Word from the Floor

Well, I finally got an update from our crew at Internet Retailer 2006 in Chicago and seems we're a hit! All the bits and pieces arrived, the booth looks great, collateral looks sharp, the crowds are arriving and the contortionists shows are going off with a bang. Right on (whew, that's just what we needed).

Momma always told you how important first impressions are and we wanted to ensure we looked polished and professional at our (if you'll excuse the term) "debutante ball." With that in mind, along with the positive reports, it seems we can unfurl the Mission Accomplished sign ;-).

Of course, no matter how successful this show went, there are fumbles to remedy and improvements to make. With this in mind, I've prepared a debriefing worksheet to glean critical and fresh info from the exhausted troops when they return. My aim is to create a "master playbook" for trade show so we can track progress and improve both the form and function of the whole routine.

Despite my worthy intentions, I suspect most of the crew (CEO Harry, VP Marketing Jason, Sales Director Mark, VP Product Dev Dave) will be more interested in catching up with the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs (which is captivating most all of Canada) and the forthcoming FIFA World Cup (captivating the rest of the world) and I heard something that NBA basketball is having their playoffs as well - hmmm. The fifth teammate, sales-ringer Suzanne is probably ready to be away from the lads for a few days!

Anyhow, The joint press release from the trade show announcing our integration agreement with Celebros is circulating around the web (though there was a minor URL correction to the couturecandy.com URL).

Here's a snippet:

The partnership offers a key enhancement to Elastic Path's ecommerce solution, which combines low total cost of ownership with unprecedented flexibility to online stores. Mutual clients are already benefiting from the integration of Celebros' Qwiser. For example, CoutureCandy, an online apparel retailer of 'the sweetest fashions on earth', achieved both higher conversion rate and average order size, following the launch of an Elastic Path / Celebros-based site last February.

"Tests have shown that conversion rates can increase up to 300% with Celebros site search," said Harry Chemko, CEO of Elastic Path. "Retailers like CoutureCandy (www.couturecandy.com) and I Want One of Those (www.iwoot.com) are proving that adding Celebros' best-of-breed search and navigation tools to our platform dramatically impacts site performance."

Additionally, I found a few blog entries via Technorati with some comments about the Conference and Exhibition. Some great comments about the increasing industry buzz (yes, I remember the bleak days of empty shows in 2001) from Adam Strong on Domain Editorial who also talks about the challenges of the retail space:

"There were a lot of facts and numbers presented by researchers throughout the show. All of them were very bullish on the future of the space. The growth of online retail is predicted to continue, but what’s amazing is that that the internet retail channel still represents a very small percentage of the whole of the retail world. <snip>… One statistic that amazed me was the low conversion ratios (1-5%) that were cited by some presenters. Remember, I’m new to internet retailing in general, but that number seems like it is very low and in desperate need of improvement."

Speaking of conversion rates (which seems to be the "big" topic ergo: We've got the people coming to the site, how do we get them to actually buy?), Webservices magazine recaps Jeff Schuler of UsabilitySciences.com's speech from Internet Retailer, in a post paraphrasing the two critical bits to increasing conversion:

"Encourage account creation. Don't separate what's most important to you. Your users and their money! Integrating new account creation within the checkout process has been shown to increase the average order value of a client over their user lifetime.

Product images drive conversion. Buyers are seeking functionality to gain a better relationship with products and as such enhanced imaging is a key factor in driving conversion."

I also came across intriguing blog by John Yunker Going Global (part of Corante). John presented at the Internet Retailer show and seems to be dialed into the Globalization of the Internet retail world (in fact, he wrote the report card and guidebook). With baked-in Unicode support, international selling seems right up Elastic Path's alley - I added John to my read list and I'll keep an eye on what he has to say. BTW, the five most common Internet publishing languages after English are: 1. German, 2. French, 3. Japanese, 4. Spanish, 5. Chinese with Hindi is a language on the rise.

I checked Flickr for Internet Retailer 2006 tagged photos, but this doesn't seem to be the hyper-creative set that Gnomedex attracts, though user peyoung from Tokyo (who seems to be eating *very* well on this trip ;-)) posted a pic of the sign and the prize Jaguar (who won this?).

Hopefully, we'll have a bit of media content to post soon so keep an eye out for rich media coming down this RSS wire.