276 – Build the Perfect Shopify Website with Elle McCann of Curious Themes

Gift biz unwrapped episode 276.

It's really about making sure that you were in front of

your ideal customer at whatever moment that they are interested in

purchasing from you.

Attentive gifters bakers,

crafters, and makers pursuing your dream can be fun.

Whether you have an established business or looking to start one.

Now you are in the right place.

This is give to biz unwrapped,

helping you turn your skill into a flourishing business.

Join us for an episode,

packed full of invaluable guidance,

resources, and the support you need to grow.

Your gift biz.

Here is your host gift biz gal Sue moon Heights.

Well, hi there,

Sue and thanks for joining me here today.

Before we get started one quick announcement,

and this is a change you may know that I do

regular Facebook lives over in the group gift biz breeze.

Those times are now different.

This is an opportunity to ask questions,

get business tips,

and interact with other Breezers.

I've also made it super easy to submit a question.

If you go over to gift biz,

unwrapped.com forward slash ask,

you can record your question on the fly.

So when you think about it,

no more writing it down,

waiting for the live and hoping you'll remember none of that,

no sending an email or even needing to show up live.

Just let me know.

What has you stuck?

And let's get you moving forward.

That link again is gift biz on rapt.com

forward slash ask today we're on part three of the six

part series covering your top sales platform options.

So far,

we've talked about eBay and Amazon handmade.

And today our focus will be on Shopify with the recent

reclosing of so many States due to this pandemic and its

resurgence. Making sure that you've got your online presence locked in,

will remain key for the foreseeable future.

Social media is one thing,

but specific selling platforms are equally important.

By the end of this series,

you'll understand the strengths of each platform.

Be able to make a determination of which one or ones

are right for you and how to make your chosen platform

work and sell your products,

all the tips and tricks.

And if you've hung around with me for any length of

time, you know,

that I preach about having your own website one you can

control completely and where you aren't at the mercy of changing

rules or being down for some unknown reason.

Not that you can't or shouldn't continue on platforms like Etsy

and the others,

but the ultimate goal is to have your very own and

Shopify is the number one platform that I recommend today.

We're going to hear about what makes Shopify such a solid

option. What the process is like when you're getting started and

the nuances to make your online presence through Shopify shine.

Today, I am so excited to introduce you to Al McCann.

Elle is the owner and designer of curious themes,

a web development studio,

just outside of Nashville,

Tennessee. She creates online classes that cover how to launch and

grow Shopify stores quickly.

Keyword quickly.

Ella has been listed as a Shopify expert for over seven

years. And in that time she has created more than 150

Shopify stores.

She's dedicated to helping entrepreneurs grow their online businesses without the

overwhelm. One way she does this is through her weekly videos

on our YouTube channel.

And she currently has over 27,000

subscribers and is growing fast.

Elle. I am so excited to hear from you welcome to

the gift biz on wrapped podcast.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm excited to be here,

me too.

And I'm going to take you through our traditional question and

I know you're prepped for this,

but I like to have you describe yourself in a way

that aligns with a lot of our listeners in a really

creative way,

and that is through motivational candle.

So if you were to create your own candle by color

and quote,

that really represents you,

what would your candle look like?

Yeah. I really love this question because I actually instantly had

a response for the candle.

So I would have a green candle.

It's my favorite color,

anything I'm picking a color I'm always going to pick screen,

but then for the quote I would actually do.

And I don't know who originally said it,

but the quotas,

you can do anything,

but you can't do everything.

And that was actually a huge eye opening experience for me

whenever I realized that in my own entrepreneurship journey and it

really kind of changed my life.

So I think having that subtle reminder that you're not super

woman is kind of helpful.

So I really love that in particular,

in comparison or along with the topic today,

because I have to tell you,

as we talk about business development within my groups,

when we get to the point about talking about starting a

website, the door's shut,

like people get really anxious.

It seems very intimidating if you haven't been online and done

some of this before.

So when you say you can do anything,

I think that needs to be the theme here for everyone.

Yeah. Can you enhance that for us as a Shopify user?

Tell us to that listener who is saying a website.

Okay. That totally freaks me out.

I don't see how that could possibly work.

Can you just give a little bit of motivation before we

get into?

Yeah. So first off it is so much easier to create

a website and an online store now versus it was even

just a few years back,

it's just getting easier and easier and these platforms are coming

so much more intuitive.

So it's not as scary as it seems to create this.

And a lot of them,

you can set up yourself also just to remember,

you don't have to do it all at once.

I find a lot of times whenever I'm talking to different

merchants, I will hear them say,

Oh yeah,

I need to set up a Shopify store.

And they kind of talk about it.

Like it's one to do list item on the list for

the week.

However it is going to take some time.

So just kind of break it down into more bite sized

pieces first,

get all your inventory together,

then take photos and you don't have to do it all.

Just plan in one day kind of process.

Okay, good.

Perfect. Okay.

So we can talk through,

and I want to in a little bit,

some of the first steps that people would take,

but before we even get there,

how did you land on really wanting to put your focus

on Shopify?

Give us a little bit of your backstory.

So my degree is actually in web development,

I went to a four year college for that.

And after college,

or I guess kind of in my last year of college,

I started creating wedding invitations,

which is totally separate and random,

but I really liked doing illustrations.

And I found wedding invitations being a nice way that I

could still kind of have that creative outlet by hand.

