With just a few dozen booths, eTail 2008 is much smaller than many of the trade shows and conferences I've attended in the past, but my feet are just as sore. It's not my shoes -- really. It's the long, long walks from the ballrooms to my far-flung hotel room.
I spotted a Segway on the hotel property, and it was tempting.
Still, I'm more than willing to make the trek from one eTail booth to another, in part to find out what's behind some of the unfamiliar company names drawing my attention: Jellyfish, Pluck and Venda, for example.
Money for Nothing
As I approach the Jellyfish booth, I'm doing my best to picture gummy fish, jelly shoes -- something mildly positive. Instead, what comes to mind are those slimy invertebrates that keep me out of the ocean.
Fortunately, the Jellyfish company isn't icky at all. The nearly two-year-old firm is a comparison-shopping
engine that -- believe it or not -- shares its marketing 
revenue
with consumers. Through its cost-per-action model, Jellyfish offers cash
back to site visitors after they purchase an item, Joe Schaefer, the company's merchant account manager, tells me.
"When you actually buy something from a store in our engine," the company says, "we share at least half of what we earn by connecting you to that store. All you need to do is sign up for an account to earn cash back."
Sounds great to me. This is pure transparency -- like that of a glowing jellyfish, Schaefer says. Hence the name.
Got Pluck?
Next, there's Pluck, a four-year-old social media services firm. The
company originally started out in aggregation, plucking content from all over the Web. (Get it?)
However, due to the "overwhelming demand" to license its technology, says Director of Product Marketing Adam Weinroth, Pluck has evolved into a social media software company that provides community-building tools for sites to enable visitor reactions, videos, photos, blogs, forums and personas (user activity logs and social net profiles).
The name "Pluck," Weinroth says, is now more closely connected to the noun "pluck," meaning "a sense of spirit and energy."
The Language of Sales
The name "Venda" is a play on the Spanish verb "vender," which means "to sell." Coincidentally, Venda staffers manning their booth tell me, it's also the name of a South African village with its own language.
The seven-year-old e-commerce solutions provider
designs and builds business-to-consumer and business-to-business Web sites.
Bowing to the Customer
Clever names aside, "customer" is the word heard most often in
every corner of eTail 2008. The conference features several sessions offering advice on hanging onto them, including one I attended, "Giving Consumers a Voice on Your Site and Creating Relationships That Drive Long-Term Loyalty and Retention," presented by Sean McDonald, director of global online for Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) 
.
Although he lost points with me when he made everyone in the audience stand up and turn off their phones (saying the speaker interference and distraction "damages my ego"), he earned major points with his insightful talk.
McDonald advised e-tailers to follow a more Web 2.0-friendly path, heavily encouraging customer feedback on their sites. A great e-commerce operation should be trustworthy, transparent, engaging, integrated, relevant, timely
and human, McDonald said, citing Dell's Web 2.0 initiatives, including the customer forum IdeaStorm, as one successful example.
He also showed a video created by Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions, "The Break Up," that spoofs the advertiser-consumer relationship. It's pretty hilarious.
More Than Shoes
D.J. Van Hameren, general manager of global NIKEiD for Nike (NYSE: NKE) , injected his presentation with a double dose of energy early
Wednesday morning. First, he showed a pulse-pounding brand-focused video that featured professional athletes performing. Then, he asked the packed
crowd, "Anybody want to get up and go for a run -- or feel guilty that
they didn't?"
I'd been hoofing it plenty, so I didn't feel terribly guilty, but I sure wanted to hear more about Nike after watching the clip.
Van Hameren touted the success of NIKEiD, which offers consumers the opportunity to create one-of-a-kind athletic shoes (sneakers, running shoes, kicks) along with other items. Customers can create shoe designs online -- either entirely on their own or with the help of Nike design consultants who, get this, make house calls. If they're willing to leave home, budding designers can also get help at NIKEiD Studio brick-and-mortar shops and other Nike design studios.
"The consumer is in charge," Van Hameren told the audience.
Other Van Hameren pearls of wisdom: "try, listen and learn" (on dealing with customers), and "you can also drown in data" (on the value of analytics).
Badge of Humor
Speaking of analytics, during a session titled "Getting Your Analytics Into Action to Provide Real-Time Solutions and Creating Internal Processes for Data-Driven Decisions," I happened to glance at the badge of the woman sitting beside me. Under her name and title -- Heather Conlan, Internet analytics and usability manager for Bass Pro Shops -- hung a tag, which I expected would label her as a "Speaker" or "Sponsor."
Instead, it read "More Cowbell."
The gimmick tag came from eTail vendor Bazaarvoice. I strolled over to the booth, and Bazaarvoice's sales director, Ryan Cush, explained the nod to the famous "Saturday Night Live" sketch is the company's effort at "flair." It borrowed the idea from the cult film favorite "Office Space," based on the 15 buttons Jennifer Aniston's bitter waitress character is forced to wear on her uniform "for fun."
Among Bazaarvoice's other tags: "I'm Kind of a Big Deal" and "Keep Walking."
I'm all for spicing up show floors -- and because I think I could use just a little more exercise, I think I'll go play a game at one of the several booths featuring the Wii .
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