Why Your Website Is Too Complicated (And How To Fix It)
Ben Sharf reveals why most e-commerce websites are unnecessarily complicated and exactly how to fix them. After building over 200 Shopify stores, he's discovered that brands consistently make the same mistakes: widget overload, convoluted customer journeys, and accumulating technical debt from deleted apps. Learn his three-part framework for simplification, why revenue per visitor matters more than you think, and how to optimise your buying journey based on actual customer behaviour rather than assumptions.
After building over 200 Shopify stores, Ben Sharf noticed that nearly every brand he works with—whether generating $1 million or $50 million annually—describes their website as a source of frustration rather than growth. The chief culprit is complexity masquerading as sophistication.
As co-founder of Platter, a company that builds and optimises websites through a unique product-service model, Ben has developed a keen eye for the unnecessary complications brands inflict upon themselves. His philosophy is refreshingly simple: "People underestimate the beauty of simplicity." Yet achieving that simplicity, paradoxically, requires deep expertise and careful strategy.
The Complexity Trap
Ben's journey into e-commerce infrastructure began at GoPuff, where he built an instant delivery business unit. While partnering with brands of all sizes, he encountered the same pattern repeatedly: every single brand had a horror story about its website. Someone overcharged them. Something broke unexpectedly. Managing the site became a constant source of stress.
"E-commerce is literally selling a product on the internet," Ben reflects. "Why is the main thing the most frustrating thing for every brand out there?"
This question sent him down a rabbit hole that eventually led to founding Platter. What he discovered was an industry-wide problem rooted in how traditional development agencies operate. When you get paid for your time, you're incentivised to make things expensive and complicated. Brands end up paying enormous sums for solutions that should be straightforward.
The result is websites burdened by excessive code, countless third-party apps, and convoluted customer journeys that frustrate users and depress conversion rates.
The Widget Overload Problem
One of the biggest contributors to website complexity is what Ben calls "widget overload"—the tendency to add small applications for every specific functionality you want to achieve.
"A lot of these apps are features, not products," Ben explains. "If you piece a million together, you end up having a lot of different single points of failure within your storefront."
The Shopify app ecosystem, whilst brilliant for getting started, creates a temptation to solve every problem by installing another app. Need reviews? There's an app. Want a countdown timer? Another app. Looking to add size charts? Yet another app.
Before long, brands find themselves managing dozens of applications, each adding code to their storefront, each creating potential conflicts, each representing another subscription fee and another thing that can break.
And when you delete a Shopify app, the code it injected into your storefront doesn't disappear. It stays there, silently slowing down your site and creating technical debt that compounds over time.
Ben shares a typical scenario: "We'll talk to a brand doing $20 million on their storefront. Over the last seven years, they've had five different agencies, seven different freelancers, and 150 apps installed and deleted—all on the same storefront. What do you think happens when the next person tries to go in and touch that? It's just a spider web and it's really hard and really complicated."
The Simplification Framework
So how do you escape the complexity trap? Ben's approach centres on three core principles: consolidation, clarity, and customer-centricity.
Consolidation Over Accumulation
Rather than adding another app for every need, Ben advocates for the power of consolidation. Platter's solution was to build a comprehensive Shopify theme and app that handles most common functionality brands require—from cart drawer optimisation to gamification features.
"Our whole thing was like, I'm going to build one Shopify theme and one Shopify app and pack a lot of functionality into that product suite," Ben explains. "It requires less custom code, less third-party apps, but still gets you to the same place."
This doesn't mean avoiding all third-party tools—it means being strategic about what you add and ruthlessly eliminating redundancy.
Clarity in Customer Journeys
Ben has a brilliantly simple test for evaluating website clarity: "Give your website to a seven-year-old and a 90-year-old and see what happens." This is what he calls the idiot-proof test.
The reason this matters? "People are ten times less logical than you think they are," Ben notes. "Just because something is obvious to you—you live it every day—doesn't mean it's obvious to the people you want it to be obvious to."
One practical exercise Ben recommends: count the number of clicks it takes to make a purchase on your website. Many brands add unnecessary friction to the buying process without even realising it.
For example, if you have a hero product that accounts for 95% of your sales, why force customers to navigate from the homepage to the collection page, then to the product page, then to the cart page, and finally to checkout? Why not put a buy now button directly on the homepage?
The Cart Drawer Advantage
One specific simplification Ben champions is using a cart drawer instead of a separate cart page. When a customer clicks "add to cart," a slide-out drawer appears showing cart contents and checkout options—without loading a new page.
This approach offers two benefits. First, it reduces friction by eliminating an extra page load in the buying journey. Second, it creates opportunities for upsells and cross-sells without disrupting the shopping flow.
"One hundred percent of our brands use a cart drawer mechanism," Ben shares. It's become a standard best practice because it consistently improves conversion rates whilst simplifying the customer experience.
The Science of Simplification
Interestingly, Ben acknowledges that "it is very complicated to simplify." This paradox reflects a journey many entrepreneurs experience.
"When you're inexperienced or you lack confidence, you try to sound smart and complicate things as a way to seem intelligent," Ben observes. "But when you get into rooms with bigger, more successful people, you realize they actually gravitate towards simplicity."
This mirrors the famous Elon Musk algorithm for engineering: question every requirement, delete any part or process you can, simplify and optimise, accelerate cycle time, and then automate. The key insight is that deletion is optimisation.
For e-commerce websites, this means stripping back unnecessary elements before adding sophisticated features. It means using proven purchasing patterns rather than trying to be novel. It means respecting that you're not doing something revolutionary—you're selling products on the internet, and there are established best practices for doing that well.
Data-Driven Simplification
Ben's approach to simplification isn't just philosophical—it's grounded in rigorous data analysis. One metric he champions that few brands track is revenue per visitor.
"It's a little different than average order value, which is just how much is being spent," Ben explains. "And it's a little different from conversion rate, which is how many people are actually buying. It's how much is being spent by the person who is buying."
This metric matters because it captures the combined effect of conversion optimisation and order value maximisation. If your revenue per visitor increases, you know multiple things are working well together.
Ben also emphasises the importance of cohort analysis for setting thresholds, such as free shipping minimums. One brand Platter worked with was selling accessories at two price points: last year's model at $25 and this year's at $75. Their free shipping threshold? $60.
"Why were they setting their incentive bar at $60?" Ben asks. "You have to look at the maths of your cohort data to know where you should actually put that number. If people are spending either $25 or $75 on average, that incentive bar should be at $74 or $75."
These data-driven insights allow you to simplify strategically—removing what doesn't work and doubling down on what does.
Simplification by Stage
One of Ben's most important insights is that the right level of complexity depends entirely on your business stage.
"What solves your problems to get you from zero to $1 million is not the same that gets you from one to ten, ten to twenty, and so on," Ben notes.
For a bootstrap brand just starting out, Ben often recommends using an off-the-shelf Shopify theme and a handful of essential apps. "Validate that people actually want your product," he advises. "Then when you want to get sophisticated and get to the next level, you can start to explore different solutions."
The brands doing $2 million annually don't need the same infrastructure as brands doing $20 million. Trying to implement solutions designed for much larger businesses often creates complexity without delivering corresponding value.
