Retailers Increasing Conversion Rates with Instagram Photos
Product images from the photo-sharing site Instagram are showing up on retailer websites, helping boost conversion rates. Coach, Teva, lululemon, and Threadless are just some of the sites that have begun using a service called Olapic to sort through and vet the Instagram submissions as well as analyze the data. Initial results of this social commerce experiment are impressive: clients reportedly saw an increase of 5 to 7 percent in conversion rates...read more >>
YouTube, Now One Step Closer to E-Commerce
Google recently introduced a new YouTube gadget for consumer goods brands that allows shoppers to comparison shop and purchase products featured in the videos they watch on a brand's YouTube channel, "all with fewer clicks than today." Unilever is the first brand to use this gadget, for their TRESemme line. For now, the gadget is only available to consumer goods brands, and Google has not explained how retailers are chosen for (or can lobby to be...read more >>
Content Merchandising Roundup #71
Below is a summary of the week's most interesting content merchandising-related posts from around the Web. Enjoy. Walmart.com Has a New Look Walmart's start page places its search function front and center and also integrates social trends. Most Shoppers Say They've Abandoned Hard to Shop Sites A recent survey showed that 65 percent of shoppers said they'll abandon an e-commerce site if it doesn't quickly display the products they're searching for. Internet...read more >>
F-Commerce Fizzles
The e-commerce platform Payvment announced it's going out of business this week. In 2011, Payvment had opened a virtual mall that allowed customers to shop without leaving the social media site. MediaPost reported that the company powered an estimated 200,000 Facebook stores. Payvment is sending its customers to Ecwid, which also offers F-commerce applications. As Mark Walsh notes in the MediaPost news story: "Despite its enormous user base and high...read more >>
Facebook Focuses on Conversion Rates
The social network company Facebook has launched a new system that will allow advertisers to "measure the ROI [return on investment] of their Facebook ads by counting relevant user actions, such as registrations and shopping cart checkouts, that are driven by people seeing an ad on Facebook." Facebook claims that tests of the new system show a 40 percent reduction in cost per conversion. Since it went public in May 2012, Facebook has seen steep...read more >>
Content Merchandising Roundup #51
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. How the Hunt for Cheap Prices Is Hurting Retail Loyalty Consumers are increasingly willing to drop their store loyalties in favor of cheap prices. That's bad news for retailers, says CNBC. EBay vs Amazon Becomes Amazon vs Google It looks as if Amazon's next push will be into the online...read more >>
Will Walmart’s Digital Reinvention Succeed?
Walmart has launched a social gifting service, revamped the search results on its site, and closely linked its online and brick-and-mortar stores. Fast Company took an in-depth look at Walmart's embrace of social and mobile commerce and asks whether all of these changes will be enough to allow the retail giant to compete with Amazon and other e-tailers. Walmart CEO Mike Duke certainly thinks so. "We are uniquely positioned to give customers anytime,...read more >>
Content Merchandising Roundup #48
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. The Remington Product Page: Something for Everyone For your product pages to be effective, they need to cater to online shoppers' different learning styles. How to Create Successful Multichannel Product Pages This week we posted two clips from the recent content26 webinar on multichannel...read more >>
User-Generated Content’s Role in Merchandising: Part 1
Retailers may not have mastered the art of Facebook selling yet, but social commerce is already here in the form of Amazon's Vine Program, assorted functions like wish lists, recommendations, ratings/reviews, and forums, Epinions, and Buzzillions, which all rely on user-generated content. Consider some early definitions of the term: "Social input in online shopping services [that] augments the experience" (from Steve Rubel) and "Creating places...read more >>
User-Generated Content’s Role in Merchandising: Part 2
In Part 1 of this article, I talked about the ethics of user-generated content in light of its steadily increasing influence in e-commerce. There are plenty of reasons to seek out authentic reviews other than, well, ethical business practices. Though it comes from consumers, not companies, UGC can be integrated into merchandising both as a complement to brand content and as a tool to inform that content. Product reviews also lend themselves to e-commerce's...read more >>