Jodie Minto [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to this week's episode of online store success. I've had a couple of weeks off, sorry about that, but I have been so, so busy working on some really cool stuff that I am going to be sharing with you over the coming weeks and months. Now, I if you're not on my list, I have released dates for an upcoming totally free training. It is a five day Ecom traffic and conversions challenge. Across five days there's going to be three initial warm up trainings, and then on our fifth day, we have the main event where I'm going to take you through exactly how to increase your conversion rate on your online store. That is, turn more traffic or more browsers into customers, and also how to send more traffic to your website. Because these are pretty much the two most important pieces of the puzzle when it comes to a successful ecommerce business. Conversions and it's traffic.
Jodie Minto [00:01:00]:
And there's lots and lots of different little intricacies and nuances and strategies and tactics and all those different things that make up those two things. So I'm going to take you through them. Over the course of five days, we have a free pop up Facebook group which is where the trainings are going to happen. I've also already got over 100 people registered, so I'm going to link this event how to register your spot in the show notes here, but be sure to come on over and join me. And this is free challenge is part of my upcoming launch for my online store success program. This is my signature program. It's a twelve week coaching small group coaching program. I've been running for almost eight years now and I've been very busy, which is why I wasn't here last week updating all of the lessons and modules for that.
Jodie Minto [00:01:47]:
So part of this five day free challenge gives you a taste test of what's to come inside of that bigger course and also a bit of a sampler of how I teach, how I coach and to see whether or not it's a good fit for us both. So be sure to come on and check that out. And if you already know about online store success and it's been on your list of things that you want to do in 2024, be sure to go and pop your name on the waitlist. Because if you are on the waitlist, there are lots and lots of free templates, bonuses and goodies for those that are on that waitlist. Welcome to the online store success podcast. If you're determined to create, launch and scale your very own fashion, lifestyle or beauty product business online without falling into those expensive pitfalls. This podcast is for you, my friend. I'm your host, Jodi Minto.
Jodie Minto [00:02:37]:
I'm an award winning seven figure fashion founder and e commerce business coach. I'm also a certified digital marketer, meta ads specialist, and mum of two teens and two fur babies. I started my online fashion store from scratch when I was working full time in the corporate world, juggling young kids and living in the Middle East. I eventually scaled that business to become a seven figure a year online brand and sold that business last year. This show is dedicated to showing you how I did it exactly, and how you can do it, too. Hit that subscribe button right now so you never miss an episode. And let's dive into this week's episode. And if you want to know the five major online store mistakes that are costing you sales in your online store right now, go and grab my [email protected].
Jodie Minto [00:03:27]:
mistakes all right, let's get started with this week's episode. So I've got a really meaty episode for you today and also for next week, I'm actually splitting this topic, this episode into two parts. So not to overwhelm you in order for you to take some notes, process what I've been sharing with you, and then come back next week for the finale. So what I'm going to take you through are the steps, the strategies, exactly what it took for me to take my online fashion store from humble weekend market stalls to fully online to then getting those sales up to $10,000 a month. And then what it took to then get from $10,000 months to $170,000 months. And you'll be surprised because it happened really quickly. Once you get over that initial launch phase, once you get to that initial hundred k a year in revenue, what it takes to get you from hundred k to a million dollars a year is actually not nearly as much work as what you'd put in to get to the first hundred k in the, in the first place. So across these next two episodes, I'm going to take you through exactly what I took, the steps I took in order to do that exactly.
Jodie Minto [00:04:49]:
Now, this is part of also what I teach inside of my online store success program. It is ideally for those that are still in the throes of getting to that hundred k a year or they've just reached it and they want to make sure that they're doing it profitably in a way that they can build predictable sales each and every day. So if you are sort of sitting with that stage of where you haven't quite cracked that hundred k, that in revenue a year. Be sure to go and check out online store success, because it is coming back. Is it the second week or the first week of September? I can't remember. Soon. It's coming back soon. So be sure to go and put your name on the waitlist for that.
