Clever Blog

6 weeks into ATG (and final post)

We’re now 7 weeks post-acquisition with ATG  During that time, we have been combining our development, sales, marketing, client services and delivery teams; to date, I am happy to report that things are going extremely well.  There are a number of significant ATG customers, and other customers, that are in the process of implementing our Recommendations service.

We continue to engage with current, and potential, customers and are continuing to understand what it is that will make our service more important to their businesses.  There are a number of new features, and additional functionalities, that will be available in the coming weeks and months.

We are busy preparing for our Insight Customer Conference that will take place at the end of April. This will be a great opportunity for our current customers, and ATG/eStara customers, to get a first-hand look at our Recommendation service.  If you have an interest in attending please get in touch with us (sales@estara.com).

One of the other things that will be combined is our two corporate blogs.  You will continue to see posts but they will be posted on the corporate ATG blog.  This blog has been a great way for us, at CleverSet, to be in touch with our customer, investors, and other followers of our company. We’ve sincerely appreciated your willingness to communicate with us through this blog and other channels of communication.  Thank you for listening. Thank you for being a piece of our company and please continue to participate and be in touch with us.

-Todd

CleverSet acquired by ATG

Today is a great day for the CleverSet team!  We have just announced  that we have been acquired by ATG. ATG is a dominant leader in e-commerce, and like CleverSet,  focused on personalization. 

Since Bruce and Jane founded CleverSet in 2000, we have been entirely focused on bringing real-time personalization to e-commerce.  Through this acquisition we will continue to do just that, as personalization is at the center of the ATG offerings. And, through this transition CleverSet's technology will become a critical component to ATG's current and future offerings. There is also a terrific match  between our two company cultures and, as a team, we are looking forward to joining ATG. There is simply no better match for CleverSet!

So why is this a fit for CleverSet and ATG?  Well, to date, ATG has delivered a market-leading rules-based approach to optimize the online shopping experience, while we offer an automated approach to personalization and recommendations.  ATG's global customer base will now be offered a strong and complementary solution that includes each of these approaches, while not limiting them to either.

Since launching our commercial service two years ago, we have established a terrific customer base, all of whom will continue to benefit from our next-generation technology and service offering. These customers will now appreciate the enormous amount of resources that ATG can provide, while having an opportunity to explore the broader set of products and services.  We expect to expand our current offerings and continue to drive increases in revenues and conversion rates while making the online experience more relevant and personalized for each and every visitor.

Any time a start-up has a successful outcome it is because of the people.  This is most certainly the case with CleverSet. This acquisition is the culmination of a ton of hard work, talent, creativity and time from an amazing group of people – the CleverSet team. We also have been fortunate to work with a supportive group of investors, along with our two outside Board members, Jan Hendrickson and Elton Sherwin. 

For me, personally, the past three years have been an amazing "ride".  I am now looking forward to joining the ATG team and seeing the CleverSet technology flourish.

I'll be sharing more as we move through the next few weeks.

Web 2.0 - Great conference & a couple of awards

So blogging on a regular basis has been harder than i had imagined. We're in the middle of a ton of things at CleverSet including product development, implementing with large customers, high level partnerships and some interesting industry events, among other things.  We will have a bunch of news to announce during the next few weeks/months but i wanted to catch up on some big happenings.

We were selected to present at Launch Pad at the fabulous Web 2.0 Conference this week in San Francisco.  For those who haven't been to 2.0 before you should go - it is the best conference in our industry, hands-down - just take a look at the agenda!  John Battelle is a terrific guy who, along with Tim O'Reilly, does a great job interviewing the top people in the industry (this years first few included people by the last names of Zuckerberg, Murdoch, Ballmer and Whitman).  Given the company we were just thrilled to be included!

The Launch Pad was composed of six companies (of the 200+ who submitted to present). I will say that there was a ton of excitement and nervousness in the 'green room' prior to our presentations.  And it's no wonder - it's not that often that any start-up ceo gets the opportunity to present in front of 1,000+ people including the who's who within the press.  After running through my presentation a few hundred times I was really excited to get on stage and pitch our story.  It apparently went pretty well. After the six presentations the audience voted on four awards and we were fortunate to win two of them - "Best In Show" and "Most Likely To Exit First".  This was great validation for our company and we are thrilled with the awards and some of the coverage including Christine.net and TechCrunch and Wired.

