As part of our collaboration with Lauren Freedman of the e-tailing group, we have put together “A Merchant’s Metrics Playbook,” to guide retailers in their quest to embrace metrics across their organizations. The playbook looks at how merchants integrate metrics into their decision making process. We’ll reveal each of the nine strategies in this nine-part blog series over the coming weeks.

PLAY #7 – PROVIDE HOLISTIC VIEW OF INFORMATION

Presenting metrics in a holistic fashion allows senior managers to gain a more compressive understanding of the customer. Unfortunately, synthesizing and presenting data from various business units can be a difficult task. The seventh play in our book discusses this challenge and the need to overcome it. To read more about this topic, download a free copy of “Metrics Therapy—Details, Dashboards and Diligence,” the new white paper by Lauren Freedman of the e-tailing group, visit: http://www.baynote.com/resource/metrics-therapy-paper/.

As part of our collaboration with Lauren Freedman of the e-tailing group, we have put together “A Merchant’s Metrics Playbook,” to guide retailers in their quest to embrace metrics across their organizations. The playbook looks at how merchants integrate metrics into their decision making process. We’ll reveal each of the nine strategies in this nine-part blog series over the coming weeks.

PLAY #6 – EDUCATE INTERNALLY

While there is a cost in gaining detailed information from different sources, retailers are realizing there needs to be a balancing act between cost, education and access. The sixth play in our book highlights the importance of internal team alignment on all touch points under review and how to tie analysis together to reduce complexity. To read more about this topic, download a free copy of “Metrics Therapy—Details, Dashboards and Diligence,” the new white paper by Lauren Freedman of the e-tailing group, visit: http://www.baynote.com/resource/metrics-therapy-paper/.

As part of our collaboration with Lauren Freedman of the e-tailing group, we have put together “A Merchant’s Metrics Playbook,” to guide retailers in their quest to embrace metrics across their organizations. The playbook looks at how merchants integrate metrics into their decision making process. We’ll reveal each of the nine strategies in this nine-part blog series over the coming weeks.

PLAY #5 – FOCUS ON THE ACTION NEEDED BY MOVING BEYOND THE NUMBERS

A detailed metrics report is only worthwhile if it leads to action. The fifth play in our book is focused on the importance of looking beyond the numbers to clearly understand what they mean beneath the surface. To read more about this topic, download a free copy of “Metrics Therapy—Details, Dashboards and Diligence,” the new white paper by Lauren Freedman of the e-tailing group, visit: http://www.baynote.com/resource/metrics-therapy-paper/.

As part of our collaboration with Lauren Freedman of the e-tailing group, we have put together “A Merchant’s Metrics Playbook,” to guide retailers in their quest to embrace metrics across their organizations. The playbook looks at how merchants integrate metrics into their decision making process. We’ll reveal each of the nine strategies in this nine-part blog series over the coming weeks.

PLAY #4 – STANDARDIZE DEFINITIONS PRIOR TO ANALYSIS

Comparing performance metrics from across your organization is difficult, and becomes even more difficult when everyone is using different definitions. The fourth play in our book focuses on establishing standardized definitions across your organization to help simplify the reporting process and, more importantly, allows for better metrics analysis. To read more about this topic, download a free copy of “Metrics Therapy—Details, Dashboards and Diligence,” the new white paper by Lauren Freedman of the e-tailing group, visit: http://www.baynote.com/resource/metrics-therapy-paper/.

The Personalization Roundup is an ongoing blog series featuring the most evocative news, articles and blogs curated by Baynote each month highlighting the rapidly growing topic of web personalization. For this month’s roundup, we’ve combed the web to once again bring you the latest and greatest on the personalization revolution.

Over the last month, we’ve seen several interesting articles and reports discussing the current and future status of the e-commerce and personalization landscapes. Read on to learn more about the most commonly missed e-commerce opportunities, and to see who some VC’s believe will emerge as Amazon’s biggest competition.

Measure For Success, MediaPost Research Brief—Our very own white paper, “Metrics Therapy– Details, Dashboards and Diligence,” by the e-tailing group’s Lauren Freedman, was discussed by several media, including MediaPost’s Jack Loechner. The white paper features findings from the e-tailing group’s 2012 Merchant Survey as well as insights from interviews with top retailers. The findings reveal that while retailers believe analytics offer the best way to improve profits, tracking the right metrics in mobile, social and across channels remains elusive. The findings also suggest interesting new conclusions about the metrics that really matter, such as profit and conversion rate. The whitepaper release preceded the Metrics Therapy for Merchant: Details, Dashboards, and Diligence Webinar on April 25th.

“Online Shopper Experience” Study of 100 Retail Brands Reveals Missed Opportunities in Shopping Cart Abandonment Processes, Yahoo! Finance—According to a recent study by Temkin Group and Bronto Software, a $1 billion U.S. company can generate between $141 million and $382 million over three years if they make a modest improvement in customer experience. Not surprisingly, the study points to user experience, indecision, technical issues, and product cost/additional fees as the top reasons buyers abandon online purchases—most of which can be addressed by better personalization strategies.  To generate the data, Temkin Group and Bronto Software evaluated carting and purchasing processes of 100 online retail brands and their abandoned cart marketing strategies.

7 Mistakes to Avoid on Your Ecommerce Site, Mashable—Costly shipping, complicated and poorly functioning websites, overselling your tablet app, and hitting clients with irrelevant offers make up the list of the top e-commerce website mistakes. In this article Todd Wasserman discusses personalization basics – i.e. if you buy a mattress at Costco, you probably don’t want to receive another mattress offer for at least 10 years. He also notes that even if your e-commerce site already sealed a deal, sending irrelevant offers in response can dissuade customers from returning to make additional purchases. Knowing what your customers want in real time is the only way to avoid this all-to-common e-commerce mistake.

