Knowledge (about your customers and products) is power

I was talking with a fellow Shopify app owner yesterday about reporting and metrics and I joked about something that stuck with me. We were talking about how each of our apps help stores by finding out more about their customers (my app) and their products (his app). My comment...

Shopify people I recommend working with

I'm frequently asked for recommendations to consultants or service providers. I have a handful I've worked with or been in close contact with over the years. Conversion Rate Optimization, Customer Experience, Design: Ilana Davis (yes we're related) - she finds where buying friction exists in ecommerce stores and adapts the...

Co-marketing during the slow periods to boost traffic and sales

Yesterday I went out to lunch to a local food cart pod. (Food carts are a big thing here in Portland) Normally during the middle of winter, their business slows overall but some still stay busy due to the foods they offer. This week two of the carts joined forces...

Shopify pricing calculator and building marketing assets

Two things today. First, I launched a simple calculator "app" for Shopify that will let you estimate how much your Shopify bill would be at various plans. Several customers were asking for recommendations on which Shopify plan to use or if upgrading would be worth it so I figured I...

Reduce buying friction by remembering what a customer said

This past weekend I worked on our taxes. Our accountant uses a computer program to collect our data which she then turns into the reams of paper the IRS wants. The software is customized to include our prior years data and forms which speeds everything up. Annoyingly though, every year...

Nudging the customer to make a second purchase

As part of Repeat Customer Insights I'll review the metrics for some Shopify stores and give them some advice. One common piece of advice I give is to improve how new customers are treated and to try to get them to place a second purchase. Kevin Hillstorm gives the same...

Should you purge old email subscribers?

The last couple of years I've been hearing that it's a "best practice" to delete inactive subscribers from your email lists. Basically, find those people who aren't opening and clicking and delete them. The only two reasons I've heard are: It makes deliverability "better" Your open and click rates will...

Chop wood, carry water for your best work

Before Enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment chop wood, carry water. Zen Buddhism quote I keep a version of this quote in a file I look at everyday. Even though I don't follow Buddhism, it serves as a reminder to me about effort and what I consider 'best...

Getting lost by staring at the lone customer's behavior and forgetting about the forest

Customer behavior can be difficult to understand when you're looking at only a handful of customers. I was looking at some reports for my apps recently and I saw several people who started to install JSON-LD for SEO but then stopped halfway through. The most curious ones where the ones...

Using order sequencing to better understand customer behavior

Recently a Repeat Customer Insights customer was asking what were the order counts in Customer Purchase Latency analysis. In there the orders are "sequenced" for each customer and then aggregated by that order sequence along with other aggregate metrics. Simple right? Just joking... An example is easier to understand: Say...