Watch the video below for Vicki’s full remarks including her advice to digital retailers at all level for preparing for the future of the industry.

Given the burgeoning tablet device user base, companies are clamoring to give these customers a great tablet experience: Burke noted that Resource Interactive delivered 65 tablet device-related projects just in the last year, serving CPG and retail clients such as Kohl’s, Sherwin-Williams, and Limited Brands. Burke cited research showing that:

• 7% of total online sales on Christmas Day 2011 came from Apple iPads specifically, according to IBM Coremetrics. iPads also drove 6% of all mobile online traffic the very next day (December 26, 2011). Their purchase conversion rate? A whopping 4.6% – “almost double the average mobile conversion rate of 2.8%.”
• Looking ahead, 20% of US consumers say they intend to buy a tablet device in the next six months. For men and adults aged 31 to 40 years old, that’s more like 23% and 24%, respectively. Even among US consumers aged 51 to 60, that’s 21% (just try prying the iPad out of the hands of Burke’s 63-year-old relative who never used her smartphone for anything but phone calls).

What’s interesting about the tablet device, Burke also noted, is that – with the exception of older users – the tablet device is not a replacement for other devices such as the computer at home. Also, Burke pointed to research showing that a high percentage of people who read e-books prefer to use a tablet device for that purpose, prompting Burke to somewhat tongue in cheek characterize e-books as “the gateway drug to tablet dependence.”

“Couch commerce” is really here.  According to Equation Research for Zmags, 70% of tablet usage is at home – specifically, either on the couch or in bed. Consumers use the smart phone and computer to get specific tasks done quickly, whereas tablet device users are “couch browsing” (attributable to Fred Cavazza of Forbes). Ultimately, the tablet is a “leisure device” – albeit one that is starting to drive real commerce.

4 Primary Tablet Device Design Principles.
“Smartphone design is more like fitting a size 12 foot into a size 10 shoe,” Burke joked. By contrast, tablet design is about using the depth and breadth of what a tablet offers – so much so that, “the conversation between agency and client is different.” Overall, Burke isn’t convinced that there’s a vast difference between a good tablet device design and good Web site design – but there are some key tablet design principles to observe:

• Make it engaging. Realize it must be a fun, engaging, immersive experience. “It’s like touching a stained glass window and watching it come to life,” Burke explained. In general, tablet consumers will engage repeatedly before making their considered purchase. Overall, you’ll want to use less text on a tablet, and instead use more imagery and short video.
• Make it share-able. The tablet device itself is often shared within a family. Tapping social media, the tablet also “makes it easy to share ideas, thoughts, and even products” with others.
• Make it shoppable. “The tablet is with people for an extended period of time in a low pressure way.” In traditional web design, “you limit the number of available windows and doors” in order to get people to the cart and to check out quickly. As a highly visual medium, retailers can offer lots of content to “engage and woo” the customer while still (gently) leading him or her to the actual purchase.
• Make it extendable. “The tablet provides a vehicle for brand stories and product immersion.” Retailers should think about digitizing and then making available on the tablet all kinds of analog content that they already own, such as assets such as circulars, a video highlighting a designer that the retailer is launching – the possibilities go on.

As one example of tablet design, Burke pointed to the Sherwin-Williams “ColorSnap” product and how that evolved from the initial smartphone (iPhone) app to the iPad app that features large, rich imagery that allows users to explore and interact.

Burke suggested that retailers also look into the concept of “Responsive Design”, by which the company uses a universal codebase and set of logic to automatically adapt the content to recognize the device and operating system that the customer is using (for example, the system would perhaps remove two or three items from a tablet design in order to render a good smart phone display).

So, let’s start with the age-old e-commerce question: in a multichannel organization, whom should the e-commerce team report into? The panel agreed: directly to the CEO. The CEO provides the cross-silo solution that cuts across all the divisions within the organization. If the e-commerce team is part of another group – marketing, merchandising, licensing, retail, or the like – it will inevitably be overly oriented toward the agenda of the silo into which it reports. What about the idea of having e-commerce report into the retail (stores) division? No, the panel said: retail and e-commerce need to be on par with one another organizationally. Or the idea of having different parts of the e-commerce team report into functional areas? The panel was clear: don’t break up the e-commerce organization – keep it whole, and, oh yes, have it report to the CEO.

Jared Blank, Vice President, E-Commerce at Tommy Hilfiger

As it turns out, this is how Bob Myers has set up his team at Sheplers. Taking it yet a step further, Bob has also implemented a single P&L within Sheplers, thereby allowing everyone within the company to unify around the consumer, versus individual silos. Sheplers has taken specific measures to make this a reality. For example, stores get credit for online sales that originate in their region or zip code, and e-commerce is tasked with driving sales in stores. As Kevin noted, “It’s about [shared] incentives.”  Furthermore, every employee hired – no matter what their job – has to have digital experience, thereby spreading shared digital sensibility through the organization.

The panelists all emphasized, however, that the most important tenets of classic retail remain: the traditional adage of “retail is detail” is as true as ever, but now it’s a matter of organizing around the customer (or, perhaps, “retail is detail plus digital”). E-commerce in 2012 simply isn’t like the online retail of 10 or 15 years ago – this is true retail, with “real retailers” running the business who understand the importance of factors such as inventory turn. “You have to be voracious about being in stock,” Bob noted as one example – retailers can’t just rely on the idea that the website is the infinite warehouse and that customers will be satisfied if you offer to order their size / color combination for them online, especially now that anyone with a smartphone in hand can do that on their own. (In the out-of-stock situation, Bob advised simply saying to the customer, “Let me get that item for you” – like we used to decades ago! – and then tracking that item down from other stores or even a competitor, simply to deliver on one’s promise to that customer.)

