The Podcast
Uneditted Video
Show Links
- Matador - https://matadorup.com/
- Groove Life - https://groovelife.com/
- Mint Julep Boutique - https://shopthemint.com/
Help the Podcast
Transcript
Hey, Scott Austin here.
In this episode, I'm going to review some websites. The websites I'm reviewing are ones that I've never seen before. So what I did is I just found a list of Shopify stores online and randomly opened up three stores that I had not heard of before. They were in a middle ranking of store traffic, so I assume that each one is a successful online business.
I'm going to walk you through my first impressions of them. I'm going to only look at the websites in mobile as that is how most customers view stores these days.
While I'm doing this, I'm recording a screen capture. So in the show notes, you can go and look at the YouTube link, which will give you the uneditted video of this whole podcast episode if you want to follow along visually.
For those of you that are audio only, don't worry. I'll explain what I'm seeing for you.
So let's dig in.
The first website is Matador travel and I opened it up, had deleted all cookies. So what I'm seeing is the default screen that all, all customers would see and in Matador travel, I actually see that they have a little motto travel hard and they explain a little bit about their, their value prop for their products. So I like this a lot and it says purpose built equipment for travelers who pursue more than the standard experience tailored for the masses. So right away, they're saying, Hey, we're Matador. Here's what we're about. If this is what you're looking for, you're in the right place. And even have a photo that shows, you know, they're pretty rugged looking backpack. The second store I'm gonna be looking at is called groove, groove life. And you can see that a fault screen is a popup.
So the first thing you see is a popup for email address collection. And I'm, I'm not a fan of that at all. Someone doesn't even know what this brand is about yet, and this company's trying to get their email address. And the email signup says, get 10% off, unlock 10% off your order today when you sign up for email and text and you have no idea what groove life is and the background is this very mountainous looking Rocky peak. So it doesn't even gimme a clue for what the product is. And immediately they're trying to grab my address, right? The third is mint ju up, which is a clothing boutique targeting women. And they also have a popup and here, at least their image is a couple of women who are cut off in this, this, this cropping on mobile, but you can guess that it's women's clothing and it says, get 15% off your first order.
So two of the three brands right off the top are aggressively trying to capture email before they even explain to you who they are. So let's go back to groove and get rid of that popup. Now here on the groove homepage their, their mobile menu has a nice little graphical belts, zoos, stackable, shop men, shop women. So you can start getting a feel for what it is they do, but their homepage banner is a shopping link. It's a new stackable. So they're promoting a new product line that they have. So here, what they haven't done yet is explain to you who groove is, what their products are, what their value prop is and who their audience is. So they're just assuming, you know, who they are to start with right on the homepage, which, you know, if you listen to me a lot, you know, I don't like that at all.
And I've also got, you know, the cookie link down at the bottom that I've got to click and get that off the screen. So now I've already had to do two actions on this website, and I still don't know really what they're about for mint. JUP when I get rid of their email pop up, I can see there's a lot of lifestyle, photography of young, attractive women in clothing. So I'm, I'm, you know, can guess pretty quickly that this is a clothing boutique and there are categories at the top nav. Just like in the, the groove one, they have very visual top nav categories for mobile. I, I like that a lot. So you can see quickly what, what their top categories are, but they also on their, on their homepage, aren't really explaining their value props. So by looking at it, I'm assuming they're selling to like 16 year old, young women, 20 year old girls who are very thin and attractive, cuz that's all I see is very thin and attractive, very young women.
So, you know, if I'm, you know, not a woman or if I'm a woman that is not in that demographic, am I in the right place? They're, they're not telling me who they're meant for. They're not telling me what their style is and who their target audience is. I'm just, I, I'm assuming I'm supposed to guess that by looking at their models, now let's go back to Matador, which actually, you know, opened up the best of the three of these, right? I didn't get a popup for email collection yet. And it explained to me who and what they are now, they don't have at the top, the little nav links that the other two did to, you know, talk about their, their shopping experience. So what I'm gonna do is open up the shopping or the, the nav menu, the hamburger, and they have three links here.
