Governor Mitch Daniels – photo by Ani Ziemniak

One Click recently relocated to a new, larger office space and plans to add up to 110 new jobs by 2015. The Indiana Economic Development Corporation offered One Click nearly one million dollars in tax credits and grants for training and job creation.

“Young businesses like One Click are the source of most new jobs in our country, and risk-takers like Randy and Angie are the best hope our economy has,” said Governor Daniels during his ceremony address.

As far as the view from the inside, One Click employees couldn’t be more happy, or more proud.

“It’s been really exciting to see where we’ve come from and where we’re going. I feel so proud to be a part of a team that is really passionate about our company’s success. Today is definitely a day to celebrate the past, present, and future of One Click,” says Sarah Thaman, Online Marketing Specialist.

Angie and Randy Stocklin

Stay tuned to the blog for more details and photos of our new space!

View the story on wthr.com>

I’m pretty sure I have worked in Excel every work day since graduating college.  Over the years, I have learned a few shortcuts to help analyze sets of data quicker and easier.   I have listed a few of these shortcuts below.

Yep, that’s right, a blog post on excel formulas!  I hope you are as excited as I am!

1. =AVERAGEIF()

We all hopefully know how to add and subtract, maybe even average.  But did you know you can AVERAGEIF?  Say you have a list of data that includes zeros and you want to see only the average of entries that are greater than zero.  Enter =AVERAGEIF(range of data,”>0”).  Your zeros are pulling down your mean.

2. =VLOOKUP()

Another helpful formula is VLOOKUP.  Trying to find information in a database? VLOOKUP allows you to find certain information in a table using a unique identifier in a row as your search tool.  To use a VLOOKUP, enter =VLOOKUP(unique identifier in the row, the range of the table you are searching in, the number of the column to the right of the start of the table that contains the data you want)

Here’s an example:

Listed above are the phone numbers for four of One Click’s brands.  The brand name will act as the unique identifier for this set of data.  If you want to look up the phone number for The Fedora Store, you would input =VLOOKUP(“The Fedora Store”, A2:B5,2).  In this formula, “The Fedora Store” is the lookup value, “A2:B5” is the range of the table, and “2” is the column number that the phone number data is in.

Also remember, the unique identifier for the data set always needs to be at the left end of the table.  While this is a very simple example, VLOOKUPs are very useful for pulling specific information out of a large set of data.

3. =LEFT(FIND())

Last but not least, a formula to help sort through a list of websites.  =LEFT(FIND()) will take a list of addresses like the list below and show only the root domain

To only show the root domain, enter =LEFT(A1,FIND(“/”,A1,9)).  This formula will find and display everything to the left of the third “/” in the address.   For cell A1, it will pull https://www.sunglasswarehouse.com/

So there you have it!  Three formulas that could very well change your life.  Show them off to your husband/wife, boyfriend/girlfriend, grandparents, neighbors, and pets.  They will never look at you the same way again.

It’s this distinctive culture that landed us on the year’s coveted list of Best Places to Work in Indiana for the very first time.

On Thursday, May 3, the Indiana Chamber of Commerce announced One Click Ventures as 26^th in the small and medium-sized company category. The small and medium-sized category consisted of those companies with between 15 and 249 U.S. employees, while the large-sized category consisted of companies that have 250 or more employees nationally. Out-of-state companies were taken into consideration as long as at least 15 full-time employees were in Indiana.

A crew of One Clickers represented the entire team at a lavish Best Places to Work in Indiana awards dinner, which was held at The Indiana Roof Ballroom. The group included co-founders Randy and Angie Stocklin (holding the award, above).

The OCV attendees enjoyed an evening of celebratory beverages, delicious entrees and desserts, and casual conversation (with plenty of laughs ). Beat-thumping music, witty announcers, and “clapper” favors kept the spirit of the evening in true celebration for each well-deserving company on the list.

