Claus Lauter [00:00:00]:
It's welcome to the ecommerce Coffee Break podcast. Today we revisit the episode with Joe Lannen, founder of orderautomator.com, and we discuss ten ways to streamline and automate your Shopify business. So let's dive right into it.
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This is the ecommerce Coffee Break.
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A.
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Top rated Shopify growth podcast dedicated to shopify merchants and business owners looking to grow their online stores. Learn how to survive in the fast changing e commerce world with your host, Claus Lauter, and get marketing advice you can't find on Google. Welcome.
Claus Lauter [00:00:39]:
Welcome to the hello and welcome to another episode of e commerce Coffee Break. Today we want to talk about something that's very important for all merchants out there. It's about automation. Obviously you want to save as much time in your business to focus on the things that really matter and a lot of tasks that you have on a day to day business, you can basically automate and how that can be done and what's the best way to do this. That's what we want to talk about today. So with me on the show today, I have Joe. He is the founder of Autoautomator.com and he has been a Shopify developer for over ten years, a Shopify store owner for eight years and founded a Shopify optimization and development agency called Speedbuster that he sold in 2022. And now he runs an automato app which basically helps merchants with automating their tasks.
Claus Lauter [00:01:27]:
So I want to dive right into that. One thing I want to mention, he's also a traveler like I am. So he's traveling since 2015. So Joe and I have a lot of in common there. Hi Joe, how are you today?
Joe Lannen [00:01:37]:
Great, thanks Claus. Great to meet you and hang out.
Claus Lauter [00:01:40]:
Beside of traveling, another thing we both like is automation. So I'm a big fan of automation. Helps a lot, specifically recurring tasks, boring tasks. There's a lot of things you can do to make your life a little bit easier. Now you're in the Shopify space for a long time and probably have automated a lot of things. Also as a Shopify merchant, what got you into automation in the first place?
Joe Lannen [00:02:03]:
Yeah, for know I was running just traveling and managing multiple businesses. I had a Shopify store and the optimization agency and I was doing consulting for Shopify stores. I was just all in on the ecosystem there. And for me it was just always looking to free up my time. I'm passionate about nature, so I just wanted to figure out ways to free up more time, to spend more time outside of the computer. And so with that, combined with being a store owner and identifying things that we could automate to either automate tedious tasks or automate increasing in sales and traffic, all that kind of stuff. So I just kind of got obsessed with it. Obsessed with it and did a bunch of experimentations.
Joe Lannen [00:02:46]:
And being a developer, I started creating custom solutions and later apps to help Shopify store owners to automate different things in the store.
Claus Lauter [00:02:58]:
Okay, let's dive into these different tasks. You said you automated a lot of things. There was for sure some kind of priority list, things that are easier to automate and things that might be a little bit more complicated to get into automation, what were the first things that you were thinking about to automate and have them run on their own? In the back end?
Joe Lannen [00:03:17]:
There's also a detailed guide on our website. It'll be order automator.com, Shopify, automationtips. But the very foundation, the basic, which a lot of experienced stores already have this, but a lot of early phase stores I've worked with and just a lot of even stored through decent sales didn't have a lot of basics automated. So your virtual assistant, your customer support, your fulfillment, your email marketing, I think the very first thing is setting up an email marketing flow. I like Clavio app for that, but there's a lot out there. So that's giving first time offers, first time visitor offers, doing crosssells, birthday discounts, all these with ads are always getting more expensive every year. So that's a key one. Again, obvious for an experienced business, but not set up all the fulfillment with our store.
Joe Lannen [00:04:09]:
My business partner was just fulfilling out of his house when we first started. And eventually things grew. So we ended up connecting, selling on Amazon too, which opens up a whole new channel and then connecting Amazon FBA with Shopify. And then that's what my app order automator does. It helps automate that type of process. So whether it's Amazon or Shopify fulfillment network, shipbop deliver, there's a bunch of other places, but modern fulfillment and then just hiring people just to do tasks, any tasks that you're doing as a business owner I think is great to just get that habit of creating SoPs, standard operating procedures and have a VA handle those for you. So with just that basic stuff out of the way, one of my favorite things that we did that showed a noticeable jump in improvements was creating affiliate program. So with that, what we would do is create.
