E-Commerce Lessons from a Former Shopify Employee

Ramin: Tell me what key information about e-commerce you learned while at Shopify?

Sam: Well, what I learned that helped me along the way is that everyone's different.

Everyone. You can have four shoe stores in a row that are all on Shopify, all on Shopify point of sale. When they go in there, each manager will check a different report. They're going to do a different first step. They're going to need a different feature.

So I think the main thing I learned is you have to start from scratch every time you're talking to someone and every business. You have to understand that just because someone else is doing it that way, it doesn't mean this is the way that you need to do it. Not all foot tracks are laid the same to get the same results.

I learned that just because you sell clothes on an online store doesn't mean that if it's collections blog posts, this will work the same for the next clothing store.

Data Backup Is Only the First Step

Ramin: So now you're at Rewind. Tell us about Rewind's mission.

Sam: At Rewind our goal is to backup all SAS platforms. Currently, we are the leading backup solution for Shopify, BigCommerce, Trello, and QuickBooks Online. We offer Microsoft Office 365 hub and, as of today, JIRA.

A lot of times, people believe that all your data is stored, which it is. But the hard part is rewinding it and restoring it and having the power at your fingertips to do this, not having to always rely on a developer or a third party to make sure this happens. And we sit nicely across the board as we don't slow down your front end. We run in the background.

We're real-time backup. And we obviously back up different things per platform at different times, but for Shopify, we are completely real-time. There are certain things we back up every 24 hours. It's not the sexiest app, but when something goes wrong, you can restore yourself within three clicks: we are the sexiest app out there when your store is down, and you're right back up.

Ramin: Well, that's an interesting misnomer. Everything's safe on Shopify. It's in the cloud. But that's not the point of it. You cannot pull it back to rewind it. That's the key part of all of this.

Sam: If something were to happen on Shopify and randomly, meteors hit their servers and your data is out, they'll take the reins on that and say, yeah, this was random on our side.

For instance, if you're renting a house and the plumbing breaks, you call the landlord. But if you spilled a beer or coffee or red wine on your couch, they're not going to come and steam clean your couch. That's a mistake that you made, and these mistakes happen.

I worked at a skate and snowboard store where we used Shopify and installed two different apps. This was before their multi-location, and they were fighting over inventory. We uninstalled one app, and it messed everything up before the Christmas break. Everything.

The stories I hear are people who think, I'm going to download this blog app to my e-commerce blog to help me add my links. If you don't do your research, you will get the cheapest one. And that app is going to want permissions, and it can ruin a lot of your stuff.

So with Rewind, you could quickly log in, bring your blog back to the day before you installed the app and then install the app.

Why Every E-Commerce Merchant Needs Rewind

Ramin: Who would you say the ideal merchant is for Rewind?

Sam: Everybody. It really is. Whether you're just starting a store, working with a new agency or something like that, it works both ways.

Protect everything you have. I know a lot of merchants that will outsource for work just on the job on contracts and not go through a vetted agency through the Shopify ecosystem. If you're listening to this, I highly recommend using it. It helps you find partners.

You're letting these people into your business. You don't know what kind of code they're installing or what they will leave you after. It is also a revenue game. If you drop your store on a busy day on a new product launch, that's lost sales, lost customer credibility - especially with customer credibility and the pivot that COVID has put - everyone's moved on.

If you don't have that niche-specific product and someone can find it somewhere else, the shopping's at their fingertips. So the main merchant for Rewind is anyone. 

There're so many different things that can happen to a store, whether there's old code sitting from an app that you uninstalled and then you install a new app, and it recognizes that code, and it makes something funny happen.

Your E-Commerce Strategy Should Include Mobile & Immersive Experiences

Ramin: Where do you see e-commerce in the next five to 10 years?

Sam: Everywhere. I think e-commerce is going to be surrounding us everywhere. And it is going to be a fight for people to stand out and be the brand they are.

But in five to 10 years, it's so hard to think about because we get these pivotal things like COVID, where everything has to adjust quickly from in-store pickup to delivery. These need to be baked-in features. 

You get things like, for example, Fortnite, where I've never spent a cent, but my nephew has probably spent like 200 bucks on skins and all that stuff. So I feel e-commerce will be everywhere around us as it is now, if anything, faster to shop. But that's already out, you know, paying with your fingerprints and asking the shopper, do you want me to save your checkout information for next time?

They already know you're coming back. What I would like to see is more in-person from being retail. There's such a level of experience and branding and just feeling of a business and a brand of being in a space. I liked where it was headed in the sense of more experienced stores, you know, where you're going to a store, and you're almost in this experience, and you might even leave and shop on the website, but they needed you to get in and feel the brand.

I think those are some of the biggest things that e-commerce could work towards would be getting more of those senses triggered. I don't think we're going to be smelling through our computers anytime soon or tasting, but something along those lines of being able to separate yourself from the other brands out there.

One Tip for Your E-Commerce Strategy: Be Authentic

Ramin: So, if you were standing in front of an e-commerce entrepreneurship class, what one tip would you offer them to help them take their business to the next level?

Sam: Don't look over your neighbor's fence. I've seen so many websites, and they all look the same. But you can tell those that didn't look over the neighbor's fence to see what they were doing and try to replicate it.

Find your own path to success, your own branding. There will be similarities, but you can only learn so much from other people's mistakes. You need to learn from your own mistakes. 

And I know it's a hard thing to swallow. I've hated the fail forward thing because I was like, I don't want to fail.

When you click on that site, and you see, even if the mouse cursor is different or the shopping cart button is a little different, these little things will get picked up on, and it's going to speak to your brand because it means something to you. And I think more than ever, people are buying a brand.

So it might not be your bestselling t-shirt right in front. It might be that every time you sell that t-shirt and you're donating a shirt to someone else in need. These are the things that I feel will kick start your business. Don't just be passionate about your business. Be passionate about the back end of your business to everything else that goes along.

And just because somebody else is selling t-shirts by putting their top collection first, you don't need to copy that. You can find your own way, which is a great Fleetwood maximum as well.

Ramin: I think you know, you should coin that phrase, "Don't look over your neighbor's fence." 

Sam: It's easy to copycat. I started a skateboard brand a little bit ago on Shopify, and I sent out four designs to friends.

I asked them, which one do you like the best? And I had spent 72 hours or more figuring out how to use Photoshop to create some of the designs. 

Everyone chose the one that I drew with my finger on my phone because they said, that's you, that's different.

You put this out quickly, and you didn't care about the fine lines. The company's called Worry Less. So how can you push a Worry Less brand when everything is fine-tuned because you're clearly worried about how it's done?

That helped me realize it. And now, when I see brands with these different designs that are just real and natural, I'm like, that's what I want to do.

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Contact the Experts in Website Backup and E-Commerce Revenue

If you want to make the savvy choice to back up your e-commerce website data with Rewind, email Sam at Sam.Francis@rewind.io.

And as always, if you're looking to ramp up your conversions and revenue on your e-commerce site, email us at hello@skuagency.com. If you mention the podcast, we'll give you a free assessment worth $850. But even more exciting is that we'll help you create a marketing strategy that delivers real results from your SMS and email marketing.

You can watch the full podcast on our YouTube channel, listen in on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio (or wherever else you listen to your favorite podcasts), or jump right into the heart of the e-commerce discussion below.