The Podcast
Video
Show Links
- Big Shoes - https://bigshoes.com/
- Jay Butler - https://jaybutler.com/
- Wide Fit Shoes - https://widefitshoes.com/
Help the Podcast
Transcript
Hey, Scott Austin here.
In this episode of the podcast, I'm going to review some Shopify stores. So what I did to find some stores to review is I just put in a search query of men's shoes, size 13. And then I looked at the results, opened up each link, and picked the first three stores that were Shopify. So those three stores ended up being
big shoes.
Jay Butler
and Wide Fit Shoes. So we're going to go through each one of them in a little bit of detail, and we're going to review them in mobile only today. Not look at the desktop version. Just see how they've optimized for mobile. Now if you're listening to the audio version of this, there is an accompanying video in the bill, a link to that in the show notes.
If you want to see what I'm showing on the screen.
So on to our first store. Big shoes.
big shoes is, you know, obviously a SEO optimized, brand name. Not really good for building a brand. It's kind of generic, but it gets the point across. Right? And what I like on their homepage banner is it says big feet need big shoes. So they're telling you and it says size 14 or not.
So right there on the homepage you're saying, hey, if you're a size 14 and up, you're in the right place. If you're less than that, you know, size eight, you're in the wrong place. So I like that, you know, really direct guidance. They're giving customers about what it is they're doing at big shoes. Now, ironically, I search for size 13 and ended up on this site, which doesn't have size 13 shoes.
But you know, it's just a function of Google search. Now if we look at the homepage or the top header that everything shows, they got a couple promotions going on there. Need it now. Most orders ship same day and then that turns into a get up to 60% off shop. All sale. And right below that there's a counter for at $150 to get free US standard shipping.
So there's a lot going on there. It's kind of busy. It's kind of crowded
and a lot of stores are guilty of that, right? They're trying to explain too many things in parallel at the same time, because we have so many messages that we want our customers to know about, like, hey, there's free shipping.
Hey, we've got the sale going on, and it's hard to get those points across, but sometimes we make all those points. It clutters the experience and doesn't help as much as we think it might. So I try to have less going on in this header section than they do now. I do like how they've got a nice prominent search box in their header.
Also.
Because I think that searching is going to be an important part of a shopping experience for shoes, but we're going to dig into the navigation experience and we're going to click on the hamburger
and the oh this is nice. They've got a bunch of different ways you can start your shopping experience. So we're searching for shoes. Well I can search by size.
I can navigate by size right. I can browse by styles. I can browse by brands. And they've also got clothing and accessories on sale. So that's that's nice. we're in multiple ways to start your shoe shopping experience.
And before we dig into the shopping experience, let's just scroll down the homepage and see what else they've got on that. they've got a shot by size and you pick your size number. I like that a lot. They show some best sellers. I'm usually not a fan of showing products on the home page like a best seller.
If you have a very large product catalog, which I assume a shoe store is going to, because we don't know enough about the customer yet. And here I see some waterproof hiking shoes and some sandals side by side. And those are two very different types of shoes for different types of, you know, experiences and needs. And, you know, so it's just random.
I don't think it helps to have that there. Now, you could do if you're trying to show your breadth and depth. I'm not so sure I wouldn't be promoting products at that level. they've got a what people were saying, which is, some reviews.
I can't scroll there. Oh, there, there's a scroll thing at the top.
So the so their header, they've got it docked to the page. So it takes up a little bit of my screen with which I'm not a fan of doing because there's such limited space on a screen or on a mobile phone already. I wouldn't, you know, lock the first 10% or whatever it is for the header, which doesn't change just as big shoes in a search box, right?
it's really not helping me right now, and it's just getting in the way because as I'm looking at this review thing, it's kind of hard to show it all on the page because it takes up so much space. And that header is taking up some of that other space. But I do like showing the reviews. Now, what this review carousel is not doing is showing me dates.
Because if you can show some the oh sorry, the carousel is for the. Yeah, that was confusing. The carousel was for the best bestsellers above. and once again, it's just because the screen is so small it gets confusing. What? You know, where the bottom of one thing is and where the beginning of the next element starts. There's some overlap, and sometimes we can help that with color, but a little bit of background color and just alternate the background colors, you know, like banding, to help customers become aware that these navigation buttons are for this element above, not for this element below.
So it looks like the, the reviews are just scrolling through automatically on some JavaScript timer.
bigger than just big shoes. So this is the next promotion they've got. And what they're trying to show here is they sell more than just shoes. It's a nice, clever way of saying that you can shop accessories and clothing. And now they show four different products, three different socks and a wallet.
Once again, I wouldn't be showing products at this level. I would say socks, wallets, you know, popular categories, not popular products.
And then let's stay connected. They've got this email sign up thing. Not a bad thing to do.
I'm clicking on it and oh that's interesting. So the let's stay connected
is actually
it. Oh it's an Instagram feed, which I didn't realize at first. I thought the let's Stay Connected was associated with the email signup, because there's no spacing between the, Instagram.
photos and the email signup section. So it actually looked like the Instagram photos were, just images for email signup and not Instagram.
What I like to do in that case is to make it really clear that that's an Instagram thing. And instead of just saying, you know, this one here says, let's stay connected. A lot of people put Instagram. I actually just put the ad and whatever the Instagram handle is for that brand right there. So it's more clear that this is an Instagram feed and theirs takes you straight to Instagram, and it doesn't even open up in a new tab.
