GA4 Alternatives and Reporting Tools

Posted on July 6, 2023October 26, 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.

ChargeUp New York 2022

Posted on September 13, 2022May 4, 2023 by Taylor

Recently, I was fortunate enough to spend a lovely and rewarding day in New York attending the ChargeUp event hosted by Recharge. This was my first event since the pandemic began, and it will not be my last. With the inspiring thought-leadership (and impressive hors d’oeuvres pictured below!), Recharge has proven to be truly apt in their event planning in the new post-pandemic tide.

After checking in, I was met with accessible high-top tables and enjoyed delicious breakfast items (most importantly; Coffee).

Welcome & State of the Industry // Recharge Product Roadmap

Led by the VP of Strategic Alliances, Lindy Crea, we discussed how undeniably there has been a spike in ecommerce growth during the lockdown, and we’re now seeing the gradual descent as we settle back to stasis. In addition to this, merchants are facing supply chain issues and clogged shipping channels, which has disrupted a significant amount of delivery flows.

The supply chain is not just backlogged, but it is getting more expensive. Customer acquisition cost continues to increase in the “cookie-pocolypse” causing merchants and consumers alike to pull back from social spend.

This has made the need for reliable revenue evermore evident for merchants.

Succeed with Subscriptions: Attract Subscribers

We then broke out to discuss one of the foundations of reliable revenue and successful, scalable, business being on customer retention, the marketing track led by Christy Ottesen, Senior Product Marketing Manager. One of the foundations of the panel; 32% of customers are prepared to abandon their loyalty to a company after one very bad experience. In a very interesting correlation, 80% of stores feel they’re delivering a great customer experience, where only 8% of customers feel they’re receiving a great experience.

Customer Experience (CX)

To add more on a merchant’s plate, buy online, pickup in-store (BOPIS), is forecast to grow by 19.3% by 2027. Whether or not this is already cultivated, this will grow into a more significant vertical for merchants as the post-pandemic stasis levels out.

Finally, research has shown that through conditioning from big league experiences such as Disney, consumers will be expecting the utmost in response time and excellent customer service. As a merchant, you are expected from customers to perform within the same parameters as those big leagues with your customer experience. So, customers are not only expecting you to outperform your competitors, but they’re expecting you to provide the same level of customer service as a multi-level, thousand-employee-marketing-team, with granular operations, and nearly 100 years of honed experience.

I know. Like, what? How the heck are you supposed to do that?

There is a ton of strategy around the best CX, and this will change as the market does. Recharge has broken it down into three major principles:

Speed
Convenience
Friendliness

Speed: Attentiveness in responding to your customers is key to making them feel heard and understood. Recharge has partnered with Gorgias to serve and resolve subscription questions faster. This integration allows the sales team to re-active, refund, or cancel subscriptions all within the same window, so there is no need to switch between tools.

Convenience: RechargeSMS is a free tool for Recharge merchants that allows for subscription management through customer self-service via SMS. Providing the flexibility for customers to manage their own subscription dramatically increases customer lifetime value (CLV). All functions of the customer portal can be completed via text and this tool has proven to increase CLV up to 30%.

Friendliness: Providing an excellent customer experience on an omnichannel strategy is key to retention. Average customer behavior has been proven to pay a premium for additional benefits such as early access, a customized experience, and long-term discounts.

Understandably, lunch was buzzing with subscription strategy conversations and methods to increase retention, and decrease churn. I discussed a few areas of nuance with merchants of varying demographics such as customizations for subscription-pause, specifically around the school year, and how to automatically resume after summer and winter breaks. I also discussed how difficult the transition can be from WooCommerce to Shopify Plus without support, and how to decrease the churn that comes with customers needing to enter additional information or create a whole new profile on a new platform.

This event quickly made me realize that as our tech partners here at Ambaum begin to scale, these merchant needs are where our services can really step in to help. Through years of agency experience with over 30 active merchants, we are able to quickly identify this low-hanging fruit to then build long-term solutions and strategies for the merchant’s success. By working with many of our preferred partners within the first few years of their conception (Recharge for 4+ years!), we are able to travel parallel with their updates, step in, and solve these types of customizations that merchants need.

