Robert 
[UltraVid id=83 ]hi everybody Scott Yoder here with e-commerce marketing 360 talking to senior marketing executive Bobby shell and we’re just going to review some of the main ideas that you want to know about if you’re looking into starting an e-commerce business and developing an e-commerce website so Bobby let’s jump right in kind of a big question with this can anybody get into e-commerce can anybody do this I’d say yeah I think anyone can do this one of my first e-commerce clients he was selling some products out of his garage and now he’s a multi-million dollar business really yeah I think with the right work ethic ecommerce you can definitely do it and why is that what’s making it easier nowadays well nowadays compared to you know say like 10 15 years ago where you had to focus on inbound marketing that you could not quantify and actually figure out like in terms of like ROI how things are working mailers billboards catalogs catalogs some of these words are even foreign at this point to me but building an inbound strategy when you can just target people who are looking for a specific product it’s much more effective okay on that good so I think what a lot of times one of the things we’ve seen is that having a niche is important you can’t just go out and hope to sell shoes against Nike yeah how do you people develop that niche how do they find that marketing space that allows them to be profitable yeah I think when it comes to determining that marketing space one of the big factors is just remaining relevant in people’s minds and one powerful tool is retargeting so whenever you’re on e-commerce you know there’s a there’s a bubble almost with e-commerce where there’s so much room and then there’s so many competitors so some of the things we do is we will focus on inbound paid ads will focus on SEO as well as retargeting bringing customers back that are familiar with your brand but I’m sure something we’ll talk about a little further into this just kind of meeting together and we will email marketing and not other areas and we’ll come back to remarketing a bit even to just stick with us a little bit more in terms of that the product niche the importance of that and how you kind of feel that out what if clients done that it helped like you mentioned the guy with the garage what kind of what kind of thing tends to be successful with this yeah I think the word niche is important and I think a lot of times what it is is people will try to stretch a little too far so I had a gentleman once who sold anything in relation to wheels and tires after the first year we realized wheels was our best option we started getting better supplier costs and then that increased our margin we’re able to create more sales on wheels where tires the margin was a lot smaller and it just wasn’t profitable for us long term to go after that but one thing we can do and I think Apple does well not to go on a rant but they’ll sell you a computer right and then they get you with the accessories and the other items then tied to that to make that experience better like the phone or your charger getting a new charger your iPad so for this for instance a wheel climb selling wheel products will then create email marketing campaigns with just crazy discounts on tires which are typically more like replace more often but also anything like thinking about the repeat purchases and thinking about the lifetime value of a customer mmm is going to be your best option so there’s still a lot of follow-up obviously yeah after after you sold somebody the first that’s just the beginning of the journey that’s the beginning of the relationship yeah and then from there we have a journey a lot going on ok good so talk a little bit about some of the platforms that exist I know we work with big commerce Shopify there’s a lot of options out there obviously when it comes to e-commerce Amazon is big eBay how can somebody getting the e-commerce kind of get a grasp on what the best tools are one of the biggest things I would say is like you said shopify bigcommerce eBay Amazon Amazon’s a big player obviously they’ve been making people millions for years and the last couple years have had a lot of e-commerce guys who have been literally buying homes living their dream come to a bit of a halt due to map pricing and distribution channels changing things like that so big commerce and Shopify are great options Amazon becoming less of an option because you are now are not leveraging your and you’re leveraging Amazon you don’t have as much pull with your customer because they’re relying on your Amazon store for those repeat purchases it’s all about repeat purchases and building that relationship with a customer so the Commerce and Shopify are great examples is also Magento and many others but those are two common ones so with for example like a big commerce site that’s your website that’s your store I’m like Amazon or Ebay you really have the most control over the sale over the relationship yeah yeah so with Amazon and eBay retargeting is huge you know certain percentage customers are going to buy from you the first time we’ve started to dial that into 90 plus percent of customers nine out of ten people are not going to buy from you we’re sensitive people you know like we’re looking for the best price I’m not getting free shipping how quick is it getting here even with that being said so people do rely on Amazon a lot but with some of these tighter Amazon regulations we’re becoming more reliant on creating our own brand over the last few years which you can do over your own website and then with that being said now you