Managing apps, considering SMS marketing, preparing for Black Friday, and more.
In this listener mailbag episode, you'll hear nine questions from merchants preparing for Black Friday:
Plus: Kurt terrifies his children, and Paul kills Moby Dick.
Kurt Elster: So Julie was gone-
Paul Reda: Oh, we're starting already, geez, wow.
Kurt Elster: She went to Disney World. She went to Disney World, did a solo trip, went with a girlfriend, but it was just to create content for her website. This was a big deal.
Paul Reda: Sure it was.
Kurt Elster: This was five days.
Paul Reda: Not to ride Space Mountain.
Kurt Elster: She did ride Space Mountain.
Paul Reda: Yeah, only for content purposes.
Kurt Elster: For content purposes. No, this was work. She was running around like a mad person. And, while she was gone, I'm playing Mr. Mom. I'm taking care of our three kids at home. And I said, "Listen, guys." Because they're two, eight, and ten. And I told them, I said, "Your mom's gone. So there are no rules. We can do whatever we want." So we did our fair share of pizza. I said, "Well all right, on Friday, we'll do movie night, and you guys can pick any movie you want. Whatever it is. Even if it's R rated."
Kurt Elster: And they were like ... This blew their minds. So the eight year old is trying to get me to pirate movies, first of all. That's what his go-to was. He wants first run movies. So we settle on the original Lion King. Fine. The ten year old immediately goes, "I want to watch It." I was like, "Oh boy, are you sure?" He's like, "I can handle it." "Why do you think you can handle it? I'm not trying to challenge you, I just don't want you to have nightmares, watch something that's too scary." And he goes, "I've watched YouTube videos of the scariest horror games you can imagine." And I was like, "Oh man, this kid is so screwed. He does not know what he's getting into."
Kurt Elster: So I'm trying to ... Because if you're like, "Listen, you can't do that," naturally they're going to be like, "All right, let's do it." So I'm trying to explain to both of them, "You don't want to do this to yourself." They're not going for it. So we end up watching It. The whole time they're like, "Oh my god." Freaking out. But I'm like, "Listen, we can turn it off. We don't have to do this to ourselves." Even I'm like, "This movie's creepy."
Kurt Elster: And no, to their credit, they made it through the whole thing. And as soon as it's over, I preempted, I said, "Guys, just sleep in the same bedroom." And the eight year old has my old queen bed, so they've got plenty of space. I'm like, "That way you won't be scared. Just sleep in the same bed." They didn't argue with me for a second. They're like, "Okay." And then I sent a video of them getting into bed together to my wife. And I'm like, "Why are you guys sleeping together?" They're like, "Because we watched It." And she thought this was very funny.
Kurt Elster: But this is the part that I am both not proud of, and very amused by. When I went to bed, I closed and locked my door. Because I don't want to be laying in bed, and it's midnight, and I hear something, and there's some ten year old in my room sneaking up on me because he had some pre-teen clown nightmare. Because I'd have a heart attack. Two days prior, he literally ... I'm laying in bed, I'd just fallen asleep, I'm in twilight, and I hear something. I'm like, "Is there someone there?" And then he goes, "Kurt."
Kurt Elster: I about jumped out of my skin. And I had not watched It, I was just minding my own business. So now I'd locked my children out of my bedroom for fear that they would frighten me in the middle of the night.
Paul Reda: I get that sometimes. Because my wife works nights, so her and I sometimes sleep in separate beds because it's just easier because you don't want one person clomping into your bed at four in the morning. So, we'll be offset. She might be off, I'll be going to bed. So it's 1 AM, and I'm going to bed, but she's already asleep because her timeline's all off. And so I'm walking through the apartment and I just hear, emerge from a room, "Are you going to bed?" And I'm like, "What the fuck? Of course I'm going to bed!"
Kurt Elster: Yeah, knock first. Maybe clap. Give me some warning.
Paul Reda: In our show notes, he has watched It written down. And I thought that was the name of the new official name of our opening segment. Which is, Watched It! The things that we watched.
Kurt Elster: Well yeah, someone left a four star podcast review, and they said, he was like, "I stuck with it, and this podcast was really valuable. But first I had to listen to ten minutes about what they watched on Netflix, and I almost turned it off." You can fast forward.
Paul Reda: Well, and it's worth it for the 40 minutes of knowledge bombs that come afterwards. Who are you?
Kurt Elster: Yeah. I just want a little bit of cold open, in which it's clear that we are real life human beings. That's all that's about.
Paul Reda: So my entry in Watched It! Is I watched Mystic Pizza. Which I had never seen before, and it was-
Kurt Elster: Mystic Pizza? I'm not familiar with this.
Paul Reda: Yeah. What, you've never heard of Mystic Pizza? It's a famous 80s movie about three girls coming of age in Connecticut. They work at a pizza place.
Kurt Elster: I don't know if you're making this up or not. This sounds made up.
Paul Reda: It was Julia Roberts's first movie.
Kurt Elster: Really?
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: No, this is all new to me.
Paul Reda: With Julia Roberts and Lili Taylor, and I forgot who the third actress is. And that Julia Roberts, that kid's going to be a star. She's real good. I enjoyed it a lot. I love 80s women's pictures.
Kurt Elster: You like coming of age tales?
Paul Reda: No like, Working Girl, awesome. Flashdance, awesome.
Kurt Elster: What are some of your other 80s women's coming of age stories you enjoy?
Paul Reda: I just like them. I don't know. So there's that-
Kurt Elster: I can see that.
Paul Reda: And I've been playing ... I play this gamed called Nantucket that's a 18th century whaling simulator. Where you run a-
Kurt Elster: Again, this sounds made up.
Paul Reda: Where you run a whaling boat. That's like a strategy game. And, it was really fun, and I enjoy it greatly. And, I saw on Twitter that the two Italian dudes that made it ... You know, two Italian dudes making a 1800s whaling game. They made an expansion pack, and were looking for beta testers. So I emailed them, so I'm in the whaling game beta. And I've been playing it, and giving them feedback. And I have been enjoying it a lot.
