Your Digital Commerce Experts
Store Builders Podcast
Helping business owners start their own ecommerce store
"How can I take my ecommerce store to the next level?"
We answer that question every episode with a little help from industry experts and successful store owners.
Hosted by Chris Lema, The Store Builders Podcast provides actionable advice for expanding your eCommerce empire.
Ryan Cowden
Ryan Cowden is a full-time podcast host and producer based in Los Angeles, California. Prior to his work as a podcaster, Ryan worked as a therapist with autistic children and spent seven years as a public school teacher. In 2018, Ryan launched his own podcast and eventually left teaching to pursue his love of podcasting and audio production. He is a podcast fanatic and doesn’t have enough hours in a week to listen to all his favorites.
Chris Lema
Chris Lema has been building eCommerce sites since 1997, back when it would take a lot of time, cost a lot of money, and still didn’t work perfectly. He's worked with WooCommerce since it was launched and helped fast-growing stores tweak it to deliver high performance. Today he’s the VP of Products at Liquid Web, where he’s designed and launched a new platform, Managed WooCommerce Hosting.
James Sowers
James Sowers is a marketing consultant and digital product manager based in Cleveland, Ohio. He is passionate about helping other entrepreneurs build stronger, more sustainable businesses, which made him a great fit to be a co-host for our show.
Episode 70: eCommerce Product Filtering
When you picture product filtering, you’re probably picturing it the way Amazon does it. In addition to a search bar at the top of the page, they have a sidebar with several ways to filter results in order to quickly find the products you’re interested in.
Episode 69: Mobile eCommerce
eCommerce has traditionally been a desktop-first industry. Most eCommerce platforms are constructed for a desktop setting and then modified to work on mobile devices.
Episode 68: Optimizing Your Pricing Page
Conversion rate optimization doesn’t always show up in the job description for store builders. Usually, conversion is seen as a marketing or business problem, traditionally outside the scope of the person whose main role is constructing the store itself.
Episode 67: Building an Appointment Booking Solution with WooCommerce
As a store builder, there are always demands on your time. As your caseload grows and your business expands, scheduling and organizing your time becomes more important and more difficult to do.
Episode 66: Fast Checkout
Cart abandonment is not a new problem for eCommerce stores. While we have a much better understanding of why shoppers abandon their carts, it hasn’t been as easy to come up with feasible solutions.
Episode 65: eCommerce Trends in 2021
No one was expecting the year 2020 to be what it was. As we look ahead to a new year, we’re asking what does it mean to go back to normal? How much of what we see now is here to stay?
Episode 64: Helping Merchants with Dropping Conversion Rates
When the conversion rates for an eCommerce store start dropping, it’s all too easy to blame the store builder. Likewise, it’s all too easy for store builders to say conversion rates aren’t their problem if the tech is working.
Episode 63: Receipts
For most businesses, the receipt is simply the end of the transaction. After the receipt is given to the customer, many businesses move on to other things.
Episode 62: Making Returns Less Sucky
Returns are a natural part of the life cycle for online stores. If your returns system turns into a negative experience for your shoppers, you could lose their business. Likewise, if you can make returning goods a positive experience, you can build trust and loyalty.
Episode 61: Point of Sale Options
Over the last few decades, one of the biggest trends in business involved stores that started in physical locations migrating to an online environment. We are now witnessing the opposite trend, in which stores that started as online-only operations are now looking for ways to do business in person.