A month ago we presented at the Zino Zillionaire event in Seattle.  There were 28 companies presenting and we were selected by the attendees as the "Best Investment Opportunity".  If you're a Seattle-based company looking to sell your story, i strongly suggest that you line up for a chance to present at Zino next year - the audience is terrific.

We've got a number of huge customer announcements to come in the weeks to come and will just have to save that for another post.

I'll be back before another two months passes...i hope/think!

The "Ad bubble" ?!

Fascinating article in the WSJ on Tuesday regarding the focus on Ads into most Web 2.0 companies and investments.  There has obviously been a significant focus on the Ad space over the last few years (post-bubble), primarily driven by Google’s amazing ability to monetize their search capabilities through the Ads on their results pages. 

When a company like Google becomes wildly successful people intuitively follow. So, with that leader firmly in place many have followed.  But we are suddenly back to a place where “traffic” and “page views” (previously known as “eyeballs”) are seemingly all that matter. 

Consumer interactions with online Ads are known to be fairly limited (in terms of click-through rates) and yet Online advertising is one of the fastest growing industries on the globe.   But if consumers aren’t interacting with them then how is this industry growing so quickly?  The simple answer is because the value doesn’t have to be a consumers interaction with the Ad, but rather the consumer simply needs to see the Ad, hence us being back to “eyeballs”. Google just announced their Ad strategy within YouTube – they will charge $20 per 1,000 impressions as the Ads roll across the bottom of the video screen for 10-15 seconds at the beginning of the Ad; again, no interaction, except that the viewer can rid the Ad fairly easily.

Google brings up another interesting question.  How is the Ad industry going to shake out?  Right now, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are the clear leaders in the market. With recent acquisitions by all three of these companies (i.e. aQuantive and Double Click) they now own much of the ‘network’ (publishers and advertisers) and the inventory.  And yet, every day there is a new “Ad company” that gets funded – how these all survive is another story entirely.

Interestingly, just prior to this article, I have had two conversations regarding the “Ad bubble”. The first time I heard that term was from a well-respected VC who said that he doesn’t have any idea how this “bubble” continues, nor how so many companies can build their Web 2.0/eCommerce/Service businesses can survive, let alone thrive, on the Ad model.  I don’t disagree.   

It’s going to be interesting to see how this all plays out. The last “bubble” was ugly, to say the least. I don’t believe the “Ad bubble” will be anything close to the bubble that we saw a few years ago, but it’s something to watch...closely.

Summer travel summed up perfectly...

Auren Hoffman sums up my travel this summer (and yesterday specifically, when i spent time in the Seattle, Denver, Chicago and La Guardia airports, although i was suppose to end up in Newark) here.

The (in)convenience of Online Shopping

Sometimes it takes a child to really 'tell it like it is'.  Here's an example of that:

Last weekend I  took my two daughters, ages 3 and 5, "shopping"...on Target.com. They loved it - sitting at the table on a Sunday morning, in their PJ's, eating their cereal, and looking at page after page of great products.  Finally they settled on their first purchases; they each got to buy a wall clock, a clock radio and, of course, a new Hello Kitty garbage can (anyone with kids can appreciate why they got exactly the same things!). 

So, we added the six items to our shopping cart, when through the checkout process and then, with three fingers on the mouse button we hit "Enter" and completed our order.  I said "ok, we're done" to which my 3 year old replied, "that's great, now where's my stuff"....

....it arrived FIVE days later.

I suppose Online shopping doesn't have quite the same satisfaction level....at least for the 'younger generation'

AlwaysOn Summit

I presented at the Always On Summit last week at Stanford University (by the way, i have no idea how anybody ever graduates from that school - including my wife - the campus, the weather, the surrounding area makes you want to do anything but study!).

It was a great conference and I was lucky to be one of the presenters at the CEO Showcase.  There were a few blog postings about it, including one from Rafe Needleman, who is one of my favorite bloggers.  It's interesting to look at the past companies/presenters and see their successes, including the CEOs of Google, Skype, Sun Microsystems and Salesforce.com - here's hoping my presentation brings us some of the same karma.

Some airlines really are starting to 'get it'...

One of the benefits of traveling a bunch is that once in a while you get upgraded. Today, United upgraded me on my DC to Seattle flight and, after a long weather-related delay, we are at 35,000 feet. 

