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Surviving CyberMonday: Lessons from the mistakes retailers make on Black Friday

The trend over the last few years has been clear more and more people are leaning towards Cyber Monday sales than they do towards Black Friday sales. Why? I’m sure not getting trampled to death in an insane Black Friday stampede is up there at the top. But whatever the reasons are the numbers are unmistakable. Adobe predicts that the Cyber Monday sales for 2013 will be over 2 Billion USD ($2.270B) that is half a billion over the projected sales estimations for Black Friday($1.628B).

So what can eCommerce stores learn from their brick and mortar counterparts who’ve been running Black Friday sales for decades now? Neilsen published an article earlier this week on the top mistakes most retailers do on Black Friday. For those of you who haven’t read the article you’ll find it here. Here’s our thoughts on a few of them.

Sticking to traditional categories

Its fairly easy to commit this mistake, after all most eCommerce stores sell products that are restricted to a certain category or vertical. One way to break out of this mould is to offer combo deals. You could offer a logical combination to something that you already sell, say you sell just apparel you could throw in a few shoes as well just to complete someone’s wardrobe. You could also prevent your customers going elsewhere for the same thing.

Leaving a bad first impression and Not having door-buster merchandise in stock

Getting on a site after days of anticipation only to find that Flat Screen TV you were really hoping to get is no longer in stock is an impression shattering bummer. Guaranteeing availability on products for a certain amount of time is a great way to create a good first impression with the shoppers on your eCommerce store. Personalization is also a great way to create a good first impression say a personalized landing page based on search queries.

Missing loyalty opportunities

Cyber monday typically brings about a lot of new customers to most sites and in effect gives you an opportunity at creating a new base of fans, Creating some form of a subscription list with the promise of more deals to come is a great way to get people interested. Creating customized deals for existing loyal customers will not only increase your chances at keeping them happy and buying, it will also give the newer customers something to look forward to.

A perfect example of this is Airline loyalty programs, all the publicized and rumoured benefits of their loyalty programs usually act as an incentive for the existing customer base to stay loyal and also gives the newer customers something to aspire towards .

No sense of urgency

The Neilsen article talks about how customers have very little patience for uninformed associates, understaffed checkouts and the like. This problem gets amplified online, the easy availability of alternatives results in rather low attention span and a slow site, or a page crash right in the middle of a checkout isn’t going to do you any favors.

Not measuring your objectives and Not scouting the competition

Well hey while you are here MineWhat can definitely help you with this :).

click here for a quick report on how your store is doing over the holidays for free.

Great product photography: A how to guide for ecommerce stores

Great product photography helps your products sell, It isn’t rocket science, product photographs are often the only way customers get to interact with the product before a purchase. There’s a whole lot of agencies that help ecommerce stores to do just this, but what if you want to do all the work by yourself. Here’s a quick guide to all you need to know to get started. Do note that we are not going to be geeking out on what aperture size is best or whether Halogen Lights or Tungsten Lights are better. These are quick guidelines for someone getting started. If you would like us to cover any specific issue in more detail, do let us know in the comment section below.

Hire an agency

Yes!!! photography is often time consuming and can be quite expensive. If you are a small team and you think your time would be better spent doing other things, find someone else to do it for you. If you decide to take the plunge and do it yourself then read on.

The right gear

The right gear is going to have quite an effect on your product photography. There’s a lot written on this subject elsewhere, so we’ll keep it brief.

Cameras:- From mobile phones to the Canon EOS 5D MK III there’s a whole world of options out there. While a more expensive camera would usually give you more features and greater image quality, the added image quality wouldn’t really make much of a difference unless you need very large images. The Canon Rebel T3i, Nikon D3200, Canon Rebel SL1 and the Pentax K-500 are some great cameras if you are on a budget. Of course you can still choose to whip out your iPhone and start clicking right away and hey the Nokia Lumia 1020 seems like a great device too if you are going to use your mobile phone. For a more comprehensive list of the cameras available and their features click here

Lighting:- If you going to use artificial lighting for your product photography you might have to often look beyond your on-camera flash alone. Usually a few strobe lights, some umbrellas and a basic lighting tent should be enough to get you started. If you are of a DIY bent of mind you can find some interesting resources on strobe lights here and here.

Lenses:- Pick a lens based on what you need. The simple rule with lenses is that the longer the focal length of the lens the more distant objects you can photograph, a 50mm lens should be enough for most basic product photography needs. If you can, set up a tripod and take the pictures from a short distance away using a lens with a higher focal length as products look a little weird when photographed from up close.

