How to create delightful customer experiences: Before the sale

Customer experience is one of the true differentiators in a person's online shopping experience. With more people shopping online than ever before, it's important that you, the merchant, pay attention to every step of the customer journey, providing multiple opportunities to delight your customers.

This week on the podcast we're starting a three-part series on the many opportunities to delight your customers in three phases: before the sale, after the sale but before delivery, and after delivery. This week's episode covers everything you need to optimize before the sale.

sponsors.  

Clockedin a time clock for Shopify.

With Clockedin your team members can easily clock in and out of their shifts from anywhere. You can manage your team's hours as they work remotely with an intuitive interface that can be used from desktop, tablet, or mobile. 

show notes.

• [09:36] Add shipping & returns policies
• [12:50] Add a size chart or nutrition information
• [14:57] Live chat
• [15:38] Easy access to FAQs on the PDP
• [19:19] Make sure your product descriptions are actually descriptive
• [21:54] Offer a back-in-stock notification signup
• [23:22] Optimize your mobile experience
• [25:31] Offer multiple payment methods
• [29:17] Capture key dates in the customer's life
• Store shoutout: Journ
• Store shoutout: Bearaby

resources. 

• Atoms on HONY
• Atoms
• Back in Stock
• Back in Stock on Klaviyo
• Kelly's Newsletter
• Customer Fields
• Motherly
• Kelly's Newsletter

transcript.

Kelly (00:00):
Customer experience is one of the true differentiators in a person's online shopping experience. With more people shopping online than ever before it's important that you, the merchant, pay attention to every step of the customer journey, providing multiple opportunities to delight your customers. This week on the podcast, we're starting a three-part series on the many opportunities to delight your customers in three phases before the sale, after the sale but before delivery and after delivery. This week's episode covers everything you need to optimize before the sale. Let's dig in.

Rhian (00:34):
Welcome to Commerce Tea, a podcast to help you succeed on Shopify. I'm Rhian.

Kelly (00:39):
And I'm Kelly. Grab a mug and join us as we talk about all things commerce.

Rhian (00:44):
Hey, Kelly? How can merchants leverage customer data to drive more revenue and increase retention? How could they create personalized experiences customers love?

Kelly (00:59):
I recommend Octane AI, the leading buyer profile platform for Shopify and Shopify Plus merchants.

Rhian (01:05):
How does it work?

Kelly (01:06):
Octane AI features a shop quiz, Facebook Messenger and SMS and opt-in tools. Using the shop quiz merchants can get to know customers with interactive questions. From product recommenders to gift finders you can learn about a customer's needs, preferences, pain points and more. This information gets saved into buyer profiles and you can sync your buyer profile data with your Facebook Messenger, SMS, email and ad campaigns for personalized customer journeys.

Rhian (01:31):
What kinds of returns can brands expect?

Kelly (01:34):
Brands using the shop quiz have increased email signups by 16 times and driven a 28% increase in average order value. Facebook Messenger and SMS see 80 to 95% average open rates and drive up to a 20% increase in revenue. Better yet Octane AI has plans for any size business and offers a 14 day free trial. Every plan gives you access to the shop quiz, Facebook Messenger, SMS and often tools. There are also plans available where Octane AI experts will help you set up and optimize your tools for success.

Rhian (02:06):
It sounds great. Where can merchants go to learn more?

Kelly (02:08):
You can learn more, book a demo or try it free at join.octaneai.com/commercetea. Again, that's join.octaneai.com/commercetea. Good morning, Rhian?

Rhian (02:21):
Good morning, Kelly. How are you?

Kelly (02:24):
I am good. How has your Valentine's day?

Rhian (02:26):
It was good. We got takeout from a bougie place in Los Angeles and drank a bougie bottle of champagne. And that was it. I wore a fancy dress because why not?

Kelly (02:40):
I love that.

Rhian (02:41):
I was like, I got to do something different today. Like A, I got to wash my hair, but B maybe I'll wear heels. And so I did for 20 minutes, the heels part.

Kelly (02:54):
[crosstalk 00:02:54] Hey, I love the commitment.

Rhian (02:55):
Yeah. I wanted full on. I will say when we start doing outside things again, shoes are going to be an interesting thing.

Kelly (03:03):
Yeah. I've been outside only a few times and every single time oh man, it's been a while since I mentioned it. I've only ever worn Allbirds. So non tennis shoes, sneakers, it's going to be a different experience. Oh, I also have flip flops that I've been wearing to get the mail.

