Shipageddon: Real or Fake News? Screw it, eat Nuggs.
In this episode, we discuss Shipageddon Season and the Cyber Monday that broke shipping. Then a Nuggs teardown– They're "the Tesla of chicken."
The Unofficial Shopify Podcast
12/15/2020
Kurt Elster: So, did you get Cyberpunk 2077?
Paul Reda: I did not for three reasons. One-
Kurt Elster: Here we go.
Paul Reda: It’s a newly-released AAA $60 game, which I am constitutionally unable to purchase.
Kurt Elster: I see.
Paul Reda: I will not spend $60 on a video game. I don’t care. You know, there were some years there that we were not making any money, and I didn’t have a job, before we got together on this, so there was that… When you grow up in the depression, you gotta save the sugar packets.
Kurt Elster: Yes.
Paul Reda: That’s pretty much the same thing.
Kurt Elster: I see. Okay. And so, because of that you can’t spend… You cannot buy a first party title for $60.
Paul Reda: No. I can’t buy. Well, I’m not gonna buy any title for $60. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: All right, so that’s reason one.
Paul Reda: That’s reason one.
Kurt Elster: That you will not buy the game Cyberpunk 2077 that I even heard about on NPR, because this thing made such news, had such a PR effort behind it, and has supposedly been in development for eight years?
Paul Reda: Yeah, that’s one of those things where they’re like… I don’t know if they announced it. You know, who knows? Number two, the previous game by this company, The Witcher 3, didn’t like it.
Kurt Elster: A beloved game.
Paul Reda: Didn’t do anything for me.
Kurt Elster: Okay.
Paul Reda: So, I’m just like, “Okay, well then, these guys don’t have a track record.” And then the number three thing is people are insane fanboys for this company and the-
Kurt Elster: Who’s the developer or publisher?
Paul Reda: It’s called CD Projekt RED.
Kurt Elster: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Paul Reda: It’s a Polish development studio, I think. And they’re in Poland.
Kurt Elster: Oh, is that where Polish games come from?
Paul Reda: Oh, I wasn’t trying to make… Speaking as someone who’s part Polish, I’m allowed to say those things.
Kurt Elster: So Chicago. Italian and Polish.
Paul Reda: They have this insane fanboy cult that are horrible people, that are just like, “This company is the greatest company in the world and they’re so great, and this is the greatest game ever made, and every… They’re awesome. You wouldn’t even believe how great this game’s gonna be. It’s gonna be so good. Everyone else is an idiot!” And you’re just like, “Okay, guys. It’s a video game made by a company.”
Kurt Elster: You know, I don’t blame you for that one because the culture in the fanboys is why I will not admit to loving Rick and Morty.
Sound bite: Oh, geez, Rick!
Kurt Elster: They’re just… They’re too weird.
Paul Reda: Yeah. I mean, who… Why would anyone become an insane fanboy of a large corporation he says, as he looks around this room and the rest of your house.
Kurt Elster: You know, we have a no Disney garbage rule and it’s slowly getting… slowly falling apart. We got so much Disney crap. I got a Disney Christmas tree skirt, there’s a Disney castle behind your head.
Paul Reda: You’re declaring it’s slowly falling apart now, that rule?
Kurt Elster: My wife has a Minnie Mouse headband tattoo.
Paul Reda: That rule didn’t fall apart, that horse didn’t leave the barn years ago?
Kurt Elster: I’m just saying it would be crazier if we didn’t have that rule in place.
Paul Reda: So yeah, so there’s a lot of just like… PC gaming, gaming culture itself is just inherently misogynist and toxic and horrifying, so-
Kurt Elster: They do… Yeah, they’re pretty bad.
Paul Reda: They’re some of the worst of the worst, those guys, so-
Kurt Elster: Hey, I don’t want comments from gamers, all right?
Paul Reda: So, I’m just like, “I don’t even want to be involved in this whole situation.”
Kurt Elster: So, was that all three reasons?
Paul Reda: That was the three reasons.
Kurt Elster: Okay.
Paul Reda: And anyway, the launch was a disaster, and the game doesn’t work right, and so everyone is like, “Well, it’s because you’re an idiot and are playing it on PS4, why would you think it would run good on PS4?” It’s like, “I don’t know, they sold it to you on PS4?”
Kurt Elster: There was an expectation there. Yeah, I have a gamer friend I asked. I said, “Hey, did you get Cyberpunk 2077?” And he confusingly said yes, my wife won a copy, but we’re waiting to play it until it’s better patched.
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: That’s not a great launch for something that took eight years to make.
Paul Reda: Well, and they just kept… It was great that they just… I mean it was… One of the missed launch dates was in like last January, and they were like, “Hey, we can release it right now if we wanted to, but we feel like it’s better if we gave it another eight months of polish so it’s the most absolutely perfect game ever made.” And then all the people online were like, “Oh my God, they care so much about us. They’re just… I mean, they’re just like…” What are the people that give a lot of charity money?
Kurt Elster: Oh-
Paul Reda: Philanthropists.
Kurt Elster: There you go.
Paul Reda: They’re like gaming philanthropists for wanting to do this for us. I can’t believe that they’re so good to us. And it’s just like it never worked. It was never good or never ready. It’s still not ready. They’re charging you 60 bucks. Still doesn’t work.
Kurt Elster: You know, they’ll get there, though. But hopefully… I don’t know. I’m not about to buy a console outside of my VR headset. All right.
Paul Reda: And also, I want to say as I was… We don’t feel that way about Shopify, either. Shopify also makes mistakes.
Kurt Elster: Everybody does.
Paul Reda: They’re not perfect.
Kurt Elster: It’s the nature of software.
Paul Reda: Sections anywhere.
Kurt Elster: Oh my gosh.
Paul Reda: So, believe me, if Shopify screws something up royally, we’ll be happy to tell you all about it.
Kurt Elster: I will not. I will not.
Paul Reda: Never?
Kurt Elster: No, because we had Harley on the show last week. Shopify President Harley Finkelstein.
Paul Reda: That’s the reason I brought that up. I don’t want-
Kurt Elster: How cool was that?
Paul Reda: No, he’s not my friend. He’s a person I have a business relationship with. I mean, that’s fine.
Kurt Elster: I want to be best friends with him.
Paul Reda: Okay. Well-
Kurt Elster: Did you see? Because he provided video too. Did you see his office background?
Paul Reda: I saw the video. I didn’t really scan it for like-
Kurt Elster: It looks like this guy works in an art museum. That’s how… Like, “Wow, that’s some serious interior decorating.”
Paul Reda: Oh, I thought you were scanning it for secret messages that’s like, “Kurt’s my buddy.”
Kurt Elster: No, no. I’m not going full-
Paul Reda: Oh, it says Kurt’s my buddy right there.
Kurt Elster: Full psychopath. That’s not…
Sound board:
Paul Reda: Oh my God. What? You just sit here for two weeks we don’t see each other, and you’re just in your office like…
Kurt Elster: I did it when you were walking up to record. I was downloading new sounds on the soundboard.
Paul Reda: You’re on the CompuServe .wav files forum.
Kurt Elster: There’s some strange websites that you gotta get the sounds from.
