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Archive for the ‘Junkie Award Winner’ Category

June 2011 Junkie Winner – TurnTo Networks

Posted in Junkie Award Winner, tagged , , , , on July 27, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

June 2011 Junkie Winner – TurnTo NetworksIn the e-commerce industry these days, information is everything.

A seemingly infinite number of online shopping resources, combined with an economic climate that has forced consumers to save money wherever they can, have put the power squarely in the hands of shoppers.  Concurrently, that climate has also made it imperative that retailers offer as many product research tools as possible in order to retain customers and stay relevant.

Quite simply, online shoppers are smarter and more diligent than ever before.  And while they might not necessarily always spend more, they are usually spending wiser.

Product reviews have always played an important role in an online shopper’s decision.  But our June 2011 Junkie Award winner, TurnTo Networks, has taken the concept to a whole new level.

TurnTo offers a social question and answer product called Ask Owners, which allows shoppers on retail sites to pose questions about particular products to other customers that have already bought them.  After questions have been posed, shoppers get multiple, highly-credible and high-quality answers delivered to them quickly through the merchant site, with links back to the original product pages to facilitate the checkout process.

The concept vastly improves on existing Q & A resources, many of which work much like a message board, where consumers often have to wait long periods of time to get a response to a product question, if they get one at all.  It also brings an added social component to shopping research that many consumers crave.

Speedy responses and high-quality advice, though, are not the only things that make this first-of-its-kind resource so valuable.

According to information from TurnTo, Ask Owners also serves as a powerful customer retention and marketing tool.  Thanks to an average response rate of about 8 percent on questions, merchants using Ask Owners are seeing many past shoppers return to their sites to provide answers to others, which in turn, can lead to even more purchases.

Furthermore, the Ask Owners is proving to have strong SEO and conversion benefits as well.

TurnTo says that visitors using the system tend to buy at rates between two and seven times higher than those who do not.  On the sites of some of TurnTo’s bigger retailers, more than 30 percent of all the purchases originate from shoppers who used Ask Owners before placing their order.

Finally, TurnTo keeps all of the valuable advice provided by shoppers for others to benefit from as well.  Q & A dialog is visible on relevant product pages as a resource for future visitors and all user-generated dialog from Ask Owners is index-able by search engines.  Many of TurnTo’s retail partners have even said that Ask Owners provides more quality user-generated content than their very own customer review systems.

TurnTo lists Emitations, ClubFurniture.com and ePartyUnlimited as just a few web merchants already benefitting from Ask Owners and from what we can see, there should be plenty more added to that list in the near future.

It has been awhile since we awarded a Junkie based on a technological feature but TurnTo is certainly deserving of this month’s edition of the award!  Learn more at: http://www.turntonetworks.com/.

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April/May Junkie Winner: SomeoneWith.com

Posted in Junkie Award Winner, tagged , , on June 10, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

May 2011 Junkie Winner: SomeoneWith.com(Editor’s Note: due to circumstances beyond our control, we were unable to award a Junkie for the month of April. As such, this award announcement covers both April and May of 2011. We don’t expect to miss another month again.)

Though progress has certainly been made over the course of the past decade, there is no denying that breast cancer continues to be one of the most severe medical threats in this country.  Statistics reveal that one out of every 8 U.S. women will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime and last year alone, more than 200,000 women were diagnosed with the disease.  Factoring in the reality that our country’s broken health care system makes it difficult, and at times impossible, for breast cancer patients to afford the care they need magnifies the problem even further.

One e-commerce company has stepped into with a commitment to help.

As we originally reported back in May, home health and medical supply company Someone With started SomeoneWith.com to provide breast cancer survivors and patients with resources to help them cope with the disease and ease the financial burden of treatment.

The site is the creation of entrepreneur and e-commerce specialist Paula Jagemann, founder of both Online Office supplies and eCommerce Industries.  In launching SomeoneWith, she wanted to give breast cancer patients the same benefits of advances in at-home shopping over the past decade that everyone else enjoys.

