Developing a product or solution that has value and fulfills a consumer need is obviously a significant part of the success equation. But how do you reach your audience in the first place?

Traditional marketing efforts like email campaigns, affiliate marketing and social media remain an effective way to direct prospects to your blog, landing pages, or to sign up for a demo. But in the world of ecommerce, sometimes that’s not enough.

Ensuring your website is optimized for search engines will increase organic, relevant traffic, and ultimately broaden the top of your sales funnel – a key step in the evolving and competitive ecommerce market.

As 2018 unfolds, here are seven tips to help you supercharge your search engine optimization this year:

1. Develop Relevant, Quality Content

According to Moz, there are generally three types of search queries:

– I want to do something
– I want to know something
– I want to go somewhere

For those new to SEO, when a user enters a query in the search bar, Google will index and rank pages that match that topic based first on relevancy, then filtered by popularity. Whether you’re writing a blog about your latest product, or creating a landing page offering a free trial, create copy that includes keywords specific to your business. Services like Google Keyword Planner or Google Trends can show you which keywords to target based on how competitive it may be to rank for a specific word or phrase, or the size of the search volume.

But remember don’t go overboard with packing as many keywords as possible. You’re writing for your audience, not just for search engines. In fact, Google’s new Latent Semantic Indexing algorithm notes that the relationship between keywords and the overall picture the content frames is just as important as the keywords themselves. So focus on the topic overall and write as naturally as possible while keeping in mind what you want your visitors to do.

2. Lead with a Tight Title and Meta Description

The title and meta description of your page not only have significant impact on index and ranking, they’re also the two items that display for a user when your content appears in a Google search. Therefore, they significantly impact a user’s likelihood of clicking on your website.

For each page, develop a clear and concise but descriptive title that communicates exactly what a user will find on the page. Likewise, note that the meta description is the snippet of text under the title that expands upon what visitors will find when they click. Keep each meta description short (160 characters or less), and use it wisely.

3. Build a Backlinks Portfolio

Credibility remains a key metric by which Google indexes pages. Positioning your website as the authority on an industry topic will get you in the good graces of Googlebots far more easily than sites that seem less legitimate.

Backlinks: Reputable sources linking to the pages on your site will significantly boost your SEO. It shows that other credible sources deem your site credible as well, which Google will use to designate your page as higher-ranking. Pursue sources that have global popularity, are trusted (university sites, non-profits, etc.), post frequently updated content, and maintain thought leadership in your industry.

‘Linkless’ Backlinks: In fact, Google algorithms have become so advanced that even if a source doesn’t link directly back to you – rather it simply names your company or product – it will still have positive impact on your SEO. So have your PR team reach out to thought leaders and reputable tech and software blogs, and start building your link portfolio.

4. Stay Agile By Staying Mobile

According to Google, the popularity of smartphones and tablets has led to more than 50 percent of searches taking place on a mobile device compared to a laptop or desktop. If a consumer is conducting product research, there’s a very good chance they’re doing so from a mobile device.

In fact, Google has hinted at the mass rollout of a mobile-first index, which will prioritize its page rankings based on mobile versions of websites versus their desktop counterparts. Get ready for mobile-first indexing by optimizing the mobile version of your site for design, ease of use, and clarity.

5. Optimize Images

We live in a visual world, and web visitors expect no less. When a potential customer visits your site, they want to see what your product looks like, and how it operates. Not only should you include images on each of your pages, you must also add your keywords into the alt-text of those images.

Download the Ebook: 7 Tips for Growing Your Global Subscriber Base

6. Keep Your Pages Up to Speed

This one’s simple. With as many research options that users have at their fingertips, if your pages load slowly, you can bet visitors won’t stay there for long. Make sure your site is responsive (Google suggests five seconds or less per page load), to keep prospects and customers drilling down and converting.

