In this episode of "The Conversion Show," Erik Christiansen, CEO of Justuno, is joined by Travis Logan, Co-Founder & CTO of Justuno, and this week's guest Brian Peters, Head of Platform Partnerships at Shopify. The conversation kicks off by looking at the most talked about statistic from Brain's presentation at the Shopify Enterprise Partner Summit 2023, 35% of Shopify Plus merchants have seen smaller cart sizes and 50% are seeing less site traffic and lower conversion rates. Brian breaks down what this means for merchants and what the future looks like for E-commerce. 

Erik, Travis, and Brian discuss:

• Finding the right product-market fit.
• Brand identity online.
• Influencer marketing
• Marketing is brand experience.
• Does high customization equal high converting?
• To survive as a brand you have to convert at checkout.
• Zero-party data expands beyond your email list.
• Why Shopify is the number one converting checkout in the world.

Host: Erik Christiansen, CEO of Justuno

Guest: Travis Logan, CTO at Justuno

Guest: Brian Peters, Head of Platform Partnerships at Shopify

Transcript:

Erik 00:00:50 - 00:01:22

Welcome to the show today. I'm very excited because I have two guests. And so this is going to be a jam-packed episode where we're going to gain some insights into Shopify like never before. We're going to learn what that the leadership, what's top of mind with the Shopify leadership along with just, you know, leadership. Because today I have my my co-founder, Travis Logan, CTO of just, you know, on the show and Brian Peters, head of platform partnerships at Shopify.

Erik 00:01:22 - 00:01:33

So hang on, today is going to be a very insightful show. So we're going to jump into it. And the reason I have Brian on the show today. Welcome, Brian. Well, thank you.

Brian 00:01:33 - 00:01:34

Thank you. Good to be here.

Erik 00:01:34 - 00:02:06

I have Brian on here because I was down at the Shopify Enterprise event down in L.A., right by where that I-10 fire was, what, two days ago? I'm not surprised because that, you know, no Shopify, they like to select very colorful neighborhoods to have events like this colorful, really cool spot in the heart of downtown L.A. Brian got on stage and gave a presentation and he had a slide that stood out to me.

Erik 00:02:06 - 00:02:45

And that's what we're talking about today. The quotes from the slide were, according to a survey of Shopify Plus merchants, 35% have seen smaller cart sizes and 50% are seeing less site traffic and lower conversion rates. Now, we also the second reason we're here is Travis and I were at the Google next event in San Francisco wandering the expo and we stumbled upon a Shopify booth at Google Nexus conference.

Erik 00:02:46 - 00:03:16

Which one was surprising? And two, the big letters across it were the number one converting checkout in the world. So today we are going to talk about Shopify and conversions and no, no one better than Brian Peters to join us and no one better than Travis who's working to build into Shopify Viser API server pixel event publishing segment extensions, everything we're building into right now.

Erik 00:03:16 - 00:03:45

So that's setting the stage for what you'll hear today. So Brian, thanks for joining us for taking the time. Brian Brian has been a Shopify for just about five years now. We've been working together for years and watched Brian grow up in Shopify as well. Congratulations on Running and heading the partnerships and the ecosystem that slide you shared.

Erik 00:03:45 - 00:03:56

Let's start there. Where did those data points come from? how did you come to present that slide?

Brian 00:03:56 - 00:04:23

It's kind of funny. That was probably the most asked-about slide in many of the presentations that happened at the summit. And it was I don't think I realized at the time when I put the deck together that that was going to be such a controversial slide. I was like, wow, I should have put that in there because it kind of freaked people out a little bit, to be honest with you.

Brian 00:04:23 - 00:04:50

The data came from a survey that we ran with a lot of our Shopify Plus merchants and here's a little bit of juxtaposition here where if you look at Shopify this quarter, their earnings call and just like DTC in general, like Commerce continues to grow online, commerce continues to grow. Shopify merchants are kicking ass. Honestly, quarter over quarter, more people are becoming entrepreneurs than ever before.

Brian 00:04:50 - 00:05:13

Our brands are growing, larger brands are joining Shopify. So on one hand, you have this incredible growth in the ecommerce space. On the other hand, you have this kind of looming like, wow, marketing. Marketing is hard. And I think that even when I first joined Shopify, when I joined Shopify five years ago, I was hired to basically run the marketing technology vertical.

Brian 00:05:13 - 00:05:42 :04

which I love because every single quarter we would run a merchant survey and the number one challenge is like, okay, what is your biggest challenge about running the Adidas E-Store online store? Every single time and I'm pretty sure that data holds. Today is like marketing. Marketing is by far the hardest thing I do. I've actually talked to we have some really great or we did at one point, like entrepreneurs and residents where they have like a full-time Shopify job, but they were kind of running stores on the side.

Brian 00:05:42 - 00:06:06

And I would talk to these people and they'd be like, You know when I first started a brand, I was like, I thought the hardest thing would be like finding the products or like, you know, like packaging them or shipping them. But like really what you are as an entrepreneur is like you're a marketer and then like, you run this like clothing or jewelry or whatever business on the side because you can't get people to come to your website, then you're you're just not going to survive.

Brian 00:06:06 - 00:06:29

I think what we're seeing is like the top of the funnel stuff is, is people are getting better and better at and like things like Facebook ads have made that like great. But it almost seems now and the reason I showed that slide to kind of close the thought here is like it's more like first-party data and converting the sort of like competition's fierce, right?

Brian 00:06:29 - 00:06:48

So like converting the most amount of people you possibly can on your website is the absolute most important thing you can do when you're thinking about building your site. And so that's that. That side sort of reflection is like new paradigm of marketing that we're in, which is like a major focus on conversion, not just top of the funnel.

Erik 00:06:48 - 00:07:15

The that paradigm shift, you know, with costs across the board rising everywhere, it's harder to get that get those visitors to the site. It's it's really trying to figure out the word conversion. You know, Shopify is never use the word conversion before. And that's why I'm so happy to see Harley out there talking about how important conversion is, how checkout so important.

Erik 00:07:15 - 00:07:41

The it's never been used, but, but people need to now because it's so expensive to get these visitors. Harley when he was on stage speaking, I forget his name the guy from Nike, you know they talked about, you know, with enterprise commerce, the focus there of the brand experience and understanding the consumer demands. And he talked about in order to do that, you have to have that first-party data, zero-party data on the customer.

Erik 00:07:41 - 00:08:12

I thought that was really interesting. You know, hearing Shopify is trying to understand Shopify as perspective of how do you influence conversion rates? And it's really coming down to this identity, to personalization, to segmenting your visitors so you can target them with the right message at the right time with the right customer. The you know, I think it might be good to just pause right now and thank our sponsor better than Audi Components.

Travis 00:08:12 - 00:08:38

So I em