How pre-populating information saves clients time and speeds them along a process.
June 30, 2023
Each April, I scramble to send my tax information to my accountant so I can file my taxes before April 15. Since my friends confide that they do the same, there are likely millions of people like us racing to prepare our taxes. What if there was a way to avoid this painful rush—and even the cost of it? The WSJ shares that Japan, New Zealand, and much of Europe get such relief. The countries prepare tax returns for their citizens using existing data, and the citizen just needs to review it,...
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What Crocs can teach us about gaining new customers and keeping them happy.
May 15, 2023
About 15 years ago, I bought a pair of Crocs sandals in Myrtle Beach, SC. Not only were they hot pink, but the insole was traffic cone orange. My buddies hated them, but oddly others loved them. The sandals were affordable (maybe $20), comfortable, and a conversation starter.
According to last week’s The New York Times' profile on Crocs, I’m one of tens of millions of happy Crocs owners. This happiness is profitable:
Our retailers recently told us that customers are calling and asking about non-existent brides, and brides are asking about non-existent registry gift lists (e.g. wedding registry lists, baby lists).
We investigated the issues and below is what we found.
What is Happening:
We found that many of these purchases are coming from registrants that open a ‘universal registry’ on websites such as Zola or MyRegistry. These universal registry services allow the registrant to add ...
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With our retail members in the throes of the holiday season, it was nice to read an article by Retail Dive providing some insight into Q4 2022. Retail Dive, a retail industry publication, informs readers that big-box stores share much of the same friction as our indie retailers do. I appreciated the acknowledgement that independent stores may feel disruptions quicker and may even have an edge on providing a more superior customer experience to gaining loyalty. The good news is that there are ...
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Lululemon is adding a paid membership service called Studio that offers access to digital classes and gives discounts on in-person classes and apparel. The apparel company suggests it may also offer member-exclusive events.
Companies are often taking this approach: offer unlimited access to a digital service, bundle in discounts and other peripheral perks, and charge a flat monthly fee. (Lululemon is charging $39/month.)
Many in the retail industry are seeking to launch a paid ...
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I don’t own a car, yet I have a strange desire to read Dan Neil's car column each weekend in The Wall St. Journal. Why would someone who doesn’t own a car, won’t be buying one soon, and hasn’t owned one in 25 years read a car column? It's a mix of enjoying the design and technology of automobiles, wanting to know what Dwayne Johnson may be buying next, loving Dan’s witty writing style, and, confession, simply being 13-years old at heart. Cars are ...
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We’ve chatted about the importance of checklists. Checklists can be checklists literally as well as figuratively (i.e. software). Checklists help us order our thoughts and actions. Yet, the last step on each checklist should be: removing as many checklist steps as possible. This ironic strategy is necessary because steps inherently are friction, and friction is our enemy. We want to help our clients avoid the drag of clicks and thinking.
I think that Zola, an online provider of gift registries, may be harming local stores. Zola allows brides to pick things from any site, such as an indie store’s gift registry. Zola may then encourage the registrant to bypass that local store and use those gift funds with Zola. This is an issue because Zola has handled more than 650,000 registries, and its revenue is estimated to be $130m. Millions of dollars may have been diverted away from indie, brick-and-mortar stores to Zola&rsquo...
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Companies with deep pockets and big connections to Wall St. have teamed up to make the Internet a dirtier place. Legislation is pending to make large sellers of new goods have to reveal the true seller of the good. The goal of the federal bill is to curtail the sale of fake and stolen goods through online marketplaces. This sounds logical. But not to: eBay, Poshmark, Mercari, and Etsy.
These businesses have hundreds of millions of dollars at stake from banks, investors, and rich people. They ...
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Many businesses are struggling during the state-mandated shelter-in-place orders. One industry that is weathering the storm well is technology. Technology companies often deliver services digitally, which obviously makes them ideal to side-step these orders--but they often utilize another feature that makes them profitable now and in general: subscriptions.
Scott Galloway, a business leader and host of an online business class called 'The Sprint,' recently brought to my attention the ...
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April 9, 2018
April 9, 2018
In the book The Four, the author Scott Galloway praises companies that reduce the 'friction' of completing an action. For example, Uber makes ordering a taxi easier. In the case of Amazon (which I often rail against), he noted it makes online shopping easier.
Which leads to the questions: what is Bridge making easier? What 'friction' is it removing for users?
Bridge reduces the pain points for a retail business in these areas: + Adding products to its website. + Adding news to its website. + ...
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February 12, 2018
February 12, 2018
Some wedding couples are foregoing the wedding party. This might put a kabosh on your bridesmaid and groomsmen gifts. Have you experienced this? Read this article from Sunday's NY Times. Click the link or read the full text below.
Make the Friends Happy. Don’t Have a Wedding Party.
When Bobby Rosen and Cara Safon got engaged last August, there were many decisions to be made. A venue had to be ...
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January 17, 2018
January 17, 2018
Are you offering shoppers a “frictionless” experience? Today’s Times covers the National Retail Federation expo. Consumers are now in control vs just looking at a shelf.
More stores will stock less and become more of a showroom. And that’s ironic because previously one would pejoratively refer to browsing in a store and shopping elsewhere as “showrooming.” Now, the stores may actually embrace that idea as long as they can get the customer to buy from it. Buy in store. We’ll ship you the goods—...
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