Hello there, my Shop-Amigos!

You ever hear of the “Dog Days of Summer?”

Sure you have! And we all think of that annual period of time between early July and mid-August when the sun is hot and the air is sticky and even the dogs don’t want to come out from under the porch. But that ain’t why we call ‘em “The Dog Days” at all.

Actually, they have been calling them The Dog Days for more than 2800 years. It’s even mentioned in The Iliad and the Odyssey … you know, those epic poems written by Homer about the battle of Troy and such. Not Homer Simpson, the ancient Greek … never-mind.

Anyway, they are called The Dog days because it is the period when Sirius — the “Dog Star” — rises up behind the constellation Orion. And it rises up, following the hunter Orion each year at the same time … faithful and loyal. That’s just what dogs do.

As you know, your ‘ol buddy and Shopify confidant Zach here is rather fond of the world’s canines … especially the Huskies. So, hot and humid be danged, The Dog Days are my kind of days.

The weather is actually pretty good in southern Michigan right now … sunny, high about 87°, not too humid at all … that’s about as good as it gets here. Even the Old Guy in the office was less cranky than normal … he might have even smiled.

But out west it’s a different story. Later this week in Phoenix it’s gonna be 117° in the shade. THAT’s hot.

That’s so hot the fire hydrants whistle to attract dogs.

That’s so hot Kim Kardashian gets jealous.

That’s so hot the concept of eternal damnation starts to seem attractive by comparison.

On days like that I’ve seen people drive in Arizona using oven mitts. Not a joke … seen it with my own eyes.

I went looking for a Shopify site about the heat and my super-AI-computer tools found a site called Hot Momma. Now, when you “accidentally” come upon a site using a domain such as “Hot Momma” the imagination naturally reals as to the quality and nature of the items that might be found for sale, therein. But when I examined said website … purely for scientific reasons, you understand … HotMomma.mx was spicy, but NOT what you might expect at all.

But I bet I made you look.

Anyway … there are literally HUNDREDS of Shopify sites related to “heat” and “hot” this or that. But I found a little site that was charming and a perfect fit for our newsletter theme this week. So, let’s have a look, shall we?

Happy Selling,
Zach

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Shopify Teardown Target of the Week: DogDaysBarkery.com

Take a look at the ladies who run Dog Days Barkery — Carra, Lindsey, and Beth. They looks like great folks, AND they are obviously dog lovers. Carra started the little shop in Mobile, Alabama, back in 2016 and they started their Shopify store just 2 years ago in 2021.

They sell from their physical store on Shell Street, have their D2C sales from the main Shopify site, and also sell wholesale. They are using the Shopify POS, which appears to be covering both online and on-prem sales totaling just under $150k per year. They are selling about 200 products and variants. most of their sales are on-prem and the site has just about 500 visitors per month, each averaging about 3.5 page views.

A small retail business doing things right with passion and charm … I love to root for small businesses like this.

The Shopify Theme That They Use

Dog Days Barkery is using Shopify’s famous … or should I now say “infamous” … Debut theme. Now, don’t get me wrong. There is NOTHING wrong with the Debut theme. It’s just that this theme was SUPER popular and TONS of sites used, and still use it. But earlier this year it vanished.

Shopify disappeared that theme from the Theme Store like a Russian dissident. It was cancelled faster than a David Hasselhoff reality TV show. It had a sharper fade the Connor MacGregor.

When everyone asked the Lords of the Shopify Tower in Ottawa what happened to the Debut theme, the response appears to be, “We do not know the theme of which you speak.”

Anyway … it’s a bit of a mystery. But Dog Days Barkery has it and you can’t … unless you already do. But eventually no one will because deprecated themes can become security liabilities over time when not regularly updated.

Stuff They Do Well

First off, this website is super fast to load. In fact … it’s TOO fast. Now, that likely sounds odd to all of you faithful readers because you KNOW I am serious about page speed. I’ll explain that in the next section.

The site looks sharp. It’s not over-complicated and it does not need to be. It is charming a sweet with some nice photography … just as a local pet-brand should be. Cheers to you gals.

Some of the few options that were installed are related to Express payment options like PayPal, etc. I am very glad they did those.

Stuff That Needs Improvement

Remember how up above I said that the site is “TOO fast?” Well … optimization is one thing, not doing anything is another. Take a look at the Apps section below. Ladies of Dog Days Barkery … do just a wee bit of marketing and see if you can bump the needle on sales.

And that brings me to another helpful pointer … SEO … do some. The images are titled and ALT-tagged by default and the descriptions could be improved to get more traffic.

See all those credit card icons on the bottom of every page? No one need those … I say lose ‘em.

Zach-o-meter Score

Not bad … but lots of room for improvement on the marketing side. So, let’s say a Zach-o-meter score of 7.1 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.

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

• Shopify Pay/ApplePay/PayPal/GooglePay/Amazon Pay — Express payment options.

• CrUX Dataset — User analytics.

• Loox Product Reviews — Obviously, a product review app.

Let’s see now … how am I gonna fit ALL the rest of the apps in this list …

Well, it’s easy, because there just aren’t any. No email subscription management, no retargeting, no affiliate programs .. nothing. Seems to me just a little bit of investment here would go a VERY long way and add a few ticks of additional profit to this lovely little business.

Marketing Stuff That They Do

So … Dog Days Barkery has a Facebook page and an Instagram account. That’s a good start.

They are not running any search ads that I can find. BUT … it seems that they have just run their VERY FIRST social media ad campaign ever! The store is doing a “Dress your dog up like Harry Potter” event that they are advertising on their site and on social … and that is so freak’in nerdy and precious in the best kinds of ways that it makes me want to buy a dozen dog biscuits just ‘cuz.

Anyway … here is their first Facebook ad ever. Congratulations, ladies … please do more.

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