70 – E-Commerce Tips with Elizabeth Schowachert

Laura

0:06
Hi, this is Laura Lee Griffin.

Nikki

0:23
And this is Nikki May with the Startist Society, inspiring you to stop getting in your own way and start building an art biz and life that you love.

Laura

0:26
We are artists who believe strongly in the power of community, accountability, following your intuition, taking small actionable steps and breaking down the barriers of fear and procrastination that keep you stuck.

Nikki

0:29
Follow along with us on our creative business journey as we encourage you on yours.

Laura

0:35
We recently introduced you to Elizabeth Schowachert, and learned all about her ecommerce shop where she sells her art, her handmade brushes and other art supplies. Today, she is back to share with us her best tips for starting and growing your ecommerce shop.

Elizabeth

0:48
Thanks, Laura and Nikki for having me back. First, these aren’t going to be in any particular order of like 1 to 10 or anything, but they’re just the things that I had a chance to think about that are important to running a successful e-comm shop. And we ended our last talk with just saying get started, and that is step number one, get started.

Nikki

1:02
Absolutely.

Elizabeth

1:02
You can’t do anything in life unless you actually take those first steps. But one of the most important things is to know your strengths, to know what you’re good at, to have passion about it, that’s really important. And then, people forgive mistakes. So your customers, if you do great things, are going to forgive mistakes. So I’m a terrible speller and with grammar, but I still slog along and have tried to figure that part out. That drives me absolutely nuts most of the time. That’s like when you’ve read over something 10 times and you hit send. And then the very next thing you noticed the mistake you make? That’s like the story of my life.

Nikki

1:34
So play up your strengths, but forgive yourself for a few little errors here and there.

Elizabeth

1:37
Exactly. And just don’t let that stop you. Don’t let those things that you struggle with stop you from doing in the first place, because there’s a lot of things that are gonna be challenging, and you can get past them, you know, and you can improve.

Laura

1:47
Yeah.

Nikki

1:47
Yeah, and if you wait until everything’s perfect, you’ll never do anything.

Elizabeth

1:51
That’s right.

Laura

1:52
Yes.

Elizabeth

1:52
Because nothing ever is perfect.

Nikki

1:53
Well, I mean, except me.

Elizabeth

2:02
Except you, Nikki. One of the things I think super important, especially if you’re gonna do an e-comm site is you have to learn how to do things yourself. You cannot rely on another person to do everything for you. So it’s important to set up your store, know how to set up your product, know how to get in there and configure things and add coding once in a while if you need to. And certainly seek out and look for help for those things that you don’t know how to do. But if you’re not independent, and you can’t run it yourself, you won’t be able to get that momentum going to be successful. And I think that’s really, really important. And it’s doable, it’s doable. I mean, I am not an expert, but I have learned how to do what I need to do and make it work. Another thing to think about is to pick a really good platform, and one that is well integrated, is actually made for ecommerce, not for something else. I happen to use Shopify, and it’s a really good solid platform. And it has a lot of tools and a lot of apps and add-ons that are really important. And I definitely would recommend it as one option. And certainly, you know, I know Nikki provides that service too. And that’s also a good option.

Nikki

3:43
Laura and I both use WooCommerce on our own sites, and I set up WooCommerce for my clients. But if anybody asks, it’s WooCommerce, or Shopify, those are the two that I recommend.

Elizabeth

3:55
Yeah, it is really important to have a well integrated and supported site and one that is focused on ecommerce.

Nikki

4:02
Absolutely.

Elizabeth

4:03
Because you know, if it’s an art site is not an ecommerce site. So they’re kind of two different things. In terms of selling and setting up a site, I think it’s important to be creative, and to allow that creativity to influence and drive your development process. Customers, you know, when someone comes to your site, they wanna see something new. And doesn’t mean you have to do new every single day. But it’s super important to have something new and different to say to your customers to show them. For me, it keeps it exciting and interesting, so that’s part of my own motivation is just to want to continually explore new ways of doing things and developing different tools and brushes and things like that. But it’s definitely an important part of driving your business and driving business growth for sure.

Nikki

4:52
Yeah, and I would say even if you don’t have new products all the time, there are things you can do to make the shop look fresh. You can change the order of things, you can feature a different category on your homepage at different times, just to keep something new and exciting happening on your site all the time.

