Shopify and Amazon Partnership, who are the Big Winners?

Posted on September 7, 2023September 20, 2023 by Taylor

Last week the news broke that Amazon and Shopify were going to enter into a partnership. Amazon is going to create an app in the Shopify ecosystem that will allow for a deeper integration between the two companies. As a Shopify Plus agency owner, I think this is huge news and a win for four different groups: Shopify merchants, Shopify customers, Shop Pay, and Amazon FBA.

Shopify merchants that already use Amazon fulfillment network (FBA) will be able to offer customers on their Shopify store a Buy with Prime button. Most importantly, Shopify merchants will be able to keep all of their customer data (email, contact info, etc). The bottom line here is that the Shopify merchant will be able to own their brand and customer information, which is critical for driving future sales.

Shopify customers can use their Amazon wallet to make payments through Shopify’s checkout. In addition, customers will get the free and ultra fast delivery through FBA that they have come to expect when making purchases on Amazon.

Shop Pay will process all the payments when customers select the Buy with Prime button during the Shopify checkout process. This is a big win for Shopify as they are able to maintain the payment processing volume and merchant gross merchandise value (GMV) on their platform.

Amazon FBA will now be an option for Shopify merchants. Most Shopify merchants currently use their own third party logistics company (3PL) to ship products. In the past, Shopify merchants could only use FBA if they sold directly on Amazon, but now FBA will become a viable alternative to using your own 3PL.

I think this news is really big for the entire Shopify ecosystem. Shopify gets to leverage Amazon’s excellence in fulfillment, while Shopify merchants continue to own their customer’s experience. If I’m a Shopify competitor (Magento, BigCommerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, etc.) I would be very worried about how close Amazon and Shopify just became. As a Shopify Plus agency owner, I’m excited to get out there and talk about this new partnership and the benefits for the merchants we serve.

Chad Fisher

CEO/Founder

Ready to start the conversation? Let’s talk more about how your business could leverage this partnership today.

The Comprehensive Guide to Bundling on Shopify

Posted on August 17, 2023September 20, 2023 by Taylor

Bundling (packaging related products or services together at a discounted price) in e-commerce is proven to increase average order value (AOV), customer lifetime value (CLV), and overall sales for merchants. In addition, bundling provides added value, convenience and potentially bulk savings for your customers. In fact, according to Shopify, “First-time buyers are 27% likely to return, but after their second or third purchase, this grows to 54%.” Bundling for e-commerce brands has evolved over the years continuing to prove its efficacy, with more upselling and cross-selling data fueling elements like dynamic and AI-powered bundling systems.

Why are Merchants so Keen on Bundling?

Fundamentally, bundling is about boosting your AOV, but it’s so much more than that. We’ve compiled a list of additional benefits for bundling, check it out:

Greater Product Selection: Customers can see products that complement each other or are frequently purchased together and are incentivized to add more to their cart with a bundle discount.
Unique Discounts: Offering discounts for a unique group of products gives your customer the impression they are getting a deal designed just for them. Create a discounted bundle that is attractive enough to encourage purchases, but be careful not to cut too deep into your margins so you’re losing money on each sale. Make sure the discount the customer receives is prominently displayed and show the regular prices alongside the bundled deal to really highlight the value!
Optimize Sales with Lesser Known Products: Strategically combine underperforming items with high-demand ones, such as new or lesser-known products or overstocked inventory. This approach motivates customers to buy both the popular and lesser-known items, benefiting the merchant (moving inventory) and the customer (ensuring they get what they need!)
Incentivized Conversion: Create a sense of urgency by making the bundle deal a limited time offer, nudging customers to hit that buy button sooner rather than later. In addition, consider offering different tiers of bundles with increasing value. This way, you cater to all sorts of shoppers and increase that AOV.
Personalization: Use customer data and purchase history to create personalized bundles just for them. Personalizing your product offerings will help increase loyalty, email and SMS open rates, and conversions.
Cross-selling: Bundle related or supporting add-on products together that enhance the customers experience with the main product to encourage a higher AOV and a better purchasing experience.
Free Shipping Thresholds: Test out the pricing on some of your bundles to ensure the overall purchase qualifies for free shipping. For example, Ambaum helped an alcohol brand create a bundle using Shopify’s native bundling feature of 4 products that was priced just north of $50 so the overall bundle qualified for free shipping.
Testing, testing, testing: Regularly analyze the performance of your bundled offer, mix up the products, tweak the discounts, and change how you display them to determine what works best for your particular customer.

Challenges with Bundling on Shopify

Bundling can really supercharge your AOV and add to your top line revenue, but you need to consider some of the potential issues when you first get started. Many merchants are unaware that when you create a new bundle you could also unintentionally create downstream issues that cause incorrect product counts in both your store and your warehouse. Also many out of the box bundle apps don’t offer custom functionality or may be incompatible with customizations you built into your Shopify theme.