Rhian (03:21):
I love that for you. I love that for you.

Kelly (03:25):
Quote on quote real shoes just hasn't happened in a while. Same with pants still wearing the same joggers as I was wearing last March.

Rhian (03:34):
Hey, I saw an ad on TV for your favorite jogger brand.

Kelly (03:38):
They have TV ads now?

Rhian (03:39):
Apparently. Well, I watch YouTube TV, so I don't know if it's digital. I don't know much about buying ads on the TV.

Kelly (03:48):
On the television.

Rhian (03:50):
As in I know virtually nothing, but I assume that it costs a different amount of money to buy a YouTube TV ad than it does to buy on MSNBC, but I might be totally wrong and they might be the exact same ads. And I have no idea.

Kelly (04:05):
That's a good question. I also have no idea that is definitely not my area of expertise.

Rhian (04:09):
No. I've just been seeing a lot more D2C brands, all advertising on television.

Kelly (04:16):
Oh, Lee, during the Super Bowl.

Rhian (04:17):
Oh, my God [inaudible 00:04:18] Super Bowl.

Kelly (04:22):
That commercial had the exact impact that they were aiming for because everyone was talking about how terrible it was.

Rhian (04:30):
Exactly. Well, they sold the t-shirt.

Kelly (04:32):
Yeah, exactly. [crosstalk 00:04:34] exactly.

Rhian (04:37):
Okay. I don't necessarily buy into the whole all press is good press, but in this instance...

Kelly (04:43):
It was a very intentional bad press [crosstalk 00:04:45].

Rhian (04:45):
It was very intentional. Yeah, exactly. Because definitely all press is not good press if you've done something bad. But they didn't do something bad to society. We were just sitting there being like this commercial cost so much money and this is what you chose to do with it. I thought it was so funny though. Taking on the dairy industry.

Kelly (05:11):
Yeah.

Rhian (05:11):
With that crappy commercial. So funny.

Kelly (05:15):
Amazing.

Rhian (05:16):
It reminded me of when we were younger and it was all those goat milk commercials were loaded with celebrities. It was like the antithesis of that.

Kelly (05:27):
Yeah. Also, a lot of the commercials were just overloaded with celebrities and less creativity. But that was a very... I posted about that on Twitter and people were very opinionated about it. I honestly think we would've gotten more creative commercials from TikTok creators that we actually got this year from just plugging super celebrities in there.

Rhian (05:49):
It felt very bland.

Kelly (05:51):
Yes.

Rhian (05:51):
Except for the [inaudible 00:05:52].

Kelly (05:52):
The whole evening was bland. The game sucked too.

Rhian (05:57):
I mean, at least I had some pizza.

Kelly (06:00):
Did have pizza and beer. That was a good time. That was a good time.

Rhian (06:03):
I didn't even have beer. I just had pizza. Okay. Before we start talking about this, I would be remiss if we didn't quickly talk about Adams and the shoe company and A they're incredible story in humans of New York and then B... So if y'all haven't checked it out, definitely check out Humans in New York on Facebook and Instagram And it goes over to Adam's founding story. But B what Adams... It's Adams, right? There's a, S on the end.

Kelly (06:41):
Yes.

Rhian (06:41):
What they just did for up and coming talent.

Kelly (06:45):
Yeah. So they're doing this experiment, they call it, called introducing. And the idea of it is they recognize that everyone has to start out somewhere. And so they're committing to work with at least one new freelancer, studio, students or artist and be their first paid client. And then if everything goes well, they're going to continue to do that. I think that's the coolest idea because getting your first client as a freelancer is the absolute hardest thing to do.

Rhian (07:17):
It truly is. It truly is. And you know what I really love about it, it's we saw the other day... I DMed Kelly, a [inaudible 00:07:25] I texted her a screenshot of a job posting online that I saw. And the job posting is something that technically Kelly and I do not qualify for because under one of their requirements, it required a bachelor's degree in something that neither of us have yet, frankly, we were overqualified. Both of us are overqualified for the role. I saw the release I believe that same day and I was like what an opposite moment?

Kelly (07:54):
I know.

Rhian (07:54):
Where you're like this one thing kind of stinks and I don't agree with it at all. Whereas, this Adams thing is such an important initiative. I hope there's some folks who get discovered and get their first piece of work. And then they get to put this in their portfolio and then they get their second piece of work or a second big client. And it just keeps rolling for them.

Kelly (08:12):
And here's what's most important about this, first paid clients. This is not like charity work. They're literally paying you for the work.