Kurt Elster: I was going to say, when you're passionate about something, and you can connect with the creator, and then give helpful feedback on it, that's a really cool feeling. Part of it's like you were in the right place at the right time. Where you got in early. That's always fun to have that connection and feel like, "Okay, I was a part of this, I shaped this."
Paul Reda: And don't worry, the game is actually in the Moby Dick expanded universe. So you've got to take out ... Starbuck is a character in the game. You've got to take out Moby Dick at the end.
Kurt Elster: So did you?
Paul Reda: I did. Yeah, no, I beat the regular game.
Kurt Elster: Congratulations.
Paul Reda: That's what made me into getting the expansion pack.
Kurt Elster: I want to take this opportunity to put GoPro on blast. So I'm a big proponent of you've got to create content. Gary V's always saying, "Document, don't create." And that's what we were trying to do with Julie's Disney trip, was, "All right, you go. And then document the whole thing, and turn that into podcasts." Podcasts, video reports, trip reports, articles, and she did. And as part of that, I had to load her down with gear. And so I sent her with my Canon 6D Mark II, and a big 2470 L glass lens. And we did ... I gave her that. Stabilized camera that she didn't end up using, and a GoPro, which she strapped to her head, in the nerdiest fashion possible, so that she could shoot the rides.
Kurt Elster: And this damn GoPro is a GoPro HERO7. Their stock's been having problems because they've had quality control issues, product issues. And I experienced it firsthand when she came back, and the SD card was corrupted because this thing's half the time, just turns off while you're recording, and corrupts the video. So I ended up losing all the ride videos, but for one, where I was able to save part of it. I was so frustrated by it.
Kurt Elster: So I'm taking this opportunity to say don't trust your GoPro for any actual mission critical content creation. And if you've got a whole bunch of GoPro accessories, you can use those with other action cameras because it's kind of turned into an open standard. So I picked up a DJI. I like them a lot. A DJI Osmo Action, which is just a full-on, "Hey, we ripped off a GoPro, and then made it a little better camera." I like it a lot.
Kurt Elster: So yeah, my point is GoPro's a POS.
Paul Reda: A point of sale?
Kurt Elster: Yes. Yeah, that's what I meant.
Kurt Elster: Finally, should this podcast be video as well?
Paul Reda: No.
Kurt Elster: I think it should. I just don't look forward to the level of editing I'd have to do. If I could outsource that ... If someone wants to say, "Hey, I'm a freelance video editor, I can do this for you, reach out to me, I am absolutely listening." I want to at least try it for a couple times. If I can get someone else to do the work.
Paul Reda: Waste of time.
Kurt Elster: The more I read about it, the more I think YouTube is also a podcasting platform.
Paul Reda: I don't like it.
Kurt Elster: We're already creating the podcast, and it's in one medium, why not turn that into two mediums?
Paul Reda: Ah, I don't use that medium.
Kurt Elster: Therefore it's bad?
Paul Reda: So no one else does. And so, what's the point?
Kurt Elster: You know, that's essentially the pushback I hear when I suggest something. I'm trying to get people to pay attention to and adopt SMS Marketing as a channel. Especially before Black Friday.
Paul Reda: That's such a good segue into one of our questions, well done.
Kurt Elster: Is it? Thank you.
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Whenever I do this, people are like, "Well, whenever I get a transactional text message, I reply stop right away." That's an exact quote somebody wrote. "Well when I." Okay, that's what you do. You don't know that that's what 100 percent of your customers do. For many, they may view it as a value add. They may view it as convenient. Because the average person gets 150 emails a day. And so, you're right-
Paul Reda: So I'm sorry, we have a listener question asking, "Kurt, what's your take on SMS Marketing right now? Are you seeing-"
Kurt Elster: Tom Brown from Posted Protein.
Paul Reda: Are you seeing many stores deploying the likes of SMS Bump and Retention Rocket with wild ROI?
Kurt Elster: Also, I like that he mentioned SMS Bump and Retention Rocket because I know both of those guys. And they're both excellent products. You really couldn't go wrong with either.
Kurt Elster: All right so, we've got ... Off the top of my head, we've got three clients using SMS. And it's tremendously good. One is using it for primarily abandoned card and browse abandonment. And it works very well. Better than email, in terms of open rates, and click through rates, and recovery rates. And the other is using it to announce sales and product launches. Both of these [crosstalk 00:10:28]-
Paul Reda: I feel like that's better.
Kurt Elster: I like that.
Paul Reda: If I got an abandoned cart text, I'd be like, "Mmm, this is creepy. I don't like it."
Kurt Elster: Have you ever got an abandoned cart text?
Paul Reda: No. But I'm saying if I did, I wouldn't like it.
Kurt Elster: I got one once. And it would have been creepy, but for whatever reason, it had ... And these apps do this. It had an image of the product, it was a multimedia thing. And it was set up like customer service. Where it's like, "If you have any questions, reply." And I didn't reply, and I didn't buy anything, but I was very impressed by this.
Kurt Elster: Well what's interesting about these two clients that are using SMS in these two different ways, and both having success, one skews male and younger, the other skews female and older. So it's really ... Between these two data points, we're covering most of the population. And they're both having equal success.
Kurt Elster: So I've heard some people say ... I've heard people make claims like, "Oh, this is better for older people." And I've heard people say, "This is better for younger people."
Paul Reda: [crosstalk 00:11:29]
Kurt Elster: Everybody uses text messaging.
Paul Reda: Why would texting be better for older people is my first question. But, I don't know.
Kurt Elster: Because they don't want to deal with email. Because it's simple and straightforward. I don't know what the ageist argument is for-
Paul Reda: Yeah, I don't know.
Kurt Elster: But I think, if you are not experimenting with SMS marketing, and you're going, "Oh well, it's spammy, and I don't like it," get out of your own way, and just try it. Just try it for two weeks and see what it does. Because all these platforms support attribution, support reporting. So you could figure out if this makes sense and will work for your brand very easily. But you just have to try it.
Paul Reda: Oh. Well I mean, and that just goes to our general thought process here. Which is, just try it. Will you just try it?
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Experiment. This is like trying to get my children to try new foods. Just try it, you might like it. And they fight you, like, "No!" And the great quote I always get from the oldest child was ... He doesn't do this anymore, but he goes, "I think I tried that when I was a baby." What? So you can't just try it again? What's the worst that could happen here? And then of course they try it and they're like, "Oh, it's great." Right?
