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The Ecommerce Blogroll: The Weekly Report for June 24
Posted 24 Jun 2009 by Noreen Vincent | Tags: Ecommerce, Ecommerce solutions, ecommerce Strategy, Facebook, Facebook Connect, multi-channel, Retail, Shopping, social shopping

It's time for the weekly blogroll!  Here's a look at my favorite ecommerce blog posts from this week.  I've covered concepts such as social / community, store locators, blogs, and a link to a blog on the results from a recent survey of online shoppers that looks at what triggers drive their purchase behavior. Read more ...

Top 5 Ecommerce Blogs for Top 500 Retailers
Posted 19 May 2009 by Adam Michelson | Tags: Ecommerce, ecommerce Strategy, Magento

My retail clients often ask me which blogs I follow.  So, I thought it would be helpful to share with everyone the blogs that I find most useful to stay current.  There are a significant number of blogs that are helpful to eBay merchants, and a large number of news repeaters, but a surprisingly few number that provide true insight into the needs of larger retailers. I will leave you with my list I and welcome you to share your Top Ecommerce Blogs in the comment section below.  I'm hoping that you will help me find a few that may change my top 5. Read more ...

Ecommerce Interview: Adding Community for Maximum Return an Interview with Adam Michelson
Posted 23 Jun 2009 by Noreen Vincent | Tags: Community, Ecommerce, Ecommerce solutions, ecommerce Strategy, Facebook, Facebook Connect

We recently had some time to talk to Adam Michelson, Director of Ecommerce at Optaros, to hear what he is seeing with large retail clients and how they are experiencing the impact (increased traffic, conversion rates and order size) of adding community to their existing online stores. We hope you find this interview interesting and offers ideas around how you could add community to your online store. Here is a quick recap on what is covered in our interview with Adam: Read more ...

Ecommerce Blogroll: The Weekly Report for June 17
Posted 17 Jun 2009 by Noreen Vincent | Tags: Blogs, Cloud, Ecommerce, ecommerce Strategy, Re-platforming, Retail, Shopping, Social Networking, social shopping

You know how bloggers have a blogroll on one of their sidebars, giving you a little insight into what bloggers deem to have a voice of authority?  Well, I have been keeping an eye on some of the blogs that my favorite bloggers recommend, and decided to share my thoughts on the posts from these voices of authority I found most interesting this week. Things that made me go "hmmm..." The Weekly Report:  Ecommerce Blog(s) Roll 1.      Father's Day Online Shoppers Ready to Buy Read more ...

Magento performance in the cloud
Posted 12 Jun 2009 by Adam Michelson | Tags: Cloud, Ecommerce, Ecommerce solutions

We have been performance testing Magento in the Amazon EC2 cloud lately (Eric Shea, from Optaros has been spearheading this from our side and has lots more information on the subject). But just to share, here is what we found: The optimal cloud environment setup for our tests was: Read more ...

TurnTo, Fluid Social, Facebook Connect & Social Shopping
Posted 03 Jun 2009 by Marc Osofsky | Tags: Ecommerce, Ecommerce solutions, ecommerce Strategy, Facebook, Facebook Connect, social shopping

We've been talking a lot with our retail clients about how to effectively add content and community aspects to their commerce sites to increase traffic, conversion rates and average order size.  Yesterday the WSJ had a great piece on Target adding content and today they covered the top community aspect being considered by many retailers - Facebook Connect.    Read more ...

Target Adds Content from DailyCandy to Drive Traffic
Posted 02 Jun 2009 by Marc Osofsky | Tags: Ecommerce, Ecommerce solutions, ecommerce Strategy, Marketing, Retail

Great piece in the WSJ on how Target is adding content to it's ecommerce site from DailyCandy to increase traffic.  Conventional ecommerce wisdom was that buyers only come to the site when they have an intent to purchase.  Therefore, content would only distract potential buyers and reduce conversion rates.  Sucharita Mulpuru from Forrester states this conventional wisdom well in the article, The idea back in the dot-com heyday was that you could use content to drive people to commerce," Ms. Read more ...

