The BigCommerce Blog

Presentation: Bootstrapping to Seven Figures by BigCommerce Co-Founder Mitchell Harper

Published on August 19th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

If you haven’t already guessed, I’m big on educating people. A few weeks back I put together a presentation called “Bootstrapping to Seven Figures” which took me about a week to create.

Basically it contains the core ideas and strategies we’ve used to build our company to over 50,000 clients and high seven figures in yearly revenue. I shared my presentation with around 3,000 people on a webinar I did recently for one of our design partners and was blown away by the response – I even managed to score two marriage proposals before I was done!

Anyway, I wanted to share the exact same presentation with you, our loyal clients. If you’ve just started your business and you’re looking for a way to grow your sales to $1,000,000 within 12 months then this is it.

I’ve broken my presentation up into four videos, each of which is embedded below – the entire presentation runs for around 40 minutes. It contains absolutely no sales pitch (I HATE pitches) – just good, honest advice based on my experiences building Interspire (the parent company of BigCommerce) to what it is today with co-founder Eddie Machaalani and our awesome team.

The presentation I used in the video is also embedded at the bottom of this blog post.

Part 1 of 4:

Part 2 of 4:

Part 3 of 4:

Part 4 of 4:

The Presentation I Refer To In The Videos Above

Download it here

How to Track Visitors and Sales From Facebook and Twitter Using Google Analytics

Published on August 12th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

When it comes to tracking visitors (including where they came from – Facebook, Twitter, a Google search, for example) and transactions for your online store, Google Analytics is king. It’s free and it’s an almost-enterprise-grade analytics package that already integrates into your BigCommerce store.

Here’s a quick video if you’ve never used it before:

… and here’s how to interpret and act on the data in Google Analytics:

Tracking visits and sales that originated from Facebook or Twitter (once you’ve integrated Google Analytics with your BigCommerce store) is easy. Here’s how.

Start by logging into Google Analytics, then click the “Traffic Sources” menu on the left:

Next up, click the “Referring Sites” option under the visitors menu:

Now on the right side of the screen you’ll see a few things:

  1. A date range which you can click to change. Typically you want to look at your last 30 days of traffic to make any actionable judgements
  2. A chart which plots traffic over the selected date range
  3. A table which lists the websites that have referred traffic to you for the selected date range, like so:

Now in the example screenshot above, Facebook was the second most popular traffic referrer with 10,941 visits and Twitter was fifth with 1,190. If you don’t see Facebook or Twitter listed in your top 10 traffic sources then just search for “facebook” or “twitter” in the search box below the table, like this:

Finally, to track the most important metric of all – sales that resulted from Twitter and Facebook, you can just click the “Ecommerce” tab that appears above the list of referrers, like this:

Remember: you should have already integrated Google Analytics with your store, otherwise you won’t see the e-commerce tab.

You can then see visits, revenue, transactions, average value, ecommerce conversion rate and per visit value for each of your traffic sources, including Facebook and Twitter:

Pretty neat huh? No more guessing if all that effort you’re putting into social media is affecting your bottom line from now on :)

By the way: If you’re looking to get started selling online and want to track your traffic and sales from Twitter and Facebook then give our e-commerce software BigCommerce a try, free for 15 days.

[Video] How to Build a Feedback Loop With Customers

Published on August 4th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

In this video I share a simple strategy you can use to gather customer feedback and implement it inside your business. Using this strategy you’ll improve your business processes and bottom line. You’ll also turn one-time customers into repeat customers who will send their friends your way because you’ve taken the time to a) ask for their feedback and b) implement it.

[Video] 6 Ideas to WOW Customers After Buying

Published on August 3rd, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

In this video I share six ideas to wow customers after buying. As a business on a budget, you really need to do whatever you can to turn one-time customers into lifetime customers who will tell everyone they know about you, and these six tactics will help you do exactly that.

Even if you only implement one of them, your repeat customer count will grow significantly. The six ideas are:

  1. Call them on the phone and thank them
  2. Upgrade their shipping to express/overnight for free
  3. Include something free (such as a product sample) with their order
  4. Include a hand-written thank you note with their order
  5. Include a 5-20% coupon code on their printed invoice to use for their next order
  6. Refund their shipping cost as store credit to encourage a second order

Would You Spend 10 Cents to Almost Guarantee Repeat Customers?

Published on August 2nd, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

The tea in the photo above was purchased at a regular market so there’s nothing special about the tea itself. What is special, however, is the little card that was included with the purchase that directs you back to the tea makers website, www.realchai.com.au:

Here’s the message that was included with the tea if you can’t read it:

Dear Chai Lover

Thank you for purchasing some Real Chai from us today.

I look forward to you being part of our Real Chai community for many years to come.

I appreciate that you can’t get to the markets all the time so we have made it very easy to re-order your Real Chai once it has run out.

