Hey everyone, here’s my reaction to the Marketplace Fairness Act (aka Internet Sales Tax) and what it means for the future of e-commerce and the livelihood of online retailers. Spoiler: everyone around here is pretty ticked.
Check out the video and feel free to leave a comment. Better yet, take our survey and let us hear from you. What do you think about the MFA legislation? Fair and balanced? Catastrophic disaster? Sound off and let us know!
With so many great, cheap and easy-to-use tools out there, the barrier for creating high-quality videos is lower than ever. All you need is a smartphone and an idea or two to start recording videos these days.
In terms of editing, it’s almost that simple. YouTube has it’s own built-in, basic editing system. For someone who wants a bit more customization, Animoto and iMovie are both great, amateur options.
While at SXSW, we caught up with GoPro Community Manager Andrew Shipp. He provided four great tips for how everyone — regardless of what they sell — can create more compelling videos.
1. It’s all about the content.
“There’s incredible content out there,” Shipp said, “You just need to go out and find it.”
In every industry or niche market, there are stories just waiting to be told. This could include sharing your customers’ stories, interviewing thought leaders in your area of expertise or even doing a video explaining the crazy idea that led to you starting your now-successful store.
2. Keep it short.
Shipp recommends that you keep your videos within the two- to four-minute window. After four minutes, most viewers will begin to click off.
3. Post bumpers in the front and back of the video
According to Shipp, posting bumpers, which in some cases could be as simple as your store’s logo, at the front and back of all your videos is a great way to make sure you get some branding in. That way it’s all about the content and not so much pushing brand messaging during the video itself.
4. Figure out the core of what your consumers want to see.
Often times, the best ideas come from your own customers. Don’t be afraid to ask them what they want to see or hear more about.
Inspiration for your next video is everywhere. Ask your employees, go on YouTube for some added inspiration or browse some of GoPro’s latest videos. Thanks for reading! Please pose questions, offer comments or write your video tips below.
Finding where your customers are originating can be a very helpful statistic for your marketing efforts, and it’s super easy to find within BigCommerce. In this week’s Wednesday Wisdom, I talk about adding this field into your checkout section so that it attaches to each of your customers’ accounts.
A few weeks ago, I did a Wednesday Wisdom issue on the basics of SEO, particularly for your homepage. I briefly showed where you could find the spots for page titles, meta keywords, and meta descriptions for your products, categories, and web pages. I’m back this week to give you a more in-depth look at where these are in your store’s control panel so that you know exactly where to go when you’re ready to fill in this information.
If you want to learn even more about SEO, we’ve got a great bunch of articles here on our knowledge base.
This week we’re talking about not being a one-man or one-woman army when it comes to running your store. It’s important to know where you can find support particular to BigCommerce, and encourage you to start learning what you’ve always wanted to through communities, social media, and forums.
Login to our forums here, and start connecting with your fellow store owners!
Our Wisdom for you this week is something every e-commerce store owner should know about: SEO. While I don’t go over the complex stuff, I do talk about best practices with your Page Titles, Meta Keywords, & Meta Descriptions: what they are, where they are in BigCommerce, and some tips on creating your own.
If you’d like to learn more, click here to find more information about SEO in general and on BigCommerce.
This week’s Wisdom is about SSL Certificates. What they are, a brief overview of how they work, and the differences between the SSL Certificate you get when signing up with BigCommerce, and the one that you can purchase for yourself.
If you’re just getting started with e-commerce, then dropshopping can help you source and sell thousands of products – without ever having to store or buy your own inventory. In this video Naruby from Ordoro (a great multi-channel dropshipping solution that, of course, integrates with BigCommerce) does a great job explaining the basics of dropshipping.
She explains the 3 simple steps involved in setting up your own online store with full dropshipping capabilities using BigCommerce and Ordoro. Definitely worth watching if you’re more interested in making (lots of) sales than buying, storing and shipping your own products.
Pareto’s principle states that 20% of your effort results in 80% of the result. While this ratio isn’t always exact, the general idea is that not everything you spend your time doing is productive, nor will it produce the results you want.
In this video I explain how Pareto’s principle is at work in your business right now and how you can use the simple concept to work less and accomplish more – specifically how you can increase the growth rate of your e-commerce business without sacrificing your work/life balance.
The key really is to shift the 80/20 balance in regards to tactics (day-to-day tasks that you can pay someone to do) versus strategy (the ideas to increase revenue that will grow your business). If you can shift from the typical 80% of time on tactics and 20% of time on strategy to 20% of time on tactics and 80% of time on strategy, then you can quite easily double the growth of your business in 2011.
Stepping back from the day-to-day and asking yourself as a business owner “where do I want to take this business and why?” is also one of the key questions you have to ask if you’re going to use Pareto’s principle to grow.
Millions of people make new years resolutions on December 31st every year. As a smart business owner you can create a win-win situation where you sell more products by catering to the needs of people looking to stick with their new years resolutions. In this video I’ll show you how with three clear examples of how new years resolutions can help sell more:
Even if you don’t sell any of these products, the ideas will still hold true for your business and can easily boost your sales by 50% or more in January.