Shoddy Product Descriptions Hound Walmart
Think you can slap up a mediocre product description and no one will notice? Think again. Gamers have targeted Walmart for ridicule after the e-commerce giant published a shoddy product description of Diablo III. The original description touted the much-anticipated computer game as a "strategy video game" that revolves around an "interesting plot." Come on people. Part of the plot involves killing somebody's zombie wife and then snatching fuzzy boots...read more >>
It’s Never Too Late to Spring Clean Your Online Content
In the northern hemisphere, spring is already giving way to summer. However, that doesn't mean it's too late to do a little spring cleaning of your online content. Econsultancy has created a comprehensive guide to decluttering your online representation. Why should you audit your online content? Much like cleaning out your kitchen cupboards when locating the cinnamon becomes a herculean task, inventorying and reducing your available pages ensures...read more >>
Tablets: M-Commerce or Not?
A recent article on Internet Retailer talks about the debate over whether or not tablets should be counted as m-commerce. It's an interesting discussion and one that will continue to get more focus as m-commerce sales keep climbing. Industry studies show that tablet sales are currently included in m-commerce figures and are widely considered a mobile device among retailers. Mark Beccue, a senior analyst at ABI Research, argues that e-commerce that...read more >>
Costco Plans E-Commerce Makeover
Do profitable brick-and-mortar stores need e-commerce? Costco Wholesale thinks so. The country's second-largest retailer has announced plans to overhaul its e-commerce operations, according to a recent report in the Seattle Times. Costco.com already does $2 billion in online sales, but feels like it's falling behind competitors like Amazon and Walmart. "The stakes are very high. The growth of e-tail is far sharper than the growth of retail in general,...read more >>
Macy’s Explores the Lure of Themed Content
Macy's has reached into the annals of department store history with a recent promotion. Their Brazil-themed marketing push, which officially debuted April 22, mirrors decades-old department store promotions that sought to pull customers in with food, music, and a select set of products tied to a distant land. In Macy's case, that means store-in-store areas dubbed "O Mercado, The Market at Macy's" and a themed landing page on their site. (You can...read more >>
Content Merchandising Roundup #18
Below is a summary of the week's most interesting content merchandising-related posts from Content Ping as well as from other blogs and news sites. Happy reading. FROM CONTENT PING: Weekly Content Critique: Popdust Style's Pop-Up Fail This week's content critique takes a look at a failed attempt to create a celebrity pop-up store. Curata's Pewan Deshpande: Content Curation Content curation has become an important social tool used by companies to ignite...read more >>
When Your Hero Image Isn’t
A hero image is your webpage's lead and the hook that should sink into your reader to make them want more. Whether it's the lifestyle image in your site's header or the main image of a product description, your hero image should tell the reader why you're both there, why the page exists, and what the logical next step is. But what happens if your artfully shot, aspirational hero is just muddying your message? Get Elastic has a comprehensive guide...read more >>
Tips for On-Page SEO Optimization
Paddy Moogan of SEOmoz recently shared a must-read list on how to jump to the head of the class when it comes to on-page optimization for e-commerce websites. The items that stand out are the significance of customer reviews, quality images, product videos, social sharing, and product descriptions. We've touched on the importance of each of these on Content Ping, but thought this was a terrific list that really puts it in perspective when thinking...read more >>
Why You Should Offer Your Consumers a Social Login
It's a little like the chicken and the egg, except that us e-commerce folk have to decide: allow consumers to purchase incognito, or force them to create an account before they check out? The fear for the latter is that those consumers really will check out, and not in the sense of handing you money; the fear for the former is that you will be left after one purchase, forgotten and dataless. With the advent of the social age, this choice is neatly...read more >>
Worldwide, Online Spending Is Increasingly Mobile
This just in from Econsultancy: The Brits spend more of their disposable income online than any other European nation surveyed in WorldPay’s Global Online Shopper Report (and slightly more than US consumers). That little fact by itself is of no great consequence. What's more interesting is the direct correlation between online spending and smartphone purchasing. Chinese and Indian consumers spend the highest percentage of disposable income online and use...read more >>