Niche ecommerce merchants and entrepreneurs can learn from how one of the oldest retailers in America, JC Penney, is being remade. New logo, new marketing, new products, and… new prices. It's the prices that are getting most attention, and the ruckus around them points to a mistake the niche merchant must avoid. Critics say it's…
Category Archives: Blog
How Brand X and the ‘glamorous woman’ exemplify a story-telling template for retailers
When work looms before me, sometimes I so welcome a good template. Dispense with creativity! Damn the clean slate! At least for today, show me the shortcut to getting it done! In saying that, I mean a “template” as a model to emulate, an outline to follow. It becomes like a shortcut. Let it be…
Why retailer’s need mythic stories (or, what to say instead of ‘coupon’)
For over a decade I’ve worked with a retail brand that does not discount. Prices occasionally go up. The owner, with great conviction, always discourages activity that might cheapen the perceived value. Never is there suggestion of an urgent deal. (Okay, there might have been a free shipping offer around the holidays, but I could…
Catalogers surge to reinvest and reinvent
The hype for this year’s Internet Retailer conference in Chicago, starting this week, suggests there’s an “urgent need for e-retailers to reinvest and reinvent their online retail businesses in the wake of the recession in order to capitalize on the industry’s certain return to double-digit growth”. No mention of a “double dip” here; the “Great…
Worthy of imitation?
You’ve got something you’d like to learn. There are a dozen ways to learn it, but perhaps none simpler than imitation. Babies are master imitators. Animals, too, are quick to learn from imitation. So why do we resist it? Scolding “copycat!” voices from our childhood may still be in our head. There’s the aspiration to…
What’s really holding you back?
Seth Godin made an interesting blogpost earlier this week called Is it too late to catch up? He provides a list of ten things you should start doing if your business has no online presence at all, as if the last fourteen years have just passed you by. His suggestions are practical and inexpensive (mostly…
How to manage the #1 complaint about ecommerce software
Were your competitor pressed to explain why its ecommerce software needs a platform upgrade, the answer will likely sound familiar to you. That’s because it’s your answer, too, and the likely answer for 8 out of 10 merchants: insufficient innovation or flexibility. The desire for constant improvement runs strong among ecommerce merchants. How could it…
Internet retailers moving to ‘in-house’ marketing
Over the last six months, we’ve spent a lot of time talking to online retailers about their approach to marketing and the challenges they face, trying to understand how best we can meet their needs with the launch of Frankly eCommerce. One trend that’s struck us as becoming increasingly prevalent during 2009, is the drive…
Frankly eCommerce beta release coming soon
As merchants begin to focus on maximizing their revenues after the critical holiday period, a free beta version of Frankly eCommerce will soon be released to an invitation-only list of online retailers. To join our list of invited beta users and start realising some quick wins for your website, sign up now to register your…
The Top 500 Guide: lessons for the little guys
But for the absence of wands, broomsticks and stuffed owls, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were advanced copies of the latest Harry Potter installment. In reality, this is June in Boston, the final day of the Internet Retailer Conference, and the coveted publication in the mountain of closely guarded cardboard boxes is the 2009…