Arlen
[00:00:32]
Welcome to the e-commerce marketing podcast. Everyone. I am your host Arlen Robinson. And today we have a very special guest, Ruth Even Haim who is the Co-founder of StilyoApps – apps made by merchants, for merchants. As a merchant on the Shopify platform, she recognized a lot of needs that were not yet solved, and decided to start developing apps for the platform, focusing on creating apps helping merchants automate processes on their store and increase their revenue. Welcome to the podcast, Ruth.

Ruth
[00:01:09]
Hey, thank you for having me.

Arlen
[00:01:11]
Oh, you’re welcome. And I’m super excited to talk to you about Shopify because I am a huge Shopify advocate. We’ve got a lot of Shopify customers here at OmniSTAR and I think it’s in my opinion, one of the best shop and cart platforms, but I know we have listeners that are using a variety of different platforms. So these strategies are applicable to really any eCommerce business. But before we get into the topic of today, which is increasing customer retention and improving the average order value, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and specifically how you got into what you’re doing today?

Ruth
[00:01:46]
Yeah, so like you mentioned, I was a merchant first before we started developing Shopify apps. And honestly, my brother is the one who got me into eCommerce and Shopify specifically, he owned a Shopify PLA store that was doing pretty good. And he got me interested in trying to start with eCommerce myself, and it started taking off. We started making money, but then my brother and I who’s also my business partner. Actually, we decided to go into apps. We just saw how many apps we were using in our stores that were helping us make more money. And we just figured out that there are some things we were still missing, but could probably do a little better than existing apps that we saw on the market. Right. So that’s really how we decided to start with developing apps for the platform. Yeah. And the idea to focus on the thank you page really came out of just looking at the big platforms like Amazon and eBay and how they use the thank you page, which is something that at the moment Shopify merchant can really do without a third party app.

Arlen
[00:02:56]
Great. And as far as you know, e-commerce businesses are concerned. I know a lot of business owners and e-commerce businesses all over. They’re always focused on sales, driving sales, sales, sales, and we wanna wanna increase the sales. We wanna do as much as we can to increase our monthly sales. That’s always such a huge focus, but I think a lot of times businesses fail to think about retaining existing customers that they have and improving the experience that their current customers have and, and then getting more out of their existing customers. So why, why really is it that increasing customer retention and improving the overall average order value is so important these days?

Ruth
[00:03:37]
So really the big point about customer retention is that if you look at your business as something that you wanna do, long term, you have to focus on retention. Customer acquisition is great, and it’s very exciting to get a new customer, but a lot of data and statistics show that customers who buy for the second, third, fifth time, just spend more money than customers who buy for the first time can be all the way up to five times more on the second purchase. So that’s one reason why you really want to get people to buy again and not only buy once, but even more. So it’s just about the fact that there is in the end, whatever niche you choose to focus on, there is a limited number of people that you can get to buy from you, right? So you don’t wanna waste each person who buys as just a one time customer. You wanna turn them into long term fans, into people who are loyal to your brand. And that’s the only way to really make sure that your business has the ability to live in the long term.

Arlen
[00:04:40]
Definitely. And what you said definitely makes sense. As far as consumers typically purchase more the second, third time around fourth and fifth times around. And I think really all of that comes down to the fact that they’re now familiar with the brand. They’ve had a positive experience. And a lot of times, I, I know just from my own experiences, when I’m purchasing from maybe a new merchant, I’m not gonna spend the whole farm, my first purchase. Cause I don’t have any experience with this company. And you know, it may be a product I’m gonna just try to test something out, something small, just say, okay, let me see how this is. Let’s say I’m buying some clothes. I may buy, let’s say a men’s shirt before I buy three and four different styles at once. I’m gonna just try one. I’m gonna see how the fit is.

