A Proven Framework to Grow Successful eCommerce Businesses

welcome to the curiosity podcast a show about everything ecommerce and digital
business the aim is simple to help you thrive online and now your host Matt
Edmondson [Music]
hello our welcome my fellow ecommerce entrepreneurs my name is Matt Edmondson
and this show is for those of us curious about e-commerce and want to know how to
get better at doing digital business coming up in today's show I am going to
run through my proven framework the framework that I used to grow successful
e-commerce businesses now I do want to say right here at the start I'm not
making this claim lightly it is not clickbait it's not designed for that but
it is a framework that I use in my own e-commerce business and it's also the
exact the exact framework I use when doing coaching and consulting with clients all over the world and I've seen
some great results with this framework okay so if you are a fellow ecommerce
site then you're really going to enjoy today's show as I run through my secret
sauce I will of course put any links that I mentioned and along with the show notes on my website at Matt Edmondson
com you can just check that out hit the podcast link and you'll be able to find the episode also on my website is
information about the collab project if you are new to the show and haven't heard about it then this is a challenge I've set for
myself in the for some reason you know one day I said it the the desire to set
up an hundred new e-commerce websites and to do that many I definitely need to partner with some entrepreneurs who have
got some great products to sell online some great ideas some great things to bring I don't know maybe you're great at
the social media side and creating the content but not so hot on the e-commerce siding you want to partner with somebody
that can help you well go check out what we do on the collab project on my site Matt Edmondson comm we've got a whole
bunch of information on there and if that she check it out now let me take a moment to shout out to the show's
sponsor the amazing curious digital it's an experience based platform and in fact this platform has been developed around
the framework that we're going to go through today right so this is the
platform that I you to grow my own e-commerce businesses and if you are looking for a new e-commerce
platform be sure to check it out at curious dot digital that's curious for the K not with a C ok curious the bit
like this podcast the curiosity podcast is where they care not with a C for obvious branding reasons now I hope
you're having a good day wherever you are at the time of recording I'm in the
recording studio here at the office which I actually quite enjoy being in is peaceful no one bothers me when you put
the red light on it's great do not enter and you can just go in here and have a little chat and it's
brilliant but at the time you hear this I will actually be on holiday because there's a
time between recording and actually going live so as you hear this do think of me just taking a bit of time out a
bit of R&R because you know what it's good to do that I don't know if you're like me I've had one of those weeks
right where you know you're going on holiday the next week and you you know you but you've got so much you want to
get done before you go away so you work crazy the week leading up to your vacation it just goes absolutely nuts
and so you get to the end of the week feeling actually quite tired I'm ready for some time off that's the point I'm
at right now give me an Amen if you can empathize right okay enough talk about a holiday
let's get into the framework now I see a
lot of people starting you know their e-commerce business with a lot of hope
and optimism right it's meant the main thing we've got is hope and optimism when we start our business and that was
exactly the same way when I started my own company but I don't really see a lot of guys come into e-commerce having a
clear plan or framework or guidebook for ones for a better expression for
building that business right or growing that business now it may be that that business is a brand new business it may
be it's a bolt onto an existing business or it may be that your e-commerce website is actually you know just not
doing great and you're trying to understand why well I reckon this framework is a
good way to understand ecommerce and a good way to understand business okay
like I said I use it on my own e-commerce businesses I go around the
houses all the time on this and I use it with consulting clients it's there's the
framework I use when I do the the e-commerce consulting which I do all over the world and it's worked everywhere I've gotten right so I want
to run through it because I think it will really really help you as an e-commerce entrepreneur to get your head
around how to grow the business now before we get into it I just want to give you one word of
warning you might think that some of what I'm saying sounds remarkably simple
and it is so don't let the simplicity of this fool you sometimes we like to have
things super complicated unnecessarily I actually work very hard to try and keep
things simple it's what I it's is what works for me right it's what I need in
reality is the simple so we're gonna try and keep this straightforward and simple but don't let the simplicity of this
fool you a lot of this should go well that makes a lot of sense of course that's right that makes a lot of sense
and that's a good thing that's where we want you to be because this is how it's going to help you and how you'll
remember it now if you know me and if you've been following along you'll know
that I have a website called Jersey Beauty company right it's one of my key ecommerce sites Jersey we just call it
Jersey we have a range of things called the Jersey group where we have ecommerce sites we have fulfillment services and
e-commerce services all through the Jersey Group right we kind of like an e-commerce behind-the-scenes business
doing all kinds of cool stuff anyway the reason I mention in this is the word
Jersey Jersey is just very synonymous with me and what we do and it's the word
Jersey that I use to remember this framework okay so the letter J stands
for jam-jar e is engineer or resonate s send e
