I’ve always believed the boys at Duplays have a great idea on their hands and I wish them much success in the future…partly cause I’m a member of their flag football league…Go Ocho Cincos!

The article was written by Carrie Hill at Search Engine Watch – http://searchenginewatch.com/3634726

Again most of what Carrie says make’s perfect sense, yet so many online retailers stumble and fall, frustrating their shoppers.

Alot of issues arise due to concerns of security and customer data.  Shopping online is a balancing act between the objectives of sales & marketing and IT & security.

Research, and our own experience, tells us,  that customers want to be able to come to your website, find what they want (or indeed be told what they need) put it in a shopping basket, checkout, receive confirmation and 2/3 days later their product arrives.   “It’s rudimentary, my dear Watson”  but alas many website’s can’t achieve these simple tasks.

etailers need to be sensible when selling online, you need to plan your customer journeys, ensure that they are well thought through and make sense, have good customer service (so important and many etailers fail on this basic service).

When I worked at tesco.com, we worked hard to achieve good customer service and experience, just because you are online, doesn’t mean you can ignore the basics of good service, it pays off in the end.

If you hit brick walls, eg how you list your products & prices, store your info, manage your supply chain, find a solution, everybody will benefit.

In Dubai and the UAE we don’t actually have many online retailers, most of us (including myself) order from international companies and have our products shipped in, (this is partially due to the fact that we can’t get these products here).

But wouldn’t it be great if we could buy our groceries, get household goods and furniture, electrical goods etc online and have everything delivered to our doors, I for one would be very grateful.

Keep collaborating,

Claire

http://tinyurl.com/pd58tj

From my experience I find that the issue is often ‘timelines’ the ‘we need it now’ attitude. I know this is a reality in business but clients need to understand that if you are going to move your brand online you need to do it right and planning is key.

Take a little more time, plan, build and QA correctly and you should avoid alot of the issues mentioned in this article.

Thanks to Flip Media for bringing this article to my attention.

Keep collaborating,

Claire

Well, here’s an easy way to get started: “Half of all internet users enter online sweepstakes and contests each month, according to Forrester Research, yet few companies have the technical know-how to integrate such promotions with the social networks they’re typically advertised on.” This is where Wildfire comes in…

…Unless your a hermit, but in that case, you wouldn’t be using the internet!  Behavioral Advertising allows the consumer to receive communication of products and services that they only are interested in.  So why not?