Unlock 15x Sales: The Power of AppCommerce with Campbell Paton | Campbell Paton

Matt Edmundson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Ecommerce Podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. It is great that you're here. It's great that you're with us. Let me just turn that music down a little bit. There we go. It's great that you're here with us here on the Ecommerce Podcast. This is a show all about helping you deliver

Ecommerce. Wow. And to help us do just that, we're having a chat with Campbell Paton all the way from somewhere just on the outskirts of sunny London. Yes, a fellow Brit. We're going to be getting into all things today to do with mobile commerce. We're going to be having a great chat about apps, about mobile, about selling things on your phone to your clients. The list goes on. So you're definitely going to want to grab your notebooks, grab your pens and joiners. I'm actually looking forward to this one and chatting this through. So yes. That's what we're getting into, but before we do that, let me give a quick shout out to the wonderful Ecommerce [00:01:00] Cohort, which enables us to bring you this show.

Yes, it does. The Ecommerce Cohort is our monthly mastermind group that you can be a part of if you run an Ecommerce business. It's pretty inexpensive. There's some great stuff in there workshops on how to run your Ecommerce business better and also you get to watch the live recording of this show.

So if you want to know how to support this show, if you want to keep us on the air. Come and join us in the cohort course. If you don't just write me a letter and let me know. That would be really awesome, . But if you do, check out e-commerce cohort at Ecommercecohort.com. That's Ecommercecohort.com.

And of course, if you are new to the show, a big warm welcome to you if you haven't done so already. Check out the website Ecommercepodcast.net. Where incidentally, you can also sign up to the newsletter. And every week we email you the links and the show notes and all the good stuff from each of our guests.

They come to your inbox automatically. [00:02:00] So if you sign up to the newsletter, all the stuff that we're gonna be talking about today, all the notes, all the links, all the ways to connect with Campbell, they'd already be in your inbox, so why not check that out at Ecommerce podcast dot. Now, shall we meet today's guest?

I think we probably should. Campbell Paton, who is a trailblazer in the mobile tech realm and a maestro, I love that word, a maestro of app commerce. As the co founder and CEO of StoreLab, he's turning the world of mobile marketing on its head, one push notification at a time. Oh yes, with a knack for social media wizardry.

And a history of dancing with Fortune 500 Giants, Campbell is the go to guru for unlocking the secrets of success in today's digital bazaar.

Campbell Paton: very What an intro! Campbell, welcome to the show, man. How are you doing?[00:03:00]

Thank you.

Matt Edmundson: Good.

Campbell Paton: Lovely. That was very nice.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, Sadaf, I think has a little bit of fun with those those intros, which is quite funny. What was it? The go to guru for unlocking the secrets of success in today's digital bazaar. That's some very well written prose there but yeah, no, good to have you on the show, man. Now, at the time of recording, of course you're the first recording of 2024.

We're recording this in January, 2024. I don't actually know when it's going to come out and I don't know if I've just seriously dated the episode but did you have a good break? Did you have a good holiday?

Campbell Paton: I did I was in Sacramento in the US with with some family with lots of kids that are not mine, but nieces and nephews. Fairly exciting Santa and Christmas filled break. With not a huge amount of rest, but there you go,

Matt Edmundson: yeah, no, fair play. Kids are great and especially if you can hand them back at the end of the day.

Campbell Paton: Exactly.

Matt Edmundson: that's a wonderful thing. [00:04:00] So you're all the way back from Sacramento. You're based just outside of sunny London. Just tell us about StoreLab what you guys do, what sort of things you've got involved in over there.

Campbell Paton: Sure, so yeah, StoreLab, we are essentially a software development company at our heart. But we make a platform for anyone to build a mobile application of their store. We have about 35 employees that work in Farringdon. And yeah, our software allows you to take a Shopify store at the moment. We are just on Shopify, but we're planning to be on Wix, Squarespace, and others this year.

And then make a mobile app of your Shopify store without any coding required. And I'm sure we'll get into the reasons for it a bit later on, but yeah, I personally believe that appCommerce will be bigger than Ecommerce at some point and it is the easiest way to get new customers or not, sorry, retain your customers, generate lots more profits out of them.

And what it really does in a nutshell is take a customer that's going to buy two or three things a year and make that customer buy seven or eight [00:05:00] items from you.

Matt Edmundson: It's interesting, this whole mobile app thing and I'm, this is one of the reasons I'm looking forward to it. We've gone through different phases in our own Ecommerce journey. For the listeners listening to the show who don't know, I run my own Ecommerce businesses. We have cohort, we have I do coaching, consulting, all that sort of stuff.

