Nexternal Solutions eCommerce Blog – eCommerce News Articles

Get Potential Customers Talking About Your Store This Holiday Season

What our friends and relations think matters to us. I care about what my wife thinks of my new shirt, and when I got a 12-inch table saw this summer… Read more.

Bay State oenophiles could find their favorite bottles of wine on their doorsteps by Christmas.

A decision by U.S. District Court Judge Rya Zobel this week will allow vineyards that produce more than 30,000 gallons of wine a year to ship directly to Massachusetts consumers. Read More…

With the holidays ahead, and a new inflatable fruit cake product selling only sparsely, Seattle toy store Archie McPhee this week is setting out to drive online sales with an explanatory video. It’s apparently working. Read More…

For examples of Video Ad Campaigns associated with products using Nexternal Solutions ecommerce software please click on the following product links:- Nike Sphere Dry Polo and Callaway FT-i Driver

61 of the largest 100 online retailers offered free shipping as of the week of Monday, Nov. 10, though nearly all tied it to conditions such as minimum order value… Read More.

Savvy marketers understand the importance of measuring success one campaign at a time. Someone may put together a great promotion, see a flood of orders and assume that they are a great marketer. The truth is that those orders are likely the sum of many different marketing channels. The single greatest thing about online marketing (as opposed to offline marketing) is that it is easy to measure results from every marketing effort. Google Analytics is a free analytics tool used by thousands of online retailers. However, many Google Analytics users don’t know that by simply appending some data to their marketing links, they can track visitors, transactions and revenue at the campaign level. This assumes, of course, that Google Analytics has been properly configured.

The data that is appended to a link can consist of up to five predetermined variables and their values which are passed in as query string parameters. In this article, we are just going to focus on the three required variables:

1. utm_medium – this parameter is typically used to specify the type of source that is driving the traffic. Examples would be email, affiliates, comparison shopping engines, banners, or pay per click channels.

2. utm_source – is used to designate the exact name of the source. Let’s say for example you are using the comparison shopping engine Shopzilla. You would set the value of utm_source to shopzilla and the value of utm_medium to cse (comparison shopping engine).

3. utm_campaign – this variable is used to set a campaign name. Let’s say for example you are sending out an email announcing a special on a specific product. You could name the campaign NovWidgetSpecial. Many marketers recommend including some form of the date in the campaign value.

When you are putting a campaign into action, simply append these variables to your URLs in the form of a query string. Let’s say for example that you want to measure the results from a banner ad that you are running on an industry specific site. Your link might look like:

http://store.firstfairway.com/?utm_medium=banner&utm_source=golfcom&utm_campaign=NovDriverSpecial

For those that are nervous about putting this type of URL together, Google has a URL building tool available here:

http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578

Before launching a campaign, be sure to test your links thoroughly to make sure they don’t cause any problems with your website. Also, log into your Google Analytics to make sure everything is being tracked as expected. It can take a full 24 hours to see data so leave plenty of time to test things.

Within Google Analytics you can measure visitors, transaction volume and revenue through the interface. Once logged into Google Analytics, navigate to “Traffic Sources/Campaigns.” From here, you can change the dimension to see the data by campaign, source or medium (the three variables defined above). Also, be sure to click on the Ecommerce tab to see total revenue generated.

Now that you know how to configure URLs to track campaigns in Google Analytics, document your results. Compare your success relative to similar promotions you are currently running or have run in the past. Document the tactics that generate the most success. In the long run, your bottom line will thank you.

Google Base is a searchable online marketplace that consumers use to find and compare specific products. While this powerful tool is free and should be used by all who sell online, merchants need to be aware of changes that Google is instituting so that buyers are presented with a more complete picture of the true purchase cost. Although Google doesn’t yet include sales tax and shipping costs in its results pages, it certainly looks as if they are going to include this information soon. Merchants need to modify their Google Base settings to prepare for this change.

Within the Google Base control panel, merchants can now click on “Settings” and select the new “Tax & Shipping” tab to specify the appropriate value calculations. Shipping and tax calculations can take on complex forms and while Google’s settings aren’t going to accommodate every merchant, they should accommodate most.

Sales tax estimates can be set at the zip code level, state level or set to none. When set at the zip code level, Google uses the same sales tax database that Nexternal subscribes to which is owned by Tax Data Systems.

Shipping costs calculations are a bit more complicated. One option is to quote real-time shipping rates. This is the actual shipping rate that the carrier charges the merchant to deliver the package to the recipient. However, in order for Google to calculate the rate, it must first know the weights of the individual products. The merchant’s data feed should be updated accordingly to include weight if a merchant is to use that option. Shipping costs can also be set to a flat rate or set to vary based on price, weight, or number of items ordered.

While it’s impossible to predict exactly when Google will display the information and make it useful, the fact that they updated the merchant interface to include these settings leads one to believe it will happen soon. Taking 5 minutes to configure these settings will not only provide shoppers with the most complete information, it can also keep merchants one step ahead of the competition.

As retailers brace for penny-pinching shoppers this holiday season, they’re hoping their websites can deliver some good news. At the very least, the internet should… Read More

To slash financial losses in its U.S. DHL Express shipping business, Germany-based Deutsche Post AG will discontinue its U.S. domestic-only air and ground service as of Jan. 30, bringing to nearly 15,000 the number of jobs cut in the U.S. this year, the company said today. Read More…

Take Steps to Ensure Disputes are Settled Locally

Most ecommerce merchants want consumers from all over, whether that means all 50 U.S. states, Canada, Mexico, Europe, or the world. But e-retailers need to consider local laws when they ask for business in another state or another country. And it is important to understand which jurisdictions might apply to a given online transaction. Read More…

Retailers should look at the economic downturn as an opportunity to gain an advantage over their competitors, writes Irwin Kramer, CEO of e-commerce solutions provider iCongo. Optimizing inventory and customer service systems are key to positioning your business for the future.

Most retailers experience a downturn in a weak economy. As consumers rein in spending, a downturn is usually not distributed equally among all retailers. The extent of the downturn depends on a number of factors, including geographic location of stores… Read More.