So, on this episode of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, I’m your host Kurt Elster, and on this show we’re gonna talk Shipageddon, Cyber Monday stats, and a NUGGS teardown. I love some spicy NUGGS and I’m joined by my cohost, Paul Reda, who will be airing his grievances in this… Actually, he aired his grievances. We have achieved a Festivus miracle.
Paul Reda: I actually don’t have grievances. There was… A piece of media was released that I decided was not for me and then I moved on with my life, which a lot of people on the internet have problems with.
Kurt Elster: You’re right. That is the issue.
Paul Reda: They’re unable to do that.
Kurt Elster: They’re the problem, not us. So, in the new… You want the-
Paul Reda: So, what did Harley do that was a total baller move?
Kurt Elster: Well, it was-
Paul Reda: You asked him for comment, and he sent you an entire video.
Kurt Elster: He gave me two videos. It was nicely edited. It looked really good. What was really cool is he replied to me. He replied right away and said, and CC’d Daniella, his… I believe her name is. His chief of staff. And said, “Hey, can we make this happen for Kurt?” And then sure enough like a week later, boom, I got this videos. I was thrilled. It was very cool of him.
Paul Reda: All right, cool.
Kurt Elster: That guy was just on Tim Ferris’s podcast.
Paul Reda: I mean, he’s a nice guy. We’ve met him several times.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. No, he’s cool.
Paul Reda: No, he’s a very nice guy.
Kurt Elster: So, in the news. You want some more exciting press release facts about Cyber Monday? We did Black Friday last time. We got some more, some Cyber Monday in here. So, Black Friday-Cyber Monday combined, the final worldwide stats for just Shopify merchants, not everybody, just Shopify, $5.1 billion with 44 million individual customers globally purchasing from Shopify merchants. A 50% jump from 2019.
All right, so certainly the eCommerce boom continued through BFCM. We’ve got an average order value stat for this. It was $89.20. So, AOV 90 bucks across all of these. And they even broke it down by country a little bit. In Japan, they had the highest AOV at 106 US dollars. Australia right behind it at 105. And Canadians, 103, and then the U.S., ooh, we brought the average down with $92.80. I don’t know, maybe we’re more… U.S. merchants do more discounting. Who knows?
And this one I thought was surprising. Mobile sales stayed relatively flat compared to last year. 67% of sales were on mobile devices versus 33% on desktop, compared to 68% of sales made on mobile devices versus 32% on desktop in 2019.
Paul Reda: So, yeah, that’s just a rounding error, which is-
Kurt Elster: Yeah, so unchanged.
Paul Reda: Interesting to me. I mean, that raises the question of has the transition to mobile… have we completed it?
Kurt Elster: Yeah, like did we plateau?
Paul Reda: Because for the last however many… Geez, since the iPhone probably, for the last decade, the share of traffic that’s on mobile has just been steadily increasing. So, have we reached the limit now? Like is it gonna be 66-33% the rest of the… two thirds one way one third the other from her on?
Kurt Elster: At the same time, does it skew more toward desktop because people have been spending almost a year spending more time than usual at home? Which, does that lend itself to desktop usage? Like my laptop’s just on my couch with me now.
Paul Reda: I would argue the opposite.
Kurt Elster: More mobile usage if I’m just killing time at home.
Paul Reda: Yeah. I’m killing time at home, I think I’m like… Not me. I sit on the couch with a laptop, but I think a lot of people sit on the couch with a phone, whereas where is the place that people are most of the time when they’re not at home? They’re at work. At work, it mostly would fall under desktop usage. And we know people do a lot of shopping at work. It’s amazing how eCommerce sales plummet after 5:00 PM and on weekends.
Kurt Elster: It’s true. Yeah. No, that theory behind Cyber Monday, like people shop when they’re back at work. It’s true!
Paul Reda: No, that’s true.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, on just about every store. The evening, it’s gonna slow down, and on weekends it dies.
Paul Reda: It dies on the weekend because people are out living their life.
Kurt Elster: And then sure enough on Monday things start to pick back up, and then Friday they start to dip again. Isn’t that interesting?
Paul Reda: I would like to know the total money increase. We have a traffic increase, traffic, consumers, buyers, 50%, up by 50%. What was the money increase?
Kurt Elster: Well, we know the total was $5.1 billion in worldwide sales, so let’s just look… let me Google-
Paul Reda: That’s what I was looking for. Well-
Kurt Elster: Let me Google last year’s. Shopify BFCM 2019. $2.9 billion.
Paul Reda: Oh, Jesus.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. That’s a huge increase. But we’re also changing like the total. Not only are more people buying online, but we also, we in that time certainly increased the total number of merchants on Shopify, so we’re gonna see net revenue go up, as well.
Yeah, I got the data insights report from last year and the average order value goes up. It was 83 bucks last year.
Paul Reda: All right.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, so it’s-
Paul Reda: Well, I mean it’s just… We could see this coming all year. I mean, just the last eight months online sales have just been insane, through the roof, because of the pandemic. So, it makes sense that Black Friday was through the roof, as well.
Kurt Elster: I remember in end of March or early April, we had that one apparel client who cleared out a bunch of inventory through a flash sale and ended up doing, like beating their previous year’s Black Friday numbers, and that was when I thought, “Okay.” Then, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Today, I’m still a little bit waiting for the other shoe to drop, but that’s when I thought, “Okay, we’ll be okay. eCommerce can survive this.” And then lo and behold, it became really this lifeline and very important. But we… Early on in the pandemic in 2020, we couldn’t have known that. Oh, the amount of anxiety and sleepless nights.
Paul Reda: I bought a house! I bought a house literally during the pandemic, like I… The house closing, it was me and my wife alone in a room because people couldn’t be in rooms with each other.
Kurt Elster: And I’m sure you were like… Well, how much sleep did you lose over that?
Paul Reda: Well, I was just like, “Well, I used to have a lot of cash. Now I don’t.”
Kurt Elster: Well, now you have a place to sleep. You have a lovely home.
Paul Reda: I had a place to sleep before and I also had cash. I’m being… I’m surprised to hear you say you’re waiting for another shoe to drop. What do you mean by that?
Kurt Elster: I keep waiting for… Well, we’re seeing double-digit unemployment and I think a lot of people are waiting for like, “Well, when does the real recession start?”
Paul Reda: I mean, I think-
Kurt Elster: And you know, what impact does that have on eCommerce?
Paul Reda: I mean, I’m probably jinxing us right now, but I think we’re really underrating that 2021 is gonna be… Shit’s just gonna get better. It’s gonna be all right. Like the vaccinations are starting. My wife’s hospital is starting to vaccinate people next week. My sister’s hospital is starting to vaccinate people next week. So, like vaccines are rolling out, and I think-
Kurt Elster: So, by the time this airs, people are getting the vaccine.
Paul Reda: Yes. Yeah. People will be getting vaccinated in Chicago at Chicago area hospitals when you are listening to this. So, I just think there’s a lot of pent up demand. I mean, I was talking… This isn’t eCommerce, but I was talking last week. I was talking yesterday to my wife and I was just like, “We’re gonna go to so many goddamn restaurants this year. It’s not even funny. We’re never cooking ever again.”
Kurt Elster: I know. I miss haircuts, restaurants, and travel.