This principle extends beyond websites to learning and mentorship. "Listening to Elon Musk talk on a podcast—you can learn a lot from that," Ben acknowledges. "But if you're a pre-seed startup trying to figure out how to get to revenue, listening to the guy trying to build life on Mars is probably not the best use of your time."
Instead, Ben recommends finding people one or two steps ahead of you—those who've recently solved the problems you're currently facing and can offer context-relevant advice.
Mobile Simplification
With most shopping happening on mobile devices, simplification becomes even more critical. Ben sees brands making two common mistakes on mobile: under-utilising horizontal scroll and tolerating slow page speeds.
"Nothing drives me crazier than when you have a collection and you're scrolling vertically to see everything," Ben shares. "There's so much real estate you can uncover by leveraging horizontal behaviors—both from image carousels on product pages, collection pages, and featured products."
On mobile, page speed matters exponentially more because exits happen faster. People are doom-scrolling, impulse-buying, and have zero patience. Every fraction of a second counts.
Ben also observes that successful mobile experiences feel more like app experiences than traditional websites. They prioritise smooth page transitions over page loads, use slide-out drawers instead of separate pages, and make exit intent signals abundantly clear.
The Attribution Challenge
Simplification also helps with one of e-commerce's thorniest problems: attribution. When brands complain about poor website performance, Ben often finds the issue lies elsewhere entirely.
He shares a recent example: "A brand launched their new storefront with us, and one of their employees said, 'Sales are down 20%. What did you guys do?' My co-founder went into their analytics for five minutes and discovered their sessions were down 23% in the same timeframe. Their revenue was actually up—metrics were all higher than before, but total sales were down because fewer people visited the site."
This highlights why understanding your key metrics matters so much. As a brand owner, you need to know the half-dozen numbers that truly move the levers for your business. Not obscure data points buried in analytics, but the fundamental metrics that diagnose problems quickly.
Revenue per visitor. Conversion rate. Average order value. Session count. Cart abandonment rate. These core metrics tell you whether issues stem from traffic, user experience, or offer optimisation.
Starting Your Simplification Journey
Ready to simplify your website? Ben recommends starting with three practical steps:
First, audit your apps and code. How many apps do you currently have installed? How many have you deleted over the years, potentially leaving orphaned code? Consider working with a developer to clean up unnecessary code and consolidate functionality where possible.
Second, test your customer journey. Go through your website and count the number of clicks to purchase. Time how long it takes. Better yet, watch a friend or family member try to buy something. Where do they hesitate? What confuses them? Their struggles reveal opportunities for simplification.
Third, analyse your data. Look at your cohort analysis to understand actual buying patterns. Are your incentives (like free shipping thresholds) aligned with how customers actually shop? Calculate your revenue per visitor to establish a baseline for optimisation.
Remember Ben's fundamental insight: "It's not rocket science. You're trying to get someone to come to your website and buy a product." The brands that win don't necessarily have the most sophisticated websites—they have the clearest, fastest, most intuitive experiences.
The Long Game of Simplification
Perhaps the most encouraging aspect of Ben's philosophy is that simplification is a journey, not a destination. You don't need to achieve perfection immediately. In fact, pursuing perfection often leads to the very complexity you're trying to avoid.
"When you're just starting, there's nothing wrong with using that off-the-shelf theme and downloading a couple of apps to validate demand," Ben reassures. "But recognise that what works at each stage is different. The key is being willing to simplify and consolidate as you grow, rather than just continuing to add layers."
The brands that successfully scale are those that regularly step back, assess what's working, and have the courage to delete what isn't. They resist the temptation to add another widget, another app, another feature—unless it truly serves their customers and their business goals.
They understand that in a world obsessed with more, sometimes the bravest choice is to do less, better.
Full Episode Transcript
Read the complete, unedited conversation between Matt and Ben Sharf from Platter. This transcript provides the full context and details discussed in the episode.
Full Episode Transcript
Read the complete, unedited conversation between Matt and Ben Sharf from Platter. This transcript provides the full context and details discussed in the episode.
Matt Edmundson (00:04)
Well, hello and welcome to the e-commerce podcast. My name is Matt Edmondson and it is great to be with you today, wherever you are in the world, whatever weather you have right now. It's good to be with you. I'm recording here from Liverpool, Liverpool, England. I'm talking to Ben who is in New York. Search is the beautiful power of technology and we are going to be talking about some amazing stuff. So grab your notebooks and grab your pens because you are definitely going to want to listen in.
And of course, if you're new to the show, if this is your first time with us and a very, very warm welcome to you, it's great that you're with us. Really excited when new people join the show and we see the numbers every week going up and up and up. I don't quite know why, but you guys like the show and it's wonderful and it's awesome. So thank you for being a part of it. If you're new, stay connected with us. And of course, if you've been around for a while and you're a regular subscriber, you're an absolute legend. Just want you to know, thank you for helping us do what we do. It's great. I get the opportunity to talk to amazing people like Ben.
And it's all because you guys keep listening to the show. So thank you so, so much. If you want to know more about the show, you want to catch it with past episodes, you want to find out more about today, about a guest, about show notes, links, all that stuff will be on the website at ecommercepodcast.net. You can go and find it out more at ecommercepodcast.net. And we would love to connect with you there. Go and have a look, sign up to the newsletter while you're there. You've heard me talk about this before. If you're a regular to the show.
but the newsletter has had some serious face lifts recently and is doing really well now, actually the new newsletter, all it's all going the right way. So thank you again for subscribing. If you haven't done so already, what's wrong with you? Come join us in the newsletter community. Matt's top sales, just to, you know, that's how you do sales. Just ask people what's wrong with them. and it seems to work. No, don't do that. Don't do that on your e-commerce websites. That's what I'm saying.
And finally, before we start the conversation, let me tell you about cohort. If you are in e-commerce, right? You're running an e-commerce site, you're a founder, you're an owner, you're a manager, whatever it is. And you want to come hang out with other e-commerce founders, owners and operators. Then come join e-commerce cohort is a free to join community. Basically we get together once a month on zoom, we shoot the breeze. We talk to each other about what we're facing, the challenges that we have. We would love you to be a part of that.
And it's just really great fun. had a, another one, a couple of days ago, big shout out to those guys. and just loved it. Love the conversation. Absolutely loved the conversation. was really, really cool. So do come and join in e-commerce cohort. would love to see that more information on the website, e-commerce podcast.net. Now that's enough from me, Ben, listen, let's get you on. let's welcome to the show. First and foremost from, it seems a very bright and sunny New York.
Ben Sharf (02:45)
Thanks for having me today, Matt. Yeah, we got a little bit of sun today.
Matt Edmundson (02:48)
Yeah, no, it's great that you're here.
Yeah. Yeah, it's nice. That's nice.
Ben Sharf (02:53)
I
think we're coming to our last few days of this before the winter months set in, so enjoying it while we can.
Matt Edmundson (02:59)
Yeah, good. Well, was going to ask actually, at what point does it turn in New York?
Ben Sharf (03:04)
We're about to turn that corner like soon. End of October, beginning of November, I'd say.
