CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2241

Light Up the Holidays … on Shopify

Yo - 

Wee … doggies! We got a rush of folks asking about the resource list from last week’s email. It’s like a lot of our loyal, faithful, and obviously good-looking subscribers had not realized that we had entered the 4

 quarter of the year with the holidays and the whole madness of Black Friday / Cyber Monday just a scant few weeks away.

And that eCommerce calendar … rereading that email now still makes me laugh. You people are SOOOOO lucky!

Anyway … just for fun I am going to put a GIF of Charlie Brown being rudely awakened by an alarm clock here ‘cuz some of you still need it.

And yes, many of you used the Black Friday / Cyber Monday (BFCM) resource list and started TaskHusky development tickets to make sure that your site was ready. 

What’s that you say? You didn’t get to review that BFCM resource list? I’m shocked! Shocked, I say!

Well, I love you so 

.

But all of this “holiday calendar” and “BFCM” stuff started me thinking. There are some businesses that don’t just rely on the holidays to make their yearly cash-ola … for them the holidays are their entire business model.

In actual physical malls … you know, the ones you don’t go to anymore … you’ve seen those seasonal stores that fill in the empty slots and kiosks next to the 

 and across from the closed Forever 21 store where they sell decorations or toys or Swiss Colony gift boxes or whatever. 

But in Shopify-land, you can sell holiday décor all year long. You can even jump from holiday to holiday like a college student jumping Fraternity parties on Saturday night — swapping merch on the fly. There are big shops that do this ... like 

. But let’s focus on Christmas and help out a Holly Jolly Shopify store pulling out all the stops.

Happy Selling,

Zach

If you have a Shopify site and want that site to be 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: Christmas-Light-Source.com

Christmas-Light-Source sells … well, they sell Christmas lights. That seems like it should be self-evident, but you can’t be too careful. Anyway .., it was founded by Shellie Gardner who solicited the support of David Robinson, and together they opened their Shopify store in 2016.

The analytics suggest that they are selling about $1.5 million per year in Christmas lights and have picked up some rather famous commercial clients as well … like the Capitol Tree, which is pretty cool. The company is based in Texas and they sell nothing bur Christmas lights all year long. Of course, right now is their super-busy season of craziness because retail demand for Christmas lights in April is rather low.

The Shopify Theme That They Use

You want to know what theme they use? What’s it to you! What are you some kind of nosy guy? (what I think a guy from Brooklyn would say)

But if you must know, they use the Brooklyn theme, which means that they saved a crap-ton of cash. But when you look at their website, it’s obvious to see that they have made a LOT of customizations and tweaks. And that’s the way to do it.

You can 

.

What They Do Well

Just look at how gosh-darn easy it is to navigate this website. They have hundreds of products and keep them all organized and as tidy as possible. There is no wasted space in the main menu bar navigation, and as you scroll down the 

 collections come into view. It’s easy to find your way to the kinds of products you want to buy.

All in all this is a solid site. It’s in desperate need of a general theme refresh, but it’s working fairly well.

What Needs to Be Improved

I notice that 

. I get it … their supplies of Christmas lights are probably also the same ones who make patio lights and such. But the name of the business is Christmas-Light-Source. Maybe it is working out for them, but I can’t help but worry about brand and SEO dilution. It might be better to start another store called “Patio Light Source” and then cross promote.

The shopping cart is kind of clunky with no upsells. It feels like they are due for an overall theme upgrade and refresh. It’s almost like – except for the tweaks — the site still “feels” like 2016. So, they should give us a call.

The page was loading unnecessarily slow. Sure, there was a lot gong on. But I couldn’t figure it out until … well, there is a beautiful header image showing lights and ornaments on a snowy white background. The default loading size of that image is more than 53” across. It’s too big and then every time Shopify reloads the pages it’s got to do some heavy lifting and bouncing around to adjust. So, yes, they need to fix that.

The Shopify Apps They Use

If you see an app or widget on their site that you like, you might be able to identify the specific tool they are using here in this section. We used our top-secret Shopify scanning tools to determine that this site is using the following apps and plugins:

  • Searchenise — eCommerce search.

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

  • Judge Me — Customer reviews.

  • PayPal — Express payment option (just this one).

Wow … that’s only four apps. They have ZERO marketing automation in Shopify.

Marketing Stuff They Do

Not much.

Well, this site has a 

 page, an Instagram page, and both 

 and 

. And they have some good content on those apges. But it is all organic. This is great. They are not taking out social media ads. They are doing the work of organic posting. Especially on YouTube where they have some actually very helpful content.

They also have no paid search ads either. And to top it off, the VAST majority of their site traffic — 90% — is organic search. Brilliant. 

But that means I have no ads to show you. So, here’s a GIF of Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer. You’re Welcome.

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