The best Web site in the world will not turn a dime of profit if no one visits it. Getting visitors to come to a site, stay on that site, and transact business are the keys to success online. The first step is creating a user-friendly and search-engine-friendly Web site, and driving traffic to your storefront or site is the second step.

E-commerce is booming. The U.S. Census Bureau reported online sales in the nation for the first quarter of 2008 was $33.8 billion, up from the $29.8 billion for the same quarter last year.

If you are not using a commercial broker to find retail space and buying shelves to display your merchandise, you still need to create a “storefront” or Web site to sell wares online. And just like any other business, you need to market your product and drive traffic to your site.

Read the entire article at Newsfactor.com

At the recent Authentication and Online Trust Association conference, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark said he chose to run the support desk rather than the entire company so he could listen to what his users were saying. Listening is the key to his success.

You as an e-mail marketer have many similar opportunities for listening to your subscribers. And they’re communicating, either by word, actions, or silence.

E-mail marketers need to be attentive, because the relationship with subscribers is a little more at a distance, yet intensely personal given the way many e-mail users feel about the privacy of their inboxes.

What’s the Cost of Not Listening?

Read the entire article at clickz.com  

by Jena McGregor

Jennifer Kahn usually began and ended her online shopping at one site: Amazon.con (AMZN). “I didn’t think about it too much,” says the Manhattan executive. But that changed on June 1, when the giant e-commerce outfit started collecting New York sales tax in response to changes in state law. When Kahn went to buy a mini-fridge recently, she ended up shopping around.

Savvy shoppers have long enjoyed a simple rule of thumb: buy from out-of-state e-tailers, save the tax.

Read the entire article at Business Week

Integrated Solutions For Retailers, July 2008
Written by: Marc Borbas, VP of marketing, INETCO

If your POS server is running at 65% processor utilization, your authorizing link is up, and your WAN has 300 megabits per second (Mbps) of available bandwidth, how long did it take for the last customer to pay for her purchase at lane three in your Cincinnati store? Does this sound like a trick question? It is.

The answer to this question can sometimes tell you more about how your IT systems are performing than your server and network statistics combined. The answer tells you how IT is supporting the in-store customer experience. So, how can you find the answer to the question posed above? Well, you would need to monitor customer interactions with your IT systems in real time.

Read the entire article at Integrated Solutions for Retailers

Using live chat can help improve customer relations, and sales, and is becoming more common, but most e-tailers have it located in the wrong place, according to a recent study, and many are not using it effectively. A survey commissioned by inQ, a ChatCommerce company, with the e-tailing group assessed how 31 online businesses that offered chat on their respective Web sites use the technology to sell. 

“We determined key dimensions of human interactions with online shoppers that are critical to inQ’s customers’ or live chat’s success. We wanted to measure to what degree these dimensions have been adopted across the industry, and commissioned the e-tailing group to conduct a survey,” says Christophe Cremault, senior vice president of marketing at inQ, which just released its Human Interaction Metrics tool.

Read entire article at ecommerce-guide.com

Integrated Solutions For Retailers, July 2008
Written by: Erin Harris

In the retail world, customer relationship management (CRM) has quickly evolved from a luxury to a necessity. If you do not retain, analyze, and use your customers’ key data, chances are another retailer will. In addition, CRM has grown from a cumbersome manual process to a proliferation of automated data collection, customized loyalty programs, one-to-one marketing efforts, and more. So, loyalty as it pertains to CRM is only one component of a multifaceted process. In this month’s Retail Solutions Forum, Tim Lemieux, senior VP and CIO of Ratner Companies, and Kathryn Murphy, VP of product management at Tomax Corporation, discuss CRM as a comprehensive discipline and where it’s headed next.

Why are retailers using CRM? 
Lemieux: CRM allows retailers to better understand their customers and create demographic profiles, which lead to improved effectiveness in marketing efforts.

Read entire article at Integrated Solutions for Retailers

A slowing job market and $4 gasoline present a minefield for retailers. Good thing it’s hot outside. The intense heat across much of the U.S. is spawning a wave of sales at retail stores as shoppers snap up summer items they’d held off buying during the chilliest May in six years. Beginning late last week, blistering temperatures across the eastern half of the country spurred immediate demand for air conditioners, fans, cold drinks and summer apparel, according to the latest survey from Planalytics, an industry consultant that helps retailers manage the impact of weather in sales.“You had a tough spring and then suddenly a shock to the system; people were rushing out to buy these things,” says Planalytics Chief Operating Officer Scott Bernhardt. Using historic data models, the company estimates national sales over the past week were up 20% for air conditioners, 4% for bottled water, 6% for swimwear and 9% for sandals over the same week in 2007, with gains much higher in the Northeast.

Between the scorching weather and the generous government stimulus checks, cash registers figure to be ringing at fairly healthy levels through the summer, but it’s only a matter of time before consumers start tightening their wallets again.

Read the entire article at Forbes.com.

His advice to other entrepreneurs looking to leverage his experience: take advantage of eBay to start out, but look to the day when eBay generates some, but not the majority of total online sales.

“Ebay is an ideal approach to launch a new business because it`s a pay as you-go-model and you can quickly test new products, said Rath, speaking June 9 at the 2008 Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition in Chicago. “It`s an instantly recognized brand and you`re immediately a global retailer.”

Read entire article on Internet Retailer.com

In today’s economy where money is tight and resources are being more carefully budgeted, a major factor for many shoppers is whether or not gas or shipping is less expensive.

Read entire press release at PRWeb.com

“There’s a clear mandate to represent the same brand to the same consumers who shop across channels,” says Dias, who will address e-commerce and multi-channel strategies for retail chains at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition 2008 next week in the session “Organizing for e-commerce success.”

But many retailers are also struggling to find the right formula for integrating channel strategies as well as their online and offline professional teams, she adds. “We’ve seen some awful flips in the last couple of years as retailers raced to integrate the web channel with the rest of the company, expecting the web team to fix the problems of the parent organization, and then seen everything grind to a halt.”

Read the entire article at InternetRetailer.com