Nick Shackelford, Nick Peroni, and Dimitris Skiadas discuss with Philipp Schoeffmann their biggest tips for ecommerce for beginners and takeaways on how to succeed in ecommerce today at Affiliate World Europe 2018 in Barcelona.

Interview with Ecom All Stars | Nick Shackelford (Co-founder, Fidgetly), Nick Peroni (Owner & Creator, Ecom Empires), and Dimitris Skiadas (Founder & CEO, 20 Digital Playroom Limited)

By Philipp Schoeffmann

Interview Transcript

Phil:
Nick, one thing. If you can only share one thing with our audience, what would it be?
Nick S:
The biggest thing is take care of the customers that you already have. That’s the biggest talking point that I can drive into anybody getting into e-commerce. They neglect the customer experience. They neglect the whole feeling of the website. From the website to the customer support, from the customer support to actually receiving the product. That’s a whole feedback loop that people don’t take into consideration or even think through.

Understanding The Buyers

Phil:
Okay so what you’re talking about is, firstly understanding actually who is buying or who should buy. That is a lot about persona but more importantly actually about the data. And then build out a funnel and a whole structure to actually re-engage those people and make them buy again. If that is what you mean, what are specific tactics that you use do that?

How To Make People Buy Again

Nick S:
It’s kind of like an offer rotation. If you’re a store with multiple products, it’s complementary products that everybody usually purchases. This is what Dimitry is going to do, this is analytics. What is that entry product that they’re trying to buy initially? And then if you map on average what’s the next product that they buy after they’ve bought product A, what should you show on product B? That goes into the remarketing ads on Facebook, that goes into the emails that they’re gonna be seeing. There’s a lot of different angles that people need to understand. What’s their entry point to the brand? And then at that point, you as the brand owner, the entrepreneur, what products should you offer them again to complement what they already just got.
Phil:
Perfect, thank you very much! Nick Peroni, your one thing please.

One Thing: Start A Good Foundation

Nick P:
Yeah that was fantastic. And so my one thing that I would really say and I talk about this a lot is I see now with so many people as they get started, they get started kind of random. They’ve seen this e-commerce thing. They see this trend, they wanna get started. They wanna have a store ,they wanna be making money. And they wanna jump right to the scaling or they wanna jump right to the stuff that they see as producing the high ROI and people that have been doing it for a while. But more often than not, what you’re gonna uncover when you talk to these, and I’ve analysed and I’ve networked with so many people and done this myself, is that there’s such a good foundation set from the beginning. You really need to have a strategy, you need to understand what the purpose is here – what is your market segment. What is your entry point into the market. And look at all these different facets and put it together as a strategy and a plan so you know what you’re trying to accomplish.

Set Targets

What kind of targets are you setting for yourself that you’re going to systematically work and try to execute on these ideas. I think that’s something that’s kind of misunderstood a little bit now because so many people come into this and they just look at it like a ‘make money online’ type of thing. Really, you wanna look at it as a business, just like any business. Really put in the time and the effort in the beginning, to be putting the research in, to be looking for the trends and the opportunities in the market where you can stand out and find ways to differentiate your entire e-comm business.
Phil:
Very strong point, thank you for sharing that.

Look At It As A Business

Dimitris:
I couldn’t agree more with both Nicks because it’s one of the craziest things that people come into an actual business opportunity and they don’t look at it as a business. Majority of the people look at it like ‘how can I make quick cash, how can I make quick cash’. And it’s actually really funny because in my slides, in my presentation, I share one slide and I say this is what 90% of dropshippers do. You are here, you’re on a date with your girl and another pretty girl passes by and you’re like ‘ooh, pretty girl’.
Phil:
Not a good idea.
Dimitris:
Not a good idea and this is what 90% of the people who enter this business, especially in dropshipping, do. They just acquired the customer, the date, the girl and they say ‘thank you very much, let me go look for someone else’.

Pro Tip #1: Focus More On Your Backend

My one tip is to focus a little bit more on your backend because the most difficult part is to acquire customers, it’s how to buy a customer. But when you bring your customer in, you can sell it him again and again and again. If you focus, as Nick said, in your customer experience and giving them an amazing customer experience and not taking like 40 days in order to receive the product and not for them having to send you an email ‘hey dude, where’s my stuff, where’s my product?’.
Phil:
That never happens with dropshipping!

Pro Tip #2: Give Them That Amazing Customer Experience

Dimitris:
No, no, never, only 4,000 times per day, I think even more. So if you focus on giving an amazing customer experience to the people who trusted you, it will be much more easier to give again their money again and again and again. And there are literally thousands of ways to do that. You have Messenger marketing, you have email marketing, you have branding ads, you have Instagram, you have influencers. It’s way easier to convince someone to buy from you again if you gave them an amazing customer experience.
Phil:
Right, right, I couldn’t agree more on that. I have one last question for you three – so as you mentioned a lot of people are entering this industry actually and as you also mentioned, there’s a lot of things that you should do to actually drive up that customer lifetime value, re-engage people and sell more to them. The question then of course is, if you’re new to that business, where do you actually start?

 Ecommerce for beginners: Where To Start As A Newbie

Nick S:
For me, it’s very very simple. You start with Nick Peroni. I’m not even kidding because Nick understands the beginning of where you need to be mentally. Where I spend is… yes, I have new entrepreneurs, I have great new products off Kickstarter, Indiegogo. They have an idea of who their persona really is and this is talking about people that are building businesses. They have an idea but they haven’t validated that idea because they are basing it on assumptions that the market is showing them. To sum it up, where I’m getting started on getting my e-commerce business is I’m jumping into these groups, I’m asking the questions. A lot of people don’t ask the questions because they’re embarrassed. They’re “supposed to know” this stuff. How are you supposed to know this stuff? This e-commerce and growing a business was very foreign a long time ago when we didn’t have digital. How do you think they figured it out?

Pro Tip #3: Do The Research

Nick P:
Thanks, man, that’s amazing! Yeah, so no pressure huh? What is so important for me in getting started is just taking the time to do the research because if you look at it, so many people are always like “well what niche is profitable?” and people get started, they come into the group and they’re like “man, just tell me a niche that is profitable”. When in reality, we all know the profitable niches, they’re huge, they’re out there, they’re multi-billion dollar categories like health and beauty and fitness and cars. These are huge categories, they are never going anywhere. They’re always gonna be profitable and things that anybody can get into. You can go to AliExpress or Amazon and see the main selling categories so it’s not really about what niche is gonna be profitable but where can I add value into a subset of a market that I can really understand and I can find the value propositions that are gonna make sense. Of course, that’s kind of subjective on a level but because we’re like “well where are the winning products” but that’s what makes a winning product, right?

Pro Tip #4: Understand The Value Proposition

I think that’s what a lot of people miss is you really need to understand the value proposition if you wanna do this and be good at it consistently. And so, you wanna start looking at actual marketing principles and doing the research, and looking for these trends and opportunities.

Pro Tip #5: Validate The Niche

And then like he mentioned, validating them – understanding how you validate a niche, how you validate a product, what makes this product sell, what makes it interesting to people that makes them want to buy it.
Dimitris:
If I were just to start out, I would really focus on one person if that would be Nick and I would follow exactly what he said and be consistent, and not being afraid to lose money. People want to only make money and I was like that in the beginning too. Nobody likes to lose money but in order to get the reward, you have to play something.
Phil:
Thank you so much guys!