Archive for the ‘Site Search’ Category

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Five Questions with Ryan Urban, Customer Acquisition & Analytics Manager, BrickHouse Security

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

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How to become a successful online retailer? Here are the key steps to take according to BrickHouse Security Customer Acquisition & Analytics Manager Ryan Urban who spearheaded its rise as an ecommerce force, culminating with a spot on the 2010 Internet Retailer Top 500 list. If you’d like to learn more about how BrickHouse thrives online, read our extensive interview with Ryan. (LINKS to: Part 1 and Part 2).

1. What are the three most important ecommerce metrics that you track?
First, I really dislike ecommerce metrics such as time on site or bounce rates. I don’t give them any value. The data can be meaningless. If you’re going to use bounce rates you need control rates. If you use really advanced analytics, bounce rates can be meaningful. But in general, though, I don’t think it means much unless you have really sophisticated analytics tools and know how to use them. Similarly, I don’t concentrate on macro stats like revenue or transactions.

  • Organic traffic is the first metric I track. I want to ensure that it is growing.
  • The second metric I closely follow is site conversion rate.
  • I also like revenue per unique visitor.

It is really simple: consistent flow of quality traffic and maintaining conversion are the keys to making money on the Web.

2. For a new retailer just starting out, what are three things you would recommend they do?
You can’t start top down. You need to drive the revenue first and then convert it. The first two employees I would hire are an SEO specialist and a conversion specialist.

The money that these two people bring in will pay for themselves 20:1. The money they make supports everyone else.

The third thing I’d do is invest money in your website. For example, Nextopia’s technology has such long-term positive revenue and ROI ramifications that it is just stupid not to implement it on your site.

3. Benefiting from hindsight, what are some things that you did that you wished you hadn’t?
It depends on the size of your company. In my personal experience, my mistake was failing to hire enough people who can drive revenue. To avoid this I would have hired more ROI optimizers and conversion optimizers.

Those are the people I want our company to hire. I’d also look at people who understand multivariate testing and really good persuasive copywriting.

When you look at filling these kind of testing and optimizing positions, I really can’t see any diminishing returns from hiring lots of people to fill them. There is a lot of room to grow before you dominate a niche so hire as many of them as you can afford.

4. What single thing that you’ve done has had the greatest impact on your business?
Without a doubt, it has been hiring analytics and SEO people. Since I joined BrickHouse Security, we’ve tripled our sales. Analytics really plays a crucial role in our success.

5. The proverbial magic wand…If you could wave one and invent some technology that would make your days easier, what would it do?
It would have to be cloning. I’d love to be able to clone my team. What you can never have enough of is people who can drive traffic and then convert it into paying customers. Sure, it is a human resources obstacle but we’re lucky because our CEO comes from an SEO background. He understands the importance of people who bring people to our website.

There is also a ton of technology that I’d love to have. I’d like really good call tracking. Attribution is an area where a lot of vendors are promoting solutions but, frankly, it is really difficult.

Thanks again to Ryan for taking the time to expound on his equation for success in the ecommerce world.

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Posted in Interviews, Site Search, eCommerce | 1 Comment »

How BrickHouse Security Unlocks Secrets of Online Success-Pt. 2

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

BrickHouselogo-smallWe’re back with BrickHouse Security’s Director of Acquisition Ryan Urban. After introducing us in the part one of our interview to a tiny computer surveillance device that surreptitiously records everything on a computer, we’re back to focus on how he maximizes online revenue and whether the future of site search is visual.

Let’s move to technology and the nut and bolts of operating BrickhouseSecurity.com?
We host with Yahoo! Stores. We moved to that platform in late 2005 and the reliability has helped us become an Internet Retailer Top 500 site.

What are some of the vendors you use?
Yahoo! for hosting. Google, Omniture, and Yahoo! for analytics. We use Nextopia for site search.

How important is site search to your company?
Fifteen percent of our revenue comes from the search box on our site. A lot of our site visitors do not land on our home page. Site search really helps our visitors who arrive looking for specific things. They want to navigate directly to the product rather then click on links. A lot of people want to click on the product images that we display as part of our Nextopia AutoComplete module.

