Boost Your Ecommerce Revenue: Strategies to Increase Your Average Order Value | Greg Writer

Greg Writer: If they've already said, I want this coffee, you can do an order bump going, Hey, would you like to double your order? Add another one and I'll give you 50% off your second one. Or you could say add two more and buy two, get one free. So you, you, you configure that order bump to where you're getting more money of them buying the same exact thing they're already buying, which is one of my greatest hacks there is.

It's like, if you're not offering people more of what they're already ordering, you're, you're leaving money on the table.

Matt Edmundson: Welcome to the e-Commerce with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. The E-Commerce podcast is all about helping you deliver e-commerce wow. And to help us do just that, I am chatting with today's very special guest, Mr. Greg Writer from Launch Cart about boosting your e-commerce revenue strategies to increase your average order value. Ah, yes. But before Greg and I dive into our conversation, which I'm very much looking forward to, cuz I like you, want to increase my average order value.

Let me share with you my podcast pick. Oh yes. A previous episode or two that I think you are gonna enjoy. Check out the episode I did called How to Take Small Steps to Grow your E-Commerce Profits, uh, with Tony, which was just. Tony's such a legend. You definitely want to check that out and also check out my wonderful conversation, maximizing the lifetime value of a customer with Valentin Radu.

You can find both of those, both my podcast picks and our entire archive of podcast episodes for free on our website, which is ecommercepodcast.net plus if you're there, sign up to our newsletter and we'll send out the links to the podcast picks along with the notes uh, from today's show that I'm gonna have this amazing conversation with Greg.

All of those notes will get delivered to your inbox, totally free, totally automagically, totally amazing, which I think is pretty amazing. So make sure you sign up. Now. Are you struggling to grow your e-commerce business? Do you feel like you're, you are constantly spinning a million plates trying to figure out what to focus next?

Well, let me tell you, I have been there and I know how frustrating it can be, which is why we're excited that the e-commerce cohort sponsors this show. E-commerce cohort helps e-commerce businesses like yours deliver an exceptional customer experience that drives results. And to help you get started, we're excited to announce a brand new free resource for you called E-Commerce Cycles, given it's a mini course which walks you through, uh, proof work for building a successful ecom business.

I will show you the specific steps that I take in my own e-commerce companies so you can see exactly how to put these concepts into practice in your own business. And the good news is, of course, , it's completely free. You don't even need an email address, so just head over now to access it at ecommercecycles.com.

Just do me a favor, let me know what you think. Uh, that, that's ecommercecycles.com to access training and get started today, it's time to start delivering e-commerce Wow to your customers with the help of e-commerce cohort. Yes, it is, uh, but like I say let me know what you think. Genuinely, uh, really, really curious.

Now, Greg Writer is known as the go-to guy for entrepreneurs who need advice. He's been around the block for over 35 years doing everything from corporate to finance to sales and marketing. Greg made big bucks in e-commerce using the same strategies he shares in his seminars and keynotes, which you've probably heard because he told me before we hit the record button.

He's been on over 700 stages. Oh yes. Nowadays he is running the show at Launch Cart, a SAS e-commerce platform that he founded himself, uh, which we're gonna get into. Greg, absolutely amazing to have you here, man. Thanks for coming on the show, really appreciate it. Love. How are you doing with my friend?

Greg Writer: Lovin' life, man. Lovin' life and thanks, thanks for, uh, having me and look forward to sharing whatever wisdom and knowledge and advice I can with any e-commerce guys out there that wanna help avoid some landmines. Cause I, I've stepped on all the landmines, so I wanna help , I wanna help you avoid the ones that I've missed.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, it is really funny, isn't it? I, I often get introduced as the eCommercer that's had more failures than successes. It's just, I often say to people, my, my successes far outweigh my failures. Um, but I think you learn more from the landmines, right? From the failures than, than from anything else.

And I think, yeah, that experience in life is something quite wonderful. Let's jump into this, Greg, why do people refer to you as the entrepreneur's best friend? I'm really curious. This is something that Sadaf's put in the notes here, the producer, and I'm, I'm intrigued, my friend.

Greg Writer: Yeah. So, so you ever read the book, rich Dad, poor Dad?

Matt Edmundson: I have Guy Kawasaki, I think was the author.

Greg Writer: Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, uh, actually that it, it was, uh, , uh, not Guy Kawasaki. That was the garage.com. Rich Dad, poor Dad was by, uh, skips my mind.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Robert. I know who you mean. I can picture him in my head as well.

Greg Writer: Yeah, me too. Me too. It'll come to me a second.

But anyway, I always tell people that book was written about me. I was born into a really, really wealthy family from Denver, Colorado. And there's like, they built homes and sky rises and restaurants and bars. Oh wow. And like in, in downtown Denver, amongst all the high risers, there's a whole square block named Writer Square after my family.

And my parents got divorced when I was two, I went with my mom. My mom got married and divorced. Married and divorced, and married again. So I had three stepdads and my rich dad. Wow. And my rich dad taught me to invest when I was 19 years old. And then I ended up getting my stockbrokers license when I was 20, 21.

And then I read Think and Grow Rich, and started getting into Jim Ron and Dennis Waitley and Zig Ziegler and Brian Tracy and Tony Robbins. And I thought to myself, this guy that I'm working for has taken 50% of my paycheck. I'm gonna buy him out. I go to my dad and go, dad, I wanna buy out the guy I work for.

He goes, go for it. So that, that, that mindset and that mentality that you can do whatever you can. My dad was very supportive of that. So was my mom. Anyway, I bought the firm I worked for and I was hailed as the youngest owner of an investment bank in the history of the United States of America. And that, that was the first big mistake in my life.

Matt Edmundson: What? Owning the bank or being the youngest owner, or maybe both.

Greg Writer: Yeah. Yeah, both. Yeah, because you know, really Wall Street just ate me for lunch. It's like they'd give me a million and they ate two, and then gimme another 2 million and take three, and it's just like, whoa. This little Ponzi scheme at Wall Street it was killing me.

