Podcasts about carthook

Ben Fisher is the Co-founder and CEO of Rodeo, a consumer-centric subscription platform for challenger CPG brands. He is an entrepreneur who understands the technologies and growth strategies for an e-commerce brand and is passionate about helping entrepreneurs scale their businesses and achieve their maximum potential. Before Rodeo, Ben was the Co-founder of CartHook, a customizable e-commerce checkout used by hundreds of DTC companies on Shopify and famous for its one-page checkout and one-click post-purchase upsells.  In this episode… Every e-commerce brand strives to acquire repeat customers. One way to accomplish this goal is by offering a subscription, but how can you perfect this method?  With the evolution of the e-commerce space, the tools and strategies people use to sell have changed. Ben Fisher notes that about 70% of Shopify brands are offering subscription products this year. However, with more and more brands pushing subscriptions, it can become a negative experience for people, resulting in higher churn rates. Ben describes how he helps clients reorchestrate the reordering experience into something better for everyone. In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Pat Yates sits down with Ben Fisher, Co-founder and CEO of Rodeo, to discuss how to introduce a successful subscription model. Ben explains how Rodeo assists entrepreneurs with the subscribe and save model, its ideal client profile, the reasons for high churn rates, and how entrepreneurs can avoid the common mistakes made with e-commerce subscription models.

Did you know that the number one reason customers cancel subscriptions is because they get too much product?Tune in to this week's episode of the eCommerce Podcast where Matt is joined by Ben Fisher from Rodeo to talk about how to make your subscriptions model stand out from the rest and give your customers the best experience while retaining them for a long time. We delve deep into the main problems associated with standard subscription models and how brands can address these concerns and improve the overall subscription experience. You do not want to miss this episode!ABOUT BEN:Ben started his entrepreneurial journey as a kid in Maine and later worked at a tech startup during the first Dot Com boom. He co-founded CartHook - a checkout optimization platform for DTC ecommerce brands that has processed over $1 billion on behalf of merchants. He now runs Rodeo, a platform that offers personalization features to maximize customer retention and lifetime value for 8-figure DTC brands that utilize subscription-based models.Here's a summary of the great stuff that we cover in this show:Ben discusses the importance of a good customer experience, specifically with subscriptions. He emphasizes that brands should consider the nuances and individual consumption patterns of their customers, and offers a solution called "on-demand" reminders that give consumers more control and eliminate the concern of getting too much or running out of a product. Convenience is key in consumer subscriptions and figuring out the most convenient method for each individual is important for maximizing customer lifetime value. Brands can offer questionnaires or check-ins to tailor the subscription to individual preferences rather than assuming everyone needs the same subscription model. Reminder emails or texts leading up to the desired replenishment period can also be helpful in simplifying the subscription process for customers.Ben discusses the different subscription options offered by the company, including a standard subscription, on-demand feature, and one-time purchase option. The on-demand feature allows for convenience and eliminates checkout friction while still allowing for upsells and cross sells. The segmenting of customers and addressing their reasons for canceling or skipping subscriptions also helps to retain customers and offer a better-suited program for their consumption style.If the customer wants to delay the next purchase, they can select the snooze feature which suggests pre-filled periods of three to five days, one week, and other options to remind users that they may be running out of the product soon and would they like to order some more? However, some users can explicitly choose a date and sometimes even up to three months in advance.Ben & Matt explore the perks of subscriptions and how to add value beyond just getting subscribers. They discuss the importance of thoughtfully designing membership programs, offering benefits like free shipping, members-only pricing, and individual subscriptions, and the risks of discounting subscriptions too much and attracting the wrong customers. The focus is on providing the best experience for each customer and creating a healthy, sustainable subscription model.Matt talks about a a subscription he signed up for which he had forgotten about and was charged $1000 without warning. Ben explains that if the company had been proactive with their onboarding process and personalized their messaging, they may have been able to retain him as a customer. A bad experience can leave a negative impression on a customer.For complete show notes, transcript and links to our guest, check out our website: www.ecommerce-podcast.com.

Subscription eCommerce is one of the best ways to increase the lifetime value of your customers and create recurring revenue in your business.   But creating a great subscription program that doesn't result in tons of customer churn takes more than just sticking a subscribe & save on your product page.   Today's guest is Ben Fisher, Founder and CEO of Rodeo, a subscription platform for Shopify. He started his development journey as a kid, selling strawberries door-to-door so he could buy programming books. He went on to create Carthook, a post-purchase upsell app for Shopify which he sold in 2022. Now he helps 8-figure DTC brands that use subscription models to maximize customer retention and lifetime value.   Links Mentioned Rodeo Subscription Platform http://hey.rodeo/   Book: Don't Make Me Think https://a.co/d/4cNNxkw   Book: The Membership Economy https://a.co/d/9Jvf4Jg   Connect with Ben Fisher & Rodeo https://www.linkedin.com/in/skinnyandbald/ https://twitter.com/skinnyandbald https://subscriptionradio.com/   Read the Full Transcript http://eCommerceBadassery.com/212   FREE Resource Library  Every freebie I've created to help you grow the traffic, sales, and profit in your eCommerce Business, all in one place!   Want More Badassery? Join the eCommerce Badassery Facebook Group and connect with other eCommerce entrepreneurs just like you!  http://ecommercebadassery.com/facebook   Let's connect on Instagram @ecommercebadassery https://instagram.com/ecommercebadassery   Ready to Level Up Your Email Marketing & eCommerce Business? Try the Klaviyo Email Marketing Platform - Built specifically for eCommerce, serving entrepreneurs, and iconic brands.   Work With Me Interested in getting my brain focused on YOUR business? Learn more about my services…   Email Marketing Help: https://ecommercebadassery.com/email-marketing eCommerce Help: https://ecommercebadassery.com/ecommerce-help   Rate, Review, & Subscribe Like what you heard? I'd be forever grateful if you'd rate, review and subscribe to the show! Not only does it help your fellow eCommerce entrepreneurs find the eCommerce Badassery podcast; it's also valuable feedback for me to continue bringing you the content you want to hear.  Review Here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ecommerce-badassery/id1507457683   This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:  Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy    

#747 WP-Tonic This Week in WordPress & SaaS: With Special Guest Rob Walling The AI Robots Are Coming & There's Disruption in The Air! With Special Guest Rob Walling Rob Walling has built and sold multiple SaaS companies, most recently Drip. He co-founded the most popular conference and community for ambitious, bootstrapped SaaS, called MicroConf. He wrote the book on how to bootstrap a startup, Start Small, Stay Small. And he started TinySeed, the first accelerator designed for SaaS bootstrappers. He has also invested in more than 55 startups, including WP Engine, CartHook, and SparkToro. https://robwalling.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/robwalling/ https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ Main Questions For Interview #1 - Rob, are there any particular trends that you have observed in the bootstrap startup community in 2022 that you think are interesting? #2 - Have you come to any conclusions yourself connected to how you see Ai/ChatGPT is going to affect the bootstrap startup community over the next couple of years? #3 - Do you generally think it's getting easier or harder for a bootstrap SaaS to the $10,000 a month gross revenue barrier? #4 - You have invested directly in several WordPress SaaS; the most prominent has been WP Engine do you feel there is still a lot of opportunity in this WordPress space? #5 - If you go back to a time machine at the beginning of your career, what advice would you give yourself? #6 - Are there any books, websites, or online recourses that have helped you in your business development that you like to share with the audience?

In part 1 of the 7th episode of Merchantry, we discuss about : Ben's journey in CPG and eCommerce space through his various ventures like Rodeo, Carthook and 1-Click Pony How 2020-2021 have been pivotal years for eCommerce and Subscription brands Causes of growth rate drop for subscription-based companies post-pandemic Effects of new customers vs. repeat customers on the overall growth rate and importance of repeat customers Challenges brands face to keep up with the subscription model Rodeo is a personalized subscription platform and playbook that helps CPG subscription brands grow. They help brands create the best consumer experience on the market. They've been a part of the subscription space for over ten years and can see the writing on the wall - an evolution in the subscription space is imminent, and the only brands that will win in this new subscription economy are consumer-focused brands. Their platform uses on-demand subscriptions, personalized cadence, and smart messaging to bring consumers a bespoke subscription experience.

What do you get out of conferences? Do you mute competitors on Twitter? How to you utilize Twitter as a budding SaaS entrepreneur? After a brief hiatus, Brian and Jordan are back with some big news: Carthook was officially acquired! Jordan shares what details he can about the acquisition as well as the process and … Continue reading CartHook Acquired!

What do you get out of conferences? Do you mute competitors on Twitter? How to you utilize Twitter as a budding SaaS entrepreneur? After a brief hiatus, Brian and Jordan are back with some big news: Carthook was officially acquired! Jordan shares what details he can about the acquisition as well as the process and journey of the company. They also talk about the upcoming MicroConf and what conferences can do for you. After all, they're not just about networking, there are a lot of things gained when meeting with colleagues, competitors …and podcast listeners. If you have any questions, comments, or topic ideas for Bootstrapped Web, leave us a message here “The thing that I want out of a conference is a huge boost of confidence.” – Jordan Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Talking Points: Carthook officially acquiredShutting down and selling the supported Shopify appA mixture of emotions after a crazy journeyUnwinding after the stress of a tripWhat conferences can do to your mindsetThe energizing effect of conferencesMeeting podcast listenersHow it feels to be an anonymous company in a space with huge companiesCompetitors on Twitter: To Mute or Not To MuteHow many people do you need for a startup?Access the gratitude “Since Day 1, we've had a fundamental difference of what ZipMessage is and that's the intake ability.” – Brian Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This Resources: Brian on Twitter Jordan on Twitter

The Title of the Interview "Community-Owned Headless Checkout for E-commerce Platforms" Main Interview Questions #1 - Maybe you can give the audience some background history info connected to founding CartHook and your new company Rallyon? #2 - Your company CartHook ingrates with Shopify and you have been quite public on the "good, bad and ugly" parts of semi relying on somebody else's eco-system can you give the audience some quick insights connectedto this? #3 - Can you give some 2 to 3 of the most important lessons you have learned connected to founding CartHook which would be the most important to share with our audience? #4 - Your new company Rallyon you state that it's a "Community-Owned Ecosystem" what does this really mean and why should people care? #5 - How hard was it to raise $6 million for the project and what are some of the things you have learned from the process? #6 - Can you give us three people of books that have influenced you the most in your business or personal journey? More about Jordan Gal and Rallyon We're excited to announce that we've raised $6m in seed financing to build a world-class eCommerce checkout and a community-owned eCommerce ecosystem. You can read more about it here: https://lnkd.in/g55-u8BR A very big thank you to our investor group. The round was led by Rainfall Ventures with participation from Felix Capital, Long Journey Ventures, Afore VC, Commerce VC, and some extremely helpful angel investors. If you're a merchant on BigCommerce or WooCommerce, sign up for early access here: https://www.rallyon.com/ https://www.rallyon.com/ https://jordangal.com/

Jordan Gal is the co-founder of Rally and Carthook. During his time building Carthook, he learned some hard lessons about building on an existing platform, challenges to overcome bootstrapping, and how to implement those lessons into your next business.

Jordan Gal is the co-founder of Rally and Carthook. During his time building Carthook, he learned some hard lessons about building on an existing platform, challenges to overcome bootstrapping, and how to implement those lessons into your next business.

While the last two episodes were all about mindset, manifestation and forming good habits, we're back in the trenches with Emily Foreman of CartHook. Her company transitioned from in-person to remote, an interesting story in it's own right. But we emphasize the unique value proposition of Carthook which is to ensure your post-purchase part of the funnel is utilized effectively or rather, at all. Every part of the funnel is important, that part you know, but what I think you'll get out of this episode is as clear an understanding of the importance and opportunity in post purchase that can be in an hour's time. ⭐️POST-PURCHASE OFFERS FOR SHOPIFY CHECKOUTS!

This week on the eCommerce Braintrust podcast, we're talking about the incumbent and the challengers in ecommerce marketplaces and platforms. Kiri Masters gives a brief history of the changing relationships between Amazon, Walmart, Shopify and others, as well as their changing statuses in the marketplace. She tells the story of CartHook to illustrate her point about challengers, rebels, incumbents and disintermediation. Then, she gives advice on how to find your place in ecommerce and introduces the Bobsled research report entitled How Big Should Your Amazon Channel be? Make sure you tune in to find out more!

Emily Foreman is the CEO of CartHook, an app that helps boost your revenue and AOV by allowing you to make one-click post-purchase offers in the Shopify checkout.  On this podcast, we talk about Emily's transition to being a CEO, Shopify's new announcements, how the new features on Shopify help Carthook, and so much more!  To learn more, visit: http://honestecommerce.co Resources: Connect with Emily linkedin.com/in/emilylforeman Boost your Shopify AOV and revenue carthook.com Scale your business with electriceye.io Get a 14-day free trial at getmesa.com/honest Get 1 month of automated Shopify backups for free at rewind.io/honest Level up your customer support gorgias.grsm.io/honest Get a free trial at klaviyo.com/honest

41 - In today’s episode, we interview Ben Fisher, Co-founder of 1-Click Pony and CartHook.. Ben walks us through what is 1-Click Pony and how to use it to drive sales for your eCommerce business by getting your customers to repurchase.Learn more here: flowium.co/episode41

Sid Bharath is an entrepreneur and SAAS marketing consultant. He works with software startups to help them identify their best growth channels and scale up in a data-driven and systematic manner.He was #7 employee and VP of Growth at Thinkific, where he was in charge of growing the MRR. During his time, they 20x the MRR and reached more than 6,000 paying users.He's also known as a marketing consultant who has worked with amazing companies in San Francisco like ShareDesk, Olark, LemonStand, CartHook, ReCharge and many more.He is the CEO and Co-Founder of Broca, an AI software that generates marketing content, such as ad copy and blog posts. Previously, he was a marketing consultant for numerous high-growth tech startups. Website: https://www.siddharthbharath.com/   LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/sidbharathTwitter: https://twitter.com/Siddharth87

Can a SaaS company restrict signups without putting their revenue at risk? Our guest today is Jordan Gal, co-founder of CartHook. You'll learn all about the company's famous onboarding breakthrough, Jordan's take on product-user fit, as well as his advice for SaaS founders looking to make a real change.Visit our website for the detailed episode recap with key learnings.Show notesCartHook — Jordan's SaaS productClickFunnels — a digital marketing product that inspired CartHookHubspot — a popular marketing tool they use for analyticsSuccess Potential: The Foundation of Customer Success — the Lincoln Murphy article that inspired JordanConvertKit — the popular email automation tool by Nathan BarryUI Breakfast Podcast. Episode 183: Customer Success with Anna JacobsenCartHook Post Purchase Offers — CartHook's new Shopify appFollow Jordan on TwitterThanks for listening! If you found the episode useful, please spread the word about this new show on Twitter mentioning @userlist, or leave us a review on iTunes.SponsorThis show is brought to you by Userlist — the best tool for sending onboarding emails and segmenting your SaaS users. To follow the best practices, download our free printable email planning worksheets at userlist.com/worksheets.

While third-party apps like Shopify have made it possible for a company to get a virtual store up and running quickly, scaling that company requires higher levels of flexibility and control. Enter headless architecture, which allows companies to decouple the front end of the commerce platform (where the virtual storefront and content lives) from the back end, where all the data resides. Greylock general partner Mike Duboe sat down with Builder.io CEO and founder Steve Sewell, whose company provides a headless CMS with full drag and drop editing, and Carthook founder Jordan Gal, whose company offers a checkout optimization tool for stores in the Shopify ecosystem. This episode is the first in a series of Greymatter conversations focused on the evolving ecommerce ecosystem.

On this episode of Bootstrapped Web (dubbed the “anything but election talk” episode), Jordan and Brian go over Carthook's exciting launch in the Shopify App Store and ProcessKit's visual upgrade. Brian also has a couple of aces up his sleeve when it comes to high level changes as well as day-to-day uses for ProcessKit. Today the focus is all about what it means to satisfy customers: new and existing customers. How do you convert trial customers? How fast should you handle feature requests? How do you deal with the pressures put onto you by customers? How to show your constant level of progress but how do you filter customer feedback/expectations? [tweetthis]“Anytime you're talking about visual user updates, especially if it affects the entire app (which this did) you get nervous. People don't like change, even if it's better change.” - Brian [/tweetthis] Here are today's conversation points: The Carthook logo is in the Shopify App Store!Team moraleDepartments that need Jordan's focusUpdates, expectations, and reviewsThe limitations of being both the designer and founder of a productProcessKit upgrades:To dashboard or not to dashboard?Email templates with liquid tags to increase the dynamic changes for these templatesThe pressure of “What's next?” and prioritizationThe current competitive climate in SaaSPipeMainStreetVisualize Value [tweetthis]“I think we've spoken before about how I look at the company as like, ‘Where is the fire burning...the hottest?' At any point in time it's not like everything's on fire or everything requires attention. There's usually one part of your company where there's more going on.” - Jordan [/tweetthis] Resources: Jason Lemkin's post about Dashboards Pipe MainStreet Visualize Value SunriseKPI Productize Audience Ops ProcessKit   Carthook  As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on iTunes.

On this episode of Bootstrapped Web (dubbed the “anything but election talk” episode), Jordan and Brian go over Carthook’s exciting launch in the Shopify App Store and ProcessKit’s visual upgrade. Brian also has a couple of aces up his sleeve when it comes to high level changes as well as day-to-day uses for ProcessKit. Today … Continue reading Satisfying Customers

Jordan and Brian are back after a few weeks. It is election week; that means a lot of stress and a lot of chaos. But before that stuff hits the fan, Jordan is launching a new Carthook product inside the Shopify app store and Brian has been redesigning the ProcessKit app to fix little frustrations. They're also talking about structure, spreadsheets, and the importance of app store reviews [tweetthis]“As we started to add more and more features, the overall structure and experience (and I'm talking about very detailed things) hasn't kept up and so I wanted to solve for all of these little frustrations in the app that have accumulated.” - Brian [/tweetthis] Here are today's conversation points: New Carthook products inside the Shopify App StorePreparations and anticipating the launchSpreadsheets and scenariosThe Prisoner's DilemmaDynamic pricing and price pointsProcessKit App redesignProgress in SaaS productsCommunity-based promotionsMarketing and funnelingBeing able to separate yourself from your businessThe importance of customer experience and app store reviewsJordan's new obsession: Cohere [tweetthis]“It is a prisoner's dilemma. You're stuck, you don't have all the information. What you do has a big impact on them, what they do has a big impact on you. But you're not colluding.” - Jordan [/tweetthis] Resources: How to Price Your SaaS Product by Patrick Campbell Cohere.so Cohere.so/demo SunriseKPI Productize Audience Ops ProcessKit   Carthook  As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on iTunes.