How do you integrate site search into your website?
We’ve been using Nextopia’s EcommISearch module for the past year. It integrates very well into the Yahoo! Stores environment. Nextopia has also spent a lot of time ensuring that it integrates well with Google Analytics.

I can see every search term typed in, which search terms converted and exactly where they converted. I see the traffic sources that are directing people to our site, and our revenue per customer. I can easily see whether we need to do a better job of optimizing our landing pages.

I’m sure you spend hours looking at logs, Do any particularly weird search terms jump out at you?
Strangely enough, the most common search term is nothing. Lots of people don’t enter a search term, yet still click submit. We just direct those searchers to the new products page.

Long tail searches on our site can reveal some really “interesting” interests that people have. Queries relating to monitoring or recording cell phones are pretty common. Unfortunately, that’s illegal so we can’t help them. Lots of people are interested in detecting bugs or are suspicious about the possibly of hidden cameras lurking in their homes of offices. They think their smoke detectors might contain hidden cameras, and many times they are right (see Erin Andrews).

Two other interesting product categories are covert surveillance and GPS Tracking. We have taken products normally sold to the government, and made them consumer friendly in terms of use and price.

Let’s talk specifically about Nextopia’s AutoComplete with Images technology.
AutoComplete with Images has really helped us. Let me explain – we first started off using Nextopia’s AutoComplete module which just displayed keyword suggestions to our customers. We later upgraded to their affordably priced AutoComplete with Images module which extends keyword suggestions to includes top converting keyword and product names and thumbnails that link directly to product detail pages. Think of it as a guided search box experience.

How does it work?
As soon as a customer begins typing into our search box, they are automatically presented with both keywords and products relevant to their search. The display instantly changes as a searcher inputs more characters. It starts predicting as each character is entered and dynamically changes the display of suggestions. Visitors end up seeing related queries and products right away, bringing them close to the point of conversion. So, customers can either click on a suggested keyword and proceed to do a search on our site OR they can click directly on a thumbnail of relevant products and be directed right to a product detail page.

Nextopia's AutoComplete site search technology on BrickHouseSecurity.com

Nextopia's AutoComplete site search technology on BrickHouseSecurity.com

Ex. A customer searching for the term ‘usb’ is “autosuggested” 5 top keyword suggestions for search and 6 top converting products with ‘usb’ in the product name. With each keystroke, suggestions dynamically change to display the most relevant set of suggestions.

What issues were you trying to address by integrating it?
First of all, we wanted to direct people to what they want and need. We found people often don’t use the best search terms so a system that suggestively prompts them is much better. A lot of people search for uses of products; not necessarily the products themselves. We wanted to enhance this process. We’ve found that product images are the best way to direct people. We now put them immediately in contact with the product.

We wanted to present historically strong sellers and direct people to those pages. The Nextopia technology pulls data from our sales history and changes as sales rise and fall over time and incorporates this data into their algorithm. We also spend a lot of time optimizing these pages. We ensure that our product pages include cross-selling information, recommending other products and coordinating products.

Another issue for to think about is this…if your product pages aren’t very good, then you might be better off putting them in contact with a product list than giving them a choice of which ones to select.

What was the AutoComplete implementation process?
It is real easy since we were already an existing eComm|Search customer and were already submitting tracking codes for each product SKU. That was it. Nextopia’s developers did the rest.

What kind of metrics are you seeing with the AutoComplete with Images module?
Upgrading to Autocomplete with Images was a great move as it converts twice as well as the base AutoComplete module. We started showing four images and then expanded to six images per query. Half of our searchers click on the product images in the search now. Overall, revenue is 8% higher. We’ve seen close to a 2% rise in overall site conversion, which I think will jump to 3-3.5%. That is very big for a site like ours.

Any other comments?
Nextopia’s AutoComplete with Images module is worth thousands and thousands of dollars to a larger website. In addition to the revenue it creates for us, it makes it really easy for our staff to find products. In fact, pretty much everyone in sales and support uses it to quickly find products in our catalog, even if it wasn’t designed for them.

I’m also experimenting with the number of pictures to display. I have six images showing now. If I want, I could have 8-10 pictures. I’m going to keep testing. I know that if I put it 10 images at a time, I think I could lift sales another 15%. It’s pretty tempting to fill up the screen and quickly give direct people to the highest selling products.

