Podcasts about ethercycle

In this episode of Firing the Man, we sit down with Kurt Elster, founder of EtherCycle and host of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast. Kurt shares his journey from flipping Beanie Babies and Furbies on eBay to becoming one of the most trusted Shopify experts. He discusses key strategies for building and scaling a successful Shopify store, including the importance of branding, storytelling, and optimizing your website for conversions. Kurt also highlights the biggest mistakes store owners make—like neglecting their checkout page and cluttering their navigation menu—and offers practical solutions to fix them. Whether you're just starting out or looking to scale, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you grow your e-commerce business.We also dive into customer acquisition strategies, including the role of Amazon vs. direct-to-consumer sales, how to drive traffic beyond Facebook and Google ads, and why content marketing is a game-changer. Kurt shares his take on the value of trying things yourself before hiring experts, the importance of understanding your unit economics, and how to build trust with potential customers. Plus, in our signature Fire Round, Kurt talks about his favorite book, his passion for e-biking and restoring vintage cars, and what sets successful entrepreneurs apart from those who struggle. Don't miss this conversation filled with expert advice and behind-the-scenes insights from one of Shopify's top consultants!How to connect with Kurt?Website: https://kurtelster.com/               https://ethercycle.com/Podcast: https://unofficialshopifypodcast.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/kurtincLinkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtelsterYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ethercycle Support the show

Kurt Elster, he is currently helping Shopify Plus merchants like HOONIGAN make more money at his Shopify Partner agency, Ethercycle. He is hosting a podcast with over two million downloads: The Unofficial Shopify Podcast. He is developing public Shopify apps. And he is investing, advising, or both with: Govalo, PostPilot, and other select clients and P.E. firms. Highlight Bullets> Here's a glimpse of what you would learn…. Transitioning from Amazon to Shopify for e-commerce sales.Differences in customer acquisition strategies between Amazon and Shopify.Importance of building an email list for customer engagement and retention.Utilizing Google Shopping for driving traffic to Shopify stores.Risks associated with relying solely on Amazon for sales.The significance of creating valuable content for SEO and customer trust.Exploring podcast advertising as a marketing channel.Strategies for establishing an online presence with a basic Shopify store.The role of Shopify Collective in expanding product offerings through collaboration.Emphasizing a long-term mindset and experimentation in e-commerce success.In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Kurt Elster, a seasoned Shopify expert and host of the Unofficial Shopify Podcast. Kurt shares his journey from retail arbitrage to becoming a Shopify specialist, offering valuable insights for Amazon brands transitioning to Shopify. Key strategies discussed include the importance of email marketing, leveraging Google Shopping, and utilizing podcast advertising to drive traffic. Kurt emphasizes the need for a long-term approach, focusing on content creation and customer engagement to build a successful Shopify store. This episode is a must-listen for business owners aiming to scale their e-commerce operations.Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:1. Secure Your Brand's Digital Presence Early - Reserve your domain and variations as soon as you file for a trademark to prevent future challenges in securing your desired online identity. This simple step avoids costly setbacks and protects your brand's online presence from the start.2. Prioritize Consistent Traffic Generation - Transitioning to Shopify means proactively attracting customers. Focus on creating a robust traffic generation strategy, leveraging a combination of paid ads, SEO, and Google Shopping listings to draw in visitors and increase sales.3. Build and Engage Your Audience Through Email Marketing - Begin growing your email list early, as this channel is vital for nurturing customer relationships and boosting repeat sales. Set up automated emails like welcome sequences and cart abandonment reminders, and prioritize plain-text formats for a personal touch.Resources mentioned in this episode:Josh Hadley on LinkedIneComm Breakthrough ConsultingeComm Breakthrough PodcastEmail Josh Hadley: Josh@eCommBreakthrough.comeBayWordPressFulfilled by AmazonMeta AdsGoogle ShoppingiHeartMedia/iHeartRadioTikTok AdsChatGPTKlaviyoBeehiivGoogle Merchant CenterData Feed WatchShopify CollectiveGoogle Shopping IntegrationHow to Shoot Video That Doesn't SuckThe Unofficial Shopify PodcastHooniganAether CycleWalmart MarketplaceHarley FinkelsteinSpecial Mention(s):Adam “Heist” Runquist on LinkedInKevin King on LinkedInMichael E. Gerber on LinkedInRelated Episode(s):“Cracking the Amazon Code: Learn From Adam Heist's Brand Scaling Secrets” on the eComm Breakthrough Podcast“Kevin King's Wicked-Smart Tips for Building an Audience of Raving Fans” on the eComm Breakthrough Podcast“Unlocking Entrepreneurial Greatness | Insider Secrets With E-myth Author Michael Gerber” on the eComm Breakthrough PodcastEpisode SponsorThis episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.&n...

Subscribe to DTC Newsletter - https://dtcnews.link/signup In this episode of the DTC Podcast, we welcome Kurt Elster, Shopify expert and founder of EtherCycle, a consultancy specializing in optimizing Shopify stores for eCommerce brands. https://ethercycle.com https://www.instagram.com/kgelster/?hl=en https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtelster/ Kurt dives into tactical advice for DTC founders, focusing on Shopify's most underutilized features and strategies that drive conversions. Whether it's improving your store's navigation, creating high-converting landing pages, or running better promotions, Kurt's insights are laser-focused on helping Shopify brands grow.

Growing an e-commerce business while managing distribution channels can feel like an uphill battle. You want to scale but run into roadblocks like limited reach, high fees, or lack of control over how your products are presented. Balancing growth with maintaining ownership of your brand and customer relationships isn't easy. Finding the right mix of platforms and strategies often becomes the key to moving forward without compromising what makes your business unique. Kurt Elster is a Shopify expert and the founder of Ethercycle, a boutique Shopify consultancy. He has been a Shopify partner since 2011 and is known for helping e-commerce brands thrive in the digital marketplace. In addition to his agency work, Kurt is the host of the Unofficial Shopify Podcast, which has amassed over 2 million downloads. Today, Kurt shares his insights on the evolution of Shopify, the importance of owning your distribution channels, and the strategies he has employed to build a successful lifestyle business. Stay tuned! Resources Kurt Elster: Your new favorite resource for unbeatable ecom recon. Ethercycle: Turn Your Shopify Store Into A Revenue Generating Powerhouse Of Persuasion Connect with Kurt Elster on LinkedIn Follow Kurt Elster on Facebook Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast hosted by Kurt Elster

In this conversation, Karl Meisterheim, Taylor Page, and Kurt Elster discuss the challenges and strategies of collaboration in the Shopify development space, particularly focusing on working with clients and other developers. Kurt shares his entrepreneurial journey, the origins of EtherCycle, and the importance of effective communication and documentation in development teams. The discussion also touches on the significance of partnerships, risk-taking in entrepreneurship, and the necessity of adhering to best practices in Shopify development. Kurt also discusses the importance of streamlined communication in client relationships, the challenges of managing multiple points of contact, and the difficult but sometimes necessary decision to fire clients. They explore the criteria for determining when a client relationship is no longer beneficial and share personal experiences with client management. The discussion also touches on the selection of themes for development projects, recent updates in Shopify, and personal projects. *Timestamps* 00:00 Introduction 00:20 Kurt Elster's Origin Story 03:22 The Evolution of EtherCycle 06:26 Partnership Dynamics in Business 09:12 Client Collaboration Challenges 12:14 Effective Communication Strategies 14:58 Project Management Tools and Techniques 17:59 Documentation Best Practices 21:00 Navigating Existing Codebases 23:58 Screencasts and Client Education 26:54 Team Collaboration and Role Clarity 32:16 Navigating Tooling and Build Processes 34:26 Dealing with Client Communication Challenges 41:40 The Art of Firing Clients 47:42 Funny Client Stories and Experiences 50:40 Theme Selection and Development Strategies 54:28 Shopify Updates and Change Log 57:56 Personal Updates and Picks of the Week *Connect with Kurt Elster:* Follow Kurt on Twitter: https://twitter.com/kurtinc Listen to *The Unofficial Shopify Podcast*: https://link.chtbl.com/tusp Join Kurt's newsletter: https://kurtelster.com/ Check Kurt's agency work at Ethercycle: https://ethercycle.com/work/ Subscribe to Kurt's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/ethercycle *Resources* Clickup: https://clickup.com/ Shopify Theme Store: https://themes.shopify.com/Alan Weiss (author): https://www.amazon.com/stores/Alan-Weiss/author/B000AQ0PNG *Dev Changelog* https://shopify.dev/changelog Shopify CLI is now easier to install and faster for Liquid theme development: https://shopify.dev/changelog/shopify-cli-is-now-easier-to-install-and-faster-for-liquid-theme-development New Full-Funnel Theme Install Parameters and Now Firing E-Commerce Events on the Theme Listing Page: https://shopify.dev/changelog/new-full-funnel-theme-install-parameters-and-now-firing-e-commerce-events-on-the-theme-listing-page New Full-Funnel App Install Parameters and Now Firing E-Commerce Events on the App Listing Page: https://shopify.dev/changelog/new-full-funnel-app-install-parameters-and-now-firing-e-commerce-events-on-the-app-listing-page Post-purchase offers limit is increased: https://shopify.dev/changelog/post-purchase-offers-limit-is-increased Product Feed webhooks now support per-market inventory: https://shopify.dev/changelog/product-feed-webhooks-now-support-per-market-inventory *Picks of the Week* Karl: https://www.udio.com/ Kurt: https://www.do3d.com/, https://us.store.bambulab.com/products/p1s Taylor: https://tally.so/ *Signup for Liquid Weekly* Don't miss out on expert insights and tips—subscribe to Liquid Weekly for more content like this. https://liquidweekly.com/

Also available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/djnSFyBsB7MWe explore Shopify's latest updates to simplify customer acquisition through its Shop Campaigns tool.Host Kurt Elster talks with Shopify's Andrius Baranauskas, Product Director for Shop Campaigns, Shopify's not-so-secret weapon for getting new customers on autopilot.Later, Nathan Onesian, Director of Ecommerce from melin, and Nick Daniels, Senior Ecommerce Manager, from OluKai spill how Shop Campaigns turned into their secret weapon for scaling fast.Key Takeaways:What is Shop Campaigns and how it simplifies customer acquisitionThe power of Shop Cash to incentivize purchasesNew features to win backlapsed customers with incentives on ShopReal-world success stories from top Shopify brandsGuests:Andrius Baranauskas, Product Directorat ShopifyNathan Onesian, Director of Ecommerce at melinNick Daniels, Senior Ecommerce Manager at OluKaiLinks:Shop Campaigns[Shop Campaigns video] (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rddSHVroIcc)Shop.appMelinOluKaiDon't forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more insights into growing your Shopify store!Sponsors:Zipify: http://zipify.com/KURTCleverific: https://cleverific.com/unofficialOmnisend: http://your.omnisend.com/UnofficialshopifypodcastNever miss an episode:Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts: https://link.chtbl.com/tuspJoin Kurt's newsletter: https://kurtelster.com/Help the show:Ask a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/UnofficialShopifyPodcast/Leave a review: https://ratethispodcast.com/unofficialSubscribe wherever you get your podcasts: https://link.chtbl.com/tuspWhat's Kurt up to?See our recent work at Ethercycle: https://ethercycle.com/work/Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/ethercycleApply to work with Kurt to grow your store: https://ethercycle.com/apply

One of the most highly regarded independent consultants in his industry, Kurt Elster is a Senior Ecommerce Consultant who helps Shopify merchants like Jay Leno's Garage uncover hidden profits in their websites through his ecommerce agency Ethercycle. With two million downloads, Kurt is best known for hosting The Unofficial Shopify Podcast.In This Conversation We Discuss: [00:55] Intro[01:55] Compare platform to Shopify before migrating[02:51] Figure out why you want to migrate[03:45] New things acquired after migrating to Shopify[04:44] Migrating helps you reconsider and review things[05:26] Maximize migration & explore change opportunities[06:40] Prioritize customer service over minor details[08:42] Migration is doable, but never easy[10:38] Navigating Shopify data migration[12:37] The impact of design on migrating[14:26] Map out key considerations when migrating[16:21] Embrace change to get better results[17:21] Keep up and learn new tools and techniques[18:28] Make learning easier with efficient solutions[19:23] Overcome fear with secure data migration[22:19] Streamline unusual Shopify migration[24:54] The importance of thorough sample checks[25:23] Challenges in subscription & internationalization[26:25] Addressing backend processes [27:10] Navage Nose Cleaner's Shopify migration story[28:42] Wheel Wiz's Shopify migration story[29:37] Realities & considerations of a rush migration[30:45] Adams Polishes' migration story[31:47] Migration as a line item in a project[32:35] Modern Sprout's migration story[33:32] WordPress freedom VS Shopify constraints[34:43] Corresponding tasks & results of blogging[36:10] Shopify's unique ecosystem advantages[38:46] Telltale signs that it's time to move to Shopify[39:27] Migrating during redesign is the key[40:09] Leverage Shopify features to implement discounts[41:09] Learn more about Kurt ElsterResources:Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on YoutubeEcommerce consultancy for Shopify merchants ethercycle.com/Follow Kurt Elster linkedin.com/in/kurtelster/Subscribe to Kurt Elster's newsletter kurtelster.com/Listen to Kurt Elster's podcast unofficialshopifypodcast.com/If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

Kurt Elster is the Co-founder and CEO of Ethercycle, an agency with a proven track record of creating web-optimization strategies for top brands like Jay Leno's Garage and HOONIGAN. As a senior e-commerce consultant and Shopify expert, Kurt helps merchants boost website sales. Kurt is also the host of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, which explores tales of e-commerce entrepreneurship with a focus on Shopify. The show has over two million plays and features industry experts like Shopify's President, Harley Finkelstein. In this episode… In today's online shopping landscape, a user-friendly website is an integral factor of an e-commerce business' chances of success. An appealing, well-optimized, and functional website attracts more visitors – and, ultimately, more sales. How can you improve your site's user experience, navigation, and interactivity to boost traffic?  eCommerce expert Kurt Elster emphasizes the importance of an intuitive website design. Removing any roadblocks from your prospects' paths through split testing, web optimization, and other advanced marketing tactics can maximize conversion rates.  In this episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris welcomes Kurt Elster, Founder of Ethercycle and host of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, to explore trends in e-commerce website design. Kurt shares his journey from a WordPress developer to an e-commerce consultant and how he started Ethercycle. He also identifies common design mistakes and provides tips for website optimization.

Are you tired of all the hassle and headache that comes with crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo?If so, then you'll love this simple method for crowdfunding on your own Shopify website! This method is easy to use and doesn't require any special skills or knowledge. So if you're looking for a way to get your project funded without all the hassle, then this is the way to do it!Hire Our Expert Team To Launch And/Or Scale Your E-Commerce Product Brand ➡️ https://launchandscale.co/apply=============About Kurt Elster:============One of the most highly regarded independent consultants in his industry, Kurt Elster is a Senior Ecommerce Consultant who helps Shopify merchants like Jay Leno's Garage uncover hidden profits in their websites through his e-commerce agency Ethercycle. With two million downloads, Kurt is best known for hosting The Unofficial Shopify Podcast.Get the Crowdfunder Shopify App: https://apps.shopify.com/crowdfunder-...

Kurt is a legend in the eComm space and hosts one of the most popular podcasts in our industry. His show, The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, just crossed the 2 million downloads milestone. Kurt and his company are all about one thing - helping Shopify store owners make more money. And the best way to do that is by split-testing everything.  An important first step of split testing is questioning your assumptions. (We all know what happens when we assume.) Here are a few recent tests Kurt and company have run. We discuss the results on the show...yes, that's a teaser. Listen to find out what test won!  Does free shipping always result in better performance (and is it even worth testing)? Should I put a slider on my home page?  What about hero images and banners on my category pages? Do add-to-cart buttons on your collections pages help or hurt conversions? What about stuffy old early 2000s breadcrumbs - are they helpful or not? Plus, favorite tools, tips, and tricks that Kurt uses often.

Kurt Elster is the Host of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast and Senior eCommerce Consultant and Shopify Plus Expert at Ethercycle, Chicago's premiere Shopify partner agency. He helps Shopify merchants, like Jay Leno's Garage, uncover hidden profits in their websites by developing apps and providing strategy and advisory services. Prior to his work with Ethercycle, Kurt worked as the eCommerce Manager for THMotorsports, an Adjunct Professor at Oakton Community College, and Chief Technology Officer for the Center for Entrepreneurship in Liberal Education in Beloit.  Kurt graduated from Beloit College with a degree in business economics and earned his MBA in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial studies from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He attended The University of Chicago Booth School of Business for a certificate in integrated marketing, where he gained an integrated marketing perspective to help maximize the impact of marketing efforts. In this episode… “Best practice” can have numerous meanings and set up false expectations for entrepreneurs. How can you get the same results with less effort? When your website is the face of your brand, how can you optimize and increase conversion? Kurt Elster follows his rule of thumb: simplify. Don't complicate, confuse, or slow down your website when you can optimize and increase conversion rates. By having a traditional landing page with simple, easy-to-read links to your products, consumers can easily navigate on any device and platform — the proof is in the split testing. Join Joe Valley in this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast as he sits down with Kurt Elster, Host of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast and Senior eCommerce Consultant and Shopify Plus Expert at Ethercycle. Together, they break down why “best practice” is unique for everyone, achieving statistically significant results by increasing readability, and upgrading your website to increase conversion rates. 

Kurt Elster is the man behind Ethercycle.com, a Shopify agency that specializes exclusively—and very successfully—in helping Shopify store owners generate massive revenue growth. Not only does he put out some really amazing websites on Shopify, but he also hosts The Unofficial Shopify Podcast and has a bunch of really cool apps that we talk about in this episode. Listen in as we dive into all things Shopify, including what store owners need to stop asking for on their sites, the one thing that Kurt has done that has really moved the needle for his clients, and the must-haves on any Shopify site that increase conversion and engagement. Kurt also shares the top three apps that get put on every site he builds to reduce friction for consumers, and in turn, increase revenue for store owners. You can find show notes and more information by clicking here: https://bit.ly/3NnObQ6 Interested in our Private Community for 7-Figure Store Owners?  Learn more here.   Want to hear about new episodes and eCommerce news round-ups?  Subscribe via email.

In episode 400, we heard from veteran ecom investor Drew Sanocki that he'd acquired oVertone Haircare along with ecom powerhouse influencer Ezra Firestone.In today's episode, our recent hire Tom Siodlak talks us through the behind the scenes experience of working with Ezra and the oVertone team on migrating the site from headless back to native Shopify with a custom theme. He reveals the premium theme we used as a framework, his thoughts on developing custom Shopify themes, design process, Online Store 2.0's impact, and more.Show LinksoVertone HaircareFocal by MaestroooTurbo Theme by Out of The SandboxEthercycleCrowdfunderSponsorsFree 30-day trial of Zipify OCU - To get an unadvertised gift, email help@zipify.com and ask for the "Tech Nasty Bonus".Back up your store with RewindTry Bold Product Upsell, free trialPrivy: The Fastest Way To Grow Sales With Email & SMSNever miss an episodeSubscribe wherever you get your podcastsJoin Kurt's newsletterHelp the showAsk a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook GroupLeave a reviewSubscribe wherever you get your podcastsWhat's Kurt up to?See our recent work at EthercycleSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelApply to work with Kurt to grow your store.

In this episode, we talk through migrating to Shopify: things to watch out for, and experienced advice on how to make the most of migrating to Shopify.Our expert guest contributors are:Stewart Knapman who joins us from New Zealand where he is a Merchant Solutions Engineer at Shopify. Before moving to Shopify he spent the last decade working as a Shopify partner and Plus Expert helping merchants get the most out of the platform.Karl Meisterheim, author of the Liquid Weekly newsletter, and an Ethercycle team member currently working on a migration from Magento to Shopify.Show LinksDocs: Migrate to ShopifyTransporter AppMatrixify - Shopify Data Bulk Import Export Update & MigrateLiquid WeeklySponsorsFree 30-day trial of Zipify OCU - To get an unadvertised gift, email help@zipify.com and ask for the "Tech Nasty Bonus".Back up your store with RewindTry Bold Product Upsell, free trialPrivy: The Fastest Way To Grow Sales With Email & SMSNever miss an episodeSubscribe wherever you get your podcastsJoin Kurt's newsletterHelp the showAsk a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook GroupLeave a reviewSubscribe wherever you get your podcastsWhat's Kurt up to?See our recent work at EthercycleSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelApply to work with us to grow your store.

Why are tiered discounts preferred? Is web 3.0 just a buzz word? Why is selling in 2022 going to be even harder? Wow, can you believe we have reached our 50th episode of Talk'n Shopify with Zyber?! To celebrate this milestone, we couldn't think of a better person to hype our audience up than The Unofficial Shopify Podcast founder and host, Kurt ‘Tech Nasty' Elster. It was an absolute hoot having Kurt on this episode and he even brought his own sound effects. Based in Illinois, Kurt is also an entrepreneur, CEO, co-founder of Shopify agency Ethercycle. How the heck do you get a Shopify store to 7-figures? Ethercycle is designed for successful Shopify entrepreneurs and Kurt's been answering this question for years. Listen to this bumper episode as we discuss agency to agency, everything from Shopify experiences, our top tech stacks and key eCommerce predictions for 2022. For more information on Ethercycle Website - https://ethercycle.com/ Youtube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/user/ethercycle For more information about Zyber Digital Visit our website - https://www.zyber.co.nz Follow us on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/zyberwebdesign/ Follow up on LinkedIn - https://nz.linkedin.com/company/zyber Join our exclusive Facebook insider groups Shopify NZ - https://www.facebook.com/groups/shopifynz/ Shopify VIP - https://www.facebook.com/groups/shopifyvip Follow us on Instagram - zyberhq

This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Ethercycle founder Kurt Elster talks about building communities, growing a podcast, and why authenticity is the key to successful marketing. Kurt is the host of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, widely considered to be “the” podcast for anyone using Shopify as their ecommerce platform. He is also the creator of the Unofficial Shopify Podcast Insiders Facebook group, which is now more than 4,000 members strong, and the founder of well known ecommerce agency Ethercycle. Within the ecommerce world, Kurt has a massive, highly loyal following that relies on him for honest advice about growing an ecommerce business. How did he accomplish that? By fiercely guarding the integrity of his community and preventing spam, and staying true to himself throughout his podcast and marketing. Check out the full episode to hear Kurt's insights. Resources from this episode: Visit the Ethercycle website Check out the Unofficial Shopify Podcast Apply to join the Unofficial Shopify Podcast Insiders Facebook Group

Misinformation is spewed left and right about nearly everything in eCommerce and it’s driving Kurt Elster and I insane. We are excited to bring you episode 300 of the Ecommerce Influence podcast and our special guest today is Kurt Elster. Kurt is a CRO expert, host of the Unofficial Shopify Podcast, and runs an eCommerce website design and development agency called Ethercycle. If you’ve been a long-time listener of the podcast, you know that Kurt is a trusted recurring guest and in this episode, we’re hoping to put a nail in the coffin of six costly eCommerce myths.  Tune in as we set the record straight on Google PageSpeed, website design and copywriting, work ethic and so much more. Enjoy! Episode Highlights: 5:28 Myth #1: You need to diversify your traffic 8:38 Myth #2: Google PageSpeed is crucial to getting more sales 14:00 Myth #3: You have to be the first to do everything  18:49 Myth #4: If a “big” business is doing it, it must be right 23:10 Myth #5: Hustle and grind is the key to business success 27:57 Myth #6: People don’t read on the internet  35:40 Check out the Unofficial Shopify Podcast Links and Resources: Kurt Elster The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Ethercycle Podcast 193: “Must Know” Elements Of Successful Ecom Design Most Business Forget Podcast 282: 8 Ecommerce All Stars Share Their Best Marketing Advice Intentional Wealth The Coalition @a_brawn on Twitter Review or subscribe on iTunes

Have you ever wanted marketing advice from some of the best eCommerce marketers in the business? I reached out to seven of my friends in the eCommerce space and asked them: What’s the single best piece of marketing advice you’ve ever been given? From words by Mark Zuckerberg all the way to legendary writer Gary Bencivenga, we’re packing in 8 evergreen pieces of marketing advice that every marketer and entrepreneur needs to have in their arsenal. Episode Guests Steve Chou, founder of My Wife Quit Her Job and cofounder of Sellers Summit Peep Laja, founder of CXL and Wynter Noah Kagan, founder of AppSumo Kurt Elster, founder of Ethercycle and host of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Ezra Firestone, founder of Smart Marketer Chris Orzechowski, Ecommerce Email Marketing Strategist and founder of Orzy Media Andrew Youderian, founder of eCommerceFuel and host of The eCommerceFuel Podcast  Austin Brawner, founder of Brand Growth Experts and host of The Ecommerce Influence Podcast  Episode Highlights 3:56 Steve Chou: Avoiding shiny object syndrome  5:43 Peep Laja: The number 1 thing to look into if you’re not making traction 8:15 Noah Kagan: What to remain focused on at all times 10:58 Kurt Elster: What it takes to be a true expert 14:26 Ezra Firestone: Are you quitting too soon? 17:00 Chris Orzechowski: How to never have a customer retention problem 20:19 Andrew Youderian: Doubling down on what works  23:35 Austin Brawner: Pressure over time Links and Resources: Steve Chou My Wife Quit Her Job Sellers Summit Peep Laja Peep's Website Conversion XL Wynter Noah Kagan Noah's YouTube Channel Noah's Podcast OkDork AppSumo Kurt Elster Kurt's Website The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Ethercycle Ezra Firestone Smart Marketer Boom! By Cindy Joseph Chris Orzechowski The Email Copywriter Make It Rain Monthly Founder of Orzy Media Andrew Youderian Ecommerce Fuel Ecommerce Fuel Podcast Austin Brawner The Coalition @a_brawn on Twitter Review or subscribe on iTunes

Kurt Elster has been growing “unofficially” with Shopify since its infancy. In today’s episode, the host of the one and only Unofficial Shopify Podcast talks about how his entrepreneurial spirit took him on an unconventional path to ecommerce success — and over 1 million podcast downloads.He also covers how to ace key elements of the ecommerce experience that most stores struggle to get right, like positioning and CRO.In addition to the Unofficial Shopify Podcast, Kurt runs a consultancy, Ethercycle, that has helped dozens of SMB merchants excel on Shopify.Topics covered:Kurt’s unconventional path to success in ecommerce The best ways to troubleshoot your online storeHow to turn visitors into customersThe underused potential of copywritingThe power of positioning Black Friday messaging during COVID-19Links and Resources theuserisdrunk.comThe Brain Audit by Sean D’SouzaPit Viper Sunglasses

In this episode, we talk to Kurt Elster, founder of Ethercycle and one of the most highly-regarded independent consultants in the ecommerce industry.We discuss his best advice for finding and expanding your audience, gaining a more complete understanding of your customers, and maintaining your mental health while striving to grow your business. We also clear the air on exactly what that new store speed report means and whether or not you should be concerned about your grade. Kurt is a wildly entertaining interview, so if you're interested in hearing unfiltered advice from one of the most notable voices in the business, you're going to want to make time for this episode.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.

Kurt Elster is one of the most highly regarded independent consultants in his industry. He's a senior ecommerce consultant who helps Shopify merchants like Jay Leno's Garage, uncover hidden profits in their websites through his ecommerce agency Ethercycle, with 1 million downloads. Kurt is also best known for hosting the unofficial Shopify podcast.On today’s episode, Kurt talks about how to turn a Shopify store into a revenue-generating powerhouse of persuasion.Topics Covered: Who is Kurt Elster? [00:20] Why Shopify? [12:22] What is the checklist that you go through with conversion rate optimization? [15:05] What are some of those obvious problems that you come across right off the bat? [18:09] How do you figure out where you need to start testing? [20:50] What are some of the benchmark numbers? [22:37] What are some of the main things that you find to annoy shoppers on a site? [25:19] What are some of the ingredients needed in a store in order to succeed? [28:32] Why is the “Back” button a merchant's biggest competitor? [31:42] What are some of the main must-have apps for Shopify stores? [39:15] What is the best way to run an exit popup? [46:53] What advice can you give to those who want to build their own Shopify store? [50:47]Connect with Kurt Elster WebsiteConnect with Jason Portnoy jportnoy.com InstagramLike the episode? Come visit us on Apple Podcasts - don't forget to subscribe and leave a review! We appreciate your feedback and would love for you to help spread the word! See all Podcasts HERE

Your store's product display pages (PDPs) are your gateway to more sales. What makes a good product page stand out from the crowd? What can you do to optimize your product page for sales? If you're limited on time, where should you focus your efforts? This week on the podcast, we're discussing how you can turn your product pages into highly-converting sales machines. We'll talk through what you should absolutely include on your PDP and what major conversion-breaking red flags to avoid. We finish by chatting with Kurt Elster, co-host of the Unofficial Shopify Podcast and co-founder of Shopify Plus consultancy Ethercycle, to get Kurt's take on what makes a product page great.

Welcome to Vurbl Voices. This experimental podcast is a way for us to connect with audio creators of all stripes. From traditional interview podcast hosts, short and long form storytellers, business leaders using audio to engage their customers, poets, speakers, battle rappers, standup comics, audiobook authors, teachers and more! On this episode, we have Kurt Elster, host of the Unofficial Shopify Podcast and founder of Ethercycle, an ecommerce consultancy that helps Shopify store owners scale their business. We dive deep into how he’s grown his podcast to over 1 Million Downloads, how to build production processes that save time, and ways to improve your guest interview skills. Kurt provides a ton of solid advice for new audio creators but I’m positive this advice can help even the most seasoned podcast hosts. Do us a favor and tweet at Kurt with your favorite advice he gave in the episode. How to find Kurt: Twitter | Podcast Website | Apple Podcast | Spotify | Consultancy

After raising $164,775 on Kickstarter, this husband & wife team is disrupting carbon fiber manufacturing.You'll the hear answers to:How they raised $164,775 on Kickstarter to start their businessHow a revenue share agreement empowered their businessThe exact influencer outreach strategy they usedHow niche group buys are growing their manufacturing businessGabriel Mountjoy is a graduate of the Cal Poly Mechanical Engineering Department in San Luis Obispo, CA. He and his wife, Ann Mountjoy, founded Common Fibers in 2013 after invention of a carbon fiber hinge. For the past six years they have developed composite products for the automotive, aerospace, medical, construction, and consumer goods industries. With two patents, they are building a passionate team that will continue to disrupt the composites industry and change how manufacturing is currently done.Links MentionedKickstarter Carbon Fiber Wallet Campaign (2014)Book: How to shoot video that doesn't suckGabe's wallet store: Common Fibers - 30% off with code ETHERCYCLE at checkoutRefersionCFGroupBuyCrowdfunderNever miss an episodeSubscribe wherever you get your podcastsJoin Kurt's newsletterHelp the showAsk a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook GroupLeave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings & reviews help, and I read each one.Subscribe wherever you get your podcastsWhat's Kurt up to?See our recent work at EthercycleTake a ride with Kurt on YouTubeApply to work with Kurt to grow your store.SponsorsTry Bold Product Upsell free for 90 daysSave 20% on Turbo, a blazing fast Shopify themeImprove your shop's search engine ranking with Venntov SEO Meta ManagerOutsource your Shopify customer service with Simplr

Kurt Elster's "The Unofficial Shopify Podcast" has been downloaded more than 1 million times. His agency, Ethercycle, helps Shopify merchants drive revenue and profit. And his newsletter at KurtElster.com contains tips and strategies to scale a Shopify store. "I eat, sleep, and breathe Shopify. I even have a Shopify license plate," Elster stated.

David is the VP of Business Development at Kickfurther, which helps e-commerce brands scale through a unique approach to finance.  On this podcast, we talk about the Ecommerce life cycle, the problems that businesses face while growing, various solutions to funding problems, and how Kickfurther can help SMBs and online store owners. To learn more, visit: http://honestecommerce.co Resources: David’s LinkedIn page: www.linkedin.com/in/davidkoifman Kickfurther’s website: kickfurther.com Mike Michalowicz’s book, Profit First: profitfirstbook.com Visit gorgias.link/honest to get your 2nd month with Gorgias free! Ethercycle’s crowdfunding app for Shopify apps.shopify.com/crowdfunder-diy-pre-order-crowdfunding-campaigns-for-shopify Visit klaviyo.com to schedule a demo! Visit postscript.io/install for a free 30-day trial! To get updates on our new episodes and exclusive deals from our partners, text HONESTVIP to 72599 and join our VIP texting list!

Resource Links: Buying Online Businesses Website (https://buyingonlinebusinesses.com)  Resources for Buying Online Businesses (https://buyingonlinebusinesses.com/freeresources/) Investors Club Membership (https://investors.club) Ethercycle (https://ethercycle.com/) The Unofficial Shopify Podcast (https://unofficialshopifypodcast.com/)   Lots of people buy eCommerce stores but don’t really know how to grow it to its best potential. That’s why it’s so important to get advice and guidance from the right people before anything else. Today, we chat with Kurt Elster, Co-Founder of Ethercycle and host of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast. We cover questions like, “What are most Shopify stores doing wrong?” and “Is there such a thing as ‘too much passion’ in running an eCommerce site?”. We also talk about getting traffic according to your niche and the intricacies of content marketing funnels. This is an interesting episode any site owner wouldn’t want to miss!   We’ll be covering: Why focusing on a niche is better than doing everything [03:17] What are most Shopify stores doing wrong? [05:39] Popular platforms for getting traffic based on your brand/product [09:31] Actionable advice for people without digital marketing experience [11:31] The intricacies of content marketing funnels with eCommerce sites [16:06], 22:17 Is there such a thing as ‘too much passion’ in running an eCommerce site? [24:14] Suggestions for someone who’s bought a Shopify store but have no marketing experience [30:06]   About Our Guest: Kurt Elster is the Co-Founder of Ethercycle. One of the most highly regarded independent consultants in his industry, Kurt is a Senior Ecommerce Consultant who helps Shopify merchants (like Jay Leno’s Garage) uncover hidden profits in their websites. With one million downloads, he is best known for hosting The Unofficial Shopify Podcast. Kurt’s person website: https://kurtelster.com/ LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kurtelster/    If you liked this episode, please don’t forget to subscribe, tune in, and share this podcast. You may also leave us a review on anywhere you listen to and share your feedback! We really appreciate it! Connect with Jaryd Krause of Buying Online Businesses: Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JarydKrause1 Subscribe on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ3g6G2USlnq7EgnUsajTBw

Building your own ecommerce store is tough.  Sure it sounds great having your own store and not paying commissions to a marketplace or having to confirm to a strict terms of service.  Plus you get to control the customer experience. The challenging part is that you have to figure out your own design and how to lay it out.  AND unfortunately, you have to get people there.   So how do you setup your own store for success? I am excited to have on Kurt Elster from Ethercycle and the host of the Unofficial Shopify to discuss how to create a successful online store.  We focus on Shopify, and much of what we talk about can be applied to just about any shopping cart platform. People & Resources Mentioned Jay Leno’s Garage Shopify Klaviyo Kurt’s Blog Ethercycle Kurt’s Podcast (Unofficial Shopify Podcast)   Connect With Kurt Elster Twitter LinkedIn Instagram   Connect With Kevin Sanderson https://www.instagram.com/maximizingecommerce/ https://www.youtube.com/maximizingecommerce https://www.facebook.com/maximizingecommerce https://twitter.com/maxecom   Check Out Our Exclusive Training Get on the priority list for exclusive training on how you can build your own international selling empire on Amazon.  Simply sign up at: https://maximizingecommerce.com/expand   Subscribe to Maximizing Ecommerce on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, PlayerFM  

Kurt Elster, Partner at Ethercycle and host of the Unofficial Shopify Podcast, shares the number one flow he recommends his clients, friends, and listeners install. Want to try Gorgias? https://gorgias.grsm.io/ecommswipefile

You’ve started a business. You’ve created a product or a service. You’re selling it to clients and getting great feedback. That’s great, you’ve overcome so many of the hurdles we face as entrepreneurs. But the next step is finding a way to keep new customers coming through the doors and scaling up your services. That’s the challenge today's guest Matt Rudnitsky of Platypusbooks.com is facing. Matt helps entrepreneurs and other interesting people turn their ideas and expertise into books. For this, Matt earns $30k and up per project. But, as you might have guessed, it takes a ton of work and the client pipeline is sometimes dry for months at a time. Matt has also created an online course teaching self-publishing, but hasn’t enrolled any students yet. So, I invited Kurt Elster from EtherCycle.com back onto the show. (Some of you will remember Kurt from episode 71 back in 2014 where he talked about productized consulting). Kurt hosts the unofficial Shopify podcast and is a leader in productized consulting in the Shopify space. He’s faced all the same problems Matt, and a lot of you reading this are currently facing. Tune in to hear our take on Matt’s business and Kurt's recommendations for next steps. As you listen in, put yourself in Matt’s shoes and see how a similar product or service ladder can apply to your own business.

