Speaker A: Happy Holidays. I hope you're enjoying this episode of Add to Cart on a beach or somewhere really relaxing after a big 2022.
Nathan Bush: We're taking a break at Add to
Speaker A: Cart, so we're bringing you some extra checkout episodes that haven't gone to air yet. We'll be back with our feature episodes from Monday 16th January, and the very first episode we have lined up is
Nathan Bush: an absolute star of the industry. We can't wait to bring it to you.
Speaker A: Until then, enjoy the downtime and we'll see you in the new.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to the Checkout. We catch up with previous Add to Cart guests and ask them five quick questions to get to know them better and leave you with a little extra inspiration to get you through your Friday
Speaker A: Today's checkout features Paul Wattie Paul is the principal of Paul Waddy, Advisory Director at ECOM Nation, where he advises some of Australia's leading online brands, including Maison de Sabre, Gdupco and Kind Is Cool. He's also been the head of operations at Showpo, the CEO of the Horse, and is now the author of Shopify for Dummies.
Nathan Bush: On top of this, he was recently
Speaker A: awarded the Industry Award at online retailer what an achiever.
Nathan Bush: Paul, welcome to the Checkout. Thank you so much for joining us. We've heard all about your new book, Shopify for Dummies, EcomNation and everything else that you're doing. We're here to learn a little bit more about you. Five quick questions. Number one, what's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought online?
Paul Waddy: Hard question. Oh, probably last week I bought this shoe goo. I don't know if, if anyone remembers Shoe Go. If you're a cricketer, you'd know it because you use it on the bottom of your cricket bat. Sadly, I'm using it to repair the soles of my shoes. So shoe goo and I got it, got it off Amazon.
Nathan Bush: Just shoes you didn't want to get rid of? Yeah.
Paul Waddy: I used to own a shoe company, so I've got about 100 pairs still lining around, lying around. It's a great pair of boots, but the crepe sol keeps coming off and just want to. I just want them to go that extra mile.
Nathan Bush: Is that the reason you've still got a hundred pairs because you've got to glue them together?
Paul Waddy: I might have had a few returns after I sold the business.
Nathan Bush: All right, number two, who is your favorite retailer?
Paul Waddy: This is very hard because there's so many within my client group. So if any of my clients are Listening. I'm going to go outside of my client group. So to answer that question, I kind of lucky enough that I see a new favorite one almost every, every other week. Like having chat to this guy from Battery Mate which was like, wow, you're killing it on batteries. Look, you know, I hate to be generic, but for the logistics experience I, I find it hard to go past the Iconic just in terms of what you did, the range, the size of the range and how quickly and how easy it is. But yeah, that's obviously outside of my clients, which are all much, much better than that.
Nathan Bush: We get a lot of students in our accelerator studying the iconic. Everyone's got to pick a retailer to study and to analyze all the way through. Is there anything about the Iconic that you wish they'd improve on?
Paul Waddy: Oh, if you ask my wife, she's looking on there the other day and she wants more. But this is, this is not, you know, they should not listen to my wife. She wants a bigger catalog. No, I don't know if I think they should necessarily, necessarily improve on things as a marketplace. Like I actually think they do. They do very, very well, I think. Yeah, you know, probably the personalization a little bit in terms of it's such an enormous catalog that the discoverability can be a bit hard. And so, you know, our goal in e commerce is to bring the client, the user, the end user to the product that they're most likely to purchase in as few clicks as possible. So I would say that they could probably tidy up their account section a little bit. And I'm always logged in when I am logged in. I would like to be served more curated product. Now that's a hard call because they do it better than most. Just filtering through those huge catalog of SKUs is a bit time consuming.
Nathan Bush: Absolutely. No, it's picking nits. But it's definitely up there in terms of the best e commerce experiences, especially in Australia. All right, I am fascinated to your answer on this one. Number three, which e commerce practice do you wish was history?
Paul Waddy: There's a few. I want to be generic here a little bit and just say that the idea that you can pay your way to success, I just don't think that occurs. You know, if you're spending more than 20% of your marketing on your more than 20% of your revenue on your paid media, then you need your head checked. Particularly if your margins are under that 50 margin, 50% gross margin I mentioned where you just can't. I just think that needs to stop and brands need to Go back to basics. So just spending your way to success needs to stop.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, great answer. Number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into? Yeah.
Paul Waddy: Add to cart as the podcast and Shopify for Dummies. Look, obviously my books is, I was gonna say also catching Decade's a good one by Gabby and anyone who's had that lived experience, but. So Shopify for Dummies and selling online for Dumm, but going off e commerce scar tissue, the Red Hot Chili. Great book and I recommend anyone give that a read. It was. It's an autobiography. I think it's an autobiography, but it's a. It's a ripper scar tissue. Yeah. Anthony Keys, Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Nathan Bush: Great recommendation. And of course we will put the link to Shopify for Dummies into the show notes and onto the blog post as well if you want to get your hands on a copy of that, which I highly recommend. Number five, finish this sentence. The future of retail is selling through live video. Live video on social, standalone on the site.
Paul Waddy: Yeah, so I was going to say video because I think movement is key. I think we learned that in Covid. You know, some, some businesses were using their customer service to get. Get on WhatsApp and take phone calls. I love that. And I think it's how our online retailers can compete with bricks and mortar retailers. Show your face. Don't be scared to show your face. More video on product page. Let's not jump straight to augmented reality if you haven't even tried video. So, and I'm seeing this out of China as a lot of the big companies are investing in this live stress. Kind of like Daniel's Direct, you know, when, when they used all the steak knives. I'm seeing that approaching Australia through China and some of the heavy hitters that have invested in and out of China. So it's essentially. Yeah, it's essentially live. You know, you might host it on your socials, but you should be able to do it eventually soon on your website where you're talking through a product and as you're demonstrating trading the perks of the product, people can click it and purchase it. And why I think that'll work is that often you see in socials, the highest engagement comes from behind the garment, behind the product, behind the scenes. People want that. Look at the social media channels. Facebook's dying. They're all going towards movement. I can't help but think video and movement is where the future lies.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I think video and movement and also E commerce and entertainment coming together as one piece as well. Feeds that, doesn't it?
Paul Waddy: They go hand in hand. Yeah, I think anything just shoppable. Like someone's wearing it, someone's, you know, whatever. Bang. I've got to be able to shop it.
Nathan Bush: Paul, thank you so much for joining us on the checkout.
Paul Waddy: My pleasure, Nathan. Thanks for having me, mate.
Speaker A: To hear more from Paul, jump back into episode 240, where Paul shares the pursuits that get him most excited. He shares his top Shopify app recommendations and gives us insight into what he believes is the key driver in e commerce success. Thanks for listening. And until next time, keep adding to cartoon.
