Empower Your Non-Profit Organization with Personal Selling Online for Non-Profit Organizations

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welcome to the non-profit digital success podcast i'm your host david and in this episode i have patrick mccarthy on the show before i introduce him i just want to mention that i'm running a special contest for every share of this episode on social media you'll be entered to win a 200 donation to a charity of your choice even if it's the one that you work at you need to tag wow digital inc that's w o w d i g i t a l i n c there's a limit of one entry per day and the draw will take place two weeks from the date of publication of this episode so uh let's get on to the introduction my friend patrick is the ceo and owner of digifly an e-commerce agency based in dublin ireland whose primary mission is to help those who sell online think retailers non-profits with shops that type of thing scale their businesses on shopify and shopify plus having previously brought his own e-commerce business from zero to over seven figures in just a matter of 12 months he now uses his experience he gained on that journey to help other organizations realize their goals patrick and i met in a community for digital agency owners and we've become friends over the years so it's great to bring him on the show he's a pilot also which probably has something to do with the naming of his company digifly which i think is pretty awesome so patrick thanks for joining on the show where's the last place you flew in from thank you for that lovely intro david um the last place i flew in from is a good question last week i was in dallas texas um and uh flew in from but uh i i fly in from london whenever i fly somewhere i'm a lot of my flights these days are to the states at the moment uh covert bencovid asia isn't as open as it would normally be so i'm doing a lot of stuff to uh to canada and the and the us yeah so from your perspective what's harder to to figure out how to fly a plane or set up an e-commerce shop well uh the risks of getting them wrong are different um but in terms of once you know how to fly a plane um it's uh i i it's you know i'd say it's a bit like riding a bike but you you do kind of keep those skills with you obviously you need to keep them uh keep them refreshed but in terms of ecommerce setting up ecommerce stores it's very different it's there's every store has its own individual challenge and every client we work with has their own individual challenge it's not simply just we want to sell a bunch of products and we want to send this is who we want to sell them to everybody has their own unique situation in terms of their whole um business journey and their fulfillment requirements and and all sorts of other things so it's always a challenging thing and it keeps it interesting it keeps it fresh which is great but uh but yeah so during the intro i i spoke a little bit about what it is that you do can you tell us a little bit more yeah so um yeah as you mentioned i own and operate a an e-commerce agency we're based here in dublin in ireland um and we basically help uh online retailers uh either set up new stores new online stores e-commerce stores or optimize their existing ones are my great from another platform potentially we we exclusively work with shopify um the reason being is that we we've i my background is in in aside from the flying side of things i obviously do that but i have a background in web design as well and uh over the years obviously worked with various different uh platforms and um and then when i shifted into e-commerce i started looking at at various different options there as well and kind of gravitated towards shopify just because of its it's it is easy to get in and even if somebody without any technical knowledge is actually quite easy to set up a shopify store where we come in though is actually then when we work with slightly bigger brands and and bigger companies who really want to uh customize their offering but still using shopify but which then requires some custom design and development which is where we come in and we also you know we have a certain amount of expertise around actual e-commerce strategies and we can bring those to the table as well so um yeah that's that's primarily what we do is we we build shopify stores for for clients and we also do a bit of digital marketing specifically around e-commerce the likes of email marketing um customer retention strategies and a bit of customer acquisition using things like google shopping ads again specifically e-commerce focused more than more so than maybe other industries when you when you're working with clients and they're they come to you and we need help with our shopify site we need to look better we need to optimize the sales process or whatever that happens to be who's your typical client in terms of size yeah good question um you know we've we've and again i mentioned that i was doing a lot of web design over the past few years and we shifted into e-commerce as an e-commerce agency um probably only maybe well probably about four or five years ago um and in the initial years of that did we we were taking uh pretty much anybody that was willing to work with us on board um and over the years we've we've we've grown a decent portfolio of of ecommerce clients and with that you know behind us we're able to start looking at bigger brands and bigger companies so now i mean ideally we're looking at we're looking at companies that are are doing it um at least a million euros in revenue per year which is um i've forgotten what the canadian conversion rate is at the moment probably about 1.3 maybe 1.4 or something like that um and are with a company head count of you know at least maybe 15 to 20 people in it and and upwards of that so we work with that on the probably the lower end and then uh getting up you know to to uh hire even potentially um eight figure uh companies as well so um yeah that's uh where we are at the moment from a non-profit