Archive for the ‘Magento’ Category
Why Magento? Why With Classy Llama Studios?
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010
Following is an excerpt from an e-mail I sent to a client that was considering building an eCommerce site from scratch and couldn’t understand the cost of building an effective eCommerce site on Magento considering it was “out-of-the-box” functional…
First, Magento is a primarily an eCommerce platform that secondarily is plug-and-play “out-of-the-box.” What that means is that thousands of development hours have been committed to generate the core functionality of Magento. The fact that you can plug-and-play Magento to be a functional shopping cart is an added perk that opens up new opportunities. To build an eCommerce platform that offers all of the functionality that Magento does would cost a minimum $15 million to recreate… and you wouldn’t even have the advantages that come along with it being an open-source application. So building something from scratch will undoubtedly be massively inferior.
Second, to call what we do “design” is over-simplifying the reality. Magento is a powerful foundation, but we build the house on top of that foundation that specifically accomplishes your goals. This process consists of the initial consultation and exploration, wherein we understand your business and clarify your business goals, the UI design, wherein we gather, organize, and structure the content and functionality in such a way that drives conversions most effectively (a process that doesn’t end with the build, of course), the graphic design, wherein we make the UI beautiful, consistent, and attractive to the target audience/s, which further drives conversions. Then we take the graphic design and build it to interface correctly on the Magento platform and with web browsers. Then we train you and your team to manage the Magento admin effectively so that you aren’t bound by a “webmaster” to add products, change images, descriptions, videos, launch promotions, give discounts, change pricing, and on and on and on. We want you to be in control of your e-commerce site as much as possible.
Third, when we build the site, we do so cognizant of potential future developments to ensure we don’t box in your options. We build everything using SVN, which is the first line of defense against anything subpar making it live. The second line of defense is our staging server, which gives us the closest thing to a live environment without it being publicly available. (Read about our Three Lines of Development Defense)
Much of your value is already received by the time we’ve generated the graphic design. The plans generated to build the house are critical to the ultimate success of the construction. The construction needs to be quality, but there is a lot more competition in the ability to build a house than to design the house to accomplish the goals of the owners. Don’t get me wrong; we build very, very well. But without sharp, intelligent design, building is worthless. You’re an eCommerce firm. You need an eCommerce business, not a well-coded website. We can talk more about this in our next dialogue, but I hope that provides you with some perspective on why the cost can be so high. We do what we do very well, and we help businesses experience more success than they could achieve without us. That’s what we’re offering you. (Read more about our Magento design approach)
Posted in Magento | 3 Comments »
The Evaluation Process: An Introduction to the Perceived Cost/Benefit Relationship
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010
Before I drill down into the actual Value Presentation, it is important to have a complete understanding of the relationship between Perceived Value and Perceived Cost, which I briefly mentioned in the previous article on Traffic Quality.
We are evaluating things all the time. We don’t even recognize much of the evaluation that takes place. It’s usually automatic, subconscious.
This process of evaluation can be broken down into the rising and falling of two perceptions: Perceived Cost and Perceived Benefit. To be clear, the cost of something is not just money. Cost is the receipt of something negative or the release of something positive whereas Benefit is the release of something negative or the receipt of something positive. When you buy insurance, you give up something positive (your money, your mental energy to think through all the insurance options, and your time talking to the pesky insurance agent), which altogether represents your Cost. How valuable that Cost is to you depends on your perception, which is why Perceived Cost is what truly matters. If you sacrifice the Cost, you lose something negative (a certain degree of risk in your life) and you gain something positive (peace of mind), which altogether is your Benefit. How valuable that is, again, depends on your perception and subjective evaluation of that Benefit. I’m sure the insurance agents reading this are howling at how much I just oversimplified their jobs. My apologies.
This is nothing new, though. This is elementary sales, which is why I’m not going to spend anymore of my or your time regurgitating it. I’ll tell you about something unique.
As I was thinking about these concepts of Perceived Cost and Benefit and the process of evaluation, I didn’t like how intangible it was. I wanted to be able to “see” what that internal process looks like, so I created a graph to represent it.
- Perceived Cost/Benefit Chart: First Impression Phase (Chart Designed by Kevin Kirchner)
Any time a value presentation is made, be it a candy bar in the checkout rack at a grocery store, a pair of earrings online, or a proposal to marry, there is an initial phase when you open your mind “file cabinet” and pull the “folder” associated with whatever value is being presented. As you open this folder, certain things will jump out at you, influencing your initial perceived cost and benefit of the value presented. What is in that folder, what items you pull first, and how much each item affects you depends on two things:
1. Your history with the value presented
2. How it is initially presented
This initial reaction to the value presentation is the “First Impression” Phase of the value presentation, which is discussed in greater detail in the next article in the series.
