CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2230

D’oh! … on Shopify

Yo -

Remember how last week we talked about how hot it was? Everyone seemed to love the jokes. Admit it … you repeated them to your friends.

You’re welcome.

I just can’t believe that it’s August already. Do you know why they call these the “Dog Days of Summer?” It’s ‘cuz starting in the first week of July the star Sirius rises over the horizon after dark. Sirius is actually a cluster of stars that appear as one to the naked eye, and the rising of Sirius followed after the constellation Orion … followed him like a faithful dog.

Thus, Sirius has been called the Dog Star since antiquity.

Back then in ancient Greece the “dog days” were considered a season of bad luck. But here at Task

HUSKY

, anything “dog” related is good luck, so

choke on that Achilles!

Whilst we ponder together the mysteries of classical Mediterranean civilizations and hot weather, let me drop another interesting tidbit on you. This is the 239

Shopify teardown newsletter I’ve sent, and that means that we will hit 260 by the end of the year. To put that into perspective:

  • Seinfeld — 180 episodes

  • The Office — 201 episodes

  • M*A*S*H — 251 episodes

  • Frasier — 264 episodes

By the end of January we will have more individual content pieces delivered faithfully to our legion of fans (you) than Kelsey Grammer. And I got to admit I was feeling a little cocky until I saw that The Simpsons has aired 728 episodes … and is still going.

D’oh!

But The Simpson doesn’t share lots of cool Shopify crap and tell you about Dog Stars and stuff … no they do not! So, obviously this newsletter is objectively better than The Simpsons. Or not. Never mind.

Anyway …. Let’s take a look at a Shopify store that sells officially licensed art prints from top movies and TV shows …

. I hear that they are working on a TaskHusky art print series … we’ll let you know if that works out.

Happy Selling,

Zach

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. 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: AcmeArchivesDirect.com

Acme Archives was founded way back in 1996 by

. She had a history in animated TV production and is obviously a huge fan of pop culture. She has been selling rare animation cells, lithographs, and sketches for nearly 30 years. This history has obviously given her the connections to get the licensing deals she needs to make her business thrive.

This business is actually 4 businesses in one — Acme Archives, Dark Ink, Pulse Gallery (for international orders), and Acme Wholesale. All of those operations are based in one location in Burbank, California, and all have Shopify sites. And they sell a lot. Based upon analytics, they sell an average of $170,000 per month (that’s just over $2 million per year).

The Shopify Theme That They Use

One of the reasons I picked Acme Archives Direct this week is how they customized their theme. It’s actually a rather big transformation. Their site is built on one of the most reliable premium themes out there — Empire by Pixel Union. This theme comes in 3 variations – Supply, Graphic, and Industrial. And I can tell you that their version is the Graphic version.

So, first things first … take a good hard look at the base

.

Now, look again at the home page of

.

If you look block by block you can see that the Empire theme is in there. But with a few solid tweaks it looks like a frigg’in custom theme, right? So, what you see is a $300 premium theme with less than a thousand in customizations and back-end integrations over the course of a few years as opposed to paying $20k to $50k for a customer theme.

That makes them a winner in my book.

What They Do Well

These guys are focused like a laser on performance. Did you look around that site? TONs of images, right? Heck … images are what they sell. Now … when I tell you that the VAST majority of the time image-selling sites perform like wet dogs on a hot August day I mean that nearly ALL of the image selling site I have ever seen load like crap and Google showers SEO hate upon their heads.

This … this site is the exception.

In fact, it is one of the fastest loading sites we have EVER measured, bar none. Google loves ‘em, and our 2 additional performance tools give them a high “A” grade and unheard of 99% rating. This is DAMN impressive. The code is spotless. And they are running some black-arts witchcraft to make it happen.

I identify some of their special secret sauces for speed in the Shopify Apps section below.

What Needs to Be Improved

Their SEO sucks. Seriously ... They are selling licensed goods, so they should be advertising and optimizing like they do.

is optimized for the title of the art piece — “I’ve Got Your Back.” But no one … not even the most rabid Star Wars fan is searching for “I’ve Got Your Back.” They are searching for Boba Fett, or The Mandalorian, or any number of other things. How are they going to find it? And how about a nice sexy product description while they’re at it.

All in all, these guys do not do enough marketing. But they have been around so long and have such an entrenched following,

maybe they don’t think they need any more business

. Make sure you read down to the Marketing section for more details.

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:

  • Marcello — Abandoned cart recovery.

  • Clicky — Specialized web analytics.

  • Searchanise — eCommerce site search.

  • Bugsnag — When there are little bugs, in your code no good. Who ya gonna call?

  • Shopapps — A portfolio of Shopify apps, including Wishlist and Now-In-Stock tools

  • UNPKG — An open-source content delivery network (this is part of their speed secret sauce)

  • PayPal/AmazonPay/ApplePay — Express payment options.

  • Flickety — touch and mobile responsive image carousels.

  • Instand.page — A tool to make pages load faster (more secret sauce).

  • Magnific Popup — Image popup and lightbox.

Note the exceptionally small list of apps and that there are some devoted to speed.

Marketing Stuff They Do

Normally after this section I show you ads that the business is running in search or on social. Trouble is … there aren’t any. None … zero, zip, nada. They do have a

page,

,

, and

… all with a rather average and pedestrian amount of organic posting.

I don’t see any affiliate programs either. But you know what I do see? Postings on fan sites and blogs. These folks KNOW where their die-hard customers live. They hang out on forums and chat groups talking about their favorite shows. And that’s where they find their customers … for free. Here they are on the

, and there they are on the

.

Smart ... VERY smart,

Sponsored

Let us help you heat up your sales. If you need help making Shopify website tweaks or fixing those little nagging things on your Shopify store, let’s get stuff done.