Finally, we’ve found that more people who use site search arrive organically than through PPC ads.

That’s great info Ryan. Thanks for your time.

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Posted in Interviews, Site Search, eCommerce | 1 Comment »

Ecommerce Site Search Invades the Windy City

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

Got our bags packed and ready to fly out to Chicago for the annual gathering of the ecommece clans–the Internet Retailer conference. Once again at the McCormick Center, the 2010 show’s 400 plus exhibitors will welcome 6,000-7,000 attendees looking for ways to get ahead online as we come out of the recession of the past 2-3 years. We’ll be there to educate people about how site search is a critical component of this upward journey.

Internet Retailer – June 8-10, McCormick Place West, Chicago, IL (Booth #414)
I’ll be in the booth, along with Chris, Ruby and Christian. Stop by to receive a gift worth receiving. One hint: it is very Canadian. I guarantee that you won’t find it anywhere else on the expo floor. Prepare to be thrilled!

We’re also planning some major improvements to our website during the summer. One of the key changes will be the inclusion of much more video so we’re shooting on-site interviews with customers discussing their operations and Nextopia experience. So if you’re not camera-shy, and have 15 minutes to spare on Wednesday, RSVP to me as soon as you can.

Yahoo! Merchant Summit – June 11 – 8:00am – 5:30pm, McCormick Place West, Chicago, IL
Yahoo! is one of the platforms we frequently work with and this conference is one full day on how to supercharge your Yahoo! Stores business. We look forward to meeting up with many of our Yahoo! Stores-hosted customers, such as .

In addition to exhibiting at this one-day event, I’m also on the “Power of Design” panel, speaking on the importance of usability and design. We’re going to discuss a variety of issues, such as which design techniques are critical for merchants and how simple decisions like the placement of the search box can affect your site performance.

Hoping to see you in Chi-town at either of these events, or both.
Sanjay

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Posted in Conferences, Site Search, eCommerce | 1 Comment »

How Mountain Rose Herbs Maintains a Healthy Online Business: Case Study (Pt. Two)

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

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Back for Part Two of our interview with Nate York, IT Manager for Mountain Rose Herbs. Nate talks to us about the technical issues, challenges and decisions he makes to keep the site running problem free. He also discusses how Mountain Rose Herbs uses Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to spark community participation in the company’s operations, and ecommerce site search to provide site visitors with information on the right product at the right time.

Let’s talk technology and the nut and bolts of operating your website. You’re on the Miva platform? What do you see as the pros and cons of it?
We were already established on the Miva platform (hosted with Cyberhost) before I arrived. It is secure and works 24/7. Even though we’re on an older version, it works well and I’ve had a good experience. Although some things are not as customizable, we’re not looking to upgrade MIVA. We’re developing a custom shopping cart, though, because we want some additional flexibility and customizable functionality. MountainRoseHerbs.com-Website
What about processing and payments?
We don’t do any card processing online. It is all offline and non-real-time. Part of the reason is security. Part of the reason is that we’re not a widget company that ships boxed inventoried products the same day. Rather than dealing with backorders, we find it better to process the order as it it is filled. The benefits of doing offline processing definitely outweigh the benefits of doing it online. We deal with fewer refunds and backorders.

How do you handle international customers? Any special fraud programs in place?
We do address verification, and direct contact and confirmation with international customers. Because each order is hand processed we can spot inaccuracies and potential fraud threats. Any orders over $300 require a special form we send after the order has been placed.

You have a corporate policy against shipping to Mexico, Russia and all of Africa. Why?
There is just too much fraud that takes places as a result of doing business with these countries to make it worthwhile.

Let’s talk customer acquisition. It looks like word of mouth is important? Event marketing, I assume is big, too.
Both are really important. We do word of mouth and event marketing across the country. We don’t host events ourselves. Instead, we get involved with green living events around the country, such as The Green Festival in San Francisco, Green America and numerous other conferences. I love trade shows and I’m trying to find an herbal IT conference that I can attend. Haven’t found one yet, unfortunately.

Let’s talk SEO.
We do all of our SEO in house. We use Google Analytics and Google Base for our shopping feeds. Also, we cover our keywords, meta-data, headers, alt tags etc… everything indexable to keep us in the search light.

