NOLL TILL 100 — ENGLISH TRANSCRIPT
Episode 109: How to increase conversion in your ecommerce store #109

English translation of the full Swedish conversation. Original timestamps preserved.
Original audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EQdn77FWxY

[00:00:00] A warm welcome to a new episode of Zero to 100. My name is Fedja Porobic and with me, as usual these days, is Fredrik Ankarsköld. We should almost have some synthetic applause here …

[00:00:16] Shall we do that? We'll see, I don't know if it'll be too cheesy. New week, fresh start. We're super excited and I love sitting in the podcast studio with you. I usually tell my friends it's like an hour of therapy. You get to talk through what's actually happening.

[00:00:36] We reflect on world events, macroeconomics and things affecting e-commerce. Then I take the insights with me into the rest of the week. Have you thought about how much you learn yourself by teaching others? To some extent it also becomes a commitment. If we talk about something, I actually want to carry it out, not just talk.

[00:01:05] Exactly. In last week's episode, which of course came out on Thursday, we said we'd go through a website next time. You listening will get inside our heads and see how we think about conversion. Driving traffic is one thing, but then it has to convert and customers need to return. Running e-commerce is actually quite simple. People think I'm oversimplifying and making it sound too rosy when I say that. Almost a year ago I was onstage at Pindex, an event about UX, CX and customer experience …

[00:01:53] … and said e-commerce is about three things: driving traffic to the website, getting visitors to buy, and then return. It doesn't really get simpler. It's like any shop in town. You have to get people in, get them shopping and have a big enough smile for them to come back. Good service, returning customers and good profitability.

[00:02:19] How did they react? Many probably think it isn't that simple. Some were incredibly provoked, others thought it sounded reasonable, especially when I explained. I only had fifteen or twenty minutes onstage, so I didn't manage the world's biggest punchline. But I did show concrete examples of how we work, including the journeys with Såpa and Mockberg.

[00:02:48] That's what I managed in my fifteen minutes. I'm returning to Pindex in September with something even sharper about why e-commerce is so damn simple. That can be a cliffhanger in itself.

[00:03:04] I want to add that just because it's simple doesn't mean it works. No, that's true.

[00:03:14] There can still be no product–market fit, or a part of the chain that isn't working. Exactly. Today, as we promised last time, we'll go through a website. Several people have been in touch since Thursday. There's one site I think we'll both like, since we're a bit interested in health. It's fun to grill a health website.

[00:03:44] It's Gårdens Mathantverk. Have you heard of them? Absolutely, I've shopped there. How fun, then this will be extra enjoyable. I shop there too, not weekly but at least about once a month. It's a bit silly because I've also invested in Mylla, which is fairly similar. But I think Gårdens has better eggs, and that's the main reason.

[00:04:16] Eggs are important to me and I eat them every day. Why did you choose Gårdens? In ordinary grocery stores there's a risk of higher levels of things like PFAS or other substances, even in organic eggs. What distinguishes Gårdens from those?

[00:04:36] Regarding egg quality, I test myself every week, particularly omega-3 levels, and have seen differences between weeks. I wondered why and started looking more closely at the eggs. They're a major source of omega-3. Since I eat two to four a day, I get a lot through them.

[00:05:01] That's one reason. The other is that they taste much better. Then you get different vitamins, minerals and other nutrients through eggs. They're complete as a whole and one of the ingredients that stand out, a staple in my new diet. People wonder whether cholesterol doesn't shoot up when you eat so many eggs. No. Current research has clearly shown it's fine to eat a reasonable amount, about two to four a day.

[00:05:44] It's been thoroughly tested in about twenty controlled, randomized and peer-reviewed studies. Nineteen reached the same conclusion. One was more uncertain due to missing data or participants dropping out and couldn't draw a conclusion. But none found that it raises bad cholesterol.

[00:06:15] It raises total cholesterol. Yes, all animal products do: cheese, milk, meat, fat, fish and chicken. There's nothing strange about that. LDL and HDL can increase a little, but that doesn't mean it's negative.

[00:06:36] Many people forget to factor in insulin levels too. Cholesterol isn't always the strongest cause of many diseases. For many people it's high insulin.

[00:06:48] Now we're getting very deep and nerdy, so we won't go further with that. I know people like it, but a caveat: Neither of us is a doctor or nutritionist.

[00:06:58] We're self-taught. To my knowledge nobody in Sweden tests themselves as much as I do, so I have data about my own body. When I became ill in 2024, I said I'd treat my body like an e-commerce business, keeping a close eye on every KPI. I regularly track around 150 measures, through wearables, blood tests and MRI scans. Sometimes I have to have CT, computed tomography, or DT in Swedish. I export all the data, process it in Excel and track progress. Now I have a trend line going back almost two years. Every week I see small changes when I adjust diet, lifestyle or health.

[00:07:51] A value can go up or down, and something can become counterproductive. About a year ago I started training very intensively: running, rowing and strength training on alternating days. My sleep was negatively affected at first before getting better. That reduced absorption of vitamins and minerals, so my values worsened even though I hadn't changed my diet.

[00:08:29] Just because I started too aggressively and too quickly. The tip is to build up, not go from zero to a hundred in training. Go from zero to ten, then twenty and thirty and keep accelerating. Over a ten-week period, your sleep has time to adapt. But this isn't a health podcast.

[00:08:54] I could mention lots of other things I've done: stool tests, urine tests and breath tests. Right, I did a stool test recently and tried Alba. Have you tried it? No, not yet.

[00:09:06] Bloody good, especially for the children. I bought it for their sake and then we've done a follow-up. It takes a little time to get the first result, but afterwards you can discuss it with a nutritionist. It's fun.

[00:09:22] I'll try Alba. If you want to know more, there are loads of books. One recommendation is Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind. I can …

[00:09:32] … link it or put the title in the description for anyone interested. Yes, do you usually list the books? I need to start doing that.

[00:09:40] I try to remind Alfred, who edits, to list them in case I forget. Okay, now let's jump into Gårdens Mathantverk. You have your iPad up, I see. Yes, so I can see your screen.

[00:09:55] Those of you only listening might want to open the episode on your phone or computer. We're on YouTube now and publish full episodes there. This is a typical episode suited to watching. The first thing I do is search for ‘buy food online.’

[00:10:17] I click through from Google, as I imagine many new customers do. There are two sponsored results. Gårdens says ‘local, small-scale artisan food’ and ‘food entirely without additives,’ followed by a long dash that looks like ChatGPT. ‘Small-scale, nutritious, thoughtful food to your door.’ Nice.

[00:10:45] Not the world's best tagline, but at least they have an icon and a tagline. KoRo Shop, right above, is nowhere near this: morning matcha. That's not quite the same thing.

[00:10:59] It feels strange. ‘Organic and vegan is what you want?’ Question mark. Gårdens' result is substantially better than the one above, which is probably bidding more aggressively.

[00:11:11] Further down is Mylla, fun. That's organic. Then there's a new sponsored result from HelloFresh, followed by Gårdens: ‘Real food that makes a difference.’ A better tagline, I'd say.

[00:11:28] What do you think of Mylla, appearing in between? It's good: ‘Buy food directly from the producer, delivered to your door. At Mylla you buy local Swedish food in season, directly from farmers and producers. Convenient home delivery in Skåne, Stockholm and Gothenburg.’

[00:11:42] It's simple, clear and says exactly what you do. ‘Buy food directly from the producer, delivered to your door’ is probably the most important thing. ‘Real food that makes a difference’ …

[00:11:53] … is better than ‘small-scale’ at the top, but not as good as Mylla or HelloFresh. ‘Shop for food online’ is what I searched for. ‘Up to a thousand kronor on five boxes.’ I don't understand what they mean, a discount or not? Probably some …

[00:12:12] Now you're thinking of HelloFresh? Yes. Gårdens has ‘Real food that makes a difference.’ Down here they're better: ‘Sweden's first entirely Ä-labeled shop,’ ‘more than twenty thousand satisfied customers in Sweden,’ ‘ten percent member discount across the entire range’ and ‘free shipping.’ That's many more USPs. Shipping is clearly stated: eighty-nine kronor. Then it says fourteen-day returns on food.

[00:12:40] Can you even return chilled goods? I suppose it depends whether they're dry goods. Exactly, that should work with dry goods. Then they should clarify that on the website. Tomatoes or asparagus can almost go off on the way home. That actually happened with the asparagus once, but I got compensation for the next purchase.

