Speaker 1 00:00:05 Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt in required, where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100% inbound in your industry over the next 6 to 8 months, with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years, and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to up my influence. Com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to up my influence. Com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you. With us right now, it's Clayton Bates. Clayton, you are a Shopify expert and you are the founder of Inspire Small Business. You are found on the web and in Inspire Small business.com.

Speaker 1 00:01:18 Clayton, it's great to have you.

Speaker 2 00:01:20 Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 00:01:22 Yes. And I should point out that we are. Thank you so much. You are in Australia and we are recording this in the in the middle of the night for you. So thanks so much for for this conversation. would you mind, Clayton, maybe just sharing a bit about the work you do and who you serve?

Speaker 2 00:01:39 Yeah. No dramas. Yeah. We help, we we build and rebuild Shopify websites, to convert more visitors into paying customers. we've been doing that six years now. We've worked with 600 people and and over $100 million has went through the websites we've built. So that's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 00:01:59 yeah Indeed. why is it that, there's a need to potentially rebuild a Shopify website?

Speaker 2 00:02:08 So it depends what stage of your business you're at. But most likely people make certain mistakes, like they might build their website themselves. They might get it to like $100,000 a year. But they're there's lots of little things that they're missing that can improve the conversion rate, average order value and stuff.

Speaker 2 00:02:26 And then anyone making like millions of dollars a year, normally there's little 1% of things. If you improve them, you'll increase that the conversion average order value, stuff like that. no. No websites perfect. So there's always room to improve.

Speaker 1 00:02:41 Yeah. And indeed. so maybe you could share. I'd love to hear, maybe some very common things that you see among, e-commerce websites. We'll speak a little bit more broadly, that are just like so you see it often and you're like, please don't do this. Like and it's just it. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, a lot of newer business owners may fall into this trap and, anything immediately come to mind?

Speaker 2 00:03:13 Yeah, there's normally five things that people mess up or they can improve. So the first one would be the home page. You really want to follow that page. You really want to think about what you're putting on the home page. So that's really important. the second one is the product page. You want to have all the information about the product, build trust benefits if you can, and have it in a way that's easy to read and can consume, especially on mobile.

Speaker 2 00:03:37 the third one, site navigation. So normally the more products you have, the more important site navigation is about 3,330% people. Excuse me, I'm going to use your navigation. So you really need to know that one little ninja hack is to bring is to build out a main menu, one way for desktop and a completely different way for mobile, because people are experiencing your website different ways. the fourth one is the checkout. So you want to have your logo there, your colors. You want to look very branded. in the checkout. A lot of people on Shopify, they actually forget to change those settings because they're in a different section to where the colors are. so if someone has a big rebrand, they often forget to change that stuff in the checkout. And then the fifth one is just mobile friendly. These days, 50 to 90% of your traffic is probably going to come on a mobile. So you really want to optimize for mobile?

Speaker 1 00:04:33 yeah. No doubt. so, I would imagine just think about like the typical person that starts an e-commerce business, like it's, it's easy to make these mistakes and likely comes from a certain degree of enthusiasm.

Speaker 1 00:04:50 Maybe they've just watched a handful of YouTube videos. do you mind maybe talking about, I'd say the the general psychology of an e-commerce e-com business owner and also, you know, just typical life cycle, you know, and I think part of it comes down to, I don't know that there is necessarily a huge, wall like it's it's a huge barrier to, to start an e-commerce business today. Could you maybe talk about that part a little bit?

Speaker 2 00:05:25 Yeah, it's pretty easy to start a website. There's lots of free tutorials and stuff on the internet and stuff like that. but I think what there's two things that I see a lot of the time, I think people build their website on a desktop and they're thinking desktop, and they don't focus as much on mobile. So that's like a really big mistake, that I see. And then the other thing is, like, people are so much in their business that, normally the website, if it's making sales, it's normally the last thing for most people to think about, like they're focused on shipping orders like rush, rush, build a social media.

Speaker 2 00:06:01 sort of thing. So just like one example is, a lot of people don't put effort into their about page, and 1 to 5 people out of 100 will go to your about page. If they read your whole about page, they're super highly likely to convert into a customer. So spending 1 or 2 hours on your about page could mean thousands of extra dollars a year. But because they're so caught up in other things, I think it gets a bit lost. It gets overwhelming, bit daunting. so like, our service takes that daunting task off someone. And basically we, we build everything, give them training videos so they, they can update little things themselves or they can hire us forever. so that's normally the difference. The other thing is, well, we've worked on 600 websites now. I've interacted with thousands of businesses, so we sort of have a pretty good idea of like what works in every single niche.

Speaker 1 00:06:59 good to know. so when someone when you work with someone, what does that typically look like? you know, obviously, you know, again, when you're bringing in an expert, I mean, there's going to be some investment.

Speaker 1 00:07:11 but could you maybe share just a bit about what that engagement looks like and, and, what you would, what you generally hope, to, to, to have your client experience in terms of like a before and after.

Speaker 2 00:07:24 Yeah. So mostly when we do a rebuild, the first thing that's the most important thing to us is that we send them a free video audit of their website. So we actually go through and give them tips and suggestions. So whether they work with us or not, the interaction with us is positive and good. Was always believe you. What if you put good things into the world, good things come back to you. So I'm always very big on that. then we'll jump on a call, find out all their issues go through a lot of different things, see what they like, and other websites, stuff like that. then we'll test some stuff out. when they're happy with it. We'll will launch the website and go from there and we'll track a lot of things.