7. Optimize for Voice Search

Whether Siri, Alexa, Echo or any other digital assistant, Google reports that as many as 20 percent of searches are voice-based. So, how do ecommerce companies optimize for this growing trend? Feature a conversational tone in your web content, include long-tail keywords, and – because voice searches often take the form of questions – design your pages with customer questions adjacent to your company’s answers. For example, a voice search may consist of, “What is the best malware software for my laptop?” versus “Best malware software for laptop.” Then, develop content around how your product fits that criteria in a similar tone.

Keystone

Because Google is constantly advancing its algorithms to ensure users are receiving the most relevant results for their search queries, SEO best practices are evolving in turn. So, stay educated on these trends to keep growing your organic traffic, and ultimately, your business.

Kyle Shamorian is the content marketer for cleverbridge

The post 7 SEO Best Practices for Ecommerce Companies in 2018 appeared first on cleverbridge.

Reasons to Test

Just about any open question is a reason to test. Testing’s real value, however, is far more than simply settling disagreement about the color of a Buy Now button. Testing puts your customers’ experience at the center of your decision making. Rather than rely on gut intuition or the most fiercely held opinion on the team, testing allows your company to ask your customers to tell you the answer that works for them. That gives you the ability to make business decisions based on hard data from real customer experiences. Careful testing is an essential part of your ongoing optimization efforts.

Resistance to Testing

Given the granular nature of user data now available to any online company, setting up and running a test is not technically challenging. Resistance to testing is often based on a lack of will by decision makers in the company. Most reluctance to testing comes from a fear of losing revenue. Especially at the ends of quarters, or when other pressures are mounting for a company, it can be difficult to have the confidence to find your most optimized cart. Resistance can also come from a general fear of the unknown, from the attitudes of the highest paid person in the room or from previous testing experiences. Once the buy-in exists, however, the process for running a test is simple.

Testing Methodology

Strategic Goal

Todd Garcia, Senior Account Executive at cleverbridge, walked us through the process for establishing a test.

He recommends you begin the testing process by defining your strategic goal. For instance, Garcia once ran a test where the strategic goal was to raise the revenue associated with a particular product. While that goal was clear, there was more than one way to achieve it. Establishing this test required some discussion about which changes to implement. As he discussed the test with the software merchant, they began to flesh out a hypothesis for the test.

Hypothesis

Garcia noted that, “It’s important to define a hypothesis that is testable and results can easily be defined through data analysis. Meaning, your hypothesis should be based on realistic KPIs for that specific test.” In this case, the hypothesis was that they could raise the average order value of the product by removing the field to enter a coupon code in a shopping cart.

Test

In order to have meaningful results, do not simply implement your change and compare it to historical data. Garcia explained, “Customers act differently in different times of the year, different days of the week, different hours of the day, etc., … so it’s important to test your variations in real time.” Your original design becomes your control design. The control shows you how your current design performs during the same time period and under the same conditions to your test design. The test design is implemented alongside your control, and customers are diverted to one design or the other.

Assess

How did the two variations of your page perform? Did one do better? How well did your hypothesis live up to the results? In this case, it turned out the hypothesis was incorrect. Average order value did not increase or decrease in any significant way with the removal of the coupon field. This negative result did, however, have a surprising result.

At the start of the test, the conversion rate was expected to remain constant. Remarkably, the conversion rate increased by 10 percent. The results indicated something very specific about customer behavior  when presented with the option to enter a coupon code. More customers completed their purchase when they were not prompted to enter a code.

We can only guess what was happening in the minds of the customers, but it could be that some were abandoning their cart to search for coupon codes and not returning. Perhaps they did not find the code and gave up. Perhaps they found a discount from a reseller, and were not buying the product directly from the publisher. Or perhaps they were finding a different product altogether. In any case, removing the obstacle to converting kept a greater number of customers engaged with this client’s product.

Outcomes

In discussing the outcomes of the test, Garcia noted, “My hypothesis was proven wrong, which is totally fine because something even cooler came out of it. Online retailers include the coupon code option because they would rather have customers come back with a coupon than not buy at all. But based on the results of the test, they’re just not coming back. The test teaches us that if customers are in your cart, they want to buy. So don’t push them away.”

