If at first you don’t succeed try, try, again…

Amazon this week announced its "new" Amazon business. The service offers B2B level ecommerce to any qualified business. If that's sounds vaguely familiar it is. Amazonsupply.com was launched back in 2006 after the acquisition of smallparts.com. That was Amazon’s initial entrance into the world of B2B ecommerce.

Unfortunately, the specialty site never really gained traction as a true B2B site when compared to its primary competitors, Grainger, ULine, Global Industrial, etc.

To put these numbers in context, Amazon.com had 2.4 billion visits during this same time period. Therein lies the problem.

It's important…

Join Yeoman's Mike Healey at the 2015 Chief Learning Officer Spring Symposium on April 12th for a review of the major digital trends impacting the education market.  The session is part of a pre-conference event sponsored by our higher education partner Mindmax.  This session is designed for high-ed execs looking to better understand the digital transformation that is impacting their enrollment and recruitment initiatives.  

Institutions continue to struggle with their online presence, often creating a silo'd series of sites that don't integrate with backend systems and ignore the critical 'offline' touches that occur as part of a student's enrollment journey.  The "web" is often dropped onto Marketing without any plans to coordinate activities with enrollment, admissions, or financial aid.  IT…

March 20, 2015:  This week was a very rough one for manufacturers and their relationship with Amazon.  Amazon announced they will be ending the 'Amazon Webstore' service in July 2016.  Many people may not realize that Amazon offered a private label web hosting, but Yeoman estimates they host almost 2,000 sites.  Many of these sites are original manufacturers like Fiskars, Cuda, Black and Decker, Eclipse, Lacoste, Remmington, Sesame Street, and Isaac Mizrahi to name a few.

For a manufacturer, the appeal was clear:  A world class hosting platform that uses the exact same product data they have to create to be successful on Amazon.  Amazon leads B2B and B2C when it comes to product details online, an area…

 This post was originally published 5 years ago.  Today JC Penney announced they were bringing back catalogs.  It took them almost 5 years to realize what Yeoman has always said; customers shop in a multi-channel way and can't be forced into 'online or offline' mode. 

Original Post: JC Penney may now join the list of retailers, manufacturers, and publishers who have mistakenly assumed they can go 'all in' online and abandon one of their traditional channels.  In this case, JC Penney has opted to exit the traditional catalog business to focus on e-commerce.

Big mistake for several reasons.  First, as all Yeoman customers know, the web is not an 'either or' type of situation.  There are…

Join Yeoman's Mike Healey, IBM's Erin Burke and InformationWeek on Friday 3/28 at 1PM for a free webinar on how to rethink your digital presence from a 'users' point of view.

Improved platforms, standards, bandwidth rates and data models mean more IT shops are taking a “cloud-first” approach to new services, keeping only select jobs in house. Cost and ROI models support this stance. But what’s often left out of the calculus is the impact on the end user. Will they be more productive? Will it be easier for them to do their jobs, process data, and share information? This webinar takes a step back and looks at the impact on the employee base. We identify 7 major gaps that most organizations ignore in pursuit of the bigger vision.

Attend this webinar and:

• Learn how to avoid getting a SaaS project dumped on IT
• Help…

Join Yeoman's Mike Healey at Interop 2014 in Las Vegas on Tuesday April 1st as he hosts an executive workshop on jumpstarting an organizations digital strategy.

You don't have to be Google, Amazon, or a cool startup to instill digital capabilities into your company. Digital Business isn't about changing code; it's about changing what legacy sales, distribution, customer service, and product groups do in the new digital age. We'll bring case studies from a variety of industries and data from InformationWeek's Digital Business Survey.

The workshop takes place at 2:30PM.  You must be registered at the InformationWeek/Interop event to attend.  More information at:…