CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2109

Feeling Sexy with FashionNova.com — Shopify Website Teardown +BONUS Content

March 09, 2021

Hello -

Remember that song from a few decades ago by Right Said Fred? You know the one…. It was called “

.” Sure, it was pretty stupid. But it was a big, big hit back in the day. And what the heck, after weeks of bitter cold, ice, and snow it is 65° here in Michigan.

Sure … next week the temps drop down below zero again as another polar vortex plunges the Midwest back into an apocalyptic landscape of despair. But today the entire state is singing “I’m Too Sexy.” I even dragged the basketball hoop out of the garage.

I hope that the weather’s sexy where you are too.

As long as we’re all feeling sexy … here’s this week’s Shopify 10-minute teardown.

Happy Selling,

Zachary

This Week’s Target: FashionNova.com

Company Profile

On their website the company declares that they are,

“Unapologetically sexy. Obsessed with being the forefront of fashion.”

And they mean it. I even blushed a bit when I reviewed the website and made sure the clear my browser history.

OK … it’s not that bad, or good, or whatever. The point is that this company was founded in 2006 by current CEO Richard Saghian who opened five stores in Los Angeles focused on trendy urban fashion. What is “trendy urban fashion” you ask? Just imagine anything that you can’t find in Omaha.

But 2013 was the big boom year. That’s when they turned their attention to online sales and promoting on the social media platforms that are tailor-made for … well, let’s just say “highly visual products” like these.

They sell on their site, on all the social media platforms, and in their LA-based stores. More on this at the bottom of this email. Interestingly, if you search for “FashionNova” on Amazon you get everything but FashionNova. Got to be a story in there somewhere. But my evaluation of their business model suggests that they are high-turn/low-margin and Amazon takes too big a cut. They are a top 5 Shopify site and a top 15k site on the entire interwebs which are some pretty impressive stats.

The Theme They Use

Their theme is custom-built. Normally I would quibble, but in this case they have literally thousands of active SKUs and they just might need a lot of custom code and supply-chain integration to keep the website up.

The Good Stuff

This site talks sexy, but they are ALL business. EVERYTHING is about getting customers to where they need to be to make a buying decision as soon as possible. It’s almost like five different websites. And once a customer goes down a path they remove all other distractions. This is a VERY busy site visually, but I think it works with their target market.

Between the website and rampant social media empire, these guys go through thousands of photos per month. It would not surprise me if they kept three or more photogs employed full time. It not “art” … but it is well-targeted.

OK … this is another one of those weird “gray areas” when it comes to page speed. I tested the site a few times on my laptop and on my phone and — visually — it loads fast. And that’s what the customers care about. But the metrics seen by the Google-bots suck because there is a, ahem … butt-load of code running in the background. So, page speed scores are pretty bad. But these guys have so much branding power that Google placement is still pretty solid.

The product pages are very well designed. The “above the fold” space is darn near perfect. All the lll=elements are there.

Needs Improvement

That said ... the page speed is pretty bad in a few meaningful ways and I wish they would spend a little money cleaning up the messy stuff … like the 247 external calls, 7.28 MB load, and page jumping/shifting.

And if you are a follower of our content you know that page speed is a factor in both conversions and SEO. And the SEO is really amateur. Even with their market and social media dominance now, some up-start is going to pull sales because they are better at search.

Apps They Deploy

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

  • Nosto — Personalized shopping experience.

  • Attentive — Personalized messaging.

  • Yottaa — User experience optimization

  • CartKit — Cart abandonment recovery.

  • Grin — Influencer marketing.

  • Measured — Incremental site testing.

  • Snowplow — Open-source analytics.

  • Back in Stock — inventory notifications.

  • Foursixty — Instagram channel.

  • Talktable — Customer referral program.

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

  • Boomerang — UX performance.

  • BounceX — Exit intent marketing.

This may not be a complete list.

Marketing Stuff They Do

FashionNova advertises extensively on social media. They have 2.7 million followers on Facebook, nearly 20 million on Instagram, 572 thousand on Pinterest, 2.1 million on TikTok, and a bunch of other stuff … so a LOT.

Below is a sampling of 3 recent Facebook ads running now. At least, the ones I can show you in this family-friendly email.

Sponsored

Want a Shopify website that turns customer's heads? 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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