Lighting

As most photographers will tell you, good lighting is a huge deal with product photography. While natural light photographs can be really amazing when done well, most product photographs often use artificial light. One easy way to ensure consistent lighting is to set up a lighting tent. You can purchase one of these for around $100 or so. You could also very easily build one for yourself with a box, some white fabric, Thick paper and a lighting source(daylight lamps will do in a pinch). Simply cut away the sides and the top of the box, glue some fabric on, line the back of the box with some thick paper of some light color, preferably white and you are good to go.

If you are going to be including models in your photo shoots then you might need more advanced lighting fixtures including multiple strobes, umbrellas, triggers and more to get good image quality. Read more on lighting fixtures here.

Once you’ve got the lighting set up, click away, experiment until you find something that you are happy with, do ensure that you have consistent exposure on your photographs. Shadows while often detrimental to an image can sometimes give an interesting 3D effect to photos, again, experiment and find out something that works for you.

Show some scale

Its hard to get a handle on how big or small a product is in real life unless you have a frame of reference. Do remember that not all product photographs need this for example a picture of coffee mug doesn’t really need a frame of reference. Some people leave rulers or other objects in the vicinity of the object for this purpose. Models are a good way of doing this as well.

Photograph a lifestyle

You don’t have to think of product photography as just a means to show off your product features, you can also use it to build a story around your product. A basic example would be, say you are trying to photograph a bottle of wine , you could photograph the bottle of wine on a rustic looking wooden table with a naturally lit vineyard in the background. Often the same activity can also help with giving some sense of scale in the images

Include multiple angles

Include multiple photographs taken from different angles. This will give the shopper a proper idea of what the product looks like and inspire some trust as well. It should also give you the liberty to experiment with some of the images to either build a story around them or introduce some other elements to give a sense of scale in the images.

Touching up images

Products pick up a lot of smudges, dust, dirt etc… during handling and this can reduce the quality of the images significantly. Luckily for those of us who are a little clumsier, there is Photoshop. Photoshop will also fix most other image problems from your photo shoots. On that note stay tuned to this space we will release a quick and easy package of actions for you to do this here soon. Let us know in the comments below if you’d like to us to cover any specific issue in more detail.

#ecommerce photography #product photos #product photography

How to NOT suck at trade shows

Around 36% of B2B marketers feel that trade shows give their companies the highest ROI in comparison with other channels that they use.

Trade shows can be great right? They can help you network, bring in customers, find investors and more but quite often the experience becomes an exercise in futility. The expenses: booths, displays, conveyance, accommodation etc...the ROI on these events sometimes doesn't justify the effort. With a few trade shows going on right now including “shoporg13” and more coming up in the future, we hope you can use some of what we've learnt.

1)Find the right trade show

Start with finding the right trade show for you to attend, there’s quite a few of them all year round and ending up at a wrong event would be a giant waste of money and effort. Work backwards on this one, find out how many of your target customers are likely to attend any event and then take a decision on which one to go to. Some good eCommerce trade shows are the Internet Retailer Conference + Exhibition and shop.org’s annual summit.

Once you know which event you are going to attend, you then need to take a decision on whether you want to go as an attendee or if you are going to set up a booth at the event. Setting up a booth is generally more expensive. Do remember that while going as an attendee will still give you ample opportunities to network, setting up a booth will give you much more in networking possibilities, attendee attention and more

2)Tell people you are going to be there

Getting some attention before the event is priceless. Start with finding out the people/companies that are likely to be at the event. Prepare a list of your targets among them and reach out to them on linkedin or elsewhere and try to set up plans to meet at the event, this will be especially useful if you plan on going as an attendee and want to network.

If you are setting up a booth at the trade show, generating some early interest will definitely help in increasing the number of footfalls to your booth. Trending hashtags on the event are a great way to drum up some interest. While doing that make sure you give a clear idea of what attendees can expect from you. Here’s what we would do.

3)Generate chatter, grab some eyeballs

In most trade shows you are going to competing with over a thousand other companies for some attention. We’ve found that having a fun, engaging product video running in a loop on a display is a great way to grab the attention of people in the vicinity.

Using give-aways can also help in creating interest. Neil Patel, the founder of Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics talks about a great example of Omniture using themed give-aways to generate buzz at a conference.

