Stealing From Video Game Developers

Video games can teach e-commerce merchants many lessons. Video game developers can teach even more valuable lessons. This Curagami post shares five tips online merchants should steal today including:

• Create Great Products
• Develop Community and then Listen, Learn, and Change
• Give customers chances to collaborate
• Forge badges, banners, and other rewards
• Define how rewards are earned but don’t forget serendipity and surprise

With such great marketing is there any wonder why Blizzard Entertainment has more than thirty million Overwatch players? Doomfist is a new brilliantly named Overwatch character and gamers are talking about little else this summer. Doomfist is more important than Game of Thrones to gamers. 

Stealing the community, gamification, and engagement tips from video game developers will help any online merchant move from "website" to "platform" and from "us" and "them" to we: http://www.curagami.com/e-commerce-lessons-doomfist/ 

Dumping WooCommerce
The DIY don't need to know code to build a great and scaleable online store may be mostly myth. Like all bell curves there may be one or two highly profitable Shopify, Volusion or Big Commerce sites but those few "rich getting richer" sites stand on the shoulders of many little guys just scaping by.

If that sound like a rigged game we agree. We shared all the reasons we dumped WooCommerce including our own idiocy in this mythbusting Curagami post:

 

http://www.curagami.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/curagami-logowide.png

New E-commerce
New E-Commerce and a Video Game Steal says e-commerce merchants should steal customization, collaboration and community from video game developers and explains how. 

Who are the best Magento Developers in America is the wrong question, better to ask who are the best Magento developers for our online store and brand.

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

Ecommerce Tips Magazine
How did we make over $35M in online ecommerce? Sure we tell you then you tell five people and before you know it everyone knows our secrets (cool with us). That's why we will be sharing our favorite ecommerce tips every day next week at
http://www.curagami.com  

Be there or don't make as much money this holiday selling season as you could.  

5 Super Secret Marketing Trends: nowists, share keys to your digital kingdoms, appify and gamify your content and developing blue oceans to win in 2016.

Crossing Ecommerce Rubicon
We are making progress on adding Woocommerce to Curagami. The goal is to cross the content / commerce rubicon. The gulf between effective content and commerce is large. The promise of Woocommerce, an ecommerce shopping cart and database appended to Wordpress, is elimination of the artificial and rapidly useless separation between content and commerce. 

The Social / Mobile / Connected times we inhibit require a new approach to online commerce. We plan to relaunch Curagami.com next week.  Stay tuned, join us for coffee (subscribe http://www.curagami.com/signup/?v=7516fd43adaa ) and we will journey across the rubicon together :). Marty & team Curagami

 

5 TIps To Cross Ecom's Rubicon
Smart merchants are beginning to cross the ecommerce rubicon between content and commerce. Discover 5 Tips to cross your online store's ecommerce rubicon.

5 TIps

* “Magazine” your content
* Curate from brands
* Curate from customers
* Lean & Visual Win
* Tie In Email, Social & Mobile

Going to incorporate @Guillaume Decugis and Scoop.it's ideas on Lean Content on this not very lean post too. I set aside some content to keep the post pinging with fresh content.

Evergreen means our team will refresh the content (or ask for help from our Ambassadors to do so) regularly. Not all content is equal. Places in our "evergreen" regularly scheduled updates category must be earned (lol).

So help 5 Tips to Cross the Ecom Rubicon earn evergreen status, or better yet contribute your thoughts and we will curate in.

Crossing the Rubicon between content and commerce is the BIG ISSUE in online retailing today. Discover our tips to cross and add yorus.  

Ecommerc's future is going to be a symphony of feeds. Use SellWare.com to help manage the sell anytime, anywhere future that is coming fast.

Ecommerce For Everyone
There are some web marketing lessons learned best by creating an online store such as:

• Words Matter as they lead (or don’t) to conversion.
• Design Matter as it leads (or doesn’t) to conversion.
• Money Is The Best Metric.
• Money Helps Create The Best Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
• Money helps create a testing culture.

 
Creating a store is so easy, we developed Curagmai's Bookstore with Amazon's Associates tool in about half a day, everyone should have an ecommerce store these days.  

As Rodney said in Back To School - Shakespeare for Everyone!

Read our Ecommerce For Everyone post: 
http://www.curagami.com/magical-thinking/news/shakespeare-for-everyone-ecommerce-lessons/

& Visit the new Curagmai Bookstore
http://www.Curagami.com/books.html 

Do you have an affiliate store you want to share? Email martin(at)Curagmai.com and we will create a gallery of cool stores for personal brands, companies and B2B marketing teams. 
 

Vote For Your Favorite Sites
Everyone has a favorite online store AND most want online retailing to improve. Curagami is in the "improve ecommerce" business, but we can't create change alone. We need your help. 

Please take a few minutes and tell us what online stores you love and why. Oh, and bet we missed some cool, great and wonderful stores so let us know who we missed and we will add your faves into our survey.

Together we can improve online commerce :). Thanks, Marty & Team Curagami 

http://www.curagami.com/magical-thinking/news/favorite-online-stores-survey/  

Disrupt Or Die
Sorry you are too late. You won't be able to win the tactical warfare my team and I did. Your ability to create meaningful differentiation with tactics is over. So BURN YOUR WEBSITE DOWN. 

Not literally, but we need to SHOCK Small to Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs) into an important realization - it's BLUE OCEANS or ELSE. Why bother putting up a 4 page site no one will care about, share, link, like love or think about ever again after they've visited once.

Instead of wasting your TIMEM and TREASURE why not BLOW UP what you think you should be doing, discover blue oceans and create lasting competitive advantage. Costs are the SAME, but one has the shelf life of a May Fly why the other may just provide the ROI needed to do the next cool thing.

