affiliate marketing best practices - irce.com · 2160 1960 1861 1860 1761 1760 1661 761 660 360 261...

IRCE16 Jump Start Guide

TECHNOLOGY

Build it and they will come… that rarely happens! Getting shoppers to your store or site is half the battle.

Optimizing strategies for how to acquire and retain your customers should always be top of mind. This requires

effective marketing and merchandising strategies and execution. Whether you are tasked with increasing traffic

and sales or improving retention it can be daunting to determine the right approach and focus efforts where

they count.

RE L ATE D SE SSIONS

DATE

8th Wed

8th Wed

8th Wed

9th Thu

9th Thu

9th Thu

9th Thu

TIME

10:30am-11am

1:45pm-2:15pm

3:15pm-3:45pm

8:15am-8:45am

11am-11:30am

3:45pm-4:15pm

4:15pm-4:45pm

SESSION TITLE

The New Tactics Driving Affiliate Marketing Today

Step One: Get Content. Step Two: What Kind?

20 Ways to Lose SEO Rankings

How Steve Madden Keeps it Edgy at Every Touchpoint,Digital and Beyond

Content Strategy for Shopper Engagement, Entertainment and Education

The Hidden Gold in Post-Purchase Marketing

What's Your Company's Marketing DNA?

TRACK

Marketing Must-Haves



General - Keynote

Marketing: New Frontiers



W W W.IRCE.COM | #IRCE16

There are many different solutions and services to help you improve the ROI on your marketing investments including email marketing, retargeting, SEO and SEM, affiliates and more.

RE L ATE D RE SOURCE S

FitForCommerce has also developed Best Practice

Guides and Key Questions to Ask Providers

designed to help you prepare and make the most

out of your time at IRCE. For example, here is our

Best Practices for Omnichannel.

To help you navigate the exhibit floor at IRCE, here is

a category map for some of the mobile solutions and

technologies that you will want to explore.

SAMPLE

Be sure to stop by the FitForCommerce booth #1701 to pick up other Jump Start Guide topics and Best

Practice Checklists. Email us with any of your questions at [email protected].

SAMPLE

W W W.IRCE.COM | #IRCE16

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#12Sent by

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NebuCore SureDone

#11Sent by

Ecommerce Platform


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EXHIBIT ENTRANCE Need Help Deciding Where To Go? Visit FitForCommerce's Booth For Guidance: #1701 EXHIBIT ENTRANCE

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101

eCommerce Diligence™ Checklist

For 1000s of Best Practices and Advice across 100s of topics: Join eCommerceKnow-How.com!

©FitForCommerce

Ecommerce Platform Best Practices1. Know your requirements, validate their importance. The single most important step in selecting a

platform for your ecommerce needs is to define all your detailed requirements and decide what you must havevs. what you can live without or build later. Having the best new widget is great, but if it is very expensive andonly leads to a small improvement in sales, it may not be worth it.

2. Understand your customers, what makes them buy. Knowing your customers and keeping theirneeds in mind will help you understand what features will set your site apart from the competition and willimprove their shopping experience and increase their loyalty.

3. Platform due diligence is key. Review several options before deciding on any solution. Thereare many ecommerce systems out there. Many look good at first glance, but once you compare them to yourrequirements, to each other’s cost, and talk to their customers, there will always be a top group that should bereviewed further. Eliminate the rest.

4. Understand that your ecommerce platform is a “store” seen by millions of customers. Yourfeatures and design will be representative of you and your brand. Make sure your store conveysprofessionalism and the right message. Cookie-cutter design, subpar features, and poor customer supportwould never make it in a brick and mortar store, thus there is no room for them online.

5. Integration is no longer an option; it is a necessity. Make sure your ecommerce platform canintegrate with all your business functions and third-party tools. Your systems must be integrated and able toaccept orders, confirm them, process payments, decrement inventory, print shipping labels, create a pick order,generate reports and update your financials without manual intervention. Even if long-term, you should alwaysbe working toward this goal.

6. Choose or add a solution that helps customers find what they want. As the number of productsyou sell increases, so do the merchandising and search challenges. Make sure the ecommerce platform caneffectively merchandise and search for the products you have now and in the future, should your merchandisemix change. If not, consider a personalization or search add-on.

7. Give your customers as much product information as possible. Platforms that either provide orhave standard integrations to show comprehensive product data, comparisons, reviews, and rich mediatechniques such as image zoom, alternate images, color swatches, etc. will improve your customers’ productknowledge and will help them to be confident in their purchase, and lead to increased customer conversion.

