Five elements creating an eCommerce store can bring to your marketing efforts. Master marketer Martin W. Smith of AtlanticBT shows how creating an eCommerce story these days is not only easy, but can bring benefits to your business way beyond any direct sales it might generate. Be sure to read the notes accompanying each slide, or better yet visit Marty's original post at http://scenttrail.blogspot.com/2013/06/5-new-ecommerce-lessons.html

Creating the Story of Cancer Store took about four days. The next MagentoGo Store I create will take half that time. Creating stores is so much easier than FoundObjects.com (Now RIP sadly). When I created FoundObjects.com in 1999 it took $5K and six months. Granted I was learning as I went, even so the store we built couldn't have been done in less than a couple of months even by season pros.

Comparing 4 days to two months is an accurate yardstick for how far we've come. Soon you will be able to create a store in a matter of hours. Store are SEO powerful because:
Ecom Stores Rock SEO Because...

Ping Rate is HIGH.
Stores Rock UGC.
Stores complete an online brand.
Stores are cheap ways to capture traffic.
I call "ping rate" the frequency of content being loaded on a page. In these post Panda and Penguin Google algorithm days when QDF (Quality Deserves Freshness) rules high ping rates are valuable. Stores have high ping rates because people check them for new products frequently and visitors add the most important GOLD of Internet marketing - UGC.

User Generated Content (UGC) is content you can't BUY, but must earn. UGC has many forms including social signals (likes, shares and tweets), reviews and comments. Stores generate UGC at a higher frequency than most other kinds of content.

Stores add an important dimension to any brand. If you are selling something you are different than if you aren't (period and full stop). Your ability to be an intelligent merchant even if all you sell is your branded SWAG tells prospects a lot about your willingness to walk your Internet marketing talk.

Finally stores are CHEAP ways to net new traffic and bolster your site's existing SEO.

(Original post at http://scenttrail.blogspot.com/2013/06/5-new-ecommerce-lessons.html)

Creating a store is EASY and getting more so. You can work with my friend Danny Rosin at Brand Fuel (http://www.brandfuel.com/) and his excellent team will do everything. You may make less money that way, but, and this is true for many B2B brands, stores are valuable for what they bring to the other marketing tactics you deploy.

If Danny's Blue Cross store never makes a dime it still lowers Blue Cross' costs and helps complete their Internet marketing. Cheap and easy marketing tactics like creating a store or having someone else create one for you are few and far between these days. Take advantage of this one.

(Original post at http://scenttrail.blogspot.com/2013/06/5-new-ecommerce-lessons.html)

Visual marketing is a MAJOR trend. Pictures sell and there are few environments more visual than a store. Creating a store helps your team perfect their eye. They will "get it" and export their visual marketing skills to your content marketing. Scoop.it's "Lean Content Movement" is about getting your message across FAST and with stunning and aligned visuals. Stores teach those skills faster than any school you could attend.

(Original post at http://scenttrail.blogspot.com/2013/06/5-new-ecommerce-lessons.html)

You can't sell things without serious storytelling chops. You can read books about how to tell stories, but the need to create 100 or 200 stories with 10% of those products changing every quarter teaches "ditch digging" story telling skills. Ditch digging storytelling skills are about getting in, setting a HOOK and getting out. Ditch digging storytelling is about conversion and emotional connection. No book can teach you those skills half as well as creating a store.

(Original post at http://scenttrail.blogspot.com/2013/06/5-new-ecommerce-lessons.html)

We LOVE to shop. Shopping is FUN because we are exposed to new ideas, stories and what our friends think about things. We get to know each other better faster by how we shop, what we buy and our reaction to those things we purchase. If you sell a $1M Software As A Service SaaS most of the FUN is behind a curtain.

A new customer signs on and you pop the champagne. Problem is your tribe of supporters and advocates don't feel part of that accomplishment. Stores create a commons everyone can easily contribute to AND it is socially appropriate to do so. If you sell an expensive SaaS a store with your team's favorite and related books creates a new (and cheap) "commons" for communication. Your brand feels more REAL and human too.

In a time of unlimited abundance and competition we buy from those we love. Five years from now EVERYONE will have a store (B2B or B2C) because benefits from creating stores so outstrip their costs. Why wait to be the 500th B2B store. Why not be one of the first 10? If you asked me how teams I've managed made more than $30M online I would say because we NEVER walked past an opportunity where the OVER (what we stood to gain) was so clearly 10x the UNDER (what the idea would cost us).

Lead, follow or become boring and a dinosaur. Open a store because you CAN and because, particularly if you are a B2B SaaS, what you will gain is so much greater than the cost.

(Original post at http://scenttrail.blogspot.com/2013/06/5-new-ecommerce-lessons.html)

Please VISIT and BUY from the Story of Cancer Store (https://storyofcancer.gostorego.com/). Every purchase provides tax deductible assistance for our Story of Cancer Foundation and our first project CureCancerStarter.org (http://curecancerstarter.org/), a crowdfunding platform developed with leading cancer researchers to help fund the cure for cancer.

(Original post at http://scenttrail.blogspot.com/2013/06/5-new-ecommerce-lessons.html)