Shop.org Summit 2014 has come and gone, and it all happened just a few blocks from content26’s palatial Belltown headquarters. It’s a beautiful thing to see so much e-commerce excitement in Seattle and on Twitter, particularly since we don’t usually find a lot of kindred spirits prone to getting as excited about online selling and shopping as we do.
Now that the excitement has died down and the Sellpoints party van has driven away, let’s look at the highlights from Twitter. Surely you didn’t think a conference around online selling could pass without a substantial social media footprint. Check out #shoporg14 for your own tour of the many, many, many online correspondents wandering the floors of the Washington State Convention Center.
@shoporg extended a warm welcome to all 5,400 attendees.
We’re almost ready. Are you pumped for @ShopOrgSummit?! #shoporg14 #Seattle pic.twitter.com/IjS5AR0MeL
— Shop.org (@shoporg) September 28, 2014
And started things out with some highly motivating stats.
Holiday 2013 stats, specific to #mobile. @katytonkin via @comScore #shoporg14 pic.twitter.com/LhpY4vERI8 — Shop.org (@shoporg) September 29, 2014
Omnichannel was a major theme in this year’s Shop.org Summit tweets, with several major retailers weighing in. But first: a definition, courtesy of IBM.
Omni-channel: seamless end-to-end brand experience across all interaction points @IBM #shoporg14 — Lisa F (@LisaF_MA) October 1, 2014
Retailers as disparate as Saks Fifth Avenue and Target are seeing the possibilities of how a robust online presence can complement and build on sales in physical stores.
10x more people visit http://t.co/2Z2GFDcMcE than Saks stores. Digital is the new flagship! At #shoporg14
— retailgeek (@retailgeek) September 30, 2014
@Target pickup in store is 15% of ecomm sales #shoporg14
— David Ian Gray (@DavidIanGray) September 30, 2014
REI’s Brad Brown made a big splash with his exploration of the customer journey (a bit different than the consumer decision journey, but related). You can see an excerpt here.
Watch: @REI‘s Brad Brown on Mapping the Customer Journey – https://t.co/5ekbRTBhGO Full #shoporg14 recap: http://t.co/tqKtcexzqL — Shop.org (@shoporg) October 1, 2014
And they have ample reason to invest heavily in digital. REI has unique ways of tracking movement between their website and their physical stores, something we’ll explore in an upcoming blog post.
Over 75% of people who buy at our stores preceded their visit on one of our digital properties: @REI Digital SVP Brad Brown. #shoporg14
— Shop.org (@shoporg) September 30, 2014
The effect of that stat was felt pretty immediately at the event.
The most popular site customers visit on the free wifi at @rei is http://t.co/3DrLrCPAU8 via Brad Brown at #shoporg14 — retailgeek (@retailgeek) September 30, 2014
Other companies, such as Zulily, have realized their mobile presence is crucial to growth.
RT @smJulie MOBILE: 49% of items orders on @zulily come from mobile – @dcavens #shoporg14 — zulily engineering (@zulilytech) October 2, 2014
The conference also included rumblings of challenges and opportunities to come.
“If I was Amazon or eBay, I would be very concerned about Alibaba – this is most disruptive company we’ve seen” Michael Rubin #shoporg14
— Rachel Arthur (@rachel_arthur) October 1, 2014
Including next year’s host city, Philadelphia.
THANK YOU to the 5,400+ attendees that made #shoporg14 the best Summit yet. See you next year in Philly! https://t.co/GkQaQfRcyg
— Shop.org Summit (@ShopOrgSummit) October 1, 2014
We hear good things about the hoagies, so e-commerce nerds have that to look forward to.
Next convention stop for content26: LavaCon in Portland, October 13-15. content26 will be there, rapturously listening and tweeting with everyone else. We hope you say hi!