Paul Reda: It’s like we’re going to steakhouses, we’re going to diners, we’re going wherever you want to go. And I think a lot of people are just gonna be like, “Let’s go!” Like just losing their minds.
Kurt Elster: I agree, because the idea of doing a second quarantine, stay home, pandemic winter is weighing on me.
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: And I don’t think I’m the only one. And so, like all right, we’re able to get through an entire year of this and I still gotta do another winter of it, and Chicago winters are grim. It’s a lot of grey, just endless grey describes Chicago winter. So, when spring rolls around and we can leave our… and we’ve got the vaccine, and we can leave our houses again, I think you’re right. I think it’s going to be quite the insanity.
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: So, the other way around though is similar to 9/11, people will wait for some sign that, “Okay, things are normal again.” Like there’s some indicator that says, “All right, we can go out. We can travel.” Does that happen? Do we need something to say it’s okay?
Paul Reda: I mean, I think it’s just gonna be a… I don’t know how it’s gonna roll out. Who knows?
Kurt Elster: Yeah, we’re just guessing here.
Paul Reda: I don’t know how the vaccine roll out is gonna go either, like are we just gonna… When we’re done with the first load of vaccinations, are they gonna be like, “Well, you gotta wait another two months because we gotta make more.” Like how’s the roll out gonna go? And I don’t know, I feel like there’s just gonna be a moment, like I think at the beginning of all this the moment was that crazy Wednesday. Within like an hour of each other the NBA canceled itself, Tom Hanks had it, and something else happened that night too, and everyone was like, “Oh, the pandemic is now.” That was when it started.
Kurt Elster: I think that was that night then President Trump did a national address, or maybe it was the next day, but there was-
Paul Reda: Yeah, I don’t think it was that night.
Kurt Elster: But there was something… I think it was the next day, when he showed up on national TV, and I went, “Uh oh.”
Paul Reda: No, it was the NBA canceling itself and Tom Hanks having it.
Kurt Elster: The NBA canceling itself, that was like… That was a scary moment. And yet they were the ones who managed to figure it out. They did their Disney bubble.
Paul Reda: Well, we’ll see how it goes, because actually the Bulls first preseason game is tonight as we’re recording this. I’m excited to watch it. I haven’t seen any terrible Bulls basketball in almost eight months. I need it. But yeah, so now they’re doing not in a bubble, so who knows how long-
Kurt Elster: Yeah. How long is that gonna last?
Paul Reda: You know, will it be the NBA again that the NBA’s like… At least I know for the Bulls games, the Bulls are gonna have no fans. So, I don’t know if every team is doing that, but I assume they are. Will there just be a-
Kurt Elster: I assume the league set the rules on that.
Paul Reda: Well, the NFL made it individual team by team, and it’s based on what the local rules are.
Kurt Elster: Oh. Yeah, so who knows?
Paul Reda: So, who knows, but I mean if it’s a league-wide thing, then the day that Adam Silver comes out and is like, “Guess what? Everyone can come to NBA games again.” I feel like that would be something-
Kurt Elster: Isn’t he the guy who likes like Nosferatu?
Paul Reda: He does look like… He’s like a cross. He’s like if Nosferatu had a baby with a grey alien. He’s a very good league… He’s the best pro sports league commissioner we have, but he’s a very odd looking man.
Kurt Elster: The moment you said grey alien and I can see that X-Files theme button already just happenstance loaded on that soundboard. I was like, “This is my moment to shine!”
Paul Reda: God.
Kurt Elster: If I can get you to laugh with the soundboard, that’s really the whole reason I do the show now.
Paul Reda: King of the CompuServe forums, this guy.
Kurt Elster: So, all right-
Paul Reda: But anyway, yeah, so I don’t know, I think next year we’re gonna be so dead, too. We’re so dead. I’m just sitting here going like, “I think 2021 is gonna be a good year.” We’re fucked.
Kurt Elster: You really doomed us, didn’t you?
Paul Reda: We’re just like, “Okay, well, the volcano exploded, and then we found the black hole. That wasn’t good.”
Kurt Elster: Well, 2020 was just like… Yeah.
Paul Reda: There was the asteroid strike.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, 2020 is pandemic, and murder hornets, and you’re like, “What’s going on?” And then you just assume that magically on January 1st, 2021 has to be better than that.
Paul Reda: Well, we thought that in 2019, too. We’ve been thinking that for the past five years or so.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Oh, well, this year will be my year. Uh oh.
Paul Reda: It’s like David Bowie and Prince died and then we were like, “This world’s just fucked,” since then.
Kurt Elster: Oh, they kicked it off?
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: I see.
Paul Reda: Yeah, David Bowie went back to his home planet.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. That was a real loss. Okay. So, there are some… I got a quick win for you. You, merchants, should send out a shipping deadline email and do it, like today’s the 15th, if you haven’t sent one out yet, do it today. Because FedEx Ground, the holiday cutoff date is the 16th. USPS Priority Mail and First Class, it’s the 17th. And UPS Ground’s already passed. And from what I can tell, UPS Ground is also the one that got hit the hardest by Shipageddon. So, like just… We have seen over and over that genuine urgency really drives conversions, because it forces people to make a decision, a purchase decision, and so this is just such an easy and truthful opportunity for you to say, “Hey, here’s your holiday cutoff dates, and you gotta order by this time.”
And if you really want to fancy it up, I would use like a countdown timer in the email, and like SendTric, S-E-N-D-T-R-I-C.com, that’s a really good tool for it. I use that. I’ve seen some others. That’s not the only one. But I would definitely send out that shipping cutoff email, and-
Paul Reda: And I just want to be clear on the dates here. You’re hearing this, you, the listener, the earliest you’re hearing this is on December 15th. These cutoff dates, one’s already gone, the FedEx Ground one is tomorrow, the 16th.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, so you gotta do this literally today.
Paul Reda: Do this today. Tuesday. Tell them to get their orders in. Also, question, are these dates different than the dates we put in the holiday email guide? Have these been updated? Oh, now he’s gotta check.
Kurt Elster: I must look.
Paul Reda: Because we’re not sure, because we’ve been getting reports from our clients that Shipageddon, or Shipocalypse, I don’t know which one’s better, is actually truly happening, so I wouldn’t be surprised if UPS was like, “I know we told you the 20th. It’s the 17th now.”
Kurt Elster: This is-
Paul Reda: And we had like the 20th in the email guide and we were… It ended up changing.
Kurt Elster: All right, so the email guide was-
Paul Reda: Was more aggressive?
Kurt Elster: For UPS, it was December 11th for UPS Ground. And the updated date is the 13th.
Paul Reda: Okay, so it’s getting better.
Kurt Elster: But this could also be like… You know, I don’t know what zones these are referring to, like shipping from Chicago to New York is different than shipping from New York to California.
Paul Reda: Oh, yeah. Okay.
Kurt Elster: One of the rules is like if anytime you gotta go over the mountain either way, that increases cost and time.
Paul Reda: You know, it’s the mountain rule.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. The mountain.
Paul Reda: The one mountain.
Kurt Elster: The mountain. I’m not good at geography.
Paul Reda: God. You aren’t.
Kurt Elster: No, not at all.
