After attending the event for four years, I’ve had the opportunity to see first-hand how the market has shifted over time. The discussions at eTail West in the earlier years were primarily about how to manage, measure, and increase transactions. But most retailers have this figured out by now, so their focus has shifted to maximizing their revenues in new ways.

Naturally as the market has matured, retailers have grown to be more concerned with customer experience and service, so it’s no wonder that the three consistent themes at this year’s event were multi-channel customer experience, personalization, and recommendations. Online retailers are looking for new ways to increase their revenues and to achieve better personalization and customer targeting. They are also looking for new ways to maximize revenues by deploying the recommendations they already have in place in a much broader sense. Now that retailers have reaped the benefits of traditional product recommendations, they understand the capabilities these technologies have to tackle the newer issues, such as navigating social elements of their sites and the ongoing quest to improve search.

Just as the market has matured, so has Baynote. Each year at eTail, we’ve seen interest in our approach grow. Listening to the conversations of the attendees and the other speakers this past week, it was clear to me that Baynote’s time has come as retailers hone in on providing a superior customer experience and ultimately how to create happier, more loyal customers.

Perhaps the best evidence of this was a survey I conducted during my presentation. I asked the crowd: “Raise your hand if you think your best salesperson can outsell your best customer?” The result? Not a single person in the room raised their hands. When I asked another question: if the happiest customers are the most important to increasing their revenues; almost every single person in the room agreed. This demonstrates just how powerful peer-to-peer brand advocacy has become to retailers and the bottom line.

I left Palm Desert thinking about what an exciting time it is to be involved in the e-commerce industry, and how proud I am that Baynote’s customers are setting the standard with more sophisticated personalization approaches that are transforming the customer experience as well as their online businesses.

About 300 delegates, most of whom are returnees already working in China such as Robin Li of Baidu.com, were chosen, and I was one of the 18 representatives from the United States, and one of only four CEOs. A part of my function as a delegate was to attend the PRC’s 60 year anniversary celebration in Beijing on October 1^st. I was honored to be in such a momentous event, and was impressed with President Hu’s address to the delegates where he laid out his plan to focus China’s economic vision on innovation.

President Hu has engaged with the delegates in a similar way that Baynote applies its technology for our customers: He is taking wisdom of the crowds to make more well-informed decisions.

Here are some photos that I took that capture the essence of the celebration:

When I returned to Silicon Valley, I was energized and enthusiastic that the work we are doing at Baynote is making an impact beyond the borders of the United States. It was humbling to be surrounded by some of the smartest minds in the world, from scientists and professors, to entrepreneurs, who have all made a strong impact on technology innovation.

My visit to China was followed by a meeting at Baynote’s Cupertino offices with Mr. Li Yuanchao, head of China’s Organization Department of the Central Government and member of the Central Committee Political Bureau, and a delegation of several Ministers and the Chinese Ambassador to the United States. Mr. Li toured Baynote as well as four other Silicon Valley companies, including Cisco and Google, during his brief trip to California. The purpose of his trip was to learn from us how to operate technology-focused companies that are economically successful and technologically innovative so he could take what he learned and apply it to China’s plans.

Included below are some key points that I made during my presentation to Mr. Li. My goal in this presentation was to give him a better sense of what entrepreneurship is all about, and to pass on some lessons that I have learned over the years that are applicable around the world.

• It’s all in the people. Get the right people on the bus and the wrong ones off, and then decide where to drive. You need talents with experience, education, but more importantly with passion!
• A startup is a process. Research the market in the real world by talking to potential buyers and tapping into the wisdom of crowds. Don’t take no as a bad feedback. On the contrary, too many yes’s mean caution.
• A few things must be created from day one: A core team, leapfrog innovations, and a culture that will serve as the foundation throughout the company’s journey.
• It’s ok to fail many times. Without moments of despair, you don’t have a lasting startup. Take a flywheel iterative approach to anything: market, technology, business model…
• In order to succeed, you must have a strong desire to learn and change: Be open to learning from your peers and taking constructive criticism, as it allows for growth. Did I mention the wisdom of crowds?!
• Always challenge the conventional norm.
• Be open and direct. There is no place for politics in startups.

Mr. Li’s visit encouraged me that President Hu’s initiative is very real and imminent. We may see a Silicon Valley in China in the future, a great thing for the international collaboration for technology development. I look forward to seeing how Baynote’s input will be applied to China’s efforts to improve technology and science – not only throughout the region but around the world.

The Era of Experts, Influencers, and Mavens
Guy noted that the old way to put a product in front of the masses was a trickle down approach. The goal was to suck up to the influencers, experts, and mavens that had an abundance of social capital and a platform to distribute your message to the masses. To make his point, he mentioned about a dozen of these “mavens,” including tech bloggers, popular media personalities and himself.
Bottom Line: Suck up to the important people, and that will effectively trickle down to the masses.

The New Age of the Masses and Crowds
Because of the advent of new technologies like Twitter, Guy argues that the most effective way to connect to users is from the ground up. Connect with users that are relevant within the context you are trying to reach. Influencers and experts will never be as valuable as the users themselves if you can reach them.
Bottom Line: Don’t ignore the experts, but make your audience and your users a source of collective intelligence that drives your business decisions.

