Melanie
The Monday Morning Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Esther of IPA Group, bringing premier online promotion to your business.
Esther
And Melanie of Stump Social Media Training, who empowers business owners to manage social media and marketing for themselves. And we're back with another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. Today we're talking about Shopify with Michelle Duffy-Rudden, team lead of support advisors at Shopify itself. Welcome, Michelle.
Michelle Duffy
Hi, thanks for having me.
Esther
It's great that you could join us.
Melanie
Today and it is an absolute delight to have somebody we have known for a number of years now.
Esther
Oh, sure, you're showing her age.
Michelle Duffy
Well, three of those years are pretty much paused, right?
Esther
Yeah. Null and void. Null and void. So, Michelle, what is Shopify? For those that have been living under a rock or just ignoring things for the last few years, what is Shopify?
Michelle Duffy
So, Esther, I'm going to start with what it isn't. And it's not a music streaming platform. I do not work for Spotify. It's the other one.
Esther
Funny enough, when I sent Melanie a message before recording this to say we're talking to Michelle about Shopify, right? The phone changed it to Spotify. It must not like Shopify.
Michelle Duffy
We're going to have to talk about what model of phone that was later. Shopify is a commerce platform where people can start, run and grow their business. So for people who don't necessarily want to learn coding or have lots of moving parts of their business in different places, it's an Out-of-the-Box platform where you can very easily set up an e-commerce website. So meaning not just an information website, but one that actually takes transactions, has a checkout and they can sell on there in a simple way or as complex as they want to make it.
Esther
Okay, because we hear about WordPress websites and they have the WooCommerce. And is this competition to WooCommerce, does it work with WordPress? Does it work with web flow? Does it work with all existing website platforms, builders? Or is it standalone on its own? This is its own website builder, if you know what I mean.
Michelle Duffy
Yeah, it is a standalone all in solution. So people don't need to have a WordPress website. Plus Shopify. Now, if somebody has a lot of work and a lot of investment of time and money put into a website on another platform, or maybe something started as just a brochure website, just needs information, just a blog, for example, and now wants to monetize that and actually sell on that same site, they can use Shopify as an extension of that. So you can just have a buy button. Basically. We've got a really cheap plan for that. So it means you don't have a storefront and your customers don't come to Shopify to just to Shop. Shopify is empowering the checkout that's happening when they're on your WordPress blog and hit a buy button.
Esther
Okay, so say you're selling a book or something.
Michelle Duffy
Yeah. So somebody has a lot put into a blog, maybe for SEO reasons. Everything is, you know, you don't want to just migrate everything over and one fell swoop. You can do that more gradually and maybe like that, have some merch or a book or tickets to something, something that you actually want to sell on a website that previously didn't sell, then you can use shopify for that one step. But honestly, having everything in one place is so much easier to manage everything from one admin dashboard, SEO wise, it's better to have everything in one place than having one link that leads to another link that leads to another link. It's a better customer experience, too.
Esther
Yeah, that's what I was going to say. People don't like to have to click too many links either. So is this similar or different in that the buy now button to stripe.
Michelle Duffy
So stripe then would be your payment processor, so it's kind of another layer behind that again. And we have shopify payments, which is powered by stripe, so that is our own payment gateway. So once people are eligible to use that, they're getting 0% transaction fees charged if they're using shopify payments. So your shopify store is your website. There's a really fast user friendly checkout in every shopify store, and then when somebody gets to the checkout to buy whatever they've put in their cart, they'll have payment options that could be shopify payments. You can also have other ones then, so some people would choose to have PayPal on there as well, and there's lots of reasons for that. It's a really trusted payment gateway by customers. So when you're trying to build trust and build your audience, if somebody reaches that point, great. So they've clicked through your ad or they've heard about you somewhere, they've shopped your store, they've added to cart, they've taken a few steps, and you're like, yeah, we nearly have the sale. And then if they doubt you at all at that point, if you haven't built that trust online yet, and they see PayPal, they know that, okay, I can choose PayPal here, and I feel protected as a customer.
