The Red Pill of Shopify Analytics +500% Income Case Study

A Glitch in the Shopify Analytics Matrix

Most people think of e-commerce stores as goldmines. We already have a product that meets the needs of the market, it’s already uploaded on a beautiful store which we rent from a platform such as Shopify or Woocommerce. The only thing left to be done is to watch as the zeros line up behind the amount of your bank account balance splendidly. The perfect source of income.

What happens when the numbers just won’t come? What happens when the money we’ve invested in products gets stuck in inventory when there are too few sales in the store? The only thing you can hear is the echo of abandoned carts instead of the satisfying sound of a successful purchase coming from Shopify’s mobile app. What happens, when we’ve spent thousands of dollars on marketing, but we can’t even win back the fee spent on advertising?

In this case study, we are going to take a closer look at “Renovation Webstore” (R.W), the obstacles encountered, and how they’ve managed to find the source of these problems while sparing the salary of a full-time employed data-scientist, and on top of it, increasing their income by a whooping 456%.

This case study is also a great example of why Shopify Analytics alone is insufficient for most store owners.

They managed to achieve all this with the help of “the red pill of analytics”, Conversific, that made them realize there are real, exploitable opportunities behind the endless data-ocean of the “Matrix”.

“If I were to keep only one application, it would be Conversific. “

Siposs Levente CEO R.W.

Table of Contents

Enter Our Neo's Team - The Renovation Store

Renovation Store (R.W) started from a single thought in 2015 and was brought to life by Levente and Zoltan in 2017 on a misty autumn morning which was the most beautiful one in a long time.

The basic concept was built on a simple, but effective principle: a treasury of methods and materials – experienced and discovered by the founders over many years.  These have been made available to those who in the absence of professionals – want to dive into one of the most intriguing and difficult challenges all by themselves: the home renovation.

Besides leading the way in the endless forest of products of the building industry, they are constantly providing useful information for their visitors in the webshop’s blog. In addition to all this, they encourage these clients to boldly aim the team of the R.W. with their questions through any channel, as they consider it their mission to help and support their clients in achieving the goals they have.

“Our goal is not to raise our profit, but rather to satisfy our customers, because we know, that this is the best investment, and it will reveal itself as profit in the end.”

Siposs Levente CEO R.W.

Blindspots - Neo and his questions

Being a pioneer has its ups and downs

The Renovation Webshop not only renovated houses but the market as well since the concept represented by them had no competitor in Hungary. 

While new concepts come with many advantages, it also comes with lots of work as well, since there are no examples or methods they could follow. The following problems arose as a result of this situation:-

Lack of time – Too many targets, not enough ammunition

Establishing a webshop starts with the investment of three main components: energy, time, and money. As the R.W was a brand new e-shop they were short of at least two of the previous things. It’s vital where we invest these things exactly, as the goal was to achieve their return in the shortest time possible. However, if we cannot assess and plan the areas of the business which we have to focus on the most, we cannot expect development in the income anytime soon.

Objective –  How big can our dream be?

As mentioned in the previous paragraph, planning is a key element in achieving our goal, and it applies vice versa: in order to define the tasks that have to be performed, we need a milestone to be targeted. The question is how we can estimate this target within a realistic range, which doesn’t result in an impossibly high number that we have no chance of reaching, nor a too-low one that allows us to sit back comfortably, and let opportunities pass us by.

Holes in the pocket - When the money disappears

The goal in every case is the return on investment. The same applies here as with investing time: it’s vital for a web store to spend the right amount of money on the right things. 

However, often what happens, in despite of the large expenditure, the expected return falls short and instead begins to decline? How do we start looking for the bugs? How do we find the holes in our pockets?

Analytics – The zenith of numerology

The best remedy for the above-mentioned issues is analytics, which allows us to continuously monitor the key performance indicators of the store and react quickly to any negative changes. Easy as pie – at least for someone who has completed a minimum 40-hour course and has a couple of years of experience behind them This individual will still give thanks for the coffee, because each time thereafter in order to extract the metrics he needs from the dataset, the analysis will take many hours, if not days.

We are back at the beginning of the vicious circle, since a beginner website owner with a small team has to spend time on plenty of things, and this task is a full-time job in its own right. If you hire a professional analyst to do the job it will cost not only the time invested in his audit but a little fortune monthly as well.

Looking for a solution for the above mentioned, the Renovation Webshop found its own red pill, Conversific.

The red pill - The part of Conversific

“You make the dataset a real attraction for me.”

Siposs Levente CEO R.W.

In the Matrix

Like the red pill in the Matrix, Conversific does nothing more than opens the eye of the user to the information and connections behind the endless line of numbers and data, without the need for a specified course or experienced professional to understand it.

