For perspective, Eisenberg gave the audience a “super duper condensed history of marketing, commerce and connectivity”, first juxtaposing images of a Roman coin with a credit card and payment by phone (my, how far we’ve come). The logistics and communications evolution has been rapidly evolving, too, of course – think of the path from the Gutenberg press to catalog retail to Amazon’s first home page, through online ads and social media, for example.

With this condensed history in mind, Eisenberg examined how marketing has been redefined. With increasingly demanding consumers, marketing is now much more about pull than old-style marketing push. Some companies such as Amazon and Zappos are foregoing classic marketing altogether, instead making an optimal customer experience their marketing strategy and plan instead (talk about culture convergence).

So, if this means “the end of business as usual”, what’s ahead for retailers? Eisenberg cited a number of evolutions that retailers need to keep an eye on, but the overarching theme is “Interactive Communications + Data = Increase in Relevance”. Eisenberg detailed what the future shopping experience might look like:

• Smartphones will synch up with a set top box in your house. The point here is expressly about utility – it is not about having hundreds of channels to choose from. Rather, the set top box knows what we like, as well as what we actually use and need.
• Webcams that give consumers “touch and shop” functionality, especially as webcams themselves become more sophisticated.
• “How will you MS Kinect?” Eisenberg asked the audience, then demonstrated the “connect and share” scenario of two friends simultaneously in front of their screens at home, trying on and discussing various dresses for an upcoming evening out.
• Paper ads going interactive. Eisenberg demonstrated how “all media is digitizing” with a video of an I-Ad in magazines, whereby the reader places his smart phone on top of a specific spot on the magazine ad (in this case for insurance company Axa), at which point part of the ad comes to life via a rather entertaining video. (“Think [also] about kids who try to use touch screen motion on a paper magazine,” Eisenberg added, underscoring the idea that future consumers will likely ignore entire a static ad, altogether.)
• Mobile. Already impacting the online retail world, Eisenberg emphasized that mobile is all about relevance to the individual user. “It doesn’t matter if mobile isn’t driving revenue directly,” he noted, adding “Up to 50% of all purchases in a store are influenced by a mobile phone. [And] 65% of mobile consumers say they want to see more personalized ads.” As for those in-store searches consumers conduct, Eisenberg asked retailers if they’re leveraging the search data that people are using when they’re in one’s store? Think of the nuggets and insights waiting to be discovered so that you can learn and adapt store offerings and information to meet customer needs that they’re voicing via search. “The truth is inevitable,” he stated emphatically, “You can’t block information or access in-store without people just leaving your store and going elsewhere.”

So what should retailers do next? Eisenberg lamented that, “the future is almost here” – and yet so many companies are in “wait and see” mode, wondering whether they should test or not, should they start a mobile strategy or not, dive into analytics or not?  Instead, take a hint from Google, which is already operating in “future state” mode: “We can suggest what you should do next, what you care about. Imagine: we know where you are, we know what you like.” (Eric Schmidt’s IFA Keynote, September 2010)

Per Eisenberg, here’s what retailers need to be doing right now:

• Think cross-channel. Consumers don’t care about channels, so forget channel vs. channel. For example, Best Buy includes customer ratings on price tags in stores. Ratings and reviews are popping up in store displays and on packaging everywhere.
• Start testing and adapting. Two examples that Eisenberg cited to inspire the audience to think “future state” now included CScout in Japan and Tesco in South Korea.  Example 1:  Within the CScout in Japan, the consumer picks up a hangar with a specific pair of jeans, which starts a video relevant to that particular product (so, a customized in-store experience relevant to you and the product in which you’re interested).  Example 2:  On the theme of “Will you take risks?”, Tesco (renamed “Home Plus” locally) in South Korea decided to let the store come to the people, rather than opening more physical locations. How so? The company developed virtual stores in everyday life, like in subway stations, by using QR code technology on billboards designed to look like a grocery shelf stocked with many household staples. People waiting for the subway could shop the billboard with their smartphone, pay for their purchase, then have the groceries delivered to their home. Online sales increased 130%, and the number of registered users grew significantly also.

Are you motivated by these fascinating examples of the future shopper? If so, what will you be testing and trying next?

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.

Zia Wigder, Pricnipal Analyst and Research Director at Forrester Research moderates the discussion.