And so I was looking for a way to sell them

online and grow that business and being a web developer,

I started looking at different platforms and trying to figure out

where I wanted to host it.

I actually first built my website on WordPress,

but quickly realized it wasn't really set up the best for

an online store.

And that's when I came across Shopify and I've built my

online store for my wedding invitation business,

but I also realized how much I just absolutely loved building

the store itself.

And I knew I wanted to continue doing that more as

well. So just a lot easier.

I mean,

WordPress is great too,

but let's face it then with your experience,

you can do custom websites all day long if you want

it to.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. It's just simpler,

easier, whatever with Shopify,

which all right,

so that's piqued everyone's interest too.

All right away.

Well, and that was 10 years ago too.

So 10 years ago,

Shopify, I thought was like really amazing compared to other platforms

now fast forward 10 years.

And they're definitely a top contender for top eCommerce platform.

When did Shopify start?

Do you know?

Cause I'm thinking.

Cause I think I moved my website over to Shopify probably

seven or eight years ago,

but it isn't that much newer than that really 10 years

Let us do this.

I may be wrong though.

12, 13 years ago,

something like that,

approximately. All right.

So just in terms of grounding and then we'll start getting

into more of the details.

Why do you favor Shopify over some of the other programs

like big commerce or some of these others that are out

there For me?

I think it's a couple of different reasons.

Shopify is super intuitive and it's a really clean interface as

well. So it's easy to understand the information and locate different

sections where other platforms you have a lot of nesting content

and it's kind of harder to find some information for your

site, Meaning like you have to find it through drop-downs or

something like that.

Exactly. Yeah.

Okay. So going into different dropdown areas and it's kind of

more hidden pages of the site to edit some random checkout

setting. And it's just not all in an easy to digest

format like Shopify is,

And just by its name,

it's really conducive to the types of websites that everyone listening

here would be putting up,

right. Because it's for a shopping experience.

Exactly. But I think what also sets them apart is that

they think about more than just your online store.

They think about more of the needs of the merchant.

So they have these different sales channels.

That's what they call them to where you can link in

your store and sell your products on Facebook and Instagram and

Pinterest. And they make it really easy for you as a

merchant. They don't expect you to have to do everything and

they just make it a really easy process.

And even with their app store,

you can add in a wishlist for your store in 15

minutes. And it's just a lot more of a seamless process

overall. Okay,

perfect. And blogs or whatever you're going to do.

So it gives you a lot of the flexibility that WordPress

sites would,

but in an easier to use platform.

Yeah. I would say so.

Okay. Alright.

So let's convince people who might have brick and mortar shops,

why they should have a website.

We might even be able to just say one word COVID

Right. I was going to say,

well, I think we got a good example for sure.

Yeah. But what else?

I mean,

what would you say would be the reason to have a

presence online?

Because a lot of people let's face it have brick and

mortar shops or they're out selling at craft shows and they

have a Facebook page.

So they feel they have a presence.

Yeah. I think it's really about making sure that you were

in front of your ideal customer at whatever moment that they

are interested in purchasing from you.

So it's great.

Of course,

when people come into your store,

however, sometimes that may not be possible due to different issues.

And so having an online presence where people can purchase from

you online is really helpful,

but you can also connect in and sell your products on

Instagram. So if they're scrolling through on Instagram and they see

something and go,

Oh my gosh,

I love that they can actually click and just purchase right

there. So it's not just scroll on by and don't really

think about it again.

You're kind of connecting with people in other ways.

And with like,

if you were to build an email list online,

being able to then target and connect with that audience and

give them your latest products and information is a really helpful

way to just build your,

and really make sure that you're building that huge fan base

around your business.

Yeah. And I'm also thinking,

you know,

with the power of Google to be able to be found

when someone's searching.

Oh yeah.

If you don't have a website,

your Facebook page,

isn't going to show up on search,

but a website will.

And I mean,

sometimes Facebook pages do show up,

but a lot of times,

if someone's Googling your specific business,

they're looking for your website,

not your Facebook page.

Right. And so it is great to have that presence online

so that they can purchase from you,

however they find you online,

but they don't have to come into your store.

They can purchase from anywhere around the world.

All right.

So let's talk Shopify then specifically for someone who is brand

new, who's putting up a Shopify site.

What should I be thinking about what are the first steps

that I should be taking?

So I would say the first steps are overall just thinking

of what products you're going to put on your store.

A lot of times a brick and mortar store may choose

not to put all of their products online and just to

have a curated collection really kind of depends on your catalog

of inventory that you have.

However, I would definitely start thinking about the products and something.

That's going to make your product stand apart from everywhere else

online. It's going to be really good product photography.

So getting some kind of little studio set up,

even if it's just a white table that you're taking photos

on, or maybe you're adding in some props,

but really start thinking about the products that you're going to

be selling and how you can group and categorize them together

as well as start taking some of those product photos.

Okay. We should decide on the products and then have our

images ready.

I'm trying to like make a little kid of things before

they go to start building a website.

Like what types of things should you have ready?

Right. Kind of the building tools so that I'm thinking product

titles and descriptions.

Yeah. It would be great if you had all that ready.

Of course you could type it into Shopify as you go.

But if you have more time ahead of time to start

working on that,

even in like an Excel spreadsheet file,

I think it will be really helpful in making the process

go a lot faster.

