Puj – Digital Commerce Conversation Series

December 11, 2012 By BJ Cook,

Kicking off a new series here at Digital Operative called Digital Commerce Conversations. DCC will be focused on telling the stories of successful entrepreneurs within the digital commerce space and their thoughts on areas like ecommerce, social media, mobile and multi-channel marketing. We'll be asking them the questions that run through our readers' minds everyday as well our very own clients. Without further adieu, we bring you Puj; the brainchild of a husband-wife team that is passionate about "simplifying parenthood." Puj was born out of Ben & Katie Richardson's garage about 3 years ago. Ben & Katie have been able to overcome a sluggish economy and found momentum with their first product the Puj Tub. The Puj Tub has been the #1 selling product in its category on Amazon since 2011, and is now available in over 600 retailers in 22 countries. Digital Operative was lucky enough to get a chance to interview Ben & Katie about some of their experience and what to expect in 2013. Let's recap that conversation with Ben & Katie... 1) What tips do you have for someone starting out with a new ecommerce initiative? There are hundreds of ecommerce platforms, and they all claim to be the best at what they do. While they all may be similar, there are definitely differences between them and you need to find the one that meets your business needs. Some crucial things to consider are transaction fees, design flexibility, shipping modules, reporting/analytics, and scalability. Try several different platforms before you build your entire site. Speak to other people that have used the e-commerce platforms. If you build your business on a cumbersome / faulty platform that doesn't fit your business , you'll spend your time focusing on the wrong things. 2) How has social media affected your ecommerce business? Social media consistently drives huge amounts of traffic to our site each month. If you have a product or brand that's worth talking about, it will spread in the social media. You need to make sure that your site is optimized for social media with buttons that are strategically placed and easy to find. 3) What are three (3) new tools you're thinking of using in 2013 that could help expand your ecommerce channel? The first two are quite obvious and aren't necessarily new: Pinterest and Instagram. Information is becoming more and more visual and these are two platforms that excel in that. The third tool we'll be using in 2013 is even older than the first two: email. In our opinion, there's nothing better than an email address because you have the ability to deliver content directly to the recipient. We plan on offering tremendous value to parents throughout the world using this simple tool. (Katie does an amazing job of Content Development - If you're a parent; her content is truly authentic and original.) 4) What are you looking forward to the most in 2013? Launching our new products! We've been working extremely hard on some exciting new products, and we can't wait to get them up and running on our e-commerce platform and launching them to the world! Thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next digital commerce conversations post