One is shop the nexus Explorer and then about us. And I'm gonna click on shop. And the shop link itself is not clickable. It doesn't take me to a destination. It opens up a sub menu. And what I see there is a list of categories and a shop all. And if I click on shop all that well, that does take me to a page. It takes me to a collection page. And now on my second page view, that's when they're giving me the email sign up, right? And their email sign up is completely full screen black background. So it's, it's, you know, it's in your face. But that's a little bit better doing that on the second click. So at least I had one page to look at the website, see if it's the right thing for me. And if I now engage to the second page, it asks me to, you know, sign up for email. Now their email doesn't give me an offer. It just says, sign up for emails for exclusive discounts, new product notifications and more, don't worry. We won't spam. You we'll only reach out when it's good. So they're not offering, at least they're not telling me if they are offering a new subscriber discount for your first purchase and getting rid of that popup menu. I now see this collection of products.
So now we're gonna do the same thing on groove, and we're gonna click on the hamburger menu. And this one also has a shop, collabs our story in sizing. So if I click on shop, that is not, it doesn't take me to a destination. It opens up a sub menu and there I can see the categories of rings belts, wallets. If I click on rings, which seems to be what they're, they're mostly about. That also gives me another sub menu. So now I, I have Zeus rings, aspire rings. So these are different. I'm gonna call them brands of rings, their own branding or collections. And really no, no explanation, right? There's no visual here. I don't know what a zoo ring is. I don't know what an aspire ring is. I don't know what a solid ring is. So they're assuming their customers know a lot about their products.
So I'm just gonna click on Zeus rings and here they on this page, they actually take me to a page, not a collection and action. And I, I just got the, the popup again. That's, that's unbelievable. So I got an email popup. This one's completely full screen, same background as before, which doesn't explain their, their products at all. Maybe it's maybe it explains their brand, but I don't know what their brand is yet. And gets 10% off. So that's pretty aggressive. But on this page that I'm seeing for Ze ring, what I really like is they open up with an explanation about Zeus rings. And these are silicone rings. They're they're antis stretch, and then they do a little explanation. They've got an infographic and then they start showing the ring. So I really like that presentation, cuz what they're doing here is they're educating me more than just dropping me onto a collection page.
Now I don't like at the bottom of this page where they are moving me to other categories, oh, maybe these are subcategories. Maybe it's men and women for Zeus rings, but that's not that intuitive there. But a much nicer page, a much nicer destination than just getting dropped into a collection page. Now, if I go into mint ju up and click on the, the nav here, the hamburger, I get all these categories. So this one does a better job in me, more shopping categories. The other two shop was one menu item. And then you had to expand that, to see all the other shopping categories underneath that. And they, they were focused a little bit on themselves with about, and those kind of things where I prefer your main menu to be customer focused. And most customers coming to online store want to shop. So I like keeping the main menu, mostly shopping links. And they're actually doing that here in the min jewel boutique website. So you gotta click on the dresses category and that opens up a sub menu. So at the top level, I can't just click into dresses, but I have an all dresses link. So let's click on that.
And that takes me to a collection. And once again, just, just like in the, the groove one, the mint JUP gives me a popup menu again, right? I've already closed the email pop up once and they're gonna give it to me a second time. So on this collection page because it's fashion, all of the product images are very vertical and that works really well. With fashion cuz most people are standing when they're, when they're, and it's all lifestyle photos of their products, which is a really good thing. And they've even got in their product listings internal promos, every few products, just to break it up and, and be explaining other things like here's one that says, don't forget free shipping on all orders, a hundred dollars plus kind of thing. So in the middle of the products, every once in a while, they're reinforcing some of their value props. That's really nicely done. Now what this page doesn't do is gimme a buyer's guide of some sort, right? I have a filter so I can filter by size, color, price, or pattern and I can sort by so let's see if I filter by color price. I wanna see what pattern is. I'm just gonna filter by price and just pick black.
See what that does for me that didn't seem to work if I click on black again. Yeah. I don't know why it's not working. Let's just pick blue. All right. Blue seemed to work. Maybe there were no blacks. I'm not sure, but so now I can see all, all the blue dresses, but there's no other filters for like styles or seasons or hemlines or, or whatever. Right. It's very basic filtering, not specific to dresses. So it's probably the same filters across all the product categories and they, they could do a better job with making it filters that are bespoke to things that people care about choosing dresses, cuz you know, I'm, I'm seeing very different dresses. The only commonality now is that I filtered on blue, but there's long ones. There's short ones. There's, you know, formal informal, all that kind of stuff.
