CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2138

Hey *|FNAME|* … Take Off That Red Dress … on Shopify

Hello —

Remember how I’ve talked about “The Old Guy” in the office before? Well … I think we broke him. So, when I was talking about the target of this week’s newsletter — RedDress.com — The Old Guy said something like, “Oh, like that movie with Kelly LeBrock.” And after a few minutes of everyone staring at him uncomfortably he unfortunately continued, “You know … that movie with Gene Wilder chasing Kelly LeBrock around. It’s called ‘The Woman In Red’ … like the website you just mentioned.” One of the developers said, “Whose Kelly LeBrock?” and we were immediately informed that she was the hot model from the movie “Weird Science” and that she used to be married to Steven Seagal. And when inevitably someone said, “Who?” The Old Guy looked really upset and tried a different tack, saying, “Well you know Gene Wilder, right?” The staring contest continued, so he called out, “Willy Wonka?” I said, “I thought that was Johnny Depp?” As I write this email I can hear The Old Guy slumped over his laptop breathing into a paper bag. And OF COURSE we know who Steven Seagal is. He was born just up I69 from the TaskHusky offices in Lansing, MI. But aside from that I think The Old Guy must be off his meds … or on them … I can never tell for sure. But today’s newsletter teardown has nothing to do with Oompa Loompas, Aikedo Karate, or 1980s John Hughes Brat-Pack comedy films. It has to do with a Shopify Store with a Kick-Butt name and serious merchant chops … and that’s not weird at all. Let’s get to it.Happy Selling,Zachary

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This Week’s Target: RedDress.comCompany ProfileAll kidding aside, I love stories like this one.  Diana Harbour married immediately after college and worked in “the real world” for only a few months before making the leap and opening her first retail store in Athens, GA, in 2005. In the sixteen years since then she has taken that single location and leveraged it into an online retail empire. Their first eCommerce site went live in December of 2009. By 2014 sales were on track to reach $14 million in online sales. And that’s when they went on season 6 of Shark Tank. The celebrity investors were stunned at their numbers and two of “The Sharks” — Mark Cuban and Robert Herjavec — went in together to offer a $1.2 million investment for a 20% stake in the company. But that’s not all. By 2019, Diana and her husband. Had pooled enough profits to buy back Mark Cuban’s equity share. They are currently #4 of all Shopify stores and sit about 8k of all websites in the world. Trust me … them there are some GREAT stats. The Shopify Theme They UseThis is a custom website that is actively managed and updated. These folks know how to run web-ops.  The Good StuffThis site is clean, effective, and well managed. I did not find a dingle line of bad code. That’s very rare in my line of work. Navigation is efficient and scream “start buying!” note that the main navigation on top is ONLY about starting the buyer’s journey. The product pages jump around a bit on page load, but they otherwise follow all our best practices. Great content above the fold, installment payment options, efficient display of product options, no wasted space … that kind of thing. There is even an “add to wishlist” button that is a super-stealthy way to add subscribers. Needs ImprovementHuh … no Express Payment options. That’s strange. No PayPal or ShopPay of ApplePay. I don’t get it. What are they thinking? Apps They DeployWe ran a scan to see what Shopify apps & supporting services they are deploying. Get a load of this list:

  • Bold Commerce — Conversion suite.

  • ScarabResearch — Personalized recommendations.

  • Alexa — Premium Analytics.

  • Chartbeat — Live traffic monitoring.

  • Abandoned Car by Marsello — Abandoned cart recovery.

  • Emarsys — eCommerce marketing suite.

  • Attentive — Messaging app.

  • Back IN Stock – inventor alerts.

  • Foursixty — Live Instagram feed.

  • Bugsnag — This code-fixer app is EVERYWHERE these days.

  • Webmakred — It’s the app that runs their wishlist feature.

  • Yotpo — Customer reviews.

  • AfterPay — Installment payments.

  • Magnific Popup — Lightbox popup plugin.

  • Refersion — Affiliate tracking.

  • DoubleClick — Ad network.

This may not be a complete list. I want to say again that the code is super-clean and all apps are operating properly at full speed.. Marketing Stuff They DoTo start, we have to say that RedRess.com is very active on social media, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and SnapChat. But I can’t find that they have purchased any ads there. All the posts are real posts made by real people (shock!). But they have an avid referral affiliate program too, so social influencers are important. Thy do not sell on Amazon as far as we can detect, but Amazon is allowing stores to keyword on their name … because, well, that’s how the Bozos plays the game dirty.  That said, they are SEO WIZARDS. They have a GREAT domain name and brand and that helps. But they also capture and rank for other great keyword sets like “Boutique dresses” (ranked #2), “online dress boutique” (ranked #1), and “cute shoes” (ranked #6). They also do some paid search ads, 3 of which are shown below along with the associated keywords that fire off those ads.

Marketing Stuff They DoFirst I want to say that Amazon is playing dirty pool again. If you search for the actual brand ‚ not “gaming chair” but for the actual brand SecretLab — you are fed a heaping diet of cheap knock-offs that are blatantly ripping off the SecretLab designs. I’d like to tell Bezos where to put his lame rocketship. That said, SecretLab is an ADVERTISING MACHINE. They do social on Facebook, Intagram, Twitter, and YouTube … and they do a good job. They also have paid ads on social. What’s REALLY impressive is that they have multi-language ads. We found English, German, and Korean — obviously they know their audience. There are social ad samples of each below. These are followed by three sample paid Google search ads they are running right now. All provided for your edification, education, and inspiration.

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