A collection of notes, ideas, and pictures
On each product page, highlight the best and most recent reviews as social proof for your visitors. Don't highlight negative reviews, but keep them. They are proof that your review system is fair and honest. Tip #124 – © Franco Folini People love to read reviews, and they trust reviews! Make them happy by listing... Continue Reading →
Don’t compete on price! Eventually, your competitors will match your lowest price. It’s a lose-lose battle. Compete on quality of service, brand image, visibility, and user experience. Tip #123 – © Franco Folini Nobody likes price wars, don't start one! Unless you are moving huge volumes and have access a exceptional prices on a consistent... Continue Reading →
This article was first posted on LinkedIn on November 20, 2019. Recently I was asked to explain the rules to make a company marketing email newsletter worth reading, a newsletter that gets read. It's an excellent question. Publishing a newsletter gives you the opportunity to increase awareness and understanding of your company and its products... Continue Reading →
Relationships outlast transactions. Invest in building strong relationships with your customers, transactions will follow. Don’t let shortsighted salespeople focus only on transactions. There’s life after the end of the quarter! Tip #122 – © Franco Folini Marketers call it Loyalty and Advocacy. I prefer to call it simply relationship.Happy customers will return to your website... Continue Reading →
Send regular newsletters to your customers. Include useful information: new products, promotions (with expiration), product tips, and company news (when appropriate).Always test to make sure the newsletter is rendered correctly on all email systems (including old Outlook versions).If you have the resources and the data, you should consider segmenting your users and send multiple versions... Continue Reading →
Today, I completed the Toastmasters training and received my "Certificate of Completion" for achieving Level 3 in Effective Coaching. This milestone reflects my dedication to improving my coaching skills and marks an important step in my personal development journey within the Toastmasters program.
Be careful about the font-size you select to display the product's price. Make it small, and the price will disappear, make it big, and it will be perceived as too high. Run A/B tests to find the optimal size. If you can't, use the same values used by big eCommerce players as a reference. Tip... Continue Reading →
If your business is on social media, you must be available to answer all questions and respond to comments quickly! Do the same for emails and site comments. It's the easiest way to start and nurture a relationship with your customers. Tip #119 – © Franco Folini There is nothing more irritating than sending an... Continue Reading →
Don’t hope or wait for a product review, ask for it! A few days after an order has been delivered or a trial downloaded, send your customer a personalized (automated) message asking to write a review. Tip #118 – © Franco Folini People are busy, they forget to go back to your website and leave... Continue Reading →
Reputation is earned, not given.Be kind to your customers, provide the best fulfillment service and an excellent customer service, listen to them, show them you know everything about your products and that you love what you do. Tip #117 – © Franco Folini Building a reputation takes years and a lot of hard work. The... Continue Reading →
Notes for my speech on November 12, 2019 at the Toastmasters Club Toast of Berkeley. Typically a coach is someone that is focused on specific goals and generally has a short term relationship with the coached person. A coach helps and guides the protege. A mentor instead is someone that has a long term continued... Continue Reading →
Fine-tune your product’s pages <title> and <meta name='description'> tags. It's important! Google will uses them to display your products on SERP (Search Engine Result Pages). Great page title and description are the main factors to improve your organic CTR (click-through rate) also called SERP CTR. Tip #116 – © Franco Folini Many modern CMS will... Continue Reading →
Create Urgency and Scarcity.Where and when possible (and makes sense): For each promotion, highlight the deadline and show a countdown.Limit the quantity and show how many items are left. Tip #115 – © Franco Folini This is another technique that is coming straight from psychology books. We all are sensitive to scarcity. eCommerce showing a... Continue Reading →
The customer is always right, but... Some customers have negative CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) because of too many returns, complaints, and support requests. Don't be afraid to block those customers, but do it very, very smoothly. Tip #114 – © Franco Folini I wish we could have a customer score similar to the popular "credit... Continue Reading →
Join the pain, split the gain. People are more sensitive to pain (losses) than to gain. On your pages, group pain points (e.g., price and shipping) in one item and split gain points (discount and free shipping) into multiple items. Tip #113 – © Franco Folini This techniques leverage the results of several psychological studies.... Continue Reading →
The first easy steps to improve your Conversion Rate? Simplify and streamline the checkout processEliminate all distractions from the cartReduce the number of click to complete the transactionClean, minimalist page design Reduce friction. Simplify, simplify, simplify! Tip #112 — © Franco Folini You and your marketing team manage to get this visitor on the product... Continue Reading →
This article was first posted on LinkedIn on November 4, 2019. Several activities related to eCommerce and Digital Marketing can benefit from Machine Learning (ML) as well from other branches of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The integration of machine learning algorithms and eCommerce can help with all the main marketing goals: retention, engagement, and conversion. Adoption of Machine... Continue Reading →
Write Product Descriptions that sell! Focus on your ideal buyers (personas)Highlight the benefitsAvoid marketing jargon and buzzwordsMake text visually scannable (formatting)Appeal to the user imaginationJustify superlatives and big statements Tip #111 – © Franco Folini A customer is investing time in reading your product description, that means he is down deep in the marketing funnel,... Continue Reading →
Do you know if your eCommerce is ready for the Machine Learning era?You need to be ready to transition your eCommerce to machine Learning technologies. The big eCommerce guys, like Amazon and Walmart, are already extensively using Machine Learning (ML) to process customer data to control their marketing efforts and to personalize the interaction with... Continue Reading →
Every visit to San Francisco is a great opportunity to take interesting pictures. Doesn't matter if you are a professional photographer with expensive gears or just an amateur walking around with a smartphone in his hands. I live near San Francisco, my place in Berkeley is only 25 minutes by public transportation from downtown San... Continue Reading →
Franco Folini Blog 