It’s a head-scratching reality that underscores just how unprepared most retailers remain in the face of new opportunities born of the recent eCommerce revolution.

According to an insightful study commissioned by Zmags, an up-and-coming provider of rich media mobile and social merchandising, only one-third of the top 100 online retailers are truly “ready” for eCommerce today.

Put differently, roughly two-thirds of the world’s biggest online retailers haven’t yet optimized their websites for tablets like Apple’s iPad and other prominent mobile devices that are very inviting to online shoppers.

“Adequate Enough”

Zmags finds that most retailers are bypassing tablet-ready websites and eCommerce platforms in favor of the easier, less expensive route: standard websites that deliver an “adequate enough” tablet user experience.

Further underscoring this lackluster effort to bring their online storefronts up to speed with the rest of the mobile community, two-thirds of the respondents admit to having built iPhone applications. But here’s the kicker. Only half of this bunch has implemented in-app purchases – a feature that is red-hot in the mCommerce space and among an increasingly mobile-savvy user population.

If you’re somewhat surprised by the findings, you’re in good company. W. Sean Ford, COO and CMO of Zmags, was surprised too.

“What we discovered, unexpectedly, was that very few retailers-even among this elite group of marketers-are tapping into the full shopping potential of mobile and tablet devices. In fact, not even close to it,” Ford says.

“Only one quarter of retailers are ready to take a consumer through checkout over tablets, but 49 percent of today’s tablet owners said they plan to shop even more next year using their device. This reflects a serious disconnect between how consumers want to shop and the inconsistent experiences they are being offered. It’s a crucial issue that retailers need to address before their competitors do.”

Ignoring The Power of Social Commerce

Zmags found – not surprisingly – that all 100 top retailers now have Facebook pages to promote their respective brands. But only one of these leading global online retailers allows consumers to make purchases directly from their Facebook page.

Given recent studies showing that the addition of an eCommerce app to one’s Facebook page can boost sales by upwards of 15%, the amount of lost revenue across the online shopping space could be substantial in light of how retailers continue to discount the value of social commerce opportunities.

Zmags did, however, identify some retailers who are largely “getting it right.” The big winners are Gilt Groupe, Disney and Urban Outfitters. The three retailers were praised for having the strongest and most robust mobile offerings across most devices and channels.

Another 19 retailers “appeared to be making moves in the right direction by developing engaging content such as look books, catalogs, editorial picks, etc.” Zmags was quick to point out, though, that none of them had applied the “dynamic environment or optimized their brand experiences” across the full range of smartphones, tablets and Facebook.

To check out the new whitepaper from Zmags – “Mobile and Tablet e-Commerce: Is Anyone Really Ready?” – click here to register and download the eye-opening report.

Exinda, a global provider of WAN optimisation solutions incorporating Unified Performance Management, is on course to meet its ambitious UK partner recruitment targets this year, since launching its partner programme in November 2011.

Over the last three months, 10 partners have either attained Exinda Platinum Partner status, or switched vendor allegiances to become Exinda Gold partners.

“We’re delighted by the numbers of resellers that have shown a desire to build successful business revenues around Exinda’s innovative technology,” said Exinda’s EMEA VP of Sales, Adam Davison.

“They are seeing the benefits wrapped around our next generation WAN optimisation solutions, and using them as a means to make more out of their customer offerings. Our increasing momentum in the channel reflects the growing market demand for our solutions. Exinda partners are best placed to take advantage of a rapidly evolving market landscape for network visibility, control and optimisation that is reeling from seismic shifts in cloud, SaaS, video and Web 2.0 application usage.”

“We immediately saw the benefit of committing ourselves to become an Exinda Platinum Partner,” explains Jeff Orr at Stack Data Solutions Ltd.

“Having a WAN optimisation solution that gives our customers integrated monitoring, visibility and acceleration techniques on their core network is proving very popular as they seek ways to get more out of their existing infrastructure. By becoming a Platinum partner we now have the benefit of a highly differentiated market offering, greater margin retention and access to a range of technical, sales and go to market support services. We’re genuinely looking forward to a prosperous and mutually beneficial relationship.”

