Scaling Up Shopify?
Focus on Customers Jobs to be Done
7 Min. Read
Putting oneself in the shoes of the customer in order to understand the customer journey is a necessary step for every business, just as eliciting customer feedback is through customer surveys. Both are effective strategies for improving the customer experience. However, when scaling up Shopify you need to take customer experience to the next level through personalization. Use your analytics data to interpret motivation and define personas based on the customers jobs to be done.
Table of Contents
Understanding Jobs to be Done
Personalization based upon Jobs to be done.
Every product has a range of uses, from the common uses to the darn right bizarre. Before taking on expensive upgrades on services, and Scaling up Shopify, take time to target each of these use cases, even target the bizarre because these can be humorous, and great for social media.
When scaling up Shopify from 1000+ orders a month, it is easy to miss-step, with ever-increasing administration comes an increasing need to optimize through time-saving tools and other tools that can leverage the increasing amount of data that comes with increased traffic, sales and support. Such tools come at a cost, but the right tools save far more than they cost, but only if you have maxed out your existing capacity.
Shopify is priced according to features, ie features such as useful KPI reporting are typically needed by bigger stores and are therefore limited to higher plans which are costly. Therefore stepping up to the next level too early, is a potential minefield. The problem for users is knowing when to take that step and how to do it effectively. This is where access to data and reports is necessary to optimize sales on every plan before upgrading.
The problem is Shopify don’t make it easy, you need your data now, before upgrading!
This is one key reason why you shouldn’t rely on Shopify Analyitics, rather install Google Analytics.
Understanding Customers Jobs to Be Done.
Users visit your store with an interest in a product (or service), but in most cases, the product is a means to an end, in other words, it is through the use of the product that the customer can achieve something. Here lies the customer’s motivation. In order to maximize sales, you need identify the motivating factor, the pain point that the customer is trying to overcome with your product so that you can sell the product in the context of their need. You should be selling the outcome of using your product/service rather than the product itself.
Using the insights gained from your customer analytics you can help your customers plan their task, giving them exactly the tools they need.
Shopify analytics are of limited use here because custom reports are only available on the most expensive plans. Here you need to resort to using a tool like Conversific to interpret your Shopify Google Analytics data.
How to Identify Customers Job to be done?
Every touchpoint is an opportunity to better understand your audience. Ergo, the more touchpoints you have the better (that you can effectively manage). You need to engineer opportunities to communicate proactively. Consider this effort as mini ‘product projects’. Great ways to engage customers about your product/services.
Here, offering incentives is effective, for example:-
- Offer a discount coupon via a popup or a link for the completion of a survey about the product/product range or category.
- Offer a guide or a discount to completing a job to be done via a link or button, that when clicked generates a chat conversion and then just ask them, a Chatbot can be useful here.
- Provide static content for the various use cases. Video and image guide of use of the product for these jobs to be done (demonstration) are big convertors.
- Go out on the street and just ask people what they would use the product for.
- Create product package variants (with addon related products) that lend themselves to specific tasks.
Understanding their purpose/job to be done enables more effective upselling and cross-selling of additional products.
Job to be done Content Conversion Funnel
So you think you know your customer’s pain points, well great! Now you need to generate a way to automatically segment visitors onto content paths (conversion funnels) tailored to the jobs to be done. Here you need content for differing levels of experience. Leverage manufacturers sales videos where possible or/and create a simple unboxing video, followed by scenes where the demonstrator uses the product for different tasks.
Probably the most effective strategy for growth is to identify products that work well together, that can be sold together. Say you have a job to be done conversion funnel, choose products to stock that further assist with getting that job done. Here you are utilizing existing content, adding cross-selling links and mentions at opportune moments. Take for example a General Household Store and the example of painting and decorating.
Job to be done example.
Job to be done – Painting house / decorating
What are they painting?
- First ask them WHY, to learn the extent of the job / jobs to be done. Is it to be a quick refresh or a major remodel?
- A room – Precisely where, – what room or rooms?
- Inside or outside, products for the purpose will vary accordingly.
- Upstairs or downstairs.
- Who is it that will be doing the job, will they be alone or will they have help?
- When will they be doing the job? Urgency can be a good sales driver.
Give them a comprehensive list of what they will likely need, – give them what they want!
Ask the right questions!
Every piece of information enables you to offer additional products to upsell or cross-sell that can help them get the job done.
Consider the items in stock that might be useful for painting the house
- Paintbrushes, rollers
- Ladders
- Plastic sheets
- Paint
- Wall Paper
- Sandpaper
- Lighting
- Mold spray
- Masks
- Gloves
- Decorative styling items
- Silicone Sealant (bathroom / Kitchen)
- Room accessories
The list goes on and on, but ultimately, what you are selling is not the items per se, but rather the after effect, – the finished product/task. Since every purchasing decision is an emotional one, you need to sympathize with their current predicament, – let them know they are not alone in their pain and offer them a vision of the final product, the beautifully painted room, ….. something (you need to find out what through your customer communication touchpoints).
Ask yourself the question, what do you supply that can help them to complete their task optimally.
The before and after comparison, when the before is now, a pain point, and the after is what and how they achieve it using your products – to get the job to be done and do away with the pain replacing it with joy.
Customer Experience is Central to Scaling Up Shopify.
The customer experience is now at the heart of ecommerce because Google Search and search engines, in general, are getting smarter, powered by AI.
Through machine learning, Google search can now interpret search queries and with great effect assign search intent. Google can now interpret what the user is trying to find out (the job to be done) even if they don’t use the right words.
Website content is now scored based upon user engagement through time on page, and bounce rate back to Google, thereby defining useful vs not-so-useful content and then ranking this content accordingly. The intent behind the search query. Consider how they might be feeling, their concerns and fears.
Understanding the customer is central to increasing sales, and then acting on what you have learned. Needless to say it can get quiet complex to manage.
How to Decide Where to Invest Time and Effort (which products)?
Interpreting your data correctly is the starting point for scaling up Shopify. As mentioned previously, this is made difficult by Ecommerce Platforms like Shopify, who only provide access to the KPI reports necessary once you have already committed and upgraded (Shopify reports are limited by plan). But if you are at just 1000+ orders a month you need access to reports prior to upgrading to maximize the plan you are on first.
The solution is in the case of Shopify is Conversific is for Shopify stores.
Here you can take an alternative path to the data you need because Conversific utilizes your GA data for your Shopify store. The idea of relying on GA for your Shopify store is far from appealing due to its complexity, however all you will need it for is the tracking technology it provides, once the tracking code is setup, Conversific makes it easy to use and understand.
Conversific utilizes GA tracking and data, integrating data display from the Shopify / GA databases, providing a holistic view of everything you need to make better decisions, with simple dashboards and date range filtering, you’ll have the custom KPI reports that Shopify provides only on higher plans. Everything you need to scale up Shopify can be found in Conversific in terms of data management requirements.
Conversific also provides insights, common points of improvement that are easily missed. Stop losing customers unnecessarily. Try Conversific today.
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