Ecommerce Blog

[Video] Positioning Around Your Ideal Customer Profile

Published on July 8th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

It doesn’t matter what you sell – if you don’t know exactly who you’re selling to then you’re leaving money on the table. In this video I discuss how you can create an ideal customer profile and use that to position the products you sell in your e-commerce store to significantly increase your conversion rate.

[Video] Our New Sydney Office Before the Renovations Begin

Published on July 7th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

As you may know, we have an our North American headquarters in Austin, Texas and our engineering office in Sydney, Australia where our developers and founders reside.

As our Sydney team continues to grow, we’ve been on the lookout for a new office. We’ve now found that office and over the next few weeks will be renovating it (or “funkifying” it, as we like to say) with beautiful wooden floors, down lights, a new paint job and a new fit out, a few glass offices, a breakout area and even a gym.

The video above shows the “before” version of our new Sydney office. We’ll post an “after” video in 2-3 weeks when the renovations are complete.

[Video] BigCommerce 6 Trailer (HD)

Published on July 6th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

What do you get when you mix iMovie, Logic Pro, Photoshop and a few too many cans of Pepsi? You end up with a movie trailer for an e-commerce platform, of course! Check it out and take a sneak peek at what’s coming in the next few weeks:

[Video] 3 Tips for Excellent Quality Blog Content

Published on July 1st, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

Building an interesting, helpful, SEO-optimized blog either in a sub folder or as a sub domain off your main website can drive huge amounts of traffic, but what if you don’t like (or aren’t good at) writing? In this video I share three different ways you can still build your blog while avoiding writing.

The first strategy is to use an iPhone or dictaphone to record your voice and then have it transcribed. This is easier for a lot of people than writing because you simply say what comes into your head.

The second is to use a ghost writer or guest bloggers who can contribute content to your blog. Guest writers will ask for attribution so be prepared to link back to their website in exchange for the content.

The third strategy is to simply post news round-ups about the products you sell or the industry you’re in. While not as effective, it’s still content and will keep Google indexing and recrawling your website regularly.

[Video] Your Business Success is Only as Good as Your Communication Skills

Published on June 16th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

In this video I discuss how the way you communicate with employees, customers, partners, suppliers and investors is a direct reflection of the business your business is (or is not) having.

Typically those businesses who are lead by excellent communicators out do their competitors and enjoy more customers, more brand awareness and more success because everyone understands what their goals are and the company as a whole (including its customers) is dedicated to one single goal that everyone is determined to (and rewarded to) accomplish.

[Video] BigCommerce Running on the iPhone

Published on June 4th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

As we prepare to launch BigCommerce 6 I thought it would be a good idea to start sharing as many sneak peeks as we can, so here’s an internal demo video (very, very rough) narrated by myself and Chris B. (our lead engineer) of BigCommerce running on the iPhone (it’s web-based, not an actual application):

[Video] 6 Tips for Running a Successful Contest

Published on June 3rd, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

If you’ve been on our website lately then you’ll know that we’re currently running our $35,000 ecommerce makeover contest which will give one lucky store owner the chance to completely revamp their existing online store and move over to BigCommerce. I’ve already shown you my thought process behind the marketing campaign we’re running for the contest, and now I want to teach you how to run your own contest.

In this video I share 6 tips that will teach you how to run a successful contest. Contests are a great way to drive traffic to your website, increase your brand visibility and most important increase your sales and word-of-mouth marketing using tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

After watching the video above, do you think you’ll launch a contest?

[Video] 6 Tips for Designing a Beautiful Online Store

Published on May 24th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

Arguably the most important aspect of your online store is its design. This means logo, color scheme, layout, load time and positioning relative to your competitors. If you think of sites like Amazon, Zappos, Target, BestBuy and TigerDirect, I’m sure you can recall at least some aspects of their design. They all have beautiful and most important functional designs that aid with the shopping process (and don’t take away from it).

In this video I share six tips to help you design a beautiful online store which will attract customers and increase your conversion rate. If you’re not a designer but are thinking about hiring an ecommerce website designer then this video will help you make the decision.

[Video] The Soft Sell Versus The Hard Sell

Published on May 11th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

In this video I discuss the benefits of using a soft sell (or an educational approach) over a typical hard sell when it comes to reducing your cost per lead and increasing LTV (lifetime value) per customer.

Here at BigCommerce we use a combination of both the soft and hard sell approaches (well, more like a medium sell instead of a hard sell). We use the traditional demo->paid model for new customers and the soft sell (educational) approach to improve existing customer retention rates and reduce attrition (churn).

Using the soft sell approach you can dramatically increase your trust and customer goodwill while reducing your marketing costs, allowing you to attract more customers with a limited marketing budget regardless of what you sell.

[Video] How to Create a Profit Pulling Promotion

Published on May 5th, 2010 by Mitchell Harper

If you’ve been watching my videos for a while you’ll know that I’m not a big fan of competing purely on price. While I do believe price is an important part of any purchasing decision, I believe in promoting the value and benefits of your product over price.

In this video, however, I’m going to share a simple strategy you can use to create a promotion for your online store that will drive repeat customers and word-of-mouth referrals – initially using the loss leader approach but then shifting the focus away from the lowest price once you have the customer in the door. Best of all this idea doesn’t cost anything and will take you just a few hours to implement.

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