Do you suffer from a low conversion rate?  Does your website cause headaches for your customers?  Are you looking for creative ways to give your eCommerce presence an extra shot in the arm?  No need to dial 911, The Doctors Are In!  

During each afternoon of the Shop.org Annual Summit, retailer attendees will be able to reserve 20 minute time slots with a number of industry consultants whose expertise include multi-channel strategy, end-to-end customer experience, site design, and merchandising best practices.  

These private one-on-one sessions allow you to network with industry experts who will critique specific aspects of your website, go over questions and ideas you may have, and provide tactical and practical solutions for what ails you.  

There is no charge, but you must be registered with a full-conference retailer pass to the Annual Summit before you register for "The Doctor Is In".  Due to popular demand, we also ask that you limit the number of appointments to three per retailer.

Register below to make your appointment with one of our "doctors" today! 

Who's Jack Aaronson? 

Note:  Jack is only available for appointments on Wednesday, September 23rd.

JACK IS ALL BOOKED UP!

Christmas in September
With the holidays right around the corner, we take this opportunity to build your Cyber-Monday checklist. Spend 20 minutes with an eCommerce expert identifying key opportunities and practical solutions to act upon before the holiday stampede.

Recommendations will range from:
End-to-end customer experience
Merchandising strategy
The Holy Grail: Conversion

Who's Debbie Carkner?  A metric-driven marketer with experience in on and offline marketing, business development and analytics, Debbie is an interactive strategist who provides strategic and tactical direction to clients to achieve business objectives. Her expertise lies in trend analysis, Web optimization and tracking, traffic building strategies, merchandising and marketing tactics to optimize revenue, as well as analytics to measure and report results. She excels at building strong client relationships and achieving goals through a consensus building leadership style.

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• What can you start doing now to prepare for mobile in your ecommerce ecosystem?
• What design principles should be maintained?
• Are you properly using and taking advantage of social tools and mobile for your retail website?

Jay will also examine why social fits in some cases and not others, what opportunities exist, and which customers gravitate to social tools. The goal of this one-on-one critique is to explore possibilities for your website and rapidly consume what others are doing and why it is or is not working for them.

Who's Jay?  Jay is a Senior Vice President at Acquity Group and leads the Central and Eastern Regions. He is responsible for the solution leadership and business development functions that provide client services across the disciplines of strategy, experience design, and technology implementation. Jay has more than seventeen years of services experience within retail, consumer packaged goods, insurance, manufacturing, and financial services industries.

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The Site Whisperer:
What your Site is Saying to Your Customers and How That Impacts Your Sales.
What a customer experiences in the first few minutes of visiting your web store is more than a first impression.  If you don't bait the hook right, you could be setting the wrong expectations, driving away customers, or worse, irreparably degrading your brand image.  

Following through on that first impression can be even harder.  From branding to information architecture, usability to social networking, we'll take a quick look at how customers interact with your brand and how you can take more control over the conversation.

Who's Rob Fredley?  In addition to overseeing all creative work at Virid, Rob works directly with clients to establish effective and brand centric strategies for their online retail operations.   He is involved in setting specific directions and goals at each stage of the design process and works with the creative group to exceed clients' expectations every day.  Additionally, Rob is responsible for discovering and analyzing internet trends—like social networking, rich media, and crowdsourcing—to determine their impact on Virid's business and the brands they partner with.  His 15+ years of experience in design and business has seen him work with brands like BMW, Saab, USAirways, Barneys New York, Miramax, The National Institutes of Health, Timberland, General Electric, CNBC, Merrill Lynch, Kangol, Trina Turk, Liz Claiborne, Intel, and Royal Caribbean.  He really does believe that content is king, context matters, and that everything you do affects your brand image.

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Merchandising for Conversion
e-commerce merchandising, strategy and customer experience expert focusing on both consumer insights and actionable merchant strategies to drive sales and conversion

Who's Lauren Freedman?  In 1994, Lauren Freedman leveraged her 15 year retail and catalog career and passion for merchandising to found the e-tailing group, inc. The firm’s mission was, and continues to be, providing strategic and e-commerce solutions to online merchants as well as businesses targeting that market.

