Boot Camp Takeaways

I spent three days this week at Solid Cactus’s Boot Camp for e-Commerce merchants. As a newbie this was a great experience to network and to learn as much as I could. I took advantage of both, by having the daily network sessions last well into the night, and typing away during all the presentations.

I’ve had two days to review all the information and I have narrowed down the most important subjects to write about.

Google was the first presentation of the conference and they did a great job of explaining all the services that they provide and how we can take advantage of them. This was the most technical presentation and also the one that I knew the least information about. I learned that there are many tools available to track every aspect of your site. These tools will only help and you need to learn how to use them as soon as possible. I will not go into the technical aspects of them at this time but will leave that for a later time. As I would sound like an idiot trying to explain what all the features are… so that will be for a later time when I am more familiar with them.

The most fun/memorable presentation was from Catherine Shafer of CDS Creative. She emphasized the brand, brand, and brand. Know who your customer is. Don’t try to sell your product to the whole world. Choose a market and go after it. The phrase that we made up when asked was “We provide the highest quality performance supplements to elite athletes.” This was taken well, and spurred conversation by few people who did not want to be excluded from our products. Clearly the most important point from Catherine was to know yourself, and your customers. This was something that we have discussed before and is a big part of our marketing plan.

On the last day they had a site deconstruction presentation. This re-emphasized the importance of user friendliness or user experience, from entering the site to the check out process. They showed couple of tricks i.e. having the search bar clearly visible because 50% of customers use it to find specific items. I would have thought that the figure would have been lower. Another key to a successful site is the content that is provided to the customers, they want to be informed about why YOUR product is the one they need to buy.

This is just s quick post, I will keep elaborating on as I learn more about this business. I hope at least one person will take something valuable from this post.

JK Livin’

P.S.

Links for the Late Night Networkers

Clothing Warehouse We’ll see you in Boston!
Self Defense Products Thanks for the Protection!
Merit Card Thanks for the case of beer!