sailor hat selling like hotcakes? - NexTag
So, does one product give a case for rock solid proof of a particular demographic? No, but it is worth noticing. As a wise man once told me, think like your costumer and try to understand who they are. Who would buy this item? And for marketers more importantly, where would they go to buy it?
The Future of Search
I enjoy speculating what the future may hold. In my mind, that is what makes good research into something valuable. Being able to take history and project into the future is a good test of understanding.
That’s why I wrote a recent post about the possible merging of a classical search engine with a classical comparison shopping engine.
What will Google Product Search and Google.com look like when combined? What will search engine marketing look like in a couple years? Maybe this is it:
http://blog.mercent.com/posts/2008/03/when-search-eng.html
Battle of the 2nd Generation Comparison Engines
It’s interesting to see the 2nd generation of comparison engines roll out and see how they are performing.
The original or 1st generation of comparison shopping engines included existing heavy weights like Yahoo Shopping, Shopzilla, Shopping, NexTag, Google, and PriceGrabber. Now the second round of CSE entrants are gaining momentum. New structures, new marketing tactics, and new approaches has lent some popularity to these companies. Social shopping, research oriented structure, and just some hard core marketing have helped these comparison shopping engines gain in popularity and added ROAS points for merchants.
Hoped a quick look may highlight how these channels are performing over the year in estimated visits -
Trending with CSE’s
One thing I have noticed recently is the variations in comparison shopping engines on a day-to-day basis.
With any marketing campaign, you will notice daily fluctuations and it is extremely important to bring some levity to the situation and not overreact. Especially with CSE use, you will notice daily fluctuations in performance. The exact amount of fluctuation will vary depending on the size of your account and the channels being used. However, this does not obscure the point which is to be patient.
Time Range
When judging performance, it is best to measure things on a weekly basis, at a bare minimum. On a recent webinar I was listening to, Tom Leung, Product Manager for Google, recommended making site tests within 2 week time intervals as a minimum. Ideally, he recommended performing site tests over a month long period.
It’s my belief that working with comparison shopping engines is extremely similar. Do not judge results over a few days time as definitive proof something should be done.
Seasonal Variations
One additional thing to take into account when judging performance is seasonal variations. Since we are looking at month long time ranges here, take a look at seasonal differences. For example, if your leprechaun and Easter bunny outfit was not performing well in January, perhaps you should take another look at it.
Seasonal variations contribute greatly to the rise and fall in popularity of products. So, be aware of these variations, even when not as obvious as holiday fluctuations. I recommend being acutely aware if your usual yearly sales decline 5% in April, so you can be aware that if you notice a drop in CSE revenue or return on ad spend, there is most likely a correlation.
CSE Seasonality and Testing : Putting It All Together
So, in conclusion, make sure you are providing enough time to test variations on comparison shopping engines. At the very least, schedule 7 days for a test, but preferably schedule 14 days or more. In testing in general, a statistically significant amount of traffic must pass through the test to make it meaningful. Even more importantly, it has to be done at the right time. Keep in mind that a Christmas ornament will not sell well in July, and if you are testing home improvement items right now, your year to year numbers will be slightly skewed. Give enough time for statistically meaningful information to build and be aware of external conditions. Then, you should be able to squeze a profit out of all that time you are investing.
Bizrate Shopzilla Categorization Tip
As a quick tip, Shopzilla recently released an updated taxonomy or category structure for their comparison shopping engines. If you are sending product feeds with an old structure, now is a good time to check out their current taxonomy and make sure your categorization still make sense, of if you can improve your placement.
Retail Inspiration
For anyone who feels overmatched occassionally (I think that means everyone), I came across a very interesting article about Micky Jagtiani, one of the world’s wealthiest people. He began as an Indian immigrant who moved to Kuwait, and one who is consistently bad with numbers.
Propelled by family tragedy and using some common sense, he found ways to build one of the largest retail corporations in the world, Landmark Group.
Check it out on Forbes.com : Revenge of the Ne’er-Do-Well - http://www.forbes.com/home/forbes/2008/0324/110.html
Google Adult Content Filter
In continuing to take a look at the nuts and bolts aspect of data feed marketing, I wanted to take a look at Google Product Search’s adult content filters.
When using Google Product Search, aka GoogleBase, Google has a filtering system in place to block objectionable material from searches. The only issue is that many people don’t know this exists.
