5 Best Ecom Stores
Next installment of our 35 Holiday Ecommerce Secrets in 7 days ( http://www.curagami.com/holiday-ecommerce-tips-magazine/?v=7516fd43adaa  ) is sharing 5 "Best" Ecommerce Stores including:

* REI.com = Movement Marketing
* MomA's Store = Email Marketing
* WaNeLo = Mashup and Mobile
* Massdrop = Social Shopping
* Casetify = DIY Marketing

We didn't select these five sites because they are BEST in the normal things e-commerce sites must do (nav, pictures, products, shopping carts). We selected these five to demonstrate 5 important trends. Think of each of those trends as a tectonic plate moving even as we write this and you will know why we seledcted these great online stores. 

Learn more about thse tectonic e-com trends on Curagami: 
 

http://www.curagami.com/holiday-ecommerce-tips-magazine/?v=7516fd43adaa

Rise of Social Shopping
Blink an eye and big stuff happens. With valuations in the billions for sites such as +OpenSky and in the hundreds of millions for relative newcomer WaNeLo.com Don't get lost in the trap such valuations create.

Remember Arthur C. Clarke's quote:
Any sufficiently NEW technology is indistinguishable from MAGIC.

There are several forms of new ecommerce magic happening now including:

+Wanelo = gamified, social & mobile shopping.
MassDrop = social affiliate program.
+OpenSky = Social Shopping with a #crowdfunding or +quirkydotcom  feel.
+fab.com = social shopping.
+Etsy = +eBay for crafters.
+Woot = Daily Deal

We added a new section to our Ecommerce Questions Haiku Deck to reflect the rise of social shopping. We also noted how and why Amazon should be worried. New "social shopping" plays are hitting Amazon right where they are vulnerable - community, social and mobile.

Amazon is  "Search and Stab" and they are about to compete with savvy mobile game creators. Shopping as a social game will beat low prices created by scale. Didn't Amazon just prove that point by vanquishing Walmart from the king's ecommerce throne?

Amazon understands the ARBITRAGE of online commerce better than anyone, but what if arbitrage wasn't the driving force anymore? Going to be an interesting fight between SCALE and its many benefits and a new generation of "kids" who don't know any better than to question everything, assume nothing and have FUN.

Fun is contagious. Will follow with video notes soon.

WaNeLo.com
WaNeLo.com understands something you don't. They understand there is NO WAY to compete head-to-head with Amazon. Better to shift to a "blue ocean" by creating a highly social, mobile and gamified environment.

As a "mashup artist" WaNeLo.com can create pages that cost pennies, pages that may generate dollars. Are there bumps with this "new age" affiliate marketing? Of course, but, as the pagespread chart illustrates, you don't beat the giant YOU CO-OPT him :).

Never been more important to know your website's long tail than in ou social / mobile / connected time as Amazon proves and WaNeLo illustrates.

Ecommerce Is A Mobile & Social Game
The more I do this, web marketing, the more game-like everything feels. Mobile and social are acting like huge pythons squeezing content into a game. Content shock is the other trend impacting your content marketing.

In 2003 your content could be factual and visually boring and it would work. Not so much anymore. Today you must think of your content like pieces on a chess board. How can you achieve your goals by developing relationships between your content, your customers and advocates?

Mobile and social make ecommerce a game too as WaNeLo.com demonstrates. WaNeLo.com is a "clean slate" built to mashup massive amounts of content that already exists, make creating "YOUR WaNeLo.com Store" fun (you swipe through content) and collect a nice fee for being the first retailer to get the many changes to online commerce brought to you by a smart phone near you (and most of the time people are within 10' of their smart phones at all times).

We began the conversation about how to make an online store a game a few weeks ago on G+ (https://plus.google.com/+MartinWSmith/posts/RdjAjWoJTHw ).

This @HaikuDeck shares how to make content more game-like. Here are a few easy ways merchants can begin to create gamification:

* Create an Ambassadors Program to identify your 1% Contributors and 9% Supporters.
* Provide a public profile for Ambassadors (if they choose) with a good URL (cool.com/ambassadors/marty for example).
* Curate great Ambassador content first to OTHER Ambassadors and next, and this should be a smaller set, to the public via your site.

* Begin to track key Ambassador functionality such as social shares, links and likes.
* Create feedback loops for Ambassador actions (200 Likes, 100 links and 3,000 social shares to date or yesterday or last week).

* Steal LinkedIn's famous, "Your profile is 80% complete" Call-To-Action (CTA).

Might seem strange to talk about adding gamification to ecommerce NOW when the holiday tsunami is only days away, but most ecommerce teams have their plans made up. While social media means any plan must respond to what is happening now, most ecommerce teams are working a quarter ahead.

Successful gamification isn't easy, but rewards are huge. Instead of invading Russia in the winter we suggest merchants begin building foundation by creating an Ambassador Program. Ambassadors, those fans, friends and supporters willing to help, become critical when you want to turn gamfication ON (and you will).