Paul Reda: Well, and the most frustrating to us is we get people that call us and are like, "Hey, I think I might want to try this thing. Could you do that for me?" And we're like, "Sure, here you go. Let's get going. Send us money and we'll do it for you. Here, we'll write up a proposal, we'll have a couple phone calls, we'll get this all ready to go." And then they get to the last stage, and they just get cold feet. And they're like, "Oh no, I don't want to do it." Why'd you go so far? Just freaking do it.
Kurt Elster: Well because it's one thing to talk about it, it's another thing to do it.
Paul Reda: I don't know.
Kurt Elster: Everyone wants to be gangster, nobody wants to do gangster shit. Tom Brown's other question is, "What's the average number of apps you see merchants installing on their stores? Seems to be a lot of folks out there not realizing the speed implications of having too many apps." It's like Tom knows us and is just setting us up here.
Paul Reda: Yeah, he just set us up. Because my answer to the average number of apps you see is too many. Stop it.
Kurt Elster: It's a frightening number. I mean, at this point, if I see a store ... If I log in to a store and it has 20 apps, I don't think twice about it, that doesn't phase me. If I see 30, 40 apps, I go, "Okay, that's a lot. But in no universe is it unusual in any way."
Paul Reda: Those numbers are too high.
Kurt Elster: 30, 40?
Paul Reda: Yes. If you have 30, 40, you're like, "What are you doing?" You don't need all these.
Kurt Elster: That's a lot. And often times, you go, "Hey, are there any of these that you don't need?" And at some point, they hit a tipping point where they go, "I don't know anymore. There's so many, I don't know what we use and don't use." And it's also like, "Well, we hired a vendor who said, 'Hey, let's use this to solve this problem.'" And pretty quickly you're like, "I have no idea what's going on anymore." And they're scared to break the machine, they don't want to uninstall anything and break something.
Kurt Elster: But I think the solution here ... And we've talked about this before. Is, number one, regularly do an app audit. Where you just go through the list to go, "Am I even using this thing? Is there a better solution out there? And what's the ROI? If I am using it, should I even be bothering?" So I think that's ... You do it once a quarter.
Kurt Elster: The two problems with apps are A, you get overwhelmed where you don't know what's what. That's less of an issue. Number two, the a la carte pricing starts to add up. So if you're looking for like, "Here's a fixed recurring cost in my business I can reduce," look at the apps.
Paul Reda: Yeah, five apps too many, that could be 50 bucks a month.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. An app can be anywhere from five dollars to 50 dollars. 15, 20 bucks is not unusual. Well you get 10 of those-
Paul Reda: That's 50 to 100 bucks a month.
Kurt Elster: All right, that starts adding up.
Paul Reda: Yeah. That's the next level of Klaviyo that you're worried about having to pay for. There's the money for that right there.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. That's kind of ... That's [inaudible 00:15:14] where people are like, "Oh that one app is expensive." I'm like, "Yeah, but you've got 10 10 dollar apps installed in here, and you didn't think twice about those."
Paul Reda: You've got 10 10 dollar shit apps, but you're really scared of upping your email rates.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. "Oh no. I'm going to pay 200 bucks for the number one revenue driving sales channel?" There's also the performance implication of apps. So when you install an app in your theme, it adds some code to the theme. It adds some JavaScript calls. It probably has some supporting JavaScript that it adds as well. And this is where themes get bloated very quickly. Because typically, when a merchant installs an app, 50 percent of the time, they're going to install it same day. And realistically, within a few minutes. I install it, I decide, "This isn't for me," or I just don't want to deal with this right now. Whatever the reason is. Then uninstall it.
Kurt Elster: The problem is it left the code behind. When you click delete or uninstall in your Shop by App in an app, it only does one thing. Disconnects the app's connection to your store. The app cannot go back and uninstall itself. Which it's frustrating for the app developers, but they do it to protect merchants, I get it.
Kurt Elster: So, you end up with all this old, crufty code in the app store. And then same problem, you don't know what's what. Especially with digging through theme code, you don't want to break your theme, understandable. So here's the process everyone should put in place for installing apps. Duplicate your theme, install the app, decide if you want to keep it. If not, then just roll the theme back.
Paul Reda: Well that's not useful. That's not necessarily useful for a lot of people because it may take a while to decide whether you need it or not. And while that's going on, you're making other changes to your store.
Kurt Elster: I agree with you. But, I know the stats are ... It's about 50 percent of time, they're going to uninstall it immediately.
Paul Reda: Oh you're right, we can look at our apps, yeah. Generally, people know within 48 hours whether they want to keep it or not.
Kurt Elster: It's within minutes. The same day install uninstall, for us, is probably 50 percent. And I think that's pretty normal.
Paul Reda: Well and the thing to point out here is a lot of these ... The way Kurt usually presents it, it's like the problem is occurring on site, on your store. But, in my experience, the actual problem is these apps are running on a script that is being served from the app company's servers. So they have a JavaScript that is on their servers that your store pings and asks for that script on everyone's page loads. And that makes it easy for the app developer, because they just need to update one file on their servers, and then they can essentially update the app.
Paul Reda: But the problem is that their servers are generally a lot slower than Shopify. And those files can be pretty big. So, a lot of times, I see people that are like, "Oh my store is slow. I feel like it's slow. My page load's too big. My Google page speed score is too high. Boo." And, what the main culprits sometimes are are these giant external files that are being called from outside of Shopify that take a long time to come in. That is attached to some app that you have installed.
Paul Reda: So these external scrips are killing your scores if you care about scores. Which you shouldn't, but I understand reality. And killing your load times.
Kurt Elster: If I want to figure out my load time, what's the tool to do it?
Paul Reda: I know the tool I like, but that's not the tool you will say.
Kurt Elster: Well that's why I'm asking you.
Paul Reda: Well, my tool is to ... All browsers have a thing called Inspector.
Kurt Elster: An equivalent.
Paul Reda: Or some sort of developer window, or inspection window, or something like that. And it has a tab called Network. And you just load your website in the network tab. And it breaks down every single file, how big it is, and how long it took to get there. And you can easily see the problem children.