Case Study: Optimize your Subscription Business with Customization and Integrations // Happy Hour

The conference ended with a case study between Klaviyo, Wandering Bear Coffee, and their Shopify tech agency, where we covered their transition into e-commerce over the pandemic. Taking on Klaviyo for email and SMS, the merchant was able to take their sales to a new level. As Recharge provided the flexibility for customers to manage their own subscription, they saw their CLV soar. Through this panel discussion we answered the question: When do you start the conversation with your customers? The answer: Either now, or yesterday.

After wrapping up the conference, we finished with a happy hour on the terrace rooftop, and plenty of in-depth discussion about what is on the horizon for subscription services. Recharge has new updates upcoming including a way to understand the entire customer experience in a single view, data consistency between Recharge and Shopify where you can perform bulk discount imports with one click, and a widget for Shopify Plus for an incredibly easy subscription service setup. As these updates roll out, you can be sure we’ll cover them here, so sign up for our newsletter now (if you haven’t already!).

Conclusion

I thoroughly enjoyed the day from the organized setup, to discussing poignant thought-leadership with peers and partners over the bustling city below. I look forward to the next event with our partners here at Ambaum, and new updates from our partnership with Recharge.

Hello, Gorgias ;-)

Posted on August 31, 2022May 4, 2023 by Taylor

Building a brand that retains clients is the most sensible method to increase your revenue. Keeping existing customers is simpler and less expensive than finding new ones, and they are proven to spend more at a higher frequency, while providing word-of-mouth with that loyalty. A 5% improvement in customer retention can boost sales by 25-95%.

Especially now, with privacy changes driving the rise in customer acquisition costs, the core of your retention strategy is improving your customer lifetime value, and decreasing your churn rate. You can decrease your CAC and increase your CLV by focusing on retention. However, it’s easier said than done. Let’s explore how our preferred partner, Gorgias, can help.

What is Gorgias?

Gorgias is an all-in-one, all-inclusive, customer service helpdesk software, specifically built for e-commerce as a revenue resource through customer retention. Gorgias is rated the top customer service solution in Shopify apps, and their strong Shopify integration enables you to amend shipping details, change tags, refund orders, import customer data to your helpdesk, and more.

What does Gorgias offer over other companies?

The biggest area that Gorgias stacks up on over other companies is their all-in-one helpdesk, with customizable rules and macros which can scale as your business grows. You are able to service the customer from right within the helpdesk with direct access to order information, order refunds, loyalty point adjustments, and shipping information edits. You can then tag and automate rules using this data. In today’s digital world, the majority of consumers expect companies to provide 24/7 support across all channels, so this function frees up your agents to be able to reply to tickets more quickly and efficiently thanks to Gorgias’ streamlined process.

They also offer revenue reporting statistics so if a customer converts after speaking with an agent prior to a sale, you can trace it back to that agent and analyze the return on investment (ROI) for your support team.

For Ambaum referred merchants, we’re offering the 2nd and 3rd month free through our partnership. (Hint, hint: set up a call today.)

What does setup look like?

Gorgias fits seamlessly into your Shopify and Shopify Plus store with the deepest support and order management integrations on the market, and partners with over 70 Shopify apps such as Klaviyo, Recharge, Attentive, and more. Migrating from another app such as Zendesk just takes a few moments, and setting up these integrations is as simple as a few clicks. The process of building your macros and rules will likely take the longest, depending on how in-depth you go, and you’ll want to revisit this on a monthly cadence as your business grows and more support solutions arise. But, the more time spent on building this out in a thoughtful way, the more time you’ll be saving in the long run.

Depending on your plan, you may also receive assistance from a dedicated customer success professional during this setup. And, when you are a merchant with Ambaum, we will set you up with a dedicated manager with Gorgias, as well as immediate escalation support when you need it.

For customers, you can set up a self-service flow for faster solutions outside of your support team. When the process is simple and quick, customers are frequently willing to use self-service tools over a chat function. Utilizing Gorgias’ self-service features can greatly improve customer satisfaction and boost team productivity.

To summarize, Gorgias is built for e-commerce brands, where many other customer support solutions simply are not. Gorgias increases customer retention while taking away the need to switch from tab to tab while managing the influx of support requests. With Gorgias, you can set up automations, customize your rules and macros, and ultimately scale your customer support with your business. Need some assistance setting up your tech stack? Reach out to us today and let’s hop on a call to go over your needs.