A Glass Half Full Kind of Story about Sam Adams and Solid Cactus: How to Keep E-commerce Brewing!

At the Metro VIP happy hour last night (see company blog), Project Manager Joe Domkowski commented on the glass that was holding my amber-colored Sam Adams Oktoberfest.

“Did you know some students a MIT engineered that glass?” he asked.

“Joe D. is full of useless knowledge,” said another SC employee.  Mancini or Emershaw or both, I cannot recall. 

Then it got me thinking.  It’s not useless info.  In fact, that tidbit was VERY useful to me.  Sam Adams’ owner wanted to optimize the drinking experience for his loyal, faithful consumers.  The company had several glassware engineers (not sure if that is proper terminology because I think I made it up) take a stab at it, and one won.  From a Sam Adams press release:

 Rastal presented a glass featuring a unique angled lip that delivers the beer to the right points on the drinker’s palate producing the optimal drinking experience. The neck and lip design also helps sustain the head of the beer, which enhances the release of the signature Noble hop aromas found in Samuel Adams Boston Lager®. To keep the brew at optimum temperature, the designers used a narrower glass base to reduce the impact of heat from the drinker’s hand. A laser etched nucleation site within the glass maintains flavor release during the drinking experience. And finally, the brew’s deep amber color is showcased by the light refracted within the rounded body of the glass.

As an account mananger, my teammates and I are constantly talking about how to make things better for someone’s e-commerce site- for our clients and then their customers to have an optimal shopping experience.  Things can always be changed for the better, no matter how good they are.  At Solid Cactus, our product development team is constantly engineer new and/or improved e-commerce features to help increase conversions, reduce cart abandonment, increase average order size and encourage repeat  business.  We innovated Snap Shap for Yahoo Stores and then we made it even better.  We created a killer click to enlarge and then we made it even better. 

So we’re a lot like the brewmasters at Sam Adams.  Beer has been around for a long time. (In fact there was even a Mespotomian Goddess of Beer- take that Joe D.!)  But many beermakers strive to make the hops and barelys concoction even better, to improve the product and the experience around the product.  E-commerce has now also been around for a while, too (but there is no Goddess of E-commerce unless you count me- totally kidding) and e-commerce developers like Solid Cactus are striving to make that proverbial perfectly engineered glass.  Those with existing e-commerce sites should be forward-thinking like this too- not settling for something, even if it’s already awesome.  I know I look forward to Sam Adams Oktoberfest every fall, but this year, it’s even better. 

So what can you do to make your site better today?  And it’s Friday, so go order up a Sams and check out that new glass.