"December proved to be a strong month for the retail category with Tuesday, Dec. 15 ranking as the heaviest online spending day of the year – and of all time – at $913 million," said Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix.

"Holiday seasonality also fueled visitation to Shipping sites, which continually see their highest volume of traffic during the month of December."

Not surprisingly, retails sites climbed in December as Americans search the Internet for holiday deals. The top gaining retail categories were jewelry/luxury goods/accessories, sports/outdoor, and flower/gifts /greeting sites, each growing more than 20 percent compared to November.

Jewelry/luxury goods/accessories sites attracted nearly 23 million visitors during the month, representing a 30 percent increase from November. eBags led the category with 2.9 million visitors (up 28 %), followed by Coach.com with 2.2 million visitors (up 26 percent), Zale Corporation with 2.1 million (up 48 %) and Kay Jewelers with 1.7 million (up 69 %).

Sports/outdoor sites grew to nearly 39 million visitors during the month, a 25 percent increase compared to November, led by eBay Sports with 5.1 million visitors (up 21%), trailed closely by Cabelas with 5 million visitors (up 26%). Dicks Sporting Goods followed with 4.6 million visitors (up 39%) and Sports Authority with 2.9 million visitors (up 29%).

Flowers/gifts/greetings sites saw a 23-percent gain, reaching nearly 39.8 million unique visitors in December. American Greetings led the category with 13.6 million visitors (up 18 %), followed by Gifts.com with 6.8 million (up 49 %), Hallmark with 5.6 million (up 46 %) and 1-800-Flowers.com with 2.9 million (up 48 %).

Traffic to shipping sites spiked in December as Americans rushed to ensure delivery of their gift purchases in time for the holidays. The category attracted 36.6 million visitors during the month, representing a 33-percent increase in traffic. UPS sites led the category with 19.7 million visitors (up 51 %), followed by USPS.com with 15.9 million (up 40 %) and FedEx with 12.6 million (up 36 %).

The e-card category grew 29 percent to 31.7 million visitors. The most visited site was Evite with nearly 8 million visitors (up 16%), followed by AG Interactive with 6.7 million (up 46%), MyFunCards with 5.7 million, and 123Greetings with 4.3 million (up 55%).

Related Articles:

>Cyber Monday Deals Attract Online Shoppers

>Walmart Wins Thanksgiving, Amazon Wins Black Friday

>Online Retailers See Strong Cyber Monday Sales

Available at the APP Store, the new UPS Mobile APP for iPhone allows users to track shipments, create shipments using the My UPS address book, calculate shipping rates and time-in-transit.

The free shipping app is part of other UPS tools for Apple users. NRG Software, a UPS partner, has recently added NRGship Mac to its shipping software lineup as a Mac application.

"Apple users are an innovative group of customers who appreciate the capabilities that make the most of their devices," said Jordan Colletta, vice president of customer technology marketing at UPS.

"These new solutions help them take full advantage of the world’s largest package delivery company."

IPhone and iPod touch users can use their devices to access their UPS address book and preferences and create shipping labels, which can be emailed in a PDF file for printout. After printing the label, people can use the app’s "find locations" feature, which uses the built-n GPS to find a UPS location.

The iPhone App does not require login for tracking. When logged, the application shows a history of tracked shipments and automatically refreshes when the app is opened. 

Related Articles:

>Usage of Mobile Web And Apps Doubles In 2 Years

> Disney Rolls Out iPhone App

> Verizon CEO On iPhone: It’s Entirely Apple’s Call

"After reviewing the research and listening to our small-business customers, we realized there is a real need in the marketplace for an online printing platform that is easy to use, provides functionality geared to small businesses, and is supported by a convenient network of physical locations," said Stuart Mathis, president of Mail Boxes Etc., Inc. (MBE), franchisor of The UPS Store brand.

Users can access the service by logging onto The UPS Store website. They will be able to upload new documents or multiple documents, select printing options such as paper and binding and choose a location for pickup as well as a date and time for completion.

Click To View Demo

On the initial use, the first-time customer creates a profile to setup a secure workplace and virtual filing cabinet for future reprints. Each job is given a number for tracking the entire process. Payment is taken online, making pickup at the center quicker.

According to research firm InfoTrends, the growing interest in online print is changing the relationship between print buyers and print service providers.

"Online print is a trend that will only continue to expand," said Barb Pellow, group director at InfoTrends.

"Last year, print jobs that moved through the Internet made up 14 percent of the total U.S. printing market, and we project online printing will grow at an average rate of 24 percent per year from 2008 to 2011."

eBay sellers can now import their information into WorldShip without having to manually enter data. Sellers can export shipping data from WorldShip and automatically update their orders with UPS tracking numbers.

Jordan Colletta, UPS
VP of Customer
Technology Marketing

eBay  sellers can also process international shipments using UPS Paperless Invoice, an international shipping option within WorldShip. This option allows sellers to submit commercial invoices electronically, saving paper and speeding Customs clearance for their buyer’s orders.