So, how about that other age-old e-commerce question: where does the retail IT team fit into the organization? Retail IT is generally used to build employee-facing tools – tools for employees to learn and use, maybe with training and manuals and on-site help. Consumer software and applications, of course, are very different and thus require a very different approach to development, implementation, and ongoing evolution. The panel agreed that it’s likely prudent to work initially with a third party development team to develop e-commerce solutions, as they know how to design and build for the consumer. As Sally noted, however, no one wants to use external resources indefinitely, so the ideal situation is to bring in and enable the internal IT team over time, gradually transitioning to make IT a true e-commerce partner.

How about e-commerce leadership? Gone are the days of “bright young things” coming in as generalists to run an e-commerce business, the panel agreed. Now, retailers need e-commerce specialists with deep expertise and experience to lead the e-commerce team. Jared described that he spends a lot of time with his merchandising and marketing teams (among others) “getting into the weeds” to understand in great detail what’s going on, how the team is doing, whether the right skill sets are in place. Sally added that understanding whether the right people are in place takes attention and time. E-commerce leaders need to invest in their team by giving them opportunities to develop their understanding of the market and to deepen their skills through venues such as Shop.org events (her words, not mine!). Also, some CEOs may not understand some of the specialized skills needed for e-commerce that are different from more traditional retail roles – for example, a usability expert, whose skills can increase site conversion and otherwise improve the customer experience.

With the e-commerce market developing so rapidly, how do organizations manage budgets? Some things in a budget, panelists noted, are must-haves like “air conditioning – you can’t not have that.” On other things, Bob explained that he listens carefully to his direct reports, and that if they all feel that something on the table needs to be included in the budget, he takes that input very seriously. What about the “shiny new keys” – emerging technologies that may not yet have proven track records? For those, Bob noted, “You place your bets.”

As Kevin pointed out, “Defending the status quo kills companies.” But if your organization isn’t yet quite as future-state as Sheplers, Sally summed up a few key steps towards the retail organization of the future: do ensure the e-commerce team reports into the CEO; focus on integrating *processes* first (i.e. integrate the organization further only once the processes are in place); and ensure that you have the right people for the job.

Amy Africa, CEO of Eight by Eight talks about the human brain and shopping.

So back to that unusual opening question. Amy used that – and a series of follow up “what if” scenarios – to get the audience to think about how we make decisions. Turns out it has a lot to do with our “reptilian brain” (I hadn’t heard of it, either). Forget the more common “right brain / left brain” categorization – Amy explained that we in fact have three brains: the neocortex (rational data processing), the mid-brain (emotions and gut feeling processing), and, finally, our reptilian brain. The latter is the arbiter or tie breaker between the first two and triggers decisions, as its primary concern is one’s survival, and, as Amy described it, “deciding what’s safe and what isn’t”.

And this has what to do with retailing? Quite a bit. Amy next outlined a raft of 21 factors about human beings and how those impact your customer’s decision to whether or not to visit your site, stay or flee, and – hopefully – actually buy. Lots of food for thought – think of it as a reality / sanity check for you and your business. Herewith some of Amy’s points:

• We are self-centered. Translation for your site: does your site really speak to your customers? Does it resonate with them, do they identify with what the site displays, talks about, exudes? Does your site speak the same “language” as they do?
• We process best in “black and white” – that is, contrasts. In fact, Amy noted, contrast is “efficient” for our brains; we’re programmed to notice differences and changes in our environment (again, a survival technique). Translation for retail sites – “what are your pattern interrupters for your customers on your site?” Amy pointed out that most people vow they can’t stand pop up ads – but, they do make people take notice. The home page carousel (rotating images or content) is also effective, engaging the user to linger a little longer and see what comes next to make sure they haven’t missed something.
• We are visual. As Amy noted, “You only think you think. You really just see.” Don’t “over SEO” your site, Amy further exhorted, forgetting that the user coming to your site from Google “doesn’t see words as much as he sees pictures.”
• We look for patterns. Translation for retail sites: customers like to see patterns, as they feel safe and familiar. In Amy’s experience, navigation accounts for 40% to 60% of the success of a site (that’s more like 80% for a mobile site). Why? “Because 80% of [the customer’s] attention goes to the first screen; the top and left hand are patterns and [therefore feel] safe.” Among patterns, human beings particularly look for faces, as they are reassuring. Amy suggested that by adding a friendly-looking picture of a customer service rep on your product and check out pages, you will increase your chances of improving conversions (sounds like a great A/B testing candidate!).
• We like things that we can touch. Translation for retail sites: are you using words on your site that are meaningless to your customer? If they don’t understand and cannot visualize easily terms like “revolutionary product” or “flexible approach” that you use on your site, they won’t warm to the product or service (or your company).
• We like beginnings and ends. Translation: are you using deadlines and creating a sense of urgency? Use short deadlines – they help customers focus. Amy pointed out that two years ago the average life span of an email was 48 hours – now it’s 9 hours at best, and likely really more like 4 hours.
• We respond to emotion. For a retail site, this is all about the story you tell (versus simply selling a product) – again, not just in words, but in your imagery and the overall look and feel of your site. What’s the first impression the customer gets? What are his or her takeaways from interacting with your site?
• We create false memories. “What do you remember? Our memories are terrible,” Amy noted. “So, how do you compensate for your user’s terrible memory?” For retailers, it’s about putting some action directive (or, a reminder to the customer to take the action you want them to take) on each and every page to compensate.
• We have inattentional blindness. As Amy notes, “We see what we want to see – and we don’t see what matters, often. Are your action directives clear and on every single page? What’s important to you and does the user know it?”
• We like what’s first. Customers who do a search will look at just the first two results presented – at best. For retailers, that means making sure your bestsellers are among the top two results.
• We respond to status. And, Amy posited, “Status and reputation are more important than money.” This is a key underpinning to social media – how many likes or connections, one’s rank as a contributor to customer reviews, and so forth.
• We respond to scarcity. As we all know, “If it’s rare, we want it,” Amy notes. For retailers, this means thinking about scarcity and how it affects your cart and your check out – are you conveying urgency and scarcity so the customer has incentive to finish the check out process?

