Wix eCommerce | How to Power through the 2020 Holiday Season Challenges

Hey everybody, this is Ramon Ray. Welcome and thanks for joining us for another exciting educational, inspirational WIX webinar. Glad to have you with us today. And today we're going to talk all about how to power through the 2020 holiday season challenges. So glad you're with us. We're honored to have you here today to learn with us. So so a few things we're going to talk about in today's live session. You're going to learn a few things and one thing I want to say right at the very top, please post chat ask your questions. We're here to serve you. We have people who can answer your questions if you have specific questions about wix. But also remember we have an amazing panel which I'll introduce in a minute so we want you to ask the questions to them as well. So a few things we're going to talk about today. One Covid for surely has affected the entire world and it's affected all of us, we small business owners. And it's shaping though the holiday season and we're going to hear some positive news about why that's important for you to understand. 2 We're going to talk about sales predictions for the 2020 holiday season. It's right around the corner. I can't wait to buy things from my family and friends. Point 3 tips and solutions for your online store. We're going to talk about strategies, we're going to talk about trends but we're going to get specific tips, specific solutions that can help your business. And as I said, I want to repeat live audience Q and A. We're going to take your questions for our amazing panel, our amazing experts who are going to help you grow your business. And also keep in mind we're going to be doing a massive big giveaway. WIX is like already saying the holiday seasons today. So we're going to give away we want you to share your best holiday tips. Feel free to share them throughout the discussion. Feel free to share them throughout especially as our panel is speaking your best holiday tips and our team is going to evaluate and look at those tips and we're going to give away copies of WIX Ascend. That's pretty powerful and pretty exciting. So thank you all for joining us again. That's what we're going to talk about today. And remember, we want to take your questions live as well. So let me introduce to you our business owners who's going to be on our panel today in addition to my colleague Liat from wix, our subject matter expert about so Many things, E commerce. But we have two, two amazing business owners that I've come to know over the past several times that we've been together. So one is Amanda and Amanda owns Cole and Canary company. Don't go there quite yet. Wait till we're over. But it's a great store that sells all things candles, maybe even more. So Amanda's going to join us today as well. Two is Noah Rosen who's with Forge 2 Table and that is an amazing knife company which has amazing, I'll call it premium knife for all of you who like to cook, who like or even people like me who don't like to cook but know you need a sharp knife. So we're really happy to have them with us today. So first I'm going to bring up Amanda again. Welcome Amanda. We're happy to have you with us. Please take a few minutes. Amanda, tell us a little bit about yourself and a bit about Colin Canary. And as she's talking, you can see the website and things like that as we go along. So Amanda, the floor is yours.

So hello everyone. I am Amanda. I was going to say good morning but then I realized that we're all across the world. So good morning, good evening. I'm so happy to be here. I own Coal and Canary candle company here in Canada and Colton Canary creates cheeky candles for playful personalities. And what we do is we create beautiful hand poured candles with amazing ingredients and they also feature a wide crackling wooden wick so they actually crackle like a little fireplace. So they're super cozy, very relaxing. Coal and Canary was actually created six years ago in my small kitchen and it was just a hobby for fun. And three months after starting in my kitchen we actually got into the Grammy and Oscar gift bags which was a huge, huge, huge surprise and success for us. And since then we have now grown to about a 10,000 square foot manufacturing warehouse. We have anywhere between 16 to 23 employees. We operate a bricks and mortar location in Canada and we also obviously have our WIX platform which has grown with us the entire time. It's really kept up with our rapid growth. And yeah, we sell online. We sell about 400 retailers in Canada and United States and through our website. So I'm happy to. Sorry, I'm happy to be here and I think we're going to learn a lot together to get through this amazing holiday season. That's going to be very unique.

Amanda, thank you so much. And is it fair to say, can I put on my website that I've almost been to the Grammys because I know you or that's not quite the truth. Can I somehow.

I think you can do that a little bit.

I mean, I have to put an asterisk and a link to Colin Canary, but I'm trying to like, get in there, you know what I mean, Somehow. So. Thanks, Amanda.

You're welcome.

Thank you. Noah, you're up next. Forge to Table again. Tell us, Noah, a bit about yourself and your journey and then tell us about Forge to Table.

Absolutely. It's a pleasure to be here. I could not be a bigger fan of wix. It's been a great platform to grow my business with. I started Forge to Table when I was a culinary student myself. I was looking for a great, affordable knife. I connected with this phenomenal third generation family forge and we've grown together over the past three years. This year has been quite a bit of challenge and quite a bit of change, as everybody around the world has experienced. And we used to have about 20 retailers. Right now we are purely E commerce. So WIX has been our backbone. They have shown up for us. It's been phenomenal. So we work with our small family forge. We've got about seven blacksmiths that we're working with there and we've been able to grow through this to have a fantastic offering through our website. We have a chef community all around the world using our knives in over 41 countries and it's been a really phenomenal journey to grow our brand with Wix. You can check out our shop now. As you'll notice, most of our knives are out of stock, which brings me to preparing for the holidays and planning which we'll get into later. But it is a pleasure to be here with all of you and hopefully you're all enjoying your time at home through Covid cooking some delicious meals for yourself. And like Ramon was saying, everybody does need a sharp knife.

That is absolutely true. And I'm curious to know, similar to how I can kind of be like Grammy, Can I kind of be like Gordon Ramsay if I buy one of your knives or. It's not quite that easy because I don't know how to cook at all. But I know where to get a good knife. Not from you. Is any connection there, Mandy?

Well, as long as you start with the right tools, you're going to be equipped to up your game in the kitchen and I think your entire family is going to appreciate if you're cooking some better food with the right tools.

I love that.

I'm going to check that out for sure. Thank you so much, Noah and Amanda, we're excited to have you with us and learn from you. And again, everybody, as I said before, we want you to send in your questions, questions, comments, concerns. You need help, we're here to serve you for the next bit of time that we have together. Up next, I really want to talk a bit about wix. Many listening today probably know about wix. Many of you are WIX customers, but some of you may not know about wix. And I'm happy to partner with, to join with my colleague, my friend Liotte. Listen, when Liotte talks, I listen. She knows a lot. But one thing she knows probably better than most people in this market is how small businesses can sell online. Kind of that e commerce whisper. So, Liat, welcome, the floor is yours and thanks for having me join you today.