[00:13:01] Fourteen-day returns on food gets a bit odd, even though of course they sell dry goods, glass jars or other things. Willys has ‘Shop for cheap food online’ and ‘Good food at a good price.’ I'm not impressed by the online food segment. But now let's go into Gårdens and work from top to bottom. The first thing we see, above the logo and well above the fold, is ‘Sweden's first entirely Ä-labeled shop.’ I assume perhaps the two of us know what Ä-labeled means.

[00:13:48] The funny thing is I thought for almost a minute before remembering it's Äkta vara. First I thought of Änglamark, but that's a certification …

[00:14:06] I'll go and look. Äkta vara has 2,900 followers on Instagram. So there are about ten million people who don't follow them. Very few therefore know what an Ä-labeled shop means. At the same time it might hit the target audience right: They want to sell real food that makes a difference, a bit better and more premium. The audience might know it, but I'd still spell out that Ä-labeled means Äkta vara.

[00:14:44] ‘Sweden's first Äkta vara-labeled shop.’ Do you even need to say labeled? Couldn't it be ‘Sweden's first entirely Äkta vara’? Well, they probably need to include the label, because they aren't certified. ‘Labeled’ needs to be there.

[00:15:00] It also becomes clearer for someone who knows Äkta vara but doesn't connect the designation. This line doesn't rotate automatically; it stays still on the screen. I'd at least have it change every ten seconds. The next USP is more than twenty thousand satisfied customers in Sweden.

[00:15:21] I find it bloody hard to believe twenty thousand people have shopped here. If the average order is around a thousand kronor, which I have no idea about, that should mean roughly twenty million in revenue. Perhaps they've had that, I don't know. I find it hard to judge whether it's twenty thousand, but okay …

[00:15:44] … let's imagine they have over twenty thousand satisfied customers. How do we know they're satisfied? I'm joking, we won't go into that. One tip is to avoid round numbers. Exactly twenty thousand feels less likely than 20,351. If possible, a script could update the number based on actual purchases. Negative reviews would presumably bring it down. A script like that doesn't take long to add to a Shopify store with Gemini or Claude. Then the number updates continuously and feels more credible.

[00:16:32] It's about instant trust. To a first-time customer, 20,351-plus looks more plausible than twenty thousand satisfied customers, even if the number is static. We want credibility at first glance. The basic premise is that I don't buy from someone I don't trust. The next USP is a ten percent member discount across the range. We won't go through every one. Free shipping over 1,299 kronor.

[00:16:57] That's quite a high threshold. The usual thinking is to put free shipping just above the average order value. If the average order is about 1,100 kronor, setting the threshold a bit higher is reasonable. Then half, or at least a large proportion of customers, add something extra to the basket, raising the average order value.

[00:17:31] Higher average orders are a big win for the store. Food often has fairly poor margins, as we both know, and there's extensive handling. You're not sending a watch worth 1,299 kronor by post. Lots of items need picking, and the parcels become large.

[00:17:57] They can weigh quite a bit, so a free-shipping threshold of 1,299 isn't unreasonable. If it were something else, perhaps I'd think it was on the high side. What do you think?

[00:18:13] I'm thinking along the same lines. But I like ‘Do we deliver to you?’ One of my first questions on a website is whether delivery covers my area. We live in Stockholm, and then it usually does, but …

[00:18:29] … with food it's especially important. If you live outside the big city, there's no guarantee. I contacted the founder before they were in Stockholm and was annoyed they didn't deliver here.

[00:18:41] When they finally came to Stockholm, they didn't deliver to Huddinge, only the north side, where they had a delivery van. I asked him to write to me personally on LinkedIn when it became available where I live. Since then I must have spent eight to ten thousand kronor, so I'm a good customer.

[00:19:03] I bought from them when they were still called Local Taste, before the name change. That was a better name, I think. At the same time, Gårdens Mathantverk sounds better for something Swedish, small-scale and close to producers. But I like that Local Taste avoids the å. In the email address it becomes gardens or gordens, and how to write the web address isn't obvious.

[00:19:35] Sometimes Google penalizes you too; you get xn-- and things. Still, I'm wondering whether I like Gårdens more. Local Taste makes me think of HelloFresh and international expansion. They're focused on local and want a Swedish name.

[00:19:54] Right now, but perhaps they'll want to expand to Denmark and beyond. I don't know. You can do what GB Glace does. In Italy there's the same heart, but the name is Algida. They change names …

[00:20:07] … but keep the same brand expression. You mean they can be called Local Taste internationally? Exactly. In any case, changing early is good. The company is fairly young. I read about them in Breakit. Are they in their second, third or fourth year? I think they started in 2024, if I read correctly, so say the third year. Let's move on. After the logo there's search, and the hamburger menu is at the top left. That's reasonable, but I used to suggest the right side …

[00:20:50] … because phones have become large and your thumb can't reach the top left without using two hands. I've tested that before and got a thirteen percent higher click-through rate on the hamburger menu.

[00:21:03] When it was on the right instead of the left? Yes. That doesn't mean purchases increased, just that more people clicked the menu. But if finding the goods became easier, I thought they'd probably shop. Here I think having the menu on the right would be good. On a food website, one product isn't enough for the whole basket. On other websites, like Mockberg or [unclear in the Swedish source: Core by D], perhaps it doesn't need to be that way, because you land on the product you want to buy.

[00:21:34] There the customer is more likely to go straight to the basket and checkout with that particular product. You don't need ten, twelve or seventeen other products like when buying food.

[00:21:47] The Mathem app has the menu at the bottom. That's nice too and can be done in the mobile web view.

[00:22:01] Is that recommended for a webshop too? I don't know what Gårdens uses, but it looks like Shopify. I'll check. If possible, I recommend icons along the bottom, because it gives a more app-like experience.

[00:22:15] I'm holding my phone and looking at Mathem. There's Home and Your Mathem. I like that they've added recommendations based on what I usually buy.

[00:22:27] Then there's Recipes, Basket and Search along the bottom. Smart. Back to Gårdens: This takes time to go through. The most important thing is what I see above the fold, before I start scrolling. From top to bottom there's ‘Search for …’ A big, clear search field is good, especially on websites where people want to search a lot and there are over two hundred SKUs, meaning products.

[00:23:04] But I'd use the space in ‘Search for’ better, with a tagline: ‘Search for real food that makes a difference,’ ‘good food’ or something similar. It's retail space above the fold that's not fully used. There are also some pixel issues and uneven proportions, and more space to the right of ‘Do we deliver to you?’ For those listening: What do you mean by retail space?

[00:23:37] Empty, dead space that isn't used. People often talk about above the fold. Space further down isn't as important to fill, but every pixel visible before scrolling can be optimized. Here there's room around the logo and a little too much white space, meaning empty space. You often see that on websites wanting to feel premium and sell more expensive products. More breathing room can give that feeling, but also worse conversion. Can you live with it? Perhaps, if you sell things for …

[00:24:32] … ten thousand kronor, perhaps. Here that isn't the feeling you want. They want more people buying real food that makes a difference. I know Oskar is behind the company because I've met him at an event and a lunch. I like that he's in the picture on the homepage.

[00:24:53] He's holding a food box, so you immediately understand it's about food. Food is in the name and the tagline says ‘home delivery of small-scale, nutritious and thoughtful food.’ I'd experiment with other wording there.

[00:25:21] What would we have instead? It's good, but really I need to come back after more thought. I want a stronger sales focus. ‘Small-scale,’ does it mean anything?

[00:25:37] I'd test it against ‘locally grown’ or ‘locally produced.’ Of course small-scale says the food was produced on a small scale. At home I usually tell the children this is food from the farmer.

[00:25:53] They've made shop versus farmer a big thing. But there are huge farms with large-scale production that spray pesticides. Not everything small-scale is good, and not everything from a larger farmer is negative. It's hard to say what's good in this context. What is ‘real food,’ in quotation marks? Is all small-scale food real food? Probably not. I want to see something about Gårdens having checked it.

[00:26:32] Having met Oskar, I know they check all their producers. There aren't many, and it doesn't take that long, especially when they're starting to sell through Gårdens.

[00:26:45] It's a shame that doesn't come across to everyone else. Another lovely thing about Gårdens is that everything is Äkta vara. For anyone unfamiliar with the organization, I recommend following them on Facebook and Instagram. They regularly examine products and what they actually contain.

