Five years after opening her bespoke letterpress business, Sara McNally realised things were no longer working out the way she planned. Rather than close her store she made the brave decision to completely pivot and recreate a new version of her business Constellation and Co. Including opening a store front, on a whim!

Kurt Elster is a Senior Ecommerce Consultant who helps Shopify merchants (like Jay Leno’s Garage) uncover hidden profits in their websites. He very kindly took time away from his own show; The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, to chat to me about why “beautiful” design doesn’t always mean profitable design, three strategies you can use in your own business to improve conversion rates and what features will help your e-commerce site stand out from your competition.

Getting away is important for you, your staff AND your business. But what if the idea of taking a holiday fills you with equal parts desire and dread? How do you take a holiday without losing money or momentum? Do you close your store or not?

Start gathering your travel brochures and thinking about your capsule wardrobe. This week on the Bringing Business to Retail Podcast, I’m sharing my top tips to get your business vacation ready.

Copy writer and branding expert Lee Rowley has more than a decade experience writing sales copy and creating brands. But he’s the first to admit, his copy hasn’t always hit the mark!

Following a personal tragedy Lee felt compelled to find an alternative to the churn style copy his counterparts were using. Ignoring the “experts” he started creating copy and brands that made real, deep, connections with the people buying the products he was tasked with selling.

In this episode Chris shares with me the importance of your home page and what you should include on it to ensure you customers buy. We check off the six ares of a website that should be converting for you and three tools you can use to test your conversion rates without breaking the bank. We also talk about my favourite topic; knowing your customer, and why split testing several versions of your key pages is integral to finding out exactly how your customer will interact with your website.

Thomas Duran was going to be a fire fighter, that was until he realised he could turn his real passion for video, into his job. For the past thirteen years Thomas has worked as a professional video cameraman and producer, helping corporate clients sell their message and products through moving images.

I don’t know about you but personally, I always struggle when it comes to shipping big items. I know so many of my clients have issues with things just as simple as decent sized light fixtures because the general points system or general queries can’t actually guarantee that they’re going to get there in one piece or even take them in the first place. I know here in Australia, Australia Post won’t do anything more than a meter. So that’s your three feet. So if you’ve got a really tall lampshade that doesn’t come down into pieces you’re kind of screwed when it comes to getting it to your customer. So I brought along Mike Williams from you ship to talk about how we can get those big pieces of inventory to our customers in a really quick way and in a way that they’re going to arrive safely.

Today I have a co-host, something very different. This episode with Michael Fox from Shoes of Prey was actually co-hosted with the amazing Pavan Bahl from Fashion is your business.

If you don’t know about Shoes of Prey then I am going to tell you a couple of sentences about them. They are an amazing company and they do customized shoes. Visit their website and you have a million possibilities to design your shoes online and they will turn it into a great product.