multichannelmerchant

1. Outlook 2012-13: Ecommerce
TEXT BY: TIM PARRY
CHARTS BY: KATE DIMARCO
H
oliday 2011
went down in
the books as the
busiest one ever
for ecommerce.
ComScore reported that con-
sumers spent $35.3 billion at
consumer ecommerce sites be-
tween Nov. 1 and Dec. 26, a 15%
increase over the corresponding
days in 2010.
Retailers saw tremendous lifts
in online sales—from online
accessories seller eBags (up 32%
overall) to old-school depart-
ment store Macy’s (which saw
its ecommerce sales rise 40.3%).
But were these kinds of numbers
only a sign that the U.S. econo-
my has rebounded? Or
was something else at work?
Based on MCM Outlook
2012-13 results—coupled with Merchants embracing 2012-13 respondents said they are
mobile commerce not using m-commerce, that’s down
an overall 2011 holiday sales 56.7% from last year. And 29.5% of
growth of 4.1% as reported by It’s taken a while for merchants to em- respondents said they have a dedicat-
the National Retail Federation— brace m-commerce. But after surpris- ed m-commerce site—a 211% gain
it’s evident that merchants have ingly low mobile adoption numbers compared to the 2011 results. An-
responded to consumer shop- in 2011, it’s evident that merchants other 13.4% said their sites are opti-
ping behaviors and adapted to are ready for the small screen. mized for mobile. That question was
maximize their online sales. Although 47.3% of MCM Outlook not asked in 2011.
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Merchants are also starting to look
at pay-per-click opportunities in the
mobile space. Though just 15.2% of
respondents said they are using mo-
bile search ads, that number is up
120% from last year.
Why the sudden jump into mo-
bile? The influence of the late Steve
Jobs may have something to do with
it. Nearly a quarter of the respon-
dents (24.8%) said they have an
iPhone app, up 66.4% from last year,
and 18.3% said they have an iPad app,
a 161% increase.
But 70.6% of respondents said
they do not have a mobile app. That’s
still 16.9% less than those who didn’t
have mobile apps last year.
To market, to market
During holiday 2011, vendors that
specialize in getting merchants set up
in marketplaces such as Amazon and
eBay boasted about their clients’ dou-
ble-digit percentage growth in weekly
emails to the press.
But that hype has not convinced
merchants to hop on board: 45.9% of
MCM Outlook 2012-13 respondents
said they are not selling in market-
places (the question was not asked in
2011). That includes 44.3% of mer-
chants who identified themselves as
primarily b-to-c sellers.
According to the survey results,
36.7% of merchants are using market-
places as a way to prospect, and 29.1%
are using them as a marketing tool to
promote their businesses.
No doubt selling in marketplaces
can help build brand exposure (bit.ly/
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mcm-gaelsong), but now merchants
may be worried about losing future
sales to Amazon.com, eBay and oth-
ers. But the marketplaces are seen as
places to sell overstocks and overruns
(bit.ly/mcm-liquidate).
Half the merchants who identi-
fied themselves as primarily b-to-b
merchants said they are not selling in
marketplaces, but that number is ex-
pected to drop.
On the same day we deployed MCM
Outlook 2012-13, Amazon launched
its b-to-b marketplace, AmazonSup-
ply. While some industry experts see
the launch of AmazonSupply.com as
an all-out game-changer for b-to-b
merchants, others see Amazon’s entry
as an added plus for b-to-b sellers (bit.
ly/b2b-amazon).
Social media is growing up
Last year, thanks to the antics of Char-
lie Sheen, “Winning” became a big so-
cial media catchphrase. The word was
one of the most popular hashtags on
Twitter, and images of Sheen with the
meme flooded Facebook news-feeds.
But as 2011 came to a close, the social
media landscape had begun to grow.
Instead of winning, social media users
were suddenly “pinning.”
Pinterest, a virtual bulletin board
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that allows users to share images and
links that can be pinned by other us-
ers, grew by leaps and bounds dur-
ing the second half of 2011 (bit.ly/
mcm-pinterest), and multichannel
merchants took an interest, according
to MCM Outlook 2012-13 results. Al-
though no respondents said they were
using the social media, 34.2% of mer-
chants who took the 2012-13 survey
said they maintain an active presence
in Pinterest.