experience and why yo now I'm going to go through all of those again so you will remember them but
that's how I remember it is so we call this the Jersey framework okay because each letter is a really key component in
this framework and of course as I said earlier don't if you're driving along don't take notes because you know that
would be nuts definitely head on over to the site and just download the show notes why would you not do that right
because it just makes a lot of sense but if you are sat there write this down in your notebook and work through this so
let's get into the first one Jam John now jam jar for me is all about products
okay it's all about starting with the right products and the reason we went with this phrase jam jar is I came
across a experiment they did a number of years ago using Jam Akane and in the
supermarket they put a table out with a series of jams on the table and they wanted to see if people could test and
taste the jam would that correspond to a bigger amount of sales at the till right
at the register would you have more sales yes or no so on the first table they put I think it was like six or
eight different flavors of jam quite well known flavors of jam and they put them out there and they monitor the
sales the next week they put the same table out but instead of put in like six or eight jars of jam on there they had
like and they had some crazy flavors as well some exotic flavors stuff you would never have thought to try but here
it was on the table you could try it without any problem right and so people
would go along and they would try this jump the thinking being obviously the more choice you had and the more flavors
you had that would mean more sales at the register it mean more sales at the checkout right the reality was it didn't
the less choice you gave customers resulted in more sales how does this
work to e-commerce because actually the normal rules of products they apply to
e-commerce and we have to think about the products that we're selling okay we can't just assume that we know we can't
just assume that actually any old product is going to be fine we've got to think about it so the
aim of jam-jar is very simple right you want to curate high demand products that
create profit through knowable sales patterns so you want to curate think
about your niche we talked about a niche and episode right what is your niche think about the jams right the the more
widespread the less niche it is so think about your niche what is your niche look
how can you go and curate and get that best high demand products for that niche
right and this is critical the products have to be in high demand ok and you've got to be able to create profit with
those products you know there are so many products out there at the moment where it is this literally a race to the
bottom if you sell them you're competing with me loads of other people and the only way really to beat them is to lower
the price so you lower your price somebody else lowers their price and you have to lower your price and it becomes
a race to the bottom so you're not really creating profit ok and the final part to this is you want to curate high
demand products that create profit through knowable sales pans you want to be able to understand how customers are
going to buy them you want to understand that whole customer journey you really need to know that and be able to figure
that out ok and that's the very first part of e-commerce it's the it's it's
getting the products right you've got to start with the products and if you're a regular listener to the show you'll know
that in September we hope to be launching a new course called the jam
jar funnel and all about how to find these high demand products that create profit you with noble sales patterns
that's the aim of that course ok and that's coming out but irrespective of whether you take that course or not it's
not a sales pitch what I want you to understand is ecommerce fundamentally starts with knowing about your products
and knowing those sales patterns and having that great product those high demand products at the start okay so
that's jjam jar we're going to move on to the first E which is engineer now
this is all about building an adaptable platform that provides the best buying
experience and integrates with your business systems okay so if you are just starting
out you obviously have to balance that with budget and so you have to think
about how much money do I have to spend which is what I think if you're just starting out actually Shopify is a
pretty great platform because it's relatively cost effective like whatever it is bucks a month for the basic
setup I think these days you can get an alright template design for a couple of hundred bucks and away
you go okay and and but it's oh it's a great starter platform I don't know if I'd say
it's a particularly great platform to be on long term I always find it's a great
way to test a business and to test an idea and if it starts to take off a little bit then I could move it on to a
different platform and I see that happening a lot in e-commerce and because you want the platform to be
adaptable right it's got what I mean by adaptable is it's got to change and develop as your business grows and
scales as your customer needs change and also as technology changes right so you
want to build an adaptable system one that can sort of iterate with you as you change as your business grows and the
key is your website take all the other stuff out of it your website has got to
develop a develop deliver as cross in two words develop and deliver then I
don't know why but it's God to deliver the best buying experience for your customers right you've got to focus on
your customers but it also has to integrate with your business system so if you're an established business already or you already have an
e-commerce business it's got to integrate with your warehouse management systems and all that sort of stuff otherwise you're going to run into
massive problems okay so first we start with the product then we look at the website what's the best website we can
build with the budget that we have with the idea of it being adaptable giving
great experience for the customer and does it need to integrate with any systems that I have okay then we move
into the R which is resonates okay now this is all about actually creating