We use Nextopia’s technology in a several different ways. We use the EcommISearch module for our site search and the new Out of Stock Alerts module which enables customers to add their email on a per-SKU basis. When we receive new product and update our inventory and shopping cart, the system automatically sends out an email. It is a great way to drive sales.

Selecting Nextopia for our site search has been one of the best decisions we made. I love Nextopia. I really do. I’ve really enjoyed working with the engineers tremendously. When I’ve needed applications developed, they’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty several times. Probably the main reason our relationship works is that they’re the right size of company for us. I know I can talk to Chris Bannister (my Nextopia account rep) and get stuff done. I work with other vendors and don’t get anywhere near the same level of personalized attention. With other vendors, I’m not just not as important. With Nextopia, I am really, really important.

The Right Amount of Cardamon at Just the Right Time

The Right Amount of Cardamon at Just the Right Time

Let’s talk Social Marketing. You’re tied into Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and You Tube. What does social marketing do for you?
Keeping in touch with the herbal community is critical for us. Social marketing gives us a face, so we’re not an anonymous wall. It allows customers to talk to us as well as interact. As we both participate in this discussion and observe it, we find out what our customers want.

Mountain Rose Herbs launched a user generated video contest in October 2009. Customers were asked to showcase their love of herbs, teas, spices, oils, and all things botanical.
The creator of the winning video received $1,000 and featured placement through the company’s social media accounts.
The idea came from internal discussions. The promotional video introducing the contest really captures who we are as a company. We wanted the video to encourage customer participation, we hired a local guy named Norm Scott, who did a terrific job. The entries were great. It is really fun to see how we touch people’s lives and play a part in their practice of an organic herbal lifestyle. (The delightful winning entry came from Catherine Wing and Bill Buckendorf who created a rapping rodent, Chives the Mouse).

Looked at your Twitter feed. Seems to be a combination of news tweets and coupon offers?
The key is having someone on your staff who has the time to keep on top of it. I’m definitely not that guy. Our marketing department handles it. Overall, Twitter helps keep our name present in any discussions relating to the herbal industry. From my perspective as a Mountain Rose employee and as a musician, I think it is a really good tool.

Where do you go to learn more about ecommerce innovations? What are some of the resources?
We work with a database programmer, Will Emmerson. He does a lot of our custom backend development for our ERP system. For example, he wrote the back end between Miva and our system. I work with him collaboratively. I’ll take an idea for a program or problem we need to solve. We’ll talk about options and possible solutions and then develop whatever we think is the best fix. Between Shawn, Will and I, we follow advances in technology and reason about how it could fit into our shop.

For a new retailer just starting out, what are a couple of things you would recommend they do?
First, I’d invest in IT and use it. Don’t go cheap and scrimp unnecessarily. Allocate whatever is necessary (time and/or money) to do a good job. It really can help you grow efficiently.

Finally, what is one thing that people probably don’t know about Mountain Rose Herbs?
Our corporate IT policy dictates that everything we buy is EPEAT Certified Gold. Everything we buy for our staff of 80 plus people, from desktops and monitors, to networking equipment, needs to meet this standard.

(Ed Note: EPEAT is a system that helps purchasers evaluate, compare and select electronic products based on their environmental attributes.)

Thanks Nate for your time. If you want to hear Nate’s other love, visit his band’s website. He manages it, of course.

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How Mountain Rose Herbs Maintains a Healthy Online Business: Case Study (Pt. 1)

Friday, April 30th, 2010

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Nextopia customer Mountain Rose Herbs has been helping its customers maintain year-round health since 1987. Today, we’re talking to company jack of all trades Nate York. Nate is not only the company’s IT Manager, overseeing the website, fulfillment and order processing capabilities, online scripting, IT security, and network management, he’s also a member of an eight member reggae dance band called The T Club that is a popular attraction throughout Oregon. Here is Part One of our interview.

Can you give us quick summary of your company, operations and markets.
Mountain Rose Herbs was founded in 1987. We’re located in Eugene, OR, and sell a wide range of natural botanical products, including organic herbs, spices, teas, and oils. We carry approximately 2,000 product SKUs. We have a head office in Eugene and operate several warehouses around the city. We do some manufacturing to produce our own finished products. Our business, however, is primary selling bulk ingredients to people who want to make their own herbal or aromatherapy products. You can order 4 oz or 200 lbs of nettles from us.