If, at any point, you determine that continuing to give attention to the value presentation isn’t worth the time and energy required to do so, you direct your attention elsewhere and you close the folder and refile it. This is the act of saying “no” to a transaction. It might be no for now or no never, but for whatever reason, you decide you are not going to complete the transaction. We will delve more deeply into what happens when you refile the corresponding folder, but for now, simply understand that the moment you say “no,” the value presentation is over.
A complete and successful value presentation consists of a few vital constituents:
1. Perceived Benefit Surplus (at which your perceived benefit exceeds your perceived cost)
2. Commitment (at which you decide to commit to the transaction)
3. Transaction (at which you consummate the commitment by giving the cost and receiving the benefit or initiating the contract committing both/all parties to do so)
- You must have a perceived benefit surplus to get the nod from customers.
Calls to action (CTAs) will not succeed if the Point of Perceived Benefit Surplus has been reached. Naturally, visitors will reach that point at different times and for different reasons, which is why it’s typically an effective strategy to give visitors the opportunity to purchase at all times. You never know when they’ll be ready to bite… I mean, buy. However, excessive and glaring CTAs can have a negative effect on a visitor’s perceived benefit as they begin to get the feeling that you’re just trying to sell them on something rather than genuinely build value into their life.
It’s also important to note here that the point at which a visitor makes a commitment to the transaction is not the same point at which they complete the transaction. The time between the commitment and the transaction should be as short and simple as possible. The more complex and time-consuming it is, the more chance the frustration of the transaction process or the “cold feet” effect could keep it from happening. Consider how many wedding engagements do not result in the “sealed deal” of an actual marriage. Have you ever heard of a wedding being called off because of how frustrating the wedding planning process was? That’s precisely the same reason you should make it as easy and quick as possible to go from commitment to transaction. (by the way, I’m not promoting the idea that you should get married the day after you’re engaged to make sure the marriage actually happens… if you’re that uncertain about your future spouse’s commitment, maybe it’s time to slow down and consider NOT sealing the deal. 
)
- The evaluation process doesn’t stop once a purchase is made
It’s very important to realize that people continue to evaluate the object even after the commitment and transaction. Most people consider their business a success if they can get people to pay them money for whatever it is they sell. I think that’s near-sighted. Businesses that are built to last give as much attention to the post-transaction evaluation process as they do to the pre-transaction evaluation process. If you’re just trying to get people to buy your stuff, you’re a con artist. It’s not about building value into their lives. It’s about making money… Had a bit of a soap box moment there.
But even from a purely sustainable basis, you have to think about how your customers/clients will evaluate your offering once they are experiencing it, and even as they reflect on the experience.
Consider the purchase of a candy bar. You are waiting in line at the grocery store. It’s late. You haven’t cooked dinner yet, and you’re hungry. You see that familiar brown-packaged candy bar with the blue letters and the white secondary color, and you hear those familiar words “Hungry? Why wait…” And you grab the candy bar as your perceived benefit rises far above the perceived cost of the nutty, nougatty, caramelly deliciousness. You begin to get impatient because all you want to do is tear off the glossy covering and devour the bar in four equal bites, but your social cost of embarrassment rises above the perceived value of eating first, paying later, so you do not take that action. The line is horrendously long, and as you wait interminably, a new thought suddenly comes to your mind… All those calories will go right to your butt. You know this. Past consumptions of equal quality and deliciousness have proven it. Your brain begins to open up all of the corresponding stigmas associated with gaining weight, and as your mind descends into the depths of the health and social repercussions of partaking in the excellence in your sweating hand, you quickly close that mind folder and tightly squeeze the snack to ensure it cannot escape. This action causes the exterior chocolate covering of the bar to cave in. You’ve damaged the candy bar. Now it’s official. You absolutely cannot put it back now. Your moral fiber rears its head at the thought of switching to an uncrumpled version. The moral cost of such a heinous act is far greater than the 50 cents required to buy it. Your appetite laughs to itself as it has successfully used your moral compass for its own devices…
Have I said enough? I hope you can see how complex a seemingly simple evaluation process can be. And you haven’t even purchased the candy bar yet! What would happen if you got to the checkout lady, and she made a comment about how obese you are and how the candy bar “aint going to help that situation?” Or after the transaction, what would happen if you bit into the candy bar and discovered a grub worm inside? Your actions and perceptions about that candy bar would likely change significantly.
The more you can accurately analyze that process, the better you will be at presenting and delivering value to your customers or clients. As this series progresses, we will break down and analyze each phase of the evaluation process.
Feel free to ask questions and make comments in the comment section. I am very actively involved with comments for these articles, so I will respond!
