Summary of Jam Session:
In this session we did 6 critiques. Rocky Patel – Crystal/Jewellery Store. Jason Tax – Alternative Apparel Store. Claus Lauter – ECG & CCG. Kelle Lambers – Sleep Store. Shan Shan – Jewellery Store. David Thomson – Custom Number Plates.
Additional Topics Covered: BGS Event, Removing Dead Products, Centering Description on Desktop, Guarantee in Product Title, BGS Theme.
Housekeeping:
0:00:00 – New Members: Before submitting a support ticket about anything app/theme related, ensure you have gone through the Getting Started module and looked through the instructions & FAQS yourself before asking for help.
0:05:00 – BGS Event: Claim your free ticket now if you haven’t already, this is located in the Members Area. Hotel rooms are sold out, only roomblock available!
0:14:30 – BGS Theme: It is not mandatory to use our theme. Our theme is built off hundreds of best practices and wins that we have found by spending millions of dollars worth of testing. It is simply a framework for someone that is seriously struggling with their current theme and needs a complete rebuild. If you have a working store getting consistent sales, then you can implement all of our best practices on your current theme no problem.
Critiques:
Critique 1
0:19:20 – Critique number 1 is for Rocky Patel, https://praniclifestyle.com/. Rocky runs a crystal store and jewellery store.
Homepage: We start off on the homepage and see sliding collections and readability issues in the header with a shipping offer. Rocky has a huge amount of products under the crystal collection and Matt speaks about the negative impact this can have on your business. The jewellery on the store are high ticket items and have stock images that provide no trust. The team offers some advice on how Rocky can improve trust on his store by improving product imagery.
Taking a look at the About Us page next. People buy from people, you should always make your About Us as personal as you can and provide quality image of yourself or you team at the top. This will increase trust in your store as well.
Critique 2
0:42:10 – Critique number 2 is for Jason Tax, https://www.spiralusa.com/. This is a Gothic and Alternative apparel store.
Homepage: Team notices right away that there a gazillion products with 8 dropdown menus in the header alone. This store has over 8000 SKU’s. Matt talks about the Paradox of Choice customers may be experiencing and explains to Jason how he can fix this by filtering and the 80/20 rule. Removing the sliding banner will reduce distraction.
Product Page: When we jump on the product page we see a couple scarcity apps that are completely overused and faked nowadays, these can actually hurt your conversions. Quantity remaining apps and ‘x products sold in the last hour’ apps, we suggest removing these from your store. There are no solid value propositions on the product page at all. Replacing the payment icons under the ATC with UVP icons is more relevant to the step your customer is currently on. Font size should be no smaller than 16pt.
Critique 3
0:58:10 – Critique number 3 is for Claus Lauter, https://www.opovoo.com/. Everyday Carry Gear and Concealed Carry Gear.
Claus has gone from dropshipping to creating his first gun concealer and has sold 5000+ of his own product alone. Claus is now working on an upgraded version of the original product in which he has already sold over 1500 units. The team talk about the correct way to choreograph a product you are trying to sell.
If you have products that sell little amounts every year but they bring organic sales or sell on the backend. You don’t need to delete it completely off your store, just remove it from your main navigation and collection pages. Allow it to be found by the search feature.
Switching your product page descriptions to full page on desktop, otherwise you are left with massive white space on the right hand side.
Critique 4
1:19:05 – Critique number 4 is for Kelle Lambers, https://zenofsleep.com/. Sleep niche
This store is in the sleep niche, selling a range of products and offering information on natural products and exercises that can improve your sleep. Team starts off with advising not to go too broad and the reasoning behind this. Focusing on 4 categories or less.
Homepage: The main navigation is hard to read because the colors are blending together. Removing the sliding collections and making them static. Focus on what is already selling and find products that compliment your best sellers. Remove your blog from your homepage and put it in the footer, you want your customers to shop, not read your blog. Aleks made a really good point on directing your customers to the product that will help the most, your audience may not know what works the best, hence why they are coming to your store!
Product Page: Matt gives an incredibly powerful tip on using the product title to incorporate value and trust. Offering a 30 night guarantee in the title, your customers have nothing to lose.
Using GTMetrix > Waterfall Report to figure out what is slowing your site down. You should use this in conjunction with GA and sort by pages to really find out what pages are underperforming.
Critique 5
1:44:45 – Critique number 5 is for Shan Shan, https://blessedbemagick.com/. Jewelry Store.
Homepage: The navigation is not typical to what customers of this niche would be used to seeing. It is not always a good thing to completely differentiate yourself from what is working in your niche. The desktop banner is much to big and doesn’t provide much value. ‘See What’s New’ above the fold isn’t beneficial to cold traffic because at this point they don’t know what your core products are.
Collection Page: The collection images are incredibly hard to see. Even though this store has 8 styles of the talisman cuff, there should be filters to filter through colors, variants etc.
Product Page: Tanner runs over a bunch of best practices for the product page. Increasing the size of the font, 16pt font typically as the base font. Remove the false bottom with the UVP’s before the reviews.
Cart Page: Shan is not using the BGS theme and has a few issues with her current theme that is stopping her from applying best practices such as the ajax cart. The button text is too big, the product titles are too small and faded. The UVP’s aren’t relevant to the current step your customer is on.
Checkout: Logo in the checkout should have support email or phone number next to it. Add a couple reviews on the checkout. Change the microcopy next to the mobile phone. Add a highlight around the breadcrumb steps to clearly identify what stage of checkout the customer is on.
Critique 6
2:08:03 – Critique number 6 is for David Thomson, https://www.showplates-direct.com/. Number Plate Maker in the UK.
Homepage: The information given about what the business is, is not clear or big enough. The homepage is already assuming customers are going to put there details straight into the fields before knowing anything! Team advises to watch a bunch of Lucky Orange recordings to see where the customers may be getting stuck on. There were features that Tanner had to explore and figure out himself that were not intuitive, using clear text or visuals to help the customer. Increase the size of the text fonts to at least 16pts.
Noteworthy Topics:
0:05:00 – BGS Event: Claim your free ticket now if you haven’t already, this is located in the Members Area. Hotel rooms are sold out, only roomblock available!
0:43:30 – Removing Dead Products: Matt speaks about the negative impacts of having tons of products on your store and trying to speak to all different audiences at the same time. This creates the Paradox of Choice.
1:08:20 – Centering Description on Desktop: Some people will browse on mobile then finish the purchase on desktop. Optimizing for desktop separate from mobile can be extremely important for some niches.
1:34:15 – Guarantee in Product Title: For some niches it can be very powerful to incorporate product guarantees in your product titles.
0:14:30 – BGS Theme: It is not mandatory to use our theme. Our theme is built off hundreds of best practices and wins that we have found by spending millions of dollars worth of testing. It is simply a framework for someone that is seriously struggling with their current theme and needs a complete rebuild. If you have a working store getting consistent sales, then you can implement all of our best practices on your current theme no problem.