"Direct data transfer of eBay order information to and from WorldShip provides sellers an easy way to ship UPS without the hassle of re-keying information. This frees up precious time for sellers to grow their business," said Jordan Colletta, vice president of customer technology marketing at UPS.

WorldShip is a Windows- based shipping software geared towards sellers who ship five or more packages per day.

"The Paperless Invoice capability within WorldShip and the seamless integration to eBay Selling Manager Applications are two great reasons for eBay sellers to take advantage of this professional productivity tool – all at no cost to the seller," added Colletta.

The platform is used by 270,000 online sellers in the U.S. to manage their business. eBay says it will no longer charge for its Selling Manager service in an effort to attract third-party developers.

eBay says more than 87,000 third party developers have already built more than 13,000 live applications that consume its Web services.

"The Selling Manager platform puts useful innovations from trusted developers in front of a large and receptive audience of customers at the point at which they are most inclined to buy," according to Max Mancini, senior director of the eBay Developer Program.

Developers interested in building application on eBay are required to meet site standards. Once approved their applications will be available to sellers that subscribe to eBay Selling Manager, and they can monetize their applications with subscription-based revenue.

UPS is the first transportation provider for the Selling Manager platform, and it is integrating its shipping software, WorldShip into eBay so sellers can mange shipping within My eBay at no cost.

"We are continuously evaluating ways to enhance our offerings to buyers and sellers," said Jordan Colletta, Vice President of e-Commerce Marketing, UPS.

"As a result, eBay sellers can now benefit from direct access to UPS from within the new eBay Selling Manager Applications beta. This enhancement streamlines the shipping process by eliminating the re-keying of information between eBay and UPS WorldShip."
 

Trust is such an important concept. This may be why, according to GetElastic.com, multiple pages in the checkout process converts better than a single page. Their data suggests that three pages or steps are optimal, converting at 6.2 percent.

Even seven pages or more (which is unbelievable to me, impatient jerk that I am) converts better than a one-step checkout process. Only one of the top 100 retailers use a one page checkout, and they convert the least at just 2.5 percent.

But why? Maybe it’s because one step seems too easy, just like a scam would seem too easy. Maybe it takes more steps to reassure a buyer, who is dealing with an invisible seller, that this deal is legit.

It would make sense, then, that providing the opportunity to actually converse with a human before a purchase could boost the chances of the purchase actually taking place. Conversations build trust and conversations look like they build conversions, too.

GetElastic has its own numbers on live chat in a nifty 46-page whitepaper on the entire checkout process, which can be downloaded in PDF or viewed in HTML, and includes data on shipping offers, coupons, security, et cetera.

"Live chat has the potential to bridge the customer service gap that exists between online shoppers and retailers," the authors say. "It can be the extra little push a shopper needs to get over any conversion hurdles that may exist such as purchase uncertainty, product questions, or technical and policy assistance."

But they’re still unsure about its actual efficacy, only slightly outperforming in the Apparel and High Ticket categories, and underperforming in every other. The authors attribute this "counter-intuitive" result to a potential annoyance factor, which can turn any would-be customer off.

Coremetrics and CompUSA have a different tale to tell on live chat, though. Coremetrics followed CompUSA’s implementation of InstantService’s live chat technology to make a case study of it. They found that website conversion rates went up by a factor of ten.

“By adding InstantService live chat to Compusa.com, we’ve given our customers the ability to communicate with a live agent who can help answer their questions,” said Al Hurlebaus, managing director of marketing and advertising at CompUSA. “This added value mirrors the in-store experience where customers rely on our knowledgeable salespeople to obtain assistance when they need it. "

Coremetrics’ analysis showed that 60 percent of visitors who chatted and added an item to the cart, did so from the most recently viewed category before initiating a chat session.

A keyword there might be "initiated," as in the customer initiated the chat session, cutting down on the annoyance factor mentioned by GetElastic. Nearly 54 percent of CompUSA customers ended up purchasing from the category they most recently viewed before chatting.

It is still unclear, though, whether CompUSA’s recent change in customer focus, from business-to-consumer to business-to-business had an impact on the results.

Jane Paolucci, VP of marketing for Coremetrics, shares some more numbers in an interview with WebProNews. She said that 68.5 percent of CompUSA customers chatted while browsing the site and that 32 percent chatted while in the shopping cart during the late stages of the buying process.

"Out of that," she said, "over 10 percent of those sessions convert to a sale, 10 times the average website conversion rate." Paolucci says that only 28 percent of ecommerce sites are currently offering live chat.

But they are "increasingly spending more money on technologies that are bringing them closer to their clients."   

Not to endorse one chat product over the other, here’s a Google search for "live chat widgets for ecommerce" to speed you along the chat discovery process should you think that’s right for your site.

In case you forgot, back when Paris Hilton launched her own special YouTube channel to promote her silly little song, purist YouTubers chimed in with their fears that the site would become too commercial.

