OrderDynamics Strengthens B2B Offering through New American Diabetes Association Site Launch
APRIL 30, 2012 – TORONTO, ON – OrderDynamics™, Canada's leading on-demand commerce platform provider, today announced that American Diabetes Association, a national not-for-profit organization that provides education about diabetes and funds diabetes efforts, has launched a business-to-business online storefront to match their existing business-to-consumer eCommerce site launched in 2010.
The American Diabetes Association’s (Association) B2B online storefront allows internal customers – volunteers and staff members – to order products using the same user friendly checkout found on www.shopdiabetes.org. The new B2B website also features a full integration with the Association’s existing enterprise business system, allowing for easy checkouts and allocation of each purchase to a specific project or event for budgeting and reporting purposes. Association staff can browse the online product catalog, follow guided navigation cues and use site search functions to find exactly what they are looking for, just like a standard B2C online storefront.
Moving from a legacy solution to the B2B capabilities within the OrderDynamics on-demand eCommerce platform allows the Association to control both B2C and B2B storefronts from a central backend, improving company efficiencies and website management. “We wanted to create an easy to use internal ordering system for our entire staff. The platform allows us to internally market to our staff nationwide, helping them to quickly and easily get the tools they need to continue working toward our mission,” said Lois Witkop, Senior Vice President of Marketing Communications at American Diabetes Association. “Having B2B and B2C sites running off the same eCommerce platform allows our organization to streamline order management and manage several eCommerce websites much more easily than ever before. We are confident this feature will help us become more efficient in working with our staff on our joint effort to Stop Diabetes®,” Witkop said.
“The American Diabetes Association’s new B2B launch represents some of the growing complexities and evolution in eCommerce,” said Michael Benadiba, CEO at OrderDynamics. “The Association’s needs allowed us to add to our B2B capabilities to offer retailers and organizations even more control of their online channel. We’re delighted to provide a solution that acts as the Association’s foundation for online sales,” Benadiba concluded.
OrderDynamics Guide to Email Marketing - Remarketing
With the growing popularity of the Email Marketing tool built into the OrderDynamics On-Demand eCommerce Platform, we wanted to share some tips and best practices on how to present a great email marketing campaign. Part one of this series touched on finding the right Text-to-Image Balance and can be viewed here. Today, the focus turns to Remarketing.
#2 Remarketing - Bringing Back the Customer that Leaves
In eCommerce, you create a fully optimized
website based on industry best practices, and engage in various marketing
initiatives to encourage people to engage with the site. Many people do shop,
some of them actually make purchases, but most don’t. According to a report
from Bronto, 2010 data from Forrester Research showed more than half of online
shoppers abandon their shopping cart before completing a sale, while more
recent data from SeeWhy reports cart abandonment is trending upward at over 70%
of shoppers checking out of eCommerce sites before checkout (no pun intended).
When someone has indicated enough of an interest to add products to a shopping
cart, but then leaves, how do you get them to come back?
Google recently released a supplement to
its Adwords program by the name of Remarketing. It’s not an entirely new
concept as there are many other companies who do the same thing: drop a cookie
on to a user’s computer when they visit your website so that your ads
subsequently follow them, even if a site they are viewing is of an unrelated
subject. Popularity is building with this method and it certainly stands out
when a banner for children’s toys is at the top of a webpage about fitness –
although it begs the question of whether or not you’re getting the kind of
attention you want as opposed to the kind that makes the shopper never want to
come back. It’s simply not enough to try to maintain share of mind when
someone’s interest is dwindling.
The key to pulling a customer in after
they’ve abandoned a shopping cart is to bring the shopper’s attention back
to items that had originally piqued their interest, rather than merely remind
them of your brand. Email retargeting allows a shopper’s abandoned cart to be
emailed to them with a friendly reminder of the specific items in their cart,
and that they are still available to them – a feature available on the
OrderDynamics™ eCommerce Platform. With specific reminders including a list and
pictures of the items, you can start to re-establish a relationship between the
shopper and the products they were so close to buying, and re-affirm an
emotional attachment to them by using specific cues with colours and images to
influence the aura of the email. You can
take this a step further by offering a coupon code or free gift as an
incentive, or create a sense of urgency with messages like “your cart is
expiring soon”.
