On-Site Merchandising

Armed with consumer insights gathered from a blend of web site analysis and consumer research, the team is continually testing and optimizing merchandising strategies designed to increase sales. From subtle User Interface changes to promotions like Free Shipping on the homepage and fresh content in the Rare Book Room, everything is tested, tracked and optimized.

We welcome your suggestions and input. Please don’t hesitate to contact us with your ideas.

	Textbooks - The 2007/2008 textbook seasons were our most successful yet, with traffic and sales at all-time highs. The online "Win an iPod" contest increased our ongoing engagement with students through sign-up for our student newsletter. Cross-merchandising related textbooks in our Textbooks area promotes the sale of multiple items per order. We also launched and promoted a new BuyBack partner, which encourages students to return to AbeBooks throughout their school years to both buy and sell textbooks.
	Bookseller Promotions – This year we are partnering with booksellers to promote items on our Best Buy page and newsletter. We recently launched a feature on Collections and Series, which featured selections from our independent booksellers. If you have an idea for an exciting promotion featuring your store, please contact us.
	E-mail Marketing – Our Marketing team has put a particular focus on email marketing this past year. This was highly successful, with sales growth of over 100%. In addition to our regular newsletters (Avid Reader, Avid Collector and The Avid Reader Book Club), we launched a student newsletter as well as a Best Buy and Free Shipping email promotional update. Our holiday, textbook and BuyBack campaigns were heavily and very successfully supported by email marketing.
	Coupons – 2007 saw the much anticipated launch of coupons. We are testing coupons with various customer segments and are already seeing a great activation of new buyers. Coupons will become a regular part of the AbeBooks marketing mix, and will continue to be paid for entirely by AbeBooks to support sales of our independent bookseller community.
	Landing Pages – AbeBooks is continuously testing and revising the pages our customers visit from search engines or from our homepage. For example, we overhauled the Welcome page, frequently updated our Australia/New Zealand page, and launched several new pages such as Used Books and Canadian Books. Look for a Canada microsite in the near future which will allow customers to sort their searches by Canadian booksellers first.
	Homepage Redesign – As part of our continuous improvement, we made some design and functionality updates to our homepage. With overwhelmingly positive feedback from our bookseller and buyer communities, we will be launching the changes on our regular homepage this spring. More improvements are being designed and will be tested over the coming months.