“I launched Someone With to drastically reduce the unnecessary hours women spend searching for obscure items, improve their overall experience by connecting them with guidance from other survivors and experts and help offset some of overwhelming financial burden associated with breast cancer disease management,” Jagemann said.  “It’s all about giving time back to women with cancer, and providing unique financial solutions to help them pay for this unwanted journey.”

In addition to centralizing research information on treatments for patients, SomeoneWith.com removes geographic boundaries and allows patients to buy all of the supplies and medication they need in one place.  By providing product reviews on medications and aggregating products based on disease stages, SomeoneWith drastically reduces the time a patient needs to spend researching and buying treatments from hours down to about 30 minutes.

The site also features a patent-pending registry service where a patient’s friends and family can make financial contributions to help alleviate treatment costs that can be as much as $30,000 in some cases.  Someone With has a Facebok community of more than 6,700 people already as well.

We were very impressed with the network that SomeoneWith has built when we first wrote about them.  It’s clear that the site is offering real value to people who truly need it.  And as a result, we’re proud to recognize SomeoneWith.com as our latest Junkie Award winner.  Congratulations to Paula Jagemann and her team for some truly outstanding work!

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March 2011 Junkie Winner

Posted in Junkie Award Winner, tagged , , , on April 20, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

This latest edition of the Junkie awards is unlike any before it.  For the first time since we started handing out Junkies, we have no solitary winner to announce for the month of March.  Why, you ask?

Well, there were some good submissions and nominations that rolled in over the last few weeks that at any other time would’ve merited serious consideration.  But in looking back on March 2011, the devastating natural disasters that unfolded in Japan emerge as the kind of world-changing events that make things like online coupons and free shipping offers seem like small potatoes, at least right now.

As was the case with so many individuals and industries, the retail and e-commerce communities rallied in response to the tragedy in Japan with a strong outpouring of support.  And while it’s impossible for us to list and cite every retailer that has lent a hand or financial consideration to relief work in Japan, what we can do is recognize that collective effort by e-tailers and retailers everywhere with our March 2011 Junkie Award.

So that’s what we’re doing.

As we said, compiling a list of every retailer and e-tailer that has donated to Japan’s relief efforts is simply not possible.  But that’s mostly because so many of them have been involved.  Large and small, national and regional, niche merchants to big-chain retailers, the outpouring of support has been as diverse as the retail industry is itself:

–Wal-Mart mobilized a local relief campaign shortly after the tragic events to deliver much needed supplies such as water and flashlights to survivors

–Nike pledged $1 million plus $250,000 worth of footwear;  Crocs sent 100,000 pairs of shoes to Japan

–Coach gave nearly $5 million, while Gap donated $200,000 in cash and another $1.1 million worth of winter clothing

–WatchShop.com teamed with Casio, donating 50 percent of the sales on two specific Casio watch models to relief efforts

–Japanese clothing company UNIQLO donated $16.8 million in cash and another $8.6 in clothing

–Build-A-Bear Workshop gave $25,000 to the American Red Cross Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami fund

–Sears Canada expanded its 1-800 call center to accept donations to the Red Cross

Still, this barely scratches the surface of all the good retailers have done to help the people of Japan.  We know there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other companies who have made contributions as well so please don’t think that just because we didn’t list you here that your good work has gone unnoticed!

We started the Junkie awards to spotlight those in e-commerce and retail who go above and beyond with their work and usually that results in one company or individual separating themselves from the rest.  In this case however, an entire industry has embodied what these awards are all about and for that, we congratulate all of you for earning a share of our March 2011 Junkie Award.

Please leave a comment with your own account of how you’ve helped the people of Japan!

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February 2011 Junkie Winner: Amazon

Posted in Ecommerce, Junkie Award Winner, Online Sales Taxes, Online Shopping, tagged , , , , , on March 22, 2011 | 1 Comment »

February 2011 Junkie Award Winner: AmazonOur February 2011 Junkie award recipient isn’t a small up and coming operation like some of our previous winners have been.  In fact, you know the name very well—Amazon.com has been a rock in the e-commerce industry for about as long as online shopping has been around.

But neither Amazon’s pedigree nor its reputation is the reason why we’re recognizing the company with the latest installment of the Junkie awards.

