Author: Atlantic BT

What is Ecommerce?

This may seem like a dumb question, but it is harder to answer than you might think. Electronic commerce is the creation of an online store with the ability to emulate, as much as possible, shopping’s tactile experience. The weakness of an online store is its inability to directly address three of the five senses (taste, smell and touch). The strength of a web store is its ability to capitalize on uniquely digital assets such as:

• Infinite Inventory pulling information or inventory from any node within the network.
• Social Shopping Via Wisdom of Crowds and powered by Reviews and Social Networks.
• Flexibility and an ability to create a one-to-many, one-to-some or one-to-one shopping experiences based on patterns or real time behaviors.

[will write more on each of these topics soon]

How does Ecommerce happen?
Ecommerce could “happen” with as little as a single phone. If you sold something everyone wanted, where demand well exceeded supply, ecommerce infrastructure could be minimal. When you have the better mousetrap, customers do beat a path to your door. Problem is there aren’t many of these high demand, low competition businesses anymore.

The 12 Ecommerce Components
Since our contemporary world is replete with “better” mousetraps, ecommerce requires a commitment in excess of a single phone. Typical components of an ecommerce store are:

• Home Page – sets the “who are we” and “what we are all about” tone.
• Images – pictures and graphics speak to brand and shopper aspirations.
• Copy – words speak to brand and shopper aspirations.
• Navigation (or “menu” or taxonomy) – provides shopping paths.
• Categories – groups of products to aid in merchandising, shopping and SEO.
• Product Pages – where the magic BUY button lives along with a product’s story, reviews and specifications or features.
• Shopping Cart – where shoppers “put” products and then checkout.
• Content Pages – about us, contact us, guarantee and a return policy are typical ecommerce content, but some sites like Woot.com tell great stories.
• Site Search – “internal search” to differentiate from external search (Google).
• Forms – When you subscribe to a site’s email list, you use a web form.
• Metadata – feeds keywords to search engines to help index a site.
• Analytics – codes feeding usage data to programs such as Google Analytics.

These are ecommerce’s 12 puzzle pieces; how a company or team combines these elements determines the success or failure of their store.

What is Magento Ecommerce?

Magento is a powerful and flexible ecommerce Content Management System (CMS). A CMS’s main role is to tie the 12 Ecommerce Components together into an efficient and easy to understand system. Internet marketers, Web Masters and Web Merchandisers use a CMS to organize, merchandise, modify and create their store.

Ecommerce used to require Information Technology pros just to do something as simple as change a product’s color variation or add a new product. Thankfully those days are gone, but not all Content Management Systems are equal or appropriate for every application.

CMS Admin System
Within every CMS is an admin system. Admin is a system within a system. It controls key CMS features such as security. Security, in this context, is mostly about who can access what and who can make changes. Admins contain user profiles for the team working on the online store and other system management tools.

Difficult and underpowered admins send merchandising and marketing teams running to overloaded IT staff to make changes. Ecommerce happens NOW. Any request forced into a queue may lose meaning and relevance by the time it gets implemented. Delay creates competitive advantage for the OTHER guys.

Magento is a GREAT ecommerce CMS.

I used several BAD ecommerce CMS systems over my 7 years as Director of Ecommerce before joining Atlantic BT. CMS is a kind of language. Once you learn the language of how to segment, add or modify products, managing millions in online revenue becomes possible and easier. This “language” is usually a series of connected screens called a “User Interface” or UI. Most UIs are created by engineers (left brainers) and used by marketing and other creatives (right brainers). In the old IT dominated days, right brainers had to conform. We had to learn an unnatural language.

Magento’s UI requires learning a left brain language, but it is intuitive and organized around Ecommerce’s 12 Components. I give Magento’s admin an A- with the potential to become an A+. Magento isn’t one product owned by a large company. Magento is “open source,” so its code is free and readily available to anyone.

Think about the iPhone’s success. Apple created an exclusive platform allowing programmers to build apps on top of their core programming. There are millions of apps now because Apple encouraged collaboration and partnership. Magento’s ecommerce platform uses the Apple approach. Create a set of core instructions and encourage programmers to add on.