Thank you for being here, Ramon. It's such a pleasure to be talking with you again. It's always fun and thanks for that buildup. No pressure there. But yeah, I'm happy to present wix. Of course. We're a website building platform. We have a wonderful e commerce solution. So today we have millions of users around the world and we also have over 500,000 active stores selling worldwide. So I'm always excited to talk about e commerce, not because I'm an expert, but because we get to see so many businesses using our platform every day and we get to see what works for them and what their customers want. And we've seen everyone kind of dealing with this very unusual year and how businesses have had to find new ways and evolve and kind of ramp up to deal with all the challenges that they faced. And we wanted to share a little bit of that to help everyone prepare for this unique holiday season.

Awesome.

And Liat, before you jump, I know we have a few slides talk about the background of the things we're going to get into in a minute here. But before we do that, we know a few users are saying, liotte, we hear you twice, Liotte. We hear a bit of an echo. We know that we are on the ball and we're working to solve that. So thank you for your patience. Hang tight a bit. Sometimes it's a technical glitch here and there, but we're going to, we know there's a problem and we're working towards that. But Leah, keep on going. Continue please.

Okay, so I hope it's not too bad.

It's gonna be great.

Otherwise you're getting double the advice.

I hear you just fine. By the way. Could be some user so you sound great to me, so please continue.

No problem.

Okay, awesome. So let's dive in, I guess, to the holiday season. Great. So I think 2020 has definitely been one a year for the history books in every aspect. That's also true in terms of E commerce, obviously. It's affecting how all of us are able to shop and buy what we need. So we're seeing huge uptake of online sales. Everybody's having to shop online even now as kind of everyone's in different sets of regulations. People are concerned for their health and safety. So people are turning more and more to online stores to meet all of their demands. I think we can already see the change in the upcoming holiday season. So what has been typically the biggest holiday event of the year, which is like the Black Friday sales, most retailers have already canceled because they don't want to be offering those in store promotions. And they're shifting their focus to all of their online promotions instead and sort of focusing on, on the holiday season sales and the cyber weekend sales online. We're also seeing that Amazon are considering hosting their Amazon Prime Day sometime during the holiday season. So definitely everyone kind of shifting gears to meet that online demand and make sure people are able to do their holiday shopping online this year. I think if the beginning of the year is anything to go by, just in the first quarter of this year we saw people spending, I think it was over $146 billion in the US alone online, which is massive growth. That's almost 15% year over year growth in terms of online sales. So this year is obviously looking really different. And based on our network of stores, we're already seeing certain categories growing massively. So anyone selling online gifts is seeing in August already almost 500% growth. So that's really big too.

That is huge. It seems like to me, Liat, what I'm hearing you say is that this

is, you know, even though Covid my

heart goes out and I know Wix as well does, you all have done a lot, is that for those who are suffering and those who maybe lost their businesses or lost their job, there's that.

But what I'm hearing you say in

some way, Liat, and correct me if

I'm wrong, there's a glimmer of hope or a big glimmer. Businesses like Noah's and Amanda's, there's an

opportunity to do more online. Is that a fair.

What I'm hearing, is that a fair statement?

Absolutely.

An opportunity to do more online. You know, I think different businesses have been affected in different ways. And I'm sure also when we talk to both Amanda and Noah, both of their businesses have been affected. There have been challenges. They've had to adapt and figure out how they're dealing with the challenges that Covid has presented. But on the other hand, there's definitely been opportunity and a lot of growth in terms of online businesses. So. So I think the best thing that businesses can do is just prepare in advance. And I think because we've all been through these last few months, there's a lot of things that we've learned about how to prepare better and meet that demand better.

Absolutely.

Love it.

So Amanda, I'm going to bring you in right now and just to talk a little bit about and you as well. Noah, you know, how are you preparing? Amanda, you know we had pre Covid. Some people are calling it PC. You know, we have after Covid AC give us that story and help us understand what are some things you, some things your team are doing to prepare for this season. Because to remind everybody that's what this session is about, how to Prepare for the 2020 holiday shopping season. And Amanda Liott's telling us that there's hope. So help us understand why she's so hopeful and how you're Preparing.

Absolutely. So COVID 19 has required nearly all business owners to adapt their strategies and navigate unchartered territory rapidly, as I'm sure we've all seen. I truly believe that some of these shifts are actually here to stay even after the recovery efforts have set in. COVID 19 has affected the way we main principles though for how we plan don't change as we prepare for the holiday season. So we at Colon Canary have something that we call the three P's and it is plan, prepare and prosper. So that never changes regardless of, you know, pre Covid after Covid. So with that said, we start planning early. So we usually start preparing and by creating a work back timeline about six to eight months in advance before launching our holiday collections. Now I know every business owner is slightly different in what you sell. For our product. We do have long lead times and we do import some of our ingredients and our inventory. So we need to make sure we have those buffers set in place just in case there are shipping delays, which I'm sure we all have experienced, which is never fun and things like that are really important. So creating an inventory projection sheet that includes shipping times, also ordering your inventory early right before launching our holiday products. We also plan our marketing strategies. We have a social media calendar that we create that includes any collaborations or giveaways as well as influencer marketing efforts that we plan on executing. So that's kind of the marketing side as well as thinking about are we going to be doing any sales or promotions during the holiday season. Like you said, there are many big sale opportunities, especially with people working from home and being home more often. And again, determining with that said, if there's any sort of shipping specials, are you going to be doing free shipping? Are you going to be doing local delivery or contactless pickup? There's a lot of things like that that we like to think about. And then one other thing I just wanted to mention that kind of going back to the marketing side for the holidays, something that I've always kind of a principle I've always followed that I think is a key to our overall holiday success and success all year, is something that I call the shish kebab method. And I'm not sure if you've heard

of it, but wait a min.

And Noah's on the line, too. Noah, this must be all for you, man. Go ahead, Amanda.