Posted in Magento | No Comments »
Optimizing Your E-Commerce Conversion Rate: Analyzing and Improving Traffic Quality
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
Variable #1: Traffic Quality
If you sell pencil sharpeners, and most of your traffic is redirected from a Youtube video that shows a guy balancing a pencil sharpener on his nose, it’s not very likely that the visitors to your site are interested in purchasing pencil sharpeners. Your bounce rate will likely be sky-high. I recently saw a massive increase in traffic to one of our client’s sites, increasing their monthly traffic volume by around 30%, but they only made one sale from all of the traffic. It was a major design gallery hit that caused the traffic. People were going to the site to look at the design, not buy stuff, so of course, the conversion rate for that traffic source was 0%. In these cases, the traffic quality would greatly decrease the conversion outcome, despite the quality of your Value Presentation and the Ease of Purchase. The Value Presentation and Ease of Purchase variables would have to pick up a lot of slack to absorb the poor traffic quality and generate conversions.
If, on the other hand, your traffic quality is very high, it can absorb weakness in your Value Presentation and Ease of Purchase. Specialty stores are a great example of this. They offer a very narrow product that you can only get from them. Their site can have a really bad design and no marketing continuity or promotional sensitivity, and it can be really difficult to purchase the product, but they still convert visits to purchases because the traffic to their site is looking for what they’re offering. This situation can be broken down via a few Value/Cost-based criteria:
1. Perceive they immediately need/want what you’re offering
Many of the people who arrive on a specialty site will most likely perceive that they need/want what is offered. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have ended up on the site. They either searched for the specific specialty item on a search engine or were referred by a friend or other site that clearly defines the specialty. Hopefully any traffic that arrives and immediately leaves wasn’t traffic that required resource allocation to generate.
If a visitor does not perceive that they need it immediately when they arrive on your site, you must either persuade them that they do need/want “it” immediately if you wish to convert the visit into a sale. That may not be the right goal, though. Oftentimes, the right goal is to build loyalty without asking for the “final” sale by asking for intermediate commitments, like signing up for a newsletter, following you on Twitter, ordering a catalog, or any other intermediate step that generates a larger degree of intimacy with that visitor. How quickly you seek to convert a visitor to a purchase depends largely on the nature of your offer. If you are selling novelty T-shirts, converting the sale on the first visit is likely the right pursuit. If, however, you are selling vintage wine, it is likely not advisable to convert on the first visit. Quality traffic flow analysis can bring clarity to this kind of question though.
Key Point: Do not base your decisions on what seems reasonable or intuitive. Look at the data and react to what is actually happening.
Key Point: “What is my bounce rate?” is not the right question. “What is the bounce rate of my quality traffic?” is the right question. In other words, are the people you want to be on your site staying? That’s all that matters. Who cares about the designers who are just browsing for design inspiration. If they bounce, it doesn’t matter. Do you think we freaked out when the general bounce rate spiked after the major design gallery hit? Of course not. That is to be expected. Asking the right questions is the fundamental key to conversion success (oh, and the key to success with everything else, too).
2. Perceive it to be worth more than they perceive it costs them.
There are two variables here: Perceived Value and Perceived Cost. To help the visitor to pass this Gauntlet milestone, you must affect one or both of these factors. There is no other option.
Perceived Value
Value is a tricky thing. No two people perceive the same thing as equally valuable. In fact, I could wax philosophical here and pose the question, “Does true value even exist?” but I will refrain. Whether or not there is a true value to anything, people perceive it differently. Our team believes in trying to correctly assess the true value of what we offer and represent that value well. That encourages our team to constantly improve the value of what we offer, which we appreciate.
There are two factors of perceived value: Pre-Existing Evaluation and Interaction Effect. The pre-existing evaluation is relevant to the Quality Traffic variable; the interaction effect is relevant to the Value Presentation variable.
1. Pre-Existing Evaluation is how the visitor evaluates the product or service prior to interacting with your marketing media. Except in cases where the individual has never heard of your product or service, everyone will have a Pre-Existing Evaluation. This is not something you can affect. Ideally, you want to attract visitors who have a very high pre-existing evaluation of your product or service. High pre-existing evaluation has a positive effect on Traffic Quality, but it’s not the only sub-variable of Traffic Quality. Most people have a very high evaluation of a Lamborghini, but that doesn’t mean Lamborghini should try to attract “most people” to their show room. We’ll discuss the other sub-variables shortly.
2. Interaction Effect is the effect the interaction with your offering, specifically your e-commerce site in this case, has on your visitors pre-existing evaluation. The only factor in the Interaction Effect that is relevant to Traffic Quality is how Impressionable the traffic is, which makes them more receptive to positively changing their evaluation of your product/service. We will discuss the Interaction Effect in greater detail when we discuss the second variable, Value Presentation.