Here’s some common challenges that merchants face when implementing bundling:

Inventory Management Issues: Depending on how you create your bundles you might find it tricky to break them apart in Shopify checkout into discrete products post purchase. For example, if you have an inventory management system or ERP that connects to Shopify, it’s important that each product in a bundle accurately gets updated in your inventory counts. In addition, if you set up bundles in your store you will want to work closely with your 3PL or warehouse employees so they know which SKUs go into each bundle for shipping.
Dynamic Bundles won’t work with Shopify Scripts: Dynamic bundles allow customers to select individual products and create a personalized bundle. Creating a dynamic bundle can be a home run for AOV, but merchants need to be careful using out of the box bundle apps. Shopify’s native bundling feature doesn’t work with Shopify scripts and if you publish a script, the bundles are moved to a draft status. Dynamic bundles are a big win for merchants, but often a more custom solution is required to set it up correctly.
Customized Checkout Difficulties: If you have customized checkout.liquid on your Shopify store, it’s important to know that checkout.liquid customizations aren’t compatible with Shopify’s native bundle functionality.
Point of Sale and Payment Processing Problems: If you are using Shopify POS for in store sales, you can’t create and sell bundles using native bundle functionality. In addition, some apps and payment gateways aren’t fully compatible with bundles.
Bundles and Subscription Orders, What to Watch for: Brands want the flexibility to offer bundles both as one-time purchases and as subscription options. At Ambaum this might be one of the most common feature requests we get from Shopify Plus merchants. Recharge is the most common subscription application on Shopify and they allow you to add bundles to subscriptions, but you must be on Recharge Pro or have access to the bundles SDK.
Track Bundle Metrics so you don’t Lose Money: Merchants need to track the performance of different bundle offerings and understand which bundles are most popular and profitable. Over time the cost inputs that go into your products will change and if you’re not careful you might be losing money selling your bundles. Customers might get wise to your mistakes and only purchase bundles that give heavy discounts on certain products.

Shopify Bundle Apps

Let’s dive into a few tech partner’s solutions, the pricing, and the advantages (and disadvantages) of each. Then, we’ll take you through a detailed bundling solution we built for one of our clients.

1. Rebuy

Description: Rebuy utilizes personalized customization by blending exclusive AI/ML technology with various software approaches (no-code, low-code, and custom code), top-tier integrations, flexible merchandising rules, and methodical A/B/n testing. This comprehensive solution empowers brands to create data-guided shopping experiences across the entire customer journey, spanning from the initial homepage visit, through the checkout process, and even after the purchase is completed.

Cost:

$99/month for 1K orders
$249/month for 2.5K orders
$499/month for 5K orders

Features and advantages:

Resources on best practices for businesses new to upselling, cross-selling, and bundling.
Adds the individual SKUs to the cart for better tracking.
Ability to add one-click subscription upgrade in the cart.
You can also suggest add on products based on: cart contents, past orders, browsing history, AI, etc.
Can create custom reorder landing pages.
Free Shipping incentives; for example, “add this product to reach the free shipping limit” in the cart or at checkout.
Post purchase offers on the Thank you page.
Integrates with Recharge and Stamped.

Disadvantages:

Rebuy has many different widgets you can use to add functionality to your Shopify store. These widgets allow you to do upsells, cross-sells, gift with purchase, and even upgrade to offer subscriptions. One thing to note is that it requires 2 widgets to fully setup subscription products & bundles on Rebuy, so plan to invest some time fully understanding their widget landscape.
For one-time purchases or subscriptions, the current Rebuy backend takes some time to learn as it uses the “data source” as the bundle creator.

Please see the supporting case study below for in-depth examples on the Rebuy bundling setup.

2. Recharge

Description: Recharge stands as a reliable solution for managing subscriptions. With Recharge, you can expand your subscription-based enterprise and empower your customers to oversee their subscriptions seamlessly from your store. There are plenty of customization options to craft the subscription journey you have in mind. Furthermore, they offer integrated solutions that effortlessly connect with your existing technology toolkit.

Cost:

$99/month for Standard Plan, to add Bundles to a Standard Plan is an additional $199/month
$499/month Pro Plan (includes Bundles)

Features and advantages:

Supporting documentation to help create a “build-your-own-box” experience.
Easy to create: set up the bundle in Recharge and it will add the new Bundle product to Shopify.
When Bundle is added to the cart it only shows the Bundle SKU- not the contents of the bundle.
Displays one-time or subscription offerings just like single products.
If you would like the bundle to have options (a dynamic bundle) you create collections of each offering. For example: breakfast, lunch, dinner collections for a daily meal bundle.

Disadvantages:

Costs an extra $199/mo if you do not have the Pro Plan.
Potential issue with analytics as all bundle sales show one more product purchased (i.e. bundle products + the bundle itself).

3. Shopify Bundle App

Description: With Shopify Bundles, you gain the capability to effortlessly craft bundled packages and multipacks directly within your Shopify administrative panel. Your customers can easily pick from different product variations linked to the bundles. Moreover, Shopify Bundles ensures that inventory is constantly updated in real-time, eliminating concerns about overextending stock.

Cost:

Free on Shopify and Shopify Plus
If not on Shopify: Subscriptions range from $39 – $2,000 per month, with annual options shaving off 25%

Features and advantages:

Easy to set up in Shopify admin.
Ability to create fixed and multipack bundles.
Inventory is updating in real-time to protect from overselling product.

Disadvantages:

To use the Shopify Bundles App, your store must meet the following requirements:

Your store must be using the Online Store sales channel. Other sales channels aren’t yet supported.
You must unpublish all Shopify Scripts.
Your store must not use any checkout.liquid customizations or features. Reverting to checkout.liquid will make your store incompatible with the Shopify Bundle App.
Your store must not use the following apps: Global-e, Licensify, Exemptify, Recharge Subscriptions.
Does not support mix and match.

Need help getting started with Shopify or Shopify Plus? Schedule your complimentary 30 minute consultation today.

