Author Archive: Alan

A small mathematical model to help understand the relationship between never-mails and the bottom line.

I caught up with Scott Silverman and Elizabeth Oesterle to hear about Shop.org and the NRF’s lobbying work on behalf of online retailers.

Two in-the-cloud apps I find really useful are TripIt and HighRise. What both apps have in common how cleverly they use email for input.

Two really interesting interviews with Chris Anderson and Michael Arrington on Charlie Rose back in March.

Crazy idea for a e-comm architecture: render the whole site in static HTML each evening, with prices and quantities accurate as of when written. Then use tiny fast AJAX calls throughout the day to update only those few bytes on each page that really change.

If you’re benefiting from the Open Source Movement, give something back.

ProQuo is a venture-backed company hoping to profit from consumer opt-outs and opt-ins.

Notes from Overstock CEO Patrick Bryne’s excellent keynote at the Shop.org Marketing Workshop in Scottsdale.

If you mail Slim Jims, check out Ross-Simon’s proposal to the USPS, and add your voice and support if you agree.

If Catalog Success accurately captured Lin’s statement — that is, if Zappo’s first six year of growth were at break-even and at not at tremendous losses — that would be astrounding.

I’m fascinated by Google’s recent announcement of Google App Engine.

I’m honored to be invited back to MIT to speak on “The Business And Mathematics of Pay-Per-Click Bidding” May 30, 2008, at MIT’s Tang Center.

From NRF press release today: retail industry sales for March (which exclude automobiles, gas stations, and restaurants) dipped 0.9 percent unadjusted over last year and were down 0.3 percent from the prior month.

I have a post on SEL hattipping the titans of direct mail for insight into paid search.

Let advertisers bid a premium for clicks from users with a recent online purchase.

Providing searchers what they really want also gets retailers what they really want: more sales.

Forrester’s Carrie Johnson speaking on the idea, “Search Is.”

Good FastCompany article on the downfall of the House Of AOL. Worth a read.

Anyone else find it strange Google’s keeping the affiliate piece of Performics?

I really like Gary Varynerchuk’s video on technology, goodness, and transparency in life and business.

March was another month where, in aggregate, Google took another tiny slice of the pie away from Yahoo.

Chuck Teller is Executive Director of CatalogChoice, a catalog do-not-mail service. In this podcast, Chuck discusses his organization and how it impacts cataloging.

Here’s a video from Steve Souder speaking about site speed at Google in November.

Be unique in your merchandising and value proposition, not on where you put your site search box. Testing and usability labs show that conversion suffers when users can’t find site elements where they expect them to be.

Polyvore lets people make collages of cool products from across the web.