The adult content filter has the ability to scan not only text but also images submitted. The exact rules the filter abides by are not public, but the filter does have the potential to make a mistake and filter every day items that merchants are trying to sell.
As a quick example, go to Google product search page: http://www.google.com/products
If you look towards the search bar next to the ‘Search Products’ button, you will see a small link labeled ‘Preferences’. By clicking on this link, you can set the ways items may display including the below option:
| SafeSearch Filtering |
Google’s SafeSearch blocks web pages containing explicit sexual content from appearing in search results. |
| -Use strict filtering: (Filter both explicit text and explicit images) -Use moderate filtering: (Filter explicit images only - default behavior) -Do not filter my search results. |
I suggest double checking your total product catalog using these different filter settings. I have seen it before that an entire product catalog can disappear by changing these settings. As a default, Google has strict filtering in place. If you can’t see all of your products with this filter on, then there is a large probability your customers are missing out as well.
Performing this quick check can make sure you are achieving the highest visibility on Google Product Search.
Checklist for Optimization of Comparison Shopping Engines
Are you doing these steps?
Here is a quick checklist of things I would suggest doing for each of the below comparison shopping engines.
Amazon : Watch your feedback. The feedback rating of the seller is factored into relevancy and exposure for the merchant. This can even push a merchant out of the buy box. A good rule of thumb is to keep feedback above 90% or risk loosing business.
Google : This is a good tip for Google, but also for all other engines as well. Be sure to fill out all payment and delivery information as part of the company policies. Many engines sort and rank based on these items so ensure all shipping information is filled out, any international shipping options are filled out, and any payment information is properly filled out. Also, think about getting Google Checkout if possible.
MSN Live : When uploading a file, also check back for the FTP status and upload status. Live is still in Beta and Microsoft seems to have this as a lower priority. I’ve noticed many times if using an automated upload, things can periodically go wrong and it’s easy to have a feed not processing if you are not checking regularly.
MSN Shopping : Look for additional ad banners and demographic targeting. The nice thing about MSN Shopping is that as part of the MSN network, they have many opportunities to drive traffic from a specific placement in MSN Shopping, all the way to an integrated advertisement on MSN.com.
PriceGrabber : Think about adding featured products which stand out on category pages. If not check out the ROI tracking post from a few days ago: Using the ROI Tracker on PriceGrabber
Pronto : Try to encourage feedback from costumers. Pronto has a cool feedback system where users are encouraged to leave feedback on items, sellers, and manufacturers to create an enhanced 2.0 experience. To leave feedback, just sign up for a Pronto account, click on items and leave the feedback. Having customers do this can help the visibility of a merchant’s popular products here.
Smarter : Check the categorization of items. Over the course of many product feeds, sometimes an item can be placed in another category than what was intended based on the engine’s attempts to properly place products. Check back through the account user inteface (UI) and make sure all products are residing the proper categories every few weeks.
Shopping.com : Check out the recent post on title set up, best advice I can offer: Read the Directions: Optmizing on Shopping.com
Shopzilla - Bizrate : When sending bidding in the product feed, the bids which show in Shopzilla’s UI is not what is necessarily being fed in the product data feed. Make sure to not go back and forth between making bidding adjustments between the UI and the feed, stick to one system and ride with it. Lastly, do this realizing that the UI will be a quick update which can be easily seen, and the product feed update will need to be tracked on the merchant’s or service provider’s side.
Yahoo Shopping : If you are a merchant who regularly changes images, keep in mind Yahoo Shopping will never refresh an image file automatically. If you change your picture, change the image name so Yahoo can process the new request. Otherwise, if you do update the image and keep the same image file name, then you will need to call Yahoo directly and ask for a complete refresh on all images. The support is courteous and friendly, and can get this done within 24 hours.
Another note to all these and engines not mentioned would be a standard rule to set engines to auto replenishment. Many times I have seen a merchant’s feed go down because they ran out of funds. Email alerts can be set up if you have a tight budget, but keep in mind these automated alerts are just as likely to be overlooked as to go directly to your Spam folder. If at all possible, set the feed to auto replenishment so your feed is not down for days until the account is refunded.
Evangelizing International Business and Online Presence
Expand your presence and push to include international consumers and business.
The reason is both logical but also as a bit of public service. Let’s start with the logical.
