Mastering Shopify: Building High-Converting Websites with Anna from House of Cart.

In this podcast episode, I welcome Anna from House of Cart and we dive deeply into the world of Shopify and e-commerce. Anna, a Shopify expert, shares her journey from starting a children's clothing label to becoming a leading name in Shopify website design and email marketing. 
We focus on the importance of theme selection, optimization, and customer journey to enhance the customers user experience (UX). 

Anna's shares valuable tips on decluttering your website, utilizing call-to-action (CTA) buttons effectively, leveraging user reviews and social proof, and integrating essential apps like Klaviyo for email marketing and Tolstoy for interactive videos. 

Tune in for actionable insights on how to improve your website navigation, product titles, and conversion rates through data analysis. 

Don't miss the chance to learn how to elevate your Shopify store to the next level.

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome

00:43 Anna's Journey to Shopify Expertise

01:31 Empowering Female Entrepreneurs

03:08 Why Shopify is the Best E-commerce Platform

10:09 Optimizing Your Shopify Store

10:37 Choosing the Right Shopify Theme

14:24 Maintaining and Updating Your Shopify Theme

17:21 Effective Product Page Design

22:23 Streamlining the Online Shopping Experience

24:06 Optimizing Your Homepage for Better Conversion

28:49 Effective Product Page Strategies

31:02 Essential Apps for E-commerce Success

37:02 Understanding and Improving Conversion Rates

40:17 Balancing Business Operations and Growth

43:48 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

Get in touch with Anna at @houseofcart

Aggregated Core Web Vitals performance by Shopify:

https://performance.shopify.com/pages/theme-performance-data-table

Apps we recommended: 

Tolstoy - Interactive video shoppable content to engage users.

Klaviyo - Email marketing automation for targeted campaigns and customer retention.

Judge.me or Okendo - Product reviews to build social proof and trust.

ReConvert or Selleasy - Post-purchase upsell app to increase average ord

Big Talk About Small Business
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Chapters

• 15:41 [Ad] Big Talk About Small Business
• 16:26 (Cont.) Mastering Shopify: Building High-Converting Websites with Anna from House of Cart.

Transcript

Speaker 1 00:00:04
 Welcome to thelotco. Business Podcast, a show all about helping you as a retailer, brand or creative understand the actual business side of running your business. I have a straightforward, practical advice about the nitty gritty of making money from your creative passion. We will be covering bite sized business and marketing lessons, as well as interviews with experts and trailblazers in the fashion, homewares and design industries. My name is Melissa Robbins. I'm a business coach, colour loving, non coffee drinking melburnian. Let's get into it. Hello and welcome to today's podcast. My name is Melissa Robbins. Super excited to be here today. Excited every time. But I am really excited to be here to share some valuable insights from Anna from House of cards. So welcome along and I'm so happy and glad that you could join us here today. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for having me on board.

Speaker 2 00:00:54
 It's always good to chat everything. Shopify my number one topic.

Speaker 1 00:00:58
 Yes. And as I think we talked about before, like, I haven't got this huge list of questions because I know that you just are the expert in Shopify, and that's probably how I'll introduce you.

Speaker 1 00:01:06
 Obviously, you're an expert and you work in building websites, running email marketing for people and really setting up everything for them. Right. Is that your sort of go to, like, what you're. absolutely.

Speaker 2 00:01:19
 Yeah, absolutely. So we've been around for six years now. We kind of evolved from having I had my own children's clothing label then move that, you know, online from markets and then obviously onto Shopify and found a bit of a passion for design and build. So I've done the full circle, started the brand, started the clothing label, selling online, dealing with public dealing with retail, and then finally evolved into Shopify, which is, yeah, an absolute passion. we've been around, as I say, for six years. So we've got a small team around us, and our main focus is, you know, females and business startups, people that are just getting up and going or they've been going for a while and struggling to get traction, struggling to get sales. and, you know, a lot of the people we work with, they just don't know what they don't know, you know, they know where they want to get to, but they don't know how to actually get there.

Speaker 2 00:02:07
 And what those steps are in the, in the beginning, and how important those foundations are to get in place. So, you know, we're generally working with, as I say, you know, it's anywhere from someone who's not wanting to go back to corporate, wants to get into a business, or they've got an amazing idea that they just want to get up and going and start earning income as a, you know, for the family and, you know, be able to step back from being, you know, in a, in a role in another place where they're not happy to actually running their own business and making money from the shop. So, yeah, it's really satisfying to watch brands evolve from an idea right through to then making, you know, profit every month and being able to sustain the business and stay away from going back to the corporate world or whatever their role was. And. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And there is so much opportunity now. That's the thing. It's, you know, yeah, there is you really have to be stuck in the job.

Speaker 1 00:02:56
 Yeah. And it's about, I think, as you say, like people making those choices for whether it's time, freedoms or whether it's lifestyle and just being in control of what they're doing, and they can direct it where they want it to go.

Speaker 2 00:03:09
 Yeah, absolutely. And we've seen so many people come from polar opposite careers, and they've gone and got a uni degree and X, Y and Z, and then they've come into running an online store and it's a game changer. They're starting right back at the bottom, not understanding technology, not understanding all the fundamentals. But that's part of the fun. It's obviously a lot of stress and tears, but it's learning a whole new a whole new ecosystem is also very exciting.

Speaker 1 00:03:32
 Yeah, absolutely. And I always talk about to people as well, like whatever you learn here, you should take it into whatever else you're doing too. Like it's it's that journey that everything adds together and it then leads to something else later on too. So there's always, as yours has in terms of you had your own.

Speaker 1 00:03:47
 I had a children's wear brand as well, by the way. Oh, lovely. yeah. Previously, many years ago now. And all right. So in terms of Shopify Now I obviously will not obviously to you, but I definitely I always promote Shopify and everything I do in my programs. I sort of, talk about how to use it in the Shopify, because I do think it is the best ecommerce brand, platform. And clearly you do too. But can you just give me a few reasons why that is and why you believe that it is the best platform?