Michelle Duffy
Lots and lots of people are trusting the shop pay as well. So shopify payments is our processor, and then shop pay is our kind of express checkout, where once they've shopped on, the shopify store previously doesn't have to be yours. Doesn't have to be yours. Exactly.
Esther
Yeah, somebody else's.
Michelle Duffy
Yeah. And I mean, there's 2 million shopify merchants around the world. So even if you're listening to this, thinking, oh, this is interesting, I haven't heard about this platform, you've definitely bought from a shopify merchant at some stage. So once you've done that before, you can opt into saving your shipping details, your card details, and therefore, if you're in the pyjamas and you're two glasses of wine in and you're like, I don't want to get up and get my card, your device can remember it for you. So it just texts you a six digit code to prove it's you. And it's so in two clicks, they've checked out. So for the people listening to this, who are trying to make it as easy as possible for people to spend money with you, like, all the hard work is done at that stage, your marketing is done, your SEO is right, the user experience on your store was good. You don't want it to fail at that point where the checkout process is clunky.
Esther
Exactly.
Melanie
So, as you know, just so that everybody remembers, I am still here. As you know, we have an audience in various countries, Michelle, because you listen to us all the time, don't you, Michelle?
Michelle Duffy
I do.
Melanie
They all do, don't they?
Michelle Duffy
Heard the Monday Morning Marketing podcast.
Esther
Hey, we don't mind when you listen to it on a Monday morning. It's up to you when you can.
Michelle Duffy
You know what I do with yours because it's so short? I save them up and I listen to a few in a row because.
Melanie
I've heard that before, actually. I've heard several people do that, actually. But as you know, we've got an audience in several countries. So is shopify something that's available to everybody in every country or is it really only in the larger countries?
Michelle Duffy
That's a great question. I know there are a few territories we're not in yet, and it's mostly down to government and legal reasons that we're not in certain far flung places. Most of your listeners are UK, Ireland, us. So we're certainly in all of those and all European countries. We're not trading with Russia right now, so there's a few exceptions, but, yeah, we are very global.
Esther
And languages, then. Sorry, beat me too.
Melanie
I was going to ask that.
Esther
One is bilingual, one here, so have to beat me down. That's good.
Melanie
I'm doing Spanish lessons at the moment.
Michelle Duffy
Okay.
Melanie
I'm in the Emerald League now, simply.
Esther
Having the Monday morning marketing podcast in Spanish.
Melanie
That would be of interest.
Michelle Duffy
Yeah. Our help, documentation, all that kind of stuff is available in multiple languages. We offer multiple language support when people want to contact us for help. And you can have your store in multiple languages as well, and you can offer it in multiple currencies. So if you want to localise it, if you are selling to several countries, you can localise it as much as possible. This always comes back to the customer experience, the buyer experience and making that better. And then your actual store currency would be in whichever one you choose. So, like that you could be in Ireland but choose to trade in US dollars. Yeah. So you choose which one of those makes more sense for your kind of reporting and accounting. So, yeah, we are multilingual, multi currency. And then it'll pick up the buyer's IP address and say, hey, looks like you're shopping from Ireland. Do you want to see this? In English and use Euros, you know, and if somebody wants to choose to not go for that language recurrency, they can still choose those from a little dropdown.
Esther
Okay, so we've covered what it is. We've covered how you can use it. We've covered the languages and stuff that it goes in. But who would really benefit from using Shopify? I mean, if you have a store.
Melanie
With your ideal cafe.
Esther
Can you use it? Or is it more for people with one to 100 products?
Michelle Duffy
This is terrible advice if you were marketing. But we sued everybody. So this is what we would always say when we're teaching people to market, is you can't actually sell it to everybody, but Shopify is a little bit bigger than most of our small businesses, and they actually can. So whether it is I mean, my first Shopify store was Secondhand Kids Close ten years ago. So 2012 ecommerce was a different world. Secondhand Kids close because I was trying to manage so many, hey, can I buy this through messages on a Facebook page? It can be somebody with a little side hustle at their kitchen table, and it can be some of the biggest brands in the world and everything in between. And we've also seen people go from the kitchen table side hustle right through to the growth, right up to IPO going public. So our motto is we're there from Hello World to IPO.