Stack Data Solutions Ltd is one of six partners that have either achieved the Platinum status already, or who are in the process of being ratified for accreditation. Meanwhile, Exinda has added several extra recruits to its Partner Programme including new Gold Partner, finance sector focussed Lato Networks.

“Exinda’s WAN optimisation solution is a very compelling technology for us, and fits well into our portfolio,” adds Paul Judd, Director of Lato Networks.

“Since becoming a Gold partner, we have benefited from improved margins and a higher level of marketing and technical assistance. For our customers, they benefit from a valuable next generation WAN optimisation technology that enables them to integrate network monitoring, visibility and acceleration techniques within a single platform, removing the need for extra hardware and therefore cost.”

According to Exinda’s distribution partner Exclusive Networks UK, resellers are starting to see the market opportunity around next generation WAN optimisation as being a key enabler for many IT initiatives.

“Together with Exinda we have been working extremely hard engaging, enabling and energising resellers providing them a range of sales, technical and marketing support services. This has resulted in a wave of new partner signings and a significant number of interested partners looking for a differentiated, high margin alternative to legacy WAN optimisation players,” says Jim Harvey, Business Development Director, Emerging Technologies, Exclusive Networks UK.

Davison concludes, “We are very excited by the number of reseller partners that have already joined our programme. As more companies increase their use of UC, video content and collaboration, and cloud computing models evolve, the need for WAN optimisation that enables, not hinders, these applications will become even more attractive as a key solution sale for our partners.”

About Exinda®

Exinda is a proven global supplier of next generation WAN Optimisation and Application Acceleration products. The company has helped over 2,500 organisations in over 80 countries worldwide improve the end user experience, manage application performance, manage congestion over the WAN and reduce network operating costs for the IT executive. For more information, please visit http://www.exinda.com.

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Exinda and the Exinda logo are trademarks of Exinda. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

As in life, men and women disagreed more than they agreed as to which brands have earned their most affection.

Both men and women rated Southwest Airlines, Google and Dove among their top ten brands. Beyond these, though, women have real heart for Hallmark, Kohl’s, Lexus, Target, Neutrogena and Crest. Men, on the other hand, were most taken with Cadillac, BMW, Apple, Sharp, and GE.

The Second Annual “Most Desired Brands in the U.S.” just released by leading global strategic neuroinsight firm Buyology Inc and uSamp, a leader in providing targeted audiences and SaaS technologies for business intelligence. This list is the only report to  uantitatively type and measure consumer relationships with brands using rigorous quantitative tools that measure people’s deepest, non-conscious connections to brands. The full report can be found at www.buyologyinc.com.

The Most Desired Brands in the U.S. Report used Buyology’s proprietary technology to test more than 220 brands across ten diverse industries, among a sample of 4,000 people representative of the US population. The test was conducted immediately following the Super Bowl on February 6-10, 2012.

“This year’s brand ranking demonstrates that it’s essential for companies to invest in creating deeper differentiated relationships with their consumers. These relationships provide the context that either amplifies or diminishes everything the brand does to connect with its customers,” said Gary Singer, Founding Partner and CEO, Buyology Inc.

“Buyology’s neuro-insight tools provide rigorous analytic measurement of these deeper, previously unmeasured, connections to provide unique insight to brands and a roadmap for how to  trengthen their relationships.”

Added Matt Dusig, Co-Founder & CEO, uSamp, “uSamp is thrilled to power Buyology’s 2012 report on The Most Desired Brands in America. As two of Forbes’ Most Promising Companies in 2011, uSamp and Buyology both thrive on disruptive innovation and believe in the power of consumer insights. This synergy, along with our ability to target an audience of over 6.5 million, will prove valuable to Fortune 500 brands across the nation.”

