UK Magic Shops Customer Satisfaction – Problems with the Magic Shop

Does the Merchant of Magic UK Shop have problems?

Our magic shop wouldn’t have been growing the way it has, without our almost obsessive interest in how we are serving our customers. After all, its whole purpose is to supply magic tricks and give support to the magic community. So every now and then we ask our customers how we have done and from that feedback we can learn how to make things better. Last week we asked magicians who had recently placed an order at The Merchant of Magic to give us feedback. 1000 responded which gave us a nice sample size. Here’s the results and some lessons we learn’t from it:

Magic Tricks and Customer Satisfaction

This is a hard one, as we have little control over which magic tricks magicians will order from the magic shop. One persons meat is anothers poison. Here’s a graph of the results:

It’s great to see that most magicians are happy with the magic tricks that they order. Although we are a ‘whole of market’ magic shop, so we stock everything without our own bias coming into play, we do try to highlight the best magic tricks on the site as much as possible.

What we could do better: The shop already has a team of magicians on hand to give opinions either by email or by phone. As we don’t mainly manufacture, it doesn’t matter to the team which magic tricks they recommend as far as profit is concerned. For them, it’s more important that the magic tricks fit the person planning on using them, so they will always tell you if they think a trick or product sucks or if it’s a favourite. It would be great to expand the customer reviews section on the site, perhaps add in staff recommended suggestions, and system that shows general feedback about items taken from social media sources.

The most important factor is aftercare here. We offer a returns program and with many items a 1 full year magic trick exchange period. Building in ways to recontact customers after a sale, so we can follow up if they have any problems is on the to do list for our developers.

The shopping experience

Firstly we asked magicians to give us feedback about the website:

Overall the results are good, but they do highlight some issues.

Website Layout

The layout is pretty basic and we don’t change it much. It’s always been about content over style. Most customers arrive on the magic shop site on specific product pages rather than the front page, so it’s vital that the product pages are clear and give as much information as possible. It would be nice to change the design for the front page, but it currently seems to help people find something interesting as quickly as possible and that’s the goal.

Magic Shop Search

Search really needs some work. It’s quite hard to find a specific colour sponge ball for example. We are looking for a new search function for the site and that’s going to be fixed as a top priority.

Magic Trick Demo Videos

The demo’s are an issue for us. We used to host a lot on Youtube, but many magic demos have music that needs a licence to be used and often the magic creators don’t get this permission. Youtube contacted us to say they were unhappy with the licencing for the music on a lot of the videos, so we switched to have the demos downloadable instead. That seems to work OK, but it’s not ideal for customers using mobile to browse the site. It’s a work in progress.

Pricing

Pricing of our magic tricks seems OK. We don’t want to be the cheapest bargin basement shop, as we want to have sufficient margin to allow the best customer service we can, and have room to advertise and grow the magic shop. We don’t want to be the most expensive magic shop either. It’s about finding a balance that allows us to employ magicians full time to answer the phones and emails, and at the same time give good value.

UK V.A.T

We received some feedback about how we show VAT on the site. It’s a difficult issue as we sell to trade, and have a huge international customer base. At the moment we have a button on every page to allow visitors to choose it they want UK specific tax to be shown. We need to work on making this more customer specific, so once you log in, we know where you are based and can show prices to reflect that. It’s an issue of your privacy that we strongly respect. At the moment we are working with our designers to see if we can default to your countires tax automatically, so expect some changes soon that will make this much simpler.

Customer Contact

Customer contact seems on track. We don’t want to spam our customers, but we do want to provide aftercare. Our phone lines get clogged up, but as we don’t want to just hurry people into placing orders, we sometimes need to chat with them for a long time giving advice. It’s not unusual for one of the team to be helping a magician through using a trick they have purchased and that has taken over an hour sometimes. Email is always a second option, but it would be great to be able to employ another magician for the phone lines. Once again it’s a balancing act as we can only build in so much budget for this and still compete with guys selling magic at almost cost price from their bedrooms. It seems that most magicians are understanding about this if the phone lines have a long wait, and they are happy that we have not outsourced calls to international call centres. We need to find a way to get more people in contact faster.