Location can mean everything for a booth, of course the prime spots are going to be more expensive, be a little creative, study the floor plan and pick up spots that people have to take to get to lunch or the refreshments section.

4)Adapt and deliver your message

Start with some research(pre-event) into the needs of the brands/people likely to be there. Use this to create different versions of the message you’d like to convey. Do ensure that you are building up on your pre-event efforts to generate interest.

Once you’ve managed to get someone’s attention or you have people in your booth, ask them questions on problems they face, adapt your message and give them answers that will solve that.

5)Leave something behind

Most attendees at a trade show are likely to meet more companies/people than they can possibly remember, make it easier for them to do so, leave something behind.

Our visiting cards have a 4-word description of what we do on the back so anyone who takes one of them can easily find out what we do without having to do any research.

Leave a simple, visually appealing one-page document on your company with clear descriptions of the problem you solve.

So what do you folks think? How do you prepare for trade shows? Do let us know in the comments section below.

Using Google Tag Manager: A How To Guide For Ecommerce Stores

Most of us have atleast a few script tags integrated into our websites. One rarely does the trick right? but with the added value that each of these scripts bring comes the added trouble of having to manage each and everyone of them. How often have you had to pull in a webmaster to check up a script integration gone wrong! Luckily for the rest of us mortals(read non tech marketers) Google in its kindness decided to give us an amazing tool to do just that: Tag Manager. Here’s some tips/tricks we use that you might find useful. Let us know what you think.

Installing custom “non-google” scripts in google tag manager

Once you have created an account you will be asked to create a container. What the container does is, it holds any of the other tags you choose to add and it ensures all the tags you add don't slow down your webpage. You’ll find a few helpful tags like the AdSense tracker, Google Analytics etc...already there by default. If you wish to add a custom script that’ll require a few extra steps

Choose “Custom HTML Tag” from the drop down list. and then write or copy and paste code as required

Set rules according to what you’d like the script tag to track (example: you want Google Analytics to track all your webpages then you select the pages rule)

Save your work as a version and publish when you are satisfied with the preview.

You can also choose to debug the script code with the “preview & debug” option.

Tracking in page objects(Preview Panes, Quick-look Panes etc..) with google tag manager

Sometimes a simple “all pages” rule might not be enough if you have any objects within a page that don’t lead to a URL change on clicking. Ecommerce stores have a few of those: product previews and so on.

Google lets you track these with a special “event” rule.

Before you can track these you will have to write a trigger point on your website for the what you want to track, lets say clicks on a “preview pane”. It should look something like this

Once you’ve done that Choose the “{{event}}" option from the rule creation interface and create a rule pointing to the trigger point you just defined (example: {{events}} equals previewpaneclick)

Now here’s the interesting bit once you’ve defined this trigger point once you can use it to connect to multiple tags as opposed to just writing the same code over and over each time, simply use the trigger point to create a firing rule for each of the scripts

Tracking flash objects with google tag manager

You can track videos the same way you track other events just write a trigger point as described above and then use that to create another rule on Google Tag Manager.

Are there any other workarounds that you use?, let us know. If you’d like us to cover any of the topics talked about here in more detail, just leave a comment saying so.

We're Open For Business

MINEWHAT’s OPEN FOR BUSINESS!!!!

And now we have a sudden urge to analyse our long, eventful and rewarding journey to get here. Your initial team can make or break you, we lucked out :). The MineWhat crew has taken on projects ranging from voice acting assignments, feature animation to managing multiple cluster servers and has come out with flying colors.

We started with the simple idea that ecommerce could be a bit more of a fun experience, then came the grind, the long hours and the meetings, oh MAN! the meetings, all so we could get our research done so we knew we were building something useful.

The market is an honest mentor and sure enough we had to pick up some lessons real quick. One of the most important lessons we’ve learnt is to evolve and differentiate. Given that the industry is constantly evolving we’ve been on our toes to stay on top of it all and create a unique, useful analytics tool that’s tailor-made for online stores with a good product-market fit.

To wrap this up here’s to the future, startups, technology and success!!! .

#minewhat #ecommerce #analytics

Marketing, Fishing and Startups

Let me start with yet another Marketing and Fishing analogy. Marketing is a lot like throwing a hook into a stream and hoping with every ounce of your soul that something takes. Of course you know which fish you are after, you know what bait is likely to be more appealing and more, but there’s only so much you can control. Marketing at a startup is even harder as you don’t often have the luxury of extensive research, pilot studies and so on. Here's some of what we learned through it all.