Magento is better equipped to become an A+ CMS because of the tens of thousands of plugins and extensions programmers have and are building. Magento keeps up with new developments such as mobile commerce thanks to the extensive developer community.

Atlantic BT’s “Should I Use Magento?” Test

I like Magento’s understanding of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the amount of power in the admin and its ability to morph quickly with plugins and extensions. I would strongly recommend Magento for any ecommerce store who may be small today but who wants to be bigger tomorrow. Changing a CMS is a train wreck (been there, done that, never want to do it again). BUY MORE CMS than you need now. Answer these questions about your web store or e-business:

Do you have more than 100 products (counting each attribute variation as a separate product)?

Is your ecommerce store critical to your company’s revenue?

Do you want your ecommerce store to be 4x or 5x what it is today in the next few years?

Are you in a highly competitive business?

Are you heavily involved in social or mobile communication or commerce?

If you are a B2B business, are you using content to create inbound marketing?

If you answered YES to any of these questions, Magento deserves a strong look. If you answered NO to every question, then you can probably survive on a WordPress blog with a little ecommerce programing. I would only suggest such a minimal option of there were no plans to scale larger in the next 2 to 4 years.

Passage Home Wins 1st Atlantic BT $25K Mobile Contest

“It seemed like my only way out was death,” Onia Royster said, sharing her story in a video about finding a way HOME. Jeanne Tedrow, Founder of Passage Home, explains she wanted to find a way to address the debilitating blows of poverty, drug abuse, homelessness and the “cycle of poverty”. Seeing a lack of resources, she set about creating Passage Home to supply them. Tonight, her nonprofit, after more than almost 16,000 votes over two voting events, emerged as the recipient of Atlantic BT’s first annual Gives Back Grant Contest. Passage Home won $25,000 in mobile application work and mobile web development from Atlantic BT.

Giving back is something is in Atlantic BT’s DNA. Founder Jon Jordan’s grandparents Clarence and Florence Jordan founded a “Christian farm” and international community in 1942 in Sumter County, Georgia and called it Koinonia Farm. Koinonia, an ancient Greek word that means deep fellowship, was to be a community based on new testament ideas and values such as:

1. Treat all human beings with dignity and justice.
2. Choose love over violence.
3. Share all possessions and live simply.
4. Be stewards of the land and its natural resources.

Habitat founders Millard and Linda Fuller spent time with Jon’s grandparents. Koinonia Farm became Koinonia Partners and they worked with Koinonia Partnership Housing, the group that the Fullers would use as the inspiration for Habitat For Humanity in 1976. Koinonia’s promise became contemporary tonight as Passage Home, a Raleigh based nonprofit dedicated to a hand up not a handout, won the first $25,000 grant awarded by the company created by the grandson of Clarence (pictured to the left) and Florence Jordan. Over lunch with Jon today I asked if he ever knew his grandfather. “No, he died before I was born,” Jon explained.

One of the strongest feelings I’ve had since starting to work for Jon, Mark and with the great team at Atlantic BT almost a year ago is the presence of living values. I’d wondered where those strong values came from. Reading the Wikipedia page on Jon’s grandfather, hearing about his other grandfather, who is in his nineties and still living in his own home in South Africa while doing volunteer work, and meeting Jon’s parents, it is easy to understand where our company’s values started.

Jim Collins points out the single common thread in his set of Built To Last companies is strong presence of guiding values, beliefs and ideas. Collins’s books is reinforced by Grow,  written by fellow ex-P&Ger Jim Stengel. This message is so strong and dominant that I advised startup entrepreneur Kurt Varner to sit down and write his company values before working more on his “DailyToaster”. Atlantic BT’s values are present, guiding and the reason the company has been growing so rapidly.

