CMO Reveals: The Real eCommerce Design Problems Business Owners Face — Jess Holland | Challenges Ecommerce Brands Face with Fast Marketing, Why Simple Design Outperforms Complex Visuals, How to Combine Branding and Copy Effectively (#319)

In this podcast episode, we discuss the eCommerce design problems business owners really face and how to solve these challenges. Our featured guest on the show is Jess Holland, Co-Founder and CMO at cornerstory.io.

Topics discussed in this episode: 

• Why simple and minimalist design often outperforms complex or overly creative visuals in e-commerce marketing
• How understanding the root causes of customer problems helps create more effective branding and messaging
• What strategies can help e-commerce businesses compete in a rapidly changing digital landscape
• How incorporating customer personas into product imagery can significantly boost conversion rates
• Why regular, well-designed email newsletters are one of the most cost-effective ways to drive sales and subscriptions
• What challenges e-commerce business owners face when trying to keep up with fast-paced marketing demands
• How unlimited design subscription services can solve common pain points for e-commerce brands and marketing agencies

Links & Resources

Website: https://www.cornerstory.io/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cornerstory/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cornerstory.hq/


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Transcript

Welcome to the e commerce coffee break podcast. In today's episode, we discuss the e commerce design problems business owners really face and how to solve these challenges. Joining me on the show is Jess Holland, co founder and CMO at CornerStory. io. So let's get started. 

This is the e commerce coffee break.

A top rated Shopify growth podcast dedicated to Shopify merchants. Welcome 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. Welcome to the show.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the e-Commerce Coffee Break podcast. Today we want to talk about something that a lot of business owners have. Business owners have problems every day and we want to talk about exactly what kind of problems business owner have to deal with on a day to day business and how to make your life a little bit easier.

Joining me for this is Jess Holland. She's the co founder and CMO of CornerStory. io, a company revolutionizing design with unlimited design subscriptions for businesses. So let's dive right into it. Hi, Jess. How are you today? 

Hi. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you all for listening and thank you for having me.

Great to have you on the show, Jess, you're a business owner and I'm a business owner and we have struggles. We have problems. You see that every day. From your experience, what are some of the biggest challenges business owners face? Is when it comes to marketing, 

uh, well, I'll say the 1st 1 is probably the fear of like wasting thousands of dollars and marketing itself.

But I think the other problem that they don't really have direction in their branding, they're just trying to keep up with how fast paced marketing is. So we're posting. We're doing everything we can to just get a little bit visible and it's very stressful. So a lot of business owners struggle with the actual direction of where they're going and what they need to be focused on.

Now, from your side, when you got into marketing, into e commerce, the whole business over there, obviously you need to compete against others. What are kinds of strategies that you have developed to, to face these issues? 

Oh, that's a good question. So I, I guess a little background. I actually started over a decade ago in marketing and the direct mail space before there was digital marketing and e commerce that was big and I really started studying the design and content and copy of which of these direct mail pieces got the most.

ROI for my clients. It was very stressful to like do marketing in the two thousands for direct mail, ended up switching over to, you know, the e commerce and digital side. And, um, it really got into Donald Miller's. Building a story brand framework, as well as Alex Hermosi's messaging for how to write offers and truthfully, um, we're looking at a time where business owners need to focus on really strong design.

Where they're reaching their true ideal customer and their messaging needs to talk about what problems they're solving for their customer. That's at the very, very foundation it and we miss the ball all the time as business owners by overcomplicating the whole process. 

You said you're following, um, Alex Hamosi, the Frameworks of Story brand.

Now people do have a very short attention span. So even a good copywriter has a very tough job to get people to read through the text and visual branding is very important. How can you combine these two things that you can communicate your message in the best possible and possibly in the fastest way to your potential customer?

I promise you guys, I promise. If you don't listen to anything else on this. Conversation. Listen to this. That simple will always, always be clever and cute. We try to make our designs vibrant and crazy just to get somebody to stop looking at it. But that, that minimalist, that, that tone in the branding is it's got to be simple because if there's too much wording, people aren't going to stop.

If it's too crazy. People don't want to stop. And also I'll say that it has to resonate with who you're speaking to. You know, if you're talking to a school teacher or let's just use a dentist, for example, actually a pediatric dentist, that marketing is going to be a lot different dentistry type of design.

