Increasing Ecommerce Sales & Social Commerce Strategies with Liz Kressel – Podcast Transcript

Speakers:

Lexie Smith, Liz Kressel

Lexie Smith 

So I met Liz through a connection platform called orbit. It’s really cool. And it’s utilized by the dreamers and doers community. And during our conversation, Liz brought up quite a few concepts that made my podcast ears go Ding, ding, ding I need to have her on. So Liz, welcome to the show. Before we dive in, I’ll alter the work stuff. Where is home base? And what do you like to do outside of work for fun?

 

Liz Kressel 

Oh, sure. So I’m in New York. And so long island now I was in the city for 20 years. And I was one of those people who you heard me the mass exodus during the pandemic. But yeah, so enjoying the grass and trees and whatnot. But in terms of what I’d love to do for fun, I’m a huge flea market attic. I love to you know, sift through all sorts of markets and vintage, etc. So that’s sort of my go to fun thing to do.

 

Lexie Smith 

Awesome. You know, I don’t know if you’ll ever find yourself in Ventura, California, because that would be random. But if you do, actually Ventura has a huge, like vintage and thrift seen, like, huge, like big, huge flea market. It’s a big thing here. So just saying if you’re ever Yeah, I might have to cater to that. Okay, awesome. So tell everyone high level, what is it that you do? What is your company?

 

Liz Kressel 

Sure. So my company is called lizard strategy. And we are an E commerce and live shopping agency. So we specialize in increasing sales through reducing like all the friction on your site. You know, making sure the customer has a frictionless journey and enhancing that experience. So, you know, live shopping is the new format. It’s very interactive and engaging. So that’s really where we’re focusing efforts today,

 

Lexie Smith 

which we will dive all in but tell me how the heck did you land on such a cool and unique offering? So talk me through what came before today?

 

Liz Kressel 

Sure. So basically, I’ve been in the E commerce space for a little over 20 years and started out with continent commerce integration worked, worked in like all the big media companies and you know, kind of moved up through working on a lot of different like cable television, etc. And I wound up thinking of a concept that had to do actually with collectibles. So this is you can see where the flea market is tying in and I came up with a content and commerce offering where you would sell collectibles but also look at content regarding those collectibles so for Example, if it were dinosaur week, which we would have on the site, it might be people who collect fossils, people who collect anything with dinosaurs on them, people who collect dinosaur action figures, and there’s a whole, like underground community of people who do dinosaur diorama is that is amazing. And someday I will do a documentary on it. But, you know, so we did this offering. And so I started in the live shopping space early, so not quite as early as the QVC HSN, you know, which are back in the 80s. But, you know, look towards TV and Internet combined, in real time. So started there, continued along the lines of E commerce, so about almost 10 years now started my own agency after working for a lot of the big media players. And, you know, now work on everything from, you know, fortune 500 down to startups, and, you know, it’s ecommerce, so it’s agnostic, but a lot of our companies are, you know, retail, health and beauty. You know, DTC brands, etc. So, now, where the marketplace is because people are looking for new engaging experiences, particularly when you think of millennials and Gen Z, and it came back around. So we started to look at the technology and say, you know, it’s time to really start to offer the live shopping offering, especially since I’ve been in the space and been doing it on the side, but we decided to really launch it for all of our clients, as opposed to just a select few.

 

Lexie Smith 

So you have my wheels turning, and I was thinking with collectibles. It’s like, what did I feel like, I tried to be a collector of multiple things as a child, the one thing I was successful at, and I’m forgetting about now I have a daughter, so this is perfect. And I feel like I’m gonna have to ask my mom to bring this down. Next time she visits, I collected fairy statues, like little ones that you could put on the shelf. And big ones, I was obsessed with berries, like they were real. In my book, I probably have like 40 many very statues. So I

 

Liz Kressel 

see, we could have done you as a feature we would do all these feature weeks. And, you know, the average collector actually has three or more collections. And a lot of people tell me, they’re not collectors, but it would come out and the collections are very disparate. So just to give you an example of what I collect, I have like 1930s American Furniture like depression era furniture. I have Tonka Trucks. Yeah, but I like again, 30s and 40s, like old Tonka Trucks with a little bit of rust. I don’t want them pristine political buttons, and then I also have stone eggs, like those are just like, I have more but like