Facebook e-commerce: the next big thing?, Reuters—Will Facebook someday rival Amazon and eBay as an ecommerce leader?  With Facebook’s upcoming IPO, the company will be looking for new sources of profit to reduce their reliance on advertising dollars. Social commerce or e-commerce leveraging Facebook’s social graph, may be that source. A handful of e-commerce startups and VCs see it as a very real possibility, and have started to spend big bucks on making it happen. Social commerce startups to keep an eye on include BeachMint, Yardsellr, Oodle and Fab.com. You can also checkout Baynote’s best practices for improving the effectiveness on your social commerce campaigns in this recent Multichannel Merchant article.

As part of our collaboration with Lauren Freedman of the e-tailing group, we have put together “A Merchant’s Metrics Playbook,” to help guide retailers in their quest to embrace metrics across the organization. The playbook looks at how merchants can integrate metrics into their decision making process. We’ll reveal each of the nine strategies in this nine-part blog series over the coming weeks.

PLAY #3 – MEET REGULARLY: THE MONDAY MEETING AND MORE

The third play in the book focuses on internal communication. The metrics themselves don’t matter if they are not socialized and accepted across the organization. As with so many things in life, sharing has strong benefits to the organization.

To read more about this topic, download a free copy of “Metrics Therapy—Details, Dashboards and Diligence,” the new white paper by Lauren Freedman of the e-tailing group, visit: http://www.baynote.com/resource/metrics-therapy-paper/.

As part of our collaboration with Lauren Freedman of the e-tailing group, we have put together “A Merchant’s Metrics Playbook,” to help guide retailers in their quest to embrace metrics across the organization. The playbook looks at how merchants can integrate metrics into their decision making process. We’ll reveal each of the nine strategies in this nine-part blog series over the coming weeks.

PLAY #2 – RUN THE COMPANY LIKE IT’S SMALL

The second play in our Merchant’s Metrics Playbook focuses on thinking like a small company. Small companies are nimble and have to be transparent to survive.

To read more about this topic, download a free copy of “Metrics Therapy—Details, Dashboards and Diligence,” the new white paper by Lauren Freedman of the e-tailing group, visit: http://www.baynote.com/resource/metrics-therapy-paper/.

As part of our collaboration with Lauren Freedman of the e-tailing group, we have put together “A Merchant’s Metrics Playbook,” to guide retailers in their quest to embrace metrics across their organizations. The playbook looks at how merchants integrate metrics into their decision making process. We’ll reveal each of the nine strategies in this nine-part blog series over the coming weeks.

PLAY #1 – ALIGN GOALS

The first play in the book focuses on goal alignment. You may have heard the author Jim Collins’ saying, “Get the right people on the bus, and then figure out where to drive it.” Similarly, for retailers, gaining company-wide alignment on goals should be a top priority.To read more about this topic, download a free copy of “Metrics Therapy—Details, Dashboards and Diligence,” the new white paper by Lauren Freedman of the e-tailing group, visit: http://www.baynote.com/resource/metrics-therapy-paper/

The paper includes data from the e-tailing group’s 2012 Merchant Survey and insights from over 20 in-depth interviews with a cross-section of top retailers. It also features “A Merchant’s Metrics Playbook” – a guide to help retailers determine a forward-thinking strategy that takes into account the right metrics and methodologies for running their business.

Overall, the report revealed that while the overwhelming majority of retailers view analytics evaluation as the number one factor in customer retention and loyalty (93 percent), their use of metrics is still a big work in progress. Check out our infographic below for a snapshot of the paper’s key insights.

See the INFOGRAPHIC.

We view metrics as a core component of any e-commerce strategy – and tracking the metrics that matter is essential to understanding how to move the needle on profitability. Moving forward, we expect to see retailers looking for strategies and tools to help them gain holistic measurement across all customer touch points. This increased focus and capacity to measure the customer experience and personalize it across devices will be the key to the industry’s future growth.

We are hosting a free joint webinar with the e-tailing group titled, “Metrics Therapy for Merchants,” on Wednesday, April 25th. To register for the webinar, please visit: http://www.baynote.com/resource/metrics-therapy-for-merchants/.

To download a free copy of “Metrics Therapy—Details, Dashboards and Diligence,” the new white paper by Lauren Freedman of the e-tailing group, visit: http://www.baynote.com/resource/metrics-therapy-paper/.

I asked, “Tell me about your mother. What kind of things does she like or like to do?”

His response, “Well, she moved recently to be near the beach.”

I said, “So, she has a new house by the beach. Have you considered buying her something for that?”

And just like that, a light went off in his head, and he suddenly a laundry list of new gift ideas. So, we talked more about the kinds of things she likes and does not like to narrow down the list. Eventually, we decided on some candles with seashells embedded in them.

This experience got me to thinking about the “data” we used to make our decision. First, context does matter. Only knowing his mom’s age or income would not have mattered in our gift decision. What mattered was that she had a new house near the beach and that she was in the process of decorating it. Second, understanding her interests helped—especially when it comes to giving a thoughtful gift. And finally, her son’s intent to buy her a gift was key. We were not looking for something extravagant, but we definitely wanted the gift to be personal. So, we used a combination of interest and intent inputs to make our decision and these ended up being much more effective than solely relying on profile information.

Oh, and I heard a few days later that she loved the candles.