Fixing the Biggest Problem with Shopify: I have traffic but no sales

welcome to the ecommerce podcast with matt edmondson a show that brings you regular
interviews tips and tools for building your business online
[Music] well hello there and welcome to the e-commerce podcast my name is
matt edmondson and this show is for all of us who are interested in e-commerce who
just love the concept of e-commerce and you know what we do with it and how it works and all that sort of stuff
and this is a show all about that and if you are joining us on facebook a big fat welcome to you as
well uh if you if this is your first time to listening to the show uh then you may not know we actually
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facebook live because you know we wanted to add to the pressure make it a little bit more complicated for ourselves and also because we
interview some amazing guests on the show it's also a great chance for you to come along to the lives and meet the guests and get
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guests all the questions that you've got as well which is just fantabulous so uh i hope you're doing well wherever
you are whatever it is you're doing right now uh if you're in the car i hope you're doing it safely and driving you know
well and uh and good it is it is the end of june at the time of recording so in the uk we
are still in the midst of covid lockdown i don't know how you're getting on
uh in your part of the world but it is still a little bit crazy here i'm not gonna lie
so i'm quite happily still working from home and still very very grateful for my
online businesses because man are they killing it right now um sales are just
really really good so i'm i'm super psyched so uh so i hope you're doing well online
wherever you are as well and if you're new to ecommerce let me tell you you've chosen a great thing to get involved with
if you can get it right and do it right and that's what this show is all about doing trying to help you get your ecommerce
setup right and well uh we have a great guest tonight l mccann calling in from the states who is a
shopify expert and we are going to get to talk to about all things shopify the title of this podcast is fixing the
biggest problems with shopify uh and uh
which is i have no traffic and sales sorry i just i lost my place in my note fixing the biggest problem with shopify
i have no traffic um i have traffic sorry but no sales is what we're going to be talking about tonight
now before i introduce our guest and before we get into all this shopify stuff
let me just take a quick moment to thank the show sponsors because without them the show wouldn't exist
let me give a big shout out to one of our show sponsors curious digital you know what i love its flexibility it's such a great
platform you know how when you start out you might typically use an online platform because they're cheap
they're easy to use super accessible but you know what they aren't that flexible and as your business grows
you end up moving to an agency right because that's just what you do and at some point you're going to have this
nightmare to deal with and it can be incredibly expensive and the thing for me that i love about
kd is it will grow with you you can start out on the platform easily and as your business
grows then kd will adapt with you now i don't know of any other platform that does
all of that so if you're in the market for a new e-commerce platform make sure you follow the links
from mattedmanson.com take advantage of the offers that they've got for you and let me know what you think
a big shout out to another show sponsor the light bulb agency these guys basically do those bits of
e-commerce that you either don't want to do or don't have the skills or expertise to do right
it's a great service let me tell you these guys do fulfillment e-commerce marketing
content creation customer service product research i mean the list goes on so if you need help with your
own online business you're looking for ways to grow and you need some help to get there do get in touch with them and again just
follow the links from today's show notes head on over to matt edmondson.com and you can follow the links to the live
agency we'd love to put you in touch with those guys lots of good stories coming out of those uh out of that so do check them out
now enough of the show sponsors let me tell you uh we are going to be talking to elle
now l is when i did my pre-call with l uh i found out that you know when shopify
started they did this whole become a shopify expert thing where you could register to become a shopify
expert and i think about people uh did it from the start of which elle was
one of them so she's like one of the founding shopify experts um and she's been a shopify expert
according to my notes here for over seven years and works one-on-one with shopify
clients now all over the world uh building their businesses and i i i was exciting she's transitioning
into the educational space uh which is good because you know i i it's just great isn't it that sort of
side of things if you're involved with it we're just about to release e-commerce masterclass actually
um in the next week or two uh all about how to build an e-commerce business um in this sort of online space so this
sort of educational thing i find quite fascinating and doing these online courses is really quite extraordinary
and if you've got a gift where you can teach which elle has go for it check out her courses she is
on youtube has tens of thousands and tens of thousands of people uh subscribed to her channel
um and she has two courses of her own uh one is called e-commerce in a weekend
which i just think is the best name for an e-commerce course uh one which i might steal i'm not gonna lie um e-commerce on a
weekend how to set up your site and the other one is all about traffic how to get the traffic to your website
both of which have been re-recorded for so
um if you are on shopify if you are interested in e-commerce do check them out do check out elle's stuff we'll link to it in all the show
notes um but of course you might go well who's l why would i want to go to a hospital we're going to find out who else is we
are going to enjoy uh interview with elle because um she just helps
entrepreneurs online entrepreneurs all over the world uh get get going without the overwhelm
and so let me without further ado press a button here which i'm hoping is
going to bring the beautiful ellen hey el how are you doing hey thanks for having me all right it's
great now um everyone can see you now and i'm just checking everyone can hear you which they can woo which is great so i i should say it
goes without question if you are on facebook live before we get started and you do have questions or comments do shoot them in the comments
they will pop up on my screen and i'll bring them to l as we go through so l
i gave a rather long-winded introduction to you to your good self there but there's a lot to say um and where but you're you are in the
states right now right yeah so i'm right outside of nashville tennessee okay
and i remember this because you're not really a country music girl no i'm really not is that allowed in
nashville i don't i don't know did they let you in is that right yeah there's all the bars there are
pretty much country music so me liking k-pop it doesn't really fit in as much but you could start a new bar
a new trend right uh you and three other people might be in it but it'll be fun at least yeah well thank
you for being on the show thank you for being here and um i was super psyched to get a
a shopify expert on the show because i appreciate we've got this ecommerce podcast and we occasionally we do talk about
shopify but we've not talked about shopify for ages and so it was very timely that we you
know we got in touch with you or we connected uh to talk about shopify so
thank you for being here um and you've been around did i get it right you've been a shopify expert for
seven years yeah so i've been exclusively just with shopify for seven years building out on
