There are many challenges with running an ecommerce business. Smart brands, however, use the right tools to help them get ahead of the pack. In the last decade, many platforms have become available for small- and medium-sized merchants which two decades ago weren’t even available to the largest corporations. Ecommerce platforms let you sell your products without having a brick and mortar store. Analytics help you analyze your traffic and make smart decisions about how to sell. Order fulfillment lets you have the global reach of a Fortune 500 company for the price of a few lattes per month. But there are yet more areas where you still want to get professional, focused help for your business, where it wasn’t available before. For example, as your brand grows, you get fans, you build a community, you get lots of social media followers. But those fans are all over the world, so how do you engage with them when you’re asleep and they have a question?

Enter Metaverse Mod Squad. Mike Pinkerton, the COO of Metaverse Mod Squad, recently spoke with us and described what this great firm does.

Metaverse’s services include moderation, customer support, community management, social media services, and QA. Basically, while your audience is online, 24/7 interaction with customers and communities is difficult and time consuming. So Metaverse helps you with this in the same way Shipwire helps you with your global fulfillment. While you focus on delivering an outstanding product, the Metaverse team engages on behalf of your brand: Moderating content, chatting with customers, managing communities, and buzzing in social media.

And we’re happy to announce that starting now, Shipwire has partnered with Metaverse to give Shipwire merchants the benefits of community management and customer support for their buyers.

As always, we’re looking to help our customers grow, and growing and managing their fan base is part and parcel of growing their brand.

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We are very proud to announce that Shipwire has been selected as a 2013 SIIA CODiE award finalist.

The CODiEs are given out by the Software and Information Industry Association for the last 27 years, and past recipients include Google, Adobe, and Salesforce, so we’re in great company!

If you’ve been following our blog, which the fine folks at SIIA definitely have, you’ll know how much work we put into the Shipwire platform just from the sheer number of updates we release. The end goal is to provide our many customers with the best global order fulfillment solution available. Every update moves us in the right direction, and awards like the CODiE validate our work in the fulfillment and supply chain management space.

This is a huge win not only for Shipwire, but also for all our customers who have chosen a superior platform for their fulfillment needs.

Together, our future is so bright that we need shades:

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Miva Conference 2013 has come and gone, and we’re left with a few impressions not only about how awesome ecommerce as an industry is, but also about how to make an ecommerce conference interesting… but we’ll get to that second part later.

This year’s Miva conference, entitled Extraordinary Ecommerce, was held in Miva’s hometown of San Diego, and Shipwire was in attendance. Hundreds of merchants, partners, and speakers got together to talk shop and exchange tips about ecommerce and shipping, and the result was impressive. Miva also gave out several awards for best new site, best design, etc., which was a great way to recognize the effort that sometimes may be overlooked. The winner for best new feature, for example, was SCOTTEVEST‘s x-ray product view.

Overall there were a couple major themes we observed at the show. After listening to the talks and speaking with many awesome merchants, the main ones that stood out are as follows:

Shipping is big
Brands are starting to realize that squeezing a few percentage points out of shipping rate discounts is a losing game. You could feel the frustration level in the room rise when I asked about the GRI. Eyes roll. Merchants are realizing that locating inventory closer to the end customer is the way to go, especially when shipping rates increase 5-6% every, single, year. When you have that pressure from one side, and customers expecting free shipping from the other side, the solution is more than just getting better discounts and tweaking your conversion rate.

Shipping is a big topic and there are as many questions as there are merchants. That those questions are being asked is a huge leap forward.

Global markets matter
There’s a level of excitement about the prospect of easily reaching customers in new markets. At MivaCon I met brands that were saying they want to reach customers in Canada or Australia or China, but it’s always been a hassle because of brokerage fees, customs, delays at the border, and more. Merchants are ecstatic when they find out that you can store a handful of products in Canada or the UK and fulfill regional sales, all without brokerage fees ever leaving a customer unhappy. There were many importers and exporters for whom having an inventory staging point in Asia or in Europe could save a lot of money, and provide a new level of competitiveness in ever-changing markets. The ability of this model – which Shipwire helped pioneer for small- and medium-sized enterprises – to help brands can’t be overstated enough.

Merchants are feeling the pull of new global markets and reaching them is easier than it’s ever been.

The conference also gave us a slew of top ecommerce tips. Here are some of the top ones:

1. Small details matter
SiteTuners CEO and author Tim Ash said that your ecommerce site doesn’t have to be brought down by one big problem or disaster. It can just as easily die “a death by a thousand cuts.” Basically, details matter. During his presentation he put the audience in the shoes of someone looking for a sofa online. The demo went step-by-step through the sometimes small, sometimes large issues that buyers face when they already know they want and are just looking to make the purchase. There were many flaws across many sites (including huge marketplaces) that included missing links, miscategorized products, incorrect descriptions, inaccurate shipping quotes, and so on.

He also had an amazing name for his breakout session, which involved him doing an on-the-spot site analysis and review and was titled “Your baby is ugly”. He joking called it “consulting by insulting”.

