The $3 Box Insert That Kept Shopify Customers Coming Back

24:31Is there an area to improve? I think asking your audience, like, is there anything we could be doing better? Maybe it's in that thankful card or maybe it's in another mechanism of some sort, I think also is really helpful. And I think genuinely listening to somebody's opinion and thanking them for it, I think is a really big deal. And so that could be everything from like a little forum to a chat bot to a human interaction, you know, employing some help desk that, you know, helps your customer feel like they talked to a human and their voice was heard, I think is a big deal. Yeah. And you know, those email flows still work too.

25:03Yeah. The comment about the handwritten notes, I am such a firm believer in, I had, his name is David. He's the founder of handwritten and they actually have these like machines that use real pens and they write notes. And to your point, you maybe could tell that it's written by machine, but it's with a real pen. Like you can see the ink on the notes and And not all the letters are identical. But I asked him about that. I was like, well, did you notice any difference with customers' engagement with it? Because they can track. They sometimes will. It'll be like a postcard with a handwritten note.

25:37And there'll be a QR code on it for like some offer or something. And like, do you notice any difference in engagement if they're printed versus handwritten? Because he does both. Like they can do it. And he said there isn't really a difference. Like the customer still feels appreciated. The most important thing is that something sent direct mail ends up on someone's counter. And on average, it's touched seven times before it's thrown out. And I can't remember the exact number, but it's touched seven times and it sits on a counter for like 13 days or something before it's thrown out. And it'll sit on their island or whatever, wherever people put their mail.

26:16And so there's a huge impact on brand recognition. like you're seeing it there, just touching it. And it kind of just escapes a lot of the noise of the email inbox too. But so I would, I'm a huge proponent of sending them and, you know, put some offer in there too. Like have, well, he, his thing was, he said the first note you send should never have an offer. It should just be a genuine thank you, maybe a picture of the team or something. And then send a second one a month later with checking in how things are going. And if at that point have some offer or some discount or something. So I think right now there's a window of opportunity to take advantage of this direct mail.

26:57But like I had Neil Goyle on. I know he's not with Postpilot anymore, but he was with Postpilot and like they do direct mail. And like the brands doing it are crushing it. But it seems like more and more of the better brands I talk to are doing it. What's interesting about direct mail, because I was a hard sell in this vein, I think, was, you know, that feels very 1990s to me. I'm not super interested. It seems odd. But I think the statistics measure up pretty well. You know, and I think there's some things that happen. Like we're all inundated with email and marketing that's somewhat impersonal all the time.

27:32Even if it's personalized, I only have so much time to go through my emails. You know, I think one of the challenges I've got is I'm also trying to run a company. And so I get marketed to a lot. And there's only so many I can read before I have to get to my day or whatever. And I assume everybody has that same scenario. And so what's interesting about direct mail is that I'm finding that there's probably a good statistic that readership is higher than when you get an email, even a personalized email, you know? And so when you start to talk about those statistics, sits on the counter for so much.

28:04I think that's true in my household. I think, you know, I'll get a postcard from something and maybe it sits for a few days before I look at it, but I look at it and I consume it, especially if it's a written one versus a printed, you know, ad or something. And I really do like the concept of like, don't always be selling in that first thank you. Just be thankful, you know, let your audience know, like your purchase is very excitable to us. And like we welcome it, you know, and save the always be selling methodology, maybe for that email flow or something like that. Or, you know, and I think going back to the sort of thank you and maybe the free sample is if you think about cost of acquisition or cost of reacquisition, And maybe you put$3 worth of sample product into a box and your labor on that's 10 cents to put those extra things in or whatever for your pick, pack and pull.

28:50But if your cost of acquisition is$29, you just spent$3 on a reacquisition. And I think that's so much more valuable than like reacquiring a customer through ads or otherwise as well. And so I think a lot of merchants that we've talked to about these sort of methodologies just didn't look at it that way. You know, I mean, it wasn't that they didn't understand it. It's just that it wasn't on the radar. And so I think it's like, well, would you rather spend$3 of product that somebody might be more excited about versus$29 to get the next person through the door? And then all of a sudden it starts to make sense.

