There was an excellent discussion about the future of mobile that could have turned into an entire session by itself. The iPhone and the meteoric appearance of over 10,000 applications and sales estimated at half a billion dollars is a real indication that mobile (not just Apple) is the next wave of retail. This is the way to “make the physical world – interactive”.  As far as the “Year of Mobile”, it could be spread out over a number of years.

Some of the investors think that Social Marketing including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube will be a tough retail environment. The question is, “why are people going there”? Is it to shop?  Chat rooms/talk forums and boards may be easier for retail message integration.  In either case the content delivered must be an engaging dialog or provide entertainment. One commented, “Social Media is affiliations with people, brands and groups–a good place to listen to the customer and a good place to improve retention.”

This was one of the most interesting sessions in that the investors take a slightly longer view of eCommerce than some retailers.

A great way for us to readjust our thinking “for the long haul”.

1. BazaarVoice with their exciting new “BrandVoice” program that allows manufacturers to share their customer ratings and reviews with participating retailers for dramatic increases in ratings volume and revenue.
2. richrelevance, who does not require retailers to make an up-front investment in their recommendations platform with a pay for performance business model. For richrelevance, this means they need to deliver the highest-quality product recommendations in order for both the retailer and richrelevance to win.  Skin in the game.
3. SLI Systems with their personalized email marketing program.  They combine site search with information about individual customer preferences and purchasing histories so that e-retailers can create highly targeted, personalized email campaigns.
4. Vcommerce’s solution handles the five personalities retailers should cater to in this economy in order to be profitable: 1) Me First/Me Now — Fulfill Correctly/Fulfill NOW! 2) Won’t Pay Shipping — Cut Back-End Costs to Increase Promotions. 3) Do-it-for-me — Easy Search/Checkout. 4) Do-it-my-way — Customer Experience Management. 5) Social Butterfly — Social Media.
5. OrderMotion boosts repeat buyer behavior to achieve higher average orders with lower costs using OMX,  an industrial-strength order management platform with an intuitively designed visual-interface.

BTW, the refreshments were great! What a conference!

Brian and Sally discussed how retailers should review all types of platforms and make decisions based on future growth as well as functionality. Saas and Open Source with specific vendors mentioned were discussed as possible areas to explore.

Brian fielded questions from the audience and indicated that the future holds more open API’s and trends toward more open services. Additional functionality such as “Social Ready” applications and mobile versioning were definitely on the horizon.

Having expert speakers from firms such as Forrester is one reason why Shop.org conferences continue to be so beneficial. This blogger has used Forrester Research several times in the past when preparing to buy a new platform which helped greatly when producing RFP’s.

His philosophy of “Complexity Simplified” by using top 10 lists and exception reporting combined with key factors like initial bounce rates (why would someone come to your site and not even click one time!) help you wade through the massive amount of information available today. Determining the answers to the following questions will get you the GOLD = Insights:

• The What?
• The How Much?
• The Why? and
• The What Else?

His messages included 3 categories of Innovation on which he asked web site owners to focus on Incremental improvement over time with “side effects” as opposed to just Incremental improvement or Transformational improvement such as the rapid change in Key Word purchasing as we moved from Overature to Google.

Based on the amount of data available today, Avinash stated we should shift our paradigm for gathering and disseminating this data by allowing all of our staff to have direct access using the tools rather than a select few as it has been historically. Having all of these individuals direct access will provide deeper and wider understandings which can then be disseminated to a few senior managers in report form.

He wants us to determine our economic goal(s). How much value did you generate? Why do you exist? Were you successful, ie. If you come to his Blog and read just two of his Posts, you will be convinced of his greatness and his Blog will have been a success. You will need to combine online and off-line data into an integrated view Avinash calls “Non-Line” to determine your success. In addition to obtaining the right tools, he believes in having the people “empowered” to make the decisions.

Use surveys, ASK THE CUSTOMER:
1. Why are you here? Primary purpose.
2. Did you complete your task? Use a completion rate.

Finally, FAIL FASTER. Learn to be wrong quicker and watch out for the HIPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion)

If you weren’t there for this one, you really need to watch for his next appearance at Shop.org.