November 17, 2023 • 32 mins
Ever wondered how combining Amazon and Shopify could skyrocket your e-commerce success? We've got Claus Lauter, the e-commerce savant and powerhouse behind the Ecommerce Coffee Break Podcast, to unravel the ins and outs of this synergistic partnership. Claus brings his extensive experience from advising numerous direct-to-consumer brands, and his expertise as a certified Shopify partner, to enlighten us on how to leverage Amazon and Shopify for maximum gain.
From enhancing conversion rates with Amazon's Buy with Prime button to optimizing Amazon's shipping rates, we delve into how this integrated approach can elevate your e-commerce journey. But we don't stop there; we also embark on a deep dive into the world of Google marketing. Learn the ropes from Claus on setting up Google shopping, and discover the importance of an omnichannel strategy, the power of subscription products, and why it's vital to keep testing and innovating with Amazon.
Tune in to this episode for insider tips on using Amazon and Shopify together to build a successful brand.
For more information about Clause, please visit https://ecommercecoffeebreak.com/
Want to chat with us about this podcast? Send us a text message here
The Planet Amazon podcast, brought to you by Phelps United, addresses all things Amazon and other eCommerce marketplaces. In each episode, we talk with Brands, Agencies, and Sellers about Amazon news, new features, policies, brand policies, logistics, marketing, issues, and challenges, among other topics.
To watch all Planet Amazon Podcast episodes, visit our YouTube channel.
To learn more about Phelps United, visit our website.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Planet Amazon Podcast with Adam Schaefer, where we
explore the world of Amazon andother e-commerce marketplaces.
Join us as we delve into thelatest strategies and tactics
for successful selling on theworld's largest online
marketplace.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Hello, my name is Adam Schaefer and welcome to the
Planet Amazon Podcast.
Planet Amazon is a podcastwhere we talk about all things
Amazon, but today we're going tostretch it a little bit and
we're going to talk about allthings Amazon with the addition
of Shopify.
And to help me talk about thebenefits of having a Shopify
direct to consumer site is noneother than Klaus Louder.
(00:40):
Klaus, welcome to the podcast,thank you for joining.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Hi Adam, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Klaus is the producer and host of a top rated podcast
If you haven't heard.
It's called the e-commercecoffee break podcast and I
recommend everybody go andlisten to that on Spotify and
Apple and the others.
For over 20 years Klaus hasbeen advising early stage direct
to consumer brands ande-commerce merchants to improve
their marketing traffic,conversions and revenue.
(01:08):
He is an official Shopify andKlabio partner, certified Google
expert which I'm not and awardwinning e-commerce store owner.
Klaus has an agency calledSmart e-commerce marketing that
helps merchants to scale uptheir e-commerce marketing
efforts with offshore marketingprofessionals, which I'm really
(01:28):
curious to find out about.
So we can talk about that alittle later.
But welcome again to the show.
And do I have it all right?
Did I miss anything cool?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Absolutely perfect.
Maybe you should add that I'm acappuccino addict, so I really
love coffee, and that's all thename e-commerce coffee break
podcast comes from.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
I love coffee.
I like coffee too.
I don't know why, but coffeedoesn't love me.
But again, thank you, and Klausand I met a little while ago
and I actually was a guest onhis show, and so thank you for
that.
That was a lot of fun.
One thing that we talked about,that we want to talk about some
more, is the benefits of havinga Shopify site and an Amazon
(02:07):
business.
It used to be I don't want tosell my stuff on Amazon because
I want to sell my stuff directon my own Shopify site or my own
direct to consumer site,whatever platform you were on.
But then there were the folksthat are on Amazon and it was
just oh, this is going to be aheavy lift to do my own direct
to consumer business.
But the two actually worktogether incredibly well and
(02:29):
Amazon friend or foe is tryingto actually make it more
integrated.
So what are your thoughts onthe latest and greatest class?
Speaker 3 (02:40):
I think it's a really good development that has just
happened there, with AmazonShopify working together.
If you have asked me two yearsago, I would say they're not
really their competitors andthey're not really interested in
doing this, but I think thecooperation was specifically
with Bivis Prime that just cameup, I think opens a lot of
opportunities for sellers outthere.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, I mean, and so they now have, and it wasn't
something that all Amazonsellers could do.
But now, if you have a Shopifysite, I believe all Shopify
sellers could also use theShopify and Amazon app if
they're using Buy with Prime,and Buy with Prime is a way that
a Shopify seller could put anAmazon Buy with Prime button on.
(03:28):
Customer could click on it, paywith.
That Doesn't mean they don'thave the opportunity to pay with
their own MasterCard or someother payment source, but it's
another source, an alternativesource, where customers, if they
want, could use their Amazonaccount and use it to pay for
their goods on your Shopify siteand, at the same time, if you
(03:48):
want and you've elected, amazonwill ship it in a brown box to
the end user or to the customerfor you.
So I think it's really, reallycool.
What have you learned?
And people you're working withthat they enjoying this or not,
because I've heard really goodthings.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
And definitely there's a lot of benefits to it.
I mean, obviously you get ahigher conversion rate overall.
There's millions of people outthere having an Amazon Prime
account and for them it's justvery convenient to check out
with the account they alreadyhave, so don't need to type in
all the details again.
And also it's a trust buildingfactor.
I mean people trust Amazon.
Amazon is around for a longtime and if you're trying to
(04:28):
shop at a brand that you don'tknow, that you haven't heard
about, but you're interested ina product and you see that you
can check out with Amazon Prime,most likely you will do so
because you trust that Amazonhas sort of verified this brand
and it just helps you withbuilding your brand, your
business, on a completelydifferent level that you were
able in the past.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
I mean it's a great point.
I mean the conversion isdefinitely better, especially
when you're a standaloneshopping site.
Customers maybe they find youon Google, maybe they find you
at retail, but they go to yoursite but they're not prepared to
buy from your site.
There's something that maybemakes them a little nervous.
(05:10):
The Amazon factor really helpsa lot because they know Amazon
will be behind the purchase andthey have all the rights of a
Prime user.
So I think conversion rate forsure.
We've tested it with a fewdifferent brands and the Amazon
experience definitely provided ahigher conversion rate.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Yeah, I totally agree .
I mean you have this easy checkout, then you have one or two
days shipping, free returns, soall of these things are done
with Amazon Prime and as aShopify merchants, and that's I
think that's one.
The biggest advantage now thatyou didn't have in the past is
you can still collect the dataof your customer, so it's not
(05:49):
just like Amazon, where Amazonunfortunately holds most of the
data, which does not really helpyou with your marketing unless
you use Amazon as a marketingplatform, but you keep the data,
but you get the advantages offast fulfillment, free returns
and so on, so forth.
So overall, I think it's agreat deal that the two have
made there and I can see that alot of specifically small and
(06:12):
medium enterprises that are onShopify and have used Amazon as
a secondary platform now canhave or create this kind of
synergy effect by having thesetwo platforms in one go, in one
checkout.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
I think it's again.
If I was getting into thebusiness again as a direct to
consumer, like you said a coupleof years ago, I think I would
have been a little skeptical.
I don't want Amazon to get mycustomer.
