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Real questions from founders and marketers, answered by Nathan Frater from first-hand work with e-commerce brands. 50 answered so far.
Ask your own questionEmail & retention
- Are giveaway email subscribers worth it?
They can be. Don't write them off until you've checked what that group of subscribers actually went on to spend.
- What should I write about in my e-commerce marketing emails when I run out of ideas?
Mine your product and your customers before you invent anything. Reviews, customer stories, FAQs and deep dives on every ingredient or component will give you more emails than you can send.
- What percentage of e-commerce revenue should come from email marketing?
At least 25 to 30%, and in a strong account I aim for around 40%, split roughly 50/50 between campaigns and flows. If email is down in the high teens, the account isn't healthy.
- Can you embed a video in a marketing email?
Practically, no. Outlook, Hotmail and most of the other common inboxes break it. Link to the video instead, hosted somewhere with no distractions.
- Should I fix my email pop-up or my welcome flow first?
Fix the pop-up first. If it's converting at 1 or 2%, too few people are getting into your welcome flow for a redesign to make much difference. Keep testing the pop-up until it's converting at around 7 to 8%.
- What is a good email open rate for an ecommerce store?
I want to see 40% plus on campaigns. If you're sitting under 30%, you're probably sending to a lot of dormant inboxes.
- What is a good sign-up rate for an e-commerce email pop-up?
I aim for around 7 to 8% on an email sign-up pop-up, and I treat anything under about 5% as pretty bad.
- How often should a small e-commerce brand send marketing emails?
At least one good email a week, and keep it consistent.
- Is SMS marketing worth the cost for a small e-commerce store?
It depends on your market and on how often your customers buy again. I treat it as a small, isolated bet and work out how many extra sales it needs to pay for itself.
- How do you run a one-day flash sale by email?
Send four emails: something's coming, set your alarm for this time, the deal is live for three hours only, and ending soon. Send it to one segment, like your VIPs, and keep it to email and social.
- How do I warm up a new email domain before sending at volume?
Authenticate the domain properly first, including DMARC. Then use the new address for everyday email and run an inbox warm-up for at least a week before you move your automations or any volume across.
- Why is my email marketing revenue declining?
Partly because everyone else got better. AI and tools like Klaviyo have lifted the baseline so far that the inbox is full of good email from your competitors, and attribution now gives email less of the credit. Email revenue is down across the board.
Website & CRO
- How many fonts should an ecommerce website use?
Two at most. One bold display font for your headlines, and a safe, legible web font like Helvetica for all your body text.
- When is Shopify Plus worth upgrading to?
When the total case adds up, not just the transaction fees. Count currency conversion, checkout upsells and fewer failed orders as well. If you're about to sell into another country, it's kind of a no-brainer.
- How do I remove bot traffic from my Shopify analytics?
You can't scrub it out of the Shopify dashboard, because that's Shopify's data. Build your own source of truth instead: a few standard reports filtered to human sessions and to the countries you actually sell in.
- Should I build my website on Squarespace or Shopify?
If you're selling products, go straight to Shopify. For anything else, I probably wouldn't build on Squarespace anymore.
- Do uninstalled Shopify apps slow down your store?
They can. Every app you install adds code to your theme, and uninstalling it doesn't always take that code away, so the leftovers pile up.
Growth strategy
- How do I double my business without hiring more staff?
Stop asking how to double it, and ask what would break at ten times your current volume. Fix those breakpoints and you can grow revenue while the team stays at today's level of busyness.
- What metrics should a small ecommerce business track?
As few as possible. For most stores that's conversion rate, average order value, total revenue against traffic, and solid tracking on your paid ads.
- How quickly should I follow up leads after a trade show or webinar?
Within hours if you can, and no later than 48. Attention and goodwill peak right after the event and fade fast, so speed alone puts you ahead of most of the competition.
Offers & pricing
- Can raising prices increase conversion rate?
Yes, sometimes. You put the price up and the conversion rate goes up, because the psychology of the new number works better than the lower price did.
- Should a new online store offer free shipping or charge flat rates?
Do both. Charge a simple flat rate on smaller orders and give free shipping over a set order value. Then leave it alone for three to six months.
- How long after a price increase should I wait before judging the results?
Give it 60 to 90 days, and don't read much into the first month. Work out your average time to purchase, double it, and that's roughly when the data settles enough to tell you anything.
- How should I price an online course?
Anchor it to what the same time with you would cost one-on-one. Work out how many hours someone will spend doing the material, multiply that by your session rate, and present that as the value.
- What promotions can I run in quiet months without training customers to wait for discounts?
Keep a small library of about four simple offers and run one in any month without a big gifting event. Send them only to people who haven't bought recently, so your regulars never learn to wait for a deal.
- How do I raise average order value without running a flash sale?
Run a standing spend-and-save offer and put it in your ads. Plenty of stores already have one sitting in the cart that nobody has ever advertised.
