We answer your questions
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
5/25/2021
Kurt Elster: Tell me about this t-shirt you’re wearing, because I have no… It says some words, what appears to be cuneiform writing, which I remember from high school, and get my clay tablet, and then it says fine quality copper.
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: What? I don’t think you’re a copper enthusiast.
Paul Reda: Okay, so yeah, I saw this, and I was like, “I need to own that because literally only five people will get it.” The earliest complaint letter in existence is a 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablet written to Ea-nasir by a guy whose name I don’t remember, but he wrote a letter to Ea-nasir that was like, “Hey, I prepaid you for this copper. You said you had high quality copper and I prepaid you for it. And when I sent my guy to come pick it up, you were really rude to him, and when he pointed out that the copper was shit quality, you said, “Well, that’s the copper you’re getting. Take it or leave it.” And this is bullshit and I either want my money back or I want my copper.”
And it’s like that’s it. It’s like 4,000-year-old him bitching at Ea-nasir about this crappy copper. And so, it’s like that’s funny. But when they continued the excavation, again, in like the ancient Sumerian city of Ur, they were like, “Oh. Okay, well, this building we found this letter in.” And so, they’re excavating the rest of the building and they keep finding letters to Ea-nasir telling him what an asshole he is, and so they’re like, “Holy shit, this is Ea-nasir’s house. He conned a bunch of people with his shitty copper, and he got off on it so much, he kept all the letters.”
So, there’s just letter after letter of like, “Where’s my copper? Why is this copper garbage? No one’s gonna trade with you anymore. Fuck you.” There’s tons of letters, all written to Ea-nasir, all in this one house, telling him what an asshole he is.
Kurt Elster: That’s fantastic.
Paul Reda: I know. I love it.
Kurt Elster: And yeah, you’re right, there’s five people who are gonna get that reference, but the story’s great.
Paul Reda: There was a thing on Twitter like two weeks ago, because copper prices are shooting up, because all goods like that, prices are going up because people are engaging in commerce again.
Kurt Elster: Hooray.
Paul Reda: And it was like, “Oh yeah, copper prices are through the roof.” And someone on Twitter was like, “Ea-nasir’s licking his chops right now.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s so good.” And I saw someone had that shirt and I was like, “I’m 100% buying that shirt immediately.”
Kurt Elster: I think the magic with t-shirts at this point and the internet is just go as niche as possible, like you want to be a culture king, right? And just go hard into the weird references people love.
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Like for me, the holy grail is like can you get me a vintage Japanese Robocop shirt? I’m in. You went even older. You went 4,000-year-old complaint letter scam… Oh, fabulous.
Paul Reda: I just love, it’s like, you know, and he lives on forever. That jerk. He’d love it. He’s like, “Everyone knows what a jagoff I am.”
Kurt Elster: 4,000 years later, it’s on a t-shirt. Yeah, that guy could not have conceived of any of this.
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: So, today on The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, we posted in our lovely Facebook group… Now, I think we’re over 4,000 members now, I believe.
Paul Reda: I believe so. Yes.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Which, I’m proud of that, so I posted. I said, “Hey, if you have questions, if you’re struggling with something, you got some pain, problem, want to pick my brain, ask me anything. Just go ahead. Post. I want to know what you’re struggling with.” And I promised. I said, “If you post, I’ll answer your question.” So, we are answering everyone’s question who posted today.
Paul Reda: Yeah, so if we gotta truck through it, we’re trucking through it. If we think your question only gets a one-word answer, it gets a one-word answer. Sorry.
Kurt Elster: But we’re doing it. And in case you’re wondering who these yahoos are, I’m your host, Kurt Elster, AKA:
Ezra Firestone Sound Board: Tech Nasty!
Kurt Elster: And I am joined by complaint letter enthusiast, Paul Reda, who grew up two blocks down the street from me.
Paul Reda: Never met.
Kurt Elster: But we didn’t actually… Never met. Never knew each other.
Paul Reda: Well, you were a public-school kid.
Kurt Elster: Yeah.
Paul Reda: I was a Catholic school kid.
Kurt Elster: I know.
Paul Reda: And never the twain shall meet.
Kurt Elster: No. It’s for the best. I wouldn’t want to corrupt you.
Paul Reda: Yeah. Right. Did you have to go to CCD?
Kurt Elster: I did not. No.
Paul Reda: They didn’t send you to CCD?
Kurt Elster: I attended a couple of CCD classes. I was curious about it because like all… You know, in Park Ridge, everybody was Catholic.
Paul Reda: Yeah, yeah.
Kurt Elster: And we weren’t, so I was like, “I wanna go.” My parents were like, “Have fun.” I quickly… I’m like, “Ehh… I gotta go.”
Paul Reda: They were truly mysterious figures, like you’d like… Because the CCD would be at the school, at least for my school, and so then like you’d come in, and then like something bad happened at the school, like there was trash thrown everywhere, or like someone’s stuff was… they think their stuff was missing on the desk and it was always like, “The CCD kids did it.” It was straight up, and it was like the teachers are mad because they found this thing or whatever, and we were like, “It was the CCD kids. It had to have been.”
Kurt Elster: So, these outsider public school kids who came on the weekend to your Catholic school.
Paul Reda: It was like Tuesday or Thursday nights. It was weekday nights.
Kurt Elster: Oh yeah. In the evening. Then they would get blamed for everything. They were your scapegoat.
Paul Reda: In our heads, we would always be like, “It had to have been the CCD kids.”
Kurt Elster: That’s funny.
Paul Reda: Who even sees them? Who knows what they even look like?
Kurt Elster: That’s really… I love that. That’s funny. All right. We got a lot of questions to go through. Would you open with our first one?
Paul Reda: John Murphy wants to know, “I have always seen a large drop off during checkout between the reached checkout and conversion step. Anything I could focus on to improve that? Thanks.” Well, first of all, it’s largely out of your hands, because in Shopify, once you’re in the checkout, Shopify controls that heavily.