While I don’t want to overwhelm with data, to understand why there is so much interest in two markets in particular – China and Brazil – a few numbers provide perspective:

• In Asia, 41% of all online users live in China. Similarly, in Latin America, 41% of all online users live in Brazil. According to CNN Money, China and Brazil rank as the world’s two largest emerging economies in terms of GDP: China at $7 trillion (second only to the U.S., at $15.1 trillion), and Brazil at $2.5 trillion (that’s on par with the U.K.).
• Forrester expects the Chinese online retail market to grow from $94.6 billion this year to $159.4 billion in 2015 (this includes both the business to consumer and the consumer to consumer markets). While smaller than China, the Brazilian online retail market is the largest by far in Latin America, and will grow from $11.9 billion this year to $22 billion by 2016.
• In both countries, online consumers across all age groups are shopping online, though on average tend to skew younger than in the U.S. Most online buyers live in major metropolitan areas. Mobile penetration is very high in both markets – though shopping via mobile phone is not yet common practice. Non-local retailers entering China and Brazil will face markets dominated by local players – global retailers have yet to become a major contender in either. Furthermore, consumers are accustomed to cheap or free shipping (so much for that as a differentiator!). And while multichannel shopping is not really in place yet, Zia’s take is that there is much growth ahead on that front.

So – sounds like lots of potential for retailers exploring e-commerce opportunities outside their home markets? Panelists Angela Kapp of Shenzen, China-based Hui She Shang (The Luxury Club) and Gastao Mattos of Braspag in Brazil say yes – but it’s important first to understand the local market, customer preferences, culture, payment systems, logistics, and regulatory issues in order to succeed long term. While I cannot do justice in a single blog post to the wealth of information that the panelists provided today, herewith are a few highlights:

How do Chinese and Brazilian consumers shop online? Gastao noted that Brazilian shoppers are driven by promotions, and that free shipping is common practice. Brazilian online retail for now tends to be dominated by categories such as consumer electronics and computer-related goods. Brazilian consumers mostly use credit cards to buy online, and installment payment plans are a “promotion driver, but with a high negative impact on margin,” per Gastao. Social media is very popular in Brazil, but so far has had a low direct impact on online sales.

Angela emphasized that in China, price comes first and foremost, and competition on price is “fierce”. Chinese consumers buy a wide variety of products across categories: fully 25% of online sales in China are for apparel and footwear, including children’s apparel. In terms of customer service, consumers mostly use online chat, with only 20% of consumers using email (or “EDM – electronic data mail”, as it’s referred to in China). Union Pay estimates credit card usage in China at just 15%, so third party payment systems dominate the market: Alipay leads with over 200 million accounts. Social media is very popular (even without Facebook!) but tends to be more content sharing sites such as market leader Sina Weibo, as well as Qzone and Tencent.

How about the competitive marketplace? As noted earlier, local players dominate both markets, and even for global players such as Amazon (newly entered in Brazil), competition will be high. With prices for goods in mainland China 30 to 50 percent higher than in other markets (even Hong Kong), Angela sees international brands succeeding partly via their expanding network of stores around China, allowing them to develop a multichannel experience.

What about fulfillment logistics? Gastao pointed out that e-commerce sales are growing more than 25% annually. There are only seven logistics companies in Brazil involved in e-commerce, and the trouble is that their growth is not keeping up with that 25% market growth. In China, local courier players dominate outside Tier 1 cities. Angela noted that 360Buy “has perhaps the best system, with more than 14 warehouses, covering 200 cities and 120 collection stations.” The Chinese government also has laws in place to let consumers easily make returns.

As Angela remarked at the very outset of this session, “We [US businesses] tend to want to drive the agenda. [Instead,] listen first, learn first.” Wise words, indeed.

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.

In partnership with BIGinsight, we asked consumers: “When choosing to make holiday purchases from a given online retailer, what is most important to you?” In an industry fueled by constant innovation – whether technical, marketing, merchandising, and beyond – the answers are a reminder that, no matter what those of us in online retail may dream up next, our customers will be looking for a number of key factors.

With a nod to last year’s rankings, here is this year’s fantastic five “what matters most to consumers” list:

1. Seeing the shopping cart total prior to check out: 4.5 of 5. Like last year, this function tops the list for consumers again. As Forrester Research has found, a leading cause of shopping cart abandonment is simply sticker shock when they see the final total including shipping costs. Bottom line: continually update the shopping cart total on relevant pages, thereby getting ahead of this issue even before the customer starts the formal check out process.

