The first Brisbane #ShopifyMeetup of 2019 proved to be a great start to the year. As 5 o’clock came around, the line spread out the doors of the Princess Theatre and there was a growing sense of excitement. This month, we had an impressive set of speakers including Hayley Worley of The Sheet Society, Charles Lorigan of Google and Paul Cochrane of Shopify.

Given our record number of attendees last Meetup, we were eagerly counting the numbers as people entered. While we fell just short of our own record, with a total of 290 in attendance, we are proud to say Brisbane now holds both first and second place!

The topic of the evening was ‘What’s New in Ecommerce for 2019?’ Given the amazing line-up, it’s safe to say that everyone went home with some great insights and exciting ideas on what’s possible in the ecommerce space. We’re covering some of the highlights below but if you want to get into a bit more detail, we’d recommend flicking through the slides below from the evening as you go.

First to take the floor was Hayley, founder of The Sheet Society. She shared how she went from posting orders in her lunch break from the back of her car, to owning a successful business with over 500 5-star reviews and 7,000+ orders.

She talked us through how she came across those ‘ah-ha’ moments throughout the process. One of the biggest things she found was how she could actually use her own data from her digital sales to get a really good idea of how much it cost to bring in a new customer and complete a sale.

Next up was Charles of Google who walked us through some of the customer trends that he’s seen moving into 2019. Dubbing it the ‘age of assistance’, he explained that shoppers are putting in minimal effort, but constantly demanding more – they are becoming more curious, impatient, and demanding.

So what can we do? He went on to describe a couple of ways that you can help these impatient shoppers to ensure frictionless interactions. These included:

• Decreasing mobile page load time
• Create better online experience for customers
• Simplify shopping platform management with Google Smart Shopping Campaigns

Paul Cochrane of Shopify was the final speaker of the evening. He had an open conversation about how he overcame challenges to redefine his goals and develop a clear sense of direction. Noting his initial failure in 2014 with his first ecommerce store, he said he got back on track by constantly falling back on his motivation driving the ‘why’ behind what he was doing. He challenged everyone to consider “it’s not necessarily what you’re doing, it’s why you’re doing it” – it was adopting this mindset that allowed him to persevere when challenges did arise.

And so came the end of the 9^th Shopify Meetup! We’d like to thank everyone who came along and the sponsors who made this Meetup possible: Okendo, Dotdigital, Andzen, and Shoelace. Our next Meetup will be held at the end of May. Keep updated for more details by joining the Brisbane Shopify Meetup group or by following @Reload_Media on Twitter.

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