As Big as Big Boys – How Appear to be Big on a Shoe String

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Looking BigLooking big is really quite easy on the internet, all it takes is some time, some cunning and a nudge in the right direction. Follow this step by step guide and you’re look like an established or corporate business in next to no time.

Here are some key page names you need to create and add to your site, ideally linked from your footer area on all pages (except the checkout if possible):

  • Press Office
  • Affiliates
  • Meet the Team
  • Careers, Recruitment or Join the Team at Company Ltd
  • Partners
  • Store Locator (if you have a trade or customer collections site)

Even if you do not have a press office, affiliate network set up, a team (other than the parents & pet cat), partners or a store. Get these pages up.

Get the Email Addresses Sorted
First off, with any decent hosting account you get a load of email boxes or forwarders, create a selection of email addresses, press@, affiliates@, careers@, store@ and forward them all to your main email address. It doesn’t matter that these go to the same email address, its the message they convey.

Press Office
For the press office, write a little blurb, here is a great example, minus the link to the PR company, make the contacts name up or even copy Donna’s name.  70% of that page is one fat image, do the same.

Affiliate Network
Even if you don’t have an affiliate network set up, lob a page up offering 2.5-8% of sales to affiliates, you never know you might be approached before you go looking to join an affiliate network.

Meet the Team
A personal favourite of mine, get some half decent pictures taken, I didn’t say pay for them, you’d be amazed what  you can do with a phone and the grey scale setting in photoshop, just check my about me page. That was me taking the pee in Tesco’s sporting a pack of ‘spam slices’.

Talk you friend, mum and dad to get in as well, a short bio, although if you don’t want to go the ‘family’ route you may want to alter their surnames.

If you’ve got any accreditations, lob them on. I used my MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional) logos for my eBay stuff, although for the best part it was pretty much unrelated, but looked FAB!

Careers, Recruitment or Join the Team at Company Ltd
More of a personal preference here, if the company you wish to create has a more relaxed feel, go for the ‘Join the Team @ Company Ltd’ , otherwise name it careers or recruitment.

You know the drill, we’ve all looked at sites we’d like to work for, google them and copy/paste and edit a few lines.

Partners
Always a firm favourite, if you shift, sorry I mean market branded goods, then include a few logos and make the impression that you work with these companies, even if there is someone in the middle (a few times probably). If they’re unbranded, brand them and knock up a logo in paint.

Store Locator
If you have premises, then this is a shocker for both the website and any marketing materials, if the buyer has no intention of visiting, a picture of a shop, office, warehouse or tent will reassure the customer, you’re real. Oh and include a google map, they’re free or just screen shot and paste the image in.

A big tip here is include the phone number and email address in clear sight, customers will normally always phone or email rather getting off their butts to come in.

So your website should have a cracking footer line up now, the above should take no more than 15 minutes per page (thats 5 min’s googling, 5 min’s pasting, 5 min’s editing).

Press | Affiliates | Meet the Team | Careers | Partners | Store Locator

It looks swish doesn’t, almost a ‘real’ professional company that you always were. You’ve now paved the way to these departments in you business structure, all in an hour or two. What its says to the customer, ‘is these people are real’. Get over that hurdle, the rest is easy.

Show Our Age
Talking of easy, thats not the end yet, here is a quality chestnut, under you logo, do just have some cheesy by line, include the date the business was established.

Ask yourself, which sounds better?

  • I Love My Feet
  • I Love My Feet | Trading Since 2006

Thought so, do it. It adds an immediate age to the company and puts the browser at ease, this is a defo a tick if using right under the logo placed in the top right hand corner, no fancy text, just plain Arial or similar font face.

Facebook & Twitter
Include these pages ONLY and ONLY after you beefed it up, spoken to the entire pub and got Aunt Bessie to hit the like button too, get at least 100 likes before trying to promote it to people you do not know.

You’ve seen the pages & invites, ‘come see my Facebook page’, its got 1 fan and some ‘hello’ post, watch the dust balls ride on by, they’re clicking the back button. You want something to model for this, see MyProtein’s facebook page, its got some FB guru company beefing that one.

Warehouse or Store Picture
Take a look here on Google for some ‘warehouse‘ pictures, pick one and include it in your listing, about pages or on the site footer. If you actually have a warehouse and even a team of staff, ike em out and take a picture. Only takes a few mins and the staff get to see daylight.

I’ll stop here, I hope you’ve taken on board the point of this blog post, if you are to be big in business, then you need to give the impression that you are big in business, even if you’re not.

Who said this was TameBay, AuctionBytes or Similar?

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I had quite an interesting chat on Skype with a previous colleague last week, apparently I am getting bad press at eBay for ‘dissing’ their enterprise clients.

Speaking openly, it did cause me a few restless nights (it was really hot at night as well, Malta is not far from the equator and over 20C almost every day, I managed to completely miss all the snow, pity…), however I decided the following:

  1. I don’t want to work for eBay (believe it or not, never have done either)
    As such, as long as I am sensible (calling the design ‘shit‘ was probably a little too much in hindsight, apologies (but it still sucks)) I am going to carry on pointing and making fun of ‘botched’ jobs.
  2. I have no intention or desire to replicate ‘Tamebay’ or AucitonBytes.
    Tamebay is great, I love Chris & Sue’s views on ‘happenings’ in this arena, but its not me. Sorry, if you were expecting fluffy nice-ness, if it sucks, it sucks, why should I say anything different?
  3. Advertising
    It was also suggested the selling advertising space, sorry no. I would indicate that there are too many disclaimers on ‘other’ sites and I am only biased solely by my own opinion. If i want to recommend something I will do it personally, openly and crucially with the reasons why (like mailchimp, its fab).
  4. I also need to be ultra careful when it comes to clients & acquaintances, although I do my best to ensure I am translucent to outside parties.

Purpose

For those unsure on the purpose of this blog, take a read of Project Matthew Ogborne, quoting a section from this page:

If it wasn’t for a client of mine and great friend of mine who gave me a stark kick up the arse a few months back, I’d be keeping all this all to myself. Enjoy it, this is a professional nut case in action. Stand aside.

As Lisa said, its the application of ‘Matthew Ogborne’ that counts, anyone can point and poke but you[me] got the know-how, nows its for you to explain why and where and educate these people.