2. Product available to ship immediately: 4.5 of 5. Up from number 5 last year, consumers clearly want no surprises on the inventory front, either. Many retailers have bought (very) carefully into inventory in recent years after the 2008 holiday inventory glut – all well and good, but the burden is on the retailer to communicate clearly when inventory levels are minimal (see Boden USA’s effective use of color coding to indicate product availability in terms of in-stock, limited inventory, and out of stock, still one of my favorite examples). Putting a different spin on managing inventory stock issues, ModCloth actually keeps out of stock items on its site, allowing customers to sign up to be notified via email when the item is back in stock – which, in turn, becomes a remarketing tool that the customer is happy to receive.

3. Value for money / good deals: 4.4 of 5. Solidly in third place again this year, consumers continue to look for good value. As many have pointed out, this doesn’t just mean the price itself – it’s about conveying to the customer how the price relates to the qualities of the product such as quality, durability, fashion quotient, uniqueness, and the like.

4. Clear product descriptions: 4.4 of 5. A merchandising basic that always needs updating and fine tuning, this merchandising area now also benefits from the explosion of product video available to consumers. Executed well, product video can significantly enhance the clarity and depth of the product description – a fact not lost on close to half of retailers surveyed who invested significantly this year in product videos. Indeed, Golfsmith’s commitment to using video to explain technical details and ease of use features for products has resulted in increases for both conversion and SEO rankings.

5. Guaranteed on time delivery: 4.4 of 5. Again, imperative for holiday purchases in particular. Those coordination meetings you held last month with your operations staff and shipping vendors will go a long way towards ensuring a minimum of delivery snafus – and for those rare instances, you’ve got a flawless plan to make things right for the customer. Of course, customers can help themselves on this front via clear, visible shipping deadlines calendars (number 10 on their list of customer priorities, by the way). Another perennial favorite of mine, Nordstrom’s holiday shipping calendar, lays out shipping deadlines by each of the three most popular winter holidays (Christmas, Chanukah, and Kwanzaa) – I just wish it were already accessible from the home page even now.

What else are consumers looking for when choosing to do business with one merchant versus another? Broad product selection (4.3); merchant reputation (4.2); free return shipping offer  or policy (4.2); the ability to see product reviews from other customers (4.1); and – in tenth place, mind you – promotions (4.1). Clearly consumers don’t simply buy based on free shipping – yes, it’s important, but their decision to buy from you – or your competitor – is often likely much more multi-faceted.

For the full data for this and numerous other eHoliday survey questions, please visit Holiday Central on the Shop.org Web site.

Like President Obama himself, I, and millions around the world learned of the passing of this retail legend on the very device that he created. Jobs created and led the iconic, cutting-edge Apple brand through innovation and design. In the most challenging economy since the Great Depression, Jobs motivated his best-in-class retail team at Apple to invent and market discretionary products that millions around the world use every day. From the iPod to the iPhone and now the iPad, that has and will continue to revolutionize how this generation (and those to come) work, play, and teach.

He created devices that do it all, without instruction manuals, with features you don’t even know you want. I, and thousands in our retail community would agree that what he did was merchandising and product design at its finest. His ideas created new industries, and literally put the power of the Internet in our pockets to access anytime.

Shop.org and the entire digital retail industry mourn the news of his passing. As marketers and as retailers we must take his example of modern day creativity, focus on innovation, and drive for perfection even during the toughest of times to take our businesses to the next level. In his own words, we should remember to “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

Known for his great speeches and interviews, I leave you all with one Jobs quote to consider as retailers, as business leaders, and marketers, as you guide your companies through the upcoming holiday season and into the future.

“A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.”

Thank you Steve. Our spirits are a bit broken today, but we send our thoughts to your family and the Apple team that you have created and guided to be one of the most successful companies in world.

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?

Stephanie Tilenius from Google

Pretty crazy, right? Well, it’s a reality for Tesco shoppers in South Korea, according to Stephanie Tilenius, Google‘s vice president of commerce and payments, who spoke this morning at the 2011 Shop.org Annual Summit. The act of combining the mobile and bricks-and-mortar experiences resulted in Tesco moving from the No. 2 grocery retailer in South Korea to No. 1. Those results are impossible to ignore. Mobile is the way of the future.

The average mobile phone user checks his or her mobile device 40 times a day and is never more than three feet away from it. These incredible facts underscore the importance of mobile for the next mobile retail generation. These customers are Web-connected and location-aware. However, embracing mobile doesn’t mean the death of bricks-and-mortar, said Tilenius. It’s your job as a retailer to create efficiencies between online and offline so that these customers have an enriching retail experience.

How do you create these efficiencies? Retailers including Home Depot, Walmart and Best Buy already have embraced order online/pick-up in-store strategies, while retailers such as Nordstrom are using iPads to provide sales associates with more information about in-store customers and their latest purchases.