Paul Reda: We used to have meetings in downtown Chicago. He was just like, “What’s a street? I don’t know where buildings are.”
Kurt Elster: I still don’t. I have… No, like the part of my brain that understands geography, mapping, just gone.
Paul Reda: But you love cars and driving around.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, and like every car has a GPS, and prior to then it was a real horror show for me to get anywhere. All right? None of that was a joke. That’s the real truth. I couldn’t navigate my way out of a paper bag.
Paul Reda: There’s humor in the truth.
Kurt Elster: I just had to accept that. No, so these are updated dates.
Paul Reda: Okay, cool.
Kurt Elster: Yeah.
Paul Reda: So, the dates did change, however, they’ve gotten better.
Kurt Elster: Yes. It appears… Yeah, by like one to three days depending on the carrier.
Paul Reda: But yeah, so stuff’s bad out there, man, in terms of the shipping.
Kurt Elster: So, there was this thought that like, well, Shipageddon, is it fake news, or is this going to be a real issue? Because certainly we’ve heard this about eCommerce earlier this year and yeah, they were taxed, but they weren’t… The system did not fall apart. And I don’t… And then the fear was, “Okay, well, if it’s already at its breaking point and then we’ve got Black Friday on top of that, what happens?” And a guy with a blue checkmark on Twitter, I forgot his name, said something very smart. He said, “Well, the metaphor I use is the shipping and logistics is a snake and on Black Friday Cyber Monday, that snake just ate a pig.” Now we need to know, just ate it whole. Can the pig get through the snake without killing the snake? I think that’s a very good… That’s a wonderful, delightful image.
Paul Reda: Everyone’s seen that on National Geographic.
Kurt Elster: You get it. Now you can picture it. So, what it sounded like these carriers did is they said, “Hey…” A, they added a ton of people. They really beefed things up. They knew this was coming. They also set shipping quotas to try and keep the glut out of the system. There’s a finite amount of space in warehouse distribution centers and in these trucks, and so I’m sure many people noticed the national news where they said, “Oh, well, UPS went to like…” it was either UPS or FedEx, I don’t remember, was going to major retailers like Nike and saying, “Hey, we’re capping you to a few hundred packages a day.” What? What are you gonna do?
Paul Reda: And we had that happen to one of our clients.
Kurt Elster: So, we experienced this firsthand. We had several clients where they said, “Hey, you’re capped at…” And it was a number, it was like 100, 150, or 200 packages, and one client in particular said, and we’re gonna try and call him and see if he’ll talk to us on the record about this. It may not work. And actually, you want to just call him and see if he’ll-
Paul Reda: Well, we’ll tell the story, and then we’ll see if he’ll confirm or deny it.
Kurt Elster: Okay.
Paul Reda: So, yeah, FedEx came to them and was like, “Hey, guys. You get 200 packages a day. That’s it.” And he was like, “We have 4,000 right now.”
Kurt Elster: Yeah, it was 4,000 picked and packed, ready to go, on their dock, and then they had another 3,000 waiting to be picked and packed. So, those orders were placed. They knew they were gonna go out the door. And then you have FedEx show up and say, “Oh, sorry. We can only take 200.” And they were adamant that they’re not gonna take more than that.
Paul Reda: So, what you currently have, we’ll get to it in three weeks.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, and they said, “Well, don’t worry. We’re adding more capacity, so we’ll get to it, you just have to trust us.” And he… I mean, they freaked. What are you supposed to do?
Paul Reda: Well, they were even like, “Can we rent a truck and take it to your distribution facility?” And FedEx was like, “No, we’ll just lose it because you’re breaking our tracking system.”
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Well, you’re breaking the system, A, and they flat out were like, “We don’t think we have the space.” Oh my God. Now, after… I don’t know if this would have happened without gnashing of teeth, but the following Saturday, FedEx showed up with a 20-foot trailer, picked everything up.
Paul Reda: I want to know what… how they pulled that off. Who got called and yelled at and who did the yelling to make it happen?
Kurt Elster: And this, like that’s one isolated client. What happens if you can’t complain enough?
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: But from what I’ve heard, it sounds like FedEx struggled the worst, UPS the second, and USPS surprisingly did not seem to struggle too badly. And like, have you been shipping stuff?
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: And what kind of delays have you seen?
Paul Reda: None.
Kurt Elster: None.
Paul Reda: I mean, I bought… Well, two of the… My wife’s birthday is December 12th, just happened, and obviously Christmas is coming up, so you just kind of buy all your gifts for her in one solid glut. But yeah, I had a FedEx package, and then something I bought from a Shopify store that I think came FedEx, and then two things from Amazon, but those all came within an entirely reasonable amount of time.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, and I’ve experienced the same thing with… There was a handful of exceptions, like my wife bought packing tape, or no, I’m sorry, she brought tamper-proof stickers. It was like a tiny roll of tamper-proof stickers. And they… UPS was like, “This is rescheduled. We lost it. It’s undeliverable.” And then it eventually did finally show up. So, like our worst-case scenario has been a package gets delayed one to four days and then arrives. And what I’ve seen is like the typical delay seems to be two to four days. So, the stuff’s moving, it’s showing up, and it only got delayed a little bit. I think that’s a win.
Paul Reda: I mean, as long as they could get it through. As long as people get their Christmas presents before Christmas we’ll be okay.
Kurt Elster: All right, let’s see if we can get this gentleman-
Paul Reda: If we can get client X.
Kurt Elster: Client X.
Paul Reda: Mr. X.
Kurt Elster: On the phone to discuss his experience.
Paul Reda: Oh, we gotta run his voice through the modulator.
Kurt Elster: Okay.
Mr. X: Hello?
Kurt Elster: how you doing?
Mr. X: I’m good. I just got off a call. What’s up?
Kurt Elster: It’s Kurt. I’m here with Mr. Paul Reda. We’re actually recording a podcast right now and we want to know if you would talk on or off the record, we could like modulate your voice, make you sound totally anonymous, about your FedEx experience.
Mr. X: Yeah. Like I could be like America’s Most Wanted or something?
Kurt Elster: Yes. Exactly.
Paul Reda: I think the cell phone muffles it enough.
Mr. X: Okay, great. Yeah. I got a few minutes. You caught me right in between calls, so-
Kurt Elster: Perfect.
Mr. X: What do we got? What do you want to share?
Kurt Elster: So, tell me what… So, you switched to FedEx this year as your shipping carrier, right?
Mr. X: We did. We were predominantly with UPS, switched to FedEx in April of this year.
Kurt Elster: Okay, and so they had not done a Black Friday with you before, but you have several Black Fridays under your belt. Did you give them predictions, projections? You said, “Hey, here’s how much we’re gonna move.”
Mr. X: We did. So, leading up to the fourth quarter, we try to meet with all of our key vendors, suppliers, FedEx being one of them. We say, “Hey, based off of prior years, here’s the number of orders that we anticipate receiving on certain days as well as weeks,” so we can make sure that we have the pickups necessary, multiple daily pickups, weekend pickups, trailer drop-offs, et cetera.
Kurt Elster: Okay, and so you thought… What was their response to this? Were they like, “You’re good. Why are you bothering us?” Or, “Holy crap, we’re gonna die?”
