CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2202

Let's Get Sweet ... on Shopify

Did you know that today, January 11th, is Eugenio Maria de Hostos Day? Now, at this point if you are not asking yourself “who the heck is Eugenio Maria de Hostos?” then you are probably from Puerto Rico. That’s because the honorable Señor Hostos wanted independence from Spain for Puerto Rico and envisioned a grand Caribbean confederation of islands ….  Anyway … they still think he’s a big deal. How do I know that it’s Eugenio Maria de Hostos Day? Well, I was thinking about the holidays and talking about what was coming up and then “The Old Guy” in the office shouted out that he should get off work early because it’s Eugenio Maria de Hostos Day. And when I accused him of looking for any excuse to knock off work early to drink rum, he looked me straight in the eye and said, “Well, what about Saint Patrick’s Day Mr. Zachary McClung … that’s your excuse to drink green beer and Irish Whiskey.” What was I gonna do … remind him that I’m Scottish? So, “The Old Guy” is now off somewhere sipping Tiki cocktails.  Anyway … what is the next holiday selling opportunity? All I can say is this year the Super Bowl is on Sunday February 13th and the next day is Valentine’s Day – February 14th. Last year folks spent more than $15 billion on the Super Bowl – that’s a lot of nachos, brats, helmet-shaped mugs, and team jerseys. And American consumers also spent more than $20 billion dollars on Valentine’s Day. There is no comment I can make that will not either endanger my man-card or get me in trouble with the woman so let’s look at a site that makes more money on Valentine’s Day than it does on any other holiday, including Christmas and the Super Bowl … and it’s NOT a jewelry store.Happy Selling,Zach

This Week’s Shopify Target: OliviaMacaron

Macaroons are 2 fluffy, cake-like biscuits made from ground nuts or coconut pressed together with a flavoring inside. Sort of like a fancy European Oreo cookie made of expensive stuff that doesn't dip well into milk — or so I've heard. Often, they are brightly colored and festive. Everyone thinks that they’re French, but the first macaroons were made in Italy.

Ana Claudia left her finance career to have a child — daughter Olivia. She spent the time in between various child-rearing duties baking tasty treats. And when the time came to re-enter the workforce she decided to make a new career out the macaroon recipe she had perfected and named the business after her daughter. She opened the doors to her first retail store in Washington DC in 2013 and now has 2 physical locations and her Shopify storefront where she sells brightly-colored, calorie-laden flavor bombs to customers all over the country. And it seems that the macaroon business ramps up for the romantic holiday in February quite nicely.

The Theme They Use

Sigh … they are using a custom theme. Now, don’t get me wrong here. The site looks line. But this site just is not doing anything that special to warrant the cost of a custom theme in my opinion. More on this in a minute. But I just do not think that a small business without some special functions or needed integrations should spend the money on a custom theme. They should take ALL of that cash and spend it on marketing. For 99.9% of the small Shopify businesses out there, a standard premium theme that cost a few hundred dollars along with a reasonable amount of tweaking and a few adjustments is more than fine.

What They Do Well

We haven’t talked about page speed in a while, but this is worth mentioning. OliviaMacaron is doing as well as I’ve seen any small Shopify brand do. There is a little too much page shifting on the desktop view that dings their scores, but all around the site performance is solid. Kudos to them.

The photography is good. I’m sitting here getting hungry just looking at that Winter Comfort Gift Box. Go ahead and

and tell me I’m wrong.

OK … I think I know why they thought that they needed a custom theme …. Check out the flavor selection tool

. I get it … but that little app cost them a ton of cash. It looks good though. They even let you choose ribbon color, but I think that overdoes it from a business sense.

What Needs Improvement

The Home page wastes too much space showing stuff other than products. “News, Press, and More” just has no business taking up that valuable real estate. Show me more stuff that makes me hungry.

The

is broken. See how the text is unbounded and runs off the left and right in both desktop and mobile view?

The Shopping Cart has a lot of requirements to proceed and it is not fault tolerant. If you forget to choose a shipping date or do not click the terms and conditions checkbox it just refreshes the page and does not tell you what you did wrong.

The Shopify Apps They Use

  • Klaviyo – marketing automation.

  • GovX – Government and military discount management.

  • ApplePay/PayPal/GooglePay – 3 of the 4 primary Express Payment options.

  • Fancybox – Lightbox creation tool.

  • Boomerang – Website performance measurement.

  • Flickety – touch responsive carousels.

Geeze … that’s not a lot of apps. This has to be one of the main reasons the site performs so well.

Marketing Stuff They Do

I was really surprised. They have active

,

,

, and

social media pages – all of which should do well since their products are visual. But all the posts are organic. They are not buying any social media ads as far as I can tell.

They do seem to be buying a limited about of Search Ads. I could find 3 search placement ads running right now, and I have put all 3 of them below for your information and inspiration.

Sponsored

In between the holidays is the PERFECT time to something sweet to your site. We can help. 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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