Published on Thursday, February 24 2011
I’m a big fan of Criggo, a blog that runs bad headlines, editor’s mistakes, and other humorous ephemera from newspapers. Today I found this entry from a few days ago, appropriate since I’m at eTail West:
Is it really so simple? No need for community and content, no need for exclusivity or behavioral psychology, no need for retargeting and multi-channel customer acquisition strategies: just deals!
One path for eCommerce is certainly to create price leadership and then focus on being found via search and price comparison engines. But it seems to me the more interesting new strategies combine the insights of social psychology together with new forms of interaction technology has made possible to create a wholly different experience, where its no longer about the best deal but about differentiation, exclusivity, curation, and loyalty.
Of course good deals can’t hurt, so the value discipline of price leadership isn’t going away – just being supplemented as the eCommerce market matures.
Published on Monday, February 21 2011
Just checked in and tagged version 2.0.13 of WPBook. Thanks to BandonRandon for her patches!
A few quick updates in this release, but fairly minor:
- Moved and Unhid the infinite_session_key in admin WPBook setting screen. Lots of folks were confused by where that option was located.
- Fixed attribution line function which prevented %author% from working
- Added global gravatar setting – otherwise we only filter gravatars inside facebook. (This prevents wpbook from interfering with othee gravatars in themes outside fb).
- Added DONOTCACHEPAGE constant when pages are viewed inside facebook –
this should enable WPBook to better coordinate with wp-super-cache, though you will still need to use the “Use PHP to serve cached files” rather than “Use mod_rewrite to serve cache files” for this to work.
Read more…
Published on Thursday, February 17 2011
I download lots of whitepapers, ebooks, and webinars, habitually – just part of trying to keep up to speed with what’s going on in eCommerce, social computing, content management, and open source software in general.
Often downloading these things requires registration, and some level of profile information: an email address, a phone number, a corporate address, etc. (Optaros often does this as well, and I can’t tell you how many times luke_skywalker@rebel_alliance.org or similar has registered to download whitepapers – but I generally use my real email address. I like to follow rules.)
Recently I got this email, presumably in reference or followup from one of those downloads:
From: Sales Person
Subject: BigCo
It has come to my attention that you requested some information from BigCo. Please let me know if I can be of assistance.
Take care
Firstname Lastname
sales@BigCo.com
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Published on Wednesday, February 16 2011
Sometimes I think Randall Munroe is a comedic genius; sometimes I think he’s just a figment of my own imagination he’s so dead on.
Hat tip to BandonRandon for alerting me to this one.
I may replace the about page on OpenParenthesis with this.
Published on Monday, February 14 2011
Last week I had the opportunity to attend and speak (“With Friends Like These, Who Needs Revenue?“) at the inagural Magento Imagine eCommerce conference in LA. It was a great show, with way too much going on for a simple summary, but I’ll try my best here to capture some of the highlights and point to recaps by others.
First, some of the highlights from keynotes by those outside the Magento team:
- Blake Nordstrom, talking about being customer-driven, not just customer focused. Make sure you’re actually delivering something she wants, not just what technology makes possible. He also discussed Nordstrom’s much vaunted customer service, saying “if you’re talking about customer service, you’re not doing it.” Lastly, he touched on mobile-in-store and the fixed cash register as one of the worst parts of the whole customer (and associate) experience – something Nordstrom is actively working on
- Naveed Anwar (@nanwar) from PayPal (with the envious email address geek -at- x.com) talking about mobile commerce, and the extent to which it will be transformative, not just additive to the customer experience.
- Marten Mickos of Eucalyptus (and formerly MySQL AB) talking about the importance of Open Source and new versions of “Open” to the overal eCommerce ecosystem – lack of proprietary lock-in may be the ultimate lock-in, because knowing you can leave at anytime has a way of eliminating the desire to leave – forces competition on service and value.
- Brian Walker of Forrester (blog, @bkwalker) talking about “Agile Commerce.” It’s time to drop the “e” from eCommerce, “but since we’re in L.A., we can’t just drop the ‘e.’ We need to blow it the hell up.” Walker noted that by 2013, “51% of total US retail sales will be influenced by or made online.”
- Warren Adelman from GoDaddy (blog, @asocialcontract), sharing the history of their infamous SuperBowl commercials, and revealing that the first SuperBowl ad very nearly starred William Hung rather than the “GoDaddy Girl” – how the world might have been different had that happened!
- Alfred Lin from Sequoia Capital (@Alfred_lin) (and ex-Zappos) describing the history of PayPal and how it grew to success in “Growing a Billion Dollar Online Commerce Company.” (Slideshare link)
Read more…
