Transcription

• Speaker #0

  We're looking at two sites today that sold bags and both of them, the variants that the product skews that were like the main product plus an accessory bundle, those had higher conversion rates, yet they cost more. And so it's kind of like may as well pricing, right? Like you spend a little more and you're going to get this extra thing that can have a big impact, you know, down the road on your bottom line, because it just keeps happening on every order for the average order value goes up.

• Speaker #1

  If you're an Amazon seller, if you're new to Shopify, what are the first three things you would tell somebody to focus on before they even spend a single dollar?

• Speaker #0

  So we have done split tests with free shipping at checkout, like different thresholds, not offering it versus offering it. And it is way less impactful than you might think. That always surprised me. For me, I like free gift with purchase a lot. That's like my go-to promo. I can do anything to offer someone a free gift with purchase. Like if I know my AOV is 50 bucks, then maybe at a hundred dollars, hey, get this limited edition enamel pin. And the only way you can get it as a free gift, a promo like that is quite enticing to the right customer in the right category and can do very well for upping AOV and increasing conversion rate.

• Speaker #2

  Mr. Farrar, it's good to see you, man. I think you just got back from a little daunt that I'm jealous of.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, yeah, it's, I'm still recouping. You're from Nashville,

• Speaker #2

  right?

• Speaker #1

  No, well, yes and no, because it was Nashville first and then over to New Orleans.

• Speaker #2

  Yeah, you did, I think I beat you there. I did Nashville, then I went straight to New Orleans for another event, and then when I was leaving New Orleans, you're like, you messaged me like, Hey Kevin, I'm coming to New Orleans. I was like, what? For what? He's like, oh, it's this annual cigar convention. I was like, well, dude, how do I get in? You're like, you can't. You got to know someone or be somebody and you're not. So you can't come. So I'm like, dang it. But I can't wait to hear some of the stories.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, some great stories. And you know, it's just like any industry. Once you get to know people, once you get to... Hold on one second.

• Speaker #2

  Yeah. I'm out of focus again. He just messaged on here telling me I'm just gonna sit back. Is that does that look better?

• Speaker #1

  It looks better. Yep.

• Speaker #2

  Yeah, I just I'll just stay back. We'll have to start over.

• Speaker #1

  All right,

• Speaker #2

  here we go I'll pick the camera after this one before the next one.

• Speaker #1

  Okay, so There we go

• Speaker #2

  Mr. Farrar, what's up, man? how you doing today?

• Speaker #1

  Good. I from what I understand we cross paths in the air

• Speaker #2

  Uh, I think so. You know, we were both in just in Nashville a little over a week ago, and then I went straight from there to speak at a mastermind in New Orleans, and I'm getting on the plane to fly home, and I see a message from you like, hey, I'm headed to New Orleans. I was like, what? Wait, what? You're like, yeah, there's a big cigar convention, annual convention. I'm like, oh, shoot, I'll change my flight. And you're like, nope, you can't. You can't get in. You gotta be somebody or know somebody, and you don't.

• Speaker #1

  Yep, and sucks for you.

• Speaker #2

  So I can't wait to hear all the stories from that. It sounds like you had a good time.

• Speaker #1

  You know what? I'm just going to say this and then we'll get right into our guest. But we always talk about cigar culture, where you can go into a cigar lounge or just be in an event. Anybody smoking a cigar can sit down. It doesn't matter who you are, what type of lifestyle you have, and you can just pick it up. And I can tell you, there was 2,500 people there. And everywhere that I went, I met friends. Now they are in my contacts as friends. I'm talking brand owners, reps, distributors, guys that have a ton of lounges. And this is a complete retail, like it's called the PCA. So it's Premium Scar Association. So you have to be in retail to really, or media to get in there. But it sucks to be media because you're getting the call, you're getting in, you're not getting into all the really great places. where they're handing out free cigars and talking. But it went on forever, like from morning until 2 a.m. every single night. And just absolutely loved it.

• Speaker #2

  So it's better than the Big Smoke in Vegas that we go to.

• Speaker #1

  Totally different crowd. Big Smoke is for the end user. This is for cigar manufacturers trying to sell to the retailers.

• Speaker #2

  Cool. Well, I can't wait to hear more. But in Nashville, the big message of my Econ Mastery event You were on stage. I was on stage. It was you need to be omni-channel now. And one of the big things is, you know, we deal with a lot of Amazon sellers from our background. But a few of them have dabbled over into Shopify or TikTok shop. But a lot of them aren't. But one of the things that's come out of a survey we've seen to have 900 people is the people that are on multiple platforms right now are having the best success. Shopify as you know and we know for dragonfish with it gives you the most control over a marketplace like Amazon where you have no control especially when it comes to AI and you know all the stuff you do to optimize for that. Our guest today is someone who is like been around host of podcast does a whole bunch of stuff in that space so it's going to be I think I'm ready to take some notes today because you and I both know a little bit about Shopify but I think we're about to get educated.

• Speaker #1

  All right.

• Speaker #2

  This is going to be a really really cool. So you want to bring on our guest for today Mr. Kurt.

• Speaker #1

  All right, here we go. I can hit a button. Yay.

• Speaker #2

  There you go.

• Speaker #0

  Kevin, thanks for having me.

• Speaker #2

  Yeah, thanks for coming on. So Shopify is a platform that there's some people that's all they know, and then there's other people that are in the Amazon world where they're like, I need to know it. So what the heck is Shopify? How did it come about? You've been doing this for a while. Just give for the people that don't understand or just listening. What the heck is Shopify and why Shopify and not WooCommerce or something else?