To be eligible for this year’s list, One Click participated in a systematic workplace assessment back in December 2011. 75% of the overall score relied on engagement surveys sent to each OCV team member, which asked them to evaluate One Click based on eight core categories:

• Leadership and Planning
• Corporate Culture and Communications
• Role Satisfaction
• Work Environment
• Relationship with Supervisor
• Training and Development
• Pay and Benefits
• Overall Engagement

The remaining 25% involved an assessment of the overall benefits, policies, offerings, and perks at One Click. Best Companies Group, a third party administrator, oversaw the surveys to ensure fair evaluation of all companies. The combination of those assessments were analyzed along with an in-depth company evaluation of strengths and weaknesses. These factors determined the final rankings.

The Indiana Chamber of Commerce recognized One Click for providing a range of company perks; these perks include no dress code, flexible scheduling, three weeks paid vacation, monthly catered lunches, discount pricing on all inventory, peer recognition programs, on-site oil changes, and frequent team building activities like the Marshmallow Challenge and OCV Office Olympics.

OCV Talent and Culture Manager Terra Kash Hamilton (in blue, above) sauntered up the winner’s red carpet and accepted the award Thursday evening on behalf of the entire team.

“This award is particularly near and dear to our hearts because it was our team members’ feedback that put us on the map,” she said. “I am hopeful that this will be an ongoing tradition and that we will continue to make our way up the list! I was so honored to represent the individuals of One Click that evening, and I thank each and every OCV member for making coming to work every day fun!”

April Above and Beyond Winner

April’s Above and Beyond winner is Haley. Haley is the Director of Organic Search.

Maggie V. nominated Haley. Here is what her nomination said:

I’d like to nominate Haley for the Above and Beyond Award this month. Lately, our team has been tackling a huge project. Haley has gracefully lead our team through it. She quickly divided us into groups and gave us clear directions to research and contact anyone who might be helpful. Along the way, Haley kept us informed through emails and daily meetings so that the team never lost sight of what we were doing. What I think is most admirable is the way Haley involved all of us. It would have been easy to tackle this herself or depend on just the leaders for help. Instead, she relied on us to research, collect data, and make important decisions. I think this says a lot about her abilities as a leader and her openness as a person. The organic team and OCV are lucky to have her!

April Core Value Highlight

The Core Value being highlighted during April is Embrace Change. Moriya nominated Graphic Designer and Email Specialist Krista . Here’s what she wrote:

I nominate Krista Ward. I have been really hands-off with Krista the last two weeks and she has proven to be able to flourish on auto-pilot. She has taken ownership of the emails and has been plugging away at checking design tasks off of her list without me asking her to do anything.

I wouldn’t have been able to to my job the last few weeks if she hadn’t been doing such a good job at hers. She has had a lot going on in both her work and personal life and her performance hasn’t wavered. She has proven her dependency this week, and that is invaluable to me.

Congratulations to Haley and Krista! One Click is lucky to have such talented team members.

Stripping down. That’s what we did, figuratively, of course (and luckily for you all). We took our largest and most recent acquisition — and stripped it down to its bare bones to see what we had to work with.

We knew there was so much opportunity somewhere in The Fedora Store. Elephant sized. Jupiter sized, even!  We sell great hats and needed to gain some trust with a site makeover.

This is what the site looked like before we got our hands on it. It’s very… um… teal.

It wasn’t  easy to navigate, and you could only sort by brand. What if you wanted a fedora, but didn’t care what brand it was? Or, what if you just wanted to browse the kids’ hats? Well, you were outta luck, that’s what. Tough cookies, as my mom would say.

We had goals. We had big goals. We wanted the site to be easily navigable; we wanted it to feel natural and easy to find exactly what it was you were looking for. Also, we needed to create a strong brand: something classic and sophisticated — without feeling too stuffy and old. It needed to feel like anyone could shop our store, young or old, hip or traditional. We wanted Frank Sinatra to feel at home on our site, as well as NE-YO. And if you only know the name of one of the aforementioned names, we wanted you to feel comfortable on our site, too.

First, we needed a logo.

Bold contrast. Recognizable branding. We liked it. Next, we removed everything from the old site. The new wireframes acted as our road map and the site design began. The solid function and navigation was our skeleton, and all we had to do was create a beautiful skin.