their platform i started about years ago with e-commerce and i did a lot of like wordpress
and other platforms and then i've just really kind of hitched my horse to the
shopify wagon at this point seven years in so that's that's fast so what made you uh
sort of nail your math to shopify what was it about shopify that made you go that's what i i'm happy with right there
so i originally found shopify whenever i had my own uh wedding invitation business that i
was creating and i needed a place to sell my wedding invitations online and i came across shopify and i'd
already gone through a couple other platforms at that point and i was wowed by them at that and that was like
eight nine years ago so it's like really vastly improved now but even then they just seem to be a lot further ahead
of other competitors and i really liked what they were doing and i think they they keep me around because
they keep changing and adding all these new functionality and it's like wow you guys are really doing a great job
they definitely are one who innovate on their platforms you can't yeah you can't deny that i mean the the
the ease of the service is just unbelievable how you can literally sign up
uh online and you know within minutes have your store up and running is just incredible how they've managed
to do that and so you started out that intrigued me i didn't know that you started out with a wedding
invitation business how did you how do you how do you get
involved in what an invitation i mean what started that so my degree is actually in web development and then i went to a
four-year college for that and like the second year of school i was like i love web design but i need a
creative outlet i love drawing and hand lettering and so i just knew that i needed to do something and wedding invitation seemed like a way
where i could still be creative but make some money um so that's kind of where i started going that route now i
after i kind of fell in love with shopify i just moved forward with shopify and kind of ditched
the wedding business um and have just been doing web development ever since okay uh but it was just something to get
your sort of your feed in the water your toe in the water if you like with the wedding invitation business okay that's fascinating
and so um you've always been doing web design that was your degree so uh you've you've
always been doing it um and then you sort of came across like you say the shopify thing and
and have stayed with it ever since what's been um the biggest surprise i guess from
shopify for you if you were to think back over the last seven years sort of the one thing where you go that was an absolute stroke of genius that
that really i would say their sales channels being able to connect to
facebook instagram pinterest amazon and be able to sell your items in your
store on other platforms i know for myself and my clients being able to sell on instagram was
really huge and a game changer for a lot of people so i think where they're innovating and continually adding in new sales channels
pinterest was just kind of redone a few weeks back um so now you can easily link up pinterest to your shopify store as well
and i think that's where they're really continually uh keep innovating there yeah they keep pushing it don't they
they really do which is fantastic really fantastic so if that was the
biggest surprise what's been the biggest disappointment
hmm i don't know the biggest disappointment sometimes i do think they are slow to do
some things um like i personally have been requesting things for the last like years um and they still haven't added
it in so i guess it doesn't matter at this point okay um but i think they're they're very
fast to innovate some things but other things that i think are more helpful for especially brick and mortar
stores they're a little bit slower to integrate on the point-of-sale system now they're making good headway but i would say that
sometimes the point of the sale is kind of a little bit more of a last thought it seems like yeah okay
so one of the things that we talked about on our prequel uh and the the sort of the title for the
show came out of it uh because i was excited to talk to a shopify expert um if there is one question i get asked
predominantly more than any other question from e-commerce entrepreneurs specifically
ones that have a shopify site right so um i get asked this question over and over again
i've got traffic but i've got no sales how do i change that right it's going to be some kind of combination those two
things i figured out the traffic thing enough but i've not got the sales thing um
and whenever someone says that to me the first question i ask them is are you on shopify and they'll say yes times out of
i do think it is a peculiar um shopify sort of conundrum
if i wanted for a better expression uh i have a theory about why this is um uh but
the i'm just curious is this just me is this something that i've
noticed or is this a common thing it's very common i would say that this
is also my number one question that i get asked i launched my store and i don't have any sales or traffic yet
so i think where it's nice that with shopify you can get started so quickly i think because of that a lot of times
people don't actually take the time to really think through about what they're going to create on their store what their
products are going to be who their ideal customer is and so because of it it just ends up kind of more like a hodgepodge
kind of store and it doesn't really have a clear vision and i think that's kind of the beauty of shopify and also the curse
is that people aren't really having to grind and really figure out the website before launching
yesterday i was doing a um a webinar with some guys uh this week
last week i don't even know what was monday no it would have been last week's i've lost track already
that's not a good sign um but yeah last week i was um doing some stuff with some guys and i
i sort of sat down with them and said listen from my point of view the best web design best web planning
piece of equipment ever made was the pen and paper and just plotting stuff out and thinking things through just on a
piece of paper or a whiteboard or you know something that's not the actual website software
uh is really the key right the key to start and you're and you're right that with shopify it's
it's so easy that you can just literally go oh okay no you know you press a button uh sorry for
those listening to the podcast i'm doing that sort of press the button on the screen uh you're right i i
i it's fascinating isn't it because it is so easy you can just go straight at it um
so i'm really keen then as we've got you here that we just tackle this topic like
smack head on uh and give some great value um
because it is quite a common problem so um if you were going to talk to you know
you've got somebody saying let's do a bit of a role play i've come to you oh listen i've got a shopify
site um and i've got a traffic coming to it but i'm not really getting any sales what do i do
what's your let's let's go through your top tips what's what would be on your list
well the very first thing that i would do would be to ask you who your ideal customer is and i get told so many times that it's
everyone or it's you know women aged to and it's like no it's not no it's not it can't be
it's just too broad and you really have to get a lot more niche and once you really know who your ideal
customer is then you can incorporate a lot more of that in terms of your imagery
your wording on your site how you're describing your products and you can really just hone in and also
of course use that on ads if you're sending traffic through ads on the site you really have to make sure that you know
exactly who your ideal customer is and that you're speaking to them um because it's just going to be you know
talking to if my if i said women aged to a year old woman is at a very different part in
her life most likely than a year old woman and so because of that i mean the language is going to be different the