So not that good of an experience here, not that bad, but not that good also. So now we're gonna do is we're gonna drive into a product page. So here I am on the Matador website and their first backpack, which was the category we looked at I'm on that collection page. I'm gonna pick the first product that shows up, which is a waterproof packable backpack. And there's this little thing overlaying on my screen, right? And it's two arrows pointing towards each other and it's actually overlaid by default, you know, and this default setup size that I have, it's overlaying on the button that lets me look at more images, right? So if I wanna look at more images, this thing's in the way, unless I scroll and I, I'm not a fan of overlays, especially in the mobile experience because that screen is so small and it's so easy to clutter the screen with lots of overlays.
They've already got one down at the bottom for their accessibility stuff. You know, which a lot of people have to do for legal protection reasons. And a lot, a lot of sites are putting that on there. But this, this two arrow thing let's click on it. Oh, it's a it's compare products thing. I've not seen that app before. I assume it's done through an app, not custom code. But I could easily click this and add it to my compare list. And then I guess I can go to other pages and add it to so I close that and on the compare when I close it, it still shows up on the screen, even though I've already added it. And like I said, it's just, it's just in the way, I'm not a fan of things that are in the way now on this product page, they've got lots of photography.
It's a with a model, but with a background. So this is outdoor gear and I don't see any photos in the car. So I see lots of photos about the product with a human, right. And without a human for that matter, lots of photos, none of them in situ in use, right. I don't see it on a mountain or anything like that. Not necessarily a bad thing, lot, lots, lots of good photography, just not lifestyle photography yet. I see the CLA up promo, which, you know, I, I always wonder with those after pay type products how much they move the needle when you show that on the product page, especially as prominently as they all list them. But you know, your data should show that, right. You know, if, if you install one of these after pay type things or pay later, however you want to call it features.
And you put the promo on the, on the product page, if it increases conversion, then that that's a great thing right now. I've got a product description here where really not that compelling on a product description, right? So here I am, I'm, I'm buying a backpack for $125 and it says the free range, 28 is a 28 liter high performance waterproof backpack that compresses for travel engineered for ultra light outdoor travel. Matador's most weatherproof, lightweight, doable equipment. So that's a little bit of an explanation, I guess it says advanced series. That's not clickable, it's a little graphic image. I have no idea what that means. And then they jump into customer reviews and I'm a huge fan of customer reviews. Now this product only has six reviews, which would cause me a little bit of concern. Let's see if I can click on it'll let me write a review.
I actually don't allow in stores that I, that I set up random non-customers to just write a review. I always wanna restrict that to verified customers. So only through emails, if I click on their view reviews link, it's not taking me anywhere. So I don't know what's broken there now if I keep scrolling down, so I can't read the reviews. Now we've got some, some videos, which is nice. Those are nice outdoor looking ones. Really well edited. I got, oh, now, now I get a better explanation of the product. So that looks nice. Explain the materials a little bit more photos. I, I like this product page so far. It's pretty long now I've got some guy in another videos. My second video talking to me about the product. I like product pages that are really long with lots and lots of information.
They've even got like some California prop 65 warnings about, you know, chemicals and all that kind of stuff. Now there's some beautiful photos of it, like in the Alaskan wilderness or somewhere. So that's looking really nice. Oh, and now down at the bottom, they explain to me what advanced series means. They show the same icon I saw before and explains what that is. And then at the end of this page here, you know, it's got a you may also like if you listen to my podcast a lot, you know, I absolutely hate most of the time. The, you may also like and this, this is an example of it where these other products just seem like a random collection of things. I, I wouldn't put this there down the bottom. They talk about some of their main value props from a service standpoint about shipping warranty.
That's all really good stuff. And then they've also got at the very bottom of the page on mobile as I'm scrolling down and a, a permanent add to cart link. If I click that add to cart, it actually adds it to the cart for me, which I saw through a little, I think it added it to the cart for me. Yeah, it did. I can see a number one in my cart, but it stayed on that product page. And it took me back up to the product page near the added cart button. So I can see a text that says, add it to cart and I can view cart or continue shopping to me. That's a very confusing experience. A lot of people do this or a lot of stores do this. And I don't like it because if I add it to the cart, I think of more intuitive experiences.
You take them to another page. You don't stay on the page that you just added, especially because this backpack, you know, I had the opportunity to order more than one. If I wanted to, why would I stay on the same backpack page if you don't wanna take me to the cart yet. And I'm a big fan of taking customers to the cart page, but if you don't want to do that, why don't you take me to another page that says, we've added this to your cart? Do you wanna look at other things or associated products or anything like that? So another shopping page to keep them, if you wanna keep them engaged in the shopping experience, then engage them in the shopping experience. Don't just leave 'em on the same page, left to their own vices to figure things out. So I, I'm not a fan of, of staying on the same page.