So the shish kebab method is pretty straightforward, but I just think it's a good reminder. So when you have a shish kebab, you obviously have a skewer and there's different vegetables and meat that go on it. So for example, a shish kebab, so a piece of meat might be your business card. A vegetable, you know, green pepper might be your online platform. So basically your website should look like your business card, your business card should look like your online store, and your online ads should look like your business card. So it's all connected and it should all look cohesive and basically be connected by a skewer. That's just another thing to kind of think about. So even when it comes to customer service, everything has to have the same voice. And I think that's a really important thing to keep in mind. I know the holidays can just become chaotic and crazy, but kind of keep those things in the back of your head that, you know, you want to maintain consistency and cohesiveness, no matter how crazy things might get.

I love it. I love it. Amanda, that is powerful. The shish kebab method. I don't think I'm ever going to forget that. Noah, what's up with you, man? How are you doing? Tell us what you're doing. Kind of different last year was there your business is good growing boom. Things happen. Anything you're doing different last year than this year that we can learn from.

Absolutely. I think everyone's dealing with a lot of changes right now, and we're very fortunate on this end. Besides having to make a lot of adjustments to keep our team safe and to adapt to the current situation that's going on, especially here in the United States, we're still very much dealing with COVID I've seen people commenting already about the shipping delays. That's very true, both in receiving product and in the case of here in the States, with delivering product and getting things sent out. So making those adjustments, making the appropriate recommendations for your customers on how long things will take to ship, those are all adjustments to be made. But in our case specifically, we've been really fortunate. We had quite a bit of a boom early on in Covid because we were initially expecting things to slow down, people to be a little reserved in their spending. But who doesn't need retail therapy right now? And when you're at home, you want to be cooking. So we saw a lot of fantastic support coming out of the chef community and a lot of influencers stepping up and giving us unsolicited fantastic reviews of our products, which led to a boom in sales. So in response to that, we've been trying to capitalize and make sure we don't lose momentum. Even being out of stock, it's really important to have a plan and to stay connected with your customers. So we've scaled up actually our recipe blog, because our whole team, our background is chefs, so we have been working to create recipes and cooking guides and tutorials and things like that. So once you have your knife, you're still connected with the business and you're still able to get fresh content every week, find delicious recipes, and stay connected with the brand and feel that you're really part of it. On top of that, going into the holiday season, we've started to prepare even earlier. So we're going where sky's the limit. We've already known that we're going to be busy. Holiday season is the time when people shop, and our product makes really fantastic gifts. Because of our gift box, our toasted pine box, all the knives come in. But this year, we're really expecting that to be doubled or tripled based on what we've seen so far. So besides connecting with customers and trying to plan ahead and make sure we have a system in place that once we have more product and once customers start coming through looking for those gifts, looking for what they can find for their friends and their family, and for the holidays, we're ready to Deliver.

Wow, Noah, that is powerful, man. And I think this just shows the ingenuity of small business. I think it's quite amazing. And again, big kudos always thanks to companies like wix, which are bigger businesses but powering and helping us small businesses. I'm going to go off script for a bit here and do something a little crazy. I probably shouldn't do it, but I'm just going to do it anyways. So listen, if you're listening to this and you love the shish kebab principle or you love the principle of building community as Noah talked about, I want to underline that even if you don't have the product, keep building the community. If you take a picture of this screen or somehow post on Facebook and tag your community, you're listening to this. I'm going to get a candle from Amanda if I can afford knives from Noah. Going to get a copy of my book. I'm going to package it and I'm going to send it to three people. If you're out of the US I will do something else, but do that. Share it on Facebook. We're listening to wix. Share the knowledge, don't be selfish, and I will send a package. Liat, I hope that was okay. I said if it wasn't too late, but yeah, absolutely.

One more for all our users and you just got them a couple more.

Good, good.

So share and I'm gonna, I'm gonna pick after this. Tag me and tag WIX and everybody else you know. But share to your Facebook communities when we're done. We'll be done in a few minutes and I'm gonna go through my feed after this and I'm gonna pick three people to send a little gift box to. From Amanda, from Noah, Send a copy my book. And don't forget, 10 of you are gonna win, win already a copy of WIX Ascend just by posting your, your tips on holiday sales in this chat. So we're giving away a lot already in this. Let's move on, move forward. But Amanda, Noah, Leotte, thank you. We got a few more things to do. So listen, Liotte, trends are very, very important. And I think what's amazing, as small business owners, we don't only want to know the practical tips which Amanda and knowing Noah are giving to us, but I think there's a few trends I know that you have under your belt that you're seeing that can help guide us. Kind of what we should look forward to, as it were, what you've seen. So help us Understand liotte some of those trends and why they're so important. If there's a link I think people can maybe the team will share that. I think a good something that you guys wrote about as well. Some e commerce trends as well. Malia, the floor is yours.

Right. So first of all you can go on our E commerce blog whenever you want. We shared a lot of the data trends over the year and we'll keep sharing as we go into the holiday season the new trends that we're seeing. So I think some of this is just really representative of living with social distancing and seeing more and more people at home. So you're definitely seeing things like uptake in food and beverage and home care, home decor, pet care and animals. So that kind of I think just really reflective of everyone, you know, dealing with COVID 19 and buying online. But then there's some other categories that we can already see that trend toward the holiday season. So first of all, gift stores are seeing amazing growth this month alone. They're selling a lot more already. So I guess a lot of people are thinking about getting ready for the holidays early. And then we're starting to see some other categories like baby and kids goods and clothing and apparel that are starting to grow. So again you're seeing that slight trend toward the holiday season. So definitely I think come back to our blog and we'll keep sharing as the season progresses. But I think the main message from this is just do your research. If you're thinking about adjusting your product offering or you really want to focus in on which items you're going to be pushing hard this holiday season, then do your research on what your customers want. You can be in touch directly with them. You can look at market trends, you can look at what your competitors are doing. But I think people are living life a little differently these days. So you want to make sure that you're really meeting their needs.

Awesome.

Love it.

And by the way, we have some cool tips coming in already. Shout out to Gene who said to make sure that your mobile site is set up. And of course, as you know, Liotte WIX comes built in with mobile. But that's a great tip. Mobile is important. We're all on that phone scrolling down sometimes too much. So make sure your mobile site is ready. Gene, thank you so much for that amazing tip. We hear you see, we're listening.

So thank you all.