But I will say this, I, it, it, it, I really became an early adopter and I was always financing and raising money for companies and doing IPOs for the early stage companies. So example, home shopping network. I raised them their original seed capital. The guy came in the office going, Hey, we're gonna start our television station, 7 24 365 and sell stuff direct to consumers.

And then back in the early eighties, there was only three stations. Cable was just coming out. No one had ever given their credit card over the phone. But yet, you know, I believed in him and we ended up raising some money. And I actually coined, I'm a copycat marketer, but I did, they do a few original things and one of 'em was, I coined this term torrential downpour economics.

Okay. And, and that is, that is when an investor believes in an entrepreneur. Right, and that entrepreneur goes on to create something that creates this torrential downpour of economics, not trickle down torrential downpour. So you think about the home shopping network, right? Yeah. Think of the billions and billions and billions of dollars in jobs from all the TV stations, from all the advertising, from all the inventors, from the shipping people, from the manufacturing people, just all of the people that that business touched.

Yeah, yeah. Torrential downpour economics. So anyway, that, that was kind of my life. And so my first 18, 20 years of my life, I did that. Then I retired from the, the, the investment banking career and started co. I started Angel Investors Network, which was one of the very first angel groups online, and I started coaching and mentoring.

Thousands and thousands of, of, of early stage entrepreneurs and inventors. And I've done that pretty much my whole life. I'm 61 years old and I've been doing this since I was 21 and my little bio needs to get updated cause it's now closer to 40 years. Right. Wow. Um, and that, and, and over that time I've helped everybody from doing, you know, the, the napkin stage.

to, you know, getting their business plans and their financial projections and raising the capital investors and strategy to guys that are going from 10 million to a hundred million, right? Mm-hmm. . So I really, and that's kind of how I got that the entrepreneur's best friend. And, and like you said, you, you get, you learn so much more from those failures than successes.

And again, because of me being a, a financial backer, I have the wisdom and insights of failures of multiple different industries in multiple different sectors and multiple different verticals. So it even gave me a little bit more, You know, insights and now I am an entrepreneur. So that's, that's that story.

Matt Edmundson: Whistle-stop tour. And I'm, I, I, I, I love your energy. You know, you, you're in your sixties and you're still sounding pretty passionate about the whole thing, which is fantastic. But,

Greg Writer: uh, I appreciate that.

Matt Edmundson: Before we get into, um, a whole bunch of questions, which I have my overarching question, Greg, because I can see you, right. We record this on video, and if you're watching on YouTube, you'll see exactly what I'm seeing. What is that record on the wall behind you?

Greg Writer: Oh. So, uh, that was a little award that I got for doing a million dollars in one week on Click Funnels. Wow. Yeah. You know, so they give you these different awards and we did a million dollars in, in, in five days, uh, online.

Yeah. I'm, I'm a big e-commerce guy. I actually bought, and when, when I retired from the e-commerce industry or from the investment banking world, and I moved out here to San Diego. In 1997, there was a mall, an internet mall called First Net Mall, 1st Net Mall. And I bought that mall. It was like, what was like one of the very first and most successful e-commerce sites on the internet in 1997.

And that was before we even had Google and, and Yahoo. And there was like, there was like these other search engines that indexed alphabetically. So if you typed in shopping mall or shop online, it came up number 1. Um, because it was FirstNet Mall. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I, that was, that was another big mistake in life because as soon as, as soon as Google and the, and the, and you know, the related searches came through that, that mall just died, but it was a drop shipping mall.

Can you believe that? Drop shipping back in 1997?

Matt Edmundson: Wow. It's funny, isn't it? And these things come back around again and you just, you do, I think you see things in cycles, don't you? You do see things come and go and you're just like, oh, that'll be back in six years time. That'll be back. Yeah. So what were you selling? Um, via click phone, if I can ask that created such dynamic sales in five days.

Greg Writer: Actually, it was the very first re reiteration of our e-commerce platform, it was a WordPress plugin for e-commerce that had funnels and it had, uh, you know, upsells, down sales, cross sales, and all kinds of really cool features and functionality that you didn't get on Shopify and you didn't get on WooCommerce.

And then that led me to be, Uh, a WordPress support company,, because it was a WordPress plugin. You know, I, I signed up thousands of people on this platform, and then I'm like, dude, what are we doing all days? WordPress support? Like, okay. And that's one of the reasons why we created Launch Cart, where it's like, okay, we're gonna create our own platform.

Matt Edmundson: So, I mean, you know, again, if you're watching on video, one of the things that the, uh, viewer will notice about you, Greg, is you are properly merched up. Right? I feel quite inadequate in terms of I have no merch onto me today whatsoever. Um, but you are very merched up with the hat and the, the, hoodie there.

So what is Launch Cart?

Greg Writer: You know, so, so Launch Cart, you know, entrepreneurs solve problems, right? So whenever somebody starts talking about problems, I say to myself, some entrepreneur's gonna fix that. Like, that's, that's what we do, right? Mm-hmm. And so the, a little background is, I, I ended up starting a company.

I, I invested in a company called Star Shop, and it was a celebrity driven shopping app and had all these big celebrities in it. And I went out to New York City to visit my investment, and I met the guy that was bringing in these celebrities, and I had this idea, I said, Hey, I wanna start a company called Celebrity lifestyle brands. Mm-hmm.

And I want to basically partner with these, you know, Kylie Jenners of the world and these influencers and help them build a brand, help them monetize through e-commerce, but help them with asset protection and, you know, and building wealth and brand equity and all the things that kind of my background and my experience would kind of help people with.

And so not really is that paid for service. And my, and my partner, he said, let's do this together. And I'm like, why? He goes, well, I launched Jennifer Lopez's brand. Nicki Minaj's brand, Adam Levine's brand. He's a whale. So he is like, and I'm wrapping up the stuff I'm doing with Tommy Hilfiger. So anyway, we formed this company called Celebrity Lifestyle Brands.

Next thing you know, I'm doing stuff and doing e-commerce for Carlos Santana and Bethenny Frankel and, uh, consulting with Sofia Vergara brand, working with all these big celebrities. And one thing you know with e-commerce is celebrities that little, I call it the pixie dust, right? Your lead cost is cheaper, your AOVs more your, you know, your customer acquisition cost is down.