Elizabeth

5:13
Absolutely. And then that just allows you also to keep, when you’re engaging your customers in email and communication, keeping it fresh. And you know, you want them to open something and say, Oh, wow, that’s cool. Or, I like that. I am not very good at making things real personal. I have a difficult time with that type of the real intimate personal connection. Some people are so good about writing about their lives, or what they’re going through and all that. And that’s just not me. So I connect more with the things that I’m doing or the things I’m making, creating versus a personalized story. Although I try really hard to add those tidbits in there to keep it real, and you know, to be a real person that exists. And just like you guys were talking about the other day, to show my face once in a while. I don’t do it very often, but it’s important for sure.

Laura

6:08
And having a story around your products, that the story isn’t just about you, it’s sort of about what inspired you to create that item that you’re selling.

Elizabeth

6:15
Yeah. And I think we talked about that, that places and connections, really, for me are those things that are that inspiration, and they find their way into what you’re doing. And that’s why, you know, if you look at my Instagram site, there’s a ton of brushes. And then there’s some of my sgraffito work. But there’s also pictures of the North Shore Lake and Montana, and this place that is so beautiful, and really touches and inspires me. So I try to sprinkle in all those things in the different ways that I communicate with my customers and the people on social media.

Nikki

6:53
Yeah, especially with the products that you’re making, because they’re made from the natural materials that you find in these places. That’s a great way to make that connection.

Elizabeth

7:04
Yeah, it is. The other thing that I really noted in terms of recommendations or things that are important is just risk taking. That’s always been kind of one of my core fundamental beliefs, and the thing that has always helped me really to find success in my past career, and now, is just taking risks. I mean, you can’t wait until everything’s perfect, like you said, Nikki, before you press go, you kind of have a throw it out there and think Holy shit, is this gonna work?

Nikki

7:38
Absolutely.

Elizabeth

7:39
You know, if I waited until I had enough sales to make a living, I wouldn’t be making a living making sales of brushes, it just doesn’t work that way, you have to kind of put it out there. That doesn’t mean that you don’t set yourself up for success, it doesn’t mean that you don’t put in the hard work and lay the fundamentals. But it does mean that there’s no guarantee that it’s going to work and you have to be willing to put yourself out there, you also have to be willing to put your work out there in a way that’s open, accessible, and available for people to criticize and say it’s not right, and that can be kind of scary. But if you don’t do that, then you can’t get into that forward process of building and making something more substantive. So I really firmly believe that that is just one of those critical things you have to be willing to do in order to make it happen.

Laura

8:36
I call it throwing your hat over the wall, and then you’ve got to go get it. So you got to figure out how to make it happen.

Elizabeth

8:43
Exactly.

Nikki

8:45
I heard somebody kind of a mindset way of thinking about it, that kind of changes the fear a little bit instead of being like, Oh, I’m afraid to put this new product out there. Instead of thinking of it like that, make it a question of, well, what would happen if I put it out there? So instead of stopping yourself with your I’m afraid to turn it around and say, Well, what would happen if I tried this?

Laura

9:12
Yeah, make it about curiosity.

Nikki

9:13
Yeah, yeah.

Elizabeth

9:15
Well, not only that, but it’s like, what do you got to lose? You know, if you put it out there…

Nikki

9:20
You’re probably not going to die from it.

Elizabeth

9:22
Right? You might have some hurt feelings. I mean, maybe but maybe somebody doesn’t like it or or criticizes you or whatever. But…

Laura

9:30
All right, what’s your next tip?

Elizabeth

9:32
We mentioned this before, but it’s a marathon, not a sprint. And I think that is super, super, super important for people to recognize that these things take time and they don’t take time doing nothing. They take time working, actually your butt off really to put all these things in place. And really, we can talk about social proof as part of that. You don’t have to have a store to have social proof. What is social proof? Social proof is a presence. And I know people hate this, but on Instagram or one platform, you know, pick a platform and then just go kill that platform. And probably, at least for me, it’s not Facebook, because Facebook is just such a… too many comments, too much politics, too much, just too much crap, I guess. Instagram is a more visual platform. So it’s a good one. But you know, for me, really, Pinterest is really the best and most effective. And establishing those things is super important, because you’re you’re saddling, you know, social proof, who is this person, there’s so many websites, now you can go onto a website, you’re not going to buy from a website with somebody that just pops out of nowhere and you think they have no Instagram page, they don’t they’re nobody knows them on Facebook, they don’t I mean, if you’re a completely unknown entity, who’s going to spend, you know, $500 with you to buy a signed print or whatever, you know, so, and those things take a lot of time, and they have take consistency, and a commitment to it that isn’t like, 2 days on, 10 days off, oh I think I’ll post something now. And kind of going back to brand consistency, to figure out what your brand is in that marathon, and posting to support your own personal brand. So that your photos, your content, everything has some connectivity and feels real fresh and you, whatever that is. And those things can all be thought about before you have a way to actually go out and sell on a platform. We talked about your email list, but email list is so important. It will have the best conversion rate of any purchase funnel that you have and it will be miles above everything else. The worst, you know, conversion rates come right off social media, like Pinterest, for example, has the lowest conversion rate. But that’s because people usually come and visit you to check it out. And then they think about it, and then they come back later to purchase. So it does have a lower initial conversion rate. But…