• Speaker #0

  Well, I think Shopify, easy to use e-commerce platform is the short answer. The primary use case there bread and butter is you want to make an online store, Shopify will let you do that. and they handle so much of it, makes it easier. Now, could you roll your own website? Could you spin up WordPress and sell WooCommerce? You could do all that stuff, sure. There are alternatives. But Shopify has become for purely, I want an online store. I want it all in one. I want it hosted by someone else, not me. They're the number one now. And not surprising, they've been at this, geez, at this point, what, 15 years? That was like 2010 is when this starts. And I... First got introduced to it when I was a young man, totally, totally overconfident and said, decide a friend said who owned a bike shop. He goes, help me with my website. You know, websites just got to be easy. I said, well, I heard of this thing called Shopify. Let's try it. We'll build you a custom theme. I'd never done that. I never even used Shopify. And I went straight to build custom theme, but we had a WordPress background. We nailed it. They took notice because it was small and early and they said, you should join our Shopify experts program. I said, okay, let's do that. Immediately, second client we get through that is Bannon Dunes Golf Course, which if you're into golf is a big deal. And I said, you know what? Let's just focus solely on Shopify. Started the podcast and now, you know, been doing that over 10 years. So hitch my cart to the right horse at the right time.

• Speaker #2

  That's a Canadian company, Norm.

• Speaker #1

  I was in, I think they started in Kanata, wasn't it? In Ottawa?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, well, you know, I don't know. They started in Ottawa, I believe. It is Canadian. And, you know, depending on the day and the stock price, they're often by market cap, the largest company in Canada.

• Speaker #1

  And that's crazy. I remember when they were so small. But you know what's weird? Like even at your event last week, Kevin, if there's an Amazon seller, most of the time when I talk to them, Amazon's cool. They understand it. And a lot of the time they're not omni-channel. So they're even getting worried there. But they're scared. They're absolutely. Well. Let me say it, Kevin, because I never swear on this. They're scared shitless. And they're afraid of going on Shopify. It's an unknown for them. And, you know, Kurt, it is crazy how many people hear of it but don't want to even explore it.

• Speaker #2

  It's a super easy platform. Like you said, it's like the Apple iOS, you know, of building something, a drag and drop. It's super easy to do. But I think the biggest thing, Norm, and maybe, Kurt, you can. agree or disagree, but when you go on Amazon, Amazon has all the demand. It's demand generation. You're just basically sitting in front of the demand and optimizing for what Amazon's already driving there. Shopify, you have to create the demand. You have to go out and create the demand and actually drive it. And that's a whole different animal. And I think that's part of what scares a lot of people is the, yeah, put up a Shopify site, but I'm not making any sales because they're not generating any demand. So what... What do you see on that, Kurt, about some of the skill set that's necessary, the fundamental skill set that's necessary to have a chance at succeeding on Shopify that maybe some people don't realize you need?

• Speaker #0

  Oh, man. It's a big question. It's an interesting question. It's what I think a lot about because we have, you know, selling on Shopify, most of our stores, we have retainer clients. Almost all of them are going to be omni-channel. And, you know, they're going to sell... all of their products on Amazon in addition to their Shopify store, or they'll have like some hero SKUs. And they're like, this is, you know, we've got our best sellers are on Amazon. And then, hey, you want all the other little stuff, you have to come to our website. Or, you know, we've over the years have had folks that they found success on Amazon, because and they started there, because as a marketplace, especially in a years ago, when it was just easier to white label stuff and make that play, right, they would validate there. And then after a while, they say, Okay. you know, they'd have a friend get shut down, they'd have a friend have an issue or like, you know, they'd get a misreported listing. And they'd say, all right, I need more control. I need to hedge my bet with Amazon. And because they're addicted to the success with it suddenly. And so they start building an online store. Those online stores, I would euphemistically describe as being thin, right? A better word for shallow. They always, there's like, they'll have the product, you know, essentially like they just take their Amazon listing and they try to apply that to a Shopify store. But then it ends up being thin because all of these Shopify stores, these brands have all the supporting content that makes it real, that breathes life into it, that makes it feel professional and more like a legit brand. It's like years of press releases in the form of blog posts and all SEO landing pages and collections and reviews and testimonials and product photos and user generated content. Sure, like I could strip some of that stuff from Amazon, but OK, now I got to worry about am I violating a terms of service? You know, what's it? Am I allowed to use these reviews? I don't think you are. But yeah, there's just, suddenly you are responsible for 100% of everything, including and importantly, getting people to the darn website. And they're like, that's just a very different thing. But the pro is, coming from Amazon anyways, okay, now that I'm off the marketplace, this is my sandbox. I get to play here. I'm responsible, yeah, I'm responsible for everything. Hey, I'm responsible for everything. So you've just a lot more room to do what you want.

• Speaker #1

  Hey Kev, have you ever felt trapped running a business or just burnt out?

• Speaker #2

  Yeah, that's happened a time or two. How would I find out if what I have is actually worth something if I'm looking to exit it?

• Speaker #1

  Well, I think one of the best things they could probably do is go to an expert that understands the market sentiment right now. First one that comes to mind is Quietlight Brokerage. And here's why. They're going to build you up. They're going to understand your company. And at the end of the day, you're going to know how to maximize your valuation. So the very first thing you need to do is go and get your free confidential valuation at QuietLight.com. And then, you know, let the games begin.

• Speaker #2

  Awesome. What was that website again?

• Speaker #1

  It's QuietLight.com.

• Speaker #2

  Awesome. I'm going to head over there. And you can control the whole customer journey too. On Amazon, you don't. I mean, you're not getting the customer data for remarketing. You can't do a bad thing. You can't do a ton of things that you can do on Shopify. So when it comes to driving traffic to it, I mean, some people start, they don't have a list. If you have an email list, you know, obviously you're going to go out to your current email list and try to drive some traffic to get going that way. But if you don't or if your list is small, are most people still doing meta? And is that the number one or is it? TikTok shop is now time to catch on a little bit? Are those guys still pretty much just going to Amazon because they trust it? What are you seeing as what's the major revenue or traffic driver for Shopify?