Mr. X: No, no. They just received the information and just kind of… They really didn’t have much of a response. They just seemed to kind of digest it and move forward, and we went into the holiday season thinking that it was business as usual. We did our piece. We projected our volume. We communicated it to our key vendors. So, we were kind of set up, we checked that box, let’s keep moving forward.
Kurt Elster: And then Black Friday rolls around. How’d you do?
Mr. X: Black Friday rolls around, we did good. Unlike years prior, we started a little earlier this year, so with everything that was taking place and internal expectation of not knowing what was gonna happen for Black Friday Cyber Monday, we tried to get a little more aggressive earlier in the month. So, Black Friday was still a very, very strong day for us.
Kurt Elster: And so, and then you ran in… How many packages did you have to fulfill and what happened?
Mr. X: Oh, let’s see here. So, when the FedEx issue really came to light was post-Black Friday/Cyber Monday. We learned our allocation, post-sale, when our driver showed up on Monday, Cyber Monday, and just said, “I can’t take all this.” We just said, “Excuse me? What are you talking about? We communicated with our reps and different FedEx personnel. This is what we have ready to go, so you gotta take them.”
He’s like, “Man, sorry, I can only take 200 packages.” So, that was the first time that we have learned of our allocation that had been placed upon us, and that was based off of… FedEx had done that based off of daily volume increase that was dating back a couple of months or so. So, we obviously hopped on the phone with our rep. We said, “Hey, wait a second here. We’ve got 3,000 packages sitting on my dock. We’ve got 4,000 packages in process. You guys are only picking up 200 a day? This isn’t going to work.” We said, “We have another 12,000 packages that we’re projected for December, so we won’t be delivering Black Friday Cyber Monday packages at this rate until March and December packages when we get to Christmas of 2021.”
Kurt Elster: Oh, man.
Mr. X: So, we just... We pressured them. We hopped on the phone with our rep, continually expressed our concerns and our frustrations, and ultimately threatened to go public with this and just said, “Look, we are a company that’s built off of social media. We have a very loyal following. We’re not doing this as a threat, but what we’re gonna have to do if we don’t see [inaudible] pickup, is we’re gonna have to go public from a customer service/public relations standpoint.” So, thankfully FedEx has responded and has started to send us trailers, 20-foot trailers on the weekends, so we can load up all of our goods and get them out. So, our daily pickups, the allocation is now at 400 moving into next week. So, that’s great. Still doesn’t even come close to taking a third of the packages off our dock that we’re processing a day.
Kurt Elster: Whoa.
Mr. X: But it is relieving some of the daily strain. And then at the end of the week on Saturday/Sunday, they are sweeping by and picking everything up.
Kurt Elster: And so, will they have… Will you make it? Will you get all your packages delivered before Christmas?
Mr. X: We will have them processed and ready to go in a timely manner. Whether they’re delivered-
Kurt Elster: Oh, man.
Mr. X: … Unfortunately, is beyond our control, so FedEx has come back and has said, “Hey, ground deliveries, we need to bump up the dates that we will guarantee Christmas packages be delivered by that date.” So, we will have them processed. It’s kind of passing the baton and praying that this carrier will deliver them to all of our customers on a timely basis.
Kurt Elster: What do you think the sane shipping cutoff date is?
Mr. X: If ground packages aren’t done by I would say the 15th, Tuesday, then we’re now at risk of them not being delivered by Christmas.
Kurt Elster: Okay, so it’s… and speak of the devil, FedEx just drove past. I just saw it out the window. Okay, so you’re operating with 15th… The order’s gotta be placed and out the door by today, Tuesday, December 15th. That’s when this episode goes live.
Mr. X: Yep.
Kurt Elster: Okay.
Mr. X: And then beyond that, the package is at risk. I would say we’re a West Coast state, so I would say the packages locally, I’d like to believe they’re still okay. But anything on the East Coast or internationally would be at great risk of being delivered before Christmas.
Kurt Elster: We’ll end on this. If you had to give any advice for like, “Okay, here’s how to try and be safe and sane about COVID in your warehouse, this is what you should do.”
Mr. X: Well, you gotta listen to the guidelines, right? So, we as an example, we have limited our staff numbers. Aren’t bringing in seasonal labor that we’re not familiar with. The seasonal labor that we had brought in early in the fourth quarter we are testing them to make sure that they are healthy on a regular basis. We are taking their temperature on a daily basis. Everyone is wearing masks consistently. We’re making sure that we can keep the six feet distance amongst team members. We’ve implemented more of a relay process from a pick, pack, scan, ship environment, and so we are just trying to take all necessary precautions to one, get our job done, but more importantly, keep everyone safe and healthy.
Kurt Elster: Okay. Excellent. Excellent feedback. I appreciate it, Mr. X. Thank you.
Mr. X: Thank you very much. All right. Talk to you soon.
Kurt Elster: Talk soon. Stay safe. All right, do we… Well, anything else on shipping, Shipageddon, anything before we move on to a spicy teardown?
Paul Reda: I want a spicy teardown.
Kurt Elster: Spicy teardown.
Paul Reda: All right. You have not shut up about NUGGS for more than two weeks. You randomly send me the website over the course of the day and you just scream at me, “Look at it! Look at it!”
Kurt Elster: All right, so again, none of that’s a joke. That literally has occurred repeatedly.
Paul Reda: It’s a thing, and I understand this because I remember over the summer I watched the 1984 David Lynch version of Dune, and while it is not a good movie, I appreciated it as a movie that makes choices. And that they were just like, “This is what we’re doing.” And you’re like, “You know what? It’s kind of all the same.” It’s like you’re just gonna get the standard, B-grade thing. It’s just gonna be a B till the end of time. David Lynch Dune is kind of like, “What if we tried for A-plus-plus?” And they didn’t hit it. But I appreciated the effort and I feel like that’s the thing with NUGGS, is that it’s just like they went for it.
Kurt Elster: They did go for it.
Paul Reda: They really went for it.
Kurt Elster: Bless them.
Paul Reda: So, my thought here, I brought this up to Kurt when I came in. We should just do these on the phone.
Kurt Elster: I agree.
Paul Reda: Because that’s where 90% of the traffic is.
Kurt Elster: Well, we just had the stats on it and it’s the majority.
Paul Reda: Yeah. Well, it’s the majority of the sales, but as we’ve talked about before, it’s 66% of the sales, but it’s really 85% of the traffic.
Kurt Elster: EatNUGGS.com. What is your initial impression of this lovely, very red website?
Paul Reda: I don’t like the Tesla of chicken.
Kurt Elster: That’s their tagline. The Tesla of chicken.
Paul Reda: Does it mean it doesn’t really work right? It has a lot of fit and finish problems when you actually get to it?
Kurt Elster: Oh.
Paul Reda: You admit it.
Kurt Elster: You know, mine has been a lovely dream to own, though the computer’s so slow, I’m paying for an upgrade that will cost me $2,700 and not covered under warranty. Thanks, Elon. No, I don’t think that’s what they mean. No, just that it feels sci-fi, it feels futuristic. There’s something about the Tesla of chicken, I think it’s just like a polarizing phrase. Like you’ll read that and then you will either get it or not.
Paul Reda: Yeah. I don’t like it.
