Let me start by saying, I am extremely excited for this new opportunity and really looking forward to working with all of you on a daily basis; as well as being a part of a growing industry and a rapidly expanding company.  I’m proud to report that over the last year, the Thanx Media team has grown by 8 people, not including myself, while continuing to add to the customer base.  Within the short time that I have been here, I have had the pleasure of getting to know the entire team and want to express how proud I am to be working with a group of extremely talented professionals.  In order to accomplish the goals I have set forth for myself in 2012, I will be looking to incorporate my 23 years of retail and operations experience into the Thanx Media culture and help guide the ship.

My main duties will be: manage the sales process, ensure we are meeting our project management objectives, SaaS operations and customer care.  Although they’re all important, it’s the last duty I want to touch on today.  My goal is and always has been to delight customers.  I want to emphasize the word “delight” and not use the word “satisfy”.  It’s easy to satisfy; I can shop on any website or walk into any brick and mortar store to buy something and be satisfied with my experience.  Does that mean I’ll go back?  Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.  But if I was delighted with my experience and it was memorable?  You bet I’ll be back!  Many companies set out to just satisfy their customers, for me that’s never been good enough.  From my own professional experiences where I was required to make important and tough decisions, I always found myself asking the same question, “Is this decision in the best interest of our customers?”  Here at Thanx Media, I plan on bringing this same unwavering customer focus to our already strong foundation.  My team and I expect to delight our customers!

2011 has been a strong year for Thanx Media and as we grow our technologies and our team, I look forward to bringing a different level of expertise to the table and help create an even better 2012!  From me and the entire Thanx Media family, Happy Holidays to all of you and may the rest of 2011 bring much success.

Reading the news about early holiday shopping has been incredibly exciting over the last few weeks.  The good news started when the first Thanksgiving Day sales numbers were first being reported.  According to Internet Retailer and several other sources, roughly $500 million worth of products were purchased online, a 39% increase over last year.  Keeping in mind that most of these stores weren’t even open, this half a billion dollars is all unearned revenue without an online presence.  Another piece of information about the Thanksgiving Day numbers that I personally found incredibly telling was that just over 11% of purchases occurred on mobile sites, compared to about 6.3% last year.  This shows that a mobile site is no longer a ‘nice addition’, but rather a necessity.  Those stores that had a customer friendly, easy to navigate site, plus were able to offer promotions and sales in the times before and after families ate, definitely had an incredible advantage over their competitors who either had an unfriendly site or weren’t able to offer their prospects any experience at all.

Real-time sales figures from Thanksgiving Day

Black Friday has typically been a day when relatives (as mine do) or friends (as mine do) leave for stores before dawn and shop till they drop.  However, more people decided to forgo the crowds and testosterone this year, adopting instead to stay in and make their purchases from home.  According to this Mashable article quoting a study completed by IBM, online sales were up 24% this year compared to last, while almost 10% were completed from mobile devices.  Again, these are huge numbers, likely in the hundreds of millions of dollars reaped by companies that were prepared for the influx in online consumers.

Once Sunday rolled around and the food had finally been digested and the dishes were cleaned, it was time to look at some of the hard numbers that were coming in.  Some of the important ones reported by the National Retail Federation: $400.00- average amount spent per consumer for the whole weekend (average amongst 3,800 consumers asked to take part in survey), $150.00- average amount of the $400.00 total that was spent online, 42.2M consumers shopped online and $1.3B was sold online between Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday.  Knowing this, I couldn’t wait to get into the office Monday and see what sales were going to look like.

Last year Cyber Monday produced a hair over $1B in online sales, but it didn’t have nearly the four day run up that this year’s Thanksgiving weekend provided.  I was interested to see if stores had offered better promotions during the weekend and how this would affect Cyber Monday, known as the online Black Friday.  Were the numbers going to reflect the increases from the weekend or were people shopped out after the long weekend?  To little surprise and lots of excitement, the numbers impressed even the most optimistic.  Most believed this year would see about the same numbers as last year, but when the numbers came out that sales were closer to $1.3B or 130% of last year’s number, it was truly stunning:

Year-by-year review of Cyber Monday sales

All told, the weekend produced over $2.5B in total sales!  For those of you, like me, who purchased something online between Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday, congratulations, we’re in the record books.  Same time next year?

