Put Lauren Freedman of the e-tailing group on stage moderating a discussion with three retailers and you get a bunch of real world scenarios, practical advice, and a realistic set of expectations.

Here are some snippets of ecommerce advice from each of the panelists:

Peter Cobb, Co-Founder, Senior Vice President, eBags

• Optimize with current point solution partners by upgrading to the latest versions but don’t invest in silver bullet, unproven capital expenditures.
• Expect and plan for a 6-12 month downturn at least.
• Preserve cash (that means no Super Bowl ads).
• Dropshipping is a great business model during this period of time.
• eBags has had to reduce team size but it has given them an opportunity to keep ‘A’ players. Those players have rededicated themselves.
• They are now having to address shoppers who are value shopping.
• They recognize a fundamental change in how customers shop. They are more sophisticated and jump back to Google, coupon sites, repeatedly. Therefore, they must improve revenue attribution.
• They also seek to fill out the SEO side of the business.
• In reference to Avinash Kaushik’s morning keynote, they also need to figure out how to address the 98% of non-converting visits starting with cart abandonment and product pages by doing A/B testing.
• eBags is playing with offers but margin decline is an issue. They don’t want to train the customer to expect discounting once the downturn flattens.
• They work with brand manufacturers to reduce wholesale costs. Many say no but lots will because they are feeling the same crunch.

Plans for 2009 include:

• Testing filtered navigation using testing.
• Testing auto complete on search (30% currently go to the search box).
• Testing video – doesn’t cost too much, quick turn around, embedding in email = adds life and excitement to the product.
• Focus on solid and unique products. Don’t contract the product line, expand it. This also helps SEO with more content/lines to sell.

Kevin Churchill, Director of Merchandising, Patagonia

• Work with vendors, don’t do big capital spends.
• They pulled back on catalogs during last downturn; this time they will be increasing circulation.
• Get back to basics = do usability study groups; learn from actual customer behavior and give them real dollars to spend to recreate real world behavior.
• There is no shortage of good ideas so prioritization becomes more necessary.
• Finding the cash to execute changes on the site also increases in importance.
• Reducing returns delivers immediate benefit, even though many of the best customers are the ones with the highest return rate (Zappos has experienced the same).
• Eliminate objections in the discovery and buying process (better images, video, more textual data, customer reviews = build confidence).
• If they are out of stock, they give suggestions of dealers who have it (applicable primarily due to their wholesale business).

Plans for 2009 include:

• Hone in filtered navigation.
• Leverage reviews across various channels.
• Push live chat more = they experience better conversion for those who use live chat.
• They are good at running reports, but have to refocus on applying learning

Bradford Matson, Chief Marketing Officer, Bluefly, Inc.

• Selling in the luxury space is really tough right now.
• Pushing to drive conversion and building customer affinity is key.
• Offline/online integration has been successful; partnership with Project Runway has driven great results: 30% increase in unique visits in 18 weeks straight.
• Partnerships with content creators (tv shows/sites)  has delivered an increase in brand searches.
• Work with your finance team to make brand building programs happen.
• Delivering a persona driven site by the end of the year should drive positive results.
• Keep cost per acquisition down but the number of new customers up.
• Be creative. They do short sales at lunch (2 hour quickie).
• Preferred customer get first look at new items due to be posted to the site.

Plans for 2009 include:

• Maintain or increase production value as it should be high and shopping should be exciting.
• Taking cues from pop culture in content creation to increase affinity.
• SEO and work on landing pages in order to create a good first impression.
• Continue aggressive emailing of 7-8 per week per individual (segmented out of 35 total emails created).

Of note: Everyone is seeing a drop in conversions (not unexpected), but lots are seeing more traffic.

It’s great having candid conversations with retailers who have two feet on the ground and Lauren asked some good questions.