How to Tell Your Brand’s Story by Making Your Site Easily Shoppable

This interview is a part of the Your Brand Editor series. In this episode I was joined by Shopify design expert and educator Shelley Easter. You can listen in below, or read along for the full (lightly edited) conversation. You’ll learn:

• Why design doesn’t have to be intimidating

• The huge difference a simple navigation menu can make

• Where brands go wrong on their FAQ pages

• How professional designers can help you make more revenue (and how to evaluate their portfolios)

  … and much more!

Listen now:

Anna

I'm joined by Shelley Easter. She's the owner of Launch Party, an e-commerce design studio, specializing in Shopify websites and branding for product businesses.

Shelley's also the creator of Shop School, an online course to learn how to build, launch, and optimize your own Shopify site. Shelley, thanks so much for joining me today. 

Shelley

Yeah, thank you for having me. 

Anna

I'm so excited to speak with you. We've gotten to work together on projects in the past, and I love your straightforward approach to design.

You're an expert in the Shopify platform and you create really pretty sites that are also optimized for business. So I'm excited to hear some of your wisdom today. I wanted to start by asking, How should brands approach building and designing a website? 

Shelley

Yeah, I'm happy to be here too.

I love that we have collaborated, I think with now, gosh, how many clients has it been? Like five or six maybe. It's always lovely to work with you and have copy that is written by you for my projects. Like that is just such a plus for me. And you collaborated with me for Shop School, so lots of different collaborations with us.

How should brands approach building and designing their website? That is a really big one, especially if a brand is an e-commerce specific brand, because then you're really designing your entire store and the entire experience that a customer will have as before and after they buy. So it's pretty essential.

So I just wanna talk about who could design their own website and who should consider hiring for that. Some people do have tech skills and are able to put together a website, but there's a lot to websites that goes beyond the technical aspect. So you need to consider all of the different elements that are going to be related.

So if someone can technically do it doesn't necessarily mean that they should do it just because there are so many things that they may be missing out on that would affect sales. But to give like what to think about in general, the first thing that I always say to my clients and people in Shop School is to think about what the experience is for a totally brand new customer, which is always difficult because inevitably the person that has built this brand is really close to their products. So trying to imagine introducing it to someone that has never seen any part of the of their product before.

And explaining it as such, you know, instead of having a really short description, which is definitely where you come in more, Anna. Or having one or two photos. I know you've also talked to brand photographers too. Brand photography and copy are both super important elements of websites. But you have to imagine that someone has never seen it.

They're not going to actually be able to touch your product if you're an e-commerce specifically for the most part. So trying to fill in those gaps. Not being able to interact, you have to add more. Basically you have to over-explain over-deliver, so to speak, so that someone can feel comfortable to purchase.

Anna

You have to over-explain and over-deliver. I think that's easy to miss because we get nervous about over-explaining and we get nervous about having too much, too much detail or too, you know, just putting out too much.

And we forget that as business owners, we have the curse of knowledge, where of course we understand what we're selling, we understand what the product is, we understand how people will use it, the benefits of it, even things like the size. How big is this product? Business owners know that just automatically.

And we have to remember that people coming to your site don't know any of that. 

Shelley

Yes. It's almost like people want to conserve the amount of space they're using on a website, and it does not cost any more to like have longer sales pages or longer product pages, and not everyone needs all that information, but the person that does is actually going to make them more comfortable to buy.

So don't be afraid of taking up space literally on your website. And putting more there. That, again, not necessarily everyone needs, but will help other people actually convert and purchase. 

Anna

I've seen some frameworks that sort of break people up into four different types of decision makers where you could make your decision based on logic or emotion, and then you could base your decision, or you could make your decision very quickly, or you could take your time. 

So you could be someone who wants all the facts and you need all the details on a product before you'll purchase. Or you can need all the story of a product before you'll purchase, and you wanna feel really connected to the brand and the founder.