8. Try to keep your site as easy to use as possible. Best ecommerce design practices include simplenavigation, clear messaging (inventory, pricing, shipping, tax), simple checkout, alternative payment methods,anonymous shopping, multiple ship-to’s, wish lists, merchandising of cross-sells and up-sells. Make sure yourplatform has best-of-breed practices or can be customized to meet these changing needs.

9. Understand each platform’s support commitment. How does the provider support them? Withinternal IT, you have some control over fixing issues. With an outsourced platform, this is not as easy. Makesure the platform you choose has defined service standards tied to financial implications.

10. Think about the cost or savings of using one platform over another. Depending upon theplatform and the tools that it includes, your internal processes, headcount support needs and cost will bedifferent. Think about these when selecting. Certain platforms will help you reduce hosting, support and ITlabor costs. There are other efficiency gains from having a more automated ecommerce channel. While costmay not be the deciding factor, you should clearly understand the numbers.

11. Assess your platform’s PCI compliance. Your customers’ credit information is sacred. Make sure yourplatform is PCI compliant to the level you require (based on number of transactions). Be wary of platforms thatare only self- assessed; most levels also need quarterly PCI scans to be fully compliant.



©FitForCommerce

Ecommerce Platform Key Questions for ProvidersCompany

1. How long have you been in this business? How many clients? How many have you lost?

2. What clients fall into your “sweet spot”?

3. Is your solution geared more toward enterprise, mid-market or the SMB space?

4. What peripheral or supporting services do you offer(e.g., design, email marketing, product feeds, SEO/SEM,customization, gateways)?

Products/Services

1. Is your solution offered as perpetual licensed software oron-demand multi-tenant solution?

If perpetual license: a. What are the hosting requirements?b. What should I expect regarding upgrades (both

timing and pain)? Cost?c. Do you provide customization & implementation

services? Can outside third parties be used? If SAAS/ASP:

a. Do all tiers include maintenance and support?b. How often are new features introduced?c. What can I do if I need a feature you don’t have or

plan to have soon?

d. Define your redundancy / disaster recovery.2. What is your solution built on (which OS, code base and

database)?3. Please describe your architecture.4. How long to launch a basic site? A complex site?5. Can third-party products be used within your platform in

place of the capabilities your product offers?6. What skills does my organization (or hired third party)

need to implement this platform? 7. What is your SLA for support issues?8. What technical support services are available?

Features

1. What key features are included in your solution? (Please indicate if they are B2B, B2C based or both).a. Is there a key feature that only you have?b. What features are currently missing that many of

your competitors have?2. What is your product‘s competitive advantage over other

packages? Why?a. Price? Dashboard? Ease of use? Flexibility? Don’t

say “all of the above”. 3. Is your platform geared strictly to B2B sales or is there

special B2B functionality available as well?a. Describe your B2B features.

4. What features are included in your platform to supportmultiple channels (Social, Mobile, B&M, B2B, etc)

5. How can you integrate data (product, order, customer,etc.)?a. Is real-time integration possible? How?b. How effective are your import tools at uploading

hundreds (or thousands) of products/images at a time?

6. How easy is it to create microsites or to build overseassites in other currencies / languages?

7. Do you have a staging or test environment and a data/content migration tool to push data and content to live?

8. What about your platform makes it search-engine friendly? a. How can we use your platform to improve our

search rankings?9. How does your platform integrate with other systems

(fulfillment, CMS, analytics, social, back-office systems,etc.)?

10. What third party tools do your customers normally add on? Why?

11. Do you have a management console?a. What can I manage with it? Is it web-based,

application-based, other?12. Please describe your reporting capabilities, ad hoc

reports, etc.a. Please provide a list of standard reports.

13. Does your platform come pre-configured for shipping,tax and payment processing integration? If I don’t want to use the providers you selected, what are my options?

14. What integrations exist to other systems?15. What reporting and analytics tools does your platform

include? Does it provide the ability to analyze cartabandonment, quantify browser searches, tie product purchases to search terms, etc.?