Matt Edmundson (03:07)
Okay.
Yeah, it starts to get, cause New York, I I know we're not here, this is not a travel podcast. If you've just tuned in, we will get to the in commerce, but, but in my, in my heads, New York gets quite cold winters, doesn't it?
Ben Sharf (03:16)
Ha ha.
does so we all sit inside and sell products on the internet instead.
Matt Edmundson (03:23)
Yeah.
I love how you have rescued this and turned that into a segue. That's brilliant. But listen, for those that don't know you've not heard from you before, just give a quick sort of snippet as to who you are and what you do.
Ben Sharf (03:38)
Yeah, I'm one of the co-founders of a company called Platter and in simple terms, we build and optimize websites. Our whole business and thesis was that there's a lot of challenges in the traditional dev agency ecosystem because when you get paid for your time, you're incentivized to make things expensive and complicated. So we found that brands were paying a lot of money for things that they shouldn't have. So our business is part product, part service.
Matt Edmundson (03:55)
always.
Ben Sharf (04:02)
We build a lot of the most popular functionality that goes into building a high converting storefront into our Shopify theme and our Shopify app. And then we offer the service to actually help build the storefronts. So the idea is that you as a brand could benefit from the economies of scale of everything we've done for the brands that have come before you. So we are able to do it more cost effectively and faster without compromising quality and have built over 200 stores in the last four years.
Matt Edmundson (04:12)
right?
wow. Wow. I love to say, correct me if I'm wrong. If I misheard this, you have your own Shopify in effect theme, which you guys have developed through these stores that that's where where your services start, right?
Ben Sharf (04:38)
Shopify theme and we have our own Shopify app as well. So they work they work essentially in tandem as like a as a product suite
Matt Edmundson (04:41)
Bye.
Yeah, that's great. That's great. How, how, if you don't mind me asking, how did, how did that all start? mean, did you just wake up one day and went, I'm just going to do a theme in an app that sounds sensible.
Ben Sharf (04:55)
It's
a good question. Before starting this company, I was working at a company called GoPuff. For those listening that don't know what GoPuff is, it's basically like Uber Eats, but for convenience store goods. So one those instant delivery platforms, I mean, they've raised $4 billion at this point. They're pretty global. But while I was there, I was building out an e-commerce business unit to enable instant delivery from dot-com websites. So the idea was to leverage their infrastructure.
Matt Edmundson (05:05)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Ben Sharf (05:19)
to buy a product on a dot com and get it delivered in under 30 minutes, which is pretty revolutionary in that process of building it out. Cause I was on the partnership side, every single brand that I would talk to, whether they were doing a million dollars in revenue or $50 million in revenue on their storefront, they would always talk about it as like a thing of frustration. It's like every brand has a horror story about like someone who overcharged them on a website or like complicated thing that they couldn't manage. And in the back of my mind, I'm like, I don't understand. E-commerce is literally selling a product on the internet.
Matt Edmundson (05:28)
Mm-hmm.
yeah.
Ben Sharf (05:49)
Why is the main thing the most frustrating thing for every brand out there? And so I kind of just went down this rabbit hole of trying to figure out why that's the case. I mean, fast forward four years and here we are.
Matt Edmundson (05:53)
Yeah.
Yeah, no fair play. And it's true, isn't it? mean, it's something that sounds obvious. Every e-commerce website needs a website. Still just, mean, AI might take that away, but at the moment we still need it. And it is the scariest and most daunting part of the whole proposition, I think, of doing e-commerce because...
I mean, I could sit here and tell you about brand after brand that have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, pounds, yen, euros, whatever your currency is on redoing their websites because they feel like, know what, we've got to a stage here. And so we started off with a basic website. So now we're doing however many thousands a month we need to upgrade our website. And at every joint in that process, there's a story where people have got it very, very wrong.
Very wrong. And it scares a lot of And I'm with you. I'm like, I come to people and I'm like, well, who, who did your website and how much did you pay for that? And I'm like, goodness me. They, they, that's a lot of money. Now I don't do websites. I don't have a web design agency. I'm my hats off to anybody that does, because that's a hard road to go down. Let me tell you. so where, why, I guess, let me ask you this question. Cause there are people listening to the show that maybe who are just starting out.
Who also may also be thinking of re-platforming. So why Shopify? What do you love about that platform?
Ben Sharf (07:17)
mean, Shopify for starters, it's like, there's not, I don't think it's a coincidence that they're gaining the market share they are and continue to gain, right? There are so many brands are moving over to Shopify. think they've done a really good job of capitalizing on like the ecosystem infrastructure of recognizing that there's a lot of things that go into building a brand and there's a lot of different ways you can go about building a brand. And if you don't give, if you don't give access to tools to allow different brands of different shapes and sizes to be able to be successful on your platform, it just doesn't work.
Matt Edmundson (07:32)
Yeah.
Ben Sharf (07:47)
And I find that when we, when we talk to brands that are on other platforms, because a big part of what we do is we platform people over to Shopify. Oftentimes it comes from a place of like, we're limited. We've like hit our cap on what's possible here. And then you hear that a lot of the things that they've wanted to do on their storefront, end up like building custom themselves. Because there's not like out of the box tools or apps that are available to do this in a more cost effective manner. And so to your point, I think.
Matt Edmundson (07:47)
Yeah.
Ben Sharf (08:15)
What solves your problems to get you from zero to 1 million is not the same that gets you from one to 10, 10 to 20, so on and so forth. And so I think Shopify is probably the best platform out there for e-commerce, that will allow you to evolve with your business without feeling like at every entry point, you have to like redo everything. It's every time we talk to a brand, it's that's, would say the most challenging part of our business is very rarely do I get on the phone with a brand in the context of working with platter.
Matt Edmundson (08:34)
Yeah.
Ben Sharf (08:43)
And they're coming from like a good place where they're like happy and excited. It's always like frustrated and pissed because they spent too much money here. This thing stopped working. Like they don't know how to get to the next, you know, rung on the ladder or so on and so forth, which is like one of the challenges that we face.
Matt Edmundson (08:50)
Mm.
Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. Well, let's dig into it then. Cause obviously you've got experience here. and you know, this is about e-commerce and obviously a key component of e-commerce is your website. So if you could wave a magic wand, right? One of my favorite questions, Ben, if you could wave a magic wand and, by waving that magic wand, you would solve the biggest problem for the most people suffer. what would that problem be?
that you, that you experience with your agency, with Plata, with what you see going on. What's the biggest thing we're all doing that's wrong that we should fix.
Ben Sharf (09:30)
I think people underestimate the beauty of simplicity.
Matt Edmundson (09:34)
I love that.
Ben Sharf (09:35)
Right. think,
I think that can, that lesson can be applied in a lot of different ways, but what we find is that a lot of brands we work with, whether it's like how they construct their customer journeys or how they decide technically how they're going to build certain functionality. It's like stripping back complexity. Very rarely have I met someone who's done that and like regret doing it. Right. Like oftentimes we run into.