have retargeting lists which you can’t always leverage on Amazon and eBay so now you’re people across the web whenever they’re on whether com Pandora com they’re seeing your brand and not seeing an Amazon ad which builds a lot for your identity that’s awesome is it is it complicated in terms of managing the inventory the transactions having it tied into a merchant account and the payment process I know people who are just starting out with this are always looking you know how do i how do I get all of this to take place how do these tools work is some of it automated what do you guys do yeah in terms of automating that bigcommerce has some awesome options I mentioned a wheeeeel client earlier the gentleman who sells wheels and he automates a lot through big Commerce where when he needs to fulfill an order or contact a customer he has it automated to his email or to whatever platform he’s using so that’s very helpful Amazon and eBay obviously have that infrastructure but in terms of building your own brand which is most important at the end of the day we have options just to allow you to scale that infrastructure of your own business and you can do that successfully mm-hmm yeah good talk a little bit if you will about how customers find these websites then so you’ve got the the underlying idea of search marketing there’s paid search there’s organic search how do you guide clients into using those avenues the best yeah a good bit of search is done over Google so we’ll use Google Shopping which is the most cost effective option at the beginning being able to set bids on Google Shopping and if you’re not familiar with Google shopping you know you type in pink shoes on Google you’re going to see four to eight options in the top right of your web browser that’s Google Shopping a lot of times the clicks there can be 50 to 200 percent cheaper so you can really manage your cost make your dollar stretch further to reach more customers so that you can build this retargeting list which follows users around the web so you can show your advertisements to them when they leave your site so it’s a great way to build brand recognition and to get more visibility for yourself now outside of the Google Shopping ads one thing that supports that performance that’s not very costly are text ads in the organic ranking so optimizing your on-site experience creating a better on-site experience for customers that retains them on your site and keeps them there longer Google views that is incredibly positive they’ll actually rank you higher and then now with this feedback we’re getting good excited experience we’re creating an easier experience for our customers right now it’s easier for them to checkout and all of that correlates to just your success and so that’s another thing where the niche comes in as well right if you have a little bit more of a niche market you’re able to optimize for those keywords and have a better chance to be found obviously if you just have some general term it’s going to be much harder to rank for that type of thing yeah yeah that is so in terms of e-commerce like if we’re just talking about a product like wheels and tires that’s very broad there’s so many models you might have a niche product that’s just twelve less products 20 or less products where you only have so many options with that it can be challenging in terms of scaling as far as organic and e-commerce because you don’t have 2,000 options for Google to decipher you only have these twelve so that’s whenever excuse me whenever we’re talking about having less products that’s where optimization comes becomes that more important because now you need to be more visible due to you having a lack of inventory so there’s different approaches for each one we might dive in that later but I know segue into that simple question does it someone with an e-commerce site need to blog they need a blog I’m selling tires do I need to blog about tires yeah yeah I think blogging social media all these things that directly relate to that organic component is incredibly important especially selling tires like for my guy who sells tires like we’re mostly tires and wheels we’re focusing on younger guys typically in between the age of 25 and 45 and this isn’t one side in particular I’m talking about but a lot of the times we’re trying to target this group of people so there’s a certain voice we want to have and our blogging makes us discoverable for that and obviously connects with our customer so that we can reach their interests what they’re into you know so I think it’s very important to have a blogging but also a social component tied to your niche business so that ties into interests that ties into information which then leads into selling ultimately yeah ok good what about the importance of all of this being able to take place on my phone the mobile mark part of the marketing yeah mobile is huge we talked about in a previous video how Mobile has exceeded desktop in terms of search in 10 different countries so the mobile experience number one typically generates that interaction with a customer we are we also talked before about a bounce bounce rate we’re 90 plus percent of customers do not close the first time so one thing Google is identified in the last few years are called micro moments and to make that more digestible just for us as people is we always hear this joke about us being zombies always on our phone right well we’re always on our phones because we’re always digesting these in bits of information in any moment you know people are texting and driving people are in the store looking at prices we’re at work on