Delivery of magic shop orders.

Next we asked magicians to give us feedback about the delivery process of the orders they place at the magic shop.

The main issues here are speed of delivery and our delivery methods. Speed of delivery needs to be better. As we have grown we ran out of space at the shop, so we warehouse a LOT of the range if they tend to be slower sellers. It was a hard choice for us, but we wanted to sell everything we can, just like an Amazon for magic. That means we need distribution centres in the UK, Europe, and the US. We keep most of the popular items in stock in the UK magic shop, but other items have a 1-2 day wait for the item to be picked at the warehouse and sent to the shop for packing. One option we are looking into is moving packing to within each warehouse, so that it removes the transfer time. That would mean having extra staff at each warehouse, so it’s a balancing act between product price and logistical costs. The plan is to brainstrom ways we can streamline this to get items picked quicker.

Shipping methods are limited in the UK at the moment. We use Royal Mail. As we offer free shipping for orders over £50 it’s difficult to switch to UPS or DHL and offer the same low rates or free shipping options. Looking at the data, most of the issues are on our international shipping speeds, so we will work on finding ways to improve international shipping whilst still keeping the price a low fixed rate.

Magic Shop Customer Care

Getting an order out to customers is one thing, but customer care is everything. Here’s what our customers thought:

Happy with that. We do have a problem with not enough staff to cope with the customer contact, so phone wait times can be long. We don’t want to pass on calls to a call centre to take orders, as it’s important that the person on the phone to you is a working magician.

Recommended UK Magic Shop

Finally we asked the most important question. Would our customers recommend us to their friends and family. Here’s what they said:

Yay! That was an excellent result to see and the whole team were over the moon. However, it doesn’t mean we can rest. The magic shop feedback from magicians gave us a LOT to work on, so we will take all the suggestions and see how we can keep going on our mission to provide the best magic shop we can.

Thanks to all of you for taking part and leaving us with such great suggestions and feedback!

Have we missed something? Let us know how we can improve things at MoM in the comments section below:

How Magicians Can Get Audience Reaction Photos and Videos

by Dominic Reyes Leave a Comment

By Dominic Reyes

How do magicians get audience reaction photos and videos of their magic when doing close up magic?

That's a common question and I'm going to share with you something that I've been using for a few weeks now and know you will love. But first, lets look at the traditional ways to get audience reaction pictures:

The event photographer.

Teaming up with the offical event photographer is always a good idea when you arrive at a magic gig. Make sure you get the persons business card, and that you ask if you can have access to some of the photographs after the event. Usually the event photographer will be happy to supply you with some of the photographs but may ask a small fee in return. The main problem with this is that you will onlybe featured in a small part of the event, so the photographer will have a limited range of images that involve you. The photographs also tend to be of you, rather than the audience reaction. It's a good idea to speak to the photographer first and ask them to take pictures of your audience smiling, laughing and reacting to your magic.

The spectator as photographer.

I know a few magicians that will ask one of the spectators to take some photographs of the magic happening, or to shoot a small video on their phone. This can be a good idea, as long as it doesn't get in the way of the spectator having fun watching the magic. Some magicians feel uncomfortable asking spectators for this. Spectator filming has the same problem as that of using an event photographer, in that a lot of the footage will be of you rather than the audience reaction.

The Autographer Camera.

I purchased an Autographer camera for a skiing trip recently, and I'm really impressed with its value for magicians wanting to get audience reaction photos and videos. I should point out that I've have not been paid, or entered into a commercial agreement to promote a specific device or product mentioned in this post.

Autographer is a small device that clips to your clothing, or can be worn around the neck on a cord. It's a camera that will automatically decide when a picture is worth taking. You just turn it on, clip it onto your clothing and forget about it. It will start taking photographs using five high tech sensors to determine when something new and interesting needs to be captured.