So you know there's potential to lose your customers to the the time suck that is Instagram. If you do things like that. I would not do it that way.
so that's their home page. And if I look at their footer footers really tall, it's more than a page scrolling. they could horizontal. So right now their nav menus on mobile are vertical.
They could make them be horizontal and with wrap so it wouldn't look so large. I can see that they're in Texas. They're an American company, and I don't see in about us. Let's see if there's one in the main nav. There is not. So this brand, as far as I can tell, isn't telling a brand story.
I'm not seeing an about us anywhere.
They do have an address. let's just see what their contact us looks like.
They told me about a retail store where their contact us is kind of horrible. There's no form. there's directions to a retail store, but, you know, they they can show a map up there if they have a retail store, like photos of the retail store. It's just a text. Contact us. They've got a phone number that's not clickable.
They've got an email link that is or an email address that is not clickable. So like I said, poorly done.
so let's try to dive into the shopping experience now.
I'm going to start with the shop by size. And I'm going to select size 14.
And they've got a little graphic for size 14. Very gratuitous in my mind. You know on on a. So now I'm on a collection page filtered by size 14 or the collection is size 14 with other filters available.
I would, you know, get rid of this graphic at the top of the collection page because it's just gratuitous, right?
I've already said I want to start shop and start showing me products. They're farther down, but you could show me two rows of products instead of just the one that I'm seeing right now. By not having this graphic that adds no value at all to the experience.
I'm looking at the the page. they've got some interesting things going on.
They've got a little app in the middle of their collection page, which is throwing in some other products because they display a little bit differently. It's called more for you. It showed one across for a second, and now it's showing you it's very confusing because here on mobile, you know, it's different but not different enough for me to notice.
Is that different? Unless I'm really paying attention and I don't understand what it's doing there.
now, the, product grid is showing the product title, number of reviews, if the product has reviews, the colors that are available, and the price of the products. I like that. Now there's filters in. The nice thing they did with their filters is, a lot of filters will be at the bottom, like I've used the Shopify free filter app.
it automatically drops your filters, all expanded. It shows them all at the bottom of the page, which is very not discoverable. So they've got their filters, they've got a button for the filters at the top of the page, and I can click on that. And now I have a whole bunch of filters to choose from. That's really nice.
So there's there's category size width, brand style, activity color, feature price and customer rating. So I'm just gonna open up color and pick black.
And I'm going to pick style and pick sandals.
Oh I can't pick oh I can pick sandals. The, the responsiveness of that little, filter app they're using is kind of slow. but now I've figured it out and I've got that working. So now I'm going to see the results and the filters have applied, and I can see three black sandals. So that filter works nicely.
They still got that more for you, which is not black sandals. So now I've said I want size 14 black sandals and I'm seeing sneakers and boots in there. More for you promotion. So they're not respecting the customer making decisions. Right. They're trying to force this promotion on people. When people are trying to shop and filter on what they're looking for.
So that same promotion I was not a fan of a minute ago, I'm even less a fan of now that I filtered, and it's not staying true to what I've said in my filter. So now and it looks like.
Yeah, this is very confusing. But anyways, we're gonna go to one of our products and you know, it's it's hard.
You know, I say it's confusing. That's a normal response to a shopping experience where you've got, you know, probably hundreds of shoes they have and lots of different ways to filter by it. It's hard to have an elegant, clean experience, which is why, you know, I'm a big fan of, you know, making things as simple and as intuitive as possible.
It's not easy to do, and it takes work, but, you know, reducing confusion is really valuable on these pages. And this this collection page, you know, there's some room for improvement there. Now I'm going to drop into the A product. And they've got a carousel of images.
So they're reselling other people's shoes. And it looks like they're just using manufacturers photography adding no value. There. this shoe comes in tons of different colors. So they got, a lot of product options. You can pick on color, size, width,
I think most brands try too hard and this is an example of it. So here I am. I'm on the, Ohana black sandals. Right. So I've gotten to this page by saying I want size 14, I want black, I want sandals. So I'm very confident that this is the right page for me.
But they now they're saying this item goes well with high performance max cushion socks. Your sandals. You don't wear socks with sandals. And then there's a Kingston Billfold wallet. I mean, what makes them think that these are appropriate things to be merchandizing with sandals. And what they're probably doing is they got some crappy app in there, and it might even be the Shopify ones, right?
That just says, oh, I'm gonna look at your entire catalog, and I'm going to figure out what people like. And most algorithms that do that, most Shopify stores don't have enough data that they give to the algorithm to have good results. And this is a great example. There's no way I should be seeing socks on the same page.
And I'm buying sandals. Right. And if I was to pick those socks, let's see what the promotion does. It says choose an option. It takes me to the sock page. I've said I want black sandals. I'm on the black sandal page and you're navigating me to white socks. Just ludicrous, right? Stupid.
so let's go back to our sandals.
Scrolling down below the cross promotions of products that I don't like them promoting. There's a description. They've got an accordion for product details. They've got a fit and care. They've got shipping in return. I like the fact they got shipping returns information right on that product page. They've got a size guy. Let's see what that does. That's a modal that pops up and it talks about sizing with a whole bunch of different information.