And now, I fee like I am sitting in a Sharper Image on a Saturday afternoon. Why you ask?   Well, I just pressed the button my console and all of a sudden I start to feel something moving in the back of my seat.  United airlines has a business class seat with a massage roll in the backrest. I am amazed. I am stunned. Fabulous!

Thoughts from the eTail Conference

On a flight home from DC after a great eTail Conference. Its always enjoyable and productive to spend time with and around our customers, and our competitors for that matter. The (online) retail industry, while massive in terms of dollars is actually a fairly small, tight-knit and fun community.  Over the past three days I have heard stories of tremendous growth, struggles, opportunities won (and lost) and plans for the next 6, 12, 24 and even 60 months.  With an industry moving at warp speed it was amazing to hear of one companies FIVE year plan.

I had an opportunity to sit on a panel at Personalization Day and talk about the here and now of “personalization”.  I was thankful that much of the day, let alone the panel, was focused on Recommendations and particularly how CleverSet is changing the way in which retailers can personalize the Recommendations on their site to dynamically adapt to each customer on a click-by-click basis.  I made the claim that “segmentation” and “behavioral targeting” are good first steps on the path to true personalization but that they didn’t get a retailer to where they should want to end up. I had four retailers tell me that the statement rang true to them (which was nice to hear!).

One of our customers, Glenn Edelman, Director Online Marketing and Merchandising at Wine Enthusiast participated in the panel discussion and then presented a 30 minute case study on personalization and in particular their implementation and outstanding results they have had while utilizing CleverSet. Thanks Glenn – you’re not only a customer but also a good friend of CleverSet’s

I also had a chance to spend some time with a great Canadian retailer, Penny Gniwisch, Founder and EVP Marketing at Ice.com.  I won’t share most of the stories or conversation but let’s just say that I felt like I had met a kindred spirit and that I have not drank my last beer with “the Rabbi”.  We came up with a unique promotion for the Shop.org Annual Summit in Vegas in September

Some other notes from the past few days:

Retailers are struggling with priorities and how to make choices on which technologies/strategies to employ, regarding personalization and other opportunities.
Many vendors make very similar claims which muddies the waters even more for the retail community.
I saw more VCs at this conference than any in the past 15 years – means something interesting is happening in the space.
Retailers really want to engage third parties to assist them but get tired of being ‘pitched’ to all day – I can’t blame them.  There was rarely a time that I saw Tony Hsieh , CEO of Zappos, without a vendor ‘selling’ him something – felt somewhat sorry for him, but I guess you get that kind of attention with the growth trajectory that Zappos is on.
Competitors (retailers and vendors) are typically friendly with one another.
DC is REALLY hot in the summer – seriously, it was ridiculous.
The “Hinkley Hilton” (where Ronald Reagan was shot) has absolutely terrible cell phone coverage and NO wi-fi, which was frustrating.

All in all, a great week!

Seattle Tech Event

Tonight i attended an event hosted by Redfin - it was full of other entrepreneurs, investors, 'techies' and journalists. it was a great event and one that should be repeated in Seattle - I mean how often do you get to talk with others in our city's vibrant tech community, while having a beer outside?!  The answer - not often enough. 

There was a great panel with Rebecca Buckman from the Wall Street Journal, Fred Vogelstein from Wired, Michael Arrington from TechCrunch, John Cook from the Seattle PI and Tricia Duryee from the Seattle Times. they engaged in a very lively, humorous and, at times, contentious conversation. It was terrific as it involved local press, national press, tech press and the most relevant blogger in our 'space' - all were candid and funny!

Michael Arrington was asked about entrepreneur blogs and simply said "i can't imagine why every ceo doesn't have one" - that, along with a subtle (or not) reminder from my VP Marketing - gave me a kick-start to get back at my blog....So, expect a few more posts than once every thirty days!

A couple of observations from tonight's event:

• Seattle's tech community is hopping right now
• 80% of VCs wear blue shirts (at least they have been over the last 2 years)..."not that there's anything wrong with that", it's just an observation, honest!
• 80% of start-up CEOs have children under the age of 6 (or maybe we were just the group huddled at the bar)
• People doing business, and running companies, in Seattle are super friendly - I like that! Not only are people nice and engaging but they are genuine when they say 'we should try to work together'.
• Angel investors in Seattle are very thoughtful in how they evaluate deals
• Everybody wants to 'meet for coffee" - in other words... buy SBUX!
• There is going to be another relatively large tech transaction in the next 30 days in Seattle...just a hunch....