MountainRoseHerbs.com-Nettles

MountainRoseHerbs.com-Nettles

Our customer base is people into organic agriculture, herbs, aromatherapy, herbal and alternative healing, sustainable business practices, and botany. They take what they source from us and make their own products for retail and personal use.

Which products are your favorites?
I use a lot of the products we sell, especially the herbal teas. Once you start working around herbalists, you quickly learn that there are lots and lots of cool products and uses for them. For example, I’ve got a friend who burned himself while camping. He didn’t have health insurance so I spoke with some of the herbalists at work about a solution. They gave me a recipe for a salve which helped him completely recover without any scarring.

If you weren’t running the back end of an ecommerce outfit, what would you be doing?
Playing music or working in IT. I love music and I love IT!

Does your business have seasonality?
Getting involved with herbs and the products we sell is a lifestyle. We’re pretty steady all year long, although we do see some fourth quarter spikes from people who do bulk orders to make products for one-of-a-kind holiday sales and fairs, or who are planning to give them as Christmas gifts.

How has your customer base been affected by the economic downturn?
As I said, we sell to people who are enthusiastic about the herbal lifestyle. Buying from us forms part of their healthcare. When the economy is tough and health care increasingly expensive, people take more responsibility for their own health.

What do you do to stand out to in the marketplace?
We have an awesome marketing department that is very in tune with the movement. They focus on the fact that we are a company worth supporting, we value our employees, our loose culture and, of course, our high quality.

Thanks for your time, Nate. We’ll be back in a couple of days with part two.

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Posted in Interviews, Site Search, eCommerce | 1 Comment »

Internet Retailer Reports ToolFetch Sales Jump 20% After Implementing Nextopia

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

ToolFetch.com-LogoThanks to Internet Retailer for highlighting ToolFetch’s experience (“Toolfetch customers retrieve products faster with a new site search system“) with our ecommerce site search technology.

An Internet Retailer Top 500 retailer, ToolFetch replaced its Google Mini site search engine earlier this year with Nextopia’s eComm|Search and the results have been anything but…mini. ToolFetch CEO and co-founder Andrew Brown reports that since integrating our technology, his company’s sales have jumped approximately 20%. Customers are returning to the site more often and purchasing a broader range of products.

The article does a great job of detailing how eComm|Search helps site visitors find what they need, and why it delivers such a huge ROI to online retailers. Worth reading, of course!

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Posted in Site Search, Uncategorized, eCommerce | 1 Comment »

Five Questions with Maria Sutorik, Vice President, Bronner’s

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

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Maria Sutorik, Vice President, Bronner’s, answers five of the toughest questions we could think of asking her. If you’d like to learn more about how Bronner’s, the World’s Largest Christmas Store thrives online, read our extensive interview with Maria. (Part 1 and Part 2)

1. What are the three most important metrics that you track?

I think the most important are:
  • Site traffic
  • Conversions
  • Sales

2. For a new retailer just starting out, what are three things you would recommend they do?

I recommend that a new retailer spend a lot of time learning. Use industry resources like the National Retailer Federation and Shop.org. Read Internet Retailer magazine and attend the conference. Education is critical. Next, spend a lot of time talking and listening to others as part of an on-going market survey process. Talk to both external and internal audiences. Finally, surround yourself with reliable partners and experts. The bottom line is that you can’t be an expert in everything. You simply won’t be able to find the time to learn about everything that will ultimately impact your business. The solution is to find individuals and firms that know their respective markets. Find a good banker, a reliable search agency, a web developer you can trust.

3. Benefitting from hindsight, what are some things that you did that you wished you hadn’t?

I think we went too long trying to manage our own email list. We thought we could continue to handle it ourselves, even as it grew ever bigger. Not only did we slow our server performance and cause headaches for everyone who was using our network, but the system fell far short of the reporting and metrics we needed to determine whether we were actually doing the right things. Now, we use a third-party email service provider and life (and reporting) is much better. We do all our creative in house but we really benefit from better campaigns.