Kurt Elster: Now, what’s interesting about this is they say, it says… The entirety of the homepage on mobile, NUGGS 2.0, the Tesla of chicken, with a picture of chicken nuggets. These aren’t meat. This is entirely plant based.
Paul Reda: I get that.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, and I… But I’m saying, like looking at this homepage, that’s not obvious at all.
Paul Reda: Well, the first thing you scroll down is a chicken nugget simulation. NUGGS utilize an advanced soy protein technology.
Kurt Elster: I’m just… They’re delicious. I love them. I mean, they taste… Delicious for chicken nuggets. They are perfect chicken nuggets.
Paul Reda: I mean, what does it mean, delicious for chicken nuggets? Chicken nuggets are inherently delicious.
Kurt Elster: Okay. I’m just saying like we’re not getting a… This is not a steakhouse. I’m not… Gordon Ramsay’s not making me beef wellington here. These are still… They’re chicken nuggies.
Paul Reda: Which are delicious.
Kurt Elster: They are delicious. I have been eating these… We’ll usually do them for like lunch or dinner on the weekend when we’re slumming it. I love chicken nuggies. And even my kids are like, “Wow, they’re like spicy NUGGS, they look so good, can we have some?” We’re like, “No, you guys eat meat. You’re not getting these. You can have the Tyson.” All right, so NUGGS. EatNUGGS.com. And then at the top they have a banner. They rebranded over the summer to Simulate. The brand is now called Simulate, because they’re expanding beyond NUGGS. There’s NUGGS discs, those are chicken patties. And I read they’re gonna do a hot dog, which that’s a tough thing to do. A good, non-meat, simulated hot dog.
Paul Reda: Yeah, I’d like to see how that grills up. But I do like, so yeah, this stuff, you know me. I don’t have… Not good with feelings. So, it’s sort of just like, “Look how cool this is. Look how cool that-“
Kurt Elster: Any site that’s like very much cool first, you inherently hate.
Paul Reda: Yes.
Kurt Elster: And sometimes I get that a little bit too. It’s why I love anti-design sites. But I don’t think this is anti-design. I do think the copywriting, I think it’s tongue in cheek.
Paul Reda: I think it’s in your face.
Kurt Elster: And it’s bold, it’s in your face, and it’s tongue in cheek.
Paul Reda: You love bold, in your face websites.
Kurt Elster: I do. Pit Vipers.
Paul Reda: Pit Vipers.
Kurt Elster: Being like the-
Paul Reda: Is about what I was gonna say.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. My baby. I love Pit Vipers. So, all right, NUGGS 2.0, the Tesla of chicken. You’re gonna land on this and you’re gonna say, “Oh, that’s interesting.” And it was probably recommended to you by someone who heard you’re vegan, or pescatarian, whatever, and they said, “Oh, you should check out NUGGS. I love NUGGS when I’m slumming it.” And I love on mobile, the site uses animation very well. There’s a little bit of animation going on here. They’ve got this kind of monochromatic color pattern that makes it feel very futuristic and I think that fits that Tesla of chicken tagline.
And then they have, which I think is clever, because they’re trying… They’re really optimizing for this one product at the moment. It just says buy. They’ve got a buy now sticky button. And they do have a sticky header, but it’s fairly minimal.
Paul Reda: Yeah. I do like that buy now button, like that to me is the… That’s a thing that I’m very into. And that it’s just like-
Kurt Elster: That sticky footer buy now button?
Paul Reda: It’s just pushing them down the line of like, “Go buy something. Go buy something.”
Kurt Elster: Well, and then what’s nice about that is you don’t have to have that buy now call to action button repeatedly through your page. And as you scroll down, they’ve got some phenomenally great model photos, and this in your face, but honest copywriting. Kills you slower is literally what this thing says, because they say, “Hey, it’s got more protein than the actual chicken nuggets and 40% less fat, and they’re cholesterol free.” Oh, wonderful.
But they refer to that as, “Kills you slower.” So, they’re not claiming it’s health food. Engineered. They do some parallax scrolling when you get to the bottom, and they’re like… This is just the stuff off their box, these images, these illustrations.
Paul Reda: See, you already hit, you’re going through all this stuff. I already hit buy now, I’m on the product page.
Kurt Elster: And then they’ve got their brag bar, their seen on. Today, Forbes. Oh, this is really clever. All right, so you should have stayed on the homepage. At the bottom, they have a thing. It says, “Send five free NUGGS to someone you love.” And you put in their phone number and it texts them on your behalf. I don’t know if this is legitimate or not. I don’t. But I did-
Paul Reda: You’re really going with the target market here where the way you give your information is by giving them your Instagram account.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. That’s interesting, isn’t it?
Paul Reda: So, it’s assumed you have an Instagram. So, let’s be honest. You’re not supposed to buy this if you’re under the age of 30.
Kurt Elster: Probably not.
Paul Reda: If you’re over the age of 30. I’m sorry.
Kurt Elster: This SMS thing is so convenient. This is how we bought NUGGS for the first time. I used this to send it to my wife who then was like, “Should I buy these? These look good. Should I buy them?” And then she did it.
Paul Reda: Yeah. It just assumes you have Instagram. That’s pretty crazy.
Kurt Elster: Well, and then when you get down, like right after that it goes straight into social proof. People love NUGGS. And it’s just Instagram post after Instagram post.
Paul Reda: I’m so old. I’m so old.
Kurt Elster: Are you saying NUGGS makes you feel that you’re like this is gen gapped?
Paul Reda: Yes.
Kurt Elster: Oh, really?
Paul Reda: I’m old.
Kurt Elster: See, I need to stay cool, so I gotta eat NUGGS so I can be cool.
Paul Reda: I gotta get home and watch more TCM.
Kurt Elster: But it’s funny and it makes you curious, and you’re like, “All right, I’ll check this out. I want to try it.” What’s that like? What is chicken-like substrate? And sure enough, NUGGS 2.0 are fantastic. And then this… You know, I think the footer is the only thing that surprises me in that often on DTC sites and some of my favorite sites you have these really big mega footers. This one does not do that. There’s only a few things in there and a very subtle back to top button. On that Instagram thing, though, the only social media link on here is Instagram. Nothing else. You notice that in the footer? It’s interesting.
All right, so we gotta click this buy now button.
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: It is desperate. I’m on the product detail page and oh my gosh, there is no product photo. There’s a 360 spinner of the box as a 3D render that you could just spin with your thumb on mobile. I assume on desktop it works with your mouse. And then the only option really is do you want original or spicy, and it’s done as… What would you call that? That button at the top?
Paul Reda: Toggle.
Kurt Elster: Toggle.
Paul Reda: A toggle switch.
Kurt Elster: It’s got a toggle. What happens when you click that toggle?
Paul Reda: It just changes it.
Kurt Elster: Does it?
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, it changes the title to Spicy NUGGS, and the box catches fire.
Paul Reda: Well, I notice on original, they didn’t size their font correctly, so the title actually runs off the screen.
Kurt Elster: Ouch.
Paul Reda: Come on.
Kurt Elster: Oh yeah. Look at that. You’re right, it does. 50 original NUG-
Paul Reda: I also have a phone.
Kurt Elster: Isn’t yours a different size than mine?
