Thursday, June 20, 2013

Catalog Retailers Lead in Online Conversion

Catalog and call-center retailers outperform retail chains, manufacturers and web-only retailers in one important e-commerce metric: conversion rate. That's according to data from the "2013 Internet Retailer Top 500" guide. As a group, catalog and call-center retailers had the highest average conversion rate of 5.1% in 2012, an improvement from 4.7% in 2011. In fact, they have consistently held the highest average conversion rate among the merchant types in the 10 years since Internet Retailer published its first guide to e-commerce. One reason for the higher conversion is that these retailers typically send catalogs focused on specific products, such as gifts or pet supplies, to consumers who buy those products and so intend to make a purchase when they visit the retailer’s e-commerce site. For more, see the Internet Retailer story at http://www.internetretailer.com/2013/04/29/catalogers-book-highest-conversion-rate-top-500

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Online Shoppers Need More Info to Trigger Buys

If you want online shoppers to purchase, you need to offer them a lot more information from a lot more channels than in the past. A recent Multichannel Merchant article from ExactTarget made that point with a quote from ExactTarget’s President of Convince & Convert Jay Baer: “According to research conducted by Google, in 2010, consumers needed 5.3 sources of information before making a purchase. In 2011, just one year later, they needed 10.4 sources. In just 12 months, the amount of information needed to pull the ‘buying trigger’ doubled. Why? Are we less decisive? More risk adverse? No. We need more information because we have more information.” The article suggests that one solution to the rising demand for information is "cross-channel marketing," meaning building marketing strategies that enable you to interact with consumers across the channels that consumers use most. Some ideas with informative/engagement impact include e-mailed in-store receipts, Facebook opt-in campaigns, digital alerts on new pricing, new models or low inventory. For more, see the article at http://multichannelmerchant.com/lists/how-to-spring-clean-with-customer-acquisition-23042013/