Every year you ask yourself the same question: what can I do this year, to be better than last year?  This question takes on a new level of seriousness around this time of year with the craziness of the holidays, Black Friday, Cyber Monday and site lock downs, plus the end of the fiscal year.  Thinking ahead and offering your visitors a more complete shopping experience during the holiday season means more revenue than last year, but also more satisfied customers who will return again and again, outside holiday shopping.

So, how CAN you be better?

While it may be your bread and butter, user experience and higher satisfaction doesn’t start with your homepage, but rather with the data and product intelligence that makes up the building blocks, or ingredients, for your bread and butter.  Having great data, data that offers insights that your competitors can’t even dream of offering is what will allow your site to be better this year.  Thanx Media’s blosm technology is a cutting edge approach that reduces the cost of compiling and integrating essential data that is currently entered by in-house teams or off-shore third parties. This helps boost organic and ‘off-the-street’ traffic by offering your team  extra time to focus on more knowledge tasks such as blogs, in-depth pictures (from different angles or environments not currently shown), reviews, web videos and everything else that has become necessary to score well in SEO.  Another advantage that customers report is the ability to add extra content, whether it be more products or data, without having to add additional employees.

Once you have complete and unique data throughout your website, it’s time to address visitor’s ability to find the product they’re looking for.  According to industry research, one of the strongest search and navigation solutions on the market is Endeca.  As a partner of Endeca, Thanx Media has the distinction of being able to offer Endeca On-Demand, which offers the same powerful technology, but as a SaaS model.  Using the thesaurus, search ahead and auto-correction technologies it’s easy to get to the right category pages.  Once in the neighborhood, it’s easy to drill down to the specific product with navigation bars such as department, price and brand drop downs.  Or, if you have certain items that will be particularly hot or want to push higher margin products, Endeca’s versatile technology will allow you to quickly create custom landing pages.

With most sites going into a freeze at the end of October, now is the time to act.

For more information on the blosm technology, Please watch our recent webinar HERE

For more information on the Endeca On-Demand solution, please click HERE

Much like location is to real estate, product information is king when it comes to websites.  Whether you create your own information or gather it from other websites, it’s become abundantly clear in this post-Panda environment that original and thorough information has a new premium.  Understanding that this is where the market is heading and that it would be a great supplement to our other product offerings, we are proud to offer blosm.

Blosm works by on-boarding product information from only the most reputable sources.  The technology goes out to manufacturers, resellers and even competitor’s, gathers all relevant information and then populates your product detail pages.  By populating your pages with as much information as possible, your website will be seen as an expert source through not only the eyes of your customers, but search engines as well.  Available in various models (Snaphot and Harvest), we can meet any demand you have.

Looking at a customer’s product detail page, here’s a great way to see what the information looked like before the technology was run and what it looked like after:

BEFORE

AFTER

If you would like more information on how the blosm technology can improve your website, we invite you to attend an exclusive webinar we will be hosting on Tuesday August 2 at Noon CST (REGISTRATION LINK https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/221558482).

Or, check out our site.

In order for a website to survive and get ahead of its competition, many things have to be in place, but arguably, the most important is search engine optimization or SEO.  Why is SEO so critical?  Simply put, because traffic to your site is the most critical aspect of operating a successful website.  Studies have shown that the vast majority of people looking for a particular item will start their search by simply typing that request into any one of the search engines and then browse through the results and various websites returned, find the exact match at the right price and make the purchase.

Now, I’ve previously taken you through the ‘F’ Graph and some ways to get higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs), but what if your site was demoted multiple pages or taken off all together?  How could this happen?  Search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. use proprietary algorithms to crawl sites and determine who has the best, most worthy data to satisfy the searcher.  If you don’t abide by their rules, your site will be adversely affected in the results returned.  What are these algorithms?  Search engines hold their search algorithm as close as national secrets and in order to be the best (which to them means, return the most valid and worthy results, while eliminating spam or ‘content farm’ sites from the results pages) they need to constantly stay ahead by changing or tweaking their algorithm before unworthy sites catch on and manipulate their data to jump ahead of more worthy sites.