Nikki

12:10
It’s great for introducing somebody to you, discovering you.

Elizabeth

12:14
Yeah, it’s discovery. And especially if you’re selling something that is more expensive, you know, people just don’t pull the trigger. So you have to understand that as part of your business model. But the email list, I didn’t really understand it to begin with, like, exactly how important that was. And I really didn’t start marketing through email seriously until probably a year and a half ago. And this year, I did a lot better with it. And I realized, oh my God, what an idiot, like I have just been totally missing the boat. Because I really didn’t leverage my email list effectively. And..

Laura

12:54
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that actually from people, they just say why didn’t I do this? Like years ago?

Elizabeth

13:00
Yeah.

Nikki

13:01
Yep

Elizabeth

13:01
it’s so important. And when I say that conversion rate is better. Like my conversion rate on email is over 6%.

Nikki

13:09
That’s awesome.

Elizabeth

13:10
Huge. I mean, it’s unbelievable. And, and, you know, the thing is, is traffic numbers are important if you run a site, but conversion is really what is the most important because you can have, a third less traffic. But if your conversion rate is a couple percentage points higher, right, it’s good traffic, it’s converting traffic, that funnel is a lot more financially beneficial for you. Those are things that are really super important to pay attention to, and you can start growing your email list now, those are your fans, those are the people that have already said, I like you, I want to hear from you, here’s my email, you can email me and I want to hear from you. I mean, come on, those are your customers, those are customers that you would pay 20 bucks for a customer on Google. I mean, that’s what you pay for a sale on Google is like 15 bucks. So you know,

Nikki

14:03
Yeah, can you share just a little bit, like go a little more in depth on what you send out in your emails, and how often you send them?

Elizabeth

14:11
Well, back to the fact that I’m not very good at the fluffy email. What I send out are just, you know, the thing, the new stuff that I’m working on, I take, I try to take really good pictures as best I can with my cell phone and

Nikki

14:30
You do a really good job. I mean I want every brush.

Elizabeth

14:34
Thank you.

I try really hard to take really good photos, and I and I’ll talk about certain things like I’m going to put together a workshop series here in Montana. So I’m trying to key that up a little bit and ask for feedback from the people, you know, what would you be interested in and how many days would you want it or do you want to be on the list? And so that’s how you can kind of tee up things, sort of prime people to both be expecting more communication on it and to decide if they want to participate. But you know, artists love art tools. So

Nikki

15:07
Yes, we do. Laura already owns all of them.

Laura

15:13
Guilty.

Elizabeth

15:14
I don’t know. Do you own one of my brushes though, Laura, I don’t know if you do or not.

Laura

15:18
I don’t actually own one of your brushes yet, but but I also own another like 400 brushes. So

Elizabeth

15:26
But there’s only one of my kind of brush. So…

Yes, I’m just teasing.

Nikki

15:31
That’s the problem. If there was just one kind, I would have bought one already. But there are so many and they’re so beautiful, I haven’t been able to choose one yet.

Elizabeth

15:42
Well, one of the other important points is to make sure that what you’re putting out there is your very, very best product. And that you stand by, I mean this is just my personal philosophy. I mean, if you’re going to have a website and sell stuff, you better stand by it. And if somebody has an issue, you fix it.

Nikki

16:00
Yep. Agreed.

Elizabeth

16:01
I have to say, I’ve been running my store for four years. And I’ve had exactly two returns.

Nikki

16:07
Wow.

Elizabeth

16:08
In four years, and I have sold thousands of brushes.

Nikki

16:13
Wow. That’s a lot of brushes.

