CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2103

Hello - 

I was healthier during the height of the pandemic. I was eating right and exercising and looking good. Then the holidays hit and TaskHusky got busy. The combination of a lot of work and Christmas cookies is deadly, my friends. The struggle is real.

But now’s the time for all of us to get things back in shape. If you’ve been putting off getting your Shopify site trimmed up and nimble, the holidays are over and now’s the time to get FABULOUS. 

Speaking of getting fab, here’s this week’s target 10-minute teardown.

Happy Selling,

Zachary

This Week’s Target: FAB.com

Company Profile

Jason Goldberg is a serial entrepreneur famous for failing — really, really BIG — with other people’s money. He’s done it a few times. The most recent example is FAB.com. At one time FAB.com was valued at over $1 billion. And THAT, my friends, is what they call a unicorn. Just a few years later he took a bail-out acquisition offer of just $15 million when the brand was purchased by PCH — a technology and retail innovations shop based in Ireland ... we think ... they are a bit out there and rather covert about things.

But what matters to us now is that FAB.com is a top 20 Shopify store and a top 12k site on the internet. They now sell “wellness” items — which we assume excludes former investors because they are likely not feeling very well no matter how healthy they appear. Anyway … it’s yoga this and exercise that and online Peloton-wanna-be fitness classes. Since we’re not too high and mighty to kick a site when they are doing Pilates, let’s have a look.

The Good Stuff

Holy crapola Batman ... this is one of the fastest loading sites we’ve reviewed. There is a little layout shifting issue (interstitial), but DAMN. Someone has paid attention to all of our content. They score REALLY well on all major metrics of page speed. It’s actually quite impressive seeing how they have a lot of images of attractive, athletic people doing attractive, athletic things.  But I checked — purely in the interests of science — and those images are well balanced for speed and quality. Not perfect, but almost. Any issues are not the developer’s fault. The code is super-clean.

The website layout is fairly good and the images are nice.

Needs Improvement

The navigation is clunky. Unless you have been to the site before, how would you know that the menu item “Practice” means buying yoga mats? And how does “Track” mean jewelry? How does “Train” mean iPhone screen scratch guard? They are kind of missing the boat here. No, they are SERIOUSLY missing the boat here.

Why are they selling a chess set? Seriously … why?! Branding ADD much? [checkmate]

This website is NOT ready for prime time. When I clicked on the button in their hero image on taking online yoga classes it took me to a sub-domain … a freak’in sub-domain, people! That is SEO and analytics death. AND on that hell-scape of a sub-domain there is a popup window advertising one of the apps they have installed in Shopify called “Click Funnels.” Nice … make me click off of a popup advertising to me that you are tracking me. It gets worse from there.

Gee … I wonder why this website is struggling? {in case you missed it, this is sarcasm)

I’m going to stop now … this doesn’t seem fair. And they haven’t updated in months.

Apps They Deploy

We ran a scan to see what Shopify apps & supporting services they are deploying. Let’s take a look:

• HotJar — website heatmaps and behavior analytics.

• Klaviyo — eCommerce marketing and automation.

• NewRelic — real-time website monitoring.

• Stamped — Reviews and Ratings.

• Intercom — CRM and messaging tool.

• Zipify — Landing page builder.

• Boomerang — performance analytics from consumer’s POV.

• Modernizr — Browser optimization

• Flickety — Touch responsive carousels.

• DoubleClick — Ad network.

This may not be a complete list.

Marketing Stuff They Do

OK … this is looking grim. They haven’t posted on social media since mid-December and have no ad campaigns running at this time. But they still appear ready and willing to take money on orders. 

I have no inside info, but even their “social proof” testimonials on the home page have one that starts, “I was skeptical .…” That is messaging suicide.

I take no hidden pleasure at this. But we could be looking at a $1 billion to zero situation.

That said, there are some lessons for all of us in this tragi-comic case study. When you dig into all the details, the current state of FAB.com seems to have a common thread … brand integrity. They keep changing who they are and what they’re selling so customers keep getting confused. I know I am.

Sponsored

Make Shopify Site "Good FAB," Not "Bad FAB"

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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