While traveling recently,  I was drawn to this column’s prominent use of stats.  We learn that this cookbook author has: 88k Instagram followers, 27k TikTok followers, and 23k Substack subscribers. People are drawn to numbers because they suggest facts and can give a quick sense of importance, and easily make comparisons. A factor’s relevance may be hard to gauge and subjective, but social media helps by giving it a numeric value. Want a book deal? Think your writing style will appeal to the masses? First, show me the number of social followers you have.  (True story: If we ever want a book deal and to publish our company's insights, that will require me to drastically increase my follower count first.) 

And while we’re talking about the importance of stats and a food author, it’s fitting to note that one of America’s biggest restaurants, McDonald’s, long touted the number of hamburgers it had served (McD’s is the OG of social stats!). We can soon proclaim:  “Over 1 million customers served online.” (The math: 15 years x $8m/yr online sales / divided by average order of $142 =  845k customers. We have about 150k to go. To get that will take just under another 22 months.)

Show Me Stats STAT

About 10 years ago, inspired by what we saw on social media, we added stats to the top of our Online Store. For merchants, the stats display the number of products, the number of registries, and the number of reviews received.  I don’t know that any other online store software has replicated this stats approach—and I love that. We have this stat strategy to ourselves.
 

Meet Top 10 Lists—the Talented Sister of Staid Stats

The WSJ article also shows two lists: 5 Most Popular Recipes and 5 Favorite Vintage Cookbooks. We recently gave each Syncing Brand its own top 10 wedding gift list, and gave each store a general top 10 gift list. Seeing the WSJ article inspires me to suggest we can put our top 10 lists on the Store home page and registry home pages. We could display the top 10 product lists, and we could let the store create its own staff favorites list. Initially, this may be easier to institute on the registry home page because the member’s index (home page) is often a newsfeed of events, and a list may not fit well in that format.

While Roberts has a formidable number of followers today, it didn’t happen on the clock of an egg timer. Roberts started his cooking business with a blog in 2004–more than 20 years ago!  We started Product Syncing in 2007 and the online store in 2010. I sometimes feel that it’s taking me too long to make the progress I want, but Roberts’ and others’ journeys show that making ‘overnight oats’ doesn’t happen overnight.  Cooking—and software—success often takes years of prep.

 P.S. ~ Adam Roberts’s 2007 book is titled  “The Amateur Gourmet: How to Chop, Shop, and Table Hop Like a Pro (Almost)”.  Maybe our book title would be: “Shop Local: 20 Ways Indie Stores Think Outside of the Box to Beat Big Box Stores Online”? (Working title! I’m taking ‘notes’ on that :) ) 

Homework: 

Imagine you're writing a book with advice and strategy for your industry.  Propose a book title. What would it be?