Collaborative Consumption Archives

FOUR WordPress Plug-In Discounts You Can’t Miss!

September 10, 2015September 10, 2015 Matthew Godwin Leave a comment

If you’re like my grandmother, you’re already planning for Christmas. She starts her Christmas shopping well before the Labour Day weekend and about 120 days before my Dad buys his first stocking stuffer. Online shopowners have a lot in common with my Grandmother when it comes to starting early for Christmas (but hopefully not the fruitcake baking).

To catch those merchants with a longer view of consumer trends, WordPress (WooCommerce) has a whole suite of plug-ins offering big deals, anywhere from 10% to 50% the usual price. But just like Christmas, we’re sure they won’t last long.

As eRated launches its own WP plug-in, we wanted to shoutout three other ecommerce plug-ins offering great deals for merchants in advance of the Holiday shopping season.

Turn One-time customers into a community with OptinMonster: This great plug-in is an attractive, low-friction tool to entice your customers to sign up for your newsletter. Make sure your customers stay in the loop for your Christmas sales and increase your subscriber rate by as much as 600%. 10% off!

Do one more for your blogger (especially if it’s your husband) with Aweber: With this email marketing solution you can target customers by action, location and other characteristics, manage subscribers and track clicks and send email sequences with autoresponder. You can get 95% off your first month!

Get more out of your platform space and use OIO Publisher: Some shops shake their heads at using ads, but if you’re investing a lot into content and creating a real name for yourself in your space (Cotswolds antique chairs?) then use OIO Publisher to maximize revenue, save time and stay in full control of your space. Get $10 off!

We’re thrilled to introduce eRated to WooCommerce! Reputation is everything to independent shopowners - buyers will not make a purchase if they don’t trust you. eRated is your global trust solution. Our plug-in lets you carry your reputation from every other platform your active in (eBay, Amazon, AirBnB) and display it in your shop window. Right now, we’re offering 20% off the product for helping us to spread the word! How does it work? Find out!

Your customers make the most out of discounts, so why shouldn’t you? Don’t wait for Black Friday to get bang for your buck - take advantage of some great offers on WordPress!

eRated Launches WordPress and WooCommerce Plugin

September 3, 2015September 7, 2015 Matthew Godwin Leave a comment

eRated, the leading global trust certification for ecommerce, today announced the launch of its trust plugin in WordPress and Woocommerce, the world’s most popular ecommerce platform powering 30% of ecommerce stores.

“We know that every new shop owner struggles to build a reputation for trustworthy product delivery. Using eRated’s plugin, WordPress and Woocommerce merchants can now import their feedback and reviews from other platforms to their own shop – cutting to a fraction the amount of time it takes for buyers to trust shop owners,” said eRated CEO Boaz Cohen.

eRated offers WordPress and WooCommerce merchants the following features:

An unlimited selection of platforms from which to import feedback
A plugin appearing where shops want it with calibration for excluded pages.
A flexible display to add merchant name, profession and location.
Ability to change the colour and language.

Vintage clothing shop owner Rebecca Gabriel said, “I noticed a difference in sales immediately after I was able to import my Amazon reviews to my shop via eRated. People know the eRated certification and now first-time buyers know they can trust me instantly.”

Increase your sales just like Rebecca and check out the eRated plug-in here: https://wordpress.org/plugins/erated-woocommerce/

Contact:
Boaz Cohen
[email protected]

Brand Management and Reputation Management: What’s the Difference?

August 6, 2015 Matthew Godwin Leave a comment

As every avid LinkedIn user knows, individuals are exercising brand control and reputation management in a way that was traditionally the preserve of companies and corporations in years passed. No longer content to hide behind the brands of big box online platforms, sellers and sharing economy enthusiasts are developing their own, unique identities. It means they can travel across platforms, attract their own buyers and users and ensure product and brand security is dominated by their own decisions - not executives.

