Category: news/press

Disaster Creates Huge Demand for Survival Supplies for DollarDays

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“We had orders for survival supplies even before [Hurricane] Sandy hit the East Coast as people prepared for the worst, and they are still pouring in. The demand for our wholesale Marc Gold fleece blankets is incredible—we continue to ship thousands.

“In addition to stay-warm supplies such as jackets, hats and gloves, [items like] flashlights, personal hygiene kits and food are selling fast. Businesses, nonprofits and consumers are buying in bulk to be well prepared for the long road to recovery. It’s hard to imagine what it’s like to be in such a horrible disaster. We are happy to be able to provide some relief to the victims of Sandy.

“Read the Huffington Post article, ‘Holes in the Safety Net,’ to see why DollarDays recommends that people partner up with The Salvation Army, Red Cross, Gospel Rescue Mission and other nonprofits equipped to help with disasters,” says Marc Joseph, President and CEO of DollarDays, a subsidiary of America’s Suppliers, Inc. (AASL), the premier Internet-based wholesaler to small businesses, nonprofits and local distributors.

You can help, too, by participating in DollarDays’ Facebook merchandise giveaway by nominating any nonprofit organization to share $5,000 in merchandise through November. Additionally, visit DollarDays’ site, where designer Marc Gold is […] giving away 100 cases of toys to 100 different community toy drives, and nominate your favorite organization. It’s an easy and free way to help others at the time of year that giving is so important.

About DollarDays
Founded in 2001, DollarDays is the leading supplier of wholesale goods for nonprofits, businesses and betterment organizations. By sourcing affordable products, backed by exceptional service and meaningful community engagement, we strive to inspire and empower our customers to accomplish their missions to improve the lives of people around the world. Recognized as the City of Phoenix Mayor’s Office “2018 Product Exporter of the Year” and Internet Retailer Magazine’s “B2B E-commerce Marketer of the Year” for 2016 and 2017, DollarDays is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. For more information, visit www.dollardays.com.

“Obama’s the One,” Say Small-business Owners, Customers of DollarDays

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“Our customers are small-business owners trying to stay afloat as the economy continues to recover. Given they’re a strong representation of hardworking middle-class Americans, we created an online presidential poll to see who they will vote for on Election Tuesday.

“As of this morning, 55% of the poll participants are hoping to see Obama in the White House for another term, while 42% are Romney hopefuls. That’s a significant gap and certainly says a lot about what hardworking Americans think is best for the country. There are many issues in this election that have a direct effect on small businesses, such as healthcare coverage, government regulation and taxes.

“Our customers live these issues every day, and this poll indicates they believe Obama is the one to best address these issues,” says Marc Joseph, President and CEO of DollarDays, a subsidiary of Americas Suppliers, Inc. (AASL), a premier Internet-based wholesaler to small businesses, nonprofits and local distributors.

About DollarDays
Founded in 2001, DollarDays is the leading supplier of wholesale goods for nonprofits, businesses and betterment organizations. By sourcing affordable products, backed by exceptional service and meaningful community engagement, we strive to inspire and empower our customers to accomplish their missions to improve the lives of people around the world. Recognized as the City of Phoenix Mayor’s Office “2018 Product Exporter of the Year” and Internet Retailer Magazine’s “B2B E-commerce Marketer of the Year” for 2016 and 2017, DollarDays is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. For more information, visit www.dollardays.com.

DollarDays Delivers a Solid Back?to?School Season with EasyAsk Semantic Search

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EasyAsk, the leading provider of natural language semantic technologies, and DollarDays, the largest by-the-case online store for small businesses, shared details of DollarDays’ recent back-to-school season success.

In 11 short years, DollarDays is celebrating several milestones, including doubling the number of SKUs it offers to more than 225,000 and the number of suppliers to more than 500. Traffic on the DollarDays site has increased significantly, as have the number of memberships. All of this translates into revenue growth for DollarDays, even in a business environment where competitors are shrinking or going out of business. 

DollarDays’ CEO, Marc Joseph, attributes DollarDays’ continued success to many key variables, including a growing number of price-sensitive shoppers, dominant marketing (as seen in the company’s back-to-school programs), and an overall exceptional customer experience led by strong site search, merchandising and analytic capabilities.

