I was going through many articles related to 'Online Shopping' or 'Best Online Selling' techniques. And every article was telling how important Online Marketing has become as it not only scale-up your business but also spread your customer base with more shelf life and customisation. Here is the crux -
1.Matching Buyer Intentions and Merchant Goals: Sell more items by making sure your customers can find what they’re looking for, and what you want to sell them. Dynamic product refinements help them in makng decisions basis on their criterias that are most important to them: price; color; brand; style; or even customer rating.
2. Get in the Zone: Enhance usability and sales with right way product positioning/placement on the website.
3. Up-Sell: Increase margins with up-selling and provide best product with high pricing.
4. Cross-Sell: Increase shopping cart size with cross-selling.
5. Promote free shipping, sales and other special offers with strategically placed banners.
6. Make it Easy for Them to Buy: Create a more targeted shopping experience with dynamic landing pages.
7. Promote YOUR Best Choices: Promote specific products within search and browse results.
8.Let Your Products Merchandise Themselves: Promote products based on results, not behavior.
9.Merchandise by the Numbers: Promote products based on business rules and sales metrics.
10. Know your Customer: Base promotions on customer segmentation, know from where they are coming. what particular pages they are visiting, leakage point, products in which they are interested, past purchase history.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
6.Online Merchandising - The base of the business
So what exactly is a merchandising strategy?
(An interesting article by Simon Rodrigue)
It can be broken down to three key components – offering (the products / services that you offer), value (value proposition to the consumer) and content (how are you offering the products / services to the consumer). Depending on your customer demographics and target market the three components will adjust to present the optimal offering to the marketplace. In this post I am going to focus on developing a strategy for a product based business at a very high level by going into a discussion on each of the three before mentioned areas.
1.Offering
Your product / service offering is your understanding of what you want to be and it can really be defined in two simple strategies that will have many different variations, but are really defined by the breath and depth of the product / service offering.
A) Specialty: In this strategy you are seen as an expert in a defined space, this could be as wide of a category like automotive or electronics (a Category Killer) or as focused as high performance tires or audio/video networking (Niche Player). With this strategy you are positioning yourself as an expert in the space, the more defined your product offering the more you should be positioning yourself as an expert and provide the user the tools, functionality and content. Most important is the depth of your offering, consumers will expect that you are providing them access to an offering that meets their needs and provides them with the innovation and the hard to find products in the space. A successful Specialty Player will be able to service any consumer request, this may not mean tens of thousands of products but it means that you need to have an understanding of what you are to your consumers and meet these needs. A Category Killer will have a strong breadth and depth in their space but the Niche Player will often have a dominate position in the smaller space they play in.
B) Mass Market: In this strategy you will have a strong breath and but a smaller depth of offering. If you choose this route you are telling the consumer that you are the single resource for the majority of their purchases but not all of them. Being a Mass Market player does not mean that you can't have a focused strategy but it will be very widely focus. The difference between a focused Mass Market player and a Category Killer is the length the business goes to positions themselves as experts in the space. For example Sears would be considered a Mass Market player focused on the Home but The Home Depot would be considered a Category Killer in the Home space because of the commitment to leadership in the space through know-how, customer service and brand leadership. In this space your strategy is defined by a multitude of products, a strong breadth of products across all categories and typically these business have hundreds of thousands of products available for purchase.
C) The one variation that is emerging in the offering space is that of the Hybrid Mass Category Killer. Amazon.com is a great example of this as they continue to build great breadth (with over 41 different product categories) and incredible depth within these categories. It is important to understand and watch this evolution as the mass of the business can be a threat to not only the other Mass Market players but the highly targeted Niche business as a business in this Hybrid Mass Category Killer can have millions of products available and incredible depth within their categories.
2.Value
Defining your value to the consumer is critical to the long term success. This does not mean price but the overall value proposition to the consumer. Price is a key component but value is the overall package you are providing your consumer and it is important to review the different aspects that change this proposition:
(An interesting article by Simon Rodrigue)
It can be broken down to three key components – offering (the products / services that you offer), value (value proposition to the consumer) and content (how are you offering the products / services to the consumer). Depending on your customer demographics and target market the three components will adjust to present the optimal offering to the marketplace. In this post I am going to focus on developing a strategy for a product based business at a very high level by going into a discussion on each of the three before mentioned areas.
