Speaker Bio

Tom Funk

Vice President, Timberline Interactive

Tom Funk has 15 years of ecommerce experience and is a frequent speaker at industry events in the US including Internet Retailer, ACCM, DMA and Shop.org conferences. His first book, Web 2.0 and Beyond, was published in 2008 by Praeger Publishers. His second title, Social Media Playbook for Business, is coming in 2011.

At Timberline Interactive, Tom specializes in SEO, paid search and other e-commerce marketing, user experience, A/B testing and web site development. Clients include Lake Champlain Chocolates, Wine of the Month Club, Garrett Wade, Terry Precision Cycling, Liberty Orchards, The Scooter Store, Dice.com, April Cornell and others.

Prior to Timberline, Tom was for six years the web manager at The Vermont Teddy Bear Company, and sister brands including Calyx Flowers and PajamaGram.

Tom's Presentation Thoughts

We asked Tom 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):
Gaining the Social Advantage Presentation: In my social networking session I'm going to share a lot of case studies of companies large and small that are successfully using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, podcasts, company blogs, customer reviews and ratings, and other social media tools to attract and retain more customers. These are often companies with colourful founders, or those serving passionate or hobby markets, or perhaps with a bit of a social mission -  whipping up the enthusiasms of your audience has to be about more than just selling stuff. These efforts require almost no financial investment, but they do require time, follow-though, and most importantly, some spark of creativity.

What can attendees expect to take away from your sessions?
Gaining the Social Advantage Presentation: The social media session particularly ought to inspire other online retailers that no matter what your product or market, there are powerful, fun, innovative ways to use social media. If a company as inherently dull as Rubbermaid can generate buzz, the sky's the limit! And this isn't just fluff - companies are driving real traffic, sales, PR, email signups, links (and therefore Page Rank and search rankings) and other tangible benefits from social media efforts.

The hottest thing in online retailing right now is:
I'm excited about something called 'microformats', which are a new standard being championed by Google. Microformats let you mark up the source code of your website with invisible labels telling Google and other search engines about specific types of content on your website so they can be 'understood' not just as text on a page but as fielded and specific types of data. The supported microformats right now include products, reviews, videos, and recipes. This means that with a few changes to your website's templates, every one of your products could essentially be submitted to Google Shopping every time your site is crawled. Recipes and product reviews from your site could start appearing in search-engine results and even connected with your Google AdWords ads.

Google and the other search engines have been including more and more "content types" into the search results, and microformats are (along with XML) a big step toward the "semantic web" - a web of meaning, of useful sortable data, instead of a mere web of pages. Taking advantage of this could really help drive more traffic and revenue for online retailers.

The biggest danger in online retailing is:
The biggest danger is cyber crime. Hackers and scammers are getting ever more sophisticated, and with every new technology come new schemes and new vulnerabilities. The increasing importance of mobile commerce and mobile web browsing will see the spread of smart phone viruses, the increased use of wireless opens up new access points for hackers. It's pretty ugly and scary.

Some of the best examples of online retail best practice are:
Here's my short-list of favorite best-practices that really drive revenue -
- Make your most important buttons (add to cart and checkout) bigger, bolder and more eye-catching
- Use an abandoned-cart email program to reel back in some of the shoppers who abandon before completing their order. In my experience a good abandoned cart system can lift your revenues, across the board, by 3%
- Don't just rely on hunches. Use an A/B or multivariate testing tool like Google Website Optimizer to really prove - and quantify - the best-performing images, messages, offers and other elements on your website