Content + Commerce

Content Plus Commerce Episode 6 

Host: Blake Puryear Guest: Ben Herman 

On this episode Blake is joined by Ben Herman of Mad Fish Digital
[00:01:09] - Background about Mad Fish Digital
[00:02:49] - Differences of working with B-Corp brands from a strategy perspective
[00:03:36] - Tool sets, favorites to use and why
[00:04:49] - Approach to last touch attribution
[00:05:59] - Trends in the SEO/SEM realm, good or bad
[00:08:24] - Shoppable content, why is it effective/important
 [00:12:08] - Best “Our Agency is the Hero” story 

Quotes from the Episode: 

“Starts with understanding the goals of what a client is looking to accomplish and what we are looking to track.” [00:04:51] 

“Anyway that a brand can more seamlessly connect a product to a user in their research phase is going to be beneficial.” [00:08:28] 

Links:

Mad Fish Digital Visible
Bright funnel 

https://www.madfishdigital.com 
http://www.visiblesystemscorp.com 
https://www.brightfunnel.com 

Content Plus Commerce Episode 5 

Host: Blake Puryear Guest: Adam Butt 

On this episode Blake is joined by Adam Butt founder of Noticed
[00:01:17] - Background of how Noticed was started
[00:04:21] - Go to tools for building out a site
[00:05:40] - Personalization trends 

[00:08:33] - Defining your brand, guidelines, marketing profiles, and digital strategies
[00:09:19] - Common headaches when managing a site build
[00:13:02] - Best “Saving the Day” story for Noticed
[00:16:24] - Growing trends in the next year 

Quotes from the Episode: 

“One of the challenge we have with some of the brands, especially the ones that are growing really quick, is not really having the brand defined.” [00:08:19] 

“If you're a small brand, hire an eCommerce manager.” [00:09:54] 

Links: 

Noticed https://www.noticed.com 

Yotpo Swell Nosto 

https://www.yotpo.com
 https://www.swellcx.com 
https://www.nosto.com 

Content Plus Commerce
Episode 4
Host: Blake Puryear
Guest: John Ostler
On this episode Blake is joined by Jon Ostler from Eight Bit Studios
[00:01:07] - Back ground of Eight Bit Studios
[00:03:15] - Dev work + Design, full service agency
[00:05:25] - Go to tools, collaboration software
[00:06:25] - Benefits to collaboration tools, creating good design systems
[00:08:09] - Common headaches when managing a site build and creative
solutions to get around obstacles
[00:11:32] - Eight Bit Studios shining moments
Quotes from the episode:
“It‘s like a holistic approach, by tearing down those barriers you’re gonna create and
end up with a better product.” [00:04:32]
“Do you have a subject matter expert that really understand the crux of the problems
that’s trying to be solved?” [00:12:14]
“We’ve got a lot of developers that are ready to challenge UX and design assumptions
right away.” [00:16:32]
Links:
Eight Bit Studios https://eightbitstudios.com
Figma https://www.figma.com
Jira https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira

On this episode we will talk about building on the web and building eCommerce digitally. We are joined by CEO & co-founder of Magebit, an eCommerce agency, Arturs Kruze. 

Magebit: 

Arturs initially started as a developer, developing website for himself such as gaming websites then started working with various agencies building landing pages to complex systems. Finding Magento he realized it had a learning curve and you hate it until you love it but the benefits exceed expectation. With co-founder Krystaps Rjabovs, Magebit was founded 5 years ago as a full service agency specialized in Magento and now has a grown rapidly currently with a team of 55 full time employees based in Latvia. 

Magento: 

Magento is flexible, you can achieve anything and easily implement emerging technology into the platform. 

Customization is easy. Not only can you build but you can also maintain it in Magento and is developer friendly 

“The flexibility to be able to, for any clients use case, basically adapt and meet their needs without swapping platforms or learning something new” [00:04:15] 

AMP’s vs PWA’s 

AMP = Accelerated Mobile Pages (fast loading websites) PWA = Progressive Web Apps 

Are PWA’s the next big thing and whatever happened to AMP User friendly and fast. AMP’s were thought to be next big thing but google has implemented so many limitations that are too harsh making them no easily usable 

PWA’s are a current hot topic and Magento is already implementing their own framework, in reality it will be the next big thing, while not for everybody, for many business they will be a big conversion booster 

Quotes from the episode: 

What is the hardest part of building on eCommerse? 

“You have to understand there will be difficulties and you have to be able to adapt fast and act in the moment” [00:06:42] 

Do you do AB testing or side improvements? 