I love talking to industry experts, picking their brains on your behalf for their hot tips and the kind of know-how you have to pay crazy town dollars to get as a consulting client. Kurt Elster from Ethercycle just went very close to the top of my Most Enjoyable list! Kurt is a Senior Ecommerce Consultant who helps Shopify merchants (like Jay Leno’s Garage) uncover hidden profits in their websites. He very kindly took time away from his own show; The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, to chat to me on the Bringing Business to Retail Podcast. Join us as we talk about why "beautiful" design doesn't mean profitable design, three strategies you can roll out this afternoon to improve the conversion rate on YOUR website and a fun look at what features Kurts retail e-commerce site of choice has that others don't. Listen here

We sit down with Kurt Elster, one of the most highly regarded independent consultants in his industry. Kurt Elster is a Senior eCommerce Consultant who helps Shopify merchants like Jay Leno's Garage uncover hidden profits in their websites through his eCommerce agency Ethercycle. With over one million downloads, Kurt is best known for hosting The Unofficial Shopify Podcast. In this episode, we go into detail on how to improve your eCommerce auto parts store's conversation rate to generate more part and accessory sales. Kurt also provides some color on why Shopify could be a good auto parts eCommerce solution for parts departments and auto part resellers alike. SOME QUESTIONS WE ASK How did you get into the eCommerce industry? (2:07) Why do recommend Shopify for automotive eCommerce? (9:17) What's been the biggest change in the automotive industry since you started working? (14:30) How do online merchants avoid “the race to the bottom” on price? (16:55) Increasing online part sales with content marketing. (20:30) How should automotive brands prepare for the rise of social commerce? (26:09) Having multiple points of communication. (32:02) Improving your online customer service strategy (34:39) Increasing conversion rate optimization and retention. (37:20) How has CRO evolved over the years now that eCommerce is largely mobile first? (38:21) One piece of advice you'd give any Fixed Operations Director, Parts Manager or anyone else selling parts online? (43:50) What's the average conversion rate for the top 500 internet retailers (46:03) CONNECT Website: https://www.oeminteractive.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/oeminteractive Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/oeminteractive Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oeminteractive LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/oeminteractive

Rob talks to Kurt Elster who runs Ethercycle, an agency out of Chicago which focuses on helping Shopify owners design more profitable stores. He shares how he uses his Podcast, Pipedrive, Linkedin, and Email Marketing – and also does a Borat impression.

My guest on this show is a legend in the eCommerce space.  He's the founder of the Shopify Agency, Ethercycle. He's the host of the wildly popular Unofficial Shopify Podcast.  And, he's just an overall really smart dude. When most ecommerce companies consider conversion rate optimization they usually immediately think of split testing, multivariate testing, cart optimization, etc.  BUT, most merchants fail to ask a very important question - “where should I start with my conversion optimization efforts?” And, according to our guest today, the answer to that question is rarely - if ever - split testing. I knew the general direction of this interview before we started to record, but I didn't know specifics.  I was blown away by the simplicity, but also the power of Kurt's suggestions. EVERY store owner would benefit from going through the exercises discussed in this episode.  Here's a quick glimpse at what we covered: The power of surveys for your best customers and how a recent survey totally transformed a brick oven seller. How to ask questions of your best customers including Kurt's 3 favorite questions to ask. What information to glean from people who visit your site and don't convert. How to harness the power of heat maps and scroll maps. The little known “coffee shop gift card” test for watching how users interact with your site.   Some of Kurt's favorite tools for testing Tips for split testing if you chose to go that route.   Plus much more

How often have you added a new element to your website because you thought it “looked cool”? The reality is that a jumble of “cool” widgets and features can slow down your site and actually worsen your customer experience. In today's episode, we bring back Kurt Elster who is a specialist in conversion rate optimization and runs an ecommerce website design and development agency, Ethercycle. Kurt shares his insights on the key components of a successful ecommerce website design. Learn the how-tos and what-nots of what makes a great website, including product page design, the importance of great copywriting, and why design actually shouldn’t be your #1 focus. Enjoy! Episode Highlights 5:02 “Ruthless Empathy”: the mindset Kurt says you need to have when analyzing your website. 6:44 The core elements of successful ecommerce website design. 8:46 The questions to ask yourself to determine whether you really need all those widgets on your site. 10:41 How to balance simplicity with complexity in your website. 13:22 Why you should approach your website design with a clear decision framework, rather than a design wishlist. 15:36 The interesting things Walmart is doing with its web design that have helped increase its online sales. 20:04 What Austin sees as a standout on Walmart's site that a lot of Shopify stores don't do. 21:29 Which design should come first: mobile or desktop? 24:49 The key elements to include on your homepage. 27:00 Aspects of homepage design that work to direct people to the product page (and why this should be your #1 goal). 30:59 Your product pages: the must-haves, what's usually missing, and the perfect example of a business that's doing it right. 35:08 Why Kurt doesn’t believe you should use artificial scarcity to drive people to buy. 37:20 How to use urgency and scarcity in a legitimate way. 38:54 Why you should be using video on your product page. 41:34 An alternative to artificial scarcity as suggested by Austin. 43:49 The best ways to sell complementary products to people and increase AOV. 49:39 Why Kurt’s excited about the future of personalization. 51:19 Something Kurt believes to be true that most other entrepreneurs don’t agree with. Links And Resources RightMessage The Unofficial Shopify Podcast KurtElster@tokurtelster.com Ethercycle Foxwell Digital Brand Growth Experts Become a Member If you've been a podcast listener for a while and you've yet to join the Brand Growth Experts Membership, now is the time to do it. It’s my online coaching community, and it’s an incredible resource for you. We've got about 120 members, all ecommerce business owners, and marketers. And in that community, I work with you one on one to help scale up your business. That could be scaling up advertising, hiring a team, diving into marketing strategy. We go really in depth every single month on topics that we also talk about on the podcast. So, if you've enjoyed the podcast, you're going to love the Brand Growth Experts Membership. Head over to brandgrowthexperts.com for more information. Can't wait to see you guys on the inside. Sponsor: Klaviyo If you’re looking to grow your business, there’s only one way. By building real, quality customer relationships. Most marketing software will claim that they do this, but they’ll never deliver on those promises. Klaviyo, though, is different. Klaviyo helps you build meaningful customer relationships by listening to and understanding cues from your customers, which allows you to easily turn that information into valuable marketing messages that’ll help grow your business and make more money. That’s why over 10,000 innovative brands have switched to Klaviyo. If you aren’t already a customer, head over to www.ecommerceinfluence.com/klaviyo and you’ll get a free trial + priority on-boarding.  

Today’s topic revolves around Shopify, a very popular Ecommerce platform that helps over 20.000 merchants manage every aspect of their business — from products to orders to customers, selling online, in retail stores, and on the go. Not surprisingly, Shopify embraced Amazon and its ecosystem early on, offering native integrations with Amazon FBA, bringing a great advantage to smaller brands and developing at a really fast pace. And what better way to break down this fascinating topic than a podcast episode with our special guest and Shopify expert, Kurt Elster of Ethercycle? Kurt is one of the most highly regarded independent Shopify consultants in the industry, working exclusively with Shopify store owners. He is also the founder of the Ecommerce agency Ethercycle, the creator of an insightful blog and weekly Ecommerce hacks video series as well as a host of the amazing Unofficial Shopify Podcast. This is definitely a show you shouldn’t miss - tune in!

Get your products on your customer's minds (and wishlists) this year without blowing a fortune on Facebook ads. Kurt Bullock joins us to discuss the tactics & strategies you need to know to maximize your Facebook ads before, during, and after Black Friday. Kurt Bullock is the founder of ecommerce agency ProduceDept, our exclusive marketing partner at Ethercycle for nearly three years. We'll find out: What's different about Facebook ads marketing during the holidays vs any other time of year? The one hack to keep budgets in line going into the holidays The one ad placement you need to run (and why to run multiple placements) Budgeting strategies What percentage to set your lookalike audiences to The ad calendar blueprint to maximize your Tune in for more details! Resources Facebook Holiday Prep Checklist Share your thoughts Ask a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group Share this show on Twitter Never miss an episode Subscribe on iTunes Join Kurt's newsletter Help the show Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings & reviews help, and I read each one. Subscribe on iTunes What's Kurt up to? See our recent work at Ethercycle Take a ride with Kurt on YouTube Grow Your Store in 2018 Apply to work with Kurt to grow your store. Prefer to DIY? Read a free sample chapter of Kurt's book Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com Learn what's Shopify Plus got that regular Shopify doesn't?” Sponsors Try Bold Product Upsell free for 90 days Save 20% on Turbo, a blazing fast Shopify theme Improve your shop's search engine ranking with Venntov SEO Meta Manager

You've turned your Shopify store into an successful ecommerce business, now how do you take it to the next level? You have traffic, you have customers, but you feel like you could be doing more. Today on the show I chat with Kurt Elster from Ethercycle and host of the Unofficial Shopify Podcast. Inside today's conversation he shares how to scale your Shopify store by fixing the leaks in your funnel. Links: Wavebreak Kurt's Email List - Join and email him about a free Shopify Conversion Screencast Teardown (VERY LIMITED SPOTS) Ethercycle Bold Brain Listen on iTunes Get new episodes via email Learn more about Wavebreak You can't scale an ecommerce business without... You can't scale an ecommerce business without email marketing. But email is hard and time-consuming. At Wavebreak, we help ecommerce stores stop leaking revenue with done-for-you email marketing. We completely take email off your plate and turn it into a top revenue driver for your brand. Only 2 slots left. Click here to apply for a free consultation.

Are you an ecommerce business owner using Shopify? Then this episode is a must-listen. Kurt Elster is a master at helping Shopify businesses uncover hidden profits from their stores and increase their conversion rates. The Ethercycle founder joins us today to share his expert tips on where to look for profits you may be missing out on, the design mistakes people consistently make, and the #1 thing that will give you the biggest competitive advantage over Amazon. Plus, he talks about the test you should do today to see how your customers are really engaging with your site. Enjoy! Episode Highlights: 7:26 The 30,000-foot-view-quick win when it comes to optimizing your Shopify site. 9:48 The things top brands are getting right with website optimization. 12:37 The maximum number of apps your Shopify site should be running and why they maybe slowing you down, even if you've uninstalled them. 14:13 How simply improving your website's messaging can increase your conversions overnight. 15:01 Don't over complicate the landing page and why a "quickie" product page could end up being your best landing page 18:15 The things you can do to make your cart and checkout page more seamless and more user friendly. 19:46 Why if you're not using "order notes" for something meaningful you should have them turned off 25:45 The post checkout optimizations you should be making to increase your AOV. 29:46 The two misconceptions Kurt regularly sees when it comes to CRO. Links and Resources: KurtElster.com Ethercycle The Unofficial Shopify Podcast The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group Key Smart Tactical Baby Gear   Membership   Doors are now open for the Brand Growth Experts Membership, a community of top ecommerce business owners and marketers who I coach one-on-one to help scale up their businesses. Together we’ll create a plan that will help you scale up your business, and then I’ll help you execute it. The Membership is open for a limited time only, and doors close at midnight CST on Tuesday, July 24. If you want to join, make sure you don’t miss your chance. Click here to learn more.   Sponsors:   Klaviyo   This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo. If you’re running an ecommerce business and sending emails to your customers, you should be using Klaviyo. It will help you find out who your best customers are and target them one-to-one to make more money. I’ve been using Klaviyo since they were just two employees. Now they have a team of 150 and are rolling out new features almost weekly. If you aren’t already a customer, head over to www.ecommerceinfluence.com/klaviyo and you’ll get a free trial + priority on-boarding. Sezzle Looking for an easy and effective way to increase your e-commerce site’s conversion rate while also providing your customers a simple and convenient way to pay? Then Sezzle is the payment app you’ve been looking for. Sezzle allows your customers to buy now and pay in monthly installments. Sezzle settles up directly with the merchant through the purchase process and handles all verification and repayments directly with the customer so you never have to worry about dealing with missed payments. On average Sezzle customers saw a 6.5% increase in sales and a 55% growth of their average order value. Learn more at http://www.sezzle.com/influence.

Today we’re chatting Kurt Elster, the Founder & Partner of Ethercycle, a top-rated Shopify & Shopify Plus agency based in Chicago. Kurt is also the host of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, interviews to 10x your Shopify business. Kurt joins us to share his story,  how he got into commerce, what it’s been like building Ethercycle and his own brand, how he sees the commerce industry evolving, and a ton a more. So let’s get started!

Not all Shopify themes are created equal. Even in the Shopify Theme Store, which has a carefully curated collection of fewer than 50 themes, some are certainly better than others. That's we've learned In working on Shopify themes for the last five years. (Which is why we now only work on themes from trusted developers.) For new store owners on Shopify, choosing the right theme can be an intimidating task. On today's episode, I talk through my theming experience, and we take a deep dive into a new theme that's become my preferred go-to choice. Joining us is Brad Miller from Out of the Sandbox. Brad is the founder and CEO of Out of the Sandbox, the designers of Shopify's best reviewed and most popular themes. Out of the Sandbox has been designing revolutionary online shops and setting trends in the ecommerce world since 2011. Their theme work has earned them a Shopify Design Award, and they've continued to push the technological boundaries for high-performance ecommerce. — 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: Why start with a premium theme from the Shopify theme store? How Turbo theme achieves incredible performance The ‘Ludicrous' feature exclusive to Turbo Turbo's clever solution to images 40% of customers will abandon a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load The most requested features from Out of The Sandbox and what to expect next How the Theme Updater app automatically gets you the latest features What you can do to get the best support Use Code PODCAST20 to save 20% off the purchase price of Turbo Links Mentioned: Turbo Theme - Use Code PODCAST20 to save 20% off the purchase price of Turbo Out of The Sandbox Themes Full Transcript: Kurt Elster: Hello, welcome back to the Unofficial Shopify Podcast. I'm Kurt Elster, recording from Ethercycle headquarters outside Chicago, in beautiful Park Ridge, Illinois, on the second floor, all the way up in the clouds, of the Pickwick Building. Eh, that joke's lame. Forget it. Anyway, so I'm excited. I've got a great guest today on a topic that literally all of us can relate to. At least I hope we can all relate to it. Picking a theme. Picking a theme is really hard and the reason is, they're not all made alike, right? So we've got an internal rule now, is hey, if it's not from our approved ... First we said, listen if it's a third-party theme, that's not in the Shopify theme store, I don't even want to mess with it because it's, there's probably a reason. Then it became, well, even within the Shopify theme store, none of them are bad, but some are certainly better than others. So, it became, all right, we're just going to come up with a shortlist of themes that we know are solid investments for stores, are going to be reliable, are going to future-proof your store. And just stick with those. And that has been such a winning idea. And it wasn't ... Well, it was coincidence that you know, four of our five favorite themes were produced by one developer. Out of the Sandbox. So you've certainly seen, whether you know it or not, you've certainly seen Parallax in stores. You've seen Retina in stores. And more recently, and more often, you're going to start seeing Turbo, which is a really phenomenal theme. All three of those are Out of the Sandbox themes. Now, of course, there's other themes they make. But like, with these three themes, very rarely do I ever need any other theme. And they just happen to be from the same developer. So once you've picked a theme that's solid, you know, if you stick to the Shopify theme store that'll really help you out. There's only 45 themes in there. They very rarely submit a new theme. It's unbelievably stringent. Or publish a new theme. They're super stringent. Which is great. So only 45 themes in there. And I think that's a good thing. There's more than enough to be dangerous in there. But then once you've got your store set up, you've got your theme set up, then you get maybe an email from someone or you see a post somewhere and you think, "Huh. I should see what kind of page speed I have. I should check this tool that's Google PageSpeed Insights tool." Then it gives you a terrible score, right? It goes, "Here's our calculator, or score," so it doesn't really give you the actual size of the page or the load time of the page. It just gives you a score based on essentially a punchlist of things Google recommends you do, and then they can detect whether or not you're doing, and it gives you a score based on that. It gives you one for desktop, one for mobile. Oftentimes, you know, when you run a Shopify store through these things it will come back at like 50 of 100. So it looks like you have an F. Oh, my gosh! And people get, they panic. Oh, my store's so slow! A. Slow down. Performance is important, but I don't think that Google PageSpeed tool is that great. But here's why performance is important. So even if you are in a major city, you've got like 350 megabit down, you can get internet that fast, that's wild now. You're on your phone. You've got LTE, that things getting 50 megabytes, 50 megabit down. Fine. Cool. Then you get on, say, the subway. And now you find yourself on 4G or 3G or even Edge and none of that matters anymore. So even if you have the most sophisticated customers living in a big city with the best devices, even they are still going to have these issues, where performance absolutely matters for them. There is one theme out there that its big selling benefit, its development, from the ground up, is focused on performance. And it happens to both be extremely good in terms of layout, flexibility, et cetera. It's called Turbo theme. And it is, again, from Out of the Sandbox. So joining me today is Brad Miller. Brad Miller's the founder and CEO of Out of the Sandbox. Designs some of Shopify's best reviewed and most popular themes. I totally agree with that sentiment. Out of the Sandbox has been designing these themes, online shops, and setting trends in eCommerce since 2011. Around the same time I got involved with it. They've won Shopify design award for groundbre- for the Retina theme, one of my favorites. Like I don't need to know anything about your store to know you could probably benefit from choosing Retina theme. Now, with the release of this new Turbo theme, Out of the Sandbox has continued to push the boundaries for high performance eCommerce. Truthfully, I thought a lot of this was lip service, fine, until I played with the theme. I couldn't believe it. It absolutely isn't. There's lots of clever underlying technology in there. So Brad, let's talk about it. Thank you for joining me. Brad Miller: Kurt, thanks for the, that was an incredible intro. I'm super impressed. That's like, wow. That sounds really good. It's very nice of you to say. I'm a huge fan of your work, so having your endorsement is incredibly appreciated. Thanks for that. Kurt Elster: Oh, thank you. No, it means the world to me. My honor and pleasure, and I'm, you know, I did that truthfully. I did, except for that last little bit, introducing you, because I didn't want to get anything wrong, all of that was off the top of my head. Speaking to my genuine real world experience. So okay. You've got ... How many themes does Out of the Sandbox sell right now? Brad Miller: We have five unique themes. Each theme comes in a variety of different styles. But all the different styles are included in the theme. We have five unique themes. Four of them are in the theme store. One of them, Turbo, is our latest theme, is exclusively available from us. Yeah, like you'd said, Turbo is the first theme with a focus on performance. We really wanted to develop it with Shopify Plus merchants in mind, who are doing high sales. They required a high performance site. The primary performance factors being the download time of the site. But also the general, kind of, user experience. As you navigate through the site, as you add a product to your cart, and then as you go to checkout. We wanted that to be super fast, super seamless as possible. We've really grown and matured with Shopify. Like you mentioned, we've been doing themes since 2011. So we've seen a lot of merchants who have just got started with Shopify, you know, maybe they're on the Responsive or the Retina theme. Their business grows. You can see this with Shopify as well, introducing the whole Shopify Plus plan for these kind of higher volume merchants. So we really wanted to create a theme that was more geared towards these types of merchants. We see a lot of them just using our default, basic themes in the theme store. Which are great for getting up and running quickly. But there wasn't really anything with more advanced features that people are looking for, or that people have been going to agencies, paying tens of thousands of dollars to develop. We really wanted to focus all of our efforts into this ultimate theme. That's Turbo, what you see today. Kurt Elster: Right. Yeah, and truthfully, to your last point, you know, if you have a custom theme developed, in our very first Shopify store, it's still up right now, from 2011, Amlings Cycle dotcom, is a custom theme we developed. Designed and developed. And we didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. But you know, now today, when we develop a custom theme, it is easily a $20, $25,000 project. So, but unless you're a huge brand, I don't think there's a particularly a great return on investment there. I think it makes a lot more sense to start with a great premium theme and then, if you have to modify it a little bit, sure, fine, great. To do what you want, add apps, et cetera. But in the past we had used, in some of our most successful stores, like Everspans dotcom and many others, we've used either Parallax or Retina. It's just our go-to themes. Recently we did a project for a large cutlery brand that sells all over the world and they came to me and go, "We already picked Turbo theme." I said, "That's great. It's from Out of the Sandbox, I'll use it." It is the first time I'd used the theme. Truthfully, I thought to myself, "Oh, the focus is on, the whole thing is that it's performance-based. That all the focus is on performance." It isn't the case. It is just, like, unbelievably well-thought out. Run me through some of the features. How does this thing achieve its incredible performance? Like for example, I mean, to it's name, what's going on there that makes it different and better than other themes? Brad Miller: Sure. Yeah, I mean, to your point, I will mention, yeah. There is a focus on performance, but at the same time, we didn't want to sacrifice any of the design or flexibility of the theme itself. Because I mean, you can accomplish something that performs really well, if you have no images on your page. If it's just a bunch of text and something super basic. But we wanted to do something that performs extremely well and also looks amazing. Looks like the best eCommerce site that you could ever want to put together. So we did that using a variety of different things. One thing that we did introduce is a new setting that we call ludicrous speed mode. Kurt Elster: Wait, you're making a reference to the Easter egg in Tesla cars. If you have the performance model and set it to ludicrous, this thing will launch like a bat out of hell. Brad Miller: Exactly. We wanted to do something a little bit more experimental that would get you that extra kick that you just can't get on any other kind of Shopify theme. When you enable this, it creates this kind of instantaneous page transition when you're navigating through a site. So we use kind of an underlying technology called Pjax or TurboLinks. It will dynamically load a page as you hover over a link. So you land on the homepage, it loads up quickly. But as you navigate or move your mouse around, as soon as you kind of hover over a link, that url is being pre-loaded. So when you click it, it's instant. The page switches, and it's insanely fast on mobile. I mean, as soon as you tap down on a link the content is always loading. So there's a lot of pre-loading. A lot of caching. And it just makes it super smooth as you kind of flow through the site. You go from the homepage, collection page, product page. That's really kind of the core of what makes Turbo special. Of course, it's an optional setting. It does a lot of fancy things related to the pre-loading pages and that. So you can turn that off and have kind of the traditional full reload on every page. But it is a special feature. It is unique to the Turbo theme. Kurt Elster: Tell me why it's, so you said it's experimental, and I notice it's like the first general setting in there is ludicrous or standard. When or why would I not want to use it? In what situation? Brad Miller: I would, if you have a lot of apps and a lot of stores do eventually find themselves with a lot of apps, which we can touch on later, because it does affect performance. But not all apps are created equal. Kurt Elster: Certainly. Brad Miller: Yeah, yeah. As you know, the App Store's a bit of a wild west. Not all apps are necessarily coded to the same standards or tie in to the same things. Or the implementation is completely different. So a lot of them will require kind of a full-page refresh to initialize or do whatever it is that they do. So we do have that option. We recommend using for shops that do have a ton of apps installed or a lot of third-party customizations. That being said, we have worked with a lot of different app developers. I don't think there's a single app developer we reached out to and provided a copy of the theme to work with that hasn't been able to update their app to work with the theme. So we're very proactive in doing that as well. If we do happen to come across any issues, with an app and our theme, or any of our themes, really, we're more than happy to work with app developers, provide them with copies of the themes for them to test with. Kurt Elster: And I noticed ... That's great. That's fantastic. I noticed in the theme, it does something clever with images. Can you talk about that? Brad Miller: Yeah. So I mean, we use a library called Lazy Sizes. Lazy Sizes is kind of a full responsive image lazy loading library that we've utilized throughout the theme to kind of maximize image performance, because that's one of the number one factors when it comes to download speed. So utilizing this library, all the images, all the banner images, slide show images, every image throughout your shop is lazy-loaded onto the page after the page is kind of initially downloaded. It uses the exact size image for whatever kind of device you're on. Whatever resolution that device is. So that really kind of minimizes the overall download size of your site by using the exact size images that that customer requires, I guess. Whether it's on their mobile device, or a big widescreen desktop. Kurt Elster: And it accounts for screen density? Brad Miller: Yes. Kurt Elster: So whether or not a device is Retina or not? Brad Miller: Right, it will double up the size if it is a Retina screen. Kurt Elster: Oh, that's very cool. So recapping kind of what that does, it's got this feature that I have not seen in any other theme. It's doing two things. A. It is taking some of the pain out of this in automatically figuring out, based on the device, so being responsive. Responding to the device it's on. Figuring out the correct image size, based on screen density and what's being displayed. So that you're not, say, taking a giant poster-sized image and shrinking it down to a thumbnail. Right? Because that's where all- Brad Miller: That's right. Kurt Elster: Truthfully, that's one of the, probably number one when we see a store that like 12 megs and no one knows why. It's because there's images that have been missized and they're huge. Then the second is just too many apps. But you have solved the ... It sounds like you've got solutions to both those things. But especially the images. Then the lazy-loading thing is very clever. So reducing the total size of the page helps, you know, that's what we think of first when we think, "Oh, make the page faster. Make it smaller." But the other is the appearance of how fast it renders. Brad Miller: Yes. Kurt Elster: So if I can show the framework. Like if you fire up Facebook on a slow connection, you'll see it do this, where it shows just kind of like the outline of what posts look like, right? It's doing that to make it look like it's loading faster with a transition. So what your theme is doing, it loads up all the text content and the layout. And then it loads the images, right? Brad Miller: That's right. And we do so in a way, where there's a nice little blur effect to it. Kurt Elster: Yes. Brad Miller: So we might initially load a very small image and kind of blur it out and then as the larger version is loaded, it's then replaced. It's a really nice kind of fade-in effect. So like we said, we want- Kurt Elster: This concept is called, isn't it called progressive enhancement? Brad Miller: Yeah. Yeah, I mean I guess you could call it that. But it does create a nice effect. Like we said, it's like we want it to look great, but also perform amazing. So that kind of plays into that, as well. Kurt Elster: Yeah, it's not just, you know ... Another thing. We've been hired to do, like, oh, this theme is slow. Fix it. Make it faster. Brad Miller: Yeah. Kurt Elster: And one of people's concerns is always like, "But when you make it faster, it's still going to look good, right?" Brad Miller: Yeah, right. Kurt Elster: You're not going to strip everything out of this. You say, "Yeah." I mean, yes, absolutely. And there's a lot of ... That's just a thing you learn from experience and I would never expect someone to know how to do that stuff. Like a store owner. Brad Miller: No, that's true. Yeah. Kurt Elster: Whereas this theme is taking care of that stuff, which I love. It's very clever. Beyond- Go ahead. Brad Miller: Sorry, I was just going to say, but you're right. Going back to that Google PageSpeed thing. I mean, all of these are kind of itemized things that that test will kind of bring up. Whether you do have these huge large images, it will recommend you compress them. Or decrease the size of them. Or something like that. So we really, all of those common things that come up, we want it to touch on. Other things like dynamically minifying the html, which is also unique to the Turbo theme- Kurt Elster: Oh, I didn't know what. Brad Miller: Yeah, well it's not something that ... So Shopify will minify your CSS if you use the Sass file extension. Kurt Elster: CSS, yeah. Brad Miller: Yeah. But it doesn't minify your html and that's a common warning that comes up on the Google PageSpeed stuff so we implemented a couple clever lines of code to minify the html. Kurt Elster: That's crazy. Brad Miller: Yeah, we also defer all JavaScript loading. Kurt Elster: That's a big one. As far, especially, you know, with, because every app is ugh. They don't talk to each other, and every app is like, "Oh, I'm going to load jQuery," and pretty soon you're loading like four discrete versions of jQuery. Brad Miller: Yes. Yes, definitely. Oh, I know. That is an issue. But yeah, there's other things that kind of go into the theme to make it feel faster and stuff like infinite scrolling on the collection page and the minicart functionality and everything else. Kurt Elster: That's very clever. All clever stuff. I love all of it. The end result is, install the theme, you really don't have to worry about performance. The end benefit of that is A. You provide, and I think this is the most important one, is you're providing a better experience to your customers. Always. No one wants to wait. Like why should I have to wait? We like things that are fast. Fast food. Fast cars, et cetera. The secondary effect there, and this is the one people focus on, but I don't, I really don't think it's as big a deal, is that Google says, "Oh, we've got ... If your page loads faster, that's a ranking factor." Yeah, that's true. Because Google want ... But why are they doing that? It's because they want a great user experience for people. Brad Miller: Yeah. Kurt Elster: But I certainly don't think there's a situation where Google's going to say, "Hey, this is the best ... This result is the best answer to the user's query. Oh, but this site has a slow load time. Let's push that to the bottom." Like, I don't think that's happening. Brad Miller: Yeah. Kurt Elster: Think it's more if two items are tied they're going to, whichever one is faster, let's bump that one up. Brad Miller: I agree. I mean, Google does weigh in the whole user experience. You land on a site, you stay on a site. You continue to browse the site. That definitely plays into it as well. But, you know, 40% of shoppers will abandon a site that takes more than three seconds to load. So that definitely plays into it. Kurt Elster: I'm writing that one down right now. 40% of customers will abandon a site that takes, how many seconds was it? Brad Miller: More than three seconds to load. So you've gotta display something pretty quickly or you're going to risk having bounces. Kurt Elster: Yeah. Absolutely. And like four years ago, we were concerned about load time. You know, when people were still fighting about whether we should do responsive or web apps and that silly stuff. And we were concerned about performance then. That same statistic existed, you know, about people bouncing. Only it was a longer time. So as time has gone on, the amount of patience they have, has lessened. Brad Miller: Yes. Yeah. Totally. Totally. People expect a site to be very quick, very snappy. Very impatient, especially if they're shopping around online. I mean, why would they stay on your site versus, you know, hop back to Google and go to the next one. Kurt Elster: That's the critical phrase right there, is most people view, you know, they've got a store, they go, "Well, my competition is doing XYZ." You're biggest competitor is not another store. It's the back button. Brad Miller: Yes. Kurt Elster: They land on your store. Like if you were so lucky, to get them onto your site. And then you give them a subpar experience. They're just going to click back. They're going to go back to doing whatever the heck else they were doing before. Brad Miller: Right. Right, no I totally agree. Think so. Kurt Elster: Okay. Some other thing. Like I love Turbo. We've established that Turbo is good and fast and you are good and wonderful. Brad Miller: Okay. Kurt Elster: But it's got some other features I like, too. I mean, it uses sections, very flexible layout. Like this promo bar across the top, all kinds of navigation options. Are there any other nonperformance-related features that you're, in there that you're proud of? Brad Miller: We just dropped a huge 2.1 release the other day. We're really committed to building this thing out. We've listened to our customers on support. We know the features that they're looking for and we are committed to just continuing to iterate on Turbo and deliver these features. So the last release, we include a multi-take filter. Product take filter on the collection page. Which is super nice. There's also the ability to display recently-viewed products throughout your shop. Whether on the home page, collection page, product page. We developed a new alternate page template. We call it page dot details. You can essentially create the homepage layout on a secondary content page. This is a request that does come up very frequently. Everybody loves, I guess the focus and attention Shopify has provided to the homepage with all these new kind of content sections and drag and drop blocks around. It's all very nice. But it really only works for the homepage or it works best on the homepage. So we've implemented a lot of that in its own kind of page template, where you can utilize a lot of those sections. We've included that. We've included a new custom mega menu builder. A lot of merchants are looking for a lot of mixed content within a giant mega menu. Not only one. They want multiple mega menus that can also support mixed content. So we really put our heads together on that one. I think we put together a nice little custom mega menu solution utilizing the new blocks and sections to build that out. So that's now included. Kurt Elster: That's very cool. Brad Miller: Yeah. Another one I think you'll like is that we now have the ability to display price savings on the product page. I should mention, all of these settings are all optional, right? These are just features and settings there if you need them or disable them if you don't. But you can display price savings, similar to Amazon, saying how much you've saved based on the compare out price of a product. And the percentage- Kurt Elster: Oh, so it will say, so it does little quick calculations. It goes, you go, oh the price of the product's 40 bucks and normally it's 80 bucks. The compare price is 80 bucks. So then this things says, "You saved $40." Brad Miller: That's right. Kurt Elster: Pretty cool. Brad Miller: But we didn't stop there. We also implemented that on the cart, so even- Kurt Elster: Oh, I was hoping you'd say that. Brad Miller: Yeah. Which is actually, you know, a very difficult thing to do. In the minicart, we display the total cart savings, so it's a nice little incentive, you know. Once you fill up a cart with all these sale items, and you kind of see the total that you're saving. So that's also included as well. And of course, we're still adding to our collection of different sections on the homepage. So we threw in a big search section, contact form section, map section. Kurt Elster: Wow, very cool. Brad Miller: We've got a long list of different sections on our back log-in that we're going to continue to kind of add to those. Kurt Elster: That's great. I mean, what I love about that is that in the past it used to be like, not only do you have to find a theme that had the feature you wanted, but it also had to have, you know, the basic layout you wanted. Sections, and what you're doing with sections solves that problem. Brad Miller: Yeah. Kurt Elster: Where now I really don't have to think about the layout quite so much. You know, I know I can, I've got enough flexibility. I don't even have to modify this theme to get it to do what I want. Brad Miller: Right. No, we're pretty excited about sections. I mean, implementing sections in our theme was almost a complete theme rewrite. It was a ton of work to do. Kurt Elster: No, yeah. It is complicated. Brad Miller: Yeah. But now that it's done, we're really trying to unlock some of the power with utilizing sections and blocks. So I think, we recently released an update. We redid the entire sidebar throughout our themes, where it's kind of based on content blocks now. So it just makes things a lot more flexible. You're able to kind of choose the content you want. You're able to reorder it on the page. There's a lot more flexibility now with Shopify's new sections editor. Kurt Elster: So you've sold me on Turbo theme. This is now, like, my go-to. There's no reason to use anything else. Et cetera. I mean that. I mean, I say it sarcastically but no, I genuinely mean that. It's just that, it's probably my new go-to. What is the price of admission for this fantastic theme? Brad Miller: So we've priced it at $350. Which is higher than any kind of theme store theme. But I still feel the price is very low. It has an incredible amount of value. We thought about pricing this actually much higher, but we still wanted to make it accessible for agencies to use. Just the amount of development effort, time, dollars, and the continued support that we're committed to developing into this theme. You're getting a lot for that $350. You have this development team backing it. We have our whole support team supporting it. We've got a theme updater app to talk about in a minute, where you can get the latest releases and versions and new features automatically. That's a one-time price. There are no kind of ongoing subscription fees to have a theme installed in your shop. Kurt Elster: So just like the theme store, I buy this theme directly from you. And then for life I get updates on it, I get support on it- Brad Miller: Exactly. It's, yeah, that's the deal. And I'll throw this out here, too, we've got a little promo code for the listeners. If you use the discount code, podcast20, you can save 20% off the Turbo theme. So that Out of the Sandbox dotcom. Kurt Elster: Use code podcast20 to save- Brad Miller: Yeah. Kurt Elster: ... 20% off the purchase price. And does that work just for Turbo, or any theme? Brad Miller: Just Turbo right now. Yeah. Kurt Elster: Okay, cool. But why should I buy any other theme other than Turbo? Brad Miller: Well- Kurt Elster: No, I like Turbo a lot. No, and I will, I'll play devil's advocate. I saw, you know, when it was first launched, and I thought, well, it's just a performance thing and it costs 350 bucks. Maybe it's too expensive relative to other themes. But if you think about it, like, you know, even if you find a cheap developer off Upwork, you're still going to pay 500 bucks for performance optimization on the theme you already spent $150 on, so why not just skip that and start with a theme that has, you know, performance plus all these other features? So it really does, as a value-based fee, I think it, you're right, it's probably low. Brad Miller: Yeah, I mean, if you actually start to compare features and how much these individual features would cost as apps in the app store. Kurt Elster: Right. Brad Miller: You'd be surprised how quickly that adds up. And that's really what we're going after. Kurt Elster: So you had mentioned the theme updater. Brad Miller: Yes. Kurt Elster: I have seen it, and I am scared of it. Tell me what the theme updater does, and why, whether or no I should be afraid of this thing. Brad Miller: Okay, sure. So I'm sure you've had lots of experience installing a theme in a client's shop. You've maybe tweaked the template files a little bit, you know, you've added some customizations and things. And then, all of a sudden, maybe Shopify comes out with a new feature. Maybe there's a bug fix or the developer has released an update that includes some fixes in the theme. Now you're kind of stuck with the theme that you have. There is no mechanism to automatically get those new updates with Shopify. So it's kind of up to the merchants to pay a developer to go and grab the latest version and install it in their shop. Or have all these other customizations applied again to the new theme. So the whole theme updating process with Shopify is, can be costly. It can take a lot of time as well. Kurt Elster: Well, you said that the theme updating process, it's essentially it's nonexistent. Brad Miller: It's not a theme updating process, yeah. Kurt Elster: Get the new theme and re-start over. Reinstall it. Brad Miller: Right. Kurt Elster: That is basically what you have to do. Brad Miller: Yes. You have to, yeah, go back, get the theme again, and essentially just the latest version of the theme. You have to set it up again, you have to go through and configure all the settings. You've gotta configure as- Kurt Elster: Installing your apps. Brad Miller: Some of the apps may require you to uninstall and install them again or run the installation process again. Kurt Elster: So how? You've definitely agitated my pain on this one. How did you solve it? Brad Miller: Okay, so it's also a huge pain for us, as well. Because on support, we do fix a lot of issues that come up or we do update the themes and make them better. We're adding features all the time. We want to be continuously developing our themes and making them better. We're not into just turning out themes for the sake of having, you know, different designs or layouts or whatever else. We're really iterating and really focused on updating our themes and making them the best they possibly can. So it's frustrating to hear from merchants who are having a hard time getting the latest version. Or if they run across an issue that we've since fixed. It's in our interest to have them using the latest version. It just makes everybody's life a little bit easier. So what we did was we wanted to create this app that kind of automated most of this process as much as possible. So when we first released it, it allowed you to install the app. It will check all the themes that you've got installed in your shop. It'll tell you what version you're running. Of course, for Out of the Sandbox themes, this works. It will tell you what your current version is and actually what the latest version is. It'll have a little link to the change log so you can see what's changed. I mean, before this, a lot of people were even unsure about what version they were using or whether themes had versions. So we really put an emphasis that themes to have versions, they do receive updates, and updates are available and free to get in your shop. So the app will look for that, it will give you a button to grab the latest version of the theme and install it in your shop. So it's just easy to get. Easy to install. It will automatically copy over all your old settings into the new version. So that alone can save you hours, you know, uploading your logos and your slideshow images and all that other stuff. It's very time-consuming. More recently, we just released an update earlier this year where it now supports customizations as well. So if you've gone into the template files- Kurt Elster: That's what I was going to ask. I'm like okay, yeah, it saves me time, but I still have to do some things here. Brad Miller: One more thing, yeah. Kurt Elster: One more thing. Brad Miller: So if you've edited the template files, or you've installed an app that has some kind of snippet in the template files, it'll automatically detect changes to your theme. It will apply those automatically to the updated theme. If you've added extra files or extra images or anything like that, it'll copy all that stuff over too, completely automatically. So, in the best case scenario, you can update your theme, a customized theme, and get the latest version, and it will be ready to go in one click. You'll get all the same settings. You'll get all the same customizations. It'll be completely seamless. Kurt Elster: I say it in the best way possible, holy shit. Brad Miller: So, yeah. This, I mean, in the past you'd have to pay somebody, you know, at least $1000 to kind of go in, figure out what's changed, apply it to the new theme. It's really incredible. Yeah, so that's free for all of our customers. Kurt Elster: That's awesome. That's really, that is fantastic. I look forward to trying it. For the reasons you've outlined, I've been scared of the thing. Brad Miller: Understandably. I think a lot of people are concerned. Well, is this, am I going to lose changes? Am I going to, is this going to wreck my theme? Anything like that. Kurt Elster: But at the same time, like, if I was genuinely worried about it, I could just download a zip file back up and then run it and if it has totally borked, reimport my theme. Brad Miller: For sure. Sure, which is, yeah. But because of those concerns, we don't actually touch the live theme or whatever them that you're choosing to update. Kurt Elster: Oh, smart. Brad Miller: We install a completely new theme. It'll be unpublished in your shop. So it'll give you a chance to go and check it out before you choose to publish and make it live. Kurt Elster: Cool. Brad Miller: And so your current theme is completely unaltered, untouched. You don't have to worry about it breaking anything. It'll install a new theme with the latest, so you can check it out. Make sure everything's good before your customers get their hands on it. Kurt Elster: That's fantastic. We're coming to the end of our time together, but you talked about making everybody's life easier via support. How many support requests do you get? So you've got five themes. Four in the app store. How many support requests do you get a day? Brad Miller: We get quite a few. So we get ... We have over 10 support agents on support, answering emails. We receive maybe a couple hundred new requests that come into the queue every day. Kurt Elster: Oh, my god. Brad Miller: Yeah. So it's a lot of support. Yeah, we do the best we can to manage that. We really do care that everybody has the best experience as possible setting up a theme, installing in their shop, we want it to work, we want these merchants to have successful shops. But at the same time, we do have to kind of respect that you know, some shops owners should probably be working with developers if they do have additional customization requirements. Or they're looking for more advanced features. So we- Kurt Elster: Yeah, for sure boundaries have to be set. On $150 theme, you know, what's the limit of how much support you can provide, realistically? But here's my question. If I, let's say I'm a store owner. I've got one of your themes. I have an issue. Do you have any tips for, and I'm sure you do, do you have any tips for what I should do when making a support request in order to get the most favorable response? Brad Miller: Sure. I think really identifying the cause of the issue. Understanding why that issue might have happened in your shop. I would say probably the number one problem that we have is a customization has been made to the shop. Something has changed, they've installed an app, or they've uninstalled an app. There's some code leftover. Maybe there's an app conflict or something like that. So if somebody does reach out to us on support, if merchants can provide more of a context into how this issue came about, it really kind of helps us identify it better. Because, yeah, like I said, there are so many different things going on in your storefront. Most of the time it's not an issue with the default theme. Of course, if it is a problem with the default theme, we'll jump on that and provide a fix. And also release a new bug release if there are any kind of issues. But that's a problem. I mean, my number one recommendation would be to be careful with Shopify apps or any kind of customizations. That template editor is pretty easy to access. It should probably come with a little quiz before you get into it. Kurt Elster: It's easy to get yourself in trouble, for sure. Brad Miller: It's very easy to get yourself in trouble. There's a- Kurt Elster: So if you say you're getting hundreds of support requests a day, and most of the time it's because a customization or app has broken something, then I think the workaround here would be, before you make any change at all, no matter how minor you think it might be, duplicate your theme. Brad Miller: Yeah. Kurt Elster: Then make the change, and then that way when something goes wrong, you could compare the two easily and know, okay, this is what caused it. And then roll it back immediately. Brad Miller: Yeah. No, I would agree with that. I mean, if you are doing customizations, you can have multiple themes installed in your shop. Only one of them is published at a time. But you can preview- Kurt Elster: Doesn't it, I think it maxes at like 30, right? Brad Miller: I think 20. Kurt Elster: 20? Brad Miller: 20. But yeah, you can duplicate a theme, you can work on that unpublished and test it out. I'd highly recommend doing this. And before you go live with any changes, you're able to kind of test it out first. Make sure everything works first. So things are not on fire in your shop. You don't break something that customers are seeing, you know? Kurt Elster: And lastly, that brings us to the end of our time together. I have learned a ton. I'm thrilled to talk to you. But where can people go to learn more about you? Brad Miller: Out of the Sandbox dotcom is our site. Kurt Elster: Out of the Sandbox dotcom. I will link to outofthesandbox.com in the show notes. I'll link directly to the Turbo theme product page. And I will include your gracious discount code, podcast20, to get 20% off the purchase price of Turbo. Brad Miller: That sounds awesome. Thanks so much, Kurt. Kurt Elster: My pleasure. And that's it for us today at the Unofficial Shopify Podcast. I would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. So please join our Facebook group, the Unofficial Shopify Podcast Insiders and talk to us. I am always happy to help. Or sign up for my newsletter at kurtelster.com. I do reply to any of the emails, and you'll get updates whenever a new episode goes live. And of course, if you'd like to work with me on your next project, you can apply at ethercycle.com and we can together pick which Out of the Sandbox theme is right for you. As always, thanks for listening, and we'll be back next week.