Why does this work? It essentially gives the
customer a second chance. Sometimes after abandoning the cart they decide they
should have made the purchase after all, but don’t want to go through the
hassle of duplicating the cart. If you send them a link to the cart, they won’t
have to. Sometimes the customer truly loves the items they’ve picked out, but
they can’t justify spending the money. If you send them a coupon code or gift
with purchase, it makes the purchase more enticing and boosts perceived value
of it. Sometimes the customer is
overwhelmed by all the options on your site and just can’t decide what to
do. Presenting them with the specific
products they were initially interested in, without the distraction of others,
and knowing they will only be so readily available to them for a limited time
is the extra push needed to close the sale, and potentially bring them back to
shop again.
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OrderDynamics Guide to Email Marketing
Part 1 - Finding the Text-to-Image Balance
Part 2 - Remarketing - Bringing Back the Customer that Leaves
Meltdown Snowboard Shop Ices eCommerce Strategy with OrderDynamics
APRIL 26, 2012 – TORONTO, ON – OrderDynamics™, Canada's leading on-demand commerce platform provider, today announced that Meltdown Snowboard Shop, Canada’s fastest growing independent specialty snowboard shop, has selected OrderDynamics to power two online storefronts and a call center solution.
Meltdown Snowboard Shop currently operate several online properties in addition to two retail stores, and are famously known for their outstanding product knowledge, product selection, and dedication to customer service. Meltdown Snowboard Shop’s desire to promote the snowboarding lifestyle initiated the search for an eCommerce platform that could extend their store atmosphere to their online properties while also alleviating several issues with their outdated eCommerce solution.
“Our online storefronts need to reflect the same attention to detail and outstanding customer service our stores are known for. We needed an eCommerce platform that could bring our online presence to life and help differentiate our brand from our competition,” said Darius Kybartas, CEO at Meltdown Snowboard Shop. “From our first meeting with OrderDynamics, it was clear they understood our goals and offered the right toolset to ensure rapid online growth. The amount of experience and success OrderDynamics have working with many of Canada’s top online retailers made us feel comfortable they were the right vendor to partner with,” Mr. Kybartas continued.
The new Meltdown Snowboard Shop website will fully leverage the Highly Integrated Virtual Ecosystem (H.I.V.E™), a network of pre-built third-party integrations into the OrderDynamics eCommerce platform. Frontend integrations with shopping sites and social networks will play a large role in creating an information-rich website, while backend integrations with ERP and POS tools will streamline pricing and fulfillment, leading to an improved customer experience.
“Meltdown Snowboard Shop choosing OrderDynamics to re-launch their online storefront validates our commitment to providing Canadian retailers with an industry-leading eCommerce platform,” said Michael Turcsanyi, President at OrderDynamics. “The Meltdown Snowboard Shop team understands how to create a quality online experience and we’re eager to play a big role in driving their online growth,” Mr. Turcsanyi concluded.
Meltdown Snowboard Shop currently operate several online properties in addition to two retail stores, and are famously known for their outstanding product knowledge, product selection, and dedication to customer service. Meltdown Snowboard Shop’s desire to promote the snowboarding lifestyle initiated the search for an eCommerce platform that could extend their store atmosphere to their online properties while also alleviating several issues with their outdated eCommerce solution.
“Our online storefronts need to reflect the same attention to detail and outstanding customer service our stores are known for. We needed an eCommerce platform that could bring our online presence to life and help differentiate our brand from our competition,” said Darius Kybartas, CEO at Meltdown Snowboard Shop. “From our first meeting with OrderDynamics, it was clear they understood our goals and offered the right toolset to ensure rapid online growth. The amount of experience and success OrderDynamics have working with many of Canada’s top online retailers made us feel comfortable they were the right vendor to partner with,” Mr. Kybartas continued.