And you know, you can't please every person all the time, but you can build a site that keeps in mind that you will have different people viewing it. You'll have people who just wanna get right to that add to cart button, and you'll have other people who wanna hear more before they make that decision.

Shelley

Yeah. I think that depends a lot on the product itself too. And then just the frame of mind, like someone may be that type of decision maker for a certain type of product, especially a product that may cost more money or may be in their home for a really long time, whereas other products can be a total impulse purchase or you're just in a frame of mind, like you have to buy a gift right now.

So, okay, this is gonna work. And that's where you, that's where you need to consider the usability of your website in general. And like UX design is kind of the fancy way to think about that. But just making your website as shopable as possible, and that's something I say a lot, which I know can sound vague, but you want it to be as easy as possible to find products as well as actually buy them.

So there's lots of different ways to do that with your navigation, which is something that I consider very important for usability, but it also affects SEO and all sorts of things. But considering your navigation, considering your calls to action, having them really clear, and then your descriptions again, and all of that type of flow of your website.

Shopify takes care of this to an extent. You don't have to worry about your cart and your checkout process with Shopify so much, but you do have to have all of those other parts in place beforehand so that people can actually find products and know how to purchase them. 

Anna

That's what I love about Shopify is they build in some really great functionality in those, you know, technical pieces like the cart. But they give you flexibility to design the rest of your site to give it a look and feel that'll match your brand. And what you said about people making different types of decisions or shopping in a different way depending on what product it is. I think that's important because it's easy to look at another website and say, “Ooh, that's pretty, I want one like that.” But if they're selling a very different type of product, That's not gonna translate necessarily to your brand. 

Shelley

Absolutely. And one thing I get a lot is people comparing to very well established brands, which is another thing that comes back to imagining someone doesn't know your brand.

And then you may think, “okay, well, but I've gone on Anthropologie's website and they don't have all this like explaining behind the story necessarily.” I mean, actually Anthropologie's website's gorgeous, but. Most businesses can't make Anthropologie’s website because they have an incredibly established brand and people are already familiar with their brand.

But in your case, you don't have people that know your business yet, so you need to be catering to new customers that you're not yet in the cultural phenomenon of Anthropologie or Nike or you know, any of these really established brands.

So that's something that can kind of be confusing if you're thinking, well, I wanna make the best e-commerce website, and Nike's is awesome and I make shoes too, so I should just do like Nike. That's just simply not going to translate for independent new businesses. 

Anna

Yeah, that's such a great point.

And I think that's why it's important to make sure that you are working with experts in the small business realm. Like yourself — you build websites for small businesses who are making a big impact and really establishing their brands and becoming well known and are not yet the Nikes and Anthropologies of the world.

Shelley

Right. It's a different type of marketing and a different type of everything really. A different type of communication and website design that's needed for those types of businesses to grow. 

Anna

Okay. Looking at the competitors is not the best way to find our website design. How would you say brands can find their own unique style? 

Shelley

That's a hard one. For one, I would base everything around the products themselves and where they can fit into things. With e-commerce and with product-based businesses in general, typically you want the products to be the star of the show.

So the style would relate to that. And if you put a different style, kind of like on top of that, that doesn't necessarily relate to your product. Then it's not going to really work. So I like to look at product shots. I'm assuming someone has some photography already existing. And that's really where I would wanna base things, style-wise. 

But then I also wanna point out that your website can be very, very simple and you can let your product photography and your products in general really do most of the talking style-wise. As opposed to Anthropologie, which has a really defined style for their brand itself. And not all brands need that, especially starting off because it's gonna kind of take some time to figure out what actually makes sense for their website. So I always recommend just going simpler and cleaner so that your product photography and your products are what really stands out the most.

Anna

I love that. 

That makes it really easy and straightforward. And I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that before. Just let your products be the star of the show and don't worry too much about the surrounding style. 

When it comes to website design, how much do we have to alter and change and update things when the trends change?

