 June 2010 Cover story:
The 2010 Internet Retailer Top 500—the big get bigger
The results are in and they show the largest online retailers took market share during recession-wracked year 2009. The Top 500 online retailers sold nearly 11% more last year, while e-commerce as a whole grew only about 2%. Even without Amazon, the leading e-retailers outpaced the market. That's just one of many insights in this summary of data from the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, the most authoritative ranking of e-retailing. This much-anticipated feature highlights the top performers among web-only retailers, retail chains, consumer goods manufacturers and catalogers. This special section also profiles the best of the best, and provides insights into the secrets of their success.
Twice the number of Top 500 retailers are selling to consumers via their mobile phones this year than a year ago. This story examines their strategies, the features of their mobile sites and apps, and where they're finding mobile expertise. And it will report on how m-commerce team fits into the org chart.
Social marketing: The elusive ROI of social media
Marketing on social networks is an inexpensive way to reach millions of consumers. But do they want to be reached on Facebook and Twitter? This story will examine the costs in staff time and technology, and weigh them against the benefits retailers have realized from their social marketing initiatives.
 Rich media: Mining the riches of rich media
Consumers want to see products in every detail, and making that possible remains one of the biggest challenges for online retailers. As a result, rich media is among the biggest areas of investment by e-commerce technology providers. This story will look at the latest advances in rich media and report on how consumers respond to them—and whether they're worth the investment.
Search engine optimization: Five tips for moving up in Google search results
Google is constantly changing how it displays search results and modifying its ranking rules—without letting marketers in on its secrets. This story will report on some of the latest changes to provide five tips for winning on Google.
Cross-channel marketing: Finding useful information in oceans of data
With each new consumer touchpoint more data accumulates—and the challenge of getting a single view of the consumer becomes more complex. This story will look at the latest technology advances, how retailers are using them, and the benefits they realize from having a complete view of their customers' behavior.
E-commerce developments: How the top women in e-retailing made it to the top
This story will draw on an exclusive Internet Retailer survey of women in e-commerce to document their experiences, the obstacles they've faced and their tactics for getting ahead. It will also profile women leaders and highlight their advice for younger women. It will also look at how the pay of women e-retail executives compares to that of their male counterparts.
Web site design: What does it cost to redesign a retail web site?
This story will report on the experiences of retailers that have redesigned their web sites in-house and those that have used outside firms to explain how to cost out a redesign. It will include the considerable time that retailer personnel will have to spend on the project, even if an outside firm is doing much of the design work and highlight key pitfalls to avoid.
Fulfillment: Want to offer free shipping? Plan out fulfillment now
 This story will examine how retailers plan ahead so they can make shipping offers without cutting too deeply into margins. It will provide tips on negotiating deals with carriers, technologies that optimize shipping methods, and how sharing plans with carriers can help keep costs down.
Multichannel strategy: The once-lowly store locator becomes a selling toolAs more consumers research on the web before shopping in stores, more of them visit the store locator page to find addresses, maps, phone numbers and hours. Recognizing that those web pages get a lot of visits, some retailers are spiffing them up. This story will examine what retail chains gain from turning store locator pages into marketing tools, and what it costs to keep information up to date and respond to customer queries.
E-commerce developments: Money talks – what executives' paychecks say about online commerceThis exclusive Internet Retailer survey of the compensation of e-retail executives will show how retailers value their e-commerce leaders. Based on an analysis of the annual compensation reports of publicly traded retailers, this story ranks the highest-paid execs, show how they fared in the tumultuous year just past and analyze what these figures show about the place of e-commerce in major retail organizations.
 Mobile commerce: QVC's mobile trifectaTV and the web have been the sales channels for QVC, and mobile is now the third. The home shopping retailer has gone mobile with gusto, and is among the few retailers that lets consumers shop via a mobile site, a mobile app and by responding to text messages. This story provides a mobile leader's take on the technology required and the marketing and merchandising lessons it's drawn.
Executive profile: The one-woman encyclopedia of e-commerce technologyHalley Silver is a popular speaker at e-commerce conferences because of her broad knowledge of e-commerce technology, and her engaging way of explaining technical matters to non-technical managers. This story will look at how she learned so much, how she keeps up, and how it helps her do her job better.
Web site design: Why show consumers your competitors' prices?Such major e-commerce players as Amazon, Buy.com and Overstock show site visitors what competitors are charging. Does this tactic promote conversion and customer loyalty? Or do customers leave for other sites offering lower prices? This story will provide the answer, based on the experiences of top e-retailers.
Corporate strategies: Web-only Shoplet.com takes on the office supply giants The big office supply chains—Staples, Office Depot and OfficeMax—have invested heavily in the web to serve their mostly small business customers. But they still have to offset the costs of their stores. Shoplet.com seeks to take market share by leveraging the lower cost of a web-only operation. This profile will examine Shoplet's claim that it can operate more cheaply than stores—and highlight the lessons other e-retailers can learn from this fast-growing company.
 Store systems: Do consumers want to shop the web from stores?
Many retail chains are betting they do, introducing more web-enabled kiosks to extend store selection. This story will dig into how much consumers order online from stores, what other benefits retailers gain from in-store devices, the cost of deploying them and training employees to use them, and whether this is a real trend or a desperate move by stores to withstand online competition.
E-commerce developments: Making sense of the conflicting estimates of e-retail's growth
Several organizations estimate the growth of online retailing, but they never quite agree, which raises questions about whose numbers to trust. This story will delve into how each organization comes up with their estimates and report on how online retailers reconcile these numbers in order to plan for the coming years.
Supply chain: Putting visibility to suppliers to work to improve profitsThe Internet ties together the retail supply chain, from manufacturer through the SKU on a store shelf or in a warehouse. But all this data has to be put to work in an intelligent way. This story looks at the latest supply chain technology that helps turn data into useful information and, most importantly, profit.
Advertising Material Deadlines |
Space Close: | May 7, 2010 |
Materials Due: | May 14, 2010 |
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