If you own a tablet or iPad, you've probably shopped for a case for it. And if you bought a case for it, did you ever run across beautiful leather cases that looked like books? If so, you and I have the same taste. Pad & Quill makes those luxurious cases. Our guest today is Brian Holmes, President, and owner of Pad & Quill. He started the business in 2010 with his wife, Kari. It was a desire to create exceptionally crafted luxury accessories (rather than profits) that motivated Holmes when he chose to start the business with a budget of just over $1,000. Pad and Quill is the tale of a shop formed with bookbinders, carpenters, a painter and a working mom coming together to create beautiful handmade iPad/iPhone cases, leather bags, and other dry goods. In this episode, we dive into his seven-year journey in ecommerce and discover what he's learned along the way. — 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: How Pad & Quill got started Their direct approach to launching the brand Why you should embrace your passion The advantage of lifetime warranties How to Brian pitches the press The golden rule that governs Brian's marketing Why he moved from Magento to Shopify Plus And his advice for entrepreneurs Links Mentioned: PadAndQuill - Use coupon code BHAPPY10 to get 10% off any product Shopify Plus 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: Hello, and welcome back to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast. I'm your host, Kurt Elster, recording from Ethercycle headquarters; about 10 minutes from O'Hare Airport, if you're familiar. And today I'm talking to a wonderful, seven year-old eCommerce store owner. Well, the store is seven years old. The owner is not seven years old, I should say, I should be specific. But we've got this app called Crowdfunder, and it's not the easiest thing to install if you're not familiar with HTML. So people ask me, "Hey Kurt, can you install this thing for me?" And I say, "Yes, of course." And in doing that, I always get to check out some interesting stores. And in this case, I said, gee this seems ... I was looking at a store, it was called Pad & Quill, and I thought, this seems awfully familiar. So I went and I searched through my email, and sure enough, I had bought an iPad case from Pad & Quill in 2011. So I reached out, and I acted like, this seemed familiar because it is familiar; I used to have your case on my first gen iPad, and I would love to hear your story. This looks like a fascinating brand, they were in the process of moving to Shopify Plus. So I wanted to hear that story. So joining me today, is Brian Holmes, who is the President/Owner of Pad & Quill. He started in 2010 with his wife, Kari. Prior to running Pad & Quill, he's a Tradesman for over 16 years; we'll find out in what. He and Kari have been married for almost 27 years. Congratulations! It is so much easier to do this with a supportive family, and doing it with family helps. But Brian, thank you for joining us. Brian: Kurt, thank you for having us on. I appreciate it, having me on. My only question is, you've only boughten one case since 2011, Kurt. What's goin on? Kurt: (laughs) Let's see, I had- Brian: (laughs) Kurt: So for the longest time I just had the standard iPad case on there. And then one of my kids dropped it on the kitchen tile floor like two or three years ago, and we have not had an iPad since. Someday. Brian: Ah. Kurt: Someday I'll get around to buying another iPad. Brian: Yes. Well, you're right I'm not seven years old, I'm almost 50, but I've been doing this for seven years. That is correct. Kurt: Very good. Brian: Yeah. Kurt: For our listeners, what is Pad & Quill? Brian: So, Pad & Quill is a, we are a luxury accessory maker. So we design and craft luxury goods for tech and play. That's kinda what we like to say. They're durable goods. They're artisan made. Those four words are very important to us. We don't wanna make anything that is going to fade away within a year and breakdown, et cetera. So all of our products come with longer warranties, and we want them to be very well made, as far as what we call good art. So when we make a product, to us, it should be both beautiful and functional. Cause you can have a lot of products out there that are really nice to look at, but they don't last, or they're really, really functional, but they're just ugly. So what we're trying to do is create these kind of beautiful leather bags, iPad cases, MacBook cases, things like that, that are unique, but also provide a function, provide a utility and are durable. They last a long time. So that's kinda been our focus. We're a typical company, that when we started, we started one place, and ended up somewhere else. That's very common in startup stories, that the products you started with aren't always the products you end up making five years later. Kurt: So somewhere along your line you had to pivot. Going back to the beginning, how did you start Pad & Quill? Brian: Yeah. Kurt: And what was your first product? Brian: Yeah. So we started with $1,200, and I- Kurt: Very good. Brian: I painted my web designer's deck. Kurt: (laughs) Brian: She painted it ... She still works with us, she's still a consultant, Kathy. She made our website. She coded it on ... I can't even remember where it was coded, what platform; think it was WordPress. And we started an original ... She built it all, all I knew is that I had seen a product out in San Francisco by a company called DODOcase. Kurt: DODOcase, another Shopify store. Brian: Yeah, they made a wood and book case, and I saw what they were doing. And I thought, my word, we could do this, but we could more than what they're doing. We could do, like, MacBook cases, and iPhone cases, and all kinds of stuff. So that kinda was the inspiration. So we took the $1,200, I paid a photographer far less than he deserved; he still works with me today. Now he's making money, but he knew we didn't have a lot so he gave me a deal. We built four prototypes, and we put up the site, it was in late June of 2010, and just started reaching out to the press saying, "Hey, we've got these products. They're on pre-order, they'll deliver in six weeks." You know, basically, help us fund this, in many ways. Reached out to everyone you could think of. Some Wired, I was talking to Walt Mossberg at The Wall Street Journal, who turned me down, of course. Kurt: (laughs) Brian: But what happened was, we got picked up by a couple people. So Gadget Lab picked us up at Wired, and then someone at Gizmodo wrote about us; and it started to pick up. Sales started coming in, and what had happened is, it was really born of not an idea that I had been thinking about. It was born out of a passion of a product I already saw, that I liked, which was the iPad and then the book bindery style case. And it just, kinda like, came together one evening. I was just like, "Wait a minute, we could do this. And we could do this better." You know, cause typical entrepreneurs think they can always do it better. So I was thinking, we can do this better, or different. Kurt: So when you saw that original DODOcase- Brian: Yeah. Kurt: You saw an iPad, [inaudible 00:05:50] and you saw ... And at that time, that was very early; I don't know if that was the first gen or second gen iPad at that point. Brian: First gen, first gen. Kurt: First gen, okay. So very early on. When you first held an iPad, it did have kind of a magical quality to it, where it's like, it's just this big, solid glass display that I can poke at. Brian: Right. Kurt: And at that time, apps had really ... Like, a lot of them had these very novel interfaces; it was pretty exciting. Brian: It was. Kurt: Back six years ago, it seems like forever ago, and now we don't think twice about it. But it was exciting. And then you had seen, you're right, DODOcase in San Francisco who was using traditional book ... Really, I mean, they were making cases using just traditional book binding- Brian: Techniques, yeah. Kurt: Techniques. Brian: Yep. Kurt: And you're right, in the typical, the entrepreneurial mindset, you said, "I love both of these. Why can't I do this? Why not me?" Brian: Yeah. Kurt: That's often how businesses start. Why not me? Brian: Yeah, and it didn't have, necessarily, a logic behind it. It had an opportunity, is what was seen. But here's the interesting thing, what happened was, is that as Kari and I started working on these products, all of a sudden there was something that connected for both of us; which was, these devices by Apple are beautifully designed, made of aluminum and glass, steel, gorgeous, gorgeous finishes, but they lacked warmth. Kurt: Yeah, they're ultra modern, which- Brian: Yeah, they're ultra modern Kurt: Can often make them feel cold. Brian: Which is fine, but we love, and that's a huge passion of ours, is that we love traditional materials. So it wasn't just book bindery, and that's why after the first two years of selling I ... I mean, we shipped about 3,000 iPad cases out of my basement window- Kurt: Hmm Brian: In the first nine months of the business. So what we were doing is we were having a bindery in Minneapolis make the books. And we were having a CNC Maker make the wood, and they were putting it together for us. And then we would take it to our basement and do some finishing touches, and ship them. So, we continued our press push. We constantly were reaching out to the press, coming out with new products. So we were in a never-ending cycle of creating new things. So we created a book-style case for a MacBook Air, which was very unique to the market, and that got us a lot of pickup. We just kept working through all these different products. We did stuff for the Kindle, at that time. This again, back in 2010 when the Kindle was pretty popular. Yeah, and then after about 3,000 or 4,000 products, my wife was like, "I want the basement back." Kurt: (laughs) Brian: So that's pretty much what happened. So we found a spot in Northeast Minneapolis, which is kind of an arts community area of Minneapolis, in downtown. We found a little spot there, and that's where we've been since. So, we've been there since I think May of 2011. Kurt: Did you, at all, have a background in business, entrepreneurship, manufacturing? Did you have any unfair advantage or skills that you think played a part in the success? Or at least, did you just have so much hubris you said, "You know, I think I could do this and then figure it out." Brian: Yeah, it's interesting you said unfair, cause that's an interesting term; that it's unfair. I mean, I know what you mean, like did I have something that I could leverage, that other people wouldn't typically have. Here's the thing, I had been a painting contractor. So I had done wall painting, like, house painting. I'd done that for 16 years. We had four kids. I didn't wanna be a painter for the rest of my life. And then the last five years of my trades work, and this was my own company, and I had a couple guys working for me, we were pretty small. In the last five years, I got into more artistic designs. So I was doing a lot of artisan finishes on walls and design work. Kurt: Like French plaster, and that kinda thing. Brian: Yeah. Kurt: Okay. Brian: Exactly. Kurt: Cool. Brian: And Venetian plasters, all that stuff. And what was interesting was, I really enjoyed that part of it. I, then, got my four year degree. In those last five years, I got my four year degree at night, in Psychology, ironically. I had never finished my four year. I went and got it, never used it. Think I decided at the end of my Psychology degree that I couldn't listen to people that long. Kurt: (laughs) Brian: So I ended up not doing anything with that, but I took a job with a small tech startup; cause I wanted to get out of painting. I didn't feel like I was using my skills the way I wanted to. So I took a risk and jumped into a small startup, which failed. It failed in about 18 months. It was a tech startup with a guy here locally, he was an inventor. It went poorly. What happened was, is that, the idea for Pad & Quill, the idea for me ... Like, I didn't have any manufacturing background. But my time, those 18 months in that startup, taught me almost a Master's level about here's how you'd operationalize a product; here's all the things you would need to make a product happen. And so, I think Pad & Quill was kinda like, a culmination of multiple life experience; running a painting company, being part of a small startup. It just kinda all came together, and I thought I could do this, and here's how I'd do it. And as I've moved further away, I'm realizing I love design. You know, I have no background in actual design. I have no background in product design. It was very much self-taught, but it's following ... I'm good at reading what people want to see in the markets, and then kind of taking it and putting my own flavor to it. Kurt: Okay. So early on you started with, it starts with your passion, and it sounds like you have a passion for product design, which is great. Brian: Yeah. Kurt: It's so much easier to run a business when it's exciting to you, versus I'm just going to do this because it will sell. That's such a struggle; and some people have the discipline to do it. I think it just makes life harder. Brian: It does. Kurt: Certainly easier if you enjoy the product. So you created this ... How many products did you launch with, like, within the first 12 months? Brian: Two. Oh, in 12 months, probably- Kurt: So you started with two. Brian: Started with two, and then we added some Kindle, and then some MacBook products. So they- Kurt: And they're all variations on ... They're essentially the same product in different form factors. Brian: Exactly. It was the same product on the same theme. So then, in 2011, the iPad 2 came out, so that was a big lift for us; and we became a competitor to DODOcase. And there was another company, I believe called Portenzo, out there at the time; and Treegloo. There was a few other competitors doing what we were doing. But here's what happened, and this was a huge shift for us, in 2012, so I'm a good two years in, I was noticing that these books were falling apart. So what was happening is, these books were made in traditional book bindery techniques, using really good book material; but they were falling apart. And I was like, they look beautiful, but they don't last. And I was realizing this is a ... You know, people love our product, they love our design, but I don't love that they don't last. And if you're cynical you could say, well that just means people will come back and buy another one. And my comment to that is, no, it means people will be disaffected by your brand. Kurt: I agree. Brian: They'll say your stuff isn't gonna last. Kurt: The brands I've seen where the product is incredibly durable, where they're comfortable in giving, like, really outlandish warranties on it because it's so durable; those are the brands where people, they don't have to worry about it falling apart and someone buying another one because people like it so much, they recommend it and they often will buy multiples. Brian: Right. Kurt: A good example would be, oh there's a Reddit group, I think, called Buy It For Life, where people just recommend products that they think will last a lifetime. Brian: Oh, funny. Kurt: Yeah. Off the top of my head ... And some are leather goods. But often times we see Saddleback Leather's bags mentioned, Beltman leather gun belts, which a gun belt- Brian: Okay. Kurt: Just turns out, it's a very stiff belt. Brian: Yeah. Kurt: I'm wearing one right now; it's a client. Brian: (laughs) Kurt: Yeah, those are great. Brian: Yeah. Kurt: What's the other one? Another good example. Oh, we use Everest bands as an example; they make watch straps for Rolex, but out of this unreal durable rubber. We had a review where someone said that they run it through an autoclave on a weekly basis, and the thing's fine. Brian: Yeah, yeah. Kurt: And it doesn't hurt their sales, people buy multiple products. So, no, I'm with you. Brian: And so what happened is, in 2011, I said that's it. It was late 2011, I said we have gotta shift to leather. We've just gotta shift, cause this is not a sustainable ... We're doing the eCommerce thing well. You know, by the way, we're not buying any ads from Google for the first three years. We are existing purely on reaching out to the press with new products. Any press that'll listen to us, and you know, if you have something kind of sexy, they'll write about it. Kurt: So that's a- Brian: And that would bring in sales. Kurt: Alright, that is an excellent point. But it's so difficult. Brian: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Kurt: Early on, the only marketing you were doing were two things, PR and these continuous launch cycles. Brian: Yep. Kurt: So you're coming out. You end up, kinda trapped in a thing where you're always launching new products; and that could be good, or it can be a struggle. Brian: Yeah, it's a little of both. Kurt: It's a little of both. Brian: Yeah. Kurt: But it gives you a reason to keep reaching out to the press. And once, I think, you've gotten over that initial hurdle where they're interested in you, and you start developing relationships, it helps. Brian: Right. Kurt: But what do you think goes into, like, what makes a good press pitch? Cause this is so difficult. Brian: Yeah. This is a good question. This is a good question. Two things, be real. You know, don't sit there and try to ... Don't talk to a press person like you're not pitching them; you are pitching them. But, with that said, be brief. Okay. Brevity is the soul of wit, is a famous saying. I love that saying; it's very true. Be very brief in your communication. Send a big fat image to the press. Make sure you're taking some photography of your product that looks nice. Pay a photographer friend, if you're just starting out, to maybe give you a hand. Because good imagery goes a long ways in a writer's mind, because in the end, what they're looking for is, are you offering me something my readers would care about? Is this interesting to my readers? Cause if it's interesting, yeah I'll write about it. I'll mention it. I'll tweet about it. So, be brief, be very real, just be open. Say, "Hey we're just starting out. We're a family business." That's what we used to say. Our pitch was, "Hey this is Brian from Pad & Quill. We're a small family business here, in Minneapolis. We've got these beautiful new iPad cases we're just releasing. Here's some images. Thanks for any considerations, if you'd cover us." I still say that same email, what I just said to you just now, today. Kurt: Hmm. Brian: I still email that exact same way, today, when I'm emailing Wired. Kurt: I'm sure it works. Brian: Yeah. Kurt: I am on the receiving end of so many awful pitch emails, and outreach emails. Brian: Yeah. Kurt: That when one comes through where it's like, alright, it's not a giant wall of text. It's concise, it's to the point, it tells me what the advantage to me and my audience is, and it's not trying to trick me, or in any way mislead me. It's saying, hey, this is who I am, this is what I can offer you or your audience, and if you wanna know more information, here's next ups. Brian: Right. Kurt: And it's genuine and real. Brian: It is, and I think that, that has a huge benefit. Again, it's that whole idea of, are you serving people? So I come from the place of serving my customers. I serve my customers, then I'll be able to create an income for myself and my family. If I serve my vendors by creating a customer base, then my vendors will be loyal to me, and continue to make products on time; because they know that I have a loyal customer base. If I'm going to the press, am I operating from a place of service? How am I serving the press person? Not using, serving. There's a huge difference between those two. Because in serving someone, you're saying, how can I help your column to be more interesting? Would this be a way to do it? And the press person may say, "No, this is not of interest to me right now," and that's fine. But it's better to come from that perspective, more of humility, than to come from, "You know, you should cover this. We have a lot of customers. You should cover our products, they last forever." Kurt: (laughs) Brian: That doesn't go very far with the press. It's funny, I wanna finish that pivot because you brought up a company I wanna kinda tie you into. So, in 2012, we wanted to move to leather goods. I wanted to get into more leather cases. I wanted to make an iPhone case. We were making them, at the time, out of traditional book bindery material. They'd last, honestly, about nine months. We were charging, like, $50, and I'm thinking, that's too much money for somethin that falls apart. You know? How do we do this? So I started reaching out to leather manufacturing companies, and I came across a company called Saddleback Leather Company. Kurt: Very good. Brian: And I hit up their PR guy, and I said, "Hey, I wanna do manufacturing." And they said no. And on the third time, I kept coming back, they gave in. So, all of our, the majority, I shouldn't say all, but the majority of our leather goods are made by Saddleback's manufacturing. So, Dave Munson's a good friend of mine, that developed over the last four years from all this. So it's funny you brought up Saddleback, cause I was like, "Yep, that's our people." Kurt: Right. Brian: And that's the thing is that, what I knew I needed, I don't wanna make just a beautiful item, I have to make something that lasts and is durable. And we have been so thrilled to be working with Saddleback's team. They have a plant in Mexico that we use, and it's just phenomenal, they treat their people really well. I've been there, I've seen what they do. It's just a fantastic company to work with. Yeah, so that's who we use for all our leather. So that happened in 2012, and we launched this little leather wallet case with them; and it was partly made here, actually. Some of it was made here, some of it was made in Mexico. It was all brought to St. Paul and assembled, and that took off in 2012. We had a huge, huge sales cycle, our biggest year ever in 2012; at that time. Kurt: This is just a leather wallet? This was your- Brian: Yeah, it was basically, like, a leather wallet case with our wood frame. We had our unique wood frame attached to all leather, so it was really durable. And that started in 2012, it was featured in the New York Times in 2013. We had a big year in 2013 and 14 because of it. Yeah, iPhone cases were real good to us in the first three years. And then, in 2013, 14 is when we started developing our lifestyle line. That's when we started bringing in bags, we started creating ... Our first bag launch was in late 2013. Kurt: I'm admiring your Classic Journeyman leather wallet on your website. I gotta- Brian: Oh yeah. Kurt: Pick up one of these. Oh, and it even comes in different colors. Brian: Oh yeah. Kurt: Oh that chest- Brian: Yeah, if that Chestnut looks familiar, you've seen it at Saddleback Leather. And I have no problem promoting Saddleback, cause honestly, it's a great company. Dave and I are different designer styles, definitely, but he makes great bags. He makes great bags. Kurt: Yeah, I see right on here. It says, "30 day, money back promise, and 10 year leather guarantee." Brian: Yeah. Kurt: So tell me, was it scary to offer this kind of warranty? Brian: Yeah. Yeah, it always is. It was funny cause I had a guy from inc.com, I was doing an interview two years ago, and he asked me, "Why not lifetime warranty? Why 25?" And I thought, it was a good question, and I thought, because lifetime is so cliched; everyone says lifetime. But by putting 25 years, what I'm trying to say is, it's gonna last two and half decades. You're gonna get a lot of use out of it. And by the time they last two and half decades, you're probably gonna want another one anyhow. You know, we'll have new stuff by then. Kurt: Right. Brian: I think we put a year around it because it gives it a definitive, like, wow this is built to really last. Yes, it's built to last. Is it scary? Yeah, it is, because you do have things break. Hardware breaks, stitching fails; it happens from time to time. We repair it and take care of it, but yeah. Put it this way, I don't feel nervous about the quality we're putting out, though. Does that make sense? We got a lot of confidence behind what we're doing. Kurt: Right, if you're confident in it, it shouldn't be scary. Brian: Yeah. Kurt: If you believe in your product, you shouldn't be afraid of it. Brian: Yeah. Kurt: I mean, really, your only fear is will people abuse it? And you're always gonna get someone who does. Brian: Yeah. I mean, we started coming out with ... We found a book bindery material that lasts more than six months. We found one that lasts for years. Now, we put a one year warranty on it, but it'll last. We tell customers, it's a one year warranty, but you'll have it for years. Because we found this really tough buckram, that's really beautiful; it's used in the library of Congress. That's what we wrap our iPad cases in. Kurt: Hmm. Brian: So for us, it's all about the materials. Will they last? So I guess I'm ... No, to answer the question, I'm not too worried because we're trying to use the materials that will last. Kurt: Right. Brian: Yeah. Kurt: So you've got, you're in the process ... Well, probably by the time this airs, maybe, your Shopify store will have launched. Brian: Hard to say. Kurt: Hard to say. Maybe it has, maybe it hasn't. Brian: We actually see a delay coming because of, and you can edit this out if you want, or keep it in, I don't care. We may be unable to switch for at least a month or two because of a new iPad coming out in a few weeks. Kurt: (laughs) Cool. Brian: Because of that, we're gonna have so much lift on the site, we are very hesitant to shift platforms until the sales calm down. Kurt: So what platform are you on now? Brian: Magento. Kurt: And you're switching to Shopify Plus. Tell me- Brian: Thank God. Kurt: (laughs) Alright, so what happened? Why are you doing that? Brian: We were told early on, I had talked to a consulting group, and they said, "Oh, you should be on Magento, it's scalable, you can customize." All true, all true. I call Magento, kinda like, the PC, and Shopify is kinda like a Mac. Kurt: Hmm. Brian: That's how I see the two. I mean, you can do a lot of customization on Shopify, but it's very plug and play friendly. And for the entrepreneur who wants to start a company, the last thing you want, is to be figuring out how many hours you can pay a $150 an hour developer. Because if you have a Magento site, that's what you're doing all the time. You're paying a developer, constantly, for the smallest changes. Kurt: Right. Brian: Whereas, on Shopify, you have app store, you have plugins. We're, of course, with what we're doing, we're paying developers to help us with small projects here and there. But for the most part, it's really a lot easier to assemble a Shopify site. Magento is definitely customizable, but boy, you better have Magento Pro engineers, who are doing all your coding. They have to do all your maintenance, manage all your plugins. If you have conflicts with your plugins, that's up to you to figure it out. Shopify does all that for you. They do that thinking for you. Kurt: Right. Brian: That's something that is a huge benefit to us. We were debating Magento 2.0, last year, or Shopify, and came down on Shopify. Kurt: What was the straw that broke the camel's back, where you said, alright it's time to make the switch? Cause it is not an easy task to change platforms when you've got an existing, running business. Brian: It's not. I think, a couple things. One, we designed this site about three to four years ago, it was starting to feel three to four years old. The current site at padandquill.com if you go there right now, it's three to four years old design. And we're kinda, you know what, we need to make this a little cleaner. We've moved more into a luxury lifestyle brand. We wanna even display more large imagery about our lifestyle and what we do, and what we love. So, that was kinda the impetus to go, okay, what platform do we want it? We were thinking, originally, Magento 2.0, and then we started considering just how much technical work was required; and that's when we reached out to Shopify, and it was a pretty easy sale. Cause we were like, "Sounds good!" I mean, we'd pay a certain fee. We're on Shopify, what's it called? Shopify Plus? Kurt: Shopify Plus. Brian: Yeah, so we're paying a fee, but that's like, I already pay that fee with a developer right now to guarantee 99.9% uptime. Kurt: Right, yeah. Brian: I have to pay someone that right now. Kurt: Yeah. The thing you're trading ... It's interesting to sell, trying to explain the benefits and the value proposition of Shopify Plus to an existing Shopify store owner. They're like, "Alright." You have to figure out, like, what's the problem you're facing, and the Shopify Plus will solve it. Versus when someone is on Magento and they're looking at switching and you go, well you don't worry about, you know, for one flat fee, someone else is gonna manage and you never worry about hosting uptime, updates, security, all of that goes away, and support. Brian: Right. Kurt: And it just becomes a no brainer. Brian: And we've had security issues, just being open with you. We've had some security issues pop up because of outdated plugins. Kurt: Right, and those- Brian: And all kinds of stuff. And it was, like, an outdated plugin in a blog. Kurt: Yeah. Brian: On our Magento site. And someone had gotten in through the back door, and we caught it, fixed it. But it was one of these things where we're like, okay Shopify does all that for us. Kurt: Yeah. I have, literally, never seen a security vulnerability like that happen on Shopify. Whereas, previously we did a lot of WordPress development work, and that was like a constant, constant battle trying to keep those things locked down. Brian: Right. That's the last thing you need to be worrying about. Right? Kurt: Yeah, that's just such an unnecessary- Brian: I mean, that's the last thing. When you're designing products, you're trying to ... Cause what am I? I'm a designer. I'm a salesman. I'm a community developer. Like, we have a family of customers, that's where our focus needs to be. You know? Not on security issues on the site. Cause 98% of our revenue comes from eCommerce, our store. Kurt: Hmm. That's excellent. Brian: Yeah, we are not in wholesale. We're very much like Saddleback; we're eCommerce only. Kurt: So, we're coming to the end of our time together. You have had a long, successful, and wonderful journey over the last seven years. What are some of the things you've learned, that you would go back tell yourself when you were starting out? Brian: Oh, that's a great question. Did I tell you to ask me that question? That's a good one. Kurt: (laughs) No, no. You said what three things have you learned building a brand? Brian: Yeah. I would say this, if you have a product you're making that's starting to sell, and it's selling pretty well and you love making that product, and other products like it ... Whatever the field is, whatever you do, be very careful to not listen to consultants too much. There is wisdom in a host of counselors, there really is. But in the end, your passion has to be from you about what you wanna sell and bring to your customers. So be careful how much you listen to consult ... I did a lot of consultant listening early on, that I wouldn't do now. I would just be who I am. And the more that Kari and I have just been who we are as a couple in this business, the more success we've seen. The more we have followed what other people have told us, "Well, you're getting big now. You really need to think about strategic changes." Those are big disasters. Not disasters, that's a heavy word. Those have not been fruitful. So, be who you are. To the degree that you can do something you love, is a huge blessing, it really is. Not everyone gets that opportunity. Like I said, I was painting for 17 years. I was thankful I was able to bring in an income, but I didn't really enjoy painting. So, where you can match a passion or a desire to income, it's awesome. But it's not ... I don't think it's something you can always do. Does that make sense? Kurt: No, absolutely. Brian: I'm not trying to paint a rosy picture here, because it's pretty hard to do that. Kurt: I think it comes down to having an authentic voice, being true to yourself, being true to your brand. Brian: Yep. Kurt: The hard part is figuring out what that voice and brand are, and then letting that show through. Every time I've been scared to include more of my personality in my marketing and my work, it has always paid off. You know, people like having that authentic voice; and that's what part of the podcast is. Brian: Right. Kurt: I'm myself on the show, and then by the time someone says, "Hey Kurt, could we work together on this?" And we get on the phone, they go, "I feel like I already know you." Yeah, because the whole time, I've been myself, and that's so important. Brian: Right. That is so important. It is so important. Plus, you'll just be happier with yourself, at the end of the day. Cause you've been true to yourself, even if the business doesn't work out. You just don't guarantee that any of these businesses will succeed, right? Kurt: No, absolutely not. It's always a risk. Brian: But in the end of day, if they fail, were you yourself? Were you trying to be yourself? Yeah. Kurt: So, Brian- Brian: A good entrepreneur gets back up and says, "Okay, what can I do next?" Kurt: Yeah, you learn from it, you move on. Brian: Yep. Kurt: And try the next thing. Brian: Yep. Kurt: So Brian, where can people go to learn more about you? Brian: Yeah, so, the best place to learn about us is at www.padandquill.com. So that's our website, click on About Us if you wanna see our story in more detail; that's at the bottom of the page, About Us. You'll see a picture of Kari and I, and there's kind of our story, and kinda what drives us, our passion is very interesting as well. Also, coupon code. We have a coupon code for your listeners. Kurt: Wonderful. Brian: So bhappy. So the letter B, and then happy, H-A-P-P-Y, number 10, just one zero. That's 10% off anything, any product, including bags, leather bags as well. Kurt: And they are beautiful bags. 10%. Brian: Thank you! Thank you. Kurt: Alright, I wrote that down, I will include it in the show notes for folks. Brian: Cool. Kurt: Brian, thank you for everything. I appreciate it. Brian: Yeah, Kurt, thanks so much for having us on, and wish you best with your success on your podcast. Kurt: Thank you. That's all for us today at The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode. So please, join our Facebook group, The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Insiders, and let me know. Or sign up for my newsletter, kurtelster.com, shoot me an email. Either way, you'll be notified whenever a new episode goes live. And of course, if you'd like to work with me on your next Shopify project, you can apply at Ethercycle. Com. As always, thanks for listening, and we'll be back next week.

