Choosing the Right eCommerce Platform | Amandeep Singh

Matt Edmundson [0:05 - 3:20]: Welcome to the eCommerce podcast. My name is Matt Edmundson and it is great to be with you today, chatting about all things eCommerce. That's what we're doing. How do we do eCommerce? How do we do this whole online thing? How do we get our stores to be bigger, better, and more awesome than they are today? That's the big question. And to help me do that, I'm speaking with Aman Amandeep Singh all the way from California, which at the time of recording, he's in a very sunny climate and I'm in quite a dark climate, just with time zone differences. We're going to be chatting about eCommerce and what he's learned over the last few years. So don't go anywhere. It's going to be great. I'm looking forward to this conversation. A very warm welcome to you. If this is your first time with us here on the eCommerce podcast, I'm just always amazed at the stats getting new listeners every week. If I'm honest with you, it strikes my ego slightly that more and more people are listening to the show. I'm not going to lie, I do enjoy looking at the numbers going, yes, yeah, it's fine, right? People are obviously listening. And you know, it's great that we get new folks along as well. And part of me is also amazed that actually people want to come and listen to me talk about eCommerce. But that's another story. It's great that you're here. A very warm welcome to you. Make sure you do all that like and subscribe and all that sort of good stuff to stay connected with what's going on. If you head over to the website, if you've not seen it already, ecommercepodcast.net comma, you can sign up to the newsletter and every week we will send you all the links, notes and everything from the show straight to your inbox, all for free. So make sure you get that as well. And of course, if you're an avid listener to the podcast, thanks for coming back. And for those who have reached out to me recently on LinkedIn and through Instagram, genuinely love it and even email, I've had so many people reach out to me the last couple weeks, which has been great from all over the world, including Australia, the Philippines, the states, the UK, I mean, everywhere around the world. So it's been great to connect with some new people. If you'd like to find me on social mediatedmonson, connect with me on LinkedIn or social media, would love to connect with you. Just let me know what you're doing. Send me a link to your store. I would love to see it. Anyway, shall we talk to today's guest? I think we should. Amandeep Singh from Cronix, which I think is quite an interesting name. I'm gonna ask you in a minute, Aman, about the name of your company, which is a full service eCommerce agency. You yourself has been involved in eCommerce for 13 years. And as we were talking before, the record button, if anyone's looking at this on YouTube and wondering what that is behind you, that is in fact a cricket jersey. And for our american cousins, cricket is a sport that we play well, basically in England, India, Pakistan, Australia. The Kiwis like to play it as well, don't they? There's a few countries left that like to play cricket and we all like to think we're pretty good at it. Except for I'm british and occasionally we do. Well, that's about it. But Aman, welcome to the show, man. Great to have you here. Thanks for joining me. How are we doing? You look. It's very sunny looking where you are.

Amandeep Singh [3:20 - 4:01]: Yes, good. It's good. So I'm in northern California here. The weather is pretty good. It's not hot, not cold, so it's pretty, pretty chill weather over there. And so my wife gifted me this, by the way, this is Jersey India team. I love cricket. And this time World cup was happening in the US. You know, like, it's US and West Indies. So it was a quite a bit of a craze. And, you know, in the India versus Pakistan match. And I can. I also saw, like, the US team basically beaten Pakistan and they qualified for the, you know, the super eight. So that was a big deal. Like a us cricket team also qualified for the World cup and then they reached to the supra over there. So that was interesting.

Matt Edmundson [4:01 - 4:25]: Yeah, yeah, no doubt, no doubt. I mean, I. I have to be honest, I don't really follow cricket that much. Yeah, I do watch the World cup every now and again. And ironically, I live opposite a cricket field. So I stand at the front of my house and I look out and there's a cricket field in front of me. An old cricket club. It's been there hundreds of years, which is a beautiful thing in the middle of a city. It means no one can build on it. You know, it's part of the reason why I got the house. No one's gonna build a house.

Amandeep Singh [4:26 - 4:27]: That's nice.

Matt Edmundson [4:27 - 4:39]: Yeah. But I, you know, watch cricket and going to see the neighbors over there and sit down. We enjoy a glass of wine watching. I still don't really know what's going on, to be fair. What I do know is there is a bit of a rivalry between India and Pakistan.

Amandeep Singh [4:40 - 4:46]: Pretty strong, actually. Like ashes in England versus the UK. Right, Australia. Sorry.

Matt Edmundson [4:46 - 5:18]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The English, Liverpool, Manchester United, if you go to football or soccer, big rivalry there, but, yeah, India, Pakistan, always a big rivalry. And Stadaf, who is the producer of this show, who you have met, is from Pakistan via Canada and now lives in Liverpool. I mean, talk about international. And the only time I ever really hear her talk about sport is when Pakistan and India are playing in the cricket, which is really quite funny. So, yeah. And I've met her brother, who's also a big cricket fan as well, so, yeah, yeah. Do you play?

Amandeep Singh [5:18 - 5:35]: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I will not prevent anybody else just for the entertainment kind of thing. But here, you know, it's not like too many people out there who might, you know, with whom I can play. But I used to play a lot. I used to play football and cricket. Yeah. And in the US, we call it soccer, so, yeah, I think, yeah, yeah.

Matt Edmundson [5:36 - 5:38]: They're just wrong, aren't they?

Amandeep Singh [5:39 - 5:40]: Yeah.

