Tracking offline conversions

Yesterday, I was speaking with Hal Varian, Chief Economist at Google after a lecture at the local University. One of the things I asked him about was tracking off line conversions. For our customers with bricks and mortar stores this is a common challenge. Hal suggested one way of measuring off line conversions was to […]

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Interview with Luke Hilton from Dick Smith Australia

We have just posted our first interview with an Australian retailer: Luke Hilton from Dick Smith Electronics. Dick Smithis part of Woolworths (ASX: WOW). DSE is Australia’s largest online electronics retailer and they have over 200 retail stores. Luke is the Web Manager at Dick Smith and in the interview he shares plenty of his […]

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No results page

I saw an excellent write up about winning strategies for no results pages by Greg Nudelman. Greg includes plenty of examples of what does and doesn’t work.  I recommend reading it. Here is a list of some of the things that we do around the no results page. First of all we try to reduce the number of times […]

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NEMOA Spring Conference

We’re heading over to Boston this week for the NEMOA Spring Conference. To find out more about this event and what the New England Mail Order Association is all about check out www.nemoa.org. We’re hosting a round table on Thursday morning (7:45am – 8:45am), come along for breakfast and join the discussion.

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Blogging, ecommerce and site search

I read an article in the Ecommerce Guide recommending that online stores should blog. The article covers some of the basics of blogging and its benefits – including helping to engage your customers and getting more visibility in the search engines. As I often do, I started thinking about what this meant from a site search […]

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Interview with Jack Love from Internet Retailer

We have just released an interview with Jack Love, President and CEO of Vertical Web Media – better known by their brand Internet Retailer. Jack discusses his career in publishing from starting as a journalist through to Internet Retailer. He talks a lot about the upcoming Internet Retailer show in Boston (June 15-18) which is going […]

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Webinar Recording Available Now – Best Practices for CSE Marketing & Site Search

If you were unable to attend our webinar on Thursday you can watch the recording from the Merchant Advantage website. Best Practices for CSE Marketing and Site Search Michael Lambert, CEO, Merchant Advantage & Shaun Ryan, CEO, SLI Systems The 30-minute webinar was held on Thursday Feb 19, 2009. By watching this webinar you will […]

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Top 10 retailers by conversion rate

I spotted a post by Bryan Eisenberg at FutureNow listing the top 10 online retailers by conversion rate. First of all – I was pleased to see three SLI customers in the list – FTD, Blair.com and Drs Foster and Smith.  Before you start comparing your conversion rate to these sites and trying to work out why […]

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eTail Phoenix

Next week we’re heading down to Phoenix, AZ for the eTail West 2009 conference. This event  is one of the largest conferences in the ecommerce industry and has an impressive list of speakers as well as a good mix of vendors.

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Incorporating video into site search

When I was at the Internet Retailer design show in Miami last month I noticed that more and more retailers are using video on their site. Fat Brain Toys president and co-founder, Mark Carson showed me an example of video on their site that shows kids playing with one of the more popular toys on their […]

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