Case Study: Custom Bundling Solution for Premier Catch

Choosing a bundling solution for the premium seafood brand Premier Catch was a no-brainer to increase customer retention, loyalty, and lead generation. With the need to move forward with bundling, we chose to implement Rebuy’s dynamic bundling product as many additional services Rebuy offered suited the current and ongoing needs of the brand:

In order to implement the bundling strategy for the brand, we built and implemented the following step-by-step guide:

Step 1: Create a Product Page widget in the Rebuy App:

Step 2: Click the “New Widget” button in the top right. Or Duplicate an existing widget to copy the settings needed to keep styles and format consistent. Click the 3 vertical dots on the far right or the widget you wish to duplicate to expand the menu and then click the “Duplicate” button.

Step 3: If Creating a New Widget, scroll down to the “Dynamic Bundle” option and click “Create New”.

For compatibility with the custom widget toggle block in the Shopify theme, it will be very important to set and differentiate between the two widgets needed per bundle. Name each bundle widget according to its bundle relation and purchase type (ex: Salmon Lovers Bundle – One Time or Salmon Lovers Bundle – Subscription)

Widgets can be renamed in the “General” settings accordion menu on the right side as well as setting the product type between “One Time Only” or “Subscription Only”.

The “Data Source” menu on the right side will be used to select which endpoint to use with the widget. The data source endpoint manages which products show in the widget. A “One Time Only” and “Subscription Only” widget can share the same “Data Source” endpoint.

Step 4: For custom bundles widgets a custom endpoint will need to be created for each bundle. When a widget is duplicated it will continue to use the same data source. To create a new data source, click on the “Data Sources” menu item on the left and click “New Ruleset”.

Step 5: Editing the data source will only require one rule since it applies to only one bundle. Name the data source and check “filter input product” Set the first IF to “Anything” so that the widget isn’t expecting a data check. The RETURN should be set to “Specific Products”, which can be selected from the search field next to the dropdown.

Step 6: Go back to the widgets and make sure the review is showing the expected products. Keep note of the widgets’ ID as they will be needed from adding to the PDP section.

Step 7: Go to Shopify Admin.

IN SHOPIFY:

Step 1: In the Shopify customizer, create a new template for the new bundle.

NOTE: if this will not work if bundles share the same product template. Each bundle should have its own template.

Click “Online Store”.

Step 2: Click Customize on the live theme.

Step 3: From the top middle drop down select Products.

Step 4: Select Create Template.

Step 5: Name it specific to the Bundle being created- no spaces.

Step 6: Select an already created bundle template like “salmon-lovers-bundle” under “Based on”.

And select Create Template.

Step 7: Select or add the “Rebuy Widget Toggle” block in the Product pages (assume images below are on your new “bundle-name” template).

Step 8: FIll in the appropriate widget IDs to their corresponding fields and hit save. The page should reload with the rebuy widgets ready to use.

Connect the new template to the new bundle product in the Shopify admin.

Step 9: Create a new product with the bundle name, or select the already existing product in Shopify.

Step 10: On the product change the Theme template to the new template created above.

Step 11: ALL DONE

At the end of the day, the data makes the decisions, and building these foundations into your strategy will provide the pillars for long term success.

The last option we’ll float here is, rather than setting it and forgetting about it, consider looping in an experienced leader in the e-commerce industry, who has Shopify experts and seasoned merchants to uplift your business. If you’re looking to increase your average order value, customer lifetime value, and customer loyalty through bundling, contact us and let’s talk. Our initial conversations are always free and informal, so let’s sit down for a chat.

GA4 Alternatives and Reporting Tools

Posted on July 6, 2023September 20, 2023 by Taylor

In March of 2022, Google announced the full transition from Universal Analytics (UA), driving businesses to migrate onto Google Analytics 4 with significant changes. By announcing the sunset of UA on July 1st, 2023, Google gave its users over a year to make the transition, allowing us to complete year-over-year reporting by the time UA was gone. Or, so we thought.

Google has since announced that (without Analytics 360) the platform will only store and report on data from the last 14 months. Google does offer the ability to store data through BigQuery, at a cost, and depending on your business that cost could compound quickly with exporting every 14 or so months, and depending on how much historical data you want access to. In addition to this, there is a learning curve to integrate and run reports on web pages with GA4’s UI and since it is more privacy-centric, we’re unable to gain as much information on important metrics.

We hear what you’re thinking:

“What do I do with all this historical data?”
“How do I get the same reports from GA4 when everything is so different?”
“Is Google the only means of recording, storing, and reporting website analytics?”

Well, we’ve done the work for you on that front. And, it turns out the new GA4 platform might not be worth it depending on your needs, goals, and general business operations. Let’s dive in.

App: Shopify

Description: If your main goals in reporting are your finances, our best recommendation is Shopify overall. Shopify will run analytics, payments and taxes, product, acquisition, inventory, behavior, marketing, order, sales, profit, customer, and custom reports, all depending on your subscription plan. You can also access live views. When you upgrade your subscription plan, Shopify will provide the data from the time you signed up your store for your access to new reporting tools. Shopify will keep and store data for the lifetime of the store, and personal data (such as names and addresses) will be tossed 2 years after it becomes inactive (but will keep the non-personal financial information).

Cost: Subscriptions range from $39 – $2,000 per month, with annual options shaving off 25%.

Need help getting started with Shopify or Shopify Plus? You’re in the right place. We’re an experienced leader in the Shopify Plus development space, and we’d love to chat. Schedule your complimentary 30 minute consultation today.