perspective um i think they have a lot of things that they can sell if it's a hospital they have like arts and crafts shops or many of those programs where children or seniors are producing artwork and they sell it to raise money for their charity um so i think there's a lot of stuff that they could actually post online what's your opinion in terms of like is it worth them exploring that yeah i mean you're absolutely i mean probably e-commerce isn't the first thing you think of when when you you mentioned non-profit organizations um and but as you say there are certain um scenarios where it does potentially it is potentially a fit like for instance if you know you mention a hospital if they have a a shop on on our store inside the hospital the gift store or something like that then they could start selling those uh products online um i mean there's other potential other aspects in shopify is obviously very focused towards uh product-based selling um and physical products as well but but you can also sell digital products so you can you could use it to sell tickets to events you could uh use it to do an online auction something like that if you were auctioning off certain things or um um so there are uh ways and means of doing it i mean traditionally shopify is set up for for physical product uh um selling but it does have the ability to um be utilized in in in many different ways as well uh from you know in terms of generating revenue around selling not not not just physical products yeah a lot of nonprofits here have some mandates from government or funding organizations to produce educational materials for for use in the public um you know maybe monetizing that if they create an e-book you know they can sell for two dollars or five dollars and you know just have it automatically shipped electronically over to the people or enable for download that type of thing i think there's a really great place in the nonprofit world for e-commerce to help them backfill some of the funding needs that that they might need and over over the last couple of years a number of clients have come to to me to ask us hey what about doing an online auction what are your thoughts on leveraging shopify for that yeah i mean and i always there a second ago i mean that that there is the possibility of doing something like an an online auction using shopify now like shopify is is obviously it's it's a it's a i mean it's a platform-based solution um and it has its limitations when you just use what you get out of the box with shopify the great thing about shopify though is that it's supported by a huge ecosystem of third-party applications which are designed by third-party developers but they have to go through a rigorous uh vetting and approval process to actually get themselves in to be an approved shopify application that will that you can bolt on essentially to give added functionality to your shopify store and one of those one of those things is is likely sorry is like um adding on uh online auction functionality so that you can create some timed auctions on on your website and and have other auction functionality built in as well again as i said it doesn't come out of the box with shopify but by adding on a third-party app albeit you do have to pay a little bit extra per month for the times that you'd be using it but you know for that added functionality it's generally worth it um and you know as opposed to and because it's a vetted and approved uh app by shopify has to go through that that rigorous process that it's it's almost always um a really well thought out uh coded development add-on to to put on your website yeah a lot of people in the nonprofit world are running wordpress there's a reason it powers like i think almost 40 of the internet now um and so how does shopify stand up against woocommerce which is probably the number one wordpress-based e-commerce uh ecosystem yeah no absolutely that's a that's a good i mean wordpress is almost you know getting to be the industry standard in terms of websites now i mean it's as you say 40 percent of the internet is pretty much powered by it so i think um you know if if if if anybody listening doesn't know what wordpress is they've certainly seen a wordpress website um but and as you say woocommerce is that add-on to wordpress to give that e-commerce functionality to it to a wordpress store and it's it's an easy bolt-on to to add in that functionality the pros and cons of both i mean wordpress is such a versatile platform you can build pretty much anything on it um and where shopify isn't you know shopify is is very e-commerce focused i wouldn't be suggesting to uh to build anything other than an e-commerce solution on shopify a a uh a like a blog post or a content rich post probably wouldn't sit very well on on shopify and uh but from an e-commerce perspective it does what it's supposed to do really really well um and for us the benefits that we see over the likes of wordpress and woocommerce is number one um it's a fully hosted solution um so and it's it's fully secure by shopify so you're not you know when you set it up you're not having to go and find uh somewhere to host your website you're not have to worry about how secure it is if the hosting isn't great uh you're not looking at all the payment processing is all built in so you're not having to go off and get a third-party payment processing account and then add that into your woocommerce side of things as well so it's they've they've kind of tried to think of everything so that it's all in one in one box um the downside obviously is that you know and even though you do have to pay for for for for wordpress hosting and things like that wordpress itself is is essentially free um woocommerce is essentially a kind of a free add-on as well um albeit as i say you do have to you know think of the hosting and security side of things so you do it but you do have to pay for shopify and you do have to pay um uh you know a monthly fee to shopify and then those those third-party apps that i