• Speaker #0

  The excellent question. It is still meta. It's going to be people running ad placements on Facebook, Instagram, and now threads. We see placements in threads as well. if I had to pick like for 2026 What is the number one concern, the number one pain or problem of a successful Shopify store? It's going to be customer acquisition cost. A Shopify online store, any online store, is very much a math problem. How much does it cost to acquire a customer? Okay, can we, at the end of the day, ship to them profitably? I hope so, right? If you can't, you're paying them to take your product and then hoping that you make it up on a second purchase. If you can make it work profitably from the get-go, which starts at like, you know, the successful stores tend to like really know their P&L numbers and maybe they even have a more expensive return on ad spend. But as long as that profit margin is there, okay, the math works and you can keep going and you can scale it so long as the math keeps working. But for sure, man, it's like they live and die by meta. And then at the same time, everyone is always trying to look for like, well, what are the other channels or that might someday replace meta? I don't see it. Or, you know, the channels that are just going to supplement it and get our overall media efficiency ratio or return on ad spend to work better. And so that's like TikTok shop increasingly, for sure, is we're seeing success with, you know, one brand we worked with, Pins and Aces. He shared this publicly. But Pins and Aces, I think it was it was something on the order of around like 10 percent of new order acquisition in Q4 last year was through TikTok shop. in So the problem with it, like it is such a gamble on getting lucky. Like they had a video go viral. And then what's crazy about TikTok, other influencers, you know, other creators will emulate it as though they like received the product for free, even though they didn't because they want to ride that wave too. And so it's like they had one successful video through product seeding, you know, where you send the product to influencers and then other people like it took off and other people started emulating it. And so they're able to ride that for. a little while and then keep it going. But not every product, not every category lends itself to that.

• Speaker #1

  What about price point? Is there a minimum price point that they should enter Shopify and work with Meta?

• Speaker #0

  I think it's less about price. I think it's more about what is margin on this. If I'm selling at 2x cost of goods sold, automatically it's probably going to be difficult for me. It's more about what is that margin? What's that profit margin? before you even start adding the ads. If it's like Forex, okay. Then that, you know, is much more typical for retail. Then you're probably going to be okay. If it's better than Forex, it'd... The better that profit margin is, the easier life's going to be, you know, the more I can spend to acquire a customer. But that's really become like the cornerstone of will this work? And so for me, I go ahead.

• Speaker #1

  I was going to say and reoccurring revenue, right? You'd be able to spend a little bit more if they're going to come back.

• Speaker #0

  I love reoccurring revenue. Yeah. A lot. You'll see like subscribe, you know, subscription offerings on a lot of these sites with like things very similar to Amazon subscribe and save, which subscribe and save. Turns out it's a trademark. Yeah, I think like subscribe, ampersand, save. I think that's how they have it. Yeah, subscribe and save. That one's a trademark of Amazon. But no, if you can, it is so hard to get people to subscribe. It is really tough because they understand like, yeah, this is a recurring cost. But man, if you can, if you have a consumable good product, that, you know, that really helps. One of our clients, Harney and Sons Tea, if you drink tea. And, you know, for them, it's like, yeah, their conversion rate's great because they're selling. a consumable good. It's somewhat addictive, right? It's got caffeine in it. It's tea. It's habit forming in a way that doesn't hurt. And it's inexpensive. I could buy tea for a few dollars. For them, their conversion rate's already good, but the magic, potentially a product that low in cost, they're going to lose money on, maybe on the first order. But when people come back or they do the subscription, they're going to make it up there. So a lot of it's very dependent on category. Do you manufacture your good? Do you resell it as a private label? But anything you could do to up that repeat customer rate, offer consumables, get the same your existing customers to keep buying, great. But if none of it's profitable, you're just paying people to take the product from you.

• Speaker #2

  You have order bumps too. I mean, a lot of times you're not making money on the initial product. It's either on the upsells, on the order bump, or getting them to go from a one package to a three package. Or like you said, if it's a continuity. program that you're making money, you know your lifetime value and you're making money on the second or third or fourth sale, wherever it may be in the cycle.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, oftentimes people come to us and, oh, yeah, I have a conversion rate problem. My site converts at 1%. If only it converted at 3%. Well, the bad news is that's extremely difficult, right? And for a lot of these sites, they're seeing their conversion rates artificially deflated by bots visiting the site. If I just add 10,000 new visitors to your site in a day, and none of them are going to buy because they're robots, they don't have credit cards, oh yeah, your conversion rate is going to tank, and it's going to be scary. But it actually is meaningless. And so we're seeing a lot of that. It's often very easy to figure out, filter it out, and then we go, okay, so your conversion rate is actually not that bad, but your AOV sucks. Maybe we could do something with this average order value. And to your point, order bump, like, hey, did you want to upgrade to the bundle? Oh, that's a good one. People miss that. We're looking at two sites today that sold bags. One was for women, one was for men, and both of them, the variants that, you know, the product SKUs that were like the main product plus an accessory bundle, those had higher conversion rates, yet they cost more. And so it's kind of like may as well pricing, right? Like you spend a little more and you're going to get this extra thing. Oh, okay, that can have a big impact down, you know, down the road on your bottom line because it just keeps happening on every order where the average order value goes up quite a bit. Yeah, anything you can do to cross-sell, anything you can do to up average order value. For me, I like free gift with purchase a lot. That's like my go-to promo. If I could do anything to offer someone a free gift with purchase, you know, like if I know my AOV is 50 bucks, then maybe at $100, hey, get this limited edition enamel pin. And the only way you can get it is as a free gift. And, you know, we may not have it in the future. So truly, it is limited edition. A promo like that. is quite enticing to the right customer in the right category and can do very well for upping AOV and increasing conversion rate.