Tonight those values included a circle of 12 nonprofits that had a chance to tell their stories to new people in new ways thanks to the first Atlantic BT Gives Back $25,000 Mobile Grant Contest. In addition to Passage home the Atlantic BT Gives Back Grant Contest started with 12 organizations who dedicate themselves to helping others, to Koinonia’s values:

1. Passage Home (Raleigh, NC) (Awarded Grand Prize)
2. CCY – CA Coalition for Youth (Sacramento, CA) (Semifinalist)
3. Fight Colorectal Cancer (Alexandria, VA)
4. UNICEF (NYC, NY)
5. Cornucopia Cancer Support Center (Durham, NC) (Semifinalist)
6. National Brain Tumor Society (Waterville, MA)
7. PATH – People Assisting the Homeless (Los Angeles, CA)
8. Project Renewal (NYC, NY)
9. Autism Society of NC (Raleigh, NC)
10. Cat Adoption Team (CAT) (Portland, OR) (Semifinalist)
11. Ounce of Prevention Fund (Chicago, IL)
12. Share Our Strength (Washington, DC)

“Your father and mother must be very proud of you,” I said to Jon at the end of our lunch. Jon looked at me shocked by my question then he looked down and smiled a little. I’m proud to work with Jon, Mark, Tonia and the rest of the Atlantic BT team and a tribe that extends to some very cool customers who challenge us to do great things. I’m proud to be part of a tribe formed by meaningful values, a desire to do the great work customers need and selfless desire to help others, to GIVE BACK. Atlantic BT is our Koinonia Farm, our fellowship. Thought about buying my boss lunch today since he was about to give away $25,000. Didn’t but should have (next time boss, lunch is on me and maybe we cure cancer next?).

Thanks to every deserving and creative charity who shared their stories during the last few weeks. Every group was deserving, dedicated and caring. Our lives are better because some are willing to dedicate theirs to helping us. Every nonprofit deserves $25,000 in cool mobile apps to help them stay current with their best customers and our digital revolution times. During any revolution, human values, empathy and care can be easily lost. We won’t lose our humanity as long as heroes like the 12 charities that started a journey that ended tonight with a Passage Home continue to exist, thrive and help.

If I haven’t said it lately, thanks for the privilege of being part of such a special group of people working so hard to save the world one great website at a time. It is my distinct honor and absolute special privilege to join such a group on a hero’s journey.

Thank You,

Marty

PS. Great job and Kudos to my fellow “Marketeer” Tonia Zampieri for her passion, hard work and inspiration. Atlantic BT Gives Back was a team accomplishment but we were well led by Tonia’s vision and care.

Near Real Time Mentions About Passage Home’s Award

Passage Home Wins $25K Contest on Small Business Growth Capital (picture with BIG CHECK)

Resourceful CEO

This is not my first Internet marketing rodeo (lol).

Built my first site in 1999 after learning HTML from a book, site design from a seminar and Photoshop from a friend and I fell hopelessly in love. Until today I didn’t know WHAT I love so much about Internet marketing. Now I know and the challenge is to describe the tornado in my head. Let’s take a journey to Internet marketing’s magic in 3 parts:

• Arthur C. Clarke’s Slightly Modified Three Laws.
• The Hero’s Journey – Wandering In The Dark.
• Finding The Wizard Behind The Curtain.

Modified Version of Clarke’s Three Laws of Prediction

1. When a distinguished Internet marketer says something is POSSIBLE he is almost certainly RIGHT. When a distinguished Internet marketer says something is IMPOSSIBLE he is almost certainly WRONG.

2. The only way to truly ever know what is possible is to venture into the impossible at least a little.

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology (or meme or idea) is indistinguishable from magic.

After more than 12 years, thousands of Internet marketing campaigns, millions of ecommerce dollars earned and at least 4 completely different teams I know how well Clarke’s slightly modified three laws describe what I do for a living. My teams and I must create magic. How can the ability to reach across an impossibly crowded room to touch someone’s heart and mind be described other than creating magic?

The Hero’s Journey – Wandering In The Dark

There is a special RUB to creating Internet marketing magic, a twisted paradox. You can’t set out to create magic. Any attempt to create magic eliminates your ability to do so because Internet marketing magic is spontaneous and real. Magic is created by, at least initially, wandering in the dark.

