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3.14.2011
ecommerce, Serious Stuff

Ecommerce Lessons: From Neuropsychology to Laptop Accessory Sales

Published by Jessica Cox under ecommerce, Serious Stuff

Practical ecommerce interviewed Kathy Seigler, CEO and president of Ecommerce Superstores.

This Bowling Green, Ky.-based online retail brand has six niche online shops: CoolComputerBags.com — which was launched in 2007 — and five other specialty retail shops all launched in 2010.

They are: BackpacksSuperstore.com, TheLuggageExperts.com, YummiHandbags.com, DiaperBagsOnly.com, and WeKnowWallets.com.

From Neuropsychology to Ecommerce

Seigler started her retail business on eBay in 2006. With no previous ecommerce experience a background as a neuropsychologist. After about 6 months of selling on eBay, she identified a marketplace niche for laptop bags and launched CoolComputerBags.com in late 2007. In 2010, CoolComputerBags.com recorded gross revenues of roughly $815,000.

“Each of our now six sites specialize in a single product category,” Seigler says. “And all of the sites share the same navigation, functionality and shopping cart. The sites are also color coded, which differentiates each one, but all with the same template. We are still experimenting with our design and testing to see which converts best.”

Biggest Mistakes

“Where to begin? My first mistake was not being educated enough about the ecommerce industry as a whole. I didn’t know what I was getting into, but sometimes that’s the best way to start. Experience is the only way to learn.

“My second biggest mistake was trying to grow too fast too soon. Grow gradually and make sure spending is in line with revenue.

“Which brings me to my third biggest mistake: return on investment. Do not do things because they are ‘industry standard.’ Unless you see a measurable return on your investment, whether it is in marketing or staffing or inventory management — make sure it is paying for itself.

“Another big mistake I made was not having a fool-proof methodology for product upload. This is probably the single most costly error you can make in ecommerce. In the past 4 years I’ve made more mistakes than not. But I keep trying and my persistence will hopefully pay off. If not, I’ll write a bestseller about what to do when starting an online business.”

Biggest Successes

“Our biggest success is having a number one ranking in Google for the most relevant terms related to CoolComputerBags.com. I’m also very proud of being selected as one of the ‘Hot 100 Best Retail Websites’ by Internet Retailer.”

Best Advice

“Watch every single penny and be careful not to get sold on the latest thing that is promised to increase sales, traffic or conversion. Also, surround yourself with excellent people who lift you up every day professionally and personally. Life’s too short not to.”

Orders, Inventory and Shipping

“We work with about 60 different suppliers currently. We stock some inventory as well as work with vendors that drop ship.”

“To manage the entire inventory for so many different stores, we have a nice piece of software that allows the vendors to manage inventory themselves. It is a third party extension specifically developed for Magento. For those vendors who choose not to do that, they email us when items are out of stock and our inventory manager is responsible for updating it.

“We have an RSS feed that tells us when we are running low on stock. We only stock the minimum for products that sell through slowly. It’s a very difficult thing to balance, especially during the holidays.

“Our average [shipping] cost-per-parcel is about $9. Drop ship vendors receive email notifications that also include a packing slip and a shipping label. The software does have the ability to be automated, but we manually review each order ourselves before sending them to the vendors for the sake of accuracy and so we can stay on top of our orders and customer’s needs.”

Caring Customer Service

“On the customer service end of things, we have a fantastic lady, DeAnna Roberts, who takes phone calls and replies to emails. I manage live chat myself and I really enjoy it. I’m proud to say that we do not have very many instances where customers are unhappy. In those times when we have messed up royally, we tell the customer we will do whatever it takes to make them happy — then, we do it.

“I’ve gone so far as to send flowers to a customer who we forgot to refund for about 6 months. We also send $5 Starbucks cards and personal notes to customers when we are at fault.”

