CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2213

The Best Choice … On Shopify

Yo - I’ve got to admit … I have a soft spot for business names that tell you EXACTLY what the business does. I remember one of the cheesiest ad campaigns in the history of ever was for a business called “JJ, King of Beepers.” His commercials were so annoying and cheesy that they were great. Think I’m making him up? He even has an entry on Urban Dictionary. He advertised on TV with commercials that would be impossible to run today and even had his own branded beepers that folks still collect and trade on eBay.Sure, his business model collapsed like a Jenga tower on dollar beer night when smart phones arrived. But you got to give the guy credit … back in the day you knew what he sold. JJ sold beepers and he was the king of them.At this point half of my readers are Googling “What’s a beeper?” and “How old is Zach exactly?”Anyway … JJ is totally NOT selling beepers on Shopify, or anywhere else for that matter. But when I picked the Shopify site for this week’s teardown I thought of good ‘ol JJ and his kingdom because this week’s target also has a straight-forward name. Is it as good as JJ’s? No, but it’s still pretty good.Let’s meet them.Happy Selling,Zach

You Can Be Next!

Well, not “you” exactly. Who wants to get a newsletter about ”you,” right? But if you have a Shopify site and want that site to be front and center in an upcoming TaskHusky Checkout Weekly newsletter this is kind of cool.

Here’s the deal … we have spent the last few years focused on the larger Shopify stores. That’s great and all, but I thought it would be cool to give a few “normal” sites a load of free advice and such. And I will do just that. But keep in mind that I tell marginally humorous jokes and poke fun at everything. So, well, you get the idea.

Just reply to this email and say 

“Tear me down Zach!”

 and I’ll put you on the list for an upcoming issue.

This Week’s Shopify Teardown Target: BestChoiceProducts.com 

What does Best Choice Products sell? Well duh! They obvious sell “the best,” I mean can’t you read? But that does beg the question, “The best what?” Well, the site looks like it’s full of

and accessories … things like patio chairs,

, and

. But then I also see a

. Then when you look at the categories you see things like Toys and Games, Musical Instruments, Lawn and Garden, Pet Supplies, Fitness, Seasonal Décor, yadda yadda yadda.

I’ll talk about all this more later … and probably not in a good way. Pet peeve time I guess.

The Shopify Theme That They Use

Best Choice Products uses a lightly modified version of the Boost theme from Clean Canvas. The style is called Spark. You can

.

What They Do Well

I say this a lot, but it is worth saying again here. The site is clean with solid photography. It is totally not junked up and it’s easy to scroll through products and not get lost. When eCommerce websites become high-design art projects they lose most of the time. The way to bet is with quick product access and clean design.

The implementations of AfterPay (installment payments option) and Express payment options in the shopping cart are great. It would be Soooooo easy to click add-to-cart and then just click PayPal and be on my way. This has to be delivering conversions. Good for them.

These guys have their SEO game together. Solid product naming, decent content, image ALT tags are intelligent and in alignment, streamlined bot navigation … they are deploying solid SEO best practices all around.

What Needs to Be Improved

I have nothing against their use of the Boost theme … in fact, I applaud it. But I have a problem with their implementation of it. When I test these things I use a varied of devices and screen sizes. When you look at the home page you will see that they have laid a green field on top of the hero product image. Not so bad on full-screen. But as the site becomes responsive for smaller screens – like tablets and phones – the green takes over the entire hero area and you can’t see any products above the fold anymore. In addition, the text makes a huge jump down from big to small. This is not a good user experience and wastes some of the site’s most valuable real estate.

Now let’s talk about brand. The company name is “Best Choice Products” for 2 reasons. The first is OBVIOUSLY because of SEO, right? They can legit say “Best Choice Products Fire Pit” and get some quick clicks. The second reason is a bit more mercenary. By this I mean that they – also obviously – do not want to commit to selling certain things. It’s just my opinion here, but they appear to want to be able to sell whatever they can get. Maybe it’s working for them, but it dilutes the brand. If they are known for everything, then they are known for nothing. This means that their business model is likely more reliant on ads and product specials. Again, if it works it works. But best practice is to build a brand and reputation on a foundation and then maybe sell a few odds and ends on the side.

The Shopify Apps They Use

We used our top-secret Shopify scanning tools to determine that this site is using the following apps and plugins:

  • Klaviyo – Customer lifecycle management and automation.

  • Algolia Search and Discovery - Product search & discovery that increases conversions at scale

  • Visual Quiz Builder - Personalization quiz | Rich design | Logic Jumps | Email sync

  • Signifyd ‑ Fraud Protection - Maximize Revenue by Preventing Fraud Orders & Customer Abuse

  • Wishlist Plus - Customizable, collaborative sales, clienteling, save for later

  • Bazaarvoice – Online communities.

  • ThreatMetrix – Fraud prevention.

  • Curalate – Image analytics.

  • Iovation – online reputation management.

  • Gladly – Customer service platform.

  • Braze – Customer lifecycle management.

  • Trustpilot – Customer reviews.

  • Snowplow – Open source analytics.

  • Yotpo – The Po of Yots … and customer review app.

  • AggregateRating Schema – rating algorithm.

  • AfterPay – Installment payment option.

  • PayPal/ShopifyPay/GooglePay/ApplePay – Express payment options.

  • Tipalti – Mass payment aggregation … I think this is what they use to pay their drop-=shippers. It groups multiple orders into a single payment.

  • Boomerang – Performance analytics. Just a little piece of code, actually.

  • DoubleClick – Ad network.

Marketing Stuff They Do

First, it’s worth noting that these guys are focused on email, and that’s a good thing. There are email subscription CTAs on home page load, on social media pages, and as a part of the checkout process. They worry less about brand because they do social and search ads, track you on the site, and the remarket the crap out of you until the end of time. That is not a criticism.

They are active across the primary social media sites and run Facebook/Instagram ads as well as search. Here are 3 samples of each for your inspiration.

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