Jodie Minto [00:05:32]:
So let me start breaking down for you the things that helped move the needle forward for my online store, my online fashion business, which for those of you been following me for a while. I scaled up to seven figures a year and I actually sold it at the beginning of 2023. A very, very first thing that I guess understood. And we don't know a lot of these different things, these different steps, or can't implement these steps until we've actually already been running the business for a little while to start gathering some of that intel and that data and that feedback. Feedback as far as where it is that you sit within the broader market. So I want to just touch that, touch on that, that you may not know some of these things yet. You might, if you've just launched your business recently, if it's only fairly new, you might not have the insights just yet. But these are the things that I want you to think about as soon as those insights, as soon as those sales and the traffic and the analytics start trickling through for you to be really, really aware of.
Jodie Minto [00:06:33]:
So the thing that really helped with the trajectory of my business was having a really clear idea around what my hero product was. And what I mean by that is what my best selling product was, what people knew me for, what I was famous for, what people were telling their friends I did, because we had lots and lots of different products. But there was only a couple of core products that people knew us for, and which made up 80% of all of our sales. And for us in Island Co. That was our signature one size fits all kimono. Now, this particular kimono came in three different lengths, short, mid and long. And it was an oversized fit. And what it became was our product that we just kept doing in different fabrics, in different colors, in different prints.
Jodie Minto [00:07:24]:
And sometimes we would try it with longer sleeves, and sometimes we try it with shorter sleeves. But predominantly, that silhouette was our core product offering. You know, if we ignored everything else, we still had a very, very healthy business just by focusing on that particular product. So this process of product refinement is what you go through in the first initial growth stages of your business. When you first launch, it might be the first couple of years, even depending on the volume of sales you're getting, before you can figure out that what that was. But by for us having that indication of what people wanted from us and what they didn't really care about, whenever, you know, we would try and release new collections and things like that, the thing that they kept coming back for drove all of our product manufacturing decisions, all of our sourcing decisions around our actual product, offering our hero product. And then, of course, we want to make sure that the hero product has the right prices, the right profit margins, that you can produce it quickly, and that you can present it in a way that's really attractive and appealing and doesn't look same, same for your customer. So the number one thing for us, the number one step, was getting really clear on what that hero product was.
Jodie Minto [00:08:42]:
The second thing which ties into our hero product, was actually really getting inside the mind of our ideal customer, understanding exactly what it was that they wanted from us. Why did they love these kimonos so much? And why were they recommending them to their friends? Because we weren't really sure. When I first started the business, the purpose of the kimono, the reason I launched it, I was living in Dubai at the time, is obviously very hot, and we're spending weekends at the beach and then also in the shopping mall. And I wanted something to be able to use as a beach cover up on the beach. But I also needed something to cover my shoulders with inside the shopping mall because it's a bit more conservative there, the way that you dress. So. So for me, it was like, oh, it's kind of like a bikini cover up. But what, in fact, really happened after years of trading and getting that feedback from customers, surveying them, reviews, testimonials, was that, no, they're not actually really wearing it to the beach.
Jodie Minto [00:09:39]:
And even though it was positioned as resort wear, a lot of people were buying them to wear over the top of little black dresses for special events. We had a lot of women buying them for to go to their child's wedding, you know, and or to attend a nephew's wedding or something like that. So figuring out exactly what problem we were solving for our customer, who our customer was, it wasn't, they weren't buying from us for the reasons that we thought they were buying, and then taking all of that information and processing it and going, okay, if people aren't wearing them at the beach as a beach cover up, if they're actually wearing them, wearing them over a little black, dressed for dinner or a special event, we need to change the way that we're talking to our customer, telling them what it is that we do and in the marketing messaging that we use. Because if we're talking about beach cover ups, but they're not buying it for that, well, there's obviously, there's going to be this misalignment and customers will be like, I don't need it. You know, it's not for me. So figuring out exactly who your ideal customer is, this isn't just like demographics and even psychographics, really understanding who your customer is and how your product solves their problems. And once we could figure out that it made the rest of our marketing that much easier, we knew exactly what problem we were solving. All that transformation that we provided for our customers, and we would talk to that in all of our marketing, whether that was on social media posts or in emails or in Facebook ads.