Joe Lannen [00:05:01]:
There's a few apps there as well, refersion, referral, candy examples. But create an affiliate program and then reach out to influencers, blogs, holiday shopping guides, all kinds of websites, pitch them on your program and for the bigger ones you can offer free. Build up an eventually you build up an army of affiliates that are promoting you, linking to you on their website, on their YouTube channel, doing Instagram shout outs. It just creates this automated flow of traffic that just keeps increasing every month and it's referral traffic which tends to convert higher. So aside from that, secondary bonus is you get a lot of extra backlinks with doing little work. So you get your SEO rankings bumped up there and then go back to this page. Step one if you have a virtual assistant and you create an SOP. Step one, research blogs in our product niche, whatever, you can have your detailed keywords for them.
Joe Lannen [00:05:59]:
Research these people, reach out with this template, mix it up, add some personalization, track the people you reach out on a spreadsheet follow up and just do that month over month to continue building more affiliates. So I like that kind of a similar traffic venue. There's an app called clickly, they allow you to set a commission rate. So say you say 20%, I want to attribute 20% of every sale. They'll drive traffic to your site through interstitial ads across the Internet and you only pay per conversion. So it's kind of like a hybrid model, that one. We also noticed just an instant boost in traffic and sales and it's a guaranteed positive ROI. So I'm not sure, I haven't done that area for a while.
Joe Lannen [00:06:42]:
There might be other apps out there, but basically they're kind of like commission based advertising apps. Next up, I got print on demand products for drop shipping integrated. Even if you just sell your own products, you have a manufacturer just adding a new channel. I really like the print on demand stuff. The margins are lower, but once you connect through the app, for example, if you're doing clothing or accessories, you just upload your design. Everything syncs. Now it's on your website and you basically just add this extra sales channel and products that you don't put any work into at all because it's fully automated. So those are good to look in for, especially for clothing brands.
Joe Lannen [00:07:25]:
Another idea in that area is expanding marketplaces. So one that I like for example, is using Etsy, which we hadn't thought about for a while because we weren't like handmaking stuff. But a lot of brands are just selling their products on Etsy as well. So it's an easy expandable channel and you can use an app called saidcommerce integration. Etsy integration that automatically syncs your products, puts them on Etsy, and then it automatically imports the orders to shopify. So another way just to get with no work involved, basically just have more traffic, more sales coming in, full automation. Check out upsell type of apps. So these are cool because it happens after.
Joe Lannen [00:08:10]:
I mean, upsell is always good during the shopping, the customer journey. Sometimes too many upsells or pop ups or something can cause friction and could lower the conversion rate. But the good thing about the post checkout upsell apps is that the conversion is already made. And then it's just like, oh, by the way, here's one other offer, so you have nothing to lose. And then I've used a handful of apps on that, but the models differ. Some of them you only pay on the conversions that happen. Some of them are monthly. But if you pay on the conversions that happen, it's a guaranteed positive ROI.
Joe Lannen [00:08:47]:
And again, another automated marketing channel. So those are cool. You set up rules like, okay, if someone bought this product, offer them this accessory that goes with it for 10% off or however you offer, want to do so that I've noticed generates automatic sales. And then another checkout type of situation. You can tie this in with your referral program. I'll have links to the apps that do that, but they have an automated set up. So when someone buys something, you can say, hey, share this purchase with your friends or share this discount code with your friends. They get X percent off their first order.
Joe Lannen [00:09:26]:
You get X percent off your next order and everybody wins. And so that is another method. The sales already happen, so you're just a percentage of those people are guaranteed going to convert. And it's a fully automated system. So I think worth experimenting with.
Claus Lauter [00:09:42]:
Hey Klaus, here, just a quick one. If you like the content of this episode, subscribe to the weekly newsletter at newsletter ecommercecoffeebreak.com. I score and create 50 news sources so you don't have to, saving your hours of research. Grow your revenue with ecommerce news, marketing strategies, tools, podcast interviews and more, all in a quick three minute read. So head over to newsletter ecommercecoffeebreak.com to subscribe as at 100% free. Also you will find the link in the show notes. And now back to the show.
Joe Lannen [00:10:09]:
And then there's also bundling. So before the sale, so we spent a lot of time working on how can we traffic acquisition is always more expensive and it gets more over here. So it's always like a constant battle. Like, okay, how can we capitalize more on existing customers about either increasing conversion rate or average order value. So with the average order value, there's like bundling products and creating cross sell systems. With automator apps, we've created custom solutions so we can create, for example, like a custom button link solution. So if you have a product from collection A, and there's a matching product or accessory product from collection B, we can have it. So it automatically shows these matching products based on rules.