 

Lexie Smith 

those are just a few. That’s great. No, I’m I also had Beanie Babies. I still have those. I feel like I was convinced one of those people that was convinced they were gonna make me a lot of money one day, I still haven’t. But you know, anyways, I still have a box of them saved at my parents house. So

 

 

you’re good for baby. You know what I when I ever I give a baby gifts. I like buy them in flea markets now and make sure like they’re clean and I put them on as baby gifts as like the decor at the top. That is brilliant.

 

Lexie Smith 

All right, stealing that. Thank you very much. Okay, so today we’re going to be talking digital and money and specifically, how to make more money digitally. As a DTC brand. The first aspect I want to dive into is live shopping and social commerce. First, can you explain to everyone what the heck we’re talking about when we say live shopping and social commerce? And how can that be an effective strategy to increase sales?

 

Liz Kressel 

Sure, so let’s talk about social commerce first. So social commerce is really any commerce transaction that happens on your social channels. So your Instagram, it was like Facebook, right? Pinterest, anything that you could purchase, but it wasn’t live. So it was you’d see an ad, or it would be in your stream? Or, you know, think on Instagram where things are, you know, highlighted with the dot, you know, oh, that particular item, that outfit that’s laying there, I could purchase and you’re taken to a cart, although it’s not truly a cart, because really, you have you get redirected to the site before you’re actually in the cart. So that’s what social commerce was. Several of the platforms attempted to launch their own live shopping, so Facebook had tick tock hat, but the thing is, it’s not native to these apps, really, you know, these apps were all about, you know, people connecting and finding and you know, discoverability, etc. So it wasn’t natural and you know, Facebook pulled back but they’re still they’re still doing it on Instagram. And then tick tock is now kind of figuring out what they want to do before they expand more into the US right, but they were having some problems in Europe, not related to the platform, but more just trying to figure out how to expand. That said, so that’s the social commerce aspect. So there was there was an overlay where this live experience was supposed to happen with live shopping is supposed to be, it’s closer to the QVC model, right? So let’s think about QVC HSN, which started back in 1986. And basically, it was someone saying, okay, it was a commerce on commerce overlay. So basically, your content that you’re seeing is all about a product. And all of the lower third are on the screen, all the graphics were all on commerce. So they basically be saying, Oh, we have the soda can and we’re selling the soda can and three payments of 999. And, you know, it sounds ancient today, but you know, the call to action was to a phone number. Right? You know, and that’s, that’s where they started. So it was live, because people could see in real time, they had inventory, and it was ticking down. What QVC and HSN didn’t have was the community piece. So live shopping today, combined content, commerce, and community, but all at the same time. So this demand has been there for a long time, we know we see something on television, we see something, you know, as we’re scrolling on Instagram, and we’re like, Oh, my God, I want that, etc. And so there’s this desire to purchase, but the technology didn’t make it frictionless for the customer. Until very recently, like in the last few years. So this is where live shopping is going. So it’s this wonderful blend what I call the three C’s, the content, commerce and community, all happening at the same time. So your content is real, true content. So in this case, we’re talking about maybe something themed like, you know, five essentials for fall, it’s real content. Bigcommerce, like the overlay, you know, at the bottom of the screen, or, you know, on the side will be true commerce. So like here, buy this product, this is what I’m selling, I’m selling the soda, okay, and there’s several soda cans and different colors, and you can buy those and add to your cart. And then the community is actually driving in live. So they are able to say, oh my god, I bought that, you know, what does this flavor passion for? Right? I bought passion fruit, I love passion fruit, that’s amazing. And other people like, Oh, I haven’t tried it yet. So the community actually helps with the sale, and a lot of ways. But what’s really wonderful here is everything is all in the same frame where social commerce was, it wasn’t in the same frame. Now we’re talking all of these components are all in the same frame, you do not have to leave the screen in order to make a purchase.

 

Lexie Smith 

So for everyone who’s going, ooh, I want to do that either for a client or themselves, what are some of the platforms or technologies that they should start looking into that support? This Triple C?