“As the volume of traffic and the total number of items increases, the more important it is to present the right items to the visitor as quickly as possible,” says Joseph.

DollarDays originally used the open-source search product, Solr, as part of its open-source e-commerce software stack. Solr is an open-source search platform from the Apache Lucene project.

Business Reasons DollarDays Upgraded to EasyAsk from Solr

  • Highly descriptive search—Because of their explosive product catalog growth, DollarDays needed to give shoppers more search functionality and the ability to enter more detailed descriptions in the search box.
  • Faceted navigation—Most navigation systems define static categories. EasyAsk[‘s] natural language automatically generates additional layers of product definitions that greatly improve faceted navigation.
  • Agile merchandising—Merchandisers can leverage EasyAsk eCommerce to create banner ads, promotions, and rapidly identify and adapt as shopper trends develop.
  • Manageability—The scope of managing search terms over a product catalog of 225,000 SKUs can be overwhelming. EasyAsk offers intuitive graphical tools and analytics to make the job easier.

“EasyAsk search dramatically reduced the time for customers to find products and get to that all-important checkout stage,” said Joseph. “As our number of items and seasonal merchandising needs grew, EasyAsk’s superior faceted search enabled our shoppers to more explicitly explore items across multiple dimensions. We offer a number of niche products, and once the visitors get to our site, we need to make it easy to find the exact product they want. EasyAsk helps us do that.”

Kevin Ryan, Vice President of Merchandising at DollarDays, said, “Wholesale sites are generally behind consumer sites when it comes to usability. Many sites only offer basic search and simple navigation by category. Imagine scrolling through 5,000 different products in the same category, such as toys, to find the one you’re looking for. People eventually get frustrated and leave. That is what sets us apart—we are way ahead of the competition.”

DollarDays recently redesigned its homepage, leveraging EasyAsk’s analytics, natural language merchandising and faceted navigation to better guide visitors and present high-priority items for the season in much less space. DollarDays also uses EasyAsk analytics to discover and actively promote the top items its customers are looking for at any given time. An example can be found in its “School Charity Drive” page, where EasyAsk Analytics identifies the 500 most-popular items from last year and promotes these in a blackboard-style category grid.

Joseph is an active contributor to The Huffington Post on economic and business issues. According to Joseph, “Despite the fact that many U.S. consumers believe we are still in a recession, DollarDays is well into our best back-to-school season yet, which is the biggest season for our company. EasyAsk is a big part of our success.”

Original article here:
https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2012/09/13/dollardays-delivers-solid-back-school-season-easyask/

6 Surefire Ways to Capture More “Likes” on Facebook

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Facebook “likes” are quickly turning into currency for credibility. The more “likes” your business has, the more seriously consumers will perceive your company. Extra bonus: every time someone “likes” your page, each of your updates shows up in their news feed, thereby providing them constant reminders of your brand.

So how can you pump up your “likes” to Apple and Gap levels (2.7 million and 1.4 million, respectively)? Follow these tips, and you’ll soon be on your way.

Tag, Tag, Tag

In late January, Jill Homiak, founder of Presenza, a wrap-top designer in Alexandria, Va., posted this to her company’s Facebook wall: “Who else is excited that Sofia Vergara is the new CoverGirl?!?!” She tagged the word “CoverGirl” by putting an @ before the “C,” thereby alerting CoverGirl to the post. Her plan worked; it not only caught the attention of the cosmetics brand, but the brand ended up “liking” her comment.

“By ‘liking’ my comment, it showed up on their Facebook page, which is ‘liked’ by more than 1.7 million people,” says Homiak. “It gave us huge visibility, and we attracted more ‘likes’ in the process.”

Donate to Charity

PaySimple, a cloud-based accounts-receivable provider out of Denver, is taking a touchy-feely approach to attracting “likes.”

“We are taking part in a month-long philanthropy campaign where, for every ‘like’ we receive, we will donate $1 to Kids Are Heroes, a nonprofit that inspires volunteerism in children,” says Sarah Jordan, the company’s Director of Marketing, adding that [PaySimple] is hoping to bring in around 200 “likes” and, so far, is up 40 from last month.

