The Shopping Mall is Dead. Long Live the Online Mall!

OK, so physical shopping malls aren’t quite dead yet, but it is interesting to see how the online e-commerce world is moving towards a shopping mall model.

First was the granddaddy of all online shopping, Amazon.

Amazon branched out beyond books years ago, and now carries just about everything. There are retailers who run their businesses entirely through Amazon, where Amazon hosts them in the same way a traditional shopping mall has lots of independent retailers in it.

Online Competition Moving to a Mall Format

In Canada, Shop.ca started up a couple of years ago with the goal of becoming the Amazon of Canada. (Check out my interview with Shop.ca founder, Drew Green.)

And in today’s interview with Chris Parsons, Newegg’s Global Marketing & Business Development Lead and Country Manager for Canada, we hear about how electronic geek store, Newegg, is now doing gang-buster sales in jewelry!

Chris will be talking about Newegg’s use of social media at eTail Canada, in Toronto May 5 – 7, 2014. My readers and listeners who are retailers get a 25% discount! Register at  http://bit.ly/1iwzfuG and ETCA14TFRANK to get your discount!

Newegg.ca opened its Marketplace not long ago, and they are testing out a wide variety of products. They were surprised to discover that their core customers appreciate being able to buy gifts for their wives and girlfriends right on the Newegg site.

Now they are experimenting with a huge range of products, including items like baby shoes!

It will be interesting to see how this evolves. The marketer in me worries that they may be straying too far from their core business. They have a strong niche of savvy computer and electronics shoppers. I think they risk alienating this core if they venture too far into unrelated products.

In today’s podcast, you’ll hear more about that, as well as about:

* their new “social gifting” feature,

* how to compete in the hyper-competitive consumer electronics industry

* the challenge of logistics

* a high-potential, often-overlooked, market: Quebec.

Want to learn more about online shopping?

Come hear the experts discuss trends in online shopping at eTail Canada! 3 day passes are already sold out! But 2 day passes are still available. See you there?

 

Don’t Shy Away From a Call to Action

When I look back on it now, I wonder how much consulting business I lost in my early days because, like so many sales people, I was afraid to put a “call to action” in front of my prospects.

OK, I admit it: I’m still afraid of seeming pushy!

That’s why I’ve been stalling for months on doing something I KNOW will increase my e-mail list: popping up a subscription request box when people visit my site. (Maybe by the time you read this I’ll have done it!)

A Nudge Doesn’t Have to be Pushy!

In today’s podcast I interview Tim Paige, of Lead Pages, which has a great platform to help companies put calls to action in front of their prospects.

These folks test the heck out of everything, and the results are great! I’m especially excited by their new podcast, ConversionCast, which talks about real results from experiments designed to convert more site visitors into customers.

How Can You Increase Your Conversion Rates?

Apart from avoiding the 33 Top Website Usability Mistakes I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, Tim offers this advice:

1. Make sure your website leads with benefits.

What’s in it for the customers? They don’t care about how proud you are of your company’s latest achievement, the depth of experience of your CEO, or what you think makes your widgets super-cool. They just want to know how you can solve their problem!

2. Have a clear call to action on the home page.

Here’s a great example from KissMetrics:

3. Start with a small request, and offer more as your relationship strengthens

The first ask can be something like signing up for a 5-part e-mail series on how to do something your customer wants to do better. Then, every 3 days, send them super-useful e-mails. In the last one, offer them something else of value, so they’ll sign on for more useful e-mails.

After about 6 weeks have gone by, they will finally be ready to pick up the phone and talk with you about the super-expensive product you want to sell them.

These tactics work equally well if you are selling to consumers or businesses. As Tim put it,

[Tweet “At the end of the day, marketing psychology works the same way whether it is B2B or B2C @TimThePaige”]

Have you seen a great call to action lately?

Please share your faves. (Or the worst ones you’ve seen!)

 

We don’t see nearly as many website usability mistakes as we used to, but there are still plenty of them out there.

In today’s podcast I’ve tackled 33 common website mistakes that I still see pretty often. I list them all here, but give a bit more detail if you have time to listen to the podcast too.

Don’t Do These Things On Your Website!

Look / Appearance

* Too Creative. Keep it simple! Follow standard patterns and layouts that people expect on websites. Things like having your main navigation links running across the top, not somewhere else.