I don't own the customer whenAmazon sells it, like you were
saying, and I think that I wantto control it all.
But the fact is, it's expensiveto try and control it and build
(06:49):
it yourself.
Where the Amazon platformprovides so much traffic, and I
think the fear always was thatAmazon is going to steal my
customers.
I'm going to have to pay themfees.
I won't have any relationshipwith my customers.
Well, now it's different.
Although you still might sellon Amazon and they might buy
from you, if you're selling onyour own site, there's the
(07:13):
opportunity for them to go backand forth.
And what do I mean by that?
If you have a brand and yousell multiple different products
it used to be an Amazon's rulewas you have catalog parity,
meaning whatever you sell onyour site, you have to sell on
our site.
You have to sell it all, andthat's gone away, and so now you
can have a selection ofproducts maybe the best sellers,
(07:35):
maybe the medium sellers, maybesome colors.
In fact, maybe you want to havered, green and blue on Amazon,
but the platinum color one youwant to have on your site along
with those.
So what will happen is you'llget leakage from Amazon to your
site and also, when peopleregister when they buy your
products, you'll get thatinformation for you to market to
(07:56):
.
So it's a pretty good deal andthat conversion rate is a big
deal, and so it goes both ways.
You could advertise on Googleand push it to Amazon and look
at the conversion rate.
You can advertise on Google andpush it to your own site, and
it used to be well.
Whatever the conversion, I'mspending less money on fees, so
(08:19):
it's better margin for me if Isend it to my site Not
necessarily anymore, but Amazonis gonna give you a rebate.
As long as you apply for it andyou're the brand owner, you'll
get a rebate on the advertisingyou do.
That pushes traffic to Amazon,so I definitely recommend
testing it for sure.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Yeah, that's another benefit.
I mean you are allowed to usethe Amazon Prime batch in your
marketing, and not only on theproduct detail patch on your
site but also in your socials,in your emails and so on and so
forth.
So you basically as a merchantcan go out there and say listen,
we offer, buy with Prime.
So again, another trustbuilding factor there.
And I think one of the biggestbenefits is that listeners might
(09:03):
know that obviously with Amazonyou have a very strict
structure when it comes to theproduct detail page on Amazon,
on your Shopify store, you cando whatever you want.
It's your product detail page,so you can.
And specifically, if you haveproducts where it needs a little
bit more detailed informationto convince people to buy from
you, then you can put everythingon your product detail page as
(09:27):
you do you make a big, huge,huge, whatever Class is, huge.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
That's big, I think, and I wish I brought it up, but
you brought it up, so I'm gladyou did.
You could only tell what youcould tell on Amazon and they've
been giving you more and morereal estate to tell your story.
But people fall in love withbrands.
If they fall in love with yourproducts and they wanna learn
more about the brands, theywanna be part of the community.
(09:51):
I do it with many of theproducts I buy that photography
products.
I always, no matter where I buyit from, I go to the main
website of the brand or themanufacturer's site.
I could learn more, connect totheir community, read more about
upcoming products.
So if you really wanna tellyour story, tell your brand
(10:12):
story, tell your product story,you really should have that
direct-to-consumer site andAmazon will do an okay job at
telling the story and you needto work really hard to try and
tell your story there.
But what you'll find is themore and more customers you get
from any channel, they're gonnago to your Shopify site and
they're gonna learn a lot more.
And again, I think we all do itevery day.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Absolutely yeah.
So I think it goes hand-in-hand.
A lot of synergy in there, butthere's also some downsides.
Right now it's only US-basedentities, so you need to be
registered in the US with yourShopify business.
Then obviously you need to havea professional set-up account,
a central set-up account onAmazon.
So you need to go through thewhole approval process there.
And I think the biggestdrawback and that's where
(10:56):
merchants really need to see ifit makes financially sense for
them to go that route is itright now it only works with
Shopify payments.
No, shopify payments is thestandard payment gateway that
Shopify offers with everyaccount.
That might not work for everybrand, Depending on what you're
selling.
You might not be qualified forthat, so you have to go out and
(11:17):
find another payment gatewayprocessor to do so.
And also, shopify payments isnot the cheapest in the game.
So if you have high volume,bigger brands might go there and
look for a cheaper paymentgateway processor.
Then it would not work withAmazon Prime anymore.
So you really need to see howdoes that fit in there and how
do your numbers look like?
(11:38):
Because, as we know, amazon isnot a cheap way to sell your
products and, specifically ifyou have products with a very
small profit margin, then youneed to do the mask to make sure
that you're still making money.
At the end of the day, that's agreat point.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
I didn't realize because I knew Shopify has a
bunch of different paymentmethods, payment gateways that
are available when you'resetting up your account, but you
have to use the one that iscompatible with Amazon.
It sounds like I didn't knowthat.
That's good information, sopretty interesting.
But again, I know that there'ssome like oh you guys, you're
(12:15):
just trying to sell more Shopifyor more Amazon, we're not.
I'm trying to say look man,I've been in the business for a
long time and I've had my owne-commerce site and getting
traffic is everything andgetting new customers and what's
my cost to acquire a newcustomer?
And then I go to Amazon.
It's the same thing.
There's a lot of traffic there,but you gotta have them raise
their hand.
If you could play them bothtogether and you could wind up
(12:36):
getting new customers to yourdirect to consumer site while
you're building your volume onAmazon, it's a great, great
thing.
So again, I wouldn't hide fromAmazon.
I would definitely embraceAmazon.
I wouldn't not have a Shopifysite.
I think without the Shopifysite you're kind of half a brand
.
You really need to tell yourstory and you really need to
(12:58):
connect with your customers anddon't just leave it to Amazon to
do that.
That's your responsibility as abrand owner.
So I would do it for sure.
But going to the logistics partof it, the multi-channel
fulfillment with Amazon, Ibelieve, has become so important
.
If, again, this is just me, butif I was a Shopify seller, I
(13:22):
would leverage the inventory Ihave up at my FBA fulfillment
centers and leverage Amazon'sshipping rates, Although there's
a cost for them to do the pick,pack and all that.
Whenever I look unless it's USmail Going in a very kind of
small flat pack Amazon beats meevery single time.
(13:43):
No matter what I try to do tonegotiate better prices with
freight carriers on my side,their rates, even with their
markup, is better.
So the fact that they couldpick and package now I don't
have to have people picking andpacking my products and wrapping
up and they're gonna ship it ina brown box.
They're gonna be responsiblefor the delivery to me.
(14:03):
I mean, I think they'reprobably the best three PL out
there.
What, what your thoughts coston that?
Speaker 3 (14:10):
I would break it down to a specific business.
So, what you do, I would notgeneralize and say everything
works best with F, amazon, fba.
There's other three PLproviders out there which have
meanwhile logistics that arevery fast.
But I think one of the reasonsand that's just me is why this
kind of marriage between Shopifyand Amazon now has become
(14:34):
reality is that I think Shopifystarted about I don't know two
years ago to build up a fullfulfillment network on their own
and that didn't go well, so ithas become very, very quiet
around.
