Category Archives: Retail

Black Friday is Now Thursday

Posted on November 10, 2011 by Chris Paradysz

Walmart just changed the game.  Let the madness begin.  Deals and bargains now start on Thanksgiving night at 10pm.  Best
Buy and Target are lined up right behind them rolling deals into staggered
timeframes.  Toys, clothes and home accessories are up first then, electronics at midnight and general consumer goods on Friday at 8am.

Ecommerce is about to reset its search bid rules to react to
consumer’s expectations although not for all products and brands, notably
Luxury.  Electronics and apparel will have no choice, especially
consumables and commoditized products, in my opinion.  Dayparting search
optimization is about to take on a new life when you consider that researching
will now start earlier which will impact site conversions related to new buying
patterns.

Will Cyber Monday and Tuesday stay the top sales
performers?  My bet says yes, but the curve is certainly going to flatten
over Thanksgiving weekend as opposed to historical, spikey high-peak
days.  Whether all of this generates incremental, new customers and demand
is the ultimate question.

We’ll know more in two and a half weeks.

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Boutiques.com – Google Gets Editorial

Posted on November 18, 2010 by Tim Kilroy

This week, Google launched Boutiques.com, which is a fabulous mashup of pure search muscle, awesome image recognition tech from Like.com and a daring move by Google…an opinion.

So the site allows celebs, fashion bloggers and certain retailers to create their own boutiques, and Google does all the hard work of presenting you with all of the products that these folks curate. Further, they have semantic curation (I think I just coined a phrase), with style and trend focused boutiques.

You can create your own Boutique. You walk through a pretty extensive fashion profiling exercise. You can see my boutique…it would be a little more fun for me if there were men’s clothes, but I can deal.

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Rewind Paid Search Performance Index: October 2010

Posted on November 4, 2010 by PM Digital Research

The PM Digital Rewind Index for October 2010, which measures monthly paid search performance for online retailers, shows that year-over-year paid search revenue was up 45%.  Paid search spend was similarly up for PM Digital clients, by 63% compared to the same month in 2009.  Clicks and conversion also grew in October, while average order value (AOV) remained flat. 

 

October 2010 Top Sales Days (Revenue):  Mon 10/11, Wed 10/6, Sun 10/3
October 2010 Top Sales Days (Orders):  Wed 10/6, Mon 10/4, Mon 10/11 

Mon 10/11 and Wed 10/6 were top days for both revenue and order volume for PM Digital’s online retail clients, and October was a solid month overall for online retail sales.  The month saw less dramatic fluctuations in day-to-day sales metrics, with a number of peak days that indexed similarly well.  Monthly sales data has been gradually trending upwards from summer into fall, and we can expect to see this trend continue and accelerate leading into the holiday season.  

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Retail Digital Marketing: The Merchandise Buyers are the Heroes

Posted on October 25, 2010 by Chris Paradysz

Office of a Tie Buyer

Nothing brings innovation to digital marketing like getting inside the product and understanding what the head of merchandising is thinking about long before it hits the stores, the web or the catalog.  Even in this just-in-time retail world, decisions about what to buy happen long before consumers see the results of what‘s on that buyer’s mind.  And, most marketers miss it, too.  They’re too caught up with campaign plans and deadlines to stop the noise long enough to listen.   

I’ve always said that real listening is a contact sport.  Certainly with marketing, listening is far more important than talking.  Spending an hour with the people who make the calls on what people want is like hanging out with a musician while they’re writing a song.  It’s as gut-wrenching as deciding what note will be the first to hang on a clean piece of staff paper. 

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PM Digital Releases Luxury & Designer Fashion Brands Online Trends Study

Posted on October 25, 2010 by PM Digital Research

Online sales are leading the way as luxury and designer brands emerge from the challenging global economy.

According to the Trend Report: Luxury & Designer Brands Online – a study of 20 online fashion brands released by PM Digital based on Experian Hitwise data – until recently, luxury and designer brands were behind the curve in adding online stores, but that has changed as more and more find success online.

Key findings from the study reveal:

  • Four brands captured two-thirds of the online market share of visits: Coach (by a wide margin), Gucci, Juicy Couture and Burberry.
  • Search traffic, predominantly from Google, dominates referrals to luxury and designer retail sites. Interestingly, Facebook edged out Yahoo! search.  
  • Traffic from social media sites to luxury and designer brand sites is growing, as brands such as Lacoste and Dolce & Gabbana link to their Facebook pages from their homepages.

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Back-to-School Retail: Anxious Moments

Posted on July 26, 2010 by Chris Paradysz

The NPD Group says that teen spending is up 6-8% over last year.  And, they’re buying what’s typical: fashion, lifestyle, electronics.  I want to believe it, but I still don’t like what I’m seeing, reading and hearing about Back-to-School and the Fall 2010 retail season.  Although the Discount/Variety store sector continues to have busy stores and monthly positive trends, there is much hand-wringing in the specialty and department stores.

The BTS period is highly compressed but is a harbinger for the Fall and Holiday seasons.  With 09 comps so challenged as a benchmark but most having improved performance in 1st and 2nd quarters this year, many retailers bought product aggressively.  And, of course, orders have already been placed for the balance of the year.  Not surprisingly, we’re seeing pre-season promotions well before prior years.  Check out the Washington Post article about Target, Toys R Us and Sears “Black Friday” sales.

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