Rhian (08:21):
Yeah, a 100%. They're not like, "please work for us for free."

Kelly (08:25):
Just so you can get exposure.

Rhian (08:27):
No, don't take exposures.

Kelly (08:29):
[crosstalk 00:08:29] Exposure is bad. Please pay your team and your interns and anyone.

Rhian (08:34):
Everyone.

Kelly (08:35):
Yeah. Exactly.

Rhian (08:37):
This is something Kelly and I are very proud about.

Kelly (08:40):
Yeah. I may have tweeted about it a couple of times this weekend.

Rhian (08:45):
Same. I don't know who said this to me, but it's "you can die of exposure."

Kelly (08:48):
Oh yeah.

Rhian (08:51):
Literally because what is it about you?

Kelly (08:53):
That's clever.

Rhian (08:54):
Nothing. So, anyways, let's talk about-

Kelly (09:00):
Not dying.

Rhian (09:00):
Let's have a [inaudible 00:09:01]. Let's talk about experiencing things from a customer's perspective. So-

Kelly (09:06):
This is something we talk about pretty frequently in bits and pieces. But we wanted to take this episode to just be like, here are some very actionable things you can do today, or this week, or this quarter or this year, however long it takes you to do anything because time is a construct.

Rhian (09:26):
It's February.

Kelly (09:26):
It's already February. Yeah. We're already halfway through February.

Rhian (09:32):
That's good though because January felt like forever. So I'm really glad that we're halfway through February.

Kelly (09:36):
This always happens though. January feels like it takes forever and then you start blowing through every single month. Unless of course there's like a pandemic and then it's still March, but that's beside the thing, besides the point. But anyway, we wanted to break things down in three important stages in the customer life cycle, one being before the sale. So you'd have to build trust with your customers. They have to figure out what they want to buy if they want to buy it. And then you actually have to push them to hit that confirm place order button. The second stage is after the sale, but before the delivery. So this is when you are packaging up the item and then you're actually shipping it out, but it has not actually reached their home yet. And then the last phase is of course, after it's actually been delivered, how can you continue to delight your customers after they've already received their item?

Rhian (10:27):
I love and hate the word delight. And I just want to throw it out there that it's [crosstalk 00:10:32] a marketing word.

Kelly (10:34):
Yeah. Oh, absolutely is. And that's why I think I intentionally said it like four times already.

Rhian (10:39):
Yeah. It's like we're creating magic.

Kelly (10:42):
Yeah.

Rhian (10:43):
I think we should start using sparkle. Let's create some sparkle and we just make that-

Kelly (10:48):
It's kind of like, instead of saying hot taste, you say spicy taste.

Rhian (10:51):
Yeah. That's just my new marketing nomenclature to see if it sticks. Does this make a sparkling moment? People are going to be like Rhian you're absolutely off your rocker. I'm fine with that. I'm fine with that.

Kelly (11:01):
That's okay.

Rhian (11:02):
Okay. So before the sale, what matters? I think a lot of things matter, but what-

Kelly (11:08):
A lot of things matter.

Rhian (11:09):
What do you think is the number one?

Kelly (11:11):
The number one thing is trust. Trust. I cannot speak. Let's try that again. The number one thing is trust. Overall, we're all good here. Especially for customers who have never purchased from you before, they're learning who you are and they need to determine if they want to actually spend their money with you. Do they believe that they're one going to receive what they purchase? And two, is it going to be the quality that they're expecting it to be? And so this is a really important time to be able to start to build those relationships with your customers and start to form that trust. And it's not going to happen immediately, obviously, but there are definitely some things that you can do to add to the customer experience.

Rhian (11:51):
So what are your favorite trust building factors, which are also by the way, a key thing for SEO.

Kelly (11:58):
Let's start with... I Originally was going to start with FAQ's because that's what I always start with, but let's start with your shipping and returns policies. This is something I talked about in depth. One, you have to have these policies, please. So start there if you don't have these policies created. But second create a shortened version, like the TLDR version of your shipping and returns policies and put them on the product display page. Put them on the product page so they're really close to the add to cart button below the button, but it's easy to start building that trust with your customers so they can be like, oh, I know if this is not going to fit me I can exchange it at no cost or I could return at no cost or whatever, if it's not at no costs then fine. But the point is, you're trying to give them the information they need now to make an educated decision on your website.

Rhian (12:50):
Also, if you're selling apparel, make sure to have a size chart available.

Kelly (12:55):
Yes.

