Back in April, I wrote an article about how to find your target market, but I still see so many people asking about how to do it. So if you didn’t read the April post, check it out. Today’s post is more of an addendum to that one. Today I’m talking about people watching as a form of market research.

First and foremost, to make people watching into an effective form of market research, you have to have great observation skills and an eye for detail. You can pick up lots of useful information by watching people but you have to know what to look for and where to look.

1.Get out of your comfort zone
A lot of us are used to doing the same things, going to the same bars, hanging with the same friends. This type of rut can spell trouble for your entrepreneurial creativity and it’s especially problematic if your scene isn’t your target market. So what to do? Get out of your zone. Go to a different type of bar. If you normally go to indie rock bars, hit up a dance club. If you normally hang out in an upscale, posh cafe on the upper west side, go get a cup of joe in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Go to a bowling alley, go to an art opening. Just get out there and do something different. (Try to pick places that you have a hunch might have your target market hanging out in them.)

Why would you do this? Two reasons:
- Because your customers might be lurking in places you don’t normally go and you might never know it until you get out there.
- You might discover a new and under-served target demographic that you want to reach.

To understand prospective customers, you have to get a little entrenched in their day-to-day lifestyle. It’s also important to take note of the people you see when you go out. Do they wear jewelry? If so, is it expensive precious metals or inexpensive quirky stuff? Do they carry handbags and if so are they small or big? What kind of clothing do they wear? What colors do they wear? Try to imagine where these people shop. Would they walk into your virtual store? Does what you sell look like what they own? Do your models on your website look like these people?

Another thing to notice is pricing in public places. Are the people around you sipping $12 martinis or $4 Buds? This may be an indicator of your target market’s disposable income. You can make inferences about that along with observing their clothing and accessories.

2. Go to market
I said in a recent post that it can be tough to make a craft show profitable. That said, they can be great places to do market research. Pay attention to who comes to your booth and how they react to your products.

Are your booth visitors young or old? Male or female? Do they have kids? How are they dressed? Which people buy and which people window shop but walk away? Are you losing customers with smaller budgets due to your price points? Can you make a cheaper version of what you sell to capture that audience? Would you even want to?

You might also want to take time to notice the people who are visiting your competitors’ booths. What characteristics distinguish those people from everyone else at the show?

Taking notes on the defining characteristics of shoppers at a show can help you build a composite profile of your target customers.

3. Hone in on pop culture
Pop culture is a great way to observe consumer markets. Rock stars, celebs and TV and film characters are often reflections of people in society. Pay attention to what characters on TV wear. Those characters are often representative of real people. Follow some celebrity gossip blogs to see how Miley Cyrus is accessorizing, because chances are her fans want to wear the same kinds of pieces.

Try to find film and TV characters that wear or use products that look like what you sell. Then take note of where the characters spend their time and what their interests are. All of these observations will help you envision your own customer archetypes and better serve their interests and wants.

These days everyone wants to know what celebrities are wearing. They pop up on TV, in magazines and on celebrity gossip blogs decked out in the coolest clothing and accessories. Small designers dream of getting their own creations into celebrity hands. But how do you go about it? Here are a few tips:

1. Pick the Right Celebrity
It doesn’t matter if Chace Crawford is your favorite because he’s so beautiful and appears on your favorite TV show. He may not be the right person to give your products to. Choosing a celebrity who’d genuinely appreciate your products is the first step in a successful gifting to celebs. That means doing your research, so…

2. Follow Your Celebrities
Pick a few celebs that you think would be a good choice for gifting. If you aren’t sure where to start, begin reading magazines with celebrity interviews. They often provide insight into their personal interests and taste. Notice what celebrities wear when they’re not working (you can often find candid pictures of their day to day lives in gossip magazines and on gossip websites).

If you sell vegan shoes, take note of which celebrities have said they’re vegetarians. If you sell Christian jewelry, start paying attention who which celebrities are public about their Christian faith.