Once you do get into Shopify.

So we can start building once we get into the Shopify

platform. So you can do that one way or the other.

Exactly. All right.

So we dump over to shopify.com

and what happens from there.

So they actually have a 14 day free trial,

so you can sign up for there and spend two weeks

building out your store and not have to pay the monthly

fee, which the basic monthly fee is $29 a month.

And the next one up that includes gift cards,

which are pretty popular with a lot of people is $79

a month,

but you would then have two weeks free and then you'd

be a charge,

whatever plan that you chose.

But in that two weeks,

you could go ahead and essentially build out your entire store.

So that as soon as your trial is over,

you were ready to launch.

And so what does it mean as this is where people

will get nervous?

Right. So what does it mean to build out a store?

How do you do that?

Yeah. So you'll put in your product information,

really think about how you're going to categorize products in a

meaningful way to your customers.

So instead of just putting shop and have that be all

of your products on one page,

you really want to think about how a customer is going

to come to your site and either be looking for specific

products or go through your collection of different products and see

what peaks their interest the most.

So you may want to,

for example,

if you were selling apparel in your brick and mortar store,

you would probably want to have a men's section and a

women's and kids,

and then you could even break it down further to be

like women's tops,

women's bottoms and break it out into different buckets or categories.

And that's what you'll be setting up in Shopify as those

categories and then filling on what the different products.

Okay. So I love that.

And this is where I think it's kind of like when

you write a blog,

like you get online,

you pull up your blog section and then you have a

blank page and you don't know what to do.

Right. So that's where I was feeling like,

it's a good idea.

Before you go into Shopify,

even to kind of envision what you want your site to

look like,

and you might do that by going and seeing other sites

online that you like product sites.

And then just what you're saying now,

like envision how you think you'd want it versus going there,

then then starting to build and seeing that it's not looking

right. Build to what a vision is that you have for

your site,

I think would be an easier way to do it.

So just like you were saying,

I love that collections,

et cetera,

the different types of product segments,

however, that would be,

Yeah. And I'd like to add.

So I think a lot of people fall into a trap

of they know their products very well.

And so it makes sense to them to group it a

certain way,

but to their ideal customer or just the regular person,

it may not make as much sense.

So I would really make sure that whenever you're thinking through

that, as well as thinking through your product names,

you're really keeping your ideal customer in mind.

Absolutely. And those of you who have not listened to the

podcast about product names and descriptions for SEO,

go back to that episode,

you can go to gift biz on rap.com

forward slash search search for SEO and listen to that because

what we've been learning now is that those fun,

fancy creative names for products that we like don't get found

in search.

You know,

so we have to do these boring yellow lemon scented candle

somewhere, either in the description,

you can still have the fluffy,

fun wording as well,

but you have to have the basic stuff too.

Yeah. If you're just starting to make sure to catch that

episode as well and use these two in tandem,

for sure.

How do you feel about having a lot of products?

We're product based businesses?

Obviously the goal is to sell a product.

How do you feel and what is the right thing for

product based businesses?

Do you have a lot of your products on your home

page? Do you have a teaser or just in terms of

good practice for design?

What should we have on our homepage?

I would definitely feature on your home page,

any products that you're primarily wanting to push,

especially for doing any kind of advertising for online.

Now, I wouldn't send your advertised traffic to your homepage.

I would send them to whatever specific product and collection it

was. However,

if they did navigate to your home page as well,

that way you're still highlighting that product there.

But I would say overall,

in terms of the quantity,

I would limit it to maybe eight is the max that

I would do on your homepage,

unless you broke it up in different sections.

A lot of times people are only on your site for

about seven seconds and then they will leave or choose to

stay on your site longer.

And so you only have seven seconds to grab people's attention

and a wall of text or a wall of products.

Doesn't really grab someone's attention as much as maybe a larger

image or some bigger call-out texts would in that seven seconds

that you have.

Yeah, because I've seen some sites where you just go and

all it is is like square after square,

after square product price,

product, price,

product price.

I not suggesting it to Shopify site,

but to me that's first off overwhelming.

If I'm looking for one thing,

plus it's just too much in your face product and price,

I guess I'd say like,

I want to know more.

I want to know more about who's behind the business.

I want some beautiful pictures maybe of I'm sticking with candles.

Cause you know,

I love them.

That's why we have that first question there,

but maybe seeing some candles lit in how beautiful the candles

are like in a life scene and then getting into maybe

the categories of the candles or the sizes of the candles.

So I have some fuel over my experience and where I'm

trying to go towards my purchase.

Exactly. And you want to make sure that you're really grabbing

your viewer's attention and hopefully getting some kind of feeling out

of them to where they're going to stay on your site

longer. And bigger images is going to definitely resonate with a

lot more people.

If your ideal audience already then a bunch of different product

information, if they're still kind of trying to figure out what

your site is,

it doesn't really make sense to show all of your products

right up front.

Okay. So that kind of brings us to the conversation of

themes. And we haven't really talked about that in relation to

Shopify. So for somebody who's brand new,

who is going to go through their 14 day trial,

has their products figured out,

they get to Shopify,

create their starter account.

And then at some point you get to a point where

you're supposed to choose a theme.

What is that all about?

So themes are what Shopify calls.

They're basically templates,

but they're designed templates.

So you can go in and pick,

they have different free themes and paid themes.

