I’m trying out a new analysis tool. It’s a little scary what you can learn on the internet with the right analytics these days. For example, my new scanning tool analyzes traffic patterns and has estimated that the Off The Grid Surplus site sells an average of $99,985 per month. Scary, right? But that’s a lot of cash on the grid or off.
The company was founded by Josh Patterson. Josh was working for a string of famous activewear companies as a clothing designer – brands like Quicksilver, Fox Racing, and PrAna. He started Off The Grid Surplus as a side hustle in 2012. By 2017 he was off on his own. Pretty sweet story IMHO.
The Shopify Theme That They Use
So here we have another Shopify winner selling well north of $1 million per year – basically in flannel plaid shirts – and they are NOT using a fancy-schmancy custom theme. No sir-ee Bob! This high-tech success story sells seven figures using a nicely modified premium theme from a developer called “Eight” … that theme is the Flow design in the Queenstown style. You can see it for yourself here.
What They Do Well
The site looks really sharp. The theme and layout work well with the brand. The photos are spot on and fit the demographic. And the carry the branding throughout with just enough orange to tie it all together. Orange is a powerful color. It gets instant attention but too much can be hard to look at.
Good deployment of Express payment options AND installment payment option (via ShopPay).
What Needs to Be Improved
What the HECK is the deal with the shirt sizing chart. You can see an example on this page if you scroll down a bit. On desktop that image expands to fill the entire screen and loses resolution. Hurts my eyes to look at it. It’s not on every product page. Just seems that a few of them are broken.
I always walk through a purchase test on every site I review. These guys did something that I’ve never seen before and it’s something that every instinct in my body tells me is hurting them by increase cart abandonment. Here’s the deal … it is an eCommerce best practice that once a shopper has decided to buy you put as few clicks between that customer and him submitting his credit card. Makes sense, right?
So, I go and click “Add to Cart” and they flash me a pop-up to subscribe to their emails. Now bear in mind that they had already asked for a subscription with a pop-up a few seconds after page entry. Now, you have all heard me preach about emphasizing your email list. But I just do not think that a SECOND subscription prompt when I am about to ACTUALLY BUY something on your site is the right way to go.
After that the checkout process was straightforward and clean.
Some of the product pages have a little interstitial page jumping. This is sometimes caused by inconsistent image formatting/sizing. Other times it’s cause by either using multiple CDNs or the load order needs adjustment. It’s one of those 3 things I bet.
In their main menu they have “The Outlet.” This links to a subdomain. This is an eCommerce error for 2 reasons. The first is that breaking out to a subdomain hurts SEO. It just does. Second, it creates a hard path to navigate back to the main site. It’s totally not intuitive. Customers can get lost.
Keep it all on the main site guys.
The Shopify Apps They Use
We used our top-secret Shopify scanning tools to determine that this site is using the following apps and plugins:
- Klaviyo — Customer lifecycle management stuff.
- Advanced Product Options - Create unlimited product options & variants options
- Meteor Mega Menu - Create gorgeous multi-tier dropdown menus for your store
- Rebuy — Personalization of the buying experience.
- Loop Returns — Manage returns, exchanges, return labels, store credit & more!
- GDPR/CCPA + Cookie Management - GDPR - LGPD - CCPA - APPI - PIPEDA Compliance for your store
- React — Customer support.
- Back in Stock — Notify customers: products out of stock, in stock, preorders..
- Product Filter & Search — #1 Collection Filter & Smart Search app for any stores
- Octane AI — Increase AOV w/ a stunning quiz. Supercharge ads & Klaviyo.
- Stamped — Customer ratings and reviews.
- Bugsnag — The app that snag bugs … in software. Seeing this app EVERYWHERE these days.
- VerifyPass — Special discounting tool for military and first responders.
- Sendtric — Countdown timer in email.
- ManyChat — Facebook chat-bot integration
- ShopifyPay/PayPal/ApplePay/GooglePay – These are Express payment options.
- Magnific Popup — Responsive lightboxes and such.
- Route ‑ Protection & Tracking
Marketing Stuff They Do
Interestingly, Off The Grid does not link to their social media on their website. Well, if they do, I can’t find it. That doesn’t make sense at all. But I found their Facebook page anyway. They even have a Facebook Marketplace presence there. I was also not able to locate any paid search ads.
Anyway … they are running a lot of Facebook ads, so I have placed 3 recent ones below for your interest and inspiration.
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