For many Ecommerce brands, converting a prospect into a customer is the holy grail. But too many merchants consider their job done once that first order is placed, which results in them leaving millions (literally) of dollars on the table.In this episode, we talk to Jordan Gal, the founder of a Shopify app called Carthook, about the million dollar potential in post-purchase offers, and how merchants can capitalize on that opportunity quickly and easily. We cover everything from how to structure your offer, the best time to present it to your customers, and the results that real brands are seeing by adding this to their marketing stack.Want to be a guest on our show? Have feedback or ideas for how we can improve? Send your thoughts over to podcast@thegood.com. We'll be keeping an eye on that inbox. :)The Ecommerce Insights Show is brought to you by The Good, a Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) consultancy specializing in helping ecommerce businesses accelerate their growth through better research, testing, and design. Learn more about our team, our work, and our services at www.thegood.com.

Jordan and Brian are back after a few weeks. It is election week; that means a lot of stress and a lot of chaos. But before that stuff hits the fan, Jordan is launching a new Carthook product inside the Shopify app store and Brian has been redesigning the ProcessKit app to fix little frustrations. … Continue reading Calm Before the Storm

Today Brian and Jordan are talking about deadlines, Black Friday, and a little bit of introspection. They go over their love/hate relationship with mornings. They also take a deep dive into hopes, dreams, dedication, and hiring true believers. Here are today’s conversation points: The Carthook deadline How the new ProcessKit developer stepped up Testing features, … Continue reading Good morning

We've been devoting a lot of time to talking about software businesses in recent weeks. One of the reasons we are so fascinated by them is that despite how difficult it can be to start one, these types of businesses can have tremendous upside. Jordan Gal is the founder of CartHook, a software company that helps Shopify merchants present offers to shoppers at checkout. Jordan first reached out to us back in 2015 with an investment opportunity (and we turned him down!). It really shouldn't come as a surprise then that Carthook has grown exponentially in the years since, with its user base having made more than a billion dollars worth of sales. Jordan joins us on today's podcast to share the story of CartHook.

Think you can't aggressively acquire customers using outbound sales for SaaS? Think it's too expensive, too inefficient, too distracting? Think again. You can do it. Jordan Gal show you how he and his team does it for CartHook. From list building, to qualification research, to cold email automation, to scheduling demos. Everything from faceless prospect to free trial to paying customer. It's all outsourced, affordable, and scalable. And Jordan will show you how to put the whole thing together. https://microconf.com #microconf #microconf2015 MicroConf 2015 Check out Jordan’s MicroConf speakers page for more talks → https://microconf.com/speakers/jordan... MicroConf Connect → http://microconfconnect.com Twitter → https://twitter.com/MicroConf E-mail → support@microconf.com MicroConf 2020 Headline Partners ► Stripe https://stripe.com Twitter → https://twitter.com/Stripe ► Basecamp https://basecamp.com Twitter → https://twitter.com/Basecamp

Think you can't aggressively acquire customers using outbound sales for SaaS? Think it's too expensive, too inefficient, too distracting? Think again. You can do it. Jordan Gal show you how he and his team does it for CartHook. From list building, to qualification research, to cold email automation, to scheduling demos. Everything from faceless prospect to free trial to paying customer. It's all outsourced, affordable, and scalable. And Jordan will show you how to put the whole thing together. https://microconf.com #microconf #microconf2015 MicroConf 2015 Check out Jordan’s MicroConf speakers page for more talks → https://microconf.com/speakers/jordan... MicroConf Connect → http://microconfconnect.com Twitter → https://twitter.com/MicroConf E-mail → support@microconf.com MicroConf 2020 Headline Partners ► Stripe https://stripe.com Twitter → https://twitter.com/Stripe ► Basecamp https://basecamp.com Twitter → https://twitter.com/Basecamp

It's been a little while but Brian and Jordan are back behind the mics. On today's episode, they're talking about vacations, a long first week back, marketing, big news with Carthook, cold emails, and guest features. [tweetthis]“I wanted to get things moving and basically get things up and running, so I hired a marketer” - Brian [/tweetthis] Here are today's conversation points: Carthook, Shopify, and working togetherHow Shopify worksWhat cold emailers get wrongConversion rates and automationInitial onboarding systems and portalsGuest featuresQuestioning ourselvesBenedict Deicke's Tweet [tweetthis]“The wins don't last very long. They just whiz by and then it's just like, ‘Onto the next challenge, onto the next challenge, onto the next thing.” - Jordan [/tweetthis] Resources: LemList SunriseKPI Productize Audience Ops ProcessKit   Carthook  As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on iTunes.

It’s been a little while but Brian and Jordan are back behind the mics. On today’s episode, they’re talking about vacations, a long first week back, marketing, big news with Carthook, cold emails, and guest features. Here are today’s conversation points: Carthook, Shopify, and working together How Shopify works What cold emailers get wrong Conversion … Continue reading The Next Chapter in the Product

In the words of founder and CEO Jordan Gal, CartHook is “expanding the canvas on which a brand can operate.” That means a customizable checkout for better customer experiences all the way through the journey. CartHook has evolved alongside the DTC market, and this conversation is loaded with tips for community-building, upselling, creating great landing pages, and more.

This episode is part two in a two-part conversation. If you haven’t already, listen to Part 1 first. This week is the second part of a conversation between Rob and Jordan Gal, the founder of CartHook. In the episode, Rob and Jordan dig into the 4th, 5th and 6th stages of SaaS growth and compare […]       Related StoriesEpisode 499 | The (First) Six Stages of SaaS Growth – Part 1Episode 477 | Assessing Product-Market Fit, How to Find a Mastermind, and More Listener Questions with Brian CaselEpisode 472 | From Amazing Launch to Near Bankruptcy to Profitability with Shai Shechter 

The world is in chaos but we're still here. Today we're talking about some of the trends and the future of podcasting after some big news with The Joe Rogan Experience. We're also going over some updates with Carthook, ProcessKit, and Audience Ops. [tweetthis]"It does seem like there's still that massive gap between the seed rounds and the Series A. Right? When you've grown to a certain level and you still need more firepower to grow." - Brian [/tweetthis] Here are today's conversation points: The big debate over Joe Rogan's Spotify dealJordan's (who is not soliciting for investments, SCC) fears over investorsProcessKit's onboarding course, not quite readyFunding: social media ads, marketing partnerships (affiliates and referrals)Jordan's biggest deal ever...and he didn't even talk to the prospectDifficult clients in Audience Ops [tweetthis]"You've been working on something for over five years. This is all you care about. You love it. You love the job, the company, the people. There's so much involved in that. How are you supposed to find investors that are going to respect that?” - Jordan [/tweetthis] Resources/Links: Substack SunriseKPI Productize Audience Ops ProcessKit   Carthook  As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on iTunes.

The world is in chaos but we’re still here. Today we’re talking about some of the trends and the future of podcasting after some big news with The Joe Rogan Experience. We’re also going over some updates with Carthook, ProcessKit, and Audience Ops. Here are today’s conversation points: The big debate over Joe Rogan’s Spotify … Continue reading Navigating Stress & Distractions

This week is a conversation between Rob and Jordan Gal, the founder of Cart Hook. We dig into the six stages of SaaS growth. We compare our journeys 1:1 between growing Drip and growing CartHook. It’s shocking how well the journeys line up with each other. Some of the differences in the journey are also […]       Related StoriesEpisode 499.5 | The (First) Six Stages of SaaS Growth – Part 2Episode 477 | Assessing Product-Market Fit, How to Find a Mastermind, and More Listener Questions with Brian CaselEpisode 472 | From Amazing Launch to Near Bankruptcy to Profitability with Shai Shechter 

Welcome back! Brian and Jordan are back behind the mic. We're talking about ProcessKit's best month, and Brian's excitement about moving forward and making progress. We're also talking about Jordan's experience with Carthook's people coach and accidental faux pas with his leadership team. [tweetthis]"I am acting fast on a lot of the smaller requests. I only do it when I've heard it two or three times from different customers. Usually and hopefully I'm shipping something fast and notifying multiple customers that, ‘Hey, we just shipped that thing." - Brian [/tweetthis] Here are today's conversation points: ProcessKit's best month with conversionsJordan's focus on hiring and salariesBrian's focus for ProcessKit: onboardingBrian's old blog postsSetting up SEOJordan's humbling experience with the people coachAccidentally taking away authorityBrian's support requests on ProcessKit [tweetthis]"What am I really doing though? I'm taking authority away from their manager. I'm not allowing that manager to be that person, resource, and that trust and that bond and… I'm messing with that and it's not helpful." - Jordan [/tweetthis] Resources/Links: Ahrefs.com SunriseKPI Productize Audience Ops ProcessKit Carthook As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on iTunes.

Welcome back! Brian and Jordan are back behind the mic. We’re talking about ProcessKit’s best month, and Brian’s excitement about moving forward and making progress. We’re also talking about Jordan’s experience with Carthook’s people coach and accidental faux pas with his leadership team. Here are today’s conversation points: ProcessKit’s best month with conversions Jordan’s focus … Continue reading Managing Customers & Managing Teams

Jordan Gal is the Founder of Carthook, a checkout optimization platform for DTC brands that has processed over $1 billion on behalf of merchants. The SaaS allows eCommerce brands to open up a new revenue channel in their checkout through post-purchase upsells. Jordan is a Co-Host on the Bootstrapped Web Podcast, a podcast about bootstrapping an online business In this episode… When building a SaaS product there are a lot of things to consider and polish out, even for software developers and engineers. But Jordan Gal defied the odds and built a SaaS product doing upwards of 80,000 in Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) without having written a single line of code in his life.  Jordan is the founder of CartHook which helps online stores take control of their checkout process and enable post-purchase upsells. He says that while the start was a tedious process of finding the right things to make your software work and finding the right people to work with was a challenge, all the risks were worth it when their big break came. Join Geordie Wardman in this episode of the Big Break Software as he interviews Jordan Gal of Carthook about how he created, launched, and marketed his SaaS product with virtually zero technical know-how. Find out how he grew his business to $80,000 MRR, how he found the right partners to work with and how he addressed the integration of their software to different platforms. Stay tuned.