Which is not to say that Pinter-
est has overtaken the two social me-
dia juggernauts: 87.4% of merchants
maintain an active presence in Face-
book, up from 77.4% last year; and
74.8% said they are actively tweeting,
up from 57.5% from 2011.
But merchants are clearly getting
their feet wet with Pinterest (bit.ly/
mcm-pinterest-tips).
In February 2012, custom T-shirt
seller Threadless ran a Valentine’s Day
contest to encourage community en-
gagement and received a “whopping”
366 entries, according to its blog (bit.
ly/mcm-threadless). As a result, it
added a Pinterest button on submis-
sion pages so its users could post right
from Threadless to their pin boards.
Pinterest wasn’t just for the pure
plays—multichannel merchants like
Lands End Canvas added “Pin It”
buttons to their product pages so
that users could seamlessly pin items
they like or want to their boards (bit.
ly/mcm-landsend). Merchants also
created their own boards as another
way pinners could spread product
info virally.
Pinterest wasn’t the only new-
comer to the social media landscape.
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MCM Outlook 2012-13 also revealed dia to listen to consumers—76.9% on its b-to-c buyers.
big steps for Google Plus (Google+): said they use it to monitor what con- However, MCM Outlook 2012-13
29.7% of respondents said they main- sumers are saying about their brands, respondents who identified them-
tain an active presence there. a 33.7% increase over 2011. And 74% selves as doing 60% or more busi-
But is it an “active presence,” or said they use social media to engage in ness in the b-to-b space didn’t place
just a presence? Because Google in- conversations with their customers— as much value on social media as Dell
cludes a Google+ presence as a part of that’s up 7.4% from last year. does. Two-thirds said they are using
its algorithm, merchants are taking a Computer seller Dell said last year social media to monitor what con-
minimal approach to Google+ to keep that it uses social media to drive re- sumers are saying about their brands
from getting penalized in the search lationships and engagement, and that (which is up significantly from 38.1%
rankings (bit.ly/mcm-google-plus). it needs to drive a value-add for the in 2011), and 54.2% said they use so-
Take L.L. Bean, for example. The customer (bit.ly/KHEru8). It also said cial media to engage in conversations
outdoors apparel merchant used social media has seven-times more with their customers—down from
Facebook to tell its brand story and impact on its b-to-b customers than two-thirds last year.
engage with followers on a daily basis
(on.fb.me/mcm-llbean). But it engag-
es its followers on Google+ with offers
and incentives on a less frequent ba-
sis (bit.ly/mcm-llbean-plus). A little
more than 500 Google+ users have
L.L. Bean in their circles, while more
than 100,000 people on Facebook
“like” L.L. Bean.
While merchants see social media
as a place to listen to and engage with
customers and prospects, they don’t
see it as a place to sell. Just 6.7% of re-
spondents said they have a Facebook
commerce store, and only 8.4% said
they use Facebook commerce sales to
measure success in social media.
Last year, merchants told Multi-
channel Merchant that they were
testing the waters to see how Facebook
commerce could work for them (bit.
ly/Kjae75). While smaller niche sellers
such as Beaded Impressions saw some
sales and exposure with outsourced
Facebook commerce apps, larger mer-
chants like Roaman’s and Express cre-
ated inhouse solutions, just in case
Facebook commerce took off.
But merchants did use social me-
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Seizing the search engines
There was a time when search engine
marketing, search engine optimization
and pay-per-click advertising were over-
looked by online merchants (bit.ly/seo-
sem-ppc). Now, however, merchants
have not only discovered the value of
those three search engine tactics, they
are finding better ways to measure re-
sults and improve on their efforts.