If you’re inspired to try this but aren’t sure what charity will resonate with your customers, Jordan recommends the trial-and-error method to see what brings about the most interest.

Host a Giveaway/Contest

On New Year’s Day 2011, Marc Joseph’s Facebook business page had around 3,200 “likes.” Today, it has more than 42,000.

How’d he do it?

“I’ve been doing giveaways every month since January 2011 on Facebook, and it has worked beautifully,” says Joseph, CEO and President of DollarDays, a wholesale distributor out of Scottsdale, Ariz. “In addition, we really engage with our customers online and ask them what kinds of giveaways they want, which inspires even more attention and comments.”

Contests are also great “like” drivers. Just before Christmas, Brina Bujkovsky, founder of The Younique Boutique in San Marcos, Calif., offered a free hanging quilt as the prize of a contest asking followers to describe their happiest holiday memories on her business’s Facebook page. The contest worked—her “likes” went from 100 to more than 800 in just two weeks. [S]he selected the winner at random and then asked them to post photos of the quilt once they received it, attracting even more “likes.”

Create a Splash Page

A splash page is a gate to one’s Facebook wall and usually contains colorful graphics describing a company, promoting products or sales. Louis Hernandez, Jr., CEO of The Motor Bookstore, a car-manual retailer in DeBary, Fla., uses his splash page to capture “likes.”

“A splash page asks the visitor to ‘like’ your page before seeing your wall contents,” he says. “You can bypass this, but the majority of visitors will follow instructions.”

Reward Reposts

In an effort to get the word out about her harp-performance business, Merry Miller turned to Facebook in a creative way: she asked followers to do the work for her.

“I inspired my base to repost a link to my love CD by offering to play a wedding for free to the person who got the most ‘likes’ on my link,” she says. “I captured 100 ‘likes’ in the first day.”

Get Personal

Facebook users hate a hard sell. Endear your business to followers by posting on personal topics such a popular sports games and how you feel about the weather. Michael D. Haaren, cofounder of Rat Race Rebellion, a work-from-home job board out of Annandale, Va., posts about his obsession with Nutella and gets tons of feedback, as well as “likes.”

Bottom line: Remember to put the “social” in social media. [D]on’t talk at your consumers; [t]hey will just tune out.

Original article here:
https://www.americanexpress.com/en-us/business/trends-and-insights/articles/social-media-for-business-2012-6-surefire-ways-to-capture-more-likes-on-facebook-1/

Clear & Compelling Video Thumbnails Can Boost SEO Rankings

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It hasn’t been easy for online merchants to maintain SEO rankings on Google in recent months, thanks to Google’s ongoing updates. No doubt you’re looking for any edge you can get in order to get highly ranked links.

Google has opened the door to one method for improving search rankings: a higher profile for videos. [Accordingly], as of late 2011, Google started showcasing larger video thumbnail images.

In the aftermath of Panda, many online merchants found that their rankings diminished dramatically. Video has offered one way for site owners to recoup some of these SEO losses: Google appears to be giving more prominence to video search results, an added boost for retailers whose sites feature videos.

As we noticed last summer, online retailers can boost SEO through video: online wholesaler DollarDays created videos and submitted a sitemap following the Google Panda changes and saw its videos appear on the first page of Google search results, immediately improving both viewing and conversion rates.

Another change you can use to your advantage is that Google recently increased the size of the video thumbnail images that appear within natural search results, making them more noticeable and appealing to people conducting searches. So now, not only do your videos help boost your rankings, but the larger thumbnails should also generate higher click-throughs. […]

[Keep in mind, though, that] you need to pay special attention to creating, tagging and submitting thumbnail images that show off your videos to best advantage; otherwise, you’re leaving it to Google’s random selection, and you could end up losing the value of your videos if the thumbnail image that Google chooses doesn’t show off your product in the best way.

You can see the placement given to videos by looking at a search result listing for catalog company Miles Kimball. A search for “solid colored braided chair pads” shows the Miles Kimball product about halfway down the first page of results, complete with a thumbnail image and video “play” button. The video-related search results typically appear as one of the first two or three results in the “shopping” section of combined search results on Google.