Keystone

Good business intuition is essential to any successful enterprise, but those gut feelings can sometimes prove incorrect. The potential risk of running tests is far outweighed by the value of confirming or refute your hunches with real data. Working with a solid methodology ensures your tests are meaningful, and your decisions based on the outcomes have a far better chance of helping you achieve your strategic goals.

Learn more about how to increase revenue with our Ultimate Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization. 

The post A Funny Thing Happened During the A/B Test appeared first on cleverbridge.

You also need a new way to relate to subscription metrics. With subscriptions, KPIs are no longer simply about conversion rates.

But how do you define subscription metrics? And how do you ensure they correspond to the subscriber journey? Finally, how do you use reporting on your subscription metrics to derive meaningful insights?

Subscription Metrics 101

Subscription metrics are a set of measurements focused on your developing long-term customer relationships and building a stream of predictable revenue. These metrics are jointly owned across an organization, meaning the Sales team, the Customer Success team — even the CIO — help meet strategic KPIs.

There are many subscription metrics to be aware of, but we’ve outlined the most critical subscription metrics to track.

• Monthly recurring revenue
• Churn rate
• Customer lifetime value
• Customer acquisition cost

Want more metrics? Download Mapping & Measuring the Subscriber Journey 

Monthly Recurring Revenue

A calculation of your subscription revenue amortized by month. It is the most important metric your subscription business needs to calculate.

MRR = Amount paid / Number of subscription months 

Churn Rate

The rate at which customers are canceling their subscriptions.

Churn rate = Number of customers who canceled in a billing period / Total number of customers at start of the billing period

When it comes to addressing the churn rate, the focus is usually on voluntary churn. This occurs when a subscriber willingly cancels a subscription. It’s important to consider involuntary churn, which occurs without action on the subscriber’s part. Many times, this occurs when a credit card expired or due to loss or theft. Luckily, there are revenue retention strategies available to prevent involuntary churn that utilize a strategic, multi-step approach.

Tackling churn by focusing on retention can significantly boost your online revenue. Read our guide to learn more best practices on customer retention.

Customer Lifetime Value

An estimate of the average total value of a customer over their lifetime (from signup to churn). This is one of the most difficult metrics to calculate, but is vital to getting a better picture of the overall health of your business.

CLV = (ARPA x Gross Margin %) / Customer Churn Rate

ChartMogul does an excellent job of explaining how customer lifetime value can be estimated, how to respond if it is low or high, and why one that fluctuates over time can be a sign of instability.

Customer Acquisition Cost

An estimate of the costs to acquire a customer.

CAC = Sum of all sales & marketing expenses / # of new customers added

Building Subscription Metrics Into the Subscriber Journey

The subscriber journey documents the touchpoints your buyer may experience on their way to their decision to purchase. The subscriber journey powers your ability to understand your customers: where they start, what challenges they’re facing, and how fast they’re moving. It’s important that your metrics are in line with the journey of your subscribers and that they center on recurring revenue.

Your subscription metrics should help you answer key business questions like:

• How quickly are customers adopting your product/service?
• Does your customer experience allow your organization to hit revenue targets?
• Knowing that no single buyer journey is exactly the same, how do you model the sales cycle?
• With an eye on recurring revenue, are your numbers telling you whether your customers committed?
• What do renewals look like?

Considering the subscriber journey as you measure your subscription program forces you to pay attention to your customers’ behavior to prevent losing them. It will also help you to avoid the pain of churn by watching for red flags. You’ll also know how to engage with your users at critical points in their subscription lifecycle – trial, subscribe, renew and upgrade.

Bringing more value to customers is more important than ever, and you cannot risk them churning away. Get more tips for attracting and acquiring new subscribers.

