eBiz News: Why Long Tail Marketing Comes Up Short By Michelle Megna
July 7, 2008
Despite it being the lazy, hazy days of summer, there's still lots of e-commerce news to report, with the launch of Avail's marketing suite, RedRoller's new shipping service and upgrades to Volusion's platform and Register.com's hosting plans. Plus, Click Forensics continues the fight against fraud. Finally, a new study questions whether the "long tail" theory of niche marketing on the Internet rings true.
Avail Intelligence, new to the U.S. market, recently announced the availability of its G8 eMarketing Suite to e-tailers in the states. Designed to increase conversion rates and order values, the software provides intelligent predictive recommendations that are mined from large data sets of behavioral, transactional and product related data, according to the company. Built to integrate with online retail customer-interaction systems, the G8 eMarketing Suite optimizes visitor traffic, the company says, with the goal of improving marketing activities.
Avail Intelligence's product suite is based on a set of proprietary analytical algorithms designed to automatically promote the products and services most relevant to each visitor. Capable of providing 5,000 predictive recommendations per second, it provides individual personalization in real-time. Unlike other platforms that offer rules based tools that only target a limited number of visitors, Avail's technology assists each shopper, according to the company.
The G8 eMarketing Suite assists in the process of converting browsers into buyers through its capability to present the specific landing page of a product or service queried through a search engine instead of the home page. Coupling this with intelligent, peer-driven recommendations throughout the sales cycle, the suite is designed to build customer loyalty.
Another key feature of Avail Intelligence's system is the automated A/B testing functionality. This real-time, Web-based reporting tool shows the conversion rates of consumers and the overall effectiveness of the software. These results are in turn used for charging share fees, ensuring only the sales directly affected by Avail Intelligence's system are counted.
"It is not necessary for eCommerce and retail sites to invest a lot of money to integrate tactics that garner results," Dr. Rolf Elmér, CEO, Avail Intelligence, said in a statement. "With Avail's suite offering a 100-percent, performance-based model, it provides a low risk cost effective solution designed to drive sales, critical elements in today's economic climate."
RedRoller Rolls Out New Service
RedRoller Holdings just announced the introduction of its One-Stop Shipping software service for shipping packages. RedRoller's service enables small online business owners to search multi-carrier shipping options, select services from the desired carrier, and print authorized shipping labels and postage for packages, all from RedRoller's One-Stop Shipping site. RedRoller's service processes transactions automatically with the selected carrier and is available on-demand at www.redroller.com.
"RedRoller is offering the SMB community convenience, time and cost savings by providing a service that was previously only available to Fortune 1000 companies," said Michael Tribolet, CEO of RedRoller, said in a statement. "We're listening to the market, and businesses want to lower costs and increase package shipping efficiencies. We intend to become the nationally branded Search Engine for Shipping packages."
RedRoller offers shipping services from multiple package carriers selected by the user, including DHL, Overnite Express, US Postal Service via Endicia and other carriers.
Using RedRoller, businesses can select a shipping service based on the best available value that meets their needs, balancing costs with the customer's required delivery date and time. Customers can also arrange for optional package pick-up by their selected carrier or display a map of the most convenient drop-off location. RedRoller automatically processes transactions electronically with the selected carriers and prints authorized carrier shipping or postage labels. EBay sellers can also manage shipments for up to 10 eBay accounts through a single RedRoller account. E-tailers can subscribe to RedRoller's service for a monthly fee of $14.95.
Volusion Getting Social
Volusion recently announced an upgrade to its shopping cart software, Volusion 5, with the introduction of its Social Store Builder. The new feature enables online merchants to offer social shopping — a way to push their products onto social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
Volusion's solution allows featured products from the merchants' stores to be rotated on their social networking page and when the user is ready to buy, they are taken directly to the online store owner's secure checkout page — eliminating the challenge of managing inventory and accounting, outside of the merchant's site.
The Social Store Builder includes setup wizards that assist store owners through the entire process of building an online store, from design to setting up tax and shipping, according to the company. This new feature is free of charge for all Volusion merchants using the gold plan and above.
(Continue to Page 2 for news on click fraud, hosting plans and a study refuting the "long tail" theory)
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