Guide to ecommerce

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© 2013 eCommerce Platform Solutions Pty. Ltd.
eCommerce Guide: How to start your online webstore, accept
credit cards and provide users with shopping cart software.
5 Strategies to Run a Successful eCommerce Business
Bob Maydonik, a Vancouver-based entrepreneur and author of The New School
China Trading Secrets (The New School Entreprneur) -- was interviewed for the
Internet Magazine on how to automate a product-based business. He says,
“Building a product-based business is like baking a cake: the right
ingredients need to be added to bake the cake under the right conditions”.
Making the right moves as you launch, run, and grow your eCommerce stores is
just as important. Here are a few tips to keep in mind before launching your
eCommerce business:
1. Go for a strategic launch
Chris Guillebeau, in his book $100 Startup1, dedicates an entire chapter on
“launch”. He insists on building up a buzz or hype around your store launch just
like Hollywood producers build excitement, pre-launch shows, and promotional
tours for their movies. As an eCommerce storeowner, you might not have the
1 Chris Guillebeau http://100startup.com

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budgets that Hollywood movie teams have. Yet, you can launch strategically by
creating buzz around your launch before the actual launch date.
Make some noise on social media; get people to talk about your store or your
products; network with influencers to help gain momentum for your buzz. If
possible, give away a few products for free to test how your products fare.
2. Make an offer they can’t refuse
Think of making offers with your product that’s just hard to refuse like Marlon
Brando and Al Pacino are so famous for saying in The Godfather. Zappos.com –
the popular lifestyle products store (now a part of Amazon.com)– gives a bold,
365 days money –back guarantee. Many businesses now provide services where
money isn’t made until customers or clients make money out of it.
What’s your compelling offer going to look like?
3. Get news worthy
People love news. If anything makes it to the news, it’s considered note-worthy,
timely, and irresistible (that’s how PR agencies stay profitable). How do you
figure in the news? You’ll have think of doing something no one (especially) your
competition has never done before.
Instructure’s Canvas2 – an exciting, new, fully loaded, Open Source LMS
(Learning management System) platform – almost disrupted the LMS industry
(the likes of Moodle, Desire2Learn, and Blackboard LMS) by making its software
open for public use and free for instructors. Revenue for Canvas comes from
implementation and support. Hundreds of leading American Universities,
Colleges, other learning organizations now swear by Canvas.
4. Keep your costs low
Your eCommerce store costs you a few dollars recurring each month. You can
hire help from contractors online. Start your marketing for free and don’t pay a
dime until you actually start making sales.
As you sell products and have a cash flow, you can gradually start spending more
by reinvesting your profits into your eCommerce store for better product image
photography, design, graphics, content, marketing, and customer service. Don’t
spend too much for the store launch. Keep your running expenses low.
Trademark registration, offices, warehouses, and most other expenses can wait.
5. Never take up order fulfillment
2 Instructure.com Canvas http://www.instructure.com

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For an eCommerce store selling physical products, shipping and order
fulfillment is the most time-consuming part. Further, there are too many
variables for entrepreneur to manage when dealing with “transport” or
“logistics”.
Making those frequent runs to the post office, worrying about space for
warehouse, packaging and keeping track of order fulfillment are all a part of
running an eCommerce business. It doesn’t make sense for solo entrepreneurs
or small teams to undertake such an operation. If you have to spend, go for
outsourcing, shipping and order fulfillment to companies such as UPS, DHL, and
Fedex.
What plans do you have for your eCommerce store? How do you plan to run your
business? Please share your ideas, strategies, and thoughts here.
5 Hidden Reasons Your Customers Don’t Complete a Purchase
Customer behavior is complicated. The International Journal for Marketing
Studies published a paper titled An Analysis of Factors Effecting Online Shopping
Behavior of Customers3 which identifies some disadvantages that online
eCommerce stores have such as: a higher perceived risk of shopping from a
website, the lack of engagement of sensory elements such as touch, taste, sight,
smell, or sound.
Add the usual mistakes associated with shopping cart sites to the mix and you
have a host of reasons why customers don’t complete a purchase (or abandon
shopping carts). While you can’t do much about the complexity of consumer
behavior, you still have control over your business.
Here are some of the “not so obvious” reasons why they do it and how to work
your way around these pain points:
A reassuring presence
eCommerce websites can be lonely places for customers. Shopping alone is
drudgery. Not having someone along to help make decisions is not exactly the
kind of shopping experience customers ask for.
Yet, that’s what they get when they hit any eCommerce store. The lack of “live
chat”, “help”, “Chat with us”, “Would you like us to help you decide?” options are
the next best step to actually being there – in person – for every visitor to your
eCommerce store.
3 International Journal for marketing Studies | An Analysis of Factors Effecting
Online Shopping Behavior of Customers
http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijms/article/viewFile/18487/1345
3