Kurt Elster: Yes. I like ... If you don't want to mess with developer tools in your browser, I like Pingdom Tools a lot. You can use that. And what's nice about Pingdom Tools, or using an external one, is it's pinging from their server. So maybe you can get a more consistent result. It's less reliant on your own internet connection. So I'll link to that in the show notes, Pingdom Tools, tools.pingdom.com. I think that one's nice.
Kurt Elster: And it outputs exactly the same thing that you're talking about, it just does it in an easier, friendlier way.
Paul Reda: Well they give you a score though, too.
Kurt Elster: They also assign a score to it, which-
Paul Reda: Which again, we don't feel good about scores because scores are sort of trying to be one size fits all for every website. And for some reason, all those score tools really dig on Shopify when they shouldn't.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. It's essentially the letter score that they're giving you, which is frustrating because you don't know what the metrics are that they're judging you by. But then they're giving you a letter score, which just creates a whole bunch of anxiety. Needless anxiety for business owners, for merchants, so I hate it for this reason. Google page speed's just out there torturing people daily.
Kurt Elster: A Shopify app partner wrote a wonderful article called The Truth About Google Page Speed Insights for Shopify. And, they sent it to me, they said, "Hey, we heard your discussion. We thought you'd be interested in this article we wrote." I don't recall if it was inspired by or related to, but whatever. I send this thing out at least weekly to somebody, because it comes up all the time. So I'll put that in the show notes as well, it's very good. And it should help you worry less about it.
Kurt Elster: Moving forward, we've got an SEO question. Some people worry about page speed because they think it affect SEO. It does, but not to the-
Paul Reda: That's the point where you should care about it.
Kurt Elster: Malik Mudosar, and I'm sorry for butchering your name, send me the ... This guy has asked me good questions more than once. You should message me the phonetic pronunciation of your name so I don't butcher this in the future.
Paul Reda: I think it's Malik Mudosar.
Kurt Elster: It is?
Paul Reda: Yeah, why not?
Kurt Elster: Well, as soon as you're pronouncing someone else's name, you want to be ... Not screw it up.
Paul Reda: No I understand you want to get it right, but I don't think that one's that hard.
Kurt Elster: Like people call me, "Hey, is Chris Ulster there?" How did you? What?
Paul Reda: I get Reta all the time.
Kurt Elster: Reta?
Paul Reda: My whole life.
Kurt Elster: So he asks, "How often should you be changing your product descriptions? To keep up with SEO? Or should you be changing them at all?"
Paul Reda: Why? Why are you changing your product descriptions?
Kurt Elster: Well I think this is a case of you don't know what you don't know, so hey, let's find out. And my guess is as to why should you ... He's asking why should you change your product descriptions, and keep up with SEO. I'm assuming this is either, are we putting key words in it based on what we think we can rank for? Or, there's this idea that Google prefers recent content. I don't know how true this is. And so, we have to keep it up to date so it's quote, unquote, fresh. I wouldn't change it for either of those reasons. I would take a different approach. And this is what we've been doing with our retainer clients.
Kurt Elster: We run an exit intent survey on the site that says, "Hey, if you didn't make a purchase today, why not?" And once a month, once a quarter, I go through those questions, and I look for trends. But I also just pull out the easy answers. Or the easy questions specific to a product. Because if one person asks that, ten other people thought it. And that's what we use to revise product descriptions over time. It's just, what questions are people asking? Add the answer or objection buster as a bullet point, or a line in that description. Or an FAQ, whatever it is.
Kurt Elster: So, probably the most common one that merchants miss that I see is, "What are the dimensions of X?" So it's like, "What are the dimensions of this sticker? What are the dimensions of this brush?"
Paul Reda: Yeah, this shirt that you say is XL, what's XL really mean?
Kurt Elster: Not even that. When I say dimensions-
Paul Reda: But I'm saying, this applies to everything.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. You jump to size guide, but it's everything.
Paul Reda: It's everything. Oh yeah. My brother showed me this cool 1950s retro refrigerator. That is modern, but it looks like at '50s retro refrigerator. And he's like, "You would want this." It's cherry red. I was like, "Oh man, I do want that."
Paul Reda: And then I looked at the dimensions, which were on there in inches. And I calculated it, and I was like, "Wait, that's four and a half feet tall. I don't want that." That thing's pointless.
Kurt Elster: I guess it would be for a garage or office or a man cave.
Paul Reda: He's like, "Put it in your garage." I was like, "No! It looks baller. You've got to show off how baller it is. You don't stick it in your garage."
Kurt Elster: You want it for the kitchen.
Paul Reda: That's right.
Kurt Elster: Okay. But yeah, no matter what the product is, people can't see it in person, they can't touch it. They have no frame of reference, especially when it's just product on white. So yeah, the dimensions are weirdly one of the biggest things we see as the reason they didn't buy, supposedly.
Paul Reda: So the answer to this question is you should be changing your product descriptions, but based on customer feedback in order to sell it to future customers better.
Kurt Elster: Yes. And that's why you-
Paul Reda: Not to try and beat Google. Which is a thing you will never do, so stop worrying about it.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Google just wants the relevant answer to a person's question. The search results are answers, and the search term is a question. They just want the most relevant thing. So looking at SEO as a customer service thing, this is how you approach it. So maybe you've got live chat on your site. People are going to ask questions. "Hey did you have any questions?" Treat this like you are in a retail store. "Anything I can help you with today? Any questions?" And they will tell you what their objections are. You note that down, you add it to the description. Same with that exit intent question that I love to run in Hot Jar. "If you didn't make a purchase today, why not?" I love that thing.
Kurt Elster: And even your abandoned carts. I think that first abandoned cart message should either be focused on customer service, or include a note in there, "If you have any questions, reply to this email, let us know." And then have a system in place where you are logging those questions, and then you can go through and update your product descriptions every so often.
Paul Reda: I think we saw yesterday that Stamped has something like that built into it?
Kurt Elster: Yeah. It was on-
Paul Reda: NutriKey had that.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, NutriKey. Which is a cool ... If you're in the supplement space, NutriKey's site's very nice. That's on Turbo. And they're running Stamped reviews. And when you make a purchase, on the order confirmation page, Stamped has a thing that pops up that asks, "Hey, why did you make a purchase?" So that's customer development, so you're going to find out, "Okay, why are people buying?" And then that info is really helpful to inform your marketing to be able to write headlines that really speak to people.
