Blog - Page 42 of 58 - Talk Commerce

Magento Opensource vs. Shopify: High-level overview.

November 20, 2022 Brent W. Peterson

have a general consensus on what makes an ecommerce platform great. If you are looking for an ecommerce solution for your business, you must know about the pros and cons of Magento vs. Shopify before making a final decision.

Putting the Human into Partner Relationships with Chris Johnson

April 14, 2023November 17, 2022 Brent W. Peterson

Do you remember when the pandemic first hit and everybody said it’s all going to Zoom, and in-person meetings are dead? We don’t have to meet up anymore. And there’s no point in seeing anybody in person because zoom and virtual meetings have taken over. After all, zoom and personal sessions have taken over our lives and existence. It’s not true.

In-person is alive. ?

We interview Chris Johnson, SalesLayer. He is the partner success manager with SalesLayer and is all about relationships. We talk about Zoom life versus real life and how maybe you can’t just get somebody a beer while you’re on Zoom. Handshakes and hugs. They are part of the Spanish culture. You’ll learn a little bit about how Chris approaches relationships and his partner management, as well as a little bit about what SalesLayer can do for you as a company.

?This is a great episode and an excellent interview with Chris Johnson.

Why use SalesLayer? Check it out here.

You can hear our interview with the CEO of SalesLayer.

More like this

BigCommerce GraphQL API: Why You Should Care

December 6, 2022November 17, 2022 Brent W. Peterson

BigCommerce recently released an updated GraphQL API feature with enhancements, functionality, and REST APIs. These advancements are exciting

Outsource your Inbound Marketing with Dina Buchanan

April 14, 2023November 15, 2022 Brent W. Peterson

It’s getting more and more challenging to hire a great salesperson. Getting those leads, getting that person to make phone calls, getting inbound leads through anything, LinkedIn, social media, paid ads. It’s all a hard slog. We interview Dina Buchanan, who has a guaranteed formula for a fantastic return on investment.

In 14 words or less, Dina can help you gain hundreds of high-end leads and clients monthly from LinkedIn.

She allows you to focus on selling and scaling instead of failing at marketing. Dina will help you to eliminate the stress. Of wondering where your following clients are coming from. Dina shows us the positive side of outsourcing your inbound leads and getting more business.

No Code Commerce 101

January 31, 2023November 14, 2022 Brent W. Peterson

s an ecommerce developer, you’ll want to know all of this if you want to grow your business. Learning about the pros and cons of coding vs. no code is a great start.

5 Ways PIM Impacts Your Business

November 28, 2022November 11, 2022 Brent W. Peterson

PIM stands for “product information management” and refers to the processes, systems, and software used to store, access, update, and analyze data related to your products.

No-Code Commerce with Kaus Manjita

April 14, 2023November 8, 2022 Brent W. Peterson

Businesses are going online daily worldwide, and it’s getting easier. But running their businesses requires constant two-way communication with users and customers across channels 24/7, year-round. @kmanjita

Today we interview Kaus Manjita with Mason. Kaus is a no-code evangelist, content nerd, and serial product builder. You’ll find her amid entrepreneurs, brand builders, developers, marketers, and designers over Zoom on Hangouts and on this podcast today.

Mason is Zapier made for commerce. It connects data designs and channels to run your product launches, sales documents, discounts, inventory updates, custom reviews in-app, help, funnels, and more, all on autopilot.

Wealth and Homeownership with Nicole Hamilton

November 27, 2024November 1, 2022 Brent W. Peterson

In interviews with homeowners, 25% say they bought their home first for an investment and second for a place to live. The other 75% say they bought a house simply as a place to live with little expectation for it to be a good investment. You grow wealth through homeownership.

Nicole Hamilton has made a career of helping others with home ownership. She explains REAFE in detail. A Real Estate Asset and Financing Evaluation is about maximizing the returns you get from your real estate.

Her tip for the episode is to think twice if you want to refinance. If you refinance with less than half the time on your mortgage, you start over with your interest payments!

Show Notes

Here are more links that might be of interest to listeners:

A product for people who want to plan for Homeownership: https://www.homeownering.com/the-formula-steps-to-becoming-a-homeowner/

And this is about the financial, real estate analysis I do: https://www.homeownering.com/reafe/

Here is a free equity report we have on our site: https://www.homeownering.com/free-home-equity-report/

Transcript

Brent: Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Nicole Hamilton. She is the CEO of Homeowner. Nicole, go ahead, introduce yourself. Tell us your day-to-day role and one of your passions in

Nicole: life. Oh, okay. It’s great to be here, Brent. I’m an entrepreneur in the housing industry. I have a company called Homeowner.

Nicole: It’s very pro home ownership and treating your real estate with the same care that you do your other investments. I’ve had other companies in the sector. I’d say the common thread through all of my ventures is an obsession with real estate, finance mortgages, Home equity appreciation.

Nicole: Home is an investment home ownership and intergenerational wealth. My current company home owning. Is dedicated to getting people into home ownership and then getting them good financial outcomes. So it spans the the life cycle of home ownership from buying utilizing and improving your financial situation through home ownership.

Nicole: And then, selling. and my passion, I guess one of my passions right now is weightlifting, . I go really into it.

