Everyone's got Austin here. And, this week we have a guest on the show. His name is Kirby, and he's from Ever Chu. Kirby wants to tell us a little bit about every two.

Nice, nice. And you were brave enough to volunteer to come on to the podcast and have me, as we we just said in the in the pre-show, criticize your site constructively to, help you figure out, some next steps for you. So, you know, here I am, I'm looking at the homepage of your website, and I just asked you a second ago, you know, what do you what is your your business and what do you do?

Can you give that to me? Shorter, seven words or less. What is what is average? You.

Yeah. That's what you sell. Right. But but but what does that get customers. What's the benefit?

Bingo.

Yeah. Yeah. And but you see the difference there. And in the beginning you started telling me what you sell in physical, you know, in the physical sense. But the benefits of your customers is not what you sell, right? It's, you know, reduced worry about choking hazards. Right. And that may not be the exact word you use, but, I like to, you know, when you explain your brand, you try to many people explain what they sell and not what they provide their customers, if that makes sense.

And any as you introduce, you know, the average you brand, I'd recommend that you think about introducing that value prop to the customer first. You know, like we give you peace of mind. You know, we get dog owners peace of mind and then you can explain how you do that kind of thing. So what I want to do on your site is I want to dive into the, product page first, because I think it's the most important page.

That's where most of your conversion happens. So, anybody listening to the audio version is podcast. There will be a video also that accompanies this if you want to watch along. And when I go to your product page, you know, the first thing I see is a little infographic. And I like infographics a lot. Because you can, you know, visually and with some text, you know, you can and you got arrows on yours, which I like.

You know, you just point of things. You know, a lot of people have been on Amazon are very familiar with infographics. I don't think that, Shopify stores do them right. And what I see here is, you know, on your product page, you've got heavy branding of the green color because your product is green. So that totally makes sense to me.

And the first thing I see is the word ever, which is your brand. What I would say is, you know, all your products are your own brand, so it's kind of redundant, right? You know, you you want to show the brand if you're if you're if you're selling, you know, Stanley and craftsman and Snap-On tools, you want to differentiate between the brands.

But if they're all, you know, yours, you don't really need to do that. Now let's look at that. Product title, safety tube, ballistic holder, starter pack. Explain that to me. Is your is your brand ever to. And your product is branded safety. You.

Yep yep yep.

Do you think that makes sense? Do you think it's easy to explain?

Yeah. Well. And. And you only have one product, right? The what? We're going to call you the average shoe or the safety shoe. Right.

Exactly. We'll dig into that a little bit is, you know. There is confusion. And in my mind, in looking at your site between the average shoe and the safety shoe, and, you know, you're not apple, right? You don't have an iPad and an iPhone and an iMac, right. Kind of thing. Now, maybe you're planning to be there someday, but I also, I'm a big fan of don't create problems that don't exist yet like I would have, you know, subbrands when you have more than one brand right now, you have, you know, one product and you can make that product's name the brand name, especially since your average shoe logo is only about that one

product. Right? You can see the little green, you know, bully stick holder there. So. And it makes sense to me, when I first saw your site, I was like, I bet they started off as 62 and for whatever reason, change to ever chew and didn't clean things up. And that's what that looks like to me. Now, I love the fact you have reviews on here.

I love the fact you show a price. Now the next thing I see is product variance and the I see one, two, three, 4 or 5 product variants. And the one with the most words in it is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven words in it. Two numbers I see one with two exclamation points. It's just I'm looking at like 50 words to choose five different things.

Now, what I try to recommend in a situation like this is remove the redundant words. The purpose of that selector is to show the differences between your products, and what you're doing is you're describing your products. You're not showing the differences between them, right? In reality, the only difference between them all you have, oh, you have two differences.

I didn't realize that. Yeah. So you have one, variant, right. One product option buy by Shopify vernacular. When you actually have two product options here. Right. One is the regular bully sticks. And then the thick bully sticks. Right. So it's regular or thick bully sticks. And no no bully sticks is the third option in that product option.

And then the second one is the quantity that they're purchasing 3 or 7. Right now here. That took me sitting here. And I've already looked at your site before we started this podcast recording. Right. And it took me another 30s looking at it to realize, oh, there's three different things I'm picking here. Do I want to add bully sticks or not?

And if I do, what size? And then once I pick the size then the quantity of them. But you've got that all three of those choices put into one decision making metric matrix. One choice. Right? When I pick any one of those items on one of the five product options I have here, I'm making three choices, and that is non-intuitive to customers.

And and this happens all the time in Shopify stores. I have a client right now. I'm going through every single one of his products in and adding layers to his decision making at the product level in this exact thing. So for you, I would at the very least have it be, you know, is it ballistic size, regular or thick?

Yeah. Yeah. But on this one here, it's, it's size, you know, stick size and then stick quantity and have those as separate options. And in the stick size it would probably be regular thick or none. Right. Hold or only it just like I said that is just very very confusing. And remove the redundant words. Right. So every single one of these options includes one safety chew.

So I don't have to say that right. Every that's just a given. So just highlight the differences. Right. You don't have to use the word you know bully sticks every time. You can just you know quantity on stick quantity three, stick you know, seven and that kind of stuff. And you'd be amazed that, you know, just spending the two minutes fixing that, how much easier it's going to be for people to understand the choices that are before them on this page.

Right now, I do like the fact that you have them, as you know, that they're not a drop down menu right there button, so I can see all my options without clicking a drop down menu. So that's a good thing now. And I love the reviews being shown. I think you're using Judge Me for reviews. I would not use Judge Me's crappy little product seals because they don't match your brand, and there's no way to map them to your brand inside of Judge me.

Now, if I look at you, if I select one of your, choices, one Safety chew, three regular six inch bully sticks, right? I've selected that. I see in the image a safety chew and three bully sticks a six inch, and I click on the one Safety chew, seven regular six inch bully sticks, and the image doesn't update.

So what I like to show. So you start off with the infographic and what's happened is I'm still on that same infographic. Right? I like the fact you open up with an infographic, but what I would like to see when I click on One Safety Chew three regular six inch bully sticks, I would like to see only in that image one safety chew in three six inch bully sticks.

None of the other information, none of these gratuitous little graphics here which add no value whatsoever to what's going on. And just make it really plain and simple, because this product, you know, the very level photos, you're I don't know if you're assigning very low level photos at all, but so far I haven't seen one assign. But that varient level photo that follows the customer through to the cart and the checkout in the post purchase process.