Keep the tips coming in. Keep the tips coming in. We're going to see who's going to win the WIX Ascend site. And I'm going to send my own little personal gift from Amanda, Noah and my book to you all as well. So thank you, Liat, for that. This is important, so let's dive into it. And then we're getting to what's going to be my favorite portion. Leot, Amanda, and Noah, the live Q and A from our audience. We got a few more minutes left, so I want to get to that and get the live questions from people that people are going to be sending in. So do that live chat, do it in the Facebook or wherever you're at and send those tips in. So five tips for 2020 holiday season sales. And we're going to go through a few bullet points. Get your pens and pencils out, write these down. Of course, you can go back and watch this when you want, but these are the strategies that Amanda, that Noah are using that Leah and her team are seeing for selling online. So I think a few things to look out for. I think one, there's less time to plan, restock, or update inventory. The selling season is compressed. People have been worried, have been anxious. So we got to get on the ball and update inventory. Noah was pretty transparent about the challenge he's going through with his inventory. I'm glad that he sold out. That's a good problem to have. Two, remember, there's slower delivery times. Covid has messed up the supply chain from the shippers and others, so that's something you need to consider. And one tip of mine, even though I don't sell fancy candles or knives, is that you can also make your customers aware. Sometimes I think it's not that there's a problem. It's we didn't know I bought Amanda's candle. She should just tell me it's going to be ten days later. Now we're cool, no problem. So, and I think the third thing is that, remember, traditional shipping providers, they're at full capacity. So you may want to think what are some other ways that you may want to ship? And I know WIX has a number of content on this and Amanda, Noah may touch on some of these points. So let's dive into it some of our five quick tips, then we'll get to your Q and A for it. Tip number one, I feel like having a bell ding. All right, plan and stock inventory and diversify your suppliers. Lia, what does this mean, why this is so important?

Sure.

So, I mean, Amanda and Noah both touched on it, but over the course of the year, we've seen people really struggle with inventory. So obviously supply chain is affected, some suppliers are just unable to deliver at all. Certainly if you're bringing from countries who are more harshly affected or unable to ship, things can really take a long time. And if you're offering international shipping, you might have a rough time getting your stuff to your customers. So I think ahead of the holiday season, focus in on what are the products that you think are going to be your top sellers and then make sure you have enough inventory. So either stock up in advance or make sure that you have several options of suppliers, like have a plan B and a plan C in case something goes wrong with your main supply chain. And then there's always like the, I'll call them the emergency plans. But there are things you can consider like if you really need it, doing some drop shipping to fill in the gaps if you need it. So have those plans in place.

Awesome.

And Noah, listen, your suppliers located in China, how has this affected your delivery? And I'm sure many WIX customers. We're a global economy and many of the manufacturing is done in China, which is a great place to do that. So help us understand. Has this affected you, has it not? Educate us what you're doing about that.

Absolutely. So there's, you know, businesses located all over the globe and us, our production partner is in Southern China. So luckily when coronavirus hit, they were isolated from it, they went into lockdown and they were actually able to come out on the other side of this much sooner than we have been. So they are able to be back at capacity. Everyone is working, everybody is back to normal over there. But the supply chain of getting those products over to us here in Southern California, that has been significantly delayed and that's part of what's going into us being out of stock. Now, one of the best ways to mitigate that is to have other products. We recently partnered with a local company here in California that makes aprons that we'll be releasing soon. That's another way to offer an auxiliary or an accessory product that is easier to source and can support the supply chain while we catch up in other means. Now, on top of that, part of managing the supply chain is scheduling your deliveries and planning ahead. It's a really tough time right now and I think I would almost say that we're past the nervous factor that a lot of businesses felt of. Can I predict what's going to happen? There was a lot of unknown when this really started. And I myself, my whole team, we were sitting around scratching our heads, going, well, what can we say? Is it going to be busier? Is it going to be slower? What are the trends going to be? Because this is an unprecedented situation and everybody says that word, but what does it really mean? And now you need to respond and a small business can do that much more efficiently than a larger corporation. So we've been really fortunate that we can pivot, we can respond and even with those supply chain delays, we're able to plan ahead now and double down and get ready to go with a restock. So it's a big factor of planning ahead, forecasting and having a confidence in your customers that they're going to support you all the way through.

I love it. Noah, thank you for that and liard as well. Listen, I know we're giving you quite a bit information in a compressed amount of time part we're doing that because we know that there's so many people who need this knowledge. Some are new to it, some are experienced. So it's a broad range of knowledge. And so thank you for listening. I know it's quite a bit, but it's useful. If you get one or two bits of information today, we're going to be happy. Point two, remember WIX has a number of online courses and free resources. Liat referenced the blog. Soon my colleague Melissa is going to talk about the WIX community. There's a number of resources which I bet many of you didn't even know that you can get more information about all of this from wix. So definitely keep those things in mind as we go along. We know there's quite a bit of information, but if you just get one or two nuggets, one or two tips, that may be the turning point to help you sell more online this holiday season. And to repeat again, remember all this information. WIX has a lot of educational resources to help you and thank you all for listening and I'm definitely going to speak a little slower. So point number two, prepare fulfillment operations and staff. Listen Amanda, staffing can be a challenge for many businesses. Operations can be in challenges for many businesses. What are you doing Amanda, with that, especially with your staffing? How do you regulate that or what's your tip? And then Noah, yourself.

Absolutely. So for our business we are a hand poured item and and we pour them actually in batches of seven at a time. It's a labor of love. With that said, we can only pour so fast and product quality has to maintain at a very high standard. And so what we do is we do bring on additional seasonal stuff for the holiday season. Specifically we typically bring them on a little bit before we launch to help prepare. Because for us the most important thing is customer satisfaction. At the end of the day, no matter what you're doing, you want to make sure your customer is happy. And, and so for us, the faster a customer can receive the product in their hands, in their home, the faster they're going to use it and the faster they're going to reorder. And that's something that's really important for our product. I think it's just important to think about what you need as far as staffing to make sure that you can fulfill the orders for the demand that's going to come in. Another thing that I wanted just to quickly note, the good news of all of this is that they did a case study and they said 38 people, sorry, 38% of shoppers started shopping locally for businesses to survive. So I think that's an upward trend that is going to increase and we're going to see it really increase during the holidays, especially when the holidays start to arrive. And I think people have to be extra prepared with extra staffing. Just make sure you have what you need in place to make sure your customers are satisfied.

