Happy Tuesday Shopi-friends!

So, coming up we have the big July 4th holiday weekend. And, even though we internet entrepreneurs pretty much work wherever and whenever the needs arise, for many people this is a super-duper holiday weekend.

Why is it a super-duper holiday weekend, you might ask? It’s because the actual day “4th of July” occurs on next Tuesday. And since nobody would be very productive on that Monday anyway, many companies have given their teams both Monday AND Tuesday off … yielding a free FOUR-DAY weekend.

That sound you hear is one-hundred million BBQs being wheeled out onto the deck.

The National Retain Federation estimates that people will spend an average of $93.34 on food this July 4th. And to that I say, “You are obviously not buying enough steaks.” And people will also buy a lot of Red Solo Cups too — a virtual cultural touchstone of working-class nostalgia.

Anyway … we are just a few days away from a BBQ Bacchanalia of hamburgers, hot dogs, apple pie … and ribeye steaks because that’s what your ‘ol buddy Zach likes best … and beer, sipped from a Red Solo Cup.

So, while we are all in this patriotic mood waxing nostalgic, I thought to find a “patriotic” Shopify store for this week’s review. Turns out that there are more than one-hundred Shopify stores with a version of the word “patriot” in their name. But I picked one that also suits those who are about to BBQ. Let’s meet ‘em.

Happy Selling,
Zach

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Shopify Teardown Target of the Week: PatriotCoolers.com

Let’s start with some stats … PatriotCoolers has been on Shopify since 2019. They are currently offering 77 products and variants from their home base in Houston, Texas. And the analytics suggest that they have about 12k site visits and 40k page views per month on average. And all that traffic translates into about $1.5 million in sales per year.

The company was founded in 2018 … so Shopify is likely their first eCommerce platform … by a father/son team who immigrated to the US from South Africa in 1997. They have a strong tie with military and veterans and proudly wear their love of country on their sleeves and on their website.

The Shopify Theme That They Use

PatriotCoolers did a good job selecting their theme. They are using the Motion variant of the Motion theme from Archetype Themes. It seems a good option, has solid responsiveness, and has modern feel while remaining familiar at the same time.

You can see the theme for yourself and take a test drive on the Shopify theme store.

Stuff They Do Well

If you are a regular reader — and why wouldn’t you be, this newsletter is awesome — then you know that I am a fan of not clogging up a main menu navigation with anything that does not feed directly into the shopping experience and making sales. But on PatriotCoolers you see “Giving Back” and “Military Discount” right up on top. But these serve their core branding very well, so it work for them.

I really like the product pages. Take a look at this one. Importantly, it is set up to look good n mobile AND on laptops. When you scroll down you get all the info you want about the product. The only things lacking is that once you scroll down you have to scroll all the way back up to buy. It would be better if there was always a “Add to Cart” action visible. There are ways to accomplish this.

I also like the immediate accessibility of Express payment options on the product pages. And they load fast. We see a lot of poorly implemented versions that load very slow.

Stuff That Needs Improvement

Speaking of slow … there is a TON of slowness on this site. And it covers everything from coding errors and lack of image optimization to failed requests and more. Basically, there is a TON of slowness and lots of low-hanging fruit to pick up the pace.

The rest of the site is pretty solid. Nothing super-great, but little else to mention on the negative side.

Zach-o-meter Score

Not bad … definitely on the good side of the equation. So, I say a Zach-o-meter score of 7.0 out of 10.

The Shopify Apps They Use

As usual, we used our super-duper top secret Shopify website analysis tools to peek under the hood and see what apps they are running on the site. Take a look. If you like what you see on their site you may want to look into the apps that they are using too.

• Klaviyo — Customer lifecycle management.

• Lucky Orange — Real-time analytics.

• Bugsnag — This is the code cleaning tool of champions these days.

• Shopify Inbox — Live chat.

• Yotpo — Customer reviews.

• Photoswipe — Image gallery.

• CrUX Dataset — User analytics.

• Network Advertising Initiative — Advertising management app.

• Your Ad Choices — Another advertising management app.

• Global Privacy Control — Privacy opt-in and compliance.

• AfterPay — Installment payment option.

• ShopPay/ApplePay/PayPal/Facebook Pay/Amazon Pay — Express payment options.

• TikTok Embed — TikTok video embedding app.

• DoubleClick — Ad network.

• Triple Whale — ANOTHER ad management app. That makes 3 so far, ironic that “Triple” Whale was the third on the list.

This is a decent list. But notice that there are three different ad management apps installed. Likely, they have been experimenting and forgot to uninstall what they did not choose … very common error.

Marketing Stuff That They Do

PatriotCoolers has a LOT of social media accounts, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, and LinkedIn. The link on the site for LinkedIn is broken … which means nobody is checking.

I found that they ran Facebook and Instagram ads in the past … but that was in 2019. If they are advertising for cash on social now, they are using a service or agency.

I also do not see paid search ads. Again, I suspect that there is agency involvement that is driving things here and that means I cannot show the ads to your right now. So, here is a picture of fireworks to get you in the mood for the weekend.

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