29:19And then the proof is in the pudding, right? Like when you deliver a postcard or a thank you, what's our measurable to say that it's successful or not? And I think you can do all of these things. You can send a sample or send a postcard, but you have to know that it's working and find a mechanism in which your goals are met. And I think one of the challenges that we have as an agency that we try our best in these conversations to work with our clients to sort of, I guess, surface is how do we know we're successful? Like people buy a little bit more. What is the lift that we're looking for? How many purchases are we chasing?

29:51Can we assign a statistic that we can measure that says we're successful? And likewise, if we're if 100 percent is a second purchase, what if we only get 50 percent? Then what do we know we have to pivot away from this tactic? and try something new? Or is that enough success for us to keep going with it? And, you know, how do we measure those things against margin and behavior, you know, and that kind of thing? And I think a lot of folks will sort of make a plan to do these cool things and then not really have a measurable goal in mind until after the fact that it's been executed. And that's just a common thing, right?

30:24Like I think businesses are busy and they think it's cool, it sounds cool, everybody agrees it's cool. How do we know it's cool? And that's really what matters. We have to know for it to be determined to be successful. You know, my first thought went to when you're sending like postcards like, yeah, but how do you track it? It's not digital. Like you can't track attribution across. There's no link to click. But you actually can track it quite well because you know the address, like you know where something is physically being shipped. And so like generally if that person orders, they're going to be shipping to the address that you sent the postcard to.

30:54and I would bet any money if you took a cohort of your customers and you sent a thousand handwritten notes to a thousand customers after they place an order like within a week or two and then a thousand that you didn't and you looked at the lifetime value of the customers that got a handwritten note I guarantee you it would be higher and I don't know any data on because I don't know anyone that's run this test I just know qualitatively that like it would it does impact them and you can track it because you can track that you have their address and you can see any reorders that come from any of those addresses and just track the cohort of those customers like it's money well spent whatever the postcard is like$1.50 or$2.

31:42So I think there's an interesting debate that you know folks like Postpilot and others that you know sort of make as well is that the the thank you should come separately from the first delivery. It should be a card sent in the mail versus stuffed into the box. Is there any measurement there? And, you know, it's a one extra step that somebody recognizes was taken that didn't just like slide something into a box and move on. It's not pulled from the, you know, the shelf or whatever. It's somebody had to put it in an envelope, close the envelope, put the address on the envelope. It's another touch point.

32:14It's another point that they're interacting with your brand. Yeah. And I think what's attractive about that to me is like an effort was made. Even if it's an automated effort, some expense and effort was made. And I know what that costs because I'm in the industry that I'm in. But I think regular people who don't maybe have the same knowledge as me recognize that as a cool effort as well. And I think, again, it's just, you know, when somebody high fives you or says thank you or whatever it is, you feel good. And, you know, that's the goal with any of our audience members is to make them feel like we care about them and that they have value to us.

32:44Even if it's just a transactional experience, it's, you know, it really doesn't hurt to say thank you all the time. Yeah. And then the only other thing I'll just add there that I've, I noticed with myself, I see some brands doing this and it works really well, like educating through those touch points as well too. Because when, if you're a consumer of a product, let's say it's like some health gummies or gut vitamins or hair product or something, the more you know about that product and like where it's made and how it actually works, the more educated you are, the better of an ambassador you become for your friends.

33:20Because the number one referral channel is peer-to-peer, one person to one person. Like, Wes, oh man, I've been taking these whatever supplements and they're just, they're working awesome. Like, you should try them. And that referral has the highest conversion and also people that are referred from a direct friend, they also have the highest LTV. They stay around longer because generally one person who recommends another person is a really high qualified customer. but I can't recommend a product if I'm not educated on it and if I don't know how it works and or whatever the value is right like if it's like coffee and I want to know that it's how it's made how the beans are roasted the fields that it comes from and how it's like fair trade and I need to know all that stuff and if I don't if I just know that I like the flavor I am not armed to refer it so working that in to these I think is a big part of it are you seeing like that with the brands you're working with as well?

