For thirteen years, Resource Interactive has studied retailers online during their high-stakes holiday season. Why the holiday focus? We’ve noticed that certain competitive advantages become highly conspicuous during these days of intense consumerism—the holiday season can either make or break the year for retailers. In other words, it offers us the opportunity to survey a retailer’s biggest moment and best effort.

Of the 40 online retailers we surveyed using our O.P.E.N. framework, we’ve chosen to feature fifteen in the final report. We focused on the social media, mobile and web site innovation, uncovering quite a few bright spots in a season of innovation and inventiveness. See how retailers fared—from Amazon to Zappos and everywhere in between—and take a look at the most novel marketing moves of the holiday season, which will surely become the everyday fare of 2010. Are you ready?

Download our 2009 O.P.E.N. Watch and share it with your colleagues.

Brand and product-based web sites have been consumer-focused, beautifully designed and rich with features, which is in stark contrast to their corresponding corporate web sites.

In their attempt to figure out how to best leverage corporate sites, companies have shifted their sites’ focuses from investor relations to recruiting to financial performance. The problem? In an effort to connect with the corporation, the web-empowered consumer who we call the iCitizen is now visiting corporate sites that are not consumer or connection friendly.

We challenge the purpose of corporate sites and share with you a case study from a company who gets it—The Coca-Cola Company.

Read More:
Evolution of the Corporate Site presentation

Taking the spin out of the purchase decision Branded manufactures of durable goods often face the challenge of having two audiences: a channel partner and the end consumer. The digital experience offers the opportunity to please both audiences and the manufacturer. Are you in engaging in the six best practices to satisfy your partners and your end consumers?

Read More:
Get in the Game: Are You Missing the Mark Online? presentation
Digital Best Practices for Branded Manufacturers white paper

Maintaining positive brand recognition globally can be challenging. It’s not enough to think about your strategy anymore; you have to successfully execute it, too. So how do you create a tech savvy global site without muffling your brand’s voice?

Create a balance between central control and local input for brands that have already gone or are about to go global.

Read More:
Global Delivery in a Digital World presentation

Consumers demand brands that are always open and always available. Integrating mobile communications into your marketing mix gives customers a brand they can connect with anytime, any place. By fully embracing mobile, your brand can:

- Drive a constant dialogue
- Create effective cross-channel program management
- Deliver new customer connection opportunities
- Extend existing relationships

Read More:
Powering Anytime, Anyplace Communications presentation

Today’s consumer isn’t necessarily more complex. The difference is that we now have far more information about her, allowing us to create more compelling and relevant experiences and thus increase customer satisfaction, loyalty and profits. A key to unlocking the social web-empowered consumer is to create personas 2.0, which incoporate attitudes and expectations within the context of the social web to your brand.

Read More:
Personas 2.0: Finding the Connection white paper

Rich Internet Applications: Information at the Speed of Life Lag time has all but disappeared and user interfaces are far more dynamic, graphical and participatory than they were even a year ago. Are your users engaged? Is the consumer experience seamless?

Read more:
The Tipping Point for RIAs white paper

When it comes to holiday marketing in the digital landscape, who was OPEN?

We monitored 50 e-commerce retailers during the 2007 Holiday season and found retailers that invited customers to co-create the experience and brands in ways that were relevant and meaningful for their customers. We’ve compiled the best examples in the hopes of inspiring and educating brands about involving consumers in O.P.E.N. experiences.

Want a peek at our findings?

• Retailers like Wal-Mart and JCPenney used emerging marketing vehicles to deliver real time, relevant content.
• Additional channels were leveraged for existing services, giving consumers portability and on-demand features.

Read more:
OPEN Watch 2008 presentation

A real-world roadmap for winning customers’ hearts and keeping their loyalty, The Ten Demandments is the ultimate guide to satisfying today’s increasingly demanding, web-enabled consumer. Published over six years ago, our research was groundbreaking then and increasingly relevant today.

The Ten Demandments

Diving deep into the holiday practices of nearly 50 top online retailers, we were delighted to find that many sites this year were beginning to effectively leverage the channel to deliver meaningful customer experiences. And not to forget the lessons of the past, this year’s study includes a ten year retrospective that highlights the ups and downs of a decade of online shopping.

Read more:
Ecommerce Holiday Watch 2006