All Things Shiny (Magpies & Jewellery, Business & Technology)

Magpies are drawn to shiny things, they collect bottle tops and anything that they can add to their nest when trying to attract a mate. It gives them “the edge”.

Humans have this same trait, we like new things. We’ve been trained by a culture of decades of marketing that we need the latest technology, because it will make our lives better, or so we’ve told.

OoooO Look its shiny! Wanna Ride?

Do we really need the shiny things to achieve results?

I know this all to well, after the conversations yesterday at the eSellerPro conference, there are a lot of “shiny things” kicking around. Lets take a few specific ones (Kris take note of Magento):

I’m not going to bore you with the endless list that your “magpie” manager (that might just be you) is being hounded by the media hype to be involved in. You should be doing social, you should be doing facebook, you should be on Twitter, you should be doing eBay, you should be doing Amazon, oh and you should be using Magento; you should be doing this and you should be doing that.

NO!!!

Lets take “Magento” for a moment, so you’ve already go your website up and running and running and have customers visiting each day. You may have seen it for the past a, 2, 3 or more years, but if a customer comes to you for the first time today, what do you thinks?

Does he scream OMG this website is soooo old, its got this bug, its missing this feature, oh would it not be sooooo cool to have this or that?

NO!!!

The customer is looking to see if the product is right for them, they may be looking for social triggers to ensure they feel safe, they want to make sure that the product or service is right for them and all the common things that happen during a transaction.

You should be doing what is measurable and what is required to gain the confidence of the customer that what you are offering is the right product for them. It does not matter if the checkout is 10 pages long, they’ll get through it, if they have “SOLD” stamped on their fore-heads.

So…

I like you, get attracted to the shiny stuff. We’ve been programmed to by endless hounding by mass media & even peers to do this and that.

Magpies use shiny stuff to attract a new partner, we use these things to attract managers, peers, friends, customers & status. But the difference between magpies & humans is that great big lump on top of your shoulders.

By knowing that something is shiny means you can focus on what really matters, what actually converts and making it better. Use your lump, its your edge.

What’s shiny to you?
Go on admit it, you have something that is shiny. I know I do. But what really matters? What really converts?