Brent: Wow. That’s great. Yeah. I definitely need to get more into Weightlift as I’m getting older, I realize that my upper body, I run every day, but my upper body is definitely neglected, especially over time and it, I think as we get into our fifties, which I am, you are it’s harder to gain.

Brent: On your upper bodies, you have to work twice as hard as if we were in our twenties. Anyways, we can, we’ll keep moving out along there, but that’s awesome. That’s good to know. I’ve heard more and more people talking about that, yeah. Alright, so before we jump into our content I have a thing called the free joke project, hashtag free joke.

Brent: And I’m just gonna tell you a joke and all you have to do is tell me if it should be free or if we could charge for it. Do I have to? You do not have to laugh. I would appreciate real real feedback on it. All right. But they’re all fantastic jokes. All right, Ready? Okay. My doctor just diagnosed me with a severe lack of awareness.

Brent: It came out of nowhere.

Nicole: Free .

Brent: Alright. Super

Brent: Thank

Nicole: you. I actually love, another patch of mine actually is standup comedy. Oh, wow. All right. I will listen to any standup comedy. Yeah, so I, I’m interested in the free joke project and I hope to follow that hashtag and learn more.

Brent: Yes. I’ve started publishing on Twitter art on On TikTok, Sorry.

Brent: Sometimes they’re on Twitter, but they’re all on TikTok on my Brent w Peterson TikTok channel Anyways. Free hashtag free joke project. Great. So Nicole homeowner I’m I’m also a homeowner and always interested in the subject. Tell us about how you got into it and what was your journey getting there?

Nicole: Yeah I guess the way I got there was Earlier in my career I was a science major and then I went into technology. And then I got very interested in how technology can make people’s lives better. I know sometimes it makes people’s lives worse, but I know that, for me it was, how can I apply this to really helping people?

Nicole: And then the recession in 2008, housing crisis hit, and I really wanted. Help solve a problem. The problem being that a lot of people got loans that they couldn’t necessarily understand were afford, and that caused a lot of foreclosures and immense pain for economic pain, for many millions of Americans.

Nicole: And so I started a company called Tactile Finance. Tactile Finance, Pronunciation. Pronunciation it. And that was a sort of visualization product for banks to use with their clients or non-profits to use with their clients. And it just provided transparency into the market. And that’s where I got super into the math and.

Nicole: And the consumer need and the consumer approach to housing finance. So it’s been about a 12, 12 year journey to where I am now. Which I would say, I wound that company down in 2015, 16, 2016. And it ran its course and I realized that I really wanted to focus on the consumer, not the inter, B2B business, but focusing on the consumer and the consumer needs.

Nicole: And so I think that journey just gave me a lot of insight. I understand, the, a more sophisticated picture. I understand the bank’s motivation. I understand the role of the non-profits, I understand the mortgage industry as a. . And then I guess one of my superpowers is to take really complicated information and make it digestible for people and an enzyme

Nicole: So that’s where my real passion for homeowner came, which is there’s all this sophisticated knowledge out there, but like people. Regular people like you and me can use it to better their situation and understand the complicated aspects of owning a home, selling a home equity, and things like that actually make an enormous impact on your, ultimate net worth.

Brent: Yeah, I think do. So going back, starting with people with on their first home, how do you help them past rent and getting into their first home? What, Do you have a formula or do Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.

Nicole: It’s an excellent question. Brent . So I actually have a product, it’s called the Formula, and it’s on our website and it’s like $20.

Nicole: It’s very inexpensive and it’s a system which basically gives you. The ability to see all the diff it’s all the different criteria to be a homeowner. So there’s a lot of different known loans and qualifications to get a loan, and it lets you see where you are in relation to those criteria now, and then plot your way to the quickest, most effective path to being a home.

Nicole: So I’ll just give you an example. If you’re refinancing a house or buying a house the lo what the loan officer is doing in the background is they’re trying to fit you in this formula. It’s called a dti, debt to income ratio. And that’s a blah, blah, blah, gobbly go, industry language, but ultimately they’re taking all the aspects of your financial picture.

Nicole: And they’re trying to fit it into a way in which the bank will say, Brent, you can get this mortgage. But all of that is very opaque to a home buyer. And what this does is it just gives you that information that you can see exactly what criteria they’re using, and there’s ways that you can adjust your goals.

Nicole: If your income is too low and your debt is too. Then the house that you can qualify for is gonna be lower, right? So it’s this formula that you massage and say, Okay, over 12 months, if I can reduce my debt by X and let’s say I pick a house price of, 350,000 then I can get to that goal.

Nicole: That’s a achievable goal for me. Whereas if you don’t have that information, you’re just like, Oh no, poor me. I can’t afford a home. So it’s just empowering people. A lot of people get left out of the housing, out of the home, out of home ownership because they lose faith and they don’t know how they’re gonna get from point A to point B.

Nicole: The real issue is that how, being a homeowner is is a known wealth builder, especially for the middle class. And letting more people get into home ownership is incredibly important. I A lot of, public policies are designed around that. So it’s just like a way to distill this information.

Nicole: Create a plan for yourself and be able to actually see how you can get to that goal. So that’s one of the things that kind of came out of, all this work that I’ve done in the last 12 years is how to make information that’s known in the industry, known by, other people. So it can empower.

Brent: Do you feel as though now what? Home ownership got more difficult after 2008 and are banks getting better at helping people to get into home ownership now compared to right after the crash, the home crash?