So we started doing millions and millions of dollars on Shopify. And this goes back to 2015, 2016, 2017. Mm-hmm.. And, and if you know anything about Shopify, you know that it's an app driven platform. So you have to get an app for this and an app for that. And an app for this. I mean, for God's sake, you have to get an app for customer reviews.

How do you have an e-commerce platform in today's age without customer reviews? And so when we were working with these celebrity driven sites, it was like, you know, we have 13, 14, 15 apps and the bill's $1,300 a month coming outta the gate. And it's like, this is ridiculous. And I remember, uh, just going to support one day and typing in Shopify support.

And, and I saw their stock quote and I didn't even know they were publicly traded. And I went, whoa, you know, and I, I got this investment banking background, so I went down that rabbit hole and I even took a screenshot. It was September, it was like, it was in, it was 2018, and the screenshot showed they had a $10.2 billion market cap.

And I thought to myself, what? This company's got a $10 billion marketcap? I'm like, dude, we, we, we've gotta put this business on hold and we gotta go create launch cart and, and get back in this game because we have the crystal ball, we know the pain points, right? Mm-hmm. , like, I wanna have a platform that one has the, the, what I call the must haves features built into it, and then have the should have features built into it.

And so launch Cart really is nothing more than a Shopify alternative mm-hmm. that we've been building over the last four years. And I think of it as speed to markets faster. It's easier. And one of the reasons it's easier is it doesn't do everything you can do on Shopify. Right? That scope creep and feature creep gets people going down these rat holes they shouldn't go down as a marketer.

Uh, and then we built in the must haves and some of the should haves into the platform natively. Mm-hmm. to kind of get things going. And then I have another story about drop shipping that kind of added onto that, but that's kind of what Launch Cart is. It's just a basic e-commerce platform that we feel is gonna be a better, faster, higher converting e-commerce platform for people that wanna sell online.

Matt Edmundson: And you guys, its great. So you guys have been around, what, five or six years now, um, doing that?

Greg Writer: Well, we, we incor, we, we incorporated in 2019 and we officially launched last in February of 2022.

Matt Edmundson: Oh, okay. So quite a, quite a sort of a new, a new venture as as it were. Yeah, exactly. And so how's it been going then so far?

Greg Writer: Well, because we have a freemium model and you can actually go sign up for free and we'll take 6% of your sales and you can use our platform with no monthly fees. We've had 44,000 people sign up on the platform with basically no marketing, just word of mouth and people talking about it. And we have some e-commerce, what I call influencers like yourself, who go take a look at the platform and go, this is easier to onboard than Shopify.

It's easier to get people up and going. And then we also integrated with a few of the print on demand, manufacturer on demand companies. . So you can basically get your t-shirt and your merch store launched in a, in a matter of hours and be selling stuff online and, you know, very, very quickly.

Matt Edmundson: Fantastic. And what, uh, what suppliers, uh, merch supplies, um, t-shirt supplies. I'm just, the reason I'm asking this, Greg, uh, is more for my son actually who, um, who is thinking of doing something online like that to try and finance his way through college or university as I'd call it. So I'm just kinda curious.

Greg Writer: Very cool. Yeah, no, right now we integrate with Printful, which is one of the world's largest companies. And, uh, I I, they're a little bit more expensive than some of the other providers, but they also got, you know, they're also like a $1.3 billion company. They got 135 million in funding in 2021. Mm-hmm. . And they're, they're, and they also have a global footprint.

They've got facilities in Latvia. If I say that right, Latvia, Japan. Mm-hmm. Latvia. Yeah. And Japan And Australia. In Canada, United States. Mm-hmm. , you know, so, so they have a worldwide footprint, which is good. And then, and then we integrated with Printify, which Printify that kind of like integrations with a whole bunch of small mom and pop and other, other vendors.

Yeah. And we're gonna be integrating with more and more and more as the, as the customer base requests.

Matt Edmundson: Fantastic. So do you have yet, um, or, or are you still waiting on the, the, the stories to arrive as sort of a favorite story of someone that sort of signed up and just managed to hit a vein and is, is going forward in a big way?

Greg Writer: You know what's interesting? We've had a couple political customers do that, right? They've got 'em, got 'em the platform and launched their, you know, selling their yard signs and their bumper stickers and their t-shirts and hats, and they do a couple hundred thousand dollars in a few months during the political campaigns.

Uh, but no, no one that's really busted out and had one of those. You know, those, those, you know, 50,000 shirt seller type things yet, but they're coming and, and we're just now in the marketing space and we had a really cool thing. We had a really cool guy join our board of directors and we're doing some really, we got some really cool stuff.

That's, and, and again, that, that piece of it, the launch cart piece is one third of really what the entrepreneurial, you know, my vision of what I want to build.

Matt Edmundson: Oh, so what are the other two thirds? If I've got a third of it, what's, what, what's the other two-thirds?

Greg Writer: Okay, so I gotta tell you a quick little story, another war story, right?

Matt Edmundson: Go for it.

Greg Writer: So a, as we're building launch cart, I had some friends that were doing drop shipping from China, right? Using Alibaba and Ali Express and that kind of stuff. Yeah. So we said, Hey, let's, let's start doing some drop shipping and let's, let's see what those pain points are. So as we're building launch cart, we can, you know, fix those pain points as well.

So we got into drop shipping and our first month we did about a million one and then we did a million, million anyway, in, in eight months we did 400,000 sales. I collected 400,000 credit cards. Wow. And did 17 million in revenues off of spending 7 million in ad spend with about a 15% net profit. Wow. Now that's, I don't know anybody else who's done that many sales.

Now, again, why was I able to do that? Like, like people, you know, I, I was like to quantify things, you know, as a trainer and a teacher is like, one is, I had money. Like, seriously, like I, when I wanted to scale something and do a hundred thousand dollars a day adspent, I had the money to do that. Yeah. And we literally were spending 50, 60, 70 hundred thousand dollars a day.

Cuz you're not gonna do a million dollars, you're not gonna do those kind of numbers if you're not spending the kind of money. That's one. Two, I also had 45, uh, people in the Philippines doing support and I had seven people spying on products and trying to find the products we're selling. And it just kind of got outta, it just, it just kind of mushroomed and it, it actually, you know, thinking back it was a huge mistake.

