The Unofficial Shopify Podcast

"You can play video games all day if you want, but I'm busting my ass, I want to build an empire." That's what Beav Brodie told me about his journey building his Shopify store TacticalBabyGear.com, an amazing niche store selling tactical-style diaper bags for today's dad. (I know I'm buying one.) Dads are actively dedicating themselves more than ever to their children’s upbringing these days. While a generation ago tackling a diaper change may have scared off many a dad, these days dealing with a baby’s messy habits is frequently a team endeavor. This co-parenting is a beautiful new norm that extends beyond loaded diapers -- it's a world in which parents find themselves in the trenches of child rearing together. So why are diaper bags still designed as if the wife will be the only one carrying them? — Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on iTunes Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on Stitcher Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast via RSS Join The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group — Learn: The journey Beav took in starting his business The exact Instagram Strategy he used to grow And his favorite app to run their growing store Links: https://tacticalbabygear.com/ https://www.instagram.com/tacticalbabygear/ https://www.facebook.com/TacticalBabyGear/ Free Guide I want to send you a sample chapter of Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com

Building a base of loyal and repeat customers is a top goal of many Shopify stores. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find what characteristics these valuable customers share so stores end up with weak, generic customer retention plans which lose them customers. Instead, by focusing on three key metrics for your repeat customers in your retention plan, you can keep those customers loyal and grow your store's revenue. Eric Davis joins us to walk through why what key metrics we should be checking, and why. He's suited to discuss it as his consultancy, Little Stream Software, helps ecommerce entrepreneurs customize their Shopify stores using public and private Shopify Apps. — Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on iTunes Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on Stitcher Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast via RSS Join The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group — Learn: Why your repeat purchase rate is an excellent measure of your future success How to calculate your repeat purchase rate and average order values Why defining the path of your ideal customer can help you evaluate marketing and retention tactics Why focusing on repeat customers can have an out-sized ROI impact on your revenue Links: Eric's free course on repeat customer metrics: http://www.littlestreamsoftware.com/l/unofficial-shopify/ Repeat Customer Insights App: http://apps.shopify.com/repeat-customer-insights http://www.littlestreamsoftware.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/littlestreamsw Free Guide I want to send you a sample chapter of Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com

Ezra says, "If you have a business driven by the ad model, you MUST understand upsells, cross sells... it's what's allowed us to grow to $1.5million/month." Ezra Firestone is a partner in BOOM! by Cindy Joseph and the company’s head of digital marketing. He runs a private network of eCommerce websites and regularly consults for companies across the U.S and Canada. He is the founder/creative director of SmartMarketer, an information hub for do-it-yourself entrepreneurs. — Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on iTunes Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on Stitcher Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast via RSS — Learn: Conversion bonuses your site needs to have The difference between cross sell and upsell The right way to do cross sell How Ezra sets up post purchase upsells Ezra reveals all of his stats including his email revenue and the product you’ll never guess he sold in 2009 Links: https://smartmarketer.com/ https://zipify.com/ http://www.boombycindyjoseph.com/ Free Guide I want to send you a sample chapter of Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com

What's the best product to sell? Your own! Most people have likely had an idea for a product they'd like to make, but that's all they have: an idea. We don't know what to do next. In today's episode, I talk to product designer Dorian Ferrari about what exact steps to take to go from idea to reality, how much it'll cost, and what pitfalls to watch out for. Dorian Ferrari helps inventors and small businesses take their concepts to prototype or production ready 3D models. With 20 years of experience, his clients come from all over the consumer product spectrum from toys to phones. — Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on iTunes Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on Stitcher Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast via RSS — Learn: Going from concept to prototype Hiring a product or mechanical designer The difference between prototypes to mass manufactured What to bring to your product designer How much to budget for your prototype Where & how to get 3D prints made Pitfalls of entering the manufacturing stage and mass production How design for 3D printing is different than design for manufacturing. Best ways to bridge your prototype and production. Links: http://www.catzdesignfarm.com/ http://www.3dprintingcrashcourse.com/ http://www.shapeways.com/ Free Guide I want to send you a sample chapter of Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com

In this listener mailbag episode, I discuss the must have apps for your Shopify store. As you'd expect, it's opinionated, but only five minutes. Have a question you'd like answered? Subscribe to my newsletter at http://kurtelster.com then reply to any email, and let me know what question you'd like answered. — Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on iTunes Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on Stitcher Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast via RSS — Free Guide I want to send you a sample chapter of Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com

Ever experience a crappy product and think, "I can do that better!" That's what happened to Joe Scarpati. When faced with a nylon watch strap that didn't meet his expectations, he decided to do something about it. But not before some research to ensure his success. Joe’s background is in market research, which he has leveraged to offer watch enthusiasts a better nylon watch strap through his company, BluShark. — Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on iTunes Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on Stitcher Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast via RSS — Learn: Learn why the most successful sites have only a few SKUs. Why the most successful stores figure out a mathematical formula on how to market. How to turn your angriest customer into raving fans What are the future big opportunities of ecommerce? FirstName’s #1 tip for The Unofficial Shopify Podcast. Product number doesn’t matter, Links: BluShark Email Joe Free Guide I want to send you a sample chapter of Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com

