Holiday 2017
2018 and Beyond
Why? The marketplace is crowded, advertising is expensive and marketplaces charge fees and drive down prices through competition all of which impacts your bottom line. The perennial question is how do you drive high quality traffic to your own store through natural search and social media ? Let me suggest that it is easier to find, target and communicate with a niche audience than a wider audience. For example if I took all the Children's products we carry and built a brand focusing on millennials with young children my social media and content can be much more focused on my target audience. The same is true of taking Yoga inspired products, a handmade fashion brand, a rustic home brand... the list goes on.
Creating content around the brand and the communities of potential customers becomes immeasurably easier if you know exactly who you are looking for. Taking our toy example content such as product reviews, cute social media images of kids playing with toys, some giveaways focused on "mom groups", even reaching out to influencers in the young mom arena with free product for reviews on their sites. All this and more becomes possible.
Our site is a good example, yes we sell the entire line but our strategy is to connect with a niche group, people who want to start a drop shipping business with unique products, preferably using Shopify. The content in this and other blogs is clearly focused (shamelessly) on this target audience and the site is designed to sell a concept, starting your own drop ship business rather than the individual products. Even our Free Website draw is designed to build our list of potential customers for ongoing marketing. This is all done through a content driven approach that is focused on a small community.
Our drop shipping platform is un-apologetically built on the Shopify ecommerce platform, we choose Shopify because its very simple, accessible and has the tools we needed to sync inventory to a large number of stores. One aspect of the Shopify platform that is vastly under used is the Blog and the "Buy Now" button which enables you to embed fully function eCommerce into any blog such as a WordPress blog.
A friend and business acquaintance told me that he would be looking for another platform for his next site because Shopify was not good at content and was all about product. Respectfully I disagree. This site is a good example of a site focused on content before product. The selection of a good theme is critical to the look and feel of a content first site. This site uses the "Out of The Sand Box - Responsive Theme", but many others have strong content and blog features and if you really do want to go the WordPress route the Shopify Buy Now button can embed a whole collection or a single product in any post along with a fully functional checkout system.
My hope for next year is that our drop ship clients will evolve and grow their customer loyalty and brand. Content is critical to achieving this evolution and understanding the power of focusing in on a specific customer rather than trying to sell to everyone.
I and the entire Global Crafts team wish you all a very successful 2017.
]]>The most common problems we see on Shopify stores is the navigation and search. If your customers can't find the products they can't buy them. Navigation often sucks on Shopify sites because free themes are not great.
]]>The most common problems we see on Shopify stores is the navigation and search. If your customers can't find the products they can't buy them. Navigation often sucks on Shopify sites because free themes are not great. You can either get a new theme from Shopify or a theme store online, such as Theme Forest for $56 or you can use an App such as Bacon Mega Menu for $9.99 a month to improve your menu. You can see the Bacon Mega Menu in action on Artisans Exchange. Personally I think the $9.99 a month is well worth the money as we now have a menu with product images, we know a picture is worth a thousand words.
While we are on the topic of finding things the Shopify search is not great, try typing half a word and see what happens. Live Search is a $3.99 a month app that adds an Ajax search to your store. I installed it on this site www.DropShippingbyGlobalCrafts.com.
While we plan on discussing SEO in tip 3, the fact is that these days search engines are far more interested in your content than meta tags. Creating content that people want to read and hopefully share is time consuming, but well worth the effort. The first stage is to create an editorial calendar for your content, to keep it fresh. A great piece of blog content can be used to springboard your social media and marketing. If your promoting drop shipping you write a blog like this, if your selling products, how about occasion driven gift guides or product reviews. Remember once you have the blog content, promote it on Facebook, Pinterest and other social media channels.
You could spend your life doing Search Engine Optimization, but you only have a few hours a week. So focus on where it matters. Start with adding or editing the meta data on your collections, build some collections that pair up with your blog content and do the SEO.
Have you wondered what the Buy Button Shopify Channel is ? Its actually pretty cool. You can embed single products or a collection in your content, inside and external to your store. This gives you the power to add a collection to your blog post, page or even a piece you write on another website or platform. When you engage people with your content make sure there is a call to action to shop and make it easy by showing a few relevant products.
One of the most under managed pages on many stores is the home page. If you have ever worked in retail you know how important a store window is to a bricks and mortar retailer, so why do we tend to leave our webstore home page the same for months on end ? Remember that content calendar you made, how about swapping out the products, featured categories and slides on your home page every month with a focus on the content you are releasing.
