In his new book ‘Make to Know,’ ArtCenter College of Design President Lorne Buchman reveals how Apple’s iconic retail store design owes less to the visionary genius of Steve Jobs than to a collaborative process of iteration, experimentation, and improvisation.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: amazing read, and a great demonstration of the power of iterative improvements applied outside of the software industry...
With new tech-enabled features, the store of the future will be able to provide a more frictionless and personalized experience that meaningfully engages shoppers. The following infographic visualizes the expected 2030 in-store journey for a customer named Rachel. Here are some of the technologies and innovations that will impact each step of her shopping experience.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: 2 of 2 interesting visualizations in this short post - unfortunately the full report is for members only ;-(
Consumers are more willing to share personal data in exchange for better item recommendations when shopping within product categories that feature more complex and customizable items
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: seems you can get away asking for very personal info if it is perceived as useful in the shopping process.
To evaluate which edition is best for your business, we highlighted the key differences between Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce on various parameters such as business size, cost, features and support.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: acquisition of magento by Adobe has taken a few years to integrate but it seems that the process is over. This comparison is quite high level but provides good insights to get started. The net-net: magento ain't your open source project anymore and has moved into the corporate grade solution, with the good (support, features, integration to Adobe portfolio, ...) and the bad (pricing, inflexibility, ...) that comes with it.
Amazon has been able to scale indefinitely because it treats every product as an interchangeable packet, and doesn’t need to know what they are, only what they weigh. But if it doesn’t know what it sells, that’s only half a retailer. And what would happen if it could change that?
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: je mets mon commentaire en français parce qu'il s'adresse spécifiquement aux amis du panier bleu. L'article de Ben Evans soulève une question importante et fait la démonstration que non, Amazon ne sait pas. Et que pour Amazon, pour l'instant, peu importe. Mais pour le panier bleu et sa place de marché, le marchandisage et la curation de contenu sera importante. Essentielle même. Et qu'elle sera peut-être le différentiateur et la clé du succès. Le panier bleu ne gagnera pas en créant une place de marché mais en réglant les enjeux des commerçants (coûts élevé des cartes de crédit, logistique, livraison, retours et publicité) et en offrant aux consommateurs une destination pour trouver des commerces et des produits québécois.
En gros, il faut régler les problèmes du commerce de détail, et la technologie ne résoudra pas tous les problèmes à court terme...
In this e-book, we'll answer all of the questions you have about customer data platforms and help you to understand the value that a CDP can bring to your business. You will also learn specifically how a CDP can increase customer lifetime value and other key metrics.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: customer data platforms are starting to become more integrated into the web platforms. This book is a good summary of what's possible with a CDP. Just beware that there is an obvious bias towards the bloomreach solution - so do not discard the standalone version as they suggest!
Key Takeaways: Forrester's research uncovered a market in which Adobe, Salesforce, and commercetools are Leaders; SAP, BigCommerce, Kibo Commerce, and Oracle are Strong Performers; Episerver and Elastic Path Software are Contenders; and Sitecore is a Challenger.
Business User Experience Drives Key Differentiators
As monolithic technology becomes outdated and less appealing to merchants, the providers that lead the pack will demonstrate deep integrations with both owned and competitive solutions, as well as business user tooling that unifies controls across those solutions and streamlines workflows. Vendors that deliver this value position themselves to successfully help their clients grow revenue, deepen customer loyalty, and expand into new markets.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: bear in mind that this list is pre-covid. But with so many retailers looking for solutions I felt this list to be useful. As with all WAVEs, have a big grain of salt and use the reviews , market positioning, etc. to prepare your own evaluations. And don'T discard solutions because they are not on the list. This is for B2C.
The only resource you need to profit from Google Shopping on Shopify. Read this free definitive guide for free today to save yourself time and frustration.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this guide is specific about Google and Shopify but the principles apply to all eCommerce solutions and the various discovery channels out there (facebook, Amazon, etc.). It highlights the relative complexity and expertise required to let your eCommerce website standout in a sea of solutions. Retailers thus must learn new ways to market and merchandize their store and their products to standout online. In the illustration from the guide, just crafting the right title for your product names requires time and effort in order to make it easy for users to *find* your products on Google. Not easy, not simple. This is where Le Panier Bleu can help by reducing the clutter and making local retailers standout when buying local is a concern for shoppers...
The industry’s largest-ever survey of CMS users reveals which technology drives greater business results.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: sharing content across different websites, eCommerce, in-store displays and new devices (ie. Alexa, siri) is difficult. This survey provides insights into the reasons why sharing is difficult. Be aware this is biased towards headless CMS, but the conclusions appear valid IMHO.