that best buying experience for your customer and this is where I think a lot
of websites kind of certainly when you starting out with Shopify you'll throw the web side up you'll put the template on but
you've not really focused on creating that best buying experience for your customer now how do you do that well we
talked about in the jam-jar stage you know you want these products that are sold through knowable sales patterns so
when you know the sales patterns you can create the best buying experience for your customer on your website and you
design around that you don't ever try and force a customer to buy your way you
want to make it easy for the customers to understand what it is that's going on on the website and it follows a logical
pattern the navigation works for them it's this it feels familiar they don't have to think about it they don't have
to guess about it your site resonates right and if your site resonates then people will start to
buy from you okay we are now going to take a few minutes
to stop pause and review this week's ecommerce news welcome to the weekly
news roundup with my fabulous talented host setup setup Hey hey Matt Hayden I'm doing good good good
good good so what have we got this week all right so true or false Matt over
half the people over shop online Wow okay this is actually a good one for me
if this was a purple quiz I'd be doing well because I've actually read this on-line I actually read this blog post
now it's true and false okay okay it is true if you live in the UK because I
read that was it the National the office for national stats said that now % of people aged and over are buying
online is that right mm-hmm well did me pat on the back but I don't
think I'll be true for every country but for the UK as things currently stand I would say that's true yeah this is a
growing segment for the UK and gives great opportunity for the savvy econ guy and do you want me to tell you where
else there is a great ecommerce opportunity sure I'm always on the lookout for new opportunities that's for
sure work where else Sweden okay Sweden yeah you're gonna have to explain what
why okay so according to a blog post on e-commerce news Europe it takes an
average of five point six days to get a parcel from Sweden to Finland five point
six days five point six days and these guys are neighbors right yep so that's
like that's like me sending a parcel to where I know Wales or Scotland and it taking what five point six days to get
there yeah goodness me I have no idea what they're doing at the border I mean that's just nuts right yeah do you know
how long it might take to send something from the UK to Australia or New Zealand I guarantee it would be a lot less than
five point six days I mean we ship stuff from here to Australia in New Zealand and it's no way it takes five point six
days yet to get it from Sweden to Finland it does so is there kudos to Royal Mail no I wouldn't go
that far but well I'm just stunned of that okay so speaking of opportunities
online I have a question for you okay do you have and I appreciate this might
sound really sexist want to say but it isn't it's not intended to be do you have a foldable travel iron no I do not
have a foldable travel iron I don't even have a travel iron no travel iron at all
nope okay now the reason I ask this is because I wrote a blog post by over lo which they
posted last week saying that they did this post you know the top products to sell online in which is a good
time to post it halfway through the year I feel but anyway they posted this blog post and did you know that the foldable
travel iron was their top recommended product sell online in no way yeah
a foldable Travel line so I I'm a little bit shocked by that would you actually
want one thing no you see I I have a foldable Travel line which I got I think about years ago when I used to care
about having ironed and pressed shirts when I traveled which I don't know wait past carry and it's in my attic
somewhere so I feel like I need to get it down maybe put it on eBay because obviously the demand if it's like the
number one best-selling product right so so anyway there you go if you want to
top tip if you're hunting ecommerce products if you're looking for that opportunity go and buy foldable travel
irons figure out how to ship them from Sweden to Finland really really quick and make sure you sell them to people
over and we've got it all covered yeah awesome so that's this week's news
roundup thanks enough you're welcome I'll see you next week as you too [Music]
that's the news so now let's get back to it
the as the first s well the only s in Jersey is sins right so we've started
off with the product we've built the website and the third thing we've done is we've made that website really really
resonate with the customers that are going to be using it okay now we were ready we're good to go so we want to
send now this is all about finding your customers undirected them to your website in order that they buy from you
okay and this is critical because I think we've missed this a lot with a lot
of talk around social media and don't get me wrong social media is great and it is awesome and I get the power of it
for your e-commerce business but your aiming your marketing which is what send is all about it's about going and
finding people converting them to customers okay so that they buy from your website it's all about going out
there and getting them and sometimes I feel like with marketing we've lost that
thinking that actually ultimately these people have to buy from you yes likes
are good yes views are good yes subscriber numbers on your YouTube channel are important yes the number of followers
you've got on Twitter is critical right and these are all important metrics but
fundamentally you can have a million people following you on Twitter but if none of them are buying you from your
website you're not going to have a business right so don't lose that
thinking in your marketing right you have got to go find people who are your customers and if they're not yet your
customers these are people that you can easily convert to becoming your customer you're going to direct them ultimately to your website yes you want them to go
to your Facebook page yes you want them to go to your Instagram feed but ultimately they have got to get on your website so that they buy from you okay