For those that started the eCommerce revolution, the digital retail and eCommerce channel has had to work hard for this growth and in some instances, for the attention and respect in the industry. With the continued growth of digital retailing thanks to technology development and a smarter, more (and always) connected consumer, omni-channel retailing is here, and no longer just an option.

Shop.org and the National Retail Federation (NRF) understand this shift in the industry and the collaboration that is taking place within the retail communities, verticals and business units all over the world. In fact, beginning today, you’ll see how the associations that represent the global retail community are truly coming together.

The NRF Big Show is getting bigger and more digital than ever. And no, we’re not talking about the fabulous event app the team has put together. Beginning today, Shop.org is going to have the largest presence ever at the 101^st NRF Big Show, the premiere event of the retail industry.

A digital keynote. Two days of sessions specifically for digital retailers. A networking event. And so much more.

It’s collaboration with the company that represents retail – that mimics the crucial juncture and opportunity for collaboration that we are all witnessing within the industry itself. As digital retail continues to rise as the shining star of the industry, our innovation and some of the leaders within our community will be showcased at the number one retail event in the world.

For the first time ever, our Shop.org and NRF teams have put together a First Look Track at Retail’s BIG Show – so that the 22,000+ retail leaders attending this conference could take this opportunity to experience the thought-provoking education, and insight for which Shop.org is known, and immerse themselves in the digital retail experience.

During our First Look track sessions, and some of the other sessions our Shop.org team has put together including a Super Session slot featuring Jeffrey Rayport, One Kings Lane CEO, Doug Mack and Rent the Runway CEO, Jennifer Hyman, we’ll be discussing some of the most prevalent themes in the evolving world of retail today: globalization, personalization, organization and omni-channel retailing.

First, you’ll hear a lot about globalization. With a strong international contingent this year, especially from the UK and Brazil, there will be some incredible sessions on retail globalization at the BIG Show. Specifically, our team is proud to bring you a session on how retailers can tap into the eCommerce markets in the growing economies of China and Brazil which companies have been particularly successful in these markets.

The next big theme throughout this year’s First Look Track is personalization, which embraces marketing, site design, merchandising, and social media. We’ve got some great speakers discussing this theme, including Amy Africa’s session on Monday afternoon on neuromarketing and how we can influence the brain to buy with site and store design with consumer behavior in mind.

What about organization? This is one of the most difficult decisions occurring in retail board rooms today. If we look back over past 10 years — what changes are we seeing in terms of best practices in regards to organization? How can retailers effectively organize for international? Centralize it? Localize it? Some of both? We believe that Retail Means Jobs, so how do you get and retain the best talent – especially as digital retailers or as retailers trying to embrace digital? Our panel of retailer executives from Sheplers Western Wear, Tommy Hilfiger and OnlineShoes.com will discuss these questions and more on a session dedicated to the retail organization of the future.

And finally, the topic that binds us all in the retail industry – omni-channel retailing. Consumers expect a one-screen, one-store experience across your channels and touch points. Are our internal business operations and customer service systems in place to meet expectations of this smarter, mobilized, socialized future shopper? I believe the future shopper is already here and we’re seeing a few great examples of retailers that are ready for it. We’ll touch on this omni-channel topic in several of our sessions from Sucharita Mulpuru, Mitch Joel, McKinsey & Company and the Resource Interactive team. But, more specifically, we have put together two sessions featuring some of our most innovative, omni-channel retailers including Guitar Center, American Eagle and Warby Parker. Attend those sessions and you will hear about SOLOMO at its finest and see successful examples of using digital channels and assets to optimize for the omni-channel shopping experience.

Shop.org is proud to bring our digital retail community to the forefront of the biggest retail show in the industry. We hope to make the NRF Big Show bigger, stronger, and more digital than ever. We like to believe we are the reason they will have WIFI for all attendees for the first time in their 101 years and have that awesome app. We hope to see many of you there to see for yourself. If not, make sure to follow along on both the Shop.org and NRF Big Show blogs as we cover stories from some of the best the show has to offer.

In light of their astonishing growth and as a preview to Doug’s upcoming appearance as a Super Session speaker at Retail’s BIG Show, we reached out to CEO Doug Mack for our most recent Talking With… interview. During our conversation, Mack repeatedly touched on a few key themes that apply to leading and succeeding with just about any retail business in the world: hone in on innovation, embrace design and technology, leverage your data, and optimize every aspect of the customer experience. While Doug points to some of the companies and brands that he looks to for inspiration, I can only imagine how many companies and brands already are inspired by his leadership and the near-flawless focus at One Kings Lane on website design, online merchandising and building the next game-changing lifestyle brand.

Social media is obviously changing the way some people shop and engage with your brand. What are some of the new and exciting trends in social?

We’ve had great success at One Kings Lane with social media to fuel “word of mouth” around our brand – when you offer something unique and interesting, customers will now share it broadly via Facebook, Twitter, blogs and even old-fashioned email. Some exciting developments in social media are new “interest” focused communities such as Pinterest and Houzz. While Facebook does a great job at addressing the social graph, these emerging sites are addressing interest by providing environments for enthusiasts to spend time sharing what they love across a wide range of categories and interests, including design and home décor.

What does the future hold for flash sales? How is the business model evolving?

The Flash Sales model is very exciting to consumers, as they tend to get great products at better prices. My view is that innovation is critical for the continued growth of companies in the flash sale space. In our case, we were the first company to offer the Flash Sales model in the home market when we launched in 2009. We then followed up by evolving from a pure flash sales model when we launched the Tastemaker Tag Sales series, where we work with well-known designers and influencers to bring curated sales of one-of-a-kind and vintage items to One Kings Lane. Today, we also shop around the world to bring unique, exceptional items that are hand-selected and deliver tremendous value for our customers. In many ways, we’ve already evolved well beyond flash sales with the variety of merchandise we offer – along with the content we integrate into the experience.