But fundamentally at heart, I'm an Ecommerce entrepreneur. We have our own Ecommerce businesses. I'm just about to launch a new one actually in hopefully about two or three months time. And I'm especially interested to talk to you Campbell about what's going on there. But that aside, we have gone through very, All the various iterations that you can think of in Ecommerce.

I've been doing it since 2002. A little while and We went through the phase of mobile's come out, now apps are a thing. So we then went and got an app developed where people could buy products from our website and manage their customer account. And then we had the advice given to us get rid of your app and just do like the web stuff super well and optimize that on mobile because no one's [00:06:00] using mobile apps anymore.

Now what you're saying is actually, no, this is now seems to have come full circle again. The apps are starting to become a bit more of a thing and actually apps are a lot more and maybe this is why they're becoming a bit more of a thing, but they seem to be a lot more accessible than when we did our very first app because they weren't a bit like when we first did our first Ecommerce website, man the tools that we have now compared to then a chalk and cheese.

And I think it seems to have been the same with mobile apps, right?

Campbell Paton: Yeah, absolutely. And it's, yeah, the rise of the self service builder and no code as a sort of as an industry has really revolutionized,

Matt Edmundson: Yeah.

Campbell Paton: barrier to entry for Ecommerce, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, all of the, all of those platforms and WooCommerce to an extent makes it just, yeah, lowest barrier to entry makes it easy.

And we're trying to do the same thing with apps. It shouldn't cost you 120, 000 to build an app or read it well, or even more than that. [00:07:00] We're trying to do that, lower the barrier to entry, give apps to everyone, make them as accessible as possible everyone can understand the benefits of them.

And see the revenue that can be generated, because that's really why we're all here, is to see revenue and sales come in, and that's what our whole company is based around, is driving revenue.

Matt Edmundson: yeah. Now we'll get into that, especially how apps are connected with customer retention, which you mentioned and drawing those customers in. I know you've got some tactics and stuff, which we can get into about how that all works. But if I'm someone listening to the show to full disclosure, we have thousands of people listening all over the world, which is still staggers me, if I'm honest with you, but it's brilliant.

And I love it. And I love the fact that it's helping a lot of people, but we do have a wide audience, right? So some of them listening to the show will be thinking about starting an Ecommerce website, but some of them will have just tinkered over the edge, made that new year's resolution and they're starting to go, they've got their Shopify store up and running.

And and then obviously there's [00:08:00] a lot of people who have been around like me since Noah and since the dawn of Ecommerce really and I've got quite well established stores all on various different platforms, I'm sure. But all of that said is what we're about to talk about. for someone who is starting out in Ecommerce, as well as someone who is established in Ecommerce, I think is a question that I'm asking, just from an audience point of view, should I switch off or should I stay listening?

Campbell Paton: No, absolutely, anyone who uses Ecommerce at all should be interested in this. And I'm very happy to plug StoreLab and all the things about us, but one of our main goals as a company is to make app commerce as well known as possible. So no you are, you have three customers and you've just started your Shopify store.

We have a company that launched their First Sox in just early December. And they're making loads of sales through through their own Shopify store and through store lab as a platform. [00:09:00] No, in my opinion, there is no time like the present. And what we tend to say to people is if they have purchase intent.

If someone is making sales, if people have purchase intent on their platform, then apps will work for you, regardless if you're, been doing this for a long time. I won't say the word dinosaur or, you're new to the game.

Matt Edmundson: No, I feel, I'm allowed to say it because I think I am. But that's okay. I'm still here. I'm still fighting strong. So you're using this phrase app commerce. A fair bit. Let's define what that means.

Campbell Paton: Really, it's just, it's app commerce is making purchases through that's what it is. An app generating you revenue. I think it's important to understand that Ecommerce is a way of doing business, rather than generating revenue through either a website or the mobile version of that person's website.

And there is key distinctions between the two, so that's why I use the term app commerce rather than mobile commerce, because I think it draws the distinction between someone just using the mobile version of a website through to an actual app.

Matt Edmundson: And so to be clear, you're not talking about web apps. You are talking about the actual app where you go to [00:10:00] the app, the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. You'll search for your Acme Store app and you will download it and it will be installed on someone's phone. This is not a mobile optimized website.

This is actual. know I'm going to go to the web. I'm going to go to the app store and download it.

Campbell Paton: Yeah, absolutely. That

Matt Edmundson: Good. Just to clarify terms. And again, this is where, when we did our first app, Man Alive, it was like I say, when I say it was complicated. So not only did we have to do all the coding, we had to go and obviously there's, there was, I don't know if there still are, but there was a lot of loops we had to jump through certainly where Apple was concerned because.