Once you’ve chosen a celebrity whose taste or interests match your products, find ways to make contact…

3. Get Online
These days lots of celebrities are online and you can contact them through their Twitter or blog. Celebs that make themselves publicly accessible in this way are also great because you can see what’s going on in their lives and find a perfect moment to offer them a gift.

Pay attention to whether or not the celebrity has an upcoming birthday. Are they getting married soon? Are they expecting a baby? Look for moments like this as an excuse to offer them a special gift.

4. Reach Out
If the celebrity you are hoping to give a gift to is online, reaching out might be as simple as sending a Tweet, email or blog comment. If your target celebrity is a little more elusive, check out Contact Any Celebrity. This paid service hooks you up with contact information for just about any celebrity.

If you have deeper pockets, another options is gifting suites. These are suites that are set up at Hollywood events like Emmys or MTV Music Awards, where business owners/representatives gather in a room and hand out free swag to any celebrity that happens by. Be forewarned that these events can get expensive, and you won’t necessarily know who will show up. On the plus side, you’re likely to be able to actually snap a picture of a celebrity with your products, which helps create proof that the celebrity owns your products.

Every day I check out the 100s of subscriptions in my RSS feed about marketing, PR, advertising, branding, social media, and a host of other topics of interest to small businesses that sell online. Most of what gets posted isn’t earth shattering but I reserve Fridays for the best reads of the week. So here you have it, the most valuable things I read in the business blogosphere this week:

• My Business Got a Bad Review! Now What?
• Pump Up the Value of Your Products by Emphasizing Their Benefits
• How to Design a Header That Makes A Great First Impression
• Etsy as a Business Incubator
• Check Please: Tips for Checking Your Wholesale Customers’ Credit
• 17 Ways To Minimize Friction in the Sales Process

There’s been a proliferation of articles on how to wow customers with amazing product packaging and a lot of discussion on what your package should include. Opinions on these subjects are mixed, but one thing is for certain, you cannot let your efforts to produce the best package run amok in the cost department. Here are some things to watch out for:

1. Order Inserts
I was amazed at the laundry list of items I’ve seen some online sellers say they insert into orders. I’ve seen everything from business cards, to product samples, to coupon cards. The interesting thing, to me, is that the retailers who include 3-4 different pieces of paper in their orders (when you add up the thank you notes, business cards, coupons, postcards, etc.) are the same retailers that eschew invoices because they’re not eco-friendly or cost effective.

Whatever your philosophy is on the extras that go into your package, make sure your actions are actually consistent with it. For my business, the greenest, most efficient and most cost effective combo is this:

INVOICE
Rationale:

• It’s printed on recycled paper and customers can recycle the invoice, so we can stay green
• It includes detailed return instructions which reduces our call volume.
• It includes detailed contact information which makes to easy to reach us if there’s a problem.
• It features our logo and branding for a professional appearance.
• We also use our invoices to proof orders when we pack. Our business ships hundreds of orders each month and having the piece of paper in hand with the list of items to go into the mailer helps us make sure the correct items are going out to the correct customers.
• It costs us less than a penny in labor and materials to produce

PROMO ITEM
Rationale:

• Around my household, when we order something in the mail and they give us a useful freebie like a pen or magnet or notepad we tend to keep it, because it’s functional.
• This also causes us to remember the name of the company we ordered from and increases likelihood that we’ll shop there again.
• If I get a flyer or business card in an order I recycle it, because it serves no function and I can’t be hanging onto hundreds of papers like a pack rat just to try to remember where I bought something. (I imagine many of the customers we mail to might even throw such items in the trash if they don’t have recycling.)
• The promotional items we include in my ecommerce company’s orders cost us between 20 and 50 cents total. We don’t make them, so there’s no labor cost.

2. Decorative Packaging
There have been so many inspiring articles on product packaging. Some of the ideas are lovely, but you have to make sure these packaging endeavors don’t become cost/time sinks.

If you only ship a few orders each week, it may feel like no big deal to spend 15 minutes dolling up a package, but when you start shipping hundreds of orders this adds up and time is money.