mentioned previously you generally have to pay a monthly fee so if you start you know building up a few of those to add on a lot of functionality you know your monthly costs can go up but they're the the pros i think far outweigh the cons um in terms of that um so yeah i mean if if and again you know look there's so many websites so many e-commerce websites out there using wordpress and and woocommerce and they do it really well and and they they have a huge amount of success but um you know for us and and obviously we're biased because we're a shopify agency but um you know if a client was coming to us now you know we we would highly be highly recommending uh shopify for uh you know for the previous reasons i mentioned especially around the hosting and the security side of things i think shopify is a really great platform it's a shop out of the box right like you like you mentioned you don't need to find extra add-ins for payment gateway and pieces like that you have to worry about compliance and like pci compliance for credit card processing any of that i mean shopify will take a cut but if you're using moneris if you're using stripe if you're using paypal with woocommerce they're going to take a cut also so it's kind of like a net uh net on that um right so being able to set it up and i think a lot of people are a little bit hesitant because they want to make sure that the site if they're going to add ecommerce functionality that it looks and feels like it's part of their site they don't want people to feel like they've been transported to you know a third-party system what can you talk about in terms of being able to match branding in in that side of it yeah so i mean and you know i did mention a few minutes ago that if you're if you're building out a content rich site then then having all that content on the shopify site isn't always the best solution you know there are you don't get me wrong there are some shopify sites out there that have some really nice content and a side of things but it they don't it it's something that doesn't come straight out of the box with shopify so if you wanted to build that in it can be built in it just requires a little bit of custom development what a lot of uh what sometimes a lot of companies do if they have domain.com uh but matching the branding completely to the original website as well um you know that's a you know as i said you can build in content into the shopify site it's just it it sometimes requires a little bit more development um and in terms of like the other platforms out there the other e-commerce platforms out there there's there's i mean as i mentioned there's loads of platforms that will do e-commerce obviously wordpress wordpress with woocommerce you know you've got magento as well which is a kind of a massive uh platform which problem with magento is it requires a huge amount of initial uh building and capital outlay to get a site up and running uh you've got the likes of you know wix and squarespace which are very easy to get into but then they they're really limited in terms of design and functionality so shopify sits in a kind of in the middle a little bit in terms of it's very easy to get up and running with shopify um but it has the ability to scale um and you know you can start off as a small to medium-sized business and scale uh as as high as you can dare imagine without the without there being limitations because they have various different plans and they have an enterprise solution as well that you can move into once you start getting into the realms of of you know even billion dollar companies that are that are that are using shopify for their for their e-commerce solutions yeah so i think as a as a take away from what you just said you can have a hybrid approach right if you love your wordpress website and you don't want to ditch it because you want to add some e-commerce not a problem right put a link create a subdomain that's a free thing as long as your it knows what they're doing they can set it up um right and you can have a store that matches your live website you don't have to start from scratch you don't have to redesign you don't have to anything like that um digifly will be able to help you get to that point where you've got a shop that matches your brand and it'll be a seamless transition across across the two of those so don't dump wordpress because you want to add a shop um because like as patrick said it's not shopify is not built for the content yeah you can create pages with content but wordpress has some phenomenal builders like beaver builder elementor etc that really allow you to take control over the content my experience with shopify is you can't control the content in that kind of way um so if you love your wordpress site stick with it if you want to add e-commerce i think shopify is a great platform uh to leverage that um yeah yeah i mean 100 i'll just add to that i mean it is and as you say if you know if you have a a really developed wordpress website you love and you don't want to try and reinvent the wheel um it's it's a really easy add-on as you say with something like a sub-domain i mean the the other great thing about shopify is is because it's it's built for merchants as well it's built for the sellers you know and while we do a lot of work custom developing shopify sites once you get into the back end of shopify as as a as a merchant um it's very easy to use they've got a fantastic uh you know a mobile app that you can use um and it's very you can fulfill orders straight from your phone and and um you know i think that's where it it really is um heads and shoulders above a lot of the other e-commerce solutions out there um that it just makes it very easy to operate your your e-commerce store as a as a merchant as a retailer yeah so for anybody that wants to leverage the shopify platform there's a lot of really great things in the back end that you can leverage so if you're doing inventory if you have multiple things so if you have books or or multiple i