[00:27:13] I love Äkta vara too and follow them. That's a relevant point, Fredrik. But what do you want instead of ‘home delivery of small-scale, nutritious and thoughtful food’? I understand food grown Gårdens' way can contain more nutrients. That's also been shown in studies. If you take a nonorganic tomato, I think it has …

[00:27:41] … a fraction of the nutrients. That means many people today, especially eating nonorganic food, can become overweight yet have nutrient deficiencies. And this is even closer to the farmer.

[00:27:55] I have two suggestions. ‘Food you recognize, quality you trust, delivered to your door.’ I like ‘to your door,’ because it immediately explains what we do. An alternative is: ‘Selected food from farms we eat from ourselves.’

[00:28:21] I know they order from the same farms themselves. They've even shown it. Does that matter if you don't know who they are? We're all people …

[00:28:35] … and we like following people rather than companies. My strong view is to make it as personal as possible. But if you come from a Facebook ad, perhaps you don't land on the homepage …

[00:28:50] … but on a product or category page. We're focusing a lot on the homepage now because it's a food shop …

[00:29:01] … and we came through Google, where many people apparently find Gårdens. Facebook ads surely drive some traffic too. I'd choose ‘Real food, carefully selected, delivered home.’ Those are the three strongest things. Small-scale doesn't automatically mean better. Real food, more nutritious, delivered home and carefully selected are the USPs we're trying to communicate. I also like ‘farms we eat from ourselves.’

[00:29:40] For me, that particular wording wouldn't matter much if I didn't know them. I've already shopped here, but a new customer doesn't know who they are. They could just as easily live on pizza, so I wouldn't trust that tagline. But I want to plant a seed: Do a customer survey among people who've shopped. Ask why they shop with you, perhaps with a gift card in a prize draw.

[00:30:18] Ask questions on these topics to understand the reasons and the customers' exact words. When we did a survey at [unclear in the Swedish source: Core by D], we learned things, wording and what actually mattered most to most customers.

[00:30:34] Reasonable. Let's move on. ‘Start shopping’ is a big CTA, and I like that. It's clear and exactly what we want. It's hard to do better with ‘Search here,’ ‘Buy now’ or anything else. Then there's the delivery area and different trust triggers. Really good.

[00:31:04] Click ‘Our delivery area’ and a map appears, nothing strange. I also like the image where he's holding a food basket with fruit, vegetables and animal products. It shows the variety …

[00:31:18] … and that they deliver home. I test the postcode and learn delivery is possible. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, roughly every day in other words. Great, but when do I get my delivery? They know what day of the week it is and that it's 11:23.

[00:31:42] So what's the earliest possible delivery day? If it's Monday, perhaps they can't manage Monday or Wednesday but need until Thursday, Saturday or Sunday. Say that directly. It's the kind of script you could create with a prompt to Claude, five or ten minutes' work. It would help the customer a lot. When shopping for food, one of the most important questions is when it arrives. You have to be home to receive it, unlike many other goods. Give the narrowest possible time window, for example Wednesday between four and eight. Then it's …

[00:32:25] … even better. I've tried shopping for food myself, although I think it's improved over the years. A few years ago, when I shopped from …

[00:32:34] … websites with more locally grown food, the answer could be sometime on Sunday. Then I thought, I can't sit at home all day …

[00:32:43] … waiting. Let's scroll a little before moving on to the really important parts of the website. Here it says ‘entirely without additives,’ ‘from small-scale farms without additives or shortcuts.’ A reasonable USP. ‘Thoughtful and natural,’ ‘good animal welfare,’ ‘lower environmental impact’ and ‘richer ecosystems.’ ‘Delivery to ninety percent of Sweden,’ ‘unbroken cold chain’ and ‘free shipping over 1,299 kronor.’ Really good …

[00:33:10] … that they've achieved that, impressive. I didn't know they deliver to ninety percent of Sweden, but that's bloody good. Clear USPs. The size of ‘Start shopping’ and the sections below is perfect. Some might think the text is too big. No, icon and text make it easier to read, and you can still scroll quickly. Then come products. I don't know if they're shown because I've bought them before, because I've bought these particular ones …

[00:33:47] … pasture-raised eggs, pasture-fed yogurt and ground beef. Or are they popular products? I think so, because I haven't bought the farm eggs from free-range outdoor hens. It's confusing: What distinguishes pasture-raised eggs from the others? I shop often and eat eggs every day, but I don't think most people know the difference.

[00:34:11] What's the difference? Pasture-raised eggs are basically a step better than eggs from free-range outdoor hens. Why? The hens get more space to move around, and you need to move them between areas.

[00:34:31] They eat insects and other things there, and the nutrients in that spot disappear. Then they're moved from A to B, on to C and D and perhaps back to A once the ecosystem has recovered. Free-range outdoor hens more often live indoors with a smaller or larger yard outside. In summer when it's warm they go out, but then back to the henhouse where they spend most of their time. They're also usually fed inside.

[00:35:21] They get to run and play, so it's better than conventional caged hens. But the difference isn't huge because the feed still matters. You are what you eat, and so are the hens. They don't get the same nutrients as the hens producing the pasture-raised eggs.

[00:35:40] I think of that when someone boasts about corn-fed chicken. It means the chickens were fed corn. Yes, then they become a bit yellower.

[00:35:52] What do you think about that? There are several feed options for hens. One is fishmeal, which is the worst option …

[00:36:04] … and then we're talking about heavy metals. Fishmeal is often imported by ship from the other side of the world, usually South America. After studies examined it and found negative things, many now write on egg cartons [negation unclear in source: fed/not fed fishmeal].

[00:36:25] Even big players. However, I know as a customer here that the pasture-raised eggs are often sold out. That's a shame. Then at least I choose not to shop, because eggs are a big part of my basket. I buy three, what is it, ninety to a hundred and twenty eggs …

[00:36:43] … three or four whole cartons each time. Let's keep scrolling. On mobile it's hard to hover, although you can do something similar with your thumb. The next image of the pasture-raised eggs is good, because it shows the hens' environment. But the farm eggs have an almost identical picture, which perhaps isn't accurate. There needs to be a clearer distinction so people understand what they're buying. I can also imagine someone buying farm eggs here …

[00:37:33] … thinking they're pasture-raised eggs, then reviewing them and wondering why the eggs are white or lower quality. I don't know, perhaps some confuse them, others don't. Anyway they're two obviously popular products. Then comes pasture-fed yogurt from Alvas Naturbete and pasture-fed ground beef. The prices can feel high if you've only shopped at Coop or ICA: fifty-six kronor for a liter of yogurt and just over two hundred and forty kronor per kilo of ground beef. That's at the upper end.

[00:38:17] Perhaps the standard is otherwise around a hundred and sixty-nine kronor per kilo. What does yogurt cost now, twenty-five kronor per liter? I have no idea. Say twenty-five, up to forty for organic Turkish yogurt.

[00:38:34] I don't know if I'm mixing up companies, but I really think Gårdens has an ad where they show yogurt straight from the farmer beside yogurt from the shop and ask which is most expensive.

[00:38:51] You've seen their advertising? Yes, I've had it too. People expect them to sell the idea that theirs is cheaper. But instead they say: Ours is more expensive, and here's why. Then you get the explanation …

[00:39:06] … of why. In restaurants I sometimes wonder where they buy the food when I see the prices. I can't make the numbers add up.

[00:39:15] I've asked many times. Often you learn the chicken comes from Thailand and the meat from South America, usually Brazil. Then the purchase price is very low.

[00:39:32] I was at an Asian restaurant chain and asked whether a curry dish was gluten-free, because I avoid gluten. They didn't know, so I was given a canister and a jar and had to read the ingredients myself.

[00:39:52] I thought it was an ordinary curry mix. When I saw the ingredients, I thought I wouldn't feed that to anyone.

[00:40:01] I'd imagined coconut milk and some spices, but that wasn't what those products contained.

[00:40:09] Unfortunately that's often how restaurant food is. You think it's just an ordinary Caesar salad, but it's laced with masses of E-numbers and additives. The dressing comes in a twenty-kilo plastic canister because they don't want to make it themselves …

[00:40:31] … and they just take a ladleful. We've both used CGM monitors and seen blood sugar shoot up after a salad. Then you wonder where it's coming from. Yes, that's happened. Then it isn't a fun salad to buy again. Back to the website: The next image of the yogurt shows a cow outside, seemingly being milked by hand. For the ground beef, we see what the packaging will look like. That's …

[00:41:07] … really good. When I click through, I expect to learn why I should choose this kind of meat. There are five important places on a website: homepage, category page, product page, search page and checkout. The basket partly belongs to the product page if it's a mini-cart, which it often is. We've looked at the homepage and now go to the category page via the hamburger menu and ‘Meat, chicken and fish’ at the top.