Today’s hot topics in retail include all things mobile, tablet, social and flash. Looking forward, which of those items do you think will sink and which will swim?

I believe the mobile, tablet, social and flash trends will continue to be very relevant to consumers. The reality is that consumers are now becoming accustomed to searching and purchasing items directly from their smartphones and tablets – with tablets representing a particularly encouraging opportunity. Social will be embedded in all e-commerce experiences – so sites that offer an exceptional consumer proposition will benefit from it while those that are undifferentiated will suffer. In flash, I expect we’ll see vertical winners evolve in the years ahead in categories such as apparel, home, kids and travel – while sites that are not a leader at any particular category will eventually sink.

What do you find the most exciting about working in the e-commerce field?

I’ve been in e-commerce for more than a decade now – and I absolutely love the opportunity to find innovative new ways to excite consumers. As we have this mindset in our company, it forces us operate in a non-traditional way in almost every area of our business, from merchandising to product to marketing to operations. For example, unlike traditional retail, our shelves change every single day, 365 days a year, which presents major operational challenges – that as we solve one by one, provides us with huge sources of competitive advantage. The end result is that we continue to deliver a dramatically new and different retail experience for our customers – and yet, despite our fast traction, I think we might still be in the first inning of all the innovation we have planned in the years ahead. The amount of open space to innovate makes it exciting to come to work at One Kings Lane each day.

With your background in design and technology, do you ever find yourself getting caught up in website design and looking less at the retail component? How important is website design for retailers?

That is a critical question for any e-commerce company. We have a phrase that we use at One Kings Lane that one of our employees came up with at our last all company summit – “the merch is the fuel to the car.” Everything we do in the business is critical to our success – but if we don’t get the merch right, we won’t get very far. Design and technology are critical aspects to our overall experience – as we apply these disciplines in three key directions – to our consumers, our employees (who run the business) and our suppliers. One of our driving principles in the application of design and technology is to stay focused and keep it simple – and this certainly manifests itself in our website design. In fact, I believe companies that have hard-to-navigate and cluttered websites is a result of a lack of focus internally – you can see their lack of cohesive strategy represented in the experience on their website.

The feedback we continue to receive from our customers is they love the simplicity of our site. One of the hardest things is to not implement every idea we have for fear it will clutter the experience. We relentlessly curate both the merchandise and website experience to make it a joy for our customers.

How does technology empower retailers today? What are the opportunities of innovation and convergence between the two industries?

Just having a website no longer cuts it for retailers. For retailers to be successful, they need to offer their customers an opportunity to interact with their brand easily from wherever they are, whether it’s on their phone, at home, or in the mall. Also, the future of commerce lies in the massive leverage of data – to have an unfair advantage is optimizing every inch of the customer experience – how you market, how you merch, how you serve. This is extremely hard to do – but those who crack the code will have a systematic advantage in the market.

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing digital retailers right now?

Companies have been working on incremental improvements to refine the customer experience, but my sense is we’ll start to see a wave of companies like One Kings Lane that bring a game-changing new experience to bear. The challenge is to sort out if you’ll be part of changing the landscape – or more impacted by it. My sense is digital retailers are also a bit too dependent on certain tools that work today, such as email and SEM, but need to push their thinking on how to be more creative in their customer contact strategies.

What skills do you look for when you’re hiring new staff at One Kings Lane? Do you think today’s graduates are bringing the right experiences to the table?

In every employee we look for passion, agility, innovativeness and customer focus. We focus huge mind share on hiring employees that fit well in our company culture. We’ve had great success hiring recent graduates who have the above traits, along with experienced individuals from a wide variety of industries, including e-commerce, retail, internet and media.

As a recognized leader in your field, who or where do you look for inspiration?

I am a huge fan of major brands that fundamentally change industries. I continue to have utmost respect for Nike, Apple and Starbucks in particular as they completely changed their respective markets, but then never stopped evolving. Apple for instance not only changed the PC industry, but then the music industry – then the mobile industry – and now the PC industry again (via the introduction of tablet computing). All of these companies started with a core innovation, but did not rest on their laurels. As One Kings Lane builds the next lifestyle brand, I will continue to look at these game-changing companies for inspiration.

This year, Shop.org hosted a cocktail reception and dinner at Jillian’s Boston, just steps away from Fenway Park. Attendees enjoyed a few hours away from the bustling convention center with hours of bowling, ping pong, pool and, of course, networking. For those that missed it (or those that want to see if they can catch themselves in a photo) we’ve included a video highlighting the evening, all thanks to our sponsor X.commerce.

Topics ranged from product listing ads to social engagement to drop shipping, demonstrating – if nothing else – that the online retail industry has a lot of opportunities. Watch these six industry professionals share what they think the trends, challenges and buzz is.

1. Opt-in Processes. According to McDonald almost half of all retailers are hiding their opt-in messages at the bottom of their webpages. There is, he said, a difference between how the top retailers position opt-ins and the rest of the retailers on their websites. Of those on their top retailer list, 92% feature the opt-in throughout their website prominently, compared to only 84% of those not on the list. In addition to making sure that your customers can easily find your opt-in, McDonald recommends considering thinking beyond the traditional opt-ins. For example, follow Moosejaw’s example and include an opt-in on your Facebook page. McDonald said that since 66% of people prefer social sign-up instead of filling out a form, the better customer experience will be found by offering both ways to sign-up.

2. Welcome Emails. Consider all the emails your company sends. Which one was is the most important? McDonald says it just might be your welcome email. Using the example of Tafford Uniforms, he explained that the first welcome email sent to customers generates six times the revenue of a broadcast email. And yet, according to their research 32% of retailers are sending no welcome email at all.

