buySAFE blog

Ingredients for the Secret Sauce – buySAFE Luncheon in Boston

As readers of this blog are aware, last Friday, buySAFE held an invitation-only luncheon in Boston titled “Discovering the Secret Sauce of Multi-Channel Selling Success.” With a capacity crowd at Anthony’s Pier 4 restaurant on the picturesque Boston Harbor waterfront, this panel drew e-commerce merchants, Wall Street analysts, and journalists as attendees, all of whom left the session with greater insight into the challenges of and key factors for succeeding online as a multi-channel merchant.

The topic and composition of the panel could not have been more timely, as the issue of multi-channel retailing came to the fore frequently during the week of eBay Live, with our panelists and attendees playing key roles:

· Moderator Ina Steiner of AuctionBytes.com was quoted in numerous publications during the week, and also scored key interviews with eBay North America president Bill Cobb and CEO Meg Whitman, addressing multi-channel issues specifically.

· Panelist Bjorn Espenes, CEO of Infopia, announced the availability of Infopia’s new book “The eCommerce 2.0 Handbook – How to Prosper in the New Era of Online Selling” by Ralf VonSosen.

· Panelist Brian Smith of ComparisonEngines.com and SingleFeed was one of the first to break the story of eBay’s decision to pull their advertising from Google.

· Panelist Jonathan Garriss of PeSA, ECMTA and Gotham City Online penned a much talked-about position paper about the eBay marketplace titled “Unhealthy Marketplace Dynamics - Seller Perspective.”

· Panelist Steve Woda of buySAFE announced new partnerships with TRUSTe and comparison shopping site PriceRunner.

· Attendee Derek Brown of Cantor Fitzgerald was quoted extensively in the San Francisco Chronicle and other media outlets regarding the impact of eBay’s boycott of Google.

Other analysts from Bear Stearns, Canaccord Adams and other Wall Street firms were also in attendance.  Additionally, highly influential eBay community members were attendees including Mike Enos of Platinum Power Seller, Skip McGrath of Auction Sellers Resource, Kerry Murdock of Practical eCommerce, Phil Davies, CEO of Tias.com and David Hardin, PeSA Board Member & CEO of Shoetime.  The event really brought together some key influencers in the e-commerce world at a very important time.

As for the actual panel discussion, the session lasted approximately 60 minutes, including 15 minutes of questions and answers. Topics ranged from how to optimize keyword campaigns, to the best ways to drive traffic, to choosing a shopping cart platform. Key takeaways included the following:

1. Diversify or Die – Successful online merchants must leverage multiple online channels. “eBay is a great starting point, but if you’re serious, you need to have your own Website,” said Garriss. “On Amazon, they give you buyers, but they are not really your customers. At a certain level, you want to take control of your business.”

2. Analytics are Key: All panelists agreed that you must closely track key metrics to understand success or failure in real time. “What you really need to know from analytics is, ‘What does it cost to acquire a customer?’ – at the platform, keyword and SKU level,” said Espenes.

3. Test, Test, Test – There are many advertising platforms besides Google that merit experimentation for driving traffic to a merchant’s site. “You have to test,” said Smith. “Test SEO. Test AdWords, MSN AdCenter, and Yahoo Search Marketing. Test Amazon. You have to see what channels work for you.”

4. The Customer is King – Panelists agreed that the lowest hanging fruit for driving sales is leveraging a merchant’s existing customer base. “You can always buy traffic, but drive traffic that converts. The number one way to convert is to motivate your existing customer base,” said Garriss.

5. Trust is a Must – In order to convert shoppers to buyers, merchants must convey their trustworthiness, else be forced to lower their prices to compensate for a lack of awareness and trust. “Merchants want to compete on a non-price basis. You can build a brand, but it’s extremely expensive. A third-party endorsement of your business from a trusted source helps merchant bridge this trust gap” said Woda.

If you were not fortunate enough to join us, Ina Steiner conducted interviews with some of the panelists and participants during the week of eBay Live. You can check them out here:

Brian Smith -- http://auctionbytes.tv/cgi-bin/video-manager/frame.pl?features&06172007f

Jonathan Garriss -- http://auctionbytes.tv/cgi-bin/video-manager/frame.pl?features&06172007e

Ralf VonSosen (author of the Infopia book “The eCommerce 2.0 Handbook” -- http://auctionbytes.tv/cgi-bin/video-manager/frame.pl?features&06172007d

 
Pictures from buySAFE’s lunch panel:

http://auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/ebaylive2007/index.pl?0&2&1

http://auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/ebaylive2007/index.pl?24&2&2

Lastly, a big THANK YOU to all the panelists and to the over 100 attendees at this terrific event.

buySAFE News: buySAFE Forms Strategic Partnership With Leading Merchant Account Provider e-onlinedata

This is a great partnership for buySAFE as e-onlinedata is a major player in the payments space.  They are the first of many future payment company partners we will be working with to cross promote our products.  buySAFE is a very natural value add for payments companies as we provide a major impact on merchant sales (via increased conversion) and since our core service is free, it’s easy to bundle with a payment companies suite of services provided.