Now let's go look at groove link and we're still on our zoos rings we're on that page that I talked about, and what I'm gonna do is gonna drop into the first product I see on that page, which is the Zeus edge, midnight black ring, and here, wow. So they've got 7,072 reviews. That number's just amazing. Right. And you know, I, I mentioned a second ago, the other waterproof pack pack that we're looking at only at six reviews and that's kind of a negative. So there's so few 7,000 reviews. That's an absolutely fabulous number, right? It just says, Hey, we're a business we're at scale. People love us is, and it says five star review for, you know, 7,000 over 7,000 reviews. Absolutely fabulous. These guys have for carousel photos. Oh, they've got a little animation of it in 3d.
I dunno if that's done through HTML video or GIF, hopefully it's HTML video, but that's nice. It shows some layers. I don't know if, how important that is kind of a cool looking effect. I don't know if it makes a difference and then they've got the ring in a couple different angles. They show one of their value props, what I would call a product seal inside of their carousel. And so not a lot of photos, no photos of it on a, on a human body, just just of the product with white background. We'll see what the else is down there later on the page. And before, you know, and they don't have a size selected by default, which is really nice, cuz a lot of stores that have sizes, right? They default to smaller, whatever, you know, a lot of people who don't realize they need to select a size, stay with the default one and you get a lot of, you know, bad orders and, and exchanges and all that kind of stuff.
So what this store has done is that we're not going to allow you to add it to cart until you select what size you want. So I like that a lot. It's gonna help with their customer satisfaction and returns and they've also gotta don't know your size. So here's what their size guy looks like. It's a modal that pops up and I can take a quiz to figure out my size. I can use an app which is, looks like they'll take a picture of your ring and, and an existing ring and figure out your size from that. That sounds pretty cool. And then they can also print out some sort of guy. So they got three different ways for you to figure out your ring size that that's really well done.
And while I'm sitting here on this page, I've got this modal down at the bottom or a little hover thing for get 10% off. So they're still trying to get me to sign up for email. And if I look below the add to cart button, we've got some value props faster than a cheater ready to ship in 24 hours. So they're, I dunno if they're trying to be cute or whatever, no BS for real safer than Fort Knox. Yeah. So there's trying to be, I don't know the right way to explain that tone they're going after, but you know, I think in what's awesome about it. The king of all rings. Yeah. So their, their copy and their brand is a little bit over the top. And I don't mean over the top in the negative way, but it's just like, it's aggressive. Like this is awesome.
It's the king of all rings. We're faster than a cheetah. No BS for real. Right. so they're at least they're consistent in that branding and tone. So I, I like that. And then, you know, they've got some made forward, just some icons kicking, working out adventuring sports, dirty diapers, rocking out. I think it's part of that branding. I don't know why dirty diapers is in there. It doesn't make sense to me, but maybe their customers think it's funny. And now they go into more value props about the rings. I like that they got some accordion functionality where you can, you know, see something, click on it, learn more information. They've got an infographic, I'm a fan of infographic. They've got some video that's nice. And then they try to cross promote to other products, which I don't like. Now you get to the reviews and ratings. Lots of people have left. Well, not lots. Some people have left photos. That's nice. And then more value props, some of the same value props we saw at the top.
So what I don't think I saw, yeah, I did not see this ring on a even finger. Maybe that's not necessary, but you know, I look at the width of it. Like how big is that? What would it look like on a finger? I, I don't know. So I would've expected to see some photography with some hand models or something. And I don't, I don't see that anywhere. So now I'm gonna go back up and I'm going to, you know, I have to scroll back up, I'm gonna click add to cart and these guys do the flyout cart, which once again, I'm not a fan of that. This fly out now they're trying to also give me an offer for a mystery ring for only 1495, 50% off. So that's not, you know, that's not a bad promo trying to, trying to increase their average order value by getting you to, to get a second product. And can I con I can continue shopping? So their cart is only let's see. Yeah. Their cart is only fly out. There's no cart page.