You know, we'll talk to a brand that's doing $20 million on their storefront. And they had over the last seven years, five different agencies, seven different freelancers and 150 apps installed and deleted all on the same storefront. It's like, what do you think happens when the next person tries to go in and touch that? It's just like a spider web of shit and it's really hard and really complicated. And you don't know like how the wires are crossed. And if you change one thing, what's going to happen everywhere else.
Right? So that's like on the technical side of things. And then on the front end side of it, in terms of like consumer journey, I talk about this as like, give your website to a seven year old and a 90 year old and like, see what happens. It's like the idiot proof test because the other piece I would add to that is people are 10 times less logical than you think they are. So all because something is obvious to you. You have to understand that it's obvious to you because you live it every day and you're doing it all the time. It doesn't mean it's obvious to the people that you want it to be obvious to.
Matt Edmundson (10:30)
Mm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Ben Sharf (10:59)
So like we just, we always run into things that are way more complicated than they need to be. And I think the value that we've been able to provide to these brands is essentially synthesizing all the information and learnings from doing this 200 times over to be able to like consolidate this into a very simple process. That is a lot of complex information that is distilled down and it gets to a point like, Oh, that makes a lot of sense. But obviously you have to get to that point of like taking all these learnings and making all the stupid mistakes.
Matt Edmundson (10:59)
Yeah.
Ben Sharf (11:27)
I think a lot of brands would be way better off if they just think about how do we simplify things. It's not rocket science. You're trying to get someone to come to your website and buy a product.
Matt Edmundson (11:33)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I don't know you've ever come across the podcast founders. It's quite a well-known podcast and yeah.
Ben Sharf (11:43)
The Founders Podcast with
David Zendra.
Matt Edmundson (11:47)
I think that's his name. I can't remember his name to be fair, but he basically reviews books, doesn't he, that he's read and he...
Ben Sharf (11:51)
Yeah,
he just started his own podcast where he's actually interviewing people now. It just started like a month ago. It's like the biggest, biggest thing in podcast.
Matt Edmundson (11:57)
Okay. Well, I need to, I need to get into that.
Yeah. The reason I mentioned it, I was just listening to the founder's podcast and he was talking about Elon Musk, right. And Elon Musk's algorithm, which basically from, from what I understand is shout at people a lot, and delete and simplify. and Elon Musk is famed and, know, regardless of what you think about Elon Musk, you know, from a political point of view, that from a business point of view is obviously achieve something quite unique.
and his whole thing from what I understand with SpaceX, with Tesla, is the unrelenting passion to simplify, and to delete stuff that is unnecessary, whether it's a part, whether it's a process, whatever it is. and it, I, I, I, I, you know, I don't know how you feel about me comparing you to Elon Musk, but it's, it's one of those things where.
Ben Sharf (12:44)
Not that anyone's ever said.
Matt Edmundson (12:47)
But in essence, the same thing, isn't it? It's the simplification of it. But in essence, simplifying actually becomes complex, doesn't it? In the sense that...
Ben Sharf (12:54)
It is very
complicated to simplify is the way that I phrase it. I think that the journey that I've witnessed, even for myself as an entrepreneur, I think when you're inexperienced or you lack confidence, you try to sound smart and you try to complicate things as a way to like seem intelligent. Because trying to sound simple to smart people, it almost feels like uncomfortable, like you're going to offend someone.
Matt Edmundson (12:57)
Yes. Yeah.
Yeah.
Ben Sharf (13:20)
And then when you get into rooms with bigger people, more successful people, you realize that they actually gravitate towards simplicity.
Matt Edmundson (13:20)
Yeah.
Yes. Yes. It's like a breath of fresh air, isn't it? It's like, people love, love, love something that they can understand and simple, regardless of who you are is, is, is becoming definitely, more and more popular. guess my question here then, Ben, what on our websites do we need to simplify? What are some of the common things that we have over complicated?
Ben Sharf (13:50)
Yeah. I mean, I think one of the biggest ones, which is a big reason we exist is adding way too many like small little widgets into your storefront to accomplish like very specific things. It's like a very big challenge when you start to scale as a business. Right. So the way that I think about it is I think the Shopify app ecosystem is great because it gives you all everything you need to get started. but one of the challenges with it is that a lot of these apps are features, not products. Right. So if you're just.
Matt Edmundson (14:09)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Ben Sharf (14:19)
piece million together a bunch of these apps that are actually just like point solution features, you end up having a lot of different single points of failure within your storefront. So if one thing breaks, it's like, well, which one was it and what happens? And like, what's the chain reaction that comes from that? ⁓ So I think, I think the, power of consolidation is very underestimated in this ecosystem.
Matt Edmundson (14:33)
Yeah.
Ben Sharf (14:41)
and it's something that we really prioritize. And I, be honest, I think that's why our value prop really resonates with people. So our whole thing was like, I'm going to build the Shopify theme and I'm going to build one Shopify app and I'm going to try to pack a lot of functionality into that product suite to allow you to consolidate a lot of these point solutions that you're using. So not only will require less custom code, it's going to require less third party apps, but it's still going to get you to the same place. Right? So you have like the bot, the backend operational.
Matt Edmundson (15:05)
Yeah.
Ben Sharf (15:09)
complexities that people bring upon themselves. and then I think on the front end side of it, we have a lot of brands who like try to be novel and unique, but like I'm a huge proponent of expediting your learning curve by looking at other people who've done it successfully. Right? Like if I were launching a supplements brand tomorrow, you know what the first thing I would do would be? Go look at the 10 most successful supplement brands they're doing. Don't, don't like overcomplicate this. You're not doing something that's novel.
Matt Edmundson (15:24)
Yeah.
Yeah, Yep.
Ben Sharf (15:37)
Your product can be novel, but the way in which you get someone to buy your product does not have to be novel. we have, there's a lot of proven like purchasing patterns based on skew counts and price points and industry verticals that we know to be true. and so I think by trying to be different is actually a really bad challenge or a really bad like habit for a lot of brands.
Matt Edmundson (15:55)
Yeah, yeah. Now I'm making lots of notes as you're talking, I, and you're preaching to the choir in many ways. It's, um, I guess.
I guess this is the downside, isn't it? I suppose of Shopify and the way that they've built their system and almost a little bit like WooCommerce is it's easy for people who don't know code to get started, but therefore it's easy just to add more and more of the widgets without really understanding the implications of those widgets, right?
And I've definitely seen some widget dominated Shopify websites, let me tell you. it's the most extraordinary thing. And I get what you're saying about the single point of failure. That makes a lot of sense. The other thing I've noticed, I guess, with all of these widgets, it's just another thing and it slows the site and it makes it a little bit more cumbersome. you know, simplification actually makes your site faster and speed is one of those, you know, to quote Jeremy Clarkson is one of those things we need more of, right?
Ben Sharf (16:56)
I'll give you one anecdote that I bet you there's at least one RAN founder listening to this podcast that doesn't know this. So when you install an app to your storefront and then you delete it, do you know what happens to the code that was injected into your storefront from that app that you installed? It stays in your store.
Matt Edmundson (17:13)
Right. So they just comment and out.
Ben Sharf (17:16)
Yeah. So it's not like just hitting delete doesn't actually remove all of the, the aspects of it that slows down the store.
