This document provides an agenda and overview for an e-commerce tool kit. It discusses evaluating an existing website, e-commerce options and platforms, social media networking strategies for business including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and creating an internal marketing plan. The key topics covered are website checkups, domain registration, hosting, e-commerce templates and options, social media engagement and demographics, and integrating email newsletters and blogging.
Hi Everyone! Thanks so much for your interest in this topic! I am always glad to be of help! Today—hope to have an interactive discussion about e-commerce and social networking.
Most of what I have learned about having a site and marketing the site I learned by doing and talking with and learning from other experts. Three years ago—did research in my town as to whether we could withstand another boutique that catered to plus size only. All of the boutiques which carried plus size had gone out of business and I thought it was time to explore the option…so I went into business with two friends who already had a boutique and provided the plus size clothing to do my research…well the experience and the results from the research were not encouraging…Cannot move into someone else’s place….and we had a harder sell with plus size women. Going to lose weight.. Rochester is a city of just under 1 mil. Very conservative, very educated, with high income and very bargain conscious. We have four malls within the metro area with all of the majors, with four marshalls and four tj maxx. I thought there had to be a way, so I just flipped my business model and made the web the primary method of distribution and our showroom the secondary method. What you see here is our first home page. I did not know anything about retail and nothing about technology. But I was willing to learn and take a chance. Not quite what I had in mind in terms of results….we sold $100 our first month. And I thought what have I done? My store looked like my closet or a younger version of my closet, who I thought my demographics were were not---and the site looked like a grade schooler made it.
Our second version was not much better. Placeholder while I educated myself. We were very limited in what the site could do for specific reasons which I will go into in a minute. The first site cost $600 the second site cost $1200 and by the time I got to the third version.—kind of like your house…by the time you built your own house—you know what you want and why and what you don’t and why.
This version was built to my specs out of the Ukraine and cost $3500. Screen shot of our current home page or june’s home page. And just like your house and your own stores—still not done a work in progress. I would love to tell you it has been smooth sailing and was the answer to all of our prayers….In some cases, I have learned the technology the hard way—in march I deleted the whole catalog….the last time we did a back up was in nov. so in march I had a home page that looked like fall for about a week. All I could manage to do was cry, eat and teach as I was still teaching my college courses in the middle of a semester…but we got thru it.
Site-Do I want to Provide Information such as our hours, brands and services with my social media connection? Or Do I want to Sell? Looking at your criteria will help you determine what type of site is needed. No doubt it is a new world for retailers—believe that we need to go with the technology and utilize it all we can to remain competitive.
This is my word of caution: Make sure you register your own domain name…you own it and it is not held hostage. 99% of the web resellers are reputable, but the bottom line is your domain name is your business name and you need to own it and have control over it…
Info site---5-6 pages Average $400-$600 plus images. Many resources you can do it yourself, hire someone. Main thing is to keep that site updated.
If you want to sell: If you are interested in uploading your hot lines or if you have a customer base that extends across the country—you are in a resort town, let’s say—then you want e-commerce. E-commerce adds the functions of shopping cart and payment gateway or payment processing functionality to the site. If you pretty much want an enhanced local or industry presence template is fine…minimal modifications, limited in their functionality and SEO ability.
As you can see here is a brief overview about how one would go about building your own ecommerce site.
Definition of Social Networking. Think---what can I do to make people want to promote my store? For the first time we can see---What Has Our Customer’s Attention? And we must ask ourselves What Am I sharing?
Businesses of all kinds are taking advantage of social networking sites and using them for a number of reasons: Immediate trust leads to viral two way interaction talk, listen and respond, A new way for companies to be Transparent people relate to transparent and want to be in the know, Relevant—get people what they need when they need it, Lasting it is written and permanent and we can see it all happening at once! It is an awesome time to be in business!!
I call these three the holy trinity of social networking. You should be using all three to cross promote, streamline communication and get your name out there! The best thing it is free; the worst thing: it takes time! Now we have the ability to have two way conversations and it is powerful! Your customers trust real people and when real people are sharing and talking about your brand and you are not doing a thing but facilitating it—there is not any other medium that can do the same thing. Tradition adv was about messages from inside the company to the outside. Social networking is about messages coming from outside the company, your customers, contacts, suppliers driving people to inside the company and back. Your job with social networking is ultimately not to do your own advertising and public relations but to let others do it for you. Social Networking is now.
Integrate, Connect, Engage vs Inform, Persuade, Remind! At Worst—Manage a Damaged Reputation. While you can post sales and special promos, I urge you to Go beyond “This is what we have for Sale this week” Take what you have for sale this week and talk about how it is one of the key trends for the season, how it is one of this season’s key colors, etc? You will have a higher success rate of establishing your credibility and you as the expert and here’s the key-- in getting customers to pay attention.
As you can see the numbers speak for themselves: Out of those 500 million users, one-half visit every day. So, it is likely, your customers and the customers you want--are using Facebook. My students were the ones a year and a half ago who pushed me to get a facebook fan page---so I have to credit them…
It is very easy to sign up. You will create a page off of your personal page for your store. Show your home page.
Like was launched in only April of 2010. 2 billion like buttons on over 2 million websites. Really cool relevant info from people you know and trust. Their friends can “Like” it as well, attach a comment to it or forward it to their Facebook friends by clicking the “Share” button, extending the object’s reach and adding social relevance. “Liking” an object also means it becomes a node on the Facebook graph, so it appears in search, and if it’s a product, brand or service, it also appears on the Facebook profile page of the “Liker.” On social optimized sites, the “liker” or recommender’s profile picture appears beneath the “Like” button. So in this case, if you like the movie The Social Network, your Facebook friends will see your “like” as a recommendation on IMDB as well. ttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/
I have used both large companies and boutiques to help me illustrate my point. Sephora: Perfect customers talking to each other, FB only promos link to site to purchase, reviews, live twitter feed.. Victoria’s Secret Very good at getting comments from customers. Libby’s Contests; Ann’s Fashions Videos/Commercials.
Twitter is a mix of sales, conversation and helping customers out—you can see repeat customers, increased loyalty, and gain a whole new network of individuals to connect with.
Twitter is a mini ad in 140 characters!
One retailer and one wholesaler who has increased business because of twitter! More is not better it is about having the right followers. Twitter competition where the first ten people who went to one of her retailers got a $40 keychain: Drove traffic to her retailers!
Delight.com does an excellent job of promoting themselves on Twitter. Their site is very well organized. I got one of my best ideas from Delight.com The Mystery Box. Show yours.
You Tube offers a high visibility venue for brands to connect visually with customers. It is also a way for brands to get recognized when a consumer types in a brand name and videos pop up---there is a higher chance of having a brand pop up when you have a video along with it.
In addition, to social networking and internal marketing opportunities, you can choose internal marketing including newsletters, and blogs. If you have an e-commerce site: Product descriptions and ratings and reviews can increase customer purchases and using social shopping sites such as Style Feeder can help drive traffic to your store.