Around the Workstand

At the change of every season and certainly more so as a new year begins, there are some housekeeping items that can really help your website communicate more effectively with your customers. Let's talk about those tips! Here's the January Marketing Blog Suzie mentions during the episode. Talk to you next Tuesday! Be sure to email your questions to podcast@workstand.com . We read all ema...

It's a little bit quiet here at SmartEtailing this post-holiday week. That could mean our merchants are so busy that they don't have time to ask us questions, but it feels more like a lull and perhaps a welcomed one. In the last few weeks, we've talked about merchandising and telling your holiday story. Merchandising is always essential but it will shift from a pure holiday story to...

We are really getting close to waving goodbye to 2022 so we're hearing tons of questions about how to finish strong and how to start planning for 2023. Today we talk about the right content steps to ensure the products, categories, and topics you care about are in place to grow your organic search reach and to be ready for receiving the paid traffic you're planning for next year. 2023 wi...

Your website is often the first part of your business that new customers meet before visiting your store. It makes sense to do your best to align your website with your physical business as best you can.  Does the website reflect your store's personality? Will site visitors get a feel for who you are as a business if they choose to visit? Are you inviting everyone in and welcoming them? You&a...

As the holiday season continues to motor by, crunch time gets closer and the benefit of being a local retailer with great gifts in-stock and ready for pickup becomes even more valuable to you and your customers. Be sure to provide a clear path to those products that you have in stock. If your business hours are changing, update them on the website, socials, and Google My Business, and don't f...

Raquel from the SmartEtailing Client Success Team joins 10-Minute Tuesday to talk about what we are hearing from our merchants this week. Ensure the changes made on your website display as expected by remembering to reset your site cache after making those changes. Remember that we systematically reset all website caches overnight so if you don't want those changes to be public yet, be sure t...

This week, we talk about important steps to take with your website now that we're deep into the holiday season. If it's popular in the store, it needs to be represented on your website. What products are people asking about, what is your staff hearing on the floor, and what do you want shoppers to know about when they find your website? Seasonally relevant content helps too so use the gr...

Here's a new twist on our Up Next podcast that hopes to provide some quick, actionable tips every week. This week we introduce this new type of Up Next episode. The first big note is that our Client Success Team has extended their support hours and will now be available from 7:00am - 6:00pm MST. We talk about retail trends and mention an article Ryan Atkinson shared with us this week from the...

Welcome to the Q3 2022 Features and Enhancements Spotlight. We released some exciting new features and enhancements for SmartEtailing website clients in the third quarter of 2022. Here's a short video with Suzie and Mark outlining notable updates for websites. Join us at the beginning of every quarter to look back on the Features + Enhancements we've released. Links to resources mentione...

Social media is everywhere. What is it good for in your local business? How often should you post to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok? TikTok, really? You've got a lot going on in the store and it takes all you have to run the business so is it worth your time or the time of your staff to add social media to the mix? For most, the answer is yes. Also for most, there is already some activity on soc...

Welcome to the Q2 2022 Features and Enhancements recap. Links to resources mentioned: How To: Home Screen How To: Discounts Up Next Podcast on YouTube Up Next Podcast on your favorite podcast app We released some exciting new features and enhancements for SmartEtailing website clients in the second quarter of 2022. Here's a short video with Suzie and Mark outlining notable updates for website...

Homepage merchandising is a popular topic here at SmartEtailing and we spend a lot of time talking about it. Homepages, far and away, receive more visits than any other page on your site so it is important to display the content there that tells the story that consumers need to hear about your business. We ( Ryan Atkinson, President + Co-Owner - Suzie Livingston, Marketing + Communications - Mark...

We released some exciting new features and enhancements for SmartEtailing website clients in the first three months of 2022. Here's a short podcast with Suzie and Mark outlining notable updates for websites. Our plan is to release one of these podcasts each quarter to ensure our clients are as informed as possible and know about the work we've done on their behalf. Let us know at info@sm...

Email marketing remains an effective, approachable, and affordable tool to market products and services. We asked Hannah Dittmar, an Account Manager from our Marketing Agency, to join us to talk about the work she does with SmartEtailing clients in email marketing. Hannah and Suzie were both presenters at Frost Bike this year and Hannah's session was specifically about email marketing so it w...

Can you believe it's already 2022 and we're already a month into 2022? It's all moving fast in the cycling industry as it is in many parts of the economy. How's your business? What did you learn in 2021? We learned a lot and the data has some interesting stories to tell from another tumultuous year. So, we wanted to do a quick recap and talk about that and what might be coming...

Shoppers today understand that the products they buy from a retailer's website may be coming from supplier warehouses and they expect a broad selection and excellent execution. Selling both in-store inventory and supplier-held inventory is just an efficient way to help manage inventory dollars and meet demand. We talk about the details and advantages of using drop shipping to sell more and to...

Holiday marketing is normally about sales, discounts, and promos but the times we're living in are anything but normal. If marketing isn't about deals this year, what is it about? How should retailers look at marketing their businesses when inventory is scarce and shoppers are plentiful? Could holiday time be a prep time for spring? Inventory has been super scarce but we're hearing...

We have a great team here at SmartEtailing. One of our newest editions to the team, David DeKeyser, has a very interesting history in bicycle retail that has resulted in him joining SmartEtailing as part of our recent merger with Retail Tool Kit. So, we invited him on to talk about how he got started in retail, his decision after 18 years as a business owner to step away, and how he ended up work...

What do you think of when you hear, Google? It's complicated, right? That's why we brought our in-house Google expert, Jack, in. He takes us through some of the work we do with bicycle retailers using both free and paid Google applications to promote their businesses, grow their customer base, and sell more. You may not use everything Google in your store and not everything with the Goog...

All of the retailers we work with are so busy. The service department seems to be a universal challenge for all - staffing, sourcing parts for repairs, scheduling and communicating with customers, walk-ups... these are wild times for sure. While discussing ways we can help, our recently released Service Appointments tool came up as a way to possibly reduce phone calls and walk-ups for service by o...

As we were signing off from our last episode, the one about custom websites, we asked each other if we were forgetting anything. Well, we certainly were forgetting something that is important in our opinion so we turned the cameras back on and hit record. Homepage makeovers, free library marketing content, and more. Wow. We forgot a lot of great information. We also publish Up Next on our YouTube...

SmartEtailing builds website tools and content so that almost anyone can create and maintain a professional eCommerce website. We also work with roughly 50 retailers each year to create completely custom websites. Why? Well, that is what's up next. Custom Website Examples: https://www.racepacebicycles.com/ https://www.cahabacycles.com/ https://www.cyclingforza.com/ https://www.methowcyclespor...

SmartEtailing has clients all over North America and the pandemic interrupted one of Ryan's favorite work activities - visiting stores and talking to retailers about their businesses. While the pandemic is certainly not 'over', there has been enough improvement that he felt good about testing the traveling waters and he recently returned from a few dealer visits in Southern Californ...

Up Next is our podcast where Ryan Atkinson, Suzie Livingston, and Mark Still from SmartEtailing discuss topics pertinent to our bicycle retail clients, industry suppliers and brands, and service providers in the cycling industry. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, impromptu gatherings around a table or a desk in our office were the norm. Now that we're all working remotely, we have to work a littl...