And now let's go onto mint Jule. And I'm going to remember I was on the dresses collection page. I'm just going to click on a dress that I can see from the swatches has lots of colors. Cause I wanna see what happens when I change color. So this product shows the product reviews in only seven reviews. They've got different lifestyle photos on a model and, and some video in there too. That's really nice as I'm scrolling through the carousel. And if I click on a different color yeah, I'm gonna guess, yeah. It takes me to a different, so it takes me the same product, but in a different color and that's a different product page. And that way they, you know, for inventory reasons, it's easier to control, but they also get to have a different product photography and not mixing and matching the blue and the red product photography on the same page.
And this one also has a nice video. So they're actually going out and shooting photography and video for every product and every color, at least from the, the sample size I have, that's a lot of work. Right. And so to work right in stores that do that level of work, you know, it just, it just makes their experience that much better. Right? Every single page you go to every product you go to, you see a model in that color of the product. That's, that's really nice quality, a lot of work to do also now I see that there's this little clothes hanger above the sizes and these products are all sold out. So I wonder if I go to another color, find one that's yeah. So that clothes hanger is a sold out indicator, which took me a second to realize it's kind of cute.
I dunno how intuitive that is to customers, but I like it. You know, it, it just bringing their brand a little bit more home, you know, you can see there's sold out. So of it being Xed out, there's just a little close hangar above it. And it's got the outta stock notification. I'm gonna assume that's the clavia one here and I can get click notify me. You gotta put the email address. That's not the clavia cuz Cleo's usually a popup. Maybe they're using their custom code for Clavio here, but they've got a back in stock notification, which is really nice.
So I'm gonna go to a color that is available and I'm going to add that to my bag. Oh, before they do, I'll go up to the rest of the product page. They've got a description of the product. They actually tell you who the model is, what size they are. So you can get a feel for how this would, would look on you. They've got a little bit of an explanation. So they've written, you know, a paragraph of copy. That's inspirational about the product and not just product, you know, measurements and, and stats. They've got a size guide, which when I click on a measurements tab, then I've gotta click again to see the general size guide. There's no reason they couldn't have just shown that to me without the click. But that is what it is. And oh, it didn't pop up the first time. So the size guy is a popup and there's a lot of information on this, on how to do sizes for tops and dresses and bottoms. And I'm on a dress page. There's no reason they couldn't have a dress size guide, a bottom size guide, a top size guide, separate, and then brought me to that bespoke one for the product that I'm looking at to, for the customer to give 'em a simpler experience.
But the fact, you know, they have size guys, you know, it's all good stuff. Yeah. There's lots of content on this page. I'm just trying to see if yeah, they have a, you may also like also like I said, I'm not a fan of that. They've also gotta shop the look and to shop the gram. So on a product page where I've already selected, I've clicked a few times and I'm saying, I wanna look more about this product. They got three different elements trying to take me away from the product page which I'm, I'm not a fan of at all.
Let's add this to the cart and see what happens. So they've gotta fly out. It looks like these guys have the exact same theme and experience as the the, the silicone ring guys. There's a lot of similarities in what's happening in their, in their sites. They both had the graphical nav menu at the top on mobile, on the homepage. And they've got the same thing happening with the shopping bag, fly out and, and recommending products and all that kind of stuff in that fly out. So it's probably the same theme and even a couple similar apps nothing wrong with that, right? No, nobody's gonna notice that, you know, nobody's gonna look at silicone rings and women's fashion side by side, except in this type of experience. So now let's go back to our Matador. Remember we added the product to the cart. I'm gonna look at the cart page, which didn't take me to, and then we're gonna drive into the checkout experience.
So be I click on checkout and I get a popup going on a trip at a hip pack to your order at 20% off. So Norman's 39 99. It's only 31 99. I save $8 add to cart. And the Ana cart button is huge and it's a button with a black background color and the skip and continue to check out is text only. So it's much reduced in emphasis. And I, I just think this is really bad, right. Why is this product recommended when by what's in my cart, how is it relevant to my experience and why is it so forceful when I'm trying to check out right now? You're trying to promote me to buy something and it's not that intuitive or not easy to see how I get past that easily. Right? If I was, if I was to do something like this and normally I would not, I would have the, no, thank you. Be a button that was equal weight to the add to cart. So you respect the customer's choice to opt out of the merchandising. You are pushing down their throat. The way that it's, it's too dominant for a heart, that's the thing that really turns me off on this. I don't like it at all either way, but that's what really turns me off. It's it's not respecting the customer and their decisions. Let's skip and continue to check out.