Paul Reda: Mine’s a 414.
Kurt Elster: I don’t know what this is. XS Pro Max XDR Turbo Edu.gov.
Paul Reda: You call yourself a professional. Dot gov.
Kurt Elster: iPhone12.gov. All right, so I’m going with the spicy, because they… It doesn’t run off the screen and it’s on fire.
Paul Reda: Well, obviously you want spicy. I mean, come on.
Kurt Elster: And I want… Give me the flavor.
Paul Reda: Become a beta tester. That’s funny.
Kurt Elster: They refer-
Paul Reda: The subscription plan is beta testing.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Recurring monthly order. Become a beta tester. Save an extra 10%. And again, so it’s like going with that software release style. Tesla did the same thing. Some of the features in my car have a beta warning attached to them.
Paul Reda: So, I want to… I’m gonna point something out here that’s like a huge pet peeve of mine. So, this little checkbox right here, the checkbox to become a radio tester, so you check it by actually hitting the little checkmark circle, but the text next to it should be a label element is what that’s called, so it’s a form element is the left, it’s form type, input type checkbox. The label would be associated with that checkbox and if it was associated correctly with that checkbox, you could hit the label text and it would also check the box.
Kurt Elster: Oh.
Paul Reda: But clearly on this website, they did not do it correctly, so you have to kind of hit or miss the checkbox and hope it works.
Kurt Elster: I want to fat finger this thing.
Paul Reda: Yeah, so you could fat finger it with your thumb, the entire block of text right there, and it would work. But they didn’t do it right.
Kurt Elster: I do appreciate that part of the product form, it does say, “Free express shipping, U.S. shipping only.”
Paul Reda: Oh yeah.
Kurt Elster: And they really… It doesn’t look out of place. It really fits in there. The monthly subscription, become a beta tester, that’s checked by default, isn’t it?
Paul Reda: No. It wasn’t for me.
Kurt Elster: No? Here, let me refresh. Well, even if I refresh the page.
Paul Reda: It’s not… Well, it’ll remember it if you had it checked.
Kurt Elster: It’ll remember. Okay. Yeah, I’m not sure.
Paul Reda: It wasn’t for me.
Kurt Elster: Okay. And then they try to upsell you and they do a good job. You know, $31.50 for two pounds. You’re saving, because it would normally be $35, and then, “Or save 43%.” It’s got a little CSS animation to try and get me to buy twice as much. Instead of 50 NUGGS, buy 100 NUGGS. Well, clearly that’s an amazing deal.
Paul Reda: I want to know what’s the NUGGS per meal setting?
Kurt Elster: Isn’t that-
Paul Reda: How many NUGGS do you get per meal? I guess 10 NUGGS a meal.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, it’s whatever the-
Paul Reda: They haven’t met me.
Kurt Elster: True.
Paul Reda: Give me that 20 piece.
Kurt Elster: I did not know that you had all these terrific NUGGS takes, just like chicken nuggets in general.
Paul Reda: Well, they’re good. Who doesn’t like chicken nuggets?
Kurt Elster: All right. Yeah. You’re right. I love nuggets. I didn’t know if I was strange or not, though.
Paul Reda: I like how the title changes when you flip between the different variants.
Kurt Elster: Oh yeah, look at that.
Paul Reda: That’s cool.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. Now it kind of confirms your order. 100 spicy NUGGS in the product title.
Paul Reda: Yeah, and the little save 36%’s bopping. That’s a nice little animation right there. That’s easy.
Kurt Elster: I like that. And I love the… It gives you the meal cost. That’s a little bit of Liquid logic or JavaScript to do that. Where it’s at like $2.02 per meal.
Paul Reda: I mean, I see that. Yeah. Yeah, that’s easy.
Kurt Elster: We did that on Harney. Remember, it tells you the cost per cup of your tea?
Paul Reda: Well, and Harney’s is way harder in that they sell you like… There’s 10 different ways you can buy that tea, so we had to figure out all the different ways it broke down.
Kurt Elster: All right, so I’m not even going down the page. I’m just clicking buy now.
Paul Reda: It’s just a lot more… Well, they do have the ingredients. They have like the full ingredients on there, which is good I think. I think probably… I’m sure if you’re a person in the market for vegetarian chicken nuggets, you probably care a lot about what’s in your food, so you want to pre-check what the ingredients are.
Kurt Elster: Well, plus if someone comes to you and says, “Look, it’s simulated chicken polymer or substrate.” You’re like, “I gotta check those ingredients maybe.” But what’s cool as soon as you click add to cart, or whatever the label was, let me check.
Paul Reda: Well, and let’s look here. Once you get down, so there’s the buy NUGGS. There’s the buy now button that’s underneath our variant switcher. You scroll down, you hit features, and then another buy now, sticky buy now button pops up underneath.
Kurt Elster: Oh yeah, look at that.
Paul Reda: And stays with you throughout the whole page. Love that. Love that and also that it’s not big. It is not taking up a lot of space. I mean, they have a sticky header that is nice and narrow. Not narrow, just like not tall. Short. And they have a buy now button that is short, that stays all the way at the bottom, which I like a lot. I feel like a lot of our clients get stickyitis, where they’re just like, “Well, that needs to be in the header because that’s important, and also the heady needs to be sticky.”
Kurt Elster: And pretty soon, yeah, nothing matters.
Paul Reda: It gets to the point where it’s just like, “Okay. Well, a third of the phone screen now is just a thing that’s sitting there the whole time.”
Kurt Elster: Yes. Well, and a phone screen’s very limited, so you have to use sticky elements very sparingly or you end up with no viewport.
Paul Reda: It’s editing. It’s just it’s the standard thing of just like if everything is important, nothing is important.
Kurt Elster: Yes.
Paul Reda: So, you need to edit yourself down to like, “This is literally the most important thing.” It’s gotta be two things.
Kurt Elster: So, when you click buy now on this site, it just… and I’m set to the beta tester, so the subscription. It just drops you straight into the recharge subscription checkout. And I’m on mobile, so it’s like, “Oh, do you want to pay with Apple Pay?” So, this whole thing, you go homepage, product page, checkout with Apple Pay, done. This is a very optimized flow.
Paul Reda: I did not take the subscription and I went to… I got kicked straight to the checkout. There’s no cart page. And the checkout is not modified.
Kurt Elster: Let’s see.
Paul Reda: They didn’t theme the cart.
Kurt Elster: Well, I think that’s their logo.
Paul Reda: Well, I don’t like… Well, I’m on NUGGS, baby. I’m on checkout.eatNUGGS.com. It shouldn’t have the Simulate logo up there, it should have the Eat NUGGS. I mean, they go so hard on the branding on this front end, and then they dump me into this black page with black buttons? I mean, why isn’t this all red?
Kurt Elster: You’re right. You’re right. It’s weird. It was better in the recharge checkout. It seemed to fit better.
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: And then when I’m in the one page checkout, which hey, at least I could use Shop Pay here and Apple Pay, so I appreciate that.
Paul Reda: I mean, that’s a real misstep. I mean, it really trips here. I mean, they go so hard on the front.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. No, you’re right. Yeah, and suddenly the color, it’s all black, where as NUGGS… Because NUGGS is so unapologetically red, the entire thing’s a single color.