don't forget that that is critical and that is important and that's what your marketing strategy should be around okay
we're going to move on to the second me now in this framework experience now
this is all about the customers buying experience from you you want to do two
things okay you want to create the best digital experience for your customers okay so
when they're on your website because you know the sales pans you understand them as a customer you're looking out
for them you've got high demand products everything about your website's cool and awesome and they feel great with it so
you're creating this digital experience for them that really resonates with them okay but you've got to remember there
are two sides to e-commerce and again a lot of people miss this okay and this is
this is where I think if you start off with a drop shipping model you have to pay attention because this is going to
be one of the key weaknesses of the drop ship model that you have to think about and work through okay and that is not
only do you want to create a great digital experience you have got to create a really good real experience -
now what do I mean by that well I think of it this way right when a customer comes along to your website and they buy
something from your site right and it's all beautiful and slick and it works and
they go through and it's been a great experience they've giving you their credit card number they've purchased the product you've got this beautiful page
resets hey thanks for shopping and we're gonna send out your product right and
you send out the product to them and it's five days late and the package is
broken but the packaging on the outside is awful compared to what's on the inside right and so as soon as the
customer touches that box as it comes through the door the package through the letterbox it has now become a real
experience it has moved from the pixels on the page to something they can touch and feel with their own hands right so
you want to make sure that that whole experience is seamless ok and brilliant
and beautiful and plan through and thought about ok do not neglect that
side of things so much energy goes into actually getting the sale without actually thinking about what happens
once we've got the sale which gives us this great experience for our customers ok so we've had jam-jar which is about
products we've had engineer which is about website we've had resonate which is about conversion we've had send which
is about marketing and getting the right people to our website and we've had efore experience which is all about
Creighton both a great digital experience but also a real experience as well whether it's
through packaging or customer service or whatever it is okay and we finally find
ourselves on the way yo-yo now what do I mean by yo-yo well when I was a kid yeah
I don't know if you've ever played with the yo-yo but when I was a kid I used to have a yo-yo you'd walk around with it and a yo-yo only makes sense if that
thing goes up and down the string right if it just went down the string and stayed at the bottom you would get super
annoyed because you're like oh you then had to spend you know time winding the string back on the yo-yo so you like
right the whole purpose of the yo-yo is to throw the thing down bring it back up throw and so it's back and forth back and forth
well this is true of your e-commerce business right it is super hard if you
are going to put all this effort in just to get in a customer to buy from you once and once only okay now there is a
statistic out there which says % of the people that come and buy products from your website will buy only once
only % of people will come back and buy again but you know if you can work
hard to make that % bigger to maybe % for example you will find actually
that portion of your turnover is significantly bigger in other words
people coming back to your website will buy from you more often and they'll
buy from you bigger amounts their average order value is higher so you want to build a business that is both
repeatable ie it can go up and down the string like a yo-yo customers feel like they can come
back and buy from you time and time again but it's also referral in other
words you want other people to tell everybody or tell all their friends
about your business right so it's referral it's repeatable and it's referral and if you can focus on those
two things you actually make your whole ecommerce life a whole lot easier let me
tell you so when it comes to using this framework if you're starting out in
business this is what you need to do right first and foremost find a great product that's what you've got to do
before you do anything else for design websites before you get domains before you go and do logos all
that sort of stuff go and find some great products that is fundamentally
what needs to happen you are then going to be able to concentrate on your website because your website is now
built around the products and these knowable sale patterns net ennoble sales patterns which means your website is
going to resonate and you're going to think about the customer being on the website what do they need what do they
want how will this help them okay how can I help them with added value that's
always a great question you know and so how does that work with my conversion you're then going to look at your
marketing and go right I've got this product I've got this website that works super well what it is gonna be a great
marketing strategy for me to build this continual business that's what I want to know okay you're gonna then work hard on
developing both a good digital experience and a good real experience and then you're going to work hard to
keep this business repeatable and referral now let me tell you if you do those first five things the website the
product the conversion the marketing and you will find it's actually an awful lot
easier to build a repeatable business okay because people love to shop with you if they've had a great experience
guess what they're going to come back guess what they're going to tell their friends so the final category becomes
actually a whole lot easier if you do those first five super super well okay
