digital marketing

Client solves Ecommerce for WordPress via Open Source

July 14, 2011 By Dan Thornton

I don’t often write about clients on my blog for various reasons, but I wanted to spread the word about Jigoshop, which is a great Ecommerce for WordPress solution that I’ve been working on for a couple of months now. One reason is simply that it’s a really good product which I can easily recommend – as part of research I played around with the alternatives and I can honestly say that I’d already decided to use Jigoshop to power a couple of future projects before working with them. And the other is that it’s one of the first times I’ve been working on a project which is delivering something via Open Source, rather than using OS products as an end user.

So what makes Jigoshop so good?

It’s worth explaining that the company behind it, Jigowatt, specialises in Ecommerce sites for a large range of clients, using both WordPress and Magento, so they’ve spent a lot of time working with all the existing ways to produce effective and attractive online stores, and have particular experience handling the backend admin side of getting lots of products uploaded and ranking in search for their clients. That means they’ve got a long list of all the features that they wish existed and eventually reached the point that they knew it made more sense to build something to answer all their problems.

It’s incredibly quick and simple to use – even I can get an online store up and running in about 20 minutes. But at the same time it’s also highly configurable when you want to get into setting attributes, localising your shop, and stock management.

The benefits of a true Open Source Ecommerce solution

I was lucky enough to start getting involved with Jigowatt and Jigoshop when they started discussing how to licence Jigoshop, and how they could try and ensure that it has the optimum chance of being the best possible product, and also how it can generate revenue to justify continuing to work on it alongside the masses of client work they’ve got at any time. They had already started discussing the open source model, obviously drawing from their experience with the likes of WordPress and other open source developments and plugins, and they’d also been open and honest on their blog about their ideas – which led to really helpful input from other WordPress plugin developers, for instance, comments and suggestions from some of the guys at RocketGenius, who make the great Gravity Forms solution.

I also whittered on about everything from the birth of the Free Software Foundation and Open Source to the business models used by the likes of Arduino, and slowly the shape of the Jigoshop business model emerged, which was to release the shop itself under a GPL licence.

That means that you can download it, get your store up and running, and take payments via Paypal without having to sign-up for a trial or submit a credit card.
And it means anyone can build on top of it, whether that’s additional features or themes etc.

The revenue streams are all around specific extensions to the main Jigoshop platform, whether it’s payment gateways or specific themes, as well as allowing donations. And that’s an approach I really hope works for this specific project, because I really want to see Jigoshop continue and evolve.

It’s not just me recommending Jigoshop

Obviously as a client, I might be a little biased, but the good thing is that absolutely loads of WordPress specialists and big independent sites have been giving positive reviews to Jigoshop, reinforcing the fact that it’s a really good product. Just some of the mentions since it launched include Mashable, ThemesForge, and Envato. And there’s a growing forum community on the site which is worth checking out.

So I figured there’s enough to justify writing about a client for once! And obviously if you’re interested in finding out more about the range of freelance content and marketing services on offer, then please do get in touch….

Geeks, BBQ food and a bouncy castle…

June 30, 2011 By Dan Thornton

That headline makes more sense when I explain that the first ever Digital People in Peterborough Family BBQ takes place on Saturday. I’m still continually amazed that an off-the-cuff idea to see if any local people involved in mobile and websites fancied a couple of beers has grown into 40+ people in the local area signing up on the DPiP website, the Facebook page or following on Twitter.

Not only that but we’ve even expanded from the monthly pub gathering to include a curry night, and now an attempt to get all of us out into the sunshine and involve our families with a BBQ at Afro-Caribbean restaurant Embe. It’s somewhere I’ve heard good things about, so I’m looking forward to sampling the food – and not only are they providing the BBQ for £5 per adult, but they’ve also very kindly agreed to provide a bouncy castle for those of us bringing children!

How great is that!