Getting an app on the App Store at that point in time was not straightforward. Let's just put it that way. I think it's probably a lot easier now. So why should I think then? Let's talk about some of the key reasons why as a listener, I should be thinking about this phrase app commerce and why I should I be thinking about it in relation to my personal Shopify business.

Campbell Paton: Sure. Okay, so there [00:11:00] are three key reasons in our opinion, there are more than three, but for us, there are three key reasons why. Any Ecommerce store should consider using Ecommerce, sorry, using AppCommerce. The first one of those is push notifications. Having an app on your phone gives you access to send push notifications through Apple or the Google Play Store to someone's mobile device.

Push notifications have the highest conversion rate out of any marketing communication. They convert 15 times higher than email. They convert 9 times higher than SMS or text. They convert significantly higher than Google ads or Facebook ads, and they are free to send. So you don't pay cost per click.

You don't pay cost per impression on a push notification that you sent. My personal background is in performance marketing. I used to run a social media agency and then I was commercial director at the largest social media agency in the UK. We spent hundreds of millions of pounds a year off brands on Facebook ads.

And the reason I got into Ecommerce is when I found out [00:12:00] that push notifications convert higher and they are free to send. That to me was a light bulb moment of this is going to be some of the future. I feel personally and I'm sure you will have experienced it if you do Facebook advertising or social advertising, I'm sure most of your listeners will as well your conversion rates from social have gone down through things like the iOS 14 update that blocked tracking.

The impressions are harder to get. Your cost per impression has gone up. For me, push notifications are what the Facebook ad platform was about eight years ago. They aren't in the same way. And they are a much easier way of reaching your customers for a lot less money.

So bucket number one is push notifications. That's the first reason. Reason number two comes down to experience. And this from two separate, two, two ways. First way is general fact of Ecommerce life, which is the faster websites, faster [00:13:00] experiences convert higher mobile apps on average, are three times faster than mobile web.

Matt Edmundson: Okay.

Campbell Paton: done a few things, one of those things being image caching. So when you open your app and you download the images for the first time, they are cached to your phone, so they load much faster. The second thing is the experience is down to conversion rate optimization. We and most app producers are able to make a make their apps for the specific device.

So there are, there's a few things that that Apple and Google lock away from the web browsers that we are able to unlock and build around the screen and build around the device. So that you can then yeah, access those through an app as you wouldn't be able to on the mobile version of the website.

So from an experience side, it is small amounts of features, but really it's speed. But really all of those things, the push notifications make people buy more, the speed makes people buy more, and the conversion rate optimization makes people purchase more at the same time. The last [00:14:00] reason number three is retention, or retention or returning customer rates.

I use those terms interchangeably. If you can use app exclusive products, app exclusive discounts, drops, reasons to keep people coming back, if you couple that with the push notifications, being able to reach people in a more easy way, we have seen customers triple their returning customer rate in three months.

Those are the three reasons, main reasons that we talk about.

Matt Edmundson: So there's a lot there, but I've got a lot of questions now. So let's deal with the first one push notifications. And again, just to clarify terms for those listening who might not know what a push notification is. This is just simply where your phone buzzes and on my screen, I get them all that I turned most of them off to be fair from all the various apps that are on my phone. 10, 000 people who have downloaded my app. If I email out 10, [00:15:00] 000 people, let's say, on a good day, I'm getting 15 percent of those people to open that email so I'm getting 150, no, what is it, 15, 1, 500, let's get the maths so I've got 1, 500 people who are opening the email and then I've got a conversion rate of whatever, 1, 2, 3, 4%. What you're saying is with push notifications. And as best I understand it, Campbell, is if I send out 10, 000 push notifications, so long as they've not disabled that push notification on their phone, that's getting through. So deliverability is going to be super high. So all of a sudden, I'm, it's not 1, 500 people that are opening my email.

It's let's say seven and a half. I don't know if you've got any stats on that actually.

Campbell Paton: Sure, it's a we see around about 30 to 60 percent of people will open and engage with our push notifications. They

Matt Edmundson: Okay, so we've got massively increased open rates with push notifications.

Campbell Paton: so push [00:16:00] notifications have the highest open rate out of any marketing communication as well.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah.

Campbell Paton: tend to talk about conversions because most people really just care about the purchase intent after that.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm just trying to figure out why there's an increase in person. I can understand it, I suppose if I'm a loyal customer, I'm much more likely to download the app. So I'm already buying from the company more than once, right? I wouldn't, I'm just trying to think of my own behavior.