Nicole: I think what the crash did is it changed a lot of laws, like the dod Frank laws.

Nicole: It made lending. It made it, it made a lot of good things happen in the industry that prevent consumers from being taken advantage of. So that, I think, was a net positive for everyone, including the banks. In a lot of ways. It made lending safer. It also, we know that we’ve been through very, up until recently, a very, a period of historically low interest rates.

Nicole: We’re not in that right now, hopefully we will be again, sometime I. Yeah, so obviously that made it easier for people to purchase homes and it also drove home prices up too with, demand and everything like that.

Brent: I think my first home was in the nineties and it was, I think we got an arm.

Brent: Or if a five year fix with an arm after. Something like that. Yeah. And at the time it was like 9% interest or something like that, but with the arm it brought it down or something. I don’t know. How you, do you have a formula me, to help people through that? Because I know like my friends in England where every mortgage is an arm and now they’ve said their payments have doubled all of a sudden because of that adjustable rate.

Nicole: Yes. So arms are, I had an. It’s arms, A lot of mortgage people actually get arms, seven year arms and things like that because the interest rate is low in the beginning. But it’s contingent upon the idea that you’re gonna be able to refinance out of that into a better rate. So it’s a, it’s a. So there there’s some risk in that, that you just really need to know what it is. And I actually made a video it’s on my website, but it explains exactly what an arm is. It doesn’t have a lot of viewers cuz a lot of people don’t know, don’t necessarily wanna follow through the whole five minutes.

Nicole: But I do have a video about product, a product review of. Of a ShopVac that, that hits 35,000 views. But the arm video is not as popular as the ShopVac video. .

Brent: Yeah, I have some Jack Russell videos that are far more popular than any videos that I can post on YouTube. So I think it is funny what people tend to watch.

Brent: Alright, so back to finance. If so, one of the hard parts as an entrepreneur, Is getting a mortgage. One of the easy parts before 2008 as an entrepreneur was a stated income mortgage, which they don’t do anymore. How do you have do you have specific help for self-employed people as they’re trying to get a mortgage?

Brent: And maybe is there a certain amount of time that you have to either show a W2 or show your tax returns to a.

Nicole: Yeah, so there’s rules for, so there’s, yeah there’s rules for mortgages. Usually the rule is for W two s is you have to show two years of your income. And it’s two years is really a rule too for business income.

Nicole: So a lot of banks will have you submit. Whatever structure your business is. If you’re, if you’re an LLC or whatever, then you submit that income, to the mc if you’re not getting a paycheck, if you’re taking a draw from the company. So there’s different ways to do it but you touched on a really important thing, which is that, for entrepreneurs, it can be d.

Nicole: If you’re in any of these categories or let’s say an Uber driver, you’re getting income from all these different places and you don’t have a w2, there are formulas that banks use to assess what your income is. So it doesn’t mean that you can’t get a loan. But in business the one thing about business income is that they wanna see that it’s going.

Nicole: So , if you have a year that, you know, so that can be a factor, right? If you have a, if you have, 2021 was a good year and 2022 is a bad year, but 2023 is gonna be a better year. There’s some ease of, getting a loan if you’re showing that your business is improving.

Nicole: And there’s also. There’s always leeway too with in the, these areas where you have to interpret, whether something is improving or not improving. There’s always you can ask for, the manager above the loan officer to take a look at it and see if, if you can submit more documentation.

Nicole: Or provide more information about the industry that you’re in. I know that during the recess, sorry, the pandemic, restaurants, restaurant owners, weren’t a great bet, right? So there’s some industries that really suffer, from declined if you’re getting business income from that.

Nicole: But there’s ways that you can, the more you know about it, the more you can help yourself. Just like anything. .

Brent: Yeah. Especially I think as an entrepreneur, that’s the hardest part is maybe, and I think it’s even harder as a young entrepreneur. So if, let’s just say you’re in your twenties, you’ve started a business and you’re trying to navigate that process of your first purchase because you don’t have a w2 is it better to go to a big bank or a small bank?

Brent: as a new home buyer or as an entrepreneur? Does it

Nicole: matter? I think it’s great to really go to a lot of different types, so I always recommend that people also put a mortgage broker in the mix. , because they have a access to many different types of loans. If you go to a bank they’ll have their own products, but if you go to a broker, they’ll be able to search more broadly and find banks that are more suitable for your particular situation.

Nicole: So it’s just good like anything else to shop around.

Brent: Do you ever talk to people about maybe a sec or investment home or a second home, or somebody that’s buying a home just for Airbnb?

Nicole: So one of the things that home honoring does, which I got into lately, which I think is a really important aspect of investment finance, which is neglected by wealth managers for the most part is analyzing properties for their long term investment potential.

Nicole: in the case of, if you’re someone who’s not getting a mortgage just to get the lowest monthly rate, which is most of us, right? We don’t want to spend a penny more than we need to on our housing, cuz we have a lot of other expenses. But for a lot of people, they do have a little discretion in how they structure their financ.

Nicole: And you can structure it in a way that gives you, a better return based on your goals, on your investment goals. So one of the things that we offer is a, they call it the reef, which is a real estate analysis. It’s like a financial analysis. So in that case, you’re looking at your current houses, if you have more than one or just one, what the financing is, which your overall goals.