I love it. Amanda, I think one of the challenges you're going through, you're not hiring the right people. I think you haven't hired me. If I came, I would be the awarded the hand poured candle. Fastest award of the year. Dude, in your company, I would do like nine candles.

You let me know when you're ready. We will take you with open arms.

Noah, tell us about your operations and staffing. What can we learn from you and what you're doing?

So on our side, we're also a very handmade product. All of our knives are hand forged. We don't really have the opportunity to hire as quickly. It's about a one year apprenticeship process at the forge for us to bring people on. When our business first started, it was Alex, our head blacksmith and two other blacksmiths. That was it. And since then we've over doubled that and we're still growing more but here locally to be able to respond to the holiday and also just this spike in business because we essentially took what had been our rough holiday plan back in April. We implemented it because we had that spike in business that we hadn't predicted happen for a few more months now. We were able to respond really quickly. I called on some friends and said, hey, can you come by and help me pack out some orders? And it was really nice to be able to respond like that we scheduled more pickups. You've got to work with your local delivery service, whether it's UPS, FedEx, USPS, DHL, whoever you're working with. We worked for them to schedule a better pickup time to be able to get more orders done before they arrived and get those out the door. And then having. I really have to say that as a small business, having friends you can count on is you're not necessarily always going to be ready to say, let's hire a new full time employee. Sometimes you say, oh man, I need help today. Can you come over and help me out? And relying on people, that can be your network. So rely on the people around you. Because like Amanda was saying, people really do want to support local businesses. Whether it's your family and friends or whether it's your community that wants to come out and make sure that your business survives this pandemic and survives this tough year.

I love it. And know what? Now that we're BFFs, you call me anytime you need like a thousand knives boxed. The same competition. I told Amanda I'll come by and help you as well.

It's on.

You're going to be busy, Ramon.

Indeed I will be. That's all right. Anything for our amazing WIX community. Liat, I know you have a few key points about this aspect of order fulfillment operation and staffing. What can we learn from what you've seen in the WIX community?

Sure. So I think you guys kind of touched on it a bit, but definitely, definitely be super transparent, transparent to your customers about what fulfillment is going to look like. So I think putting up that communication on the website is key so people know to expect how long things are going to take, when they're going to get things. If you're seeing delays, which happens, I think every business who's used some kind of fulfillment or shipping solution has had those issues this year. So I think the best thing you can do is just reach out directly to your customers and make sure that they know that's happening. I think again here having multiple options is always best. So think about whatever shipping services you're using or fulfillment providers and then consider having a couple of other options in case something goes wrong. And I think we can kind of segue from here directly into the next tip, which is I think like get creative in how you're actually allowing customers to get that product. So I would say thinking about offering more delivery options versus just typical shipping if you can, as well as offering that curbside or in store pickup option. So I think some customers might be really happy to just come and pick up the goods. It saves them having to wait for things and also that uncertainty and it can take a lot of the load off of your business if you're not having to ship everything and you don't have to kind of overwhelm your shipping service with all of the delivery. So I think the other thing we've seen, and it's just something to think about, but we've definitely seen people get creative with their delivery services. So, you know, a lot of people offering crowd driving services don't have their usual customers. People aren't traveling as much, they're not going away for the holidays. So they're also looking for other ways to ride and make money.

So.

So you could consider hiring someone like that to help out with your local delivery needs. So creativity, I think is key and also kind of staggering your efforts. Right. So any kind of mass fulfillment just puts a lot of load on you and a lot of load on your fulfillment services. So don't wait to do all of your holiday season sales really late in the season. Try and get that going now and do them in drops along the way if possible.

That's powerful.

And Liat, the audience is booming with affirmation of what you're saying. And Amanda and Noah are saying, shout out to Vanester who says, hey, if you have delayed shipping, you can offer coupons. So I think that's really cool. And affirmation to be creative. And a shout out to Tracy who says, listen, why don't you put up a wish list? Wish list so friends and family, you know, they can see what you want and you encourage that whole community. People sometimes, like, say, in Amanda's case, Amanda, I personally am not a candle person, but my lady, she's a candle person. We have like a closet full of candles. So those are the ways that wish lists can work. Thank you, Liat, for that. Option number 4.3, maybe, Noah, I'll turn just to you and then I'll turn as well. But any thoughts you have, Noah, for this aspect of pickup options and delivery options that you're experiencing, actually it's sort

of jumping back to fulfillment. But it kind of fits in both. Just something that I have to get out there. And I have to say, because it came back to get me last year, never forget about your shipping supplies. You might be focused on your stock and your inventory, but this came to me last year. Cyber Monday. It's about one o' clock in the afternoon. We've been packing all weekend and we ran out of boxes. So always make sure you have your shipping supplies ready to go. Make sure you have your packing tape, your bubble wrap, your shipping labels. Think through those things because they'll sneak up on you sometimes when you get really, really busy in the holidays. As a business owner, even if you're just doing the fulfillment yourself, you tend to get in that sort of tunnel vision where you're looking at, how many products do I have? Make sure you think through everything you're going to need.

That's part I can see it being Friday night and Noah's like, packing up 500 knives, shiny, brand new knives from the factory. He's like, no, we have no more shipping labels. Amanda, thoughts on that? What can we learn from you, if anything, to add to that? If not, we'll go on. But anything you want to add to

that, it's really interesting. So for our company, delivery and pickup was never something that we had done pre Covid and obviously when the coronavirus had started, we decided to offer it. We also started doing free shipping and we do again, local delivery ourselves and any ways to save money. But I think what it comes down to is just that customers like choice and customers want choice. Especially nowadays, there's not as much choice and freedom for people. So I think anything you can do to make make it easier for your customer to get your product in their hands, the better people, again, just want to feel safe. So we started doing it and it's insane. As soon as we started offering the delivery and pickup option, our customer satisfaction went up, our orders increased again. The bottom line is just to make your customer happy and get the product in their hand. So definitely try and do it if you're able to do it.

Yeah, Amanda, you're so true. And I think all of us will agree. We'll turn to point four in a minute. But I think is that many smaller businesses, how do I compete against the big e commerce giants of the world, which many of us use and serve us. But I think part of the reason that they're successful is just to make it easy. The technology that's important. WIX does that very well. But as you said, Amanda and Noah, it's just being nice to people and I think it's a trust factor as well. But I could go on all day about that. So point four tip number four, get your payment solutions ready. Leanne, I know you have a few key points on this which are important. Share with us what this means, Lia, and why it's so important for you sure?