I like that that looks good.
they've got 18 reviews for this product. Looks like they're using judge me for reviews. I might be wrong in that it looks that way. And then they've got another. You may also like. Right. So now on this one here, they're promoting a whole bunch of shoes completely unrelated to sandals. so once again, there's there's no intelligence in that.
Or if there's any intelligence in it, it's, it's got crappy data that's being added to it. Right. That adds no value. So twice on this product page, they're trying to so many things that are not related to the product that I'm on. They don't help with the product I'm on. Right. It's not like a would you like fries with your hamburger type cross-promotion.
It's, you know, you walk up and order a hamburger and they're like, hey, here are vegan wraps. You know, it just makes no sense.
So to me, that's just a lot of way to waste space in in a small mobile phone screen. It just confuses the experience more. Right? What page man, what product is this? I'm losing context here.
Right. And they've also got the, Facebook promotion. Let's stay connected with the carousel there. And the email signup. There's no need for that information on this page. It just clutters the experience. Right? I liked it on the homepage down by the footer. I don't like that on every single page on your website because it becomes very dun.
It just means noise and it's background and it once again, it confuses the experience. and I've scrolled this page quite a bit. There's a lot information on here. There is no, back to the top or add to cart button that shows up at the bottom like many stores do. So now I've got to swipe all the way back up to the top, which isn't that hard on a phone.
It's harder on a desktop, it's easier on a phone to swipe all the way to the top, but a little, you know, back to the top or, you know, add to cart thing would be nice. although not not completely necessary. So now let's take a product, this this product here, we're going to add it to our cart.
I think I added it and nothing happened. There we go. Oh there we go. So it added it to the cart. I've got this. add $75.01 to get free U.S standard shipping header. Now I'm not a fan of countdowns on, free shipping. I like saying hey, free shipping threshold $150. I like saying hey, you've now earned free shipping.
Congratulations! I like seeing this product is over 150. Therefore it is has free shipping. But studies have shown that
showing the counter you like. So I've added $74.99 to the cart and they're telling me, hey, 75 more dollars more than I've already added to the cart. Like it's not a $5 difference here. You know, double the amount of money you want to spend will give you free shipping.
Studies have shown that that actually makes people leave the site more than it makes people add that extra $75 to the cart. So like I said, I like free shipping promos and but only tell people when they've earned it. Don't tell them they haven't earned it yet because that'll scare them away or make them angry or however you want to, you know, to phrase that.
And it makes them abandon their experience. Now, on this cart I now see you may also like they they love doing these cross promotions. And what I see here is a high performance matte cushion crew sock. Again, a bandana towel, a Kingston Weekender case, and a dry fit trail. Solar Chase t shirt.
so those really aren't relevant to what I was buying
and and the price points are $17, $25, $35 and $36. a lot of times what we do in carts with my clients is I call it the, you know, the impulse item or, you know, the checkout line item. We find the cheapest products in the store that are applicable to the widest variety of people. And then we promote those.
So it's not like we're asking you to, you know, spend a whole bunch more money. Hey, just some of the $4, another $3 and those $6, whatever, whatever that, you know, product is or products are, make them, you know, small dollar amounts and they convert really, really well. Much better than trying to ask them to make another big considered purchase like they're already doing.
And on this thing, we have a checkout button at the bottom that is docked. So I can see that no matter where I'm scrolling to. So now let's go into our checkout,
see what that looks like.
They've got their logo on their checkout.
Shopify has taken a second to load here.
Shopify is taking a long second to load here. There we go.
right here it's it's telling me add $71.04 to receive free shipping. Oh that's interesting. So that that calculates the tax in there. Now two were before tax wasn't being calculated. Now I don't know how it knows my address to calculate that tax.
Well it doesn't there's no address put in here yet. So the subtotal $78.96.
Oh I hate this crap. So, the sandals were 74.99. You're going me say that before it ran into $75. But I got into the cart, and this is $79.29. And on mobile, you don't see the products in your cart unless you expand it. So I expanded that. And now what I see is there's two products in my cart.
There's my sandals for 74.99. And then there's tri risk free with free returns or exchange valid in U.S for $3.97. So this store is taking the liberty to charge me another four bucks on top of what I put into my cart. They added it to my cart for me, and it's kind of hard to see that in the mobile view because they don't show the products by default.
It just says order summary and it's a little too. And it's like, oh wait, two products. I don't get that. So, you know, they're they're trying to increase their average order value by sneaking some garbage in, and not, you know, so the customers to opt out of that instead of opting in. And I don't like that experience at all.
Right? I think that's not respecting customers.
now, the rest of the cart is, you know, so they got that, you know, add $71 to receive free shipping. That's a higher amount now because they added that second product in the cart.
so once again, you know, they're trying to, you know, tell me that, oh, you haven't earned free shipping yet.
That's going to scare people away more than it's going. Incentivize them to buy more. And even on that element which says add $71, I can't click on that and go add anything. Right. So it doesn't help me much there. and they've got the standard checkout. Besides that they have a one page checkout going on.
one thing I would note is and this is a note for all Shopify stores, right?
I think Shopify does a poor job in that header of the checkout in telling people what their options are. So you got that shop pay button up there, which they force on all of us, right? You got the PayPal button, the Amazon Pay and Google Pay, which the store added. Those payment types, which is totally fine. And there's even more options.
