Pitstop with Sarah Levinger

Jarrod Steffes from Muddy Bites is back. We're talking Tik Tok today.

• What makes Tik Tok unique, and why brands shy away.
• Creator tools to make videos special like sounds and stickers.
• Trending sounds and verification limitations
• First experiences running Tik Tok ads.

Pitstop is a tactical podcast for DTC/ecommerce/Shopify entrepreneurs to keep their store on the track and winning. Updated a few times a week, these short episodes get right to the point with none of the fluff. Hear real stories from operators and experts to get fast fixes and find free money.

Pitstop is presented by Mesa.

Mentioned in this episode:

Triple Whale - Whale Mail

Muddy Bites is the bottom part of the ice cream cone. Jarrod Steffs joins Pitstop to talk about the challenges of packaging.

• Making sure chocolate doesn't melt before it reaches customers (and enhancing the customer experience)
• Price differences in volume pricing
• What customers are expecting
• Managing customer expectations pre and post purchase

Pitstop is a tactical podcast for DTC/ecommerce/Shopify entrepreneurs to keep their store on the track and winning. Updated a few times a week, these short episodes get right to the point with none of the fluff. Hear real stories from operators and experts to get fast fixes and find free money.

Pitstop is presented by Mesa.

Mentioned in this episode:

Triple Whale - Whale Mail

David Foulstone is marketing director at Swan Brands. He shares some of the struggle, and opportunity of the UK market.

Pitstop is a tactical podcast for DTC/ecommerce/Shopify entrepreneurs to keep their store on the track and winning. Updated a few times a week, these short episodes get right to the point with none of the fluff. Hear real stories from operators and experts to get fast fixes and find free money.

Pitstop is presented by Mesa.

Mentioned in this episode:

Triple Whale - Whale Mail

David Foulstone is back, talking about their BFCM and how they used Nostalgia during their 90th birthday celebration.

To tap into their business buyers and consumers, Swan recreated Monica from Friends apartment and went live.

Pitstop is a tactical podcast for DTC/ecommerce/Shopify entrepreneurs to keep their store on the track and winning. Updated a few times a week, these short episodes get right to the point with none of the fluff. Hear real stories from operators and experts to get fast fixes and find free money.

Pitstop is presented by Mesa.

Mentioned in this episode:

Triple Whale - Whale Mail

How does a 90 year old brand, that pioneered the electric kettle, keep invigorating? By being a 90 year old startup.

David Foulstone, marketing director at Swan brands, joins me to talk about managing partnerships with retailers while selling online.

Dropship and fulfilled by is a strategy you can use to build relationships with your suppliers and grow sales.

Pitstop is a tactical podcast for DTC/ecommerce/Shopify entrepreneurs to keep their store on the track and winning. Updated a few times a week, these short episodes get right to the point with none of the fluff. Hear real stories from operators and experts to get fast fixes and find free money.

Pitstop is presented by Mesa.

Mentioned in this episode:

Triple Whale - Whale Mail

Typically, any business be it online or offline seeks to deliver their service in the most efficient way possible, getting the customer in, getting them their order, and getting them out so you can repeat the cycle at a high rate. Anything that got in the way, or slowed down this process, is called "friction", and it's the big bad F-word of the commercial world.

Contrary to this widely held belief though, not all business related friction is bad. That's what Phillip Jackson found out when he and Rightpoint set out to study customer behaviour and buying habits.

Good Friction Vs Bad Friction

There are two types of business friction, generally defined as Good Friction and Bad Friction.

• Good Friction - Something in the buying process that allows a customer to engage further with your brand a product, without interrupting their purchasing of the product
• Bad Friction - Something in the buying process that slows the process without adding any value to the customer in return, creating "speedbumps" between them and completing their purchase

"How do I tell good friction from bad?" 

Where friction is placed in the shopping process is a good indicator, and knowing how shoppers approach your customer support experience is the best way to determine if you've applied too much or too little friction.

