2011 Ecommerce review

E-commerce continues growing, 2011 has been a good year for e-commerce despite being a bad year for global economy. It seems that e-commerce is not affected by the bad news of the offline world, and it continues growing like years before, and it looks like that in 2012 it will continue to grow.

Let’s analyze what happened in 2011 to see if we can guess what is going to happen in 2012 or what are the keys to success for e-commerce projects starting in 2012. It’s important to analyze what others and us have done in the past to be successful in the future.

Mobile:

Smartphone and tablet usage continued growing in 2011, these devices are really important and every e-commerce project must be prepared for mobile commerce. Android, Google’s operating system for mobile devices, surpassed Apple’s iOS in popularity. Marketing campaigns can also be adapted to this new way of e-commerce.

Social Media:

The importance of Facebook and Twitter and a lot of social media platforms around the world is getting bigger and bigger. Facebook is really important for online display advertising in the U.S. and in the next years F-commerce will be as important as traditional e-commerce.

Security:

Security issues are really important, e-commerce projects have to ensure the safety of their users so they can buy what they want with high security levels. New security threats are going to appear in 2012 and e-commerce business have to be prepared for this.

Customer care:

A lot of new users are going to arrive at your e-commerce platform in 2012, this new customers will have a lot of questions for you and you have to give them a quick answer if you want them to buy. Solutions like a virtual assistant or an Intelligent Chat will be more important than ever if you want to offer a great web experience to your users.

We don’t know what’s next, but everything points to even better years for e-commerce.

SOPA Day

Today is the big day for the Anti-Sopa activists, Wikipedia’s English version is down, Wordpress.com is dark, and Google.com has censored their homepage logo. A lot of famous big companies and Internet sites like Facebook, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo, Foursquare, Amazon or eBay are supporting this fight too. The black out will last all day.

We have talked about SOPA in this blog, but today is a special day because a lot of websites decided to black out. An example is Reddit.com, they announced that they would be blacking out their site today. Reddit.com four 12 hours goes dark to raise awareness of SOPA and PROTECT IP bills in US congress. They argue that these two bills could change the landscape of the Internet.

You can check sopablackout.org if you want to blackout your web. In this web you can obtain the code to put in your web page a banner supporting the SOPA Blackout or the code to blackout your web page. With this code your web will temporarily turn down and it will show a text with information about the controversial bills SOPA and PROTECT IP(PIPA).

*About SOPA

It would particularly affect sites with heavy user generated content. Sites like Twitter, Reddit, Youtube and others may cease to exist in their current for if this bill is passed.

*About PIPA

PIPA is SOPA’s twin in the Senate. Under current DMCA law, if a user uploads a copyrighted movie to sites like Youtube, the site isn't held accountable so long as they provide a way to report user infringement. The user who uploaded the movie is held accountable for their actions, not the site. PIPA would change that - it would place the blame on the site itself, and would also provide a way for copyright holders to seize the site's domain in extreme circumstances.

*Information from sopablockauto.org/learnmore

Big companies like Google are fighting really hard against these two bills. You can check this post in Google’s official blog, it’s called “Don’t censor the web” and they talk about the blackout and they explain why they are against SOPA and PIPA bills. A huge campaign asking people to send petitions to the US Congress has started, Google has enabled a landing page where every US citizen can send and sign their petition to the US Congress.

Here is a video from EngineAdvocacy where you can see a few Internet entrepreneurs talking about SOPA and PIPA and it’s possible effects on the Internet

CES 2012

The 2012 International CES has started in Las Vegas, Nevada. Since January 10 to January 13 2012 International CES will be offering the most exciting technological news. This year’s edition has more than 3.100 companies, and we will see more than 20.000 new products being launch in the 2012 International CES, the world’s largest hub for consumer technology innovation.

Innovative products as ultrabooks, voice and gesture-based technologies, smartphones and OLED TVs are going to be launched during the event. The 2012 CES show floor covers 1.851 million net square feet of exhibit space, a huge space bigger than 37 footaball fields, this big space is filled with consumer technology innovation.

What can we see at CES?

Microsoft President and CEO Steve Ballmer delivered a pre-CES keynote address. During the address, Ballmer announced that Microsoft Kinect will be available on Windows on February 1, 2012. Other innovations from Microsoft such as Windows phone can be enjoyed at CES.

Other big companies like LG Electronics, Panasonic, Nokia, Samsung, Pioneer, Sharp, Sony, Intel and more are going to launch interesting and innovative products at CES too.

Here are a few conferences you can see at CES the next days

Conferences January 12:

• At LVCC, Nort Hall: “Simplifying the Architecture for Connectivity”, “Kids Go Mobile”, “The Future of Tablets: Segmentation”, “Show Me the Money: Mobile Payments and the Consumer”
• At The Venetian: “Being Creative in Producing a Live-Streaming Show”, “HD Video Everywhere”

Conferences at CES are amazing and there is a wide variety of them to choose the best for you.

The Consumer Electronics Association announced that the 2012 International CES will be the association’s second largest show in history. Every major technology company across the globe is participating in force at this year’s CES. Companies like Apple, Facebook, Twitter, HP and Dell are sending significant delegations to CES to show and talk about their new products.

The opening day CES started with a record number of exhibitors, we have 2 more days to see what CES can show to us.

Social Commerce

The new step on the e-commerce stage is the Social Commerce, as eBay CEO John Donahoe said: “We’ll see more change in how consumers shop and pay in the next three years than we’ve seen in the last 15 years”. The revolution is arriving to our lives, eBay and Facebook have established a new partnership to empower Social Commerce.