It was, it was a little bit of distraction. But it just, we, it just grew so fast and you know that cash coming in, you're just entrepreneur. This is incredible. We, we sold 5,000 today. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the good news. Okay. That's the good news. The bad news is my China supplier didn't ship the last 50,000 products.

Matt Edmundson: Wow.

Greg Writer: They started shipping out empty envelopes and I started getting thousands and thousands and thousands of support tickets going, Hey, I got an empty envelope.

Matt Edmundson: Wow.

Greg Writer: So I went from working with all these celebrities doing e-commerce, millions of dollars a month in revenues. A whole team blowing and going to, I was out of business in 45 days.

And with my background and my history, I I, I was just like, wow, it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone type thing. Cause I was blown away cuz, but, but basically cause all I started giving refunds and we gave like 50,000 refunds. Every bank account, every merchant account was shut down. The merchant account shut down, and then the banks talked to the banks and PayPal talked to Chase and Chase.

Boom, everything shut down. So anyway, that kind of took me to my knees and, you know, and, and praying some more. But that led me, that story led me to this is now I said, okay, I gotta fix that problem, right? Mm-hmm. I'm building launch cart as this SaaS platform. Now I'm gonna build the drop shipping marketplace that we call the Source and Sell Marketplace.

And the Source and Sell Marketplace is a marketplace that we're building where brands and manufacturers can upload and put their products in the source and sell marketplace, and then allow Launch cart sellers to sell those products. On a drop ship basis.

Now we're gonna rebrand it and we're gonna rebrand the whole industry as on demand E-commerce. Mm-hmm. and on demand product sourcing, because I wanna get away from the drop shipping negative connotation. Yeah. Yeah. And I want to have my, I wanna be number one in the category, so I always quote to entrepreneurs for years.

If you wanna be number one in the category, create your category. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So we're gonna do the on-demand product sourcing, the on-demand e-commerce, and that's, that's the second piece of the three piece. And you go, okay, what's the third piece? Well, the third piece is banking as a service with blockchain.

Well, what do you mean by that? What I mean by that is now when you come into launch cart, when this is all said and done, you're going to get a bank account, right. And you're gonna, and then when the, when we onboard customers into the and, and vendors and manufacturers and brands into the source and sell marketplace, they're gonna get a bank account.

So now when you come shopping at my site, let's say one of my sites is called Rescue Joe. It's a coffee brand, drink a cup, save a pup, and we donate money to dog rescues, right? And you come and you buy my coffee and you got, and you're getting ready to go to checkout. And this says, wait before you go, would you like to add a French press to your, to your order?

but I don't sell French presses, but my predictive analytics, you know, AI is everything these days, right? The AI and predictive analytics that says, Hey, this guy's also looking for a French press. It pulls a French press from the marketplace and puts it in front of the customer to increase the average order value.

Mm-hmm. , as well as the lifetime value of the customer. And then if I add that French press to my order and I checkout at the point of purchase the money for the cost of goods, that French press gets deposited into the manufacturer of that French Press Bank account and I get my commission into my bank account.

So that solves a whole bunch of problems. Yeah. One is the real brands are worried about digital marketers and blue and gold crooks selling stuff online, taking the money, shutting the store down, opening up another store, taking the money and running. So they're never gonna let you sell, you know, Prada or Louis Vuitton or any real brand because they're more protected about brand protection.

Mm-hmm. . But now that I split the payment off at the point of purchase and they get paid instantly. They're pretty happy about that. Two, as an entrepreneur, when I was doing those 400,000 sales, it was an accounting nightmare. Mm-hmm. , can you imagine 400,000 orders? We probably sold three or 400, 500 different products.

So money's going to different vendors, refunds, different vendors. It was a nightmare. My, my accounting department could not figure it out, could not keep up with it. But now if we do it at the point of purchase, and it's all with technology and it's all recorded on the blockchain, boom. Now as an entrepreneur, I don't do any book keeping.

And then we're gonna take in and we're gonna book in. We're gonna figure out the whole tax situation and automatically pay the taxes. Cause now, you know, every state in the United States wants their little tax cut for the internet sales. Yeah. Yeah. So we're just gonna figure out that whole banking as a service, and then you'll give you a debit card and we'll give you a bank account and you'll be able to transfer funds online.

And we might become one of the biggest, you know, banking partners in the world, if we can put a few million people on our platform. And then it also lowers the barrier of entry for people in places like Bangladesh or South Africa or Ghana and these other parts of the world where they have a hard time getting a bank account.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Wow. That's,

Greg Writer: so that's the three piece of the puzzle. That's the three piece of the puzzle. And what you can do with that at the end of the day is, is unparalleled to anybody else in the marketplace.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, it sounds, I mean, you've got a lot going on there, Greg. I mean, I'm not gonna lie. Lot going on that sounds awesome.

And I, I can see why you're going down the road that you're going down. I mean, and I'm listening to you talk going, why? That makes sense. That makes sense. So I'm not listening here going, well, why would you do that? That doesn't make any sense. It's, it is all obvious now when you, when you now you've sort of joined all the technologies together and you kind of go, yeah, I, I can see how that would work.

Um, and especially excited with the fact that now people in Bangladesh can start trading on a worldwide platform, um, much easier as well. Cause I think the globalization, uh, of, of the markets. We've, it's fine if you live in the UK, it's fine if you live in the States, but it's never been that fine if you live in, um, sub-Saharan Africa or something like that.

So, um, it'll be interesting to see what happens when those guys can actually start coming on and, and playing the same game. Really. Yeah. Um, So obviously, I mean, a lot of passion, a lot of drive, a lot of stuff going on there. Um, and the title of today's podcast Boost Your E-Commerce Revenue Strategies to Increase Your Average Order Value.

So let's, let's dig into that a little bit. Some of the stuff that you've discovered along the way, and I'm imagining, Greg, you figured some stuff out and you've gone, that needs to be a feature in Launch Cart because that's gonna increase average order value. Right? So what are some of the things you deliberately added to Launch Cart to help increase average order value and why did you add them?