Technologies like Twitter and Baynote’s Affinity Engine allows marketers to leverage their users in ways previously impossible. While Twitter allows marketers to speak to and gather feedback directly from their audiences, Baynote allows marketers to poll users through implicit observation. Ultimately, its all about making sure that your audience finds your products in a timely manner. Your audience may be on Twitter, but its definitely on your website and that is where Baynote comes in.

Websites are now the primary way to get in touch with your customers, at least thats what Apple says and I agree. I’m not declaring the death of trade shows as a way to reach customers, but I am marking today on the calendar as the day where one of the biggest marketing machines in the world declared just that. This is a powerful message that will be heard around the world. Apple is usually the company that epitomizes a customer-centric company. Their company ideologies and methodologies have created arguably the most loyal and passionate customer base on earth.

That said, ensuring that your website users have the “Apple customer experience” should be a high priority for a company’s web strategy team. Enhancing the user experience means something different to all different types of businesses. A few months back I wrote up a post on just that. Bottom line, greet your customers with relevant information immediately and stay in touch with them on their terms(no irrelevant email blasts).

Here’s a quick description:

In this talk we will explore, how startups have applied the wisdom of crowds to create unique business opportunities and how they are building monetizable business models. Hear from founders of Baynote, Jigsaw, 8020 Publishing and Satisfaction, who are using their communities’ wisdom or knowhow to drive their companies’ business models.

Find more details on the event here.

I’ve just returned from the Shop.org Annual Summit in

Many continue to ask whether eCommerce growth has peaked. With countless consecutive quarters of double-digit growth, one has to ask these kinds of questions. Well, the data suggests it has not peaked. According to Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru, ecommerce will continue to grow at a rate of 25% annually for the next many years. The reason? Online retailers not tackling the basics.

As the holiday season approaches, and since it’s football season (thankfully), it’s only appropriate that we talk a bit about blocking and tackling fundamentals. Forrester and other pay mention to the following:

1) Completing the Transaction

Amazingly, some leading eCommerce websites are seeing transaction failures as high as 12-14%. For comparison purposes, the airline industry which is hardly the gold-standard in service sees has delayed/cancelled flight rates of about 6%. There are $ millions left on the virtual table as consumers are driven to alternative channels to make their purchase.

2) User Experience

Snazzy front ends that are engaging and interesting may draw some attention, but don’t forget the basics of making it easy to browse, search, add to cart, and purchase. ‘Pretty’ is good, but usable is better.

… and finally…

3) Product Recommendations

The only technology that Forrester recommended were recommendation engines.  Recommendation engines help retailers dynamically up-sell / cross-sell / merchandize their products.   With thousands of products and millions of visitors to an online retailer’s website and automated solution to this is a necessity, but measure the impact so you can truly understand the hard-dollar impact it’s making.

So make sure to do your homework and invest in the basics of selling, merchandizing, and completing transactions.Also, I wanted to give some credit to Jason Billingsly over at Elastic Path. He presented an eye-opening and incredibly engaging session on leveraging social media for eCommerce. If you have a chance, check out his session at Online Market World in

Come join us Wednesday, June 27 at the Santa Clara Convention Center for the WebGuild Searchnomics 2007 Conference and hear Baynote CEO Jack Jia speak on the Increased Revenue through People-Powered Site Search and Recommendations panel. We’d love to see you there! Register Now.

The Searchnomics Conference is a one-day event aimed at web and internet marketing professionals and dedicated to the search industry. At the conference you will learn about trends and best practices in:

• Search Engine Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization
• Design and Development
• Branding and Promotion
• Web Analytics
• New Innovations and Opportunities

Come be a part of this one-of-a-kind conference and learn from expert speakers in the field of search. Don’t forget to stop by the Increased Revenue through People-Powered Site Search and Recommendations panel featuring industry though-leaders including Baynote CEO, Jack Jia.

Register for Searchnomics here

This panel of seasoned executives and global investors will tackle these questions: 1) Whats different about the Pacific Rim investment pace versus the U.S. bubble in the 90’s; 2) Is there too much venture captial chasing too few early-stage deals in these regions; 3) What role, if any, can a U.S. investor play; 4) When is the right time to make investments in global markets; and 5) What Silicon Valley best practices are successfully going global?

Jack has also got an all-star line-up on the panel with him: David Kasujin of Chao of DMC, Promod Hague of Norwest Venture Partners, P.V. Kanan of 24/7 Customers and moderator Kevin Fong, managing director of the Mayfield Fund. Sounds like it will be a really exciting event for everyone! In fact, this event is so popular that it’s already sold out. Don’t worry if you’d still like to attend though, a limited number of tickets may be available at the door on a first come, first serve basis.

Jack spoke during the conference on the Community Guided Web and illustrated the following points about The Invisible Crowd:

• Website visitors are lonely explorers, even though you might have thousands on a given website at any time
• The invisible crowd knows nothing of past successes or failiures on the site; hence, the community never learns.
• Most sites are developed without regard to your invisible crowd, and instead, reflect a web developers best-estimate of what is important to the crowd.

Thanks to everyone who came by to see a demo on how Baynote taps into this Invisible Crowd to improve website effectiveness. We spoke with as many folks as we could while at the show but we were getting double- and triple-teamed at frequently and may have missed a few of you. We’re flattered but apologize for not being able to spend time with everyone.

- Mike