The right way to A/B test

A/B testing helps you test ideas on your retail eCommerce site. From the results you can decide if the idea has worked and how much extra revenue it has generated. If no more revenue was generated then you can keep on trying until you find one that works. Simple?

Not really, when you start looking at the data that is generated and examine the different shopper segmentation groups, you may find that result are lower or greater then expected. Why is this? It is because of who the shoppers are, where they have come from and which segmentation group they were put in for the A/B test. For example, you may have a simple A/B test that splits all your shoppers in half, so 50% go to test A and 50% go to test B. How do you ensure that the 50% that go to test A have not all come from affiliate feeds or a PPC advert, where they will naturally have a higher conversion rate and thus generate more revenue?

Now to solve this you could heavily tag the different tests and do deep drive analysis using either Coremetrics or Omniture.

Or, you take the simple route that I recently took, when trialling a product, of pre-segmentation before the A/B tests start. This is very similar to A/A testing but can work on a lot more tests, A/B/C/D/etc..
Before you start your test, segment your shoppers into their test groups. So if you are testing 2 different ideas, you would need 3 test groups, the last being the control group that just sees the normal site. These pre-segmentations should run for half the time of your test; of course as you are not actually running the test, each of your segment groups will just be seeing the normal site. If you can, and if your A/B testing suite allows it, make your shoppers sticky to their segment.
Now that your shopper are pre-segmented you can monitor the difference between your segments, this will be the noise that can get deducted from your final test results.
You can now run your test with the assurance that you have statistically relevant data.

BTW. If you are already doing an A/B test and have not done the above, you can always run it after the test.

- Posted usingt BlogPres from my iPhone

Facebook vs Google

Now that Facebook has over taken Google as the most visited site in the US, all UK retailers should be looking at different ways to Market their retail eCommerce site on Facebook. The reason for this is that the UK is never far behind the US with web trends.

eCommera to run the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic online shop

It was announced yesterday that eCommera are running the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic online shop.
eCommera will run the London 2012 shop on their CoreCommerce Retail e Commerce solution which uses Demandware's high scalable store front.

Other eCommera customers using the CoreCommerce solution include, ASDA, House Of Fraser, Hamleys, USC, Magasin, Garden Bird Supplies, Gardening Direct, The Gardening club and Flying Flowers

Marketing your eCommerce site via social networking

Facebook and Twitter provide retailers with a good way to promote their brand, both of which reach a large audience base. As the only cost to promote a brand on these social networking sites is time, it is an easy win for 2010.
Consumers can be very brand loyal and the highly motivated of these consumers will set up groups, fan bases, etc to inform other consumers of the latest news from these brands. One of the classic examples of this is Apple; consumers have set up a large number of websites, lots of Facebook groups and lots of followers on Twitter. This is great when the messages coming from these groups are positive and promoting the brand, in fact even some negative messages can easily be turned into positives by the brand; however these groups are out of the retailers control and, as such , too much negative messaging can put shoppers off the brand. Apart from the message generated by the groups, the information from the consumers that sign up to these groups is extremely important to the brand for the following reasons:
• How much money they spend on items?
• What products are these consumers interested in?
• Are these consumers also interested in completer products?
• Where these consumers live?
• What these consumers’ views on your brand are?

As this consumer data is controlled by a third party, the retailer does not have access to it and will miss out on using it to help promote your retail ecommerce site.

One of the great ways to control the message that reaches your consumer fan base and also to collect information about your consumers is to create a Facebook page
The reason that I recommend that you create a Facebook page instead of a group is because:
1. Only groups with under 5,000 member can send email blasts
2. Access to pages can easily be controlled.
3. Pages can host applications
4. Pages can benefit from social ads that publicize the fan connection.

Once you have created a Facebook page, look around Facebook for groups that are interested in your brand and then have your new Facebook page join on these groups. The next step is to spread the word around that you have a Facebook page, eg. post on the groups that there is a new Facebook page. Also provide links from your Retail eCommerce site to the new Facebook page, and of course vice versa!

To build up the interest in joining your Facebook page do one or some or all of the following:
• Put limited 1 day voucher codes on the site for anyone who has signed up to your site. The reason of putting a 1 day voucher code is that these codes can easily be distributed by 1 person and which will limit the amount of people who can sign up.
• Provide merchandising press releases on the site on the latest offers or Sales. Remember don’t overdo it, or else your consumers will naturally ignore your message (eg. Viagra emails, need I say more!).
• If you have some new products coming out, promote them first on you new page before these products are released. Make sure that the message is clear about where these products will be sold and the date that these products will be released.
• Provide quizzes on your page that test how well the consumer knows your brand.

