🤔 Is Your Shopify Store Designed to Convert, or Just Look Pretty?

27:36And so you can really refine who sees the page. And so how that works is it's also just like A-B testing. It's built right into the Shopify admin. You install the app. You're already in it basically. And it shows you two different boxes. So you see your original page and then your variant pages. And so you can create multiple variants as many as you need by segment that you create. So again, let's say we're selling swimsuits and we have just our original page targets everybody. And then we have our Miami page specifically. So when you go to make that variant, you can go into the page, edit it, change the copy, change the images, just like AB testing, change the layout of the page.

28:11You can't do a completely separate page. This is actually a variant of the original, unlike AB testing that does allow URL testing. But with that variant, again, changing that copy, changing the buttons, everything else to make it more personalized. And what happens is the people that meet those segment requirements will only see that segment page until it's gone. So as long they will always see that page there's no like redirect there's no flash it's not like an awkward experience it's just that's the page they see that's what loads yep that's what loads so it's pretty smooth experience what is the best use case that's relatively easy to set up is it location like someone i can imagine east coast west coast maybe summer winter or like colder climates, warmer climates, and like if you're selling clothing, different hero images or different speaking to like to that location or like what's a real quick win for personalization?

29:12So the one that we see most commonly used is actually location. And so we have these brands that sell locally. Yeah. And so they have different locations throughout various states, but they don't sell all the same products at all those locations. Gotcha. So they use that personalization to create these landing pages that just show the products of the store closest to the customer so okay makes it because they were getting the issue was actually people were ordering things from like two states away it's like either you drive here or we have to refund you basically right so that and we've seen that actually with various brands at this point it's based on your location certain things just are not available to you is the product so what page would this be is this like a collection page or a home page and you just are showing different products they're either making landing pages or collections pages.

29:58Okay. Yeah. Based on that. So when you do land on like the collection of what's available locally, that's just all you see. So they can still go through the site in some ways or get around it, which is unfortunate and something we're looking into, but like if they searched for it or typed in the URL, right. But they wouldn't just see it on the collection page. Exactly. And so again, this comes, a lot of this comes from paid. So right. Direct paid landing page and you put them in the flow and you build your flow around that personalization. So it's not something that they would necessarily jump out of that flow, but it is possible to jump out of that flow.

30:31Like, I mean, could you do something too, like if you can do it by source, if you have a influencer program, could you do it by someone, a specific, maybe someone's email newsletter, that might be tough because you want to have a URL. Actually, could you add? You could. Yeah. So you can do UTMs. So you can do, You can give any of your partners or influencers a specific UTM and then they would land on that page personalized for them. You can show the influencer's face and a quote from that influencer and everything else to make it really jive with the social campaign. I'm assuming you're running with that influencer.

31:09Well, that's been proven to increase conversion. Are you familiar with Superfiliate? Yeah. It's basically their business model is influencer landing pages. but they create full-blown landing pages, I think you could probably get 90 % of the win. And I'm a fan of Super Affiliate, great product. But if you didn't want to build full-blown landing pages for each affiliate, you could probably get 90 % of the effectiveness at least by having their picture and Jay recommends or recommended by Jay and I see some products that I recommend or something. Like that, even like that addresses the trust, the, I'm not just clicking a random, um, affiliate link.

31:53It's actually, there's a connection with me and the brand. Like, yes, a big fancy landing page would be nice, which I guess you could, you could do that with Shogun too, page builder, and then send them to each one of those. But like quick win, this would probably increase conversion for sure. Well, yeah. Yeah, so this is, again, the benefit of personalization is you can take, you make just one landing page, and then you make variants of each of that. And then for the influencers, they each get their own UTM. So let's say you have five different variants of this page, and all you have to do is switch out, say, the hero section, put the influencer space up there, quote by them, and then show the products most linked to that audience, that influencer's audience.

32:33And so you can do that how many times you need to very quickly. so you can build an entire pretty robust influencer campaign so you could actually probably do exactly what super affiliate does with shogun if you built a template for a page that was and i haven't looked at super affiliate for a while but i know when they first launched the concept was if i'm an influencer for let's just say a beauty brand and you click on my link on my instagram profile and i'm talking about beauty products you land on a site and it's like here's my recommendation, my products, my seven favorite skin creams or something along those lines.