Perceived Cost
The first mistake people make when considering Cost is to assume that it’s simply the price. It’s not. First, the same price will be perceived differently in how costly it is depending on the perspective. A multi-billionaire perceives a private jet to be a very low cost; a millionaire would perceive it to be extremely costly. When thinking about Perceived Cost, think about it in terms of Perceived Sacrifice, as that is what the person feels. How much a person feels they will experience sacrifice as a result of making a particular decision is a different way of saying Perceived Cost.
Many people perceive less sacrifice in purchasing a $3,000 ring for $100 per month for five years than paying $3,000 cash immediately, even though the first option is twice as costly in terms of cash than the second, and yet it is considered less costly. Clearly, Perceived Cost and price are not interchangeable.
Money isn’t even the only factor that plays a part in Cost Perception. Time, stress, focus, and forms of sacrifice are equally important to consider. Convenience is becoming more important in the purchase of goods and services because a higher value is being placed on time, focus, and stress avoidance. People value time more, so using less of it means they feel less sacrifice. This is especially relevant to the third variable, so I will bite my tongue for the time being.
To conclude this section on Perceived Value and Cost, consider that in order to pass this Conversion Gauntlet obstacle, the visitor must perceive more value than cost in the acquisition of your good and/or service. Consider all the factors that affect Perceived Value and Perceived Cost. Most people just look at price. Don’t be sucked into that ignorance. It’s not about price. It’s about Value and Sacrifice (Cost).
There is tons more to say about the relationship between perceived value and cost. I could literally write an entire book about it. But I will be patient and elaborate on it later.
3. Be able to complete the transaction process without falling below the “Adequate Value Threshold.”
The “Adequate Value Threshold” is that point at which the Perceived Value falls below the Perceived Cost or the Perceived Cost rises above the Perceived Value. I will be writing a blog post on this idea alone as it is an essential piece of theory that every business person and marketer needs to be able to visualize graphically.
Two important questions relevant to Traffic Quality:
1. Do they have the technical skill to complete the process?
Your visitors need to be able to use the internet and complete a transaction online in order to purchase from you. If their technical skills are lacking or if your process is difficult, their attempts at completing the process may produce a great deal of stress or take a lot of time and focus, both of which increases their Perceived (and actual) Cost to complete the transaction. This can push the Perceived Cost above their Value Threshold, which is the point at which a person says “No.” Generally, the later this occurs during the interaction, the more likely it will cause the visitor to exit the interaction with a negative outcome. Visitors don’t typically expect to see adequate value in a product or service early on in the interaction, but once they cross the value rises above the cost or the cost dips below the value, a cross back over typically greatly reduces the likelihood of a positive outcome.
2. Do they perceive significant risk in giving their credit card and other personal information to a business online?
Security is so important to people because it represents the absence of risk. Risk is a sacrifice, and therefore a cost. Reduce risk and you reduce the cost to the visitor. The less your traffic consider it risky to give personal information, the higher quality traffic it is as it relates to conversion rate specifically because fewer visitors will abandon the process due to the perceived cost of insecurity/risk.
4. Have the resources to absorb the cost right now.
I clearly have chosen specific verbiage here to represent a more accurate truth. I could have just said, “They gotta have enough money to pay the price,” but, to belabor the point, it’s not just about money. Do they have the time, money, and emotional and mental strength to absorb the costs of time, money, stress, and focus that is required to complete the purchase?
Convenience has become a major factor more recently because people are tending to value their time more. Consider what your target audience values (make a list!) and be sensitive to those values. If you can’t connect with what your audience values most, how in the world are you going to communicate any value to them?
Conclusion:
Traffic Quality is the nature and condition of people when they arrive on your site. There are a vast array of preset values that will affect how they respond to your Value Presentation. Your Value Presentation is not right for everyone. In fact, it’s probably not right for the grand majority of the market. Make sure you’re attracting the right Traffic for your Value Presentation. Sometimes, though, it’s easier to change your Value Presentation to conform to the Traffic Quality you have. In the next section, I will discuss how Your Value Presentation can affect the two criteria for conversion and what factors you need to consider in optimizing it to better deliver value to your Traffic.
Coming Soon… Article #3 in the Revenue Optimization Series: Value Presentation. I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m in marketing heaven already.
Appendix A
Wrong Question #1: What is a good conversion rate?
