E-commerce Blog

As a Bigcommerce client, I’m sure you consider yourself either a small business owner, an entrepreneur or a visionary. Whatever you call yourself, you’re only as good as the people around you. As I talk to our clients and also other entrepreneurs, one of the common threads I see between those who are successful is that they don’t try to do everything on their own.

They know when to ask for help.

One of the best sources of help is to build a smart advisory team around you. A team of advisors can help grow your business and also make you a better small business owner by helping you see the forest from the trees. One of the most important things to do as your business grows is to shift your focus from the tactics (day-to-day “stuff”) to strategy (where you want to take the business and how you will do it) and a great team of advisors can help you with that transition.

Building a team of advisors takes some work, but the rewards far outweigh the challenges. Whether you’re a one person startup building your online empire in the wee hours of the morning, or a team of fifty looking to grow your sales to $100 million, having a great team of advisors to work with will accelerate your progress more than almost anything else will.

I hope you enjoy the presentation and really consider building out your own advisory team.

With the US Senate passing the Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA) yesterday, we wanted to take some time to break down what an Internet Sales Tax might mean for your business.

What is the Internet Sales Tax Proposal?
Right now, online sellers are only required to charge sales tax in states where they have a physical office or warehouse. While sellers are technically required to charge a “use tax” in scenarios where they aren’t collecting sales tax, this historically hasn’t be enforced.

The MFA would essentially level the playing field for all businesses. According to the Marketplace Fairness website, it will grant states the authority to compel online retailers, no matter where they are located, to collect sales tax at the time of a transaction — exactly like local retailers are already required to do.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m currently in New York attending TechCrunch Disrupt. While I am impressed with few startups that are launching, I have mixed feelings for the startups in the commerce (both e and offline) space. I don’t necessarily see disruption.

I was at a fireside chat earlier today with Chamath Palihapitiya, the managing partner of Social Capital, a venture firm that is focusing on disruptive startups. He mentioned something which resonated with me — “We are at an absolute low point in terms of startup quality.” It may seem slightly harsh considering that entrepreneurs are problem solvers who convert a gap into an opportunity. And, of course, the easiest opportunities to see are the ones that are hanging low. I have been in the e-commerce space for a while now, and work with tons of startups and developers around the world. I have a sense of where the industry is heading. I had a feeling before I came here that the startups were walking dangerously close to being just “one more.” TC disrupt sealed that feeling. Very few startups are truly disrupting. Let’s take a look at the startups that are here:

Read the rest of this entry »

So many of our clients are taking big steps to improve or promote their businesses, and we wanted a way to highlight those bold moves and inspire other clients to make their own. Every Monday, we want you to tweet about something you did that you think will have a major impact on your small business and could help others do the same. Just use the hashtag #MaverickMondays when you post so everyone will see it. Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve launched your Bigcommerce store and you’re getting consistent sales. You’ve nailed your supply chain (whether it’s one-of-a-kind products shipped locally, or commoditized widgets that you ship worldwide) and are generating healthy margins. Nice.

But you’re working 14 hours a day. Every day. Not nice.

Is it time to hire your first employee? Let’s find out. But first, let me tell you a little story from the early days of Bigcommerce, circa 2009. See if you can relate…

2009 Rewind

Way back in 2009, Eddie and I had the crazy idea to launch an e-commerce platform that would generate billions of dollars in sales for tens of thousands of businesses worldwide and employee over 200 people.

Well, not really…

Truth be told, we just loved building cool software. But the two of us didn’t scale to build a company the size we knew we were capable of.

When we started, I was wearing about five hats. I was the VP of Engineering, the VP of Product, the VP of Marketing, the HR manager and CEO. And while it was fun, I was so involved in tactics I never had enough time to focus on strategy.

By 2010 Bigcommerce had gained serious, serious traction and was the fastest growing e-commerce platform in the world with over 10,000 clients in the first year. So we both had to make a serious decision. Do we continue to wear multiple hats, or do we go out and hire our first manager to help expand the business?

In other words, do we “buy” some of our time back, by handing over a critical business function to someone who has done it before, or do we continue to learn as we go? By making the decision to bring someone else into the executive team, we gained a few things:

1. Time. We got back 10+ hours per week (each) by handing over a function of the business to a new manager.

2. Focus. The more you have to manage, the less effective you will be. By “offloading” a function of the business to someone else, we could focus on what mattered the most, which was figuring out how to grow the business even faster.