Targeting

We always try to sell to our worst critic. That way we get to ensure a strong customer acquisition focus to everything we say or do. Start with the assumption that most people are looking for an excuse to leave or drop out and do the best you to ensure they don’t find one.

Build Castles In The Air

Well just a tiny bit of an amendment to that: Build all the castles you want, just ensure that you’ve atleast got the bricks you need. Getting an early start with the marketing efforts while the product is still in the works is usually a great advantage, especially if you need some hype to increase your visibility. Just don’t go overboard with it and market something you don’t intend to build

The Knowledge Curse

Marketing at its core about getting a message out to a target group of people, but it doesn’t stop there. Like every good marketer knows, the interesting bit is what happens to the message as it spreads on. A simple enough message might be perceived very differently by two people. At MineWhat, we regularly pull in outsiders to take a look at what we do and very what we think is amazing copy or a great idea usually elicits totally unexpected and often insightful observations that we would have never thought of.

Perfection Is A Myth There’s always something else you can add or change, the trick lies in knowing when to stop. Something that has worked quite well for us is to give out previews to small groups of people and use their feedback to make the necessary corrections and then go live as opposed to going round and round with changes and even more changes.

#Minewhat #marketing and fishing #marketing fishing #marketing analogy #startup marketing #startupmarketing

If you want to make your dreams come true, wake up!!

Startups are all about dreaming big but you can't stop there.

Analytics for Ecommerce: Page Views vs Event Level vs User Level vs Product Level

So you are probably among the many people who use Analytics tools on your eCommerce site. They are convenient, informative and enable you to offer relevant content to users. Ever wondered how each of them are different. What can they do? What can’t they do?

Analytics tools are usually one of these types.

Page View Analytics

User Level Analytics

Event Level Analytics

Page View Analytics

Page view analytics (Google does this very well) dig into the past to offer reports on what has happened. Metrics such as click thru rates, page views and time spent on site should help with SEO, SEM and other promotional activities. While this is useful it is only indicatory. What happens between clicks? Yes, your users are dropping out but why are they doing so?

Event Level Analytics

Event level Analytics let you do much more (CrazyEgg and Mixpanel are doing some amazing work here). They enable you to understand exactly what your customers are doing instead of just tracking where they go. You can track actions like hovering, Scrolling, custom events and more to understand how users interact with the content on your Online Store.

User Level Analytics

As the name goes these tools offer in-depth analysis of customer behavior at a user level. These are primarily useful for user segmentation, User Lifetime value and more(Check out KISSmetrics).

Product level Analytics

Now if you could push it even further: if you could run a behavioral analytics engine that gives you insights at a product level(i.e) which specific product is the most engaging, which ones haven’t been viewed and suddenly a whole new world of possibilities emerge.

You can optimize your webpages to highlight your best-selling products. You can manage your campaigns better because you know exactly which product a certain demographic is likely to buy. You can manage your inventory better because you know which products are most likely to sell and so much more. A bird’s view of your data will only get you so far in your quest for conversions, opt for product level insights, take a look at MineWhat Inc.

#ecommerce analytics #minewhat #product level metrics #analytics

what we ARE and what we are NOT

Hiya folks

How are you all doing? We’ve been busy as a pack of ants adding bit by small bit to the product, getting closer to our goal of providing intelligent assistance to shoppers and enabling e-retailers to engage their customers.

All through the process we’ve had people ask us questions on what we are and what we aren’t. Thought we’d address some of those here.

a) Why do you think that shoppers would bother to interact with your product?

Let me set the scene, firstly the lack of effective user engagement is a well-documented problem, add to that the fact that most online stores list way more products than what a shopper can effectively sort through, finding what you are looking for becomes a huge problem. Any tool that offers assistance in making shopping easier is in itself a sufficient incentive.

We also understand that some folks like to do things by themselves. With this in mind the product is designed to stay out of the way while letting shoppers know it’s always there if they need assistance.

b) Ok you can manage to keep shoppers engaged. Would you get in the way of my site’s experience?

The Product is designed to avoid exactly that. The assistance widget is not intrusive. It will not get in the way of any user interaction during key stages of the buying cycle.

We’ve built the product with the idea that it would seamlessly integrate into any online store and augment all the cool features there, while providing added value to the shopper.

c) How do you increase conversions?

The product actively observes shopper behavior and uses the understanding gained to keep them engaged and drive them towards a point of purchase with intelligent assistance. There’s also the added benefit of using insights gained during the process to deliver more relevant content through other channels to further increase conversions.

d) Aren’t you just another recommendation Engine?