Matt Edmundson [5:40 - 6:28]: I mean, I don't like to often criticize my american cousins. You know, I've lived in the states for a while myself. There are a few things I think, you know, they've got wrong. And it's not soccer, it is football. We do play it with our feet. I just want to point that out and say, I've just offended half the listeners. They're all like, rubbish. Terribly sorry. Do come back. But let's talk about eCommerce. Maybe let's get to safer grounds where I don't offend anybody. You were saying before we hit the record button that you were in an agency for a while, and more recently you've sort of taken the plunge and you setting up. That's not even a word. You set up chronic, your own agency. What made you take the plunge? But why? I mean, I. Why?

Amandeep Singh [6:29 - 7:56]: Yeah, I think there were a few different reasons. Like, I was working at the previous company for around eleven years, so it was a long time, you know, like starting a company from scratch over there, like, you know, 13 people, and then, you know, growing the department to around, you know, 300 people over there. But, yeah, I was managing around 100 people. I was so busy, you know, wasn't getting time to learn anything new. And I feel like, you know, I come from a development background, so, you know, there's always feeling that, man, you're gonna get behind if you're not keeping yourself up to date. Right. So the idea was to basically, basically start something on my own where I can have better control on my time and can basically learn more platforms, new technologies and experiment few things and it will be on my own risk. I am not really putting anyone else risk or anyone else job or anything risk. So that was kind of the idea that just to get a bit of a time for myself. And I also believe in educational art. So I, apart from Cronix, I basically do two batches of developers every year where I train them on development, programming and web standards and all the stuff. So that's also very close to my heart. I'm trying to work with the universities and the colleges close to my areas to see how we can empower the college students and have them with more practical knowledge as well. So yeah, so just a bit more freedom, you know.

Matt Edmundson [7:56 - 8:17]: Yeah, I love this. I'm listening to you talk and I know we're not talking here about setting up a business, but I'm intrigued by something you said. You sort of left the agency because you wanted to be more in control of your time. And I'm thinking, yeah, but when you start up a business, the last thing you have is control of your time, right? I mean, yeah, yeah. So I'm curious, how did you find it?

Amandeep Singh [8:17 - 9:17]: Yeah, I mean the thing is, maybe more decision making was also the reason as well, because, you know, for example, I always, there was always, you know, some kind of, in a developer's mind like, you know, you always want to go to some kind of a product development, you know, plugin development, things like that. But you know there is, there are so many boundages over there like, you know, you have to figure out, okay, what's the current structure looks like and everything. And then you know, on our side now my side, you know, I can put the money, risk it whether it works or not, it is my own money. Right. So it's that kind of a decision making. But, but yeah, you know, now in the previous agency there was some kind of, you know, time tracking, you have to be there for all the stuff, but now I have better control. Okay, well you know, if I need to take a vacation for something, I can do it, you know, I don't need to take a permission from someone. Right. So, so yeah, that was, you know, a few of the things kind of stuff, but yeah, yeah, decision making, you know, and the time control kind of stuff is definitely helpful.

Matt Edmundson [9:17 - 10:39]: Yeah, I get the decision making. I do. I'm being slightly facetious, having run my own business for a very long time. I don't even, I don't even know how long I've lost count. But I am very aware that I have deluded myself into the belief that I have the power to make all the decisions and that's why I keep going. But yeah, it's very, very funny. So let's talk about eCommerce. And I mean, obviously you've been around for a while and I was browsing your website earlier and we were talking about this again before we hit the record button. You've, you're connected and partners with quite a few of the big platforms, so bigcommerce, Shopify and so on and so forth. And one of the questions we get asked a lot, and I'm really keen to ask you this question, Aman, because I think you'll probably have some really interesting insight into it. Which eCommerce platform should I use now that I, I've hesitated to ask previous guests this question because normally when we have them on, they'll be like a shopify partner or do you know what I mean? They'll have nailed their colors to a specific mass. So they're going to that question in an obvious way, whereas you seem to be a bit more, well, a bit more ambidextrous, I suppose, is one way to describe it. So I'm kind of curious, how would you help somebody who is starting out in eCommerce and they're going, what's the best platform to start with?

Amandeep Singh [10:39 - 13:03]: Yeah, I think, you know, so I started my journey like, you know, very older platforms, like, you know, Os commerce, x card, then card, open card, you know, and all the stuff. And now, you know, of course Magento and Woocommerce. And then slowly the shift happened toward SaaS eCommerce platform. People don't want to bother about, what do you call it, these hosting, the security, the upgrades and everything. So I think the original, the SaaS ecommerce platform really took over kind of thing. So there is not a one answer I can give it. What ecommerce platform is best? I think it's depending upon the use case. But what I have in the past, let's say two, three years ago, but now every ecommerce platform is kind of growing quite a bit. But if someone is looking for a quick eCommerce site, not looking for agencies help, they just want to get started, launch the website with a nicer design, nicer themes, like a fashion, clothing brand, and don't have too much complex requirements. Shopify is a good platform to go with. It's just shopify big commerce. But yeah, if you want to do some drag and drop, you know, Shopify customer customizer is pretty good. There's pretty good community as well. So that's like, you know, but if you are looking for a bit more like a b two b side of things. Shopify has also done the b two b as well now, but it is expensive, you know, $2,500 per month or something like that. So. So yeah, probably then, you know, if you're looking for cheaper version of the b two b where then like a low cost, but will give you good enough starting b two b functionality, then go with the big commerce, you know, like in a pro advanced span, you will get a pretty good big commerce, you know, features which will give you filters by default, which will give you customer groups and everything. So you will be. And big commerce promotion engine is pretty good. So that is like in a good starting point. If you very early age b two b and b two c in a single site. And then if you're looking for an advanced b two b, then you can go with the big commercial b two b edition which is not that expensive either. And you will have much more b two b functionality like company management, you know, hierarchy and everything. Big commerce, just what he calls it. There was a big summit. I was also at the big summit as well. Recent conference by bigcommerce. They're launching pretty cool things on the b two b side of things. So. Yeah, that's pretty good.