While you can’t entirely control where or how your product video will turn up in a Google search, you can make sure that the thumbnail image you make available to Google will highlight your product as effectively as possible. In fact, you should make it a regular practice to include a thumbnail image when you create a video sitemap for Google. […]

Some tips for creating effective video thumbnail images:

  • Make sure they’re in focus. This may sound obvious, but images taken from video can be blurry. Choose from only sharpest stills you can gather. If the image is blurry, it loses its appeal.
  • Insert marketing messages. NFLShop.com adds text to its videos to deliver messages about product quality and exclusivity and chooses thumbnails that illustrate these messages. For instance, the thumbnail for a “Faulk jersey” includes the message “Order Today.” (On the other hand, don’t let messages take over space that you need for the product image, which is the most important factor in a video thumbnail.)
  • Choose a large, well-centered product image.A thumbnail is still a thumbnail, after all. Counteract the small size of the image by selecting a product shot—or a picture of someone using the product—that fills as much of the limited space as possible and is properly centered so that it’s easy for the viewer to understand what it is. The thumbnail images for “drill pumps” at ToolKing.com […] leave viewers in no doubt as to what the product is.
  • Test variations. Try out two or three thumbnail options to see which ones drive the highest click-through rates. You may find out that thumbnails featuring people perform better than straight product shots or that a certain angle on a product draws more click-throughs than images from other vantage points.

Given Google’s affection for video, it makes sense to take advantage (and take control) of the ability to showcase your products as professionally as you can. Take the time to deliver thumbnails that are truly representative of your products—the effort will pay off in click-throughs and conversions.

Original article here:
https://multichannelmerchant.com/marketing/catalog/clear-and-compelling-video-thumbnails-can-boost-seo-rankings/

Put up or Shut up

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“It’s time for us to pull together and stop the bickering and finger-pointing and just help people in need,” says Marc Joseph, President and CEO of DollarDays, a subsidiary of America’s Suppliers, Inc. (AASL.PK), a premier Internet-based product wholesaler to small businesses and local distributors.

As part of the company’s ongoing corporate philanthropy program, this month, DollarDays will donate more than 1,000 blankets to homeless shelters around the country. Through the company’s Facebook page, customers can enter their local shelter into a sweepstakes. Winners will be selected January 4, 2012.

“The economy is in shambles, and our neighbors and fellow human beings need help. The people that help them need assistance, and it’s time we stop griping and just do something,” says Joseph. “DollarDays works closely with small-business owners who are so economically burdened, but they also are the most philanthropic people, and we appeal to them and their customers to help out as well.”

According to Michigan State University, three-million Americans, a fourth of which are children, go without shelter every night, and, during the winter months, the 3,235 homeless shelters and social service outlets in the United States are filled to capacity and working at a breaking point.

Every month throughout 2011, DollarDays has donated up to $5,000 in product to small businesses and nonprofit organizations, and they plan to continue it throughout 2012.

“There’s so much noise about how to solve economic woes, but at a grassroots level, we just need to help with product, food and financial donations.”

In addition to small businesses, DollarDays services the nonprofit sector, which has been the fastest-growing segment of its business. Through DollarDays, nonprofit organizations have access to necessary supplies by the case that help them stretch their donated dollars.

Joseph reports that nonprofits are buying everything from office supplies and health and beauty products to fundraising items. Other top-selling supplies include batteries, inexpensive clothing, recognition awards and plaques, holiday greeting cards, and small electronics. In fact, Occupy Wall Street ordered Army blankets.

In November, Blind Cat Rescue & Sanctuary, located in St. Pauls, North Carolina, won the DollarDays $2,500 grand prize for use toward product. Founded in 2005, Blind Cat Rescue & Sanctuary provides a safe place for blind cats deemed un-adoptable by regular shelters due to blindness or illness.

“Thank you so much to DollarDays for their wonderful contest, giving us the opportunity to win $2,500 of merchandise,” says Alana Miller, Director of Blind Cat Rescue & Sanctuary. “This wonderful gift allowed us to buy cleaning and office supplies that will last us many months. Freeing up those funds allowed us to provide the cats with new climbers that were not in our current budget. We are so grateful to [DollarDays] for their kindness!”