In this presentation, you'll learn the methodology for deploying in-store shopper analytics software, understanding the metrics that matter most, how to use these metrics effectively, and the teams or roles that should be responsible for it.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: to make stores relevant in a world that moves to eCommerce, this report is full of useful insights to improve in-store marketing via technology and analytics.
D2C brands can scale tremendously fast by capitalizing on technology, shifts in consumer buying patterns and behaviors, social engagement, and the experience economy. D2C industry trailblazers have mastered the art of storytelling, experiential in-store testing and showrooming, consumer engagement, and creative digital advertising. Once you have established a sound D2C operation, you should build a holistic Amazon strategy to generate incremental product exposure, demand, sales, and profits.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: direct to consumer - DTC or D2C - is gaining ground with manufacturers and brands recently. This playbook provides some context and stresses the importance of having an Amazon strategy. And I would suggest also a strategy for Walmart, Wayfair, Best Buy and all the other marketplaces out there!
An in-depth guide to understanding and optimizing your recurring revenue pricing strategy.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this report is by far the best reference I found to understand the pricing strategy of software as a service and subscription services. Should be mandatory reading to anyone selling online today.
This guide covers how attribution measures true ROI by connecting marketing activities to revenue, how it integrates with your marketing automation and CRM, and much more.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTER: when you spend 10$ on Facebook ads, how much of that spend contributed to the 100$ sale? Simple question, tricky answer in this world of omni-channel customer journeys. This guide provides a very good overview of the problems and solutions as they related to marketing attribution in B2B.
A digital experience platform (DXP) is an integrated and cohesive piece of technology designed to enable the composition, management, delivery and optimization of contextualized digital experiences across multi-experience customer journeys.
A DXP can provide optimal digital experiences to a variety of customers, including consumers, partners, employees, citizens and students.
This technology can thrive in a digital business ecosystem via API-based integrations with adjacent technologies.
DXPs are applicable to business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-employee (B2E) use cases.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: with customer experience journeys and omni-channel integration the primary focus of marketing teams, web content management (WCMS) solutions are growing in scope to become digital experience platforms (DXP). Or so Gartner says. My recommendation is to be very critical as the implementation of those platforms become large-scale projects with impacts across many business units, leading to easier integration but often solutions you may not need or may not implement for years. Sometimes it is better to go with a smaller solution than a full fledged platform to deliver value short term, especially in less mature organizations...
2019 has been a banner year for beauty tech. See what tech-backed cosmetics brands will continue to transform and disrupt the sector in 2020 and beyond.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this report provides insights in the many transformations that the beauty industry is going through, with many being digital technology driven.
According to Marketplace Pulse research, Amazon-owned private label brands are not nearly as successful as many paint them to be. Amazon has been successful in creating generic items at low prices, but only when using the Amazon brand name (i.e., AmazonBasics and Amazon Essentials). Otherwise, the hundreds of brands and tens of thousands of products launched are not resonating with customers. On the surface, Amazon is utilizing its knowledge of its powerful retail machine to steer shoppers toward its in-house brands and away from its competitors. The goal of this research was to check if this was true. To validate if the success of AmazonBasics batteries could be extrapolated to other brands and different categories. We analyzed over 23,000 products launched by Amazon under more than 400 different brands. Some of those brands are private label brands built by Amazon, and some are exclusive brands made by a third party. All under the “Our Brands” umbrella, a collection of Amazon private brands and a curated selection of brands sold exclusively on Amazon. According to our research the Amazon-owned Top 10 most successful private label brands, including the likes of AmazonBasics and Pinzon, contribute estimated 81% of the total sales. Amazon added more than 100 brands in 2018, but none of the recent launches are category leaders. Amazon has attracted much attention with every new brand they launched, however the assumption that every new brand will be as impactful as AmazonBasics is unfounded. It is Quantity vs. Quality - AmazonBasics represents less than 5% of products launched, but more than 57% of sales.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: when Amazon started to use its knowledge of best sellers in certain categories to sell products under its own brand, huge alarm bells started to sound. After a few years this study shows that even this unfair advantage is not sufficient to make Amazon the runaway competition killer. But with the expected rise of marketplaces in the coming years, this trend may prove difficult to bear for brands and smaller retailers that distribute on these online channels. Let's hope it doesn't backlash for Amazon and others...
