As a store owner, the bottom line is always important. Its this number that you are constantly thinking about. When we see it go up, we smile; and when it goes down, so does our attitude. A big part of business is coming up with strategies that increase this number, and one simple way to do this is by creating Product Kits.

What is a product kit?

A product kit is when you take similar items and place them together to be sold, also called “combo deals” or something of that fashion. Newegg does this when ordering some of their products. They create combo deals where if you buy a group of products together you receive a discounted price. When you order a mouse, they’ll also sell you a keyboard with it. Because of the discounted price, a buyer feels more inclined to buy the extra item.

Amazon utilizes combo deals to their advantage.

Amazon does this by putting products together that are “frequently bought together.” You are given the option to buy several products together at a reduced price. To the customer, they are paying less per book, which if they were getting the price on the book individually, Amazon would have a lower profit margin. However, because they are purchasing all three books together, depending on how much Amazon has reduced the price, they are retaining a better profit margin, and more than likely more than if the customer bought the book individually.

How do I figure out my profit margin?

The best way to do this is by busting out a calculator and some pen & paper. Let’s say I’m selling a pair of earrings for $12. It costs me$5 to have them made/get them from whomever so that I can sell them. My profit from selling the pair would be $7. Now let’s also assume I sell necklaces at my store. There is one necklace that matches perfectly with these earrings. It sells for $20 and costs me $8, so I make a profit of $12.

So when I sell the items by themselves I make a pretty good amount, but the necklace isn’t selling as frequently as the earrings because of its price. Instead of just discounting the necklace alone and reducing your profit margin you can pair it with the earrings and sell them together for $28 ($4 off). You would make $13 on every sale of this kit. Sure its $6 less than what you would make selling the items individually, but if you weren’t selling any of the necklaces, you’re making more than expected off the item.

Should I be kitting all my items?

This is really up to you, as the store owner. You need to know how much you are making on all your items and based off that information come up with what you’re comfortable with. I would say that its a good way of moving product that you no longer want to have without directly discounting the individual item. Its also a great way to move more product in general. If customers are buying more items per order, you’re getting more money in your pocket then if they only bought one.

What do you think? Do you like stores that have kits? Does this tactic work on you?

Home Page for APO Malls

Recently Jon Ramaci of APO Malls, a veteran of the US Army, had one mission in mind: “to provide products that we know will make life easier and better for our troops overseas.” To help with his mission, Border7 made an e-commerce store so that anyone could purchase care packages for soldiers fighting in the war. Border7 was faced with the challenge of creating an identity for APO malls, the success of which is seen on there website HERE.

Thank a Soldier:

Border7 worked hand in hand with Jon to create a portal where soldiers could register themselves by supplying some info, and their preferred pre-made care packages. A caring civilian can choose to thank a soldier by “adopting” one of the registered soldiers and sending them their preferred care package directly to

APO Malls Thank a Soldier

them anywhere in the world. What a great way to show you are grateful of the troops work. In the words of an adopted soldier “It helps really to uplift the moral of one when they get something in the mail and lets them know there are those that care!!!”

eGift Certificates:

Another great idea that was implemented was APO Malls eGift Certificates. Right from the beginning you have the choice of sending the gift certificate via Email or print. With email you get the option of sending thecertificates to multiple addresses all at once. Both methods of sending allow for a personalized message to show you care even more.

Gift Certificate

Theme:

APO Malls was so great working with. In this APO “World” we created, we used elements of handwriting (to express letters written to soldiers) and text from WWII posters. Our creative juices were able to flow at incredible speeds while creating a nostalgic feeling by working with a romanticized WWII theme. Mission Complete.

One reason many people steer clear from shopping online is because of shipping costs. They’d rather drive to the local Target or Mall. A lot of the time, your store’s visitors are people browsing for prices on the products they want to buy. A really great way to compete with other online stores and also local merchants is by offering free shipping.

The Power of Free…Shipping

Free Shipping will keep your customers from just using your online store as a comparison site. They’ll see that ordering from you will cost the same as it would if they drove to the store. Like we mentioned in our Why People Choose NOT to Shop Online 53% of online shoppers dislike the idea of spending their money on shipping & handling.

How do we use this dislike of shipping & handling to our advantage?

You could offer free shipping for all your items, but that’s not very practical for small orders and where your profit margin cannot really afford to eat shipping costs. A way to still compete with those offering free shipping and to increase your order totals is to do as Amazon does and offer free shipping once an order total is achieved. Not only are you standing up against local competitors, but you’ve found a way to convince your customers that they should spend more money on you. The customer will feel that they aren’t paying for shipping but essentially to you, they did buy purchasing another product.

Make sure you make it clear that you’re running the promotion

You need to do more than just offer free shipping at $X order total. You need to let the customers know that they need to spend a certain amount to qualify. A great way to do this is by displaying the promotion in a prominent page. Some people like to put it on their homepage (like our client All Sarongs), and others prefer to just include in the header (Suburban Dog House) so that customers can see it on every page.

