Live From IRWD 2010, What We’ve Learned So Far

“Please come and see us?” I was asked by a vendor whose booth was tucked away in a black hole of the exhibit hall of the Internet Retailer Web Design Show, here at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress in Orlando.

The exhibit hall, actually, is hopping, and they do have it set up so you can check out the sessions by going through the exhibit hall. But this one vendor is kind of stuck away from all the action. I feel bad, and I should stop by and visit later instead of smiling and ignoring them.

So what have we learned so far?

• John Thompson, the general manager of BestBuy.com, says he is surprised he didn’t lose his job last spring. On April 30, Best Buy was ranked 162nd on the Google search-term “TV.” Not a great thing for the merchant, which claims to sell one of every three televisions in the U.S. Some simple tinkering with its SEO and its URLs helped it jump back to No. 2 by October. The moral of the story – constantly check your SEO.
• The latest e-tailing group 100 was unveiled by Lauren Freedman, e-tailing group’s president. Of those merchants, more have adopted video than product personalization. A quick video stat: 61% are using video guides at the category level, 55% are using video on the product pages. As for personalization, 27% are using product configurators, though product personalization grew from 28% in the fourth quarter of 2008 to 34% in 4Q 2009. Ratings and reviews are becoming much more commonplace, at 74% vs. 58% in 4Q 2009.
• Lee Jeans had an epiphany in 2008 and realized it could sell better via e-commerce than it had. Lori Graham, the e-commerce business manager for Lee Jeans, showed that its re-design wasn’t just done to make its site look pretty, but help customers shop the way they want to shop. As a result, its 2008 revenue increased 98% on traffic increase of 20% – all because it asked its customers what online tools they needed to better shop the site.

Well, the next sessions begin in 30 minutes. Maybe I should go make friends with those vendors who are in a black hole.