PPC Marketing Experiment

“Our marketing strategy varies. We lost a lot of money last year trying pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. We never arrived at a profitable result. We lost about $50,000 in just three months. I would not advise anyone to attempt PPC unless they have about $100,000 to spend ‘testing’ it.”

Aqua Vita PPC Note: Testing is key. When you are starting out, don’t bid for the number one spot. Watch your keyword bids and total expenditures like a hawk.

Cull keywords that do not result in conversions or email sign-ups. If a keyword group gets too competitive and expensive for you to make a profit, drop your bid prices so you aren’t competing with the big fish in that pond.

Think maximum ROI for each click you pay for. Make sure you push email sign-ups to get PPC visitors into your marketing list. That way you get more than one opportunity to market to these expensive visitors.

Facebook and Twitter for Ecommerce

“As far as Facebook and Twitter go, we post our email campaigns, special offers and have contests. We also have the ability for customers to share on every product page.

“But to be honest I still haven’t figured out yet how to leverage Facebook and Twitter to increase sales. We are considering an extension that allows us to sell on Facebook directly called ‘Facebook Shopializable.’ And I’m very keen on having an ‘incentive to Like’ functionality.

“I think the genius of social media is if a business comes up with something revolutionary, like Groupon did. That’s something people really want to talk about and it spreads like wildfire. Otherwise, you are a nameless face in a sea of millions on Facebook”

“The reason I think it’s important, however, is for rankings. It’s no secret that Google has incorporated the Facebook ‘Likes’ into its algorithm, which makes a lot of sense. Word on the street is that ‘Likes’ will eventually replace ‘links.’”

Get the full story and more ecommerce tips at Practical ecommerce.

3.04.2010
Marketing Alchemy

How To Use Social Media Management Tools – 5 Tips

Published by Jessica Cox under Marketing Alchemy

Twitter eating up your time? Facebook filling up your schedule? Losing track of time on LinkedIn? You’re not alone. Time management is one of the top challenges for serious online networkers.

Social media management is worth the effort. Networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace can launch your message to the far corners of the net. You can harness this power for your business.

But managing these social networks doesn’t have to consume your day. Here are five tools to take back your day and streamline your social media circle.

Social Media Management Tool: HootSuite

Schedule a week’s worth of tweets and status updates in under ten minutes? It can be done! HootSuite schedules tweets for later publication on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Ping.fm. This is my personal favorite web application for handling social media.

Plus, with a careful Ping.fm setup, you can achieve social media nirvana, scheduling updates on Plaxo, MySpace, LiveJournal, and more. Truly mind-blowing.

You can keep an eye on your Facebook and LinkedIn social media networks here as well, with separate columns for various Twitter list feeds. Their reputation management settings allow for social media monitoring on your key terms. Clever.

They make it easy to use, too! There’s an iPhone App, and a quick-post button for scheduling updates while you browse.

Bonus 1: HootSuite gives you automatic link shrinkage and tracking!

Bonus 2: The adorable mascot. Look at those big eyes!

Bonus 3: It handles pages and personal accounts separately. Yes!

Social Media Management Tool: TweetDeck

TweetDeck is an application that lives on your computer, organizing the stream-of-consciousness into customized columns. It plays well with Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, and Twitter, and handles custom searches, @replies, and direct messages.

Bonus 1: TweetDeck is also on iPhone.

Bonus 2: It handles multiple accounts with the greatest of ease.

Bonus 3: It’s a multimedia star: drag and drop images into TweetDeck to share on Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace. You can record and share YouTube videos within TweetDeck also.

Bonus 4: Interactive notifications.

Social Media Tip: Import Your Blog to Facebook

This one is a huge time-saver. Facebook has a built-in tool to import posts from an external blog! The posts show up as notes, without you lifting a finger. Facebook will automatically update your notes whenever you write in your blog.

With this setting, you can import posts from Blogger, WordPress, or any other blogging platform with an RSS feed. Choose wisely: you can only import one blog.

Bummer: Imported blog posts cannot be edited.