So definitely, if you're new and you're just getting started with a new business, you want to make sure that you've connected your payment provider, but also verified your account that you're completely set up and good to go. You don't want to run into any payment issues along the way or getting paid out along the way. So make sure that you do all of that ahead of time. But even if you already have a payment provider connected to your website, if you're thinking about adjusting the products that you're sending, you want to make sure that the payment provider that you're using allows you to sell those products and fully supports what you're doing. So just an example is something like cbd. A lot of times products that you don't necessarily think or even CBD related products might have that as an ingredient and kind of surprise you along the way. So be aware of what you're selling. And then of course, if you want to be selling something new, then just make sure you have the right payment provider connected that supports that. And then the final thing I would say with regard to payments is also really be on top of your refund requests from customers and chargebacks because if you're not handling refunds quickly enough, those can turn into chargebacks, which in return turn into issues with your payment provider. So you don't want to get any negative marks next to your name from your payment provider. You want to make sure that you're keeping that, you know, your connection with them really up and going and that your payments are open and always working on your website.

Absolutely. And Amanda, I know that you've said already, I'll just underline that before I turn to Noah here is that just have great customer service. The better customer service you have, the less refunds and et cetera. I know, Amanda, you've said that. Noah, I want to turn to you because I want to get to our live Q and A as soon as we can. Refunds. I think you've had some. You have experience or tips on that. What do you have to say about this aspect of refunds, Noah? What should we be aware of?

So we're very fortunate here that we've actually had an extremely low rate of refunds. We've very limited returns. And that comes back to customer service of being able to have a conversation. If someone gets a product they don't like, in our eyes, it's better to send them something different and swap it as opposed to a refund. But in the case of refunds, one Thing we've really seen uptick this year is shipping. We've had package theft, we've had missing packages and things like that where we still refund the customer and we'll fight it on our end to make sure we can deal with the shipper and find out what happened there and try to get a credit back for that product that we shipped. But owning up to that refund, because it's not necessarily something all companies do, if a package says it's delivered and the customer claims that they never got it, that comes back to a trust with the customer and understanding that maybe someone did grab it off their porch, maybe it didn't actually show up. There are inconsistencies happening with shipping right now. So owning up to that and offering them that refund or offering a replacement is a great way to really build a lasting bond with them. And then being quick to those refunds, it's a good, efficient way that they're going to feel confident that they can come back when things maybe get normal or when they get their next paycheck and they'll give you another shot. Because across all of our refunds, we've got an 85% where they come back and order a different product later on.

So no for sure.

And I'm not a pricing specialist.

No.

But my guess is, is that as small business owners, we can't afford to be cheap. So I would say build in the margin so you can offer the best customer service. Because in my humble opinion, which my wife says is wrong, most of the time, most people are good people. So most people are not going to try to cheat you. And, you know, A. No. I have a stock of knives that I'm just hiding from you, so that usually doesn't happen. Let's turn to number five, marketing efforts. Our final big tip before we turn to your live audience. Q and A, which I'm excited to get into. So keep your questions coming. I'll ask some of them here live and those we didn't get to. The WIX team is behind the scenes. They see what's going on and we will help answer your questions as best we can. I'll just start off real quick, personally, as a marketer. Those who want to see more about me, you can go to ramonray.com that's my Wix built site, ramonray.com but bottom line is, I think for me, content is a key part of that. Noah alluded to it and so I don't have a direct physical product to sell, but I found that Whether it's a service or product. Education, education, education. Building the trust is so important. Then you can nurture people to a sale. So that's my one tip I'll give. I want to leave the rest of the time for Amanda to talk about some of the sales channels you're using, Amanda, that you can promote. I know there's Facebook and Instagram and more briefly recap for us what you're doing for marketing efforts, Amanda.

Absolutely. So currently we actually started advertising for the first time on Facebook and Instagram when Covid started. So for us, again, we were a little scared of what was gonna happen and how Covid was gonna affect our business. So we decided to start advertising. And I have to say, it really got us through and if any, actually our sales increased during COVID which is incredible. Again, we advertise both on Facebook and Instagram. It's an integral part of our business and it's a way to reach new audiences that we wouldn't reach with traditional media, especially because people are in their homes a lot more often. And actually during March to May, we did see a 23 to 1 return on ad spend on our advertising, which was huge. So we were very, very excited about that. Again, I think it's looking at opportunities as opposed to Covid being maybe a negative thing. What are some opportunities that it can pose for your business? And how are there different ways you can interact or reach your customers? Another thing that we've been using that has been really great is actually the Smile IO app. It's available through wix and it's a rewards program for your customers. And it's been amazing. We've only been using it for about two weeks now, but we've already seen the benefits of having it. You're able to set specific limits and ways for your shoppers to earn points that they can later redeem for different rewards that you set and that you control. And you can also see the back end analytics. So how many customers are collecting points, how many are using the program? It's fully customizable and yeah, it's been amazing. So it's again, fully compatible with wix. And so far our customers have been loving it. And it really has increased again, the conversion rate for our website. So that's another thing that you can do that's outside of the traditional advertising.

I like that.

What I'm hearing, Amanda and Noah and Leah, this is about incentivization.

You know, you have in a physical store the little clips you get, what I'm hearing. So Amanda If I buy 17 candles from you, I may get an email that says, ramon, if you buy 49 more, you'll get one free. Something kind of like that maybe.

Absolutely. You bet. You get so many candle points for every dollar you spend. So buy those candles and collect those points.

Then I'll head over to Noah site

and buy some knives.

This has been great.

I think we will move on here.

I think.

Yeah. Let's church to the live audience.

Q and A.

And again, if you have questions for us, send in your questions. The hardest questions go to Liat. For sure, we'll do that. We'll start off with a few questions. Amanda, I'm going to ask you first. We had a question come in. What is the best suggestion, according to your experience, to convert visitors and to real customers? Because, Amanda, as you know, people can browse your site all day, but if

they don't click that buy button, it doesn't help.

So what's one or two tips to convert the browser into buyers?

Absolutely.