This topic was in Shopify, so Ithink they just, instead of
reinventing the wheel for okay,let's go and Work with Amazon,
because they have thefulfillment there, they have the
(14:55):
network they have to warehousesand so on, so forth.
So there is definitely abenefit in there.
But it might be that you're inthe business where you need to
pack your stuff yourself Custommade products, for instance,
might be something like that.
You can't be there for sure youcan't give it to a warehouse
because it's custom built andthere's a lot of business out
there were exactly doing that.
Or just products that youcannot hold in a warehouse
(15:18):
because of whatever your wholelogistics is behind your product
.
To really break it down to thebusiness that you run and look
if it gives you the benefits,and the benefit for the customer
is clear.
It's overnight shipping, one today shipping, the returns, it's
seamless.
You don't have it on your list,you leave Amazon to do it.
So a lot of benefits there.
(15:40):
But again, I would notgeneralize.
Look what your business needsand then go class.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
I'm glad you said that.
I mean I was too, too bold inmy statement of FBA only.
But you're right, if it's acustom product and you can't
have it there or it's a bill toorder type of product, I get it
for sure.
For the mass type of producttypical, you know, products that
you know are smaller to eveneven quite larger FBA is
(16:06):
definitely a good choice.
So it didn't mean to generalize, but you're right.
You know, I think I'vedefinitely met some, some brands
that are built to order or theyget them together before they
go out and it's hard to stockthat up at Amazon.
But their freight rates are sogood in general, again, outside
of US mail and even with some ofthe mail there better.
(16:29):
But I just I haven't found itbetter.
Like I look at UPS and FedEx, Ilook at one tooth.
You know, you know groundshipping.
It's shocking.
I hate freight because it costsso much, but they're, they're
better than most.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
That's true here so so what?
Speaker 2 (16:48):
what other tips and tricks you talk about on the
Shopify side of the house, andhow?
Maybe it would relate to Amazon.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
I basically, with this new solution, a lot of the
tips that I gave in the past aresort of gone, because I was
saying use Amazon as one of thesales channel.
You should not Specificallyonly focus on one sales channel.
There's so many platforms outthere, so many sales platforms.
If you want to be successful inyour business, you need to be
on most all of these platformsdepending on your business,
because there's traffic and yousaid before traffic is important
(17:18):
.
There's traffic Everywhere onthe interwebs.
You need to just tap in andfind your customers on the
platform they are on.
Now pretty much everyone is onAmazon.
So again, you want to build upyour brand on Shopify.
You want to get the customerdata and keep the customer data
for your marketing on Shopify.
I think that's the core goal ofevery market here and sales
(17:41):
person out there is to get thecustomer data to continue
selling to them, lifetimecustomer value and so on, so
forth.
So without an email address,you're still lost and you won't
get that from Amazon.
On the other hand, you want togive the benefit that, once you
have this, give the people thechance to check out with Amazon
(18:02):
Prime, get the free shipping andso on, so forth.
So all of that plays togetherand in building a brand and I
think, basically saying you needto be Good on Shopify, you need
to be good on Amazon to reallymake it work, which is a problem
for smaller businesses becauseAmazon is a huge universe.
Shopify is on the way there.
(18:27):
They're adding more features bythe day, so it's not as easy,
specifically with Shopify, likeit was six, seven years ago,
where you could just hop on theplatform and throw a product up
there and Start sellingsomething.
You still can do that, but ifyou want to build a business,
not a side hustle, if you wantto build a business, then you
need to treat it as a businessand tap in every what do you
(18:51):
need?
Every feature they have, andthen it can become very
complicated.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
I'm so changing the subject a little bit and thank
you for that.
I noticed you were a clavioexpert and is that you got into
clavio the email providerbecause of the integration with
Shopify?
Is that how that happened?
Speaker 3 (19:09):
How does that I?
Speaker 2 (19:10):
mean, I used to use it before.
They were part of Shopify andthen we went on to HubSpot and
some other stuff.
But what do you like aboutclavio?
Is it that powerful?
Speaker 3 (19:20):
It is that powerful.
Clavio was built for e-commerce.
So I mean there's a ton ofother email marketing systems
out there you have MailChimp andso on and so forth but they
were not built for e-commerce.
Clavio was from the get-gobuilt for e-commerce and they
had, from the start they had avery deep integration into
Shopify.
Now, obviously, shopify hasinvested in Clavio, so they're
(19:42):
sort of part.
It's not the same company, butthey have a lot of shares in
there and integration is just soclose, so nightly knitted
together, that it just works thebest way possible that you can
have.
So I don't think I mean youpossibly can do, but I would
always recommend to use Clavioand Shopify if you want to do
email marketing.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
For the common store owner.
Is Clavio easy enough that thestore owners can use it, or you
find that you're having to do itfor them?
Speaker 3 (20:12):
No, it's easy enough to use it and there you start
with the basic integrations.
You start with your flows, adcampaigns and so on and so forth
.
But it's very straightforward,to be honest.
And when it comes to emailmarketing and I'm a big fan of
email marketing, I'm doing thisfor 20 plus years Once you know
the basics how do you do yoursegmentation and so on and so
(20:35):
forth it becomes sort ofstraightforward to work with
Clavio.
It gives you just all the toolsthat you need and, again, it
works very, very close withShopify.
So you pull all the data thatis in Shopify, from your orders,
from your customers, right intothe email marketing system and
with that you can obviouslygenerate very personalized
emails, and that's what, at theend of the day, it is about.
(20:57):
People want to havepersonalized emails and Clavio
gives you that opportunity.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Well, free advertisement for Clavio.
But I was just curious becauseI've used so many different
systems and I just I see theseguys just getting closer and
closer together.
And also, you know yourexperience with Google.
We do Google and we do socialmedia advertising.
But have you been doing muchGoogle advertising pushing to
Amazon, or is it almost all toShopify?
(21:24):
What have you been seeing goingon out there?
Speaker 3 (21:28):
I personally was driving, or I'm driving,
everything directly to Shopify.
Obviously, Google shopping is abig part of that.
And, Mr Google Merchant Center,you link basically your product
feed from your Shopify storedirectly into Google shopping
and it brings you all the wayback there.
So it's a very closeintegration there works very
(21:51):
well and the conversion rates,if you do Google shopping right,
are relatively high becauseGoogle shows exactly the product
, what people are searching forin Google.
So it can't get better thanthat.
It's not that easy to do thesetup.
Obviously, all the productsneed to be approved and Google
shopping and so on and so forth.
And then you can go one stepfurther and see okay, what other
(22:14):
kind of marketing activities onGoogle ads for instance do I
want to do?
Do I want to do remarketingcampaigns bring people back to
the store if they have beenthere before.
Search campaigns, performancemax campaigns Again, Google has
a lot to offer when it comes totheir marketing tools.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
What I noticed with new stores.
When you start trying to marketon Google for the first time,
it's not super easy to get yourstore set up, to get everything
set up at Google.
Do you find that like they giveyou a hard time about things?
They audit your site, maybethey block you sometimes from
doing it?
I mean, maybe we just did itwrong, but I didn't think it was
(22:54):
easy.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
You need to go with your products through a sort of
approval process and obviouslythere is a automatism behind
that, so an algo behind that andthey might disapprove your
products.
