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[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 through your Friday. Here's your host, Bushy.
[Ad]: Today's checkout features Ian Calvin, consultant and trainer at Boom. E Commerce. Ian is an e commerce consultant and trainer with 20 years experience. Originally from the UK, Ian now concentrates on the Australian market and helps Aussie
Nathan Bush: brands do e commerce better. Ian Calvert welcome to the Checkout. Thank you for joining us. We learned so much from you on our main episode. Everything from how to run a profitable e commerce store through to measuring and calculating myrrh. Starting your own freelancing business Buying selling e commerce businesses where to pick up eBay your 711 deliveries in Japan we're here to learn a little bit more about you. I've got five quick questions.
Iain Calvert: Go hit me.
Nathan Bush: Number one. What's the weirdest thing that you've ever bought?
Iain Calvert: Online e commerce business.
Nathan Bush: We heard all about it. Do you reckon you'll buy another one soon?
Iain Calvert: I wouldn't say soon. I just want to get that one sort of like a little bit bigger. I'm pretty keen on helping other people do it because I still keep an eye and I've spots some really sort of interesting ones. I'm like ooh, what's that? It's not as straightforward as buying like a quicksilver T shirt or something like that, but it's not far off. There's websites that sell them it's like yeah, I want this, I want this on this.
Nathan Bush: And we talked a lot about that in the main episode. Number one tip for people who are considering buying an E commerce business from a platform like Flippa. Apart from creating your own stamps, what would be your advice to people when they're going down that path?
Iain Calvert: Write a shopping list of what you're looking for and what you're not looking for and don't fixate on a type of business. So for example, I love surfing. I wasn't looking for a sur, I ended up buying like a lamp business.
Nathan Bush: I love lamp. Number two, who is your favorite retailer?
Iain Calvert: So I had to give this one a little bit of thought actually. But when I thought about it hard enough, it's like Patagonia. They make me feel great. To be honest, the online experience is pretty bad. It's certainly last time I used it, it's a bit sort of like unloved. But for me the brand as a whole is amazing. Classic brand marketing. Right. You think it says something about you but then actually when you really dig into it they're really good quality clothes. They everything sort of like stacks up and that beats any performance marketing or well structured meta campaign or discount.
Nathan Bush: But you're absolutely right is that their online experience is not up to scratch.
Iain Calvert: Certainly in Australia. Right.
Nathan Bush: Not in Australia. I had a delivery over Christmas of a jacket and it arrived in two plastic bags which were recyclable plastic bags to give credit but such an opportunity for a nice recycled cardboard box or something similar that aligns with their values
Iain Calvert: a little bit more. Yeah, I think my guess would be and sorry if the person that's responsible for is listening to this is probably the poor cousin. Yes, exactly, exactly. Or they're sort of like under sort of like resource but but again no still buy it.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And not everyone gets everything perfect and I think it's a good lesson for everyone is that Patagonia constantly gets brought up as favorite retailers. They're not perfect, no one is. So you've got to pick your battles. Number three, which E commerce practice do you wish was history?
Iain Calvert: Instant pop up saying do you want 10% off before the rest of the site's even loaded? Yes, it's good for collecting email addresses but just let me walk in the door and have a look around first before we sort of like start getting into.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Iain Calvert: All of like. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: In your opinion best trigger point to make a pop up offer.
Iain Calvert: I think you're looking for the they're engaged in some way shape or form so it might be time on page, it might be how far they've scrolled down. It might be clicked on multiple sort of, like, pages. Essentially, they've shown some type of intention where it would justify having that sort of, like, pop up. I think what happens is everybody sees other people doing it, so they do it. And also I think it's just installed and people don't know how to sort of, like, control it, basically. I think it is as simple as that.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And once you start seeing results, it's hard to turn it off. Right, yeah, sorry.
Iain Calvert: It's like discount any result. It's like discounting. Right. Like, you discount, you make loads of sales, but if you keep discounting, it's just like a vicious circle.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Number four, can you recommend a book or a podcast that our listeners should immediately get into?
Iain Calvert: I can. So for me, the key to E commerce success is essentially having a very strong brand. And the problem is the term brand is very misunderstood on a basic level. People will think it's like logos and colors, whereas actually a brand is everything that a business does. And there's an amazing book called All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin that explains it in such a good way. It literally changed the way that I saw the world. I was like, oh, that's why that happened. Written years ago and just so good. And you mentioned in the main show about sort of, you know, rereading sort of books rather than, hey, I read 54 books this year and I didn't apply anything. That, for me is one that I go back to all the time when I'm traveling. It just is like, It's Amazing is my most recommended book.
Nathan Bush: I'm going to have to go back to that.
Iain Calvert: It's good.
Nathan Bush: Last question I have for you. Finish this sentence. The future of retail is a really
Iain Calvert: good combination of the online experience and physical experience. And so I know we like geekland, we call that like, omnichannel or what have you, but I think that's just the mechanics. Right. Whereas I think when E commerce first came back, it'd be like death of the high street is all going to be online. That's clearly not the case. Right. And even through Covid, obviously everybody's buying online because they can't go to stores, but people like going to stores and having that experience. And I think that it's very difficult for pure D2C businesses to do really well. And I think there's a combination of channels that need to happen, and the ones that I see that do best is they provide some type of experience in store is then replicated online. But not replicated. Like you know when you got those when websites first came about and they were replicating brochures so you would get the flash websites and the page would sort of like turn. You're like, that's not helping anybody, right? It's kind of doing it in a way that works sort of like online and just it's basically making people feel good. Like we talked about Patagonia before. Like I felt good when I bought bit annoyed and sort of like turned up in plastic bags and sort of like stuff like that. That's not the new shiny thing, but I think it is the way forward for businesses to improve their profitability or become profitable.
Nathan Bush: Well put. Ian, thank you for joining us on the checkout.
Iain Calvert: Pleasure. Thanks for having me.
[Ad]: To hear more from Ian, jump back into episode 378 where Ian shares his nifty P and L hack for working out which areas of your business you should focus on. He also gets real about Google Attribution and we hear his carefully curated shopping list for buying an E commerce business. Thanks for listening and until next time,
Nathan Bush: keep adding to cartoon.
