Name: Back9 Creative Studio
Price range: $$
Rating: 5

Selling online: Shopify vs WooCommerce, which platform is better?

Posted on July 31, 2020April 22, 2025 by Phil

If you’ve been looking to sell products or services online, you’ve probably heard of Shopify. Claiming to be the “Best eCommerce Software for Your Business”, can this Canadian company back up its statement?

Although Shopify gets its name out there and does plenty of advertising, it’s actually only the 2nd most popular eCommerce platform. So what’s first? That crown rests with WooCommerce, a plugin (a program you can download to add extra features to your website) for WordPress. It integrates easily into any WordPress site.

So in the battle between Shopify and WooCommerce, who wins, and who’s left holding the peel of the second banana?

Shopify

Shopify’s goal is to do the hard work for you when it comes to setting up your online store. One of the biggest benefits of the platform is that you don’t need to have tech skills at all. You can get an online store up in a matter of minutes with their easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor.

However, if you want the edge in getting found on Google through Search Engine Optimisation tools, Shopify’s limit of customisation can hurt you here. Additionally, it can be difficult to export your posts and information if you decide to try out another platform. You can also run into scaling issues if your business starts to grow because there are limited options for customisation.

While Shopify does have a “Lite” plan that’s only $9 USD per month, it comes with practically no features and has to connect to an existing website. Regular plans start at $29 USD per month (and 2.0% fee on all sales). The highest plan tops out at $299 (and 0.5% fee on all sales).

Some other features of Shopify include:

Website hosting is part of the package.
Drag-and-drop customisation.
24/7 Support.
Abandoned cart recovery.
Dropshipping/a>options.
Unlimited file storage.

When should I use Shopify?

If you’re okay with adding products on your own and want a good-looking, easy-to-use store, Shopify could be a good choice for you. This is especially true if extensive customisation doesn’t worry you.

WordPress with WooCommerce

The best thing about WordPress is that you have endless customisation options to make your store look and act exactly as you want. The bad news… There are endless customisation options. Therefore, web development skills are a must. Learning how to use WordPress like a pro takes time. In fact, some people even make a career out of it!

WooCommerce is a plugin that plays off the endless customisation so you can build a store exactly the way you want. You can have custom products, pages, checkout systems, and sales funnels. Whatever you want can be customised. You’re only limited by the capabilities of the builder. Hence, getting a skilled web developer is important!

However, using WordPress with WooCommerce means that you’ll need to have a WordPress website already. You won’t be able to simply download WooCommerce and get a store ready from nothing the same day. Because of this, it can take some time to get your store up and going. Nevertheless, it will be powerful and versatile once it is ready.

WooCommerce is free to use. It costs nothing to set up. Some plugins, like tracking abandoned carts or suggesting edits to make your website rank better on Google, come with a cost. However, you can pick and choose to get what you want, with plenty of free options out there. To get the best add-ons for your site, it pays to sit down and have a chat with a professional web developer to discuss your options.

Some other features of WooCommerce include:

Search Engine Optimisation tools.
Free website backup options.
Thousands of plug-ins through WordPress.
Custom fields for products.
Use any payment gateway.
Easy integrations with other software.

When should I use WooCommere?

If you want the freedom of customisation, the ability to scale for large operations, and the largest selection of add-ons and plugins, WooCommerce is the right choice for you.

Who’s the winner?

If you want to build an eCommerce website yourself, loads of spare time, and limited tech expertise, Shopify is the winner. For almost everything else, WooCommerce is the winner.

With WooCommerce, you have the endless options of WordPress. This means if you have your site professionally built, it will be completely customised. No one else will have one quite like yours. If you’re looking into doing any advanced features like adding uncommon payment methods or translating your store into multiple languages, WooCommerce gives you the easiest, best, and most options.

Still not sure? Book a FREE website consultation

To find out information on other eCommerce platforms, we have an article you may be interested in Which eCommerce Platform is right for me?

Selling online – Where to Start with eCommerce?

Posted on June 26, 2020September 9, 2024 by Phil

Online sales and contactless purchases or contactless transactions have become all the rage since the inception of COVID-19, but where do you start if you want to sell online with e-commerce?

We believe if you’re running a business and selling a product, or even a service, it’s imperative that you strongly consider e-Commerce and how you could sell it online? If you think that leap of faith seems too much or is overwhelming, don’t worry. You are not alone. We talk to business owners all the time who are not sure where to start when it comes to e-commerce and selling online.

