How Shopify boosted YouFoodz to stardom
We all know about Shopify, its immense popularity and easy-to-use toolkit for businesses looking at creating eCommerce stores.
However, it’s harder to find concrete proof of how Shopify can help companies to grow. Many lists are available, but they don’t delve deeply into the actual reasons that spurred growth for eCommerce owners.
We decided to dig a little deeper to unpack a success story about a company that has used Shopify to bolster rapid growth. We can all learn a thing or two from successful businesses!
Background to Shopify
Shopify is a leading eCommerce platform that is fast becoming one of the most popular of its kind. It can be used for most businesses, regardless of their size, and offers tailored plans to help different-sized companies.
Shopify simplifies the process of selling online, and the platform accepts sellers in every industry. You can use it if you’re selling a service, physical product or digital subscription/ download. Shopify Plus is the recommended plan for large-scale businesses, as it can handle significantly more traffic than the base plan.
According to figures from June 2019, around 820,000 merchants used Shopify as the preferred platform for their stores.
Since its inception around a decade ago, Shopify has seen some success stories emerge from its platform. One of these is YouFoodz – we’ll be sharing their journey with you.
Changing the face of retail
With the emergence of multichannel/ omnichannel marketing, it’s clear that you should offer your products on a variety of different platforms. This allows them to decide how they want to interact with your brand.
It’s no longer set in stone that brick-and-mortar stores are the best tool for acquiring new customers. Businesses need to focus less on finding the perfect physical location for a new store and spend more time experimenting and optimising online channels.
It’s a well-known fact in Australia that there is a considerable distance for suppliers to cover within the country. More Australians are starting their businesses to solve problems and satisfy demand internally. As such, it’s a great environment for budding entrepreneurs.
YouFoodz
Now, let’s look at YouFoodz.
YouFoodz is an Australian brand focusing on healthy food delivery. It aims to bring nutritious, protein-packed ready meals straight to its buyers’ doorsteps. It has been reviewed as the #1 beneficial meal delivery service in Australia for several years in a row. Their website offers an extensive menu of healthy meals, including low-calorie, vegetarian/vegan, gluten-free, and weight loss options.
YouFoodz offers over 100 meals every day, with deliveries happening every day of the week, including weekends. The brand positions itself as applicable for those who don’t enjoy cooking or have hectic work schedules. This group includes busy parents and individuals looking for weight loss options with diet-friendly possibilities that won’t pile on extra calories.
Historically, YouFoodz focused on TV and radio ads to propel their brand and achieved success this way. However, they decided to go digital in 2017. They used both Shopify and Facebook ads – and have since moved on to Shopify Plus.
They achieved excellent results, including a 15.6x ROI, 16% increase in conversion rate and a 10% reduction in cost per acquisition than their costs before going digital.
Their segment is incredibly profitable – as digital health globally is expected to reach a value of $418 million by the end of 2020.
How YouFoodz used Shopify
If you looked at their website, you might not suspect they used Shopify, but YouFoodz is a ShopifyPlus customer. Their biggest asset is the value of their brand and how their mission turns into sales. YouFoodz also values its customers immensely and emphasises being different in a ‘good way’.
They’re become so popular that they regularly attend Shopify meetups. So how did they manage this? After moving to Shopify Plus, YouFoodz grew 5-10% week-on-week in 2015, indicating a 3846 per cent sales growth in 14 months – that’s an unbelievable amount of change!
According to recent figures from SimilarWeb, YouFoodz receives between 190,000-300,000 visitors every month and can maintain a referral rate of 12% – which is quite challenging to achieve.
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YouFoodz Referrals
YouFoodz is so great at referrals because they use ReferralCandy, which manages referral programs and allows the user to show them to every visitor on their website. This solution includes advertising free meals and other incentives, including giveaways for up to a week of free meals.
Here is an example that shows YouFoodz understands the value of a strong incentive to encourage people to share. One of their most potent marketing aspects is their referral program, and you can achieve this by using ReferralCandy. Of course, compelling copywriting is also necessary to ensure your visitors are excited by your offers.
YouFoodz also boasts a well-designed website, with pictures of delicious foods that are hard to resist. This easy-to-use website was built with Shopify and is visually pleasing for potential customers.
Besides, YouFoodz partnered with Shopify Plus agencies such as The Working Party to further enhance their eCommerce store. Agencies help add new features or tackle requests you to add specific features, designs or elements to your eCommerce store. Assistance comes in the form of custom themes, coding new features and general troubleshooting and support for your store.
Moving towards mobile
In 2018, YouFoodz, together with e-commerce app developer AppetiserAppetiser, launched the YouFoodz mobile app. Upon launch, the app received thousands of daily installs, 100 000+ weekly deliveries and a massive growth spurt for the businesses involved.
YouFoodz decided that using a mobile app would give them a competitive advantage in their home food delivery industry. They created the YouFoodz app using Shopify mobile apps. This app helped them deliver on increasing goals and attracting new and additional customers – resulting in sustainable revenue increases.
Notably, the app provided the same features as the website and new features, such as real-time updates on orders placed and push-notifications for promotions, order updates, and new features. They also included one-touch payment attributes, allowing the app to save customer information for future payments.
Following the launch of the app, the business grew for YouFoodz. This growth materialised as improved customer engagement and overall satisfaction, increased retention rates, ROI surges, and a vital competitive edge over similar brands.
The takeaway from this is that it’s become much easier to turn successful websites into apps while still using Shopify’s core services. It’s as simple as choosing an appropriate mobile app builder and plugging in your Shopify credentials.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it’s clear to see that Shopify boosted YouFoodz to new heights. Additionally, the business was already reasonably successful before their digital integration.
The take-home message from this is that it is possible for you, an average commerce owner, to strive toward the same results as other successful Shopify companies.
Firstly, Shopify makes it easy for you to launch your site quickly. Shopify offers multiple mobile app builders on their app store that have crazy turn-around times so that you can be capitalising on mobile buyers as soon as a couple of days from right now.
Secondly, it’s all about the user experience. YouFoodz’ core values include:
- Putting the customer first.
- Keeping a consistent brand message of striving toward convenient and genuinely healthy food.
- Trying to stay different in a positive way.
These all combined to put YouFoodz ahead of their competition, allowing them to gain over 1 million web visitors per week. These figures are achievable with the correct marketing strategy, an attempt at improving your referral rates, a robust analysis of how to improve ROI and a well-designed website that your customers enjoy using.
Thirdly, don’t give up! YouFoodz has been in operation since 2012, but it wasn’t until 2017-2018 that they saw immense growth. It is a testament to the innate patience and grit that eCommerce owners need to survive in an increasingly saturated and competitive market.
