ETD: 941 ETD Survey - New format; A better way to count
clicks?; Designer clothing is starting to find its fit online
E-Tailer's Digest
etd_post at gapent.com
Tue Dec 20 14:01:18 GMT 2005
E-Tailer's Digest --- Everything for the Retailer
Issue #0941 December 20, 2005
George Matyjewicz, Moderator mailto:georgem at gapent.com
Published by: GAP Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.etailersdigest.com
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CONTENTS
[1] Greetings
[2] ETD Survey - New format
[3] A better way to count clicks?
[4] Designer clothing is starting to find its fit online
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[1] Greetings.
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Hi All:
NYC retailers are going to be hurting this final
week before the end of the Holiday season. A
transit strike has hit the City and nothing is
moving. 5.5 million transit workers are
striking, the first time in 25 years. Last time
they did strike, it was in the Spring when the
weather was warmer. So, this will affect retailing this year.
We are thinking about changing the format of
E-Tailer's Digest to an html format, which allows
for graphics, hyperlinks and is easier to read
and we want your opinion. Check out the details in 2 below.
How many visitors do you get to your site? 1
million "hits?" 100,000 unique visitors? 1
sale? This has been an ongoing issue since
dotcom era started. How do you honestly measure
traffic. Well, there may be some standards very
soon. Check it out in 3 below.
Looks like fashion is finally online in a big
way. There have been all the issues of why
fashion doesn't work, with the main ones being
they can't touch and feel the goods. Looks like that may be in the past.
Now, let's get to everything for the retailer.
Sincerely
George Matyjewicz, PhD
Chief Global Strategist, GAP Enterprises, LLC
mailto:georgem at gapent.com
http://www.etailersdigest.com
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[2] ETD Survey - New format
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We've been experimenting with some new toys and I
am thinking about changing the format of
E-Tailer's Digest to an html format, which allows
for graphics and is easier to read. And I want your opinion.
We have been publishing E-Tailer's Digest since
March 13, 1998 in basically the same
format. That's 7 1/2 years! Wow! I just
realized how long we have been together.
Anyway, we are considering some new formats, with
a little color and pizzazz and the ability to
hyperlink in the digest. Years ago, many people
couldn't get html or graphics at work, but I
believe that has all changed now. So, if we
don't get much objection, we will probably change
the format the first of 2006.
Please send me an e-mail if you object to html to
mailto:etd at gapent.com?Subject=ETD_No-HTML
If you would like to see a change in format, send
me an e-mail to mailto:etd at gapent.com?Subject=ETD_Yes-HTML
As always, we really appreciate your input.
George
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[3] A better way to count clicks?
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An Internet standards body is hammering out new
rules for tallying traffic numbers on Web sites
and their content partners, in an initiative
called the Nomenclature Project. Under changes
proposed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau
(IAB) and its members, publishers will have to
work under more stringent rules about what can
and can't be counted as part of their site.
One prominent issue comes down to branding. For
example, sports news site ESPN.com attracts an
estimated 15 million unique visitors a month,
according to the audience-metric firm
Nielsen/NetRatings. Included in its traffic are
an estimated 1.2 million unique visitors from
content partner Active.com, an activity event
site that displays a small logo from ESPN.com at
the top right-hand corner of its pages.
Theoretically, under proposed rules that are
still being worked out, ESPN would have to change
Active.com's pages in order to count that
traffic. In fact, ESPN must be the dominant brand
on the page, or comprise 75 percent of the brand
attribution, in order to count it, according to
proposed rules. ESPN could not be immediately reached for comment.
Why is this important? In one word--advertising.
The sites with a bigger audience can command more
advertising dollars. And up to now, there's been
no one way that everyone agrees to tally that Web
traffic. Nomenclature Project organizers hope the
changes, which are not yet finalized and should
go into effect in the middle of next year, will
help Web publishers and their advertisers get a
better understanding of how many people are
visiting which sites, and how often.
"The measurement companies have had different
hierarchies, and each partner site was able to
roll up traffic in different ways, causing great
consternation around the industry," said Leo
Scullin, an IAB vice president who is driving the initiative.
The project has been in the works for the last
two years. Scullin agrees that it could cause
problems for some publishers, but he believes
those issues have been identified well before the rules changes takes place.