3. Opt-out Alternative. 34% on Silverpop’s top retailers list offer opt-out alternatives. That drops to just 22% for the rest of the retailers. There are a number of alternatives that you can offer in addition to a opt-out including letting subscribers change how often they receive emails, what format they come in, which email address they come to, etc. According to McDonald, often 20-30% of subscribers will stay if you offer them alternatives. Retailers might even consider offering a “snooze” options to their customers like J&P Cycles does. Allowing customers to take a break from newsletters and emails for a month or two would certainly be preferable to them unsubscribing and potentially not signing up again.

Whether you are a top retailer or just getting started, making sure you are doing the above will go a long way in ensuring your email marketing is effective and your customers are happy to hear from you.

All that to say, when I experience moments like this, I feel like we’re living the future of mobile.

Most of you reading this are probably ahead of the curve on implementing the latest and greatest digital technologies on a personal level with the retailers who you do business with daily (so maybe you’re all already doing this, but…). One morning last week, as I ventured down for my morning Starbucks, I was surprised to notice that my colleague carried nothing with her except her phone. Preparing myself to jump in and pick up the tab for her Chai Tea Latte, she pulled out her mobile phone and simply scanned the screen to pay using the Starbucks Card Mobile App.

This may be a small example, but it’s quite a successful one. But let me take that concept one step further. In an Annual Summit session today on this exact topic, our moderator shared the following video. And let’s just say, I can’t wait until this exact technology becomes commonplace in subway systems across the U.S. Think about how efficient your commute would be!

In yesterday’s Annual Summit session on independent daily deals and flash sales, the first question to ask is “Why?” With the heavyweights I’ve mentioned above, why would retail companies launch their own independent flash sale or daily deal program? Well, let’s take a look at a few companies experimenting on their own: Neiman Marcus, Giiv.com and Lifetime Brand.

Neiman Marcus has found wild success with their flash sales, called the “Midday Dash”, with higher open rates and click rates compared to batch emails, says Aaron Shockey, VP of Advertising and Digital. One cool feature of the sale opportunity: If someone adds a flash sale product to their cart, Neiman Marcus keeps it in their cart even after the sale is over. What have they learned from the program? Shockey says these events have assisted regular price selling, expanded the customer base, and improved engagement. But he also cautions for other retailers experimenting, “You can be unpredictable, but you still need to be consistent.”

Michelle Crames, CEO and Found of SkuLoop and Giiv.com, says these flash sales and daily deals are an “immediate opportunity to create excitement with your customers.” As a solution provider, SkuLoop is finding wild success in assisting retail companies looking to venture into this space. A recent promotion with PACT Organic Underwear showed 60% more revenue than the same products on Gilt Groupe and a 95% new customer acquisition. Crames’s closing words to the audience: “It’s about losing market share if you’re not doing this. You’ve gotta do this now.”

Jeff Berman, President of Retail Direct and eCommerce with Lifetime Brands, was a little more cautious in his recommendations to the audience, saying, “Daily deals are not for everyone!” Just look at the recent scaling back of Yelp and Facebook in the space. Berman’s experience at Lifetime Brands found that consumers are already getting burnt out on these types of promotions – so his team focused on making their program more efficient in their specific market. Key elements of the Lifetime Brands strategy included: immediacy (deal is one-day only), scarcity (sell out on many product offerings), simplicity (one-click), group psychology (direct link to facebook via iframe to encourage and feature dialogue), and social sharing (“share to save more”).

These three retail groups have had very different – but all successful – programs. With more than 82% of GenXers saying flash sales have encouraged them to try new brands’ products and services, is it time for your company to jump in?

Let’s rewind a bit. Up until 2001, Ticketmaster shoppers stood in physical lines for hours, maybe even days, to procure the best possible seats to view their entertainment. It’s true that some would call sleeping in tents and waiting in lines with hundreds of like-minded consumers a “social event”. Once web became the primary channel of operation for Ticketmaster, and once the social phenomenon as we now know it began to take place, executives realized the ticket-buying process is an inherently social event. Even on the web.

Ticketmaster’s online social experiment started with a link and bookmark and share buttons across the website (everyone’s gotta start somewhere). But last year, Levin shared, Ticketmaster relaunched their social strategy with a focus on Facebook buttons. First, they started placing contextual copy around “Like” buttons. The response: Each Like equaled $5 in additional ticket sales. Each “recommended” link shared on Facebook found the same response.

So they took it a step further with custom integration through a RSVP feature. The simple ask of “Tell your friends you’re attending The Counting Crows” message also accounted for upwards of $5 in ticket sales.

Levin said these stats were the key to greater investment in social by the organization. After the original success of the Facebook “Like” button, next up was a fully integrated homepage which included personalized recommendations based on Facebook data as well as a “friends on Ticketmaster” functionality with a basic news feed.

All of these items were wildly successful…but Levin said that there was a key missed opportunity that was quickly recognized: The typical ticket purchaser doesn’t buy just one ticket. Who were these “guests” that were attending with the average Ticketmaster shopper? And how could Ticketmaster engage that group?

Well, the e-commerce folks at Ticketmaster found the solution. And it’s pretty cool. I’ll let this demo speak for itself.

Just how successful has the interactive seat map been for Ticketmaster? Levin says 80% of users share their ticket information through Facebook with everyone (not just friends, or friends of friends). A lightbox pop-up for those already logged into Facebook, asking for permission, has led to twice the number of RSVPs. And the added ability to tag those guests who are attending with the shopper drives 33% more visits back to Ticketmaster.com.

So why exactly did Ticketmaster embark on this new social experiment? Levin said, “For us, it’s just about making the experience better.”

And with that, it all comes full circle. “If you focus on making your customer experience great, great things will happen.”

During his career, Bill Bass has undoubtedly done many things that people can agree with. He’s seen tremendous success from tenures at Lands’ End, Sears, Fair Indigo and now Charming Shoppes.

