Tell us a little about your company

What do you sell? What makes you unique?
Costo sells limited edition hats and high quality leather accessories for laptops, tablets and smart phones.

Innovative designs, utilizing industry leftover materials and the story behind the brand.
Our latest hat collection is made from our own developed 100% Recycled Denim.

Who’s your target audience?
Costo style ignores trends and fashion fads and it strives to make products that stay fashionable regardless the period in question. Costo style is for everybody. It doesn’t pigeonhole people into narrow genres or segments.

How did StoreYa help you on your marketing efforts?
Our social media fanbase is growing fast so with StoreYa we can offer a quick view to our catalog and latest product updates. More people are using smart phones nowadays so having online catalog optimized for desktop and mobile is beneficial to any e-Commerce. StoreYa marketing tools are easy to setup and cost effective way to engage our customers.

1. What is the #1 advantage you have over your competitors?

2. From your experience, should a merchant run a small shop with limited number of items, or rather a big one with many items for sale?
Companies who have a large product line tend to lower prices and focus on selling to the mass market. This strategy works very well for companies who do not know exactly what their target audience wants, or even if their audience knows what they want. On the other hand, a company that has a limited number of product categories tends to sell their items to a smaller number of people. This allows them to have the ability to create a product specifically tailored to their target audience.

In today’s constantly changing online environment, having small and large e-commerce stores allows consumers to browse from a large number of items. Then they can narrow their search and find the exact item they are looking for.

3. Please give us one example to a successful creative move of one of your merchants.
MikkatMarket.com has built an entire online business based on the relationship with their client through a fashion blog. Original content established a large following for Katherine, the site’s owner, and that content grew into features in prominent online fashion websites.

4. Do many of your merchants run a brick and stone store as well?
There are, but on average I would say that we see more online only e- commerce stores.

5. Can you share any interesting plans for your platform in the near future?
With BrilliantRetail we are looking to educate our consumers in the future about useful e-commerce integrations. Thats why we have decided to create a marketplace to introduce our clients into new and interesting products that can enhance the functionality and bring added value to any e-commerce site. Our clients have enough to deal with in running their business and we would like to take some of the difficulties out of the equation. Our goal is not to bombard our users with second hand products, but to offer interesting integrations that can add a more personable/profitable experience for our clients and ultimately their online customers.

6. How do you cope with the high pace of changes in the eCommerce arena and specifically in the social commerce world?
Many people fear change; especially how fast social commerce has change in the past 4 years. We at Codesly, love the change. Social commerce has allowed consumers to have a more personable shopping experience online. Prior to social commerce, if a customer bought a product online they never could get input from friends and family. Now, social commerce has opened the doors to sharing across the web and getting input from friends and family. Consumers can find products they like and announce it to friends to get their input before purchasing.

This has allowed e-commerce sites to have a more personalized presence on their sites as well as add a great way to advertise their products through Word Of Mouth. The number one way to get a site/product trusted is through word of mouth, especially when it comes to friends and family. Now you can see why we here at Codesly love how social commerce has shaped the online marketplace.

7. Which big brand names are using your service?
There are a number of companies and brands featured in our showcase. We recently launched Lifefactory.com with BrilliantRetail and EllisLab.com, the developers of ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter, run their store on our product. Checkout our showcase (http://www.brilliantretail.com/showcase) for more examples!

8. Do you believe that in 10 years, shopping will be done mostly online?
I believe that online shopping will continue to grow, but it will never fully eliminate the brick and stone stores. Online stores allows consumers to shop wherever and whenever they want. This allows companies to profit from impulse purchases that were not available to consumers before the advent of online shopping. On the other hand, physical locations allow consumers the social interaction between retailer and buyer that online shopping sites cannot currently offer.

Take for instance Macy’s and Nordstrom’s. Macy’s specializes in selling high end items for a lower costs while Nordstrom’s offer the same items for a higher price. Macy’s is able to achieve their business success by cutting costs in customer service. Nordstrom’s is able to do this by devoting their time in offering the best customer care available making each experience different from the last. Even though online shopping will continue to rise and flourish, the brick and stone location will not become obsolete as long as these stores offer the social experience that online sites lack today.