Matt Edmundson [13:03 - 14:55]: Yeah, I heard that. It's an interesting one. Again, I thank you for your answer, and I appreciate the sort of the different breakdown. There we were. I don't know if I've mentioned this on the podcast before or not. Forgive me if I have, dear listener. I remember who I've told what story to, if I'm honest with you. We wanted to this year launch a new skincare brand. Okay? So we had a beauty business. We sold it, and that was a few years ago. We've got this idea for a beauty brand now. It's been long enough since we sold it where I can get back involved in the beauty business. And I'm like, right, let's do this product. And I said to the team, you know, we're having conversations about it, yeah, let's go get a website. And so the default in our head was, and I didn't really think about it, which is, you know, shame on me, given what I actually know and what I do for a thing. Yeah. We're like, let's just go to Shopify because it's going to be fairly straightforward and easy. And I said, there's a, there's an agency here in Liverpool, very good friends of mine called them up. Do you fancy doing me mates rates? And they're like, sure, man. So I didn't even have to do any of the design work. Guy called Tony Richardson there just legend of a guy called him up, Tony, he said, I saw, yeah, it's not a problem. And so we very cheaply, we're going to get the Shopify site. And then he messaged Jen, who was heading up the project, and he said, shopify, I'm going to let you sell the products that you've got to sell. So, yeah, which I was a bit taken back by because there are products similar being sold on Shopify sites, mostly Shopify. Again, no, you can't sell this on our website. And then when you looked into stripe a little bit, they were like, oh no, you can't sell that on this website. There's obviously some beauty products and supplement products which they have issue with, lyrical about whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. But that really struck me as quite interesting that shopify now going down this.

Amandeep Singh [14:55 - 15:38]: Road of, yeah, I think any SaaS platform, you know, like basically that's the difference, you know, like a SaaS platform and self hosted platform, right? Like, or a commerce shop where you can host and, you know, woocommerce, Magento and everything. So where you get the full freedom to do whatever you want to do it. Right. And you're in SAS platform, you are bound to their, you know, terms and conditions, right. So there was an instance where, you know, Shopify decided like, you know, they won't allow CBD products kind of stuff and then people migrated to bigcommerce because big allowed that time kind of stuff and they still allow it. So, yeah, some of the high risk brands who, you know, shop it. The thing reason is I believe Shopify cannot allow it because of shopify payments. Like the payment processing.

Matt Edmundson [15:38 - 15:38]: Yeah.

Amandeep Singh [15:38 - 17:03]: So they don't process the high risk, you know, they don't really allow the high risk product kind of thing over there. So Shopify payments either. You have to go with something different payment provider. So that's why I think it's a, in that, in those kind of scenarios, if you feel like you have to go with some other payment provider, you know, just recently, you know, I was working with almost pretty, like a pretty expensive deal and they needed custom payment integration. Shopify was not the answer for them. Right. Like I was working with a billion dollar client earlier and they had something as well with the shop. You know, they needed some kind of custom payment integration. You know, we were working with the Shopify steam and everything, but they were reluctant to do kind of, you know, checkout customization at that point of a time. So, yeah, I think when you want a bit more flexibility, freedom, for sure, you know, you have platforms like Shopware or commerce for b two B. You know, you have Magento as well, have woocommerce as well. So it's a choice what kind of industry you are in, what kind of features you're looking for, and then decide the platform accordingly. I don't go with them. Whenever I am coding any project, I make sure that I do provide them at least two choices and pros and cons of each choices. Like, okay, well, and then go from there.

Matt Edmundson [17:03 - 17:25]: Yeah, that's first. Fantastic. And so the big ones to think about, if you're thinking about starting an eCommerce business, the platforms to look at, you've mentioned Shopify, you've mentioned bigcommerce. You've mentioned Woocommerce, which is part of the WordPress platform. Yeah, you've mentioned Magento, which I probably wouldn't look at if you were starting.

Amandeep Singh [17:25 - 17:26]: Yeah.

Matt Edmundson [17:28 - 17:55]: In fact, I know all of disrespect to Magenta. I don't know if I would actually look at Magenta at all ever again. But that's just me. Bad experiences. We actually have our own bespoke platform, which again, I don't think you need if you're starting a business. What do you think? I'm curious if you've ever played around with things like Squarespace or Wix. A lot of these sort of website builders now that offer some sort of basic functionality.

Amandeep Singh [17:56 - 19:36]: Yes, squarespace, I am a book too, but, you know, in the school I have worked the squarespace as, what do you call it, you know, a CMS kind of thing as an alternative to WordPress, Wix, you know, I have used wix eCommerce. I think it's some of the migrations we are doing from, you know, wix to, what do you call it, man? Shopify or bigcommerce or shopline kind of thing. So the, some of the challenges, you know, which we came across with the Wix was some of the apps which are available, you know, the true ecommerce platforms like big commerce and Shopify or, you know, shopline or things like that, they were not available on a wix, you know, or they were not even supporting Wix quite a bit and then people had some kind of, you know, issues on that sort of a thing. And I think the URL structure wasn't very well but that, you know, you can fix it if you do very well, nicely develop your website. But yeah, I think when it comes to the true ecommerce platform, if you're looking for, if you're an eCommerce business looking for a bit more ecommerce functionality, then I would probably prefer to go with the actual ecommerce platform where CMS take a secondary, secondary role. Yeah, but then, you know, the things are also coming up as well. Now. Ecommerce platforms are also investing a lot in a, you know, CMS side of things as well. You know, like Shopify released meta objects as well. They are doing, you know, Utopia and everything as well. Their customizer is pretty powerful now and big commerce is also releasing, you know, makes swift as well, things like that. So, so yeah, I think if someone just want to test the idea, Vix is not a bad solution. Can, I think there's only one product they're selling, you know, that's fine, but if there's someone that has a catalog of 110,000 products or something.

