eCommerce Analytics

You have to offer free shipping to sell shoes online. At least it seems most pure-play online shoe retailers think so.

Our free shipping list surveys 129 clothing and shoes retailers weekly. Of those 129 retailers, only these 13 offer free shipping with no minimum purchase:

Amerimark
Barneys New York
CaféPress.com
Casual Living
CustomInk.com
Kate Spade
Onlineshoes.com
Piperlime
Road Runner Sports
Shoebuy.com
ShoeMall.com
Shoes.com
The Guiltless Purse

Even though they make up only a small fraction of the clothing and shoes category, online shoe retailers account for nearly half of merchants offering free shipping (6 out of 13).

Has Zappos’ free shipping and returns policy forced competitors to drop shipping charges as well or is there another dynamic at work here?

(It’s interesting to note that, although free shipping is nearly ubiquitous in the shoe business, many merchants are reluctant to offer free returns as well. Instead they promote “easy shipping” by providing free pre-paid return shipping labels, cost deducted from return amount, of course. If everyone is forced to match Zappos’ free shipping policy, why not their free returns policy as well?)

Since I’ve begun talking about twitter analytics, I’ll just keep on keeping on. After all, it’s the most greenfield thing out there right now and it’s interesting to speculate on which metrics will come to rule the roost. In Despite Recession, More Than 50% of Marketers Increase Spending on Social Media, Sarah Perez from ReadWriteWeb notes that social media spending is on the rise. Of course it is; that’s about keeping up with the Joneses. But in paraphrasing the shiny, happy report from our Forrester friend and prolific tweeter @jowyang, Perez drops a bomb in the third-to-last paragraph.

Read The State of Twitter Metrics: Social Media Stumbling Block? »