Ladies and gents, I give you our brand-spanking new: The Fedora Store.com

The left navigation is clear and concise. The top nav is helpful and informative. The options in between the two are endless. Shop by brand, or shop by one of our most popular categories. If that doesn’t tickle your fancy, scroll down and check out our content modules. There is some solid information in there, from how to size your hat, to education on hat styles. We want to make sure our shoppers know it’s there.

Because a blog post about redesign wouldn’t be complete without some performance stats, here are a few numbers that compare eight weeks before the relaunch, to eight weeks directly following:

• Number of Orders increased 78%
• Conversion Rate increased 31%
• Site Search decreased 42%
• Bounce Rate decreased 22%

Not too shabby, eh? We’re all very proud, and with each successful redesign comes the confidence to continue pushing our brand’s function and design. Watch out Amazon and Apple, we’re picking up steam here at OCV.

For the sake of this argument, let’s call the situation and environment described above as “Social 1.0.” You speak, brands listen. Brands help (or try to help) you with your issues and you speak about your experience (good or bad). This relationship has worked well for many companies thus far, but several large companies and startups are trying to shift into “Social 2.0,” and the results have been less than stellar.

Consider the example of Facebook. When I first learned about so called “f-commerce stores,” I loved the idea. In theory, brands could connect directly with their fans at moments of [supposed] high purchase intent and deliver hyper-relevant product offerings based on user information pulled from profile data. Awesome, right? I never have to leave Facebook to shop anymore … I can see a brand offering a Facebook-only discount code, hop on their brand page, and before I even know what happened I’ve bought three new shirts from Threadless. If this situation seems so great, why hasn’t it worked?

Brands like Gap, Nordstrom, and Gamestop all gave f-commerce a shot, and each of them had another word that begins with “f” in their minds shortly thereafter. Why are customers so resistant to extending their shopping experience to Facebook? One of the answers lies in the very thing that drew us to social in the first place: More often than not, people are using social as an escape….a time waster. People on Facebook are more than willing to interact with brands they admire when they receive incentives or can participate in a contest, but when the conversation shifts to a hard sell, the blinders go up and the ear plugs go in. All of a sudden, social isn’t fun anymore.

Erik Sherman brings up several great points in his analysis of the failure of f-commerce as well. Consumer trust in Facebook also influences the behavior of potential f-commerce shoppers, turning many folks away at the door who just don’t feel comfortable completing a sale on Facebook.  Another major point in Sherman’s argument is that Facebook sales simply aren’t incremental. Shoppers who choose to buy through a Facebook portal could (and probably would) have purchased just as easily on the company’s traditional site, often with greater flexibility in promotions and product offerings (think about a full page store versus half a page with Facebook). If Facebook isn’t driving any incremental sales, is it even worth the effort to commit the resources to develop an entirely new storefront?

Time will tell if more brands are willing to take a risk with f-commerce, but unless we see a drastic change in the mood and profile of social-networkers and shoppers, we as digital marketers are probably best suited to focus on ways we can interact with our customers in a non-threatening and low-pressure environment. Learning to interact with potential  customers effectively in the social space is one of the great challenges in digital marketing, and one I’m sure each of us love to tackle with our morning coffee.

Q: As an Order Fulfillment Specialist, what’s your typical day like?

A: A typical day begins at 7 a.m.! We arrive at the warehouse and immediately begin the order fulfillment process. This consists of grabbing an invoice, finding the product on the shelf, boxing the item up, and setting it at the scanning station where it will be scanned, labelled, and placed in a designated pickup spot in the warehouse.  After all packages have been scanned and prepared for pick up, stations are straightened and restocked for the following morning. At the end of the day, UPS and the post office arrive around 3:30 p.m. to pick up the packages and get them shipped out to the customers. This completes our day!

Q: What do you do to make sure our customers are happy and receive the best service?

A: There are two main things done daily to ensure customers are happy and receive the best service: 1. Inventory is frequently checked for accuracy to ensure products are in stock and ready for the customer to order. 2. Orders are filled and shipped on the same day they’re ordered (as long as orders are placed by 2 p.m.). This ensures the customer receives their product in a timely manner.

Q: Tell me a little about the rest of your team.

