In this episode of Add To Cart, we are joined by Paul Waddy, eCommerce expert extraordinaire – and all round nice guy. Paul is the principal of Paul Waddy ecommerce and Director at ECom Nation where he advises some of Australia’s leading online retailers including Maison de Sabre, Geedup Co and Kind Is Cool. He’s been the Head of Operations at Showpo, and CEO of The Horse and is the author of Shopify for Dummies and Selling Online for Dummies. On top of this he was recently awarded the Industry Award at Online Retailer. Underachiever really. Wherever you are on your eCommerce journey, trust me, you can learn something valuable from Paul. In this chat, Paul shares the pursuits that get him most excited, his top Shopify app recommendations and what he believes is the key driver in eCommerce success.
“Some of the best advice that I give is don’t do it, it’s a terrible idea“
Paul Waddy
ECommerce For Dummies
“A fortuitous conversation that I was having with a guy called Spencer, he was on Shark Tank and he’s been knocking around E-com for a while and he wrote a book and he introduced me to the publisher.
I said (to her), what I struggle with is that there’s so many gurus out there who are just absolute bell ends who charge a large sum of money and deliver peanuts and promise profits. And it doesn’t work like that. And I just wanted a cheap, accessible book that people would pick up and read. There just needs to be a guide.
This doesn’t exist. You can’t do eCommerce in uni or TAFE or whatever. So there needs to be more of this out there, more from trusted sources. And I said to her, like a Dummies guide to eCommerce. And she said, oh we own that franchise globally. Would you like to write one? And I said yeah definitely.”
Product, product, product
“For anyone listening who might be starting a business or maybe they’ve got an eCommerce business that’s just taken a turn, it’s not doing so well. I really encourage people to go back to when you started initially thinking about your business and you went to bed dreaming about how your product was gonna change the world. Now, too many people are hung up on my Facebook ROAS. Or the next paid media channel. And I would say, is that what you went to bed dreaming about when you started? Facebook ROAS?
It’s going back to basics. Commerce from the dawn of time, it’s like supply and demand. Here’s a product you need. Here’s a fair price, let’s go. And people lose sight of that. You cannot force a crappy product down a consumer’s throat. And if you wanna play that game, you will not make money because you just you are paying a fortune to acquire customers who don’t really want you.
I think that product drives everything in e-commerce, including ROAS. If you’ve got an interesting product and you’ve got an interesting brand and you’re doing interesting things, the ROAS will follow. There’s no silver bullet in digital marketing. A great ROAS is the sum of many parts, and those many parts are product and people and brand and creative and all those cool things that people tend to neglect after a certain period of time.”
Paul’s fave Shopify apps
“This is my little black book of apps and I’ll only put ones in here that I’ve used. And that I love. In apps I include integrations, anything that plugs in and goes, So I couldn’t pick a favourite, I’m just gonna give you three.
Gorgias for customer service, I love that. The customer always comes first. It just gives you everything you need for the customer. The reporting’s good, you can set it up in an hour. The team’s friendly, the customer service is good. You can do lots of actions like refund customers inside of Shopify.
I like PushOwl for push notifications. And again, the reason that I like it is I’ve seen a positive ROI with most clients. It’s super easy. It gets good cut through. You can get started on a free plan.
Foursixty for shoppable Instagram and user generated content. That’s a big space at the moment. Everyone wants to work out how to monetize influencers and use user generated content. There’s plenty of platforms floating around. Foursixty in my experience is a really good one, particularly if you’re in the apparel space.”
Questions answered in this episode include…
- In your opinion, what is the key driver in eCommerce success?
- What are your top three Shopify apps?
- What are you most excited about in the future of Shopify?
Links from the episode:
- ECom Nation
- Donor Republic
- Drummer Boy
- Green Friday
- Shopify for Dummies by Paul Waddy
- Selling Online for Dummies by Paul Waddy
- Shopify Plus (sponsored)
- Packleo (sponsored
This episode was brought to you by…
