Channel Intelligence Blog

That 'Where to Buy' Section on Manufacturer Web Sites

I really wonder if that 'Where to Buy' section on a manufacturer's site adds value. It usually goes to a page with a list of retailers who carry the manufacturer's products. But not every retailer carries every manufacturer SKU. So the process goes like this:

1. Consumer goes to the manufacturer's site
2. Consumer drills down to a product
3. Consumer decides they want to buy the product
4. Consumer clicks on 'Where to Buy' and is shown a list of retailers
5. Consumer clicks on a retailer name and tries to find the product
6. Consumer clicks on a retailer name and tries to find the product
7. Consumer clicks on a retailer name...

Who shops like this? I wonder what kind of traffic manufacturers see to this section of their site when this is the only option offered. You can improve the linking in this section of the site but the best solution is to have 'Buy' buttons on each of your product pages.

Categories, Attributes and Keywords

Let’s face it, any one of these topics is a mess. It seems as though no one can agree on categories, everyone thinks attributes are vital but no one seems able to make them actually work and everyone is nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof so far as keywords are concerned. Keywords are a disaster from a search point of view but there’s too much money being made for us to be really honest about them. The emperor is stark naked. Keywords really don’t work but, as an industry, we’re reluctant to admit it. 

“Fair Use” of a Manufacturer’s Product Content by Retailers

A retailer recently raised an interesting question about whether they have the right to use a manufacturer’s product names, descriptions and images in their online advertisements even if they don’t have written authorization from that manufacturer to do so. 

We all know that retailers get product content from many sources – including the manufacturer’s Web site, data sheets, content providers like CNET Channel and Etilize, content creators like ARS eCommerce and Virtucom Group, distributors and even from the side of the physical box that contains the product.  And it’s nearly impossible to determine which content came from legally authorized sources, and which didn’t.

The retailer obviously has the right intentions.  Use a manufacturer’s product content to sell more of its products.  Who would object to that?

Well, what if the retailer isn’t an authorized reseller?  Even in that situation, the “fair use” doctrine seems to protect the retailer (see here).

What if the content is wrong, like a incorrect technical spec that unintentionally misleads a consumer?  Well, this rarely occurs because of the limited content displayed in most online advertisements (name, image and maybe a description – in addition to a retailer’s own information like price and promotions).

If you’ve run into an issue with “fair use” of product content from either a retailer or manufacturer perspective, please share your experience.

What does [FILL IN BLANK] really mean?

It is a never ending battle to find the balance between providing cool metrics and consumable metrics.  Let me give you an example of one of my favorites.  Happened again today.  (There will be more and I'll post as often as I deal with them I promise. ;)

Let's take the concept of Sales.  So, I want to run a Performance Report.  Doesn't matter what really.  By keyword, by product, by category, etc.  For this example, we'll use keyword.

So, let's see the performance of a specific keyword.  I want to look at April's results.  I want leads, orders, conversion, profit, blah blah blah.

Quick run of the report and I see that the keyword has zero leads and 3 orders.

[User typically scratching head at this point.] "Hmmm, something must be wrong with this report" is the unfortunate, yet all too common, response. 

Welcome to the "What does <FILL IN BLANK> really mean?" scenario.  In this case, "What does ORDERS really mean?".

Well, as is typically the case, it depends right?  We've got a performance report, by keyword, for April. 

Does the column ORDERS mean...

1. The total number of orders that have occurred in April, due to leads of the respective keyword, regardless of whether the leads occurred in April.
2. The total number of orders that have occurred due to April leads, regardless of whether the orders were placed in April.

Hmmm again. Two different meanings that answer two different questions.  Reporting services may make the most commonly requested answer (#1 I find) the default report option, but anyone expecting #2 and not knowing the option is available, is consuming bad data.

That's not a good thing...

Moral of the story?  Cool metrics are only cool when a user gets what they are expecting.  Perfecting that?

I'm workin' on it. ;)

Them is more what you'd call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules

One of the biggest challenges we have when sending data out is determining how best to format the data for our clients and the destinations.  This doesn’t sound like it would be hard:  contact the destination you’re sending data to, get their specs, send the data.  You’d think that it would be easy, right?  Wrong.

Take a recent episode where we contacted a new destination and asked if they would have a problem with product page URLs that were redirectors from a different domain.  We got a quick, “No, our system can’t handle that. We have to have the raw URL”.  This means tracking the leads can get much more complicated.

Fortunately, we tested this ‘rule’ and found out everything worked with the redirectors we put in place.  In fact, we found out later that it wasn’t really that big of a deal and redirectors were okay.

So, the moral of this story is that having destination specifications are important.  However, understanding what’s a hard rule vs. a nice guideline can save you a lot of headache.

Tripp Lite Acquires Keyspan

Tripp Lite announced their acquisition of Keyspan. Tripp Lite and Keyspan are both Channel Intelligence clients. This is a great combination. Priscilla Galgan at Tripp Lite and Alison Hargadine at Keyspan are two of our favorite people. They implement best practices for manufacturer implementations and do a terrific job with their products, channel management and Web sites.

If you want to see what their linking services look like you can see a Tripp Lite example with the Shop Online button here and a Keyspan example with the View Online Resellers button here.

You Don't Know the Players Without a Program

Thanks for checking us out. The Channel Intelligence blog will cover a number of different Commerce topics. We've assembled a team of our experts to write on these topics and I'd like to introduce them to you now.

Alan Fulmer - that's me. EVP and co-founder of Channel Intelligence. I'll be contributing to a number of different categories. You can see my bio here.

Chuck Kronbach - Senior Vice President, CI Ad Network and SellCore. Prior to joining CI, Chuck worked for Amazon. You can see Chuck's bio here.

Patrick Thompson - Senior Vice President, Architecture. Patrick is formerly with Microsoft. His main areas of expertise are categorization, keywords and attributes. You can see Patrick's bio here.

Vik Murty - Vice President, SellPath. Vik is formerly with Mitsubishi. His main areas of expertise are branding, content publishing and CI's manufacturer solutions. You can see Vik's bio here.

Tim Tryzbiak - Vice President, Operations. Tim will mainly be writing about data feeds. You can see Tim's bio here.

Roger Robbins - Vice President, SellCore. Roger will focus primarily on publisher topics. Just to be clear, we define publishers as content providers that are neither retailers or manufacturers. In other words, they don't make stuff or sell stuff, they write about or relay information about stuff.

Steve Roth - Vice President, Strategic Consulting. Steve is our resident expert on managed services for retailers.

David Schrader - Program Manager, Market Intelligence. David knows reporting. David knows tagging. David knows data. Market analytics wil be his primary contribution to this blog.