Introduce your business and tell us your story: How did you decide on what to sell, and how did you source your products?
With the introduction of the iPhone and more specifically Google Maps, Chris wanted to mount his iPhone to his bike to help him navigate around Sydney where he had just moved. Not satisfied with the generic solutions on the market, Chris went to work designing a mount that was super secure, lightweight and very strong. The design was successfully funded on Kickstarter in early 2012 and soon after www.quadlockcase.com was launched on Shopify. Everything is designed in house and manufactured in China and Germany.
How did you earn your first sales? Which channels are now generating the most traffic and sales for you?
Firstly having an awesome product that people love helped a lot as our customers told all their friends about us. We made the most of this by allowing people to review their products using the Yotpo reviews app. We have over 5,500 reviews with a 4.5 star rating so that gives you some indication of how much people love our product. Aside from that we promoted the product to the right audience using Google and Facebook ads. Video Facebook ads have been really effective lately. Aside from organic search and direct, Facebook drives a lot of traffic but it's the channel we advertise on the most so you would expect that. Reddit and Twitter are a distant 2nd and 3rd.
Tell us about the back-end of your business. What tools and apps do you use to run your store? How do you handle shipping and fulfillment?
Yotpo Reviews app has been great to generate product reviews as mentioned above. Google Apps for email hosting. Google Analytics to keep track of everything. AppSumo and Mailchimp for building our email list. Zendesk and Influx.com for customer support. Influx has helped free up our internal team to focus on other areas other than customer support. But when it comes down to it, Facebook advertising has been probably the most effective tool for growing the business. We ship globally using Shipwire. We've been using them since the beginning and would not be able to do what we do without them. To date we have shipped product to 4,000+ cities in over 100 countries.
What are your top recommendations for new store owners?
Start with a standard theme and focus on selling products rather than having an amazing looking store. Average looking websites still perform well. Install Google Analytics and track everything! If you don't know what effect changes make to your store.