34:18I think so. Yeah. I mean, I'd say, especially when we're talking about things that have qualitative values or quantitative values. So like, was the coffee tasty? You know, the tastier it is, the more likely somebody is going to recommend it. I think likewise, the ethics behind how it was grown and some of those things matters to a pretty large portion of at least the domestic U.S. audience, truly the North American audience as well, I think. And so giving the customer an opportunity to know those things, whether they get to discover them or you just tell them, I think both are a presentable method for getting there.

34:53But, you know, number one, there's always the Pepsi challenge of your product. Was it good enough that I liked it? And then after that, it's about do I also feel good about using it? Is it sourced ethically? Is it made in the U.S. or whatever it is that matters to me? I think it's a big deal. And then, you know, I find that behavior happening all the time. I ask my friends, like, what do you do for this? You know, is your, you know, could your teeth be white or what do you use for toothpaste or like whatever the silly question might be? Or why does it cost this much? Is it really that good? You know, some of those kind of questions.

35:25And a lot of times I get to like, oh man, it's worth it. You should do this or it's great. I like it. Or my wife loves it or, you know, whatever it might be definitely is the number one influencer for like why I do things as a consumer anyway, you know? And then there's those sort of unicorn type products. Like if you think about a MacBook, well, you have a MacBook and you have everything else, you know, and Apple has built this sort of following based on like everybody knows that their products are both expensive and super high quality. Like everybody knows that, you know, it's very rare that you find a PC user that doesn't know those things.

35:59And so then the question becomes for them, I think, like, have you dove in on our ecosystem or our tool set and you're locked into it because of you've made that choice? And so, you know, I think for products like that, where it's either you pick option A or option B, and those are your two choices, it's really a question then about, well, option A is a twice as expensive thing. How can I make sure my consumer feels that it's worth paying twice as much? How many times have I told somebody I use a Mac because I love this thing about Apple or this ecosystem around it or it has the best software for my needs or whatever, you know, and so I think that's a different style of product and recommendation or referral type sort of mechanism where there's limited choice in the world.

36:44And I think a different strategy applied, especially when I can go buy, you know, a regular PC laptop for$500 or something. And the Apple counterpart to that is$1 ,300 or$5 ,000 or whatever it might be. How can I tell my friend that it's worth spending three times as much for this thing because it's better? And how do I get educated as a consumer to be able to give that messaging appropriately, even if I haven't really spent a lot of time being a power user or a power consumer or whatever? you know and so I think I see this a lot in the coffee world there's prices all over the spectrum you can have inexpensive really good coffee you can have very expensive really good coffee and likewise you can have low quality versions of those things as well and so in a world where I have infinite choice and a spectrum of prices really based on what the market is or that kind of thing how do I get my audience to understand like why it's important and how to make you know that value proposition to their friends.

37:41And not only that, but in the coffee world, it's especially complex because like there's 10 different places coffee might be coming from that this company's roasting from or creating from. And each one has its own unique flavor profile and its own unique experience and some of those things. It's still all coffee. It's still all caffeine. It's still all highly addictive or whatever. But option A in this coffee world may be great for person one and option B may be great for person two. And as person one, I'm going to say like, well, I bought this Brazilian coffee and I thought it was delightful.

38:12And then somebody that I recommend to drinks it and goes, well, I didn't like that. And then, so, you know, maybe my answer as a coffee nerd would be, well, you should try the Ethiopian one then because it's got a different flavor profile or something like that. And so how do I educate my consumer when they're going to be that advocate for my product that the thing you're buying is also, there's other flavors and genres or other experiences that can be had within our product line that maybe aren't for you, but you could also point your friends toward or recommend or whatever and, you know, that kind of stuff.