Magicians using Autographer

To road test Autographer, I clipped in on at a drinks and canapés party in Central London. Here's a short video of me performing close magic with Autographer clipped to my suit jacket top pocket:

That was a fun gig, made especially so because I was working alongside Ben Williams from the Professional Magicians Agency (you see us discussing magic in the video) He's one of the best magicians, and creative minds that I work alongside whenever I can.

The image quality.

You'll notice that many of the shots are either out of focus, or have blur. That's understandable given the low lighting and the fact that both myself and the guests are constantly moving. In that gig, Autographer took over 1500 images. I removed many of the shots that didn't show anything of interest, but I've intentionally left in lots of blurred and out of focus shots. I want the footage to look organic, live, and capturing the 'reality' of the event. You could go through the images and just pull out a few perfect audience reaction shots if you prefer. Those could then be tweaked using photoshop to correct colour and lighting. I don't personally think that's my goal with a large bank of images played together in a stop frame video.

For magicians, Autographer creates a gritty, live action video that is not supposed to be perfectly shot. It also will give you a few excellent, clear and focused audience reaction shots you can save as distinct images. As you wear the camera over time, that bank of 'perfect images' will become very large indeed.

You can check the photographs that Autographer has taken using an app on your phone. If you know something cool is about to happen, you can set Autographer to instantly take a series of photos. You can turn the camera off and on whenever you like, or just forget about it, and let it capture every audience reaction.

You can find out more about Autographer on the Autographer website.

As well as the Autographer device, you also get easy to use software for the Mac or PC that will allow you to download the images, edit, save and delete them. You can then stitch them together into an animated gif or video that can be shared online. Adding music to the video is easy and creates a lovely recap of the whole gig.

Tips for magicians using Autographer.

Make sure you get permission from the event organise to film at the event. Usually there will already be a photographer or a cameraman filming the guests, so it will not usually be a problem.

Don't try and hide the Autographer camera. Just clip it on and forget about it. Spectator's may notice it and ask what is. There is a setting on the device to select if you would like the camera to flash a light each time it takes an image, or you can set it to show nothing at all. Tell them that it's a camera and that some of the event is being photographed. The host of the event will be receiving a copy. Asked them if they would like their picture taken, and if they decline just close the camera lens.

I've been approaching groups and starting to perform magic, then mentioning that the event is being photgraphed and they may be caught on camera watching me perform. So far everybody seems to be fine with that. Make sure that the cleint/host of the event is happy for you to use the footage.

If anyone has a problem with you filming make sure you stop immediately. You can delete any photos you had instantly using your phone app. This is very rare because you're performing at a public event, and photos and videos are already happening.

Check and delete Autographer images.

When you go through all of the audience reaction footage, you going to have hundreds of photographs. Make sure you go through each one carefully. The Autographer software makes this very easy. Remember that you are a magician and you need to make sure that magic secrets are not exposed in the images that you take. A close attention to the times that you are queitly resetting in the corner. Some of your images will capture magician only angles, so make sure each image is checked.

Because you're capturing live events, many of the images will be out of focus or blurred. You can keep some of these in as they given an organic feel to the footage, but remove any shots that are too dark or obscured.

What magicians can do with Autographer images.

As you use Autographer at your close up magic gigs and shows, you will build up a huge quantity of performing pictures that show great audience reaction. Here's some ways to use them in your magicians marketing.

1) Save audience reaction photos and videos to use on your website or as promotional material

2) Create a fly on the wall video of the whole event and send it to the client as a follow up thank you gift.

3) Create a website or blog of each gig you do. Invite the guests to visit it to see if they feature in one of your videos or audience reaction photos. Use this to pass on your business details.

4) Create a Youtube channel or instagram account of your performing videos and audience reaction photos. Show prospective clients what they can expect, and how much their guests will love your magic.

5) Study the footage to check audience reaction. Use this feedback to perfect your performing and presentation techniques.

6) Build in a magic trick into the footage, so the viewers get a magicial event happening, as they watch the footage.

Here's a few individual shots I saved from my gig last night:

Tips for capturing audience reactions.

Once you have a capture device set up, there are a few tips to make sure you capture some useable audience reactions:

Camera location.