Once you have a large fan base, start collecting the data on these consumers, eg. where they live, what other pages they signed up to, are they male or female, married or single, age, etc....
Once you are successful, don’t stop, spend the time each week to ensure that there is new data on the page. Also setup a Twitter account and promote this in the same way of the Facebook.
If you have found this information useful and have set up a Facebook page please add a comment to this blog with the Facebook/Twitter URL.

House of Fraser Online Christmas sells up by 91%

Well done to House of Fraser, who have increased their Year on Year on-line Christmas sells by 91%.

House of Fraser use eCommera to provide the Software as a Service solution for running their on-line retail ecommerce shop. At the heart of this Software as a Service solution is Demandware a leader in the space for providing a 99.97% uptime storefront framework.

10 ways to win in 2010

As eCommerce continues to progress and change, what will be the advancements that retailers take on in 2010? Here are my predictions based on my plans for 2010:

1. Dynamic recommendations
Having automatic recommendations generated for cross-sells and up-sells based on shopper engagement will increase revenue for retailers from 5% - 10%. Dynamic recommendations will also reduce the workload on merchandisers, which will allow them more time to spend on the other important activities.

2. KPI's
Using conversion and CPO by channel does not give retailers all the information about why sales are down or what is going wrong within your supply chain. eCommerce Key Performance Indicaters will allow eCommerce Directors to find problems quickly and allow them to correct them. Michael Ross of eCommera has published a good article on this. Retailers who use a KPI driven eCommerce site will achieve better results in 2010 then those who just use conversion!

3. Master Data Management
Multi-Channel retailers need to have a single repository for Product information and Customer information to effectively present offerings to their shoppers. Most retailers will have some system that holds a minimal amount of data, however to effectively present the same data to shoppers over the web, in catalogues or shop displays, a single repository is required within which product data can be enriched.
As retailers expand their range of products by using Drop Ship Vendors, management of this data through work flows becomes increasingly important.

4. Site redesigns
Sites that have been around for two years are starting to look tired. What looked cutting edge has now become common place. And sites that have had redesigns recently are adding features that are becoming the defacto standard of retail ecommerce. Is it time your site had a redesign?

5. On-site price comparisons
On-site price comparison is where you display the price that your competition is selling the product for. This is very effective when your price is cheaper then theirs. It also stops the shopper from visiting other sites to compare the price, which aids to them purchasing the item from your site.

6. More Payment options
Every retailer offers the standard credit and debit card options through their payment gateway. However, shoppers still require other ways to pay for these items. These can include: Paypal, Google Checkout, Finance options, bank transfers, etc....

7. Better delivery options
All retailers should be offering Next day, Named day and Saturday as part of their delivery options; If you are not, do so now! Shoppers also require more delivery options to suit their busy lifestyles, these include: AM/PM delivery, evening delivery, time slots, Sunday and same day.

8. Extending range
If you are a trusted brand that offers great customer service then shoppers will continue to shop with you. If you want to expand your eCommerce business then you need to broaden your range of products. This can be achieved with very little cost by using Drop Ship Vendors to hold the stock and perform the fulfillment. I've seen this work very effectively with ASDA Direct where they added a Living Aids category. Without any marketing this category does very well.

9. Dynamic customer segmentation
Active Merchandising for me was a big thing in 2009 and all of my customers have this implemented in their eCommerce sites; this is one of the advantages about using a SaaS eCommerce platform!! However other retailers should be implementing this in 2010 to allow the shopper to be directed to products that they may be interested in based on Gender, age group, previous purchases, etc...


10. Shorter checkout process
Checkout processes are too long, and one way to stop shopper drop out is by offering a quicker checkout process.

Post Christmas sales are doing well even before Chirstmas

It is normal in retail ecommerce to start the "January" sales after the last shipping day before Christmas. For retailers that don't have Next Day delivery, this year the online "January" sales started on the 21st December.

Shoppers before Christmas will be looking for Christmas presents, so most online retailers will see low conversation between 21st December and 25th December. However, on Christmas day converstion will start to increase. This year we have seen the busiest day for the "January" sales occur on Boxing day.