Social Media Tool: Posterous

From one email, create dozens of blogs and social updates. Send blogs, pictures, and status updates to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and blogs.

This service spins all forms of multimedia into web-friendly formats. Bring them your photos, audio files and links, documents, video files and links. They will even resize photos to web-friendly size.

Bonus 1: Posterous redefines “easy to use”. Attach multimedia file to email. Send to post@posterous.com. Poof! Blog post.

Bonus 2: Posterous also offers a social media bookmarklet, for your browsing convenience.

Social Media Tool: Ping.fm

Post blogs, miniblogs, and status updates to over 40 social networks. From the popular to the obscure, this is one of the most complete network support for social media posting services. Unfortunately, multiple Twitter accounts are a bit tough.

For customized communications, you can create “posting groups” to focus messages. Your “professional” group might hook into LinkedIn, Twitter, Plaxo. On the other hand, the “Personal” group could send information to Blogger, Friendster, and so on.

Bonus 1: Ning support, very impressive.

Bonus 2: iPhone integration. Of course.

Bonus 3: Social bookmarking support.

Social Media Tip: Tools do not replace interaction

Imagine sending a robot to replace you at in-person networking events. Not the best impression to leave with your audience, right? In the same way, overusing social media tools can leave your network cold and disinterested. It can be tempting to take things to the limit with automation. But remember, there’s no substitute for the “personal touch” in networking, online or offline.

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1.05.2010
Naked Writing

Four Unbreakable Social Media Rules

Published by Michelle Pierce under Naked Writing

1. Thou shalt be active.

In social media, you have to establish yourself as part of the community. Don’t just set up an account, make a couple of status updates or send a couple of tweets, and then decide that it’s not working. Social media marketing is not a magic bullet (nothing is). It takes time, and the most popular people online have been doing it for years.

Look at it as an investment. You’re investing in a community that will give you more informal access to your customers, to their hopes and dreams and disappointments. You can find out what they love and what they hate about you. It is easier than EVER to get feedback from people on how you’re doing, so that you can make your company into everything that your ideal customer would want.

Once you’re doing that, you can transform casual customers into hardcore fans. And hardcore fans are the ones who pimp you out to everybody they know.

2. Thou shalt be transparent—but not too transparent.

If you’re balancing work and personal stuff on sites like Twitter and Facebook, go for the 80/20 rule: 80 percent professional, 20 percent personal. That’s just enough to make people feel like they “know” you without giving up a ton of your privacy. And remember: people are more likely to buy from people they know than from people they don’t know.

Also, unless you’re plugging the awesome deli on the corner where you just had lunch, nobody cares about what kind of sandwich you’re eating. Even your personal posts need to have some guidelines.

3. Thou shalt not worry about making somebody angry.

Participating in any kind of back-and-forth with dozens—or hundreds—of anonymous people will eventually result in somebody getting ticked off. People don’t agree on everything. Heck, I can’t even get three people to agree on a radio station in my car. Just accept that sometimes, especially when you’re expressing an opinion, somebody’s going to take offense.

The only way to stop it is to make everything you write so utterly bland and flavorless that nobody would read it long enough to agree with you. And in social media, that’s more often worse than making people angry.

I’m not saying that you need to be deliberately antagonistic when you’re writing a post, or a Twitter update, or a bulletin. Just don’t completely neuter your point of view.

4. Thou shalt not post when angry.

And when somebody does get angry, as we discussed above, remember this rule. Never post when you’re angry. Don’t comment, don’t send an email, don’t interact with anybody. It’s so easy to spout off online when you’re angry, and engaging in a flame war will have very real, detrimental effects to both you and your business if you’re not careful.

Take some time to cool off before you post. Step away from the computer. Take a walk. Get some other work done. Eat some chocolate. Just make sure that you have to have control of yourself before you sit back down at the keyboard.

The thing to remember about the online world is that nobody has the benefit of hearing the tone or seeing the body language behind the words, and everything you do reflects on your company. Everything.