Make sure that the camera is positioned so it sees from your point of view. Ideally the camera should be attached to you and pointing forward. Clipping it onto your top jacket pocket, or wearing it on a cord are ideal. If you have to wear a security badge at the event, use the cord as a handy mount for your camera.

Focus of attention.

The images need to be the audience reactions, not the magic tricks you are performing. Time the images to capture the moment the magic trick reaches it's climax. Images of a magician holding playing cards, or talking to the spectators may seem to make sense to you, but viewers that don't know what is happending may not understand what is going on in the picture.

Aim for images of people smiling, laughing, or looking shocked. The goal is to communicate how much emotion and energy your performance generated at the party.

The magic tricks.

Choose a few magic tricks that have a funny ending, or that will shock the spectators. Mentalism may have a stong impact, but it can sometimes fail to create a pronounced physical reaction. Choose magic tricks that create energy to give you interesting audience reactions.

Interact.

Create action within the group. High five a spectator during the reaction moment. Make a positive comment when a spectator becomes animated during a magic trick climax. Use cues and prompts to indicate that it's acceptable to physically respond to the magic. Whenever possible, end a few magic tricks in an applause cue position. The goal is to nurture a physical reaction from the group.

I hope this helps you.

Best wishes as always

Dominic Reyes

P.S If you have any other ideas for interesting ways that magicians can use 'point of view' filming during their magic shows, please let me know in the comments box below:

How did Magician Troy Push a Coin Inside a Playing Card

by Dominic Reyes Leave a Comment

After magician Troy pushed a coin inside a playing card in his magic TV show, we are getting a lot of questions about the magic trick technique.

When John Webb Carter invented the C2C technique back in 2006 the magic shop released a book for magicians that detailed exactly how to perform the magic trick in close up walk around conditions. It was a huge hit amongst magicians that perform in walk-around close up magic conditions. Many magicians focus on card magic tricks, as coin used a different skill set. Signed coin in signed card acted as a perfect bridge to move from a card magic routine into a coin magic piece.

Here’s the demo video for signed coin inside signed card back in 2006

Here’s some of the questions he have received about the magic trick and magician Troys performance.

Does magician Troy use duplicate playing cards or duplicate coins in order to perform coin in playing card?

You only use a normal ungimmicked coin which you can borrow from the spectator and they can keep at the end. It’s usually a stronger magic trick if you borrow the coin. The object doesn’t actually nedd to be a coin. We have had great feedback from a magician that uses a mobile phone sim card that he demonstrates putting into the deck, just like he does with his phone. The playing card used is the one that the spectator selects and signs.

Can the coin and card can be kept as a souvenir?

YES! You should do that! The spectator will often take the playing card out of their wallet or purse and describe the magic trick to their friends. A momento like the playing card is a great advert for your services and magic!

Does magician Troy switch in gimmicked props?

Signed coin inside signed playing card was designed to be used in surrounded close up magic conditions. That’s how magicin Troy likes to do his magic too. You don’t need to switch in any extra props or gimmicks. It’s all contained within your deck of playing cards.

Is the coin really inside the card or is it just an optical illusion?

Magic on TV can sometimes use optical effects or camera tricks. Magician Troy doesn’t use that for his presentation of coin inside playing card, and you don’t either. The coin really is inside the playing card. You cut the coin out with a pocket knife, or the card is ripped open to release it. The spectators can feel the coin in the playing card before it is cut open.

Is coin in playing card repeatable?

Yes! You ruin one playing card each time you perform this magic trick, but that is the only additional cost to perform it. You can use any normal deck of playing cards.

Magician Troy doesn’t have to worry about repeating a magic trick on his TV series. He can do several takes that result in a single performance. Real work close up magicians, need to be able to repeat the magic trick many times each booking. That’s the way signed coin inside signed playing card was designed to allow. A few moments before, they were holding both items then WHAM! The coin is GONE and really does become impossibly buried INSIDE the spectators signed playing card!

You can learn more about C2C Signed Coin Inside Signed Playing Card here