I can expand to see that. And then then I see Venmo and then there's an order. And this is the part that I don't think Shopify does well or or themes, whoever, whoever is at fault for this, right. With that should say, in my mind, this is what I do for all of our stores. We change that word or to or use credit card so people know that, hey, you can use these other payment types shop pay, PayPal, Google Pay, all that kind of stuff, or use your credit card because right now, just this or and it doesn't explain what or is.
So and that's an easy change for all stores to make. And just go to your language settings in your theme and find that and just change the or to or use credit card. so that's it for this store. I think we've, we've talked about it enough. We're gonna move on to the next one. One thing I noticed on this is I didn't have any pop ups show up throughout that whole shopping experience.
no, I did look at this store before I started recording this, and I deleted my cookies so that pop ups would show up again. So I don't know if they were showing them before or not showing any pop ups at all, but, just something to note. There's no right or wrong. There's just something to note. So.
And move on to Jay Butler. And Jay Butler has a pop up. And you know
this pop up sucks.
so it's it's three quarters of the page. it's got the brand Jay Butler. And then sign up for updates and news. It's got benefits. Three of them. It's asking me for my first name, my last name, my email and my phone number.
That's a lot of information of asking people when they just came to your site for the first time ever.
I like pop ups that show up, you know, maybe the third of third page view on mobile, right. I like, you know, on desktop, I much prefer the pop ups to be exit and tent, but we don't have the exit and tent action as, as well defined on mobile.
So on mobile, you know, I'll do a, you know, third page view or 10s and then I'll also have pages like it doesn't show up on the cart. We don't get in people's way on certain pages. but to have this really large, no graphics in it at all, asking for four pieces, information, lots of text, it's it's just too much for me when I just got here.
Right. So let's close that out. And so their header, they've got free shipping, $125 plus domestic orders and first returns. I don't know what first returns means. that might be something that most customers understand. I don't understand that. and then they've got this, their banner image is horrible. I'm being really negative today. I will just for that.
I was hoping for for better examples here. So, their header banners are probably desktop ones that, you know, they didn't make mobile versions for. So they're very, not tall. Right. So it's probably the screen width, you know, 400 pixels by 200 pixels higher. So, and it's of these loafers, you got two stacks of loafers.
So it's the same basic image done two different ways, so it doesn't add any value. And they've got a little text over it says shop now, which is hard to read because of contrast issues. And there's these big buttons for the scroll. Right. The scroll of these two images doesn't help me at all. It's just confusing. But they got these big navigation buttons to let me know.
I can navigate between these two useless images. and then below that, welcome to Jay Butler. There is a full page of text below that, which seems like a lot. There's nothing bolded, nothing to stand out, no images, no graphics. so they're expecting people to sit here and actually read a whole bunch of text. and, you know, most, most shoppers are skimmers.
They're not going to sit down, read things, and then they've got this.
Underneath. Oh, it's reviews. It's customer reviews with really bad contrast. It's white text over a photo in the photo is much more light than dark. So it's really hard to read. and then below that they got loafers or showed a couple products. I would, I would at this level show collections, not products. Now they've got a video the making of our shoes I like that.
so now I'm realizing they make their own shoes instead of reselling other people's.
So that look, that looks great. And then they've got an as featured in. So they got GQ, Town Country Business Insider. So that's awesome right there showing some social proof. There's no reviews on the homepage and we'll see if they have them anywhere else. Now they've got about button or about Jay Butler who is a men's loafers and leather goods brand.
That is a really non sexy description for men's fashion. I would have expected that to be a little bit more compelling. Let's see if we can click on that about I can't click on the about. So right in the footer it says Jay Butler is a men's loafers and leather goods brand. And that's it.
like who's Jay?
What's his street cred. You know tell me more I want to I want to learn. And it does not let me do that. Now there is a press button which let's see what that shows us.
So that's got some articles I like that it's hard to read them on mobile, but you know, because they're showing the, an image of the article, they're showing videos and stuff.
It's hard to pull all that together, but they're trying, right? I like the fact they're trying. I would maybe do some color contrast, like you talked about before, the banding so that I could see, you know, a little light gray background, a white background, a light gray background alternating so I could see what things go together like. These images are for that title and with this press and all that kind of stuff.
So you could do a little bit better work on that. But they've got a lot of press articles. So that's, that's nice. They're putting all that in there. It takes a lot of work to pull that all together.
So now let's start shopping. So I'm gonna go to the menu and I've got there's an about link. Let's see what that one does. There's an about link in the hamburger okay. So the footer about link didn't work. But there is one in the hamburger that I can go to now. I hate I absolutely hate when you start your about with our mission.
tell me through your story. Like our mission sounds so freaking corporate, right?
they're explaining stuff.
A lot of text, not enough images, but they can work on that. But I like the fact they're actually telling their story. That's good.
So now we're going to go to the shop link,
and we're just going to pick casual loafers.
I'm on a collection page, nice and clean.
let's see how many products we got here.
Lots of products. See if we have filters. So there's 16 products, no filters.
Now, the purpose of a collection page is to highlight the differences between products. So here I am I'm looking at the Milbank bit loafer. It says gold bit in brackets. Black full grain right. The next product is Milbank bit low for gold bit dark brown full grain. So the difference in those two products is the color. which means those could have been combined on the same product page.
because right now. So I see there's Milbank bit loafers.