Arlen
[00:05:24]
I’m gonna see how I like it, cuz you know, there’s no sense in ordering a whole lot. And then if you’re not satisfied, you’re having to, you know, deal with the returns and all of that. So it really makes sense that the subsequent purchases are gonna be of a higher value because after that initial point, if they are satisfied and they’re happy with the product and they’re experience, they’re gonna go, come, come back and order more. So that really totally makes a lot of sense. And I can see how that can ring true with consumers these days. Now, what are some effective ways you mentioned, you know, keeping these customers and, and really kind of pulling as much out of ’em as you possibly can. What are some effective ways to do a post-purchase upsell without turning off customers? Because I know sometimes when you throw a lot at a customer it’s, you know, it can be too much. And then, you know, how do you kind of define what’s enough as far as a post purchase offer?

Ruth
[00:06:20]
Yeah. So I think how many upsells you can get away with without overwhelming your customer is really individual to each business and each store. But as a general guidelines in reconvert, we always give a lot of options. And there’s a lot of things that you can add to the thank you page, but we always tell customers not to add all of them because obviously it will overwhelm your customers. You want them to know what you want them to do. So they shouldn’t get to the page and feel like they’ll get in sales and popups popping up from everywhere. Just like you wouldn’t want it to happen in any other page in the store. Generally, most people add somewhere between one to three upsells on the page and then maybe two or three more widgets that are not upsell that are things like birthday collector or a post purchase survey, something that shows your customers that you’re interested in connecting with them in hearing what they have to say and not just in getting them to buy again now to really get the sell to be effective.

Ruth
[00:07:23]
One of the best things to do is actually give a bigger discount than whatever you are giving anyone else in your store. So if your customers can just opt into your email distribution list and get a 10% of everything in the store, if you give them another 10% on the thank you page, it’s not going to be as effective. So you wanna do a higher percentage than you give anyone else. That’s one thing that really makes the upsell stand out more and be more attractive to the customers so that they actually want to make use of it because it’s something more exclusive and not as common as anything else.

Arlen
[00:08:02]
Yeah, that’s so true. Cuz I have experiences in myself where, like you said, you can always offer a 10% discount anywhere. That’s kind of standard companies will do that. If someone opts into their mailing list and to just offer that same discount at checkout, doesn’t really make sense because it’s, they could get that anyway. So it has to be an exclusive offer. And I that’s, I think the main thing that you were pressing that something exclusive that only a customer will get. So they know that, okay, wow, I’m a customer, I get this great discount on this other product or this other feature or this other optional product that I can add on. And that, that totally makes a lot of sense. Now with these upsells that are, you mentioned, you know, maybe two or three, the most that they can think about getting away with, is there a particular, I guess you could say design methodology that you really have to follow when you’re constructing the presentation of these, is there like a general rule of thumb about how things need to be laid out based on your experience?

Ruth
[00:09:04]
I can’t really point out to a specific layout when it comes to the thank you page that works. I would recommend the upsells not to be booked together, but actually for the customer to first see an Appell and then get some auto details and then maybe another Appell right before he’s about to leave the page after he’s called all the way down. Okay. And one of the best things that work for our customers is actually a popup. So the popup shows up, let’s say five seconds after the customer got to the thank you page and the amazing thing about this popup, obviously because it’s a popup, the customers notice it more, it catches their attention. But other than that on the thank you page, you are not asking for anything. You’re just saying, Hey, thank you for buying. We wanna give you a discount now and they don’t have to put in their phone number or the email address or anything else. They just get the discount for the act of purchasing. And the amazing thing that works in the reconvert popup specifically is actually that we added time out to it. So the timer really takes conversion rate to the next level because customers have an urgency factor here and it encourages them to not sleep on it, but actually buy directly from the thank you page.

Arlen
[01:10:22]
Right? Yeah. That’s so true. I’ve seen the use of these timers a lot more these days and I think you kind of nailed it there. It puts an urgency on the customer performing that action because otherwise yeah, you, you know, people see popups all the time and a lot of times I think people are just kind of so accustomed to just glazing over them sometimes and just clicking and closing ’em out. But if you have that timer there, then there’s the urgency there. They’ll they’re gonna hesitate before they close it out because they say, okay, wait a minute. Is it how much more time is left? They see maybe, okay, it’s only a couple more hours. They’re gonna pause before they close it out and that’s gonna actually make them, I believe, at least take a look at it more thoroughly before they decide to do any type of engagement.