So when they make a selection with one, you know, safety two, and in three ballistics, they will see that in every communication you send to them, if they make it one, one bully or one, chew or a safety chew and seven bully sticks, they'll see that throughout their experience. So it's just reinforcing for them visually the choice that they made.

Because the naming of your choices is also so hard to follow. So just give them that affirmation of the choices that they're making, right? Like when I click on the one safety shoe holder only, no sticks, it's nice so that you do change the variant image, but I would get rid of at the very image level, I would get rid of the text around it because that's like I said, it shows up in the cart, it shows up in emails that go out and the text is going to be really, really small, hard to make out.

So I always say, you know, I want that. I want that image to be exactly only what they get in the package and everything that they get in the package. Right. You might even show the box or something like that. Now, this isn't a gift, so it doesn't come with gift packaging and all that kind of stuff, whatever.

You know, a lot of stores to tell them, you know, show your gift box if there's a gift box that it comes with and all that kind of stuff. So you want it to be very clear to them what they're getting when they make that choice. And the other thing here is when I buy three bully sticks or seven, well, let me go to another product when I could stick on that, because it'll make more sense in another product.

Your add to cart button is an orange color, which is also used on other places on your page, right? It's one of your brand colors. You're using it for your review. So I gotta write a review button, which I'm also not a fan of. Having a write a review button on the product page is just would judge me.

There's a there's an option you can have or you can just have it only through email solicitation because there's no need for an anonymous person to be writing a review, and they're never going to. So you just reduce a button on your page kind of thing. I do love the fact that someone actually submits a photo, right?

I think it's going to be fabulous for your brand as people show their cute dogs with their on. That's awesome because there's those are highly used right kind of things. So that's that's awesome. On

the more of those you get, the

better that's going to be. Right?

 

The media reminder. Yep. Yeah. And I, I will send 2 or 3 of those emails depending on the brand because and yours is perfect for it, where, you know, they're not showing the product as much as they're showing the dog. And that just gives authenticity of what you're doing. Right. Especially that one photo I looked at where it was are highly used, which means they're highly loved.

Holders now. So the add to cart button orange like other things on the page. And at the top I have this, promotion which scrolls which I'm going to tear that apart later on, but that's just bright red. Right. What's what is the one thing on this page that I am seeing right now? It's the bright red promotion that takes me off of the page that I'm on right now, and I'm on a decision making page to buy a product.

If you're add to cart button, was that red? And it was the brightest, most obvious thing on the on the page is directing people. Here's what I want you to do. Add it to the cart. I've gotten down to the product page. You don't want to take me off the product page, right?

You want me to add to cart?

The only choice you want on this page is add to cart. So I would change that button to be a red. Now you got a nice little video here.

Oh yeah. So I've watched this video before. I love this video. It's you with your dog and you and the dog talks to you. And I love that that that video is fabulous. Was that your Kickstarter video? Yeah. Yeah, it shows because it's much higher quality than other videos on your site. And when we get your homepage, I'll explain what I mean by that.

But I love that video. Well done. You know, it's good to include there now you've got some, oh, wow. That's interesting. So I'm clicking on your, accordion functionality underneath the video, and it actually is moving my images when I do that. Oh, you've got that aligned. I hate that aligned image thing. Where it splits your page into two and you know, it scrolls up and down with you kind of thing.

I'm just not a fan of that. Because, you know, one reason I'm not a fan of it is it doesn't matter on mobile. Right? This is all going to be stacked on the mobile phone. We're looking at it on desktop. And I'm just I'm not a fan of things moving. Right. When I click on this thing over here, I want this to move.

I don't want this, but the images move when I do that. And it makes me wonder, like, oh, what did I miss? What happened over there? And then I go over there. Nothing changed. It just moved the placement of it to align with the other thing. So it's one of those it's sending a message to your customers but doesn't make sense why it's doing that.

Right. And it's sort of like, you know, I kind of did a snide little critique of your your gratuitous graphics up here in your infographic. They add no value to the process, right? It's designed for the sake of design, not design for the sake of informing the customer. And that little motion on the theme at the theme level that does it's the same thing, right?

It's designed for the sake of design. It doesn't add value to the customer. Therefore I don't like it. I'm a big believer that anybody any chance you give somebody can be confused by what you're doing. They will take advantage of that opportunity and they will be confused. Customers do not spend the time and energy on our website that we think they should do when making a purchase process.

We're all distracted, we're all multitasking, and we expect people to give us their undivided attention and they're not going to. So the things that we can remove from the site, the gratuitous things that are cool or sexy, they only confuse people. They only distract people, right? Keep them focused on what they're doing. But I like this information. I personally, you know, I usually put this under the, page.

You know, we have the, the, reviews. Your theme probably does it here by default for you. But, you know, I like to move those just so they go a little wider on desktop. But once again, optimizing for desktop is not important. Now, what I love is as I click one of them open, it says the word dishwasher safe.

Supervision required is weird to me. Like maybe it's real, but that that that would make me think I don't want to buy this thing. Like, I have to watch my dog eat it, chew.

Yeah. I totally get it right. But if I'm sitting here buying the thing and it says supervision required, you have to watch your dog eat it. Chew. I'm like, maybe I don't want to buy this thing. Maybe it's not. You know, you're covering your your ass legally, but that's another reason for customers to not make their choice.

Right kind of thing. But what's missing here? So you've got this information. It's in text. You, bold. Some of it. You bullet point. That's all good, right? You don't have any graphical support. You know, the one you do have is the one I didn't like, which is the judge me badges. But, you know, some trust badges here about your main value props.

For example, I think on your homepage I saw that you're made in the United States, correct here on this page. I don't see that. And maybe it's buried in one of these accordions. I don't, I don't know, but like. In today's world where there's, you know, made in the United States has cachet. At the very least, you know, there's a whole nationalist side of Americans, but there's also the well, it's not made in China.

So and we don't trust what China's, you know, you know, materials are ingredients or safety, that kind of stuff. Right. Made in America I always say, if you can say Made in America, say Made in America on the product page, right. So a little product sell about Made in America. Dishwasher safe would be another great product seal.

