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/
Martin (Marty) Smith:
This Curagami post continues a conversation about appropriating video game developer's brilliant marketing ideas, strategies, and tactics to online commerce.
9 Actionable E-commerce SEO Tips We like the straightforward simplicity of this list of e-commerce SEO tips. Writing better product descriptions seems obvious, but you'd be surprised how many online merchants walk by the obvious. Nothing in SEO is complicated as these 9 tips show despite their "advanced" claim. Tips such as the create "versus" posts will occur to anyone who sees what controversy does to visits (it increases them). Visiting isn't conversion and many new to-e-commerce make that simple mistake.
Our advice is not to do that.
Martin (Marty) Smith:
Good list of SEO tips for e-commerce though not as "advanced" as they make out.
5 Digital Marketing Tips To Steal Today After purchasing two pairs of Robert Rauschenberg inspired frames from WarbyParker.com we came away with admiration and five digital marketing tips other online merchants should steal. - Create Limited Editions
- Keep Content After Events
- Have and Share VALUES
- Start with WHY not HOW
- Tie Purchases To A Related Cause
Learn more about why we love our Rauschenberg frames and other ideas to steal from WarbyParker.com at Curagami: http://www.curagami.com/warby-parker-5-digital-marketing-tips-to-steal-today/
Martin (Marty) Smith:
Our summary of how much we enjoyed buying new eyeglasses frames from WarbyParker.com and ideas every online merchant should steal today.
Holiday Shipping Tables
Successful e-commerce is about 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. We use the old cliche for a reason. To win in a crowded world you need to have some cool ideas, but you also need to pay attention to the basics.
Things like creating an easy to understand Holiday Shipping Calendar is e-commerce gold. Whenever you share a feedback lop you collaborate with visitors who may become customers since you clearly CARE.
Amazon will beat you on price, but you can beat them on CARING and, unless you sell highly commoditized things, caring matters. This Curagami post shares a tips likely to anger some of our readers and clients, but just because Amazon is a vampire doesn't mean they don't have something for Small to Medium Sized Merchants. See if you don't agree with our contingency and multi-channel ideas.
http://www.curagami.com/e-commerce-gold-holiday-shipping-tables/
Hacking Happens - 5 Security Measures shares the death, taxes & websites get hacked as life's new certainties or maybe not if you do these 5 steps today.
Simple E-commerce Stories - How To Tell Them shares storytelling secrets such as how details create trust & why a little romance in About copy is good.
E-commerce Bounce Rate Calculator
Bounces are frustrating. When a website visitor leaves after viewing a single page (doesn’t have to be your home page) and without engagement (clicking, subscribing or buying) they “bounce” and your SEO goes straight to HELL.
If you are prepared to feel real pain when you see the sizable website out there in the cloud, the visitors you are bouncing away, strong drink is recommended. We used an example of a $3M website with a 55% bounce rate. For every 20 points recovered the site would gain $1M in sales.
Another way to state that statistic is for every 20 points the site would grow more than 30%. Did you need to create an amazing campaign to grow 30%? Nope, but you do have to change your thinking and that is always the hardest thing to do (lol).
Attempt to use our calculator without strong drink and we can't be held responsible if you jump off a tall building after seeing the ghost site you could be managing. Just saying :). Marty
35 Ecommerce Secrets in 7 Days
Time to dump every ecommerce secret we have out in the world and let them do some good. Every day this week we share 5 tips sure to help your online store make more money. B2B marketers will find some tips applicable for their online marketing too.
Monday is 5 Ecommerce Storytelling Tips
http://www.curagami.com/holiday-ecommerce-tips-magazine/?v=7516fd43adaa
5 More Secrets Tomorrow
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 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.
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…
Martin (Marty) Smith:
Great "set up" tips here. We agree. Magento has no "default" bad SEO / SEM settings as some "shopping carts" do. Some of these tips were new to us and they are easy to implement / understand.
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.
How did we made more than $30M in online commerce? Watch our first Ecommerce Master Class Video & to learn about directed search wins hearts, minds and loyalty. Can watching a 2 minute video really make millions? Worked for us :). M
Hero Marketing: Compete with Amazon shares passion, customer focus, exponential thinking & need to create movements not promotions needed to win online and how SMBs can compete with Amazon.
Here are 5 tips to increase e-commerce sales through quality customer service and relevant content, targeting the 2nd step of the consumer conversion funnel
Martin (Marty) Smith:
Content Is the KEY To Tomorrow's Commerce
There is NO DOUBT in team Curagami's (http://www.Curagami.com) mind that content holds the key to conversion and SEO in tomorrow's ecommerce world.
We would order these tips differently:
1. Product Reviews (the most power UGC on our site curate the heck out of these and find your Ambassadors here too).
2. Clear returns & Free Shipping policy - we added free shipping, but having pages dedicated to both of these ideas means you may not have to pay Retail Me Not for your traffic.
3. Product Descriptions - use keywords you see customers using in reviews and use the keywords tool to test words against each other.
