Key Takeaways from the 2015 Ignite Conference

Razoyo had the please of attending the 2015 Ignite Conference last week in Dallas, TX that was put together by the folks at Practical Ecommerce. A big shout out to those guys. This was the first year for the conference and we know what a big deal starting anything from scratch is! Congrats!

While the Ignite conference is aimed at small merchants, as developers, it was nice to get our heads out of the code for a couple of days and listen to content aimed at merchants and hear their reactions to it.

John Lawson of Colder ICE Media was, as expected a big crowd pleaser. If you aren’t familiar with John, he’s a big eCommerce Enthusiast, online promoter and business entertainer. John introduced us to the Beyoncé principle for social media promotion and how to have a promotion funnel that maximizes results.

The highlight of the ignite conference was the keynote by Richard Last. If you aren’t familiar with the University of North Texas’s ecommerce Program, you may want to learn about it. As far as I know, it is unique in the US and seems to be churning out a lot of ecommerce talent. Richard heads the program and has an incredible pedigree for the job (was a true ecommerce pioneer at JC Penney). His grasp of larger ecommerce trends is truly phenomenal. It’s no wonder that program churns out such highly sought after young talent in our space.

Whenever I go to a conference like this, the most important thing I usually get out of it is a list of ideas so long I could never implement them all.  Here’s my list from Ignite 2015:

• When developing content, always consider how shareable it is, from the subject line to the Pinterest button. Sharing is good. Use it.
• Simplifying search results is critical for mobile conversion. Nobody wants to scroll through long lists on a mobile device. Make your mobile search results easy to filter!
• When someone pushes a button or takes any action on your site, make sure they get a confirmation of that action that is both obvious and unintrusive.
• 70% of email receivers have images turned on by default now. Time to go back to using images in email!
• Amazon is the devil… but, could be your devil. Don’t sell on Amazon when the segment is crowded, you don’t have a cost advantage, you don’t have exclusivity or where margins are low. Do sell on Amazon when you have a unique product or you are looking to liquidate it.
• Google Tag Manager can be used to capture things like things people are clicking on that aren’t links or buttons, page scrolling, where an infinite scroll fires, and so forth.
• More and more brands and manufacturers are selling directly to consumers. How do you compete with this? Customer service, selling experience and loyalty programs.
• 23% of smartphone purchases use a digital wallet or express checkout. Have these!
• Facebook’s policies are making the platform less relevant for merchants. Don’t spend too much time on it!

Of course, this isn’t the whole list. I just got tired of typing it up. This first year for Ignite was a mixed bag, some great presentations, some not so great. But, the good stuff was really good. I’m looking forward to Ignite 2016.