These charts compare the conversion rate of shoppers who open the TurnTo widget to that of those who don’t on the largest sites in our network.

This will sound like self-promotional hyperbole, and I’m going to say it anyway.  When we started TurnTo a bit over 2 years ago, it was clear that the viability of the business hinged on delivering measurable, positive business results for the ecommerce sites we planned to have as customers.  But, of course, there was no way to know for sure what the numbers would look like without building a product and finding customers to really use it.  So we plunged in, built the product, brought merchant partners on board, gained experience, and put in place the systems to measure if we were really doing any good.  And today, in conjunction with three of our partner merchants, we announced some actual results.  So this is the self-promotional, hyperbolic part: it truly did not occur to me when we set out that we’d be able to deliver numbers this positive.  I thought if we would able to show a conversion effect of 10% or 20% we’d be doing pretty well.  And here’s the data from over the holidays for these three sites:

Conversion rate of shoppers who opened the TurnTo widget vs. the baseline (shoppers who didn’t):

Jomashop.com (IR #209) Watches and luxury goods: 6 X the baseline (i.e. 500% higher)

ChristianCinema.com, Christian-themed DVDs: 8X the baseline

ePartyUnlimited.com, gifts and party supplies: 8X the baseline

To be sure, we know we’ve got a lot more measurement work to do before we fully understand the effect the TurnTo system is having on shopping behavior.  But still, after 2 years, it’s very nice to be able to announce numbers like these.

We’ve just released an announcement welcoming 17 additional partner merchants, travel sites, and non-profits that have recently gone live or will be shortly. These new partners include:

• Intrepid Travel: offering over 650 trips in over 100 countries, specializing in ‘off the beaten track’ adventures, organizing trips for 20 years, with over 70,000 travelers joining them each year.
• Jomashop: No. 209 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, has been in the wholesale and retail trade of upscale luxury brand name goods such as watches, fine writing instruments, handbags and luxury crystal since it was founded in New York in 1987.
• Stylin’ Trucks, a (sister) company of JC Whitney: a 20-year leader in providing performance products for sport, off-road and pick-up trucks, as well as SUVs. Parent auto parts retailer J.C. Whitney & Co. is No. 115 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.
• EyeBuyDirect: A leading online eyewear seller and an Internet Retailer Hot 100, EyeBuyDirect is a global prescription lab and optical retailer specializing in the volume production of affordable prescription eyeglasses.
• Overstock Art: the Internet leader in hand painted oil painting reproductions at clearance prices.
• BeyondtheRack: a private shopping club for men and women who want designer brands at prices up to 70% off retail.
• The Watchery: No. 278 in the Internet Top 500 offers brand name watches at substantial discounts to the manufacturer’s suggested retail price.
• F+W Media: offers community, content, and connectivity to focused markets of highly passionate enthusiast communities.
• Country Pet: a producer of all-natural pet food and treats, running on a NetSuite platform.
• The Mountain Fund: dedicated to achieving the Millennium Development Goals at the grassroots level, The Mountain Fund and its global network of partners span every corner of the globe eliminating poverty in mountain regions.
• CoffeeCakes.com: with an ever-expanding product line includes coffeecakes, whiskey cakes, rum cakes and travel mugs, CoffeeCakes.com distinguishes itself from other Internet retailers because of its obsession with providing superior customer service.
• Accessory Geeks: delivers high quality cell phone & iPod accessories while providing information with geeky expertise.
• Jamestown Distributors: an industry leader in marine and building supplies for over 30 years.
• Bloomex.ca: a national Canadian Floral company.
• Christian Cinema: a motion picture production and distribution company founded in 1999, born out of a desire to connect independent Christian filmmakers with consumers.
• Black Helmet Apparel: founded by a fireman for firefighters, Black Helmet Apparel designs are hand drawn, and unique.
• Wireless Emporium: provides consumers and on-the-go professionals a one-stop shop for cellular phone and wireless device accessories as the leader in wireless accessories.

We’re looking forward to the Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTEN) this Sunday - Tuesday in San Francisco.  If you’re there, please come by and see us in Booth #42.