Our regular readers know how important the internet taxation issue is to us:  the proliferation of new legislation in an increasing number of states seeking to tax online purchases to help narrow their budget deficits has been staggering over the course of the last 12-18 months.  And at times it has seemed like the e-commerce community has been helpless to defend itself against what can be viewed as burdensome and maybe even unfair over-regulation.

That’s where Amazon comes in.

The company’s size and reach has often made it a scapegoat for online tax matters but it has consistently responded to being in the crosshairs of many state-level legislators with an effective counter-argument and overall strategy.  And during the month of February, Amazon scored one very big internet tax victory that will have ramifications for every other retailer out there as the online tax battle continues to evolve.

The development played out in North Carolina, where the online tax battle between the state’s Department of Revenue and Amazon was white-hot throughout most of 2010.  A major turning point came in early February though when a settlement, which the American Civil Liberties Union helped facilitate, was reached to scale back the state’s demands for personal customer information as part of its online tax collection efforts.

North Carolina had initially demanded that Amazon (and by extension, other retailers) include sensitive customer information about the specifics of online purchases to help it collect back taxes.  Amazon hedged, arguing that passing along the details of customer purchases, particularly of potentially controversial books and/or movies, was an invasion of their Constitutional right to privacy.   A lawsuit against North Carolina ensued and the U.S. District Court in Seattle sided with Amazon in a ruling on the lawsuit last October.

But make no mistake: it was the February settlement that means more.  It ensures that not just Amazon, but ANY retailer that North Carolina chooses to go after in the future for online taxes can promise their customers that their privacy will continue to be protected no matter what.

And that’s important.  Certain states’ online tax proposals have often had an Orwellian feel to them, one that would make even the most hardened online shopper think twice before purchasing what some may consider “controversial” materials for fear of having it come to light later.  At least in North Carolina now, the rules are much more clearly defined.  It’s our hope that the same protections will be afforded to online shoppers in other states as well.

Amazon, in our opinion, hasn’t gotten enough credit as this issue has grown.  They’re out front taking most of the flack and fighting back not just for their own preservation but for that of every other retailer who sells online as well.  For leading the e-commerce community’s charge against unfair and probing regulation and keeping its’ customers’ rights a priority, we’re proud to name Amazon our February 2011 Junkie Winner.

Got feedback?  Leave us a comment!

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January 2011 Junkie Award Winner: GrantMeSerenity.com

Posted in Junkie Award Winner, tagged , on February 22, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

January 2011 Junkie Award Winner: GrantMeSerenity.comAfter debuting our monthly e-commerce awards series in 2010 and shining the spotlight on both companies and individuals that set themselves apart in the industry with good deeds, important initiatives and innovative concepts, we’re excited to announce that The Junkies are back!

And our very first Junkie award winner of the New Year, GrantMeSerenity.com, provides yet another wonderful example of a company that is looking beyond its bottom line to craft a resource that can actually help people.

Launched late in 2010 by two sisters with a self-proclaimed ‘passion for service’, GrantMeSerenity not only offers a full line of spiritual jewelry geared towards several different faiths.    The site is also an active community of support for people in recovery from addiction, with a full slate of resources for individuals who seek personal growth.

On the e-commerce side of the equation, the site offers two distinct product lines.  The aforementioned line of spiritual jewelry is actually pretty expansive, with both sterling silver and stainless steel pieces highlighting the list.   There are also Chinese symbols and Zodiac themed items, pieces inspired by ‘Affirmations & Prayers,’ crosses, stones & crystals and rings and chains.  Both beautiful and very reasonably priced, all of the jewelry is centered mostly around ideas like tranquility and self-actualization, two very important components of recovery.

The second product line revolves around Yogism and the concept that gentle exercise is a critical component of health and recovery.  GrantMeSerentity has a “cozy selection of yoga wearables for complete life balance,” primarily t-shirts and light jackets/pullovers.  Though not as expansive as the jewelry selection, the yoga items are stylish and priced to fit most budgets.

While the product lines are indeed impressive, it’s the extra effort GrantMeSerenity’s creators have put in to build a helpful community for other recovering addicts that really stands out to us.