Kurt Elster: Yep.
Paul Reda: I would say I’m assuming your checkout has been styled. You want to style your checkout with your store logo, your store colors, like make the buttons and colors in your checkout the same colors as they are on the front end of your site.
Kurt Elster: This is one that even the biggest sites forget.
Paul Reda: Yeah. And please, if you have a… One of the things I hate, don’t upload your logo, but it’s like a square with a white background, and then the background of your checkout’s like blue, so your logo looks like trash. I hate that.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Put up that transparent logo. I wish it would let you upload an .SVG, but that’s me just being really nitpicky.
Paul Reda: That’s too far.
Kurt Elster: It breaks my heart when I’m given an .SVG by the client and I’m like, “Oh, I gotta save that as a .PNG and upload it.”
Paul Reda: It’s fine.
Kurt Elster: For the checkout. It’s fine.
Paul Reda: And I think, sorry to interrupt, the last thing is I think is your shipping rules too bad? Are you charging too much for shipping or is it surprise shipping? That’s the last thing.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. If they got this far, if it’s a really expensive item and they got this far, and I know John Murphy, this is a really expensive item. This is-
Paul Reda: Oh, John Murphy. Oh, okay. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. This is a four-figure item.
Paul Reda: Yeah, that’s the thing.
Kurt Elster: And so, you get a lot more looky-loos, like people…
Paul Reda: When you sell expensive products, a lot of people fantasy shop, and some people… A lot more people fantasy shop, and they take it all the way to the end.
Kurt Elster: It doesn’t necessarily mean that this is broken or a problem. It just means they’re like, “Look, I really want this. It’s just a lot of money, like I gotta wait. Give me another two weeks.” And so, I think for this, if you’re seeing this and it’s an expensive item, make sure you’ve got a really great abandoned cart series. Maybe do split testing with it. Try different cadences, timing, and you could also split your cart flows out, your abandoned cart flows based on value to try and figure out different offers in there.
But all right, so he’s saying a large drop off. We didn’t define what that was.
Paul Reda: Yeah. It’s gonna drop anyway. I mean, it’s gonna be 75% of the previous step. Dropping 25% at least.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. I would say standard-
Paul Reda: If it drops 25%, you’re doing a great job.
Kurt Elster: Yes. Yeah, if it drops 25 or even 33%, like if we lose a third, I would say that’s optimized. You’re good. If it’s dropping 50%, that’s probably the standard. That’s average.
Paul Reda: Average. I would say that’s average.
Kurt Elster: If you’re losing more than 50%, that’s almost… That’s gotta be like there’s some unmet objection.
Paul Reda: Yeah, there’s something-
Kurt Elster: And the chances are it’s shipping.
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: So, the way to figure it out really, in the abandoned cart email, first email is like, “Hey, did you have a question? Just hit reply. Let us know.” Don’t open with, “Here’s your discount.” Open with, “Can we help?”
Paul Reda: Yeah, is why didn’t you buy today worthwhile or no? Or is it just gonna be… I know you’ve done that, and people have just been like, “It costs too much.” And it’s like, “Well, it costs what it costs.” Like you get a lot of, “Well, it’s too expensive. How dare you,” when you ask why didn’t you buy today.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Which either it means I didn’t communicate the value well enough, they didn’t see the value, or they want it, and can’t afford it, and they’re mad about it.
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Either way, like yeah, if I’m getting price objection a lot, the answer is try and communicate the value. Try and offer financing if you can. But beyond that, you’re just always… If I see price as the objection is number one, and we’ve already done the first two things, at that point I just start ignoring it.
All right, you may butcher this person’s name.
Paul Reda: Oh, Kani Saburi Ayubu.
Kurt Elster: Okay, that’s better than I would have done.
Paul Reda: I think it’s pretty good. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Okay, good. Yeah.
Paul Reda: “I’m working on a B-E-W site?
Kurt Elster: New site, I assume.
Paul Reda: Oh, okay.
Kurt Elster: I assume that’s a typo.
Paul Reda: I was like, “Is it-“
Kurt Elster: B and N are next to each other on the keyboard.
Paul Reda: I was like, “Is a bew site like a thing I don’t know about?” “And contemplating a best navigation style for websites with a larger product catalogue and quite a few collections.”
Kurt Elster: Lean on search. Lean on filtering in the collection.
Paul Reda: Yeah. Collection filtering is important.
Kurt Elster: That sidebar filtering.
Paul Reda: I mean, and your thing that you love, you gotta do a card sort exercise. You can narrow it down to five things. Five main, overarching, crazy things, and then each one has a mega menu below it that’ll come out when they do those five overarching topics, and in the mega menu, each of those five could have like six or seven things in it, and right there you got 30 different categories.
Kurt Elster: You could also try using your Shopify analytics, or Google analytics, or an app like Better Reports, and figure out like, “Okay, these are my top-selling products. These are my top-selling product types. These are my top-selling product vendors.” And then use that to inform some of it. But really, the way out, we’ve got several stores now with really big collections, and the way out of it has been use… have good search on the site and have good sidebar filtering in the collection, and so that really assumes that you’ve got great product information management, so there’s some data entry and heavy lifting there. But really, I think the short answer is Boost Product Filter and Search is this app that I’ve come to love for situations like this.
Paul Reda: Yeah. We just… We lean on that app. They don’t pay us any money. They just make a great app.
Kurt Elster: No, it’s just a genuinely great app that has helped us out in the last 18 months on a lot of big projects, especially the automotive stuff.
Paul Reda: He or she, don’t know-
Kurt Elster: They.
Paul Reda: They also want to know pagination or infinite scroll.
Kurt Elster: I like this question.
Paul Reda: A, who cares? B, if infinite scroll is better, it’s only by like 1/10 of 1% and C, if it is better, it can break all the time, so sometimes-
Kurt Elster: There’s your answer.
Paul Reda: So, sometimes you don’t get anything, so why would you do that?