Joseph adds, “Everyone has something that touches them, whether it’s animals, children, homelessness or medical issues. We just need to act on our natural impulse to help, and in this hectic world with a scary economy, it’s hard to do. But, like DollarDays, even a little every month helps, and it’s so rewarding for everyone.”

About DollarDays
Founded in 2001, DollarDays is the leading supplier of wholesale goods for nonprofits, businesses and betterment organizations. By sourcing affordable products, backed by exceptional service and meaningful community engagement, we strive to inspire and empower our customers to accomplish their missions to improve the lives of people around the world. Recognized as the City of Phoenix Mayor’s Office “2018 Product Exporter of the Year” and Internet Retailer Magazine’s “B2B E-commerce Marketer of the Year” for 2016 and 2017, DollarDays is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. For more information, visit www.dollardays.com.

DollarDays Chooses Treepodia’s E?commerce Video Tool

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Treepodia, the leading provider of automated video solutions for online retailers, announced today that DollarDays, a leading online wholesaler that helps small businesses compete against chains in their area, has seen a major increase in conversions using Treepodia’s e-commerce video platform. DollarDays has also greatly improved the SEO of its product pages using Treepodia’s Dynamic Video Sitemap.

DollarDays, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, offers more than 165,000 bulk products—including decorative items, clothing and personal care products—that can be ordered in small quantities at competitive prices. Given the wide range of products, DollarDays needed to make it easier for its customers to find and choose products from the DollarDays website. Video offered one of the best methods for showcasing DollarDays’ products, but managing video content was time-consuming and labor-intensive.

“With so many products to cover and an ever-expanding product line, an automated solution was clearly the only option in terms of both sheer logistics and cost,” said Marc Joseph, President of DollarDays. In addition, DollarDays needed to make sure that each video was properly indexed so that searches for relevant keywords on Google and other search engines would include DollarDays’ products further up in results—a benefit that the Dynamic Video Sitemap provides.

DollarDays chose Treepodia to create about 50,000 product videos for its site. Treepodia’s e-commerce video platform enables online merchants to cover their entire product catalog with dynamic and effective video content in just 24 hours and includes monitored video hosting, high-quality streaming and a multi-environment video player. DollarDays also chose Treepodia’s Dynamic Video Sitemap, which ensures that all video content is indexed, including video titles, descriptions, duration, location and more, in order to drive more new traffic to their site.

Soon after it began using Treepodia to create and manage its product videos, DollarDays saw its conversion rate rise significantly. Additionally, all of its product videos were indexed by Google in a single day, and product-specific long-tail search terms such as “bright pencil pouch” were yielding far higher results on Google than before—in many cases, showing up first among search results.

“We’ve been incredibly pleased with the results we’ve received from the Treepodia solutions,” said Joseph. “So much so, in fact, that within a month, we’d already decided to expand the Treepodia solutions across our entire product offering. Not only was the ROI quick and concrete, but the implementation was surprisingly simple.”

Original article here:
https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2011/12/06/dollardays-chooses-treepodias-e-commerce-video-tool/

DollarDays Cuts Through the Site Search Thicket with “Natural Language” Technology

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The e-commerce site operated by wholesaler and closeout company DollarDays presents a daunting site search challenge. DollarDays sells some 140,000 products spread across 5,000 departments, and the smaller business owners who typically purchase there […] often had to navigate through a thicket of unwanted item[s] before finally finding the desired product[s].

But the e-commerce company says that has changed with the deployment of what it calls “natural language” site search. Software and algorithms provided by EasyAsk enable DollarDays to automatically classify products into categories that better reflect site searches performed by shoppers and return to them results that more closely match what they want to buy.

For instance, before DollarDays began using the technology about a year ago, a shopper typing “blue polo shirt” into the site search box at DollarDays.com might be presented with a long list of results that included not only apparel, but Polo cologne or other unrelated blue items, says Marc Joseph, President and CEO of DollarDays. The EasyAsk technology better understands the prime characteristics of the search—in this case, that the shopper is seeking a blue shirt—and returns a more exact set of results; the software classifies products according to such attributes as price, brand, design and patterns. A search conducted today using that same phrase returned five results, all of them for shirts, and only one of which was not obviously blue.

