Tomorrow makes the first day of Q4, the season that makes or breaks the year for most stores. What do you have planned this time around? Eric Davis Analyze your winter holiday performance Figure out how your winter holiday performed versus the rest of the year with the Winter Holiday...
Lower prices can be a crumbling cliff of a strategy. You might be able to hang on for a bit, but eventually you'll slip without a better handhold. No matter the price, someone will always go lower. Even if you have your own brand of merchandise, competitors can undercut you...
Last weekend (and this next weekend) I spent time building a cold-frame and some planter boxes from old fence wood I kept. As a fence the wood was starting to fall apart but many boards still have a few years of life left. All I needed to buy was some...
Seth wrote recently about sharpening digital tools. The rest of us, on the other hand, regularly use digital tools we don’t understand, don’t maintain and haven’t optimized. Sometimes, our lack of care in the choice and use of tools only wastes our time. Often, it actually degrades the quality of...
Two different stories happened today that got me thinking about the cost of professional services. The first was a conversation I had with someone about PPC advertising. Specifically about how much agencies charge to manage those campaigns and how they never run on auto-pilot so they constantly need someone managing...
When you're trying to grow your repeat customers you want to get as much feedback as you can. You can always choose to ignore or not follow bad ideas but the more data you have, the better. That's why you'd want to ask customers what made them come back after...
With as much writing as I do, I have to keep a lot of writing prompts around to help generate ideas and inspiration. The set I look at when I start writing had nearly 40 prompts. But that's not the whole truth. It really had seven good prompts. Ones that...
When merchandising there are a bunch of strategies you can use to decide what to promote: Best sellers - will tend to move fast and contribute to your bottom line right away. Items that create the best customers - will have the best long-term success. Inventory you want to clear...
One easy branding opportunity that I don't see used enough is from from your coupon codes. Some stores will use the generic ones: SAVE_10, SUMMER_SALE, 20_OFF These are nice because they are clear, though any with a number will be pushed. Is SAVE_15, SAVE_20, or SAVE_25 valid for even better...
Avoid promoting products that mostly create one-time customers. Each product you promote has the potential to create multiple orders per customer. Some products are weak and don't lead to many repeat orders, while other products get customers hooked. Avoid promoting these dead-end products in important places (e.g. homepage, email, ad...
Each tip includes a way to improve your store: customer analysis, analytics, customer acquisition, CRO... plus plenty of puns and amazing alliterations.