Speaker 2 00:04:18
 Yeah, I say this a lot when I'm talking on sales calls and things like that. As an as a business, we only work on Shopify. We don't add klaviyo like we don't work on any other platforms. We don't work on work, we don't work on Squarespace. We don't work on MailChimp. We don't make it work on active mail. We choose these two platforms because they are designed and built from the ground up for e-commerce.

Speaker 2 00:04:39
 It wasn't a secondary idea that came along working with WordPress and then, hey, we're going to sell online. It's designed and built and is being optimized and scaled every day, you know, by the founders for e-commerce. And they're just cutting edge, you know, especially when we look at Shopify and Klaviyo going together. You know, they're a perfect pair. They're designed for each other. They work so seamlessly together. And that's why, you know, we're back both. And as I say, you know, we only work on those two platforms. Shopify is the one thing I love about Shopify. You've got massive brands on their massive brands on there. Yeah. But then you also have like one of my oldest clients, she's 73 and she has her Shopify store, doesn't use Facebook, doesn't use Instagram. She's making money from Shopify and her store, and it's designed around anybody at any level can get themselves online and get a store up and going. Yeah. and then again, as we say, we've got these massive brands, you know, the Kylie Jenner's of the world selling their products on Shopify.

Speaker 2 00:05:35
 So it's it's robust enough to to meet every sort of person that's going to come along. But it's definitely where you need to be in terms of features, functionality, optimization and growth in terms of getting your store up and going and scaling it. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 00:05:50
 And I always talk about the simplicity of the analytics in the dashboard. What you can see, the reporting that you can get out of it. Like you have to sort of if you're going into a Squarespace or you're going into another one, you sort of like, where is that information? Where do I find all that? And it's just not clear and it's just not it's not easy for you to track and check those KPIs that you sort of want to know what's going on.

Speaker 2 00:06:11
 It's designed for anyone with any skill knowledge to be able to go in there and understand the numbers, look at what's going on, pull some reports at a very basic level, and the support center in there. The help dictionary is just next level in terms of you literally type in what I'm a what am I looking for? And there it is.

Speaker 2 00:06:27
 So there's a lot of easy ways to navigate things that have previously been quite challenging for people to understand in terms of their business, especially coming from something, say, WordPress or, you know, Squarespace, where the functionality is just not there. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:06:41
 And then in terms of as well, like the ease of getting started with a free template, like they've got a great option to get going. Plus you can I have buy templates over there. but then also customized so much as well. So it's got that as you say variety between just get going and then start to sort of customize and change or tweak or I'm sure you have lots of people who started themselves and then they go, can you help me?

Speaker 2 00:07:04
 Absolutely, absolutely. And that's the thing. You know, you've got a free theme on there. You can get up for me, you can get up and going for very minimal cost, more on the time side. So if you've got the time to sit down and understand and learn what's going on, and then, you know, as you say, we have got a lot of clients that that's where they started.

Speaker 2 00:07:18
 Then they come to us a year later. We've now got to this point and we're struggling with X, Y and Z, and now we need to level it up and change things up, and then it can evolve as it goes. But at any level, you can enter in and be able to at least start selling very, very quickly. Yeah. And as you know, the the frameworks of what's in there is just so user friendly for people to be able to get in, plug and play, get your products in, pop your information in and off you go and then scale it. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 00:07:46
 And I do see on the groups and I've mentioned this, the Facebook groups that are out there, you know what I'm talking about, I'm sure. And you hear people or see people say it's just too cost prohibitive. What do you say to that? Like what's your response to that?

Speaker 2 00:07:58
 Look, and it's I don't know how many times I've said this and it's a very old school saying, but it is true.

Speaker 2 00:08:03
 You do get what you pay for. Let's just be real like. And it's the same when we talk about the free themes versus the paid themes. It's that same conversation. Yes, you know, you can find cheaper, but does it do everything that you need it to do? And in the long run, where is it going to put you? You know, in terms of going with a cheaper option, going with something different, versus the cost of getting straight into where you need to be to start with and going from there. So yeah, I always say, you know, you do get what you pay for. and at the end of the day, if you are really that tight on budget that you feel like the basic Shopify is out of reach, something's wrong with the business model and you maybe need to think about what's actually going on, because that should just be something you've got a key in your numbers to be able to cover, like we all do with all our technical, you know, platforms that we use.

Speaker 2 00:08:51
 it's just a fee of. And at the end of the day, also think about back in the day where we wanted to start a store.

Speaker 1 00:08:57
 I was just going to say that was a shop. I was 30,000 on my website when I started.

Speaker 2 00:09:03
 This is the thing. And it also goes in terms of even further back from that. You know, you're wanting to start a business, you want to sell things, you had to lease the space. You know, you had to go and do that. Nowadays you can pay the the 50, $60 a month, have an online store that can access the world. You've got to kind of look at it on the bigger picture about what are you trying to achieve? Who are you going to be able to want to.

Speaker 1 00:09:25
 Be, or where do you want it to be in time as well be? Yeah.

Speaker 2 00:09:28
 Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, you know, it's like anything, you know, you know the cost of things is going up. And yes, Shopify is going up but everything else is going up.

Speaker 2 00:09:36
 So and you've just got to stay relevant. I think that.

Speaker 1 00:09:38
 My platform for my courses and memberships, is $197 a month. Like, it's that's a lot more My tech.

Speaker 2 00:09:47
 Stack is adding up there too, and I calculated each month and I look at how we're going and unfortunately it's all in US dollars and it's a bit of a challenge, but there's the cost of doing a business and it's the cost.

Speaker 1 00:09:56
 That's the cost of doing business. So and I always I say to people like, you only need one more sale because you're on Shopify and it's it's paid for itself. Like, seriously like you. And the way that you can convert on Shopify, although, you know, all the things that we'll talk about in a minute, you can't the ease of use, the customer journey of people understanding how to use Shopify, point of sale or not shop for herself the checkout. It's just you're gonna get more sales because you're on Shopify.

Speaker 2 00:10:24
 Yeah. And, you know, having those foundations in place at that level already, when you kick start things, you know, if you're not at that point and then you're using something that's subpar, you know, it's going to take you longer to get where you need to be.

Speaker 2 00:10:36
 So you're better off just jumping straight in there, you know, getting the foundations in place and then being able to step a lot quicker through the journey.