So, however slowly, i tread back into the blogging waters...

CleverSet in Business 2.0

We are included in a great article, “Rethinking the Recommendation Engine”, in the July issue of Business 2.0.  Erick Schonfeld and I have sat down a few times and he is a direct, precise and fair journalist, as you will read in this article.

The article provides some perspective on how companies, like CleverSet, are moving beyond Amazon’s collaborative filtering technology (“people who looked at product X also looked at product Y”. 

Jeff Bezos calls recommendations their "key differentiating factor" Sucharita Mulpuru from Forrester says that retailers can expect to see between 10 and 30% of their sales come directly from recommendations/suggestions – WE AGREE!

Go pick it up – page 40.

Selling to Google in 6 months or less

Gotta love this story. Six months ago, two guys (one of who’s wife is pregnant) drive to Silicon Valley to create a company with the intention of selling it to Google. 

Today they did just that. Congratulations. 

(GOD help all of the pregnant women who are about to be left behind as their husbands try to do the same).

Ballet and Start-ups...

I mentioned Marc Andreesson’s blog and his discussion about start-ups. I was having a conversation about our company, and others at a similar stage, with another CEO last week. I was trying to come up with an analogy for the lifecycle of a company. I not only discovered it, but actually watched it, on Sunday.

First, I digress...Sunday was Father’s Day and it turned out to be one of the most special days of my life. My soon-to-be-FIVE year old daughter, Claire, was performing in her first ballet recital. This was a BIG day.  She wasn’t only going to perform on a ‘real stage’ but in front of hundreds of people. Ok, I had confidence that she could do that (I think). But then I found out that she was the ‘leader’ of her group and would be the very first one to come out. This I had serious doubts about. 

All of this made me very, very nervous.  I was a wreck and could barely speak as her time approached. 

But then a miracle happened – the music started, the lights came on and, after a slight delay (that felt like a year) out she came. She had her hair ‘done’, make-up on, her pink leotard and looked so grown up.  I can only imagine the look on my face – I was the proudest, happiest Dad on the face of the earth at that very moment.  Amazing.

So how does this relate to a start up. Well, after Claire’s performance out came the six year olds, the eight year olds, and on and on.  So while I thought that she looked like she should be on Broadway there were more and more girls (and boys) who were older, bigger, more refined, more skilled and quite simply better ballet dancers. 

Many people talk about companies ‘growing up’. It struck me on Sunday that we do that, day after day, week after week, month after month. Continuously getting bigger, better and hopefully smarter.  But it takes the same level of dedication, ‘practice’ and time that a dancer does; it simply can’t happen overnight. 

On Sunday I was a very proud Dad. On Monday morning I went to the office feeling like we are 4 year old ballet dancer with lots of room to grow and amazing potential.

Andreesson describes Start-ups perfectly

I, like a lot of others, have been reading the great posts by Marc Andreesson’s blog.  While most of them have been really well written I have gone back to two of them a number of times – the way that he describes the life of a start-up is phenomenal. If you’re an entrepreneur, or want to be, or are curious what goes on in these ‘early stage companies’ go and read this – there is truth in all of it. 

My favorite quote is this one:  “in a startup, absolutely nothing happens unless you make it happen.

This one throws both founders and employees new to startups.

In an established company -- no matter how poorly run or demoralized -- things happen. They just happen. People come in to work. Code gets written. User interfaces get designed. Servers get provisioned. Markets get analyzed. Pricing gets studied and determined. Sales calls get made. The wastebaskets get emptied. And so on.

A startup has none of the established systems, rhythms, infrastructure that any established company has.

In a startup it is very easy for the code to not get written, for the user interfaces to not get designed... for people to not come into work... and for the wastebaskets to not get emptied.

You as the founder have to put all of these systems and routines and habits in place and get everyone actually rowing -- forget even about rowing in the right direction: just rowing at all is hard enough at the start.

And until you do, absolutely nothing happens.

Unless, of course, you do it yourself.

Have fun emptying those wastebaskets.”

Couldn’t be more true! Thankfully we’ve got a team that isn’t afraid to empty the wastebaskets....

Being recognized as "Most Innovative Company" in America

It’s always fun when hard work, dedication and many people working a ton of hours really pays off. Last night in NY we were presented with a ‘Stevie’ Award – it is presented annually by the American Business Association. We were chosen as the winner of the “Most Innovative Company” (less than 100 employees). 

