Marketing

Sarah Worsham / Feb 12, 2014

The Untapped Opportunities for B2B eCommerce

W.W. Grainger branch 2915 Boardwalk Ann Arbor ... — W.W. Grainger branch 2915 Boardwalk Ann Arbor Michigan 48104-6765 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The viability of consumer eCommerce is a no-brainer. What’s often forgotten is B2B (business to business) eCommerce, but sites like Amazon.com are starting to fill the gaps left by others. While B2B purchases tend to be much larger than consumer purchases, and the sales cycle is longer, customers still want the convenience of going to a website to make the final sale, purchase supplemental parts/pieces, or be involved in the purchase cycle. eCommerce sites don’t have to disrupt the B2B purchase cycle which is based on relationships and trust — they can be used to automate processes and increase customer satisfaction. W.W. Grainger, which is a supplier of industrial parts and equipment, is an excellent example of B2B eCommerce.

For more on the opportunities of B2B eCommerce, Practical eCommerce has this article:

Many B-to-B companies have long believed that ecommerce would create channel conflicts between sales personnel, suppliers, and other channels. But in reality, B-to-B sales channels are already disrupted by ecommerce. Manufacturers are selling directly to consumers. Manufacturers and distributors are selling products on AmazonSupply.com, Alibaba.com, and other portals to other businesses. Wholesalers are consolidating rapidly because they are caught in the channel chaos. — B-to-B Ecommerce: Big Opportunity, with Obstacles by Dale Traxler

Sarah Worsham / Jan 31, 2014

Getting Your Ads More than Seen

There’s a great post over at MarketingProfs that dissects an eye-tracking study to show where on a web page ads are most likely to be seen:

Advertisers looking to boost the effectiveness of their digital display ads should be focusing on in-content units, nontraditional placements, contextually relevant creative, and above-the-fold locations, according to recent data from Infolinks. — Eye-Tracking Study: How to Beat Display Ad Blindness by Ayaz Nanji

Having your ad get seen is just half the battle — the next problem is to get someone to actually take action (click, mouseover, etc.). While there certainly is some value in getting an ad seen (if they look at it long enough to read and understand), most advertisers want people to take action and click the ads. MarketingProfs analysis of the study didn’t include any click data. The assumption is that people will be more likely to click in places they are more likely to look. Is this true?

Will these types of results lead to even more advertising that is difficult to distinguish from content? How will that impact how people interact with advertising?

Another question I have is whether there is any impact with having so many ads on the page. If you only have one ad on the left (a typical ad place), but it doesn’t look like a typical ad, will people be more likely to look? It seems like a page that’s full of advertising is going to saturate what a visitor will look at.

One of the key findings from the study is that people completely block out areas of the page that they believe have ads (especially if there are ad-looking things there). This should be an important consideration for the design of sites without ads — make sure people don’t think you have ads in ad-places if you want them to look there.

Sarah Worsham / Jan 30, 2014

Does the Facebook News Feed Algorithm Leave Out Lurkers?

FACEBOOK LIKE (Photo credit: owenwbrown)

There’s been much news about the Facebook News Feed Algorithm which seems to remove posts from most of our friends and the pages we’ve liked — some might claim for reasons of wanting people to buy promoted posts. While Facebook claims that the changes are to boost engagement — claiming that people are more likely to make updates when they see updates from others (but not from pages) — I think this leaves out a huge chunk of the Internet/Facebook audience — The Lurkers.

If you manage a Facebook Page for you ecommerce business, you may have noticed your organic reach and engagement has tanked lately. Analysis of the Internet Retailer 500 Facebook Pages shows engagement sunk 27% in 2013 vs 2012, and rumors abound that Facebook’s News Feed algorithm is increasingly hiding Page posts to force marketers to pay for exposure in the News Feed. — Hacking the Facebook News Feed Algorithm by Linda Bustos

Lurkers are people who read and consume content — probably even regularly, but never share, like or comment on it. They find the content valuable enough to consume, but not enough to take an action. Many people just aren’t the type of person that feels comfortable with commenting or sharing online. But they do find content valuable, and sites that can provide valuable content regularly are useful to this type of content consumption.

If Facebook discounts people who just read content (maybe not even clicking on the links), and removes that content from feed — is that providing a service to that type of person? My argument is that is not. Even the least Internet saavy has noticed that Facebook is “tampering” with their feeds. Will this make Facebook less useful in general? Time will say, but I certainly have seen the impact in my own content consumption — preferring to get content from my feed reader, Feedly, or maybe even Google+ which doesn’t filter my feed.

What do you think?

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