A: Every member of the order fulfillment team is motivated and dedicated to providing the fastest, most efficient customer service possible. We all work together daily to accomplish tasks and make sure the order fulfillment  process runs as smoothly as possible. Each and every team member treats each other with kindness and respect and there is never a dull moment throughout the day!

Q: What’s your craziest shipping story?

A: There are so many crazy stories to choose from I don’t even know where to begin! I guess one of the biggest moments for shipping was in 2011. We went from 12,877 orders for the month of September to 19,324 orders for the month of December!! That was crazy!

Many thanks to Destinee for the interview. If you have any  more questions about our shipping team, please leave them in the comments!

When I first started looking into usability testing, some of the methods I found in my research were really daunting and super expensive. There was special equipment to buy, and we needed a private room to hold tests(absolutely not possible at the time). We would need to pay out incentives, provide lunches, and the list goes on. On top of that, there was the issue of recruiting users – unless we only wanted local residents, we’d have to figure out ways to locate and possibly bring in out-of-town testers. Feeling overwhelmed yet? I sure was.

WAS. Past tense. Despite my love for the show Mad Men, I’m grateful to live in an era with tons of free and low-cost marketing tools available on the Internet. Thanks to sites like UserTesting.com, I was able to launch my very first user test in just a few minutes for a very low cost per user. I didn’t need to go purchase any special equipment, and usertesting.com took care of compensating the users. The best part was receiving the awesomely valuable feedback within a short period of time — and then getting to share it with the team. I now make it a habit to conduct these tests monthly across all our brands.

I could ramble on forever about all the amazing things we’ve learned from the user tests, but what I’d really like to do is share some of these tools I’ve found.

UserTesting.com — This is the user testing tool I routinely use the most, and it’s the only one on this list that provides you with a video.With usertesting.com, each user is presented with a scenario and a series of tasks to accomplish while they’re on your site. It takes no time at all to set up a test, select the number of users, and launch. It even allows you to choose users based on a limited amount of demographic data, or you can send a test to your own selected users. In return, you receive a video of the tester’s session, including audio — all within a matter of a few hours. They recently expanded into mobile testing as well, which is also beneficial to us.

Clue — Pop in your URL to create a free test that asks viewers to list what they remember the most after looking at your site for five seconds. Once you create the test, you’re responsible for getting the word out by sharing the tool via email, Facebook, or Twitter.

Fivesecondtest –- Just as the name suggests, testers get five seconds to view any image you upload before answering the series of questions you set up. Results are collected and then presented in graphical form with the most frequently used keywords. There is a free community version, but paid versions are available as well if you’re interested in combining this with some of their other testing tools.

Feedback Army –- This is another extremely low-cost way to conduct a user test for your website. You submit questions and receive 10 responses in text form. Reviewers are from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, so this test doesn’t allow you to select demographic data, with the exception of country.

EasyUsability –- This allows you to submit your website and a series of questions to a panel of testers. You have the ability to qualify the testers, so you have a better chance of reaching users who will provide you with quality feedback. Along with their answers, you also receive some basic demographic information.

Feedback Roulette –- A free, easy way to solicit feedback on your website. It can also be fun for you because it requires you to review a random website before someone reviews yours. There’s no targeting or profiling with this one, and all reviews are anonymous, so you can’t follow up on the feedback. Again, it’s free, so think of it as a fun way to supplement some of the more robust solutions you may choose to use.

I know I’m pretty geeked-out by all the great, useful information we’ve been able to collect from our testers, and I know you will be too. With these tools, you have no excuse not to start testing right this second. So go!

I’m pretty proud of our email marketing team at One Click. With one email marketing director [that'd be me], a creative director, an associate, a copywriter, and an analyst — most of whom serve the email team in a part-time capacity — we get the job done, and we get it done well. For the nine brands we manage, we create content for and send anywhere from 16 to 25 email campaigns per week through our email service provider Bronto. Our emails are up-to-date with HTML optimized for all email clients and ISPs and those subscribers with images-off by default. We keep our content interesting with attractive promotions, varying product highlights, and tantalizing deals. The copywriting and design in each of our campaigns communicates a human touch with a great eye for layout and branding.

I spend much of my time pinching myself to be working with such a talented, well-oiled machine.