Kurt Elster: Baymard would tell us, Baymard UX Institute, who I love, would tell us do pagination. And I love infinite scroll. It is so cool. It is so prone to breaking, especially in a browser like Safari. Safari is the new IE. This thing is so… Safari and JavaScript just don’t seem to get along. I’m tearing my hair out with Safari.
Paul Reda: I built a baller slideshow for Hoonigan now that was great, and in Safari on your iPhone, if you touch the screen in any way, it stops working.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Yeah. Safari-
Paul Reda: And I had to find a fix for that. That has been an extant bug I found for three years.
Kurt Elster: Oh, geez. Yeah. No, truly, Safari, new IE. Get with the program, Apple. No, so the short answer is do pagination because A, I’m pretty sure Baymard said that’s the way to go. It’s standard. Everybody knows how to use it. And infinite scroll is so prone to breaking.
Paul Reda: Every time you mention Baymard I think of Brymar College from Deltron 3030.
Kurt Elster: Are you just making up words?
Paul Reda: Upgrade your gray matter because one day it may matter.
Kurt Elster: Oh, okay.
Paul Reda: Come on.
Kurt Elster: I appreciate anytime you rap.
Paul Reda: Brymar College. All right, you’re just gonna give me all the weird ones. When Brenda McFarlane comes up, you’re taking Brenda McFarlane, I’m sure.
Kurt Elster: Yes.
Paul Reda: I get Andriy Rudnyk.
Kurt Elster: All right.
Paul Reda: Sorry. I’m sorry to all of you. Running an eCommerce business can seem super complex, but if you had to write a back-to-basics checklist for a $1 million a year merchant, what would it be? Thank you. Is this more of a question than a comment, a comment than a question? I don’t know. Get the fundamentals right. That’s a thing-
Kurt Elster: Nail the fundamentals.
Paul Reda: That’s a thing you said this week that I liked that I think we can spin on, is everyone worries about little ancillary bullshits in their business.
Kurt Elster: The shiny toys.
Paul Reda: Yeah. And they just don’t care about the fundamentals at all. Like anytime in my life anyone’s like, “But what about my PageSpeed score? What about Core Web Vitals?” I’m like, “How many emails do you send a week?” I’m just gonna completely be like, “How many emails do you send a week?”
Kurt Elster: When was the last time you looked at your product descriptions?
Paul Reda: Yeah. No, what? Yeah. How are your product photos? Are they big enough? Do they look nice?
Kurt Elster: All right, so I would say… He said, “Write the back-to-basics checklist for a $1 million a year merchant. What would it be?” At that point, we’re already established, so let’s make sure that customer service is on point, let’s get a returns manager in place with Bold’s Return Manager or Narvar if you want something more enterprisey. Those are both really good options, so get a returns portal in place. Let’s get an FAQ in there. Let’s get support ticketing software. Let’s make sure that we have preempted any customer issues. All right, boom, number one. Got that out of the way.
Number two, let’s nail our positioning. Let’s start talking to customers. Let’s do a customer survey. And then let’s rethink our positioning, because it probably hasn’t changed between the time, we were growing the business and we hit $1 million a year. Let’s make sure it still makes sense. And then if we know that, positioning is the cornerstone of our copy, our marketing, our messaging, now take the top 20% of your products and you rewrite those product descriptions, so they tell a story, so they’re tonal, so they’re longer, and that really… Those are the three things I would start with.
And then you can get into like, all right, let’s try and make the site easier to browse, easier to find our products, but those three, if you go through that, really that exercise will help you dramatically.
Paul Reda: Well, and now that we have our positioning and all that language down, we’re gonna write a new welcome series that welcomes every single email that we grab on, or from someone that buys something from us, and we’re also-
Kurt Elster: That welcome series, you’re right. Especially at this stage. Like I went to Klaviyo Boston a couple years ago, and I’d ask people, merchants. I’d say, “What’s your favorite flow?” And the majority of them said the welcome series. That was the one. They’re like, “Once we got that dialed in and performing right, that’s the thing that really made the money.”
Paul Reda: Yeah. And that, again, that loops back to John’s question of like, “Well, why am I seeing this conversion drop?” Well, because maybe people don’t understand the value you’re offering. Okay, well, the welcome series fixes that.
Kurt Elster: A welcome series will help you do that. You’re right. No, you’re 100%. Oh, this is great. This is building on itself.
Paul Reda: Wheels within wheels, man. It’s all holistic.
Kurt Elster: It’s like an onion. Just layers. Keep peeling back. Brenda McFarlane asks-
Paul Reda: Brenda McFarlane-
Kurt Elster: A-A-ron.
Paul Reda: A-A-ron Rod-gers.
Kurt Elster: We were rewatching Key & Peele. I think that show is gonna make it. It’s very funny.
Paul Reda: Yeah. I think they’re talented gentlemen.
Kurt Elster: Oh, yes. All right, Brenda McFarlane asks, “I make handmade jewelry and I work alone. What’s the best way to advertise for conversion plays?” I would point you back to Vivian Kaye’s episode from last Tuesday in which she makes it very clear, community and story are what sell.
Paul Reda: Yeah. You’re not selling the jewelry. You’re selling Brenda McFarlane.
Kurt Elster: Yep. I want to know who you are. I want to know why you’re doing it. I want to know your journey. And then I’m gonna buy your jewelry. That’s the thing.
Paul Reda: And you working in a… Someone we worked with that’s in the group, Meri Geraldine, I forgot the name of her store.
Kurt Elster: Gardens of the Sun.
Paul Reda: Gardens of the Sun. She sells jewelry. She doesn’t make it. She’s in Indonesia, I think.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. She’s in Bali.
Paul Reda: She’s in Bali. And it’s like-
Kurt Elster: And that’s very Midwestern. Bali.
Paul Reda: Bali.
Kurt Elster: She’s in Bali.
Paul Reda: You know, the total fitness, casino, and an island.
Kurt Elster: And arcades. Or pinball machines.