Nicole: And then coming up with different scenarios that could, maximize your, the goal that you’re looking for, whether it’s putting more money in play, whether it’s reducing all your expenses, whether it’s looking to buy a second home, whether it’s looking to buy a home for rental purposes, things like that.

Nicole: It’s a financial investment analysis. And I think, too few people go through those steps to understand their real estate as an investment. And if you consider how much we all spend on our housing, really do, and doing little tweaks, like taking a second look at that, helo that you have, is there a better way to structure it so that you’re spending less?

Nicole: What is the interest rate that you’re on? When does it a adjust, taking a more watchful eye to these major expenses that you have. And a lot of people don’t know that they have options, so that’s a really big focus of home owning right now.

Brent: Yeah. I think you, you brought up a really good point about your financial advisor and it’s been my experience that a lot of financial advisors don’t look.

Brent: A rental property as a valid investment, they think somewhat probab. Some do I’m not gonna, I shouldn’t generalize so much, but a lot of them would say you put your money in bonds or stocks or, and properties sometimes, or a property or maybe a real estate fund might be something they would recommend.

Brent: But buying a rental property and then trying to. Is sometimes out of their purview. Maybe it’s more common for entrepreneurs to buy doing something like that. But I Maybe just a quick comment on that. Do you feel as

Nicole: that’s, Yeah, I think that, wealth managers and investment managers, they know their domain very well.

Nicole: And if you think about. There’s a lot to consider already in their domain. They’re not really necessarily trained or equipped to do something, in the real estate realm because real estate investment is itself a large domain. There’s a lot of math and a lot of considerations, tax considerations all kinds of things.

Nicole: Liability considerations. With real estate investment that is, that, I don’t know that you could expect someone to also be an expert in, it’s a different kind of thing. I have a good friend Roger Brown who wrote a book called and I Wish I had it here. He’s a great guy. It’s called Real Estate in.

Nicole: Math or something like that.

Brent: Roger Brown. I’ll put it I’ll do some research and I’ll put it in the show notes.

Nicole: Yeah, no he’s an amazing mathematician and so I, I learned a lot from him. He did a lot of work with me over the years, validating the math that I was doing. , helping me make sure that it was solid.

Nicole: And so I learned a lot about real estate investment from him, and I just know that I’ve read his book. It’s very interesting, but it’s it’s something if you’re gonna get into that field, I just don’t think that an investment, a wealth manager is the right person to maybe help you with.

Brent: Yeah, and I guess I never thought about this. Probably there probably are wealth managers that are focused more on the real estate side rather than the just straight up investment side. That’s an interesting, I, that’s an interesting take on things. Yeah. How about what about recommending if somebody were to buy a, an apartment, just paying cash for it.

Brent: Is there ever a good time to do that

Nicole: right now? Yeah. , I think right now, if you’re a cash buyer, And, you can imagine if the Fed is trying to, slow the economy down and and we know that rates are going up and mortgage rates aren’t tied to that specifically, but they have definitely, the, a lot of relationship to the cost of money being lent, So you know right now you would expect real estate prices to decrease as it’s harder for people to buy homes in this high interest rate environment or high mortgage rate environment.

Nicole: If you’re a cash buyer, you’re, this is your time, Like this is this is in your sweet spot cuz you. If prices are declining and you’re competing against people who have to get a mortgage and you don’t need a mortgage, then you know it’s your

Brent: time. Yeah. Good. Nicole, we have a few minutes left.

Brent: And it always goes by so fast. If if you have one little piece of advice that you could give somebody, what would that be? To get into the housing market right now.

Nicole: I think that you should if you wanna be a homeowner and home ownership is for you, you should make it a goal. And don’t give up on it because it does have a lot of potential to improve your financial situation, but at the same time, obviously you wanna know what you’re getting into.

Brent: Yeah, I like that. I like that concept because if you never set a goal, you’ll never

Nicole: achieve. Exactly. It’s true for everything in life, isn’t it, Brent?

Brent: Yeah, that’s fairly, that’s a really good way to look at it. So Nicole, as we close out the podcast to give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug, what would you like to plug today?

Nicole: I have a newsletter. It has a lot of subscribers. You can go to my site, homeowner.com/newsletter. You can sign. And also, take a peek at the site. There is the formula, which is for people who want to be aspiring homeowners, and there is what we call the reef, which is financial analysis for getting better returns on your, on the money you spend on home ownership.

Nicole: That’s great. That was really three plugs, . That’s

Brent: perfectly fine. You had to sit through my joke, no, I

Nicole: love you could get it. I wanna hear more of your jokes. Okay.

Brent: You could get extra plugs because of the bad joke. ,

Nicole: the free joke.

Brent: Yes. Thank you so much for being here today. It’s been such a pleasure.

Brent: And just so many more things we could talk about on this subject.

Nicole: Yes, Thank you for having me. Wonderful to be here with you. Thank you.

Four Ways to Increase your Website ROI with Thien-Lan Weber

April 14, 2023October 31, 2022 Brent W. Peterson

Tune in today to learn about the four easy steps you can take BEFORE Black Friday to make your site faster. (You can even tune in after Black Friday). Thien-Lan Weber talks about the four easy steps you can take today to ensure your ROI is maximized on your website ROI.

OneStepCheckout is not a traditional Magento module provider with a lot of extensions. Our checkout module is our core business. We work exclusively with checkout and conversions to always bring you the best possible checkout product. We are all about reducing customer abandonment and increasing customer conversions.