I don't think I would download the app of an unknown store onto my phone unless there was a bloody good reason to do it, right?

Campbell Paton: That's something, a very interesting point that you brought up once we finish this,

Matt Edmundson: okay, we'll get into that we'll get into that, but if I'm just thinking of the stores that I buy from regularly, actually, if they had mobile apps, I'd probably download them because it just saves me going to their website. I'm already logged into the account and I can just, a bit like Amazon, I suppose Amazon's got an app on there. And so I'm just thinking of, because I've got that app on my phone, I'm a loyal customer in, at least in my own head, I'm buying from them more than once.

And i, [00:17:00] therefore, am going to be much more likely to engage with the push notifications on it. Whereas on an email list, if I think about our email list, if we send out 10, 000 emails, that's not 10, 000 amazingly hot clients, that have put this to everybody, isn't it? People that have signed up to the newsletter, all kinds of stuff.

And so I can see actually just by the very fact that I've taken the time to download the mobile app onto my phone, it probably puts me in a different

Campbell Paton: yeah, but also from an aspect of message hierarchy or information hierarchy when you're, for me to see an email, I have to log into my log into my Gmail or log into my account to go through and read through those emails. I am probably there for a different reason. I'm probably there to look at something else.

Then open a an email that, that is, you go at 15 percent off this clothing store it will, I'm not saying email marketing doesn't work but if you look at your [00:18:00] phone notification tray everything that exists in there alongside messages from your family, WhatsApps text messages, phone calls, and then you have push notifications from the company.

So it is down to the company to make sure that they're not sending enough push notifications that, are making people disable them. But the message hierarchy or the information hierarchy there is equal to WhatsApp and messages from friends and family. So the reason that is, you get the highest open rates is because you're there in the same level.

Someone will see that message. They will understand it. They may not interact with it. They don't interact with all of them. But they will interact with some of them, which then pulls them back onto the the brand. And that's essentially what most Ecommerce at the moment is just, trying to get attention from people, come back to our company to see our face.

And this is push notifications are such a great avenue of doing that. And

Matt Edmundson: That's actually a really [00:19:00] strong word, the word attention. You're trying to get people's attention because I've got one of those watches that buzzes whenever I get a new notification. I don't have that turned on for email, otherwise I'd be constantly looking at my wrist. And so I get how push notifications are much more likely to grab attention, a bit like WhatsApp.

Marketing, in a lot of ways it's much closer to people because it's not yet been screwed up by marketers, right? So the honest answer.

Campbell Paton: unregulated aspects of it. It's like Facebook ads were eight years ago. In the same way that you weren't expecting, if I went when I say Facebook, Facebook and Instagram, I wasn't expecting to just be bombarded by brands that are getting your attention because you clicked on one thing six weeks ago.

That's how, for me, the push notification space feels. I know at some point, down the line, they will start being regulated by Apple and Google more so they bring your attention back. But at the moment, it's more of an unregulated space. And [00:20:00] especially for companies that deal with things that are restricted.

Adult stores. I used to work for Love Honey, it's one of my favourite companies I've ever worked for. But you have massive problems if you're an adult store with advertising on Google or any social platform because of restrictions. Push notifications are not in that same league. If you can get someone onto the app, then they can receive notifications from you.

And it's, yeah, again, it's your job to make sure that they're not explicit. And they're not written in a way that's going to make someone say, I don't want people to see that, or it's bugging me, and I'm just going to turn them off.

Matt Edmundson: Wow. Very good. Ethics aside about whether or not you should run an adult company entirely. Maybe that's a different show, but what I'm intrigued by here is there a way then that I, as a company. Can do push notifications without having an app or do I actually have to have an app, a native app on their device?

Campbell Paton: There are ways that you can do that without it, but the problem with a native [00:21:00] push notification is it will list where it's come from on top. When you send a native push notification from our, from one of our apps, or from any app, you see the name of the company followed by the message that you're trying to send.

If you use a. A service like OneSignal, which is a way of sending push notifications without an app, it will say OneSignal message, and then the message that you're trying to send, so you're limiting the characters that you can send and there are, there are desktop push notifications, but I don't know of many people that enable those, or anyone that does, I know, turn off

desktop notifications at

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. Yeah. They were a big thing about four years ago. I think desktop notifications when they first came out and you can see. But I just think it's an old tactic now, whereas, and I'm sure somebody listening is going to email me in and go, Matt, you're wrong because I've made gazillions from desktop notifications and all power to you I, yeah, I'm just I think as a general rule, it seems a bit of an old technology, but. [00:22:00] You're right, it hasn't caught up with mobile. So if I haven't, if I did, there are services out there, then from what I understand you're saying, Campbell, is you can use services to do notifications. But it's not as good or as clear as if you do it through your own app, because you own that, it's got your name on it.