don't know maybe you're selling umbrellas for fundraising or something like that you can track the inventory in the system you know how many you have on hand you don't need a separate management system for that that could cost hundreds or thousands of dollars a year to be able to leverage it's all built in with shopify right so from a functional activity you can use that um as well as if you have a shop on site where people can physically come in and buy something you can leverage it as a point of sale yeah you're absolutely right you take the example of a hospital gift store and they shopify has their own point of sale system shopify pos um and all you need is a a mobile device like an ipad that you load their app onto you have all your inventory uh is is on the system the shopify back end operates like a back end and then the website is just one channel of that and then you can have your point of sale as another sales channel um and um you can you can sell uh products directly from inside a gift store for instance and all the stock will be managed so that you know it's it's it's syncing all the stock so if somebody buys something in the in the store it goes down by one but also if they buy it online it still goes down by one so you're not you're not running out of stock or having stock issues online versus in the store um i mean the other on the other side i talk about channels there the other thing is it's set up for omni-channel saline which is one of the kind of the big things that people are looking at now in the world of e-commerce is not just where am i going to sell this products like how many places can i sell this product and it's selling it on instagram it's selling it on facebook it's selling it on amazon and you can link all those seamlessly directly into shopify and they just become shopify becomes the hub and you have all these sale channel spokes coming out of it and with the website just being one of those it's just another extension but you can have all these other sales channels as well to help support your business i think that's really interesting for non-profits to think about you have these really dedicated audiences following you on social right leverage that platform and try to use a system that can generate a bit more money for you you might not sell you know fifty thousand dollars a month worth of product right but you know even if it's a thousand dollars right that's an extra chunk of money that you can use to leverage and and create other program opportunities in your organization yeah absolutely i mean as you say even social media you can sell directly on instagram so you know the the classical example he has you have an instagram post of that might have some products in that in that in that picture or in that image and you can click on it and it'll pop up a little a little tag showing how much that product is click on the tag brings you straight to the the product page itself and then you can shop from right within your your instagram web browser and check out so yeah that it's all those small things that shopify does really well it really thinks about the customer journey and um and also how to how to help the retailer um make the most out of their business that's amazing so obviously i mean i think this is kind of a newish development in terms of online sales and hitting out and reaching out to social media um what do you anticipate is like the how the e-commerce landscape is evolving yeah i mean how far into the future do you want to go but if we if we look at the short term um it's you know i mentioned omni channel selling that that's been kind of one of the big buzzwords over the last few years and again it's not just selling through your your physical store or your website it's it's howdy connect all the other channels you know even connecting up ebay and and things like that directly into a hub like shopify so that your all your stock is managed in one place um and yeah it you know obviously the last 24 months or so has seen a huge shift towards e-commerce and and uh you know um consumer confidence in terms of shopping online you know a lot of people would have been not that confident giving away their credit card details even this day and age but you know because of of covet and a lot of physical stores having to temporarily shut down people have been forced to shop online so it's catapulted e-commerce a good few years into the future in terms of people being confident to to to now shop online and a lot of people are you know they're the amount they shop online it probably won't change you know they'll they they're used to it now they they're they're confident um and they'll continue to do so you know as i said how far into the future do you want to go i mean you know then we're looking into you know the likes of um augmented reality and you can also i mean shopify already has augmented reality functionality built in so that for instance you know the likes of an ikea or somebody selling furniture or bicycles or anything physical that you would want to rep see what it looks like even down to to uh you know clothing uh shoes and things you know you can get your phone and you can you can see a visual representation through your phone using augmented reality as to what that object would look like uh in your house or or on your feet um and then you know you push beyond that into virtual reality and metaverse but that's a whole other conversation for another day i think so anybody who doesn't know augmented reality is basically where you take your phone and you uh you load up an app and it will show you through essentially the lens of the camera what something looks like in a space or like patrick said you know shoes on your feet what it could look like uh and it leverages basically like 3d rendering uh technology in it to to show you what it could look like that's good but that is mind-boggling being able to like walk through a big store something kind of like ikea like you mentioned uh without having to go there and actually