The best place to start is to understand first and foremost what you want to achieve, and make a plan to achieve that! There are multiple factors to getting set up to sell online. Things like:

Will selling online work for me?
What e-commerce platform should I use? (i.e. what is best for you and your business)
What does it cost to set up an online store?
Is dropshipping an option? What is Dropshipping?
How do I work out and charge freight costs?
What software can I use to manage my shipping?
How do I manage my stock? (especially if you have bricks and mortar too)
How do I take online payments (what payment gateway is best? – What is a payment gateway?)
Home much can I do myself?
Can I update or add my own products going forward?
How do I advertise or promote my e-Commerce store and my products?
Who are my customers?
Will I actually make any sales?

The list goes on…

Are all e-commerce platforms created equal?

A lot of people may just think it’s easy to purchase (well, actually license – you won’t own it) a pre-existing templated platform. Platforms such as Shopify, Squarespace or Wix, can be good starting points, but beware! There’s a lot of pitfalls when it comes to these prebuilt, proprietary systems. If you’re tech-savvy with a can-do, do it yourself attitude you may be able to work it out and that’s cool, fill your boots. But if you really want to succeed when it comes to e-commerce and selling online, you may want to think about bringing in an expert. And by an expert, we mean someone with experience, with a proven track record in building, maintaining, and marketing e-commerce websites.

Of course, there are a lot of cowboys out there in the marketplace. From my experience they may have what it takes to put your information into a pre-existing template such as the ones mentioned above, however, simply adding products to a predefined template, does not an e-commerce website, make!

Before you jump in and engage the services of a designer or marketing agency, ask them some (or all) of the following:

How many e-commerce websites have you built?
Do you actively help manage these and/or drive sales?
What sort of return should I expect from an e-commerce website?
What platform do you use for e-commerce?
Will I pay a license or will I own my website?

We’ve written an in-depth article about some of the most popular e-commerce platforms that you can read here, Which eCommerce platform is the best for me?

Why choose Back9?

At Back9 we have built and maintain a number of e-commerce websites for a range of clients. We understand what it takes to succeed in this space and you need to be prepared to invest in order to see a return…

A great place to start is with an e-commerce Strategy! This will help you define your objectives, figure out the best platform to use, and how much it will cost. Ultimately how you will market your business online and succeed. We’re here to help and to challenge our clients to visualise their potential.

E-Commerce doesn’t need to be hard or overwhelming. Especially with the help of a virtual marketing department like us.
We can work with you to help bring your story to life, come up with a plan, and put that plan into action. So feel free to get in touch with us and book a Free consultation to see if and how we can help you and your business!

Book a FREE consultation

What’s the best spend for your advertising dollar?

Posted on June 23, 2020April 22, 2025 by Phil

There’s a lot of work that goes into making a marketing effort successful. Getting the creative bits down into something catchy and shareable is a huge help. But even getting everything down perfect is only half the battle. What about distribution? How can you make sure that genius Adonis of marketing gets to the people who like that sort of thing? We’ve heard from many people who tried one-off advertising who weren’t pleased with the result. That often boils down to one thing: poor spending of their marketing budget. So how can you make sure that you get the best spend for your advertising dollar?

Traditional Advertising

Traditional advertising like radio, TV, newspaper, and signage can all be effective. However, focusing on traditional advertising alone might not be the best spend of your advertising dollar. One of the biggest drawbacks is the cost. Running a single newspaper ad, for instance, can cost upwards of several hundred dollars. This might not be so bad if the newspaper has a good readership. However, many tend to be getting fewer subscribers each year, especially the physical paper.

If you decide to do traditional advertising, make sure to look into the benefits. This includes how many people will see or hear your ad. Sometimes the typical package offered won’t work well for you, if at all. Furthermore, will your target audience be reachable through the format?

Digital Advertising

While much of traditional advertising is on the decline, digital platforms and ads are like that exploding arrow on the graph that flies right off the chart. In 2020, it’s estimated that the average person spends 2 and a half hours per day on social media. No, not on online. Just on social media. Some studies suggest that New Zealanders spend up to six hours a day spent online (thankfully, including video streaming!). That is about a quarter of our lives. This is why you would want to focus on marketing to people where they’re already spending their time.

However, the digital landscape can be quite crowded with ads on YouTube videos, Facebook, Google, and on your everyday websites. There’s so much advertising online that a lot of it gets completely ignored. Therefore, it’s crucial to know where to advertise and who to market to in order to get the best return for your advertising dollar.

How can I get the best return on my marketing?

If you think about it, marketing only exists because it generates more money than a company puts towards it. The old adage is true: you have to spend money to make money. Finding the right amount to spend for maximum return is tricky. It depends on a lot of factors such as budget, industry, the specific products you’re selling, and your audience. Typically, you’ll get the best results by doing some combination of Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing.

Search Engine Marketing

You know those results at the top of google that have “Ad” next to them? That’s Search Engine Marketing in a nutshell. So how do you get one of these top-tier placements? Through Google Ads.