Speaker 1 00:10:44
 And I guess that's a thing as well. Like, you do need some money to get started in a business, so it is a low entry point compared to what it used to be. But there is a cost of doing business and it's figuring out, you know, like where you're at, whether you can, you know, invest in that at the start. But it definitely is a worthwhile investment to get going on there.

Speaker 2 00:11:02
 Absolutely.

Speaker 1 00:11:03
 Let's just talk a little bit about, you know, how you design your websites or sort of what are some key things to because obviously, you know, conversion rate we just touched on. But that is one of the things that I think is such a easy thing to track and monitor in your Shopify dashboard. And, understanding what that is is a really important, you know, strategy and knowing where that is and how you can improve that is a big part of the business as well.

Speaker 1 00:11:28
 Yeah. Talk about what sort of, you know, averages there are or what are some key things to talk about in regards to that?

Speaker 2 00:11:34
 Look, I think when setting up your store, you know, it's very, very important to think about, you know, what theme are we going to be selecting. And, you know, does it suit your brand and the niche. you know, recently we've also been working really heavily and monitoring every week the performance of the themes that are on the theme store. Hey, I will be able to drop a link later if you want, but there's actually a performance data table that you can.

Speaker 1 00:11:56
 Look at.

Speaker 2 00:11:57
 With all that. And it comes from Shopify. It's updated every seven days. And it's you know, how these themes are performing.

Speaker 1 00:12:03
 Oh that's amazing. Yeah I haven't seen that.

Speaker 2 00:12:05
 Yeah. When we're on sales calls, I often say to people, you know, you can look at that theme store and you know, there's now over a hundred.

Speaker 2 00:12:12
 There used to be so many, so much less. And it was a lot less daunting. Now you look on there and there's just so many and you go, oh, they all must be amazing, right? Because they got on there. Not necessarily. So we only work with really 10% of what's on there. Yeah. you know, a lot of them are great. A lot of them just don't tick all the boxes. Some of them tick some some of them tick others. So it's really working back. What are you trying to achieve. What you potentially want to do. What kind of features and functionality you want to have? Where do you want the business and the store to go? And then working out a theme that's going to be right for you. And then again, once you start, you know, getting into that, it's about making sure that your best practices are in place to make sure that theme stays fast, you know, because at the moment, you know, once 2.0 rolled out with Shopify, the constant updates that have been happening at the moment, they are very, very fast.

Speaker 2 00:13:01
 You know, the latest versions are very, very streamlined. The mobile optimization is beautiful. but it's about maintaining that, you know, and making sure that that stays in place. So it's about, you know, making sure what apps are you adding. And I always use the words, let's not get AP happy. And let's not just be like, we're just going to throw all these bells and whistles in and it's going to make everything amazing. And then a lot of people don't understand that by popping in an app, code gets spread through your theme. And then let's just say you go, I don't really like that. That was no fun. I don't want to use that anymore. And you delete it. You don't do it properly and uninstall it and then potentially reach out to support to get them to remove the app for you. Code stays in there and it keeps slowing things down. Yeah. You know, at a goal, we want to be making sure that we really only have ten, maybe 15 at the most, even 15th getting pretty high, you know, 5 to 10 apps in the back end.

Speaker 2 00:13:52
 And it's ones that are actually moving the needle for your business. Yeah. and things like that. And are we removing the apps properly to making sure that we're not clogging our theme down with apps that are slowing it down and theme code that's getting jumbled and slowing it down to make sure your theme stays optimized, because all of those things are really going to affect your conversion rate. And then just making sure, you know, are you getting custom work done on it? Have you been getting things done? is there extra code that doesn't need to be in there? Are you optimizing all the imagery that then goes inside your site? You know, are you making sure it's all off? That's a huge.

Speaker 1 00:14:27
 One, which I think is.

Speaker 2 00:14:29
 We could talk another whole hour just on that one. It's massive. Yeah. It's massive. You know, a lot of people like. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:14:36
 Some of the size of the photos. I'm like, are you joking? Like, how massive is that file? Like, what are you doing? This does not need to be on here anyway.

Speaker 1 00:14:46
 But yeah, there's a whole lot of. And I guess that's where it depends on how what your product range is to and your mix of course, because some people have very, you know, limited products. They're just selling specific ones or they're a brand that just has their own product. others have got, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of photos and end products listed. So then they have, you know, 5 to 10 photos for each of those. And if they're way too big, then that's going to really impact it.

Speaker 2 00:15:09
 Yeah. And I think it's about making sure that you're optimizing at every single point in the journey. So again, you know, before you're putting these imagery into the back end, before you're loading them onto your products, before you're loading them into the theme, running them through a program to make sure that the optimize or the right file size or the right file format, and just making sure everything's, you know, as streamlined as you can possibly get it when you're adding it in.

Speaker 2 00:15:32
 So those sorts of things are going to be really important. And what about.

Speaker 1 00:15:36
 What about people having older themes and like getting rid of all of that, like you said a.

Speaker 2 00:15:42
 So, you know, week in and week out, it's, you know, what we've been doing for the last 2 to 3 years is just constantly, you know, we're getting these clients with older themes. We're either moving them from 1.0 to 2.0. One thing I'm massive, you know, because every dollar counts, right? Every $100 counts for a small business. So, you know, if you've got a very old theme and you reach out for some support and they're saying to you, you know, we can spend this much and we can do this, we can do that. Just be very, very conscious. We're very big on one. The value of the money. Right. Like we need to be getting really good value for what we're spending on support, but we can't Band-Aid solutions, you know, putting money into an old theme, especially when e-com moves so fast.

Speaker 2 00:16:22
 So even a theme now that's a year old sounds pretty old. Two years, we're getting ancient 3 to 4 year old. You know, we're talking really old themes now because icon moves so very fast. So we always say, you know, our biggest, best practices. If you come to me and you know, you go to three year old theme, I'm not going to tell you to spend $1,000 and do X, Y, and Z to get it where it needs to be. We need to start again. We need to get a new theme, especially, as I say, like the new themes right now that are being loaded out and pushed out there. They are beautiful and the phenomenal.

Speaker 1 00:16:50
 So much more.

