Ecom Revolution
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March 17, 2014

GORUCK GEAR Visual Markets Ecommerce
Martin (Marty) Smith

Marty Note
My Curatti.com post this week is 8 Tips on Visual Marketing from Vogue.. Visual marketing is dominating in 2014. I'm searching for the top 10 visual marketing websites and know GoRuck is going to be one of them.

Ecommerce is difficult. Too much visual and not enough conversion and you can't afford your hosting fees. Too much visual and not enough storytelling and you can't afford your credit card gateway.

GoRuck strikes an amazing balance. Their Pinterest-like grid tells an amazing story. Check out GoRuck and share your favorite visual marketing websites. 

Single BONE to Pick
GoRuck follows a tiny number of their followers. This is a favorite pet peeve of mine. Hey GoRuck if you are reading this Social Media is about being SOCIAL and we can't communicate on Twitter if you don't follow us. GoRuck is sending the WRONG anti-social signal, or a signal dissonant from their "we are all in this together" look and feel. Don't make their mistake, follow worthy people that follow you. If your following is below 50% I would LOVE to hear why.  

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February 28, 2014

5 Ways Ecommerce Sites Killing it With Content & Context via @pcorwin [+1 From @Scenttrail]
Martin (Marty) Smith

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

Great Peg Corwin Insight

Creative ways that ecommerce sites are using content marketing:


 - Make how to videos

 - Answer FAQs in clever ways

 - Use photos 

 - Get a blog and be a media outlet

 - Stay in the know


Quote: "Content. It’s the material you create to inspire existing customers and the audience you hope to reach (your next customers are out there somewhere!) Ecommerce sites across the web are taking advantage of content’s power."


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Marty Note
When I was a Director of Ecommerce I LOVED #contentmarketing, but it rarely loved us back (lol). An ecommerce site is divided between right brain creative (buy) and left brain engineering (Q&A, content marketing).

The more content we put on a product page the worse it converted. Video and reviews were the single exceptions and videos took some serious tweaking until we got it right (short, product as hero, VO narration, show the product working and bring in review summary from our Buzz Team).

Never forget the first 5 minute video we testing with a hard rock score that was WAY too loud. I could watch conversions tank in real time (advantage of having 14,000 unique visitors a day). That video lasted less than a day, but it taught us to shorten and quiet our content.

Eventually we found a formula that put new life in best sellers and rocketed any product with momentum. Video wasn't a miracle worker. When we tried to rehabilitate a product long gone from the Best Seller list video alone wasn't sufficient.

Big Trend Train Running - CONTEXT
As I was leaving Ecommerce three years ago context was starting to play an increasing rule in the increasingly visual language we needed to speak. Saw a great example of this in the DWR.com catalog.

The Design Within Reach Catalog features a Food Truck with DWR chairs, shelving and lighting. Amazing how much more interesting these "high design" products looked in a real world setting.

DRW.com is so Bauhaus WHITE it hurts the eyes and the pretension can be a bit much. Buy mixing high and low art the FUN factor goes up 10x and their products LOOKED LIKE something you might want in you home (instead of an operating theater lol).

One of the BIG implications of our visual marketing trend is more relevant context like DWR's food truck meets the Bauhaus two page spread. BIG MISS by DWR for not sharing that print spread online. MISS by Fox Restaurants creators of the wood fired pizza food truck called the ROCKET (picture above) too since a page about their DWR shoot would have earned social shares, praise and UGC (User Generated Content).

A cool food company like http://www.foxrc.com should know better!

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Peg Corwin's curator insight, January 26, 2014 1:27 PM

Creative ways that ecommerce sites are using content marketing:


 - Make how to videos

 - Answer FAQs in clever ways

 - Use photos 

 - Get a blog and be a media outlet

 - Stay in the know


Quote: "Content. It’s the material you create to inspire existing customers and the audience you hope to reach (your next customers are out there somewhere!) Ecommerce sites across the web are taking advantage of content’s power."


If you like this scoop, please consider a thumbs up or share.
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September 1, 2013

"5 New eCommerce Lessons" - A Haiku Deck by Mark Traphagen
Martin (Marty) Smith
Five elements creating an eCommerce store can bring to your marketing efforts. Master marketer Martin W.
Martin (Marty) Smith:

Loved it when Mark made a Haiku Deck out of my blog post. His Hiaku Deck has about 3x the views as the original 1,000 word blog post so pretty good lesson there about visual marketing and the lean content movement. 

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March 21, 2013

The New Ecom: The Poetry of Material Things
Martin (Marty) Smith

Art Of The New Ecom
Doesn't this cool Tumblr feel like a new cool store? That is because it has an artists visual approach combined with a merchant's eye. Beautiful and strange like the new ecommerce :).

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Martin (Marty) Smith's curator insight, March 21, 2013 10:34 PM

SoLoMo Nightmare

I came home to see water seeping into my garage from my house. A leak in a downstairs half bath has done some serious damage and may be doing more now (if it is in the wall). 

I look for a plumber stating with Angie's list. Bad Experience because the search algorithm is stiff and pitching a strange set (probably those paying the freight to be at the top). Every plumber has an A review and putting in people I know about was only a fifty fifty shot to find anything at all. 

 Where Is The BEAUTY? FUN?
 I'm confused. We've got Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook and looking for a plumber is a hair's difference from using the yellow pages. I moved from Angie's LOST List to Google and Yelp reviews. 

If Angie's LOST List seems rigged and inauthentic Yelp and Google have no scale. I tweeted and asked friends on Facebook if anyone knew of a good plumber. My friend Kate saved the day with a great recommendation.

 

I Want A New Drug!

Here is the problem in my head we are already working in the predictive real time of Web 3.0, but the reality of this brutal plumber search makes me wonder why an army of startups isn't thinking about social reviews like the one Kate just provided. 

Social reviews can be very brief because they come from such trusted sources (friends). Kate should have been rewarded for her immediate and high quality thought. Instead her great idea disappeared into Facebook's either. Where is the tag cloud when you need it? 

I Want A New Drug!

Call me crazy but the process of finding a plumber should be beautiful. I'm using this beautiful Tumblr feed again, the Poetry Of Material Things to point out that a sad truth.


The problem is US. We lack the imagination to mashup scaled systems to produce, reward and scale a reviews / recommendation engine that provides beauty, immediacy and support. Why? Because we can, because we HAVE a new drug called the Internet. 

If you are a startup or so inclined and have already spent some mental cycles on this let's grab lunch. If I can't fund you I know people who can. Tell me the story of how looking for a plumber can be beautiful and fun and you have the proverbial million-dollar idea.  
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