Time saver

As the Renovation Webshop is a pioneer in its field, most of their time is invested in creating the right online conditions for the distribution of each of their products. This includes, among other things, filtering products, finding and listing their benefits, and positioning them appropriately, As we are talking about more than 3.300 items at the moment, it consumes the main part of the focus in terms of both time and energy, as the quality of the goods on offer is one of the main strengths of the store.

Consequently, the time spent on analytics had to be kept to a minimum, all in order to be able to extract the maximum necessary information for decision making.

Half an hour a day.

It takes about as much for the Renovation Webstore to get up-to-date information from the revenue of the webshop, via cart abandonment, or to monitor the performance of the various marketing channels. Thus, in addition to being able to get the most out of their current capacity, they also have time to quadruple their product range.

Conversion at rock bottom – Hole patching step by step

There’s a feeling when the elevator leaves for the next floor, but our stomach decides to stay at the previous one, not wanting to join us for the ride. The Renovation Webshop may have experienced something similar when the conversion rate turned red on the screen at 0.09% despite the growing number of visitors.

It’s not hard to say they were facing a big problem, but how did they know exactly how much trouble it meant for them?

The fact that the conversion rate is highlighted in red ( which we already know by instinct may not mean good) and has dropped several percent over the previous period, only provided us visual support. However, the conversion rate could only be labeled as “good” or “bad” if we do not only compare our results to the previous ones but also to other web stores’ performances which are similar to ours (i.e. compare apple to apple)

What does a 0.09% conversion rate mean?

The webstore was interesting for a lot of people, but only 9 out of 10.000 visitors decided to buy something, which means there was a huge backlog of revenue, not to mention the impact on the profit.

However, the necessary first step had already been taken: identifying the problem in time, thus enabling timely response. It didn’t take long to find it, because all it took was clicking on the Conversion report, and this was the first thing we came across. In the Industrial Benchmark, we could see our indicator was on the floor as well.

Let’s dig deeper

The next step is a deeper analysis – we needed to deep down into the rabbit hole of the Matrix. In this case, it’s worth scrolling down on the same report, where you can check the full statistics of the Purchase Funnel. Noticeably, except “All Sessions” every other step performed below average.

As a result, it’s a good idea to check the tools you use to visit the site. In the Mobile Report, at Mobile Performance Breakdown the number of Sessions on mobile phones was visibly high, however, the Conversion Rate and Bounce Rate showed critically low values.

Trying it by himself led our hero to realize the saying “too much of a good thing” was true in this case: a large number of pop-ups had made browsing the web store frustrating and annoying, and as a result visitors left the site en masse.  In a short space of time, it became clear that this type of advertisement tool had to be minimized or eliminated and the appearance of the mobile platform needed to be thoroughly improved.

Once the root cause of the problem was found, and the solution plan made, the team immediately began its work. Both the Bounce Rate and Conversion Rate started to rise from the red zone, and soon the revenue began to increase again.

Decision making support – The Oracle comes to light

The above-mentioned tools are an excellent help in the case of “firefighting” – as from the present situation we can trace back those past events which caused the success or failure of a given event, but the treasury feature has other potential uses.

Since literally every important key performance indicator can be monitored (from the COGS to the Returning Customers) we have every parameter to measure our own performance. Besides, the Industry Benchmark, makes it possible to compare these results to other similar stores in the industry, allowing us to create a useful and operable strategy. 

What’s more, Conversific does most of this work, and just like an Oracle, it can explore areas that need to be developed, then offers a personalized to-do list, so it can help on both management and analysts to set future goals and plan the path to achieve them.

+1 point: You’ve already saved 69.000.- $ and several hours of consultation per week

A skilled analyst costs at least 5.500 $ a month. Experimentation, pathfinding, and, at best, continuous growth also requires continuous analysis. Here, the annual cost has already increased by 69.000$. Finding a reliable analyst is not an easy task – the Renovation Webshop suffered from this problem too- and even if you found the right person, it would still take a long time to work out how to develop the necessary reports and constantly negotiate on working together.

You could also spend that valuable time on product development, supply expansion, mobile interface fixing, or any revenue. generating an activity you may need. With Conversific, you and your entire team can gain superpowers that can save an entire salary.

Results over a year – let the numbers speak

Conclusion

The Renovation Webshop had to invest neither time nor money in a 6-week foundation course nor for a full-time data analyst or data, warehouse programmer to get the dreamed webshop on the road to success.

Instead, they chose Conversific, which not only saves energy and time but also helped to find and eliminate the main causes of revenue loss with the tools provided by the application – e.g. Industry Benchmark.

However, they didn’t stop there, as they recognized there were many opportunities that the knowledge and continuous monitoring of the store’s sources and indicators can reveal. As a result, they began to develop the necessary products, redesign the mobile interface, and increase the effectiveness of their ads by learning more and more accurately about their Customers’ habits. All this resulted in a nearly 500% increase in the revenue over the year and all for the price of a single cup of coffee a day ( plain espresso, not from a franchise cafe).

Have you taken your pill today?💊

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