Google Ads is a platform where you define a budget, create ads, and then have them show on the top of the list for certain searches. This is based on the budget and quality of the ad. It can be extremely effective, but only if time is invested in learning how to make quality ads and understand the platform. Search engine marketing can be especially important if you sell products online. If you’ve thought about selling online but aren’t yet, you might be interested in our article, Which eCommerce platform is best for me?

Search Engine Marketing – Does it work?

So what kind of return can you expect? It varies by industry, and there’s a handy chart here to show some common cost-per-click (CPC) by industry. As you can see in the chart, the lowest average for Search (the ads on top of a Google search) is $1.16 per click for e-commerce. For display (picture ads on other sites besides Google), Travel is at $0.44 per click.

How does Southland compare? One of our clients in the e-commerce business was at 12 cents per click in May 2020. Comparing that to the average price of $1.16, our client is getting almost 10x the clicks as the average for the industry. This is because the account was set up and ran by an experienced team. Sales wise, for a few hundred dollars a month, this client gets a few thousand in sales as a result of ads. This indicates that 1 advertising dollar brings in several–sometimes 5 or even 10 dollars back–each month.

Practically everyone in the country has an active Facebook account. Most that do will check it at least once per day. That’s a lot of chances to show someone that you have the products and services they’re looking for. So how do you make sure it’s your brand that pops up instead of a rival’s?

Building a following can take a long time. With a bigger following comes greater reach, meaning your posts go to more people. These people can, in turn, follow you, meaning you get greater reach, and so on. But to get that snowball rolling, you have to start reaching people. This can be a major hurdle when starting out.

One form of social media marketing that can help you leap this hurdle is Facebook Ads. Like Google Ads, Facebook Ads is an enormous suite with more options than most people ever have the chance to see. Let alone use effectively. By choosing the right type of campaign targeted to the right audience can bring in several times the return on investment.

We’ve done Facebook Ads for clients who have had incredible results. One had the number of online sales increase over 10x previous months and even more in dollar amounts. Including the set-up and planning time, this amounted to over a 600% return on investment.

Another client who tried Facebook Ads integrated the catalogue directly for remarketing. This allowed us to show people who viewed a product that same product as an ad later. Using that method, in one week and $50 spent on ads, over $1800 worth of sales were made directly from these ads. Including the setup time, that’s still a 5x return on investment. These ads are running continuously and are still generating sales without any extra input needed. Breaking down the first week, that was about $5 of ad spend per sale with each sale averaging over $180. Not bad at all!

Does this mean digital advertising is better than traditional advertising?

For many clients, yes. If forced to choose one method, digital tends to give the best value for your advertising dollar. This is only as long as it’s set up by someone who knows what they’re doing.

However, that doesn’t mean both types can’t work together. Having a website, Facebook page, Google ads, flyers, and radio ads all working together can create a tight, complete, and ubiquitous campaign. You’ll be everywhere, and reaching people in more ways than ever.

If you’d like to find out how to get the maximum return for the advertising dollar for your business, come in for a chat. Discover how to make your marketing money work for you!

Conversion Paths and Writing Style

Posted on May 8, 2020November 8, 2022 by Phil

We’ve talked about conversion paths in a few places lately, like on design for conversion paths and a blog explaining conversion paths in-depth. For a recap, a conversion path is every path a visitor takes before taking the desired action like registering, contacting you, or making a purchase. Pretty much every step of most conversion paths involves writing of some kind. It might be the written part of a Facebook post, information on a blog, or a description of a product or service. One important thing to keep in mind with conversion paths is the style of the writing.

You might remember a few different styles of writing in school, like persuasive writing, informative writing, and so on. If you try to sell to someone who doesn’t even know what your product is, they’ll be unlikely to commit. And reminding someone ready to about the very basics of the product instead of a way to purchase won’t do much good. The video below touches up on a couple writing styles for conversion paths.

Informative Writing

Informative writing is all about teaching and education. For informative writing, you should be writing about something you know about. Imagine a business owner who is a professional painter with 20 years of experience. This person could be considered an expert or authority on the subject of painting. What they say will be more valuable than some guy who threw paint on his wall once. Informative writing can be giving helpful tips, explaining the benefits of a product or service, or refuting bad information or myths that are out there.

Persuasive Writing

Persuasive writing is all about convincing people to do something. A lot of business Facebook pages and conspiracy theory videos are trying to persuade you to do something or stop doing something. Persuasive writing sometimes gets a bad rap for being “salesy”, but that’s only one way it’s used. Those long rants that are usually shared around Facebook with some emotional “tell it how it is” tend to be a kind of persuasive writing too. It’s okay to use persuasive writing; especially when someone needs that little extra convincing!

Which writing style is right for a conversion path?

