Jackanapes: Our e-commerce journey
As Jackanapes had begun conquering Amazon and social media, we decided to look into our e-commerce options. Extending our story into our own space was an important factor in building our brand. We want customers to easily be able to find us, have trust in our products and our process. Our branded website contributes to the trust of customers who buy our products, something Amazon likes to see. Relying on one source for all our sales – particularly such a giant like Amazon – could be a recipe for disaster. So how did our e-commerce journey begin?
The website
If customers are shopping on Amazon and then want to research who we are on our own website, we want to make sure our story is cohesive. It needed to be true to us and reveal who the team behind the brand are. The content was going to be important, but after some research, we discovered Shopify was going to give us even more than just a website.
Why Shopify for Jackanapes?
This e-commerce platform had so many connection opportunities that we already wanted to explore. Not only does Shopify connect with Amazon, including now allowing use of their ‘Buy with Prime’ feature, it also connects with Quickbooks and Veeqo. One of the biggest advantages is the ability to plug into Amazon FBA via Veeqo, a really valuable feature as we didn’t have a warehouse to begin with. We wanted to demonstrate how you can streamline your startup or new brand with a restricted budget. This helps keep our overhead costs low while we develop the brand. At the time of our research, Shopify also connected with TikTok, before TikTok shopping was making moves to keep e-commerce within their own platform.
Shopify also had some other great features – incredible automation, an easy-to-use 2.0 user interface, great plugin capabilities, speed and awesome mobile-friendly usage. It also has tremendous built-in marketing automation, perfect for customer engagement and upselling. As a bonus, Shopify also owns an app called ‘Shop” in an attempt to appear as a marketplace. This is a separate app focusing on the shopper’s search, returning multiple brands and product results that are on Shopify.
The content
To do this, the content was vital. We wanted to make sure that the website was clear and concise, mobile responsive and easy to use, so we kept the first version of our website simple. Shopify offer a number of set templates that are easily edited. We chose the theme ‘Impact’. It offered all the responsiveness and simplicity we needed, plus had some great features built in to help support better e-commerce conversions using several different call-to-action functions. We paid a one-off $350 for the theme.
For the content itself, we had created such a clear branding style it was easy for us to transfer that across. Hot sauces are often looked at as vibrant and challenge-led products. Following our labelling and brand guidelines, we sprinkled a bit of this into the website. After all, Jackanapes is a colourful but very old fashioned way to describe a rascal or whippersnapper!
The finished product
We started the build in April and had it finished for a soft launch in July 2023.
The website is all about the products. With our build of reviews, we were able to add these to our website and link our social feeds to add a constant feed of new material.
What we’ve also done since is open a TikTok shop as well. Given the rumoured changes to TikTok shops and how 3rd party e-commerce links may not be possible in the future, we wanted to get ahead of the game. As we’re a food and grocery brand, this does require extra steps. It’s an invite-only category, so the process is a little longer to set up. It’s all about converting customer visits into sales, whether that’s through our e-commerce site, Amazon or social accounts.
Our first-year results
As Jackanapes has reached the end of its first year in business, we want to share the realistic results of setting up a small business. Come back for our next blog, where we reveal the results.
