The times they are a-changin’

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Being a B2B provider, we don’t interact with consumers – but our clients do.  Thus, we have an interest in issues pertaining to customer support and service.  One trend we’ve started to notice is the rise of social media use among traditional retailers.

As reported by Internet Retailer, a recent online survey of 1,000 US consumers reveals that 17% of online consumers sought service via social media.  The most revealing part of the survey is that customers who received “great” customer service via social media increased their spending by 21%.

Social media is becoming – or has become – a more popular way for companies to communicate with customers.  It has also become a new way for companies to develop their brand personality and foster open dialog with customers.  In the online retail world, where customers often make purchasing decisions without seeing the product in person, customer service is of utmost importance.  Let’s not speculate on what Zappos would be now without its legendary customer service, but it has obviously made a critical difference in its success.

On the opposite end of the customer service spectrum, the recent survey reports that “80% of the respondents who used social media for customer service failed to complete a purchase with a retailer because of poor customer service.”  Of those respondents who didn’t use social media for customer service, 55% of them did not make a purchase due to poor customer service.

The times they are a-changin’, whether online retailers like it or not, but social media use will continue to rise.  For those that haven’t jumped on the social media bandwagon, it’s not too late to start.  It could well be worth it down the line.

What is “Speed of Change”?

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Speeding Police CarYou’ve probably heard us use the term “Speed of Change” quite a bit since we launched our new website.  “Speed of Change” isn’t just merely a clever tag line here at Kalio.  It is what we aim to achieve as the point of differentiation between ourselves and our competitors.  We strive to give our clients the tools and ability to make the necessary changes to adapt to an ever-changing e-commerce landscape.

This recent Internet Retailer piece about how Dolce & Gabbana used 3rd-party tools to reduce page load times got us thinking about our “Speed of Change” philosophy.  On one hand, “Speed of Change” can simply describe the way the KalioCommerce platform can improve the performance of our clients’ sites – which is a crucial piece of the online shopping experience.  After all, it has been proven that site speed and performance can affect shopper abandonment rates.  On another hand, “Speed of Change” describes the way our clients can make essentially on-the-fly changes and improvements to successfully navigate the ebb and flow of online selling year in and year out.

At this point, “Speed of Change” may still sound like a simple tag line to you.  That’s fine – but only if you haven’t seen it in action.  The 2012 Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition in Chicago is taking place from June 5 to 8 in Chicago, IL and it’s going to be the perfect opportunity for you to witness firsthand what “Speed of Change” means.  Come on down to booth 1819.  You won’t miss us – we’ll be at a 20′x20′ booth that, well, you’ll just have to see in person.  Throughout the show, we’ll be doing a regular “Speed of Change Challenge” where one of our talented Kalio employees will make a variety of changes to a client site.  You will be able to guess how long it will take to make these changes and if your time is the closest to the performed time, you win a $50 gift card.

The “Speed of Change Challenge” will only be a small glimpse into our philosophy but we think it’ll give you a good grasp of the concept, which we will continue to expand upon on our site and blog in the upcoming months.  Until then, see you in Chicago!

A touch of mobile improves conversion and sales

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A Touch of Class says an m-commerce site was the right move.

It’s a familiar story in the world of mobile commerce: Traffic to an e-retail site coming from mobile devices is soaring. In the case of home décor cataloger and e-retailer Touch of Class, traffic from smartphones accounted for 19,000 visits in February 2011 and more than doubled to 40,000 in February 2012, now accounting for about 4% of total site traffic.

Continue reading on InternetRetailer.com…

Kalio® Makes the Mark in 2011 And Achieves FitForCommerce Verification

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Strong Holiday Season and New Site Launches, As Well As Completion of Industry Leading Verification Process Mark Successful 2011

Cupertino, CA — January 30, 2012 — Leading e-commerce software-as-a-service firm Kalio, Inc. (www.kaliocommerce.com) today announced that it closed its most successful calendar year and recently achieved FitForCommerce Verification of its flagship platform, KalioCommerce.