Paul Reda: And Six Flags.
Kurt Elster: Oh, and Six Flags.
Paul Reda: They did own Six Flags.
Kurt Elster: That was some regional reference.
Paul Reda: And a record label. But anyway, yeah, and I mean, so she has a great story because she has like local women in Indonesia that are making it, and so it’s like she’s giving these women an opportunity to make money, and all that sort of stuff, so she has incredible stories and videos detailing that story, so I would look at what she is doing and that’s the kind of stuff you need to be doing.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Well, and the issue with jewelry is it’s very much… You are spoiled for choice with jewelry. And that can make… I mean, in many ways, jewelry can be a commodity. And so, for that reason, that’s why for this question I immediately went to story and community are the two things.
Paul Reda: Well, it’s the same thing. I mean, she’s a small operator, so she’s got-
Kurt Elster: Those two will help, saying story and community, if you can develop those, that’ll help any business.
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: But especially with something like jewelry.
Paul Reda: Ethan Lahav, “We are running paid ads and we see 90% of traffic with only one page view, which is the collection page,” so that’s the landing page. “Almost all of them don’t continue to the product page. I’d be happy to get a clue why this is happening.” Because you’re running paid ads and that’s the top of funnel traffic, so it’s gonna convert like shit. That’s just-
Kurt Elster: Yeah, that TOFU traffic, top of funnel.
Paul Reda: That’s just what’s gonna be happening, man.
Kurt Elster: Well, at the same time, sending them to a collection page, is it literally like you just… I get dropped into a grid of products?
Paul Reda: Yeah. That sucks.
Kurt Elster: That’s not gonna work.
Paul Reda: That sucks.
Kurt Elster: You need to send me to a landing page.
Paul Reda: A landing page specifically made for people that have clicked on the ad.
Kurt Elster: Yes. So, like number one, it needs to… The first thing I need to see needs to feel like the ad I just saw, right? So, all right, let’s look at your win. You have an ad that people are clicking through on. That’s the hard part. Fabulous. You did it. Now, assuming that the traffic, that it works, all right, let’s make a landing page, and this could just be like a fancy collection template, or you can use something like Zipify Pages to build and quickly revise and test a landing page. And number one, make sure when I land on that page, take the headline from the ad. Take the graphic from the ad. Do something that makes me immediately feel like this is connected to the ad. I think that’s number one.
Then number two, it needs to be a little bit like a sales letter. Get me some kind of hook, some kind of positioning that makes me feel like this is the product for me, and then show me the product, show me social proof. And you can do this in this case, maybe it’s not just one t-shirt, it’s like a group of t-shirts. That kind of thing.
Paul Reda: Yeah. I was gonna say, I mean, you could do this with a product page if you have a crazy great product page like we have on Adam’s Polishes or something that has a ton of great content on it. That you could do. But just a straight up collection page of just like, “Here’s one paragraph of text and 12 products,” like…
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Well, and when I land on a collection page, you’re essentially telling the person like, “Hey, now you have to make a decision.” And you’re kind of like launching me into this like, “Well, you gotta browse.”
Paul Reda: It’s like they just clicked through on a Facebook ad. They are not ready to buy yet.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. And it may be that like, okay, you could look at it as like this is a win, we got them to the page, they visited. Now retarget people who click the ad.
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Right? That could help.
Paul Reda: I mean, and again-
Kurt Elster: Sometimes it’s about total number of touch points.
Paul Reda: And I ran the numbers on this months ago. I remember, because we were trying to figure out why mobile conversion rates are so bad compared to desktop conversion rates. And I’m sure there’s a myriad of reasons, but we realized that one of the reasons was that the main way that people got to the site through desktop was by searching or directly going to it. And-
Kurt Elster: That’s very intentional.
Paul Reda: That’s very intentional. The main way people got to the site on mobile is Facebook or Instagram ads.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Those story ads. That’s the only kind of ad that will get me, because it’s like such an… It’s interruption marketing where it takes over the entire page. It’s not as easy to click past. And then it’s easy to just swipe up on it. Now I’m on a page and I could tell you the number of times… I’ll click on several ads-
Paul Reda: The number of times you’ve bought on that visit is like one in 100, maybe?
Kurt Elster: Maybe. And usually, it’s like I saw the ad, I swiped up, I looked a little, and I’m more interested because I’m also a professional, so it’s like it has to interest me and I’m professionally interested, and then I’m still leaving. And it’s only on like a subsequent ad or maybe if they got me into a newsletter that I’m gonna go back and buy.
Paul Reda: Yeah, so that’s another thing you need to understand, is that those Facebook or Instagram ads are not gonna be direct converting on that click. Those are the seeds for your future conversions.
Kurt Elster: That’s such a good way to put it.
Paul Reda: On desktop.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. You’ve got people. These people are now in the top of your funnel. What are you gonna do to move them down?
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: So, yeah, it’s you gotta think in this touch point idea.
Paul Reda: It’s this thing where it’s like, well, they click and then 90% leave, and I guess it’s over now. No, it’s not over now. You’ve got another nugget of information about them. It’s that they were interested enough to click. You’ve whittled down the audience by a ton.
Kurt Elster: Yes.
Paul Reda: Yes. Correct. Anthea Digby-Smith. Anthea-
Kurt Elster: Anthea Digby-Smith. There we go.
Paul Reda: I installed Turbo.
Kurt Elster: Congrats.
Paul Reda: Is there any great features I may have missed? Any other good tips or tricks with Turbo? I don’t know. It’s a theme. It’s got a lot of options on it.
Kurt Elster: You just click around.
Paul Reda: Just click around.
Kurt Elster: All right, so-
Paul Reda: The Turbo options are daunting to me and they make no sense. They’re like headline color, sub headline color, top headline color, side headline color, it’s like what? What are even these options? I don’t know where any of this shit is.
Kurt Elster: To this day, I still have to get a little fiddly with it.
Paul Reda: It’s too hard. The Turbo customization things, like the GUI tools, are way too complex and underexplained.
