What are You Doing to Move the Chains?

Football is a game of yards.

Talent is scouted out and recruited. It’s not just about creating an army of superstars but also achieving a balancing act of strength and weakness. Teamwork is essential. Individuals must come together and function like gears in a machine to achieve the goal. If even one part is out of sync, the best-laid strategy will break down quickly. No single player – no matter how skilled – can advance without the cooperation and support of the other 10 men on the gridiron. Discipline is the mantra of the team. The fundamentals are never taken for granted. They are practiced and reinforced and sharpened with rhythmic and unfailing consistency. The hard work of training and conditioning is done in blistering heat, driving rain and freezing cold. Film is studied. Strategy is debated, refined, challenged and retooled. Tactics are meticulously planned and plotted in playbooks. The competition is scrutinized to identify advantages and vulnerabilities. All of these acts are performed in the quest to gain yards, because those yards add up to wins, and victories add up to championships.

Business is a game of yards, too.

These yards aren’t measured by hashmarks on a field but by the trust cultivated in your customers and your community. Just like in football, it’s up to you to create opportunities to advance down the field. It starts with making sure you have the right players on the field – ones who not only have the skill set needed to execute the plays but the vision to see the field and react to unforeseen challenges when necessary. Teamwork is not just a warm-and-fuzzy HR concept but a critical element of success. Your employees must believe in their stake in the ultimate goal and take full ownership of executing their routes without fail to minimize the chances of blatant mistakes and errors that result in costly setbacks. Yards must be earned one at a time through the demonstration of good values, honest communication and commitment to service.Discipline can never be abandoned. The process of building trust is challenging and never-ending. It can’t be accomplished by writing a check or putting up an empty facade. These yards must be earned one at a time through the authentic demonstration of good values, honest communication and commitment to serving your customers and their needs. Vigilance to strategy must be a constant. When innovation is absent, when tactics do not evolve, when shortcuts are taken, the cost is missed opportunities and lost yardage while your competitors advance on your goal. All of these acts must be performed to gain trust, because that trust yields a stronger community around your brand, and a growing community paves the way to owning your market. Find the right talent, cultivate good internal synergy, remain vigilant in serving your tribe and refine and sharpen your approach, and you’ll create opportunities to grow your business. By contrast, if you allow team spirit to fall by the wayside, become complacent, stick only with old, familiar marketing tactics and fail to lead your tribe, you’ll be watching your competitors sail across the goal line while you scramble to catch up.

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5 Must-Haves for Today's E-Commerce Website

E-commerce has come a long way in the last few years. We now have phases of the online shopping experience going back to the 90s up to the modern, fully social shopping experience.

The current e-commerce website looks very little like what shopping looked like even a few years ago, but not everyone is on board. There are still a lot of sites that are more "traditional" in their shopping experience. If your website still offers the same layout as it did even just a few years ago, it may be time for an upgrade. So check out these modern trends in e-commerce and see if you need to integrate the latest technology into your online store.

Social...very social

Shopping has always been about the social experience. There's nothing quite like window shopping with your friends or trying on a pair of shoes to get your friend's opinion. Ecommerce doesn't come close. Or at least it didn't until recently. Now shopping has become quite the social experience online when you have sites like Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook that are intimately intertwined with most shopping experiences.

Top e-commerce sites, such as Amazon.com, include social media buttons on each page so that customers can easily share products or purchases with friends and family. Others also provide the option to sign in using social media accounts. To really capitalize on the sharing feature, some websites also encourage social sharing immediately after someone leaves a review or makes a purchase simply by placing social sharing widgets on the Thank You page. While Facebook and Twitter are definitely the big social sites to include, do your research and find out where customers most commonly share your products.

Mobile optimized

Another major change has been the use of mobile phones for shopping. Sites used to have a one-size fits all approach. Then came the mobile version of a site. Now, sites utilize responsive web design and adaptive web design to present the same information in different formats.

To really improve conversions via mobile shoppers, e-commerce sites have to remember that mobile customers are usually on the go and simply wanting a quick and easy experience, whether it's researching prices or making a purchase. You can simplify a site for mobile by including a banner and a menu that only includes options that mobile users need, such as popular products, categories of products, a product search, account login, or whatever your customers seem to access via your mobile site. Check out these 10 laws for a successful mobile e-commerce site to see more excellent tips and examples on mobile design.

Ratings rule

People love to have their opinions heard - by both their social circles and you, the vendor. Rating systems give people the opportunity to both praise (or pummel) the store from which they've purchased. In turn, others who may be interested in a product can read reviews and ratings to get a sense of your level of service.

Rating systems are just about mandatory these days. Not having any reviews can be worse than having poor to medicocre ratings. It's risky. You can use this risky business to your advantage, though. Take the feedback and the invaluable data and turn it into something that empowers and improves what you do. Plus, negative reviews can actually increase consumer purchases by as much as 67%! Most commonly, e-commerce websites place the opportunity for reviews on each product page. For those of your customers who are less verbal, offer a way for them to click on stars to simply rate a product without having to leave a comment if so desired.

One-click wonders

Finally, modern e-commerce sites make it easy to purchase and move on. It's not about loading up a "shopping cart" any more. People buy one thing and get out. More and more data indicates that consumers shop for a single item and they're done, especially when shopping through a mobile device. A recent study, in fact, found a 20% improvement when consumers had the option to complete a purchase on one click. You can try to upsell, but you may want to leave this for after the purchase. Shoppers online want a fast, easy to use purchasing process unencumbered by the likes of confirming what's in their cart.

Give them the option to buy with a one-click like purchase and keep the cart as a back up if you must. For instance, you could remove the shopping cart option from your mobile version but allow customers to use it if needed when accessing your desktop version. But don't be surprised if you abandon the cart just like consumers are doing. Top e-commerce sites such as iTunes have certainly found single-click purchasing to be a huge success.

A modern e-commerce site is increasingly social, optimized for all kinds of browsing devices, has a rating system, and makes it fast and easy to purchase. Is your system up to speed or do you still have shopping cart isolated from the outside social media world?

 

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