A recent Nielsen Online Survey as seen in InternetRetailer reported that global internet online shoppers have increased 40% in the last two years. Many of the technological hurdles present for many countries are being overcome. Increased bandwidth is making online shopping much easier as can be attested to anyone who remembers switching from dial up to DSL a few years ago. Especially amazing is the United States is only ranked 8th worldwide in terms of adoption of online shopping. Approximately 94% of internet users in the US have made a purchase online, which puts the country behind more online savvy countries like Japan, Korea, Germany and the United Kingdom.
Reaching out to this international population is essential for many businesses as evidenced by recent outreach efforts by computer manufacturers like Dell, to produce low cost units which can be made widely available to populations that traditionally could not have afforded a computer.
For retailers, the greatest hurdle is ensuring accurate payment processing and shipment. The good news is there are many companies working to solve these issues. However, some problems have a way to go, as evidenced in China where many times a payment is made by sending a bicycler to the consumers home to collect funds. Luckily, credit card adoption is catching up in foreign countries as well.
The second reason to push into international business adoption is focused on the general health of the US economy. I am not someone who could be considered a nationalist in any sense, but I do pay attention close enough to know a perpetually worsening trade deficit is hurting the long term prospects of the US economy. When you have leading investors like Warren Buffett leading a push to invest internationally because of poor long term growth here, many should begin to reconsider if we need to begin changing direction.
It’s ridiculous to expect the United States to continue to have such a substantially higher level of wealth compared to the rest of the planet, and equally ridiculous to justify this should be the case. However, I am increasingly concerned the US is in the same state as the Roman Empire, when the wealth of the empire was being spent on foreign and imported consumable goods, resulting in a drain of resources and eventually a hollowing of the entire infrastructure . Of course, as an undergrad in History, I can tell there is a lot more to the story, but the point can be made. The US is in decline and things will get worse unless the country and it’s businesses find more substantial things to offer to the rest of the world besides credit cards, music, and hamburgers.
To ensure the US continues to lead in some fashion, businesses need to be more innovative and offer more creativity than is currently the case. Giants like Microsoft and Google are doing a good job, as are traditional corporations like Walmart. The typical American business should do more as well to lead the way. Especially now as the currency is declining and no longer a benchmark as countries like China cash out by unloading their investments in US currency because of it’s decade long instability. This creates a huge opportunity as devalued US currency means any goods and services offered to the rest of the world will essentially be cheaper to other countries. Now is a golden moment to begin to take your company’s offerings overseas because the Euro, Yen, and Pound will buy so much more.
If you have not thought about expanding recently, then now is the time to develop a plan and put it in motion.
Free Keyword Tools
I have always been efficient, some would say cheap, but I enjoy finding items with high value. Many times the highest value items are actually, yes, free.
In working on ways to optimize campaigns for clients, I like to look through as many resources as possible and that includes find good information without having to needlessly waste a client’s money. Whether a business owner, decision maker, or fellow manager, I am sure many can appreciate that outlook.
In fulfilling that philosophy with some actionable information, here are some good keyword tools that I have found that give great information for analyzing what content is best used in marketing products. Each provides information in a different format which can prove to be very useful. If you have not already used these, then enjoy!
Google Trends: http://google.com/trends
Google Keyword Tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
SEO Book: http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/index.php
Trellian Keyword Discovery: http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
Using the ROI Tracker on PriceGrabber
Many of the comparison shopping engines have ROI trackers that can be inserted and used to track results. For merchants who do not have either a great analytics package, or perhaps not the fortitude to drill down through many different layers, installing the CSE’s ROI tracking code can be a great window into what is performing and what is tanking.
I am writing about PriceGrabber because installing their code offers more benefit than just visibility into clicks and sales. Using this tracking code, PriceGrabber’s account managers can gain additional visibility through their internal systems to help optimize traffic coming to the merchant.
One additional benefit is being able to manage affiliate site traffic going to the merchant. As has been pointed before in previous postings and comments, comparison shopping engines use their own affiliate networks to pull in traffic to their merchants. PriceGrabber reaches out to a wide audience, including an international segment through sites like PrecioMania.com. Increasingly I am becoming an evangelist for reaching to an international audience. In working with on client recently, one of PriceGrabber’s account managers was able to determine while a lot of traffic was coming through the international arm of the PriceGrabber, the results were not in line with expectations. The account manager was able to redistribute traffic through their network to cut out poor performing traffic sources.
