On today’s episode, Kunle is joined by Nick Raushenbush, Co-founder and COO of Shogun, a California-based software company empowering over 20,000 brands to create exceptional ecommerce experiences.

In today’s market, customer experience is everything. But at the same time too many eCom stores make the mistake of sticking with the default features and apps of their eCommerce platform. Other specialised apps like Shogun and the like are still seen as a luxury, but in reality they are closer to being a necessity.

Brands spend thousands of dollars on marketing and ads to get visitors to their store. Only to lose them because they look like every other store on the internet. Everything from the way your site looks to how fast it loads can make or break your conversion rate. So how can brands truly stand out from the crowd?

In this episode, Kunle and Nick talk about how Shogun is helping brands differentiate. You will get to hear about why and how eCom brands use landing pages on top of their stores, what is Headless eCommerce and how you can boost conversions by going headless. This is a great episode for entrepreneurs, marketers and anyone interested in the latest eCommerce tech.

Here is a summary of some of the most important points made,

• • “Headless” means you can choose your own visual representation layer
  • Large Multi-location brands utilise Page builder for localisation of content
  • eCommerce platforms do a lot of things, but don’t specialise in any one
  • One of the underplayed benefits of going Headless is unparalleled sitespeed
  • Shogun Frontend prefetches all the site’s content during the 1st load making subsequent click much quicker
  • Brands use page builder as a differentiator

Covered Topics:

On today’s interview Kunle and Nick discuss,

• Story behind Shogun
• Why you need Landing pages for your eCommerce site
• Top use-cases of Shogun page builder
• What is Headless eCommerce
• Shogun Frontend’s USP
• Building Progressive Web Application Frontends
• Integrations
• Future Plans

Timestamp:

• 11:20 – Meet Nick
  • Shogun has 2 products – page builder + headless commerce
  • Previously co-founded a creative agency
  • Has always played the role of a company-builder
• 14:20 – Story behind Shogun:
  • Company name is inspired by the novel “Shogun”
• 15:40 – Why you need a standalone Landing page on top of your shopify store:
  • “Ecommerce platforms do a lot of things, but don’t specialise in any one area”
  • When you need additional functionality over the platform capacity
  • It is used to differentiate your brand
• 18:25 – Top 3 use-cases of Shogun page builder:
  • Landing page
  • Home page
  • Blog page
  • Localisation (Advanced content management)
• 21:05 – Why Headless commerce?
  • Bringing enterprise level tech to smaller clients
  • Rich visual merchandising
  • Advanced Content Management
  • Boosting Site Speed
• 26:00 – Launching Shogun Frontend:
  • Onboarded 1st client at the end of 2020
  • Was a learning curve for low-code users
  • Use Shopify for everything except the visual presentation of the site
• 34:00 – Frontend’s USP:
  • It prefetches all the site’s content during the 1st load
  • Subsequent clicks loads superfast
• 36:00 – Building Progressive Web Application Frontends
• 40:40 – Shogun Page builder’s future plans
• 42:45 – Integrations for Frontend
• 44:10 – Lightning Round

Lightning Round:

• Q: Are you a morning person?
  A: No 
• Q: Daily Morning routine?
  A: Black coffee 
• Q: What book are you currently reading?
  A: Handiwork manuals for stuff around the house 
• Q: Setback that has given you the best feedback?
  A: Having Page builder be a side project 
• Q: Single most impactful book/resource?
  A: Paul Graham’s essays

Takeaways:

• Going “Headless” can cut bounce rate by 15% and boost conversions by upto 20%
• eCommerce platforms do a lot of things, but don’t specialise in any one
• One of the underplayed benefits of going Headless is unparalleled site speed

Links & Resources

• Nick on LinkedIn
• Paul Graham’s essays

Tweetable Quotes:

“Ecommerce platforms do a lot of things, but don’t specialise in any one area.”

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