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Shop Talk Mark Rippstein Shop Talk Mark Rippstein

A Few Of Our Favorite Shopify Apps

A list of Shopify Apps we’ve tried and how they can benefit your online store.

Shopify is our #1 pick when it comes to building an online shop. It’s a secure and easy-to-use platform for online shop owners and it provides several built-in tools needed to run an online store. However, if you want to add a special feature, you will need to find, install and configure a Shopify app that works with your online store.

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Carla Rippstein Carla Rippstein

Setting Up Gift Guides & Gift Cards

Featuring your best selling products on your website is always a great idea, but consider taking things a step further with a gift guide and gift cards. A curated gift guide makes it easier for your customers to find the perfect gift, guiding them directly to items they’ll want to purchase for everyone on their list! For those who still aren’t sure what to get, gift cards are a perfect alternative.

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Business Tips Mark Rippstein Business Tips Mark Rippstein

Getting the most out of your project kickoff meeting

This is what we do at the beginning of our website projects!

A successful project usually starts with a successful kickoff meeting. From confirming deadlines to confirming how best to communicate, you will get the most out of your project and see the project as a success if you have a good kickoff meeting. Here are our insights for making the most out of your meeting.

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Business Tips Mark Rippstein Business Tips Mark Rippstein

DMARC, DKIM, SPF...oh my!!

Reduce the chances of having your emails sent to spam.

If you haven’t already done so, set up the bare minimum by adding a simple DMARC record to your domain. Depending on your setup, and as soon as possible, make sure that you have an email address with your domain name, that your email is authenticated with anyone sending emails on your behalf, and that you have a DKIM record, an SPF record or both.

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Shop Talk Carla Rippstein Shop Talk Carla Rippstein

Information Alerts For Online Shops

Our 3 suggestions for where to place important information alerts on your website.

Need to let your customers know important information about your products, shipping delays or your holiday deadlines? What about if you go on vacation? If you’re a one or two person company, what do you do with your shop when you want to go on vacation and no one is around who can help you create and package orders? Although you can pause your store, you don’t want to lose any sales just because you’re going away!

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Shop Talk Carla Rippstein Shop Talk Carla Rippstein

Thinking of Opening a Shopify Shop?

5 things you should know before you open your shop.

So you’ve decided to open an online store and you’ve decided to do it on Shopify. Congratulations...we believe you’ve made the right choice! Shopify is one of the best platforms out there to build your online store. They only do shops and have thousands of shops running on their servers. They take care of security, which is incredibly important when you have an online store. And, because they have so many stores on their platform, their features are some of the best out there.

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Website Tips Mark Rippstein Website Tips Mark Rippstein

Why Your Site Isn’t Converting

Our collection of reasons why websites don’t perform and what you can do about it.

Most of our time at work is spent designing, coding, learning, or talking with entrepreneurs. When we first meet with a business owner who already has a website, it’s almost a certainty that they mention wanting to generate more traffic or improve traffic conversion. Here is our collection of reasons why a website might not be living up to expectations and what you can do about it.

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Website Tips Carla Rippstein Website Tips Carla Rippstein

How To Choose Your Online Platform

Deciding which platform to use to create your website isn’t always easy.

Where your website lives (its ‘home’) will depend on a few things such as, what your business is, what type of website you want to have (do you plan on offering products or are you only selling services or are you just showing your work?), and how much backend work you want to put in. There are so many options available!

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Website Tips, Shop Talk, Business Boosters Mark Rippstein Website Tips, Shop Talk, Business Boosters Mark Rippstein

Why You Need An FAQ Page

The top reasons to have one, how to design a very useful one for your website visitors and examples of great FAQ pages.

There are several ways to improve customer experience, many of which can be time-consuming, complicated and even expensive to design, develop and maintain. One tactic that we like is simple, cost-effective, improves the user experience while also providing ‘SEO gold’ too: A page with Frequently Asked Questions (aka FAQ page, FAQ hub, or help center).

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Business Tips Mark Rippstein Business Tips Mark Rippstein

Graphic Editors For Your Desktop

When you need to edit photos but don’t have Photoshop.

There is no shortage of graphic editing tools out there. Some are better for photos, some are better for illustrations, some are expensive, some are free....and it's a whole other game if you include mobile apps. When it comes to the best options for the desktop, which do we use and recommend?

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Business Boosters Carla Rippstein Business Boosters Carla Rippstein

How to plan out your social media to better reach your customers

A powerful tool in succeeding in social media is to make a habit out of planning and scheduling.

We know that being on social media is one great way to promote your website or online shop. Do you plan out your social media? If being consistent on your social media channels is one of your goals for your business, planning it out a week, a month, or even a quarter ahead is what you need to do!

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Business Boosters Carla Rippstein Business Boosters Carla Rippstein

Pinterest for Product Sellers

If you sell products, then Pinterest needs to be in your marketing toolbox! Learn how to use Pinterest to drive traffic to your online shop.

Pinterest is a great tool for product sellers to help drive traffic to their website. It is often overlooked as many people think that it is just for recipes, crafts or DIY projects. However, we see with our own site and our clients’ sites, that Pinterest is one of the largest sources for their website traffic, often driving more traffic than any other social media channel that they are using!

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Shop Talk Mark Rippstein Shop Talk Mark Rippstein

3 Reasons Why You Should Move Your Online Shop To Shopify

Why move your shop to Shopify? 3 key reasons why our clients have chosen to move from Etsy to Shopify and why you might consider it too.

There are several options out there that can help you create an online shop for your business, hobby, or extra revenue stream. After helping several clients set up their online shops, migrate shops from one platform to another, and maintaining shops, one thing is clear: We love Shopify! Shopify is an amazing tool for most product based businesses and gives you as a shop owner several key advantages over an online marketplace like Etsy.

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