so that's a framework but what happens if you've already got an e-commerce business how do I use this tool to
diagnose for example say is your business working well well I literally
whenever I sit down with the consultant client we're just sit down we have a conversation about an awful lot of things and we go into a lot of detail
about their products we do a lot of research around their products and we obviously spend an awful lot of time
looking at their website what's working what's not working what needs to change and we look at this whole idea of
resonate so how are you dealing with customers on your website do they enjoy being on your website what could you do
there to improve that is your navigation working for them I mean a whole bunch of questions around that side of things we
obviously spent time looking at their mark campaigns we look at that email marketing and just as an aside I'm
always surprised by how many companies I go in and consult with who do not have email marketing strategies I don't know
what that's all about but you definitely need to build that in from day one so what's the marketing strategy what's the
email marketing strategy how we do in that how's that working what kind of results that we getting from that
what are you doing on social media and how's that working how are we getting them back to the website in order that
they buy from you right we look at that whole side of things we if we're
diagnosing issues I definitely I'm going to get on the phone and call a whole bunch of your customers and talk to them
I want to know what their experience is like what are they finding out I'm going to go through all your customer service
emails because I want to see what people are actually saying and understand that experience and how how could you make it
better for that customer for that industry and obviously we look at how many people coming back to the site how
many people are buying more than once what's that percentage what strategies could we put into place to improve it as
always a super big question and we look at those and we look at metrics maybe how we could measure that so you could
use this to diagnose your business really well if maybe you've got fantastic products right we've been
doing a consulting project with a company great range of products their website actually for me was a
fundamental problem it wasn't working well for them at all so we put a big question mark next to their website it
didn't really resonate with their customers that well so they had two big
question marks their marketing was pretty reasonable and but just needed to be adapted a little bit that should the
customer experience was pretty good these guys were actually really good at customer experience so we use this as a
tool to sort of diagnose where the issues were and it was all around their website and the customer experience when
that once they were on their website we've gone into other situations where we've looked at and gone right let's use
this framework right let's have a look at the products and we've never moved away from it because that for me was
where the issue was they didn't have high demand products and people didn't know about them so it's like okay so use
the tool right the see questions are six things the six items the six points whatever you want to call
all around e-commerce I just call it the Jersey framework because I remember that and it's super super easy and so when I
look at my own e-commerce businesses I'm like how my products doing let's go get some more products that our high demand
let's lose the ones that were not selling what do we need to do on the website on the engineers side of things how does it into what can I do to make
it integrate better always or every month there are changes on our website where we're adapting resonate we're
always looking at conversion stats how can we get people to convert better how can we resonate better with our
customers what kind of content do I need to put on the website that will help them and so on and so forth
our marketing geez that changes a lot because technology changes and customer
buying patterns change social media is always changing so we're constantly reviewing that so I use this platform
every month to go through my own e-commerce businesses with our teams and go how can we make this better how can
we make you work so that's my framework okay that I use hopefully that has been
helpful to you and you like I say you can use it on your own e-commerce business one more time it's the Jersey
framework J is for jam-jar ears for engineer R is for resonate S is
for send E is all about the experience and Y is for yo-yo download that from
the website mat Edmonson calm and use that to diagnose your business or if
you're starting out to plan your business what are you gonna do in those six areas which is going to give you
that much bigger chance of a homerun at the start okay now make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you get
your podcasts it is free of course and the show well it's full of good stuff
even if I do say so myself which of course I do it's full of good stuff about how to set
up run and grow your own e-commerce businesses so you can make sure you know
you've got it like using the framework for example make sure you've got a much greater chance of success we give all
those practical tips help and advice I think it's great we have great guests which we interview as well and they share the advice and we
also do coaching calls and if you would like to be featured on the podcast and like I think Dan was
recently we did a coaching call with him get in touch via the website you can apply to be on the show and we do
coaching calls where I'll talk to you about e-commerce and we'll have a little bit of a chinwag and hopefully get your
website moving and get it better and deal with some of the problems that you are facing okay so check all that out at
Matt Edmondson comm all the Instagram Facebook Twitter links and all that sort of stuff on there as well or you can
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great day I'll be back soon with some more help and advice on e-commerce so until next time
you've been listening to the curiosity podcast with Matt Edmondson subscribe and join us next time as we carry on
conversations about all things ecommerce and digital business [Music]