App: Triple Whale

Description: Backed by Shopify, Triple Whale utilizes AI and automation to drive data and profitability advancements for small and medium-sized e-commerce businesses. They offer key metrics in a centralized dashboard so you can view ad spend and ROAS across marketing platforms, custom audiences from first-party data, clusters, no-code metrics, automated reporting, and real-time reports through desktop or on their mobile app. With the sunset of UA, Triple Whale has since built on top of their Pixel tool to provide an alternative solution to GA4. With the Pixel data, you can answer the same queries as you could in GA4 through a single dashboard in your Shopify store. They’ve added metrics such as conversion rates, users, sessions, bounce rate, new users, unique visitors, etc. at the landing page and ad levels.

Cost: If you’re already on Triple Whale, you can begin exploring Pixel now. Otherwise, you’re looking at subscriptions starting at $100 – $400 a month.

App: CrazyEgg

Description: If one of your main goals is visualizing user experience, CrazyEgg is a good bet. They offer heatmaps, scrollmaps, click reports, website recordings, A/B testing, errors tracking, real-time surveys, on-site commenting, and traffic analysis. There’s integrations with e-commerce platforms like Google Analytics, WordPress, and Shopify.

Cost: Pricing range from $29 – $249 a month, billed annually, after a 30 day free trial. Each package is sized based on the amount of monthly pageviews, and offers more tools the higher in the pricing package you go.

App: Google Search Console

Description: If your goals are more focused on SEO and Traffic Reporting, Google Search Console is a good way to go. The Search Console tools assist in reporting on search traffic and performance, fixing issues on your site content to support ranking, and generally helping your site rise in Google Search results. There are plenty of educational tools within the system, as well, to help you understand how Google is crawling your pages. They offer customized reports for mobile usability, AMP, and structured data. To begin configuring your Search Console, you’ll have to set up an analytics account.

Cost: This is a free service offered by Google.

App: Fathom

Description: Fathom provides financial reporting, analysis, and forecasting for their stores. They offer in depth insights into business performance, create custom management reports and dashboards, three-way cash flow reporting, and consolidated financial reporting. This can be a good option for businesses with multiple stores as the pricing will vary depending on the number of companies connected.

Cost: Packages range from $48 – $650 per month. Each tier will allow you to add additional companies at a cost, but all plans include all features.

App: Snowplow

Description: Snowplow enables it’s clients to create first-party customer behavioral data to drive a multitude of use cases directly from a data warehouse in real-time. With more scalable and sophisticated data, they allow you to build applications such as churn prediction, recommendation engines and custom attribution modeling. Snowplow will only record the data, so you’ll have to have a hosting platform for it to pull from, as well as an add-on for reports and visualizations. Snowplow data can live in Snowflake; a data cloud for storage that can collaborate locally and globally. With both in use, and an add-on for visualization, this could offer a complete alternative to GA4.

Cost: Snowplow has dynamic packages based on your needs. For a hosted SaaS that gives you a turnkey managed solution, it begins at $800 a month after a 14 day free trial.

Snowflake, on the other hand, has pricing based on the volume of data stored and the compute time used. They do offer dynamic pricing with 30 day free trials including $400 worth of free usage on all of their packages.

App: Clicky.com

Description: Although the homepage looks questionable, Clicky is a cloud-based web analytics platform that assists businesses to track, evaluate, and report on their websites in real-time. Clicky offers features such as action tracking, heatmaps, path analysis, data export, engagement analytics, A/B testing, and customer segmentation. This solution integrates with WordPress and Shopify and is an alternative to GA4.

Cost: Pricing ranges from $9.99 monthly or $79.99 annually for 1M monthly pageviews.

App: Microsoft Clarity

Description: Microsoft’s Clarity is a behavior analytics tool that can assist a business in understanding how users are interacting with your site. Clarity offers features such as instant heatmaps, session recordings, insights into UI functionality, and a Google Analytics integration. This is a straightforward app to add to your existing toolbelt and see a more holistic view of the user experience.

Cost: Clarity is a free service offered by Microsoft.

To summarize, you’ll need to be able to understand the metrics most important to your business to find the best alternative to GA4. If you’d like to migrate smoothly with our expertise, and have more questions, we’d love to help. Drop us a line here to set up a complimentary consultation.

E-commerce Agency and AI-Powered Solutions

Posted on May 15, 2023September 20, 2023 by Taylor

In today’s competitive e-commerce market, agencies and merchants alike are constantly looking for ways to stand out from the competition. One of the latest innovations that e-commerce agencies are adopting is ChatGPT; an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that can help automate various tasks and improve the efficiency and personalization of e-commerce operations. Let’s explore how we as an e-commerce agency are employing ChatGPT to improve our operations, bring value to our merchants, and innovate the AI space.

Employing Automation

One of the most significant benefits of using ChatGPT is that it can streamline many repetitive and time-consuming tasks. For example, operational and marketing tasks that we are able to automate using ChatGPT are:

Writing professionally crafted business emails
Explaining highly complex technical topics for more general understanding
Creating an action plan from detailed paragraphs or conceptual notes
Generate blog posts
Curate marketing calendars
Create social media content

By streamlining these tasks through creating a conversation with AI, we can free up valuable time that can be used for other important areas of the business, such as customer service, product development, and marketing strategy.

Use Case: Building an Integrated Slack Channel

One way we’re using AI-powered solutions in improving our internal communications is through creating a dedicated Slack channel that’s integrated with ChatGPT. This allows members of our team to ask questions and/or provide prompts to receive replies directly in a threaded chat, all within an interface we already use daily.

This centralized approach not only improves communication, but enhances transparency and allows us to find opportunities at the company-level based on the queries at hand. This betters our internal documentation and allows us to utilize AI in one location, while enhancing security by having one centralized account. Furthermore, we may even be able to reuse it and potentially implement it for our merchants, further enhancing our ability to leverage AI and improve our services.

