Pre-registrations for the event, the largest of its kind in the world, seem to validate the sanguine rallying cry of the organisers.  With pre-registrations up one third on last year’s event, it’s interesting to note that the biggest percentage increase in registrations comes from catalogers – a sure sign that these direct commerce pioneers are starting to feel the squeeze as  traditional retailers, manufacturers, and pure play etailers continue to pour resources into their ecommerce efforts.

It’s predicted that about 4,500 online retailers across all sectors will attend this year’s event in Chicago.  But what about the rest of them?  How do all the other niche online retailers – the vast majority – keep up with the advances in technology, and the latest, most effective marketing tactics?

The answer is – it’s not easy.  Time is a big problem, and so is budget.  But the biggest challenge of all is sifting through the superabundance of online advice to find what’s relevant to your particular kind of business.

Solving this problem is our primary objective for Frankly eCommerce.  Using our own personal experience as online retailer and ecommerce software provider, we’ve packaged up a series of ecommerce lessons that are designed specifically for the niche online retailer – and made them available online for your whole team to work through at a time and place that suits their busy schedule.

So if you can’t make it to this year’s Internet Retailer, but would still like to learn directly from the experience of leading industry experts well now’s your chance.  Tim Ash, CEO at SiteTuners.com, is an in-demand speaker on the subject of SEO and his bestselling book Landing Page Optimization is a highly readable handbook for anyone serious about crafting conversion-focussed landing pages.  This year, his session at Internet Retailer is called “Creating landing pages that turn searchers into buyers“.  If you can’t make it to Chicago, why not check out Tim Ash’s lesson on Frankly eCommerce: “Home page design: a tested approach to jump start conversion“.  It’s just one in a series of connected lessons designed to build in-house expertise and drive your online business forward as the retail recovery begins in earnest.

Scolding “copycat!” voices from our childhood may still be in our head. There’s the aspiration to think different. Who doesn’t recognize a certain cool cachet in someone deemed original. Just saying someone is original is perceived to be a compliment.

I’m all for the new bright idea. But if our task is to learn, then let’s start with the obvious: imitate. Too many bad home page designs result from a designer wanting to be original. (Tim Ash bemoans “graphic designers run amok” in our lesson on home page redesign.)

Parents fear imitation at times, concerned their kids will pick up “bad influences” if they don’t have the right friends. So yes, let’s pick carefully who’s worth emulating. But there’s nothing better than a good example, if you ask me. And sometimes there’s nothing more instructive than a bad example.

There are some training programs that ask you to plod through lots of theory and certifications. Not here. A working tagline for Frankly eCommerce expresses this difference, I hope: “An expert-led course teaching you with frank stories & examples.” Let’s copycat what works.

PS. Hat tip to Dan Millman, when he wrote: “If you feel you’ve not yet attained a high level of expertise, it may be that you’ve not made the best use of your powers of imitation.”

But it’s his closing shot that really leapt out at us:

The problem is no longer budget. The problem is no longer access to tools.  The problem is the will to get good at it.

This is suddenly the situation with online retail.  The tools are readily available – at minimal cost compared to a few years ago.  Free open source ecommerce software, pay-as-you-go email marketing, free analytics tools, scaleable hosting.  What’s needed is a strategy – and the will to make it happen.

We can provide a proven strategy for niche online retailers.  Can you provide the will to get good at it?

The desire for constant improvement runs strong among ecommerce merchants. How could it not when you can examine other web stores’ features and immediately see what yours is missing? So the matter becomes one of wise ecommerce software management. Can you choose a platform that’s flexible enough to meet your feature ambitions, and that innovates at a sufficient pace?

Probably not, which is why the churn rate for ecommerce software runs about every 3 years says Ernie Schell, who helps multi-channel merchants select new systems. I’m talking with Ernie because he’s going to help Indi the entrepreneur answer this very question. It’s part of building out the Frankly eCommerce course, an online learning program for merchants facing decisions that are similar to Indi’s.

