Christian Otto Grötsch | Handelskraft - The E-Commerce and Online Marketing Blog

About Christian Otto Grötsch

Christian lebt E-Commerce wie kein anderer. Als einer der Gründer, langjähriger Geschäftsführer und jetzt Vorsitzender des Verwaltungsrats der Digitalagentur dotSource setzt er seit 2006 gemeinsam mit seinem Team visionäre Digitalprojekte um. Dank seiner jahrelangen Erfahrung hat er ein besonders Gespür dafür, welche digitalen Trends kommen, um zu bleiben. Um diese zu teilen, hat er 2007 den Handelskraft Blog ins Leben gerufen, der bis heute auf seine Expertise baut.

Why the pressure to innovate is rising in e-commerce

5. March 2015 | by Christian Otto Grötsch

Some trend topics and innovative services, like drone delivery, currently sound more like a PR gag than like real possibilities. Whether or not such innovations will establish themselves often hangs in the balance. There just aren’t any laws for such scenarios to follow.
But if the past few years have shown one thing, then it is the enormous speed with which hype can turn into expectation. At the very latest, everyone starts panicking when the competition has successfully implemented a new technology. The spiral of expectations goes on and on. On top of this come new technologies and innovative, agile startups threatening to overtake traders.

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E-Commerce

Every few years: the e-commerce hype is over

3. March 201521. January 2022 | by Christian Otto Grötsch

It’s that time of the year again: “online trade is over,” according to the summary by Grundersyene.de, based on a study from VC Capnamic Ventures. The venture capitalists analysed the financing requests from 2014 and came to the conclusion that the number of e-commerce start-ups has significantly decreased. Why? Clearly every niche is already full and there isn’t any space for new companies. So this time it is the investors who are holding the eulogy.

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3 alternatives to creating a customer account

2. March 201521. January 2022 | by Christian Otto Grötsch

Grafik:Tim Reckmann — Graphic:Tim Reckmann

Conversion rates show how many visitors to an online shop actually become purchasers and is influenced by numerous factors. The wrong colour, a non-functional internal search, or poor customer support can send conversion rates into the cellar. But even when wares are already sitting in the shopping cart, the customer journey is by no means over. Apart from payment providers and the length of the checkout, compulsory registration is also a reason for potential customers to break-off their purchase, despite a full shopping cart. So what alternatives are there to the customer account?

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dotSource case study: a clearer view with 4Care thanks to responsive design and migration to Intershop 7

25. February 2015 | by Christian Otto Grötsch

Selling glasses online is a complex business, and there is now serious competition among classic traders and pure players, even in this initially controversial business model. Occasion enough for 4Care, one of Europe’s leading omni-channel providers of contact lenses, care products, and classes, to do a general overhaul of their fleet.

The migration to Intershop 7.3, the implementation of a responsive design, as well as a design merger of Lensbest and their partner sites, were important project goals. 4Care found a strong partner in us for this project.

The optimisation of the product data structure and the connected import and staging processes, as well as creating a new system landscape for the operation of the platform was also part of the project. This was no exercise for beginners, but we managed to master this complex project with success:

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Content, commerce and community: how publishers get points in e-commerce

24. February 2015 | by Christian Otto Grötsch

Content in e-commerce is the all-time favourite in last year’s topics. Little wonder, after all, Google requires high quality, detailed content and there are rumours that this excites customers as well. Brands and manufacturers go to great lengths to create and maintain corresponding content. Our customers Gartenhelden.de, for instance, entrusted the delivery of regular videos and blog posts with garden tips and tricks for their fans to experts. At Polyvore, the majority of stems from the community: this is another way to implement content marketing. The fashion start-up shows how it can work in this presentation.

But actually there should be others who shine in the battle for the best content – the publishers. After all, they’re already sitting on an existing treasure trove of content, and know how to wrote, whilst traders have to learn this or pay for it.

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So how do you become the CEO of an e-commerce agency Christian Grötsch?

20. February 2015 | by Christian Otto Grötsch

The shortage of skilled workers in IT is not a new complaint. Even digital natives answer questions about their desired profession with classics like teacher or lawyer. In order for this to change and to create an awareness for new, digital professions, we at dotSource are putting our knowledge to use: for instance through the foundation of an e-commerce degree at the technical university in Jena. Since this week, our CEO Christian Otto Grötsch has been a testimonial for an IT career information flyer at the federal employment agency, Bundesagentur für Arbeit.

So if you want to know what career path brought Christian to the point of founding our agency almost ten years ago, you can now inform yourself officially. Naturally you can pass it on to school and university students who have a career with a future in their sights.

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Net Find of the Week

The end of Google Helpouts: service doesn’t run itself

19. February 2015 | by Christian Otto Grötsch

Google Helpouts will be closed down by the 20th of April. On the platform, users were able to help each other via ‘hangout’ with the option of charging for it. The shut-down of the service, which has been in existence for 17 months, hardly comes as a surprise, considering that a search for its promotion or an obvious crowd puller was in vain.

Strategically, it was also unclear what gap it was supposed to fill. E-Learning? Support? Service channel? Everything was possible. But maybe exactly that was the problem. There were just a few exciting examples from Google themselves. For instance, they were able to motivate well watched YouTube giants to offer Helpouts.

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E-Commerce

E-Commerce in Games: The Slightly Different Shop

18. February 201521. January 2022 | by Christian Otto Grötsch

Companies, like InnoGames and GoodGames are well-known for their entertaining online games, which are intended for the casual gamer. But the game manufacturers have far more to do with the e-commerce branch than it seems at first glance. Even a shop which only sells virtual products for a game needs to be optimised.
In contrast to games which you buy in one payment, Free2Play games rely on the continual willingness of the player to pay. GoodGames for example, shows how such a business strategy works. Other game developers also use ingame monetisation, especially with mobile apps. But how does this branch, which pulled 29.3 million German gamers to their monitors in 2014, work?

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E-Commerce

Book Trade War – Price fixing, TTIP and Amazon

17. February 201521. January 2022 | by Christian Otto Grötsch

At the beginning of January the German publishers and booksellers association published statistics which see stationary book trade as remaining a successful distribution channel. Turnover may have sunk by 1.2 percent in stationary trade in comparison to the year before, but shoulders were still being patted, digitalisation has worked and the people are even still coming to the shops. The fact that Thalia gave up a total of 9000 square metres of shop space in the end and Weltbild registered for bankruptcy doesn’t bother anyone any more.

Crisis survived, now off into a rosy future…no? While stationary book shops have had a turnover slump of 1.2 percent, the annual results for all sales channels – stationary book trade, train station book trade, e-commerce and warehouse/department stores – fell by 2.1 percent in total. The reason: a strong year 2012 and the late Easter. No one is daring a prognosis for the next years yet. So what does the future hold for book trade?

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E-Commerce