Paul Reda: So yeah, if you have Stamped running on your store for the reviews, you can also get these post purchase comments from people. And they're very useful.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, I thought that was cool. I didn't know it did that.
Kurt Elster: All right. What do we got here?
Paul Reda: Maude. Now see, now I made that thing about names, and [crosstalk 00:25:27]
Kurt Elster: Oh, it's easy.
Paul Reda: It's easy. I'm going with she's french. Maude L'ouvre.
Kurt Elster: Very nice.
Paul Reda: She asks, "What is the common, or worst, mistake that merchants make with Black Friday, Cyber Monday?" And I'm going to go with not doing enough emails.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, I will say the-
Paul Reda: How many emails do you think you should send? Send 50 percent more than that.
Kurt Elster: The common mistake is leaving money on the table. And you're doing it by not sending enough. So if on a regular day the average person's getting 150 emails, or something crazy, on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, especially for online shoppers, it is going to be extreme. And they're also going to be getting hit up on other channels as well.
Kurt Elster: so, I talked to Ezra Firestone two days ago. And he laid out for me his full Black Friday strategy for 2019 with their goal of making a million dollars on Black Friday. And he said, "The Black Friday sales start November 8th." November 8th is, "Hey, if you want to be an early bird, get early access to the sale, sign up on this website." And then, sign up for this list.
Kurt Elster: So they essentially run their Black Friday sale to these VIPs, these early birds who opted in, two weeks in advance. And that gives them an opportunity to test it. And then they run the sale again on Black Friday. And for any of these major days like Black Friday, Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday, you're getting three emails.
Paul Reda: Sales starting, sales going to start at this time, sale has now started, sale is ending.
Kurt Elster: You can do it that way. Like, "Hey, here it's coming. Hey, the sale's running. Hey, supplies are low. All right, sale's ending soon. All right, hey, here's the preview for tomorrow." You can come up with any number of reasons. But in general, the cadence he goes with ... He said 7AM, 5PM, 10PM. Because you don't know when people are going to be checking their email. I mean, you could look-
Paul Reda: Especially because most people are not at work those days. So they're bouncing around. Going to family, seeing movies.
Kurt Elster: And then, well you've got Black Friday, you've got Cyber Monday. Then you can also do, "Hey, here's the last day to order with guaranteed shipping. Regular shipping." Then, "Hey, here's the last day to order express shipping." And then I've talked to several merchants, the smart money is on ... Right on Christmas, that's when you do your New Year's sale. If you wait until January, it's too late, and they've got that credit card bill coming due. It's less fun. There's always that holiday hangover in January.
Kurt Elster: So, right around Christmas, people have gift cards, they're feeling good. Maybe they had some eggnog. That's when you say, "Hey, new year, new you." You do your New Year's sale on Christmas.
Paul Reda: Well yeah, you've got to get ready for New Year's Day. The new you has to be ready on New Year's Day. So with shipping and everything, you've got to buy that stuff on Christmas.
Kurt Elster: But there's certainly, people, with the new year starting, with resolutions, with the holidays ending, that's definitely when people jump into new hobbies, new interests, new things. So if your brand fits at all into that. Even for us, the month that we see the most podcast downloads, for years, has always been January. Because that's when you say, "My resolution is to start my business, my resolution is to scale my business." That's my theory anyway.
Paul Reda: Well yeah, it's like everyone's at the gym in January. "I'm going to get ripped this year."
Kurt Elster: Yeah. I mean, no one questions that that's a true phenomenon. The same thing is going ... You can leverage that exact same phenomenon in your store. So the short answer is send more emails. Please send more emails. No one's going to be mad at you. It's free for all on Black Friday. And mix it up with ... It doesn't have to be sheerly promo. Use it as an opportunity. Reintroduce your brand. Reintroduce your top products.
Paul Reda: Yeah. And start early.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. We need-
Paul Reda: It doesn't start Thanksgiving Day.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, I think you-
Paul Reda: This starts Veteran's Day, or whatever.
Kurt Elster: Anytime you're doing a big sale, a product launch, a promo, whatever it is, I think you start teasing it minimum two weeks in advance. And that's really ... That seems to be what supercharges it. You don't want it to be a full on surprise. You want it to ... People go, "Oh yeah, I remember that." Because familiarity breeds trust, maybe it can help with planning, spending. I don't know. But it definitely works when you start earlier.
Paul Reda: It breeds contempt.
Kurt Elster: Adam Watson says, "Great last episode." Thank you, Adam. "What's the best multi-currency app? I'm launching a new store, and targeting several different countries. Mostly English speaking. But some not. Is there a good translation app, and currency converter in one? So the site would be eligible for Google Shopping Germany, for example."
Paul Reda: That's the same thing ... And then Peter Murphy also asked the same thing about what app-
Kurt Elster: Well read his question.
Paul Reda: Oh, come on. No.
Kurt Elster: He says, "It would be great if you covered the new multi-currency settings that Shopify has rolled out for all users. Like what app to use when having it automatically show the customers local currency."
Kurt Elster: All right, you ready for the dark truth? I've not messed with this yet. I really don't know the answer. So I could be wildly wrong here. But my understanding is when using ... Shopify Now, it's multi-currency payments. Meaning in the past, multi-currency was the theme, or an app, like Bold Multi‑Currency, would do a currency conversion in the theme. And then, when they hit checkout ... And really, all it was, was just JavaScript would look up what the rate is, then do a little math on it. It was cool, it worked.
Kurt Elster: But the downside to that was when they hit the checkout process-
Paul Reda: It's now all of a sudden in dollars.
Kurt Elster: It always goes back to whatever the store's native currency is. So if you have a US store, it would be US dollars. And you get that warning in the cart page that's like ... The cart page will say, "50 Canadian Dollars." And then it will be like, "But, all orders are processed in US Dollars." That's not a great experience.
Paul Reda: Yeah, because who knows what that is off the top of their head?