You know, all natural, those kind of things. Those are all good things to, to highlight there. And you're highlighting tons of stuff. I would just also highlight it graphically. Right. So you want text, you want images, you want graphics, you want video. You already got three of the four. Just, you know, some graphics. A little more graphics wouldn't hurt you here kind of thing.

But I like, you know, you actually got a product description with lots of different ways to think about things and explain things to people, which is really nice. Mean. I actually didn't look through your product photos. Let's, scroll through them.

Yeah. So the thing you're missing here is your size guide. All right, here's the video. I hate it. I can't stand video. Yep, yep. Junior right there. Right. I can't stand video that does not have audio. You're sitting there. So in this video it's really cute, right. You got this husky on the floor looking up at the bully stick that the the pet owner is putting together and putting in your holder.

And what she's doing is every once in a while, she gestures with her hand. The thing that you could easily say, look how easy it is to, you know, I got a hole in the stick that's going to go into the pin, right? So I've got it. And once again, this goes back to the you expect your your customers to pay way more attention to what you're doing here.

Then they're going to give you. So if you show me a video and you just have a, you know, a voiceover, and in today's world you can do an AI voiceover. Super freaking easy, right? It's still an authentic video. You just you can put an AI if you don't want to, you know, do your own voiceover. And I've actually done this in my own house ads.

There'll be a house ad in this podcast episode, which is an AI voiceover that I did in the original one, and my voiceover kind of sucked. So we just did an AI, you know, with the script that I had and made myself kind of thing. It's so easy to do that kind of stuff today. And this is just one of those you're not respecting the customers.

You know, laziness, like the fact that you you. I can't stand when someone on a video with their mouse or their finger points at something and doesn't use words to describe what they're pointing at. Right. So and this is a great video from a video quality. It's horrible from an audio quality because there's no audio. All right. So I just recommend that you add an audio voiceover change.

Nothing else about the video. Just add an audio voiceover. And those people who are, you know, driving in their car while watching the video, which people are doing, they can hear things and watch traffic a little bit more kind of thing. Right? I always try to say, you know, think, think about your the person watching this video is a parent driving their kid to soccer practice, and they're at the stoplight looking at your website now, you laugh when I say that.

But if you think about it that way, you will make a much simpler, much more, you know, brain dead simple type experience. Because the point of that is people are not giving you the undivided attention you think they are. So you've got to give them content in every format possible, because we all absorb content differently and dumb things down as much as possible.

Right? So what I don't see here, though, is.

Who this Safety Chew stick holder is best for him. But by who, I mean what size dog, right? You said you have three different products. We're going to talk more when we get to the collection page about, you know, that decision making engine of, you know, which of the three products should you be on. But now I'm on this page, so what dog is this safety tube bullish check holder.

Best for.

Yeah it's my question here. What dog is this one. Best for.

Okay so this husky I'm looking at how how much do you weigh.

Did you weigh more than 25 pounds. Yes. Yeah. So you're showing me a dog on this page that does not use this or should not be using this product. And the video is actually now that I look at it, of a different product, I think one of the higher, you know, one of the next ones up in the scale.

So every, you know, nowhere on here does it say best for dogs under 25 pounds. So up, up higher. You're going to help me make those decisions. Like I said we're gonna talk about that quite a bit. But here you need to reinforce that again with, you know, a little trust badge, safety icon. What are we going to call it that says, you know, for dogs under 25 pounds and every image on this page should be about dogs under 25 pounds.

So you got this video here of the Husky. You need to do it with, you know, a smaller dog. You got this video here. You need to do it with a smaller dog. So it's always reinforcing. You got a small dog. You're in the right place, right? If I'm on the small dog product page and I see big dogs, I get confused.

Is this the right product for my small dog? Well, I'm seeing I'm seeing a husky. Maybe it's not right. And once again, they're not going to watch it enough to realize that this is a different product in this video than the one that I'm looking at here.

So now I'm scrolling down. You see, you get the reviews. Love that. You're showing dates in your reviews, which is good. And I can see the most recent review is six days ago, so I can see that people are actually buying your products. Which is a good thing. Now I get down to check out our other holders and refill packs.

Oh, wait a second. Why do I see reviews twice?

Yeah, I see reviews twice. So you just got the module in there twice or something? You.

Why would you ever do that? You may be doing that, but what? Why would you ever do that? Let me ask. No. They look like they have the both the same number of things going on, but, you know, so I would, you know, once again on this product, I would only show reviews of this products right. And, and that once again reduce a little confusion.

So here under the, first review thing, there's a check out our other holders and refill packs if your site. So how many products do you sell in your store today? How many different SKUs or products do products on SKUs?

I think it's less than I think you have three starter packs and how many refills? You have two refills. One refill. So you have four products in Shopify right now. Three starter packs, one refill. Right now it's more SKUs in that you probably have 12 SKUs. Yep. So here on this product page, there's only four choices in the whole store.

If I get down to the safety tube, bully stick holder, starter pack, you should have absolute confidence there on the right page, the right product. And by the time we're done this conversation, you'll understand more what I mean by that. Which means there is no reason to be cross promoting any other product in your store on that product page.

Now, Amazon does this because they have 400 million products in their store and they have no confidence you're on the right product page because you have a small product set, and you're going to have a much more curated shopping experience of a decision making engine. You're going to have confidence there on the right product page. Therefore, you don't need to cross promote the other products.

Okay, so that is your product page. I'm going to add a product to the cart and look what your cart looks like. You got the draw cart, which is not a bad thing.

Premium shipping protection. You get that as a so you're you're opting me into that by default. Is that what that says? Do your customers like that?

That does not mean they like it. Most of them may not notice it right?

Yeah. So and I have yeah. I have no opinion on that. None of my clients do that. So I've never really seen it before. I've never had a conversation about it before, but you're taking an extra dollar from your customers, and maybe that's maybe they appreciate that, but I don't know. And I would, you know, double check that kind of thing.

So there's no cart here, right? This is this is your whole cart. The, the draw. So then I can go to checkout.

You've got it. Your checkout branded. It took me to shop pay, which is crap. So we'll check out as guest. And that's a that's a shop pay thing that I'm not a fan of. That's not something you guys did. It just automatically sees that I have a shop pay account takes to the shop pay checkout, which I think is a huge disservice that Shopify is doing right now to stores, and which means they will probably fix that in future, I would imagine.