These five tips all share the goal of creating great content, products, collections, blog posts and making sure they can be found via menu's, search, social media and your home pages. If you do this consistently in relation to an editorial calendar you will see your sales grow.
Sign up for your FREE Drop Shipping by Global Crafts account today and start selling handmade artisan products. Find Out More
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The second piece of the puzzle is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - we have already written a piece about Adding SEO Data to Collections and Products
The crux of the question was how do I make Google Adwords work and not cost a fortune for little in results. In other words how to get a better ROI. I can't say I practice what I preach here, it takes time and we all get lazy but here goes:
So rather than setup one ad for your entire site and use generic terms, setup one for each category or even specific ads for your most popular products. One word of caution be careful about using trademarked brand names for example you can't buy google ads for "Global Crafts" its trademarked. But do buy ads for Handmade Kalimba Africa, Handmade Finger Piano, Soapstone Family Kenya etc..
Its a lot of work which is why we don't always practice what we preach.
In a recent Adwords campaign we setup a group targeting Felt Birdhouses - we spent $1.50 this week to get 4 clicks - 2 of them converted and both spent well over $100 each. The screen shot shows the most recent $200 order from Google to a specific collection. That is an extreme example, but point made.
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Within the Fair Trade space these companies also offer drop shipping. Please contact the individual companies about terms, pricing and fee structures.
You can find more Drop Shippers on Germinate.com drop shipping directory. Germinate.com can also setup your Global Crafts Drop Shipping Site for you.
]]>By now you are probably getting barraged with emails saying your site isn’t optimized for search engines and you need help with your Search Engine Optimization (SEO). While you could pay someone to optimize your site to try to hit the sweet spot of Google’s search engine rankings, there are several changes you can make to your site through the Shopify admin panel, that will boost your search rankings organically.
Your site should reflect your business and target potential buyers who you think would be looking for your products. Having a small number of visitors that buy is much more valuable than a million visitors who don’t buy so you want to select key words and phrases that target buyers.
While we tend to market Global Crafts’ products to a certain demographic (women from 20-55 with disposable income who purchase ethically sourced, green, handmade, imported products and may know about fair trade), you may see an entirely different market for these products. Whatever you decide as your target market should be reflected in the SEO terms you include on your website. And the narrower the terms, the easier it is to appear high up on searches. You will stand a better chance with “Recycled Fair Trade Bracelet” than “Jewelry”.
Shopify has identified fields on each page of your site that is specifically for SEO data. Whether it is an informational page, a category page, or a product page, you can specify SEO data that will be picked up by search engines.
Your site is made up of many pages, each of which contains content that will help you with your search engine rankings. Whether it is the About Us page or the Returns page, these should be optimized for search engines
You should already have content in the Title and the Content section – it’s the “Search engine description” section at the bottom that needs to be more meaningful.
The “Page Title” field is what shows up in the browser at the top of the page as a tab title. You can change this to say “About [company name]” rather than “Us”. You have 70 characters to play with.
The “Meta description” is the text that shows up in many search engine listings. You have 160 characters for this field. If you leave it blank, the first 160 characters of the page description will be used so it’s better to put something meaningful here.
This field is generated when you create the page. Shopify uses the Title from the top of the page to create the link that will access the page from other pages. It places hypens between the words, creating the link. The hyphenated field (called a “Handle”) can be updated to include the company name for further SEO. In this example, we replaced “about-us” with “about company name”. Do not include the hyphens when you enter the handle – Shopify will put those in. (I blew up my browser numerous times before I figured that out.) You will also see a check box that is pre-checked indicating that a URL redirect will be generated, ensuring that the traffic to the old link will be redirected to the new one.
Because your site has so many collections and products, you may want to attack this task in pieces. Each collection and product on your page has its own SEO criteria that defaults to information for the collection or product. You can not only improve on these but also create your own unique presence in the search engines.
While there is SEO information at both the collection and product level, you may want to start with collections as there are many fewer of these.
Because the “Description” of the collection is blank in most cases, the “Meta Description” is also blank so we are missing an opportunity to market our site. Update the “Meta Description” of the collection with pertinent information that will reach the search engine requests of visitors that will buy from your site. You will also want to change the “Page title” in the “Search engine listing preview” and the handle as well to include keywords that you believe will resonate with your buyers in search engines.
The small numbers above the enterable fields indicate how many characters are available. The “Page title” in this example currently has 40 left and the “Meta description” has 160. If the data entered exceeds the maximum of 55 characters and 160 characters respectively, these counts will be negative and the display in the search engine will be truncated.
