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Inspired by the success of the 2012 Gift and Home show survey, Whereoware once again conducted a survey of retailers and vendors at this year’s shows, looking for information on their social, technological, and selling habits. Once collected, this information was combined with data from our own clients, and some key patterns arose...

Here at Whereoware, we’ve been signing clients, releasing websites, and churning out new campaigns like it’s our job (which, technically, it is!). In fact, it’s seems like it’s been a non-stop ride since Q1 started, and here we are, already a third of the way through Q2. Before we put up any further blog posts, however, we’d like to pause to take stock of where this year has brought us so far.

Colonial Candle needed a more user-friendly website to increase conversions and revenue.  Whereoware was tasked with creating a site that would improve search, navigation, and purchasing, while still retaining the trademark Colonial Candle look and feel.

Want to learn more about the behind-the-scenes modifications Whereoware put into place for Colonial Candle? Download our free 5-page case study for a more in-depth look at these features and a peek at some of the amazing results!

Evergreen Enterprises, Inc. found itself dealing with increasingly complex demands from retailers and sales reps as business grew. Whereoware was tasked with design + development of a cutting-edge website that would be attractive while still being able to handle the many complicated functions inherent in their B2B business.

Want to learn more about the innovations Whereoware employed to keep Evergreen’s e-commerce business moving forward? Download our free 5-page case study for a more in-depth look at these features, and a peek at some of the amazing results!

Over the last few years, Largo Furniture has seen rapid growth in their product offerings and customer base. They soon found that they had outgrown their website, and reached out to Whereoware for a website makeover. The new site,www.largofurniture.com, focuses on user experience to make products easier to locate, research, and purchase.

It’s been demonstrated again and again that automated emails are much more effective than normal emails. You’ve heard the statistics, with some companies seeing open rate improvements as high as 49%!

Armed with this knowledge, you’re eager to move past blast mailings, but you’re not quite sure where to begin. With our many years of experience helping both clients and ourselves to optimize + deploy automated, behavior-triggered emails, we’re happy to help.

Download our free How-To guide, “5 simple steps to improve your marketing automation skills,” and you’ll be ready to automate your own B2B or B2C emails in no time.

Whereoware recently won Silverpop’s Agency award in the first Crawl, Walk, Run Engage Programs competition, working on behalf of PaperStyle.com. The winning program was an innovative wedding campaign comprised of a series of emails that followed a bride and/or her friends through wedding events, offering Paper Style products to match their needs along the way.  

Read on to find out more about this award-winning campaign.

Whereoware recently developed an innovative Closeout campaign for Gift & Home company Creative Co-Op, which found great success with its highly personalized nature.  Retailers were shown particular items of interest to them, at a time when they most likely needed to restock.  The Creative Co-Op closeout campaign has resulted in revenue increases across the board.

 Whereoware conducted a survey of retailers and vendors at the 2012 summer gift and home shows, with questions ranging from how they use email to where they see the biggest growth in the next 12 months. When we combined that information with data from our own clients and outside sources, we saw 5 key trends emerging again and again.

By now you’ve set goals in Google Analytics, and learned how to track your sales funnel, for maximum impact. These are very important steps, but the process is not complete; without a way to interpret these goals and funnels, you’re not actually learning anything from what you’ve done. This is where goal reports come in.

Here at Whereoware, we deal with all sides of B2B business - sales, marketing, development, and more – and a big portion of that business deals with lead generation. Since this area is such a hot topic for most B2B companies, we all know how important demand generation programs can be.

Have you ever wondered which demand-gen channels your peers find most successful? Will they be spending more or less on leads next year, and for what channels? These aren’t questions that have easy answers, but our friends over at the research firm Software Advice have recently launched a survey to tackle this very important area of marketing. If you are a B2B marketer, you’re invited to participate. We geeks love data, so of course, we’re chomping at the bit for this one!

A few weeks ago, the world was entranced by the competitions and results of the 2012 Olympics. While most of us will never run a 4-minute mile or do a backflip off of a diving board, there is something we can learn from these athletes. Whether it was beating a world record, making it to the medal stand, or even just getting to the Olympics in the first place, all of these athletes began with goals.

Unlike the Olympics, the competitive ‘sport’ of business allows you to be measured against yourself, not others. Rather than aiming for an objective medal, YOU can decide what defines success and what defines failure. The first way to do that is to figure out what’s important to you.

Were you a pro at ‘Go Fish’ as a child? The game is a great model for sales: after all, when a tradeshow is over, you want to be the one left holding the most business cards. But if you don’t have time to turn all those cards into prospects, racking up contacts won’t put you any closer to securing sales.

Marketing automation provides a solution. It streamlines sales activity, allowing reps to focus their time on only the most promising leads. But how effective is marketing automation at converting these leads into customers?

This week, we have a guest post from Whereoware Web Marketing Manager, Peter Bergen. Recently, Peter’s A/B test for Paragon won Honorable Mention in the B2B Email Blast Templates category during Which Test Won’s 2012 Email Test Awards. This test was also added to the 2012 Email Tests Hall of Fame. Here, he breaks down his experiment, and shares secrets to making A/B tests work for you.