All you need to do is follow these simple steps…

  1. Go onto www.realchai.com.au
  2. Visit the shop page
  3. Select your re-fill bag
  4. Enter in your details
  5. Watch it get delivered to your door step in days
  6. Continue enjoying your Real Chai experience

If you have any feedback as always I would love to hear it.

Happy Sipping!

Anthea Cahill (aka the chai girl)

Simple, effective, cheap to produce, and a brilliant marketing strategy – getting people who purchased from you at a market to your website using a piece of paper that probably cost 10 cents to print.

Try getting repeat customers for 10 cents using any marketing method period. Besides some creative email marketing, you’ll find it tough.

Why not take this idea and implement it for your business? Write your own message (or just copy Anetha’s – I won’t tell), print up a few hundred and slip one in with every order. I bet you’ll be amazed with the results

[Video] When Everyone is Digging for Gold, Be the One Selling Shovels

Published on July 31st, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

In this video I look at the old business mantra of “being the one selling shovels when everyone else is digging for gold”. In this video I explain why sales of the iPad fuel huge sales of custom iPad cases, how the preference for green/organic products has generated billions of dollars in revenues for new business and more – all rotating around the same simple concept.

[Video] Understanding Points of Diminishing Return

Published on July 26th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

When I type define:diminishing returns into Google, this is what I get:

“In economics, diminishing returns (also called diminishing marginal returns) refers to how the marginal production of a factor of production starts to progressively decrease as the factor is increased, in contrast to the increase that would otherwise be normally expected”

What a mouthful. Long story short, there are certain areas of your business where adding more horsepower won’t necessarily give you the exact same result forever.

For example, if you build a customer service team comprised of only untrained, unmotivated, lazy customer service reps then eventually you’ll end up with frustrated customers who won’t be able to get their questions answered no matter how many people are on your customer service team.

In this video I discuss the economic principle of diminishing returns in the context of e-commerce and shares three examples that demonstrate how diminishing returns can impact your business productivity and bottom line.

The examples include:

  1. Spending more on Google AdWords to counter competitors bidding on popular keywords just to attract the same number of visitors
  2. Quality over quantity of autoresponders
  3. How to create a successful customer service department that when combined with automation will reduce your costs

This video is a bit heavy on theory, so if you don’t understand anything just leave me a question below or ask me on Twitter (@mitchellharper).

Head to Head: Product Page Design From Top Online Retailers

Published on July 25th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

Arguably the most important pages in your e-commerce store are the product detail pages. You know, the ones with your fancy photos, nice big “Add to Cart” button, description and price?

But what makes a good (high converting) product page? There are certain elements that have been proven to increase conversion rates, such as having a bright, bold “Add to Cart” button shown above the fold (in the first 600 vertical pixels of the page), crisp and detailed product photos and of course good prices.

In this post I want to share product pages from sixteen of the top retailers in America and Australia. You will of course notice a lot of similarities on their product pages, but I’m sure you’ll also notice a lot of small differences. For example, the position and size of the “Add to Cart” button varies quite a lot between retailers.

Numerous studies have been done that show the “Add to Cart” button produces the best conversion rate when it’s shown above the fold in a bright color and toward the right side of the page, so why do some of the biggest retailers in the world show it in other places, potentially costing them millions of dollars in sales every week? Who knows.

Take a look at each of the sixteen product pages below and then leave me a comment to let me know which you prefer in terms of layout and why.

Amazon.com

Zappos.com

Sears.com

BestBuy.com

Dell.com

Audible.com

DealsDirect.com.au

EziBuy.com.au

Shoes.com

Apple.com

DStore.com.au

Sony.com

Walmart.com

Myer.com.au

Macys.com

NeimanMarcus.com

[Video] The Buying Cycle Explained

Published on July 16th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

Whether they realize it or not, your customers go through four distinct steps before they buy anything online or off. This process is known as the buying cycle and the four steps are:

  • Realizing you have a need or problem
  • Researching solutions or information
  • Comparing options, price and value
  • Buying the solution to your problem
  • Repeating this process (optional)

In this video I explain the buying cycle and shares strategies you can use to assist your customers regardless of which stage of the buying cycle they’re in. The trick is to make your e-commerce store appropriate no matter which stage your customers are in, so they start with you and end the buying cycle with you, ideally coming back for more the next time they have a need or problem they need to address.

Podcast #7: Your Marketing Questions Answered

Published on July 13th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

Length: 17:10

Overview: Today I answer five of the marketing questions that were submitted via fans earlier today on our Facebook page.

Description: In this, episode 7 of my podcast, I answer marketing questions from fans on our Facebook page. Topics include how to get sales when no one knows who you are, why the first impression of your website can make or break you, how to design high-converting landing pages and how I think e-commerce will change over the next five years. I also debunk a popular myth about Google AdWords and search rankings.

(Apologies for the hissing sounds throughout the podcast. It was recorded using the voice memos app on my iPhone as a test)

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