How competitive techniques can help lure clients and grow a network.
September 10, 2023
Andrew Chen shares in 'The Cold Start Problem' that many times, networks are competing in a zero-sum game. One network gets a customer to join their network and thereby not participate in another. For example, when a driver used Lyft instead of Uber, Uber, which Chen helped, lost. And it lost in two regards: Uber lost the revenue from the lost ride, and Lyft gained the revenue. Chen’s team was tasked with getting drivers to use all their time driving for Uber and thereby unraveling Lyft&...
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How we can acquire new prospects by leveraging our existing network of customers.
June 2, 2023
In Andrew Chen’s book The Cold Start Problem, he breaks the network effect into three parts: engagement, acquisition, and economize. At Shop Local, we rely on the network effect and its three parts. I feel that we’re succeeding in terms of engagement but need improvement in acquisition.
Engagement
We use the 64,000 products in our Syncing service to engage 1,200 our retail clients. We email them new intros, price updates, archived items for these synced products. Once they ...
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Today’s Wall St. Journal shares show retailers are frustrated by Facebook’s e-commerce offering.
Sellers complain it misses many basic features, including offering an item in different colors or sizes (what Bridge calls a “multi-SKU item”). One can’t control where the item is sold—apparently, a seller may have to ship to the Maldives. Some sellers said it’s too complicated to manage the service. What if they need help? There&...
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I enjoyed today’s WSJ article about stores teaming up to take on Amazon. Since Bridge has collectivized 800 indie shops to push back against Amazon, we can relate to efforts to help stores team up and boost their communities.
The article mentions Shopify and its popularity among indie shops. Shopify, along with BigComerce, Big Cartel, Wix, and Magento, are platforms that have helped indies to grow online independent of Amazon.
While we appreciate any platform that helps indies...
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Business leader Scott Galloway said this past week on his podcast Pivot that "complexity is a tax on the poor." I'd expand on that and posit that: complexity is a tax on indie businesses.
What if indie businesses could reduce the complexity and costs of running an online business? I believe we can. Bridge is reducing the costs of running an online business for more than a thousand businesses.
How do we reduce the 'tax'? Bridge often helps a retailer set up an online store ...
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Each month, on average 99.3% of retailers retain their Bridge Store service. A high retention rate shows that retailers are happy with Bridge’s software and customer service. This high customer loyalty says that Bridge is providing great value for members.
A monthly retention rate of 99.3% equates to approximately an annual retention rate of 92%.
Other important metric tools: + Customer Conversion Rate (CCR) + Average Order Value (AOV) + Online CRR (Customer Retention Rate) +Online Order Frequency + Average Order Processing Time + Net Promoter Score (NPS)