When we applied for the award we thought it would be good exposure for CleverSet in front of an impressive group of judges. We were really surprised when we were selected as a finalist. 

I went to NY (for the ceremony and a series of other meetings) with very low expectations of winning the award – in fact, it never occurred to me that they would call our name.  During the awards I got an email on my blackberry from my Mom who said she was watching the event online – you have to love that!  Given that I didn’t expect us to win, I didn’t really contemplate what to say during the expected ‘acceptance speech’. So, one minute I am eating risotto and chicken sipping on red wine (think wedding reception) and the next I am speaking in front of 1,000 people being broadcast live online and on national radio.  (Rumor has it I didn’t embarrass myself with my comments).

I did manage to accomplish one lifelong goal (along with winning a Stevie, of course) and that was saying “hi to my Mom” during my acceptance speech!

So, needless to say, I am so proud of our team, and particularly of our co-founders Bruce D’Ambrosio and Jane Jorgensen who have built this company from their dining room table to the where we are today – another great example of entrepreneurship at its best.

Congratulations team – this one is all you!

Recommnedations engines...every site needs one...

Erick Shonfeld from Business 2.0 had a great post today about eBay's acquisition of StumbleUpon.

There have been numerous reports/rumors about this deal for the past month, along with a bunch of speculation about why eBay would buy them for $75million.  I think Erick nails it when he says it is about "discovery". It has long been said that eBay needs to provide its users with a more personalized site experience, and enabling them to find and discover (and bid/buy!) new items simply has to be part of eBay's strategy.  This acquisition gives them some level of site-based discovery, which their customers are going to love.

The next question for eBay, and other large retailers is 'what's next'? How do they continue to provide a great shopping experience for their customers? Is it all about site design? Does site navigation enable personalization?  At CleverSet, we don't believe there is only one solution but i do agree with Erick when he says "Discovery can also be thought of as the latest twist on recommendation engines.  And every e-commerce site needs one of those."

Start-ups attract the "Swiss Army Knives" of the world

Start-ups are amazing!  Guy Kawasaki has written a number of great books but my favorite is The Art of the start - if you're an entrepreneur and haven't read it, you should - it talks about the inner workings of early stage companies and some of the most critical things towards success - people is at the forefront, of course.

One of the qualities that we look for when interviewing potential team members at CleverSet is a person's ability to be a part of the 'swiss army knife" that is a start-up.  This means that they need to have multiple skill sets, a willingness to do it all on a moments notice, and be reliable in the tough, difficult and different circumstances.   

When your team members shines through in those circumstances it just reaffirms that you've hired the right people.  I had one of those moments today, except not with someone we have hired - it was the guy who hired me, our founder, Bruce D'Ambrosio. 

Today Bruce was introduced to a potential customer (to remain nameless for now) and went into a meeting expecting to talk about our technology, ease of implementation and then hand it off to our sales team. 

I called Bruce three hours after the meeting had started to find out how it went.  He wasn't able to talk much because he was STILL  in their offices, and was in the process of helping them implement our Recommendations on their site right then.  He had short-circuited any sales "process" and was moving this customer to 'live' - simply amazing.

Great work Bruce, but be careful, I may give you a 'bag' and tell you to go close sales from here on out!!!!

Market to the Max Event

I presented at the Market To The Max Conference  (Seattle Direct Marketing Association) yesterday in Seattle. The session was titled "Better Recommendations. Better Sales." and I was joined by Ryan Allison, founder of AwineStore.com. AwineStore was the first retail site to launch with CleverSet, almost 18 months ago.

There was a mix of marketers, "internet marketers", direct marketers and content managers in the room. The conversation and questions ranged from "what is personalization" to "why do recommendations work" - everybody seemed to have an opinion on how they should be presenting content and products to their customers, although very few were actually doing so on their site. When we talked about personalizing to the individual level there were some 'ah hah' moments - particularly in that we (CleverSet's Recommendations Service) models each customer on a click-by-click basis and anticipates what that customer is interested in seeing next. 

It's great to see so many people interested in the leveraging the online behavior of their customers to deliver a better customer experience.

I wasn't able to stay for the remainder of the day and was sorry to miss Gary Locke's keynote address.

So, to the SDMA - thanks for the invitation - it was fun to be a part of the event!