Shelley

That's gonna depend on how trendy your brand is, but for the most part, e-commerce can be, again, very straightforward. I don't recommend trying to make your website totally unique where, “wow, you've never seen this before. The carts on the bottom left and you have to hover over this like hidden button to find it.” You know, there used to be things like that in websites where you'd have hidden things, which sure, I guess that could be fun. But in general you want your website to just be simple, usable, and expected, with things are where they are naturally going to be on every other website.

Because that's what makes people trust a website and feel comfortable and also just know how to use it. You don't want people to be thinking too much. So in terms trying to bring in different design trends, I don't think that needs to be a major priority. That's something that I would play around with more on social media.

It's a lot easier to try that on social media than to try to update and change your website all the time. Now, there's things on your website that can be updated and changed, but not like the actual website. So I would just put more emphasis on adding a different photo that may relate to trends or a video rather than updating like total design style.

You want that to stay relatively consistent, which kind of goes back to finding the brand style where I recommend trying to keep things pretty simple in general. So keeping it simple, keeping that part consistent so that maybe product photos can change or you can add some different videos and things like that that may be more topical or trend related at the moment, rather than the actual design itself is better to just keep, keep more consistent and simple.

Anna

That makes sense. I love what you said about making sure that your website is expected. So having the cart in the upper right corner, that's where people expect to see it. Make it easy for people to find what they're looking for, where they expect to see it. There's no need to go down rabbit trails and follow every new design trend that comes 

Shelley

So in that sense your website isn't necessarily as intimidating as it may seem because simple is great, straightforward, but somehow it can be hard still to figure out that for yourself.

Especially like just figuring out how to present something for someone that is brand new. And that's where working with a professional is super helpful. But then, you know, thinking more about trends, there's all sorts of different app trends as well with Shopify, maybe like how we initially, like probably five or so years ago, it was a trend to just have that spin the wheel thing.

You know, if you see that on websites, I still sometimes see that. So those types of trends are easy to try out. At the time when that came out, I did suggest them to a couple of my clients but that's something that's really easy to take off and try different trends, like different types of apps or different types of upsells, things like that.

That's less design related, but more just Shopify functionality related and marketing, and those are things that you can definitely try and experiment with. I love that most apps have free trials, so I often encourage my clients to try out and see, is this gonna work for you for 30 days?

You can try out for free and see if it helps your business. Things like that are fun trend-wise to, to, to experiment with. 

Anna

It's all about testing and seeing what works best for your brand and you can do a lot of that with copy as well, testing out different copy on your call to action buttons. Or testing out a different offer. So if you have an initial offer that pops up and people can give you their email address. You can test out different deals and resources that you're giving out and see which one gets the most email addresses? 

And it's really all about serving the user. What are users most interested in? And going from there. Shopify connects so well with so many different apps. So you can add things like the spin the wheel, chat bots, all kinds of things that you can really use to amplify the marketing reach of your Shopify site without actually changing the core design.

Shelley

Exactly. And that's something I think people are a little intimidated to do, or they might just not think it's worth trying. But some of these things can really add a lot of revenue to your business and you may not be using them or realize you can pretty easily try it with Shopify and it's not gonna break your site. 

So those are things that I do like trying to experiment with and just having an experiment mindset in general with your business is great. 

Anna

Yeah, it's something to be mindful of and just set aside time on your calendar to make sure you're learning about the newest things and take time not just to set them up, but then to go back and look at the numbers  and see how they're actually performing and measure them and make sure that they're still working for you.

So let's talk about the biggest mistakes, because you look at a lot of websites, you consult with business owners and so you see a lot of things going right and you see some things going wrong. What are some mistakes that business owners often make on their website? 

Shelley

Oh man, there's definitely a lot, um, a lot of things and not in a bad way.

