With another holiday shopping season upon us, maximizing product visibility in the e-Commerce market is one of retailers’ biggest hurdles. Keyword-rich product descriptions are important, but that alone won’t be enough to differentiate your product lists from your competition’s this holiday season.
It’s predicted this holiday season’s consumer online shopping spree will be US$ 54.47 billion. To capture a significant chunk of that, retailers must rethink their strategy for pushing their inventory through the digital static to the front of shoppers’ screens.
From ensuring your site is architecturally sound for top search engine rankings, to actively seeking out online customer reviews, retailers can make easy tweaks to their websites to ensure their inventory is in plain view.
Here are five defined strategies retailers can implement to boost their products’ visibility:
1. Have a Clear Website Blueprint
Before pouring time and money into search engine optimization efforts, make sure your website has an SEO-friendly foundation. Every website needs logical site architecture to ensure that search engine crawlers can index each page effectively. Consistency in your naming conventions, sitemaps, header tags, internal links and inbound links provides search engines with a clear blueprint of your site, allowing them to determine which keywords match your offerings.
Create clean informative page titles, metatags and spider friendly URLs. Without a thoughtful structure, search engines are forced to guess your specialty, resulting in unrelated, untargeted traffic onto your site.
2. Avoid Duplicate Content
Few pain points lower a website’s search ranking faster than duplicate content. Google and other search engines refrain from listing substantially similar web pages in search results, pushing websites loaded with redundant content further to the bottom, if not off the first page.
With many e-Commerce retailers battling holiday time constraints, repetitive content becomes a major issue. Too often, online merchants copy and paste manufacturer product descriptions onto their website to save time — that’s missing a unique opportunity to add SEO value. Always rewrite product descriptions to guarantee that they’re tailored to your site, that they speak to your specific audience’s needs and that they are rich with important keywords.
Be careful not to create duplicate content inadvertently by showing the same results on two separate URLs (for example, if the only shoes your website sold were Nike, but clicking on “shoes” or “Nike” yielded different pages with the same products). Avoid these SEO penalties by sketching out a logical taxonomy for your pages, using canonical URLs and having an easy-to-use redirect tool, so you don’t need to be a web programmer to correct the problem.
3. Quality Links Matter
It is no surprise that the Web churns out large amounts of spam; SEOmoz estimates around 60 percent of all web pages fall on the more questionable side of the trustworthy spectrum. In order to provide web users with the highest quality search results, search engines analyze links to gauge a website’s trust and popularity.
Collecting link-backs from popular and highly trusted domains boosts your own site’s credibility, resulting in a significant increase in your SERP ranking. Links from industry-specific websites versus links from general or irrelevant sites speak louder to your own reputation, and boost your site’s placement above the fold. Google also considers internal links when evaluating your page rank, so be sure to incorporate internal links in your overall linking strategy.
Mitt Romney's private equity firm might be a symbol of corporate greed in a fierce political season, but Bain Capital Ventures invested early and deeply in companies you probably patronize all the time.
Here’s what you probably know about Bain Capital, the private equity company cofounded by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 1984: It buys up shares of companies like KB Toys and Dunkin’ Donuts, offering sweet bonuses to board members and loading the company up with debt in order to finance “dividend recapitalizations.” Maybe you read Rolling Stone's piece in late August about how Bain’s financial moves helped net Romney some of his fortune and left a trail of laid-off long-time employees in its wake. Even the Wall Street Journal in 2009 produced a list of 11 companies affected by dividend recaps, and Bain made the list twice as an investor in KB Toys and Warner Music Group. During tonight’s first presidential debate between Romney and President Barack Obama, you’ll probably hear the name Bain Capital often enough to fuel an energetic drinking game.
Now here’s what you probably don’t know: If you’re a fan of receiving quick shipments from Amazon, use Apple’s iCloud to store your favorite songs, or recently updated your LinkedIn profile, you’ve boosted the bottom line of Bain Capital.
Let’s connect the dots.