Site visitors come across dead pages all of the time, either by following a broken link or typing in the wrong address. The situation, while not ideal, is common enough. What really matters is what you do with it once it occurs. Should you leave your visitors hanging with a one-size-fits-all error message? Absolutely not! How you choose to handle lost customers maybe the perfect time for you to shine.

This week, we have a guest post from Whereoware Online Marketing Manager, Faith Albers. As point person for several client accounts, she has sent plenty of emails in her day. Here, she shares some tips on how to send emails like a professional...

People navigate the web in different ways. Some may be accustomed to typing out the full URL of a desired site, while others may navigate entirely via Google at this point. Similarly, on websites, some people may be more comfortable using drop-down menus; others may scan sidebars for clues as to where their desired products are located. Still others are drawn automatically to the search bar, no matter where it’s located.

Customers are going to come to your website in many different mindsets, from many different angles, and it’s important that you’re ready to direct them regardless. One way to do this is to ensure you have multiple access points to important areas of your website.

Direct and assisted conversions are two ways of looking at how a company made revenue. What’s the difference? Let’s use a typical e-commerce website as an example.

There are a variety of email domains out there - which do you use? You may have stuck with your original, housed at aol.com or Hotmail.com. Or maybe you are more of a Gmail.com person, known as the domain of ‘techies’ and academia. Stereotypes abound for a whole range of other email providers. If you’re reading this in the office, there’s a good bet that you’re using an Outlook account…or perhaps you’re solely Apple-focused, and cherish your mac.com or me.com address.

Whatever the platform, marketing automation experts are taking its features into account and actively marketing towards you. Tailoring campaigns to reflect particular email platforms can make a world of difference.

When Whereoware founder Eric Dean was asked to write an editorial for Gifts and Dec magazine, he jumped at the chance.  In the resulting article, Lessons from Industry Leaders, he shares his thoughts on the current state of technology in the gift and home industry, the need to make customer communications more relevant and compelling, and some fascinating insights from Whereoware clients.  

We recently took stock of a number of our Gift and Home B2B clients. Along the lines of the Dow Jones Index, the E-com Brief provides a benchmark for overall online activity in the Gift and Home industry. Take a look and see what we found!

At its core, e-commerce is about maximizing profit. Knowing which products are most profitable and/or most popular can help you to make more informed decisions about both your website and product lines. The new version of Google Analytics makes it simple to find the information you need.

So you want to start tracking your marketing efforts. Setting up tools like Google Analytics is a great way to stay on top of your data and ultimately on top of your marketing efforts. Unique visits, conversions, and bounce rates are great places to start…but what if you don’t know what those things mean? Never fear, Whereoware is here to help!

The new interface of Google Analytics has been live for a few months now and we have discovered some great features that weren’t heavily promoted in the initial excitement.

These “hidden gems” have been right under your nose, providing brand new information on your data or perhaps just a new way of looking at the same old numbers. Here are some of our favorite innovations.

 By now, it should be a well-established practice to design for mobile. We’ve said before that mobile web traffic is growing at an alarming rate – almost 160% in 2010! But is all mobile the same? Or do you need to pay a bit more attention to tablet shoppers?

By now, you know that Google Analytics can be used for many types of analyses, from pinpointing referral sources to uncovering which keywords your customers are looking for. But if you’re an ecommerce site, you may be missing out on one of the most important features – Google Analytics’ ability to take stock of revenue stats using ecommerce tracking.

Sounds great, but how?

Even with highly organized categories and an easy-to-understand nav bar, customers may still have trouble finding products on your site. Help shoppers find what they want with internal site search…

Why?

In 2010, 90% of companies said that search was the number one means of navigation on their site and that 82% of visitors use site search to find the information they need (Google Enterprise, 2010). Perhaps the most telling testament to the importance of search, however, is the fact that 80% of visitors will abandon a site if search functionality is poor. Transform your site abandonment rates by creating an intuitive site search.

We’ve talked about the benefits of working social media into both your website and email campaigns. With any luck, the two efforts will play off of each other, encouraging site visitors to sign up for emails and driving email recipients to your site. But how do you know if your social media efforts are having any effect?

Some important social metrics can’t be measured by Google Analytics, such as the number of comments on your blog posts, number of followers who are sharing your content or the number of followers who like your content. The Google Analytics platform, however, is a great place to look for information on the effects of social on your website.

Social media marketing is on fire right now. It seems like every advertisement, commercial, or email refers the customer to a Facebook or twitter page with a promise of special offers or other enticements. Why is this? Perhaps it’s because the speed of social media enables users to take advantage of viral marketing. Perhaps marketers appreciate the immediacy of the medium, which allows brands to be at the top of customers’ minds for an extended period of time. Or could it be that people like to communicate on a more personal level rather than receiving just a list of sales and dates?