lunch break trying to figure out the best solution say for our family situation so these micro moments that are happening throughout the day ultimately lead to that buying decision so it’s very important to be mobile optimized and to good mobile strategy that way were discoverable and then ultimately make the dollar from the customer and get them the best solution they need that is HUGE I know an example of the micro moment that I’ve seen from Google is somebody’s in their bathroom they’re drying their hair all of a sudden their hairdryer goes on the fritz what happens they can immediately right there and then start shopping for a new hair dryer start comparing hair dryers start comparing prices that’s the the kind of arena that you’re in with e-commerce yeah talk a little bit about website design how that works in terms of kind of building trust and getting people to commit to a purchase and then also we’ll talk a little bit about some of the data that we look at to help improve performance on the website yeah absolutely um so one thing I’ve been on the web since I was a kid so I’ll kind of tap into what I see like I saw sites 20 years ago where they have Comic Sans which is a very playful font very childish font versus nowadays where these more like serif sans serif fonts that are cleaner easier to read especially for say a more elderly I on all these different devices but one thing is look and professional right on that first interaction we’re talking about micro moments these are what builds trust to bring people back so I think having a good experience where it’s easy to read no matter your age it’s easy to go through your site and find what you need with the correct call to actions and just guidance into what you’re trying to find right so one thing we are responsible for is your landing page that’s ultimately whenever you click an ad or a page on the web that’s where you end up we want that page to be quality so that side experience is ultimately like your very first impression with a brand new just acquaintances or potential partner in business good so tools like marketing 360 Google Analytics they gather a lot of data on how people behave on your website what are a few of the key things that you look at that you can recognize and then act on to help improve sales on an e-commerce website yeah so one of the big things people just tend to talk about is the bounce rate mmm like when someone balances and I like to make the analogy of a basketball you just throw a basketball on the ground it’s going to balance bat so a bounce rate has to do with how sticky is your website you know when someone hits your site do they stick or do they just bounce away so bounce then is somebody goes on they are only on one page on the site and they exit the site right yeah that’s what it bounces yes what would what would create a balance is you do not interact and click into another page so you land on that page you don’t click anything and then you just leave you didn’t find anything relative to your needs you left so in terms of site experience that’s one of the biggest metrics next would be you know if we’re moving past the balance obviously we’ve gotten that first interaction right so what’s next important is how many pages deeper customers diving so from there we can start to see where people go and then if they’re falling off at that point say they’re engaging with 3 + 4 + pages and they’re still falling off there’s some issue to be solved in terms of are we getting people are we that discoverable on site now that we have them are they finding what they need uh-huh good yeah so obviously confusion is going to kill sales what types of promotions call to action some of those short bits of content have you found really work well to encourage people to buy our e-commerce site so with e-commerce it’s all dependent on the market we’ve had customers where we can do the pop-up right when you enter the site you can get a free coupon that can be helpful some people it’s annoying it’s all dependent on that business sometimes this when you exit the site you want to give them a coupon then to retain them but also in terms of that the retargeting which is very effective bringing customers back now that they’re aware of your business’s cost can be two-thirds less so plainly if you haven’t lost them right you can still remark it to them so that they’ll see your advertisements your yeah first do you recommend free shipping usually is that a question Scott yeah if you don’t have free shipping people are going to ignore you and this is one of the battles we face every day because honestly adding free shipping to the scope of a business can be hard you have your prices defined you have your shipping so now whenever we add free shipping a lot of times it is actually adjusting your cost in your shipping model to fit that in that way you don’t cannibalize your own sales but the customer has this perceived value of free shipping that’s incredibly value yeah that’s a good way to put it definitely talk a little bit about reviews product reviews and how those play a role in influencing buyers on e-commerce Oh baby good reviews oh my gosh it’s like if you’ve ever been on a date I’ve been on a blind date you you’re obviously set up with a good review right that can help close this deal or not but my whole theory is you know one thing will do especially for this wheel client I keep referring to we use top-rated local a third party review source to generate reviews build trust not only with people trying to scope out what we do who might have a little deeper just their nitpicky right like some people do