Rhian (12:56):
Without clicking out of the product description page, because that is my own personal nightmare. When you're like, how does this fit? David and I was trying to buy shoes, I don't know [inaudible 00:13:04] I'm like, I'm not wearing shoes. So obviously I want to buy some more. I always try to buy shoes and I could not for the life of me because the shoes were gender neutral, I figured out if they were sized in men's or women's size to this day, to this moment right now I have no idea because I turned off at the page because I couldn't figure out what size the shoes were.

Kelly (13:23):
That's hilarious. And also terrible.

Rhian (13:26):
It was terrible. It was terrible.

Kelly (13:29):
On that same note. So I often say this for apparel, yes you definitely need a size chart. If you're selling anything people are going to wear, anything people are going to put on their skin or anything people are going to ingest you need to have anything involving nutrition information, allergies, how to care for the product, what it's made of, all of these things are extremely important because you never know what allergies people have for one thing. And second, some people want to purchase only organic, whether it's clothing or food, it doesn't matter. You just have to make sure that it's actually clearly stated on your website.

Rhian (14:09):
100%. I will email people sometimes because as I've mentioned before our house is a gluten-free household and I literally, my daughter can't even put gluten on her skin, like that's how bad of a reaction it is for her. So I've had to email multiple companies to say, "hey, I don't see any gluten listed, but is your product gluten free?" And they're always like, "oh yeah, of course it is and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and they have all this stuff," but it's like how much time did that just cost the merchant when that could've just been literally a graphic or just like a bullet point saying gluten-free.

Kelly (14:48):
Exactly. And you said you had to email them?

Rhian (14:50):
I had to email them. [crosstalk 00:14:53].

Kelly (14:52):
Most people are not going to do that.

Rhian (14:54):
No. Most people are just going to be like, "I'll just find something different."

Kelly (14:57):
Okay. Yeah. So one thing that you can do in this scenario, emailing people takes effort, chatting with people is a little bit easier. So add a live chat to your site. It's not something that you have to be monitoring 24/7. A lot of these live chat apps if you're not available, it defaults to sending a message to respond to via email later on. But providing that live chat experience is exactly what I'm talking about when I mean you need to delight your customers, I use the word again, to give them that immediate feedback. So you're not having to wait 48 hours for an email, for example.

Rhian (15:38):
You know what I also like too when the live chat does a very specific thing, and that's when you ask the live chat, when you know there's not a chat agent there, you ask them a question and it kind of scrapes the words and then it gives you options. It's like, oh, we think you mean this. Then there's already a doc written on it. And normally that doc's getting pulled from your FAQ's or your [inaudible 00:16:01] wherever it is. But either way, it's like, oh, we think you mean this, is this what you mean? And I don't know, 60/40, it's correct. And you're like, "yes, that is what I mean. Cool. I have my answer. I can move on with my life." Like I don't need to actually talk with anybody if I can find the information I'm looking for.

Kelly (16:19):
I'm often annoyed when I actually do need to talk to somebody and they have to go through the steps.

Rhian (16:23):
Yes. I do agree with that.

Kelly (16:25):
No, I don't need help with my order. I'm not asking where my tracking number is or anything like that. I just need to speak with an agent for a particular reason. But honestly, those interim steps and those intermediary steps when somebody is actually providing some potential answers to questions you might have, it definitely reduces that support debt. And I say you should absolutely do it. Also make sure that these same questions are answered on your frequently asked questions.

Rhian (16:53):
Wait, are we talking frequently asked questions, Kelly?

Kelly (16:57):
We are talking frequently asked questions. So again, something I have beaten again and again, and again, first off, make sure you have an FAQ's page because your customers have questions and you have answers, pretty easy. But second, add your most frequently asked questions that pertain to the product the customer's viewing directly on the product page.

Rhian (17:22):
Yeah.

Kelly (17:22):
Don't make them jump to another page to get answers to their questions because people get distracted and then they don't go back to what they were doing before.

Rhian (17:29):
I was going to say, something I noticed about FAQ's and I'm almost like this is a choice. The FAQ's feel like oftentimes it's what the merchant thinks the frequently asked questions are and they don't go back and they don't go back and update it with the actual frequently asked questions.

Kelly (17:45):
Oh, without a doubt. And you could definitely see who updated their questions last year. Because suddenly you had a lot of references to COVID-19 and shipping delays and things like that are really important for your customers to know, especially when you're dealing with a pandemic and a health crisis. Is my package going to be handled carefully? Is it going to take longer to ship? Can I return right now? Earlier on in the pandemic businesses weren't allowing returns at all because that's a risk. That's a health risk to the people who work at the warehouse.