Reporting Subscription Metrics

Subscription-based reporting is a powerful tool for identifying trends, measuring customer satisfaction, and improving the health of your business. Combining key subscription metrics with the right reporting provides important business insight. If metrics show customers are losing interest in your product, then reporting will alert your team to the issue. Reporting provides the insight to identify the potential loss of recurring revenue and to put preventative measures in place.

Maintain a current view of your business by reporting on monthly recurring revenue, churn, customer lifetime value and customer acquisition costs. Then run all of these metrics through your ERP tool. It’s even possible to connect the billing tools your team uses most for more accurate analytics — regardless of where your data sits — and then run customer-centric subscription reports that can be presented to the board or across your organization.

Use these reports to answer your most important questions: Which customers are past due on their billing? Which marketing channels send us the most valued customers? How much revenue are up-sells contributing to our bottom line?

For further details, look at how we integrate with ChartMogul to offer real-time subscription analytics specifically for subscription businesses.

Keystone

Running a subscription business requires a shift in thinking about your customers, your products and your metrics. Reporting on subscription metrics helps you build a better, more predictable business. It also makes it easier to forecast future revenue and provide visibility into the health of your business. All this will make your business more responsive to customer demands. Moving quickly to respond to those demands cements strong and long-term customer relationships, which are the foundation of growing recurring revenue.

Andrea Bailif-Gush is the Product Marketing Manager at cleverbridge

The post Subscription Metrics Defined appeared first on cleverbridge.

Today’s focus is on subscriber identities and roles — what they are, how to use them and why looking at metrics for specific roles can help you identify important trends in your analytics. You’ll learn how to empower the Finance team to define and assign subscriber identities and roles in the way that contextualizes data and makes it more meaningful for your organization.

After all, in this new subscription environment, Finance isn’t just measuring performance; they’re helping drive it.

Building Subscriber Identity Records

In the old transaction-based economy, it was enough to keep a static database of customer contact information — but that era has come and gone. Now that your focus has shifted from the order itself to the person doing the ordering, you’ll need to maintain comprehensive subscriber identity records.

This is accomplished by consolidating behavioral, financial and demographic data from disparate business systems, including your CRM, ERP, web analytics, email platform, marketing automation tool and subscription billing platform. Think of a subscriber identity record as your customer’s fingerprint: it gives you an overview of the impact that their behavior, demographics and financial contributions have on your subscription business.

Your subscriber identity records should contain the following information:

• Email, address, phone number, etc.
• Product usage metrics
• Purchase history
• Payment history
• Refund history

Once you know who your subscribers are you can group them into roles. By running reports on each of these roles, you’ll uncover insights that are specific to the different types of subscribers you’re serving.

Defining Subscriber Roles

One way to define subscriber roles is based on the features and functionality that different groups of users are able to access within your offering. To boost recurring revenue, you need to upsell “standard users” to a premium version of your offering with more features and functionality – and then charge these “power users” a premium price.

In subscription reporting, different subscriber roles might also be referred to as “cohorts”. In short, a cohort is a group of users who share a common characteristic or experience within a certain period. It could refer to a group of subscribers who all have the same access level – like, for example, your “power users” – or it could simply refer to a segment of users who all signed up during the same month.

According to Cohort Analysis 101, cohort analysis is useful in subscription billing because it lets you identify relationships between
the characteristics of a specific population
and that population’s behavior.

Assigning Subscriber Roles

Now that you’ve defined your roles, it’s time to assign them. Assigning the right subscriber roles can be tricky because it isn’t immediately obvious which roles will reveal trends that are actually valuable for growing your business. So how exactly do you figure out where the best data is hiding? The answer: leveraging powerful predictive analytics to apply a role, or multiple roles, to each subscriber identity.

Machine learning software accurately identifies trends in customer behavior without the risk of human error. It’s intelligent enough to refine its predictions as you feed it more and more data.
The result? An unbiased overview — and forecast — of how different subscriber roles (or cohorts) will impact your bottom line.

Why invest in predictive analytics for your business?