Jaivi, Indi’s cosmetics business, aspires to a greater level of integration between its website and fulfillment operations. The wishlist of website merchandising features grows unabated. There’s no lack for imagined interactions between website visitors using the shopping cart and follow-up offers by email. And on it goes. Sound familiar?

Schell is helping Indi to understand that the challenge will be evaluating which software provider will be her best business partner going forward. It’s not so much a matter of comparing feature lists as it is understanding the landscape of service providers. The lesson is to be found in learning to classify providers and compare them against your needs and expectations.

“By giving people the clasification tools, it’s then within their power to look at any ecom platform regardless of where they come across it, and decide whether it’s a match,” said Ernie.

It goes back to the problem with innovation or flexibility I mentioned at the beginning. Ernie writes about survey results concerning the challenge of managing ecommerce platforms, reporting 48% of merchants in the process of replacing their systems are doing so for lack of innovation / flexibility. But if you look at the other reasons in the survey, most are another way of phrasing the same problem, including:

• outgrown the technology, 24%
• vendor too slow to upgrade, 10%

Sounds like lack of innovation / flexibility to me. So 48% + 24% + 10% = 82% or 8 out 10 in my book. And if it’s an innovation problem, that reflects an underlying problem with the service provider. For merchants like Indi, the lesson goes back to choosing wisely among service providers, accurately examining them as a business partner across the criteria that matter.

As a former ecommerce service provider myself, creating this lesson will be fun…

Why ‘in-house’?

1. Without doubt, there continues to be a squeeze on costs as all businesses look for ways to trim expense.  Agencies and consultants are often first to go.
2. More significantly than that, ecommerce merchants are looking for sustainability.  Training existing staff to fulfil cross-disciplinary  roles not only improves their own value and self-esteem, but adds value to the team as a whole.
3. A unified approach is much easier to manage under your own roof, avoiding the strategic fragmentation that can occur when using a selection of specialist agencies.
4. Existing staff will be better tuned in to your brand values and the profile of your target customer so you’re efforts are likely to be more ‘on brand’.
5. ‘In-house’ can mean superior control & flexibility over your strategy, including the ability to change it on the spot.
6. Existing consultants and advisors needn’t be banished permanently – you can choose when and how you wish to employ their services.
7. There is potential to maximise value from the marketing budget, particularly as the tools aren’t expensive.
8. The knowledge is available at little or no cost for those who know what they need.

The value of ‘internalising’ marketing know-how within your business is fundamental to the design of the Frankly eCommerce program.  The result is a guided, on-demand, collaborative strategy that’s available to you and your team for as long as you want it.

Delivered online, at a time to suit you, the course will focus on implementing a range of proven seasonal marketing tactics so that your business can squeeze the maximum sales out of this short but important window of opportunity.

Frankly eCommerce is a real commitment to ‘in-house’ expertise. Invest a little time each week, as and when it suits you, and you’ll soon glean timely and relevant insights from our expert contributors that can be implemented quickly and effectively. At the same time, you’ll have a zero-risk opportunity to assess the value of the Frankly e-Commerce syllabus – both in terms of substance and our highly innovative style of delivery.  Your comments and feedback will help us as refine the course ahead of a full launch in the Spring.

There’s no doubt that Frankly eCommerce is going to be a fun and engaging experience for your team – one that will result in them working together in a more collaborative, web-savvy manner that will deliver better web sales. What better way to start the new year!

So, is there anything here for the smaller online merchant? Is there anything we can possibly learn from the billion dollar mega-brands?  Well – the answer is a resounding “yes”!

The harsh economic conditions have fundamentally changed the nature of online retailing over the last year.  For the first time since records began, online retailing grew at less than 10%, even though it was credited with propping up the rest of the retail sector.  But only when you look behind the headline numbers do you understand the real situation.  Much of the growth in online retail was driven by Amazon and the top 100 retailers that trail in its wake.  According to the US Department of Commerce, online sales from retailers outside the Top 500 have actually fallen for the first time ever.

The retailers that grew the fastest were those that continued to diversify their product lines or develop niches that appeal to a certain online audience.  Additionally, these merchants offer consumers the best experience, competitive pricing and superior merchandise.  In short, they all have a good story, a good strategy, and they execute it well.  For the smaller online retailer with limited resources, this sounds like a tall order – but it’s exactly the reason Frank Learning was conceived.