Jon dives into why Conversion Rate Optimization doesn’t stop after the purchase and the different points after-purchase that you need to optimize in order to drive higher revenues. Link: The Essential Guide to Ecommerce Sales Promotions (https://thegood.com/insights/essential-ecommerce-promotion-guide/) (In this article, #51-78 are focused on promotions you can run that aren't discounts) Outline: First, Jon cover’s different points after purchase that CRO can have an impact: In cart, right after purchase -Thank you page Email post-purchase sequence: -Confirmation email -Shipping confirmation -Customer service -Please leave a review – just click here -Add to general marketing email list sends He also explains the metrics a brand should be looking at to track progress of post-purchase optimization: -Return purchase -CLTV -Conversion (overall, should go up with repeat customers!) Jon is a firm believer that companies shouldn’t use discounting in post-purchase communications. However, there may be offers you can make that are not discounts. You do not want to become a discount brand. Finally, Jon explains that a successful method for getting referrals post-purchase outside of a set loyalty program is just to ask! Very few do! Transcript: Ryan: Jon, today, I really want to move our focus to an area that I think many companies and individuals would not normally think of conversion rate optimization and the impact it can have. I'm talking about post-purchase. Most people generally would assume that once a purchase happens on the website, CRO has done its job, time to move to the next person on the site and get them to convert. But, because I know you, I'm aware that CRO doesn't stop at the purchase. There's a lot more to be done. Can you explain to people, that maybe aren't aware of post-purchase conversion rate optimization, what they need to be thinking about, what they need to be doing, and why it even exists after they've already taken the sale, done what you wanted them to do originally? Jon: Right, and I think that's an important point there, Ryan, which is that most people think that conversion optimization stops as soon as you get someone to purchase. I think that's really shortsighted and it's a big problem because so much of the consumer experience and getting people to purchase a second time, is all about what happens when they purchase that first time. So, if you get them to convert, your job's not done. At that point... you got to think of this like a marathon. You just ran a marathon. Most people who are seasoned marathon runners, they get through that finish line. They have a process they still go through to cool down, protect their body, recover a little bit. It's the same thing here. After you've- Ryan: ... And I just go drink beer. Jon: ... Right, exactly, and that's why you don't run marathons. Ryan: That's why I don't. Jon: Learned that lesson the hard way, huh? Ryan: Uh-huh (affirmative), I did. Jon: Yeah, so exactly, this is it, where we can't just stop and drink a beer. You've got to go through a follow-up process here that can really, really have a massive impact on your overall metrics of your site and success and revenue, and even your conversion rate, because most people don't think about that. But overall, your conversion rate should go up with repeat customers. Ryan: True. Jon: There's a handful of things you should be thinking about that I think we should talk about today. There's a bunch of different points after purchase that can have an impact with conversion rate optimization, and if you optimize these points, you will see higher revenues. Ryan: Okay, so somebody's purchased on my site or client's site. Action's done. Does post-purchase conversion rate start after the product arrives, or where's the first point that we can be making an impact to improve conversion rates in the future? Jon: In the cart. It starts right then. As soon as somebody completes the order, gives you their payment, what happens? Ryan: Hmm. Jon: Most of the time, people aren't really considering the first step, which is a thank you page. What is the content that you're putting on there? Now, there are ways to, even on that thank you page, influence so many extra metrics. You can influence your average order value on that thank you page. There's some great tools out there right now. One of my favorites is a company called CartHook. CartHook has a tool, where you put it onto your thank you page, and it actually shows you complimentary products to what you bought and says, "Do you want to add it to the order?" You're doing an upsell after the purchase. You already got them to commit, and maybe they're thinking, "I bought those shoes, maybe I'll add a pair of socks. Why not?" Ryan: Now is that in addition to maybe also having upsell in the shopping cart, or do you usually recommend just get them to commit to something and then try to upsell them later? Jon: Right. I think that's a big mistake people make is to do the upsells in the cart. I don't think that's serving the consumers' needs, because serving the consumers' needs is helping them complete that checkout as quickly and easily as possible. You want to get that conversion. That's most important, obviously. So, after you've completed that sale, then, go back and do the upsells. Now, that doesn't mean you're not doing upsells throughout the funnel and throughout the product detail page or categories, things of that sort, right, complimentary products. But I don't think you should be doing it in the cart. That's when you just closed the transaction, at that point. Jon: A lot of people like to think of it like retail, where you're at a grocery store and they have all the candy bars and magazines, and you're just standing there in line. It's not like that because online, you shouldn't be waiting around at the checkout. Those items are there at the grocery store line because you're waiting for the person in front of you. You're likely bored, and they're capturing your attention. It's a captive market. Well, when you're in the cart and you're checking out online, you just have one goal, and that's to get it done. So, anything you put in the way there is actually going to become a distraction and annoying for the consumer. Not something where, "You're entertaining me with the latest gossip about celebrities for five minutes while I'm waiting for the family in front of me that's scanning 300 items at the grocery store." Ryan: Oh, you follow me at the grocery store, huh Jon?" Jon: Exactly. I got one kid. I can't imagine having a whole family like yourself. I think the first step is definitely in-cart, on that thank you page. Pay attention to the messaging. You can run a lot of A/B tests on the messaging alone and see what resonates. But also, adding a tool like CartHook, where you're figuring out all of these additional metrics and how to increase things like customer lifetime value, average order value. All of that kind of even goes back into your ROAS, your return on ad spend. If you start thinking about it this way, the higher your average order value, the higher your return on ad spend. Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Now, in addition to something like a CartHook offering up some complimentary products, is there any kind of messaging or kind of like, "Hey, I really want to make them feel good about what they just did. They spent money with me..." because most companies are like, "Hey, thanks. We'll be emailing you a confirmation," and that's pretty much the thank you page. Do you recommend adding more to that, or is it just kind of just get the products in front of them, get them in and out type thing? Jon: Well, we've actually run some tests, where brands who already participate in like 1% For Good or some of these other donation or charity causes, at that point, and reemphasizing that on the thank you page. Like, "Thank you for your purchase. Did you know part of your purchase is going to these great causes?" Ryan: Oh. Jon: Right? Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon: So, what's happening there is you're actually just making somebody feel even better. You're reassuring them about their purchase. I think that's really important there, is the reassurance. I don't know about you, but sometime... like, I bought a new car six months ago now, maybe. There's nothing like the joy of driving the new car home. But then you're sitting at home and you're like, "I'm a little guilty. I feel guilty. I bought a new car today." You know what I mean? Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon: It's that thing where it's like, "I just dropped a lot of money on this." Yeah, it's awesome, but at the same time, I could have got a used car that had a hundred thousand miles on it and would have got me from A to B. It's the same thing when you buy online. You need to reassure people that... they probably didn't need what they bought from you. Maybe they had some need around it. But if you did a great job with your marketing sales and every everything else but your customer experience, you helped them see the benefit of a product that maybe had a little more cost to it than what they were planning to spend, but there's some value there for them. Sometimes that's just the emotional value. But, at the same time, reassurance is really key on that thank you page. Ryan: Got it. Okay, so we've got the thank you page dialed, we've got some upsells potential there, we've told them that they're amazing and they bought from an awesome company. Now, how do I go about encouraging future business from this customer of mine? Jon: Well, I think the first thing that really needs to be paid attention here is that what happens in email post-purchase. Now, most people don't think about this when they're optimizing a site. They usually just leave it to whatever the defaults are. So, if they're using Shopify, it will automatically send out some emails, depending on what email provider, using like a Klaviyo or something like that. It will have some of these built-ins with some best practices. But this is a ripe opportunity for optimization that most people are not thinking about. Jon: I always say there's five emails that should be sent out after a purchase. It's a huge opportunity if you're missing any of these five. Now, the easiest one, and the first, is always confirmation email. The order went through, all is well, it's received, we'll be shipping it on this date or soon. Just confirming everything's gone well, it's gone through. Just send them an email, and that email should go out immediately. There's no reason to hold on to it, even if you don't have a shipping date yet. It doesn't need to have tracking information in this email. It's just, "Hey, you know what, we have your money, your order, here's your receipt," right? Ryan: Okay. Jon: That's a good opportunity, at that point... I've seen this done very well, and I don't know what the tool is, but I should definitely look into that. I've seen this done so well, where they even do the upsell in that email. This happened to me last week. I bought some lights for my yard, solar lights, and to light up what's been real... we live in Portland. It's super dark here this time of year for long hours of the day. So, I'm driving home and it's dark in my driveway. Well, what I did, I went and I got some solar lights. Yeah, probably not the best for how dark it is here, but we'll move on from that. Jon: In the cart, it said, "Hey, you bought a certain number of these, did you want to add more?" That was a great in-cart experience and I decided not to do it. But then, I got the email right away. In that email, it said, "Hey, if you change your mind, you have four hours from when this email is sent to add a few more before we're going to start packing up your order, and you'll have to just place another order." And it said, "Click here to add four more, eight more or twelve more." It even had a discount on them. I thought that was really interesting. I wanted to see it, what would happen, just from a research standpoint, so I added four more to my order. It was great. It just took me right back to a page on the site that said, "Thanks, Jon. Here's your order number. We added four more to it. Your new total is X." Ryan: And you got a discount on it, on adding the four more. Jon: Well, it was because they didn't add any more for shipping those extra four, right? Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon: So, it wasn't a percentage off. It was saying, "Hey, we'll add these, but we won't charge you more to ship them." Ryan: Got it. Jon: Now, you could do a whole bunch of different items around discounting. We should definitely talk about discounting today, a little bit there. But I think the point here was, is that they had a captive audience. I'm going to look at my receipt email. Most people do. Ryan: Yep. Jon: It should be a highly opened email. So, it's a great captive audience and a great opportunity to do an upsell that nobody really thinks about. Ryan: No, yeah, and I can easily see how... you didn't take the complimentary products, but maybe you suggest something maybe even more different in the email, but offer a discount. Like, "Hey, add this in and we'll give you 10% off, and just include it in the order and it'll go out at the same time," or something. Jon: Right. And you think about it, it's a free cost of sale at that point for the retailers. So, there's really no additional cost in sending that email. You're already going to send the receipt. Email is super cheap as is anyways. But you don't have to advertise to them. You're not remarketing. You're not doing any of that that could add the extra cost. Jon: Okay. So, we have confirmation email. The second email is shipping confirmation. Once the order has shipped, let the consumer know immediately. "Your order has shipped. It's on its way. Here's the tracking number, and it should be there within this date range or on this specific day." Now, even if the tracking number is not available in UPS or FedEx or whatever at this point, because those can take 12 hours or 24 hours to show up in there, you can always just say, "Hey, this link won't show any results for X amount of time." But you should give them that right away because they're going to reference that, perhaps, throughout the order process or while they're waiting for the order. But I think it's a great opportunity just to confirm things have been shipped, all is still well, it's going to be there. Jon: It's a great opportunity, at that point, to also offer any resources. So, you can say, "Hey, you bought these solar lights. Let me include a video..." and this is exactly what they did for me. They included a video that showed me how to put them together, in that shipping confirmation. Ryan: Hmm. Jon: So now, I had something to kind of tease me a little bit until the products arrived. I thought it was super interesting because, not only was I just getting that shipping information, which normally I would just look at, but archive and save in case it didn't arrive, but I actually went through and reengaged with the brand by watching an installation video, which is a great opportunity. Now, when I get the product, immediately I can open the box and start using it. Right? Ryan: Oh, yeah. Jon: That's a much better experience. So, we've got confirmation email, shipping confirmation email, and the third email I always recommend is a customer service email. What do I mean by that? Well, this is just a check-in email. This should be a couple of days after the product was supposed to arrive. What should happen here is it should say something like, "Did you receive the product? Was everything okay? If not, just reply to this email and let us know." Pretty simple, right? Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon: It's a just let them know you're there, that they have a channel if there's an issue. And what you're going to do here, is you're going to prevent a negative online review. Because if they have a problem, they're not going to go online and vent. They're going to say, "Oh, you know what, I got that email from them. I'll reply to that email and try to figure this out." And then, you have an opportunity to turn a bad situation into a good one very quickly. You're preemptively handling that situation by just letting them know you're there. And if there's no problems at all, it's still awesome just to know that that brand is available for you and that they're there. Jon: I often recommend, have this email either go out the day the product should arrive, and you can say something like, "Your product should be arriving today. Let us know if you have any problems," and things of that sort. It's also another opportunity to send some more resources. If you want to link to more stuff up on your site, or there's... we worked with a company that sells tents. They did a really good job with this. It's like how to set up your tent, right? Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon: Because a lot of people struggle with that. They've gotten a lot easier over the years, but it's still something that required a little bit of knowledge. So, we've got confirmation emails, shipping confirmation, customer service, and then the fourth email I always recommend is please leave a review. This is a review request. Now, this should definitely go out a couple of days, maybe even a week, after they've gotten the product. The idea here is just make it so simple for them. There's a couple of tools that make this super easy. Shopper Approved. It does this extremely well. It's a reviews platform, where they just send out an email that asks for the review, and then it has five stars in the review, and it says, "Click the star that you want to rate." Ryan: Yeah, I've actually done that before and didn't even know I was giving a review. Jon: Right. It's one click. Ryan: It's phenomenally simple. Me, as an online marketer, I'm in it all day every day. Then I got a review email from one of the companies I bought from, and it was Shopper Approved. Blew me away. Like, "Wow. I actually just accidentally gave a five star review." I was going to give it anyway, but it was like, "Wow, that was ridiculously simple." Jon: Yeah, and that's exactly what it's about here, is just make it quick, make it easy, but ask for the review. Most people, at this point, don't ask for a review. They're asking for a review on their website, which I can promise you, nobody is going back to a website, from finding that product detail page for the product they purchased, and giving it a review. It's a huge red flag and perhaps we should do another episode, Ryan, on product reviews, because it's a huge red flag for consumer trust. Jon: If you see, on a product detail page, that you can leave a review, that tells me that there are so many unverified reviews on there. I don't trust what's being said anymore because the manufacturer or retailer could just be sending their entire family to that page. I want to know that they're actually verified reviews from people that have purchased and that's the only reviews that are in that mix. The best way to do that is just ask for it via email after the purchase. It's going to be a verified review. That also, and you probably know more about this though, Ryan, but that also allows you, if they're all verified, to have the star ratings show up on your product detail page listings in Google search results. Ryan: Yeah, exactly. You need to have a review aggregator that's approved by Google that's looked at their system and said, "Yes, you're actually getting legitimate reviews." I know there's some plugins on a lot of eCom platforms that allow people to just leave reviews on the site, like you said, and it doesn't build trust. Those can't be sent to Google. So, if your website is, "Hey, I got a place to get reviews. I've got 500 wonderful reviews on my website. How come Google is not allowing me to send them?" It's because you haven't used one of the 30, I believe, companies that are approved to send those reviews to ours, and Google trusts that they're legitimate. Jon: Now, you're not gaming the system, so that's helpful. Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon: So, five emails. Confirmation email after purchase, shipping confirmation, customer service, leave a review, and then the fifth is just add them to your general email marketing sends. So, whatever that next email marketing send is, just add them. Now, here's the thing. If you're going to send an email every day, or even every week, the cadence can't be the same as somebody who clearly signed up for your marketing emails on your site. Now, I'm suggesting sending them marketing emails, but maybe it's once a month. It's just some way to stay in front of them, and these emails should be more helpful. They shouldn't be, "Here's the big promotion we're running right now." It should be something like, "Hey, Valentine's Day is coming up. Have you thought about ordering by X date to ensure that you'll have it in time?" Ryan: And so on this, real quick though, you would, in theory, keep them out of your marketing emails until they get to this point. You don't want to automatically, you purchased, you're in my marketing email, and you're going to get a marketing email in the middle of this cadence of emails. Like, you don't want, "Oh, shipping confirmation." "Oh..." two hours later you got the marketing email. Jon: That's exactly right. I think that's extremely important that even if they signed up... okay, this isn't a tactic I recommend. You know I rail on this all the time. But even if you had a pop-up, and you offered a discount to sign up for the marketing emails on your site before they made a purchase, you need to hold those emails a reasonable amount of time, maybe a day or two, to see if they made a purchase right away. There's so many of these tools, like Klaviyo, that make that pretty easy to do, where you can just add an exception real quick to hold them until the next email blast or something. But I would wait for them to at least complete that purchase. If they complete the purchase, then don't send a marketing email until they've gotten the other four emails. Ryan: All right, so we've got an email cadence. We've got in-cart right after the purchase. Some of the things you can do on the thank you page. We touched on this a little bit, in the process of going through there, but in addition to CartHook and maybe the email platform you're using, are there any other CRO tools people can be utilizing or looking at when they're trying to improve post-purchase conversion rates? Jon: Well, I think that it's not as data-focused on tracking every click and movement at that point. So, it's less about the toolsets here. It's more about that customer experience. Email is going to be your biggest toolset here. Yes, there's a lot of stuff you can do to run tests and see how much people are engaging with that thank you page, and there's tools like CartHook and several competitors to them, but I don't think that being as data heavy at this part of the process is going to be very beneficial. Ryan: Got it. And a lot of that is going to be measured by lifetime value of your customers. Are they increasing or not? So, if your lifetime value was $500 and then you implemented a bunch of these things Jon's talked about, did it move to $700 or $800 over a course of the time period that you're outlining? Jon: Right. And there's really three kind of goals that you should have from doing this, and three metrics that you should be tracking by optimizing post-purchase. The first is that customer lifetime value, of course. We want to see that go up over time. What influences that? A return purchase. Did you give them such a good customer experience that they came back and purchased again? Another thing is number of reviews. That's a great one because people are only going to leave a review if they're satisfied or if they're deeply unsatisfied, right? Ryan: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jon: That kind of mushy middle there, nobody really leaves a review, typically. That's why you very rarely will see like a three star review. You're going to see a five or a one, or a four, sometimes people don't like to give five unless... they reserve that for the one time a year. Maybe it's between four and one, but you see very few in between, typically. Then the third metric, besides those, that you should be thinking about is just your conversion. Your conversion rate overall should go up because of those repeat customers, in the sense that if you get more people to come back and purchase again, you should see your conversion rates go up because it's going to be an easier purchase, you're going to have more sales. So, it kind of feeds itself in this cycle. Ryan: Got it. So it's post-purchase conversion rates not something I've normally thought about, or even associate with typical CRO and what you're doing with customer testing and heat mapping and all these wonderful things you do onsite. Now, is generally post-purchase CRO a part of an overall CRO strategy or do you kind of separate them into like, get the purchase CRO and then post-purchase CRO? Jon: That's a great question. Now, my initial thought on that is that it is something that is built into what we do at The Good, and it should be part of a full conversion optimization. But it is a graduate level step. What I mean by that is if you haven't gotten into college and completed those courses of just getting the conversion, then there's no reason to focus on post-purchase yet. So, you really want to have a good customer experience up to that point, and then you can start working on post-purchase optimization. But it is an overall part of the CRO picture, and it really should be. Ryan: Now, one easy way to increase your conversion rate is to throw a bunch of discounts out, obviously. If people save money, of course they're going to buy more, generally. But how do you, or do you, recommend any discounting post-purchase? I kind of mentioned like, "Oh maybe I would throw a 10% discount out for complimentary products in an email." But that may be a bad idea. I don't know. Jon: Well, I'm not a proponent of doing discounts on a site at all. I really believe discounting is not optimization. I call it margin drain, because that's really what it is. Now, can you get more sales through discounting? People love a discount. It does work, but I'm not a proponent of it. I don't think you should be testing discounts, testing promotions in that way. There's a lot of other ways to be doing promotions that aren't just a straight up discount. And the reason is, and I say this all the time, once you bring a new-to-file customer in through a discount, your brand is forever a discount brand in the eyes of that consumer. And it's just not going to change. That means, every time you do a purchase in the future, you're going to have to offer a discount. It's just what's going to be expected. They're never going to want to pay retail price because that's not what the expectation is. Jon: But there are ways around this that are still intriguing offers that aren't discounts. We actually have an article up on our site. We'll have our producer put it in the show notes. But there's an article that we have up on The Good that's something like 90 or 100 different types of offers that you can do that aren't discounts. Ryan: Oh wow. Jon: There's just an unlimited number up there, it seems like. Now, things like buy one, get one, bundling. I mentioned, just earlier, how the company got me by saying, "Hey, we'll add four more to your order without charging you more for shipping." So, you can do things like shipping promotions. Free shipping should be something that you're considering. If not, look at a better fulfillment partner, perhaps, but there's a lot of options out there. That you're allowing people to upgrade their shipping speed. Ryan: Yeah so, one final point, I think, in the post-purchase thing. Something you and I do a lot of between our organizations is referrals. I'm always referring business over to Jon and Jon's very good at referring business to us. But in the eCommerce space, very rarely do I get asked to refer somebody else. I just bought this product. I'm really excited about it. I mean, more than likely, I'm going to be willing to refer, but very rarely do I get asked about it. And a lot of times it's... there may be a loyalty program system out there that does some of this, but what do you suggest companies do to increase some of that potential for referral? Jon: Just ask. I think, as you mentioned, so few do, and there's... most eCommerce managers are spending all this effort and money in affiliate programs, where they're getting people to recommend their product in exchange for an affiliate fee. But they ignore the power that people who actually buy can have. And I think that's a mistake. They really should be thinking a lot about how can we just get somebody who purchased, and is happy with that purchase, to be a referral source? One of the things you can do is, in that email chain that I mentioned of those five emails, instead of asking for a review, you could ask for a referral at that point, right? Ryan: Yeah. Jon: You could mix it up and do a 25% you're asking for referrals, 75% you're asking for a review, however that mix is that you'd like. There's a lot of options there. But the reality is, is all you have to do is ask, and it should cost you nothing at that point. You could offer them a gift in exchange for making a referral, something of that sort, or have a loyalty program that you're doing. There's some great tools out there. I'm a huge fan of one called Smile, smile.io. Smile.io, however you want to pronounce it. But there's a handful of these out there that do a really good job with the loyalty programs. And one of those is asking for referrals and doing it at the right step in the process. Just so few people do it that it blows my mind. Ryan: Is there a right or a wrong way to ask for that referral? Is there a way that it can make people mad, or there's a way that you've seen that's been very successful in that email chain of asking for one? Jon: The first thing I would do is offer them something of value to share. So, instead of the overt, "Just click here to publish to your Facebook a, "I just bought this product, you should too," or something that is super cheesy and very pushy. That's the mistake I see, typically. And most people aren't going to do that. But if you make it something that is really useful, like, "Hey, I just bought this tent from this company, and here's a video on how to set up a tent, or a trick on how to set up a tent, perhaps, that would make your life easier if you camp too." So you say, "Okay, well, share that out," perhaps with this referral code, something of that sort. And you can offer people a discount. Jon: Now, a lot of times... I do this a lot. If I really like something and I'm recommending it to somebody, I'll say, "You know what, I know I get a discount on that. Why don't I just make the introduction and then I know you'll get a discount." So it's, "Offer 10% off to your friends," or whatever that might be. Or, "Use this code and your friends get free shipping," or, "They get a free gift if you refer them." It doesn't, again, have to be a percentage off. But I think there's a lot of options there and a lot of offers that could be mixed in. It just requires a little bit of thought and creativity instead of doing the lazy thing that every eCom site's doing, and either not asking or just saying, "Hey, use this code and give it to your friends for a percentage off." Ryan: Got it. So, just kind of make it a little more fun or exciting, or not just the basic "give me a code." Jon: Right, exactly. Ryan: Well, that's awesome. Okay. So, we've got a lot of potential for increasing conversion rates from thank you pages to emails to referrals to countless different things. Thank you, Jon, for downloading all of that education on us. I think there's just a ton in there that I'm actually going to start implementing on some of my brands. Anything else you want to leave us with? Jon: No, I think that the first thing to think about is getting that conversion. After that, there's so much more opportunity to go that most people don't pay attention to. I think it's really important that they take that extra step. I appreciate you bringing this topic to the table and us discussing it today. Hopefully it's a value for folks. Ryan: Oh yeah, I'm sure it is. Thank you, Jon.

From a job in finance to $600 Million dollars in processing orders through CartHook, Jordan Gal is bringing us in his entrepreneur journey while constantly reinventing himself.

Jordan Gal is the Co-founder and CEO of Carthook, a company offering customizable checkout processes for some of the most groundbreaking eCommerce brands. He and his team are partnering with clients to implement one of the most overlooked strategies in eCom, the post purchase upsell. Carthook clients have seen as much as 42% of past 30 day total revenue be driven by post purchase upsells.   In this episode, you'll learn how to implement product upsells to increase revenue and how you can use product funnels to customize the buying experience for your customers to increase conversion rate.    “This allows you to make an upsell without adding any friction to the buying process that can drive up your average order value.” - Jordan Gal   Some topics that were discussed include:   How to use a "one click upsell" after the checkout to upsell your customer without adding friction to the buying process Leveraging consumer psychology to increase hit rate of an upsell Using "product funnels" to sell more with a better customer journey   Contact Jordan Gal:   Connect with Jordan on Twitter Learn more about CartHook  Carthook on Facebook    References & links mentioned:   Jordan Co-hosts The Bootstrapped Web, a podcast centered on the highs and lows encountered while bootstrapping an online business.    Subscribe & Review The Commerce Lab Podcast:   Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of The Commerce Lab Podcast! If the information shared in these weekly conversations and interviews have helped you in your business journey, please head over to iTunes, subscribe to the show, and leave us an honest review. Your reviews and feedback will not only help us continue to deliver great, helpful content, but it will also help us reach even more amazing entrepreneurs just like you!  