Here is an updated sample:
Each of the products on the site can be optimized for search engines in the same manner as categories. Needless to say, this can be a big job.
If it has not been edited, the description in the Search engine listing preview box is the first 55 characters of the title, the first 160 characters of the product description, and the title as the handle name.
If you want your site to be known for Fair Trade, you will want to change the title so that the entire word Fair Trade exists (maybe prefix the description with Handmade Fair Trade and lose the “and”). Additionally, the description doesn’t mention that it is Wall Art or that it is made of metal. You need to choose what is important for your search. Here is a sample of the changed SEO:
Setting up discount codes in Shopify is very easy.
The sample below illustrates a discount code that lasts from 11-12-2015 through 12-01-2015 and has no limits to the number of uses for a given customer. The discount is 10% off an order of any amount, which is specified in the Details section of the discount:
There are three types of discounts available in the Details dropdown, $USD, % Discount, and Free Shipping.
The $USD discount applies a dollar amount off either an order, orders over a specific amount, a collection, a specific product, or a specific customer. The details of the discount are specified by selecting the dropdown that has the default “all orders” and entering the desired information. For example, if you choose “collection”, you will be presented with a dropdown that enables you to select the collection to which you want the discount applied:
If you select a collection, you can also choose if the discount applies only once per order or to all applicable items in the cart. In general, a $USD discount would only apply once an order.
The % Discount dropdown selection enables you to offer a discount on an order, orders over a certain amount, items in a collection, a specific product, or customers in a group. Like the $USD discount, once you select the dropdown to specify the kind of discount you want, you will enter additional information regarding the discount.
The Free Shipping dropdown selection enables you to offer free shipping on orders over a certain amount and for certain destinations.
NOTE: The default for the location is “All Locations”. In general, you will want to change this to the selection “United States.
Shopify associates customers based on certain criteria and creates “groups.” There are several groups that Shopify maintains of customers who create an account:
You can create other groups as well that you can use for specific discounts.
To encourage customers to order again, you could create a Discount code specifically for Repeat Customers that is included with the shipment.
]]>The larger question is will you make money and how do you make sure you don't sell something we don't have. I am going to assume that you have your own website with our products on it and that you are either using the Shopify inventory sync or you are uploading our file every day. Thus your store is in sync with us and we are 99% certain not to oversell. That great but how do you keep your eBay or Amazon store in sync with your store? There is the expensive but robust way and the low-cost do-it-yourself way.
]]>The larger question is will you make money and how do you make sure you don't sell something we don't have. I am going to assume that you have your own website with our products on it and that you are either using the Shopify inventory sync or you are uploading our file every day. Thus your store is in sync with us and we are 99% certain not to oversell. That great but how do you keep your eBay or Amazon store in sync with your store? There is the expensive but robust way and the low-cost do-it-yourself way.
There are lots of apps (Shopify) and other third party services that work with other platforms to sync your inventory. If you are using Shopify and only want to sell on eBay - try the inkFrog app at just $10 a month. It's on the low end of fees and has great reviews. We have not tested it. If you are looking for something to handle other marketplaces as well, it gets a bit more expensive, we use Sellbrite and find it works well, but it starts at just over $100 a month. Another options is Stitchlabs. Many more exist, so do plenty of research.
Can you do it without an app? Yes but just be careful to monitor our inventory.
TIP To Save Money - A simple trick for Shopify users is to install the Wipeout app ($3 a month) and get a daily report of what has come off site due to zero inventory and what was added back to the site after we got more inventory. Now you have the data to manually manage your listings.
So the big question is will you make money? You are making 40% assuming you collect the same shipping we charge and sell at MSRP. While the fee structures are complex, both marketplaces seem to cost around 15% of sales, so you still have 25% profit. Plus when you find a product that sells really well for you, you can buy it from us wholesale and make more money. Of course then you have to ship it yourself, or use Amazon's FBA Fulfillment service. You can't have everything - right? :)
Our opinion - Yes you can make it work on a shoestring without expensive software and yes you can make money at it. But we do believe its a numbers game, You need to list 100's of products to sell a few.
We recently added UPC codes to the feed so that selling on Amazon would be easier for you. So go for it.
Fully managed eCommerce partners - give us a call as its a bit more complex, but it can be done.
]]>Now that you have an Ecommerce site, how do you get people to visit it? Three simple words: Content, content, content. The content on your site should reflect your business and attract the visitor that is going to buy. Behind every website is a bunch of text (called metadata and metatags) that search engines search for to determine if your site meets the criteria that a person is searching for.
