E-commerce Retailer Case Study: CoffeeForLess.com

CoffeeForLess.com, is the B2C online outlet for the 40-year old Kirshner family-owned CoffeeServ business, a Philadelphia, PA office coffee supplier (OCS). Son Ben, who now also owns the successful New York-based digital marketing agency Elite SEM, developed the company’s first brochure-style website in 1996. The one-page site offered simple company service and email contact information, yet ranked first by search engines of-the-day merely because they were the only OCS company with a website. (Ryan) In 2000, Ben created the first e-commerce CoffeeForLess.com website providing online purchases that supported the direct-to-consumer coffee sales sparked by the early website from well beyond the Philadelphia metro-area.

A Tale of Two Markets: Comparison for Good or for Evil

Of the initial 29 California Department of Motor Vehicle (DMV) self-driving car permits, Google’s 25 test permits out-distanced Audi and Daimler AG Mercedes-Benz that obtained two permits each. (Clark). Google’s concept car’s business objective exponentially more value than the auto companies’ was the “rolling data collection” factor: Registered vehicles have no identity protection allowing a constant occupant behavioral data collection and an impulse-driven broadcast potential that would rival the heady days of in-store Kmart Shopper Blue Light Special experiences. Target ranges for real-world application of self-driving cars range from 3 to 5 years to never, given the vast numbers of unmapped roadways and weather complexities that include Polar Vortex winter storms and resultant roadway potholes. Fleets of self-driving Herbie the Love Bugs are one thing Google, not likely to be encountered on the roadway, anytime soon.

Does IBM CoreMetrics Challenge Google Analytics In E-Commerce Analytics?

Although Google recently announced 2014 profits of $14.4 billion, an increase of 19% over the previous year, industry experts continue backroom discussion about whether the corporation will continue its tech dominance as digital advertising platforms Facebook, Pinterest and Snapchat score big ad revenue gains through emotion-immersive brand advertising. Arguing Google has peaked, critics like Ben Thompson see Google following in Microsoft’s footsteps, “…when a company becomes dominant, its dominance precludes it from dominating the next thing. It’s almost like a natural law of business.” (Manjoo).

What New Balance Tells Us About Social Media Circa 2015

“For us, it’s less about selling to our communities and more about distributing compelling content that shows you how New Balance is playing a role in peoples’ lives and the culture we are trying to build. Through content, New Balance is accessible. We have a personality, we stand for things and we have a culture.”

−Patrick Cassidy, head of Global Digital Brand Marketing

Unique Visitor Metrics Help Digital Marketers Monitor Ongoing Site Performance

Website owners large or small, for-profit or non-profit, individually-owned or governmental should evaluate unique visitor traffic data regularly. Estimated unique visitor counts, which ignore repeat sessions from the same browser ID (or mobile ID) provides a baseline on-going metric of visitors that engage with a website at least once during the measurement period. Unexpected declines in website traffic should be investigated immediately to determine causes for the reduced traffic, which can include technical website performance problems needing immediate attention.

Conversion Rates − The One Metric to Have

If William Shakespeare were writing Hamlet in 2015, he might have been tempted to write the famous protagonist soliloquy as, “To convert or not to convert?” due to today’s author and playwright blogging importance in promoting their creative work. Whether “Modern” Shakespeare would be looking to create an email contact list, RSS feed subscribers list or free Q1 of Hamlet download, micro-conversion rates per event, based on Shakespeare’s unique website visitors, would have been the key performance indicator providing him with actionable outcome intelligence.