How do you think that box from Amazon (a Fast Company Most Innovative Company) gets outside your front door just 48 hours after you place an order--with free shipping, to boot? You’ve got Massachusetts-based Kiva Systems (another Most Innovative Company) to thank for that, and Kiva Systems has Bain Capital Ventures to thank for most of the seed money that got it off the ground. Kiva created a fulfillment model based on burly, but compact, orange robots that shuttle stacks of inventory around massive warehouses.
If you’ve recently purchased the iPhone 5 or upgraded your legacy device to iOS 6, you’re taking advantage of the software’s cloud-based music management properties developed by Lala, a company backed by BCV that was acquired by Apple (another MIC--you seeing the trend here?) in 2009. BCV led multiple financing pushes, including the Series A round in January 2005, that helped move the company’s business strategy from CD-swapping to cloud-based uploading and licensing of songs. Apple acquired the company for $80 million in December 2009 after bidding against Google.
Over half of the $103 million in venture funding LinkedIn raised from 2003 until its IPO in 2011 came in 2008 when Bain Capital Ventures and three other companies made a Series D investment. That round of funding helped the business networking service expand by nearly a factor of 10--from just over 100 employees to 1,000, and from 17 million members to 100 million.
While Bain Capital Ventures has over 100 companies in its portfolio, and each has its own story, Bain’s work with Kiva Systems from 2004-2012 seems standard enough to be educational. And it resulted in Kiva founder Mick Mountz’s fully formed company being purchased by Amazon in March for $775 million, netting BCV a hefty windfall.
Ajay Agarwal was Bain’s top venture executive on the Kiva Systems project and doesn’t want to ruffle the feathers of other companies in the portfolio, so he hesitates to rank it in the company’s top-5 all-time, saying, “We’ve been involved in a lot of successful companies, it depends on how you measure it” before rattling off BCV connections with LinkedIn, Doubleclick, Liberty Dialysis, and SolarWinds. (There’s Tennis Channel, Vonage, Princeton Review, Minute Clinic, and others, too.)
“But we were investors pre-revenue, and we were the largest shareholder, and … the absolute return on dollars was significant,” he says, unable to reveal specifics. “The limited partners and folks at our firm were thrilled about it, it was a very good outcome and an outstanding outcome for Mick and his team.”
Agarwal is being modest when he says 99% of the credit goes to Mountz and his colleagues, who wrote the code and built robot prototypes that made order fulfillment more efficient for warehouses. In fact, Bain’s long-standing connection with Staples led to an important trial run for Kiva.
“Bain’s venture capital group is a fund inside of the larger Bain Capital, and the private equity portfolio they had included companies like Toys-R-Us, Burlington Coat Factory, Michael’s, and a bunch of others,” says Mountz. “We felt as a small startup, if we were out trying to pitch our idea and get some reviews, their portfolio would serve as a natural backstop because they’d worked with so many businesses that were attractive to Kiva.”
So with funding came customer introductions but also an important vote of confidence that helped the startup allay clients’ concerns about handing over their precious warehouse inventory to robots. Even after hearing Mountz's pitches in 2005 and 2006, Agarwal says, “No one wanted to be the first guy to have this worst-case nightmare of robots running amok in their warehouse--no matter how compelling the value proposition was.” So BCV helped get Mountz an audience with Don Ralph, Staples' top executive for logistics in North America.
Once Kiva Systems proved itself with Staples, more clients like Walgreens and Diapers.com followed.
After a few years, what some potential investors saw as a $100 million risk started generating cash with just a third of that investment. Eventually it became an appealing target for Amazon.
“With a modest investment and long-term patience they were able to create a sizeable business that employs a lot of people,” says Mountz (over 300 in the Boston area), noting that Kiva also makes its robots and ships some of them to European installations. “[Bain’s] been able to create a mini jobs engine in the Boston area and a manufacturing exporter.”
In the final phase of Bain’s involvement with Kiva, it was a key advisor on hiring decisions--COO, CFO and others, something with which Mountz says he was glad to have help. And Agarwal says the Kiva timeline is a fair representation of how Bain Capital Ventures works with most companies.