Show Notes In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Rob talks with Jordan Gal of CartHook about his big move to stop his free trials, move to demos, and increase his prices. Items mentioned in this episode: CartHook Bootstrapped Web Podcast CartHook Pricing Change Blog Post Lincoln Murphy blog post about Qualification […]       

Quali sono le prime cose da fare per migliorare la crescita di un negozio online?Ne parliamo con Niccolò Gloazzo, esperto Shopify e fondatore di qbrico.com.Ecco alcune cose di cui parliamo:- usare Google Analytics per individuare i “low hanging fruits”- dove mandare il traffico dalle inserzioni social- che strumenti possiamo usare per creare rapidamente landing pages- come creare un funnel- quali sono i 3 kpi da ottimizzare nell’ecommerce- costo di acquisizione cliente rispetto a customer lifetime value- cosa può fare un esperto e cosa deve fare il proprietario del negozio nello sviluppo di una strategia di crescita Ecco alcuni strumenti citati- Unbounce (link con sconto qui https://tunca.it/risorse)- CartHook https://carthook.com/- Klaviyo https://www.klaviyo.com/

Duc from Annemarie Gianni shares the impact that using Carthook, a checkout replacement has had. They were able to increase their AOV 15% and double their landing page revenue. Send me a screenshot of your review to win a giftcard to Annemarie Gianni Learn how the world's leading DTC brands are transforming their customer service to a profit centre at https://gorgias.grsm.io/ecommswipefile

Jordan Gal joins the podcast today to review the 5-year journey he's been on with CartHook. I know many of you might know him from co-hosting the Bootstrapped Web podcast with friend-of-the-show, Brian Casel. But if you're like me, the half-decade old story of CartHook starting out as cart abandonment tool, to now a full-on checkout replacement for Shopify, has become a little blurry. Keeping up with Jordan's roller-coaster ride has been exciting and today's interview sticks the bookmarks at all the right places. When & why did Jordan decide to build a new product? When did they decide to pair down two products into one? How did they move upmarket with pricing and customer applications? All of these pivots, while not easy, has made the company stronger across culture and lowering churn. It has been an amazing ride, and I hope you find some lessons you can learn from in today's episode -- I know I have. If you liked this episode, please consider sharing it on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook! ★ Support this podcast ★

Jordan Gal joins the podcast today to review the 5-year journey he's been on with CartHook. I know many of you might know him from co-hosting the Bootstrapped Web podcast with friend-of-the-show, Brian Casel. But if you're like me, the half-decade old story of CartHook starting out as cart abandonment tool, to now a full-on checkout replacement for Shopify, has become a little blurry. Keeping up with Jordan's roller-coaster ride has been exciting and today's interview sticks the bookmarks at all the right places. When & why did Jordan decide to build a new product? When did they decide to pair down two products into one? How did they move upmarket with pricing and customer applications? All of these pivots, while not easy, has made the company stronger across culture and lowering churn. It has been an amazing ride, and I hope you find some lessons you can learn from in today's episode — I know I have. If you liked this episode, please consider sharing it on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook! ★ Support this podcast ★

Jordan Gal joins the podcast today to review the 5-year journey he’s been on with CartHook. I know many of you might know him from co-hosting the Bootstrapped Web podcast with friend-of-the-show, Brian Casel. But if you’re like me, the half-decade old story of CartHook starting out as cart abandonment tool, to now a full-on…

Jordan Gal joins the podcast today to review the 5-year journey he’s been on with CartHook. I know many of you might know him from co-hosting the Bootstrapped Web podcast with friend-of-the-show, Brian Casel. But if you’re like me, the half-decade old story of CartHook starting out as cart abandonment tool, to now a full-on…

071. Carthook | Jordan Gal is the Founder of Carthook, which is a cart abandonment software solution that recovers lost revenue by following up with potential customers who don’t complete the checkout process. Their flagship product is a customizable checkout with post-purchase upsells for Shopify stores. Jordan currently lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and three daughters. He is also currently co-hosting the Bootstrapped Web Podcast, which is a podcast about bootstrapping an online business.*** For Show Notes, Key Points, Contact Info, & Resources Mentioned on this episode visit here: Jordan Gal Interview. ***

Jordan and Brian are back in the studio. Today the main focus is on the continuous adjustments needed in the software industry. They also quickly cover the trend of SaaS companies doing conferences and community-based marketing. Jordan talks about how great Carthook is doing, productivity challenges, goals for the future, some exciting, secret news for … Continue reading Continuous Adjustments

Ben is finding it easier to plan meetings to talk about challenges, and how he appreciates consistency. He describes his recent experiences with NanoConf and TupleConf. Derrick understands how perspectives shift as a business goes through different stages. Everyone wants financial security, but they always have complicated problems to solve. Today’s Topics Include: Mini Mastermind Conferences: Growth Strategy for building rapport and trust while bringing in new people for new perspectives Lessons Learned: Capture what went well, what should change in the future TupleConf: Ben, Joel, and Spencer discussed high-level questions and risk of co-founder issues and ambitions How to Deal with Conflict: Know your strengths, weaknesses, and personality type Planning and Prioritization: How to clarify and activate energy to do lower/smaller tasks StaticKit Milestones: Derrick achieved expansion revenue, additional customers, and annual renewals Pricing Structure, Tiers, and Upgrades: Monthly vs.yearly subscriptions with no surprises Derrick shares future vision of StaticKit beyond static forms for positive user experience Links and resources: Art of Product on Twitter (https://twitter.com/artofproductpod) Derrick Reimer (http://www.derrickreimer.com) Website Derrick Reimer on Twitter (https://twitter.com/derrickreimer) Ben Orenstein (http://www.benorenstein.com/) Website Ben Orenstein on Twitter (https://twitter.com/r00k?lang=en) Tuple (https://tuple.app/) Tuple’s Pair Programming Guide (https://tuple.app/pair-programming-guide) StaticKit (https://www.statickit.com/) Using Tailwind CSS with Next.js (https://statickit.com/guides/next-js-tailwind)  Level (https://level.app/) Big Snow Tiny Conf (https://bigsnowtinyconf.com) Build Your SaaS Podcast (https://saas.transistor.fm) CartHook (https://carthook.com) Brian Casel (https://briancasel.com/) WordPress (https://wordpress.com/) Gatsby (https://www.gatsbyjs.org/) Jekyll (https://jekyllrb.com/) Drip (https://www.drip.com/) Netlify (https://www.netlify.com/) Stripe (https://stripe.com/) GitHub (https://github.com/)

It’s September, which means we’re talking about the changing of the seasons: kids are back in school, we’re gearing up for Black Friday, updating websites, and checking our numbers. Brian talks about his email marketing, hiring developers, and changing website hosts. Jordan talks about what’s new with CartHook and the future of podcasting. Here are … Continue reading Rabbit Holes Within Rabbit Holes

This episode of Rogue Startups, Craig chats with fellow entrepreneur Jordan Gal.  Jordan is the founder and CEO of CartHook, which is a software company that provides an e-commerce platform for online businesses and the Bootstrapped Web podcast. Craig and Jordan talk about product development and process; the difference between “hovering” and managing; the role […]

In this episode, we discuss how Jordan had an eCommerce store making $75k/mo, which gave him a lot of insight into making eCommerce products. He started out with a cart abandonment solution for multiple platforms (I even tried this out for Easy Digital Downloads). He actually avoided integrating with Shopify, but he had an idea to make a checkout that was customizable. He released an MVP and he was overwhelmed with the response. Jordan talks about how they may have released too early, which reminds me of this post by Jason Cohen about why they don't build MVPs. They are now sunsetting the cart abandonment product because the checkout solution is going so well. Jordan says Carthook's checkout solution is popular because it brings the customization of ClickFunnels to Shopify. We also discussed how his product is risky, because it's not officially working on Shopify APIs. They are not in the Shopify app store, and technically Shopify could kill their business if they wanted to.

In this episode of the Growth Machine Podcast we are joined by Wilson Hung, the Director of Growth for Kettle & Fire. Wilson wrote a phenomenal tweetstorm and article about the relationship between the cost to acquire new customers and their lifetime value. Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Wilson Hung Kettle & Fire Sumome [1:31] Justin Mares [1:54] Ahrefs [2:17] Joe Rogan podcast [4:49] Tim Ferriss podcast [4:49] Perfect Keto [9:11] Google Trends [9:24] Shopify [13:17] Bridgerock Data [16:39] Babak Azad [18:25] Beachbody [18:25] Blue Apron [20:59] Hello Fresh [20:59] getARPU [23:15] Carthook [24:35] Articles mentioned The golden era of DNVB is over on Twitter The Golden Era of DNVBs Are Over Show Topics 0:41 - How Wilson and Nat new of each other in Sumome’s awesome Alumni network. 30 day strategy proposal to get a new job. Ahrefs and link building with affiliates. Videos and indirectly ranking for bone broth. 3:14 - Saturating growth channels, ads cost started rising. Thought: if customer acquisition costs (CAC) continue to grow, then customer lifetime value (LTV) is the variable to act on to hit the top line revenue targets. 5:25 - Improving LTV. Identifying points of direct LTV improvement (data infrastructure, margins, repeat purchases, etc). Slowing down the rate of increase of CAC (increasing efficiency, diversifying to non-paid acquisition channels, SEO, referrals, etc). Benefits of scaling Facebook Ads when you already have a large audience. When to try non-paid before than paid channels and vice versa. 9:53 - Increasing LTV. Less mature brands tend to measure success only on the first purchase, revenue per visitor or the return on ad spend on the first purchase, vs considering subscriptions. Attention to metrics that aren’t in line with long term goals. 12:08 - Valuing customers differently. Willingness to pay more for a subscriber than a non subscriber. Segmenting customers by the acquisition channel (paid/non-paid). How to build the company’s customer data. Cumulative revenue and blended margins. Cashflow issues if you pick the wrong LTV timeframe. Maintenance and guardrails. Past performance is not a guarantee for future performance. Metrics Wilson receives weekly. 18:55 - Guiding people to subscriptions. Increasing subscription opt-ins at first purchase or at upgrade. How dev agencies come into play to increase subscriptions. Examples of how they are improving opt-ins at K&F. Finding way people subscribe by surveys and identifying potential subscriptors based on keyword search. 22:19 - Developing clever tools for helping do better with LTV. What to focus when sales are in the $10k-$20k range. Tools to optimize for revenue per visitor. Paying attention not over optimizing bundles to break the free shipping barrier, to the point conversion rates start to diminish. 25:52 - Sweet spots with free shipping and pop-up discounts. Understanding the costs of fulfillment. LTV is not just revenue, margins play an important role too. With better margins one can afford more expensive customer acquisition. Margin improvements. 29:25 - LTV and CAC summary. 30:41 - Find Wilson at his website and @. Go to growthmachinepodcast.com/freecourse to get the 7 part, in-depth series about building a blog to success. Go to growthmachinepodcast.com and subscribe for future episodes. Lookf for growthmachinepodcast.com on iTunes and Stitcher. If you are enjoying the show, leave a review!

On today’s episode, we meet Jordan Gal, CEO of CartHook. Up until CartHook, Jordan came from an immigrant entrepreneur household, and when you grow up around that it’s hard to get away from it. He’s started several different businesses, and eventually landed on his own ecommerce site. He sold the business off, and then got into the software game, but he wanted to stay in the ecommerce world. He looked at the apps they were using and took one, a cart abandon apps, and realized this app was awful but still made him thousands of dollars a month, maybe there would be a business in making a better version of that app?   Two years into marketing this cart abandon project, he realized he’s just been staring at different checkout pages all day. Eventually it dawns on him, wouldn’t it be more valuable if instead of capturing lost sales, they just developed a better checkout page that had fewer abandoned carts to begin with? That was the genesis of his product, a better converting checkout page.   Today, you’ll learn about what CartHook can do for your ecommerce site, as well as where Jordan thinks the future of ecommerce is headed.   To learn more, visit: https://electriceye.io/podcast   Resources: Learn more at https://carthook.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/carthook Twitter: https://twitter.com/carthook Start a Simplr free trial: simplr.ai/honest Honest eCommerce is produced by Crate Media

My guest on today's episode is Jordan Gal, the Founder & CEO of CartHook. We chat about how they help Shopify merchants to improve conversion rate and grow average order value through their checkout and funnel solution. What You Will Learn Today…Learn how CartHook allows for complete control over the entire checkout process with your Shopify store, including a customizable one-page checkout to increase your store’s conversion rate and a one-click, post-purchase upsells to increase your average order value. It’s a compelling solution used by Shopify and Shopify Plus merchants.Links And Resources Mentioned In This EpisodeCartHookNatural StacksOrganifyBombtech GolfKettle & FireKinobodyThank You For ListeningI really appreciate you choosing to listen to the show and for supporting the podcast. If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.I would also be so grateful if you would consider taking a minute or two to leave an honest review and rating for the show in iTunes. They’re extremely helpful when it comes to reaching our audience and I read each and everyone personally!New Strategies Each Week To Help You Build And Scale Lifetime Customer Loyalty. SUBSCRIBE HERE!Being an entrepreneur is a life of learning. All it would take is a new idea, strategy, Shopify app, or marketing platform to be the next thing you need to drive more revenue and lifetime loyalty for your Shopify store. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, or Spotify. Don’t miss a single episode!Episode SponsorThis episode was brought to you by Omnisend, makers of sophisticated omnichannel marketing automation tools for sales-driven Shopify brands that have outgrown generic email marketing platforms. Engage your customers and boost your sales with dynamic emails, text messages, web push notifications, Facebook Messenger, and retargeting ads on Facebook and Google – all from one platform.Try Omnisend for free for 14 days. Check them out at Omnisend.com and use the code “fastlane” when you signup to get an extra 50% off for the first 3 months. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Today, I'm talking with , the Founder and CEO at , a SaaS startup that helps ecommerce businesses maximize conversion rate and grow average order value. I've been following Jordan's story for years through , the podcast he co-hosts with Brian Casel. It's been amazing watching him build CartHook from the sidelines and today I'm excited to have a more active role in things. In our chat, we learn what it's been like building his business to a team of 24 (and counting), everything from his successes to his failures and how these lessons can help make you a better founder. Jordan is trying to build something big with CartHook and has approached it all very deliberately, so it was super interesting hearing how he approaches that, like how he balances growth and profitability and how he keeps leveling up the skills of his team and of himself. There were a lot of lessons from this chat that I've immediately applied to my own business, so I'm sure you'll get a lot out of it as well.

Meet Sid Bharath, our favorite SaaS consultant and growth marketer, who specializes in growing SaaS companies and was previously the VP of Growth at Thinkific, an online course platform that he's helped grow to the leader in the industry. He's also a marketing consultant who has worked with amazing companies in San Francisco like Gorgias, ShareDesk, Olark, LemonStand, CartHook, ReCharge and many more. In this episode, we bring back Sid Bharath who was a guest in episode #3. Since then he's been working in San Francisco with top SaaS companies so he has lots of insights into what's happening in the SaaS marketplace, what's changing and where are we going. You'll hear about the SaaS strategies that are actually working in today's B2B space. You'll learn the biggest mistakes Sid sees most SaaS companies making in marketing, the exact KPIs and systems you absolutely must have running to scale any marketing you have going and finally, the shifts in the SaaS marketplace that you need to be aware of for 2019. This is a really fun episode! Show Notes: 04:05 Helping SaaS Grow and Scale 05:55 Big Wins Running Summits 07:25 Creating a Summit Playbook For The Team 07:40 Using a Partnership Model 09:40 The Planning Phase 11:00 Trying to Grow Quickly Without Product-Market Fit 12.40 Finding Real Product Market Fit On Funded SaaS vs Bootstrapped SaaS 13:35 The Drawbacks of Pushing Customer Acquisition Before Product-Market Fit 15:40 Different Types of Partnerships 18:05 Long Term vs Short Term Strategies Business Conversations 19:40 Mistake #1: Not Knowing Where Your Customers Are In The 1st Place 21:40 Mistake #2: Not Setting Up Analytics Upfront 22:10 Recommended KPIs and Tools 24:05 Advanced KIPs 25:20 Budgets and Value 27:30 Marketing Budgeting: Overall vs Per Item 28:40 Start Building Out Manually Then Automate 31:40 Hire Over vs Automated System 33:30 B2B SaaS In 2019: Better Alignment on How Marketing Is Generating Leads and Personalization 37:05 Lightning Questions

Rob talks to Jordan Gal about a pivotal moment in his business where he made the decision to protect something fragile; his confidence, and why it's been key to his success at CartHook ever since.