“We’re a one-stop shop for small businesses who buy from us, and we have to get our customers quickly to what they want,” Joseph says. “The natural language search allows our customers to find the exact product in a single click, increasing our customer conversion rates.”

Since installing the software, Joseph says DollarDays has experienced a dramatic increase in the use of the e-commerce site’s search box by shoppers, who are using longer search terms to find products more quickly. He declined to provide details. The software also works to take product attributes such as price and recent arrivals to create new product categories that help DollarDays run better promotions; for instance, the software helps to place items into such categories as “closeouts,” “49¢ or less,” “hot sellers” and “new products.”

For an e-commerce operator such as DollarDays that installs and manages the site search technology on its own, EasyAsk typically charges a one-time licensing fee of $35,000, says John Morrell, the technology provider’s Vice President of Marketing. If EasyAsk manages the technology, fees start at about $600 per month, he says.

Original article here:
https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2011/09/09/dollardays-cuts-through-site-search-thicket/

DollarDays Rings up E-commerce Dollars Using EasyAsk Natural Language Search & Merchandising

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EasyAsk, the leader in e-commerce search and merchandising software, and DollarDays, the premier online wholesaler and closeout company, today announced one of the largest and most diverse uses of e-commerce search in e-retail. DollarDays is using the natural language conversion power of EasyAsk eCommerce Edition to get customers from the home page to the right products in a single click, helping increase purchase rates and revenue.

DollarDays distributes over 140,000 products on its e-commerce site, with over 5,000 categories and subcategories—a product catalog that would rival even the largest e-retailers. In addition, as a small-business wholesaler, the catalog is continuously shifting as seasons change, new products become available and excess product needs to be closed out.

A product catalog of this size, diversity and fluidity created a number of difficult challenges in implementing e-commerce search and merchandising. The product diversity meant that the same search term could have different meaning for different products and the navigation attributes would be widely varied across the different categories. The constant change created a merchandising nightmare in trying to manage promotions and offers. It was clear that keyword-based e-commerce search offerings could not meet these challenges.

DollarDays chose EasyAsk eCommerce Edition because the natural language technology provided a more powerful yet easier-to-use search and merchandising for their e-commerce site. With EasyAsk, DollarDays now has: 

  • A search box that is more accurate, allowing visitors to type phrases describing exactly what they want and getting those in one click;
  • A rich, dynamic set of navigation attributes that adjust based on the categories and products, making navigation faster; [and]
  • Superior, easier merchandising, including the automatic assignment of products to special categories and rapid addition of promotional banners, ads and links.

“The most successful e-commerce sites get the customer to the right products the fastest, speeding the buying process,” said Marc Joseph, President and CEO of DollarDays. “EasyAsk[‘s] natural language search allows our customers to find the exact product in a single click, increasing our customer conversion rates. EasyAsk also makes our merchandising more agile, which is essential in our business, where product offerings are continuously changing.”

As a result of using EasyAsk, DollarDays has seen significant improvement in the performance of their e-commerce site, including:

  • The improvement of successful search rate to 99.8% and the virtual elimination of zero-results searches;
  • A dramatic increase in the use of the search box and the length of search terms to lead visitors to products faster;
  • Greater efficiency in merchandising by replacing a time-consuming multistep process to create promotions with a combination of automated and single-step creation of merchandising programs.

DollarDays uses EasyAsk[‘s] natural language and algorithms fed by operational product data to automatically classify products into unconventional categories such as “closeouts,” “49¢ and less,” “hot sellers” and “new products” (seen across the top of the DollarDays website). Using EasyAsk in this way saves many “man-days” of merchandiser time and completely removes technical staff from the merchandising processes.

“DollarDays is a shining example of how EasyAsk’s natural language search and merchandising can bring an e-commerce site to life and instantly increase customer conversion. Higher conversion equals more sales, leading to higher profits,” said Craig Bassin, CEO of EasyAsk. “In a marketplace where you need every competitive edge possible, DollarDays found a powerful yet easy advantage by using EasyAsk that is paying off at the bottom line.”