An entire industry has grown around promises of getting your site to the top of search engines, the gold standard of which is Google. You may have started receiving emails expressing how poorly your website is positioned in search engines and for a fee, ensuring your site has a high ranking in the Google. The good news is the SEO (search engine optimization) companies are finding you!
Realize that Google and other search engines want to display pertinent search results. SEO companies figure out the algorithm Google uses to determine the value of the site and set up sites to comply. Google then changes the algorithm because much of the content set up by the SEO companies is done to “beat the system” and results in low-quality sites being displayed. It’s a vicious cycle. Think back on the sites you visited over the years. Remember the boxes containing pertinent words (keywords) that displayed on front pages? Remember the sites that had a page containing links to other, in many cases, totally unrelated sites? These were all methods marketed as ways to improve your search engine optimization.
What it really comes down to is having good, pertinent content on your site that others want to not only visit but repost. Consider your site as the repository for your business musings, your advocacy, your promotions. And boy, if you can get other high-quality sites to link to blogs that you write, that’s money in the search engine optimization bank.
Facebook has us conditioned that whenever we want to say something, write a post. But your post on your business Facebook page generally is displayed in a very small number of your fan’s news feeds. And then the post is never read again except for those few fans who actually visit your business page. In other words, your Facebook posts have a very short lifespan.
If you write a blog and store it on your Shopify site, you’ve created valuable content. Instead of relying on the reader to click the “More” button on your Facebook post, the Facebook post can be a short description of what you want to say and have a link to the blog page. If others find the blog compelling, they can link to it on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. All roads lead back to your website.
So now that you’re in the mentality that whatever you usually would post on Facebook should live longer than the blink of an eye, create a blog on your Shopify site and then post it on Facebook.
I entered a compelling title in the Title field (it could be better – it should include the store name). In the Content field, I entered text, an image, and a link to the website.
To add an image to the blog, the image must exist on the Shopify site, in other words, it needs to be uploaded.
Click on this button to add an image. You will have the option of inserting an image that already exists on the site or a product image from the site. If you click on the Upload button, you will be able to select a file from your computer to upload. Uploaded images will be available for you to insert into future blogs.
Click on this button to add a link (this can be to a product page or a collection, etc.) To add the link, highlight the text that you want to be clicked to go to the page and then click on the button. The following page will display:
You can copy and paste the URL in the “Link To” field or type it with the http:// in front of it. Shopify even tells you that the “Link title” helps with SEO so enter something meaningful here. Change the “Open the link in” dropdown to “A New Window” so the person doesn’t leave your site when the link is clicked. Click on the “Insert Link” button. You will notice that the text you highlighted is underlined and a different color indicating it is a link and clickable.
Let’s not forget that our purpose of writing the blog is 3-fold:
The section below the post contains fields that are specifically for search engines. You have 70 characters for the title and 160 characters for the description (Meta description). Both of these will be picked up by search engines.
Once you’ve completed your post, click the “Save” button on the top right corner of the page. Then click “View” to admire your work.
You will want to check out any links that you entered (in this example, click on the words, Gifts With Humanity.)
We know this is only one of many posts you are going to write. When a viewer visits your blog page, you want them to be able to see a list of blogs rather than each blog in its entirety. So for each blog you write, you will want to create an excerpt.
You can add an image to your excerpt. It can either be an image that already exists on the site (previously uploaded or a product image) or you can upload a new one.
View your blog from the published page (not the Shopify admin page). Copy the URL. On your Facebook page, paste the URL into the post, wait until Facebook resolves the URL, then type over the URL text in the post with a comment about the post. If you’ve linked Twitter to Facebook, the post will be tweeted as well (and don’t forget hashtags!)
]]>For example a lot of the content here is adapted, it originally appeared on the PNConnect Blog. Written by Porter Novelli. By adding this link we are providing credibility to the PNC Blog and thanking Porter for the inspiration.
Online content suffers Content Decay, essentially it is rapidly lost and loses value. Twitter posts last seconds, Facebook posts days, but blog posts last forever, get indexed by search engines and become a driver of traffic. So as a general rule of thumb why waste time writing lengthy social media posts that are gone tomorrow when you could create a content engine for long term success.
In very simple terms content decay is the outcome of putting all your content on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks that are not indexed by search.
Sure, your ‘real time marketing’ or education piece might get a bunch of shares over a few hours, but then it’s gone, for good. You’ve spent all that budget and time for a flash in the pan. And 48 hours later you’re asking yourself, “Now what?”
So, Now What?