* Inadequate colour contrast. I don’t know why designers are so fond of using pale grey text. I had to battle with mine for ages before he agreed to make most of the text black! I love this simple tool to check that you have enough colour contrast: http://www.checkmycolours.com/.  On the other hand, avoid clashing colours that strain your readers’ eyes.

* Not mobile responsive. Your site must be easy to read on a handheld screen. That doesn’t just mean shrinking the text size.  

* Wasting too much space “above the fold”. You don’t need a huge picture or banner across the top. Make sure that what they see in that first screen gives them motivation to want to read more.

* Relying on PDF documents. This is bad for readability and for search engine optimization (SEO). You can have a downloadable pdf version available as an option, but make sure you convert your pdf’s to web-friendly formats.

* Animation. Really, folks, the days of dancing dogs on a star-spangled background are loooonnnng gone!

* Sneaky Sound Attacks. If you are using video, don’t have the sound come on automatically. Not everyone is checking out your website in a quiet, private place.

* Don’t flash me! Flash is a bad idea for a whole bunch of reasons, not the least of which is that it usually delays people getting to the content they want to read!

* To Click or Not To Click? Make it obvious what is clickable; and make things people expect to be clickable (for example, images that look like buttons) actually be clickable.

* Having to click in just the right spot. Make your link’s clickable space big. Not just the arrow at the end of the words, but the words themselves, and a bit of white space around them. Or if they are in a box, the whole box should be clickable.

* Don’t make me squint! Make sure your fonts (text sizes) are big enough to be easy on even middle-aged eyes.

* Too many pages. Give people the option of reading long content all on one page instead of with several clicks. It is really frustrating to have to click for only a paragraph of content.

* Long, dense paragraphs. Make your pages easy to scan quickly. Use headers, bullet points, and white space.

* Inconsistency. Keep a consistent look throughout your site. If you have to take people off the site (e.g. to pay) warn them of what’s happening.

Content

* Too generic. What’s your unique selling proposition (USP)? Why should I buy from you instead of somebody else?

* Poor navigation. Test out what is logical to your users. Good website usability also means not using cutesy navigation link names. Don’t call your About Us page “The Fab Five” even if there are five of you!

* Ignoring standard reading patterns. In languages that are read from left to right, top to bottom, put the most important info in the top left. People’s eyes scan your page in a capital F pattern, so leverage that to show the things you most want them to notice.

* Hidden contact info. You should have a prominent contact link at the top of every page. And if you are more likely to make a sale with some phone contact first,

Overwhelmed?

In this social media, always-on, info overload world, many of us struggle just to keep our heads above water; making more money with less work seems like an impossible dream. 

But according to today’s guest, Melanie Benson Strick, it is possible.

How Can You Balance Workload & Money?

It starts with your mindset, says Melanie. First, you have to believe that it is possible; to silence those voices in your head that say, “I’ve got to do more“, “I’m not good enough“, “If I say no to this, what if I don’t get another project?”

Then you need to set priorities. Recognize that you can’t say yes to everything and still have a sane life.

[Tweet “You can’t say yes to everything and still have a sane life. @temafrank @melcoach”]

OK, I hear you saying, that deals with the “work less” part of the equation, but what about the “make more money” part?

How To Make More Money With Less Work

The “making more money” part comes down to things like:

* Deciding which activities are the most profitable. Then dropping or delegating the rest.

* Developing systems & streamlining your processes. If you’ve got good systems in place you won’t waste time figuring out what to do, over and over again. Or, as Melanie put it you’ll stop “burning your creativity cells trying to remember what to do.“

* Planning and mapping out your year. Figure out what your priorities are for the year. What new projects, products or services will bring in the most income with the least effort? (Or, with some effort at the start, but that will turn into passive income over time. If you want to learn more about that approach, check out Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income podcast.)

* Constantly monitoring and refining. You need to know which things are working and do more of them, while minimizing activities that aren’t making money for you. Melanie, for instance, hosts a weekly Twitter chat that brings in 40% of her new clients. Now that’s worth doing!

Do you have other tips for how to make more money with less work? Or is this just a pipe dream? Some people seem to manage it, but for most of us it’s a constant struggle. Why not add your thoughts below?