I’ve been a marketer for almost 30 years starting with the Bar Soap division at P&G and now here at in Raleigh for Jon, Mark and the Atlantic BT team. Looking across every campaign over almost thirty years there is a single common thread. The beginning of MAGIC always starts with anger, frustration and a sense of dislocation. If you don’t feel like you are wandering in the dark then you aren’t about to create magic. If your content, community and campaigns feel good from the start you are doing it wrong.

Magic can’t be the objective of an Internet marketer’s journey. The marker we are on the right course, the course toward magic, is the feeling we are on the wrong course to NO WHERE. Ironic but what in life isn’t ironic? This irony is also filtering since many teams never get past the wandering in the dark part of the hero’s journey. They punk out, quit and go home convinced they can’t create magic when they may well have been on the path to do exactly that (more irony).

If you are starting to hear Joseph Campbell’s A Hero With A Thousand Faces then you were a step ahead of me until TODAY. Today, thanks to an email from a colleague wondering if we were wandering in the dark, a big, bright bulb exploded over my head. Compare this hero’s journey chart to the first phase of every project you’ve ever worked on:

When the hero refuses the call to adventure he or she is wandering in the dark. Look at the rest of the hero’s journey and think about every project you’ve ever worked on. The hero’s journey describes every project management timeline along with our daily quest for meaning and context.

Finding The Wizard Behind the Curtain

In the worst of wandering in the dark we may not be very nice to be around. When I created the Mondrian grid for my first website it took 3 months to figure out how to engineer the lines. Now those lines would take any web programmer in the Atlantic BT center minutes, but FoundObjects.com (now RIP) was launched in November 1999. Things were different then. Usually a friend, mentor or family member (Yoda) frames the conversation or problem slightly differently and revelation happens. Presto Chango and we see the wizard behind the curtain. We are transformed from wandering, lost and frustrated to someone who, for a tiny moment, sees and knows truth. What do we want to do the moment we know truth?

We want to share. Truth is so rare and beautiful we rush to give it away, to bring it home and change others. Knowing the phases of the journey to magic doesn’t change their required existence. We only find magic when we are present and capable in each phase. If we try to jump the shark magic disappears.  When we “fail” we believe we are at “fault” and begin to assign “blame”. Eckhart Tolle taught me a magical lesson in his book A New Earth. Tolle explains whatever IS happening is what is supposed to be happening. WOW was my reaction. I remember furiously underlining. I  wanted to get up and talk about how Tolle just defined the essence of life, love and Internet marketing.

Internet marketing always happens NOW. Great Internet marketing is created by heroes capable of creating magic, those true believers who create magic without meaning too. Internet marketers must think magically. They must go through the same processes every campaign, website design and mobile application. They must treat every all too familiar step as if it were as new and untouched as fresh snow on a quiet winter’s morning or the sound of the ocean at night. Thankfully, our Internet marketing journey to magic is always the same.

Marty

Mobile technology is new kid on the block.   So are Google+ Hangouts &  Social enabled Contests.   What do you get when you combine all three?

This Thursday at 6pm ET/9PM PT, a merger of online & offline experiences are set to provide anyone involved in the world what Trendwatching.com is calling “NEWISM” .

The concept that we as consumers and thus human beings love experiencing new things

Increasingly, we want to be left guessing, have new experiences, or Experience Cramming, whereby consumers want to mix-n-match as many new and varied experiences as possible. ( another Trendwatching.com nugget).

This doesn’t just refer to products.   People are tired of the same ole’ song and dance when it comes to live events or long, laborious and (sometimes month’s in the  process) written grant submissions.  Couple this with the explosion of US Smartphone usage  and tsunami of demand for mobile optimized experiences and, well, continue on…

Here’s a preview of what’s happening at Atlantic BT’s  ‘Experience Cramming’ event this Thursday:

1.  Live Pitch – Think Shark Tank.

Each of our four nonprofit finalists  will deliver a 5 minute “pitch” live via  Google+ Hangout, streaming for anyone in the world to watch. If Tiger Woods and Conan O’Brien can host ’em – why can’t we?