In a year of transition and reorganization, Kalio experienced unprecedented volumes of traffic and revenue from its hosted enterprise e-commerce business. The traditional end of year holiday season saw a 40% increase in visitors during Cyber Monday 2011, and a 50% increase in visitors across the entire holiday season – November 1 through December 27.  Consistent with traffic figures, Kalio’s top 20 customers experienced a 39.7% growth in 2011 over last year’s holiday season.

Client successes and growth were also highlighted by new customers adopting the KalioCommerce enterprise class software-as-a-service e-commerce platform. During the 2011 fiscal year, Kalio launched 30% more new e-commerce sites as compared to 2010. This came as part of a repositioning and rebranding process the company undertook as it embarks on its strategy to take a leadership position in the mid-market of e-commerce platform providers.

“We had a very exciting and trying time through this transition year. It has taken exceptional effort but the team’s contributions have paid off,” said Jonathan Lee, CEO. “We are pleased with the results our clients experienced and we are happy with the performance of our platform and infrastructure.”

As the year came to a close, Kalio also announced that KalioCommerce, its next generation multi-tenant software as a service offering, had successfully completed the FitForCommerce Verification process.  The ‘FFC Verified’ status is awarded after a structured evaluation process by which a certified analyst reviews claims and proof points for pre-defined features and capabilities important to an e-commerce website and business.  FFC Verification is a recognized industry standard evaluation method.

“As we embark on the next stage in our company’s growth and expansion, we are proud to have confirmation that our enterprise class platform has achieved independent verification against best practices and their critical e-commerce functionality assessment,” said Kalio CTO Nanda Kaushik, PhD. “This is a testament to the capabilities we are able to implement in a true multi-tenant SaaS architecture. We have many customers on the platform now and our vision of delivering power to the user is really beginning to take shape.”

About Kalio®, Inc.

Kalio is your partner in profitable online selling. With our many years of industry experience, Kalio is firmly establishing itself as a leader of full service SaaS e-commerce to mid-market online merchants and multichannel retailers. At the very core of what we do — and do very well — are two things. First, our ability to bring firsthand direct marketing, retail, and mail order catalog experience to our clients. Second, our expertise in managing cloud based infrastructures to remove from you the burden and hassle of IT associated to running an online store at peak performance.

Our enterprise class KalioCommerce™ platform offering shatters the myth that e-commerce vendors have to choose between being boxed in to a template product or make deep investments into in-house developments to achieve the performance and brand personalization they expect.

We partner with our clients to ensure you achieve this level of results.

For additional information, please visit www.kaliocommerce.com or call 408.550.8040.

Kalio Announces a Marketing and Technology Deal with MyBuys

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San Mateo, CA— January 20, 2012—MyBuys, the leader in cross-channel personalization for retailers, today announced it has entered into a marketing and technology partnership with Kalio, Inc., one of the leading Software as a Service e-commerce platform providers.  In seeking to extend its existing personalization capabilities, Kalio determined that the combination of MyBuys services and the Kalio platform delivers a very robust and seamless solution to their online merchants. This new partnership provides Kalio clients highly personalized recommendation services to help drive consumer engagement and increase sales.

“We are pleased to be able to offer MyBuys personalization services to our clients using our productized integration connectors” said Emmanuel de Boucaud, EVP of Sales & Marketing for Kalio, Inc.  “The combined solution is extremely simple to implement. Leveraging MyBuys’ in depth consumer profiles provides very precise personalized recommendations, which enhances the overall consumer experience and drives more conversions.”

The partnership makes it easier for retailers to enhance their sites using the power of MyBuys’ deep consumer profiles which help boost sales from website visitors. These profiles can be leveraged not only on the website, but also for retargeting consumers using both personalized display ads and personalized emails.

“We are excited about this new partnership. Kalio is an innovator in delivering enterprise eCommerce capabilities to the midmarket through a true SaaS delivery model.” MyBuys CEO Robert Cell said. “The intelligence of our personalization was very easy to add to their platform because of their open architecture and impressive integration model.”