So I think the most important thing is to know your customer and know who they are and explain your value proposition to them very clearly and very simply on your landing page. So when they come to your home site, they know exactly who you are, what your values are and they know if they want to do business with you after that. I think it comes down to having incredible customer service. Again, we talked a lot about that today. But again, today, in retail, shoppers long remember their service and the experience rather than the price. So by delivering superior customer service, retailers can provide a memorable experience that sometimes lasts a lifetime. And sometimes it might be the quickest route to a new customer. But it's also the ultimate path that secures a loyal customer as well. And they'll keep coming back.

I love that. And Noah, I know you're the king of automation. I want to hear about that in a minute. But a few shout outs from some things that are coming in here, shout out to Lynn, who mentioned, hey, many big businesses, they started out small. So, you know, in a year from now, Liat, you may not be able to talk to Noah or Amanda. You may have to go through their executive assistant. Liat will have to be on hold. Can I please talk to Amanda?

So thank you.

Wait on that call all day long.

Indeed. So thank you, Lynn, for that. That's a great point. And also I want to touch on just the point to mention email marketing. That's an important part. I know of my marketing as well. Social media is great, but email rocks as well. So thank You, Priya and many others who are sending in those comments and thoughts. We really appreciate that. Keep the questions coming in. So Noah Automations, what does that mean? How does it work? I know it's pretty powerful. Touch on one or two tips that we can learn from you about marketing automation.

Absolutely. So there's a lot of different levels of automation through the WIX site that exist. There's the automated ad system which is fantastic for marketing and reaching new customers. But on the email side of things, just because that's what you just mentioned and that's really, really beneficial for that conversion rate, the automations can be everything on our site. It is abandoned carts, it's people that drop something in the shopping cart. We've got a pop up that says hey, leave us your email, get a coupon, things like that, stay in touch, wait for the restock, that's collecting contacts and then the automations will run through and follow up with them. And then on top of that, every single one of our customers, every single one of our new email address that we acquire while we're in a wait list period, we're using those with our automations to send them coupons, to send them exclusive offers, to get in touch with them and stay connected. And we've got a fantastic over 25% return customer rate because of that email collection. And the automations, every single time someone checks out from us they're going to be getting an email, they're going to be getting multiple emails actually they're going to be getting their order confirmation, they're getting the tracking number we fulfill pretty much in a day luckily. But then about a week, week and a half later they're also going to be getting an email saying hey, we're hopefully loving your light your knife. Reach out to us if you have any questions, have a chat with us, nerd out about blades with us. But also here's a coupon, here's a reorder coupon to come back, come through, check out our new products and then three or four months down the road we're going to send them another email that says hey, how's it going? Hope you're still loving your knife. Here's that coupon again. Look at these three new knives that we just brought in or check out these new accessories and that brings people back more often than not and it's a no brainer. I am not sitting here sending out those emails to two or three thousand people every time. It's the system automation doing that because it's already pre Programmed. And on the customer service side, the automations on the chat function are also really beneficial. You can set it up so I don't have to be in my computer 24 7, which sometimes happens anyway. They'll get a message that says, hey, thanks for reaching out to us. Leave your email, we'll get back to you tomorrow. We're so happy. We look forward to helping you. And that sort of automation builds that with a customer. So even if they don't get that immediate response, they still know that someone's going to get back to them. And usually it's the owner, which also helps them connect to the brand.

Oh, I gotta go. No, doesn't that happen? People get distracted?

Absolutely.

They forget where they're at. So my point is absolutely they run away.

And going back to this, what was I doing?

This stopping cart abandonment. I just want to stress that this is what happens to Amanda Noah and thousands and thousands of you people are scrolling through baby cried, scrolling through dog barked scrolling. You get my point. So this kind of ninja tips help you increase the sales. This is what Leah and her team wake up in the morning. This is all they think about. How can we help our customers sell more? I love this. Keep sending in your questions and questions. Leah, let me pause. Leah, let me pause a minute. Anything you want to add to these points or do you want to give a ninja another ninja tip for us as we're going through these questions?

Yeah, so just I would say do the marketing prep early. So stuff that you want to see helping you, stuff like SEO that takes time to kick in. So if you need to update your SEO or you added new products, make sure that you've done that stuff in advance. Add as much information as possible onto your website about shipping, about delivery, about refunds. That's going to save you time on the customer service because people are getting the information in advance. And it's also going to reduce frustration because people understand what to expect and are aligned with what you're doing. So those would be my two quick sense.

I love it. That's powerful. Noah, one more thing I want to turn to you and then Amanda, same question right now, of course, as we do this live, this is September, so it's a bit later in the holiday season. But speaking about, and I know you talked about, you plan six or so months early. Amanda Noah, first you touch on that. Is there any too early for planning for the holiday season? And let me add, holiday, you know, is a big word. It doesn't just have to be the fall and typical western or eastern, whatever it is, holidays. But it could be other holidays, Valentine's Day. So speaking in the generic sense of holiday, Noah, first, how early should you plan? Is that like the week before or do you have to start doing that the month before? How does that work for you? And then Amanda.

So a lot of planning obviously is always going to come from historical data. I started structuring what was going to happen this holiday season, last holiday season. You see what's happening, you see the trends and take notes. As you're running a business, you can only save so much in your head. You can probably see the post it notes on my desk here. I'm always writing down when a customer asks about something or when something comes up last year and they say, oh, you know, how long does it take to get it before Christmas? I take a note of that. So then this year I can do the same thing and I can put that out in advance. When it comes to planning, I already integrated a lot of my holiday. Well, our standard operating procedure for holidays, when this first started, when we had that boom of orders out of nowhere, we had some of our holiday plan done of who was going to come in and help, what our orders were going to be, how we were going to order our supplies in time. And we integrated that in April. So I would say that you should have an idea in the back of your head building every single day you go to the office, every single day that you're doing business, you should think about when those busy days come, how you're going to respond. But for specific holiday sales and planning, I would say three months. You need the time to get your SEO done. You need the time to plan your ads. We use later as a service for scheduling our social media posts so we're able to plan, okay, well, we need three photo shoots. We need to cook a turkey. Definitely got to slice that turkey. When are we going to do that? When are we going to edit it? When are we going to get it in our emails? And you need to give yourself wiggle room because you have to do day to day business to stay in business. But you also have to set a set of time and dig away at it and get into that holiday mindset early. We are already pretty much structured on this side of what we're doing, when our sales are happening, what our email plan is. You can schedule your emails months in advance with wix so we're preset and ready to go.