Nope. Recommendation engines give shoppers product suggestions based on aggregated historical data, we go one step further. What we do is on the lines of an offline shopping assistant. We combine shopper understanding and glyph based interactions with the shopper to provide relevant assistance.

e) So you give me numbers, how is that different from any of the other (free) analytics tools I could use?

The simplest way we could describe what we offer in comparison with some of the other good analytical tools out there is Pre-Purchase Analytics vs. Postmortem Analytics

We believe that offering analytics long after your customers have left your site doesn’t make much sense when you are trying to actively engage and convert them. We provide extensive metrics such as the intent to buy, trending products and most engaging products all based on pre-purchase data so you can still do something about it.

Another key differentiator is that all our metrics focus on what’s happening at a product level instead of click through data and URL based data.

f) I don’t list too many products on my online store, will you still be effective?

Yes, although it would make more sense for you to use the product if you have a fairly decent number (Above a 100 at the least) that your customers can’t effectively sort through them all to make informed decisions.

g) I am an exclusive retailer. Will the product apply in my setup?

The product works well as long as you have something to sell. The parameters of providing assistance might change but the product would still work just the same. The product includes category specific assistance based on expert knowledge as well which could provide added value if you are an exclusive retailer.

h) You have an image of a robot on your site. Are you working on a Chat Bot?

The robot silhouette is meant to signify automated intelligent assistance. We aren’t working on a Chat Bot of any kind. Our product is built to be a hands free intelligent tool providing assistance using shopper understanding and glyph based interactions with the shopper much like a human sales assistant would.

i) Do you sell beer?

We wish! We’d sure be glad to buy you one though if you do agree to buy the product.

#what we are #concept #minewhat #misconceptions #beer

With Brad Feld at Startup Arkansas Event. Had an insightful office hour discussion. The chair next was for Ram :)

#brad feld #officehour

UX designer, who cares about the interactions , sits inside user brain.

#UX

Minewhat's data nerd, data around him.

#data nerd

Minewhat’s Visual designer and frontend developer. They are wired.

#visual developer #frontend developer

eSparks 2013 takeaways

We have got good feedback from business development and marketing team members of top eCommerce companies of India.

Top take aways for our automatic assistance product & predictive analytics

1) Assistance will differ for every product, every category. Most users need specific assistance based on their need. For example: assistance for buying TV is different from buying cloth. Importance of a retail product feature varies based on geography of user, category of product, purpose of usage.

2) Three important data points any eCommerce company looks for 1) who comes to the website (persona) 2) why they have come 3) what is their experience on the website

3) We need to add more data points apart from user behavior on the website like reviews, forums , curation.

We are iterating faster to improve the product and best fit the market needs. We are open for your feedback and suggestion. Please write to [email protected]

#esparks #2013 #feedback #minewhat #brochure

MineWhat latest BETA offer

Signup now, our latest brochure designed for eSparks event.

#esparks #minewhat #brochure #beta #free

MineWhat meets Joe Gebbia

MineWhat listened to what Joe Gebbia had to say about AirBnB, Entrepreneurship and the trough of sorrows. His story about the initial phases of AirBnB was something that sounded exactly like ours . This was a good sign and we are happy about that.

The take away's from an hour long meetup were plenty. Let's make an analogy. We are extremely passionate about the problem we are solving. We are talking to the customers. We are not sitting in an Australian office because we know that our initial customers are in the US of A. We are sitting right there and talking to our customers day in and day out. The best part is that the customers themselves are coming up with amazing ideas and we are heading in an amazing direction. One thing Joe focused on was waiting for the right time to let the product meet its market. AirBnB wouldn't have been a success had it launched back in 90's. We feel the e-market is blooming and it's quite a good time to market our product. We are hearing the gears clicking and hopefully, investors are too.

Joe took questions from audience and a guy wanted to know how he managed to bring AirBnB in limelight when Craigslist was the goto website for every need. He answered that with 3 words. Design is important. We are design fanatics. We have a Visual Designer who has worked with the God, Rajnikanth for his several movies.

We are still developing from the ground up. "Correct and continue" is the mantra we abide by as well. We want to make the customers happy and hopefully, that will give us a good word of mouth marketing as well. We are connecting the dots of opportunity with those of the need and are working hard to make our product a huge success.

Design of our first auto assistance screen.

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