Online shopping growth outlook good, shopping sites feed tactics and options growing.

Posted on November 13, 2008
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Online shopping growth expected to outpace all other consumer spending sectors, much thru shopping sites!

“The good news is that [online retail sales] growth will outpace nearly every other sector of consumer spending” during an otherwise lean holiday season, said Sucharita Malpuru, a principal analyst at Forrester Research, in an e-mail to DMNews.

While the most recent predictions expect holiday sales to be flat or fall by a percentage point or two, more than 56% of online retailers expect holiday sales to increase at least 15% from the same period a year ago, according to the 2008 eHoliday Study conducted by Shopzilla for Shop.org. from <http://www.dmnews.com/Shopping-sites-try-on-new-look/article/120623/>

New shopping search engines are cropping up often around niche areas or improving the customer driven experience. They have gone well beyond just the cost comparison functionality. For example, Istorez.com launched in beta earlier this year and give customers more control over their experience using a profile. ThisNext.com claims to be” the social shopping site where people explore, discover and rave about the hottest products.

When it comes to shopping feeds merchants have several options:

DIY-Do it yourself (mostly to Google base, still free. )
Elementary tactic-submit via feeders all products via services, with default/limited analytics and tracking of return on investment.
Intermediate tactic-submit via feeders full feed but supplement with Indextools/Google analytics to capture and measure conversion data and Return On Investment (ROI)/ Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)
Advanced tactic-via automated feeders filter products to feed only the producing profitable products to the feeds

Fastpivot works with “best in class” feed partners and portals while installing the analytics to measure results. Let us know how we can help!

eCommerce Should See Growth for the Holidays

Posted on November 3, 2008
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The economic instability that has been rocking harder than a ship in a hurricane has tightened the grip on our wallets and seemingly caused a major meltdown of the global economy. The good news is that we have not succumbed to depression and a complete meltdown. In fact, despite all the uncertainty and fear about the future, ecommerce is positioned for double digit growth once again. This is great news for online store owners, especially since brick & mortar sales are predicting a flat to 2 or 3 percent decline in growth from last year.

Holiday sales outlooks, from sources, such as eMarketer, are predicting a 10.1% growth in online sales over last year. Although a far cry from the 19%-24% year-over-year growth in past ecommerce holiday seasons, it is a much better trend than what we were facing just a few months ago.

In an article “Will the Grinch Steal This Year’s Online Holiday Shopping Season? ” eMarketer lists some encouraging reasons why growth will still be slightly over 10% this year. It sums up in one word: frugality. People are looking for a deal; and, they know that the Internet is the place to find it.
Why are more people buying online?

• Higher gasoline costs
• Free shipping offers
• Ease of bargain seeking
• Research all done from the comfort of a home/coffee shop/office, etc.

What should store owners do?

MarketingExperiments outlines the top priorities for an online store to help your viewers:
1. Emphasize your value proposition
2. Intensify clarity of navigation, organization, visuals
3. Reduce inhibitors of shopping your site

And, when someone comes to your site, they need to have answered immediately:
1. Where am I?
2. What can I do here? (how to shop even)
3. Why should I purchase from you (value proposition) stated on the page and reemphasized throughout the site.

These days, customers expect to have an easy shopping experience. Features, like customer registration, a shopping cart wrapped to match your store, clear calls to action stated in clean text and images, and other solutions will benefit both store owners and shoppers. In an uncertain economy, changes you make now for an optimized, user-friendly shopping experience, can make the difference between a gain or loss in sales. For more information about My Account for Yahoo! Stores, visit www.fastpivotsoftware.com, or contact a FastPivot account manager to discuss how to improve your site for the holidays.

http://fastpivot.com/contact-fastpivot.html

Fluid Introduces Fluid Lite – Sophisticated Dynamic Imaging for Small and Mid-Sized Businesses

Posted on October 22, 2008
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FastPivot, featured developer of Yahoo! Stores, first to offer Fluid Lite technology; small and medium online retailers can add zoom, multiple views and color change to their online store.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Oct 21, 2008 - Fluid, Inc., developers of innovative online retail solutions that drive conversion and brand loyalty, today unveiled Fluid Lite, giving small and medium online retailers access to the most advanced rich product presentation capabilities available to retailers today. Fluid has also announced an agreement with FastPivot, the featured developer of Yahoo! Stores, to resell Fluid Lite to its customers and be the preferred vendor for the more than 40,000 Yahoo! Stores. Customers can purchase Fluid Lite alone, or as part of one of the eCommerce services plans that have made FastPivot a first choice among Yahoo! Stores owners.