Obviously, google has certainguidelines and requirements and
rules about which products theysell or they show on Google
shopping and, depending if youdo it right or not, they will
(23:20):
not be approved.
So the initial approval processin Google Merchant Center might
be a bit not complicated, butjust cost you some time to get
everything right.
Once that is done, it'sbasically smooth sailing.
Then there's not many problems.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
For us it was a setup .
It was trying to get theproducts approved.
They were disapproving a lot.
We had to keep on going back inthere.
It was definitely something wecould have used your help with
at the time.
We figured it out, butdefinitely I lost some hair,
which you can see, and so sorryto stray off into those areas.
Although this is the Amazon show, I just think that Google has
become much more important forAmazon sellers these days as it
(24:01):
is for Shopify, and I do thinkthat whoever is going to be
marketing, if you're on bothplatforms, you definitely try to
test both and see what theconversion rates are, because if
you're going to get 8% to 10%back from Amazon, you might find
that you're better offadvertising on Amazon.
The thing is Amazon gets thecustomer.
(24:22):
You don't own the customer, butif they register for your
product, you'll get the customer.
If they don't register for theproduct, hopefully they like
your brand and they come over toyour site.
So I would definitely try thatthe best I could, and also with
Amazon, there's a lot of testingthat you could do to try and
continue to enhance yourconversion rates.
(24:43):
I'm sure a lot of this isavailable on Shopify too, but on
Amazon you could always, always, always be testing and trying
to increase your conversion ratewithout it interfering with the
sales of your business.
So it's not a bad place to testproducts and try new things, as
long as you have some kind of agoal of ultimately saying I
(25:05):
don't care where the customerbuys, as long as they're buying
and they're happy.
And if it's a subscriptionproduct, I'm the happiest
because they're going to buyover and over again.
And if Amazon could reduce mycost to acquire new customers,
I'm thrilled about that.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Yeah, I think our omnichannel strategy is the most
important thing.
As a starter in e-commerce, asa solopreneur or site hustler,
it might be overwhelming, itmight be difficult to find the
right way through all thesedifferent platforms, through all
these different features thatare out there, but unfortunately
, at the end of the day, youhave to play with all of them
because, as I said, you don'tknow where your customer is and
(25:42):
you want to be there if theylook for you.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
And the problem is with Amazon.
You're talking about $610billion.
$615 billion of merchandisegets sold through Amazon in a
year, and there are brands thatyou've never heard of, that are
just beating the heck out ofbrands that we all grew up with
and know quite well and they'vemade a huge business for
(26:08):
themselves and they'reUltimately eating and stealing
your share.
So you kinda need to be thereas a defensive measure.
Sometimes also, I guess there'sthe exclusivity that people
might want to keep with theirown site, but I see some great
brands doing a great job tryingto Keep exclusive products on
their site, mass market productson Amazon, and they use them
(26:31):
both well together.
So you know I'm for it.
But question I brought upsubscription.
I mean a Shopify.
You can do subscriptions, canyou?
Absolutely sure so to me thatthat's such a big deal.
And I look at the products wesell and, again, if I could do
it all again, I would never sellone off.
So we sell something thateither has accessories or
(26:53):
something that you use over andover again, like coffee.
You know we buy coffee.
What you're buying from aShopify site, you're buying from
Amazon.
We basically have it onautopilot.
We know like every month couplebags come in and it just keeps
on going.
We do that with a bunch ofstaples that we use, but Things
(27:14):
like air purifiers, the filters,you know you put them on a
subscription basis and you canalways modify it.
But that, to me, is the valueof acquiring a customer.
The one and done is reallytough is unless you're gonna
make a fortune on the first sale.
But if you want to have thisannuity, this ongoing business
and building it, a subscriptionbusiness where products that
(27:37):
need to have accessories to makethem more interesting give you
more features, is a big deal.
And you know, I do think youcould do both on Shopify and on
Amazon.
So Any comments on that at all.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
Your hundred percent right.
If you find the golden grail ofhaving a product that you can
use or that you can offer as asubscription offer, then you're
very well off.
Please do not start to sell acoffee subscription.
That's a commodity.
That's completely.
You will not succeed there.
So, whatever is a commodity,don't go that route.
(28:13):
Supplements can be a greatbusiness, but it's a complete
overcrowded market.
So you really do think and findyour niche.
If you want to go that routeand find a product that's not
everyone else is already sellingas a subscription business.
Other than that, subscriptionbusinesses are great.
Shopify offers a ton of reallygood subscription apps out there
(28:35):
.
I had a few of suppliers ordevelopers of apps on my own
podcast can go there and have alisten.
So it's a good business if youhave subscription.
That's true.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Yeah, and accessories like so, if you're, if you fall
in love with the brand and youlove the core product and there
are other things.
So recently I bought an instant360 go.
It's like a little sport cameraand it's super cool when you
could buy it and it haseverything you need to use it.
But because I really enjoy theproduct Every every few days of
(29:10):
getting an email from instant360 and it's got another
accessory or another cool way touse the camera and for me, you
know the lifetime value, youknow for anybody that loves the
product, is much more elongatedby having all these cool
accessories.
So it's not like I'm buyingfilm, I'm buying another stand,
(29:31):
another holder for another casefor it and you know I'm sure
there's 10 or 15 differentproducts are going to buy for
this thing over my time using it.
So it's pretty cool.
I recommend that to everybodyaccessories, accessorize.
So with that I know we soundlike the Shopify, amazon.
(29:51):
We love it, we love it.
There's definitely the thingsthat are complicated about it,
the things that get you Upsetand get you frustrated, but If
you take your time and you learnhow to navigate and you stay
with it and you work with peoplelike Klaus, like our company
and Phelps United, we're here tohelp you Navigated, but it's
(30:11):
think about being able to starta business without having to
open up a store.
You could do that with Shopifysite and by selling on Amazon.
It used to be that it wouldcost you hundreds of thousands
of dollars I mean back in theearly days of Internet.
It costs us millions of dollarsto create an e-commerce site
that has One tenth of thefunctionality that Shopify site
(30:35):
has already built into it.
Today, I mean, you could do somuch out of the box with Shopify
for like no money, very lowamount of money.
Amazon also small fee you payto be a part of it and you have
this whole world of traffic.
So I think for entrepreneurscoming up, people that want to
start their own business, peoplethat are creatives, that wanna
(30:55):
build products and sell them,the platforms available on the
opportunity to sell is betterthan ever before.
So I just you know I'm acreative at heart and I love
great new products and figuringout ways to sell them.
I'm sure you're the same way.
Close.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
Yeah, I am, unfortunately, but I'm in the
core.
I'm in a market here, so I domarketing for a very long time
and, as you just said, you'rebuying 50 more accessories for
your insight cam there.
That's the bad people, like me.
Marketing makes you buying more, so I have to apologize for
every market here on the show.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
We have to add some value.
So well with that any any lastwords for audience today On the
Shopify Amazon team up.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Only tried out.
Tried for your business.
Have a look at the numbers ofthe figures, have a look at the
conversion rates.
I'm sure it will have apositive impact on your business
.