1.Offering
Your product / service offering is your understanding of what you want to be and it can really be defined in two simple strategies that will have many different variations, but are really defined by the breath and depth of the product / service offering.
A) Specialty: In this strategy you are seen as an expert in a defined space, this could be as wide of a category like automotive or electronics (a Category Killer) or as focused as high performance tires or audio/video networking (Niche Player). With this strategy you are positioning yourself as an expert in the space, the more defined your product offering the more you should be positioning yourself as an expert and provide the user the tools, functionality and content. Most important is the depth of your offering, consumers will expect that you are providing them access to an offering that meets their needs and provides them with the innovation and the hard to find products in the space. A successful Specialty Player will be able to service any consumer request, this may not mean tens of thousands of products but it means that you need to have an understanding of what you are to your consumers and meet these needs. A Category Killer will have a strong breadth and depth in their space but the Niche Player will often have a dominate position in the smaller space they play in.
B) Mass Market: In this strategy you will have a strong breath and but a smaller depth of offering. If you choose this route you are telling the consumer that you are the single resource for the majority of their purchases but not all of them. Being a Mass Market player does not mean that you can't have a focused strategy but it will be very widely focus. The difference between a focused Mass Market player and a Category Killer is the length the business goes to positions themselves as experts in the space. For example Sears would be considered a Mass Market player focused on the Home but The Home Depot would be considered a Category Killer in the Home space because of the commitment to leadership in the space through know-how, customer service and brand leadership. In this space your strategy is defined by a multitude of products, a strong breadth of products across all categories and typically these business have hundreds of thousands of products available for purchase.
C) The one variation that is emerging in the offering space is that of the Hybrid Mass Category Killer. Amazon.com is a great example of this as they continue to build great breadth (with over 41 different product categories) and incredible depth within these categories. It is important to understand and watch this evolution as the mass of the business can be a threat to not only the other Mass Market players but the highly targeted Niche business as a business in this Hybrid Mass Category Killer can have millions of products available and incredible depth within their categories.
2.Value
Defining your value to the consumer is critical to the long term success. This does not mean price but the overall value proposition to the consumer. Price is a key component but value is the overall package you are providing your consumer and it is important to review the different aspects that change this proposition:
- What is the return policy, how easy it is for a consumer to return a product that is defective or unsuitable, what risk is being put on the consumer?
- How can the consumer purchase the product and what payment options are available to them?
- Is it easy for the consumer to purchase the product, are services offered during the purchase process, do they fully understand what they are purchasing?
- What warranty options are available for the consumer to protect their purchase, are these included or are they an additional charge?
- How is the product delivered, can additional services like next day shipping, installation or white glove services be purchased?
- Is the purchase / delivery process considered a positive experience, something that they feel that cannot get anywhere else?
These are some of the key questions and depending on what the products are that are being sold many more can be asked, when defining the value proposition it is key that you spend time in understanding the answers to all of these questions. If you do then you can clearly communicate them to the customer so they understand them. When it comes to defining the pricing piece to the value proposition it is key that these questions are answered first as they will influence the price that the marketplace is willing to accept.
At a general level the more mass your offering the more of a price leadership position you will need to take in the market place, as a Niche Player with a strong answers to the above questions customers will be willing to pay more for the offering as they place a value on the overall product offering not just the best price on the product. Again the Internet does present a challenge as consumers can quickly move from site to site to find the best price once they have determined the product they want to purchase but if you are providing a strong value proposition as a niche player you can overcome the price leadership that some of the Mass Market players offer, as well the depth of your offering will provide access to products that may not be available elsewhere which provide a considerable value advantage over other players. This is where the Hybrid Mass Category Killer can again show dominance as the size of the business combined with the breadth and depth of the offering can provide a power value proposition to consumers.