By reducing the need for manual labor and improving marketing efforts at a fraction of the cost, ChatGPT helps us increase the value of our development hour over other agencies. Since ChatGPT can generate this content at scale, we can achieve better results with fewer resources. Ultimately, ChatGPT improves our customer experience, optimizes advertising campaigns, and helps us stay ahead of the curve in terms of innovation and automation.

The Human Element

While AI-powered e-commerce solutions like ChatGPT can automate various tasks and improve the efficiency of operations, it’s important to remember the human element of using this technology. Using ChatGPT effectively requires a unique understanding of crafting specific prompts, so we can make data-driven decisions and optimize our operations to achieve better results. This means using specific terms and language that ChatGPT can easily understand. It’s also important to write prompts in a way that is clear and specific, as ChatGPT responds best to prompts that are well-defined.

Additionally, treating interactions with ChatGPT like a conversation rather than transactional can improve results. This means expanding on certain thoughts, providing context, and telling ChatGPT what you don’t want. By employing our knowledge and constant learning (or, the human element) to the use of ChatGPT, we can improve the accuracy of the AI-powered solutions and enhance the overall customer experience. For example – AI and human collaboration at its finest – this blog post was co-authored by ChatGPT.

If there’s improvement to be had with your business strategy, submit an inquiry today, and let’s talk. Our initial conversations are always free, and informal, so let’s sit down for a chat today.

ChargeX23 Recap

Posted on May 2, 2023August 17, 2023 by Taylor

Last week I had the pleasure of attending ChargeX Beyond in my old stomping grounds, Washington, DC. This conference was filled with new app releases, insightful thought-leadership, and a conglomerate of business solutions. Spending a few days surrounded by conversations on the wild west that was the beginnings of e-commerce, the zero and first party customer-focused present, and an AI-powered future, reminded me of the sheer need for adaptability in this industry.

“ChargeX Beyond is really a vision of where we think Recharge is going, where commerce is going, and how we need to all change in this new time.”

– Oisin O’Connor, CEO/Co-Founder at Recharge

Recharge’s Product Roadmap and Insights on Customer Retention

The first full day of panels unveiled some incredible updates over at Recharge; game-changers for merchants and developers alike. New items that will be boosting subscriptions and the merchant-experience within the coming months:

Bundles: Curate or customize product bundles and soon will offer dynamic pricing
Memberships: Create paid membership programs to increase recurring customers
Rewards: A potent suite of options, including cash back and store credits, to build loyalty
Flows: Implement customized workflows that improve the customer experience and reduce churn

These new offerings are designed to provide merchants with an out-of-the-box functionality of Recharge. They will provide a powerful toolkit for us to further help merchants quickly grow their customer base, increase average order value (AOV) and lifetime value (LTV), as well as strategize even more customization. With Flows, for example, merchants can (or we can help them) implement proven CRO strategies directly into their customer journey; guiding shoppers through the purchasing process, making it easy and convenient to buy. By drilling down as granularly as possible within the customer journey, we’ll be able to create highly targeted and personalized experiences at scale, building long-lasting customer relationships.

Oisin O’Connor, CEO/Co-Founder at Recharge

Another update released during the event, and one of the more requested subscription enhancements, was the Affinity Customer Portal. This offers businesses a highly customizable, no-code customer portal where customers can easily manage their subscriptions from any device through Affinity’s modern and user-friendly interface.

Thursday Takeaways

Later that evening, I was treated to the choice of wine or whiskey, to which I ruminated on the other panels while enjoying delicious South African wine, guided by sommelier Tinashe Nyamudok.

A highlight of the panels that day was 10 Steps to building a retention program for your merchants with Brandon Amoroso, Founder of Electriq Marketing (a DRINKS company). The key takeaway from this talk for me is that customer segmentation and personalization are critical for merchants to deliver a 1 to 1 experience that meets the needs of their customers at scale. To do this, merchants will need to leverage customer data effectively, make reordering easy, and create loyalty programs that are tailored to their customers’ motivations, whether it’s free swag, badges, or tier programs. Quality customer service is crucial for building strong relationships, and merchants should go the extra mile to win back customers who have had negative experiences. Additionally, merchants should audit their tech stack to identify the best tools and techniques that will help them achieve a better ROI and consolidate their experience. By doing all of this, merchants can improve their bottom line and build long-lasting relationships with their customers.

As many of the attendees migrated to a beautiful evening at the LINE hotel in DC for food, drinks, and dancing, the conversations around optimizing the customer experience did not stop. Across brand categories, there are an incredible number of customized strategies for increasing current revenue and predicting future hurdles. On the horizon, we’re talking about everything from recession concerns, to GA4 transitions, and an AI-powered future. If I look at it through an objective lens, I’m incredibly fascinated by what’s next.

Conclusion

As Friday came, we were treated to a series of engaging presentations and discussions, as well as an insightful chat with Jonathan Van Ness about their personal journey and the success of JVN Hair. Throughout the discussion, Van Ness emphasized the importance of deeply understanding your audience, while also touching on the critical role of relationships and technology in supporting effective decision-making and strategy development. They highlighted the value of leveraging your passion for the industry to build community and engagement, as well as the need to stay true to your original vision and sense of self as a business owner.

“These are our babies…and the higher you go, the more razor’s edge that is, and the higher you can fall.”