Rhian (18:20):
And some places still aren't accepting returns.

Kelly (18:23):
I've seen that some accept returns, but don't touch them for 72 hours. And then they process the returns.

Rhian (18:33):
And Kelly, because I know FAQ hill is one you'll die on what is it tense or what perspective should the FAQ questions be written from?

Kelly (18:43):
I am the customer. I am asking the question. So how do I return my order, for example, where are you located? Do you have a brick and mortar location that I can drop off packaging or drop off... Here's some styrofoam. Not what I meant by... Where can I pick up my package if you offer in store pickup, for example. Basically the question should be written from the perspective of the customer asking the question, not the merchant asking the question, if that makes sense.

Rhian (19:19):
That makes a 100% sense to me. And I think it's really important and something that people don't consider, it's like the perspective of everything, whether this is your FAQ or your actual product description on your product description page, what is the voice you're trying to carry through? Is it relatable? Do I want to buy it or does it make the customer want to buy it? And does it actually describe things to me? Because just because we're no longer shopping or most of us we're no longer shopping in store doesn't mean we don't want a similar in store experience merit on the internet. Yeah. We actually do it. It's why people have such an aversion to pop-ups that comment the first like two seconds, because they don't want it. And Kelly, you and I both used this analogy, it's like standing in front of Nordstrom, blocking people coming into your store, being like, "before you can come in make..." It's almost like the perfume people you know.

Kelly (20:16):
Oh, those are the worst people, I'm sorry if you do that [crosstalk 00:20:19].

Rhian (20:19):
Bless their hearts. I've worked in makeup counter. I get it. But at the same time, you're it's like, think of the perfume mile or the perfume section. Do you want to even block your entrance to the perfume section and then make it difficult to understand? Or do you want to be like here's the arrows that goes this way. That shows me the clothes that are well-described as if a person's telling me what the clothing is like. So then I understand what I'm going to buy instead of black t-shirt, a black t-shirt doesn't tell me any, oh, cool it's made of cotton? I assume so. It grinds my gears so much because it's always like black t-shirt size small. Okay, cool. Like that doesn't say anything to me, if anything, I read that and I think that it's just a drop ship product, frankly.

Kelly (21:08):
Yeah. You kind of explained exactly what I was going for in terms of being descriptive. But as we've talked in depth before about the SEO and the benefits of having a detailed product description there, make sure your product descriptions are actually descriptive and not just bullet points.

Rhian (21:24):
Yeah.

Kelly (21:25):
Add your brand voice.

Rhian (21:26):
Add your brand voice. And if you sell apparel and let's say you sell t-shirts and jeans, what t-shirt would those jeans go with? What size is your model? What size are they're wearing? Is this a comfortable material? Is this more formal? I don't know. I'm on the other side of a computer screen you tell me. I need to know the answer to this question, these questions. So you got to put on your more creative hat when you're writing content like that, in my opinion.

Kelly (21:54):
Agreed. And here's another one that I always like to see, is if your products sell out and you restock them at some point, make sure you have some backend stock notification sign up. Replace that sold out button with a signup for, restock notifications or whatever you want to, let me know when this is back in stock. You can have fun with it. You can use the Back In Stock app that's in the App Store. That's literally called Back In Stock. Or you can use Klaviyo's back in stock functionality if you're using Klaviyo. Please just make sure you have this. It's an easy enough thing to add to your store that really adds an easy dimension to the customer experience, to get those customers who wanted to purchase something that's no longer available, get them to come back to the store because of an email that you did not even have to manually send out.

Rhian (22:46):
You know, who does this really well? It's Everlane.

Kelly (22:49):
Yeah.

Rhian (22:50):
I was hunting a sweater that I really wanted and it sold out in my size and I was like, "oh, okay." But then it was like, "well, sign up here for back in stock notification." I was like, "okay, I'll do it." I actually don't really normally do that because I'm normally whatever the product is dead to me moving on with my life. But I really wanted this specific sweater because I'm cold. So I filled out the information and guess what? They emailed me when it came back in stock and I went and I bought it and then it sold out again in 15 minutes. So I was like, this really worked. This really does work.

Rhian (23:22):
So another thing that's super important and is one of the number one reasons why I will turn off a website, but don't just trust me, trust your data and look at your Google analytics, is make sure that you're selling or your customer journey works on mobile. And I don't mean works as in functions on, I mean actually works and I actually can add things to the cart and I'm actually going to check out because I find so often that the mobile experience while it is technically a mobile friendly, like it hits the marks I've been experiencing some really poor mobile experiences. I don't know about you.