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.

In April during our Unite coverage, I had dinner with Carson McComas, the owner of Shopify Plus agency Fuel Made, and we got to talking about our mutual love of marketing automation, and specifically Klaviyo. Now, if you're not using Klaviyo, that's okay. Don't tune out, hear me out. Carson mentioned to me that they were having great success with Klaviyo to the point where they were pushing the limits of ecommerce email marketing automation. I immediately knew I had to have the rest of the conversation on this show. So I emailed Carson, and here's what he said: “Would love have Lisa on with you. She's the bomb and knows email marketing and Klaviyo like a pro. She's generated some pretty incredible ROI for our clients like Beardbrand.” Lisa heads the email marketing department at Fuel Made, she specializes in Klaviyo Email Marketing, and she knows it like the back of her hand. She's looked through 100's of Klaviyo accounts, helping clients add tens of thousands of dollars in automated monthly revenue by setting up their triggered marketing. In this episode, LIsa Oberst is going to walk this through the very same Klaviyo email marketing automation campaigns she's used to add huge value to Shopify stores like BeardBrand. — 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 how: Why and how to start with email marketing What to do before starting with email marketing The three typical lead magnet formats Lisa uses, and how to brainstorm Lead Magnets that capture emails The safe & polite way to offer your opt-in The 3-step approach to pop-ups The basic segmentations you must have The 4-step email cart abandonment email that converts The uncommon email that converts at 9% for BeardBrand Lisa's one-tip from Links Mentioned: Get Lisa's Email Marketing Checklist! Klaviyo - Get your free account FuelMade BeardBrand Leno's Garage HelloBar InkedGaming 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 Elster: Recording from Ethercycle headquarters outside Chicago. This is the unofficial Shopify Podcast and I'm your host Kurt Elster. You heard our wonderful Shopify Unite coverage, which was very exciting. One of our best, our most listened two weeks ever; 7,000 downloads something crazy. We're going to crack a quarter million downloads. I'm really, really excited. I could not have done it without you guys. It's amazing. It's been a wild ride. Anyway continuing on that Unite coverage, I met with a lot of really interesting bright people there and that's where I have been picking up some wonderful guests, was from networking at Unite. One of the first things I did, was go to a VIP dinner there and the gentleman sitting to my left at this dinner was none other than Carson McComas your Shopify Plus Agency Fuel Made. We got to talking pretty quickly about our mutual love of marketing automation and specifically Klaviyo. Now, if you're not using Klaviyo, that's okay, don't turn out. Here me out here, because a lot of marketing automation principles will work across several different platforms and just that I like and endorse Klaviyo. Carson mentioned to me that they're having great success with Klaviyo to the point where they are pushing the limits of ecommerce email marketing automation. At which point, I heard the needle scratch in my head and I immediately knew I had to hear the rest of this conversation on the show so that you could benefit from it. Of course, I want to learn too. I do most of my learning through this podcast truthfully. It's great resource for me. I emailed Carson right away and I said, "Hey, come on the show. You're a great person, I want to hear this." He replied, and I am quoting. He said, “I'd love to have Lisa on with you. She's the bomb and those email marketing in Klaviyo like a pro, she's generated some incredible return on investment for clients like Beardbrand. I could not have wrote a better intro myself. Now I know Lisa has female marketing department at Fuel Made. I'm told she specializes in Klaviyo email marketing and she knows it like the back of her hand. I believe it. She has looked through hundreds of Klaviyo accounts helping clients at tens of thousands of dollars in automated monthly revenue by signing up their triggered marketing, so Lisa, thank you for joining us. Lisa Oberst: Thank you, Kurt, great intro. I appreciate that. Kurt Elster: My pleasure. Tell me, give me briefly, give me your Klaviyo background, how did you get into this? Lisa Oberst: Sure, so about two years ago, a little bit more, I moved to L.A. and joined a three-person team that was building an agency specialized in Klaviyo. That's really when I started my special connection to Klaviyo and since then I've been just needy in Klaviyo, so about a year ago, I joined Fuel Made and I've been developing our Klaviyo email marketing at Fuel Made. Kurt Elster: Very good. You've worked with some big brands including a well known Shopify rockstar who's been on the show once before the Beardbrand guys were very cool, tremendous business and probably them evangelizing their experience is really contributed to the explosion of beard oil products, which is crazy to think about. Aside from that, so certainly you have street cred, but let's dive into it. First, make the case for email marketing in general. I will play devil's advocate. People go, "Email marketing is dead. It's all about social media." Help me make the case for email marketing? Lisa Oberst: Sure, that shouldn't be too hard. A lot of stores that I start a conversation with don't have any email marketing in place. The most important thing, they don't even have a need capture in place. They have no way of even starting a conversation with leads who come through their store. I know, Kurt, you know about this. It is so important to capture all of this traffic that you're spending money on to get to your store and that is not going to convert. About 98% of visitors are not going to convert on a first purchase, because you need to have the opportunity to start up a conversation with these people before they leave your store. Kurt Elster: Yeah, as an example, let's say I got the most optimized store in the world. I have some clients with really optimized stores. They do 5% conversion rate, that's amazing. That means for every hundred people that go to that store 95 of them don't buy anything, they just show up and bounce. Whereas, email marketing lets you turn anonymous visitors are more or less useless to you. Email marketing is going to let you provide value to them. Start building a relationship with them. Stay top of mind and lots of other fun things we will learn about. If you think email marketing is dead compared to social media, well, A; they're not mutually exclusive. You could do both. You could certainly do both. Think about how many times a day you check your email. Unless you are unbelievably disciplined, you are probably checking it 10 times a day. That's just the nature of who we are as a culture now. Don't discount email marketing and love it. All right, now we've the case for it. I believe in it. What do you do first? How do we start this conversation? Lisa Oberst: Yeah, it's all about the conversations. You want to start by thinking of who you're talking to. As I said already, the first thing you want to do is having need capture in place. Before we even thinking about writing an email and sitting down to write content, you want to take a step back and think of who is your ideal customer. That's the way we do it and I definitely recommend doing it, is having a picture of your ideal customer in your head to think of what is the offer that is going to get them so excited that they will not even think twice about giving you their email address. That is step one. That's coming up with a great offer. Kurt Elster: Before we've even come up with, we've even touched email marketing, really, we're thinking about the lead magnet. I'd like to think of the lead magnet as like, all right before- Lisa Oberst: Exactly. Kurt Elster: The email marketing at that point, if you think of it is like human to human is dating, by that point you have gotten the digits, you're now entering the beginning stages of dating here with this customer before even then, you need a good pick up line. That's your lead magnet. The first thing you think about is your lead magnet, but that something that make sense that is valuable to the customer, right? Lisa Oberst: Right, exactly. It's going to vary. It's going to vary a lot from one story to another. You mentioned Beardbrand for example. In Beardbrand's case we are giving away information. It's all education-based and it is working extremely well, but we were able to 4x; their lead capture rate by just giving away 10 tips on how to grow a beard. Kurt Elster: Is it like PDF or an email course? Lisa Oberst: It's an email. It actually just one email. Yeah, it's one email with 10 tips and then it's beginning of a Beardbrand bootcamp. Kurt Elster: Okay. Lisa Oberst: Sorry, go ahead. Kurt Elster: No, so I love this idea. This is like the first chapter of my book Ecommerce Bootcamp we talk about … You could get the free sample for free if you guys want it, ecommerce-bootcamp.com. We talk about sales through education or for lack of a better term "saducation". That's actually what you just described. You're not giving away a coupon. You're not giving away free product or sample. You're just flat out providing people. You're giving away value by educating them. Lisa Oberst: Exactly. In some cases, giving away a discount, giving away a product is going to be the most relevant offer. In others, it isn't. It's all about thinking the person that you're starting the conversation with. In Beardbrand's case, we're talking to customers who are obsessed with their beard; they want to learn everything about it. It makes sense to grab them with this education-based marketing. We do that and then we feed them into a welcome sequence. This welcome sequence is the continuation of the conversation. We're gradually taking the new visitor through a journey of learning about their beard. We're telling them everything they're wondering about their beard already. At the same time, we're taking this so little opportunity to tell them about Beardbrand products, because, well, how to take good care of your beard, you might want to check this out as well. We're not making it all about the product. We're making it about value, about what the customer is interested in, does that make sense? Kurt Elster: No. Absolutely. Yeah. No one wants to be sold too. I don't want to listen to a sales pitch. I don't want to hear about your time share. I want value. I want you to give me a better life. As a man with a moderate/mild beard, if you give me some tips on, "What do I do with this thing so it doesn't like scraggly and gross?" Honest to god, it's a thing you have to learn. I found it like I did not figure out how to properly shape and shave my beard until this year when I saw a video from another beard Shopify store BEARD KING, sells a different product. Yeah, honest to god, it sounds silly, but when you think about it, now I learned that. Now almost every time I trim my beard I think about that piece of content and I think about BEARD KING. This connection has been made where I can't help but think about this Shopify store and their product every Sunday when I'm trimming my beard in the mirror. You're doing the same thing. Lisa Oberst: Exactly. We're also training customers to expect high value from these emails. They're going to start loving to open these emails, because they just know that it's going to be full of exactly what they want to learn about. The beauty about this journey, this welcome sequence bootcamp is that we're gradually taking them to a point where they're going to be dying to buy from Beardbrand. Kurt Elster: I like it. Lisa Oberst: If they haven't bought by the end of … it's a five-day bootcamp, and they haven't bought by the end, well, we're actually telling them, "Here's a free gift, because you deserve it. You have made it through the bootcamp. Get this gift to become part of the club officially." Yeah, there's all the psychology that goes into it, but we're honestly using a elements of scarcity. We're using customer reviews. Social- Kurt Elster: Social. Lisa Oberst: Exactly, social proof. All of that, packaged in a way that looks like it's all about the customer. Kurt Elster: Right, so as long as you're providing them more value than you're asking for, it no longer feels sleazy. It doesn't feel like a sales pitch. You could still slide in those elements that act as psychological triggers to sales like scarcity, urgency and social proof. You don't have to feel guilty about it. Ultimately, if you believe in your product, you shouldn't feel guilty about trying to sell it to people. I've seen that. If you're confident and if you believe in it, it's probably your duty to educate people about why they may want your product in their life. Okay, so some knee grade, basic tips here. How do I come up with a lead magnet idea? Implementing a lead magnet, not terribly tough technically, the hardest part is coming up with the idea. Do you have someone like go-to formats, ideas or methods for brainstorming these things? Lisa Oberst: Yes, there are three typical ways to go, either education-based or discount-based or product offered. Before even thinking about that, what I typically do is, again, I take a step back and I think of who I am speaking to. What is going to be the key offer that's going to get them to take? For example, I have another client where they were offering 10% off. Their audience are gamers. They sell custom gaming accessories. Their offer was 10% off. We switched that over to giving away a card, a token that is worth $1 in the store that probably cost about 10¢ to make, just about 10x to your capture rate. Exactly, much, much higher dollar value with the 10% off, but so much more exciting to think of the token. I like to go as much as possible to think of something tangible. Think of something in your store that's tangible either education or a product. Imagine, your customer see that and using it. Is that going to be exciting to them? That's really where I'd like to start when coming up with these offers. Kurt Elster: I like it. Lisa Oberst: The more tangible the better, typically. Again, if I have another client who is medical supply company and in their case 10% off was right on. You have to think of your audience. You have to think of what, where they're coming from. Kurt Elster: Even if you're like I really don't know. Also if you go, "I really don't know what they want." Just experiment, it is not hard to change these things and switch them up and try them. Lisa Oberst: Exactly. Kurt Elster: Yeah, okay. Offering, probably like the most basic, the go-to. You don't have to think about it too hard. It's just, "Hey, here's a 10% off coupon for signing up, right? That one's easy. Lisa Oberst: Exactly, yeah. Kurt Elster: You don't even need marketing automation to do that one. You stick the coupon code in your welcome email or whatever it is regardless of platform. There you go. It's like these are all tips that work independently with Klaviyo. You can do them on Klaviyo, I wish you would, but you don't have to. What else? My gosh, I lost my train of thought. Yeah, I'm talking about the different lead magnets that work. Yeah, then from there, you know you could combine that with education. You could follow up with email course. I love email courses just because you're in their inbox everyday for a week or like in your case the Beardbrand bootcamp, which is a nice alliteration to it. It helps keep you top of mind. It gets you in the earn box every week. I love what you said, "Hey, you train them to expect value." That's how you keep those open rates up. As long as that first email delivers on the promise of the lead magnet and it better deliver on the promise of that opt-in form and then some. Then people go, “Okay, these are providing me value.” They're going to see them and they're going to be willing to keep opening them and that's what's going to help keep open rates up naturally with great tip. Then the other one, format we have recently seen work well is a regular giveaway, because like a monthly or weekly giveaway. We did it on Jay Leno's Store, lenosgarage.com. That one worked pretty well. We haven't tried anything else. There's no comparison. All right, so my next question on these lead magnets. We haven't even got in the marketing automation. Lisa Oberst: I know. Kurt Elster: Mostly, we're just talking about the opt-in form lead magnet and what you give them. Okay. We'll move on, one last question, how should I set up the opt-in form? I've seen them in the footer, I've seen them as exit-intent, as popup. At Leno store, we do it as a promo bar and a landing page. There's at least five different ways I could format a lead magnet. You can even do Facebook lead ads. What's the right way or is it all of them. What do I do? Lisa Oberst: Well, the same answer that goes for all of this. There is no one right way. Kurt Elster: Right, it depends, is the right answer. Lisa Oberst: It depends, right. For most cases, we like to go with an exit-intent popup. They're great because they don't interrupt the flow of your customer. If someone comes to your store, they intend to buy … you really do not want to be throwing a popup in their face. First of all, it's disrespectful. They are here. They're trying to get something done. Second of all, you're giving away margin. If you're giving away a discount and someone comes to your store with the intention to buy, you do not need to be sending them this discount code. That's why, I definitely lean on the side of exit-intent popups. Now in Beardbrand's case, we don't do that. Instead, we want to go even less aggressive and have a hello bar-type banner at the top. It depends. Beardbrand has a very specific way of communicating. If they did not want to do a popup, fine, a banner works fine as well. The conversion rates are similar. It's going to depend on how aggressive you want to go. If you want to go all out, then you could go for a Mat, a type of Sumo Mat. Kurt Elster: I hate those things. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, my problem with those is that they tend to trigger every single time you go to the store. They don't give you time to breathe. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, but it does work wonders in some cases. Kurt Elster: I agree with you. I love the exit-intent. It's the safe, polite way to do it. Then if someone who's on the site to shop, you will never going to see your exit-intent popup form. If they're there, they browsed and then they're leaving. Okay, as a safety net, we have our last stage. Hey, let me give you something for free, please. All you're going to do is give me your email address, which is way harder than it sounds. People don't want to give up their email address, I don't blame them. You need to be finding something of value. Lisa Oberst: Okay. Exactly. Kurt Elster: Go ahead. Lisa Oberst: What's crazy with those exit-intent is that they're capturing customers who are leaving the store. We're still able with the welcome sequence to convert them at about eight to 10%, so that is huge. Kurt Elster: Yeah, you're right. In theory, you're capturing the least engaged segment of the audience and still converting one out of 10 of them which is just awesome. Okay, then my last question on exit-intent popups. The work on desktop, what do you do on mobile? There's no mouse. The exit-intent popup is just watching for the mouse to go toward the tab, right? Lisa Oberst: Exactly. Kurt Elster: Mobile, their touch devices, there's no- Lisa Oberst: It doesn't work. Yeah, so that's a problem. The way we go around it is we trigger the popup with scrolling. One way of knowing that someone is exiting the page on mobile is that they're scrolling quickly towards the top and so that's one way of knowing that they're leaving. Another alternative is just to turn it into a timed popup. Kurt Elster: Okay. Lisa Oberst: Depending on the audience. Kurt Elster: Yeah, I typically done it as … I use OptiMonk and you can use OptiMonk just you know, whatever to do your popup forms or if you're fancy and you have a front-end developer, there's a free open source JavaScript called ouibounce, O-U-I bounce that I like. Lisa Oberst: Yeah. Kurt Elster: Yeah, mobile I was just doing the timer. I did not know about the scrolling trick that's very clever. I have to explore that more. Lisa Oberst: Yes and we build our own custom popups just so we have all that flexibility. One last tip about popups, this is, again, something that we're able to do because we build them in-house, but I love building the popup in a three-step manner. This all comes back to value, value, value first. On our popups, we don't even show you the email field on the first screen. It's only a question. For example, when we're giving away those token cards, the first screen that's going to show up is which one of these two token cards would you like for free? There's nothing indicating that you're going to have to do anything. It's all value. Then once the reader has made that micro-commitment of picking one of the two cards the chances of them going forward with giving away their email address are increased. This is a psychologic triggers that we use in this set up. Kurt Elster: I love it. Lisa Oberst: Another little tip there. Kurt Elster: Yeah, it is rather than ask for, "Hey, buy my stuff, give me your credit card details." That's a huge ask. You go with a series of micro-commitments that helps you build that relationship and build trust. The simplest one is, “Hey, did you want this free thing?” “Okay, yeah, the answer is yes, I do.” Lisa Oberst: Okay. Kurt Elster: You step them through it. Lisa Oberst: Once they said that, then they're going to focus all through. Kurt Elster: Can you share with us the store that uses the coin thing, this three-step process? Lisa Oberst: Sure, instagaming. Kurt Elster: Got it. Lisa Oberst: We actually also use that on Beardbrand. Kurt Elster: Okay, cool. I'm going to include all of these in the show notes, so people could check it out. I'm sorry if your opt-in rates go up and your conversion rates go down. Lisa Oberst: Conversions. Kurt Elster: Sorry. Lisa Oberst: At least, we're aware. Kurt Elster: If you check these out, please go, just by something small so she has something to do with that. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, I was going to say it. These products are amazing. You're going to love them. Kurt Elster: Yeah. Okay. In this sense, you've got into one of the early, one of the nice tenets about email marketing automation. You're only showing the sequence to a particular kind person. You're not just blasting the same message to everyone all the time. This is segmentation. Talk to me about segmentation? Lisa Oberst: Yes, the basic segmentation that you must put in place is what we just talked about with welcome sequence. This is someone who comes to your store. If they're not buying, you put them to through this welcome sequence. Then on top of that, abandon carts, so this is someone who went as far as putting a product in their cart, but didn't buy, so that's another sequence. Then on top of that is the post-purchase sequence. Those are really the core foundation of automation; post-purchase, abandon car, welcome sequences. Kurt Elster: All right. Go ahead. Lisa Oberst: Go for it. No, go for it. Kurt Elster: All right, so I love the … the welcome sequence is clever and each segment, each sequence has a goal. The sequence is to take these very fairly cold prospects and turn them into customers through a longer effort in high touch engagement process that's fully automated, which is very cool. That's our first one. That's with our exit-intent popup. Cart abandonment, they added the cart and left the store so now we're going to follow up with them. I have a format I follow that I like, what is yours? I will share you mine, if you show me yours. Lisa Oberst: Okay, well, mine is typically built with four emails. I like to go with four emails to present about across five, six days, it depends. First, goes out two hours an abandoned cart you want to hit. The idea is not to be creepy and not to be too intrusive, but to still potential hit them with an email before they've left their computer. Kurt Elster: Strike while the iron is hot. Lisa Oberst: Exactly. This email is always, always customer support-centered. It's just being helpful, because most of these customers who place an item in their cart, then abandoned necessarily because they didn't want to buy. They abandoned maybe because they got distracted and maybe, I don't know, someone got home and they just forgot that they were in the middle of placing an order. The idea of this first email is just to remind them, also, at the same time, you're reminding them, but you're also discovering if they had an issue, if they had a question. You can discover some really interesting information about your cart by just asking the customer if, maybe, they weren't able to put their order through. That's signal number one. Kurt Elster: Right. Lisa Oberst: It gets a lot of answers, a lot of customers think that someone sat down and wrote that email specifically for them and they really appreciate it. Kurt Elster: This sounds like the first email will be very plain texted. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, it is, a 100%. Kurt Elster: Okay. It's interesting that we separately discovered and came about the same approach. What I was doing was after four hours. Pretty similar, then I thought strike while the iron is hot, I would send them an email even if this was just basic Shopify cart abandonment an email or they only send one or it fits in something fancier like Klaviyo or Conversio. I would send them off an email. Its plain texted and says, "Hey, I'm the owner of whatever, and I saw you abandon your cart. I just want to make sure you didn't have any issues or if you have any questions just hit reply and let me know how I can help." It was just a way to find did they have a customer service issue, can we be proactive, can we find objections? Ultimately, most of the time, they got distracted, they forgot or they just said, "Yeah, not quite comfortable yet." Getting that personal touch email where it's proactive on customer service that's very positive. That's going to help increase trust. Okay, cool. We came up with the same thing separately. I like it. Lisa Oberst: Yeah. One little thing I like to do with that email is it's plain text, but I like to add a head shot in the signature just to give it even more of an element of real human interaction. Kurt Elster: That's a good idea. I like it. Next? Lisa Oberst: Number two. Number two, definitely, you want to show the cart content. At that point, a primary goes out about a day later. You want to show the content to get them out and excited about the products they were looking at. Sometimes, you can include a discount already in that second email. I try to keep it for the third, fourth. It depends on the brand. It depends on how much they want to send out discount codes or not, but that's an option. Kurt Elster: I like it. Okay. Yeah, typically, my second one I just go, "Good things come to those who wait, here's 10% off your purchase and here's your cart." Something like that after 24 hours. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, yes. The next one can go out after 48 and then that's when you want to really start pushing, putting some discount code in. They definitely have an element of scarcity in saying, "Well, wait, we can't keep these items forever, maybe make it fun." Definitely, for example, in gaining, they have a lot of fun on their store that we can reuse, so we do that, which is make it entertaining. I find that making emails fun, entertaining, definitely have higher return. Kurt Elster: Yeah. Why not make it fun. Everything doesn't have to be super professional and serious. A great example of this that I always point to, super successful Shopify store Violent Little Machine Shop, violentlittle.com. All of their descriptions are like its all gallows humor. They're swearing same with their emails. It talks about like writing them drunk. The store does phenomenally well. It's just such a great business because their audience likes that. It's authentic and engaging and it's rough and tumble and it works for them. Be fun, be yourself. I think have an authentic voice. Lisa Oberst: Yeah. Kurt Elster: That helps a lot. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, if you can afford to be fun, maybe you can say someone is going to run off with your cart content or just come up with some entertaining way, excuses for being in their inbox. Kurt Elster: All right, the third segmentation then is the post-purchase sale. We finally, we went through these two. Lisa Oberst: Yes. Kurt Elster: In theory, people who've gotten these two email sequences. They've got them to purchase, they've got a lot of emails, they're really building a relationship here, but the really successful stores don't just stop there. Lisa Oberst: Nope. Kurt Elster: At this point, we have optimized the top of our funnel, we validate our business, but how do we extend customer lifetime value both ways and I'm sure you have ideas? Lisa Oberst: Yes, there's so much that you can do with post-purchase email. One first tip I want to point out, especially for Shopify Plus stores. It's sending your order confirmation through Klaviyo. This just heads up, it isn't just the one click setup. It's a little complicated because you have to deal with Klaviyo's tags and put the email together. It enables you to include a product feed. The product feed is huge. It's going to show the specific products that a customer has highest chance of it wanting. I like to do the order confirmation, because order confirmation emails have the highest open rates. They have about 70% open rate on average. If you can show more products in that email, I typically, actually for Beardbrand the order confirmation email is converting at .8%, .9%, that's sending to every single customer. It's a little bit counterintuitive, but customers are super excited after making an order and it's a really good time to be actually showing them more products. Kurt Elster: I have loved this feature in Conversio which was normally called Receiptful. That's like how they started, was just this one single idea in automation. Just, hey, show them upsell products in the email receipt. I had no idea you could make this work in Klaviyo. I am so excited. Lisa Oberst: I saw them. Yes. No. As I said, it is not a one click setup, but it will figure it out. Kurt Elster: I hope someone from Klaviyo is listening to this. This needs to be added in one of like the defaults of just inflows. My gosh, that's fantastic. Lisa Oberst: I will send them an email. Kurt Elster: Please do. One of the issues you run into here, when you do this one is there's no way to turn off the order confirmation email from Shopify itself. You got to replace it with something, what do you stick in there? Lisa Oberst: No, you can with Shopify Plus. Kurt Elster: Okay. Lisa Oberst: You just have to reach out to them. Kurt Elster: Very good. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, it's a little sneaky. Kurt Elster: Instead of Shopify, what we typically do is make that one just like a personal plain text thank you from the owners. It's like, "Hey, you placed for an order, thank you for your purchase. Your receipt's on its way in the second email is the way around it. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, that's perfect. Kurt Elster: Cool. Lisa Oberst: That's perfect. After that, definitely, you want to send a thank you email and those, you might be surprised again, but those convert at the same rate about as the order confirmation email. Include another product feed, why not? Kurt Elster: I love the product feed, just tell me what that is in Klaviyo, they've got this drag and drop editor, it's very cool. You could drag product feed in and it gives you latest products, newest products, but most likely to buy. Something of that effect give you a couple of different feeds or you can make different feeds. Lisa Oberst: Make them, yeah. Kurt Elster: Yeah. The one you want is the one that people chose them products they're most likely to buy because it's got a JavaScript widget in your theme so it could track what people actually looked at. I always suspected what it's showing them. The intersection of bestsellers and products they looked at but didn't buy. Lisa Oberst: The way it works, if you set it up with the waiting. The way it works is it looks like what products the customer bought. If they bought A and B products and another customer ended up, pass about A and B and C, they're going show them C. Kurt Elster: Okay, so it's based on historical purchase data from other customers? Lisa Oberst: Exactly. Kurt Elster: Very clever, it's personalized recommendations. You don't have to do anything. It does it automatically, dynamically, super cool. Lisa Oberst: That's a main great feature. Thank you emails, big ones too. Now something that we do for Beardbrand, for example is for every single product in the store, we have a special, we have a particular email that goes out. Let's say someone buys beard oil. We're going to send them a post-purchase email that teaches them exactly how to use their beard oil. If they bought a balm, we're going to send them an email that shows them how to use their balm. That's taking it to another level. Kurt Elster: What you're doing, it's very clever. You're going to ensure, you're going to help keep the excited, because I'm assuming they get this between the time they purchased and before they get the product, right? Lisa Oberst: Yes. Kurt Elster: Okay. It shows up. It helps keep that excitement going, but you're also going to preempt like you already know what customers objections are, issues. It's going to preempt those things and really radically increase customer satisfaction, because when that product shows up, they already know, "Hey, this is how I apply beard oil." The first time I bought beard oil, it showed up and it occurred to me, “Wait a second, I don't know how you actually apply this or how much.” Lisa Oberst: What do I do with this? Kurt Elster: I had to go find a video that explained it. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, exactly. If you know that your customers are going to be wondering, "Okay, well, what do I do with this when I receive it?" Send them the email with instructions. Very, very helpful. It helps establish that relationship to another level again, just increasing customer lifetime value, letting them know that you care enough to send them all that information. Kurt Elster: That one, that's huge. It may not seem obvious as to like, "This is going to sell them something. No, it doesn't need to; this is an investment in that relationship." You're going to have happier customers, you're going to have less customer support request and it's going to them more likely to buy and recommend your products. Lisa Oberst: Exactly. It's an excuse just to be in their inbox. Kurt Elster: Right. Lisa Oberst: Again, it's an excuse. Well, before sending them another sales email, you're sending them a lot of value. Next time they get an email they're going to open it again expecting value. Kurt Elster: What do I do? All right, we have now set them up where we know they're going to open up that next email. What is the next email? Lisa Oberst: That's when you want to study a bit of your customer lifetime value. You want to know; what is the typical journey of one of your customers, do they buy a second time after one month, after three months, what's normal? Let's take Beardbrand as an example; typically, a great customer will buy maybe every month. What we want to do after a month after their first order, we want us to be in their inbox. We want to show them, okay, well, you're probably running out of the product so here you can click this one click button and add the product again to your cart. That's one thing that we do. Kurt Elster: Swell. Lisa Oberst: It takes a little bit of coding, but it's possible to set this up so that you show them their past order. You have a "add to cart" button right next to the product so that all they have to do is click that button and refill. Kurt Elster: Very good. There's another way to do it, I forgot what it's called, but you could build a link that when clicked on sends everyone to the checkout process with a particular item or items already in their cart. This is a clever idea you have. In their case, they have a consumable good. We know they use it. It maybe takes 30 days to use it up since it's a consumable. Then you follow up with them, "Hey, are you running low, don't run out, order now, order again. Here you go." Just make it so branded easy, remove all the friction for them. It's clever. What else can we do? Lisa Oberst: What we do in some cases if they didn't buy after one month? Well, shoot them another email after three months. Maybe that they hadn't run out yet, maybe they just needed a bit more time before buying again. Send them another different email basically saying that same idea a little bit later. Then if they really haven't purchased in a while, you want to win them back. To do that, you can get creative, send win-back emails that, I don't know, a bit of emotion, be clever, be fun and give them a reason to come back. Maybe a discount, maybe a free product, those work pretty well in win-back emails. Kurt Elster: Let's say after, for most brands, it's going to be somewhere in between 50 and 80 days or if they don't make another purchase, we can really think of them as lost customer. They're a one time purchase, now they're gone. Maybe they'll be back, but maybe not. What we could do is send these win-back emails, where we try before they turn out, before they totally forget about us. Great, make another purchase, come back, we love you, that kind of thing. All right. Lisa Oberst: Exactly. Kurt Elster: All of those things. Those are three workflows or three colors for email marketing automation. Really tremendous, you've absolutely opened the kimono on this stuff. As someone who lives, eats, breathes Klaviyo, do have any Klaviyo pro-tips for working with the platform? Lisa Oberst: Actually, you've mentioned some of them already. Definitely using the product feed, I know you love it. I love it, it's amazing. Some other tips, so you definitely can setup. It takes a little bit of coding, but there's a way of setting it up your store, so that a customer who clicks through from your Klaviyo email has his discount code applied automatically to the store. Kurt Elster: I didn't know that. Lisa Oberst: Again, that does take a little bit of coding, but with Shopify Plus, Shopify also, that's possible. That really makes for a smooth process. Another thing that's possible by tweaking the Shopify Plus cart a little bit is trading a discount code that will automatically add the free gift to the cart. Kurt Elster: That one for just Shopify Plus only, right? Lisa Oberst: That is Shopify Plus only, yes. Kurt Elster: Yeah, we did that. Well, there's an app that will do it called like Secomapp Free Gifts, but it's not the same. It's not quite the same as the smooth frictionless version that you can get with a little bit of JavaScript plus Shopify scripts. Lisa Oberst: Yeah, exactly. Actually, big news, Klaviyo just announced that Shopify stores will be able to have custom coupons sent out through Klaviyo as of now, so that's really exciting. Kurt Elster: Yes. Lisa Oberst: It used to be only for Shopify Plus. Kurt Elster: Yeah, so what it would do is Klaviyo in Shopify Plus only could dynamically generate coupon codes. When you sense somewhat like, you get the abandoned cart email go say, "You get 10% off, order now!" Then the next you go, “It's going to expire.” Well, really like you were lying essentially, because everyone got the same coupon code. Lisa Oberst: Yeah. Kurt Elster: Even if you limit to them with one email and then those end up on coupon code sites. It was like the good outweigh the bad, but it wasn't perfect. Versus now, if you are in Shopify Plus, Klaviyo could dynamically generate a one time use coupon code for each individual person, which was very cool. It worked well, I liked it. Now, as of yesterday, well, as of May 16th, we see that that works on all Shopify stores even Klaviyo, very cool. Last question, we're running- Lisa Oberst: Go for it. Kurt Elster: When you've gone long, because this has been tremendously valuable. Last question, what's your favorite part about what you do? Lisa Oberst: You might have noticed I have a bit of an accent. That's because I'm French, I'm American, I grew up in Belgium. I've traveled a lot. I have a lot of different experiences to pull from whenever I start working for a new client. I love that aspect of the job. I love diving into these new personalities that I have to embody to be able to rewrite the best copy for each client. One thing, I didn't mention, but every single time I write for one customer, I have someone that I think about. For example, the in gaming sales, game accessories, I'm not a gamer, but I do have friends who are and every time I sit down to write, I start the email, "Hello, Jeremy." I really, really dive into that personality. I think that that's amazing. I get to learn a ton. I have learned so much about growing a beard. I really wish I could grow a beard right now. Kurt Elster: I love that idea. Yeah, when I was trying to unlearn like the awful academic business pros that have beaten into me in school, I had to unlearn that stuff write natural sounding, authentic sounding emails. One of the early tricks that helped was picturing the one person that you're answering. Writing to a single individual and that's going to help you kind of do some code changing, some code switching and writing their email. I love that you're actually titling it when you right the first draft, of course is like, hey, and that person's name. That's going to help you keep you on track as opposed to writing those gross emails that are like, "hello newsletter." You keep in touch one-on-one. Lisa Oberst: Hello world. Exactly. Yeah. Kurt Elster: Very good. Lisa, where can people go to learn more about you? Lisa Oberst: They can go to fuelmade.com and we've actually put together a free checklist, email checklist that you can access at fuelmade.com/usp for unofficial Shopify podcast. This checklist, it gives a lot of tips on how to think through every aspect of your emails before sending them out. Lots of best practices and it's just a great way to make sure that you don't forget a key element of the email before sending it. Great value, definitely go get it. It's at fuelmade.com/usp. Kurt Elster: I will include the link to fuelmade.com/usp. Download the checklist; I'm sure it is greatly valuable. You're talking to a Klaviyo pro here. What was going to say? Lisa, thank you so much for doing this. I greatly appreciate it. Lisa Oberst: Thank you, Kurt. This was great. Kurt Elster: I have learned a lot. To our listeners, thanks for your time and attention, your wonderful reviews on iTunes, your kind words et cetera. However, you found this, find out more about it and get those show notes at unofficialshopifypodcast.com. If you don't want to miss another episode, you want to be notified, sign up for my newsletter, kurtelster.com. Shoot you an email whenever we post a new episode. Of course, if you like to work with me in your next project, you can apply at ethercycle.com. Thanks everybody and we'll be back next week.