Speaker 2 00:16:52
 Yeah, we can't Band-Aid those solutions. We can't build in those features and functionality. Yeah. So just be very conscious about where you're spending your money and what kind of upgrade you're going to do. If you've previously purchased a theme, let's just say you have impulse or prestige.

Speaker 2 00:17:08
 the hot tip there, those two are beautiful themes.

Speaker 1 00:17:10
 Yeah, I've had a few up to just a few people, actually. That's right.

Speaker 2 00:17:13
 Yeah. You have that theme for life, so you have an update there in the background ready to go. If you are still on a 1.0, you will get a completely blank shell because the framework is very different now on 2.0. But if you're, you know, if you've got a reasonably in the last year or two, you can get those, you know, that update, you just need to potentially do a little bit of tweaking on the, you know, maybe the formatting and a few little things. Any customization might not come across, but you should be looking to update, you know, to the newer version every 6 to 8 months, but also what we say. And people don't realize that there's actually a changelog. Every theme comes with a changelog from the theme developer and just, you know, pop it on your bookmark. We always are tracking them what happens every week and just kind of have a look.

Speaker 2 00:17:56
 If you see something and you go, you know what, there's been a whole pile of bug fixes in this one, or there's been a new feature rollout. Maybe it's time to do it. Maybe you want to hold off until something happens in the, you know, because at the moment we're seeing new features roll out. So it could be a good opportunity. When you see something new pop in and you go, you know what, I'm actually going to update that now because there's a great new feature in there that I want to use. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:18:17
 So let me get rid of all the old stuff in there as well.

Speaker 2 00:18:20
 Yeah. And just you know, it's it's about clearing out. You know, we're always saying that people go into the apps. What's going on. Have you got a whole stack of 20 apps.

Speaker 1 00:18:28
 Cluttering.

Speaker 2 00:18:28
 Unused, cluttering. Yeah. Just like you do in life. Minimalistic living. Try to keep the same. You know everything is compact down as you can. Just to make sure it's really optimized for conversion on that one.

Speaker 2 00:18:40
 Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:18:41
 And then in terms of some of the design, I know it's obviously comes into the theme and stuff as well. One thing I just wanted to I just saw on your, you know, websites that you've built the the big thing that I happen about with you knows lots of my clients. Like the first thing is like a call to action, like so many people just don't even have shop buttons on their website. Like, how many did you. Yeah. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 00:19:01
So the amount that I could say. So it's the rule of thumb, right? If I land on your site and within 2 to 3 seconds, I don't know who you are, what you sell, and an option to do something. You've lost me and you will lose everybody else. You know, that's going to be the golden rule. You know, as a prime example, let's just say we had a t shirt store. If I'm landing and I'm seeing a picture of a mountain and I'm seeing no wording.

Speaker 2 00:19:24
So the simplest way I can explain it, we're selling t shirts. When I land, I want to see a person on the beach wearing the t shirt, having a fabulous time. Looking amazing. Looking amazing. The caption should be as simple as we sell t shirts, they are amazing with a button to say buy now. It's that simple, right? Like it's just needs to be that direct so there's no excuse for not having it. Now we have ChatGPT where we can plug in some conversation and ask for some really good pointers on brief power blurbs for our brands.

Speaker 1 00:19:54
 But yeah.

Speaker 2 00:19:55
It's about very direct, you know? And the other thing we see as a huge mistake is, you know, I'm going to hate against it. But CTAs click to actions, our buttons with very weird conversation. Like, you know, sometimes we've got sentences. Did you want to have a look? Did you want to view more? What do you want me to do? You want me to click.

Speaker 1 00:20:13
 Here or shop or.

Speaker 2 00:20:15
 Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:20:16
 Action things. Yeah.

Speaker 2 00:20:18
 Like we see a lot of you more, you know. Do you want me to view more? What do you want me to do? I'm here to shop. I'm not here to read. So just making sure it's so super clear because our brains are just in there looking for a For DirecTV. It's almost people.

Speaker 1 00:20:31
 Are afraid to sell, you know, like they're like, oh, is it okay if I share this with you? You know? Yeah. We get.

Speaker 2 00:20:36
 People say, you know, and I say to them first that after your hero banner and that bland brand blurb straight away bestsellers straight away hot ticket items right away new collections and you want to be I don't want to have.

Speaker 1 00:20:48
 From there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 00:20:49
 And they said, oh, but I don't want to put the product front and center. What are we doing? That's just like saying, I'm going to open up a store down at the mall, and I'm going to put it all at the back.

Speaker 1 00:20:58
 I'm going to hide.

Speaker 2 00:20:58
 Everything in the back. And you have to come in and ask me, you know, don't make me work too hard. People are in a hurry. People are shopping one handed on their phone while they're juggling kids. It's like, yeah, it's, you know, they're distracted shoppers. They need to be able to get in, get in really quickly, have no blocks, understand? What problem are they solving in my life? How much is it going to cost me? Can I return it? All of these things really, really quickly.

Speaker 1 00:21:21
 You give them what they need to make that decision in terms of what you say, that trust that reviews, that contact that refunds. I want to know, can I turn this back?

Speaker 2 00:21:31
 And, you know, the hierarchy of our home page and now the hierarchy of our product pages have never been so important because there is a lot of noise, there's a lot of competition out there. And if you haven't leveled up and your product page is not on point, you will lose the sale again.

Speaker 2 00:21:46
 Like, yeah.

Speaker 1 00:21:48
 What do you feel? How do you feel about the drop downs in terms of I was working with a client yesterday and you know, she has the I think it was a broadcast theme. And essentially, you know, you have that drop down of the fabric and care, you know, all the different dropdowns you could have. Is that a good, part of your product page?

Speaker 2 00:22:04
 Absolutely. So the technical term is using meta fields. So now that the sell out yesterday we have the meta fields. Right. They are super important because the best way I can describe it in a non-technical way is there's a lot of unsexy information people may want, but they also might not want and not really care about. But you need to have it. It's important. So it's about when I see a product page and it's just paragraph after paragraph after paragraph of information. It's just too much. I don't want to know. I'm way overwhelmed. I don't want to read all that stuff. No, I'm done.

