Making Sense of Online Shopping Malls

1
Making Sense of Online Shopping Malls

• Cory Nielsen - Internet Marketing, Woodwind
  Brasswind
• Jacob Hawkins - SVP Online Marketing,
  Overstock.com

2

• Whoever said money cant buy you happiness
  simply didnt know where to go shopping.
• - Bo Derek

3
Know the Players

• Amazon.com
• AOL inStore
• Become.com
• BizRate.com
• Brilliant Shopper
• Buy Safe Shopping
• Cairo
• CNET Shopper.com
• Commission Junction
• DealTime
• eBay.com
• Epinions
• FindGift.com
• Froogle

• LinkShare
• MSN Shopping
• mySimon.com
• NexTag
• PriceGrabber.com
• Price Runner
• SHOP.COM
• ShopLocal
• Shopping.com
• ShopWiki
• Shopzilla
• Smarter.com
• ViewScore
• Yahoo! Shopping

4
Types of Players

• Comparison Shopping Engines
• Online Retailers
• Affiliate Partnerships
• Shopping Blogs Wikis
• Local Shopping
• Each partnership will require a different
  relationship and integration strategy.

5
Understand the Differences

• What will it cost you?
• Cost Per Click vs. Commission
• Rate Card vs. Bid on CPC
• Bid by Category vs. Bid by SKU
• What factors play into your cost?
• Syndication Partners
• Internal Merchandising Rules
• Marketing Strategy for Your Category
• Local, International, Mobile

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Understand the Differences (cont)

• Other important considerations
• Will you have an Account Manager?
• Do they have conversion tracking tools?
• What additional marketing opportunities do they
  offer?
• Do they have a Featured Merchant program?
• Do they offer Customer Reviews / Rating systems?
• Taking these factors into consideration will
  help the overall success of your product
  syndication campaigns.

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The Key to Success

• Automate the process for your product feed to be
  syndicated to your partners.
• Build vs. Buy
• Tracking Reporting
• Tons of tools available...
• Mercent Retail
• Channel Intelligence

8
Optimization Process

• Important considerations
• Understand your audience
• Clearly define your goal
• Understand your options and limitations
• We pair marketing analysts with graphic
  designers for all of our marketing partnerships.

9
Understand Your Audience

• Where are they coming from?
• What are they looking for?
• Why did they click the link they did?
• Special price
• Special promotion
• Specific product or category
• Trust your brand
• If visitors behave differently, then consider
  creating segmenting and optimizing for each
  group.

10
Understand Your Goal

• What are you trying to optimize?
• Conversion
• Revenue
• Profit
• New customers
• Lead generation
• Downloads

• Where should you start?
• Most potential for improvement
• Greatest volume

Establish clear goals, set a plan to achieve
those goals, and then meet as often as needed to
follow up.
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Understand Your Goal (cont.)

• Other things to consider
• What steps must a visitor complete to achieve
  your goal?
• What barriers exist for visitors to achieve your
  goal?
• What happens to visitors who dont achieve your
  goal?
• How else can you hook visitors?
• You achieve your goals by meeting customers
  needs.
• Make it as easy as possible for customers to
  succeed.

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Understand Your Options

• Some common things to optimize
• Advertising areas -- Landing pages
• Advertising bids -- Categories promoted
• Themes -- Your check-out process
• Understand business and technical limitations.
• Start with the areas that require the least
  amount of work and have the greatest potential
  for improvement.

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• QA