Kelly (24:08):
Oh, without a doubt. I experience poor mobile experiences literally every day. Then again, I'm also very picky about sites on mobile.

Rhian (24:17):
[inaudible 00:24:17] But I'll churn. We can't be the only ones who sit there and we're like, screw this and we turn off of it.

Kelly (24:23):
Oh, yeah. I've given up on so many things just because I'm like, I can't hit this button and I'm tired of having to zoom in to do something on your site. So I am going to abandon and shop elsewhere or not shop at all and just save some money.

Rhian (24:38):
You know what just hurts my heart, is when I go and I really like a product and then I add it to the cart and there is no accelerated checkout option and my credit card information does not auto fill because all of a sudden I'm on my phone, on the couch being lazy, I'm not getting up to find my credit card. I'm just not. That is where my journey ends. I have officially turned from the cart. I don't understand a reason unless you're selling something that isn't supported by the accelerated checkout functions on Shopify, which most products should be fine with at least one of these. I mean, how many options are there? There's so many options.

Kelly (25:24):
You have to be on top of the payments though. That's the one piece.

Rhian (25:27):
They are Shopify payments, but what if you're PayPal even? Check out through PayPal.

Kelly (25:31):
So that was one of the things I was going to mention is just make sure you offer those multiple payment methods. So I backed to writing a weekly newsletter every Wednesday morning I'll send one out and I think two weeks ago, the entire thing was on payment methods. And that you'd need to be offering more than just credit cards. Because as you mentioned, not everybody uses something like LastPass that saves their credit card information. Rhian.

Rhian (25:58):
I feel really seen [inaudible 00:26:00] my business partner I don't use LastPass still.

Kelly (26:04):
I'm trying to get you to use it.

Rhian (26:06):
So is everybody. I don't know why I'm so resistant to it. I don't know why.

Kelly (26:12):
If somebody has never shopped in your store before, they might not be, especially people who are less trusting of websites in general and shopping online, entering in a credit card is going to be a tough decision for them. That's why PayPal is such a great option. I get it. PayPal can be very frustrating to work with, especially on the merchant end-

Rhian (26:31):
[crosstalk 00:26:31]. And the button is ugly.

Kelly (26:34):
Yes. The button is very ugly. But the reality is people trust PayPal. And they trust that they're going to be able to get their money back if they needed to for some reason. Amazon Pay is another one I'm seeing more and more customers use. And I did not realize just how much this payment gateway is used, but I feel like it's an easy one to add.

Rhian (26:55):
But how many people have Amazon accounts?

Kelly (26:57):
Especially since so many people... Exactly. And I have 10 credit cards saved on my Amazon account. I mean half of them are expired now, but I do have 10 on there.

Rhian (27:07):
Do you ever go through and delete them, because I don't.

Kelly (27:09):
No.

Rhian (27:09):
It's just a running list of deleted.

Kelly (27:11):
I was looking at Google's list of, so all my Google billing through the app store or domains or anything, I have probably 16 credit cards on there. And I think 10 of them are expired.

Rhian (27:23):
I love that about you. I love that about me as well. Okay. And Google Pay, G-Pay. What's it called? Google Pay.

Kelly (27:33):
Google Pay, Apple Pay both of those.

Rhian (27:35):
Yes.

Kelly (27:35):
Yeah.

Rhian (27:35):
Google Pay, Apple Pay, Shop Pay.

Kelly (27:39):
Shop Pay, of course.

Rhian (27:40):
It's the easiest.

Kelly (27:41):
Yeah. I'd probably say those are going to be your primary ones to look at adding. You don't have to add all of them.

Rhian (27:48):
No.

Kelly (27:48):
I mean, you should add as many as your customers actually want to use of course. You certainly don't have to offer something like Crypto, if you don't want to. I mean, if you want to take Bitcoin as payment, by all means, I think Coinbase actually integrates as payment gateway. Your opinions?

Rhian (28:07):
I have don't know... I don't know what I don't know about crypto and I don't know-

Kelly (28:11):
It's volatile. It's high risk.

Rhian (28:13):
Yeah. I just don't like high risk things. I think what it comes out is like I saw on Twitter, someone bought land for X amount of Bitcoins and now it'd be worth $27 million, but they-

Kelly (28:25):
It's like the guy who bought 19 Bitcoin or spent 19 Bitcoin on a pizza.