3. Skill. I know what I’m good at and most importantly what I’m not good at. And I got to do more of what I was good at than what I wasn’t. Most people will tell you to improve on your weaknesses. That’s wrong. Spend more time doing what you’re good at and delegate the other stuff.

Fast forward to today and we have an amazing executive leadership team. This has allowed me to shift my focus from 90% tactics (doing) and 10% strategy (planning) to 100% strategy. This more than anything has made a huge difference in the trajectory of the business, which has grown well over 1,000% in the last 3 years.

What’s Your Strategy?

There are a few things you need to weigh up when thinking about hiring your first (or second or third) employee to help build your business, but the most important thing to ask yourself is this: what is your strategy to grow the business?

If you don’t have a well thought out strategy to grow the business, then chances are you’re spending too much of your time doing (tactics) as opposed to planning (strategy).

Spending 14 hours a day packing orders and answering emails won’t help your business grow if you don’t understand your customer acquisition cost and lifetime value, for example. You can very easily hire someone to fill orders and answer emails, which could give you back 20 hours a week to focus on strategy, which is:

• Understanding your core business metrics:

• Customer acquisition cost

• Lifetime customer value

• Conversion rate

• Visitors per day

• Average order value

• Profit margins

• Overheads

• How to attract more customers while driving your acquisition cost down

• How to drive production costs down as order volumes increase

• How to provide customer service that drives repeat purchases

• When/if to expand your product line and marketing channels

Having a strategy will allow you to lay out a few key milestones over the next 12 months to grow your business quickly and efficiently. Once you understand your metrics, margins, etc, try answering these questions:

• Why is your end goal from building this business?

• What is your revenue target for the next 12 months?

• What is your profit target for the next 12 months?

• How many orders will you need to reach these goals?

• How many employees will you need to reach these goals?

• What will each of these employees cost you?

• What will each of these employees do?

There are two final questions to ask:

• What do you spend most of your time on today?

• What should you be spending most of your time on?

The bigger and more successful your business gets, the more your answer to the last question should be strategy. And you get to focus on strategy by hiring capable people which you can delegate day-to-day tasks to.

Employee Number One

Hiring your first employee can be a scary thought, but if you’re generating enough profit and believe in your business, you’ll be absolutely amazed at how much just one person will help fast track the growth of your business.

Whether your first employee spends all of their time packing orders, taking calls or managing the books, you’ll start “buying” some of your time back to focus on strategy and understanding your metrics.

Here are some tasks your first employee might help with:

• Accounting and book keeping

• Processing and shipping orders

• Customer service emails and calls

• Ordering more stock and tracking inventory

• Writing content for your blog to improve your search rankings

• Managing your social media accounts

• Creating marketing campaigns

• Cleaning your office/house

Your first employee might not even be full time. You could hire someone part time to help run the business day-to-day or even hire someone remotely to help with customer service emails for a few hours a week. Whatever they do, it’s a great start.

It’s All About The Metrics, Baby

The best entrepreneurs understand the metrics of their business and can recite them in their sleep. They also go on a never ending quest figuring out how to improve their conversion rate, repeat order rate, average order value, conversion rate and customer service experience.

Hiring your first employee will give you more time to do just this. And once you understand your metrics (using the reports in Bigcommerce and free tools like Google Analytics), you can improve them.

Remember: you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Track your key business metrics and watch them like your life depends on them. Because in some ways, it does.

So hopefully that’s given you a bit of an insight into why hiring your first employee is a good idea. It’s a scary step, but you’ll wonder how you ever did everything yourself. You’ll get more time to focus on the numbers and marketing and by answering the questions about revenue and profit targets I mentioned earlier, you’ll see a clearer path to success that you’ll begin to move towards much faster.

All great companies started with just one or two people and an idea. The best businesses are led by entrepreneurs who focus primarily on three things:

• Having the right strategy
• Having enough money in the bank
• Hiring the right people

Spend most of your time on the three things above and you’re off to a great start.

Another question we received during our How to Use Content for E-Commerce Marketing webinar with HubSpot was where and how to use customer stories and testimonials during the sales process.

To start, remember that each story is from a unique individual with goals. Their testimonial should tell how your product helps them reach those goals or brings a smile to their face. Based on that, you can decide where each story belongs.