Kurt Elster: I wish you could have like tool tips in there. That would help a lot. All right, now that we’ve thrown our sponsor under the bus.
Paul Reda: Yeah, well.
Kurt Elster: So, when I go into a store that already has a theme like Turbo running, the two missed opportunities I always see are number one, the mega menu, like no one implements a mega menu, and if they do, it ends up being a mess. So, setting up a mega menu and having it look really clean, that’s a win. That one’s definitely an overlooked strategy or an overlooked opportunity. Same with Flex, so really any theme that has a mega menu. Just don’t see them set up often. Because there’s some heavy lifting there I think in terms of like, “I gotta crop an image.”
Paul Reda: Going back to decisions. It’s like you gotta make… It’s a lot of decisions involved.
Kurt Elster: Yes.
Paul Reda: Picking a font, not a big decision.
Kurt Elster: Right. Yeah. Choosing your fonts, colors, that’s not that big a deal. And then the other one is the page templates. There are so many cool alternate templates in there, like product.details, and page.faq, and page.contact, and that often gets overlooked, and that I think really is where a lot of the value and the magic is.
Paul Reda: Oh, like utilizing those templates on your contact page? Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, like people just don’t use them, or if they do, like they don’t do a lot with the sections. And playing with those alternate templates, that’s the magic. That’s where it gets really cool.
Paul Reda: True, true, true.
Kurt Elster: And then you could start duplicating those templates, applying them different places.
Paul Reda: Well, they’re not doing that.
Kurt Elster: They’re not?
Paul Reda: Well, you mean like make duplicating a template, so you have like a second product details template and all that sort of stuff?
Kurt Elster: Yeah.
Paul Reda: They’re not doing that.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. I get… That one’s intimidating. As soon as you have to edit the theme code, most people are like, “I don’t want to break this.”
Paul Reda: Rightfully so.
Kurt Elster: And I don’t blame them.
Paul Reda: Rightfully so.
Kurt Elster: Ethan Lahav.
Paul Reda: Ethan’s back. How would you structure your homepage as a new brand in the competitive niche to encourage add to carts and conversions?
Let’s go with what is our top homepage layout.
Kurt Elster: A giant-
Paul Reda: Video.
Kurt Elster: I want a video explaining why the heck I should pay attention to you, which also makes it look professional and good. I see that video, I’m like, “Okay, these guys are not yahoos.”
Paul Reda: I want a video showing how cool I will be when I buy this product. And the product-
Kurt Elster: Oh, you’re brilliant!
Paul Reda: And the product doing rad shit.
Kurt Elster: Yes.
Paul Reda: Below that, I want what you are and the name of the product and all that sort of stuff, and how cool you are, the maker of the product. I want text about that. Then I want three featured collections of places they can go to winnow them down in the product funnel. Then I want a collection of your best-selling products.
Kurt Elster: I’m stripping it further. I want a video that just makes it, that just immediately screams, “You’re gonna be awesome if you buy this.” I love that idea, like show me how cool I’m gonna be with this product.
Paul Reda: Go to Overlander.com. You’ll look like a badass in an action movie if you buy this gas can.
Kurt Elster: That is really what they did, isn’t it?
Paul Reda: That’s pretty much what it is.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. And then below that, just give… Either depending on… So, it depends on the catalogue, but I think the win, if it makes sense for what you’re selling, just give me giant collection grid. Just let me start scrolling through a grid of 48 of your best sellers that are in stock.
Paul Reda: Well, let’s give a SOP. He said as a new brand in a competitive niche, so we need to talk about what are competitive advantages and why we’re better.
Kurt Elster: Okay.
Paul Reda: And who we are.
Kurt Elster: But if it’s like t-shirts.
Paul Reda: Well, it depends.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, so there’s a lot of… There’s so much missing here.
Paul Reda: It’s like does your product have a creation process that is different or interesting? It’s toasted, something like that, put that in there. But if it’s just like, “Our t-shirts have butts on them,” just get to the butt t-shirts. It’s fine.
Kurt Elster: Our t-shirts have butts on them.
Paul Reda: ButtShirts.com. I’m buying it. I’m buying it right now.
Kurt Elster: I’m sure somebody has it. It’s too late. No one register that until we have the time.
Paul Reda: That’s it, we’re done?
Kurt Elster: Well, it’s-
Paul Reda: And also mega menus. And then I want an email thing at the bottom to grab their emails if they hit the bottom.
Kurt Elster: Well, for sure. I do. I want an email opt-in at the bottom as my safety net. How would you structure your homepage? I think the answer, attention getter, so really that should be video, followed by featured promos or multiple featured collections to try and get me into the proper category I’m shopping for, whether that’s like pants versus socks, right? Or Ford versus Chevy. And then if it’s fewer products, okay, let’s just do it in a featured collection. Just get me to the product sooner.
And then I like the idea of like, all right, after that, then hey, we’ll explain who we are, why we do this, our story, and then newsletter opt-in.
Paul Reda: I think the story goes before the collection, but that is quibbling.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. I’m just happy… You know, if it’s on the page at all, I’ll be thrilled.
Paul Reda: Yep.
Kurt Elster: Anthony Watts. Oh, I like Anthony Watts. I think he’s one of the few folks who gets preapproved status in the Facebook group.
Paul Reda: Wow!
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Anthony Watts, “How did you guys cope with work burnout in the beginning when still growing your brand to a level where it’s sustainable to take time off? E.g., you can actually afford to pay other people to do some things.”
Paul Reda: It’s funny you should mention it because I feel like the problem at the beginning is not burnout, at least for us, it was not enough work to do.
Kurt Elster: Yes.
Paul Reda: It’s like no one comes to store. Very lonely.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Early on, it’s like I think early on it’s trying to keep motivated. Then you end up in like once you get past that, you end up in the entrepreneur’s dilemma, where you’re on the hamster wheel and you can’t stop working or things just stop, but you don’t… You’re not making enough money yet to hire out and outsource stuff. So, two things here. One, you may find that like maybe there is stuff that you can outsource, because you can get contractors. You don’t need full-time employees for a lot of things. You can get contractors. You can get virtual assistants. And maybe that frees up your time enough that you could do it.