100 orders/15 minutes of decorating = 25 hours of your time!!! That time could be spent doing things that deliver better value for your business. You also have to consider your average order value. If your average order value is $15.00 and you spend 10 minutes dolling things up, and you consider your time to be worth $20/hour, then you just spent the equivalent of $3.33 in time on decorating a package! That’s over 20% of the gross value of your order. (On the other hand, if your average order value is $200, maybe $3.33 in labor on package decor is a reasonable cost.)

The other cost with package decor is materials. Make sure you’re buying in bulk and that your material costs are reasonable in proportion to your order values.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying you shouldn’t send out a pretty package. I just think it’s important to keep a close watch on the cost associated with what you’re doing.

3. Packing materials
Some of my readers have asked if it’s okay to use recycled materials to ship packages. I guess you can get away with it if it’s the image your brand is going for, but it may be less cost effective than you think.

Going back to the time is money mantra, if you have to spend 5 minutes turning a used cereal box into a presentable looking revamped shipping box you may be better off just buying mailers from a bulk supplier like Uline. When you buy mailers in bulk you can get them for around a penny per piece, and no DIY solution will be that cheap in terms of your time.

4. Thank You Notes
Handwritten thank you notes are a nice sentiment for outgoing orders. It may even make sense to include them if a customer placed an especially large retail order. That said, handwritten notes can eat up time.

You can accomplish the same effect by pre-writing standard thank you notes on your computer, and printing them out using a font that mimics your handwriting. (You can even design your own font from your own handwriting if you want to go the extra mile.) With computer programs you can even personalize the thank you note to address your customer by name, adding an additional personal touch without eating into your time as much.

If you feel a formal invoice is too corporate for the image you want to achieve for your brand, why not use the thank you note to accomplish the things and invoice is useful for (click link to see example). Use the note to reiterate return instructions, use branded letterhead, provide contact information, and include a list of them items the customer ordered. You can even set up your website to automatically generate a note like this for you to print, and have it plug in your customer’s name and order details. Thus, saving you time and still retaining a personalized feel.

Your Exercise For Today: Next time you pack an order, time yourself. See how long it takes you to actually get the order from your stock shelves into its mailer, stamped and addressed. Then determine how much your time is worth hourly and figure out what you are paying for package prep. After that add on the cost of shipping materials. Count every decorative ribbon, sticker, etc.

Is the figure you’ve come up with one that makes sense when compared with your average order value? Are there ways you can make this number go down? Do you need to increase your shipping price to absorb some of those costs? What happens if you start shipping 1,000 orders per month? Could you afford to hire someone to pack orders and pay them for the time it would take to pack?

Turning your website into a lean, mean selling machine means fine tuning every page from your home page to your check out. Today’s post is about 10 things you can add to your product page to improve conversions:

1. Your USP
While it might be obvious to you that you have the most flexible return terms or largest selection or cheapest prices, your customers need it spelled out for them. A little box highlighting your company’s unique selling position can give customers a little push to choose you.

Do you have free shipping? Do you have a liberal return policy? Do you donate to charity? Whatever it is that makes you stand out, put it in your USP box. Your USP should be a short and sweet bulleted list that customers can digest quickly and easily. Do not turn this into an essay.

2. Shipping Policy
A note about how you ship or how quickly you ship is an important piece of information. If you sell custom items that take 3 business days to ship say so right on the product page.

If you ship within 24 hours via Priority Mail tell the customers. Sometimes people need an item in a rush and they appreciate it when they don’t have to go digging for this type of information.

3. Recommended If You Like…
Links to similar products on each product page are a great way to increase conversions. If a customer is checking out your argyle mittens and you sell a matching argyle hat, be sure to link that hat right on the mittens product page.

Sites like Amazon do this all the time, and they even offer a discount to customers buying certain items as a bundle.

4. Specials
Speaking of discounts, if you’re running any promotions, why not tell customers on your product page. If you ship for free over a certain dollar amount, let them know. If you offer a coupon code for an expenditure over  a certain amount, put that on the product page. These little nudges can often seal the sale or boost average order value. This move can also help keep customers ON your website.

