Ayaz Nanji says, “Customers responding to email marketing and shoppers navigating directly to online stores (including app traffic) accounted for the highest share of purchases on phones in the first quarter of 2014, according to a recent report from Custora. Email marketing generated 26.7% of retail purchases made on phones in 1Q14, compared with only 20.9% of sales on desktops and 23.1% on tablets. Direct traffic also drove a larger share of purchases on mobile phones compared with desktop, with one-third (32.9%) of sales coming from shoppers who went straight to online stores/apps. On... [...]

Amy Gesenhues says, “In its latest round of reports, Custora claims mobile e-commerce revenue is set to reach $50 billion by the end of this year, up nearly $8 billion since last year, and an astounding $48 billion since 2010. Analyzing e-commerce data from more than 100 retailers, 70 million consumers and $10 billion in transactions, Custora found mobile traffic to e-commerce sites has increased from three-percent to nearly 37 percent in the last four years, while mobile e-commerce revenue climbed from $2.2 billion in 2010 to $42.8 billion last year”. Study: Mobile E-Commerce Sales... [...]

James Critchley says, “Many online retailers remain obsessed with growing overall site traffic, at the expense of increasing conversion rates from existing customers. Research shows that for every £100 retailers spend getting customers to a website, only £1 goes into converting them. This can be counter productive: the cost of acquiring new trafficis increasing exponentially. Actually it makes much more sense to convert the 97% of customers that visit your site and abandon before making a purchase. What often prevents retailers from concentrating on conversions is the perception that... [...]

Derek S says, “Having to piece together performance and security software is something that Wany web workers are familiar with. Verizon Digital Media Services, a division of Verizon Communications, has announced the release of a new e-commerce solution for website owners. Through the new solution, Verizon aims to target website owners that are piecing together their website protection and performance softwares and offers them an all-in one solution. Within the solution are eight features (Transact, Protect, Compute, Analyze, Develop, Support, Store and Route) which combine to offer... [...]

Christopher Ratcliff says, “Continuing my quest to investigate how various industries use email marketing, here’s a look at how some of our favourite fashion retailers use this most effective yet often neglected marketing channel. Much like my round-up on the travel industry a couple of weeks ago, I’ll be looking at the frequency of emails, the use of subject lines, the email content itself, special offers, editorial voice, personalisation, relevance… All of the many tools that a company can utilise to coerce the recipient to open up an email or even engage with it. As well as the... [...]

David Moth says, “Content marketing has been a hot topic in digital for more than a year, but many brands still struggle with the challenge of how to integrate content seamlessly into the ecommerce experience. One of our recent surveys found that only 38% of in-house marketers have a defined content marketing strategy, despite 76% saying they are producing significantly more content than they were 12 months ago. To help brands overcome these challenges Econsultancy and EPiServer have published a new report entitled Where Content and Commerce Collide. It examines how digital content can... [...]

Ben Davis says, “It’s hard to get one’s head around China. The scale and the speed are vast and fast. So, I thought I’d round up some companies doing interesting things online in China, just to give a snapshot of marketing in the country. Full credit where it’s due, these are all taken from Barney Loehnis’ presentation (he’s head of digital in APAC for Ogilvy & Mather) at the Future of Digital Marketing 2014“. China: from WeChat mcommerce to experiential nuts ‘Econsultancy’ Blog  [...]

Darin Archer says, “For retailers, video is the new JPEG. Companies have demonstrated that videos drive more conversion and higher AOV, and with the costs of video production dropping, there’s no reason why all retailers shouldn’t be embracing video – and hundreds of reasons why they should. You probably already know how important video is for your ecommerce site, but do you know the best ways to effectively harness it? To start, videos should be produced using a scalable process and address content in which visitors are interested”. Online video for ecommerce: what... [...]

The latest ‘Econsultancy’ blog post is titled “Why Norman Records is a masterclass of ecommerce design”. Christopher Ratcliff says, “Obviously I’m biased. I buy a lot of records. I write about music on a daily basis. I’m a sucker for online shopping. Therefore Norman Records hits my sweet spot. There are plenty of other record stores out there that have a perfectly acceptable online presence, but most are in dire need of a responsive design, and none of them are as unique, personality-filled and containing quite as many brilliant idiosyncratic features as Norman... [...]

If you haven’t already downloaded these Two Free Software Tools, this is your last opportunity. They will help you get more Amazon traffic & more buyers and, this week only, they are available free: 1. Crowd Force will help you pin-point and take advantage of targeted traffic opportunities. With its special design, it helps you drive high-value visitors to your Amazon listings, (whether they be for a physical product or for a Kindle e-book.) 2. Description Master+ will help you convert more of those visitors into buyers by helping you build better ads. Even if you aren’t selling... [...]