Today we’ve got two interviews about new online store happenings, from the recent Dx3 conference in Toronto. The first is with Ben Burmaster, who has grown SnuggleBugz from a bricks and mortar retail store to one of Canada’s top online retail successes. The second is with Doug Stephens, aka the Retail Prophet.

How Snuggle Bugz Became “Canada’s Baby Store”

Like many small retailers, when baby store Snuggle Bugz first dipped its toe into the online world, it was too tentative to have much success. It wasn’t until Ben Burmaster sold another of his businesses and had some time to spare that he decided to really devote himself to building a serious online store presence for the company.

Key Online Success Factors

1. Dedicate Serious Resources

Sure it’s possible to start an online shop these days with almost no money, but it is hard to become really successful that way. You can’t just treat the web store as though it were another sales clerk; it is more like a whole new store.

2. Build A Community

Right from the start of their online venture they realized that building on the strong community of moms was going to be key. Facebook has been especially successful for Snuggle Bugz. They have nearly 30,000 Likes, and active community engagement.

3. Offer Free Shipping

Yes, it hurts your bottom line on the first order, but Ben feels it is worth it if you consider the lifetime value of a customer. Their online store has a minimum order size of $40 for free shipping, and they have now grown their online sales to the point where they can justify building a western Canadian distribution centre to lower shipping costs and speed up deliveries.

What’s Changed in Retail This Past Year?

I love talking with Retail Prophet, Doug Stephens. (If you missed my last interview with Doug, check it out here.) He’s gently but steadily pushing retail executives into the modern era.

There’s a common refrain these past few years: bricks and mortar store sales are flat but online store sales are increasing 12 – 15% a year. As he said, “it’s becoming clear to everyone that if you don’t figure out this multi-channel thing, you’re toast.”  [Tweet “If you don’t figure out this multi-channel thing, you’re toast @retailprophet”]

The digital world is changing retail stores offline too. There are a growing number of tools that are making it possible for physical stores to analyze and tweak the effectiveness of in-store promotions almost in real time, instead of waiting for month-end reports.

The hardest part, for many retailers, is just coping with the huge number of technologies and options coming on stream: they can be paralyzed by indecision. Ultimately, when evaluating technology options, you really have to think through how they will help you deliver on your brand promise. It’s not about what you sell, it’s about how you sell it. So “the answer to the question, what is the right technology is not a technology question, it’s a branding question,” says Doug.

My favourite quote of the interview: Too many retail executives “still think that stores are just big repositories for products … Like a catalogue without the nice photography.”

What’s your business struggling with?

If you are like a lot of companies, you may still be struggling with just the idea of starting an online store! If that’s you,

Let’s face it: many businesses are afraid to get on social media because they are afraid of things going wrong.

And they do go wrong.

Sometimes even the best-intentioned Tweet will be misinterpreted and before you know it a firestorm has blown up.

(A few weeks ago that happened to the Dean of the Harvard Business School. I got into a lively debate about it on the Fortune/CNN Money website. Read the comments. I got in one of my best zingers ever!)

Today’s show guest, Dr. Alison Konrad, thought companies had a challenge with the pace of change and crisis management these days, but then she started chatting with firefighters.

Now they have to deal with change and crisis!

Their working conditions change minute by minute when they are fighting a fire and the consequences of mistakes are a lot worse than embarrassment.

Lessons From Firefighters

In our interview Dr. Konrad, who will be speaking at the Conference Board of Canada’s Change Management 2014 conference, May 5 & 6, talks about some of the lessons we can learn from firefighters to prepare ourselves for social media flare-ups.

Social Media Crisis Prep

A few key lessons from the firefighters will work equally well for your business:

1. Prepare

Make it clear in advance what your expectations are, have some standard approaches, discuss what types of language you will use.

2. Practice

There’s a reason they made us do fire drills in grade school. If you’ve run through some worst case scenarios in advance you are less likely to panic if a real crisis hits. Peter Aceto, CEO of ING Direct, discussed this in our interview.

3. Be Flexible

Having done the preparation and the practice, you will have an easier time being flexible and adapting to the situation as it evolves. Your team will all be approaching the problem from a similar vantage point.

Do you have any other tips for social media crisis management?