Speaker 2 00:22:34
 Whereas if I can just go in, get a little caption about how amazing it is quickly, I can see, you know, because maybe I don't want to be a hand washing it, you know, can I wash it in the machine? Perfect. I can do that. So if I'm able to get in and out of that information that I want really quickly.

Speaker 1 00:22:48
 It's so easily accessible, but not necessarily in your face lately. Yeah.

Speaker 2 00:22:51
 And it's just making it look nice and tidy and organized and decluttered again. We come back to the decluttered word. But yeah, it's about making sure the information is available, but it's not in your face and I can get to it really easily because when we have it all dumped in the product description, which is the old way of doing things before Meta Fields came along, you've got to really work really hard. You've got to look through, find the information. But if we can just have little, you know, little tabs that have just blocks of information, maybe I'm really, you know, really, really the kind of shopper that I need to know that I can return it.

Speaker 2 00:23:23
Right. So can I drop straight into the returns tab. You know that if I hate the product, I can return it for a refund. So it's about making sure every shopper has, you know, no blocks in front of them. Adding to cart and getting to the purchase.

Speaker 1 00:23:35
And how do you feel? Because I love them. But I don't know if this is, about side carts.

Speaker 2 00:23:43
So we're talking about the pop out ones.

Speaker 1 00:23:45
Yeah, the pop out.

Speaker 2 00:23:46
Yep. So you don't like them?

Speaker 1 00:23:48
No, I love them. I love them on there I hate it. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 2 00:23:53
Absolutely. Yeah. We should be moving. Everyone should be moving towards making sure that that's there. Because it's again it's just a quick flash of the pan. There it is. I've added to cart and it enables me to just move through my journey a lot quicker. We don't want to. The less clicks the better. And that happens with everything you know in terms of I don't want to have to add to cart, then go to my cart, then go back to the pacer shopping.

Speaker 2 00:24:14
Oh, but I got thrown to the home page. Now I've got to go back where I need to be. Way too many clicks, you know, we need to get where we want to get really quickly with just simple, simple clicks. And, you know, the less the better towards checkout.

Speaker 1 00:24:26
Yeah, I said to I've said to a few people like, why not? Because I buy a lot online. So I am an online shopper and I definitely buy a lot on Shopify. And sometimes you you've bought it faster than you realize and you're like, oh, that actually checked out quickly because all your information's there. Everything's just in there already. They make it so fast to actually now with.

Speaker 2 00:24:46
You know, shop pay, everything's registered, everything's there. It's if you click it to the button. But that's what, you know, customers are wanting again it's it's one handed shopping. It's shopping on the go shopping while you're in the supermarket. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:24:56
No one's stopping to go and get their wallet to find their card like police.

Speaker 1 00:25:00
There's just all those items.

Speaker 2 00:25:01
And if again, if you are not at that level with your store, but somebody else is your competition, you know who you're trying to, you'll lose the sale, you know. So unless you've levelled yourself to a better than them, they will win the sale. And that's the reality right now is if you, you know, if your store isn't optimised and it's not really at a point where the journey is amazing. Customer journey is on point and you know people are actually enjoying transaction. You know you're not going to get them back. yeah. And you know, you can you can you can drag all the traffic that you want to the site, but you get one shot to impress. It's not at the local shopping mall where they may walk past again, and then they'll re influence because the shop window looks better. You get one shot and if they come and they're just they're not you know, if they turned off, they won't come back. They work.

Speaker 2 00:25:49
So yeah.

Speaker 1 00:25:50
And so just touch on your you touched on it there. The hierarchy of the home page. What else like would you say. You know, like you've got your main hero, you've got call to action within their in a statement about who you are. Then you're going into your bestsellers or your key pieces, that you can shop straight away from that collection. What would what else comes in?

Speaker 2 00:26:07
Yeah. Look making sure again, so when we're starting at the top that we've got a nice announcement bar that's saying what my shipping is going to be and can I return it. Maybe have got Afterpay, any other sort of sale going on at the top.

Speaker 1 00:26:17
And high contrast. That's my other pet hate.

Speaker 2 00:26:19
When yes we can talk about that in great detail, high contrast and then making sure our navigation is on point as well. So, you know, I don't want to be seeing massive long list of things. Think about how people are going to be shop and breaking it down from there.

Speaker 2 00:26:33
So making sure you're building out your mega menus to make it very, very easy. Let's not use all fancy words because your brand has fancy, you know, descriptive titles. It's not about that. It's simple where you know men's woman's children. Yeah. Skirts, tops. It's not a flare in navigation. You know, I do see a lot of brands who want to add brand vibe into the navigation, and it's not the place to do it. You need to be able to get in and get where we need to go to. And then again, moving down, making sure that hero is really capturing, you know, so many hero banners. I see they're just so un, you know, just not applicable at all. So making sure that's there. And then again, don't be scared. Get your product out there. We're here to sell product. But that should be front and center. Making sure that again we're using features and functionality that convert. Has it got to hover over. Am I seeing second imagery when I hover over the product image? Do I have an add to cart buy that allows me to just quickly add some things as I go? And then making sure that again, you know, shopping by collection, making sure I can get where I need to get to.

Speaker 2 00:27:34
And you know, all the content in terms of the about Us and stuff. Yes, it's great, but it needs to be further down. Yeah. Again. Yeah. I don't want to read too much. And again, don't put five paragraphs about your brand. You know, it needs to be short and sharp with a directive to go somewhere else and read more if they want to. Yeah. making sure reviews are really, you know, prominent on their. Have you got your review carousel. Are you seeing is the social proof there. Yeah. and making sure that our trust factors there with the trust badges, trust icons, whether it be, you know, eco friendly brand, you know, eco friendly packaging, free returns, you know, satisfied customers, whatever it may be. So to make me understand as I go through the journey, I'm just feeling great about this, you know, I really want it. I've got FOMO and just making sure that you're capturing them at all the points.