The new Meltdown Snowboard Shop website will fully leverage the Highly Integrated Virtual Ecosystem (H.I.V.E™), a network of pre-built third-party integrations into the OrderDynamics eCommerce platform. Frontend integrations with shopping sites and social networks will play a large role in creating an information-rich website, while backend integrations with ERP and POS tools will streamline pricing and fulfillment, leading to an improved customer experience.
“Meltdown Snowboard Shop choosing OrderDynamics to re-launch their online storefront validates our commitment to providing Canadian retailers with an industry-leading eCommerce platform,” said Michael Turcsanyi, President at OrderDynamics. “The Meltdown Snowboard Shop team understands how to create a quality online experience and we’re eager to play a big role in driving their online growth,” Mr. Turcsanyi concluded.
OrderDynamics Guide to Email Marketing - Finding the Text-to-Image Balance
With the growing popularity of the Email Marketing tool built into the OrderDynamics On-Demand eCommerce Platform, we wanted to share some tips and best practices on how to present a great email marketing campaign. Over the next few weeks, check back on the On-Demand eCommerce Blog for a new tenet on how to construct your emails and make sure they get read!
#1 Finding the Text-to-Image Balance
As it becomes increasingly easy to create your own images with tools like Photoshop and Illustrator, the tendency to format email newsletters as a whole image is appealing and less costly than employing a professional designer. It allows for elaborate backgrounds, fonts, and pictures to be incorporated in the message while ensuring everything looks exactly the way you put it together, no matter the browser, the email client or the device. However, what many companies drafting email campaigns don’t realize is that these splashy, image-based emails pose a greater disservice to them than producing a less elaborate email with more text.
A 2009 report from CampaignMonitor.com found that only 48% of images in marketing emails are automatically loaded without the recipient having to tweak their email client settings or respond to a “click here to download images” prompt. This means that only a portion of each email being sent is actually seen; and if the email you are sending out is comprised solely of images, recipients could be viewing a blank slate. Depending on the email client the recipient is using, they may not even know you sent them a message, as most email clients send image-ridden messages that aren’t already on a safe list directly to junk mail by default.
Does this mean that email messages must be boring blocks of text? Of course not. You still want readers to pay attention to what you have to say, and images are an integral part of that. The key is to create email messages that communicate all necessary information even if the images do not load, or – in other words – create messages with a text-to-image balance.
There should always be text present in an email to relay the pertinent information. Images in the message should be complementary, wherein they provide added value to the information already available via text – they should never be the entire focus or hold the bulk of the information in case they are never seen. However, this does not tackle the issue that when images are not allowed to be shown, the email is displayed in HTML format in which case a large, blank space with the image file name scribbled in the corner is all the recipient sees.
To supplement the vacant space, some of the most important bit of text you can place in your email is ALT-text – literally meaning alternative text. When emails are shown in HTML format, whatever copy has been used as ALT-text is displayed in place of the generic image file name within the empty space left behind from the image. ALT-text contributes to the text-to-image balance by showing something to the email client rather than giving it an image it can’t read, helping the message to potentially bypass the spam filters and land in the inbox so that it can be seen by the recipient.
Once the recipient opens the message, they still will likely see the message in HTML format until they tell the email client that the message is from a safe sender – naturally, the recipient has to actually want to add your company and future emails to a safe list. The presence of ALT-text where images should be essentially lets the recipient to read the image, allowing them to decide things like whether or not they want to download the images, whether they want to click through to your site, and whether they want to add you to their email safe list – the easiest way to bypass spam filters altogether.
#1 Finding the Text-to-Image Balance
As it becomes increasingly easy to create your own images with tools like Photoshop and Illustrator, the tendency to format email newsletters as a whole image is appealing and less costly than employing a professional designer. It allows for elaborate backgrounds, fonts, and pictures to be incorporated in the message while ensuring everything looks exactly the way you put it together, no matter the browser, the email client or the device. However, what many companies drafting email campaigns don’t realize is that these splashy, image-based emails pose a greater disservice to them than producing a less elaborate email with more text.