Kurt Elster: Yeah. And then it's a question well, "How are you doing this?" So, Shopify announced for Shopify Plus stores, initially, and now it's been rolled out to everybody. If you were using Shopify Payments, you could sell in multiple currencies in your checkout. Which is super cool.
Paul Reda: That's in the checkout. But these guys are asking about the front-end. On the store, and on the product pages. So does Bold app's Multi-currency change the price on the product pages?
Kurt Elster: Yeah, that's what it does.
Paul Reda: Okay. So they still need that.
Kurt Elster: Well, and that's what ... I'm looking at the support document for Shopify's multi-currency payments. And this is what I'm confused about. "Your customer could pay for their orders and receive refunds in their local currency." Okay, so it's happening in the checkout. "The customer's local currency can be chosen from their location, or from a currency selector that you can add to your theme." All right.
Kurt Elster: This is truthfully what I don't understand. Is, does the Shopify multi-currency work with the existing apps and themes that support multi-currency? I don't know, I have not played with it.
Paul Reda: See, I think Shopify multi-currency is entirely in the checkout. So it is not hitting the front-end of the store.
Kurt Elster: So you just do whatever ... You're thinking you do the standard thing in the front-end, and then you run multi-currency-
Paul Reda: I think you need two solutions. I think you need something on the front-end that swaps the prices out according to whatever. And, Shopify handles the backend at final checkout, last mile.
Kurt Elster: Then to complicate things a little more, if you're on Shopify Plus, it can do custom rounding rules. So it will always like ... So you don't get odd currencies, it will round to 95 cents, even if it's doing the conversion.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, it's not clear to me how you're supposed to set this up. I've got to research this and bring it up again. So, if the question is what's the best multi-currency app? If we're looking for an app solution, I still think the answer is Bold Multi‑Currency app because it's simple, and it support GOIP. So if I land on the site, and I'm in Canada, and it's a US store, it automatically has pre-selected Canada as the currency.
Kurt Elster: But as far as how that implements with Shopify's multi-currency setup, I've got to look into it. Because I'm looking through the documentation, and it's not ... I really just need a list of, "Here's the caveats, here are the requirements."
Kurt Elster: Moving forward. This one's interesting. Michael Wilkes asks, "Do sellers bother to block site traffic from other countries? I've seen the apps and even tried one. Could not prove that it worked, so I removed it to trim the app count."
Paul Reda: Why are you doing that?
Kurt Elster: That's my number one question is, why? I wish we ... I should have replied to this comment and asked for the background. Why do you want to do this?
Paul Reda: We did have a client that did that, that they were like, "I'm blocking all the Russians. Because the Russian hackers are going to hack my store, so I'm blocking all the Russian IPs."
Kurt Elster: Well, spam is a problem. So you're getting ... All right, if I have a store, and I don't sell internationally. I only sell in the US, or maybe I only sell in US and Canada. And you think, "All right. So as not to provide a frustrating experience to them, to reduce some security risk for me, to reduce spam, I could block these foreign IPs, and also then I'm less likely to skew my conversion rates because I'm not having people come to the site." I'm trying to think through and make an argument for doing this.
Paul Reda: It's so tortured though. It's a tortured argument. There's no point in blocking other countries, even if you don't sell to them. Who cares? Shopify's not charging you by the hit.
Kurt Elster: He says, "I could not prove that it worked though, so I removed it." If you want to test this, because we've got stores where we forward people between different stores depending on their location, or we automatically change the currency, you want to use a VPN. And I use ... It's called a Virtual Private Network. And a VPN will let you route the traffic from your computer through a different country. People do this for security, I use it primarily for just testing this stuff. Where it's like, "All right, what happens if I access this site from the UK? Does it change to the UK site?"
Kurt Elster: And the app I really like for that is called Private Internet Access, PIA. It's inexpensive, it's sleek. And it works on my phone and my desktop, I don't really use it on my phone. But I can just go in there and say, "Connect from this country." And then boom, when I go to that site, they're going to think I'm connecting through that country. So I'll link to that in the show notes as well.
Kurt Elster: But as far as do sellers block site traffic from other countries? We've had one customer do it years ago, and they don't do it anymore. And it was just about limiting spam. And if you wanted to do it, you could, but I don't know what the really compelling use case is here. Think through that first. But if you want to, you can, and that's how to test it. But it's more of a thought exercise than something you should do or consider.
Kurt Elster: Also, dude, I just want to avoid being overcritical of questions because I want people to ask whatever off-the-wall question they have. It would be helpful, for future questions, just to have a little bit of background. Here's the why. If it's not obvious.
Paul Reda: Well they're not going to learn unless we make fun of them on the podcast.
Kurt Elster: It's a part of fun with them. So. Any thoughts there?
Paul Reda: Don't do it, that's a waste of time.
Kurt Elster: All right, yeah, you're right.
Paul Reda: Stop focusing on a waste of time.
Kurt Elster: The next question. Kevin Elliot. This is a long one, and it's going to have a short answer. "I want to know if there's a solution to this common issue we have." All right, and the reason this question is in here is because I've seen this come up more than once. People have asked me this before. "Account creation is optional at checkout on our site. Returning visitors try to log in to their account, but they can't since they didn't create one."
Kurt Elster: So I go to the site, I try and make a return order, and I've done this. I think to myself, "Oh, do I have an account?" And maybe there's a common password I use, and I know what my email is. And I can't. So I say, "All right, I'll reset my password." But I don't get one because they don't get an email because they don't have an account. Then they try to create a new account, Shopify tells them their email already exists, so they can't create an account. Finally, some people call, and we send the account invite email. Some people order as a guest, and some people get fed up and leave.
Kurt Elster: I think the answer here is, if account creation is optional, and it's creating these frustrations, go full guest checkout. Turn account creation off.
Paul Reda: I'm so glad you said that. Because I was worried you were going to say make everyone create an account.
Kurt Elster: No, oh my gosh, don't.
Paul Reda: And I was going to be like, "No!"
Kurt Elster: So for sure, one of the things we know about conversion rate optimization, and this is a universal truth. The fewer fields you have in checkout, or the fewer fields you have in any form, the higher the conversion rate will be.
Paul Reda: Yeah. Or decision points, or roadblocks, or whatever you want to call it.