If so, please share them in the comments section below!

I grew up in a family of academics, and I was always blown away by the brassy whiz kid entrepreneur types who could wheel and deal from the time they learned how to walk.

Today’s show guest, Danny Iny, founder of Firepole Marketing and lead author of Engagement From Scratch, is one of them. He dropped out of school at 15, and bluffed his way into convincing CEOs that he had expertise they needed.

Chutzpah!

He might have had more guts than knowledge when he started, but now he’s one of the few “Internet marketing” teachers out there who’s the real deal.

Key Business-Building & Marketing Lessons from Danny Iny

1. Just because your business is online, doesn’t mean it’s no-effort.

There are lots of dreams about “passive income” from online businesses, but, as Danny puts it: [Tweet “Building a business online is passive like owning a restaurant is passive! @DannyIny”]

2. You can’t run an online business without knowing a bit about technology.

It’s surprising how often people dream of becoming Internet millionaires but think that it’s OK if they know nothing about how the systems work. [Tweet “You don’t have to be a geek, but you need to know enough to understand your geeks!”]

His students have to try to solve their own technology problems for 30 minutes before they call his staff for help. He wants them to get over their fear of “breaking” something. Things will break; that’s just part of the business and you’ve got to learn how to deal with it. As Danny put it, “It’s not like we’re working in an operating room; nobody’s going to die!”

3. You can start from scratch, but critical mass helps.

Danny started by doing tons of guest blogs. It can be a good way to start getting your name out there, but it can still be a slow build. Once you’re name is out there enough though, instead of linear progress it goes geometric. (Or, if you prefer “hockey stick”. On my mind today, since the Canadian women won Olympic Gold in hockey! Congrats, ladies!)

I’ve heard similar things about a slow start but then sudden crazy fast growth from people like John Lee Dumas, in our interview last week. So if you are in the slow build stage, keep at it! Your growth spurt might be starting soon.

Prefer to read the transcript? Get the full transcript here.

I sometimes struggle to get my podcast out once a week, so you can imagine how bowled over I was when I discovered John Lee Dumas, host of the wildly successful daily podcast, Entrepreneur on Fire.

Not only does he get a full length interview-based podcast out every day (including weekends), he does it with enthusiasm, quality, and now generates about $170,000 per month (yes, you read that right!) from advertising and podcast-related spin-off products and services.

He has some 500,000 unique downloads per month, is heard in 145 countries, and is winning Best Podcast awards. 

If he weren’t so darned nice, you’d have to hate him!

How Does He Manage To Be So Productive?

Some of the key things John Lee Dumas does to manage his time effectively:

1. Batching

Mondays are recording day. He tapes interviews for eight hours straight every Monday. Exhausting, but efficient. He only has to set up once. No fiddling to get things working properly. No time psyching himself before every interview; he just gets into the groove.

2. Systematized Processes

Not only does he have his recording day, he has a set list of questions he asks all guests, and only prepares with a 50 word bio that they send him in advance. Because he’s such a good listener, you’d never guess that he hasn’t spent lots of time researching each guest.

3. Shortcuts

I’ve learned to save a bit of time in editing podcasts by playing them at 1.5 times normal speed while editing. John takes it a step further: he only listens to the transitions while editing.

In other words, he’ll make sure to cut out the long hesitations or false starts guests sometimes give when starting to answer a question, to avoid wasting the audience’s time. But he doesn’t spend time listening to the entire recording as he goes through it. If you record using two audio tracks (one for you and one for the guest), it is easy to spot those transitions.

If you want to learn more about how to do your podcast recordings, there are several good sources to get you started. Here are some of the main ones:

* Podcaster’s Paradise. This is John’s school of podcasting, and it looks fantastic!

* Podcasting A to Z. Cliff Ravenscraft’s course; one of the first and the one that got a lot of today’s successful podcasters started.

* School of Podcasting. Dave Jackson runs this one. I hired Dave to help me out with some of the technical stuff that baffled me when I was getting going.

* The Audacity to Podcast. Daniel J Lewis hosts this one. Audacity is a free audio editing program used by a lot of pocasters.

* The Podcasters’ Studio. Ray Ortega’s site, which has details on gear to buy, tutorials and tips.