Speaker 2 00:28:21
And then as you get further down, you know, adding in your blogs, adding any other content that people might want to read. Like I see with the footer is when we get all the way down there, we just see some really boring, unsexy information we see. Contact me, policies and things so it doesn't give the customer the opportunity. If they have got all the way down to the bottom. You know what? I actually really like that handbag I saw right up the top. I want to get in and have a look at the bags. So making sure that down the bottom we have shopping opportunities as well. You know, that's one of the biggest things I see as people just having some really boring stuff at the footer, you know, not having any links to social media, not having another little brand blurb that just reiterates who you are as a brand and what your unique selling points are. And the main thing is to add some sort of shop yet add your top five collections, add your top six products, whatever it may be, you should be potentially having, you know, one for shopping by collection, one with the top selling products, and then the other boring stuff that people might want to have, like the information policies like that.

Speaker 2 00:29:20
So going through and you know, if anyone wants to see some, some really beautifully built out footers, have a look on my portfolio. But go down the bottom, start looking at your competitors. What have they got down the bottom. How's it laid out. and make sure that there's a signup form there. There's a discount carrot. I'm able to sign up and get my 10%, and it's across the footer all the way through the store.

Speaker 1 00:29:39
And I think that's it. Like, don't be afraid to repeat things. I think that's sort of the thing here, too. People think, oh, well, I've put my shipping at the top and I don't need to talk about it again. Or as you say, your menu's at the top, but I need to put it there again on my newsletter is, you know, there. But yeah, like you can definitely have it in more than one location and often that's needed for people to be like.

Speaker 2 00:29:58
Yeah, okay. I was reading somewhere the other day, that we actually it's gone from needing seven up to about 12 touch points now from a brand before we make a purchase.

Speaker 2 00:30:08
So and it's the reiteration of those really important things like you just keep telling me free shipping, over 50 free shipping over 50. Free shipping over 50. And eventually I'm going to go. You know what? I need to spend 50 bucks and I'm going to get these items for free, so, well, free shipping. So yeah, it's about really making sure all those, you know, unique selling points of your business and your brand are really in their face continuously so that I'm not distracted by concerns or negative things against the conversion. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:30:37
Amazing. And then just touching on the product page hierarchy. So in terms of the name of the product, is there any particular things that you would really concise.

Speaker 2 00:30:46
You know really direct about what it is. And nothing too flowery. You know we do see a lot of really descriptive product titles. And again it's just so distracting. And now again with midfield, what it's allowed us to do is to take some of that product description out and pop it straight underneath so we can set a product title meta description that then breaks it up a little bit.

Speaker 2 00:31:10
So, you know, let's just say we see a lot of people putting descriptive stuff, you know, whatever x, y and z product for men, you know, x, y and z product, you know, for healthy skin or for dry skin. So instead of putting those descriptive in there, we can now pop them into meta fields underneath as a secondary title. So really clear and concise so that people know exactly what the product is with not too much description. And, you know, the worst thing I see is when people are grabbing products from dropshipping or other sorts of places and they still just have like generic wholesale descriptions. It's so off.

Speaker 1 00:31:43
Putting the.

Speaker 2 00:31:43
Same. So really start to look around at the bigger players.

Speaker 1 00:31:47
How well the site I you can use to help with that too.

Speaker 2 00:31:51
And like let's just say you're a skincare brand and you're starting up your skincare label. You know, everyone always says that they want to be like go to skin, but, you know, go and look at her site.

Speaker 2 00:31:59
You know, she is the epitome of what a what a skincare brand should be looking like and have a look at what she's doing, you know, have a look at your bigger competitors, because the other ones out there making money and dominating the market, you know, how have they set up their product pages and their descriptions and the product titles to really sell. and now we need.

Speaker 1 00:32:18
I always go through as a yeah, as a reference of like her copy's amazing. And you know.

Speaker 2 00:32:24
I also come on board and you know we always whose your brand crashes. You know nine out of ten times it'll be it'll be her and you know but it's yeah.

Speaker 1 00:32:32
There's so much personality in it as well in the website. So the clients.

Speaker 2 00:32:36
Like don't be deterred. But you know, she's got money. She's got a person in every department. They're able to achieve all of that stuff. But there's a blueprint right there for you to then be able to grab things and adapt it to your own business and brand, to really level up what you're doing as well.

Speaker 2 00:32:50
Because again, it comes back down to the fact that there is a lot of choice out there, and you want to make sure that your stands out enough to grab that dollar. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 00:32:58
And in terms of, you know, any particular apps that you think are like essential, don't you think everyone should have or. so.

Speaker 2 00:33:07
You know, as I mentioned before, we stand by Klaviyo in terms of a perfect pair to go with your email marketing. Yes. again, there's same conversation we could have. Is it worth the money? Is it worth me investing someone to set it up? Yeah. Is it worth the monthly fee? Absolutely. I don't think I've ever met a person who said to me Klaviyo was a waste of money, and it didn't. You know, if done correctly, it's a powerhouse. and, you know, most clients and brands out there, they're aiming to make 30% or 40% revenue just from that automated nurture in my marketing from. So it's a massive topic. It's a huge thing.

Speaker 2 00:33:40
but definitely jump on board it if you're not, review apps absolutely imperative. You know, it's so important now to have that trust factor and people to understand that that, you know, people enjoyed the product, people enjoyed the brand. The customer experience, judge me, is a great option at a budget level. It does everything really well. If you're looking to level up and really have it branded and beautiful and a bit more of a powerhouse behind it, McIndoe is amazing. So we work heavily with the Kindle and you know, their widgets are beautiful. The the way it works is really lovely. It's a little bit higher and budget. It's a hot ticket one at the moment, which we're actually promoting, and we're popping into a lot of client stores. It's very much a hot ticket item at the moment, which is Tolstoy. So it's basically, you know, it's the yeah, the interactive shopping video that's all about utilizing UGC. And you'll see it across a couple of brands. I can again link a couple of clients so you can see it in action.

Speaker 2 00:34:32
But on the product page we can have, you know, a little a little widget that shows little real. So let's just say you're selling and underwear brand and you might have linked underneath the description, there'll be four little circles and there'll be little reels of maybe someone in the underwear, someone running in the underwear, someone, you know, stretching the product, showing it in real life. People want to see it.

Speaker 1 00:34:53
And this is the thing people want to see it on. And because often I will go to an Instagram, see the product in, in the flesh or on a different size model or whatever it might be, I want to see. And it is a game.