Visitors can choose from several areas to help supplement their existing recovery efforts, with specific sections for feeling, growing, and healing.  Each area includes guided exercises that force an individual to confront what troubles them in a productive way.  The site’s Feeling Finder, for example, defines a host of different emotions that an individual may be dealing with and offers ways to sort through them.  Meanwhile, under the healing section, GrantMeSerenity lists four different methods that one can incorporate to help facilitate the healing process, from forgiveness and affirmations to a self-healing tapping exercise called Emotional Freedom Technique.

Finally, taking a page from social networking and incorporating the idea that human beings exist in relation to each other, the site’s Share section allows users to submit their own personal growth and recovery experiences for others to learn from.  Written submissions can be made anonymously or otherwise, with special attention paid to an individual’s “turning point” and GrantMeSerenity promises to publish those that are appropriate and fitting.

The goal of GrantMeSerenity.com is to be of service to others in a real way and though it’s a young site, they appear well on their way to meeting that goal.  For creatively merging an interesting line of merchandise with an environment that seems as though it can provide some real tangible help to people in need, we’re proud to award GrantMeSerenity.com with our January 2011 Junkie Award.

Check out GrantMeSerenity and leave us some comments on what you think!

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Holiday Season Junkie Winner: Wishter.net

Posted in Junkie Award Winner, tagged , , , , , on December 17, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

We’re merging the months of November and December together for the next round of the Junkie Awards.  Because the holiday shopping push that unfolds over those two months represents the most important time  of year for the retail and e-commerce industries, we feel the holidays really deserves to be set apart as their own time period for the purpose of handing out the final Junkie of 2010.

Of course, the holidays aren’t just about turning a profit.  It’s a time when e-commerce and retail companies can really get creative with their efforts and do some good for the community as well.

In that vein, our holiday season Junkie Award winner is Wishter.net, whose “You’ve Been Gifted” program is an outstanding example of giving back during this busy time of year.

Wishter is a kid’s gift registry resource based in Wayne, NJ that helps take some of the stress out of buying presents for children year-round.  Their Wishter List is a personalized wish list service that parents can create for special occasions and any items that friends or family purchase off that list can result in donations being made to selected schools and other organizations that participate in the Wishter Helping Hands program.

The You’ve Been Gifted program builds on Wishter’s existing outreach efforts and helps kids spread some holiday cheer to other children.  The premise is fairly simple: a “Pay it Forward”-type gift program that employs Wishter’s existing platform and technology to get people in neighborhoods and small communities working together during the holidays, all while boosting traffic and building awareness of Wishter’s suite of services to a fresh batch of new users.

As Wishter co-founder Christian Sees puts it: “The holiday season is a great time for children to get into the spirit of giving.  You’ve Been Gifted is the perfect mechanism for both parents and children to make it a holiday season full of surprise.”

The process is short and sweet too.  Participants prepare a small gift or present, attach the You’ve Been Gifted poster and instructional poem (both available on the Wishter website), and then leave the gift on the doorstep of a neighbor as a surprise.  Gift recipients place the poster in their window to ensure they only get “tagged” once and the poem directs them to the Wishter site to print out their own poem and poster.  They are then are expected to repeat the process, with the help of their kids, for two other members of the community.

While it’s a novel, feel-good idea, You’ve Been Gifted is also proving to be a savvy marketing tool for Wishter as well.  Implementation costs are minimal for the company and every poster displayed in local communities is essentially free advertising for the company and its services.  That free advertising has been paying off, too.  According to Wishter, December has already become their busiest month for affiliate sales and revenue, while traffic and new registered users are up 190 and 100 percent respectively for the month.

For crafting a program that helps others in a tangible, fun way while also raising their own company profile, Wishter is a worthy recipient of a Junkie Award.   Congratulations to Wishter and all of our 2010 winners, and we look forward to recognizing e-commerce and retail excellence with even more winners in 2011!

