CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2106

Combing It Out with TheBeardClub.com | 10-Minute Shopify Teardown

February 09, 2021

Hello -

As my faithful readers know, I write these beautiful emails on Monday so that you can have them in your email box promptly on Tuesday morning. But some Mondays … ya’ feel me?

I’m not complaining … well, I am, but not really. I’m lucky. I have a bazillion great customers like you to keep things humming here at TaskHusky headquarters. But it’s Monday and the temperature hasn’t been above freezing in more than a week and there’s more snow on the way. So, getting up and going this morning was … let’s just say “problematic.” I didn’t even shave so I probably look like I feel — a bit scruffy.

I could just let it go and grow out one of those big Viking beards. What do you think?

That reminds me … here’s this week’s Shopify 10-minute teardown.

Happy Selling,

Zachary

This Week’s Target: TheBeardClub.com

Company Profile

TheBeardClub.com is one of those rare brands these days where the name tells you just about everything you need to know about the business. They sell men’s grooming items, specifically for those who have facial hair. They opened as “DollarBeardClub” back in 2014 but they changed it to “TheBeardClub” in 2017 — we’re betting they got a nasty letter from Unilever and their DollarShaveClub subsidiary. Hey … lawyers gotta eat, right? They sell a lot of hair-inspired merchandise and have grown to become a top-200 Shopify site and a top 50k site on the entire interwebs thingy.

They sell on their site, have an extensive presence on Amazon, and sell on Facebook/Instagram. More on this at the bottom of this email.

The Theme They Use

When we use our state-of-the-art scanning tools, we’ve determined that the theme is … we don’t know. The code indicates that it is a custom theme, but we think that it is a heavily modified template theme with the root theme identifiers hidden.

The Good Stuff

TheBeardClub actually does something that we like a lot and have recommended to several customers. Instead of having a Hero image followed by collections followed by yadda yadda yadda, the home page is a long series of Hero images in strips. Each one has a clear message and call to action (CTA). We like this approach for some brands … it really works here.

The navigation is clean and no-nonsense, guiding you always to start whopping for your beard stuff.

Most product pages are solid with great SEO’d content and plenty of good stuff above the fold so that customers who want to decide quickly can have all the info they need to make the buying decision right away without scrolling.

Needs Improvement

The shopping cart is clunky and a bit slow. There is no “Continue Shopping” option — which is really odd. What if I wanted to buy those nice electric clippers to go with my beard conditioning cream?

Also, there are no Express Payment options. No PayPal, no ApplePay, no ShopPay, no nothing. What’s up with that? Doing my trial purchase, I had to manually fill in each field. It’s not until three screens in that I see a teeny-tiny PayPal radio button AFTER I’ve entered all that info. Come on guys … it’s not hard to update this stuff and deploy it properly.

The page actually load pretty fast. BUT … the speed scores suck. And it’s all because of one app mucking up the works — Webeyez. It runs at the end of the code thread so the user experience is OK, but Google hates you. And if Google hates you … well, you got problems.

Looks like they ran ZenDesk in the past but do not run it now? Anyway … it’s breaking your code in the middle with a failed external call. Fix it.

There is Magento code in here … I have NO FREAKING IDEA what that’s about.

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.

  • Elevar — Tag management.

  • Speedcurve — UX analytics.

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

  • SwellRewards — customer loyalty programs.

  • Zendesk — Customer service and support.

  • Weglot — Translation API.

  • JudgeMe — Product review management.

  • YouTube/Vimeo — Video streaming.

  • Boomerang — performance analytics from consumer’s POV.

  • DoubleClick — Ad network.

This may not be a complete list.

Marketing Stuff They Do

TheBeardClub advertises extensively on social media.

Below is a sampling of their 3 most recent Facebook ads that ran starting immediately after the holidays and are still running now. I have also included a screen capture of their brand presence on Amazon below those ads.

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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