And you can pick ones that have different types of layouts

and feature different types of content,

like larger images or a large background video.

There's a lot of different themes that you can choose from.

But I think people get really caught up in the theme

stage because it seems kind of scary,

but also I think you'll look and see some of the

examples that other people have done and you think,

Oh, this theme is going to be perfect for me.

And I want my site to look like this site.

However, whenever you add your own images in,

it may not look the same or work.

So I find a lot of times that people aren't thinking

through of all of the assets that they have available to

them, like the different,

big images,

individual product images,

videos, if you don't have that kind of content available,

or you're not able to shoot it,

then it probably won't work on a different theme like that

you'll want to choose a different style.

And I think a lot of times people just don't really

think ahead of time about what kind of things that they

already have or what they can create When you're on a

theme. Are you able to eliminate certain portions of the theme

or do you have to use every section that the theme

has when you first see it?

No, you can definitely eliminate sections.

You can duplicate them,

you can hide it if you want it to show it

up for later,

like a black Friday promotion that you were getting ready in

October or something like that.

And so you do have a lot that you can play

with there in the theme section and build it how you

want. However,

the overall style of the layout is kind of chosen through

the theme that you choose,

Right? And of course you can customize your colors to match

your brand and all of that.

Are there any themes that you gravitate to over and over

again that you would recommend or is it different for everybody?

Honestly, I feel like it's completely dependent on the individual store

and I don't really have a theme that I would say

that I use on a continual basis.

And I think part of that reason is also because there's

constantly new Shopify themes being added as well as older ones

are being grieved done and have new functionality.

So there's always something interesting and exciting to kind of try

out for me as a web developer.

I definitely get excited about that.

And I'm not suggesting that you change your site design that

often because that's a lot of work,

but there's a lot of great options there.

So I don't really have a specific name that I can

recommend. Okay.

Any advice?

This is from personal experience.

We chose a theme that now isn't really updated that much

and doesn't have a lot of support,

which I'm so frustrated with because I paid somebody to help

me with the Shopify site.

We just simply didn't have the time.

Is there anything,

as you're looking at themes that you should consider,

like who the developer is,

whether they have multiple themes,

how often they've updated or anything to help people.

So they don't get into a situation we were at where

we're a little bit limited and some of the changes are

a struggle.

Yeah. I would definitely look in the themes area.

They have reviews so people can actually review the theme and

they have links to their developer websites.

So you can go to the website,

see individual reviews there.

Sometimes the developer website will actually have a discount on their

theme and you can also see overall how many themes they

have as well as the documentation of how to change things

on the theme.

There. A lot of them,

I think over the last few years have built out more

of that.

There, there are definitely some people that just have one or

two themes.

However, there's a couple now that have five themes per studio.

So they're really dedicated full time.

Okay. Yeah.

And it's possible that because we started when Shopify was very

new, that it just might not be something that particular company

is doing all the time anymore.

I don't know.

We'll probably be in need of a change at some point,

but okay.

All themes,

I'm guessing have integration with shopping carts because it is Shopify

after all,

do all themes,

have the ability to add blogs and other types of things

through app ad-ons or should we be looking specifically for certain

things when we're looking for themes?

So all of the themes have the core functionality of blogs,

pages, products,

and collections.

So you don't have to worry about picking a theme based

on that.

That's just core functionality that's built in with Shopify.

Now each theme can style it differently though.

So definitely if you are wanting to do a blog on

your site,

blogs are styled very differently across the different themes.

So I would definitely go into the different theme areas and

look and see what the blocks look like for each of

those sections.

But they do have some additional functionality added into different themes.

However, you are going to get the largest amount of additional

functionality through Shopify app.

Okay. And so let's merge in and talk a little bit

about that then as well.

Wait a question.

When you buy a theme one time charge to buy the

theme and then you use it.

Yeah. So it's a onetime charge.

You can only use it on one store and then they

do typically have to where you can update your theme to

the latest version without a charge.

Okay. Yeah.

And if I started with a theme and I'm like,

this is not the one I want to use,

I want to go to a different one.

You obviously have to buy that second one then.

But if you change your theme will all your information then

transfer over into that theme.

So sadly Some of your information will not transfer over.

You'll have your products and collections there you'll have your blog

and any kind of navigation that you had set up.

All of that will still be there in Shopify.

However, you're still going to have to go through that new

theme and set up your typographic choices and your color choices

and adding your images and do that theme customization process again,

Add in your images.

Yeah. You'll have to add all that into the new theme,

the logos,

but your products would transfer over.

Yeah. Your products will be there.

Your navigation will still be the same,

but you'll have to go in and redesign your homepage to

include whatever images or texts you want in different areas.

And you'll have to go through that process again,

It's not a total rework,

which is good.

Okay. So somewhat of a sigh of relief,

but just in case that was,

were to happen or someone wants to change,

they want to update what their site looks like.

Have it look different for some reason.

Okay. So now let's get into apps.

What are apps?

So are a great way To really extend your functionality on

your Shopify store.

And there are so many different apps out there for probably

anything you could think of,

but there's a lot of cool ones that can help you

do like rewards programs so that you're giving your customer a

reward for shopping with you online kind of like a percentage

total to maybe a $10 discount for their next shopping trip

or something like that.

You can do reviews on your site wishlist.

There's so much different functionality that you can incorporate on your

site through the use of Shopify apps.