imagery is going to be different so it's really important that you know first who your ideal customer is and
then just kind of do a whole site audit overall and make sure that you're actually attracting that person to your site and if they
come to your site that they're gonna feel like it was created for them and not just totally random oh that's gold i'm
i'm uh searching around i should have had this ready already but i'm i don't actually know what i've done
with my pen um make some notes here so number one is
um understand who your ideal customer is so if someone so let's say i mean i have
a beauty site right one of the things that we sell online is beauty and i am very clear from the demographic data who my customers but let's
let me let me role play this out a little bit um and say to you listen i'm setting up a beauty site online
and you say well who's your ideal customer and i say basically women you know occasionally men but basically women are going to come to my site and
buy and you're like well hang on a minute matt that's just a little bit too broad dude um between the ages of and
um how would i how would i scope out who my ideal customer should be then how
would i how would i start to figure that out so if you've already been selling you could definitely look at more
historical data of who's been purchasing on your site already but if you're new getting started with
it all i think really look at what your products are or what kind of products you want to sell and what kind of demographic that they would
go to based on their packaging um for beauty you know even just talking about makeup there's different
colors that are going to gravitate towards different age ranges so once you kind of know overall what
you're going to be selling i think you'll kind of figure out who is going to like it the most
and then be able to either add additional products that hopefully they'll like as well or maybe you're going after
a few different age groups that you have kind of a specific stylized collection for each one
so would you um because again with beauty it's it is that industry where you know
ladies in their s will want to buy stuff women in their s will buy stuff women in their s women in their s
because it is quite a broad mix would you and you and you said you know when you
understand who your ideal customers you're going to be able to target the content of the site much better you know with the imagery and the
language and how a year old woman talks very different to a year old woman would you then advocate
that i segment the site somehow or
do you mean how do i how do i cater for those different age groups yeah if you were going to have multiple
age groups on your site i would definitely set up a collection for each and have products that are catered
towards each kind of niche age range of women in there and then have the specific wording so like for
the age range you could say like beauty for a night out
or kind of saying like get dressed up for a night out with your friends or something along those lines where
you may have like you know perfect makeup for a date night or something like that so you could have
a you know night out collection date night connect collection things like that where you can kind of subtly
tie that in without just having to scream hey if you're a woman and you'll like this
do you think that would make it a little more subtle yeah it's a headline i've never tried
and i i wonder if i should um no no i don't actually if anyone's listening to don't don't try that
um so so okay so the first one then is i've
come to you and said listen i i don't understand why my site is not generating traffic and you're you're like well hang on a minute first who is
your ideal customer um i've gone away i've done a little bit of research around my ideal customer and then i've
come back to the site and i've made some changes like you say in terms of the language you know a headline aimed at year old women is
different to a headline um year old woman is there anything else that i need to think about there
i would think overall of your like how your imagery is going to look if you're going to be sending ads to the site but
also on that page on your product page so embellish the wording a little bit more i cannot tell you how many times i go to
do a store review and their product description reads out like a bullet spec
list and it's so boring and it's so dull and yes it is important to know sometimes
you know with beauty stuff i want to know how many ounces is going to be in this skincare routine
but i want to know that okay this moisturizer is going to make my skin glow like a baby like i i want to be sold
and have more descriptive language than just its ounce product in a tube um so i think adding a lot
more of that kind of more colorful language throughout where your ideal customer is hopefully reading it and going oh yeah i need this
or that that would be great for me yeah that's such powerful advice um i i alm on my
list of things to do shows future shows on we're going to do some shows around product pages because like you i i am amazed at how
little thought goes into the product pages sometimes and it's like
i don't know if you have if you've ever been into a store uh a bricks and mortar store where they've just literally
it looks like they've just vomited the products out onto the shelves where they've just gone blue there it is
you know figure it out figure out what you want figure out what the price is and then if you can be bothered go to the checkout
um we don't you don't you wouldn't see that in any store um at least stores that i you know
i've been into recently but if you went into um you go to a website it kind of
feels that's what's happened and there's been no thought into like
you say things like the product description um and you know one of the things i've noticed most
that people do uh is they will go to somewhere like um shopify they'll set up a
shopify site then they'll go to aliexpress they'll find three or four products on aliexpress which they like the look of
copy all that description and paste it and it and it's just it's soulless
copy that is on everybody's website and somehow that's supposed to entice me to
buy it's bizarre isn't it how we think this is gonna work um so no i think that's dynamite advice
embellish which is such a great word by the way embellish uh wording on the product page um and again
you would uh you would the wording would be geared towards your
um target audience right your ideal customer yeah absolutely well and you had an interesting point
about the brick and mortar store because i am a totally lazy shopper whenever i go to a brick-and-mortar store i can't i
don't have a vision for it and so i literally will go up to a mannequin and be like oh i like this i'll i'll take this
like this is my size i would like all the things that this mannequin is wearing and if you think about it a lot of
stores do that and kind of curate these looks together so that it makes it easier for people to shop
they don't have and so even just on your product page having like this shirt goes with this jacket or
these jeans or whatever it is and really making it as easy of a process for your customer as possible
um i think it's gonna definitely help increase your conversion rates and get more of your ideal customer really
interested in your products yes again such gold advice um you know one of the common questions we get asked on
skincare products is can i use this product this cleanser with this moisturizer and we're like
goodness me well we need to write that on the website because if you're actually asking us that question then other people are thinking it
right so and you're right it's just giving that extra information is it which makes it so much easier for them
okay so step number one uh is figure out who your ideal customer is
what would step number two be so i kind of combined step number two
which was speaking to your ideal customer and the spec list um so just really making sure that