An extensive client list has included Fortune 500s and start-ups. From involvement with the initial launch of sites like Toys “R” Us, The Vitamin Shoppe and Kodak to specific initiatives for clients including Scholastic, J.Jill, Orbitz, USA Today, CTW and MSN, her role becomes Strategist, Merchant, Facilitator, Educator and Spokesperson.

Note:  Those that make appointments for Wednesday time slots will be meeting with Kylee Magno, Senior Analyst, the e-tailing group, inc. instead of Lauren.

LAUREN IS ALL BOOKED UP!

Marketing and Merchandising for the Aspirational Customer
Now that the economy has shifted, the issue of reaching aspirational or upscale customers is more challenging than ever. Suzanne's critiques will cover product photography, online merchandising strategy (search, category, browsing and comparisons), product detail functionality, and checkout. In addition, she will discuss your online marketing strategy, partnerships, and how it ties in with your in-store strategy if applicable. Those that sign up with Suzanne are encouraged to bring examples of emails and special online content if they're not easily accessible from a public web browser.

Who's Suzanne?  Suzanne Hader, founder and principal at 400twin, brings years of experience with luxury brand marketing and research to the table, gleaned from her long relationship with cosmetics institution Estée Lauder working with brands like Clinique, Bobbi Brown, and Darphin. Prior to Lauder, she was an early addition to upstarts Eve.com and Viant. She is known for her remarkable insights on upscale brands in the fashion, beauty, travel and real estate industries and her deep understanding of the luxury audience.

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• Potential quick wins before the holidays
• Easy-to-implement best practices that can help drive more new customers to your site
• Keyword approaches that can instantly change the number of people your site can reach
• Integrating social media into your site’s shopping experience
• Long-view projects to consider developing during your holiday code freeze

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1:1 Site Slams: Focus on Traffic & Content Strategy
Do you want to attract more qualified customers who convert to buyers, without spending buckets of money?  Bring your business problem to the table, and I'll give you actionable tips to take home. Note: Site Slams are not for the faint hearted. Prepare to hear the truth.

Who's Sonia?  Sonia Meisenheimer has ten years of experience designing and developing customer-centered content experiences that build traffic and revenue for ecommerce and publishing businesses. She has worked with MSN, Yahoo, AOL, Ticketmaster, Expedia and Payscale.com, designing content strategies that allow online businesses to connect with their customers in direct and meaningful ways . Currently she is the brand manager and online marketing strategist for tampabay.com, the website of St Petersburg Times. 

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20 to Social:  Create Your Social Ecommerce Strategy in 20 Minutes
With retailers looking guidance in developing their plans, 20 to Social offers a simple process to help you decide what social features to implement for maximum impact.  After your session with Adam, you will leave with a plan on how you can leverage the benefits of social shopping features within your site.

• First, you will discuss with Adam what are the key metrics you are looking to improve on your site
• Then, Adam will help you identify the social features that can help you move the needle on these metrics
• Adam will review each social feature against industry adoption
• Finally, Adam will help you rank order the social ecommerce options so you leave with a clear plan of the social ecommerce features you will be adding to your site

Who's Adam?  Adam Michelson serves as the Director of Ecommerce at Optaros, Inc., an international consulting and systems integration firm that assembles online shopping solutions. Author of the popular and most downloaded Optaros ebook The 2009 Social Ecommerce Planning Guide, Adam works with online retailers to leverage Internet technologies for ecommerce re-platforming, new online retail concepts, and multi-channel efforts. A leading authority on ecommerce, he speaks often at industry events and is a published author in trade and national publications.

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'Searchandising' - Optimize How Merchandising and On Site Search Can Drive an Exponential Increase in All of Your KPIs
Even in 2009, very few retail sites have on site search and merchandising that's 'fit for purpose'. Learn as much as you can in 20 minutes with Martin on why site search should be driving at least 30% of your sales.  You will walk away with top tips on how to increase conversion, units per transaction and average transaction values by leveraging and optimizing your merchandising techniques.

Who's Martin?

