CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2208

Feeling Presidential ... on Shopify

Yo - Here we are at the tail end of another wonderful 3-day weekend. As I write this, it is President’s Day. Lots of folks have President’s Day off. If you did, have another beer and raise a glass to me, your humble Shopify newsletter servant slaving away at the computer keyboard so that you can start your Tuesday off on time with a healthy shot of sarcasm, humor, and insights into Shopify stores. You’re welcome. But seeing that it’s President’s Day as I am writing, I thought to find and review a Shopify store sort of “president adjacent.” Holy crap, what did I get myself into. Turns out that every extremist left wing and right wing yahoo with an idea has created a product and built a Shopify site to skewer their target anti-hero. We are distinctly non-political here, but my 2 favorites were the “Hillary Clinton Irretrievable Email Backup Device” and the “Donald Trump Toilet Brush.” I don’t know if either of those Shopify stores is making any money, but they did make me laugh. There are dozens and dozens of these kinds of stores … each worse than the one before it, all of them on Shopify. The things I do for you people. Then there are businesses like Koch Lincoln selling cars, and Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center that sells guitars. But even though they were non-political, both were presidential in name only. By the way, it appears that you can get 1.99% financing on select Lincoln cars – each one comes with an Old Spice car freshener and a “World’s Best Grampa” T-shirt at no extra charge. And remember when Kanye West announced that he was running for president? His merch site is still up and running … you guessed it, also on Shopify. I was going to say, “Kanye’s site does not offer free shipping, but there is an Adderall prescription tucked into the sleeve of every shirt as part of a large election-themed performance art project.” But I decided not to say that.  Then, at last, I finally found a presidential-themed Shopify store that plays it straight down the middle and sells actual stuff that semi-normal people would actually buy and keep. So, cue up “Hail to the Chief” and let’s get this (non-political) party started!Happy Selling,Zach

This Week’s Shopify Target: WhiteHouseGifts

White House Gifts has a real store

in Washington DC. Make total sense, right? And they do some smart marketing in the age of Instagram and TikTik because they have created replicas of both the Oval Office and the White House Press Room and — with a minimum purchase — you can take your photo there. That’s super smart. I’d do it.

Jim Warlick is the man behind this marketing powerhouse. In addition to White House Gifts he has manufactured reproduction vintage campaign buttons and has one of the largest collections of JFK memorabilia in the world. Incidentally, a few years ago he opened an ice cream shop nearby called “

.”

The Shopify Theme They Use

White House Gifts is using a tweaked version of the

by our friends at Maestrooo. And no, all those letter “o” at the end of “Maestrooo” are not a typo. There are, indeed, 3 of them. There’s got to be a story behind that. I’ll have to ask them next time we talk.

What They Do Well

This site does just about everything OK, but nothing outstanding. And that’s fine. Their business is not a flashy all-the-bells-and-whistles king of business. It’s clean, loads fairly fast, and is easy to navigate.

In fact, I think that the navigation is my favorite part of the site. Take a look across that top menu nav. They did NOT just phone that in. There are some unique menu drop-downs there and it proves that they have studied their customers and have learned through iteration what helps their target audience find and buy fast. Take a serious look at the non-intuitive menu items.

The checkout confirmation popup offers some good upsells and that thing jumps onto the screen. It is super-fast optimized.

What Needs Improvement

There is not a lot to criticize here. But for so few running apps (see the next section) there sure are a LOT of external calls and a couple of them are broken. So while the site visually loads pretty quick, behind the scenes it is struggling and they are getting hurt on search ranking as a result. And all this stuff is fixable.

The Shopify Apps They Use

  • Poptim — Visual overlays to improve conversion.

  • WooHoo — Website gamification.

  • Tidio — Live chat.

  • Schema — Product transfer app.

  • PayPal/ShopifyPay/ApplePay — Express payment options.

  • Boomerang — User performance analytics.

  • Flickety — Touch sensitive carousels for mobile.

  • DoubleClick — Ad network.

  • The Trade Desk — Advertising app.

That’s only 9 known apps. This site does not do a lot of online marketing. They keep it low and tight. Not saying that they “should” have so few apps, just that they do. Well discuss that briefly in the marketing section below.

Marketing Stuff They Do

The White House Gifts Shopify site is obviously an add-on to augment their physical retail assets. I think that they are also collecting email addresses in the store and online. So email marketing is BIG for them, especially at the holiday gift giving time.

Speaking of holiday gift-giving, they run some search ads. But it looks like they ONLY run search ads for their White House holiday ornaments. This is smart. They know that the only search marketing that pays is that one and they use it for customer acquisition. From there, email marketing rules the day. We could find no social media presence whatsoever.

Here are 3 of their holiday search ads for your review and inspiration.

Sponsored

Let’s work together to put your Shopify site on Mount Rushmore. 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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