Were you one of the many children who saved cereal box tops, hoping to mail them in for a “free” prize? Those free prizes never came free, though; you (or your parents) had to spend money on the cereal in the first place, then include $X shipping/handling…eventually, the costs added up to the point where you were essentially paying the original cost or possibly more than the value of the prize itself. But that’s not what you – or today’s modern consumer – saw. What grabbed your attention then, as now, was the concept of “free”.

"Hello Account #XYZ, thank you for clicking/calling/writing..."

Form emails and letters are a personal pet peeve for many people. The format is rote and clearly interchangeable among recipients. Even referencing a specific topic of interest would go a long way towards winning them over. But in the modern world how can a company possibly do this with so many clients and so little time? As paradoxical as it may seem, using automation to personalize services actually does make logical sense.

“Can you hear me now?”

It’s a joke that’s funny in mobile phone ads, because with phones, there’s an easy answer: either you hear someone, or you don’t. With email, the line can be less distinct. Colors and a great layout may spur click-throughs (they “hear” you), while lines and lines of incomprehensible prose may halt any chance at revenue, but if you don’t have a call-to-action, it’s difficult for customers to know what to do next.

So you’ve gotten visitors to your site, through email marketing or SEO! Great job. But getting them there is only half of the battle- this is an ecommerce site, so the next step is to entice your customers to purchase.

A common complaint from customers of brick-and-mortar stores is that the cash registers are “too hard to find”. In those stores, however, there are at least salespeople to ask for directions or assistance! On the internet, customers are pretty much on their own, so it’s important to make the ‘cash registers’ (Shopping Cart/Checkout) as accessible as possible.

 In the last post we talked about the benefits of adding customer reviews to your website, or opening the floor to customers on your various social media platforms. Open discussion can be a great thing; however, allowing for open commentary means just that – you’re allowing customers to speak openly, regardless of whether or not you like their opinion. You can hope for the best (“[X] product never leaves my side!” “I can’t live without my [X]!”), but as the adage goes, you must always be prepared for the worst.

 Take a moment to think about why customers come to your ecommerce site. Not HOW they get there (search engine, email, direct traffic…), but what their purpose is in doing so. Are they looking to buy something? Do they want further information on a product before they purchase? Often, it’s a combination of these two goals. And you should be able to meet them both - you (naturally) have the product for sale and copy describing the item. But for many people, that information may not be enough.

What you will learn:

Discover the powerful stats for abandoned cart emails that prove they work. Learn how to put the campaigns together including: timing, messaging and frequency. Plus, see some real life examples.

Cart abandonment defined:

Cart abandonment occurs when a shopper adds an item to their cart, but does not complete the purchase. According to industry experts, cart abandonment rates range anywhere from 60-70%, which coincides with data we have collected from our own clients which show an average of 69% abandonment.

Let the data speak for itself!  Download the entire guide here: Abandoned Cart Emails: the facts, the data and the how to. (.pdf, 2.87 MB).

 Your customers are not a nameless, faceless mass, and it’s important to treat them as individuals. Online marketing presents a unique advantage to webmasters: based on the specific ad that directed them to your website, you have an idea of what they’re looking for even before they arrive. But to take advantage of this, you need to make sure you’re showing these customers the information they want without making them jump through hoops. This is where landing pages come in.

Many sites direct every customer to the same page, often times the home page. But this doesn’t make sense! If the customer has discovered your site in the first place by searching for “boys’ clothes,” there is little advantage in making them wade through shoes, ties, and princess dresses before they get to the item they want. It’s sad but true: the longer you make them search, the greater the chance that you’ll lose that sale.

Simply defined, automated targeted campaigns are emails that are directed to a specific group of people and are triggered based on a set of rules or criteria. The most classic example of this is the ‘Welcome’ campaign. It is sent to those who have just registered to receive your emails and is triggered off of that registration date.

We love automated targeted campaigns because we know they work! We have completed hundreds of these campaigns for clients over the years and have found huge increases in effectiveness when compared to normal blast mailings. For instance, we’ve observed the following differences when comparing automated mailings against normal mailings...

Images are flashy and certainly attractive. It’s rare to find a website nowadays that doesn’t use them to showcase merchandise. However, there is a very real risk that comes with relying too heavily on images when designing your website – in terms of search engine optimization, you’re essentially shooting yourself in the foot. After all, search engine spiders index based on text alone, and as someone once said, “spiders still can't appreciate art.” As attractive as your carefully designed images may be, any text you’ve placed “on” them will be unreadable to spiders. 

Imagine going to a grocery store and being forced to sign up for the chain’s Super Saver Card before you purchase your items. Don’t want to give your personal information? Too bad. You’ll have to find another retailer.

This scenario seems laughable in a brick-and-mortar store; however, it happens on e-commerce websites every day. By requiring customers to register accounts and login each time they want to make a purchase, many websites ignore key human characteristics: impatience and cautiousness. One of the biggest issues with requiring a password for checkout is that it invites a moment of pause, bringing with it the inevitable questions: