A highly effective strategy in e-commerce is multiple channel selling. This involves having several niche websites targeting different demographics, displaying specific product ranges. This allows you to create completely focused websites with a high sales conversion rate.

It is often helpful in the retail space to appear to your consumers under a different persona. This could be for various reasons – sometimes political but sometimes simply aesthetically. It is important that you project the right corporate image for the individual products you are selling. For example, you might have redundant stock that you want to get rid of; this technology would enable you to develop a bargain website where people can buy items at discount prices, without devaluing your parent brand.

This strategy is also effective when you need a microsite specific to a particular marketing campaign or particular product which still links in to your main corporate website. This allows you to have fully branded sites specific to one product brand without increasing the administration or management as the content can be driven by your main database.

Having these various websites means that you can target individual affiliate campaigns, pay per click campaigns and other online marketing strategies to drive traffic with a high potential of converting to the right website.

To find out more about Motive’s multi channel e-commerce platform, please get in touch with our e-commerce experts.

As the explosion of blogs on the internet continues to grow – 105 million blogs already in existence with 120,000 new blogs created daily – retailers must realise the importance of having their own corporate blog on the website. It is expected that by 2010 – 70% of all content on the web will be user generated so it is crucial that retailers do not get left behind.

The one to one contact that retailers are able to have with customers is lost in the faceless world of retail websites. Having a blog enables you to project a human voice to your customers and break the formality of the rest of the website. The blog is somewhere you can speak as a human being rather than a company and customers are able to respond and post their own opinions and comments. This helps to build a personal relationship with your customers and you are able to respond and react to their comments, suggestions etc.

Although the idea of customers posting up their own comments and views on products etc is an unsettling concept for some retailers, it is better that consumers have somewhere to do this on your own site rather than elsewhere where the conversation is out of your control and you are unable to respond quickly and effectively.

Another advantage to having a blog is that it will greatly help your SEO strategy. You will be able to write blogs filled with all important keyboards and if you are blogging regularly you will be ensuring your site is full of fresh new content – search engine spiders love websites that are regularly updated.

To find out more about how you can integrate blogging into your e-commerce solution, feel free to contact the experts.