Lessons Learned From The Frontlines of eCommerce

It is hard to escape the platitudes and suggestions that accompany a New Year. The tendency is to look back and try and learn from what has occurred in the past and apply that wisdom towards creating a more fulfilling future. Being in the internet marketing business I always find the New Year to be very exciting. When I look back I find more and more businesses waking up to the opportunity of marketing online. The smart companies become obsessed with testing and becoming as effective as they can in their online efforts.

Here is what I have learned in the past year that I am applying to create a more fulfilling future for myself and my customers. I share these not as solutions but as Lessons Learned from the frontlines of ecommerce. I trust that they will help you in your online efforts.

1) Testing is what professionals do with all of their campaigns online. Wannabe’s talk a good game. Professionals want to know what the optimal solution is. Amateurs think they already know everything.

2) Tracking is what separates the BIG DOGS from the rest of the field. Professionals recognize that in the online world every link can and should be tracked. In the vernacular of the infamous "rock, paper, scissors" game we all learned in pre-school…."Hard Data Trumps Instincts."BIG Success is only possible online if you Track everything.

3)  Accountability is the secret sauce of the online world. Think about it this way. It currently costs about $2.6 million to purchase a 30 second TV commercial for the Super Bowl. In other words, the old fashioned advertising industry argues that to reach 500 million people will cost roughly 1/2 cent per person. Is this a good deal?

Although that advertisement will be seen by half a million people in the world the only thing I want to know is will the advertisement convert and generate more sales for me. If so I want to know how much?

• Paying 1/2 cent per person is a complete waste of money if it does not generate sales.
•  Advertising on the World Wide Web does create this accountability. Online, the proven advertising model provides a very exact measurement of conversion. As a business owner this is the one thing you should be most concerned with. I would rather pay $500.00 per visitor knowing that 10% of my visitors will become customers and generate a $100,000 profit for me than spin my wheels with the antiquated advertising model offered by Madison Avenue Advertising Agencies.

4) You can only drive more traffic to your site if you give the world something to click on. Links are the currency of ecommerce. He who has the most quality links pointing at them wins. Today links have evolved into multimedia channels consisting of text, audio, video and images. Use all types of links to drive traffic to your site. This ain’t your grandma’s internet anymore.

5) The Economic Metrics of the Offline World are but a Fatal Distraction to a Successful Marketer. Consider the following fact, in 2008 the Year over Year Decline of the Standard and Poors 500 Index was close to 50%.This is a statistic that we have not seen since 1931. While naysayers and forecasters draw comparisons to the Great Depression the simple reality is that commerce online continues to grow year over year.

I am not trying to put a rosy spin on the economy. I am very aware of the high unemployment, corporate layoffs, government bailouts and other treacheries taking place in the offline world. However on the flipside consider the reality that only 11 years ago Google did not exist. Over the last twelve months they have generated over 18 billion in revenues.

However far-fetched it may appear, stories similar to this have occurred regularly at all entrepreneurial companies. The dynamic of fast change creates growth that most experts would claim is not possible. That growth opens the door to exploring experimentation and possibilities. Consider companies like Amazon.com, AOL, Yahoo, Google, etc. The fast pace of growth at these organizations has created entire departments that have never before existed in any other company. The Disney Corporation referred to this as "Imagineering."

I marvel at the reality that the telephone had been around for one hundred years and that the personal computer had been in existence for twenty years before some trailblazer wondered what might occur if they would marry the telephone and computer together. Consider all of the new possibilities that were created due to this innovation. Entire new niche industries have evolved in areas like firewalls, online payment processing, satellite communication, voice over internet telephone messaging, text messaging. The list goes on and on.

6) Power is best defined as "what you are connected to!" Those connections are LINKS. Without links empowering you or your web pages you cannot create real power on the internet. Often times all it takes to succeed is to plug in to the right links.

7) To breakthrough problems I have learned that you need to Fail Forward, Fail Fast, Find Feedback. I call it my 6 F’s strategy. It is easy for me to remember because it reminds me of my report card as a kid in school.

• People are petrified by failure and thereby do not recognize that it is the foundation that all success rests on. Think of how many times you fell before you learned to walk as a child. What would have happened if someone scared you into not trying?

• When most people fail, they STOP. Same is true for the majority of corporations. Failure stings when it is expensive, slow and you don’t learn anything from the experience. When failure is quick, cheap and informative it creates the very highway you will travel on to success.
• This is very true to observe in the arena of sports. For example in baseball the world champion teams often lose about 42% of their games. In basketball it is very common for a team to lose control of the ball every sixty seconds without ever taking a shot. Professional sports teams recognize that success comes from failing forward, failing fast and finding feedback.

• Quick. Cheap. Informative. That is the ticket.
• The challenge in business is that experiments do not have to be expensive in terms of time wasted and money lost. Often tiny, miniscule changes can result in huge changes in productivity and profitability. Legendary direct marketer Ted Nicholas once commented that he increased his response to one of his advertisements by over300% by merely changing the headline.

• Failure is the biggest phobia most of us ever deal with. Replace this nasty term with the word "feedback" and you will recognize what is necessary to be successful.
• There is no failure, only feedback.

These seven lessons are what I am focusing on as I usher in the New Year. I hope they challenge you as you navigate the online world.