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.  

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.

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

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 :).

Revolution Has Begun, Now Join & Contribute
Are you as frustrated, bored and wanting more from ecommerce as we are? "We" is five marketing, merchants and Magento programmers who know TOGETHER we change the way we communicate, share and sell things to one another.

Learn More
http://bit.ly/ecom_revolution_google 

Crowdfunding is a new powerful marketing channel similar to what email marketing used to be - high profit, low cost with big social and UGC benefits.

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.

Ecom's New  Best Practices
Better have all of these if you expect to make money online these days:
* Easy To Get Free Shipping.
* Easy To Find Sale Section.
* Deal of the Day (once Woot.com only now becoming ubiquitous).
* What's New.
* Best Sellers.
* For Him, Her, Kids navigation (if applies).
* An ASK for User Generated Content.
* Clear "WE VALUE UGC" signals.
* Exciting "Magazine-like" content.

Via Tomorrow's Ecommerce: How To Design Tomorrow's Ecommerce Today on Haiku Deck http://shar.es/1nkirc

New Ecommerce Marty (@scenttrail) Note
I love this post sharing tips from a handful of ecommerce experts. I might fall into that category too after a 7 year tenure during which teams I managed made over $30M in online sales.

Our AOV (Average Order Value) was never more than $62 so hundreds of thousand of transaction. When I was hired the site's sales were below a million. When I left annual sales were over $6M.

Those times weren't EASY either, but they are were in comparison to now. Now ecommerce is complicated by:

* Increased competition.
* Muddled channel marketing ROI strategies.
* Social Media.
* Mobile.
* New SEO.

Add all of those new pressures together, all discussed multiple times in the linked post, and the inescapable conclusion is "easy" is OVER in ecommerce.

If you've been looking for a perfect web template for an on-line retail business you came to the right place, because today I'm gonna show you 16 of the newest and coolest e-commerce website templates.

ShopLocket is the easiest way to sell something online. No store to setup, no risk to get started. With ShopLocket selling something is just as easy as embedding a Youtube video. Simply create your product, embed it in your website, Facebook page, or blog post, and start selling!

Ecommerce & The Next Million Bucks
This post explains two critical ecommerce ideas:

* Working in SCALE.
* Diversifying Your Channel Marketing.

Making a million online only takes 10% more effort and money than making $100K so always think in scale. Ask yourself where the next million bucks is going to come from then create a plan to get there (more on the plan when it isn't 2PM I promise).  

The other new ideas contained in this piece are about new marketing channels like the work we are doing on crowdfunding at our #startup http://www.crowdfunde.com.  

Diversified channel marketing doesn't get wiped out by the inevitable ups and downs of online channels. When your marketing is diversified you can sleep at night because you have the TOOLS need to recover WHEN (not if) things go BUMP in the night on one of your channels.  

Netflix data shows "binge watching" is up. How do we create content marketing to encourage a binge?

Creating Binge Worthy Content for Ecommerce sites helps master the New SEO, but the process is different than for B2B because:

* B2C ecom content needs more UGC (User Generated Content).
* Ecom content needs to tell great stories fast so VIDEO.

* UGC needs engagement support so gamification.

* Tribal key for ecommerce, so needs to be highly social.

* Don't like to pull attention away from HERO, so selectively visual.

* Need to curate more "binge worthy content" from UGC and social. 

That last bullet demonstrates the core difference. B2C ecommerce is an act of curation as much as creation. Customers trust each other often MORE than the websites they visit. The more UGC an ecom website has the richer it is.

UGC can take many forms on an ecommerce site such as:

* Reviews. 
* Profiles (MyAccount). 
* Comments. 
* Response to contests and games. 
* Review the reviewer (was this review helpful?). 
* Social shares.
* Blog or social commentary (use only with permission as you will have to rake into your website with an Online Reputation Management tool). 

Stories and content are no less important to an ecommerce website, but there are distinct difference in the type of content that will help and not hurt conversions.  

Is E-commerce Stuck In The Mud? After our first Holiday Ecommies Review of 30+ top online retailers (@Ecommies is a new ecommerce ratings, review and award site coming soon). It’s clear e-retailers are stuck in the mud.