3.Content- This is akin to product / visual merchandising in retail stores, the "how is the product / offering presented to the consumer?", but in the online world this consists more of the level of information and other tools that are provided. When looking at the first two components it is critical that you then understand how your consumer will interact with your site and ultimately purchase the offering. Depending on what the product category is you will need to understand what different informational criteria are required, these can range from basic product information and specs, to detail product summaries, multiple images, 3D views, videos, and professional opinions as well as consumer generated content and reviews. This can begin to blur with the site's User Experience strategy which is not necessary a bad thing as it is the products and how consumers shop them that are critical to the overall success of the site and therefore the business. When defining this piece to the puzzle take time to understand how consumers shop your proposed offering, how the competitors are merchandising their sites and what innovations are going on in other product categories. Versus the other two components this is one that can change more often as you learn from your consumers and the overall industry and your site evolves.
Source - http://knol.google.com/k/simon-rodrigue/online-merchandising/1cn4gmfa4efug/2#
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
5.Basic Internet Terms
- Above the Fold - The section of a web page that is visible without scrolling. This section varies by the resolution settings on your (or anyone's) monitor.
Top Sites - Top sites are websites for which visitors can vote in a ranking system generally showing on a Top Site System listing multiple websites in order of 'rank' (number of votes or highest votes).
Unique IP - Generally used to distinguish between repeat visitors and unique visitors based on the IP address of the visitor's computer.
Visit - A view of a web page or uninterrupted views of web pages within the same website, regardless of length of time spent looking at the web page or pages viewed within the same website.
Flash Banner - A flash banner is a graphic ad that uses Macromedia technology to create image / text movement within the advertisement.
Animated Banner - A banner that is not a single image. Generally animated banners are .GIF files (image files) that use "graphic frames" to cause the banner image and / or text to "change" as it's being viewed.
Frame - Frame, when used in relation to web browser windows, is an HTML element that allows multiple parts of websites or multiple websites within the same browser window. For example, frames can allow a person to see something from two websites at the same time within the same window.
Click-thru (through) - A click-thru is the action of someone clicking on an advertisement that takes them to a web page.
CPC - Cost Per Click. How much is paid per click on a text ad, banner ad, search engine result, etc.
CPM - Cost Per Thousand - How much is paid per 1,000 of impressions. For instance, a $.01 per visit campaign would mean a cost of $10.00 for one thousand visitors.
CTR - Click Through Rate - Most often used for measuring an ads effectiveness. For instance, a banner ad with a 1% CTR would mean that out of every 100 impressions, the banner was clicked on 1 time.
PPC - Pay Per Click - The amount that is paid for each click on a banner, text ad or search engine listing.
Exit Ad - An advertisement or complete web page that is shown to a visitor after they leave a web page.
Ezine - Online newsletters, magazines and other publications that are emailed to subscribers are often called ezines.
Floating Ad - A floating ad is a graphic image that moves over a web page instead of being in the same place all the time
Hit - A "hit" is NOT a "visit". A hit is the term for a file being requested from a webserver. For instance, if you have 3 images on 1 page, you will get 4 "hits". This is because there is 1 hit for each image (3), and 1 hit for the yourpage.html (1) = four (4) hits.
Hit Exchange - Contrary to the actual definition of the word "hit" (above), a hit exchange is actually an exchange of web page visits.
HTML Email - An email message that instead of just showing text, can show banners, graphics, an entire web page, etc.
Impression - In relation to advertising, an impression is a banner or a text ad display. 1 person viewing the banner or text ad counts as 1 impression.
Pop-Under - A pop-under is a browser window containing an ad or web page that automatically displays under another web page when the original web page is loaded (visited). A pop-under can immediately load, or be timed to load after a specific number of seconds.
Pop-Up - A pop-up is a browser window containing an ad or web page that automatically displays over another web page when the original web page is loaded (visited). A pop-up can immediately load, or be timed to load after a specific number of seconds.
Reciprocal Link - A link traded (eg. a link on one web page in exchange for a link on another web page)
Robot - In relation to search engines, a robot is a program that gathers web pages for indexing (organizing) within search engine results. "Many search engines use programs called robots to gather web pages for indexing. These programs are not limited to a pre-defined list of web pages, they can follow links on pages they find, which makes them a form of intelligent agent. The process of following links is called spidering, wandering, or gathering."
