Affiliate marketing is a highly measurable way to drive targeted traffic to your site in a scalable, pay as you go way (CPA). As with all aspects of internet retailing though it is open to abuse from individuals that want to bend the rules for their own benefit.

We manage the affiliate programme for a client and noticed that one unknown Affiliate was out earning top sites such as My Voucher Codes, which seemed highly suspicious. After running a few reports in Hitwise it became clear the Affiliate was bidding on the name to hijack the brand which people naturally search for. This is against Affiliate practice and was excluded from the Publisher set of rules.

Using the brand name, he paid Adwords to place his link at the top of searches made, which people naturally clicked on. When someone clicked on the Adword it set a cookie on the viewer’s PC and immediately redirected to our clients site. You’d never notice.

Managing the Adwords account for the same client, the Affiliate recognised that we would see his rogue Adword links. His work around was to exclude his Adwords from being presented in the geographic locations of the Agency, the Client and the Publisher to make himself invisible to us.

This neat work around netted him thousands of pounds in Affiliate fees. Our client didn’t loose out completely as the business still converted in to sales but the cost of acquiring the sale went up.

When we looked through the data again it was clear that it wasn’t just our client that was being stung. There were some big names in there and this guy was doing the rounds.
It’s not unusual for Affiliate payouts to be huge. Search online and you’ll see plenty of Google AdSense cheques for over a million dollars but when it comes down to making your own business grow make sure you keep your eye on the ball. We cancelled this account and regularly check for similar anomalies. It’s important you do to.

How do I get to #1 on Google must be among the most common questions for anybody who works with the internet. Its an obsession but is it the right thing to obsess about?

Getting great positions on search engines for popular terms isn’t free. It can take an enormous amount of effort building links, writing content and fine tuning pages that don’t necessarily convert as well as ppc based sites because they have to be search engine friendly. With SEO and Google it doesn’t happen overnight so be prepared to wait months to hit the front page.

If you believed what people tell you nobody ever clicks Google adwords. We had a great opportunity to test something we have believed in for a while, that Google adwords traffic generates more sales than traffic from the normal search engines.

Look at this google result for K&N’s (the worlds leading manufacturer of performance air filters)

The two results of interest are:

Performance-filters.co.uk

A shop we use and promote only via adwords. This was forced on us as the previous domain name (kandnshop.co.uk) was asked to be taken down by the manufacturer. We’ve spent a lot of time optimising the adwords that we use so as to get the maximum number of clicks.

filterpower.co.uk

A domain we purchased because it was the #1 result for K&N but the existing owners had ceased trading. We knew it had traffic and the price was right so we threw a duplicate site on but retained the title and description tags so we could retain the #3 position.

Both sites are exactly the same except for a different colour top banner and logo.

The differences – Ive rounded the monthly numbers to keep it simple.

Traffic to adwords site: 15,000 visits
Traffic to #1 shop: 2,500 visits

Revenue from adwords site: £24,000
Revenue from #1 shop: £1,700

Each visitor generated from adwords site: £1.60
Each visitor generated from natural site: £0.68

Action points

• What is clear (in this situation) is people who click on PPC buy more than visitors to the organic results. People do click adwords in much higher numbers than most would tell you.
• The highly targeted text in the adwords campaign allows you to tick the emotional boxes that make customers want to click them.
• If time is short, I would be hitting adwords harder as a priority rather than working on search engine traffic because its easier to buy this position and as long as the price is right for the adwords then it is going to make you more money quicker.
• Getting people onto the site is one element but the better and more targeted the page you send them to the better.  The gains in sales from fine tuning these pages let you turn poorly converting adword campains into winners.
• Getting to #1 in Google is not free, SEO is expensive and time consuming.

Nobody likes paying for adwords compared to the free traffic from the organic listings but these are great reasons why you should.

Our friends over at Bath Empire are growing fast and needed to recruit a bunch of new guys for the warehouse to cope with demand. Improving customer conversion rates  is big priority as part of the work we do with them, but sometimes your website can have interesting effects in other ways.

What happened when they went recruiting proved to be a great example of  the content on the website having a direct effect on the quality of staff they recruited.

The Bath Empire meet the team page:

10 people were brought in for interviews for a job in the warehouse. I was amazed to find out that when it came to interview day 7 of the potential candidates turned up in white shirts and blue ties.

