Must Market

2016 Year of the Story
Telling e-commerce stories is HARD. When we tested narrative on the e-commerce site I managed conversions tanked. Conversons tanked because we did it wrong (lol).

This post riffs a video game developer post from Gamasutra. What does e-commerce and video games have to do with one another? Read our Curagami post to find out:

http://www.curagami.com/new-ecommerce-story-rules/

SEO Blow Up
I know better, but moving to Woocommerce just blew up every URL on my blog. This post explains how URLs are tricky. URLs get changed in many unintended ways.

Changes to your Wordpress categories, use of an add on like Woocommerce or re-publishing after changing the URL window all change your URLs and require 301 redirects to maintain continuity with Google. URLs aren't just YOURS as this post shares.  

After spending 3 days creating manual redirects so my URLs won't stay broken my advice is try not to do that :). Marty  

There is a new ecommerce creating new "best practices" such as: easy free shipping, new him, her, kids merchandising, social shopping & UGC conversations.

5 Holiday Ecommerce Trends
Holiday E-commerce Trends Infographic shares trends in free shipping, gamification, mobile, cause and loyalty marketing we've watched for years. 5 BIG Trends for this holidays includes:

* More, Better & Faster Free Shipping 
* Mobile  research and games, some smartphone bying\

* Gamification and lmore loyalty programs (they work)

* More causes & movemens less shouting and doorbusters

* More asking for help

Find each of these trends in our Holiday Ecommerce Infographic on Curagami.  

This post shares 3 simple web metrics to help find the 20% of stuff controlling 80% of your online business because online only Pareto can hear you scream.

Use these three simple metrics to find your long tail:

Rank
% of Total
Running Total

Crowds, Icons & Tribes
The more we work our Startup Factory Funded statup http://www.Curagami.com the more every client needs a combination of :

* Crowds.
* Icons.
* Tribes.

Crowds bring wisdom. Remember how few were smarter than a class of 5th graders? Every websites most VAST under-utilized resource is the wisdom of crowds they AREN'T tapping.

Icons create the language that makes a crowd work just hard enough to feel exclusive and included. If anyone can join for free there is no perceived value. No perceived value means your visitors will click away. On the other hand, if you have a language only you and your tribe understand - that isn't too dense or complex - curiosity may catch the cat.

Finally tribes are everyone's end product. Tribes = sustainable web presence. Tribes means you can delegate JOBS to AMBASSADORS and get out of the way. Tribes means you are on your way to the land of get more, do less. Tribes are where we lucky few Internet marketers are headed and we are riding a bullet train called Curagami :). M

Conversion Go Up When

Visitors arriving on your website have expectations and not all visitors are equal. Some may be "new" to your content. Others may be learning your content and a small group may be as expert about your site's content as you.

Feed "newbie" content to experts is a sure way to frustrate two people - the expert and the new to your content person who didn't get the content they needed. This post is about MAPPING your content to your visitors needs and expectations.

Why map? Meeting and exceeding your visitors' expectations builds trust and community. Conversions don't happen without TRUST and COMMUNITY.