It was great, but they cleaned out my entire wallet.
So I made a list of Disney tactics and how I could use them to improve my own online store.
I was getting owned, might as well learn something!
1. It All Starts With Content
Disney's lifeblood is their incredible content.
They put out great movies, then make boatloads of cash from character merchandise.
My daughter is obsessed with the movie Frozen and any time she sees any merchandise featuring Elsa, she wants it.
That's the power of content.
The content for your website is the most important part of your store.
Content attracts customers, then you sell them product along the way.
(e.g. we put up craft tutorials to attract customers to our store and position ourselves as an authority).
2. Make The Buying Process Easy
Disney makes the checkout process extremely convenient.
As soon as you check in, they issue you multipurpose wrist bands that are your:
- Hotel key
- Credit card
- Ticket
Pure genius.
Why?
With my wrist band, it didn’t even feel like I was spending money at all.
Ice cream? (Flash the wrist band)
Disney princess autograph book? (Flash the wrist band)
Dinner reservations with Disney Princesses for $230.80? (Flash the wrist band)
(Yes this really happened BTW.)
So what can we learn?
You need to make payment simple and smooth.
Here are some ways to do that:
- Pre-fill forms.
- Offer alternative payment services (e.g. paypal express)
- Save credit card information so that they don’t have to enter it again for repeat purchases
3. Don’t Make Your Customers Wait
There's no wasting your day queuing at Disney.
You schedule the rides that you want, turn up and cut straight to the front - no wait...
...Which means a lot more time buying ice cream, snacks and souvenirs.
Well played Disney. Well played.
These principles apply to your online store.
You don’t want customers waiting for webpages to load. Make sure your website is as fast and as responsive as possible by optimizing your store for speed.
(This was one of my major objectives in my last website redesign.)
4. Utilize Cross Sells And Upsells
Since I had kids, my spending resistance has gone to hell.
Disney exploits this weakness in parents.
By evening you are tired from dealing with kids all day.
Then you get on the Buzz Lightyear ride thinking everything is good...
...And then the ride drops you off at the fricking gift shop on the way out.
"Mommy, Daddy, can I have a new toy? I promise that I’ll be good for the rest of the day..."
If you’re a parent, you know it's easy to succumb.
Well played Disney….
The good news is you can employ these tactics in your online business.
> Display related products on product pages.
> Set up shopping carts to suggest accessories or add-ons
Once a customer has committed to buying a one thing, it's much easier to get them to spend more.
5. Keep Them In Your Shop
Disney is like a prison.
Once you land on their property, they force you to stay.
We nearly stayed 10 minutes away, because it was way cheaper. But then you have to pay huge parking fees and miss out on the perks like getting in an hour early.
Once you arrive, Disney have a convenient transit system that shuttles you anywhere you want to go for free.
Because getting around is so easy, you don’t want to leave.
(And if you try to eat outside, you would get stuck paying their exorbitant parking fees again.)
Moral of the story?
If you want to make sales, keep customers on your property.
I hate it when I see ads on an online store site. Big mistake.
Why would you ever want to send a customer away from your website for a few pennies when you can keep them on your site?
The longer you keep someone on your site, the more likely you’ll convert a sale.
It might take time. But if you can engage them, they will come back and tell their friends.
So fill your online store with interesting content and products and never put ads on your ecom site.
Conclusion
Wherever we go, we are being marketed to by big organizations.
So take a step back and analyze what tactics are being used against you.
I’m sure that Disney has an army of marketers and they clearly know what they are doing.
But now you do too!
Thank you for reading.
If you found this helpful, follow me for more content on marketing and ecom.
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Shopify dominates the eCommerce space with more than 1 million businesses running stores on the platform
Here are 4 different plans you can choose to start growing your brand online 👇
//THREAD//
Shopify offers 5 plans:
1) Lite - $9/month 2) Basic - $29/month 3) Regular - $79/month 4) Advanced - $229/month 5) Plus - $2000/month
And goal of this thread is to understand how much your Shopify plan will cost and pick the cheapest plan to match your store.
Features on all plans:
1) SSL certificate 2) Shipping quotes 3) Unlimited products 4) Shopify POS: Access in person payments at pop-ups, markets and trade shows 5) Abandoned Cart Recovery: Reach out to customers and convince them to complete their purchase