How George used Hidden Collections & 2 more tricks to scale his store

George did this amazing thread where He shared How He used Hidden Collections to scale his store.

I wanted to make $1M with an e-Commerce store a couple of years ago.

Everybody laughed at me when I said I'm gonna scale a store without touching the FB ads.

That store made $8.5M.

Here's how I did it and how you can copy-paste the methods to do the same.

>>> A Thread 🧵 <<<

— George Ten (@GrammarHippy) January 6, 2022

Before we start…

Pop quiz: what’s the worst time to scale an e-Com store?

That’s right. At the beginning of the year.

Why? Because people have already spent all their money on BFCM and Christmas.

And that’s exactly when I scaled my store. But before I did…

We had a huge debate within the e-Com community.

How do you scale?

90% of e-Com “experts” say that you scale through ads.

“Let me manage your ads – I’ll scale your store” And I argued with them all.

I said that the scale happens INSIDE the store.

Here’s what happens next…

I decided to focus on 3 things inside the store:

1. Hidden collections
2. Pricing + order manipulation
3. The force of +1

I highly doubt if you could find this information anywhere online.

Including paid courses and expensive masterminds.

Let’s begin:

Hidden collections:

We found a way to create hidden collections inside the Shopify store.

Meaning: you can not access this collection from within the store.

Only if you have a direct link.

And that’s important because in those collections is where we tested this:

Pricing + order manipulation

This is a tricky one.

We took all the data from the store and divided it into three parts:

1. Best selling items.
2. Mid-selling items.
3. Worst selling items.

Now. We set up the collections to show 3 items per row.

And here’s why that’s crucial:

We priced all the items within 3 pricing categories.

1. Best selling items: $35-39
2. Mid-selling items: $47-67
3. Worst selling items: $89-97

And that’s genius because people buy the best-selling items either way.

But now they’re also the cheapest items in the store.

But that wasn’t enough.

We also had to position the items in the store in a way that would be easier for the buyer to find “the best deal”.

So this was the order of the items in each row:

Worst selling (W) – best selling (B) – mid selling (M)

Each row.

W-B-M
W-B-M

See why?

We placed the best-selling items in the middle. Between two higher-priced items.

Creating the illusion that they’re getting the best deal.

They found the item they want – and what a coincidence!

It’s also the cheapest one. But we went one step further:

You know how they say “if everything’s on sale – nothing’s on sale”?

A rookie mistake.

We only took the middle row of items and discounted them.

So instead of $97 – pay only $35.

Further enhancing the illusion of the best deal.

But that wasn’t enough…

Because selling one item for $35-$39 (remember? Those are the best-selling ones)… Won’t even put us at break-even after ad spend.

So we had to increase our AOV (average order value).

But what’s the easiest way to do that? This:

The force of +1

Make the buyer buy one more item. Anyone knows how to do that.

Newbies just offer a discount on a second item. “Buy 2 get 10% off”.

Experts use coupons.

Pros know there’s a difference between giving % discounts and $ discounts.

We took it to the next level:

We had a small banner at the top of EACH page on the store.

And this was the GENIUS move of ours. The banner said this:

“Buy $70 – get $7 off
Buy $80 – get $12 off
Buy $150 – get $20 off”

But why was that so effective? Let’s break it down:

The price of the items that people were buying was $35-39.

Meaning – 2 items would put you at $78. So you get the $7 coupon.

Great! But wait.

If you add a couple more dollars you could get $12 off.

It’s called “selling money on discount”. Add $2 to cart – get $5 off.

Free $3!

So the buyer would lock his mind on buying one more item.

But… we didn’t have a $2 item. The cheapest was $35. Remember?

So we are forcing the +1 on a buyer.

Increasing our AOV by a minimum of an extra $35.

Smart. Right? But that wasn’t all…

We also knew that our VIP clients were buying for around $150 per order.

So we strategically placed a $150 coupon to not lose those customers to lower coupon deals.

But the real part that shocked all my e-Com colleagues?

We didn’t touch the ads:

No new creatives. No new campaigns. No fancy tricks whatsoever.

Our highest revenue day was $67K. That day was a $10K profit.

At some point we also got to the maximum allowed spend per day.

The cap was $35K/day. FB later opened up a higher cap for us…

Now…

If you enjoyed this post, do thank George.