Matt Edmundson (17:24)
Right.
Ben Sharf (17:25)
Because like to your point, a huge thing and it's a really popular topic with brands that we talk to is everything around speed. Right? It's page speed, it's loading speeds, it's attributing drop-off to that. And so we have to be very educated on like, what are the things to look for around how do you optimize the storefront in terms of like page speed, right? And how much extra code is in there? What is the architecture of the storefront in terms of like, what's loading first?
Matt Edmundson (17:32)
Yeah.
Mm.
Ben Sharf (17:54)
Like how are you preloading certain elements in a, on a page, um, to, to make it seem to be faster than maybe it is. Like there's a lot of little nuance things you can do, but again, I think as a brand, you need to understand that like getting from zero to a million does not require the same skillset that it does to get from one to 10, 10 to 20, so on and so forth. And so like a lot of these things you're talking about, there's nothing wrong with like doing that to get started.
Right? Like if I talk to a brand, there's like a new brand, they're a bootstrap brand and they're coming to us. I'm like, not necessarily are we the best solution for you today. Like go get it off the shelf Shopify theme, like go download a couple apps, like validate that people actually want your product. And then when you want to get sophisticated and get to the next level, then you can start to explore different solutions. But I can tell you that like the solutions that we're bringing to a brand that has four SKUs that is doing $2 million in revenue.
Matt Edmundson (18:32)
Yeah.
Ben Sharf (18:48)
is not the same as the solution for the brand doing 20 million in revenue that has a thousand SKUs on their storefront. When you think about everything from like the upsell strategy, the cross-sell strategy, like how you're using different gamification levers, whether it's like bundle builders or cart drawer upsells or incentive bars, like there's just so many different things that you can do and different levers you can pull, but you can't skip steps in that process.
Matt Edmundson (19:11)
So, and again, this is right, it? Understanding the phase that you are on in your e-commerce journey, right? And understanding what makes sense for that.
Ben Sharf (19:19)
And the other
anecdote I would give that's in line with that is like you can hear this through the lens of content creation, you can hear this through the lens of business building. If you're, let's just take like new creators for example. If you're launching a YouTube channel and you want to grow an account to get as many subscribers as you can, paying attention to what the YouTuber that has 200 million subscribers is doing.
Matt Edmundson (19:31)
Mm-hmm.
Ben Sharf (19:41)
Probably not the strategy to figure out how to get your first 10,000 subscribers. The same way in business. Like it's so great to listen to Elon Musk talk on a podcast. Like I think you can learn a lot from that. Well, like if you're a preceded startup trying to figure out how to get to like revenue, listening to the guy that's trying to figure out how to like build life on Mars is probably not like the best use of your time to like find applications to apply to your business. And so I think that holds true in like this world as well. Like, you know, you have the
Matt Edmundson (19:44)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Ben Sharf (20:09)
the founder of Hexclad and True Classic and these massive brands and they're amazing people that talk on the internet and you could learn a lot of dos and don'ts from them, but there's nothing wrong with also trying to find people that are dealing with the same problems as you or people who maybe one step ahead of you instead of 10 steps ahead of you to like try to apply that to your business. Cause context matters.
Matt Edmundson (20:29)
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I, there's such a, there's such a truism, isn't it? Like I, I, I, I admire what Jeff Bezos does with Amazon. I just don't go to Jeff Bezos for e-commerce advice. ⁓ is, is in essence, it's, it's, he is like in a very different place to where I'm at. that's for sure.
Ben Sharf (20:43)
Exactly.
Okay.
Matt Edmundson (20:51)
It's, and that's okay. And understanding that I think is really important actually. And, I say this a lot to smaller brands, but I call them digital Davids, you know, the story of David and Goliath. It's like, we're smaller, but we just fight, we fight different. mean we fight smarter and we fight in a way that makes sense for us. and I, I think the way we do e-commerce should fit, brand, our story, our positioning, where we're at, our target market and all that sort of stuff.
And if you do that really well, you'll have a really successful business. I've just seen too many businesses fail where they've tried to be like another business, if that makes sense. They lose who they are in that story.
Ben Sharf (21:25)
Yeah, and that's where they lack the context. if you're trying to take a really large brand in a category and emulate what they're doing, but they're doing $100 million in revenue and you're trying to get to a million dollars in revenue, like you can't use the same strategies that they're using.
Matt Edmundson (21:38)
Yeah, not yet. You'll get there.
Ben Sharf (21:39)
Not
yet, but like you can't, they, can't skip the first 10 steps is kind of the point.
Matt Edmundson (21:44)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You're totally right. The policy has always been the same. when you listen, listener, when you do get to 100 million, as a result of listening to this show, then fly your jet to Liverpool, pick me up, we'll fly to New York, we'll pick Ben up and dinner's on you, right? That's just the deal we have. So, okay, we simplify the widgets. What else can we simplify?
Ben Sharf (22:02)
love that.
I think the actual buying journey, one exercise that I love giving to brands is going to their own website and counting the number of clicks that it takes for them to actually make a purchase. So what we find is that a big reason for drop off in the conversion funnel is adding a lot of friction to the buying process.
Matt Edmundson (22:21)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Ben Sharf (22:30)
Right. So you have to understand your product and your category. You have to understand, are you something that caters more to high intent shoppers or more exploratory shoppers? And for that reason, you need to know, like, what are the different levers that you should make available to them? So my example for you would be like, if you have a hero products that accounts for 95 % of your sales, like why not put a CTA on the homepage to let someone buy that product immediately instead of making them go from the homepage to the product page?
to the cart page, to the checkout page, to then make the purchase.
Matt Edmundson (23:02)
Yeah.
Yeah, that's really good.
Ben Sharf (23:03)
So I think that's like
a really good exercise. And then I think the other thing, and this is where we specialize is really around gamification. So we, our main ICP is brands that have medium to large catalogs, low to medium price points. So things like supplements, household goods, accessories. There's a lot of brands that just leave a lot of dollars on the table in terms of like AOV opportunities.
Matt Edmundson (23:17)
Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Ben Sharf (23:26)
which is all grounded in consumer psychology and gamification of the storefront. Right. So the idea of putting like an incentive upsell bar. So this is actually a really, really interesting anecdote. We did a study with two of our brands like two weeks ago, and we pulled all their historical data and basically built like their cohorts. Right. So we have one brand. They were selling, I'm just going to change the category just for the sake of anonymizing it. They're selling a lot of the accessory product, right?
Matt Edmundson (23:46)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. ⁓
Ben Sharf (23:54)
And what we found is that they had two main cohorts. One was buying last year's accessory, which is like $25. And then the new one, which is this year's accessory, which is like $75. Right? So why were they setting their incentive bar for like free shipping and their cart at like $60?
Matt Edmundson (24:05)
Mm-hmm.
Ben Sharf (24:14)
Like you have to actually, like you should look at the math of your cohort data to know like where should I actually put that number? And like, what is the lever that I can actually pull to get someone to do that? Because we know on average someone spending either 25 or 75, like if I have $54 in my cart, that incentive bar should be at like $74 or $75. Right? So it's just that a lot of people just like throw an incentive bar on there like, Oh, it seems like another $20 on my AOV would be great. So like, let's just put that number on.