I love it. And I want to say, for sake of time, Amanda, I Want to move on and ask Leot a question about dropshipping? I know we get that quite a bit from quite a bit from WIX users. And I wanted then to save time for Melissa to talk about the winners of the Ascend contest. I want to give her plenty of time to share about the community as well. And I know we have about five, six minutes left. So, Leah, can you just briefly underline for us this aspect of dropshipping? How does that work in high level and what's so important about it?

Sure. So when you use drop shipping, essentially you're connecting with the supplier who's also going to ship that product on your your behalf. So it takes care of some of that hassle for you. In terms of wix, we integrate with a bunch of different dropshipping marketplaces so you can go and look for additional products that you want to sell on your website. Sometimes people use it to test new products that you're not ready to commit to in terms of building out that full inventory or supply chain. Sometimes we see businesses using it just to add some variations to their product line or to fill in the gaps between. You know, that they're waiting for inventory to come in. Another way of doing it is doing print on demand. So there you're just kind of taking the basic products, whether that's clothing and apparel or accessories, things like iPhone cases and bags, and then printing your brand on there or your art on there, whatever it is. So that's also another way of using a dropshipping service. So I'm sure somebody's throwing the information, the links there in the chat. You can go learn more about how to do that with wix.

So, Liette, I could have a whole

smart hustle empire of clothing, of hats, of watches, of shoes, of socks, of T shirts. Is that what you're saying?

You can have Ramon Ray T shirts and apps and iPhone cases. You can have the whole suite.

All right, this is great, but we

have a few more minutes and I'll summarize and bring everybody on again in a minute. But I think what I'd like to do, Liat, Amanda and Noah, is bring on our colleague Melissa just to share a bit. Listen, the Wits community is so active and important and amazing, and I know we have the winners of Ascend and much more. So, Melissa, if you're ready, I'd love to bring you on now to talk to us for a few minutes.

Then when you're done, I'll come back

and we'll close out. But listen, it's Been great. So stay tuned. We have a few more things to go. Melissa, the floor is yours.

Hi everyone.

Thank you so much for having me on. I'm Melissa. As Ramon said, I'm head of community here for WIX E Commerce. And before we get to the winners because I know that's what you're waiting for, I just wanted to invite you all to our new form community forum as well as our Facebook group. Come connect with others, share tips. Merchants just like you are waiting for you to connect with you. And I'm actually going to show you. So let's take a look. I'll show you the form. Here we are.

And this is exciting, Melissa. I mean listen, just to give you time to scroll there, I think people have often asked how do I find out more information about this, what you're about to show us? This is how you do at least one of the places.

Please continue.

For sure.

So this is our form. If you have any future requests, you have any questions you want to share, this, you know, amazing tip that you just, you know, came about, that's the place. Please go and share. And I promise you we're surrounded by good people. Amanda is definitely one of them, Noah is another and they would be happy to connect with you. So please pop on the forum there. We also have our Facebook group which is the WIX stores E commerce insiders. So if your home faces more Facebook, that's your place. Same concept. It's filled chock full with people just like yourself discussing various topics on E commerce and their small businesses. Definitely, definitely jump on in there. I'll be there. I'll be waiting for you as well. So I hope to see you soon. But we're gonna go back and I'm going to announce the winners. I know that's really why you're listening to me.

No, we want to hear about the community too. And Melissa, as we have people's attention, I just want to let people know as well that we have the resources section and the holiday hub. It's evolving with a lot more resources so people can go to Wix.com ecommerce holiday season. But all that we'll put in there and I'm sure your team is doing it. But Melissa, please continue.

For sure. Honestly, the holiday hub, I highly recommend it. It's the team did an amazing job and it's really jam packed with awesome tips. I learned tons of things just by going on it. So definitely check it out. We're gonna get to the winners now. I know that's what you're waiting for. But first off, I want to give a shout out to Holly. She gave a fantastic tip that I think that I'm gonna take. It's to have shopping nights on Zoom with other merchants. You all jump in a Zoom. You know, you offer one of your products either for free or a discount. You know, bring on the wine chat for about 30 minutes. And that sounds like paradise to me. So, you know, I'm definitely going to take that tip myself. So if anybody wants to participate in a WIX community Zoom night shopping night, you're invited. I'll send you the invite. So, drum roll.

Drumroll.

All right, so 10 people. The first one is Christine Liu. Second one. Way to go, Christine. Second one is Roxanne Presley. Third is Holly Dibella McCarthy. Fourth is Bailey French. Fifth is Kristen Allen. Fifth. Sixth, sorry, is Simon Selman. Then we have Julia Gibson, Alicia Harmon. Bet, Nestor Williams and Maggie Chambers. So you guys won. And we will be in touch with you to get you guys sorted and get you that Ascend package it. We're so happy that you, you know, participated and send all those great tips. We'll definitely be, you know, I'm sure so many merchants will be benefiting from those and we'll also be sharing them with our community as well because they're super insightful. I just want to thank you from my end for letting me pop in this awesome webinar. I'm going to hand it back over to Ramon and guys. You guys are all amazing and I really hope to see you all soon.

Indeed.

Melissa, thank you so much. I think it's very important and powerful and really, this is a wrap. So I just want to thank for sure, Amanda Cole.

And Amanda, what's the name of your company again?

Cole and Canary.

I got the Cole. I didn't want to end it wrong.

Coal and Canary. Cole and Canary. Check out Amanda Noah.

Forge to table.

Yes, Forge to table. Check us out on Facebook too.

Forge to table. And Liat's that company with that company, wix. Yes, definitely. Check out Liat WIX E Commerce Holiday Hub. Check that out. The WIX E Commerce School, huge resource of information. And the WIX E Commerce blog. And my name is Ramon Ray and you can find me@ramonray.com. don't forget to send those Facebook posts or your tips and tag me. I'm going to send three people, three gift sets from Amanda, Noah and myself. And on behalf of wix, thank you for joining us and allowing us to serve you. We support small business. And again, on behalf of WIX and the whole team here. Thank you so very much.