As part of the partnership, MyBuys and Kalio will collaborate to provide a seamless experience for joint clients with the benefit of both solutions to help increase conversions and revenues.

About Kalio, Inc.

Kalio is your partner in profitable online selling. With our many years of industry experience, Kalio is firmly establishing itself as a leader of full service SaaS e-commerce to mid-market online merchants and multichannel retailers. At the very core of what we do — and do very well — are two things. First, our ability to bring firsthand direct marketing, retail, and mail order catalog experience to our clients. Second, our expertise in managing cloud based infrastructures to remove from you the burden and hassle of IT associated to running an online store at peak performance.

Our enterprise class KalioCommerce™ platform offering shatters the myth that e-commerce vendors have to choose between being boxed in to a template product or make deep investments into in-house developments to achieve the performance and brand personalization they expect.

Kalio clients commonly experience a dramatic increase of 50 to 100 percent in their web sales during the first year of working with us. We partner with our clients to ensure you achieve this level of results. Visit us at: www.KalioCommerce.com or call 408.550.8040.

About MyBuys

MyBuys is the leader in cross-channel personalization for retailers. We help them increase the effectiveness of their marketing strategy by learning individual consumers’ tendencies and interests, then updating our unique insights continually to present these shoppers with the most compelling recommendations and offers. We coordinate the personalized experience across every channel — on e-commerce sites, through email, via display ads, on mobile devices, and on Facebook. More than 400 companies, including many of the Internet Retailer Top 500, use MyBuys to increase their sales.

Based in San Mateo, California, MyBuys is a privately held company. MyBuys was recently named one of the fastest growing private companies (#114) in America by Inc. magazine for 2011. Visit us online at www.MyBuys.com or call 888-291-2422.

Introducing the new KalioCommerce.com!

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Hello, all:

Today we unveiled the new KalioCommerce.com corporate website which will take the place of Kalioinc.com and our main website. It is live effective, NOW at www.kaliocommerce.com!

The New Kalio SiteThe high level objective for the update was to continue to support our strategy of elevating the Kalio brand as a leader in e-commerce solutions for mid-market online merchants. More specifically, we worked to create a design that reflects an innovative e-commerce company, and a style that is bold and attention-getting but brings focus to our core value as an organization: delivering value as a partner in e-commerce.

We chose to change the base URL to KalioCommerce.com because that is easier to remember, more telling than KalioInc.com.

This is a phase 1 launch and over time you will see the site continue to evolve. In the near future, we expect to add some rich media (videos) and more image-based content to reinforce the text.

Please feel free to spend some time reading and navigating the site. In particular the Speed of Change page which outlines Kalio’s vision. Also, you will note under the Enterprise product page a section on Appliform™. This is a key differentiation about our product philosophy that we will continue to evolve and emphasize over time.

Enjoy and let us know what you think,

Emmanuel de Boucaud, Executive VP of Sales and Marketing

 

Social Network Wars = watch out for e-commerce

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There has been a ton of news in the social media/networking front in the last two weeks.

First, the guy who played Sean Parker (one of the power players at Facebook and the mastermind behind Napster) in the film The Social Network was part of the group that bought rival MySpace for $35 million (a pittance compared with the billions that Rupert Murdoch paid for it a few years back). Wonder if Justin Timberlake wore his classic SNL Cup of Noodles costume to the closing …

Anyway, Timberlake has proven to be a master marketer of himself, his brand and is an excellent pitchman as well. He says he will be “intimately involved” in trying to revive MySpace. Stay tuned for what that means for ecommerce – but with the growth in social commerce, we can only image that MySpace should not be ignored for long.

Then last week, Google unveiled Google+ - the Silicon Valley search giant’s answer to Facebook. It looks very cool … from afar. We are still drooling with envy and waiting on our invite here at Kalio. In the meantime, here is an interesting take from Paul Chaney, the Social Media Director at Practical Ecommerce. He basically says that Google+ will have minimal impact on ecommerce, for now.