My point Is…

That there is a lot to be learnt and to continue learning from, pointing and making fun is the easy part, actually suggesting corrections and adaptations is a completely different ball park, what I regard as ‘my ball park’.

People have implemented my suggestions, made serious cash and also passed off them off as their own, this time around, you get them fresh, in their raw form to do with as you please.

Now, wait for tomorrows post…

A ‘Merrier’ Christmas on Amazon – Fudge the Item Weights

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If Amazon read this, it’ll probably piss on any chance I ever had for working with/for them. But keeping with the no-holes-barred approach I set out here, here is a tip that no-one will tell you, mainly because its dirty and underhand, but hey it works!

The Background

This only works if you know that your competitors on Amazon use weight based rules, its a basic flaw in the way that inventory is created in Amazon, by having lots of people able to edit records, then there is a margin of error, based upon this, we are able to force an error in our favour.

I say that this only works when ‘they use weight based rules’, this is because the Amazon shipping method setup for merchants is very primitive, you essentially get two options, weight based or item based and also only works for non BMVD (media like DVD’s etc) items. You can see the Amazon help pages on this here.

Its also imperative that you are not using weight based shipping yourself, if you do not alter this, then you’re screwing yourself. Again see here on how to alter them.

Spotting if we have Chance to Weight the Odds

You can normally spot what method your competitor is using on Amazon by checking a collection of items, preferably look at something that is intrinsically very heavy and something that is very light and seeing if the postage changes. If it does, Housten, we have a winner!

Altering the Weights

There are a couple of options that we can use, we can either edit records manually one by one, use a script such as an iMacro to alter them in turn, page by page, an update file or use an import/export from your software provider.

My biggest tip is not to go overboard with the weight increases and definitely not to do everything. Instead, pick on a selection of items and alter their weight so that it becomes unreasonably expensive for shipping.

If you have enough time, then picking a single item and working out their shipping with multiple weight edits could be very advantageous, you would know then sweet spots and because to create a simple calculation in excel to push each item over its barrier.

Summary

I hope you have realised how dirty this is, however realised that it could make or break someones Christmas.

The key to this is not going overboard on weight changes, setting something from 100 grams to 1 tonne isn’t going to work (well it may do, but expect it to get picked up) and for gods sake, if using the Amazon update files, ensure you write ‘update’ for the update type, its too easy to wipe data and always keep a backup and a record of the changes made, just in case you need them back later.

ToysRus – Putting My Photoshop Skills Where My Mouth Is – The New Listing Template

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This is quite an old article now. I have considered removing it and I have edited it slightly since. However I decided that it would be better to leave this and the other articles on the site, as with anything, experience is only learnt through fire, this was one of those times where I could have done better and approached the subject more tactfully.

I’m leaving it, as it shows I’m just a mere mortal, like us all.

Original Article

In a meeting today with a client, the topic of outlets came up and I explained about ToysRus and my post two days ago and how I thought it was amateur.

Phil [the client] quite rightly suggested that I should explain my actions, going around and pointing at things and saying they are ‘poor’, it isn’t on, prove they’re shit and explain why you think its better he said, this is for you Phil.

10 Minutes in Photoshop

I set the stop watch , well looked at windows clock and started, 10 minutes of my pr0 photoshop skills were unleashed. Thats right, I bodged this together in 10 minutes flat.

My point is that its not my photoshop skills you should be interested in, its my reasoning. I’ll shut up and lets get looking at my copy and paste jumble. But before that, lets do a before shot, then get to the happily ever after.

Before Any Changes

toysrus-before

Toysrus Before Screenshot

If you click the image above or you can view the ebay item here in the flesh and ore at its design nastyness.

10 Minutes of Photshop Hacks

Yep, 10 minutes of copy/paste, chop and insertions, I arrived at this master piece.

toysrus-better-design

ToysRus Better Design

Explaining My Actions

Now this is where if it wasn’t for another customer an great friend of mine who gave me a stark kick up the arse a few months back, I’d be keeping all this all to myself. Enjoy it, this is a professional nut case in action. Stand aside.

As Lisa said, its the application of ‘Matthew Ogborne’ that counts, anyone can point and poke but you[me] got the know-how, nows its for you to explain why and where and educate these people.

Lets go:

  1. I left the babyrus in the top right, this sits well with the websites and although that babys template is just as bad. Moving on…
  2. I kept the top eBay header bar from the listing, but I inserted the category bar from the website. (Yes that really is the cart section in the header, I told you, this was 10 mins flat in Photoshop, its one cut get over it. I am not that thick)
  3. The search box area needs work, I am not 1oo% sure on this area art all, it needs more than a few seconds chopping to set this right. Maybe where the cart is?Not sure at all. This defo needs some consideration outside of the post.
  4. Now that banner, brilliant idea from their website and exactly why what ever muppet designed this looked at their website with their eyes firmly closed. Yea it says free shipping, this is not my point, the banner existing is. Think of some USP (Unique Selling Point) and promote it, hey here is one. ToysRUs official eBay outlet, that’ll do for a few days to doge the negs.
  5. Going down the left menu, I spotted a neat little feature on the ToysRus site ‘back to’, lets set this as a link back to the shop home. OR wait for it…. drum roll… set it to the same category where this item is listed in. You getting it yet? You feeling it? I am saying WE know which shop category this item is listed in, so we can offer a ‘Back To’ link feature by using this to make the shop category link. Genius!
  6. The category menu is OK, personally I’d prefer a more well thought out category structure with sub menus, similar to the website, but with the limitations of eBay taken into consideration (eg only two shop cats per item).
  7. That eBay newsletter is bordering on miss leading, its implying that its from eBay, not that its Toysrus, its there because I think its needed, but it needs work to clarify its source.
  8. You’ll notice I have slipped in the ‘Helpful Links’ section on the bottom left. You betcha, that right hand side useless menu is a goner.
  9. Back to the top again and a full width title has been placed, this is crucial. Hold on to your seats here, stellar information overload coming.

You have 10 seconds to sell this item

  1. WTF(remember this term?) Matt, 10 seconds? Yep 10 seconds, you have just 10 of them before the customer decides to continue reading the rest or looks for a bail out option. So lets give them to information they need to make this decision in 10 seconds.