A 2009 report from CampaignMonitor.com found that only 48% of images in marketing emails are automatically loaded without the recipient having to tweak their email client settings or respond to a “click here to download images” prompt. This means that only a portion of each email being sent is actually seen; and if the email you are sending out is comprised solely of images, recipients could be viewing a blank slate. Depending on the email client the recipient is using, they may not even know you sent them a message, as most email clients send image-ridden messages that aren’t already on a safe list directly to junk mail by default.
Does this mean that email messages must be boring blocks of text? Of course not. You still want readers to pay attention to what you have to say, and images are an integral part of that. The key is to create email messages that communicate all necessary information even if the images do not load, or – in other words – create messages with a text-to-image balance.
There should always be text present in an email to relay the pertinent information. Images in the message should be complementary, wherein they provide added value to the information already available via text – they should never be the entire focus or hold the bulk of the information in case they are never seen. However, this does not tackle the issue that when images are not allowed to be shown, the email is displayed in HTML format in which case a large, blank space with the image file name scribbled in the corner is all the recipient sees.
To supplement the vacant space, some of the most important bit of text you can place in your email is ALT-text – literally meaning alternative text. When emails are shown in HTML format, whatever copy has been used as ALT-text is displayed in place of the generic image file name within the empty space left behind from the image. ALT-text contributes to the text-to-image balance by showing something to the email client rather than giving it an image it can’t read, helping the message to potentially bypass the spam filters and land in the inbox so that it can be seen by the recipient.
Once the recipient opens the message, they still will likely see the message in HTML format until they tell the email client that the message is from a safe sender – naturally, the recipient has to actually want to add your company and future emails to a safe list. The presence of ALT-text where images should be essentially lets the recipient to read the image, allowing them to decide things like whether or not they want to download the images, whether they want to click through to your site, and whether they want to add you to their email safe list – the easiest way to bypass spam filters altogether.
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OrderDynamics Guide to Email Marketing
Part 1 - Finding the Text-to-Image Balance
Toronto's Ecommerce Camp 9 Review
Another fantastic Ecommerce Camp has come and gone. Last night’s 9th "meet-up" featured a strong line-up of speakers including Erin Lubelsky from Dealuxe.ca, Jan Gandhi from Peacock Parade, Jacob Kennedy from Sears.ca, Matt Bertulli from Demac Media/Snugglebugz, Audrey Carr from Nurun, and Ted Starkman from The Shopping Channel.
Each of the speakers touched on various shopping cart abandonment tips and tactics they've tried with their respective organizations. In particular, Ted Starkman's message about keeping the checkout experience distraction free resonated with the majority of the audience, while Matt Bertulli's A/B test of credit card logo sizes revealed twice as many checkouts were completed with slightly larger Visa and Mastercard images. (Note: Matt was quick to note that Snugglebugz shoppers might behave differently from other site visitors.)
The different opinions and tactics provided an interesting commentary about the online world – something eCommerce professionals have long known – there is no single right method. Every site and its visitors are completely different and need to be treated as such.
OrderDynamics offered its experience in one-on-one talks about our experience with checkout conversion rates across our platform and metrics on testing that we’ve done. OrderDynamics have clients with peak gross conversion rates of 12%+ for pureplay merchants that have highly tested and tuned their checkout flow. Part of the core OrderDynamics platform is the ability to use an industry best practice stepped checkout with a single-page checkout form. Merchants can configure elements of the cart and checkout independently to test the impact of making these changes.
It is truly amazing to see first-hand the kind of growth this event has gone through. From being at the very first Ecommerce Camp three years ago with approximately 20 people (mostly OrderDynamics employees, probably) to upgrading venue size several times over. Last night's Ecommerce Camp saw more than 250 of Toronto's finest eCommerce and retail professionals pack the Courthouse (a new and highly successful venue).