• Speaker #2

  Do you see that bumping like the minimum order ship free or second day air over $50 or whatever? Do you see those types of things where you want to get that average order up? Just add one more thing to the cart and it's free shipping? Or are most Shopify sites doing free shipping now because of competing against the Amazon? Or what are you seeing on that side of things?

• Speaker #0

  It's free shipping is interesting. So we have done split tests with free shipping at checkout, like different thresholds, offer not offering it versus offering it. And it is way more way less impactful than you might think. That always surprised me. Just the ubiquity of free shipping, I think has meant that when it isn't there, it isn't necessarily the end of the world anymore. It's quite strange. You know, for me, I don't want to pay shipping. Like I think free shipping should be table stakes. I think you take whatever your average order value is and up it, you know, 15, 20 percent. And that becomes where you start with your free shipping threshold. you know, less important than we all thought in practice with split testing, which is kind of odd. I have seen people do well with like some off the wall things like, hey, you, you know, do spend X and you'll get free shipping insurance where they do like the free reship. That's kind of interesting. You know, normally it's like a dollar, you know, a couple bucks, but that they like, you know, a lot, some people live in places where it's like, oh, your package gets stolen from your front doorstep. And if you live in the city, that happens.

• Speaker #1

  Now, I know we covered a couple of these things, but if we could, I just wanted to go back and check out. If you're an Amazon seller, if you're new to Shopify, what are the first three things you would tell somebody to focus on before they even spend a single dollar?

• Speaker #0

  Build your list.

• Speaker #1

  Build your list.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. I mean, if you have that newsletter, I mean, those are your customers. You own that list. That is yours. And because they have opted in, they have raised their hand and said, yes, I'm interested in hearing from you. And at any time they can leave. And so like those are your people. But once you have that email list, OK, you could stay in touch with them. You could survey them about future things. You could inform them about your promos. They can become advocates for you by giving them opportunities like, hey, did you, you know, are you an influencer? Apply to our program. Like there's all these opportunities that appear. And, you know, now I've got this list. OK, then that can become a custom audience where that helps inform some of my advertising. Maybe I can have those folks take a survey, get demographic data, and then start to figure out like this is what my ideal customer looks like. Maybe you could do something that doesn't scale and actually call a few of those customers and have conversations with them. Hey, why'd you buy? What kind of person would you recommend this to? And tell them, you know, I'm the one who created it. And tell them the truth. Like we're, we were an Amazon brand. And now, you know, we're trying to expand the brand. We're so proud of it. You're one of our earliest customers, our best customers, or, you know, you just happened to buy recently. I just want to ask you a few questions, you know, and then we'll send you a gift card or a free product. People will be thrilled to hear from you. And as long as, you know, you're friendly and genuine about it, you know, talk to them like they're a friend who's interested in the product like you, that they'll remember. You know, people remember how you made them feel.

• Speaker #2

  Shopify, too, has like, talking about some of your customers might be influencers. Shopify has apps. There's a third-party app that you plug in that actually will tell you, identify your customers. This is a... this is an influencer, this person has this many followers, and you can actually treat them a little bit differently or go out to them. That's one of the beauties of the Shopify platform is there's tons of third party apps that will do very specific things for you, whether it's the order bump stuff, identifying influencers, you identify anonymous traffic, people that don't even sign up for your newsletter, and you can actually not just pixel them and retarget them, but you can actually get their email address and an additional... Customer.

• Speaker #0

  Identity resolution is what that's called. It works. Yeah, we've run that on sites, and we've even compared them where we had multiple customer identity resolution services to see which ones had the best performance. What are you finding?

• Speaker #2

  I mean, retention.com is a big one out there, but I don't use them. Exact Match Marketing, I think, for me, has been getting really strong identity. And then DataZap is one that actually gets a lot more. but the quality doesn't seem to be quite as good. The matching is not quite as good, but it's interesting, like you said, put multiples on there, you'll get a lot of crossover and they'll get some of the same people, but you'll also get different stuff based on how they're pulling that data.

• Speaker #0

  Yes, yeah. And so we found, if you're just like, hey, I just want one that just works with Shopify and I don't want to mess around, I would still probably do retention. They've been doing it the longest with a Shopify specific solution. And so I like that about retention. And then there's just tons of competitors into the space. Because I suspect, you know, if you've built a SaaS before, it's probably just not that tough a thing to build anymore. Like what would scare me about building this is the legality of it. You know, how do I stay compliant in a space where privacy laws are evolving? But, you know, all right, I'm not building one of these for that reason. But like Instant, Instant.one, that one we found was good. And there's at least like... three to five others that are Shopify specific and I'll plug into whatever email you use like Klaviyo. It's cool.

• Speaker #2

  Just to explain for those listening, like what are we talking about? So when someone comes to your Shopify site, you can put a Google analytics pixel, you can put a Facebook pixel and then you can retarget them. That's how, when you go to a website and all of a sudden it's, you seem to be followed around the internet because you start seeing ads to come back and get it. And you can even do DSP networks. And like, if it's a supplement. say, start showing them an ad 29 days after delivery so that, you know, they know it's time to reorder or whatever it may be. You can get that granular. But the other thing you can do is you can get in the United States. This is legal in the in the in Europe. It's different,

• Speaker #1

  but not so much.

• Speaker #2

  But you can still do it. It's just not. you know it's it's and there's different laws but in the united states you can actually put a pix uh pixels down and they will do uh there's no such thing as privacy in the us it doesn't exist and so there's big huge databases out there that have all this quote-unquote anonymous data that when pooled together can be de-anonymized and so they they figure out that uh this website belongs to kevin king because he's visited this other website somewhere on they They pixeled him and I entered an email address to check my IQ against everybody else or something and didn't read the terms of service. And there's always all kinds of ways to match up. And so when I come to your Shopify site, I can identify, depending on the tool, between 40 and 70 percent of the people that actually come to that site by email address. A lot of times by snail mail address, get their LinkedIn information, get their demographics and then retarget those people either through email. if you're good at cold email and you got it, there's, there's some. Things you got to be careful with there or through retargeting. And that's what he's talking about. So you can get you can catch the people. It's kind of like catching the people that walked into your front door of your store and never bought anything. But you know who they are and you can go after them. So that's what that's what we're talking about with this identity resolution, which it's super powerful if done right.

