2009 Community and Social Media Study

We are pleased to make available a PowerPoint presentation summarizing results of The First Annual Community and Social Media Study, conducted by the e-tailing group. In a succinct series of ten slides you will learn: The social tools that are a marketer's best bet for word-of-mouth marketing, the most effective tactics to mobilize brand advocates and influencers, the #1 social media tool for driving sales and customer engagement, ...and more.

Abe’s of Maine Leverages AnswerBox Solution to Acquire New Customers for Less than $24 CPA

Well known locally and globally, Abe’s of Maine has been selling cameras and digital electronics since 1979. With a prospering online business and a state-of-the-art warehouse and retail showroom in Edison N.J., the company serves its loyal customers across the United States with the top-notch service it has become famous for over the years. Abe’s of Maine stands true to its mission: “go out...

Discgear.com Boosts Product Conversion 74% with Tag-Based Customer Reviews

After a 2007 Nielsen study found that consumer recommendations are the most trusted form of advertising in the world, retailers everywhere began looking for ways to integrate user-generated reviews on their websites. Discgear was no exception, and sought a way to harness the power of social media to increase the sales of the CD and DVD storage cases it manufactures and sells both online and off...

Diapers.com: In-Line SEO™ boosts natural search traffic by 49 percent and search-based sales by 33 percent on Diapers.com

Eighty one percent of internet users find the web sites they're looking for through search engines. Not surprisingly, shopping sites acquire 26 percent of their traffic (on average) from search engines, making search engine optimization (SEO) a mission-critical, highly efficient source of traffic for merchants and manufacturers. With the rising use of search engines by consumers, the product page has become the...

NetShops: 26% increase in product sales from tag-based customer reviews

The University of Nebraska at Omaha conducted an empirical study on the effects of tag-based customer reviews on NetShops product sales. In addition, NetShops analyzed the conversion effects of using "Top-Rated Products" merchandising pages on their websites, and computed the "Total Cost of Ownership" of setting up and using the PowerReviews reviews solution. The findings to each are presented...

Diapers.com: User-Generated Product Reviews Turn Overwhelmed Browsers into Confident Buyers

With the ever-expanding number of products in the marketplace today, sorting through the seemingly infinite shelf-space of online stores has become a daunting task, and locating just the right product among them is like finding a needle in an ecommerce haystack. With more and more products being offered at the category level, it's hard for shoppers to figure out why one product should be clicked over another...

Brookstone: Optimized User Generated Content Increases Search Engine Rankings and the Bottom Line

With nearly 80% of internet traffic coming from search engines, online merchants are becoming increasingly dependent on high website positioning to achieve their site traffic and sales goals. But with the ever-rising cost of paid search traffic, merchants are focusing their efforts largely on acquiring organic search traffic to stay cost competitive in today's marketplace. One of the inherent problems with...

Evo: Customer Questions Provide Valuable Answers to Fellow Shoppers... and their Merchants

In the absence of comprehensive product information, customers are likely to abandon the shopping process and search for answers at competing sites or abandon the shopping process altogether if they can't easily resolve their specific concerns. As such, online merchandisers continuously strive to present the most thorough and useful product information possible, thereby enabling their customer...

Mountain Gear: Consumer-Generated Feedback Enhances Email Marketing

Email marketing is losing importance in shoppers' eyes and is becoming less effective in terms of performance. Not only are ISPs associating marketing emails with spam, but people have become desensitized to the frequent and predictable marketing messages that are filling their inboxes. In response, merchants are forced to send out increasingly higher volumes of email to combat the high deletion and low...