“We are very active investors on the venture side,” says Agarwal. “Fifty percent of our investments are early stage, first institutional funding or Series A, and 50 percent are more growth-oriented. In both cases we tend to be the largest institutional shareholder, we tend to be the most active member on the board and the lead director on the board.” Investments from private equity companies like Bain Capital don’t always work out, as some stories have noted and you’re likely to hear tonight. For Mountz a notable list of others, it clearly did.
“It’s another business model, like selling insurance is a business model, they all have their pros and cons,” Mountz says. “Selling hamburgers is another business model that’s killing Americans if you believe that movie [Super Size Me]. But the things private equity guys are doing inside the businesses they buy are the exact same things that good management teams inside any business are doing anyway.”
So if you do play that drinking game tonight, remember that no matter which side of the aisle you support, the shot glass you use might not have made it into your hands without Bain Capital.
With the recent official kick off of the NFL season, now seems like the perfect time to talk about what we can learn from the NFL in terms of teamwork and enterprise collaboration.
At this point, many of you are probably conjuring up images of your high school coach (of any sport) or maybe even one of the great ones from the big league, such as legends Vince Lombardi or Tom Landry. Some of the most inspiring “team” lessons on the field have come from these and other great coaches over the years.
Lessons from the Field
Today, however, I want to focus on what we can learn from behind the scenes at the NFL. Whether you like the product or not, you have to be impressed each season at how the whole thing just comes together. Most fans just take it for granted, but as a student of “process” and “collaboration,” I see it as a carefully orchestrated symphony, where all the players and instruments must come together at exactly the right moment, or disaster ensues. Ok, maybe the symphony is not the best analogy for the NFL, but you get the point.
Let’s set aside scouting, the draft, money and all other factors and focus on just one game. Obviously each team is responsible for its own stadium and organization, but for simplicity, we’ll assume for this example that most are alike.
There are thousands of people involved in getting everything ready for what amounts to a 3-hour event on a given Sunday. In no particular order there are: security, concessions, parking, ticket sales, suite services, grounds crews, AV staff, officials, players, press, broadcasters, radio, TV staff and more!
How Sunday Night Happens
Many of us have had challenges managing a team of five, let alone 5,000. So how does it work or perhaps more importantly, why does it work?
Here are a few broad observations from a collaboration and project management view:
1. Defined Scope
An NFL game must be the most defined project scope ever: get two teams to play a previously scheduled game according to a strict set of rules (profitably).
2. Get Everyone on the Same Page
Look around at an NFL game. I don’t know how they communicate or what technology they use to do so, but you’ll rarely find staff unsure of what’s happening. There’s a strict schedule, and everyone seems to know it (why does it feel that there aren’t a lot meetings taking place?).
3. Plan Plan Plan
The beauty of some of these games is in how easy things seem to go, but you and I know that is the result of careful planning. They seem to have contingency plans for everything (from triple overtime to lightning storms).
4. Team Members Know their Roles
For this one, we can start on the field. There aren’t a lot of offensive linemen running down the field on a slant to haul in a touchdown pass. Even most of the fans seem to know their roles: stay in the seat, spend lots of money and don’t try to play the game (I said most fans).
5. Clear Milestones and Deadlines
There are very clear milestones and deadlines for a game. Water the grass too late (or vacuum the turf?) and the teams can’t play. Open the parking too late and the traffic can effect a whole city.
As you sit down to enjoy a game, think back to April when the NFL released its schedule and think of everything that had to happen prior to Sunday to make it all possible. You might have to pause your DVR to take it all in. Then on Monday, when you return to face your own projects, keep in mind the basic principles of why something such as the NFL works on such a massive scale. It might give you a whole new perspective on Monday morning quarterbacking.
Following the vacation season, DAM news is beginning to bloom again: updates for WebDAM, FocusOpen and Razuna, MediaBeacon and Aspera join forces, experts look at digital asset management trends.
WebDAM, FocusOPEN, Razuna
WebDAM Solutions has launched new features for its digital asset management solution. Designed to increase efficiency and streamline productivity, the new features include the ability to present and control PowerPoint presentations inside WebDAM, and to have WebDAM handle format conversion for downloads. The new capabilities come on top of collaboration functions added in July.
Open-source DAM vendor FocusOPEN has updated version 3.4.3.1 of their system. New features include preview rollers, API extensions and security improvements, plus a variety of bug fixes.