Whereas,

Campbell Paton: there are also rich push notifications. It's sending a notification with a picture. So someone like soft hovers over with an iPhone or clicks on it with an Android, you see the item that you're trying to get the person to buy. Or, another graphic that you can send.

You can't send rich push notifications with a service that's that's not an app on your phone.

Matt Edmundson: okay. And so the service then with notifications, if I do WhatsApp marketing, I've got to pay somebody a fraction of a pence, a fraction of a penny every time I send a message. I don't have to do that with push notifications.

Campbell Paton: Depends who you do your push notifications with.

Matt Edmundson: Okay.

Campbell Paton: With us, you don't. We have a deal with the company that allows us to send them [00:23:00] for fractions and fractions of a penny. If you use someone like OneSignal, I believe it's something like 13 pence or 14 pence per 10, 000 messages delivered.

So it's not very expensive and there are, we are not the only people who do the no codes app solutions but yeah it depends, really it's not it's a very cost effective way to send messages out.

Matt Edmundson: But it's, that intrigue, what you said there intrigues me, Campbell, if I can just dig a little bit further, because you use a company to do the push notifications with your app. Rightly or wrongly. I would have assumed that your app would have done the push notification, so you, but you outsource it to a service for and on behalf of your users, just take, just explain that a little bit.

Campbell Paton: sure. So that's we are a startup. We've been around for three years. We are building our own push notification service that will send them out automatically from our position. However, we have a limited tech team. So we have had to build some things into our service.

So yeah. We [00:24:00] swallow that cost on our client's behalf and hopefully, within some time in the next 12 months, we will have our own push notification service. But noted for, so we could concentrate on user experience and making the product possible. We decided to outsource that at the moment.

Matt Edmundson: Okay. But I imagine it's all fairly seamless and no one knows

Campbell Paton: Oh yeah, I know. We have never had a downtime in push notifications.

Matt Edmundson: So is the technology then to do the push notifications quite complex?

Campbell Paton: depends on how deep you want to go into it. To send a push notification to every single person on your phone, anyone that has your app is not super challenging. To send a personalized message that goes to an individual based on an item that they have viewed and only they have viewed.

That is a little bit more challenging.

Matt Edmundson: Oh, okay. So you're now personalizing the notifications. And so actually you're going from what I would call an email blast, which is where you just email everybody. You're going, no, let's pick out this subsection over here and let's just [00:25:00] notify this particular group of clientele and personalize it a little bit.

Is that, am I hearing that right?

Campbell Paton: yeah. And especially when it comes down to the gold dust in Ecommerce, the thing that everyone wants, the thing that generates you more revenue than anything else is the abandoned cart push notification.

That piece of tech is usually what pulls most people when they hear, when we talk numbers and statistics, that's what brings people back, what brings people to the table to talk about it.

Abandoned cart push notifications can recover up to 60 percent of abandoned carts. So that is almost unheard of in any other sort of style. If you think of how many abandoned cart emails you send out. The other thing about abandoned cart push notifications is you don't have to retain data. So this is something that we're going to talk about in a second and how you get someone onto the app.

But say, for example, that I want, I'm using a Shopify store and I want to send someone an abandoned cart email. I have to capture that email first. I have to ask that person to either sign up for account or enter their email in a different [00:26:00] way. If they download the app, they have bypassed that information in inputs requirements, you can then, and they have felt, to an extent that they haven't given anything up.

But you are then sending someone an abandoned cart email, which recovers huge numbers of abandoned carts and again is free to send. And it is sent after a period of time that, that you can choose from someone adding something to the basket that yeah. Is massive and it's yeah, probably the single thing in commerce that makes people more revenue than anything else.

Not saying the other reasons aren't important, but that one thing is, yeah, like I say, gold dust.

Matt Edmundson: I see you preempted my next question in a lot of ways. I know when people sign up for email marketing, the law is getting more and more complex GDPR, you've got California has got his own set of rules because it's California. Why would it not? How does push notifications with the app connect with all of this? Crazy legislation that's going on around the world at the moment.

Campbell Paton: So obviously, we can't talk [00:27:00] about every Ecommerce provider. Some people do it differently from us. All of our notifications that are sent are GDPR compliant because we as a, as we as a company do not retain data it's put onto Shopify's position. So Shopify has to be the company that retained data not us.

