Today, I participated in a Webcast with Sucharita Mulpuru from Forrester Research, called “Turbo-charge Your Up-sells and Cross-sells: 9 new ways to increase average order size.”

Those of you who listened in…tell us what you think!

[tags] e-commerce, Forrester Research, cross-sell, up-sell [/tags]

More and more, we hear eTailers coming to the realization that the website “band-aiding” and “bolting-on” they’ve been doing for the past few years no longer makes economical sense. They’ve tried to fix issues and add new online capabilities to stay competitive, but have ended up creating a “Frankenstein’s monster” of point software products.   

If you’re in this “Frankenstein” club, you probably felt that each point decision made sense independently, especially when compared to the large cost of replatforming your online store.  But in trying to save a nickel or dime, you’re creating a TCO nightmare of a site that won’t keep up with the competition and still requires risky, time-consuming and expensive bolting-on for future features like searchandising, affinity selling, guided navigation, personalized recommendations, micro-targeting, automated cross-sells, AB testing, personalized eMails, proactive assisted service, etc.

Stop and do the ROI/TCO math. You need to honestly evaluate whether your e-commerce platform can continue to meet evolving consumer needs and internal marketing and merchant needs. Are you in the position to evolve your site to help you double or triple your online business?  Are you comfortable that the site will stand up to the future volume of visitors and transactions? Will IT no longer be the bottleneck for advancing the site and implementing the online vision of the company? Be honest with yourself about your long term situation.  It’s too easy to just think one Christmas season at a time.

You may conclude that like many eTailers, you’ve probably reached a “tipping point” where cobbling together a plethora of pieces from different vendors every year no longer makes sense. It might be time to look at a holistic pre-integrated suite that includes everything from the core e-commerce components (commerce engine, catalog management, search, merchandising & marketing, content management) to more advanced capabilities like searchandising, guided navigation, affinity selling, personalized recommendations and e-mails, split testing, site analytics, and click to call.  

It’s simple…history repeats itself. As most IT organization have realized on the ERP and CRM front withcompanies like SAP and Oracle, in the long run an integrated suite can make the most economical and functional sense.

As an e-commerce insider, I reacted to the NYT article proclaiming that the “dot calm” had begun with a range of emotions; from defense (well, of course you can’t sustain 40% growth rates indefinitely) to justification (they need to view the full effect of the web regardless of purchase location) and finally to introspection (have we created web fatigue?).  Over the past couple of days, I have watched the retail blogs with interest.  And, they did not disappoint, the reactions were plentiful.  And while I saw some similar thoughts and some new, I was struck by the lack of energy and excitement around the possibilities before us. 

We are at a crossroads.  We have figured out the basics, built the infrastructure and enticed consumers to visit, shop and share.  But, while we have made great strides, our creativity is far from tapped.  We have taken a careful approach to the web and have related it to established channels.  We have replaced the print catalog with the web catalog, we have shifted marketing mailboxes from the driveway to the web and we have built a shopping process that assumes that you pull a cart through the store and checkout by the exit.  This approach has successfully established the channel.  It eased customer adoption and enabled us to learn the operations and to gain credibility.  But has it optimized the shopping experience?  Have we added more than convenience? 

The credibility that we have built and the proclamation of slowing growth offer us the opportunity to forge a whole new path.  We have the opportunity to truly change retailing, to provide shoppers with more than just access to more shopping hours and checkout channels.  We have the opportunity to engage consumers more directly, to provide better information directly to them and to help them accomplish their goals more effectively.  We have the opportunity to assess both the web experience itself and its role within the full customer life cycle. 

One company that’s changing the shopping paradigm is a new client of ours, Nau. 

They have flipped the retail concept on its head.  In their model, the physical stores are “webfronts”, the CAPEX is limited, the customer savings are increased and the world gets a philanthropic benefit to boot.  While I greatly admire their business, I realize that they had the luxury of building from scratch.  However, while their approach is likely beyond the reach of most established retailers today, I’m confident that their creativity is not. 

The warning has been issued, the opportunity is before us, who’s ready to play?