And so the colors, the voice, the branding, it really has to match your customer persona. And I can't tell you. One customer that's ever come to me that's actually built a customer persona now granted. It's going to change It's going to optimize as you grow but when you start you have to have some sort of direction and consistent branding so that Someone that is getting in front of your content or design says this is probably for me 

Now, when it comes to design, there's sort of a notion right now, since AI came up one and a half years ago, that design is very quick.

You just throw it into a chat GPT or any of these LE tools and you get your design and you take it from there. So I understand that that needs much more thought process and a customer persona behind that. What's your approach in really finding the customer persona and then creating the brand from there?

The first recommendation is understanding the deep layers of the root cause of the customer's problems. So many people say, okay, I'm a real estate agent. I'm helping you find a home. Great. So is every other real estate agent or, or I'm selling the best coffee out there. I'm selling the best mushroom coffee out there.

So is everybody. So what are the root causes? Of your customers problems. Is it really like the midday crash? Is it really the brain fog? Is it is it the fact that we have too much going on? Is it burnout, you know? And so when we sit with our customers, that corner story, it's understanding what are the root causes of these clients problems and building out a messaging fact sheet so that we can really speak to their customer and build out that customer persona and get into designs that actually make sense.

Now, I'm not a branding expert. I have a friend of mine. She's a branding expert and she talked to me about the basics of branding. If a client comes to you to corner story out IO and has a design, does that absolutely not match the customer persona that you're working on? What are the steps to get them from a, to be from a old design to a new design?

We have worked with some senior designers to put together a very seamless process of, it's actually a type form questionnaire for us to understand what are they really trying to design, you know, what are they really trying to get out of this? And we have built out those questions so that it helps us build the design that is tailored to.

Who they're at least trying to reach where they may not know all the specifics or they may not have paid thousands of dollars for a branding expert and that's okay, you know, but sometimes people know that they just need a refresh on the homepage and they're just trying to keep up with the competition and that's okay too.

You know, it's, it's not that you have to have a customer persona. It's just highly recommended so that all of your designs convert better. And this day and age, again, it goes back to. Brands are falling behind because of the AI, because of how much content brands have to pump out. And so we've created this system where it's like, Hey, these are the things we need to create a beautiful design right away, and there's no meetings.

It's a type form. Then it goes into ClickUp as a project management tool. And the, the business owner, you know, if I'm an e commerce business owner, I don't have time to, to manage every single design or worry about if it's perfect to my, that's our job as designers. And that's where so many designers drop the ball because business owners are so good at their craft.

They're so good at starting businesses and coming up with product lines that. They care about, and they like, they're not, they're not all designers and that's cool. We are, we know exactly what we need to make the e commerce world stand out, match the competition, exceed the competition, especially with all the AI, VR, AR, you know, world out there.

The whole experience of online shopping is changing right before our eyes. We're kind of in the beginning stages of it, so you got to work with people who know it for you. Especially if you don't. 

I want to touch on the e commerce parts. It was e commerce. You have different stages. You have your homepage, you have a category page, you have your product detail page, and they all follow a certain structure.

Can you give me some examples of clients and you don't need to name the brands that you worked with and the kind of results, the outcome that they got after getting a upgrade into their branding. 

We have worked with a global. Um, most people have known about them and they pump out, you know, two times a week newsletters and so many people underutilize their email list.

They don't really know how to use it to the best and there's a lot of advice around it. But at the end of the day, it's that simple design with a quick call to action. And again, you're reminding them that your brand is there. Constantly, it's one of the cheapest ways to get repeat to get subscriptions.

And so we saw 30 percent increase in sales just by implementing the newsletter campaign. They weren't doing it before. So, you know, that's, that's a case study in itself, do your newsletter campaigns, but to have them professionally designed so that if someone does take the time to open it. It's a strong impression and it's like, oh, this is mouthwatering.

I want this. Um, we have, um, we had another client that does, um, CBD gummies. And it was a really interesting project because they really didn't know who they wanted to sell to. It's kind of everybody and anybody. Everybody needs CBD gummies, right? We're like, okay, let's let's just test some images. In the social media and on the homepage.