So what’s the difference between brand control and reputation management? Brand is how you want the world to see you and your reputation is how the world actually sees you. As far as we’re concerned, brand may get customers and clients to your website or to your product pages, but it’s your reputation that induces them to click through and make a purchase. Brand is the carrot, but getting bites requires you to have a proven track record of sales. Ultimately, it requires people to trust you. Reputation becomes brand when you have a long history of success where your logo, picture and/or name actually create the fuzzy feeling of confidence buyers need to make a purchase.

What IS a brand? In concrete terms, a brand is how people identify you at a glance (or, half a glance nowadays). Scanning through a page of products, companies or platforms, your brand is your logo, name, two line description or the intangible emotion of the viewer. Do they recognize you? Do you interest them?

What IS reputation? Reputation is the impression the viewer or buyer has of you given what they’ve heard or seen before. In many cases, you will have no reputation because they’ve never heard of you. However, all it takes is one bad review for them to have a negative impression and keep on scrolling, no matter how good your brand is. Reputation is what you’ve done, said and these days been before. What you (and your staff) have done in the past influences your reputation. If your product or business has no reputation yet, beginning with what you’ve done before is a great place to start.

Your brand is easier to control than your reputation, because it starts with you. Think carefully about framing before you launch your store, platform or product. Turning your brand around after it’s already out there is like turning a ship away from an iceberg (and we know how that turned out). So what can you do at the design and content stage? A great way to test your brand is to harness the growing community of start-ups providing cheap, instant polling. Why not try Verdict, Voicepolls or Pollfish? These guys let you toss your design around and provide you with quick, actionable feedback. Most of us can’t afford expensive marketing consultants at an early stage, so finding tangible alternatives is critical.

A later installment will deal in-depth with reputation, but for now check out an older piece on reputation dos and don’ts for online sellers.

Brand is the foot you put forward and reputation is the ground you stand on. It’s up to you to make sure you’re doing your utmost to inspire confidence through good design and content. It’s also up to you to make sure your reputation becomes a solid foundation on which to grow, not a mucky pile of quicksand beneath your feet.

Tripda & eRated Global Partner to Certify Trust for Ride Sharing

July 22, 2015 Matthew Godwin 1 Comment

Hitch-hiking the galaxy has never been safer, thanks to today’s partnership announced by eRated and Tripda. Learn more here!

The world’s leading ride sharing platform, Tripda, and eRated, the global trust certification solution announced their partnership integrating eRated’s trust solution in Tripda’s global marketplace. With the partnership, Tripda is the first car sharing marketplace to add a definitive trust and security solution for its users. eRated allows Tripda passengers and drivers to import their social media identities (Facebook, LinkedIn) and their ratings and feedback from other marketplace transactions ( as in AirBnB or eBay) to bolster trust between them.

Tripda is a genuine ride sharing and carpooling platform for long-distance travel. Drivers can offer empty seats in their cars on trips they are already making, and passengers can search and book seats on rides that are already going where they need to go. Both sides have plenty of information available on the platform to select the travel companions they’d like to ride with, they can read reviews that other travellers wrote, see other users’ affiliation with any organization such as a college or a corporation, view their Facebook profile, check if they have any mutual friends or choose to communicate with them directly before the trip.

Far from creating more friction on the journey to find the right rideshare, the eRated integration is simple and gives drivers easy customization abilities. eRated’s intuitive backend has made it simple for Tripda to roll-out the security solution worldwide instantly, removing the heavy efforts previously needed to rebuild the trust and security of potential riders on a new platform. Eduardo Prota, Tripda’s Co-founder asserted, “we selected eRated as our strategic partner to build Tripda as the most safe and secure ride sharing marketplace in the world. Security is of paramount importance to our users and eRated gives us the authoritative, 3rd party trust-certification our riders need to feel comfortable.”

