Newsletter for Ecommerce and Catalog Retailers – Apr 8 2011

April 15, 2011
Industry News
FIFTH GEAR Choice of the Week

Getting Your Warehouse Into Order Fulfillment Overdrive
Increasing the efficiency and profitability of your warehouse operations can be a challenge (trust us, we know firsthand!). But by looking beyond warehouse operations and creating an environment of continuous employee training and empowerment, you’ll end up with happy staff, better operations, and more money…
(Source – Retail Online Integration)

Subscribers are Still Excited About Receiving Email Deals
Here’s good news for companies who use emails to spread the word about shopping deals – customers love reading them! Customers continue to subscribe to weekly and daily deals, read them completely when it arrives in their main inbox, and even forward it to their contacts… (Source: emarketer.com)

Streamlining Checkout to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment
Do you have a crazy checkout process or confusing form fields? If so, your customers might be a part of the 59.8% who abandon a shopping cart. If you want to reduce that figure, here are 11 basic usability principles to follow for ecommerce checkout design…
(Source: Smashing Magazine)

Supply Chain Uncertainty Takes Another Blow
As retailers continue to look for ways to reduce inventory cost and increase speed to market, global and economic events are reducing control over their supply chain. So how will the latest hike in fuel prices affect merchants? The answer is still unclear…
(Source: Stores.org)

Create an Awesome Ecommerce Experience
If you have typos on your website, require shoppers to register before they buy, or make it difficult for them to contact you, you may have an ecommerce site your customers love to hate. Turn unwieldy websites into effective shopping environments by avoiding these simple mistakes…
(Source: Practical Ecommerce)

Customers Demand Low Prices with High Expectations
According to a recent Deloitte LLP study, customers are using powerful web-savvy tools to search for better deals and a better shopping experience. With wifi, mobile alerts, social updates, and email deals, they are sure to get it, too!…
(Source: Deloitte LPP Press Release )

Accelerating Commerce
Featured Content from the FIFTH GEAR Blog

• Does Your Order Fulfillment Process Have a Plan B

• Marketing Baseball through Email

• When it Comes to Fulfillment, Customer Service Holds the Key

• Email and Images

• All is Not Lost with Abandoned Carts