[00:41:55] The first thing on the category page is a sold-out product. But starting from the top, we see the breadcrumb Home, Collections, Meat. I'd remove Collections, because that's Shopify's umbrella term, a collection page. I know you can remove it.

[00:42:23] Still, it can be useful if you want to return to all categories. If I'm on chicken and want to go to vegetables, I want to get directly to Collections.

[00:42:35] Okay, it serves a function here. You can skip that step, but don't have to. Clicking Collections brings up all …

[00:42:45] … the categories, like Vegetables, the same as in the menu. There's a function. Then come seven or eight lines of text: Our philosophy is that the best meat comes from animals that are well and live as close to their natural environment as possible. They say they're proud of producers such as Mysinge Kött, [unclear in the Swedish source: begärre kyckling] and Glada Utegrisar, who stand out in animal welfare, sustainability and taste.

[00:43:18] So far, so good. Three or four lines followed by three bullet points might have sufficed, with an option to expand more text. That's often better for SEO, gives more authority and ranking and slightly cheaper clicks from Google because there's more text. The title ‘Meat, chicken and fish’ is clear and simple; you know what to expect. As you immediately noticed, the first product is sold out.

[00:43:52] That's a shame, especially since it can hardly be the bestseller. ‘Fourteen days without ultra-processed food’ costs 3,329 kronor. Unless they've heavily marketed that particular product, something else should sell more, such as the ground-beef bag with grass-fed meat. Though I don't really think any of the expensive boxes sell the most. Neither 3,300 nor 929 kronor is a small amount to put in the basket. That's a lot of boxes. The ordinary grass-fed ground beef is more likely a bestseller, and it's sold out too.

[00:44:41] Here's grass-fed and climate-certified ground beef, roughly like the one on the left. Isn't the other climate-certified? It has an icon, but that's organic. The difference between products becomes unclear, while many of the first items are boxes.

[00:45:06] Could that be because they want to encourage larger purchases? Yes, those of us working in e-commerce understand that. But is it the most conversion-friendly? Probably not. Especially when traffic goes to a product page or homepage, it's very likely better to show individual products. Then intersperse a box every second or third product, so customers see they can save on a ready-made box. Like ‘Fourteen days without ultra-processed food’ for three [amount cut off in source], where all the contents are discounted ten percent.

[00:45:50] Fair. But if one or more products in the box are out of stock, does the entire box become sold out?

[00:46:00] You'd want to be able to swap one SKU for another. The box doesn't need to be tied to an exact item number, but to the type of product. Swap one type of eggs for another, for example, or crispbread for an equivalent crispbread, as long as the ingredients are roughly the same. The customer is buying fourteen days without ultra-processed food, not the box for one exact product.

[00:46:36] Here come eight boxes: the ground-beef box, a ground-beef bag with four kilos of grass-fed meat and a trial bag of organic grass-fed meat. I want to add that I like the video of cows breaking things up in between. Yes, we mentioned it briefly.

[00:46:57] It's nice and shows what you're buying: the animal welfare and why it can cost more. That's good. Possibly it comes too early, already after two products. Perhaps four would be better. It also becomes repetitive and hard to see the differences when the images look alike. Here it says ‘Trial bag, grass-fed meat, organic’ …

[00:47:23] … and immediately after, a trial bag of grass-fed meat. Does that mean the other isn't organic? It's still more expensive. One comes from [farm name unclear in source], the other from Hagshultskossorna.

[00:47:37] It's unclear how much weight you get in each bag, which meat is included and what it is you're actually trying.

[00:47:48] How much can you fit into the category overview? There's quite a lot of retail space to work with here.

[00:47:56] There's room in the images too. Move the organic symbol into the image, for instance, and keep it there permanently. That frees text space to explain the difference between products A, B and C, which now feel very similar. The images, though, are nice and professional, especially number two showing the contents. There's even a video of the contents, exactly what we usually …

[00:48:36] … advocate. If possible we want five to seven images, a video or GIF and some of the story behind it. That's here: at least three images and a couple of videos …

[00:48:54] … that are fairly short. Bloody nice, and then some story. I'm guessing this video tells the story. We're not listening to the audio because we're recording the podcast ourselves.

[00:49:07] Perhaps it's just lovely sounds from the cows, or perhaps they talk about the product. Either way it's a good idea. We've touched on the category page and won't scroll all the way. What we see is that the space isn't used enough. The same goes for the icons showing minus ten or nine percent.

[00:49:30] How could those elements be used better? As we mentioned, move the organic symbol up beside the discount icon. That makes it clearer and frees a little more space for the text below. ‘Buy’ is a bit unclear too. If you press here, do you buy the product? Yes, you do. Then I'd write ‘Buy now.’ Clicking the image takes you to the product page, but pressing the button buys now.

[00:50:03] Or ‘Add to basket,’ because that's what actually happens. Since we're discussing the basket, it's fantastically nice. When we clicked buy now, it popped up. We can show it again.

[00:50:22] No, now the upsell appeared this time. Wait, now that got strange. I'd definitely have this nice mini-cart. First it clearly shows, though very small, that the product has been added. Then comes upselling of other products, but why they're appearing there is a bit unclear. The nice approach would be that I close it, and then the basket opens.

[00:50:49] I don't know what I think of this. I think it's clearly negative. But you do know what you think? Yes, exactly, I know what I think. If we remove a product: What's interesting here is that the free-shipping counter is very dynamic and shows you have 112 kronor left to free shipping.

[00:51:07] Add a product and the free-shipping counter recalculates: Great, shipping is on us. Really clear, love it. We see what's in the basket and what's often bought together with it. This is where I think upselling belongs. Yes, and in a nice way.

[00:51:28] You see an image, product name, price and reviews. They fit a lot in. Can you add one of the upsell products to the basket and see how it works?

[00:51:40] Then you choose which product variant you want and the quantity. It goes into the basket, free shipping updates and shipping is on us. I thought this purchasing experience was fantastic. Let's return to having just one product in the basket. Here there's also ‘Become a member of Gårdens’ as an upsell: 10 percent off every order for 79 kronor a month. If you're already a member, the member discount is deducted automatically when you enter your email address at checkout.

[00:52:16] Fantastic. You tick it and the discount appears immediately: Member discount activated. Love it. An incredibly smooth process for becoming a member with one click. You know what you're getting and the discount is deducted straight away. I can assume this wasn't simple development, but they've solved it.

[00:52:39] Well done. This was one of the best baskets I've reviewed in a long time. Not just the membership part; below it says ‘Go to checkout.’ Really clear.

[00:52:52] They also have all the payment symbols and immediately show how you can pay. The subtotal, discount and total price are clear and highlighted. It's impossible to misunderstand what you'll pay.

[00:53:05] Then they have the payment symbols, as you mention. The only thing I miss is shipping information. When do I get the product, and with which shipping company? That can be a dealbreaker for many. For example, I don't want DHL. Is that the only option? Now it's food, so it's a bit special. But if I were shopping at [unclear in the Swedish source: core by], perhaps I don't want to collect at a service point five kilometers away with a particular collection counter I don't want to use. I want PostNord or home delivery. If that information is missing, I don't buy. I'm not speaking from my own perspective, but because many customers have emailed precisely that thought to the e-commerce retailers we work with.

[00:53:47] That's the only missing feedback I see that could clearly be improved here too. Many watching might think it's a cluttered basket. No, they've used the space nicely. Everything is simple and instructive, not cluttered. The purchasing journey is consistent too. Remember the buy button on the previous page?

[00:54:16] It was green. ‘Go to checkout’ is green. The free-shipping threshold is green, and it's easy to add products in green. The whole purchasing journey is consistent, which is nice and easy for the brain to understand. At the same time I'd try to make the purchasing journey contrast with the rest of the page. Perhaps I wouldn't use green here, because the logo is green too.

[00:54:44] There's green at the top and a bit everywhere, in the chat and in the footer at the bottom. Now you have to scroll a very long way. There are green backgrounds behind images too. So the color isn't very contrasting.