In last year’s MCM Outlook sur-
vey, 80.2% of merchants cited sales as
the number-one way they measured
their SEO and SEM efforts. That
number dipped to 77.4% (a decline
of 3.6%), according to MCM Out-
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look 2012-13. And sales was replaced survey. Total conversions as a measure- (60%) said they are reaching deeper
at the top by traffic. ment tool grew by 19.3%, clickthroughs into their analytics, a 21% increase
A distant second last year at 70.2%, by 15.7% and rankings by 11%. from 49.6% from last year; and 42.6%
traffic was cited by 86.1% of respon- Merchants still felt that optimiz- said they are increasing PPC terms
dents in this year’s poll as the top way ing landing pages was the best way (up 58.4% from 2011).
merchants measure SEO and SEM ef- to improve their search engine rank- Merchants also upped their SEM
forts (an increase of 22.7%). ing, but that also had the largest drop budgets to an average of 23.54% of their
Three other answers to that mea- of all the answers (down 12.8%, to overall marketing budgets (a 5.59%
surement question grew by double- 62.6%, in 2012). increase). An average of 43.39% of the
digits in the MCM Outlook 2012-13 Three-fifths of the respondents search marketing budget is going toward
PPC (up 8.82 percentage points from
last year), while 25.77% is earmarked
for SEO (down 1 percentage point).
QR code adoption rises
It’s hip to be square.
QR code usage
soared after last year’s
MCM Outlook survey
was completed.
At that time, the
United States Postal Service had an-
nounced a “summer sale.” Mailers that
used a QR code on or in a direct market-
ing piece in July and August 2011 were
offered a 3% discount. The USPS said
nearly one-third of all standard mail
during that timeframe contained a QR
code (bit.ly/qr-code-2011).
And with the USPS recently an-
nouncing a similar sale for 2012 (bit.
ly/qr-code-2012), the number of
merchants using QR codes has grown
to 42.7%. Last year, just 8.6% were
using them.
The number of merchants who
said they are not using QR codes as a
part of their marketing strategy is still
pretty high, at 38%. But last year, that
was 71.6%.
Last year, 19.8% said they weren’t
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using QR codes but were considering revenue opportunity. ple who had abandoned carts. That
it. That number has dropped to 14.8% Last year’s results showed that, number dropped to 38.3% in MCM
this year. aside from email reminders, 60.9% Outlook 2012-13.
The USPS seems to have changed of merchants did not market to peo- The ways merchants have marketed
the way merchants look at QR codes
as a part of their marketing cam-
paigns. MCM Outlook 2012-13 shows
that 63.2% of respondents are us-
ing them in print catalogs (up 28.2%
from last year), and 47.4% have them
on postcards and other non-catalog
mail pieces (up 12.4%).
Capturing cart abandoners
As ecommerce grows in volume, so
does the number of abandoned shop-
ping carts. And it seems
that merchants have begun
paying attention to this lost
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to shopping cart abandoners has also l 35.5% do not offer alternative pay- l 41.3% of merchants are selling in the
grown. For example, 37.4% have offered ment methods on their sites, down Amazon Marketplace; 45.9% are not
cart abandoners a special offer via email, from 56.2%. selling in marketplaces at all.
up 13.9% from last year. And 29.9% are
remarketing to abandoners via remar- l 65.1% of ecommerce sites include l 74.8% of merchants measure success
keting ads. That’s up 18.6% from 2011. a trustmark of approval from a third- in social media by the number of fol-
party company, up from 59.1%. lowers or fans, up from 64.2%.
Quick hits:
l Video is starting to catch on. Almost
64.3% of respondents said they are
using it on their ecommerce sites, up
29.6% compared to last year. But fewer
merchants are allowing users to upload
videos to their sites (15.2% this year,
20.8% in 2011).
l 37.8% of respondents offer Live Chat,
up from 20.3% last year.
l 70.5% offer their customers the abili-
ty to refine search results, up from 52%.
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METHODOLOGY
An online survey was fielded by
Multichannel Merchant be-
ginning on April 19. Subsequent
mailings were sent to Multichan-
nel Merchant’s subscriber list, as
well as to those of sister publica-
tions Chief Marketer and DIRECT.
Emails were also sent to members
of Multichannel Merchant’s
two LinkedIn groups (Multi-
channel Merchant and O+F
Operations & Fulfillment). A link
to the survey was also tweeted via
Multichannel Merchant group
and individual accounts.
As an incentive to participate,
survey respondents were offered
the chance to win a $200 American
Express gift card.
When the survey closed on May
21, there were 952 respondents.
Of those, 654 (69%) indicated
that their company was an online
merchant, retailer, manufacturer,
publisher/media or a wholesale dis-
tributor. Those active respondents
form the basis of the survey results.
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