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Voice, Tone, Personality (or the lack of it)
Customers want to relate, engage, converse, and learn before getting into the
“decision making mode”. If your eCommerce website only offers dry product
descriptions and insipid cut and paste descriptions, how will customers learn to
trust, like, and engage with your business? How do people relate to you when
you don’t exhibit some sort of personality?
Start a blog. Push your personality (even companies have personalities) through
your blog and social media networks. Make your voice and tone resonate with
customers.
Lack of focus: What do you sell, really?
eCommerce hosting needs focus for many reasons. These include:
• The attention span of an average Internet user is short.
• Offering too many choices makes it difficult to make decisions.
If a customer loses attention because they can’t figure out where your site is
going, online store will lose the sale completely. Make it clear what your
eCommerce site sells and specializes in (use the header for this, perhaps?).
Don’t make me think4 by Steve Krug dwells on the specifics of making web users
take action easily and directly.
Not being available where your customers are
Let’s assume that your potential customers take in visual cues from Pinterest. Do
you have a presence there? What about all those online conversations that take
place around (or about) your product category? Are there forums that you
should be taking part in?
The equation is simple:
4 Sensible.com | Don’t Make Me Think By Steve Krug
http://www.sensible.com/dmmt.html

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Multiple points of contact are important, especially for SMBs. With so many
places for customers to lounge, it’s never been so complicated for marketers! Yet,
the results are worth it.
Customer Support always makes or breaks the deal
Numerous stories exist on “customer support nightmares”. Everyone seems to
know its importance but very few actually make a difference to their customers
using customer service. Lack of an efficient customer service system – even if
you are still being responsive, caring, patient, and quick in other ways -- drains
profits quickly. Customer support can be a great asset to differentiate your
business from competition; it could be the USP that you can count on.
These pointers are not obvious but they hurt. Can you think of any other hidden
realities that could make consumers not buy? Please share them with us; we’d
love to hear from you.
eCommerce Product Descriptions: 4 Tips to Spice Up Your
Content
On the Internet, your word can make you money or send it to your competitor.
Literally. Most eCommerce businesses don’t focus on quality product
descriptions or “content marketing” the way a publishing site or blog does – and
that hurts. Every page of your site is important and the way it reads, aka the
content marketing, has a role in determining what your customers think about
you and how your products sell. The product description itself is vital in giving
listen
Engage
Strike
conversations
Develop trust
• Offer Unbiased
help
• Answer
Questions
Nurture
• Social Media
• Email
Marketing

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your browser an appealing idea of your product. So, do you develop content for
your eCommerce shopping cart that works?
Here are a few tips that can help you:
1. Keep copy crisp, clear, and opinionated
Long-winding, scientific explanations are not meant to sell… to most consumers,
anyway. Avoid run-on sentences like the plague. Keep the words simple, clear,
and opinionated. Back up opinions with facts. Cut out unnecessary details and
keep your descriptions sharp, crisp, and short. Furthermore, since you are
writing for the web, spread out your product descriptions, blogs, and any other
copy into readable sentences. Increase the font size, check web page
backgrounds and match these with the text to ensure readability.
2. Develop copy with your heart
A bland, tasteless product description will not do a good job explaining the
uniqueness of your product. Filling up your pages does not mean you’re doing
justice to the products you are selling. To fill your pages and product description,
try “Lorem Ipsum”. For selling products, create content that resonates with
visitors, speaks to them emotionally, and makes them reach for their preferred
form of payment!
3. Speak to your audience
We have all seen it… web stores with copy that starts off, “one should blah blah
blah…” How impersonal. Speaking to your audience in the third-person is out.
This kind of content disconnects your visitors or potential customers. Try to
write as if you are a happy-go-lucky storeowner talking to your customers. Let
the world know that you are an upbeat store; a company that has fun producing
and/or selling while serving customers.
Inventing and ‘speaking’ to one, single imaginary customer can help you
accomplish this. And yes, read your content out loud so you will hear how it
sounds to your potential online shoppers!
4. Rouse emotions
Customers – like all of us, indeed – are humans. We don’t buy most things using
logic. Don’t clutter your online business pages with logic; spice it up using
emotional triggers instead! Latch onto emotions and make customers feel that
your products (and your business) are on the same emotional level as they are.
Strike a chord and develop relationships that will likely lead to future sales.
How does your website read? Have we missed any tips for developing profit-pulling
content? We’d love to hear your inputs in the comments below.

