All the search engines and comparison shopping sites in the world do not make finding that perfect sweep-you-off-of-your-feet present any easier. Either the person tells you what they would enjoy or you have a very good idea based on their interests and how / where you would like for them to use the gift.

Amazon pioneered and in my opinion maintains one of the best wish lists / gift services available today. Gift Central offers gifts by occasion, relationship and price range, registries and gift certificates all packaged easily for the buyer. As a bonus Amazon also shows items most wished for across the entire site, revealing that the 60th anniversary edition of It’s a Wonderful Life is a hot item this holiday season…

Now both eBay and Overstock announced new gift-finding features over the last few days to help shoppers with this challenging task on their respective sites.

Overstock Gift Finder

Overstock’s Gift Finder is a new wizard that helps buyers narrow Overstock’s 700,000+ products down to what may be appropriate for your recipient of choice (based on a series of questions on occasion, age, relationship and interests). The New York Times recently highlighted the new service along with other personalization features launched by Overstock.com.

The technology behind the service, which is provided by ChoiceStream, a Web site personalization company in Cambridge, Mass., essentially assigns a series of attributes to millions of items according to their brands, styles and prices, among many factors. The more the service is used, the more accurately it can predict which of Overstock’s items will appeal to people with a certain personality.

I have run through this wizard a few times to check if it returns anything remotely useful and i have to say that it is somewhat on track, recommending products that would not immediately end up on the “regifting” pile. Give it a try by searching for a present for a corporate occasion for a 35-49 old professional that is interested in high tech gadgets. Look! That’s quite an attractive Citizen Men’s Eco-Drive Multi-function Watch, if you ask me .

eBay Express Wish List

eBay quietly launched its new eBay Express Wishlist feature with a small “Wish List” link in the top right-hand corner and a promotional page on which it highlights what some iconic Americans are asking for this holiday season.

You can create multiple wish lists, add products directly from the item view via a Wish List button to one or multiple lists and then e-mail your list to friends and family. The feature feels a little rushed — there is no way for a fellow shopper to look up someone else’s wish list and no direct URL or “share this link on your blog” (or even on My World). Wouldn’t be surprised if they are already working on version 2.0.

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Grocery shopping…not a big fan. Cut-throat parking, endless waiting at the deli counter, squeaky shopping carts. No thanks. The checkout line is especially fun - I like to play a little game I call “find the fastest line”. The rules are simple: pick the one line that will get you the heck out in the least amount of time. Novice players oversimplify: find the shortest line and get in it. Amateurs. The pros know better, there are a dozen factors to consider: How full are the shopping carts? Any produce? How quick is the clerk? (bonus points for managers). Is there a bagger? Is anyone paying by check? And beware the ultimate evil: the customer with a stack of coupons, there will *always* be a dispute.

As amusing as this game is, it pains me to have to play it. Banks have figured this out years ago: one line per clerk is wasteful; one line feeding all clerks is fair to all. If little Jimmy is depositing $50 all in pennies, no problem – you skip his teller and move to the next. No games, everyone gets a fair shot.

Years ago at CA we made a fundamental design decision in our software that has paid off tenfold: use centralized “bank style” queuing to scale out our load efficiently. Back in the dawn of CA history (circa ~2000) our very own product manager Rick Watson, then a “light side” disciple of our engineering group (bet you didn’t know that, huh?), introduced an architecture we refer to internally as “Generic Services”. What the name lacks in flair it more than makes up for in capability. Generic Services was our own homegrown version of Grid Computing, before the phrase “Grid Computing” got hip. There are many overly complex definitions of what Grid Computing is, but I’ll oversimplify with this one statement: “Grid computing lets you spread lots of work across lots of machines in automated manner that uses all of these machines as efficiently as possible.” The enemy of a grid is an idle server – every minute your CPU sits at zero you’re wasting capacity. If you buy new servers while others are sitting idle, you’re wasting money.

(more…)

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eBay is holding a 15p insertion day on the 28th of November.  This is an interesting longer pre-announcement for a listing promotion than I’ve ever seen before.  CA UK customers, this should give you plenty of time to really schedule up some big listings.

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We’ve often said that you if you plotted daily sales volume against outside temperature you’d find a pretty good correlation. Now some recent research by a UK search marketing agency has suggested a similar thing.

The research showed that online searches rose by an average of almost 7% on bad weather days, but fell by an average of 11% on days when the weather was good. The dramatic increase of 39.5% happened though on days when bad weather followed a period of good (and the sun worshippers went back indoors to do their accounts, search for a loan or sort out the holiday insurance).
Conversely, when the weather improved after a bad spell, search volumes dropped by 31% below average (and presumably everyone went to the beach or park instead).

“Traditional retailers have been studying the vagaries of the British weather for many years and know if the umbrellas or the suntan lotion should be displayed prominently in the front of store. By checking the weather and past data, and knowing when online traffic is likely to rise or dip, retailers have the arsenal to entice customers to whichever channel suits the conditions outside.”

So how can a UK online retailer take advantage of this predictable consumer behaviour?

The key is being able to adjust your online strategy quickly - the electronic equivalent to walking out the front of your shop and switching the umbrellas for the sun-tan lotion. For example, being able to rapidly change which items are promoted on the home page of your eCommerce website, adjust bidding strategic on paid search keywords and use targeted special offers and promotions to turn browsers into buyers are all effective tactics.

We’d love to hear any clever ways you have adjusted your strategy in response to weather forecasts. What have you tried? What has worked the best?

Now all we need are for the meteorologists to get their forecasts right once in a while!

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Google announced yesterday that it will be launching a new Google Checkout Holiday Site (checkout.google.com/holiday) on Cyber Monday with promotions, specials and gift ideas in the most sought-after categories such as clothing, gift certificates, toys, electronics, DVDs, and music.

Through Tuesday, December 26, users will receive $10 off purchases of $30 or more, or $20 off purchases of $50 or more, depending on the merchant. And best of all, these promotions are reusable, no special registration is necessary, and there are none of the delays that come with rebates — users will automatically see the credits applied as they make their purchases. For example, if users visit an average of five participating websites, they can redeem the promotion on each of those sites and save at least $50 on their holiday shopping.

Quite a few merchants, such as Buy.com (good online help on Google Checkout), are already advertising this promotion aggressively on their site.

The Google announcement also included worrisome results of a Harris Interactive survey indicating that “40% of employed U.S. adults say they’ll be doing at least some of their online holiday shopping from work this year”:

[…] 1 in 4 of those shoppers logging on to track down that perfect gift on Monday, November 27 (57% plan to shop during coffee and lunch breaks, while 34% will wait until the end of the workday).

Quite frankly 40% is way too low. I will personally be encouraging the entire ChannelAdvisor team in Raleigh, Seattle, Berlin and London to spend as much time as possible during work hours to shop for presents on ChannelAdvisor merchant stores that accept Google Checkout (XBox 360 games are nice *cough, cough*).

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