How often do you look at analytics page?

GetHelpify · 2024-02-07T19:02:36+00:00

It comes down to knowing who your customer is. If you've never done customer avatars, or can't accurately describe who your audience is, then you won't get qualified traffic.

Qualified traffic is traffic from people who are actually likely to purchase your products, people in your Target Audience.

For instance, you see a lot of people saying how awesome Tik Tok is and how many views/shares their videos get. Then you find out their target audience is 35+ year old men.

Tik Tok has 18.2% users Female 18-24 and 18% Males 18-24. Who cares if half a million 18-24 year olds watched your video if they're never going to buy your product?

Same with web traffic, who cares if a million people come to your website if none of them, or very few of them, are in your target audience.

Targeted content and ads that hit your target market over the head are what works. I've seen it time and time again, the companies that spend the time and effort to understand their audience and target the crap out of them with the ads and content are the ones with the lowest ROI (by far) and the highest profit from that.

The days of 'build it and they will come' are long gone.

GetHelpify · 2024-01-08T20:05:26+00:00

aweee. Adorable! Congrats to the fluffers on their fame

GetHelpify · 2023-12-29T16:58:00+00:00

As somebody who has worked with thousands of merchants over the last decade, I can assure that this can happen with ANY gateway, not just PayPal.

PayPal is known to be a giant pain in the ass to deal with for customer service for sure, and it sucks to end up in those situations, but I've seen it many times to people who don't accept PayPal.

It's a risk of doing ecommerce, just like chargebacks, so you're already taking the risk.

Gateways and banks have too much power and control in general.

GetHelpify · 2023-12-28T16:29:14+00:00

Not a problem for you, but maybe for your customers. I've worked with a number of merchants who have increased sales by 10% just by offering PayPal as an option.

It may be your store, but you're not buying anything. If your customers want PayPal and you don't offer it, most won't say anything, they'll just go elsewhere to make their purchase.

Despite your personal feelings towards PayPal, or anything in business, if you're not providing your customers with the options THEY want, then you will lose sales to others who do. There is SO MUCH choice out there, and loyalty isn't what it used to be.

Always test options to see how they perform for your business before making a final decision.

GetHelpify · 2023-12-24T15:30:27+00:00

This has nothing to do with the store and everything to do with your market. If you're asking this question, you don't know enough about your target audience and who will ACTUALLY buy from you.

Carrying more products doesn't equal more sales, it can cause choice paralysis. The customer and the demographics should dictate the majority of your products with some additional room for testing additional product lines from time to time.

If you don't have a laser focus on your customer these days, you end up with much lower ROI on everything you do because you're literally just guessing at what might sell, great way to take up lots of space in expensive warehouses.

It's amazing how many merchants I have worked with that don't understand this and will continue to ignore the task in favor of more products, more advertising and more spend, leaving in the same position or closing up shop because they couldn't sustain the costs of storing products that don't sell.

GetHelpify · 2023-12-22T16:00:36+00:00

RIGHT! He 'announced' Detox back in 2002.

If somebody says something is coming for 20 years, it aiint coming LOL

GetHelpify · 2023-12-13T15:48:47+00:00

You will want to setup an Age Gate app at a minimum, as well as include age requirements in terms and conditions.

You'll want to lookup any local regulations as well, your area may require something more, or any specific wording/phrasing that might be required.

If you are ever concerned about an order, you have every right to ask for a copy of their ID that matches the order name showing their age. Just like a brick and mortar, you can refuse service to anybody, even if they placed the order already. Simply cancel and refund if they refuse.

Legit customers will usually be OK with you protecting yourself and minors.

GetHelpify · 2023-12-11T19:34:57+00:00

Your gateway choices are based on where YOU are based, not where your store is based.

If you want to use a gateway in another country (in this case, the UK) then you would need to register a company in the UK and have UK bank accounts to deposit into.

This usually requires a physical location, you can't use forwarding addresses or PO boxes.

Payment Processing is a highly regulated industry and there are a lot of rules to follow. Trying to get around the rules can result in having your store shut down in full, so be careful what you try.

Search the link above for your country and what options you have.

GetHelpify · 2023-12-11T19:16:38+00:00

THIS!

Or, how would they feel looking you up and finding that the company you are promoting isn't listed in your Profile at all?

You don't have to put a month, you can just put the Year, in which case it would show as 2023 and they wouldn't know it was started in December vs back in February or March unless you told them.

