Don Davis is an internet technology journalist whose focus is creating well-researched, high-quality content that helps internet retailers make sound decisions and do their jobs better. We got a chance to chat with Don about the present and future of internet journalism; how internet retailers can recognize the right time to jump in to emerging technologies; the rise of Amazon.com as a universal competitor, and more.
KEY LEARNINGS:
1. Whether online or in print, technology journalism must be driven by high-quality reporting and editing.
2. Proof of results should be the number-one factor for e-commerce companies deciding whether to invest in a new technology. Ask: Is there any evidence that the investment will make a difference?
3. Big data remains a somewhat nebulous concept. Many companies are still grasping for effective ways to analyze and use vast quantities of information.
4. Traditional retailers that also sell online are finally finding some success in measuring digital markets and in-store sales.
5. The success of Amazon.com has thrown many traditional retailers into crisis and is prompting even pragmatic executives to innovate and take risks with emerging technologies.
IINTERVIEW:
ML: Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got started in this industry.
DD: Well, I have been a journalist for over 40 years and the last 25 years, I have been in the business of technology. I joined Vertical Web Media in 2007 as a publisher. I am also the Editor-in-Chief of InternetRetailer.com, which means I am responsible for the intro content daily. Vertical Web Media started in 2000 with the publication of Internet Retail Magazine; a lot of the magazine still comes out in print and in digital form. We have other e-commerce websites and newsletters, and we also have a big research arm so we research the leading online retailers in North America, Europe, Asia, China and Latin America. All that information is collected in top500guide.com.
ML: How were you able to top companies with this level of credibility in the industry?
DD: Well, the founders of the company were both longtime journalists who had founded a previous publishing company that focused on financial services; that’s where I first started working back in 1995. Their focus had always been on quality and really bringing Wall Street Journal, Business Week-level content to very focused markets. Here in Vertical Web Media it’s been about online retailing, and now we also cover business visually, e-commerce and mobile technology. But the focus has always been the same; to hire really good journalists, do high-quality journalism.
We are very clearly focused and we know people are not reading us for entertainment; they are reading us to be able to do their jobs better. We try to provide them with a lot of facts, data, real-life examples. We ask the hard questions of sources; the questions their CEO would ask them if they went to their boss and said I think we should invest in this. He or she is going to have some hard questions and we try to provide the answers in our article. That’s how we have built our credibility over the years.
ML: As you are preparing for 2016, what topics are going to be more relevant this year? What goes into that process?
DD: Well, our team of about 20 journalists and researchers meets every day to talk about the news we see on the wire, what we’re hearing in the course of doing our own research for magazine articles and for in-depth research reports. So it is really based on just knowing the industry and talking to people every day, and of course a lot of us now have been here a long time.
ML: How can organizations figure out whether to invest in emerging technologies? Because it seems like it’s very difficult to figure out, “This is the time for us to jump in,” or “This is the time for us to wait it out and see what happens.”
DD: We always look for proof of results. For example, within months of Apple introducing the iPhone back in 2007, we could see that this really was a game-changing device. But we started by talking to retailers, saying, “Well, what are you doing? Are you creating a mobile site? Are you sending emails any differently to people on their iPhones and apps? Are you developing apps? What kind of results are you getting from your mobile website or your mobile apps?” And so it always came down to, is there any evidence that investing in this technology makes a difference in the first couple years? You know, it was very modest (initially), but eventually, it did become a big part of online marketing and even online shopping. But our approach is always easy: What are the results you need in order to invest in it?
ML: You mentioned mobile being something that companies look at as a high priority, what are the two, maybe three approaches you see for other organizations that you’re talking to?
DD: You know, one thing we’ve seen more is that retailers are using display ads online. Ten years ago, retailers rarely bothered with display ads. They were more sort of a branding for credit card companies or travel companies, but now retailers do it. The reason is that the ads are invariably tied to retargeting campaigns and as long as they know that, they know somebody came to their website and looked at a particular product.
They’re still a lot of figuring out of Google advertising, particularly with the growing importance of product listing ads; those ads with pictures and prices that show up high in the central part of a Google search results page when you search for a product. There is still a lot of investment in that.