Yeah. So you got the normal checkout. There's no customizations done to it other than color. You're, you're is this a blue that you use in your theme? I don't think it is.

Yeah. Yeah. So I would just change that to, to match your branding a little bit better other than, you know, because you got the green and the orange and I don't think this blue I saw on your site before. Why do you have the registered trademark on your logo?

Yeah. Well, so here's the thing is your attorney using your trademarks probably told you to do that. And they're, you know, you need to do that while you're doing the process to show you're serious about it. But if you go to the Nike website or the Apple website, you will not see a single or in a circle or TM, right?

They are not required. Some lawyers will tell you to do it while you're in your process. I think when I see that and I have I have one client. They have it like 75 times on a single page. Trying to convince they don't need to do that. Right. But I just think it, it makes your site look a little more amateur and small by doing that because you for that, when you're doing that, you're focused on the legal process.

You're not focused on your customers. Your customers don't care about that at all. Right? The lawyers care about that. And I don't like optimizing a site for the lawyers. I like optimizing a site for the customer. So my $0.02 on that one. Now one thing you can do here. So you got the single page check out which is nice.

You can right here change this text string. Or to be or use credit card. I think one of the confusing things about the Shopify checkout is you got the quick pay buttons at the top, and most people don't understand what those things are by default, and they actually take you to different experiences. Like we saw a second ago.

I was in the shop pay checkout and there's like certain apps you can add to your your checkout that don't work inside a shop pay, which is why I think these things are a disservice. So in some stores we actually turn those alternative checkouts off. Or at the very least you can put or use your credit card right here.

And that'll make it easier to people understand that they want to use their credit because, you know, the credit cards down the page, they don't see that. So it's just explaining this a little bit better, a single line of text to change their.

Well, this is in the text strings file in your theme. It's not in theme customization but it is in the text strings. It's hard to find that one depending on your theme, because if you just search for the word or it'll come up a couple thousand times, but you know, you can figure it out and find it, but it is a kind of a pain one to find.

But it's worth it. Most definitely. For for your store. So we talked about the product page. I want to go up a level we mentioned before. You only have four different products for sale on your store right now with multiple SKUs underneath that. So, you know, the skew level decision making engine, you're going to cover that in the product page like we talked about.

Now let's talk about the decision making that happens at the, store level. The the first thing is I'm buying starter packs or I'm buying refills. Correct. So it's new customer versus returning customer. What percentage of your sales are first time purchasers?

30% are. Repeat.

Oh, that's a sign. You're not marketing enough. Believe it or not,

I'm.

Yeah. Know, like like, I have clients who have a 14% conversion rate in their store, which sounds fabulous. It actually means you're not marketing enough. People love their products. They have so many repeat purchases, but they don't have new purchasers. The fact that you're a new purchasers is so low, even on a, you know, consumable product like you have, is a sign to me that you're not doing enough marketing.

Right. But, you know, that's a separate problem.

the first choice people have is are you new at the average you need to buy one, you know, the first time or are you doing refills and you have that. It's the starter packs and refills up the top. I might word that differently, but you know it's nice that that's up there.

Now the the all products I normally do. But in your story I might not because the the choice is so simple. Are you getting started or are you buying a refill. Right. There's not over that. Those should be easy enough for people to understand, but let's look at your starter packs. I click on the starter packs.

Nice, nice. Well, so here, I clicked on starter pack. Right? So, you know, however you message to people, you know, you know, get started. Starter packs, you know, you know, get the holder or whatever. I see three products here. Explain to me the difference between those three products.

That's not true though. It's it's a two factor thing. It's the size of the dog and how aggressive mature they are. Correct.

Yep, yep. Because I actually went through your quiz. All right. So so here's the thing. Right. This quiz it's great. You have a quiz and they're fine I like quizzes right. You need to make this page the same as the quiz. And not that you click the. But in the quiz you ask people questions like what size dog do you have?

I don't see that here on this page right now. Here on this page I do see, you know, I got a Frenchie for this one. Maybe Frenchies are mostly under 25 pounds. I got like a collar of some sort and a husky. Right. So. But what it needs to be is.

It's so sorry. I'm just stuck here because this is so common of a mistake, right? Your collection page is a list of products. It is not a decision making engine. Now, for your decision making engine, you have, first thing is your size of your dog right? Is your dog under or over 25 pounds? So you could say that right here.

You could have a, a headline that says for dogs under 25 pounds and below that for dogs over 25 pounds. Now, if I'm a 20 pound dog and I'm a not aggressive chewer, I get the safety issue correct. Now, if I am a under 25 pound and an aggressive chew, or what do I get?

The shake to chew. Plus. Okay, now if I'm over 25 pounds and I'm not an aggressive chew or what do I get? All right. If I'm over 25 pounds and I am an aggressive chewer, I'm going to guess I get the Super Chew right? So you have these names city to City chew plus Super Chew. Right. And that makes sense to me now a little bit I could argue that if I wanted to, but it makes sense right.

Do you think those names help customers make decisions?

Yeah. And that's totally fair, right? But imagine if what you had on this page was four products, not three. And in the first one it said for dogs under 25 pounds, normal chewers aggressive chewers right for dogs over 25 pounds, normal Chewers aggressive chewers and it took it for the right products and even remove the safety chew, the safety Chew plus and the Super Chew.

And you can even have an icon for that image, right? That showed those two things dog size and and chew aggressiveness. Now this is a decision making page.

Right now it's a list of products.

Yeah.

Yes. Yep. Which you because you've already got the icon for the size and aggressiveness. You're doing it both right. So the collie I guess is a non-aggressive chewer or the Huskies an aggressive chewer. So you're doing it a little bit there. Just take that kind of thing and take it to the next level. Right. And on these images that I see, right, there's a lot, you know, the middle one, there's a lot going on on that one where I got the, you know, it's the infographic style thing where there's a bunch of gratuitous graphics, there's the product and some text about it.

There's the bully sticks and text about it, a pencil compare size. It's way too much information, right? The only thing I need to know on this page, the only thing you need to know, the only your customer needs to tell you the size of their dog and the aggressiveness of their chewing. That's all that matters here. Those are the decisions that are being made right.

So and you're doing what many stores do, which is they they explain their products. They don't help customers understand the differences between their products. So this is an easy one because you only have four products. It's a super easy problem to solve. Right. And on this being like it's seems kind of crazy at first when I say you got three products, you need to show four here because the decision making is a two by two matrix, right.