It's tremendously easy to waste money with Facebook ads, yet we've heard so many successful entreprenuers talk about their success with Facebook Ads. So what can we do stack their cards in your favor? Our guest today, Kurt Bullock, walks through a proven blueprint that any store can use to yield better results with Facebook Ads by leveraging content to grow your Shopify store. Kurt Bullock is the founder of ecommerce agency ProduceDept, creator of TargetEcho and HelloSocial - which are tools for marketing agencies, and - he's someone we work with on a daily basis at Ethercycle. — 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 how: The content-first approach that lowers ad cost and increases conversions How to use video to remarket to customers How to find ideas for content Hacks to improve your relevance score Kurt's one tip: “the best advertising is invisible…” Links Mentioned: PDF Worksheet to map out your own Content-First campaign ProduceDept PrairieMod BuzzSumo SEMrush 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 Elster: Hello, and welcome back to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast. I'm your host, Kurt Elster, recording from Ethercycle Headquarters, outside Chicago. All the way, up in the clouds, on the second floor of the historic Pickwick Theatre building. It's pretty cool, [inaudible 00:00:13]. Anyway, today, we are talking about getting more traffic to your store, using Facebook ads. Certainly, we've talked about Facebook ads, before. I think, we've made the case for, "Here's why you should be using Facebook ads." We've talked about a few ways to do better Facebook ads, examples of how to do Facebook ads. And, today's, is really no different. One of the things, you know, in doing Facebook ads for a couple years now, we've discovered, you have to view the Facebook ads, themselves, as a sales funnel. There is no one ad, that's just going to print money for your store. Sometimes, that works for people. God bless them. I wish them the best of luck, if they can manage that. But, for most stores, the trick is to increase the total number of touch points with a customer, by using your Facebook ads to segment your audience, based on the actions they take on your site. And, then, shepherd them through, walk them through that relationship, from not knowing who you are, to discovering who you are, and then buying your product. It takes time. The more touch points you can have with someone, the more likely they are to buy. That totally makes sense. It's the way human psychology works, right? We talk about human tissue, and selling. It is very much like dating. That initial purchase is getting married. You're not just gonna run up to somebody and say, "Hey, marry me." That's what a lot of Facebook ads try to do. Today, we're gonna walk through an example sales funnel, that we have lovingly dubbed, 'The Content First Sales Funnel.' I think it's very clever. The discussion will be led by, none other than previous guest, Kurt Bullock, who is the founder of Ecommerce Agency Produce Department, creator of Target Echo, and HelloSocial, which are tools for marketing agencies. I use Target Echo. And, it's someone I work with on a daily basis, through Ethercycle, through my agency, and it's been hugely successful. Kurt does ... It's a little confusing that we're both named Kurt. But, Mr. Bullock does a fulfillment for email marketing setups, Facebook setups, Facebook ads, retainers. It's, all around, full of good and useful ideas. So, I said, "Oh, we gotta talk through this, on the show." So, Kurt, thank you for joining us. Kurt Bullock: Absolutely. Thanks for the wonderful intro. So, talking about content for sales funnel, what does that mean? Kurt Bullock: So, content for sales funnel simply means, using content to drive people to your products, and to increase ... We use an advertising to decrease the cost of advertising, and getting a sale. Kurt Elster: So, rather than just, you know, the go to, and this makes sense, and it'll seem straight forward, is you have one ad ... This how people used to do it. You have one ad, it's an ad for the product, they click the link, it goes to the product, and that's it. Kurt Bullock: Right. Kurt Elster: Now, it's traditional. And, now, that approach doesn't work so much, anymore. And, it's expensive. So, what you're advocating, instead, is what? Kurt Bullock: Right. Sending your cold traffic, direct to go to a product page, sort of, the highest way to get a customer. The most expensive way to get a customer. We propose using content, first, to help you gain trust, and to help people raise their hand. We like to use behavioral indicators, throughout our marketing funnel. So, this gives us a way to get people to raise their hand, by reading your content. And, then, we can target them, nurture them, with a combination of email, and Facebook ads, in a funnel. I set up my Facebook ads on funnel, just like an email autoresponder. So, we have, sort of, all the same layers, and same messaging. Kurt Elster: It's clever, but it's a little abstract. I can wrap my head around it, 'cause, you know, we've been doing this long enough. But, walk me through an example. Kurt Bullock: Sure. I was looking through Buzzfeed the other day, and I came across ... We're doing this ... Well, we're not actually doing this. We've been talking about Whole30, because we do Paleo stuff in my family. This recipe Facebook ad caught my eye. Said, "17 recipes that actually got me through Whole30." That was the Facebook ad, on the front, to pull traffic. I click on that ad. In this case, it took me to a Buzzfeed page. Somebody had paid for this article to be created, on their behalf. There were links, all the way down, of different recipes. They had Pinterest posts, that were embedded, that sort of thing. At the bottom, was a recipe for piña colada mix, and a link to a third party site. This is the person that paid for this article to be created. Once you click on that link, you're taken to that third party site, and it's all dedicated to Whole30 meal planning. There was an offer to get a free, seven day, Whole30 meal planning guide, with email opt-in. From there, after opting in, I'm put on an email nurture sequence, and Facebook ads would target me until I make it to that final stage, which is a purchase. Kurt Elster: I love it. What you're doing here ... If you download the free sample of 'Ecommerce Bootcamp', ecommerce, dash, bootcamp, dot com, link in the show notes. The first chapter is 'Sales Through Education', which we, lovingly, turned into a program called 'Seducation', right? That's what's going on, here. You're educating. You're giving away value in the form of an article. That article, even if I don't purchase the piña colada mix at the end, is the article still valuable, and useful to you? Kurt Bullock: Right. It needs to be, to be effective. Kurt Elster: You're asking them for something. You're asking them to buy something from you, to share their very personal credit card, and home address with you. You're asking for a lot. I think, that's what people have to realize. Up front, you need to give them as much, or more value, then you're going to be taking. So, you've got ... You're leading with genuinely useful content. In the past, people would create content, but they're certainly not paying for ads to drive people to that content. Here, we're challenging that mindset. We're making an ad, that just goes straight to content. And, you say Facebook's gonna charge me less to do this? Kurt Bullock: Exactly. There's a couple reasons for that. I'll give away some more ideas about this later on, on the Podcast. They'll charge you less to do this, because Facebook loves content. They love promoting content, and people love reading and promoting content, if it's good content. I just read, when I was just keeping my eyes open, before this Podcast, I clicked through a different article, that was sort of a similar format. When I got to the page, it was a certain camera manufacturer. And, they outlined somebody's journey, through the day, with this particular camera. It was very painful to read, because every other paragraph says, "And, so and so uses the camera model to take pictures on the day, and uses the special setting, which is great for the active lifestyle this person had." It was an ad, and it wasn't useful, or valuable content. So, a couple paragraphs down, they'd lost all credibility, and that's important, because that's one of the main goals of this first piece of content, is to drive up trust, and credibility. Initially, your cold traffic doesn't know who you are. They don't trust you. Without trust, making a sale is very expensive. So, that's one of the primary objectives of this first piece, is to engage people emotionally, if you can, on some level. Whether, it's educating them, or entertaining them. And, then, hopefully ... If nothing else, you have got them on your retargeting list. You can continue to re-target them with ads, and try to get them to that next step in your funnel. Which, in this case, would be an opt-in, or they could go straight through, and make a purchase, as well. Kurt Elster: Recapping a little bit. We wanna use content first, because it's gonna build trust. But, the content ... It has a lower ad cost. In doing that, we're going to build higher quality traffic for our retargeting list. And, maybe, they'll go directly through, and buy. But, they probably won't. I mean, if you have a one percent conversion rate, one out of a hundred will, right? Kurt Bullock: Right. Kurt Elster: But, the highest converting stores I've seen, use this approach. Like, if I see a store, and they go, "Oh, yeah. Converts at ten percent," I don't even need to ask. I know, immediately, there is some content piece that they're getting the traffic from. And, it could be something on their own site, on a separate site, something they paid for. But, those are the sites where they have primed the traffic. It just converts tremendously well. Then, they're spending way less on customer acquisition cost, because they're using genuinely valuable content. I gotta create a piece of content that is useful to my customers. Useful to my potential customers, ideally. Is genuine. There's no ... It does not feel like a sales pitch. The sales pitch is totally secondary to it. What else? Kurt Bullock: That's very important. They did some research in the last couple years. This group, I think it's called, 'LAB 24', that did some research. They actually found that, as long as you are able to make editorial integrity primary, that people actually ... Conversions were better, than if it was a product sale's primary message. It's important to people, that it feels like real content, in order to keep that trust level up. Another way to do it is, video. We've talked about video, before, on this Podcast. But, video's a great way to do it. You can follow a really similar structure with video, where, now Facebook ... Before, you would need to take somebody off of Facebook, in order to pixel them, right? So, you would wanna host a video on your own blog, for this strategy. Now, Facebook lets you pixel people, right on Facebook's platform. You could run a Facebook video ad, get people that watch a certain percentage of that video, let's say, and then, Facebook can put them into an audience, so that you can, then, re-target those people, and continue down that same funnel. Bring them to your product page, bring them to a lead magnet page, and collect their email opt-in. There's lots of different lead magnet concepts, and, I guess, top of funnel concepts. Now, you can even target people that engage with your page, and your posts. You could keep the posts on Facebook, if you wanted to. But, in terms of our clients, we've had the most success creating something, typically off sites, when it comes to blogs, so the content could be a little bit richer. 'Cause, Facebook doesn't let you make it a real nice, like, article reading place, right? It doesn't format it very well for articles. Kurt Elster: Yeah. It's okay. It's not great. I like to send them ... As long as you send them to site that's totally responsive, that's gonna look good, regardless of device. 'Cause, Facebook traffic's probably 80 percent mobile. You could see this, in the stats, people who do tons of Facebook ads ... At this point, a majority of track is mobile. But, it starts skewing much stronger toward mobile traffic. Kurt Bullock: Yeah. Kurt Elster: So, always check that out on mobile. Kurt Bullock: It's interesting. If we look back at one of our shared clients, PrairieMod, for example, right? They sell pottery. When we first started working together, we were trying to come up with a strategy, and we ended up using one of their most popular blog posts, and creating a PDF download out of it. It was 'How to Choose the Right Vase for Your Room.' That wouldn't have come to me, right off the bat. If you do a little bit of thinking, then, you can come up with a piece of content, or a blog post, for essentially, any store, or any topic, as long as it's useful. It was, actually, a very successful campaign. It drove down the costs of purchase for PrairieMod, and did very well for them. You can generate content for pretty much any type of store. Kurt Elster: Very good. I'm taking a couple notes, here. What's the best way to come up ... It's easy to say, "Hey, you need to make content for your store to sell your stuff." How do I do it? What is the approach I should take, here? Kurt Bullock: Yeah. Good question. I like to use a couple ways. One is, BuzzSumo. I know, that's a product that you use, as well. But, BuzzSumo's a great way to do research. For those of you that aren't familiar with it, you can type in a keyword, or some phrase, and it's gonna give you all the most shared articles on the top social media sites. This includes your competitors. You can actually type in their specific URLs, and find what's performing best for them. One thing I like to do is, to check out the way that they create their titles. How are all the titles formatted in that top 10, top 20 list? And, then, that's a great way to get hints. Another way, I use the Google autosuggest, which is essentially, when you go into Google, type in a search, and it gives you those little lists of suggestions, after you've typed in the search term. Scroll down that list, and see if there's any phrases that might clue you into a direction that you could take with your content. That's two quick ways. BuzzSumo has a free ... You could do that first search for free. Actually, I guess, you could get those first 10 results for free. Anybody could use that. Kurt Elster: Yeah. I like BuzzSumo, is nice, and it'll give you some basic stuff. I really like the top 10, are what's gonna be most useful to you. It is valuable, if you wanted to pay for it. SEMrush can do some similar things. It's more focused on, "Hey, let's find back links." That's, also, useful in itself, if you could find the back links. 'Cause, you could often find, like, "Oh, this is ... " You get interesting article ideas, that they've got published on external sites. I find that useful for doing competitive analysis. If BuzzSumo doesn't yield something, then I'll usually ... Like, something obvious. Then, I'll combine it with SEMrush. The Google autosuggest trick works a lot. The only caveat is, it'll try, like, Google ... If you're logged in, Google's gonna try to tailor the results to you. Usually, it's fine. It's totally fine. But, someone on my email list called me out. Or on, like, a YouTube comment. "Look, well, you have to do it in the Incognito window." "Okay, fine." I mean, it's not gonna, like, hugely change the results. But, if you wanna make sure it's not tailored to you, open it up in a private window, or in Incognito window, so they can't do it. Kurt Bullock: Right. Also, if I may talk just a little bit about, as you're executing this strategy, relevance score. Relevance score, for those of you that aren't real familiar with it, when you run ads, Facebook gives you a score from one to 10, that's going to, essentially, tell you how engaged your audience is with your ad, or how well your ad is resinating with your audience. This is all because, a few years back, in the wild west of the early days of Facebook, advertising a bunch of wily internet marketers were promoting aggressive ads. It got a little bit out of control. Facebook's very concerned about their user experience, right? They figured out that they could use this score, that shows advertisers how well your campaign is doing, in terms of, "Are people sharing it, commenting, liking it? Or, are they pressing the 'Do not show this ad' button, in the upper, right hand corner of the ad?" It'll give you that score. If you can manage to get that score on the upper end of the scale, Facebook will reward you with a lower CPM, which is a way to measure the cost of your traffic. This is a really important number to monitor, as you're running these content campaigns, at the top of your funnel. Kurt Elster: What affects the relevance score? It goes one to ten. The lower it goes, these ads are gonna cost me more. It implies they're not effective. How do I get a perfect ten on a relevance score, and how realistic is it to do that? Kurt Bullock: Yeah, so, initially, for me, it was not realistic at all. I would never get tens, and I really struggled with making it happen. After I really started paying attention, and doing some research, I came across a couple methods that help out with this. One example is, if you create your ad, and instead of creating it in the ... If you start by putting it as a post, on your Facebook page, then you can take that ad, run it with the goal of engagement for a few days, right? The idea, here, is to try and get some social proof on the ad. If you can get people to comment on the ad, give it some thumbs up, and boost that relevance score, and you can see that go up. Once you've got that score going up, a little bit ... More than anything, I'm just looking for those engagement cues, that it's being shared and commented on, then ... I usually show that to a friendlier audience. That would be the followers of my Facebook page, or warmer targeting audiences. People that are most engaged with my brand. I wanna go for the easy audience, that's gonna help me get some of that engagement on there. After I've done that for a few days, then, I like to move it over, and start sending that to wider audience of traffic. I found that that has brought me from, sort of, the six, to seven range, on average, is where I was doing, a lot of times. Eight, as well, depending. On a retargeting ad, it's really easy to get higher score. But, on a cold ad, an ad to cold traffic, it can be really hard to get a higher score. So, this trick, if you first get some engagement on that ad, and then move it over ... You can do this by pulling out ... It's called the 'Post I.D.' You can pull up that little number, or you can search for it when you're creating a new ad. You select 'Use Existing Post,' and find that same post. Then, you can run it, using the traffic, or the conversions objective, as you normally would. But, now, it's gonna convert better, and have a higher relevance score. That's, actually, made a really big difference, bringing me up to the nine, and sometimes, 10 range, for cold traffic, which, is pretty awesome. It makes a big difference on the price of your ad campaigns. Kurt Elster: All right. So, to recap. I gotta come up with an idea for an original piece of content. I can use, if I don't have an idea already, I can use BuzzSumo, SEMrush, and Google auto complete to try and come up with a title, and a topic. Once I've got that, I'm gonna create the content, be it, I create it myself. I hire somebody off Upwork. Something to that effect. Then, once I've done that, I wanna make sure the content is not sales-y at all. It's gotta be genuinely educational. It can't be this affiliate, nasty stuff. It needs to be genuine, and authentic, and real, and helpful. Then, at the very end, I will link to, if it totally makes sense, then I'm gonna link through to the offer. To my product page, to a lead magnet. I got that out. I'm gonna post it, as to my Facebook page, then I'm gonna grab my post I.D., use it to create a Facebook ad for that post, run it to a warm audience. By doing that, I'm juicing my relevance score, 'cause it's gonna go up. They all start at five. Then, as people engage positively with it, by liking it, by adding comments, by sharing it, it's gonna go up, six, seven, eight. That's gonna bring my end cost down, and establish, like, "Oh, this is a positive thing you should check out," when it starts showing up in, like, total strangers' Facebook feeds. Correct? Kurt Bullock: Tah-dah. Yes. Kurt Elster: Okay, cool. Now, what do I do, then? I've got the ads running. It doesn't cost me much, it's got low quality score, or a good quality score. People are going to this article. I'm just spending money. I'm not getting customers. What am I doing? What do I do next? Kurt Bullock: After that, you're gonna wanna have retargeting ads that bring people to the next stage of the campaign. I use retargeting ads that bring people to, if I have a lead magnet, then it's bringing them to that lead magnet stage. If not, then, you can bring 'em right to the product page. I've got an outline for everybody. I usually use a three stage funnel, at the very top. This is for cold traffic. We'll bring 'em to a lead magnet. That could be an email course, whatever you have as a lead magnet, and then to the product page, at the end. Does that answer your question? Kurt Elster: Can I build custom audiences off of this traffic? Kurt Bullock: Yes. Kurt Elster: People just go, like, they visit the ad. What's the custom audience for that look like? Kurt Bullock: Got it. What I would use for, if I'm doing the blog post, I would create a custom audience of people that visited that blog post page. That's the most general way I would do it. If I had a lot of traffic ... [crosstalk 00:22:11] Kurt Elster: Yeah. Simple. Straightforward. Kurt Bullock: Yeah. If I had a lot of traffic, then you can use one like that. But, it takes the top 25 percent of people that engage on ... So, by time spent. That's another way you could do it. The simplest way, take everybody that visited that page. Then, I would use that audience, and send them the next stage of my funnel, which would be sending them to my lead magnet. Kurt Elster: So, lead magnet, email opt-in offer, what does that look like? Kurt Bullock: In terms of building a custom audience, or the lead magnet, itself? Kurt Elster: The lead magnet, itself. Kurt Bullock: Lead magnet, itself, I've had a lot of luck with checklists, can be really great. Or, purchase guides, like, let's say, a recipe guide. That was one of my most successful campaigns. We created 40 different recipes for this essential oil company. They like to mix and match oils, and put them together, this way. We had 40 of those recipes as a downloadable PDF. Another great way to do it is to have some sort of email drip. People could opt in, and maybe over the next three to five days, it's dripping out content every day, that kind of takes them through your ... Teaches them about your offering, and offers value. At the end, then, you would want to redirect them to your product page. [crosstalk 00:23:31] Kurt Elster: Why not do both? So, I go, like, "Download my PDF." They download the PDF. It's a checklist. It provides value. Maybe it's pretty, maybe it's not. You could buy a template, you could hire a designer to put it together. But, as long as it provides value, who cares? Kurt Bullock: Right. Kurt Elster: From there ... I think, people, kind of, they overemphasize the importance of design. And, I say that as a designer. Step two, we say, "All right. You got your lead magnet. Keep it. You can unsubscribe right now," or, "Stay subscribed, and I will send you my free email course, over the next five days, seven days, whatever it is." Then, follow up that lead magnet with this email course. Now, we're in their inbox every day, staying top of mind, building trust, giving them opportunities to reply to us, and say, "Hey," you know, which questions. Then, hopefully, ideally, purchase along the way. We've radically increased the total number of touch points, at this point. Kurt Bullock: Right. That's perfect. Kurt Elster: I think that's a clever way to do it. I suggest that, because that's what my lead magnet is. I have a couple, that, no matter what, it's, "Hey, here's your quick hit of info. Here's your PDF. Stick around. I'll give you an email course, and follow up with you, and you can hit, 'Reply.' It goes to me. I'm a real person. I'll answer your questions." Then, from there, then, "Okay. I'm just gonna follow up. You're on my regular newsletter, and I'm just gonna followup with you a couple times a week." It builds engagement. Especially, for like, higher tech items. You don't know where people are in the sales process, in the sale cycle. You don't know when they're ready to buy. You don't have to worry about it. It just happens. At that point, then, I really provide a lot of value to them. I could run a Facebook ad, that finally, just sends them to the product page. Kurt Bullock: Right. Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's a wasted opportunity, once you collect their email address, to not put them on a nurture sequence, and continue emailing them. Then, yeah. You want all those things to point to your next largest offer. So, your product page. Whatever that next product is. But, it shouldn't be the focus of your content, right? It should, sort of be, a result of your content, is that they would want to check that piece out. Kurt Elster: That makes sense. Geez, I don't know. I mean, that alone, that's a ton of info. That's a lot of strategy we just dumped on people. You have ... Well, wait. We were talking about The New York Times, and how they were employing the strategy. Can you share that example with us? Kurt Bullock: Yeah, absolutely. The New York Times, I think, it was October of 2016, purchased a few Ecommerce properties. You may have heard them. [crosstalk 00:26:13] Kurt Elster: Such as? Kurt Bullock: Yeah. Sweethome, and The Wirecutter. Kurt Elster: I love both of them. Kurt Bullock: Yeah. Great sites. So, they are using this same strategy, right? So, they're coming up. They spent a lot of time on their content. They usually do a lot of research. They employ experts, and they do all sorts of testing, and they usually document their testing, in the article. So, you could see they've got, you know, 20 pressure cookers lined up, or something like that, and they're testing them all out. Then, their strategy is to make recommendations, and they are monetizing this, by sending people to Amazon links, or Home Depot links, and getting an affiliate fee on those purchases. Kurt Elster: Yeah. Which is, like, it's seven percent. But, they don't have to do anything. They do no fulfillment. I guess, as far on Ecommerce's side, there's no customer support. There's no fulfillment. There's kind of a cool model. But, yeah, man. Wirecutter and Sweethome, people go to them, because they trust 'em, because there is genuinely valuable content. Like, I go, and I'm like, "Yeah. This review totally makes sense. Helps me make a decision." I go there, like ... It's cool. So, the concept works. I know what they're doing. I know full well, the way it works. I totally trust it. I totally buy into it. I've never seen them use Facebook ads. Kurt Bullock: Yeah. They're not ... I don't believe that they're using Facebook ads to push people to this ... I haven't seen it, either, that way. But, I think, that just the model works. You can see it. You know, if you wanna study how to do this yourself, you go look at the bottom of The New York Times' website, and look at all of their promoted content, right? The articles that are there, because people are advertising. Study the way that they do those, and you can see for yourself, which ones are well done, and, which ones aren't. Also, go to Buzzfeed, and these other sorts of sites, and study the way that they create their articles. That's a really good way to get ideas for your store. Kurt Elster: Also, a good idea. You have a download, you have a bonus for people. It's free, so they can try and do this, themselves. Tell me about that. Kurt Bullock: Yeah. So, I've created a few maps of this strategy, because it is a lot of content that we went through on the Podcast, so far. It maps out, visually, the way that the funnel works, and then give you some spaces to, sort of, fill in the blanks, and come up with your own content first strategy. Tells you which custom audiences to build. The whole thing's mapped out. I have two maps built. One is for using blog post content, and the other one is for a video style content, using video views. You can download those maps at produce ... The link is, produce d-e-p-t, dot co. That stands for 'produce department,' slash content, dash first. [crosstalk 00:29:14] Kurt Elster: I will put that into the first ... Produce department, dot co, slash content, dash first. I will include that as the first link in the show notes. I took notes on all of the links you've mentioned. So, we've got those in here. People can grab those, check that stuff out. And, to go further over it, we're gonna go over Facebook funnels, in a upcoming webinar. Kurt Bullock: Right. Kurt Elster: In the next coming weeks. So, keep an eye out for that. Sign up for my newsletter. Kurt Elster dot com. I'll promote the webinar there, or join us in our Facebook group, where Kurt Bullock is also active. So, you can ask your questions there, as well. And, other than that, anything else you'd like to add? Anything you wish it restored, or would do? Anything like that? Kurt Bullock: Well, I think that this is the direction that the people are going. People don't want to see ads, anymore. Research is showing, the best type of ad is, essentially, or advertising, is invisible. Right? People don't want to see blatant advertising. At least, not until they know who your brand is. And, later on, the advertising can be more blatant, and it serves a purpose, because you are interested in the product, you know how it could enhance your life, if advertising is done well. I think that this is the direction that people should be going to. To start simple, just start experimenting. You can do this with very little down, in terms of ad spend. Five bucks a day, to give it a test. Post, again, as Kurt mentioned, in the Facebook group. I'm happy to answer questions, and help you through it. Kurt Elster: Very good. Thank you for joining us. You have absolutely ... You've opened the kimono on the very saying, sales funnel process for Facebook ads, that people are presently hiring us to implement for them, in their ecommerce stores, and seeing effective return on investments on these ads, which is fantastic. Typically, you know, any kind of marketing, any kind of advertising, is an investment. Like all investments, carries a risk. But, approaching it this way, coming at it, knowing what works for other people, experimenting with it, wildly helps you reduce that risk. You're gonna be less frustrated, spend less time, and less money, getting to those positive ORY campaigns. Once they're running, they're evergreen, because they're based on peoples' actions. You could, typically, run them for quite a long time, before you have to modify them, when they start becoming ineffective. Right? Yes? Kurt Bullock: Yes. You're exactly right. Kurt Elster: Fantastic. That concludes this episode. Thanks so much, for everybody, for your attention, your reviews on iTunes, and your comments in my inbox, and on the Facebook group. However you found this episode, you can find out more about it on Unofficial Shopify Podcast, dot com. It's where I'll link all the show notes. If you'd like to be notified when we post a new episode, when the webinar's coming up, sign up for my newsletter, Kurt Elster, dot com. Shoot you an email, whenever we post a new episode. Of course, if you'd like to work with us on your next project, you can apply at Ethercycle, dot com. Thanks, everybody, and we'll be back next week.

Today's guest is Kurt Elster. Kurt is a conversion rate optimization expert, and the Senior Ecommerce Consultant with CRO Company Ethercycle. He is also an accomplished speaker, the host of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, and co-author of Ecommerce Bootcamp. Kurt has worked with brands such as Verizon, NFL, Hilton, Everest Bands, and Shopify.  In today's episode, we talk about Conversion Rate Optimization. We get into where to begin with CRO, design mistakes, things to think about for mobile, and we even look at a couple of the clients Kurt has worked with and the difference Conversion Rate Optimization made for their business. If you have a website of any kind, especially an ecommerce store, this episode is a virtual gold mine.

Introduction Productized services Definition 9:50: Copywriting Understand the problem your service solves. Pricing 15:30: Testing with productized service Draft Ethercycle Website Teardowns (Kai Davis and Kurt Elster) 19:30: Mobile Onboarding Blair Enns 28:30: Freelancers just starting out Hourly billing Screening out clients Website Rescue 38:10: Word of mouth Part of marketing Niches Expensiveproblem.com 45:50: Downsides to productized services Pricing Start small Low level of collaboration Minimize risk Give options Picks: Building the Perfect Sales Page (Jonathan) Internet Archive Wayback Machine (Philip) Examples of Productized Services: * https://draft.nu/revise/ * http://websiterescues.com/ * https://doubleyouraudience.com/pricing/outreach/ * https://memberup.co/membership-roadmap/ * http://sessions.superspicymedia.com/ * http://uibreakfast.com/services/   hired.com/freelancershow

Introduction Productized services Definition 9:50: Copywriting Understand the problem your service solves. Pricing 15:30: Testing with productized service Draft Ethercycle Website Teardowns (Kai Davis and Kurt Elster) 19:30: Mobile Onboarding Blair Enns 28:30: Freelancers just starting out Hourly billing Screening out clients Website Rescue 38:10: Word of mouth Part of marketing Niches Expensiveproblem.com 45:50: Downsides to productized services Pricing Start small Low level of collaboration Minimize risk Give options Picks: Building the Perfect Sales Page (Jonathan) Internet Archive Wayback Machine (Philip) Examples of Productized Services: * https://draft.nu/revise/ * http://websiterescues.com/ * https://doubleyouraudience.com/pricing/outreach/ * https://memberup.co/membership-roadmap/ * http://sessions.superspicymedia.com/ * http://uibreakfast.com/services/   hired.com/freelancershow

We're back after a short break! Today we're exploring user experience in online stores. Our special guest is Kurt Elster, the guru of ecommerce and the founder of Ethercycle. We break down the entire purchasing flow and explore design specifics of each step: product list, item description, shopping cart, and checkout. You'll learn how to showcase your products, reduce friction, and motivate your customers. Download the MP3 audio file: right-click here and choose Save As. Podcast feed: subscribe to http://simplecast.fm/podcasts/1441/rss in your favorite podcast app, and follow us on iTunes or Stitcher. Show Notes Ethercycle — Kurt's ecommerce consultancy for Shopify businesses Ecommerce Bootcamp by Paul Reda and Kurt Elster Kurt Elster's Ecommerce Hacks Weekly The Unofficial Shopify Podcast J. Peterman, CozyPhones, Violent Little Machine Shop, Everest Bands — some of the stores we mention as examples The Brain Audit by Sean D'Souza Kurt's website Free resources for ecommerce professionals and store owners Follow Kurt on Twitter: @kurtinc Today's Sponsor Today's episode is brought to you by Remarq — fast, professional formatting for your reports and proposals. Just focus on your content, while Remarq automatically creates beautiful PDF documents. Go to Remarq.io and use the coupon code UIBREAKFAST to get a 20% lifetime discount. Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more here. Leave a Review Reviews are hugely important because they help new people discover this podcast. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please leave a review on iTunes.

Kurt Elster is an e-commerce consultant who specializes in the Shopify platform. He is a founder and partner at EtherCycle, and host of the Unofficial Shopify Podcast. He earned his MBA from Illinois Institute of Technology. Kurt is a newlywed, and the theme for his wedding was “Day of the Dead,” the Mexican version of Halloween. […] The post Revenue Generation for Ecommerce with Kurt Elster – 106 appeared first on Art Of Value.