Matt Edmundson [19:36 - 19:37]: Yeah, good luck.

Amandeep Singh [19:37 - 19:39]: Maybe look for the wix. Yeah, yeah.

Matt Edmundson [19:41 - 19:53]: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think it's, they're an interesting place to experiment. I don't think you, you want to be there long term and I don't think you want to be there if you're selling more than a handful of products.

Amandeep Singh [19:53 - 19:54]: Yeah.

Matt Edmundson [19:54 - 20:05]: Or even if you really want to give options on the products and stuff like that. But, yeah, I think Shopify still seems to be king, doesn't it? And it sort of still seems to be wearing that crown for, yeah.

Amandeep Singh [20:05 - 20:36]: Small to medium, I would say. Yeah. But for enterprises, you know, like when they, when they, you know, get into a quilt, you need a custom shipping, you need a custom tax, you know, integration, you need a custom payment and all the stuff. Then you know, you need to look into that kind of stuff or you have very complex product options, you know, or pricing rules or discounts rule kind of stuff. That's, that's where, you know, you need to then start looking with broader aspect of it. Like, I don't want people to just say, well, yeah, Shopify is this one stop solution for everything. It is not, you know, so.

Matt Edmundson [20:37 - 20:38]: Got its issues.

Amandeep Singh [20:38 - 20:39]: Yeah, yeah, definitely, you know. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson [20:40 - 20:44]: Tell me about, a little bit about shopline, almost the new kid on the block.

Amandeep Singh [20:44 - 20:45]: Yeah.

Matt Edmundson [20:45 - 20:47]: Not actually played around with myself.

Amandeep Singh [20:47 - 22:42]: Well, shelf line, you know, basically. Surprisingly, this is getting pretty popular in the UK, actually. You know, it is taking off. Yeah, yeah, in the UK it is getting pretty popular. And we are working with some of the UK agencies and brands actually as well, directly where, you know, we are developing some of this sites in there. Shopping is very similar to shopify in general. Like, you know, if you are. If you are familiar with the shopify, you can definitely know working shopline as well. The framework they're using is kind of a handlebars, which is stencil, which became a handlebars as well. So it's similar to that as well. So the entry to the development is not difficult either. But yeah, so it's kind of the internal layout. The back end is very similar to shopify. The programming is kind of a handlebars, which is J's framework. So that's not an I difficult either to learn. And I think the only aspect here, well, what they have done here a little bit different is that they have developed kind of modular approach. They are, you know, let's say you want a b two b sort of thing. You are going with the b two b app or you are looking for a bit more discounting. So they have done so many separate small little module that you can plug and play kind of stuff to add additional functionality to the native platform itself, you know, so you're not going with a third party Java, J's Ajax request and all the stuff. So. So that has a little bit of, you know, you know, pros and cons as well. Like, you know, it is native, but then it also, what do you call, say you have to install an app, basically native apps, but they are spending a lot of, like, I think a video eCommerce kind of thing, you know, which, which is pretty interesting. Like they have a default integration, the tick tock. They have an integration with the TikTok as well. So yeah, they're spending a lot on the videCommercee.

Matt Edmundson [22:42 - 22:55]: Yeah, they are. And they seem to be sponsoring a fair few things and they're definitely appearing more and more on my feed and I'm kind of curious about. I should probably just set up a site with them actually and have a little bit of play.

Amandeep Singh [22:55 - 22:56]: Yeah.

Matt Edmundson [22:56 - 23:02]: And to see what's going on. I mean, would you rate them? Are they any good? I mean, obviously you're a partner with them, but are they any good?

Amandeep Singh [23:02 - 23:47]: Yeah, I mean we launched only four sites for the shopline, so they're pretty good. Like they migrate from Shopify to shopline, which is pretty interesting. So, yeah, they think they are. Also, they have better rates as computer shopify, I guess, you know. Well, you have to go with that to be competitive, I guess, you know, otherwise you will not survive. But they were pretty flexible, you know, so we had to integrate some kind of a custom payment integration within the shop, Shopland checkout. You know, they worked pretty closely with us and we were able to do it so it wasn't as closed as Shopify. So you, if you will, you know, check any shopping website, it will look very similar to Shopify. But they did allow us to customize the checkout, which is pretty interesting.

Matt Edmundson [23:47 - 23:52]: Very good. Well, we're gonna have a little play. I wonder if they'll let me sell my beauty products. We should find out.

Amandeep Singh [23:52 - 23:54]: Oh, yeah, for sure. I guess they will do. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson [23:54 - 23:57]: I'll just give them a ring, say, don't you know who I am?

Amandeep Singh [23:58 - 23:59]: Yeah.

Matt Edmundson [23:59 - 24:17]: And they'll go, no, I've no idea, Matt. Fair play. Well, that's really fascinating, you know, you sort of talking about all of these things. What I have noticed about your site, though, Aman, is that you only are partnered with one eCommerce email provider, which is klaviyo.