[00:55:01] Does it need to contrast that much? Not necessarily, but if you want maximum conversion rate, it does. Small differences make a big difference. I also think Gårdens does it nicely by making ‘Go to checkout’ very easy to click even if you don't want to add another product.

[00:55:20] Yes, nice. Let's go to checkout and the summary comes along. Then we go back and tick membership. I realize I'm not behaving like an ordinary customer, who perhaps wouldn't go back and forth like this, but we're testing. Membership follows through to checkout. You pay for it but immediately receive the member discount, which exceeds the cost of membership.

[00:55:48] Yes, membership costs 79 kronor and the member discount is 118.70. Nice, I actually love it. Let's remove it. You can't even remove it? A little strange, but perhaps you can't.

[00:56:03] No, you can't remove it. Once at checkout you can't change it. I wonder whether that's because we only have one physical product and a membership. If we remove the product there's nothing left, so we're only buying membership.

[00:56:18] That's okay; you should be able to buy just membership, even if it isn't what people normally do. But even if I add another product, can't I then either? We remove membership and go to checkout, where we have the order summary. No, you can't remove the quantity here either. There's no bin icon. What happens when you press edit?

[00:56:46] The same thing opens. You can increase the quantity but not reduce it. You can only remove it in the previous step. Okay, that's a small detail.

[00:56:59] Is that something Shopify has, or specific to Gårdens? It's Shopify's default setting, but you can change it in Shopify. I'm guessing they have Plus, considering they say they have 20,000 satisfied customers.

[00:57:11] If you're on Plus, you probably save money using [unclear in the Swedish source: Clio] or another payment partner, and then the Plus membership becomes free. You have more features and can, among other things, change a few things in checkout.

[00:57:23] How can membership become free? Do you mean it cancels out? It's subsidized by being able to negotiate your own checkout rates. That's where Shopify makes money.

[00:57:34] Is it the card fees? Really the transaction fees, not card fees themselves. By default you can have Klarna if you want. There you pay almost four or five percent of the total transaction value. Quite a large share can go to Shopify. Shopify takes a large kickback and pays a smaller portion to Klarna for the transaction. A card transaction might be three percent by default.

[00:58:05] Unnegotiated, yes. That's what Shopify makes money from, their ongoing fees. Not these 29 or 299, now 399 a month. That's not where they make the bulk of it. Servers, hosting, development and teams cost money, as does every time you email them. The base fee barely covers that; it's the variable fee. When upgrading to Plus, you pay, say, 2,300 dollars a month, about [unclear in the Swedish source: 20 is 1000] kronor. Then they start making money on the monthly fee.

[00:58:44] With that you get to negotiate what agreement you want at checkout yourself. You can do that earlier too, but then there's a penalty fee. When that's removed, suddenly you can negotiate better terms.

[00:58:57] Then it's much more favorable. Let's continue so we don't get stuck too long; we haven't even reached the product page, the most important part of the website. If you've made it this far into the episode, you've had a kind of masterclass in how a website should be built. This basket is definitely one of the best I've seen, perhaps not just on Shopify but in all of Sweden. Clear, fast, very nice, consistent and simple. It's hard to find more superlatives.

[00:59:37] Let's return to the product page. It's still consistently simple from top to bottom. There's the logo, basket, search, delivery and home. They've removed Collections from the breadcrumbs and instead use the category name, meat, chicken, fish, followed by the product name. An easy way back and clear breadcrumbs. Again there are slightly too few images, just like on the product we looked at before. The target is at least five to seven images.

[01:00:13] What would you like? Now we're looking at grass-fed meat, ground-beef bag. Five to seven images minimum per SKU. Should they have a picture of the cows here too? What else?

[01:00:23] Ideally the farm and producer, meaning who produces it. You can use images from marketing, have text and USPs in them, or before-and-after pictures if you sell that kind of product. More images, more content, is always good.

[01:00:47] Given that teams are often small and limited, you can generate images. Do you mean AI-generated images of food? Then you're moving away from it being locally grown.

[01:00:57] No, exactly, I don't mean that. Generated images could be ten reasons to buy a ground-beef bag of grass-fed meat, but in the image instead of requiring the customer to scroll to it. It can be text, icons or anything.

[01:01:10] The images don't need to be perfect, but in this case they should be appetizing, and they are. I like that the third image is a video, and then they've added reviews. That's an example of not having enough image content. How much more content can you make about this meat? So they've brought in reviews as an image.

[01:01:35] Nice, I think. It's an easy way to show reviews earlier in the flow so you don't have to scroll all the way down. But an image could show all the unpacked pieces so you see the cuts of meat and how much you get. Quantity is hard to grasp in a bag.

[01:01:51] The second image shows the meat itself. It's nicely photographed from above, really clear and with good lighting. Then the third is a video. Fantastic. They've even added some greenery at the beginning of the video.

[01:02:06] They've captured the essence of what's important on a product page with this kind of content. Almost exemplary. What do you think about AI-generated content for a business really about getting as close to the authentic source as possible?

[01:02:25] What's authentic these days? If AI-generated can look authentic, I think it's completely okay. What's authentic once you start adding filters, editing, lighting and placing images in a perfect setting? The piece of meat doesn't actually come out of the package this perfectly.

[01:02:46] It's already been worked on. Someone has used their hands to fix it up. If we look at another, bad example from a grocery store, Findus or whatever, who can tell it's a real image? Perhaps it's Photoshopped or edited. There are specialist photographers who primarily work with food.

[01:03:13] They know exactly how to do lighting, filters and retouching. They use props that aren't even what you get in the product. I saw an example when they were advertising soda: They poured in coffee instead, because coffee was darker than the soda and looked better in a photograph.

[01:03:35] Exactly, a very clear example of what I mean by fake products in image production. Everyone knows the image of a product at certain fast-food restaurants doesn't look like what you're served.

[01:03:48] Exactly. Especially in the fast-food restaurant industry, there's endless cheating. So what's the difference compared with an AI-generated image? Fundamentally I'm against extreme editing. What you see should be what you get. At the same time it has to look appetizing, at least when selling food. If you can AI-generate the image and it looks roughly like what you get in the end, I'm completely okay with that. I know others will see it differently.

[01:04:18] If you go onto Louis Vuitton's website and try to buy lipstick, the people are so retouched that an AI-generated UGC image would look more realistic than the real people.

[01:04:36] Yes, unfortunately that's true. They're so retouched and Photoshopped. But let's scroll on. Here's the producer Mysinge Kött. Perhaps you want to click here? Yes, you can, and then you get more products from Mysinge Kött. On that page you'd want more information about the producer.

[01:04:56] Is there any? No, unfortunately not. Scroll quickly, because we don't have unlimited time. Here's more information about the farm and so on.

[01:05:07] It would be good to have more information about Mysinge Kött at the top of what seems to be a category page. ‘Ground-beef bag with grass-fed meat,’ 929 kronor. It also mentions a regular price and saving 79 kronor [price contradictory in source: 1080/1008]. I'd like the regular price crossed out so you see what it actually costs.

[01:05:28] It's a bag and you save money by buying a larger quantity. ‘An easy way to fill your freezer with ground beef from grass-fed cattle’ is a really good tagline. That's exactly what this customer group does: Buy a big bag and freeze some.

[01:05:47] The description says 4 kg. Shouldn't that be in the product name already, so you don't have to go into the description to see you get 4 kg?

[01:06:00] Good point, Fredrik. Absolutely right. 4 kg must be in the title; otherwise you have to go down into the product description. That was one of the things we pointed out on the previous page.

[01:06:10] You can't see the difference. Here it says the meat is from farms transitioning towards organic production. So it isn't organic production yet; they're in transition. Perhaps it then takes a number of years before becoming organic. That's why it was a bit cheaper.

[01:06:24] But it's still grass-fed meat. On the previous page, the ground-beef bag with grass-fed meat cost 929 kronor. The other, the trial bag of grass-fed meat, is organic.

[01:06:39] That's why the first didn't have the symbol. For 1,099 kronor you get an easy way to discover organic grass-fed meat. Here it also says something about trying it and discovering how much difference really good organic grass-fed meat makes in the kitchen [part of the reading unclear in source]. So it was the other product that was organic.

[01:06:57] Yes, this one really is organic. Here they also have information on Solmarka gård, which sells it, on the product page itself. Returning to Mysinge Kött's product page, there's information about the producer there too. Love it. The only thing missing is the same kind of information on the producers' pages.

