On Episode 15 of Optily Radio, Chase Clymer, Co-Founder of Electric Eye, let us pick his brain on his process of onboarding and diving into helping brands succeed on Shopify. He’s a big fan of implementing the funnel structure when it comes to marketing and identifies as a Shopify fanboy.
While Chase and the Electric Eye team specialize in Shopify, they are aware that there are tons of options out there that work for different business needs.
For Chase, the strategy and method for tackling a unique business problem are key here, rather than the individual platforms.
That being said, they work exclusively with companies running on Shopify. During our half-hour chat, Brendan Hughes and I heard Chase’s take on several topics, including:
- Red flags to watch out for and customer onboarding
- The crucial element of ensuring proper customer research
- Planning for the holiday season well ahead of time
We’ll go into some of these topics below, but it’s best to just hear from the horse’s mouth directly. Check out the preview clip and full audio:
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Who are Chase and Brendan?
Chase Clymer, as I’ve mentioned, is the Co-Founder of Electric Eye, a Shopify development and marketing agency. He’s also got his own eCommerce podcast, Honest eCommerce, which you should definitely also check out as he’s been running his show weekly for much longer and has had some amazing guests on (including one coming up soon with our own Brendan Hughes).
Brendan Hughes, Optily’s CEO, is a frequent guest of the show and a long-time digital marketer who’s worked on both the ad buying and ad selling sides of the business. He’s also written a guidebook for eCommerce business looking to scale through online advertising, Accelerate eCommerce Growth.
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Starting with Shopify
The first step when it comes to any new client Chase works with is doing an in-depth review of their current practices to evaluate easy quick wins. For example, he mentioned if the store was obviously not mobile-friendly, that would be a really quick way to boost conversions from a huge potential customer base the client was currently missing out on.
It’s crucial to really dive into what the current process is, what has been done, and to figure out gaps in order to create a workable strategy. Customers might assume that marketers and developers can come in with tons of suggestions right at the start, but without knowing more about the company, the goals, and the current approach, a tailored strategy for success isn’t possible.
Ensure Product/Market Fit
Another point Chase emphasizes is that no matter how good the marketing and website is, if the product just isn’t good or there isn’t a market for it, then it’s simply not going to sell. We’ve talked about the importance of customer research a lot on this show, but before that step, you need to figure out if your customer base even exists in sufficient enough numbers.
Chase can’t stress the importance of ample market research before even launching your eCommerce store. You need to make sure that people actually are interested in your product, enough so that they’ll pre-order it before it’s even in production. Get people to put their money where their mouth is (with a significant discount in the early days, of course) and that will help you validate your offering.
No big changes in Q4
When asked if he had any tips for the pre-holiday season, Chase simply said, “You should already know what you’re doing.“
He and his team at Electric Eye send out reminders to all their clients in late summer to urge them to start planning for Black Friday and other holiday offers. If you’re only in your ideation phase now, you’re very late to the game and it’s going to be really hard to pull off.
Chase also always makes sure that there are no big website changes in the two months before Black Friday, just in case anything negatively impacts performance, rankings, or UX.