So here on the checkout page, it looks like they have done no branding and are taking the defaults from their theme, right? There's no Matador logo, there's no color backgrounds, there's no imagery. And it's got this gold color that I don't remember seeing on the site at all before. So I don't think they've actually gone into theme customization over the checkout section and edited their checkout, which is, you know, missing a branding opportunity there. So let's go to groove life and we are already, we already added a product to our cart. So we're gonna click on our cart icon, get that flyout cart. We're not gonna add the mystery ring. We're gonna go to checkout.
And I get into the checkout experience and these guys have branded theirs, right? So they've got their logo at the top. I see some of their colors. They don't have a background color going on. They've got, so these guys must be a Shopify plus store cuz they've got some extra icons and messaging on there that you can do more easily. When you are a Shopify plus store, you can edit your checkout liquid code a little bit better. So it looks like they've got that in place. Now let's go to our mint Julip and click on the checkout button from their flyout and they've got a branded experience. They've got the logo at the top. They've got some color highlights and text and buttons. There's no background colors applied. You know, you don't have to do that. I like to do it a little bit just to bring more of that branding home.
I also like to put like a little banner image at the top sometimes just to bring that little more branding to, to the checkout experience. But they have the normal checkout experience, but at least they've customized it to their theme. So that's a shopping experience on the three stores. Now, one of the things I'm gonna look at on each one is just their story. They're about right. I'm a big fan in telling stories. So we're gonna go to each of our stores, go back to the homepage and on Matador, I'm gonna look at the nav menu here, the hamburger and they've gotten about us. So let's read there about us. It starts off with travel hard. It seems like it's their, their motto or tagline, which is nice. And then they talk a little bit about, we focus on engineering, high performance, travel equipment for any scenario.
So a good, good explanation. They talk about where they're from Boulder, Colorado. They talk about performance, simplicity, innovation, brand ethics. I see human beings in these photos and they're all facing away from me. So it's not inviting at all, even though they are backpack company in their defense, right. And they're showing backpacks. Well, and most of 'em are showing backpacks and one looks like they're showing a blanket or something. But it they're looking away from me like they're ignoring me. It's, it's actually kind of jarring. It is not welcoming at all. What I don't see here is a human story. I see talking about their product, their manufacturing and all that kind of stuff, which is fine. But I, I on and about us wanna see the people at the company I want, I want a human connection, right? I actually think that most stores could get away with three about pages.
One is about us, which is about the team. The humans one is about our, our company, right? Our history. We talk about how we got started your origin story and, and your differentiation, all that good stuff. And the third one could be about your products, which would be about your manufacturing process, how you give back to charity or, or whatever it is, kind of stuff. Whatever your unique value prop is. You can have three different abouts and explain those three different aspects. This one, this one is not strong enough for me in the, the human side, who are the people that started this company, who, who are running it now, who's, who's the creative genius behind this brand. You know, how did they get started? All that good stuff. It's very generic in that. So in the groove one, let's go into our story, born in Alaska, built in Tennessee, some texts, some images I, well, it's taking a second for the the website to catch up when scrolling and it's all kind of fuzzy at the moment. Let's try to refresh on the page.
Yeah. It's not coming into focus at the moment or some parts of it. Aren't we'll try one more time. Yeah. So it's not coming into focus. There's, there's something going on with my internet connection or the Shopify servers. But I, it looks to me like there's a little bit more of a story. I can see some human beings or even two people waving at me here in one of them. Oh, they talk about how they have kids. So this is much more of a human story. And, and, and the journey of the company, it looks like it's both of them at the same time. So to me, that's a lot more personal and a better connection that the brand can make with the customers because it's a human to human connection, not a brand to human connection. Now, if we look at the Mint Julep go into their menu.
So one of the things I like about their nav menu is I can't find the about link in it because it's probably in the footer, right? Cuz the about their, their me, their hamburger menu is much more focused on shopping, which I, I like. So if we go to the about us, oh my God this is not my favorite opening paragraph. We serve our customers by meeting them where they are conveniently, where they are and conveniently providing them with the trendy and affordable clothing. They desire to feel beautiful, confident, and present in their day to day life, no matter where it might take them. I, I don't know how to, that's just not my style of things. Right. And now farther down, they got our story. That sounds a little bit better. They talk about their humble beginnings.