check everything out and see it all that would be phenomenal and to be able to to sell something through that medium would be that that just that blows my mind yeah yeah that the technology is getting a little crazy now and i think it's going to be going in that direction for the next few years but for now um you know but still you know being able to just browse on your phone and browse on on your on your on your laptop or your desktop and and pick and choose what you want to have it sent to your house is is you know is is fantastic and it's it's something that's improving you know obviously shipping times are improving deliverability of items is improving being able to do returns and things that's all improving and there's so many new services coming online as well to help with that you know amazon aside obviously amazon are are one of the kings at all that but um the uh there's many other third-party providers they're helping and and assisting and complementing the likes of of shopify and uh online merchants in order to improve their own customers experience yeah yeah when i was working at the hospital i was there for about five years and we were talking about selling stuff online and i investigated shopify we had our wordpress website i set up a shopify site for us and we had manuals and guides and there was some training materials and some dvds and things like that that go along with those workshop books and stuff but one of the things that always stuck out one of those things that always stuck out for me was what's going to happen when somebody isn't happy with the product right what is what is the fulfillment process who's going to be boxing up the product and mailing it out and who's going to deal with returns so i think that's something really important for anybody that's listening to this whether you're a nonprofit or a business is to really think through the entire life cycle of the sale right uh being able to be found so dealing with seo getting your products in front of people leveraging social that type of thing through to boxing shipping it and you know there are gonna be people that aren't happy with it you know not everything is is you know rainbows and and butterflies and and the world is great sometimes there's a product that gets damaged during shipping right it's not your fault it's not their fault it's just you know something that happens do you have any advice for anybody uh on steps that they can do to think about through what that process would look like yeah and one of the things we we emphasize to all our clients is to try and have five-star customer service um you know from not just from an after sales perspective but from a from a pre-sale perspective if somebody's making an inquiry about a product that they can do it easily they can either get you on the phone or they can get it they can email you and get a quick response to that email or you know a lot of um a lot of companies have live chat on their website although now little chat bubbles on the popping up here there and everywhere are starting to get a little bit of annoying i think people are getting used to them or are getting a little annoyed with them but as long as you can have you're contactable and you can you can uh provide some a good level of support that goes a huge way and then obviously post sales as well if somebody has a problem with a product that they can get in touch they can return the product easily it's worth so much if you can give that high level of service to a customer especially if they're a first-time customer because it's so much easier to get for an existing customer to purchase from you again than it is to get them in the door the first time when they don't know much about you so if you if you you know if you give that first time customer a really good experience obviously that you know if it's a product you want the product to be good but you also want the service around the product to be good the fulfillment of that product the fact that they get it they get it without any damage um and if it is damaged for any reason even if it's not your fault that you deal with it in a professional way and offer some compensation or replacement of the product or um and things like that and if you can keep that level of service and customer support up it's you know it's worth a fortune to you um and that's one of the things we really emphasize with clients because it's it's one of those things that it tends to be a little bit overlooked well i just need to set up a website i put my products on there and then i ship them out and see you later and it's bye-bye but there's so much more beyond that and it's it's those bits that beyond that that sometimes get overlooked sometimes are also the most important parts to consider one of the things i guess i've got two questions is um what is a good response time right like if if somebody were to email you or open up a chat bot or or get in touch in some way you know hearing back from you three four five days later that doesn't feel like good customer uh support so you know first question is what's a good response time the second question is is what can you do if you have a shop to [Music] market or re-market back to the people that have already purchased from you yes so like two great questions the the first one in terms of a response time for you know i mean obviously the you know the the ideal response time would be i have somebody on on a live chat that they could actually have a live conversation with and they could ask questions about products and and things like that but that's not always feasible for especially small businesses to have somebody on that you know all the time not even not all the time but even during opening areas and you know during the week monday to friday um so what you know i i think at a minimum most people would expect um a reply within 24 hours um that you know to to an email and and there's some really great software out there as well now that you can add on to your shopify store that not