etail strategy beyond the cart
Here’s a brief article from Lifehacker which discloses some of the habits of the online powershopper. It’s got a strong tech-product focus, but still useful for looking into the mind of the consumer.
(And, it makes a nice, light post for Saturday mornings 
See this report from e-consultancy.
Walmart take’s their phone number down and directs customers to their online service center instead. Wow.
A very solid post on setting up affiliate programs, from The Ecommerce Blog.
[techtags: etail, affiliate+programs]
I’ve written before about using Twitter for ecommerce marketing (once I was finally convinced that it was useful). Now, there’s more.
Twitter has released a new feature which allows users to receive updates for keywords they are tracking.
Instant Traffic to Online or Offline Sales
For etailers, this feature has legs, because it provides a near-real-time ability to post products and offers for those seeking them. Now, mind you that only a few retailers are using Twitter for marketing, but imagin a future (a near future) where a customer who is tracking “northface sale” would receive notifications from all over the Internet whenever such a sale was taking place. In this manner, Twitter provides “real time, centralized, crowdsourcing” for online and offline event marketing. Instant word of mouth.
Reputation Tracking Using Twitter
Another use for this tool is to track online reputation. We all know about the sites which are truly bad-mouthing our brands because those sites represent strongly held, loosely distributed opinions. But what about loosely held, but WIDELY distributed opinions? These types of comments can be even more damaging for a brand because they often remain unseen (and therefore, un-acted-upon). Twitter is the very definition of “loosely held, but widely distributed” information, and tracking your own brand name through Twitter will lead to some surprising results I think.
[techtags: marketing+on+twitter, twitter+for+etail, twitter, etail, social+media+marketing]