The vast majority of post-purchase customers contact service for two reasons:

1. Delivery questions
2. Return questions

There's a smaller but potentially helpful third reason though;

          3. Can you help me with more information?

Whereas any interruption that addresses the first two before checkout will be seen as bad friction, slowing the process to provide unwanted annoyance, one that provides the details of the third (accounting for around a third itself of all customers) before the customer either checks out, or has to return themselves to ask the detailed extra questions, is good friction, helping them to make a better purchase and have a better overall experience.

Examples of Customer Experience  Design Centric Friction

Pop-up assistants, preferred by almost 30% of all customers, are an excellent example of how to use good friction, and how it could result in bad friction. 

• If a customer arrives at your store, and is unsure what to get, a pop-up assistant, like an in-store assistant, can be very helpful in pointing in the  right direction. It is a form of friction, because you have interrupted their shopping flow, but it's good friction because it has actually accelerated their buying experience, delivered through a positive brand engagement. This means that the shopper not only has what they want faster, but now trust your company a little more.
• If however the pop-up needlessly interrupts someone going through the checkout, product in cart with their shopping experience nearly finished, this previously good example breaks bad. The customer has now been slowed unnecessarily, and will carry a negative association not only with your product, but with the feature itself.

Another good use of these chat features, which can be either automated or human-driven, is to offer customers ways that they could fix any problems they have themselves while waiting for escalation, empowering them to feel responsible for their own good outcome with your product and brand, with even less needed interaction or engagement.

The happier the customer is, the better their customer experience through either applied good friction or a noted lack of bad friction, the more likely they'll return to buy again.

Our Sponsors

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'Optimizing your Technical SEO' may sound like a big, scary and expensive process, with with a little help from a few handy apps, it's no more than another step towards your traffic goals.

Here are Ben's top 5 take-aways for Technical SEO

• 1:22 Product Schema. Google doesn't treat all search results the same, and presents them to users with clearly market favourites. Those golden-starred front-runners in the search response are using a piece of code that's available to you, usually through your review app, that syncs the product reviews in your shop with Google. Once installed, you can expect to see results within days.
• 3:20 Broken Internal & External Links. If Google can't follow a link into, around or out of your store, then it's not going to include any of the affected pages in search results. Use a broken-link-checker app frequently to make sure your links are active, internally & externally.
• 5:28 Orphaned Pages. No blog post or content should stand alone, and if Google can't find a way to a  page on your site, it will never get traffic. Be sure that every page is linked to at least 5 other pages on your site, either with related links in the content or standard links to shop sections
• 6:34 Broken JS Code. The bane of many merchants, broken JS code are parts of old apps and features still left in your shop's site that can cause endless errors for you and your users, and disrupt Google's web crawlers. Make sure all previous apps have always been properly uninstalled and fully removed with an online scanner.
• 8:05 Links To MyShopify.com URL. Every Shopify store gets an initial MyShopify.com URL that hosts your content until you've purchased and set up your final brand URL, and often these will be used to link pages together when building a site. Make sure after you're done that you relink all of these back to your brand URL, or MyShopify.com will eat your traffic.

Our Sponsors

Omnisend - ShipBob - Gorgias

Mentioned in this episode:

Triple Whale - Whale Mail

It doesn't matter how good the sales figures are, when store owners are told their best bet for a positive influencer-relationship is to simply give some of their product away, they start having second thoughts. 

"Shouldn't I get something in return?"

When you work in the world of e-commerce, so much of your life revolves around transactions, and it can seem very strange to offer costly items in return for no guaranteed promotional content.

The secret, explains Lagace, is to trust your influencers and trust your product.

• A properly curated and chosen list of essential influencers, chosen for their potential interest in your product and approached in a friendly, non-transactional manner, will return positive responses and posts from at least 30% of recipients, many of who will make at least two pieces of content

If that's just 100 items sent to 100 influencers, you've generated between 30 and 60+ promotional spots. Most influencers who see positive responses to a product will also agree to share the usage rights to any created content, with the understanding that continuing the relationship would be mutually profitable and beneficial. 

