ETD: 779 Need Gift Card System; Optimizing Full Online Sales
Potential & Customer Service; Defense Department completes RFID trial
E-Tailer's Digest
etd_post at gapent.com
Thu Apr 22 11:09:00 GMT 2004
E-Tailer's Digest --- Everything for the Retailer
Issue #0779 April 22, 2004
George Matyjewicz, Moderator mailto:georgem at gapent.com
Published by: GAP Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.etailersdigest.com
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CONTENTS
[1] Greetings
[2] Need Gift Card System
[3] Optimizing Full Online Sales Potential & Customer Service
[4] Defense Department completes RFID trial
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[1] Greetings.
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Hi All:
Our list members have magically come through once again. We have some
solutions to the gift card system request. Great stuff.
And we have comments from a list member on online sales potential and
customer service. What do you think?
RFID got a big boost as the US Department of Defense successfully completed
a pilot test. Combine this with major retailers like WalMart who are also
endorsing RFID and we may have a winner. Maybe it's time to buy stock eh?
Tell us about your business which will remain for posterity at
our "Members: Who Are You?" site. We just updated all those postings that
we were delinquent with the
updates. http://etailersdigest.com/resources/members/index.htm And we have
a form there for you to tell us about you. As I said when I first proposed
this idea, we have "known" each other for a long time, yet we often don't
know anything about each other. So, tell us who you are and what you do.
Now, let's get to everything for the retailer.
Sincerely
George Matyjewicz, PhD
Chief Global Strategist, GAP Enterprises, Ltd.
mailto:georgem at gapent.com
http://www.etailersdigest.com
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[2] Need Gift Card System
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Steven J. Owens...
> Some local business owners asked me for a little advice on obtaining a
> point-of-sale oriented gift card system.
We do have a Gift Card solution that can run stand alone on a PC (POS
system), or can be integrated. However, integration would require the
software developer's help. In any event, here is a link to a 7 minute video
on our site that shows how it works. It is part of our X-Charge payment
processing product, but you can use the Gift Card portion without
processing credit or debit cards. Choose "Xpress Gift" from the list:
http://www.camcommerce.com/prod_videos.htm
Best regards,
Geoff Knapp
CAM Commerce Solutions
+++ [Next Post} +++
The developer link in the table of contents on the left side of
www.pccharge.com shows a link to the gift card systems that are readily
available. Whether a store's terminal can talk to those providers or not is
another story - but independent development solely for this purpose is not
necessary.
Mark Riffey
+++ [Next Post} +++
Gift cards work like gift certificates. You have an encoding device (look
like a Zon machine) that put the amount on the card. When you make a purchase
You use it like a gift certificate by doing a card swipe. (I don't know how
it uses part of the amount and leaves a balance on the card.)
Prepaid phone cards work the same way as gift cards. When you return an
item without the receipt to WalMart, they give a Walmart gift card with the
amount of the return encoded on the mag stripe.
I do not sell gift card hardware or software. The first place to check
would be the credit card provider. It may already be built into the
authorization terminal.
Hope this helps.
Jerry Grooms
http://barcodeitnow.com/
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[3] Optimizing Full Online Sales Potential & Customer Service
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> In light of Forrester's figures, the E-Tailing Group was surprised to find
> that almost half of all e-tailers in its survey did not know their shopping
> cart abandonment rates, which are a benchmark of an e-tailer's performance.
>
> Of those that did know, 8 per cent had a 51 to 60 per cent abandonment
> rate, with another 8 per cent reporting a rate of 61 to 70 per cent, and 8
> per cent, again, reporting 11 to 20 per cent of their customers to abandon
> carts. While 19 per cent of e-tailers surveyed did not know their buyer
> conversion rate, 22 per cent said their rate was about 1 to 2 per cent, and
> 12 per cent, about 3 to 4 per cent.
Is this a performance benchmark? Or a retailer stupidity benchmark?
Given some sites where I had to take out a cart to see what things would
cost, I'd think this is more of a stupidity benchmark.
So 8% provide enough information that a customer need not take out a
shopping cart to see what it's likely to cost?
High or low, you need to understand the footpath your customers wear in the
aisles of your on-line store. We know they are coming in through the
windows, not the front door. But which windows? What do they really want?
For that, you need to mine your clickstream, those server logs which
usually include the searches your customers ran on search engines to find
your site, and who your competition is.
Hello marketing! You claim to be interested in demographics, maybe you've
heard the word psychographics... No?
Your security cameras are reading their shopping lists! You've got their
thumb prints on everything they touched, and you see their empty shopping
bags from their visit your competition lining in your isles!
Are you making use of any of that information? Or are you treating that as
just more lint to sweep up?
You think it might help you figure out what to stock, what to upscale, what
to downscale, and how to up-sell???
SOME THOUGHTS ON CUSTOMER SERVICE...
