談中國電子商務（一）08年是電子商務元年

◎女性網民比例是指標

筆者在2008年初的時候對很多朋友說，08年是中國的電子商務元年。因為從周圍很多跡象顯示，08年的累積將會在09年爆發出來。當時，筆者對幾個台灣的朋友說，要進入大陸市場要趕快，現在是時機了。而，電子商務是台灣在網際網路領域裡唯一還領先大陸發展的。

情況果然一如所料。大陸近幾年興起的電子商務網站「京東商城」號稱要做網上家電零售商，08年的營業額已達14億人民幣。這個數字已經與台灣知名的電子商務網站PCHome在08年的營業數字相當。可以想見，09年，PCHome的營業額將會被京東商城極速的超越過去。

為什麼會在08年初就下這樣的判斷呢？這是歸功於台灣的電子商務環境成熟比較早的緣故。從台灣的電子商務發展歷程來看，有一個指標是筆者發現，並用來衡量一個國家或地區的B2C 電子商務是否即將起飛的指標，即：女性網民的比例是否突然大幅提升。

筆者在05年出版的書「當科技變身時尚：16% 的科技行銷密碼」就提過這觀點。女性代表龐大消費實力，只要女性網民比例大增，B2C 電子商務大潮就會來臨。這觀點在中國網際網路市場再度得到印證，08 年女性網民比例從年初的 42.8%到年底的 47.5%暴增近 5個百分點。

◎網購的基礎建設已經成熟

或許有人會問，稱為「元年」未免也太誇張了，大陸的知名購物網站噹噹跟卓越也是好多年前就在經營了呢。而，這正是筆者之所以稱呼 08年為元年的原因，因為其實噹噹跟卓越過去那幾年的時間所累積起來的競爭壁壘，是很容易被超越的。他們，很遺憾，來得太早了。

過去幾年，在大陸做B2C 電子商務（以下簡稱為網路購物，或網購）所遇到的物流問題（國家幅員廣大，遞送體系不發達），金流問題（信用卡不普及，或者對網上信用卡消費不信任）等，這些在06年以來就早已經不是問題，網路購物所需的基礎建設已經完備。

正如台灣人網路購物喜歡選擇便利超商取貨一樣，大陸的網路購物很習慣貨到付款。由於人工便宜，貨物遞送到家裡的成本極低。而目前最流行的網上支付工具「支付寶」，其用戶數已在09年初突破 1.5億（大陸網民人數是 3億）。使用支付寶交易成為信用卡交易的替代品。

06年筆者問公司同事，網上購物都去哪買？絕大部分人回答淘寶；再問，除了淘寶還有哪裡？大部分人回答不出。淘寶身為大陸最大 C2C 網路拍賣平台，就跟台灣雅虎奇摩拍賣一樣，教育成萬上億的中國網民習慣網路購物。當08年一切條件成熟，B2C 網路購物自然順勢而起。

◎大量網店湧現

除了用戶需求，習慣以及基礎條件成熟以外，供應端的發展也異常熱絡。由於國際金融風暴的關係，產生了下列效應，使得更多的人投身於開設B2C 電子商務網站（以下簡稱網店）：1)Web 2.0 泡沫破滅； 2)中國大陸的各式代工廠從外銷轉做內銷。

Web 2.0 經過四五年的發展，激烈的淘汰賽已經使得檯面上僅存少數的倖存者，目前正努力的想辦法要營利，因為要再拿到投資很困難。而被淘汰出局的更多，這些人其實已經沒辦法再靠著做虛擬的網路服務找到投資，而電子商務看起來是個很實在的出路。

另一方面，原本身為世界工廠的中國大陸，面臨到歐美採購商縮減單量或延長票期，感覺做外銷越來越艱困，於是紛紛轉回內銷市場。然而，這些做外銷的工廠公司在國內並沒有根基（例如，沒有遍及全國的自營店面與品牌知名度），而網路購物是最快可以切入市場的方法。

而在網上銷售男性襯衫的自創品牌Yes PPG 與Vancl 凡客誠品猶如神話般興起，則是筆者看到的最後一個訊息。在台灣，我們對於B2C 電子商務的經驗是，賣別人的產品將面臨激烈的價格競爭以至於毛利很低，因此唯一的出路就是賣自創品牌的商品。

而，中國大陸的網路購物自創品牌出來了，這表示已經摸到了竅門。

（文：黃紹麟）

SEO During E-Commerce Application Development

By Chris Boggs, Search Engine Watch, Oct 24, 2008

E-commerce applications for Web sites can take thousands of hours to build, and require patience and determination on the part of the organization awaiting its "new toy." The end result of such a project can be beautiful, much like a custom motorcycle or hot rod may look to an owner once completed.

