The Internet Retailer conference was in Chicago this month. What a great show! We have been seeking the right venue and I believe we found it! Internet Retailer had great vendors and messages that spoke to the struggles and successes of retail going to etail. One of my favorite technology companies at the show was Infopia; they provide SaaS ecommerce solutions. Great team, great technology, and they solve a real business problem for companies selling on the Web.

We were pretty busy throughout the event, with lots of questions from retailers that we like to answer. Here are some that we fielded, and a quick answer, although Everest would be happy to have our product managers and technology gurus provide a more in-depth outlook. Just give us a call!

One retailer commented that her website margins were lower than her physical store margins. Well, we all know that it should be the other way around! Web merchants often undersell stores by marketing products they don't have to stock, by having minimal physical presence and by needing by far a lower headcount to run their business. What costs are you carrying? Take a look, and then at what resources would be available outside your company for less.

How to do good branding on the Web? We get that all the time. It's a topic of endless discussion. Certainly we know that the online experience has to be compelling and much like an in-store experience. Shoppers have even higher expectations of Web stores. How fast and easy and fast is it for them to find what they want? What are the differences between similar products? They expect lots of instantly accessible information like this to validate their choice.

What works best to get shoppers on your site to buy? If they find what they're interested in, it's not all about just product and price. Besides really relevant information, other customer product reviews and ratings are good. Give them everything they need to get to the purchase decision. We advise retailers to test, test, test. If you're running promotions in different places, have the shoppers come to special landing pages associated with those promotions and see what works best. Online shoppers can be very different; make sure you have everything in place to let them have the experience that works for them, individually. For example, let them choose if the item is a gift and then make sure you have options for gift-wrap and cards. We often use Starbucks as the one-to-one buying experience, and ask how you're going to do that on your website. One size really doesn't fit all on the Web!