They're so easy to make a lot of these mistakes. Number one would just be the usability and finding products, and I should be able to go to your website and understand what you sell relatively quickly, but I have a fair amount of people that inquire where I look at their website and and it takes me a while, I have to go through multiple pages and look through lots of different parts of the website to understand all of the things that they sell.

And that should just be priority number one s displaying that and showing that as quickly as possible.  Which again comes down to what I talked about at the beginning too, just it all comes down to that people have to understand in order to even consider the possibility of one, staying on the website and two, actually buying or even joining someone's email list.

So that comes down to product organization, not really a fun thing necessarily. It's really important to have your products organized and in different collections so that they're actually shoppable. I see a lot of people not showing new collections or new products, which isn't helpful for returning customers. You wanna always have a “new” collection so that returning customers can see those products and potentially buy those. 

Also, I often don't see a “shop all” or where I can just see everything, which not everyone needs. That depends on the amount of products you have.

Or there are collections that are all listed under “Shop”, which makes it difficult to actually see like dropdown style. That's really important and something that's kind of in a lot of different factors and parts of your website. 

Other mistakes I see are just, again, not really having enough information. Maybe there is an FAQ. But they've only asked like, how do I return my order? Or things like that. Your FAQ page is a really awesome opportunity to answer pre-buy questions. So rather than like, “oh, what happens if I don't like it?” Which kind of immediately puts someone in the mindset that they may return, which of course you do still wanna share your return policy, but I see sometimes on the FAQ page, that'll be the first question.

Or “what happens if this breaks”, you know, things like that. And so you wanna think of the FAQ page and all of these pages on your website as opportunities to answer pre by questions, answer pre-buy objections or respond to them. So just kind of making the website more sales-oriented that way is really important.

And it's something that takes a lot of thought. Instead of just thinking of the person that's bought it, maybe something has broken. 

Another one, and this is just a pet peeve, but I hear many people say, is the instant pop-up. So I love pop-ups, they're very effective, but they need to be deployed at strategic times.

Within a scroll percentage rather, or a certain amount of time on the site is when you wanna deploy them. Rather than instantly, because that can make people just close the site right away, because why would anyone join the email list without having seen the site? That's one that I always wanna remove immediately. Yeah, 

Anna

I feel like lately I've been on several sites where the popup pops up immediately and it takes up the whole page. So it's blocking my view. I literally cannot see the site at all, until I find the tiny little X and close it out.

Shelley

Or then, you know, some websites will have, and I know we've talked about this before, Anna, like, where [the pop-up will] say “no, I don't wanna save money” on the close button. And that's, another one I don't recommend. Just make it easy to close your pop-up.

Still use a pop-up, but use it, you know, strategically. 

Anna

Yeah. And keep your user in mind. Try to be nice, and it all comes back to making it easy and fun to shop with you.

I love your point about the FAQ page as a missed opportunity because yeah, every page on your site can be sharing what's so great about your products and really used as a sales tool, and of course a customer service tool as well.

Having questions about your return policy or your shipping policies can help reduce the risk that someone might feel in making a purchase from a site they've never done business with before. But you wanna keep the emphasis and lead with the really positive questions. So questions about your products where you can share the details that will make people even more interested.

Shelley

I usually put the return or exchange information on the bottom of an FAQ page, so it's still very accessible, but just not front and center. 

Anna

So you've talked a lot about navigation. What does your ideal navigation look like? 

Shelley

I have, and it's funny that that ends up being such a big thing, but it really is important on websites and it's something I work a lot with my clients on because it's something that I think sounds really simple, but is actually, can be much more complicated than it seems like just to plan the navigation.

Not necessarily complicated, maybe that's not the right word, but it just takes a lot of thought. . So for me the ideal navigation does not have a home link. It doesn't have the privacy policy. Sometimes I see that listed or like returns or shipping policies up on the top navigation. But it is just simply your shoppable categories.