1. Provide product recommendations Product recommendations generate 33% higher average order value. You can include product recommendations in both your product pages and cart pages. In your product pages, you can include the phrase “Other customers who view this product are also interested in these products…” And for your cart pages, you can include a list of products with the title “This product you’re buying is frequently purchased together with these products…” How do you figure out which products to include in your recommendations? You can do this manually or by simply using a recommendation algorithm. 2. Upsell or cross-sell complementary products You can get an immediate 15-30% increase in revenue from upsells. If you’re not doing this tactic, you’re stealing from your company by limiting its potential to earn more revenue. If product recommendations mean you’re encouraging your customer to add popular products to their purchase, up-selling & cross-selling mean you’re encourage your customer to add helpful and complementary products to their cart. Confused? Let’s take a customer buying a laptop as an example. Product recommendation is suggesting a smartphone or a tablet. Upselling is suggesting a more premium laptop model. Cross-selling is suggesting a mouse, a keyboard or a laptop bag. 3. Set order minimums for a discount In my 30+ years of experience as a human, I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t want to get a discount. After all, it’s more bang for your buck, right? Don’t give out discounts too freely, though! You need to qualify This tactic helps you incentivize your customers to spend more just so they can save money. How do you do this in a sustainable way that’s win-win for the both of you? Compute for your AOV. Then, pick a number higher than your AOV and add how much you’re willing to discount and use this number. For example, if your AOV is $15, and you’re willing to discount $10, tell your customer that if he reaches $30, you’ll take $10 off his total. This way, your customer gets to save money via the discount and you get to increase your AOV over the long run ($20 vs $15). 4. Set up a customer loyalty program that exchanges points for customer benefits The more your customer spends with you, the more points he’ll receive. And the more points he’ll get, the more benefits he can experience. An effective way to implement this is to establish tiers within your loyalty program. The more he spends, the faster it is to unlock the higher tiers which provide more points per dollar spent. Don’t know if this really works? Just check out this study done by Smile.io which found that “majority of brands see at least a 13.71% increase in order values from rewards program members over non program members.” This means that every time a non-member spends $100 on an order, a member would have spent $13.71 more. 5. Sell product bundles/product packages or offer BOGO deals Offer product bundles that cost less compared to buying the same items individually. For example, a product bundle that includes a laptop + a mouse + a charger + a laptop bag can cost $499, whereas buying the same products individually can cost $649. This way, customers are more likely to buy the bundle because this will save them money. And doing this helps you increase your AOV and subsequently, your revenue as well. You can also offer Buy One, Get One deals to incentivize purchases higher than your AOV. Bonus! Now, we’ve talked about the five tactics that you can use to increase AOV but you can do these only on the pre-checkout phase, meaning, before your customer finalizes the transaction. What do you post-checkout? You can also: 6. Include product recommendations and up-sells while the payment token is still active Once your customer clicked the “pay now” button and while his payment token is still active, you can still send him to a post-purchase sales funnel which does the product recommendations and upsells for you. For example, you can use CartHook to do this for you: while your customer’s payment token is still active, you can present time-limited exclusive offers that they can click once to be included in their final order. 7. Include product recommendations and up-sells in your email receipts Here at Conversio, we still see email receipts performing really well: high open rate, high click rate and high conversion rates. Simply include a discount coupon and a product recommendation in your email receipts to boost your AOV. For example, include a casual offer in the email they’ll receive, something like: “Hey, nice cart! Customers who bought the products you’ve bought also got these… Want to get these products at a discount? Here’s a discount code just for you - valid for 1 hour only!” Increase your AOV this 2019 and see your company’s profitability soar, too. Any other things you’d like to add? Let me know and let’s talk in the comments section below. See you next week. Cheers!

Today Dave and Craig catch up on their businesses with a few new developments on both fronts. Dave has been completing several integrations for Recapture, including Carthook, EDD and several other shopping cart solutions. Interestingly some of the integrations that they’ve done are now waiting on approval from the integration partners…something good for us all […]

GUEST BIO: Jordan Gal is the founder and CEO of CartHook. CartHook serves eCommerce business owners to maximize average order value and give back control to merchants on Shopify by directing customers to high-converting checkout pages. Jordan's career started on Wall Street, where he discovered that he wasn't happy and decided to pursue a new career. He joined his family's eCommerce business and was able to scale to $70,000 in revenue per month. Shortly after, he sold the company and created CartHook to solve the pain points of eCommerce that he had experienced as an eCommerce business owner. Jordan is also the host of The Bootstrap Podcast. SHOW SUMMARY: Jordan Gal is the founder and CEO of CartHook, helping eCommerce business owners increase their order values with high-converting checkout pages. His eCommerce expertise is increasing sales by over 30% for eCommerce businesses around the world. In this episode, we talk about Jordan's initial leap into entrepreneurship and how he was able to identify a pain point in the eCommerce industry. Jordan explains checkout upselling strategies, how to capitalize your most popular product, and the future of eCommerce marketing. This is The Lean Commerce Podcast. TOPICS: What does CartHook provide customers? 0:55 Our mission is to help eCommerce merchants thrive by providing them with control over the most important pages of their website, aka where the payment happens. Our app gives merchants complete control over their checkout process. How did you figure out this was a pain point in eCommerce? 3:14 It has been an eight year process. I started off on Wall Street, hated it and left. Then, I joined my family's business and brought it online. Within a span of six months, we were making $70,000 a month and we sold the company a year later. 5:16 Customers are more likely to convert when an entire store is dedicated to the product they are interested in purchasing. For example, instead of being an entire sports store, we were just a fishing rod store. We remained extremely niched. 6:25 After selling that business, I started CartHook as a cart abandonment app that triggered an ad campaign if a user didn't purchase the items in their cart. After two years, I realized this wasn't the only problem on the check out page and I asked myself, “How do we reduce the amount of people abandoning their cart in checkout?” How do customers experience post purchase upsells? 11:28 The eCommerce businesses that create relationships with their customers are the ones that last the longest. When approaching post purchase upsells, ask, “How do we respect the relationship with the customer?”. Offer products that are genuinely useful to the customer, for example, a second unit of the same product at a discounted price. 14:38 Upselling into subscription is another popular upsell. For example, ordering a product weekly, monthly, quarterly etc. 15;13 Our software lets you identify which upsell funnel should be seen by the shopper based on what product they are buying. 16:35 The only thing that individual merchants can do that Amazon can't, is build up a relationship with them. What are the best current practices for post purchase upsells? 17:17 Start off on the checkout page, ad trust symbols, a testimonial, identify the design that is congruent with your website and fan base. Then, create a simple upsell funnel of more of the same product and then an adjacent product. Generally speaking, upsells do better when they are lower priced than the original purchase. 21:14 Set up a stand alone landing page for your winning products and load it up with copy, video, testimonials, images, etc. We have a big feature launching in a few months that is a template for these dedicated landing pages. How do you approach post purchase upsells? 24:03 We see three main strategies: Video with a buy button, Short-form, above-the-fold Offer, Long-Form (correlating to a higher priced product).

GUEST BIO: Jordan Gal is the founder and CEO of CartHook. CartHook serves eCommerce business owners to maximize average order value and give back control to merchants on Shopify by directing customers to high-converting checkout pages. Jordan’s career started on Wall Street, where he discovered that he wasn’t happy and decided to pursue a new career. He joined his family’s eCommerce business and was able to scale to $70,000 in revenue per month. Shortly after, he sold the company and created CartHook to solve the pain points of eCommerce that he had experienced as an eCommerce business owner. Jordan is also the host of The Bootstrap Podcast. SHOW SUMMARY: Jordan Gal is the founder and CEO of CartHook, helping eCommerce business owners increase their order values with high-converting checkout pages. His eCommerce expertise is increasing sales by over 30% for eCommerce businesses around the world. In this episode, we talk about Jordan’s initial leap into entrepreneurship and how he was able to identify a pain point in the eCommerce industry. Jordan explains checkout upselling strategies, how to capitalize your most popular product, and the future of eCommerce marketing. This is The Lean Commerce Podcast. TOPICS: What does CartHook provide customers? 0:55 Our mission is to help eCommerce merchants thrive by providing them with control over the most important pages of their website, aka where the payment happens. Our app gives merchants complete control over their checkout process. How did you figure out this was a pain point in eCommerce? 3:14 It has been an eight year process. I started off on Wall Street, hated it and left. Then, I joined my family’s business and brought it online. Within a span of six months, we were making $70,000 a month and we sold the company a year later. 5:16 Customers are more likely to convert when an entire store is dedicated to the product they are interested in purchasing. For example, instead of being an entire sports store, we were just a fishing rod store. We remained extremely niched. 6:25 After selling that business, I started CartHook as a cart abandonment app that triggered an ad campaign if a user didn’t purchase the items in their cart. After two years, I realized this wasn’t the only problem on the check out page and I asked myself, “How do we reduce the amount of people abandoning their cart in checkout?” How do customers experience post purchase upsells? 11:28 The eCommerce businesses that create relationships with their customers are the ones that last the longest. When approaching post purchase upsells, ask, “How do we respect the relationship with the customer?”. Offer products that are genuinely useful to the customer, for example, a second unit of the same product at a discounted price. 14:38 Upselling into subscription is another popular upsell. For example, ordering a product weekly, monthly, quarterly etc. 15;13 Our software lets you identify which upsell funnel should be seen by the shopper based on what product they are buying. 16:35 The only thing that individual merchants can do that Amazon can’t, is build up a relationship with them. What are the best current practices for post purchase upsells? 17:17 Start off on the checkout page, ad trust symbols, a testimonial, identify the design that is congruent with your website and fan base. Then, create a simple upsell funnel of more of the same product and then an adjacent product. Generally speaking, upsells do better when they are lower priced than the original purchase. 21:14 Set up a stand alone landing page for your winning products and load it up with copy, video, testimonials, images, etc. We have a big feature launching in a few months that is a template for these dedicated landing pages. How do you approach post purchase upsells? 24:03 We see three main strategies: Video with a buy button, Short-form, above-the-fold Offer, Long-Form (correlating to a higher priced product). What does the check out process look like for an upsell over a product landing page? 28:42 There is a Tag Funnel that let’s the software know what product to show to upsell and there is a Product Funnel where people go from product page to checkout page (there is no checkout summary page). What failures have you faced in your business? 34:14 We are consistently facing failure. The highlights are boring, the best moments are in your failures. I have a podcast, The Bootstrapped Web Podcast, where I pretty much only talk about my failures. What are you looking forward to for the future of eCommerce in 2019? 42:30 We’ve hit, what feels like, a peak in direct to consumer advertising. The ads for B2C are becoming really expensive. We’re starting to see the war for ad dollars and customer acquisition. That’s what’s going to happen in 2019. Resources Mentioned in the Podcast: CartHook The Bootstrapped Web Podcast Ryan Caldbeck on Twitter Wilson Hung on Twitter Contact Julie: Jordan on LinkedIn

Interview with: Jordan Gal Founder and CEO of CartHook Bio: Jordan is the Founder and CEO of CartHook, a solution that provides a customizable one-page checkout with post-purchase upsells. Links: CartHook Jordan Gal [Twitter] The Bootstrapped Web [Podcast] Sponsored by: Spark Shipping – Dropshipping Automation 

Jordan Gal is the Founder of Carthook, which is a cart abandonment software solution that recovers lost revenue by following up with potential customers who don’t complete the checkout process. Their flagship product is a customizable checkout with post-purchase upsells for Shopify stores. Jordan currently lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and three daughters. He is also currently co-hosting the Bootstrapped Web Podcast, which is a podcast about bootstrapping an online business. *** For Show Notes, Key Points, Contact Info, & Resources Mentioned on this episode visit here: Jordan Gal Interview. ***  

Things are getting back to normal in our respective business worlds. Brian has launched his podcasting service and Jordan is back to business as usual after a visit from Ben and Rok. Today we kick off our “armchair quarterbacking” sessions, and we are starting with Andrew Culver's SaaS product, Bullet Train. We also give general updates on what is going with Carthook and Audience Ops. So tune in to hear about Brian's new service and Jordan's newfound ambition after having a rare full team meetup. [tweetthis]We [founders] think in a certain way and maybe we don't remember what it is like to be an employee. - Jordan[/tweetthis] Here are today's conversation points: How having Rok and Ben around has energized Carthook's team. The presentations and social activities that helped Jordan's team get better in step with each other. Adjusting back to regular business after Rok and Ben left. Brian's new podcasting service. The hiring process Brian is using to build his podcast service. An update on the Productize Course and Brian's closed cart approach. Jordan's upcoming conference projects. The struggle of working during business travel. The benefit of doing one-on-one discussions with your employees. The first armchair quarterbacking session: Bullet Train. Why agencies would be the best fit for Bullet Train. [tweetthis]Nobody is going to get as fired up and keep pushing than the founder. - Brian[/tweetthis] Resources Mentioned Today: Audience Ops Bullet Train Carthook MicroConf. Productize Shopify Unite As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a  review on iTunes.

We welcome Team Carthook to the podcast today! Jordan has brought two of his senior team members to discuss the evolution and future evolution of Carthook's service. Ben Fisher is the co-founder of Carthook and head of product. Rok Knez is Carthook's lead developer. He usually manages the company office over in Slovenia. Both Ben and Rok were a part of the company since the very beginning. The guys share how they met and how the business has gone from 3 guys hanging out to the large-scale team that is today's Carthook. We discuss the technical issues that have reared their ugly head the last few months and Ben explains how they coped with this inevitable part of the business. Today the hood is being lifted on Carthook and we will learn about how Jordan and his team interact with each other and their clients. Buckle up for a very technical episode! [tweetthis]For bootstrapping new software startups, choose a more mature framework, rather than the trendiest stuff. - Brian[/tweetthis] Here are today's conversation points: Introducing Ben and Rok. How Ben and Rok met Jordan and got involved in Carthook. How Rok hired the engineering team. Who helps with product design? The new style guide the team has recently adopted. How Carthook's tech stack has evolved. The importance of not cutting corners. The benefits of using Angular. Carthook's road-mapping process. When do frameworks and processes matter? The 3 questions the team ask themselves when making decisions. How Hiten Shah has influenced Carthook's process. How Jordan and the original team have coped with working with a larger team. What Jordan and his team have learned about their product. The importance of choosing the right colleagues. [tweetthis]Spend whatever we need to spend, and eventually they [Ben & Rok] took that advice and now I regret it a bit. - Jordan[/tweetthis] Resources Mentioned Today: Carthook As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a  review on iTunes.

MicroConf is right around the corner and Jordan is gearing up for his talk for the event. He bounces some topic ideas off Brian and reveals how his topic choices are reflecting what is happening in Carthook. The version 2 upgrade is finally working properly and Jordan and his team are seeing some major cultural shifts in the business. Brian has found himself with some downtime, so now he is thinking about new avenues for Audience Ops. Brian outlines his idea for a new service offered through Audience Ops. An done-for-you podcasting service. He gets Jordan's feedback and really explores why he thinks podcasts are the next logical step for the business. He also drops a big announcement… Brian wants to learn to code. We have some interesting conversation about alternative content on this episode and some really useful reflections on the founder's role within his company. [tweetthis]If somebody asked the most valuable thing you've learned the past months it would be related to our process. - Jordan[/tweetthis] Here are today's conversation points: Get ready for MicroConf. Brian's new service launch. Considerations for future podcast topics. Jordan's March recap. Why Brian wants to launch a new service. The all-done-for-you podcast service breakdown. Brian's small beta group for the new service and the results. The benefits of podcasting content. The second version of Carthook update. Jordan's webinar experiment. The benefits of webinars. How to create pitch-hitter scenarios. How Carthook uses paid ads. The ad strategy Jordan used for the webinar. Brian's results from his Productize webinar. Why Brian wants to learn to code. How to be a full stack product person. Jordan's adjustment to a larger work team and changing the dynamic. [tweetthis]If you are a designer of web applications, you should have a full stack skillset. - Brian[/tweetthis] Resources Mentioned Today: Audience Ops Podcasting Service Bullet Train CodeMentor.io Carthook Castos MicroConf Ops Calendar Productize As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a  review on iTunes.

Funnels... you've probably heard of them. More and more Shopify stores are taking advantage of funnels and selling millions of dollars of products with them. Today on the show is Jordan Gal, the cofounder and CEO of CartHook. He explains exactly how people are selling crazy amounts of products with funnels and how you can do the same. Links: CartHook Jordan's Twitter Shogun Recharge Listen on iTunes Get new episodes via email Learn more about Wavebreak "I know I could do better with my email marketing" Does that sound familiar? Do you feel like you're leaving money on the table with your current email marketing situation? Download my free 31-point Email Revenue Checklist to find out how to take your email marketing to the next level. Get it at EmailRevenueChecklist.com

2017 is coming to a close and Jordan and Brian are looking back on this explosive year. They also share their plans for 2018. Audience Ops and Carthook both saw tremendous amounts of growth this year. That growth has caused the guys to reflect on 2017 and the lessons they have taken away from the experience. Brian has seen an uptake in sign-ups and Audience Ops has ridden a roller coaster this year. Brian shares what he learned from the sudden stop and go growth of the business. 2018 looks to be a major year for Audience Ops, Ops Calendar, and Productize. Jordan has had a monster of a year. He is recuperating from a breakneck year with a well deserved slow down period. Jordan shares what this year taught him about team building and how he plans to fix some of the issues he noticed during Carthook's major growth spurt. [tweetthis]Growth is great, but it will mask problems. - Jordan[/tweetthis] Here are today's conversation points: The problems Jordan discovered when onboarding new team members. Brian's surge in service sign-ups. Carthook's Drip campaign disaster. Setting new goals and themes for 2018. The downside of sudden growth. Coping with wild growth and rapid plunge of business. Jordan's tech issue in 2017 and how he plans to fix them. Productize's new course launch in January. Jordan's general observations about 2017 and 2018. Brian's general observations about 2017 and 2018. [tweetthis]I actually have a lot of firepower to play with going into 2018 now. - Brian[/tweetthis] Resources Mentioned: Audience Ops CasJam Carthook Ops Calendar Productize As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a  review on iTunes.

2017 has been a phenomenal year for Jordan and Brian. On today's episode, they give the audience an update on the businesses and offer a glimpse into their plans for 2018. Brian is going to shift focus to Productize and relaunch a bigger and better product later. This means he will be closing enrollment in the course and beginning the maintenance phase of this upgrade. He shares how he reached this decision and why he is excited by the new possibilities it can bring. Jordan is adjusting to a growing business and finding ways to restructure his processes to make Carthook more efficient. He uses his previous experience over the last year to prepare Brian for his up-coming wild ride. The guys also share some new tools and resources that have found to make this new stage in their businesses a little easier. [tweetthis]This has been the biggest spike in revenue for Productize and way beyond expectations. - Brian [/tweetthis] Here are today's conversation points: Brian's shift to working on Productize during the month of December. Jordan's look back over his year, from an investor's point of view. Coping with a larger team and the issues that arise. Brian's awesome Black Friday! Brian's plans for relaunching Productize. Jordan's new team members and the importance of good content writing. How Jordan is restructuring his processes. The trade-offs a team has to make for the sake of speed. How to build a great product without slowing down the project. [tweetthis]It's still a mindset and a process, if everything is a trade-off, where are you putting the emphasis? - Jordan [/tweetthis] Resources Mentioned Today: Appcues Audience Ops Beacon Carthook Drift Seeking Wisdom Podcast GoVideo Productize Course Ops Calendar Soapbox As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on iTunes.