For eRated, Tripda is the 15th marketplace its partnered with. Sellers on marketplaces that have previously partnered with eRated like eBay and Sidelineswap have seen an increase in transactions by 150%. “Our mission is to increase trust in the sharing economy,” said eRated CEO and Co-Founder Boaz Cohen, “our partnership with Tripda is the first step in building a safer experience for drivers and passengers.”

Contact us at [email protected] to learn more about how you can introduce the eRated widget to your marketplace.

Guest Post for Duct Tape Marketing: Turn Window-Shoppers into Buyers

July 6, 2015February 21, 2016 Matthew Godwin Leave a comment

Increasing conversions online is the most important consideration for online sellers, whether they are working from their own platform, from a major online retailer or in one of the hundreds of new collaborative consumption websites. Turning window-shoppers into buyers is about more than making sure signs are polished and windows are clean: It’s about conveying trust.

UK-based WebRetailer has confirmed once again: Online sellers and businesses convert better the more they are trusted by buyers. The top sellers on Amazon as ranked by Internet Retailing all have feedback which is over 90% positive. Additionally, they’ve also got a track record of hundreds of thousands of reviews. Online sales are like a snowball – the more ball rolls the bigger it gets. So how does trust help to get the ball rolling?

It’s the cozy feeling that separates you from the pack. Unless you’re selling homemade products on Etsy or Hbzy, your products and services are likely very similar to your competitors. Whilst marketing and branding are important, reputation is what differentiates merchants as it’s the one thing they earn through responsible practices and good behaviour. Unlike product pictures or prices – reputation is free, but something that can’t be adjusted by you.

It’s the elephant in the room. You’re doing everything else well. Your tag lines are effective, you’re at or near the top of search results and your photos are dead gorgeous. However, 98.5% of all your visitors are bouncing before they bag your products. The problem is likely that you have one too many bad reviews, not enough reviews or not enough positive reviews. It’s proven. By increasing the number of reviews, you can increase your conversions far easier and more cheaply than by spending more on branding or marketing. Reputation management product users with an enhanced reputation are converting up to twofold better than those relying solely on one reputation. Indeed, by importing reputation data from their other identities, new marketplace sellers are getting their first transaction at least three times as quickly through using eRated.

So how can you do this? Reputation management products allow users to import all of their ratings and reviews from all of their online identities and platforms they operate in. If you are a seller in Amazon and want to increase your conversions in eBay, get a reputation management plugin for free and take your reputation from Amazon over to eBay. Recent case studies have shown that sellers using reputation management tools increase their sales by up to 30%. After price, the second most important consideration for any buyer is trust.

Reputation Management in e-commerce isn’t just about SEO optimization and getting seen through expensive branding and marketing campaigns, it’s about getting the most out of what you already own: Your reputation. So who provides these products? Check out eRated, Traity and Trusttribe.

Users are only now beginning to understand that they can actually use their reputation to their benefit. This is a ripe opportunity for savvy online entrepreneurs to get ahead of the pack and start using a reputation management tool to optimize their conversions through increasing trust with buyers.

Drive Safe with Tripda & eRated

June 5, 2015July 9, 2015 Matthew Godwin Leave a comment

One of the most famous car ads of all time was the 1987 Michelin tire ad: Because so much is riding on your tires. It reminded motorists that while cars may have thousands of parts needed to keep them running, only four wheels are responsible for keeping a car safely on the ground. Featuring a baby in the ad, it also made the connection between car safety and family safely - this meant that tires are responsible for family safety and you can only trust Michelin to keep your family safe. It’s not hard to see thousands of American families switching to Michelin after that.

Nearly thirty years later, motorists are still principally concerned with safety when they get into a car. What has changed is that it would have been almost unthinkable for four strangers to get into a car together and take a long drive along a lonely road with only a bit of leather seat to separate them. Cars were for families and single guys drag-racing.

These days, an environmentally conscious generation having families later and opting to spend money on things other than four wheels and time at the pump are leading motorists to find new ways to get the most out of their vehicles.