ABOUT BUYOLOGY:

Buyology is a leading global neuro-insight firm that rigorously measures the 85% of human decision making that drives customer preference for consumer brands around the world. Utilizing advances in the medical, neurological and social sciences, Buyology has developed statistically validated, large-sample web-based tools to quantitatively measure and immediately leverage a deeper, understanding of customer responses to new products, other innovation, positioning, branding, advertising, digital content, packaging, and experiences.BUYOLOGY, INC.

launched in 2009 following the release ofMartin Lindstrom’s New York Times bestseller, “Buyology: The Truth and Lies About Why We Buy” (Random House).  Buyology has served global leaders in consumer products, financial service, media, pharmaceuticals and technology and is internationally recognized as a thought leader in driving marketing insight and effectiveness, Buyology publishes America’s Most Desired Brands annually and has been cited and covered in the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, The New York Times, among others. In 2011, Buyology was featured as one of Forbes 100 Most Promising Companies in America. For more information on Buyology, visit www.BuyologyInc.com.

About uSamp

uSamp (uSamp.com), the Answer Network, is a premier provider of technology and survey respondents used to obtain consumer and business insights. uSamp’s solutions and SaaS platform transform the way companies gain intelligence to make better, faster decisions about their products and services by tapping into uSamp’s 6.5 million global panel of survey respondents. Through uSamp’s proprietary technologies for self-serve survey authoring, self-survey sampling, and private-label panel management, companies have on-dema nd access to millions of profiled survey respondents.

uSamp is based inLos Angeles, with five offices throughout the United States, Europe and India. The company has 185 employees worldwide, led by serial entrepreneurs Matt Dusig and Gregg Lavin. uSamp ranked #11 in the 2011 Forbes America’s Most Promising Company List, was named one of the fastest growing private companies in Los Angeles by the San Fernando Valley Business Journal and one of the best places to work in Los Angeles by the Los Angeles Business Journal.

Woburn, MA- based backup vendor Acronis has a major campaign under way to recruit VMware resellers to sell its flagship Acronis vmProtect solution.

Its latest initiative is a significant bonus to margins, with a large additional bonus when their solution is sold with VMware.

“In 2009, we launched our virtual backup and recovery product and our first all virtual product last year,” said Izzy Azeri, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Americas & Business Development, at Acronis.

Acronis restructured its channel program last year to try and drive more channel business in the virtual space, and they have added 350 new partners in the U.S. since then.

Now we are offering the channel something much more lucrative, Azeri said.

First they are raising overall margin by a maximum 10 points — to 30 — on all products.

“We give that 30 points to distribution, and what a partner is paid depends on their tier,” Azeri said. This is paid up front.

The real plum with the new program is an additional 30 points given when selling Acronis products alongside VMware

“That extra 30% is not dependent on tier,” Azeri said.

Azeri said they have grown their VMware business significantly since VMprotect was launched, but that the growth has been disproportional among their larger partners.

“We have good overlap with VMware on the large DMR community, but once we move beyond that, that s where we are looking to recruit partners, on the VAR side,” he said.

Acronis vmProtect is specifically designed for pure VMware vSphere environments and uses all available VMware API s to perform in virtual environments with little or no IT support, with all backup and recovery tasks able to be managed remotely through a web based interface, and requiring little training to get up and running.

“We will also be providing great marketing collateral for partners to use as well as part of the promo,” Azeri said.

News Facts:

• Zmags, the leading provider of rich media mobile and social merchandising, today released results of a research report entitled, “Mobile & Tablet e-Commerce: Is anyone really ready?“
• Zmags commissioned HawkPartners, a marketing consulting and research firm, to assess the mobile and tablet offerings of the Top 100 Internet retailers, who were evaluated on the shopping and purchasing experiences they provided across tablets (iPad), smartphones (iPhone and Android) and Facebook.
• The research revealed that fewer than one-third of retailers have optimized sites for tablet commerce. Most are simply relying on their standard websites to provide an “adequate enough” tablet shopping experience.
• Other key findings include:
  • More than half of retailers have developed smartphone-specific offerings to provide key functionality for the smaller screen.
  • While more than two-thirds of the retailers have developed iPhone apps, only half of that group offers the ability to purchase via the app.
  • All 100 retailers have Facebook brand pages, but only one (Coldwater Creek) lets consumers directly purchase from the Facebook page.
• The research identified three retailers (Gilt Groupe, Disney and Urban Outfitters) as having the strongest and most robust mobile offerings across most devices and channels.
• Only 19 of the top 100 retailers extended beyond ordinary HTML-type content to include more engaging material such as look books, catalogs, editorial picks, etc. However, none of them extended the dynamic environment or optimized the brand experience across the full range of smartphones, tablets and Facebook.
• An interactive multimedia summary of the research is available at http://www.zmags.com/blog/new-research-report-mobile-tablet-commerce-is-anyone-really-ready
• A full research report, entitled “”Mobile & Tablet e-Commerce: Is anyone really ready?”can be downloaded atwww.zmags.com/top100.
• All results are based on the research conducted over a 4-week period in November and December 2011.