Welcome back to Bootstrapped Web! Today we share progress reports about our respective businesses and ask the question, “Should you go freemium or not?” Jordan has begun the process of “fattening” up Carthook's systems to add value to the company and move the business to the next stage. Carthook is also growing their team and there have been some growing pains in the communication process. There have been some hard lessons in the process that Jordan hints at that could help business owners build their systems more effectively. Brian has been putting a lot of energy and time into Ops Calendar. He is getting a lot of interest in the service and the product. This new interest has given him a reason to ask the question if freemium is a viable option for Audience Ops. There is some really useful and thoughtful discussion in today's episode, so tune in to join the conversation. [tweetthis]I feel freemium is one of these things that a lot of bootstrappers have not given a fair shake as a strategy. - Brian[/tweetthis] Here are today's conversation points: The “fattening up” process of Carthook. The struggles of building an effective team. Audience Ops and Ops Calendar progress reports. Ops Calendar's features and fixing the unexpected bugs. The usefulness of Slack. The benefits of letting  people “win.” Working with freelancers and building a positive business culture around them. Jordan's marketing experiments and the results. The pros and cons of freemium. [tweetthis]I admire people who are super product focused because I think it's fun. It's so creative and interesting. - Jordan[/tweetthis] Resources Mentioned Today: Audience Ops Calendar Carthook As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a review on iTunes.

On this episode I talk with my buddy Jordan Gal from carthook.com who is building a SaaS. We talk about what we are trying to achieve financially through online business and what life looks like at different levels of success. We discuss what was Jordan's motivation for moving into SaaS after building and selling a profitable ecommerce store. Hint: Monthly Recurring Revenue! Show notes at >> https://richardpatey.com/carthook

We have both reached a turning point in our marketing campaigns. Jordan has launched a new marketing funnel for Carthook's Shopify tool. Brian has been running a new marketing campaign for Ops Calendar. We share how the campaigns are working for us and offer each other advice on how to improve our strategies. We also discuss how we keep our team culture positive when we ourselves are super busy and can't give our undivided attention to individual projects. Our teams are growing and changing and we explore how we are coping with these mostly positive developments. It's a good time for both Ops Calendar and Carthook! [tweetthis]These calls are dripping in, inbound, organically...these just feel like good signs to me. - Brian [/tweetthis] Here are today's conversation points: Carthook's new paid marketing campaign. Ops Calendar is finding a new audience and why Brian is excited by this. How Brian uses and makes sense of Audience Ops' analytics and metrics. How Jordan set up his marketing campaign. Jordan's 3 blog post marketing strategy. Other insights into email and ad marketing. How we differ in our methods of team building and encouraging positive company culture. [tweetthis]I tell people on my team think like an owner, think what do I need to fix this - Jordan[/tweetthis] Resources Mentioned Today: Audience Ops Carthook Ops Calendar As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a  review in iTunes.

Happily, our client loads are increasing, but our staffs are starting to feel the increased workload. So, we need to hire more people to keep up. It's a good problem to have. On today's episode, we compare our staffing needs and discuss how we are trying to build a process that frees us both up for “CEO tasks.”  As our businesses grow, our roles change. Brian shares his plans to cope with a couple of team members exiting the company. While Jordan recently spent some time away with his family. He shares how that trip changed how he looks at his team and responsibilities to the company. [tweetthis]I have to perform better as a CEO...the interference portion of my equation is just preposterous. - Jordan[/tweetthis] Here are today's conversation points: The uptake in business for Audience Ops. Brian's plan to cope with the increased workload. Filling team positions for growth at Audience Ops. The ups and downs of working with a remote team. Jordan's recent trip to New York. The “performance equation:” performance= potential - interference. How the performance equation has helped Jordan look at Carthook's growth differently. How difficult it can be to transition into the “CEO role.” [tweetthis]Forget limiting the headcount, let's get more than enough people on board and spread the work around. - Brian [/tweetthis] Resources Mentioned Today: Audience Ops Carthook Productize As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a  review in iTunes.

In this episode of Startups For The Rest Of Us, Mike interviews Jordan Gal, Cofounder of CartHook, about his lessons learned from doing demos for customers. Jordan gives a background on CartHook as well as the journey from one-on-one demos to the possibilities of scaling the sales process.       

Today Brian and Jordan discuss growth. In Jordan's case he is dealing with sudden growth, and in Brian's case, he is planning for growth. Both share how they are handling this wonderful problem. Jordan has been focused on getting Carthook's marketing up and running again, but it has become clear that his team needs him to focus on improving the customer support. It has been a struggle to really pinpoint what the team needs. Jordan calls it “customer success,”  but Brian isn't so sure that's the best title for the position. Brian is working on his KPI (Key Performance Indicators.) While making the dashboard for these KPI, he learned that sometimes you need to just hire someone. Brian is also planning to do some hiring, he needs two project managers and a writer. He caps off today's topics with an article from the website Baremetrics. [tweetthis]I'm now in this mindset with this business, it is all about growth. - Brian[/tweetthis] Here are the conversation points: Brian's four major categories for his KPI. When to know you need to hire someone. Jordan's ever-growing stress. Jordan's undefinable job description. What does “customer success” mean? What Jordan needs for this new position. The importance of taking care of “home base.” Brian's hiring needs. Josh Pigford's blog post. [tweetthis]What we need to do is work harder and smarter on making sure existing customers are satisfied and happy. - Jordan[/tweetthis] Resources Mentioned Today: Being a Solo Founder: Pros, Cons, Tips, and Tricks, by Josh Pigford Audience Ops Carthook Ops Calendar As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a  review in iTunes.  

We are both hitting some major growth right now in our businesses, and that means a lot of excitement and a lot of restructuring. We talk about project managing, hiring the right people, and the efforts we are putting into our marketing and lead generation. Jordan recently went to Europe and met up with his team. He tells us how the trip went and the exciting milestone he saw while working with the Carthook team in Europe.  Jordan has also had some people leave the company. He explains why they had to go and how he plans to bounce back. Carthook's marketing has stalled because of a sudden flux of customers, Jordan discusses his concerns and how he plans to fix the problem. Brian has really sunk into his Facebook ad campaign. He is working to generate leads for Audience Ops and filter people into a funnel that will lead potential clients to a consultation. He explains the 3 step ad campaign and shares how it is working for him. Brian is also hiring some new people and offers some advice for Jordan regarding his marketing problems. [tweetthis]We only have a certain number of bullets to fire, in terms of people we can have inside the company. - Jordan[/tweetthis] Here are our conversation points: Jordan's trip to Europe. Brian's Facebook ad campaign. Brian's current hiring needs. How to create evergreen content for lead generation. Jordan's concern about customer support quality. The “2 worlds” of Carthook. Why Trello isn't working for Jordan and his team. How to discern what is urgent in your business. What are the expectations of a Project Manager? The difficulties of firing team members. Brian's podcast relaunch. The 3 phases of online software. How to build a brand online. [tweetthis]My whole goal right now, is to drive more leads into Audience Ops. - Brian[/tweetthis] Resources Mentioned Today: Appointment Audience Ops Calendly Carthook CasJam Expert Secrets by: Russell Brunson Facebook Help Scout Intercom Seeking Wisdom Trello War of Art by: Steven Pressfield Weworkremotely.com Zendesk As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a  review in iTunes.  