Amandeep Singh [24:17 - 24:18]: Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson [24:18 - 24:22]: So you do all the different eCommerce platforms, but I'm just doing Klaviyo.

Amandeep Singh [24:22 - 25:00]: Yeah, no, we have, we have. I think we need to probably update our website, but, yeah, we work with the Klaviyo Mailchimp omnisend and we also work with Zoho email campaigns as well. So it's just like, you probably need to update it. Those are like, not very, you know, currently. So we are very, you know, as I'm a developer. Right. So I come from development background. So we were very, like a developer focused company in the beginning, but now we are trying to go into, like, a bit more digital marketing as well. So we are trying to partner with the Klaviyo omniscient, some other, you know, solutions as well to, you know, grow digital marketing department as well.

Matt Edmundson [25:00 - 25:18]: Very good. Very good. Well, no, thank you for that. I'm kind of curious. You've obviously been playing around with different platforms. Thank you for your insight. What are some of the things. What are some of the trends that you're seeing at the moment in eCommerce? What are some of the things which are coming up time and time again with all your clients?

Amandeep Singh [25:18 - 25:41]: Yeah, I would say now I think that the search is pretty critical happening with the b two B especially as well. So not only the b two c, which is, you know, everyone has a pretty nice search over there usually. But for the b two B, you also need to probably modernize your tech stack over there. So I think you need to make sure your search is pretty good.

Matt Edmundson [25:41 - 25:43]: Do you mean on a site search or.

Amandeep Singh [25:43 - 26:47]: Yeah, on a site search, yeah, on site search. On site search. So that's some of the critical functionality which I can think of. The omnichannel is another one which is, I guess everyone wants to be everywhere. It's not everyone wants to be everywhere, but everyone probably needs to be everywhere or you know, or multiple places at least to be selling kind of stuff. So, you know, there is another aspect, you know, earlier what was happening is a lot of ecommerce sites were ignoring content, I guess, or ecommerce platforms were ignoring content set of things which, you know, shopify for a long period of time. Probably still to some extent, you know, didn't invest too much on a blog set of things. Right. And similar to Bigcommerce as well, you know, they didn't know one so many platform, even shopline. They didn't have a very sophisticated blog publishing tools. So people, you know, adopted like very different ways to handle it. You know, either page fly in Shogun or things like that.

Matt Edmundson [26:47 - 26:47]: Yeah.

Amandeep Singh [26:47 - 27:11]: Which are like a J's focused tools and you know, of course it works for sure, but, but, yeah, but I think now I am seeing a bit of a shift by either these platforms or some of the extension or some of the new things are coming up which is a content pages and the blog pages or like better landing pages, you know.

Matt Edmundson [27:11 - 27:12]: Yeah.

Amandeep Singh [27:12 - 28:08]: Using what you call say, let's say pack digital using a makeshift by Bigcommerce or become has just recently acquired makes Swift as well, which is pretty interesting. So now you are basically able to create a bit more like a content pages on your product, a better landing page product, and then you can also do better blog pages as well which are kind of essential for your, what do you call it, your SEO and everything as well. So yeah, that's I think is another shift I'm seeing then another aspect could be the chat boards like getting more and more smarter as well nowadays. So that's one. And personalization is a good one as well. But now every, everyone, not everyone, but a lot of times people are saying like AI, personalization, this and that recommendation engine has been there for forever.

Matt Edmundson [28:09 - 28:14]: It's not actually AI, is it? Yeah, you know, tomato, tomato.

Amandeep Singh [28:14 - 28:20]: Yeah, yeah. It has been like wendish ninja forever, you know, better learning has been there forever.

Matt Edmundson [28:20 - 28:53]: Yeah, let's just throw the word AI in front of it and it'll start selling. That's what I've noticed a lot of companies doing now. We've got this tech now on board it. Let's just put the word AI in. Everyone's buying it now. It's a beautiful thing. Let's go, if I can, let's go over some of those. Let's go back to the content one, you mentioned a content. Now I, having had both the pleasure and misfortune of trying to sell products on Amazon, fully understand what you mean when you use the word a content. So let's explain for those that may be new to ecommerce or may never have sold on Amazon, may never have heard this phrase, what a plus content is.

Amandeep Singh [28:53 - 29:19]: Yeah, I would say like, you know, in general, a lot of time you will notice that, you know, the product pages, whenever you visit an eCommerce site, there is, it's very thin content. Thin content. Meaning I can just, the photos of the product, the pricing and a small little description really, which doesn't really add any value. Okay. Like doesn't it explain the benefits of the product, doesn't explain the use cases of the product kind of stuff, you know, or doesn't provide any kind of comparison, things like that.

Matt Edmundson [29:19 - 29:19]: Yeah.

Amandeep Singh [29:20 - 30:54]: So, so I think especially, at least, at least for your best selling products, you should invest some time to make those product pages, you know, a bit more what you call, say the content should be a bit more self explanatory which will reduce your customer queries as well, which will make a decision making quickly as well for the people who are basically, you know, visiting the product page kind of stuff. So yeah, I mean add, have a nice product photos over there. If have, you know, you have the videos, add a videos as well. Explain the use cases. Explain the benefits as well because sometimes people cannot, you know, think about how this product can be used as well, you know, in all different use cases. So try to do that. And you know, in a, in a Amazon you will probably, I mean everyone probably see that there's a photos with the, what do you call, say somebody, I don't know how to call it, like, yeah, they have some kind of, you know, watermarks or explaining the use cases on the product gallery as well. So you know, you can add something like that as well. So yeah, you know, just, and also adding FAQ is very helpful as well which will then get indexed in, what do you call it in the search engine which will be helpful, you know, having a photo reviews that could be as well. So, yeah, I mean, basically provide bit more information on the product, just not, I mean if you're a, if you're a brand, like a nike or something even, they provide a pretty nice information these days. They're not looking for just a, like a two, three sentence short copy and that's it. They are, you know, adding bit more nicer layout, nicer information over there so that people can make a good decision as well.

