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Price Comparison Mobile Apps – an opportunity for B&M Stores?
Posted on November 26th, 2009 Comments
There are a number of apps (Twenga, RedLaser, Save Benjis and others) for performing on-the-go price comparisons.You either search by product name or barcode, but the pitch for them all is the same: you’re out shopping, in a bricks & mortar retail store when you see a product you want. You take out your iPhone, scan the barcode or type in a product name and check the price, either directly with online stores like Amazon or using Google Products.
The developers of the apps sell them cheaply, the real revenue is in the affiliate commissions to be earned.
Whenever a technology comes that tips the balance unfairly (away from the bricks and mortar store which are being turned into a free showroom for online merchants) there are a number of ways for the ‘wronged party’ to handle the threat.
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Remarketing – scary or good customer service?
Posted on May 18th, 2009 Comments
Remarketing, the online equivalent of running after a customer who has walked away from a shopping cart, was covered by the New York Times yesterday.I must admit it’s the first time I’ve heard the term, but back in the late 90s I wrote something like this for the online store of a company where I was marketing manager (and web developer). We tracked what products registered website users had looked at or downloaded demo versions of. Being a FileMaker driven site, this data was instantly available to my colleagues in sales – they used it to go fishing for hot leads – if necessary they would research the products first so they might be able to answer any simple questions straight away. As to the marketing application of this data, I used it to build up an idea of what areas of the creative industry a customer was into so we could target direct mailings and emails to them more effectively.
All of this was permission based – we wouldn’t phone someone who would prefer not to take sales calls and we wouldn’t mail or email someone who had opted out. I don’t see any mention of permission or opt-in in the NYT article. That SeeWhy’s founder, Charles Nicholls, ’says he advises Web sites to have visitors “put their e-mail address in at the first step,” to increase the likelihood that it will be captured’ shows just how little he understands about usability or permission marketing – nobody puts their email address into an online store before they start shopping!
In the last five years I implemented something similar for some client online stores and for my previous company’s own store. The difference to the Abandonment Tracker Pro methodology is in how the follow-up is performed and the conditions under which this is done. Only logged-in customers, who abandoned the shopping cart in the checkout process, rather than just left the cart ‘in the aisle’ are contacted and the contact is always made by telephone. Additionally abandoned carts are separated into two groups – abandoned at checkout and abandoned after an unsuccessful payment attempt. The unsuccessful payment attempt ones being the most urgent – the customer was trying to pay and couldn’t.
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Why can’t giving to charity be more like shopping?
Posted on March 11th, 2009 Comments
Americans gave over $300bn to charities last year. UK figures are much lower (hey, we pay higher taxes) but are still over £9bn annually.But charities always need more money to accomplish their aims – you’re unlikely to come across a charity that says “no thanks, we’re good for this year”. Given the worsening global financial situation, charitable giving is set to suffer – in the last recession corporate giving dropped by over 10%. It’s clear that charities are going to have a shortfall in funding and may be unable to meet their objectives.
Right now charitable giving online is handled in a number of ways. You can go direct to the charity’s website and make a payment online, or set up a recurring payment for a specific amount; you can go to a site like charities.org and do something similar. Some charities like the Red Cross give you a choice from five different sub-causes. One that I really liked, Barnados, lets you purchase ‘ethical real gifts‘ for people in need, a step in the right direction, and not prominently displayed enough in my opinion.
Another problem that charities have to overcome with online giving is that people are often reluctant to give a charity their contact details – they know that they will receive guilt inducing ‘begging letters’ by email, maybe phone calls too – giving to a charity is like painting a target on your back. None of the donation forms I looked at, where you enter all your details offered full opt-out – Red Cross had a checkbox, default checked, saying ‘I may be contacted by email’, Charities.org gave no such option. Neither allowed you to opt out of further contact.
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