Arlen
[01:11:08]
So that, that really makes a lot of sense. You know? And at the beginning you mentioned, as far as I talked about so many e-commerce businesses are focused on sales, sales, sales, and just growing the sales. And a lot of times they forget about retaining their customers and getting more out of their existing customers, but really the only way to grow your customer relationship and retain these customers is gonna be through effective communication that you have with these customers. So what are some ways to make your customer communication more personal? Because I think many times people are turned off by just getting automated bot so to speak bot emails. What are some suggestions that you have to make it personal?

Ruth
[01:11:51]
Yeah. So the first thing, when it comes to personalizing the communication post purchase, if you ask me is to make sure you are talking to your customers in whatever platform they feel comfortable with. So a lot of stores only have an email distribution list, but as we know, a lot of customers don’t really open their emails anymore. That doesn’t mean email is bad. It just means you need to give your customers the option to talk with you, whatever it is for email SMS, Facebook messenger, Instagram, wherever you can reach out to them, give them the option to subscribe so that your communication is actually wherever they want it to be. And not predic dictated by you now for the messages themselves and the communication. The rule of thumb really is to get as much information about your customers as possible. When someone buys, you have some basic information about their name, where they’re from, what kind of products in your store they like, but if you add something like a birthday collector, you can actually know when their birthday is and send them a special message saying, happy birthday, if you add something like a post-purchase survey, then you can ask specific questions that you wanna know about your customers so that you know how to really talk to them in the language that they’re interested in listening to you in and you know, really what subjects they’re interested in and they wanna learn about.

Ruth
[01:13:17]
So it’s all about showing your customers that you care, not always selling, but actually asking them what they think, what they want and trying to come up with ways to answer their needs and desires.

Arlen
[01:13:29]
That’s awesome, man. That’s some great advice for sure. You really have to find out a lot more about your customers to help facilitate the best communication cuz like you said, there’s so many platforms these days that there’s some people that, you know, they may not check their emails, but they’re big on Facebook. So Facebook messenger may be a way to communicate or some of the other social platforms. So you really have to do your homework up front and figure out what are the best lines of communication for your customers, your different types of customers. And then you create the proper messaging across each of those channels. So that’s really very important. Now, as far as communication is concerned, one of the things that I actually realized is that, of course you want to get this information from customers, but I think what can also help is that as a, a brand, you do also have to open yourself up to kind of letting people see what’s behind the, the proverbial doors or whatever store doors.

Arlen
[01:14:32]
Yeah. So, you know, who’s there behind the shop doing the work who is there that came up with these products or the concept and all of that. So you have to open yourself up because once you do that, I think that will also help your customers open up themselves. You know, one of the things that I told in a, a previous podcast is that what I usually do when I’m looking at different eCommerce sites and I’m trying to purchase something from a, a specific brands website, I’m always interested at in who the founder is, who the owner is, how did they come up with this product? What’s their backstory. And I think once you put that out there, you humanize the brand and you get people to feel a bit more comfortable. And that, that also can help form the communication, make a more of a solid communication and give people more openness to let them know about you. What are the types of things that, that they want your customers want? So, yeah, that’s another thing that I think is also very important that can help communication

Ruth
[01:15:33]
With the brand. Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah. It’s all about the brand story and the brand’s values when you really want to form a deeper relationship.

Arlen
[01:15:40]
Right. And I don’t know if it’s always been like this, you know, if we’d look at past decades and, and how relationships customers had with brand, but I do know now it’s more so, especially with the millennial generation, I think millennials that are purchasing kind of have that because I think of social media, they’re so used to knowing so much about everyone, you know, of all of this media, they wanna know everything about, you know, every company that they’re dealing with. So I think that’s, I think what’s further spawned all of this. Now we talked a little bit about the, you know, what you can do at the thank you page of course, and the upsells that you should do. What are some other types of, of things that you can actually do on the order? Thank you page to increase the average order value.