• Quickly segment complex analytics by subscriber role
• Understand how customer behavior powers product innovation
• Easily track engagement scores and lifecycle moments

Wrapping It All Up

Between part one of this series and today’s conclusion, the ultimate question is this: How do you ensure that the Finance team has the resources they need to effectively measure and track your business performance while driving future growth and profitability?

Well, you have a couple of options.

1. If you’re managing your subscription
   program in-house…

   You’ll need to closely inspect all of your business tools (whether developed internally or outsourced) to ensure that you have solutions in place for all of these capabilities. Then, you’ll need to link of these systems together. That’s how you get those subscriber identity records – plus a holistic view of the health of your business.

1. If you’re using a payment processor or subscription billing platform…

   You might find that your provider is not offering real-time insight into your revenues and cash flow. If you can’t seamlessly consolidate your customer and financial data, you’ll never have an accurate view of your business’s performance.
   Evaluate the time and resources required to manually feed data into different business tools and systems – and also consider the room for error.

1. You can partner with a a flexible, comprehensive, end-to-end subscription billing solution that specializes in helping businesses like yours go global, fast. This enables the Finance team to quickly track and analyze key metrics, measure customer satisfaction and identify opportunities for optimization — not just reporting on your business, but driving it.

Regardless of what you choose, you’ll need the capabilities to:

• Combine your financial and behavioral data
• Track your subscribers’ buying journey from start to finish
• Measure how your customers are engaging with your offering
• Monitor the health of individual subscribers
• Group subscribers by common traits and behaviors

Enjoy this two-part series on subscription metrics and reporting tips? Good news!
You can download our free white paper or view the SlideShare below.

The post Subscription Metrics & Reporting Tips, Part 2: Subscriber Identities & Roles appeared first on cleverbridge.

This month on the blog, we covered the difference between user experience and customer experience in a guest post from Shane Barker. We took another look at the AgTech industry and how two companies approach user experience. And we explored three key tips for affiliate marketers to successfully leverage social media. But that’s not everything of note that happened. Below, we feature key stories from the past month about subscriptions, the cloud and global compliance.

Subscriptions in the News

Trapping You in a Club You Didn’t Know You Joined | Bloomberg

In the growing world of subscriptions, unscrupulous companies with abusive (or illegal) policies are getting attention. In Bloomberg’s recent feature, they highlight Adore Me, an online subscription company that ships lingerie to their subscribers. Sounds like many other subscription box companies we hear so much about. But these subscriptions must adhere to the provisions in ROSCA against negative option billing, or defaulting customers into a recurring billing agreement without upholding specific transparency standards. The law states that any subscription or recurring billing agreement must “provide simple mechanisms for a consumer to stop recurring charges from being placed on the consumer’s credit card, debit card, bank account, or other financial account.”

Here’s where Adore Me ran in to trouble. By signing customers up automatically for their VIP package, and then making cancellation of the package practically impossible, Adore Me inspired a torrent of customers to contact the FTC to complain. “Canceling what one customer described in an FTC complaint as the ‘seemingly inescapable VIP package’ can be an aggravating process. ‘I never opted in for monthly billing,’ another Adore Me customer wrote to the FTC, ‘and yet now it is MY responsibility to chase them down to tell them I wish no longer to be enrolled?'”

Oregon State University to Test Subscription-Based On-Demand Tickets for Sporting Events | SportTechie

Subscription models are making their way into college sports. Oregon State University is rolling out a subscription program for sporting events. SportTechie notes, “Oregon State deputy athletic director Zack Lassiter said, ‘We’re not trying to maximize revenue… We’re trying to create a price that resonates with our young alums.’ This on-demand ticket options allows SQUAD users to sit with each other at games, and also provides the option to upgrade to better seats, even at the last minute.”