2. Pay attention to schema.org for the future of SEO
The folks over at Search Engine Land brought this up as an upcoming vital part of ecommerce SEO. schema.org provides markup formatting guidelines that help ecommerce site owners make their site more easily indexable to search engines. There are lots of important things to note on new schemas, but keep a keen eye on guides for product reviews, locations, special offers, and product descriptions.

3. Tips to make your ecommerce site better
These tips came from a few of the speakers and people that we chatted with on the floor, including Tim Ash and Neil Patel. Actionable tips are always better than abstract ones so here are just a few interesting highlightsw:
-E-commerce orders from Pinterest average $80, compared to only $40 from Facebook.
-Buyers are most likely to recommend your product right after they’ve purchased it.
-Make purchasing simple, and don’t overwhelm with options during checkout.
-Cross-sell right in the cart when the purchaser is checking out.
-There’s plenty of low-hanging SEO fruit: Get rid of titles that are duplicate, missing, or too long. This seems like nit-picking but keep in mind it’s a robot that ranks your post on SEO, not a human.
-If you’re going to use popular memes on your social pages, make sure they’re relevant to your product. Don’t forget to include a call to action, as well.

4. If you want your conference to be a hit, hire a mobster
Miva decided to hire legendary mob boss Michael Franzese to deliver a quick talk at the dinner event. He will be the keynote speaker at next year’s conference, and I think the 15 minutes he gave us already won everyone over to buy a ticket for MivaCon2014. Definitely look him up on YouTube.

Photos from the event
Check out photos from the whole conference on Leslie Kirk’s photo stream.

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According to some very interesting findings from Econsultancy’s recent survey, 26% of US shoppers were showrooming this holiday season.

For those readers allergic to buzzwords, ‘showrooming’ is the act of being in a retail space to check the product out but looking for reviews and better prices elsewhere, typically online. Customers can stand in the aisle of a store and be looking at the same product on their phones at a lower price.

Did you use a mobile while shopping in stores to check reviews and prices? (n=1,000)

Multichannel fulfillment to the rescue
A good order fulfillment partner and a focus on multichannel is important for smart brands that are planning to grow instead of stagnate. Being able to sell across a variety of channels means being able to reach a customer whether they’re buying your product from a brick and mortar retailer or from their mobile phone. And as the Econsultancy survey demonstrates, sometimes they’re the same person. So what does the smart brand do?

1. Sell across channels
I hope we’re getting through to you because we say this time and again: being able to sell across a variety of channels is like diversifying your investment portfolio. In short, it’s a good idea. But more importantly, it also lets you reach a different set of customers. If you sell on Amazon you may not reach the customers who really love to shop for a particular type of product on Fab.com. In the case of the above survey, a brand that’s being showroomed can still make the sale by having an online store of their own. Optimize the site for mobile and you have a recipe for success in 2013.

2. Give a unique offering
Special packaging for the retail versions of a product help you do two things: differentiate the way the product looks through its packaging, and label it with a different Stock Keeping Unit (SKU). When you add value to your product in a store by bundling it, combining it with a unique offer, or giving it unique packaging, you are selling something distinct from what’s being sold online. Not only that, but having a unique product means a unique SKU which means a mobile search (a common way of searching for a product online is by scanning its product with an app that uses the phone’s camera) will not turn anything up.

3. Kits and bundles
Your fulfillment provider should be able to offer you the ability to create kits in its facilities. Use this to create unique product combination which can help offset the impact of showrooming. For example, if you’re an electronics retailer that sells products individually, offer a product bundle (power supply, travel adaptor) as a way of giving a unique offering. This also gives you a different SKU and (more importantly) creates value for your customer.

Being able to reach those same customers that are showrooming, and being able to offer them a compelling price no matter where they are, is how smart brands can mitigate the new and disruptive tech that affects retail.

Shipping problems
The survey also highlighted shipping problems over the holidays. Overall 83% of people said their products arrived when promised, which is actually not nearly as high a number as it should be. For newer products, the shipping problem is even bigger. Out of the top Kickstarter projects, 84% didn’t ship on time. In the survey the question that’s even more telling is whether a shopper would shop somewhere again if their purchases didn’t arrive on time. Unfortunately, 59% said No. All the more reason to get shipping right.

For those readers who have Kickstarter projects, read our free Fulfillment for Kickstarter guide. It will give you many tips about topics ranging from packaging design to working with international customs.

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It’s with lots of love that we give you news about some great new updates to your favorite order fulfillment platform. Today, Shipwire gets some new features and a number of behind-the-scenes upgrades that will make your shipping experience even better. The most important ones are custom gift messaging for your customers, updates to packing lists, and some fine-grained control over carrier choice for low-cost items.
 
Gift messaging
Custom gift messaging is now available right in your Shipwire account. You can add new messages or edit existing ones.

