OK, so sometimes I’m an idiot.
Do you have any idea how close we are to the Thanksgiving holiday? Nine days … that’s how close.
You … my dear Shopify buddies … are no doubt scrambling to make your final preparations for the online buying spree that we all hope is coming our way. And at TaskHusky we are fixing and tweaking all the websites for good boys and girls to help them get ready.
So, I thought let’s find some kind of holiday-related Shopify site to review. Keep things light and entertaining whilst remaining helpful and informative. Hey … that’s just how we roll, right? Anyway … I used our super-secret Shopify spy tools to comb through the cornucopia of Shopify sites using the search term “turkey.” I was thinking that maybe there was a Shopify site that sold Thanksgiving-themed merch … maybe pre-prepared meal kits for the holiday … maybe recipe books to cook the Thanksgiving Day feast … kinda makes sense, right?
The top site in my search results comes up and … no turkeys.
Sure, they have a nice-looking site and sell high quality merch. But I clicked through dozens of pages and could find no gobblers whatsoever. And sure, this site looks review-worthy and all, but why would a site selling pens and writing books come up when searching for turkeys? Makes no sense at all. The site doesn’t even have a turkey-themed hero image.
Nothing. Bupkis. What in the name of Stove Top Stuffing is going on here?
So, I rerun my search … same results. I check the analytics tools thinking something is haywire … same results. And this is really starting to bug me because we rely on these analysis tools to help customers with marketing and development options. If the tools are broken it’s a problem. But everything looks normal … nothing broke.
I’m sitting there screaming into my head, “What the living heck would make this website come up in a search for turkey?”
Well, I’ve been in tech for a long time. When I was running customer support teams, we used the expression “PICNIC” which is an acronym for “Problem In Chair Not In Computer.” After a particularly long and difficult call with a “tech challenged” customer we’d just say that the call was a “PICNIC” and everyone would get a laugh and understand. That’s what we had here, except this time I was the PICNIC.
Now it makes total sense. I’ll tell you all about it in the next section.
Happy Selling,
Zach
This Week’s Shopify Audit Target: GalenLeather.com
What does Galen Leather have to do with turkeys? Turns out … nothing. But they are based in Istanbul … you know, the capital of Turkey. The country Turkey. And they sell quality crafted goods made locally … in Turkey.
Zach shakes his head and scratched his neck because he feels like a doofus
Galen Leather sells a lot of leather goods. That includes pouches and such that hold pens and other writing paraphernalia. They also sell leather-clad writing books. You know, the kind you might imagine Indiana Jones scribbling in while searching for the “Lost City of Golden Magic” or whatnot.
Galen Leather has a wonderful, melancholy story. It was founded by a lovely Turkish woman named Zeynep. She was a successful salesperson, but was diagnosed with a rare form of throat cancer in 2012. By all accounts, the cancer was treatable. But she would not be able to speak for six months or longer after surgery. She had to find something else to do. So she contacted local Turkish craftsmen and started selling hand crafted goods worldwide.
The business thrived, and Zeynep recovered.
Sadly, the cancer returned a few years ago and the company continues in her memory with her brother and husband at the helm. They are a top 2000 Shopify store and a top 12k eComm store worldwide … which are impressive numbers. Analytics suggest that they are on track to sell more than 4.3 million in fine Turkish goods this year.
The Shopify Theme That They Use
You have likely heard me preach … again and again … how you do not need a 5 or even 6-figure custom theme to pull down real sales on Shopify. Galen Leather is another choice example of this truth. They are doing more than $4 million in annual sales from one of the more popular premium themes that you – or anyone – can acquire on the Shopify marketplace.
They are using the Retina theme from Out-of-the-Sandbox. You can take a look at this theme for yourself here. It costs less than $200.
What They Do Well
OK … I really like this. I do not have analytics as to how this innovation performs, but I alike it and I wonder how they did it.
When you go to the website you see the main menu navigation across the top of the Home page. So far, so good. But then – immediately below that standard menu – you see a secondary menu based upon images. Take a look at the circles and you can see product categories. You can see this effect on both laptops and on mobile devices. I swear that I did not see this when I found the site before. But it is certainly there now and it’s really interesting. I wonder if it works?
The photography is spot on. The images feel both like quality and nostalgia … in keeping with the brand theme and obviously on purpose.
They have a decent content and SEO marketing effort in place. Someone wrote some good content for them in the blog, etc. And there is fresh content there too. Good for them.
The product pages are solid as heck. Take a look at this one. Everything you need to make a decision is right up there above the fold. But if you do scroll down, you see some AMAZING product review videos. This is STRONG marketing and persuasion. I am very impressed.
That folio example in the previous comment? Went to walk through a trial purchase with it and the upsell push was seamless. I had upsold myself a paper refill before I’d even known it. VERY NICE! And there were two more upsell opportunities before checkout.
What Needs to Be Improved
You KNOW that I like to sling some funny criticisms when I can. But this site is buttoned up tight.
I can’t even criticize the page speed because even though there are a lot of apps and TONS of images, the page load experience is still pretty good.
The Shopify Apps They Use
If you see an app or widget on their site that you like, you might be able to identify the specific tool they are using here in this section. We used our top-secret Shopify scanning tools to determine that this site is using the following apps and plugins:
- Receiptful — Product recommendations and cart abandonment recovery.
- Bold Commerce — Some custom app thingy.
- Smile.io — Loyalty program.
- Ramaze — Customer support app.
- Back in Stock — inventory alert system.
- Veripass — Discount program for military and police.
- Swym Wishlist Plus — Wishlist app.
- Elfsight — Social media widget.
- Judge Me — eCommerce reviews
- Privy — Email list generator.
That’s a decent sized list of apps … not too many, but some important ones to get the job done. And they are reasonably optimized to avoid hurting page speed.
Marketing Stuff They Do
As you can see from the apps listing, they are running display and retargeting ads through DoubleClick. I do not see any currently running paid search ads … which I expected, but nada. They have active social media on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.
The YouTube page has not seen a post in years, but the quality of what’s there is good. The link to the Twitter page goes to a deleted account, which confuses the bejeezus out of me. Their Instagram account has more than 82.5k followers, which rocks. Their Facebook page has only about 18k follows, so they are living off of Instagram. They are running a lot of ads on the Facebook/Instagram platform of pain, and I’ve placed 3 sample ads below for your inspiration and enlightenment.
It is worth remembering that they have a VERY active email marketing program. When you sell stuff that is giftable, that there email list is a gold mine.
Want to Ensure Your Shopify Site Ain't No Turkey This Season?
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