    This is a research done by a company sellathon about 4 years ago, yes its old but I swear it holds true today as well. And yes the bullet point numbers in this list are now out :)
  2. So with the right menu gone, we’re able to give the main image pride of place smack in the middle, BUT also reinforce the product message with some key information pointers.
  3. We show the selling price, shipping price and total it. Actually now looking at it, we need to do a little link for more info and drop that shipping box all together, its confusing.
  4. We have ’email a friend’ and ‘watch this item’ as before, but vertically, but I have added the ‘similar items’ box. This comes from the link I suggested way up in point #5. Have an exit strategy at all times, this item may not be the right one for the browser, so deal with it effectively.
  5. The description area was nicked from the website. a welcome replacement to the crap that was in the original design, ToysRus have a fun clean design, lets not cheapen it, but bend it to eBay.
  6. The last section, related items. by their name its related items. What I’d do here is actually offer two lots, one for true related items, like other trucks, but also accessories. This can be easily done with some Javascript that I have set as a blog post to be released sometime next week.

Summary

I hope from the above I have explained why I pointed at the original listing and said it was crap and have now given a full break down on how it could be bettered with a bonus 10 minute mashup photoshop visual.

If you can only learn one thing from these sets of posts on the ToysRus designs, is that do not be a yes-man and take the first design given to you, especially when its blatantly obvious its been done by a muppet designer who looked at the corporate image with their eyes fulled closed and missed all the good points and delivered something that I wholly think is substandard.

ToysRUs Negged Twice @ Day 2 +28K Listings Will help

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This is quite an old article now. I have considered removing it and I have edited it slightly since. However I decided that it would be better to leave this and the other articles on the site, as with anything, experience is only learnt through fire, this was one of those times where I could have done better and approached the subject more tactfully.

I’m leaving it, as it shows I’m just a mere mortal, like us all.

Original Article

Howdy, things are pretty busy here with some crazy sales coming through already this week, predictions are being smashed and we still have next week to contend with, which was the week I was expecting previous sales histories to be smashed in. I’ll try and keep this one to a few paragraphs.

I am away for a few days soon looking at property in Malta, but its been amazing the response back from the ToyRUs post I made yesterday. I think I hit a nerve as the stats went bonkers after that got tweeted. See the post here, sorry but it does look crap and spoils the clear cut brand they have with a cheap layout.

I looked at it again today (see here) and could not help but wonder if they should have perhaps left this under wraps for a while longer as the ID is being trashed already?

Last Year Tesco Outlet

Tesco-logo2It was a round this time last year when Tesco launched Tesco_Outlet on eBay and it was running late by 2 days because the design was held up and it was launched on the Tuesday when I was away[in Malta]. Jeas that was some ‘faith’, Kim, I am forever indebted. There was no way I could get out of the trip, for the men out there, when you get ‘the look’ you know the answer is a no.

It was mad, the UK’s largest retailer launching live on eBay UK and I was not around.

A well briefed Kim [Implementer at eSellerPro] was on the case though and I had put four days on-site in previously, Clive and the Team were well versed (also inherited my odd perversion to eBay customers) and I am happy to declare that the first week sales were crazy and all-in-all pretty smooth. The full page add in the Times helped.

Even though I knew I had had the planning & all the ground work done and knew the the Team were there, it was quite a nervous trip and I did have a sleepless night which involved the trashing of the eBay ID. What if someone has a massive grudge against Tesco and trashes it, they must have pissed off at least one customer…? But we were lucky and nothing eventful happened. They did get the odd negative, but the Team were able to resolve them amicably.

Ouchy, Negs!

Back on topic, to ToysRUs, I think now with hindsight of Tesco Outlet, it would have been better to soft launch, built some feedback up and then swapped eBay ID’s, at least to build a buffer. Even more when you see the below:

So much for the few paragraphs, I do feel for the chaps & girls that must be behind the scenes on this project, I am sure a few favours will be pulled in and those negs will go eventually. Laying down +28,000  listings will certainly help, even if they do look crap :)

ToysRUs on eBay.com – But it Looks Crap

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This is quite an old article now. I have considered removing it and I have edited it slightly since. However I decided that it would be better to leave this and the other articles on the site, as with anything, experience is only learnt through fire, this was one of those times where I could have done better and approached the subject more tactfully.

I’m leaving it, as it shows I’m just a mere mortal, like us all.

Original Article

Was just catching up with the Google reader over a cuppa and spot an interesting post from AuctionBytes that ToysRUs have launched on to eBay.com, you can read the article here.

Superb, another massive name hits eBay. Now this is where I’m going to go off the rails a little and point out that wtf is this crap template?

Now for those who don’t know Fooition basically left a load of their customers in the brown when eBay changed its shops format (was ittoysrus-logo twice? pretty sure it was) so I have never been a raving fan of the company. Their designs have always been front page only, although their more decent versions have got a lot better. Even still this is a company that has been around enough and are fully in-bed with Channel Advisor.

But surely between the pair of them (CA & Froo) they could have come up with something that doesn’t look so, whats the best word[?], basic, primitive, crap?

Look here:
http://www.toysrus.co.uk/Toys-R-Us/Toys/Role-Play/Little-Tikes-Side-By-Side-Kitchen(0078942)

And here:
http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=4319472&ab=Tru_homepage_aspot:leftnav:Dollhouse

I really hope this is just a beta or mock up version, otherwise this will be another amateur set up.

You think You Could Do Better Matt?

Yep and I’ll tell you for free. Its easy get the designer to copy the corporate brand and port it to eBay, this is not hard and when done properly can be done superbly well. If it does not look very, very like http://www.toysrus.com/ or http://www.toysrus.co.uk/ then it needs work.

Drop menus can be done (there is a post on this in a few days on the first eBay store that has this), the flash elements are easy and get rid of that right bar, product product product.

Note

I do try to be an advocate for the majority of the time. Frootion have some great designs, like I said they have got better (recently), While not a huge fan of Channel Advisor (due to history pre-Marketworks buy out), it has its place and I do admire its PR machine. But come on, it admit it, the listing looks crap and if you were ToysRUs would you be happy with it? I know I would not be.