Previous Junkie Winners:

October 2010:  GreenSoul Shoes

Sept 2010: eBay

August 2010:  Andrew Cuomo/State of New York

July 2010:  Rep. Paul Hodes

June 2010:  ACLU

May 2010:  Zappos/6pm.com

April 2010: BadCustomer.com

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October Junkie Winner: GreenSoul Shoes

Posted in Junkie Award Winner, tagged , , , , on November 18, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Ecommerce Junkie Award-Winner - GreenSoul ShoesWe received another healthy amount of submissions this month for the Junkie awards and it is amazing to us just how much good work is being done out there across the e-commerce industry. While we always try to make the monthly recognition timely, sometimes that’s just not possible and we have to reward acompany for their overall body of work as opposed to something they did in a given month.

Such is the case with the October Junkie Award winner, GreenSoul Shoes, which is a great example of a company that has merged social responsibility with a solid e-commerce operation.

This two-pronged approach is the result of a glaring problem for many people around the world, particularly children: the absence of shoes.

According to GreenSoul’s website, more than 300 million impoverished children go without shoes every day, the equivalent of every single man, woman and child living in the United States.  Being shoeless is not just a clear-cut sign of poverty, it also impacts other quality-of-life elements, such as the ability to go to school.  And since walking is the lone mode of transportation for most of these kids, the need for shoes is even greater.

GreenSoul was founded by Alastair Onglingswan, described as a “serial entrepreneur” who has successfully launched a number of companies.  He got the idea for GreenSoul during a trip to the Philippines, where he witnessed a severe shortage of shoes among kids living in a shantytown built on a garbage dump.  He also noticed that some of the people there were wearing shoes made of recycled tires, of which there were plenty in this particular spot.  It occurred to him that using tires and other such refuse materials could not only put shoes on the feet of many children in need, but also help clean up the planet a bit too.

GreenSoul operates using what it calls the “cradle to cradle” approach.  The company works with local shoemakers and artisans in developing nations to produce 100% up-cycled products (namely shoes made entirely of rubber tires and inner tubes with no staples, pins or glue), thus giving them an income opportunity and a global market to sell their goods, neither of which they’d likely have otherwise.  For every pair of shoes or other eco-friendly product sold, GreenSoul donates a pair of shoes to an underprivileged child in that same community.  The company’s overall goal is to shoe one million shoeless children around the globe within five years.

If you head on over to the GreenSoul site and click on the ‘Shop Online’ tab, you’ll find a bunch of cool products for sale in addition to the handsome sandals.  We particularly like the clutches and handbags that are made primarily of soda can tabs, which definitely have some style in addition to being eco-friendly.  The prices aren’t too bad either.  If you’ve got an environmentalist who’s also a bit of a fashionista on your holiday shopping list this year, GreenSoul would be an excellent resource to consider.

We congratulate Alastair Onglingswan and the entire GreenSoul team for their amazing work. They’re truly deserving of this month’s Junkie Award.

Previous Junkie Winners:

Sept 2010: eBay

August 2010: Andrew Cuomo/State of New York

July 2010: Rep. Paul Hodes

June 2010: ACLU

May 2010: Zappos/6pm.com

April 2010: BadCustomer.com

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Now Accepting Junkie Award Submissions!

Posted in Ecommerce, Junkie Award Winner, Online Shopping, tagged , on November 3, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

That’s right, folks. It’s Junkie time again!

We’re thrilled to have seen the last few Junkie award winners blogging and Tweeting about their recognitions. It shows that the Junkies are gaining some momentum within the e-commerce community, which makes us very proud.

But now it’s time to find the next Junkie winner! You think you have what it takes? We’re looking for submissions that really wow us–no product or company pitches, but stories of e-commerce companies and/or individuals who went out of their way to do something really noteworthy during the month of October.

Send your nominations to ecomjunkie@mail.com. We promise to read every single one we receive to give each its due diligence. You can expect a winner announcement sometime next week!

We look forward to hearing from all you!

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September Junkie Winner: eBay

Posted in Junkie Award Winner, tagged , , , on October 11, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Junkie Award Winner EbayWe started the Junkie Awards with one very clear mission in mind: to shine a spotlight on individuals and companies within the e-commerce industry who go above and beyond the call to make positive contributions to the world of online shopping. While cool promotions and new resources are important and deserve coverage here on Ecommerce Junkie, we reserve our monthly award series for those that really dazzle us in creative ways.

