The Unofficial Shopify Podcast

After a brief hiatus, we're back with season 2 of TUSP! Last month, I spoke at The Double Your Freelancing Conference that took place in Norfolk. It gave me the opportutinity to pick the brains of a lot of great people, and now I want to to share that information with you. In this episode, Kai Davis, who spoke with me at the conference, joins me to discuss what key takeaways we got from the conference. You'll learn the mindset shifts we uncovered at Double Your Freelancing Conference from our fellow speakers. You'll be inspired to take action, apply a new direction to your own businesses, and strive for productivity and focus. You know, all the things that make you more money. Links: Kurt's DYFC Retrospective The Traffic Manual Website Teardowns

Have you wondered why your store doesn’t get more conversions? There are two types of businesses: 1) the kind that intimately understand their customers, and 2) the kind that shoot aimlessly and occasionally hit the target. Both types of businesses may succeed for a while, but let’s face it: the second type of business isn’t sustainable. You know that talking to your customers is the the only way to know them, but it’s one of those things that slips to the bottom of your to-do list. That’s okay. In this episode we talk to Liston WItherill of Good Funnel to find out: Why don’t people get more excited about my business? Why aren’t I getting more sales from my website? How do I answer objections, right in the copy that I write? How do I improve my onsite conversion rates by at least 30%? Liston is here to help you resonate with your audience to get more leads and conversions. In other words, we can answer these pressing questions for you. Liston Witherill is an online marketer and Chief Creative at Good Funnel. He helps tech and info businesses understand their customers to sell more. He studies copywriting, persuasion, pricing, positioning and automation to help businesses hit the hockey stick - or at least come close. After serving as Director of Marketing for a $10M company, Liston declined their CMO position to instead pursue his own business. He has a MS in Environmental Science and a BA in Political Science and Economics. He’s an environmentalist and hiphop artist, too - but that’s a different story. Learn more about Liston at http://goodfunnel.co/ and be sure to sign up for his email course.

New store owners often look to social media to kickstart their marketing efforts, yet rarely succeed. To help break the social mediocrity that most brands engaged in, we talked with Mojca Marš from http://superspicymedia.com/ about how to achieve it. Mojca Marš consults with companies on the use of social media, email marketing and content marketing. Since social media is her passion, and she loves to communicate with people and create active communities around great brands/companies.

Ever wonder how to buy or sell a website? We did, so we talked to David Newell, an experienced business broker. David is Brokerage Director at FE International. Starting out as an banker, he moved online to use his transaction experience for website brokerage. At FEI, he spends his time speaking with buyers, executing deals and working on raising industry standards to encourage more investments. In 2014 he closed more than $6M in sales and wrote a book on buying internet businesses for investors new to the space. Useful links: Buyer Guide: http://feinternational.com/buyerguide/ Advanced Buyer Guide: http://feinternational.com/advancedbuyerguide Valuing businesses: http://feinternational.com/blog/how-do-you-value-an-online-business/

Yesterday I spent the whole day at the Shopify Retail tour. They'd invited me, along with a few other folks, to answer questions about Shopify and Ecommerce from existing and potential Shopify customers. From 10am until 4:30pm, I talked to a diverse and interesting lot of folks. But every single person asked me some variation of one universal question: "how do I SEO?" I get why they're asking. If your site appears at the top of google searches for a variety of things related to your products, you'll have loads of traffic. And potentially you didn't pay for it, if only you could crack the code on SEO! If only you knew the magic formula of H1 and alt tags to make the google machine happy. But that's not realistic. It's at best an attempt to game a hugely complex and constantly changing algorithm into giving you traffic you don't deserve. I say you don't deserve it because you're trying to cheat the system. Instead, let's come up with a real strategy that works. Step 1: Let's forget about obsessing over html. If you're using a new premium theme from a good developer like Pixel Union or Out of The Sandbox then you've already done 99% of everything you need to support technical SEO efforts. Open graph, schema markup, etc. All there and done. Don't waste more time and money on this because you'll never get a good ROI out of it. Let's face facts: google engineers are smarter than you. Step 2: on site SEO. Google wants what your customers want: relevant, valuable content. You have to write articles, guides, interviews, and all the other valuable content you enjoy on other sites. My most successful Shopify Plus couldn't care less about SEO. Instead of fussing with alt tags, he hired three writers to produce great blog content for him. It only costs $1200/mo which is way cheap for the ROI he gets. Here's the best part: he never worries about writing the perfect SEO copy, because he's instead creating on-topic and relevant articles. You can do the same thing. Write on your own or hire someone. I already know your objection: "Kurt I'm a lousy writer and I can't afford a writer." I've got a hack for you that I use. Dictate your articles using the text to speech already built in to your device. Macs are great at this. Then send it to a copy editor. I pay $30/article on average for copy editing. Step 3: off-site SEO. Links to your site from sites with a similar audience are massively important. (Note: The spammy blog comment links you buy from a snake oil salesman SEO pro for $500/mo are the opposite of this.) Here's where we need to again forget about SEO; start thinking like a public relations firm. The best SEO strategy I've ever seen is PR outreach. Find blogs, forums, YouTube channels, and Instagram rockstars who are in your niche. Now email them. Email them and offer them free product in exchange for an honest review. This is a numbers game but it's the only way you'll get relevant links with qualified traffic. This tactic is powerful in that you'll be able to trade up the chain. You'll start with small blogs and as word of mouth grows you'll be able to build relationships that move you up to blogs getting millions of daily visitors. This tactic isn't particularly difficult but it is time consuming. You can hire someone to do it for you which will save you time and speed things up because outreach professionals already have a network to leverage. (I personally recommend Kai Davis for this kind of work, he's pulled great results for my clients.) What's the takeaway here? Instead of trying to learn the finer points of semantic HTML while guessing at google's algorithm, all you need to do is share your passion. Make your love of your niche infectious and the SEO will follow.