We’re thrilled to partner with e-onlinedata and we’ve been quite impressed with their team and their product offerings for merchants.

Internet Retailer & Bear Stearns Internet Conference Takeaways

Most of the buySAFE team is now back from last week’s Internet Retailer Conference.  Some of us, like me, just spent the last two days in NYC for the 18th Annual Bear Stearns Technology/Communications/Internet Conference. I was a speaker yesterday on the Safety Panel.

I wanted to share a few important insights from the two conferences.  I’ll share a bit more following the eBay Live conference this week. 

Internet Retailer put on a terrific conference. The number, variety and quality of both the exhibitors and the merchant attendees were exceptional.  This was the best eCommerce conference I’ve attended all year.  It’s a great conference for large, professional, multi-channel online retailers.  So that’s you -- you should try to attend next year. The depth and quality of the content is much higher than one typically finds at an eBay conference and the caliber of the attendees there makes it a much more productive conference for everyone involved. 

The Bear Stearns conference provided a great overview on the key trends across the internet.  Internet advertising continues to grow at an astounding rate and it sounded to me like the trend toward CPA (Cost-per-action) vs. CPC is really picking up steam.  CPA-based advertising is a new form of advertising which merchants are clamoring for because it takes all the risk out of marketing (they pay  % of sales vs. a flat fee for impressions or clicks).  Given that advertising is the riskiest, yet most important, spend a merchant makes, turning this into a truly pay-for-performance model where advertisers are paid as a % of revenue generated will be a great thing for merchants. On the trust and safety front, our panel discussed the trust issues all online merchants face.  That online shoppers are nervous and that to avoid missing major sales opportunities, online merchants need to aggressively address the two primary concerns online buyers have when buying online – 1) will my information/data/privacy be kept safe and 2) will this merchant be reliable and trustworthy and deliver as promised (will I have a smooth transaction and get what I paid for?). Tom Cuthbert from ClickForensics also provided some great insights into the click-fraud issues the search engines are facing.  All of the engines are taking it seriously and trying to minimize it as much as possible, but that overall, the search engines are not making much headway in reducing it.  In fact, in many cases click fraud is actually growing.

Scot Wingo of Channel Advisor, Rodrigo Sales of Vendio and Jonathan Garriss and Joe Cortese of PeSA all participated in a panel yesterday afternoon. The focus of the discussion was eBay and the universal message was that eBay isn’t innovating fast enough and the changes they are making (like raising listing fees) are net harmful to the marketplace. According to Jonathan/PeSA, the primary issue eBay continues to face is buyer confidence. Everyone seemed to agree with this.

Discover the Secret Sauce of Multi-Channel Selling Success – Join Us Next Week at eBay Live!

As I mentioned in a post a few weeks back, buySAFE will be sponsoring two big events next week during eBay Live, and I wanted to share the details for both.

First, on Friday, June 15, buySAFE is hosting an invitation-only luncheon at one of Boston’s finest waterfront restaurants – Anthony’s Pier 4 (140 Northern Boulevard, Boston, MA). Titled Discovering the Secret Sauce of Multi-Channel Selling Success, this panel discussion will feature executives from some of the top companies in the space, and will provide attendees with crucial insights into traffic driving, infrastructure/fulfillment, and conversion issues faced by multi-channel merchants. The panel will be comprised of:

MODERATOR

• Ina Steiner, Editor of AuctionBytes

PANELISTS

• Bjorn Espenes, President and CEO of Infopia
• Jonathan Garriss, CEO of Gotham City Online, Executive Director of PeSA, Managing Director of ECMTA
• Steve Woda, Founder, Chairman, Senior VP - Product & Strategy of buySAFE
• Brian Smith, Author of ComparisonEngines.com, Founder of SingleFeed

Space is extremely limited for this event, so please RSVP immediately to ebl2007@buysafe.com if you'd like to attend.

In addition to the luncheon, buySAFE will again be the title sponsor for the Seller Meet & Greet event on Wednesday, June 13. This year’s event will be hosted at Ned Devine’s Irish Pub in Faneuil Hall’s Quincy Market building from 7:00-11:00 p.m., and is a great opportunity for sellers to meet and trade stories from the trenches. The event is open to all sellers, and will feature free appetizers, door prizes and more.

We hope to see you all there!