you're taking the time and effort yes you can set up the shopify store super quick but is it going to be the
best version um you were talking about going to aliexpress and pulling products there there's nothing wrong with drop
shipping products but i would definitely take your own product images i would write your own product copy
and i would not pull what everyone else is pulling because they're everyone's using the exact same stuff and it's not going to help you at all
and you're not going to get sales because of it no and it's there's this thing about standing out isn't there and being
different um and people still buy people don't they they still buy from people at the end of the day
injecting your personality um one of the best pieces of advice we were ever given as a
business is you know what we we had um we had a friend of mine who uh worked on
the branding of the jersey beauty company website a few years ago because i realized how i'd made a
fundamental error as much as i loved doing e-commerce i'd made a fundamental error all the websites that we had
um up until that point yours truly here are designed okay so i have an ideal customer who is
female of my clients are female and they fall into the to sort of
bracket range okay so these they're definitely professional
and they've definitely got a few quid to spend because the products aren't cheap they've all got iphones do you mean it's
you you can sort of pick them out i know where they live in the uk and um and so i was like
i had a little epiphany um we have this website designed by a fella you know
fast approaching uh which is which is not it's not who we're selling to let's just be real
and so um and so i went to a friend of mine who actually they're a company based in texas
and i said to him listen i i need your female designers to work on our site and to come up with some concepts and
ideas and branding and it you know what one it was totally different to what i would have ever come up with in a million years
and two it really connected with our ideal clients um but three one of the things he said
to me and i've never forgotten is you've got to inject your values and your personality into this brand um and so
how do we do that you know with imagery and colors and language and how do we how do
we bring that across and so we definitely stand out from everybody else in the
industry you either like us or you don't which is you know it's it's polarizing which is quite nice um
but but our values definitely come across in the copy and in the images so i really like that um speak to your ideal customer spec it
out and figure that out and inject your personality into it don't don't be like everyone else
because you really do get people to where they get really connected to you and they feel like they know you um just reading about the about page on
your site so many people just undervalue the about page on their website and it's typically one of like the top five like performing
pages on your site so really take the time to add in you know pictures of you
pictures of behind the scenes process what inspired you to start the business if you're hand making it definitely
include some shots or a video of you actually hand making the product really take the time and don't just
throw up you know a paragraph about what your value is of what kind of
products you're trying to get but you know start with your why of why you were even wanting to start this business yeah yeah
again such valuable advice i've seen that like you time and time again the about this page and the other
thing i'd maybe throw in there um is actually if you're small celebrate being small don't try and look big
yeah um on the about us page if you're small just don't be afraid to to talk about you and
your family or whatever's going on around you um because actually a lot of people don't mind small small usually means
much better customer service right um and you don't get lost in this sea of nothingness
with the bigger companies and of course you know there's all the ethics isn't there involved in it as well but um
so don't underestimate the value of the about his page i think is brilliant yeah it is one of the top five pages
that people will view and what's have you i appreciate i'm putting you on the spot a little bit
here and we've gone a little bit off track um have you got in can you think of an example
of an about us page that you have looked at and gone my goodness they've done that well
let me see i know i was on the um i love shopping for different social causes um
so a lot of times i'll go to their about us page i was recently purchasing some toms the other day um
and they're the tom's shoes their page with all their social proof or their social causes that they have i
always really like how they've incorporated videos and images throughout um but even if you don't have that i
think just showing you know a headshot and saying who you are and why you're starting the business is going to be just fine
starting out yeah no that's fair play uh tom's shoes are such an inspiring company aren't they
yeah i think they've done a lot of stuff yeah yeah absolutely remarkable um have you read his book um
i listen to it on on audible yeah start something that matters um and i think if you're actually
starting an e-commerce business that's probably one of the books i think you should read yeah because it i think it just
is life-altering in some respects it's very very good um okay so uh i don't know actually i'm
saying you know we've got point number one point i don't know how many points are actually on your list
um i think we're on point number three now um but it's hard to say this and i don't
want it to come off being mean but sometimes your products just aren't good and that's why
it's not selling um i see this so many times with people especially that are doing drop shipping
and they have gotten a product that's clearly like a one two dollar product and then they're trying to upsell it for
twenty dollars and they didn't change the image they didn't change the copy you can tell and it's just not gonna be
sold because people aren't fools they've they've seen this kind of going on um
so really just make sure that you know yes you want to make sure you have that healthy margin but make sure that you're getting
products especially if you're drop shipping that you actually order the products first and make sure that they're actually
going to be good quality and that your customer is going to actually like it and you're not going to get a bunch of returns
as well as just that you're displaying them correctly on your site so i think it's a little easier if you're hand
making them or if you yourself have made the product i think if you are in the process of
actually creating the product you're probably going to have a lot better of a product itself and a product page that accompanies it versus using drop
shipping where you're just trying to build off of that yeah so uh i don't think that's harsh at
all i i think you were very gentle actually i've definitely been harsher um
so how would you know um whether or not your product is good
i mean how would you what would be some i mean i know you talked about you know quality and trying to sell
something which you bought two dollars for that's not going to work out but um but how
how do you know you've actually got a product that's going to get some kind of demand that's going to get some kind of
traction that is good it's one of the big questions i think with ecommerce isn't it yeah i think a lot of that goes into
doing some research and not just immediately putting products on your site but actually like
if you have an email list start building that up with your audience or even just social media where you're testing
different products even just testing different patterns or designs on the same product
so you know before you go to market what design is going to perform better than others as well as you know just testing out you
know you're going to have some ideas that aren't as good as others even once you launch it on your site i see so many times with like a