But the most refreshing part of his keynote during the Shop.org Annual Summit today was perhaps the unapologetic comments that Bass made about QR codes (doesn’t see the point), Facebook (can’t completely buy into the hype) and company organizational structure (he had a few choice words about some recent retailers’ changes). Regardless of whether attendees agreed with him, all likely walked away with a few topics to debate at this afternoon’s roundtables or this evening’s networking event.

At the crux of Bass’s presentation was five lessons he has learned in 15 years of selling online. The lessons themselves are fairly straightforward, but the food for thought he offered as a part of his keynote surely got the conversation started.

Lesson #1: Ecommerce is not just another store, nor is it just a cheaper marketing channel.

In order to fully utilize your website, Bass said, you cannot treat it like one of your stores. Why? Because the rhythms and dynamics on the web are totally different.

One example: web traffic tends to peak during the week while store traffic spikes on the weekends. (Meaning, the “in store” offers and doorbusters so popular on Saturdays and Sundays might perform best on Mondays or Wednesdays from an online standpoint.) Bass encouraged retailers to “shoot when the ducks are flying” – and the ducks are flying during the week online.

In addition, Bass said, metrics for success are completely different between the two channels. “If I go to any store person and ask about factors for success, no one is going to say easy search, speedy checkout. They’d say something totally different.”

Viewing your website as just another store is “the dumbest damn thing I’ve heard in my life,” Bass said. “If you treat it the same, you’re going to sub-optimize it.” And things just got more spicy from there.

Lesson 2: Org structure matters.

There are two ways the majority of retailers organize their company to account for ecommerce. In one structure, the ecommerce folks operate completely independently. The other model, which integrates ecommerce operations with the rest of the company, means that the marketing team handles both digital and traditional advertising, merchants and buyers work for both channels, etc.

According to Bass, neither of those arrangements works particularly well. “What you want to do is have it somewhere in the middle but skewed towards independence,” he said. In his view, the ecommerce group should be independent and report directly to the CEO.

In Bass’s view, the right structure is imperative to getting ecommerce the resources, and attention, it deserves. An ecommerce team reporting to marketing is only focusing on marketing, he said. An ecommerce team reporting to through stores is only focusing on – you guessed it – stores.

For better or worse, the web often forces change within companies, he said, “and the CEO is the only person that can give you the air cover to make those changes.” Besides, a CEO that doesn’t have the ecommerce team reporting directly to him or her may need a bit of a priority check, Bass said. “If a third of your sales are coming in from the internet, there is no more important strategic thing facing you. If you don’t understand that, you’re going to lose.”

Lesson #3: Focus, Focus, Focus. Don’t be distracted by shiny objects or bogus metrics.

There’s no doubt there have been plenty of “revolutionary” ideas in ecommerce that have made executives stop and take notice, but the challenge comes in cutting through the clutter and critically determining whether each new fad could improve your bottom line.

FourSquare was one example that Bass highlighted as a “shiny object” that may be more fad than function. “When you really look at what causes your website to win, it’s just a handful of things: search and fast checkout. These make customers’ lives easier,” he said. “FourSquare doesn’t make a customer’s life easier.”

According to Bass, all metrics should come down to search and fast checkout, and encouraged executives to be skeptical if other data is being highlighted. “You’ll start to see people throw out other metrics when they’re trying to sell you something that doesn’t work with those metrics.”

Lesson #4: Pay attention to Lesson #3. (But also take advantage of new capabilities. )

It all does come down to search and fast checkout, Bass said, but there are ways to do the basics well and focus on other elements of the shopping experience to increase sales. During his presentation, Bass walked through Charming Shoppes’ new site, www.FashionGenius.com. The site, which offers incredibly easy search functionality, uses an adaptive survey created from a million customer surveys and 10,000 in-person fittings to help women find clothes that will fit their body type and their personal style.

Bass called it “a Google for clothes” and said that, since yesterday, over 60,000 people have already taken a survey on the site. The success of the launch has defied the company’s expectations.

Lesson 5: Look at what lies ahead (and what shouldn’t)

One of the best lessons Bass has learned in ecommerce seems to be that looking forward may be even more important than looking back. And what’s coming down the pike? According to Bass, with an estimated 30% of store-based sales shifting online, store economics will “cataclysmically” change. And for stores, he said, “it’s going to get worse.” (In fact, Bass went so far as to recommend against long-term store leases – he is that confident that the web will impact physical locations.)

What else is coming down the pike that will revolutionize retail? Put your eyes on the iPad, Bass said. “You can’t play Angry Birds on your computer – it doesn’t work,” he said. “And the shopping experience on an iPad is empirically better than on a website. I’ve now come to believe that this is the single most important thing going forward.”

What is Bass not so hot on? Smartphones, he says. “If I’m a restaurant, or Fandango, I need to be doing the smartphone thing,” he said. “Smartphones matter depending upon your category” but aren’t applicable to everyone. (Discuss amongst yourselves.) Also on the “not so hot” radar: social media, which he thinks matters for service but not sales.

At the end of the day, retail executives may have had mixed opinions on Bass’s viewpoints. But he did give people plenty to talk about. And at a conference like this, that is always a very good thing.

As the CMO of eBags, Wilson was able to share with the Shop.org Summit attendees first hand experiences from both eBags and Handbags.com in the session “Social Commerce in the Trenches.” While Facebook is not the only social network out there, with 750 million active users worldwide, it was bound to be the focus.

With users spending over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook, the challenge for retailers becomes losing people. How? A retailer’s website may say “Like us on Facebook.” So the average shopper clicks through to like the page, sees the brand’s page, then notices that today is cousin Megan’s birthday. So the shopper heads over Megan’s page to send birthday wishes, finds a new photo album from a recent vacation and just like that… you’ve lost them. It’s stickier than fly paper.