Speaker 2 00:35:04
Changing technology, and we now live in a know where people are buying because of what TikTok said. People are buying because of what Instagram said and the users on there. So it's about making sure you incorporate that into your.

Speaker 1 00:35:17
Connection between them. Yeah, keeping people on your site so they don't have to go to those other places.

Speaker 2 00:35:21
So the technology is moving that way and you've just got to adapt with it. So that's probably my hot ticket one at the moment. is using Tolstoy things like reconvert obviously for, you know, your post-purchase upsells and in cart upsells. It's really important now to get our order value up and to get that customer loyalty there. And, you know, we don't want to just be selling one product when we can sell three, you know. But if you don't do that actively and it's not really, really easy for them to add a couple of extra products at a discount or know that, you know, this actual T-shirt goes really well with these pants and looks great with this belt.

Speaker 1 00:35:57
Yeah, I heard one of them sell easy that I've heard of that one like that sell combines like suggests I actually use.

Speaker 2 00:36:02
Selling on.

Speaker 1 00:36:03
My site.

Speaker 2 00:36:03
Together. bundle a couple of downloads that I've got. It's a very very easy yep to use. Their support is brilliant for the cost. yeah. Just making sure that we're really up, up leveling what we're offering.

Speaker 2 00:36:15
You know, we sell this, but it also goes great with this and we'll give you a discount because all of these things are going to increase.

Speaker 1 00:36:20
Do you have a particular bundle? One, because I know a lot of people ask me that question as well.

Speaker 2 00:36:24
So the the developer is eight. Yeah. and Bundle Builder is probably the one we work with. Yeah a lot. it has beautiful bundles. I was actually just talking to a client today about getting their store set up with it. it works really well with, you know, it's a brilliant. It's got a beautiful interface. And that's the other thing when we talk about bundles. On a quick side note, you know, you want to make that journey really easily. Let's just say you sell one product or two products, and you want them to be able to pick a few different things or colors or whatever. That needs to be very easy. You don't want them going in and out of a product page and and adding to cart or.

Speaker 2 00:36:58
But if I buy five I get a discount. Okay, so I've got to go in and out. No, you just want it all displayed on one beautiful screen where they can just add the five items or add whatever the thing that you want to sell and bundle in one spot. And then it gets it gets coupon up, up to the cart and off you go. and that's what the bundle builder allows you to do. Make sure the customer journey is really on point for bundling. You know, having a confusing bundle or discount offer where it's more, you know, verbal, you know, written on there and you've kind of got to think about it. It's too hard. People just won't do it.

Speaker 1 00:37:30
Well, they've got to if they've got to take the action, it's probably not going to.

Speaker 2 00:37:33
Bundle by eight is great. and then another one we love is actually, Lucky Orange, which is there is a great free plan. but so that you can get in and have a look at your heat maps, see what's going on with, you know, do your session recordings, see what people are doing on your site because.

Speaker 1 00:37:49
Yeah, when they're leaving or when they're very close.

Speaker 2 00:37:52
To our brands and we're very close to what we sell. And, you know, we've got a motion with our own businesses, and it's very different from a customer point of view. And a lot of clients really struggle to get into their customer mindset. You know what's actually working for them. You may have built your site and think it's absolutely beautiful, but you know it's confusing for the customer. You may find it fine because you built the brand, you built your product, you know what it is.

Speaker 1 00:38:16
You understand the you know the story behind it all the different being.

Speaker 2 00:38:20

Able to see actually what's happening for customers is going to be imperative to being able to make change so that you, you know, you're always leveling up, you know, always understanding what's happening to the traffic. Where are they dropping off if they're all dropping off once they get to the checkout? Why? What is happening there? What's reason, you know, the shipping? Yeah.

Speaker 2 00:38:37
You know, whatever's happening for them. Because we can guarantee you that when things are going wrong on an attempt, people are not going to email you to say, actually, I had a really bad experience. I got thrown out of the cart. you know, I tried to edit the scan code. Maybe they do for that, but generally any problems that they find, I was really slow to load on mobile and then, you know, then it was gone. no one's going to tell you that. So if you're not constantly checking and testing and finding out what's going on on the back end for your customers. you're just losing potential sales on a daily basis. But always being, you know, knowing what's going on on your site is really important. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:39:13
And just on that, because, obviously some of the numbers that you'll see on your dashboard are the add to cart, reach checkout and then obviously purchased as a conversion rate. So what are some average numbers that you're seeing now. You really want conversion rates.

Speaker 2 00:39:28
It's a difficult one. And I will honestly say August has been really tough. You know we're getting a lot of clients messaging saying conversions are down, conversion rate down. August has been tough. It's been really hard. but you know, it has. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:39:41
I've heard it too.

Speaker 2 00:39:42
Australia's just in a bit of a crazy time right now. but, you know, you want to be having your conversion rates 1 to 2%, if not more. but you also need to look at your data. And again, ChatGPT comes in real handy for this. People aren't utilizing it as much as they can. You can have a conversion rate, but we need to work backwards. What are you trying to aim for and then. How many people do I actually need to get to my website to make that conversion? And that's the biggest mistake, I think. People go, you know, I've got a conversion rate of 1%, you know, and I really want to make it higher. Okay. Well then what do we need to do number wise to get those people to convert.

Speaker 2 00:40:17
And it's a bit hit or miss in terms of because you need to know your numbers more like, how many people do I actually need to get to the site? And as I say, ChatGPT is awesome. You know, we've been directing a lot of clients. Jump on there, you know, put all your stats in there and it will give you a stack of numbers to work towards. because, you know, driving the more more people you have coming there, the more chances of changing that conversion rate. and looking at your industry standards as well, the best thing I can say is when you're in those report screens and you're in there looking, there's so many more little tips and tricks. Now that Shopify has added this help. Little buttons, there's explainer buttons. Open everything up and understand and know what it is. And if you don't still don't understand it, you know, pop it into jet GPT. Put your own stats. That's another thing you know. Put your own stats that you've got on your dashboard.

Speaker 1 00:41:05
So yeah, talk about talk about it. Have to compare the right.