There is no global “good” conversion rate. It really depends on your particular circumstances. Consider this. If you have a product that requires a large amount of consideration and research before a purchase decision is made, you may have visitors that visit your site 20 times before purchasing. Since conversion rate is calculated by purchase orders divided by total number of visits (# of Orders / # of Visits = Conversion Rate), your maximum conversion rate is only 5%. So if half of the unique visitors that are coming to your site end up purchasing, you are achieving a 2.5% conversion rate. This is over-simplification, but you get the picture. Determine your target conversion rate based on your offering and your audience. Don’t listen to gurus who herald their ability to produce xx% conversion rates and that you should be generating that conversion rate as well. If their traffic is exclusively club members and their product is mandatory membership cards, their claims becomes less impressive. In fact, aiming too high on your conversion rate can generate bad decisions. By trying to get your visitors to push the button too quickly, you may miss out on opportunities to cross-sell or up-sell and you very likely will get to a point when you stop serving their best interests (and that’s what you want most, right?). If you need help, find a consultant that wants to know your business before telling you what your target conversion rate should be. That’s a good sign they’ll be helpful.
Next article: Value Presentation (will link to as soon as the article is finished)
Tags: conv, E-Commerce, traffic, traffic quality
Posted in E-Commerce, E-Commerce Optimization, Magento | No Comments »
Optimizing Your E-Commerce Conversion Rate: The Two Conversion Criteria
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010
E-commerce traffic is worthless if you are not converting any of your traffic into sales. The percentage of visits that result in a purchase is called the conversion rate. So much emphasis is put on generating traffic, but it’s only the first step in building e-commerce revenue and profitability. It is typically very expensive from a holistic resource perspective (money, time, focus, etc.) to generate traffic, so to pay no attention to conversion rate is committing a cardinal e-commerce sin. There are a few critical components that determine how high your conversion rate will be.
Step back for a moment. What would it take to produce a 100% conversion rate? Every single time someone visited your site, they would purchase something. Any time a visitor meets two criteria, they make a purchase. There are many factors that affect each of these criteria, and I will analyze each of them in this article and following articles.
THE TWO CONVERSION CRITERIA
(Here it is. The secret recipe for converting visits to sales.)
To convert a visit into a purchase, the visitor must:
1. Perceive the value of what you offer is higher than the value of the cost to acquire it.
2. Have the resources to absorb the cost at the point of purchase.
I will analyze these Conversion Criteria from the perspective of a different set of variables. While it isn’t a quantitative measurement, you can determine the likelihood that an individual will make a purchase via a cubic equation: Traffic Quality x Value Presentation x Ease of Purchase. If you have a very high value for any of these variables, it doesn’t necessarily mean you will have a high conversion rate. Just as with the broader e-commerce revenue equation I covered in the first post of this series (Traffic x Conversion Rate x Average Order Size = Revenue), attention must be given to each of the variables to optimize the outcome. If any one of them is shirked, it can ruin all of the efforts made to improve the other two. While you cannot attach a numeric value to these variables as easily as you can to the Revenue variables, it’s still important to understand conceptually because the conversion variables relate in the same way as the revenue variables.
In the next article, I will dig into the first variable that affects conversion rate: Traffic Quality.
Tags: conversion rate optimization, E-Commerce, revenue optimization
Posted in E-Commerce, E-Commerce Optimization, Magento | 1 Comment »
The Three Keys to Optimizing E-Commerce Revenue
Monday, January 25th, 2010
Introduction
No matter what you sell online, there are three core constituents to revenue: Traffic, Conversion Rate, and Average Order Size. In fact, it’s a cubic equation: Revenue = Traffic (#) x Conversion (%) x Average Order Size ($). So if you generate 21,000 visits in a month with a conversion rate of 3.00% and an average order size of $156.23, your revenue is $98,424.90 (21,000 x 3.00% x $156.23).
If you can analyze each of these variables effectively, the e-commerce world is your banana. I hope that by the end of this article series, you’ll understand the “sub-variables” that affect each of these core revenue variables, equipping you with the tools to optimize your e-commerce revenue. (btw, many of these principles apply to business in general, not just e-commerce)
This first article will relate to generating Traffic and the variables that affect it.
Keys to Traffic
Traffic is calculated according to the following equation: Unique Visitors x Average Visit Frequency
Keys to unique visitor traffic are Medium (where they found your site) and Presentation (what they experienced through the medium/media that made them visit). The key to repeat traffic is the Visit Experience (their evaluation of their visit retrospectively). Every single person that visits your site has a corresponding medium and presentation history, and if they visit the site more than once, they have an experience history as well.
Medium
The primary factors of a medium are relevance and accessibility.
The key relevance question: Is the medium used connecting with the kind of people that will see value in what you offer and need it now or at some point in the future, preferably in the near future?
The key accessibility question: Is it easy for the recipient of the message to take action in response to the message?