[01:07:16] What do you think about having exactly the same information? Couldn't it become duplicate content? Yes, it could. It doesn't have to be the same text, but updated, similar information.

[01:07:25] Similar, yes. Ideally slightly different information, otherwise, as you say, it becomes duplicate content. Google doesn't like that. I love that there's lots of text and they explain why grass-fed meat from this particular producer is good. Then you're selling it. Some might think it's a wall of text from Gårdens. I think it's fantastic. If you've scrolled that far, you want to know what you're buying.

[01:07:51] If you haven't scrolled, you aren't interested anyway. Just scrolling shows I'm interested, and then I want more information. But I'm thinking this is also the kind of product you want more information about.

[01:08:04] You want more information about every product. There's no product you don't want to know more about. Sure, inadequate information can be enough for some to buy, but the more information you have, the better it usually converts. That's the rule of thumb.

[01:08:20] Of course you can generate loads of nonsense that kills conversion. But as long as the information is good and useful, it's very good for conversion. Let's move on. A long line of text, actually good: because the animals grow at their own pace and so on. What does the ground-beef bag contain? Around 4 kg of ground beef, divided into convenient 450-gram packs, easy to take from the freezer and use. But 4 kg divided by 450 grams is 8.88 packs. It doesn't add up. Then it's nine packs times 450 grams. They either need to write around 4 kg or it's a bit of a marketing bluff [part of the weight reasoning unclear in source].

[01:09:10] Or you get 4.2 kg delivered, because otherwise you don't reach exactly that weight. ‘For those who want,’ dot, dot. Really good to have more text. Delivery and handling is good too. If I've got that far, of course I'm interested in when it arrives, the contents and nutritional value. Under ingredients it says beef.

[01:09:32] I'd also want to see the fat content. Exactly, that's where I was going with nutritional content. As someone buying meat, and you buying meat, we want to know the nutritional content. What proportion is fat?

[01:09:47] The fat content of beef can determine what you use it for. If it's ten percent fat, perhaps you use it for Friday tacos. Higher fat content, 14, 18 or even 20 percent, perhaps you'd use for burgers or meatballs to make them juicier. In my case I have low [unclear in the Swedish source: pankkreastas], so my body has trouble processing fat.

[01:10:15] So even when making a hamburger, I need to choose something without 20 percent fat, because it affects me negatively. Yes, absolutely right. The fat content isn't anywhere on Mysinge Kött's product page. Despite the long text we just called fantastically good, it isn't there. That's inadequate for what you'd need to make a purchase in this case.

[01:10:43] I'm thinking the same for people who go to the gym and train a lot. I don't know exactly how you calculate it, but protein content can matter too. If you have both fat and protein content …

[01:10:55] That's true, for someone training. The other bag doesn't state the fat or protein content either. Nutritional information is missing, and the ingredients list just says beef. In this case it's a mixed box with two sirloin steaks, grilling slices and hamburgers. Or, no …

[01:11:12] Yes, it is. So the bag contains several things, but it doesn't say afterwards when I go in. Are the hamburgers presalted or do they have pepper in them? Sometimes ready-made hamburgers already have salt and pepper minced into the meat. Say someone wants to go on …

[01:11:31] No, then they aren't, considering it doesn't say that. You have to assume that. But what you say is true; I've ordered from different …

[01:11:38] Yes, because I had a period when I avoided certain substances or needed to control salt or pepper content myself. I think this is a big area. Let's click into the ground-beef bag with climate-certified grass-fed meat. Another, not identical but equivalent product that's also grass-fed beef.

[01:12:01] A bag too, with 4 kg. The average price is a little higher and it looks slightly different. There the calculation was exact, because here it's eight 500-gram packs.

[01:12:13] Yes, an exact calculation. They also discuss tenderness, fat content and richness of flavor, with cooking tips and information about the meat. Here it says the meat has a naturally high fat content of 25 percent.

[01:12:24] That's very clear. Then you get to fat 18 percent. How did we go from 25 to 18? Even if it says approximately. Yes, it says 25 percent, but 18 grams.

[01:12:35] 18 grams per 100 grams is 18 percent. Exactly, they've written something wrong somewhere on the product. Here it says something about the meat hanging [unclear in the Swedish source: i trök], that fat content is another important difference, and the mince has a naturally high fat content of 25 percent. But then it says 18 grams, of which saturated. A bit odd, probably an error.

[01:12:55] On this one they've listed protein content too. Yes, actually. But it's a bit irritating: This is ground beef from these cows, then there's a completely different product video showing …

[01:13:08] Yes, that's how it looked. It's a video from the producer, so it isn't about the product itself. But still.

[01:13:18] Let's click away. There are definitely content improvements to make, especially when buying food. Things like this make people abandon, I can almost guarantee. In one place it says naturally high fat content of approximately 25 percent, then 18 percent in the ingredients list.

[01:13:39] Here it also says to contact us at localtaste.se for ingredients lists and information. There's a discrepancy because the website is called Gårdens. Am I supposed to contact Local Taste for an ingredients list that should just be written there? Why? It didn't say that on the other products, so perhaps it's something outdated. Then comes information about the location [unclear in the Swedish source: skillingar]. Really nice to know where the meat comes from. Then the ratings. It looks like Judge.me, not Yotpo, right? A nice review system anyway: stars, the person reviewing, and that they're verified and have probably shopped with us. It looks consistent as I scroll, and I can load more. The only note is that you'd like images too.

[01:14:39] There are images; they just aren't first. Here people have uploaded some. Really lovely when someone shows what they've cooked.

[01:14:51] Yes, or what they've bought and prepared. This was beef, but that also looked like a [unclear in the Swedish source]. Is it really beef? There's only beef in the bag. Yes, it's beef in the picture.

[01:15:03] Now I see, classic ground beef. But the reviews concern something else: marrow meat. Exactly. If the reviews show something else, perhaps they've merged them. The next review is about climate-certified chef's tallow, from a week ago.

[01:15:20] ‘Frying more and more in chef's tallow. Works perfectly and enhances the flavor nicely.’ But that's not the product we're viewing. There are older and newer reviews merged here, probably in the backend. They need to review that so another product isn't being reviewed when I'm looking at a particular product. Otherwise people might start thinking the products or reviews are fake. Now lots are about chef's tallow.

[01:15:52] ‘Very flavorful, very nice.’ A nine-month-old baby liked oven-roasted marrow bones. I actually need to replenish marrow bones; I've run out at home. But that's not the product we're viewing now.

[01:16:04] No. ‘Nice ground beef.’ Now I know I'm going to Gårdens to shop tonight. ‘First time using tallow! Pleasantly surprised.’ That's not this product either. Roughly half the reviews aren't about the product we're viewing. For anyone unfamiliar with tallow, it's really good for frying, as is marrow fat.

[01:16:26] Yes, let's go back now. More products from Hagshultskossorna. Most websites have similar products. This is good; I'm already looking at the producer and am probably interested in more of what it offers. To increase conversion, perhaps I'd show the four bestselling products from Hagshultskossorna, so it doesn't get too much. Then I'd show four products that go well with the one I'm viewing.

[01:17:02] As complements: If I'm looking at ground beef, perhaps I'm interested in eggs or farm yogurt too, something other than meat. Another thing I want to give them credit for is having sticky add to cart.

[01:17:20] Absolutely, it appears as you scroll. It's nice, simple and consistent with the rest of the website. I'm scrolling up and down a lot now to quickly give feedback on the other parts of the product page. Clicking down takes us to Gårdens' story.

[01:17:43] ‘Real food that makes a difference. We started Gårdens, formerly Local Taste, with a simple idea.’ Wait, is that Mustiga Mauri? No, but he looks a bit like Mustiga Mauri, the guy on the crisp bag.

[01:18:02] Yes, damn good-looking, handsome guys. Mauri probably isn't behind this. He's a bit taller. Now I don't know how tall they are, but Mauri is very tall.

[01:18:13] ‘The best food comes from animals and soils that are healthy, and from people passionate about their craft.’ I agree. ‘We want to make it possible for more people to access that food in everyday life.’ An extremely good storyline. Why are we doing it? ‘By choosing Gårdens, you're helping support small-scale farmers, animals living on nature's terms and food systems caring for the earth for future generations. We believe in …’ and so on. Really good. ‘Explore the full range’ leads to collections/all. So we return to …

[01:18:49] I also like that they have videos of frying eggs, the hens and how the hens live. Yes, clicking back doesn't quite take you back. I meant ‘Explore the full range.’ Then we get to Äkta Vara, why it exists and what it is.