33:08And it's a bit of a curated list of products I recommend or whatever it is, clothing, t-shirt, something. You should be able to do that very simply. I would imagine with Shogun, create the template, have a different, just slap in the, you know, create a template in Canva for like influencers, like headshot with a background color put in. And then in Shogun on a landing page you can pick specific products to show in it right yeah yeah the whole thing could be personalized so yeah that would be that would be you know it's so funny though like personalization is it's just not i don't know it's not and that the way it's positioned is just not something people are immediately searching for so we've been playing around with different ways to position the product and you know this might be the right angle it's all packaging hey it's like you can sell the same product, but you package it as something else and then it sells.

34:03And so like really what it is, is like you, if you package it up as like personalized influencer landing pages, which really it does that. But anyways, just, I mean, that's interesting. You almost have to, you almost want to think about like use cases. Like what are like the five ways that people would use this? like for maybe like email campaigns for exclusive offers for VIP programs where VIPs get access to something influencer programs. And then you have these like pre-packaged work workflows or solutions because it's like the power's there. It's just packaging it that way. 100%. So we've had this conversation since it launched actually, like how can we do we split it up and just like, I guess, separate apps but it's still really the same app and position each specific for like specific use cases or do we try to capture kind of like a broader use case and see if that brings people in so it's definitely like you said the packaging issue is the biggest one because the tool is super powerful the tool is great and works very well uh it's just we just haven't brought in that interest yet so just kind of a stab at the heart as a marketer we haven't quite figured that out i'd love to see the numbers go up it's just one challenge so far that we haven't quite cracked but i think we will we'll definitely get there it's like you go to a hardware store and all the lumber can be there and all the tools and hammers and every saw you need but what people want to they'll pay twice as much for the deck kit yep exactly packaged ready to go exactly what you need to build a 10 by 10 deck instead of half price for the lumber and so like you're you kind of have like you've got the product to do anything yep maybe it's like themes like you have a affiliate themes and then something along those lines right so yeah yeah that's super that's very powerful i can definitely like i mean the data shows that like when affiliates click in and then if you can pull in it'd be super interesting i just had a call well not a call on the podcast this morning you're familiar with video wise yeah yeah so they just recently launched like live video shopping and so what they're doing is you can have live shopping on your on your site of course but you can also push it to every social channel which is which is awesome because if you're have live shopping on your site it pushes to instagram tiktok youtube twitter everything but what they're seeing some brands do and they're seeing incredible success with it is it pushes, they're pushing it to their influencers pages.

36:38And so if an influencer has 100 ,000 followers, they'll push the live stream. They'll say, can we push this to your channel and we'll give you 5 % of sales generated during the live stream. But then now if you could make it so the link from that influencer, because like if I just saw a live stream being pushed to an influencer channel or like Instagram account and I clicked on the product and there was no mention of the influencer, it feels like a very much like a, okay, someone's just paying to put a post on their channel, which we see all the time. But if I click the link and it says like, Kim Kardashian recommends these products or whatever it is, right?

37:21That whoever the influencer is. I think that would even close the loop even more too, like tie it all together. At the top of the show, I mentioned Omni Sen can now talk to Chachi BT and Claude. And I want to tell you why that's even bigger than it sounds. So if you missed it, quick catch up. OmniSend is what I use for email and SMS on every Shopify store I work with, plus for this show as well. And you can now connect your AI, Cloud Chat, GPT straight to your OmniSend account. Your data, your campaigns, your flows, everything. You open a chat and you ask, what should I focus on this week to make more money?

37:56And it will come back with real answers about your store. which flow is underperforming, which automation needs improvement, which customers are going quiet, what's missing, everything. My favorite part though is AI segments. I used to build these by hand clicking through filters forever. Now I just type something like customers who bought twice but ignored my last campaign and it just builds it. And anything it writes already sounds exactly like your brand because it pulls from all your previous emails, from your website, your logo, your color, your voice, everything. I've been doing this for 15 years, and this is the closest I've ever felt to having a full-time marketer sitting right beside me.

