Classic Sailing’s Adam Purser discusses 20 years in eCommerce, and getting 100,000+ natural Facebook engagements (episode 041)

Adam Purser is the Managing Director at Classic Sailing who sell holidays on traditional sailing vessels all over the world. The business has been going for 20 years and has adapted really well to take advantage of the content possibilities of online selling. They’ve now reached the point where they are sending over 1,000 people to sea each year.

Click to Tweet: On this week’s @ecommasterplan #podcast how Facebook has helped give Classic Sailing a real boom!

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Adam Purser of Classic Sailing Interview
About the business

  • eCommerce Business Structure – Online Only
  • Product Range Scale – niche
  • On a bespoke platform
  • 4 people in the business
  • Based in the UK, sell globally

Listen to hear how Adam Purser got started in eCommerce

Most Awesome Thing Right Now

Adam explained that the most awesome thing in the business right now is the giant strides that the Classic Sailing brand has made in the last 18 months – mostly due to Facebook.

On the Radar for the Coming Months

Currently Classic Sailing have a non-responsive website – with over 2,500 pages of content – it is going to be a huge task to update.  The creation of a new website represents a huge resource not just in website development but also content creation – so that is the big things on the cards for them at the moment.

Content Top Tips

For Classic Sailing Adam explained that imagery and videos are extremely effective – they have a real understanding what their customers / potential customers want to see and work hard to find content that fits.

With a large amount of knowledge available for people interested in sailing – luckily for Adam the Classic Sailing team really enjoy writing and creating content. The do cloan some text but always try to ensure that they write in a way that doesn’t become easily dated – write content so if at all possible it shouldn’t have to be updated.

Adam suggests that you learn as much you can about your product – be honest about things that can be difficult, you have to address the issues in an honest way.  This will then build trust between you and your perspective customers.

Listen to hear how Classic Sailing have built up over 2,500 pages of content

eCommerce Book Top Tip

Lateral Thinking by Edward de Bono

eCommerce Traffic Top Tip

For Classic Sailing Adam has found that content has really helped boost their traffic – they currently use Facebook but know they should be using Istagram, Twitter and YouTube too.

Listen to hear how Facebook has increased Classic Sailing’s website traffic

Tool Top Tip

The team at Classical Sailing use a tool called Fantastical an i-phone app which incorporates calendar, diary and reminders.

Start Up Top Tip

Adam suggest that you just find a product you enjoy and just get stuck in – learn all you can about it so you know the ins and outs.  That way you’ll have a lasting product not something that will come and go as a fad.

If your business didn’t exist, which eCommerce Business Would you like to be Running?

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