It was fantastic to see that the recruits took the time to look at the site and look for an affinity with the existing team.

Simply, its proof that your websites quality has a direct effect on more than just sales.

So what next?

Take the time to considered how you can improve the quality of your team page. Im off to fill the Supplyant team page with bikini clad lovelies and see what happens at our next set of interviews

Being in the online business, my friends always ask me how they can “do e-commerce”. If they have no experience of selling online my answer is always the same, “get yourself on eBay and have a go”.  eBay is a great place to start; it’s bootcamp for e-commerce with a tough set of rules to follow that will shape you up for retailing online.

Why should I start on eBay first?

• It teaches you retail discipline
  eBay forces you to provide good customer service; the feedback system demands you do nothing wrong.
• It teaches you good product choice
  If you can’t sell your product on eBay with all those ready made customers your chances of selling it from your own site aren’t so good.
• It teaches you how important a good product description and pictures are
  Look at the guys with huge feedback numbers and notice how they all have great descriptions. They do this for a reason; awesome long copy descriptions sell harder and show good intent.
• It teaches you how important pricing is online
  Selling on eBay is a reality check for traditional retailers as your normal margins often disappear in two seconds flat.
• It teaches you about e-commerce in a risk free environment
  You don’t have to invest in a shiny new web shop to retail online. With eBay, setup costs are tiny and the worst possible scenario is that you don’t sell anything.

If you can you go onto eBay and sell over 25 items in a month with 100% feedback & high DSR in shape then congratulations, you have passed basic training and it’s time for you to go-large.

Why eBay isn’t for Wimps….

Be prepared for eBay. If you’re going to get serious expect the following:

• It requires your time to maintain an eBay business
  Managing the eBay process is time consuming so you have to be prepared to devote time & effort to making it a success. 
  
• It requires exceptional Customer Service
  eBay never feels a particularly fair environment to deal in, particularly if you are a distributor not used to dealing with consumers directly. You will find yourself having to give away product or pick it up with no good reason other than to keep your feedback high. Poor feedback at the early stage could see you struggling to recover or being banned. Don’t blame eBay for this though – if you can’t cut it here then look in the mirror, not at eBay rules. And if you are thinking of doing Amazon instead, it’s tough x 2…. that’s another story.
• It requires you to understand pricing & salesmanship
  Do you have have descriptions that are only half as good as other eBayers? Look at yourself to see if you’re up to scratch. Good descriptions create happy customers and good feedback. They also create lots of social buzz. Want to know what we’re talking about? click here

Acceleration on and off eBay

Think you have mastered eBay? Great, now you’re ready to REALLY jump-start your online retailing. We would love to hear from you.

What’s your thoughts on eBay? Let us know by commenting below.

Its great getting an ever increasing number of visitors to your site,  but what does it take to get them through to the shopping cart? We’ve recently  integrated a fantastic tool, Visual Website Optimiser, into our platform so our partners can test variations of layout, colours and text to see which customers prefer.

Hows It Work?
AB testing allows you to show visitors to your site different versions of a page. Tracking software can follow the customers journey through the site see what works better.  Its easier to understand with an example so see what happened below:

The BathEmpire Sale Test

A client, Bath Empire, recently launched an amazing sale on the site and the team had  a few ideas over how we should present the savings. Rather than arguing between us which was best we ran a test to see which one worked better for our customers.

In the test we measured:

• Engagement – when people visit the page do they click another link on the page or hit the back button
• Visit Product Page – how many people visit a product page based on the 3 layouts
• Get to Shopping Cart – of these people how  many get to the shopping basket.

Which variation do you think would win?

Be honest, which one would you choose? How big an effect do you think this small change might have had? Our straw poll in the office showed the strike through version (variation 2) was most peoples top tip for winning all categories. As it clearly showed the savings and followed a convention that many other shops online were using.

What did win?

In our test variation 1 was a clear winner, removing the RRP all together had the following effect over the original:

Engage on page:

19% more people interacted with the page

Click through to a product:

80% more people clicked through to a product

Into shopping basket:

377% more people went through to shopping basket

Why?

This was a fairly small test, but my thought is that the winner was down to a less is more approach. By keeping only the key facts in view it reduced confusion working out which was the best deal.

What do you think, I’d love to hear your comments.