Handbags.com set out first to understand their customer and then to create a social cycle that would both utilize Facebook’s feature-rich platform and achieve the benefits that every retailer wants. The first thing eBags realized is that handbag shoppers want different things than those shopping for, say, luggage. Handbag shoppers don’t spend as much time looking at reviews. They can decide for themselves if the bag is cute. They just need to know that the zipper isn’t going to fall off. They give a lot of weight to what their friends think of a handbag. On the other hand, none of my friends has ever asked me if I liked their new piece of luggage.

So how do you create a social cycle that keeps that demographic focused on the retail brand or site, and not stuck in Facebook? One tactical example Wilson gave was the social toolbar at the bottom of their website. From there, if you share the website with friends you’ll earn a $25 coupon for every three friends that also sign-up. The key is, you do all that without ever going to the Facebook site. You log in to handbags.com with your Facebook credentials, pull up your favorite Facebook friends, and share the site. And there you’ll be, still on handbags.com, ready to spend your $25 coupon.

That’s not the only Facebook tool on handbags.com that manages to use the network to share, while still keeping the customer on the site. Want to recommend the new Botkier bag to your friends? You can do that from Handbags.com. Want to register for the site with your Facebook account, and not have to fill out a new user form? You can do that on the site. Want to see which of your friends “likes “Handbags.com? No need to go to Facebook, just look at the Handbags.com homepage and look for your friends’ familiar faces.

Regardless of whether Facebook is too sticky for retailers, it’s a key component of social shopping and therefore should not ignored. Thankfully, there are deep social commerce integrations that allow retailers to utilize Facebook’s strengths and keep the retail brand front and center.

The tips ranged in scope from “duh, I should have thought of that” to “that’s so in the weeds I have no idea what’s going on,” but I’ve condensed many of panelists’ top ideas into a little “Lucky Number Seven” list of how to make more money now. The expansive handout will be available soon on the Summit website.

1. Implement Facebook “Like” and Google+1 buttons. The “Like” buttons can be in more than one place on your site, but should definitely appear above the fold (via ChannelAdvisor’s Scot Wingo).
2. Make your email bullet-proof by making the focal points of your email (including navigation, calls-to-action and borders) visible even if consumers can’t see images. Most e-mails come through with images “turned off.” Outsmart the system (via Bounce Exchange’s Ryan Urban).
3. Watch your mobile speed and make navigation your No. 1 priority. Too much space, meaningless categories and horizontal scrolling are all no-nos. Make checkout simple, offer large search boxes that are front and center (and easy to type in), and provide an embedded call to action for consumers (via Eight by Eight’s Amy Africa).
   
   

   Sheldon Gilbert, Founder and CEO, Proclivity Systems

4. A digital tune-up can go a long way toward improving your conversions. Fix your bounce issues and recommendation engines. Re-examine your “Welcome” series e-mails and make sure they don’t roll out too slowly (via Social Shopping Lab’s Peter Leech).
5. Help customers find what they’re looking for. Incorporate lists of synonyms in case customers aren’t sure how to spell a product time. If you don’t sell something, offer alternative products and consider if the product is worth stocking (via Demandware’s Sue Chapman).
6. Improve your page load time. Ten seconds isn’t good enough. Two seconds is the industry standard, but many major retailers aren’t there yet. Minimize requests, such as downloading images and javascript, and optimize your images. Quick tip: try Pingdom.com to find out what sections of your pages are taking the most time to load (via IMPAQT’s Jamie Keaney).
7. Drop cookies on customers who receive your e-mails. This will work even on customers who look at your e-mail in the preview pane of outlook (via Proclivity Systems’ Sheldon Gilbert).

Now go home, implement a couple of these quick fixes, make more money, and let us know how it goes!

Charles Nicholls

Shopping carts have plagued retailers and their customers for years.

There’s something inherent to their design — or perhaps it’s Murphy’s Law — that dictates that all four wheels may not, under any condition, be able to simultaneously roll in the same direction. More than once, the subsequent rattling and precarious instability, akin to driving without power steering, has forced me to abandon the cart altogether and fend for myself.

Then, there are virtual shopping carts.

According to SeeWhy Inc founder Charles Nicholls, over 70% of online customers will abandon their virtual shopping carts. Cart abandonment is a pressing problem for digital retailers across the board, and that’s why Nicholls, along with Saks.com Director Andrew Balazs and Build.com Marketing VP Brandon Proctor, came together at Shop.org’s 2011 Annual Summit for a session entitled, “The Science of Shopping Cart Optimization.”

Nicholls began the session by running down a litany of statistics detailing why customers abandon their carts and offering insights on how retailers can win them back. According to his research, customers abandon their carts either because it’s not the right time or because it’s not the right price. As all retailers know, timing and price are two of the most difficult factors to combat when trying to complete a sale, so recapturing those sales is certainly not an easy process.

Here’s a quick rundown of some of Nicholls’s other primary points:

• Design your remarketing campaigns to address timing and price objections. Although this seems intuitive, Nicholls said it was amazing how many retailers overlook this step in their remarketing process.
• Realize that not all abandonment is bad. For many purchases, abandonment is a natural part of the product-buying process. Shoppers research, price check and then finally purchase, often with one or more cart abandonment occurring between the initial “add to cart” and final purchase.
• Begin remarketing as soon as your customer abandons the cart. They say that within the first 12 hours is your greatest opportunity to recapture the sale — Nicholls says, however, that sometimes even 12 hours is too long. The quicker you are to remarket to the customer, and the more personalized the remarketing campaign is, the better your chances are of completing the sale.

Balazs gave attendees a look into the behind-the-scenes process that occurred in Saks’ virtual shopping cart redesign effort. Saks recognized the problems they were having with cart abandonment and decided to give its shopping cart system an honest review and makeover. Their objective was to improve the completion rate for customers who start the checkout process. The most common problems that Saks’ cart system had, according to Balazs, are: (1) customers entering checkout just to determine the final sales price; (2) customers leave in order to modify their cart; (3) a confusing user experience; (4) buggy checkout process.

