Catherine Langman:
Well, hello there, Catherine Langman here with you on the Productpreneur Success Podcast. Welcome if you are a new listener to the show and of course, welcome back to you long time listeners. Now today, I’m actually doing something I very rarely do, and I’m recording this episode on a Sunday afternoon. Normally I like to keep my weekends for family time, but I don’t know, this weekend, I just really felt like I needed to spend today getting a little bit of a jumpstart on things for the week.
Catherine Langman:
I’m sure I am not alone in doing this. My kids are about to head back to the classroom for school tomorrow. They’ve just finished a couple of weeks of home learning and yeah, and my boys have also moved up into the top swimming squad which means something like, I don’t know, nine or 10 swimming sessions a week which is, I don’t know quite how we’re going to do this. Anyway, so I’ve spent this morning doing a huge food prep, lunches, and they’ve been made and frozen, some recess treats, preps and dinners as well.
Catherine Langman:
Honestly, I feel like I’m planning a bit of a military operation here. So anyway, I just really wanted to record, well, I wanted to record this episode for this week, but I also really wanted to make it about the kinds of things that we’re seeing bigger brands doing with their marketing and that we’re obviously doing with some of our clients that are really at that point of scale, but there are things I want to give you some ideas that are really any of you could replicate in any size business from startup onwards.
Catherine Langman:
And so to be clear, I’m going to be talking about some of the things that are really worth doing because they do actually work. They really will shift the needle in terms of growth. So something that I see often with startup and earlier stage e-commerce brands is a real focus on organic social media as almost the only marketing strategy to the exclusion of pretty much everything else. And ultimately, to the detriment of the business.
Catherine Langman:
Now, I can completely understand the rationale behind focusing on it if you are at that earlier stage of the business, especially if you’re bootstrapping your business and you don’t have a huge ward of in investment capital to fund more costly marketing strategies, most of us, right? But the problem with focusing on just that one thing is very likely going to lead to losing a lot of other money and time and effort that you’ve invested in your business because as a standalone strategy, it’s just highly unlikely to be effective at driving traffic and sales.
Catherine Langman:
I’m not saying stop putting effort into social media content because it’s something that we all have to do. It’s very helpful to help build some brand awareness and to, I guess, engage with your audience and do some of that really just awareness and demand building type work with that content. You can use it for that for sure, but the problem is platform algorithms these days really do prevent organic social content from getting a whole lot of reach.
Catherine Langman:
And so you’re going to struggle to get much traction in terms of eyeballs on your stuff or traffic to your website. And so in terms of return on effort, if you are only doing social media, marketing alone is going to be a pretty limited result. But secondly, even if you do get some okay reach and engagement with your organic social media content, typically that content is going to be you talking about your product and your brand, right?
Catherine Langman:
And that alone is often not particularly effective at helping a customer to make a purchase decision because most first time customers, and think about your own buying behavior as well when you’re shopping online. Most first time customers will have some kind of perceived risk or objection or fear of some kind that’s going to hold them back from making a purchase decision, or even just not really understanding how to compare what you have to offer against other options on the market if people have shopped successfully somewhere else, then it’s often easier for customers to go back there than to try something new.
Catherine Langman:
And so if you don’t address any of those perceived risks or objections or anything like that for your customers, basically your website conversion rate is going to remain lower and you will not be making as many sales as you could. Now that said, it’s not a requirement for success that you must spend a ton of money on expensive ad campaigns. Obviously, we are believers in paid traffic as part of your marketing mix, but you do not need to focus just on that either, and you certainly don’t need to be spending a small fortune.
Catherine Langman:
So there are other impactful strategies and activities that you can and should be doing that have really helped other brands grow significantly. So I’m going to share a few examples with you today. This is not going to be an exhaustive list, we could be here all day. So I won’t do that to you, but I want to share some really great examples. And I hope that you can find at least one that inspires you to implement in your business. Now, before we dive any further into this episode, I’d like to ask you a quick favor.