Simon…

From October 2010, you will be able to change the delivery details of a particular shipment, (before it has been delivered), quickly and securely, using the DPD website. You will be able to make the changes as you receive them, online and without the need to call or email us and you’ll be able to make the changes until 19:00

The procedure is extremely simple: you log on, select track it and then choose the relevant option (see details below) and make the change. It really couldn’t be easier! Here’s an at-a-glance guide to the changes you can now make before a parcel has been delivered. The only requirement is that the parcel hasn’t been delivered.

We think this is a move in the right direction, and DPD seem to be the most innovative delivery partner at the moment, but does this mean more issues? Who do you use for a carrier right now and what do you find the biggest delivery issues?

Do you trade direct through an existing company or trade through a new UK registered company? This is a common question for our International customers so we asked our partners at Quick Formations to give some further insight.

With the history and structure of The Companies Act alone, it’s not difficult to see why a UK registered company enjoys an almost limitless amount of benefits when it comes to credibility, a certificate of incorporation is an affiliation between your company and the oldest and most comprehensive Corporate Law structure in the world.

To almost emphasise this fact the latest Companies Act 2006 is the largest bill ever to go through UK parliament, taking almost 4 years to come into effect in its entirety. Therefore when dealing with potential clients globally to be able to show a UK Certificate of Incorporation shows that you take business seriously and that you adhere vehemently to the regulations in place.

Once registered as a UK company the maintenance of Limited status can be easily lost or fines and penalties can even accrue due to neglect, so being able to show as an active, up to date live Company is of a huge credit.

A key consideration also is that by being a UK registered company with overseas ownership you have the most up to date ‘webfiling’ internet filing technology – meaning a UK company can be maintained from anywhere around the world, an asset no other Country can offer.

Here in the UK the benefits of trading as a UK company with a UK Company much outweigh trading with an oversea company.

Firstly the governing body for all UK companies, Companies House, maintains a free data search for anyone with an internet access can use – meaning your UK company is completely searchable within a matter of seconds, allaying any fears or mistrust from your prospective client by your company being transparent and searchable from the offset.

The advantage of UK companies is not solely for the gathering of clientele either – the infrastructure and support available to a UK company from its government, via Companies House and independent corporate services like Quick Formations, is seen as a leading light across the globe. Only recently, the UK government reaffirmed its stance on backing UK based business and making it a priority to develop UK commerce and entrepreneurialism across the world and Quick Formations is at the very forefront of implementation of these changes, ensuring our clients get the most accurate information first time, every time.

If you would like expert advice on cross border internet retailing please call +44 1604 679090 or email nick@supplyant.com

One of Supplyant’s key e-commerce clients needed a way to manage over sixty UK warehouses from one system. They were relying on their suppliers to dispatch the goods to their customers as well as relying on them to provide customer service information. This method provided no visibility nor tracking facilities. Furthermore, they incurred high carriage charges because of the low volumes being dispatched from each supplier.

Supplyant worked with MetaPack to create a system that allowed individual warehouses for each of their suppliers and customers incorporating the relevant rates, services and allocation criteria.

Director, Nick Morton explains the benefits, “now that we have MetaPack in place we’re able to pass on an average carrier cost reduction of 28% and reduce account setup to pickup time to under 48 hours. This has proved a big hit with small and large businesses alike.”

Now when processing a ‘third party collection’ (where the consignor organises the collection from a remote address for either a return delivery or delivery to another address through MetaPack, all Supplyant or their customers have to do is enter the consignment details as normal, the supplier then logs into their warehouse and prints the label.

The goods are dispatched directly from the supplier with Supplyant or their customers having full visibility and tracking of each delivery.

“MetaPack has automated our dispatch process, reduced the amount of administration involved and enhanced our customer service by giving us the knowledge of where our parcel is at any given time. We encourage all of our suppliers and customers to use MetaPack, we consider ourselves ambassadors for the system. People generally concentrate on cost savings on the bottom line, and forget the cost of administration and automation. The savings our clients have made have been incredible” adds Nick.

You can read the full case study on the MetaPack site here

For more information on how MetaPack can help organise your delivery systems watch this video with Patrick Wall, CEO being interviewed by Internet Retailing Magazine.

Talk to us about integrating the MetaPack system into your business today.

It’s your birthday and I’ve just given you a present.

You open the small box to reveal a guitar pick.

“Great. Just what I wanted”

I can tell you are lying, but I appreciate your vague attempt at gratitude.

