By Christa Angel, Web Reporter – Forum Publishing Group

The Mido show held in Milan, Italy is the premier show for the eyewear industry. This year’s event featured at the new Rho-Pero Convention Center was both exciting and inventive as the newest fashions were displayed. Anfao in conjunction with the Foreign Trade Institute organized the first in-flight eyewear fashion show held on a chartered Eurofly jet from JFK Airport in New York. Flying over the Atlantic Ocean, over 30 journalists were treated to a lively fashion show hosted by Kristen Grove, model and MTV VJ. What better way to view next year’s collections? Colorful and trendy frames as well as funky styles were modeled, including many vintage and collectible frames.

E-retailers must focus on cultivating existing customers because they can’t count on acquiring too many new customers going forward. It’s a well-known axiom that it costs less to engage existing customers than to acquire new ones. It’s been said that the cost of acquiring new customers is three to six times that of retaining current ones. Current ecommerce research confirms this.

Estimates say U.S. retail ecommerce will reach $131 billion in 2007 (excluding travel). But retailers won’t be increasing sales by attracting new customers. Instead, online retail strategies should include:

• Cultivating existing customers
• Developing customer loyalty
• Taking customers away from your competitors
• Motivating your customers to spend more

When WalMart gets behind online commerce in a big way, you know that retail is entering a new era. This topic is covered in a new eMarketer report, “US Retail E-Commerce: Entering the Multi-Channel Era” ($695).

Industry research shows that many businesses don’t take advantage of a Thank You page upon confirming a customer action. This would be the ideal opportunity to provide more information that might lead to a future sale, besides simply saying thank you.

Your offers would depend on your web site goals and business model. For instance, wholesalers could take customers to a Thank You page after receiving a Contact Us request, presenting a relevant white paper download on dropshipping. You could display a recent press release if it’s worthy of note. You might present client testimonials, a published article, or anything that would help customers get an idea what your company is all about.

Do you want to see a lift in your PPC campaigns? If so, optimize your site for SEO.

ICrossing did a study using a random sample of 200 keywords, which included branded and non-branded terms in both organic and paid search campaigns. To quote from iCrossing: “These 200 keywords are representative of 2,000 unique keywords, engines and medium (natural, paid, or both) data point combinations used in paid search as well as ranked in the first three pages of natural search results on the major U.S. engines (Google, Yahoo!, Ask, MSN, and AOL).”

Here’s what they found:

“Online performance is dramatically improved if keywords purchased for a paid search campaign are also ranked in natural search.”

Here’s what happened when they incorporated organic search into an existing paid search campaign and compared its performance to the performance of the paid search campaign alone:

Did you know that Congress levies different tariffs on men and women’s clothing, sometimes for the same item? Clothing manufacturers have been accepting this for years. However, several manufacturers have decided to sue.

Uncle Sam slaps a 28 percent tax on men’s bathing suits but only 12 percent on women’s. When it comes to overalls, this is reversed, with the women’s wear taxed higher (14 percent tax on women’s overalls versus 9 percent on men’s).

There’s no rhyme or reason to the difference in tariffs on imports, which penalize men in some cases and women in others. Duty added to the clothing, shoes and swimwear entering our ports has been rubber stamped year after year by Congress, and the cost is passed on to consumers.

Google’s Web History feature makes it easy for Google Account users to view and search across the pages they visit. I like it because when I remember something I saw on the web and want to find it again, I can do it quickly through Web History. I’ve given up on using Favorites on IE because you can’t alphabetize and it’s just a long laundry list.

To use Web History, you need a Google Account and the Google Toolbar with PageRank enabled. The Toolbar allows Google to store the pages you visit. You can sign up for it here: http://www.google.com/history.

Although voluntary, Web History raises alarms over the possibility of Google merging its vast database of user information with that of DoubleClick and then using it nefariously. The Electronic Privacy Information Center and other groups immediately filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over Google’s privacy practices, asking them to investigate the DoubleClick acquisition prior to approval.

comScore reports that global Internet users totaled 747 million adults in January 2007, representing a 10 percent increase over January 2006. Non-U.S. users accounted for 80 percent of the global online population.

It could be profitable for wholesalers and retailers to market internationally if the right dropshippers are available. Of course it depends on the nature of the product and how well it would fit in with various foreign cultures.

If interested, you must translate your web site into regional languages, and this is best done at the local level. But translation isn’t everything. For more information on how to be successful with an international web site, see “It’s in the Details: Seven Secrets of a Successful International Website” at Digital Web magazine.

The National Retail Federation says moms will get the royal treatment this year. Its survey shows consumers will spend $15.73 billion on Mother’s Day this year, an average of $139.14 compared to last year’s $122.16.

A whopping 84.5 percent of consumers plan to celebrate Mom’s Day, and they’ll spend their money thusly:

• $1.6 billion on clothes and accessories (37.0%)
• $2.1 billion on jewelry (32.8%)
• $2.3 billion on flowers (72.4%)
• $3.1 billion on a special dinner or brunch at their favorite restaurant (61.0%)
• $1.3 billion on a trip to the spa or beauty salon (19.7%)

Other popular gifts include:

• Greeting cards (86.8%)
• Gift certificates (39.3%)
• Books or CDs (29.3%)
• Housewares or gardening tools (18.5%)
• Consumer electronics or computer related accessories (11.3%)

Here’s where consumers will shop:

• 37.5% will purchase at a specialty store like florists, jewelers or electronics stores