A poor reaction could cost you business. However, if you handle negative posts properly, you’ll earn a lot of esteem and respect in your community for doing so.

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Picture by dullhunk

12.18.2009
Marketing Alchemy

Social Media Showdown: Twitter vs. Facebook vs. Email

Published by Jessica Cox under Marketing Alchemy

E-mail continues to dominate emerging social channels such as Twitter and Facebook. E-mail remains the favorite way to share information with colleagues and friends, according to the latest social media study by ShareThis, a popular social content sharing widget.

Shared content breakdown:

Email: 46%
Facebook: 33%
Twitter: 6%

The remaining 14.4 percent split out between various other platforms like Digg, del.icio.us, and LinkedIn.

Also interesting: how people used the content after it was shared. Twitter came out on top for interaction: their links drew the most click-throughs. Maybe the shiny new retweet button is working its magic.

Click-throughs:

Twitter: 40%
E-mail: 35%
Facebook: 25%

However, the high-speed Twitter visitors ricocheted off the page in short order: Twitter visitors looked at 1.66 pages before exiting. Email on the other hand, delivered much more steady engagement at 2.95 pages.

Engagement:

Email: 2.95 pages
Facebook: 2.76 pages
Twitter: 1.66 pages

Twitter & Email: Speed vs. Depth

Thus far, Twitter is the fastest of the social mediums, much like telegraph or ticker tape messages. Users can access information at the speed of light, and let it go just as quickly.

With speed comes impermanence. This makes Twitter the “quick fix” medium with the least staying power for messages. Once a tweet appears, it can float away in an instant, or get a boost on wave after wave of retweets. Twitter visitors click the links, and click back just as quickly.

It’s interesting to see how the virtual opening of Twitter borders with new technology integration will affect the development of the system and expand this ripple effect.

Takeaway:
While Twitter usage has soared, email is still the top social media sharing mechanism. Integrated campaigns will have deeper, more lasting effects.

At 40 percent, Twitter seems to have the highest “click-it!” factor. The fast pace encourages you to click links before they sail out into the global stream of consciousness. However, the numbers show email still has much more popular acceptance, and email visitors tend to stay longer.

“Of course this varies by vertical and site, but if you think about your own habits, it makes sense. Getting an emailed link from a friend may cause you to pay more attention than the more random discovery that you get on Twitter as you consume quick opinions.” – Tim Schigel (@schigel)

Playing to the strengths of both mediums

Some people also argue that a “closed system” like Twitter or Facebook can never hope to replace or approach an “open system” like email as a universal communication medium. Personally, I don’t think it’s a question of replacing; both mediums have their functions.

Twitter offers a different scope of information and multimedia than email. You have to consider the amount of data you can communicate in 140 characters. Enough to intrigue, not enough to educate or persuade. On the other hand, you can’t beat Twitter for immediate message gratification.

With email, you can get more creative with multimedia and use HTML templates and engagement tracking. You can deliver a more complex message, offer more options for interaction, and create a more complete experience. Email also provides the comforting idea you can save something to read later. It’s very easy to organize and archive information. Facebook falls somewhere in between.

Your thoughts?

It’s a safe bet that the capabilities of both platforms will continue to evolve and entwine. Your thoughts? Where are email, Twitter, and Facebook headed?

10.20.2009
Marketing Alchemy

Social Media Marketing: What’s the Big Deal?

Published by Jessica Cox under Marketing Alchemy

Five years ago, announcing “I’m on Twitter” might mean trying a new anti-depressant. Today, Fortune 500 companies are releasing “tweet” policy guides, while CEOs create v-blogs and podcasts. Strange phrases like “tweets,” “v-blogs,” and “microblogging” began to enter the professional marketing vocabulary.

Social media marketing has evolved from a quirky Internet buzzword to a world-wide phenomenon. Nielsen Online ranks social networks and blogs as the fourth most popular online activity –ahead of personal email! Social media communities are visited by 67% of the global online population. Even the CIA is investing in social media monitoring services, PC World reports.