Catherine Langman:
If you love this episode, would you please share it with one or two of your business besties? Especially if you know they’re looking to seriously level up with their eCommerce brand this year. It’s super easy to share. All you need to do is click on the icon next to the podcast on whichever platform you’re listening to it on, copy the share link, and then you can just easily send it to your friends in a message. Alrighty, so let’s dive into the episode, and the first example that I want to share with you today is probably not going to surprise any of you who have worked with me or gone through any of my courses.
Catherine Langman:
I want to talk about the fashion, the women’s fashion boutique Birdsnest. So this is birdsnest.com.au. I think in years gone by, I’ve actually recommended doing a spot of shopping on this website as market research for your own business because they just do so many things really, really, really well and guarantee that you will learn something from how a successful eCommerce business does it that you can apply in your own business. The whole customer experience from start to finish is so well done with this business.
Catherine Langman:
And so of course, it is no wonder that they are a multi, multi, multimillion dollar brand these days. Anyhow, and of course, they didn’t start there. I remember I started shopping with them when they were quite new and they were a much smaller business then. So take heart with wherever you’re at in your journey. Now, when you think about buying fashion online clothing or many other products as well, but clothing is a pretty good example because I think a lot of you are probably selling clothing as well whether it’s for adults or children or whatever.
Catherine Langman:
But when you think as a customer about buying clothing online, there’s so many perceived risks that hold us back from making a purchase decision. For example, the sizing between different brands available on the market is so varied that it’s really not possible to say, “Okay, I’m a size 12, or I’m a size 14.” Or whatever size you are in one brand means that it will be the same for another brand. And so we’ll often have that moment of hesitation because we just can’t be sure whether that item is going to fit us from a size perspective, but also, even if an item is the right size for us, different styles sit on our bodies in different ways.
Catherine Langman:
We’re all differently shaped and some of us need to choose different styled clothing so that it’s actually going to fit our shape. And that’s not just a preference thing of course, that can also just be a comfort thing. And for example, my sister, my younger sister is quite a lot taller than me and a very different shape. I’m more curvy than she is and shorter as well. And what fits me is going to be very different from what fits her.
Catherine Langman:
It’s a good thing she lives in state for me because if she did live near me, I’d be a bit annoyed. I can’t just go and borrow stuff from her wardrobe. Anyway, so there’s style, there’s size, style is in terms of the shape and the cut I’m talking about here. And even the way that the type of fabric might drap on you or whatever. And then there’s of course style preferences terms of the aesthetic that we all prefer. And so there’s so much to choose from.
Catherine Langman:
So there’s a few things there that hold us back from making a purchase decision for one. And I’m sure you probably completely understand where I’m going here, and it’s not all about whether it’s the right size or it’s going to fit us. It’s also whether we are going to feel good in it, whether we’re going to think that we look good in it, is it going to really express our personality and all of that kind of stuff, but then if we do get over the line and we receive that goods and they don’t fit quite right, and we don’t really like it, there’s that additional kind of perceived risk about what if I need to exchange it, or if I really don’t like it, am I going to get my money back? Is this business trustworthy in that way? And all of that sort of stuff.
Catherine Langman:
So there’s a few things that birdsnest do exceptionally well, and they’ve woven it really into the entire fabric of the business, the whole customer experience from start to finish really touches on all of these perceived risks and tries to mitigate them. So for instance, if you go to the website, you’ll see in their top menu there is a menu option to get recommended style tips. So essentially it’s a bit of a questionnaire to help, I guess, to help the business, to help the online store recommend the clothing that they stock, and they have a huge range these days, that are going to suit your shape, your size, your style preferences, and all of that sort of stuff.
Catherine Langman:
So from a personality perspective to a comfort perspective to is this going to look good on me with my shape and style preferences et cetera, et cetera. So that’s one way of being able to filter that big product range into a smaller selection that might actually give you a higher chance of choosing something that’s going to fit the bill. So that’s one thing that they do when you get to the product pages, they have a number of tabs in the product description.