Melanie
I remember, hello world. Now, I wanted to ask, there are some people who have set up a business, and they've got their websites, and then they've decided, okay, I'm now ready to add on, especially over here in Ireland. We've had the trading online voucher, and they've decided that this great opportunity to take advantage of that and add a shop. Does that mean they have to get rid of their old shop or can shopify attach.
Michelle Duffy
It can attach. They don't have to get rid of the old shop. Now, what I've seen in Ireland with that trading online voucher is that they're attached to their old, emotionally attached to that old website, because they're like, we've put years and blood and sweat and tears into this. But is it fulfilling its purpose? If it is, great, but it's possibly slow loading, not optimised for the future. And so if they want, they can absolutely just use us like a plugin, and we just become the Ecommerce bit. That's fine. And like I say, we have a really cheap plan for that. I'll cheque and I will send you some links that you can send out after. I think it's about $14, maybe $9 for that, where we're just the buy button. If somebody's going to the bother of applying for a grant and they're going through all that paperwork and going to seminars and listen to this one and listen to that one, I would say it's time to just have a clean start to do things right going forward. And even if that means a lot of work right now, it's future proof in your business.
Michelle Duffy
Whereas painting over a crack is not necessarily always having the same solution. Long term, it might be a good way for them to try us out and say, what is Shopify like in terms of support? You know, signing up for our emails and seeing explore in the platform a bit more. That online trading voucher can be used for. Shopify say they went for our basic plan is $29 a month. If you pay for that annually, you save 10%. So, like lots of subscriptions, it's this price for a month, you pay for a full year upfront, you get a discount. Great. You can bring that receipt and get 50% of that back from your online trading voucher if you want to pay for two years upfront 15% discount. And it works out that if people want to make the commitment now, I understand they're going to have to explore the platform and make sure it's the right fit for them. But that trading voucher can also be used to improve existing websites. I'd say talk to several experts and talk to Shopify Support and talk to support in other platforms too, and see that grant money is precious, right?
Michelle Duffy
And you also have to come up with the cash to make the outlay and redeem it back again. So I would say just do lots of research there and talk to existing shopify stores as well. See if you can see somebody in your local area and ask them if they got a Shopify store. Notice when you're shopping yourself who's on Shopify. Even ping a random stranger on LinkedIn and say, hey, I noticed your business is on Shopify. How do you find it? Get some honest feedback, because that's where you're going to see if it's a good fit for you and where to invest that grant. It can also be spent on things that improve even if they're already on Shopify or they join Shopify free trial after here and this and think, okay, now what? When I need good photography, possibly video content. And this is where they can hire people like you, both of you, to create the content or direct the photography or whatever it is, give them advice and tips, and then when they get your invoice, they get half of that back from the trading voucher. So it's not just about which platform are you paying a bill to, it's about what is this doing for your business long term?
Michelle Duffy
There's a Shopify Partners programme, so I know a lot of your listeners will be the people in our network and our community for years whose main gig is helping other small businesses to sell their thing. Shopify Partners has specific support there, so when you've got a partner dashboard, you can build shopify stores for other people. It is a very simple DIY platform for people who don't know any coding or any development skills. But then if people do have those or want to further edit things and develop things and break things, they can do that too. They can do that. You can edit the code, it's accessible there. Most people don't want to hear things, but if people want to develop stores for other people, then they should be shopify partners, because you then can build the store in development mode and hand it over when it's ready. And then the partner gets a commission. Basically, percentage, when that merchant, as we call them, the business owner, is paying their shopify bill every month or every year. The partner that built it for them is getting a cut of that every month.
Melanie
So just the one off every month.
Michelle Duffy
So it's whatever their monthly subscription is you're getting. So it's like a residual income. So you can build them. That's between you what? You build them for the build, then you hand it over, then their relationship is between themselves and shopify. They can lean on us for support. 24/7. We've got live chats, we've got phone calls. Actual human beings on the phone.
Esther
That's impressive.