Ruth
[01:16:29]
So other than Appell, like I mentioned before, you can add some elements that collect information about your customers so that you can improve your communication with them post purchase. You can also just communicate that kind of brand story and values that we just talked about through something like an image with text or a video of you looking into your customer’s eyes through the computer and saying, thank you for buying and maybe talking a little bit about yourself, about the product, about the brand, anything that really helps you communicate and connect with them on a more personal level. Another thing you could do is really invite them to share order on social media, but also to follow you on social media and connect with you that way too.

Arlen
[01:17:20]
Right? That’s really huge. The sharing on social media is really big, especially right at the post purchase because we’re kind of in the age of where people want to share everything. They want to share what they just purchased. Especially if they’re excited, they’ve had a positive experience and you know, people these days, they wanna brag. They wanna say, okay, I got this. Yeah. They wanna share that with their friends and family. And that’s also a great way to do it.

Ruth
[01:17:44]
Also people tend to trust their friends recommendations much more than they would trust an affiliate or an influencer. So while these marketing methods are amazing also just getting your customers to spread a word about your brand wall to mouth, it’s really an amazing opportunity for them to just share, Hey, I just bought this. You wanna get one too? You can get a 10% off for my link or something like that.

Arlen
[01:18:10]
Yeah, exactly. You’re you’re right. As far as these customers yeah. Sharing, there’s also definitely a, a large part of people that they’re gonna share with it. They’re gonna be their friends and their, their friends are gonna really trust them a lot more. And then that’s, that’s kind of how, where you can kind of see, I would say a spike in your sales because typically the majority of the contacts that people have on their different social networks are gonna be friends and family. People that are close to those are the people that they have the highest level of engagement with at least. So that that’s where they can, if they do share that you’re gonna get more of a, kind of a higher bang there, because those are people that trust them and trust what they say. Now, as far as increasing the average order value by doing these different types of upsells in your experience, are there any particular stats that you have as far as if a company implements some of these strategies, let’s say they’re not doing any type of upselling. They’re not doing any type of post purchase engagement at all right now. Maybe they just have the standard. Thank you page. They’re not doing anything like that. Once they do implement some of these strategies, do you have any statistics on what type of increase they can see as far as order value or overall revenue?

Ruth
[01:19:31]
Yeah. So I can tell you, first of all, that the numbers really change. According to the type of store you have the industry, you mostly, what, what is the average price of your product? Is it high or low? How many cells you get a month? So the numbers really vary. I want anyone listening to taking, to account that the numbers I’m gonna be talking about might change for better or walls depending on their industry, but basically in Shopify, I can’t really talk about adult platforms, but I’m guessing the numbers are pretty similar. We can see that each thank you. Page is actually viewed in average two and a half times. So after someone completes a purchase is not the only time he sees the thank you page. Shopify turns this page into the order status page. So whenever a customer gets an email form, Shopify with a status update on his order, he gets a link back to the same page.

Ruth
[02:20:29]
So this page gets more than twice as much traffic as the number of orders. It just makes it a more important page to actually utilize because otherwise it’s just lost eyeballs that are getting there and living without really taking any action. What we’ve seen as far as conversion rate for the thank you page, let’s start by just saying that before you do anything, if you haven’t used that at all, and haven’t optimized that the conversion rate of the thank you page is zero. No one is converting from the thank you page. They just see the summary of the order and leave once you actually use it and optimize it. The conversion rate can be anywhere between one to 7%, which is what we are seeing mostly. But like I said, it can change according to your industry and the number of orders you get. So sometimes we see more and sometimes we see less, but even for people with, let’s say 0.5% conversion rate, we actually see that the ROI is really high because these are people that get to the page.

