CheckoutWeekly/TaskHusky Curated Newsletter #2248

Way Off The Grid … a Shopify Best Of Teardown

Out 3rd Most Popular Email of 2022An "Off The Grid" Best-Of Experience

As we continue our reflection back on the most popular Checkout Weekly newsletters from April, 2022, it's time to stop and ask the classic holiday question:

"Do Millennial Hipsters Cr@p in the Woods?"

My favorite line from this particular emails is:

"It’s a little bit techno and a little bit dueling banjos with the hill people."

Still makes me laugh.

You all must have laughed too, because literally thousands of you read it all the way through and even shared with your friends.

Thanks for that, by the way.

Enjoy this newsletter repeat. I hope that you are killing it with the holiday sales folks.

Happy Selling Holidays,

Zach

Yo - So, at TaskHusky we employ a lot of talented people. Talented, but quirky. Quirky works for us.We have this one guy who will proudly tell you that he lives “off the grid.” When you point out that he makes his living on the internet which … technically … is the very definition of “the grid” he gets all flustered and mumbles something about solar power and canned beans that have a 20-year shelf life.Like I said … quirky.We’ve got another guy in the office who is just the opposite. Ever since he heard about Elon Musk’s “NeuraLink” project to put chips in people’s brains he’s been all excited. He wants to be an early adopter and BE a part of the grid. He tells me that we should make sure the procedure is covered by the TaskHusky health care plan. I have to constantly remind him that he is not an employee … he’s the guy who comes in to water the plants once a week so, he should probs talk to his real boss about that.He looks upset when I tell him that.Anyways … our Shopify target this week is a little bit of both. They are a clothing company with a great online store selling to folks who get away from it all and have great hipster beards. It’s a little bit techno and a little bit dueling banjos with the hill people. Sounds like fun, right? Let’s get on with 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: OffTheGridSurplus.com

I’m trying out a new analysis tool. It’s a little scary what you can learn on the internet with the right analytics these days. For example, my new scanning tool analyzes traffic patterns and has estimated that the OffTheGridSurplus site sells an average of $99,985 per month. Scary, right? But that’s a lot of cash on the grid or off.

The company was founded by Josh Patterson. Josh was working for a string of famous activewear companies as a clothing designer – brands like Quicksilver, Fox Racing, and PrAna. He started OffTheGrid as a side hustle in 2012. By 2017 he was off on his own. Pretty sweet story IMHO.

The Shopify Theme That They Use

So here we have another Shopify winner selling well north of $1 million per year – basically in flannel plaid shirts – and they are NOT using a fancy-schmancy custom theme. No sir-ee Bob! This high-tech success story sells seven figures using a nicely modified premium theme from a developer called “Eight” … that theme is the Flow design in the Queenstown style. You can

.

What They Do Well

The site looks really sharp. The theme and layout work well with the brand. The photos are spot on and fit the demographic. And the carry the branding throughout with just enough orange to tie it all together. Orange is a powerful color. It gets instant attention but too much can be hard to look at.

Good deployment of Express payment options AND installment payment option (via ShopPay).

What Needs to Be Improved

What the HECK is the deal with the shirt sizing chart. You can see an example on this page if you scroll down a bit. On desktop that image expands to fill the entire screen and loses resolution. Hurts my eyes to look at it. It’s not on every product page. Just seems that a few of them are broken.

I always walk through a purchase test on every site I review. These guys did something that I’ve never seen before and it’s something that every instinct in my body tells me is hurting them by increase cart abandonment. Here’s the deal … it is an eCommerce best practice that once a shopper has decided to buy you put as few clicks between that customer and him submitting his credit card. Makes sense, right?

So, I go and click “Add to Cart” and they flash me a pop-up to subscribe to their emails. Now bear in mind that they had already asked for a subscription with a pop-up a few seconds after page entry. Now, you have all heard me preach about emphasizing your email list. But I just do not think that a SECOND subscription prompt when I am about to ACTUALLY BUY something on your site is the right way to go.

After that the checkout process was straightforward and clean.

Some of the product pages have a little interstitial page jumping. This is sometimes caused by inconsistent image formatting/sizing. Other times it’s cause by either using multiple CDNs or the load order needs adjustment. It’s one of those 3 things I bet.

In their main menu they have “The Outlet.” This links to a subdomain. This is an eCommerce error for 2 reasons. The first is that breaking out to a subdomain hurts SEO. It just does. Second, it creates a hard path to navigate back to the main site. It’s totally not intuitive. Customers can get lost.

Keep it all on the main site guys.

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 — Customer lifecycle management stuff.

  • Meteor Mega Menu - Create gorgeous multi-tier dropdown menus for your store

  • Advanced Product Options - Create unlimited product options & variants options

  • Rebuy — Personalization of the buying experience.

  • Loop Returns — Manage returns, exchanges, return labels, store credit & more!

  • GDPR/CCPA + Cookie Management - GDPR - LGPD - CCPA - APPI - PIPEDA Compliance for your store

  • React — Customer support.

  • Back in Stock — Notify customers: products out of stock, in stock, preorders..

  • Product Filter & Search — #1 Collection Filter & Smart Search app for any stores

  • Octane AI — Increase AOV w/ a stunning quiz. Supercharge ads & Klaviyo.

  • Stamped — Customer ratings and reviews.

  • Bugsnag — The app that snag bugs … in software. Seeing this app EVERYWHERE these days.

  • VerifyPass — Special discounting tool for military and first responders.

  • Sendtric — Countdown timer in email.

  • ManyChat — Facebook chat-bot integration

  • ShopifyPay/PayPal/ApplePay/GooglePay – These are Express payment options.

  • Magnific Popup — Responsive lightboxes and such.

  • Route ‑ Protection & Tracking

Marketing Stuff They Do

Interestingly, OffTheGrid does not link to their social media on their website. Well, if they do, I can’t find it. That doesn’t make sense at all. But

anyway. They even have a Facebook Marketplace presence there. I was also not able to locate and paid search ads.

Anyway … they are running a lot of Facebook ads, so I have placed 3 recent ones below for your interest and inspiration.

Sponsored

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