It was the best conference I’ve ever been to.

Magento IMAGINE is a 3-day conference for all the ecommerce nerds who use Magento as their website/shopping cart platform. As their second year running, they had to move to Las Vegas to accommodate the growth. They’re going to have to go bigger still, because admission was sold out months in advance.

Cabana Session

The IMAGINE attendees pretty much took over the entire M Resort, located way way off the strip. It was a beautiful hotel and Magento hosted meals and activities throughout the conference. We snuck out for one night and treated ourselves to an amazing sushi meal at NOBU in the Hardrock. After a $50 return cab ride that almost resulted in a head on collision, we stayed at the M for the remainder of our trip.

The meat of the conference spanned 2 days where attendees broke out into different tracks for sessions on either business or development related topics. I attended the “business” track which covered everything from better merchandising, increasing conversion rates, to better social media marketing. You can read all my notes here. It was such a great learning experience. So many take aways and so much inspiration. When I had to narrow it all down though, this is what I decided I was going to focus on from all I learned at Magento IMAGINE.

MAGENTO IMAGINE WISH LIST

More targeted email communication
- abandoned cart emails (incentives to return, ask for feedback)
- review follow up
- year inactivity email
- unopened/remarketing email
- boot care tips
- more direct way to ask for newsletter sign-up

Better merchandising that increases confidence and experience
- category pages, family landing pages
- “7th” slot graphics
- navigation to get to detailed family/product launch pages
- SEO enriched

More time for Google Analytics
- integrate social
- know the metrics – page views, visits, mobile vs. traditional
- best converting pages/products
- use this data to build marketing strategies around increasing conversion

Better strategy for delivering VALUE to our customer
- figure out why our customer loves Danner/LaCrosse
- deliver content in an easy way that surprises and/or delights customer
- what does the customer need to increase confidence and experience in order to convert

This is a boring post even if you’re a Magento nerd.

I wanted a place for these notes to live, so here is a detailed dump of my thoughts and ideas from the Magento IMAGINE 2012 conference.

Opening Act - Deering Banjo, Magento Customer

DOUBLING YOUR REVENUE IN 6 MONTHS

This session was all about increasing conversion rates. I loved it because they suggested so many simple ideas that we have completely forgotten about or totally overlooked.

Modal Pop-Ups for further call-to-action (only if we can do them in a not-so-annoying way)
Pop-Ups requesting visitors to sign-up for In the Details
- could these be targeted for certain visitor sessions? (return visitors, Facebook ad traffic, etc)
Pop-Up at end of checkout requesting Danner/LaCrosse customers to sign up for the Breakroom

Impulse Purchases at Chekout
- socks, laces, boot care (simple check to add to cart – don’t take them away from the checkout screen)

Email Marketing
Resending (and repurposing) content to non-openers
- a simple change in the subject line can get people who previously didn’t open, to open
- especially effective during the Holidays (shipping cut-offs and reminders)
Follow Up Purchase Email
- Review request emails – one example showed a 17% increase in conversion rate, 7% increase in the number of reviews
- Bootcare Tips email – opportunity to add value to customer experience, opportunity to sell accessories

SEO
- work on family specific landing pages
- build these SEO pages into SEM campaigns

WEB MERCHANDISING – WE ARE MERCHANTS, AREN’T WE?

This was probably one of our favorite sessions because we are big fans of Warby Parker (one of the panel speakers). The session started off with a simple quote from Bernadine Wu, “It’s just shopping.” She’s so right. We sometimes get so tangled into the technology and latest designs that we forget the real purpose behind our website – to allow customers to buy our product. This session helped me put the perspective back on the customer’s shopping experience.

Navigation Changes
The customer has been trained how to shop online. Basic navigation is a no brainer.
- change navigation into a guided tool (boot finder)
- use navigation to help romance the product

Personalization
Warby Parker is “focusing on increased confidence and experience”.
- site is heavy image based with tools that build confidence in product and how the consumer uses it
- use real people to tell the story
- add sharing functionality to confirmation page

Tools to help
- kiss metrics, analytics, focus groups -> data to prioritize
- list track, monetate, Predictive Intent (Magento plug-ins)

Standing Room Only

OMNI CHANNEL COMMERCE

From social to mobile, to brick and mortar and everywhere in-between, today’s customer interacts with your brand on many different levels. Omni-channel commerce is all bout reaching and captivating your customers anywhere. Multi-channel shoppers spend 3 times as much, so it’s important that they have a unified experience across all channels. Each channel should be treated as a place to introduce and reinforce brand values.

