CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2238

Scoot’in Away from Storms … with Shopify

Yo -

So, last week hurricane Fiona crossed over the west coast of Puerto Rico dropping upwards of 20” of rain. A member of the TaskHusky team is there and the eye of the storm passed directly overhead. Power is still out across most of the island and it’s still hard to get around. The official man-on-the-street report is, and I quote, “It sucks.”

Not to be outdone,

is going to tip its hat to the Communistas in Cuba before continuing its forecasted path into the west coast of Florida this week. Could be a monster too … with the potential to be a category 4 storm. Those cyclones tend to leave havoc behind and do some pricey damage.

If you are in Tampa or Saint Petersburg or anywhere around there, gas up the generators, get some bottled water, and hang on to your ass…orted canned goods.

Seriously kids … stay safe out there Floridians.

Kind of a metaphor for the world economy at the moment – stormy and expensive.

Remember last week when we talked about how the southern hemisphere has reversed seasons? Well, there are other differences too. For example … when hurricanes and typhoons head toward New Zealand they spin clockwise. Of course, in this age of cell phones and digital smart watches, many of you may not even know what “clockwise” means … but I’ll take a chance.

The point is that big storms south of the equator spin in the opposite direction than they do in the northern hemisphere. But places like New Zealand also drive on the left-hand side of the road, so that probably balances everything out … like 2 negatives making a positive or something.

OK, that doesn’t make any sense. But since we are taking about storms and New Zealand and electricity and getting around, I found a Shopify site that touches on all 4. Let’s have a look.

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: StormRides.nz

There is not a lot of background information about StormRides. Notice on the site that they don’t waste a lot of space on “About Us” content. We can tell that they launched their Shopify store in 2017. And … they launched their Facebook page on May 25

of 2017. And I do not see any business filings or media articles before then, so that’s likely near their inception point.

They are a New Zealand-based reseller of electric scooters and related accessories. They appear to have a single physical location in Auckland and then ship across New Zealand. They also have their own branded scooters. And since I do not see any manufacturing, those scooters are likely a white-label offering. They also appear to be an importer with a thriving wholesale business. You can see that they have a

that shows their physical store location up top.

The Shopify Theme That They Use

StormRides is using one of the most popular premium themes in all of Shopify-land. This is the Bold variant of the Impulse theme from Archetype Themes. It’s designed for flexibility and handles promotions well. And if you look at the theme and then at the site, you can see how much customization is possible. The Impulse theme is compatible with all Shopify features, kept well up-to-date, and can be had for $320.

You can have a

.

What They Do Well

There is a lot to like about how StormRides is doing things. Let’s start with the fact that they know that they sell expensive scooters. There are NOT your average Christmas toys … no sir. This are modes of transportation. And when you are selling expensive things like this, the more convenient you make it to buy and pay the better. So,

. I count no fewer than 4 different installment payment options – AfterPay, Gem, Humm, and LayBuy. Some of the auto-calculations that display on those apps seem silly at times, but they are trying.

Now … let’s talk about SEO. These guy are working like crazy on their SEO. In fact, it would not surprise me if they had not cornered the SEO market for electric scooters in their little corner of the world. And while those scooters ain’t cheap, the financial analytics suggest that StormRides is book’in on down the road with about $2 million per year in sales.

Admit it. All of a sudden electric scooters sound cool now, right?

I can’t decide if the drop-down mega-menu main navigation is good or bad. It ugly and over sensitive to mouse-over, but it does make it easier to identify brands. It works a “little” better on mobile, but can get out of control quick.

What Needs to Be Improved

OK, I’ve decided that the main menu needs to be fixed. For usability sake, brands should be a collections page, IMHO. You can go ahead and think differently if you want.

On both pc and mobile …

. Decent hero image at top, then you start to scroll down and what do you see? About 3 frames worth of text that does no good whatsoever. I had to push the scroll 3 times before I saw another product or CTA. Then it gets worse ….

After you find the products again, the home pages scrolls on forever with TONS of images and social widgets and … well, with tons of stuff that slows the page down too much because all of them load with each refresh. Get this … the home page takes more than 30 seconds to fully load, receiving one of the lowest speed scores I’ve seen this year. And OMG … there is so much broken code it makes me want to cry.

I hope those scooters go faster than their website.

I started a test purchase of a $2k scooter and went to checkout … no upsells or compatible product offerings. That’s just throwing free money away. It a guy is spending >$2k on a scooter you think he can’t afford some leather gloves or wheel oil or whatever else the scooter gangs of Auckland are wearing these days?

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 — Automated marketing and customer lifecycle management.

  • ProveSource — Social proof app.

  • Tidio — Live chat.

  • Bugsnag — The snagger of bugs of the coding kind.

  • AfterPay/Humm/LayBuy — Installment payment options.

  • ShopifyPay/PayPal/ApplePay – Express payment options.

  • DoubleClick — Ad network.

That’s not a lot of apps. The page slowness is about too many images and bad code.

Marketing Stuff They Do

StormRides has middling-active social accounts on

,

, and

. When I was checking things out they were not posting too frequently, but they had some content there.

I was expecting to find an active affiliate program and was surprised when I didn’t. seems that this would be a natural.

In addition to SEO, what they are doing … a LOT of … is advertising. I found a lot of Facebook ads and search ads. Here are three recent examples of each for your inspiration.

Sponsored

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