Rhian (28:29):
Exactly. I just don't love that part about buy. If you're going to use it, okay. This is not trading advice. I cannot give it to you. But I just don't like it as a way to receive payment or give payment.

Kelly (28:43):
Yeah. I will continue to buy Crypto, but [crosstalk 00:28:48].

Rhian (28:48):
Me as well slowly.

Kelly (28:49):
And do nothing.

Rhian (28:51):
Do its thing. I just watch it with fascination.

Kelly (28:54):
That's really all I do. I just pull up my Coinbase account and I'm like, huh. And then I close it again.

Rhian (29:00):
So let's say you offer all of these multiple payment methods, which I'm very bullish on. Sounds Crypto, whatever. That's my personal thoughts on that. What is one of the other things you can do that really makes a difference before the sale is complete?

Kelly (29:17):
One of my absolute favorite things to do is add that personal touch to start collecting information about some of the key dates in your customer's life, that you can then use for marketing later, or just send me not even like promoting products, but like sending them a nice email on their birthday, for example. It's easy enough to capture this information. There's a customer fields app, I think called customer fields.

Rhian (29:43):
Shopify app developers. We're great with names.

Kelly (29:45):
Customer fields Shopify. Let's see what it's called. It's called customer fields. Yep. So we'll link that in the show notes, it's literally called customer fields. You can collect things like their birthday. And the nice thing is you can just do like day and month. It's not like you need to capture their year or anything like that to get super specific unless it makes sense to get more specific if you're offering let's say a company that sells flowers, you can capture like an anniversary and the number of anniversaries or something like that. You can even capture your significant other's name in there to again, send a personalized email. There are all kinds of fun things that you can do with customer fields to really personalize the emails. I think I may have talked about this in the past, but Motherly is a really good example of this from our clients.

Rhian (30:35):
Yes.

Kelly (30:36):
So if you don't remember or you do you remember I am going to tell you again, Motherly is a content company that focuses on motherhood both before and after giving birth. And they have an e-commerce component to the store, of course, because that's why we are here. And they're capturing a lot of information about your family, what you do for a living, all kinds of fun, interesting things. Are you currently pregnant? Are you trying? Whatever it might be. I'm not pregnant. You can check these boxes and then every email that you receive from Motherly is super personalized to your life and your family, including the names of your kids and how old they are. Like, oh, happy second birthday to your son. Little things like that. It seems like you get super granular with that information, that it would become a lot of work, but once it's done, it's done and you don't have to be spending a ton of time redoing it again. I just think it's a really clever way to capture that additional information at the personal experience there.

Rhian (31:45):
I love that. I think it's really important and it can be a really powerful tool before the sale and beyond.

Kelly (31:52):
I think I may have said at the beginning of this episode that we were going to go into after the sale but before delivery and after delivery as well. But we have a lot of information to cover in just those so this is actually a three-part episode because...

Rhian (32:10):
We decided.

Kelly (32:11):
We decided, so you're going to get three times the content. So I guess next week or maybe they'll be released in order. We'll see. Actually there are no rules. I was going to say we don't make the rules but it's because we don't want any rules to exist. Point being we'll be getting more into after the sale but before delivery and after delivery at a later time. But hopefully that gives you some stuff to think about in the meantime, until those episodes come out. But I would love to jump into shout outs now, what do you think?

Rhian (32:44):
I think we should jump into shout outs right now. And this store I want to shout out is because they gave us and by us, I mean my daughter and I, a fantastic customer experience. And that is Jorn, which is ourjorn.com. So not only is it a beautiful website, which yes, that's awesome but when you go and you unbox it, it comes in a beautiful box. It comes with rose pedals around it while you're unboxing it. And it comes with a handwritten note and the handwritten note is so thoughtful and so kind, and it is noticed, like I noticed, I was like, "wow, this is really excellent." And the product is great. So I love every part about it and I would definitely recommend checking it out.

Kelly (33:31):
I love that.

Rhian (33:32):
I do too. It made me smile. I was like this... So there you go that's the delight like, oh, you're opening it. You're getting... My daughter was excited. Everyone was excited about opening this box. It's a much different than when you opened a poly mailer. I was really amped up. So what about you, Kelly?

Kelly (33:48):
So I think you may have shouted out this store at some point or it's definitely come up in previous discussions, but I finally ordered a weighted blanket from Bearaby.

Rhian (33:59):
I love Bearaby.