Rant over, coffee finished.

Update

I put together the following article called ToysRus – Putting My Photoshop Skills Where My Mouth Is – The New Listing Template which summarize suggested changes. The template works, but it frankly sucks.

In hindsight (that beautiful maiden) , I should have perhaps joined all posts regarding ToysRus into one mammoth article. However, you can read all of them in this search:
http://lastdropofink.co.uk/?s=toysrus

Tesco Taking on Amazon, Great Choice!

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Tesco Logo

Update: This article has been expanded upon further, see Part 1: Battle of The Giants – Tesco V’s Amazon – Who Will Win?

The PR wheels have been turning for the past few days on the news that Tesco is to take on Amazon. It was interesting reading the comments left by users on the article posted on Tamebay, as they had a distinct eBay feel to them.

Amazon in many ways is almost the perfect model to follow, its core differences between its  marketplace and eBay are reason for its huge success year on year.

The Marketplace Differences

eBay UK LogoeBay facilitates transactions between buyers and sellers, but does not sell or create product to sell on its own marketplace (like a ‘farmer’ hosting a ‘carboot sale’), where as Amazon is its main (note not sole) selling platform which ‘allows’ other sellers to sell along side ‘it’ and to use the Amazon umbrella.

Another huge differences is the way inventory is handled, eBay is still a free-for-all, although a few categories like Sat Nav and DVD’s are moving towards single listings, multiple sellers, but for the best part, its a mess of same items all designed and displayed differently [this is both a positive and a negative] in vast amounts of listings.

Amazon UK

Hey look, Amazon!

Where-as Amazon’s structure is quite different, this is a true single record > multiple sellers environment and its a fight based upon ‘mainly’ price. So instead of creating a listing per seller, its one listing per multiple sellers.

This is not without its complexities over duplicate records and damn annoying duplicate barcodes especially in the media categories (sold a book when it was supposed to be some fancy dress item, grrrr) but generally the system works, if its to work then Tesco need a backend system that can cope with the creation of new records, a way of verifying them on multiple criteria and allow edits to them to maximum inventory creation potential.

Seller Thrashings

Another fundamental difference between the marketplaces is that you can generally talk around eBay and cover up miss-haps. If you piss-off Amazon, then you are screwed. Its their marketplace and if you let their customers down, then you better have a damn good contact list to start bailing on, its extremely rare for sellers to get back on. I know of only perhaps just three in almost 10 years.

OoO Wait, What About Play.com?

play.comIts worth noting here that no-where I have seen has anyone mentioned Play.com, not I think this has a potential in itself. Again for those new to the different platforms, Play.com offer something called PlayTrade and PlayTrade Pro, which allow sellers to sell on their platform along side their existing stock.

Now the biggest limiter (by their own design I hasten to add) is that Play.com have chosen to the stance that ‘if its not in our database you cannot sell it’, which in many ways keeps things cleaner, but also seriously stunts their growth when compared directly to Amazon.

Yes you can ask Play to create new records, but the data better be squeaky clean and its not a fast process by any means as from I know if its checked manually [poor Chris B!].

Processing the Sales Data

The other no-brainer for Tesco is that they can pull an Amazon style javari.co.uk on the data they pull. Again for those who don’t know this, remember you are selling on Amazon’s platform, they sell there too, its their platform. So when they spot a sweet spot, like footwear, don’t be supprised if they do a javari.co.uk or an endless.com with this data. If I was Tesco, I’d be gunning for this data, data that says what sells, when, how and who for, its utter insane when you think that Amazon have been doing this for years and haven’t even started to monetize their data to sub sites.

On a side note, checkout javari.co.uk and endless.com they are super slick and not a patch on what Amazon have released in the Amazon Webstore platform for merchants.

Integrate, Integrate, Integrate!

Now if Tesco is going to open its doors to other sellers, then it better have some ‘common’ tools at its disposal to enable sellers to port data (coff, just like Play.com did) from existing marketplaces (Amazon) and enable its use on their own site.

A few common sense things, like keeping condition codes the same as thats used on Amazon (coff Play.com) and file formats would be a good start. One thing that Amazon lacks on in direct comparison to eBay is that its API isn’t that great. eBay’s API has to be one of, if not the the best documented & thorough API there is.

Working with 3rd party tools like eSellerPro , Channel Advisor, AManPro etc is going to be key to the marketplaces success, I really do not see such a channel taking off if no-one can list data there quickly, especially the businesses that already have great data sat there waiting to be deployed.

Fulfillment By Tesco?

Infact I don’t even want to contemplate this right now, but thinking about it for a few movements, if Tesco are smart enough to take a swipe at Amazon, why not go for the jugular and take some FBT (Fulfillment By Tesco) as well? Buy up a third party like ProFS, bingo instant fulfillment network to take on Amazon’s. See crazy stuff! My head hurts on the sheer potential they have here.

Tesco Affiliates, Amazon Style

Another topic that I have seen absolutely no-one mention and that is affiliates. For those who have never heard of this concept, its simple, you transfer a customer that converts, you get a commission (its what I have been hiding away doing for the past few months on a larger scale).

My point is, Amazon have BOAT LOADS OF AFFILIATES and the crazy thing about their affiliate program is that they offer 24hr cookie where the rest of the industry is around 30 days, but Amazon converts like crazy, times this by thousands and an astore product that is simple to use for community sites and can be deployed in minutes.

Its like an army of sales staff working for you, its crazy.

Note to self, need to find out the figures quoted for Amazon affiliates, I am sure they account/contribute for a massive amount of the total sales revenue of Amazon.

So Matt Your Point Is…

Tesco would be insane to try and copy eBay, by-god thats a dirty marketplace when you compare it to Amazon. I have no idea how this is going to pan out, a new site or a bolt on module to their existing Tesco Direct site at http://direct.tesco.com/ (which again for those did not know it has a proportion of an amalgamation of supplier feeds branded as Tesco, well and some Tesco owned items too I suspect).

If its going to work, they’re[Tesco] are going to have to push their brand name to the limits of what can be pushed. That Amazon logo instills a sense of comfort & trust that just isn’t found elsewhere on the Internet and is going to be extremely hard to get anywhere near to it, regardless of their starting base.