Catherine Langman:
So there’s the product description itself which is always well written, but also very detailed in terms of the features and fabrics and the descriptive stuff. And then there’s another tab that is something like will this item suit me or something like that? And so this is around two elements. So number one, your body shape. So is it a cut that is going to fit your body shape or my body shape comfortably? And then of course, there’s the more personality-driven style preferences as well and it will let you know because at the end of the day, if you are somebody who likes to get around in more of a boho style or perhaps a natural fabric style, like beige linens or white linens or whatever versus a very corporate or more dressy style.
Catherine Langman:
So there’s so many different kind of style preferences or personalities. And so it really tries to help you make a decision from that perspective as well. And then there’s also, they do a easy returns system, which really works a treat. So if you’re a first time customer there, it’s not just easy, but it’s also a free first return, so that can really help as well if you’re a little bit worried that you’re going to choose something accidentally that’s really not going to fit or suit you.
Catherine Langman:
So that helps you I guess have that first go at buying from them without that risk. And then once you know what from their range is going to fit and suit you, et cetera, then you’re less likely to make that mistake again in the future. They have a number of other risk mitigation strategies as well. So they have lots of customer reviews and they’re really helpful. So the person, the people leaving the reviews are generally sharing their size whether the item was true to fit in their opinion and very in my experience, they haven’t filtered out any slightly negative or very negative reviews, they leave everything there so that it just really helps other people to make a good decision based on other customer feedback.
Catherine Langman:
So that social proof is super helpful because word of mouth referrals, this is not true word of mouth, of course, because you’re not talking to that person in person, it’s online, but they are verified testimonials or reviews from those past customers. It is far more influential to a new customer to hear something from a peer than it is to hear it from the brand talking about it themselves if that makes sense, it just adds a lot more credibility.
Catherine Langman:
So that is always going to really help with conversions and just to help the customer make a really sensible decision for themselves. So that’s a number of different things that birdsnest do to really help customers to make a great decision for themselves. A couple of other things I want to touch on there, in addition to their style recommendation quiz thing that I mentioned, they also sell outfits. So many of us and I’ll put my hand up here.
Catherine Langman:
I actually don’t particularly like going clothing shopping. I much prefer once I know what I feel suits me and fits me well and et cetera, I don’t really want to think about it past that. So I like going on to the birdsnest outfit section, selecting the sorts of style preferences that I have. Usually, fairly casual dresser. Sometimes I of course like to put some lipstick on and stuff like that, but usually I’m a fairly casual dress dresser. You’re hard pressed to find me out of jeans these days.
Catherine Langman:
So it just makes it really, really easy to select your what’s going to suit you from the outfit section. So and you can literally just add the whole outfit to your shopping cart from the same page. So that’s super easy. So I really like that. And the other thing that I really love about what birdsnest do which may or may be a little bit perhaps less accessible to smaller businesses, however, I’m going to suggest a way that this is possible to do.
Catherine Langman:
So with birdsnest, they have strong values around inclusivity. And so what they do is they show that all of their clothing on such a wide variety of models, of very different age brackets and cultural backgrounds and size, and all of these kind of stuff. And it’s not just like there’s one segment or one collection of clothing for larger women versus one for smaller women, that can be not very inclusive in my opinion. So whereas what they do, you can actually see one, I don’t want to say every product because there’s probably thousands in their range, but most of their products I would say are shown on women of such varying different sizes, shapes and cultural backgrounds and all of this kind of stuff.
Catherine Langman:
So if you’re a size 14 and you want to see that jacket on somebody who looks like you, you can do that. You can select that versus if you’re a different size or shape, you can pick a different sized model to see the clothing on. And so it just makes it so much easier again because you can see the items on somebody that looks a bit more like you, and it will help you make a better decision. So one way that one of our clients who’s a very recent startup has been able to get imagery on models of different sizes and shapes is to go out and work with content creators/brand reps, whatever you want to call them and that has been really, really helpful for them to get a bigger collection of images than you might be able to do as a start up if you were paying for a professional photo shoot for instance.