print on demand business where they're selling a bunch of t-shirts they'll have you know maybe two or three winners and then there's like
t-shirts that it doesn't look like anyone's buying um so you will still have that i think
of some products people gravitate more towards but the more that you can research and
even just asking your friends or family that happen to be in that ideal customer range for you
of what they honestly think about your product is really helpful as well yeah okay
so um and just be brutally honest with yourself and you know don't try and yeah i don't
know if you have this expression in the states in england we have this phrase which says don't try and flog a dead horse um
it's one of those things where i think if if it's bad just admit it's bad and move on just be
brutally honest with yourself if no one's buying it it's main it might be because it's like you say it's a bit of a rubbish product
um so you know like okay so do research research around the products
very very good advice top tips but what happens if you're um you mentioned there if you are making
the product yourself um i guess if there's some kind of
handcrafted product like i don't know jewelry or even beauty you know there's there's a lot of people now make soaps and uh bath bombs and gums and all that sort
of stuff um
what would you what would your approach be if you like well how did you do say with your
wedding invitations was that a good product do you think you were selling them i was very
young at that time in my business so i would not say that that was the biggest success but i would say
for that really like especially if you're creating it start getting feedback throughout the
whole process and making sure that you're you know showing it in front of your ideal customer even if it's just
a random facebook group maybe it's a business group that you're in that has a couple hundred people that are your ideal customer and just showing
it and saying hey i am interested in selling this on my site i would love to hear your honest feedback and opinion
um sometimes people are full of opinions and then whenever you ask them for like okay i can take your credit card
now um to purchases then they all go quiet um so sometimes the best proof of knowing
if a product is going to sell or not is to actually just put it on your site and try and sell it and that's where it may be beneficial to
maybe put a little bit of kind of money in your budget to do some tester like facebook ads or instagram
ads just to test it out first to see um before you really start heavily pushing that design yeah
yeah no it's brilliant very very good okay what's step number four if i've
made it this far and i'm not crying in a corner right um i would say that you may be on
the wrong platform so everyone whenever i ask them if they're doing any paid
advertising everyone instantly says facebook or instagram and there's so many other platforms that you could use
that maybe work better for your ideal customer so you can advertise on twitter linkedin pinterest youtube google
and there's so many other places where you can advertise that maybe will be a better fit for your products
or your ideal customers hanging out there and facebook ads can get a little bit expensive same with instagram so if
you can save yourself a little bit of money and maybe reach your audience in a different way i think that's always helpful to try out
that's really good because i think the default is all i mean again shopify are very good
at educating you on how to do facebook advertising i think it's one of the things they've done quite well so
if you're going to set up a shopify site um they they get you into the this is how
you do facebook advertising and you know you can use our sell on facebook sell on instagram feature which is cool
um and so i've noticed a lot of people who come to me and say i've got traffic
but no sales where do you get that traffic from a lot of it is i've paid bucks and i've got traffic coming in
from facebook so they've invested their money in that um and like you say it gets expensive
it's the default it's very competitive now it doesn't i think facebook advertising
for me is remarkable um still but it is definitely not what
it was um definitely not what it was so how do you figure out then and i kind of
know what the answer is going to be and i appreciate i'm leading myself in into this but that's okay let's open the door and see where it goes
how do you figure out what a good platform is for you to advertise on
so i apologize i feel like i'm saying the same thing but it really comes down to ideal customers so
for example that's fun right um i love pinterest as a platform um for a
lot of different reasons for paid ads it's cheaper to run paid ads on uh it's
specifically a lot more female based and they're a lot more likely to shop where facebook is more people just kind
of scrolling through uh their feed also with pinterest your pins actually live forever where facebook as
soon as you turn off the ad like that's it the ad probably won't be seen again
um unless you had posted on on your page but even then your reach goes down where pinterest you can put twenty dollars to
promote a pin and it could still be a really great viral pin for you a year down the road
and it just keeps building up so i think it's really helpful but to your question i think a lot of that
does go to your ideal customer so you know you can advertise on snapchat but if your ideal customer is year
old women probably snapchat won't be the best platform for you um that would probably be a pinterest or a facebook
so really just thinking through of who your ideal customer is and also what kind of assets you have
available because i've seen a lot of different youtube ads that have just been really
not the best and so if you're gonna put in some money for a youtube ad make sure you do have
a little bit higher quality production for that so if you're not there and you don't want to do video yet that's okay just don't do youtube yet do
another platform to start with yeah and so um i mean pinterest ads are interesting
because i think they're still quite new have you got a lot of experience doing ads on pinterest have you run some
successful campaigns yeah i've run successful campaigns for myself and a couple different
e-commerce businesses as well um i know for my web development business they have gone
amazingly well um because i have different like free guides or like webinars that i'm promoting and i can
create a pin that talks to that and kind of leads into that lead magnet and then that's kind of where i was
talking about spending and still a year later people are pinning it every single day
so it's really helpful of you know spent a year ago is still working for me now so um
so i appreciate i'm i'm nitpicking a little bit here but i'm
i'm aware that people listening will have heard of facebook ads they'll have a heard of google adwords um and pinterest i think is one of those
things that will for a lot of people it'd be like i've just you know i'm talking a foreign language and it's going straight over there
um is it straightforward and simple to do pinterest advertising can anybody do it or do you need
somebody to do it for you no it's definitely really easy um a lot of times pinterest actually will give
you like a free ad credit and help walk you through the process as well i know right now if you sign up for the
pinterest sales channel app through shopify so you actually have to go add the pinterest app on the shopify app store
if you do that and you've never advertised with pinterest before you can actually get ad credit which is really helpful when
you're just getting started it is really easy to go through i will say though you don't get as much
really detailed targeting as you do with like facebook advertising so you're it's more kind of
broader interest and keywords um but it is quicker to set up and then you'll kind of
from there it's kind of like where facebook you're testing out different ad images you're going to be doing the
