Interview with Chuck Lasker, Founder of MerchantTutorials.com and E-Commerce Consultant

When did you become involved in the e-commerce industry?
My first website design was in 1995, but my first e-commerce site was for my employer in 1999. The site is still exactly the same as when I left it in 2003.

How did you get started in the Miva Merchant community?
I was Vice President of Operations and Marketing at a national health products company. We decided to add online shopping to our static website, and our host happened to offer Miva Merchant as their e-commerce solution. As a new user, I signed up for the Miva Merchant user list (now a forum). I started out asking questions, then, as I learned more, answering questions from other users. Finally, people started asking if they could hire me, and I started a part-time consulting business. A few years later, in 2003, I went full-time.

What made you get involved in the creation of tutorials?
As a Miva Merchant consultant, I kept getting the same questions from clients over and over. Recognizing a pattern, I bought screen capture software and started creating tutorial videos to answer the most common questions. It saved me a lot of support time and allowed my clients to be less dependent on me for many tasks.

Word got around about my Miva Merchant tutorials to users who were not my clients. People asked me if they could watch the videos, so I came up with a subscription plan that allowed me to expand the topics and create more professional tutorials.

What role do you think social media plays in the e-commerce industry?  How do you think that those running online businesses can use social media to their advantage?
I am a social media addict. I use Facebook and Twitter constantly. However, I have my doubts that many e-commerce sites would benefit from the time it takes to manage social media accounts. It takes real commitment, engaging your connections, not just blasting out promotional posts.

For those willing to put in the time and effort, there are three ways I can see benefiting from social media:

1. Being accessible. While the big companies are completely out of touch, with almost no desire to engage their customers, a small e-commerce business can build true customer loyalty and word of mouth marketing through honest engagement. Additionally, you can get fantastic ideas for new products, product improvements, and marketing techniques. Step out of your ivory tower and you’ll be amazed at how much your customers want to help you.
2. Tech support and complaints. If I can send a quick question via Twitter about a product I purchased, and get an answer within a few hours, I will be impressed. If I complain, and I get a sincere response, I’m even more impressed.
3. Promotions. People are not too fond of obvious promotional posts in social media. However, every now and then giving an exclusive discount (coupon code twittertuesday, for example), builds interest in your updates and gets you onto special follow lists.

What role(s) does blogging play in the current web 2.0 landscape and how can blogging as well as applications like Twitter and Facebook bring a personal touch to businesses?
One major benefit of blogging is having constantly updated content on your site, leading to SEO benefits. Another is providing information that builds loyalty and trust. If you reveal yourself via blogging and social media, as long as you’re not a jerk, you will generate loyal ambassadors for your brand. If you are a jerk, stay far away from social media!

I’ll take this opportunity to give some e-commerce advice. Unless you have a proprietary product with high demand and no competition, you must differentiate yourself from the bigger online stores. The best way to do this, in my opinion, is to tell your story. Most people would prefer to do business with a person instead of a corporation. Personal photos, in depth stories, family references – all of these things can be done with a blog to build a reason to shop on your site versus Amazon.com.

Could you tell us a little more about your role with the popular Practical eCommerce magazine?
I founded Practical eCommerce Magazine. I used Kerry Murdock as my publisher. Even before the first issue was published, Kerry offered to buy the magazine from me. I sold it and helped with the first few issues. I wrote most of the first issue, half of the second issue, and some of the third issue. Eventually Kerry decided to discontinue the printed magazine and focus on 100% online content. It’s quite popular and I’m proud of my part in its creation.

What are your roles at the Miva Merchant conference?
I don’t have any predefined roles. At several conferences I taught a breakout session or two. At the recent 2010 conference I was asked to be the MC. I also moderated a guest panel and demonstrated the new Wombat version of Miva Merchant. I hope to have continued involvement in future conferences.

How do you see Miva evolving over the next few years?  How has it changed since you began working with it?
In the beginning, Miva was a barely-funded startup. Support was minimal as staffing was always below what would be required to properly support the product. But it was a good enough product to be worth the trouble.