So, as always, when it comes tobusiness, there's only one way
to find out try it out, try itand if you get stuck, Call Klaus
, call felt United, and so classof people want to reach out to
(32:03):
you how we're going to get outof business.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
I'm going to reach out to you how and what's the
best way to do it.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
To ways either go to close louder dot com or search
for e-commerce coffee breakpodcast.
I'm pretty much verytransparent in the interwebs.
You will find me on everyplatform, from LinkedIn to
Facebook, instagram, tiktok.
So just search for e-commercecoffee break.
You will find me there.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Super with that.
Thank you so much for joiningus.
I really enjoyed talking to youand I love talking about
e-commerce, so thank you verymuch.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Thanks, so much was fun, have a good one.
Planet Amazon Podcast with Adam Schaefer, where we
explore the world of Amazon andother e-commerce marketplaces.
Join us as we delve into thelatest strategies and tactics
for successful selling on theworld's largest online
marketplace.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Hello, my name is Adam Schaefer and welcome to the
Planet Amazon Podcast.
Planet Amazon is a podcastwhere we talk about all things
Amazon, but today we're going tostretch it a little bit and
we're going to talk about allthings Amazon with the addition
of Shopify.
And to help me talk about thebenefits of having a Shopify
direct to consumer site is noneother than Klaus Louder.
(00:40):
Klaus, welcome to the podcast,thank you for joining.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Hi Adam, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Klaus is the producer and host of a top rated podcast
If you haven't heard.
It's called the e-commercecoffee break podcast and I
recommend everybody go andlisten to that on Spotify and
Apple and the others.
For over 20 years Klaus hasbeen advising early stage direct
to consumer brands ande-commerce merchants to improve
their marketing traffic,conversions and revenue.
(01:08):
He is an official Shopify andKlabio partner, certified Google
expert which I'm not and awardwinning e-commerce store owner.
Klaus has an agency calledSmart e-commerce marketing that
helps merchants to scale uptheir e-commerce marketing
efforts with offshore marketingprofessionals, which I'm really
(01:28):
curious to find out about.
So we can talk about that alittle later.
But welcome again to the show.
And do I have it all right?
Did I miss anything cool?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
Absolutely perfect.
Maybe you should add that I'm acappuccino addict, so I really
love coffee, and that's all thename e-commerce coffee break
podcast comes from.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
I love coffee.
I like coffee too.
I don't know why, but coffeedoesn't love me.
But again, thank you, and Klausand I met a little while ago
and I actually was a guest onhis show, and so thank you for
that.
That was a lot of fun.
One thing that we talked about,that we want to talk about some
more, is the benefits of havinga Shopify site and an Amazon
(02:07):
business.
It used to be I don't want tosell my stuff on Amazon because
I want to sell my stuff directon my own Shopify site or my own
direct to consumer site,whatever platform you were on.
But then there were the folksthat are on Amazon and it was
just oh, this is going to be aheavy lift to do my own direct
to consumer business.
But the two actually worktogether incredibly well and
(02:29):
Amazon friend or foe is tryingto actually make it more
integrated.
So what are your thoughts onthe latest and greatest class?
Speaker 3 (02:40):
I think it's a really good development that has just
happened there, with AmazonShopify working together.
If you have asked me two yearsago, I would say they're not
really their competitors andthey're not really interested in
doing this, but I think thecooperation was specifically
with Bivis Prime that just cameup, I think opens a lot of
opportunities for sellers outthere.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, I mean, and so they now have, and it wasn't
something that all Amazonsellers could do.
But now, if you have a Shopifysite, I believe all Shopify
sellers could also use theShopify and Amazon app if
they're using Buy with Prime,and Buy with Prime is a way that
a Shopify seller could put anAmazon Buy with Prime button on.
(03:28):
Customer could click on it, paywith.
That Doesn't mean they don'thave the opportunity to pay with
their own MasterCard or someother payment source, but it's
another source, an alternativesource, where customers, if they
want, could use their Amazonaccount and use it to pay for
their goods on your Shopify siteand, at the same time, if you
(03:48):
want and you've elected, amazonwill ship it in a brown box to
the end user or to the customerfor you.
So I think it's really, reallycool.
What have you learned?
And people you're working withthat they enjoying this or not,
because I've heard really goodthings.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
And definitely there's a lot of benefits to it.
I mean, obviously you get ahigher conversion rate overall.
There's millions of people outthere having an Amazon Prime
account and for them it's justvery convenient to check out
with the account they alreadyhave, so don't need to type in
all the details again.
And also it's a trust buildingfactor.
I mean people trust Amazon.
Amazon is around for a longtime and if you're trying to
(04:28):
shop at a brand that you don'tknow, that you haven't heard
about, but you're interested ina product and you see that you
can check out with Amazon Prime,most likely you will do so
because you trust that Amazonhas sort of verified this brand
and it just helps you withbuilding your brand, your
business, on a completelydifferent level that you were
able in the past.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
I mean it's a great point.
I mean the conversion isdefinitely better, especially
when you're a standaloneshopping site.
Customers maybe they find youon Google, maybe they find you
at retail, but they go to yoursite but they're not prepared to
buy from your site.
There's something that maybemakes them a little nervous.
(05:10):
The Amazon factor really helpsa lot because they know Amazon
will be behind the purchase andthey have all the rights of a
Prime user.
So I think conversion rate forsure.
We've tested it with a fewdifferent brands and the Amazon
experience definitely provided ahigher conversion rate.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Yeah, I totally agree .
I mean you have this easy checkout, then you have one or two
days shipping, free returns, soall of these things are done
with Amazon Prime and as aShopify merchants, and that's I
think that's one.
The biggest advantage now thatyou didn't have in the past is
you can still collect the dataof your customer, so it's not
(05:49):
just like Amazon, where Amazonunfortunately holds most of the
data, which does not really helpyou with your marketing unless
you use Amazon as a marketingplatform, but you keep the data,
but you get the advantages offast fulfillment, free returns
and so on, so forth.
So overall, I think it's agreat deal that the two have
made there and I can see that alot of specifically small and
(06:12):
medium enterprises that are onShopify and have used Amazon as
a secondary platform now canhave or create this kind of
synergy effect by having thesetwo platforms in one go, in one
checkout.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
I think it's again.
If I was getting into thebusiness again as a direct to
consumer, like you said a coupleof years ago, I think I would
have been a little skeptical.
I don't want Amazon to get mycustomer.
I don't own the customer whenAmazon sells it, like you were
saying, and I think that I wantto control it all.
But the fact is, it's expensiveto try and control it and build
(06:49):
it yourself.
Where the Amazon platformprovides so much traffic, and I
think the fear always was thatAmazon is going to steal my
customers.
I'm going to have to pay themfees.
I won't have any relationshipwith my customers.
Well, now it's different.
Although you still might sellon Amazon and they might buy
from you, if you're selling onyour own site, there's the
(07:13):
opportunity for them to go backand forth.
And what do I mean by that?
If you have a brand and yousell multiple different products
it used to be an Amazon's rulewas you have catalog parity,
meaning whatever you sell onyour site, you have to sell on
our site.