But like when we start to work with a lot of these brands, you can do a lot of cohort analysis to understand like what are your actual buying groups and like, how can we use data as much as possible to figure out like which product should I serve to you as the next thing to add to your cart based on your behavior? And like, what is the threshold number to unlock an additional incentive? Right? So there is, it is pretty technical and there are nuances there, but I say that because there's a lot of brands that are doing a lot of revenue that have done the hard part, which is like, we built a brand with products that people want.
Matt Edmundson (24:48)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Ben Sharf (25:14)
and we're getting people to come to the website to buy. Part two of that is how do we now just optimize that and maximize the amount of money that people are spending when they come? So like a metric that we think about internally that isn't necessarily like the mainstream metric out in e-commerce is revenue per visitor.
Matt Edmundson (25:29)
Okay, it's a good metric to track,
Ben Sharf (25:31)
Right. So it's just like, can
we get the most amount of money from each individual that is coming to our site? It's a little different than AOV, which is just like how much is being spent. And it's a little different from conversion rate, which is like how many people are actually buying. It's how much is being spent by the person who is buying.
Matt Edmundson (25:48)
Yeah. It's a really interesting metric revenue per visitor. Actually, now you've brought this up and I, I do want to highlight that a little bit. It's, it's one of those metrics that like you say, rarely gets talked about, but it, I think it speaks to a lot of things. speaks to average order value. It speaks to your conversion rate. It's all sort of tied in that number. And if your revenue per visitor is going up, you can understand why, you know, what, what, what's causing that to happen.
but it is an indicator, I think, of lots of things going well, usually.
Ben Sharf (26:18)
Yeah, or the opposite, right? Or it's a way that you can actually analyze what's not going well. I just think one of the biggest challenges with e-commerce and also with some of these metrics is that there are so many variables that directly impact them that some people just don't even know about. This is my favorite example as a service provider. When I have a brand new comes to me and is like, yeah, this is really interesting, but can you guarantee that you're going to increase my conversion?
Matt Edmundson (26:20)
Mm.
Ben Sharf (26:46)
And my response to that is, well, if you promise to me that you're going to hold your ad strategy constant, the seasonality, the pricing strategy, the quality of your product, your ad spend, if you can promise that every single one of these things is exactly the same, except me improving your website, sure. And they look at me and they're like, okay, I understand your point.
Matt Edmundson (26:56)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ha!
Yeah, yeah. Which of course, everything changes. Yeah, right. It's...
Ben Sharf (27:10)
It's impossible
to attribute it to sure directionally. we understand like we can pull qualitatively, like here are 10 things that you don't do that I know are effective as seen by these other case studies. have high confidence that your number will go up and not down. But what I can't allow is for you to come back to me and be like, well, like this happens. And so therefore like you're responsible for it. Like we just had a brand actually that we launched our new storefront for, and they're one of their,
employees came to my co-founder. was like, I don't understand. We launched our new website, but our sales are down by 20%. Like what the hell did you guys do? And my co-founder went into their analytics for five minutes and he's like, dude, your number of sessions are down by 23 % in the same timeframe. Your revenue is actually up. Like your, your metrics are all higher than they were, but your total sales are down because you have less people come in your site. And he's like, Oh.
Matt Edmundson (27:58)
Mm-hmm.
Ben Sharf (28:05)
But like if we don't have the knowledge to be able to go into the data and defend ourself like that, the reputation risk is so real because then you're just like, yeah, you're right. Like it was my fault, sorry.
Matt Edmundson (28:10)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. But this again, I think this comes down to the actual responsibility for those that do run e-commerce businesses to understand the numbers. Now, again, going back to the earlier point of simplifying, there are so many numbers that you can look at and analytics just feeds copious amounts of data at you. But it's knowing the sort of half a dozen key numbers for your business that move the levers, right? And you have to know those.
So quickly you can diagnose a problem, whether it's a website problem, a traffic problem, whatever it is, right? if you, if you own an e-commerce business and you don't know those numbers, I think that's more on you, than anybody else, because I think that's actually the responsibility of the owner to know them and to understand them. not to heap condemnation on anybody, but I, I do, I'm quite passionate about that, right? Rather than just go into the website, go, my sales are down. That's your fault. Actually is it.
Really. Can you say that from the data? Yes or no. And not some obscure little bit of data in the far flung corners of analytics that you think is going to help your argument, but actually the main bits of data. Know them and know them well. And just keep it simple. Don't get overwhelmed by it, but have half a dozen metrics that really help you.
Ben Sharf (29:27)
I think that's also back to the point that we made earlier, which is like the things you need to focus on as a brand doing a million dollars in revenue versus 10 and so on and so forth. It's like there's different levers or different metrics that you should be paying attention to likely to get to like the next rung on the ladder. And so to your point, like simplifying what those are is very important. You know, like I don't even remember what the metric was, but I was I was at a conference in New York a couple of weeks ago.
Matt Edmundson (29:35)
Mm.
Mm.
Ben Sharf (29:55)
And there's a guy that I'm friends with. he runs a holding company called peak 21. You might've heard of it. It's a holding company of a couple of brands. do multi multi nine figures a year in top line. And he was talking, I was standing there just listening and he was talking to another brand founder doing like three or $4 million in his, in his brand. and they were talking about his ad account and he was just like,
Matt Edmundson (30:01)
Mm.
Ben Sharf (30:18)
talking about like the metrics to look at the way to think about it. And I'm like, just listening to this conversation, you can tell how obsessed this guy has been with like, knowing every single thing to look at based on like where his business has gotten to. And now that he does hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, he knows that the things he's looking at and thinking about is not the same as when he was doing three, $4 million. But again, he didn't skip the steps to get there.
Matt Edmundson (30:42)
Yeah.
Ben Sharf (30:45)
So he can very easily tell you like, I'm doing zero to 1 million, these are the things I should be doing. If I'm doing one to 10, so on and so forth. And so just like listening to someone who can talk to an operator who's way behind them. Again, it's like, he's not Elon Musk, but he's a couple of steps ahead of you. Those are the people you want to be listening to that can help you get one or two steps further along than where you are today.
Matt Edmundson (31:06)
Yeah, so true. And let me, whilst we're here, Ben, just give a very shameless plug to Cohort, which is what this is all about. So come find out and join us in Cohort. So one of the things that you told if I can just rewind slightly, Ben, one of the phrases that you used earlier that I just want to come back to was clicks to purchase. And obviously simplifying clicks to purchase. What kind of things have you discovered there that makes sense that maybe again,
common mistakes that everybody's making, things that we should look at.
Ben Sharf (31:34)
I think the biggest one that we found is for brands that when you add a product to your leveraging a car drawer instead of a page load for a checkout has made like a huge difference. ⁓
Matt Edmundson (31:47)
Just explain
what you mean by that statement.
