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This is a recap of our webinar Multi-Store Retailing: Perks and Pitfalls with Elastic Path's own VP of Innovation, Jason Billingsley. (The replay should be available by the end of the week.) You can also catch up on all of our audio/visual webinar replays at ElasticPath.com/Events/ and blog summaries here. Though our webinars are not product-specific - we put these out there for all online retailers to access and enjoy whether you use our ecommerce software or not, this topic is near and dear to use as our most recent version of Elastic Path is really honed for multi-store retailing. If you're interested in a product-specific webinar on our product you can view the replay of Technical Introduction to Elastic Path Commerce 6.1. Multi-Store Retailing: Perks and Pitfalls covered: * Why Multi-Store is gaining momentum * Types of stores to consider launching * When to launch additional stores * How to avoid critical mistakes

Despite the convenience of shopping online, many people still use the web only to research products to purchase offline. Multi-channel retailers with both physical stores and online stores have a leg up on pure-plays when it comes to serving and converting these buyers. Circuit City is an example of a retailer that's in tune with what customers want and expect from the cross-channel experience, offering customer service features that leverage its competitive advantage:

This post is a recap of today's webinar: The eCommerce Platform of the Future. The on-demand version will be available shortly. About our guest speaker As Senior Analyst for ecommerce technology at Forrester, Brian researches and reports the impact of technology advancements, operational needs, and changing consumer behaviors on online retail. His expertise spans B2B and B2C retail and online travel, with a focus on multichannel strategies, user experience design and technology. Brian holds more than 11 years of experience in eCommerce and online marketing, serving senior roles for retailers such as Amazon.com; Classmates Online, Inc.; Eddie Bauer; Expedia.com; and The Spiegel Group.

'm often asked what I think the hottest trend in ecommerce is and I believe it's video content. So I'm excited to see more new technology emerge that can embed video right into retail email, and retailers experimenting with it. Anna Yeaman reports one retailer boasting a 20-27% click through rate without linking to video, and 51-65% with links to video. And Forrester Research reports video in email can increase click through by 2-3X.

I've been a big fan of Crutchfield's marketing for a long time - I consider them to be one of the top retailers in that regard. Here's a perfect example of why: Crutchfield recently ran this email incorporating ratings and reviews (an effective and underused tactic for retail email), and includes content that speaks to various buying modes effectively.

Last year we posted cart buttons from over 100 top online retailers. Just over a year later, I spotted 46 out of the 111 retailers using different button designs. But does that mean they're testing? Not necessarily.

Cross-selling and upselling is a popular tactic among online retailers in hopes of increasing average order value, items per sale and improving customer service with relevant suggestions. Amazon shared that cross-sells were responsible for 35% of its sales in 2006! According to the e-tailing group's 8th Annual Merchant Survey Report (of 190 ecommerce executives), 55% of retailers will include cross-selling and upselling in their merchandising activities this year. But cross-selling and upselling is one of the most difficult activities to do well and effectively measure, as evidenced in the e-tailing group's findings:

Is social media/Web 2.0 for retail just hype or an essential part of doing business in the 21st century? The Wikipedic definition of Web 2.0 is "a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate and share information online." Wikipedia, being a user-generated knowledge base, is itself Web 2.0. In the ecommerce context, Web 2.0 includes leveraging social commerce on your own site, blogging/podcasting and participating in social networks like Youtube, Facebook, Twitter - and anywhere you or your customers can create and share content. Retailers often wonder what Web 2.0 / social media activities to be involved with, so this post ranks what I believe are the top 10 Web 2.0 activities for ecommerce based on their business impact.

Add to Cart buttons - they may be small, but no online retail store can do without them. These little, rectangular, sometimes colorful clickables connect the product to the shopping cart and are an extension of your branding. It's important to put some thought into what your "Add to Cart" icon looks like in your shopping cart.

Our 2007 study clearly shows that online retailers are not capitalizing on the customer experience and are overly focused on innovation while ignoring the basics.

Online, pictures are worth more than words, they're worth dollars. But how many dollars depends on how effectively product images *speak* to customers. We're talkin' details. Just like textual product descriptions describe a product in detail, enlarged images and alternate views better describe your products. And many products cannot be fully described with words.

An overview of the changes in retail and social business

One of the many retail emails I subscribe to is Rampage, which recently notified its mailing list of a new brand called Golden State (separate e-store).

Subscription options for consumables is not necessarily a new concept, but certainly an underused tactic of online retailers. It's far more common to see e-tailers offering tiered pricing (discounts on quantity) to increase basket size. But customers don't always want to order a case lot of something - who has room for a year's worth of coffee in the cupboard? Others don't have the cash-on-hand to pre-purchase items.

We don't do a lot of posts on branding on Get Elastic, but I had to blog about Seattle-based ski, snowboard and wakeboard shop evogear. evo is an example of a retailer that has taken its corporate culture and incorporated its personality into nearly every aspect of its marketing.

Cultivating a solid, permission-based email list can take a lot time. So some businesses understandably get impatient waiting around for their lists to grow. ALTFor these businesses, online contests may be an attractive quick fix. As an example, let's say a newly launched shoe e-retailer, Shoe-Fanatics.com, wants to grow its email list really fast. So it partners with a well-established fashion news website Fashion-Freaks.com, to run a contest or giveaway. Fashion-Freaks.com has been around for years, and they've built up a subscriber list composed of users with the same demographics that Shoe-Fanatics.com is looking for. Fashion-Freaks.com will send an email promotion to its readers, recommending they all visit Shoe-Fanatics.com to enter a contest, or redeem a nice coupon. When readers of Fashion-Freaks enter the contest, they can opt in to Shoe-Fanatics's email marketing list.

Taking lessons from two marketing disciplines, online retailers and their web designers can build a well structured Internet store organized into themes or categories that will make it easy for shoppers and search engines alike to find important information and product pages. In this Ecommerce Know-How, I will briefly define search engine optimization (SEO) and information architecture (IA), describe one of the many places where these marketing specialties intersect, and explain how easy and natural thematic structure and linking really is. I've also included a video. I should point out that this technique is very intuitive, and many site owners or designers are probably using it to some extent naturally. We are simply putting a name to these natural tendencies.

he final variable in the Marketing Experiments conversion sequence is "a" for anxiety about following through with a purchase. Some of this anxiety is about the product, some is about you as a retailer. You must address both. And unlike friction (resistance) which must be minimized and balanced with an attractive incentive, anxiety needs aggressive overcorrection on your website. Ecommerce anxiety comes in a number of flavors, including fears about: * Quality of the product * Quality and reliability of your customer service * Will the item arrive on time? * Will the product be as described or as appears on screen? Is it the right color or size? * Will it fit? Is this item true to size? * What if the product needs to be returned? * Is this site secure (privacy, credit card information)? * Is this really the best price? Today's post will focus on anxiety on the product page specifically.

Jason Billingsley shared with me his positive shopping experience with a multi-store retailer while shopping for a birthday gift for his wife Amy, and we both agreed it would make a great blog post. (Unless you've been following Get Elastic for a while, you may not understand the title of this post, please read on…)

Most ecommerce merchants want consumers from all over, whether that means all 50 U.S. states, Canada, Mexico, Europe, or the world. But e-retailers need to consider local laws when they ask for business in another state or another country. And it is important to understand which jurisdictions might apply to a given online transaction.