Kurt Elster: Just simplify the process. Because when you're dealing with these things at scale, every extra action, no matter how small, is a chance for somebody to bail. And so, this account creation process, it's okay. But the way Shopify does it is they check out as normal, and then at the end it says, "Hey, add a password," you create an account. So that's a really nice, frictionless way to do it.
Kurt Elster: The issue is when they go to check out upfront, it says, "Hey login or checkout as guest." And that's where the issue comes in.
Paul Reda: It should just always be checkout as guest. I think the problem with that is though, does that hinder your email acquiring?
Kurt Elster: No, because it's still that checkbox. And even if someone has an account, they can still opt in and out of emails. So I don't think it has an impact on that. Some stores need an account to log in to. So if I'm doing subscriptions, especially if it's like-
Paul Reda: Are they wholesale stuff?
Kurt Elster: Wholesale, customer pricing needs it. But if it's a situation like tea. If I have my regular tea order I place, and it makes my life easier if I can go in, see my past orders, and just click reorder. That's a common customization we do is in their order history, they can just click reorder. So, there are situations where accounts are beneficial, especially if it's a consumable good. Kevin here is not the first person to bring this issue up to me. So this sounds like ... And I don't know what the cause is, I don't know what the solution is. Because I've heard this several times.
Paul Reda: Well I see a couple problems. And I'm not entirely certain how every stage of the Shopify account creation works. But, one, they try the reset password link and don't get an email because they have no account. I feel like there should be an error that pops up and says, "You can't reset a password ... We can't send a reset password link to this email because this email isn't connected to an account." But then they try to create a new account and Shopify tells them their email already exists. How's that work?
Kurt Elster: Because they placed an order in the past. So they have a guest account. I think the way it's supposed to work, you go back to y our order confirmation page, and then you create the account from there, question mark?
Paul Reda: Because that seems like that shouldn't work. If an email isn't associated with an account, you should be able to create one. Or there should be some sort of error message that guides them to doing it.
Kurt Elster: I'm testing this right now on a site. I'm trying to reset a password with an email that I know is not legit. Now see, okay, this is what's odd about this. I tried it, I said reset password. It said, "No account found with that email." But if I've checked out as guest, then it will say ... This is confusing.
Paul Reda: That's bad. Well I mean, that's a bad ... I'll just say it. That's a bad design if it does do that. There needs to be better information given to the user.
Kurt Elster: Let me try this again with an email that does exist that I may have used as a guest. Okay, so I did it, it said, "We'll send you an email to reset your password." And I did get the account reset password, and it was for an account that was a guest checkout. All right, so trying to replicate this issue, I couldn't do it.
Paul Reda: I don't know.
Kurt Elster: So isn't that happening to everybody? I don't know. I'm not sure what the issue is. But if this is a real issue, consider turning off accounts.
Paul Reda: Turning off accounts, yeah. Guest checkout. Anything you can do to make people have to type in less things, always.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, absolutely.
Paul Reda: If only we could make product pages where they just click one button and it's all done.
Kurt Elster: So like dynamic checkout and Apple Pay?
Paul Reda: I know, but it's charged, and they don't have to put in their shipping or anything.
Kurt Elster: That's how Apple Pay works and Google Pay.
Paul Reda: I know.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, it's sweet.
Paul Reda: People should use that more.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, not every merchant is running dynamic checkout buttons in their store. And not every person has Apple Pay and using dynamic checkout. Only thing that thing's dangerous it makes impulse purchases too easy.
Paul Reda: I know, we want that.
Kurt Elster: I've got ... I bought some dumb T-shirts because of Apple Pay making it too easy. It's like, "I want this." Eight seconds later, I own it. Maybe I should have waited 30 seconds.
Kurt Elster: Okay, final question from Sue Heela who says, "If you sell products on Amazon and Shopify, and your goal is to capture those Amazon customers, do you limit the number or variations of items on Amazon to drive sales to Shopify store? Or, do you increase Amazon price and bring shoppers back to your store? Or do you keep all products equal? Or do you get off Amazon?"
Paul Reda: Screwing with your Amazon listing to make the prices higher, or limiting the selection, is only going to lower your sales. First off, do they even know you have a Shopify store if they're looking at it on Amazon? Secondly, if you degrade the Amazon experience, they're not going to be like, "Oh, I'll go check their mythical Shopify store that I'm not sure it exists." They're just going to be like, "Well I'm not buying this."
Kurt Elster: All right, so-
Paul Reda: And then you lost the sale.
Kurt Elster: All good questions. I don't know what the right answer is here. But let's think through it. We have seen stores that have Amazon listings. Where it's like they started as an Amazon seller exclusively, then they add a Shopify store. Will, as soon as that store's indexed, start getting branded search show up from Google. So that tells me people who look at the listing on Amazon are turning around and googling it.
Paul Reda: What?
Kurt Elster: Yeah. So and I don't know what percent it is. But for sure that phenomenon is real. And, there are people who will find your Shopify store through a Facebook ad, look at it, go, "I want this." And then they'll check to see if it's on Amazon. Because of convenience. So they know they've already got all their stuff saved in Amazon.
Paul Reda: Yeah, they got that shipping.
Kurt Elster: So to your point, I don't have to type anything in. And I can just go in. Or maybe they want to add it to their wishlist. Or they want to check reviews. There's a whole number of reasons they might go look on Amazon. So first, I think, to that point, you've got to make the user experience on your site match that of Amazon. So dynamic checkout button, maybe even add Amazon Pay as a mobile checkout to add that convenience factor. Match the free shipping that Amazon does. And make sure you have social proof. You have customer reviews. And then one of the weird things I see is Amazon listings are always so good. Really nice listings, and Amazon sellers really nail those listings. Because that's like their whole experience, this one listing. If you have already gone through that effort, and you've got that great listing, I want exactly that same thing on your Shopify store.
Paul Reda: Oh yeah, you should recreate that on your product page 100 percent.