Ben Sharf (31:52)
Yeah, so if you're on a product page and you click add to cart, there's typically two different mechanisms that unfold after you click the button add to cart. One is you have a slide out cart drawer that then shows up. It shows you everything that's in your cart and then allows you to go to the checkout page or add additional products to the cart. The other option is the second you click add to cart, it takes you to a separate page that shows everything in your cart and then you can click checkout.
to go like pay. So what's happening is it's leveraging the slide out functionality, as like a preview of the cart instead of, adding an additional page load into the buying journey, which is not, it's actually also a very challenging thing to do from the perspective of maximizing average order value, right? Because what you're doing is you're leaving the page and you're not utilizing the opportunity to impulse, add additional products to the cart when you have the slide out widget.
So we found that to be like a very, very effective one. I think a hundred percent of our brands use a cart drawer mechanism in that buying journey. And then the other one, which I won't, I won't make this as a blanket statement where like every brand should be doing this. But as I mentioned, if you have impulse purchase products and you have high hero products in your catalog, adding like a buy now CTAs on the homepage or the collection page with these products is a really
Matt Edmundson (32:48)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Ben Sharf (33:15)
powerful mechanism. You can use like a quick view modal for example. So if you're on a homepage and you have a hero product inside of the collection card, you can have like a buy now button or like an add to cart button where instead of taking them to the collection page or the product page, you could just have like a pop-up modal. ⁓ Which again, you're just reducing the friction and the amount of time and energy and thought that goes into like spending money on that product.
Matt Edmundson (33:32)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, that's true. It's the way that I've always thought about this with the, you know, you click the add to cart button and it takes you to the separate checkout page. It's a bit like being in a store and it's just how my brain works. It's a bit like being in a store and you're stood by, I don't know, the sweaters, you're in a clothing store and you're stood by the sweaters and there's an assistant there just, you know, you give the assistant the jumper that you want to buy and they drag you all the way over to the checkout and you sort of watch them put it on the checkout and then they leave you.
Well, where do you want to go next? Well, actually I want to go back to the jumpers. I, so, do you know what mean? It's, it's that kind of thing. So the sort of slide out draw, I, I, I, I get that and I see that a lot. And I'm again, you're going back to Jeff Bezos, what Amazon does, uh, you know, with this sort of the slide out thing, it just keeps you on the page, keeps you buying, especially when you've got variants, when you've got things that will increase the value of that order right there on the page. How do you see that working on a mobile? Same thing.
Ben Sharf (34:13)
I love that analogy.
Yeah, we have you can you can still put it at the the most important thing on the mobile experience is just Making like the exit intent very like visible, right? So if it's like a back arrow In the top or it's like a slide out and then it closes and you have like the car button in the top the top right corner To go back to the cart But it's it's all it's all the same mechanisms in terms of the user behaviors I think the only difference on mobile is just like making
Matt Edmundson (34:46)
Mm-hmm.
Ben Sharf (35:01)
making clear what the intent signals can be, right? Cause you obviously have less digital real estate to work with. So more obvious is like, how do you go back to the previous page? How do you go forward to the next page?
Matt Edmundson (35:07)
Yeah.
Yeah, that's great. That's really interesting. sticking with mobile, if I can, let me ask you some questions around that. Where do you see, because of the limits of real estate space, feels to me, Ben, like a lot of mobile sites have fallen into a very default pattern, of presenting their e-comm sites. Do you, do you see it staying there? Is there room for development there?
What's changing that, you know, that people need to be aware of? Because obviously mobile is becoming a bigger and bigger part as it always is of our sort of online sales. What do you see there?
Ben Sharf (35:45)
I see a lot of people who almost try to make their online storefront feel like a mobile app experience. Like you really need to cater to the experience. I think the page load thing is even more important on mobile. Like as we know, most shopping happens on mobile and people have no patience. has like, everyone just doom scrolls and impulse buys.
Matt Edmundson (35:51)
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Yep.
Ben Sharf (36:07)
One of the other mistakes I see happen on mobile is people under utilizing like horizontal real estate versus vertical Right. So like nothing drives me crazier is when you have like a collection and like you're scrolling vertically to like why yeah Yeah to like see it seems crit like again this goes back to something I said at the beginning of the episode which is like people are ten times less logical than you think they are So like you see that happen and if all I do for a living is stare at econ websites, obviously my first reaction is
Matt Edmundson (36:28)
Mm-hmm.
Ben Sharf (36:34)
How would you do this? Like, why would you not think to not do this? And then you realize people are not as logical as you think they are, but that's a huge mistake we see. It's like, there's so much real estate you can uncover that's untapped by leveraging horizontal behaviors. Both from like image carousels on product pages, collection pages, like featured products. There's a lot of that. That is like a huge one. And then the other one is really just everything around like page speed matters so much at mobile because the exits happen so much faster, I find.
Matt Edmundson (36:37)
Mm.
Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's true, isn't it? I, and I suppose this is where I'm seeing, going back to my original statement, I've seen a lot of sites just look identical on, on mobile. but the, the changes I'm seeing, the better sites, the ones which have a better user experience, let me put it that way, are utilizing the horizontal scroll an awful lot more.
like you say with the featured category, I see a lot with things like blog posts and like you say with images and things like that where you scroll horizontally rather than vertically. And so it becomes like this sort of, rather than a sort of an up down, it's an up down left. It's like the old Etch A Sketch. I don't know if you, if you ever came across one of those things, you, can, you can do more than just go up and down and draw a straight line. You can sort of go all over the place a little bit with them. who do you see,
If I can ask this question, who do you see doing it well in the space? What sort of e-comm sites do you, you can maybe shout out a few clients don't feel like you have to, or is that like a few sites that you buy from on a regular basis and you guys, you guys are killing it. I think you guys are doing it well.
Ben Sharf (38:05)
That's a really good question. It's such a challenging question for me to answer without feeling like I'm being biased because I feel like I tried not to be... I wouldn't say I'm a huge chopper but my problem is every time I go to a website like all I do is like think about it through the lens of like what could be better. I'm not just like a mindless chopper.
Matt Edmundson (38:22)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.
Ben Sharf (38:28)
Yeah, I might dodge that question in spirit of knowing that my answers will likely just be like brands that have logos that are already on platter.
Matt Edmundson (38:32)
You
Yeah, no, fab. I very political. Well done. ⁓ well done. One of the things that I find myself doing, don't, and listening to you talk, it's, it's obviously not just me doing it right. If I am buying off an e-comm website, which I try and do a lot. if I'm going to buy something and I'll try and do it. So I go to somebody else's website, not just Amazon all the time. I will screen record whether I'm on mobile.
Ben Sharf (38:41)
Hahaha
Matt Edmundson (39:04)
or whether I'm on desktop, I will screen record me buying the product. And I will talk aloud as I'm doing this, right? And I'm saying what I like, what I don't like, what I think's working well, that's a great feature. Why would they do this? I'm critiquing literally every website I shop on because it's such powerful data and such powerful learning.
because especially if it's a website I've not been to before, because it's like, well, why would, you know, I can then go back to my website and go, actually, maybe customers feel like this when they go to my website, because my website is the same, this, that, and the other. And I think I've not quite, I've not quite convinced my wife that this is a really good excuse to buy whatever I want online whenever I want to buy stuff. Um, but you can, think, turn everything into a online, you can turn it into a big sort of
learning experience can't you and go what you what have you learned from it?