Head in the Cloud

10 Industries That Have Embraced the Cloud | Inc.com

The cloud is becoming essential to business in more sectors every day. Inc.com compiled this list of 10 industries that have embraced cloud computing. Based on data from Okta, author and Okta COO Frederik Kerrist summarizes his company’s findings by looking at cloud adoption in Software, Marketing, Biotech/Pharma, Real-Estate, Not-for-Profit and five other industries with their heads in the cloud.

Strengthening Authentication Through Big Data | TechCrunch

The cloud is also beefing up authentication technology. We all know passwords are easy to crack, and other authentication technologies are often cumbersome for users, spoiling their experience. But fear not: “As a result of dramatic decreases in data storage costs and the explosion of cloud services, data collection technologies and advancements in web platforms and mobile technology,” connecting large data sets from disparate sources is simultaneously making authentication processes more secure and easier on users.

Global Compliance

Facebook Moments Launches in EU and Canada Without Facial Recognition | TechCrunch

Because of the data protection laws in the EU and Canada, Facebook has disabled facial recognition technology in their photo-sharing app Moments for those jurisdictions. “Facebook says it instead uses a form of object recognition, which is based on features like the distance between a person’s eyes and their ears,” and not on any personal information that users have provided to Facebook.

The article notes that this method is not as accurate as true facial recognition, and may also diminish the quality of the user experience depending on the user’s location. “This makes the app a bit more labor-intensive, as it now can’t automatically identify who is in your photos – it can only suggest that a group of photos that may contain the same person.”

United States: First Circuit Decision Increases Risks to Businesses Under VPPA | Mondaq

The First Circuit US Federal Court recently took up a case involving the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), which prohibits companies that sell or rent video to consumers, renters or subscribers from disclosing any personally identifiable information to third parties. Mondaq deeply analyses the legal implications in their coverage of the ruling. TechCrunch also has an excellent discussion on their site through the lens of the tech industry.

The plaintiff in this case claims USA Today illegally provided his viewing and location data to Adobe for use in their analytics tool. Two important things to catch with this ruling: First, specifically if your company provides video services, be very careful about the way you use user data and share it with third parties. Equally important, the court found that the plaintiff in the case, who had downloaded a free app from USA Today, did count as a subscriber under the definitions in the law. While lower courts had reasoned that a subscriber had to pay subscription fees, this court’s embrace of a broader idea of the subscription governing a customer relationship updates the court’s understanding of the law to match current industry practice.

Want more? Visit our resources page today.

The post May 2016 Digest — Subscriptions, Cloud & Global Compliance appeared first on cleverbridge.

In today’s infographic from IDC and SAS, they identify three approaches to data monetization and apply the theoretical framework to two specific industries. These three approaches, however, are relevant to any business looking to derive value from their data. Effectively monetizing data means:

• New revenue streams
• Better products and services
• Operational efficiency
• Profit optimization

Key Approaches to Monetizing Data — Data Decisioning

One approach to monetizing data is to leverage insights to enhance processes. SAS calls this Data Decisioning. By combining customer data with comprehensive analytics and A/B testing, any business will have a more accurate perspective on what resonates with customers. From these insights, a company can optimize the customer experience on their website and within their product or service. Improving customer experience will increase customer loyalty and satisfaction which, in turn, increases revenue.

Key Approaches to Monetizing Data — Data Products

Establishing a service based around the data a company collects is another important strategy for monetization. For instance, in our earlier look at connected devices, we noted Nest successfully leverages customer data for a paid service. Their NestAware data storage plan allows customers to access Nest Cam video data from anywhere, and stores tiered amounts of data at different monthly or annual price points. Nest makes it easy for customers to access the service, including offering a free trial.

Key Approaches to Monetizing Data — Data Partnerships

SAS’s third approach to data monetization involves selling or sharing core analytical capabilities with partners. In the age of APIs, partnerships are easier than ever. Essential data can be easily communicated between platforms and organizations. And companies will pay for access or ownership of the data. For example, the infographic points out that banking data can be shared with retailers, or manufacturers may have important fault diagnosis or productivity optimization capabilities that partners in the supply chain would pay for.