 

Liz Kressel 

Right. So I am a big fan. You know, I’m a huge advocate of the third party platform, so not on the social commerce to start. And there’s a number of reasons for that. Number one, you know, you don’t truly own your content when it’s on these other platforms, including your data. So you know, first party data is becoming so much more important, particularly as you know, cookies might go away, etc. And so we need to think about how do we gather that first party data, if you launch it from your own site, which these third party platforms allow you to do? You own that data, you own that content, and 70% of the purchases happen post event. So you’re going to want to be able to have that replay, clip it down, reuse it on social, like the wonderful thing about it is because you’ve done a content theme this lives on. So, you know, you have to think about it is like what is that content? And how do we leverage that content beyond this initial event? So you know, I like brands, like you know, firework and boozer stage 10 There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of great brands out there right now, you know, a lot of people are starting to enter the space. And you can use these with social so I’m not saying ignore social, what I’m saying is simulcast to social, from these platforms, so you can still reach your Instagram audience, but you own the data?

 

Lexie Smith 

Well, that would be kind of my follow up question, right? From the consumer standpoint, how are they discovering this event on third party tools? Is it the brand itself has to advertise it and that’s how they find it? Or is there any, like natural way that they’re coming across this content?

 

Liz Kressel 

So it’s like anything else? It’s it’s advertising, it’s like, you know, you’re gonna do all the traditional channels, you’re gonna do advertising you’re gonna, you know, promote it on all your social channels. Prior to that you’re gonna hit up your email list, etc. You know, SEO is always your friend. You know, when you promote these events, have you promote it on the site and make sure but but you have to do it all the traditional ways. It’s not if you build it, they will come. And so I mean, there are there More and more places that are starting to say, Oh, hey, we have some events coming up, particularly if you’re using some of the platforms, and you do, you know, if you’re a bigger brand and doing a partnership, but if you’re a smaller brand, you know, the one thing that people get caught up on is the number of people who are attending your event. That is not so like, because I know you’re asking that question people like, Well, how do I make sure there’s more than 30 people there? Right? That’s fine. If 30 People are there, because everyone’s telling you that they are already interested in your product, these are hot leads for you. hot leads. And so even if you do a poorly executed program, like most people are seeing 10x over what they do on their website, or doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. So even if you had 30 people, they would be performing better than what they would do on their website.

 

Lexie Smith 

Correct me if I’m wrong. But to overly simplify, it sounds just like you’re hosting any like you would host any other event. Even if it was a zoom event, I have to promote that event. In order for people to know it exists, right? On zoom, it would be on one of these third party platforms. But if this is a new concept, for some it sounds pretty similar, at least from the marketing standpoint, unless I’m wrong.

 

Liz Kressel 

No, the marketing standard is exactly the same. It’s how it’s how you would do anything else. But I think where people get tripped up is, you know, what a lot of people don’t attempt, but the conversion rates are so high, like really well, executed programs can see up to like 30% conversion. Yes. So it’s really important, like, you know, I want to push on the content piece, people get tripped up on live shopping, because they think it’s all about the commerce, and certainly coming out of China. So you know, this evolved from China. And you’re seeing a lot of, you know, heavy, heavy, aggressive sales on the commerce, but you have to remember, American audiences group grew up on HSN and QVC. Like they expect a different format, it is not going to follow the Chinese format. Exactly. So content is much more important to us. And again, going back to like the millennial, and Gen Z’s experiential is a big thing, there has to be an added value for someone to show up, you can’t just be Hawking your products. If you’re Hawking your products, you’re not going to see the returns that sorry, the the return on investment that you’d

 

Lexie Smith 

like to go, what kind of company would What Kind Of Products Do you think do? Well? is it usually a certain price point? Is it you know, any product at all? Do you see any trends there and the types of companies who should consider maybe enacting the strategy?