Catherine Langman:
So that’s just one idea there. But anyway, as I said earlier, go and have a shop on birdsnest yourself and go through their website on your mobile, as well as on desktop. They do such an amazing job. I wouldn’t have even covered half of the things they do to provide such a great customer experience. All right. The next one I want to mention is a favorite of a couple of our team and it is a very different product. It’s a supplements brand called Mister Jones, or it might be Mister Jones Health, I think.
Catherine Langman:
Whenever I need to look for them, I just Google Mister Jones Health, or I’ll Google Mister Jones Supplements, and I always find them. Anyway, I want to talk about them. They have been, I don’t think they’ve been around for a super long time, but it’ll be a few years now, a handful of years now, and they have really taken off. They are based on the Gold Coast, I think, but they’re now for sale globally I believe. And one thing that they do really … Well, again, these people, they do quite a lot of things really well. I love their branding, they do such a great job with their branding, but that’s not what I wanted to talk about today.
Catherine Langman:
I wanted to talk about how they use user-generated content. So user-generated content is pretty much what it sounds like. You are trying to extract or receive content created by your customers or it could be, again, using some content creators or brand reps who are creating content on your behalf, but in this kind of style. So user-generated content typically refers to content that looks a little bit like a customer is giving you a video testimonial.
Catherine Langman:
And so by testimonial, I always want to think in terms of the testimonial sandwich where it’s like a story where the customer is talking about their experience from, “I used to have X, Y, Z problem that I was struggling with and I’d tried, this is the sorts of things that I was experiencing and I’d tried X, Y, Z to really try and resolve this for myself and it just wasn’t working, and I was getting really, really frustrated.” Was a short version of the hero’s journey.
Catherine Langman:
If you have ever read the book, oh gosh, what’s it called? StoryBrand by Donald Miller, highly recommend that brand. Anyway, so you want to get that journey of problem and frustration, and this is everything that I tried that didn’t work. And then I tried this brand and this product and here’s the experience that I had and I love it and I’m feeling great now and I would highly commend it. So yes, I’m just being a bit hammering it up there too. So hopefully you get what I mean.
Catherine Langman:
So that’s the most common example of user-generated content that I would see. I also see unboxing type videos and also demonstrations like product demonstrations. And it’s going to depend a little bit on what your product is, how people use it and all of that kind of stuff as to what type of content is going to really suit. But if you can get a bit of a mix, that’s going to be really beneficial as well. And another brand that does this extremely well, not so big in Australia, but huge in the US is a makeup and skincare brand called BOOM by Cindy Joseph.
Catherine Langman:
And I’d say they were probably one of the earliest adopters of this style of marketing. And again, they are multi, multi, multi multimillion dollar brand, probably multimillions per month. These days, maybe even more, I don’t know, it’s a huge business, but it’s just so influential. And again, when you think about it, it’s a little bit like having the really good and voluminous number of reviews on your website. It’s a similar thing, it’s social proof when customers or potential customers see other people who are just like them and experiencing things, just like they’re going through, there’s that familiarity and usually a faster, harder trust is formed as well because the credibility comes from somebody else.
Catherine Langman:
It’s not the brand talking about it themselves if that makes sense. So this kind of content used in your paid traffic and also in your blogs is so, so, so powerful. It is really, really incredibly effective. And in terms of getting a better return on ad spend for instance, or a better return on effort as well is super, super effective and generates really fantastic results pretty much across the board. I don’t think that I’ve ever worked with a client who’s been able to get great user-generated content and then had it bomb.
Catherine Langman:
So what I see more often than that is that brands, smaller brands, startup businesses, they don’t want to ask for the content. They don’t want to put the effort into actually getting that content to use. And I think that there’s probably … I think the reticence if I find the right word to spend time and effort on getting this kind of content is probably because it’s something that feels like really big ask and also, going through the motions of trying to collect it, it’s unfamiliar if we’ve never done it before.