They’re not going to need luck, they’re going to need some damn gifted management heads, every single corporate based tool at their disposal and some fairy dust for good measure.

Exciting times ahead for all of us, be sure of that.

Possibly The Worst Customer Service Experienced Ever? MobilePhonesDirect.co.uk

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MobilePhonesDirect

MobilePhonesDirect

What is to follow is exactly how you should not deal with your customers and probably not how you should deal with being a customer either.

Let’s Set the Scenario.

I finally decide that I need a new mobile phone, I had already decided that I did not want an iPhone, but a Android based phone. So I go through the classic buying phases, research(involves lots of Google and asking friends), home in on a brand or few handsets (happened to be HTC), research some more, then flop the wallet out and buy.

Now literally 10 minutes before I stopped haunting the four or so major phone sites, I got an email from Which? saying that HTC had just released two new HTC Desire phones, the HTC Desire HD and the HTC Desire Z. Now the Z has a flip out keyboard like that old Nokia lump, nice, but I was dazzled by the 8Mp camera, 4.3 Screen and HD recording. I have two young children and my previous phone coupled as the family camera and thus these attributes stamped SOLD on my head immediately.

Here is the promo video for the phone, I personally love this style of storyboarding:

Soo now I have the big phat SOLD sign dangling from my head, its down to network, price and data usage. After scouring the net I finally settle on a 24 month contract from T-Mobile called ‘T-Mobile £30 Mobile Internet’ which had a decent amount of minutes (900), some texts (500) and for me crucially 1Gb of net transfer.

While I don’t actually anticipate that I would clear an entire Gig in a month, I would not put it past me and yes I know most places I got have wifi, but still I wanted 1Gb of transfer.

Anyway, I settle on a company called mobilephonesdirect.co.uk, I do my usual checks (ok I suffer from web paranoia), whois check on the domain, phone a store, use their live chat (which is now gone, you’ll find out why soon) and verify their other two stores on Google maps. OK I am comfortable.

Now a secondary clincher was this, noting that its still on thier website almost two months later:

We are an HTC ultimate partner and are receiving stock weekly during November and will supply Desire HD on a first ordered first delivered basis. Order Now and receive a Free 8GB memory card.

Bingo, this phone was not to be released for another week or so, they’re a premium partner, I’ll be one of the first. O-Happy-Days, or soo I thought.

Then Things Started to Go Wrong

I contacted them using their live chat, which was offline, but left a message and shortly afterwards I receive a reply that the phones have not been delivered yet, but would be notified when they had more information.

Now knowing this is a new phone and they’re reliant upon the manufacturer (HTC) to deliver, I wasn’t really concerned, hey they are[?], as they still quote:

We are an HTC ultimate partner

Another week passes, so I email, no response, I email again the next day, no response and again the next day, yep you guessed it no response.

So I phone. After five minutes of waiting, ‘Sarah’ answers the phone and to be honest I felt sorry for the girl, I am not the best customer as I ask bloody awkward questions and can be very blunt when rattled by poor customer service. The up shot from the call that the Manager (who would not talk to me) would be emailing ‘The Customers’ the next day.

From her tone, you could tell that she had obviously been beaten up several other times that morning and feeling sorry for her for verbal onslaught I had just given her (that sounds bad, I am always polite honest!), so left it to wait and see what happens in the email.

So I get the email, another week. Another week passes, another email, another week. WTF (remember what this means?) I thought these were:

We are an HTC ultimate partner

Ok, now I’m getting narked, after no reply for two days since I replied to their email saying it was not in stock for an indeterminate amount of time (yep its their standard address webshop@) I decide to ring.

At 6.37 , I get the message to email (no chance) or use the live support.

Now interestingly, I noticed two weeks prior to that, that the live chat was removed from their website. I am sure this probably to do with the number of customers that have been chasing their HTC Desire orders because they quote:

We are an HTC ultimate partner

I ring again and again and again, this is going no where. I ring the stores, no answer. I flip.

You WILL Answer me

Up until now I have been quite relaxed, but now, when I flip, I get noticed and I get results no matter the cost in time. Trust me, you really do not want me as an angry, paranoid, scared customer, you’ll find out why next.

Enter iMacros

I use iMacros for everything, I have plans to document this amazing tool at some stage, but for now, understand the following:

Anything you do in a web browser can be scripted

So with that in mind and the new knowledge that I iMacro almost everything, I put this to good use.

Here is my first proper published YouTube Video:

I think you’ll understand from my tone in the video how pissed I was at the time, I look at it now a day later and laugh at it. I amaze myself at times.

Yep thats right, I set it to send 1000 times.

Now if this had not yielded results, I would have driven to the stores, or used companies house to find the directors and knocked on their doors at 8:30 on a Saturday morning (after ringing them before of course, they might be miles away). Do you get a sniff of the idea of the psychopathic eBay buyers that are out there yet?

Enter Awful Customer Service Part 2

Now I am only guessing here, but they have an auto responder script that looks for the word ‘cancel’ and sends the following back.

MobilePhonesDirect Auto Responder

MobilePhonesDirect Auto Responder

Your reading that right, this company has such a fundamental customer services issue, it needs to respond with lies.

You’ll see from the snap-shot of my email box this was an auto responder and it was sent numerous times, to the point that I got this too:

MobilePhonesDirect Recall Request

MobilePhonesDirect Recall Request

Ok, this is getting somewhere (remembering that I had minimised the browser that is still set to loop 1000 times), so I reply with:

Hello,

I strongly doubt that this order has been despatched, as if it had been it would not be in its current status, nor if it had left the building you would not be readily able to stop the order.

Sick to death of no replies, cancel it as the mail suggests.

Kind regards,

Matthew Ogborne

More Insulting Customer Service

I face-palmed when I read this, they’re blatantly lying:

Mobilephonesdirect Insulting Customer Services

Mobilephonesdirect Insulting Customer Services

YAY Humans at Mobilephonesdirect

I’ve hit the jackpot, Mobilephonesdirect have humans working for them. There is a cheer from the ‘Matt Ogborne’ camp. Ore at its beauty:

MobilePhonesDirect Have Real Staff!

MobilePhonesDirect Have Real Staff!