Elizabeth

16:15
It is. I am not exaggerating, because I was looking at it the other day, and I’m like, holy cow, how the heck did I make all these? But that was when my thumb was hurting from arthritis and I’m like, Oh my gosh, well, that’s why, I mean, come on. But it’s really important to have that passion and to stand behind your work. And so I think that that really makes a difference and it makes it much easier to communicate what you’re doing. So, you know, when I make something, I’m excited about it, because I love the products just as much as my customers do. And I love painting with it. And it’s you know, we talked a little bit about this in the last interview, but how do I get inspired to actually make artwork, a lot of it is tied into my tool, you know, when I’m making tools, because I get a big charge out of, you know, making something new and figuring it out and then working with it. And you know, making art.

Laura

17:10
So I have a question. So you’re talking about putting your best work out in the world, what happens when you have something that is not your best work?

Elizabeth

17:16
I don’t put it out. I mean, I don’t sell it, and I won’t make it. And some of it, you know, like when you have legacy, you can go back and look at some old stuff and go oof, you know, well, I’ve gotten much better at that. But for the most part, I think if you’re staying true to yourself, you know, it’s never a good reason, just because you need money. And I have to make a sale I got to get no, no, no, you have to. And I think that that’s another important thing is just clearly understand what your business is. What are you about? I mean, you better know that, you better know exactly what you’re about. If you’re about being a painter, and you’re about having a certain message to convey to your audience, that’s great. Just know what you are. And the other thing is, if we’re talking about ecommerce, narrow niche is really important. Like, I sell paint brushes, mainly and art tools. And that’s a really narrow, narrow kind of area that I’m in and it’s much much easier to develop a strategy and execute a strategy against that. I belong to some forums and stuff. And some people are like, well, they’re selling everything but the kitchen sink, and I’m like, That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard about why people could just go to Walmart. I mean, nobody needs that. So figure out what you want to say and figure out how you’re going to say it and be really clear with that. And you’ll have much more success than if you’re trying to keep everybody happy. Because that’s not going to happen. Yeah. And then I think the other thing is to own what you’re doing. Don’t be afraid of telling somebody what your price is for something. I mean, my brushes are not inexpensive. That is a fact. Yeah, they take me a long time to make and I use the highest quality materials, I import materials that are specially for brush making. And they are extremely functional, well designed tools. And they should last you a lifetime if you take care of them. And I am not embarrassed. And if somebody thinks it’s just way too expensive, that’s fine. And they just don’t have to purchase.

Nikki

19:25
They’re not your customer.

Elizabeth

19:26
They’re not my customer.

Laura

19:27
They are not your ideal customer.

Elizabeth

19:28
Right. And that’s okay, because I’m fine with that.

Laura

19:33
Yeah. And I seen that a lot with people will will speak passionately about what they do. And then when they go to tell the price of something, they shrink back and the confidence disappears. And I think that does have an impact on the person who might purchase that. When they when they see that kind of shift in people.

Elizabeth

19:51
And don’t be afraid, you know, like, I’ve put things out there and then I’ve raised the price because I’m like, Oh, this thing takes me a lot longer to make than I thought and it’s way more complicated and I need to charge more. So I do. And maybe I don’t sell as many. But…

Nikki

20:05
As you should.

Elizabeth

20:05
Yeah, I only have a limited capacity of what I can actually make and produce. And you know, supply and demand is also a factor. And as we said before, social proof, when you’re just looking at the number of purchases that people make, and that also builds confidence for people to pull the trigger and decide that they want to make a purchase. But those are all things to think about. It’s important to enter a journey like this in the mindset of constant learning. Because every day you’re going to learn something different. We said you’re gonna make mistakes. I mean, the other day, I put out an email for gift cards, I’m trying to figure out the whole gift card thing, you would think that gift cards would sell well, but I just really don’t sell gift cards well at all, so. And I put my email out, and I realized that when I set up my promotion, I didn’t click on a button on my Shopify site. So my promotion didn’t work. So I’m sure I sent out this email and everybody got it. And if anybody tried, it didn’t work. But that’s a learning process, right?

Nikki

21:09
Yeah.

Laura

21:09
You’re always gonna click that button again in the future.

Elizabeth

21:12
Yeah, I’ll never make the same mistake.

Laura

21:14
And also, the thing about gift cards that I think is unique is that, with a product like yours, each brush is so unique, I think it’s hard to pick out what you think somebody else would like. So the key about the gift cards is you know, they can go to that lovely group. It’s like Nikki was saying it was hard for her to pick one out, then you give it to somebody, and they can choose their own versus you choosing it for them.