38:33I have a link for you in the show notes that will give you 30 % off for your first three months, or you can just use code J30 when you sign up, J-A-Y-3-0. If you're ready to migrate from Klaviyo to OmniSend like thousands of others, they will do everything for you. You just show up, and all your campaigns and automations from Klaviyo will be set up and running in OmniSend, ready to go. And usually, at 35 % less what you were paying Klaviyo.

39:00yeah absolutely i mean being sent to that kind of generic landing page would definitely i think turn a lot of people away so that's that's that's kind of what we're trying to solve for right making that that whole journey more personalized i think maybe we need to be speak video wise to do some sort of cross promo partnership there yeah totally yeah i mean you can do the live streaming anywhere but they're just saying he was saying that brands are seeing really good success by pushing it to their influencers so yeah yeah how hard is like to install it and get it set up like how fast can you have a seconds it's again it's all built in shopify directly so you can have personalization with zero theme editing code at all correct yeah uh and the segments that we do offer are just already pre-built too you don't have to like upload lists or anything.

39:52It's just, we pull that data for you. So if someone's listening right now and they're not doing personalization, what do you recommend? Where do they start? I would start with definitely holiday sales. We have Black Friday coming up. And so segmenting your audience, looking at your audience members, certain locations, past year's data, what areas converted the best and create landing pages or variants for those specific segments. So it could be, you know, LA might've converted the best for your product line during Black Friday. create a special personalized page for them and run, run your black Friday ads to that.

40:26Obviously you want to run broader black Friday ad campaigns, but definitely segment out a little bit of your paid to, to try that, to see if you could actually get more efficiency there, lower the cost of those, that acquisition for that, for those segments. Yeah. Cause there's no, I mean with Shopify, you can have different country sites, but state by state and city and province, It's like there's no way you'd have to have a different site for each one. Like this would kind of be the only way that I know of. Yeah, it's a great solution. Unless you're really dedicating like your brand to establishing sort of a home base in a country, this personalization route is probably the best way to go.

41:07And again, like you said, we get definitely more refined with the locations as well than just country. Right. and then the app that's coming out which is probably going to be out by the time this is live so this is the ai section builder so we all know ai is everywhere right ai is a part of actually my daily process at this point uh but it's interesting so we've seen kind of a mixed bag between elksman product here in a second but we've seen a mixed bag between people really loving the idea of ai and injecting ai into their workflow and people flat out telling us they will never touch AI. So it's been an interesting experience building this one and speaking with the customer base.

41:46But what we built is basically an AI generator for 2.0 sections. So directly, again, in Shopify, within your admin, we provide you a prompt box. You tell it exactly what you want. Say you want a hero section, two columns, an image on the right side, and copy on the left side with a CTA button. It will generate the whole thing, usually within one prompt. It's pretty pretty solid. And it does animations and it does, you know, interactivity and all sorts of stuff. So it's like you have your own little personal developer building out a section. And so this is perfect for those campaign managers or e-commerce managers looking to build out quick landing page camp or campaign landing pages.

42:28So like say Black Friday and you want a new Black Friday hero section, tell it what you want. So it builds a section that you can publish directly into Shopify, into your Shopify editor and pull that section right into the page and use it wherever you want. Multiple pages or whatever. So these would be great for having different sections for your product pages where you're having like testimonials or user generated content or maybe info grids of learning about products. Like, is that where you envision it being used the most or like homepages or? Yeah, so getting those more interactive sections that I think a lot of merchants just don't do because one, it's time consuming.

43:08You have to go through design. You have to go through engineering. And then when you want to edit it, it's like impossible if you're not, you know, the programmer. So this allows you to build that section, publish it, and then go back and then tweak it later code-wise. Or you can tweak it in the Shopify editor, right? Change the copy, whatever, with the Shopify configuration inputs. But yeah, it's totally. So we've had customers use it for like an interact. Like we had a furniture customer use it for a section at the bottom of their landing page. that allowed you to hover over each of the different products.

43:40And it gave you like a little more description of the product in the picture. So it's pretty cool to see. Like it's pretty, it does really advanced stuff. It's not just like a basic section. It's pretty cool stuff. And it kind of ties nicely into the personalization because now you can quickly spin up sections that you can use for personalization, right? Like you can then, if you wanted to make 50 sections, one for each state, that would take a lot of time. But now with, with this, that can speed up that process. And then you could have a definitely, you could have potentially a different section or maybe, maybe returns are not allowed in certain states or, or different rules.