So say for example that you, someone downloads the app, that information is retained with Shopify and on the native device. So we don't get user information, you as a company, by using us, do not retain that information, you see a transaction when it comes through listed in exactly the same way as it does, someone buys through the website.

But we do not get into the realms of any regulation from that perspective because data is maintained by the customer and then by Shopify.

Matt Edmundson: So if I've got say 10, 000 customers and I've managed to convince 500 of them to download the app, for example, I'm assuming with the way that you've got it set up, and [00:28:00] even if customers are not using what you've got set up, I'm sure it'd be an interesting thing to do. Is it easy to monitor which sales come from which channel? So I know that these sales have come through the app.

Campbell Paton: So yeah, I mean that, that's one of the reasons that we selected Shopify as our first platform to go after is we're a sales channel, we exist as a sales channel on Shopify. So I think on your Shopify dashboard. Top left hand corner and your analytics, you've got revenue Shopify boss.

And next one over, it's sales by channel. And you will see store lab listed there or any of the other app providers will be listed right there. And it will say, online store and store lab. And one of the most exciting things for us is we've had customers where, you know, within the first month we are 50 percent of their revenue. Or higher by getting people to use the app. And yeah yeah it's, we're a sales channel just like any other. And that's where you'll see app commerce.

Matt Edmundson: Fantastic. So what happens if, and I'm just thinking of all the, I [00:29:00] personally don't run my sites on Shopify, but if I did, one of the key things I know about Shopify and that I really like about Shopify, certainly when we've used them in the past, is you can integrate other apps. So let's say I've got a subscription app or a membership app or something that's helping me grow my business.

Does what you do integrate with that or is it just a case of the app's the app and it's a separate thing?

Campbell Paton: It depends. We are always, when I say about having a limited tech team, we focus on integrations too. We partner with most of the major providers. If you're using Royalty Lion for a reward system, then yeah, we, we do that. Yopo many recharged, any, yeah, the many of the major Zapiet integrations we partner with.

If you are using something completely obscure that is, not many, then the answer is probably not at this time. But we do have a a request service where if you want us to build something, we will do it. It just might take some time.

But yeah.

Matt Edmundson: Okay. A lot of useful information there. So let's say I'm bored into the whole [00:30:00] idea. I like the idea of push notifications. I like the faster experience. I like the bigger customer retention. Those two things we've not got into yet, but I do want to talk a little bit about strategy.

So if I'm thinking I'm going to try this system. I'm going to do a mobile app. How do I convince people to join that app, especially cause I want to come back to something that you picked me up on earlier. About me not necessarily be willing to download an app if I'm a first time visitor. So let's talk about how you get first time visitors to Download the app.

Campbell Paton: So this for me was my first question. I, we we get lots of companies use our service, especially micro brands or really small brands. And I know from experience with working with them, they don't want to take budget away from campaigns to spend on just getting people to download the app.

And it really surprised me when I first learned about it. So the primary way that you get customers onto your app [00:31:00] is by installing a mobile app banner. So what this is a little widget or a banner that exists on your mobile version of your website that gives someone a reason to download the app.

So we usually say you need to give someone an incentive that is monetary driven, but you don't have to. So this would be 5-10 percent off your first order, free shipping on your first purchase. Loyalty points with your first purchase free gift with your first order through the app.

So you're giving someone an incentive to download the app when they have purchase intent. So when they're going to buy something anyway, they would go and they would, yeah download the app instead. The other thing that is, that I really like about the mobile app banner is that it doesn't interrupt the purchase journey if someone doesn't want to do it.

They dismiss the banner and they complete the purchase as they would on the mobile version of the website. We [00:32:00] see between 85 and 90 percent of app downloads.

Matt Edmundson: Wow. That's a really high number. Yeah. Yeah. So

Campbell Paton: we also see about 20 percent of people, it's about 19, 20 percent of people that download the app are first time buyers who have never bought something from the store before.

Matt Edmundson: there goes my theory then right out the window.

Campbell Paton: So you're, as long as you're using the correct incentive. As long as you are giving someone a reason to download that, the app, then they will do it and they will stay there. So as I said, the thing I said right at the start, what an app really does is it takes someone who's going to buy two or three things and it makes them buy six or seven. First time buyers are retained on the app. And this is not a foolproof solution. People will download the app for the incentive and then leave. People will download the app and they will turn off push notifications. But the vast majority don't, and that [00:33:00] is why yeah, that's how you get people onto the app which is a much easier solution than most people expect.

