CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2218

A Real Mother #$@%& … on Shopify

Yo - So, there I was … just sitting in front of my MacBook Pro thinking wistfully about the Mother’s Day holiday and trying to decide which Shopify site to target this week. You know what popped into my head out of nowhere? Mom Jeans.You know what “mom jeans” are right? They are those loose-fitting, high-waisted jeans made of stretch denim that your Mom would wear while picking you up from school in her 1995 Chrysler Town & Country minivan … you know, the one with the fake wood paneling decals on the side.Geeze … 1995 … that’s the year “Gangsta’s Paradise” came out and TLC’s “Waterfalls” too. Dang I’m starting to feel old.Anyways …. So, I was thinking of Mom’s and mom jeans and crappy minivans and decided to find a Shopify site that connected all that stream of consciousness into a newsletter for you … my lovely, intelligent, and faithful readers.What I found was a super high-end, super-trendy women’s jeans site with rail-thin 20-something model chicks posing seductively to sell $300 blue jeans that look like they were purchased at a thrift store.Sort of the opposite of “Mom” ….But they sell bazillions of dollars of these tragically over-priced … ahem, I mean luxury goods and the Shopify site has a few really sexy features that you might want to look at. So, let’s look at it.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: MotherDenim.com

Tim Kaeding and Lela Becker were two long-term fashion denim veterans in 2010 when they started working on their company in Tim’s basement. The clothing industry is cut-throat competitive and having a ton of specific industry experience was a key to their success — they knew what they were doing.

They spent a full year working on the brand before they made their first product. Most small businesses start the other way around. Anyway … they caught a wave and rode the success to Shopify super-stardom. Their “opposite of Mom jeans” are worn by celebrities and they even got a

.

Marketing Preview

I took a peek into their Shopify site traffic and they had more than 130k visitors in March of this year. Nearly 87% of that traffic in from the US, and more than 50% of it arrives via search. But most of that search … in fact almost all of it … is navigational. That means that folks are searching for “mother denim” or “mother jeans” in combination with other descriptors. Interestingly, about 37% of their traffic comes from direct navigation. So that means that even though they do a lot of search advertising and some social, more than 87% of their traffic is looking for them before they see an ad. They are running on brand power.

They sell their own brands and select designers on their website and also distribute their brands to physical retails like

,

, and

.

The Shopify Theme That They Use

If you have been reading this email for a while you know I do not think that a custom theme is necessary for success the VAST majority of the time. Usually, a good premium theme and some solid tweaking and customization by TaskHusky is all you need. But there are exceptions, and this is one of them.

When you sell $300 torn and shredded jeans and $100 faded tank tops, you need to sell style. They need some custom features to do that. So, I think that the execution of those custom features is worth the extra cash in this case.

What They Do Well

These guys spend a HUGE amount of time on branding, feel, and style. The different between an $80 pair of jeans and Mother Denim is branding, feel, and style so you had better bring it! But they do. The photography is top-notch.

Take a look at all those photos on the home page. They look good, right? Most of the time when we are looking at a high-fashion brand the photos kill the page speed. And when I say “kill the page speed” I mean suck the life out of a site like Dracula. But this page weighs in a just 3MB. That still 50% higher than optimal, but not bad with all those photos. Someone spent the time to optimize the heck out of those images, squeezing them with an eyedropper. Nice Job.

This is super-impressive.

Whether you are viewing on a laptop or a phone, most of the product images on the primary collection pages are short videos.

. On a laptop/desktop, mouse over a few of the images and they come to life with video. If you are on mobile, press and hold the image and it pops-up to do the same thing. This is what they are paying those fancy-schmancy developers all that money for … so you can see pouty-lipped, dead-eyed models who look like they haven’t eaten lunch in forever slump their shoulders and shift their hips.

Someone needs to give these girls a sandwich or chicken nuggets or something.

The checkout process is clean and efficient … there are express payment options and installment payments via ShopPay. And when the jeans cost as much as a car payment, sometimes you need to make installments. Also note that they have the subscription offer in the shopping cart. That works for me.

What Needs to Be Improved

OK … this is an expensive, highly stylistic custom Shopify implementation. Did you see that “Shop New Arrivals” stock ticker-like text scroll just below the hero image on the home page?

. What the heck is that? It’s even scrolling left to right, which is odd. I haven’t seen that lame of a text scroller since 1998 GeoCities sites.

!

I conducted a few mock-purchases. Part of that means putting something into the shopping cart and then leaving the shopping cart to go back to the main page. Normally, there is an indicator of having items in your art and a way to navigate back to it. Totally could not find that. Big miss here. In order to navigate back to the cart I had to add another item to it.

But I finally found it

… there is a little circle on the upper right-hand corner of the page. No cart symbol … no words … just a little circle you have to “know” to click. Really strange.

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:

  • Rapleaf — marketing automation.

  • LiveRamp — Retargeting.

  • HotJar — Website heatmaps.

  • Zaius — MORE marketing automation.

  • Klaviyo — Customer lifecycle management.

  • Maxpanel — Workflow and funnel analytics.

  • Attentive — Mobile messaging.

  • SearchSpring — Website search tool.

  • Backin Stick — Inventory alerts.

  • SEO Manager — Pretty sure that one is self-explanatory.

  • BookThatApp — Reservation system.

  • Privy — Email list growing app.

  • Rakuten — Shop marketplace system.

  • ShopPay/AmazonPay/ApplePay/PayPal — Express payment options.

This seems like “not too many” apps, but I call attention to the multiple “marketing automation” apps. I’ll bet that at least one of those is old and they forgot to remove it.

Marketing Stuff They Do

Mother runs a lot of search ads. They also have active Social media, including

,

,

, and

. In other words, the usual suspects. Facebook and Instagram are very active with hundreds of thousands of followers, organic posts, and paid ads. They haven’t posted to twitter in 2 years, which begs the question, “Why have it?” Ditto for Pinterest.

Here are sample ads from their social and search campaigns for your inspiration and enlightenment.

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