44:20This actually comes up all the time. Like if, depending what you're selling, there's different guidelines and rules state by state. You can have different disclaimers on products in certain states. Yeah. Then use, use the personalization tool to show that if they're from Alaska, for example, and shipping is going to be double or you don't ship to Alaska or whatever. I don't know. But I can see a real tie between those two. Absolutely. Yeah. And so that's our goal. And A-B testing too, actually. Yep, exactly. So that's our goal, to build out this broader ecosystem that just works, right? So you can kind of pick and choose what you want to work with, like which app makes sense for you today.

44:55But we want them to get to the point where they're so integrated, where you have just like a streamlined workflow between each of the apps. So yes, generating those sections for personalized variants or generating those to test in an A-B test. And again, it's all built native Shopify. So there's that background native compatibility, but we're working on ways to make that much more fluid experience between the apps as well. And none of this, you don't need Shogun Page Builder for any of this. Nope. It's all built outside. I mean, there's a potential plus if they do because then they can, actually, is there even?

45:33I mean, Page Builder is nice because it's drag and drop and you don't, but you can A-B test just your regular theme settings and everything else, right? Yeah. So yeah, back to A-B testing. Yes, you can definitely do theme and yes, obviously your pages. But with Page Builder, we have A-B testing built in. So that's specifically for testing those Page Builder pages against each other. And we do have personalization built into Page Builder as well. Section Builder is not yet built into Page Builder, but it's something we're looking to integrate. but these are separate so that's that's the call and that's what we're working through right now is the page what are a be testing and personalization personalization is actually separate from the separate a be testing and personalization apps so they are a little different and we are moving people into the new apps those are more robust and that's where we're focused but yeah you can integrate with page blur so you can do like I was mentioning that URL test so you can test a page builder page against a Shopify 2.0 page so there is that option, but it's not like a native integration quite yet.

46:34And what is the cost to get started with these apps? So we've got free plans and we've got really cheap, less than$20 plans for these apps we're still working on. We might just make personalization free is something that we're talking about, to begin at least. But even$20, like, I'm just pulling them up here, but so, I mean, that's incredible. Like, if you want, there's no reason someone shouldn't do A-B testing. So like, what is that app specifically? A-B testing? Yeah. Is it$20? Do you get a certain number of tests or that's just a flat? Yeah. So with A-B testing, you get one test, one active test.

47:13And from there, you can expand to unlimited tests. But yeah, when you start at the$20 plan, it pretty much covers what you need. Gotcha. For the most part, if you're a smaller brand, I would say, it definitely covers what you need. It's a great entry into A-B testing. but we do actually we've scaled up to to the point where you can do unlimited tests with the higher chip plans we are also adding additional features to the advanced plan like price testing it's a very popular thing it's a little it's not quite out yet so i don't know if i'm supposed to share that but it'll be out probably by the end of august so we're really excited for that one we're going to start promoting that very soon and that's a big uh big request we get from people but we do have definitely more advanced testing uh options there will that be part of A-B testing or will that be a standalone?

47:57Nope, that'll be part of it. Yeah. And just, just the higher tier plan. Yeah. Okay. Cause I mean, I, I think there is a very good argument for that to be like dynamic pricing as a standalone tool where if it's testing pricing, seasonal pricing, pricing based off factors, I don't know, you know, every retail store now has these liquid LCD price tags. They look like paper, but they're actually, they're dynamic and they're changing and if it's raining outside the price of umbrellas goes up 10 or different things and based off inventory and all kinds of stuff like it's in brick and mortar stores and everyone's doing it i feel like that is a amazon does it like it's all based off of like velocity of ordering how many times you've looked at a product it's interesting i mean that's amazing if it's part of a b testing could also almost be its own standalone tool as well yeah yeah and um you know it's something that when we have shared with the merchants like ab testing especially the bigger merchants or larger merchants it's definitely something they bring up it's something that like they're really what they want to test when they're thinking about ab testing but totally yeah it could be separate app we could really build that out into something where you do see that kind of surge pricing uh as well and you know reporting on those metrics testing against original pricing against surge pricing that kind of thing would definitely be a really cool option What are some of the best results you've seen brands get with A-B testing?