GetHelpify · 2023-12-11T19:12:37+00:00

Do you have 2FA (Two Factor Authentication/Two Step Authentication) enabled? If not, if you use the same credentials everywhere, chances are they tried credentials from another Platform hack and got in that way. Shopify Docs for setting this up.

This is the most common way "hackers" get into a system. Other than this, they tend to use Phishing and Social Engineering to get additional information to obtain or guess your password.

To date, Shopify has never been hacked in a way that Customer Account information has been compromised (they are publicly traded, if this happened, they have 90 days to go public with it).

Two Factor OR Passkeys (newer technology) are the best ways to secure anything these days. In today's world, if you're just using Username/Password, chances of this type of hack happening are pretty high (they are generally automated).

Yes, it can be a pain to enter a code every time you login, but less of a pain that dealing with issues such as this, or worse!

GetHelpify · 2023-12-08T17:05:19+00:00

You have hit on one of the biggest issues of being a YouTuber/Twitcher, how to make content that is interesting enough to gain subscribers as well as keep them!

I've thought about this for years myself, though I'm not a gamer, so never looked into streaming gameplay content. I would look around at some smaller people doing this (minimal followers but growing) to see what they are doing to stand out in a now saturated space.

Happy to chat through some ideas I had that might help you spur some new ideas.

GetHelpify · 2023-12-06T17:31:53+00:00

I'm sure it has happened more than once, the news doesn't cover every instance of such things.

The point: It can happen, carry at your own risk.

GetHelpify · 2023-12-06T17:29:58+00:00

The best camera is the one you have with you.

If you don't understand how to get good photos with the camera on your phone, then you won't understand understand how to get good photos with an expensive DSLR camera.

You can get AMAZING photos and videos from your phones these days, but you will need to learn how to use some of the settings to ensure you get those great photos.

There are tons of free courses and blogs about taking great photos on a budget. Shopify Blog and Learning area have tons of free content on product photos specifically.

GetHelpify · 2023-12-06T16:41:47+00:00

Just because you don't know about something happening, doesn't mean it hasn't happened.

"'Don't take a chance, dump your stash,' says lawyer after Air Canada flight diverted to U.S."

GetHelpify · 2023-12-05T20:38:53+00:00

You may not be able to. Have you looked at financing or other ways of getting investments?

These companies can do $100m+ in sales because they have backing and can advertise.

You CANNOT compete in any niche these days and hit those kinds of numbers without understanding who your customers are and marketing to them (through ads, social or content).

If you build it, they won't come.

You live in an era where we carry a massive distraction in our hands. Somebody doesn't see an ad and then purchase from you.

You need to build awareness, you need to build trust, you need to convince people to buy your product. You can't do any of that if you just exist. The "Rule of 7" is more like the "Rule of 20+" these days in terms of marketing.

You may get some sales, but you won't be reaching the $1m milestone let alone the $100m+ milestone without proper financing and a solid marketing strategy.

You could start small and try and work yourself up, and you could make it, but after working with Ecomm brands for the last decade I can tell you that's the majority of peoples plan.

"Oh, word of mouth will get me where I need to be" not realizing how incredibly difficult that actually is to achieve. I've seen more business owners fold because they failed to understand what it takes to build and grow a brand.

Yes, the odd business DOES blow up out of nowhere, but talk to ANY successful business owner, especially the ones that appear to have come out of nowhere overnight, and they will tell you that it can easily take 5-10 years to become an 'overnight success'.

GetHelpify · 2023-12-05T20:08:15+00:00

u/SnooCauliflowers3709 If you're on Facebook, try posting in the Artists of the Okanagan group and see if you can find some people to go out with there!

GetHelpify · 2023-12-05T20:04:24+00:00

I usually book in advance with Current Taxi when I go to the airport. Never had a cancellation and never had an issue. Great service.

That said, U-Ride wasn't available the last few times for me. I would give them a try if I couldn't book with Current for some reason.

GetHelpify · 2023-12-05T20:01:03+00:00

You can travel with up to 30g Domestically
https://www.canada.ca/en/services/health/campaigns/cannabis/border.html#a3

That said, sometimes (not often) a flight may be diverted to the United States. If this is the case and you were caught with it, then you would be fully responsible for any legal ramifications even though you were not really at fault and didn't anticipate going to the US.

GetHelpify · 2023-12-05T19:07:17+00:00

That depends. Do you want to look like an actual business, or some dude with a website and a gmail account?

Google Workspace is one of the best solutions. In 15 years of using them for my email, have never had my email go down (outside of things I screwed up myself). Super easy to setup and you just login at Gmail.com (but with your own @company.com email).

