Speaker Bio

Mark Baartse

Consulting Director, First Rate

Mark oversees First Rate's team of online marketing consultants. He oversees projects for clients such as Officeworks, GraysOnline and Ted's Cameras, as well as setting the strategic direction for the company and ensuring it innovates and responds to the fast moving search landscape. Mark started his online career as a web developer in 1994 for BBC, HP and Sony. From 1999 he worked for Microsoft in London, managing the rollout of MSN sites to 22 countries.

Other work includes online marketing for Microsoft Australia and Lexis Nexis, working in Seattle to overhaul the tracking of marketing spend for Microsoft globally, and consulting to the NSW Government and a range of ecommerce startups. Mark has a personal interest in and extensive knowledge of ecommerce technology.

Mark's Presentation Thoughts

We asked Mark the following questions about his upcoming presentations at Online Retailer. Here are his responses...

Please summarise the content of your sessions (in your own words):
Shopping Cart Bonanza Presentation: If someone asked you what is the best car, you'd look at them a bit funny and say "well, it all depends on what you want it for." Yet, I'm asked what is the best shopping cart software about once a week, and people think I'm being difficult when I don't give a simple answer! I'll be guiding you through the hazardous world of shopping carts so hopefully you come out less confused on the other side.

Changing The Game in 2010 Presentation: If you're like me, the first time you ever saw SEM you thought it looked pretty easy. A few (hundred) thousand dollars later and your Sales Volume and CPA figures are looking quite unattractive. SEM is challenging enough, but as the rules keep getting rewritten, new channels, strategies and tactics keep appearing, it is getting harder to run a great campaign. I'll be talking about proven tips, tricks and case studies on how to make a good campaign great, and how to explore new avenues.

What can attendees expect to take away from your session?
Shopping Cart Bonanza Presentation: You'll come away with important points to consider when choosing an e-commerce platform for your site. This is looking beyond simple functionality check boxes, and into total cost of ownership, community support, availability of skilled developers, the pros and cons of open source and more.

Changing The Game in 2010 Presentation: You will get to hear real case studies, with specific examples of the problems faced, and solutions to those problems. You'll also see some of the latest developments in SEM and how you can use them to your advantage.

The hottest thing in online retailing right now is:
There are many new opportunities for online pure-plays and multichannel retailers to build brands in a measurable, ROI-positive way. These opportunities include Click to Call, Local Search and Remarketing. In addition, while the impact of using social media is well-known, not many players have been able to harness this impact. But there are proven ways to use a combination of personal interaction and paid placements tactics to build one's traffic and brand.

The biggest danger in online retailing is:
Stagnation and lack of innovation - you need to innovate just to keep up! E-commerce can be so operationally driven, it's easy to forget to keep up. I did some work for a client who have several direct competitors. Reviewing their site and the competitive sites, I found they were all copying each other - and all making the exact same mistakes. With my recommendations - including some innovative ideas to break the "me too" cycle - their traffic and sales have grown in leaps and bounds.

Some of the best examples of online retail best practice are:
In some ways, I don't believe in best practice - it often means 'this is what worked for me'. If it were that simple, then everyone would be making a lot more money. Having said that, some things I'd like to see more of include:
- A mature outlook on media spend; that is, an earnest, logical approach to measuring the true ROI of media channels.
- A real focus on users. So many people seem scared to talk to their users. Yet, there is a goldmine of information in their users' heads.
- A focus on analytics. Everyone pays lip service to analytics but few people invest the time into extracting meaningful, actionable data from their analytics.