 

Liz Kressel 

So it works for both products and services? You know, if you think what you have to think about? Can you inform? Can you educate? Can you entertain? So if you think, you know, health and beauty tutorials, natural, right? But if you’re a service based business, what if you’re like, an interior decorator? What if you, you know, working construction, and you build new patios, like showing like DIY type of stuff, or before and after, those are wonderful things to get people to see like your skill set, and how you work, etc. You know, I always think of the interior designer, like how to make a small space look bigger with pillows, you know, that’s a great one, people will show up for that. And then you can sell your services and packages, it doesn’t have to be product base. And when I say the entertain, so again, you have to think of a theme. So I mean, first, what you’re going to want to start with is, well, what merchandise what type of merchandise do we want to move? Right? It may be maybe you have a host of like, a low margin item that you haven’t been able to move, but you can pair it nicely with a higher margin item. You know, are there themes you can create around that? Does it add value to your consumer, right? Because yes, we can do Okay, our new arrivals, but that like you can do that in emails, the live experience is really to show particularly like, you know, products where you maybe it doesn’t do as well, you know, on a flat page. And so recently, I talked about this in another video that I had done, and I was talking about like, well say you’re a couch, and you want to sell a couch online. How do you do that? Because you just see it in a flat way. I know how I know what the size is. But maybe it doesn’t tell me things like how firm it is. Maybe it doesn’t tell me how stain resistant it is and showing videos of how that might work or how it opens out and how it’s convenient and super easy. That’s something that you wouldn’t get from a flat product page. So I think particularly products that you know, require a little more of an explanation, that it’s a great format for it.

 

Lexie Smith 

Yeah, you have my you opened my mind to the concept of services too, because I don’t I didn’t intuitively think of that for this, this type of strategy but to your point You know, if you are a makeup artist, that’s a service you’re doing rather than just selling the products. I mean, hello tutorials like people are going to show up to that they’re going to see you and your zone of genius. And that’s just such a great organic, useful, helpful, informative, fun way different way right to market, market your services. Hey guys, it’s Lexie here. If you enjoy this show, then I’m guessing you’re someone who loves knowledge, resources learning, and you can appreciate a good punter too. If I am nailing it right now, then I also know that you would absolutely love the PR weekly roundup sent out every Tuesday, I give the members of my community, a roundup of resources, tips, event invites, knowledge, nuggets, freebies, and so much more. It’s really simple to jump on the list, all you got to do is head to the PR bar inc.com/newsworthy. To sign up, we’ll put that link in the show notes, of course. Okay, back to the show. I bet a lot of people have their wheels turning, I do want to talk a little bit more about the traditional ecommerce side of things. And first, I do want to caveat that something I tell my clients is everyone listen up. If you are looking to get press to drive sales, if that is your why behind press, make sure your site is optimized to convert first Holy Cow have I seen people mess up here, they get this huge feature. And they are so bummed when they don’t get any sales, but you go to their site, and it’s a hot mess. So maybe they got the traffic, right. But people didn’t convert. Anyways, it’s important. So what are some of the most common problem areas that you see when going on to an E commerce site that are preventing new traffic, such as from press from converting?

 

Liz Kressel 

I think the biggest issue is the flow, the navigational flow, and it has to do with can I find, you know what I want easily, right? Like people come to your site with an action in mind, I’m going to research about this product, I already know this product, I’m going to buy it or I need to see the pricing on it. If they can’t get to those places quickly, then that’s where you lose folks, right? If I want, if I’m looking for kids, and all of a sudden I like you’re throwing a whole bunch of products at me and I can’t narrow it down between men, women’s kids, that’s an issue. And if your offering is too cumbersome, if it’s not like that’s a second thing, I would say if people don’t understand what you’re offering is right away, because in their head, they’ll say I’ll come back later. And we all know what that means. Like they won’t come back later. Because generally, it’s just too much work. If your site is too much work, that’s a problem. The other thing I would say is like when you think about the product pages, is there enough information there for me to make a purchase? So does it require a video? Do you need more explanation? Have you answered all the questions of the consumer? These are? These are important things to think about when the customer is there. And also, are you distracting the customer when they go to pay? If they say they want to pay? Stop? upselling Okay, your your job is done. I see this happen too many times that people will say, Oh, wait, wait, you know, you may want to add this on, you may want to add that on, that is not the time to do it. That is not the time to do it at checkout is not the time to add something on there. The only time I would caveat that is like for example, if it’s a warranty, like if you’re buying a mattress and you want a warranty or electronics, and maybe you upsell the warranty there, that is the only time but anything else like if you’re buying clothing or makeup or you know like that’s where it should be done. Right is when we’re on the product page. Because and this is another thing where I see people leaving money on the table not so much as making a mistake there leaving money on the table. Because the you may also like, if I’m looking at a black blouse, you should not be selling me other black blouses. You should be thinking about how I might accessorize this. Maybe here’s a nice necklace, here’s a purse, here’s shoes that go with it here are pants, and it should be custom curated. So yes, you can rely on the algorithms of whatever program you’re on, whether it’s Shopify or you know, whatever platform however, if you really want to make the money you have to take the time you know, start with maybe your top 20 Your top 20 items that sell well. Custom curate what that you may also like looks like and do it a little bit each week until you have Have everything customize, you can rely on the algorithm if there’s no match, but people don’t spend the time to do this, or the money to do this, it’s completely worth it, you will absolutely increase your average order value