If this sounds like something that may pose problems for honest, good-natured websites, it can be.  One example that’s currently happening and we’re hearing a lot about, is the latest Google algorithm update, known as Panda.  Usually when a search engine comes out with a new algorithm it flies under the radar and doesn’t get much publicity because, it’s usually just a minor tweak on their backend that doesn’t really have much of an impact on results.  However, when Google drew-up and conceived Panda, they wanted to dramatically change the way results were returned, and in their mind, reward those sites offering the best data.  Since I know a lot of people have been negatively criticizing Google for their new algorithm, I’ll say that again, they were looking to reward websites for having unique data, results on every page (no 404 redirects that lead to dead ends) and overall appear to be an expert within their industry.

It’s only my assumption, but in my opinion Google wasn’t looking to punish anyone with Panda, but they determined that moving forward, the best way to promote valid, honest websites, was by pushing down those sites farming their data through duplication of content.  Although thousands of companies have been affected as a result, Google has put their stake in the ground and shown that if you want to be seen as an expert, through their eyes, you need to pay attention to your data.

If your website has significantly dropped in ranking, or even just dropped to the next page, we can help.  Our proprietary blosm technology will go through your data and make it unique to your site, enabling you to be seen as an expert and more importantly, returning you to your rightful spot as a top returned result.  If you would like some more information on blosm, please visit our Information Extraction page.  After looking through the information, please contact us to set up discussion around your data.

Or, for more information on Google’s Panda update please visit:

Webmaster Tools Help –by Google

Panda Cleanup: Maximizing Content Quality (According to Google) –by ITBusinessEdge

Enhance Unique Data to Increase Visibility –by HubSpot

Been away from the blog for a couple weeks, but I think you’ll find it worth your while.  Over the last year or so Thanx Media has been diligently working on a proprietary technology that we can call our own; a technology that would not only be ‘neat and shiny’, but also something that would have a profound effect on business metrics.

After much hard work and due diligence from our great technical staff, we believe we’ve found it, Site Social.  What is Site Social?  Simply put, it allows online companies to market their business operations across multiple channels and mediums.  Specifically, we heard our customers saying that they needed the ability to get their full product catalog in front of their social media fans.  Their problem was, they had lots of traffic and unique visitors coming to their website, plus thousands of followers on Facebook, but weren’t able to capture a dollar value from one to the other.  So we created a technology, Site Social, that accomplishes this in a very easy to implement and ‘neat and shiny’ way.  It works by putting your entire product catalog on your Facebook page so your followers, who may not be regular site visitors, can see your offerings, as well as ‘hot’ or popular items selling over on your site.  After they see what fellow friends are buying, they’re able to make the purchase themselves.

Although I’d love to talk about it all day, I’d rather let you read about it from one of our happy customers who just went live.  And if you still have questions or want to discuss in more detail, I’d love to hear from you!

Aquinas and More Press Release

Site Social Landing Page

As someone who not only works in the industry, but also shops online regularly, I enjoy looking at a website’s layout and design and critiquing it.  Someone once told me, much like brick and mortar stores, the only limitation to setting up your store is your imagination.

Here is one of my favorite examples: The Children’s Place

The reason this is one of my favorites is how easy it is to find the right content and know that you’re getting exactly what you need.  Having two small children, I can honestly say it’s often challenging to take them out shopping and get anything close to productive accomplished.  With all the Dora the Explorer gear and let’s say, “unique” patterns available, we’re often left leaving the store with very little in the way of publicly presentable merchandise.  As a result of this, my wife and I have started buying their clothes online and have come to appreciate the ease with which The Children’s Place helps out.

One great example is the collection of landing pages they present

By making it easy to find the category you’re looking for (swim shop, dress shop, communion shop, …) it saves the visitor valuable time.

