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Issue link: http://beautystorebusiness.epubxp.com/i/141850
Continued from page 66 Perhaps it will be a new technology or eBay or a manufacturers' backlash against selling on Amazon—perhaps it will be an antitrust lawsuit. How can ecommerce sites boost customer retention? Email is the single most effective customer-retention tool. I advise retailers to collect email addresses in whatever manner possible. It's inexpensive but very impactful. Are you seeing a rise in sampling or purchasing via in-store kiosks and self-service technologies? How effective are these technologies and where do you see them going as we move forward? I'm not seeing it in a big way, but I've heard that companies such as Coinstar are doing some experiments in beauty sampling in stores, which is really cool. It seems experimental at this point. How can ecommerce sites utilize new technologies to evaluate how shoppers connect with various marketing touch points? Marketing attribution is a mess right now, and none of the retailers seem to be doing anything useful across store channels. Hopefully, "big data" will solve some of this challenge, and companies will get a bit closer to even understanding how a visitor interacts with it across devices. But other than media mix modeling, understanding what is effective in marketing is a mysterious black box. Is video a big thing online? Video does have an impact on conversion, but it's not easy to do well and tends to perform differently on different devices and with different Web connections. 116 August 2013 | beautystorebusiness.com "[Stores] need to focus on mobile and tablet access— to ensure that site content works across all devices." What types of various payment forms are being employed? The usual: credit, debit and cash. PayPal seems to be pushing more into stores, but it's often linked to a debit or credit card for most consumers anyway. What are your thoughts on Swirl—the retail app that greets customers and recommends merchandise if salespeople are too busy to assist consumers? Swirl could be interesting. It's like a digital billboard that pushes information to shoppers in stores—at the very least the big beauty brands will buy placement on the tool. Finally, please identify the key trends that will impact the market through 2013 and beyond. Omnichannel, mobile and big data. ■ Regina Molaro is a freelance journalist based in New York City.