And finally just after the Fourth of July, Facebook unveiled it’s new video chat capability using Skype technology. Again, not a huge impact immediately on ecommerce retailers and merchandisers, but certainly something to keep an eye on. Sean Corcoran at Forrester’s writes that the move will only increase Facebook’s stranglehold on engagement data and remains the center of “earned media.” Here is ClickZ’s take on the announcement – the gist is that it is good news that Facebook is opening itself up to more partners for its platform and technology. Corcoran says a deeper integration with Netflix is a foregone conclusion, for example.

The immediate takeaway is that brands and companies won’t be able to use this to hold video chats with fans. But still, this could create interesting new marketing opportunities, such as virtual “Tupperware”-style parties and the like.

How will all this play out for actual e-retailers, especially those trying to sell on social networks? Too soon to tell about any immediate impact. But we are starting here at Kalio too – we have already launched one Facebook store for one of our clients and are working on some others.

One thing’s clear, however. We are in the midst of a social media feature war – and the beneficiaries not only will be customers, but the myriad of brands and e-retailers already using these platforms to market and actuall sell product. How these features will benefit customers and brands/e-tailers remains to be seen, but with Google and Facebook going at it and a darkhorse out there in MySpace – you need to pay attenton.

ADDENDUM (July 8, 2011): I just got into Google+ and started playing around. And Google has been very clear that businesses will have little access to the platform in the short term. But longer term, that is where the money will be – and Google will be opening this up. More thoughts to come.

KalioSocial is live!

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Our latest product KalioSocial is now live and up and running.

Please check out our latest press release on our KalioSocial product – which can bring your ecommerce site to Facebook.

Not only that, but we have a package of plug ins to optimize your current ecommerce site for social commerce.

IRCE recap …

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Kalio booth at IRCE
Kalio had a booth for the first time at the Internet Retailers Convention and Exposition – which this year was held in San Diego (check out the photo).
But there were a TON of interesting presenters and information during the breakout sessions. And some great quick hit takeaways ….
1) Never abandon the abandoned: Only 17 percent of the Internet Retailer Top 500 (plus about 100 more) are implementing a triggered email when someone abandons a cart. For those companies that do have such a feature, abandoned cart emails account for about 0.3 percent of the total emails sent.  But those same emails account for more than 18 percent of total revenue generated by emails. Sounds like a great quick hit way to more revenue to us at Kalio. By the way, this information comes via a recent survey of major e-tailers on their use of email and it was presented by Loren McDonald of email provider Silverpop.
2) Optimize your email for mobile: San Diego based pet supplies retailer Petco realized a growing percentage of its customers were viewing e-mail newsletters on mobile devices. So to correspond with the company’s launch of its mobile-optimized site, Petco sent out a message that announced the mobile site in a message that was optimized for mobile devices.  The resulting revenues from the mobile site were five times higher than on a normal day – showing the power of paying attention to the mobile audience.
3) Free shipping is coming: In the kickoff introduction, event chairman and Internet Retailer editor in chief Kurt Peters gave an interesting prediction for e-tailers: Free shipping will soon be the standard and not the incentive it is today. He cited examples such as LL Bean and NewEgg, where shipping is always free, as well as others such as Amazon, The Gap, or Office Depot that have low order total thresholds to get free shipping. “Keep an eye on it,” were Kurt’s closing words.
There were tons more of takeaways, including takes on social commerce as well as the growth of mobile, but those are worth separate notes.

Mcommerce Thoughts at Lenser …

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Kalio’s chief ecommerce strategy officer Larry Kavanagh spoke at a seminar at the Lenser MultiChannel Marketing Summit last month.

He was on the panel “Taking the Leap into Mobile Technology,” (this link downloads the full verson of the slide deck). His basic message was as he stated in his two previous posts in this column: best practices for setting up an mcommerce site. You can download the full version of the slide deck.

As well as hitting on the overall state of the mcommerce market and where it is headed, Larry hit on the key points of integrating with your ecommerce site and your back end system, as well as design and function best practices as seen in Tretorn’s mobile site.

Worth a read if you have the time and are interested in mobile commerce.