5. Detailed Product Details
While a fun and flowery description of your product might be captivating, make sure you’re not leaving out the details. It’s fine to tell customers that the dress they’re looking at is flirty with a bold floral print, but customers need to know how it fits, what it’s made of, whether it’s dry clean only, whether it’s lined, etc. Make sure you include ALL the product specs on your product page.

6. Multiple Images/Close Ups
Make sure your product pictures answer every question that your description can’t. Allow customers to see the product from the side or the back. Allow customers to zoom in to see the details close up. Show your product in use so customers can imagine owning/using the item.

7.  Product Options With Ease
Make sure that product options are easy to find and select. If your product comes in multiple sizes or colors, make sure you have select boxes that allow your customer to indicate her preferences. I recommend putting these options towards the top of the page (above the fold) so your customer doesn’t miss them.

Also, make sure your product page has a quantity box! I’ve seen a few websites that don’t show this and it’s somewhat confusing and looks unprofessional. A simple “add to cart” with no quantity box won’t cut it if your customer wants more than one of the same item.

International shipping is an issue for every online seller. It’s expensive and there’s no perfect way to do it. At my own ecommerce business, we’ve tried just about everything and found that you basically have 2 choices: fast or cheap. Since we realize our customers won’t agree on which is more important we actually offer both. Today’s post is going to detail the options, and the pros and cons of each.

Note: This post is for US vendors. I unfortunately don’t have any experience shipping FROM any other countries, but if my readers do, feel free to give your $.02 in the comments below.

USPS
The USPS has a few different options for international mail and they all have varying degrees of speed and reliability.

First Class International: This is the cheapest way to go. It’s also the slowest. It is supposed to take 6-10 business days to arrive, but after having shipped hundreds of international packages I can unequivocally tell you, that’s often not the case. I’ve had packages arrive up to 2 months after I shipped. Your are very much at the mercy of the USPS and the postal system of the country you are shipping to. Some countries are more reliable than others. I’ve seen record speed with Australia’s post and a shockingly glacial pace in Canada.

The worst part of First Class International isn’t that the speed is questionable, it’s that the package can’t be tracked. If the package gets lost, you’re screwed and you’ll have a customer bitching about their lost items. Now you have to pay to send their stuff AGAIN and hope this time it actually arrives. You are also open to the possibility of con artists claiming the goods never arrived, only to try to get freebies out of you. Most people are honest, but this is a risk you take with First Class International mail. This service also does not have insurance available.

Flat Rate Priority International: This is not to be confused with Priority International. This USPS offering is mid-way between First Class and Priority,  both in terms of price and features. With Flat Rate Priority International you get a free mailer from the USPS for your shipment and you can mail whatever fits in the box for a flat rate. (There is a weight limit, but unless you are mailing lead this probably won’t be an issue.) Flat Rate Priority International is supposed to be a bit faster than First Class, but like First Class, you can’t track the package. So if it gets lost (or a customer claims it is lost) you are on the hook for the replacement/refund. Also, like First Class, you cannot get insurance.

Priority International: This is the reliable way to go. it gets your order delivered the faster than First Class, and you can get a tracking number for the package so you know when it has arrived. You can insure the package in case it gets lost or stolen. The bad news is that this option is much more expensive than Flat Rate Priority and First Class. It costs us about 3 times as much as First Class.

I personally offer this option to my customers, in addition to First Class, so they can decide for themselves if speed or price is more important. (Actually, we only offer First Class to countries that we know have a reasonably reliable postal system. For countries whose postal systems are of questionable reliability, we require customers to use Priority International for their shipments. International shipping really has some calculated risk attached to it so you have to set your policies in accordance with your risk tolerance, average order value and shipping volume.)

Express and Global Express Guaranteed: This method of shipping is the fastest, most reliable and most expensive. Unless your customer is desperate to have their package immediately, you probably don’t need to go this route. For a premium, USPS will guarantee package delivery in 1-3 business days to a number of countries.