their research some people buy immediately when people do research we want to do our due diligence upfront to reflect the quality our brand does we can do that so the reviews are huge on site but also you know some folks especially when your brand grows and you’re getting twenty thirty hundred thousand visitors a month people are going to type in your brand name and the word reviews online and whenever you’re visible and you’re showing there with these great experiences people will then come directly back buy from you and that closes the deal so that kind of reiterates it’s never on the first interaction people are buying with you they’re doing price research and review research it’s huge and the platforms like big commerce and Shopify have tools to gather reviews and place reviews on the product pages as well right so the your previous customers who bought a particular product can write up a review and then you can place it there to have a plot hopefully positive review that new buyers can see yeah you’re absolutely big commerce and Shopify have reviews on the products and one thing that’s important also are just overall brand reviews so having reviews on the actual page is very impactful for that individual product sale but a lot of times we’ll find customers actually researching the brand name and looking for reviews on that so that’s why we also leverage top-rated local and the brand reviews at the same time good can you talk just a little bit about the actual web design process like here at marketing 360 what are some of the initial steps and how long does it take people are often you know wondering that just a little bit about how we develop ecommerce sites on the big commerce shop find other platforms yeah yes so we have about 10 to 12 different designs that we’ve utilized over the last six years or so and they’ve been through many iterations of what’s going to be best right because we’re always trying to work on what’s best for the customers experience you know so one of the things we’ve done is we’ve created 8 to 10 12 designs total that create the best user experience on site for e-commerce in terms of starting at the homepage dialing into your product and then lastly you know you found the products you wanted the cart the checkout an e-commerce website design typically is we have a site or a series of questions and that leads us into how we’re going to design the site the logo the colors from there it’s about 10 to 15 business days total so less than three weeks and the sites typically live that’s awesome um how much does it cost how much does it cost to market an e-commerce website yeah um you know we we obviously want to put you in a plan that’s gonna make you successful we don’t want to give you too high of a budget or too low where it’s just money lingering not enough to make you successful but minimum you know four or five years ago we could get someone started on a five hundred six hundred dollar plan monthly just being invested in your business in the last few years people are spending more money realizing the value of the Google advertising driving inbound business and depending on the competition I assume as well yeah yeah the competition is one of the biggest components that actually determine how much you need to invest but yeah over time you know people are obviously investing more so there’s more competition like you said but ultimately we want to do research on the competition see what they’re investing that way we can actually make you competitive in that space mm-hmm and how long does it take the once that everything gets set up the marketing gets turned on how long does it take before I can start seeing some sales and start making some money yeah sales can be pretty immediate with paid ads you can have them the same day that’s why we do set up Google Shopping the text ads all these components on the front page but also that retargeting list that will grow for as long as you set that list up for you could we could build multiple lists for a year or for shorter amounts of time how long until it really kind of starts to peak till all this comes together you know I’ve had folks where within one month we have complete sales a lot of that is dependent on the customer service a lot of phone calls are happening nowadays on mobile sometimes it can take a month or two but typically within three to four months you’re getting really good results and by month six is whenever everything’s working say you have a brand new site you’ve never done SEO you know what is SEO SEO is starting to make a move and now your paid ads are being much more effective and they’re actually collaboratively working to create more sales I think the biggest thing is making sure you leverage every opportunity for your success from paid ads organic to remarketing to reviews to just your social media presence so I just encourage everyone attack all of those with full force and you will be successful I can promise you that thanks everybody I encourage you to browse our site check out some of the tools on e-commerce marketing 360 you can see the platform you can see some of the different search strategies and get a feel for how we can help you be successful Bobby last thing to get that passion going get the blood flowing and really think about getting out there and being successful what song would you recommend somebody jam to really get in the state of mind I would say Steppenwolf born to be wild because you got to be wild about what you’re doing in order to be successful great that’s embedded at the bottom of this page and a little bit more information thanks for watching