• Speaker #0

  And you would think like you would get you would really annoy people and they'd be mad that you're like, oh, you spam me. It turns out that's what we were always afraid of with this. It never happened. You know, it really was never.

• Speaker #2

  You get the occasional, you get the occasional someone's, you know, but they're in the market, they're in the market for it. They have an interest in this. And so a lot of times they want to hear from you or they want to be confirmed that they made the right choice or maybe they went and bought somewhere else and they're like, man, I should have bought from these other guys next time I'll buy from them.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. I mean, that one, it's such an easy win. So many stores are doing it. You need a minimum amount of traffic to do it. I don't know what the cutoff is, but if you're eligible for it, it's certainly worth experimenting with to see if it's worthwhile.

• Speaker #1

  Are you looking to quickly boost new Amazon product launches or scale up existing listings to reach first page positioning? The influencer platform Stack Influence can help.

• Speaker #2

  That's right. Stack Influence pushes high volume external traffic sales straight to Amazon listings. using micro influencers that you only have to pay with your products.

• Speaker #1

  They've helped up-and-coming brands like Magic Spoon compete with Cheerios for top category positioning, while also helping Fortune 500 brands like Unilever launch their new products.

• Speaker #2

  Right now is one of the best times to get started with Stack Influence. You can sign up at stackinfluence.com or click the link in this video down in the description or notes below and mention Misfits. M-I-S-F-I-T-S to get 10% off your first campaign. Stackinfluence.com. And these can run you from a couple cents per lead up to some numbers, 35 to 70 cents a lead, depending on the company. But if you work those, but that's just one aspect of what makes Shopify fully customizable, because basically Shopify is a blank template. A blank program is pretty simple. But then you can layer all kinds of advanced stuff on top of it with all these third-party plugins. What are some of the other good plugins that you're finding that are really...

• Speaker #0

  beneficial um for a lot of shopify is it a pop-up like oh you're leaving uh oh we also sell this on amazon click here one of those kinds is it some of the analytics stuff it's is it's what are you all right in our our shopify metaphor they

• Speaker #1

  like hub and spoke shopify is our hub you know that all of my content should live in there i could put my customers in there my orders my products categories for products pages blog pages uh pages blog posts And then like custom fields for any of that. And then from there, I add sales channels. So Google Analytics, Google Ads, Meta, like my advertising is a channel I add. It's just an app I install and set up. My online store is a sales channel. And then I can run like point of sale and you can even plug your marketplaces in. So it is like I have like one dashboard, have it all come in here. And then as I need features that Shopify may not have currently have yet or is like bespoke, then I can get an app. And it just easily plugs in as an integration into Shopify. And that can modify my online store or, you know, be for fulfillment, whatever, like printing labels.

• Speaker #2

  It's like with all of these apps that are out there. I mean, it's a huge, huge ecosystem out there. Are there top five or ten that you might suggest?

• Speaker #1

  Oh, man. Okay. I think no matter what you need product reviews, Judge.me is the gold standard there. Famous for having one plan and one price forever. It's quite economical. that's a good one. So like a reviews app for sure you need. I think people skip out on, you need a solution for back in stock notifications. And so if you're using your email provider, probably like Shopify could do email. You're probably using Klaviyo is very common with email. There are others, OmniSend, SendLine, and they'll generally have a solution for back in stock, you know, so people can get notified when the item's back. That one, you know, not a native feature in Shopify, so you want to do that. Within Shopify, they have their own first-party apps that you could choose to install. Like Shopify Flow is one of my favorites. I put that in every store. And it's an automation tool. So I could do a thing like when a new order comes in and its risk has been analyzed, if risk is low, capture the payment for me. Just go ahead, capture it, and fulfill it. But if risk is not low, meaning it's medium or high, ah, don't capture the payment. Flag the order. Send me an email that I need to review this. Ooh. So I like... I like marketing automation a lot. You know, I like that Shopify Flow has that built in, or Shopify has it built in through Shopify Flow. And then, like, pop-ups is probably going to be part of your email software as well. You want to be able to capture emails. Shopify could do it too. And then, like, customer service. Everybody does that last. You know, what about returns and exchanges in your policy pages? You know, and FAQs and live chat. I think at this point, live chat is probably... a requirement for a legit site. And it's just a way for people to get in touch quickly or ask a quick question. And Shopify's got that built in now with Shopify Inbox. Or you can use any number of apps. Like if a standard one you already like, like Zendesk or Crisp, we'll just plug into it. Or there's several Shopify specific ones.

• Speaker #0

  So another thing that's big on, like you said, you have the whole... Everything in there, it's not just your products, but you have your blog posts, you have your FAQs, you have all this, you build out a whole system. Your entire website basically sits on Shopify. So from an AI, an AEO or GEO perspective, SEO perspective, that's massive because you can control a lot there that you cannot control on marketplaces or on TikTok shop or Amazon or Walmart or somewhere. And so by... How many of the Shopify people are really maximizing that, do you think? A lot of people are just under, it's underutilized, especially in light of Shopify's big push to AI. I mean, the president said something like, we can't hire anybody unless you got to prove to me that AI can't do this job before we hire somebody else. They've doubled down with partnerships with Walmart and OpenAI. They just made a whole like, was it B2B? like every product business to business is going to be searchable or something. They're doing cross marketplace stuff, or if you, you can, there's like a Shopify little, almost like it's a little miniature version of Amazon where all these stores are all in there. You can do one central place to search. So what do you need to be doing to optimize beyond just the product page on Shopify, especially in a lot of what's going on out there?