Another great feature included on their site, are the sizing charts.  As adults we’re very used to standard sizes and knowing how certain brands or articles of clothing fit us, but as any parent can tell you, this is most certainly not the case with growing children.

All sizing information is available right here in these charts, which makes it easy to find the perfect fit for any item with one click of the mouse.

The last thing I’ll point out are the obvious navigation capabilities.  Although we’ve all seen and utilized these on numerous sites across the web, I think they’re always worthy of a mention.

As you can see your first navigation option is by gender and age (0-12m, 6m-4t, 4-14).  This allows you to at least get started, before narrowing down to the article of clothing.  Once you’ve decided who you’re shopping for, you can decide what to buy, using their other helpful navigation tools.

Although these may seem simplistic or elementary, you should always remember the popular slogan: KISS, or Keep It Simple Stupid.

The bottom line is that these little things save the visitor time and with this time the visitor can have more time to spend with the recipient of these gifts, their children.  And what parent doesn’t want to spend every available second with their children, as long as they’re not trying on a pink Dora shirt with royal blue horizontal checked pants?

REMINDER:

If you’d like our tech team to look over and analyze your website, sign up for our new 75 Point Health Check.  We’d be happy to take you through our evaluation process and show you where you may be losing visitors and sales.  Plus, IT’S FREE.  Here’s the link to sign-up!

As a car enthusiast who enjoys everything car related and lives in Chicago, spring time is always one of my favorite seasons.  Over the last couple of weekends it has finally been warm enough for me to get out and do a thorough spring cleaning of our family cars.  In preparation for this, I knew I had to pick up some supplies, so I visited a couple sites online to see what was new for the season, plus read some user feedback to determine which brands would work best for the vehicles we have.  After seeing all the great products available, I had the sudden urge to get started, so instead of waiting the 1-2 weeks for delivery, I decided to stop by my local auto supply store to pick up the necessities.

Once in the store, I couldn’t help but marvel and admire at how in-store and online experiences have merged over the last decade.  Once in the store, I was greeted by a cheerful sales person asking how they could help me.  Just as I would navigate on a website, I was able to tell the sales clerk that I needed soap, wax and tire cleaner and they brought me to each respected aisle where I was presented with maybe eight or ten different brands of each.  After picking up the soap and on my way to the wax, I walked by the soft-cloth washing mitts and realized my one from last season was probably in a frozen ball in my garage, so I picked one up and moved on.  Before I even reached the wax aisle, I realized that through the power of merchandising, I wouldn’t need to make a second trip.  I realize most websites do utilize some form of merchandising, whether it is complementary products or similar products, but some still do not.  The ones that we talk to that don’t offer it usually say that it’s either too hard to set up or too intrusive to the shopper.  To the first part, I would respond, it’s no harder then physically putting the appropriate items on a shelf just like a brick and mortar store, period.  To the second part, look no further than my new soft-cloth washing mitt, not only was I glad that I noticed it, but I was even thankful that the store and put it there for me to purchase!

Now on to the wax, I thought.  Walking down the aisle and seeing the eleven different brands it became clear that I should have done more research before I came in.  There were different brands, different compositions for different car paints, and different application methods.  Realizing I was over my head, I quickly pulled aside the friendly clerk from earlier.  He asked me what kind of cars I was looking to wax and the color of each.  Once he had this information he was able to direct me to a specific canister and followed it up with a testimonial of a recent customer that had purchased it, used it on the same car and loved the result.  Sold, I said!

When I had finished cleaning and waxing the cars, I decided the next thing I had to do was log on to the site’s I had previously been viewing and add some customer feedback of my own, knowing now how much they can help.  I shared as much as I could, knowing that someone else was probably going through the same experience I had a few hours earlier.

Having been in the technology sector for the past decade and a half the blurring of the in-store vs. online experiences has been very exciting.  When eCommerce first started, it was very elementary and the products being sold were very standard, but through time and technology, I can have exactly the same experience from the comfort of my home as I would if I physically walked through those automatically opening doors.