You have to sell it all, andthat's gone away, and so now you
can have a selection ofproducts maybe the best sellers,
(07:35):
maybe the medium sellers, maybesome colors.
In fact, maybe you want to havered, green and blue on Amazon,
but the platinum color one youwant to have on your site along
with those.
So what will happen is you'llget leakage from Amazon to your
site and also, when peopleregister when they buy your
products, you'll get thatinformation for you to market to
(07:56):
.
So it's a pretty good deal andthat conversion rate is a big
deal, and so it goes both ways.
You could advertise on Googleand push it to Amazon and look
at the conversion rate.
You can advertise on Google andpush it to your own site, and
it used to be well.
Whatever the conversion, I'mspending less money on fees, so
(08:19):
it's better margin for me if Isend it to my site Not
necessarily anymore, but Amazonis gonna give you a rebate.
As long as you apply for it andyou're the brand owner, you'll
get a rebate on the advertisingyou do.
That pushes traffic to Amazon,so I definitely recommend
testing it for sure.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Yeah, that's another benefit.
I mean you are allowed to usethe Amazon Prime batch in your
marketing, and not only on theproduct detail patch on your
site but also in your socials,in your emails and so on and so
forth.
So you basically as a merchantcan go out there and say listen,
we offer, buy with Prime.
So again, another trustbuilding factor there.
And I think one of the biggestbenefits is that listeners might
(09:03):
know that obviously with Amazonyou have a very strict
structure when it comes to theproduct detail page on Amazon,
on your Shopify store, you cando whatever you want.
It's your product detail page,so you can.
And specifically, if you haveproducts where it needs a little
bit more detailed informationto convince people to buy from
you, then you can put everythingon your product detail page as
(09:27):
you do you make a big, huge,huge, whatever Class is, huge.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
That's big, I think, and I wish I brought it up, but
you brought it up, so I'm gladyou did.
You could only tell what youcould tell on Amazon and they've
been giving you more and morereal estate to tell your story.
But people fall in love withbrands.
If they fall in love with yourproducts and they wanna learn
more about the brands, theywanna be part of the community.
(09:51):
I do it with many of theproducts I buy that photography
products.
I always, no matter where I buyit from, I go to the main
website of the brand or themanufacturer's site.
I could learn more, connect totheir community, read more about
upcoming products.
So if you really wanna tellyour story, tell your brand
(10:12):
story, tell your product story,you really should have that
direct-to-consumer site andAmazon will do an okay job at
telling the story and you needto work really hard to try and
tell your story there.
But what you'll find is themore and more customers you get
from any channel, they're gonnago to your Shopify site and
they're gonna learn a lot more.
And again, I think we all do itevery day.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Absolutely yeah.
So I think it goes hand-in-hand.
A lot of synergy in there, butthere's also some downsides.
Right now it's only US-basedentities, so you need to be
registered in the US with yourShopify business.
Then obviously you need to havea professional set-up account,
a central set-up account onAmazon.
So you need to go through thewhole approval process there.
And I think the biggestdrawback and that's where
(10:56):
merchants really need to see ifit makes financially sense for
them to go that route is itright now it only works with
Shopify payments.
No, shopify payments is thestandard payment gateway that
Shopify offers with everyaccount.
That might not work for everybrand, Depending on what you're
selling.
You might not be qualified forthat, so you have to go out and
(11:17):
find another payment gatewayprocessor to do so.
And also, shopify payments isnot the cheapest in the game.
So if you have high volume,bigger brands might go there and
look for a cheaper paymentgateway processor.
Then it would not work withAmazon Prime anymore.
So you really need to see howdoes that fit in there and how
do your numbers look like?
(11:38):
Because, as we know, amazon isnot a cheap way to sell your
products and, specifically ifyou have products with a very
small profit margin, then youneed to do the mask to make sure
that you're still making money.
At the end of the day, that's agreat point.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
I didn't realize because I knew Shopify has a
bunch of different paymentmethods, payment gateways that
are available when you'resetting up your account, but you
have to use the one that iscompatible with Amazon.
It sounds like I didn't knowthat.
That's good information, sopretty interesting.
But again, I know that there'ssome like oh you guys, you're
(12:15):
just trying to sell more Shopifyor more Amazon, we're not.
I'm trying to say look man,I've been in the business for a
long time and I've had my owne-commerce site and getting
traffic is everything andgetting new customers and what's
my cost to acquire a newcustomer?
And then I go to Amazon.
It's the same thing.
There's a lot of traffic there,but you gotta have them raise
their hand.
If you could play them bothtogether and you could wind up
(12:36):
getting new customers to yourdirect to consumer site while
you're building your volume onAmazon, it's a great, great
thing.
So again, I wouldn't hide fromAmazon.
I would definitely embraceAmazon.
I wouldn't not have a Shopifysite.
I think without the Shopifysite you're kind of half a brand
.
You really need to tell yourstory and you really need to
(12:58):
connect with your customers anddon't just leave it to Amazon to
do that.
That's your responsibility as abrand owner.
So I would do it for sure.
But going to the logistics partof it, the multi-channel
fulfillment with Amazon, Ibelieve, has become so important
.
If, again, this is just me, butif I was a Shopify seller, I
(13:22):
would leverage the inventory Ihave up at my FBA fulfillment
centers and leverage Amazon'sshipping rates, Although there's
a cost for them to do the pick,pack and all that.
Whenever I look unless it's USmail Going in a very kind of
small flat pack Amazon beats meevery single time.
(13:43):
No matter what I try to do tonegotiate better prices with
freight carriers on my side,their rates, even with their
markup, is better.
So the fact that they couldpick and package now I don't
have to have people picking andpacking my products and wrapping
up and they're gonna ship it ina brown box.
They're gonna be responsiblefor the delivery to me.
(14:03):
I mean, I think they'reprobably the best three PL out
there.
What, what your thoughts coston that?
Speaker 3 (14:10):
I would break it down to a specific business.
So, what you do, I would notgeneralize and say everything
works best with F, amazon, fba.
There's other three PLproviders out there which have
meanwhile logistics that arevery fast.
But I think one of the reasonsand that's just me is why this
kind of marriage between Shopifyand Amazon now has become
(14:34):
reality is that I think Shopifystarted about I don't know two
years ago to build up a fullfulfillment network on their own
and that didn't go well, so ithas become very, very quiet
around.
This topic was in Shopify, so Ithink they just, instead of
reinventing the wheel for okay,let's go and Work with Amazon,
because they have thefulfillment there, they have the
(14:55):
network they have to warehousesand so on, so forth.
So there is definitely abenefit in there.
But it might be that you're inthe business where you need to
pack your stuff yourself Custommade products, for instance,
might be something like that.
You can't be there for sure youcan't give it to a warehouse
because it's custom built andthere's a lot of business out
there were exactly doing that.
Or just products that youcannot hold in a warehouse
(15:18):
because of whatever your wholelogistics is behind your product
.
To really break it down to thebusiness that you run and look
if it gives you the benefits,and the benefit for the customer
is clear.
It's overnight shipping, one today shipping, the returns, it's
seamless.
You don't have it on your list,you leave Amazon to do it.