Catherine Langman:
So trying to do something we’ve never done before, it’s new, we have to go through a learning curve that feels difficult and tricky. And so we want to procrastinate on it. So there’s one thing, but then definitely, I think there’s a big component of just feeling really nervous about asking. I guess there’s the risk that people are going to say no, and that kind of rejection really hurts. And so I completely understand if either of those scenarios are where you’re at or what you’re feeling or experiencing yourself, totally get you.
Catherine Langman:
I have totally been in that position as well, and so I know exactly how it feels, but I still want to encourage you to do it anyway. Number one, I guess if you don’t know how to put a bit of a system in place to actually get the right content, or actually, I think that there would be many of you also just a bit afraid of there’s so many people who have shared miserable stories where they’ve sent product out to content creators, or brand reps with the view to receiving some of this content in return.
Catherine Langman:
So you’re giving away free product, and then they’re just greedy freeple who want free stuff and they just don’t come through with the goods and the brand is left high and dry with no content and they’ve lost the money on the product. So I know that that is also a really, really common scenario and I would certainly be wanting to prevent that from happening myself as well, so totally get it if that’s also where you’re feeling.
Catherine Langman:
Now, if any of that is the case and you just need to get a little bit more familiarity with the process about how to find these people, how to ask them to create this kind of content for you and how to put a system around it and how to protect yourself and make sure that they actually deliver the goods for you. You might want to check out, we’ve got a small training bundle. Our brand rep Blueprint, it’s very low cost, short training course that will help you to get that content and also show you what to do with the content once you’ve got it so if you need to use it in some ads for instance.
Catherine Langman:
So that’s one side of things, but I guess at the end of the day, I just want to just really encourage you. I know that there’s a lot of things that feel tricky because we’ve never done them before and challenging our confidence and our mindset as well. But just because it feels like it’s a challenge to us personally, because whether we don’t want to hear no, or we don’t want to risk losing the product and not get any content back, whatever the case may be, we still need to do these things anyway.
Catherine Langman:
And I think what happens when we practice doing hard things is that we just experience so much more growth personally, as well as in the business. And the sense of achievement on the other side of doing something that was hard and then mastering that skill is just incredible. I can’t say that I’m perfect at this either, but I do try really hard to learn new things and to challenge myself to do things that might not feel comfortable in the moment because I’ve not done it before, or it just really challenges my introverted personality or whatever the case may be.
Catherine Langman:
And it’s been such a personal, a positive personal journey I guess to come out after several years. I don’t want to say I’m out the other side because obviously, I’m still going with this business, and that sense of accomplishment is huge and that’s important to have those moments of mastery throughout our business journey because that’s going to help pull us through the harder times.
Catherine Langman:
Anyway, user-generated content like I said before, one of the most effective types of content for paid ads. So if any of you are at the point where you are, and I know many of you are running paid ads to try and build your brand awareness and to drive traffic and sales in your online store, user-generated content is super, super effective right now. And so I would be working very hard to try and get my hands on as much of that as possible.
Catherine Langman:
All right, the next thing I want to talk about, and again, this is a favourite brand of some of my team and I have to confess, I did not know about this brand. I absolutely should have, and I will absolutely be buying from them the next time I need this kind of product. So Sweaty Betty Activewear, who’s heard of this brand? Have you bought from them before? So I want to talk about their use of product quizzes.
Catherine Langman:
So when we are trying to sell online, there’s a ton of products, product categories. So types of product I’m talking about that are actually quite difficult for customers to choose the right thing online. And I’m talking about the things that are usually we want to try it on or test it in person before we commit. So this could be makeup, skincare, perfume, sunglasses, shoes, clothes as well, I guess, although we’ve talked about a whole bunch of ways to help customers make the right decision there, but activewear, this is another one here as well.