Show notes

Page speed deck by John Hughes: tiny.cc/irx-page-speed
Forbes Finance Council Article: https://blog.onestepcheckout.com/2022/10/ecommerce-tips-holiday-recession-economic-downturn/
Optty (Buy Now Pay Later Aggregator): https://www.optty.com/
Hyva: https://blog.onestepcheckout.com/category/hyva/
Wyomind Shipping Extension: https://blog.onestepcheckout.com/2022/08/insights-why-click-collect-further-boosts-checkout-conversion-bopis-in-store-pickup/
OneStepCheckout Seamless Registration Feature: https://blog.onestepcheckout.com/2021/10/onestepcheckout-for-magento-2-registration-account-creation-modes/

Transcript

Brent: Welcome to this Spoony holiday edition of Talk Commerce. Today I have Thien-Lan Weber from One Step Checkout and she has done a much better job of her costume and background than I have Thien-Lan. Why don’t you go ahead, introduce yourself, tell us what your day to day role is and one of your passions in life.

Thien-Lan: Hello, I’m Thien-Lan Weber. I work for OneStepCheckOut. So I guess most people know me otherwise. One step checkout is the main Magento extension to reduce for Magento one and Magen two. My passion in life, it’s eCommerce and drumming. I also like dress. And appearing on podcasts.

Brent: Excellent, thank you.

Brent: And so today before we get into our regular content, I’m gonna tell you a joke and then you are going to tell me if that joke should be free or if we could charge for it. Ready? You ready, ? Okay. I found out my girlfriend is really a ghost. I had my suspicions the moment she walked through the door.

Thien-Lan: It’ll be free.

Brent: Good. All right, Telan. I know today is Halloween, so I dressed up in my doctor who Christmas sweater, which I have my holidays completely mixed. And you are very well appointed in a a scary outfit with a span stuck in your head and you even have a great background. I appreciate that.

Brent: But we, let’s talk about the scary state of the economy and things coming. And then I think, let’s put it into context of what merchants can be doing to make sure that they’re getting everything they can out of their website. . Exactly.

Thien-Lan: Yeah. So yeah, not very funny. The current state of the economy is pretty gloomy.

Thien-Lan: We actually, I noticed that in New York when I went for McLin to New York, it was not as vibrant as 2018 and 2019 when I went and even the locals like Eric, and. Laura was telling, wa was saying that, A bit more dangerous. Lots of homeless people in the street. And I guess here in Europe we hear all the news about inflation war in Ukraine and yeah.

Thien-Lan: Worldwide inflation is around 8.2%. For the last 12 months in the US it’s yeah, around 8%. In Europe it’s around 10%, but with big discrepancies between countries like France, where I live, which is like 6%, and countries where Anton I imagine to expert lives in Estonia where it’s like 25%.

Thien-Lan: So yeah pretty.

Brent: Yeah. And so I know that there are ways in which merchants can help. And one step checkout is at the end of the funnel, let’s say at the checkout process. And I, you mentioned that you had done a article with Forbes about some points in which merchants can look or work through the checkout process.

Brent: Why don’t you explain a little bit about what that was?

Thien-Lan: Yep. We partner up with nata, who is a for finance council member to talk about this context and what eCommerce merchants can do as quick wins to get more sales this holidays. So it’s all about getting. Market share because consumers will have less spending power.

Thien-Lan: So the competition will be really fierce among all the brands. And you need to offer an experience that really appeals from the moment that people like even before people learn on your website up to the end of your online sales funnel. So today, I’m happy to share with you those four. and and they should be a lot, most of them should be implementable before this holiday season.

Thien-Lan: So that’s the good news.

Brent: All right, so let’s just tell let’s tell us the four points and then let’s go into detail on each one of them. Yep.

Thien-Lan: So the first point is to have a fast. Sorry. A fast website good performing websites. Consumers who go to your website, if they, it’s loading in more than two seconds, they’re going to leave and go to another website.

Thien-Lan: So performance is key here and throughout the whole browsing experience, you need to make sure that it loads fast enough so that people don’t leave and find items that they want, gift ideas, and put them into. So that would be by using themes like Hova, for example, on two, that makes the whole experience much faster and even helps you score rank higher in the search results so as to capture more traffic.

Thien-Lan: So that’s number one.

Brent: Number two, Okay, so I, Yep, go ahead. No, go for it. Number two

Thien-Lan: is around shipping. So with C we saw that by online pickup, in store, or click and collect is very popular. And sales going through those channels are going faster than eCommerce itself. So given that most of most of the time those shipping methods are more cost efficient, it costs nothing for the retailer to just have people come and pick it up.

Thien-Lan: It’s going to be very useful for consumers who can’t afford those extra five, $10 for shipping. So that was number two offer. More flexible shipping methods, including cost effective ones. Third one is offering flexible payment methods. And for the last couple of years, by now, pay later has been very popular as well because they allow consumers to pay, let’s say, in sport installments every fortnight, but without paying any.

Thien-Lan: So that helps when the budget is very strained to break it down into a longer period so you get your paycheck and you don’t pay anything on top of that. So offering payment methods that consumers like need for the holiday seasons is a big factor for to drive. And last but not least, having a good checkout that removes all friction from the checkout experience and allows consumers to place their order without forcing them to create an account or look for two coupon code that you might not have, or filling a lot of fields that will allow you to convert all that traffic.