Presentation
Every presentation has a persuasive effect that depends on two variables: To WHOM it’s presented to and WHAT is presented. WHAT you communicate is worthless without the right audience (they need what you’re offering and they need it now or soon), and likewise, it doesn’t matter how targeted and ripe your audience is for what you’re presenting if WHAT you communicate is poorly constructed. In fact, it can do more harm than good to make a poor presentation to the right audience by appearing unprofessional and incapable to deliver quality.
The presentation variables depend heavily on the medium in question. If it is word-of-mouth, the presentation is what is being communicated by the referrer to the referee. What are they saying about your site and what you offer? If it’s search marketing, is what you’re communicating in your ad relevant and does it point to a highly relevant landing page? Are you using highly targeted keywords with ad copy that is tailored to those keywords? There are quality questions to ask for each medium, and they vary significantly. But all media should be based on the same quality questions: Are we communicating to the right audience? Are we communicating the right message to that audience to effect the desired behavior (click a link, request a quote, submit an e-mail address, buy a product, etc.).
Visit Experience
Experience is the single factor that determines whether a unique visitor becomes a repeat visitor. In short, visit experience, how a visitor evaluates their visit retrospectively, is defined by if the visitor:
1. Felt that the content was relevant to them
2. Felt that they could navigate and access what they wanted easily and intuitively
3. Has a compelling, memorable reason to return.
If these three criteria are met, the experience will likely develop into a repeat visit.
E-commerce traffic means nothing if you can’t convert that traffic into sales. In my next post, I’ll discuss the key to optimizing the conversion rate.
Tags: conversion, E-Commerce, optimization, revenue, traffic
Posted in E-Commerce, E-Commerce Optimization, General Business, Magento | 5 Comments »
Magento SEO Case Study
Monday, January 25th, 2010
We have seen dramatic increases in site traffic and better native search positioning for our clients, but we wanted to be sure that the SEO value of sites that had built great positioning through years of business would not be lost when switching to Magento and using 301 redirects. As Magento Professional Partners, we now have access to a whole new world of resources through Varien, so we asked them about what results they had seen. Here is a portion of their response, straight from one of Varien’s many clients:
“Yesterday I attended a very interesting presentation of the new Jack Wolfskin online shop (Globetrotter in Germany) based on Magento (yet community, next year enterprise). They seemed to be very happy with your product and increased traffic (+ customers) by 600% in 10 months just by moving to Magento (due to better SEO capabilities).”
While the results are not necessarily typical, we have seen dramatic results just by implementing Magento with 301 redirects. Long story short, if you are thinking about switching to Magento and you are concerned with the impact of the change, don’t be. The greatest concern you should have is the clients you are missing by not using the robust platform of Magento to enhance your SEO.
Posted in General Business, Magento | No Comments »
Creating Success – 5 Star Service
Monday, January 25th, 2010
Do you need to stand out from the crowd of competitors around you? Do you want to be remembered when your clients are deciding where to invest their hard earned resources?
Service is dying in the United States. Everywhere we look, an epidemic of apathy spreads its disease. Industries that traditionally emphasize service (eg. foodservice and customer service by phone) are continually adopting lower standards to accommodate lackluster performance. What is missing?
Service begins with the idea of active listening. Our era is focused around each of us having the ability to access information easily, but we can often feel that our voices are lost amidst the cacophony of voices around us. When was the last time that you felt that you were completely heard and understood? Listen to your clients. Listen to what they say, to what they mean. A huge piece of listening is to intentionally engage your mind with what your client is saying. Intentionally engage. If you are detached, they will feel your distance acutely, and you will lose effectiveness. Get rid of distractions, and focus your attention solely on them. Make them the most important thing in your world, if only for that moment. Your attentiveness to them will make a greater impact than you can imagine. People are used to being ignored and marginalized. The respect you give them when you make them your priority will resonate instantly with them.
Service requires a genuine desire to contribute. You must understand that your client is a valuable human being who is trusting you with an important piece of their life. Business decisions that they make will impact them personally. Value what they say. The desire to impact someone’s life positively is unusual to the point of extinction. I am not talking about putting up a façade of empathy. If you have ever seen a hypocrite, then believe me when I say if you come to the table trying to manufacture a mask of interest, you will be found out. There are very few things more detrimental to a relationship than phony interest. Suffice it to say; go genuine, or go home.
Service requires transparency. You must be willing to put yourself in a vulnerable position. I am not advocating placing unlimited trust in someone that you do not know, but honesty is always the best policy. Communicating in an open manner, especially when it is to your disadvantage to do so, will create a level of trust unobtainable in any other way. Please temper this statement with this caution: carefully weigh your words to ensure that they are palatable. Criticism is almost never an appropriate choice, whether it be directed toward competitor, co-worker, or client. Be generous with your praise towards the people around you, and very miserly with criticism.
