CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2120

Keeping the Beat with RayconGlobal.com on Shopify

May 25, 2021

Hello - 

I was writing this week’s email while having a text conversation with a buddy that started with the target of our teardown and ended up talking about Apple and Steve Jobs. 

Stick with me on this ….

Gobs of BS business books have been written about Steve Jobs this and Apple Computer that. And yes, it’s all interesting and cool. But when it comes right down to it, the most important and lasting legacy of Steve Jobs may not be the Mac, the iPhone, or the iPad tablet. The most important innovation to come out of Steve Jobs’ noggin might be a fundamental economic insight that we all take for granted now. It’s a part of our everyday life in deeply meaningful ways.

Micro-payments.

It used to be that banks and Credit Card companies HATED small charges with a passion that bordered on the fringes of insanity. They even constructed their model to discourage them by charging a minimum transaction fee of $0.50 or so plus 3% of the sale. Small convenience stores would take ONLY cash for transactions under $5 or $10 because the fees would kill them on the small stuff.

When Apple launched iTunes in early 2001, Jobs wanted to sell individual songs from back catalogs for $0.99. And he did, first by batching transactions, then letting customers deposit (prepay and gift cards), then by showing the banks that they were freak’in idiots leaving a fortune on the table.

Now, micro-payments are everywhere … gaming, music, phone apps, podcasts, content subscriptions … even in the Shopify apps you use in your stores. The entire tech universe is copying Steve Jobs's successful business model, making billions.

Speaking of copying a successful business model, here’s this week’s Shopify teardown.

Happy Selling,

Zachary

This Week’s Target: RayconGlobal.com

Company Profile

William Ray Norwood — better known as Ray J — is a bona fide success. His 

 identifies him as a, and I quote, “singer, songwriter, rapper, television personality, actor, and entrepreneur.” He is also a card-carrying member of the lucky-family club (his older sister is the singer Brandy and his first cousin is Snoop Dogg and a few other famous folks. And he famously (infamously) …. um, let’s just call it “dated Kim Kardashian on video” back when she was an up-and-coming reality TV star.

Anyway ….

Remember when Dr. Dre came out with his Beats headphones in 2006 … then sold the company to Apple for a cool $3 billion eight years later? Do you remember that? Ray J remembers that. And Ray J remembers HOW Dre did that via influencer marketing before everyone knew that was a thing and with stylish designs and decent packaging.

So, that is what Ray J is doing with Raycon. They sell earbuds and headphones on their website, have a robust social media presence and influencer marketing campaign, sell via a virtual storefront on Amazon, and have a wholesale channel. They are a top 100 Shopify site and are a top 30k or 40k site on the internet depending on whose numbers you trust.

The Shopify Theme They Use

The Raycon Shopify site is heavily tweaked and modified, but at its core, it is the Pipeline theme by Groupthought. 

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The Good Stuff

There is a LOT to love about this website. It’s clean, stylish, and on-task like a laser beam in a James Bond film. Sure, they sell earbuds. But folks can buy earbuds anywhere. What they are really selling is identity and lifestyle and they are doing it very well.

The product pages are nearly perfect. The above-the-fold content is simple yet has EVERYTHING a customer needs to make the buying decision. 

. Great images, social proof, risk reversal, payment plan, impulse buy-it-now pricing, clear call-to-action … it’s ALL there in full view at the top of the page.

The shopping cart has even MORE risk-reversal (always be closing) and the checkout process has solid Express Payment options ready to rock.

Make sure to check out the “Our Fans” strip on the Home page which is filled with celebrity endorsers looking natural and organic … perhaps a bit TOO natural and organic. 

Needs Improvement

There is really only one thing that is not working here — page speed. The numbers really suck. This will hurt them now that Google is punishing sites that are slow by Google metric standards. It does NOT have to be this way. All they have to do is make a tech project to clean the code up now. It’s the perfect time because we have months to work through the issues now before the holiday season kicks off.

Apps They Deploy

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

  • Klaviyo — eCommerce marketing and automation.

  • HotJar — Website heatmaps and behavior analytics.

  • Attentive — Personalized messaging.

  • Tatari — TV and Streaming Video Advertising.

  • DoubleClick — Ad network.

  • Stamped — Ratings and reviews.

  • Weglot — Translation API.

  • Fontdeck — Font api.

  • Bugsnag — Bug discovery and tracking tool for code.

  • Talkable — Customer referral program.

  • Kustomer — Customer experience and support.

  • Privy — Email list automation.

  • JudgeMe — Customer review display.

  • ShopPay/PayPal/GPay — Express Payment options.

  • Klarna — Schedule payments.

This may not be a complete list. There are some unused apps here. And the code has well over 200 external calls on the home page alone and more than 250 on the sample product page I looked at. Completely unnecessary. This stuff needs to be cleaned up.

Marketing Stuff They Do

Social Ads

RayconGlobal is obviously a content and marketing company first. And with the target audience that they are going after, that is EXACTLY what they need to be. Here are some screen captures of the latest three 

/Instagram ads for inspiration.

Amazon Storefront

And here is a screen capture of 

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Sponsored

Does your Shopify site skip a few beats? 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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