Jodie Minto [00:11:06]:
And then it was landing better and converting better and more successful. So understanding exactly who your customer is and where you fit into their life, how you solve their problem, is so crucial. It's probably one of the most crucial things. If you understand that, you can then adjust your products in order to serve them. So understanding who it is they are and why they're buying from you is absolutely crucial. Now, building on from that, we obviously then had to figure out, okay, well, what is our marketing messaging, and does our brand align with that? Because when I first started island company, I was picturing my ideal customer as a 20 something year old single woman that lived in Bondi, that had a professional job, that was buying her kimono to wear on an upcoming holiday to Bali. I thought I knew this lady. I even knew the name of her cat was Ziggy and that she liked Savre blanc, not red wine.
Jodie Minto [00:12:08]:
Thought I knew her, and boy, was I wrong. So figuring out from those insights who your customer is and then pivoting is then going to drive your branding and that overall marketing messages. So for my brand, when I first launched island company, it was a black and white logo, for example. It was quite a heavy looking font. It was going more of like a surfer vibe, and it felt quite masculine. And then what ended up happening was selling these products at market stalls and online and figuring out, oh, that lady's not actually buying from us, it's her grandmother. Or even it was more her grandmother. I was going to say mother, but it was, we were finding we were really tapped into the 65 plus market.
Jodie Minto [00:12:53]:
So we were so, so wrong in so many ways, and then realized that, okay, our brand, our overall brand message, our overall brand aesthetics don't actually align with who it is that we're serving and the problem that we're solving for them. So there was this process of brand alignment, and then from there it's all about the traffic and conversions. Now I actually have an upcoming free five day challenge on all things traffic and conversions. Because if we really want to simplify what it takes to make an online product based business works, work and successful, it's traffic and conversions. We need a certain volume of traffic, that is, website visitors to come to our website each and every day. And then we need to convert as many of them as possible. That is, we need to turn as many of those website visitors that traffic into people that are adding to cart and purchasing as much as possible. And if we can pull those both of those levers simultaneously, our marketing becomes more efficient, our business becomes more profitable, our sales become more predictable, and we can start making forecasts around what our business might look like in six months or in twelve months.
Jodie Minto [00:14:09]:
And we can also understand, even if we get granular on that, like what products convert the best or what marketing channels convert the best and start that process of refinement. Because once you get over that first initial hundred k hurdle of revenue a year in your business, you've done the bulk of the hard work. It's all about then refinement. But I appreciate so many people are still in that stage where they're trying to get to that hundred k revenue mark. And I just want to reassure you that what got you there to 100k won't get you to a million dollars. If anything, it's a little easier to take that next big leap from one hundred k to a million because you have so much insights already on who it is that you're serving and what works. I hope you found today's episode helpful. Like I said, this is a two part series.
Jodie Minto [00:14:59]:
In the next episode, I'm going to get more into that traffic and conversion piece. And also then the final piece of the puzzle. Knowing how to read your data and knowing which metrics are important and which ones you should be paying attention to in order to scale scale your business further. So, to recap on the first things, the first elements of what it took for me to grow my business from $10,000 months to $170,000 a month, was the product refinement piece really understanding and then going all in on that hero product. Then it was all about getting really clear on who exactly we were serving. This isn't just like demographics and psychographics. This like, who is this person? What problem are we solving for them? What are their buying motivations to even come to us or to recommend us to their friends and for them to keep coming back for more. And then it's taking that information and making sure that our brand is still aligned.
Jodie Minto [00:15:59]:
Our overarching brand statements, our aesthetics for our brands, our logos, our fonts, our website, all that kind of thing is that speaking to this particular customer and truly highlighting those hero products. Because from there we need to really work then on our marketing, messaging. And once we have those first three or four layers right, everything else becomes a lot easier. All right, thank you for being here today. I can't wait to chat with you next week to go more into the traffic and conversions piece. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of online store success with me, Jodi Minto. If you loved it, please share it with your friends on Instagram and tag me amjodyminto so I can say thank you. And if you really want to make my day, please go ahead and leave me a review on Apple Podcasts and give me a follow.
Jodie Minto [00:16:47]:
If you'd like my help in starting or scaling your online store, be sure to check out my free resources and [email protected]. thanks again and same time, same place next week. Bye for now.