Matt Edmundson [30:54 - 32:19]: So. Yeah, yeah, that's a really interesting point, isn't it? And I think one of the things that you, that I saw, I don't see it as much these days. I used to see a lot of people who would buy, I don't know, a widget from a company over here and they would sell the widget on their website. But you know, 10,000 other people are selling that same widget on their website and they copy and paste the images from the manufacturer, they copy and paste the text and the text is sparse because the manufacturer goes, it's a widget. They don't care about selling it to the end customer, they just care about selling it to you. And so it was all a bit bland, all a bit beige, all a bit sort of boring, really. And I remember when we had the beauty website, one of the things that we intentionally did was we took our own photographs, we wrote our own copy, our own sales copy about that product. We would expand on things, would add things in there. We'd be a bit playful, do you know what I mean? There's all those kind of things that we bought into it. And so conversely, I think our conversion rate went up as a result. Amazon started a few years ago doing a content where they had their traditional page with the bits and bobs of information on there. Then if you wanted to, you could upgrade whatever your, you know, your subscription with them was or whatever your deal was with Amazon to a plus content, like you say, where you can start adding faqs, I can start adding better images, I can start adding comparison charts.

Amandeep Singh [32:19 - 32:20]: Yeah.

Matt Edmundson [32:20 - 32:27]: And the more education, the more information we seem to give people on the product page, the more conversions seem to go up.

Amandeep Singh [32:28 - 32:30]: Yeah, I think you explained it pretty nicely. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson [32:30 - 33:06]: Thank you. So what I find interesting here is your comments then about a content better landing pages, you know, so if you're bringing someone in from an ad, you don't necessarily have to send them to your product page. You can send them to a landing page specifically connected to that ad. Again, all increases conversion that shopify as good as they have been and so on and so forth have been a bit slow in some respects in giving you the ability and the flexibility to create these pages. And that is now coming. That's what I find interesting is it seems to have taken a little bit of time to catch up.

Amandeep Singh [33:06 - 34:06]: Yeah, I think now after releasing the Metafield and meta objects. Earlier people used to use metafields as apps and everything, but now it's native within the dashboard over there. So that's a bit more easier to add, bit more content, like additional content. And the meta object, it also basically helps quite a bit. Let's say you have a size chart, I kind of stuff, and you have 6000, 5000 products and now, but you just have five different types of products and five size chart will going to be applied to all those different, you know, 5000 products. So now you create one, you know, size shard type over there in a meta object and just assign it to, you know, relevant products. So now you have one too many relationship, right? We are meta objects. So, so that means if you are making some changes, it will be, you know, reflected across all those relevant products over there. So that's, that's pretty good, I guess, you know, so I think a meta object, meta field are pretty good addition in Shopify. Yeah, that's great.

Matt Edmundson [34:06 - 35:30]: Now one of the ways that you can do this, dear listener, one of the things that I was playing, a friend of mine, he was launching a website. What was the product he was putting on there? He asked me what I thought it was, but airsoft, you know, these sort of bb gun type things. And he was asking me what I thought and I was a bit like the product copy is just a bit boring, isn't it? So all I did was we just went over to chat GPT, you know, and said, listen, take this product copy, rewrite it, but I want you to write it to men in their early twenties who think they're James Bond. And I, and this was a language that I used and I want you to be a bit playful. Yeah, but I want you to talk to them as though they are James Bond. And Jeremy and Ray write it as such. And it came up with some wonderful idea. I mean it still needed a bit of editing. Yeah, but you could see instantly the transformational change. Do you know what I mean? Just in terms of, well, let's just play around with this a little bit because the assumption was actually anybody that's doing airsoft probably wants to be James Bond, especially if they're british, right? So let's pretend they are. And I think it was such a wonderful exercise. And actually, we just did it on the fly on Zoom together, and he went away and rewrote his product copy. Yeah, yeah, I. So if you want to do good product copy, just, and sort of have a better fun with it, think about who your target audience is.

Amandeep Singh [35:31 - 35:51]: That's pretty good point. Yeah, that's pretty, that's pretty good point. I know. Like, I think, yeah, the chat GP, these AI tool gives you a good blueprint, kind of, you know, framework to write and then gives you a bit more ideas. Then you can write, you know, the way that you write as well. But, yeah, I think it's a good suggestion, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Edmundson [35:51 - 36:05]: Absolutely. Yeah, do that. Just please make your product copy interesting. So let's talk about the omnichannel thing that you mentioned, because for years, omnichannel just meant, well, I'm gonna sell it in online and I'm gonna sell it in my shop.

Amandeep Singh [36:05 - 36:07]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Edmundson [36:08 - 36:17]: But I think it needs, it means a little bit more than that now. So what, what are you seeing as some of the key channels people need to think about exploiting?