Unfortunately, these product-shuffling and category-dealing applications can also wreak havoc for automated search engine crawlers out to index sites leveraging these applications. This can lead to less-than optimal performance for the site’s pages within search engine results for related queries.

As with large-scale Web site designs and redesigns, putting SEO off until after the fact can be a costly mistake. An internal case study showed an example where a site owner could have saved in excess of $100,000 by incorporating SEO into the interactive design plan instead of going back and making changes to an existing site to implement SEO best practices.

Over the past few months, our SEO team has worked on redesigns of three sites using IBM Websphere Commerce for e-commerce functionality. We’ve also advised on Microsoft applications being developed for clients, in order for the end product to be "SEO-friendly."

It’s important to clearly delineate between "SEO-friendly" and "optimized," because statements of work have to be explicit in describing the final product. Typically, SEO-friendly means that the application will be scalable should a full SEO initiative be launched in the future. Optimized means enterprise-level SEO was performed during the development of the application, and the finished product is more likely to rank within search engines.

Let’s look at three high-level topics to consider if you plan to include SEO in business requirements for the development of an e-commerce application: internal process, out-of-the-box functionality, and content equity.

Internal Process

Unique teams from our Java/IBM Practice and our Search Practice work on all three of the Websphere Commerce Projects, with a little overlap at the management/executive level. Naturally, it’s difficult to easily transfer learnings and experiences from one team to another in real time, but the common SEO bond has helped speed up some of this sharing. Post-project feedback sessions are crucial to for future efficiencies.

Each of the project teams has slightly different internal communication dynamics, but one common bond is the use of tracking tasks and their corresponding owners.

Some businesses rely on documentation of business requirements clearly explaining the "what" prior to getting to the "how." If there’s no smooth system to ensure that issues are being resolved, it could be a nightmare for a project manager to stay on top of things and properly prioritize. Without this order, it would also be difficult to work in the SEO requirements and best practices because developers who don’t have the skill set may overlook SEO ramifications.

Out-of-the-Box Functionality

Some e-commerce applications developers actually pause to consider SEO, and they’re often rewarded when they find that many systems, including Websphere Commerce, have some additional functionality that they describe as "SEO-friendly." Using these out-of-the-box (OOTB) features can certainly be very helpful when it comes to designing a more search-friendly application. However, they aren’t silver bullets. Our technical engineer has openly questioned some of the OOTB recommendations of some applications as being potentially more harmful than helpful.

If you plan to use the OOTB SEO features of any e-commerce application, run the ideas past an engineer with deep and current SEO technical knowledge. Although many features are helpful, some are potentially risky from a Webmaster guidelines standpoint. Websphere Commerce has an OOTB URL rewrite that, if done properly, makes the URLs look much cleaner than most WC sites. However, in terms of a continuum, the OOTB rewrite is still several stages away from the optimal optimized URL.

Content Equity

Content is still king, albeit sometimes ruled by his queen, linking. At the root, many e-commerce applications simply collect and distribute related products onto a dynamically generated page. Often, there is no consideration made for HTML content that describes the particular product other than the database-driven short and possibly long descriptions.

Unfortunately, in many cases this content is essentially "stock," and already has been published on countless pages across the Internet. Taking the time to create unique product descriptions can be very valuable.

At the category level and higher, place additional descriptive content on each page. This should help you gain traction within the search engine results for category-type terms.

Content equity is an idea I use to describe how this content actually ends up on a page. Most would think that every bit of content should be able to be controlled (as in the physical placement of the content on the page) by one system. Although in some cases this is true, there are often multiple areas on the backend that could be used to enter text onto the page.

Without getting into the technical specifics, it’s important to understand that not all content is equal, and that it may need to get on to the site through a CMS or be coded into the page through a developer.

There are hundreds of considerations when building an e-commerce application, and SEO should be on that list, if you plan to rely on search engine-referred organic traffic. Ideally, the application should be at least SEO-friendly, if not fully optimized, when it comes off the showroom floor.

Many e-commerce topics will be covered at SES Chicago in December during the Wednesday afternoon panel eCommerce 101. Hope to see you there! Frank I imagine you will be ready for a drink after that panel ends around 5:15?

Frank Watson Fires Back

SEO elements haven’t always been a priority for CMS programs — e-commerce and otherwise. Interestingly, some of the smaller programs incorporated them. OsCommerce‘s use of popularity and categorization helped many sites.

It’s good to see that the bigger programs now have them, because, as Chris notes, the installation of a high-level e-commerce site is a major undertaking. Many times, SEO is overlooked because of the sheer volume of other tasks involved.

Web sites aren’t a "Field of Dreams," though many think they are. Having the ability to develop search-friendly e-commerce sites built in to the base program is a huge value-add, and one any program that doesn’t have them should be adding if they want to be competitive.

Chris, look forward to catching some of the e-commerce sessions in Chicago — see you there!