Ruth
[02:21:35]
You didn’t spend any money to get them into this page. You spent the money to get them to the site, and they’ve already attend this investment by making the first purchase. Now, the second purchase that could come from the thank you page is basically a freebie for you as the store owner, because the customer has already, like I said, returned the investment of advertising that you put into him. So conversion rate could be anywhere between one to 7%, but we’ve seen some stores with even 15% conversion rate, but these are the more outstanding ones. When it comes to revenue, we see an increase for stores using reconvert and optimizing the thank you page of somewhere between five to 15%, by average. And again, this is the average. It could be less, or it could be more depending on a lot of variables, but this is a pretty huge increase for any store. So whatever you are using Shopify and you are using reconvert or you are using another platform and you are optimizing it on your own with a developer, I really recommend optimizing the thank you page because it’s just this wasted real estate. If you’re not doing anything with it, it’s just this place that becomes a doll where your customers leave the PA the store instead of staying and buying more, which is what happens when you actually optimize it.

Arlen
[02:22:53]
Right? That is very well said, Ruth. Now, a lot of businesses, you don’t really realize that, but like you said, specifically with Shopify, that that order status page is just a thank you page. So people are gonna go back there regardless. They’re gonna be good checking the status. So that makes a lot of sense that if you don’t do anything extra there, you’re really just kind of wasting those views and anything that you get at that point, like you said, it’s really just extra, you know, it’s just kind of gravy there. So even if it’s not an actual sale, maybe even if you get them to, to perform some type of action that can lead to growing the relationship, like you said, collecting information, maybe of course opting into the email list. Maybe you have a contest, whatever it is, whatever you can get them to do at that point is just really gonna be a benefit to your business outside of that initial investment that you’re getting the, you know, the return on your initial investment, for sure.

Arlen
[02:23:48]
Well, Ruth, you know, you’ve definitely shared a, a whole lot with us and I appreciate you coming on to the e-commerce marketing podcast. This has been an area that I, I hadn’t delved into much at all on the podcast, as far as the post purchase and increasing the average order value. So I really appreciate that. And I know it’s gonna go a long way with all of our listeners. My listeners all know that I always close out things with one final kind of changing gear questions here. Just my closing fun fact, just so our listeners can get to know a little bit more about you. What is one fun fact that you can share with us that our audience may be surprised to know about you?

Ruth
[02:24:25]
Well, I would say that the one fact I’d like to share is that I’m a total Harry Potter fan from childhood. And up until today, I sometimes watch the movies only the books whenever I can.

Arlen
[02:24:38]
Okay. Wow. So you’ve read the multiple times, huh?

Ruth
[02:24:41]
Oh yeah, definitely.

Arlen
[02:24:42]
Okay. Okay. Wow. Yeah, my business partner’s daughter, she’s 10 years old. She is a huge Sherry Potter fan and she’s gone through, I think at least six of the books already. And I’m like, wow, amazed at age 10. And those books are, they’re nothing to sneeze at. They’re thick. There are some long stories there. So I, I applaud her and applaud you for diving into that. Yeah. That’s an awesome series. And it’s really, I know, inspired a lot of children to kind of dive into literature where they may not have otherwise. So, yeah. That’s awesome. And thank you for sharing that now, you know, finally of course, if our listeners would like to pick your brain anymore about custom, more about customer retention or increasing the average order value, what is the best way for them to get into contact with you?

Ruth
[02:25:25]
So anywhere in any social media, our handle is at reconvert app and I’m always available there. Me or Eric, my brother. And we’d love to chat with you and share with you what we know and listen to what you are interested and what you wanna share with us.

Arlen
[02:25:43]
Great. We appreciate that Ruth. And thank you again for joining us today on the eCommerce marketing podcast.

Ruth
[02:25:50]
Thanks for having me.

speaker 1
[02:25:52]
Thank you for listening to the eCommerce marketing podcast. 

Podcast Guest Info

Ruth Even Haim
Co-Founder of StilyoApps