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Handy SEO Tips For eCommerce Business Owners
Search engines are by far the most frequently used tools for customers looking
for information – that includes product searches, reviews, and piles of other
information that people are looking for every day. Yet, SEO isn’t a one-time
effort; it involves a mix of best practices, strategic publishing, painstaking
research, ongoing analysis, and long-term work.
Your eCommerce store needs as much (if not more) emphasis on Search Engine
Optimization compared to other websites. Here are a few SEO tips that should
serve you well:
• Writing SEO content is an art
Online store owners are caught between the need to use most relevant keywords
in their content and product description and making content worth reading. In
the past, there was a mad rush to plug as many keywords as possible into a 500
word piece. After a series of Google’s Panda updates, however, some of the most
reputed and large retailers and eCommerce stores were hurt due to this keyword
stacking strategy.
Using keywords properly in web copy, blogs, and product description is an art. It
takes great skill, creativity, and pain staking effort to weave in those keywords
into an article or a blog post and still have it read well.
For instance, if you sold Wooden Cabinets and you primarily cater to a local
market anywhere within 50 miles of Orange County, San Diego. How should your
product description read? Here’s a comic example:
“Our Wooden Cabinets are polished, made with maple wood, and built by
craftsmen – the kinds ancient Asian kings would kill after such art is produced to
avoid reproduction of the same kind of artistic genius. Our wooden cabinets and
wardrobes are built to withstand 8 hours of raging fire or incessant flow of water
due to floods (not that Orange County, San Diego, U.S, witnessed any of these
natural catastrophes; we are just saying)”
The keywords (highlighted in bold type) don’t appear in a string, rather they
appear where appropriate. The copy still retains a sense of character and
personality and is clearly written for users and not search engine spiders (aka
Google bots).
Weave in keywords where it makes sense and does justice to the overall product
description or page content. Leave them out if there’s no use for them.
• Keep your offsite SEO distribution relevant

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Guest posting is a great way to establish your credibility, boost your search
ranking, increase traffic to your site, and get precious links pointing back to your
own business. When writing guest blogs, however, be sure to distribute them
well. Analyze the audience of your host’s blog to make sure their target audience
is compatible with your goals. Who reads that blog and why? Is the host blog’s
audience the right consumer for your products, as well?
The same goes for all publishing that you do to promote your store. Keep your
content distribution relevant and targeted. Don’t waste time by guest posting for
an irrelevant blog. Don’t write a post with too many keywords in it. Always aim
to develop great, authoritative content with a dash of well-placed keywords.
• Quality of links ranks over quantity
As you build your eCommerce store and publish more content related to your
products and services, other websites start looking to your content because
bloggers, publishers, and general users deem this content as authoritative and
trust worthy. On the Internet, this “pointing to your website” relates to links
pointing to your website or eCommerce store.
Your shopping cart software platform for ecommerce should understand this
• eCommerce Hosting
• Shopping Cart
• Website Builder
The more links that point to your store, the more Google thinks that your content
is relevant for keywords that your business relates to and hence your website
tends to show up better on Google’s search results.
Before Google’s Panda updates, this was the norm. Today, it’s not as simple as
that.
Jayson DeMers of Search Engine Watch recently interviewed5 Neil Patel, the
founder of Kissmetrics and QuickSprout. In the Interview, Neil swears by the
quality of links pointing back to your website and not the quantity. Today, post
multiple Google Panda updates and Google’s insistence on weeding out bad
content and links from the system, this is true.
Don’t try to build links from random sources. Instead, links that are relevant to
your business are best. Resist the temptation to “buy” your way to build links by
offering to pay, purchasing links from link brokers, and sacrifice quality over
quantity for both content and links that point to your site.
5 SEW | Neil Patel’s Interview with Search Engine Watch
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2235536/SEO-Link-Building-Best-
Practices-for-2013-Interview-with-Neil-Patel