Now – do I wish we had a few more hours in the day and one or three clones? Sure. There are always things we can improve. For example, the bulk of 2012 will be spent building our triggered remarketing program through SmarterRemarketer, a partner of ours who is integrated with Bronto, including a multi-part abandoned cart and welcome series, discounts for first-time visitors, and sale notifications based on certain categories or products.

Another one of our goals for 2012 is to expand upon the success of a few of 2011’s campaigns, most notably our April Fools’ series.

We tried our hands at three tricky, tongue-in-cheek campaigns last year for Sunglass Warehouse, Reading Glasses Shopper, and Handbag Heaven. All three campaigns resulted in our highest click-through rates of the year, and all three saw a lift in open and click-through rates. (You can learn more about the process and success of these campaigns in this 2011 case study.) We wanted to take this success a step further this year by doubling the brands for which we sent these campaigns.

We decided to craft six new April Fools’ campaigns for six of our brands in 2012:

• Sunglass Warehouse
• Reading Glasses Shopper
• Handbag Heaven
• Socks4Life
• Scarves Dot Net
• The Fedora Store

Campaign Creation

Our first step in getting these out the door was to brainstorm fresh, new ideas. Who are our target audiences? What frustrates our subscribers? What do they find exciting? What do they value most? Creative Director Moriya Harpster, Graphic Designer and Email Specialist Krista Ward, and I came up with a list of about 80 ideas ranging from pet sunglasses to hoversocks to un-reading glasses. However, we were looking for themes that were just believable enough — not to mention appropriate and applicable to any subscriber who would open the email. After a few rounds of elimination, we landed on the following ideas:

• Sunglass Warehouse: 4-D Sunglasses
• Reading Glasses Shopper: Lost Glasses Detector
• Handbag Heaven: Mega-Sized Handbags
• Socks4Life: Sock Regenerator
• Scarves Dot Net: Self-Tying Scarf
• The Fedora Store: Invisibility Cap

And onto the copywriter’s digital desk they went! (That’d be the fabulous Sarah Heckle, by the way.) We communicated our vision for the campaigns and let her take it from there. Sarah wrote witty, believable, and audience-appropriate copy for some pretty far-fetched products; for example: “Pyroclusters create photo-realistic effects!” described a feature for our 4-D sunglasses.

Krista created six email designs based on the concepts of Sarah’s copy that embodied our brands’ strong identities, graphic elements, and product and stock photos. For Scarves Dot Net, Krista created an animated graphic of content marketer Molly Borter posing with a self-tying scarf. (See the finished product here.)

After a few rounds of edits and approval among Moriya, Krista, and myself, it was time to code each of the emails in our HTML-optimized templates. Krista inserted the graphics and directed them to landing pages created just for the faux-holiday. These pages contained 35 of our bestselling products with special graphics revealing the April Fools’ prank and a 15% sitewide discount. See this landing page at Sunglass Warehouse as an example.

Because we know about 50% of subscribers have images turned off by default, we wanted to make sure our audience could see the main message of the email regardless of their inbox settings. Thankfully, this is a standard practice for us; we use a combination of inline and embedded CSS to make this happen, defining elements such as background and text colors, font sizes, and line heights.

We tested the emails to make sure everything appeared and functioned as it should and scheduled them within the Bronto platform for early morning on Sunday, April 1.

And then we waited.

D-Day

Because April Fools’ fell on a Sunday this year, a few people on our social media teams and I checked into Twitter every so often from home, searching for keywords such as “megasized hangbags” and “sock regenerator,” our store names, and of course, our Twitter handles.

We saw fewer Twitter responses this year than we did last year; most likely due to the holiday falling on a Sunday.

I also asked our customer service team to keep mental track of any voicemails, phone calls, and emails received regarding the promotions. Throughout the week, they received a few calls from customers inquiring about our “lost glasses detector.” Other responses included two emails from Socks4Life.com subscribers praising our sense of humor.

How did these email campaigns perform?

As in 2011, we were pleased to see a positive increase in revenue, open rates, and click rates across the board compared to our average campaigns [measured specifically to each brand 30 days prior to April 1].