Cultivate principles in yourself, and in your company, of honesty, valuing your clients, and transparency and wrap them all around a core of listening. Listen carefully and you will know what they want and what they need. Listen, and they will remember and feel that you heard them. Listen, and you will find the core of 5-star customer service.
World class customer interactions are central to our business model at Classy Llama Studios. This is the first of a series of five posts that I will be writing to relay aspects of our business development strategy specifically related to customer service and its vital role in crafting success for our clients. Since implementing this strategy we have been able to change the way that our clients interact with us, dynamically impacting both their satisfaction with our work and our ability to hear and apply their business vision effectively.
Tags: classy llama, clients, customer service, interaction, service, strategy, success
Posted in Magento | 2 Comments »
Using ShipWorks with Magento (USPS, UPS, Fedex Shipping integration)
Saturday, August 15th, 2009
In this post we will be exploring the integration of Interapptive’s ShipWorks with Magento.
ShipWorks is a Windows-only desktop application that integrates a number of different shopping carts with the most common shipping services. It uses the Microsoft SQL server as it’s data storage engine, allowing it be installed on multiple computers on the same network.
ShipWorks currently has support for the following shipping methods:
- UPS (direct integration)
- UPS Worldship
- DHL (direct integration)
- Fedex
- USPS (Label printing, w/out postage)
- USPS (via Stamps.com desktop application – domestic shipping only)
- USPS (via Endicia desktop application)
Benefits of using ShipWorks
- Fast shipping fulfillment
- Less error-prone than copy-and-pasting
- Integration with multiple different shipping methods
- Low cost (max. of $49.95/mo – see pricing)
Disadvantages
- Windows-only (this is a common trend with shipping management software)
- Desktop-based (as opposed to web-based)
Typical Magento/ShipWorks Order Fulfillment Workflow
Here are the steps a typical order fulfillment process will look like, once the Magento/ShipWorks integration is completed:
- Download new orders from Magento by going to “Order > Download Orders” in Magento. This will download all orders since the last order download.
- Select all orders that aren’t marked as “Closed” or “Complete”. You can create filters in ShipWorks that will only show orders that match certain parameters. If you offer multiple shipping providers (eg, UPS & Fedex), you’ll want to select and process orders from each shipping provider separately.
- Click the button on the toolbar for the shipping provider associated with the selected orders.
- You’ll then customize the shipping options (delivery confirmation, insurance, etc…) for the orders. You can do this individually or as a group.
- Note: I did notice that when you open the shipping label dialog, ShipWorks doesn’t properly associate shipping services imported from Magento to their respective service type in. For example, when you select three orders, one with “USPS Priority” and the others with “USPS First-Class” mail, the “USPS Priority” option is selected for all orders. Here is a screenshot demonstrating this.
- Once you’re done customizing the shipping options, you’ll print the shipping labels.
- Once an order is shipped, it will be marked as “Complete” in Magento. A Shipment will also be created that will be associated with the associated Order and Invoice. If a tracking number was provided from the associated shipping service, it will be added to the Shipment. This will allow a customer to login to the “My Account” section of the Magento store and see that their order has been shipped.
- ShipWorks has the ability to send shipping confirmation emails directly to the customer. This may work fine for many merchants, but there will be those that want Magento to send the shipment confirmation email. Based on my perusal of shipworks.php file, it doesn’t look like a shipment notification email is sent from Magento when a shipment is created. If a merchant wants to have all emails sent from Magento, it would require a small change to be made to the shipworks.php file.
Alternative Solutions for Integrating Magento with UPS, USPS, or Fedex
There are alternatives to using ShipWorks. Here are a few alternatives. If you know of any integration methods that aren’t listed here, please let me know and I’ll add them to the list.
- Fedex/UPS Shipping Label Module for Magento (configuration instructions)
- Manual Fedex Shipping Manager integration instructions
- Manual Endicia Galaxy Ship integration proof-of-concept
- T-Hub Magento/Quickbooks/Shipping Manager ($299-$996)
- Webgility Magento/Quickbooks/Shipping Manager ($450-$1,025)
- StoneEdge ($1,995)
- Shipper 3 for Magento
Installation – Magento Script
In order to install the Magento script for ShipWorks, all you have to do is copy the provided shipworks.php file into your Magento installation directory.
