Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Darren Hill, CEO of WebLinc (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Besides geography, what other parameters do you personalize on?

Darren Hill: For a lot of our fashion clients, we personalize on sizes. For instance, if you have come to the website and you’ve looked for a specific pair of shoes, we’ll actually tag your account and we’ll know what shoe size you are. So the next time you look at shoes, we will filter and sort that specific shoe category. We will make sure that the shoes at the top are available and are in sizes that you indicated that you were interested in. That simple little tweak can increase the conversion rate by about double for specific clients. That is pretty significant.

Sramana Mitra: What else in fashion is interesting in terms of personalization? I’ve started one of the first Internet fashion companies about 15 years ago. I know this category cold. What are you seeing in terms of trends? I’m a big believer in online >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Darren Hill, CEO of WebLinc (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s fast forward to 2014. What is your business today?

Darren Hill: 2014 is an interesting transitional year for us. We had been in business for 20 years. All of the growth that we had, which was pretty significant, was organic. We invested all of our profits back into the business and never took any outside investment up until last year [2014]. Last year was the first time that we did take outside investments.

Sramana Mitra: What is your business?

Darren Hill: We have an e-commerce platform. Companies hire us to use that e-commerce platform for their business. It controls everything that their online store is doing. It controls the front-end—what the customers sees and what the customer interacts with. >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Darren Hill, CEO of WebLinc (Part 1)

As you know, I am deeply interested in personalization as it applies to e-commerce & Web 3.0. In this interview, Darren Hill and I discuss the subject at length, especially as it pertains to fashion e-commerce, another area of significant interest for me.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with introducing our audience to yourself as well as WebLinc. Tell us what you do and what you’re focused on.

Darren Hill: I started WebLinc with my brother in 1994 when I was 18 and a freshman at college. Before we started WebLinc, we owned a small mail-order business, which was a traditional mail-order business for mailing out catalogs. >>>

Thought Leaders in Big Data: Damon Ragusa, CEO of ThinkVine (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: One of my observations which pertains primarily to electronic commerce is that the more we can attribute, the more we can tie the marketing and advertising and customer acquisition to actual purchases. As you know, one of the most effective ways of marketing e-commerce is through affiliate programs. It’s 100% performance-based. There are lots of sites and apps that have accumulated huge numbers of eyeballs that they’re not able to monetize today. If more and more of this gap that exists today between traffic, lead generation, and conversion into actual transactions could be bridged, that would really relieve a lot of the friction that exists today between advertising and commerce. Can you comment on that?

Damon Ragusa: You’re absolutely correct on that but there are a few challenges. Part of it is based on the realities of digital marketing. You hit on one point. You talked about affiliate marketing as a good example that can be 100% performance-based, but because it is 100% >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Eugene Laney, Head of International Trade Affairs at DHL Express (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Any other trend that you want to discuss?

Eugene Laney: I just want to point out a study where we looked at the trends in global e-commerce. Some of the more interesting trends pointed to the importance of finding a market. We noticed that a lot of the goods that are sold out of the US go to Germany and UK. We also saw what the demand for products in different countries was like. In places like China, they depend more on the reviews of products whereas in Germany and UK, they just do searches on the product price. I’ll definitely invite you to take a look at the Shop The World study because there are some very interesting trends that you can see within the e-commerce environment. >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Eugene Laney, Head of International Trade Affairs at DHL Express (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Essentially, what you’re saying is, there could be another third-party logistics provider involved that is handling all the fulfillment and inventory. You do the shipping part. At the same time, you still work directly with the website owners and not with the fulfillment players.

Eugene Laney: Depending on the needs of the customer, it can change. Even with large corporations, they may have a variety of providers based on their products.

Sramana Mitra: We’re talking about small merchants.

Eugene Laney: What I’m saying is the model is still the same. It doesn’t really change. You sit and figure out who can give you the best service and also who can meet your current needs. >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Eugene Laney, Head of International Trade Affairs at DHL Express (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What are your observations then? These small one or two-people e-commerce merchants who are sitting on top of third-party logistics providers, are they then working directly with DHL Express or is there another layer of third-party intermediary before you come in to the picture?

Eugene Laney: They’re very dependent on us.

Sramana Mitra: Who’re dependent? Is it the people who own the website or is there a layer between them and you that is a logistics provider layer?

Eugene Laney: In most cases with these small to medium sized businesses, the CEO is also the CFO and also has a variety of hats. A lot of times, we’re on phone calls with the person who started the business.
>>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Eugene Laney, Head of International Trade Affairs at DHL Express (Part 2)

Eugene Laney: We also have a hybrid model where we have customers working with e-commerce companies using those companies as their domestic mailboxes. You have an individual who might be in the UK and wants to purchase a number of e-commerce goods from a domestic-only retailer who sells through e-commerce. Their goods would then be consolidated in the US held by that e-commerce mailbox. Then that e-commerce company would then use DHL or other logistics providers to send all of that products to him. It’s like a consolidator type of model. Those are the new models that we see emerging now.

>>>