Tilenius stressed the importance of optimizing mobile sites and adding rich content as a sales driver. On-site curators and tastemakers that personalize recommendations help initiate a new dialogue with loyal customers. Retailers also can offer store maps, coupons and recipes via mobile for consumers who are in stores. Better yet, they can offer mobile payment as a self-checkout option, so that customers don’t even have to stand in line when they’re in the stores.

Google’s role in this integration of mobile and bricks-and-mortar comes in the form of Google Wallet, Google Offers and Google + and other platforms. The company also has launched Google Catalogs, a product search that features curated sets of products as an interactive browse-based experience.

One final scenario from Tilenius to consider while you ponder your own role in this new wave of retail features: A customer walks into a Gap seeking a pair of jeans. She finds the right style, but not the correct size. With her mobile device, she scans the NFC tag attached to the garment, selects the correct size and places an order. The next day, the customer’s jeans, in the correct size, is delivered on her doorstep. That’s a win/win for both retailers, who get to keep the sale, and a shopper, who is able to buy the product she wants.

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.

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.

What are a few of the top trends you’re seeing in digital retail this year?

In no particular order…mobile, social, deals and convenience.

The cost of walking out of a store is cheaper than it has ever been. For the first time in history, consumers have the ability to save the absolute amount of time and money at zero incremental cost regardless of whether they’re standing in a store with their coveted merchandise in hand. When you have two-parent working families with kids who have more activities, an economy generating flat income growth relative to inflation and rising commodity prices, the pressure to adapt and find efficiencies to maximize your lifestyle accelerates.

Just as retailers are increasing productivity through adoption of technology like CRM, connected stores, recommendation engines, free shipping, site-to-store, etc., the vast majority of consumers are also using technology to steepen their value and efficiency curve and improve their lifestyles. Deals, recommendations, inventory availability and price comparison have become so accessible to Main Street that the traditional ways consumers look to save money more clearly than ever express their true costs of use.

Are digital technologies reinventing the relationship between consumers and advertisers? What does this mean for retailers?

Shopping tools that are always available, predicated on simplicity and elegant design combined with real mobile processing power have fundamentally changed retailing forever.

There are 330 million search results for “my 2-year-old can use an iPhone.” In short, technology is more accessible than it has ever been at a time when inventory, pricing, reviews and recommendations information have reached near 100% transparency for non-perishable goods. Today, we have easy-to-use tools that personalize, organize and filter information like Groupon, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Google. Consumers’ understanding of these tools is peaking and usage has become more sophisticated overtime.

Retailers should be focused not just on where consumers spend their time researching and buying, but on how best to tailor their tactics based on the transitions people make by device and by location. From desktop at work, to tablets after work on the couch, to mobile in the aisles, focus on transitions in mindset and context. Size of screen and location impact the kinds of information people seek.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask about one of the biggest social media announcements of the year – the launch of Google+. Will you share three tips for retailers looking to leverage the platform?

Social seems to have its most significant impact at the front – through awareness – and backend – through conversion – of the buying cycle. What deals are available? What brands or products do people who are like me buy and when it comes down to the final choice, which brand do people like me buy? It’s still very early days and retailers are investing in the promise of tomorrow.

Today, social signals are relatively one dimensional in that they express interest, but not necessarily intent. In the future, companies that make sense of these connections and influences by understanding their relationships will revolutionize the way retailers merchandise and personalize their stores for each customer.

At Google, our goal is to use social signals to improve consumer experiences across Google properties and partners. In the near term, we’ll enhance the relevance of intent-based queries which are already delivering the most qualified customers on the web to retailers. If someone is looking for barefoot running shoes and their friend endorses a specific result for barefoot running shoes, we believes this will improve engagement for brands, improve the relevance of generic queries and deliver higher conversion rates for our partners.

According to this year’s State of Retailing Online report, search is still the number one marketing acquisition tool for online retailers. I know you can’t tell us what’s in the Google secret search optimization sauce, but what common mistakes do you see among retail clients when it comes to optimizing their site for search?

For multichannel retailers, too many still optimize for an online conversion and view all other paid search visits to the website as waste. Many focus their investments on 2% of their traffic as though the only people who come to a website are online buyers. This happens because the organization views the website as one store, although a very profitable one, and not the gateway to the brand. The stores benefit far more from the website than the online division, they just don’t fully measure online to store activity. The first stop for any consumer – regardless of where they intend to buy – is a website. As long as online divisions are hyper-focused on converting every visit, the consumer experience, which is tied to the whole brand, will be sub-optimal. To create an optimal customer experience, online divisions need to focus less on converting every visitor online and more about the overall customer intention and experience.

