Need help with your small business social media? Check out these 10 tactics based on 2019 Inc 500 Social Media Research by UMass Dartmouth.
The post 2019 Inc 500 Social Media Research How To Improve Yours appeared first on Heidi Cohen.
For John Padgett, Chief Experience Innovation Officer at Carnival Corporation, transforming customer experiences with technology is nothing new. Before joining Carnival, he was a key player in the technology development and success of Disney’s MyMagic+. Creating frictionless experiences with wearable technology.
“When we decided to create a frictionless guest experience, the discussion was not actually around the technology itself. It was around the value of creating a frictionless experience and what that meant about how to reengineer and rethink the touchpoints,” said Padgett during a podcast with Roger Dooley.
So, when Carnival wanted to create the ultimate vacation experience aboard their ships, they placed their guests at the center of the experience design and improved the convergence among the physical and digital worlds into a seamless experience.
Rethinking the touchpoints and how to incorporate emerging technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), bots, and wearables, meant they needed a headless commerce platform.
For companies like Carnival with multifaceted content and individualistic customer requirements, headless commerce can deliver consistent, personalized, and innovative customer experiences fast.
“Each guest is different and the things that make them happy are different,” said Arnold Donald, president and CEO of Carnival Corporation to CES Tech.
Why Go Headless
The main notion behind the headless commerce concept is to separate the presentation layer which customers interact with from the backend layer with all the business logic and infrastructure and connect the two via a flexible API.
Traditional monolithic commerce solutions force brands to adopt their capabilities across the ship, thus mandating that the business match the solution. As opposed to more flexible offerings with an API-based/headless solution that allows brands to apply best of breed capabilities that match the system to the business needs and in this case the guest expectations.
The benefits: Brands like Carnival, who want to deliver guest-centric experiences are not tied to what their legacy commerce platform allows them to do. They do not have to stick to the rules of a UI logic which are designed to produce a standardized web experience. Instead, they are entirely flexible regarding content delivery, UX and multiple technology touchpoints.
The Regal Princess cruise ship and the Carnival Corporation are able to continue to revolutionize the travel industry with their guest-centric strategy by employing a headless commerce solution. A backend platform solution that enables emerging and upcoming consumption channels to be added in; and a platform their fleet staff can easily interact with converging the digital and physical channels onboard.
Carnival was recently recognized as a CES 2019 Innovation Awards Honoree for OceanMedallion
at CES 2019 in Las Vegas where just two short years prior they first announced the launch of OceanMedallion.
Stay tuned for more on Carnival’s digital transformation/guest-centric experience.
The post Vision to frictionless reality: How Carnival created a smart city on the water appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.
Microservices has been gaining a lot of interest within the commerce industry; and many developers have already started experimenting with them. However, before you adopt microservices for your business you must understand what they are and why they matter.
Senior architect, Matt Bishop lays down the groundwork to help organizations and developers determine if microservices are right for business. In this series he’ll outline what processes and practices are needed to support microservices, in addition to the benefits and difficulties of a microservice architecture.
What are microservices?
This question turned out to be surprisingly hard to answer, mostly because people writing about microservices describe them as implementation details like Docker containers, NoSQL databases, REST and other technologies. Some definitions are great, yet employ somewhat vague language to define them. For instance, Chris Richardson at microservices.io calls them: “highly maintainable”, “loosely coupled”, “independently deployable” and “organized around business capabilities.” Some of these can easily be dug into and worked with, like “loose coupling” and “independent deployment”; however, the other aspects are really hard to measure, such as “maintainability.”
A favorite definition comes from Adrian Cockroft where he defines microservice architecture as:
“Loosely coupled service-oriented architecture with bounded contexts.”
This definition is favored because every part of the statement is understandable and identifiable. You can take a system, measure it against these qualities and determine if they are indeed microservices.
Now let’s break this definition down to discover what it means.
Loosely Coupled
This quality is a mainstay in service-oriented architectures. It means that the components in a system should share as little as possible with each other. System cohesion demands that the components provide coordinated, useful services to fulfil the business’ requirements, yet this quality encourages each component to require as little as possible from each other. The key benefit of loose coupling is replaceability. You can replace a component with another version and not disrupt the system overall.
The most minimal coupling between components is a shared business identifier. Customer name, account number, invoice number, and other human-readable identifiers knit the business together in the physical world. In the same way minimally-coupled microservice components share these same identifiers with each other, but not much else. These components do not rely on each other for data and instead store their own state internally rather than rely on other components to provide seemingly-shareable data.
For instance, you would not find an “address” service that stores addresses for other components. Instead each would store their own relevant addresses locally to avoid coupling across components. The component can choose to modify this address, or store only relevant portions of it (like country) without worrying about impacting any other component. It turns out that bounded contexts often have data that looks and sounds similar to other contexts, but that is usually a coincidence.