49:26You know, we regularly see 20-30 % of A-B testing. Crazy. In terms of conversion, like actual sales conversions. Yeah. That's pretty common. And so that's the part. So like if you're not A-B testing, you're leaving 20 % on the table. Oh yeah, easily. That's a safe statement. Yeah, absolutely. I would endorse that statement. And we see it even at Shogun ourselves, A-B testing, right? on the B2B side, we see regular gains like that. It's just something that you can't ignore. But I would say, again, it comes down to, and this is the feedback we get or the questions we get is like, where do we start?

50:00What should we test? Why should we test this? And so we built tons of resources around, like we have a Navy testing library on our website with, I don't know how many ideas, maybe 50 plus ideas of things to test. On the site, we also built a personalization library. So all the location type of testing or UTM type testing. We have tons of ideas for that. You know, it's just something I think people are still a little just not sure of for the most part. If they've never done it before, I can definitely see how it's a little intimidating. It's a little concerning because again, you are taking a live page and diverting some of that traffic.

50:31So if you're expecting X number of sales and you got to hit that quarter, it's scary to be like, well, we might actually just cut that in half because we're going to divert the traffic and see what happens. It might also be more. It could be more. Yeah. It's just scary. It's your risk appetite, I guess. yeah well i think that's i that's part of the game of e-commerce like if you don't have the ability to test i think you're on a downward spiral because then you're just flying by your instincts in your gut and that can get you in a lot of trouble too yeah well especially like ad prices i can't believe the cost of these things i remember when i started working at shogun and you know our conversion like our cost per conversion was significantly less than what it is now yeah and it's like and we've tested the pages we got better conversion rates since then yeah you should have the best conversion of any app company yeah we've been testing years and years and years but just the cost in general it's just rising like there's nothing you can really do about it and so we see that on the e-commerce side too with our merchants the cost to acquire these customers has become significant to the point where certain products you're selling don't even make you money anymore because you're just getting people in the door and so that you know that can be acceptable if they're loss leaders and you get good repeat purchase rates but you don't see that often either so it's like you have to continuously test and what are you actually showing out there uh is extremely important right now that's a whole nother show but i feel like that is a huge challenge right now is finding ways to acquire customers and leverage your existing customers and lean into your data on customers that you have to drive more repeat orders and referrals and everything else from your customer base versus like the days of just throwing money at Facebook.

52:19You can still throw money at Facebook, but you can't really grow a sustainable business long-term just by throwing money at Facebook anymore. Right. And it's, I mean, it's great top of funnel Facebook is, but yeah, if you're not nourishing that funnel and optimizing it continuously, I think you're going to struggle. yeah so what do you recommend someone start with someone's listening right now and they're not using any of these tools but they know they're like okay i get it i can increase my conversion i know i'm not testing enough i'm not doing any personalization where should someone start again i think it depends on the brand but i would say probably a good flow would be to actually use this AI section builder, come up with some unique new sections and see how those play out when you add those to your page with A-B testing, right?

53:10So insert that new section. It could be a new collection section or new info section or facts section, whatever. Put that on your product page, test out with A-B testing and see how that performs. If that increases those conversions or even just if it actually helps increase just length of time on the page, start small. See if that actually is something attractive to your customer base and then try to optimize from there further, right? Do your next test. Yeah, that kind of makes sense for that being the foundation because that is what is building the sections and then you personalize and test.

53:42So that does make that make sense. Yeah, it's definitely the foundational tool, I would say. And we are obviously we still have the page builder product, but this the section builder is great for those quick section inputs, right? Right. Brand new section, you want to test. You don't have to go through a whole design or dev process. You have the idea. It takes that idea, puts out a really polished section for you. And then, yeah, just try it out, test it, see what happens. Amazing. This has been very insightful. I'm super excited to see where Shogun's going. I mean, Shogun's been a leader in the space forever, one of the OG Shopify app companies.