same on pinterest of testing out you know maybe three four different pins for one lead magnet and seeing what kind of optimizes
and works the best okay so this similar sort of rules obviously apply to doing it as they would across other social channels
um that's interesting that you can get that ad credit with the shopify app so definitely worth
checking that out and having a go are there some uh where would you go to find more resources about that if people
are listening oh i want to know more about that um that have you done anything on your youtube channel about it yeah i
have a couple different i have a whole playlist on my youtube channel about how to connect in with
pinterest for your shopify store and i just did a recent video um it's like four minutes long
on how to add in the new pinterest app because it's so fast and easy i think you do have to spend twenty five
dollars to get the hundred dollar ad credit but still a win still a win yeah yeah totally okay so do
check we'll link to that in the show notes we'll link to your video playlist in the show notes and people can get that and grab that and have a little
play around with it um so think about different ad channels um so we've talked
about your ideal customer speaking to your ideal customer having products that aren't rubbish um
and then uh obviously making sure that where you're advertising actually makes sense for you
and for you you know you're going to where your ideal customers at aren't you really yeah um and doing that
in a way that the the most makes the most sense for you and your business
and the default of facebook and google doesn't always mean it's the the best for you and your business
um do you advertise your courses so for those who selling digital products do you advertise your courses on
uh channels other than facebook and google you mentioned pinterest i think that you do it on there yeah so i do on facebook pinterest and
google okay and again pinterest works well for the digital courses the digital aspects of life yeah
absolutely so a lot of that if you're going to do a digital course on pinterest i would more start with a
lead magnet and get them to sign up for a free guide or join a webinar and then kind of get
through your final system there if you're going to do pinterest for e-commerce i would just pin your product images one
thing i would keep in mind just kind of like with facebook a product laying on a white background is not going to do well you need to make
sure it's a lifestyle shot it's some kind of engaging content that's going to grab people's eyes more
hopefully there's maybe a model wearing something if it's a clothing piece it's definitely going to work better than just a flat oh it's because
it's an image i mean pinterest is very image orientated exactly and so you've got a like with
youtube you've got to invest in the video on pinterest you've got to invest in the image quality to really make those
pop and jump out yeah okay that's that's good advice uh so no product shots just on a white
background uh unless you just want to throw money out the window you know however okay
yeah that's a little too boring for pinterest yeah yeah don't be boring rule number one there's a book title right there
don't be too boring for pinterest um that should we should do a podcast on
that that that's a great podcast title don't be too boring for pinterest pinterest advertising um
so we've got um those four points have we got any more on your list yes i have my last one
which is also a little bit more harsh um and that's that maybe
right maybe your site design is not very good and that's what's caught i'm
trying to be so nice about it i'm like maybe you're not doing a good thing have you have you ever is that you know when you
talk to clients on the phone they come to you and they you know they can i hope can you help me with my shopify and you're like sure we can work with you
uh and you look at it and and do you actually word it like that do you actually say well maybe your website design is not
very nice is that yeah i always try and add in some southern charm so that way they don't get too mad but
it's always like there's some improvements we could definitely do here that's where you start with but yeah i
think a lot of times people are like well why is no one you know purchasing from my site and it's just
you go to the site and you're like oh my god i don't even know where to look everything's overwhelming like uh for
example yesterday i saw a facebook ad and that was a t-shirt that had like
saved the bees on it and i love outdoor stuff so i was like ooh save the bees so i clicked on it and then i went to
the site and it had like this bright like fire truck red header banner all of the products were listed as on
sale and all of the text on the site was read and it was just so overwhelming i was like i can't get out
of here fast enough like i would like to the shirt but i can't even it hurts my eyes i felt like i was
going to get a headache yeah top top web design tip do not give
your visitors a headache headaches are bad unless you sell advil then maybe go forward yeah
right but i think i mean design is very subjective but i think overall you want to make
sure that your design is not distracting that you're not going to do these crazy colors that are really hard to see
overall i would say probably background colors you really don't really want to have as much unless it's really
subtle i went to a site the other day that was a black color background and white text and it
was just like why would you why would you do that don't worry why are we still doing that yeah this was like early next time
yeah um and then also the site like everything was on sale and it was marked everything half off
for a shirt design so clearly i could tell you know i am a little bit more in the industry but i
could tell that okay this is a print on design product and they're creating false urgency with on sale products
where they're not really on sale this is just their default purpose and i think a lot of times
ah okay we have a slight technical issue um
let's just give it a few minutes and hopefully uh we'll be back so i
i think there may be sheep on the internet line uh so let's uh let's wait just say are you
back yeah oh good did you did you lose me yeah you zoned out for just a little bit
well not you you didn't zone out the internet kind of zoned you out for a little bit you just kind of went
like that did that sort of yeah yeah yeah yeah that was good so you were talking uh pre pre-pause
um you were talking about sites not being very good and you um you went to a site where there was a
black background with white text and you're talking about subtle sites and then we got cut off
gotcha sorry yeah i can hear the storm raging out my window so sorry about that that's probably on my
end um but in terms of the site that i was mentioning everything was listed on sale and you
just know that everything's not on sale that it's just a gimmick that they're doing to try and get you to purchase and i think you have
to realize that your viewer that's coming to your site is a little bit smarter than that
and they're not going to just instantly fall for everything being off with crazy red text everywhere
so make sure that you're if you're doing something like that of adding in some kind of urgency or social proof on your site to
try and increase your conversions that you're not going to end up harming your conversions by just making it really ugly and making people not
want to stay on the site can can we talk pet peeves because
i feel like i feel like there's a soapbox here somewhere and we're probably both about to get on it
yeah yeah no that's fine and i think but i think you know let's if you own a shopify site
um buckle up because it's about to get rough uh we we might and it's to be fair this
is not a shopify um i've seen sites that are so bad in their design that actually it becomes a
selling point for them that the worse they make it the more customers they get is quite extraordinary but we're talking like one out of a