It could be that you could leave for a little bit and you just haven’t realized it yet or figured it out. I think that… Both of those, I speak from personal experience, and then I think the other thing is anytime you’re experiencing burnout, the way I handle it is number one, look… To get in the right headspace, I take inventory of things I’m grateful for. Take inventory of wins. Just run through a list like, “Here’s top things I’m giving thanks for.” And that usually, that’s enough to start feeling good again.
And then from there, okay, what are my goals? Let’s start reminding yourself of what your goals are short term and long term, and why you’re doing it. And that should get you motivated and coping and moving forward, but I think you could also look for… Maybe take a hard look at things that just aren’t… don’t generate an ROI and you can just stop doing.
Paul Reda: Dump. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: I guarantee there’s stuff you’re doing that is a complete waste of time and you just haven’t realized it yet.
Paul Reda: Yeah. Well, and that you were like, “I thought this was a great idea back when I started, because I didn’t know.”
Kurt Elster: Some things you just gotta try to find out that they’re bad ideas.
Paul Reda: Yeah, because I didn’t know better, and now I’m just like in a routine. It’s like, shake up the routine.
Kurt Elster: That’s part of why stepping away for a few days is a good idea. Oftentimes, you’re like… You leave for three days and you realize like, “Oh, man. There’s a whole bunch of stuff I really shouldn’t be bothering with.”
Paul Reda: Yeah, like you know, let’s be honest. He could ignore the business for one day and it won’t blow up.
Kurt Elster: Correct.
Paul Reda: So, take a day off. Just take it.
Kurt Elster: Yeah.
Paul Reda: Just take it and just forgive yourself for taking it, and you don’t need forgiveness, and you don’t need permission. Part of this magic is that-
Kurt Elster: It’s your business.
Paul Reda: It’s your business.
Kurt Elster: You can do what the frick you want.
Paul Reda: Yeah, exactly.
Kurt Elster: Anthony, I believe in you.
Paul Reda: I don’t.
Kurt Elster: Aw! All right. Well, you’re one for one on that one.
Paul Reda: You’ll do fine, Anthony.
Kurt Elster: Jesse Tutt.
Paul Reda: Jesse Tutt. What bundling solutions do you recommend? Kurt, what bundling solutions do you recommend?
Kurt Elster: If you’re on Shopify Plus, you can straight up do your bundling with Shopify line-item scripts. That would be my preferred solution there. Frequently Bought Together is a great app for just cross sells. And if you’re talking about like straight up we just want to do bundling, like buy this group together, Bold Bundles.
Paul Reda: Bold Apps Product Bundles.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. That one’s great. It’ll do what you want. And then what’s cool about that one is you could pair it with Bold Brain, and it’ll be like… It’ll straight up tell you. Here’s the stuff that you should bundle together. And that’s very convenient.
Got that one.
Paul Reda: Sam Chi. How/where to find a good Shopify or Klaviyo expert for ad hoc work? Is it Klaviyo? Klaviyo? Did we ever figure it out?
Kurt Elster: You know, every time I find out what it actually is, then I like eventually… I’ll second guess myself and go the other way. At this point, just say it how you feel.
Paul Reda: I’m fully locked in on Klaviyo.
Kurt Elster: I also just say Klaviyo.
Paul Reda: All right, there you go.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Klaviyo. Really hammer the A. Chicago. How/where to find a good Shopify or Klaviyo expert for ad hoc work. Well-
Paul Reda: Free to answer.
Kurt Elster: Well, the Shopify… There’s the Shopify Experts and Shopify Jobs. Those people are vetted by Shopify and certainly I would hope are fearful of getting kicked off the platform. No one wants to get slapped on the hand by Tobi, so I think that would be my first place.
Paul Reda: Tobi’s a very gentle man I feel like. I’ve met him several times and he seems like a quiet, gentle, unassuming man. I don’t think he’s gonna slap you.
Kurt Elster: No?
Paul Reda: No.
Kurt Elster: I challenge him to slap me.
Paul Reda: Harley, on the other hand…
Kurt Elster: You think he’s the muscle?
Paul Reda: I think Harley could whip my ass.
Kurt Elster: I think he could take us both. The next Unite, people are gonna see us running, just running. Harley coming at us. Ahh! Run! Let’s see what we got here. So, yeah, I would start with Shopify Experts would be the first one, and then after that, what I caught here was ad hoc. It’s like, “All right, I’ve got these random tasks I just need someone to take care of for me.” For something like that, I would use a small task service. TaskHusky, HeyCarson, Storetasker.
Paul Reda: Do those all three still exist? Because wasn’t there like mergers and stuff?
Kurt Elster: Okay, so Hey Carson and Storetasker were both owned by Jonathan Kennedy, and he sold one of them to Ask Lorem, I think.
Paul Reda: Okay.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, so there we go.
Paul Reda: But all three of those are still a thing.
Kurt Elster: Yeah.
Paul Reda: Okay. Hire one of them.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. There you go.
Paul Reda: Also on that Shopify Experts directory or whatever, don’t go with the cheapest.
Kurt Elster: Yeah.
Paul Reda: Don’t do that.
Kurt Elster: Go for the second from the bottom.
Paul Reda: No, I’m not kidding. It’s like wines, people that do your stuff around your house.
Kurt Elster: Trim levels on cars.
Paul Reda: Yeah. Second cheapest. Because the cheapest… Not good.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Yes. Let’s see what we got here.