Editing an order:

Order details:

Packing lists
Shipwire packing lists for most warehouses have been updated. Packing now include the custom gift messaging that you define in the feature described above. An order from our LA warehouse, for example, can look like this:

Fine-grained control over uninsurable carriers
You can now choose to use a specific carrier for low-cost items instead of using the same carrier for all your orders. Shipwire will let you add an uninsurable carrier based on order value, so for example, you will be able to specify that you want to use USPS First Class on all orders < $5.00.

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Another successful year has come and gone at CES. As we reported a couple posts back, this was set to be the largest CES ever, with over 3,250 exhibitors and more than 150,000 attendees.

And as always, the show didn’t disappoint. Wearable tech, connected homes (including some clever fridges with Evernote integrations), smart cars, and mobile computing accessories farther than the eye can see.

But out of the thousands of products on display there did emerge a trend in two very, very exciting areas: home automation and robotics. These two product categories had breakout representation at this year’s CES and I think this is just the beginning. The demand for these products speaks for itself, too: Robotics, for example, is a market that has global demand due to various factors which include aging populations, and it’s expected to reach $46.18 billion by 2017. Home automation & control systems, also market that we can expect to continue growing, is expected to reach $35.6 billion by 2016.

CES highlighted for us the many forces at work that are bringing together lots of different technologies to make our lives easier, and there’s no better example of that than home automation.

Smart homes & appliances

There is a lot to be said for a product category when a giant like Lowe’s decides to bet big money on it and enter the pitch. Lowe’s debuted its Iris home automation system, which lets you combine a variety of products into one app and manage things like when to water your plants, lighting and blinds, water heating, and a whole lot more. This means smart management of your energy use and saving more on your monthly bill.

Other products like the Izon from Stem Innovation let you view live video and monitor your home remotely for noise and motion. They basically give you a security system that just a few years ago was the stuff of sci-fi movies.

And the aforementioned fridge isn’t the only smart appliance that was showcased at CES 2013. Whirlpool, Haier, and LG all brought products that let you control basic functions from your smartphone.

i, Robot

How long before we have consumer-grade Asimo robots featured at CES? Apparently not that long; from toy robots like the Mindstorms EV3 from Lego to more advanced consumer products from iRobot, there is a lot of very clever innovation in this space.

Some of what’s available now – the iRobot mobile vacuum cleaners, for example – can be seen as part of the smart home category mentioned above. After all, you can already see yourself starting up your vacuum cleaner via your phone; this isn’t the stuff of science fiction. But there’s a lot more to this market than meets the eye. Take the new telepresence robot from Double Robotics, which effectively is an iPad on a Segway. It lets you move around at home or in an office, attend meetings, or even provide a mobile kiosk in your retail store. For a reasonable price you can be in many places at once, and in an office like Shipwire’s where working in a different time zone is quite common, being able to have a telepresence unit is quite a step up for collaboration.

What are smart brands doing?

Another thing that has grown since last year is the number of companies (including many in the two categories we listed above) that are aware of the benefits of, and are actively looking for, a great fulfillment partner. Before the show even began we had appointments set up with brands who wanted to know how to reach their growing (global) customer base the right way. Here are three of the top tips that came up a few times, just in case you didn’t hear it from the horse’s mouth on the trade show floor:

1. Locate inventory closer to end buyers. In this case it means making sure that your products are located near your customers, whether they’re in New York or in London. Nate just wrote about this year’s GRI (General Rate Increase), and it’s no different than last year. Earlier in 2012 we also wrote about the rate increases for Royal Mail shippers, which doubled prices in some cases. What does this mean for smart companies? Learning to mitigate risk in innovative ways. If shipping rates increase because of fuel or other factors, storing inventory closer to your customer means being able to offer free shipping and fast delivery all without cutting into your margins.

2. Sell across channels. If you’re only selling to retailers, then you’re not getting all the margin you can get, especially with customers that already know your brand. And if you’re only selling on your own online store, then you’re not getting the advantage of a retail partner’s (or a marketplace like Amazon) vast distribution network. Smart brands diversify. Sell online, sell through partners, sell on Amazon. Flash sales? You use those too. What’s important here is that you hedge your bets by diversifying, and partnering with distributors internationally can even help you with tip 1 above.

3. Specialize. If you’ve got an innovative, disruptive product that’s unlike anything else that’s on the market, then that’s great. But someone needs to make products that are used every day by millions of people – like iPhone cases. In that case, you’ve got a lot of competition and need to focus on the things you do best – like running manufacturing, or design, or whatever edge you have on the other makers in your field. This means that every penny – and more importantly, every minute – spent not doing something you specialize in, is spent inefficiently. You’re not building your own e-commerce shipping integration – you’re using something that’s been built already. You should do the same with shipping. Outsourcing the hassles of storage, inbound shipping, outbound shipping, and everything in between, means that you can focus on what you do best.

Learn how the pros do it

Something else we’d recommend – check out our Hong Kong White Paper. We wrote it specifically in response to the questions we got from top CES exhibitors and how to successfully expand into new markets. You’ll get plenty of tips about reaching buyers in Asia-Pacific, registering your business abroad, shipping to a new international warehouse, and you’ll even get some insider secrets from companies that have done it.

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