Catherine Langman:
There’s such a wide variety of different kinds of activewear these days. And so it can be quite difficult for customers to make the right choice. And when it’s difficult to make a purchase decision, nine times out of 10, people just aren’t going to buy. So we need to find ways of really trying to help customers to make a purchase decision, but we’re not trying to be super salesy about it. And, and by that, I’m imagining the used car salesman character from Matilda, the Roald Dahl book.
Catherine Langman:
I’m not talking about just selling people something just to make money. I’m talking about helping customers to make the right decision for themselves because that’s what’s going to give you the best chance of happy customers who love your stuff, all right? So one thing that I love and I should totally create a training course on this one because I really love this and that is the product quiz. So a product quiz is pretty simple to put together.
Catherine Langman:
It’s a series of questions that will help you to deduce what will be the right item for your customer so that you can make a recommendation at the end. Now, there’s a few reasons why I love using product quizzes for e-commerce brands obviously helping the customer to make as close to right decision for themselves as possible because obviously, this is all automated. We’re not doing kind of manual quiz analysis and reaching out to customers in the moment when the quiz aren’t coming, not talking about that, this is all automated.
Catherine Langman:
But the things that I love about product quizzes, number one, you can use this to really effectively build your email list and what happens, customer goes through the quiz, they’re going to be segmented into a few different categories. And what you can then do is they would go onto your email list and into a bit of a nurture sequence and like a new subscriber sequence here because they’re not bought from you before, but it’s a bit of a nurture sequence that is very specific about the category that you just recommended to them.
Catherine Langman:
So as a really basic example, a few years ago, we did one of these segmented quiz type. It was a very simple one as well. Projects for a different active wear brand actually. So this was yeah, like I said a few years ago now, but it worked really, really well. And so they sold maternity active wear, as well as non-maternity active wear. And so we could actually funnel people into a new subscriber email sequence that was specific to what kind of category they were wanting because obviously in a big product range, not everything is going to suit everybody as we’ve already established.
Catherine Langman:
And so we want to make it really easy for customers to make that decision, but then we also want to share relevant information with them. So if they haven’t bought straight away, which most people won’t, then if you’ve got them on your email list, you want to be able to share relevant content in those emails that reflects the product that they’re likely to buy.
Catherine Langman:
So if you are pregnant, then most likely you’re going to want those maternity ones and not the rest. So and when you can send people very specific and relevant content, you are going to convert at a much higher rate. So it really does increase the conversion rate. You are much more likely to convert that potential customer into a customer. So it’s building your email list and it’s increasing your conversion rate at the same time. So as an email list builder, generally what I find works the best is that you go through the series of questions so that you’re able to deduce which recommendation to make, but before you give them that recommendation, you offer a small incentive to add the email address in, in order to see the recommendations.
Catherine Langman:
So that’s how the list building element works and also obviously, if you’ve got a incentive in there, you can make that time limited and that will help people make a decision sooner. So hope you love that one. Now I’m going to give you a recommendation here for a quiz app because you obviously will need a little bit of tech here. So I want to suggest tryinteract as an app to use for this particular purpose. We’re actually not affiliates of theirs at all. That’s an app that several of our clients have used with success, so I thought I would recommend that for you.
Catherine Langman:
And I have one more example that I want to share. This one harks back to the swimmers in the family here. My two boys, well, my daughter swims as well, but she’s much younger. So she’s not really at this competitive level yet, but Aiden and Hamish really taken this super seriously. So being 15, 16 year olds, they’re wanting all of the protein powders and the pre-workout and the this and that, and I do limit it, but there is this slight issue that we have with them where they’ve trained in the morning, they’ve eaten something before training, then they’ll eat breakfast and then generally, they’ll have a protein shake as well before going to school.