Greg Writer: Um, I'll tell you that. So let me add one, let me squeeze one little thing in there that also ties into this. So one of the first things we did is we wanted to have a checkout page editor, so, so to me the checkout page is the most important page on the website cuz that's the moment of truth. That's when you're giving me your credit card.

So we gave our users the ability to add images. Like on my rescue Joe, again, I have a phone number, says, Hey, got questions, call me right now. I put my phone number on there. Do I ever get a call? No, but it increases trust. Yeah. Right. And then you can put trust seals on the checkout page. You can put, uh, countdown timers and scarcity timers on the countdown page.

You can add images to your count, your, I mean, not your countdown page to your checkout page. So we call that the checkout page editor, which is the beginnings of, you know, increasing that, that's gonna increase your conversions, cuz increases your trust. Then..

Matt Edmundson: That's actually, um, that, sorry to interrupt Greg. That's quite a differential with Shopify. Because this has always been one of the pain points that people have with Shopify. And don't get me wrong, I like Shopify. Shopify's a great platform. We've used it a lot over the years. Um, but the reason I am not a, a solely Shopify man for my own sites is because you, you, you can design the site, you can't design the checkout.

There's very little flexibility, right?

Greg Writer: Right. You can, if you're on their Shopify Plus program. Mm-hmm. for 2000 and you have some really good coders..

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Well, you can now, I mean, it's not always been the case, has it? I mean, it's a sort of a more recent thing with Shopify. Yeah.

Greg Writer: Right. So we built in that, so that helps increase your conversions, right?

Then you say, okay, then what can help increase your, your AOV? And that's like an order bump. So right on the checkout page, we allow you to add an order bump with a little red checkered box, or not a red checkered box. You can kind of customize how the order bump box looks, but we, we kind of coach people, you know, let's say I'm selling my rescue Joe coffee or a shirt, and I know they probably have a rescue dog.

Then maybe I have a digital ebook that says, Hey, you know how to potty train your rescue dog, or something along those lines. Mm-hmm. So now I have a digital download, which we also allow digital downloads with our platform. And so now I can have that dig that, that, that order bump going, Hey, add this digital download to about seven bucks.

Yep. Let me add that too there. Or like we did, we did a test with a Shopify store, Salem Jewelry, and we did a test where we offered uh uh, uh, uh, Uh, wrapping, you know, wrapping where you, you wrap the gift. You wrap the gift and our order bump. Now, they had a, they had an app that they had installed on their, on Shopify, but our order bump outperformed their order bump like three to one.

Theirs was converting at about 22%. Ours converted at 75%. And, you know, you start tracking those numbers. So really order bumps is the very first thing you do to increase your average order value.

Matt Edmundson: Can I ask, um, Why would yours outperform three to one? What was different about the way you did the order bump?

Greg Writer: Well, their, their, their order bump was on the product page. So, so you, you're, you're buying, you've, you've seen those before, right? On Shopify, Shopify apps. It's the order bump, say add gift ship, add gift wrapping on the product page. Yeah. Whereas when we, we offered on the checkout page, it converted three to one.

So that's just another insight going, there you go. Right? Mm-hmm. . And again, I wouldn't have known that unless we tested it. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. That's really interesting. And for those that are maybe new to e-commerce, Greg, just explain what you mean by order bump, just so we're sort of all clear on terminology.

Greg Writer: Okay. Well, you know what, another thing we always tell people is you're experiencing it every day. Right? Would you like fries with that coke or would you like coke with those fries? Right? Yeah. So it it, it's like you're just trying to add something at the point of checkout. Mm-hmm. to their order that's relevant to their order or, uh, is gonna be additive to their order. Or maybe in a lot of situations it's just order more of the same.

If they've already said, I want this coffee, you can do an order bump going, Hey, would you like to double your order? Add another one and I'll give you 50% off your second one. Yeah. Or you could say add two more and buy two, get one free. So you, you, you configure that order bump to where you're getting more money of them buying the same exact thing they're already buying, which is one of my Greatest hacks there is. It's like, If you're not offering people more of what they're already ordering, you're, you're leaving money on the table.

Matt Edmundson: Very good. Very good. I'm sorry, I'm just making notes as we go along. Uh so we've got the order bump, um, and you're either selling another product or you're selling more of what you're already offering to the client.

What else have you, have you got on your, on your note list?

Greg Writer: Well, going back to the whole funnels and the upsells and the down sells, so now we actually, you know, built in, you know, funnels. And, you know, upsells and down sells. So, so with our platform, you can do up to five upsells or down sells. So, and what I mean by upsells, again, for those of you maybe not familiar with that, is now I've, I've checked out, I've put in my credit card, I hit checkout.

So now the credit card has been charged for that first order that's in the cart. Now what happens is with the technology for good visualizations, now that credit card's floating in space. And then another order says it comes up. And you, you've probably seen this before in some site. Wait, before you go, would you like to, like, again, if I'm buying some coffee, maybe I wanna sell them a coffee grinder.

Maybe I wanna sell 'em another t-shirt. Maybe I wanna sell them something else. Yeah. Wait before you go, would you like me to add this to your order and we'll give you free shipping or we'll give you a discount type of thing and you can do an upsell. So that's called an upsell. Right. And if they add it to their order, we build the credit card again before we, we cancel the, the transaction.

So that can't, that credit card, so they don't have to go and put their credit card back in again. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . It's there. And then if we do that upsell, we can do 'em another upsell and another upsell. Or we do what's called a downsell, which is they say no to that. Then you can say, well, if you didn't buy that, maybe you might wanna buy this.

And you do what's called a down sell. And then we, and that's, and really that's just a, a lower priced product. Mm-hmm. You're just trying to upsell 'em again, but you can call it downsell cause we're giving 'em a lower priced product. And now you, you maybe try to upsell 'em that digital download or that e-book or something that's lower priced and get more money of 'em.

And it's, and, and, and you know, what you hear all the time is, oh, I hate those. and it's like, yeah, but the guys cashing the checks are, don't hate those, right? Because yeah, statistically there's like, it's like 12% usually on the low if you have it done right. And you understand the, the concept of mm-hmm , this, you should be getting a, you know, 10 to 12% conversion post checkout on an upsell or down sell, and you can get as much as 30%.

