Total Blue System Ecommerce

'How did you hear about us' identifies source of catalog requests

Do you mail a printed catalog (or catalogue?) to your customers? Website visitors have long been able to request such catalogs from merchants using Total Blue System's ecommerce package. But now you can ask the same question of someone requesting a catalog as you can of someone creating a website account:  How did you hear about us?

The possible answers are configured by you in the Admin Area, under the User Accounts tab. See the subsection Customer Sources, where you can name and code sources and their manage their display.

The answer selected by the visitor who requests a catalog can be passed into your order fulfillment system along with regular website orders. If you're using Dydacomp's Mail Order Manager (MOM), then this will be included in the appropriate data format as part of the order file that's downloaded by you each day.

Ask or observe source of orders

Identifying the source from which you acquire a new customer -- hey, everybody wants to do that! The question of how to go about it exactly, and how precisely it can be done, well, that's not as clear cut. But here's one way within Total Blue System that you can both observe and or ask customers directly from whence they've come:

• Create a Source, starting within the Contacts module in Total Blue's Admin Area. See the nearby screen shot showing the Name and Code that can be configured. The Name is what you'll call it, and what can appear to shoppers on the public website.
• The Code is relevant when your website integrates with your internal database or order fulfillment system and you want to pass in a tracking code along with the order. Note that if a shopper enters a Coupon Code during the cart check-out process, and there's no other overriding code matched according to the Sources explained here, than the coupon code will be inserted into this Code field when the order is downloaded to your order fulfillment system.
• Sources can be configured to appear on a "How did you hear about us?" question when a shopper is completing the form to create a new website account. In such a case, you're asking the customer to tell you directly by choosing from a set of possible answers. This is helpful should you advertise or be featured in a print publication, for example. It serves in cases when the only way of knowing the source is to ask people to identify their referring source.

Sometimes people choose not to identify their source. Sometimes they don't create a new website account, but choose the Express checkout option. In such circumstances, you still want to know where the order came from. In this case, better to observe directly the referring source web site. That's where the Domain Pattern configuration is useful.

• A regular expression can be created to recognize the referring URL for a website shopper. When that domain name is marked as a source, then orders placed by visitors who were referred from those domains can have special details included in the order to identify their source. These details are imported into your internal database or internal order management system with each order.

In the example shown in the nearby screen shot, both asking and observing are in progress. The "how did you hear about us?" form is asking the shopper, and the domain pattern is watching and matching shoppers with pre-established "sources" that match the shoppers' referring URL's. Either way, you'll identify the source. 

Note: there are abilities to track the source of orders within Google Analytics that are independent of this method described here. But they can complement one another. Google Analytics is concerned with the marketer's dilemma of what can be observed about a website visitor's activities. Goals can be established and tracking codes embedded in URL's to identify sources like Froogle. 

That method is useful for slicing and dicing the data within Google Analytics, but it's not going to tie back into your order management system. Therefore the Source configuration described above ought also be given attention. If we keep the example of Froogle, the link above describes embedded tracking codes in the URL's. But what also ought be done is to configure a Source in the Admin Area for Froogle.

In the screen shot nearby,   see how the Source will observe orders referred by the Froogle (or GoogleBase) shopping engine. The Domain Pattern match will identify it. However, shoppers won't be asked whether they came from Froogle when creating a new account. You're observing, not asking.

If using the Catalog module's product feed to GoogleBase, you'll want to configure a Source in the Contacts module to track sources accordingly.

Orders have searchable addresses, account holders don't

Merchants' web or customer service teams may use Total Blue System's Admin Area
to look up customer records, using the Contacts module, or they may go to the Cart module to download web orders (if their database integration doesn't do this automatically). The latest System Update streamlines how you search for Orders and what we'll call Users. Here's what's going on:

• If you're looking to find someone or some order by an address, go to the Carts module. There you can search by address fields, and the search will query both billing and shipping addresses of all orders placed through the Cart. Additional fields are also available for searching, including an Alternate ID (typically connected to your internal database or order fulfillment system). See the nearby picture of what this search form looks like.
  
• If you're looking to find someone or some order by an ID number or an email address, you can go to the Contacts module search form. See the nearby picture of what this form looks like.

Note: Keep this in mind about searching for users using the Contacts module: a user that has a website account can save shipping and billing addresses to be re-used for convenience during future cart check-outs. They're not searchable from within the Admin Area, though they appear within the customer's My Account area of the website. Similarly, there may be addresses entered for catalog requests or during a cart check-out that gets aborted and these addresses are not searchable.

