ClickTale Shows Where Consumers Go After Leaving Your Site

ClickTale is releasing their Drill Down Funnel today. Marketed to help brands understand where consumers go after they enter a website. This information could be helpful in improving landing pages, sales & advertising campaigns and product information to help keep visitors on site and to convert them into consumers.

How does ClickTale work?

ClickTale captures every mouse move, click, scroll and keystroke that a visitor makes inside a webpage, and then sends this information back to the ClickTale servers in a highly compressed package. Our servers take a snapshot of the webpage as experienced by the visitor, and combine it with the visitor actions to recreate the original browsing session. When you then login to your ClickTale account you can see your visitor recordings, visual heatmaps and other behavioral reports.

Will ClickTale affect visitors’ browsing experience or page loading times?

Website visitors don’t notice any difference in their browsing experience since ClickTale is optimized for minimal use of CPU and bandwidth resources. In addition: Only about 5K of highly compressed data per recording is sent back to our servers, which has no noticeable impact on site performance. The ClickTale tracking code is small and compressed, and is delivered via a Content Delivery Network that is extremely fast and reliable. Customers usually choose to record only a small fraction of their total traffic, and the extra load is not noticeable on the servers. The ClickTale code is loaded at the end of the page, and therefore does not affect page load times at all.

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ClickTale offers several tutorials, click this link to view:

http://www.clicktale.com/resources/video_tutorials

About ClickTale (from their website):

ClickTale is the industry leader in Customer Experience Analytics (CEA), providing businesses with revolutionary insights into their customers’ online behavior. Over 50,000 businesses rely on ClickTale to optimize website performance, improve usability and dramatically increase conversion rates. ClickTale tracks every mouse move, click and scroll, creating playable videos of customers’ entire browsing sessions as well as powerful visual heatmaps and behavioral reports that perfectly complement traditional web analytics. As a fully hosted subscription service, ClickTale is cost-effective and quick to set up.

Company History
Founded in June 2006 by Dr. Tal Schwartz (CEO) and Arik Yavilevich (CTO), ClickTale is based in Ramat Gan, Israel and funded by leading venture capital firm YL Ventures and angel investors.

ClickTale has won much acclaim and has been written up in numerous media outlets. You can read some of the stories about us in the Media Mentions page. We are proud to have been named one of Red Herring's Top 100 Most Promising Companies in Europe, Middle East and Africa in 2008 as well as one of the 15 Hottest Israeli Internet Companies in 2008 by the California Israel Chamber of Commerce.

Civil suit charges Overstock with misrepresenting prices

A civil lawsuit filed in Superior Court of California in Alameda County yesterday charges Overstock.com Inc. with making “untrue and misleading” claims about its prices. The suit, which was filed by seven Northern California district attorneys, alleges that Overstock’s comparison prices, which the web retailer uses as a basis for setting discounts, are consistently inaccurate.

The suit states that since January 1, 2006, “Overstock routinely and systematically made untrue and misleading comparative advertising claims about the prices of its products.” The complaint charges that prices presented under the labels “List Price” and “Compare At (Overstock) Price” were not prevailing market prices and that Overstock “used various misleading measures to inflate the comparative prices, and thus artificially increase the discounts it claimed to be offering customers.”

The suit also charges that Overstock.com’s misleading pricing applied to “virtually every product listing” since January 2006, and seeks at least $15 million in fines and restitution for misleading pricing information published on Overstock.com.

To read the rest of the article, click HERE.

BBB Advises Online Shoppers This Holiday Season

The BBB is offering advice to holdiay shoppers. Actually, it's good advice to follow all of the time.

Protect your computer: Install a firewall, anti-virus and anti-spyware software. Check for and install the latest updates.

Shop trustworthy websites: Look for the BBB seal and other widely-recognized "trustmarks" on retail websites. Click on the seals to confirm they're valid.

Protect personal information: Read a site's privacy policy and understand what personal information is being requested and how it will be used. If no policy is posted, that's a red flag that they may sell your information without your permission.

Beware of too-good-to-be-true deals: Offers on websites and in unsolicited e-mails may offer extremely low prices on hard-to-get items. There may be hidden costs - or your purchase may sign you up for a monthly charge. Look for and read the fine print.