Ben Sharf (40:01)
So I've, I've never, I haven't gone to the extreme of actually like screen recording when I'm shopping, but I'll give you a funny story because this is actually one of my favorite anecdotes since we started our company. Um, a couple of months ago, my, one of my co-founders girlfriend texted him and was like, Hey, I was trying to buy this product from this website and I literally couldn't buy it. Like you, you guys should work with them. She like vaguely knows what our business does. Like she knows we optimize websites. Not really much beyond that.
So like my co-founder sends me a screenshot of his text conversation with his girlfriend, like her telling him about using this website. And I posted it on Twitter and I was like, you should be bullish on a business when your co-founder's girlfriend is auditing websites for you. And one of my friends saw my tweet and texted me. It was like, I know the founder of this brand and put me on email with them and they're now a client of ours.
Matt Edmundson (40:53)
Ha!
you gave the girlfriend a small commission. ⁓
Ben Sharf (40:56)
I
told my co-founder she could pick her percentage. don't Well, what's funny, but what is funny is once it happens, I told the founder of the brand the story and the founder sent the product to her that she like struggled to buy on the website. So it was like a very full circle. Full circle story. Yeah.
Matt Edmundson (41:00)
Hahaha
brilliant. That is brilliant. That is
absolutely brilliant. I love that. And the thing about them doing that with her, if it's a repeatable product, she'll buy from them like for a long time now. Right?
Ben Sharf (41:27)
Oh yeah, for sure. 100%.
And that any like any savvy brand founder knows like you got to turn those opportunities into like brand effectively.
Matt Edmundson (41:34)
Yeah,
yeah, no, absolutely. Ben, listen, question for Matt. This is a part of the show where I ask you for a question for me and I will answer that question on social media. So Ben, what's your question for me, sir?
Ben Sharf (41:45)
If I erased your footprint off the internet, so all your content, all your podcasts, everything, and you only had 30 seconds to leave a message with everyone that would consume your content, what would it be and why?
Matt Edmundson (41:56)
What's the question that is? Okay, have you? Was that a question you just made up on the spot? Or is this something that you've you've been asked before?
Ben Sharf (42:05)
I saw this question asked to someone one time and I was like, holy shit, that is so profound and I haven't had a chance to do this. I'm very glad you gave me the opportunity to ask it.
Matt Edmundson (42:13)
⁓
Okay, I'm going to take 40 days now to think about that question. One of the things that comes back again to the complexity of simplifying. You've got 30 seconds, it needs to be simple, it needs to be, you know, succinct, doesn't it? But it's complicated to do that. And brilliant band listen, man, honestly, love the conversation. I feel like we're just getting warmed up. If I'm honest with you, I feel like we've got a long way to go.
Ben Sharf (42:19)
Ha ha!
Matt Edmundson (42:39)
But if people want to find out more about you guys, what you guys do, want to reach out to you, what's the best way to do that?
Ben Sharf (42:47)
Yeah, you can find all the information about our business on platter.com. That's P L A T T E R. And then my email is that at platter.com B E N happy to happy to jump on the phone and help and talk. We will give free audits to brands that are looking to improve their websites. And then if you're interested in my content, I'm most active on LinkedIn and just at Ben Scharf.
Matt Edmundson (43:10)
Fantastic. We will of course put all of those links in the show notes. And we were saying before we hit the record button, think platter.com is one of the best domains I've come across for a while. have hats off to you sir for securing that deal. No, it's great. It's great. Listen, we're at the stage of the show where we're coming to the end. So we have this feature called saving the best till last. Ben, this is where I say to you.
Ben Sharf (43:24)
Appreciate that.
Matt Edmundson (43:34)
Listen, it's been a great conversation, but what's the very best tip you've got? The best piece of advice you can give to our listeners. You've got the mic for the next two minutes. Over to you, my friend.
Ben Sharf (43:45)
My advice is to start telling your story on the internet. think putting out content into the world is the highest leverage thing you can do for yourself as a founder. It can be as simple as just putting your ask into the world of the problems you're having, the things you're looking to solve. can't stress it enough. Like all my biggest opportunities have come from embracing the cringe of posting content on the internet and realizing that like being vulnerable is something that a lot of people aren't willing to do. So it separates you if you're someone that is willing to do it.
I really think that the journey goes is you'll watch someone else do it. You'll judge them think it's weird You'll then try it yourself for the first time people will judge you and then if you stick with it Those people will respect you if you stick with it longer those people will then envy you and ask you how you went about doing it It's like this arc of creating content and I really do believe that every founder Can benefit from telling their story because you never know when one the one person
Comes across your content that resonates with it that could change the trajectory of your life
Matt Edmundson (44:43)
Fantastic. And your platform of choice is LinkedIn, did you say?
Ben Sharf (44:46)
LinkedIn and then I just recently started YouTube Doing look along form building public a lot of different like long for videos of what it's like building startup And a lot of e-commerce focus stuff as well. It's on YouTube. It's just at Ben Sharpe
Matt Edmundson (44:50)
Okay.
Yeah. Yeah.
Fantastic. And we'll add that link to the whole show notes as well. It's really interesting, isn't it? Because I mean, one of the pivots, I must stop using this word because I really hate the word pivot. It's like, it's like the word ping when people say they're to ping you an email. just, there's just something inside me that goes, it just feels wrong. Anyway, one of the changes is a better word that we've made to EP is I like you, I've started to put a lot more long form content out there.
Ben Sharf (45:16)
Yes.
Matt Edmundson (45:27)
where it's just actually, I mean, the podcasts are great, but actually just doing my own stuff as well. And it's amazing how just a simple photo on LinkedIn or a long piece of long form content here on YouTube or something, it causes people to reach out and connect. And it's such a powerful thing. You mentioned there actually about being vulnerable. What does that mean to you?
Ben Sharf (45:50)
Not like changing or editing the words that you feel inclined to share because you're scared that someone's gonna judge you for it. Like be authentic. Share your wins, share your losses. Like the way that someone described it to me, at least in the context of like video content, is talk to a camera as if you're just FaceTiming with your best friend.
Matt Edmundson (45:56)
Mm. Yeah. Very good. ⁓
Yeah, so true. Very good. Very good advice. Ben, listen, absolute legend, my friend. Really appreciate you coming on the show, sharing your wisdom and your insights. And it's been really fun. Thank you. No, it's been great. Well, listen, thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for joining us this week on the e-commerce podcast. If you enjoyed this episode with Ben.
Ben Sharf (46:22)
Appreciate you having me, Matt.
Matt Edmundson (46:32)
Make sure you do connect with him, whether on LinkedIn or through his email, or even go check out his YouTube channel. I'm sure he would appreciate you just reaching out, even if it's to say hi and you just enjoyed it. Go give him a bit of EP love as we say. But yeah, it's been great. Loved it. Love the conversation. Make sure you come back next week as we have some more great conversations. Of don't want you to miss any of them. It's just, why would you want it? This is great stuff. This is really helpful stuff. It's going to help you with your business.
Thanks for being part of the journey again. I will see you, well, I'll see you next week. That's it from me. Bye for now.
