Thursday the 2^nd of August marked the 7^th Quarterly Brisbane #ShopifyMeetup presented by Reload Media. Once again, the event was a great success with Shopify Merchants and Partners taking away some key insights on how they can prepare for the upcoming busy retail season.

The panel this month consisted of Shalm Harold of Amazing Oils, Gavin Ballard of Disco and Tracy Kaur of Shopify. Here were some of our key takeaways from their presentations:

First up was Shalm who took the audience through the story of his family’s business Amazing Oils. The company is still run within the family and is based on the Sunshine Coast. They began in 2012 when one of their family members were diagnosed with a serious illness and the entire family’s focus shifted. Since then, Amazing Oils has been devoted to researching and discovering forms of pain relief through Magnesium and other natural minerals.

With humble beginnings at market stalls around South East Queensland, Amazing Oils now has two Shopify stores to service the demand they receive from both consumers and retailers that stock their products. Shalm discussed the importance of understanding the customer journey for both the B2C and B2B sides of his business regarding their marketing efforts. This is something that we encourage all our clients to do at Reload, ensuring that your customers are receiving the right message at the right time.

Next up was Gavin who provided the merchants in the audiences with insights that he has gathered over his eight years of working within the Shopify space. His main three points of advice for the upcoming busy retail season was for merchants to:

1. Leverage Transactional Emails
2. Help Customers Spread the Word
3. Create Evergreen Product Launches

You’ll find more information about each of those points within Gavin’s slides, featured below. He also recommended that merchants check out a new Shopify Plus whitepaper that gives insight into how brands are launching more campaigns to boost holiday revenue.

You can view that here: www.gavinballard.com/autopilot

Finally, Tracy went into detail about how merchants could prepare their Shopify store for the ‘tidal wave of traffic’ that comes with the upcoming retail season. The more time that merchants spend setting up their store and making sure that it’s being seen customers, the more time they can spend selling and growing during the busiest part of the year.

But when exactly do you need to be prepared for? Tracy ran through some key dates, arguing that the retail season kicks off from September and goes all the way through to February. November and December being the two busiest months due to Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas. She went onto explain that during this period, customers expect a ‘buy anywhere’ experience. That’s why Shopify partner with Google, Facebook, Instagram and more of the world’s most used sites to bring millions of shoppers to Shopify stores.

We’d like to thank the sponsors who made this Meetup possible, Okendo, Dotmailer and Shoelace. Our next Meetup will be in October. Stay tuned for more details by joining the Brisbane Shopify Meetup group or by following @Reload_Media on Twitter.

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