FedEx/UPS/DHL
These private services all offer a small variety of shipping options. None of them are cheap. They also will charge your customers a hefty customs processing fee. (This fee is justified by the private courier getting your package through customs post-haste.) The up side of dealing with these private couriers is that your shipment will arrive when they say it will arrive. You aren’t at the mercy of a pretty unaccountable government agency who will take their sweet time delivering your package. If FedEx says it will be there Tuesday, with the exceptions of literal hell or high water, your package will be in your customer’s hands on Tuesday, end of story. The private couriers aren’t 100% perfect, but they’re definitely a good way to go if speed and reliability are of the utmost importance. You can also insure your package with private couriers, so if your package is lost or damaged, they are responsible for reimbursing you.

A final note about communication with international customers:
One of the most important things with international shipping is communication. Make it clear to your customers what they can expect, so they don’t get angry later. On my website’s checkout pages we remind customers that international shipments may incur customs fees and we are not responsible for those.

Since we offer both First Class and Priority International shipping on our site, we have those options in a drop down, and right next to them we have an estimated number of days to deliver, so customers know that if they pick the cheaper option they’ll be waiting for a longer time to get their packages. We also tell customers (on the check out pages) that First Class packages can’t be tracked, so if they choose that option, we won’t be able to give them shipment status.

Managing our customers’ expectations right from the point of taking their order, helps ensure that they’ll have a more positive overall ordering experience.

When we talk about analytics in the ecommerce world, most of the lip service goes to web analytics. You absolutely should monitor your website stats. You need to know where referring traffic comes from and how many visits and page views you’re getting. All of that is valuable decision-making fodder. That said, those stats are primarily about visitors, not buyers. For the real goods, it’s important to run reports on your sales data too.

Here are some patterns you’ll want to look for:

What are my best sellers?
The things you sell the most of are a good indicator of what your customers want. (Duh) But it’s important to think about WHY it’s a best seller. Is it vastly cheaper than your other items? Does it have a superior design? Is it more functional than your other items? The features that cause things to sell well should guide future decisions about product offerings.

What are my worst sellers?
While best sellers tell you what people want, worst sellers tell you what they don’t want. If something isn’t selling it’s good to think about why.

You may also want to think about ridding your shop of loser products. These items that no one wants may be making your overall store less appealing.

Is there a particular size or color I sell the most/least of?
If your products vary by size and color, be sure to take note of which sizes/colors sell best. This will help you stock your shop appropriately and make decisions about product development.

Is there a particular type of product I sell the most/least of?
For example, if you sell jewelry, meaning necklaces bracelets and earrings, take note of what kind of jewelry you’re selling the most of. Are you selling three times more bracelets than necklaces? These patterns can help direct the development of your product offerings.

Are there days of the week when sales peak or drop?
Noticing when you sell products is just as important as noticing what you sell. If you know your traffic converts best on Fridays, you might start sending out your newsletter on Fridays to support this popular buying day.

If you know Tuesdays are slow, maybe you want to run special promotion codes on Tuesdays via Facebook to buoy sales for that day.

It’s also important to notice if sales pick up or drop off at certain times of the month. You may want to adjust your marketing efforts to boost slow periods or supercharge active periods.

Are there certain months where sales increase/decrease?
Being prepared for slow or busy months is extremely important. If you know certain months are busy you’ll want to make sure your stock levels are high for those times. You may also want to plan special PR or marketing efforts around those periods.

For example, if you know you do really well around Mother’s Day think about what you can do to make that holiday even more profitable. Can you plan a special PR push for that holiday? Should you be running additional advertisements?

If you know certain periods are slow, for example if you sell knits and you know summer is dead for you, think about how you want to handle that. Do you want to introduce a line of summer knits made of lighter materials? Can you survive on slow sales in the summer because your winter is so busy? If so, what do you need to do to adjust your budget accordingly?