38:43And I think, again, that's an education sort of point. But I think especially in sort of a food and beverage world or a varietal type product world, getting somebody to try something outside of their comfort zone and find out if they like it is also part of the educational experience. Like, I didn't know I liked tea until somebody sort of handed me a cup of tea. Yeah. And it was a hurdle that as a consumer, I have to be educated about like, just try it just this once, see if you like it kind of thing. And, you know, it's pretty irregular that a consumer gets outside of their standard comfort pathway.

39:14Right. And so how do you provide enough experience or education to do that from a marketing standpoint or language standpoint that entices somebody to try something new, I think is a really tough thing to encounter. And a strategy that matters to most businesses, I think, that tends to be somewhat of an afterthought. you buy my thing it's on a subscription the same every week you know off you go what you're losing is that sort of gigantic venn diagram of but i have 10 things this person's only ever experienced one they're only ever going to tell their friends about the one and what if their friends don't like it how do we also then get them to leverage the other nine products in our product line to say you should try the other ones then yeah or there's other things out there for you yeah and so i think that's a really tough kind of six degrees sort of version of how do we educate our consumer, I suppose.

40:01Yeah. Well, it's, I always say there is no such thing as true value. It's only perceived value. So like if I'm buying a guitar, I don't know anything about guitars. There could be a $10 ,000 guitar or a$300 guitar. And I'll say, just give me the guitar. The guitar is a guitar, but maybe I know everything about canoes and paddles and the different types of canoe material and that. And so when I am knowledgeable on a subject, I value it more. Right. And so I think a lot of it goes to brands think that they're a premium product, they price it premium, but they're selling the flavor. And like with wine, for example, I think a great example of this is like the value is in the story.

40:50It's why the sommelier comes out to the table and shows you the bottle and tells you where it's from and the farm and how the grapes are grown and everything. And then like, then you value it more. But if I walk by an aisle and one's$10 bottle,$50 bottle, 20, like, I don't know. I don't perceive the value in it. And I think a mistake a lot of brands make is they think that once a customer purchases it, they're educated and they made the decision, but they're actually not. They're like, they're trying it. And from the moment they buy it, it's your job as a brand to continually educate them. Like the second they buy it, they should be getting an email, a welcome video.

41:26A couple hours later, something else showing about like the farms where the grapes are grown. And then another one about like the best foods to pair it with. And like you're continually educating them on. Now that perceived value has like doubled in their head. It's like someone who knows what a good guitar actually sounds like versus someone that doesn't. Right. So I see a lot of brands that don't get that right. They think that the education happens just on the product page, which it should, but they think that kind of like that's okay. They've made the purchase and then it's over. Well, I think there's only a percentage of our audience that buys that$10 ,000 guitar that finds just the, I bought a$10 ,000 guitar.

42:06And so it's awesome. Like, I think if you're a great musician, that$300 guitar is going to sound just as good and you're going to be able to play it just as well. Yeah. And so it's rare that we have an audience member who will divulge value based on the premium nature of your product alone. Meaning I paid 50 bucks for it and I want to tell all my friends that I buy really expensive cheese. Nobody cares. You know, it's very rare that the I bought a$50 block of cheese argument matters to your group of friends or your peers or whatever. What it is, is that I bought this amazing$50 block of cheese.

42:41And even though it was expensive, it was the tastiest cheese I ever had. And I just found out it's totally organic. Right. And that's a big deal to me because that's the type of consumer I am or whatever. And I think there's a lot of folks, especially in a high dollar product realm or an expensive in the marketplace that it's in realm that assume that because it's expensive, your audience will have the same perception of it that you have. but you forget that you're a highly educated cheese maker or a highly educated coffee roaster. You got into the business that you're in because you already love what you're building or making or whatever.

43:16And there's a, that value prop exists for you because of the knowledge that you have. And if you don't leverage that knowledge to your consumer in a very consumable way, they don't understand the nuance of those points. And I think just saying it's premium and I'm better than others or my reviews are great or whatever isn't going to make your consumer love you. It's just going to make them think it's expensive. And I don't think there's a giant portion of our audience that cares to tell their friends how much they spent on something. They care to tell them about the wonderful experience that they had.

