WebLinc just launched the brand new mobile commerce site for Free People, a division of Urban Outfitters Inc. The new site fully replicates the experience customers have come to expect from Free People, and now with the aid of their smartphones, shoppers can access the site from just about anywhere.

A few things make this site and WebLinc’s capabilities different from other mobile development companies. For starters, there’s a shared cart. This means if customers log in from their phone and place items in their cart, then go to any other computer and log in, those items will still be in their cart.

There’s no product or content syncing needed between the mobile site and the non-mobile site. All the product data is exactly the same. Using the WebLinc Direct admin area, administrators can also choose to “hide” products and/or categories from the mobile site if they want. And all of the site’s discounts and promotions work on the mobile site, too.

On the front-end, customers are able to browse and purchase products, place and track orders, sign up for the email newsletter, sign up for an account, manage their wish list, search for a friend’s wish list and much more.

The site debuts a collection of beautiful apparel, displayed simply and attractively, allowing for the clothes to be the star of the site experience. A Look Book lets shoppers leaf through the online catalog, with links to product pages for each of the showcased fashions. Within each product page are multiple views and zooms of the high-end clothes. The site’s Share functionality lets shoppers share their discoveries using email, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and more, ensuring maximum exposure for the young brand.

Infinity Resources, Inc., already a leading online retailer known for their competitive prices and diverse offering of books, DVDs, CDs, and video games on deepdiscount.com, selected WebLinc to redesign and re-launch their online presence. The new site is a testament to the scalability of the WebLinc Direct eCommerce platform, as Deep Discount has expanded their eCommerce product catalog to include fragrances, costumes, party supplies and electronics. Deep Discount (deepdiscount.com) is #105 on the Internet Retailer Top 500.

WebLinc also developed and launched the new site for Brodart Library Supplies featuring tool sets and functionality unique to sites catering to B2B audiences. New functionality includes tiered pricing based on quantity, with volume pricing that changes at the product page level. In addition, WebLinc developed a dynamic option configurations represented by a series of drop-downs, allowing shoppers to easily create and order Brodart’s customizable shelving products.

Brooklyn Industries is a cutting-edge design company that sells its innovative clothes exclusively through its 12 retail stores and its new eCommerce site, built on WebLinc Direct. The site features a litany of new features including Shop By Look functionality, quick views, rollover zooms, customer reviews, advanced product “fit guides,” and more.

Misook.com is the new home for Exclusively Misook, a line of 100% wrinkle-free and machine-washable women’s apparel. The site represents the second eCommerce site developed by WebLinc for the HMX Group in Chicago, America’s leading tailored clothing company.

WebLinc anticipates launching an additional six new eCommerce sites prior to the end of the first quarter of 2010.

According to a survey taken by ComScore Inc. shoppers are responding to customer submitted product reviews in much higher numbers than in years past. We have seen product reviews getting love here, but seeing it happen market-wide to retailers both large and small just makes it that much more apparent and important. People shopping on the web are becoming more savvy to the limitations of in-store shopping and using the resources offered to make more informed decisions before taking the bait.

A smaller but still significant amount of people are members of company Facebook pages or using their friend’s Facebook recommendations to shop (6% and 7% respectively) while others still are following Twitter for deals and gift ideas.

“I think we are getting our first real glimpse at the impact social media will play on commerce as we enter the next decade.” – comScore chairman, Gian Fulgoni.

There is still a lot of ground to cover but with Twitter opening up the firehose for more 3rd party applications, Google search going real time and Facebook actually starting to generate revenue as ad spending in offline sources like print and television decline, this trend has nowhere to go but up.

Google Goes Real Time

What does that mean for ecommerce, though? First and foremost it means get on Twitter, Facebook and Myspace and use them to your advantage. It means stay abreast of the shopping space you are a part of. It means use Twitter to provide coupons and Facebook to dish out Promo codes. It means create an incentive for customers to not only pay attention (and by proxy lend credibility) to you, but to actively engage your business. You obviously can’t personally reply to every single Facebook message or tweet that mentions you, nor should you, but you can certainly foster a conversation with and among your customers to create and exploit this unprecedented level of interactivity.