The other piece of advice I’d give is to think differently about website visitation by category. People don’t buy sheets the same way they buy blenders so if you’re using the same layouts, information, attribution window for transaction across all your categories…there’s an opportunity to increase topline revenue by optimizing for each category.

As online and offline continue to blur, retailers are hoping to increase customer insight and build relationships between online and the physical world. What tips do you have for retailers looking to leverage this customer data?

The consumer has changed and as a result, retailers must structure themselves for the 21st century.

First, align your organization to optimize for delighting the consumer regardless of the channel. From the CEO down, the whole organization must commit to the idea of a single profit center where everyone is fairly compensated and media is optimized for any conversion regardless of channel. In short, start by eliminating internal friction. This is a must do, because consumers don’t see any difference between your stores and your website. Creating separate PnLs that compete for resources, media dollars, etc. creates confusion for the consumer and damages a brand. Most of our testing demonstrates that the stores benefit far more from a visit to the website than the .com.

Second, invest in continuous testing. I’m always surprised when retailers expect a single test with a positive or negative outcome to change a media mix that’s been built over 10 years. Make a long-term commitment to solving this because you have to believe that eventually 20%+ of commerce in the U.S. will happen online.

Third, invest in a single view of the customer. That means breaking down the data silos between stores, website analytics and online transactions. This will enable top line revenue growth for your company by truly understanding the lifetime value of your customers.

How are you seeing locality play out in the current customer shopping experience?

Location is still one of the most important factors for a traditional retail business. Today’s consumer wants instant gratification as a result of technology. Price transparency and inventory availability make local shopping more important than ever before. Your customers expect that they only have to drive to your store if you have what they need, when they need it.

I don’t think that retailing has changed all that much. The foundational things still apply, but technology that can identify a customer’s current location presents all kinds of interesting opportunities to encourage a visit that never existed before.

If you’ve ever done direct mail marketing, you know that certain zip codes generate higher conversion rates and higher average order values. Apply everything you know about direct mail marketing to online marketing and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how your efficiency improves. Buying nationally is a legacy behavior, but online it ensures you’ll be spending more than you should in lower performing markets, and not enough in the ones that perform the best. When you can, maximize precision.

Mobile is accelerating the importance of a local strategy. There are over 100 million Google mobile maps users in the U.S. Some of our best performing ad units on a mobile device are brand searches and click-to-call. Consumers use their phones as shopping tools to save time looking for your store locations and calling for information. In fact, we have data that shows that mobile queries peak at the same time that offline sales peak. Those consumers who are a bit further ahead of the curve know they can find inventory availability and pricing information by store location on the web as well.

The easier the tools are to use, the smarter we become about who the shopper is and what she likes, the more opportunity there will be for advertisers to design an exceptional and personalized shopping experience for their customers.

What do you think the 2011 holiday season holds for retail?

Long lines and aggressive shoppers have been hyped by the media for the past three years. True or not, this stuff sticks with people. As a result, a greater share of transactions will shift to the web again in 2011. Shoppers will buy earlier and deal sites will see gains as consumers hunt for values. Increased use of technology in the aisles as a shopping assistant, as well as mobile and tablet usage will see exponential growth.

What is the number one recommendation you’d make for retail companies as they begin their holiday planning?

Don’t build another microsite. Increase your presence in social communities where consumers already spend time. You’ll activate a lot more users and benefit from network effects.

If one can go by the tremendous creativity, pragmatism, and high level of engagement with customers evident at last week’s Shop.org Online Merchandising Workshop, however, our industry is well positioned to continue outright thriving. Online retail for the most part has continued to experience strong growth – and, so far, it’s no blip. Retailers whom we surveyed in March 2011 reported an average increase of 40% in Web sales for 2010 vs. 2009, ranging from 21% average growth for companies in operation over 10 years and 91% for companies in operation less than four years. The recent MasterCard Spending Pulse monthly report further underscores this growth track.

Perhaps, then, the last three years represent one of those “Necessity is the mother of invention” kind of periods, pushing our industry further – much further, even? – than might have been otherwise. As I took in the stories and advice during last week’s Workshop, it occurred to me what a difference three years make:

• Social media has gone from an experiment (if with some very vocal supporters) to major investment area for retailers. Even if some are still hesitant about bottom line benefits (see the 2011 State of Retailing Online: Marketing, Social Media & Mobile report published in late May), few refute its power to actively engage customers in so many ways. (See also last month’s interview with Kerry Cooper, CMO of Modcloth – and check out their site for great examples of getting their customer involved and returning.)