This additional layer of tuning to cater to online demographics relative to the merchant is just one great benefit to installing PriceGrabber’s code. I encourage each merchant out there to carefully consider implementing third party code on their site, but this is one case where I encourage it as the cost to benefit ratio clearly supports addition of this tool.
Back in Business!
For everyone who has checked this site recently, you may have noticed it has been down for a few days now. I just wanted to send a quick apology and let you know the site is back up and online.
I suppose every challenge has a lesson and a huge one stands out to me, back up your files!
It’s odd how dependant we get just expecting things to go right. A few months ago my laptop crashed and burned and after this episode, I am even more keenly aware of how important it is to keep a back up of everything.
For the first time in the history of Channel Dollars, I am making a specific product recommendation, and that is the Western Digital External Harddrive. I picked up the 160GB version for under $90, and the investment is well worth it in terms of piece of mind and just plain ease of use. The only additional thought is after this, I may recommend the 1TB version depending on your needs.
Read the Directions: Optimizing on Shopping.com
You know, invariably I sometimes fall into the stereotype of the person who does not want to read the directions, but instead wants to just jump in and start finding my own way, and blaze my own path.
Well, that’s great in terms of creativity, but it’s also essential in planning and preparation to read the instruction manual. Such is the case with Shopping.com. A while ago, I was reviewing their materials and came across an important piece in optimizing product titles.
Shopping.com has built their systems to scan product titles by looking for the brand or manufacturer in the first portion of the product title, for a description of item in the middle of the product title, and then the product type at the end of the title.
Lifted straight from Shopping.com’s instructions, you can find the following breakdown:
The best product title structure: [”Product Brand” “Descriptive Copy” “Product Type”]
According to Shopping, here are some examples of good product names that follow this structure:
Nike Shox Turboz Running Shoe
McCartney “Proud American” Dog Breed T-Shirt
Marvel Heroes Chess Set
Spalding Official Size Top Flite 100 Basketball
I have been using this strartegy for a while and have seen excellent results. Different structures will vary in effectiveness on different channels, but in general what works for one channel will in many cases work for others. If, as a merchant you have not tried structuring your titles like this on Shopping’s comparison shopping engine, I encourage you to give it a try and watch your improvement. Simple adjustments like this in product content can make all the difference in seeing excellent results or just getting lucky with what you already have.
Building Focused Traffic Using Comparison Shopping Engines and Marketplaces
As a quick reference, I put together another post for the Mercent Blog that I think is worth checking out.
The main point is that if you are not focused on using Google Adwords and organic search results on Google to build traffic, in many ways the comparison shopping engines and Amazon will do the job for you. Check out more here:
http://blog.mercent.com/posts/2008/02/marketing-using.html
Solution Providers and Alternatives for Management of Shopping Comparison Engines and Marketplaces
Getting back on topic for a few minutes, I wanted to put together a quick list of companies who specialize in helping merchants to manage and optimize shopping comparison engines aka CSEs, and other marketplaces. Several companies offer this as an additional service, but I have not seen a specific list out there of firms who specialize in this, so I thought this would help.
Going alphabetically:
ChannelAdvisor : Provides self service tool and full service marketing and account management. Several options available. Based in Morrisville, NC.
ChannelIntelligence : Provides self service tool and full service marketing and account management. Several options available. Based in Celebration, FL.
Mercent : Provides self service tool and full service marketing, agency and account management. Several options available. Based in Seattle, WA.
MerchantAdvanatage : Provides self service tool. Based in Miami, FL.
SingleFeed : Provides self service tool. Based out of Silicon Valley.
If I missed anyone, or if anyone would like to leave comments to provide more options and information, please feel free to do so.
All of these solutions differ in places and I would encourage anyone considering these to investigate details such as average returns, supported engines, details on analytics and tracking, additional options or add ons, and costumer references.
Hope this helps for companies looking for solution providers in the growing space of e-commerce management and marketing services.
E-commerce Fraud Alert
As a merchant, nothing is more frustrating than shipping out a product and ultimately not getting paid for it. For every merchant who has been pulling out their hair because someone got a free ride through a fraudulent order, then this list may help.