“Our users will get the results as they are produced.” – Amit Singhal

Another thing you have to pay attention to is that even though you’re working on getting your copy right and code clean and keywords in place – you may still be trumped when a twitter link scrolls in and takes your bite. This is the flipside of the nearly hypodermic interaction that social media applications create between you and your customer and, if you aren’t careful, can serve to take your business and branding out of the equation. But again, making sure you are an active and positive member of these communities will help to bring in these wandering members of your herd.

In so much as the aforementioned sounds alarming, this next bit should sound quite comforting (hopefully.) If you’re reading this, you’re probably aware of and stay on top of your Twitter account, regularly update your facebook page, check your industry blogs and update your own blog. If that is the case your reward will be top billing on Google, thanks to your adoring fans, in addition to a savvy marketing campaign (and also, how cool is this feature??)

If not, well, there is no time like the present…

Numbers are impressive across the board:

• One WebLinc client had their best day ever in terms of revenue generated.
• Another retailer saw the number of transactions rise by 44%.
• One retailer saw a 30% increase in site traffic over traffic from the week before.

Lastly, a client who’s been using WebLinc Direct for several years saw a 51% jump in number of orders, versus the same time period last year. This is a testament to the scalability of WebLinc Direct, proving that the solution we put in place today can grow and adapt to your business needs in the future.

Adding videos to your eCommerce site is easy to do using the WebLinc Direct eCommerce platform. There’s no need to involve WebLinc from a technology perspective. Once the video is produced, users can add the video directly to their sites using the content administration area. One great example comes from WebLinc client Mighty Leaf, who recently began selling a Tea Top Brew Mug. You can find a video that demonstrates how the new mug works on the item’s product page, as well as through callouts throughout the Mighty Leaf site. Mighty Leaf also does a great job promoting the video through Facebook and Twitter, making sure the efforts that went into producing the video don’t go unrewarded.

Helping Thomas prepare for future sales through eCommerce presented several challenges that WebLinc met head-on. One of those challenges was accurately reflecting different pricing structures across their wide and disparate customer base. This is a common issue for companies that have grown in more traditional sales environments, where sometimes different deals are made even within different departments of the same institution. The site now provides the right pricing per customer login, and also allows for approval routing that enables a primary account holder to approve the spend limits of sub-account holders.

Incorporating Thomas’s vast catalog meant the site needed to house many thousands of products across a variety of different product types — from beakers to chemicals to spectrophotometers. And within each of those those products could be dozens of options. Helping Thomas’s customers easily find exactly the right supplies was crucial — their scientific experiments depend on it.

Thomas Scientific’s new site also contains tools to help customers track their spending against grants they’ve received, easily categorize and re-order products through shopping lists, and generate competitive quotes from the company’s sales and customer service departments.

The flexibility of WebLinc Direct ensures that we can solve the demands specific to your business. For more information, please call 215-925-1800, or contact us through our website.

Says Megan Koons, web marketing analyst at Free People:

“I have noticed that the reviews are a bit more creative. Customers seem to be excited at the thought of possibly becoming a ‘Top Featured Reviewer’ in the future.”

The blog post went on to say that Free People saw a staggering 93% increase in review volume in the first week of launch.

The WebLinc Direct eCommerce platform is flexible enough to allow clients like Free People to take advantage of marketing innovations with little or no ongoing technical assistance.  To learn how WebLinc can help your business capitalize on emerging trends, contact us here.

One common mistake is showing only one product image. This is especially important for apparel stores, where the product imagery likely does more to sell the product than anything else. Says Smashing Magazine:

This one’s simple: include more images. Four or five images of each product are ideal, offering enough views to allow a consumer to feel comfortable that they know exactly what they’re getting.

Another common mistake is not including related products on product pages. Just as an in-store mannequin shows customers how different products look when worn together, product-page cross-sells and suggestions can go along way in increasing total order size:

Use an ecommerce platform that lets you include related products on product description pages. A platform that will let you manually choose related products can also give you a big advantage, since you may see relations that a software program doesn’t (such as coordinating clothing pieces to create an outfit).

Cross-sells are important for all kinds of products — from clothing to scientific equipment to consumables. The WebLinc Direct eCommerce platform includes the ability to easily manage cross-sells on product pages, as well as up-sells on cart pages. For a demonstration of how WebLinc’s cross-sell and up-sell technology works, contact us here.

]]> http://blog.weblinc.com/15-common-ecommerce-design-mistakes/feed/ 0