Love your products
It's really important to use your own products and to know your own platform. I'm doing about one listing a day on vzaar at the moment. Real world listings, not tests. This helps me find problems and bugs and issue or just learn how things can be improved. As a result we have a long list of things we want to improve and are working through them as fast as we can.
One of the reason Arena did such a good job with helping me pick flowers for my date (see my last post) was because they knew their products really really well. Had they just recommended roses or some generic flower I probably wouldn't go back in a hurry, not only because they didn't help me out but because they clearly don't think enough of what they sell to know everything about what the sell. But this is not the case and Arena is going from strength to strength.
The same thing can be said of almost anything, even smoothies or coffees.
I used to get a lot of juices and smoothies from Crussh when I worked on the Old Bailey which was near a Crussh. They really knew their products and always had something to recommend or advice. Buying something from people passionate about what they do and their products makes one want to buy them again.
No more so did I see this when I used to get coffees from Taylor Street Baristas when I worked in Richmond. These guys would throw a way a coffee if they didn't make it just right. And just right was complicated, with lots of tapping of the coffee thing and compressing it get just the right amount of pressure. They were good, and they made some of the best coffee I have ever had. But not only that, they loved coffee. They talked about it, they chatted about it, they were passionate about their product. I bought a lot of coffee from them.
Contrast that to Coffee Republic who have tried to rebrand themselves as a deli. All good, except they don't know their products and have no passion. I just ordered a smoothie with vitamin C booster from them. I had to point it out on the board as the person serving me had no idea they even did vit C boosters. The guy had no interest and really looked like he would rather be somewhere else.
No passion. Doesn't know his products. I'll be going somewhere else next time.