And another open-source DAM solution, Razuna, has announced user interface changes designed to make the system “more intuitive and easier to navigate.” The files detail page now combines info in one place, for instance, an entry page has been added, and folder navigation has been cleaned up.
MediaBeacon, Aspera Get Together
DAM solutions provider MediaBeacon and high-speed data transport vendor Aspera have announced a global partnership and technology integration. “MediaBeacon’s robust search tools let users find what they’re looking for,” Aspera’s vice president of marketing Richard Heitmann said in a statement, “and Aspera delivers the digital assets at line-speed.”
DAM Trends, Need to Know
Extensis’ DAM expert Edward Smith took a look at digital asset management trends last week here at CMSWire.com — including larger collections, integration with other systems and increased server-side/cloud processing.
And DAM pro Henrik de Gyor surveyed What a Digital Asset Manager Needs to Know on Tuesday. One of our favs: “Love information and data. Really. It may not love you back, but it is a give and take relationship. You get what you put into it….”
While the hot weather is hanging on in NYC, this week marked the end of vacation for many as students went back to school and the mobile device announcement season kicked into high gear.
Our contributors helped launch the beginning of the school year with some looks at how to put data to work for you, future trends in the digital asset management world and an explanation of just what semantic web technologies are and what they do (and a hint at how they will change the future of enterprise information management).
If you're like me and you miss the syllabuses from schooldays, consider this yours for the week.
Bob Clary (@webucator): As an avid Google Analytics user, I sometimes find myself overwhelmed with all of the data! I could spend days and days trying to determine actionable steps to help improve my website and online marketing endeavors, but that's just not realistic. I'm sure it's the same for you. So I want to provide you with four actionable steps you can do right now within your Google Analytics account.
Virginia Backaitis:There’s a difference between a big pile of data and Big Data.
It’s hard to believe that this needs to be said. But try this. Ask someone what Big Data is and see if you don’t hear words like petabyte, exabyte, zettabyte, yottabyte and the like dominate their answers. Most common definitions of Big Data revolve around quantity and data/information storage.
Diane Buzzeo: Last year, customers turned to e-Commerce retailers in record numbers for their holiday shopping — outpacing forecasts with a 25 percent increase in online sales. According to eMarketer, 2011’s e-Commerce boost warranted a 2012 online shopping prediction of US$ 224 billion, up more than 15 percent from 2011. With the gifting season creeping closer, it’s time for e-Commerce retailers to get their holiday promotion strategies into shape.
Simplicity for the customer causes complexity for the organization.
When Manish Chandra was launching Poshmark, a shopping party app, one of the design decisions he faced related to the payment system. It was relatively easy to plug PayPal in. However, Chandra was focused on making everything really easy for the customer. So, instead of using PayPal, his developers spent two months developing a system where payments could be made in two clicks.
The result of Chandra's relentless pursuit of simplicity for the customer was a mobile app that has been a big hit.
It is officially party season for gadget lovers, as Amazon joins all the other major smartphone and tablet makers with an event to announce its latest wares, scheduled for early next month.
Reorganize Your Diary
Add another date to your burgeoning diary for media phone or tablet events in the next few weeks. Amazon is inviting the press to a major launch on 6 September in Santa Monica, with the likely topic of discussion being the Kindle Fire 2 and, maybe, an Amazon smartphone.
So, just to refresh your memory, the launch event line up is as follows:
With all these devices hitting the shelves shortly after their announcements, the stores will be packed with new product, review sites will be screaming the scores out, and the typical consumer might feel rather put upon by all the pressure to upgrade to a new phone.
We also have HTC possibly launching a 5inch-screen One X model, then there's the Windows 8 tablet launch in October, making it a very busy selling period. What it does mean is that the older generations of devices will be being sold for great bargain prices come the Black Friday holiday sales, as stores try to clear old stock.
With the recent official kick off of the NFL season, now seems like the perfect time to talk about what we can learn from the NFL in terms of teamwork and 
While the hot weather is hanging on in NYC, this week marked the end of vacation for many as students went back to school and the 