Plus, having had a quick look at their menu, I’m already trying to work out when I might be able to come along again to try some of the dishes they have on offer…

We’ve already got 11 or 12 confirmed people, with families, coming along for something a bit different, so if you’re in the Peterborough area, and you’re at all interested or involved with any sort of digital business, consider yourself invited. You can be a blogger, marketeer, developer, systems admin, mobile app creator, collect retro consoles, or write online for a living. We’re all really friendly, and if you want to find out more about us in advance, just take a look at the website, Facebook or Twitter in advance!

Don’t write for SEO and social media marketing from the start…

May 8, 2011 By Dan Thornton

That may seem an odd headline for someone who sells digital marketing alongside writing for the internet, but stay with me. I’ve just spent an hour or so reading through my 22-year-old copy of ‘Searching for Robert Johnson‘, a fairly short book by Peter Guralnick about the legendary early blues musician who was supposed to have gone to the crossroads at midnight and sold his soul to the devil to have become so talented, and who was then murdered at an early age, passing into myth and legend for songs like ‘Hellhound on my Trail‘.

Having been blessed with an obsession for music and reading in a just pre-internet age, I’m a big fan of all the Peter Guralnick books I’ve read and owned – he’s covered the history of the blues, soul, and country, as well as works about Sam Cooke, Robert Johnson and Elvis Presley (The Presley ones are the only ones I haven’t read). There’s a pretty good list on Amazon, and as a music writer I’ve read, re-read, and long admired, I wondered what he was doing at the moment – and thanks to Google, found some invaluable quotes on what makes his music writing so brilliant, especially when he writes with more succinct clarity than the likes of Lester Bangs, for example. And they explain why I believe that optimisation for SEO, tailoring content for social media etc all comes second to creating something really brilliant in the first place.

They’re from InsideVandy.com, Vanderbilt University’s student news website:

‘I started writing about music when I was probably about 20, and I started writing purely to tell – I was writing fiction, short stories novels, I still write fiction – but the nonfiction, I just wrote solely to tell people about this music that I thought was so great, it was almost entirely the blues, and I did it at a time when there were almost no outlets where you could even put down the name Muddy Waters or Howlin’ Wolf, Lightnin’ Hopkins, James Brown, it was such a thrill. I wrote these things telling people how great they were. It wasn’t for money, there was no money; it was just to tell people.

I’ve never written a single piece about anybody or anything that I haven’t chosen myself and hasn’t been out of my admiration for their work. It would be inconceivable for me to write something about a subject that I wasn’t totally invested in.

There have been growing debates about the need for PR and Marketing in technology – the suggestion is that by building something amazing, you remove the need for promotion, which I think is mistaken and disingenuous. A great product should be your focus as it makes Marketing, PR, Advertising etc all easier and ways to boost the natural interest.

And by the same token, SEO, targetting social media etc are all extremely useful, but they boost interest, links etc to great content and writing.

You can argue that plenty of truly great works have never achieved mainstream success, but that’s down to a number of factors, including marketing, timing, and luck. But those great works continue to endure, even if it’s in a small way.

Meanwhile there’s plenty of crap that has become amazingly popular due to well-oiled publicity efforts, but it’s always tended to result in fleeting success at best, despite the work and effort that’s gone into promotion.

And particularly if you’re trying to build a business around content, or by utilising content, it’s better to get a smaller number of truly passionate and evangelistic people who are likely to part with their money or attention on a longterm basis, than to hit a huge number of people who just pass through and move onto something else in seconds.

That’s why I suggest forgetting about SEO and marketing when you first start writing something. If not, you’ll spend hours or days in fear as you build up the worries about putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. And when you finally do, it’s likely to appear faked when you’re shoehorning in keywords and sticking on an irrelevant linkbait headline. Far better to create something incredibly powerful and optimise with a light touch. It’s why the need for copy editors and sub editors remains, but that need evolves into editors skilled in marketing and search engine optimisation alongside more traditional skills.

And it’s why I’m still enjoying, and recommending, music from the 1930s and books written about it which I first enjoyed as a pre-teen.

The stopping power of simple and effective marketing

April 7, 2011 By Dan Thornton

Before you click on the video below, which shows a very literal example of being simple and effective, I should point out that it does contain a very small amount of violence, that I know it’s from the film ‘Never Back Down’, and I also know it’s not an accurate reflection of the effectiveness of Capoeira as a martial art.

