CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2125

Hello -

“Have you ever heard of Kristin Cavallari?” If you ask that question in the wrong crowd you get dirty looks from Millennials. I’m just a guy fixing Shopify sites and doing entrepreneurial magic. How am I supposed to keep up with so-called “reality TV” and whose dancing with whose stars or who’s winning the latest Cupcake War? “Besides … you want reality? Run a small business online for a week and you’ll get a dose of real-reality so don’t give me none of your attitude!” … is what I should have said.  But turns out I may have been a bit too hasty on the lovely and recently single Ms. Cavallari. Not only is she an attractive TV-type person, but she has her own Shopify store where she sells jewelry and accessories. Who knew?  To apologize for ignoring her obvious celebrity and online work ethic I will now offer my two cents review of her website … and she is free to call me anytime for a free Shopify consultation … I’m just super-generous that way. Here’s this week’s teardown.

Happy selling,Zachary

This Week’s Target: Uncommon JamesCompany ProfileJames is the middle name of Kristin Cavallari’s brother. She liked that name, so she made it the middle name of her daughter too. Someone said that it was certainly uncommon, and “Uncommon James” stack as a brandable and trademarkable name. Before this she had a partnership with jewelry-designer buddy Chelsea Bulte called “Emerald Duv.” When that relationship soured a bit, Cavallari launched her Uncommon James jewelry line in 2017. Since then things have been going well. She sells through her Shopify website and through a network of resellers. She also has her first physical store location in Nashville along with one in Chicago and one in Dallas, is super active on social (as we’ll see shortly), and has fully embraced the devil … I mean Amazon storefronts. The site itself is in the top 130 in the Shopify multi-verse. The Shopify Theme They UseHidden in the code is a reference to a theme named “Beauty Launch Theme” that was updated just a few days ago. But the reporting tools say that it is a custom theme. To me it feels like a regular theme template that has been heavily modified. The Good StuffKristin takes good photo. And she obviously has the photography budget to take full advantage of it. All kidding aside, this brand and product line are tailor made for visual selling. Great photography is the entry-level threshold for big-time success here whether you pay a pro or shoot it yourself. Take a good look at the navigation. Everything is about getting to seeing photos and buying what is in them. Any “About Us” or business terms and such is justifiably relegated to the footer where it belongs. The add to cart and checkout process works nice and the Express Payment options work well.  They offer free shipping on all jewelry orders. I totally get what they are doing here. Jewelry ships super cheap and they turned this into a tactical advantage without losing money on the bigger items. Nicely done. Needs ImprovementObviously UncommonJames is not relying on SEO for sales. Maybe with their advertising and social campaigns they just don’t have too. So, when I say that the SEO sucks, I mean it in the most complimentary way possible. :-) Along with the SEO debacle, they suffer from the slings and arrow of outrageous slowness. Google Page Speed Insights HATES them with a visceral longing for revenge on the automated bot side of things. Speaking objectively, I viewed several pages personally on both desktop and mobile. From a “real” experience point of view the mobile view was not bad. “IF” target customers find their way to the page a little slowness there will not hurt them. But if Google hates you, over time fewer and fewer folks will find you organically. On desktop the product pages jumped all around … at least when I was testing it. They need to pay more attention to this stuff. I would like to recommend an installment payment option. I racked my cart up over a hundred bucks and was not offered payments. I think that this will help conversions.  Apps They DeployWe ran a scan to see what Shopify apps & supporting services they are deploying. Get a load of this list:

• Btonto — Multi-channel marketing platform.

• Attentive — Personalized messaging.

• Fera — Urgency and social proof system.

• AudioEye — Accessibility tool.

• Rebuy — Data-driven content personalization.

• Zendesk — Customer service.

• Boost Commerce — Product search and filtering.

• Reserve in Store — Drive online traffic to physical stores.

• Bugsnag — Snags bugs in the code, duh.

• Rollbar — Code error analysis.

• Yotpo — Customer reviews

• PayPal/AmazonPay/Shoppay/ApplePay — Express payment options.

• DoubleClick — Ad network.

• AdRoll — Retargeting.

This may not be a complete list.  Kristin … we all have baggage. Yours are nearly 4MB of page load and 216 external calls filled with errors and cancels left over from previous app relationships that just didn’t work out. I can help you let go of all that. My door is always open.

Marketing Stuff They Do

UncommonJames.com has known accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest that are all actively maintained. There’s also a Twitter account, but it seems perfunctory and not actively maintained with any verve — so, we’ll leave it off of this email. Here are some screen captures of three current Facebook/Insta ads along with their social and Amazon presences.