Southern Fried eCommerce Episode 23 Recap

Hey, y’all and welcome back to another episode of the Southern Fried eCommerce Podcast from EYStudios. This week cohost Jay Brimberry starts out with some “sportsball” trivia for Emily asking her for the most prominent and successful athlete to ever wear the number 23. Emily does not know. (Acceptable answers: Michael Jordan, LeBron James, David Beckham, Don Mattingly, and if you’re a One Tree Hill fan Nathan Scott.) After Jay said, he plays basketball, Emily was able to guess Michael Jordan but only because she’d recently watched Space Jam. And don’t ask which Space Jam — there is only one Space Jam. 

Getting to Know Our Guest: Evan Perkins

This week we are joined by Evan Perkins, a Sr. Account Executive at BigCommerce. BigCommerce is an open source SAS (software as a service) eCommerce platform and one of EYStudios platform partners. Evan is joining us from Austin, Texas to discuss this week’s eCommerce news. He starts out by describing BigCommerce and what his role is in the eCommerce world. 

EVAN: The way to think about us is that we’re offering all the benefits of a SAS platform — so it’s completely hosted, we’re managing PCI compliance, it’s generally a quick time to launch — but we’re combining it with this flexibility you would get out of open source. And we do that via this API-first approach. Everything is exposed over the APIs, there’s no issue pushing or pulling data in or out of BigCommerce. The front end code is completely accessible to the merchants so they can customize it however they want and build whatever look, feel, user experience they want and then again on the backend all that API flexibility makes us ‘play well” with your other back office systems. We’re not prescriptive, we’re not a giant monolith, we don’t offer gateways and ERPs and POS hardware, we just focus on building a great eCommerce engine that’s going to play really well with the other parts of a tech stack you want to build. 

After catching up on some mutual friends at BigCommerce, Jay jumps into his standard questions for our guests:

• What is your least favorite business jargon?
  Flip the funnel. Or we’re going to flip the funnel on this one. It is a garbage phrase that means nothing. I think the idea of it is, is that we’re going to look at this in a different way or approach this in a different way than we’ve done before but when people say ‘flip the funnel’, I think, ‘what are you doing?’ 

• Are you a gamer? Are you playing any video games?
  I am not. And I said this once at a dinner and my wife who is very sweet — about to be married 15 years — said to me, ‘you know when you say that you kinda sound like one of those people that says I don’t watch TV.’ So I have to qualify this. Here’s the deal, I love video games and I don’t play them because I have an extremely addictive personality. I know this about myself so if I bought a console and a stack of games, you’d never talk to me again. I’d be fired from BigCommerce. My wife would move out. I wouldn’t ever do anything else. So it’s more of a self-imposed discipline thing. I’m just not mature enough to handle it I guess.  

• What emerging technology interests you the most?
  I heard a new term recently, ‘non-creepy personalization,’ and I like that concept. We’ve been talking about personalization for a long time, there are a bunch of platforms that claim to do it, there are platforms that do it well, but this concept of something being personalized for me because I’m me because of what I’ve purchased, because I’ve voluntarily given over my information to a brand that I like, and then they can market to me in some fun ways. I don’t think we’re quite there yet or doing that super well but I think the tech is getting there and that’s something we’ll see happening over the next few years.
  I’d also like to go to sleep in a car and wake up at my destination but that’s something else entirely.
• And now the most important question, have you ever seen the hit 80s movie Willow?
  Absolutely, I have seen Willow! My sister and I went through like a three-year phase where we watched Willow all the time. Now, this was 30+ years ago but yeah I’m totally familiar with Willow.

*THE CROWD ERUPTS IN APPLAUSE* (there is no crowd, simply Jay) Jay thanks Evan for being a man after his own heart and for finally being a guest that has watched his favorite movie. Jay is so enamored with Evan after this response that he suggests streets be named in his honor. 

New From EYStudios

Emily then dives into some of the latest blog posts from EYStudios:

• Southern Fried eCommerce Episode 22 Recap
• Why Every Business Should Have A Blog
• 2022 Benchmarks: Where Is Your Vertical Ranking

Twitter Takes Steps Into eCommerce World

After that, we jump into our first article of the week, Twitter Shops Debuts in Beta from Adweek. This article dives into the new beta feature on Twitter called Twitter Shops which will allow businesses to showcase up to 50 products directly from their Twitter profile. Some businesses have been able to begin using this feature including All I Do Is Cook, Arden Cove, Gay Pride Apparel, Latin in Power, and Verizon. Currently, this feature is limited to beta testers and a release date for the general public has not been released.

Jay feels like this might be too little too late with the other social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat already having this type of feature for some time. He asks Emily if she feels the same. 

EMILY: I mean, is it too late? No, not necessarily. I think it’s good to have it because everyone else has it. Do I think it’s going to be successful for Twitter? Absolutely not. Nobody goes to Twitter for eCommerce. Statistically, that’s just the case. If you want to have a cool brand presence, Twitter is a great place for that…but for sales, that’s not really the place to go. Could that change over time? Sure. At least setting it up, when it is available for everyone outside of beta, I think is great, and is good to have links to your website. Otherwise, I just don’t think this is going to be the most successful. And the companies that are in beta I haven’t heard of any of these except Verizon, so clearly it’s not something they’re ready to take over the world with. 

Evan agrees and says that it’s something they should be doing because it’s a feature everywhere else but doesn’t think it will be that successful. He even likens Twitter as a whole to the movie Willow, “it’s been a while since I thought about it.” Sick burn on Twitter. 

