CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2205

Getting the Boot ... on Shopify

Yo -  So, it’s cold again. Seems like it happens every year at this time. Coincidence? I think not! Tuesday through Thursday we are going to get rain and ice followed by snow. On Saturday the temp will be -2*f. At times like this it’s hard to even think warm thoughts. So I went out into the interwebs to find a “warm” Shopify store to write about this week. And I thought that I hit the jackpot when I found “Paloma Wool.” No such luck. The website has absolutely ZERO to do with Palomas (doves) or wool. Talk about your false advertising — it’s a Shopify store that sells attitude and over-priced clothes for skinny people with WAY too much money on their hands. Next, I found a Shopify site called Eskimo Joes. It’s a restaurant that sells merch on the side. Dang … just T-shirts. No self-respecting Eskimo fishing off an ice floe would wear a T-shirt. Then I heard that weatherman say something about “weather models predicting up to a foot of snow” and I thought to myself, “Gonna need some boots.” And here we are folks …. Welcome to this week’s Shopify website teardown. I’m gonna write this fast before the frostbite sets in.Happy Selling,Zach

This Week’s Shopify Target: ThursdayBoots.com

Turns out Thursday Boots are not “keep you from losing your toes in an ice storm” boots. They are more “look cool walking down Broadway” kinds of boots. And sure enough, they were founded in New York in 2014 by

and

after a surfing trip to Nicaragua.

They have a physical location in the Flatiron district of New York, have an

that mimics their Shopify site, and their successful eCommerce website that is in the top 100 of all Shopify wonderland. They sell boots and accessories in 60 coutnries.

The Shopify Theme They Use

The analytics tools say this is a custom theme. Sure, it looks good and performs well. But the layout and functionality is fairly straight forward. The custom part is a little developer trick that … wait a second, I am obligated to warn all the readers.

NERD ALERT! NERD ALERT! The next few words are stupid nerdy code tech crap that you probably will not care about!

There are actually 3 different websites here, I think. They are using what’s called an “nginx reverse proxy” tactic to send blog traffic one way, content load another, and then use the Shopify backend for transactions. We are seeing this more and more and I call them Franken-sites. But the funny thing is that the developers named this custom configuration “Production Trolls.” Nerds think things like that are funny.

Anyway … it’s expensive custom Shopify website stuff. Does it pay off? In super high-volume situations with sophisticated inventory and distribution systems, sure. For >99% of site, nope.

What They Do Well

The design is super clean and easy to navigate. Look in the main menu and in the hero image. The Calls-to-Action (CTAs) are completely binary — “Shop Men” and “Shop Women.” They know what folks are here and they waste ZERO time getting you in the sales funnel.

On the

when you mouse-over the boots a color selector appears below the image. That’s pretty slick.

On the

you can mouse over the various colors and the main image changes sharply. The size selector implementation is strong too. All of those customizations are tied into their inventory management system for real-time updates. Really solid work. Go ahead and click a few different combinations and when you hit one that is in low inventory you get an instant urgency message with a remaining count. It updates so freak’in fast! The developers have spent TONS of hours streamlining that. This performance is why they have all that custom work for the theme.

The checkout implementation works well too ... equally speedy. And there are a few Express payment options available. In my test I only saw 2 — AmazonPay and PayPal. Wondering if there is an issue with ApplePay and ShopPay with them?

What Needs Improvement

Personal pet peeve … all those photos of their boots stepping over logs and on boulders and stuff? People who wear these boots have never seen a log or a boulder and keep their shoes in special boxes inside walk-in closets. Just say’in.

There is nothing wrong with this site. Super clean and simple, but with very speedy customizations to make the shopping experience fast and satisfying for the user. Good stuff. I wish it sucked a bit more so I could warm myself over the internal fire of snark, but no.

The Shopify Apps They Use

  • Klaviyo — Customer lifecycle management with is just a fancy way of saying marketing automation.

  • Heap — User behavior capture.

  • Back in Stock — Inventory alerts.

  • Bugsnag — The hottest code error app going these days.

  • YotPo — The Po of Yots … actually, it’s a way for customers to write reviews and such.

  • PayPal/AmazonPay — Express Payment Options.

  • DoubleClick — Ad network.

  • Taboola — Personalized recommendations.

  • PepperJam Network — Affiliate Marketing.

  • Outbrain — Content Engagement.

  • LiveIntent — Email advertising.

  • Toutiao — Product recommendation system.

  • Zendesk — Customer Support.

That’s not a long list. But remember, these guys are splitting things up into multiple websites behind the scenes. I bet they have things running that the analysis tools can’t see easily.

Marketing Stuff They Do

I found dozens of search ads running — 3 examples below. They are also running social media ads without end. I could have included dozens of examples. And it is worth mentioning that most of their social media ads used video. Must be working for them.

Sponsored

Let’s shine and polish it together. 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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