• Speaker #1

  Oh man. I mean, there's so much, you rattled off so many features and that's just like in the last Everything rattled off. That was just in the last 12 months. I mean, they ship so much so quickly. It's like drinking from the fire hose. It could be tough to keep up. Even for me, you know, I'm on. You know, I'm on top of it. I'm on the receiving end of it. I'm managing multiple stores. And I still, like, will hear about new features and sometimes just go, you know what? I'm just going to wait and see how people use that before I even look at it. You know, make my life easier. Because they got so much coming out. But to your point, AI has been a priority for them. And so they've got lots of neat tools in there. Like I was describing that Shopify flow automation tool. Now you don't have to build the automations. You just tell it what you wanted and then it goes and does it. And it does a pretty good job of it. Um, but for actually selling stuff, oh dear, they have my favorite of their AI tools. They have the AI toolkit. If you are currently a, an avid AI user like myself and you use, you know, Claude code in the terminal, you could plug, um, Shopify has a plugin and now I could connect Claude or Claude code directly to my Shopify store and have it help me with, you know, it could read anything, it can write to it. And so I can have it help me with administrative tasks. analytics tasks it has really been incredibly helpful and that's like in the last i think it was two weeks ago that came out brand new probably tell it to just modify your template and everything too like all that i mean not can that scares me i have not i haven't gotten there yet but yes you can yeah what

• Speaker #2

  about the blog side of things uh i've always thought that shopify never had a great blog system i always used a subdomain for the blog have they improved that you

• Speaker #1

  I'm going to go with, all right, for you, I'm going to say no. Like, honestly, I think if you saw the way the blog article system works today, you would still think it's limited versus what you were using on a subdomain. You've got to get creative with it because it supports custom fields. And so, like, by adding custom fields and custom templates, I could definitely make it do what I want. But doing, like, these very editorial layouts, unless you're quite comfortable as a web developer, it's just not easy. out of the box in Shopify, you know, doing like one at a time, you know, you make one a month fine, but trying to publish them regularly, it would be tough. Like you would have to make a custom template in the theme editor. It's all drag and drop for each article. And that, you know, that's tough. It's not really sustainable, especially, you know, you end up with a hundred custom templates and then, oh, we want to upgrade themes. Okay. Well now you're going to rebuild a hundred custom templates.

• Speaker #2

  So I'll stick with my subdomain.

• Speaker #1

  That is still a bit of a, that's a sore point. It used to be a common one. People would be like, well, they're going to fix the blog. Now they do so much other stuff. That's great. We've forgotten about that.

• Speaker #0

  Now Shopify likes you to actually process through them. They don't, they actually, they still penalize you if you're using your own merchant account, right? They charge you a little bit of extra fee if you're not actually processing through their, their system.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. A hundred percent. They would, they want everyone to be using Shopify payments and you don't have to use it. You could plug in, you know, authorized.net. But we see. you know, whatever payment gateway. And then if you're using those other payment gateways, though, they're going to charge a transaction fee to your Shopify bill in addition to, you know, whatever you were paying that payment processor. And so, you know, it's a way, I don't know why they do it, but the answer is clear, like, hey, just use Shopify payments. Now, I will say the experience with Shopify payments, really, really nice because now your payment processing is tied entirely into your Shopify admin. You're not like, I'm not going to a separate payment processor and logging in there and trying to reconcile things. Everything lives in this one admin.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. I mean, you could also, you can connect Stripe, you're going to be paying X, or WAP, some of those.

• Speaker #1

  Shopify payments, under the hood, that's Stripe. I mean, that's the payment process.

• Speaker #0

  That's why I thought it was white-labeled Stripe. Yeah. Yeah, that's why I thought. But then WAP is making a big push towards... at Stripe right now. I don't know if you're familiar with WAP, W-H-O-P. Some young guys started it, but it's a half a point less than, I just talked to them yesterday, one of the co-founders. It's half a point less than Stripe. So even if Stripe's charging that half a point, you can get it back. But they have some pretty sophisticated stuff built in with all the buy now, pay later kind of stuff built in. They have something like 100 and something. currencies if you want to pay in goats you know you can pay in goats it's i'm serious it's like you got me with goats you can pay if you're selling some guy you know in one of the desert countries and they need to pay in goats they i'm exaggerating a little bit but they take basically any kind of little thing and that's one of their big pushes and they did like something like eight billion and um so far this year then they're moving up quick uh so i think they're going to be someone that comes on the scene. pretty quick um but anyway uh so but we'll shop with the ai side though I think Shopify is probably the most friendly AI platform of all the commerce marketplaces or platforms out there. Oh, for sure.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, they're aggressive with it.

• Speaker #0

  They're super aggressive with it and everything that they're doing and trying to integrate everywhere they can. So is there something that your clients, you're seeing you need to tell them to do? Like, look, yeah, okay, AI, maybe a couple percentage points of your sales are coming through that, but the conversion rates are typically higher on AI. results or answers than they are on typical search. It's still small, but are you doing something now to your clients? Like, look, you guys need to start putting out more blogs or more press releases, or you need to start changing your listings to talk to the machines as well as to the humans. Or what are you doing to help prep some of your people to, as this starts to evolve and catch on more, they can ride that wave?