Paid ads
- Can you find B2B customers on Meta ads?
Almost always, yes. Across hundreds of brands I've worked with, only a handful genuinely couldn't find customers cost-effectively on Meta and Google. When it isn't working, the funnel and the message are nearly always the problem.
- How much should I spend testing a new Facebook ad offer?
I want at least $1,000 in media behind an offer before I'll read the results, and ideally $3,000 to $5,000. Under that, you won't get significant data, so it's mostly wasted spend.
- Should I use CBO or ABO for Meta ads?
Base it on your creative win rate. If only a few of your new ads ever win, ABO testing just burns money and a CBO is the efficient way to test. ABO earns its place when you need control, like pushing budget behind a flash sale.
- Does ROAS matter for e-commerce ads?
Not much. I barely look at in-platform ROAS, because it's so often inaccurate. I judge ads on whether we're inside our target CPA, what MER is doing across the whole business, and whether the content is getting better.
- What is a good ad frequency on Facebook and Instagram?
If you're sitting around four or five, things are good. That's high enough for people to see you plenty of times, and low enough that they're not sick of you.
- How fast should I increase my Facebook ads budget when scaling?
Slowly, in small steps. I lift the budget about 10% every two days for about a week, then look at what's happening to the cost per lead or cost per acquisition.
- What are Meta partnership ads and are they worth it?
Yes, they're worth it. Partnership ads, what used to be called whitelisting, run your ads through a creator's page with your brand alongside, and they're one of the biggest edges on Meta right now.
- What is the minimum daily budget for a Meta lead generation campaign?
I treat about $50 a day as the sweet spot for a lead-gen campaign that's trying to find new customers. Below that, Meta finds it harder to reach the right people and your cost per lead tends to drift up.
- Should I reply to comments on my Facebook and Instagram ads?
Yes. If you want cheap impressions, respond to every comment on every ad, including the sceptical ones. Only delete the comments that are genuinely rude or offensive.
- How do you target owners of a specific product with Meta ads?
Mostly, you don't target them yourself any more. Make five to eight really good videos that talk a lot about that product and what people use it for, point them at a page built for those owners, and Meta will do the targeting.
- What determines cost per click on Facebook ads?
Mostly the quality of the ad. A thumb-stopping ad gets more clicks out of the same number of impressions, so each of those clicks costs you less.
- When should I start promoting a Black Friday sale to cold audiences?
Start your cold audiences six to eight weeks before the sale with an early-access sign-up campaign, then spend the final month on warm audiences. Ad costs climb from mid-October as everyone piles in, so you want the list built before the noise.
Creative & UGC
- How do I get natural video testimonials from customers who aren't comfortable on camera?
Don't ask them to perform a testimonial. Get them to do a product demo instead: mic them up, film them using the product where they normally would, and have someone ask questions like it's an ordinary chat.
- Should I reuse old ads that worked before?
Yes, but don't treat it as a substitute for new creative. Start seasonal campaigns from what worked last year, test old winners alongside what's running, and keep fresh content coming.
- Do I need to show my face in social media videos?
No. People don't care. They just want the value of the content.
AI & automation
- Is an AI clipping tool like Opus Clip worth it for turning long videos into short clips?
Yes, for the volume work. Keep your editor on the hero edits and let the AI tool handle the short clips for ads and socials. The licence costs about what a few hours of editing does.
Content & SEO
- How do I beat competitors in AI search results?
Answer every question your buyers ask, including the ones about your competitors. Map every decision a customer has to make in your category and turn each one into an article, and ideally a video too.
- Should a service business without a shopfront set up a Google Business Profile?
Yes. It's priority one, even if you never want a customer turning up at your door. It helps people find you, and it's where your Google reviews live.
- How long does it take Google to index a new blog post?
Left alone, it usually takes Google somewhere between 10 and 30 days to crawl a new page. You can cut that right down by asking Google to index it yourself in Search Console the moment you publish.
- What is a good Instagram content idea for a service business to generate leads?
Break down a real customer document on camera. Use the green screen format, with you talking to camera and an anonymised example behind you, then ask viewers to DM you theirs.
- Why isn't my website showing up on Google?
Check for a no-crawl rule first. A lot of sites are built with a setting that tells Google not to index them, nobody turns it off at launch, and because Search Console was never set up, nobody notices.
Brand & positioning
- Should my ecommerce brand target a niche or try to appeal to everyone?
Pick a niche and say it plainly. It's better to be something to someone than nothing to everyone.
- What questions should I ask in an ecommerce customer survey?
Ask the questions that help you sell to them. I always include age range, which other brands they buy from, where else they shop, why they buy from you, what would make them stop, and one open question about their biggest frustration.
Running a business
- How should a marketing agency retainer handle work outside the agreed scope?
Anything that isn't on the agreed deliverables list is out of scope and quoted by default, and the client should hear that upfront. Then agree a small buffer, around 10% of the retainer, that the agency can spend on little requests without a quote.