CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2237

Remember September … with Shopify

Yo -

Holy mackerel, Andy! September is more than half over. In less than 2 week, we will be in the 4

quarter of the year and officially entering the holiday season. Time is zipping by so fast it makes my head hurt.

When you read this, it will be September 20

, and the next day will, of course, be the 21

of September. And that ALWAYS makes me think of the classic song “September” by Earth, Wind, and Fire.

Go ahead … take just a moment and

.

Did you see those outfits? The song is a timeless classic, but the bell-bottom jumpsuits sure are not.

Speaking of classics, September is also when the over-priced coffee shops of the world pump the classic combination of corn syrup, cinnamon, and clove into darn near everything. Yes, I am referring to the cultural void they call “pumpkin spice” – or, as one might call it,

“designer drug of the suburbs.”

I swear … they pump that overly sweet amalgam of that karma-defying instant blood-sugar into just about anything and everyone from Generation X on down would buy extra heap’in helpings.

Now, for a limited time … Pumpkin Spice Haggis!

Anyway … September is the official start of the Autumnal season. But, you know, the seasons are completely reversed in the Southern Hemisphere. While we are murdering helpless baby pumpkins to feed the sugar-laced trend cravings of middle managers in Silicon Valley, in Australia they’re planting petunias and hosing off the patio furniture while drinking jumbo cans of Fosters Beer and flicking the pop-tops at Koala bears.

Well, that’s what I’d do.

But speaking of September and Down Under and old classics, there’s a little Shopify store we can take a look at that might be fun. Let’s do it.

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: SeptemberCreative

SeptemberCreative is the business and brainchild of Tamara Scheiwe, who is a graphic designer by trade. The business is a classic small-business-for-the-love-of-it kind of thing … which means that I will likely be less snarky than usual. But the company is based in Australia, so

I will do my level best to not make any jokes about Kangaroos or “grilling some shrimp on the bar-b.”

Tamara sells stationary on her Shopify store. Which begs the question,

“Who the heck sends physical mail anymore?”

You could just send an e0card with an animated GIF of dancing wallabies. But let’s assume that there are a few old-school types that actually do buy paper, write with ink pens, and lick stamps.

Maybe the Amish. Or one of those indigenous tribes that they discover every few years that hide on remote islands in the western Pacific and hurl spears at airplanes while National Geographic takes inappropriate photos … but I digress.

Anyway … they sell stationary.

And you know what? Our automated analytics suggest that they sell a few hundred thousand dollars-worth of ground up baby trees each year. But I’m sure they’re lovely down-under.

The Shopify Theme That They Use

SeptemberCreative is using a theme that we haven’t featured yet in this – your fav Shopify newsletter. It’s he “Ira” theme from Fluorescent Design. They focused on storytelling for this theme, and it seems like a good fit. They make a total of

.

Take a look at the theme for

.

What They Do Well

The site is super-clean in a good way. The colors are on-brand and soothing. It feels like it was laid out by a young Martha Stewart, with also feels on-brand to me.

The implementation and display of AfterPay installment payment options is strong and shows a solid understanding of the target customer base.

Not a bad job on the SEO. I can tell that Tamara is targeting geographically and leveraging herself to avoid competition in the bigger countries (even though she is drawing heavily from the US as well).

What Needs to Be Improved

The default logo is too low resolution. Makes it look like it was cut-and-pasted onto the home page.

See the main menu navigation? Putting “Home” there is a complete waste of valuable space. Focus on the buying process of delighting your visitors. Everyone knows to click the logo to go Home these days.

And while we’re at it, put the Blog and About links in the footer as well. Use that space to feature collections of specials or best buys or whatever sells stuff.

See the

? I couldn’t get the selector to work. Tamera should contact us to help he fix it.

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:

  • Bugsnag — The snagger of bugs.

  • FastClick – Removes click delays on mobile devices.

  • AfterPay – Installment payment option.

  • ShopifyPay/ApplePay/PayPal – Express payment options.

That’s it … 4 apps. And none of them to optimize marketing. See additional related comments in the Marketing section below.

Marketing Stuff They Do

SeptemberCreative has accounts on

,

, and

. When I was checking things out the Instagram page was not loading, but it could be a network issue, so I will cut them some slack. But they are not doing a lot of posting. The last organic Facebook post was nearly 6 weeks ago.

Site traffic only averages 400 to 600 per month. Now, if those numbers are accurate the convers rate has to be incredible to generate $300k to $400k in revenue. All traffic comes from either the United States or Australia, and almost none if is is direct navigation. About a quarter of their traffic comes from organic search and the rest comes from … and this is likely the magic … referrals. This site gets high converting traffic from referral sites.

We found no current paid search ads, so all that search traffic is organic … nice. And we did not find any current social media ads either. So, what we have here is a nice person who love paper stationary who has carved out a little niche for herself making stuff she likes and getting all her business from referrals without paying Mark Zucker-jerk a dime.

Well done, Tamara. Well done, indeed.

And since we have no available screen captures of ads to show you, here is an animated kangaroo chasing a safari dude around a bush, in the bush, to delight and amuse you.

Sponsored

Let us help you make your Shopify site less stationary. If you need help making Shopify website tweaks or fixing those little nagging things on your Shopify store, let’s get stuff done.