• Sunglass Warehouse: 4-D Sunglasses
• +82% revenue
• +36% open rate
• +54% click-through rate
• -42% conversion
• 2nd highest click-through rate of 2012 [of 76]
• Reading Glasses Shopper: Lost Glasses Detector
• +3% revenue
• +12% open rate
• -3% click-through rate
• -23% conversion
• 13th highest click-through rate of 2012 [of 82]
• Handbag Heaven: Mega-Sized Handbags
• +29% revenue
• +17% open rate
• +79% click-through rate
• -50% conversion
• 2nd highest click-through rate of 2012 [of 65]
• Socks4Life: Sock Regenerator
• +14% revenue
• +18% open rate
• +56% click-through rate
• -19% conversion
• 3rd highest click-through rate of 2012 [of 65]
• Scarves Dot Net: Self-Tying Scarf
• +7% revenue
• +9% open rate
• +39% click-through rate
• -52% conversion
• 8th highest click-through rate of 2012 [of 60]
• The Fedora Store: Invisibility Cap
• +64% revenue
• +30% open rate
• +11% click-through rate
• -27% conversion
• 3rd highest click-through rate of 2012 [of 12]

Also important to note for this year: We increased our comparative revenue, open rate, and conversion rate for the Sunglass Warehouse April Fools’ emails over 2011 by 241%, 80%, and 67%, respectively; however, we did see a drop in these metrics for our other brands.

What did we learn?

I’m going to be honest: I have no data to prove this, but I have a feeling our success was a little lower this year compared to 2011 for two reasons:

1. Subscriber Fatigue: We’re sending more emails now than we ever have before. Around April 1, 2011, our subscribers were receiving two emails per week per brand. Now, they’re receiving up to four per week. Their attention and/or tolerance for our brands in their inbox has likely minimized over the year.
2. Sunday, Sunday, Sunday: April 1 fell on a day of the week when subscribers weren’t sitting in front of their computers or mobile devices, so the promotion likely fell on deaf ears. In retrospect, boosting our sitewide discount for the day might have compelled a few more subscribers to convert post-Fool. Also, we may have benefitted from a mid-day Friday email teasing for a product reveal and special sale on Sunday.

Aside from higher frequency and the unfortunate day of the week, I feel we could have approached these campaigns better from a social perspective.

• Integrating social sharing capabilities into our landing pages.
• Setting up Twitter searches on April 1 for keywords like “lost my glasses,” “one sock missing,” or “how to tie a scarf,” and responding to tweets with our fake products as a solution. This may have provided us some traction and visibility for the day via retweets and shares.

Overall, I’m proud of the work we did for April Fools’ 2012 and feel we improved over 2011. As hokey as it sounds, what I feel was most important in these campaigns is we communicated our humanness with our subscribers — and that we’re able to have a little fun sharing our products and promotions with them.

April Above and  Beyond Winner

This month’s Above and Beyond award winner is Stacie. Stacie is an SEO Specialist who also has a creative talent for photography.

Sarah T nominated Stacie with this kind e-mail:

I think everyone knows that Stacie has become OCV’s unofficial second photographer for organic projects, new site designs, and even email content. I know she is approached many times a week to help other people with projects, and she always has a willing spirit. We talked about an idea for a blog post for Handbag Heaven, and she not only offered to help shoot something for it, but she did it quickly and with a smile. She’s the true definition of team work!

April Core Value Highlight

The April Core Value Highlight is “Win through Teamwork.” OCV’s Director of Shipping and Receiving, Melissa, nominated Destinee, Janet, and Taylor for willingly staying late on a Friday to fill backed-up orders due to an Internet outage.

Melissa’s nomination said:

On the sad day of Internet problems, the shipping team was hit very hard because we were not able to print out invoices, fill orders, or scan orders. All we could do was wait for the Internet to start working … The Internet came back around 3 p.m., which is about half an hour before these ladies are supposed to leave … Without even having to ask my team, they knew that we needed to stay to keep up and get all the orders completed for the day! I appreciated them staying until almost 6 p.m. that night to ensure that all our customers were still guaranteed same-day shipping.

Congrats to Stacie, Destinee, Janet, and Taylor for being recognized in true OCV style!