Installation – ShipWorks
Here are screenshots of the ShipWorks installation process:
Initial Setup Screen
Installation Location
Database Location Selection
If you choose the “Connect to and existing ShipWorks” database, you’ll see the following:
SQL Server Selection
If you choose the “Create a new ShipWorks database” option, you’ll see this:
- You can either install the packaged version of Microsoft SQL Version, or you can use an existing installation
ShipWorks connects to the Interapptive servers to download the latest version
- You’ll create an SQL account on your newly installed server
After installing MSDE (SQL Server Desktop Engine) and restarting your computer, you'll create a database
Setup ShipWorks user account
Software Licensing Screen
Magento Store Setup Wizard
Shipment Settings
ShipWorks will use these settings to send emails to customers (if you configure it to send email notifications)
ShipWorks Screenshots
Here are some screenshots of ShipWorks in action. More screenshots/screencasts can be found on the Interapptive site.
Once you connect ShipWorks to Magento, you can "Orders > Download Orders" to download all orders from Magento
Orders View - You can view all orders that have been imported from Magento (customer data is blurred).
Customer View - See all customers that are associated with the imported orders. ShipWorks groups all orders for a specific customer together, allowing you to see an entire order history for a customer.
Here is an example of 7 orders being prepared to print labels using Endicia's Dazzle application
Posted in Management | 12 Comments »
Magento’s “Global Record Search” Explained
Sunday, August 2nd, 2009
Magento has a little-publicized feature called the “Global Record Search”, located at the top right of every admin page. It allows you to quickly search for Products, Customers, and Orders in the system. If you need to quickly find one of these types of records, using the Global Record Search is much quicker than going to the Product, Customer, or Order listing pages. Here are the attributes you can use to search:
- Product Name
- Customer First Name
- Customer Last Name
- Customer Company
- Customer Postal Code
- Customer Phone Number
- Orders by Billing or Shipping address (using the same information as Customer fields listed above)
- Order Number (Increment ID) – must be exact number, no partial matches
Example Global Record Search Query
Unfortunately, you’re not able to search by Product ID or Customer ID. This functionality would be simple for a Magento developer to add. It would require overriding one of the following classes: Mage_Adminhtml_Model_Search_Catalog or Mage_Adminhtml_Model_Search_Customer.
Hope that helps in the management of your Magento store!
Posted in Management | No Comments »
Magento Comparison with Proprietary E-Commerce Solutions
Friday, July 31st, 2009
I recently came across an answer on a LinkedIn question, and I wanted to share it with you all. Roy Rubin, CEO of Varien, the company that designed and built Magento, the open-source e-commerce platform that has totally reinvented the e-commerce landscape.
The question was asked, “What are the pros and cons of Magento compared to middle and high end e-commerce proprietary solutions?”
Roy responds with a numbered list of reasons in support of Magento, and I really appreciated them. In his fifth bullet point, he specifically heads off the false idea that Magento doesn’t work for mega-sized e-commerce deployments.
Here’s how Roy Rubin responds:
”
Thanks for raising the topic. Despite my bias (clearly), a few clarifications to address here:
1) CMS – Our next enterprise release will feature a significant enhancement to our content feature set. CMS+ will allow for the creation of multiple pages, restricting publishing privileges for authorized users only and support versioning. We will also introduce Widgets (configurable page blocks) for insertion to CMS pages.
2) Customization – Our experience in working with retailers using Magento over the past 18 months has shown that less customization work is needed in most scenarios. The more unique the business model off course, the more custom code that needs to be developed. The architecture supports such enhancements without jeopardizing upgrades. This is given due the products’ rich feature set.
3) Templating – It does indeed take longer to template Magento initially (comparing to other open source solutions not proprietary). Magento’s architecture is such that it allows for template hierarchies, reuse and all this without effecting upgrades. It is to the retailers benefit/advantage.
4) Integration – I would argue that integration is rather easy. Certainly easier than 3rd party proprietary systems that are closed by design. Our web services based API certainly helps as well.
5) Target Market – Magento today is consumed by all size retailers, including Fortune 500’s, leading market brands, and billion dollar online companies. It’s important to note that on the upper end, we have retailers doing tens of thousands of orders a day.
Hope this helps and I look forward to reading additional feedback.
”
I’ve heard a lot of people complain about how complicated Magento is, but it’s usually people that are wanting a do-it-yourself solution like many of the other lesser e-commerce solutions. Of course, once you get Magento set up, it’s one of the most user-friendly, manageable systems available for any size sales site.
The simple truth is that Magento boasts a built-in robust feature set that reflects thousands of hours of development from some of the best guys in the business, and already in the first 18 months on the market, members of the development community have contributed hundreds of extensions, evidence that they too have recognized Magento for what it is: The herald of the next generation of e-commerce (aka, the coolest thing since broadband). Oh, and did we mention that it’s free?
Classy Llama Studios is a consulting and development firm exclusively focused on expert Magento development and customization. Contact us to discuss your project: 417.597.4769
Tags: comparison, Magento, proprietary, roy rubin, varien
Posted in Magento | No Comments »
