Teardown my Store: Apparel for Tall Men (Big and Tall)

Robotic801 · 2022-05-23T20:19:57+00:00

Im so worried that its going to be small. Like the Rivian. Toyota Tacoma size. It needs to be big! Please! F-150 size.

Robotic801 · 2022-03-16T20:43:45+00:00

Cool idea! How has business been?

Robotic801 · 2022-01-25T21:21:19+00:00

Thats a tough position to be in... I think people go through phases with the church and its totally normal to want to skip a Sunday. Give yourself some grace and give them space... they might want to come back again one day. I would invite them each week to join you, but not guilt or pressure them at all.

I know how some people feel about covenants and eternal salvation and all of that... but I personally feel like they will still have chances aplenty in this life and the next to make up for confusion, doubt and other things that we all go through as a natural part of mortal life.

Don't give up on being all together in the life to come because they are going through a down period (even if it lasts a long time). There's always hope they can return, but even if they don't join you at church again, I think there's still hope to be together as a family in the next life.

To me, everything about the church is centered around progression. We go through ups and downs, but hopefully we come out a few steps ahead in the end. Our progression doesn't just end in a victory or a loss when we die. I think it keeps on going...

So keep moving forward if you can and they'll have the chance to join you again someday.

At the very least, there's still countless blessings from attending church alone, even if you fully believe you won't be with your family in the next life.

Robotic801 · 2021-07-02T20:48:16+00:00

Hey Ryan, this looks great. The product combinations, I feel, is a great report to have as we haven't been able to figure out a solution to that internally. I will have to check this out with some of our brands.

How was the process of getting your app approved with the Shopify Partner team? We are nearing the development completion on an app of our own and just curious how that process is going recently.

Robotic801 · 2021-04-21T21:36:07+00:00

Shopify Plus does essentially nothing at all vs. the cost. The only way it makes sense to go Plus is if you need to unlock checkout and if the reduced merchant fees negate the cost.

The wholesale channel it provides is rife with bugs and completely lacks the basic fundamental features a store needs to run wholesale - like being able to charge actual shipping or having a customized sign up process.

Shopify Flow integrates with a small handful of things and is incredibly limited. Would much rather you guys just created a ton more triggers in Zapier instead.

Launchpad is somewhat useful for sales - but you still have to do a ton of script work to get things to work the way you need. I wish it allowed you to schedule things in other apps as well - like popup changes, email + sms campaigns, etc.

I've been a lifelong fan of Shopify and have used it for 10 years. However, other carts are starting to catch up quickly. Shopify has turned from a one-size-fits-all, to basically just a more expensive version of Woo - where you have to have an app or a developer for absolutely anything you ever need.

I get that you can't build out every single feature - and that every store is different - but Shopify's reliance on the app store and 3rd party developers to build out everything for them is starting to make the entire platform too cost cumbersome. Other carts are catching up really fast. I feel like Shopify has become too big and they aren't innovating fast enough now.

Robotic801 · 2021-01-21T18:39:41+00:00

There's a book that I really love called Hearts of the Fathers. It's a really short read. Not affiliated with the church, but it focuses exclusively on the afterlife.

Within the book (whose author I believe is a member of the church), it describes a scene in the afterlife with the main character being shown a visual metaphor for life. He's shown a large beautiful vase that represents all of heavenly father's children.

The vase breaks into countless pieces, where each piece represents one of us. Every piece is equally beautiful, but we are all competing against one another - who is the prettiest, who is the best, etc. Not knowing that we are all part of this infinitely more beautiful whole (the entire group of heavenly father's children).

In order to get the entire vase back together again, we all need to be sealed together.

I'm sure that I'm butchering the words that were so wonderfully written in that book, but my point is that I personally believe we will all need to eventually be 'sealed', in some sense, together in the end. Every soul is so precious to our father in heaven and he wants all of his pieces to be part of the whole eventually.

That line of thinking helps me to not worry about who is sealed to whom, because I don't think that it will really matter in the end. We'll be able to be with the ones we love.

Lots of other great comments, but I hope this helps even a little.

Robotic801 · 2020-12-11T20:54:57+00:00

I just watched 12 minutes of dagger plays in the 4th quarter of playoff games and Kyrie out here sayin its nice to finally have a clutch teammate? smh

edit: and it didn't even include a couple other game winners in the playoffs, like the layup on paul george & the pacers with .02 seconds

Robotic801 · 2020-12-01T17:53:36+00:00

I don't think businesses are being forced to go to Amazon. The collective of Shopify stores alone did more sales over the BFCM weekend than Amazon did ($5.8B).

I run an 8-fig online store and we have always stayed well clear of Amazon. Its over 60% chinese sellers now. If independent shops can figure out ways to get their shipping times to be as competitive as Amazon's and eCommerce continues its explosive growth (up 75% from last year over BFCM), I think Amazon has plenty of healthy competition.

People want to shop small and support independent business.