• He is one of the most experienced and respected e-commerce practitioners in the market today
• He has been involved in multi channel retailing for over 25 years
• Holding P&L responsibility for retail, direct mail, e-commerce, kiosks and call centre channels for a number of retailers including Ted Baker, Burberry, Harrods, Pentland brands (Speedo, Kickers, Boxfresh etc), and Intersport.
• He has been selling online since 1996
• Martin is an e-commerce and digital consultant to leading brands including Peak Performance, Matinique, In Wear, the Science Museum (London), and a global FMCG brand   Register Now

How to Digitally Enhance Brand Perception, Deepen The Customer Relationship and Drive Commerce
Purpose: Heuristic Evaluation and Recommendations: To take findings from psychology and user experience and turn them into actionable strategy and tactics for your digital presence.

Who's Dr. Read?  Melissa Read, Ph.D. is the vice president of research and innovation for Engauge’s digital group. Dr. Read leads a group of specialists who leverage knowledge in human behavior to produce digital design and marketing strategy.
 
Dr. Read leverages human psychology, user experience research and best practices in interaction design to explain, predict and influence digital behavior.  After spending several years serving as a college professor in academia, she transitioned into industry to bring her expertise to life in applied environments. Dr. Read’s unique approach has helped clients as varied as The Home Depot, AT&T, Coke, General Motors and the Centers for Disease Control. She has advised clients on topics as diverse as web and application-based interfaces, robotic search and rescue, public transportation, kiosks, touch-screens and mobile devices.

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How to use Site Merchandising and Search to Increase AOV and Basket Size
Effective merchandising starts on the home page or the very first landing page for the visitor and should be consistently reinforced throughout the visitors’ shopping session, all the way past the check-out and purchase confirmation pages.

Meyer will review your site and offer insights into some quick-win opportunities to use product images, placement, dynamic product recommendations, unique site search techniques and post purchase merchandising strategies to increase average order values and drive customers back to the web site more frequently for greater conversions.

Who is Meyar?  Meyar Sheik, CEO & Co-founder of Certona Corporation is a seasoned software industry executive with 25 years of experience.  Since 2000, Meyar has been a web analytics and personalization pioneer working with some of the largest sites on the Internet many leading retail brands, in the areas of web analytics, recommendations and real-time content optimization. Prior to co-founding Certona, Meyar was the CMO and COO of web analytics leader, WebSideStory (now part of Omniture). 

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Design Patterns for Successful e-Commerce Sites
From this session, you will learn how to optimize Return On Design (ROD) and learn Best Practices in E-Commerce.  Attendees also will learn how research-based, experimental design will help make a quantum leap in site performance.  Finally, if attendees are interested in a high-level assessment of their site design, this will be reviewed with them during the session.

Who's Doug?  Douglas, a principal and founder of Naviscent, has more than 20 years of entrepreneurial, management and interface design experience, and has been an innovator in online shopping, e-commerce, and software and multimedia development.

An author of the best-selling Web site design book, The Design of Sites, Douglas is a leading influencer in the field of Customer Experience. His teams have developed innovations for companies including eBay, Oracle, Autodesk, Vonage, MBNA, Yahoo, Intel, Safeway, Agilent, and other Global 2000 companies.

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Is Your eCommerce Platform the Right Choice For Your Business?
Brian is a leading expert in eCommerce technology and platforms. Brian advises clients on selection of the right solution providers and partners, how to optimize their investments in eCommerce technology, and how to lay the right technology foundation for future eCommerce channel and multi-channel growth.

Who's Brian?  Brian has more than 11 years of experience in eCommerce and online marketing, serving senior roles for large, established online retailers and Web marketers such as Amazon.com, Classmates Online, Inc., Eddie Bauer, Expedia.com, and The Spiegel Group and providing solutions for the online retailers and Web marketers while at Amazon Enterprise Solutions and his own firm. Additionally Brian presided over a start-up company, Swallowtail Solutions, focused on innovative eCommerce solutions for emerging retailers. Brian's roles span both business and technology leadership, from Web marketing, online merchandising, product management, solution architecture, customer experience design, and technology leadership.

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We are confident that retailers attending Shop.org events will acquire valuable strategies and tactics to improve their online and multichannel retail business. If not, let us know and we'll refund your registration fee.

Contact Stacy Cornell at cornells@shop.org or call 434.326.5740. 
Download the prospectus, including current sponsorship and exhibiting opportunities.

Listen to the Voices of Shop.org Attendees
We'll tell you it is the one-of-a-kind networking, innovative and engaging education, and access to state-of-the-art technologies but it sounds better when it comes from them. Watch this short clip.