CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2142

Hey *|FNAME|* — Getting LOUD About Electronics Down Under … on Shopify

Hello —

Do you remember last week when I got all distracted talking about football for four paragraphs? Of course you do.  All I want to do is take a moment and update you that my hometown Michigan State Spartans beat our in-state rivals — they who shall not be named lest the devil himself appear. We … I mean they … are now 8-0 and ranked #5 in the nation. Boom! In honor of this monumental achievement, I decided to review the #5 Shopify store in the world. I’m just clever that way. But determining who is #5 is not as easy as it sounds. Do you go by web traffic? Number of customers? Number of sales? Amount of sales in dollars? Do you go by quarter, year, or all time? And then whose data do you trust? It’s not like any business ever fudged the numbers a bit here and there to get on a top ten list before, right? So, I took three methods and found the site that averaged in the 5th position across all three.  And I was really happy with myself until I went to the site and saw one of the ugliest monstrosities I’ve ever seen. The bright, garish colors nearly gave me a seizure. The rapid flicking of the hero image scrolled by so fast I got motion sick. In fact, this site is soooo ugly …. “How ugly is it Zach?” Well, I’ll tell you …  This website is soooo ugly that the web designer didn’t send an invoice, he sent an apology letter. This website is soooo ugly that during a ransomware attack the hacker cried because he thought they had suffered enough. But sometimes ugly works for you. Here’s this week’s Shopify teardown.Happy Selling,Zachary

This Week’s Target: JBHIFI.com

The “JB” in JB Hi-Fi is John Barbuto. He launched his first record store in East Keilor, Victoria, Australia way back in 1974. That’s 47 years ago folks. And the key to their continued success is that they never fell behind the times. First they expanded into sound systems. Then they made the leap into VHS tape players, then DVDs, then CDs … whenever technology made a leap, BD Hi-Fi leapt with it. Now they sell computers and TVs and cell phones and home theaters and cameras and drones and … well just about anything electronic. And they are an Australia institution with generations of loyal shoppers.

So, when retail went online, they did too.

They have more than 200 physical store locations across the Down-Under … and one ugly-monkey-butt website selling tens of millions of dollars worth of electronics using mind-numbing, soul-sucking eye spasms. They are so successful that researchers study how they do their data analytics. 

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When I look at the business it seems like a combination of RadioShack, Best Buy, and the fictional “Buy More” store from the TV show Chuck.

The Theme That They Use

When I used our super-secret website spy tools to scan the theme, I immediately got a phone call from federal marshals of the witness protection program asking that I not reveal the folks who designed this website who had been removed to a secure location … for their own protection.

Not really. It’s a custom theme which means that

some sadomasochistic son-of-a-b did this on purpose

. But not only is it a custom theme, it's a Franken-Site.

Want to know what a Franken-Site is?

Read all the way to the end of the newsletter and I'll tell you all about it.

What They Did Good

I need to be fair. This site has TONS of images and animations and screen changes. But I have to say that it loads a LOT faster than I thought it would. Behind the evil curtain of neon-colored schmaltz is someone watching the code and keeping it fairly clean and tight.

They have 4 ways to “buy now, pay later.” They want zero friction between their customers and the sale. They pay a few extra points on those transactions, but they KNOW it’s worth it — especially on big-ticket items.

The product pages have great “above the fold” content. Everything you need is there. 

. SEO, social proof, solid offer presentation, payment options, upsells, followed by product details.

What Needs to Be Improved

OK … I might be exaggerating the “ugly website” stuff here just a bit.

But I am trying to make a point.

I like great design as much as anyone. The sight of a clean, well-coded Shopify site with elegant style still gives me the chills. But the most powerful forces in eCommerce are brand, performance, service, and brand … and brand. You should focus on everything and have great attention to detail. But form follows function … get the business side right first, then make it pretty. And if you have to choose, choose getting the business right every time.

The Express Payment Options are not implemented well. They need to come sooner in the checkout process so that address and other details can be auto-filled to reduce time and friction.

The Apps That They Use

  • Optimizely — Personalization, geotargeting, and A/B testing.

  • Klaviyo — Customer lifecycle management.

  • CrazyEgg — User visit visualization.

  • Inspectlet — User action recording (spy on visits).

  • Amazon Advertising Sizmek Ad Suite — Keep an eye on this one folks.

  • Riskified — Fraud and Chargeback risk detection.

  • Algolia — On site search API.

  • Zendesk — Customer support.

  • Bugsnag — Find code errors (We see this app nearly every week now).

  • PayPal/ApplePay — Express Payment options.

  • Contentful — I am going to go into this more in the next paragraph.

This seems like a relatively low number of apps. But there is a LOT going on here. Read the next section.

This is a FrankenSite

You see that app called “Contentful” listed above? That is not really an app. It is an API interface for making what is called a “headless” website. When we run all the website spy tools, what we see here is a Shopify backend, a bunch of React code running on Ubuntu Linux machines, and a bunch Microsoft .NET Core driving the stuff you see from servers in the Azure. There are other layers as well. Basically this site has three totally different technology stacks — each specialized — working together to make one kick-ass successful eCommerce platform. That’s why they are so successful and why data scientists are writing up studies about how they do it. 

It's actually rather impressive. But WHY would someone do that?

It's simple. Shopify is built for eCommerce, but has trouble handling really large amounts of data. Linux machines have the power to run ton more applications, including some power analytics tools. And when it comes to UI, .NET Core is the fastest platform in code at the moment. So they have kind of built three websites in one to take full advantage of the strengths of each technology.

We are actually seeing more and more of this. But it is only relevant to large eCom sites with Big Budgets ...

I like Big Budgets and I will not lie

. But most site don't need — and cannot afford — it. JBWIFI likely has a full team on staff to keep this thing running.

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Is your Shopify site scary? 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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