Yeah. I'd also say another one that we use is the

shipping. Oh yeah.

So that then,

cause it's so cool.

When someone orders,

it gets placed on the Shopify site as an order,

but then it goes directly into,

I used shipping easy.

So it goes directly in there.

We don't have to retype addresses or anything.

All we have to do is pick and pack,

do a packing insert.

So it shows all the products that are there,

put it on the scale,

pretty much enter dimensions,

click print,

and the address comes out,

which also so good because then we don't by accident transpose

addresses or anything.

Well, I'm shipping easy as,

and other providers like that are great.

Also if you're doing like a bulk order that you're putting

through. So if you're doing 10 different orders at the same

time, that are the same product,

they make it so fast and easy to do things in

bulk. That really just speeds up your process of fulfilling orders.

Okay. Perfect.

And that's all done through apps.

Yes. Let's see.

I'm trying to think of some other cool apps that people

could think about using that.

Just make their site different.

Are there apps for how you can do the popups with

people have questions like for a chat?

Would that be through an app apps and more right after

a quick break?

Yes. It's possible increase your sales without adding a single customer.

How you ask by offering personalization with your products,

wrap a cake box with a ribbon saying happy 30th birthday,

Annie, or at a special message and date to wedding or

party favors for an extra meaningful touch.

Where else can you get customization with a creatively spelled name

or find packaging?

That includes a saying whose meaning is known to a select

to not only our customers willing to pay for these special

touches. They'll tell their friends and word will spread about your

company and products.

You can create personalized ribbons and labels in seconds,

make just one or thousands without waiting weeks or having to

spend money to order yards and yards print words in any

language or font,

add logos,

images, even photos,

perfect for branding or adding ingredient and flavor labels to for

more information,

go to the ribbon print company.com.

Yeah. So those Chat popups,

there is a free Facebook messenger popup that you can add

in, but there's also additional ones that go into whole customer

support ticketing systems.

You can also do popups for promoting your email newsletter.

So you could have a popup,

does a discount code that you're promoting.

And I mean,

honestly, there's so many different functionalities.

I imagine at this point that if you go to the

app store and you type in something,

you'll probably find an app for it.

There's just so many options out there.

Now It's kind of like candy going in and looking at

everything that's available.

I want this,

I want this.

Exactly. But I will say two things about that.

First off,

you need to definitely make sure that you're being mindful about

the app costs and that you're not going to be surprised

because these apps typically do costs and additional charge.

And so it's going to be,

I've actually logged into a client's store before that had like

$500 a month in app.

She had so many apps going on and it was just

too many and too much money spent on apps every month.

So make sure that you're still just being on top of

it and making sure that the apps that you're adding or

helping with functionality on your site and are not going to

be something that you kind of forget about later on and

are still paying Worth it.

Like what the result is,

is worth.

It they're actually being used either by customers or you and

good point that the apps mostly are charged monthly.

So versus the flat fee for the theme.

Yeah. So it is an ongoing charge there.

Yeah. Yeah.

So just from your perspective,

how do you feel we're coming into a website with the

focus as the business owner,

on displaying our products and having people be able to purchase,

what do you think about like the about page and having

information on there as the owner,

the designer of the product,

how important do you feel that is?

Oh, I think it's absolutely crucial.

And I think you've done a really great job of covering

it in your last different podcasts interviews where you're talking about

your overall story and making sure that you have that branded

photo that you can put on your site in different locations

because people are yes.

Interested in the products,

but they are going to be buying from you specifically because

they like your story.

They like your brand,

what you stand for.

And so being able to convey that both visually and through

of course the different language on like your,

about page or even just your homepage,

I think is super important to make sure that you're sharing

your story throughout your site.

Good. Yes.

I'm glad you said that.

And another caution,

I guess I would say that I was thinking about as

you were talking is if you're just now putting up your

website, so this is going to be something new and fresh

for your business.

Don't create a whole new brand.

Make sure you stick with the same colors that you're using

at a craft booth or the same logo too.

Or if you're going to change,

then change out everywhere.

Because what I've often seen happen is people will go to

a craft show.

I've seen this happen to myself,

I've liked something,

got swayed away,

didn't buy or want to buy more and then go to

the website and it looks completely different.

And it's like,

okay, is this even the same company anymore?

Like, I don't know.

So it's fun to do something new and to have a

website if you never have before,

but make sure it stays in line with what you're already

presenting out to the market.

So there's synergy when people come over then to your website.

Yeah. If you want it to be cohesive so that if

they saw you online and then saw you at the booth

or vice versa,

they would know who you were and be excited to see

you and excited to see your products.

And you don't want them to completely forget that they've already

interacted with you before.

Right. And I think another big point for a website that

we haven't talked about,

and I think this is by way of an app.

Although some themes might have it.

You'll tell me,

Al is you definitely want a place where people would be

able to enter in an email address and not just to

sign up for your newsletter because most people won't do that.

You have to have something enticing,

some great reason why they'd want to share their email with

you. But this is a great way to start developing a

prospect base.

Obviously customers you'd have emails,

but I'm surprised out like through my one Shopify site,

we have people signing up for more information there all the

time. I wasn't expecting it to be as much as it

is. It is.

That's awesome.

Yeah. Yeah.

But is that through an app I've kind of forgotten?

So no,

every theme does have an email newsletter built in functionality.

