A presentation on eCommerce as part of a masterclass on 21st Century Commincations that included presentations from Powa, OurSocialTimes and Enterprise Nation.

2. A brief introduction to Powa: Powa, was developed by Venda – the world’s largest on-demand eCommerce provider Venda customers all share the same platform – from Tesco Fashion, to Laura Ashley, Jimmy Choo to Wickes, Sharp to JVC, hundreds of large brands and retailers all sharing the same technology – ‘software as a service’. Powa brings the same economies of scale and eCommerce expertise to small and medium sized businesses A brief introduction to Steve Emecz: 11 years in eCommerce. Grew an eCommerce business for a major brand from $6m to $200m in 5 years Joined Venda and Powa in 2008 as Business Development Director My role at Venda is to help the large retailers with their revenue growth strategies My role at Powa is to work with major business groups and governments to help SMEs grow online For fun I write books, publish books and swim.

4. Why eCommerce? – Because customer behaviour is changing (c) One in four people visiting your website are looking for ‘offline’ information [they have no intention of buying online, they are looking for your address or phone number] Around one in three people that are given the chance to ‘pick up from store’ – take that option [if you want to drive footfall, leads and enquiries, have a great website] eBay has more than 10 million customers, and is the UK’s 2 nd largest ‘search engine’ behind Google One in two online shoppers in the UK have a PayPal account, and 35% of those prefer that method The next generation wouldn’t dream of using anything else than a search engine to find any type of business – and mobile is coming too…… (c) Shop.org retail survey

6. Let’s build a site…………. [steve builds an eCommerce site live, from scratch on Powa in under 10 minutes] To see a site being built live come to one of our weekly free webinars . Note: Web designers and agencies can build customised sites on Powa If you are a retailer and want a customised site, or a designer/developer that wants to add eCommerce to their services – you can see examples and find out more here Powa Design Providers (c) Shop.org retail survey

7. 10 Key Things to Improve Your Website Sales 1. Keep your homepage fresh 2. Have a sale section 3. Add Your Products To Google Shopping 4. Search Engine Optimise - Generic SEO Title Short [search engines tend to take the first 60 characters of the title] - In the home page properties, customise the SEO with your principle keywords 5. Have Great Product Information - Google Adword Predictor - Google Adword Selector 6. Use a shared page sections to promote key things – like “Free Delivery over £30” 7. Give customers several ways to find the product that they want 8. Offer related and alternative products 9. Use Google Analytics to watch your customer behaviour – and act on it 10. Social media ……………..

9. 2. Have a sale section Ideal to clear end of range or ‘last season’ items

10. 3. Add your products to Google Shopping Google is beginning to feature products into the main search listings

11. 4. Search Engine Optimise - Keep your SEO Title Short [search engines tend to take the first 60 characters – i.e. the shop title plus the page descriptions

12. 4. Search Engine Optimise - In the home page properties, customise the SEO with your principle keywords

13. Entering your products Get it right first time and the search engines have more chance of finding your products. a) A useful formula for product description - [brand] [sub-brand] [description] [colour] A good description: Frank Lyman Fushia Pink Dress Due to the strong SEO structure of Powa, this becomes: http://www.julesladiesfashion.com/engine/shop/product/FL01001F/ Frank+Lyman+Fushia+Pink+Dress which the search engines rate highly. Note that we also put the part number into the page address – great if customers search for that particular part number 5. Have Great Product Information

14. b) Use good quality multiple images. If you don’t have extra images, but have nice packaging show it – you can often use a generic packaging image there. 5. Have Great Product Information

15. 5. Have great Product Information Some ways to identify good keywords Google Predictor – type into Google and see the prediction of keywords Google Keyword Tool – type in your chosen keyword and the keyword tool tells you other suggestions and how many people have searched for them

16. Really useful for things you want to promote on lots of place on the site: 6. Use a shared page sections to promote key things – like “Free Delivery over £30”

17. Really useful for things you want to promote on lots of place on the site: 6. Use a shared page sections to promote key things – like “Free Delivery over £30” Ibson Menswear for example put their email signup form throughout the site and capture quite a lot of signups on product pages as well as the home page.

18. 7. Give customers several ways to find what they want Manx Heritage use the brands function to add another attribute to all of their products “ e.g. Three Legs” Categories in the traditional manner Search

19. 8. Offer related and alternative Products

20. An overview of the site’s key trends. A vital component of analytics is the geographical data provided. This allows us to find out from which cities / countries site visitors are visiting from and also which brands / products they are looking for. This enables us to target advertising, prioritize which products we display online and structure site content to suit our different target markets. 9. Use Google Analytics to watch your customer behaviour – and act on it We use Google Analytics to monitor the characteristics of visitors and their navigational behaviour whilst viewing the site. Esquires

21. The traffic sources area of analytics is extremely useful. It allows us to track the effectiveness of online marketing (referring sites), offline marketing (direct traffic) and hits via search engines. We are then able to react accordingly in relation to marketing or search engine optimization. The content analysis allows us to view which areas of our site are most popular. We can therefore identify any issues of concern for customers, such as shipping costs, and pin point which brands are receiving the most attention online. 9. Use Google Analytics to watch your customer behaviour – and act on it

22. 10. Social Media (including Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and many others) Lets take a look a couple of case studies: Esquires using Facebook to acquire new customers Ibson Menswear using social media and email marketing to acquire and retain customers

23. Example advert Picture gallery Basic info such as our brands and opening times are prominent on our Facebook site. Photos of new products are uploaded on a regular basis and provide direct links to their related product page on our webstore. Using Facebook adverts has proven an extremely cost effective and highly targeted way of driving traffic to our webstore and Facebook site. We have recently started using Facebook as our primary marketing vehicle.

24. Ben Sherman adverts Facebook insights Our fans Insights allow us to discover the demographics of our “fanbase” in terms of gender, age, location etc - we can also evaluate trends over time to find out when we were gaining or losing the most fans. If a person “likes” our page they receive a notification if we add anything to the page - a high number of people “liking” our page helps to provide credibility. Along with other types of content posting TV adverts featuring our brands has been popular - people are then able to tag that they like these adverts.

26. Small but loyal Following – Twitter is about ‘quality’ not ‘quantity’ Promotion codes are great for Tweets and Blog posts as well as email Ibson Menswear (UK)

27. Engaging and interesting content Drives traffic and gains subscriptions Demonstrates to your commitment to your brands Simple and easy to update – perfect for quiet moments in the store

28. More information: Free weekly webinars on how to get trading online:

29. More information: Other useful resources: Enterprise Nation - excellent support and help for home based businesses Webjam - easy to implement community sites My Warehouse – ‘on-demand’ outsourced warehousing