that that funnels all your communication channels into one place so you know if you know if bob contacts you by facebook messenger but then the following day he emails you that sits in one uh you know in on one screen in one place that that that whoever is doing customer can support can see all the information about bob they can see if he's purchased anything in your store if that thing has been fulfilled and how much he spent over his lifetime and he can see and they and and all the other channels that he's communicated with you on so that when you're responding to him um you have a much clearer picture of what his question or his issue is so there's some great tools out there to help with that um but yeah response time i'd say you know within probably within 24 hours unless it's the weekend you know i think people do uh expect if they contact you on saturday they might not hear it until you hear from you until monday um but um and then of course if you do have weekend uh response times it's even better it does seem like a pretty gold star service but um and then your other question in terms of uh kind of customer retention instead of getting those customers to come back and and and purchase a second time you know it's one of the services that we provide and there's various things you can do such as kind of loyalty and reward programs and you can add them into shopify as well you know earning points and and having referral links that people can send out to their friends to give and and that give incentives for purchasing but ultimately we we focus on email marketing and you know typically you know when you when somebody shops with you they when they shop online they they you get their their email address um and as long as they're willing to be marketed to then you know we build in a lot of automation with emails to keep the the client's brand um in in the customers um thinking you know far into the future far beyond the the actual purchase um and engaging with customers consistently over email uh we found is gives the best return on investment um because you know as regards to yeah there's obviously all various methods of advertising you know paying for uh pay-per-click advertising on social media on google ads and stuff email marketing is essentially you know you're not you're paying a little bit for your email software potentially but but it you know so small compared to what you'd be paying for pay-per-click advertising um and you know it gives such a great return on investment so that's the tool that we would utilize the most with clients in terms of retaining customers and and getting them to come back and purchase a second third and and main you know keeping them as lifetime customers are as long as as you can obviously depends on on the product that's been sold but um but yeah that's that's uh that's what we would focus on and again you know it's it's one of those things that is sometimes overlooked you know that people think just build a website put the products on and then get some people in and they buy the products but they don't a lot of sometimes people don't think about what do you do with that customer afterwards and and well you get them come back and purchase the second time and that's where the customer support and customer retention strategies come into play absolutely and i think everybody listening to this at some point has bought something online maybe it was big maybe it wasn't um right and if you needed any support being available and you know level setting that at the beginning saying you know these are our contact hours can really help um the customers understand and appreciate you know if you don't work weekends you don't work weekends not everybody uh has the ability to to respond over the weekend some you need downtime right you need to be able to to step away from work at some point and and enjoy life so i i think being able to to level set that i i think is really great um you know shopify is such a powerful platform it does what it does extremely extremely well um deja fly is is should be your first stop if you're thinking of setting up a shop um patrick and his team are phenomenal i've gotten some really great insight out of this episode as well um that i'll be able to to chat with my my prospects and current clients with and um yeah so i know like during our pre-show we were talking a little bit about a special offer that you might have for listeners um so let's hear what that's about yeah look uh we're um we're looking to offer anybody who's interested uh a an absolute free audit of uh their existing setup um if they have any comments for the tips that we can we can do a full audit of that plus we're running uh uh for anyone that's interested that's listening to this uh we can offer a full free uh one an hour and a half discovery session so where we would actually sit down with you on a call go through all your requirements and actually uh build out a solution for you at with no commitment to uh to building that out um so that's something that we're currently offering to uh to your listeners that is that's amazing value patrick knows what he's doing what he's talking about get in touch with him uh but speaking of which how can they get in touch with you uh what do they need to do good question we our website is digifly.i.e that's d-i-g-i-f-l-y-d i-e and my email you can contact me directly is patrick at digifly.i.e um probably the best way to get me but either that or through the website um so we're gonna have the show notes all put together uh for this so go to wowdigital.com podcast and find this episode you'll get all the links and and email and everything that we've uh we've spoken about today all the great value that patrick and i have discussed um thanks again so much patrick for having you on the non-profit digital success podcast and looking forward to connecting with anybody uh if you have questions you can leave comments on the episode page and until next time stay successful thank you david absolute pleasure [Music]