EasyAsk eCommerce Edition is the industry leading e-commerce search and merchandising solution that allows visitors to find products faster and receive compelling promotions and offers. EasyAsk understands the content and intent of the search question—“red long-sleeved dresses under $150”—to deliver the right results on the first page. EasyAsk eCommerce Edition customers see the industry’s highest conversion rates, deliver a superior customer experience and see dramatic increases in average order sizes.

About DollarDays
Founded in 2001, DollarDays is the leading supplier of wholesale goods for nonprofits, businesses and betterment organizations. By sourcing affordable products, backed by exceptional service and meaningful community engagement, we strive to inspire and empower our customers to accomplish their missions to improve the lives of people around the world. Recognized as the City of Phoenix Mayor’s Office “2018 Product Exporter of the Year” and Internet Retailer Magazine’s “B2B E-commerce Marketer of the Year” for 2016 and 2017, DollarDays is headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. For more information, visit www.dollardays.com.

Interview: Marc Joseph of DollarDays

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This week, it’s my great pleasure to post an interview we ran with Marc Joseph, founder and President of DollarDays, and Kevin Ryan, [DollarDays] Vice President and General Merchandise Manager.

It would be great if you could share some details about your company’s history, goals and values.

DollarDays is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. It was started back in 2001, because we felt the Internet leveled the playing field and was going to be the next channel of distribution for wholesale and closeout products to small and medium-sized businesses who had survived and were beginning to thrive against the chains in their areas. DollarDays became a public company in 2008 as America’s Suppliers, Inc. We now have over two million registered businesses and average over 1,000 new businesses joining us each day, attracted by our over 140,000 general-merchandise products, which are categories of items you would find in a Macy’s, Target or Walmart. Customers find us because of price, assortment, […] convenience and […] customer service provided by our 20 inside sales people.

We strive to be the premier online supplier for the small guys to compete against the big guys. Our second-largest customer base [is] nonprofit organizations like churches and schools who buy products from us to support their causes. We just went through hats, gloves, underwear, toothpaste, blankets, etc., and now are supplying them with backpacks, school supplies, kids’ clothing, health and beauty supplies, etc. We reach out to nonprofit organizations, because, with our buying power, it allows them to stretch their dollars and get more bang for their buck.

What initially kindled your the interest in e-commerce video? Where you actively seeking out an e-commerce video solution, per se, or was this simply part of the ongoing quest to improve the site and bring up conversions?

A little of both. We had been experimenting with video over the past year knowing that it was going to be an important part of SEO plans and goals. We partnered with a video company to produce several funny videos hoping they would “go viral,” but as we quickly learned, this is a one-in-a-million chance to happen, [s]o we decided to pull back until we found the right method and process for producing videos. When we found Treepodia, we knew we had found a value proposition that would give us more bang for our buck by producing thousands of product videos that would rank in product searches, rather than hoping for the one big viral video to come along.

How did you first hear about Treepodia? What were the factors that led to the decision to choose our solution for your implementation?

Our Vice President of Merchandising, Kevin Ryan, found Treepodia’s ad in a web design trade magazine and brought it to the management team’s attention. We discussed it as a team and decided it was worth pursuing. Again, we saw Treepodia as a value proposition to get us started down the road to video production and success.

What’s the impact e-commerce video has had on your operation so far?

We are still early in the game with Treepodia, but, so far, we have been impressed with the results we have seen. We are extremely pleased with our video viewing rate, conversion rate and product placement in Google search engines. Early on, we immediately started to see our product videos appearing on the first pages of Google searches. This just further helps us create the reinforcement in our product listings.

What have your e-commerce video experiences taught you? What would you recommend to smaller/less experienced vendors, in this respect?

We have learned over the past year that video is an important part of our current and future merchandising and SEO strategy, and that once we found the right partner, it was obvious that […] the results are promising and successful. The key part is finding a way to create videos in [an] automated manner that requires little setup on behalf of the retailer. We all have many other projects and goals to accomplish, and having a partner to do this on our behalf allows us to concentrate on the merchandising, selling and customer service part of our business. The small cost of a service like Treepodia has proven to be a successful partnership.

Original article here: http://blog.treepodia.com/2011/07/interview-marc-joseph-and-kevin-ryan-of-dollardays-com/