Thien-Lan: And your efforts along the online sales funnel into an actual order.

Brent: So three out of the four are at the end of the funnel, which is probably pretty common that once they get through, number one, if it’s fast enough, they’re gonna, they’re gonna wanna buy something. What if you start at the top of the funnel with.

Brent: The Google has changed its its algorithms to now put more weight on the speed of your site. And if, let’s just say so one step checkout supports more than just Magento, right? There, there are other platforms that you’re supporting.

Thien-Lan: So for Dar, we are looking at supporting Que, but the priority is to support Magento two and Which makes Magento two much faster.

Thien-Lan: And is adding the sexy back into Magento,

Brent: adding the sexy back in, is that what you said? Yep. That’s good. . Okay. So having that sub two second load time, which in the past first Magento especially, has been unheard of. So some of the tools I guess people could use to help with that would just be Google Lighthouse and Google Page speed insights.

Thien-Lan: Exactly. Another resource that I found very useful and entertaining was a deck of slides by John Hughes from ue it was a hundred slides, but very funny ones about page speed, why, what you can do, and all the tips. We can add the links to the notes of this podcast. But this is a fantastic

Brent: Perfect. Yeah, and I will add the, I will add that to all the show notes. Alright, so let’s move on to shipping. So I think in the US anyways, shipping free shipping is the thing and Amazon is really driving that. Do you recommend that merchants do free shipping?

Thien-Lan: So that’s a strategic decision based on your cost goods sold, your pricing, your competitors.

Thien-Lan: So I can’t. You have to offer free shipping or you have to include shipping in your item price. I think depending on categories and consumers there might be different strategies that was better for you. But yeah, consumers one of the key reasons for carbon environment is when consumers see extra cost at the end of checkouts, so that often happens.

Thien-Lan: when checkout is on two pages with the first page with the item price, and then the second page with tax shipping all additional costs. So that’s a big driver. Either you state up upfront how much your shipping is going to be, or you put a threshold of. When shipping becomes free, and that works quite well to get consumers to pile up their cart and reach that threshold.

Thien-Lan: That makes sense for you financially. But yeah the most important is to be very up upfront and not have any surprises. When shoppers go to the end of checkout and see the final cost they have to pay.

Brent: Yeah, and I can say from experience that I have dropped out of the cart many times when I get to the end and suddenly shipping is a quarter of the cost of the entire order.

Brent: And I automatically go to Amazon then because A, I know that the ship, there’s no shipping. And then b, I also know that it’s gonna come in two days. The other, I think the other good strategy in terms of shipping, and I do agree that showing shipping up front is such an important thing to do. If you were to have a threshold of, say if you spend 50 euros or $50 and then you get free shipping, I think that’s something that I, that appeals to me and it also gets me to spend a little bit more money.

Brent: So if you’re at $49, you search like crazy on what does that $2 item I could get to get my free shipping maybe talk

Thien-Lan: a little bit about, Does that I do the thing I haven’t looked for. The product that is the same as shipping. If shipping is $10, I’d be like, Oh, I get that $10 items. I can have it for free.

Brent: Yeah, absolutely. And if merchants are very clever, they would also do maybe a little scale that says Here’s how close you are to get to free shipping. And if you just add this one more thing. And if they’re very clever, they would add some extremely high high profit items. As incentives to get over that shipping amount.

Brent: So say you’re at $9 and they have something that they charge $9 for, but they pay a dollar for it. Hey, buy this item and you’ll get over your free shipping. There’s so many tactics that merchants could use if they start thinking about the behavior of consumers. And as a merchant too, I think you should be looking at what your competitors are doing and trying to make sure that you’re not missing out on something like that.

Brent: So for example, if your competitor is just offering free shipping, but their every item is a little bit more expensive there’s a reason for it. I think we’ve seen that on Amazon. Sometimes those really cheap things are more expensive cuz there’s free shipping and I you mentioned that earlier.

Brent: About the free shipping part of it. The other one the second one or the third one you mentioned was flexible payments, and you mentioned buy now, pay later. Talk a little bit about that.

Thien-Lan: Yes I’ve been following the Buy now pay later trend for two, three years now. And it all started in Australia and today there are more probably a dozen brands who offer Buy Now pay.

Thien-Lan: the most popular in the US would be a firm and in Europe might be clown. And the whole objective what I find very interesting is that it’s a win-win for consumers and for merchants. The merchants pay a little bit more with our in terms of fees, but consumers get to pay. To slice their payments over six weeks and sometimes more without pay, paying in any interest.

Thien-Lan: So it’s, great for them especially when they are they don’t have much budget and and it. Showed to drive a lot more conversion. And also a lot of those brands, they have their own app. They have their own consumer database, so they give exposure to their own merchants through their apps.

Thien-Lan: So let’s say on the Klan apps, you will say you will have or buy from ex brands, and then consumers will go directly from the cla up to that. Instead of going through Instagram ads or, Google search.

Brent: Yeah. And I think the other thing would be to make sure that they’re at least saving the token for the credit card to check out.

Brent: So second time around, you don’t have to enter all that information. Talk a little bit about that friction that happens in shipping and payment in your check.