For OrderDynamics, these events represent a healthy mix of partners, clients, and industry peers we collaborate with. While OrderDynamics sponsored Ecommerce Camp 8, last night's event was sponsored by our friends and H.I.V.E. partners Nextopia. It's also a great feeling to see a growing number of our Clients attend and speak at these events too.
These quarterly Ecommerce Camp events have allowed OrderDynamics to interact and network with some of Toronto's leading eCommerce professionals. It's because of events like these that we've been able to meet prospects (in some cases) and team up with highly regarded industry thought leaders like Paige Malling and Tanbir Grover - two insightful speakers that will be part of an eCommerce panel OrderDynamics President Michael Turcsanyi will moderate at the Retail Council of Canada's 2012 Store Conference in June (more on this in the coming weeks).
We eagerly await Ecommerce Camp 10 and can't wait to see the new and old faces there. Cheers to the organizers (full disclosure: OrderDynamics Founder and On-Demand Architect Steve Berkovitz is one of the event planners for Ecommerce Camp) on another great event.
Each of the speakers touched on various shopping cart abandonment tips and tactics they've tried with their respective organizations. In particular, Ted Starkman's message about keeping the checkout experience distraction free resonated with the majority of the audience, while Matt Bertulli's A/B test of credit card logo sizes revealed twice as many checkouts were completed with slightly larger Visa and Mastercard images. (Note: Matt was quick to note that Snugglebugz shoppers might behave differently from other site visitors.)
The different opinions and tactics provided an interesting commentary about the online world – something eCommerce professionals have long known – there is no single right method. Every site and its visitors are completely different and need to be treated as such.
OrderDynamics offered its experience in one-on-one talks about our experience with checkout conversion rates across our platform and metrics on testing that we’ve done. OrderDynamics have clients with peak gross conversion rates of 12%+ for pureplay merchants that have highly tested and tuned their checkout flow. Part of the core OrderDynamics platform is the ability to use an industry best practice stepped checkout with a single-page checkout form. Merchants can configure elements of the cart and checkout independently to test the impact of making these changes.
It is truly amazing to see first-hand the kind of growth this event has gone through. From being at the very first Ecommerce Camp three years ago with approximately 20 people (mostly OrderDynamics employees, probably) to upgrading venue size several times over. Last night's Ecommerce Camp saw more than 250 of Toronto's finest eCommerce and retail professionals pack the Courthouse (a new and highly successful venue).
For OrderDynamics, these events represent a healthy mix of partners, clients, and industry peers we collaborate with. While OrderDynamics sponsored Ecommerce Camp 8, last night's event was sponsored by our friends and H.I.V.E. partners Nextopia. It's also a great feeling to see a growing number of our Clients attend and speak at these events too.
These quarterly Ecommerce Camp events have allowed OrderDynamics to interact and network with some of Toronto's leading eCommerce professionals. It's because of events like these that we've been able to meet prospects (in some cases) and team up with highly regarded industry thought leaders like Paige Malling and Tanbir Grover - two insightful speakers that will be part of an eCommerce panel OrderDynamics President Michael Turcsanyi will moderate at the Retail Council of Canada's 2012 Store Conference in June (more on this in the coming weeks).
We eagerly await Ecommerce Camp 10 and can't wait to see the new and old faces there. Cheers to the organizers (full disclosure: OrderDynamics Founder and On-Demand Architect Steve Berkovitz is one of the event planners for Ecommerce Camp) on another great event.
OrderDynamics is Attending Ecommerce Camp 9 Next Week!
The next installment of Toronto's Ecommerce Camp is right around the corner - Monday April 16 at 6pm - and the OrderDynamics team will be there.
Ecommerce Camp 9 features speakers from Sears, Peacock Parade, Dealuxe, and The Shopping Channel discussing their checkout process and how their conversion rates are affected with various changes and tweaks.
If you've never attended Ecommerce Camp before, it's a free networking event and a great way to get meet peers in the eCommerce and online marketing community.
Ecommerce Camp 9 will be held at the Courthouse (57 Adelaide St. E) April 16th starting at 6pm. Click here to register for the event in advance (note: space is limited, so register early). See you there!