• Luxury goods on sale? Not so much back then, much more likely today via Gilt Groupe, ideeli, One Kings Lane, and then some, to the tune of a $1 billion in 2010 and growing, per comScore. What hasn’t changed: the element of scarcity, one of the underpinnings to the luxury industry.

• Mobile and retail in the same breath? What a quaint thought on that miniscule screen – yet here we are, with smartphone adoption growing exponentially to meet our voracious appetite for ratings and reviews, price comparison, and store info wherever we are.

• As for tablets – well, no doubt some stealthy tinkering was already going on in Cupertino, but three years ago I think most of us only knew about the paper variety. . In her keynote presentation last week, Jeanniey Mullen of Zinio noted that, scarcely a year after market entrance, tablet users are often more affluent, skew towards purchasing in the evening and/or at the weekend, and at this point spend more than the typical smartphone user.

• Particularly interesting is all that traffic from outside one’s home country that has evolved from an analytics report curiosity to potential bottom line gold mine, with retailers large and small scrambling to figure out global currency, taxes, shipping and service to tap pent up overseas demand.

All of this to say – we’ve got Back to School on our doorstep, and Holiday 2011 close behind. As Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy advised us many years ago, “Don’t panic!” – and, I’d add, stay focused, be creative, and keep the customer front and center. To help you with facts, figures and best practices, check out inspiring takeaways and tips from the 2011 Merchandising Workshop sessions, then watch in the coming weeks for our upcoming NRF / Shop.org Back-to-School / Back-to-College consumer survey results, as well as the annual Shop.org 2011 Holiday Strategy & Planning Guide.

Few phrases cause more anxiety in the hearts of e-commerce executives, and for good reason. With average abandoned shopping cart rates hovering around 40-50%, it’s easy to understand that converting even a fraction of these deserted carts into sales could substantially add to a retailer’s bottom line. What’s difficult is figuring out how to do that.

Eight by Eight CEO Amy Africa shares tips for lowering shopping cart abandonment

During a session at Shop.org’s Online Merchandising Workshop, Eight by Eight CEO Amy Africa shared incredible insights on the physical reactions involved in buying online, a “magic formula” for trigger emails, and the best ways to test for success. She also offered exceptional suggestions on ways retailers can convert on-the-fence shoppers. Some were simple, some were extensive. Here are ten of them:

1) Make it easy to take the plunge. “Check out now” buttons are a good idea, Africa said. “It’s very important that when someone raises their hand and says they’re ready to buy, you act on that.”

2) Leverage temperature bars. Don’t we all like to see how much we’ve accomplished? Let your customers know how many more steps there are until they’re finished with the check out process by using a temperature or status bar at the bottom. Why? The higher customers get on the temperature bar, the more likely they are to actually pull the trigger on a purchase. Hello Direct and Amazon.com were cited as examples of companies that do this well.

3) Reconsider one-step check out. One-step check out is all the rage in online retail, with a handful of service providers making it very easy for consumers to simply click and buy. While this option is ideal for some consumers, it isn’t best for everyone, said Africa. “In a perfect world, you’ll have a four to five step process for some people and one-click for others,” she said. “It’s your job to know which check out they should receive.”

4) When it comes to buttons, remember: Bigger equals better. “Take your biggest button and triple it,” she said. “The biggest button should be what you want them to do next.” What that means is don’t create a bunch of similar-sized buttons. If your “check out now” button and your “keep shopping” buttons are the same size, Africa said, it confuses people. And then they leave. And then you’ve got to speed right down to #10.

5) Look at your vertical fields. And from the things-I-never-would-have-thought-about department, here’s a good one: Put your city, state and zip codes on three lines, not one. Why? Having these fields on separate lines gives the impression to the buyer that they’re going through the process faster, Africa said.

6) Quit asking pointless questions. Once a customer makes it to the checkout, the process needs to be easy and hurdle-free. So, retailers, stop asking questions that don’t pertain directly to the sale. Shipping information? Fine. A billing address? Absolutely. But don’t ask them for the code on the back of their circular. There’s another time and place to gather that data.

7) Use pop-ups. When a customer has merchandise in your cart and is leaving your site, use a pop-up to ask them if they’re sure they want to move on. Hate pop-ups? So does Africa. So do some consumers. (So do I.) But, quite frankly, they’re a great way to get attention and, if the creative is right, are very effective.