"Everybody suffered a little pain, but it's for
the gain of the overall industry and the audience
measurement business," Scullin added
The initiative is part of a long-running campaign
by the Web publishing industry to cast the
Internet as a mature, accountable medium for
advertising. More importantly, it's designed to
make Web ads easy for advertisers to buy, so that
traditional advertisers of TV, print and radio
will be comfortable shifting their spending to the Internet.
The changes come at a time when industry ad sales
are steadily growing. Interactive ad sales are rising at roughly 25 percent
Details at...
http://news.com.com/A+better+way+to+count+clicks/2100-1024_3-6000365.html
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[4] Designer clothing is starting to find its fit online
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After a rocky first few years, marked by
technological missteps, and some doubters,
designer clothing and accessories have become "a
viable, growing business online," says Heather
Dougherty, a senior retail analyst at the research firm Nielsen//NetRatings.
Consider YOOX SpA of Milan, which offers access
to some 250,000 items from lingerie to baby
clothes, along with Hermes fashions that can't be
found in bricks-and-mortar stores. The
five-year-old e-tailer expects revenue to jump
this year by 28% to $60 million, from $47 million
in 2004. Net a Porter Ltd. of London, which also
has been selling clothes online for five years,
reported earlier that its revenue for the year
ended in January nearly doubled to £11.8 million
(about $21 million) from £6.1 million the previous year.
Designers' own efforts are paying off as well.
London's Burberry Group PLC began selling online
in Europe in September after launching online
sales successfully in the U.S. last year. Armani,
which recently started a cosmetics, fragrances
and beauty-products site, says its Web site for
youth-oriented A/X Armani Exchange has become
that brand's third-biggest outlet in revenue, and
will be No. 1 by the end of 2006. Similarly, an
online Armani Collezioni boutique hosted on
Neiman Marcus Group Inc.'s NeimanMarcus.com now
equals the sales of one of the highest-selling
Collezioni boutiques in Neiman stores, says Mr. Triefus.
Among newer entrees, Glam.com, launched this fall
by Glam Media Inc., of Brisbane, Calif., brings
to the mix both designer news and shopping
through its links to fashion blogs and some
10,000 items for sale. And Intermix Inc., a New
York-based apparel chain, returned to the Web
last week after a test appearance online in the
2004 holiday season; IntermixOnline.com features
well-known and up-and-coming brands at a wide range of prices.
Meanwhile, there may be no better sign of current
interest in online fashion than ShopVogue.com,
from New York-based Advance Publications Inc. The
site is made up almost completely of ads and
shopping links to advertisers in Vogue Magazine.
In its three previous editions -- each timed
around the start of a new fashion season --
ShopVogue.com has attracted more than half a
million visitors, a Vogue spokeswoman says. At
least 17% bought something, she adds.
The recent flurry of interest among fashion
retailers is partly explained by the desire to
gear up for the holiday shopping season. But the
bigger trend toward a more permanent Web presence
is being driven by other forces, including the
evolution of e-commerce itself. Online apparel
sales in the U.S. are expected to grow 23% to
$12.5 billion this year, up from $10.2 billion in
2004, according to a study by the online retail
industry group Shop.org11 for Forrester Research
Inc., Cambridge, Mass. The percentage of
Europeans online who have bought clothes on the
Web more than tripled by mid-2005 to 16%, up from
5%, says Forrester Research BV of Amsterdam.
"The level of online buying lends itself to
purchasing more luxury items over the Net," says
Ms. Dougherty, the Nielsen//NetRatings analyst.
"The comfort level helps drive [high-fashion]
sales," she says. Nielsen//NetRatings is a
service of the global Internet media and market research firm NetRatings Inc.
The Net hasn't always been this fashionable. When
some designers went online in the late 1990s,
many overloaded on splashy technology that was
meant to impress shoppers but ultimately made the
sites too cumbersome. With most Web surfers
accessing the Net through slow dial-up
connections, retailers also were reluctant to use
high-resolution photography, fearing the images
would load too slowly, says Ms. Dougherty.
Now that consumers have more broadband
connections and more-powerful computers at home,
sites offer multiple high-resolution views of a
single item, all in crisp, attractive photos.
Details at...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113459552235622619.html
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