The following list was compiled by CyberSource in partnership with MindWave Research lists the riskiest American cities and countries to do business with:
4 Riskiest American Cities for Online Fraud:
1. Miami
2. New York City
3. Los Angeles
4. Chicago
Riskiest Countries for Online Fraud:
1. Nigeria
2. United Kingdom
3. Ghana
4. Indonesia
5. China tied with Singapore
One of the articles pushing this information mentioned Russia has fallen off the list for the first time in 2 years, most likely because merchants are no longer taking orders from this country.
The next question that comes to mind is, “Then who is still shipping to Nigeria ?!?”
Good luck. From what I understand, the late dictator of Nigeria, General Sanni Abacha, is still trying get his $80 Million out of the country. Perhaps his family should try buying a few things online?
Wake Up
You know, sometimes you reach a point where you need to say something, maybe for some good, maybe just to vent.
I thought it was worth noting how the rumors I had seen for a week or so actually materialized pretty much exactly as reported on blogs and sites: Yahoo going down, Meg going out, and who knows what else. Lately it seems like all you can read about is how horrible 2008 is going to be for the economy (at least here it the US).
Anyone heard of the phrase, ’self determination’?
The more I read overall, the more sensitive I am to how great the whole online community, or perhaps the whole cultural consciousness is at prediciting events. A couple of years ago all you heard about was how the real estate market was heading downward, and it did. Now you see constant gripping about what a cold spell we are heading for.
Shining examples can be seen at Where Has All the Tech Sector Optimism Gone?, by Erika Morphy. Also check out today’s article by CNNMoney Editor, Paul La Monica, The Fed’s Stagflation Fear. That’s right stagflation, as in inflation combing with recession like Voltron to make stagflation, giving us a rosy future of counting pennies in 2008.
Hopefully, we will still be able to afford a Heineken for less than $10 a bottle because the price of gas could get so high, it could take $8 in transportation costs just to get the thing to the grocery store, and really my American dollars don’t do much in Euros anymore for the German bottler who needs more from us Americans.
To put this in perspective, there is an interesting project I heard about recently. Researchers are using bots to scan the internet, and then aggregate this information as a predictor of short term future (see UrbanSurvival.com, rated Forbes Best of the Web).
At first this sounds kind of mystical, but it’s not. When you consider we are determining our path as a group of individuals working collectively, then if you want to get a litmus test on the group, what better place to do so than on the internet? This actually makes a ton of sense, just like you hear rumblings of war before Germany invades Poland, or calls for change before the counter culture movements of the 1960’s, or seismic tremors before an earthquake or volcanic eruption.
If you are still reading at this point, then you may be saying, ’so what’? Or perhaps you are just disregarding this as a cycle out of your control. Nope, negative, get over that, grow up.
The problem is we have been building towards this for years. I burned out my credit cards after college. And what about everyone who cashed-out on their mortgage and blew the money? How about sub-prime lending? Back in 2004, I spent a week working at a Miami mortgage brokers office and personally saw the most reprehensible and unethical behavior I could imagine in business. The actions building up to this are all around, and we each have taken a small part in it.
Lastly, perhaps you missed this WallStreet Journal Article, Dire Year on WallStreet Yeilds Gigantic Bonuses. If you missed this, like most people did, let me show you the math for 2007. The big five firms, Goldman Sachs Group, Morgan Stanley, Merill Lynch, Lehman Brothers Holdings and Bear Stearns together produced the following numbers:
2007 Combined Profit: $11 Billion
2007 Combined Losses by Shareholders: $80 Billion
2007 Bonuses Paid to Executives: $39 Billion
Read that again, they paid more in bonuses than they made in profit.
The lesson is simple, we are all combining our actions to put ourselves into a huge hole. For years we have been looking to cash out, run up huge bills, finance everything, save nothing, and like the Federal Government, not worry too much about the bottom line. After all, things just keep getting better right? Just worry about you right?
Well, if you have followed me this far, then follow me to the end and wake up.
We can all do something about this piece by piece, one part at a time. 2008 does not have to be a horrible year. The reason I got into e-commerce was because it is a growth industry, constantly expanding. I am personally not going to pack it in. Each of us needs to strive to make things better. Maybe it’s by saving, maybe it’s by bringing that new innovative idea that will help your company produce profits in a new way, maybe it’s by getting out and volunteering for the presidential candidate of your choice. Whatever it is, make a decision, and do it. There are infinite ways to do something right now, but all of us need to realize that we can and we want to change this.
Wake up.