Michelle Duffy
Actual human beings on the chat. I know we're still here. Or emails. If people don't have the time for that live conversation, it can go over and back. But that instant support from a real human is really, really valuable as part of the subscription. And like I say, there's specific specialists there to help partners with their stock. So I would say to lots of people who are in the business of helping others get online or improving that that's what you could spend your voucher onto, is hiring a good shopify partner. And anybody who feels they're leaving money on the table and maybe is already doing this and helping people to improve their shopify store or even to market their shopify store, they should be in the partners programme.
Melanie
Now, I just want to take you back a few beats when you were talking about how people are emotionally attached to their websites. But there's also an element of, I've got this website, it's been around for a number of years, it's got good SEO. Surely if I start up a brand new website, I have to start again. How do you overcome that, Michelle?
Michelle Duffy
I mean, I've had these conversations with people who say, I hear what you're saying. I just wish we had a fence shop a year ago or two years ago, because now we've paid this person or this company or the agency or whatever, 20 grand and we're stuck with this website. So, you know, they're not easy conversations. And there are people out there, as we know, in the market, who take advantage and charge a fortune for building websites that don't really work, or don't work for that industry, or don't work without another 20 grand cent on marketing or something. I'd say you have to look at what is the right thing for your business. And there's always going to be some point in your business where you have to do something that like, let's say when I packed in the funky crayon business, it was the right thing to do, but it broke my heart. Sometimes there are times but there are times when you have to say, that product is not making money or that staff member is not right for this business or that supplier that we've had this relationship with all these years.
Michelle Duffy
So, no, personally is too expensive, we're going to have to drop them. There are times when you have to make decisions in your business and you have to kind of park your feelings and say, what's the right thing to do here? Going forward?
Esther
Especially right now, with the recession and the cost of living and everything else, you have to decide where your money is best spent.
Michelle Duffy
Yeah. And it's a mindset thing of, okay, you've put all this time and money, but it's in the past. If you could go back again, would you spend it all the same again? No. Okay, cool. You have this information now, what are you going to do with it? And we can all think of big brands who stayed stuck in a rut for too long and didn't move with the times or wasted money, then realised it and didn't change their mind. I think changing your mind on any element of your business is a mindset thing.
Melanie
Well, I think that's maybe why some people prefer not to go the whole hog and they just have the shopify elements put onto their website because they've still got their presence. I'm not a website person just for anybody listening. I never have claimed to be. But can you do like a redirect? Esther michelle, can you have your existing website and it redirects to the new shopify website? Does that work?
Esther
Yeah, but I mean, this is one of the questions that I was going to ask you, Michelle. You can have a shopify website without it saying, like, the Mondaymoneymarketing shopify.com, right?
Michelle Duffy
Yeah. You can attach your custom domain or several of them, so when you open your trial account and get started, you're given whatever name you choose. myshopify.com. But very few people would actually leave it like that and market it as that because you want it to be branded as your business. So lots of times when you shop on Blah blah blah.com UK, you're on a shopify store, but it's the whole look and feel of it. You can remove any trace of shopify if you want. It's not like when you're shopping on a big marketplace where you're just lost in this big brand name and you just want the product shipped as quickly as possible. It's not like that. It's your own website, and therefore, if there's content that should live, there an About US page that tells your story, video about the product or service or your story, blog posts, any sort of information pages, you can customise the product pages whatever way you want. So things like return rates would be on a lot of people's minds that, OK, ecommerce is great, but we're making these sales and then we have to factor in the cost of returns and clothing in particular.
Michelle Duffy
So the more information that you have on a product page the better. So if you can have some sort of sizing table, you can have photos of people and give the measurements of the human modelling, the clothes. If you can have just a 360 spin of something in a little GIF, those things all help to convert someone because they realise, OK, this is what I'm buying. And all the questions they're mentally asking themselves, they will have answered on the product page. And it reduces the people buying things where it's not a good fit or doesn't do the thing they wanted it to do. So it should lower the return rate. You can do all of that and reviews.
Esther
Can people write and give you five stars?