Are they all Milbank bit loafers. Oh summer suede. Some are leather.
So it looks like there's 16 different versions.
oh no. There's an ostrich leather alligator leather. Yeah. So it's it's these different. It's the same loafer. A pretty close up. There's a couple different.
It says 16 more than 16 products on this page. The footer said 16, but there's more than 16. So I'm confused by that. So they could do a better job here in making decisions right and helping me make decisions. There's no filters. They're really not calling out the differences between these products. They're not bucket sizes. So one thing you could do is you say, you know, here's our casual loafers.
Pick leather pick suede pick ostrich pick alligator you like. You make decisions that way. Or you could have filters for those things. Or you could do it by color. But they're not helping me at all. And they're not. Help me understand the differences between these products. So I've got to look at them all, go into the product page, figure them out, and you're putting a lot of onus on the customer about understanding the breadth and depth of your product catalog without, you know, providing any tools for them and do it easily.
So the collection page, this one collection page, please could stand a lot of improvement.
Now it's going to the product page.
They got big buttons for the navigation. The carousel
Like the big buttons they had on the sets, their themes using these big buttons. The same ones they had in the carousel on on the homepage banner.
it shows the choices of color and sizes, shows which ones are sold out. Let's pick a sold out one.
Notify me when available.
It looks like a clear view of form. That's good.
So they're allowing back and stock notifications.
now here they've got the share buttons for Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. I think those are an absolute, waste of space on Shopify stores. people haven't shared socials since about 2008.
they've also got a men's shoe guide size guide.
That's good, showing the different sizes, but you asked you that good stuff like that shipping timeline. That's awesome. They've got that there. It's got a modal that pops up and explains more returns and exchanges a modal. Again I like that a lot. Contact us.
They could do a little more here maybe. So it just brings up a contact us a modal form.
and it maybe that works for them, right. I would not put that right on the product page. I might, you know, have it down at the bottom. You know, still still got questions or something. Let them read the full product page instead of at the top of it. You know, having the contact us, right? Like, no, we want you.
We want you, you know, buying this. We want you adding it to the cart, you know, maybe all this information. Then if you don't like that information, then we'll give you the option to contact us. but that's that's a subtle thing. Now that below that, they've got a product details, which is a lot of text. So they've written it up so that I like that it looks unique to their products.
Now it also says, hey, this is available in American alligator and ostrich leather. When I click on that, it opens up to a new product in a new tab. so at least it's going to a new tab,
up. And now I got a another pop up on the page. That was an exit intent that came up asking me for that same four piece information.
Again, it's too much. Just ask for the email first. Right. And what a lot of people do you Susan Klaviyo is the last for email on the first tab. And then when the customer enters that, then they'll go to the next tab and they'll ask for the, mobile information.
although most brands don't do the best of jobs, communicating at the mobile is optional.
but, you know, you can collect those one at a time instead of asking for all these, you know, bits of information at the same time, and that'll actually improve your conversion rate.
so they're, they're cross promoting. So I, I've put myself onto this leather loafer page and right in the description for the loafer, for the leather one, they're telling you about alligator and ostrich leather.
Right. So they're not respecting the customer's decisions and people. I think a lot of people try too hard to cross merchandise.
the reason you have to do that is if you don't have good tools for the customer to let them make informed decisions in your navigation experience, like there were no filters, the collection page was non structured.
It didn't help me understand the differences between these products. Therefore, when I got to the product page, I as a customer don't have confidence on where I'm at and the store staff knows that. So then they try to compensate for their lack of collection page tools by putting cross promotions in the product page. And that's backwards, right? You should have people make good, educated decisions at the collection page so that you have confidence when they get to the product page.
And below that, now they're talking about wallets and and other loafers. They're just cross route and way too much. Now they've got a couple videos love out, two videos, a couple lifestyle photos. That's nicely done. And then and also worth considering promotion. Right. They do not need that on this page. And I'll just see what happens when I click on one of them.
So it takes me to that product and it does not open up a new tab. So now I've left the shoe page that I chose to be on. And now now. And that's where the shopping experience. So you know you got to respect that user funnel. Let people make decisions and respect those decisions. Once they make them they want to see leather loafers.
Show them leather loafers right. And now they do have, product reviews. So they're not shown on the collection page, which I also usually do not show them on the collection page, because for your own, you know, brand, most reviews or you know, most your products are just five star reviews. So the review stars on the product page or on the collection page don't add much value because they're all equal.
They're all five stars. So where they add value when you see the comments on the product page and that's what they're shown, here is all the comments. Now as I scroll down the page. They do have an add to cart button and a product selector in the footer. So I can choose the color that I want, the size that I want, and add it to cart without scrolling up back to the top.
I like that.
So let's add our product to the cart.
Oh, it's sold out. It gave me a notification about that. So we'll pick another color and see if that's, not sold out. Now there tool at the bottom didn't tell me that it was sold out. I had to click the button. And now it looks like we've broken that footer thing, because I see this. The the button says, adding it got stuck on adding it, but then the product was sold out, so it broke somehow.
So their code needs a little work. There. so let's try refresh the page we're going to add to cart now it says adding it says added yeah, I hate that. So I've added this to my cart supposedly
There's no indication on my screen other than the added button at the bottom that it's added. So it didn't pop up a cart.
