A Shopify Game Changer, Awards, Bulk Edits, & Design Inspo
Metaobjects, Bulk editing, Localisation, Best Awards & Inspo
Alex Murton
July 10, 2023
Welcome to ALMOND LABS - our weekly newsletter - here’s a summary of everything we’ve got for you today:
🏆 Best Award Entries Submitted!
🏃♂️ Shopify Bulk editing - 30 seconds can save you 5 hours a week.
📣 Localisation - show your customers they’re more than an afterthought.
👨💻 Shopify MetaObjects - the possibilities ❤️❤️❤️❤️.
🪞 Reflection Quote: from Charles Bukowski.
🎵 Alex’s Design Inso.
🤖 My AI Tool Pick - Otter.io.
🏆 AWARDS
Best Awards!
It’s the same each year - you can see a mile off what you’ll submit to the NZ Best Awards, but it’s always last minute.
While we’re proud of much of the work we’ve created over the last 12 months, we have the highest standards for the design we put forward for judging.
We’ve submitted a few projects this year, including our upcoming launches for Deadly Ponies & Blunt Umbrellas.
We’re excited about what this year might hold and are truly humbled to be in a position where brands of this calibre trust us to create their vision online.
Thank you for your trust and support in our work
🏃♂️ SHOPIFY SPEED TIP
Bulk Editing - save 5 hours a week instantly managing your products the right way.
Navigate to Shopify Products
Select multiple products.
Click on “Bulk Edit”.
Then - click on “Columns”
You can now select any fields on your PDP - even Metafields!
Check / uncheck the fields you want - and now - the magic!
While it might be obvious that you can copy and paste text - did you know you can copy/paste ANYTHING!
Upload images, then copy/paste them to 20 other products.
Products - select four references - copy/paste to any other product.
As soon as a metafields has the data added - you can copy/paste - no matter the format!
Next time you’re entering a new season or batch of products - use this to turn that job into a matter of minutes.
📣 BRAND & STRATEGY
Localisation - show your customers they’re more than an afterthought.
So you’ve done it! You’ve created an unbelievable brand, achieved success in one country, and it’s time to launch in the next. Look at you go!
You’ve spent years honing your copy, brand, and communications, and now it’s time to focus efforts on your next market. You might even be launching into a country that doesn’t speak the same first language. Kudos!
The big day comes - your ideal customers arrive in droves to your website after seeing your latest amazing PR campaign - but hang on - something isn’t right - the copy reads a bit differently. What’s going on here?
🎯 minus 10 points if you just added a plugin to your website to run an automatic translation in a different language.
What brands often skip over is launching in another country or region isn’t just a case of having stock available, providing shipping options, and updating your hero banner image - it’s speaking the language, dialogue, and connecting.
If you’ve spent years honing your brand, positioning and communication, all of that goes down the toilet if you don’t consider how this is all interpreted in your new market.
Stop. Look. Listen. You’re crossing land, air and sea; make sure you don’t waste your money or change to make an impact. Consider your tone, language, and put your best words forward.
⚡️SHOPIFY UPDATES
Shopify MetaObjects - the possibilities ❤️❤️❤️❤️
This recent update from Shopify is an absolute game-changer.
Previously, as developers, if we wanted to provide access to data outside of products, collections, blogs or customers, then they were different workarounds that we’d need to use.
While these ensured that the website admin could update content, there were sometimes a few trade-offs - such as double handling - and maybe performance considerations - but not anymore.
With MetaObjects, we can create unique data collections and use them across your website! Some examples:
Ingredients - let’s say you have a list of ingredients that you want to have a name, image, link, source, and reference articles for - you can create a database and then access this data via blogs, products, collections, customers - and update from a single source.
Size Guides - you have multiple size guides that reference different models and cross different categories - create a MetaObject for each data type, and manage as you wish.
In practice - this approach means the number of fields you manually need to update per product will reduce by around 50-70%.
Pre-MetaObjects, all of this data would have to be saved to a PDP template - now, it’s in the core site - increasing speed, management, and - our favourite - digital autonomy for website admin.
🪞 QUOTE
Reflect on this, you superstar ⭐️
Quotes are such a powerful way to reflect and teach - open up a point of view that you may not have considered.
For me, this is a long-standing favourite which is important for everyone looking to do something new or face a challenge in their lives - so basically everyone.
“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
– Charles Bukowski.
Charles was a prolific underground writer who used his poetry and prose to depict the depravity of urban life and the downtrodden in American society. He also drank a lot. But he struck gold. His books are good as well.
🎨 CREATIVE INSPIRATION
Alex’s Design Inspiration
As I like to remind Monica, I was a designer when we met ten years ago (I did some UX consulting for Apple etc., designed and built a load of apps etc.) - though she likes to forget, the point being, I am quite into my creative inspiration. Here is my pick from the week:
Teenager Engineering's upcoming release of the CM-15 field mic. As someone who records many videos and is looking to do even more content, this is a creator's dream. Quality, design, feel.
Unfortunately, it's around $1199 USD - I'll see if Santa can bring me one for Christmas.
🤖 AI TOOL PICK
Otter.io
If you’ve been meeting with me recently, you may have seen me using Otter.ai.
Otter helps to write notes and summarise meetings 30x faster. I particularly like how you can assign voices to different meeting participants. Each recording is transcribed, saved, and if you want to get fancy - you can run through Chat GPT afterwards to create a summary - though Otter can do this as well.
I find this tool great as I have a type of dyslexia that means taking notes and listening generally results in the worst notes in the world.
Worth checking out if you’re in the business of maximising your time.
Thanks for reading! Our LABS promise is to act as your personal eCommerce advisor and help you understand what's happening in the world of eCommerce.
What did you think of today's newsletter? Reply to this email and let me know what you'd like to see more of. Thanks for reading.
Until next time!
Alex Murton
Managing Director & Co-Founder