 

Lexie Smith 

if you do that. Yeah, no, those are all great tips. I have a specific question. I’m just curious, because you have such obviously vast experience in this area. And this is a question that I have a buying habit as a consumer, but I don’t know if my buying habit is what you see the majority of people do. Curious if you see shipping costs as a big deterrent, meaning I get fish into my cart, I go through the checkout process, all of a sudden, I’m hit with a $20 shipping fee. And I then usually abandoned cart for some reason, I would rather pay $20 more for the item, then feel like my money is going towards shipping. But I could like totally be alone in this. Do you see any trends and shipping in what you do?

 

Liz Kressel 

Yes. So there’s, there’s different ways to look at shipping. So there’s usually thresholds, right, that people need to meet in order to get free shipping. And I do think if you have a threshold, then you need to let the consumer know like, Hey, if you’re $5 away from free shipping, we probably want to alert them at checkout that your $5 way, because that adds another item for you. Right. But we’re the issue is, you know, it depends on what your margins are, and what type of product. And I’ll give you a perfect example, one of my clients is a luxury pajama brand. And when they first looked at the marketplace, like they were charging for shipping, but when I say these are luxury pajamas, these are pajamas that would go for like 100 $120, they’re super soft, they use like pima cotton, like what they use for babies. And the thing is, you know, if you’re paying $100 Plus for pajamas, you’re not really worried about the shipping price, right? Like you’re you’re not as price conscious. And it made more sense to include that in the costs like to include the shipping in the cost of the item. Right? So like it was it was baked in, it was baked in raise the prices like you know, slightly to bake it in and actually increased, you know, their average order value. So, you know, people were ordering more, you know, sales went up like 300%, just in terms of changing that, because there is a little bit of a drag, you’re like, what, why am I paying that? You know, why am I paying that shipping fee? The problem is, though, you have to think about it, what if you have a heavy item? And I’ll give you a perfect example. Like what if it’s wine? Yes, yeah. Okay. And so people need to know, I mean, you can’t always eat all those costs, right? Because that has to go into refrigerated, you know, a refrigerated car, and it has to, you know, edit as heavy. So, and the same thing with furniture, it’s very hard. But you have to let the consumer know upfront because I see this too often where people are getting a lot of traffic, people are adding it to cart and then they’re abandoning cart. Why? Because they didn’t inform the consumer beforehand that this would be the cost. Consumers need to know the cost up front, they’re okay with paying it, but you have to inform the customer from the get go. Because they’re, we don’t want them to go down the funnel. Now you’ve really pissed them off, right? Like we’d rather them say, You know what, I have to pay $30 For that, you know, that half case of wine? Okay, so either I’m going to decide yes or no, but we don’t want them to get to checkout and then a band.