9. From your experience, what is the first thing a merchant should pay attention to when opening a web store?
Ease of use is vital in creating the right first impression. A site that is difficult to navigate can deter any merchant from making a purchase. No consumer wants to work hard to spend their hard earned money.

10. Tell us something about your platform that would make our readers remember it.
BrilliantRetail allows consumers to create an online store extremely easy to use while offering developers the ability to customize and personalize their store. We want our product to be easy to use because business owners don’t have 8-10 hours a day fixing their sites. Our goal is to make the e-commerce store plausible for every company whether its a mom and pop shop that wants to take a shot at an online store to a multinational company who sells millions each year.

If you are a BrilliantRetail merchant, import your BrilliantRetail store to Facebook now!

I want to thank David and Kevin from BrilliantRetail who took the time to answer the above Q&A.
We highly recommend you all to check out this amazing platform: http://www.brilliantretail.com/

Macklemore is this week’s Facebook shop contest winner!

If for some reason you haven’t heard the name Macklemore, here’s some background and numbers:
Ben Haggerty, also known as Macklemore, is an American musician. He began independently releasing music in 2000 and now collaborates with producer Ryan Lewis, violinist Andrew Joslyn, and trumpeter Owuor Arunga.

He has released one mixtape, three EPs and two albums, although none on a major record label. His music video “Thrift Shop” has been viewed on YouTube more than ~280 million times, and reached number 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart and stayed there for 5 weeks!!
We can’t stop listening to the ‘Thrift shop’ video here at the office, check it out:

He sold more than 6 million copies! Macklemore released his debut studio album ‘The Heist’ on October 9, 2012, which charted at number 2 on the US Billboard 200 chart, selling 78,000 copies in the first week.

We are lucky to have such an amazing artist using our platform, promoting his products to more than 1.6 Million fans on Facebook!

Macklemore Facebook Shop

This is a good place to remind you of our latest partnership with Hootsuite. We recommend you to create a free account which will enable you to manage your community, your Facebook shop, and get statistics right from Hootsuite’s dashboard, so you’ll know what works best for you, and optimize accordingly.

Download the complete set of “perfect post” infographics

Why should I add it to my site?

You get daily visits to your online shop from potential shoppers browsing around your shop. Some of them make a purchase, some of them, well.. don’t. No matter what is the percentages of those users in your site, you have them, and then you don’t. They leave no records like name, email address etc.

The ‘Like Box’ offers them the option to join your Facebook community, by joining this community you can engage with them on a daily basis!

Offer them interesting content, special discounts and sales you are having on your shop.
More fans = More sales. The bigger community you have, higher revenues you’ll see. Having likes on your page is a great thing especially from targeted customers – like you already have – who can expose your shop to their friends. So, you get to keep in touch with your current visitors AND with their friends – that’s what it’s all about, keep social build your network!

Customize this tool in StoreYa with just a couple of clicks, and launch it in your site so you can keep in touch with your visitors! If you are using one of StoreYa’s premium plans, log in now to your account and go to the Marketing page. If you are using the free plan, this is a great time to upgrade your account!

Good luck! We hope this tool will bring you lots of fans & sales:-)
Keep us updated on your success.

What do you sell? What makes you unique?
The products and their styling makes us unique here in the UK and additionally we are very customer focussed and promote and pride ourselves as a retailer of luxury lingerie, to suit most budgets.

Who’s your target audience?
Our target audience is the professional lady who is vivacious, out-going and mixes the sensuous aspect with the elegance befitting her as a professional.

How did StoreYa help you on your marketing efforts?
Storeya is a very good platform to expose our products to a very wide audience, as we see social media as a very effective marketing tool which can reach a wider audience than traditional marketing.