So that gets you four and results. And then so turn this page into that right decision making engine, I'm saying what size dog I have. And then once I say the size of dog I'm saying how aggressive their chewing is. Now you might need a little bit of explanation of aggressive chewing this and what that means, and that you can hold that somewhere else on another page, a buyer's guide with more details or something like that.

But turn this page into that type of structure, and it'll be way easier for people to understand what of your products is better for them, right? And then, you know, as I said before, that consistency of only showed the small dogs and the small dog products. Right. So you may have your safety two plus you may make that two products, one for small dogs and one one for small dogs that are aggressive chewers and one for large dogs that are not aggressive chewers.

And the messaging is going to be completely different on them, even though it's the exact same product, right? Yeah, yeah. Now Shopify, that can be a pain in the ass. If you're managing your inventory inside of Shopify, you can't have two SKUs that are the same, but you can figure those things out. Also. Right? Yeah, that takes care of it for you think you're totally fine.

So then on your refills.

So you have this cute little candy cane thing that's sold out. Is that only for the holidays? So get get it off. You get it off this page. You might keep it in your store so people can sign up for all that. But right now, I want refills. And the first thing I see is I got two choices, but one of the choices is out of sale or is out of stock.

Oh dang. Is that the one I really wanted? Oh, maybe. Maybe I should come back later, right now you're probably thinking, well, Scott's been stupid and he's exaggerating a point here. Like, totally am, right? But always assume your customer is stupid. Not because they are, but because they're distracted. Right? And here, if I see, you know, the oh, that candy came.

My dog would love that. It's sold out. If you're not going to have it until next December. You know, I'm not saying take it out of your store. I'm saying don't promote it under refills. Different things, right. So your refills can go straight to a product page instead of having a collection page in the middle right your refills link in the header.

And then they go to that page and let's talk about the decision making that happens here. So here we're doing a better job because we're broken out. Our product our options right. You're picking the length separate from the thickness and all that kind of stuff. Now. In my starter kits did I have a thickness of ballistic option?

Okay.

So.

Are your customers going to understand. So now I get it right. So you've got your three different holders which have a combination of lengths and thicknesses. And I didn't see all these options on a single product. But if I looked across all the holder products I would see all these different options correct. So. They're probably not going to know which product they bought.

But what I'm wondering here, you know, in which holder they bought is what I'm saying. But what I'm wondering here is how are they going to be able to figure out which of these is the right one for them, right.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

Well, so maybe. Yeah. I'm thinking of a couple different things here. Right. So maybe we go back to that starter packs, page concept we had where you have the decision making matrix of size of dog and aggressiveness of chew. Right. And then when they click on that, then you can ask them, do you want the starter pet.

Well you're doing it already right here.

If I go to this product's the one we started on where you can order just the holder, which is there really a reason anybody should order just the holder?

But they don't they don't need replacement ballistics when they do that.

The fact that most people ask for it, that's justification. For me. So because what I'm thinking is you probably have customers who buy their own ballistics drill a hole in it, and they just want you for the holder, which is, you know, that's what they want to do. That's totally fine, right? They're not participating. Your reasonable business model, but, you know, they're still participating in your ecosystem.

So what you could think about here is you might as we build out these different options, right. This product instead of being called the safety shoe ballistic holder starter pack, it could be called you know, for small dogs who are not aggressive Chewers. And their option is holder yes or no. And then sticks, you know six inch thick or regular quantity and those kind of things.

So they could order refills on this same page.

So what you're doing is you're picking your dog, right? My dog is small and non-aggressive. And now I see all my options. I can get holders, I can get refills, you know, for my dog. These recommended ballistics are regular or thick six inch. Right. And I see that all here. Right.

Yeah.

I'm thinking about the customer. Absolutely. I'm putting it in words they understand and I'm thinking about them. Not not I'm not thinking about your products. I'm thinking about your customers. Like I said, many people sell a list of products or show list of products. They don't help their customer understand the differences between those. So, you know, going back to the refill page of the products where you do have all those choices.

And one of those choices is, is choose your pack size 716 better value 32 best value. I like that one thing I would do even better than that is, show the price per stick.

Right. So 16 is a better value. So my price for my price for seven is 2599. Right? 16. My price is 54.99. And it's on Amazon. And I got this idea from Amazon originally. Right. And I use it in a lot of stores. Now if we're doing quantity as a variant, we always show the price per unit when they make that decision.

So you're showing them buy more, save more. Right. We say buy more save more. That's what you're saying. Better value would show it right. Because if I save yeah. Let's say if I buy seven bully sticks that is 25, $26. So it's like, you know, 4 or 5 bucks apiece, four bucks apiece, three bucks, 3 or 4 bucks apiece.

So, yeah, let's just said 350. Right. If I click on the 16 and I see it's 250, I'm buying it. If I click on it and I see it's 325, I don't really need to spend that extra. Right. So by showing how much savings they get, you end up moving people up to the higher quantity ones, like I'm one cheap S.O.B., right?

So I order, you know, like my toilet paper, my toothpaste, my shaving cream from Amazon. And I order the highest pack size they have. So I have a 12 pack of shaving cream in my mind. And I live alone. Right. So. And I know it last six years because that's how long since I bought the 12 pack. I just bought one a couple months ago.

Right. I have six years with the shaving cream, but I'm so cheap. I like it because it shows me you buy one can. It's six bucks, you buy 12 cans. It is literally 250 per can. I'm like, I'm saving the money. I'm just going to fill up my shelves kind of thing. Now I'm crazy, but there are crazy people out there that will do this kind of stuff.

So if you're going to show, you know, you're going to have, you know, price is a very it show the savings for that. And then we usually do some custom code in our client stores to do that. And we put it right up here next to the price. We'll say, you know, when the you know, they click on the they see the 2599.

It will see 350 each. Right. And they click on 16, it will say 250 each or 325 whatever it is. And sometimes we also do infographics down below. You know, sort of like you got this infographic here. We'll show that, you know, the more you spend the more you save. And we'll show the price each on the different quantities.

And that kind of stuff. So there's a lot of cool stuff that you can do there that all makes sense. Yeah. So let's talk about your about page next. We've talked about your shopping structure. We talked about the products, the collections, how you could rethink the way that you show that kind of stuff. I'm a huge believer in about pages.