 

Lexie Smith 

Yeah. Okay. That is such great advice. I think in to your point on the consumer side, that is what pisses me off, what they go through all the steps, right, I put all the information in the very last part, you know, it says X amount of shipping. Whereas if you just told me that upfront, I could have decided and I would have no emotion to it, I’d say yay or nay. So that was just a personal question. It’s also one that I get asked a lot by clients just shipping is this big, like mysterious question mark when it comes to strategy. I’m curious if there are any other trends or interesting insights in the E commerce space circa the year we’re in 2022 that DTC brands should really keep in mind when they after this episode, go and look at their website and they’re sitting down to figure out how can I make this better?

 

Liz Kressel 

Sure, well, you know, if, again, we’re catering. You know, I know if people aren’t catering to millennials and Gen Z today, you know, Soon those people will be of age and they will have to focus on that. They’re doing a lot more payment plans. So you know, if you don’t have a payment plan like Klarna or something like that on your site, you should add it everybody doesn’t want to pay full price that is a huge that’s a huge value. had for them that they’re able to break it down. So I would say in terms of the younger audience and some of the other trends that I’m seeing, you know, I know people want to do these very flashy sites and like, there’s lots of cool designs and whatnot, you can do, but the more movement that’s on a site is actually not good. It actually lowers conversion, I always say cool doesn’t convert. So, you know, I know people want to have lots of animated this, that the other thing things swooping in whatnot, if the customer can’t focus on where to look, again, they want to get to where they’re going quickly. It’s those, it’s those three actions that I talked about, like if I can’t figure out how to get to the product page quickly. That’s a problem. So yeah, and especially, I mean, think about it, how many sites are there out there today, and you’re competing against all these other sites like you need, you need to let people know who you are, what you do, and how to get to any of your items for sale quickly.

 

Lexie Smith 

It’s such a good point. Now I’m like, thinking of I haven’t touched my pair of our site in a while, but I’m like they’re rotating logos. Those are probably very distracting. I should move those. So thank you. I’m auditing myself as we’re talking, talking live, where if people you know, they don’t want to DIY this, and they want to work with the best of the best, aka you? How can they get in touch? Where can they go to learn more about your

 

 

services? Sure. So um, lizard strategy.com is the website. But I’m also you know, active on Instagram. So it’s at Liz Kressel. So you can find me there as well. So, you know, I’m happy to answer any questions.

 

Lexie Smith 

Awesome. And then my last question for you today is what can we find you sipping so what is your well, literally right now? But also, what is your favorite beverage alcoholic or non alcoholic?

 

Liz Kressel 

Ooh, so today, I’m actually doing my seltzer because I just had like too much coffee this morning. And I’m jittery, but I’m definitely my favorite beverage of choice is probably Starbucks, the cold brew vanilla cream like that and been been rotating in the chocolate cream and then on the on the alcoholic side, I am the beer girl. I’m a craft beer girl. So I’m always looking for new craft beers all the time.

 

Lexie Smith 

Okay, do you have any maybe like local or branch edits you want to give for some could be somewhere where you live? It could not be I always like giving a little shout out to people if we can.

 

Liz Kressel 

Yeah, absolutely. Actually, I found now that we moved out to Long Island, I found a really great brewery called the long run farm brewery. And we frequent it all the time. And right now they have out a honey sunflower because they grow some flowers there on the farm. And it sounds interesting, but it’s it’s quite good. I know. Because I was like, I don’t know. But it’s it’s very delicious. All their beers have been great.

 

Lexie Smith 

Awesome. I mean, that I’m someone who likes I’m a connoisseur of many beverages. And anything that’s interesting. I’ll like to try once. So that sounds honey sunflower are really really good. And they should do like shopping. I feel like beer would be a great product, different product. Maybe you could even do some sort of like interactive purchase tasting. I don’t know I’m going off here. You can definitely do that. I

 

Liz Kressel 

think like with alcohol, you always have to worry about like, what are the state regulations? There’s there’s a little bit of that with the shipping. So as long as they’re set up for shipping otherwise, yes. But yeah. tastings. I mean, those kind of blossom during the pandemic. Yeah, but not the sales people still had to go offline. Yeah, that’s

 

Lexie Smith 

fair enough. All right. Well, Liz, thank you so much for joining today. I know I learned so much. I know everyone else did too. You guys follow up with her, send her some love. You know, let her know if you end up trying any of the tactics she shared today. And until next time.