Category: Europe

Guest Post for Duct Tape Marketing: Turn Window-Shoppers into Buyers

Increasing conversions online is the most important consideration for online sellers, whether they are working from their own platform, from a major online retailer or in one of the hundreds of new collaborative consumption websites. Turning window-shoppers into buyers is about more than making sure signs are polished and windows are clean: It’s about conveying trust.

UK-based WebRetailer has confirmed once again: Online sellers and businesses convert better the more they are trusted by buyers. The top sellers on Amazon as ranked by Internet Retailing all have feedback which is over 90% positive. Additionally, they’ve also got a track record of hundreds of thousands of reviews. Online sales are like a snowball – the more ball rolls the bigger it gets. So how does trust help to get the ball rolling?

It’s the cozy feeling that separates you from the pack. Unless you’re selling homemade products on Etsy or Hbzy, your products and services are likely very similar to your competitors. Whilst marketing and branding are important, reputation is what differentiates merchants as it’s the one thing they earn through responsible practices and good behaviour. Unlike product pictures or prices – reputation is free, but something that can’t be adjusted by you.

It’s the elephant in the room. You’re doing everything else well. Your tag lines are effective, you’re at or near the top of search results and your photos are dead gorgeous. However, 98.5% of all your visitors are bouncing before they bag your products. The problem is likely that you have one too many bad reviews, not enough reviews or not enough positive reviews. It’s proven. By increasing the number of reviews, you can increase your conversions far easier and more cheaply than by spending more on branding or marketing. Reputation management product users with an enhanced reputation are converting up to twofold better than those relying solely on one reputation. Indeed, by importing reputation data from their other identities, new marketplace sellers are getting their first transaction at least three times as quickly through using eRated.

So how can you do this? Reputation management products allow users to import all of their ratings and reviews from all of their online identities and platforms they operate in. If you are a seller in Amazon and want to increase your conversions in eBay, get a reputation management plugin for free and take your reputation from Amazon over to eBay. Recent case studies have shown that sellers using reputation management tools increase their sales by up to 30%. After price, the second most important consideration for any buyer is trust.

Reputation Management in e-commerce isn’t just about SEO optimization and getting seen through expensive branding and marketing campaigns, it’s about getting the most out of what you already own: Your reputation. So who provides these products? Check out eRated, Traity and Trusttribe.

Users are only now beginning to understand that they can actually use their reputation to their benefit. This is a ripe opportunity for savvy online entrepreneurs to get ahead of the pack and start using a reputation management tool to optimize their conversions through increasing trust with buyers.

Ride Sharing: Don’t Sing Alone

Even if you’ve never been to LA, everyone has the image in their mind. Lane after lane, mile after mile of big, gas guzzling vehicles grumbling alone like wallflowers at a high school dance. A grey fog of smog hangs above as stationary as the cars and the drivers sit inside alone, fuming for hours on their way in and out of the city. Or, singing by themselves with the windows up.

If there was a starker image more in contrast with the sharing economy, I’d like to see it.

Car-sharing landing page images always contrast the most - it’s usually a group of relatively young, mid-20s to 30s gender balanced bunch laughing their assess of together driving down a forested road with every seat filled. The idea is that they have never met and are going somewhere together. Are they happy because they’re sharing a joke? or because they’re saving the environment, money, car performance, or the world? Could it be they’re singing together?

The sharing economy began with sharing apartments - but it’s ridesharing where collaborative consumption is ensuring users get the most out of their assets and truly contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and save money.

So what is ride-sharing? Like the sharing economy itself, definitions are fluid and stick about as well as sand to a wall. Most people will immediately think Uber, or Lyft. However, the experts (who are few and far between) would probably not qualify these companies as ride-sharing, but rather “ride-sourcing.” The likes of these companies, Haxi and Sidecar included, are primarily commercial. The driver and the passenger do not share a destination and the relationship is an instantaneous, primarily commercial one. We are not arguing they are not part of the sharing economy, afterall, people are getting the most out of their car and their wallet - but they are not ride-sharing.

So if it’s not uber or lyft, what is ride-sharing? Think carpooling. Most of us have parents or friends who arranged to travel to work together, probably from the suburbs, into the city. In all likelihood it was coworkers or people from the same neighbourhood sharing an origin and destination. What’s changed is that the advent of social media and online marketplaces have allowed people who don’t know each or to share rides. They are sharing long distance drives, from Paris to Berlin for a concert. As more and more people are working from home and going to cities once or twice a week for work, they’re sharing one-offs in and out of town. They’re of course carpooling - because fewer people are choosing to, or are unable to, own cars.

Pioneers in the ride-sharing space are united by a similar mission: That the journey is as important as the destination. In the United States, Tripda is making ride-sharing accessible for everyone by reducing barriers and ensuring drivers and passengers trust one another. With 20 million users, BlaBlaCar in Europe is famous for doing its best to make sure everyone under the same roof gets along, pairing chatterboxes with chatterboxes and the silent types with the, not so chatty. In the UK, GoCarShare and Carpooling are cracking a tougher British market (it just ain’t that big) by focusing on a younger demographic and niche markets, such as students and football fans.

Ride-sharing is a policy area being taken seriously by governments interested in increasing incomes, reducing congestion and combating greenhouse gas emissions. However, the space continues to face challenges by legislators and users alike. Insurance providers are only now beginning to grasp the potential of this new market, whilst governments are still dithering about possible new taxation avenues and managing disruption to conventional services. There’s also that pesky issue of trust between drivers and passengers.

Ride-sourcing is a touchy subject for governments and businesses - it’s future in some cities is still a matter of debate at the moment. Ride-sharing, on the other hand, appears to be taking the quiet, back road to success as more and more like-minded travellers opt to save money, meet friends and cut down on carbon.

Start ride-sharing and stop singing alone (if you dare).

EU Consumer Day: eRated at the European Economic and Social Commission

eRated’s VP Partnerships, Matt Godwin spoke at the Commission’s annual Consumer Day conference on 16th March in Brussels on the topic of ‘New Trends in Consumption’.

Alongside Members of the European Parliament, industry leaders and academics, participants discussed the sharing economy’s disruption to established businesses, government policy-making making and trust in the sharing economy.

The discussion ranged from how to conceptualize the sharing economy to how to insure it. Are platforms where users are making money really the sharing economy, or are they being wrongly included in this rubric? Is this just a case of a rose by any other name?

EU policymakers are currently working on an EU-wide approach to the sharing economy, with EESC staff working towards a report on the sharing economy for 2015. As with the UK, policymakers are not only making the sharing economy a priority, but are putting it at the forefront of packed and dynamic economic and social agendas.

eRated was delighted to be joined by Marco Torregrossa, Managing Director of the European Sharing Economy Coalition. The Coalition was launched in 2013 at a public hearing of the EESC and is the first pan-European coalition of sharing economy organizations bringing together sector stakeholders to present one voice to EU legislators and policymakers.

Governments around the world are seeking a constructive relationship with sharing economy marketplaces and partners. As government’s attempt to find a way to chart a regulatory and legislative course, eRated welcomes the opportunity to play a positive role.

Marco and Matt both emphasized go-forward recommendations, with Matt highlighting recent progress in the UK. Drawing directly from the UK government’s ‘Unlocking the Sharing Economy: An Independent Review,’ Matt echoed the need for governments to make identity data available for sharing economy actors, which will help ensure a safer and more trusted space.

eRated’s mission is to build trust in the sharing economy as it continues to appear on European agendas in the future.