Some will have additional popups that you can do on the

site to collect the email address.

Plus through Shopify is just a default functionality.

You can actually choose in the checkout process.

If you want to have a button that says sign up

for our mailing list.

So that way you can potentially also get them on your

newsletter after they've made a purchase as well.

Okay. And that would integrate with lots of different email providers

so that it automatically goes over Exactly.

And email marketing is really a great way to interact continually

with your customers online.

Everyone really needs to be building an email list because social

media platforms can change their algorithm and your reach can be

gone. But with email marketing,

you can really specifically talk to your customers and build that

know like,

and trust factor that everyone's always talking about that we know

is so important,

but you actually are kind of building that community and tribe

through email more than you can in social media and other

platforms. I mean,

we keep talking about this because it's so good.

Important. Yeah.

That I rely on social media platforms because what if they

go away,

what you own is your email list.

So I'm glad that you mentioned it for first time listeners

and to some people might be saying,

I've heard that before.

I've heard that before.

Okay, great.

But make sure you're doing it.

Yeah. And even with e-commerce you can do a lot of

additional things with email marketing.

So you could,

for example,

do a kind of a win back campaign is typically what

it's called,

but it would be if someone had purchased from you before,

but hasn't purchased in the last 90 days,

you can send them an email that says,

Hey, we missed you.

Check out our latest products.

You could put a discount code in there,

something like that to try and reengage someone who you already

know was interested at some point before.

And so you can do a lot of this kind of

more targeted messaging and showing your products to people who know

we're going to be the most interested to buy.

And along with it,

abandoned cart emails.

Yes, definitely got to have abandoned cart.

Emails is in every Theme.

Where do you think There's a core functionality of Shopify?

So it's actually added into the notifications area and the settings,

and you can go in and change a wording there on

the abandoned cart.

And that's already set up for you plus different email providers.

Also like if you were using a Claveo or MailChimp,

they also have their own abandoned cart,

email templates that you can use as well.

Okay. Perfect.

All right.

I picked my theme.

I added my products.

I've started tweaking it,

adjusting it.

It's starting to look good,

but I want some feedback on this before I press live.

Is there a way to share something that's still in draft

mode with somebody else or no?

Yeah. So you'll have,

until you connect up your domain,

you'll have a password protection on your site,

but you can send an actual,

there's a share preview link whenever you're creating and customizing your

theme. And you can actually click that share preview link and

get an actual URL that you can share.

I wouldn't necessarily share it online publicly.

I would share it more like an email or private mastermind

groups, something like that to get feedback.

And that way you're not sending a flood of traffic to

your site when people can't purchase yet.

Right? No,

I'm thinking that if you want to show it to maybe

someone who's been helping you with your photography or just get

some feedback before it goes live,

that you really are feeling good about it.

And again,

you don't have to have everything in place,

but you want to have a lot of it set up,

right? Because as you said,

Al, it's a work in progress for sure.

Always. I mean,

my sites have been up forever.

I go back and tweak them anyway,

and you're going to add products and change things out and

add promos and all of that.

And I would even say,

if you're going to share it,

I would share it.

It's great to get friends and family's input on things and

other business owners.

But if you know someone who is your ideal customer,

I would share it with them and get their opinion and

make sure that you're not going to be changing something.

Just because your mom says she doesn't like this color that

you're doing it based off of your branding and what your

ideal customer would gravitate towards.

Yeah. That's a great point.

Steaks, have you seen people make on Shopify that we should

be aware of?

So we don't do them right from this.

I would say my biggest mistake that I see literally happen

every single day is when people are doing,

especially Facebook ads,

they're sending the traffic from the ad to their homepage.

And that is a huge waste of money because there's a

lot of distractions that they can get into on the homepage.

And you're not sending it,

especially if you're featuring in a specific product in your ad,

you need to have the link for that Facebook ad go

to that specific product page because you want to make sure

they like this.

Okay. Here's where you buy it.

You don't want to give them reasons to get distracted on

your site,

right. Fewer steps in between that ad and the purchase button

As possible.

Exactly. Cause if there's On the site,

they may want to look at all of the product selections,

read about a few of the products,

make a choice and then buy.

But all of that presale stuff virtually has been done in

your area,

Right? Yeah.

Hopefully, Hopefully,

then they're just going to buy.

Okay. Good,

good point.

What else do you see?

I'd say also kind of what we've been talking about as

not really thinking through of your ideal customer and their experience,

and that can be even something like your images aren't really

properly optimized for the web.

Maybe you're uploading your huge 300 DPI image from your photographer

and the image takes forever to load in.

And it's kind of like random loading park.

And so because of that,

definitely people on mobile devices,

won't be able to see that image at all.

And it is probably going to distract people on desktop and

they're going to click away.

So thinking about your ideal customer in terms of branding for

your site and your messaging,

but also in terms of where are they coming to your

site from and how can you really make sure that that

experience is optimized for them?

So loading times,

and this goes back to,

I think the testing with a customer,

the experience to understand where to go,

to find what they need,

just the whole navigation type thing,

but yeah,

from a customer,

especially when we start looking at it and working on these

website development,

you see it all the time.

So you know where everything is,

cause you've put it there,

but a customer might not.

And I still go back to the idea of look at

other sites that you really like imagery.

Yes. But now look at it by layout.

And it's not just within your own product category either.