I think teams are super important. And you've got an art team page and I like your story. I read it before, you know, you talk about how you had a problem firsthand with your dog. You know, having having, you know, a panic attack about them, you know, choking hazards and all that kind of totally makes sense, right? You show a photo of the three of you, which is great.

Here's the thing. Where are your dogs?

Yeah, but I think you can take more than one photo every three years of your team, right? Yeah. So. And I literally tell all my clients on your about page, I want to see babies and dogs. It makes even more sense for you guys, especially if you if you're telling the story of is it Lola? Is your dog's name?

Oh, even right. I want to see a photo of Eva. Right. The dog that, you know started this whole thing, right? It just adds credibility. And it also makes you more human, right? What a lot of companies try to do on a small company is try to do they try to seem bigger than they are, right? If they have four products, they turn it into 16 products on their website.

And it just confuses people, right? If they are only 2 or 3 people, they try to look like they have 15 people at their company. Like embrace your small because it's authentic, right? You guys care about animals. You had, you know, first hand problems everybody can relate to. You're telling the story. I love that your video tells the story even better.

I love that just, you know, do it a little bit more. Here is all all I'm saying. Right. This is a good about page. You can, you know, go to the next level. You know, like on your about page, you should not have a promise. Right. And that kind of stuff. Keep it about the people right now.

You may have a separate about page about the process. Like, you know, here's our safety standards. Here's how we make sure it's all natural and all that kind of you can separate those two out right. I'm not going to go through the rest. You don't have a lot of pages here, right? But I'm not going to go through.

I am going to go through one more. If not, I think about because it's very confusing. I think, so there's very little here for me to get a feel for who and what you guys are. So you might want to think about doing a, you know, how we do it. You have a how it works page.

You also have some contrast issues on color here, right? That's very hard to read with that background color. And there's actually tools that will tell you your contrast is poor. But spending a little bit of time like you're doing here, explaining it, that's good stuff to do for the people that really want to understand that. Now, the page that I did think was confusing was retailers.

So when your main nav, I see the word retailers and I'm thinking, I can buy your stuff at a pet store near me, I can get it today when I go there. It's for wholesalers, right? It's not for me as the customer to go buy it in a store. It's for me a wholesaler to do it, you know, kind of thing.

So I would just label that wholesalers and I would move it to the footer. Right. And I would not duplicate, links in the header and footer. Nav, I would keep your shopping links in the header, which you have very few. And that's totally fine to people, to people try to fill up their header and give multiple choices.

Like if you only have one choice, tell us about your dog. That should be it, right? Because everything here should be a shopping experience, right? If they want to learn more about the brand, let them go to the footer and figure that out. They know where to get that information. But right now you have one, two three, four, five, six, seven links in the header plus a currency one.

Those seven things. Now, I got to think I have to look at each one of those seven things, understand what they are, and ask myself which ones are most important for me. I assume most of your customers are shopping because you are an e-commerce store, and then all you need are your shopping links up there and you're shopping links are easy.

Tell me about your dog or tell us about your dog. Right? That might not be the right wording, but something along those lines keep it super simple. The less links you have up there, you're lucky you get to have very few links up there. You know, other stores, I've stores, you know, with 30, 50,000 SKUs and it's a nightmare.

But, you know, that's that's their business. They have to they have to manage that nightmare. You have the luxury of make it nice and simple for your customers. So go ahead and make it nice and simple for your customers. Now, I'm not a fan of your footer. So you've got this green background color except in the header.

I think most of your pages have the green background color, and it blends right into your footer, so I can't tell the difference in the footer in the page. Right. I like to see difference in background colors between those two. Usually I like white pages. Right. We were talking about the contrast issues. Even here. Right. This green is closer to this green than a white would be.

Right. So there's there's contrast issues there. Whites going to pop more. And it also delineates, you know, what your, what your, you know, page. And what's your footer now on your footer here. You got these links or these icons right. I like icons about NBC, Fox, Modern Door Magazine. That that sounds great. But it's you know, once again, you got these gratuitous graphics things in here, which just confuse things.

Right. But the worst part about this is it's clickable. This is on the footer. I wouldn't put this in the footer. I would not put this on every single page on your website. But the worst part about it is it's on every single page, your website. It's at the bottom of the page. So if I didn't find what I was looking for, I might click here.

And where does it take me?

It takes you to a competitor. It takes you off your website. You never, ever want to link off your website unless required by law or some extreme thing, right? Even if you wanted to tell like, hey, you know, we were on NBC News or Good Morning America or whatever, take them to a blog article and embed that content there.

Don't take them off your website.

And then, let's let's go to your home page and see what we got there. So here's where I found out you were made in America. You know, you need to be consistent in that. We talked about that simple message, the value prop you guys provide, which is peace of mind. What I like to see here in this home page banner is that you are here.

Sign right. This is what we do. This is what we provide you. Right? Which is what you sell. What we provide you is not what you sell, right? It's the result of what you sell. Right? Which is the peace of mind thing. However, you know, you guys will work on that message in quite a bit, right? That's a really hard seven words to come up with.

But when you can come up with that, it makes your life much easier. Right? So in your you are here sign right. You want to explain to people what it is you provide them so that they can say, that's what I want or don't want and leave if they're in the wrong place. You know, anybody who goes, oh, I'm looking for cat toys.

And like, these guys don't sell cat toys and they leave. That's a favor to you, right? And then also tell them your differentiation, right. Why is yours better or something like that. But what you're doing here, right. Our patented ballistic shoulders eliminate internal blockage and choking risk.

The fact it's patented does not matter at this moment. Right now, that's a product seal you put in later on patented or something like that, which you know, right now you should try it. You know, we we do the peace of mind thing and, you know, keep your pup safe and occupied with our patented, you said patented twice.

They're made in USA. I got made in USA here and over here. Ballistic shoulders and and healthy all natural dog chews like you call them bully six one place you call them something else, another place. It just there's too much right. It's it's this has to be super precise and concise, which is really, really hard to do. It's really easy to make this long and confusing.

It's really hard to make it simple and concise. Right?

Yeah, but but what does that matter to your customer. Right. That matters to you. It does not matter your customer. Too many times we want to talk about all the things we do when all the customer cares about is, is you know, Fido not choking. That's all they care about. They love their dogs. They don't love your patent.