– Johnathan Van Ness

Through being extremely clear on their personal mission statement, “spread self-acceptance by modeling joy and curiosity”, Johnathan has been able to fuel decisions toward fulfillment both as an individual and as a merchant. Sometimes, (most times) we can get so wrapped up in competition and optimization (although essential to success) that we can forget the baseline of good business: relationships and authentic storytelling. Overall, the discussion was expertly moderated by VP of Strategic Alliances at Recharge, Lindy Crea, and a valuable reminder of the key principles that underpin successful e-commerce ventures.

Rounding out the evening, the e-commerce energy was lush, and I am invigorated and re-ignited in Ambaum’s approach of moving merchants forward through our expertise and excellence. If you have thoughts on your business needs, and how we can help, check out our work, and drop us line today.

– Taylor Payne, Partnerships Marketing Manager

Westinghouse Migration

Posted on April 24, 2023August 17, 2023 by Taylor

Previous Platform: WordPress

Industry: Consumer Goods

Use Case: Legacy Brand Integration to Shopify Plus

Company Summary

Westinghouse has provided power to Americans for more than 100 years, and aims to bring people together with reliable change. Westinghouse works closely with industry leaders in product development, manufacturing, and design, guided by their history of innovation and quality, to choose high-performing products for residential and industrial customers globally.

Project Summary

The goal of this project was to create a custom Shopify 2.0 theme for Westinghouse, bringing the merchant up to industry standards while respecting their strong legacy. The theme also needed to be functionally integrated with their licensees to create a catalog store. To accomplish this, we carefully planned the layout of their extensive product catalog, creating a sophisticated Mega Nav (or, Mega Menu) with an easy-to-use UI, and organized the admin side of the site to streamline migration.

Why Shopify?

With this project, our goal was to support the most immediate need for migration and custom theme build, but we needed a platform that would support future growth as well.

Shopify checks the boxes by providing a robust app ecosystem for 7,000+ reviewed apps, a platform for e-commerce that is secure and PCI compliant, as well as one that could handle multi-channel tracking and reporting. Further, Shopify prioritizes an easy-to-use interface, empowering merchants to make their own site changes in the Shopify Theme Editor, automate repetitive tasks through Shopify Flow, and manage account permissions all in the same place. By choosing Shopify, Westinghouse was able to take advantage of easier admin UI, and provided Ambaum with the opportunity to build functionality and theme specific to their brand and business needs.

Westinghouse Custom Theme Build

In order to protect their rich history, the client provided us with Figma files and asked us for pixel perfection as we built this custom Shopify 2.0 theme. By building within the Shopify Theme we could provide total transparency as we went, and the client was able to view the designs in real-time, without the site being live.

Ambaum created the customized theme that included a home page with sections to easily add, edit, and remove main category pages. As the collections were massive, we coordinated a hierarchical structure for the Main Category Pages, Sub-Category Pages, and Product Category Pages (the Sub-Sub-Category Pages, if you will). This robust Mega Nav allowed easy navigation throughout the site for their collections and sub-collections.

When it came to the data migration, we were able to streamline the task by creating Page Templates. We created Collection and Product Templates to offer various customization options depending on what sets of products the client would like to showcase at any given time. Then, we built full control of the Category Pages into the customizer settings, which made sections such as Product block titles, subtitles, colors, order, and text fully customizable.

Functionality

The functionality of the Westinghouse catalog store was built with a dual intention:

Provide their customers with an easy and seamless experience as they move from the Westinghouse catalog to the licensees’ stores
Give the client a solid foundation for scalable growth

By building a custom Shopify 2.0 theme, Westinghouse can now reuse this same theme as they integrate their licensees stores. The customer is now able to travel to the licensees’ product detail page (PDP) for purchase while maintaining the same look and feel from site to site.

The client is able to manage the page templates we built with Shopify’s Theme Customizer in the Admin, easily adding their own content, copy, and images. By leveraging these templates, the client is able to easily create and add Product and Category pages for their website after migrating their data, and as they continue to grow.

Even though the Westinghouse store is not directly selling to customers, this custom theme was essential for building this foundation and the seamless customer journey to their licensees’ stores; something that would not have been possible without Shopify.

Summary

The goal of our project was to relaunch a 100+ year old brand to industry standard through Shopify. To achieve this goal, we strategized the design of their massive product catalog and categories, ensuring the client’s ease for adding/removing content, images, copy, and text. We adhered to strict design through client-provided Figma files, allowed for theme sections to be fully customizable by the client, built out a complex Mega Nav Menu with intuitive UI, structured massive product collections, and streamlined a scalable strategy when integrating their licensees.

We are excited to have been provided the opportunity to uplift such a strong brand, and confident that the brand’s online presence will continue to thrive. If you are considering an online shop or a migration to Shopify and would like to discuss your options, we’d like to offer a free consultation to discuss how we help. Sign up today.

Unlocking the Power of Personalization

Posted on February 19, 2023May 15, 2023 by Taylor

What is Zero-Party Data?

Zero-party data is data that is voluntarily provided by customers, and is collected directly from them. This type of data could be information such as a customer’s preferences, lifestyle, life stages, opinions, and values. It is different from other types of data, such as first-party data, where we’re indirectly learning about the customer through website analytics, social channels, and other sources.

Why Do We Need it?

We’ll tackle this question two fold:

Because third-party cookies and new privacy changes to iOS, retailers across the board are facing difficulties in data collection. Brands will need to draw from reliable data more in the face of stricter (and more consumer-aware) privacy rules, and this is most succinctly achieved through zero-party collection methods.
Learning more about your customers on an individual level provides opportunities to create personalized flows, honed retargeting strategies, and custom shopping experiences. For example, personalized emails have a 26% higher likelihood of being opened, and a 760% increase in revenue from these segmented flows.