4. What single thing that you’ve done has had the greatest impact on your business?

I would say it goes all the way back to my Dad listening to his customers. We wouldn’t even have a Christmas business if he hadn’t talked to some merchants who were in Frankenmuth in 1951 searching for Christmas decorations for their city lampposts. To meet their needs, he designed and produced some Christmas panels. Over the next couple of years, he gradually built up a sideline, producing and installing decorations and displays for communities, shopping centers and stores. The first retail store opened in 1954 because the wives of the merchants who came to my Dad’s small wholesale shop started asking about how they could find items for their own homes. That is how the retail sales got started. By 1977, our retail operations had grown to the point that my Dad purchased 45 acres on the edge of town. Our current store covers an area equal to five and a half football fields. We’re huge believers in the Golden Rule: we treat customers as we would want to be treated. We read all comment cards and we take action whenever necessary.

5. The proverbial magic wand…If you could wave one and invent some technology that would make your days easier, what would it do?

I would love integration, one system that would help me avoid having to look in multiple places for information and then try to piece everything together. This wonderful system would integrate website analytics, sales data, ROI performance and shopping feeds so I could
staff properly and really maximize efficiency.

Thanks Maria for your time. Good luck finding an integration wand.

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Posted in Interviews, Site Search, eCommerce | 1 Comment »

Hockey Gold Medal Means Merchandising Opportunity for IceJerseys.com

Monday, March 8th, 2010

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While we’re proud to be a Toronto-based company, this week we’re a little prouder than usual due to that recent nail biter in Vancouver. More than a few Nextopians arrived at our office the next day with voices raspy from having exhorted our national heroes 2,500 miles away as they battled for the men’s Olympic ice hockey gold medal. The result also generated more than a few congratulatory emails from Nextopia customers, some of whom were fans of Team USA. Regardless of which team you were pulling for, even those who don’t like hockey (I think Canada has fewer than 100 people who’d fit this description) would have to admit that it was an incredible game. Let’s hope that the National Hockey League agrees to contribute its players to the 2014 Games in Russia.

(Thumbs-up, too, for the hockey-playing Canadian women who went undefeated and earned their own medals in that same gilded shade).

What does this have to do with our usual posts about ecommerce excellence? Gold medals beget merchandizing opportunities. And ice hockey gold medal victories by Team Canada mean lots of merchandizing opportunities for Nextopia customer IceJerseys.com, which is headquartered in Montreal.

We fired off a few questions to Anthony Wolfe, the company’s VP of of Ecommerce. Anthony didn’t have much time, given that Olympic gold medals in Canada’s favorite sport aren’t as common as we’d like.

First, general comments on the Olympic Hockey tournament?

I think the tournament was great all around. Fans were treated to seeing the best players in the world competing for their country with everything on the line – it really doesn’t get much better than that!

Did you see a jump in sales (and search queries) coincide with the Olympics? If so, when did sales start to go up?

We started to sell Olympic merchandise at the beginning of Q4 2009, and sales gained momentum throughout the holiday shopping season. In fact, we’ve carried jerseys and apparel for most participating countries from the beginning and sold out of a lot by Christmas. Sales never really dropped off much after Christmas, picking up significantly as the Olympics approached. As a result, a huge chunk of our search queries have been focussed on Olympic teams and merchandise.

How much of an effect will Canada’s gold medal have on your sales this year?

The gold medal has resulted in a major sales boost over the past week, and we anticipate it will linger for a few more weeks.

What is the top selling “let’s celebrate the gold medal” item?

Right now we have two champs items that have been very hot:

In addition, the two official Team Canada jerseys continue to sell at an incredible clip:

Canadian pride aside, what was your favorite jersey (mens or womens) among teams in the Olympics?

Honestly, I think there were a number of really nice jerseys in addition to Canada’s. The USA alternate jersey, Germany, Norway, Finland and Russia were among my favourites. I especially liked how many of this year’s Olympic jerseys worked a sublimated ‘patriotic’ pattern into the jersey fabric – or in Canada’s case, the crest. Very subtle, but nice attention to detail.

Lastly, what are some of the countries from which people have bought Canada jerseys?

In addition to Canada and the USA, we have shipped Canadian jerseys to pretty much everywhere around the world, including: Australia, Bermuda, France, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Thailand and the United Kingdom.

