Design Direct Lecture 3 @ PolyU by Product Designer Luke Ritchie

Something a little different, a lecture given by blog!


What we will cover in this lesson
- Online marketplaces, with so much choice how do you decide which is right for you?
- Once you have chosen a marketplace what to do next?


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Online marketplaces.
An online market place is a website that allows you to sell your products using their site as a service. Everybody knows the two biggest ones ebay and amazon, but are they really right for you?  Choosing an online marketplace can be difficult as they have different policies, look, payment methods, usability, commission etc.


Lets take 3 market places (etsy bigcartel and amazon) from the list below and compare them using the following questions 

1. What is the setup cost or monthly charge if any? 
2. What commission does the site charge per sale?
3. Is it easy for your customers to find your competitors from your store?
4. Does the site get allot of traffic from search engines, people browsing the site, or do you have to drive all the traffic to your store?
5. Can you customize the look of your store?
6. Does the marketplace have limitations? This wont be listed on their site try searching forums or reviews with google.com

Suggested Marketplaces to investigate.

etsy.com    (handmade)

bigcartel.com

bonanza.com

shopify.com

amazon.com

storenvy.com

deviantart.com (graphic art)

ebay.com

Can you find any other good marketplaces, if so leave a comment below?


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Setting up your shop.


Once you have decided on a marketplace its time to set up your shop.
Your customer cant touch or feel the real product, the only thing they have to go on is images and text. Also you don't want to leave them with any un-answered questions as any doubt is reason not to buy.
The three important issues here are
1. Clear and attractive product images or video
2. Detailed description
3. Clear policies  
4. After sales service


Product images
Good product images are a must. If the images don't draw in the shopper they will just move on. Showing the product in use is a great way to help the buyer imagine it being used in their own life. Give the product some human scale too if possible. If the marketplace has a maximum of five images per product use them all. This allows you to show the product in more detail. 
Product description
Here you will want to give as much detail as possible. Physical description, feature list, materials, color options. You could include some background about how it is made, if thats part of the product concept. Any background information about your philosophy or process can help draw the buyer into what makes your product unique and special.  
Shop policies
You will want to clearly define your policies so their is such as how often you ship, is it daily before 4pm, once every 3 days or once a week. Do you have a returns policy. What are your shipping rates, do you ship internationally.
After sales service
Packaging and shipping box. You want the experience of receiving your product to be as nice as possible. Whats its going to be like when the customer opens the shipping box? If there is something nice thats un-expected this will leave the customer feeling good about the over all experience. This could just be having it packed in a thoughtful aesthetically pleasing way, or a small personal thank-you message inside. A small gift or discount coupon can also be a way to get customers to return.     




Furtherer reading / links
A great comparison between etsy / big cartel and storenvy this post covers many of the points you need consider.
My etsy webstore.  It should be the first result this shows an example of clear photos and product description 

Design Direct Lecture 2 @ PolyU by Product Designer Luke Ritchie

Something a little different, a lecture given by blog!


What this lesson is about. 
Page rank. What is it? How do I increase mine?

Page rank is googles way to determine how "relevant" your page is compared to others for any given search term. The reason for this is to give their users the most relevant page at the top of the list. Its what makes google good at search. What google classes as "relevent" includes many aspects (important / popularity / most visited / liked / trusted etc)

Image by Felipe Micaroni Lalli (micaroni@gmail.com).

Increasing your page rank is often referred to as SEO
Search Engine Optimization is the science and art of making your website or page become higher on googles page rank and therefor appear closer to the top when somebody searches for you.

Some ways to increase your page ranking and search-ability

1. Unique tags or handles - These are the search terms people use to find your page. You want this to be unique enough that the search term does not bring up 2million results. This will make your job of getting to the top of the list very difficult. But also as short and relevant as possible. Once you figure out what your unique "tag" is want to use that everywhere you can. The tag I want to use for people to find me is Product Designer Luke Ritchie if you google this term you get 24,000 results which makes getting to the top of the list easier than the search term "Luke Ritchie" which has 1,200,000 results.  You will notice I used this tag in the blog post title. Also I linked the words about to my linkedin profile creating an outward link to a high ranking website with my information on it. This increases the chances of people finding me. 
2. Outward links going towards popular and relevant sites. The more popular and relevant the sites you link to the more it makes your page appear to be reputable. This helps it rank higher as google believes its relevant and people would want to go to your site. 
3. Backlinks - This is links that go from the web back to your website. These are like votes for your website. The links are also weighted depending where they originated. The more popular or trusted the source of the links the bigger the vote they cast.
4. Keeping people at your site longer. This makes google think your site is cooler or more relevant as people want to hang out there so it must be better than a site people only spend a few seconds at and don't come back.