[01:19:06] Another trust trigger increasing the chance I'll convert. Love it. Then where they deliver. Here it says 90 percent [context unclear in source] and chilled home delivery in southern and central Sweden.

[01:19:20] Nice. Can we click here? ‘Do we deliver to you’ is a bit further down. How does delivery work, can we read about it?

[01:19:28] Yes, here are frequently asked questions. Nice. ‘How does delivery work? What do I do if I'm not home?’ That's no problem; Gårdens can leave the goods outside your door.

[01:19:40] It works equally well if you're not home. If you live in an apartment, it's important to give the entry code. The downside is that the goods are outside your door, but if you have milk and other dairy products and it's 26 degrees, like yesterday …

[01:19:52] Not so fun. But they write it: Remember the cold chain breaks on delivery, so try not to leave the food waiting too long. Absolutely. ‘Where in Sweden do we deliver?’ Here we deliver, and then we're back to what was above on the product page. But it's good to have in the FAQ. ‘Which days do you deliver?’ It varies by postcode. In many areas delivery is available five days a week. Nice. When's the final day?

[01:20:18] These are common questions: How does membership work, can I give a gift, buy a gift card or order as a business? I wonder whether you can see delivery times. If you go up to checkout, it says you'll find out there. Can we find the delivery-time selection section?

[01:20:39] We'll do that later; we're coming to checkout soon. The final part is the footer, which is a bit messy. In what way? Otherwise it's simple from top to bottom. Here it says Gårdens Mathantverk and something about enjoying real food, but the text is a bit messily placed. It's not structured into two columns, which it could be.

[01:21:02] By messy, do you mean a long column with all the menu links in a row without grouping? ‘Our delivery area,’ ‘Frequently asked questions,’ ‘For producers,’ ‘Careers’ and ‘Contact us’ feel a bit jumbled, as if they just want to get things into the footer. It doesn't feel like they've put much time and love into that part. Completely understandable with a small team, but there's room for improvement. The Facebook link goes to Gårdens Mathantverk, and so does the Instagram link.

[01:21:33] What do you think about links to social media from the website? So few people click that it doesn't matter much. But it's not negative. If I want to find the Instagram account, it's good that it's somewhere. It's also nice from an authority perspective to show you have accounts. Bots click through there, so it's good to do. Here we have email: ‘Want to join our journey? Enter your email for offers, news and thoughts.’

[01:21:59] Actually a good enough tagline to make me want to enter my email. But perhaps you need something more, a stronger reason to sign up. What could that be here?

[01:22:13] Something behind the scenes, coming along. Do you want to help influence things, or get a reason to be part of a community? Something else. This feels like standard text. There's nothing wrong with it, because there is …

[01:22:33] Yes, but ‘Want to join our journey?’ with a question mark isn't the best copy. ‘Join the journey!’ with an exclamation mark would be better. If you ask the customer, they start thinking: Do I want to be a member, or really subscribe? Then the customer has to make an active decision. Instead of the question, you'd almost prefer just a prefilled email address.

[01:22:59] Another thing is ‘our journey.’ It's written from the sender's perspective, not the reader's. The funniest thing I once saw was an ad in the local paper, although I don't read it anymore. A hairdresser who also did nail treatments wrote: ‘I'm open again, now you can come to me.’

[01:23:29] ‘I'm available at these times.’ There was nothing about what the customer gets. I particularly notice when people use AI to write that AI tends to write from the writer's perspective, not the reader's.

[01:23:46] That's true, unless you give clear instructions. I'd rewrite that line quite substantially. I'm not saying AI wrote it. No, it feels like classic standard text. There's nothing wrong with it as such, and I don't see any direct reason it would be really bad.

[01:24:15] No, it looks as though a real person wrote it and thought it through. It's not entirely standard; it feels like someone actually sat and wrote it.

[01:24:21] Yes, or they copied it from another website. I think that might be it: We'll fix it later, but then they haven't. One example could be ‘First access to real food.’

[01:24:35] ‘Better offers, news from our producers. Sign up and we'll send selected tips, tricks, campaigns, stories from the farms and recipes.’ Recipes are easy. If you want something more premium, write ‘Discover the food before everyone else, get news, offers and inspiration from the farms straight to your inbox.’ I have to say Västerbottenssåpa is good at that. I follow your newsletter, and when it's time for the decking, you have GIFs in the email and guides on cleaning it.

[01:25:09] Inspiration instead of just offers on soft soap. Let's go to the final part. No, we also have the search page before checkout, because Shopify's checkout is fairly quick to go through. Let's search for something common, say hamburgers.

[01:25:27] Hamburgers. Before I pressed enter, hamburgers actually appeared. Fun. Do they appear straight away? Yes, already after I type ‘ham,’ hamburgers with organic grass-fed meat appear.

[01:25:43] It's good you don't even need to type the whole word to get suggestions with an image. Hamburgers can also be misspelled. If we spell it with two m's, unfortunately it doesn't appear.

[01:25:54] But it does appear when I press enter, despite the misspelling. So it's missing from the preview. There's room for improvement.

[01:26:06] Often you can easily add the most common misspellings manually. You can see them in Google Analytics. You can also export the entire product list and ask AI to suggest what people might search for and where they want to land. Then import that into the search engine, here a Shopify app or the default function. But we find hamburgers, and that's most important. The search results page is fairly dull otherwise, a standard Shopify page. Nothing negative about that except not using all the space.

[01:26:47] What would you add in that space? More of what you have on a product page. The story, information about what I've searched for or landed on. Especially on popular search pages, perhaps hamburgers or barbecue boxes.

[01:27:04] If I search for barbecue box, ten different barbecue boxes appear, but that's all. I'd like a little more, so it's like the category pages we reviewed earlier and both thought were fairly good.

[01:27:23] You can keep clicking through and it works bloody well. There's nothing wrong with the search result itself. Search for eggs and it comes up again. I'd like the most popular products at the top, because those are probably what people click.

[01:27:44] One small disadvantage is the missing buy button, so you can't add things straight from search results to the basket. Yes, a plus sign for adding would actually be good.

[01:27:55] Yes, a plus sign is really enough. We don't need to get stuck on the search page, but there are things I'd like. Reviews and more information from …

[01:28:07] Where do you want reviews? On these pasture-raised eggs or the stewing hen from pasture-raised hens? The latter is admittedly a less relevant search result. When I search for eggs, perhaps the last egg result should rank higher. But whatever: more information to use the space better.

[01:28:26] Perhaps a tagline underneath, so you can compare pasture-raised eggs and farm eggs from free-range hens outdoors. If I didn't know better, I'd assume the farm eggs were better, because they cost from 27 kronor and the pasture-raised eggs from 25 kronor.

[01:28:41] I'd assume that, but it isn't the case. For some reason a six-pack of farm eggs costs 27 kronor, while a six-pack of pasture-raised eggs costs 41. Strange that they aren't even available for 25 kronor despite saying from 25.

[01:29:00] I see why. If you select one of the out-of-stock variants, it says from 25. Exactly. There are no products there. We know they're smaller eggs, the early-season eggs, and therefore cheaper. So when searching you might assume the others are better eggs because they're slightly more expensive. If I send someone less knowledgeable to the grocery store and ask them to buy eggs …

[01:29:30] If I've run out at home, my rule of thumb is usually to look for a zero, because that stands for organic. It's the best I can find in the grocery store, where I can't find pasture-raised eggs. Then I can say: Buy the eggs with the highest unit price in the largest pack.

[01:29:47] Then perhaps you see 4.40 versus 4.20 and think the ones costing 4.40 are probably a little better. At least you can guess. Here you could think the same way. That's feedback for Gårdens, who should reflect on it too. But let's go quickly now so the episode doesn't get too long.

[01:30:11] Quickly to checkout. A typical Shopify checkout. Here too the space could be used better. They only have the logo at the top. Beside the logo in mobile view, you can have more things, such as a tagline or icons saying we deliver with PostNord. The payment icons are already directly below.

[01:30:36] You can often upload an image as the logo. Do you mean put the text in that same image? Good. Now I saw a discrepancy. At the bottom of the basket it says I can pay with Trustly, [unclear in the Swedish source: Clearo], Apple Pay, Google Pay, Visa, Mastercard and Swish. Then I go to checkout …

[01:30:56] There aren't nearly as many options. Trustly disappeared. I don't see any [unclear in the Swedish source: Ax], but that wasn't on the previous page either. Several options that were in the mini-cart are missing here. There they had Google Pay and Apple Pay.

