What CAN and Wat NOT with Money

Things we need to do

Last week i attended the First Emarketing Conference here in CMB, it looks like there are few things we need to fix in order to make our website and make it more user friendly. Because a good user experience is same as good customer service.

1) I have to notice & Figure out the internal problems on the sites.
2) I need to give everyone of our team instruction on how to improve the sites.
3) Make the content more clear for users, because content can break the sites.
4) Fix the 404 Error pages which customers will not like to see and Definitely Google hates.
5) Build more PR with Vendors.

I will be discussing more about emarketing topics on my next posts.
So please keep in touch for more..

Finally Ecommerce is LIVE

FInally Ecommerce is LIVE :)

http://www.ecommercemaldives.com

6 ways e-commerce survived the recession

According to Forrester's recent findings, successful Web retailers exhibited at least one of the following six deliberate efforts to drive growth despite the challenges of the past year.

Reset goals as needed. E-commerce has to focus on more than just the single sale. Unlike bricks-and-mortar outlets, customers can "leave" with a single click of a browser button. Therefore, customer service has played a crucial role in differentiating online retailers. Providing a successful customer experience requires more than merely making products available online. Online retailers must also focus on details such as site usability that will continue to deliver on the value proposition.

Redefine the competition. Competing on price can only go so far. The online channel allows retailers to introduce new products and address new customers in ways that would be expensive and difficult through other channels. Clothing retailer American Eagle, for example -- which has a presence both on- and offline -- also owns the 77Kids brand which sells children's clothing exclusively online.

Respect the technology department. Rarely do companies think about the technology team that builds and maintains the e-commerce systems. Technology is critical to enabling the features that give online retail its advantage over the bricks-and-mortar experience, such as rich Internet and mobile applications and purchasing without having to provide credit-card information. According to Mulpuru, Web retailers spend 7 percent of revenue on technology. In the overall retail sector, that figure is 2 percent; in all other industries, 3 percent.

Reinforce partner relationships. Consumers love their brands -- and are more likely to be loyal when they do. In fact, Mulpuru reported that roughly a third of e-commerce spend is generated or driven by manufacturer and brand Web sites. However, competition between branded and private-label goods often complicates retail's ability to collaborate with partners.

React well to the people power. Social media connects consumers to each other, but also enables them to communicate directly with companies. Mulpuru told the audience that she sees retailers generating blogs, forming microcommunities, and joining social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, but admits there are a wide range of driving forces behind retailers' efforts:

• 66 percent say return on social marketing intiatives is unclear.
• 50 percent are pursuing social media because of industry buzz.
• 34 percent report social marketing strategies have in fact helped them grow their business.

While many retailers claim social media represents a long-term strategy for customer engagement, there are companies seeing substantial short-term returns: Eventbrite, an online provider of event-registration services, claims social media generates the highest source of revenue after online search.

Recognize the mobility revolution. Retailers, Mulpuru said, should "like social, but love mobile." She emphasized that the statement didn't necessarily require an increase in spending on mobile initiatives, but that mobile will be critical to creating the ultimate multichannel experience. "More people will access…sites through mobile," she said, citing one product platform that was recession-proof in the last year: Apple's iPhone. Retailers who hopped onto the application platform early, she said, saw immediate advantages -- but she noted that the iPhone isn't the only mobile application consumers are using, nor is it the most popular. Other devices, in order of popularity, include:

• Blackberry;
• LG;
• Motorola;
• Apple;
• Samsung;
• operator brand;
• multiple brands;
• Nokia; and
• Palm.

Mulpuru did not disparage the more-traditional digital channels, but noted that while email marketing "still works," it's "not the future." According to research from Forrester, email is used by a larger share of people over the age of 65 than within the 18-to-29 age bracket (67 percent versus 65 percent). Nevertheless, she said, as a marketing strategy email remains substantially more effective than social media:

• Social media marketing sees an average of .04 percent clickthrough rate among the 65 million active social network users in the United States.
• The 166 million active users of email produce a 22 percent open rate on marketing emails.

In closing, Mulpuru recommended retailers implement two strategies immediately:

• Introduce alternative payments to the mobile site to increase consumer confidence and simplify the shopping experience; and
• improve site legibility on mobile devices. This initiative may be complex given the variations in carriers and devices, but Web-accessibility specialists can help manage the migration from Web to mobile.

In another sign of the shifting technological landscape, the conference unofficially began the day before with an all-day Bootcamp, in which roughly 250 attendees covered topics from social media to analytics to email marketing.

The Future of Social Shopping

Paul Dunay is global managing director of services and social marketing at Avaya and author of “Facebook Marketing for Dummies.” He talks to eMarketer about the future of social commerce as it shapes up on brand Websites, Facebook and Twitter.

eMarketer: How do you define social commerce?

Paul Dunay: Social commerce is working with or using your social graph, which is defined as your followers or your friends, and allowing them to help you make buying decisions.

eMarketer: What role does Twitter play in social commerce?

Mr. Dunay: Social commerce can be anything from a buying suggestion or recommendation—perhaps a tweet from a Dell outlet saying, “Hey, we have a special on this”—to something like Facebook Connect.

Facebook Connect would allow you to go to a Website like Dell.com and authenticate yourself using your Facebook profile, allow your identity to be known and access your friends so you could spark up a chat. So I could say, “Hey, Jeff, I’m looking at this new fancy laptop or this netbook. I heard you bought something. Would you recommend this to me?”

“You could almost take your friends shopping with you.”

So you could almost take your friends shopping with you. That is the potential with this example.

We’re in a period now where we’re all starting to get comfortable with Twitter and get comfortable with using Facebook and LinkedIn and a lot of these other tools, and now we’re about to expand.

In the next 12 to 24 months, you’re going to see things that you’ve never seen before and uses of the Facebook platform that you’ve never seen before.

I call these new social commerce events life-changers. No. 1 is the combination of search and your social graph—social search.

eMarketer: What is another life-changer?

Mr. Dunay: Another potential life-changer is what I like to call “Amazon going social.” When I look at my book on Amazon, I see it says, “Customers who bought this also bought...” It’s not exactly personal, because I could be at my wife’s computer seeing books she bought. Now, how personal is that?

“Amazon could easily turn on a Facebook Connect where they would allow you to import content from your social graph.”

But Amazon could easily turn on a Facebook Connect where they would allow you to import content from your social graph to say, “Your friends who also bought this bought some other item.” And that would carry a lot more weight with me.

The full version of this interview is available here, to eMarketer Total Access subscribers only. Every day they have access to new interviews with digital marketing leaders and trendsetting entrepreneurs.

Taken from Emarketer

Yes we Can Rename...before we Start it

Its been couple of weeks ....yeah...
Here i go again...Nothing much to say ...
I am going on with my medical treatment , just thinking ... having around 10 pills everyday for next 20 days.. WOW
Got few Med Exams to do ..tommorow...

OK lets get back to Work...
On my Previous Post I mentioned about a New Brand ( Fihaara by Badhige )
Finally we have changed the plans and we are Going to name it as Maa Mall ( Maa Means Big or Huge in Dhivehi )
we have already taken www.MaaMall.com for this

The name itself is Quite easy to remeber and Type isnt it ?

Insha allah Maa Mall will be up running soon with alot of Suprises...

But pls dont think its the END Of our First Brand Badhige...its just a begining of Surprises for badhige.com Valuable Customers...