CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2050

10-Minute +BONUS Teardown of Rhone.com on Shopify

December 29, 2020

Hello -

Holy mackerel folks … this is the LAST TaskHusky email of the year. But just because this is the interlude in between Christmas and New Years doesn’t mean I’m slacking off.

OK … well, it usually means I’m slacking off, but NOT THIS YEAR!

Here’s the deal. I am ADDING additional content to the email as we spill the beans on top Shopify websites. First you got the Good Stuff and the Bad Stuff about each site. Then we added a list of the Shopify Apps they used. And now we’re adding a section at the end with Marketing Stuff — links to their commercials and images of some of the ads that they are running. The idea is that since these are successful companies, you might pick up some ideas or inspiration.

Cool, right? Let’s do this thing.

Happy Selling,

Zachary

This Week’s Target: Rhone.com

Company Profile

Rhone started by selling men’s clothes online. They have since expanded to let the ladies shop on the site as well. And they sell a LOT of stuff. Maybe you’ve seen their ads on TV and social media … who hasn’t? They are a top 100 Shopify site and a top 27k site on the internet. Sounds like success to us.

The Good Stuff

They obviously spend a lot on photography. Even though the image formatting is terrible (see below) the quality and content of the images is well done.

The Product pages are organized well, but the load VERY slow (see below). The above-the-fold content has all the info you need to make a quick decision, but there is plenty more content on the page if the customer wants more.

They do not use Trust Badges, but they communicate Risk Reversal well using text blocks — and they hammer on the Return/Refund policy in several places because they know it's important.

The Shopping cart displays well after each selection and offers a good range of Express Payment options. This is getting them sales.

Needs Improvement

Wow … page speed sucks. In industry-standard tests the top image take more than 3 seconds to display and has small interstitial jumping when it does. Both are BIG no-nos. it's also a full 14 seconds before all of the interactive elements actually become interactive. That is the suckiest we’ve seen on a major Shopify brand.

The reasons for the slow speed are real simple Best Practices screw-ups. First, there are 357 external calls on the Home page alone. That is 3.5x standard and there is a TON of unnecessary wasted code — a lot of it may not even be used anymore. Heck, there’s one JavaScript external call that loads for 15 seconds and then just … stops. I could go on, but let’s just say that the code sucks and when you are making as much money as these guys there is just no excuse for that.

Oh … and we sampled a half dozen images and all of them were formatted wrong to balance quality and performance. Every page is a pain. After initial page load, scrolling jumps around so much it’s like using a flip book.

… no Image ALT tags? Really? What is this, 1996?

Apps They Deploy

We ran a scan to see what Shopify apps & supporting services they are deploying. Get a load of this list:

  • ApplePay/PayPal/AmazonPay — Express Payment options.

  • RapLeaf — Marketing automation.

  • Ometria — eCommerce analytics.

  • Shoelace — Another retargeting platform.

  • Attentive — Text messaging.

  • HotJar — Website heatmaps and behavior analytics.

  • Dynamic Yield — Personalization and conversion optimization.

  • LuckyOrange — Website heatmaps and behavior analytics. (why do you need two?)

  • SwellRewards — Loyalty and referral program.

  • Segment — Customer Data Analytics (serious micro-targeting).

  • Tatari — Measure effectiveness of TV ads to drive traffic to websites.

  • Snowplow — Open-source analytics.

  • Riskified — Fraud detection and chargeback prevention.

  • Back in Stock — Customer inventory product notification.

  • Searchanise — eCommerce search widget.

  • Zopim /Zendesk — customer service and support and chat

  • Aimtell — Web push notifications.

  • JustUno — Social Media marketing.

  • Stamped — Reviews and Ratings.

  • LogRocket — Action/engagement micro-tracking.

  • Weglot — Translation API.

  • FastClick — CTA speed optimization.

  • Yotpo — eCommerce marketing and reviews.

  • OXI Social Login — Single Sign On (SSO) tool using social media profiles.

  • AddThis — Social sharing tool.

  • Browse Happy — Browser compatibility alert notification.

  • Klarna — Shopping cart optimizer.

  • AppNexus — Ad network.

  • Rubicon Project — Advertising optimization.

  • Neustar AdAdvisor — Customer data for advertising.

  • The Trade Desk — Ad network.

  • DoubleClick — Ad network.

  • LiveIntent — Email ad system.

  • RockerBox — User behavior intent (exit).

  • PepperJam Network — Affiliate marketing.

  • RTB House — Retargeting.

  • Dstillery — Brand loyalty audience identification.

This may not be a complete list. Do they REALLY need all those apps?

No … no they do not.

Remember that page slowness thing we talked about?

Marketing Stuff They Do

Rhone is a successful business, so they have a big marketing and ad budget — including TV ads and social media. They have had 6 TV ads running recently and

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Below is a sampling of their 3 most recent Facebook ads that ran during the Christmas buying season.

Sponsored

If you need help making Shopify website tweaks or fixing those little nagging things on your Shopify store, let’s get stuff done.

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