You know, trust and safety for every child. That's better. Right then than what's above it kind of thing. We already talked about this video. Now this this image here.

It doesn't feel quality to me. Right? You know, the the the background color, the cropping that, you know, happened here. I don't have a better option for you, but, you know, I would expect to see. Well, do you expect people to hold their holder for their dog? Just that's what you're showing them in the main image in your home page.

Yeah. So you're showing them how they should not use the product right now. What I love is in your your this stuff here, right. These photos are fabulous. So think about something along that line that shows a cute dog having a great time, you know, and I love the fact when they hold the holders themselves so they get better leverage on the bully stick.

You know, dog owners get that kind of stuff. Yeah. Totally, totally. Well, show that instead of this thing is too close, right? This dog does not look cute here. It looks like it's got, you know, scary teeth and I can't even see its cute little eyes. Right. Kind of thing. So just a better image there to get that tone and point of view across what you're trying to do right?

This literally looks like you're trying to feed the lions at the zoo.

Like I said, I this video could be good if it had, you know, voiceover you know, you try and explain the difference here. So what you're trying to do, you know this we talked about this, you know, you're going to turn your collection page into decision making engine. So you won't need this here. You can take him straight to that page.

You don't have. Yeah. You don't have reviews on this page. So you can take your, judge me, your all reviews widget and put it here. Right. You can also add reviews to your footer links and make a reviews page, which will help you with Google. Also, they like to see that, and you have.

Yeah. Yeah. And here's why. Like I use notion for my project management. And I have task inside of notion. And every time I want to delete a task in notion every. And I use this app every day, all day long for six years now, every single time I have to remember and I forget it the first time I open it up, I'm looking for the word delete and they've named it Remove or Move to trash, which technically I'm moving it to trash.

I'm not deleting it. What do I expect to see every single time the word delete and every single time I go, oh, these idiots named it move to trash, even though I call it delete. Right? You want to use your customer's language? It's like one of the things you're doing here. Also, you're trying to be cute. And I didn't mention that before.

Like the friends or whatever thing share with friends kind of thing. Like you're trying too hard to be cute in the branding. And then when I'm talking about it here on the product page and I do even critique it, I don't like the the tell a friend thing. I don't think people have used that stuff since 2007, but yours does.

Them say tell a friend. It says tell a friend, right? And you just try to be cute like. And once again I ask the customer, hey, you shouldn't have that thing there because nobody uses a B. What the hell is a friend? Right? And I figured it out, but it took me half a second to do that. And I'm only going to give this whole site half a second of my time.

And you've taken that up with something you think is cute and is cute, but really is making me think too hard. And I don't want to think too hard. I just want my dog to be happy.

All right, so back to the homepage. What I wanted to see was, do you have Instagram and are you posting? So you have 13,000 followers. That's really good. That's pinned. Pinned. Let's go. You're doing videos. That's really good. I'm not seeing this content on your website. Right. So one of things you could do is you could add an Instagram feed to your homepage, not to engage people into your, you know, you don't want to take people from your, your website to Instagram, but it shows a heartbeat, right?

Just like those reviews are showing. Hey, somebody bought six days ago, you're Instagram is saying, hey, somebody cared enough about this brand to post a video in the last week. Which means if you place your order, somebody might actually be breathing on the other end to process that order and send it out to you right. So there's a there's an app, I use Insta feed.

It's got a free level that allows you to put in a Instagram feed on your homepage, which gives you that little bit of life. Right. So the last thing I want to well, before I talk about that, I already mentioned this up here, right. This color of the top nav, your goal when somebody lands on the site is to get them clicking to understand your products and pick which product is best for them.

Right. And that takes a couple steps. We talked about those, you know, what kind of dog do you have? What size, how aggressive or mature are they now what I see here in these promotions one is free priority shipping on orders over $125. The next one, because I get to scroll through, we donate a meal to a local shelter for every order I did not see that on the product page anywhere.

And then, log in to see if you are an ever chew VIP and get a deal on starter packs as gifts. This whole thing is so horrible. I'm going to go off on it for a bit here right?

You wouldn't have to. Wouldn't have to name names here. Kirby. Come on. We're all friends. So first off, you need to convince people that they need to buy your products before you tell them about free shipping and things like, we're getting ahead of ourselves too much. This is a normal store mistake, right? You know, get free shipping.

Like, they don't even know what you sell yet. And you're talking about free shipping, right? You know, and by the way, how many people actually spend $125 and get free shipping on your store?

I'm thinking 10%. Okay. Which is so 10% of your customers get free shipping and it's the first thing you promote on the website. So 90% of your people get told they're not good enough to get free shipping. How do you think that makes them feel?

Yeah, yeah. We used to put down shipping timers, you know, $75 away from free shipping. Learned over time. That is a horrible thing to do, because what you're doing is you're telling people they don't. They're not special. They're not valuable. They don't get the privilege. And what do they do? They say, screw you. They don't go, oh, I'm going to add more to my cart.

They're like, screw you, I'm out of here. Right? So you got to be careful with promoting free shipping. You definitely want free shipping as low a threshold as possible. You can't put it to zero if you can't do that for your business, but you don't want to alienate those that don't qualify for it. Okay, so the next promotion is we donate a meal to a local shelter for every order.

That sounds nice. I didn't see that anywhere in your about. I didn't see that anywhere in the product page. If that's going to be part of your brand's, you know, value or mission, then make that part of the brand not a top line, you know, thing that nobody cares about yet until they actually want to purchase. Right? So that's the kind of thing you show on the product page or in the cart, like, you know, yeah, this order is going to feed a puppy or whatever kind of thing and get them over that edge.

They decide what product they want. Now they're really debating whether to put down the credit card, use that as the tool at that time to get them to do that. And then the this one, I got to tell you, this is horribly written, right. Log in to see if you're an ever chew VIP. So it's worse than the spinning win where I don't even know if I qualify.

So in a spinning win, everybody gets an equal chance in theory, right? And I think spinning wins are horrible, but that's another story. This one here is like, are you good enough? And then you have to log in to find out. And let me guess what makes an ever true VIP the purchase before.

Four times. How many of your customers hit that bar?

Yeah, because of the nature of you're not spending it. Right. So but here's the thing. Like imagine your new customer. You're telling a they have to log in to figure this out. You can't even tell them right now. Right. It's just so what you're doing is you're telling your your most loyal customers, hey, we love you. You know, and by the way, and get a deal on a starter pack is gifts is deceiving, right?