Instead of laughing with a late night joker or chatting on golf swings – participants will share & learn how Atlantic BT’s $25,000 mobile grant will improve lives.    If you’ve wondered just how investment in mobile strategy, marketing and technology services will improve your bottom line – it might be worth joining us.

2.  “Gives Back” Vote-Off.

As if nerves weren’t already frayed, once finalists experience giving a live “pitch”, our real-time voting will launch at 7:00 pm ET/4:00 pm PT.  The polls will open here at Atlantic BT’s Raleigh headquarters and online at our Contest homepage.

Voting only lasts 45 minutes!  Will we top 11,697 – the number of votes cast during our semi-finalist round?

3.  Winner Announced “Live” On-Air.  

Yep, you guessed it.  This will be a nailbitter right til the very end.   At approximately 7:30 PM ET we will hide vote count from public viewing.  Public voting closes at 7:45 ET/4:45 PT.     At 8pm ET on the nose – live in Raleigh and broadcast throughout the world via Google+Hangouts – our “Gives Back” $25,000 Mobile Grant Contest Grand Prize Winner will be announced.

Reality TV at it’s finest folks.  Are you in?    

Remember, live streaming will be here – posted on our Facebook page and on twitter using Hashtag #ABTGivesBack

Have other “Newism” experiences to share?

It was our second day riding a bicycle in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Martin’s Ride To Cure Cancer team was still in North Carolina, but only barely. We would cross into Tennessee after two more days of riding straight up, or that is how it felt. I wasn’t prepared.

Having trained in Durham and occasionally riding my favorite route on Dairyland Road in Chapel Hill, I wasn’t prepared for the Blue Ridge Mountains with their 12% grades and being at elevation (6,000 feet would be laughable in Colorado where we slept higher, but it was hard this early in the ride). I was going to die, and death was coming SLOW (lol).

I was heavy, carrying 50 more pounds than I would in a few weeks. My bottom was so sore after riding 50 and 60 miles a day for a week, there was no comfortable position on the bicycle. I wanted to quit and go home. Jeremy, the bicycle shop manager I hired to be the lifeguard of Martin’s Ride, listened to me whine before reminding me I wasn’t riding for me anymore. I rode for him and Brian. I rode for other cancer patients (Martin’s Ride left from the Duke Cancer Institute where I’ve been treated). Cancer patients were following our bleeper and my ride. I rode to realize an impossible dream. In short, Jeremy reminded me to shut up and get back on the bicycle.

Now my story moves forward about 50 days to the last days of Martin’s Ride. We’ve traveled more than 3,000 miles a bicycle (slept in an RV most nights). My bicycle’s crank has been turned millions of times. I’m 50 pounds lighter and have successfully conquered California’s Mt. Baldy’s and its 20% grades. My distance vision is honed. I don’t look at the computer on my bicycle to know distance or grade now. I feel the difference between 4% grade that will roll never getting above 6% and 4% lead-ins sure to become PAIN. I know things by instinct. On the lead-in to Mt. Baldy, I knew I was in for hours of pain. There is something about the way a lead-in rolls that, after 50 days of riding, communicated hundreds of messages, messages I was unaware of only two months ago.

After 50 days, I knew where pain started. Around 10% grade, grade being the elevation you ride against, life on a bicycle is interesting. Past 12% and continuing to turn the crank is a matter of faith, hope and belief. Climbing the highest peak of the ride, Mt. Monarch in Colorado 13,300 feet up, I learned to create a plan before attacking such an obstacle. I’d taken the day before our biggest climb to create an effective plan. Only three days after abandoning the only day of the 60 of Martin’s Ride because I couldn’t breathe as we rode above 9,000 on my first day riding in Colorado. Breathing is important and hard to do without (lol), so I spent the first day riding with my sister sitting in a chair feeling like a giant stomped my body and head.