What's a good conversion rate? One that's better than last month. But how did you get there? Nick Disabato has built a career on research-focused A/B testing. Over the past year, he's helped Shopify Plus store KeySmart achieve extraordinary success. He joins us today to discuss that journey and how you can improve your store 5% monthly with his approach to split testing. "Never forget: focusing on your customers brings you more customers. Are you focused on helping your customers, or are you focusing on what your coworkers want?" — 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 — Learn: How testing makes you money What makes a successful test Testing's impact on design Why testing defangs your internal debates Links: Draft The A/B Testing Manual nickd.org Visual Website Optimizer Hotjar Free Guide I want to send you a sample chapter of Ecommerce Bootcamp, free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com Transcript Kurt: 00:06 Before we continue, I wanted to share a quick tip from our sponsor, Referral Candy. We'll find out what's working, then do more of that, so look at your top sales channels and then double down. It's the 80 20 rule and action. For many stores, word of mouth is a top channel, but how do you double down on the word of mouth? Check out Referral Candy - increase word of mouth sales by giving your store a refer a friend program. They're giving you guys 50 bucks to get started with it. Just go to Kurtelster.com/referralcandy to get started. Kurt: 00:37 Hello and welcome to this episode of the Unofficial Shopify Podcast. I'm your host, Kurt Elster, agency owner, Ethercycle, author of the Ecommerce Bootcamp, and a lot of other things. Find out more on Kurtelster.com. That's my podcast radio voice. At this point, I can't say Unofficial Shopify Podcast any other way. I apologize for that. Joining me today is a wonderful gentleman who, through a mastermind group that he started, has changed my life and a lot of inspiration to me and is also an quite the interesting character who's been on the show before. Please welcome Nick Disabato. Nick: 01:11 Hi there. How's it going? Really happy to be here. Kurt: 01:15 So Nick, the last time you were here, it was a good episode. I enjoyed it. I like talking to you, but for you, you had a great outcome from it. You landed your favorite client. Nick: 01:27 No offense to my other clients. All of my clients are really my favorite client. I landed a fantastic client. They are a lifestyle, everyday carry brand called Keysmart. If you go to getkeysmart.com - they are wonderful. It's essentially like a multifunction tool for your keys and it makes your keys a little bit more organized, has a few extra tools and all these other things. Just to talk about what I do for a living - I run A/b tests for e-commerce and SaaS businesses. Those in the audience who don't know what A/B tests are - you have a change, you want to vet the economic impact of it, you test it against the control and you determine what the actual lift is. You've come up with ideas through research, you end up making that a core part of your design process so that you're not making bad decisions that could potentially hurt your business and you're more carefully and scientifically vetting what could actually convert better. Keysmart's revenue has gone up. I forget the last calculation I had done. I think it's something like 75 percent as a direct result of my A/B testing over the past nine months. Nevermind the fact that they have also been growing significantly as a company. So that helps as a force multiplier, right? Like they're getting more traffic, they're getting more sales, and then people who come in are more likely to convert that last bit is because of my work. Kurt: 03:02 On Shopify Plus, they have a really cool custom theme. I've done a few few modifications to it for them. There's like a lot of brands you hear talked about on Shopify that are very popular and you don't hear Keysmart talked about that often, which I always find strange because it's a cool product, but it also is quantifiably one of the most successful stores on Shopify. Nick: 03:25 I even mentioned to Andy, who's one of the people there, that we should just say we have like thousands of happy customers. Then he said we have millions of happy customers. I'm like, great. Kurt: 03:37 I was talking to Andy, who has been on the show before to say, wow, your facebook campaigns and your marketing... Andy's the one who did this stuff and it's phenomenal. I've never seen anything this successful. And he said, yeah, we could scale it, but we can't ship fast enough. That's your problem?! Your bottleneck is because you literally can't get the product out the door quick enough. That's nuts. I've never heard anyone say that Nick: 04:05 That's a really good problem to have. I like when I can cause problems for my clients. Kurt: 04:13 That's what you did. How did that happen? What is the test you ran? How did you go about it? How did you know what tests to run? Cause I know with a/b testing, everyone thinks it'll help them pick the right button color. And it's not that at all. It's quite a bit more complicated than that. Nick: 04:32 Yeah, everybody wants to know where they should start with testing. When they ask me that, it's as if they want the one weird tip that causes the revenue to go up by 75 percent. That's not at all true. I'm so sorry. What I do is research what your customers are doing and then come up with informed guesses as to what these tests may be. Button colors generally don't work. Headlines work. If you have a clear idea of what kind of headline you should be writing, there is no such thing as just writing a headline for the sake of it being "more persuasive." So what I'm doing is going into Google Analytics and figuring out if mobile is converting dismally. OK, why? Well, the page time is taking really long time to load. Nick: 05:20 Well, that kind of sucks. Why is the page to taking a long time to load? Oh, you have a one megabyte product image on your page and you never bothered compressing it and it loads great on my comcast for business connection, but then I go into chrome and simulate a 3DG connection that's dropping occasionally and the page takes 38 seconds to load. You're not closing a sale. That was one example of research. What I did was go into one of the product pages and then extensively compress the product image and it ended up being like a 38K product image. It looked a little granular. Whatever. It's on your cell phone, you're on a train. You don't know what it actually looks like, and it's probably smaller than the actual product in person, but I ended up converting something like 11 percent higher because way more people were able to load the page effectively and make a purchasing decision. Nick: 06:17 They don't care how compressed your product image is or what CDN is serving it. That was the most basic mobile optimization thing. But I went in, said this isn't working, let's fix it. It's leaking money. That wasn't a headline, it wasn't a button color, it was something that should have probably happened at the beginning of this site being built out, but nobody caught it. So that's one thing. Another thing that I run is heat maps on your site. I determine where people are clicking, how long down the page people are scrolling, that sort of stuff. One thing that I find very frequently in Shopify is that they keep the same navigation on the same template from page to page. So you end up having like the full blown navigation and all these things all over every page of the site. And that includes your shopping cart and your checkout pages. Nick: 07:13 That sucks for a variety of reasons. This is a rare moment where I'm going to recommend something pretty fervently and say it will probably convert better. When I say probably, I mean it's likely to. Don't blame me if it doesn't. You have to test it, but try removing those links in your header navigation. When people get to the shopping cart page - Amazon does it, Ebay does it, and it works extremely well for keeping people focused on conversion. They're not just like, oh, shiny. And then go somewhere else when they're just about to pay you. The last thing people want to do at any point in the transaction is fill out a form, but you have to make them do it and you'll have to make them do it at the last step. So I strongly recommend doing that. Nick: 07:59 We have most importantly over the past nine months crafted a process and an internal culture around constantly checking our own beliefs around things. I think that's been the biggest outcome. We have a part time developer on staff right now who is constantly making changes to try and optimize stuff from a programming and technical debt perspective, which allow us to run tests considerably faster. Ideally, you always want a test to be running as much as humanly possible. You want there to be kind of consistent tempo around it so you want to be building the next test while a given test is running. So, we have a Trello board for vetting test ideas and researching them and we move things along on this Trello board and when we get to the point where we need to be building it, then I coordinate with the developer to build it. If you don't have a developer, one thing I would recommend installing as few plugins as humanly possible in your Shopify store, and I know that sounds so cringe worthy because plugins are a huge value add to Shopify, but they add a lot of code dependencies and craft that might actually bite you later on. I'm not saying this about Keysmart necessarily, but I have seen it enough. Kurt: 09:17 It's true of any store that installs into several plugins; even one could start adding these bizarre dependencies. And then to your earlier point about performance optimization, there are two things that generally cause those performance slowdowns. One is the giant image like you described. It's very common because people want their image to look the best. So they save it out in the highest possible size that causes these bloated load times. Plugins and Apps - each time you add one that starts adding code dependencies. You'll see sites that load jquery like four and five times because of these apps aren't paying attention to each other and you've installed something and installed it. But yeah, it's a little bit of a rabbit hole there. Nick: 09:56 Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, that's definitely something that can weigh down your site and keep you from being able to make changes and deploy. And it's so funny, it's this combination of like the full facebook move fast and break things mentality, but you're doing it in a way that isn't so fast. We need to research it. So you're making a lot of changes, but a lot of it is like almost infrastructural where you're figuring out, OK, well how am I creating a separate product so that I can make changes to that and shunt people there as a variant page. How can I create variations on Shopify's end using if/then logic. There's no in built framework for this. So you're running a test maybe on maybe one product page that has if/then logic, if you're particularly sophisticated, or you're just running two skews and hoping to God that the inventory works out. I've definitely encountered both of those situations. If you're in a position like Keysmart, you cannot afford to have two different skews and hope that the inventory works out for reasons you had just mentioned, Kurt, right? It can be really difficult there. Kurt: 11:10 So going back, you had mentioned heat maps. Two questions. What is good heat mapping software and what am I supposed to get out of heat mapping? Kurt: 11:24 I'm going to start with the second one first. You're supposed to understand where people are interacting with the page and where people aren't interacting with the page. Then you figure out how that squares up with your business goals. I've written a huge, huge, deep dive on heat maps recently that actually goes through a couple of example ones and then says, OK, well people aren't clicking on our primary call to action and why is that happening? Well this area is lighting up like a Christmas tree. Why are they going? And you just have to ask yourself, why are they going, how can I make them do something else? Because they're not going to be cajoled into actually doing the thing that you want. You have to investigate their motivations, right? Nick: 12:07 Why is the page persuading people to go to the things that I don't want them to go to? Then you start to come up with some speculations about it and you'd say, well, OK, well maybe they're not ready to buy. Maybe it's a high involvement product, maybe it's not our flagship product, but it's the cheapest product. Maybe a masthead - we've never bothered swapping out the masthead image. Maybe it's just the first place that people go after viewing a facebook ad. And so we haven't like actually segmented this sensibly enough. The thing you're trying to figure out about heat maps is like real world customer behavior, right? Good tools for it - for most of my Shopify clients, I already have heat maps that I get out of my a/b testing framework, which is visual website optimizer. Nick: 12:54 You could go to vwo.com. It's a little bit overkill if you're not actually running a/b tests yet. In that case, I would recommend hotjar.com. They're like $29 a month. It's just comically cheap and you get heat maps, scroll maps, you get to see people's cursor and finger as they go around the screen. It's amazing and always really compelling evidence for a client. Usually when you show heat maps to clients, they feel like they're staring directly into the matrix because they've never actually seen the real world behavior in that visual way before. They go a little feral over it, which is great. Right. But heat maps and Google analytics are only two of the things that I do. I also actually get paying customers on the phone and talk to them for an hour about why, what competitors they vetted in, why they chose to buy it at this point in time, what motivated them, whether they're using it now, and what their problems were beforehand. Nick: 14:03 I actually ran an annual survey for Keysmart in particular recently and it was asking about like other every day carry things. That's going to shape a lot of the other products that we're going to be putting out later. So there's a lot of like other strategic things that you can be doing; it's not just about vetting the impact of the design decisions, but you end up like drilling down to the business needs in a lot of ways and saying, OK, well what does this business stands for? Is it selling a bunch of this widget to people or is it providing a broader ecosystem around the thing that we care about? Neither bad answers, right? You just need to know what the answer is so you don't go down the wrong rabbit hole. Kurt: 14:39 This sounds a lot like a lot less like traditional a/b testing in more business and user research which are incredibly valuable things. But is it a/b testing? Nick: 14:59 Well I say it's research-driven a/b testing. A/b testing is a tool that you use in the service of optimization and it is usually the last step if you're getting a certain number of sales. If you're on Shopify Plus and you're listening to this, you probably get enough sales for a/b testing. If you get 500,000, that's probably the minimum, especially if you have one flagship product and all your traffic is going in there. You should not be stabbing in the dark on your design decisions. You should not be arguing internally about your design decisions and wheel spinning and then saying, well, a/b tests our way out of the hole. That is not a good strategy for making changes to your site. That is how you end up getting a 12.5 percent success rate on A/b tests industry wide. And that is true, right? But if you research stuff and just say people aren't clicking here; even something that basic ups the success rate to around 58-59% in Draft's case. That's tests that are generating revenue, not mailing list sign ups, not people are engaging with the page more. No, no, no. Screw those things. What matters is that you are increasing revenue, decreasing costs, or decreasing risks to the business. And in A/b testing, you're getting at least two of those things every single time. Nick: 16:32 You have to end up backing it up with research. It's absolutely essential. If people say, I want to cut the research and I just want you to run a/b tests for me, I'd probably nope out of the project. Kurt: 16:44 Knowing you, I can assure you that's what you would do at that point. You're just shooting in the dark. Nick: 16:55 Yeah, honestly I charge you. I have probably a moral obligation to not take the project at that point because I would take early five figures of your money, do a bunch of research via Marionette for you, not get good business results, and you would waste money on me. And then we would part ways and everyone would feel frustrated. And you would think that a/b testing writ large as a failure. My goal in my career is to make sure that people understand that design decisions have an economic impact. I'm doing a tremendously bad disservice to the cause of design if I would take a project that did not actually have research as a component for it. Kurt: 17:32 I don't have a good follow-up question. Kurt: 17:42 Give me a good next question. I've got nothing. Nick: 17:54 This is a big mindset thing. Like it's, it's something people are used to design decisions by debate, right? There used to be around ideas. Kurt: 18:06 You know, even getting hired as a designer, you go through this constant back and forth with clients and that's why you have to back up a lot of design decisions. Saying, I didn't just pick that because it looked pretty, here's the reasoning behind it. I've cited my sources. Even then you're going to get push-back. The person's going to say, well, my dog doesn't like blue. So you have to change those kinds of things. Nick: 18:28 Yeah. And I actually run into the study testing clients, like I've had one recently, a keysmart were lovely clients. They are insanely brilliant. They're a wonderful team and there is a forgivable foible at play here where we have the Trello board where we're suggesting different design decisions and all these things and we'll start batting it around. And in the critique process, most good designers, they have what's called the yes. No, yes. Other places called the Shit Sandwich. And uh, where you say, I love this idea, I think that we might need to change it in a little bit this way or what's your thinking on that? Or something like that. And then you end up with another yes. Like, uh, again, I think that this is really cool. I just wanted to know what's going on here. So that is classic critique, active listening technique, non-violent communication that allows people to not feel threatened or imposed upon when you're proposing something. Kurt: 19:20 Right. Um, which is great, right? Um, it's super useful and what they see is, that's a great idea. And they're like, great, I just shipped it and I'm like, well no, this is a board for testing ideas that have to be tested and researched and there's gotta be a process. And so I ended up having to like spell out, here's what happens when a t how, here's how test ideas get on fire, hose them on, here's what happens when they get on, they need to go through this process, not only to make me feel good about having this actually go the way we wanted to, but also to kind of expose it to the harsh light of day, right? Like we need to make sure that not only is it a good idea to us, but it's actually a revenue generating idea for the business. Kurt: 20:07 And that involves research that involves spending a little more time actually thinking about the ramifications of the decision that involves squaring it up against all the other decisions that we've put together in the past. Right? Like the more tests we run, the more likely it is we're going to continue coming up with decisions that don't work for us or that we've already tried. And some other form and we want to make sure we're not spinning our wheels on this. Um, so I had to go and sit down and say, you know, you want to do ab testing like you hired me. That seems obvious enough, but your still thinking in a way that is like the socratic inquiry design decisions that, that everybody does and I get why you do it. It's because you have like 10 years background in this industry and that's all you've known. Kurt: 20:57 And then I asked to come in and be the fun ruiner right? I'm really good at ruining people's fun. I'm really good at it. Um, and I don't like having to come in and be the fun ruiner I like it when people agree broadly with the concept of Ab testing and then figure out the execution behind it. Right? And there's a lot of like, psychological impact that too, you know, like when a test fails and you have to say, well we should keep testing. You don't look good politically by doing that as a consultant or as a worker or anything. If you're the champion of the project, you look terrible to your boss and the best clients are ones where we'll spend like three months planning a task and putting together this giant, ambitious reworking. It fails miserably and they're like, it's OK. Kurt: 21:47 I saved you from wasting more time on what would be a boondoggle of a project. But if you let, you know, if you get emotionally invested in it and you have people you know, fighting for, um, you know, they're, they're designed candidate for just to save face. It doesn't work. And that's where it split testing gives everyone this easy out. You know, when I argue with my children clear, like they just want an out, but they don't want to have to say, well, I was wrong. They'll always take the out if you give it to them. And I think that's um, as a tool for ending Itar internal debates, split testing is wonderful and you know, in your own language you say, well, it defines them. Kurt: 22:26 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it, it, if you have a process for considering design decisions, defangs them. And it also removes what in Ux parlance, it's called the hippo or the highest paid person's opinion. I love it. I relish it. Nothing more than when the like high school marketing intern comes up with a testable design decision that bumps revenue by 15 percent. And I just know about the CEO is design decisions. It's like one of my favorite things. It's so satisfying. I'm like, you know John over here, I'm actually about 15 percent more revenue for the business and we're paying him barely minimum wage credit. Kurt: 23:07 No one wants. No one's gonna argue with it because who doesn't? If you're, if you're the business owner, if you're the employee, you're goal is roy in Split testing gives you this beautiful framework to do that. Right? Kurt: 23:21 Roi Is also measurable in decreasing costs. Right? And I can come in. The most classic example for Ab testing is like this was a disastrous thing and it lost 11 percent revenue and now we're not rolling it out to everyone. So we avoided a bullet, right? That's the most classic one. But I tell you, I've run shopify Ab tests that pair to back the number of skews that we were offering and ended up decreasing overall like cost of goods and cost of manufacturing by like 25, 30 percent because it turned out nobody gave a crap about all the ancillary products that we were offering and offering it in one color, one size actually worked better for us. Kurt: 24:04 You're eliminating, um, in many cases you're eliminating choice paralysis. People don't have to consider the thing they probably don't want. And even if it was like one in five, you still have a Pareto's principle, the 80 20 rule. And you're exploiting that by offering fewer products. People like storage often act like I'm crazy when I suggest that. I'm like, have you considered offering fewer products? Here are fewer options. So they're like, what? No more products means more money and it isn't the case. Not always. Kurt: 24:33 Yeah. And then you can cite a bunch of consumer research around it, but like shopify store owners have printers in general, they have a habit of like they made a successful product and now let's make it green. Or let's make it slightly larger or let's put Swarovski crystals on it or something, you know, and, and they, they get antsy because there's this constant process of reinvention and it might juice the numbers temporarily because you're getting a little bit more engagement from like collectors or something like that. And that could work in the long-term if you're a brand like field notes and you've released something new every three months and you can run out of it really quickly, but most storefronts probably don't have that luxury or they're probably not creating goods that are amenable to doing that. And so I would, you know, removing products is one of those things and that's one where it's like maybe we are settling intubate, but like what's the monetary upside? And I asked them to like, you know, we got rid of these products. That's great. Like what's the upside for you? It was like, oh, probably we just produced manufacturing expenses by 25 percent. I'm like, peel jaw off the floor. Like, are you kidding me? Like oh, OK, fine. Kurt: 25:52 Yeah. If I want to hire nick D, if I want to hire you to do my split testing, I know you actually run a business that's small by design. Um, so you can take out of the limited number of clients at any one time so I can hire you or, Kurt: 26:12 or you can. Um, so there are, there are a few ways to, uh, enlist my services. So the easiest thing that you can do right now, if you go to ab testing manual [inaudible], I, uh, I'm writing a book and creating a video course around everything that you need to know about Ab testing for your store. Right? There are three different packages. One of them is just the book. If you just want to know tactics about how to run an ab test and research it. Another is the video that talks about all the strategy, like the things that we were just talking about around, like dealing with disappointment around Ab tests, dealing with the psychological impact of it, the mindset shift needed in an organization. And then the third thing, which is obviously my favorite, is I come in and do a giant tear down of your site and you get the video course and everything else and it's like a hour long video tear down, like I actually go through on screencasts and pick everything apart and offer a ton of testable ideas. Kurt: 27:11 I also run heat maps and fine tune your google analytics install for you. So that's the deluxe wash if you want the really big package where I come in and run a b tests for you and dictate your strategy, um, that is probably going to be accepting new clients shortly before the holidays. Knock on wood. Um, I don't know when this episode runs, but um, I'm hoping to open up like one slot for a store owner probably end of November, ish. That might give us enough time to start ab testing and Ernest for the holidays. Um, it might get us enough time to get a plan going, but timeline depends heavily on like where your sites at and what you've gotten stalled, what your team looks like, that sort of thing. Um, but if you go to draft a dot and you, I spelled it all out, I'm probably your best option is grab a copy of the Ab testing manual, read through it, see if it makes sense as something that you should be doing for your business. You should really only be working on ab testing. You could work on optimization. Anyone can do that. Anyone can fix browser bugs or compress the images on their mobile pages. Um, but if you're running ab testing, you should probably have around 500 to 1000 transactions a month minimum. Ah, and that's not everyone who's listening to this, but it could be you someday. And maybe you'll think of me then. Kurt: 28:35 So what's, we're coming to the riverside together. Want to see if you have any closing thoughts. What's one thing you wish every shopify store owner would do? Kurt: 28:43 God, your biggest enemy is yourself. Most of the time when you think about the way that people are engaging with your product, you may be wrong and that is scary. You're the one who is the most informed about your product. Um, you think about it every day. It's your job, it's your life's work, um, but that's exactly why you shouldn't trust yourself on it, and the most important thing that you can do is listen to your customers and do what you can do, research it, whether or not you ab test anything after is that's up to you, but take the time to like run a survey. You can put together something on type form in 15 minutes and blasts it out to your mailing list and put it as a call out on your homepage for a week and then analyze what the impact is and it might teach you a lot. Kurt: 29:29 What do you think about including a link? If you made a survey like that, it's easy to use type form [inaudible]. There's no reason you shouldn't have the data you get out of those things is unbelievably valuable. What do you think about including that in the, uh, order confirmation and the receipt? Kurt: 29:42 The thing that I actually love doing kind of like life cycle emails too. So you get an order confirmation but, and actually deliver the product yet the order confirmation might be like jobs to be done type stuff like Clayton Christensen type questions. Like what led you to do this? What was the last thing you had an objection about before you went and purchased? Um, who else did you consider that sort of stuff. That's really great to get right at the height of purchase because it's also the height of enthusiasm. I love also sending a survey or sending a survey separately. Um, maybe like two or three months after they received the product. Like are you still using it? How did you enjoy it? Do you have any issues with it? Um, were there any problems with like assembly or something like that? Those are amazing. Amazing for figuring out. Kurt: 30:29 Not just like how to actually talk about it on your website and get revenue generating changes, but maybe even for like how would you help with onboarding on the product, right? Like how you help with maintenance of the product or something like that. Like is it a leather wallet? Is it prone to cracking? Great. Sell a bottle of needs, foot oil on your site and get people to condition their wallets, pushed that a lot in a little card that you ship with the product, that sort of stuff. Um, it's, you know, optimization effects every part of the business. Kurt: 31:00 Absolutely. Those are all great tips. Um, so what's one piece of information you'd like to correct about Ab testing? Kurt: 31:07 Um, it is not a sack of money button. It is a tool, it is not a panacea for your job and it is a tool and it is one part of optimization and you have to be considering things more holistically than just this headline converts better. Kurt: 31:24 Very good. And lastly, where can people go to learn more about you? Kurt: 31:28 Draft Dot n u a n as in Nick, U as in the letter u university that um, and uh, yeah, if you want to learn more about the AB testing manual, ab testing manual, [inaudible] is your best option there. Kurt: 31:45 Nick. Thank you. It's been my honor and pleasure. Kurt: 31:48 A total honor. Thank you so much for having me back on. Kurt: 31:50 So however this audio made it until find out more about an unofficial shopify podcast.com, and if you'd like to be notified whenever a new episode goes live, subscribe in Itunes, join our facebook group, unofficial shopify podcast insiders, or set up for my newsletter. Speaker 5: 32:05 I'll shoot you an email whenever we post a new episode. Thanks everybody and we'll be back in. Our program was produced today by Paul Reeder. The unofficial shopify podcast is distributed by either cycle, LLC will be back next week with more value bombs for shopify store owners. If you're looking for more high quality and actionable advice on learning the business of e commerce, join thousands of other shopify store owners on our totally free newsletter at ecommerce bootcamp. That's e-commerce hyphen bootcamp.

Kurt Elster from EtherCycle and E-Commerce Bootcamp (coupon code ROBERTPLANK) tells us about Shopify, an easy platform to setup an e-commerce store and take payments. He walks us through a case studies of one of his clients, Everest Bands and the steps they took to setup their e-commerce presence: 1. Create Shopify account (14-day trial) 2. Setup payment options 3. Configure shipping 4. Products 5. Categories 6. Theme 7. Copywriting & Unique Selling Proposition

Kurt Elster from EtherCycle and E-Commerce Bootcamp (coupon code ROBERTPLANK) tells us about Shopify, an easy platform to setup an e-commerce store and take payments. He walks us through a case studies of one of his clients, Everest Bands and the steps they took to setup their e-commerce presence: 1. Create Shopify account (14-day trial) […]

In this week’s episode of the Sailing to Success Podcast Show, Lyndsay Phillips interviews Kurt Elster. Kurt is a senior ecommerce consultant and the founder of ecommerce agency Ethercycle. He is the author of Ecommerce Bootcamp and the host of the Unofficial Shopify Podcast.

Kurt Elster, co-founder of the Chicago-based digital agency Ethercycle, started out like many of you. He made websites for all kinds of different businesses and slowly built that into an agency. As his network and portfolio grew, he partnered up with larger agencies and started doing work for big clients like Verizon. Kurt was making... The post Agency Advantage 29: Kurt Elster on How to Earn >$200/hr Designing Websites appeared first on Hubstaff Blog.

Today, I’m thrilled to have Kurt Elster on the show. Kurt was introduced to me by my good friend Nick Loper who I had back on episode 80 of the podcast. Kurt runs EtherCycle.com where he helps private label sellers launch their own ecommerce websites. Specifically, he’s a Shopify platform expert who helps Shopify users uncover hotspots in their designs to improve their conversion rate. Anyway, I’m a firm believer you really need to own your own platform in addition to Amazon which is why I brought Kurt on the show today to discuss the transition. What You’ll Learn How […] The post 118: How To Transition From Amazon To Your Own Ecommerce Store With Kurt Elster appeared first on MyWifeQuitHerJob.com.

Kurt Elster is the founder of Ethercycle. He has an MBA as a Senior E-commerce Consultant who helps Shopify owners uncover hidden profits in their website.  Kurt got his start in business as a product manager for a company that drop shipped car parts, however he knew he wanted to be in business for himself.  He started his own agency that offered a broad range of services before niching down and driving his income up. In this broadcast, Kurt Elster and I talk about: How he made the decision to niche down and only work on Shopify websites. Why it is it that The smaller the niche, the smaller the audience, the easier it is to sell, the more you look like an expert . How niching down can radically increase the effectiveness of your marketing. His choice to do the work that gives joy. The value of word of mouth and getting the most out of that by, first, giving people the best possible experience, and second, doing everything you can to keep yourself top of mind. Remembering that everything comes down to relationships. Your website should reflect that. How he qualifies clients based on the size of their team. How Kurt uses tools like Clarity Calls to decide which clients would be a good fit. How to find Kurt Elster online: Website: www.kurtelster.com Podcast: www.unofficialshopifypodcast.com Video Course: www.ecommerce-bootcamp.com (use the code TRENCHES for  a 25% discount) Twitter: @kurtinc If you enjoyed today’s podcast, please leave a review on iTunes here. Thanks so much in advance for your support. The post ITT 081: How to Rapidly Qualify Lucrative Clients with Kurt Elster appeared first on Tom Morkes.

Zach is a lifelong watch collector and has the stash of scratched up Swatches to prove it. He holds a B.A. from Bard College in Studio Arts and a Masters of Design in Designed Objects from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As a working product, graphic and packaging designer, he views watches as the perfect synergy of 2D and 3D design: the place where form, function, fashion and mechanical wonderment come together. He has even had some viral success with his own ORBO digital watch concept. Having started a hugely successful watch blog, worn&wound has also launched an equally successful watch strap and accessory store. All of the items offered at the worn&wound shop are developed by the worn&wound team with the goal of creating products of superior quality and affordable price. Further, they're proud to say that all worn&wound watch straps and original products are designed and manufactured in the USA. Read their blog at http://www.wornandwound.com/ and grab one of their watch straps at http://shop.wornandwound.com/ PS: Be sure to subscribe to the podcast via iTunes and write a review. iTunes is all about reviews!

Have you ever wondered how some ecommerce stores become known as the go-to guys for a particular niche? They'll sell the same products at the same prices as their competition, but somehow they're always top of mind when it comes to their niche. It's not through SEO wizardry, or fancy campaigns, it's actually a misunderstand tactic called content marketing. You know that blog you haven't updated in six months? That's typically what people think of with content marketing. We don't blame you, creating content is tough work. Fortunately, it doesn't have to be hard. We talked with Philip Morgan of My Content Sherpa and he laid it all out for us: Why you shouldn't call it a blog How to focus your blog The content you're probably wasting your time on Why it's okay to repurpose content And some easy strategies for creating great content (sometimes without even writing) One of the best investments you can make in your long-term success is authority, which brings customers to you. Listen and learn how. For more great advice, visit philipmorgan.consulting and sign up for his free email course. PS: Be sure to subscribe to the podcast via iTunes and write a review. iTunes is all about reviews! Transcript.... Voiceover: This is the unofficial Shopify Podcast with Kurt Elster and Paul Reda, your resource for growing your Shopify business, sponsored by Ethercycle. Kurt Elster: Welcome back to the unofficial Shopify Podcast. I'm your host, Kurt Elster, and joining me is ... Paul Reda: I'm Paul. Nice to meet you, Kurt. Kurt Elster: Thank you, Paul. Paul Reda: That sounded bad. Kurt Elster: Do it again. Paul Reda: Ah, fuck it, just keep going. Kurt Elster: All right. Joining us today is Philip Morgan from My Content Sherpa. Philip, where are you right now? Philip Morgan: Sebastopol, California. Kurt Elster: How's the weather there? Philip Morgan: It's good. Actually, it's overcast, but it's fine. Kurt Elster: It's overcast? I'm fine with that. Whereabouts is that? Is that near the Bay Area? Philip Morgan: Yes. Sebastopol is a 7,000 person hippie paradise about an hour north of San Francisco. Kurt Elster: Oh, okay. Paul Reda: It's spelled like the Russian city of Sevastopol? Philip Morgan: If you try to dictate it into your iPhone, it is. In reality, it's spelled with a "B" instead of a "V." Paul Reda: Americanized it. Kurt Elster: I'm going to try to go to the Bay Area in December, so I will try and come out and see you. Philip Morgan: Oh, you will be coming out to see me for your ...? Kurt Elster: In my little rental car. What do you do, Philip? Philip Morgan: A number of things. I'm an authority builder primarily for technical firms. Kurt Elster: An authority builder. What is an authority builder? Paul Reda: He says it authoritatively. Philip Morgan: Good, glad to hear it. It's the voice processing on my microphone. I try to help technical companies get to the position where they're attracting clients rather than them chasing clients. I do that using educational content, so I help them develop educational content to help them learn how to use educational content to attract potential clients. In some cases I do it all for them. I have a service called My Content Sherpa that does that. Kurt Elster: Ah. What's an example of educational content? Philip Morgan: Educational content typically is the kind of stuff that people share with other people in order to look smart. Paul Reda: Very good. Kurt Elster: If I want to look smart, I need to be posting educational content versus what? Okay. A better question then; what's the inverse? What is content that makes me not look smart? Philip Morgan: Any newsletter that talks about the last person you hired at your company, what you've been up to, "Oh, check out our new office.” Those are all great examples of content that is easy for a lot of people to produce but has zero value for their prospects because it does not ... let me be clear ... does not make them any better off than they were before they read it. Paul Reda: It's the annual Christmas letter. Philip Morgan: Exactly. Paul Reda: That shouldn't be the focus of your blog. What you're saying here is that you provide, you essentially show people how to prove that they have authority in their business, that they're smart and they know what they're talking about, and the way for people to achieve that is to post shit online showing how smart they are. Philip Morgan: In essence. Now, it helps if you have an empathetic perspective towards your customers. What are the problems my customers have? How can I help them solve those problems? The end result is it makes you look smart, but you're starting from a position of, how can I be empathetic with what is a real pain point or a real struggle for my customers. Paul Reda: That's something, empathy for the customer, something that I've always struggled with, many times, as you can see from by blog posts on the Ethercycle blog. Kurt Elster: I think what's going on here, the difference is, the examples you gave of not smart is everything was about the company, was about the author versus, it sounds like the authority building stuff is where you make it about the reader. Philip Morgan: You know, paradoxically, that's how it works, absolutely. Kurt Elster: Good advice. The problem I run into, and everybody says to me, almost every website, be it ecommerce or otherwise, has a blog on it. With Shopify everybody gets a blog. Everybody says, "I need a blog and I'm going to update it," and then they never do. There's literally one ... I've got several, I'm sure I could pull several clients like this, where there is just a single unfinished blog post from 6 months to 18 months ago. Philip Morgan: Yeah, in Word Press terms, it's the "Hello, World" blog post; right; that's still there six months later. Because, guess what? It was a list a mile long of things that outranked creating content for your blog in terms of priority to keep the business running; right? Kurt Elster: Right. It's easy to ... You never see immediate results from writing a blog post. It's a very passive thing. The results are indirect. You don't necessarily see them immediately, so on the list of things to do, you're going to answer the phone first, ship your products first, do your taxes first, and blog is always going to end up on the bottom of that "To Do" list every single day. Philip Morgan: Right. Kurt Elster: On top of that, when people do sit down to write, either they don't produce good content or they're not a good writer. I mean, there's no shame in that. Most people flat out are not good writers. Philip Morgan: That's the reality of not only a Shopify store owner but pretty much small- to medium-sized business owner, where they can't just talk to HR and say, "We need to solve this problem. Go hire somebody or put together a team," or whatever; right? That's the position everybody is in. Kurt Elster: Okay. Philip Morgan: I think part of the problem, and I'm just going to put this out there and I'd love to hear your reactions to it, because you guys work every day with people in the ecommerce space. I think part of the problem is, the word that we use is "blog," and we need to use a different word, which is ... I'm just going to pull this out of the air ... "educational resource." Instead of, "This is a blog. This is a section on my site where I have to go periodically and think of stuff to write that my audience is going to like or enjoy," what if you were creating a course for them? I think that does two things. I think it maybe makes it more intimidating for some people, but it reduces the scope of the problem. Paul Reda: I feel like that almost makes it less intimidating, because ... Kurt Elster: Yeah, it makes it easier. Paul Reda: Because the term, "blog" implies this is a thing that's going to updated on a regular basis, at the very least, weekly, if not more. Philip Morgan: Right. Paul Reda: You kind of face that wall of like, "Oh, well, shit, as soon as I start writing posts in this thing, I've got to come up with the next one and I've got to come up with the next one, and I've got to come up with the next one." It's just an endless cycle, where if it's, "I need to create a single piece of content that educates my customer, helps my customer or gives something to people, that is a much smaller task, because you're just creating one thing. That thing needs to be great, but it's only one thing. Philip Morgan: Right, and it may be one thing that's in multiple parts, but still it has an end point, whereas a blog, you're almost adding another job title, not like you need one. You're already busy enough as it is. You're adding the job title of blogger, and what are the expectations people have of a blogger? Always publishing stuff. What if you literally went in and changed the letters "B-L-O-G" to ... Quick, guys, give me an example of a Shopify site that is just killing it in terms of what kind of product are they selling? Kurt Elster: Well, one of my favorites is Everest Bands, and they sell two products, a rubber or a leather replacement strap for Rolex. Philip Morgan: Okay. So “The High End Watchband Education Center.” That's clunky. That's off the top of my head. What if it was that instead of a blog? How would that change things for the average, for the owner of that shop? If they're killing it, they're probably doing a great job with content too, but if they had a competitor who was trying to enter the same space, what could you educate your customers who are looking for watchbands ...? Kurt Elster: That's a good question. This was a Kickstarter success story, and before I got involved with their store, he was telling me all about the incredible journey of manufacturing these things and how he's had to become an expert on rubbers and plastics and how most rubber watchstraps are these really awful silicone things that don't look finished, they don't feel good, and he's got this incredibly technical expensive-to-produce rubber called FKM Rubber. I said to him, I said, "Why is this nowhere on your website?" That was all really interesting and made me believe in the product. "It's nowhere on your website." Philip Morgan: You know, that's interesting, because it does not fit exactly into the little thing we're talking about here of educational content, but it's a great example of something that still would position him as an authority, because who knows that much about rubber, and who can talk about it in a way that's interesting and informative? It reflects positively on the product, so that's a great example of something that could go right there in the education center, because at first blush, it's like, "Well, how does that help me solve my problem as a customer?" When I think about it for another minute, I realize it does, because I need to know about materials so that I can be a smarter shopper. Kurt Elster: Exactly. Yeah. As soon as you get into watchstraps you have to choose a material and then within materials you have to choose a design. It turns out, because I've gotten loads of watchstraps from this guy, and then he'll lecture me on the differences between them. None of that is included on the website still. We're working on it. But, man, I could pick up various rubber and leather pieces, just even like a wallet. I could pick up a leather wallet and tell you, "Okay, here's why they manufactured it this way,” and, “Here's why I like this." "This might be kind of shitty," or, "Here's where it might fail." Philip Morgan: As a shopper, as a consumer, you feel empowered as a result of having that information. Kurt Elster: Yes, exactly. Paul Reda: Well, and it also just helps sell the product, because it's like, "We use this rubber. Here's why this rubber is so awesome. Here's why you've got to pay us so much for this watchstrap because I've explained to you why this rubber is so awesome." Philip Morgan: Think about from a sales perspective what that does. It deals with pricing objections. Kurt Elster: Oh, absolutely. Philip Morgan: It positions the product as unique because now a potential customer for this watchband can say, "Well, maybe I want to shop around;" right? "Who else has got the good stuff, the stuff that I just learned about from reading this site's educational resource on watchbands," and then they find, "Wow, nobody else does." They have a unique market position. It does a lot of things from a sales perspective purely by starting from the point that was the question, "How can we educate our customers on the intricacies of watchbands?" There's a lot more there than you might think at first blush that you can, content that you can develop ... It's already in his head. Kurt Elster: Yeah. Philip Morgan: I think we need to talk about that. How can he get it out of his head into a part of his site without feeling like he has to be moonlighting as a writer? Kurt Elster: Yeah. Okay, yeah. Over the phone, if someone is enthusiastic about their business or their product, it's easy for them to talk at you for 20, 30 minutes about it, but how do they turn ... Then as soon as you ask them to put pen to paper, they can't do it. So how do they do it? Philip Morgan: I think that's another problem with the word, "blog," because it sort of boxes in our thinking about what needs to go there. What needs to go on a blog? Written content, maybe with a picture or two to spice it up; right? Kurt Elster: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Philip Morgan: That creates a problem because people are ignoring ways that they could get their message across that could be way more effective. If they are not a very good writer, then they're kind of shooting themselves in the foot by limiting themselves to written content. They could be thinking about things like a podcast or ... Kurt Elster: Right. Philip Morgan: That's the thing that you do. It takes work. It takes planning, and it takes post-production work, but ... Kurt Elster: Yeah. It takes about ... Paul, how long does it take to edit a 30-minute podcast? Paul Reda: Well, if it's a 30-minute podcast, it probably takes me 45 minutes to an hour to edit it. Whatever the time of the podcast was plus another 50% because you're going back and forth and poking at it. Kurt Elster: Yeah. Philip Morgan: Yeah. Paul Reda: You have to listen to all of it. Philip Morgan: What's they all-up time investment to produce one episode? Paul Reda: We record for maybe 45 minutes and then I spend an hour maybe editing it down and then Kurt spends 15 minutes throwing it up. Call it two hours maybe. Putting it up online, not actually vomiting. Kurt Elster: Two to three hours. Paul Reda: Yeah; a week. Kurt Elster: I've noticed it has way more impact on people than blog articles. We've been writing blog articles for years. Philip Morgan: Yeah. Kurt Elster: And I don't get nearly as much feedback about those as I do the podcasts. Philip Morgan: Yeah. Let's roll with that for a minute. I'll just give you a benchmark. I'm a professional writer. I can at peak performance crank out a good solid 2,000-word article in two to three hours, not including any time that I need to prepare and gather information. Okay? That's like a pro on a good day. We're back to our podcast example. You record a 30-, 40-minute podcast. You have it produced, and you have a piece of content that if you have a more easy, natural time talking to people than you do writing, was, I'm going to say, ten times easier for you to create. Kurt Elster: Absolutely. Philip Morgan: And it has value as an educational piece of content. It goes in your education center part of your site, and it can be re-purposed in really interesting ways. It would cost you about 50, 60 bucks to have that transcribed, and I can tell you that an hour of conversation transcribed is going to produce about 8,000 words of content. Now, it's going to be a transcript. It's not going to be typed from a writing perspective. Kurt Elster: No, but I still get the organic SCO value out of it. Philip Morgan: You do, and think about the possibilities that you have to read through that transcript and say, "Wow, well, there's a little interesting section there.” I'm going to pull that out and either myself or with hired help turn that into a high-quality piece of written content. Kurt Elster: See, I personally haven't even thought of that. That's great actionable advice just for me. Paul Reda: To go back to producing written content, even if it makes the business owner more comfortable, a lot of the stuff that I write for the Ethercycle blog, I dictate it into my MAC. Mavericks has really good voice recognition built into it. I'm sure for somebody it's even better, and I just sit there with TextMate open and almost monologue about the topic I want to talk about. Then when I feel like I'm done, I stop talking, and then I look at everything it spit out, and then I just go and chop it down and clean it up a little bit, and then I've got a blog post out of it, and I'm not sitting there worrying over a keyboard trying to find the next word. I'm just speaking extemporaneously, which I think really adds to the voice of the piece I'm writing. Kurt Elster: Yeah. Philip Morgan: I agree. You know, you're doing this clean-up work that you could pay somebody else to do. There are excellent, excellent copy editors all over the internet for between 30 and 60 bucks an hour. It would take them an hour to do what the average non-writer would probably need five or six hours to do. Kurt Elster: Yeah. No, I had a 2,500- or 3,000-word blog post that I sent to the Shopify Partners blog, and I paid a copy editor to do it, and it cost less than 50 bucks. Philip Morgan: Yeah. Kurt Elster: It was well worth it. Philip Morgan: Yeah. Again, I think all of these insights about what you can do come from getting away from the idea of having a blog. To me, that's the real big idea here is, let's get away from this whole idea of a blog, and let's start building education centers for customers. Paul Reda: We need a new word, because "blog" is a very specific thing. It's a very specific thing, and it's also something that most business owners should probably stay away from, because they just don't have the time for it. Kurt Elster: I think from a technical standpoint, the sole difference between a blog and anything else is that the posted date. If you've got that posted-on date, that ends up becoming an expiration date. Philip Morgan: Yep. Paul Reda: Yeah, because it's like, “They last posted something in November of 2013, and then after that I guess they just went out of business because they stopped talking to me.” Kurt Elster: It's like I know from being on the inside I know it's because they're busy, but to a customer who hasn't done this before, it really does look like you've abandoned your business. Philip Morgan: Absolutely. It just makes you look like a ghost town if the one part of your site that is, according to the label, supposed to be updated every week, isn't, it raises some eyebrows. The other thing that people should think about as they're thinking about how can they become educators of their customers is their list. All this content can have a second life, a third life even, on their list as part of a drip email course or just as a part of regular content that goes out. Kurt Elster: Yeah. We both do that. I'm a big fan of that. Philip Morgan: You do that very well, Kurt. Kurt Elster: Thank you. Paul Reda: That's why you're a guest. Kurt Elster: Yeah. I will reuse content. I think a lot of people think content is used once, and it's absolutely not true. You can take stuff that I've been a guest on other people's blogs or podcasts. That ends up in my newsletter. I end up linking to it on my blog. Essentially, I create a library of every single piece of content that is created by me, around me, with me, and then I'm going to try and re-purpose that. Philip Morgan: That's a great way to do it. It points out that content is both about the content of the content, and it's about the context. Kurt Elster: Right. Philip Morgan: Where does it show up? People are afraid, I think by nature, of re-using content because ... I don't know ... because they see it all and they're like, "Well, that makes me look cheap," or … I don't know exactly what the fears are. Kurt Elster: I don't know. I had the same fears. Years ago I had the same fears. I only started re-using stuff when I was developing my drip email campaign, and I discovered that nothing bad happened. Lo and behold. It turns out people aren't ... Every single person is not consuming 100% of everything I put out on the internet, and that's the assumption you have to get away from. Philip Morgan: Exactly. They're not getting that email and going, "I wonder if this was an old blog post. Let me go check." Kurt Elster: Yeah. Even if it was, no one would care. Philip Morgan: Right, because it has a different context and it may be more relevant in that different context. Paul Reda: “Welcome to the Shopify Podcast, where we will be discussing [symbiotics 00:20:21] today.” Philip Morgan: Yeah, exactly. Those are just important points to keep in mind to try to get yourself out of that box that the blog puts you in. Kurt Elster: Okay. I'm thrilled with this. There's loads of actionable advice here, and I think the biggest thing you've done is really re-frame and change my perspective on what a blog is and how content creation works. What would it cost to hire you for my own store? Philip Morgan: You know, it depends. I can work custom, meaning I can fit my services to whatever the problem are. I have a subscription service, though, which is a productized consulting service called, "My Content Sherpa." Kurt Elster: Which I'm a big fan of. Philip Morgan: Thank you. That costs $1,500 a month ongoing. It's ongoing because I'm solving that pain we talked about at the beginning where people are like, "Okay, I'm a business owner and now I'm a blogger. Now I have to get it up every month to write great content." I take that pain out of the picture with My Content Sherpa. I do it on a monthly subscription basis. It happens for you. It takes two to four hours of your time as a business owner, and you get great ongoing content that speaks to your audience and uses the power of time, because none of this stuff happens overnight; right? Even if you get jacked up on espresso and Red Bull, there's only so much you can do in a short period of time, so why not look at this as a medium-term project and use the fact that you're being consistent about it because you're paying somebody else. It's my job, number one; it's your job, number ten. You pay me. You get consistent content, and over time what you can do with that is really impressive. Kurt Elster: Let's say I do hire you. What are the specific deliverables that would come out of it? Philip Morgan: Again, it depends a little bit, even within a productized consulting framework, there's room to customize for each customer. What I find that most customers need is a way to hit the ground running with content marketing. So if you do not have a mailing list, I'm going to set you up with mailing list software that's configured appropriately for your situation. We're going to create a lead magnet, which is some sort of very short, digestible educational resource that you can put on your site to start to build your list. I'm going to build that lead magnet for you. We may have to put together a quick landing page to make that happen. From there we really focus on building your list with high-quality educational content, because we've been talking about content and education this whole time. The real purpose of My Content Sherpa is to get you a list that makes money for your business, and so all the content really drives people towards joining your list. Kurt Elster: You're right. Yeah, we didn't touch on it, but having that list is hugely important, because we've got several clients with lists that have anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 people on it, but in every case, every time one of those clients hits "Send" on an email campaign, they immediately become top of mind to all of their customers again, and they generate thousands every time. It's literally, "Click," "Send," and then they've guaranteed thousands of dollars that day. Philip Morgan: It's amazing. I really focus primarily on the ecommerce space. I'm so jealous because little things like optimizing a list or coming up with a few pieces of relevant content can produce such immense returns on the investment. It's really impressive. Kurt Elster: No one can see the value of email marketing like ecommerce clients can. Philip Morgan: Yeah. Paul Reda: Yeah. I think that's one of the reasons we love it is because for ecommerce clients, it's like there's very hard numbers right there to see whether or not things are working, and we could just be like, "Oh, look, sales went up. We did a good job." Kurt Elster: Yeah. Paul Reda: As opposed to an offline business, it's kind of like, "Well, you know, there's other reasons." Kurt Elster: “How many people walked in the door today?” Philip Morgan: Yeah, or branding, which is of course important but ... Kurt Elster: It's very subjective. Philip Morgan: [Crosstalk 00:24:49] a long-term investment and so subjective. That's why the whole blog thing is such a tragedy, because not only if you ... Paul Reda: “The tragedy of blogs.” Philip Morgan: It's the tragedy if you're setting yourself up for failure twice, because you're killing your ability to create good content that can be re-purposed for your list. Kurt Elster: Okay. Well, this is all really great information. The one thing I want to leave people with, though, is some examples of content they could go out today and try to create for their website. Philip Morgan: Interviews with customers who are killing it. Let's do three examples. Example number one, interviews with customers who are killing it. Wouldn't your other customers really like to know what they're doing, and that message gets brought to those other customers by you. Super easy to produce. It's so easy to get people to talk about what they're doing that's successful, because everyone wants to look good in that way, so interviews with customers that are killing it. Kurt Elster: Okay. Philip Morgan: Record the interviews over Skype. Get them transcribed. Pull out a couple blog posts. It's a huge easy win. Everybody loves talking about things that are going well, so it's just really easy to set it up and get people to agree to it. Second example, you could talk to your sales or customer service people if you're at the size where you have those and those people are not yourself, in which case it's even easier. What are the top X number of questions that people have? Answer those questions. Kurt Elster: Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. I always ask that of the people with brick and mortar stores. I say, "When people call you, what questions are they asking?" and if they say, "Don't know," I'm like, "Get a pen and paper. Next time somebody calls, start writing this stuff down." Philip Morgan: Exactly. Find out what that is. Turn it into content in a way that is not painful for you. If that means talking into your iPhone and having it transcribed and edited, if that means sitting in front of a webcam and recording it. It doesn't matter if the information is high quality and there's not some fatal flaw with the production or the media. That's my second one, is find those customer common questions, answer them in some way, and get that content on your site. Kurt Elster: Okay. My new bench in my office is not going to solve people's problems, but answering a question that I consistently get asked by customers will solve people's problems. Philip Morgan: Yeah, that's one of the secrets of good content is it basically comes from your customers. It may not be in their voice and it may not be recordings of them, but the good content comes from them, because it reflects their pains, their needs, their desires, their dreams. Kurt Elster: Well, I think we're going to wrap it up there, Philip, but that has been hugely powerful if people implement that stuff. Philip Morgan: Glad to hear it. Kurt Elster: That's the problem, a small percentage of people are actually going to go do anything with this advice, so I urge you to try any of it, and if you see value in it, go ahead and go hire Philip. Otherwise, where could people get more information? I'm willing to bet that you've got a great list going. Philip Morgan: They can join my list. There's just one "L" in "Philip." Remember that. They can go to PhilipMorgan.Consulting. It's one of these new-fangled domain names. PhilipMorgan.Consulting. That's a website. One "L" in "Philip." Kurt Elster: All right. We'll link to that in the description. Philip Morgan: Right on. Kurt Elster: Cool. Philip Morgan: Kurt, this was fun. Kurt Elster: Yeah, it was fun. Thank you for joining us today. Philip Morgan: You're welcome. Paul Reda: Thank you, Philip. Kurt Elster: We're all using our NPR voices. Paul Reda: This is like Ethercycle After Dark. Kurt Elster: What's your favorite website? At Night. Mine's just Google. I just Google stuff all day. Paul Reda: You just Googled "Girl boobs," and you're like, "Yes." Kurt Elster: Well, I search for animated gifs. I know Philip has an impressive folder of animated gifs. Philip Morgan: It's a growing ... Kurt Elster: None of them are boob related, though. Paul Reda: Well, damn it. Philip Morgan: Yeah, I don't think so. Yeah. Kurt Elster: Well, work on it, buddy. Philip Morgan: I know. That's a big hole in my collection. Kurt Elster: All right. I will leave you to your animated gif research, Philip. Philip Morgan: This was fun, guys. Thank you. Kurt Elster: Thank you for joining us.