Um, so we, we tested some of like older ladies sleeping for the sleepy ones and then some for the, let's have fun on Fridays with like a little bit of a younger demographic. And it was quite interesting to see when we switched from just showcasing the product to adding in that typical customer persona, the increase of conversion, about one and a half percent on the page, which I That's a big deal in e commerce.

So those are, those would be two like data driven case studies that I would be, I'm just happy to be able to share with you guys. 

Hey Claus here, just a quick one. If you like the content of this episode, sign up for our free newsletter and become a smarter Shopify merchant in just seven minutes per week.

We create content from more than 50 sources, saving you hours of research and helping you stay on top of your e commerce game with the latest news, insights, and trends. Every Thursday in your inbox, 100 percent free, Join now at newsletter. ecommercecoffeebreak. com that is newsletter. ecommercecoffeebreak.

com. And now back to the show. Now, when it comes to working on this with designers as a business owner, you mentioned the time aspect. You don't have the time to deal with that. And I think the other thing is that business owners sort of think, um, Specifically on an ongoing basis, on a campaign basis, email marketing campaign, new landing page, it can become very, very costly.

I understand at cornerstories. io, you do things a little bit different when it comes to how you charge and what you provide to your clients. Tell me about it. 

Well, I guess I'll tell you in story form because that's what we're about here, right? We're here to tell some stories. So I, um, by trade, I'm a fractional CMO, which is chief marketing officer.

And I've managed, I manage multiple brands. And I am not a designer. I'm not good at design. I'm good at strategy. I'm good at writing out the content and helping people simplify the message. But my clients, I had one that was going through a major rebrand, like the full website, the social media, the colors, the font, just the voice in general.

I had another client that was launching. So we needed a full website. Design, we needed emails. We needed flyers. It had another one that needed a pitch deck. They're a nonprofit. And I had hired a freelancer, which the turnaround time was, it was so bad and it was making my clients frustrated. And then I tried hiring a friend, which we all know how that goes.

It was like good pricing, but I didn't want to hurt her feelings. Feelings because I didn't really like the designs. Um, hopefully you guys are laughing along with me cause we've all done it. We've all hired our, our kids or our friends. Um, just don't hire your kids guys. We got, we just bring the professionals.

Um, and then thirdly, I, I was so desperate. And so I started on this journey with an agency. It was 150 an hour. And I was like, okay, this isn't going to work. So I reached out to my, my now partner, Andy, because he has a private equity group, multiple brands under it. I'm like, what are you doing? Because I mean, your designs are awesome.

He's like, well, for the last three years, we've been doing this with corner story. I just haven't brought it to market. And he was like, try it, try it for free. Do it for like seven days. See if you like it. I put in a landing page, I put in a flyer and a business card, super simple, but I got them all back the same day and I'm very picky.

And I was like, holy poo. Sign me up. Like, where do I sign? And I signed up. And within two weeks I had my entire nonprofits website page done in two, the two weeks after I had the healthcare groups, entire website done. And. Um, the flyers, the banners, the pitch deck. I mean, it just, it solved so many problems and the fact that it was just 1 rate.

No meetings, all I'm doing is uploading this, you know, responding to this type form form and all of the projects are out of click up. It is so nice. I, I'm obviously still using it because I bought in as a, as a. Partner, I loved it that much. I really believe in it and I believe it's the future. Sure.

Because business owners shouldn't have to worry if they hired the most senior designer, how much that invoice is going to be after the project, or they shouldn't have to pay 25, 000 for a website design. And Corner Story is built off of a group of senior designers that, you know, you're getting two or three designers to look at the project.

So you're really just getting a strong deliverable. And we're so confident in it. We give everybody a free week now because that's what sold me. You know, I'm like, okay, if this is that good, show me, you know, so it's flat rate, unlimited designs, unlimited revisions, no managing, there's a project manager that works with me.

If I have questions, it's just easy. So 

that brings us back to the start when you said, keep it easy and simple. So easy is good from my plate. Someone else, an expert does the work, not my kids, not my family, not my friends. So tell me about the cost structure. You said it's a flat rate. Um, where does that start?