Scott Wingo is an eBay analysit, author, and president & CEO of Channel Advisor Corp.  He is quoted in the closing paragraph or the Top 500 introduction as saying this:

“The recession has put a lot of web retailers just in survival mode.  The successful merchants that will make it through the tough times and grow are the ones that execute on every part of their business plan and do whatever must be done to maximize their performance”.

The Frank Learning approach to eCommerce is focussed on developing an integrated, holistic, long-term strategy based on your brand’s products, personality and story.  For the niche merchant with a tight budget, it’s a sustainable strategy for survival, growth, and success.

Gramar Investments is a syndicate of five UK investors, chaired by Ronald Fidler, ex President of Black & Decker worldwide. They bring a huge amount of top-level business experience to our team – we’re very pleased to have them on board.

So now we have the chance to share what we’ve learned: through Patrick’s experience helping online merchants grow at 3x the industry average, and through mine as a merchant, striving to identify and implement the best strategy to help my brand take a quantum leap to the next level.

Two colleagues stayed behind in Canada, he said, but he did bring along his techie webmaster. Hi, there. Hi, he replied shyly. After another bite on my bagel, I asked what he’d been learning?

The e-commerce conference offered lots of diversions, the webmaster said. The trouble was that the sessions felt oriented towards marketing, and he was focused on programming. Oh well, it was still nice to have come. He said this to me as if repeating it out loud would make his manager, smiling at him across the table, feel better about the expense.

The two ladies who remained in Canada worked on marketing stuff, but also customer service stuff. And they couldn’t afford to leave the customer service stuff unattended in order to enjoy a five day, there-and-back-again, Boston adventure. So they missed out. “I’ll bring back what I can remember and we’ll talk about it,” the e-commerce manager offered with a hopeful tone. Again, as if repeating it out loud would inspire him to, to … to what, exude diligence in his note-taking?

The cost of airfare, the lodging, and the intensive all-day, multi-day format had excluded from attendance the actual people (those two ladies), who are doing the hands-on part of this company’s Internet marketing work. Ack.

As I bid farewell and left the table, a feeling of scarcity stuck with me. How to shuck this feeling? How can we train up a team without airfare expenses getting in the way? How can we promote learning among one’s entire team? Imagine the sales possible from getting all four (the ecom manager, the programming geek, the marketing & customer service ladies), on the same page? Imagine each person spawning unique ideas from the same learning experience, if only they could share it?

Whenever we build our distance learning product, merchants ought be able to:

• involve the whole team, even an outside freelancer.
• make something a team can experience, and then reference later for a just-in-time refresher.
• offer teachable moments in small enough bites that even the busiest customer service person can make the time to learn.

For one respected developer of an e-commerce package I talked with, it’s a line they don’t cross.

“I’ve got six companies all selling pecans,” said the company’s president. “How are we going to help one of our customers with marketing recommendations, and not upset any one of the other five? There’s no way. So we just don’t go there. Look, here’s the software, tell us if it’s broke. Tell us what features you want. But we’re not going to help you, your company specifically, grow web sales.”

When I described our plans for Frank Learning to provide marketing training to the small to medium sized merchant, that company president saw something to offer his hungry customers. He loved the idea of a do-it-yourself, work-at-your-own-pace, package for the ambitious but budget-minded retailer. If our training program helps improve a merchant’s web sales, the e-commerce hosting company is more confident in earning that merchant’s long-term business in license and hosting fees. Win-win, as they say. I jumped on an airplane to explore this possible match…

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PS. About that Red Oxx Metro Briefcase bag I’m toting: I worked with Red Oxx since 2001, starting first with their email marketing program and then eventually powering all their e-commerce needs with E-business Coach’s Total Blue System. We enjoyed a fantastic 8 year run helping Red Oxx grow web sales. Learning what worked, and what didn’t, for Red Oxx will inevitably shape our marketing program offered by Frank Learning.