My Mt. Monarch plan (the picture to the right is the lead in to Mt. Monarch, the actual mountain isn’t in view yet) was to ride easy, alone and stop every mile once the grade exceeded 6%. I would stop,  take a picture, slow my breathing and “over fuel” by hitting my Hammer Nutrition supplements hard. I’d been in a bicycle shop in Salida, Colorado and heard a man from the shop confirm what my triathlete sister Caroline had told me. “Big guys need a lot of fuel. There is no way you can over-fuel, but you can easily under-fuel,” the man told a smaller man than me. I’d been under-fueling, but wouldn’t make that mistake again.

I would over-fuel on my climb of the tallest peak in Martin’s Ride’s 60 day adventure. That advice made the rest of the ride possible, since we rode mountains almost daily except for a stretch on the loneliest highway in America (Rt. 50 in Nevada, and lonely is the right word).

In Colorado I took a day off to gather a plan. By the time we reached California, I could create a plan in seconds in my head and without preamble or half the work. Riding a bicycle across variable terrain each day for sixty days taught me hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of tiny lessons. Each of those lessons was stored, segmented and easy to retrieve for almost any situation. Coming down Mt. Baldy, my average speed was 50 mph (read my 45 MPH story from rocketing down the Blue Ridge Mountains). Coming down Mt. Baldy, I touched the brakes twice other than 3 stops to cut speed and spare my brakes.

Internet Marketing Experience Vs. Classroom
I’d thought about doing Martin’s Ride most of my life. For more than thirty years, I thought Martin’s Ride would be something that looked like X. Having completed Martin’s Ride, now I know how few elements in study were anything like the ride’s reality.

We studied Google Maps for the best routes, and that method almost got me killed and was driving Jeremy crazy as he poured over routes at night. We corrected our bad plan by purchasing proven maps from Adventure Cycling, maps of bicycle routes across America that saved Martin’s Ride. We changed our route from a southerly route to a more mountainous course, because my teammates wanted to visit National Parks. We would visit 12 National Parks, including Arches (or as I like to call it, God’s Sculpture Garden) in Utah. We saw bears in Yosemite and giant trees in Sequoia National Park in California.

Internet marketing is like Martin’s Ride. What you THINK is important rarely is important.  What is happening NOW is what is important. There is no way to simulate what is happening, because there are too many variables happening all at once. Think about how many dimensions you compete in on the web, including but not limited to:

• Competition (you watch them, they watch you)
• Google (SEO and SEM)
• Content & Offers (can you say Free Shipping?)
• Social Media Marketing
• Video Marketing

Simulations and visualizing the road ahead can help, but nothing matches the speed and hyper-reality of Internet marketing, nothing. Riding a bicycle in a simulator (if such a thing exists) can help practice rocketing down a mountain, but no simulator can replace the actual experience of having your life on the line as you make the next hairpin turn.

Internet Marketing Summer School
Despite these limitations, you can hone an Internet marketing process that makes the battle easier. Creating plans in California after riding a bicycle every day for 50 days was easier than at the beginning in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. It was easier in California because I was more experienced AND because we’d thought about our process. We thought about the HOW of what we were doing, not just the WHAT, WHERE, WHY and WHEN of it. Read Dov Seidman’s excellent HOW: Why How You Do Anything Means Everything for more on the importance of PROCESS to Internet marketing. Use the links below if you want to practice, hone or develop Internet marketing skills:

To Read:

• Internet Marketing Summer School on ScentTrail Marketing
• Top 10 Internet Marketing Summer Reading on Atlantic BT
• Experience vs. Internet Marketing Degree on Atlantic BT
• Do I need an Internet marketing degree? on ScentTrail Marketing

Contact or Stay in touch with Atlantic BT:

• Complete A Get Started Form (if you would like help with your Internet marketing right away)
• Follow @Atlanticbt on Twitter
• Like Atlantic Business Technologies on Facebook

Follow Marty & Story of Cancer:

• Follow Marty on Twitter @ScentTrail
• @StoryofCancer on Twitter
• Martin’s Ride To Cure Cancer
• Story of Cancer on Pinterest