Pitch the email opt-in after you've got the order

For every merchant who wants to query would-be buyers with all sorts of questions (yes, we love the data, too), there's a shopper who wants to buy with a minimum of hassle. Creating a website account in order to make a purchase of cart items can be one such hassle that our latest System Update seeks to reduce. New: an email opt-in invitation no longer appears on the Create a New Account page.

The website account creation process for site visitors is now separate from the act of opting-in to receive email offers. With the latest System Update, the Create a New Account page now asks these two questions only:  your email address, and "How did you hear about us?" -- assuming the merchant has configured this question and answer options to appear here.

So what can be done to encourage a shopper who wants to buy to also opt-in to email offers? Here's a couple of ideas:

1. Make use of Teasers in your site's navigation bars to call attention to your Publications sign-up form page at http://www.yourdomain.com/profile/signup or alternatively the Quick Sign-up form if you use it.

2. Configure the Cart Thank you Page Teaser to offer an invitation to opt-in. This Teaser displays after the cart's order has been placed. It's a great time to encourage your new customer to stay in touch and get great offers by email. Here's a tip on how to do this:

In your teaser, as a link around a graphic image or as a text link, point to this special URL: http://www.yourdomain.com/profile/edit_using_session_email

When you do this, the site visitor who clicks through will be brought to the Update Your Profile page and the email address he or she already entered during the cart check-out process will be pre-populated in the appropriate form field. (If the shopper used the Express Checkout option and didn't enter an email address, then of course it won't appear.)

By setting up the Cart Thank you Page Teaser in this manner, you can keep the continuity of the ordering process going with minimum interruption, and then pitch the email opt-in at an opportune time: after you've got the order.

Making it easier to create website account

Your website shoppers ought be encouraged to create an account when completing a purchase. While a guest account in the "express check-out" mode will still get you the order, the personal website account will get you more of what you want to know:  how did the shopper learn about you, an invitation to sign-up to your email marketing list(s), and the opportunity to collect some demographic information. Now it's easier than ever:

The latest update to the Create A New Account page at https://www.yourdomainname.com/user_register.php?g=%2Faccount.php&t=e removed several fields of information:  first name, last name, postal mailing address, company name, and fax number.

Now the only time a shopper is asked for a name or address is in the context of shipping something, or entering payment information -- at that moment only. Prior to this change, we'd collect the address earlier in the process and then present that address again to be used as the ship-to or bill-to address. Now it's a psychologicaly shift to only ask for it at the moment it's required. There is no longer a concept of a "primary address" for a website account.

The result is a dramatically shorter form that fits in one screen without any scrolling (mostly).
Objective: make the form less intimidating, and hustle shoppers through the account creation process as painlessly as possible. At its most basic, it's just the shopper's email address.

Here's what the form can also include, depending on your configuration:

1. "How did you learn about our web site?" question, which you can control the answers to within the Contacts module's "sources" area.
2. "Please sign me up for the following email lists:" which then displays all of the active, public lists  within your Email Marketing module. Name and description appear, so be sure to have a good description that sets expectations of frequency and content.
3. "Which best describes you?" demographic questions, as many as you've created within the Contacts module. We expect to make more of this kind of data with the Email Marketing module for segmented, personalized messaging in 2007, so take a second look at what you're asking, or not asking, on this important website account creation page.

Encourage more catalog requests, if you want

Would you like to encourage more catalog requests from your website's visitors? We know that shoppers who come to our clients' sites after receiving a print catalog are more likely to buy than other visitors, and spend more per visit than visitors from other sources.

Now there's one less obstacle for a site visitor to request a print catalog from your website. There's now no longer a requirement that an email address be given when requesting a catalog on your website. We've separated the Catalog Request process from the process of creating a Website Account. The website account creation process required an email address as a unique identifier. Now there's no connection between these processes, making it more likely that a catalog request won't be avoided by a website visitor for fear of giving up a sensitive email address.

Here's a couple other changes:

• The URL to the Catalog Request page has changed, to http://www.yourdomainname.com/catalog_request.php. We've updated your site's universal navigation menus and email templates that link to this form.
• You can now add a "Teaser" to the top of the Catalog Request page. Create a new teaser that features photos of your catalogs, along with a text description of their frequency and subject matter. Assign it to the Catalog Request "Teaser Spot" in the Teasers section of the Admin Area.

Note: If your website automatically imports catalog requests into your order fulfillment software, like Mail Order Manager, then expect this to continue. There are no changes in how this data is integrated with your other software packages.