Now, after composing myself, because at this point I have gone from one end of frustration, to practical answers and now to potential resolution.  I think about this whole experience for a few moments.

MobilePhonesDirect said and still say that they are:

We are an HTC ultimate partner and are receiving stock weekly during November and will supply Desire HD on a first ordered first delivered basis. Order Now and receive a Free 8GB memory card.

But now they ‘magically’ offering me a the phone. Do I really want to deal with this company? What if it breaks? What if I have a service issue? Why the bloody hell was it not delivered to me before, this order had been outstanding since the 5th October?

I really do not like (as your customers similarly do not like either):

  1. To not be informed regularly on their order, especially if its a pre-order item
  2. To be address by name, explicitly not as ‘The Customers’
  3. To be insulted by still failing to deliver the item though still showing it for sale
  4. To be lied to
  5. To be automatically lied to.
  6. To be bullshitted by customer support staff.

So The Reply Was?

Polite, but clear, I’ll let you relish in a well formed reply:

Hi Phil,

I appreciate the response and you must also appreciate the nightmare that I have had trying to contact you over the past few weeks.

Being referred to as ‘The Customers’, not being answered to when calling, unhelpful when I do and no answers to previous email is not good for customer service.

I am really tempted to say I would like the phone, but unfortunately I am gravely concerned at what the outcome may be if I ever had an issue with the phone, contract or yourselves in the future, as spamming contact forms is hardly an appropriate method of provoking communication (the same as your awful auto response emails) and are amazed that you actually have these (even if just one) in stock and not fulfilled my order, sadly I regret I have to decline the offer.

Shortly afterwards, I get three emails and the order has been despatched, returned and refunded.

What awful customer service experience that was. I only hope that your customer services are nothing like these muppets.

Warning, Your Customers Are Empowered

I only used iMacros to spam a contact form, but you must be extremely aware that like never before your customers are empowered with some deadly tools at their disposal, its called social marketing. If just one customer is pissed with your service and they are smart, they will cause untold damage.

I’ll leave it here,  make your own decision on the company in this article, a customer should never have to result to the extremes that I had to go to to provoke a response & I only hope you learn how not to deal with customers from this article.

Part 4 : SuperDryStore The Wasteful eBay Listings

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SuperDryFollowing on from the three earlier posts regarding the SuperDryStore on eBay, we have a lot to learn from their eBay listings. Lets dig in and get dirty.

I’ve picked the first item I’ve come to which is a bag, you can view this item below:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290488798635

Interestingly this item has picked up 26 sales, keep this in mind as we go through the points that follow and ask yourself the question:

“How many more could have sold?”

Categorisation

Following the category breadcrumb trail along the top, we are taken to the Mens Bag category http://clothes.shop.ebay.co.uk/Mens-Bags-/52357/i.html.

A very important step here is to realise that eBay serve different pages to different people, its always worth using another machine or a third party proxy like http://hidemyass.com/, even logging out can cause the pages to alter. So now knowing this, you should have three tabs open in your browser(s), one signed in, one signed out and another via proxy.

SuperDryStore Mens Bag Item SpecificsThe reason why we do this is extremely important, as by checking the category where the item is listed we can quickly pick up any commonly used item specifics or in this case the absolute important of the following factors:

  • Offering expedited delivery
  • Offering a free delivery option
  • Specifying the condtion
  • The absolute important of the listing title due to the ‘absolute lack’ of product based item specifics in this category.

I’ll come on to the item specifics in part 5, however lets get on to their largest fundamental eBay listing flaw…

The eBay Listing Title, Your #1 Asset

Let me spell this out in the simplest of terms possible.

The eBay listing Title is THE MOST Important Asset on eBay

Screw feedback, Screw categorisation, Screw a crappy looking listing, Screw everything.

Without a quality listing title you are knacker’ing up any chance of buyers finding you. Sorting out every other issue is secondary to the listing title. Something like 80% of all eBay purchases are made by search. Its not just important to have good titles, its categorically important to your business survival that you have ‘brilliant’ tittles.

So with this in-mind don’t do what these ladies are doing, out of a extremely limited title character count of just 55, the first cardinal rule is use everyone of them and  they’re not even using all the characters even when stuff it with mindless junk

The Current Title: New Superdry Large Haversack Bag MW140/0531

This comes in at 43 chars, so we have 12 left or some 22% wasted real-estate being lost. When you take into account the removal of the mindless junk (more on mindless junk in a moment), we’re left with ‘New Superdry Large Haversack Bag’ which is only 33 characters.

Thats 40% of theirs and imagine if it was yours, the most important marketing attribute on eBay, pissed up the wall.

So you think you can do a better job Matt?

You bet my-left-nut-I-can and I bet you could too.

Lets quickly brain storm this bag:

  • Man Bag
  • Large
  • Haversack
  • Canvas
  • Messenger
  • Shoulder
  • New
  • Grey
  • Vintage
  • Faded
  • Worn
  • Strap
  • Adjustable

Oh brill, we have an excellent assortment of keywords here, lets string some together so that the title is kewyord-rich and helpful to the customer too:

  1. Large New Vintage Superdry Messenger/Haversack Man Bag
  2. Superdry New Shoulder Man Bag Worn Fade Vintage Grey

Actually we could be here for ages, I actually quite like #1 and I’m sticking with it, it comes in at a cool 55 char count. “Happy and Days”. Lets ore at it:

Large New Vintage Superdry Messenger/Haversack Man Bag

It sure kicks ‘New Superdry Large Haversack Bag MW140/0531’ butt any-day.

Side Note: I am a Man Bag pro, I was even on BBC Radio Wales for them. I kid you not, see here.

Mindless Junk

Now lets try and understand why they’re stuff mindless junk like ‘MW140/0531’ into the listing titles.

In short, its probably an aid to their despatch process or a legacy carry-over from their early listing days. I suspect its caused by a combination of them not having a proper inventory management tool for their back end, needing this information in the titles to identify stock at the time of despatch and a crap tool like Auctiva.

You do not need to make the same mistake, even in eBay’s selling manager you can add stock numbers to goods (yea and via the SYI form), this is a separate value for your items so you can identify products by a name you recognise the SKU (Stock Keeping Unit).

