A cornerstone key to e-commerce success lies in something as old-fashioned as a simple email. That's right, we’re talking about email marketing.

Online reviews are important for eCommerce stores because they provide potential customers with insights into the product quality, customer service and overall experience they can expect from a business. This information can be crucial in helping customers make informed purchasing decisions and can ultimately impact a store's sales and reputation.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the process of improving the percentage of website visitors who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase, filling out a form, or signing up for a newsletter.

Put down that thesaurus, forget about "SEO" being an acronym for "Search Engine Optimization", and get ready for a wild ride through the universe of keywords.

First things first, let's talk about why SEO matters in the first place. The world is moving online at a rapid pace and that means that more and more people are using search engines to find the products and services they need.

It’s a pretty regular thing now that we get challenged on the importance of a Blog page on a website. There’s so much interest and hype around video as the key medium for delivering your message, ideas, service that Blogs are being seen as irrelevant. This is very much not the case. A blog is a hugely important piece of any digital strategy.

When it comes to marketing within any organisation it’s traditionally been seen as a bit of a luxury. When things go wrong it’s often the first budget to be cut or department to be culled. It’s a nice to have but some believe it doesn’t always contribute to the bottom line. Other areas like operations and traditionally sales are seen as more fundamental contributors to a business. In recent years however the trend is changing. Marketing has established itself as a core function in a business. An essential department which becomes more important in tougher times and permeates a whole business.

One of the biggest challenges in planning digital marketing strategies with our clients is to understand exactly what a digital marketing strategy is and does. After our first week up and running as Usual we have several great inquiries into what we do, but one has stood out above the others. It highlights how expectations and reality can be very different. We had a request to create a ‘viral’ digital media strategy!

If you work in retail you more than likely have heard of Ron Johnson. He is the man who lead the development and launch of the most successful retail stores we know of… That’s right! The Apple stores. Apple is credited with being the most profitable stores in the world with turnover per square foot of $5,600 (that’s square-foot, not square metre… even more impressive) and an average footfall of over 20,000 people per week.

The Rugby World Cup 2019 has just come to it’s end with South Africa Rugby coming through as worthy winners in the final. Looking back at the highlight reel there has been some fantastic displays of athleticism, incredible tries, big surprises (the Japanese team stands out) and some interesting calls. If we had to pick one of the standout performances of the last couple of months of rugby heaven we’re looking off the pitches and into the RWC headquarters.