Keystone

Whether your company uses data to shore up internal processes, create innovative products or services to sell directly to consumers, or works within a B2B partnership, you can tap into the value of data to earn more revenue. In fact, enterprises that leverage analytics are two times more likely to outperform their peers. Statistics like that beg the question  – can you afford not to monetize your data?

Learn about essential subscription KPIs in our complimentary guide, Mapping & Measuring the Subscriber Journey

The post Ecommerce Eye Candy — Three Approaches to Monetizing Data [Infographic] appeared first on cleverbridge.

We’re not the only team publishing great content for the digital goods industry. Enjoy these selections from the past month.

B2B Ecommerce

Measuring Up: Benchmarking Your B2B Ecommerce Performance | Forrester

In their updated benchmark study, Forrester Research examined the state of B2B online sales, finding that the B2B online market is bullish. Online B2B sales enjoy healthy conversion rates, growing average order values and net-positive profitability, finding 47 percent of B2B companies believe profitability per online order is increasing. Even with these positive stats, B2B brings with it greater marketing and customer support costs.

Analyst Andy Hoar goes on to note, however, “It’s still early days for B2B eCommerce. Even those companies that have vaulted ahead of their competitors face significant challenges building the next-generation version of their business. B2B companies looking slightly over the horizon and positioning themselves successfully for 2016 and 2017 are focusing on:”

• Harnessing international growth opportunities
• Establishing critical metrics
• Understanding what tech infrastructure must be built-out over the next two to three years
• Shifting to an omnichannel approach

Predictive Analytics

Unified View Helps Execs Predict Customer Needs| eMarketer

A unified customer view allows companies to analyze the entire life of a customer’s relationship with their brand. Having all that information compiled into a holistic view is essential for companies that wish to jettison the traditional ‘transaction-centered’ perspective for a customer-centric one. With this perspective, a company puts customer experience at the center of their efforts.

But it’s more than just an attitude shift. Pooling customer data in one tool also allows for more complete customer analytics. Rather than the marketing team analyzing one slice of a customer, while the accounting team analyzes another slice, companies with a unified view can begin to see how their marketing efforts are impacting their revenue, or a how a feature release impacts customer support contacts.

With comprehensive data like this, a company can move from simply looking back at what customers have done to predicting what they will do. According to eMarketer, “More than six in 10 executives worldwide said that achieving a more complete view of the customer helped them more accurately predict customer needs and desires.”

IoT

Gartner: IoT Adoption Set for 50 Percent Growth in 2016 | CRN

If media buzz is any indication, then the Internet of Things (IoT) is big and getting bigger. Now Gartner has data to back up this trend. In their new report, they say that 64 percent of businesses they surveyed plan to implement an IoT strategy.

Chet Geschickter, research director at Gartner says, “2016 will be a very big year for IoT adoption. We are starting to see a wide range of IoT use cases across virtually all industries. But the big challenge now is demonstrating return on investment. Executives need to validate the contribution that IoT can make in order to justify large-scale rollouts.”

Subscriptions

Life, by Subscription | TechCrunch

Nic Milanovic over at TechCrunch provides a wide-angle view of the new subscription economy. Looking first at what is available via subscription, we see that far more than milk and newspapers can be had for a small, recurring fee. Milanovic looks at the technological and socioeconomic reasons for the prevalence of subscriptions today. Since the last economic downturn, most Americans have not rebuilt the savings they had before the collapse. The technology that made the sharing and gigging economy possible emerged just as these consumers were left with a dearth of liquid capital. Many younger adults, never having personally known the ownership economy, have fully embraced subscriptions as a way to taste the good life without owning it outright. As Milanovic says, “We may have to face the fact that it doesn’t make financial sense to own the things that we could instead simply subscribe to.”