At Shopify Unite, we heard that Shopify is advancing their checkout process by adding new features like Shopify Pay. Advancement in the checkout process is great for merchants, and especially important for Shopify. It's important because the Shopify checkout process is tightly controlled. There's limited customization options, and unless you're on Shopify Plus, you're not given access to edit the checkout process. This brings us to a controversial point: is it not being able to edit that checkout process good or bad? And if we wanted to edit it, how could we do it? Then, what would do to improve the checkout process for the better? Joining me on the show to discuss it is Jordan Gal. Jordan is the Cofounder and CEO of CartHook, a software company that offers products that make your ecommerce business more successful. — Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast via Email Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on iTunes Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on Stitcher Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast via RSS Join The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group Work with Kurt — Learn: The coming battle for your Shopify checkout The arguments for and against replacing your Shopify checkout Customizations to consider that may improve conversion at checkout The one trend in ecommerce you need to know about The power of free plus shipping offers The strategy used by the most sophisticated Shopify store owners to dramatically increase ROI on ad spend Links Mentioned: CartHook Bold Apps Cashier (Beta) Zipify One Click Upsell Shopify Pay Address Auto Completion ClickFunnels Free Guide I want to send you a sample chapter of Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com Transcript Kurt: One of the interesting and perhaps blessed things that happen in Shopify is that unless you're on plus you can't mess with the checkout, and even on plus you can mess with it a little bit but totally rewriting the thing just probably isn't a great idea. The reason I say I like this about Shopify is the Shopify checkout is based on millions of data points, so in theory they're always optimizing this thing and we know it works well. I've seen really optimized stores with conversion rates at 3% and 5% and those that really juice their traffic to the store, conversion rates in the low double digits, so we know the checkout works. We've certainly seen it work a number of times, but that doesn't mean there aren't ways to improve it, and not just in terms of conversion rate but there are other features maybe we would like to add to the checkout which would be cool. There's a controversial practice that happens and we'll go into why, but it's replacing the checkout. If you've ever used a subscription app, Bold app's recurring orders is a wonderful way to do subscription. It actually when someone goes through the checkout to place their subscription, it entirely circumvents the Shopify checkout, replaces it with Bold's that is just a duplicate. They have remade the standard Shopify checkout so that they can do their own payment processing, and then just funnels all that stuff back into your Shopify store via the API. It's kind of crazy and early on we were like, "Oh damn, that's how they solved that? That's nuts." And now we're seeing more people do it. You've probably heard about Ezra Firestone's Zipify, his company Zipify. Zipify's one click upsell. Bold Apps has one in beta. I've seen it enough places now I'm comfortable mentioning it, that we got a replacement called Bold Apps Cashier that's designed to try and pull all these things together, add a bunch of features to the checkout. And of course we have heard from him before. Jordan Gal from CartHook, who joins me today to talk about what's going on in this space, why and how it's heating up, and why it's controversial, what the trends are and what's going on. It's a more high level discussion but I think this should be very interesting. Jordan, welcome. Jordan: Thank you very much, Kurt. Thanks for having me on. I had to bite my tongue through the intro because I have a lot of interjections to make. Not disagreements but adding to the richness of the debate. How about that? I think we can get into it. I think it's a good, good topic. Kurt: I don't even know where I fall on this, so we'll see if you sway me. You probably will. You're a charismatic gentleman. Jordan: I don't even know if it's about swaying. It's a laissez faire argument. The checkout on Shopify right now is good. It converts well. Once people get into the checkout, it converts and it's standardized and it looks great on mobile and it's super stable and super fast, so there's not an argument to be made about how Shopify's checkout is terrible. That's not the argument. The argument is, should the eCommerce merchant have control over their checkout? And if so, then why? What are people trying to do with the checkout? And we saw the first rumblings of it with the subscription apps, and now it's starting to blossom a little bit in that space and we've got a few different companies playing in that space. Our company, CartHook, has a one page checkout and post purchase upsell app, and then Ezra's got OCU and then Bold's coming out, so it's getting interesting and my only argument is to let the merchant do what they want with their store. Kurt: When you phrase it like that then it's hard to argue with it. I'll play devil's advocate. The argument against it would be, protect people from themselves. If the checkout is based on ... It works and it's got these millions of data points, then lock it down. It's so important. Don't let people mess with it. But then I have said that and we've heard that on the show, but then I've also said if you want to add predictable, recurring revenue to your store, you should try selling subscriptions, in which case you got to replace the damn checkout. Jordan: And it may not even be like that forever. This very well may be a temporary period where things are in transition around the checkout. That's one of the things that we keep an eye on. We say to ourselves, how long does this last? This period where Shopify's checkout is locked down and then people are replacing it. Maybe there's something that we're transitioning into with some of Shopify's new APIs that allow for more features to be built into the Shopify checkout instead of replacing. I think it's a very fluid thing. To back up a touch, our product, it originated years ago when I ran an eCommerce business on Volusion where I ran the company with my three brothers. One brother was in charge of getting traffic to the store. I was in charge of converting that traffic into sales, and my other brother was in charge of everything that happened after the sale, from customer service to shipping, inventory, and so forth. So I spent my days staring at, okay, how do I convert more of this traffic into sales? The truth is I spent a considerable amount of my time on the checkout process or the cart page and the checkout page and trust symbols and error notifications and as everyone knows, every little tweak can make a difference. Sometimes you don't know which tweak makes a difference so you start off with your best practices and you make it super simple, and then you start to work from there and a lot of unexpected things happen. That's where it originated and now what we're really doing is we're bringing that same mindset and that same situation into Shopify. We're saying what works for one store may not be optimal for another store, so let's give control over to the merchant to experiment. Kurt: If we hand control over to the merchant, what are the things that people are going to do? What are they missing out on now that they could be doing if they had access to this checkout, or swap it to one of these other replacements such as CartHook? Jordan: We're seeing it happen in two different ways. The first is on the checkout page itself, and the second is what's happening after the checkout. I don't even know where we should focus first. I guess the first one's almost easier. Kurt: We'll do it in order. Jordan: Sure. I think it's more straightforward too and then the second part that the upsells after the purchase go deeper, so we can go deeper into that side. The first part is the checkout page itself. Shopify has a three step checkout and it's debatable whether or not that is the right way to go compared to a one page checkout. These days with more and more traffic and more and more conversions happening on mobile, you want it to be as fast as possible. Again, it's not straightforward that a one page checkout is faster and easier and converts better, but you can't tell without experimentation. What our customers are doing is they're trying to match up their checkout page with their brand so that it's on their own domain and it has trust symbols, testimonials, images, design that match the rest of the company's site so that there's a consistency from the product page to the cart page to the checkout page and then that consistency is generally understood to help conversions. Kurt: So the first is we want access to design for two reasons. One to make it match the store so you have a cohesive experience. You don't have this jarring, suddenly I'm on a different domain name with a different feel, a different look entirely. That's usually the first objection is listen, I just want this thing to look the same. Okay, cool. Then the second would be, all right, you're asking a lot saying to a stranger, "Hey, give me your credit card details and your home address, buddy." That's a big ask, so you want to add some psychological triggers in there like social proof, trust indicators. Even just, "Hey, if you have questions call us. Here's our toll free number." That kind of thing. Then of course remove all the friction. Make it as easy to use as possible. Add fancy features like address auto-completion would be a not atypical customization we see. Jordan: Yeah, and along with that just the desire to experiment with whether or not one page checkout will convert better for you than the multistep, and it's not straightforward. Kurt: It really does depend on the audience, because before we hitched our cart and did only Shopify, and obviously this was years ago so things have changed wildly, but we saw situations where some stores did better where you gave people the option to register as customers versus be guests. Some stores did better when you did one page checkout versus multistep. It really was dependent on the audience. Jordan: Yeah, it makes sense and that's what we're seeing too. It is not a straightforward, the second you add a one page checkout it converts better. It's not straightforward like that, so it's an experimentation piece. Kurt: And the end goal there to have those options, to have those features, is to increase the conversion rate. We make it as easy as possible, remove all those barriers, all that friction and we just make it easier for people to buy, and in theory our purchased rate goes up, right? Jordan: Yes, and one of the interesting things that we have an eye on is it's my opinion that the thumbprint wins. That's where I think everything is going on checkout. What I say is that my ideal is that 12 months from today, our default checkout page has no fields. Like the cart summary where you don't see the cart summary until you click on it and then it opens up and extends the cart summary. My hope is that the fields are hidden and you have to click on it to open up the fields to put your name and address in, because the thumbprint purchase will be that prevalent. That's what I hope things get to for merchants, because once ... There are a few different options. Apple Pay, Android Pay, some type of a Shopify Pay, Stripe. Whatever comes out over the next year I think the thumbprint is the thing that wins. Kurt: We see that with Apple Pay now and really I've only used it in maybe two or three situations and it was absolutely magical. Like oh my gosh, this is the easiest thing ever. How long has it been around? A year? And it's stunning to see how few ... This is not a criticism of just Shopify stores. Of just eCommerce and mobile in general that just don't use Apple Pay and that confuses me. Jordan: I think these things happen all at once. They grow and then all of a sudden you look at it and you say, "Whoa,". It wasn't that big last year and it's bigger this year and it's anticipated to be big, and the next thing you know it's huge and then everyone adopts it all at once. Over a 12 month period everyone will add it. That's my ... It's just inefficient, man. To be on a phone and punch in all those buttons when you're just using the credit card that you already have in your wallet and then you will eventually have inside your phone. It seems inevitable to me. Kurt: Absolutely. I'm confused as to why it didn't happen sooner. Jordan: I agree. Kurt: That's our dream as we get to, I want to check out. I just tap my thumb and it's like, "Hey, you want to pay with this card and send it to this address, right?" Yeah. Done. Send. No more thinking about it. It's done. It's over. It's one step. It works on our mobile devices and soon we'll see touch ID on everything. Jordan: It's a bit scary, isn't it? Kurt: A little bit. Jordan: The fact that the entire Internet will be as easy to purchase from as Amazon is scary. Kurt: Yeah. I ... It's a total rabbit hole here. I don't keep Amazon on my phone to prevent impulse purchases. When I need to shop on Amazon, I download the app and then I have to log in, make a purchase, then delete it. Jordan: Wow, good for you. Kurt: Because it's too easy. Jordan: If I were a Shopify merchant, that's what I would want. I want it to be too damn easy to buy from my store. Kurt: Right and fundamentally, with conversion rate optimization, that's the end goal is it is too damn easy to buy from this store. That's number one is, give me access to design so I can optimize this thing tailored to my specific audience. Then the pushback against that would be, "Well, if we do that we're giving you enough rope to hang yourself or you could mess it up and make it harder to use." In theory you're sophisticated enough. You can test it. You would know that your conversion rate goes down. Jordan: Yes. Like all business. I have plenty of rope to hang myself with in my business, just like you do and just like everyone else does. Kurt: There are other places I could through things up like uploading 12 meg PNGs to my carousel slider and that kind of thing. Then the other is this post purchase stuff, which I think is really exciting and is an untapped opportunity. Talk to me about that. Jordan: I think it's fascinating, and I have really enjoyed my job for the past year working in this space because it's just genuinely interesting and new. Once again, let's back up two steps. Here's what I see that happened over the past year or two. What's happening is that the marketers, the army of marketers that move around the web and identify opportunities, they have been moving from digital products to physical products en masse. Just a gigantic trend. It was not kicked off but accelerated by ClickFunnels. ClickFunnels brought marketing innovation in their platform. They basically said, "Okay, Leadpages, you guys have awesome landing pages, but people don't build landing pages on their own. They build them together in a funnel." So ClickFunnels just put that concept into play and said, "Now instead of building standalone landing pages, we're going to help you build landing pages that connect in a funnel," and then on top of that they provided a ton of education around how to use that. How to sell both digital and physical products through a funnel, and one of the key components of the funnel is the post purchase upsell. It's not just an opportunity to add something to someone's order. It is an opportunity to completely change the way you actually sell. The strategy from the starting point can be changed because of the fact that the post purchase upsell exists. A popular example is the free plus shipping offer. The free plus shipping offer, the way it works is what you want to do is offer something on the front end on your checkout page that's really low, low price. Ideally it's free. It's, "Hey, I just wrote a book. Buy my new book. I'll give it to you for free. All you need to do is pay for shipping." So the book is free, $0, and the shipping is call it $6.95, hence the free plus shipping nomenclature. Kurt: If you want to see this in action, if you've ever seen ads ... Clearly Facebook has considered me an info-marketer because I see ads for this stuff all the time. I got ads continuously for Russell Brunson, the owner, creator, of ClickFunnels, for his book DotCom Secrets, which was offered to me as free plus shipping and sure enough, after seeing enough ads, I did end up buying it for free plus shipping and it was like $7. Jordan: Right. And now after- Kurt: Then it worked on me a second time. He just came out with another book. Did it again. Jordan: That's right. So look, it works. It's a great offer, and so what that does is it gets the person into your funnel. All of a sudden your checkout page, what you're selling on the front end becomes an entryway. It's not the point. It is the beginning of the point. Once you put in your credit card information to pay $6.95 in shipping, what happens is that payment token can then be used again, which means ... Kurt, when you bought that book, what happened after you made the purchase? Kurt: Immediately afterward it's like, thanks. That's great. You purchased it. By the way, one time offer. You'll never be able to get this again. For $150 or something, add this extra package of just amazing value and it had a video and it was it's own amazing landing splash page and I said no thanks. But I also made sure to not read it because I'm sure it was very compelling and I might have bought it, and then when I said no thanks, it offered me another different thing. Jordan: A downsell. Kurt: A downsell, which is always going to be cheaper than the first thing it offered me. It always seemed way cheaper because I was just price anchored to the other thing. Jordan: Right. So if you had decided to purchase, in order to purchase all you would've had to do is click on the button that said, "Yes, I want to purchase." You would not have needed to reenter your credit card again. The credit card would have been stored in the payment token stored from the checkout page. That became very, very popular in the ClickFunnels world, and then the next phase what happened is a lot of people on ClickFunnels started selling physical products in this way. They'd say, "Okay, here's one unit of skin cream," and then after the purchase it's, "Hey, do you want to buy another one for a different price?" And, "Hey, do you want to subscribe and just save and get it every month without you having to do anything?" So then it started to creep into the physical product world. People started making a lot of money being really successful in the physical product world, and then what do they realize, Kurt? They realize, "Oh man, I really want to use Shopify to do the order management because it's really good at it." Then you had this strange gap where you said, "Okay, I want to sell like ClickFunnels but I want to manage like Shopify," and that's really what's happening in the market right now. You have a ton of these marketers coming into Shopify and they're introducing all these marketing concepts and now they're slowly seeping into the regular retailer world, not just the marketer world, and now there's this crazy [crosspollinization 00:19:30] around post purchase upsells are ... It's a legitimate strategy. It works. Kurt: Right. Initially, as soon as I think retailers and eCommerce folk in general hear info-marketer, they're like, "Oh, it's sleazy. I don't want to do it." Then over time they open their mind to it. It works for them for reasons, and a lot of the stuff is based on 50, 100 year old direct response marketing ideas. We've seen that with the power of landing pages and people's desires to rather than just have a product page, make these much more sophisticated, compelling landing pages for their Shopify store that are borrowed straight out of this info-marketing world. Jordan: Yes, and I actually want to make sure we talk about the landing page thing. That's probably the biggest insight I can give to your audience based on what we're seeing, so let's put a marker on that. I just wrote that down as a note. The process of normalization. I remember three years ago when we first launched our abandoned cart application, CartHook started off as an abandoned cart email app. We used to get people who saw our site and email us in such anger. Just, "I cannot believe what you guys are doing, that you are horrible, evil people who do this," and it's because we're sending emails to people after they abandon their cart. Do you know anyone who thinks that's a horrible, controversial, sleazy practice? No, it's normal. It works. It's inevitable. You need to do it in a tasteful way. It's always in the way you do it. Kurt: Yeah. Don't damn the tools. It's what you do with them. Jordan: Exactly right. I think there is now a process of normalization around upsells. I think within a year, basically not every single time but most of the time you buy something online you will have a post purchase upsell, and people will start to learn about it and be conditioned to it and understand that they're going to get certain offers and then they'll start to try to game it to see what kind of offers they get after the purchase. It's just a totally normal process. Kurt: I had not thought of it that way but yeah, we're already doing that as a standard practice in email marketing automation. You've got to be doing an upsell after the fact to extend customer lifetime value. Even the previous episode to this one that's literally what we discussed. Like a third of the emphasis was devoted to those post purchase sequences. At no point did we think it was strange, sleazy, or anything like that. Jordan: No, it's just a normal part of retail. Anyway, so that's the second piece. The first piece is the checkout. The second piece is what happens after the checkout. Now there's this amazing experimentation. What can you do ... If it's helpful I can give you what a typical post purchase funnel looks like. Kurt: I love examples. Really solidify it, picture it, so lay it on me brother. Jordan: Yeah, let's do it. Let's say you are selling flip flops. Okay. You sell flip flops from Brazil, so it's cool. You've got a brand going. A typical post purchase upsell funnel would look something like this. Visitor puts a pair of your flip flops in the cart, goes to the checkout page, fills out the forms, puts in their payment information, and clicks "complete purchase." After that checkout page the first page they would see would be an offer for more of the same. Meaning, the product you just bought, I'm going to offer you the same thing but for a better deal. Basically say, "You want to get a second pair of flip flops for 20% less?" And it's positioned as a one time offer because literally on the site publicly, it's offered for call it $40, but because you just purchased it, it's a thank you to someone who just purchased it. It's a one time offer. Add a second pair for you, for your spouse, for safekeeping, whatever. You get it for $30. Then, if they accept it, let's not get into downsells because that gets complicated, so let's just say three upsells in a row. Let's say they have two pairs of flip flops and they got a good deal on the second one and they're happy. The second would be for a complimentary product. What goes along with your flip flops? It is your flip flop cleaning kit. Then again you can say a one time offer, publicly or it may not even be available publicly on the website, or on the website the cleaning kit is available for $10 but now you can add it to your order for $5. So upsell number one is more of the same. Upsell number two is complimentary. Then what some people do, upsell number three is expedited shipping. What you're doing is you're saying, "This person is really interested. They just purchased. Maybe they want to get their product faster," and so instead of trying to convert them to upgraded shipping on the checkout page which creates friction, you can add an upsell as the third upsell for expedited shipping. Basically offering the same type of upgrade in shipping that you would've on the checkout page but this time you're not adding the friction up front. You're making an offer after the fact, then they can decide whether they want expedited shipping or not. That would be a typical post purchase upsell. More of the same, complimentary product, expedited shipping. Kurt: I love it. I love it and I can't do it right now. Jordan: Right. The point of this is really to change your average order value. Kurt: Right, obviously you're increase customer lifetime value but we're doing it in a much faster way. Where normally it'd be they make the purchase and then you email them their upsell offers, versus now we're doing it like, they have already committed to the first purchase, and in that same transaction now we're increasing that average order value, I think in theory extending their customer lifetime value through these upsells. Jordan: Right and the whole theory is, because these offers come after the checkout they don't interfere with the conversion rate on the front end. Kurt: Right and that's the risk. Right now if I want to do something similar I would use an app like Bold Apps Product Upsell [inaudible 00:25:51] pops up in the cart based on what's in the cart and offers me additional items. It's like, "Oh, you bought this beach towel. Did you also want to buy this suntan lotion?" So it pops this thing up. But they haven't bought the first item yet, so there's always the fear that this is going to increase bounce rate on the cart page. It's going to impact that conversion rate. Jordan: You got it. So it should be the same math on the front end. If you spend $10,000 a month in advertising and that usually results in let's just say 100 orders and the average order value is $100, that makes you $10,000 in revenue. Cool. Now, if you add post purchase upsells, that doesn't change at all. It's still the same spend, the same conversion rate, the same revenue but now 20% of those 100 purchases also add an additional average of $10, so now you've just made an extra $200. It shouldn't change the math on the front end at all on the conversion rate. Now what you're doing is just X% of customers are also taking an upsell, so you spend the exact same amount on ads but you make more revenue as a result. Kurt: So I'm getting a higher ... My initial order, my customer value goes way up but my cost per acquisition of customers doesn't change in the slightest. Jordan: Right. Shouldn't change, but the average order value goes up, and what does that allow you to do? It allows you to spend more on ads, and then you can make more money, and then spend more on ads, and make more money. Kurt: Right, you step on the gas and just keep this ... which I learned from you in a previous episode. If you get a funnel that works, it's profitable, step on the gas. See what you can do. Jordan: Yeah, step on the gas. Kurt: See how far you can scale it. That's a good example of how one might use upsells in eCommerce. Can I do this in Shopify right now? Jordan: You can do it in Shopify right now and there are a few options for merchants. Between ourselves and Ezra's OCU, there's starting to be some innovation in the space. Bold just came out with their Cashier. That's in beta, so the features there, we don't know what they're going to do but right now in the market you can use our product, CartHook Checkout or you can use Zipify OCU and people are doing it. We are getting a healthy amount of demand and we are kind of quiet. We don't really do any advertising and marketing, and we're just getting a wave of people who are talking about it in Facebook and then wanting to try it. It's starting to grow very organically and I think it's going to tip at some point over the next few months where it's just going to be more standard practice as opposed to the innovators on the marketing side. We're already talking to some really well known merchants that I don't want to mention, so it's already seeping into the ... The mean. The one standard deviation away from the normal. It's already creeping into the norm for them. Kurt: Right. Once we have these big ... You have some hero stores. Some stores that you aspire to be like. Very large, work in public Shopify stores. A good example would be [Beer Brand 00:29:18] or I always reference [Everest Bands 00:29:19] on here where you hear a lot about them and you're just like man, I want a store like that. Once you see those people, because we perceive they're successful and therefore when we see them adopting these things we go, "Well, they must know what they're doing." Everybody has that thought, even if they're just experimenting. That's what's going to normalize this and we're going to see more demand for it, and then we'll see more education about it, more people talking about it in Facebook groups, and you're right about that. I start seeing more and more mentions, especially in the Shopify Plus Facebook group. See mentions like, "Hey, how do I do this?" Then, "How do I do upsells? How do I do this?" And you hear people like, "Oh, check out CartHook. Check out OCU. Have you heard about this new thing from Bold?" I keep seeing this in the last month this conversation keep happening. Jordan: I think it's a great thing for Shopify merchants. I think it's a good thing for our market specifically. I expect more competition. Ezra and I are in touch and we're both supporting what the other person's doing and I think it's good for everybody. Kurt: That's one of the wonderful things about this community in general. Everybody works together for the greater good. Jordan: Yeah, and it's big enough. It's all good. Kurt: There's 400,000 Shopify stores. Jordan: That's wild. Kurt: It's all good, man. Jordan: Kurt, how we doing on time? I want to get to this one thing that we see that I don't want to leave out. Kurt: Right. We're at 30 minutes recording so I do want to wrap it up after this, but give me that one hit. Give me the tremendous value. Lay it on me. Jordan: All right, here's what we're seeing. People who are heavy into Facebook advertising, the people who really, really care about their ROI every single day for every dollar spent. What they are doing is they are first figuring out which product on their store sells, and then they are no longer sending the traffic to the product page. They are building a landing page and sending the traffic there and they are getting much more success from it. In theory you and I know that works. We know that a landing page converts better than a homepage let's say, but it is being put into practice in a big way in the Shopify world. People will figure out which of their products sell best and then they will do more work on the page to sell. Instead of just sending to a standard page where there's some photos on the left and then on the right there's some bullet points and a description, they'll put together a full blown landing page that does away with the navigation, keeps a super focus on the product, and does a lot more work with videos, additional testimonials, additional images, more copy, and they are being rewarded for going that next step in effort beyond just the standard page on the Shopify store. Kurt: I'm totally with you. I absolutely believe it. Just to give the crash course in Shopify landing pages, imagine a more purposeful product page. Often that is how we do it is if you've got access to a front end designer developer, we make a longer form version of the product page where we've got longer sales copy. We go through the whole pain, dream, fix format. We include social proof. Maybe we include urgency on there, scarcity. We'll do little hacks with that stuff ... And you can't do this for every product, right? So either you sell a few products, you could do it for all of them. Do it for your flagship product or use the 80/20 rule. Figure out, this is the big bad boy. Do it on just this one. Then take that same page, make a version of it where you just throw in some extra style tags and hide, display none, all the extraneous links that would get someone to leave the page. The fundamental thing that makes a landing page is in theory, it only has one call to action. Generally that means you got to strip out your navigation from your header/footer, so there you go. There's the easy crash course in Shopify product landing pages. Jordan: Just to plug my own product a little bit, what they're doing from there is they're using ... This is what our most successful merchants are doing. They're using what we call product funnels. In CartHook you can build something called a product funnel which links up directly to one specific product in your Shopify store and then provides you with a URL that goes right to a checkout page that has that product preloaded. They don't go from the landing page to the cart. They go directly from the landing page, they put the funnel URL from the CartHook product funnel, and then they go straight from landing page into the checkout page with that product preloaded, and then all the post purchase upsells after it and because you know exactly where the traffic is coming from, that one landing page, you know which product they bought so you can put testimonials that are specific to that product on the checkout page and then you can have a post purchase upsell sequence that's very specific to that product. It's a super, super focused funnel that you have full control over. You have control of the landing page, checkout page, upsell pages, thank you page. That's where our most successful merchants are dialing in their ad spend. Kurt: Just thinking out loud, if you are just starting out with a Shopify store, is this something you want to worry about or is this once you've got where your processes, your product validated, dialed in, then you want to start exploring this stuff? At what point do I start doing this, I think is my question. Jordan: I'm going to say that this is not something you should do as one of the first things. There are so many other foundational elements to your store that you need to get right, between the positioning and copy, navigation, and so on. I would work on that first. This is an optimization. This is, okay, how do I make things better? I think maybe eventually it will get to the point where, okay, I need an email app. I need a cart abandonment app. I need an exit intent popup app, and I need a checkout app. That's where I hope it gets to where every single person that starts a store just grabs these few fundamental apps that they need to add. I don't think it's quite there yet. I think this is a bit more advanced. Kurt: I want to wrap this up but now I got more questions. You rattled off here's the four apps you need to have. Do you have a preferred one or recommendation for an exit intent popup app? Jordan: No. I don't know. I don't know. I know OptinMonster. I know OptiMonk. I know Bounce Exchange for bigger stores, but I'm not as familiar with the app ecosystem to recommend exactly what to use. We partner with certain apps like ReCharge Apps on the subscription billing so people can sell subscription products inside the funnel and so on, but beyond the larger market, I'm not the right person to make those recommendations. Kurt: Okay. All good. I'll throw in my recommendation. I really like OptiMonk, but I've also heard fantastic things about Justuno but I have not personally played with it. I think in theory the thing I'd like to do and I never get around to because these other exit intent popup builders are so convenient, would be just coding our own using Ouibounce which is just an open source JavaScript snippet. It's O-U-I bounce, Ouibounce. I will throw those into the notes, the links mentioned. Jordan, where can people go to learn more about you? Jordan: Go to CartHook.com/checkout and you'll see more about the products, and then we interact with our customers and people on the site a lot so if you have questions just click on that chat button in the bottom right or hit us up at support@CartHook.com and if you are feeling podcasty, check out BootstrappedWeb.com which is my weekly podcast. Kurt: Who do you host that with? Jordan: Brian Casel. Kurt: He is a good dude. Jordan: My man. Kurt: Wonderful man. I will not go down any more rabbit holes as I was about to do. No, this is good. We're going to wrap it up here. Jordan: Cool. Kurt: Thank you, Jordan. I greatly, greatly appreciate it. I think that's all for us today at the Unofficial Shopify Podcast. And to our listeners, I would love to hear your thoughts on what you've heard come out of this discussion, so join our Facebook group. Just search the Unofficial Shopify Podcast Insiders. You'll find it. Apply to join. I will approve you, and come talk to us. I post every episode there. Or, you can always sign up for my newsletter at KurtElster.com. Shoot me an email. Either way, you'll be notified when a new episode goes live. And of course if you want to work with me, I'd love to have you. Go apply at Ethercycle.com. That's my consultancy. As always, thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.