16. Is it PCI compliant and certified?

Pricing

1. What are the typical implementation cost ranges foryour platform? What is the minimum cost to get onto the solution?

2. What is the license fee (if perpetual license)?3. What are the pricing schedules and what features do

they include? On what are they based? Provide an

annual estimate of cost, based on some performance metrics

4. How do you charge for annual support? What aboutmaintenance?

5. Are there any additional fees (e.g., implementation,transaction costs, revenue sharing)?



©FitForCommerce 2015

Systems Implementation Best Practices

1. The skills required for creating and operating an effective online store are widely diverse.You’re unlikely to have all the requisite skills in-house. Identify your organizational needs and hire as quickly aspossible to ensure a solid project team. Work with your provider to help you identify resources you may need toeffectively carry out the implementation and ongoing support.

2. Identify a team of super-users. Each department that is using the new solutions should have arepresentative that will speak on their behalf at meetings and facilitate providing input. They will also be the onesresponsible for training their teams. Identify these key resources early in the selection process to ensure success.

3. Manage your timeline. Both you and your provider will have identified tasks to be accomplished. Managethose tasks and make sure you have the resources to support accomplishing those tasks. Implementation requiresadditional time above and beyond the regular work day. Acknowledge the additional responsibility on your staffand give them the time to focus on their implementation responsibilities.

4. Hold Weekly Meetings. It is important to stay in constant communication with your team and your provider.Weekly meetings should occur between the team and the provider. Identifying roadblocks or challenges will allowfor changes/rerouting to occur so that the timeline will be met.

5. Train early and up to launch day. Training should not wait until launch day. Users should have access assoon as possible so they have reached a comfort level by the time launch day arrives. Furthermore, the earlier theyhave access, the more they can add input to procedures and processes.

6. Clearly define procedures and take the time for process reengineering. Implementations are a greattime to relook at your existing processes and procedures. Why are you doing things the way you are? Is it becauseof the current system’s limitations? Create new procedures that make sense and use the new system you haveselected to achieve better processes. Do not recreate procedures and processes in your new systems withouttaking a hard and honest look at why you do the things you do.

7. TEST TEST TEST. The last thing you want to do is launch without your users feeling comfortable with thesolution. Testing is critical to validating procedures and software configurations. Make sure that you have aworking test site to allow for ample training and testing time prior to launch.

8. Be realistic about what can be accomplished. Do not overly tax your project team and be forced to delaya launch date. This is one of the biggest pitfalls and risks to a successful implementation. Stay on task and manageyour team’s turnaround time to deliverables required of them. Make sure you are being managed appropriatelyby your provider as well.

9. Identify phase 2 and phase 3 initiatives. Put them on your roadmap with clearly defined dates. If timelineconstraints force a Phase II and Phase III initiatives, identify those early and commit with your provider to get theseprojects accomplished. Too many times the later phases fall to the wayside. Providers tend to be much moreresponsive in the implementation phases instead of post launch.

10. Have a clear and objective way of measuring success. What is the end result that determines success?Is it documentation, processes, a decision, a successful launch day? Understand your options, if success is notachieved. Identify a back-up plan.



©FitForCommerce 2015

Systems Implementation Key Questions for Providers

Company

1. How long have you been in this business?How many clients? How many have youlost?

2. What clients fall into your “sweet spot”?3. Is your practice/processes geared more

toward enterprise, mid-market or the SMBspace?

4. What peripheral or supporting services doyou offer (e.g., design, email marketingservices, SEO guidance, customization, bestpractices)?

5. Where are you located and if you are notnearby, will you provide a team to be onsite during the entire implementation?

Products/Services

1. Are your services a fixed fee or monthly?2. Do you provide customization &

implementation services? Can outside thirdparties be used?

3. Do you provide upgrade support?4. Describe a typical team and what it is made

up of: project management, developers,business analyst, etc.

5. Will an account manager be assigned to theretailer?

6. How long to launch a basic site? A complexsite?

7. Would you support other third partyrelationships as well?

8. What skill does my organization (or hiredthird party) need to work closely andaligned with your organization?

9. What is your SLA for support issues?10. What technical services are available post-

launch?

Features

1. Which platforms do you support?2. What additional functionality have you

developed (extensions), if any?3. Do you do integration services?4. What is your competitive advantage over

other implementers? Why?5. Do you provide project status reports

weekly?

6. How often do you meet with managementto update them on successes andchallenges?

7. Do you offer additional services post-launchto help grow the business? Consultingservices? Webinars? Audits?

Pricing

1. What are the typical implementation cost ranges?2. Do you carry the license or does the retailer?3. How do you charge for annual support? What about maintenance?4. Are there any additional fees (e.g. gateway, integration with back-end systems)?5. Are there additional fees for strategy or retail consulting?

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