43:48And I think they'll tell a lot more people about that thing, that experience as well versus it was expensive and I'm awesome because it was expensive. That's not really a thing that anybody ever says to anybody. At the top of the show, I mentioned OmniSend can now talk to ChatGPT 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, Claude, ChatGPT straight to your OmniSend account. Your data, your campaigns, your flows, everything.

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45:33Right. I want to pivot a little bit because I think you've got a lot of experience in another way that helps stores grow that stores probably don't traditionally think helps them grow. And that's accessibility. And it's something that a lot of brands just, they ignore until they have to pay attention to it. But you, I think your exact stat was one in four customers. You're blindly turning away one in four customers that visit a site if you don't do it well. So like maybe can you talk to me a little bit about why accessibility actually matters and what it's doing to your numbers and why stores should think about it.

46:12For sure. Yeah, I think you're accurate with the statistic. You know, if you think about me here on this podcast, I'm wearing glasses, my vision is not perfect. And so I have some minute impairment when it comes to seeing things. And so making sure that me as a user who's the least impacted by this scenario can see everything, read it, you know, consume the information is vital. But really what we're talking about is discrimination. And so in the U.S., it's called WCAG compliance, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. A lot of folks refer to it as ADA compliance, which is the Americans with Disabilities Act, which are two unique things.

46:49One governs brick and mortar things. One governs what happens on the Internet in Canada or Europe. there's different acronyms, but they all generally apply a similar standard, which is you have to provide a reasonable accommodation for every person who visits your business online or otherwise to be able to do what their goals imply. And if you don't do those things, you're being discriminatory. And merchants don't set out to be discriminatory. They're not saying, well, if one in four of my audience members doesn't have hands, well, that's just too bad for them and they can't use the internet. Like that would be insane.

47:23And no merchant would ever say that. The reality is most commonly it's that we design something or build something that we don't know has faults in it and thus we're accidentally discriminating against somebody who needs some form of assistive tools to get the same experience that a fully abled person would. And so that can be everything from how your site is visually perceived to the ability to not listen to an audio track and instead read a transcript to see things with the right level of contrast or the right font size or to be able to apply their assistive tools that might be something like a joystick or a keyboard or a braille reader or something that allows them to consume your information in exactly the same way that somebody who doesn't need those tools would.

48:06And there's a lot of programmatic challenges when it comes to building a website that present unique problems to solve. And so when you think about Shopify and Shopify themes, they have a specific standard that a theme author has to apply to meet a specific level of standard for compliance that is enforced when you're buying something from the theme store, licensing something from the theme store. In a totally custom site, it's sort of no holds barred. Did we follow best practices, etc. In the context of why WCAG compliance matters, it's become a very litigious thing in the United States. You know, there's a lot of precedent.

48:41It's not necessarily governed by any specific body, and the rules are not always applied evenly, even though we have a standard that we should all be following. And so one of the challenges there is that everybody's problem that might be a lack of compliance for something could be everything from your brand colors when leveraged on the internet, don't maintain a contrast ratio that matters to 100 % of your audience. And thus we have a problem to solve that's a branding problem. Your brand colors are not good for this purpose. And so what do we do about that without corrupting the brand that you spend so much time and money building.

49:14A lot of it could be something like, I can't navigate this site without using a mouse, and that's problematic. And so maybe that's more of a technical problem to solve and need to make sure that we're solving it. Likewise, it's also about letting your audience know that if you do encounter a problem, here's how I can help you solve it. Here's the accommodation I can offer, a chat bot, a phone number, a human touch somewhere along the way to help you achieve your goals and to try to do our best as a company to both learn from the problem that you've encountered it and solve it and then likewise get you through whatever it is that you need right now as well as quickly as you want us to help you out.