In fact,

I'd suggest better to go outside of your product industry when,

see what other things people are doing,

how they're laying things out and what appeals to you and

what would work with If your product line.

Yeah, I think that's a great tip to really look at

others. And you don't have to just look at your competitors.

You could look at someone in a completely different industry,

but see how they're really doing a good job of telling

their story throughout their site and admiring certain aspects like that,

of how they've arranged things on their site to better flow

and tell that story.

I think it's great to always be looking for inspiration,

but still keep in mind that assets that you have available.

So if you do love this video effect that they have

on your site,

then start thinking about,

okay, how could I actually create my own video before moving

into that stage?

Perfect. The other thing I hear often is make sure that

you're talking in your customer's language and not just talking to

a customer,

right? So if they're coming into your site,

you're welcoming them in.

So you want to talk about them,

why they should be here,

why the product is good for them,

not everything about them.

Exactly. Yeah.

You really want to make sure that you're using language,

that's going to help sell your product and really resonate with

your ideal customer.

So for example,

let's say your candle,

you could of course just say on the site,

here's this candle,

it's the scent,

it's the size.

It burns for however many hours and that'd be that.

Or you could create more language.

That's going to resonate with your ideal customer by talking about

unwind after a long day,

perfect candle for a bath and just have more imagery in

your that really resonates with people more and gets them more

excited about your product more than it's eight ounce candle.

You really just try and think about some of that form

More the results and the benefits through wording and imagery,

as you're saying.

Yeah, I think benefits are what sells the product more than

the product specs.

And I think a lot of people get so just focused

on putting the product specs.

And so their product description is a sentence long and has

a couple different numbers in it for the specs themselves.

But you're not really selling it to them.

You're hoping then that the image sells it to them.

So why not just do both and have the image,

sell it to them as well as the copy that you

have there?

Yeah, Absolutely.

And as we learned in a couple episodes back then making

all tags for the images to describe the benefits as well,

because then that can be searched on too.

Exactly. And especially if you're going through the beginning process of

setting up your store,

or maybe you're going through a redesign now taking the time

to add in the different SEO,

keywords and different areas of your site,

as well as in your alt tags,

like you mentioned,

is really going to pay off in the long run and

just make sure that you're building that foundation altogether.

I don't want you to get overwhelmed feeling like next to

do everything at once,

but while you're in there setting up the products,

it is always really helpful to be mindful of those different

areas that you can optimize.

What does do,

If I offer in terms of customer support or does that

go down to the themes you purchase or if I'm getting

stuck somewhere,

what do I do?

Yeah. So there's customer support through different apps.

If every app company will have its own customer support,

same with themes,

but then Shopify overall has customer support.

That's 24 seven and it's a chat support.

I think the call support is 24 seven as well,

but I just find the chat super helpful.

You do the chat bubble,

you can type in your issues and you also connect it

to your Shopify store.

So that way they can actually see whatever issue that you're

having and walking you through.

Certain areas are better explain it because they're able to actually

see your site.

And so it's kind of just the regular chat exchange,

but it's always really helpful.

And if there's any additional questions,

they're great about following up through email as well.

Well, okay.

So that makes me feel a lot better,

Right? Yeah.

Their customer support is good On your own wonderful final comments

about Shopify and why it's the best platform for your website?

Yeah, I think overall Shopify is really doing a lot of

things now for merchants,

including like how I was saying before about being able to

list your products on Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest.

But I think they're also really thinking about the future experience.

So they just recently in may had said about different product

functionality and features that are coming out to Shopify later on

this year.

And they're really kind of taking notice of what's happening obviously

in the world and changing the Shopify platform to really help

merchants even more.

So they're rolling out local deliveries and contactless pickups at stores

and having that functionality built into Shopify already.

And there's a lot of other things that they're rolling out

later this year as well,

but it's just really,

I think,

great that they're constantly innovating and on the forefront for e-commerce

overall. Perfect.

We need them to be on the forefront because we can't

think of everything,

right. Yeah,

no, while it just makes it so much more helpful because

if they're sharing that with us,

then we don't have to figure it out and we then

look better to our customers too.

Yeah, that's very true.

All right.

Tell me more about curious themes and what you're all about.

Yeah. So I started curious themes,

as I said before,

I kind of got hooked after the first Shopify site that

I built and I have been listed as a Shopify expert

for seven years now.

And in that time I did a lot of work.

One-on-one building Shopify stores,

I've built over 150 Shopify stores and I've learned a lot

of things that entrepreneurs kind of deal with throughout the process.

But I've also learned that I just really love entrepreneurs.

I love their excitement,

their motivation,

their drive for things.

And so I really wanted to kind of help as many

entrepreneurs as possible.

So here lately,

I've really kind of been transitioning a lot more to giving

different content through my YouTube channel and online courses,

all about Shopify and e-commerce.

So tell us more about your online courses.

What kind of topics do you cover?

So I have two different online courses.

One is called e-comm and a weekend,

and it actually takes you from the very beginning of you're

signing up for your free Shopify trial to all throughout the

process of setting up everything to the end of launching your

store and how to actually fulfill your customer's orders.

And then the second course is called your traffic blueprint.

And that's where we talk about how to actually market your

store. Now that it's launched a lot of times,

people still think,

okay, build it and they will come.

And sadly,

that's just not true.

And so you need to really make sure that you're doing

kind of an overall strategy to market your business.

