5 TIps To Cross Ecom's Rubicon
Smart merchants are beginning to cross the ecommerce rubicon between content and commerce. Discover 5 Tips to cross your online store's ecommerce rubicon.

5 TIps

* “Magazine” your content
* Curate from brands
* Curate from customers
* Lean & Visual Win
* Tie In Email, Social & Mobile

Going to incorporate @Guillaume Decugis and Scoop.it's ideas on Lean Content on this not very lean post too. I set aside some content to keep the post pinging with fresh content.

Evergreen means our team will refresh the content (or ask for help from our Ambassadors to do so) regularly. Not all content is equal. Places in our "evergreen" regularly scheduled updates category must be earned (lol).

So help 5 Tips to Cross the Ecom Rubicon earn evergreen status, or better yet contribute your thoughts and we will curate in.

Crossing the Rubicon between content and commerce is the BIG ISSUE in online retailing today. Discover our tips to cross and add yorus.  

Not sure why ComScore expected strong online sales late in the season. With shipping concerns, weather and other December issues the holidays begin to shut down online around 1.15 and sales become very quiet by 1.20.

This year that trend was accelerated by the calendar with Christmas in the middle of the week. As we discussed in our Ecommies piece for Curatti (Is Ecommerce Stuck In The Mud http://curatti.com/is-ecommerce-stuck-in-the-mud/ ) ecommerce wasn't very inspiring this year.

Ecommerce merchants are caught in tectonic shifts in the mobile/social web. Online merchants are slowly realizing social marketing is more than one way communication. Social marketing is a conversation, but few online merchants treat social media marketing like an active two way conversation.

The mobile revolution is about much more than smart phones too, yet few online e-retailers are organized around a "mobile first" idea. Battles continue on free shipping, battles that should be all but over as leaders have adopted free shipping out and back (i.e. for returns too) especially in December.

Free shipping out and back is now a meme, a meme that will take over by 2015 (if not before) since it is easier to understand than using coupons or trigger points. If ecommerce is going to dig itself out of the mud embracing social/mobile will be a good first step.

Letting go of print catalog and bricks and mortar behavior online would be a great second step (though much harder to realize).

Wanted to find 5 Top Holiday Websites and had to look at 40 websites to find five A grades. Here is critera used to evaluate 37 top ecommerce retailers:

* Free Shipping (easy to find, clearly communicated, easy to use).
* Holiday Look and Feel.
* Holiday categorization.  

Here are trends rapidly becoming standard:

Free Shipping All Orders.
Free Returns.
Deal of the Day.

Free Shipping = Half A Merchant's Grade
If Free Shipping was easy to find, clearly stated and didn't require a code then half of this holiday rating was positive. Surprising how many websites are poor about communicating their free shipping or confusing (see Crate and Barrel for one of the hardest free shipping offers to understand).

Another misstep is to tie up free shipping with credit cards or loyalty programs (Amazon's prime means free shipping is not easy to understand at this time of year). 

Free Shipping with a $50 or $99 set point was common. Daily deals seem to be wedging its way into many leading ecommere websites.

Foodie Websites Lead In November
Not surprisingly foodie websites led in November since this is their Christmas. The top site with amazing hero photography, a real holiday feel and a lot of offers clearly communicated is Williams-Sonoma.

See all 37 ratings
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkeG3a8zValDdDNGdGFaRkx1ZGd1cmhPU3BLcXh3eEE&usp=sharing