Now it's time to get transactional.

Once you've purchased the usage rights to a dozen or so of the best performing responses from the most reliable influencers, establishing the explicit transactional nature of the relationship, offer to take it to the next level with exclusive contracts.

This is where you'll be able to set clear terms and openly state your expectations, while paying your content creators drastically less than if you hadn't invested in winning them over with some low-cost gifted product and a small investment in their earlier promotional content.

Never stop seeding for new influencers.

Always be on the lookout for the next big name and face to push your product and spread brand awareness, while keeping your best and brightest curious and interested.  Repeat this process constantly to ensure a steady flow of cost-effective, engaging and genuine promotional content.

Pitstop is a tactical podcast for DTC/ecommerce/Shopify entrepreneurs to keep their store on the track and winning. Updated a few times a week, these short episodes get right to the point with none of the fluff. Hear real stories from operators and experts to get fast fixes and find free money.

Pitstop is presented by Mesa.

Mentioned in this episode:

Triple Whale - Whale Mail

Pitstop is a tactical podcast for DTC/ecommerce/Shopify entrepreneurs to keep their store on the track and winning. Updated a few times a week, these short episodes get right to the point with none of the fluff. Hear real stories from operators and experts to get fast fixes and find free money.

Pitstop is presented by Mesa.

Things to take away from this episode.

1:30 Types of chargebacks. Service-related chargebacks are for things like an order not showing up, or not as described. Alternatively they call their bank and call fraud. 

3:05 Card not present. When a fraudulent purchase is made in person, the liability is on the bank, but online that liability, even for fraud chargebacks is on the merchant.

7:58 Review the reason codes of your chargeback, but take it with a gain of salt. If there are common issues like “not as described, or order didn’t arrive” you can adjust your descriptions, follow up, etc.

9:06 Make it obvious who they’re buying from. This include on your credit card statement the part that shows up as “sp*yourstore.com”and can be edited in your Shopify admin under /admin/settings/payments https://monosnap.com/file/x3hFgYMYaEhaWCuZPzKp4Dvq97YsEV

9:20 Have a phone number, especially if your customers are a bit older.

12:00 For subscription-based businesses, Chargebacks can be issued for up to 3 months of services, and making it known you can cancel makes customers feel safe. Don’t make your customers feel like they’re ordering from an adult video store to cancel meat box subscription.

14:06 Having clear policies, particularly your refund policy. They can be an insurance policy for if you do get a chargeback. Being able to show what you did to help customers will go a long way.

Tactics to reduce service related chargebacks

• Work with quality suppliers and partners. Test your fulfilment centre, and make sure you’re working with one that offers a guarantee.
• Clearly communicate what’s happening with orders. If there are delays, or items are out of stock, don’t hide.
• Don’t act like an adult website for subscription based business, and make it easy to cancel at any time.
• Adjust your messaging on site, and through your pre-and post purchase automations.

Mentioned in this episode:

Triple Whale - Whale Mail

August Noble, seasoned ad buyer, and founder of AOV Boost shares some of his tips to increase tour ad conversions and free up more ad budget.

• If advertising a discount code, add "today" in the copy like promo code TENTODAY for 10% off today. It naturally creates urgency.
• Instagram stories ads continue to convert well, and give you formats perfect for Snapchat and Tik Tok.
• Nothing beats understanding your customers, and what they like, but it's important to understand the nuances of each platform.
• Why the best ads make customer feel noticed, show the product, and tell a story in under 15 seconds.

Pitstop is a tactical podcast for DTC/ecommerce/Shopify entrepreneurs to keep their store on the track and winning. Updated a few times a week, these short episodes get right to the point with none of the fluff. Hear real stories from operators and experts to get fast fixes and find free money.

Pitstop is presented by Mesa.

Mentioned in this episode:

Triple Whale - Whale Mail