Be Proactive: Let them know how much more they need to spend to be eligible for free shipping

Like Amazon, if you’re going to offer free shipping after they have an order total at a certain point, you should remind your customer that they could qualify for free shipping if they spent X amount. It probes them to think “I could save myself some money here. I could get another item and not pay for shipping.” And that’s a great thought to put into your customers mind.

Just remember, doing little things to convince your customer more will bring you more success on your online endeavors.

What other ways do you think convince you or your customers to spend more on an online store?  Do you agree with these practices? Or do you ignore them when you see them? I’d be happy to hear your thoughts in the comments.

A month ago we signed on a new client by the name of Brenna (she’s an awesome chick!) who wanted to start a trendy vintage clothing store based off her design blog. She had this vision in her head and she needed some creatives to put it to paper (or in Photoshop in this case really). When all was said and done, a chic, edgy, and sophisticated site was born.

Home Page:

A custom looking homepage that lets you know where you’ve landed. We utilized the default.asp option within the Volusion Ecommerce system to create the landing page. The page gives you options to learn more about the store itself, the person behind it, products, and everything in between. The landing page sets the tone of what’s left to find behind the covers. Its very clean and like the rest of the store, lets the product speak for itself, not letting the design of the store take attention away from what matters.

Category Page: The category pages lets the products do the talking. One feature that we did was utilize the Volusion system to let the products show when they’ve sold out but still let you see the products they sell. The idea is great because when you have potential customers browsing through your site and trying to find out what kind of products they can purchase at your store. In the example image you’ll see the Little Red Riding Vixen  is shown to display the types of products that the store offers but lets you know right away the product is no longer in stock.

Product Page: The product page was a lot of fun to work on because it doesn’t look like any other Volusion Store default product page. We kept the idea of letting the product be the primary focus so the details only compliment the product. Utilizing a “Past Life” the product is brought to life and by making the “Add to Shopping Bag” in a different color than the section, customers clearly can find the call to action for the page.

All in all, the project was a huge success with many products being sold out upon launch. Chic and You Shall Find was a pleasure to work with and we’re looking forward to doing many projects with them in the future. If you haven’t already, check their site out and buy something for yourself or that beautiful girl in your life.

Just a friendly reminder that behind the dinosaur avatar and spaceships, we too, are all humans… and unfortunately… humans make mistakes. This one however takes the cake for hilarious reminders to CHECK YOUR WORK!

Somehow... Nazi's never seem to go away...

Good thing we have clients with a sense of humor. So remember to Nazi proof your… proofs? before you send them. Enjoy! And be careful… the Nazis are out there.

In school it was most students’ nightmare to be assigned yet another brand identity project.  It seemed like every class, every semester, assigned branding or re-branding projects.

A professor of mine once pointed out that we were doing that assignment so many times because it is hard to do.  On paper, it looks easy.  You make a logo and apply it to some stationery and a few assets.  But there’s the rub.  It’s true, the rest will be much simpler (notice I didn’t say easy) if you have a strong mark to begin with. However, designing a concise, thoughtful, clever logo is difficult.

Naturally,we have  ground rules for making any design, but how do we find the way to tie an abstraction like a thought or a feeling to something tangible?

Get out in the world. I initially felt like I was wasting time if I walked around a mall, or a bookstore. At some point it was brought to my attention that writing things down while meandering through public spaces could bring spades of inspiration.  I now carry a notebook with me everywhere.

Listen to music. It’s no secret that this can be a powerful creative tool.

Read. The more information you take in, the more you will have to offer.

Write.  Get out of your head.  As visual people (this is from another professor) we need to see things to process information fully.  Yes, even words.

Draw. Again, we are visual.  Learn to solve spatial problems with your hands.  Don’t forget that the computer will not make you a good designer anymore than a box of pencils will.  Develop your hand skills and translate that into the digital medium.  Everything a designer does with CS4 today was done by hand just 15 years ago.

Share. In graphic design, one of the most helpful tools is often another designer.  Collaborating is one of my favorite things about the design business.  It seems often that more is more.  In other words, more pairs of discerning eyes on a project is likely to yield a more successful end result.

All of these things will help you be a better designer, and it is my firm opinion that you will be a happier person as well.  In this world, success is based on how well your designs communicate. Perhaps you sold a logo you don’t particularly care for (aesthetically speaking).  The real point is, did it get the client’s message across?  That’s the measuring stick.

So if  you’re stuck, go for a walk, look around you, and rethink your process.  It’s nice when we get to make something pretty, but often that isn’t the task before us.

I was reading last year and the year’s before post and realized that I always have the same tune when it comes to the whole goals versus resolutions thing. I’m sorry if I bore you about that.

In other news, its now the third week of the year and I hope you are still keeping up with your resolution!

So progress of 2009 was actually really bleak because our goals weren’t really specific to our own company. I think we hit 1/3 which I guess is not that bad considering, like I mentioned before, most people never really keep to there resolutions.

