Hello there, fellow price takers!

So, I went to make a Caesar Salad. Seemed like a good idea … a cool and crisp salad on a hot Summer day. But then I went to buy the ingredients. Did you know that Romaine lettuce is 40% more expensive than it was a few years ago?

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Hey there Zach … you been living und a rock? Inflation is a B-I-T—atch!” The next thing you’re probably thinking is that if I am comparing the price of lettuce to a “few years ago” then I might want to consider adding more veggies to my diet because it’s highly likely that the FDA and the AMA and a bunch of other governmental-type acronym organizations recommend a SLIGHTLY higher frequency of salad intake than biannually for proper health and digestion.

To which I reply, “Probably.” But that’s not the point.

The point is that Romaine lettuce has got so out of hand that it is even being monitored by the Federal Reserve Bank. And to that, all I can say is thank goodness the FED has properly prioritized their attention upon salad bar staples and is not wasting precious hours in the day fixing the national economy or money supply.

Anyway … I put the over-priced bunch of bunny-food in my shopping cart and proceeded to the salad dressing aisle.

This is the point in the newsletter where I could depress you with the knowledge that the Federal Reserve is also tracking the production costs of salad dressing, and it’s up 30% over the same period. At which point I gave up on my designs to partake of fresh greens and went to McDonald’s for chicken nuggets. I did not look up the price change (but I could have because people on the internet are crazy).

Inflation … what a bummer. The FED should take a look at all that data they’re tracking and stop printing so much … well, lettuce.

Anyway … because I look for newsletter inspiration from my everyday life, I thought I would see if there are any Shopify websites that came up in a search for “inflation.” Why yes … yes there are … there are hundreds of them. The first one I came across was such a stunningly hideous website as to confound the eCommerce imagination. Here is a warning label, “Do NOT look at this site if you are prone to migraines or good taste.” They call it ‘DystopianStreetWear’ for good reason. Why did that site come up in a Shopify search for the word “inflation?” I do not know … I do not WANT to know.

Please Mommy make the bad website go away.

But there are a bunch of other sites that kind of make sense. So let’s look at one of those instead.

Happy Selling,
Zach

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Shopify Teardown Target of the Week: Inflatable-Zone.com

Inflatable-Zone sells those big bouncy-houses and such that you normally rent for way too much for your kids birthday party. You know what I’m talking about.

Anyway … they’ve been on Shopify a long time … at least since 2016 (my super-tech-spy tools hit a data wall prior to that). But they have been in business and based near Pasadena, CA, since at least 2011. They got everything … water slides, castles, mazes … even an inflatable nightclub that looks like it belongs at the house-party of a Miami smuggler.

Our analytics suggest that they are selling over $200k worth of these plastic bounce-death-traps … I mean, fun and playful party palaces per month. And that’s a LOT of hot air! These numbers rank them in the top 44k of all eCommerce sites and about #13,000 in all of the Shopi-verse.

The Shopify Theme That They Use

You’ve heard us talk about Archetype Themes before. These are some of the good guys — they make quality themes and stand behind them. Inflatable-Zone is smart enough to know that they can buy one of these high-quality themes and tweak it a bit to do serious business. In this case, they are using the Clean version of the Impulse theme.

Check it out for yourself on the Shopify Theme Store.

Stuff They Do Well

Look how the site is clean and gets right down to business. The main navigation is all about the products — as it should be — and they do not waste valuable Home page real estate space on anything but more products. They know you are there to buy plastic inflatable petri dishes … I mean fun party environments for your kids enjoyment and they get right to it. Respect.

OK ladies … have you ever … EVER dreamed of having a Wedding Bounce House on your Big Day? Well, they got one for you! But let’s look at this as an example product page. Take a look at the size selector and the use of Trust Badges. Solid work. Are the product pages perfect? No. That comes in the next section

Stuff That Needs Improvement

About that product page … first, it needs SEO help. the description is no-existent and the Alt tags suck. Seems to me a little easy SEO work here gets for traffic AND sales with solid ROI. Next, I see no reason that products that are so expensive should not be available with installment payments froma service like AfterPay.

See that ugly discount counter at the top of home page? Oh my goodness, is that ugly and old school at the same time. Does anyone still think those work? maybe they do.

Really? No Express Checkout options like PayPal? That is table stakes these days.

they get an average page speed grade of “C.” But they could easily up the speed and just don’t seem to care. Hint: fixing a few images and doing a little caching would get you up to a “B” I think.

Zach-o-meter Score

Not bad … but lots of EASY room for improvement. So, let’s say a Zach-o-meter score of 6.9 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.

• MainMunch — Email marketing. They have a nice subscription pop-up.

• Lucky Orange — Real time heat-maps and analytics.

• LiveChat — As the name implies.

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

• PhotoSwipe — Javascript image gallery.

• Haktor Commerce — eComm collaboration tool.

• AVADA Commerce — Custom App builder.

• ApplePay/Amazon Pay — Express payment options … but they did not display in my tests.

That’s not a lot. Seems like a little retargeting and abandon cart work would be fruitful.

Marketing Stuff That They Do

I do not see any paid search … which seems odd. maybe they are using an agency and it is not showing up.

They have four social media pages: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube. All of them seem fairly active, EXCEPT Pinterest. Maybe that tells us something? But there are no paid social ads that we can see. And none in quite some time. Maybe they already have too much business?

So, here’s a photo of kids who “look” like they’re having fun.

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