Right? So that's a big, big, big deal when you're trying to make money, profit, and, and especially now where, you know, you go back to when we were 2015, 16, 17, and even 2018, you know what we were, our customer acquisition cost was $3, $5, $8, $10. Now it's 15, 18, 20, 25, 30, right? Mm-hmm. . So we have to bid, figure out a way to get people to put more into their cart and add more into their cart.

Yeah. And it's really not hard, but you have to, you have to know, you have to just think it through as well, what product goes with what product, and you know, how do you do that.

Matt Edmundson: It's really interesting and one of the things that has always intrigued me by the upsell, um, thing, and Greg maybe you, maybe you can speak to this a little bit, um, was that if I do an order bump, So let's say the original product was 20 bucks, and then I do an order bump and that product is 15 bucks with an offer.

So then the customer's going, well, now I was prepared to spend 20 and now I'm spending 35. They're seeing it collectively. Yeah, I've got a great offer there, but I'm still seeing the total price. Whereas on the upsell, they've gone through checkout, um, and you are selling them a a, a a. promoting the product on the upsell.

They don't see it as a combined figure anymore. It's not like, well, if I now add this, it's a total of 35 because the first transactions happened. Well, that was 25, uh, that was 20 bucks over there. Well, this is a separate thing for 15 bucks, and it, it, it stops them adding the two numbers together. I don't know if that's true. That was something that I heard and I, I wonder if you can speak to that.

Greg Writer: I, I believe it is true. And I, and, and, and again, I think it goes back to the personality types of the person that's on the other end of that computer. But I do believe it is true because, and it just goes back to making killer offers and killer prices and, you know, it's normally $45, but you can get it for, and again, you think about this, um, hey, can you, oh, here's one right here.

Here's a good example for those of you on YouTube. So I'm holding what's called a spin gym, right? Mm-hmm. and this is like a little fitness thing, right? And so this is a little fitness thing that sells for 40. Wow. Okay. The cost on it. The cost on it's eight. Yeah. They sold 2 million of these on home shopping network.

Right? So if, if, if my cost is eight, right? And, and, and I wanna sell them, this is another one, I sell more of the same. Right? So it's like, Hey, you bought, you, you just bought one for 40. Buy three of 'em and I'll give you two more for 40. Mm-hmm. . So it's, it's, it's by buy two, get one free, and then buy five of them.

And I'm gonna lower the price down to where it's maybe, you know, um, I don't even know what we did there, but you know, just so much significantly lower they go. And that's a smoking deal. And then you can also make it make sense because you should have one in your car. You should have one at your office.

You should take one within your travel. You should give one to your spouse. You should give one to your friend, you know, so it's a great gift. Fits all those models of what you wanna do. Mm-hmm. And, and so I'm always trying to coach people going, what is that hero product that you can do that fits with the upsells that down sells sell more of the same to get the customer in the door, cuz it's much easier to get 'em to buy again or buy something else through email marketing and that kind of stuff down the road if you have 'em as a customer.

So it's, it's always it. And I, and specifically when I'm running ads, right? Yeah. So if you're running ads, you gotta really think, what's that hero product and what, and again, stickers, I got these stickers that says I love my rescue dog. You know, and it's come get your free sticker. And then when they get to our landing page, and that's another thing, that launch cart did to increase your, your, your average order value and your, your conversions is we built in pages.

So now, rather than sending to a shopping store, we can send you to a long form sales page and it's like mm-hmm. , hey, get these stickers, just pay shipping and handling a 10 pack. Right? And now I get that credit card out and I always tell people the minute you got that credit card out, even if it's a dollar. Dollar Free trials, $7, you know, $3 for shipping. Mm-hmm. , they just became a customer versus a prospect. Yeah. And a customer's gonna read your emails, they're gonna pay more attention to you, and it's a whole different relationship the minute they pay for something.

Matt Edmundson: That's really important. It's a psychology aspect of it, isn't it? Which says if they've given me their credit card, like you say, they're a customer. And that's, that's really important. They call it the micro yes. Don't they? And, and getting people to say yes, even something small like that, um, is, is a, is a, is a big, big deal. So what, out of a, again, out of your experience here, Greg, the stuff that you found, um, how do you distinguish between what's a good product? What's a good order bump, and what's a good upsell? How would I know which products to put in which place? If that makes sense.

Greg Writer: Yeah. Mean, you know what I always tell people I'm really good at marketing. I'm probably one of the top digital marketers on the planet. I mean, when you spend 7 million of your own money on Facebook ads and Google ads and all that kind of stuff, you get really good at it. Right?

Matt Edmundson: you find a few things out. Right? You learn a few things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Greg Writer: No. When it's your money, you pay a little bit more attention.

Matt Edmundson: It's true. That's true. Yeah.

Greg Writer: Uh, but, but I, but I tell people as good as I am, I'm only right maybe half the time. The audience is always right. So it's always about split testing.

I could look at a product and go, that's a great product. It's gonna, it's fly off the shelves and it's it. So if you're not ab split testing constantly, right? Mm-hmm. , and it's always about the, it's always about the customer journey. The landing page, the product page, the checkout page, the upsells, downsell pages, and there's optimizations you can do at every single stage of the customer journey.

And they even back up to the Facebook ads. The headline on the ad. The image on the ad. The video on the ad, yeah. You know that customer journey, it's always about can I increase one or two percentage points on this, this piece of the customer journey. Then one or 2% here, and then one or 2% here, and then one or 2% here.

And now on that three or four or five step customer journey, I've increased at 7 or 8%. That's the difference between going broke and making money. Mm-hmm. So, and then it's always different. So if I'm doing a t-shirt brand, right, or I'm trying to sell some, some graphic tees because I'm a 12 year old or a 14 year old and I wanna, I love skateboarding or I love snowboarding.

Well now we use spy tools and there's spy tools where you can go look at Amazon, you can go look at Etsy and you can say, you can just type in, you know, surfboard, you know, or surfing, you know, graphic tees. Or you can type in anything and. Rescue dog graphic tees, and you'll see all the designs come up and then the spy tools can actually tell you which ones are selling, which ones aren't selling.