While we’ve had a diverse number of winners already in the award’s brief history and continue to receive outstanding nominations from all over, our September Junkie winner, eBay, is perhaps the best example to date of what exemplifies the spirit of these awards.

eBay is earning the September Junkie award as a result of expanding access to its features and services to blind Americans, an initiative it launched last month jointly with the National Federation of the Blind and one we reported on here.

eBay added enhancements to its site as part of the program, primarily a feature that lets people bid, sell and buy auction items using just their keyboards.  Blind users can also now navigate throughout the site’s content with the help of assistive technology and screen access software.

With nearly seventy percent of all blind individuals in this country either unemployed or underemployed, eBay embarked on the project, in part, to help tackle the problem and provide more opportunities to them.  The enhancements not only give the blind community a gateway to eBay’s 92 million users and 200 million live listings, but also a chance to generate some real income as well.

“We have great respect for the advocacy role the NFB plays in creating employment opportunities for the blind,” said John Donahoe, president and CEO of eBay at the time.  “eBay has built a reputation as a driver of job creation by helping entrepreneurs start up and grow their businesses. We are excited about connecting with an even wider audience through this partnership and providing blind Americans with easier access to our marketplace for both buying and selling.”

In addition to the site upgrades, eBay also developed a number of support programs as part of the partnership including providing seed money for promising blind entrepreneurs, recruiting members of the blind community as eBay Trainers to teach other blind individuals how to sell on eBay and the creation of a National Federation for the Blind ecommerce store using the eBay platform.

We applaud eBay’s creative and selfless initiative with the National Federation of the Blind and congratulate the company for being given the September Junkie award.  As always, leave us your thoughts and comments!

Previous Junkie Winners:

August 2010:  Andrew Cuomo/State of New York

July 2010:  Rep. Paul Hodes

June 2010:  ACLU

May 2010: Zappos/6pm.com

April 2010: BadCustomer.com

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August Junkie Winner: State of New York

Posted in Junkie Award Winner, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 15, 2010 | 2 Comments »

It’s Junkie Award time again!

It must be said: we received an unprecedented number of submissions for our August award and most were fantastic.  We hope that continues in the future because we really do look at and carefully consider every nomination we get so by all means, keep sending them in!

However, we went in a bit of a different direction this time around, recognizing what was a major development during the month of August with long-term ramifications for both retailers and consumers alike.

We’re giving the August Junkie award collectively to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and his colleagues within the New York state government for their efforts to expose a handful of companies that were responsible for defrauding hundreds of thousands of consumers through a scheme related to online discount clubs.

We’ve covered this story twice, most recently last month, when an agreement was reached forcing half a dozen companies to compensate consumers affected by the scam to the tune of more than $10 million.

Cuomo’s office initially started the investigation earlier this year, handing out more than 20 subpoenas to kick off the probe into the scam, which saw hundreds of thousands of shoppers joining discount clubs with hidden fees that were not disclosed upon opening a membership.  Many of those affected would get instant cash-back or other offers from marketers, enroll in the programs and inadvertently include debit and credit card information that would then be charged later for the hidden fees.

The Marketing company Affinion Group Inc. took the biggest hit in the agreement and will have to shell out $8 million total. Additionally, five retailers—FTD Inc., GameStop Corp., Classmates Online Inc.,  Avis Budget Group Inc., and Avon Products Inc., are on the hook for another $2.1 million total in customer refunds.

Cuomo’s investigation is ongoing and could result in even more action in the form of fines and penalties for others involved in this type of deception.  Two other marketing groups called Vertrue Inc and Webloyalty were named in the initial investigation, for example, and could see punishment down the line as well.

Now, to be fair, we firmly believe that consumers should be diligent in all areas of online shopping and research and that they should bear the brunt of responsibility for avoiding the plethora of scams out there.  That being said, fraudsters can go to great lengths to bury or hide the particulars of an offer that can be damaging, as was the case with these discount clubs.  As such, Andrew Cuomo and his colleagues deserve this Junkie for their work to protect the interests of consumers everywhere and help ensure that similar episodes in the future are fewer in number.

Got a company, individual or anyone else you think is deserving of Junkie consideration?  Let us know about it!

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