Ultimately, collecting zero-party data will be a requisite for success for all merchants across B2B and B2C because it provides companies with more direct and valuable insights into their consumers.

How to Collect Zero-Party Data

This all sounds well and good in a brick and mortar business, but how do you collect data directly from your customers in a digital environment? Here are a few methods of collection to get in touch with the customer on your site as an e-Commerce brand:

Whether it be through a subscription, membership, or loyalty program, allow customers to create an account through your site, saving their preferences while signing up. Customers who receive offers and recommendations that are customized to them are more inclined to purchase from brands, according to 91% of consumers.
Build a survey/questionnaire into your customer journey. Quizzes are such an engaging way to interact with your customers, and our brilliant partners over at Okendo have tackled this and more.
Create an email preference center where customers can specify the kind of content (and product categories) they would like to receive from you.
Conduct a drawing or contest using a landing page form, gathering more information with embedded forms on your website than just an email address.

The Power of Personalization

To a consumer, privacy is power, and it is ever slipping through the cracks in a digital world. With consent at the core of its concept, zero-party data is quickly becoming a hot topic among marketers and merchants alike, and for good reason. In the future, companies will need to create a balance between providing customers with personalized experiences while respecting their privacy. This means that companies will need to be more transparent about how they’re using their customers’ data, and provide customers with better control over their data.

If there’s improvement to be had with your business strategy, submit an inquiry today, and let’s talk. Our initial conversations are always free, and informal, so let’s sit down for a chat.

Looking Forward to 2023 Growth

Posted on December 14, 2022December 14, 2022 by Taylor

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

– Peter Drucker

Whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, planning for 2023 growth is essential for success in the coming years. To ensure your business is ready to take on the future, it’s important to consider key areas such as customer acquisition, customer retention, product development, technology, and data. Here are a few tips to help you plan for growth in 2023.

The GA4 Migration

If you haven’t already done so, you’ll need to migrate to Google Analytics 4 from Universal Analytics. Google has announced that they will be discontinuing UA in July of next year. We’ve done a full write up on the other reasons for making the transition, (and a few tips on doing so along the way). We have helped a few of our merchants from the transition to setting up, and we’d love to walk you through it, too. Drop us a line for a free consultation today.

Early Planning = Sooner Success

This year, several early Black Friday sales began in the middle of October, allowing customers more time to spread out their buying. In a Justuno poll on Christmas trends for 2021, 65% of US consumers said they will buy their holiday gifts even before Thanksgiving. While Black Friday sales fell 31%, overall November 2021 sales increased 10% over the prior year.

“U.S. consumers continue to give contradictory signals.”

–An interview with McKinsey & Company.

In today’s e-commerce landscape, it’s important to stay ahead of the competition. Research the latest trends and technologies and invest in the necessary tools and resources to ensure you stay ahead of the curve. As we move into the new year, we’ve heard the same question “How early do we start planning and then promoting?” The answer: Plan earlier than you think.

Build a Data-Driven Tech Stack

Invest in the necessary tools and resources to ensure you have the insights to make informed decisions. Utilizing predictive analytics and machine learning to uncover customer insights and staying ahead of the game is key to building a strong e-commerce plan. Is your tech stack built out?

Finding the right tech stack for your business is a time-consuming process, with plenty of trial and error if you’re not familiar with the apps. If this is an aspect you’re struggling with, it may be time to schedule a huddle with us.

Own Your Audience

By owning your audience, you are able to build trust and loyalty, stronger brand awareness, and retargeting during your promotional seasons. Implement strategies for cross-channel communication (i.e. incentivizing email subscriptions, running email campaigns to build your SMS list, etc.).

Having a comprehensive marketing plan focused on owning your audience is essential to success in an e-commerce marketplace. An estimated 67% of consumers have spent more online than before the pandemic, along with a 22% increase of contactless payment from 2020. This is indicative of a younger audience growing into money-power. This means that now is the time to invest in leveraging social media audiences, subscriptions, and the value of BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick Up in Store).

BOPIS and BOPAC

In-store and curbside pickup are two fulfillment alternatives that customers have grown to love, and it’s not just because they’re the more health-conscious choices. The perks of in-store and curbside pickup can be significantly greater than more conventional shipping methods to a growing number of consumers. Buy online, pickup in-store (BOPIS) and buy online, pickup curbside (BOPAC) allow customers to browse your products from the comfortability of their mobile devices and pick up their order when it’s most convenient for them.

E-commerce companies will need to consider their BOPIS and BOPAC initiatives and strategies for 2023 to stay on top of demand, above the competition, and satisfy the customers’ expectations for order fulfillment.

Practice Some Brainstorming

Sometimes, it’s most advantageous to mind-meld with an experienced Shopify Plus agency.

Just to come back to this – If you’re looking to get serious with a Shopify Plus agency, it’s important to find a partner that has the necessary experience and expertise to help you succeed. Look for an agency that has a proven track record of success and can offer a comprehensive suite of services such as strategy, design, development, marketing, analytics, and support. Make sure you’re comfortable with the agency’s approach and can trust them to deliver results.

If you’re still not sure, see if they offer a free consultation (like we do) so you can sit down in an informal environment and discuss. We would love to work closely to ensure you have the right strategies and resources in place to succeed in 2023. Submit an inquiry today.

