CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2132

Hey *|FNAME|* ... Let’s Fetch Customers with RuffWear

August 17, 2021

Hello -

If you have been around us for a while, you know we are dog people. Hello! We’re called “TaskHusky” for a reason, people! Currently, this is the reason.

That’s Lola. See those eyes? I am a sucker. I will buy Lola just about anything she wants. I'm wrapped around her little paw and she knows it. That got me thinking a lot about pet brands. For example … dogs don’t see color the same way humans do. They have only 2 color receptors in their eyes (humans have 3). So, when you buy that bright fuchsia leash, you are buying it because you like fuchsia … the dog sees it as grayish-yellow. And when I say “you” I mean me.  The point is that you have to ALWAYS remember who the customer is and sell to them. I found a dog-brand that does this really well. Let’s take a look at this week’s Shopify teardown. Happy selling,Zachary

This Week’s Target: RuffWear.comCompany ProfilePatrick Kruse is a lesson to every entrepreneur – and not just because he leads a dog-centric business. He is an example of real-world endurance. RuffWear is his third entrepreneurial adventure. After crewing tour boats in the Caribbean, he opened a boat servicing business in California, then he made and sold kayaking gear. Each of those businesses lasted just a few years. But in 1992 he was inspired to create a collapsible bowl so that trekkers could water their dog on hikes. Third time’s the charm, and the success of that one product allowed RuffWear to build up a huge following and diverse product line of gear for working and adventure dogs. I have decided that I like this guy. Today, RuffWear stays out of the doghouse through a multi-channel strategy. That means that they sell on their Shopify Plus site — which has risen to position #250 in all of Shopify-land. They also sell on an Amazon storefront, are carried by major outdoor retailers like REI and BassPro, and have a secondary reseller channels in both the physical and virtual retail universes. AND they sell on social media. More marketing details are in the marketing section below as they should be. The Shopify Theme They UseWhen you look at the RuffWear Home page it sure looks super-custom. But the kibbles and bits of this site — the stuff that makes it work — looks to me like it’s built upon the Debut theme. This is one of the core Free themes from Shopify with some very nice tweaks. You can find the Debut theme here. The Good StuffRuffWear is an established brand. The luxury of being an established brand is that you get to bend the rules. The Home page breaks a lot of those rules. Here, the focus is on story-telling. If they were an unknown, they could not do this because you need to get folks shopped ASAP. But the RuffWear brand has a lot of great stories to tell. And they also know that new customers are FAR more likely to land on a Product page than the home page, and those Product pages are formatted to sell. So, let’s talk about those Product pages. Here’s a good example. These Product pages are simply GORGEOUS. First, RuffWear knows that they are not really a “dog brand.” They are a lifestyle brand. As I said in my intro, dogs don’t buy stull. People do. And people buy premium dog gear for themselves. The page leads with a lifestyle image of the product in action. People see themselves in that photo and are triggered to both aspirational and mimetic desire. Then the photos show the product in a traditional eComm manner. If you view the page on a desktop or laptop, note how the buy set — color, quantity, social proof, CTA — float with you down the page. The set is always there, but never gets in the way. Simply perfect in design. A bit slow to load, but the design is so good I don’t care. One of the guys in the office liked it so much he wanted to buy something even though he doesn’t have a dog. If you select an item, the checkout process has a very nice upsell opportunity and plenty of Express Payment options. Needs ImprovementIt’s not “just” that this is a dog-brand … OK, that’s part of it. But I LOVE this Shopify site. Aside from some slowness issues I got noth’in bad to say. Damn it’s good. Apps They DeployWe ran a scan to see what Shopify apps & supporting services they are deploying. Get a load of this list:

  • Listrak — Email marketing.

  • Bold Commerce — Marketing.

  • BrightEdge — SEO analytics.

  • CrazyEgg — Visualization of user experience.

  • Back in Stock — Inventory alerts.

  • Algolia — Website search.

  • Reamaze — Customer support and engagement.

  • Stamped — Ratings and reviews.

  • Bugsnag — We’re seeing this a lot more … it finds code bugs.

  • PayPal/AmazonPay/ApplePay/ShopPay — The quartet of Express Payment options for the win.

  • DoubleClick — Ad network for retargeting.

This may not be a complete list. But that’s a pretty small list. Who’s the good boy? They’re the good boy … yes they are!

Marketing Stuff They DoAs I said, RuffWear is full multi-channel. Below you will see a screen capture of their very nice Amazon storefront, followed by sample ads running on Facebook (127k followers) and Instagram (370k followers) to inspire you. But they are also active on Pinterest. They have pages on YouTube and Twitter as well, but there has not been a lot of activity on those social platforms in a few years. Instagram gets a lot of their attention, followed by Facebook. So, you can bet this is where the money is for them. And they have an active retargeting campaign and email subscription focus. Once they get you as a customer they work hard to keep you.

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