So I start to explain that this is no ordinary pick. Oh, no. Far from it in fact.

This is the pick that Jimmy Page threw into the crowd during the recent Led Zeppelin reunion gig.

Enlightened with this knowledge you’re now viewing your gift in a whole different light. But it’s still the same nondescript pick you dismissed 2 minutes ago. So what’s changed?

It’s simple. This small, flat piece of plastic now has a story. It has been given a character. It’s become far more than the object itself.

And because of that, you won’t forget about it. You won’t leave it to gather dust at the back of a shelf. You won’t let your kids play with it. It’s also highly likely you will tell your friends all about it.

By giving an object a story you will, in turn, give it a character and people would much rather buy stories and characters over objects any day.

So what stories do your products have?

Photo credit to Aidan Jones

I’m a firm believer that when it comes to e-commerce sites, its wrong to go too far away from what customers are used to. Every 3 months I take a look at the tools, features and styles that the top e-commerce setups are using to woo customers. My snapshot takes a look at some of my favorite shops and shops that consistently feature well in hotlists.

Who are we looking at?
Ebuyer | Asos | Argos | Boden | B&Q | MyDeco | Apple | Tesco | Ebay | Amazon | John Lewis

1. Layout

Its appears to be true that there is now a way e-commerce should look and feel. There are standardised design elements throughout big brand e-commerce

The Header

Consistently menus now reside on the top, with logo on the left, search & shopping basket on the right.

Home Page

Always featuring a big picture of some kind, normally full width with no side navigation

Category Pages

Sidebars to narrow searches are commonplace and getting more intelligent.

Products – full width

Once you get to a products page its now mostly full width, with no side navigation, and heavily product focused above the fold.

2.  Video

Video is a trend that seems to be cropping up regularly and I love it! Video provides masses of extra emotion and trust on any product it appears on. For me the best use of this is at ASOS, fantastically emotional salesmanship on the kids cloths and great runway videos for the products in adult fashion. Its also in use at  Ebuyer with selected lines giving QVC style buying guides. Do your videos have to be flawless to get a response? If you take a look at this youtube clip of somebody unboxing his new ipod with over 650,000 views you’ll see that real user videos are also a massively powerful customer conversion tool.

3. Quality of photography

If your retailing online and want to roll with the big guys there no excuse for an under exposed 50×50 jpg anymore.

I see a few consistencies from my chosen retailers:

• Giant images are OK for homepages (see examples below)
• Branded commodity items image quality isn’t so important (have a look at Argos, Tesco and John Lewis sites for examples of this)
• Providing more that 1 image if possible is most definitely better
• Modern e-commerce layouts absolutely place focus on product shots
• At each of the sites I looked at there was no genuinely poor images.
• On a number of sites I saw standard product images teamed up with “in use” pictures with people in them

4. Search tools

Search results on all the sites I looked at were pretty good. I loved the search on ebuyer, it was intuitive and helpful. Apples search was awesome, extremely polished I’d recommend you try it.

Second stage filtering of search results was an absolute requirement for all stores for me mydeco ruled on this one, the colour chooser was a nice touch. Despite Apple having a great search it was one of the few stores were I didn’t feel a need to search as the navigation was incredibly clear.

5. Delivery

A constant frustration for me with online shopping is poor delivery information. I started out in Automotive parts and its shocking how poor many of  the distributors of these parts are compared to leading online shops.

ebuyer and asos stood out as excellent examples of going above and beyond for customers.

• Ebuyer offers next day delivery on orders up to 11.00 at night. WOW!
• ASOS offers same day delivery in London. WOW
• Zappos in America stood out with its free delivery both ways promise

2 consistent elements cropped up.

• Free delivery is commonplace (and so it should be, it removes all confusion)
• Delivery on a nominated day is gaining traction

Conclusion

If there is one thing that’s clear above all else is that the strength of modern platforms means its all about high quality content. Many of the sites I used looked and functioned in pretty much the same manner.

Selling online now is more about the determining why somebody should buy it from you. Is it the quality of the service, the great video help, the  awesome delivery or something else.

I wouldn’t use any of the companies because they have a great site, but because they are great companies. Good sites are just a  tool to that may provide enough extras to push customers in your direction rather than some other retailer.

If you have favorite sites you think I should be checking in on I’d love to hear them.