Amandeep Singh [36:18 - 37:53]: Yeah, I think I'm seeing for sure. Earlier people used to be like, okay, whether they're online, you know, the online store, and then they will be going with Amazon. But, you know, I'm seeing more and more trend. Like, people are going with the se, people are going, the target people are going to Walmart, you know, so, yeah, I mean, especially for b, two c kind of stuff, you know, that's kind of happening. You know, also the affiliate networks as well, that you're basically publishing your product feed. So. Yeah, and also the TikTok shop, the social media channel as well. Instagram shop, TikTok shop kind of thing. Surprisingly. I mean, yeah, the TikTok shop, I. I don't think so. When the, well, when the Instagram shop went live, some of the brands that I worked with, I didn't see too much attraction on Instagram in terms of, you know, purchase and all the stuff. Yeah, I mean, for sure, Instagram did a ad and did a brand awareness and, you know, you probably got benefited from the purchase over there, but not in a, in an Instagram shop, but in a TikTok. People are buying within TikTok. I see more, what do you call, say, no trend over there that people are actually buying within tick tock. And then, of course, you have to fulfill and everything. So that's, that's a bit surprising that how maybe people are a bit more confident now in buying social commerce kind of stuff, but, yeah, so, so, yeah, if you're a fashion brand, I mean, not a fashion, like, you know, any brand, which consumer friendly brand, which you feel like, you know, could be a good, good source over there. So, yeah, I think TikTok is a pretty good channel to sell as well. Hopefully you just won it. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson [37:53 - 39:45]: Well, it's interesting. I mean, you're not the first person to mention TikTok shop. Yeah. And for the longest time, I mean, we're just about to launch another product on TikTok shop. And it's some products, like everything, they're easy to get set up on TikTok. Some products, not so much. And I would agree. I think it's an interesting platform. I do like you have questions over whether the US will actually ban TikTok. I think that would be a really interesting play if they did, how they would enforce that, I have no idea, but I think it'll be a really interesting play. But that the US is, what, 30% of my market, there's still 70% out there that I can sell to using TikTok. Right. So I'm kind of curious to see how that one works. So, like you say, the obvious ones, Amazon, TikTok. It's interesting what you say about Instagram shop, because social commerce is one of those things that I think about five, six, seven years ago, I remember having a conversation going, I do not understand why Facebook does not have the ability to buy whatever it is that I'm seeing on the Facebook platform, and they just take a small percentage of the sale. I don't understand why they're not doing that. And it's taken longer, I think, than I thought it would do for social commerce to start to become more of a thing. But it is becoming more of a thing, isn't it? And I'm curious if TikTok is more popular because it tends to be a younger audience who are a bit more digitally savvy, whereas Instagram is a bit more than millennials. And the millennials are good, but they, I mean, they're not as. It's not like the, you know, Gen X as well, just like what, I'm a Gen X. But millennials are a bit. A bit more reticent, maybe. Whereas the, you know, the gen wires, the, what they call them now, Gen Alpha. I don't even know.

Amandeep Singh [39:46 - 39:49]: It's hard to give tag on people.

Matt Edmundson [39:49 - 40:02]: Younger than me, which is a lot of people, to be fair. I think the younger they are, the. The more confident they seem to be about doing purchases on social platforms.

Amandeep Singh [40:02 - 40:59]: Yeah, I think what I believe is social platform gives you an opportunity to connect with the founders, connect with the people behind the company, and people are emotionally attached with the brands. There's a lot of moments that are happening as well by a local, by this, and that's another aspect. Wherever I. You get to hear the story, and then you are making a decision right away. Sometimes, you know, whether it's informed or impulse or whatever it is, but that gives you a quick way to, you know, buy or make a decision right away. So I think people are emotionally connecting with the companies or brands who are a bit more authentic, you know, kind of thing. And, yeah, they're buying things over there. And with the videos, I think it's. I mean, TikTok, how it's basically exploded, and I think it basically helped, not help, but basically attracted that audience quite a bit.

Matt Edmundson [40:59 - 41:00]: Yeah.

Amandeep Singh [41:00 - 41:03]: Which, which are making those decisions pretty quickly.

Matt Edmundson [41:03 - 41:04]: Yeah.

Amandeep Singh [41:04 - 41:08]: I think people are. The younger generation is very impatient as well.

Matt Edmundson [41:09 - 41:56]: That's very true. And I think TikTok did that rather clever thing. You know, when you first joined the platform and you post a video, they'll show it to 10,000 people, and you kind of think, oh, I got 10,000 views. I've never had that on Instagram. They'll do that once or twice, by which time you're sucked in. Right. And it's just, it's just really clever how they. Hats off to the TikTok guys. So we have talked about different platforms to think about. We've talked about different things to think about from search omnichannel, the content, smarter chat bots on there. I think, actually, we're more and more willing to talk to chatbots now, aren't we? We think they've got the answers most of the time because we think they're smarter. And obviously, personalization. We've talked a lot about that, actually, on the show. Is there anything else that you think we should throw into this mix of conversation?

Amandeep Singh [41:57 - 44:10]: No, I think, yeah, basically, one thing which I would like to point it out is that migrations are, when you're migrating from one platform to another, I see a lot of time those going wrong. So if you're able to maintain the same URL's, try to maintain the same URL's, you know, but if your structure is pretty bad on your previous platform, you know, then, of course, go with the newer platforms, newer URL structure. But make sure you do have a nicer redirects. You have the content and the data migrated sometimes what happens, a lot of times people just migrate the product descriptions, but they don't migrate the meta description, they don't migrate the title tags and everything. So make sure you do migrate that as well. Another aspect is that a lot of times people forget the internal links, you know, replacement. So let's say you launch the website, you migrate all the data. You also added the redirect strategy as well, like, you know, old to new URL's. But now some of the content, let's say you have a 200 blog post, you had a thousand of product pages, and in the product content itself there are some links which are pointing to the older URL's. So you need to make sure that those are also replaced. It could be a post launch thing, you know, that's fine, but recommended to go with that replacement as well. So I definitely suggest that whenever you're migrating it, make sure you take care of these points as well. And the new thing which is happening, which is coming up in a speculation API. So performance is a very big factor these days. So Google has, especially for Google Chrome browsers, you have a speculation API released, which I see that WordPress and all these plugins, they definitely take an advantage of those things, but I have not seen that happen in eCommerce. And I recently implemented on one of the website on Shopify and it was very fast. It will give you an experience like a single page application. You have to be mindful how you're implementing it. But if you implement it, it will definitely improve your performance. A lot, a lot. Fantastic. Speculation API implemented wherever you can.