So a lot of benefits there.
(15:40):
But again, I would notgeneralize.
Look what your business needsand then go class.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
I'm glad you said that.
I mean I was too, too bold inmy statement of FBA only.
But you're right, if it's acustom product and you can't
have it there or it's a bill toorder type of product, I get it
for sure.
For the mass type of producttypical, you know, products that
you know are smaller to eveneven quite larger FBA is
(16:06):
definitely a good choice.
So it didn't mean to generalize, but you're right.
You know, I think I'vedefinitely met some, some brands
that are built to order or theyget them together before they
go out and it's hard to stockthat up at Amazon.
But their freight rates are sogood in general, again, outside
of US mail and even with some ofthe mail there better.
(16:29):
But I just I haven't found itbetter.
Like I look at UPS and FedEx, Ilook at one tooth.
You know, you know groundshipping.
It's shocking.
I hate freight because it costsso much, but they're, they're
better than most.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
That's true here so so what?
Speaker 2 (16:48):
what other tips and tricks you talk about on the
Shopify side of the house, andhow?
Maybe it would relate to Amazon.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
I basically, with this new solution, a lot of the
tips that I gave in the past aresort of gone, because I was
saying use Amazon as one of thesales channel.
You should not Specificallyonly focus on one sales channel.
There's so many platforms outthere, so many sales platforms.
If you want to be successful inyour business, you need to be
on most all of these platformsdepending on your business,
because there's traffic and yousaid before traffic is important
(17:18):
.
There's traffic Everywhere onthe interwebs.
You need to just tap in andfind your customers on the
platform they are on.
Now pretty much everyone is onAmazon.
So again, you want to build upyour brand on Shopify.
You want to get the customerdata and keep the customer data
for your marketing on Shopify.
I think that's the core goal ofevery market here and sales
(17:41):
person out there is to get thecustomer data to continue
selling to them, lifetimecustomer value and so on, so
forth.
So without an email address,you're still lost and you won't
get that from Amazon.
On the other hand, you want togive the benefit that, once you
have this, give the people thechance to check out with Amazon
(18:02):
Prime, get the free shipping andso on, so forth.
So all of that plays togetherand in building a brand and I
think, basically saying you needto be Good on Shopify, you need
to be good on Amazon to reallymake it work, which is a problem
for smaller businesses becauseAmazon is a huge universe.
Shopify is on the way there.
(18:27):
They're adding more features bythe day, so it's not as easy,
specifically with Shopify, likeit was six, seven years ago,
where you could just hop on theplatform and throw a product up
there and Start sellingsomething.
You still can do that, but ifyou want to build a business,
not a side hustle, if you wantto build a business, then you
need to treat it as a businessand tap in every what do you
(18:51):
need?
Every feature they have, andthen it can become very
complicated.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
I'm so changing the subject a little bit and thank
you for that.
I noticed you were a clavioexpert and is that you got into
clavio the email providerbecause of the integration with
Shopify?
Is that how that happened?
Speaker 3 (19:09):
How does that I?
Speaker 2 (19:10):
mean, I used to use it before.
They were part of Shopify andthen we went on to HubSpot and
some other stuff.
But what do you like aboutclavio?
Is it that powerful?
Speaker 3 (19:20):
It is that powerful.
Clavio was built for e-commerce.
So I mean there's a ton ofother email marketing systems
out there you have MailChimp andso on and so forth but they
were not built for e-commerce.
Clavio was from the get-gobuilt for e-commerce and they
had, from the start they had avery deep integration into
Shopify.
Now, obviously, shopify hasinvested in Clavio, so they're
(19:42):
sort of part.
It's not the same company, butthey have a lot of shares in
there and integration is just soclose, so nightly knitted
together, that it just works thebest way possible that you can
have.
So I don't think I mean youpossibly can do, but I would
always recommend to use Clavioand Shopify if you want to do
email marketing.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
For the common store owner.
Is Clavio easy enough that thestore owners can use it, or you
find that you're having to do itfor them?
Speaker 3 (20:12):
No, it's easy enough to use it and there you start
with the basic integrations.
You start with your flows, adcampaigns and so on and so forth
.
But it's very straightforward,to be honest.
And when it comes to emailmarketing and I'm a big fan of
email marketing, I'm doing thisfor 20 plus years Once you know
the basics how do you do yoursegmentation and so on and so
(20:35):
forth it becomes sort ofstraightforward to work with
Clavio.
It gives you just all the toolsthat you need and, again, it
works very, very close withShopify.
So you pull all the data thatis in Shopify, from your orders,
from your customers, right intothe email marketing system and
with that you can obviouslygenerate very personalized
emails, and that's what, at theend of the day, it is about.
(20:57):
People want to havepersonalized emails and Clavio
gives you that opportunity.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Well, free advertisement for Clavio.
But I was just curious becauseI've used so many different
systems and I just I see theseguys just getting closer and
closer together.
And also, you know yourexperience with Google.
We do Google and we do socialmedia advertising.
But have you been doing muchGoogle advertising pushing to
Amazon, or is it almost all toShopify?
(21:24):
What have you been seeing goingon out there?
Speaker 3 (21:28):
I personally was driving, or I'm driving,
everything directly to Shopify.
Obviously, Google shopping is abig part of that.
And, Mr Google Merchant Center,you link basically your product
feed from your Shopify storedirectly into Google shopping
and it brings you all the wayback there.
So it's a very closeintegration there works very
(21:51):
well and the conversion rates,if you do Google shopping right,
are relatively high becauseGoogle shows exactly the product
, what people are searching forin Google.
So it can't get better thanthat.
It's not that easy to do thesetup.
Obviously, all the productsneed to be approved and Google
shopping and so on and so forth.
And then you can go one stepfurther and see okay, what other
(22:14):
kind of marketing activities onGoogle ads for instance do I
want to do?
Do I want to do remarketingcampaigns bring people back to
the store if they have beenthere before.
Search campaigns, performancemax campaigns Again, Google has
a lot to offer when it comes totheir marketing tools.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
What I noticed with new stores.
When you start trying to marketon Google for the first time,
it's not super easy to get yourstore set up, to get everything
set up at Google.
Do you find that like they giveyou a hard time about things?
They audit your site, maybethey block you sometimes from
doing it?
I mean, maybe we just did itwrong, but I didn't think it was
(22:54):
easy.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
You need to go with your products through a sort of
approval process and obviouslythere is a automatism behind
that, so an algo behind that andthey might disapprove your
products.
Obviously, google has certainguidelines and requirements and
rules about which products theysell or they show on Google
shopping and, depending if youdo it right or not, they will
(23:20):
not be approved.
So the initial approval processin Google Merchant Center might
be a bit not complicated, butjust cost you some time to get
everything right.
Once that is done, it'sbasically smooth sailing.
Then there's not many problems.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
For us it was a setup .
It was trying to get theproducts approved.
They were disapproving a lot.
We had to keep on going back inthere.
It was definitely something wecould have used your help with
at the time.
We figured it out, butdefinitely I lost some hair,
which you can see, and so sorryto stray off into those areas.