Kurt Elster: Yes. I mean, I love when we get approached by a client who's like, "Hey, I've got a successful Amazon store. I want to get on Shopify and start owning that customer experience." Because I know it's going to be ... Yeah it's a lot of copy and pasting, but I know I'm going to have really solid product listings to work with. And so yes this is happening. Answer some of those objections by adding dynamic checkout, Amazon Pay, reviews, and equivalent product listing. Make sure your return policy is very clear. Because that's the other thing, there's that safety net with Amazon where I know the return process with Amazon is fairly straightforward. I go, "All right, I didn't want this." And it really comes down to who's paying return shipping, and then I go drop it off at Kohl's or whatever. So, have that return policy front and center.
Kurt Elster: As for the pricing, I would really have them be the same price. And that used to be Amazon policy.
Paul Reda: Yeah. I just don't like this idea of trying to ... If you have an Amazon store, and you have a Shopify store, trying to game one off the other. It's just like either do it or don't. Either be on Amazon and Shopify, or just be on one or the other. But this idea where one is going to offer a degraded experience against the other one, that I don't like.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. It's not up to you to decide where the person buys. You can decide, "Am I going to be there or not?" In that marketplace. Because at the same argument, it's like, "Well, if you're going to be on Amazon, are you going to be on eBay? Are you going to be on Etsy? Where else are you going to list it?" It's still your brand. Provide the best experience you can across all platforms.
Paul Reda: Yeah. Now that being said, I might just contradict myself. I think if you're doing a new product launch, or a special product release, maybe do that only on your Shopify store.
Kurt Elster: I agree with that. What I see a lot of people do is they'll have just their bestsellers on Amazon. But then accessory items, other stuff, they just have in their Shopify store.
Paul Reda: Yeah, that might make better sense because accessories, you're trying to find ... Trying to find things on Amazon sucks. If you're trying to find a specific product, it's horrible. It's good if you're like ... If a Google search leads you there, you'll get it. But if you're typing in the Amazon search box, "I want this specific phone case, or pen," or whatever, it's a shit show.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, it's not great. Amazon is functionally a search engine at this point.
Paul Reda: A bad one.
Kurt Elster: It's not ideal. And I question why is this ranked this way? Why are they showing me this first? Are they getting ... Or you click on a product and it's like, "Oh, well did you want the cheaper Amazon Basics version?" I'm so over Amazon.
Paul Reda: No, they're bad. I don't like them. I don't like them anymore, and I don't like them for our customers anymore. Or do you get off Amazon is her last question, I'm going with yes. Get off Amazon. I realize it's making you a lot of money right now, but don't just jump off it and stop carrying it. But I would be making the movements to get off it. So it's like, "Yeah, I'm adding new products," or, "I'm regenerating my product line." Maybe every time you do that, only do it on your Shopify store. And let the Amazon side of your business slowly whither. Because Amazon, you're just getting buried under other listings, you can't capture the emails, and you can't capture the customers.
Kurt Elster: You don't own the customer.
Paul Reda: You don't own the customer. At any moment, someone could just show up and be like, "Oh, same thing. Made by-"
Kurt Elster: You get your listing hijacked. Is a common one.
Paul Reda: Yeah, your listing gets hijacked.
Kurt Elster: And sometimes it's hijacked by Amazon. Which is demented.
Paul Reda: I mean, it's a great way to make money, don't get me wrong. And more power to you if you can sell a lot and make a lot of money on it. But just ... I would always have a firewall or an escape plan if I'm on there.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. I would certainly not want a majority of my income be reliant on Amazon. And when we have moved Amazon sellers, and brought them on to Shopify, it's always the same story. You go, "Oh, well why do you want to do that? What happened?" Every time they say, "Because we think we're on borrowed time." They're literally scared of Amazon.
Kurt Elster: I talked to a guy two weeks ago, and he's a very successful Amazon seller, and was spinning up his Shopify store. And he said, "With Amazon ... Being an Amazon seller is like being in an abusive relationship. Because half the time it's great, the other half of the time I want to call the cops." That was not-
Paul Reda: Amazon doesn't care.
Kurt Elster: None of that was surprising because none of it's unusual.
Paul Reda: Amazon doesn't care about you at all.
Kurt Elster: No.
Paul Reda: Just remember that.
Kurt Elster: And I think that's been a really powerful distinction for Shopify is to say, "All right, we're entrepreneur focused. We're merchant first." Whereas Amazon does not care about you.
Paul Reda: Yeah, Amazon is Amazon first. If some Chinese Pong Hai trading company wants to make a knockoff of your product, and dump it on Amazon, Amazon's like, "Sure great. More money for us. We don't care."
Kurt Elster: Yeah. "Oh, this is selling well? Okay, well we're adding that to our Amazon Basics line. And then we're going to advertise for free on your listing. Thank you for that data."
Paul Reda: Yeah. Anytime anyone searches for it, we're just going to put our product ahead of you in the search results.
Kurt Elster: And the strangest part, just as long as we're bashing Amazon, Amazon's often not the cheapest. Once I canceled Prime and started shopping around, Walmart and Target are often the cheapest.
Paul Reda: Yeah, my prime is up for renewal at the end of this month, and yesterday I logged in and was like don't auto-renewal. Just cancel it.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. It's not worth it anymore. We're done bashing Amazon. I think the answer is do the same price, provide a great experience, but don't ... Make hay while the sun shines with that marketplace. But certainly be looking for the escape hatch with Amazon. For future episodes, next week we got Ezra Firestone, talking about Black Friday and his Black Friday plans. We've got my holiday email marketing guide, I've got to update that. That's going to come out again this year. And I've noticed I haven't been advertising it, but certainly people are googling it and starting to think about their Black Friday holiday emails. Because we're starting to get sales on that again. And I've not mentioned it at all until now, so that's cool.
Kurt Elster: And then third thing, of course we always need your questions. Twice a month I post in our Facebook group and say, "Tell us what's on your mind, what do you need to know, what can we talk about?" So join our Facebook group, search Unofficial Shopify Podcast on Facebook. Join the group. And then watch out for that announcement every two weeks, and just comment there. This time, we answered 100 percent of the questions that people posted. So if you post your question, there's a very good chance we will actually answer it. And that's a great way to help everybody by having this discussion in public, by working in public. So that's all I got.
Paul Reda: That's good.
Kurt Elster: All right. Let's leave it there. Thank you guys, appreciate you.
Paul Reda: Bye.