ecommerce

It has come to our attention . . .

Posted on by John

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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ecommerce

Magento Imagine eCommerce Conference

Posted on by John

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)

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ecommerce

Stuck in the Middle with You

Posted on by John

The first part of this week I was out in Los Angeles for the inaugural Magento Imagine eCommerce conference (more about that to come). En route, I ended up trying (via standby) to get on an early flight for one leg (ATL to LAX), and just got squeezed onto the flight as the last passenger.

This meant five hours plus in a middle seat in coach. Nothing to write home about — this certainly falls in the first-world-problems camp — just the average run-of-the-mill experience that makes traveling tiring.

The next day, I got this in my email:

Excellent, proactive customer service. Never got one of these before – maybe it only comes with a certain level of Medallion Status?

Not that 500 sky miles is going to make any significant difference (and never mind that of course on every full plane there are lots of folks in middle seats) but I thought it was quite clever to notice and simply acknowledge that the much heralded benefits of being a frequent flier didn’t apply in this case.

Good work Delta, and thanks for the aisle seat on the way home.

Uncategorized

WPBook 2.0.11

Posted on by John
Ours Goes to 11

Just tagged and checked in another maintenance release of WPBook, 2.0.11. This will be the last (hopefully) release in the 2.0 series – next up is 2.1, with OAuth 2.0 for authentication. (Facebook is migrating in this direction, which means eliminating by March 2011 some of the calls I’m relying on now).

This release also incorporates all the 2.0.10 changes, but it marked stable – so many of you will jump right from 2.0.9.2 to 2.0.11.
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