49:52You know, it's sort of like saying, I think the easy analogy is a brick and mortar one where let's say you have a store that's a brick and mortar store and its doorways aren't wide enough for somebody who uses a wheelchair to roll through. You would never in your life consider saying, well, we have a tent out back that's for the folks in wheelchairs because our door's not wide enough. So just roll yourself out there and there's a guy standing in the back and he'll help you out or whatever. That's not something that anybody would think is anything but insane. And so we have this brick and mortar standard that makes perfect sense because it's concrete and you can sort of see it.

50:26The under the hood version of it on the internet is a little bit more discreet when it comes to a normal lay user. How do I know it's right? What do I do to see that it's right? How can I accommodate this person who needs this help? And it's a lot harder to determine And are you doing anything right or wrong? Yeah, I think for a business owner, the benefit to having great SEO or accessibility in this case is great SEO. So meaning the things that you would do that help a screen reader read the information that's on your website back to a user who can't visually see it is also great for SEO. It feeds that information back to search engines or it's good for GEO.

51:02So feeding it back to, you know, ChatGPT or other sort of generative tools that would help me understand, like, what's the best podcast about Shopify or whatever? As long as you have great under the hood tools, well, Shopify 1 % is going to show up in that ChatGPT search or whatever. Yeah. If you don't do those things, you're missing out on that SEO, but you're also telling that user, I don't want you to be my customer is really what's happening. And so as an agency, what I thought and philosophically, I guess I've been an Internet user for a really long time. I'm really old in this industry for somebody who's been around the block a bunch of times and sort of said like, well, you know, I truly believe the Internet is for everybody.

51:40E-commerce is for everybody. We have, you know, in modern times, it's very hard to go to a store for everything, you know. And so we must provide an avenue for anybody who wants to approach us to buy from us or to consume our information. and it's not such a bleeding heart kind of thing, but it's like, why would I not want everybody in the world to do my whatever it is that I'm up to? Buy my t-shirt, drink my coffee, whatever. They're all, their money all spends the same. They're all just as important to me as a business owner. And so why would I shut off a portion of my audience just because of my own ignorance or otherwise?

52:15And so it became really important to us as an agency, not only to solve situations where litigation occurs and our clients would get sued because they've discriminated without knowing they have. But more importantly, how can we unlock that 25 % or 20 % of audience that can't buy from us and maybe doesn't sue us? They just leave and they never come back. And you never know. And like, so, you know, it's a combination of how we apply design, what tactics we use to build things. Are we making choices that don't put somebody, you know, painted into a corner as they're trying to put that thing in their wallet or in their cart and, you know, again, putting that wall up between their wallet and us.

52:53And what can we do to make sure that any user, no matter who they are, whatever abilities they have or don't have, can buy from us or work with us in a way that makes them feel great. And I think at the same time, you know, when you talk to folks who have true disabilities that are very prohibitive to use things on the Internet, any one of them can rattle off a handful of websites that this site, I can do everything I want. on and thus I've become loyal to them. It's not even then at that point about convincing that your product's the best. It's just the most accessible. It's the most convenient thing for them to get.

53:29And at the same time, I think if you were to think about yourself being put in the shoes of struggling to just put something in a cart and give somebody money, there's no reason that you wouldn't become loyal to the system that allows that to be the easiest. I think this applies to fully abled people as well, but most importantly, it applies to folks that need extra assistance to get there. So obviously there's money being left on the table when your site isn't accessible for everyone. So what about all these, like if you go in the app store, there's dozens of these accessibility widgets you can just throw on your site, little bubbles that show up on the top that people can click and that people just think that I have got this accessibility widget.

54:10I'm covered. What are your I know you've got some kind of spicy opinions and takes on these. Sure. What should a brand think about or consider when they're just looking at a one-click accessibility widget install? Well, let's see. So to back that up, I guess, take one step back. I mean, as an agency, we chose to focus on certifications of various things. And so I have an employee who's extremely passionate about this and has led our charge. His actual job title is now Captain Accessible. And so I have become very reliant on him to keep all of us as an agency trained and up to date on the best quality information.

