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Which Online Retailers Have the Most Satisfied Customers?

posted on November 28, 2012

Time to review the “2012 Harris Poll Shopper Satisfaction Study of Online Retailers: A Look at The Online Shopping Landscape.”

Note for 2013: can you call start using shorter titles on your reports?

This one asked customers to rate 14 top online retailers in regard to the selection of products, ease of shopping, perceived value and likelihood to recommend, and overall satisfaction.

Coming out on top was Amazon with 82 out of 100. They got their highest marks for product selection, which isn’t a surprise. Ease of shopping scored slightly higher than price, which is interesting. Consumers said they’d recommend Amazon to others and gave it an overall score of 5.9 out of 7.

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IBM Study: How to Make Social Work

posted on November 28, 2012

IBM has been on a roll lately with interesting information you can use to grow your business. Today, I want to talk about their “The Business of Social Business” report.

We sometimes come down hard on social media, declaring that it’s not the golden goose it’s often made out to be. But the truth is, it’s not social media’s fault, it’s the fault of the social media marketer (myself included, so don’t get all huffy.) When you look at the world of advertising from print, to TV, to banner ads, social media hasn’t been around all that long. The only thing newer is mobile and not by much.

So maybe we’re expecting too much, too soon.

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Apple Maps Manager Given Directions to the Exit Door

posted on November 28, 2012

I am not a big fan of reporting on when someone has been fired. I have been in that position before but no one reported about it (until just now actually, so there).

The reason a firing at Apple is getting attention is because it was of the person who was ultimately held responsible for the Great Apple Maps Mishap of 2012. You remember it right? Apple users around the world were directed to slam their cars into brick walls and famous landmarks were reduced to wavy images that led some iPhone 5 users to think they were having flashbacks. OK, well it wasn’t that bad but it wasn’t good either.

Bloomberg reports

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Bing Top Searches for 2012: Kardashians, Elections and Honey Boo Boo

posted on November 27, 2012

Between the Olympics, Hurricane Sandy and the elections, Americans shared a lot of common ground this year but it’s not just the big stories that everyone talking. . . or rather, searching.

Bing has just released their lists of the most searched terms in 2012 and it’s a little frightening.

Most-Searched Person

  1. Kim Kardashian
  2. Justin Bieber
  3. Miley Cyrus
  4. Rihanna
  5. Lindsay Lohan

I still don’t know what Kim Kardshian does to deserve so much attention, but she’s staying strong at the top of the list. Justin Bieber I get and Rihanna. Then we have Miley and Lindsay both landing on the list because of their troubles not their talent.

Most-Searched Social Networks

  1. Facebook
  2. Twitter
  3. MySpace
  4. LinkedIn
  5. Tumblr

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Cyber Monday Stats: Online Sales up 30 Percent with a Big Boost From Mobile

posted on November 27, 2012

Yesterday, Frank gave you the skinny on Black Friday sales as detailed by IBM. Today, I’m here to give you the same on Cyber Monday.

Let’s start with the basics. Online sales were up 30.3% over last year. That’s very good news and here’s the breakdown.

Couple of interesting points here. Customers bought more items per order this year but had a lower Average Order Value than in 2011. That says people are working to get more for less. What’s hard to see is how 2012 ended up with higher sales overall when the average order was less. I’m guessing that means more individual people bought online on Cyber Monday than last year.

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Google Takes A Legal Hit Down Under

posted on November 27, 2012

No this isn’t about anyone getting hit below the belt. It’s about a legal ruling in Australia that claims Google’s treatment of content that appeared in their search results was harmful to someone.

What you ask?! Isn’t that going to open a Pandora’s box which every search result / ambulance chasing lawyer would like to get into? Possibly but it’s far too early to tell.

Mashable reports

Do Google search results amount to content that the company “publishes” and is responsible for? One high court in Australia says yes — and the decision, if unchanged on appeal, could have far-reaching repercussions.

For starters, Google will be forced to pay $200,000 to music promoter Milorad Trkulja, the plaintiff in this case. Trkulja brought the suit in 2009 after Google refused to remove links to sites that claimed, incorrectly, that the promoter has connections to organized crime in Melbourne.

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Mobile Keeps Showing Upward Mobility

posted on November 27, 2012

Let’s all agree on one thing. We live in an increasingly mobile world.

It’s the rate of the increase that can be astonishing and it seems to sometimes catch even the best marketers by surprise.

The latest data from eMarketer again outlines just how rapidly this change is happening and the result is pretty simple. If you want to reach people (and in fact it is likely to be a certain kind of person) then you need to be optimized for the mobile environment. Here is a breakdown of the growth of various online vehicles.

These growth numbers for mobile remind me of the growth numbers from the heyday of search. In other words, the train is about to leave the station so if you are not on yet, now is the time because it will have left for good.