So we cover things like email marketing,

how to increase your conversion rates on your site,

how to run paid ads with Facebook and Pinterest,

as well as social media and PR,

because it's really an overall strategy where if you just did

social media.

Yeah, that's great.

But you're not getting the full piece.

And by adding in even just email marketing or maybe some

paid advertising,

you're really going to be able to scale up your online

store even more.

Exactly. I totally agree with you.

And it breaks my heart.

And I do see this even in my group where people

will be like,

I put up my website last weekend.

I haven't had any sales.

Yeah, yeah.

But how are people going to know that it's there,

you know,

both of these courses sound really,

really valuable,

love to know that they exist.

Where would people find out more about all of this?

Yeah. So you can go to my website,

curious themes.com.

So you can see both the courses there,

but I also have a free guy there.

We talked a lot about themes and the free guide,

actually a theme checklist.

So it kind of gives you some different prompts to go

through so that you can kind of narrow down that theme,

especially if you're going to be paying for your theme,

you want to make sure that you're paying for one that

you're going to really and want to use for a while

and not want to constantly be changing it up for sure.

Oh, that sounds so helpful.

Yeah. So there's a free guides there in the navigation area.

And the theme checklist is right on that page where you

can go through the different prompts there to hopefully try and

find a theme that works best for you.

Perfect. I love that.

So where do you,

You see yourself as you're going into the future,

how do you see yourself or curious themes expanded?

Yeah, so I really love online video and I've been growing

my YouTube channel for a while,

talking about different Shopify tutorials.

However, I'm going to be transitioning it here actually pretty soon

to be more kind of overall e-commerce tips and feedback and

tutorials for you to really help you grow your business no

matter what point you're at online.

But my bigger vision is actually to this may sound crazy

because I'm coming at it right now.

It's straight e-commerce point of view.

But my bigger vision is to actually open my own brick

and mortar store and feature different sustainable brands and handmade artists,

and really show the process and document everything from the very

beginning of renovating the space on through setting up the point

of sale system,

connecting and setting up the Shopify store with it,

and really just document the whole process behind the scenes.

Not only as an eCommerce Shopify store owner,

but also as a brick and mortar store owner as well.

Love that.

And I think there's so much conversation about,

Oh, brick and mortar is dead.

It's like thing of the past,

it is not dead.

It's transitioning,

it's different,

but I think that's exciting because people are going to circle

back to recognizing that.

And I'm not talking about the mass chain stores.

I'm talking about the smaller boutiques,

just like you're describing the one that you would be putting

up. Are you staying in Nashville?

I'm not sure yet.

And then we're still probably a bit off because of recent

events with COVID,

we're kind of changing things up there,

cause I'm not sure about the timeline for that or the

location, but definitely something that I'm really focused on doing.

And I think you're absolutely right.

Brick and mortar is not dead.

I think it's just changing.

And I think the different crisis happening in the world right

now is making people realize even more than it's really about

the community and making personal connections with people.

So yeah,

you can purchase and find anything you want from Amazon,

but you don't really know the story behind it.

You don't know the faces behind it.

And I think a lot more people are switching to buying

more local,

small business and just being more mindful about building up their

community. Absolutely.

And along with those brick and mortar stores come websites.

And that's what we talked about here today.

That was perfect.

Exactly. Thank you so much for your time,

your knowledge on Shopify,

us understanding the platform a little bit better.

I mean,

it is my number one without doubt go-to recommendation,

for sure.

So I'm glad you were able to cover it as the

expert here for us today.

Thank you so much.

Yeah. Thanks so much for having me Love,

love, love Shopify.

And I think you can see why if you're considering Shopify

and thinking it's the next step for you?

I have a 14 day free trial ready and waiting.

Go to gift biz,

unwrapped.com forward slash Shopify to sign up now full disclosure.

This is an affiliate link,

which means I get a small kickback if you decide to

use Shopify,

but it doesn't cost you anymore.

It just helps me fund things like this podcast.

So the link again is gift biz,

unwrapped.com forward slash Shopify.

Remember, this is part three of a six part series.

So we've done eBay,

Amazon handmade,

and now Shopify up next week.

We're covering the new Facebook shops,

not to be confused with the prior Facebook shop by now,

if you've updated your app and you have a business page

designated as a shopping page,

you should have it.

If not hold tight,

they're rolling it out over time,

but you want to know about it now finally make sure

to subscribe to the show.

If you haven't already,

that allows the next episode to automatically be downloaded,

ready, and waiting for you.

First thing next Monday morning,

did you know that if you're not subscribed,

sometimes it takes hours for the episode to become available to

you, but not when you subscribe.

So take a moment and go do that now.

Okay. That's a wrap until next week.

Remember that you can catch me live over in the breeze.

You'll hear more about that group in the outro.

Clip, closing out this show,

take care be well and bye for now.

I want to make sure you're familiar with my free Facebook

group called gift is breeze.

It's a place where we all gather and our community to

support each other.

Got a really fun post in there.

That's my favorite of the week.

I have to say where I invite all of you to

share what you're doing to show pictures of your product,

to show what you're working on for the week to get

reaction from other people and just for fun,

because we all get to see the wonderful products that everybody

in the community is making my favorite posts every single week,

without doubt.

Wait, what,

aren't you part of the group already,

if not make sure to jump over to Facebook and search

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