ChatGPT and AI Are Destroying Us All! ... on Shopify

What do robots have to do with coffee anyway?

So, turns out I like to push my luck.

Remember last week how I teased the Old Guy in the Office about his coffee last week? Of course you do, but here’s a link if you want to reread it.

Anyway … he snapped out of his “the world is going to hell in a hipster hand-basket” funk when he got a decent espresso shot later that day and they gave him one of those little mandolin butter cookies for free … you know the ones? They are a little crispy on the outside and soft and cake-like on the inside. The Old Guy loves those things. A few bites of the cookie and an unhealthy dose of caffeine and everything was back to normal ... or at least as normal as things get here in the TaskHusky offices.

So, today the Old Guy was talking about how everyone was saying that AI was coming to take all of our jobs and plug-us all — Matrix-like — into steampunk barcaloungers. But he said that he wasn’t worried because, “Some jobs just cannot be replicated by machines” … things like Shopify eCommerce content masters, plumbers, and espresso baristas.

That’s when I told him that this week in the newsletter we are tearing down a website for Robot Coffee Company.

When he heard that the Old Guy slid slowly down off his chair, crawled across the floor, and is now hiding behind the office ficus tree whimpering like a puppy on vet-day. I can’t make out what he’s saying exactly, but I distinctly heard something about Terminators and Judgement Day.

Ya … I might have gone too far.

Truth be told, I was going to review a completely different website for this week’s edition, but I couldn’t resist poking the Old Guy right in his cappuccino. But now I feel kind of bad and the developers are telling me that it’s creepy to have him staring at them with crazy bug-eyes from between the leaves and such. So anyway, I’m having the coffee shop send over a dozen of those mandolins. I figure that I can leave them on the ground in a trail to lure the Old Guy out from behind the ficus and back to his desk.

But I really did find a Shopify merchant called Robot Coffee Company and it’s too late to turn back now. So, let’s meet them, shall we?

Happy Selling,
Zach

App of the Week

Sometimes a little automation is a good thing … especially when it comes to marketing. This app is like having your own personal contact droid that uses email and SMS to bring previous customers and site visitors back where they belong … your Shopify site.

And this IS the droid you are looking for.

Take a look at Recapture.io.

Shopify Teardown Target of the Week: RobotCoffeeCo.com

Robot Coffee Co arrived on the Shopify platform just about two years ago. But I can see that they started the Facebook and Twitter pages in 2017, so I do not know if they were maybe selling a bit here and there before they went the full-eComm route.

They are growing their online presence and our analytics suggests that they are selling about $10k per month in coffee stuffs. Good for them. They are not blowing the doors off yet, but it takes time to build a business and such. They are off to a good start, far exceeding most startup- eCommerce stores less than two years old.

The company is based in Rockville, Maryland.

I’ve got to admit … I was kind of hoping that Robot Coffee Co was going to be one of those companies making actual robots that make coffee … that would have driven the Old Guy crazy! There are companies doing things like that and one of them is called CoffeeRobot.co … just take a look. Heck … seeing that robot making coffee would freak just about anyone out. But they are not on Shopify, so poop to that.

But Robot Coffee Co does sell bags of precisely-roasted premium coffee beans on Shopify. Still a good business, so let’s give ’em some love.

The Shopify Theme That They Use

Robot Coffee Co is using a solid premium theme from GroupThink Themes — the Pipeline theme. This theme comes in four variations, and I think that Robot Coffee Co is using the “Dark” variant.

You can see the theme for yourself and take it for a test drive on the Shopify Theme Store.

Stuff They Do Well

Take a good look at the product packaging and clever names. “Hello: Human,” “Compiler,” and “Logarithm” … I bet they had a lot of fun coming up with those. And I know a LOT of guys in the tech industry that drink a LOT of coffee and might be a perfect target market for this product.

The site is clean and loads super-fast. Of course, with only six products — 3 coffees and some merch — you would expect things to load lickety-split.

The checkout process is all default settings. It works, but is a bit boring as well. The plethora of Express payment options is a nice touch, though.

Stuff That Needs Improvement

Um … if you are going to make a News page … heck, any web page for that matter … you REALLY should have some content on it. At the time of my viewing, this page was totally blank. There’s an old adage in media, “There’s nothing worse than dead air.” If you have no content, hide the page from view until you do.

They have a “Related Items section on every product page. And while this is ALWAYS recommended, when all you have is six products in total, well, you click on one or two product pages and see that the same stuff is “recommended over and over and over again … because there ARE no more products … well, that just starts to feel a little lame, don’t you think?

Again, it’s pet-peeve time. The main menu navigation is … well it’s almost not needed. Perhaps the biggest single recommendation that I would have with a site and brand like this is that when you have so few products, trim everything up tight and make it a single-page site. That’s one long page with all products displayed along with the Contact and About Us stuff on on the Home page. Of course, you would still have the individual product pages, But the short content and blank page issues would instantly go away. And it would turn low-content and low-product variety into a feature … it would feel “purposeful” as opposed to accidental.

Zach-o-meter Score

OK … this is a small brand with few resources and such. I take all of those things into consideration. But this coffee site didn’t get me charged up. There’s plenty of way to increase the buzz and they just ain’t doing it yet.

This site gets a total Zach-o-meter score of 6 out of 10.

The Shopify Apps They Use

As usual, we used our super-duper top secret Shopify website analysis tools to peek under the hood and see what apps they are running on the site. Take a look. If you like what you see on their site you may want to look into the apps that they are using too.

  • Bugsnag — The most popular app in Shopify land these days to snag them darn code bugs.

  • ShopPay/ApplePay/PayPal /GPay/AmazonPay— Express payment options.

  • Network Advertising Initiative — As the LONG app name would suggest, this is an ad network.

Um … that’s it. Three, just like last week. I will roast them for this and other reasons in the Marketing section.

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Marketing Stuff That They Do

I couldn’t even get their Facebook page to load. And the Twitter page — although live and link to from their Shopify site — has zero content … what’s up with that? Why do it and link it and then have nothing?

Their Instagram page at least has some stuff on it … not much, but at least something!

There is no email campaign, no social media ads or campaign … there are no analytics or marketing automation. In short, they are doing absolutely zero marketing that I can see. It makes me doubt the reported sales figures. It’s just way off. And it also means I have no sample ads or posts to show you. :-(

I wanted to give them some more love … honestly! But you got to do stuff to get the light shined on you.

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