So kind of thinking about it, like if you walk into a store and you see the aisles of the store and you know, so that way you know what's actually there, that would be a good way to approach thinking about your navigation so that potential customers understand what types of products you sell.

And then including “new”, including “sale”, and potentially a “shop all” if you have a manageable amount of products. 

Anna

That's super helpful. So if someone knows that they need major website help, like a total redesign, maybe they're moving to Shopify for the first time. Maybe they're setting up a website for the first time, or maybe it just needs a really good revamp. How should people figure out whether, you know, building it themselves is the right choice, whether they need help or coaching, or whether they should hire a full-time designer? And what are some good ways to evaluate designers when looking to hire someone?

Shelley

Yeah, so if your website is not performing the way that you want it to, investing in a professional Shopify designer is really going to be worth the investment because again, it's your entire business if you are doing e-commerce. So it is a hugely important element. So I always encourage people to invest in professional design if they can afford it for that reason alone — it really will pay for itself or it should.

To determine how to actually find a designer who you would wanna work with is gonna really vary on a lot of factors. So number one is looking at their portfolio and are they websites that are for you to use? Would you want to shop on them? You know, not, not necessarily if they're not in your product category. That doesn't necessarily matter. 

Then there's also if they can adapt to different brand styles, I think that's more important than having a designer that has their own style that they kind of put on all of their clients. I prefer for it to be that they are able to adapt and make your brand style stand out.

So looking at a portfolio and then also just seeing their results and testimonials. So you should be able to see, (this is what I love about e-commerce), see the impact of your redesign or of your new website, you can see those stats, you can see the sales, you can see the average order value, and you can compare.

So if your designer has made an impact like that where they have increased sales or increased average order value, increased return customer rate and maybe decreased amount of emails beforehand, things like that impact people's businesses. Like one of my clients, The Tiny Tassel has talked about how she gets so many less emails now that are like — “where do I find this?” or “how does will this fit me?” — things like that. So that saves her a lot of time and it also certainly impacts the conversion rate. So seeing things like that, those also matter rather than just the conversion rate and sales, which of course matter a lot too. 

One of my clients, Gingerber, told me when she hired me that she wanted to make back her investment in a week, in sales, and she actually did. So things like that are really important. Are they actually making an impact on the numbers that matter for your business?

They should be able to show that. So that's also important. And then number three is just if someone is specific to your platform. That's important too. Especially with something like Shopify, because there are so many apps, there are so many different things you can do that having a deep understanding of the platform is really helpful because there's so many things that most of my clients don't know. When they tell me, “oh, I have this problem,” I can tell them, “there's an app for this that we can do”. Or, “there's some custom coding we can add  in order to make that not a problem anymore.” So having a deep understanding of the platform is super, super beneficial when you're working with someone. 

Anna

Yes to all of that. 

I love what you said about showing a business impact. And with e-commerce it's really easy to measure sales, which is a great metric to use, but there's also others too. It could be something like saving your customer service team time and hours every week like with A Tiny Tassel. And that's a huge win. So thank you for sharing that.

If someone wants to find you online and follow along with your work or get your eyes and expertise on their site, how can they do that? 

Shelley

My website is launchparty.live, so you can go check out everything there. And then also I have a free Shopify workshop at shopschool.live to check out and it's on demand, so anytime you wanna watch it, you can sign up and watch it.

Anna

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Shelley, for joining me today. This has been such a fun conversation. I know we could just talk all day long about e-commerce websites, because design and copy just work so hand in hand and all these small changes make a really big difference. Like you said, it's your whole business if you're running an e-commerce business. 

Shelley

Yeah, exactly. It really is everything for e-commerce, so it's super, super important and little things can make a really big difference. 

Anna

Yes, they can indeed.

Thanks, Shelley. 

Shelley

Thanks, Anna.

—-

Do be sure to check out Shelley’s business and her free workshop.

Catch up on the archives: view Adam Feller’s interview about packaging design here, and get brand photography tips from Monica Farber here.

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