This to me sounds like it's your affiliate model, right. And you're trying to get them to refer a friend kind of thing and and you're telling them they should buy that as a gift for someone else. When I see the word gift, I'm thinking, you're going to give me a free gift because I'm not on a gifting website, right?

If I was on a gifting website, I could see, you know, give it. You know, I don't. I'm buying chocolates and I see, you know, buy as a gift. I understand I'm buying as a gift for someone else when I'm on a dog chew thing and I see gifts, I'm thinking I'm getting something free. So 90% of your people, if you had a good, you know, flow of customers won't qualify.

And those that do qualify, they don't get something for it's this is the kind of thing where too many stores try to do everything at once and not at the right time. So when someone becomes a VIP, do you have clear to you? Do you have email?

What do you use and for email?

Yeah, yeah. No. It sucks. You should you you should use klaviyo. Right. And email marketing should be 25 to 33% of your revenue. Yeah, but but here's the thing. I once you you must set up klaviyo like it's the next thing you need to do, right? If I was prioritize things literally, I would do klaviyo before I do anything else.

I talked about this this conversation. Just because retaining your existing customers and getting more money out of them to replenish will is so important. And so, you know, 25 to 33% revenue stream, all the things I talked about, you know, unless you start driving more traffic to the store, aren't going to move the needle as much because you already have that loyal user base.

You want to keep reminding them and keeping them coming back right? If you were, you know, starting out from Brand New, I wouldn't say focus on email. I would say focus on Google Ads or something like that. But since you've got this user base, you know, email's a great way to start increase your revenue. But back to the, you know, log in to see if you're never too VIP.

Once you have email the second time they get the the time they place their fourth order, you'll have a flow set up. This is congratulations. You are an ever true VIP. You know talk about all those benefits they get right? So you don't have to promote that ever on the website. You just promoted to the people when they reach the threshold.

Unless you think that dangling the carrot and I don't think dangling carrots is a good thing to do, like I talked about with free shipping, right? There may be a time you do that kind of thing, but, you know, in this situation, I would get rid of that whole red, you know, announcement bar at the top. And, you know, another thing I hate about these things is there's you have three of them, and I, I have to sit here and wait for them to scroll through to see what they all are or click on them.

And it's like just way too much work and the messages are in the wrong place at the wrong time. So the last thing to talk about is your brand

brand is things like consistency. It's your graphics, it's iconography, it's your logo, it's your typography and those things and you're doing a pretty good job there. You guys definitely have, you know, the color palette of the green and orange.

You're doing that consistently. And the green is based on the color of your product. Makes total sense, right? You're you're ever to logo a little cartoonish, I think. Or is this icon or is this font used elsewhere? Is this font the same as this one? I don't think it is. Yeah, I would match that font. Whatever font you use in here, I would make it your heading font or something like that just to add a little consistency.

Now this is a really, simple sans font in bold. So it won't be noticed as much. But when you tie those things together, I think a lot of branding is about consistency. And your customers don't consciously notice it. They subconsciously notice it. Right? So like I said before, with your judge me badges, they didn't match. So, you know, you've got this, let's call it magic marker.

You know, type, you know, graphic thing you're doing in different places. And there's a consistency in that. You're doing it. You know, I call those gratuitous and unneeded before, but the positive of them is you're doing them consistently. And that that consistency provides that, that branding element. But you see how this seal here doesn't map to this hand-drawn graphic thing here.

So that that lack of consistency, you know, you want to think about how do you bring that together? So your fonts to me. Yeah. See, there's different colors going on to. So like here I've got a white heading. This is, you know, you've got contrast issues with all these dark colors here. Right. But this one's not white.

Right. It's got a slight gray to it or whatever color is thrown in there. Which is different than that one. And I just, I when I look at those little things, you start asking questions like, why is it that way? Right. But that said, you're actually doing most of the stuff really well in that, for example, this is a sentence case heading.

This is a sentence case heading. This is sentence case. So there's consistency in capitalization. Yeah. Even here. Yeah. So that's nicely done. I think you're doing better than average on branding. Let's put it that way, because you definitely you have a look and a feel when you come here. Right. And the green is just, you know, so dominant.

Now once you take that green off the background, if you were to do that, I'm not saying you have to, but if you were that would take it down a notch. It would help your contrast. But you'd lose that little bit of branding in there. So it's a debate whether or not that's the right thing to do. And right now I think it's so strong I'd keep it.

What I would do is I would take your footer and take that up to a dark green background, to, to give them more contrast between the page and the footer. Right. But if you do that, you're going to have problems with the graphics, but I don't want those graphics in the footer anyways.

I think that's it for me right now. I've talked. Oh, wow. We've gone for quite a bit of time. Any any questions on that? Any, any and any feedback for me like, yeah Scott, you're more on about this or that kind of thing. I'm, I'm totally open to that too. So.

You win me over. You.

Well, yeah, but but overall, like, what I didn't say is, overall, you know, what I love is you have a product that is unique. You make your own product. Right? That's fabulous. You know, you guys have a passion about this. I. Success is yours, right? You just got to execute a little more tightly than you are already. Right.

You're doing it. Well, now, I just got to ask you a little more tightly. Make it easier for customers, right? Stop trying to be so cute and stop trying to do more and and dazzle people and just, you know, your product is simple. Purchasing. It should be simple. The benefit of it is simple to understand, help people help people do that.

Right? Like I said, two people try to be too sophisticated and and and just give customers the benefit of the doubt and you really can't do that. They're just too busy. And, you know, you can have two dogs everywhere. Who doesn't love that?

Oh, yeah. We absolutely all assume our customers care way more about what we're selling than they do. Right? And, you know, it's just a world choice out there. Anything that prevents them from continuing on saying yes to what's going on, any confusion? They're too busy. Or if it takes too long, you know, even if they want to buy it, they're at the dentist office and they get called to the chair.

So they're they're like, and they forget about you kind of thing. Right? So you just gotta make it as quick and simple as possible, because that's the world that people are operating in. All right. I appreciate your time today. I I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's you know, it takes a brave person to sit here and listen to me rant for an hour.

Good. I'm glad. I'm glad to hear that. All right. Thanks for your time today.