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Keyword research, content development, Onsite SEO, Offsite SEO, Link Building
while weeding out the bad links – that’s a lot of work. Yet, it’s critical to work on
your SEO, the right way.
How does your eCommerce store show up in search? What’s the state of your
search presence? How do you manage your SEO process?
Heads Up: do this for your eCommerce Site in 2013 (and
beyond)
As is true everywhere, things are changing on the web. Google, for instance, is
going to release more Penguin/Panda like updates to make sure it cleans the
web of all sorts of manipulative content, links, and spam.
While there’s a rise in the broad scope of opportunities available for eCommerce
storeowners and other online entrepreneurs, it’s getting tougher for businesses
to advertise on the internet. As for online marketing, some practices are a thing
of the past and new marketing ideas are already in. Starting this year, you’ll have
a lot to work on.
Here are a few of them:
• Aggressive marketing doesn’t work
Rand Fishkin wrote a clairvoyant post titled 10 Predictions for Inbound Marketing
in 20136 and one of those points was that aggressive ads while using PPC (Pay
per Click) ads wouldn’t work. He states:
“Overly aggressive search ads will result in mainstream backlash against
Google”
He further explains that there’ll be a great movement to layer social search over
Google’s traditional search. As a result, Google will do all it can to make Google+
an important inclusion for every marketer to consider. Overall, it’s a trend that’s
hard to miss: multiple channels will affect basic search listings for business. As if
that wasn’t enough, social media will continue to play out various benefits,
extending into SEO, link building, and branding.
What you’ll need to work with these changes, is a strategic approach to online
marketing that combines multi-faceted content development, social media,
search optimization, and a website builder software.
6 SeoMoz.org | 10 Predictions for Inbound Marketing in 2013
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-predictions-for-inbound-marketing-in-2013
by Rand Fishkin

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• Mobile web
In the future (as it’s already happening now), mobile devices will turn out to be a
major access point for consumers. Businesses that don’t invest in responsive
web site design (which helps websites render appropriately on respective
devices) are going to be left out. According to The Next Web7, which alludes to
Morgan Stanley research, Mobile Internet will surpass desktop web by 2014.
One look at Corey Eridon’s blog post 23 Eye-opening Mobile Marketing Stats You
Should Know on HubSpot8, and you’ll see why it’s such a big deal after all.
Build a responsive eCommerce store and blog today. Make sure they render for
the mobile and the tablets exclusively. If possible, develop an app for your
business.
• Adapt to the changing habits of the online shopper
According to a Case Study by Think with Google9, customers conduct at least 10
searches on average before buying anything on the web. Additionally,
approximately 33 days is the time lapse between the initial searches to the sale.
Mobile phone service shoppers who click on sponsored links are at least 2.2
times more likely to buy. First-time shoppers are also 30% more likely to use
search engines in the research process when compared to repeat buyers.
Further, at least 69% of buyers who use mobile take less than a week decide and
make a purchase.
Today, mobile is the new shopping kiosk. Searches fuel purchases online and
offline. Word of mouth happens on the web faster than ever through social
media. And businesses have to engage with buyers and earn their trust.
The world of business is changing. How do you plan to cope up with these
changes to sustain your eCommerce business?
What are your plans for the ever changing world of eCommerce? We’d like to hear
your ideas in the comments below.
7 The Next Web | http://thenextweb.com/apps/2010/04/13/internet-
predictions-morgan-stanley-forget-desktop-mobile-japan-showing/
8 HubSpot | 23 Eye-opening Mobile Marketing Stats You Should Know
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33314/23-Eye-Opening-Mobile-
Marketing-Stats-You-Should-Know.aspx By Corey Eridon
9 Think With Google Case Study
http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/insights/library/studies/the-role-of-search-
in-a-customers-mobile-experience/