Kelly (34:00):
One the blankets is amazing and I absolutely love it, but two kind of going on the same line of that customer experience. So if you've never purchased a weighted blanket before you need to know what weight to buy, basically, because you don't want to get one that's too heavy if you've never actually used a weighted blanket before, that's a thing.

Rhian (34:24):
[crosstalk 00:34:24] my business partner once gave me a 25 pound weighted blanket, and I couldn't move it off of my own body. I would just be stuck. I'd be like, "husband can you grab this blanket-"

Kelly (34:37):
That's amazing.

Rhian (34:38):
Sorry. It's a real thing.

Kelly (34:40):
Yeah. So the cotton napper is what I bought and it comes in three weights, 15, 20 and 25 pounds. And I'm like, I have no idea what the hell I need here. And they actually have a question that's clickable that says which weight is right for me. And it's a short quiz, just three steps. How long does it take to actually fall asleep? I'm going to [inaudible 00:35:03] right now. What is your weight? So just a range of weights? And what are your wellness goals? So, that's kind of fun. I'm going to go with feel less anxious because that sounds nice.

Rhian (35:13):
That sounds good.

Kelly (35:13):
And then my result, 15 pounds is the right weight for you. And I don't have to question it. That's what they're recommending I'm going to go with it. You're building trust. You're helping your customers figure out what you actually need to purchase. And you're following through with that. I'm kind of going into the post-purchase thing here for just a minute, but they also send an email this is your first purchase. So I'm now on of some flow, let's say on Klaviyo, that's how to use your napper. And again, if you've never owned a weighted blanket before going from zero to a 100 can be a bad idea. Like you get it and then you immediately start sleeping with 15 pounds of weight on you. It's a concern.

Kelly (35:55):
So it literally goes through phases like phase one, you're easing into it. Don't use it for more than two hours a day for the first three to five days, phase two, you start to ease in more into it. Some people can take up to like 10 days to actually feel fully comfortable. The other piece in phase one is maybe not covering your entire body whereas in phase two, you can start to actually cover your entire body with it. And then phase three is just do whatever you want with it. So sleep proud of yourself in a cocoon.

Rhian (36:24):
Don't build a fort though. It feels [crosstalk 00:36:26].

Kelly (36:25):
Maybe don't build a fort. Yes. But I also like this tip, we don't recommend using your napper on top of a comforter. Because the nice thing about the weighted blankets is that like Daniel, my husband was looking at it he was like, there's so many holes in it. Does it not keep you warm? The purpose is not to keep me warm. It's breathable, which is really nice, but also weighty.

Rhian (36:49):
I prefer it over other weighted blankets that I've had because it's breathable.

Kelly (36:52):
Yeah.

Rhian (36:53):
Frankly.

Kelly (36:54):
Because you don't want to be heavy and warm.

Rhian (36:59):
Yeah. In the middle of the night. And then you're like, "I think I'm dying" and then you're like, "no, it's just the weighted blanket on me. And I'm just really hot."

Kelly (37:06):
At some points I did that. I decided to sleep with it. Maybe like my fourth night of having it. And at some point in the middle of the night, I don't know I woke up and it was on the floor. So clearly I was over it at some point in the middle of the night.

Rhian (37:19):
That's so funny.

Kelly (37:22):
Amazing. So we will link to both of those in the show notes, along with everything else we talked about today. And once again, we'll be covering how to delight your customers after the sale but before delivery and how to delight your customers after delivery in future episodes. So definitely stay tuned for that. Thank you for tuning in today and thanks again to our sponsors for supporting this episode. We do have a YouTube channel and every single week, I'm like, "we're going to restart recording videos again."

Rhian (37:51):
I think this week is it. I think this week is it.

Kelly (37:54):
We said the same thing last week.

Rhian (37:55):
Okay. But I mean it this week.

Kelly (37:57):
Okay. Let's set aside some time to actually record videos.

Rhian (37:59):
Okay.

Kelly (38:00):
You can find the YouTube channel at youtube.com/commercetea. If you like our podcast, please leave us a review on Apple Podcast, reviews make us happy. Also, you can tweet about us or something because we just like seeing mentions about our podcast on the internet. You can subscribe to Commerce Tea on your favorite podcasting service. We post new episodes every Tuesday. So grab your mug and join us then. We'll see you next week.

Rhian (38:24):
Bye-bye. ClockedIn is a time clock for Shopify. With ClockedIn your team members can easily clock in and out of their shifts from anywhere. You can manage your teams hours as they work remotely with an intuitive interface that can be used from desktop, tablet or mobile. Check it out at clockedin.io or in the Shopify App Store.