54:47And so as he went through this like massive level of certifications and training and seminars and like a monumental amount of work, he started to dig into exactly what you just asked about. And what these tools are called most commonly is overlays. Then you see the little Vitruvian man icon and you click on it and it says like, I'll change your color contrast or I'll make the fonts bigger and things like that. Those are essentially placebo. And, you know, they do positive things to a certain degree and they mostly help folks like myself, somebody who has a slight vision impairment or a slight problem.

55:19And I can click a button and make things bigger, easier to read. And that's beneficial to me. For somebody who is truly blind, can't see anything, relies on a technology that reads things back to them or a braille machine or something like that, those tools actually often tend to get in the way of those assistive technologies. And there's the great website that we reference all the time. It's called overlayfactsheet.com. And it basically spells out a combination of most of these overlay companies have been sued for not being compliant. There's also opinions by organizations like the Americans with Disabilities.

55:52There's various organizations for folks with blindness in the U.S. or deafness in the U.S. And commentary, like actual feedback about these tools of why it causes unique problems for somebody who's using assistive technology. And it really doesn't actually provide true assistance. And so there's really no substitute for good code, whatever that means in this context. And these tools tend to provide a placebo sort of effect of, you know, I installed this tool. I paid$9 a month for it and my problems are solved. Most commonly, what we found with the folks that we've worked with who've received the lawsuit, the target was that tool.

56:25I was just, you read my mind. I was literally going to say, if I'm a quote unquote ambulance chaser looking for like to go after lawsuits, I'm going to go in a tool like store leads or anything else. I'm going to find every Shopify store using this widget because then they think that they're compliant and that's, they're probably a sitting duck. Well, and I think if you just go to your old friend, the search engine or Chachi PT and say, give me a list of lawsuits that were leveraged against overlay companies. The list is very long. A lot of them are from merchants who installed the tool and then got sued anyway, or different organizations that support people with disabilities in various ways that show that this tool wasn't doing its job, things like that.

57:10And so, you know, I think it makes its own case. The litigation against those organizations or companies that didn't actually truly solve a problem, I think, spells out enough information in most cases. But I think at the same time, you know, you look at the lawsuits that come about. I think it's probably based on this is a person who phoned it in to solve a problem and didn't actually make the effort to truly solve the problem. And so I'm sure I can find problems that go beyond what this tool is solving. And I think it's sort of painting that target for most of our audience. And especially when you start to use these very specialized assistive tools, what you'll see often is that the tool that you've created in this overlay is in the way of those kind of things.

57:53So it actually prohibits the Braille machine from doing its job because the overlay machine or system is trying to take over. I think there is several different platforms that are coming up that actually do uniquely solve problems. And if I can throw one out, a somewhat new SaaS type provider that exists in the Shopify world and other places is called Test Party. And what makes them really interesting and unique is they don't provide an overlay. They provide a cost effective, reasonably affordable, like mitigation type service that's AI driven. And what's interesting about it is even though AI can't solve every problem, it can find many.

58:29and what it actually does is it attaches to your store your GitHub repository or wherever your store theme is sort of being deployed from and it will scan it for problems, it will visually regress the visuals of your site and it will actually propose or execute code solutions into your theme, publish it to a dev theme and then you push it into play. And so it's creating, you know, just like Cloud Code would write a new section for your Shopify theme, it will solve some of the problems that exist in the site. And I'd say it's a good 50 to 75 % solution. There's no substitute for humans using the internet.

59:06But if you think about the cost of me to go from zero to 100 % versus the cost of a tool like this to get you to that 75 % mark where a specialized agency can solve the remaining 25%, it's an amazing value and it does a great job. The unique challenge you've got, I think, in any circumstance where AI exists today is let's make sure it's actually doing its job. So again, employ some kind of human testing or some opinion where an actual user is using the fixed thing on top of just believing that it's fixed. Yeah. But it's pretty good. Oh, test party. Okay. Check it out. I haven't played with it or I haven't even heard of it actually.