Work sheet for this lesson.

1. What is your unique tag? Is it too long or too common? How many search results are there for your tag?
2. Create outward links to high ranking or relevant websites. Example http://en.wikipedia.org (high ranking) or other design blogs (relevant)
3. Create outward links to other websites that contain information about you. Such as linkedin.com
4. Create backlinks pointing to your website. The simplest method for this is to use the social networking buttons on the bottom of each post, these create links back to your page from other locations. Such as twitter, facebook etc. 
5. Get more followers. Ask people you know to follow you. This is the simple way but you only know so many people. The goal should be to create a site cool enough that strangers will want to follow you. Other ways to get more followers are to follow other blogs which are relevant and you think are cool, the owners might be nice enough to return the favor. Leaving useful interesting and relevant comments on blogs is another good way to drive traffic to your site. If people are interested in your comment they can click your profile and visit your site. 
6. Think ways to make users of your site want to stay longer. 

How do I check my progress?

• The ultimate test is to search your unique "tag" on google.com Don't get discoraged yet though it will take more time and work to get to the first page result.
• Use the Stats tab in blogger to check traffic to your blog, don't check it obsessively though, you only need to look once a week to see if the trend is upwards. 

Enjoy and have fun with it!

Design Direct Lecture @ PolyU by Product Designer Luke Ritchie

Something a little different, a lecture given by blog!

About the lecturer. 
Luke Ritchie is a freelance product designer from Australia currently located in Hong Kong.
He graduated from the University of South Australia in 2004 with a Bachelor of Industrial Design.
He has six years professional experience that ranges from startups, small & medium consultancies, corporate and freelance. Working in a variety of locations including Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China (Zhuhai, Shenzhen, Beijing). Luke's experience is international and wide ranging. He has worked mostly in housewares and lifestyle product categories with products such as hair stylers, vacuums, BBQ's, sporting goods and mobile accessories. He excels at problem solving, CAD, model making and photography.

About the class
This class is about answering the question "Are companies and clients becoming obsolete"? Typically a designer works for a company that does the manufacturing / marketing / distribution / retail. All of which have been difficult for the designer to do. But now all these tools are available to the designer for free / cheaply, now its easier than ever to go from design to market alone with tools like:
MARKETING
blogger.com
wordpress.org
FUNDING
kickstarter.com
MANUFACTURE
shapeways.com
alibaba.com
SELL
amazon.com
ebay.com
paypal.com

About "1 day product" project.
Can a product go from concept sketch to real purchasable product in 1 day?
Why? I did this project to challenge myself, a creative outlet and to see if it could be done. I got tired working at companies where products could take 3 years to get to market. I needed a fresh new way to design and sell products. And I did it because I can!
A one day product cycle was totally un-heard of 10 years ago. Now with tools like personal 3D printers being available to individuals, this can be possible.
What it is not: This product is not going to make me a bunch of money. Mostly because its manufactured in a way the is very time intensive and that fact its marketing plan is just to get it online not sell thousands.
What it can do: Although not a money maker per-say, it allows me to market myself, promote my blog and sharpen my design skills.
It can also help me test the market, if I sold 100 of these it would be worth investing the money to get the part injection molded and implement large scale distribution.

How is the project going so far?
The google test "magnetic drill bit caddy"
The blog post. 1 day product the Magnetic drill bit caddy
Online store provided by etsy

How to get a profile online quickly and free
options

Basic /  quick and free
-blogger.com
-wordpress.com

Advanced / not quick or free
-wordpress.org with own domain and hosting
-complete custom site with e-commerce

Blogger setup walkthough

As blogger is the fastest and simplest to setup I'm going to show an example of how to make a product page with purchasing in 5 easy steps. The site will look like this test blog with purchasing

1. you will learn how to
2. sign up
3. your first blog post
4. look / themes
5. basic online purchasing with paypal


Next lecture
Page rank, what is it and how can I increase mine