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Lessons From eCommerce Success Stories: 5 Lessons To Achieve
Simple Goals
Lessons from real life are powerful – they inspire us, motivate us, make us
rethink our own approach to work, and point us towards our own goals with a
great degree of clarity. In fact, learning from other’s success is actually the corner
stone of education, mentor-mentee relationships, etc. What do entrepreneurs in
eCommerce space have to learn? Turns out that there’s plenty!
Here are some success stories that eCommerce entrepreneurs can learn from:
1. Customer Centric Business from Zappos.com
Everyone knows Zappos.com, whether customers or not. That’s just the kind of
customer-centric business Tony Hsieh – CEO of zappos.com – built. Take a look
at their website and you know why customers love the company. They have a
growing list of 400 pages of raving customer testimonials10 -- they must be doing
something right.
Lesson: Concentrate on reaching customers (and potential customers) in a
variety of positive, memorable ways!
2. Paranoid Customer Service from RackSpace
We all think customer support is a pain to deal with; RackSpace maintains that
they are proud of their “fanatical support”. One look at their support page not
only communicates what they do as a part of customer support, but they also tell
you what they don’t. RackSpace is an open cloud, technology ecommerce hosting
services company. So, they go all out and declare that they don’t “lock in”
technology, encourages open standards, no vendor lock-ins, promises not to
deliver scripted answers, and never gives out a one-size-fits-all solution.
Lesson: Avoid scripted answers – it’s not a good feeling to know that every query
originating on the web leads you to the same answer. Your customer support
function is not a “cost center”; it’s a “profit center”.
3. Speed from Amazon.com
Jeff Bezos didn’t know this when he started Amazon.com, but eventually
amazon.com does what most business bleed to achieve: speed of the website
loading times (no matter how large it grows in size). Amazon.com rarely stalls; it
doesn’t flinch, groan, or take forever to load. Given the number of pages it has
and the product portfolio it maintains, the speed at which amazon.com delivers
while making webstore transactions as smooth as ever is no mean feat.
10 Zappos.com| Customer Testimonials
http://www.zappos.com/testimonial/page/1/start/20

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Lesson: Invest in whatever is needed to make your eCommerce shopping cart
infallible. Downtimes cost you money. Online customers have no patience for
slow websites. If your eCommerce website isn’t quick, it just doesn’t exist (or in
time, it simply won’t).
4. Focus, Elegance, and Simplicity from Apple
Apple products triggered a rush from competitors to make similar products.
Take a peek at any random Apple store (even their physical stores) and it’ll be
hard for you to miss the elegance, the neat layouts, and a laser-like focus on
customer delight. Apple leads its sales process through demonstrations. When
you are on an Apple eCommerce site, it’s hard to get lost.
Lesson: Avoid the temptation to sell way too many products. Don’t choose garish
colors and fonts that are hard to read. Focus on simplicity and elegance
everywhere – from the logo to the layout; from product images to product copy;
from navigation to a resistance-free checkout process.
5. Reach and Scale from eBay.com
Pierre Omidyar started eBay (then known as AuctionWeb) as a simple portal in
1995 to allow anyone to sell and an easy way to buy stuff online rose to a
worldwide online market place with a global customer database of 233 million.
Today, eBay makes sales worth $60 billion per year, according to an Infographic
on Geek Zu11. At least 4 billion visitors throng to eBay on “Computers and
technology” category alone.
Lessons from eBay: You could start as one person and start a phenomenon.
Simple portal can scale up easily provided you build a business with “scaling up”
in mind. If it’s online, there’s nothing stopping your business from going global.
The Power of Transactional Emails: sometimes, it’s the boring
stuff that delivers
Allow us to introduce Bob, the salesman. He is stoic, unyielding, not-so-creative,
plays by the book, and is not exactly the most cheerful member of the team. Yet,
he ends up performing at the top and gets in the most numbers. How does he do
that? What’s his secret?
Apparently, Bob revealed that these opinions about him are only what is seen by
the office staff, his boss, and his colleagues. When he is out and about with his
customers, he is at his best: cheerful, understanding, patient, intelligent,
persistent, and empathetic. He asks the right questions, guides customers
11 Geek Zu | ebay Infographic on http://www.geekzu.com/ebay-stats/

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efficiently, and helps them solve problems (even if that means he has to lose a
sale).
Why are we telling you about Bob? That’s because Bob is just like the silent but
powerful transactional emails. You’d not think much about these emails but they
have the power to pull in revenue. How does that work? Here are a few insights:
Transactional emails can be power packed with potential results
Transactional emails are often interactive and expected. They come in the form
of order confirmations, site notifications, receipts, event reminders, and so on.
Carolyn Nye wrote an apt post on Practical eCommerce12 where she shows
examples that relate to the power of transactional emails. Before she gets to the
examples, however, she offers insights on how triggered emails (transactional
emails) work for S & S Worldwide -- the company she works for -- while
transactional emails only account for 4% of all emails sent by her company, more
than 40% of revenue is generated from these emails alone.
Transactional emails are almost always opened: What do you do with that?
If you’ve been wondering why all this fuss about transactional emails, you’ll only
need to read up Carly Brantz’s post on Send Grid13 titled “Why Transactional
Email is so engaging?” Transactional emails are opened at least 2.5 times more
than regular emails. Customers open transactional emails on a recurring basis
and transaction rates are 8 times higher than bulk emails for order
confirmations.
It’s not an email; it’s an opportunity
Borell and Associates, Inc. and Merkle14 published a report, which claims that
64% of consumers regard transactional emails as valuable communication
pieces from companies, and they almost always open them. What does that mean
for your eCommerce store? Would it mean that you could use the space in an
email for cross-selling, promotions, and drive higher conversions?
Professional doesn’t have to be boring
While transactional emails are valuable and most email subscribers do open
them, it doesn’t mean that these emails should state the minimum, say almost
nothing but thanks and let the opportunity slip into void. You could spice those
12 Practical eCommerce | The Power of Triggered emails (6 Examples)
http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/2431-The-Power-of-Triggered-
Emails-6-Examples-
13 SendGrid | Why Transactional Email is so engaging?
http://blog.sendgrid.com/why-is-transactional-email-so-engaging/
14 Borrell Associates| Research papers
http://www.borrellassociates.com/reports/industrypapers/