Paul Reda: It’s one color. It’s red.
Kurt Elster: So, you’re right. It is jarring to go from that, it creates cognitive dissonance, especially since like on the previous site, it’s only in a single header, like an announcement bar, that they just say, “NUGGS is now Simulate.”
Paul Reda: Yeah, who the hell-
Kurt Elster: So, if you weren’t paying attention, you’re not weird like me, obsessing over it, you would potentially be startled. And this is an easy thing for them to test and see in their analytics, like do we have an unusual drop off between add to cart and reach checkout? But after they’ve reached checkout, do we have an unusual drop off between that and purchased, I should say.
Paul Reda: Yeah, it should really only be like 60%.
Kurt Elster: All right, so going back to the site, I’m gonna open up their menu.
Paul Reda: 60% of the previous, so down 40%, not down 60%. Oh, it says in the text box that serving side is six pieces. Get out of here.
Kurt Elster: I like to do six.
Paul Reda: What am I having, a snack?
Kurt Elster: Depends on how hungry I am and what the side is. I like to make some garlic parmesan fries to go with it.
Paul Reda: Oh my God.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. It’s good.
Paul Reda: Barbecue sauce.
Kurt Elster: I do, I put like a ghost pepper barbecue sauce, or Hell Diver wing sauce from Tacticalories. That’s amazing. I put that on there. I dip my NUGGS in that. Anything else we want to check out on the NUGGS site?
Paul Reda: I like the top nav. If you go back and hit it, it pops down.
Kurt Elster: It is very nice.
Paul Reda: It’s very responsive. It’s got four things. What is the difference… Product takes you to the product.
Kurt Elster: Okay, what’s releases do? Oh, release notes.
Paul Reda: It’s release notes, but buy a box… Oh, buy a box takes you to the checkout.
Kurt Elster: Wow.
Paul Reda: What if I had nothing in my cart?
Kurt Elster: Interesting.
Paul Reda: Check this out. There’s no cart.
Kurt Elster: Oh my God.
Paul Reda: How do I edit my cart?
Kurt Elster: You’re right. There isn’t.
Paul Reda: Because this is the magic of literally only selling one product.
Kurt Elster: I know. The whole thing can just be like one squeeze page.
Paul Reda: I mean, it’s… Again, go back to like my fantasies. My various store fantasies I have that we’ve never been able to do.
Kurt Elster: Your eCommerce fantasies.
Paul Reda: Yeah. I just want to do… I want a client or a store that sells literally one thing. Just a single SKU. And just optimize it so hard.
Kurt Elster: But that’s a tough business model to have, and here, what they have done is it’s a consumable good and you can sell it on a subscription, and you could also buy, like this is a product where it makes sense to buy in quantity. So, here, ah, they’re treating it like a subscription. It makes a lot of sense.
Paul Reda: I wasn’t gonna mention this, but it’s now happened to me twice. Anytime I hit the back button, the product page doesn’t load anymore.
Kurt Elster: Oh.
Paul Reda: Because they’re trying to get so cutesy with all their frickin’ animations and all their little bopppins and stuff.
Kurt Elster: Their boppins?
Paul Reda: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: A technical term.
Paul Reda: You know. I just feel like whatever trigger they have to trigger the animations is just like not working, or there’s some library-
Kurt Elster: Oh yeah. No, I was able to replicate the issue as well.
Paul Reda: Yeah. Anytime you hit back on the NUGGS site on your phone, the site breaks.
Kurt Elster: Huh. Yeah, you’re right. I went forward, back, and now I’m scrolling through it and my 360 spinny box is gone.
Paul Reda: The whole thing’s gone until you get down to the reviews, which I assume are just like static.
Kurt Elster: Well, for me, like the stuff was gone, and then I started to scroll, and it appeared, but I never got the product box back.
Paul Reda: I’m telling you right now, because the space is all there, like you could scroll down, so like the stuff is there, it’s just at opacity zero. And it’s not triggering the little cutesy animation to have it fade in.
Kurt Elster: This is why I always avoid, as much as I love fade-in animations, I avoid them because they break like this.
Paul Reda: I hate fade-in animations. And I hate when you’re scrolling down through the page of little animations. Because in my mind, they trigger too late a lot of the time. Like you’re scrolling down, you’re like, “Where the fuck did all the stuff go?” And then like the middle of the page is gone, and then all of a sudden it pops in.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. No, I know exactly what you’re talking about, because I’ve seen it many… Well, just scrolling through the homepage it did it, where it was just like blank space, blank space, and then the release notes popped in. Just load it in advance and then you don’t have that issue.
Paul Reda: yeah.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, I like to use those animations sparingly. Anything else we want to look at on here?
Paul Reda: I guess that’s it. They only sell one thing. Right?
Kurt Elster: Well, there’s more coming, so we’ll have to revisit NUGGS.
Paul Reda: It’s our dream. It’s literally our dream. We sell one thing, buy it or don’t.
Kurt Elster: I’d also… I would love to have someone from NUGGS on Twitter and I’m starting to reach out to people. I’m trying to make that happen. So, fingers crossed.
Paul Reda: Yeah. You are extremely thirsty on Twitter.
Kurt Elster: You know what? When I love something, I’m in.
Paul Reda: They got a big FAQ page that’s good if you go to help. Yeah, got to the help page.
Kurt Elster: Oh, but my camera just died.
Paul Reda: Oh, well.
Kurt Elster: All right.
Paul Reda: That defeats the purpose of this whole thing.
Kurt Elster: Well, we’re on the screencast, so… Text us. Oh, wow. You text them.
Paul Reda: Yeah. You could text them or email.
Kurt Elster: And then there’s… Yeah, the top of the FAQ page, the header just says, “Text us.” And then or email.
Paul Reda: Here’s the problem-
Kurt Elster: And then we have our FAQ.
Paul Reda: I got a question. How do I text them?
Kurt Elster: I just tapped it and it opened.
Paul Reda: Oh, it didn’t work for me. I’m tapping on it. It’s not doing anything. Yeah, the FAQ, that’s pretty cool. I think the text is too small. The answer text is way too small.
Kurt Elster: For mobile, it’s tiny.
Paul Reda: Yeah. I’d up that.
Kurt Elster: This is a good selection of questions, too.
Paul Reda: I’m sure. A little tip, take note of every question you get emailed by any of your customers. And write it down, and then every couple months or so, go through the list of all the questions you’ve been asked and go, “Oh, that one got asked four times, that needs to go in the FAQ now because it was a frequently asked question.” And head all those off at the pass.
Kurt Elster: Cha-ching. That’s major key alert right there.
Paul Reda: Yeah. What, you’re not hitting the button?
Kurt Elster: I just didn’t have it loaded up. Sorry. I’m the idiot here.
Arnold Schwarzenegger: You idiot!
Paul Reda: Yeah. Oh, very good.
Kurt Elster: There you go. All right, let’s wrap it up. I’m hungry for NUGGS and my camera died.
Paul Reda: Do you have NUGGS?
Kurt Elster: I do have NUGGS.
Paul Reda: All right, maybe we’ll have some NUGGS.
Kurt Elster: We gotta go test some NUGGS. All right, see you guys.
Paul Reda: All right, bye-bye.