In all honestly, I’ve not looked Auctiva in about 5 years, it was always crap, I doubt much has changed, although the cash injection from Alibaba.com might help. On my mental list to investigate sometime before 2014.

Subtitle, WTF?

No idea who wrote this listing subtitle, but I suspect subtitles are freebies from eBay and are being randomly filled out with not-very-well-thought-out-crap. Oh like this:

RRP £29.99 – Buy from the official Superdry eBay Store

Now the key point here is that the contents of the 55 characters of the ‘subtitle’ do not impact search results, so you need to use these to nail the customer to open your deliciously tasty listing and reconfirm the title and your USP’s (Unique Selling Point).

Again, lets pause for a moment and brain storm some options for the subtitle:

  • eBay Outlet
  • Official Superdry Store
  • RRP £29.99
  • Save 50% off RRP
  • Free Delivery
  • Feedback, +89,000

See this is the kind of thing you should be doing not only for every title, but every sub title too! I’m going to go with the following, you can think of your own super sexy subtitle:

Save 50% | Free UK Delivery | Official Superdry Outlet

Why did I use the pipes? Simple Seal | The | Deal

Quick Summary

All this and we’ve not even got past the subtitle yet! Lets quickly summarise the above into some bullet points:

  • Check the eBay category you’re going to be listing into for item specifics (covered in part 5)
  • Do not waste your #1 eBay marketing Tool, the title
  • If you get free subtitles or use them, use the the simple rule Seal | The | Deal

Time has run out for me today, if you only pick up one thing from today’s session, get the titles right!!!

Click here to view part 5 of this series.

Email Marketing, Why & How you Can Set up Your List In Minutes with MailChimp

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Don’t have a email marketing list yet? Need a easy to use sign up box to integrate into your shopping cart or your website? Need a solution that is completely ‘Matt Proof’? Simples, MailChimp.

There are several basic options you have when it comes to gaining subscribers, while not exhaustive, these are some common ones to get you thinking:

  • Sign up from your website
  • Sign up as part of the checkout process
  • Adding signup info to outgoing emails (eg eBay & website despatch emails)
  • Information provided in documentation (invoices or flyers)
  • Sign up as part of your companies blog (not got a blog yet? I have a 101 session on this coming shortly)
  • Buying an a ‘list’ of subscribers (not recommended due to cost)

And all bar the last one, can be done using MailChimp, for free. Did I mention FREE? Sign up here, its one of the most painless email marketing forms I’ve ever filled out.

Why Email Marketing?

Wow, this is a stellar one and I could talk all-day, but I will keep it to one line, brace yourselves, its a big one:

They have Opted-In. They have chosen to hear from you, specifically.

Your Options

Mr Mail ChimpThere are other companies out there. I thought Constant Contact was good, they have a decent library of templates but hits the sweet spot here is that MailChimp allow you to make as many sub mailing lists as you want. Meaning you can have a mailing list for different parts of your business and market them differently (eg blog and checkout subscribers).

The other company worth mentioning is AWebber, but and its a big ‘but’, you have to pay a subscription for even a tiny list. Maybe when you have thousands of subscribers, AWebber should be considered, but I’m assuming you’re just starting out and have a grand total of 1 (thats you).

By the way, here are two big-hitter names to drop, Magento & Mozilla; They both use MailChimp.

Registering & Making Your First MailChimp List

As part of the registration process (takes a few minutes, its super easy), you create your first ‘list’, a big tip when doing this is to use this text as a base of your ‘Permissons Reminder’, just swap the domain bit for yours:

You are receiving this email because you opted in at our website http://websitename.ext/ , you may opt out at any time.

Then once done, along the top hit ‘Lists’ and then the sub link ‘For Your Wesbite’ and if you did make more than one list, select the list you want to embed from the drop down box as show below:

MailChimp Code for Your Website

MailChimp Code for Your Website

Now that you have the right list selected hit the link called ‘Signup Form Embed Code’, this gives you a simple sign up box where you can alter the boxes attributes to your own needs.

Copy the code at the bottom and paste into place on your website where you want a sign up box to be added. Simples? Yep.

For advanced users, you can take the form elements and alter at will; Also I suggest you drop the jQuery includes and put them in the header if you ‘really‘ need them.

Pricing

This is exactly why I am suggesting you use MailChimp, until you get 1,000 subscribers (and yes you will get this and more given enough time), its free.

AWebber is paid for from the start, Constant-Contact gives 90 days, but that still does not match ‘free’. You can of course move to another provider when you topple the 1K mark, but hey, we have only 1 so far (you).

Got WordPress or Another Web Software App, Like Magento?

Even simpler, create your list in MailChimp and then use their ‘plugins’ to integrate directly into your systems back end. I’ve used this on both Magento and WordPress and its soooo easy, set the API key and its pretty much done.

Mail Marketing for Monkeys

MailChimp knows how to cater for email marketing beginners, that’s why they have a fantastic video guide section and weekly 101 sessions. Here is an example:

See I said it was easy.

If you don’t have a mail list started yet, you now have no excuses to set one up, register for free here and get started today.

Need Help?

Still unsure? Already started by getting nowhere? Not sent your first email marketing campaign? That’s what I’m here for, I can help you. We can break your email marketing virginity together and then turn you into a ’email-marketing-campaigns-freak’.

Dear eBuyer.com, You Could Be Doing So Much Better on eBay UK. Here is How!

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eBuyer LogoeBuyer has a personal favourite of mine for technology based products; Since the day I discovered their returns process was simple & effective. After being burned by utterly dire customer support at dabs.com. I’ve sworn my allegiance (well, for some things) to them ever since.

But sadly they are making me go nuts about their eBay operations. I’ll explain why.

I am a Clean data Freak

I am the biggest data-freak ever, in my conversations with new clients, besides the formalities of hello and getting a coffee in (note if you want to bribe me, coffee works exceptionally well) I am interested in what their data is like.

This is for the simple reason, if you have great, clean data you can do anything and I mean anything with it. If you don’t, its going to get messy.

