New zine, DTC issues, the future of Draft
Our sponsor for this newsletter is Blink!
Blink is a specialist eCommerce SEO agency, grounded in data science. We know eCommerce – and DTC – inside out, and typically we grow organic revenue by at least 100% with 12 months for our clients. To find out more visit blinkseo.co.uk or follow us on LinkedIn.
Thank you for sponsoring our newsletter this week!
Our latest zine is now available! It’s called Talking to People, and it’s all about how to run insightful, profitable customer interviews. Take a look and grab your copy before they all sell out.
Copies of our completely normal heat & scroll mapping zine, You installed a heat & scroll mapping tool on your store, signed up for a paid plan, and then never used it for some reason, are still available at the aforelinked, too.
As mentioned, we’re the latest guest on the Unofficial Shopify Podcast. Along with that, I posted an update to my recent thread about what’s broken in DTC ecommerce. You should read the update, listen to the podcast, and then come back here and read a bummer story.
Last week, I got on three prospective client calls. One of them demanded that we write a guarantee of a 20x ROI into the contract. Another noped off because we failed to guarantee a refund clause in the contract. And a third got into an actual verbal fight with me when we mentioned that our work costs money. To be very clear, they started screaming at us when we refused to provide them with free solutions on the call, and escalated when we insisted that we don’t work for free.
We have had 42 qualified leads get on calls with us in 2022. None have signed with us. Bar our largest client who just parted ways with us, our only other 2021 client tried to back out after signing their contract, and we had to chase the payment.
This wasn’t the case just a year ago. What on earth is wrong with our industry? Why are people choosing to treat value-based design with such indignity and disrespect?
We haven’t changed the kind of work we do since 2015. We haven’t changed the amount of money we charge since 2020. This year, people are clearly interested in working with us – until they realize I’m an American with 17 years’ experience and a mortgage, and we charge accordingly. They go for someone cheaper, receive low-quality work, and think research-driven optimization is not for them.
I’m writing threads like the aforelinked because I exist on the front lines of a profound intellectual, emotional, and spiritual impoverishment in independent ecommerce. There is no way to circle around the issue any further, there is no way for me to be nice about this, and I have little to lose by bringing it up.
So.
If you have truly, unconditionally earmarked an immediate investment in value-based, design-driven optimization, and you want to listen to your customers and act on what they’re telling you, then reach out.
If we haven’t been paid for new design consulting work by October 28, we will close Draft for the remainder of the year and reposition the consultancy to serve a more structurally nourishing industry.
My small business’s future thanks you in advance.
This week, for paid members
- Our weekly paid lesson describes how to critique the synthesis process itself. What happens if you’re relying on a busted process to generate new design ideas?
- Our design of the week shows you how to handle category navigation and positioning on your home page – at the same time.
Want in? Join us now – now named one of the best ecommerce communities going on the web.
Links & analysis
- I loved this piece on paying down design debt. Only rarely is a retheme appropriate! It’s far more useful to identify what isn’t working with what you already have.
- How to indirectly ask questions. Remember: what customers say and what customers do are two very different things!
This week’s paid lesson: How can you effectively critique synthesized work?
This week’s lesson is for paid members. Sign into our community to read it, or join us today to get access.
Thanks for the sponsorship, Blink!
Blink is a specialist eCommerce SEO agency, grounded in data science. We know eCommerce – and DTC – inside out, and typically we grow organic revenue by at least 100% with 12 months for our clients. To find out more visit blinkseo.co.uk or follow us on LinkedIn.