54:19And still 12 years later now, innovating 11 years later, innovating like crazy, which is awesome to see. if someone wants to try these apps is it it's get shogun.com get shogun.com uh or directly from the app store so it's shogun a b testing shogun personalization and it soon will be shogun ai section builder in the next week or so amazing and if someone wants to follow you personally where are you what social platform i am not on social you're too busy i've moved away from that i'm on linkedin so phil mormon on linkedin okay that's probably the best way to find me or if you just want to reach out to me, ask questions, phil at getshogun.com.

54:57I have every variation of Phil, but I typically spell it Phil with two L's, but Phil with one L will work. But yeah, that's the easiest way to get ahold of me. More and more people I ask this at the end of the show, they say, well, I'm not really, I don't really do social anymore, but like everyone has a LinkedIn account. I mean, you have to at this point. Yes. Yes. Basically the resume. Yeah. This has been great, Phil. Thank you so much. I'll make sure to include all that in the show notes and just Really appreciate your time and all the best with the launch and the new app. It sounds exciting.

55:27I think it's going to help a lot of merchants. I think so too. Yeah. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having us on here. My complete pleasure. Thank you. Well, that was a great episode. Now, as you know, at the end of every episode, I like to share a quick tip, something that will help you grow your store at least 1%, which is the theme of this podcast to improve your Shopify store 1 % every day. because those listeners know that if you do that at the end of the year, you'll be 3 ,700 % better because 1 % compounding every day. That's what it ends up. So here's your 1 % tip for today.

56:02Lately, we've been talking a lot about getting found in AI. It's a big, it's a big theme lately. Shopify a few weeks ago announced that you'll be able to buy directly in chat GPT. So it's essential that you figure this out. I've been sharing a lot of different tips and ideas. the one I want to share today, one easy 1 % win is to build three outcome-based bundles and name them like a human would ask for. Okay. So what do I mean by first an outcome-based bundle? So let's say you sell kitchen supplies. So your bundle might be a starter kit, first apartment kitchen, first apartment kitchen starter kit.

56:41Let's say you sell outdoor running, jogging stuff, create a bundle called the weekend trail runner pack. So you sell cosmetics, gel nails and stuff, create a bundle called the at home gel manicure set. So what you're doing is you're putting the outcome name in the name and description. So an agent can map that to the question that someone asks. So when someone asks chat GPT, I'm looking for a good gel manicure kit for home. That isn't typically what people would write on a product. So what you want to do is create one skew. Okay. Cause chat GPT isn't going to show the seven items needed. It's going to favor single skews.

57:24So if you have a single skew that is a bundle and you just have to map that in your backend, like when someone orders that skew, you know that it's these seven items going in, but then chat GPT can show the single skew when the person asks that question as the suggestion, this is a big hack. And if you do this now, you will get found in ChatGPT in six months. Probably everyone will be doing this. But right now it's a big opportunity to get ahead and take advantage of that. So if you have a spring lawn starter kit or a gardening for beginner kit, it might have 20 items in it, but put it as one skew.

58:01That's it for this tip. I say start with three, but think when you name it, think how would someone ask for this? So don't call it the premium gardening kit. No one's going to search for a premium basic standard. Name it as the gardening kit for people who don't know how to garden. So something along those lines. So when someone is searching and asking for a outcome based result, that's the name of your bundle. And then make sure on the description in the bundle, you actually say that you have a section and we talked about this in another episode, but you have a block that says, who is this for?

58:35For people who don't know how to garden, for people who've never gardened before, for people just getting into gardening. This is ideal for people who have no experience in gardening. So when someone asks ChatDBT, I'm looking for all the supplies I need for gardening for someone who's never gardened before. So it literally has that qualifier on the product. So just think in terms of how people ask, name it that way and make sure all of that outcome data is on the product as well. Now, here's a question for you. Are you going to implement it? If you are, say thank you. by leaving a five-star review.

59:10That's it. If this tip is something that you might use, which you should use, just open up your app right now, Spotify, Apple, and leave a review. Five stars, hopefully. And if you can leave a comment too, that's great because that helps people know what the podcast is about, what you're learning. And if you do, email me, jay at shopify1percent.com. I have a special gift for you. We're trying to keep this show free for everyone so we can help you grow your store. All we ask in return is a subscribe and a review. So we'll see you on the next episode. Thanks for listening, everyone.