Is E-Commerce Depressing? Handelskraft Highlights July / August 2015

friedhof
Photo: Rolle Ruhland

Is pressimism catching? Is e-commerce depressing? At any rate, this summer our blog has joined the ranks of negative institutions of excitingcommerce and Kassenzone. Already three swan songs – content marketing, stationary trade – which not even Zalando can save – and finally, the online shop as such, which is only a phase on the way to integrated online buying.

A critical perspective on current tech hypes from Gartner fits in well. At least #Sanifail offered some entertainment:

Our top posts July / August 2015

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A goodbye from your translator

You don’t hear from me a lot, but I am the one who brings the content of Handelskraft to you in English. Now it is time to say goodbye and move on to other things. Thanks for being such a great group of readers! Handelskraft.com will continue, so stay tuned for more e-commerce content and marketing gos!

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Every year: According to Gartner, these 5 Trends Completely Overrated

Gartner Hype cycle 2015
Graphic: Gartner Newsroom

Marketing research institution Gartner has been examining what trends are where with their “Hype Cycle” for 20 years. Already arrived at the productivity phase, or does the valley of the shadow of disappointment still lie ahead? This analysis offers a hysteria-free perspective on current tech hypes.

The following trends are totally overrated and represent the peak of inflated expectations: self-driving cars, next-generation analytics (understandable to everyone, even without specialists), Internet of Things, instant language translation and machine learning.

3D printing in industry, virtual reality, and the deployment of gesture control are things to keep on the radar. These developments could soon disrupt the way we trade.

Anyone who thought that the robots will take over the economy and our lives in the next few months will have to wait about five to ten years for current futuristic hype-visions come true.

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In an upswing: Facebook is doing everything right at the moment

Facebook Aufwärtstrend
Photo: Robert Scoble

Last Monday, one in seven people on this planet used Facebook. With this, the social network broke through the through the sound barrier – so to say, with one billion active users in one day, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg proudly announced in a Facebook post. Facebook currently has over 1.5 billion users. They reached the 1 billion user mark in already in 2012 Q3.

So this new record is more of a psychological signal, although the idea that every seventh person in the world is using the same platform certainly holds a certain fascination. In general, things are going well for Zuckerberg. Turnover is rising ceaselessly, and they are strategically confident, at least more confident than Google Alphabet.

Facebook has managed to occupy all the most important trends for themselves. Mobile + mobile ads, video, visual content, and its monetization weren’t set into motion solely thanks to Intagram. This is why an ongoing upward trend is expected for the second half year.

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Why Online Shops Will Soon Be History [Shop System-Innovation]

Apple Website
Screen: Apple.com

In recent years, an incredible amount of momento has come into the topic shop system innovation. Spryker, eMatters, ongr and ScaleCommerce are just some of the latest artists in the shop system circus (maybe this is where the Shopware Community Days got its motto?).

Taking a step back and looking at things as they stand, there might be a simple reason for all this: perhaps online shops were just a phase; the first way to make the internet conceivable as a socially acceptable sales channel. Nothing more than metaphor to help transfer catalogues to the internet. Online shops don’t need this now, anymore than you have to imagine manila folders to get that you can save data on a PC.

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Logic – as if! How emotions steer purchase decision, even in B2B [Infographic]

B2B buying emotion
Graphic: socialmediatoday.com

It is no secret that there are no robots sitting in B2B buying centres (yet). Buyers are people and private customers who also shop at Amazon etc. Their purchase decisions give this away. According to a whitepaper from CEB, emotions dominate B2B purchase decisions too.

According to the whitepaper, fear is one of the more influencial emotions. It stops 48% of staff from initiating solution purchases they personally believe to be good. But this aversion to risk is not the most interesting result:

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Amazon Takes Over TopGear: When Ratings Top Morals

TopGear auf Amazon
Screen: Amazon Lovefilm

The automobile show TopGear is the BBC ‘s most successful production and will cease, after 13 years in its current form. TopGear itself has been around since the seventies, moderated by Jeremy Clarkson. He is exactly the reason for the BBC dropping the show. His politically incorrect statements and a certain penchant for violence have finally become too much for the producers.

Soon after TopGear was dropped in March, Clarkson announced that this doesn’t mean the end of the show, that we’d be seeing it on Netflix or somewhere else soon. It was clear what direction things would take – not only broadcasters, but new kinds of media producers were obviously interested. The fact that classic broadcasters have competition from the internet is nothing new – since youtube at the latest.

Shortly after, Amazon announced that they would continue the humorous automobile show on their own platform.

Which raises the moral question.

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Learn to Think Digitally: Why The MVP Approach Is Not Only Exciting for Start-ups

transformation
Photo: JD Hancock

In the start-up world, the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) approach didn’t become viewed as the lowest risk way to build-up a business only yesterday. This way of thinking propagates “think small” not “think big”. The idea is that you see if there’s even a demand, before pushing forward with a business idea and investing in it. The first step is testing hypotheses and ideas.

Zappos is probably the most well-known example. They first tested if it was even possible to sell shoes online before starting and professionalising. This is why the first Zappos order didn’t occur via their own warehouse; the shoes were simply purchased at the store across the road and then posted.

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IMHO: The Sad Demise of The Content Marketing Hype

content-marketing
Graphic: Sean MacEntee

I never get tired of ignoring the latest content marketing tricks. Basics like subheadings, paragraphs, or…wait for it – the use of pictures (!) get celebrated as though they were a new invention which will get readers all excited. People hardly dare to blog on the topic anymore because there are just too many pseudo-tips.

Very few articles on the topic actually have something new of offer. Mostly they just say what anyone who went to school should already know. At the moment, content marketing is rarely more than a basic writing course. Now that the trend is slowly subsiding, there are a lot of unaddressed questions.

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