Catherine Langman:
And then they eat ridiculous amounts of food for recess and lunch. And then they will need some more afternoon tea before they go back to the pool and swim for another two and a half hours. And then they come home and eat me out of house and home for dinner. So the amount of calories they need is just ridiculous, just so that they have the energy. And so I actually started buying True Protein powders to add this morning protein shake into their day, their daily intake just to really help them have enough energy for school because they’re in year 10 and 11 now and trying to stay awake for starters, but also have the energy to do their schoolwork and hang out with their friends, I suppose as well, it was getting really tough.
Catherine Langman:
So True Protein was recommended to me actually by my sister who’s a bit of a … Well, she used to be a swimmer as well actually, but now, she’s into weightlifting and she’s a real nutrition and health fanatic. So she recommended this True Protein and there’s a few things that this website do really, really well. So if you are not needing to buy protein powders, then I’m not going to suggest this is homework for you.
Catherine Langman:
They actually do taste pretty good. So they don’t leave that horrible after taste that a lot of protein products often do. Anyhow, they do this thing that I guess is a bit of an Amazon strategy. The whole frequently bought together strategy. Now, this is not uncommon. I think probably a lot of you would’ve already put this stuff on your website. Most of the time I find that it goes a bit missed on a website because perhaps it appears down the bottom of the page underneath the reviews for instance.
Catherine Langman:
So you might be on the product page to add something to your shopping cart, and then generally under the add to cart button, you’re going to see a whole bunch of customer reviews. And then the customers who bought this also loved line of recommendations down the bottom. And so that can be really missed. So the thing that True Protein do is, and look, I don’t know if they use an app, they’re not clients of ours. So I don’t know how they functionally make it happen because they are a big brand.
Catherine Langman:
So they potentially coded it all in themselves, I don’t know, but it pops up. So you’ve added something to your cart and then it’s going to pop up with some recommendations for other items that customers love or frequently bought together, right? And then sometimes I added in and sometimes I don’t, it depends on whether I was actually looking for that or not. But then often what will happen is it will have a bit of a tracker or a prompt in there for how far away from the free shipping threshold that you’re at.
Catherine Langman:
So that can also be quite influential if you’re really trying to increase the average order value of orders coming through. And you want to encourage people to cross sell and try something different from your range as well as potentially upsell, so they’re buying multiples of the same item, if that makes sense so that you can get people to that higher average order value. So if you think about it, if you’ve got 10 people making a purchase on your website and you can get them spending a $100 instead of $50, automatically, you just made twice as much money.
Catherine Langman:
So this is a really, really successful strategy to include. There’s other ways to increase your average order value. Obviously, just having a free shipping threshold will help, but also, having bundles. So just having bundles as a standalone category or collection in your menu, that helps as well. But I love this frequently brought together strategy. It just really, really works. So one of our clients, that lovely Stacy from all natural mums and I’m pretty sure also Christie from Babiators might do this as well are now using a Shopify app called frequently bought together that also does the same thing.
Catherine Langman:
And I don’t think it’s a free app, but I can tell you now that this does work and when I say that, it’s probably not going to work for 100% of businesses, but I think it is something that is worth testing if you are really keen to try and increase that average order value by encouraging people to add other items to their shopping cart or to buy multiples of the same. So check it out, perhaps go and check out all of these example stores as well first and just suss out how other people are doing it and see which of these strategies you feel are going to be the best for you to test out.
Catherine Langman:
The first, second, third. I don’t know how many of them are going to be relevant for you, hopefully at least one. So the examples that I’m suggesting that you go and check out birdsnest, Mister Jones Health, the supplements brand, Sweaty Betty Activewear, and then True Protein. So that is what I have for you for today’s episode. I hope you have enjoyed that one.
Catherine Langman:
I hope you’ve gained a little bit inspiration and an idea or two that you can go and implement in your business. Of course, if you’re keen for some help with any of this stuff, please just give us a shout whether you need help to learn and implement these things yourself, or if you’re ready to outsource to our team, please just head over to productpreneurmarketing.com and you can book in for a free e-commerce strategy session. That’s it from me today, and I will be with you again on the show next week. Bye for now.