Category Landing Pages
- give identity and educate on breadth of assortment

CONVERSION OPTIMIZATION
I will be the first to admit that I need to up my analytics game. This session was a bit of an eye opener because it really showed some great examples on how reading and analyzing data can seriously impact your conversion rates. It also re-iterated the importance and benefits of A/B testing, another field where I sorely lack experience.

Next step/Action items:
- check out browse use and conversion rates
- where to start with A/B testing?
- highest bounce rate pages (why? how can we improve the experience?)
- checkout
- email sign-ups
- cart
- abandoned cart promotion – “what did we do wrong?”
- use feedback to make checkout/cart better

Highlight of the trip? Meeting the man, Roy Rubin!

UNLOCKING MAGENTO ENTERPRISE POWER
We need to upgrade our version of Magento! Some of the features I was most excited to hear about from Magento Enterprise were the customer segmentation functionality and and cross sell merchandising.

Customer Segmentation:
- group by product, category purchases
- send out targeted promotions
- export segments to mail chimp or build out emails in Magento

25% of abandoned carts need a single nudge to get them to pull the trigger and buy the product.
- We need to be emailing these customers!
SOCIAL MEDIA – MONEY MAKER OR BANK BREAKER?
This was the session that brought everything together for me. Maybe it was because it was our last one before the end of the conference, but this was the moment where I decided I really wanted to make the customer experience number one. I mean, I’m not just saying that. I really really want to start adding value to the lives of our consumers. I think the inspiration struck at this moment because the panelist at this session reminded me of how intimately we are connected to our customers now with the age of social media.

Remember, you’re in your customer’s living room.
- don’t waste people’s time
- surprise and delight your fans

Figure out why our customer loves us and give them that content.

Yes!

My grandparents gave me my first pair of skis for Christmas at age four.  I don’t really remember it, but my family tells me that I tried to ski down the tiny hill in front of my grandparent’s house that same night.  I do remember my K2 Mickey Mouse skis though.  Those came a few years later, once I had graduated from Trollhaugen’s bunny hill.

It wasn’t until I moved to the mountains that I switched from skiing to snowboarding.  Skiing is hard and it’s even harder when trees and deep snow are involved.  That’s why I decided after a 10 year hiatus from skiing, that I would rent a pair and take my two planks to the pristinely groomed runs of Sun Valley.

I had so much fun that I even convinced my friend, Emily, to join.

Ski reviews to come soon…

Clymb founders, Kelly and Cec, kick off the night with a toast to all those who have helped them grow over the last couple of years.

Live music from All the Apparatus.  So many instruments happening at the same time!   That guy on the right played the keytar and trumpet at the same time.  My mind was blown.

The open bar served vodka grapefruit slushies and ginger bourbons.

Confession: I really wanted to find a reason to take a work trip to the mountain. After the pre-line success of our new women’s LaCrosse rubber boots, I thought it might be good to do a little market research in a setting where said women might wear said boots.

I checked ticket prices at all the Mt. Hood resorts and stumbled across Tuesday Night, Ladies Night at Ski Bowl.  Perfect, all ladies event to see what women wear up to the mountain.  $17 lift tickets from 3pm to close sounded like a reasonable expense.  So, I made it official and set up a Microsoft Calendar Event and invited a few key ladies from the office.

Ladies Night turned out to be even better than expected. We arrived around 2:30pm and decided to get warmed up before our first run.  Luckily for us, Bud Light Joey was on the scene and he promptly bought us a pitcher of Bud Light to help rep the lighter side of the King of Beers.

The snow was the deepest it’d been all season.  Turbo and the girls rocked it for the minimal time they’d had on the mountain that season. If the snow and the beer wasn’t enough to win you over, Betty Rides sponsored a raffle at the end of the night and every girl in the place walked away with a prize.  And while we never made it to the Warming Hut and we only saw 4 other women wearing Keens and Danskos, I’d still consider it a success.

Ladies Night at Ski Bowl is probably the best deal on Mt. Hood.  $17 lift tickets, minimal people, free Bud Light, ladies dance tailored music on the juke box, free raffle… where will you be next Tuesday?