Biography
Chris Boggs is a Director of Search Engine Optimization at Rosetta. Formerly with Brulant, an Interactive Agency and Application Development shop acquired by Rosetta in 2008, Chris has been living and working in the Cleveland, Ohio, area since 2007. Chris is also Associate Editor of the SEW forums, and has served on the SEMPO Board of Directors since 2006.

Geotargeting Comes of Age in E-commerce

By Jack Aaronson, ClickZ, May 30, 2008

We’ve been talking about it for years, now it’s finally happening. Geotargeting is melding with e-commerce. How you do harness the power of geotargeted campaigns?

Two Levels of Granularity

With geotargeting, granularity and immediacy are important. By granularity, I mean geographic precision. Is it important for you to know what city (or Zip Code) users are in? Or do you need to know their actual street address? In either case, what can you offer users based on this level of knowledge?

Immediacy is a related concept. Do you need to know where users generally are, or is it important to know where they are right now?

For years, companies have been able to ascertain the Zip Code people are in primarily from their IP address or other implicit means. Others simply ask users where they are. Either way, once you know where people live, it’s intuitive to begin tailoring advertising based on their location.

For instance, many of Bedbathstore.com’s promotions are location based. When I went to the site to research this column, the top banner said, "Welcome NY visitors. Enjoy Tax Free Shopping Today!" Somehow the site knew where I was from (I’ve never logged into the site or given it any information). It then tailored an ad based on some of the reasons New Yorkers would shop online: high sales tax in New York.

A multichannel retailer with a lot of brick-and-mortar stores could take advantage of this to proactively tell users about stores near them. Additionally, in-store specials specific to the local store could be shown with the Web merchandise. Of course, this requires coordination on the back end that most stores don’t have at the moment.

Here’s another example: We were hired a couple of years ago by a very well-known beverage company. It wanted to know why so many people were coming to its site without the intention to buy. Through a lot of analysis, we determined a person’s motivation to use the site was directly related to that person’s proximity to the company’s closest store. In other words, users who lived more than, say, 20 miles from a store location were more likely to buy online. Those who lived closer were more likely to look online to see what was going on at a local store, get hours, directions, and the like. In this company’s case, being able to target promotions to users based on their address and their proximity to a physical store would prove extremely beneficial.

Going to the Next Level

Apple’s iPhone has a location tracker in it. The much-anticipated 3G version of the phone will have even more location-based services in it. So, what can you do based on the immediate knowledge of the user’s current location?

When the Palm VII came out in the late ’90, some companies set up kiosks that sent infrared signals to the Palm and gave you location-specific information. Vendors at conferences used this functionality to download whitepapers and such to a prospect’s Palm.

With real location-based services, any Web site (when loaded from a geo-tracking device) could highlight local store specials, menus, or other location-based services.

Beyond this, one can easily imagine a third-party tool that analyzes the kinds of stores or restaurants you frequent, then makes recommendations when you’re traveling.

For instance, a geo-location tracker on my iPhone could sense that I often eat in French restaurants here in New York. The next time I’m traveling, I could ask the application to find good restaurants nearby, and it would weight French restaurants heavier because it knows I prefer them.

Conclusion

Geotargeting works on a number of different levels. If you have the kind of products and services that lend themselves to the immediacy and granularity of GPS-level locations, the infrastructure is now here to support that level of personalization.

On the other hand, if your promotions can be tailored based on general location (and the granularity of the user’s specific and immediate street address is overkill), that’s good too.

Either way, this dimension of personalization can show dramatic lifts to your business.

Questions, thoughts, comments? Let me know!

Until next time…

Jack

Biography

Jack Aaronson, CEO of The Aaronson Group and corporate lecturer, is a sought-after expert on enhanced user experiences, customer conversion, retention, and loyalty. If only a small percentage of people who arrive at your home page transact with your company (and even fewer return to transact again), Jack and his company can help. He also publishes a newsletter about multichannel marketing, personalization, user experience, and other related issues. He has keynoted most major marketing conferences around the world and regularly speaks at Shop.org and other major industry shows. You can learn more about Jack through his LinkedIn profile and follow him on Twitter: @JackAaronson.

What Are UK Women Doing Online?

APRIL 7, 2009

Shopping and socializing.

According to IPC Media, 74% of female Internet users in the UK went online every day last year.

In terms of login sessions, slightly more women went online on weekdays. But on the weekends, they spent more time online—an average of 20 more minutes a session.

Shopping was the most popular online activity. Nearly all the women (97%) said they researched products online, and 92% said they bought products online.

Social networking sites are becoming more popular, too. One-half of all UK female Internet users visited Facebook; slightly fewer went to MySpace and Bebo.

The appeal of video seems to be flattening out. While more UK women said they had visited YouTube in the past, 5 percentage points fewer said they were regular viewers.

