Vanessa Zeng says, “Following Alibaba’s announcement that it will list on the New York Stock Exchange, global eBusiness professionals are paying closer attention to the Chinese Internet giant, wondering what impact it will have on their business. For those who need to get up to speed on the company, here is a preview of Forrester’s upcoming report on Alibaba, which summarizes its development history, revenue streams, business expansion, and the impact it will have on digital services business value chain: Alibaba draws its revenue streams from the ecosystem around its eCommerce platform.According... [...]

Daniel Burstein says, “Pricing is critical to ecommerce success. After all, customers can get a range of prices for the same or similar products in a matter of seconds. You have to walk a careful line. Make your products too expensive, and you lose sales. Set prices too low, and you lose margin. To help you gain a sense of how your peers in the industry handle this challenge, in this Marketing Research Chart, we’ll share gross margins at different company revenue levels“. Ecommerce Research Chart: Average gross margins for small, medium and large companies MarketingSherpa  [...]

Shafqat Islam says, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch, right? But in the world of content, there is. In this world, gone is the thinking from consumers that if something is free, it’s not going to be worth the paper it’s written on. In the UK, British Airways, M&S and Sports Direct are some of the brands that are surprising and delighting consumers by using good content to tap into their love of TV, fashion and adventure”. How killer content can move masses ‘Econsultancy’ Blog  [...]

Shafqat Islam says, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch, right? But in the world of content, there is. In this world, gone is the thinking from consumers that if something is free, it’s not going to be worth the paper it’s written on. In the UK, British Airways, M&S and Sports Direct are some of the brands that are surprising and delighting consumers by using good content to tap into their love of TV, fashion and adventure”. How killer content can move masses ‘Econsultancy’ Blog  [...]

Ben Davis says, “At the beginning of 2014, Ashley Friedlein rounded up some trends and predictions for the year in digital marketing and ecommerce. I thought I’d dip back in and take a look at some of the most incipient trends with some simple Google searches. Do click through to the searches and see what else you can dig up”. What do search volumes reveal about trends in marketing and ecommerce? ‘Econsultancy’ Blog  [...]

Martin Beck says, “The marriage between social media and e-commerce still isn’t official, but it seems like every week they take a least a few steps closer to the altar. And while the major social networks in the space — Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest — continue treading cautiously, one company has created a solution that works today on Instagram. It’s not quite seamless — customers still have to maneuver through a few hoops to buy products from their Instagram feeds — but Curalate’s Like2Buy is pretty slick”. Curalate Brings E-Commerce To Instagram; Nordstrom... [...]

David Moth says, “Way, way back in 2011 we published an article looking athow 26 commerce sites presented their mega menus. This refers to the drop-down menus that are generally situated within the horizontal navigation at the top of a webpage. Web trends and UX design have changed in the intervening years, in large part due to increasing consumer adoption of mobile and new technologies such asresponsive design, so I thought it would be interesting to revisit those same sites to see how they’ve evolved”. Mega menu design trends in ecommerce: 2011 vs. 2014 ‘Econsultancy’ Blog  [...]

Martin Beck says, “Details of Twitter’s long-expected move into e-commerce are continuing to slip out. Re/code’s Jason Del Rey reported today, citing multiple industry sources, that the company will work with payments startup Stripe to handle the credit card transactions required for users to purchase goods directly from tweets”. More Twitter E-Commerce Plans Emerge; Payments Startup Stripe Said To Be On Board Marketing Land  [...]

Adam Sutton says, “Marketers focus on the content of a page and let developers worry about the load time. Does it matter if the customer has to wait another two seconds to see a page? The answer in this case study is “yes.” This ecommerce team increased conversion rates nearly 17% sitewide by reordering when content displayed on its pages. Find out why your social sharing buttons might be costing you sales“. Ecommerce: How an online retailer achieved a 17% conversion lift with faster page loading MarketingSherpa  [...]

Suzanne Bucciarelli (known as The Domaining Diva) has just released a new software package for people who want to tap into the income potential of an e-commerce store. If you want to sell any product online, whether products you build, products you procure through drop-shippers or even niche affiliate products, you need an online store where you present what you have to offer. However, creating an online store can be a challenge. There’s a lot of software needed to take orders, charge the customer’s credit card, ship via UPS, Fedex, etc. Integrating all this software into a package... [...]