Data Freak

Lets take a Wander

Now with this little preface over, lets see why eBuyer would make me nuts…

Lets take a look at an item from their site http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804 and a screen shot of this item is below:

eBuyer Item Details Page

eBuyer Item Details Page

Now lets make a bullet point list of the features and crucially the data they have on their item details page for this product:

  1. Item Title
  2. Item Image
  3. Description
  4. Specification
  5. Related Products
  6. 104 Customer Reviews
  7. 114 Discussion Topics
  8. A  ‘urgency-generator’ in the header. Order up to 11 for next day’

* takes a deep breath*

eBuyer HD103SJ on eBay

eBuyer HD103SJ on eBay

Now lets look at their eBay Listing for the very same product  http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Samsung-HD103SJ-Spinpoint-F3-1TB-Hard-Drive-SATAII-7200-/ and again a screen shot is to the right. Click on the image to see the full version as its rather long.

Now the key points they have are:

  1. Item Title
  2. Product Image (but not in the listing area)
  3. Product Description
  4. An added bonus of a ‘Storage Calculator’
  5. A not very well formatted specifications section
  6. Some related items

Now can you guess what I am going to talking about next? Yep you guessed it, poor usage of product ‘data’, in this case how they’re making two mistakes that with the right tools (and will) could be easily joined.

Suggested Changes to eBuyers Listings & Why + Tips For You!

Here are my suggested alterations, if you have similar data then I strongly suggest you follow suit to aid conversion of your listings.

  1. Add a Listing Template with ‘Branding’
  2. Add the product image to the description area
  3. Add a ‘Urgency Generator’
  4. Format the description into its own container
  5. Format the specifications in its own container
  6. Add dynamic related items
  7. Add related product groups
  8. Add the top rated customer reviews to the listing
  9. Quote the answers from the forums

Now, lets work these out in some more detail:

Add a Listing Template with ‘Branding’

What do I mean by this? Image is everything and currently it looks pants.

In the case of eBuyer, get your in-house design department to make a listing template, if they are incapable, outsource it for £500 (and tidy the shop at the same time).

If you are not fortunate to have an ‘in-house design team like the rest of us, outsource it. You can get simple templates for free and quality customised ones for £500 (contact me for details, I’ll post information about this in a later post).

Add the product image to the Description Area

Not hard at all, eBay images are OK, but you can gain more flexibility in the eBay listings themselves. There are countless examples of this, just search eBay for a few top rated sellers, most have got the idea. Again this would be part of the formatting in the listing template mentioned above.

Add a ‘Urgency Generator’

This one-gets-my-goat big style, where the * hell is the urgency in this listing? Take the logo in the header area of eBuyer.com, chop it up and slap it in the listing.

If this is for you, then a strong call to action is always needed. This could be the re-confirmation your USP (Unique Selling Point(s)) or a time deadline for ordering. If you’re stuck for ideas, write ‘Order Today, it’ll be with you in a maximum of 3 days’ (at least its a start…).

Format the description into its own container

We are dealing with great data here, so format it just as ‘great’. Give it a container (visual area) of its own and then do the same for the next part too.

Make the description stand out by darkening the outside of it, so the eyes are drawn to it. Customers are sheep, herd them.

Format the specifications in its own container

Arrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

We are selling a highly technical product here, just like on the website, make the specifications clearly readable.

If this you and have a product that requires a ‘product specification’, make the table that is formatting the data, clean, clear and alternate colouring on lines and highlight key specifics.

Add dynamic related items

Ok, this is  9/10 for effort, as its better than what is being shown on the eBuyer.com website. But it hard-coded, go for dynamic tool to display items automatically, there are a few out there, check the eBay solutions directory (again noted for a future post).

Add the top rated customer reviews to the listing

Ok, here is the ground breaker… I should be charging for this stuff I tell ya. Lets spell this out:

I am eBuyer, I sell this product, this product has 104 customer reviews

Pillow screams x 10

So you have the data in the eBuyer.com data base, so why not spill the top 10 rated reviews onto eBay? Surely this is a no-brainer? 104 people have left reviews or questions, does it not make you think that out of these 104 reviews or questions your new eBay customers might ask the same? (insert pillow scream).

Two databases, common key, join them, deliver quality content, format it, sell loads.

(ignore that top bit, thats my mind working it out in simple terms)

Quote the answers from the forums

Now this one is a ‘grey one’. If I was eBuyer, I’d push this and bring in the form posts and also link back to the forums, as its helpful info to the product buying decision. Kinda grey due to the eBay links policy, but I’d personally argue this one for quite some time.

Summary

If you have great data, then get it in and use it. This is why the eBuyer listings on eBay drive me nuts, we know they got great data, its on display on thier website, so where is it on their eBay listings?

If you are having similar issues or need some guidance on how best to implement your data as effectively as possible, see the top right of the page, the number is there…

Update

I just spotted this on YouTube, I’m not posting a video reply with fear I’d pillow scream to much, even they know they’ve got a serious issue, branding boys, its all branding!!!!

PS. ebuyerdotcom you got mail on YouTube :)

Pre-Season Email Marketing 10 Point Checklist

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SnowmenI’d have loved to have claimed this as my own, but thats rather naughty. Check this very useful guide out from Silverpop here.

The key point here is really do not wait to very last moment to turn on your email marketing campaign on, start it immediately!

The 10 points in their checklist are:

  1. Make subscribing as appealing and easy as riding a sled down a hill.
  2. Manage expectations with a holidaythemed welcome program that’s warmer
    than a cup of mulled wine.
  3. Make informed frequency/cadence decisions that won’t freeze out overwhelmed shoppers.
  4. Get customer data together, check integrations and apply list hygiene—in other words, make your list and check it twice
  5. Test message templates and optimise so they’re prettier than a Christmas card.
  6. Create cart-abandonment and browse campaigns that provide quick reminders to distracted shoppers.
  7. Give recipients the gift of choice—offer an unsubscribe preference centre.
  8. Fine-tune your social-sharing initiatives— ‘tis the season to spread holiday cheer, after all.
  9. Optimise transactional emails to offer value beyond generic bah-humbug receipts.
  10. Create a post-purchase email strategy that keeps the holiday spirit going strong through 2011.

So when was the last time you contacted your customers and marketed your USP’s to them?

Don’t even know where to start? No time to even make a start? Know full well its on the to-do listing and it just never gets done?

Easy, contact me at the top of this page, we’ll have a chat and I’ll point you in the right direction (or push, or just plain do it for you) .