Official Blog

I hope everyone has fully recovered from Halloween weekend! We sure had fun here at Smarter! 

Now that it’s the first of November I know that for most of us its full-steam ahead for the holidays! I’ve gathered a couple of resources for you this week to help in your efforts for a successful holiday season!

Free Holiday Webinar from Merchant Advantage featured Smarter.com!

 #1: Merchant Advantage offers a free Webinar featuring Smarter’s own Joanna Estacio on hand! Just click on the link above and register. The date/time is Nov. 13th, 2008 2pm – 2:30pm EST.

Marketing Charts Brings Us Deloitte’s ‘08 Holiday Findings

#2: Deloitte’s 23rd Annual Holiday Survey of retail spending and trends. Take it from the experts, Deloitte is trusted by industries across the spectrum! Gift Cards still reign on shoppers lists, but a huge spotlight will be focused on discount & value! For current Smarter merchants this is a great reminder to make sure and include your gift-cards in your feed with us as well as any and all rebates & coupons!

Regarding Mercent from Seattle Tech Report

 #3: All about Mercent! If your site is already doing a robust e-commerce business but you are looking for an agency to pull your online/data-feed marketing and reporting together for you, read on about Mercent, they’re doing a great job for their client list!

And finally, please let me know if I can offer you my support for a Smarter account set-up in time for the holiday’s! You can also register online here:

Register Now for Smarter.com!

Last week’s post was a little bit lengthy, so I’m planning on keeping this one short and simple. I know that some of you are saying “we’ll see”, right? Ha! Okay, maybe you’re right…. Having said all that, there is no less a “punch” here for those that will read on!

First, I wanted to call to your attention a FREE webinar hosted by Hitwise entitled, “Retail Planning for the Holiday Season”. Here’s the blurb that caught my eye:

“The Holiday season will be here before you know it. Your retail competitors are already planning promotions and marketing initiatives to maximize traffic and sales. Make sure your promotions, content, affiliate partnerships and search programs hit the mark with Holiday gift-givers. Don’t miss this 30-minute webinar covering Hitwise data and trends from Holiday 2007 and early hints for 2008.”

Hitwise Webinar - Retail Planning for the Holiday Season
Date: Wednesday September 10, 2008
Time: 1pm EDT (10am PDT), 30 minute duration

Here is the link for Registering!

On to the second thing I want to mention here… Smarter.com is planning an exciting new roll-out in the next couple of weeks and I want you all to be the first to hear about it! We are going to be updating our category landing pages in a big way! Check an example out of a current category landing page:

Smarter’s Current Home & Garden Category Landing Page

These updated landing pages are going to really come into their own with lots of fun integration to help educate our shoppers and offer them even more value when they choose to shop for the products you offer thru Smarter! Following is our official “pre-launch” blub! (BTW – I’ll explain more about how this is a benefit to YOU, our merchants, in the next few weeks!)

“With this updated version of the Smarter.com channel and sub-category pages, we’ll be pulling all the levers to deliver a streamlined, magazine-like layout that displays content ranging from ‘Top Stores’ to ‘Best Deals’ to ‘Popular Video Reviews’, and even a ‘What’s Hot’ section updated frequently by our in-house ‘Channel Guides!’”

Hope you had a great Labor Day and I look forward to talking with you soon!