There is a lot of psychology that goes into a positive shopping experience—including online shopping. I was reading in The Wall St. Journal about how to improve a vacation experience. The author encourages us to save the most enjoyable vacation part till the end of the trip because our mind is biased towards the most recent event. (In psychology, this is called the "recency effect.")
When I read this, it made me wonder: what is the last experience a gift giver has on our...
Read More
When we compared our registry service to other registry software, we found 17 unique ways that our registry service helps gift givers, registrants, & merchants. Many other registry services don’t offer these 17 features below.
6 Ways Our Service Helps Gift Givers in Ways That Other Services Do Not
Gift Giver’s Experience (E.g. Friend or family member giving a gift)
The gift giver can easily find the registrant’s gift list because the service helps merchants rank
How a drawing on a bar napkin led to a software platform that processes trillions of calculations
April 15, 2024
In 2007, while sitting at the pub Moran’s with a beer, I drew a sketch on a napkin that would change our business. I drew a software model that would allow an indie store to instantly show (and sell) thousands of products online—without any labor. (The secret sauce: The respective brand would do the product update work for the merchants.) The immediate goal was to help my two retailers more efficiently load products onto their websites (and save me the boredom of doing it).
21 ways Gift Reggie is making it difficult for gift givers, registrants, and merchants
April 3, 2024
Our registry service handles 80,000 gift and wedding registries. We often come across other registry software and can see how it's affecting the merchant that is using it.
While eating breakfast and browsing the web via my phone, I recently came across RFD, a merchant in Albany, NY, that uses Gift Reggie (an app that is added to a Shopify Store).
I observed 21 problems while reviewing the merchant's registry service. I initially wrote the issues down on a paper tablecloth...
Read More
I was happy to see Tableware Today magazine share our experiences and lessons regarding the power of free shipping.
You're invited to read the article below:
.........................
THE LAST WORD
FREE SHIPPING PAYS OFF
by JASON SOLAREK
Most indie stores don’t have the technical ability or people power to track pricing and offer discounts like free shipping. Indie stores need this information or they’ll be left behind. This information can make a difference: in ...
Read More
How having the right defaults makes decisions easier for clients and helps them be more successful.
January 27, 2023
When you look at your driver’s license, it lists if you’re an organ donor. Twenty years ago, only 20% of people were donors, but today 80% are—thereby saving millions of lives. Did people become more kind? No, the question on the application was changed from opt-in to opt-out. People signing up for or renewing a license are now by default enlisted in organ donation. Lesson: the right default answer in medical care can save millions of lives. Similarly, the right defaults ...
Read More
In her new book ‘Quit,' Annie Duke shares that the best poker players only play 25% of the hands they are dealt, whereas others play 50%. Ms. Duke talks with Stewart Butterfield, the founder of a few startups, most recently Slack (which is an acronym, which I didn’t know). Slack wouldn’t have been born if Mr. Butterfield didn’t drop a video game company to start Slack. Likewise for Twitter which was born out of the failed blogging company Odeo. Ms. Duke's lesson: winners ...
Read More
Bridge recently analyzed stores that offer free shipping and found they were 600% more likely to receive an order.
Details:
Bridge assessed abandoned shopping carts. Stores that didn't offer free shipping had a 6x greater quantity of abandoned shopping carts than those that did offer free shipping.
Stores offering free shipping didn't offer free shipping on all orders. They offered it when the dollar amount of the purchase was over a set amount, which ranged from $1 to $...
Read More
An East Village Artist’s Death Prompts a Reflection on the State of Indie Retailers Today
…….
While thumbing through the Times, I noticed a smiling young woman’s picture in the obituaries. In the black and white photograph, she's standing on a fire escape with a historic building and a bridge in the distance. I was initially attracted to Ronni Solbert’s 1959 picture, yet I was even more drawn in by what I noticed next to her photo: a children&...
Read More
Your Bridge 2.0 update is complete. Your site now offers a smoother, cleaner experience for customers--and you.
Your upgrade to 2.0 software is free and automatic--you do not need to take any steps. This free upgrade is especially valuable because a new retail website costs $11,000 - $29,000 on average to setup. (Source: Atlantic Business Technologies.)
1. You will wish to learn what is new in 2.0.
I will be sharing a video about what is new in Bridge 2.0.
"In order to facilitate a customerβs independent research in the initial phases of their buying journey, a retailer must have their full catalog of shoppable inventory available online."
Bridge: Sounds like they need our Smart Product service :)
Excerpt:
"...high shipping costs accounted for 54 percent of online shopping cart ...
Read More
January 7, 2016
January 7, 2016
Have you wondered what it's like to be a customer on your site? Now you can easily find out. We've added a new how-to article to the Help Center: Making a Test Purchase on Your Site
Here are the steps: 1. Go to your Bridge store.
2. ***Be sure you are NOT logged in as the administrator.*** When you are logged in, the upper right will say "Logout"; when you are not logged in, it will say "Login." Be sure the upper right says Login, meaning you are not logged in.
Please see below. This article from today's Wall St. Journal explores the expectation for free shipping when buying online. My advice to clients: - Let's better promote our free shipping offer for orders made online. - Let's e-mail a coupon to past customers either for an amount off the purchase, or something about free shipping. - Can we lower our free shipping baseline, or offer a free upgrade to quicker shipping? aka: 2 day shipping?
Tracking abandoned shopping carts and retrieving lost sales
Below is a good article from Inc. magazine about tracking abandoned shopping carts. How can the home goods industry get sales from this area?
Excerpt: The median abandonment rate is 40 percent for consumer-products companies and 58 percent for service companies, according to a recent survey by MarketingSherpa, a research firm based in Warren, Rhode Island. During periods of economic decline, shopping cart abandonment tends to spike, ...
Read More
August 2, 2009
August 2, 2009
Website design comparison: before and after pictures
Results page:
Shopping cart page:
Please click on the images above. They show the comparison of our clients website before and after we redesigned their retail home goods website.
View Post