On the product page

We first received this question from a company that sells and rents video equipment. They have a number of videos from their customers, but what I recommend is featuring videos shot with specific gear on each product page. That way a shopper can not only hear about the details of the product from other customers, but can see the results of using the product. It gives you a chance to really show off the quality of what you’re selling.

In an order confirmation email

One of most opened emails you will send is the order/shipping confirmation email, but too often merchants don’t leverage this opportunity. Never stop selling, even after the purchase! I like to feature customer stories that include the product that has just been purchased. It affirms that the customer made the right purchase choice. Bonus: This is the time people are the most excited about your product, so make sure to include links to share in social media from the email so they can talk about their new favorite thing.

On your blog

One of my favorite blog topics to read and write is about a real customer having real success or fun with our product. When I am looking for inspiration, I look at the various Bigcommerce stores out there and I am always floored by how smart our clients are. Take some time to tell the stories of your own customers. The blog medium gives you a chance to provide an in-depth story about a customer — their experience, thoughts and insights are extremely valuable to your future customers. Did one of your customers write about your product on a personal blog? Invite them to guest blog for you. The customer feels appreciated and you get great content you don’t have to write.

In social media

We’ve all heard about the value of your customers liking your Facebook page, but what about you liking your customers? Use a social media monitoring tool and set up searches for both your company and the products you sell. If you find a customer talking about you or your products, consider connecting with them. Create a Facebook or Twitter post publicly thanking them for their support or sharing some tips on using the product.

A great example happened recently to me. I purchased an infant toothbrush/teether for my son as he popped his first tooth. After liking the company’s Facebook page, they asked me to submit a picture of my child enjoying the toothbrush. As soon as the photo was posted, it allowed me to tell all my Facebook friends to check it out. Most people’s friends are the customers you want for your business (in my case it’s the new mommy audience). So you’re reaching new customers in a fun way, and simultaneously adding to your brand.

Hopefully that gives you some ideas of how to make customer stories work in your own sales process. Have more questions from the webinar? Please post them in the comments.

An Australian retailer has been in the news this week for charging shoppers $5 to enter her store. This fee for “just looking” is meant to combat showrooming, a recent trend where shoppers visit a physical store to see the merchandise in person and ask questions about it, then go buy the products online.

Georgina of Celiac Supplies has the right strategy, but the wrong tactic. Addressing showrooming is a must for brick-and-mortar stores, but alienating potential customers isn’t a good long-term solution. For the $20 she’s made upfront from the fee, she’s probably lost much more in actual transactions.

For anyone else out there facing the same problem, I advise making showrooming work for you rather than against you. Here’s how:

1. If you can’t beat them, join them: While Celiac Supplies has a website, it doesn’t sell online. The best way to handle showrooming is to open an online store yourself. It used to be intimidating to start an e-commerce site, but thanks to services like Bigcommerce, you can start selling online with minimal investment and effort. We have clients that have set up a store in as little as 30 minutes and made their first sale within hours. Georgina mentioned that she carries a lot more products than her competitors: that’s a built-in advantage she can take online and massively expand her reach.

2. Produce killer content: Georgina also mentioned that she has a lot of knowledge about gluten-free products and Celiac-related issues. Perfect — informative content is critical to online selling success. By using her knowledge to produce blog posts, articles, product videos, etc., she’ll improve her search ranking and drive a lot of business to her new online store.

3. Compile a customer database: When a customer comes into her store, Georgina should ask for their name and email address so she can add them to her email list. She should also seek them out on social media whenever possible. Then add them on Twitter and suggest they follow the Celiac Supplies Facebook page. Also make sure to remind people about the online store when they come in to the physical location. A lot of people want the option of buying later, and appreciate that they can buy from a store they actually visited.

4. Build a community: Now that she has a solid email database and social following, Georgina needs to communicate with her customers and potential customers regularly. Don’t just talk about your latest sale or how great your products are (although you should definitely do that) — give them useful information and link to your content or other informative articles and blog posts. A monthly email newsletter is a great way to mix company news and promotions with timely, relevant content. On social media, retweet other people who are also creating great content, and follow related businesses and public figures from the company Facebook page.

By following these steps, Georgina will have the best of both worlds: a beloved marketplace for local buyers, plus a solid online store where people all over the world can buy her products. Sure beats charging $5 for store entry.