But I don't see who was the humble beginnings, who are the people that started the company? Are they still there? Why are they so passionate about this? You know what, what's their personal mission and goal. So their, their about is very generic and a little bit corporate is the way I'd say that. Now let's see if I'm being unfair to them. Let's see if there's any other about sort of pages and doesn't look like there is. So that's a pretty bla one. And in most of the fashion BR you know, websites that I've looked at where it's people bringing, you know, bringing together collections of clothing. And one of the things I don't even know with mint Julip is, are these clothes manufactured by them? Are there styles that are designed by them or are they just reselling other people's most of the, the Shopify stores, I, I see they're reselling other people's clothing.
And what you're doing is you're going to that brand because the person or people that are running the brand, you like their sense of style, right? So they talk about those people because their sense of style is what draws you into the brand. I don't see any of that here, which makes you think maybe they're actually manufacturing their own clothing and not reselling, but I didn't see that anywhere. Right? Let me actually just do a quick look on the dress page that we were on before and see if it tells us, or you can pick any dress here. See if it tells us if they make their own clothing,
It says imported. So I'm, I'm gonna guess they're not creating their own clothing. They're just reselling. So in that case, if they're reselling other manufacturer's clothings, I think what works really well in this category. And if it works for them without doing it, it's totally fine. Right. But what I've seen is the people that are making the decisions of what goes into their, their catalog and collections, you know, they make that personal connection, like, Hey, I'm Jane. And you know, here's my story, yada, yada, yada, let's be friends. And let me help you out with getting better fashion and style. So all three of them are, you know, not the, not making that personal connection as much. The, the groove life is making more of a personal connection on their about page. So let's just look at one more page is for fun. And that is contact us. Oh, I clicked on contact us and it took me to patents. So I clicked it wrong, contact us. There we go.
So here on there, contact us. They've got a brand image, which is some guy out in the world this which makes sense for Matador. Cause they're doing the, the hardcore backpacks. They talk about email, phone number. So they're showing their phone number, which I totally love. They also show what their support hours are, which is really good. And you know, they say at their mountain time. So that helps me realize, oh, they're probably in the United States, you know, they're in Colorado. Like they say they are. So that that's all good stuff. I love the fact that they're showing their phone number, not a lot of graphics on this page. There's, you know, no maps, no icons. It's pretty bland and, and text heavy, but you know, it serves the purpose. Let's go to the groove, still the groove life and see if we can find there, contact us page.
I'm actually scrolling around trying to find their contact us page and having a hard time. Their footer is just dark black, I guess. Oh, text us returns. Oh, there we go. It's in their, so they're, they're they have a footer, a footer footer, which is you know, the copyright 20, 22 groove life Corb that has a black background. Then I just assume that was the whole footer above. That is their actual footer, which has menus and customer service and icons, but it's a white background. So I assumed it was part of the page, not part of the footer. And that's just, just me. So let's actually go to the customer service menu and click on contact us <affirmative> so they've got a text us. So, you know, a lot of people have a text message and they've got the text link right there. They talk about returns or exchange. They talk about their warranty. They've got order lookup, sizing guide, email us. So their contact us is even a little bit more functional in just to contact us. Like here's some of the frequently asked questions and here's how you can get support for them. You know, you can look up your order and warranty. So that that's really good. That's a nice page. Now let's look at Mint Julep, we're gonna have to go to the footer to find a contact us.
There we go right there under support. So they have a text only page, which has email phone phone with ours live chat, which brings up a model. It looks like and store locations, which takes you to another page. So a really non-branded non engaging, but completely functional contact us page. All three of these stores had phone numbers, all three had emails, none of them have a form. They're just have an email link. Which, you know, I, I like to provide both, but there's, there's no right or wrong there, but they're all allowing you to contact them and even call them. So all of them were functionally complete. But a little graphically kind of sparse, but there's nothing wrong that, especially on the phone and I'm not gonna look at what these look like on the desktop, but they're very functional. And to the point for the phone, which is nice and, and the links are, you know, like the phone number is a, is a clickable link and the email is a clickable link also.
So in summary, even though I'm being really critical here, I actually think all three of these stores do are doing a really good job. They, they, they know their brand. They're bringing their brand through, they're investing in photography, in videos, in graphics. There's just, I, I think a couple details that I would do differently for them, but all three are, are pretty good stores. I I'll include links to in the show notes to each of the three stores and you can check 'em out for yourselves and see what you think.
So that's it for this episode. Thanks for watching.