Rebuy: 5 Questions with Ambaum

Posted on November 20, 2022November 23, 2022 by Taylor

Recently, we had the pleasure of sitting down with Miles Shattuck, Rebuy’s Senior Content Marketing Manager for a think tank of Shopify Plus solutions. Our Founder, Chad Fisher, and our COO, David Stober, hashed out legacy D2C brand potential, professional recommendations for online store improvement, and exciting projects on the horizon. Check out the full article through Rebuy here, and a TL;DR 10 minute video below.

Key Takeaways

Ambaum provides Shopify Plus users with the resources they need to grow their businesses, integrating into unique templates to raise performance indicators.
Every three to four years, revitalize the template for your Shopify store to stay current with software updates and improve performance metrics.
Although top-of-funnel awareness can be generated from social selling on sites like Facebook or Instagram, Shopify businesses are best benefited by driving traffic to their online store.
Future ecommerce tech stacks must be adaptable and agile, able to react swiftly to shifting trends.

Whether you are an entrepreneur with an idea on a napkin, a bootstrapped startup, an SMB re-platforming, or a high-flying CPG brand, we help accelerate your growth through world-class strategy, design, and development. Get the most out of your Shopify Plus store, and schedule your complimentary consultation today.

RAM® Mounts

Posted on September 30, 2022April 24, 2023 by Taylor

Previous Platform: Custom

Industry: Mounting Solutions

Use Case: Integration to Shopify Plus

Company Summary

Created in 1990, RAM® Mounts is the manufacturing leader for mounting solutions that are reliable and adaptable for almost any application or device. RAM® Mounts is the most cutting-edge product line of its kind, including almost 5,000 modular parts. These parts, built on an interchangeable ball and socket system and built around an elastomeric rubber ball, include anti-slip properties as well as shock and vibration absorption. The innovative RAM® Mounts system’s patent-protected design offers easy installation, adaptability, and durability at a reasonable cost.

Project Summary

Ambaum helped RAM® Mounts create a plan to replatform from their own custom ecommerce site to Shopify Plus. The project broke out into 3 phases: create a custom theme for RAM® Mounts, assist the merchant with data migration, and help them create custom functionality on their new site by building a custom application. The final outcome of the project was a new Shopify Plus site with functionality similar to their old site plus UI updates and the ability for customers to build their own RAM® Mounts.

RAM® Mounts Custom Theme

To create the new theme, Ambaum worked closely with RAM® Mounts to make sure all of the functionality on the old site was recreated on the new Shopify Plus site. We worked with RAM® Mounts to build a more robust mega nav and developed templated landing pages that were reusable for many of the brands that RAM® Mounts supports.

Ambaum created a custom theme for RAM® Mounts and made sure to incorporate all of the latest Shopify infrastructure updates that rolled out in the summer of 2022. There were a number of important features added, the first one was we created the custom theme with sections everywhere which allows RAM® Mounts to use the Shopify UI to drag and drop sections on the site without having to get into the code. In addition, Ambaum used metafields in multiple places on the site, one example is on the product detail page where we were able to create a “complete your solution” section which is effectively a recommended products section, as seen here. The product template uses variant metafields to easily swap product data based on the variant selected, for example: images, tabbed data, pricing, title, description, etc.

About Us Page Customization

The about us page template is a custom page we created within the theme that allows the merchant to easily manage the content of the page. The about us page has multiple tabs, and each tab is a unique page that can be edited within the Shopify Editor. The benefit of this is the ease of use for the merchant going forward as opposed to requiring custom development to update and maintain.

Collection Page Functionality

RAM® Mounts products all had “facet data” aka metadata on them which allowed for very custom filtering. There are “tiles” on the existing collection pages and some of them have size data that is needed for extra filtering. Ambaum helped RAM® Mounts think through a couple paths for their collection filtering; path 1 was for us to create custom filtering logic and path 2 was to utilize a Shopify app to give them the required functionality. We eventually settled on using Product Filter and Search, a powerful app that gave RAM® Mounts the ability to leverage the metadata on all of their products and give them the custom filtering they needed.

RAM® Mounts Custom Builder

RAM® Mounts requested that Ambaum help them create a brand new feature on their site that allows customers to select the optimal mount based on vehicle, device and mounting location. With this custom builder, the user is prompted to go through a set of questions to determine which products are most applicable for the customer’s situation. If you take a look at the images below you can get an idea of what it looks like from the customer’s perspective to use this custom mount builder.

RAM® Mounts had their own internal IT team and was very hands on with us as we created their new Shopify Plus site. One example of how we worked very closely together was around the API feed needed for the custom product builder. RAM® Mounts provided the API feed that sent the data to the product builder to enable a customer to make their selections from the drop-down menus. Ambaum then built this functionality by utilizing Shopify’s Section Rendering API. This alters page content without reloading the entire page based on the user’s selections.

One final thing Ambaum did was develop this custom RAM® Mounts builder with Shopify reusable components that will allow us to create this same builder functionality for many other product lines in the RAM® Mounts catalog. The client indicated to us that it was important that our code was reusable as they had big plans to roll this feature out to other lines in the future.

Summary

At Ambaum we have been fortunate to work with a number of parts companies and help them replatform to Shopify Plus. RAM® Mounts was an intense project with a lot of theme customizations, API work and data management. We didn’t want to just build a custom site for the merchant, we needed to implement reusable code to help them manage their site internally without having to rely solely on developers for future updates. As you can see from the quote above, the client was very happy with their new site and can see the benefit of a platform like Shopify to help drive their companies growth.

Have questions about how Ambaum can help your organization in the next step toward scalable success? Reach out to us today and let’s hop on a call to go over your needs.