• Speaker #1

  What's interesting about it is what you do is still very much SEO. And what we have found is over the last year, searches referred from LLMs are increasing. Almost definitely the LLM in question is ChatGPT. If the LLM in question is Google, that's harder to figure out because how do I know the difference between Google's AI overview referred you and just Google.com search referred you? I can't tell that. But for sure, we're seeing on the biggest stores like Harney and something like that, T Company, ChatGPT referrals going up. progressively and steadily over time but they're still tiny you know it's still a fraction of total orders but it's happening you know more and more people are going to be turned to a robot that just goes this is the answer to your question hey i want this product this is the one to get aha so what for what shopify did they've developed a thing called the universal commerce protocol and chat gpt and others can use that to query and get a concise listing of products. Previously, you would have to do stuff like search Google and then parse the page to try and get the info. Now it has a very standardized way to do it through this universal commerce protocol that Shopify architected. Inside Shopify, I have to optimize for that kind of search. And the answer is make sure everything is filled out, you know, title, photo, price. So that's standard SEO stuff. We know it can only read, it could read the product description, but it's going to be the first. Max 6,000 characters. That's a lot. So I could put, you know, just like traditional SEO, I could put a big narrative description into my product description. And then it's going to read, you know, I can add custom fields to a product page. It's not going to read them. There's a special kind of product field called category meta field where Shopify is in charge. They'll look at a product and they'll go, all right, we think that's a t-shirt. And you go, yes, That's a t-shirt. Great. now it knows the category. It has to know the category before it's able to recommend it. And then once it does that, it's going to go, hey, you should consider these other fields, size, material, washing instruction. You know, they're meta fields, custom fields related specifically to the category of product. If you spend the time and you fill all of that out, it's just that much more surface area. It becomes that much more likely that when ChatGPT asks for a product recommendation. Shopify comes back with one of yours. So the answer is completeness of product profile. So we do that. That's not, depending on the size of the catalog, that's either very easy or very difficult. It's all point and click. There is no coding here. Anybody can figure this out. You just put in the effort. And if you want, you can have an AI do it, take it forever, but it'll do it. And then the other side is just traditional SEO stuff. Like these AIs are still very much searching the web. The solution is... Add a lot of structured data, JSON data. All Shopify themes now have this by default. It is one of the requirements where the content of the page also has additional code that describes the content of the page to a machine. So it's like this type of page is product page and the product title is and the price is and the photos look like it'll have it all in there. But you can add supplemental data that won't be there already. And that's stuff that like AI can really help you do. And that's getting very technical and moving into, you know, traditional SEO that may or may not help AI. But we keep doing it anyways because we think, well, like we're just trying to stay ahead of it. I mean, it is also new. Anyone who says like this is the way to optimize for sure. It's a best guess. You know, this is only just starting.

• Speaker #0

  So what's. I mean, you have Shopify has UCP and then Google has MCP. It's almost like beta and VHS. They're very similar. Who do you think is going to win in this? Do you think both will subside or work together or merge together or something? What do you think is going to win?

• Speaker #1

  Well, I think MCP is an alternative to MCP model context protocol is an alternative to API application programming interface. It seems to me that I think MCP is going to go away and the AIs are smart enough. They just go use a regular API. UCP, Universal Commerce Protocol.

• Speaker #0

  That's more the product cards. Yeah,

• Speaker #1

  it is specific to you want to do a product search. And currently it's like Shopify. it searches the entire catalog and surfaces results and it does it instantly. Like it's quite, quite impressive that that works. And then I think, you know, others will, will integrate into it. Like I know Google's a partner, Walmart, Walmart's a partner, Etsy's a partner. I don't know if Amazon is, I'm not sure, but it will, you know, in theory this thing expands and then both marketplaces, discovery like ChatGPT and Google search can use it. And then, you know, anyone who has 100,000 or more products listed somewhere wants that to surface it there.

• Speaker #0

  Hey, Kevin King and Norm Farrar here. If you've been enjoying this episode of Marketing Misfits, thanks for listening this far. Continue listening. We've got some more valuable stuff coming up. Be sure to hit that subscribe button if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast player. Or if you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify, make sure you subscribe to our channel because you don't want to miss a single episode. of the Marketing Misfits. Have you subscribed yet, Norm?

• Speaker #2

  Well, this is an old guy alert. Should I subscribe to my own podcast?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, but what if you forget to show up one time? It's just me on here. You're not going to know what I say.

• Speaker #2

  I'll buy you a beard and you can sit in my chair too. You can go back and forth with one another. Yikes But that being said, don't forget to subscribe, share it. Oh, and if you really like this content... Somewhere up there, there's a banner. Click on it and you'll go to another episode of the Marketing Misfits.

• Speaker #0

  Make sure you don't miss a single episode because you don't want to be like Norm.

• Speaker #2

  So you've worked with a lot of high revenue companies and I'm kind of interested to hear why are some companies, they can't get $100,000 a year. Some can get a million dollars a year and some...

• Speaker #1

  can easily get to 10 million dollars a year what are they doing differently is it like mine site is it tactics is it what is it that's a good question you know i have never been able to build a 10 million dollar year company myself um so i have a lot of respect for those folks but yeah some of it of course is luck and did you get do you have a good product market fit did it happen at the right time you know launching during the pandemic very different than launching now the thing that I seems to consistently help people is, you know, early on they'll have like some win advertising wise, you know, an ad that really took off, you know, a marketing partner that worked out a, an influencer that was able to make a viral video or they just kept at it. You know, it's like, Hey, we, you know, we just kept stacking the bricks and then we got successful on Amazon and it took us 18 months. And then we just, you know, started to put the work in on our website. So it's like one of the two, either luck early or we just kept going, tenacity. All right. From there, it is a constant refinement and optimization, you know, for things to keep up and look professional and, you know, everything to be operating at the same level. And beyond that, really, it comes down to, do you know how to launch a product or are you really good at selling and keeping subscription customers? It's always one of those two. If I'm great at product drops where it's like, hey, we got this limited edition collab and I can sell it out. And then the next month I'm like, hey, we just restocked this out of stock product and I sell it out. And I could just keep selling out these big launches every month or every week. Those are the eight figure brands. That's the commonality. It's either like product drops slash launches or I am so extraordinarily good at selling subscriptions.