8) Offer a guest checkout option. Yes, we all wish every single customer would want to create a username and password. But they don’t. If given the option, about 30% of shoppers will use guest checkout. Why? The perception is that it’s faster (even if it’s not). For a customer who’s shopping in a hurry, guest checkout might be the deciding factor on whether to move forward with a purchase.

9) Don’t make me ask you again… If you already know certain things about your customers – their name, their shipping address, their email – don’t make them tell you twice. Do them a favor and prepopulate those fields. It will give them more time for, I don’t know, shopping.

10) Send them an email. And another one. And another one. While an abandoned cart program shouldn’t exclusively rely on emailing your AWOL shoppers, reaching out to people who left your website with items in their cart is essential. During the session, Africa talked about the importance of email timing (around lunchtime), personalization (use their name and specific items they abandoned), how many emails you should send (five), and whether retailers should offer extra incentives in those emails to get people to buy (she says no).

For more insights from Amy, or if you just need a good laugh, read her blog – I mean, qlog.

Thacker, who has been a member of the Board of NRF’s Retail Advertising and Marketing Association for many years, has a storied career: before joining OfficeMax in 2005 as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Advertising, he served as Target’s VP of Marketing and SVP of Marketing at Sears. (Yes, it’s true: he is the guy who brought Michael Graves to Target.) As a speaker on one of this month’s Marketing Month webinars, we reached out to Thacker for his insights on mobile, traditional advertising, his favorite retail ad of all time, and how to land the perfect job in retail marketing.

There’s no doubt that mobile provides retailers with opportunities, not only as a sales channel but also as a marketing vehicle. What do you think is the best way for retailers to measure marketing efforts delivered through the mobile channel?

I used to say that Mobile in the US was like soccer: The rest of the world got it, we didn’t. That’s all changed. I recently read that something like 60% of people are purchasing goods using mobile services. People are texting, reading QR codes, searching, voting, polling, even earning rewards with mobile. Measurement has been challenging for some areas, and others not. Tracking sales, redemption of coupons and click through, opt in, and click-to-call rates on mobile are relatively straightforward. It’s also possible to track changes in attitudes toward brands through mobile. The softer, less finite things are still posing challenges for measurement. But I see that changing very soon.

Are there any areas where you think retailers are really missing the boat?

These are tough times. People are still in post traumatic shock from the recession. Fear and doubt are the killers of creativity. I think it’s time for people to focus on nurturing, developing, protecting and championing new ideas. Many companies have talent. Sadly, the talent is traumatized. This is an area that I’m passionately focusing on in the future. Helping people think “inside” the box. Helping them maximize the talent they already have on staff.

Across mobile, social, online, and print channels, which do you think are the most effective with conversion? Speaking from your experience, how would you prioritize the four?

It’s tough to lump media into a category of effectiveness because there are always individual ads and campaigns that break the rules. That’s what advertising should always strive to do. That said, I would say that for pure and direct ROI (messaging that delivers most immediate sales results), I’d choose online, print, mobile, and social.

Thinking back over your time with Target, Sears and then OfficeMax, what has been the most fun marketing campaign you’ve been a part of?

I’ve been blessed with a long career. I would have to say that the most rewarding, and therefore fun, would be the restoration of the Washington Monument while I was at Target. People said that we couldn’t make restoration construction a work of art. We did it! The scaffolding system Michael Graves designed was amazing. There were actual attempts to make it permanent. It was a case of art and business and government coming together for a greater good. As a by-product, Michael Graves was introduced to Target as a designer. The rest is history.

At a Shop.org event a few years ago, you spoke about traditional advertising and shared your viewpoint that “If you’re going to crash the party, you’d better bring a bottle of wine.” What did you mean by that?

Advertising is a party crasher, an uninvited guest. People tolerate advertising interrupting their life, but few people would say that they actually LOVE advertising. I believe that advertisers shouldn’t forget their role. So when they crash the party, they need to give something in return. Advertising must entertain, enlighten, inspire, provoke thought, and be memorable in the most respectful way.

What brands do you see as ahead of the curve on social media marketing?

Social media is fascinating. Some of the best in my opinion are Threadless for total engagement both of suppliers and customers, Old Spice for making my grandfather’s aftershave seem current and hip, and Coke for always remembering who their true audience is.

Some of your most successful campaigns have used good, old-fashioned public relations as a way to generate media buzz and excitement. What is your viewpoint on the role of PR in traditional marketing, and how do you see the two fields working together?

