Thanks for Making Crazy Egg a Shopify App Store Staff Pick!
In honor of Crazy Egg being listed as a Shopify Staff Pick from June 26 – July 3, we thought we’d take some time to share what the Crazy Egg community has learned about building an excellent business on Shopify.
If you’re interested in installing Crazy Egg on your Shopify store, we’re offering a 26% discount to anyone who signs up while Shopify has us in the Staff Pick spotlight.
How do you Build a Successful Shopify Store?
Over 820,000 shops. Driving over $41 billion in sales. Supported by over 5,000 apps. With 218 million buyers on the platform. Lots of great stats abound after UNITE.
(Takes deep breath) WOW.
There’s no denying that people are finding success on Shopify. The real question is how to stand out in the middle of such a crowded ecosystem and make sure your store drives revenue.
So, how do you build a successful Shopify store?
In celebration of being a Staff Pick in the Shopify Store, and in honor of what Shopify has done for and meant to entrepreneurs around the world, we’ve decided to elevate the stories of four of our favorite customers who have built successful businesses on the Shopify Platform.
Each has extensive experience with Shopify. We hope you enjoy what they’re building, and find inspiration and motivation in what they’ve achieved.
Here’s the panel:
- Zach Katz, Founder and CEO at Framed Tweets
- Milen Kovachev, Founder of Sherpas Design
- Aalap Shah, Founder 1o8 Agency
- Haley Campbell, Founder of Beluga Baby
Starting vs Building a Successful Shopify Store
First and foremost, it bears mentioning that there’s a difference between building a Shopify store and building a successful Shopify store.
Perhaps the single most consistent piece of advice anyone can share is that creating a store is a very small percentage of your work. Which is why you might be tempted by quick store builds without realizing that a profitable store is an ongoing labor of love.
Don’t believe me? The search results don’t lie. 10 steps. 19 minutes. 25 minutes (from scratch).
“If you build it, they will come.” There’s a reason why this is a line in a movie. Creating the store alone won’t bring you customers and revenue.
You’ll need to put in the time to know your target customers and see if your store is delivering what your buyers are looking for.
And that brings us to why Shopify is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms in the world. One of the key themes you’ll hear from our entrepreneurs about Shopify is how robust and helpful their support team and educational resources are.
Shopify hasn’t just built a world-class ecommerce platform, they’ve built a world class ecosystem of partners and educational resources to make it easier for everyone to participate and maximize their investment in Shopify.
More on that later. First, a little about our featured entrepreneurs.
How Sellers Use Shopify to Build and Grow their Stores
Crazy Egg: Can you start by telling us a little about your store and how and why you use Shopify?
Zach @ Framed Tweets
I’ve always thought Tweets are little super-modern works of art, and thought it’d be special (and hilarious) to immortalize them in picture frames.
So I did!
I started by selling them on the streets of Portland, Oregon, and people loved them so much that I took them online for the world to enjoy. Now, we sell everything from Tweet mugs to huge Tweets on big, beautiful artist canvases.
I think I chose to use Shopify basically how anyone chooses to use Shopify: it’s simply an amazing way to sell stuff online.
The single biggest differentiator for me is their 24-hour support, which has been invaluable. It was especially invaluable when I was creating the store, because I like to work late at night. I love Shopify so much!
Milen @ Sherpas Design
Sherpas Design is a Shopify web design and development agency. We are Shopify Partners and Official Shopify Experts.
We build our own Shopify apps, which are listed in the Shopify app store, as well as provide custom design and development services to Shopify merchants.
We have built our agency around Shopify because we believe Shopify is the backbone of the most successful ecommerce businesses around.
We prefer a platform where we can plan, design, and build a full experience for our customers. The Shopify Platform has the power to support all of those use cases.
Aalap @ 1o8 Agency
1o8 focuses on direct-to-consumer brands utilizing Shopify and other ecommerce platforms to accelerate sales growth for CPG manufacturers.
Our team has broad experience working with companies of all sizes to create digital funnels that lead to sales traction, awareness, and position for future exit or private equity funding.
Personally, I’ve been fortunate enough to have discovered Shopify a number of years ago. I always learn by doing, so I bought a business on flippa.com to learn the ropes of Shopify and Amazon with a small outdoor fishing accessories manufacturer.
That experience helped me learn how powerful Shopify is, especially with the integration with key apps and platforms like Crazy Egg. These easily integrate and help provide insights on how best to create a user experience that helps drive sales.
My agency is both an advocate and merchant on Shopify, and we use it as the hub for all of our digital activities regardless of where the sales ends up happening from a transactional perspective.
Haley @ Baby Beluga
Beluga Baby is a baby carrier company that started in 2015, and launched when my daughter was five months old. Beluga Baby’s products aim to bring a little bit of rock n’ roll into new parenthood.
Shopify has been Beluga Baby’s partner since the launch of the business and we wouldn’t exist without Shopify.