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emails, add character, launch dedicated campaigns, cross-sell, or perhaps do
nothing else but promise to follow-up with them.
How do you plan to plug into the power of transactional emails? Please share your
ideas with us.
The 10% Rule For eCommerce Websites: Little Increments,
Sustainable Profits
Entrepreneurs have a need to stay, think, and operate on their feet. The
competition, the self-inflicted pressure to perform better, the challenge of
running a business, and the rapidly changing environment in which
entrepreneurs operate could be cited as reasons. As a result, entrepreneurs tend
to take themselves seriously, which in turn stunts their own progress. It doesn’t
have to be that hard if you are in business. The answer to perform better is what
I call, the “10% improvement rule”.
Here’s how you can apply this rule to run your business better:
Aim For a 10% Improvement Across the Board
Let’s assume that your total sales revenue last year turned out to $10,000.
Instead of worrying about growth, try to aim for 10% more in sales revenue this
year, and then add 10% increments for total sales revenue every year from now
on. A mere 10% increase in revenue is easy to achieve since it’s a modest goal
compared to $100,000 in revenue. Most people forget what little increments in
goals can do.
200 units sold X $30 price per unit = $6000 in revenue
Increase either the price per unit or the number of units sold by 10%, and you get:
220 units sold X $30 price per unit or 200 units sold X $33 price per unit = $6600 in
revenue
This might not seem much, but it amounts to a lot when you trade in enough
volume or when your price point is profitably higher. You may add this principle
to almost any measurable metric while you run your business. You could look at
an incremental 10% reduction in expenses, 10% increase in profits, and much
more.
Focus On Stellar Customer Service
If you have competition, chances are that your customer service function is an
area where you can differentiate. Customer support makes or breaks your

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business, assuming that everything else remains the same. Even companies like
Salesforce.com can’t escape the wrath that follows even a single instance of bad
support. According to a story on Computer World15, Bray International -- a
Houston-based valve manufacturer -- sued Salesforce.com over lack of support.
It might not turn out to be this dramatic for your business, of course. Customers
will choose your competition or just stop doing business with you even if a single
instance of customer support goes wrong. How do you apply the 10% rule for
customer support?
Use metrics: can you increase the overall positive feedback for your customer
support by 10% each quarter? How about trying to reduce the number of missed
support tickets by 10% each month?
Social Listening & Social Media
Social media seems like a vast, chaotic ocean to coast through, and that’s
understandable given that many new entrepreneurs who take to social media
are not sure what they’re dealing with, at first.
As a business, your activity on social media should take a direction. Using clear
metrics will give you a sense of purpose once you take stock of where you are
and where you want to go, based on parameters such as instances of social
mentions, social listening, increase in the number of followers and fans,
measured influence, etc.
Grow your social networks by 10% each month/week/fortnight. What can you
do to get mentioned by others on social media? Since you can measure mentions,
track conversations, can you apply the 10% rule here? You bet.
Website Traffic, and Conversions
Internet marketing is such a big deal is because you can “track” the impact of
your marketing dollars. With online marketing, you can focus and analyze the
number of visits to your online store, effectiveness of every online marketing
channel, your Return on Investments, and how each of your web property helps
with conversions.
Applying the 10% principle is the easiest with your online marketing efforts:
seek to increase click through rates on your PPC ads, banner conversions, email
subscriber growth or opt-in numbers, etc.
How do you think you’ll benefit from the 10% improvement rule? Do you think this
is an easier way to reach your goals than BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goals)?
15 Computer World | Salesforce.com Faces Lawsuit Over Support Service
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9235380/Salesforce.com_faces_laws
uit_over_support_service

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Notes:

Guide to ecommerce

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