This weekend I started cleaning up the garden beds for winter. A big job is adding compost to the soil so over winter and into spring it can feed the soil. The problem is that I didn't create enough compost this year. The first batch I used elsewhere so I'm...
With a certain social network imploding, it's as important as ever to remember that any social media strategy has the risk of getting shutdown at any moment. A friend of mine built up a huge following on Facebook years ago. Then Facebook started to charge them each time they wanted...
Contacting customers for a promotion is a regular tactic in ecommerce. Typically the events are based on the calendar. Black Friday. First day of summer. Back to school. There are more reasons to contact customers than days in the year. There's a problem with using only date-based events though. Each...
While there's only a week left before the holiday rush starts, you still have time to work on attracting organic sales. A week is not enough time for most SEO. You might see some results next month but SEO generally is something that should be done six months ago. SEO...
Attribution is a billion dollar marketing problem. When done right, you'll know where customers are coming from and be able to avoid wasting marketing money. The problem is that attribution is nowhere near perfect and it likely never will be. The more you spend, the better attribution you can get...
This week I've been filling up my writing Vault. My Vault is a collection of articles that I've pre-written that can be sent any day I'm busy, rushed, or out of it. Normally every article is written the day before so the Vault serves as a savings account or a...
Detecting when customers defect and go elsewhere can be more of an art than a science. For most Shopify stores, there isn't a cancellation that marks when a customer defects. They just stop showing up. That's why most defect detection relies on measuring how long it's been since their last...
Average Order Value (AOV) gets mentioned often in ecommerce metrics. Since it's just a single value, the strategies around improving it are pretty basic though. Often it's just "increase AOV by ..." with hundreds of tactics listed. You can build a different strategy with it though. One that's more adaptable...
With Black Friday approaching, have you thought about how you're going to treat your new customers? The time from when they place their order, until a few days after they receive their package are a critical time for their ongoing behavior. Handle that well and they might convert to a...
Focusing on your most profitable products is a solid merchandising strategy. Sell more of those products and you'll get to keep more money than selling other products. One hiccup though is that most profitability measurements only look at a time transaction at a time. They assume all transactions are created...
Each tip includes a way to improve your store: customer analysis, analytics, customer acquisition, CRO... plus plenty of puns and amazing alliterations.