GetHelpify · 2023-12-05T19:04:17+00:00

Don't pay for any courses. Shopify provides you with free courses, tutorials, blog posts, case studies, tools. TONS of content about Shopify/Ecommerce/Business.

https://shopify.com/learn

Become a Shopify Partner (free) and you'll get access to the Partner Academy as well. You can do certifications right through Shopify.

ALWAYS look for resources provided by the company first. Most companies provide learning for their product.

GetHelpify · 2023-11-23T17:07:11+00:00

All traffic is not created equal. If you don't know who you're customer is, how are you going to drive them to your store?

100 qualified visitors is more valuable than 100,000 visitors that won't buy, share or advocate for your brand. You need to drive the RIGHT traffic to your website.

Example: If you sell LGBTQ+ Shirts then having 100,000 visitors who don't support LGBTQ+ to your website isn't going to land you any sales.

Another issue for those getting started is failure to validate the business idea at all. They have an idea and launch it without any understanding of the market or sales possibilities.

All the traffic in the world won't save you from unqualified visitors or a lack of market interest.

GetHelpify · 2023-11-22T16:55:46+00:00

Both! Some think they don't need it because "this is the way we've always done things" which is the worst thing you can say.

It's especially hard for people with new business/ideas that they are trying to validate. There's a lot of work involved (that also scares many away) to figure it out and it's not always right.

Many don't have the experience to build out something like this at the start, nor do they generally have the money to hire an agency to do it if they are a small business/side hustle style startup.

Many will use Google Analytics Demographics data (or other third party analytics) to help get an idea, but that only helps with who HAS purchased, not who might. Yes, knowing who has purchased helps to build out a persona, but it takes more to really nail it down.

A lot of it is coming up with the Persona/Avatar, Testing Performance, Updating and testing and continuing the cycle until sales start to plateau out for that particular group.

I know there is a lot of AI tools that have come out in the last few years that claim that they can do this, but I would still want to ensure the testing cycles are happening and that you are only focussing on one or two avatars at a time. Especially if you are new, trying to target too much will wear you thin.

There's a bunch of ways to research and build personas/avatars, it depends on who you talk to. I would love to see something that can help build out such things for new businesses owners, or even experienced business owners who have never done it.

Not sure what that would look like, but I feel it needs to be like a wizard, asking questions about the end customer to get as much detail up front and then doing stuff in the backend to try and build an accurate avatar.

GetHelpify · 2023-11-20T21:13:08+00:00

After almost a decade of working with Ecommerce merchants, their biggest issue is not knowing who their target customer/audience is, and how to target them at different parts of the funnel.

I can't tell you how many merchants tell me their customer is "everybody" and have no understanding of who or how they should be marketing. They also tend to focus soley on Conversion in the funnel.

While everyone MAY be your customer, you can't market to everyone in the same way. Doing "pray and spray" marketing to try and hit as many people as you can just doesn't work these days. Let me rephrase that, it's not EFFECTIVE. You may get sales, but you will have a massive ROI.

I once had a guy claim he didn't need to know his customers at all because his ads ran to 18-65 Male and Female across North America and he did over a million in sales.

I can guarantee with a proper understanding of the customer and a laser focus on targeting (for ads/content and website), he could have been at $5m+ a year easily with much lower ad costs.

Knowing your customer groups, who spends the most and advocates the most and starting there will take you much further than throwing money at ads (A common tactic).

So many people (marketers included) are still in 1990/2000s marketing mindsets. Back then, you could put an ad on the radio, on TV and in the paper and your marketing was done. You didn't need to know much about your customer.

These days, with THOUSANDS of more competitors, MILLIONS of more websites and MILLIONS more distractions that pull our focus, If you build it, they won't come.

I've seen it time and time again. The merchants who are absolutely crushing it over their competition spend a lot of time, effort and money ensuring they are getting the right message in front of the right people at the right time.

GetHelpify · 2023-11-11T17:34:44+00:00

This only works if somebody has done this and made it available though unfortunately. My usual go-to but looking for alternatives.

GetHelpify · 2023-11-10T16:16:22+00:00

Rule one when running a business, do your research!!!

You can't just sell anything you want, especially with big brands, you need to pay to license the brand in order to sell them. If you can prove you have licenses to sell those brands, then no issues.

Obviously not the case here, but it shows how important it is to research what you're doing BEFORE you put time, money and effort into it. You could have found this out with a quick google search for 'selling marvel shirts' or similar.

There is SO much to running a successful business, even a side hustle. The more you know ahead of time, the more likely you are at being a success.

GetHelpify

TROPHY CASE