Joe Lannen [00:11:02]:
Like if it's in one collection, show another collection with the matching title or tag, stuff like that. So we can create really cool custom features. And so if you sell clothes, you can say like, oh, complete the outfit. Here's all the things that match. And once the system is set up, then that can be automatic. Then that's pretty much an automated increase to your average order value because naturally people are going to add to cart. They can just add it right on the page. So yeah, I recommend creating like a bundling system.
Joe Lannen [00:11:34]:
In that guide, I'll have some ideas. There are some apps out there that do related products, mostly like related products or checkout products from this collection, this type of thing. What we've done with our custom solutions is more specific to the store to bundle how they want. We have a new automation app coming out later. That feature is going to kind of be involved as well. But for right now, yeah, there's a lot of apps out there. I remember Limespot being a good app that I'd used in the past for those kind of recommendations. There's another one that maybe a lot of people haven't tried.
Joe Lannen [00:12:08]:
But having a cause behind your brand, anybody who's done this can recognize you get so many benefits out of it. But I want to meet me instead of just saying, hey, we're a brand. We sell products. We sell high quality products at a fair price or whatever. That's not the generic pitch, but if you're a brand that's passionate about something or you give back, you can see a lot of benefits around that. So, for example, I had a company that every sale we planted a tree and then worked with different parts. So it's a nature based brand. So we're passionate about nature.
Joe Lannen [00:12:43]:
We appeal to people about that. I've actually spoken on the topic a handful of times. So I've researched this a lot and talked to a lot of people. But basically the basics are find something that you're passionate about and that makes sense to integrate in your business. So if you sell pet products, then you love animals, you sell pet products. Every sale, you donate a percentage to adoption, charity, or the best models are like a one for one, a tangible. So like if you can say, okay, if you buy this product, we donate one meal to an animal in need in an adoption center or something like that. Or like if you buy a product, we plant a tree.
Joe Lannen [00:13:23]:
These type of methods. So the reason I kind of tie that into the automation theme is because what this does is it generates word of mouth sales. So it's like offline kind of referrals. So if you have a cause behind your brand, and this is through research and stats that I've done over the years, if you have a cause, one, people are more likely to buy your product, especially if it's a similar price point than a competitive product, even if it costs more a lot of times. So you're increasing your conversion rate on that. And then also if you excite your users and you connect with them on an emotional level, they're talking about your brand. Like if someone said, hey, cool shirt. Oh, thanks.
Joe Lannen [00:14:04]:
Yeah. Did you know this company, every time you buy a shirt, they give a meal to a dog. So you're helping dogs or whatever. So it creates these talking points and that just creates these untrackable but very valuable systems of getting new referral traffic to your site without paying for it, other than what you're obviously paying for your charitable contributions, but creates its whole kind of system. So I think that's worth experimenting about or giving a think about because I think every brand could have that opportunity and I think it just overall helps and it gives you more purpose in the business. So I like that as well.
Claus Lauter [00:14:43]:
Okay. 100% agreed. I just saw a stat the other day touching on having a course that generation Z, they are most likely to buy from you if you have a course attached to your business. The numbers were actually staggering on what kind of impact that made for the brands using this. So very good point there. Now, the automation. So from what you said, I think you can break it down in three things. You have automation that help you with increasing your revenue, with optimizing your marketing, and with optimizing your back end process, your operations.
Claus Lauter [00:15:19]:
One thing you touched on in the beginning, I like that a lot, is that you're creating standard operating procedures for your Vas. And I'm a big fan of doing everything in the beginning in my business on my own, just to understand the process that I know what I'm talking about. And then basically with standard operating procedures, give that to someone who is either more qualified or more motivated than me doing a specific task. When it comes to order automator.com to your app, there's a couple of features in there that help with making sure, for instance, you have one feature, a fraud guard, so that you don't get charged backs and others. How did you come up with these different features to help with automation?
Joe Lannen [00:16:03]:
Basically it was when I was running my store, I was also a Shopify developer. So if we ran into something that someone on the team was like, yeah, I check orders every single day and I do this or every order that comes in with this type of product, I have to do the, I kind of gathered those pain points and then said, okay, I'm going to build an automated solution. And eventually that became the order automator app. And then once the app, the very first feature was automating Amazon fulfillment. So syncing inventory with Amazon and automatically fulfilling shopify orders through Amazon, updating the tracking so that's completely hands off for the brand. They just have the product. Amazon. Anytime Shopify comes, it's handled on the back end.