My phone number is likely to change as we Finally Dump
Verizon! Fuming! Any phone company that leaves your phone ringing solid
for 20 hours... THREE TIMES... as an attempt to "fix" your phone and WON'T
turn it off when you complain... then has the Utter GALL to answer their
phone with "How may we provide you with excellent service today"... Where's
my Dynomite?!?!?! If someone calls me repeatedly, it's harassment. If the
phone company just leaves my phone ringing... what, it's repair???
TIP: Using the phrase "Excellent Service" when you have customer service
problems just makes irritated people go Ballistic! Use "How may we help
you?" It's a Lot less arrogant!
TIP: Using slow classical music on hold soothes the irritated soul. Fast
beat, Rock or Rap music just inflames it that much more!
Verizon tells me that my new even lower glacial baud rates are all I'll
ever get, so quit complaining. All while they send us literature about DSL
coming... and coming... and coming... take our orders, but their DSL techs
say "I don't know if you'll ever get DSL!"
TIP: Don't lower your standards on a product so as to get customers to buy
up-scale. Existing customers will only spread the word about your quality
falling, not your new product.
TIP: Don't raise your customer's hopes only to dash them. They won't
believe you anymore after a few times. EVER! And they will let others know
of their anger! (How many times I've seen Direct TV dishes on sale at flea
markets, only to find the seller more interested in telling his tales of
frustration than selling the dish! Glad I didn't get that service! And
now with the Internet... word travels even faster!)
These people are not trying to provide me with any service. These
monopolists are just trying to see how much money they can beat out of my
hide before I figure out how to escape! "For service truly below the
horizon, try Verizon!" (Fuming!)
In another couple of weeks, we'll have microwave Internet and Internet
phone service. Or be in the throes of moving out of reach of Verizon's
filthy claws!
I'd have had microwave Internet and phone already, but a microwave Internet
company which came to our neighborhood raised and lowered our expectations
a few times, and appointed an arrogant "neighborhood coordinator". They
emulated Verizon's service department behavior all too well! Eventually, I
found another microwave supplier, got some topographic maps, some country
parcel maps, and am now trying to find where to move so I don't need to
deal with GTE/Verizon or those first microwave bozos Ever Again!
Oh, one nice thing about that second microwave company. They never knocked
their competition. They just said their competition is good at marketing;
"we like to think we are better at delivering than they are at
marketing." Really nice people. A real class act!
Now, if you want to provide your visitors with what they want, without
making them search for it, e-mail or call me.
-javilk-
Today's Photo: http://www.mall-net.com/today/
------------------- IMAGINEERING --------------------
--------------- Every click, a vote. ----------------
----- Do people vote for, or against your pages? ----
-- What people want: http://www.SitePsych.com/free --
-----------------------------------------------------
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[4] Defense Department completes RFID trial
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In an article in Frontline Solutions it was reported that the U.S.
Department of Defense (DoD) has successfully completed a radio frequency
identification (RFID) trial to track cargo at a shipping dock.
The DoD deployed 13 RFID readers and 16 antennas at its Navy Fleet
Industrial Supply Center (FISC) Norfolk Military Ocean Terminal in Norfolk,
Va., to increase outbound shipment accuracy.
The trial was conducted over a six-week period at the Norfolk terminal.
Alien Technology partnered with Science Applications International Corp.
(SAIC) to install readers at receiving workstations to apply Electronic
Product Code (EPC) Class 1 RFID tags to all shipments. The shipping dock
was equipped with Alien readers and antennas in a mobile tunnel
configuration. To date, the DoD has applied 15,000 tags.
"When we received the Alien Technology equipment and began testing it, we
quickly realized that it was far more capable than we had anticipated. This
allowed us to rethink our proposed business process, and led to the use of
the EPC tag read as the transaction of record ... which is an easier and
more efficient process than our legacy documentation processes," said Dave
Cass, transportation systems analyst, U.S. Navy, FISC, in his address to
the DoD RFID Summit last week.
According to Cass, an unacceptable number of shipments were loaded into
SEAVAN containers without being scanned or documented, which caused
problems with manifest accuracy.
With the RFID system, users could read the EPC tag before printing each
FISC Norfolk Internal Tracking label, linking all of the shipping
information together.
Trial results showed RFID could increase operational efficiency, enhance
receiving and shipping activities and increase loading accuracy while
reducing the time and effort necessary to locate material within the
warehouse.
The trial obtained a 100% read rate for the tags, but Cass said that label
placement was critical--and the optimal placement for reading the RFID tag
was not always the same as optimal placement for the human readable
information on the shipments.
Some freight required a backer or spacer to keep unfriendly surfaces--like
metal canisters--from interfering with the RF signal. Cass said the Navy
was able to use inexpensive self-adhesive weather stripping for this purpose.
The Navy also put an enclosure around the RFID read area to prevent
unexpected tag reads due to reflections and bounces.
www.alientechnology.com
www.saic.com
Article at...
http://www.frontlinetoday.com/frontline/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=92123
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Links to follow
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