Thien-Lan: Yeah so yeah, as I said, the number one reason for car abandonment is high shipping costs. So that’s why it makes sense to offer various options and buy, install to buy online pickup in store.

Thien-Lan: Is a interesting one. And yeah, we’ve partnered with French Magento extension provider called Why Your Mind That does very good quality extensions to allow that and add all these options. So the, this is The more payment and shipping options you offer, the less friction you get because consumers want certain options and if you don’t have them, they will go elsewhere.

Thien-Lan: So for shipping, that’s a great one. And for payments, either, they, one of the reason why they leave a website is also when they don’t trust the website. They have never heard of that band before, that the item is interesting and they don’t want to leave their credit card. So in that case, they would rather, for example, use paper.

Thien-Lan: And so it’s a good one to offer as well.

Brent: Just going back to the shipping I spoke with somebody earlier who said that they clicked on an Instagram ad and they were they needed something for a holiday. I don’t remember the holiday, but they needed it by a specific date and they said the shipping would be three to five days.

Brent: Their date was two weeks out, so there was plenty of time the two weeks came and went and there that nothing was ever shipped. Talk about the importance of maybe some reviews and having that knowledge that, hey, that item is actually gonna get there on time. Because I think sometimes people also wanna know that I’m gonna buy this and I need this, and if I don’t get it in this amount of time, I’m gonna go somewhere else.

Thien-Lan: Yep. So I guess there are two things here. One is setting expectations. So having the right information, the accurate information about when the item is going to arrive at your place is important. The other day I went to a local merchant and they have their own calculation and algorithm saying, Oh, for shipping it might be three, four.

Thien-Lan: But then they don’t re, it’s not accurate. It doesn’t really talk to the carrier. So it’s not, that trustworthy. So if you can, have the right timing and specify information about. When the order is going to be processed, when is going to be packed, when is it’s going to be shipped, and based on how far the consumer is, how long it’s going to take to be shipped, that would be the best.

Thien-Lan: But yeah, otherwise it is better to, overestimate the shipping time, then underestimate and then disappoint.

Brent: All right. So let’s get then to the, Oh we’ve talked a lot about frictions. Tell us about how, maybe, how one a checkout can help reduce that friction with the client at checkout.

Thien-Lan: Yep. After shipping cost being the number one reason for car and the number, the second one is forcing consumers to create an account. So how many times have you been to a website where, Click on cards I want to pay. And then you have that page that says, Log in, I’ll create an account. And you can’t do anything.

Thien-Lan: You can’t, pay, you can’t get your item. And 25% of consumers leave at that point. So we, OneStepCheckOut we’ve been addressing that. Thanks to feedback from a lot of our merchants and clients, and what we do is we allow to create an account by simply using all the information that anyone would answer when they fill out their shipping details.

Thien-Lan: So email, first name, last name, address, and the only thing you need to add it is a small tick box where consumers can enter their passwords twice and that creates an account. So we call it seamless account registration, and it replaces that, account creation wall that is making, 25% of people leave.

Brent: Do you find at that stage some people forget that they have an account and they fill out all that information. How do you get around the idea? , they go through that, they forgot that they created an account and then they click and then it comes back and says, You already have an account.

Brent: Please enter your password. And then they’ve forgotten their password and by the time they get around to finding it, they’ve left because they forgot they were even what they were ordering. Yeah,

Thien-Lan: that happens quite a lot. So yeah. I think we also allow people to check out as. And then have the account reconciliation later after.

Thien-Lan: I have to get back to you on that. But I think that would be the sensible thing to do because you absolutely don’t want people to be stopped at that point when they’re ready. To give you money and to pay for that item.

Brent: Talk a little bit about the idea of one step checkout. What, like the reason why it’s called One Step?

Brent: I think that’s obvious, but a lot of people don’t think through all the different steps that they have to go at checkout.

Thien-Lan: So it all started with Magento one, and back then checkout was six steps. So it made a massive difference to have all those steps into just one. Above the fold with one single button that says Order now.

Thien-Lan: So you can fill out all your fields and not click any next button, just one big button order now.

Brent: So it’s making sure that there’s almost nothing you have to do make sure you complete checkout. How about making sure that users The right address and things like that. I’m assuming, integrates with other plat or other services that help find the right address.

Brent: Yeah, go ahead.

Thien-Lan: The key advantage of our product is that we integrate with. 90% of the third party extensions that are out there. So address validation, that works really well. Tax calculation shipping estimates, any shipping extension hundreds of payment extensions. So whatever you need, you can integrate it with one step checkout.

Brent: All right. I wanna switch directions just slightly. Okay. Are you seeing the same amount of people on Magento two using your services, or do you feel like it’s declining right now?

Thien-Lan: So with Magento two, we could see that it’s on the other side of the product maturity curve. The number of install.

Thien-Lan: And the number of orders for Agen two has been slowing down. But as I said, with Hova, it’s been picking back up, so that’s why I’m saying it’s bringing sexy back. And so a lot of, I would say, yeah, big proportion of new orders from west of checkout, from gen two are driven by hiva things. .

Brent: So you would, you could say that HAFA is changing.

Brent: HOA is ch is saving Magento from the dorans, from the tomb.

Thien-Lan: Let’s say that .

Brent: Absolutely. So if you have something that we started off with spooky and scary. What would be the biggest thing you could tell a merchant that they should think about for. website and for their checkout process,

Thien-Lan: I would say yeah, performance is key.