Jay feels a giant meh towards the whole thing, Twitter included. Evan and Jay acknowledge though that there is a Twitter audience, it’s just not them. Emily says in her opinion Twitter is much more of a stream of consciousness platform and for brands, it’s much more about showcasing personality than it is driving sales. She points out that she has never once seen a product on Twitter and thought that she needs to buy that right now. 

Jay then brings up that viral aspect of Twitter and how it might be good for brands to “go viral” with a quirky tweet or a funny line. Emily brings up that most viral Tweets aren’t very positive and cites Burger King’s infamous International Women’s Day tweet that said “Women belong in the kitchen,” in promotion of a culinary scholarship for women. 

New United Natural Top Digital Exec Tasked With Improving Accelerating eCommerce 

The next article we talked about is from Digital Commerce 360, Nationwide Food Distrubutor Names Top Digital Executive. This article discusses the appointment of Louis Martin to the newly created position of chief digital and transformation officer at United Natural Foods. However, we focused more so on the reason his position was created: to handle the increasing responsibilities of the eCommerce space as revenue and demand continue to spike in the food industry. 

Jay begins the discussion by asking Evan if he has seen an increase in food vendors going digital. Evan says absolutely within the last three or so years food and drink eCommerce has exploded as a vertical. To name a few food businesses on BigCommerce: King’s Hawaiian, King Arthur Baking, Jeni’s Ice Cream, Ben & Jerry’s, and Snap Kitchen. He also says that this is much more of a B2C concept than a B2B concept. 

Jay then asks Emily if she has bought any food online. Emily says she uses Instacart occasionally for her grocery shopping but that yes she has begun thinking about purchasing other food items online specifically Jeni’s Ice Cream. They don’t sell all of their flavors in the grocery store or in their brick-and-mortar stores so she’s looking to perhaps buy harder-to-find flavors from their online store. Now knowing they’re on BigCommerce, she’s even more excited about making a purchase. 

This leads Jay to wonder out loud about the logistics of shipping ice cream and asks Evan if BigCommerce helps with figuring out these types of questions and concerns for food businesses that may not have traditional shipping methods. Evan says they absolutely help with that because when it comes to eCommerce the website — that’s the easy part — the hard part comes into play when you have to figure out how to ship your product. For large companies, they’re downsizing from shipping pallets of this stuff to grocery stores to now shipping much smaller packages. For small companies, it’s figuring out how to ship this specific type of food or drink or frozen dessert effectively. He then says that’s part of the beauty of BigCommerce is that they can help you tackle these issues with all of their third-party applications that seamlessly fit into your store. 

Jay then points out that after shipping, merchandising is key with food eCommerce sites. He encourages business owners to really invest in imagery, content, and design to really make customers’ mouths water just by looking at your site. He says that’s something that you need to be able to transfer from the brick-and-mortar store to your website.

New Report Says 75% Of Direct to Consumer Businesses Make Less Than $1M A Year Online

The last article we dove into is from Retail Dive, Roughly 75% of DTC Brands Bring in Under $1M in Online Sales: Report. The article really focused on showcasing how difficult it is for brands to break that $1M barrier especially if they’re established as a brick-and-mortar retailer. Jay says this is the perfect example of how eCommerce is not simply putting your products online and expecting them to sell the same way they do in your store. He says you need to invest in the correct software and strategy and really think about how you’re going to conduct business differently online. 

Evan points out that even a lot of the businesses he works with that are in the over $1M revenue category don’t understand the investment it takes to run a successful eCommerce site. He compares it to opening another retail location and asks business owners to consider how much work goes into that when they start thinking about launching a website. He then implores those business owners listening,” if [you’re] going to spend the time and money to start eCommerce, do it right.” He says don’t try and do everything on the cheap and use technology that’s too small for your business. Instead, he says, think about scale and the future and how much of a lift a re-platforming will be if that becomes a need. 

Jay agrees and says, “The first million is always the hardest to get to.” He continues on to say that he sees people every day that are scratching their heads wondering why they’re not able to reach their revenue goals simply because they’re on a platform like Squarespace. A platform like Squarespace that started as a payment software is going to care a lot more about your payment software than any other aspect of your site. He points out that even just making sure that the platform is optimized for SEO is a huge thing that a lot of businesses overlook when making decisions about what platform to use. 

Jay then asks Emily what areas new DTC businesses should invest in when they’re first starting out. 

EMILY: I think laying a foundation for social media, is really important. I think it’s good to get your brand out there, really try and push it as far as you can. I always really like social media because you can try all the different platforms, see what works best for your business, what audience you’re really trying to capture. Maybe it is Twitter, you never know. And then once you’re there maybe start investing in some ads, get some really good organic traffic going. By then you can start creating a list of subscribers, people that are interested. Maybe setting up some nice ads to generate some email sign-ups. Start an email list, start a newsletter, start promoting your products that way. Once you start getting some revenue down that aisle, ‘hey why don’t you invest in some PPC ads?’ Getting more sales through that avenue. There are lots of different ways to start it but honestly just getting your brand out there and letting people know you are there and you have something they potentially might want will really help you out. 

Jay agrees and thinks we could probably do a whole episode just on this topic because we didn’t even get into how marketplaces can be a double-edged sword for new DTC businesses to get their brand out there. Evan then says that the most important thing to remember is that getting to know your audience, gathering data, and owning your brand and voice is the best place to start. He then slyly throws in a nice plug saying that both BigCommerce and EYStudios can help you out if you need any help starting. 

With that, we say goodbye. We hope y’all enjoyed this latest episode of the Southern Fried eCommerce podcast. We would like to thank our special guest Evan Perkins for joining us today. Hope you’ll join us next week as we dive into more eCommerce news.