This is according to an artcile by Blu Halo, which shows that 78 % of the US online retailers it polled use Facebook, while 75.6% utilise Twitter for social media marketing purposes.

About 11% of respondents revealed that they do not make use of any social media sites at all.

Nearly seven in ten retailers said they intend to up their social media online marketing activity in the future, with 26.8% to keep their campaigns the same.

When asked how social media had helped their businesses, over half said it had had a beneficial effect.

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6. Measure and monitor customer engagement

Says James: "It’s not rocket science. I’m not exploding ideas that will change the world. But it’s often the simple things that go untouched yet can have the greatest impact on website performance (visits, engagement, conversion etc)."

Take the man from Boo (the online fashion retailer - a pre-ASOS - which burnt through £89m in 18 months.: "We were very arrogant with the fundraising,” he said. “We could have raised much more but we didn’t want to give away this company that was worth £500m, because we thought that it could have been worth £5 billion.” ASOS - a success - is worth £350m.

Read it all...

Read on...

They carried out everyday online tasks such as searching for and purchasing a laptop PC and travel insurance.

The stress levels of volunteers who took part in the study rose significantly when they were confronted with a poor online shopping experience, proving the existence of ‘Web Stress’. Brain wave analysis from the experiment revealed that participants had to concentrate up to 50% more when using badly performing websites, while EOG technology* and behavioural analysis of the subjects also revealed greater agitation and stress in these periods.

Thes study found that more than three quarters (77%) of European consumers blame either website owner or the website host (which is
in any case chosen by the website owner) when an online application fails. It also revealed that if consumers encounter problems online, 40% will go to a rival website and 37% will abandon the transaction entirely. Only 18% said they would report a problem to a company,

See the full report here.

Plotting of the data reveals that customers tend to experience more stress as they progress through the shopping process of finding products, selecting them, entering their personal information and concluding the sale. CA and Foviance
identified two points in the sales cycle where people are most likely to experience heightened levels of stress – the ‘search’ and ‘checkout’ stages. Both of these are crucial to a good customer
experience.

Even though the technology is easy now (witness the success of online TV and Youtubee etc), very few retailers deploy video on their websites. Some of the largest (or most innovative) use catwalk videos (such as ASOS), but on average the adoption rate is less than 5%.

Treepodia's automated video technology uses retailers' existing product images, marketing texts, user reviews, and merchandising rules to create engaging and effective videos, automatically. The platform eliminates the high initiation costs of producing product videos and enables retailers to cover their entire product catalog with videos in 24 hours. To ensure ongoing accuracy, the videos are updated on a continual basis to reflect changes in the retailer’s catalog including new prices, special offers and additional items.

We also like the examples on Forzieri.

Here's a few impressive ROI stats:

"In just two months after we began using Treepodia's automated online product video platform, our e-commerce sales of products that include video rose 69%," say BedBathStore.com. "In addition, customer conversion was up as much as 300% among those who viewed the product videos."

Electric Shopping has seen a big jump in conversions among shoppers who view the product videos compared with those who don’t: an average 75% more conversions, with increases upwards of 200% for some products

Treepodia also has built-in an automated A/B testing mechanism. Different video versions for every product and tests the effectiveness of each video version; the best performing versions are automatically promoted to ensure the highest conversion rate for specific products.

Treepodia's CEO has written a good summary of how to exploit video @ http://www.reelseo.com/7-tips-adding-videos-sell/.

How much does it all cost? Not a lot, in fact. Because it's mostly clever software and easily embedded on a website, it works out at about 5p per video viewed. Against the increased conversions, that should be very attractive to smaller retailers. Treepodia is so convinced, it will even guarantee a return of £20 for every 100 product views. Plus it only takes a day or so to get up and running.

MDC’s online strategy is to capitalise on its relationships with key venues, labels and artists, promoting relevant recordings at competitive prices. Its 30 years experience gives it an unparalleled insight into classical music. Classical CDs are still a priority, but it has also established a highly respected range of World Cinema DVDs, considered to be the best in London, at its Royal Festival Hall shop, and a great selection of World and Jazz music reflecting the artists performing at the Royal Festival Hall.

Alan Goulden, Director of MDC, said: “We knew that success online means much more than simply having an online shop. We knew Screen Pages could deliver on the fundamentals because of its track record, but we also liked the business-oriented, consultative, hand-holding culture of its team.”

Roger Willcocks, director of Screen Pages, said: “MDC has a reputation and hallmark second to none in the classical music world. It’s a privilege to be working with MDC on exploiting the online opportunity and watching its sales increase on the internet.”

68% of fashion companies' websites are profitable and half say that profitability was achieved in the first year. Two thirds of the profitable businesses said that their e-commerce websites were more profitable than stores. 77% believe that their website will trade more profitably than stores in 2010. Oddly, one third were not trading profitably. The writers conclude that those who were not using this sales channel were missing out on profitable growth opportunities.

E-commerce budgets were variable, but the average spend was between 5% and 7.5% of sales with most predicting this % would increase in 2010 as further investments are made in e-commerce.

* Product tours or multi-media viewing which combines guided spin, zoom imagery, videos or animations with copy (36%)
* Visual filtering and advanced search on product features including size, color, and price (33%)
* User comments and reviews (32%)
* Search landing pages (32%)
* Product comparisons (28%)
* Zoom (28%)

Well they would say that, wouldn't they?

Link your "other channel" communications to Buzz and share your content with it.

"Among online shoppers who engage in social media, more than 80% are using Facebook. YouTube comes in second at 31%, followed by MySpace with 22%, Twitter with 16%, and LinkedIn at 12%. Yet 25% of the top 100 online retailers have no formal presence on Facebook, Ertell says, and another 25% have fewer than 10,000 fans. The study found that 49% of those who follow companies through social media want to hear about deals, and 45% want to see products. Only 5% use social media primarily for customer support.

69% of online shoppers who are social media users, 56% have chosen to "friend," "follow" or "subscribe to" at least one store. But they are selective, and 61% of this group is connected to fewer than five companies. Another 21% is made up of more serious shoppers who follow between 6 and 10 stores, while just 18% is hardcore enough to have friended more than 10."

1. Media ‘graze’: the growing demographic of consumers that have tuned out of traditional
2. media and instead graze on their social graph – the output of the people and brands they follow online.
3. Social TV: why social media content and TV content will merge to become one.
4. Social spam: how explosion in social spam will create new obstacles for marketers looking to engage with influencers online.
5. Goodbye status, hello check-in: the location revolution and the opportunities and threats this provides.
6. Internal communications: the hidden potential within social networks to aid internal communications.
7. Measurement and meaning: why deciphering meaning is more important than headline numbers when measuring and planning marketing strategy.
8. The customer is always on: Richard Baker on why and how brands must engage with their customers through social media channels.
9. Social search: 2010 will be the year social search really takes root.
10. In-game PR: the opportunities and threats to brands by in-game PR.`

How distant these all seem. Maybe I am way behind?