Showrooming Scurge
Most retailers HATE people showrooming in their stores. That's stupid as it is like trying to hold back the tide. Better to embrace showrooming - the practices of shopping in the world and then buying online for better price.

One way to embrace showrooming occurred to this morning watching Bruno Torturra discuss how easy it is to stream a live event to the web. Torturra is streaming protests, but retailers brave enough to encourage showrooming could use the same tactics to build a powerful Ambassador layer.

The recipe is simple:

1. Create content explaining how to stream live video.

2. Create a community to share your "shopping videos".

3. Provide social rewards (encouragement and features) to filter.

4. Rinse and Repeat

Your customers could help keep your prices in line, alert you to cool merchandising by competitors and a million other near real time benefits. You can't go into something like this halfway.

It's an all or nothing idea and that means listening more than you talk (some sites, brands and companies are better at 2 way communication than others). Early today team Curagami wrote a piece about competing with Amazon (http://sco.lt/58qhn7 ).

Add this "video showrooming army" to that and you get differentaion from the monster. Cool thing is cost of creating such cool and cutting edge competition is minimal (webpage and some serving). I wouldn't host on YouTube unless you were strapped for cash since you want the SEO juice flowing in your site's direction.

Soon retailers will be glad people are in their stores FOR ANY REASON, beat them by embracing showrooming now.

Tiffany & Co. has been the world's premier jeweler and America's house of design since 1837. Shop creations of timeless beauty and superlative craftsmanship that will be treasured always.

Marty Note
WOW the Tiffany animation sets new standards for "interactive" web design and storytelling. #toogood!

If you've been looking for a perfect web template for an on-line retail business you came to the right place, because today I'm gonna show you 16 of the newest and coolest e-commerce website templates.

Curagami Score & Ecommerce
At our Startup funded startup Curagami we’ve created a new “super metric” called a Curagami Score”. We combine 11 different metrics from pagespread (number of pages in Google) to inbound links. We also have a few proprietary metrics such as LEI (Link Efficiency index).

Once you know a site’s Curagami Score its possible to create an ecosystem combining ANY website. Once you have an ecosystem you can compare even the most unlikely sites. Why would you want to create such a comparison? Because it’s interesting and informative to know who is “winning the day” in online marketing.

I created Curagami scores for websites from Red Bull to Schwan’s wondering if we could learn even more lessons from the master brander Red Bull (see my Curatti post Red Bull Branding Lessons).

Once we created Curagami scores for six different websites we can add them up and compare the share for each. The pie chart, from my Connection: The New Ecommerce Haiku Deck, shows the results.

One easy deduction? If Zappos and the other Ecommies on our comparison list were to adapt a more Red Bull-like branding approach their online “castles” would grow stronger faster. Zappos was closest the running of the Red Bulls but still a distant second. Look how completely Red Bull dominates their space.

Monster is so far away from Red Bull they won’t catch up in this lifetime UNLESS they disrupt instead of trying to copy and “be like” their bigger brother. Now imagine you knew your Curagami score and your competitor’s. How helpful would it be to know where you are winning and losing online?

Funny, that’s what we were thinking.

Sending all traffic to a generic landing page can be a mistake for ecommerce owners. Remember that shoppers who found your store via paid search are different from those who ...

IndyWeek.com Give Guide
The linked post is the "inside baseball" story of how a local free print publication created the first Indy Give Guide (http://give.indyweek.com/ ). The "Give Guide" is way to help local nonprofits raise funds and it is content, social and ECOMMERCE gold.

I am writing almost a bog post a day about the Guide and driving social links to our Story of Cancer Page http://give.indyweek.com/Nonprofits/Health-and-Wellness/Story-of-Cancer-Foundation ). Every Ecom Director's ears just perked up (lol).

Cause marketing done right rocks social maketing and an Ecom merchants register like no other conent marketing. The IndyWeek.com give guide is cause marketing done right because:

* Low cost, Big Reward (traffic, brand awareness, SEO).
* Emotionally resonate especially at this time of year.
* Focused altruism that builds a strong network of contributors for future years.
* Helps first and figures out money later (perfect for our Thank You based economy).

If your band, company or website hasn't figured out how to create something as cool as the IndyWeek.com Give Guide steal the idea and mashup a great and related list of nonprofits in your business vertical.

If you sell HVAC you might create a guide based on your customer's favorite charities. If you are a B2B agency ask your customers who they give to and mashup a guide from those connections.

The IndyWeek.com GiveGuide is a great example of how a little creativity and the right altruistic idea can make a HUGE difference in your Website's authority and SEO AND it helps local charities feed hunger tigers and cure cancer so that is cool too :).

Story of Cancer Foundation page on GiveGuide
http://give.indyweek.com/Nonprofits/Health-and-Wellness/Story-of-Cancer-Foundation

My very RARE Keith Haring TV Man watch made by Playboy is for sale to benefit Story of Cancer Foundation along with almost everything I own. Who will be the first to place an order on our Story of Cancer Store?

We launched on D-Day because we are storming the beaches of a new ecommerce to help cure cancer. Every purchase / donation helps cure cancer. First order receives a Story of Cancer Foundation tee (also very rare lol). 

Thanks, Marty 

---
Martin W. Smith
Founder, Story of Cancer Foundation
Cancer Survivor  

@StoryofCancer

@ScentTrail  

Flowchart infographics always grab my attention because they require the reader to interact with the infographic. Helping guide your decisions and choices which

Art Of The New Ecom
Doesn't this cool Tumblr feel like a new cool store? That is because it has an artists visual approach combined with a merchant's eye. Beautiful and strange like the new ecommerce :).