The advent of online marketplaces has met the need to create platforms that connect motorists with spare seats and passengers looking to get from A - B where public transport fails to make the connection. While Europe’s more communal society has advantaged continental marketplaces, the lack of high-speed rail in the US presents an enticing opportunity for marketplaces like Tripda to lead the way.

Tripda values convenience, environmental responsibility, social engagement and safety. Founded in 2014 and powered by Rocket Internet, the world’s largest platform, Tripda’s New York-based team is growing along with its user-base. Tired of not making connections on older platforms and definitely not keen on cramped, smelly buses American commuters are opting for the convenience of a rideshare. They’re making new friends, saving money and travelling with safety, comfort and convenience.

Like four good tires, eRated helps keep drivers and passengers safe by ensuring everyone filling the seats knows one another as much as possible before they meet up. By providing users with data from AirBnB reviews, eBay ratings or social media connections, eRated lets users get to know one another on a deeper level before they set out on their journey together.

Ridesharing is all about unexpected journeys - eRated and Tripda make sure that journey is a safe one.

Ride Sharing: Don’t Sing Alone

May 29, 2015February 21, 2016 Matthew Godwin Leave a comment

Even if you’ve never been to LA, everyone has the image in their mind. Lane after lane, mile after mile of big, gas guzzling vehicles grumbling alone like wallflowers at a high school dance. A grey fog of smog hangs above as stationary as the cars and the drivers sit inside alone, fuming for hours on their way in and out of the city. Or, singing by themselves with the windows up.

If there was a starker image more in contrast with the sharing economy, I’d like to see it.

Car-sharing landing page images always contrast the most - it’s usually a group of relatively young, mid-20s to 30s gender balanced bunch laughing their assess of together driving down a forested road with every seat filled. The idea is that they have never met and are going somewhere together. Are they happy because they’re sharing a joke? or because they’re saving the environment, money, car performance, or the world? Could it be they’re singing together?

The sharing economy began with sharing apartments - but it’s ridesharing where collaborative consumption is ensuring users get the most out of their assets and truly contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and save money.

So what is ride-sharing? Like the sharing economy itself, definitions are fluid and stick about as well as sand to a wall. Most people will immediately think Uber, or Lyft. However, the experts (who are few and far between) would probably not qualify these companies as ride-sharing, but rather “ride-sourcing.” The likes of these companies, Haxi and Sidecar included, are primarily commercial. The driver and the passenger do not share a destination and the relationship is an instantaneous, primarily commercial one. We are not arguing they are not part of the sharing economy, afterall, people are getting the most out of their car and their wallet - but they are not ride-sharing.

So if it’s not uber or lyft, what is ride-sharing? Think carpooling. Most of us have parents or friends who arranged to travel to work together, probably from the suburbs, into the city. In all likelihood it was coworkers or people from the same neighbourhood sharing an origin and destination. What’s changed is that the advent of social media and online marketplaces have allowed people who don’t know each or to share rides. They are sharing long distance drives, from Paris to Berlin for a concert. As more and more people are working from home and going to cities once or twice a week for work, they’re sharing one-offs in and out of town. They’re of course carpooling - because fewer people are choosing to, or are unable to, own cars.

Pioneers in the ride-sharing space are united by a similar mission: That the journey is as important as the destination. In the United States, Tripda is making ride-sharing accessible for everyone by reducing barriers and ensuring drivers and passengers trust one another. With 20 million users, BlaBlaCar in Europe is famous for doing its best to make sure everyone under the same roof gets along, pairing chatterboxes with chatterboxes and the silent types with the, not so chatty. In the UK, GoCarShare and Carpooling are cracking a tougher British market (it just ain’t that big) by focusing on a younger demographic and niche markets, such as students and football fans.

Ride-sharing is a policy area being taken seriously by governments interested in increasing incomes, reducing congestion and combating greenhouse gas emissions. However, the space continues to face challenges by legislators and users alike. Insurance providers are only now beginning to grasp the potential of this new market, whilst governments are still dithering about possible new taxation avenues and managing disruption to conventional services. There’s also that pesky issue of trust between drivers and passengers.