5 Opportunities to Improve E-Commerce

Sucharita Mulpuru of Forrester came out with a great report yesterday called Five Immediate Opportunities for E-Commerce Improvements. She mentions the need for sophisticated product discovery like our’s and says that surprisingly few e-commerce companies are embracing the technology. From our perspective, we’re definitely seeing traction in the marketplace among both large and small e-Commerce companies, especially in the last six months. Online retailers are catching on to the fact that creating a relevant, personalized site experience is a must have not a nice to have. We’re really trying to focus our sales and marketing messages on our fast time to implementation and revenue lift per visitor. E-commerce is extremely competitive and if customers are going to implement a new technology they need to know that it’s going to work and it’s going to work fast. Expect to see more results-oriented customer success news from us in the coming weeks.

Thoughts on Wisdom of the Crowds

I know it’s been a few days since I last posted, but it’s been a busy week at CleverSet. First of all, we’re thrilled to announce that CleverSet has been chosen as a finalist in the “most innovative company” category for the American Business Association Stevies Awards. We were one of just a few hundred finalists chosen from over 2,000 applicants across the U.S.in all sectors. We think that’s a great validation of the innovative technology at the core of CleverSet’s online personalization technology for retailers. But even more gratifying is seeing how CleverSet is helping online retailers boost sales and increase customer satisfaction in ways they never before thought possible. Take Wine Enthusiast. The company – the leading source for wine accessories, storage, information and events – recently implemented CleverSet on wineenthusiast.com to offer customers personalized product recommendations, boosting revenue-per-visit by 23% in a matter of days. And that revenue lift has continued unabated for over two months. So whether CleverSet wins a Stevies Award in June or not, we already feel like we’ve won in the game of helping online retailers.

We continue to focus our attention on the real issues that surround the e-commerce industry, and we’ve just published a whitepaper on how what we think is the next step in online retail: one-to-one marketing. In the paper, we discuss a popular concept – the wisdom of crowds – and how retailers have used it to sell more products. By tapping the wisdom of crowds, retailers can find out which of their products are popular among a large group. That serves a purpose, but it misses the true promise of the Internet: a one-to-one experience. If retailers could tap the “power of one”, selling each individual the products and services that fit his or her individual needs, the retail world would never be the same – and profits would explode. We hope retailers will harness the power of one-to-one marketing, because we are convinced it’s the future of the Internet. If you’re interested in seeing a copy of the white paper, drop me a line todd at cleverset dotcom.

Cross-country sights...

I’ve been traveling a ton this year – every week except for 3 since January 1st.  Being on the road is challenging for a variety of reasons, particularly being away from my soon-to-be 3 and soon-to-be 5 year old daughters way too much. It’s also tough from a business perspective because it means being away from the CleverSet office in Seattle, our team and the day-to-day operations of our company. But, there is simply no other way – we’re in a critical stage of our company and the ‘road’ beckons. 

One of my favorite writers is Peter King at Sports Illustrated. His columns are informative, well-researched and funny.  Every Monday he writes a short piece on ‘Aggravating Travel Thoughts’ from the past week.  I love it – funny instances a variety of travel.  So, in following Peter’s lead I am going to do the same – these will be random thoughts from my travel experiences.

So here’s the first one: This morning I woke up at 4am for a 6am flight to Denver, on my way to NY.  Travel today is tough – long lines at ticket counters and security are really starting to wear people down.  But, this morning was different. I used the United ticket kiosk at SeaTac and then sailed through security (amazing what status you can obtain when you fly 35,000 miles a quarter).  So I avoided the lines, right?!  Wrong.  I turned the corner to see 57 people in the Starbucks line.  Yes, FIFTY SEVEN people – I counted!  Keep in mind this was at 5.15am.  What an amazing company Starbucks is – the ‘following’ they have created is simply amazing – the caffeine doesn’t hurt either.

Other interesting sights & observations:

* It was a crystal clear day in Denver but we still waited 45 minutes on the runway.  It’s amazing how restless people get when there are delays – unfortunately the flight attendants take the brunt of that frustration, which has never made sense to me.

* At least 70% of the people on this flight are business travelers.  At least 80% of them are staring at laptops (what did we all do before laptops?), and I would say that 50% of them using an Apple product. And, probably 30% of those travelers are wearing iPods.

* I just saw a 25 year old guy with a black beard tattooed on his face – pretty cool looking – except for when he is 60 years old.

* Upon landing there were five people standing within four feet of me – all five us were checking, typing or talking on Blackberries – again, incredible market penetration!