[01:31:10] They aren't shown as icons here in the actual checkout. That discrepancy is a little strange, because it creates a small trust issue. Google Pay …

[01:31:23] How many people do you think get hung up on small differences like that? I think people do, especially if they want to use those options.

[01:31:33] And saw it before. For example, I like using Google Pay. Then I see this. I seem to remember seeing PayPal earlier. No, you can't even change it here; I'd have to remove products. I thought I saw PayPal, but it was Google Pay all along.

[01:31:52] I thought it was PayPal. But if I want to use PayPal or Trustly and don't see them here, perhaps I don't want to buy. Let's enter my email address [spelling unclear in source]. It fills it in for me. Does it know I'm a member? Yes, it's entered that I'm a member.

[01:32:17] Nice that it understands that from the email address. I also like that you see suggested delivery times before completing the purchase.

[01:32:28] Exactly, although the times are very broad. If I remember correctly, you get a more exact time closer to delivery with Gordon Delivery. Yes, you do. Here it says chilled home delivery with Gordon Delivery or collection at a postal service point. Then you want to know which it is. It says either/or. Perhaps you find out in the last step or after ordering, but if so, put that in parentheses. It's important: Is it collection or home delivery? There's no such option among the choices. I can choose Saturday, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday and Monday. Either way the days are at least five days away.

[01:33:07] That's a long way ahead and a big time window, nine to six. A little too broad. If possible, you want to narrow the time as much as you can. Here we know you can increase conversion rate quite substantially, and you should be clear whether it's collection or home delivery.

[01:33:27] Don't put both in the same sentence. These are things people find irritating, me too. You'll lose people here.

[01:33:36] If you know it's refrigerated at a collection point, perhaps the exact time matters less, because you can collect it the next day.

[01:33:47] With home delivery, though, you know you probably have to be home. You can't plan to do something else that day.

[01:33:56] When we pay, Swish is preselected. Then you're redirected to Swish to complete it. It's a direct payment, because the money is taken straight from your bank account, not credit. Pay later by invoice is available too. It redirects nicely. Then you can pay by card.

[01:34:17] I think it's clear and nice enough. Down here Trustly returns, having disappeared somewhere. So three different places show three different sets of payment options. Here it's Swish, [unclear in the Swedish source: Cleiro] and different cards. Here we have Google Pay, Swish, Mastercard, Visa and [unclear in the Swedish source: Clero]. But no Amex. As someone who uses Amex a lot, I find that a little annoying. Do you think you can use Amex through Trustly?

[01:34:45] I actually don't know. We can try. Here it says pay by card and it's prefilled. Debit card, credit card. No, probably not. Add a new card, card number. We'll have to blur that later.

[01:35:12] Yes, otherwise you're showing all the card details. It doesn't work; it says Mastercard and Visa. But you can still press complete purchase. Yes, but then it will still …

[01:35:24] It's declined immediately by the bank. Exactly. Trustly here is a bank transfer, not a card transfer. This is card, this is Trustly and this is Swish. Again it shows all three even though I clearly chose pay by card. Interesting. I'm not saying it's negative, but something to keep in mind when analyzing checkout abandonment.

[01:35:57] Pay by card. I like that it was prefilled; nothing strange. I've shopped here and on Shopify before. Shopify has a very stable, good checkout. There's more information here and more trust triggers near ‘Pay now’: food without additives, organically certified and 20,000 customers in Sweden.

[01:36:16] Nice to have that at checkout too. Bloody good, people with Shopify usually don't do that. Here they've taken the time to add some questions and answers. It feels like a very complete page. Shall we look at the website overall?

[01:36:35] Overall this would rank at the top, among the best three or four percent, or perhaps even the top one percent of websites I've visited. That's a great rating. Well done.

[01:36:56] Extremely well done. It sounds like we've had endless feedback and sat for ages picking at details, but that's not the case. Except ‘Pay now’ suddenly being black when it should be green based on the consistency we discussed. There are small things …

[01:37:12] Here and there, but no broad strokes they've clearly missed. One thing I can mention: Speaking for myself, many products out there are preseasoned or pretreated.

[01:37:27] If you don't list the ingredients, meaning that nothing has been added, that can stop me completing the purchase. Perhaps I'm unusual, but …

[01:37:38] Perhaps it affects more people. I also noticed the discount-code field at the bottom. Does it really need to be there? Just above ‘Pay now’ there's ‘Add discount code,’ and in the order summary it's there again.

[01:37:56] If you go to the top, it's here too. Yes, in two places, I see what you mean. I understand wanting the field in certain places, but these people don't spread discount codes everywhere through influencers or come with a new code every month or week or have discounts on the website. They don't; I know because I shop here.

[01:38:14] So why repeat the field? The problem is I start thinking: Can I Google a discount code? Usually I ask AI.

[01:38:24] Yes, that's what people do now. Previously you could search Google for Gårdens discount code. Now we search and see: There are currently no active public discount codes, says AI Overview. Nice.

[01:38:40] Nothing else really appears when I search Gårdens discount code, just information about membership giving a discount. That said, the checkout is largely complete and very nice. Especially the lower part around the pay-now button. Clear that it says pay now, because that's what you're doing.

[01:39:11] Pay by card. There were a few too many choices around the postal service point, and delivery needs to be a little clearer. But really all the choices concern times, so I suppose it's fairly good to have many options there.

[01:39:25] Yes, it's very much about times. That's true, lots of options are good; better too many times. You're right, especially when they vary so much. A long dropdown is a little annoying, but probably unavoidable, especially for food delivery. I shop at Mathem myself. It would be interesting to connect it somehow, perhaps code it yourself, so you can see and select a time before the food is in the basket. Sometimes that's what I do when shopping …

[01:40:04] I understand what you mean. First I want to know when the food arrives, because that determines whether I need it tomorrow or in a week.

[01:40:15] Exactly. Then it would be good to know before adding anything to the basket whether delivery is even possible at the relevant date and time. Very relevant input. That concludes the episode.

[01:40:30] A UX masterclass for e-commerce retailers. This is incredibly fun. Thanks to Oscar at Gårdens, who contacted us to have the website reviewed and, above all, dissected piece by piece for a good purpose on the podcast. I hope you listening got inspiration and perhaps want to shop at Gårdens. Do; they really have good products. Both Fredrik and I shop and have shopped there and can vouch for product quality. They've put time and love into finding good local producers, particularly in southern Sweden but also around Stockholm. Here in Stockholm you and I shop through REKO, a tip I got from you. There are meeting points where you can buy directly …

[01:41:33] From the farmer, exactly. The alternative is buying directly from farmers through REKO, and there are Facebook groups for it. But it's at specific times and you can't always make it. That's why I think being able to get home delivery directly is fantastic.

[01:41:49] Now I see time is running away, and so is my battery. That's okay. We should thank all the podcast listeners who've stayed this far in a slightly different episode.

[01:42:05] I hope it was useful food for thought. If you like the format, we can do it again with another website. Perhaps we'll also review the desktop version for a different view. Now we know 80–90 percent of traffic is mobile, and a large majority shop on mobile. That's why I thought it was most interesting in this case.

[01:42:30] One final tip is that Shopify now has a feature under Sales channels where you can see how agents search and how many sales happen through agent search. Yes, they actually do.

[01:42:50] That's positive, and we can discuss it more in another episode. Now we have to finish, because we always have so many good tips.

[01:42:59] Thanks to all the listeners who've stayed for another episode, and thank you, Fredrik, for joining me on the podcast. Thank you, and thanks to you listening. See you next week. If you have colleagues who don't listen, share the podcast with them. The more people listen, the more inspiration we get to make more episodes and keep having fun here on the podcast sofa week after week. We also want to go through ads.

[01:43:31] Perhaps that will come in a future episode. I'm not promising the next one, because we want to talk about other things too, but we want to dissect one or two ad accounts.

[01:43:40] And see what the ad library looks like, ideally for a new website. We know Gårdens makes ads, obviously, because we've both been drawn in by them. Any other website wanting feedback is welcome to get in touch. Thanks and goodbye for this episode. See you next week, Thursday, same time and place.

[01:44:02] Bye bye. Yeah.