ROI - Return on Investment. Arguably the most important factor in advertising, Return on Investment is the calculation of how much return (money) is earned from an advertising campaign (investment).
SEO - Search Engine Optimization. In the most simplest terms: Using coding and text in an effort to get the best possible search engine results.
Spider - Process of a search engine program (see robot) reading a web page coding.
Start Page - Start Page (also known as Home Page) is the first page (URL) that is viewed when an internet user starts their web browser. By default, for instance, the Home Page is generally the main page of your ISP (Internet Service Provider) such as MSN.com, AOL.com, Juno.com, etc.
Target Ads - Ads that are shown only to viewers in a particular category or geographic location.
Top Sites - Top sites are websites for which visitors can vote in a ranking system generally showing on a Top Site System listing multiple websites in order of 'rank' (number of votes or highest votes).
Unique IP - Generally used to distinguish between repeat visitors and unique visitors based on the IP address of the visitor's computer.
Visit - A view of a web page or uninterrupted views of web pages within the same website, regardless of length of time spent looking at the web page or pages viewed within the same website.
Text Ad - An ad that contains no graphics. Generally text ads are manditated by a limit on characters and can be automatically formatted to link to a URL or include a linked word (words) that when clicked take a person to a URL. - Source - http://www.trafficalliance.com/basic_terms.php
4.Ask yourself ?
At the start of an ad campaign, we should try to answer these queries before starting any campaign:
1.What is your business?The preliminary things you ned to understand is the industry and your business.
2.The purpose of your web ad campaign - Exact purpose of your campaign. What will the banner promote... products, services?
3.Whom do you want to target? Knowing the audience well is of prime importance in creating a rewarding banner campaign. The audience can be people from the same industry or a more general group.
4. Web site URL
5. Research & analysis of some of your competitors' web site URLs & promotion style
1.What is your business?The preliminary things you ned to understand is the industry and your business.
2.The purpose of your web ad campaign - Exact purpose of your campaign. What will the banner promote... products, services?
3.Whom do you want to target? Knowing the audience well is of prime importance in creating a rewarding banner campaign. The audience can be people from the same industry or a more general group.
4. Web site URL
5. Research & analysis of some of your competitors' web site URLs & promotion style
3.Banners - An Effective Online Advertisemnt Tool !!
I am sure while surfing net, we all have noticed banners on the webpages. Yes right..that flashy rectangular shape either on the top right side of the webpage or in the side known as sky scrapers. So lets try to know more about banners.
Banners are those advertisement tools which can help you in either promoting your website, particular offer or any specific communiation. A click on this banner would result into a landing page or a website.
So here are some of the important terms which will help in knowing more about banners:
Standard Banner - Standard banner generally refers to the graphic size (measured in pixels) of the most common graphic-based image (banner) of 468 pixels in width and 60 pixels in height (468 x 60).
What is a banner impression?
Banner impression measures the number of times the banner is displayed, either on a web page or in a separate browser window as a pop-up or pop-under advertisement. Thus, 1000 impressions mean that the banner has been displayed 1000 times.
What is CPM?Cost Per thousand iMpressions is an effective method of pricing web banner ads. It is the cost for displaying a banner 1000 times. Thus, if a banner ad space has a CPM of $10, it means that the cost of displaying a banner space one thousand times on that space is $10.
What is CTR?
Click Through Ratio determines the effectiveness of a banner ad in terms of click-thrus. It is a ratio of the number of times the banner was clicked on by the viewer and the number of times the banner was displayed. Thus, if a banner has been displayed 1000 times and has been clicked 50 times, its CTR is 50:1000 or 1:20. Changing this CTR into a percentage value yields 5% (1/20 * 100); thus, 5% of the impressions have lead to clicks on the banner.
CPC - Cost Per Click. How much is paid per click on a text ad, banner ad, search engine result, etc.
CPM - Cost Per Thousand - How much is paid per 1,000 of impressions. For instance, a $.01 per visit campaign would mean a cost of $10.00 for one thousand visitors.
CTR - Click Through Rate - Most often used for measuring an ads effectiveness. For instance, a banner ad with a 1% CTR would mean that out of every 100 impressions, the banner was clicked on 1 time.