Supporting Quote:

“What we discovered, unexpectedly, was that very few retailers—even among this elite group of marketers—are tapping into the full shopping potential of mobile and tablet devices. In fact, not even close to it,” said W. Sean Ford, COO and CMO of Zmags.

“Only one quarter of retailers are ready to take a consumer through checkout over tablets, but forty-nine percent of today’s tablet owners said they plan to shop even more next year using their device. This reflects a serious disconnect between how consumers want to shop and the inconsistent experiences they are being offered. It’s a crucial issue that retailers need to address before their competitors do.”

About Zmags

Zmags helps thousands of the world’s most progressive global retailers and brands design brilliant and consistent marketing and merchandising campaigns across social, mobile, tablet, and e-commerce platforms, driving product discovery and inspiring purchases. Using the Zmags on-demand rich media merchandising platform, leading brands have measurably and dramatically increased customer engagement, conversion rates, order size and brand loyalty without the burden of IT constraints. Zmags is among the fastest growing technology companies in North America, ranking #70 on the Deloitte 2011 Technology Fast 500.  Zmags is headquartered in Boston, MA. with European offices in London and Copenhagen. For more information about Zmags, please visit www.zmags.com.

Media Contact:

Samantha McGarry
InkHouse for Zmags
781-966-4107
[email protected]

SOURCE Zmags

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Exinda, a global provider of next generation WAN optimization solutions, incorporating Unified Performance Management, today announced it has bolstered its presence in the Middle East by appointing COMPUTERLINKS as its exclusive distribution partner across the region.

The deal enables Exinda to better satisfy growing market demand for its technology and further reinforces its continued commitment to the region as a growth market.

As the leading value added distributor in the region, COMPUTERLINKS will help Exinda increase its channel footprint and add significant momentum to Exinda’s sales, service and support capabilities as it seeks to accelerate penetration and increase market share.

“As a business Exinda continues to grow ahead of the market and that particularly applies to the Middle East where we are seeing pent up demand for our solution and a significant growth opportunity”, explained Adam Davison, VP Sales EMEA at Exinda.

“We needed a strategic partner to help us capitalize on this opportunity, a distributor with a proven track record in taking innovative and disruptive technologies to market, building channel momentum and providing value added services. COMPUTERLINKS ticked all the boxes and we are genuinely excited about the opportunity this presents for a mutually beneficial and rewarding business relationship.”

Commenting on the agreement Lee Reynolds, Managing Director, COMPUTERLINKS, Middle East and Asia said, “It’s increasingly rare these days to find a technology that lives up to its next generation billing and truly disrupts the market. Exinda’s integrated approach encompassing visibility, QoS and acceleration within a single platform sets it apart from the legacy WAN optimisation providers and represents a great opportunity for our channel partners to be able to differentiate themselves in the market as enterprises look to realise the benefits of Cloud, SaaS, video and Web 2.0 applications. We look forward to working with the Exinda team and growing its business across the region.”

About COMPUTERLINKS

COMPUTERLINKS is one of the leading value added distributors for international top manufacturers in information technology. As the link between the manufacturers and resellers, COMPUTERLINKS smooth the path for the successful distribution of intelligent IT solutions from the areas of e-security and e-business. The COMPUTERLINKS product portfolio is geared to the growing needs of customers for security in the field of ever more complex, global IT structures. With branches in 18 countries COMPUTERLINKS reach is constantly expanding to cover new territories and strive to retain its position as a leading VAD for international IT manufacturers, who are all market leaders in their fields.