The fan gate acts as a landing page for users visiting your Facebook shop for the first time, users that haven’t liked your Facebook page yet.
You can activate the Fan Gate and ask them to like the page in order for them to browse your store and get special deals as you can see in the below example.

But we’ve also added an important twist to this marketing tool, besides the fact that you can activate the landing page and gain new fans, we also provided you with an option to give your users a coupon code they can redeem in your store. It can be for a new item/ collection, clearance, off season sale you’re having. We also enable you the option to upload an image of the relevant product. See the below example.

And this is how the thank you screen looks like:

Needless to say that like in all of our tools you can change any wording, and translate these screens to any language you wish.
If you are using one of StoreYa’s premium plans, log in now to your account and go to the Marketing page. If you are using the free plan, this is a great time to upgrade your account!

Good luck! We hope this tool will bring you lots of fans & sales:-)
Keep us updated on your success.

Tell us a little about your company

What do you sell?
a.musing designs and makes conceptually creative pieces of art capturing snippets of time and preserving them in little blocks of joy. We help you communicate an emotional message by creating personalised gifts, thank you’s & awards for any occasion.

Our designs fall into four categories:

- Treat yourself and your home every now and then with something fancy – a little block of indulgence

- We’ve got it wrapped with gifts that last a lifetime – a little block of kindness

- To all those dazzlers who shine bright – a little block of pride

- A toast to show clients they are valued – a little block of thanks

What makes you unique?
Nobody ‘needs’ a little acrylic block, but everyone ‘wants’ a little amusing every now and then.
We deliver that special gift which becomes a lifelong keepsake.

Who’s your target audience?
A wide demographic of consumers looking for a contemporary and unusual personalized gift.

How did StoreYa help you on your marketing efforts?
StoreYa has provided a seamless solution enabling our products to be effectively imported to our Facebook page. This will allow us to gain more exposure and awareness of our e-commerce store through a well-established social media platform.

1. What is the #1 advantage you have over your competitors?
Our feature list is as big or bigger than most of our competitors yet we keep our prices low. We also offer a customization & development service with the ability to customize our software to almost any requirement.

2. From your experience, should a merchant run a small shop with limited number of items, or rather a big one with many items for sale?
I would say it’s best to find a niche and stick to it. Anyone can open a web store filled with thousands of products with generic images & descriptions and these types of stores are not the path to success, Amazon has truly devoured that market and it’s near impossible to compete. My advice would be to find a niche market and offer a small number of products which you know inside and out, accompanied by unique product descriptions, images and videos. Offer a level of pre and post sales care that larger retailers cannot and add even more value with a blog.

4. Do many of your merchants run a brick and stone store as well?
Yes, I would say around 20% run a brick and mortar store in addition to their online store. Most opened their online store as an extension to their physical stores but these days the swing tends to be in the opposite direction with merchants opening online stores first then brick and mortar stores in areas where their products are most popular.

5. Can you share any interesting plans for your platform in the near future?
We are currently building version 8 which is set to contain a host of powerful new features, we’re really taking our time with this as we want it to a market leading shopping cart.

6. How do you cope with the high pace of changes in the eCommerce arena and specifically in the social commerce world?
We keep a close eye on industry news and ensure we listen to our customers. If our customers come to us asking for a feature / function they’ve seen elsewhere, most of the time we will build it for them.

8. Do you believe that in 10 years, shopping will be done mostly online?
Maybe 10 years is a little too early but I do think it will become that way eventually. However I also believe that some sectors will always have a place on the high street, such as fashion as technology will never be able to create the experience of going into stores and trying on clothes.

9. From your experience, what is the first thing a merchant should pay attention to when opening a web store?
The competition, if the market is flooded with established stores selling the same products and services as you intend to, how are you going to compete? The answer is you probably can’t.

10. Tell us something about your platform that would make our readers remember it.
Despite having a large presence and 80% of our clients in the USA, we are actually based in Melbourne, Australia.

A BIG thank you for Gareth, VP-ASP marketing director, for taking the time to answer the above questions. If you want to learm more about this great platform visit them now at: http://www.vpasp.com