Miva was then bought by a company named FindWhat, which turned out, even with the additional funding, to be a terrible fit. The product lost a lot of users and community support.

In 2007, the current owners bought Miva Merchant. Support increased dramatically, the product was greatly improved and the community became much more motivated. Miva Merchant 5.5 is light years ahead of the previous versions due to considerable investment in a complete platform redesign.

As far as the future, I believe Miva Merchant will follow a path similar to eBay, Skype and Salesforce.com, from a small company serving a tight-knit community of users, to a mainstream corporate software leader. With the software getting easier to use and the company providing services historically offered only by third party partners, the need for a user community to support each other is decreasing. The result will be either Miva Merchant becoming a large full service company like Volusion, or the company being acquired similar to Monster Commerce’s acquisition by Network Solutions.

What advice would you give someone who wants to start their own Miva store?
That’s a simple one. Be prepared to spend some money to get started. People wrongly believe they can start an entire e-commerce business for 500 bucks, mainly because of misleading ads from GoDaddy and Yahoo. The reality is, if this will be more than a hobby, if you’re serious, it’s going to require a minimum investment in the thousands of dollars. Get an experienced consultant to help, and do it right. Or, if you don’t have a big enough budget, spend what you have on some nice new clothes or a short trip, because doing e-commerce halfway is worse than not doing it at all.

Why choose Miva over other shopping carts (either hosted or open-source)?
I wrote a blog post, 10 Reasons Why I Prefer the Miva Merchant Shopping Cart.

How has your blog helped you generate business?
Anyone who has been involved in the Miva Merchant community for a long time can probably remember my entrance to the community. Instead of a forum, there was an email user list. When someone emailed to the user list address, everyone on the user list got a copy of the email. When someone responded, everyone got that one, too. This led to a lot of emails each day, as well as some lively discussions.

With this user list, I made waves by criticizing Miva (the company), loudly stating my opinions, and fighting off the old-school leaders of the community. I made people angry, but everyone knew me as a person who says what he thinks. I learned that notoriety and honesty can make an impact. My initial clients all said it was because of my willingness to criticize that they were interested in working with me. They trusted me. And by working to earn continued trust, I built a business.

I said all that to say, for me, a blog is a place to build a reputation. Combined with other social media, people can truly get to know you.

What challenges do you see facing the world of e-commerce now and in the future?
In the beginning, long long ago in the late 90’s, a small company was able to compete with the big companies cheaply and effectively online. This is no longer the case. As with anything else, the big companies have found a way to push costs up to exclude smaller entrants from making a dent in their businesses. And that just means us smaller guys need to be more creative, faster to react to market changes, and more engaged with our customers to succeed. This, I believe, is the challenge of the moment, and will remain so for a few more years.

If I tried to give an opinion about what is going to happen with the Internet beyond 2 or 3 years, I’d be showing myself to be a fool.

Can you tell us some of the reasons behind your success?
Even though I’m not rich, I do consider myself successful because I’ve been able to do what I love for over seven years with no boss. I can pick and choose who I work with, and I have never had to seek out new business. I credit this to doing something at all times, keeping myself out there and working continually. If business is slow, I look for opportunities to help others. I believe this creates a karmic response that leads to good fortune from sources I could not predict.

How has the recent economic downturn affected your business?
When the economy is slow, businesses must choose where to get the most return for their investment dollar. For example, they can spend four grand on a Yellow Pages ad, or they can invest less than that to hire a developer to create or rework their online stores for increased sales. More website work equals more developers needing help equals more subscribers to MerchantTutorials.com! In other words, the downturn has been good to me.

What can we expect from Chuck Lasker in the next five years?
I have no idea. I have learned to write my goals in sand, knowing that, working hard in one direction usually leads to unexpected opportunities from other directions. I could not have told you in 2005 that I’d be anywhere near where I am today, professionally. Hopefully, by 2015, I will be able to say that I am just as surprised and delighted by where I’ll be as I am now. If that includes a lot of beach time, all the better.