A hockey jersey and Bermuda shorts must certainly be a strange sight on the island. Anyway, with the Closing Ceremonies fading into history, we’d like to thank Anthony for taking the time to talk to us. We’d love to talk to him more later in the year about his site operations, as well as the mystery why Slapshot remains so popular.

In the meantime, enjoy fulfilling those orders.

- Team Nextopia (who are big fans of Team Canada)

Posted in Interviews, Site Search, eCommerce | 2 Comments »

Three Questions with Ken Kikkawa, founder of eHobbies.com

Friday, January 29th, 2010

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As a follow-up to our two-part interview with Ken Kikkawa, president of eHobbies.com, we gave him three really tough and provocative questions that only an experienced entrepreneur, steeled in the fiery cauldrons of online retailing, could answer. He answered them almost too easily:

How do you define merchandising in an online environment?

Presenting products to customers in a way that would entice them to buy.
What are the three most important metrics that you track?

A. Overall company sales.

B. Site visitors.

C. Site conversions (percentage of site visitors to purchasers).

For a new retailer starting out, what are three things you would recommend they do?

A. Don’t over-invest in inventory.

B. Develop a business plan and stick to it.

C. Focus on the customer and customer service.

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How the World’s Largest Christmas Store Thrives Year Round-Pt. 2

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

 Bronners.com-Logo

We’re back with Bronner’s Vice President Maria Sutorik. In the second half of our conversation, Maria discusses all the technology powering the World Largest Christmas Store’s online presence.

Let’s move to technology and the nut and bolts of your site. Who are some of your vendors? I noticed McAfee, Nextopia, and both sites are Yahoo! Stores.
Both the McAfee Secure and Nextopia relationships came from the fact that we host with the Yahoo! Stores platform. We actually have three Yahoo Stores; Bronners.com, BronnersCommercial.com and BronnersWholesale.com. We do our payment processing offline, and also use a local search agency that we’ve been very happy with.

 Bronners.com-Homepage

Seems a natural environment to allow customers to showcase their Christmas displays (either video or photos). Any plans to incorporate user generated content?
Improving our use of UGC is on my wish list for 2010. We’d like to do a lot more but it is a question of where do we apply our time. Our MyChristmasWonderland.com site has operated for several years and is integrated with GoogleMaps. It is a place where Christmas lovers can post pictures of their outdoor lighting displays. It is really quite amazing to see the results when our customers invest time and effort and creativity into their gardens.

How is social media such as FaceBook and Twitter working? I saw that you have Facebook pages for both the commercial and retail operations.
Our use of social media services is working well. Facebook and Twitter have proven great sharing channels for customers to share their experiences. Right now, we have 6000 Facebook fans and 1,500 Twitter followers. We’re careful to split up the Facebook audiences between our retail and commercial customers because their interests relative to Christmas are very different.

Bronners.com-on-Facebook

Do you handle web development in-house or it is outsourced?
We do both. The creative is done in-house, while we outsource a lot of the store coding to a specialist Yahoo-Store developer. Our Bronner’s commercial site is handled by a former employee who left to launch a web development firm. We produce all photography ourselves.

What about search engine marketing and search engine optimization. Do you handle those in-house?
The search agency handles both optimization and search engine marketing. I manage our comparison shopping program. Although we use a third-party feed software, we manage feeds ourselves. That’s a lot of work because the key to profitability is submitting the right products with the right pricing, product descriptions and titles.

How did you find Nextopia?
We had seen them at a show. We thought the time was right to upgrade our site with a really comprehensive site search and merchandising system. The price certainly was right, too. It made perfect sense. The implementation was painless and the performance has been terrific. We’re using the eComm|Search module to handle site search on Bronners.com.

Bronners.com-Site-Search-with-Nextopia

How does Nextopia’s site search technology and modules fit in with your ecommerce plans?
We use all the core functionality, including search filtering. It really helps customers find their way to the products they’re looking for, particularly when they aren’t sure of the spelling or, perhaps, there is a regional difference in what a specific product is called. Overall, we’ve been very happy customers since 2007.

We’re raising a glass of eggnog as a toast of thanks to Maria for sitting down and talking to us about what it is like to live Christmas 365 days a year. Merry Christmas to everyone at Bronners from the engineering elves at Nextopia Software.

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