About Exinda®

Exinda is a proven global supplier of next generation WAN Optimisation and Application Acceleration products. The company has helped over 2,500 organisations in over 80 countries worldwide improve the end user experience, manage application performance, manage congestion over the WAN and reduce network operating costs for the IT executive. For more information, please visit http://www.exinda.com.

Joe Pulizzi: Few venture capital firms are experimenting with new media and content marketing to the degree you’re doing it at OpenView Partners and OpenView Labs. Tell me how that came about.

Scott Maxwell: We focus on companies within two specific sectors and a specific stage in the investment cycle. Since those companies can be anywhere in the world, we have difficulty finding them. We did a lot of research and made a lot of phone calls to identify and reach out to target companies. What we now do with content marketing is flip that dynamic, helping our target market find us and understand who we are.

The content marketing strategies we use on the OpenView Labs site came about because I read your book, Get Content Get Customers. The ideas you talked about really resonated for me, and we began encouraging our portfolio companies to adopt content marketing.

It wasn’t long before we realized that if we were telling our portfolios’ companies to use content marketing, then we needed first-hand experience ourselves. We began with a company blog.

Then we introduced the OpenView Labs website, where we blog, publish videos and podcasts, and produce a series of e-books. OpenView Labs has been a great proving ground for us, helping us experiment with content marketing so that we can guide our portfolio companies to do the same.

J: There are so many sites dedicated to venture capital and tech startups. How do you stand out?

S: Our audience is very narrowly focused. We are writing about ideas for expansion-stage software and technology companies only. The set of issues they face is fairly unique.

One of the important roles we play for that audience is not only publishing original content, but also curating all the content that’s out there on the web and filtering it to find the best examples for our audience.

J: Most people don’t think of financial services as very advanced in new media. What in your own background led you to embrace content marketing and digital media within an industry that’s usually thought of as a laggard?

S: The best way to describe myself is somewhere between an engineer and a teacher. I began my career in the ’80s as a mechanical design engineer, designing robots. I went on to get a PhD in mechanical engineering in order to become a professor.

The academia career didn’t happen because, in truth, with my background there were so many commercial opportunities for me. I went to McKinseyto hone my business skills, and then spent a lot of time in financial services, first for Lehman Brothers and then Putnam Investments.

I ended up moving to venture capital because a friend asked me to join him. For me, venture is the perfect intersection of technology and financial services. What’s more, it’s an engineer’s dream to test out ideas and to experiment—and both of those qualities are highly valued in venture capital. Essentially, we are engineering businesses.

As far as why my background translates to having insights about digital media in particular. I would say that I’m not a digital evangelist by any means. I really just like and pursue what works. I’m willing to take a new idea, test it out, experiment and see how it fits together with other ideas.

J: Your content marketing team for the OpenView Labs site is small, but I happen to know they are very media-savvy. Tell me how you identify and attract the best talent.

S: We are especially good at recruiting tech-savvy employees because of the channels we use to find them. Our LinkedIn searches, for example, help us identify individuals who are extremely active in tech, not just those who say they are. It’s an important distinction.

J: In this issue we are talking all about Content 2015. What do you think the field will look like in three years?

S: What we really need is a lot more automation and more prediction in marketing and digital media. Currently there is a huge amount of manual work involved in posting blogs and identifying others to follow. All of the “plumbing” of the web will need to become more automated over time.

There are companies who are already providing solutions to this problem, such as Dlvr.it, but we still need a lot more intelligence built in to all the social media activities we engage in so that companies can scale their social media and content activities.

The question I also hope gets answered in the coming years is how to achieve one-to-one content marketing. What I mean by that is, if your company is targeting various markets, and each of your target companies has multiple user or customer types (e.g. IT versus human resources), how can you deliver the right content to the right person at the right time? It’s a complex but very important problem to solve.