“It’s no surprise that women’s love affair with the Internet has continued,” said Karin von Abrams, senior analyst for eMarketer. “But this study shows just how vital a tool the Web has become for women in the UK.

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“Three-quarters of female Internet users are online every day, weekdays and weekends,” said Ms. Von Abrams. “And a phenomenal proportion of women using the Net are researching or buying products online, signaling a real revolution in retail.”

Personalization: Putting the “A-Ha!” into Online Shopping

MARCH 26, 2009

Knowing what the customer wants—even before they do.

Amazon and Netflix were pioneers in building recommendation engines, and they used the systems they developed to become leaders in their respective categories.

Until recently only large retailers had the money, expertise and time to develop the complex algorithms that drive personalized product recommendation systems. But the market has advanced and a number of vendors have proven they can deliver real customer value. Now the technology is affordable to even small retailers.

Yet, according to Vovici, only slightly more than one-fourth (27.6%) of online retailers offer any type of personalized product recommendations.

But that proportion could be changing.

“A growing number of success stories is spurring online retailers to jump on board,” says Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer senior analyst. “Zappos.com, for example, currently uses a low-tech solution to offer personalized recommendations on only some product pages, but its recent expansion into product categories beyond shoes may be just the impetus needed to push the retailer over the hump.”

Brian Kalma, director of user experience at Zappos.com, said the retailer’s goal is to roll out recommendations on a massive scale with a powerful engine at the center: “Hopefully one day our search engine will become so effective that it could replace what we are currently calling a recommendation engine.”

“Even though automated recommendation systems are rapidly improving, there are situations where peer recommendations provide more meaningful results,” says Mr. Grau. “Take for example a woman who has just moved to Manhattan and needs help choosing and purchasing appropriate business attire. An automated recommendation system would be challenged to find suitable suggestions based on her historical shopping data. A better source of apparel advice would be other professionals working in New York.”

Peer recommendations are most commonly shared on shopping-oriented social networks such as Kaboodle, ThisNext and StyleHop. While these social shopping sites are very much a work in progress, their popularity is growing.

“Retailers like personalized product recommendations because they create cross-sell and upsell opportunities,” says Mr. Grau. “They also cite long-term benefits such as a higher degree of customer engagement and loyalty.”

Despite low adoption rates, 40% of online merchants surveyed by Internet Retailer said they planned to add personalized product recommendations to their Websites by the end of 2008—second in priority to video functionality.

“Despite being around for 10 years, the personalized product recommendation market is still in its nascency,” says Mr. Grau.

E-Commerce Explodes in Russia

APRIL 7, 2009

Consumers turn to the Web

In Russia, 2008 was a banner year for e-commerce, as consumers, businesses and government agencies increasingly went online to fulfill their needs. Consumers alone spent RBL110.0 billion ($4.42 billion), an increase of 35.4% over 2007, according to the National Association of Members of E-Commerce-Russia. As a comparison, in November 2008 eMarketer calculated US retail e-commerce growth from 2007 to 2008 at 7.2%, excluding travel, digital downloads and ticket purchases.

There is no reason to think this explosive growth rate will diminish. A study quoted in RUmetrika by the GfK Group reported that 8.4% of Internet users in the country made a purchase online at least once per month in 2008—leaving plenty of room for future growth.

The only question left for Internet users in Russia is whether they will follow in the footsteps of those in several other Eastern European countries and continue to adopt online shopping. According to eMarketer projections, there will be 61.9 million Internet users in Russia by 2013. Even at the current online buyer penetration of 8.4%, that would mean approximately 5.2 million online consumers in Russia. That’s a hard number of potential customers to ignore.

German Online Sales Rose Last Year

APRIL 9, 2009

Karin von Abrams, Senior Analyst
Internet uber alles!

Despite the general gloom brought on by the economic crisis, German online sales saw a healthy rise last year.

According to the GfK Group “WebScope Survey,” people in Germany spent €13.6 billion ($20 billion) on the Internet in 2008, 19% more than in 2007.

Growth was due to two main factors.

One: further expansion in the number of online shoppers and buyers. GfK reported that 29.5 million people in the country made purchases on the Web in 2008, up 12% year over year.

Two: Average expenditure per purchase rose 7% to about €49 ($72). Frequency of purchase remained constant, however, at 9.4 times per year.

GfK’s analysis divided online consumers into seven groups, based on the products that interest them, as well as their general Web usage and online habits.

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In most cases, the contribution the groups made to e-commerce sales was very different from their relative share of Germany’s online population. Information seekers, music fans, bargain hunters and (no surprise) those who shop and bank online all accounted for more than their expected share of e-commerce sales. Bargain hunters, for example, constituted 7.4% of online households in 2008, but chalked up 10.7% of Internet sales.

So-called “selective users” (who made up almost 35% of online households) were responsible for just 12.8% of sales.