4. Photo & Video Quality - looks are overrated on an ecommerce site. Sounds strange to write that sentence, but if your customers trust you, you use User Generated Content and offer the right shipping and loyalty environments your pictures can be something you are always working on. Better is better no doubt, but a site with moderate images and the right reviews, shipping and returns can outsell a site with beautiful pictures and the wrong policies.
5. Customer Support - best way to show customer support is via your existing customers. This is why reviews are so important. Reviews are the unvarnished voice of the mob, your customers.
Marty Note
Solid tips here with a few caveats:
* #3 printing is a nice to have now not a must have. Printing just isn't as important, but, for some, a printed piece is easier to share.
* Reviews are now more important in their absence. Having hundreds of reviews is great as it shows the size and value of the tribe formed around a given product. A Customer's voice is always a tad different sounding too, so be sure to curate content FROM reviews.
* High res images is a good idea, but don't slow the delivery of your page down. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to help server your images and videos fast no matter who is looking at your content or from where.
* Product comparisons are great especially if they are social.
* Shipping = we would amend shipping to make sure your FREE Shipping triggers are easy to find / be aware of and set to maximize conversions.
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).
Ecommerce Revolution In 2015
Yesterday we planted a flag stating our intention to create an ecommerce revolution in 2015. Today first objections were heard. Learn why Can't is music to a marketing geeks ears and how you can join the ecommerce revolution so you can say, "Yeah, I helped with that," when others say they wish they could have been there.
Join The Ecom Revolution Today
http://bit.ly/ecom_revolution_google
This holiday selling season (2014) will happen as close to real time as any thanks to the social / mobile web. Listening and curating are going to be important, but so is tapping the nostalgia and spirit of the season in creative and collaborative ways.
Martin (Marty) Smith:
Not to late to make these changes to your ecommerce website before the holidays. Rock On and have a great holiday selling season.
Ecommerce: 5 Common Easy To Fix Blunders
* Hiding Free Shipping.
* Not using Branded Free Shipping.
* Not offering Faster Free Shipping.
* Deal of the Day. * Men, Women, Kids (or similar) "Human" Categories.
This new Haiku Deck shares 5 common easy to fix ecommerce blunders. Fixing any 2 of these 5 ecom mistakes will make for a better holiday seasons for your online store.
This holiday selling season (2014) will happen as close to real time as any thanks to the social / mobile web. Listening and curating are going to be important, but so is tapping the nostalgia and spirit of the season in creative and collaborative ways.
Content Curation is the "new marketing" & this post shares 6 reasons curating content should be your online marketing's elephant.
Finding the need to curate content acute as we develop HackHeadphones on Shopify. Why create new content when everything we need can be curated from sources such branded websites (using videos from Shure.com), Amazon and other "portal" sites.
We are making sure to give credit where it is due and someone might throw a flag, but bet we can negotiate mutually beneficial terms since using content with attribution is closest thing we have to advertising these days.
Your website sucks.I’m sorry that I have to be the bearer of bad news, but someone had to tell you the truth.Your website is a crime against humanity, an atrocious abomination, a target for Godwin’s
Martin (Marty) Smith:
Great list from a trusted source, Jeff Sauer. My favorite reasons Jeff notes why a website sucks include:
#2. IT teams seek efficiency, marketing teams want traffic. Those two goals don't always play nice together.
#5. Designers are another dangerous group to a website's ability to convert visitors into buyers. Designers are important partners, but have firm ideas about preferences for conversion over pretty pictures and recognize the difference.
#6. You get what you pay for and no free or $10 site is going to sing, perform magic or help your mission critical online marketing much. Don't invade Russia in the winter (i.e. outspend your ROI), but don't think you can get anything worth anything for free either. Expertise is expensive, but you save money in the end because you spend less than having to redo the same work over and over again and make more.
#11 We've all been to websites where there is no there, there. If you don't have a passion you want to share with the world don't create a website. Remember the web is a huge lie detecting amplifier. If you have cracks the web magnifies them. If you have flaws they are not up there on the big screen. Good news is everyone does, so an honest, passionate and real share has and will always work beautifully online (just not with a $10 designer or your mom's friend, friend).
#14 Dedicated landing pages separates pros from everyone else. Those with more landing pages do exponentially better than those with fewer. That stat may not past Freakonomics muster, but the idea is sound. Create more landing pages dedicated to supporting a single PPC keyword with a solid offer and a clearly visible CTA (Call To Action).
Agree These Are Common SEO Mistakes Made By Merchants
* Dupe Titles (not unique).
* No Text On Category Splash Pages (easy one to blow). * Product Descriptions That Lack Depth.
I would add these 3:
* No keywords in title or keywords you win anyway (company name or brand).
* No keywords in image anchor text (or too many keys). * No "in-lline" divs promoting "Read More".
That last one is a "trick" that secures engagement and spider attention by writing 500 or more words and then hiding most of the text behind a "read more" link.
The content appears to the spider early and the spider skips right on by the "read more".
Fix these 6 common ecommerce SEO mistakes NOW and you make more money on black Friday.
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