Service-Oriented
The least-favorite part of Adrian’s microservices definition, mostly because the concept of “service-oriented” has been applied to so many things over the decades it has lost its true meaning. Anyone approaching this term will likely have a definition that will conflict with “loosely coupled.” This is because “services” are meant to provide data and capabilities to other services so they will not have to manage the capability themselves. In microservices, “service-oriented” covers a few different kinds of orientations.
One orientation for a microservice is proxying a capability in another external system. A shipping microservice can proxy capabilities from external shipping services like UPS for example. The consumer of the shipping service will have a shared identifier (say order number) that is used internally to find the correct service and tracking number for the shipments. The external service is queried for status, which is returned to the caller as data.
A microservice can be oriented to providing a direct business capability. An “order” microservice is one that holds orders for the business. Rather than proxying to an external order system, this microservice stores the data and business rules internally and offers up order management as a standalone service. If this feels like a vague definition, further clarity will come in the Bounded Context part below.
Another orientation is coordinating workflow between services. Proper loose coupling means two services cannot directly know about each other. Like foreign dignitaries at a meeting, they need someone to coordinate their introduction and communication. They do not speak each other’s language and only respond to the coordinator/interpreter. This analogy isn’t quite right, as the two dignitaries do know each other and intend to communicate directly. In microservices, the two services cannot know they are being coordinated. That knowledge rests with the coordinator.
There may be other types of service orientations, but these three are favored as they tie together the business purpose of the architecture and integrate it into the IT topology the system must live within.
Bounded Context
How do you know your microservice is the right size? Is it too small, is it too hot? You can probably recall the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, where she found comfort in the food and furnishings that were “just right”. This sort of intuitive scoping protocol is not recommended for your microservice designs. Bounded contexts are discoverable using proven techniques from Domain-Driven Design.
Martin Fowler has a good overview of bounded contexts and how they are defined by an organization’s human culture. This is similar to Chris Richardson’s “business capabilities” organizing principle.
It’s hard to measure culture, but one-point sticks out. A bounded context’s data model is internally consistent, which means changes to the data in that model must be consistent for all the data in that model. You cannot have contradictions in the bounded context’s data. The standard way of achieving this is to use persistence transactions in a shared database. In microservices an individual service will maintain a transactional database of its context’s state and share data internally.
Microservices should not share a data storage system with another service because information will leak into the services that share the data store, and this data sharing will break the loose coupling needed to maintain independence.
Tune in next week when Matt reviews the benefits and difficulties with microservice architecture.
The post Leveraging microservices for your business, Part 1: Why microservices matter appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.
For John Padgett, Chief Experience Innovation Officer at Carnival Corporation, transforming customer experiences with technology is nothing new. Before joining Carnival, he was a key player in the technology development and success of Disney’s MyMagic+. Creating frictionless experiences with wearable technology.
“When we decided to create a frictionless guest experience, the discussion was not actually around the technology itself. It was around the value of creating a frictionless experience and what that meant about how to reengineer and rethink the touchpoints,” said Padgett during a podcast with Roger Dooley.
So, when Carnival wanted to create the ultimate vacation experience aboard their ships, they placed their guests at the center of the experience design and improved the convergence among the physical and digital worlds into a seamless experience.
Rethinking the touchpoints and how to incorporate emerging technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), bots, and wearables, meant they needed a headless commerce platform.
For companies like Carnival with multifaceted content and individualistic customer requirements, headless commerce can deliver consistent, personalized, and innovative customer experiences fast.
“Each guest is different and the things that make them happy are different,” said Arnold Donald, president and CEO of Carnival Corporation to CES Tech.
Why Go Headless
The main notion behind the headless commerce concept is to separate the presentation layer which customers interact with from the backend layer with all the business logic and infrastructure and connect the two via a flexible API.
Traditional monolithic commerce solutions force brands to adopt their capabilities across the ship, thus mandating that the business match the solution. As opposed to more flexible offerings with an API-based/headless solution that allows brands to apply best of breed capabilities that match the system to the business needs and in this case the guest expectations.
The benefits: Brands like Carnival, who want to deliver guest-centric experiences are not tied to what their legacy commerce platform allows them to do. They do not have to stick to the rules of a UI logic which are designed to produce a standardized web experience. Instead, they are entirely flexible regarding content delivery, UX and multiple technology touchpoints.
The Regal Princess cruise ship and the Carnival Corporation are able to continue to revolutionize the travel industry with their guest-centric strategy by employing a headless commerce solution. A backend platform solution that enables emerging and upcoming consumption channels to be added in; and a platform their fleet staff can easily interact with converging the digital and physical channels onboard.