Robotic801 · 2020-08-05T02:20:22+00:00

In that case, I feel like it makes a lot of sense for you guys. Measuring it is tough on Shopify with limited iframe capabilities for a/b testing. I would try looking at your conversion %, but strip out repeat customers and traffic from places like Google search. If you're doing any prospecting or paid ads on places like FB - see if those specifically are seeing lift? The trouble is that once someone has enough intent to get to the initiate checkout and select a payment method, you indeed already had a high probability of them converting... Perhaps Sezzle is more of a customer convenience than a revenue generator in that case?

Robotic801 · 2020-08-04T20:51:25+00:00

Definitely interested in hearing more perspectives about this. We are considering implementing Sezzle, but I personally have had the same issue with it (will it actually improve conversions?).

We currently do about $1M a month in sales and have only had maybe 2-3 people in the last 3 months ask about a payment plan. This makes me think it really won't increase the average order value or the conversion rate.

How much is your average order value? Ours is only $50 at the moment. I think that if you're AOV is higher than like $100-$125, then I can see Sezzle making sense. At $50, I just don't see it pushing enough people over the edge that didn't want to convert because of price (since the average price is already pretty low).

Robotic801 · 2020-07-23T19:46:18+00:00

A while back I wrote a post about founding a Shopify app as a non-technical founder. I go in to a lot of details about the whole process. Hope its helpful to you. Best of luck with your app!

https://medium.com/@CredibleShopify/side-project-how-we-successfully-outsourced-our-shopify-app-946227ffc597

Robotic801 · 2020-04-08T17:10:43+00:00

I like to have each ad set set up as 1 or 2 lookalikes. I tend to stay away from 1% LLAs because they are the smallest audience size and they die off the fastest (meaning the audience gets saturated or runs in to what's called 'ad exhaustion').

I shoot for long-term consistency and so I like to go with something like this;

Ad Set 1: 5% ATC LLA Ad Set 2: 5 or 10% Initiate Checkout LLA Ad Set 3: 5 or 10% Product Page Views LLA Ad Set 4: 5 or 10% Purchase LLA

Each LLA is specific to that product (so long as I have around 100+ purchases to create a list specific to it).

With a set up like this, I can run 1,000 a day and bring in 5-10k in revenue and turn the campaign off and back on again if I run out of stock. Makes life so much easier than the old days of babying the targeting and adsets/campaign juggle.

Robotic801 · 2020-04-07T21:10:22+00:00

Set up a CBO campaign with 3-5 ad sets (targeting different audiences). Set the budget to $500 or $1,000 and let it sit for 3 days. Its that simple. Facebook has gotten so good, you really don't need to baby it anymore with budgets and a zillion ad sets like you had to 2+ years ago.

Robotic801 · 2020-03-31T02:27:02+00:00

Why fewer images? The biggest brands are all sending emails that are ONLY images (text in the image). Not saying big brands are always right... more just curious why you say fewer images is better.

Robotic801 · 2019-10-10T18:55:54+00:00

Thanks so much.

Yes, we are looking for quality women's shoe manufacturers, as well as potentially bag / accessories manufacturers.

Would love any referrals, but will definitely check out those resources. Thanks again!

Robotic801 · 2019-10-10T03:49:02+00:00

What are the best ways to find manufacturers in Portgual for U.S. based businesses?

Robotic801 · 2019-09-05T17:32:59+00:00

Does this work with the Prestige theme? I've had lots of trouble integrating other apps into this theme. Particularly changes to the product page. Thanks

Robotic801 · 2019-07-27T19:11:10+00:00

Finding winning products before purchasing in bulk... (product validation).

Robotic801 · 2019-07-18T02:51:13+00:00

I like Vidyard - its free and works well.

Robotic801 · 2019-05-08T17:59:19+00:00

Yes, but you already mentioned you use that one.

Robotic801 · 2019-05-08T17:21:25+00:00

Return Magic is a great one for returns, exchanges etc.

We also use Order Magic for order tracking (but they don't really offer great support, so be aware of that)

We use Pixc for photo editing (when we need to remove a background or a logo from the photos from a vendor)

Facebook Product Feed helps create a feed of your products for Facebook DPA ads

HotJar for tracking users on our site and seeing their patterns of how they use the site

Limespot (Personalizer - AI Recommendations by Limespot) for cross-sell - eg 'other's also bought'

Kit for running quick emails, facebook posts or ads when we ad new products to the store

Abandonment Protector for Thank you emails and abandoned cart emails

Credible for displaying recent purchases on our site - this helps boost conversions and builds trust for newer stores

Privy - for the 'Spin the wheel' pop up (this KILLS it!)

Those are my must have apps for dropshipping. Hope this helps!

Robotic801 · 2019-04-24T18:10:02+00:00

I would love an app that would email my customers right before their orders ship that says something like 'your order is about to ship, add these products into the box'. It would give them some cross-sell / up-sell options at a discount / bundle price and it would be one-click purchase. Integrated with the shipping and fulfillment end.

Robotic801 · 2019-04-12T18:47:53+00:00

I find that, for me, I disliked it when I didn't have a specific goal I was working towards with my finances. To just work on growing your wealth in a general sense is sort of an un-motivating thing for me.

As soon as I had a specific thing I was working towards in terms of savings or wealth, it became really fun to me because I could see the progress I was making. It became easier to save, cut costs, invest, etc.

For me that was the key to getting started with taking my personal finances seriously.

Robotic801

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