Taylor Pratt at Marketing Pilgrim wrote about a study from e-consultancy that showed online retailers out-ranking offline retail for customer satisfaction. This may come as a surprise for many, but here’s why I think it makes sense. In the offline world, entering a retail store has become a crap-shoot. After enough poor experiences with under-trained [...]
I recently found myself in the market for a new point & shoot digital camera after putting my last one through the wash. It turns out that cameras don’t need to be laundered. I’m a huge fan of Canon’s Powershot point & shoots. Especially the ones with wide angle lenses because they’re great for indoor [...]
Matt Mantey from The Internet is Just a Fad has some examples of the weaknesses with Nordstrom’s online retail experience. While Nordstrom’s has an incredibly recognizable and respected offline brand, it doesn’t necessarily translate into comparable online success. If I was to guess, I think the problem faced by many large retailers trying to succeed [...]
Does online shopping always beat offline? Absolutely not. Here are a few examples of where offline trumps online shopping today. But first, a shout-out to online: While shopping for new running shoes on Amazon last night, I was able to filter by size so I didn’t waste time comparing shoes that didn’t fit me. That [...]
My Capital One credit card’s online account management service includes a customer service feature called, “Send us a Secure Message” that sounded like the perfect way to communicate with the credit card company before traveling to Uruguay and Argentina. While it isn’t required, I have run into issues in the past with credit cards when [...]
After shopping for a dishwasher online earlier this week, I’m thoroughly convinced that nobody is really taking this market seriously. The two biggest problems I found were a lack of consistent specs, and no highlighting or differentiating or key features and benefits. I ended up getting into this market after the motherboard fried in my [...]
Offering live chat on websites can be a great way to connect with customers, but like most tools, it’s only as good as the people using it. Take, for example, a recent experience I had with Home Depot where I decided to use the live chat feature to get answers to a few questions that [...]
Tomorrow is the unofficial kick-off of the holiday shopping season. What technology gifts are you hoping to receive this year? Do you have your eyes on a Kindle? Have you made it 5 months without an iPhone? Also, what tech gifts would you recommend for others?
Seth Godin think search engines still have a lot to room to grow when it comes to comparison type searches: Seth’s Blog: The haystack But they’re terrible at connections, at rankings, at horizontal results. They can’t help me find the 25 most important up and coming artists in the United States. They can’t help me [...]
Marketing Pilgrim has been on a user reviews kick lately as it pertains to online retail and has come up with some really interesting nuggets. The crux of the posts have been about whether user generated content on retail sites helps or hurts business. Are people more likely to buy from a site that has [...]