Today we're talking with Nick Disabato of Draft, a small interaction design consultancy in Chicago. His previous clients include Gravitytank, New Music USA, Chicago Magazine, The Wirecutter, and too many other attractive, intelligent people to count. We spent quite a bit of time talking about his work designing a delightful user experience for Cards Against Humanity. We discuss... Cards Against Humanity marketing strategy Split-testing Conversion rate optimization And more Links: Cards Against Humanity - http://cardsagainsthumanity.com/ Cadence & Slang - http://cadence.cc/ Draft: Revise - https://draft.nu/revise/ Nick's newsletter - http://eepurl.com/vqJgv Visual Website Optimizer - https://vwo.com/ PS: Be sure to subscribe to the podcast via iTunes and write a review. iTunes is all about reviews! Transcript Recording: This is the Unofficial Shopify Podcast with Kurt Elster and Paul Reda, your resources for growing your Shopify business, sponsored by Ethercycle. Kurt: Welcome to the Unofficial Shoplift Podcast. I'm your host, Kurt Elster and with me today is Nick Disabato from Draft. Nick, how are you doing? Nick: Doing fantastic. How are you, man? Kurt: I'm well. Where are you at? Nick: I live and work in Logan Square, a neighborhood in Chicago and have been here for the past seven years. I've been independent for the past 3-1/2. Kurt: That's good. I'm about right miles from you in Park Ridge. It's funny we're doing this over Skype but we're like a bus ride apart. Nick: We are. We're probably a short L ride apart. Kurt: Tell me, who's Nick D? Nick: Nick D is me as I exist on the Internet and I run a small design consultancy called Draft as you mentioned and we do a lot of things. I publish books. I do monthly A/B testing for people. I run the world's stupidest newsletter but what I think we're here to be talking about is my one-off interaction design product, just more typical client work, more consulting work. I've done it for a variety of e-commerce clients and solved a lot of really interesting problems for both mobile and desktop and I think about these sorts of things a lot. That's kind of ... Kurt: For the lay person, what's interaction design? Nick: Interaction design, it's the process of making something easier to use and it involves hacking out the layout and behavior of a product. That can range from prototyping something and running it by users to see how they enjoy using it or whether they're successful at completing goals within it. It can range from promoting certain design decisions and hacking out functionality. It can involve figuring out edge cases like if you type in a really long response that doesn't belong in a certain form field, what happens? If you click here, what happens? It's figuring out to choose your own adventure capacity of going through a technology product of any type. I've worked... Kurt: It sounds like you're a problem solver for your clients. Give me a good example of a problem you solved with interaction design. Nick: We'll talk about e-commerce stuff. One of my biggest clients over the past few years was a board game company called Cards Against Humanity. Kurt: I dearly love Cards Against Humanity. Tell us about it. Nick: For your audience, if you do not know Cards Against Humanity, it's similar to a card game called Apples to Apples where I'm a person judging a card and everybody else plays another card only it's usually quite inappropriate. You have weird poop jokes or [scathalogical 00:03:03] things. Kurt: The favorite combo I ever got, the winning combo I ever got out of Cards Against Humanity, I will never forget. It was "Santa gives the bad children genital piercings." That was genius. Nick: My personal favorite is 'What's the last thing Michael Jackson thought about before he died?' and somebody played Michael Jackson. Kurt: That one is layers on layers. Nick: Oh my God, I still think about it. It's amazing. I've worked with them to define all of the layout and behavior for their e-commerce system. They now have, in addition to Amazon, you can buy stuff directly through them. You go through and they run through Stripe. It's not through Shopify but it's entirely independent and entirely custom. What they wanted was something that worked pretty well on mobile and they wanted something that was a little more unconventional to fit their business's needs. Cards Against Humanity, for those of you who don't know, they're a relatively unconventional business just in terms of their tone and in the way that they carry themselves and the way that they deal with their customers. Kurt: That has totally differentiated and set them apart. Nick: Yes. I think a large part of Cards Against Humanity's success is their marketing and their outreach. They do a terrific job of both of those but they do a very ... Kurt: I've seen their marketing and it's amazing. They do one-off promo cards. I've got their House of Cards promo set that they did co-branding with Netflix. What kind of outreach do they do? Nick: They do a lot of ... They'll reply to people on Twitter. They'll follow along with people's activity. They'll pay attention to what people are talking about and they'll try and be a little bit proactive about it. As far as their site is concerned, their tone is very distinctive. It's ... Kurt: Absolutely, it irreverent. Nick: Yes, it's irreverent. It's a little bit standoffish, a little bit jerk but fun jerk. It's like [inaudible 00:05:09]. Kurt: Yeah. You love them for being mean to you. It's like Ed Debevic's.. Nick: [Crosstalk 00:05:10]. Yeah, it is like Ed Debevic's a little bit which is a diner in Chicago that ... Kurt: Right, [inaudible 00:05:15]. Nick: It's definitely one of those things where they own their voice and they know how to do it. If you go through the prompts on their Website, if you go to ... I believe it's store.cardsagainsthumanity.com. You can go there and buy stuff and they ask you what country you're from right away. We can go to a UX teardown of why that is but I'll give you the high level. They go to country [crosstalk 00:05:40] right away. Kurt: I'm already there. Nick: If you choose I live in the rest of the world like not US or Canada or UK or something like that, they'll be like, "Begone foul foreigner" or something like that." They'll just make fun of you. "Send us an e-mail for when Cards Against Humanity is available in your inferior country" or something like that. They're just totally blanked up. UI Copy was definitely an enormous component of it. It's part of why I'm getting to this because I wrote a fair amount of the UI copy that is still on there right now. Another thing that you'll see on the page if you go through it while you're listening to this podcast is you'll see a row of information at the top of it. You'll go and buy something, you'll hit Pay Now and you'll see country recipient, e-mail and shipping and what it says is ... It says USA. It'll try and geolocate you and then it'll say, "Not right." You can tap back to that and two things are happening there. You can edit your order as you're going and it reads the order back to you. One thing that you see in Shopify in particular or in e-commerce in general like Amazon or anything like that, it reads your order back to you before you hit Place Order. That's an extra click that you don't necessarily need because you could get this kind of inline feedback. There's no reason why you couldn't get inline feedback. I built the interaction model to fit that and people liked it. There were two things that people called out – the way that the feedback was being read back to you and the way that it was auto-correcting as it goes. If you type in your zip code, it autocorrects to your city and state and is usually accurate. That's pretty cool and it does have for both USPS and Canada Post. It requests little information from you, moves you through the process as fast as possible at the minimum of clicks. I wrote a book that called about interaction cycle, Cadence & Slang. One of the things I say is reduce the number of steps to complete a task. I tried to make this kind of exemplar of that principle by making it as efficient as humanly possible. The other thing that people talk about is when you actually go buy something, which I see you're tapping through that right now, Kurt, that I would ... Once you finish the transaction it says, "Now, go outside" and makes fun of you about the fact that you're on the Internet and it links ... Kurt: It shames you for your order. Nick: It already has your address and if you click "Now, go outside," it searches on Google Maps for parks near you. Kurt: [Crosstalk 00:08:07]. This is incredibly clever stuff. Nick: It's thinking like, okay, I'm on a computer and I'm refreshing it whenever an expansion comes out or I'm doing all these other things and it just wants ... It's like, "Oh, by the way, you're on the Internet. Now, you don't have to be on the Internet anymore. You gave us money. Just go away." That's most of the design decisions behind this. I feel like a lot of people just reinvent the wheel with e-commerce. They want to do something safe. One of the great things with Cards Against Humanity is they don't want safe. They don't care. They want to get the orders okay but if you're messing it up, it's not their fault. It's your fault for this particular organization. [Crosstalk 00:08:56]. Kurt: Yeah, like the whole ... the entire experience ... Like it's easy to use and it's great but at the same time the game ... It starts with a product. You've got this incredibly irreverent game and then that gets extended to the messaging and the copy and the positioning. Then amazingly where everyone else would have stopped, they moved it into the actual user interface. The interaction itself is irreverent. Nick: There are a couple of people at Cards that handle a goodly amount of the logistics in getting the cards printed and shipped and everything. To use a developer term, they are a full-stack operation. They deal with the printer. They deal with Amazon. They deal with the warehouse. They want to build a vertically-integrated system for [crosstalk 00:09:40]. Kurt: I was going to say that sounds like a vertical integration. Nick: They're a good enough business and are popular enough that they can get away with it. They could ... If I did that ... Kurt: It's a great product. People love it. It's a catch-22. People love it because of these irreverent decisions but at the same time, are they able to make those irreverent decisions because people love it? It's like where do you start with that? Nick: I would be putting words in their mouth but I suspect it's kind of a feedback loop. They make these decisions and they realize they're getting rewarded for it by having more business and so, they end up making more irreverent decisions in more irreverent ways. Kurt: Why, yes. You're right. It does. It rewards itself. Anyone could start trying this and if it doesn't work out, you shouldn't do it. Nick: Yeah. I run a large part of my design practice as A/B testing. You could build this and run half of your users through it and if your conversion rate drops, either try and tweak it or throw it away. That way you're not losing an insane amount of sales on your testing idea. You're vetting whether it works for you. I suspect at least certain conceits of these like auto-complete and providing this feedback. I don't see any personal reason why that couldn't exist in other e-commerce context. I really don't. Kurt: Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned split testing. Tell us briefly, what is split testing? Nick: It's essentially you have an idea and rather than fighting about it internally about whether it's a good idea, you let people decide and you're letting real customers decide. This can be anything. This can be a call to action button. This can be a headline. This can be a person on your homepage selling the thing. It can be whether a video autoplays or not. It can be any design decision you want and you have a control page which is your original page. You send that by 50% of your users and then the other goes to the other 50%, whatever you're varying and you're measuring success in sales, signups for your mailing lists, whatever have you. It can be anything that you want. Kurt: As long as it's a measurable goal. Nick: You have a goal, right. You can do this with multiple variations. Most of my A/B tests are in fact A-B-C-D-E tests where I'm vetting many different variations of something and many different permutations of something and testing it with real-life people. It reduces risk because you're running many variants. You're optimizing the page slowly and you're throwing away what doesn't work and learning what does work and where you want to be putting more of your efforts. Even a failure, which is a plurality of your tests are failures or inconclusive, you're still learning where you don't want to be putting your efforts, like you don't need to be fighting over that link, that sort of thing. I always try and frame it in a very positive way. Kurt: It's interesting. The way you brought it up is you don't have to fight about it internally. It's a great way to talk about it because in our design practice that's generally how I bring up the idea of split testing is when the client pushes back on something or they attribute some loss in sales to a change and I say, "Actually, we don't have to guess about it. We could split test it and know for certain." It's usually how I introduce that concept. Nick: Yes. Kurt: As soon as you say, "We can know for sure and we can know scientifically," then people become very interested in it. What's your favorite tool for split testing? Nick: I give all of my clients ... I have a monthly A/B testing tool or a service called Draft Revise where you pay me a certain amount every month and I run tests for you and write up reports and that's it. You never have to worry about the practice of doing this. I use something called Visual Website Optimizer. It shortens to VWO. You can go to vwo.com. For a few of my clients, I use something called Optimizely, if you go to optimizely.com. Both of those are terrific. They have very small differences at this point. It's like Canon and Nikon. They're just snipping at each other and it's making both of them much better. Kurt: I've used them. I've personally used VWO. I really liked it. I used the Google split testing tool. That thing's a nightmare. Nick: Yeah, it's changey. I would pay the money for V. If you have enough scale to get statistical validity out of the A/B tests which typically you need at least 3,000 or 4,000 [uniques 00:13:53 ] a month to be doing that for whatever goal you're measuring, usually it's more, you're probably making enough money that you can afford Visual Website Optimizer, no question or Optimizely. Don't do the free Google stuff. It just sucks. Kurt: The amount of time I wasted messing with that wasn't worth it. VWO is so much easier. Nick: Yeah, don't bother. Kurt: The support is really good. I'm not condemning Optimizely. I've literally just never used Optimizely. That's a good way to get into it for our listeners. If it's confusing or they don't want to deal with it, your service is great. I've seen the reports you run and I'm not even plugging it. It's just genuinely good stuff that you do. Nick: Thank you. It's one of those things where a lot of people don't know how to start and they don't know how to do it and I have two different offerings. One of them is a one-off like I give you a guide and I give you a lot of suggestions for what you can test and what you can change things to, things that I would change. You're getting a UX teardown and a write-up of how to put into practice but I find that a handful of those come back to me and they're like, "Can you just do this for us?" Kurt: Essentially, what you've said to them is like, "Here's a plan for immediate success based on my vast experience and you could do whatever you want with it." I imagine a lot of people are going to be, "All right, fine. You know what you're doing. You just take care of those for me." Nick: Yeah, and they're already used to paying me and I give them a discount on their first month. If they pay me $900 for Revise Express Report and then they sign up for a 2000-dollar plan for Draft Revise, you're paying only $1,100 for the first month which at that point you're not getting charged twice. You're able to hit the ground running. I signed up a Revise Express client recently for Draft Revise and it's been going well. We went from not having anything together to contract signed and A/B tests running on their site in three days because I already knew it. Kurt: That's good. Nick: I wrapped my head around it. It was great. Kurt: When you're wrapping your head around it, how do you approach optimizing a site? Nick: It depends on the site. Let's say it's like a typical SaaS business. I look at the things that I know changing them will yield a lot of fruit and that can be common elements to optimize like your headline or your call to action or testimonial quotes, stuff like that which is very optimizing 101 type stuff. Or I'd look at things that I see are clearly bad like if you have an e-mail list signup form and the button says Submit. Unless you are [crosstalk 00:16:39]. Kurt: I look for the stuff that just like, "This is painful. This goes against every best practice. Let's fix this first and get our baseline back to zero." Nick: Yeah. I break things into two categories. One of them is one-off design changes which are beyond the need for testing. Things like if you make your button Submit. Unless you're an S&M site, you have no business making your buttons Submit, all these other things. Then I also look at things and suggest "Let's test this because I'm not sure." The difference between those two is confidence. I'm still changing things. I'm changing elements on the page but I'm not fully confident that changing your headline to this one thing is going to speak to your customers effectively especially because I've been working with you for only three days if I'm doing these teardowns. It's very like intuition at that point. I will check everything within ... If you're a SaaS business, call your conversion funnel like your homepage to your pricing page to your signup page to your onboarding to all that and then you get converted from a trial into a paying customer eventually. There are a bunch of pages that you have to go through in that flow to actually figure that out. I try and vet all of those and figure out if I were building your site and figuring out your marketing page and trying to figure out a really good way to speak to people, would I do this? I bring in my experience working with dozens of SaaS businesses and e-commerce sites to bear on that and eight years of interaction design experience. That's often something that they can't get internally because I don't know any actual fulltime UX employees who've worked for as many individual clients as I have. Kurt: They couldn't possibly. Earlier you had mentioned to me the other day that you're working on something with Harper Reed. Nick: Yeah. I did it for six weeks. It was a one-off project with Harper Reed. For those who don't know, he elected the president at the beginning of ... starting at the beginning of last ... No, two years ago. It was 2012. Kurt: The way I view it is Harper Reed personally defeated Mitt Romney. Nick: His tech team certainly did. He built the team that ... It almost feels like that. If you read the teardowns of it, they're amazing but he has a startup now which is essentially a mobile e-commerce startup called Modest. It's at modest.com and first project that he did was a storefront for a toy and game manufacturer called [Choonimals 00:19:04], if you go to Choonimals Website. He's a friend of mine. He works and lives in Chicago. He works in Fulton Market. They had me come on and just be another pair of eyes on their UX. They already had a lot of interesting UX ideas there. I'm not going to take remote amount of credit for some of the most novel and fascinating parts of it but I agree with the conceit. A lot of the things were already coming together like scanning your credit card with the iPhone's camera is one of them and Uber does that. There's a JavaScript library called card.io that lets you do that where it just turns on your flashlight and lets you take a photo of your credit card and it scans your number in so you don't have to manually type it and reduce the error [inaudible 00:19:52]. He has a thing where you can buy stuff and it's basically buy with one touch and then if you ... You get a grace period where you could undo that. You can un-buy something and then ... Kurt: The easier you make something to buy, if people aren't used to that standard yet, I think there is a lot of that ... I wouldn't call it cognitive dissonance. Nick: I think you're just thrown off expectations-wise. There's a mismatch. Kurt: Yeah. Or it becomes too easy and suddenly, it's frightening. You have to have that grace period, that undo. Nick: I did not come up with these ideas to be clear. I helped refine them and offer my own ideas about them which is just like fit and finish. The idea of un-buying, you might tap something and it says Buy. It's very clear you're buying something but you don't even get an undo button in the app store if you buy something. You tap it on your iPhone. Kurt: Yeah. I bought a lot of silly things. I wish there was an undo button in the app store. Nick: I don't let myself check the app store while I'm drunk anymore because I just threw up and buy some 30-dollar application that's just ill-advised but this is like they're not going to ... It's a physical good usually. They're not going to ship it for another day at least or five hours if it's [overnighted 00:21:08] or something like that. At which point, you have a chance to take back that notion and edit your order. You barely get the chance to edit your order or merge orders on Amazon as it stands. Kurt: With Amazon, it's a scam. You could cancel an order while it's in progress but once you put cancel, it says, "We're going to try to cancel it" and it's like less than 50% of the time that it actually manages to cancel it. Nick: Right and if you're Prime, they probably already have it sent on a drone to you so you don't even know. It's one of those things where it just seems obvious that you should have an undo button when you're buying something. Kurt: Absolutely. You've got a lot of experience with this. Give me one tip for – obviously this is tough because it's general – one tip for an e-commerce store owner who's looking to grow the revenue. Nick: I'm going to drill down into this tip. You need to make it as easy for the person to buy the thing as possible and easy for them to back out of it and so, cutting down the number of steps. If you're asking for any extraneous information, if you are deliberately asking for both billing and shipping address, if you're splitting the person's name into three different fields, if you're not supporting auto-complete, those are all different forms of the same problem which is you're making the person enter more data than is necessary. Make the person input les data. Nobody likes to fill out a form. You don't want to feel like you're in a doctor's office buying a product. That's the one tip that I've got. Kurt: I guess it's pretty common with Shopify store owners. They want to do less work personally. They want like or go, "Can you make it ask them X, Y and Z thing?" and we'd say, "Sure, we could build out these product options for your products." Then when we do it, their conversion rate plummets and they're like, "Why did that happen?" Well, because you just made it really hard to buy from you. Nick: Yeah. Doing this auto-complete ... Going back to Cards Against Humanity, doing the auto-complete for your address and address validation and making it as fast as it is on that site is tremendously difficult. It is not easy programming to be putting in. Doing this focus is really hard but their sales bear out how they're doing. It justifies that decision. It almost says the amount of work that you put into the site and making it smarter, making the defaults easier and making it easier for the person, that's hard work but it directly connects to your conversion rate and if you're delighted about it ... I can't tell you how many positive twits happened when the first storefront came out that talked explicitly about the user experience and shared that out. It said, "Oh, you have to buy something." Who says "Oh, you have to buy something" about an e-commerce store? Kurt: You have to experience this. Nick: You have to experience getting sent to a park nearby you. That's very unexpected. Kurt: People are just ignoring the product itself. They'll just buy it for the sake of the purchasing experience. Nick: Right. Kurt: People don't think ... They would never think twice about someone making the interior of a retail store nice, making it easy to buy something there but as soon as it comes to e-commerce, then suddenly it's like the strange thing that no one wants to spend money on. Nick: It's funny because Apple's retail stores are beautiful and amazing and their UX is incredible. If you go in person, they swipe your card there in front of the computer and somebody walks the computer out to you and ... Kurt: Have you ever paid with cash in the Apple store? Nick: I have not. Kurt: It's same deal but the cash register is hidden inside one of the display tables. Just like the face of the table pops open. The cash box was in there the whole time. It's clearly on remote. They still use their iPhone and then the thing pops open. Nick: Right. Their UX is amazing but I bought an iPhone. I bought the new iPhone from the Apple store online the other day. Kurt: Did you go with the 6 or the 6-plus? Nick: I have 6. Kurt: You don't have monster gorilla paws is what you're telling me. Nick: No, I have normal human being hands and I don't need a Phablet. I have an iPad Mini. Anyway, I was going on it and I was on the Website, not the app just to be clear. I think the app is better but it was not fun. It sucked. It was really flunky and weird and it could be better. You're selling ... You're the biggest company in the world. You can fix that. Kurt: I noticed that they do one clever thing. You can choose multiple payment methods. I don't think I've seen that anywhere else. Nick: Amazon ... Kurt: If you were to max out your credit card and then finish up with a second credit card, they will let you do that. Nick: Or if you have one of those crappy gift cards that you get from the grocery store, like somebody gives you 100-dollar gift card and you have 18 cents left on it and you feel bad wasting that 18 cents, you could put that on the card. Kurt: You could do it. Nick: Right. That's edge [casey 00:25:58], feasible. Kurt: That's an argument I have with people is about edge cases where it's like, okay, we could fix this problem that one of 100 people have but what's that impact on the other 99 out of 100 people? I think Apple has walked themselves into that. Nick: Yeah. They can accommodate edge cases. I know that Amazon used to accommodate that sort of edge case and then they got rid of it for whatever reason. They probably saw that it wasn't diminishing returns or something but anyway. Kurt: That's a thing you could split test. Nick: Right, yeah. I'm sure Amazon does. Amazon A/B tests everything. I get bucketed into A/B tester of their pages all the time. I find it redesigns itself and I refresh it and it goes away [crosstalk 00:26:42]. Kurt: Or open an incognito window and it's a different site. Yeah, I've had that happen. Nick: Yeah. Kurt: If I wanted to learn more from you, the best way would be to do what? Nick: You should subscribe to my mailing list because it's funny. Kurt: I subscribe to it. I enjoy it, lots of good Chicago references in there. Nick: There are a lot of good Chicago ... Kurt: Like the hotdog story. Nick: There was a story ... It's a dog stand that's very popular here. It's closing this week. That is a very good way to get to know me as a person. If you want to know more about interaction design, I would go to cadence.cc which is my book, Cadence & Slang, and grab a copy. It is generally considered one of the more important texts on interaction design by people far more famous and important than me which is terrifying. Kurt: I have read it. It is genuinely good. Nick: Awesome, thank you. That's the best way to get to understand the kind of stuff that I'm talking about with e-commerce. It's applicable to any technological project but the ultimate goal is just to make things more efficient and pleasurable to use. Kurt: Fantastic. That's great. Thank you, Nick. Thank you for joining us and have a great day. Nick: Thank you so much. Take care.