Beware of phishing: Legitimate businesses do not send e-mails claiming problems with an order or account to lure the buyer into revealing financial information. If you receive such an e-mail, the BBB recommends picking up the phone and calling the contact number on the website where the purchase was made to confirm any problem with the transaction.

Confirm that your online purchase is secure: Look at the website address or URL in the box at the top of your browser screen. There should be an "s" after "http" or a lock symbol in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. If you have doubts about security, right-click anywhere on the page, and select "Properties" to see the real URL. The dialog box should say whether the site is encrypted.

Pay with a credit card: Under federal law, you can dispute the charges if you don't receive the item. Shoppers also have dispute rights if there are unauthorized charges on the card, and many card issuers have "zero liability" policies if someone steals your card number and uses it. Never wire money.

Keep documentation of your order: Save a copy of the confirmation page or e-mails confirming the order until you receive the item and are satisfied.

Check your credit card statements often: The BBB recommends that you check your account regularly for suspicious activity by going online or calling your credit card company. Make sure statements match up with purchases you know you made.

Know your rights: Federal law requires that orders made by phone, mail or online be shipped by the date promised, or within 30 days if no delivery time was stated. If goods aren't shipped on time, shoppers can cancel and demand a refund. Consumers also may reject merchandise if it is defective or if it was misrepresented.

Boocoo Auctions Institutes Site Fees

New site, Boocoo was free since opening up in Beta. Things have changed and it appears that the fees they have in place are rather high for a new, unproven site.

According to the site:

Boocoo auctions charges a required final value fee of 6%. This means if you post an item for sale and find a buyer your fee is 6% of the final price, including handling. There are no required listing fees and no fees for bidders/buyers.

The 6% final value fee applies only to the first $1,000. If you sell an item for over $1,000 you pay 6% of $1,000, and everything above that is pure profit, with no fee!

Beginning November 1st boocoo will also charge for some optional listing enhancements (Bold, Highlighted, and Category Featured). We’re adding these charges based on customer feedback. It was brought to our attention that too many listings were enhanced because it’s free - in some categories it was difficult to find normal listings! Give you an example, of roughly 7,900 listings in ‘collectibles’ 7,400 were “category featured” you finally reached “all listings” on page 298. Here’s one more, on the first 3 pages of ‘Antiques’ only 3 listings were not using bold titles. It’s truly a case of free destroying the value.

Here’s how we’re going to transition: on November 1 we’ll remove the enhancements from all listings, the next time you list or relist an item you will have to add the optional enhancements if you want them, otherwise continue listing for free and pay only if you sell. This should be good for everyone; Sellers will be able to draw attention to special items and we’re still in no danger of moving up any tax brackets.

All listing enhancements are optional:

Bold - 50 cents
Highlight Listing - 75 cents
Category Featured - $2.00

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We are registered on Boocoo but have never listed anything. With these fees, it is highly unlikely that we ever will.

What's All The Buzz About Addoway?

Everyone we have talked to lately is talking about moving or at least spreading their inventory out to Addoway. Some very long time, loyal sellers of various sites have been talking about Addoway and encouraging other sellers to join them on the site. So, we just had to go snooping to see what we could see.

It appears to be a rather well put together site. We decided to check out the press info. There it states:

Addoway is an online marketplace for all things fashion, collectibles and much, much more. Our mission is to bring the next generation of "social commerce" to the masses, where shoppers can buy from their friends and the merchants they trust. While other notable marketplaces use stranger's experiences to create reputation, Addoway integrates directly with Facebook, giving users recommendations to reputable sellers through people they already know.

Addoway recommends independent merchants that friends have purchased from in the past, merchants that friends know personally and others who are upfront about their identity and reputation.

Shop for everything from designer clothing and jewelry to unique crafts and collectibles, all at up to 70% off!

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That last paragraph turns us off since we are not interested in selling on a site that offers that kind of discount. It gives the impression of a bargain basement or a site that was intitially overpriced just to offer such discounts.

We looked further at the press info and it states:

FREE online storefront with built-in marketing, inventory and order management tools;

Listing importing from eBay and Etsy - List new items in seconds or import inventory from eBay and Etsy. Even sync inventory so you never run out of stock on Addoway;

Social Marketing - Grow your business using our automated Social Marketing tools and Referral Incentives to keep the buyers coming back.