Then you go, okay, look at that design. That design's selling. Yeah. Okay, so let me take that design and make it mine. Like we don't ever tell people, rip it off and copy people. Make it yours. Take the same concept, make good stuff, and make it yours. And then you got at least you have an edge up to know that hey, people are actually buying that design.

Yeah. And then, and then the last piece of that question, I think that I would say is, you know, building brands, selling products, when and if you can, it's emotion. Like what can you do to bring emotion out? So there's a new client that we're, that we're gonna be onboarding into the source and sell marketplace. And I've never said this publicly, but I'm gonna share it with you.

This is so cool. These guys have a technology to print words, personalized words on roses. So, so, so I could send, I could send roses to my wife that says, I love you Mary. Happy Valentine's Mary, Merry christmas Mary. It and it's printed in white lettering on a red rose. and we're just trying to get with them.

They do this on a local, local basis, but we're trying to get them to figure out the supply side side of it so they can ship 'em all over the world and then, and then kinda hook that stuff up. Um, and they said their number one seller is, I'm sorry, people saying I'm sorry.

Matt Edmundson: Wow. So that's, wow. So I just need to figure out how to print, I'm sorry, on a red rose and I'll, I'll clean up. But, um, no, that's, that's really, really, intriguing.

Greg Writer: So you think about, you think about the emotion that product consider that does, and that also can deliver. And same thing with jewelry and gifts for Valentine's Day and birthdays and anniversaries.

And, and again, you know, we're always telling people, look, there's cyclical stuff, E-commerce, and you know this more than anybody, right? It's like we have all of our holidays. If you're not really putting stuff together, like, like we just had St. Patrick's Day, and I see a lot of people just like blip on St. Patrick's Day.

St. Patrick's Day is one of the biggest t-shirt and, and, and, and graphic tees of the season. People love those, those, those that stuff. So, and it's such an easy target to Target, right? You know, the, yeah. The Irish, you know, St. Patty Day lovers. So you gotta go after the holidays and you gotta be just real cognizant of what you're doing.

So, you know, your question is a good question, but it could be different based on holidays could be different based on time of year. But one thing that's always consistent is if you can get people to feel something, we always teach people when you're building a brand, they might forget what you say. They might forget what you do, but they'll never forget what you, how you make them feel.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, that's such a powerful statement, isn't it? Um, Greg, earlier on you touched on this, um, topic of reviews with, um, Shopify. One of the big problems with Shopify, so I'm guessing with, uh, launch cart, you've got a review system built in. how have you seen reviews affect, say, average order value and what would us, what's your strategy for getting people to leave reviews, good reviews?

Greg Writer: Well, that's a good question. So, so it it, it's critical and, and it's, and, and it's really hard for people that are new, Right, because you don't have any reviews, and so people are coming to your new store and there isn't any reviews, so it's really, really critical that you do solicit reviews. Now, what I suggest people do and.

this is getting easier and I haven't done what I'm getting ready to say. I'm, I'm gonna tell you what I do and what I've done, and I'm gonna tell you what, what's coming. Mm-hmm. . And what I do, what I've done is I've used this, this, this technology called BombBomb. And it's a video, it's a video recording program where I record a video.

So you're the owner of the store. Hey, this is Greg and I just wanna say thank you so much for purchasing. You know that Rescue Joe Coffee, it's gonna go, we're gonna help support Rescue Joe Dogs and bottle it, and I just love it. You're gonna be getting your product in about three to five days, and actually I try to time the video to hit their inbox about within 24 to 48 hours and then getting the actual product right?

Yeah. Yeah. So if you can time that. Um, then you just say, we really would appreciate review. You know, we're doing a lot of good out there. And the more reviews we'd have, it's gonna show people out there. And if you have any problems, here's our support number. I'll call, I will personally make sure you get the best white glove, you know, customer service ever.

And again, who does that? Like you, you compare yourself to every e-commerce out there. Have you ever got a video like that from the CEO or the founder of the business? And especially as a small business, we have to do stuff like that.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Yeah. totally.

Greg Writer: Now the other thing I've done, and Shopify has an app for this, and someday we'll probably integrate an app for this at launch cart, but they have a postcard system that you can pay an extra dollar or a $1.10 or whatever it was, and it will send a postcard out, you know, to that customer.

So I think that's another really great way as well. Yeah, just send a postcard out. Thank you for your order. And it's just going over and above and stepping up. But where it's going is now with ai, you can record a video. And it'll like merge your lips and you know, cuz again, the whole thing is if I record a video that's generic, it's better than nothing.

Mm-hmm. . But if I record a video that says, Hey Matt, thanks for your order and I recorded your name, they go, wow, that guy just took the time to make a video for me. Yeah. So you use these new AI tools to record a video and then boom, pop that video up to every order you got. And then, and then that link. And then, and then you can do that in your sequence to getting, you know, we have a three, three email sequence that goes out to ask for reviews. You can just put that video right in your sequence. Mm-hmm. .

Matt Edmundson: That's really clever. Really good. So what's in the other two emails? You've got, uh, your three email sequence. So one of them's with the video. What else do you think works?

Greg Writer: You know, really it's just, it's just pulling on human emotion. A as to, and again, because we're working with a lot of early stage, you know, companies and doing print on demand and stuff.

I always tell people, you gotta tell your story. Mm-hmm. You gotta do like the indoctrination emails, like who you are, what you're about. And you know, I'm a single, you know, stay at home mom and you know, I. , you know, uh, uh, you know, handicapped or I got fired cuz I didn't wanna take, you know, whatever it is, right?

Mm-hmm. , they need to try to indoctrinate their customers to an emotional pull to who they are and let 'em know that you're a human being and they're buying and supporting a human as if I walked down Grand Avenue and I went into your store and I bought something from your gift store. Yeah. So I think it's that, that's what I've, to me, the first one or two emails are always about indoctrination.

Um, of, of who you are and what your business is about and your vision. Kinda like you with this today. Now it's kind of hard to do this on, you know, we got plenty of time today, but when anybody in the e-commerce world, here's my vision of a launch cart SaaS platform, a source and sell marketplace, and banking as a system.