But still…

I’m not going to suggest that business strategy, marketing or writing are related to fighting or violence, although I do know that to excel in martial arts or any endeavour requires similar levels of focus, dedication and perseverance. What I wanted to point out is that the most effective route to a solution is quite often the simplest, and that’s something easily overlooked in a digital world which tends towards information overload and constant hype cycles around the latest startup and innovation.

The thing of it:

I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t experiment, innovate and impress. But these should always come after your core business and marketing ideas. The hardest bit is often stripping back everything to the simplest expression of what you do and why you do it. In fact, you can often find business people will try to delay answering or avoid the question altogether, and I imagine that’s because they fear that actually there’s nothing there.

That’s never been true in my experience.

It’s simply about digging deeper and asking the right questions to find the one core element that will really resonate. Even the dullest business you can possibly imagine, which may have been set up purely to make a profit, will have something of interest in it, whether that’s something in the story of the founders or workforce, or in the history of the business, or in future ambitions. The trick is to find it, and this is something which is potentially a lot easier for someone like me to discover as an ‘outsider’ working on a freelance basis, who can take an overall honest view and then ask potentially career limiting questions if you were putting them to your boss.

I recently had an epiphany when trying to simplify the brand idea for a client, after losing myself in all the great functionality of their product, and struggling to explain a lot of detailed technical terms. I’d succumbed to selling the features, rather than the benefits. But looking at it from the angle of their potential consumers, I suddenly realised that the one key benefit was incredibly simple, and could be summed up in 6 words. Now that’s got potential as a strapline, message, brand idea and identity etc.

It’s about simple messages:

Particularly in the early stages of a business, it’s about getting who you are, and what you do, across in the simplest, most comprehensible ways.

People are great at passing on information. They’re not always great at taking information in, processing it, and repeating it all accurately, and that diminishes as the amount gets bigger.

Imagine you’re at a party, and you’re introducing an old friend to someone. Would you tell them absolutely everything that you know about your lifelong friendship? Or would you be more likely to say ‘Here’s Dave, he works in marketing and I’ve known him since I was five.’

One of my favourite tricks when it comes to simple messaging is to think about the classic game know as ‘Telephone‘ in the U.S, and without wishing to cause offence, ‘Chinese Whispers’ in the UK. If your message isn’t simple enough to pass from the CEO of the company down to the receptionist without the basic gist of it remaining, then it isn’t simple enough.

Or just think about the companies and slogans you remember off the top of your head. There are plenty of examples which not only function as a simple and effective strapline, but go further in explaining what it is you do, e.g.

Making collaboration productive and enjoyable for people every day. 37Signals

That goes a bit further than the classic strapline. And if it passes down the line and comes out as ‘they make working together more fun’, then it still works.

And there’s another reason why it’s more important than ever:

If you’ve ever come across Gary Vaynerchuck, you’ll already known why ‘passions,hustle, wine and business’ is a great 4 word summary. Generally SEO advice is always about ranking for keywords, but that site description is what converts people to following up on the search results. And as search and social become more and more intertwined, then memorable and sharable become even more important.

Oh, and if you can keep it under 140 characters, that’s even better:

Practising what I preach:

Along with a lot of bloggers and commentators, I can often fall into the trap of talking a great game about other people, and failing to do it for myself.

That’s particularly true when I’ve spent a lot of time working on client projects – part of the reason I took up blogging was to have an outlet for writing which didn’t follow a traditional news structure (At the time I was writing a lot of online news). That probably explains why I tend to write lengthy posts whenever I get the chance.

But now that TheWayoftheWeb is increasingly a lead generator for my marketing and content business (which is continuing to grow and may well expand in the future), and I’m also responsible for the marketing and lead generation side of Jodanma design and development, I’m going to be able to show more of the process that goes into that simplicity. The current Jodanma holding page will be replaced by the full website shortly, and the initial attempt at conveying what we do isn’t anywhere close to what it should be.

So here begins a real journey to apply what I do for clients to my own two businesses, and explain what goes into it along the way…