Well, it’s too late for that now. It’s a marketer’s world these days, whether you’re selling hotel rooms or politics. But the burning debate surrounding video ads has been over whether pre-roll, mid-roll, or post roll ads were best.

Advertisers like pre-roll ads the best, but they can push the viewer to push the "Stop" button. People rightly assume viewers won’t stick around for post-roll. Mid-roll ads operate on the same premise as TV and radio ads – hook the viewer, make them wait a few seconds, and then get back to the content.

Google and YouTube know their touchy demographic, though. They won’t tolerate any in-video ads for long, if at all. This must be why they’re falling back on old standards: banners and pop-ups.

Yes, pop-ups.

If you have you’re Firefox browser tuned right, you won’t be able to see what Beet.tv’s Andy Plesser is pointing to. So use Internet Explorer or check out Plesser’s Dennis Kucinich video screen shot of the Best Western pop-up ad.

The banner ads seem more contextual. Click to view a Kucinich video and you may see a banner ad for YouTube’s latest baby, CitizenTube.

Though it seems backwards at first for such a Web 2.0 marketplace, it makes a lot of sense to do it this way. YouTubers just won’t tolerate their pure user-generated haven being interrupted constantly by in-vid advertisements.

The pop-ups may get annoying though. It will be interesting to see how the YouTube crowd responds. 

The ups:

• users feel they are part of the brand.
• they are more likely to push the brand and link to the site
• points are created free but give some perception of value
• users create free content for the site even when you are not doing so.
• some of their content will rank in search results. today I did a search for search engine marketing and saw Google listing a link for recent blog posts listing this post
• contributors might give you good marketing ideas or help you catch important trends before competitors do

The downs:

• people who spend lots of time contributing tend not to value their time too much AND are hard to profit from (especially in savvy marketplaces that ignore ads).
• having many relationships allows you to be a connector that knows someone for just about any job, but focusing heavily on building community and maintaining the many relationships needed to do so may hold you down on the value chain. A few strong relationships will likely create more value than many weak ones, especially as we run into scale related issues.
• if your site is not authorititative, user generated content may waste your link authority and lead to keyword canibalization
• if your site is authoritative many people will look for ways to leverage your domain or authority
• as you get more authoritative more people will try to exploit it. even friends get aggressive with it, and unless you call people out it gets out of control quickly.
• as you extend your commitments, spending time to police a site, it is harder to change course. I get frustrated when I see spam on the homepage of ThreadWatch, but I guess I can’t be surprised people do it, and due to database issues I am uncertain if I will be able to upgrade TW without just archiving the old information and switching to a new CMS.
• some people looking to promote their work may spam or aggressively associate your brand with the articles they wrote. For example, is this comment spam? Or is it good?

If a relationship is affiliate based it is quite easy to police undesirable activity by banning accounts, but if people are adding content to your site and marketing it aggressively in ways that may not bode well with your brand it might be harder to police it, especially as you scale your community. And typically the people that are most likely to give you crap for it are hypocritical with their beliefs.

I think on the whole a community section is a pretty good idea if you tie it into a paid content model, but even when you do that you will still run into scale issues if you provide any type of support for the paid content. I have over 600 emails in my inbox, and recently stopped advertising free consulting with an ebook purchase because I stopped scaling as a person. As your profits scale the opportunity cost of any one revenue channel become more apparent. That is one of the things which has prevented me from putting a forum or community section on this site.

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More background here and here, including a new ad format, text links:

Text links are hyperlinked brief text descriptions that take on the characteristics of a publisher’s page. Publishers can place them in line with other text to better blend the ad and promote your product.

For example, you might see the following text link embedded in a publisher’s recommendatory text: "Widgets are fun! I encourage all my friends to Buy a high-quality widget today." (Mousing over the link will display "Ads by Google" to identify these as pay-per-action ads).

Though the maximum length of a text link is 90 characters, we’ve found that shorter links perform better because they allow the publisher use the link in more places on her/his site and in different context. The maximum length is 90 characters but less than 5 words is best. Even better, just use your brand name to offer maximum flexibility to the publisher.

If they push this as hard as they did AdSense or search it is going to teach advertisers and publishers to create efficient conversion oriented content and sales funnels. It will fundamentally change the structure of the web.

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Google has added new features to Picasa Web Albums, its online photo storage service, and increased the storage for free accounts to 1 gigabyte (up from 250 megabytes). New features include easy embed codes for sharing your photos through email, instant messages and websites and being able to search for public photos.

Also, Blogger now integrates with Picasa, with all the images you upload to Blogger becoming part of a Picasa account of the same name, enjoying all the features of Picasa, as well as the one gigabyte storage limit. For now, all your photos going back to December are in Picasa, but Google aims to get everything you’ve uploaded into the system. Finally, some useful integration of Google services!

Of course, this means Blogger no longer has vaguely unlimited storage, so be prepared to pay up if one gig isn’t enough for you. Prices start at $25 for 6.25 gigabytes a year, and go up from there.

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