As Beluga Baby continues to grow, the functionality and support Shopify provides allows us to scale, be innovative, and provide the very best service to our clients.
Advice and Tips for Entrepreneurs Building a Shopify Store
Crazy Egg: What’s one piece of advice you have for people who are looking to get the most out of Shopify?
Zach @ Framed Tweets
The Shopify community is massive and engaged. Maybe this is a cop out, but the best advice I have is that whenever you have a question about Shopify, whatever it may be, small or large, obvious or obscure — Google it.
I guarantee you’ll find instant answers and excellent advice in response to your question.
Milen @ Sherpas Design
I echo what Zach said above: don’t be shy. Our advice for anyone who is just starting with Shopify is to seek help when needed and to keep making progress.
There are many resources available online as well as Shopify-related groups and Shopify experts who can help you grow. Google is one place, but we recommend you start on the Shopify Platform in the Shopify Experts community.
You’ll find access to experts and expertise on any topic you can think of that’s relevant to your store and your business. The advice is valuable whether you’re on Shopify or not (we also run a handful of stores on platforms other than Shopify, but always find the Expert advice invaluable).
Aalap @ 1o8 Agency
Dive in. Learn the ins and outs of Shopify, be it through the numerous guides or Shopify’s own support and forum.
Perhaps the biggest piece of advice I have is to make exhaustive use of the app store. There’s no substitute for trying the apps available to you and mapping them to a challenge you’re having or an opportunity you’re pursuing.
Give the apps a try and you’ll quickly learn what drives ROI and what drives performance — as well as what doesn’t.
Testing Apps is how we found Crazy Egg, for example.
Shopify Fact: 80% of Shopify merchants have an app installed.
Haley @ Baby Beluga
I side with Aalap. Just start!
The technical support is amazing, so if you ever get stuck on something you don’t know how to do, Shopify’s support (by chat and by phone) is second to none.
It’s a crash course in web development and ecommerce. There’s so much information available to you. Skip the classroom and learn on the go as you grow your business!
How to use Crazy Egg and Shopify together to Drive More Sales
Crazy Egg: What’s your favorite thing about the Crazy Egg App for the Shopify Platform and how do you use it to drive more sales?
Aalap Shah @ 1o8 Agency
How easy it is to integrate! Combined with the power of the Shopify editor, we can use video recordings and/or the snapshots to pinpoint A/B tests to drive growth for our clients and our own brand.
The insights and visualizations that Crazy Egg provides are invaluable in terms of user flow and clicks, and the heatmaps help us make decisions on product placement, images, and copy for our clients across the board.
Bonus Pro Tip: I also like how I don’t have to work with a developer to install the code, and I have a variety of options through additional integrations like Google Tag Manager to install and have the app get to work immediately.
Zach @ Framed Tweets
Crazy Egg’s got it all: Heatmaps, scroll maps, screen recordings, and it’s easy to use with plenty of tools available to crunch your data. It’s fantastic.
The heatmaps are an especially useful way for me to see what people are clicking on so I can then adjust my website/landing pages according to what the numbers are saying.
Milen @ Sherpas Design
We use Crazy Egg to get insights on how we can improve our site for better usability. So far we have identified areas for improvement and we have implemented changes on our website based on insights from Crazy Egg’s Recordings and Heatmap features.
Our favorite part about using Crazy Egg with Shopify is that the integration is very smooth and takes less than 2 minutes to complete.
We started getting insights on our website in no time.
Haley @ Beluga Baby
Being able to see how visitors to our website are interacting with our store allows us to better tailor the customer experience.
For example, we know that video tutorials are highly engaged with, so we put them front and center throughout the experience.
Basically, Crazy Egg allows us to find out what our customers want, and serve it up to them in the most effective way.
Thank you Beluga Baby, Framed Tweets, Sherpas Design, and 1o8!
You’re an inspiration when it comes to building a successful business on the Shopify platform; and we’re honored that Crazy Egg is a part of your ongoing success.
It’s also wonderful to see that as varied as your experiences are, you all shared a handful of key similarities and core principles about why you chose Shopify and what’s made you successful:
- The best thing to do is get started. Dive in. Start bringing your ideas and dreams to life.
- The best place to go is the community. When you have questions, ask them to the experts, the community, Google. Just ask and you’ll find your way to some powerful answers.
- The best reason to choose Shopify is the support. For all the technology and scale and flexibility the platform offers you — the best thing Shopify does is help you get started and then scale.
- The best way to take the next step is with Apps. Shopify has a rich ecosystem of Apps; lean into testing the Apps available to you. Take advantage of deals, discounts, and trials to determine what’s performing and what isn’t.
You may have inspired us to start our own Shopify store? On second thought, maybe we’ll just keep focused on making our integration better and better instead. Got ideas? Send them my way.
In the meantime, get 26% off of Crazy Egg from June 26 to July 3rd while Crazy Egg is featured as a Staff Pick in the Shopify App Store.