• Speaker #0

  What do you... When it comes to the ad side of things, what about attribution? I mean, you said meta is the biggest one, but there's people that I know, Obvi, a big supplement guys, you know, they have a really good little newsletter and they talk about some of their strategies and stuff. I read their newsletter. And they see stuff where they're using like Triple Whale or some of these other guys that follow the attribution around because they did some tests where they're like, well, it looks like our Google ads are just not working. So we're going to shut those down. the ROAS is pretty bad on those. And as soon as they do that, their meta stuff skyrockets and their sales go down. so, and so that, so in that customer journey, Google was playing a role somewhere along the way, but it wasn't getting enough. The final attribution was going to Facebook or somebody else. So how are you doing that with your clients and like really knowing what is driving this flywheel and where do you need to actually cut back and when you need to double down with maybe not always be so obvious.

• Speaker #1

  Excellent question. And there is no straightforward answer. but it's okay. It's why the, why you hear the word. incrementality a lot and why attribution is a hot topic. You know, like asking a car guy, hey, what's the right kind of oil to use? It is just like a loaded question that they will have a million opinions on. We have stumbled into one here. But the struggle with attribution, what annoys merchants and online sellers is if, you know, my email software, Meta, Google, all of these things are going to say, I take credit for this. So if I add up the total attributed revenue across all these things, it will always exceed hugely the actual revenue of my store by like multiples. And so you go, all right, well, they couldn't all take credit. But the answer is they did and they should. Right. Because it isn't the one thing. You know, you need the repetition for that purchase decision to happen, either because you're just trying to stay top of mind in a. a modern world that's just always throwing stuff at me to distract me, or I just need to think about it and, you know, think on it long enough that I become comfortable with it. You need to give me space to convince myself, but I also can't forget. And so all those touch points did add up and matter. And that's why, you know, you see a situation like what you described, you know, in this obvi triple whale hypothetical where they go, you know, hey, our last touch attribution says that meta is the thing that's driving... the purchase click. But if we stop Google, you know, now we're losing our, like these remarketing ads that weren't getting clicks, but the person saw them, you know, and it kept you top of mind. And so without that, now suddenly meta doesn't perform as well. And so the answer, like, I think it's just touch points. Can I increase the surface area? Can I increase impressions and touch points? And can I do it quick enough? Because I think every, you know, it's like, I don't know what the stat is, but is it, you know, I got to see it like five to 10 times before I trust it. I think that's what's going on.

• Speaker #2

  I think that number is 11 times right now. That's what I've heard. Yeah. It keeps going up. But okay. So we are getting up to the top of the hour. Have you ever launched on Amazon?

• Speaker #1

  I have not. I have connected fulfillment by Amazon to a Shopify store. You could do that. Like you could sync the inventory. It's kind of cool.

• Speaker #2

  So give us a call if you ever want to do that. So I guess you're a little biased on Shopify. Kevin, we are at the top of the hour. We've got to cut it off a little early today, but let's get some contact information.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, so if people want to reach out, what's the best way for them to do that, to learn more, follow your podcast or whatever it may be?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, Google me. Check out KurtElster.com. That's my name and my website. I'm active on LinkedIn and Twitter. And, of course, we've got the podcast, the unofficial Shopify podcast.

• Speaker #2

  Fantastic. All right. So there's always one question we ask our guests at the end of every podcast. maybe our misfit at the end of every podcast. Do you know a misfit?

• Speaker #1

  I do know a misfit. Am I volunteering a misfit?

• Speaker #2

  You are volunteering a misfit.

• Speaker #1

  I would love if you talked to Brandon Hiroho from Montana Knife Company. This is like the most fascinating Shopify store because they do they make knives in America and Montana and they sell out every single week.

• Speaker #2

  Wow. Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  And it's through that. I was like, you know, hey, one of the what are one of the common things? than all these stores that are really successful have. And it was that drop model. Often, you know, I'm thinking, one of the stores I'm thinking about when I say that is Montana Knife.

• Speaker #2

  Fantastic. Well, we will reach out for that information. And Kurt, it's been awesome having you on the podcast today.

• Speaker #1

  Oh, my pleasure. Thank you both so much.

• Speaker #0

  Thank you for coming on. I appreciate it, man.

• Speaker #2

  That was great.

• Speaker #0

  That was good. Shopify is something that a lot of our audience needs to be taking a look at or if they've just been dabbling, highly recommend it. And Kurt, you know, he's also got his, he didn't mention it, but his website, EtherCycle. If you want to check. check that out as well. Or if you need some help on, on Shopify and I see he's got some resources and stuff there. So be sure to check that out too. You know, another thing, what's another thing they should always check out norm.

• Speaker #2

  Oh, they should always check out our YouTube channel, marketing misfits podcast. And if you want those three minutes, maximum three minute clips, go to marketing misfit clips on podcasts, or you could always are on YouTube. And you can also go to our channel, MarketingMisfits.co, not com co.

• Speaker #0

  And we also have a newsletter now. You know, we take these podcasts and we repurpose them into a really cool newsletter that comes out every single Wednesday. So it's at Misfits.News. Misfits.News. You can sign up. It's totally free. So I encourage you to check that out as well. We just, I think we're up to about 10 or so issues by the time this comes out. So it's brand new. So it's growing. But check that out as well. It's nice, digestible size nuggets from each one features a couple of the podcasts. Norm, we'll be back again next Tuesday with another edition, right? I think so. I hope so. If you don't, you know, you just came back from cigar thing. You got a big smile on your face. It's the peppiest I've seen you in a while. So you're happy. So I was with my people. Well, take care, everybody. And we'll see you. the next time.

• Speaker #2

  Alright everybody, see you later.

• Speaker #0

  See ya.