Oh well, all is forgiven and hopefully this year will be much better. So what do we have planned for this year? Well its actually really simple:

• Double our sales by end of the year. I’m not going to disclose the number but I’ll definitely let you know if this occurs.
• Move to a bigger office (this actually seems very likely in the next month or so and I guess is a cop-out to say we at least accomplished one of our resolutions).
• OK, because the previous one is a cop-out, move to a bigger office and make sure it just emits the Border7 brand!
• Update our blog to the new layout we have planned (we need more time since client work is taking up most of it!) and also blog on a more frequent schedule.
• Increase our RSS & Newsletter subscriptions by 30% by summer.
• And do a site overhaul as far as design, content, and offerings. We have a lot of new things in store and have shifted focus slightly, and or site doesn’t really reflect that yet.

Well, here’s a toast to the new year and I wish everyone the best of luck with whatever endeavor  you have planned for yourself.

Many of us expect to magically have a customer base once we have an e-commerce store. We don’t realize that we need to market ourselves to actually bring in the customers. Here are a few tips that will help your sales and boost your customer base!

Make sure the customers are aware of new products and can distinguish them. “New!” “Latest” “Hot New Item!” One thing that always brings customers back, is new products. The more new items you release, the more things to shop for. The more to shop for, the more to buy.

Customers love receiving something for free. If you can, include something for free with purchase. “Buy one get one FREE!”, “Free gift with purchase”, “Free gift on purchases more than $xx”. A big thing with the economy now is people are looking to pinch dollars more and more. By offering something free with purchases, it gives the customer a sense of savings. Even if the gift is just merchandise that advertises your company, it’s still free.

Let customers know the urgency of buying now. Use words like “For a limited time only!” or “Offer ends mm/dd/yy.” This brings a sense of uniqueness, like what they’re buying isn’t going to be at that price for long and if they wait, it’ll cost them more to buy.

Stress the limited amount of product. Use words like “While supplies last!” or “Limited amount available.” Doing this emplies that what they’re shopping for is something rare and special, that it’s something that is hard to find and they should take advantage of it while it’s there.

If your prices are lower than other stores, make sure your customers are aware of that. Have a comparison of price chart somewhere on your site, or have a section dedicated to testimonials from people saying how good your pricing is. When you’re doing this however, be sure not to mention specific names of other companies. Good sportsmanship is part of the game, and pointing fingers only makes you look bad.

Coupons are a great way not only to gain new customers, but to also keep customers. By offering 10% off to New and/or Returning customers they are more inclined to shop with you because they get a discount.

These tips are sure to boost your sales as well as your customer base!

I personally do not like the idea of resolutions. They’re pretty much empty promises we make to ourselves. And I always wonder how many people actually accomplish their resolutions? For those that last the first few weeks of the year, they tend to give up by mid March or even sooner.

But I will admit, I sometimes like the idea of resolutions. I, myself, have made them before, but I change the title to “goals” instead. Its a way to trick my mind into accomplishing them. A resolution is just a yearly goal. Not only do I have yearly goals, but I also make t hem measurable. So instead of “lose weight” its “I will lose 3-5 lbs per month.” This gives me a smaller time frame (waiting a year to accomplish a goal leads to procrastination I’ve found.) and something I can quantify and track. This makes following my “resolution” much easier.

Three easy steps to make and keep your resolution:

1. Make the resolution. Define it and ensure that it is quantifiable and has a due date (Plus be reasonable with your goals).
2. Plan. Make action points that you can easily follow.
3. Measure and track. Check on your progress often.

Step 1: Establish your goals.

So as a business person, this is the best time to establish what goals you would like to accomplish in the next year. Again, keep in mind that we want to be able to measure results. So instead of “increase traffic,” your resolution should be “increase traffic by 5% by the Summer.” We have something to measure now, and then we also have a deadline. We also made the goal reasonable enough that its possible to accomplish (I’ve also found that this is key to keeping your resolution).

Step 2: Plan, Plan, Plan!

So now that we have our 2010 resolution! YAY! New Year tradition is completed! But wait! We want to keep the resolution! Having a plan will help ensure we follow through. So for instance:

Resolution: Increase traffic by 5% by summer.

Plan of Action: Begin Twitter & Facebook. Focus blog. List bloggers & sites to garner exposure. Test Google Adwords, Test Facebook Ads. Contact People on list to do guest posts and vice versa. Etc, etc, etc.

By breaking the resolution into plan of action, you now can see what you have to do to accomplish it. You can break it down into weekly goals to do one action point, or you can just do them as time permits. Whatever works best for you is what you really ought to do.

Step 3: Measure for results

The plan was made and you acted accordingly. Its summer now, therefore its time to measure the results of your efforts. If you made it, then you have the rest of the year to bask in your own glory. If you end up just shy of your goal, there’s still six more months to try and get it done!

Time for them resolutions!

We’ll be posting a follow up of our company’s 2009 resolutions later this week and we’re in the process of creating next year’s now! So next week you’ll get to see what we have planned. What are some of your resolutions? Do you usually follow through with them? Or do they tend to fall on the way side?

Border7 wishes you a happy and prosperous New Year! Happy Holidays!