Every day I check out the 100s of subscriptions in my RSS feed about marketing, PR, advertising, branding, social media, and a host of other topics of interest to small businesses that sell online. Most of what gets posted isn’t earth shattering but I reserve Fridays for the best reads of the week. So here you have it, the most valuable things I read in the business blogosphere this week:

• Design an Effective About Page
• 29 Worst Practices & Most Common Failures: SEO Checklist Part I
• Checkout Abandonment is On The Rise
• Why optimizing your pages for search doesn’t work
• Color Psychology for Your Shop (mostly about brick and mortar but these ideas apply to web design too)
• The Need for Speed: What Does Google’s Caffeine Mean to You?
• Tricks to Reduce Cart Abandonment and Increase Account Creation
• Beware of Copyright Trolls
• 5 Ways to Power Up the Appeal of Your Web Content

Today’s post might read like one of the dreaded fortune cookie posts that I so despise, but I had an ah-ha moment last night that I thought I’d share.

Have you seen the movie “Never Been Kissed?” If not, a little background: A newspaper reporter poses as a high school student in order to write an article on modern high school students. The reporter was a geek in high school and thinks now that she is older and more mature, getting in with the in crowd should be easy. She quickly realizes it’s not. She turns to her brother, a former cool kid, for help and he says something smart, that something is the premise of today’s post:

All you need is for one person to think you’re cool, and you’re in.

To prove his point, the reporter’s brother poses as a student, tells the cool kids the reporter is cool, and like magic they all worship her. Sound ridiculous? It’s actually not far off.

We all want to believe that being good at what we do is what will make us successful, but the truth is it’s not enough. In fact, it often doesn’t matter a bit. What matters is making the right people like you. Not your brand, not your work, but YOU.

You’ve probably seen celebrated art that’s made you scratch your head. How many times have you gone “Why the hell is that band popular?” or “How the hell did that ugly thing get featured in the New York Times art section?” or “Why is everyone reading a blog that sounds like a fortune cookie?” (I’ve wondered that last one often.) The driving force behind that celebrated thing, that may very well be crap, had the right friends, and it propelled them forward professionally.

One of my favorite artists, Andy Warhol, probably spent as much time hanging with the in crowd, as he did creating, maybe more. If he’d spent all that time in his studio we might not even know his name.  I suspect a lot of his success had to do with who he knew, moreover than what he did as an artist.

So here’s my challenge to you (unless you’re already in the in crowd, in which case good for you, you probably don’t need much help):  Figure out who your in crowd is. Then, get out there and get them to think you’re cool. Don’t do it with your marketing hat on, do it as a social butterfly.  I suspect it will make your brand more successful as a result.

Making your customers a part of your brand is a great way to increase engagement, build a fan community and solicit customer feedback. At, Ex-Boyfriend, we’ve tried a few different things to build relationships with our customers.

1. Put Your Pin on Our Map
The Ex-Boyfriend website hosts an interactive map which automatically places a pin in each city the company has shipped orders to. To get their hometown pinned, customers simply need to place an order.

The map offers a fun way to see where the brand’s products are being worn (all 50 states and 5 of the 7 continents) and even lists which cities have had the most orders shipped to them. (Chicago is currently #1.)

(How to: Building a map like this for your own site requires a little technical expertise, but it’s not super difficult. The map employs Google Maps technology, which is free and has an API for webmasters.  Simply create a database table that holds the longitude and latitude coordinates of each city your company has shipped to. Then use Google maps to place pins in each location. As new orders come in, update your table if the new order’s city is not already listed in your table. You can find tutorials on Google Maps here.)

2. Help Us Design Our Next Product
Ex-Boyfriend hosted a contest asking fans to suggest concepts for their next t-shirt design. Fans were also invited to vote on the suggestions submitted by the contestants. The winning contestants’ design concepts were brought to life by the brand’s illustrator and the contestants were given free tees.

The contest offered an opportunity for fans to participate in the brand’s creative process and have their ideas realized by a professional designer.

3. Introduce Yourself
Ex-Boyfriend updates their blog each week day with fun content like videos, cocktail recipes and cute pictures of kittens. Fans are welcome to add their commentary, and just recently, Ex-Boyfriend started sharing  fan photos, fan interviews and fan videos. The brand’s illustrator mails a handwritten thank you to each fan who submits their photos/videos.

Got a handy tip for incorporating fans into your brand? Share it in the comments.