So here are a few of the suggestions that Balazs made in light of Saks’ research and testing:

• Let your customers know what the final price is before they start checkout.
• Make it easy to make changes and see the subsequent impact on the cart.
• Ensure that key information is easy to see and edit.

Proctor wrapped up the session by offering what he believed to be the biggest takeaways for digital retailers. Convenience appears to have been a theme of the afternoon, with each presenter insisting that the easier the process the higher the conversion rate. For instance, Proctor noted that coupons are “bigger than Britney Spears” right now (before amending that to “bigger than Justin Bieber, because Britney isn’t that big anymore”). This means that retailers should attempt to make the use of online coupons as easy as possible, going as far as providing coupon codes during the checkout process.

Here are the rest of Proctor’s takeaways:

• Give the customers what they want. Proctor noted how shocked customers are when retailers actually provide them with the experience and products they wanted. The more retailers can do this, the better. He also added that it is “unforgivable to not give customers what they want, given how much information digital retailers are able to gather about their customers.”
• Listen to the customer. Another stalwart of the retail community that is too often forgotten when it comes to designing checkout processes.
  
• Create a thoughtless shopping experience. Convenience, convenience, convenience.

In advance of the release, we sat down with Forrester Research Principal Analyst Sucharita Mulpuru to discuss findings from the latest survey of retailers. In the video, Mulpuru shares how retailers are investing in mobile, which retailers are getting mobile “right,” and outlines the differences between smartphones and tablets (and why that should matter to retailers).

Innovation and technology were the keys to expanding market share and increasing sales, according to Columbia’s Mick McCormick, who delivered his “Gear up for Growth: Innovation in the Outdoor Industry” keynote this morning at the 2011 Shop.org Annual Summit. In an unusual move, the company hired a new team that would function entirely like a start-up and was segmented away from the corporate structure. The team took a hard look at the company’s four brands and made changes that emphasized technology.

Here’s a snapshot:

• Mountain Hard Wear previously was known as a great mountaineering brand, but Columbia redesigned it as a brand for athletes by focusing on innovative lower-weight mountaineering gear.
• Montrail’s focus was all over the map in 2008, so Columbia reinvented it as an all-around running brand and emphasized how its running products differed in terms of technical results. Montrail told the story of its new focus via its website, which offered a sliding bar that customers could use to showcase different types of running products based on their interests.
• Sorel used to be a men’s winter footwear brand with a limited scope. The brand reboot (pun intended) broadened the opportunity by focusing on young, fashion-forward women. These customers are greatly influenced by fashion blogs, brand sites and high-end retailers. So Sorel introduced custom videos targeting this customer and worked with her favorite retailers, such as Neiman Marcus and Barneys, to get Sorel boots in their stores.
• Consumers viewed Columbia’s namesake brand as a value brand, which is a perception the brand has changed by embracing technology in its products as well as via digital means. In less than ten years, Columbia’s number of patents grew from one to 157, allowing the brand to tout its high-tech products, such as its Omni-Heat line. Custom video, strategic online advertising and retail partnerships, and QR codes all play a role in telling the brand’s story to consumers.

The digital experience is much more than e-commerce, said McCormick. Customers want customized video and Web content to learn about your brand’s story. So get away from the idea that your business is all about transactions. The best way to influence customers is to be present throughout their shopping experiences online and in stores with more information – whether it’s via a QR code or a sleek online video.

That was what my NRF colleague Ellen Davis (@nrfellen) tweeted during Kurzweil’s keynote address at Shop.org’s Annual Summit 2011. If you were in the room with Ellen, myself and the thousands of other Summit attendees, I’m sure you are nodding in vigorous agreement with her sentiments. Ray Kurzweil, leading inventor, thought leader, author and futurist, is what we refer to in our business as a “really, really, REALLY smart man.”

During his keynote address, Kurzweil took the audience through technology’s breathtaking exponential growth over the past several decades. “Go back just a decade,” Kurzweil said. “Most people didn’t use search engines. Imagine life without search engines — sounds like ancient history now.” Kurzweil had a handful of other similar examples that demonstrated how technology’s capabilities are multiplying year over year, ranging from health and science innovations to 3D printing.

That’s part of what Kurzweil does for a living; he measures technology’s growth using a method he calls, “The Law of Accelerating Returns.” In the 1980′s, Kurzweil began wondering if he could chart technology’s progress in such a way that would allow him to show not only where its been, but also where it’s going. Sure enough, he found that technology grows at an incredibly steady, albeit explosive, rate. “Its [growth is] predictable,” he said. “But it’s not intuitive.”

The online shopping experience was a retail-specific arena that Kurzweil drew attention to. “While shopping online has significant advantages, your experience is limited,” Kurzweil said. “You can’t try on clothing or feel the material. However, all of that will change soon as we begin to introduce complete sensory-immersion technologies into the mainstream.” Imagining a world where I can actually “feel” a cotton shirt virtually before I buy it seems outlandish, but as Kurzweil pointed out, the iPhone 4 I’m using today is twice as powerful and half as expensive as the original iPhone 3G I was using just two years ago.

Technology can be both awe- and fear-inspiring for e-commerce. As technology’s exponential growth continues, digital retailers will be tasked with creatively implementing new innovations in ways that meet their customers’ expanding needs. However, it seems that the more technology we have, the more technology we need. Kurzweil said this is why people often believe the world is getting worse, “It’s not that things are getting worse, we just have a much better idea of what’s going on in the world,” he said. “We know when there’s a war in Fallujah, or someone’s sick in the Sudan, so people think the world is going to hell in a hand basket. This is all actually a good thing, though, because it motivates us to fix those problems.”

For digital retailers, Kurzweil may as well be Nostradamus. Technology has long enabled digital retailers to succeed through innovation; however, falling behind the technological curve — or even straying too far ahead — can often be fatal for a brand. That’s why Kurzweil said he has always believed that the key to success is timing.

“Technology is like skeet shooting: you have to always shoot ahead of the target.”

The oracle has spoken.