Speaker 2 00:08:04 So let's say if the conversion rate is like half a percent, we'll go back. We'll we'll document all their conversion rate, average order value, within a week or two. We're really monitoring everything. And then, trying to improve things to make it the best it can be, if that makes sense. So that's sort of what we do.

Speaker 1 00:08:24 Yeah. What I'm thinking ahead of where we are in ecom. This is what you do. This is all you do. I mean, you know, again clearly have some great authority in this space. to folks that might be a little bit on the outside. Let's say that they're in the B2B world. They don't necessarily do ecom themselves, but, you know, but they they want to stay aware of what's going on. What would you say would be some of the major trends that that not only have been recent, but, you would say pay very, very close attention to this, this and this over the next 6 to 12 months. What comes to mind there?

Speaker 2 00:09:01 Well, I guess the big thing at the moments I.

Speaker 2 00:09:04 Yeah. So, like, just for example, the content you can write for your website is unbelievable with AI and stuff like that. If you're an expert in your field. So let's just say you sell socks and you're you're an absolute expert in socks. If you use your expertise and enter the right things into the into AI, it's going to come back with really, really good content. Like, I always think the more you give the AI, and especially if you're an expert, the better the material comes back. So you're actually just making everything better on your website. it can't really code very well yet. They can do basic code, but we're, we're even looking into that like, trying to integrate coding into website using AI and stuff like that. but yeah, I'm, I'm always looking for trends and seeing, like having it open mind to other things, if that makes sense Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:10:02 who from a personality standpoint or, you know, what are some thinking, that if you were to hear this and say a founder or a new founder, that, not so much about the practice or the exercise of what they're doing or the tactical, what they're doing.

Speaker 1 00:10:20 but what do you think is helpful from a belief or a behavioral standpoint? Like if we think about, the, the, the traits that, that make a successful e-com leader today. what's your opinion on that?

Speaker 2 00:10:39 You have to be consistent and you have to have a good mindset. Like, I reckon it doesn't matter what business you do, one of the most important things is mindset. If you have a good mindset, then like it's nearly impossible to fail. So if you're consistent and have a good mindset, that's really important. because the one thing I have noticed is like a lot more people, especially since the pandemic, a lot more people. They want to feel a connection with a business. So if you're the face of the business and people like you and stuff like that, you have a competitive advantage over like going to Amazon or or Walmart or whatever. so yeah, people want to have a connection. So if you're consistently rocking up, posting on social media, building a brand that loves you, I think that's that's really important as well.

Speaker 1 00:11:28 Yeah. And and how how important is it you were talking about the about page? I, I, you know, even when I'm doing business in any comment, I mean, unless it's maybe like Amazon or something like that, I usually want to check out the who. Like, I want to know, am I going to get scammed? are there real people here like, you know, also to like, I'm interested. I might not be completely normal. I'm not, you know, but but I'm a little bit interested in the story. I'm interested in the in the people involved in this product. I mean, if nothing else, I want to know what other humans have to say about this product that I might be making a purchase on.

Speaker 2 00:12:13 Yeah, 100%. I think that, like, people underestimate stuff like that. That's why I've been going on a lot of podcasts and stuff lately, because when I get on sales, cause people are like, oh, you said this on the podcast, so I watched your video.

Speaker 2 00:12:26 You're about video. I watched your video reviews, all the stuff like that. I always think if there's 20 reasons why someone buys something off you, one of them might be they watched you about video on your about page. The next one might be you have 145 star reviews. The next one you you've won 40 awards will be finalist. Like one's a Shopify expert. So if you keep stacking these things on top of each other, it really makes a big difference, especially service based businesses as well. yeah. So it's all these little things, all these one percenters all add up. So making a good about page is definitely one of those things.

Speaker 1 00:13:03 Well, yeah, I love it. All right, so, I know that you've got, some resources. to our friend that's been listening to this conversation right now. do you mind maybe just sharing a little bit about, you know, hey, listen, if you've enjoyed this conversation, here's some things you might want to take a look at.

Speaker 1 00:13:20 Or, you know, things that we make available to the ecom community. what should our our friend do?

Speaker 2 00:13:28 so the first thing if if you have a website and you want a free audit, we do a completely free video review of your website giving tips and suggestions. So that's really good. the other thing is, well, the five things I said before, they are important. And I always think the the three really main things to a website is the traffic that's going to it. So if you got good traffic, that's going to help. The second one is the flow and how the the website works. And then the third one is the images. a lot of people underestimate images on a website. So, for example, I can build the same fashion website selling women's clothing. But there's a big difference between, someone who did a selfie and then someone who did black had a photo shoot and stuff like that. So I definitely think images are underrated for a lot of businesses.

Speaker 1 00:14:20 Yeah. your website Inspire Small business.com.

Speaker 1 00:14:24 What would you recommend folks click on?

Speaker 2 00:14:27 just yeah. Free video review. yeah. Just grab that. That's I've done 2000 of them now. So people really love those videos. so yeah. Grab that. if you want a brand new website, just click, new website and, and we'll have a chat to jump on a pole or something with you. No dramas at all.

Speaker 1 00:14:47 Yeah, I like it. Okay. Yeah. In fact, so again, it's inspired small business. Com, it's right on the front page. You'll see under services as free video review. just click on that. Fill out the form and bam. Awesome. Well, I appreciate it. It's great conversation. Clayton Bates again, founder of Inspire Small Business. thank you so much for being with me, being a guest.

Speaker 2 00:15:09 All right. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate your time. And thanks for listening, everyone. Cheers.

Speaker 1 00:15:21 Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up my influence.

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