Hugh Duffie

If you're logging in to various platforms 10, 20, 50, 100 times per day - that time really adds up and a password manager like 1Password can help speed things up. It's also just the best value subscription I have - i'll never regret keeping my online identity safe and secure and I'm sure you wouldn't either. It's even better for teams.

A review platform built by super experienced, really great D2C people. Customisable as you need and integrates where it should. Worth the money.

Brilliant little plugin with a one-time fee, made by an independent developer, and it saves me loads of time with a super handy colour picker - what's not to love?

In terms of a ratio between usefulness of a website to quality of their logo... there is no bigger discrepancy. Awful logo but amazing site that really helps suss out your favourite site's tech stack. If you like this you'll love 1800D2C

Does what it says on the tin. Highly recommend this as a brilliant resource for navigating email design/ copy/ structure/ strategy, all of it! Sign up, save the emails you love to boards, get the Chrome extension!

You're gonna want to get featured here! Great for inspiration and an amazing community. I'm on my way to becoming a Supertester :)

A great place to explore the tech stack combinations and stories of people driving the D2C game forward. Also just super smart to scrape this from Builtwith and beautify it - chapeau!

Potentially obvious one but if you're not using Twitter and you're running a D2C brand, you're making life harder than it needs to be. So much value given away by people selflessly giving back to the ecosystem every day - and that's before you even ask for help!

Worth checking to see how your site's performance stacks up. Follow the prompts to improve or use them to brief your developer.

Building an audience is one of the best (if not the best) places to start when you're setting out to create a brand. A regular newsletter is the best way to build momentum and I think there's no better platform than Ghost to host a newsletter with its own connected website where new readers can read back issues and with all the growth integrations and analytics you need to get to your first 1000 true fans.

More detailed daily dashboard and deep-dive analytics. I love using the scheduled reports (every day!) to have daily vital signs sent straight to Slack where I can see them easily and make sure I always know what's going on with the key numbers like traffic, conversion, orders, ad spend, CAC and more. Connects to Shopify, Amazon, Google Ads and Analytics, Facebook, Recharge and more.

A-sync means not everything needs to be a meeting.

Referrals for pre-launch.

This is one of the best built apps I've come across from an ease of use perspective. Multiply that by the fact it has the frictionless experience of the big referal players at a fraction of the cost, and you're onto a winner. This should pay for itself almost immediately and is currently my favourite for leveraging referals to keep acquisition costs under control.

I always recommend developing frameworks for maintaining consistent content output like 'content pillars' that take the guesswork out when it's time to post. In my view content is about seeking engagement and conversations, but first you have to nail consistency. Planning what sort of content you'll post is the first part, but making sure it actually happens is another crucial piece. That's where uploading content to Later allows you to see a calendar/ social grid view so you can progress from focusing on just getting the content published, to thinking about how it will prompt engagement.

The best. Always evolving. Bootstrapping: use a free or $300-400 theme from the Theme Store and upgrade once you can afford it with money you've earned through the store. Venture style: work with an agency or freelancers (hit me up for recommendations) and invest early in the right architecture to enable rapid growth.

Leverage templates to keep your creative consistently on point. You should go to your design agency for creativity and to push your brand forward - with new templates. Then your team can use the templates to make the social posts/ sales sheets/ etc that you need.

The hub of all your customer data and in a healthy account, should be driving ~30% of Shopify revenue.

Obvs.

Spicy take - I don't think you should do subscriptions until you have customers loving your products so much they are making multiple repeat orders and asking you for subscription *for convenience*. If you have this you can add all sorts of value adds to recruit and retain subscribers and grow it as a % of overall revenue, but you need to nail down a repeatable Order 0 -> 1 - > 2 engine first otherwise you will be a busy fool.

There's no better way to improve segmentation, dis/prove hypotheses and learn from your customers than to ask them! Typeform makes it super easy to integrate with whatever else you're using via Zapier or natively, plus I love the personalisation capabilities and logic jump functionality.

Customer service all in one place.

I don't know about you but I hate unneccesary admin and love extra margin. OrderEditing enables customers to self-serve when they hit buy and only then realise they've used the wrong address. A short delay is put against the payment token to enable edits (plus a chance for a tasty upsell). No brainer if you're getting slowed down by support tickets.

How did you hear about us? Probably the most important question to ask your customers to know what's working in your marketing efforts. Ask automatically at checkout.

Connect Relo with your Klaviyo account to supercharge repeat orders and convert more returning customers to subscription. Klaviyo flows are automatically populated with richer repeat customer opportunity data and then linked to a conversion focused 'magic cart'. *chef's kiss*

I want customers to enjoy their browsing experience without loads of popups or noisy offers before they've decided whether they want to even try something for the first time. I like to keep things quite bare with just the focus on the key selling points and great imagery and then use a free shipping threshold strategy with Rebuy's smart cart to offer intelligent upsells at the moment when someone actually wants them (to qualify for free shipping).

"Your next order is about to ship in 3 days. Would you like to add our new *item* to your order?" Such an intuitive add on for any subscription store. Also leverages quick actions to allow customers to delay their next order or 'ship now' right from the email - genius.

Super fast loading, high converting pages - I use as a layer between ad and site, often with a Shopify 'Buy Button' to allow customers to checkout without leaving Instagram (for example).