Simon Driscoll is the founder and sole person at UXB Skincare a business he founded in 2018 with a mission to develop affordable skincare products that really make a difference to customers skin. The business runs on a Shopify store and mostly sells to the UK.
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Catching Up With Simon
Simon came on the show at the beginning of his journey into eCommerce with his brand, UXB skincare and offered to be available for several follow ups on his journey.
His goals for Q1, 2020 at that time included: increasing orders to 200 per month, maintaining an average order value of £20 or higher and getting the advertising to pay for itself with a daily spend of £100.
How it Played Out
Simon says things started a bit slow. He wasn’t ready to turn on ads beginning in February as he expected, largely because he wanted to gather testimonies for creative content in his ads—a process that took longer than expected.
Added to that were multiple app clashes in Shopify which meant he didn’t even get started until March. Lastly, Simon started at a smaller spend than he projected.
The good news is that Simon’s sales goals are looking pretty good! Over the last 30 days, he has had 139 orders through Shopify and has sold on Amazon successfully as well.
His average order value went down to £16, but he says that data isn’t entirely accurate and needs some clarifying. His £24 a day spend on ads is bringing about 5,000 people into his shop daily.
Simon’s add to basket rate is currently 6% and his basket to checkout is at 45%. Shopify, Simon points out, happily sends you data about how much money you’re losing from your poor basket to checkout conversion.
Gathering Wisdom
Simon appeared on Matt Edmundson’s The Kuriosity Podcast and got some more advice which he is currently working through bit by bit.
A big takeaway was that emulating the look and feel of the big players actually undercut his authenticity and he’s fired up about reworking and refreshing the brand image.
Initial Q1 Takeaways
Simon is living proof that running an eCommerce business produces not only a never ending to-do list, but that reacting to real time information is more important than being rigid in predetermined goals.
At this point, Simon says he feels like he’s reaching a tipping point with advertising at which the pixel has enough data to set up look alike audiences. His hope is that he’ll be able to move better quality traffic to his site at which point he can amp up advertising spend.
Dealing With Large Average Order Value Ranges
Simon’s order values run the gamut—from £6 up to 40 and beyond. With a range like this, it’s a good idea to put breaks in to ensure you get a better understanding of your actual order value.
For example, you might split it up into £0-10, £10-20 and so on. Looking at the data in the right way is more important than just having arbitrary targets met, even though it’s great to start somewhere! Simon is considering adding some one click add ons at checkout to increase his minimum orders.
Channels
Simon has been using both Facebook and Google and says he sees customers bounce around before purchasing and is excited to see repeat purchases.
For email, he is using Klaviyo and focusing on abandoned cart messaging. He says he wants to spend time looking at automated flows as much as possible. He has also been working on creating a skincare quiz that will require email to get results to build his email list.
Chloe suggests that Simon even add an incentive in his abandoned cart email flow using the bonus gifts he already includes to entice people to complete their purchase.
Q2
For Q2, Simon is focusing on his Facebook Ads—testing creative and audiences is top of mind.
eCommerce Book Top Tip
- Hype Yourself: A No-nonsense PR Toolkit for Small Businesses by Lucy Werner
eCommerce Traffic Top Tip
- The cleverness of Facebook just works if you can keep going at it.
Tool Top Tip
- Air Table — A spreadsheet on steroids with a lot of integrations
Growth Top Tip
Interview Links
- Business
- Hear Simon on The Kuriosity Podcast
Related episodes
- Plotting a 3 month Growth Strategy with Simon Driscoll from UXB Skincare
- Competitive advantage and selecting suppliers with Matt Edmundson of Jersey Beauty Company
- Chloe’s Marketing Maxims – 3 ways to increase the performance of ALL your marketing
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