million right the reality of it is this does not work as a strategy um for most people but i
i agree with you i think um do you know have you ever heard of a chat called zig ziglar which is the most
cool name ever um he i always remember listening to him talk once
uh saying that sales is all about telling the truth attractively right that's what sales is
and it's true online and it's true offline and so i get uber turned off by the
sites that i go to and they're like you know people are viewing this
product right now we've got two in stock make sure you jeremy and they have those little
things susan from chattanooga has just purchased this fred from adelaide has you know people
literally all over the world are buying this pop-ups are coming up on the screen as i look on the site
and then the product has zero reviews yeah so there's no way you've just gone
and sold i don't care who you are because you would definitely not have zero reviews and i feel like i'm being lied to you
sorry i am going i'm on my soapbox right now um and this sort of these pet peeves isn't it with design
and and it's easy to install these apps isn't it yeah you know yeah a client said to me the the day should i put this um
yeah have you seen the spin the wheel thing spin the wheel oh my god that was my pet peeve i was
literally going to say pop-ups as my number one pet peeve and i was going to say the wheel one yeah because it dropped oh you go for it
you talk about the wheel and why you shouldn't do the wheel i think for me my biggest i love pop-ups
to grow your email list like you really need to have your grow your email list and put attention to it even if you're doing
e-commerce i hear so many times people saying well i'm just trying to sell products why do i need to build an email list but they really go hand in hand so i'm
not at all trying to say don't do a pop-up to try and get people to join your email list but a give them a reason to join and not
be annoyed by the pop-up and also have it delayed don't show it and instantly whenever they come
to the site i hate whenever i hit the site page and i haven't even seen the home page
and then i've got a wheel popping up and a thing over here and then people reviewing over here and it's
still and then just pop up over here and it's like oh my gosh like i don't even know what this site is but i've seen four pop-ups in
like the first seconds yeah yeah it's crazy it is crazy so um and all these features
that are designed to help people buy or actually i think people it turns people off i think like the
spinny wheel thing i i know it worked for one or two companies when it first came out because it was new and it was kind of
like cool and kitsch and but then it just became stupid and everybody started to do it
um and now it doesn't work uh so how do you distinguish then or how would
you figure out out of the countless apps that i could install on my website all designed to elicit you know someone
to buy by offering discount codes or give me your email address with discount codes
what apps um how do i know which ones are good to choose what have you seen that works well if you
follow my train of thought yeah i think that's kind of a downside with shopify
is that they have a great platform but they have if you want any kind of additional functionality you have to get shopify
apps for which shopify apps can really slow down your site if you have a bunch of them on there they can really hike up your
monthly cost of the shopify so you really just want to be mindful from that point of view but also you
don't want to have too many things going on so that it's going to annoy your customers so i would say really think through of how you're going
to add value so a lot of times i would do maybe just an email pop-up after they've gone on at least one page
of your site so they're on a second page of your site already maybe then do an email pop-up and either offer a discount code or some
kind of lead magnet that'll entice them and then i think having an app that's going to really be valuable
and helpful for them and their journey is good like a wish list functionality or a words program something like that
that's just giving value and not coming off as spammy and you can definitely test the other things
if you want to see how that affects your conversion rate but i think overall just making sure that you're really
taking the time to describe what your products are and then also think through that customer journey so a lot of times i've
seen the biggest kind of change for people in increasing their conversions on their site is having like an
upsell app so that's probably the one that going back to your question that i would recommend
would be one that you would do so that way if you know you bought a pair of tennis shoes it's then gonna have a upsell for you of
do you need this three pack of socks so you're just kind of adding that average order value and you're
increasing that on the site in subtle ways where you're still providing value and trying to be helpful for your customer
and you're not going to be like tracy you bought this and you might like this too and then it just gets a little more
spammy yeah yeah okay so um if i can just repeat back what i've heard um
basically the apps that you use on a shopify site or should begin with should be the the sort of the bread and butter the
tried and tested ones of uh the pop-up to get email address but only after you've been on a couple of
pages of the website um and the upsell apps you know that
that aren't spammy um start with those and then see how your conversions doing
and then you can play with other ones one at a time and just see see how it works um i think that's great
advice i think the only thing that would add to that is remember that sales is telling the truth attractively we're not trying to con
people and i think people will see through that um in a big way and they're just
instantly turned off by it and um and i i think whilst you
you apologize for being harsh i think it's actually we need to be harsher on people like that because we have a word for that it's
called con artist and um it's it's it's not great so don't try and con people um especially
if you want to build a long-term relationship with those customers uh would be my i'm not as apologetic
about being harsh sorry well i think that's kind of part of the problem though is that
people are looking for just selling one time to a customer where if i'm going to spend money on ads i
don't want this customer to buy one time i want them to buy five times for me every year and i want
to keep engaging them so it's more valuable for me to not just annoy them with all these other
things and these kind of con spammy practices and to really just build up that brand and be more authentic and
transparent with them very very good advice i like that i like
that a lot so we've got i'm just i'm going through my notes here
because i've been taking notes as we go along pen and paper still analog
in some respects um so i've got my notes here in terms of figuring out who your ideal customer is
doing the research figuring that out and i've i've written a word down here
twice you've mentioned it twice you mentioned it once at the start of the show and just recently and that's the word
upsell what do you mean by upsell so think about it kind of like
the mannequin example for a brick and mortar store like if i came in just for one top and
i'm like okay i want that top but then i see oh but that top goes really well with this necklace and this jacket and
then it's a whole ensemble well then i may be more likely to actually get those as well where
without seeing it i wouldn't necessarily maybe put it together or even know that those existed so really trying to think through of
your customers journey on your site and give them products that they are most likely going to
like and hopefully add to the cart because i mean at the end of the day we do want them to purchase from the site but you also want