Are you ahead of the curve, or struggling to catch up?

Ignorance is not an option.

Two-thirds of the global internet population visited social networks in 2009, says Nielsen. This means your clients, your business partners, and your competition. Savvy businesses are scrambling to adapt in this ever-changing playing field.

We’ll be covering the basics so you can survive and learn to thrive in this new Internet ecosystem.

Alright, I’m listening. So what IS social media?

First, let’s establish a solid definition.

In the words of the immortal Brian Eisenberg:

“The biggest problem I have with the term ‘social media’ is that it isn’t media in the traditional sense. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and all the others I don’t have the word count to mention aren’t media; they are platforms for interaction and networking. All the traditional media — print, broadcast, search, and so on — provide platforms for delivery of ads near and around relevant content. Social media are platforms for interaction and relationships, not content and ads.”

This bears repeating: “Social media are platforms for interaction and relationships, not content and ads.”

Social media move and spread through social interaction. It’s all about connection. Sharing. Pictures, videos, audio, and text get blogged, bookmarked, and commented as they’re passed through the digital word-of-mouth chain. Each one becomes a potential conversation-starter.

Along the way, these media types pick up some fancy new names:
Audio = Podcast = online radio show
Video = V-blog = online TV show
Text = Blog = online magazine

Social media platforms use highly accessible, scalable publishing techniques. Social media accommodate casual and obsessive use. Laid-back users might tweet once per day, check in on their major social networks, bookmark a few websites, post pictures from events once a month, throw a podcast or v-blog covering an insider technique in the mix, and blog on their latest projects.

On the flip side of the scale, hardcore social media users get twitchy if they can’t update from mobile devices every few hours. People look for their recommendations on the hottest sites, and tag them in pictures to prove they met them in person. Huge social media fan bases watch their every move, and their retweet chains can spiral to the outer reaches of the universe.

Social media transform monologues into dialogues. How well did you do in math? Remember multiplication? Social media replace the “one to many” model of advertising and traditional media broadcasting. Now the dynamic is “many to many” as social media users tag, share, comment, and put their own personal spin on the message. Social media offer the ultimate in audience participation.

Social media are going mobile. Web is no longer limited to a cord-bound desktop. Laptops have released nomadic Internet junkies into coffee shops and Wi-Fi hotspots in every major metropolis. Now mobile phones have condensed the power of the net to the palm of your hand.

These techs show no sign of slowing down. On the contrary, they’re growing by leaps and bounds. Nielsen Online reports time spent on social media sites is growing at three times the overall Internet rate.

The revolution is underway. It’s time to find your place in this brave new world.

Round Two of the Social Media Survival Guide answers the question: “Who do social media work for?” Tune in next week!

Have a burning question you’d like answered?
I’d love to hear from you. @JessicaFCox.

Fifty-Second Field Guide: tweet

A small but powerful creature, a tweet seeks to answer the question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less. A species of microblog, tweets are published at Twitter.com. Like their larger cousins blogs, old and new tweets gather in flocks called “RSS feeds,” hosted on the Twitter profile.

Tweets are highly accessible. They can be viewed on Twitter.com, social apps, and websites, including the great Google and Yahoo. Widely recognized and easily searched, tweets can be seen by your mother, your clients, and everyone you have ever known. Specific categories of tweets identify themselves via “hash tags,” such as “#marketing,” “#tech,” or “#green.”

Individual tweets frequently replicate and spread through the Twitter ecosystem via a process known as “retweeting.” Some tweets even migrate into Facebook and MySpace as “status updates.” While individual tweets can be deleted, they cannot be totally eliminated from the Internet landscape. Handle with care.

*update* Tech Crunch reports deleted tweets will be removed from Twitter search results! However, it still pays to be on the safe side. A re-tweet by one of your followers can put a hasty comment beyond the reach of your delete button.

Picture by Damien Basile