Speaker 2 00:41:08
So you know, how do you think I'm doing. What can I do better to make my conversion rate 2.5. What do I need to do to get there. And you can put your own data in there and it will work back and give you some industry standards and things like that. So again, you know, you're only as good as what your armed with knowledge wise. And if you're not armed with all that understanding, it's going to be a real struggle. So yeah, I think that's the best thing I can say to people is start to understand and learn. Your numbers are not a lot more, and, you know, make data, data driven decisions rather than just sort of going by how many sales do they actually make?

Speaker 1 00:41:44
That's right. People looking at the yeah, the sales only and not. Yeah. Because I mean, there's a thing like if everyone's let's say we just met August you know conversion rates down.

Speaker 1 00:41:53
Is it all their numbers have dropped off or is it the conversion you had. You know, as you say, traffic.

Speaker 2 00:41:58
To your site. Okay. So is that because people there's a problem. Yeah. Is there a problem on the website if you got broken link somewhere, you know, if something happened on one of your ads, it's not working. and just stepping back all the way along, it's a constant process of, you know, what's working, what's not, and where it starts to not work. How can we fix the holes in that bucket to make sure it does work?

Speaker 1 00:42:20
Yeah, because it could just be like, you know, your sales might be down, but just because your average orders dropped or a total sale of the units that people are ordering have dropped down as well. So it's maybe your conversion rates fine, but it's actually there's yeah, so many factors of value.

Speaker 2 00:42:34
Although it's hard, you know, as a small business owner who started a store, like the amount of hats that you have to put on and wear are huge.

Speaker 2 00:42:42
You know, there is so many different factors and, you know, going into it, it's not for the faint hearted because there is so many different factors to actually making it a success. but it's just taking the time to understand all the steps along the way to be able to scale yourself. Well, I.

Speaker 1 00:42:58
Think that's the thing is, well, managing your time in your business because, you know, a lot of people I work with as well, they're actually making their product too. So but you can't spend all your time on that. Like you have to make sure that you are allocating enough time in your week or day or what, you know. However, it looks for sales, for marketing, for tracking your data and understanding what's going on as well as the making. You cannot just be the technician who's making it the.

Speaker 2 00:43:22
Same with a lot of clients where you know they're physically making the range and it's time consuming because you've got that side of it, and then you're also customer service, and then you're also packing the orders and then you're also trying to.

Speaker 2 00:43:34
So I think time blocking is really important on your week, understanding what you need to be doing in your business to move the needle. You know, every Monday sitting down and, you know, laying out just five things that you should be doing each week aside from working in your business, things that you can be working on your business to actually move the needle. And you know, if you've listened to this and you go, she have no idea about my conversion rate. I don't know what that is. I don't I don't know how many, how much traffic I'm getting, you know, take it as a sign to go, okay. I need to know those numbers every Monday. Yeah. Every Monday I'm going to sit down and look at those things, and then maybe we can look at some other things each week to really move the needle. Things that you don't know you need to understand to really work forward, get where you need to be. It's really important. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 00:44:18
I've got a, I've got a spreadsheet for that, like exactly what to track.

Speaker 1 00:44:21
And each week in your business. So, I'll put a link for that as well to have a look at. But yeah, absolutely. It's about selecting the time. But then the more you do it too, and the more you you start to understand it. So it will take you, as you say, a bit of time at the start, but as you sort of, each week are doing it, you'll start to understand and see these slight variations and what it may mean.

Speaker 2 00:44:43
And as well. So know what you're looking at and what's good and what's bad. And absolutely, the more you do it, the better you're going to get at it. Just just like, you know, when it was when you started your product range as well, you know, now you can probably talk the talk about it. everything evolves and yeah, it's a journey. It's a journey. Absolutely. And.

Speaker 1 00:45:00
Yeah. And and I guess that's where for you, like, I'm sure you have a range of customers in terms of you've got people who are startups getting going, you've got people who've been going for a while, and you can help change and tweak and improve what they're doing.

Speaker 1 00:45:12
You obviously work on websites as well as the email, so then you can help people at all different stages of the journey, right? It depends on what people.

Speaker 2 00:45:19
Need us and they are completely non-technical, but they know what they want to do, right? They know where they want to get to. And then other clients we've got, you know, they just write in there. They're just time poor. So we really work with everyone. and our biggest thing is, you know, making sure we're giving over value to we're not just about here's what we're going to do for you. We want to actually give you options about what you should be doing, whether you choose to do them or not. Put them on a to do list. So when we're, you know, working on jobs and working on builds, we'll also make heavy suggestion about the direction or the things or the features and functionalities that you can be doing, and then it's up to you whether you decide to jump in and do them.

Speaker 2 00:45:54
because again, it is a very fast moving ecosystem. Things are changing really quickly, and if you don't know what you don't know, you will get left behind. So yeah, just trying to make sure people are aware of what is out there, what can be done, what's best practice. and just making sure everyone's aware of how to live a lot and having opportunity to educate themselves on doing that.

Speaker 1 00:46:15
Yeah. Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing so much information here. I know you've been very valuable. how do people get in contact with you and what's the best place to find your site?

Speaker 2 00:46:23
House of cards. Commu I'm very, very active on Instagram, so you can check me out on there. Send me a DM and we connect. hello, at House of Commons are you to email me? But yeah, reach out on any of my channels. I offer a free 15 minute call, so if anyone wants to jump on, chat about their store, chat about what's going on, let me know what the issues or problems are.

Speaker 2 00:46:44
Happy to chat to anyone to see how we can help in any way. So welcome.

Speaker 1 00:46:47
Thank you so much for that. And yeah, I look forward for everyone getting an improved a website and emails to go in in the next little while.

Speaker 2 00:46:56
Season as well. I hope you have this amazing sales season.

Speaker 1 00:46:59
Absolutely. All right. Thanks so much, Anna. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to thelotco. Business Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure you subscribe to receive future episodes as they are released. And I'd be so, so grateful for a review on Apple Podcast. If you would like a copy of the show notes or any of the links mentioned today, please jump onto my website at www.thelotco.com.au/podcast. Have an amazing week and I look forward to chatting to you again soon.