Shopify Expert Insights

E-Com Advice from our experienced in-house team

I didn't email you last week. I'm sorry.

It was a 3-day weekend because of Labor Day so I took a break from laboring.

I did two extremely satisfying things instead that weekend:

1. I caught up on some reading, finishing three books.

My favorite by far was Unfu*k Yourself by Gary John Bishop. It's currently my favorite personal development book. The right mindset is critically important to succeeding as an entrepreneur, so I invest in my own mental health regularly and fiercely defend it. You should too.

2. I went goddamn mental on my lawn with an edger.

My lawn had not been edged in at least two years, as we'd been focused on growing any grass at all instead of Creeping Charlie; a diabolical broadleaf weed that can only be killed with Ortho® Weed-B-Gon® Colloidal Silver during a full moon.

Our now full and lush lawn had grown so confident that it had decided to leave the confines of the yard and attempt to colonize the sidewalk, driveway, street, etc. Whacking back entire inches of grass like slashing shag carpeting with a new utility knife is one of the most weirdly satisfying things I've done. Possibly the most fun you can have for $60 (other than renting a Jet Ski from a Cuban man named Angel in Key West. He is the best and I hope he's okay.)

I really know very little about lawn care. It's one of those things that seems obvious and self-explanatory until you actually try to do it. Then it becomes clear that your lawn is a minefield of mistakes waiting to happen. Google, experience, and a crash course from my sister-in-law are the only reason I am at all competent to care for grass.

When you're trying to fix your lawn, the lawn & garden section at Home Depot becomes an exciting opportunity to waste money and kill grass. That's kind of how I feel about the Shopify App Store. It's filled with thousands of shiny toys that all promise to grow your store or make your life as store owner easier. But just like lawn care, it's easy to get carried away. Pretty soon you have a shed full of tools and sprays that you forgot about, and a website that crashes iPhones with impunity.

Which is why it should come as no surprise that one of the more common questions I get is, "Hey Kurt, what apps do you recommend?"

Like any experienced Shopify Expert, I normally give a cryptic non-answer like "I recommend installing nothing until you have a specific pain or problem than can be solved by a single app. Audit your apps regularly to make sure you still need them."

This is not the answer you or anyone is looking to hear. It's not my fault, it's because I have PTSD from logging into client stores and discovering 40+ apps installed resulting in a 20MB page size and more javascript errors than I can diagnose. That's not hyperbole either, it's happened repeatedly.

Until now that's been my stance. Today I'm going to break my app silence. I have a lot of experience with apps and I hear even more about which apps are hot, which have great support, and which are to be avoided. I and several of my friends even own successful apps. So I could make some app recommendations for right now as we all get ready to maximize our revenues on Black Friday and through the holidays.

That's the topic of this week's Sunday Drive: The Best Shopify Apps for 2017.

Hope that helps because...

Black Friday will be here before we know it.

Book a 1-on-1 coaching call with me and I guarantee that we can improve your store together.

☞ Book your call, start improving your store now.

Talk soon,
Kurt

PS: I updated my vanity site, kurtelster.com. I even took a new headshot for it. Well, my wife took it in our basement, and I was wearing her makeup because we are professionals. The contact page is a trendy-if-you're-a-twitter-cool-kid 'now' page that's worth checking it.