Plus free distribution to the most popular product search portals reaching millions of shoppers - Bing, Google Shopping, Oodle, The Find and Shop Wiki.

There are no fees to sell and it takes seconds to sign up.

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We went to the area on their site - what users are saying - and found some familiar sellers (several from Bonanza and some from Etsy and eBay). It is always interesting when sellers who have been loyal to other marketplaces show up on newer sites. It's a bit of a sign that the site may have potential and/or a disenchantment with the site(s) that they had previously been so loyal to.

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We checked out the "Share and Save" link. It states:

What are Addo Bucks?

Addo Bucks is a special currency you can earn on Addoway for sharing with your friends. Every Addoway member is given 25 Addo Bucks to start with, and can earn Addo Bucks for referring friends, submitting new listings, placing orders, rating sellers and more. Addo Bucks can be redeemed for discounts on Addoway purchases, Prizes & Rewards and more.

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Finally, I clicked on the "Sell" tab:

This is where they offer sellers to become "Pro members" for $8.95 a month or $75 per year. Not too bad compared to other sites. Even on Bonanza, another "free" marketplace, their paid memberships start at $10 up to $24 per month plus final value fees.

You can check out the Pro Member features at http://www.addoway.com/promembership

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All in all, it appears to be a very clean and efficient site with an experienced staff. It will be fun to watch how the site does over the next few years.

eCrater Expands Sevices To The UK

eCrater has launched their online selling venue in the UK, http://www.ecrater.co.uk .

A post by eCrater adminisitration in the eCrater forums (we believe authored by Dimitri) on 11-04-2010 states:

As you all probably know we recently announced that we launched a UK version of our marketplace.

http://www.ecrater.co.uk

If you would like to list your products in the new marketplace:

1) you must maintain prices on both USD and GBP
2) you must ship to United Kingdom

We encourage all US merchants to start selling in GBP as well which will bring more buyers to their stores. The main advantage is that your products will be listed in both our US and UK marketplaces. They will also be posted to both Google Product Search and Google Product Search UK. In addition all merchants will receive their own store under the ecrater.co.uk domain.

It is very easy to convert your prices to GBP. One can use the global editor to do this. Select "set UK price", choose "Price in USD" as base, choose the * operator and fill out the user value: 0.624 (1 USD = 0.624 GBP)

Please note that your prices in USD will remain unaffected, the operation merely adds prices in GBP as well.

If you want to get rid of the GBP prices then just use the global editor and select action "set UK price" and select operator "delete"

To set the shipping rates to UK please fill out the shipping matrix rates for United Kingdom. If you already use the USPS calculator you don't have to do anything because we convert the shipping rates to GBP automatically.

Please note that fixed shipping rates are not available for shipping to the UK at this time. Only the fixed rates for US-Mainland, Alaska, Hawaii, and Canada will convert to GBP automatically.

There is also an option called "Enable GBP currency" in the Options menu. This will add another price field in the following pages: add products, edit product and copy product. It will also enable you to fill out the Google Checkout UK merchant ID and key in the Payment Options menu.

US and UK stores will share the same name, just the domain will be different so no need to reserve a name if you already have a store with eCRATER.

It is currently not possible to have a UK store without a US store.

If the conversion rate considerably changes, the prices can be easily updated with the global editor. However in reality this will happen rarely because USD is a stable currency.

If offline payments are accepted in the US store, these will display and be accepted in the UK store. At this time, these can't be removed from just the UK store. However these may change in future.

To sell only part of the items in the UK store, set the price in GBP for only the items that are to be sold in the UK store. This can be done in both global-editor and add product menu. If the item has a price in GBP you will see it in ecrater.co.uk. If the item does not have a price in GBP, the item will be only available in ecrater.com

If you want to accept Google Checkout in your UK store you need a bank account in GBP and then you have to sign up for Google Checkout UK. The bank account in British pound is requirement of Google Checkout.

If you want to set up Google Analytics for your UK store please fill out the "UK Google Analytics ID" in menu options. To get the UK analytics ID you need to add your UK store URL in Google Analytics first.