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to read Marketing in the Age of Google, by Vanessa Fox.  This great book discusses Google and how it has not only changed the search engine game, but the marketing research game as well.  While there were too many great points and anecdotes to discuss every last one, there were two major take-a-way points for me that I’ll talk about here.

The first was this incredible chart produced from an eye tracking study performed by Enquiro.  I think the ‘F’ shaped pattern is fairly logical, but actually seeing it is quite remarkable.

Image: Google Images

What this graph shows is that 100% of people will see the top returned result.  This is a powerful static because if you can buy the proper search terms or get to the top of the results organically, you have a 100% chance of being in someone’s evoked set.  Now, that’s not to say they will purchase something from or site, or even click on your link and visit your site, but if everyone who was looking for a Nikon d7000 camera walked past your brick-and-mortar store front, you can surmise that you’d sell more cameras.  Probably, alot more cameras.

The second take-a-way I had is how to find out what keywords to focus on when trying to determine who you want to “walk by your storefront” when searching on Google.  Here’s a passage from the book that may educate you on how to go about buying and focusing on strategic words or phrases:

From Marketing in the Age of Google: Excerpts From Chapter 2 (How To Use Search Data To Improve Your Business and Product Strategy)

What I like most about this passage is this line: “… he describes the marketing revolution of the 1950s and 60s as a shift to understanding that a “company should produce what people desire, instead of trying to convince them to buy what the company happens to make.””  It really drives home the point that you shouldn’t try forcing your products or your website onto people who don’t need to see it, but those people who can benefit from it, shouldn’t have any problem finding it.

As an entrepreneurial company, we pride ourselves on our ability to be nimble and react to market needs.  By finding the most technologically advanced and consumer friendly companies and then partnering with them, we are able to provide our customers with the latest, cutting edge technologies.  This search has led us to many great partners, but there’s one in particular that I would like to discuss today.  Thanx Media learned about Baynote through business associates in the industry and had to find out more about their groundbreaking ability to predict visitor behaviors.  After doing some due-diligence, the parameters of the partnership were ironed out and we’ve both been hungry for business since.   Baynote, based in San Jose, CA provides personalization and digital marketing optimization solutions that power an adaptive web experience for users.  When coupled with the industry leading Endeca search software the results speak for themselves:

• 20% increase in Revenue
• 20% increase in Average Order Value
• 2x higher Conversion Rates

Although these results may seem superficial or extreme, it’s easy to see that the technology provided by Baynote WILL have a great impact on your site.  Here’s how:

When visitors land on your site and decide to search for a product, they have something in mind that they want to purchase.  If they can find what they’re looking for, they’ll be happy to give you their business, however, if they can’t find what they want, they’ll be happy to give your competitors their money.  In order to cut down on bounce rates, which usually lead to money in your competition’s bank account, it’s not only imperative to show the results they want, but it’s also important to deliver that content as close to the top of the results page as possible.  As you can see from the pictures above, 95% of visitors won’t get past the second page of results, which means that even if you have the exact product and your results algorithm has brought it up, unless it’s in the first two pages, you’ve most likely lost the sale.

Although it may be called magic by some people, Baynote calls it their ‘Affinity Engine’.  The engine operates by collecting data from every visitor to your site by remembering what they click on and whether they have a common path that can then be adapted to another ‘like-minded’ visitor.

To prove that their solution isn’t magic, but rather a repeatable, industry leading recommendations solution, the Baynote technology provides in-depth reporting so your team can understand the consumer needs and interests.  This allows you to identify new revenue opportunities through product gap reports and predict purchasing trends.

So, the question becomes, what’s the overall benefit of Baynote to your company?

As you can see from the circle on the above chart, product recommendations are quick and easy to install, results will be realized in a relatively short period of time and best of all, the technology is reasonably priced given the ROI.

With the exception of hiring great people and watching our ideas blossom, one of the best parts of owning a business is seeing other products and sharing visions with others in the industry.  When we met the Baynote team we realized immediately they were the perfect partner for Thanx Media!