Joe Lannen [00:16:50]:
That was the first feature. And then later, yeah, we added tagging and changing locations, different fulfillment stuff, and then it's just on request. The philosophy with that, with the app side is that we're building stuff for users and they're the best people to get advice from. So we actively tell people like, hey, if you have a feature or an idea, let us know and we'll make it happen. And we do make it happen. And that's where a lot of our reviews on the app will kind of attest to that, to where I think that's the best source is your customers and it goes along with your Shopify store. The best source of ideas for, okay, what products or design should we do next? I think is just asking your customers and blasting out to them. One of the key features that surprisingly not in shopify automatically is just help with identified fraudulent orders.
Joe Lannen [00:17:47]:
So they have the risk. They can say, oh, this is a high risk order, but if you're getting a lot of orders, you might not catch it. You have to search through your orders again. That's like a daily ask. You could do a bookmark and a daily task. You could bookmark and see the fraudulent orders. But if you have systems coming to play where you have fulfillments going out, then you have to be monitoring orders constantly like that. So the feature we have in order automator, which is in the free version as well, is just to where if a high risk or medium risk order comes in you can automatically have an email sent to support.
Joe Lannen [00:18:21]:
You can tag the order, you can cancel the order. So most people just prevent fulfillment on the order and notify support. So then the order is just chilling until the support can investigate. But there's people that use our app that have just hundreds of orders coming in every day, and a high percentage of fraud orders, they just automatically cancel them. So that helps a lot because, yeah, fraud is the paint and the chargebacks are nasty, man. So just having just a system in place to help catch those helps a lot with people.
Claus Lauter [00:18:57]:
Yeah, no, I totally agree. Chargebacks are a pain in the neck. Now you can optimize a lot of things, outsource a lot of things. Are there certain tasks in a business, now I'm asking you as a business owner, are there certain tasks that you would never optimize or outsource?
Joe Lannen [00:19:10]:
I generally have a mindset of trying to sop everything and trying to automate, optimize or automate as much possible. I figure even stuff that I probably wouldn't automate, I would still create an SoP for it just to see or just to have my own. So I think I start with just creating Sops for everything. And then once you look at it, be like, okay, this could definitely someone else can do this. At least on a level I can do, then that would go for stuff that I wouldn't automate. I guess it depends how deep you take the term automation, because eventually if you have an operations manager, then you kind of automate much of your business other than significant decisions. I think product choice is like product design can be hired for, obviously, but I think product choice, I think that's good to be kind of at the owner level because to make sure that you're okay, what next product should we do? Is this in line with our values? Does it make sense doing the research to see if there's demand for this product or this one that we want to do next. So I think that also keeps you at the owner level, connected to with your brand and your mission overall.
Joe Lannen [00:20:34]:
So I probably wouldn't automate that, but some of those just like top level owner decisions. But other than that, if something can be sop, I think it's good to try hiring it out.
Claus Lauter [00:20:46]:
Okay, no, that makes perfect sense. And I think within the next couple of months we will see AI solutions coming up that will even help always automation and will take a lot of things from your plate that don't necessarily need to be there. Joe, where can people find out more about you and your app.
Joe Lannen [00:21:02]:
Yeah, so in the Shopify App Store it's order automator. And on our website is orderautomator.com and we just started a blog there. So we're going to be doing more guides and resources for Shopify store owners within the theme of automation because it's just stuff that I've done for so long. I just have a lot of information built up and I've written down the topic on other sites. But we're going to have more resources there at order automator.com so you can check that out. And yeah, the app is useful for a lot of people and even just there's a free version that has the fraud guard, so feel free to check that out. Long term, we're going to have more resources and help with automation, dive into the new stuff like when AI gets more going too, because sure there's going to be, like you said, ton of opportunities there. Cool.
Claus Lauter [00:21:53]:
I will put the links in the show notes then you just want to click away. Joel, thanks so much for giving us an overview of what you can optimize in your business to free up your time. And then probably one or the other listener or viewer of the show will become a location independent person like the two of us are. Thanks so much for your.
Joe Lannen [00:22:10]:
Sure, it's a great, it's a great lifestyle. I recommend that.
Claus Lauter [00:22:14]:
Cool. Thanks so much. Safe travels.
Joe Lannen [00:22:16]:
All right, thank you. Good luck everybody on your Shopify store.
Claus Lauter [00:22:21]:
Hey, Klaus here. Thanks for joining me on another episode of the e commerce Coffee Break podcast. Before you go, I'd like to ask two things from you. First, please help me with the algorithm so I can bring more impactful guests on the show. It will make it also easier for others to discover the podcast, simply like comment and subscribe in the app you're using to listen to the podcast, and even better if you could leave a rating. Thanks again and I'll catch you in the next episode. Have a good one.