Elizabeth

21:36
I’m hopeful, you know, especially as it gets close to Christmas, somebody is going to be desperate and like, Oh, nothing is gonna get here in time. Oh, I can get them a gift certificate from Elizabeth. Well, we can keep trying, you just and that’s the other thing is just keep trying. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean it’s broken, or it never will work. It just means maybe you didn’t get it right the first 10 times. That’s exactly like with email. It’s a learning process. Like you figure out oh, I need to put the little emoji of a paint palette that changed my open rate on my emails by like, 10%. I’m not kidding! Yeah.

Laura

22:16
Yay for emojis.

Elizabeth

22:19
And then just making sure that you have like, really succinct titles, and I mean, just all that kind of stuff, it’s a learning process, you’re going to continue to learn and to be open to that learning and to recognize that even as an older person like me, who’s not a youngster anymore, that you’re perfectly capable of learning how to do technical things, in technology, it is not just for the young, you can do it. And it’s possible.

Laura

22:45
Just get started.

Elizabeth

22:45
Just get started. And the other thing that I think’s really important for people is you cannot survive on paid traffic. So if your strategy is to pay for your traffic, save yourself a lot of money and time and don’t open your store and spend that money on something else. Because it will not work, period. And just paid traffic, I can’t tell you how many times I see people, it’s like, I opened my store, and I’m doing all these ads, and I’m getting all these people, I’m not converting anything. And it just goes back to social proof. And all those things we’ve talked about before that it’s like a puzzle, you have to have all the pieces, not every single one of them. But you have to have some pieces that all fit together. And that ends up creating something that will deliver against those objectives better than perhaps just trying to throw it out there and see if you can pay to get people to, you know, jump on your site or whatever, you know.

Laura

23:44
I think there’s a place for paid traffic. But there are steps that have to be done. First, you have to have that organic following first. And that social proof.

Elizabeth

23:51
I did not start paying for marketing and advertising until I was in it three years. I just started my first Google Ads this year, this year. Because if you don’t have SEO, if you don’t have backlinks, if you don’t have all that stuff, you know, Google ads aren’t gonna do you any good anyway, so you know, there you go.

Laura

24:14
All right, what’s your next tip.

Elizabeth

24:15
Diversifying your income, so make sure that you have multiple streams of income, you know, I teach classes, I do online zoom classes, and I sell multiple types of tools for many different kinds of mediums. Because if one is kind of, you know, slow than the other one may pick up some, and it gives you the ability to weather some of the storms too. So…

Nikki

24:38
When one thing goes down a bit, you can focus on the other thing that might be doing well because of the season or

Elizabeth

24:45
Exactly. Then just the importance of branding. We talked a little bit about this previously, but just because of my background, I’ve always been very aware of branding and aware of what I wanted to do with branding for my own business, it’s really important to have, first of all, to know what your brand identity is clearly. And it’s really important to then execute against that brand strategy, and on a consistent basis. So using a consistent color palette, having a logo, using certain fonts, maybe the kind of style of photography, that you have your communication style, all these things are super important. And they really make a difference, especially over the long term. So having that figured out ahead of time would be time well spent to think about that. And also, that’s one place where I would maybe spend some money is to have somebody help design the logo, and then make sure that you have all of the right file types. So you know, you have really clean logo files that are done correctly. So you can just pop those onto your photos and put them into your content. My logo is recognizable. I mean, it’s all over the place, I put it on every single picture that goes on my website has my logo on it. That way someone snatches my picture or puts it on Pinterest or whatever. And then if you go to the logo and you hover on it on Pinterest, all of this stuff comes up. That’s that’s all my stuff. So, right and then take the time to trademark that that logo, it’s not that expensive to do, you can do it yourself, go through LegalZoom or something like that. That’s what I did. Make sure that you also have your company set up with proper… I have an LLC, I would recommend doing that as well. And then those are just some of the things that I think are the good foundations for setting up a shop and making a go of it as a creative with an online business.

Nikki

26:47
Those are fantastic tips.

Elizabeth

26:50
Thank you.

Nikki

26:52
Elizabeth, thanks so much for coming back and sharing what you’ve learned by not letting fear stop you from just getting started with your own shop. And you’ve given us some really great tips about what to think about as you’re growing. We’re sure our listeners are going to get a lot of great insight from these.

Elizabeth

27:08
Well, terrific. I really appreciate being here. And I think you guys are providing a great service to listeners. And I wish both of you a lot of success.

Nikki

27:18
Thanks you. We wish the very same for you.

Laura

27:23
To get a downloadable PDF with Elizabeth’s tips and tricks, visit startistsociety.com/ecommercetips. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week.