Paul Reda: Sam Chi, “Also, when retailers reach out who aren’t Walmart and Best Buy,” so I guess like mid, non-big-box retailers, “and want to carry your product, how do you think through that? Things to look for. How to scale that.” Blah, blah, blah. I got no clue, man.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. There’s a lot there. All right, so I’ll just talk you through how we would typically set up a wholesale channel is number one, like a contact form on the site. An application form for wholesalers to apply. That’s gonna ask a lot of this info just to weed out the tire kickers, right? Like, “How long have you been in business? Do you have a physical store? Do you sell online? Are you legitimate? Why do you want to carry our product?” And that’s it, boom. And you can find, if you check the footer on a whole bunch of sites you like, you’ll see these wholesale application links, and it’s a client application form, essentially.
So, you start with that, and then from there, assuming you’re not getting a lot, talk to them on the phone. Be like, “Hey, what are you looking to do here?” And then you need to provide a way to incentivize them selling your product. And so, number one, make it easy for them to buy. And you can use, if you’re on Shopify Plus, there’s a wholesale channel built into it. You can use Shopify line-item scripts to do the discounting automatically. Or you can use an app like Wholesale Hero, Wholesale Guerrilla. I don’t know. Just type wholesale in the app store. You’ll find a whole bunch of them.
Paul Reda: Isn’t there a… There’s a Bold. Bold Customer Pricing. Is that-
Kurt Elster: Bold Customer Pricing. That’s the one we used on our biggest wholesale store for a while.
Paul Reda: Yes. Yes. They pay us money, by the way.
Kurt Elster: Oh, yeah. How about that? So, you want to set that up, and then I think the piece that a lot of people miss is they treat their wholesale customers either like regular customers or ignore them. Do a newsletter for just the wholesale customers. Put together marketing materials and promos that then they can use to sell your product. Help them sell your stuff and you will be rewarded.
Paul Reda: Oh, that’s huge. Like you think-
Kurt Elster: Nobody does that.
Paul Reda: I mean, you know, think of everything you see in the grocery store. The grocery store doesn’t do that. That is all handled by the company that’s got the grocery… The grocery store just charges rent for a shelf. You gotta do everything else. What? No.
Kurt Elster: Charging rent for the shelf space in a grocery store is diabolical and brilliant.
Paul Reda: I mean, that’s not actually how it is, but that’s pretty much how it is. They don’t care whether your stuff sells or not. They’ll just get someone else.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Yes.
Paul Reda: So, it’s like you have to do the sales, like you’re the one that has to lead them to the water.
Kurt Elster: All right. Final question. James Cirkl asks, “What is your team updating/changing for Core Web Vitals?”
Paul Reda: Nothing. We are doing nothing.
Kurt Elster: Why?
Paul Reda: Because who cares? Oh, I got terrible news, by the way. Awful news. So, when we last discussed this three weeks ago, I gloated that my website had a 100 on a Google PageSpeed. I believe it is now down to 94 out of 100.
Kurt Elster: Oh, no!
Paul Reda: I know. I lost 6 points from my-
Kurt Elster: Do you lose sleep over it?
Paul Reda: I do, because-
Kurt Elster: But what about the algorithm update?
Paul Reda: It said, by the way, that because I have too much page shift when my website is three P tags, obviously nothing is shifting. It’s entirely static content. It’s loading a paragraph of text and the Google robot, which again, controls our lives and is obviously perfect and knows exactly what it’s talking about, says my website shifts too much. So, I don’t know about this.
Anyway, we’re doing nothing. We don’t care.
Kurt Elster: So, if you do care, it’s just why would they care about cumulative layout shift?
Paul Reda: I don’t know.
Kurt Elster: I like… Steve Chou from MyWifeQuitHerJob, he goes, “Look, Google makes their revenue from ads.”
Paul Reda: Correct.
Kurt Elster: And-
Paul Reda: Like why does Google care why websites are slow? What do they care?
Kurt Elster: And it’s not some altruistic thing. It’s to juice ad revenue. Because their ads load deferred. They’re the last thing to load on the page and they also cause cumulative layout shift creates problems for them.
Paul Reda: Oh, yeah. Google ads pop… I mean, think about when you’re-
Kurt Elster: That results in fraudulent clicks.
Paul Reda: Yeah. Think about when you’re on a website. Google page ads pop in late all the time.
Kurt Elster: Because it’s load deferred. So, all right, if-
Paul Reda: Wait. So, wait. Explain this conspiracy theory, because I’m into it.
Kurt Elster: You like it?
Paul Reda: So, wait. So, what is it? So, Google is in-
Kurt Elster: All right, so the reason they… This was Steve Chou’s theory and I subscribe to it. I like it. Cumulative layout shift is like you’re about to click on the pagination on a site-
Paul Reda: Or you’re clicking on a… Yeah, you’re clicking on a link.
Kurt Elster: And then the ad pops in and you click it and then you click back.
Paul Reda: You accidentally click on the ad because it popped in late.
Kurt Elster: Yes.
Paul Reda: While you were in the midst of doing a click on something else.
Kurt Elster: Yes. Right. That then gets… That’s the most annoying kind of click for them because that’s fraudulent click.
Paul Reda: So, Google knows when that happens how? Because you immediately back out and they track it?
Kurt Elster: Yes.
Paul Reda: Okay.
Kurt Elster: So, they mark that as fraudulent click, and then everybody gets annoyed. The webmaster who lost the revenue and Google and the user. It’s a bad experience. So, this whole thing is about Google ads wrecking up the web, but they shift… It’s similar to how we made sustainability the end consumer’s problem. We have now made Google ads performance the webmaster’s problem.
Paul Reda: So, what they’re saying is your website needs to be faster and not shifting-
Kurt Elster: So that their ads load sooner.
Paul Reda: So when our ad loads up and shifts the website, that’s not so bad.
Kurt Elster: Yes.
Paul Reda: Well, and I mean it goes back to the thing-
Kurt Elster: Now, here’s… Here we go.
Sound Board:
Paul Reda: I mean, it goes back to the thing where they’re like, “Here’s the worst thing on your website,” the YouTube JavaScript. It’s like, “That’s yours.” If you cared, you’d fix it.