Matt Edmundson: That's really interesting. Such a high number. A first time clients who you've obviously worked with a lot of, you are working with obviously a lot of people, 35 staff, you've got a significant number of people on board. If you don't, if you don't mind sharing this one or two maybe companies that are top of mind that are doing this well, that are killing it, that we, I'm really tempted just to go to their website, have a look and download the app if I'm honest with you.

Campbell Paton: Oh, of course, so I'll tell you my favourite case study. I'll let you know my favourite case study of all of this. A lady called Carol. From a company called Rock Those Curves. She,

Matt Edmundson: Curves, is that what,

Campbell Paton: Rock Those

Curves, yeah. They are yeah, we spoke to her in September of 2022.

She was doing her company as a side hustle.

It was, I wouldn't say, a distraction, but she was not doing I think what she aspires to with it. She was making a few [00:34:00] thousand pounds in sales a month. Most of that was through Etsy or other platforms and not necessarily through her own Shopify store. We helped her with some mobile app, with some Facebook strategy.

To help her just basically from my old experience and installed the app on her service. She has made 390, 000 in sales in the year and a couple of months that she's worked with us. It's now her full time job she works, 15-90 an hour days that she's not super pleased with, but she's still doing that.

So they're someone I love talking about and when she first came to us, she said, my target market are 55 plus. They will not use apps. We've categorically disproved that. Yeah, and I don't believe app commerce works for my audience, I don't think Facebook will work for my audience, all of those things.

We've just, we've made almost half a million pounds at this point. Other companies I talk about [00:35:00] that I'm not saying that this is the right thing to do but they do it really well. This is a company called Arabell Apparel. I always get, I always struggle saying the name, it's Liberia Backwoods Arabell Apparel they are a fashion brand that exists out of New Jersey a lady, very impressive lady sells around about 1.

9 to 2 million dollars worth of fashion gear a year out of her bedroom in New Jersey we were 52 percent of her revenue from month one that we worked with them.

Matt Edmundson: wow,

Campbell Paton: cause she managed to convince all of her customers with a great incentive. I think it was really 10% off your first purchase to use the app, and then she's retained them.

So yeah, that, those are two. There's another company, Mike's Dive Store . They are largest provider of diving equipment to Europe. This isn't just fashion apparel that works across the board. We sold 15,000 pounds worth of gear in their first week. Other companies are similar in the sports equipment side.

We have a few [00:36:00] butchers use it really well. So it is industry agnostic. The only thing I would say for that is, the analogy of someone who's going to buy two or three things. It's difficult to get someone who's going to buy zero to one. So yeah, a mattress provider people don't tend to buy three mattresses in a year.

Apps are difficult for them to get used well. So yeah, multiple purchases, if, repeatable purchases, that's where we really shine. But yeah, in the diving equipment analogy though, of Mike's Dive Store. Someone may buy one BCD or a jacket a year or even longer. That's, a few, a thousand pounds purchase, but then they'll come back for the mask.

They'll come back for fins, they'll come back for accessories, and that's where you can pick them up to.

Matt Edmundson: that's really interesting. Super powerful. I, and that you, again, you've preempted one of my questions is who does this not work for? And so if it's single purchase items, it tends to not work well.

Campbell Paton: And the other [00:37:00] thing, it's worth explaining what apps don't do and they don't drive traffic. So you need to have traffic coming through to your website. You need to have it coming to your online store. This is not going to revolutionize your company if you're not driving traffic in some way. So it pairs really nicely with Google and Facebook ads.

And you do take a, if you want to go down the route of discounts on your incentive, you will take a hit on the first purchase, but you will have that person coming back. And again but yeah, they don't drive traffic and they don't work for companies where someone's only going to buy one thing in, in three years.

Matt Edmundson: Fair enough. Yeah. I can't imagine actually, even if you optimize your app, no one's going to the Apple app store to search for your widget or your product, are they really? I get that they don't drive traffic. But if you've already got traffic come in and you've already got a plan to create traffic, do you run ads?

I dunno how this would work, but can you run ads direct to your app store or do [00:38:00] you run ads that take them to the web store and then there's the mobile banner?

Campbell Paton: Yeah, so we wouldn't run ads for the to the App Store because Unless the person has a real knowledge about the brand, Nike and Adidas will do that. But most of the people that we work with aren't well known enough for that to really work that well.

Or you're, you're using a personal, personalized list that you've taken for, and uploaded to Google or Facebook, that your cost per click or cost per impression is going to be so high, it's just not worth it. You might as well drive to the website. And then use the IncentiveFace banner to get them there.