Carnival was recently recognized as a CES 2019 Innovation Awards Honoree for OceanMedallion at CES 2019 in Las Vegas where just two short years prior they first announced the launch of OceanMedallion.
Stay tuned for more on Carnival’s digital transformation/guest-centric experience.
The post Vision to frictionless reality: How Carnival created a smart city on the water appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.
89% of marketers use social media but 51% don’t have a social media strategy in place. Further, 19% of marketers don’t know if their social media activity is effective. Surprised? I’m not. Without a map and a destination, anywhere you arrive is good enough. Instead get your social media use on track for success this year by creating a strategy aligned with your business and marketing objectives. As marketers in today’s always-on, content saturated landscape, we must rethink our approach to social media. Where should we start? By admitting that social media is media. As such, social media isn’t a marketing strategy on its own. Rather a social media strategy provides critical GPS for achieving your marketing goals. Based on your organization’s mission statement, your social media strategy guides your organization’s use of social media by focusing on core activities. … Continue reading
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Facebook Ads Made Simple, is a detailed guide for businesses, brands, and people who are interested in promoting themselves, their goods, and their services on Facebook.
Fully updated to cover new Facebook features, this new Third Edition includes guidance on Graph Search, the updated News Feed design, cover photo rules, advertising changes, updated mobile apps, and more. Examples and case studies illustrate best practices, and the book provides step-by-step guidance on creating a successful Facebook marketing campaign, from setting up a fan page to analyzing results.
The post Facebook Ads Made Simple – Author Interview appeared first on Heidi Cohen.
Annual content planning is not just about filling your content marketing editorial calendar. Done well, annual content planning enables you to laser-focus on the content your organization needs to build your addressable audience and ultimately to purchase from you. Includes tips and examples.
The post Annual Content Planning: How To Fill Your Calendar Like A Pro appeared first on Heidi Cohen.
Want to reduce Non-Human Digital Traffic? Use these 3 ways to improve your marketing results. Includes data and actionable tactics to combat non-human digital traffic.
The post How To Reduce Non-Human Digital Traffic: 3 Ways That Will Make Your Marketing Succeed appeared first on Heidi Cohen.
The success of industry disruptors such as Airbnb, Amazon and Tesla can be attributed to many factors, but these companies all have one thing in common — a focus on creating an exceptional customer experience, rather than just selling a product.
As a result, customer expectations as a whole are evolving. Today, consumers expect Amazon-like speed and service from any business, regardless of the space you play in. They want to be able to browse and buy anywhere, anytime, and on any device. On average, today’s consumer uses almost six touch points when buyingan item, with 50% regularly using more than four.
Meeting these expectations is a major challenge for enterprises. You need to be able to offer a meaningful engagement and seamless sales transaction at every touchpoint. Essentially, this means making it as simple as possible for customers to find what they need during every interaction, allowing them to purchase when and where they are ready.
Interact with customers on their terms
In this environment, having an online store is just the beginning. The growing use of conversational commerce highlights how more businesses are meeting customers inthe moment to create a better experience. For example, enterprises are increasingly relying on chatbots, AI and emerging technology to assist customer enquiriesand sales. Gartner predicts that by 2021, more than 50% of enterprises will spend more per annum on chatbot creationthan traditional mobile app development. That’s not surprising, given that 75% of online customers expect a response within five minutes.
Social media is also a growing avenue for commerce interactions. Features such as Instagram Shopping, where businesses can tag up to five products in an image to display the product cost, product description, and link to buy the product, have made it even easier for customers to purchasewhile scrolling through their feed. The recent expansion to Instagram’s Stories feature for verified accounts further indicates the growing appetite for social selling.
Then there’s the increasing development of IoT and wearables, which is helping with everything from reordering office supplies to creating cashier-less checkouts at Amazon Go stores.
Personalize the shopping experience with artificial intelligence
However, it’s not enough to offer multichannel engagement—the experiences you offer on these channels need to resonate with customers to be effective.
Personalization is an increasingly important aspect of the customer experience. Consider how a customer engages with your brand today. It’s likely that they use a laptop, smartphone, tablet, or maybe voice-assisted technology such as Google Home or Amazon Echo. It may take some time to find a specific product in your catalog, and that might involve clicking through various tabs to complete research online. The customer may be turned off if it takes too long, or if there are an overwhelming number of options.
Enterprises can speed up the buying process and make it easier to buy in the moment by creating personalized experiences. Data from customer browsing, known preferences, purchase history and other touchpoints lets you gain a complete picture of your customer. You can then use that data to personalize the content shown on your website, app, social media, chatbot, orother touchpoint to create a more relevant, curated customer experience.
Data analysis and artificial intelligence make it easier to make sense of the mountains of customer data available. As the number of touchpoints increase, AI will become even more necessary to create individually tailored customer experiences.