Gmail, as one of the largest Email client service, includes a rather strong security protection system. However, for your security and privacy considerations, it’s counseled to typically change the password of your Gmail account. https://bit.ly/2VFR3gN
WIKIBRAND’S TRANSFORMATION WEBCASTS: DEBATES & CONVERSATIONS ON THE FUTURE ASPECTS OF CHANGE Our global-leading Wikibrands collective and guest experts get together regularly to discuss the future opportunities and challenges we face with disruption, innovation and transformation.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: the wikibrands collective discusses different topics and issues on digital transformation with different leaders in the field. This is the place to catch up on past programs. Shameless plug, I am also on speaker on the series!
Les promotions en ligne sont une excellente façon de mousser vos ventes, mais aussi d’acquérir de nouveaux consommateurs et de fidéliser votre clientèle. C’est pourquoi nous vous partageons notre checklist promotionnelle. Cette liste vous permettra de propulser votre promotion et d’optimiser les retombées de celle-ci.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: every time a marketing team creates a promotional campaign in eCommerce (I would argue it applies to pretty much any campaign), the number of promotion outlets that must be touched to ensure the campaign reaches its intended audience is HUGE as evidence by this 20-step checklist. Morever, the checklist highlights the need for standards, tools, and automation - especially with regards to data consolidation and attribution - that is required but often failing in most organizations.
Average open rates are between 15% and 25% range, depending on industry, so for the 75% to 85% of recipients who do not open any given email they receive, the subject line IS the email. The ultimate email marketing guide is free to discover the trends that will impact email marketing in 2019.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: a recent survey provides numerous insights into email marketing tools and techniques. A great reference with numerous examples, tools and technologies. One highlight of the report are all the tools available that include AI and machine learning technologies to help craft the best content.
Beyond the world of email marketing in the wider world of business, the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on productivity and employment has risen to prominence in the last two plus years as more affordable systems have become available from vendors. This has naturally prompted marketers to review the potential marketing applications of AI. To answer this question, in our guide to marketing applications of AI , Smart Insights has reviewed the opportunities and tools for AI across the customer lifecycle. This report highlights the critical trends and techniques that will help you transform your brand-customer relationships using the most powerful channel in your marketing mix: email!
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: a recent survey provides numerous insights into email marketing tools and techniques. A great reference with numerous examples, tools and technologies. One highlight of the report is the role that AI plays in the creation and delivery of email campaigns in the coming years.
Mission Capital Clients et Nathalie Innocenti partagen, en partenariat avec Emarketing.fr, les Grandes Tendances Store Tour NEW YORK 30 magasins + NRF 2019: Nouveaux Parcours & Expérience Points de Vente Connectés demain ? Best Practices & innovations les + prometteuses. Le tout en de 2 minutes. Enjoy !
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: (in french) a great quick overview of the retail shopping experience and marketing trends as seen in NYC and NRF 2019. If you are in France, attend these events for more : http://www.mcclients.fr/nrf-2019-restitution/
What would the impact be on your business if you could improve the effectiveness of your advertising by 25%? This document outlines the different parts of a good advertising setup and provides advice on best practices.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: few marketing units measure the success of their advertising campaigns. This article describes what it takes to do so.
The digital commerce platform market continues to grow steadily. Gartner forecasts digital commerce platform revenue to reach CAGR of 15.5% through 2022. The Gartner digital commerce team has seen continued growth in the number of digital commerce platform inquiries.
We recently conducted a Gartner Research Circle survey composed of members whose organizations use digital commerce platforms (see the Evidence section for details). Organizations in manufacturing and natural resources represented the highest number of participants (26%), followed by retail, services, banking, insurance and government, which collectively represented 43%. The survey revealed the following take-aways:
Of participating members, an average of one-quarter of total revenue comes through digital commerce channels.
Note: Most participants work in organizations that sell to both B2B and B2C audiences.
Improving customer satisfaction, innovation/transformation of the business, and reducing costs via automation of sales processes and customer self-service buying were cited as key reasons for embracing digital commerce.
Delivering the desired customer experience was cited as the most critical challenge for digital commerce. Consistency in serving customers across all sales channels and justifying IT spending based on current ROI were also highlighted as key barriers.
A majority (63%) considered digital commerce as a critical and natural progression to a digital business strategy.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: always good to use when you need to know where the market is going on eCommerce. Love the analysis. Always take the vendors and their position with a grain of salt.
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WHY IT MATTERS: amazing read, and a great demonstration of the power of iterative improvements applied outside of the software industry...