* How To Start a Podcast. Pat Flynn’s step-by-step tutorial. Pat is another super-successful and super-sweet guy to follo...

There’s been a lot of talk lately about whether e-newsletters are dead.

People are overwhelmed with too much e-mail, there’s a ton of competition for “eyeballs”, Gmail now streams newsletters off to the Promotions tab, and even the word “newsletter” can be enough to trigger the spam filters.

So maybe a return to old-fashioned printed and mailed newsletters is what we need to get attention these days.

Today’s guest, Jim Palmer, who calls himself the Newsletter Guru, argues that print newsletters have never gone away, and that to be an effective marketer you need to use both print and e-newsletters.

Which Type of Newsletter Should You Use?

In an ideal world, using both is probably a good idea. Especially if you are marketing to traditional, older managers and executives who would rather read print than electronic formats.

But to produce a high-quality printed newsletter is not cheap, nor is mailing it. So if the traditionalists are not your target market, you may be able to get away with just an electronic version. But…

How to Get Your E-Newsletter Read

Assuming you make it through the spam filter, here are a few important tips for e-newsletter effectiveness:

1. Weekly is Best

To be fair, there is some debate about the frequency. The “internet marketing” gurus will usually bombard you with emails several times a week. They do this because it works.

But is it worth the price of turning off a whole bunch of other prospects? If you are focused more on quality relationships than a numbers game, I’d say, weekly or even every two weeks is tons. (With apologies to the gurus!)

You might be able to get away with monthly, but there’s a serious risk that people will forget who you are if you only send monthly. However if the list is mainly for existing clients or others with whom you already have a pretty strong relationship, monthly might work.

2. Use Great Subject Lines

As Jim Palmer pointed out in our interview, subject lines that evoke curiosity are among the most effective. If you really want to get good at subject lines, I strongly recommend you check out Copyblogger‘s subject lines articles. (They’ve got a new one on the results of an email subject line contest.)

3. Be Consistent

I confess that I’ve fallen down on this one, but, as with podcasts, it is best if people learn to expect your email at the same time on the same day every week.

4. Get Personal

If you’ve followed me for a while, you know that I still struggle with this. What can I say; I had over two decades of strict separation between work and personal life before the social media era changed all that! But I do, now, include a little something personal in each newsletter (check out my newsletter archives here, and sign up for the newsletter here).

I should really do that in my blog posts and podcasts too. I’ll get there someday!

Do You Think E-Newsletters Are Dead?

When teacher Laura Berg was pregnant she came across the idea of teaching babies sign language so they could communicate more easily before they learned to speak. She decided she’d try it with her daughter.

She was also trying to figure out how she could make money while staying home with her kids.

Putting the two together she started teaching other parents how to teach their babies sign language. And since many people had heard of the idea but never seen it, she did a video of a lesson with her daughter.

That video went viral.

It has been watched more than 4 million times. (You can see it below.) My Smart Hands was born, and has blossomed ever since. Her YouTube channel has had over 25 million views, she now has 200 licensed instructors across North America, and she sells a wide range of products from her website. 

In today’s interview Laura talks about the successes and stresses of growing her business.

Advice for Entrepreneurs from Laura Berg

1. When you do business with a friend, always have a contract!

She learned this one the hard way, as she discusses in today’s podcast. You may think you’ll be best friends forever, but things can change. Better to be prepared.

2. If you are offering a share of the business or sales instead of cash, cap it.

When you are desperate to get help from an unaffordable programmer or other pro, offering them a share of future earnings seems like a great solution. But do you really want to be tied to them forever? Offer them a generous cap in exchange for the risk, but at some point you want to stop being in debt to them.

3. Dragon’s Den is great for exposure and brand-building.

She was offered a deal on Dragon’s Den, but, like the folks from Rent Frock Repeat (interviewed in our 3rd episode), it fell apart after the show. Nevertheless Laura feels she learned a lot from the experience, and the exposure helped her land a book deal with a US-based publisher. No regrets!

Would you go on Dragon’s Den with your business idea?

Sure there’s a chance of a deal, but there’s also a good chance they’ll squish you and make you look stupid. (Fortunately, Arlene’s there to prevent them from getting toooo nasty!) What do you think — would you go on with your idea? Share your thoughts below.