Ride-sourcing is a touchy subject for governments and businesses - it’s future in some cities is still a matter of debate at the moment. Ride-sharing, on the other hand, appears to be taking the quiet, back road to success as more and more like-minded travellers opt to save money, meet friends and cut down on carbon.

Start ride-sharing and stop singing alone (if you dare).

The Universe of Performance Dashboards: Let Us Do the Juggling

May 8, 2015July 9, 2015 Matthew Godwin Leave a comment

Is juggling a skill or a pastime? For freelancers, SMEs, and boutique online sellers, it often ends up being more the former than the latter. Why is that? Because most of us are the CEO, CFO, COO, and the guy that cleans the washroom – all rolled up into one. Most of us won’t end up having a boardroom behind us – it will likely end up being a handful of staff (at best), a supportive network, friends, and probably your kids fixing the tech problems. And that’s just fine.

However, where can we get help to keep all the balls in the air? That’s why new, multi-platform maps offer incredible value to today’s independent entrepreneurs. We may not be able to afford staff, let alone high-priced researchers, but we can set aside enough to get the support we need to gain insights, gather trends, and get more out of what we put into our online strategy.

Whether you call them dashboards, multi-channel maps, or just a bird’s-eye-view to your operations, there are many ways you can streamline your operations through using a multi-platform data aggregator providing insights, trends, and a more comprehensive understanding of your business flow. So what’s out there?

Blogging Metrics: What are your most popular posts? Do people prefer your top ten lists or your morning rants? Where does your traffic come from and who’s sharing your material. Having a better idea of your blog trends will allow you to target your message to your most receptive audience and focus your attention on the most responsive channels. Cultivate a relationship with your biggest fans and get them working for you!

Social Media: This is the most obvious and probably the most necessary one. Unlike other distribution channels, you simply can’t afford to only exist in one social media world. Having a perspective on the universe of social media channels is essential to cross-pollinating through your own channels and through other’s. Are people clicking through to your site? Are you building the right type of audience in the right places? Is your content interesting to more than just you?

Ecommerce: The days of eBay and Amazon being the only ecommerce platforms sellers are operating in are long over. There are now over 1000 marketplaces with over 100 million sellers operating within them – and 90% are selling across platforms. Get an ecommerce platform to track your sales through all verticals; find out which platform is best suited to your products; keep track of and manage your reputation to increase sales; and compare yourself against other sellers.

SEO: You don’t need to be a crafty wordsmith to get more people to view your content or make purchases, but you do need to know what people are looking for, how they’re searching, and what trends you can feed into to advance your landing page in search engines. Speaking of landing pages, is your blog where people find you, or is it through a partner’s site? An SEO dashboard can provide a real-time solution to let you keep track.

Email Insights: Do you know which subject lines are most successful for you? Are you sending from the right username? How often are you ending up in trash and non-primary inboxes? If you don’t know the answer to these questions, you probably need a dashboard to manage the content going to your lists.

Most of struggle with two balls in the air, so why are we trying to keep dozens going at one time? SumAll and eRated are just two solutions available to help freelancers, SMEs, and online sellers keep track of their performance and get the most out of online efforts.

Read more: http://blog.sumall.com/journal/universe-performance-dashboards-let-us-juggling.html#ixzz3ZY8b7f2m

Announcing eRated Profile Pages: The HootSuite for eCommerce

April 24, 2015 Matthew Godwin Leave a comment

Unless you’ve been an online seller for a long time and have gotten to know the players, experts and gurus, you probably don’t know how well you’re selling compared with others selling similar products or services. What’s even less likely is that you know how well competitors are doing in other marketplaces. One thing’s for sure, you’re looking to become a better seller, but you’ve read all the top ten lists and don’t know where to go. That’s why eRated has created Profile Pages.