You know were we would VOTE and if you are going to miss Exinent's Ecommerce Meetup in the Triangle of North Carolina tonight you can play catch up with our Haiku Deck.

http://www.curagami.com/magical-thinking/marketing/the-new-ecommerce-meetup/ ;

Magento is a great system for building e-commerce websites; it’s not bad for marketing them either. Out of the box there are no truly bad default settings for SEO and it offers handy functions to m…

Ecommerce is changing fast. This Scenttrail Marketing post shares and explains 30 "must master" to win ecommerce strategies and tatics.

Want to provide some great unboxing experience for your customers, but don't know where to start? Learn the basics on transforming a package into a gift.

30 Ecom Strategies & Tactics To Master
No wonder most ecommerce teams feel overwhelmed. Off the top of our heads we came up with 30 complex "mini-systems" that must be mastered to create greatness in online commerce.

Gone are the days when a little of this and that could win the day in online retail. Today all 30 of these tactics and strategies dance together requiring sophisticated understanding of individual trends, tools and ideas to win.

Things change too fast to really KNOW anything. Instead teams must surf waves, learn and fail fast and then wax up their boards for another wild ride.

Did we miss any BIG IDEAS your ecommerce team is managing. Soon we will support this infographic with a http://www.Curagami.com post to further explain each strategy and tactic. In the meantime let us know what we missed in comments or email martin(at)Curagami.com.

Thanks and remember DEEP SLOW BREATHES and if you aren't having FUN your visitors will know. They will feel it.

Ecommerce Strategy vs. Tactics
Which comes first ecommerce strategy or tactics? Trick question. Doesn't matter as long as you end up swimming in a blue ocean.

FedEx Ecommerce Summit
Will be presenting the New Ecommerce to about 100 Small to Medium Sized Businesses in Atlanta at Georgia Tech on 4.16. Here is the agenda:

* Know Thyself (video notes done).

* Ask the right ?s.
* Share Thyself.
* Ask for Help.
* Favorite Tools.

We are working on video notes for each section.
Find the Ask For Help: The New Collaborative, Curated, Community Ecommerce Haiku Deck Here: http://shar.es/1gJbLS

Find Know Thyself Marketing Master Class video notes here:
https://youtu.be/OvJ92tZ2dtA

The Little Haiku Deck That Could
Our Asking Ecommerce Questions Haiku Deck (http://shar.es/1g6S5q ) is becoming the little deck that could. To say these slides are a testimony to the power of fast feedback loops and iteration is an understatement.

With three sets of video notes (more coming soon) and three major changes based on feedback from attendees at conferences where we've been presenting the little deck that could Ask For Help: Asking Key Ecommerce Questions proves another important point - everything is a curated conversation now.

Thus the power of @Scoop.itand thus Google's QDF (Quality Deserves Freshness) demand. When we started this little deck had a few hundred views. Now, thanks to feedback and support from those providing the feedback almost 2,000 people have learned to do the hardest thing in the galaxy (at least for American men) - ASK FOR HELP!

Thanks for all the help we've received creating the little Haiku Deck That Could. Marty

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.

Yesterday at the Digital Summit in Charlotte, NC we ran into a familiar problem. "Marty we don't have any content," an growing ecommerce website shared.

I shared the good and bad news. The bad news is developing an effective content strategy takes time, focus and money. The good news is there are things to do in parallel that bring all pieces together such as:

* Create an Ask.

* Begin to CURATE content.

* Curate 90%, Create about 10%.
* Listen and set up Key Performance Indicators to LISTEN better.
* Develop a testing culture.
* Begin the journey to sustainable online community.

Added video notes to explain all of this to our Ecommerce Questions Haiku Deck: http://shar.es/1guIF1

Find video notes on platforms, content curation and community on Curagami's YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/tSHeIxtrs4g

A blog about ecommerce marketing, running an online business and updates to Shopify's ecommerce community.

Marty Note
We agree with all 7 of these "product page best practices" such as:

1. Powerful product descriptions (tell a short story and use language from reviews). 

2. Clear Call-To-Action (CTAs).

3. Size Chart (we love the Johnny Cupcakes graphic).

3. Include Stock Levels (and use Amazon's only 4 left language).

4. Great Product shots.

5. Social Share buttons (with feedback loops for # of shares, look at SumoMe.com for the best social share widget).

6. Shipping & Free Shipping info clear and easy to find.

7. Relevant to what is happening now (Holiday theme).

8. Remove background (this one was new to us, but we get it).

& The forgot 2 of our favorites:

9. Reviews - voice of the customer is the most convincing and begins to create online community.

10. TEST - we've only beaten a red "Add To Cart" button once, but we only knew we beat it because we tested.

The truth is: a decided customer is a rare phenomenon in the e-commerce world. In most cases, people are sure only about their needs, and slightly know about the way they can be satisfied. There is a fine line between making proper suggestions and trying to sell more at a rate when a customer doesn’t see it as an aggressive tactic. Cross-selling and upselling techniques when used properly can be a delicate thing that works like a charm both for customers and businesses. And here’s...

Visualizing Data
Inside every big data stack is a secret, a secret capable of helping your web marketing IF you find it. Our new Curagami Ecommerce Master Class discusses how to cut a mound of mud into meaninful patterns.

Steps are easy:

1. Start with clean data.

2. Start categorizing.
3. Sort by your categories.

4. Cut your detail out (remember to replace functions with numbers).
5. Graph your broad strokes.

We fly through how to create patterns in this 3 min video. If  you ae stuck or confused email martin(at)Curagami.com.

Good luck and make sure your weed whacker is working.

M