We're starting to see a few integration projects of e-commerce in social networks as Facebook, this integrations are not the future of social commerce but are the beginning of it, social commerce will be a new reality in which our electronic life will be enhanced by the shopping experience, everything we want at the moment we want, fast and easy for everybody. Buying the same clothes that your friend is wearing in the latest photo that he uploaded to Facebook, or buying the book your friend read, will be a reality in a few months or years.

The partnership between Facebook and eBay includes the integration of Facebook’s Open Graph into eBay Magento and GSI global commerce platforms. This partnership gives third party developers a bigger voice in the development of social commerce. The social commerce experience will not be owned alone by Facebook, this are great news for the e-commerce developers community, the opportunities are just beginning for everybody, nothing is done and everyone can contribute to this new reality.

Social Commerce is considered by a few as the next bubble on the Internet, but others consider it the next revolution, is time to contribute, to develop new applications, to offer to the people new buying experiences. E-commerce was considered a few years ago as something that was just for geeks, today everybody is buying food, clothes or technology on the Internet and e-commerce stores like Amazon are bigger than telecommunication companies, and this e-commerce projects continues growing year by year with a growth rate that is impossible to reach for other business

Las novedades de Facebook

El pasado 22 de septiembre Facebook organizó en San Francisco su conferencia para desarrolladores, el F8, Mark Zuckerberg capitaneó las presentaciones que comenzaron con una divertida suplantación de identidad de la mano de Andy Samberg, su gran parecido con Zuckerberg logró levantar las risas de los asistentes. Pero Zuckerberg tenía cosas más interesantes que mostrar y no dejó indiferente a nadie, las innovaciones que el equipo de Facebook y otras empresas tan conocidas como Spotify enseñaron en el F8 pretenden revolucionar la manera en la que empleamos las redes sociales.

Las últimas novedades que Facebook ha planteado pretenden convertir a esta red social en una herramienta que envuelva nuestra vida y nos permita compartir con extrema facilidad (quizás demasiada) todo lo que hacemos. La barra de información instantánea que podemos ver actualmente en Facebook es una muestra de estos avances que van encaminados hacia conocer en todo momento que es lo que están haciendo nuestros contactos, se trata de eliminar barreas y de compartir la información sin tapujos, para Zuckerberg esto es un avance en la interacción social, para otros muchos esto es una clara intrusión en la privacidad de los individuos, el debate está servido.

Las novedades no acaban ahí, el nuevo perfil de usuario de Facebook, que actualmente se puede disfrutar en modo desarrollador, es una versión muy diferente de la que veníamos empleando hasta ahora, el perfil se convierte en un timeline que desglosa nuestra actividad en diversos períodos de tiempo, Facebook pretende convertirse en la herramienta que recoja nuestra actividad vital, qué hacemos, qué comemos, qué película vemos, dónde estamos, todo esto lo podremos compartir en nuestro perfil-timeline y será visto instantáneamente vía la barra de información instantánea de nuestros amigos, lo que les permitirá interactuar en tiempo real con lo que nosotros estemos haciendo, por ejemplo si estamos corriendo en el parque escuchando una canción, los demás lo verán en su barra de información instantánea y podrán comenzar a escuchar la misma canción.

Este tipo de servicios los facilita Facebook gracias a un buen número de alianzas con diversas empresas, desde repositorios de recetas como Foodily que nos permiten compartir que plato vamos a comer, hasta empresas como Spotify que se han cogido fuerte de la mano de Facebook y están cambiando diversas opciones en sus servicios para estrechar los lazos de colaboración con la empresa de Palo Alto, parece que otras como Netflix serán las siguientes en establecer fuertes alianzas con la compañía de Mark Zuckerberg para poder ofrecer sus servicios en Facebook con una integración total.

¿Qué se valora más en un servicio de atención al cliente online?

Recientemente hemos puesto en marcha en la página de Facebook de Anboto, una breve encuesta donde les preguntábamos a nuestros fans que era lo que más valoraban en un servicio de atención al cliente. Si en nuestro anterior artículo “La atención al cliente online”
tratábamos de mostraros cuales eran los puntos básicos para ofrecer un buen servicio de atención al cliente, con esta pequeña encuesta queríamos ponernos del lado del cliente y ver que es lo que demandaban a la hora de interactuar con una plataforma de atención al cliente.

La encuesta no es lo suficientemente profunda como para ser representativa, pero si que de manera esquemática nos da una idea de que es lo que demandan los consumidores.
Para realizar la encuesta empleamos la pregunta:
“¿Qué valoras más en un servicio de atención al cliente online?”
Y establecimos tres respuestas posibles que obtuvieron los siguientes resultados:

- Trato correcto y amable: 0%
- Rapidez: 10%
- Interacción sencilla con el asistente: 90%


La opción que más escogieron los fans de la página de Facebook de Anboto, fue “Interacción sencilla con el asistente”, que recibió un 90% de los votos de la encuesta, como comentamos anteriormente la encuesta no es lo suficientemente profunda ya que participaron un total de 8 fans, pero si que nos deja bastante claro cuales son las preferencias de los clientes a la hora de valorar un servicio de atención al cliente.

En muchas ocasiones los servicios de atención al cliente ponen el foco en desarrollar sistemas amables y correctos con el cliente para que se sientan cómodos y que funcionen con rapidez, los clientes percibirán esta calidez y buen trato pero sus necesidades no estarán del todo cubiertas si no les ofrecemos un asistente sencillo con el cual puedan interactuar sin mayores complicaciones y que además les ofrezca la cobertura necesaria para resolver todas sus dudas.