We encourage people to do social posting about their app and include it as a banner on the bottom of their email campaigns. On the desktop, they might have a QR code to scan. But yeah, no, we don't see the need to drive people to the app store. As well as what we're really trying to do is drive revenue and we want someone to have purchase intent when they will download the app because it makes them less likely to then turn off the notifications.[00:39:00]

Matt Edmundson: so I, my final question here, Campbell, before we start to wrap up, 'cause I'm aware of time, but have you come across any stores that have gone the mobile. All the app commerce, as you call it, is working so well that I'm going to switch the website off and just run all my commerce through the app.

Campbell Paton: And that wouldn't work because of the way that the journey works. One, one day. Okay, so there is a thing that Apple and Google brought out a few years ago, and it is years now that hasn't really taken off, and it's called an App Clip or a Google Instant App. They tried to bring this out for app streaming rather than app downloading.

So if I went to Google and I looked for the Nike app, then I would open an App Clip. of that store rather than downloading the app. The the icon goes onto the homepage for 24 hours. And yeah, it's app streaming rather than downloading. [00:40:00] I don't fully understand why that never really took off as it was supposed to.

But the way that you want someone to download the app is, again, with purchase intent. So they want them to be looking through your store. You want them to be looking through the clothing or the pictures of the products in whatever they are to then say, I want, I'm going to buy that.

I want the incentive. And that gets them onto the app and then the retention through there makes them convert better. If you just remove that experience entirely, then you're trying to sell someone on an Ecommerce experience based on the Shopify app store, I'm sorry the Apple, the Google Play store, which is not a good experience for someone to check out products.

Matt Edmundson: Very good. I have one, one more question if you have time. I'm aware of time. I know. As long as I'm not causing you to be late for something else. The thing that you mentioned there about payments, so I go onto the app, buy a hundred bucks worth of product through the app. Am [00:41:00] I paying 30 percent commission to Apple or Google for that purchase?

Campbell Paton: No not at all. You don't pay the because the, you are not using their payment service as this is where the lines get a little muddled. You can use Apple Pay and you can use Google. But you're not using the Apple Pay through our Apple developer system, and you're not using Google Play Pay, sorry, through the Play system developer Play system, you do not pay them the percentage fees.

You retain everything. And our competitors are different, we're not all the same but we do not charge percentage of sales either. The, you pay as you would normally and you retain as much of that as you're taking normally.

Matt Edmundson: Fantastic. Fantastic. Campbell, listen, I appreciate the insight here into app commerce. It's very fascinating. And [00:42:00] offline, I think we need to have a conversation about a new store that we're doing. I'm really curious to see what your thoughts about that are. But if people want to reach out to you, if they want to connect with you, if they want to find out more about what you do at StoreLabs, what's the best way?

To do just that. Fantastic.

Campbell Paton: I'm on LinkedIn, so please come speak to me on LinkedIn it's, my name's Campbell Paton, you can find me there or come to our website, which is storelab.app, where you can connect with me or any of our team to talk about apps. We're very happy to talk to you about it. And yeah, we do store audits all the time to make sure someone's ready.

So yeah, please come check us out.

Matt Edmundson: Fantastic. We will of course, link to Campbell's information in the show notes which you'll get along for free along with a transcript at ecommercepodcast.net. Or they come into your inbox if you signed up to the email newsletter and if you're not, sign up to it. 'cause why would you not? Campbell, listen, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Great to meet you. Great to hear what you guys are doing. Really intrigued by the whole thing. Genuinely, really intrigued and I'm always intrigued. It always fascinates me [00:43:00] how these things come full circle again. So great to have you on. Thanks for your candid information and all the best with the venture, good sir.

Campbell Paton: No worries. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much for having me. It's been

Matt Edmundson: No, great. Loved it. And I hope you loved it as well. Also, a big shout out to today's show sponsor, the Ecommerce Cohort. Remember to check them out, ecommercecohort. com. If you are in the Ecommerce business, it's just a great place to hang out with people, connect with people and get some cool information and insights all at the same time.

And be sure to follow the Ecommerce podcast, wherever you get your podcasts from, because we've got yet more great conversations lined up. I don't 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. Credit awesome. It's just a burden you have to bear.

Campbell's got to bear it. I've got to bear it. You've got to bear it as well. Now, the eCommerce 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 [00:44:00] possible is the astounding and just simply amazing Sadaf Beynon and Tanya Hutsuliak.

Our theme music was written by Josh Edmundson. And as I mentioned, if you'd like to read the transcript or show notes, head over to the website ecommercepodcast. net. So that's it from me. That's it from Campbell. 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.