Developing a hub and spoke model that connects your store blog to your social network activity solves this.
This model provides both short-term and long-term value to all your content. I would add a Newsletter and Pinterest to the graphic above. Newsletter are by far the cheapest and most effective form of marketing, while less so than 5 years ago, this statement still holds true.
Publishing original content on your store blog and then promoting and syndicating effectively across social channels will initially drive that short-term engagement. It starts conversations and drives traffic.But then that ‘attention’ begins to wane. We’re all on to the next thing.
For consumers it’s the next thing in our Facebook feed from our friends or another brand we follow. For the brand it’s the next item to be published/promoted. Remember that great thing Brand X posted on Facebook last Tuesday? Yep, neither do I. Since that content is NOT indexed by search it’s almost impossible to find.
By having an owned channel that is indexed by search, the long tail begins to kick in. That original piece of content is now drawing in search traffic, day in and day out for the foreseeable future. As your content archive grows it’s search value grows as well.
Revenue generated in the first 24-48 hours is driven by social network activity. This may be our initial Facebook post and Tweet and subsequent shares withing our audience. Then this activity almost flatlines after the second day. Now, search has it’s day, or should I say days/months/years. The revenue generated by inbound search soon eclipses the original social activity.
Pinterest creates an interesting opportunity as it behaves more like a search engine than social media. Pins on average peak after around 3 months on site.
We strongly recommend that all your social media content be driven from your store blog.
Here is just one example of a campaign.
You write a review of a product in some depth with several product images including a lifestyle image of the product. How do you then leverage that blog post.
1. Take a teaser of the blog post and put it on Facebook with a read more link to the blog post. Use the Lifestyle image.
2. Pin the Lifestyle image with some text and a link to the post
3. Add the images to Flicker
4. Tweet about the product
5. Perhaps you create a Video , include it in the post and load it up to YouTube with a link to the Blog
6. Send out a newsletter focusing on the product review.
Want to go further ? Okay lets do a giveaway for the product, a random winner from everyone who signs up for your newsletter or comments on Facebook, or how about you offer 10% OFF the product you reviewed for a week via a coupon and of course promote that via Facebook, Tweets and a newsletter.
One simple blog post just became an engine for traffic generation, in the immediate on social media, but later on Pinterest and your store blog via search engines.
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To get people to visit your site from a Facebook post, you just need to copy the address of the page where you want them to land (the URL) and paste it into your post. Let’s say I want to promote a new product that was just added to the site.
Visit the item page on your site where the product is and click into the picture:
Copy the entire URL that is in the address box in the upper left corner, including the “http:” In this example the URL is http://artisansexchange.org/collections/new-products/products/hand-felted-one-eyed-red-tooth-monster-with-wings-global-groove
On your Facebook page, paste the URL in the Status box. Facebook will resolve the link below your post:
The pictures are square and Facebook uses a 4X6 horizontal template but it adds a little mystery to the product, don’t you think? Delete the URL from the post and replace it with something you want to say:
Click on the Publish button. Voila! The post is on your Facebook page with a link to the product on your website.
Unfortunately, Facebook isn’t as kind to business posts as it is to your posts of your cat. Your cat post goes out on the News Feed of your friends but posts from business pages do not get nearly as much traction with the people who have liked your business site. So you may want to give your post a little nudge with a “boost.”
Boosts are not free but are very affordable. You select the duration and the audience and the amount of money you want to spend.
Click on the “Boost Post” button. A page similar to this will display:
Select and audience, a budget, and duration. You can set up a target audience based on location or demographics (sometimes we only want to post locally). Facebook gives you an estimate of how many people will be reached. It can be worth a couple of bucks to get your post seen. In this example, while the site has almost 2000 likes, Facebook estimates that only 160-430 people will see it. But wouldn't it be amazing if 5% of them placed an order?
Click on the "Boost" button. If you haven't already sold your soul to Facebook (i.e. have your credit card on file), you can enter payment information on the next screen.
If you’re like me, you’re still trying to figure out the use for Twitter posts. It’s difficult enough to post something on Facebook, let alone needing to count your characters and post the same on Twitter. But you can link your Facebook page to your Twitter account so you only have to post on one place. Remember, only 140 characters show up on Twitter (with the rest of the post being turned into a link) so put the important information in the beginning, including the ever-popular, much-maligned hashtags.
While they certainly don’t make your Facebook posts pretty, Twitter users follow certain phrases called “hashtags.” There’s no defined list of these. But if you want your post to show up with others offering, say, ornaments, put the hashtag #ornaments in your Facebook post.
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