Kurt Elster: That’s what’s funny. Yeah. Oftentimes the largest piece of JavaScript on a website is the YouTube player.
Paul Reda: Well, and you know, this got changed about seven or eight months ago. One of the things they were always like, “You’re calling these Google fonts. They don’t support font swap,” which is a font embedding option that apparently makes your page shift less. It’s like, “Well, up until six months ago, Google fonts didn’t support font swap.” Add support for it if you’d like me to not have that on my website.
Kurt Elster: All right, so if you are concerned about Core Web Vitals, which-
Paul Reda: Don’t be.
Kurt Elster: Why are you concerned about it? Because it’s a tie breaker, right? It’s not actually… In the algorithm update, it becomes a tie breaking ranking factor. But fine, let’s just continue with that. You’re still concerned about it. You want to see the arbitrary score go up. On all of the sites I’ve looked at, at this point the culprit is JavaScript. Core Web Vitals, PageSpeed in general, really has become a metric for how much JavaScript is on your site, probably too much.
Why do you have the JavaScript? It’s tracking snippets. It’s live chat widgets. It’s functionality. It’s apps. What apps, what functionality, what tracking snippets, what do you want to give up? What are you willing to give up? Give up as much JavaScript as you possibly can, and the site will be more performant and your Core Web Vitals scores will improve. If you’re willing to give that stuff up, then great, you will have a better performing website.
Paul Reda: A better scoring website.
Kurt Elster: I’m sorry. A better scoring website.
Paul Reda: A better scoring. Not a better performing website in terms of money, necessarily.
Kurt Elster: Right. Yes. Yeah, when I say performant, I mean very literally like the scores we’re getting are load time performance metrics.
Paul Reda: Yeah. If you truly care about this, delete all your apps.
Kurt Elster: Uninstall all your apps.
Paul Reda: Yeah. There you go.
Kurt Elster: Done. No more problems. Get rid of that. Guaranteed, live chat widget’s the biggest culprit. If you’ve got any YouTube videos on there, that’s a problem.
Paul Reda: Those live chat widgets load all the way at the end. They make your final load time score, whatever, jack through the roof. Those things stink, those live chat widgets. But if you think a live chat widget helps you deal with customer questions and sell more money in the end, maybe keep it.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. That might be more important than this stupid Core Web Vitals score.
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: But Google told me, so we better do it.
Paul Reda: Yeah. I mean, that’s what we’re changing. We’re telling people who care about this to delete all their apps and when they say no, we say, “Okay, then you’re gonna have a bad score. There you go. Game over.”
Kurt Elster: I mean, that really is… It is as simple as that. And on the sites I’ve seen where it’s like, “Oh, we got a really good score.” The way they did it is they just deferred all the JavaScript, so it loads later.
Paul Reda: Yeah. Which again, you could do some of that stuff. I mean, it’s the hack we talked about three weeks ago. But I do note none of our big gun clients care about this one iota.
Kurt Elster: This is interesting. If someone says to me, like if someone is worried about this, they’re doing less than seven figures.
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: The stores that are making over seven figures a year, and especially like the eight figure stores, their concerns are supply constraints and customer acquisition costs. Those are their top concerns right now. Only the stores that are… Like, the stores in the six-figure range, those are the ones that are worried about PageSpeed scores and Core Web Vitals.
Paul Reda: Yeah. It’s like…
Kurt Elster: I mean, obviously people are gonna say like, “Well, I’m in seven figures and I’m worried about it.” Okay, fine. But I’m just saying what I’m hearing-
Paul Reda: On average.
Kurt Elster: Ear to the street. That tends to be an indicator.
Paul Reda: And I mean, my thing is now when people ask me about it, where they’re just like, “Hey, what would you do to help increase my PageSpeed score?” I’m just kind of like, “How many emails you send last week? How are your product photos? Do you have page descriptions? Do you have a size guide on your apparel?” And they’re like, “But I asked about PageSpeed scores.” It’s like, “Well, I’m asking about things that are way more important.”
Weirdly, they have no answer and they have not thought about their email sequences at all, but they’ve been thinking a lot about their PageSpeed score. Probably because the PageSpeed score is like a little tiny problem that they think they can solve, whereas like-
Kurt Elster: They can worry at that.
Paul Reda: Writing a welcome series-
Kurt Elster: Nobody wants to do it.
Paul Reda: That’s too much work.
Kurt Elster: Yep. And I will say as usual, we had a few eight figure clients, and all of them have low, low-
Paul Reda: Terrible.
Kurt Elster: Awful, awful.
Paul Reda: 12.
Kurt Elster: Awful, terrible.
Paul Reda: Stores that make $12 million a year, which is also their PageSpeed score. 12. Okay.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. I mean, that’s also like why we come from a place where this just isn’t worth your time. There’s just other stuff that’s better. All right, fine. We’ve beaten that horse to death.
Paul Reda: We always do.
Kurt Elster: Do we have any horse beating sound effects?
Paul Reda: Well, you’re the weirdo.
Kurt Elster: I don’t.
Paul Reda: Don’t beat horses. That’s terrible.
Kurt Elster: It is.
Paul Reda: They’re pretty.
Kurt Elster: I like horses. I got nothing else. You want to go for a ride in this Beetle? I got it running.
Paul Reda: Does it still reek of gasoline?
Kurt Elster: Yeah. I mean, I know why it reeks of gasoline.
Paul Reda: Like, “Yeah.”
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Yeah, I found some things the previous owner did. I’m waiting on some parts.
Paul Reda: You’re like jamming your fingers into pipes and stuff, apparently?
Kurt Elster: Yeah. No, my evap canister has a giant footlong crack through it, and then yesterday I discovered that it has the wrong fuel cap on it, so that’s just… Wrong fuel cap. It’s just not even sealing.
Paul Reda: I was told this car was a B-plus.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, well… I’m getting there.
Paul Reda: All right.
Kurt Elster: It runs real good. All right, let’s go try it.
Paul Reda: All right, goodbye.