Although this is the Amazon show, I just think that Google has
become much more important forAmazon sellers these days as it
(24:01):
is for Shopify, and I do thinkthat whoever is going to be
marketing, if you're on bothplatforms, you definitely try to
test both and see what theconversion rates are, because if
you're going to get 8% to 10%back from Amazon, you might find
that you're better offadvertising on Amazon.
The thing is Amazon gets thecustomer.
(24:22):
You don't own the customer, butif they register for your
product, you'll get the customer.
If they don't register for theproduct, hopefully they like
your brand and they come over toyour site.
So I would definitely try thatthe best I could, and also with
Amazon, there's a lot of testingthat you could do to try and
continue to enhance yourconversion rates.
(24:43):
I'm sure a lot of this isavailable on Shopify too, but on
Amazon you could always, always, always be testing and trying
to increase your conversion ratewithout it interfering with the
sales of your business.
So it's not a bad place to testproducts and try new things, as
long as you have some kind of agoal of ultimately saying I
(25:05):
don't care where the customerbuys, as long as they're buying
and they're happy.
And if it's a subscriptionproduct, I'm the happiest
because they're going to buyover and over again.
And if Amazon could reduce mycost to acquire new customers,
I'm thrilled about that.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Yeah, I think our omnichannel strategy is the most
important thing.
As a starter in e-commerce, asa solopreneur or site hustler,
it might be overwhelming, itmight be difficult to find the
right way through all thesedifferent platforms, through all
these different features thatare out there, but unfortunately
, at the end of the day, youhave to play with all of them
because, as I said, you don'tknow where your customer is and
(25:42):
you want to be there if theylook for you.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
And the problem is with Amazon.
You're talking about $610billion.
$615 billion of merchandisegets sold through Amazon in a
year, and there are brands thatyou've never heard of, that are
just beating the heck out ofbrands that we all grew up with
and know quite well and they'vemade a huge business for
(26:08):
themselves and they'reUltimately eating and stealing
your share.
So you kinda need to be thereas a defensive measure.
Sometimes also, I guess there'sthe exclusivity that people
might want to keep with theirown site, but I see some great
brands doing a great job tryingto Keep exclusive products on
their site, mass market productson Amazon, and they use them
(26:31):
both well together.
So you know I'm for it.
But question I brought upsubscription.
I mean a Shopify.
You can do subscriptions, canyou?
Absolutely sure so to me thatthat's such a big deal.
And I look at the products wesell and, again, if I could do
it all again, I would never sellone off.
So we sell something thateither has accessories or
(26:53):
something that you use over andover again, like coffee.
You know we buy coffee.
What you're buying from aShopify site, you're buying from
Amazon.
We basically have it onautopilot.
We know like every month couplebags come in and it just keeps
on going.
We do that with a bunch ofstaples that we use, but Things
(27:14):
like air purifiers, the filters,you know you put them on a
subscription basis and you canalways modify it.
But that, to me, is the valueof acquiring a customer.
The one and done is reallytough is unless you're gonna
make a fortune on the first sale.
But if you want to have thisannuity, this ongoing business
and building it, a subscriptionbusiness where products that
(27:37):
need to have accessories to makethem more interesting give you
more features, is a big deal.
And you know, I do think youcould do both on Shopify and on
Amazon.
So Any comments on that at all.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
Your hundred percent right.
If you find the golden grail ofhaving a product that you can
use or that you can offer as asubscription offer, then you're
very well off.
Please do not start to sell acoffee subscription.
That's a commodity.
That's completely.
You will not succeed there.
So, whatever is a commodity,don't go that route.
(28:13):
Supplements can be a greatbusiness, but it's a complete
overcrowded market.
So you really do think and findyour niche.
If you want to go that routeand find a product that's not
everyone else is already sellingas a subscription business.
Other than that, subscriptionbusinesses are great.
Shopify offers a ton of reallygood subscription apps out there
(28:35):
.
I had a few of suppliers ordevelopers of apps on my own
podcast can go there and have alisten.
So it's a good business if youhave subscription.
That's true.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Yeah, and accessories like so, if you're, if you fall
in love with the brand and youlove the core product and there
are other things.
So recently I bought an instant360 go.
It's like a little sport cameraand it's super cool when you
could buy it and it haseverything you need to use it.
But because I really enjoy theproduct Every every few days of
(29:10):
getting an email from instant360 and it's got another
accessory or another cool way touse the camera and for me, you
know the lifetime value, youknow for anybody that loves the
product, is much more elongatedby having all these cool
accessories.
So it's not like I'm buyingfilm, I'm buying another stand,
(29:31):
another holder for another casefor it and you know I'm sure
there's 10 or 15 differentproducts are going to buy for
this thing over my time using it.
So it's pretty cool.
I recommend that to everybodyaccessories, accessorize.
So with that I know we soundlike the Shopify, amazon.
(29:51):
We love it, we love it.
There's definitely the thingsthat are complicated about it,
the things that get you Upsetand get you frustrated, but If
you take your time and you learnhow to navigate and you stay
with it and you work with peoplelike Klaus, like our company
and Phelps United, we're here tohelp you Navigated, but it's
(30:11):
think about being able to starta business without having to
open up a store.
You could do that with Shopifysite and by selling on Amazon.
It used to be that it wouldcost you hundreds of thousands
of dollars I mean back in theearly days of Internet.
It costs us millions of dollarsto create an e-commerce site
that has One tenth of thefunctionality that Shopify site
(30:35):
has already built into it.
Today, I mean, you could do somuch out of the box with Shopify
for like no money, very lowamount of money.
Amazon also small fee you payto be a part of it and you have
this whole world of traffic.
So I think for entrepreneurscoming up, people that want to
start their own business, peoplethat are creatives, that wanna
(30:55):
build products and sell them,the platforms available on the
opportunity to sell is betterthan ever before.
So I just you know I'm acreative at heart and I love
great new products and figuringout ways to sell them.
I'm sure you're the same way.
Close.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
Yeah, I am, unfortunately, but I'm in the
core.
I'm in a market here, so I domarketing for a very long time
and, as you just said, you'rebuying 50 more accessories for
your insight cam there.
That's the bad people, like me.
Marketing makes you buying more, so I have to apologize for
every market here on the show.
Speaker 2 (31:32):
We have to add some value.
So well with that any any lastwords for audience today On the
Shopify Amazon team up.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Only tried out.
Tried for your business.
Have a look at the numbers ofthe figures, have a look at the
conversion rates.
I'm sure it will have apositive impact on your business
.
So, as always, when it comes tobusiness, there's only one way
to find out try it out, try itand if you get stuck, Call Klaus
, call felt United, and so classof people want to reach out to
(32:03):
you how we're going to get outof business.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
I'm going to reach out to you how and what's the
best way to do it.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
To ways either go to close louder dot com or search
for e-commerce coffee breakpodcast.
I'm pretty much verytransparent in the interwebs.
You will find me on everyplatform, from LinkedIn to
Facebook, instagram, tiktok.
So just search for e-commercecoffee break.
You will find me there.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Super with that.
Thank you so much for joiningus.
I really enjoyed talking to youand I love talking about
e-commerce, so thank you verymuch.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Thanks, so much was fun, have a good one.
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