I’m sure I’ll have more to report given that I just landed in New York.....

Google and Personalization

Google’s making a big push for personalization. They invited journalists to the first-ever Google Personalization Day to unveil some new stuff they’re up to with personalization. For one, Google is allowing users to set a default geographical location, which will allow them to get targeted search results; searchers who type in “spa” would get listings for spas in their town, for example. And then Google is doing some “behind the scenes” personalization with its Web History, allowing users to get more relevant results based on their past browsing and search history.

We think it’s great that Google is making forays into personalization. After all, the future of the Web is about creating a personal experience for each user – not a one-size-fits-all Internet. In fact, here at CleverSet, personalization is our mantra. We believe that until the Web is totally personalized, it’s falling short of consumers’ needs. Our idea of personalization is complementary to Google’s emerging offerings, because we personalize on a real-time, one-on-one level every time a visitor comes to a website. We analyze the relationships between a user’s current behavior, clickstream data, stored customer information, product catalog details and purchase history to actually predict what a customer will want to buy next.

So when someone visits a website to shop for chardonnay, they get recommendations for chardonnay. When they come back an hour later to look for a corkscrew, they get recommendations for corkscrews. Our technology doesn’t “store” your browsing behavior, but instead looks at your immediate, real-time activity on a site to offer totally relevant, up-to-the-minute recommendations. We think it’s great that Google is attempting to deliver on the personalization promise of a “the Internet just for me” – because that’s CleverSet’s goal, too.

Froogle and A New Generation of Search and Disovery

Late last week, Google pulled the plug on its Froogle brand. Froogle’s days have been numbered since Google demoted it from its home page last August. In Froogle’s place, Google has introduced Google Product Search – “Search for Stuff to Buy”. Google Product Search features a cleaner interface and a continually refreshed list of 25 things recently and randomly found with the service: minibars, pumpkin seeds, a mullet wig, diamond earrings, pond pumps and Star Wars lego sets on a recent visit.

Google’s re-focused efforts on product search is great news for online shoppers.  However, despite the power of search algorithms and relevant results, search alone isn’t the best way to find enticing products on the web. Search, as perfected by Google, is a great tool for finding exactly what you are looking for. It is a less effective way of finding “something interesting, new or unique”. As the recent momentum for StumbleUpon.com shows, there is a huge consumer demand for online tools that let you discover, not search for, intriguing products and information.

Retailers, hamstrung by inadequate site search tools, are also turning towards product discovery as the new paradigm for eCommerce browsing. In fact, Forrester’s Sucharita Mulpuru cited product discovery as one of the top new e-commerce buzzwords for 2007.

Our experience at CleverSet has shown that retailers who help online shoppers discover relevant and appealing products, both through search and onsite discovery, are able to sell more by surfacing the long-tail of products that remain invisible to most browsers and searchers. The next big eCommerce opportunity isn’t perfecting product search – we’ll leave that to Google – but helping consumers effortlessly find the things they love but didn’t know to search for. 

More Clicks for Google: What the DoubleClick Aquisition Means for Online Marketers

Another day, another multi-billion acquisition by Google. But this time, the search giant’s plans to acquire Doubleclick for $3.1 billion are making a lot of people in the advertising market nervous, with claims of a monopoly on the “pre-click” side of the advertising equation circulating. No one knows for sure how this mega-merger will impact the online advertising industry, but it’s certainly a wake-up call to those on the “post-click” side of the fence. According to Google “This new partnership represents a tremendous opportunity for us at Google to broaden and deepen our inventory of available ads and to better serve both our publishers and users.” That may be true, in part. Certainly, for online marketers, a combined Google-DoubleClick is an opportunity to bring a whole new level of interactivity to their “post-click” marketing, branding and online advertising programs. Fred Wilson wrote a great piece

about the resurgence of the banner ad and how banners carry branding value that search ads don’t.

But it also means that Google will own even more of the “pre-click” ad marketplace, and online advertisers will sign over even more of their online ad budgets to Google. The more Google owns the "pre-click", the more marketers will be forced to pay attention to the "post-click." In my opinion, to survive and thrive, marketers will have to increasingly control what happens on their sites after the click. With Google once again in the news, the whole world is focusing on driving traffic – but the experience that users have on the site is what turns those clicks into dollars.