Matt Edmundson [44:10 - 44:48]: Speculation. Get onto it. Do it now. What's wrong with you? That's brilliant. Listen, fascinating conversation. I'm aware of time and I should probably think about bringing this to a close at some point. So why don't I do this? Why don't I ask you for a question? For me, this is where I ask all of my guests now for a question. I then take that question and we'll answer on my social media channels. All in a ploy, dear listener, to get you to join me on social media. If you've not spotted it, just total transparency. So anyway, over to you. What's your question?

Amandeep Singh [44:49 - 45:11]: I have two questions, probably no, one thing. What kind of books recommendation that you have currently? What kind of books are you reading currently? It could be a fiction, nonfiction. That's one aspect. The nether one is like a. I think omnichannel is getting pretty bigger these days. So what is your point of view on omnichannel strategies? You know, I would love to know more about that as well.

Matt Edmundson [45:11 - 45:55]: Very good. So if you want to know what books I'm reading at the moment, if you want to know my thoughts on omnichannel, come follow me on social media and find out. You'll find me on the old ignore Matt Edmundson. You'll find me on LinkedIn. Matt Edmundson. I think I'm on x, but I rarely post on X at Matt Edmundson. But yeah, come find me on either Instagram or LinkedIn. I'll put the information on there. It'd be great to see you. When you connect with me, just send me a dm, just drop me a notes. Go, hey, hi, how you doing? And I will respond. Man, listen, man, it's been great. It's been such a good conversation. If people want to know more about you, if they want to connect, find out more about Cronix, maybe want some help with you, from you. What's the best way to reach out?

Amandeep Singh [45:55 - 46:12]: Yeah, they can reach out to me on LinkedIn, or they can also reach out to cronixweb.com. so yeah, I'm pretty much available a lot on LinkedIn as well. So yeah, shoot me a demo over there. Reached out to our website as well. Yeah, happy to help anywhere I can.

Matt Edmundson [46:12 - 46:17]: Fantastic. LinkedIn seems to have become like more and more of a thing, isn't it?

Amandeep Singh [46:18 - 46:25]: Yeah. I'm not sure how they're doing too much of the video. I don't want video reels every year, but it is becoming too much as well.

Matt Edmundson [46:25 - 46:39]: You know, to be fair, LinkedIn, I never look down the feed. I just don't. I'm connected to 12,000 people. There's no chance I'm going to connect. So I tend to use LinkedIn for messaging people. Reach out.

Amandeep Singh [46:39 - 46:39]: That's nice.

Matt Edmundson [46:39 - 46:52]: We put loads of stuff out on LinkedIn. And then I'm in one of a few WhatsApp groups where the guys go, listen, this is what I've posted. Could someone please go and comment? And so I'm in some of those groups, so I'm a bit more targeted and focused on the LinkedIn.

Amandeep Singh [46:52 - 46:54]: That's nice. That's nice.

Matt Edmundson [46:54 - 47:36]: But yeah, it works super well. It just means it's very manageable. But yeah, I get the whole LinkedIn thing. So we will, of course, link to Amman's information in the show notes, which you can get for free by heading to the website ecommercepodcast.net. or of course, you can just scroll down or sideswipe, depending on which app you're using to see the show notes on this particular episode. The links will be in there. Do reach out to Ammon, even if it's just to say hello. Just go connect with him on LinkedIn. Say how's it. Heard you on the podcast. Great to connect. I'm sure he would love to hear from you. But Aman, thanks for coming on the show, man. Really, really appreciate it. It's been a fab, fab, fab conversation.

Amandeep Singh [47:37 - 47:38]: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Matt Edmundson [47:38 - 49:04]: No problem, no problem. Well, there you go. What another great conversation. Love that. I learned a lot, actually. Also be sure to follow the ecommerce podcast wherever you get your podcast from because we've got yet more great conversations lined up. And I, of course, do not want you to miss any of them. And in case no one has told you yet today, let me be the first. You are awesome. Yes, you are created awesome. It's just a burden you have to bear. A man has to bear it. I've got to bear it. You've got to bear it as well. Now, the eCommerce podcast is produced by the wonderful team at Pod Junction. You can find out more about [email protected] in fact, if you have a podcast yourself, check out the pod Junction website. I am on it with the wonderful Salaf, and we talk about how to use podcasting to grow your business. This is a little side swipe there, a little side promo to some of the other stuff that we're doing, but do come and check it out. So, yeah, big thanks to Salaf and the team. Big thanks, Josh Edmundson, for writing our theme music. And as I said, if you'd like to read the notes or the transcript, you can get [email protected] for free, where incidentally, you can also sign up to the newsletter should you require it. And why would you not? We just basically send everything to you once a week to your inbox. You don't even have to do anything, so you can go sign up for that. But that's it from me. That's it from Aman. Thank you so much for joining us. Wherever you are in the world, I will see you next time. Have a fantastic week. Bye for.