Kai Davis is a dynamite internet marketing professional. He's really reinventing how his clients view SEO and creating an amazing suite offerings with which anyone can build an amazing organic stream for their website. We discuss: How Kai boosts a website's findability Why you should focus on results, not SEO What best practices to follow What does on-site SEO involve? How do you get quality backlinks? The education problem that SEO faces What a bad SEO engagement looks like Link-building strategies for real SEO results The easiest SEO win you can use for your site How important are search rankings? An easy way to improve click-through rates Are you communicating trust? Kai's number one SEO tip. If you want to learn more from Kai, he's got a newsletter where he dispenses more of the hot truth you heard here. Sign up at http://kaidavis.com/newsletter/ PS: Be sure to subscribe to the podcast via iTunes and write a review. iTunes is all about reviews! Transcript.... Recorded: This is the Unofficial Shopify Podcast with Kurt Elster and Paul Reda, your resource for growing your Shopify business sponsored by Ethercycle. Kurt: Welcome to the second episode of the Unofficial Shopify Podcast. I am your host, Kurt Elster. With me is my cohost and partner-in-crime, Paul Reda. Paul: Hello. Kurt: Joining us today is our guest and friend, Kai Davis. Kai, you're out in Portland. How's it going there? Kai: Hey, folks. It's a nice and rainy overcast Portland day so it feels like home. Kurt: Fantastic. Kai, you're my go-to SEO guy. Why don't you tell people a little bit about yourself? Kai: Sure. I am a marketing consultant specializing in search engine optimization and helping my clients get found online through digital outreach promotion and link building. I figure my clients have wonderful content, wonderful websites. My role is to help people find out about those sites. Go out there on my clients' behalf, tell influencers, authorities, bloggers, and journalists about my client, their resources, their linkable assets, and promote that connection. Kurt: It sounds like you've differentiated yourself. You're like, "I should wait more than just an SEO guy." Kai: Totally. Totally. So many people practicing SEO out there but saying I need an SEO is like going to an architect and saying, I really need a hammer. You want a new house. You want a beautiful entry way. I am focused on the results for my clients which usually are traffic, sales, better image, not necessarily just, "Hey, we're going to do some SEO on your site." We're going to do best practices that help you get found online. Kurt: Okay. Actually, tell us a little bit about those best practices. Kai: Sure. It really splits into two different camps. You have on-site SEO and off-site SEO. With the on-site side of things, it's like saying, "We want to get everything tuned out that we can, make it easy for people to find us." The analogy I like using is saying, "If you're going to have people over to your house, you're going to tie some balloons to your mailbox so they know exactly where you are." I think that's what on-site SEO really is. What can we do to make it so when people come by, they're able to find your site. It covers the normal stuff, title pegs, headers, headlines, on-page content, what keywords are we targeting? Just making sure everything is as perfect as it can be. When it comes to off-site stuff, again, that end goal is we want to get traffic to your site. We want to get interesting people finding your site and saying, "Hey, this is what I want." To do that, the best signal to send to Google is and always has been links. What I do is that outreach on behalf of my clients saying, "Hey, we want to get some links to your site from relevant sites, from influencer sites, from sites that have high quality content, and everybody benefits from that. Paul: That mention of high quality content is really what is important and sticks out to me because at least, my impression is dealing with the SEO consultants of the world. Is that SEO has almost become like a catch-out term for snake oil salesmen who are just trying to get people to be … I can get you to be number one in Google. I can do black magic that will secretly increase your Google rankings so you give me a ton of money. I feel like those people are taking advantage of a customer who actually needs legitimate help. Is that something that you think is a problem in dealing with your industry that the clients don't understand that there's much more to this than just paying some guy to buy a bunch of backlinks off of Fiverr? Kai: Absolutely. It comes down to an education problem and a reputation management problem on behalf of the SEO folks. I've had so many clients and potential clients say to me, "You know what I hate? Two things in the world. Only two things. Lawyers and SEO specialists. I don't understand what they do. It's confusing. They try to explain it to me and do a terrible job, and I just throw money to a black box, and I don't know what's going to come out of it." That's what I want to move away. There's so many people out there who are eager to sell a $300 or a $500 solution. We'll get you traffic. We'll get you a number one position on Google, but again, for that hammer analogy, it's like they're selling you a really fancy hammer when you want a better house. Kurt: Let's talk about the bad SEO people. What are those guys doing? Let's dispel it right now. Kai: Usually when somebody goes out and says, "Hey, I want to get to number one on Google. I am going to pay somebody $300, $400, $500 a month," they're going out there and they're doing, the SEO company is doing on that client's behalf directory submissions, building a spam backlinks through blog commenting or buying up existing sites that have links pointing to them, building out the content, and then putting links in that content to the client's site. As with anything, there's some ways you could use these black hat tactics effectively and some ways you could do it very ineffectively, and most of the time, if your client he says, "Hey, I just want to spend $300 or $400 a month on Google and get to number one," you're going to be working with an SEO company who is really good at cashing your tanks, building some spam backlinks, get you a little bump in your traffic or rankings of the first couple of months. Then, you'll see your traffic just plummet when Google catches on and says, "All that's pointing to your site is 5000 low quality irrelevant links, why should we be ranking you high? What's relevant about your content that you deserve these links and what's relevant about these links that you deserve this rankings?" Paul: Yes. Really, if you cheap out on it, in the long run, you're only hurting yourself because Google is going to catch on to your shady game and they're going to punish you for it. Kai: What's that comment? I never knew how expensive it would be to work with a professional until I work with an amateur. If you cut corners, if you work with somebody who says, "It's going to be cheap, we'll get you what you want," if it seems too good to be true, we're going to get you 1000 hits a day in 24 hours, it's probably too good to be true. Kurt: The way to avoid those snake oils, the bad SEO marketers is number one, look at price and look at unrealistic promises or results? Kai: Absolutely. I'd add to that. Talk to them about what clients they've worked with before and what results they see, and talk to them about the system they use. A few months ago, I had a call from an entrepreneur who is starting up an SEO company, and I said, "Hey, just walk me through. How do you get these links toy our clients? What system are you using?" It's a really innovative patentable process that our VP of technology has developed that assures people's first place rankings." "Yeah, but what do you do?" "Unfortunately, I can't tell you that." Whatever any client ask me, "Hey, Kai. How are you going to get us links?" I will break out for them in detail what I do. Let's identify the influences in your industry. Let's identify those bloggers. Let's figure out who is linking to your competitors and what their most valuable links are. Let's copy your competitors' most valuable links through link building and direct outreach, and let's find those people who are having conversations about your brand or your industry online, and insert ourselves into that conversation through outreach, picking up the phone or hopping into email and saying, "Hey, we'd love to have you link to us. You have this great resource about X, Y, Z. We have X, Y, Z. Would you be willing to include a link to help your audience?" That's what I do. That's what good SEOs do. Paul: What you're saying is you do actual hard legwork to deliver real actual results. That is craziness. How could you charge people to do actual work instead of just cunning them out of their money like most of these guys? Kai: I know, right? I built my practice from the beginning to say, "I want to work with a very small number of clients but deliver the best results possible for them. That's a different attack than a lot of SEO companies or a lot of consultants. They say, "Hey, we want to work with 50 or 100 different clients." To do that, you might end up having to staff up or cut corners. I say, "I want to run an independent practice. I want to work with six exceptional clients at a time, and deliver to them the best results possible." Paul: Yeah, these other guys are selling mass-produced nerve tonic. You're a natural doctor. Kai: Exactly. Exactly. Kurt: Let me back up. We do a lot of web developments. Naturally, for us, we just follow Google's best practices, or usability best practices, accessibility best practices when developing. Does that mean we're following good on-site SEO? Kai: For 95% of the cases, it means that you are. Time and time again, Google has reinforced a viewpoint that the way to do good SEO is to do what's in the user's or the visitor's best interest. If you're following Google's guidelines, if you're making sure your website is designed to be accessible, designed to be usable, designed to load quickly and efficiently, you're crossing 95% of the Ts and dotting the Is. Kurt: What's probably the biggest mistake you see for on-site SEO? Kai: For on-site SEO, for people who are using an off-the-shelf theme like let's say they have a Shopify site and just picks something off the shelf, they aren't looking at the theme to make sure that everything is dialed in. I had a client recently and I did a website x-ray for them, just digging through their sites, seeing what they needed to change to make their site better able to generate traffic. Whoever had built their theme had included three instances of the title tag on every page. That's a weird thing to have. If you think about it, the title tag is like the story name in the newspaper and if you pick up a copy of the New York Times and the front page story has three separate titles for it, you're going to say, "This is confusing. What I am reading?" Same thing for Google. They're going to look at that page and say, "There's three separate titles here. What is this page really about?" If you are using something off the shelf, making sure that it's dialed in, talking to an SEO consultant or talking to the web developer and saying, "Hey, walk me through how you optimize this thing for SEO." It's really easy to slap optimize for search engines label on anything but, what did they actually do to achieve that? Kurt: Okay, yeah. Just asking people. Seem straightforward. It sounds like a lot of the stuff you do, SEOs like the direct byproduct of it, especially with off-site optimization. Give me a couple of tips, methods, tactics to do off-site SEO. Kai: In the end, you're really just looking to get a number of domains linking to you and domains websites that are relevant to your industry that have related content that are talking about the same thing. The biggest, easiest when I see for a lot of clients who are starting a new online store and say, "Hey, I want to do off-site SEO. What do I do?" It's just to make a list of everyone you know who has a website or blog. Maybe it's ten or 15 friends. Maybe it's more than that. Just writing them individual outreach emails saying, "Hey, I am launching a new thing. I would love it if you could include a link in a post just talking about it." If he had a post about the handbags I am selling, please link to me. Those links will add up. It will start getting traffic to you. It will help move you towards getting your first sale but just finding those people who have relevant sites to you and saying, "Could you include a link to me?" Not anything super keyword-heavy. You don't want, for this handbag side, have it be like, "Buy handbags online." Just be like, "Hey, my friend, Dave, has a handbag site. You should go check it out. He sells wonderful quality products. Getting that link is the most value possible." Kurt: When you put it like that suddenly, now it seems so easy and obvious. The thing that stuns me is most people won't take that advice and won't do it because they'd have to go ask someone for something. People are so resistant to doing that. Kai: I had that exact same scenario come up. I had a mentoring call for a friend that he said, "Kai, what can I do in the next 30 minutes to get a link to my site?" I said, "You got to email people." He's like, "I don't want to talk to people. I just want to get a link to my site." Kurt: I got to talk to somebody. Paul: I just want to have it for free. Couldn't it just happen? Kai: Yeah. That's hope marketing where you sit around and hope that happens. Kurt: I think it's perpetuated by this slimier side of SEO that says, "Hey, there's a magic wand that I have that you don't, and if you pay me, I'll waive that magic wand." "Where can I buy a magic wand?" There's no magic wand. Paul: My SEO will cure all of your illness with your business. Kurt: I think you're saying the benefit, the results of good SEO, good marketing is dollars. It's money in the client's pocket. I see a lot of people where they'll guarantee rankings and that to sounds like the worst thing you could possibly do. Kai: It's terrible on both sides. It's terrible for the person guaranteeing the rankings because as you find out when you play online, Google search results change dramatically depending on if you're locked in to Google or not, depending on what city. I had a call from a friend not even two hours ago where I Googled a key phrase that she was trying to rank for an online dating coach, and she Googled it, and we compared the top five results. Three of the five were different. She's in Seattle. I am in Portland, Oregon. We have a couple of 100 miles between us. It's impossible to guarantee a search ranking because it could change from instance-to-instance. Plus, for the client, you're saying, "Hey, they're going to guarantee me that I'll be number one for this term." Is that a term that even generates traffic? I can get you ranking number one for web development studio with podcast in Chicago, run by a friend of Kai Davis. If nobody is searching for it, does it even matter that you rank number one? Kurt: Yeah. How important is it to have those rankings? Kai: I look at rankings as a nice-to-have thing but month-to-month where I am putting together a report for a client, I am focused on how much organic traffic are we receiving overall? It's hard because 20% of Google search every day are unique. Nobody searched for it before which could mean that 20% of people who are coming to your website every day are searching for a new phrase. If it's hard to rank for every phrase under the sun, is there a lot of value in being number one for a specific key phrase? There is because you know it is generating traffic for you but I'd encourage anybody listening to this who says, "What metrics should I be looking at for best SEO to know it is working?" Look at your organic traffic on your site. Just the traffic from search engines and Google Analytics and see month-to-month, is it staying consistent? Is it rising? If it's going up, you know your SEO is working. If it's going down, you know, "'Hey, maybe there's some holes we need to plug." Kurt: Yeah, that's really great that you're focused on ROI like that but we've also made that the core of our business here is searching for the actual thing that the client needs, not the way to get there. We want to increase the end result as much as possible and it's just how you're saying where you want to look if the traffic is increasing and not if the ranking is increasing. Paul: In the end, it's really the traffic that's more important. Who really gives a shit where the ranking is as long as the traffic is good? Kai: Bingo. Bingo. If you're getting enough traffic by ranking fourth, and fifth, and sixth for a big basket of terms that your business is profitable and sustainable, you win. Now, it's just about incrementally improving it over time. Kurt: People really shouldn't obsess over phrases and rankings. Kai: I really don't think they should. I think, again, it's good to look at and good to say, "Hey, strategically, we want to rank highly for web development in Chicago or SEO Portland, Oregon," but if you're focused entirely on that one term, you've one-it is, you're missing all the other opportunity out there because you're too focused on just one thing. It said … Paul: I'm sorry. Yeah, it's like a business that's focused entirely on revenue and cares nothing for profit. All the revenue in the world is great but if you're not actually making any money, who cares? Kai: Right. Right. Absolutely. It's the same thing with traffic. Traffic is only an indicator in and of itself. I can get you a ton of traffic but if that traffic doesn't convert, if you have a conversion rate of, say, 0.1%, it's just not going to work out for you. It really needs to be a holistic effort. We're getting you traffic but shouldn't you be focusing on increasing your conversion rate? Shouldn't you be trying to raise your price from a $10 average value per customer to a $20, $30, or $300 price? A lot of the time I work with a client and when I come in to their business, I'll say, "Let's just take these three baseline indicators." How much traffic are you getting from search engines? What's your conversion rate? What's your average lifetime value for a customer? If one of those looks really out of whack, I'll say, "Hey, you know what? Maybe SEO isn't the right thing for you to invest in right now. You'll get a bigger return on investment by tuning up your checkout process and taking your conversion rate from 0.1% to 1% or 2% or 3%. That will pay off so much more than doubling your traffic." Paul: All right. Let me get technical with you. In developing Shopify feedings, we always include, and correct me if I am using the right term, not metatags. Those tags you define inside a product page where you can tell Google like, "This is the title. This specific span is the title. This span is the price. This is the image." Are you familiar? Kai: Yeah. Paul: I've been doing that but I don't think, does Google do anything with that? Is there really any advantage to doing that? Kai: There is and if I am thinking of the same thing, within a product, you'd say, "Hey, Google. This is the product title. This is, say, the product rating or review, or number of stars." Those are valuable since they'll show up for sites that Google indexes and trusts in the search results next to that product name. Remember back, we had Google Author Photos through Authorship a year ago and they discontinued it a couple of months ago. Things like that, I call them value adds in the search results do increase the click through rate. It's an easy way for a customer who searches, say, handbags. They see two different handbag sites in the search results. One is just the product title, a normal Google search result. The other shows the price, shows the number of reviews, show the quantity available. Those make it easier for the customer to say, "This site is better put together, more trustworthy, has the product in stock. I'll click this." Elements like that can increase your click through rate in the search results. Paul: Trust is very important in having all of that metadata in there quickly at the customer's fingertips. It psychologically increases the likelihood that they will trust that that site that that site is not some sort of fly-by-night. Kai: It looks professional. Paul: Yeah, it's professional and people want to more likely to give their money to someone who is professional. Kai: Yeah, absolutely. It's all about trust signals in the end. During the checkout process, are you communicating trust to your customer, on the project page in the search results? Good SEO is about outreach and about they can share your site is both accessible and is trustworthy that somebody look at this and say, "This is the type of site I want to get my credit card to." Kurt: Tell us about, what are some trust signals? Tell us about that. Kai: The main trust signals I advocate my clients to include really fall outside of SEO as a whole but a best practice for a website, get your phone number on there. Get your phone number in the header. Have an 800 number. Include testimonials on product pages and in the checkout process. Remove extra fields in the checkout process. It dovetails a little outside of strict SEO as a whole but if there's elements I could advise the client to include to make their website look like actual other real humans that use it and love the experience, let's get those o0n there just so more humans that come along will say, "Hey, a guy named Bob once brought a product and really liked it. I am willing to give my money to you now." Kurt: That's a good tip. For a Shopify store, what's your number one SEO tip? Kai: For a Shopify store, my number one SDEO tip really is contact. When you think about it, when we're getting these links to your site, what are people linking to? You have the product pages on your site. You have a marketing page like the homepage or an about page, and then you have what I call linkable assets which is really content creation. What can you develop that people say, "Hey, that's really exciting and I want to link to it." We could do on-site SEO until the cows come home but unless we're getting other relevant sites in your industry to link to you, we won't really see any benefit from it. The biggest tip is saying, "What's our content creation process? Who are we marketing to? Who is your audience? What are the problems your audience experiences relating your industry and how can we help solve them for that audience member with educational informational content, and then the link building. The SEO becomes, "Hey, let's go tell people about this really great content we have," and get links to it. Kurt: People, an e-commerce story should be writing articles creating blog entries? Kai: I really think so. I think it's sort of mixed because I work with a number of SEO consultants whose number one tip is like "You need to be blogging more," but what are you talking about? Who are you saying it to and what problems are you solving? I am sure we've all read across stories and websites that half at the bottom works like, "Hey, great. We released a new product," and nobody really cares, but I think e-commerce stories should be talking to their audience or researching their audience, seeing what questions their audience has about their industry and that product line and then, writing content that explains what to do. Kurt: I think that's interesting because you can turn that like you could start with increasing customer engagement. We want to know what to blog about so you could set it up. In your email, your order confirmation email to your customers who bought. Those are really your ideal audience, people who are already buying. Include a link to a survey and reward them with a coupon on their next order, and survey them and ask them, what's interesting about this? Why did you buy this? What problems are you facing? Then, the replies to those survey results are going to be people essentially writing you your blog articles. Kai: Bingo. Bingo, or even just every customer feedback email you get which is like, "Oh man, I couldn't use this thing because X, Y, Z." Hey, great. Here's a blog post that explains how to solve X, Y, Z problem and everybody in the industry, everybody who is buying a handbag, or website, what have you can now link to that and say, "Great. This is the definitive guide to solving problem X, Y, Z." That's going to get links. That's going to traffic. That's going to build trust. Paul: Kai. It sounds like there's a blood pressure machine going on in the background or something. I don't know what it is over there by you. Kai: They're tearing up the carpet in my hallway. Kurt: Yeah. This has been incredibly helpful, Kai. Where could people find you? Kai: My website right now is KaiDavis.com, K-A-I-D-A-V-I-S dot come, and I've got a newsletter on there where I send out SEO and marketing tips. If you want to sign up, please do and I promise it will be worth it. Kurt: Wonderful. I know I've signed up for your newsletter. I've gotten value out of it, but yeah, people should go to your website and sign up for that newsletter. Kai: Excellent. It's been a pleasure being on and I hope that your audience enjoys us. If they run in to any questions or have any SEO ideas that they want to throw at me, my email address is on my website. Please open invitation. Send me an email, folks. Send me a question and I promise I'll get back to you. Kurt: Wonderful. Very generous. Thank you, Kai. Paul: Thank you very much, Kai.

Michael DiMartini from Everest Bands come on the show to chat and share his success with us. He's gone from failed businesses to two successful Kickstarter campaigns and an amazing product line sold through Shopify. Michael doesn't just sell watch bands. He sells literally the best rubber watch strap made- and it's for a Rolex. We discuss: What Everest Bands is all about (it's more than just swiss rubber) What goes in to a successful Kickstarter The ROI of Facebook likes What it takes to be a luxury brand The Apple Watch Michael's favorite watch And his single best tip for Shopify store owners. Check out Everest Bands Shopify store or their Facebook campaign. PS: Be sure to subscribe to the podcast via iTunes and write a review. iTunes is all about reviews! Full transcript [opening music] Announcer: This is the Unofficial Shopify Podcast with Kurt Elster and Paul Reda, your resource for growing your Shopify business, sponsored by Ethercycle. Kurt Elster: Welcome to the inaugural episode of the Unofficial Shopify Podcast. I'm your host Kurt, and with me is my business partner and co-host Paul. Paul Reda: Welcome. Hello. Kurt: Joining us today is Michael DiMartini from Everest Bands. He is one of our favorite clients, a Kickstarter success, a manufacturer and a Shopify store owner. Michael, it's around 3:30 there in St Loius, what are you up to? Michael DiMartini: Well, if it was Friday, I'd be drinking a cold one. Kurt: There you go. Michael: Obviously, I am excited to do this first inaugural podcast with you guys and really appreciate it. Super excited to talk more about our company and Shopify and the great job that you guys have done for us. Kurt: Thank you. Tell us a little bit about Everest Band. What's an Everest Band? Michael: About two and a half years ago, my partners and I came up with an idea for a rubber Rolex replacement watch strap. Now, two years later, we had a successful Kickstarter with our first rubber strap. We are on our second version now, made in Switzerland. Just recently, last month, we had our second successful Kickstarter for a leather strap. It was a wonderful experience. Thank God for Kickstarter. Kurt: [laughs] This band is made in Switzerland, huh? Michael: Yeah. Our rubber strap is entirely made in Switzerland, rubber-wise. We actually have a steel oyster link that is attached to it and we coat that with a coating called DLC, diamond-like coating. That is actually from here on the US. Kurt: I think, I and a lot of people, we have ideas. We're like, "Oh, we got this great idea for a thing." Making a thing is hard. It's easy to have an idea. It's tough to actually get it manufactured. How did you go end up in Switzerland, asking a manufacturer to build your rubber? How does that happen? How do I get there? Michael: To be very honest, we actually had two previous versions. One was made, or tempted to be made, here in the St. Louis area. Honestly, it was a complete epic fail and we did not actually produce any straps for sale. We had a second version that was also made in the United States. That was a very good strap. We had some limitations with the manufacturer on, basically, material choices. We traveled the globe to find what we think would be the absolute best manufacturer. Honestly, the Swiss just blew us away with their technology at rubber molding. The company we use specializes in rubber watch strap molding. I can't list the names of the companies, but probably the top 10 watch manufacturers in the world use them to make their rubber straps. I actually had to pretty much beg them to take my business. Kurt: Did you pretty much beg them or did you literally beg them? Michael: Oh, no. I got on the proverbial hands and knees and literally said, "Please, please make my strap." They said, "Sure. We'll do it." How did I get there? A lot of research. Honestly, a tremendous amount of research and actually asking industry experts. I asked other watch companies who they used. Kurt: I think that's one of the things a lot of people should do or don't know how to do is, do I go out and ask people in my industry or even competitors, "What are you doing? How do you do it? Can I pick your brain?" Did you do that? How do you go about that? Michael: Yes, of course. There's a two-part answer to that. One of them does relate to Kickstarter. Whenever you're producing a product like we produce or really anything of a higher-end level, don't be embarrassed to ask others how they're doing it. For sure, other people are more than happy to help. We just started with other watchmakers, high-end watchmakers. They were very open with us. Some were, of course, tentative for giving us any information whatsoever. When they immediately found out that we weren't a competitor, a direct competitor in any way, they were more than happy to talk to us. Kurt: Really, the only barrier to entry is you psychologically just being willing to go out and ask. What's the worst that can happen, they say no? If you don't ask, you've guaranteed that you get nothing out of it. Michael: Honestly, let's call it, any entrepreneur has to have some balls. Kurt: [laughs] Right. It took me a long time to get there. Michael: You can't be fearful of being told to drop dead. Kurt: [laughs] That's a good line. That's a great quote. We should include that as a tweet. Tell me, what goes into...You got the seed money or got this off the ground using Kickstarter twice now, right? Michael: Yeah. Just a really quick back story, I had another business that was a failure, to be honest. I think that the best entrepreneur is the one that get kicked down at least once or twice and they then learn from those mistakes and take it from there. Our first business, completely unrelated in every single facet, local business, didn't deliver a product, delivered a service, et cetera, was a failure because of a lot of different things. One, we added too much debt to the business. When we were looking at the product itself, the product idea, we felt that Kickstarter was perfect for us. It gave us the ability to have a presale, so we knew if the product was worth doing. We did of course put a lot of money into it at the very beginning. The amount that we put in was a little bit more than what we got from Kickstarter, but really Kickstarter did finish line us on our first product. On the second one, we took a completely different direction. We were going not for what we did on our first one, where we were trying to get the seed money to finish the project. It was more of wanting to make sure the market place wanted the product. We, of course, used the funds to pay for the finish line of the second product. We also didn't go after retailers, for example. We just went after the general public. On our first Kickstarter, more than half of our Kickstarter proceeds were from retailers. If I was doing this all over again for a first time, I definitely would try and get retailers involved in my first product. Kurt: Now that you're a Kickstarter veteran, if you had one tip for someone who's about to launch their product on Kickstarter, what would it be? Michael: The first tip that I would give is you really have to have your crap together. I mean it. Kurt: It's a good tip. Get your shit together! Michael: Get your shit together! Don't start Kickstarter with questions, because you're going to get annihilated, number one. Number two, when I say that, I mean there are so many different levels to that. Starting with that, not only do you become an expert in your area through at least understanding the part that you're going to sell and manufacture, number one. Number two, you're going to want to have excellent pictures of a prototype. You want to have connected with the lowest level of purchasing. Usually, that's through forums and different items that are connected to some type of social media connection. Yes, get your sit together. Paul: You mentioned social media, and we think that social media advertising is sort of bullshit here. It's a lot of snake oil. It doesn't get the ROI that the social media people like to claim it does, at least in our experience. However, you have a ton of Facebook Likes and the majority of your traffic comes in via Facebook. Why do you think you were able to pull that off? Michael: That's a really good question. To be really honest with you, I think that each business has a different successful tool in some level of marketing. For example, we seem to have a product where people need to physically see it. With social media, we can present pictures constantly. When we have a Facebook Like, for example...and I'll be honest, it costs us very few cents per Facebook Like, whereas in other industries it's very expensive to acquire a Like because... Kurt: Actually, I didn't know that Likes are on like a bidding system where it varies by industry. How many Facebook Likes do you have, anyway? Michael: We have 128,000. We're probably going to achieve today 129,000. Kurt: How many did you have where you saw it really was paying off for you, in terms of sales? Michael: Probably after 5,000. Honestly, after about 5,000 Likes. Kurt: So, 5,000 is the baseline that people should be shooting for and 100,000 is ideal. Michael: Actually, to be very honest with you, our end goal for Facebook Likes for the end of 2015 is over a million. Kurt: Yes! There's no limit, so why not shoot for the ceiling? Michael: Exactly. To better answer your question, because that's a really good one especially for entrepreneurs, Facebook, Instagram, those things are free. There is no form of free marketing better that that. It costs you money to put a sign on the wall of your office or your storefront. It costs you money to have, honestly, Ethercycle do work for you. Facebook is free. Social media's free, but to make it successful, you need those tools behind you, like Ethercycle's work, like a sign maker for your outside, like a very good business card printer, so on and so forth. That is what gets you the end success. Paul: Social media marketing takes a lot of time too, which people just assume that it's a thing that just happens for free and you don't have to worry about it. There's a lot of time-suck there as well. Michael: Yeah. For my own self, as the marketing person for our company, I focus 50 percent of my day on social media. Development of it. Paul: Earlier, you mentioned forums and that really tickled something in my brain. Another one of our big clients that works in aftermarket auto parts and they do millions of dollars in revenue a year, a portion of their sale staff is just devoted to pumping up the product on forums and selling on forums. Because a forum dedicated to the kind of product that you're selling is essentially just a captured audience of people that are super interested in what you want to sell them. Michael: Yeah. A forum is a community of hobbyists, obviously. Some of them are not hobbyists. Some of those are people like, for example for us, a watch repair company. They might have access to a forum and they keep up to date on what's popular and what not. That's how a lot of our business has come from, especially on the retailer side. To be very honest with you, we involve ourselves enough to give a presentation of new products and ideas but not so much that we're going to get kicked off. Because it's a club. That's what it is. Paul: You think to swoop in and be, "Buy my stuff!" You can't spam them. Kurt: [laughs] Paul: Engaging is the word. You want to engage. Not just spam. Michael: Yeah. Exactly. At the end of the day, let's call that as it is, no one likes to be sold anything, everybody likes to buy stuff. Kurt: Speaking of buying, you're selling a luxury brand. You're selling a premium item for people who have already bought from a luxury brand. You only sell for Rolex, correct? Michael: On Everest Bands, yeah. We do have a secondary site, we don't need to get into that today but yeah. Our primary focus is Everest and Everest Horology products in general, just only focuses entirely on Rolex users, Rolex owners and wearers. Kurt: All right. I think luxury brands as an idea fascinate me. I know we've gone back and forth about it in the office. Sometimes you have to tease out, "Is this just a product with a very expensive price tag?" It's purely a status symbol. Rolex is extremely well made. It's a premium product. It's well made. At the same time, everyone knows it's expensive. Starting Rolex, brand new, is going to be eight grand. For a product like Everest Brands, it's a luxury product. How did you get to become a luxury product? What's the barrier to entry to be a premium luxury brand? Is it just a big price tag? What is it? Michael: A lot of people are trying to make things in different countries right now for a super low cost. The consumer today of course likes value but, if you're talking about a luxury product or becoming a luxury company, you have to remember that, what does the end user want? True end users. Luxury purchasers. Quality is a corner stone of whatever you're making. Second - longevity of life. Don't think that people with money have any interest in buying something over and over again every six to 12 months. They're just not interested in doing that. It's very uncommon that you see a destroyed Gucci bag or a pair Ferragamo shoes that are quite a few years old and still look excellent. Mercedes Benzes last a very long time. They're not a car that you drive for three years and throw away. At the end of the day, Everest makes a product that is the highest quality in the world. There is no better rubber strap or leather strap ever. The longevity and life of our product is very long. From a luxury standpoint, our service is extremely high. I have direct communication with almost with every single costumer at some level. Kurt: All right. A luxury brand obviously is more than just the premium price. You have to back it up. If you're going to talk the talk, you better walk the walk and have a product that's number one in its category, in terms of precision manufacturing. Then being able to back it up with customer support, so people don't even have to wonder. They know they'll be able to get a hold of you. Speaking of luxury products, premium brands, we can't ignore Apple. You're a watch guy. I'm into watches. I think partly you've got me into watches. The Apple watch was just announced yesterday. I'm dating this podcast a little bit. The Apple watch just came out. I love it. I think it looks great. For $350, I don't think you get a watch that's better. What do you think? Michael: First, obviously Everest has had its own level of getting kicked while it's down, we'll say, when we were first starting. I'm not going to kick the Apple watch while no one's even really seen it yet. Do I think it's going to hurt the hot horology world? Absolutely not. I don't think it's even going to get remotely dent Rolex, Omega, Bell & Ross's sales because, honestly, people buy those products because they love the watch. They could care less about time keeping. Paul: Yeah, I agree with you there. Hublot has nothing to worry about. But in my mind, judging by what I've read and what I've heard you and Kurt talk about about the low end of the watch industry, in terms of the low end of the luxury watches, the kind of things that are available at that price point, it's my impression that the Apple watch blows everything out of the water at that price point. Michael: Yeah. The other side of the spectrum is - not to try and compare entirely a Rolex to an Apple watch...I have a Rolex. It's seven years old. It looks brand new. I treat it well but I don't have a seven-year-old iPhone, gentlemen. Kurt: [laughs] Good point. Michael: Do I think it's going to be somewhat or something that you replace every three to four years at a maximum? Yeah. The Everest Band, for example, I am still wearing the original first single piece that came off the assembly line today and it still looks as if it's brand new. That was a year and a half ago. Again, it just goes back to the whole luxury idea. Is Apple producing a luxury product? No. They're just producing a great piece of technology that has a lot of advancements. It's not going to affect Hublot. It's not going to affect Omega. It's not going to affect Rolex. But on a low end line, say for example a Casio? Yeah. Casio, Seico, low ends, they're going to feel it. They're going to feel the heat pretty hard probably. Kurt: The sub-five hundred dollar people are in trouble. The heirloom, status symbol and $10,000 watches have nothing to worry about. Michael: Yeah. I don't particularly see that Southwest is affecting private jet sales. Kurt: [laughs] Good point I didn't figure it out that way. Michael: Lets call it as it is, but do I feel the Southwest is probably affecting American Airlines in sales? Hell yeah, gentlemen. Come on. It like $98. Give me a break. To go up to Chicago from St. Louis, I would pick that over $300 flight on American Airlines, for example. Also, there's a million of those, but I'm excited to see what happens with the Apple iWatch, especially because I watched kind of amazingly as the Pebble watch was coming down the pipeline. It was in its Kickstarter when I was doing my first Everest Band Kickstarter. We are brothers from another mother. I really feel that the Pebble hasn't really hit the marketplace the way they thought it would. Paul: I think that is true. Every smart watch that's come out. Kurt: Every smart watch, yeah. Michael: Oh yeah. Kurt: I had a Pebble watch, I thought it was an awful. I wore it like handful of times and I ended up selling it. I lost money on it. It's just not a good product. Michael: Then, on top of it, I really almost feel bad for Pebble, because they had such enormous phoenix rise at the very beginning with, I think it was $10 million in sales... Kurt: I know they broke a record for fundraising on Kickstarter. Michael: Oh yeah. Just recently the Coolest Cooler knocked them off the top. More importantly, they had countless issues. They couldn't get the damn thing out for a year. I can tell you right now, our customers were...we were late by three weeks and they were freaking out. I just feel that when it comes down to being successful, selling a product and what not, there are a lot of different parts that have to play in to it. The one great thing about Apple is that they are so well organized that this multiple-billion dollar company is going to probably hit it really well on their first version. The first iPhone was pretty sweet, but I am worried that, honestly, it could be the next Newton. I don't know if you guys remember that P.O.S. Kurt: Yeah. I love it. The only thing I can ever think of about the Newton, I think a lot of people our age too, is the Newton on the Simpsons. Paul: Yeah, "Eat up Martha." Kurt: "Eat up Martha." Paul: The main thing that is in my mind is that I don't wear watches. I don't understand why anyone would wear a watch, because I have an atomic clock that I carry around in my pocket at all times that also does things more than a watch. Kurt: It's jewelry really... Paul: No. and I don't... [crosstalk] Kurt: It's jewelry that happens to tell the time. Paul: I don't wear any jewelry, so it's kind of meaningless to me. I saw the smart watch and, because I'm stupid, I was kind of like, "All right, I kind of want it a little bit." Kurt: It's not stupid, it's geeky. It's another screen. I see the attraction. Michael: I totally see the attractions too, because honestly, you don't fit in to...like Kurt fits in to it but not everybody fits into that wanting of a high-end watch. Honestly, Rolex probably produces about a million high-end time pieces a year annually. Kurt: That blows my mind. A million people a year are spending $8,000 plus on a watch. Paul: I was doing research on how the watch might affect Apple's bottom line, because I am an Apple shareholder and... Kurt: That makes two of us. High five. Paul: ...the world watch market produces something like 1.2 billion watches a year. If 1.2 billion watches get made, Rolex makes 1 million of them. That's less than one percent. [laughs] Kurt: It's still crazy. Paul: I'm sure in terms of revenue, they're way higher, but not in terms of watches produced. Michael: Exactly. At the end of the day, you've got 1.2 billion watches being made annually. There's going to be a large percentage of them that are going to last a very short amount of time. They're $20, $15. They're $75. You know what? You're right. I think the Apple watch is a creative, brilliant idea that is well-designed. I'm simply not going to bang it, even though...I don't think I'll ever buy one. But it's just a different animal. Paul: It's a different thing. Kurt: It's a new market. Man 2: I think Jony Ive said during the video that, "You know, we are going to replace Rolex." He made some crack about replacing Rolex and a lot of those brands. That is kind of like, "All right. You are not right there." Because that's... Kurt: Don't be reaching for the stars. [crosstalk] Paul: This is a different thing they are selling. They both might be called watches, but they are different things. Michael: Rolex is not a buggy whip, gentlemen. Honestly, for him to say that shows, sadly, that even though he's a beautiful and wonderful designer, his complete and utter ignorance on the watch industry is completely...he overly showed it during that point. Paul: I'm really excited to listen to this in five years and then we're like, "Oh man, Apple controls everything. We were idiots." Kurt: [laughs] "I can't believe Apple bought Rolex." Tell me, you are a watch guy, what's your favorite watch? Michael: I hate to say that I'm a...Even though I love complex, beautiful watches, I have to still say that the Rolex Submariner, in it's simple form, it's absolutely the most beautiful watch I've ever seen. It is a timeless, gorgeous definition of what a watch should be. It's accuracy is absolutely impressive. It's an over a 60-year design that's slightly evolved to almost absolute perfection with their current version. I look at so many other watches, and you just don't ever see that. When you look at watches, in general, or really products in general, let's just start with the car or anything like that or the Internet for that matter, very seldomly do you see one company be able to take their vision from 60 years ago and still keep running with it perfectly. Kurt: Yeah, it's true. The Rolex Submariner shape is classic and timeless, like people will always recognize a bottle of Coke, I think number one, and number two, they'll know Rolex when they see it. Michael: Not to try and push Ethercycle in any way, but... [crosstalk] Kurt: Oh no, please do. Please do. Michael: I know, but I really feel like one thing that you guys did great was that...I said to you during our design meetings that I wanted a website that showed the essence of Rolex's website and Rolex's presence. I didn't want to be Rolex. That's not what my intension was, but you guys were able to take the essence of that. That's complex. Countless people try and make watches just like Rolex watches, and they are completely off the mark every single time. It's good to see you guys, actually, were able to both manufacture my idea of what our website should look like but also give it that same feeling that it's going to last. I'm not going to change my website six months from tomorrow. I actually think that we are only going to minorly evolve it over the next two or three years as technology develops better in Shopify. Kurt: That's the way to do it. I think the people who have the most success are not the ones who tear down their website every six months, but instead are doing just constant iterations. With you, it's really every two weeks, even sometimes weekly, we're making continuous changes that really add up to better conversion and more sales, et cetera. Speaking that, as a Shopify store owner, give me one tip for Shopify store owners. Michael: The one tip is I do believe you need to trust something as important as your website to professionals, because if you are going to run a website like Shopify's -- very well built technology -- you can download one of their templates. You can figure out how to put some images and things like that. At the end of the day, the consumer is very short lived in their decision-making online. I look at the amount of time that people are on our website, and they are only there for a minute or two really sometimes. Kurt: A minute and a half is good. That's extraordinary. Michael: That is such an integral important part. To spend 2, 3, 4 thousand dollars on something that you are going to have as an asset in your company for the next 12 to 24 to 36 months...it's kind of foolish to think that, "I will just download a fifty dollar template and just start going with it." You need professional guidance, especially, even at a base level when you first do Kickstarter, when you first do this things, when you're first coming up with the product idea or your first, you're even just starting up a retail store online, you need to have that guidance. Because without that, your conversion rate will be much lower. Even if you think it's looks great and your mom does too, it doesn't matter. What matters is the end consumer has complete confidence in buying the product and you need the company to really do that and develop your website. Kurt: Hell yeah. God, I'm going to have to embed that audio on the second website now. [laughs] Paul: Autoplay audio now on the website. Big conversion. People love that. Kurt: You are right. That is a conversion killer. [laughter] Kurt: I think that I learned a lot. I hope other people learned a lot. It was really good. It was great having you. Michael I looked forward to talking more with Everest Bands and really growing that brand. Thank you for joining us. Michael: Thank you guys. Again, I really feel, not to go back a couple of times to do something, but if you're going to do a Kickstarter, you really need to get things organized. One of the most important things in organizing it is the image that you put out there, because if you don't have that, you will fail. Kurt: Your number one tip is still, will always ring true in my mind and it's good to hear it, "get your shit together." Michael: Get your shit together. Don't start without your shit together boys, because it's going to fail. I had a great time... Paul: Advice for everyone. Michael: Yeah, honestly. Your mom told you when you were 18 years old, "Get your shit together." Kurt: All right, this is fantastic. Thank you, Michael. Michael: Thanks guys. Paul: Thank you. [closing music]

If you've been in the "niche site" game at all over the past few years, this week's conversation will open your eyes to a whole new world of possibility in the realm of making money with Adsense. Kurt Elster is the co-founder of EtherCycle, an online marketing strategy and web design and development firm. But on top of that, his company also runs a plethora of one-page micro-sites that earn advertising revenue with Adsense.