It didn't take me to the cart page and it didn't update my cart count in the header. It still shows a zero. So I assume it's added to the cart, but I have no confidence that that actually happened. Now I'm a fan of for most stores, when somebody adds something to their cart, you leave that product page,
Very few stores have a reason to stay on that product page. Some stores do, but very, very few. So take them to another page that can be on the cart. It can be an intermediary step like, do you want to continue your shopping experience, but don't just leave on the same product page they were on. So now we're gonna click on our cart and see if that product did get added.
Yep. It did.
wow. So there's this. Yeah, the cart is confusing. It looks like it's showing me the price of the products. This probably looks fine on desktop, but on mobile it's very confusing. I can see a quantity box and an X so I can remove that from my cart. But I also see the price 229 twice with dollar signs above it.
So it's wrapping. Is there a dollar sign? Then it wraps below this. It takes a two lines and they're very spaced out. So it's hard to realize those are actually associated with one another. And but it shows it twice before and after the quantity of one. So that's just, you know, inelegant on mobile.
so now we're going to check out they've got their accelerated checkout buttons, the Shop Pay and PayPal on the cart page.
I usually remove those in 99% of my stores because they are confusing, right? Most customers, you know, we all understand what those buttons do. And how you can do it up at the cart level. You can go to the checkout level. That's, I think, too confusing for most, customers.
remember, the less confusion there is, right? The fewer things are on a page, the easier it is to make a decision.
I said at the bottom of my cart page. Right now I've got an update cart button, a checkout button, all these different payment types, you know, and that's that's the ones that are normally in the footer and they are in the footer also, but they've got it right below the checkout button. And then below that they've got Shop Pay and PayPal accelerated checkouts.
So it makes me think that I can click on any of those payment buttons and pay with them, but I can't. So there's a lot of confusion going on there. And on the update cart button, which all you're doing there is if someone changes the quantity, you update it. You should have JavaScript. It does it automatically. Your theme should be doing that for you without a customer having to click the update cart button, but their update cart button and their checkout button are the same color and the same size, right?
So there's so many choices here. What we want everybody to be doing at this, this page that I'm looking at right now, which is the buttons in the cart, we want them clicking the checkout button. Now we might have a continue shopping which they have a little bit higher up. That's totally fine. But right now I got four big buttons.
And then it looks like 8 or 9 other smaller buttons which aren't clickable, but I think they are right. There's just too many choices. What if we just had the checkout button there, period, right? So it's really obvious what my call to action is instead of having all these different choices.
All right. So let's go into our check out and see what that looks like.
Shopify rendered that page a little more quickly than it did on the last one. let's see if they've got the yeah, I've got the one page checkout going on.
yeah, that's just a standard one. They got their logo in there, which is just a text logo. show order summary. They didn't sneak any extra things in there like the other store did.
So that's that's all standard and easy to do. So that is our review of the J. Butler store. Let's move on now to wide food shoes.
Now wide fit shoes. They've got only get the top. How to measure your feet. And I click on that. It takes me to a sizing thing. They got a little cookie notification you know. And then there's a 10% off button. It looks like a clever uniform that just popped up. At least this one's given me a 10% off.
Right? It's giving me an enticement on why I should sign up, even though I just started here where the J. Butler one just said, hey, give us your personal information right now, all right? We didn't trade you anything for that information. So at least these guys are giving a 10% off coupon. now, normally what I do when I do that is will actually say in that form, 10% off for new customers.
And we only will send the coupon code to new customers. So that people can't get 10% off every time they come to the store in order. but I don't know what's going on behind the scenes on their email competition. They might be doing something like that behind the scenes, but I would actually say that in that form.
so we're going to go back. So that was our, you know, how to measure your, your shoes. Now that how to measure your feet button our link at the top like an announcement bar. It looks like it scrolls. I can't control that because it said contact us when I came back. And now it says how to how to measure your feet.
So I don't know why it said contact us. Let me see if I refresh the page. What happens? Contact us.
Yeah. yeah. I don't know how it rotates, but there is a contact us link there, a promotion that shows up once in a while. You know, you bring people to your website and the first thing you have for them is contact us. We should be using our website to merchandise better, to educate better and not have them just contact us.
Unless it was something like, you know, sign up for our wholesale, you know, distributor deal or whatever kind of thing, on a wholesale website. But, the contact us. I would never have just a generic contact us at the very top of every page on the website. now, there logo is is wide fit shoes, you know, so they have another SEO optimized type brand, not a really sexy brand.
Underneath this is footwear that fits. and that text is so small on mobile it's hard to see, sometimes what I'll do on a mobile, logo if we've got, like, you know, small text, we'll just remove it, right, and simplify the mobile logo so that it's easy to read and it looks a little bit larger. because you've taken some things away, you've also got another promo beneath.
And that is 10% off this month. Promo code treat me ten. So they just this is the kind of store that just hands out promo codes. Everybody gets 10% off all the time. and we got a cookie little banner thing trying to get rid of. and on their banner image it says shop men's five seven for shop women's 574.
So five seven for by looking at this I'm realizing that's a model number for New Balance sneakers. So for whatever reason these guys so lots of large you know wide with shoes. They're promoting the 574 on their homepage before anything else. And you know I'm just not a fan of that. Right. What I like is. What I call you are here sign which basically says, hey, this is what we're about, right?