PPC - Pay Per Click - The amount that is paid for each click on a banner, text ad or search engine listing.
Types of banners -We classify web banners in three categories:
o Flash banners
o Animated gif banners
o Static and interactive banners
Animated (Flash and .GIF), static (.GIF and .JPG) and interactive (Flash, HTML, JavaScript, CGI) web banners for several successful banner ad campaigns.
Flash Banners - Statistically, Flash banners result in higher click-thru rates than other banners. This is attributed to smooth animation and special effects that can be developed in Flash. Though Flash banners may involve a lot of animation, their file sizes are relatively small, as compared to the corresponding animated gif web banners. Also, the animation is much smoother that animated gifs. This is due to the inherent nature of Flash, which is a vector-based program. Furthermore, flash banners can be made interactive, responding to mouse-clicks and mouse-overs.
Composite banners contain graphic elements and HTML code. Graphic elements can be gif, jpg images or flash movies. HTML code is embedded in such composite banners to either bring interactivity or to display HTML form elements such as drop down menus, radio buttons, checkboxes etc.
Static Banner - A banner that is a single image which does not use frames, flash or graphics / text that moves via an animated .gif file.
Source - simplygraphix.com & trafficalliance.com
Banners are those advertisement tools which can help you in either promoting your website, particular offer or any specific communiation. A click on this banner would result into a landing page or a website.
So here are some of the important terms which will help in knowing more about banners:
Standard Banner - Standard banner generally refers to the graphic size (measured in pixels) of the most common graphic-based image (banner) of 468 pixels in width and 60 pixels in height (468 x 60).
What is a banner impression?
Banner impression measures the number of times the banner is displayed, either on a web page or in a separate browser window as a pop-up or pop-under advertisement. Thus, 1000 impressions mean that the banner has been displayed 1000 times.
What is CPM?Cost Per thousand iMpressions is an effective method of pricing web banner ads. It is the cost for displaying a banner 1000 times. Thus, if a banner ad space has a CPM of $10, it means that the cost of displaying a banner space one thousand times on that space is $10.
What is CTR?
Click Through Ratio determines the effectiveness of a banner ad in terms of click-thrus. It is a ratio of the number of times the banner was clicked on by the viewer and the number of times the banner was displayed. Thus, if a banner has been displayed 1000 times and has been clicked 50 times, its CTR is 50:1000 or 1:20. Changing this CTR into a percentage value yields 5% (1/20 * 100); thus, 5% of the impressions have lead to clicks on the banner.
CPC - Cost Per Click. How much is paid per click on a text ad, banner ad, search engine result, etc.
CPM - Cost Per Thousand - How much is paid per 1,000 of impressions. For instance, a $.01 per visit campaign would mean a cost of $10.00 for one thousand visitors.
CTR - Click Through Rate - Most often used for measuring an ads effectiveness. For instance, a banner ad with a 1% CTR would mean that out of every 100 impressions, the banner was clicked on 1 time.
PPC - Pay Per Click - The amount that is paid for each click on a banner, text ad or search engine listing.
Types of banners -We classify web banners in three categories:
o Flash banners
o Animated gif banners
o Static and interactive banners
Animated (Flash and .GIF), static (.GIF and .JPG) and interactive (Flash, HTML, JavaScript, CGI) web banners for several successful banner ad campaigns.
Flash Banners - Statistically, Flash banners result in higher click-thru rates than other banners. This is attributed to smooth animation and special effects that can be developed in Flash. Though Flash banners may involve a lot of animation, their file sizes are relatively small, as compared to the corresponding animated gif web banners. Also, the animation is much smoother that animated gifs. This is due to the inherent nature of Flash, which is a vector-based program. Furthermore, flash banners can be made interactive, responding to mouse-clicks and mouse-overs.
Composite banners contain graphic elements and HTML code. Graphic elements can be gif, jpg images or flash movies. HTML code is embedded in such composite banners to either bring interactivity or to display HTML form elements such as drop down menus, radio buttons, checkboxes etc.
Static Banner - A banner that is a single image which does not use frames, flash or graphics / text that moves via an animated .gif file.
Source - simplygraphix.com & trafficalliance.com
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