eRated’s Profile Pages are the world’s first multi-platform channel providing sellers a comprehensive dashboard to track performance. What does performance mean? The Profile pages let you view your rolling reviews from all of your platforms together. Spot a problem or bad review - innoculate immediately and get your reputation back to where you want it. Track your reputation across time and across platforms - where are selling best and where do you need to improve?

eRated Profile Pages are the Hootsuite for online sellers.

eRated’s Profile Pages make it easier to manage your reputation. How are you perceived across multiple platforms and in ecommerce generally? eRated is the first company to aggregate all your behavioural and social data to give you your eWorth. This is important because it demonstrates your capacity - and how much more room you have to grow.

The Profile Pages aren’t just a calculator or schedule to keep track of things - the Profile Pages improve your reputation. You can contact your clients and friends to request vouches and recommendations regarding your sales history, reliability and even your friendliness and demeanor. In a social world, people want to buy from friendly sellers.

You can connect all your online identities, from your social media accounts to your marketplace profiles. Best of all, you can search for other sellers! Visit other profiles to start building valuable networks and communities, and of course to keep track of your competition.

As always, you can export your reputation data to all of our partner marketplaces. Improve your sales in eBay by aggregating your reputation data in one place through the eRated widget. It’s also easy for online sellers to use eRated to carry their reputation to their own storefront. Keep track of your sales in your shop, as well as in your shop identities elsewhere. Get the most out of your reputation.

eRated profile pages are fun, easy and convenient. As hundreds more shops and marketplaces pop up online, eRated makes it easy for sellers to keep track, improve and reduce stress.

Guest Post: The Sharing Economy – Your first time? It’s virgin’ on the ridiculous!

March 31, 2015July 9, 2015 Matthew Godwin Leave a comment

Of course the sharing economy isn’t ridiculous, if you’re reading this you already know that! The harsh truth is that if you’re a customer or even a supplier to the sharing economy it currently presents well let us call them, “challenges”!

This emerging sector’s multi-channel service provision is leading to cumbersome processes. It’s hard for consumers to find complimentary or supplementary solutions and to keep track of providers on the one hand, and for suppliers to build long term relationships with consumers, on the other.

Frankly, whilst we are all busy innovating, disrupting and generally trying to improve how markets work, the irony is that we are not caring enough about the customer experiences that we are creating.

We must ask ourselves some serious questions and consider what improvements will ensure the sustainability and potential of markets is realised.

What’s the problem you may be asking?

Ok, so you are an experienced ‘sharer’ and you are “all in” with the movement, but now let’s imagine you’re a sharing virgin - what is your experience like right now?

At best it’s fragmented and unsatisfactory. It forces consumers to engage with multiple apps in order to book different elements of a trip or to engage different home services. For example, a tourist must book through Airbnb for accommodation, then Uber for transport and then possibly EatFeastly for a local dining experience, etc. This requires building three relationships in three different platforms.

We don’t make the creation of a satisfying sharing experience easy, do we?

Suppliers are forging the emergence of “sharing lifestyles”, which sees a single supplier create an income from multiple sharing activities.

Their current experience presents three major obstacles:

Visibility + Scalability – A single person cannot effectively build a profile and market themselves as micro-entrepreneurs.
Efficiency – suppliers want to be time rich and have an efficient, flexible model for earning. Currently suppliers suffer the same fragmented experience as consumers when managing multiple applications separately.
Unable to build a trustworthy personal brand – Consumers cannot currently see a single view of how good you are as a supplier of sharing services.

Existing market structures seem like a recipe for frustration and in truth are self-defeating. Fragmentation deters suppliers from expanding their sharing activity and something needs to change quickly if the potential and sustainability of these suppliers and indeed consumer buy-in to the Sharing Economy is to be preserved.

Adrian McDonald
Founder – Crowd Potential – Sharing Economy Consultancy
@crowdpotential