3 New Ecommerce Funnels: Part 1
Posted 21 May 2009 by Marc Osofsky | Tags: Ecommerce, Ecommerce solutions, ecommerce Strategy, Marketing

A lot of our ecommerce clients are expressing frustration with their current approaches to drive traffic to their sites. Nearly all are currently spreading their dollars across paid search, email and affiliates. The effectiveness of all 3 are generally declining and the cost per converted customer is going up. But most retailers are unaware of viable alternatives.There are 3 new ecommerce funnels that have been proven to work. I will describe the first one here and as soon as I get a chance I will post the other 2. Please add your own new ecommerce funnels in the comments. Read more ...

Calendar Marketing - the new email marketing for retailers
Posted 20 May 2009 by Marc Osofsky | Tags: application syndication, Ecommerce, ecommerce Strategy, Marketing, oview, Retail

Retailers use email to reach customers at their desktops to try and get them to return to the store to buy. The effectiveness of this tactic is on the decline, largely because: Read more ...

Social Commerce
Posted 02 Mar 2009 by Noel Heaney | Tags: Ecommerce, ecommerce Strategy, Retail, Shopping, Social Networking

Last week I attend the first part of a workshop in London hosted by IMRG to focus on driving sales through the use of Social Commerce (checkout their website for further details). The event was very well attended with a number of excellent guest speakers. Below are my observations of what I see as the key take aways and areas for business to consider with respect to this topic. Details of the event and the speakers can be found at the bottom. Read more ...

Open Source Year 2008 in Review: More Adoption, Success, Innovation, and Alternatives
Posted 21 Dec 2008 by Bruno von Rotz | Tags: Acquia, Acquisition, Ajax, Alfresco, CIO, Community, Content Management, CRM, Customer Relationship Management, DiSo, Django, Drupal, ECM, Ecommerce, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Open Source Directory, EOS, Europe, iPhone, IT Strategy, Java, JBoss, Liferay, Magento, MySQL, Open, Open Source, Open Source Katalog, OpenID, Portal, RIA, Spring, SpringSource, Sugar CRM, Yahoo!

2008 was an important year for Open Source and a successful one in addition. We have seen more adoption, more commercial success, more innovation, more collaboration and more options for the IT buyer. And it’s not the end, more success is still to come. The following paragraphs are summarizing what we have seen in the last 12 months.Accelerated Adoption of Open Source Read more ...

Open Source ecommerce – OXID, another significant OSS storefront platform
Posted 02 Nov 2008 by Adam Michelson | Tags: Ecommerce, eTail, Magento, OFBiz, Open Source, osCommerce, Retail

There is a new and exciting entrant in the open source software (OSS) ecommerce market. OXID (http://www.oxid-esales.com), a leading ecommerce solution out of Germany has announced that it is releasing an open source version (http://www.oxid-esales.com/en/news/blog#). The ecommerce storefront is certainly not a new concept. Read more ...

Website Application Design - Milkshake Usability Part 1
Posted 08 Jul 2008 by Drew Mattke | Tags: Analysis, Demographics, Design, Ecommerce, ecommerce Strategy, eTail, Marketing, Personas, Retail, Shopping, User Experience, User-Centered Design

Usability and milkshakes: Need to sell more widgets? To answer this question the first challenge is to know why your customers want to buy them. Don't assume you already know. Read more ...

Content Management in the Age of User Participation - Presentation
Posted 20 Jun 2008 by John Eckman | Tags: Alfresco, Amateur, Collective Intelligence, Community, Conference, Content Management, content syndication, Culture, Direct Consumer Engagement, Drupal, Ecommerce, Enterprise 2.0, Facebook, Knowledge Management, Media and Publishing, Next Generation CRM, Open, Open Source, Social Networking, Syndication, User Experience, User Generated Content, Web 2.0, WordPress

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to present at Web Content 2008 on user generated content and the impact it has on content management.The presentation is called "Tag, Upload, Share, Discuss: Content Management in the Age of User Participaiton" - you can view it below, or download the PDF at slideshare.   Read more ...

Ecommerce Strategy - Customer Loyalty Basics
Posted 17 Jun 2008 by Adam Michelson | Tags: Customer Relationship Management, Ecommerce, ecommerce Strategy, Retail, Shopping, Strategy, Web 2.0

Ecommerce success requires innovation and solid execution. The top question we get today regarding innovation is as follows: "We've done product ratings and reviews, what social shopping features should we implement in 2009?" To help our clients answer this question we developed the 2009 Social Ecommerce Guide Read more ...

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