This is the secret that digital companies have understood for years now. While from a consumer perspective, it may not make sense to buy something you can simply lease, from a business perspective it makes even less sense to make a one-time sale when you can earn recurring revenue. For customers, this means, “There is a financially shrewd Zen in not being tied to unmalleable objects. It frees people to spend money on pursuits other than that of saving to buy nice things.” So too, a subscription business model frees companies from the tyranny of the new sale, and allows them to focus on providing the best experience possible for subscribers — all with a stream of recurring revenue to support it.

Get help Navigating the Subscription Solutions Landscape

Global Compliance

Why a Tax Law Change in Australia Could Impact Online Revenues for US Online Retailers | Forrester

Beginning in July 2017, the Australian government will be expanding its Goods and Services Tax (GST) collection to purchases previously exempt under existing law. This March 10, 2016 blog post by Forrester analyst Lily Varon notes that not only is the value threshold of $1,000 being removed, but the tax will also be applied to new business categories — including digital goods.

“This GST change will also impact cross-border purchases of digital goods like software, gaming and media streaming. Merchants in these categories, like their physical goods counterparts, will have to calculate the impact of the increased GST and revise their pricing strategies and/or revenue forecasts accordingly.”

As online retail continues to grow, expect to see more jurisdictions applying their local sales taxes to digital goods.

Learn what you need to be prepared to sell globally and more in our Six Guides on Ecommerce Essentials

The post March Ecommerce Digest appeared first on cleverbridge.

In today’s multimedia world, every marketer can be a storyteller. But in order for your story to resonate with the B2B buyer, it must be valuable and it must be driven by data. This may require playing the role of researcher, journalist and publisher. But based on solid data, you can choose the topics that are most helpful for your customers and cater content to suit their needs.

As we see in this “Data-Inspired Content” infographic from Dun & Bradstreet, powerful data builds the foundation for any successful marketing campaign, whether through blog posts, infographics, white papers or videos.

Data-driven content works. According to Dun & Bradstreet, 75 percent of B2B buyers rely more on content to research and make B2B purchasing decisions than they did a year ago.

However, 87 percent of B2B marketers say they struggled to produce content that truly engages their buyers. So, as a B2B software vendor, how do you deliver the right content to the right people at the right time? It’s a delicate process, but it should always start with good data.

Keep reading to learn tips on:

• Understanding your audience
• Tailoring the right content for them
• Finding the right channels for content distribution
• Measuring and optimizing the results

Download our Six Guides on Ecommerce Essentials today.

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In any case, the expanding use of cloud computing by businesses around the world is making Software as a Service (SaaS) a ubiquitous delivery model. SaaS and other delivery models that dovetail with subscriptions promise recurring revenue streams and maximized value from your customer relationships. But to measure those things, companies will need to establish new KPIs.

Subscription KPIs

Familiar KPIs like number of transactions or average cart value are no longer adequate. To assess the health of your business, KPIs like monthly and annual recurring revenue, customer acquisition costs and customer lifetime value must all be compared and measured on a regular basis.

Understanding how these new, more complex KPIs interact with each other is a challenge. The infographic below came from RJ Metrics’ attempt at creating a unified dashboard for the health of their entire enterprise. Tristand Handly of RJ Metrics explains, “Drawing up a conceptual model of how your business works and how all of your KPIs interact is a good way to make sure that everyone is looking at the business the same way.”

They created a flow chart to help keep track of the most important subscription metrics. Handly calls their approach Metric Decomposition, and explained their process further on the RJMetrics Blog.

Learn more about essential subscription KPIs for your business by downloading our complimentary white paper, Mapping and Measuring the Subscriber Journey.

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It’s easy to make decisions centered on these influences, however, it’s not smart because it’s not driven by real data. We know you are in a hurry, but if you take the time to do some A/B testing, you will end up with results that can put you on the road to increased revenue.

With testing you will gather actual real information about your specific issue/problem/change/design, and be able to use that data to make factually based decisions, just like the scientists do.

Be a scientist, not a follower. Check out this amusing infographic from Wingify that will help you determine in which scenarios you should A/B test instead of deciding by other methods.

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