That depends on what your goal is for the specific conversion path. And you can have several different paths with different writing styles for one website. One path might be informing someone on Facebook about what you do. Then that link could go to a form that they fill out to get an eBook with more information. Since these people are still researching, getting information might be most important. They may not be ready to buy yet, but maybe after learning more!

Other conversion paths might be directed towards people that want to buy something. Email newsletters with discounts can use a persuasive writing style to convince someone to buy something now. Or you might just want to convince them to come and meet with you in-person.

There are plenty of opportunities to use different writing styles in your conversion paths. If you want to learn more about this, feel free to get in touch with us and let’s talk!

Design for Conversion Paths

Posted on May 5, 2020November 8, 2022 by Phil

Design for Conversion Paths

Conversion paths are the series of steps that a visitor takes before converting and becoming a lead or making a purchase. There’s a lot of elements that go into making a conversion path effective, and one of these is design.

Here at Back9 Creative Studio, we create custom websites because they offer a lot of advantages. A custom design lets us plan from the very beginning how to use design to accomplish your goals.

Planning is key

Before doing any kind of design or building the website, you need to define and plan what your goals are. Do you want to sell products straight from the website? Do you have services and want people to get in touch with you by filling out a form or making a call? The more detailed your plans, the more targeted your conversion path can be and your design will reflect that.

What kind of design elements help with conversion paths?

There are a lot of different design elements that can help customers get through your conversion paths and some might of them may be specific to you and your goals. But there are some common things that are effective.

A typeface and font that is easy to read. Text that’s too small can be difficult for some people to see. Font choice should also prioritise readability, especially if the site will have a lot of written text.
Using your brand colours. Your colours are an important part of your brand, and those colours will be used to accomplish different things to help customers along the conversion path.
Let images paint a picture. Images are more engaging than text alone. These don’t necessarily have to be photographs either. Icons are another good way to guide visitors through the conversion path.

By knowing what you want your customer to do, you can use design to help visitors through the conversion path and give you the leads and sales that you’re looking for.

SMART Goals for your Business Plan

Posted on April 17, 2020January 11, 2024 by Phil

Does your business have the right kind of goals?

One of the most essential parts of any good plan is to have goals. What do you want to achieve? What do you want to accomplish? Do you want an 8-figure yearly revenue with a 7-figure salary? Do you want to be the go-to company in your industry for your region? Having goals helps your plan stay on track, but having the wrong goals can set you on the wrong track. So how do you be SMART with your goals?

Watch the video below, and read on to find more detailed information about these types of goals.

Creating SMART Goals

SMART goals don’t just make you feel intelligent, they help your business run more efficiently too. A good goal should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound… SMART.

Let’s start with a simple goal, “I want to get more website traffic” and then make it SMART.

Specific – Getting more website traffic is something most people want. But it’s not a very specific goal. More traffic than when? Yesterday? Last year? From where on your website? Your homepage? Resources page? A more specific goal is to “Get more people to read the monthly blog.”

Measurable – “More” readers is a very general number. By making it a measurable numeric amount, you can easily find if you’ve met or didn’t quite reach your goal. “I want 500% more people to read the monthly blog.”

Attainable – It’s great to push your team to their limits. But you want to make sure that the goal is something that they can accomplish. “500% more” readers might be a bit much, especially if the blog has been around for a couple of years. “I want to have 20% more regular readers for the monthly blog.”

Relevant – Accomplishing your goal won’t mean too much if it isn’t relevant to your business. Getting more readers is helpful, but why do you want readers in the first place? In this case, it’s probably because you want those readers to become leads. So that should be part of your goal. “I want to have 20% more regular readers for the monthly blog because blog readers are 3x more likely to become qualified leads.”

Time-Bound – Putting an end date on your goal lets you know if you achieved it or not. Without an end date, the goal can be pushed out forever. And it if wasn’t met (or if it was exceeded by a lot), when the end date comes you can evaluate and adjust it to be a better fit. “I want to have 20% more regular readers for the monthly blog in 6 months because blog readers are 3x more likely to become qualified leads.”

By making your goal SMART, you can go from something very simple, “I want more website traffic”, to something that is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound for your business, “I want to have 20% more regular readers for the monthly blog because blog readers are 3x more likely to become qualified leads.”

I’m having trouble making my goals SMART

Making sure your goals meet each of the areas might be a challenge, but we have a template that can help. If you visit our SMART Goals template page, you can download a template from Google Sheets or Excel that will guide you through the process. Simply fill in the prompts with information about your business and you’re on your way to making SMART Goals and running a smarter business. We’ll also able to work with you to help you develop these goals if you’d like, get in touch now to learn more or to get started.

Selling online: Shopify vs WooCommerce, which platform is better?