And it does say width matters. The art of sneakers buy New Balance, right? So if they're about wide fit shoes, they should just say, hey, if you have really wide feet, you're in the right place, right? Just like the, the large size shoes for men web site did that, right. They said, hey, we're here for, you know, large size shoes.
They need to put that that stake in the ground here. Like, you know, if you have narrow feet, you're in the wrong place. You have wide feet, you're in the right place. scrolling down, it says, welcome to our community, the home of comfort. And then it shows me products. Right? I've already talked enough about why I don't like product feeds on homepages.
I'd rather see collections. Right. But welcome to our community, the home of comfort and then products. What? What is community about that? I don't see any people. I don't see any customers. You know. Welcome to our community by products. Those two messages do not go together. Well. And then they've got a sale on New Balance. They've got a sale on Skechers or their shop by brand.
They've got as featured in with a whole bunch of well-known brands. That's good. They've got a Trustpilot promo. Try and do a little social proof and then down at the bottom, wide foot shoes. Comfort is everything, you know, that's the kind of thing they can put at the top and said, this is, hey, this is what we do.
and they have really large. So they have a footer with large buttons for all these different links. Let's see if we have an about us. Our story. There we go.
About us.
Wide fit shoes available for wider feet. Diabetics for both men and women. Our shoes are suitable for the following conditions. So that's not about them, right? that's more about their products. Right. And now who we are. Here we go. We are a well-established footwear retailer since 1965. That's awesome. Since 1965, I would even maybe have that on the homepage somewhere.
with lots of experience in dealing with problematic feet. We have many referrals from the orthopedic hospitals, but at blah blah blah high street retailer shoe sizes only come in one with where we blah blah blah blah blah. So the title says who we are and I loved that. But the text below, it doesn't talk about who they are.
There's no people mentioned there. They don't say, hey, you know, we're here, then I don't know what country they're in, right? You know, maybe they're in London, maybe they're in New York kind of thing. there's a team or it's family owned, right? There's nothing about the people. And I want to read about the people at this level.
When you say, who are we or who we are, I would expect, you know, you tell me about the people that are there, like John's the CEO and he's been doing this is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? All that kind of information. now they do talk about their shoes, their brands. Yeah. So they're about us is is not really good for building their brand.
you know, they're trying to get people to navigate around. So here I am on the About Us page. And at the bottom there's a single product listed, another single product. So got three single products with a misspelling. They misspelled women's. but but why are those products being promoted in the About Us page? Right. Like once again, respect your customers.
Right. They want to learn about you. Don't try to sell them shoes right now. They know how to go back to the header and click on shop. They can do that. so this this about is not very good. It's not the worst one. but is definitely room for improvement. There. Now we also have this thing in the about mission statement.
I told you before, I hate mission statements. Let's see what they're says. We think about footwear a lot, not just because it's our business, but also because we want to provide every customer with an unforgettable experience when they come to put their shoes, put on their shoes each day to give as many people as possible the chance to enjoy wearing footwear, which is beautifully designed and will last and is one of our central goals.
That is crap, right? and then their mission. I just scrolled at least three page links or screen links. It's all text once you get to the bottom of our products again. Right? So like this brand doesn't feel human. It doesn't communicate to me, you know, with me. Right? It's not communicating with me. It's just, you know, dictating AI generated garbage or, you know, marketing team generated garbage about our mission statement.
Kind of like, be real, be human. They talk to me. They're not doing that here. Now, white fitness has been around since 1965, right. So it's probably a bigger, more established company where most Shopify stores are, you know, smaller, smaller family owned businesses kind of thing. And I always tell small brands, embrace your small, these guys, you know, maybe they're bigger than that.
Maybe they're, you know, a $10 million brand, not $1 million brand. Maybe they're $100 million brand, right? But they could still become more human, right? And less corporate or just, I don't know how to the right word to explain this, but it just, you know, their mission statement stuff. Just I'm not a fan of it and it doesn't resonate with me.
Yeah. So now we'll move into the shopping experience. I'm going to click on men's. So they have a top level nav link for men's. And I can't click on it. It expands and then I can click on other things. But what I like to do is allow people to click on that top level one. And then take into a page which gives you the same options.
And those sub options are view all men's shoes and boots, request a catalog with find width, width, fit finder and sale. Great! Have a page. It gives you those four options also. But you know that's a small point. And so I'm going to view all men's shoes and boots. Now I'm actually surprised that I have to view. All right.
It's my first option. Buy expanded that I can see more options. I would have expected to see those before the view. All now. Oh this is it. This is confusing on mobile right. Because mobile's hard. So they it looks like these are filters and they're showing all their filters at the top of the page. No, those aren't filters.
Or maybe they are. But there's two types of filters because I've got this box at the top and view all men's footwear width fit finder, arch support, lace up, slip on Velcro. I assume these are filters I'm gonna click on Velcro.
Oh, so that took me. Yeah. So that's not a filter that takes me to that collection. So I clicked on the view all. And what they give me at the top is navigation which are sort of like filters but they're not filters. And then below that I have a filter button that expands really nicely. Right. So those are redundant and confusing right.
So what I would have done is not have the navigational element at the top and just have the filter element like they have it.