A lot of the retailers we cover also operate stores as well selling online and for them, a big part of this is figuring out up how they connect their web and mobile assets with their stores. How, for example, do they make sure they know where all their inventory is across the company so they can make use of every item? Now, increasingly, stores are giving their store employees tablets or phones or mobile devices that they can use to check online inventory so that if a particular items isn’t in the store, they might look it up on their online inventory. The customer is satisfied because the order will be sent to their home, and the company will save the order that way. But it takes a lot of investment to make that happen. That’s a big part.
ML: Have you seen any examples of when organizations were able to successfully measure digital markets and in-store sales? This seems to continue to be the holy grail for traditional retailers.
DD: Well, there’s a lot of work being done on that. Comps Square will work with a panel of I think about two million consumers worldwide, about one million the United States, and they can track all their online behavior. They have documented that online advertising does significantly increase the likelihood that a consumer will go into a store and buy a product. The stores are collecting data themselves much more. I mean if you go in to pay cash you know they have no idea who you are. But if they ask for your e-mail address, “so we can send you a receipt or send you offers,” now they have a file. A lot of stores scan your loyalty card to know who you are. It’s a way they can identify what the customer is doing in store and then again when they use the internet. Through cookies, they can identify what that customer does on their website and perhaps in advertising networks. And so there’s a there is a lot of investment going on to marry that in-store behavior with what consumers doing online, and I think the biggest store-based retailers are making some headway there.
ML: So very often when we chat with analysts or directors in an organization and we talk about innovative analytic tools for capability similar to what you have mentioned, often their responses and our executives do not buy into that. There is not enough proof that that’s going to work. And it seems like very often, we have people that are innovative, who want to try something new and see what happens, but also there are pragmatists; people who want to see how others had done it and wait for the proof before they themselves dive into that. How can we become better at convincing pragmatists that they can bend to invest in new technologies?
DD: Well, I think Amazon is helping the cause of the innovators because store-based retailers are being hit hard by the competition, particularly from Amazon but also from some online retailers. Just in this month, we’ve seen Wal-Mart announcing their significant store closings. You know these retailers are in trouble. Some of them are in crisis and if they don’t want to see their businesses disappear, then they’re going to have to come up with better answers. Staying the course is clearly not going to work. So I think the pressure they’re under right now is going to force them to try different things. I think pretty much everybody competing with Amazon at this point is looking for new ideas.
ML: Another topic that you touched on is big data, and you mentioned that some of it is ambiguous; how do you define that? And at what point do you really start having big data? It seems like many organizations have analytical challenges. They’re not really having big data challenges, so where did we cross the line or just think it exists?
DD: Big data is a concept; it is not a thing. I think you’ve got big data when you’ve got more data than you know what to do with and probably for very small companies, that’s not a big problem, or even for regional retailer chains of maybe 20 or 30 stores and an e-commerce website. There is plenty of data out there, hopefully it becomes big data and I am not really an expert at that. I would say that a lot of medium-size companies are getting to a point where they have more data than they can effectively analyze.
ML: On a personal level, what do you do when there is so much information, there are so many decisions; what to publish, what not to publish, are there any sort of sources that you trust to find information? Where do you go to find answers to some of your questions?
DD: Well, I read the Wall Street Journal every day, which is a good starting point. I am watching the wires. We have Google alert terms. I am, fortunately, part of a team of 20 people who are doing the same kind of things, so that’s a lot of specialty. So I am talking to a lot of people who are providing good information, and we’re publishing a monthly magazine and writing daily news report. So I am seeing a tremendous amount of information about e-commerce that all fits into my understanding of the trends in the industry.
ML: What keeps you up at night? Is it work-related?
DD: Not much, frankly. I think the biggest threat for us is that our readers are also facing information overload, so we have to get sharper at providing real insights and getting right to the point. I think that’s what our readers want. Here is what this means for you and keep it as tight as possible and acquire as much data as possible, so you are not just reporting opinions. That’s what we try to do and that’s how we try to retain the loyalty of our readers. But there’s a lot of competition out there in the information business, as there is in pretty much every other business, of course. The internet takes all kinds of information available and opinions available and we have to be our toes to continually improve where the process of moving to a whole new web site platform for all of our news websites. Like everybody else, we are facing a lot of competition and we are continually investing to make our product better.
Resources:
1. Don Davis is Editorial Director at Vertical Web Media you can find him on LinkedIn and Twitter.
2. Vertical Web Media’s research top500guide.com
