Tips From Top Stores: How To Make Lexity Work For You - EarthLED

Meet EarthLED and Mark Costigliola

Since opening their doors in 2007, online ecommerce store EarthLED has found success as one of the largest distributors in the country of LED bulbs. EarthLED specializes in bulbs for retrofit use to replace regular lighting.

In addition, EarthLED has used Lexity for over a year now to fuel that success: Sales revenue has increased 27% year over year, visits have increased 42%, and pageviews have increased 54%.

We asked managing director Mark Costigliola to share his tips with us on Lexity, marketing, and small business in general.

Mark’s recommendations:

• Take advantage of Lexity Live View to keep a finger on the pulse of your business
• Stores that have just opened for business should try starting with the Overall Store or Specific Products themes instead of the Retargeting theme
• Users should make sure to write descriptive site content and product pages to increase the chance of good performance from Lexity
• If you have a bit of extra time, put yourself in your customer’s shoes to help think of ways to refine Lexity’s keyword suggestions
• If you have a new product, reach out to “key opinion leaders” in your industry to help you gain an initial audience
• If you keep inventory on your side, make it a priority to figure out how to do efficient fulfillment
• Before you start your small business, spend time planning it all out

Use Lexity Live View to track your business in real-time 

Mark says Live View has helped give the EarthLED team instantaneous insight into their business and how to improve it.

“Live View has given us a lot more intelligence about how our business operates, and how different things we do during the day affect who's coming to our site. It gives us a finger on the pulse of our business. Being an ecommerce store, if you can't see what's going on in your store at any given time, you really don't know what's going on.”

“I'll watch it and be able to see if someone purchases or abandons the checkout. Or I'll post something on Facebook and start seeing people come in from Facebook. It’s an instantaneous reaction to what you're doing, and because it's something we can watch and measure, it's helped us to be a lot more proactive in what we do every day. It's revitalized how we update our site, because we update things more frequently when we can see we're getting results. For example, we've added a lot more categories and different ways for people to find different products on our site, and we've seen how that helps people actually buy a product. Live View is one of the best things that’s been added to the platform.”

Brand New Stores: Try the Overall Store or Specific Products Themes

Mark recommends that stores that have just opened their doors start with the Overall Store or Specific Products themes. The Retargeting theme shows ads to previous visitors who haven’t yet bought, so it works best for stores that have already built up significant traffic.

Write Descriptive Site and Product Pages

Since Lexity factors in store copy to make keyword recommendations, Mark also recommends that new users make sure their site and product pages have good content to increase the likelihood of good performance from Lexity.

Put Yourself In Your Customer’s Shoes To Help Refine Your Keywords

Mark says he’s surprised at how well Lexity generates keywords on its own and thinks users who don’t want to adjust the software’s suggestions will be “just fine”—nevertheless, Mark admits he likes to spend a few minutes each week adjusting his keywords.

Now that he no longer has to manage the details of executing his ad campaigns, Mark says he likes to take a few minutes each week instead to refine Lexity’s keyword suggestions. “You can stop thinking about logistics and start thinking, what do I want people to find me by?” To help you uncover keywords Lexity might have missed, he says, put yourself in your customer’s shoes. “When you're looking at what Lexity comes up with, ask yourself if there's something your customer would be looking for that's Lexity isn't coming up with.”

If you keep inventory on your side, make it a priority to figure out how to do efficient fulfillment

EarthLED carries roughly 60 products, with about $2-3 million dollars in inventory at any given place altogether.

“The biggest thing, especially for people who keep inventory on their side: Get fulfillment figured out and do it efficiently. Figure out the most efficient way to get from warehouse to customer. Most people like free shipping, so cut as much out as possible to get free shipping in a timely fashion. Once we figured out the key to this, that drove our success.”

“Any store with varied products for varied customers, the first thing people think is drop shipping. We decided to store in our own warehouse. Which was great, except there were a lot of overhead costs. We had to figure out how to get the product to the customer in a timely fashion, had to figure out an inventory management system. So we started using third party fulfillment solutions like Amazon Fulfillment. That's the key thing we use. I definitely recommend Amazon Fulfillment to others. It's difficult to achieve the level of expertise internally that you need. Once we get the product to Amazon, it's a lot easier because they manage checking and managing product inventory.”

If you have a new product, reach out to “key opinion leaders” in your industry to help you gain an initial audience

“If someone's got a new product, go out to the blogs in your industry or focus group, send free samples, build that relationship with who we call “key opinion leaders.” That doesn't hurt. It worked really well in some cases. Some blogs were really popular and got us our initial audience.”

Before you start your small business, spend some time planning things out

What would Mark do differently if he started another small business? Here’s what he says:

"Sit down from the start and plan things out. Do a lot of planning. Try to figure it all out before you launch—but, still launch as quickly as possible. Think it all through but still launch."

Interested in learning more about how Lexity can help you advertise your store online? Visit lexity.com or contact us! There are no fees for the first 3 months, and Lexity Live View comes free when you use Lexity for your online advertising. Lexity supports multiple store platforms, including Shopify and eBay ProStores.