59:42So that sounds super interesting though. It's a killer use of AI that solves a lot of, you know, challenges that, you know, if you look at the WCAG guidelines, they're extensive. It looks like the building codes. If you've ever built a house, they don't ever get smaller. They don't ever get more concise. It just keeps getting more and grows more and more. And I think the goal, though, is intentionally there to make sure that the internet is truly democratized for everybody. Any user of any place can use it, and we have to do the right things. Typically, what it means for merchants, I think, that's also a unique challenge is you can't just make a video now.

1:00:17You also have to make a transcript. You also have to make sure that you have all of these extra things available in your marketing that, again, don't close that door. So effort has to be made and paid attention to. There's typically routines. You have to have oversight at all times, you know, in the same way that you wouldn't not refill your fire extinguishers every year in a brick and mortar scenario. You wouldn't not maintain compliance every year in your website as well. And it's sort of a never ending battle, especially as your content managers change over or new product lines come out. There's a lot of checks and balances in play that need to be paid attention to.

1:00:53And as an agency, our job is to either solve those problems for you or teach you how to solve those problems for yourself and provide you with the knowledge and oversight necessary to do it and fly on your own. And I think once we get past the barrier of how does this make me money or why is this non-glamorous thing possible or whatever, it really starts to make sense, right? I think if nothing else, it's you won't get sued for this reason. And that's a big deal. But more importantly, it's you've just left 25 % of a possible audience on the table. They're never going to come back. They're going to lose entire loyalty.

1:01:24Even if you solve your problem later, they're not coming back. It's just how it is. And so, you know, when a merchant starts to understand those things, it makes perfect sense. They dive right in. Well, maybe this is a good spot to wrap up. I know we've already even gone a little bit over time, but I know you mentioned before we got on air that I asked, is there anything we can kind of leave our listeners with as a bit of an offer? And I think you mentioned something about if there is anyone interested, and I'll let you speak to it, but in having a high level audit that was related to this, right?

1:01:55Can you maybe speak to that? Sure. Yeah, I think we tend to look at a website holistically. So when we're talking about an audit, it can be everything from its performance to its compliance to maybe its tactics. And so I'd love to offer the audience that sort of an audit, which is engage with us for free. We will spend some time pouring through your site and divulge any opinion or issues that we can discover that would help you improve your sales, help you improve your compliance, help you improve your conversions, all the above. And I think specifically, obviously, we specialize in Shopify and Shopify Plus, but we're very happy to talk to any merchant, even somebody who's considering heading that way and maybe wants to understand, you know, how do I look today?

1:02:36And if I get to Shopify, how would that look differently? But yeah, it would be our pleasure to help any of the listeners along the way with this style of free audit and, you know, focus on areas that maybe are their high priorities or focus in a generalist way across all of the things I just mentioned. That's amazing. And just for those listeners, Wes's agency has been around, is it 19 years now? We're just about to cross the 20-year mark. So coming up here in about a month. Like, I mean, that's, you're in the top half percent of agencies. Like, I don't know many out there, even half that long.

1:03:11So you've been seeing it all and you've been on both sides of the fence. So like, if there's anyone you can trust in the space, it's Wes and his team. So where can I point people to connect with you on that? So you could visit cmonsterstudios.com. Just drop in a contact on our contact form and say that you saw me on the podcast. You could reach out directly to me, Wes, W-E-S at cmonsterstudios.com. And hit us up however you'd like. You can also find me on LinkedIn if you're one of those folks. And so however you want to get in touch, we'd love to chat and help out. And there's no obligation for anything.

1:03:45You just, let's have a great conversation and see if we're the right folks to help you out somewhere along the way. And worst case scenario, it might save you a lawsuit because I know a lot of brands that have gone through that and it's not fun. Wes, thank you so much. This was a ton of fun and I'll make sure to include all those notes in the show notes and we'll have to have you back on someday in the future. This is very informative. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Shepa Fowl.

1:04:13One percent.