I've never had anyone go, well, I don't think that's gonna fly. Yeah. Everyone goes this way. You said, no, that's interesting. Ah, you're solving that problem. Wow. You can pull that off. That'd be amazing. .

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, no, absolutely, totally. It'll be amazing. Um, I'm really intrigued by it. Greg, listen. Um, where do people find out more about Launch Cart?

Uh, if they want to know more about, I'm just aware of time, so it, you know, if people listening to the show go, man, this is, this is intriguing me. Um, I'm gonna check it out. Either they're on Shopify or they're starting out, or maybe they're on a different platform like where, where, how do they find out more about what you guys are doing?

Greg Writer: Yeah. You know, it's really just launchcart.com. And we have a, a, a a nice if you search launch cart on Facebook. We have a nice community and we're always doing training. I have seven figure trainers that train every week and we have different flavors and different kinds of training and we're always doing things we can to train.

Cause we know that my biggest issue as a SaaS company and a businessman is, I have to get you onboarded and I have to get you making sales or you're gone. And I do wanna share one other thing that's really cool. Have you ever heard of the guy, the name Master P?

Matt Edmundson: No.

Greg Writer: So there's a, there's a, there's a, a hiphop guy, or he used to be a hiphop guy named Master P From, from the, from the South. New Orleans.

He sold over a hundred million albums. Wow. African American. Yeah. And he, and he became one of the biggest hiphop guys start his own label called, uh, no Limit Records. And, and then he helped launch guys like Snoop Dogg and, and, and, and 50 cents and a lot of these rap industries. And then he became a businessman, start buying up real estate and doing all kinds of stuff.

Well, he's been a friend of mine for about 12 years. Right. He just joined our board of directors. Oh, wow. So he's the new. He's the new chairman of our board. And his influence is, is, is significant. So in honor of him joining our chairman of our board, we created this thing called the Chairman's Special.

And the chairman's special is you can get, we have a, we have our free plan. Our $27 month plan, our $97 month plan, and our $297 month plan mm-hmm. . And there's different levels of all the funnels and all the, all the bells and whistles you get as you go up that ladder, that paywall. But the $297 plan, obviously is the best plan.

Mm-hmm. . So in honor of him joining, we created the 85% off the $297 plan. So right now, Um, you can get the $297 plan for $43 97 cents a month, and we're gonna do that for the first 2023 people that sign up to commemorate 2023, the year 2023. . Wow. So it's a smoking deal. And um, and, and like we're really committed to building the faster, better, higher converting e-commerce platform.

And, and, and you know, and in your opening you talked about your little recommendation of the other thing. We also have a friend of mine who has this company called LTV Numbers, and we're gonna be integrating some lifetime value calculation figures into our platform. And they guarantee you they'll be the absolute best.

That's ever been put into an e-commerce platform because I'm a numbers guy and I always recognize if you can't track it, you can't optimize it. So we're gonna continue to build things that, that help people sell more. We wanna empower entrepreneurs, we wanna empower communities, we wanna empower countries, and we wanna build something significant and make a difference in the world.

Matt Edmundson: Fantastic. Fantastic. Well go get your, uh, be one of the 2000 people that get that smoking hot, uh, deal. The chairman special, I assume, um, Greg, that's grandfathering that rate. Is that, is that always gonna be 85% off? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Of course, of course. Yeah. Check it out. Now, Greg, how do people reach you? How do they connect with you if they want to do that?

Greg Writer: You know, my, my name is Greg Writer and everyone is like, they think when I have the name tags at events, it's like, oh, are you a writer? And I go, yeah, it'll be written. I'm like, but I haven't written anything. Right.

Matt Edmundson: SaaS platform.

Greg Writer: Uh, yeah, exactly. So it, it's, it's gregwriter.com. I'm on Twitter, I'm on Instagram, on Facebook.

I'm everywhere. I'm very accessible. I've been online for, since 1997. So, I'm out there and I'm communicating and doing everything I can to empower and, and just share and help people cuz I believe what Zig Zigler told me and taught me in the early eighties, help enough people get what they want and you'll get what you want.

And I really do believe that and I live it.

Matt Edmundson: Absolutely. Zig Zigler. What a legend. Uh, yeah. I, I love that guy. Fell in love with him when I was an early entrepreneur. Just absorbed all of his tapes, which is what they were back then, weren't they? You know, you got the tapes. Yeah. Uh, . You had to listen to those.

Uh, listen, Greg, thanks for coming on the show, man. Super excited to hear what you guys are doing, love your passion, uh, and what you've got going on and your vision for the future. That's awesome. And, um, I hope it goes super well. Maybe we'll get you back on the show in about, I guess about six, 12 months time. You can tell us how it's all going and bring some great stories, I guess.

Greg Writer: I, I love it. I appreciate it. Appreciate you and I always tell people, do what I do. Wake up every day with an attitude, a gratitude, which is something I learnt from Jim Rohn. I think. And, and then, and then I added this. Tell somebody you love them and you'll have a better day.

Matt Edmundson: That's very true. I I like that one. I do like that one. That's awesome. Fantastic. There you have a great conversation with Greg. Big thanks to Greg again for joining me today. Also, a big shout out to today's shows sponsor, the e-commerce cohort. Remember to check out their free online training at ecommercecycles.com.

Also be sure to follow the e-commerce podcast wherever you get your podcast from because we have got some more great conversations lined up and I don't want you to miss any of them. Yes, I don't. So make sure you sign up. And in case no one has told you yet today, you are awesome. Created awesome. And it's just a burden you have to bear. Greg has to bear it. I have to bear it. And you, dear listener, have gotta bear it as well.

Now, the E-Commerce podcast is produced by Aurion Media. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app. The team that makes this show possible is Sadaf Beynon, Estella Robin and Tanya Hutsuliak. Our theme song was written by Josh Edmundson, and as I mentioned, if you would like to read the transcript or show notes, head over to the website ecommercepodcast.net. And if you're there and you haven't done so already, sign up to the newsletter and get all of this good stuff straight to your inbox for free.

Now that's it from me. That's it from Greg. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.