What happens when a new visitor hits your website? They don't buy. And that's okay! In this episode, we skip the guest interviews, and instead Paul and Kurt talk through the strategies and tactics involved in building trust with customers. The Chain: Anonymous visitor Engaged prospect Cart abandoner Buyers Repeat buyer Brand evangelist You'll learn to visualize your relationship with your customers and the tactics we recommend to turn anonymous visitors into brand evangelists.

Jordan Gal is the Co-Founder and CEO of CartHook, an effective abandoned cart recovery solution. CartHook tracks and captures the email addresses of visitors going through your checkout process. When a visitor abandons a purchase, an automated email campaign is triggered that is designed to bring the customer back to the site to complete the purchase. CartHook customers are recovering an average of 10% to 20% of abandoned carts and boosting revenue by up to 15%. Previously he was the Co-Founder of YCA Shops which operated a network of niche ecommerce stores. That company grew quickly and was acquired in mid-2009, so Jordan knows a thing or two about successful ecommerce. On top of that, he hosts the popular Bootstrapped Web Podcast. So what we're saying is Jordan knows a thing or two about ecommerce, and optimization in general. He joins us today to share his experience, and in particular, two powerful anecdotes about learning from your customers that you won't want to miss. Be sure to check out CartHook as well as follow Jordan on Twitter.

Josh Highland Giese Better known as Josh Highland, owns and operates Venntov.com, a software and services company focused on the Shopify platform. Venntov.com has been a certified Shopify Expert since 2011 and has assisted hundreds of Shopify shop owners. Josh has literally written the book on SEO for Shopify stores. We talk to him about what that means and why you should care. You'll want to take notes for this episode. You can get his book from http://shopifyempire.com/ Learn more about Josh at http://joshhighland.com/ or even hire him at https://venntov.com/

Zach is a lifelong watch collector and has the stash of scratched up Swatches to prove it. He holds a B.A. from Bard College in Studio Arts and a Masters of Design in Designed Objects from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As a working product, graphic and packaging designer, he views watches as the perfect synergy of 2D and 3D design: the place where form, function, fashion and mechanical wonderment come together. He has even had some viral success with his own ORBO digital watch concept. Having started a hugely successful watch blog, worn&wound has also launched an equally successful watch strap and accessory store. All of the items offered at the worn&wound shop are developed by the worn&wound team with the goal of creating products of superior quality and affordable price. Further, they're proud to say that all worn&wound watch straps and original products are designed and manufactured in the USA. Read their blog at http://www.wornandwound.com/ and grab one of their watch straps at http://shop.wornandwound.com/ PS: Be sure to subscribe to the podcast via iTunes and write a review. iTunes is all about reviews!

This week we talk with Jeff Sheldon from Ugmonk. It all started with a simple idea – design fresh high-quality unique items. Just one month after Jeff had graduated college, married his high-school sweetheart, moved to Burlington, VT, and started a full-time design job, he found myself brainstorming about launching his own brand centered around a love for typography and minimal design: Ugmonk. What started as an outlet for my passion and entrepreneurial experiment quickly grew into much more than just selling a few shirts. Listen and find out how Jeff went from full-time agency employee to full-time Shopify store owner and clothing designer. Check out Ugmonk and pick up some finery for yourself. (I know I've got my eye on those waxed canvas bags. I love the patina waxed canvas develops with use.) PS: Be sure to subscribe to the podcast via iTunes and write a review. iTunes is all about reviews!