Why You Should Care About Personalization

“Personalization” is in the news again lately. Last week, Acxiom Digital acquired dynamic targeting company, Kefta.  According to Acxiom’s news release, "Kefta and Acxiom together will finally enable clients to capture the full potential of their digital marketing campaigns through comprehensive personalization and integration across marketing channels”.  Also, Aggregate Knowledge and ChoiceStream each raised money this week. 

I think of these deals as continued validation of the emergence of post-click marketing, a subject I’ve blogged about already.  But, more specifically, it’s validation of the promise of true personalization. Of course, we’ve been hearing about the personalized Web experience for at least the last six years, if not the last decade. But, so far, no one has really delivered it. Because when I say personalization, I don’t mean getting an email with your name on it, or seeing an ad that might interest you because of a keyword you clicked on. And I’m not referring to getting product recommendations based on the past, collective buying behavior of segments, either. Personalization, to me, means seeing products and content that are completely and totally tailored to your immediate tastes, desires and needs.

Let’s step back a bit. The value of demand generation is well understood by most online retailers. This has driven the willingness to pay for effective outbound marketing services to the edge of breakeven in many cases. (Just look at what’s happened with average AdWords CPCs over the last 24 months.) Now, online retailers are looking for the source of incremental revenues, and they’re focusing their attention on the effectiveness of their sites to acquire and retain customers. They also want to drive up average order size.  In other words, they want people to come to their sites, stay there, and buy more stuff.

As we talk to executives at online retail companies, the desire to use personalization to achieve these goals is a common theme, if not a necessity.  In fact, personalization is viewed by many of these folks as the solution to every marketer’s dream of a real-time, one-to-one marketing program that can operate effectively at scale. Based on these conversations and the “personalization buzz” in our market, expect to see more press releases from more companies promising personalization. But be careful how you read these announcements: true personalization isn’t about breaking people into segments of millions of “like-minded” consumers, it’s about delivering a real-time, one-on-one, totally unique experience to each and every visitor, each and every time they visit your site.

Todd Humphrey, CEO

The Dawn of Post-Click Marketing

John Miller wrote a great piece for SearchEngineLand recently about what he calls “Post-Click” marketing.  The basic idea is that what happens after the AdWords click is just as important, if not more so, than the click on the keyword itself.  In other words, getting a visitor to your site is only half the battle.

This insight holds equally true for B2C companies.  Perhaps even more so given the fierce competition for keyword inventory among online retail sites.  With increasing click costs and already thin contribution margins, the online retailers we talk to tell us there is no more important metric within their control than conversion rate (generally defined as orders/visits per unit time). Up to this point, online retailers have leaned heavily on costly promotions such as free shipping, price discounts, and “buy x get y”.  Let’s not forget that margins are tight and getting tighter in the online retail business.

So there’s a problem.  Where do retailers turn to to convert more visitors into buyers, drive down acquisition costs, and increase margins?  There is a significant need in the market to optimize the post-click experience for every visitor.  At CleverSet, we study this problem every day and see many opportunities for sites to do just that.

Here are a few tactics we’ve picked up on from some of our customers.

1.                  Define the primary use cases for which your site is designed.  Compare these use cases against the actual behavior of users on your site.  Are they aligned?  Do people get lost or bounce right back out when they come through natural search?  Answers to these fundamental questions can be found in your analytics and with a basic use case framework you can go a long way to understanding how well your site is optimized for post-click.

2.                  Optimize the order path.  Make it as easy as possible for people to complete the ordering process.  Sounds obvious but you’d be surprised at how many sites out there make it difficult and/or confusing for consumers.  Closely examine the order path, remove unnecessary hurdles, and assist the customer in completing the transaction.

3.                  Deliver a user experience that is personalized and relevant to the interests of every individual user.  Give visitors something fresh and new, with useful information, that will give them a reason to stick around, explore products and browse.

Check out how awinestore.com has seen significant revenue lift by personalizing the site experience for their customers. 

Todd Humphrey, CEO

Re-introducing the “CleverBlog”

After too much time away we are re-launching our blog.  There is a ton of activity in the online retail, technology, marketing and personalization categories and we’ve got some thoughts to share. As well, we’ll share some of our adventures in building the personalization category. You’ll be hearing from me as well as some of our team members including our VP Sales, Todd Sherman, our VP Marketing, Donna Custance and our founders Bruce D’Ambrosio and Jane Jorgensen. We hope you check back often and subscribe to our feed.

Todd Humphrey, CEO