Michelle Duffy
Yup. And so this is where our App store would come in. So we've got over 3000 apps. They would be the same as plugins in the WordPress world. So if there's an extra feature that we don't have built in natively for every merchant, so the likes of product reviews, we've got a free app built by Shopify that you can bring in. You can also bring in Google reviews. So if you've got stuff, this is where the conversation keeps going back to people moving over. And I know if you've got thinking about everything lives in all these different places and it's so much work to start again. It's not starting again, it's actually tidying everything up into one place so that you can manage things like inventory your email marketing, your Facebook ads, your Instagram ads, your Google shopping, all of that can be done from your Shopify admin. You're just connecting your business to all these things that you have in different places.
Esther
I mean, who doesn't want a simpler life?
Michelle Duffy
Yeah. Especially if people are at the hiring stage. So even you might not be like, oh yeah, we're taking on ten staff. It's a huge step for a small business to hire somebody one person part time that still feels like a massive growth step in a small business. So there might be parts of it that you want the staff member to have access to, but not others. So you might be like, I'd love.
Melanie
To make lists and that sort of thing.
Michelle Duffy
Yeah. And you could have somebody who can see orders and how much money has been made and all that, and somebody else then who doesn't, you know? And this is where you have control over what's happening in your business.
Melanie
So Shopify is suitable for control freaks?
Michelle Duffy
Yep.
Esther
And those who aren't control freaks as well.
Michelle Duffy
But you know, as a business owner, you need eyes on everything.
Melanie
Absolutely.
Michelle Duffy
You might want to we were talking.
Melanie
About mostly people being sole traders and they are going to be wearing all their hats, you know, so I was joking.
Michelle Duffy
Yeah, but, you know, I mean, it might be the kindest way to say it, but it's back to that thing of this resistance, maybe, of like yeah, but we've put so much time into this thing. Yeah. And it is a mindset shift that real entrepreneurship needs, that growth mindset of let's do this and see what happens.
Esther
Exactly. Take the leap. Okay. You mentioned about a free trial. Where can people go and cheque it out?
Michelle Duffy
Yeah. So shopify.com, they can sign up for a 14 day free trial. You don't have to have everything done in 14 days. So some businesses will take much longer than that by the time they list their inventory. Or you could be waiting for other stakeholders to get those photos over to you. Or, you know, we're still maybe procrastinating right, those product descriptions, whatever it is. But 14 days until we would charge you and then like, say the basic plan is roughly €30. I'm going to say that, but it's less than that. And you have support from day one, though.
Esther
And even during the trial?
Michelle Duffy
Even during the trial. And even if you weren't ready, say if you were ready and you had everything you need, you've got all your assets, you've got all your content, you only sell one product and you spent the first few days on and you're like, this is ready, this is ready to launch. All you have to do is pick a plan to have an active checkout and launch publicly and we still wouldn't charge you until day 14. So hypothetically, you could actually be up running, selling before we even charge you. Now, it takes most people, the bulk of that free trial. What I would say is don't leave until the night of day 13 to start. Which can happen too. But I mean, at a price like that, some people are paying that subscription and still building this thing behind the scenes, getting it ready.
Melanie
Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for coming on and explaining how shopify works. It's been an area that's always been a bit of a mystery to me, to be honest, because I don't have a shop and so I've learnt quite a bit today and I might even make inquiries about becoming a partner.
Michelle Duffy
Free to sign up. And the other thing is a shopify store, you know, when we would have worked together selling courses and training, you know, if you put a package together and call out a product you are selling.
Esther
Yeah, that's true. Most people sell without knowing that they're selling. Brilliant. Thanks so much for joining us today, Michelle. We'll be back next week with more Monday morning marketings. Until then, bye bye.
Michelle Duffy
Bye bye.
Melanie
See you remember to say goodbye.
Michelle Duffy
Bye. Bye.
Melanie
Yeah, shopify a bit of a mystery to me, I've got to be honest with you. That's why you're here.
Esther
Michelle, how about the number of questions that we've been asked? What is shopify?
Michelle Duffy
I don't know.
Esther
This brand the expert.
Melanie
Yeah, I mean, your websites. But you're just not that kind of website.
Esther
No. Well, we did the odds ecommerce.
Melanie
But not shopify.
Esther
No, not shopify. But we need to look into it. Not shopify yet.
Michelle Duffy
Not yeah, because even with your level of developer knowledge, that partner programme, somebody hired you and.