Several leading retailers have already signed up for the Fluid Lite offering. Initial Fluid Lite customers include modern-heirloom wooden car maker Automoblox and ShopGenes.com - retailer of innovative children’s furniture, clothing, toys, gear and more. For these and other small and medium-sized online retailers, interactive features in the product page such as zoom and multiple views are no longer “nice to have”. The increasing expectations of online shoppers make these capabilities essential, and Fluid Lite offers retailers a simple, affordable way to add them to their online stores.

Up until now, this type of productized, reliable, scalable technology has been unavailable to this segment of the online retail market. These businesses have been forced to make a choice between inferior off-the-shelf products and cobbling together a home-grown solution that may seem more cost effective initially, but ends up being more expensive to maintain as well as difficult or impossible to enhance.

“Our partnership with FastPivot has given us easy access to cutting edge Fluid functionality previously out-of-reach for us,” said Joe Barrett, Automoblox CEO. “The use of rich product visualization on our storefront allows our customers to better engage with our products at the time of purchase - which is absolutely critical in today’s competitive online retail environment - and allows us to extract even greater business value from the Yahoo! Stores platform.”

“Fluid Lite represents the core features required by retailers selling between $1 million and $5 million a year - industry-leading product interactivity that delivers a rapid ROI with minimal up-front investment,” said Matt Ledford, president of FastPivot. “For our larger customers, we believe Fluid Experience remains the standard.”

“Fluid Experience delivers the most advanced solution for rich shopping experiences for premier brands like The North Face, Reebok and Timberland. Fluid Lite will extend many of those core capabilities to small and medium-sized online retailers at an appropriate price point,” said Cassandra Girard, director of business development for Fluid, Inc. “We look forward to continued work with FastPivot, and to extending the reach of Fluid Lite to other key platforms.”

Availability

Yahoo! Store owners interested in Fluid Lite should contact FastPivot at (888) 770-8883 or www.fastpivotsoftware.com to sign up.

About Fluid, Inc.

Fluid creates engaging online retail experiences that drive conversion, customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. Founded in 1990, Fluid has a customer list that includes major online retailers such as Reebok, Timberland, JanSport, Design Within Reach and The North Face, among others. More information about Fluid, including information for companies interested in reselling Fluid Lite for other leading SMB ecommerce platforms, is available at www.fluid.com.

About FastPivot

Since 1997, FastPivot.com (formerly Ydesigns.com) has offered complete ecommerce website development and strategic marketing for companies of all sizes. From start-up ventures and established entities such as the Library of Congress and Waldorf-Astoria, to retailers like Conn’s and Service Merchandise, FastPivot.com provides engaging ecommerce solutions for stable and leading edge growth in a variety of markets. For more information, visit http://www.fastpivot.com.

Perfecting Your Online Store’s Homepage or Front Page at Wilsonweb.com

Posted on August 27, 2008
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“Your online store’s front page or homepage is the most important piece
of real estate on your site. Here credibility must be established for
both your store “brand” and for the products you sell. Here you engage
users to shop and buy.“

Check the full article by our President, Matthew Ledford’s article at: Perfecting Your Online Store’s Homepage or Front Page at Wilsonweb.com- WebMarketingToday

FastPivot’s All Women Design and Development Team Rocks RedKoala.com Store Launch

Posted on August 6, 2008
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Meeting Red Koala’s founder Abby Port, chosen as a finalist in the Seeds for Success Contest sponsored by Yahoo!, was an incredible experience. Red Koala needed a fresh, clean and customized website and as an official sponsor of the contest, FastPivot was ready to help. In May, our all-women team traveled to Atlanta to meet Abby in person and present the first round of design.

With FastPivot as their partner in web design and development, Red Koala Canvas Company launched www.redkoala.com on July 29, 2008.

Here’s what makes this store special: you can create a customized wall canvas for yourself, your kids or your friends through a nifty tool that lets you to combine images, colored backgrounds, text, and more. Upload your own photos or choose from a gallery of awesome images painted by artists. Go to RedKoala.com to give it a whirl.

FastPivot is thrilled to be a part of the Yahoo! Seeds for Success Empowering Women Entrepreneurs Contest and we are excited to watch Abby realize her dreams.

Watch Video
Read Abby’s Blog
See what the Mentors are saying