đŸ“« Direct mail -> Shopify

$1.3M over 2 days with a direct mail campaign

Author

Kyle Tully
October 25, 2023

Welcome to Morning Commerce!

Kyle here with another roundup of what’s good in the world of Shopify:

  • Nike launches on Shopify

  • ChatGPT-4 fails miserably at UX audits

  • TikTok shop driving 15% of daily sales for one brand

  • Google testing ads within organic results

  • Direct mail drives $1.3M for one DTC apparel brand

  • The current state of e-commerce product page UX performance

— Kyle Tully

ACQUISITION

Direct mail drives $1.3M for one DTC apparel brand

It’s no secret that ad costs skyrocket and inboxes get flooded during BFCM. But when was the last time you got a direct mail letter from one of your favourite brands?

At least here in Aus, I can count on one-hand the number of promotions that hit my mailbag every year. The US is a lot more sophisticated with direct mail, so the numbers are probably a little more respectable for many of you
 but I bet you don’t get as many offers as you should.

This campaign is the perfect example of just how simple a direct mail campaign can be:

  • Simple 30% off discount

  • Basic offer-focused creative

  • Coupon code to track results

  • Tagged high-value customers in Shopify to send to

Way back when I was a gun-for-hire copywriter, we did a lot of direct mail and frankly, it was kinda a PITA. (Licking stamps, folding letters, stuffing envelopes, then dragging it all down to the post office.) But the results were awesome which is why we kept doing it.

These days, with tools like PostPilot, running a direct mail campaign is about as easy as setting up a Klaviyo flow. But even if you’re not yet at the $3-5M a year sweet spot to work with them, adding direct mail to your marketing mix might just be the breakthrough you’ve been looking for.

6 weeks in, TikTok shop driving 15% of daily sales for BK Beauty

BK Beauty got onto the TikTok shop bandwagon early, before the native Shopify integration launched. In just 6 weeks, it’s now responsible for 15% of their daily sales.

Not bad for a business doing over $10 million in annual revenue.

Co-founder Paul Jauregui spoke with the Ecommerce Conversations podcast recently and said, “We’ve always worked with content creators on social platforms. TikTok Shop aligns well with that effort. We’re seeing a lot of success. It makes up about 15% of our total revenue on any given day, and that’s growing."

He continued, “However, TikTok is spending a lot of money extending discounts to buyers on the platform — roughly 20-40%. We don’t pay for that. It drops directly to the bottom line. TikTok also offers free shipping, which goes into my pocket too. Both of those — discounts and free shipping — are helping with conversions.“

With the addition of TikTok Shop, the app has gone from a top-of-funnel awareness platform where creators could talk about your products, to a bottom-of-funnel place where they can drive direct conversions without leaving the platform.

Google testing ads within organic results

Since the dawn of Adwords, Google has been looking for more ways to get ads in front of eyeballs. (Alphabet reported revenue growth of 11% for the 3rd quarter so I’d say they’ve found a couple.) The latest test found in the wild is showing ads within organic search results.

Barry Schwartz responded, “It's continuous scroll so as you scroll you get ads on what would be page two.”

But at position 9, what would traditionally have been the bottom of “page 1”, it shows how easily Google can wedge a few more ads in thanks to the less defined nature of continuous scroll.

Just one more reason to be running as many ads as you can afford.

CONVERSION

ChatGPT-4 fails miserably at UX audits

ChatGPT may one day take all our jobs, but at least for now, UX auditors live to work another day.

Baymard tested ChatGPT-4 against a qualified UX professional conducting UX audits of 12 different web pages, and the results were
 not good.

  • ChatGPT-4 had an 80% false-positive error rate and a 20% accuracy rate in the UX suggestions it makes.

  • ChatGPT-4 discovered just 26% of the UX issues in a screenshot of the webpage found by a human expert. (And just 14% of the UX issues actually present on the live website.)

  • ChatGPT-4 found on average 2.9 UX issues per page, but overlooked 18.5 UX issues on the live web page.

So while the image-recognition and apparent cognitive abilities of ChatGPT-4 are indeed impressive (especially to a layman in any given area) there are still massive holes in its actual capabilities as compared to a skilled human.

However, where the AI killed the humans in this test was in speed.

The humans on average spent 2-10 hours on each of the 12 web pages.

ChatGPT-4 would have spat out its suggestions in a few seconds.

The current state of e-commerce product page UX performance

Baymard is at it again with a UX benchmark, this time analysing product page performance of the top-grossing US and European e-commerce sites.

“Only 48% of the top-grossing US and European e-commerce sites have a ‘decent’ or ‘good’ product page UX performance — and no sites have a ‘perfect’ performance.”

There are a few ways you can interpret these results:

  • You can be a top-grossing ecommerce site even with an average product page.

  • There is a lot of room for improvement!

As always, a Baymard report is worth an in-depth read, but here are some highlights you can action immediately for your PDPs:

  1. Provide “in-scale” images so people can determine the size of your product visually.

  2. Provide a “human model” image to give context to your products.

  3. Add text to some images to convey non-visual or abstract information such as weather resistance, weight, or scent.

  4. Show “price per unit” where applicable to help users compare products with varying quantities.

  5. Show or link to your return policy on the product page to instil confidence.

  6. Show “free shipping” info near the buy button not just in header banners.

  7. Respond to negative reviews to give context and show you care.

SHOPIFY NEWS

Tobias LĂŒtke wins Rails Lifetime Award 2023

Shopify CEO Tobias LĂŒtke was awarded the “Rails Lifetime Award“ at Rails World, “acknowledging individuals whose long-term dedication and impact on the Rails ecosystem have been nothing short of legendary“.

Ruby on Rails is the web application framework Shopify is built on.

Tobi has proven that Rails is not just a great starting point for the single developer, but also an amazing platform for a multi-billion dollar e-commerce empire operating at Web Scale with thousands of developers. And he continues to lead Shopify’s investments into both Ruby and Rails with framework extractions, core member employment, fundamental advances in the language, and foundation support.

David Heinemeier Hansson

You can watch the full presentation here.

Nike launches on Shopify

Five new Shopify updates

INSPO OF THE WEEK

Nike Strength got my attention this week with a unique take on a sometimes complex problem: how to present an ala carte offer with many products/options to choose from. Their approach? Show them all! But somehow it works. The subtle AOV boosting copy and bar chart are nice too. “The heavier the cart, the more you save on shipping. Add 250 lb to save“. Lovely.

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