We have some big news coming up the following weeks. Brian discussed his recent experience with Facebook ads and the pros and cons of marketing on the platform. Jordan shares his found  his new found security in his business. We are really excited about the new rewrites and product launches and we talk about it all! [tweetthis]Marketing needs to make that promise and then the product needs to deliver on that promise. - Jordan [/tweetthis] Here are today's conversation points: Brian's Facebook ads and the results. Jordan's new confidence in Carthook. Tweaking the Calendar app for beta testers. Brian's new service Audience Ops Express. The reasons people leave Audience Ops. How Audience Ops Express would change those reasons. Carthook's new release. How to move into a self serve business model. Audience Op's Calendar gets a new name. Gearing up for Microconf. Las Vegas. [tweetthis]We'll do all the extra leg work to get it proofread, polished… whatever needs to happen. - Brian[/tweetthis] Resources Mentioned Today: Carthook Audience Ops Ops Calendar MicroConf. Las Vegas As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a  review in iTunes.

Well, 2016 is coming to an end. Today we'll compare our goal lists from last year and reflect back on what went wrong  and what went right.   Carthook and Audience Ops have both grown and changed so let's sit down and take a look at our 2016 results. We will also discuss our goals for 2017 and how we plan to make them happen. This will be our last episode for 2016, and we'll pick up next year. [tweetthis]I think another way to think bigger is to think long term and not short term. - Brian[/tweetthis] Here's today's conversation points: Why Jordan wasn't able to bring Carthook into profitability. Brian's goal for Audience Ops and finding organic leads. How to think bigger. The problems Jordan had pivoting away from cart abandonment. Audience Ops is diversifying its product line. Beta users will be getting the Audience Ops Calendar. Wanting 2017 to be a breakout year. Why Brian went back to sales. When to raise prices? Working with kids in the house. Working with teams during the holidays. Jordan's 2017 goals. Brian's 2017 goals. When to give yourself a raise. Have a Happy Holidays everybody and we'll see you next year! [tweetthis]My goal is to have a more balanced 2017. - Jordan[/tweetthis] Resources Mentioned Today: Carthook Audience Ops Audience Ops Calendar ProfitWell As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a  review in iTunes.

Today's Bootstrapped Web is going  to be an up-date episode. We both have a lot to talk  about with what we're working at the moment. Audience Ops and Carthook have new products and we discuss what is working for our sales respectively. We talk about transparency and some resources that will help you improve your sales game.  So tune in for the latest developments in Carthook and Audience Ops and what you can expect in the coming months. [tweetthis]Force the demo and you will get fewer sign-ups, but you will get into a lot of conversations. - Jordan[/tweetthis] Here are today's conversation points: Why we don't see the point to total transparency. When to ask for the credit card during a sign-up. Brian's plans to redesign the Audience Ops website. Getting ideas from Ruben Gamez from Bidsketch. Jordan's lessons from demos. Tweaking Audience Ops for a Resource Hub pivot. Brian's plan for launching Calendar for beta testers. [tweetthis]I feel like I can't launch anything else, until I have the new site up and running. -  Brian[/tweetthis] Resources Mentioned Today: Audience Ops Carthook Securing the Five Figure Sale, by: Ian Landsman Product Demos that Sell: How to Deliver Winning SAAS Demos, by: Steli Efti Audience Ops Calendar As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a  review in iTunes.

Introduction of guest Scott Buscemi – WordCamp Speaker, WooCommerce Ninja, avid drone pilot (unofficial creator of the Dronie (drone selfie!))Luminary | eCommerce Consulting Partners in Los AngelesDon't use OS Commerce Installing WooCommerce and it’s extensions won’t magically bring you sales / successYou need to market yourself / your business / your site – create relationshipsEDD Enhanced eCommerce Trackingstripe.comDealing with Abandoned Carts on WordPress e-Commerce SitesWooCommerce Google Analytics ProTaxJar-Sales Tax Automation for WooCommerceWooConf:Learn. Develop. Sell.It doesn’t matter what platform you are on, or how beautiful your site is – it’s about smart marketing – understanding who your customers are, what they wantZMOTYou need to use SSL – doesn’t matter what kind of site (even if your site is small – helps build your reputation/trustworthiness)  – LetsEncrypt is a great optionLet's EncryptShould you use a CDN (content delivery network)? Yes, speed matters. Amazon found that even a delay of a tenth of second in their speed decreased the number of orders.Cloudflare-The Web Performance & Security CompanyBouncehelp – Increase Sales Calls by 20-30%Square – Create Your Free Online StoreOnce you have data where you can start understanding how people interact with your business, then it’s more appropriate to move to a more sophisticated platform such as WooCommerceIf you leave a marketplace (like Etsy) to create your own shop on WordPress with WooCommerce (or similar) to save money, you have to ask yourself – what does that actually cost me?  How will I market my site if I’m on my own – what will marketing / migration cost me?Cost of plugins / extensions doesn’t just cover the code, it covers the support as well as updatesWhat are some methods/plugins to streamline the cart process and avoid abandoned carts?Consider at all times what the user is expected to do nextThere are extensions available to help manage abandoned cards (emails customers)CartHook for WooCommerceJilt for WooCommerceShownotes prepared by:Jason Tucker – @jasontucker – http://www.jasontucker.usEmanuel “Manny” Costa – @emanweb – https://blog.emanuelcosta.comSherie LaPrade – @HeySherieCheryl LaPrade – @YayCherylThe post WPblab 049 – How to sell products using WordPress ecommerce appeared first on WPwatercooler. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Today's episode is basically a therapy session for us both. We lay out our current issues and talk each other though the options. Jordan is dealing with customers and their personal expectations for the products. Brian is looking for balance in his development stage on the calendar product. We try our best to see our situations from all angles and possibilities. [tweetthis]The first step is deciding which things are the right things to pursue. - Jordan[/tweetthis] So join us for our conversation today, you might learn some things about the futures of Carthook and Audience Ops. Here are today's topics: Carthook's customer response to the checkout product. Dealing with customer requests. When it is time to expand a company. Approaching service based business models. Approaching product based business models. The alternative answer to consulting services. How to standardize operations. The 2 approaches to launches. Finding the balance of life and product development. An Audience Ops podcast. Audience Ops webinars. [tweetthis]What's the higher level goal for the company? And that's not just revenue and profit. - Brian[/tweetthis] Resources Mentioned Today: CartHook Audience Ops Calendar Sponsor Indeed Prime – Get a $5,000 bonus when you get hired through Indeed Prime using Bootstrapped Web's link. As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a  review in iTunes.

We welcome Rob Walling and Ben Fisher to the podcast today. We are going to discuss the topic of co-founders. Rob is the original founder of Drip, but has found a co-founder named Derek. Ben is Jordan's co-founder in Carthook. Brian however is the solo founder prospective in today's conversation. Brian has had co-founders, but Audience Ops is all him. On today's episode Jordan and Ben talk about how they began their partnership and Rob discusses his partnership with Derek. In recent news Rob's company Drip has been acquired by Leadpages. He tells us about that change and how it has affected his partnership. [tweetthis]In the early stage it's easy to overlook how difficult will it be to make it [SAAS] a viable business. - Brian[/tweetthis] The topics we covered are: How Leadpages' acquisition has changed Drip. Why you are always reinvesting into your business. Jordan's original intentions for Carthook. Why Jordan needed to work with Ben. The issues for a solo founder. How Ben found Jordan. How Rob found his business partner. The 2 factors of finding the right business partner. How to divide up decision making. The pros and cons of partnerships. How to respect your partner. Agreeing to a shared goal with your business partner. [tweetthis]Is there a such thing as a final decision or is everything a collaboration? - Jordan[/tweetthis] Resources Mentioned Today: Audience Ops Carthook Drip Leadpages Lean Startup Machine ZenFounder As always, thanks for tuning in. Head here to leave a  review in iTunes.

Welcome to Episode 27 of Mastermind.fm! Today masterminds Jean Galea and James Laws interview Zack Katz, author of the WordPress plugin GravityView! Hang out with us for a bit and have a listen! This was a super fun and interesting interview and Zack has lots of great advice. He's experimented with several marketing and advertising strategies and we can all learn from his experiences to take some smart shortcuts in choosing the best promotional methods for our plugins. Zack also talks about his favourite WordPress conferences. We both met Zack at Pressnomics earlier this year and this interview is a follow-up based on the great discussions we had there. Questions we asked Zack How did you get into WordPress and full-time development? How do you select projects to monetize? You build Gravity related plugins, but Gravity Forms doesn't have an "official" community development model around Gravity products. How does that work out with the Gravity team? How was the transition as your work began to be noticed by Gravity? How do you feel affiliate links being removed from the WordPress repo affected the WordPress ecosystem? How do you feel about the lack of an official WordPress market for premium products? Should WordPress have an official monetization model? What can you tell us about the progress of GravityView as a product? What does the structure of development look like for moving GravityView forward? What can you tell us about your website and promotional ideas? What has been the most effective method of content marketing for you? You've had success with Google Adwords pay-per-click. Can you expand on your methods? Do you have any good resources for folks who would like to learn Google Adwords? Do you manage the campaigns yourself or do you have someone do that for you? Do you have specific marketing techniques to guide customer interaction? What is the one piece of advice you would give to someone who is thinking about starting their own business? What would you do differently before starting your own business if you had it to do over again? What is the most exciting thing about your business right now? What's you favorite tool that you think our listeners might not have heard of that they could benefit from? Do you have any books you'd recommend our listeners read? What's your favorite conference? Featured On The Show: Gravity Forms GravityView Easy Digital Downloads WP Rocket Envato Math by GravityView Jonathan Mann Appleworld.today CartHook.com Getdrip.com Segment.com Waffle.io PressNomics CaboPress Google Analytics Academy    

Jordan Gal, Ecommerce expert and cofounder of Carthook, a product that helps sellers unlock lost revenue by automatically tracking and emailing shoppers who start, but don’t finish the checkout process, shares his insights on the proven practices you can use to make your Ecommerce selling more successful.

Jordan Gal is founder of Carthook, a cart abandonment software solution that recovers lost revenue by following up with potential customers who don’t complete the checkout process.  Jordan previously ran a successful ecommerce business that was acquired.   Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: [0:15] Jeremy’s introduction of Jordan Gal, ecommerce software developer. [1:28] The most important thing Jordan did: found a good Volusion developer. [6:03] Mistakes made on the checkout page. [7:25] The most common reasons people abandon a cart. [9:06] The power of a live chat functionality that tracks user activity on the site. [12:19] Why people abandon SaaS purchases. [14:28] Observations from working with ecommerce vendors. [20:05] A story that illustrates the importance of phone contact with prospects and customers. [24:50] The good and difficult parts of scaling an ecommerce business. [28:34] Mistakes ecommerce builders should avoid. [31:37] The major skillsets Jordan had that he would never pass to someone else. [37:00] Mistakes Jordan made building an ecommerce business. [42:01] Platforms Jordan recommends - and know that no platform is perfect. [44:38] The power of reviews on your ecommerce site. [46:00] The type of software you must have for effective ecommerce. [55:49] Best time frames for follow up of abandoned carts. [58:00] Email sequence recommendations. [1:03:51] Things Jordan has implemented because of customer feedback. [1:10:04] Things ecommerce people need to check in their business. [1:14:23] Jordan’s typical schedule to balance work and life. [1:17:30] Jordan’s journey from Israel to the U.S. and his family life. [1:25:27] Things Jordan learned from his Dad’s direct response business. [1:33:28] The highest priority step ecommerce owners should do now. In this episode… Cart abandonment is a big issue in the ecommerce space. If you can close that loop you’ll significantly increase your revenue and build a more effective follow up sequence with your customers. This episode is about helping you make cart abandonment a thing of the past. Instead of hitting on the generalities of ecommerce, this episode drills down into some of the most important aspects of how you can optimize your process to convert more shoppers on your website into paying customers.   Today’s guest, Jordan Gal has a wealth of experience in direct response sales, the creation and operation of his own successful ecommerce business, and now as a software entrepreneur for Carthook, one of the best shopping cart abandonment solutions in existence. If you want to increase your revenue through capitalizing on the customers that are already visiting your ecommerce site, this episode is for you. Jordan Gal shares best practices for on page optimization, checkout page improvements, and follow up sequences for those who have abandoned the cart on your site. If you’re ready to make cart abandonment a thing of the past on your ecommerce site, this episode with Jordan Gal can move you a long way toward making sure it’s a reality. Don’t miss this one. Resources Mentioned on this episode www.Skubana.com Carthook Jordan on Twitter: @JordanGal Jordan’s blog post: The 10 Foot Test Good Morning America: How to Find and Use Online Coupon Codes GetDrip Grasshopper SiteTuners Google Docs www.GardenGnomes.com Shopify LemonStand WooCommerce Yotpo review software HelpScout Groove AdWords AutoResponder Max Magento BOOK: Startup Nation

Jordan Gal is founder of CartHook. Their software recovers lost revenue by contacting people who don’t finish the checkout process. He previously ran a successful ecommerce business that was acquired. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: [0:43] Jeremy’s introduction of Jordan Gal, founder of CartHook. [1:08] What are some of the best things ecommerce business owners should take action on right now? In this episode… For any business owner, finding ways to grow and connect with the target market are the keys to success. Jordan Gal is no stranger to growing an ecommerce business into a resounding success, so much so his last business was acquired. In this short chat with Jeremy, Jordan shares some tips and strategies to help you connect with areas of opportunity in order to grow your ecommerce business. He offers insight into how you can analyze all areas of your business to identify what’s working, what’s not, and how to improve. Jordan discusses the value of “doing a sweep” of your business. He talks about what areas to look at, what to look for, and some tactical steps to take to make improvements. From optimizing your shopping cart page to analyzing various channels, it’s clear Jordan understand how to help you connect with your market in order to make a bigger impact. Resources Mentioned on this episode CartHook

Ben Fisher, the co-founder of Lean Startup Machine, and Alchemy. Listen in as Ben talks about his growth process with both Lean Startup Machine and Alchemy, what he learned, and what lessons can be applied universally. Ben, a New York City­based designer + hacker, co­founded Lean Startup Machine and Alchemy (acquired by Red Rover in 2013). Time Stamped Show Notes:01:08 – Nathan’s introduction 01:35 – Welcoming Ben to the show01:50 – Talking Lean Startup Machine02:00 – You will fail, you will focus on the wrong stuff.03:23 – Lean Startup Machine started as a weekend-long experiment04:25 – The ascension of Alchemy Labs06:14 – Collaboration software—Google Group meets LinkedIN07:30 – WeWork was one of the earliest customers…bottom line at $100/mo08:50 – By the time they raised $60K in funding, they realized they didn’t have the energy to build the company—they therefore jumped on an acquisition offer11:38 – Ben was drawn to Jordan because he’s a fantastic marketer12:27 – People pay a ton of money on user-acquisition, but it’s highly inefficient14:00 – 100 paying customers right now—not profitable, but close!15:05 – Currently have raised $300K (originally wanted to boostrap)15:58 – SkinnyAndBald Famous 5Favorite Book? – Thinking in SystemsWhat CEO do you follow?— Brian FentyWhat is your favorite online tool?—Duet DisplayDo you get 8 hours of sleep?— NoIf you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be?—Collaborate more. 3 Key Points:Don’t try and do it all yourself. Being profitable isn’t important at the onset.If you don’t have the energy to do something right, don’t do it at all. Resources Mentioned:Edgar – Nathan uses Edgar instead of other scheduling tools for Twitter because Edgar cycles through content over and over (buffer/others you have to re-input content over and over – time consuming). In the last several months, Edgar has driven Nathan over 3728 clicks that he didn’t have to work or pay for.Host Gator - Powerful web hosting made easy and affordable.Duet Display – The online tool Matthew can’t live withoutThinking in Systems – Ben’s favorite business bookBrian Fenty – The CEO Ben closely follows     Listen to The Top if you want to hear from the worlds TOP entrepreneurs on how much they sold last month, how they are selling it, and what they are selling - 7 days a week in 20 minute interviews! Join the Top Tribe at http://NathanLatka.com/TheTop The Top is FOR YOU if you are: A STUDENT who wants to become the CEO of a $10m company in under 24 months (episode #4) STUCK in the CORPORATE grind and looking to create a $10k/mo side business so you can quit (episode #7) An influencer or BLOGGER who wants to make $27k/mo in monthly RECURRING revenue to have the life you want and full CONTROL (episode #1) The Software as a Service (SaaS) entrepreneur who wants to grow to a $100m+ valuation (episode #14). Your host, Nathan Latka is a 25 year old software entrepreneur who has driven over $4.5 million in revenue and built a 25 person team as he dropped out of school, raised $2.5million from a Forbes Billionaire, and attracted over 10,000 paying customers from 160+ different countries.   Oprah gets 60 minutes or more to make her guests comfortable to then ask tough questions. Nathan does it all in less than 15 minutes in this daily podcast that's like an audio version of Pat Flynn's monthly income report. Join the Top Tribe at http://NathanLatka.com/TheTop

This Small Biz Chat is with ecommerce expert Jordan Gal. Today Jordan owns CartHook, a successful software company that helps ecommerce entrepreneurs reduce shopping cart abandonments, but before that he was creating a streamlined conversion pipeline in his own ecommerce business! After discovering the levers that could bring in and convert the most leads, Jordan was able to rapidly grow the business and sell it in just 13 months. So if you’re a ready to learn how you can supercharge your conversion funnel, stay tuned for my conversation with Jordan Gal.

Jordan Gal is the Co-Founder and CEO of CartHook, an effective abandoned cart recovery solution. CartHook tracks and captures the email addresses of visitors going through your checkout process. When a visitor abandons a purchase, an automated email campaign is triggered that is designed to bring the customer back to the site to complete the purchase. CartHook customers are recovering an average of 10% to 20% of abandoned carts and boosting revenue by up to 15%. Previously he was the Co-Founder of YCA Shops which operated a network of niche ecommerce stores. That company grew quickly and was acquired in mid-2009, so Jordan knows a thing or two about successful ecommerce. On top of that, he hosts the popular Bootstrapped Web Podcast. So what we're saying is Jordan knows a thing or two about ecommerce, and optimization in general. He joins us today to share his experience, and in particular, two powerful anecdotes about learning from your customers that you won't want to miss. Be sure to check out CartHook as well as follow Jordan on Twitter.

Jordan Gal of CartHook talks about how he found his technical co-founder, how he de-risked his app before building it, and the tension between business and technology requirements.