So on their filters they've got size width, faceting style, brand features, color condition. So they've spent some time coming up and enriching their data. with all these different categories. I like that a lot. rich, rich product data like they're doing here is work, but it's well worth because what they're doing is they're helping their customers. So I'm clicking on one of the features and it says, arch support.
So I click on arch support. Like if that's important to me. Oh, there's one shoe that has arch support. So if that's important to me, I've now easily found the one for me. So I like I like to have filters. So now I'm going to click on that product.
Their breadcrumbs takes three rows. Lot of space. There's no need for you know I'm not a fan of breadcrumbs. Usually they're they're old SEO best practice. It's I think it's kind of dated. and usually it's for the benefit of SEO, not for the benefit of a customer. And especially when it takes three lines. I would not have it.
they got lots of photos. their photos are of different sizes, so the carousel moves a little bit from those, and it's just, they're reselling other manufacturers products. So it looks like it's just the manufacturers images there. I don't value with any of their own images. I can choose between colors, size and width. And one of things they're doing here that I like a lot is on the size.
I can select US sizes and it shows the US sizes. I can collect UK, click on UK sizes and it shows me the UK sizes and EU sizes. That's really nice. Now they've got this on some of these size variants that I'm looking at. There's a size 13. There's a email icon next to the 13. We're next to the ten.
There isn't. So I'm assuming that means that's not available. That's not intuitive, right. Usually you'd have that zoom out or grayed out or something to show it's not available. I click on that. And so there is a notify me when. So they've got a back in stock notifications sign up going on. But that icon it I would not do it that way.
It's not intuitive that it's that means it's not in stock and you can get an email. But when I click on the notify me.
the notify me button. They get the pop up. That all fine. Thank you. So now we scroll down the page some more. They've got, a description. They've got an accordion for details.
It says extra boxes around them for, for no discernible reason. exchange. That's good information with that finder. I don't know what that does. For me. It's a tool it looks like I can click on. I'm not going to delivery. so they show me the delivery price right there. And it's actually kind of expensive. And they have a typo in it.
a big typo where it says from 24, 99, 99 worldwide. So it looks like it only cost you, $249,000 to ship it. just because they got an extra 99 in there. And then they're showing recently viewed. Right. So instead of showing, well, I guess farther down. Yeah. See so they're showing you recently viewed, which I like a lot a lot more than you may also like recommendations.
So if someone's shopping for shoes and you know they're alternate between these three different ones, you're allowing them to quickly go back and say, oh, there's that when you looked at a minute ago. So I like recently viewed especially in apparel, categories. And then below that I guess their footer on every page on the website, cause you're me about it before they've got these three product promos and that just looks like it's on all of their pages across the site, which, you know, not not the best way to do things.
so now let's go and add this product to our cart. So it brings up a cart modal, and it's got a header, the top returns or exchanges. I like the fact they're letting people answer that question if they want to get an answer to it again. I can see what's in my cart, my product. I can see the subtotal.
And then it's got a checkout securely button at the bottom. That all looks really nice. I like their cart. here's where I would actually, you know, put the promotion for, you know, whatever their impulse item is, you know, their 3 or $4 item, you know, which for this, you know, for shoes, it might be something like the shoes.
Socks would be okay. It could be, you know, here's something to preserve your shoes or treatment or something like that. but the fact they don't have that isn't, isn't the worst thing. This is a nice clean cart page. Now I click on checkout securely.
They've got their logo in their checkout and they're using oh, they're using the three page checkout if you're interested to see why they chose to do that.
look at the order. Some reason I click on that every time. Now, since that other brand, you know, through an extra, price items on me and they did not do that here like most respectable brands would not. And then, you know, you got the shop here, PayPal, Google Pay and then that, that other thing that I talked about before that, you know, I would recommend put it on your credit card or use your credit card.
but they're using the, the three page, I guess. I don't know why, but they might have a reason for that.
I go back a level just want to see. So their add to cart button is green. But and let's see if I go to my cart, my center my checkout button is black. And then when I'm in the checkout, the continue button is black. So I don't know why they change their button color in that shopping. What I like to do is I like the add to cart button to be the brightest, button.
Usually read on on the site and use other button colors for other navigation purposes. You know, primary, secondary, button, those things and always happen. I always have the add to cart, it's own unique color and the add to cart. The checkout in the kitchen, you in the checkout. Those would all be that same consistent bright color. So it's easy and obvious for customers.
What's the next step? Right. and that's it for these three stores. just a lot of random feedback as I'm walking through them. in general, you know, the way I'd summarize it is you everybody should be evaluating their store on mobile only because things that look great and work well on desktop may not work great and may not work well on mobile.
So just try to put yourself in your customer's mind on a mobile phone and just go through your website and navigate and see, you know, there's too much information on this page, or maybe this is confusing or we're not helping people find the right direction or path that they're going in. I would say these three stores, which were the top three Shopify stores for, you know, a high keyword, you know, high value keyword phrase of men's shoe size 13.
Now, there were a bunch of brands above that, like Amazon and Target that just weren't Shopify stores, but these are the three Shopify shorts it showed up in listing. I I'm not impressed with any one of them. You know, a couple of them did things okay. Most of them were just mediocre shopping experiences. so I hope that you and your brand will do a better job in making your website work well as a conversion engine for mobile.
Thanks for listening.