Can you build a profitable brand by ignoring all that online marketing bullshit? Today's guest, Matt Giovanisci, believes you can, and intends to prove it. Matt is the creator of Swim University and a co-founder of Listen, Money Matters, a personal finance podcast that gets more downloads in a day as The Unofficial Shopify Podcast gets in a week. He also recently started MoneyLab, a series of documented experiments in making money online. Matt candidly shares his story of success building Swim University – an online resource site for swimming pool and hot tub owners that earns him six figures annually. Oh, and he once rapped about his podcasts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnH4CSg-gR8 — Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on iTunes Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on Stitcher Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast via RSS — Learn: Matt’s “one stop shop” concept for content marketing The reaction your visitors should have when they land on your site How humor enables better marketing Why & how to write for people, not Google The importance of a single sentence Matt #1 tip for The Unofficial Shopify Podcast. Links: http://www.moneylab.co/ https://twitter.com/mattgiovanisci/ Free Guide I want to send you a sample chapter of Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com

"The first time we ran video ads, sales immediately tripled." Andy has been running PPC ads for a while, but struck gold about a year ago with Facebook video ads. After just 2 weeks of running video ads he was able to triple the revenue of a large Shopify store. Now he has set up thousands of ad campaigns, and he has discovered a formula for telling good stories that make great video ads. He spills the beans on that formula so you can make profitable Facebook video ads for your Shopify store. — Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on iTunes Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on Stitcher Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast via RSS — Learn: Learn why the most successful sites have only a few SKUs. Best practices for video ad The formula for crafting effective video ads The optimal length for a video ad Which tools can make video ads easily And the one thing most video advertisers get wrong Links: Andrew's Course: http://www.fbvideocourse.com FB Best Practices for Video: https://m.facebook.com/business/news/updated-features-for-video-ads Plainly Simple Studios: https://www.plainlysimplestudios.com/ TUSP Exclusives Get any Bold App free for two months I want to send you a sample chapter of Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com

Jay Myers is one of the co-founders of Bold Commerce. He has a long history in ecommerce and uses that to help build some of the best apps on Shopify. Currently he heads up marketing at Bold, and works very close with the product team. With 22 apps in the app store, and a staff of one hundred, Jay Myers and the Bold Apps team has learned a lot about ecommerce. Jay had some online retail shops that he built on the Shopify platform, but Jay wished they could do a little more for him. After all, Shopify is a brilliant, efficient, and easy to use platform for selling your goods, but Jay wanted to do more. Big surprise. He wanted to market directly to his shoppers while they were on his website and make more sales. Lucky for Jay, Shopify allows developers to create plugins, add-ons, and applications and put them in their App store for all to use. But Jay also found that most third party developers were creating apps for managing the back end of your store and nothing really existed to help market products on the front end, help customers buy more, and help retailers sell more. So Jay called up a couple friends of his who were very well versed in eCommerce software design and pitched them the idea of building some apps for his store that they could then also put in the Shopify App Store and provide to other store owners. These gentlemen became the ownership team of the Bold Innovation Group, Shopify's leading app developer. With tens of thousands of app installs, Jay has learned firsthand what makes some stores succeed. In this episode, we learn what separates successful stores from the rest of the pack. — Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on iTunes Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on Stitcher Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast via RSS — Learn: Learn why the most successful sites have only a few SKUs. Why the most successful stores figure out a mathematical formula on how to market. How to turn your angriest customer into raving fans What are the future big opportunities of ecommerce? Links: TUSP Exclusive: Get any Bold App free for two months Recommended reading: Hug Your Haters https://twitter.com/jasonnmyers https://twitter.com/bold_commerce Free Guide I want to send you a sample chapter of Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com

Email marketing can be HUGE for ecommerce stores and online retailers. Problem is, most companies do it wrong. Or they just don’t do it at all. Joining us to unpack email marketing is John McIntyre. John McIntyre is the founder of ReEngager, a done-for-you ecommerce email marketing agency. ReEngager helps ecommerce companies increase total sales by 15-30% with email marketing. He is the host of The McMethod Email Marketing Podcast, one of the highest-rated marketing podcasts on iTunes. John has a knack for getting world-leading marketers, copywriters and entrepreneurs onto his podcast, and this has lead to the wild success of the show. Since 2012, John has helped thousands of business convert more customers online by implementing a variety of email marketing and email copywriting strategies. Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on iTunes Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on Stitcher Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast via RSS Learn: How to set up an abandoned cart sequence that works How to keep an email list warm and gradually move them closer to making a purchase What to expect from email marketing John #1 tip for The Unofficial Shopify Podcast. Links: https://www.ometria.com/ http://www.reengager.com/podcast/ http://www.themcmethod.com/category/podcast/ Free Guide I want to send you a sample chapter of Ecommerce Bootcamp, absolutely free. Tell me where to send your sample at ecommerce-bootcamp.com