One of my mantras has always been “Don’t make ads, make news!” I measure the success of a marketing campaign idea by the way it can be extended to become truly newsworthy. PR and events are key players in the mix. I always ask “What is the photo image of this idea? How would it look if it came to life as something more than just an ad? How can people ‘experience’ this idea?” Suddenly an ad idea becomes a flash mob, or a street encounter, or a viral experience, or even a fashion show.

OfficeMax’s ElfYourself campaign is widely recognized as a smashing viral success for its ahead-of-its-time creativity and low-cost budget. If you could go back to 2006 and re-launch this campaign, what would you do differently?

In many ways ElfYourself was an unexpected hit. We actually launched 20 sites simultaneously. Anne Bologna and Ari Merken wisely convinced us to experiment…to take our paltry budget and play it on an exciting new experience. I don’t think I’d do anything differently. I just have to keep reminding myself and others that it’s important to test multiple ideas. We didn’t know which of the 20 would hit. Fortunately, one was a mega hit. It’s interesting for me to look back on some of the others. A few had millions of hits as well. I’ve often thought we were ahead of our time and that OfficeMax should bring some of the others back as well. Alas.

Is the catalog dead?

Catalogs aren’t dead. Newspaper inserts aren’t dead. They may be on life support, but there is still a place for both. It’s important for retailers to understand though that they can’t expect the same return on their catalog and insert investments as they did in the past.

What’s your favorite retail TV ad of all time?

Asking an ad guy for his favorite retail ad of all time is a little like asking somebody “What’s your favorite hot fudge sundae of all time”! That’s hard. I will always love a radio ad that Chris Preston – formerly of Martin-Williams, now President of Preston Kelly in Minneapolis – did for us at Target. We were entering the Chicago market and Chris proposed that we do a radio-roadblock where we would own the exact same minute on every single radio station at the same time. This had been done on television before, but never radio. People said “You’ll never make it happen.” It’s a long story. We did. The spot itself spoofed people pushing buttons on the radio as the announcer said “We’ve taken over every single radio station in Chicago to make this announcement. Don’t change the channel. (SFX: buzz buzz music squeal) I told you not to do that…” It was a huge success. Very engaging. And a brilliant use of media.

Over the years, you’ve undoubtedly hired many young people looking to excel. What pieces of advice can you offer someone right out of college who wants to break into the world of retail marketing?

Don’t ever act your age. Be young, but not immature. Be kind. Say thank you.

What’s the best marketing advice you’ve ever received?

If you don’t go out on a limb, you’ll never taste the fruit. Great ideas are often scary.

Complete this sentence: “At the end of each day, I…”

I hope that I’ve given more than I’ve taken.

Stephanie Brocoum, a founding Rue La La team member and Vice President of Marketing, and Josh Verrill, Rue La La Director, National Brand Partnerships and Corporate Development, presented several key focus areas for Rue La La around inspiration, empowerment, creativity, and delight. The presentation focused on empowering the Rue La La member. Everything they do, from their blog featuring brands and special events to enable discovery and inspire, to their mobile app that allows their core customer to easily shop on the go, the Rue La La team is enabling “her.” This empowerment is focused on giving their members access to brands and control over their site and shopping experience.

The primary element of their member empowerment strategy focuses on engagement. The Rue La La team even has a specific group of people – their customer excitement team – responsible for optimizing the lifetime value and extending the Rue La La shopping experience with creative, engaging touch points. These creative, clever touch points focused on member engagement and empowerment include:

• The Rue La La blog featuring brands, interviews with fashion designers, and special events to enable discovery and inspire.
• The mobile app for their on-the-go core customers to easily browse and shop.
• Customer service on Twitter that they have branded as Rue La La Concierge. Their concierge, Amy B., is actively answering questions on Twitter and Facebook for Rue La La customers that have questions about their orders, want to get on the wait list for products, and need some style advice.
• A presence on Facebook to showcase what Rue La La is all about. Rue La La has always thought about their Facebook presence as an extension of their brand. Since all of their merchandise is behind the wall their Facebook page enables members and prospective members to have a special experience with a brand, receive special offers, and even enabled fans (or likers) of the brand to curate a Facebook fan style boutique.

Rue La La is bringing their products and brands to life and creating a special shopping experience for all of their members. In wrapping up their presentation, Stephanie and Josh touched on a few key points on engaging now that every retailer and brand should consider.

• Create an integrated experience. Get “her” or “him” or “them” so excited about so they share it for you.
• Always have your customer at the center of every decision. Is the product, the experience, the message, right for her?
• Value the sum of the parts. When looking at ROI for initiatives like Facebook communication channels remember to consider the customer service value and the earned media value.
• Extend your brand and your experience where and when you can to be more to your customers.