The use of artificial intelligence could extend to your pricing structure. For example, a dynamic pricing engine that uses machine learning algorithms could examine customer behavior, product comparisons and purchase history to offer differentiated or competitive pricing based on an individual’s behavior. This kind of personalization can have real benefits to a company’s bottom line, with Gartner predicting that by 2020, smart personalization engines used to recognize customer intent will enable digital businesses to increase their profits by up to 15%.
Take an open systems approach
It’s one thing to invest in chatbots and launch Instagram Shopping, but bringing together the back-end systems to enable a truly holistic customer experience can be more complicated. You need to combine commerce, content, data analytics and machine learning. You need to integrate your content management and commerce systems with legacy billing and fulfillment systems. You need to consider SEO, third-party data and merchandising.
Taking an open and flexible approach is essential to merge commerce into personalized, multichannel customer experiences. By embracing data analytics and machine learning, you can better make sense of customer data to offer a level of personalization that was previously impossible. Only then can you create relevant digital experiences for individuals, enabling them to purchasein real time, regardless of touchpoint.
The post Better customer experience means targeting people, not buyers appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.
Consumers, on average use five to six touchpoints before making a purchase – and for those multi-device shoppers their commerce journey starts and ends on smartphones. And not all journeys end with a conversion.
Based on data from comScore there are five reasons mobile shoppers don’t convert:
How do retailers solve for these five challenges?
Security
Filling out transaction forms with addresses and credit card numbers often leave shoppers weary – over 60% of consumers won’t complete a purchase if the site is missing a trust logo. Therefore, in addition to the SSL certificate, retailers’ transaction forms should include well-known and trusted security logos clearly visible and close to transaction forms.
Product information
Retailers’ product pages should be more focused on the details that matter to the target buyer versus keyword priorities. Retailers need to provide as much detail as possible and have it read simple enough for anyone to fully understand. Product description pages need to include: product measurements, available colors, model or item numbers, photos and videos. The feature image of the product also serves as the first impression to the shopper, so making the investment in high-quality imagery is important. 
There should also be more than just one photo, including a gallery of images, as well as any potential 360-degree shots gives shoppers a full glimpse at what the product really looks like. Shotfarm reported that detailed descriptions rank higher in influencing a customer’s decision to purchase over reviews and price.
Since reviews are also valuable to converting shoppers, having them accessible on the product page can assist with conversion. Two Leaves does a great job of this, by having the product description, ingredients, how to brew and reviews all within the product page and right next to the “add to cart” button.
Product pages also offer the retailer an opportunity for up- and cross-selling as Amazon does so well with their “frequently bought together” feature.
Comparison
A step in the consumer journey that is often overlooked is the consumer’s desire to compare products; and it’s typically lumped in with search or navigation as an afterthought when mapping this out. However, comparison itself is crucial. According to the Nielson Norman group, “the first step to enabling comparison is providing consistent information for all comparable products or services. However, when that information is distributed across detail pages, the interaction cost and the cognitive load both increase: users are forced to remember information, take notes, flip between tabs, or open multiple browser windows.” And because of this, the comparison table should be leveraged as it “allows for quick and easy comparison between each offering’s features and characteristics.”
Keurig offers a straightforward comparison table and it is also visible right from the mobile navigation with product details and FAQs. Keurig also ensures the “live chat” feature is available front and center during this phase of the journey – providing added assurance that all mobile site visitors’ questions can be answered in a timely manner.
Navigation
Good mobile navigation is imperative in the customer journey – and it is not to mirror desktop. The more scrolling a mobile user has to do the more likely they are to bounce.
Common practice is to collapse the mobile menu within three horizontal bars aka the “hamburger” icon. Mobile navigation must be quick and intuitive, while informing visitors and providing shortcuts to the areas of the mobile site that matter most to them. L.L. Bean provides clear navigation within their mobile header by offering the hamburger, hyperlinked logo to bring users back to the home page, shopping bag and direct upfront search bar.
The hamburger icon opens up to reveal the organized navigation options. “Call us” and customer service are also clearly displayed and accessible for users. Retailers must prioritize navigation options while keeping it short and sweet and designed for touch.
Forms
Navigation shouldn’t mirror desktop, neither should the mobile checkout process with forms and fields. Mobile involves planning for the “thumb zone” and ensuring all the necessary functions needed via touch are within proximity of where a user’s thumb would be on the device.
The checkout and form completion phase of the customer’s journey is also not the time to try to up- or cross-sell. This phase needs to be as frictionless as possible or retailers run the risk of mobile cart abandonment.Checkout also needs to be a simple one-page form, no images and descriptive text. Staples is a great example of this and because of the simplicity of the page, mobile loading time won’t be an issue.
The post Convert your mobile browsers into buyers with these recommendations appeared first on Get Elastic Ecommerce Blog.