And on that topic: here’s a link to a press release Earthwatch just put out on their expanding use of TurnTo to increase volunteer recruitment though their website.  We’re thrilled, since Earthwatch provided the inspiration that led to TurnTo.

We’re very happy to kick-off the new year by welcoming 5 additional sites to the TurnTo network, bringing the total to 14.

• Go Away Travel is a leading vacation planning agency
• Kenmar Watches and WatchWear are sister sites that sell an incredibly broad range of timepieces
• Mac-Access sells a diverse array of accessories for Apple products
• Paganum is an online farmers market supplying meat and produce from family farms in the Yorkshire Dales, UK

Check them out!

Four new partner sites have gone live with TurnTo in the last couple weeks.  All of these discovered us following our launch announcement in September, showing how quick and easy it is to go from zero to up-and-running with TurnTo.  It’s also exciting to see what a broad range of businesses have embraced the TurnTo approach to driving conversion through trusted references.

Our new partners are:

• Superior Nut Company - Specialty snacks
• Dog IDs - Pet supplies
• Celebrity Seats - Event tickets
• Tabula Tua - Fine tableware

Check them out to see TurnTo in action.  And pick something up from them while you are there!

We’re out at the DEMOfall conference in San Diego.  Our official launch announcement went out yesterday morning, but I thought I’d wait until after our stage presentation this morning to post.  You can watch it here - it’s about 5 minutes long.  We’ve had some nice press coverage already.

We’re also excited to announce that we are live on two more great partner sites.  CompSource is an electronics site and a member of the Internet Retailer 500.  You can find TurnTo at the top of their pages under the search box.  And Teavana is a specialty tea merchant.  They’re using TurnTo on their individual product pages - scroll down a bit to see it.

Our second partner site is now up and running.  Angara is a great online jeweler with an interesting twist: you can buy loose gemstones and create your own jewelry.  Since their approach is a little different, and since buying jewelry online can be an intimidating experience, getting customers to give them a try can be a hurdle.  So they turned to TurnTo to connect first-time shoppers with friends who have shopped there before.

Nice side note: Angara reported that the TurnTo integration took a total of only 12 hours.

With thanks to our core engineering team, Eric Pederson, John Rauchenberger, and Jan Vejsada, it gives me great pleasure to announce that TurnTo is live!

It’s also particularly great that our first partner is the Earthwatch Institute, where special thanks are due to Kathy Santos and John Jorgenson for making it happen.

It was about 10 months ago that I had some time on my hands and offered to design social features for the Earthwatch site.  Earthwatch is a fabulous organization that enables regular folks to assist environmental scientists with their field research.  After 37 years, Earthwatch has brought about 90,000 people on many hundreds of different research expeditions.  And I cooked up a variety of site features to connect these people with each other.  What proved harder was figuring out how to activate this group to promote Earthwatch to those who were thinking about an expedition but were not yet part of the community - and do this not on other sites, but on Earthwatch’s own site.

I was struck by how often, when I mentioned Earthwatch to people, they’d say, “I’ve been thinking about going on one of their expeditions for ages.  What’s it like?”  Turns out, lots of my friends - people I’d known for a long time - were interested in Earthwatch and just didn’t know that I was a potential source of information until I brought it up.  That’s when the first light bulb went off: what Earthwatch needed was a way to tell prospective volunteers who among their friends are past volunteers.  Then they’d naturally reach out and ask all those nagging questions. (Was the work hard?  Were the crocodiles dangerous?  Did you get to shower?…)  If we could make that connection happen at just the right moment - when the prospect was considering an expedition - we could have a big, positive impact on conversion rates.

The second light bulb followed soon after: Earthwatch isn’t the only organization that can use this - it’s every organization where word-of-mouth plays a role in sales (i.e. just about every one!).  And, in fact, if it’s structured as a unified network, the more organizations that use it, the more valuable it becomes for each of them.  Therefore it made much more sense to approach this as an ASP offering that Earthwatch and others could all subscribe to than to build a one-off, silo’d application just for Earthwatch.

So, since they provided the initial spark that led to TurnTo, it’s particularly satisfying and appropriate that Earthwatch should be our first live partner.  Thanks to Earthwatch, and Happy Birthday TurnTo!