them to have a good experience and you want them to feel like you knew who they were you knew what products they would like
and you kind of curated the whole experience for them yeah very good okay so um
and so upselling actually from your point of view there's a couple of things you said which i really liked one was i don't want somebody to buy from me
just once i won this buy from me four times this year or however many times it makes sense for your product um
and also when they come i don't want them to just buy one thing i want them to buy you know multiple items and increase
their average order value to really maximize the value of them shopping on the site i mean
um it sounds you know when i say it out all out and i hear myself saying that
that sounds really simple and obvious you know what i mean it just sounds
really simple and obvious but you kind of think so why why aren't more people doing it why why am i not doing that as good as i
can and and i i wonder um and maybe you can comment on this do
you find that a lot of people are searching for the the magic silver bullet rather than
focusing on the core essentials uh first yeah i cannot tell you how many
emails and youtube comments i get of hey can you just look at my site real quick and tell me what i need
to change and there's not a quick fix like you need to you know put in some elbow grease you need to actually dive into
your whole kind of store yes you can set it up in you know a day but it's not going to be
the best version in a day and so really just taking the time to build everything out and think through
the whole process i think is going to and you know doing those foundational things so really thinking through of
what complement complementary products you have that you could kind of guide people through together
no that's good that's good um so uh number one figure out your idea or
customer number two speak to your ideal customer uh number three make sure your product
is not rubbish um it's very english way of pushing it uh number four make sure you're advertising
on the right platform and number five at least make sure your website isn't
pants right is not um is not also rubbish um and be
brutal with the design um and don't try and con people would be have i summarized that
yeah absolutely i think i think overall like you said it's not going to be a quick fix you really need to kind of
look at it from a whole perspective but even just kind of going down the list starting with ideal customer and then moving on
you know into there once you know who your ideal customer is are they gonna like your products are they gonna
like your site or are they gonna run for the hills um what platform are they on i think it all really comes back to just making sure
that you take the time to really think through um who you're building the store for who your products are for
that's fantastic so um el thank you so much for sharing your
your insight and wisdom on this because i i like i said at the start of the show for me this is a very common
problem uh it's a very common question and i think actually the advice that you shared will help a lot of people and a great place
to start for a lot of people um so how do
how do people connect with you how do they get in touch with you if they want to reach out and and see what other stuff
you're doing how do they do that yeah so they can go to curiousthemes.com
which is my business url and i post videos every week on youtube specifically about
shopify and e-commerce and online marketing tutorials as well as i have some free guides there and as you mentioned before i have two
different online courses specifically for shopify and setting up your store and then how to grow it from there
fantastic so the courses that you do um there were there what was it called
e-commerce and a weekend i like the title there do you talk about this sort of stuff in there or is it just much more practical
this is how you set up your shopify store so we do talk about ideal
customer in there but it is the ecom in a weekend is very practical of this is how we set up your products
this is how we set up collections menus and take you through the whole process we definitely get into that a little bit
more in our second course which is the traffic blueprint and just hone a little bit more into
who your ideal customer is and then bringing that in through email marketing paid advertising social media and so on
great and so they can find out more about the courses uh if folks are interested at your
website curiousthemes.com that's correct awesome and we will link of course to
all of that in the show notes we'll link to your site we'll link to the courses and um your youtube channel uh so do check
those out listen thanks so much for taking the time to be was really really appreciate it it's been great to
get to know you great to meet great connect love doing the podcast because you get literally meet people all over the world
uh with a shared passion for e-commerce which has been fantastic so thank you so much for taking the time to
be with us it's been an absolute pleasure and all the best with the courses and the youtube channel
yeah thank you so much for having me this has been a lot of fun thanks help thank you so what did you think about that wasn't
l fantastic uh i really like i said just to really appreciate it taking the time time to come and join us um and
just honestly being really straightforward and practical and helpful with everything that is going on uh in in the
world of shopify which is which is great isn't it so do check out elle's youtube channel it's a
great channel and very practical very helpful and you can really easily connect with her through that she does respond on the
comments i do have at it and and get in touch with her that way and like say we will put a link to the
youtube channel and uh the curious themes website in the show notes and you can check all of
those out on my website matt edmondson.com we will point you in the right direction just go there
when the podcast is live and all of that information will be there so uh so yes uh do um
do subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcast from whether it's itunes stitcher um spotify
i almost said shopify instead of spotify so you know it is it is one of those
things isn't it where you talk about something a lot and it comes out anyway wherever you get your podcast from
do make sure you subscribe because we continually put out a lot of this free content really helpful stuff
we have some amazing guests on the show who are just super helpful and super lovely and super generous with
their experience and their expertise and you can get all of that for free just by subscribing to the show
and as i said she previously do uh check us out on facebook uh if you want to watch the facebook
lives when we record these interviews we do record them a couple of weeks before they go live out and you get sort of early access and
can you know get involved in the conversation why not have at it see how it goes uh it has been great talking to you
today thanks for taking the time to listen to the show as i said my name is matt edmondson do check out the website mattedminson.com
for all of the show notes all of the transcripts and we'll put all the links to where you can subscribe to literally everything
to do with the show on the website if you are driving just don't worry about taking notes head on
over all the notes will be on there for you and you can put all of those things into practice which ella's talked about
and more and check out previous shows we've got some great guests coming up uh really really excited by some of the
guests that are coming up trust me they're going to be fantastic but all that's left for me to say
is happy ecommercing and i hope wherever you are whatever you're doing with your online business it is growing
and doing well that is all from me thank you and good night ladies and gentlemen
you've been listening to the ecommerce podcast with matt edmondson join us next time for more interviews
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