Thien-Lan: So today people don’t want to wait. Most people would buy their holidays, gifts on mobile, so it has to be mobile friendly. Loading really fast, allowing them to browse and or even, guiding them into what would be the most interesting, the best selling products because people are also looking for inspiration and then removing friction all the way through to check out and let them place their order without asking them for too many questions or asking them to do too many things.

Thien-Lan: So a lot of a lot of that friction is also in the order. Subscribe to our newsletter, get $5 off. Remember this, do this, do that. And you’re like, Go away. Go away. I want my product. And then someone calls you, you do something else, and then you go to another website

Brent: to shop. Yeah, that’s, that’s a great point.

Brent: I do, I’ve had quite a few guests that say, Love you learn to love the popup, but make sure you don’t have the popup in checkout. Because it I agree. It’s so annoying when you’re typing in. All of a sudden you get the popup and says, that, says, Enter your email address and subscribe to our newsletter when you could have a checkbox in your checkout that says, I’m, I’d like to subscribe your newsletter , because you’re putting your email address anyways.

Brent: Exactly. Yeah, that’s a really great point. Popups popups, especially on mobile. I think the other thing is that merchants still are thinking desktop first, and we’ve talked about performance and we’ve talked about friction in the checkout. Friction in the checkout is even more when you’re on mobile because it’s so much smaller.

Brent: So having that easy to use navigation is so important. Do you have any words of advice for people to. Enter as little as possible for the checkout. For mobile, You mean for consumers? No. For a merchant. Is there anything that they can do to reduce the amount of things like you, You said that having options for shipping, but I think.

Brent: At some point, if you have so many options, that’s too many options to show on your mobile phone. Is it recommended that you have as little options or making sure that they don’t have a lot of opt or even that’s where the free shipping would come in, where they don’t even have to choose shipping because it’s free.

Brent: Anything that, and that helps merchants check out on mobile quicker.

Thien-Lan: Yeah, that’s that’s an interesting point and I’ve seen it with. A lamp company. So they are the biggest in Europe. They have lamp.de eliminations.co, uk, lamp.fr, and 13 lamp sites across Europe. And for all their websites they have, they almost removed the shipping method.

Thien-Lan: Section because they have one carrier, one shipping cost, and you don’t have to choose. So that makes the whole checkout form much shorter and it’s quicker. People don’t have to wonder, Oh, what do I want? It just tells you what you’re going to have and that’s it.

Brent: So you’d say they’re helping us shed new light on the checkout process?

Thien-Lan: Yep. They help. Yep. They help simplify the whole thing and I guess they’ve seen that consumers are happy with that. So why give the choice when you know it’s the best options for you as a merchant and consumers are happy?

Brent: Excellent. Telan we are running outta time. And as a bonus on the episode I do want to do another free.

Brent: Because it’s Halloween and I have a Halloween joke for you. And then we’re gonna go into our shameless plug. But before we get there, I do have a special Halloween segment joke for you today. So again, this one is free or paid. Are you ready? Ready. Why did the policeman ticket the ghost on Halloween?

Brent: It didn’t have a haunting license.

Thien-Lan: paid with

subscription .

Brent: Excellent. Good. All right. Yeah. Tn Lan, Thank you so much. As I close out every episode, I give our guests a chance to do a shameless plug about anything you’d like. What would you like to plug today?

Thien-Lan: The only thing I didn’t mention was that Natasha Sonoma from the Forbes.

Thien-Lan: Council is the CEO of Optt, O P W T Y, and that’s innovative platform that allows you to acquire and manage all your, by now, pay later brands all in one space. So that’s really cool because depending on your. Not all the favorite brands are the same. And if you operate in lots of different countries, you can acquire them all at once, and then in the panel you can see who is performing better and you can dial up that down based on your storefronts.

Thien-Lan: So that really helps consumers have the preferred payment methods. And in terms of integration, that helps all the hustle. talking to each of the brands, integrating them into your two checkout, and then seeing which one works for you. Yeah, excellent. For one, it’s not a plug for one step checkout, but for Opti, and that is compatible with one Step out as well.

Thien-Lan: So it’s like a Lego blog. You have one to click out, you plug Opti and from Opti you can have access to 60 by no pay later. .

Brent: Very cool. Thank you so much. And I will put all these in the show notes and I will try to get this episode live as soon as possible so we are not so far away. Ka TA’s Halloween and it won’t go live today, I’m afraid, but we should have done a live stream.

Brent: That would’ve been a good idea. Yeah. Anyways thank you so much for being here today. 10. Who also helps on the Magento Association. I appreciate all your work and she’s now showing us a nice sticker for one step checkout. I would encourage everybody to go there for their Magento two sites, and I would encourage everybody to use hfa.

Brent: Our newest HofA is our newest sponsor for Talk Calm. So you’re excited about

Thien-Lan: that as well. There you go. I wasn’t even paid to talk about them. ,

Brent: thank you so much. Have a great. .

Thien-Lan: Thank you. Bye.

What is a CRM, and Why do You Need One?

October 18, 2022 Brent W. Peterson

Customer relationship management (CRM) software is a system that helps you manage and grow customer relationships.

Articles & Podcast Episodes

More like this

Show Notes

Personal:

Company:

Roger Brown

Transcript

Show notes

Transcript