What's the entry level pricing? 

Yep. So we, um, we start at 2, 500 a month. And we guarantee a 3 day turnaround time on a normal project. If somebody has a website, full website design, it's not going to be turned around in 3 days. We'll let them know, hey, this is going to be like 5, 7, 10 days, whatever it is.

Um, and so the project manager works with them. Then we have a middle tier package. That's 5, 000 a month. That includes 2 designs to be worked on at a time. So, with a 2 day guarantee turnaround time, and that's where, like, my eCommerce brands and my marketing agencies. They use that one the most because they're pumping out so much design.

So they put in two design requests. The designers are working on those. We send those two for revisions and then we start working on the other one. So you're, you almost have like these four projects working on at once. The 10, 000 package is with development. So brands that manage lots of website development would be a great option for.

These are going to be like website dev agencies and that sort of thing. I will just put a little asterisk on here. We do work with custom requests on a case by case basis. So, if we do have someone, that's just, they just need a rebrand. It's a 1 time thing, because we don't make people sign contracts or anything like that.

We can work on pricing with them, but that's our range. Is that 2, 500 mostly to the 5, 000, unless you're doing development, which is the 10, 000 a month flat rate. 

No, it makes perfect sense. So now we have different stages there, but who's your perfect customer. Who's the. I don't know. Is there a specific industries on these that you work more with than others?

Yeah. Uh, e commerce, typically we're seeing e commerce that, uh, where they're pumping out multiple social designs a day and e commerce newsletter every single week they're involved in going to trade shows. So, um, larger e commerce brands are really happy with us because. It's just done for them. It's a huge stress off their back and also marketing agencies.

This is another big client of ours, specifically in the commerce industry. So we're really, really experts and how we need to be working and building out templates and making sure we have video editing on hand and that sort of thing for e commerce and agency world. 

Mm hmm. I love the approach. I'm doing online marketing for 25 years and not knowing what the final invoice is.

That's always some stuff for sleepless nights and not knowing how long it will take to get it delivered is the other part of it. Before we come to the end of the coffee break today, what's, is there anything that you want to share with our listeners that we haven't covered yet? 

I, I just want anybody who's still listening to know that We're not in business.

I'm not here to just advertise corner story. I want people to know that there are people out there that have been so stressed about design. Like I, I mean, in tears, frustrated about it and that you can have a design solution without getting taken advantage of. So if you need anything, please reach out to us.

Okay, that sounds good. One question. I want to have a bit of your take on what e commerce design will be in the future. Um, will AI influence that? Will AI influence the whole shopping process? What do you see coming up there? 

Absolutely. Yeah, you're seeing more and more of the augmented reality, the virtual reality, personalized shopping experience come into play with AI.

Um, you'll still need, I mean, everybody knows you're still going to need a human to look at it, but AI is going to be a really fantastic tool for us to use and to get to know brands. Um, and I also want to give peace of mind that you don't have to be the 1 to know everything about AI, like, let someone else know it.

I mean, it's like what happened when tick tock came. Everyone's freaking out. No, just let someone become an expert in it and find the experts. So it's coming. You're going to need it. You need to have designers that are familiar with putting together design that works for personalized experience, virtual reality and that sort of stuff.

So look out for those three main things. 

Okay, couldn't agree more. I'm on the same page with you. Where can people find out more about you guys? 

You can head over to cornerstory. io. And you will have a ton of information. Um, you can even book a virtual cup of coffee with me, um, right there on the site. I'm a little bit booked out, but I'd still love to meet with you and answer any questions that you have and try the free trial.

There's no card required 7 days. We'll give you proof of concept. 

Cool. I like the idea with the coffee because we're on the e commerce coffee break podcast. 

Jess, 

Jess, thanks so much for the chat today. I think that was a good overview of what you can optimize in your business when it comes to design, when it comes to make your brand stronger.

And I hope a lot of people will reach out to you. I will put the links in the show notes and you will be just one click away. Thanks so much for your time today. 

so much. 

Hey, Claus here. Thank you 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. And finally, sign up for our free newsletter and become a smarter Shopify merchant in just 7 minutes per week.

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com. Thanks again, and I'll catch you in the next episode. Have a good one.