“Some of the biggest gains for some brands have been in testing product page layouts, not even testing checkout, a lot times it is the product page that can be the biggest lever and make the biggest difference” [00:09:48] 

What is a trend in eCommerce or the agency Life that you are working in that you think is going to be kind of hot in the next year? 

“I don’t think there is a single trend but one thing that I think is worth mentioning is personalization. That has been happening for quite a while already and there are new companies popping up with new personalization systems in place that can use machine learning or artificial intelligence for bringing the best possible customer experience to the shopper.” [00:14:44] 

Links: 

Magebit https://magebit.com Magento https://magento.com 

On this episode Blake is joined by Yuri Kurat of the New Normal Agency, a Seattle based software services agency. 

[N]ew Normal Agency: 

From 2008, Yuri worked for a development company and after 5 years there he decided start his own project, the New Normal Agency, co-founding the business with Alex Tinyaev they began with the a goal of building custom eCommerce implementations. 

What tools do you use: 

Depends on the clients needs. 

One of the biggest things that we discovered for agency space is when the client comes to you with what they need which seems uncomplicated but when you start talking about it there are questions that they had not thought through but you know that develops from a simple idea into something that requires special treatment. 

The cost of doing business in the online retail space has gone down which makes it easy to run a business but makes it more complicated to implement something technically. 

Amazon: 

A real threat. Companies that were sold to Amazon are spun as a success story for example Zappos or Diapers.com but they were “Amazoned”... meaning, if amazon can come into your space and offer razor thin margins they can run you out of town. 

eCommerce Challenges: 

As an agency what are some of the common challenges you face, where you feel you are in the trenches working against yourself, the platform or the technology you’re working with. 

People are seduced by the idea of residual income. They don’t want to sell something once. They want to emulate the dollar shave club and keep customers coming back. What we find is there is not enough education or understanding around what it takes to go from a simple online business to subscription. 

Loyalty Programs: 

In the past few months [N]ew Normal has been narrowing their niche of expertise into loyalty programs. 

8% of customers identify as being loyal to a brand 

Exemplars in the space: Starbucks & Southwest Airlines Starbucks is data driven, you don’t need to interact with anything else because you can do everything through their app. The trick is personalization and making you customer feel like they are the only customer for you. Analyze what they buy at what time, take all that metadata and privide personalized offers to them. 

If you are a brand selling one kind of item, how do you get customers involved in your loyalty program? 

You have find other ways to get their attention. iPhone wallet cards, build an app that send push notifications to gather usable metadata. Once you find out what else is important to your customer you can market to that. 

Quotes from the episode: 

“Everybody wants to do retail but more so its residual income. They want to be able to build subscription models and the subscription has to support and integrate with shipping companies and reverse logics, ex. refunds” [00:02:57] 

“Half of the success of subscriptions is that people set it and forget it. It is a lot of the way you make money. So if you give them a chance to opt out or renew you’re going to lose a lot of business.” [00:10:55] 

“It takes 5 to 25 times more money to gain a new customer than to keep an old one.” [00:13:10] 

Links: 

The [N]ew Normal Agency https://newnormal.agency 

On this episode Blake is joined by Chad Fisher founder of BTOWN Web, a Seattle based software services agency. 

BTOWN Web was founded 7 years ago. 6 years ago they shifted focus to Shopify and became Shopify experts, 3 years ago they became Shopify plus partners 

BTOWN Web focused on being a jack of all trades to accommodate where their clients were coming from 

Building sites: 

We focus on what are the pain point brands are dealing with. When we are engaging with a brand it is often because they are looking into changing platforms. We have to get into the hard core moving raw data. From a design perspective sketch and photo shop to build actual sight. We have to look at what is the problem the brand wants to solve. 

What do you see as some of the challenges of building a great eComm experience? In terms of difficulties of the actual buildout. 

Technical components, connectors, functionality. Soft skills and things around the project are typically the problems that arise . Proper project management on both sides: communication, expectations, scope 

What do you think is something that might catch people off guard in the next year and a half? 

It is ok to sell and be a renter on other platforms, it is ok to do physical retail. Understanding how to make that seamless and efficient as possible so I can connect with my customers wherever they are. 

The pitfalls are not understanding the technology, not having the right partner to help navigate these challenges or not offering a product or connecting with the customer because you have hit a bump in the road by not understanding the technology. 

Quotes from the episode: 

“The evolution or life cycle of a brand. Unless you are doing over $5 million in sales you can get away with using your eComm platform as a light ERP”. [00:07:15] 

Links: BTOWN Web. https://www.btownweb.com