Today's episode pulls back the curtain on one of the highest ROI strategies for Shopify brands: AI-powered SEO and organic growth.

If you're watching 98% of your paid traffic slip away before converting while acquisition costs keep climbing, this episode is your wake-up call. We're diving into the new playbook for driving organic reach that actually moves the needle.

My guest is Mike Simmons, CEO of Plug In Useful, whose SEO and site speed solutions power over 30,000 Shopify stores. He's a builder and operator living on the front lines of traffic acquisition for direct-to-consumer brands.

Plugin Useful's suite goes beyond "best practice" checklists. We're talking actionable recommendations, specialized keyword analysis, bulk content optimization, and tracking that shows if your SEO changes actually work.

Mike shares why native solutions like Shopify Magic leave money on the table, and reveals overlooked strategies like leveraging collection pages and schema markup. Plus, his take on how AI tools like Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews are changing the game.

Whether you're a founder, marketer prepping for Q4, or operator fighting complexity, this episode gives you clarity and tools to own your organic growth.

Check out his YouTube channel here for more strategies!

Reach out to us! We welcome questions and comments about this episode. Connect with us here or through our socials — your feedback is always welcome.

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook

For more ecommerce, marketing, and growth strategies, check out the eCommerce Fastlane Insights Blog.

Today, we're diving into one of the most powerful—yet often misunderstood—strategies for Shopify brands: micro-influencer marketing.

If you're tired of celebrity endorsements that feel inauthentic and paid ads with questionable ROI, this episode is for you. We're exploring how authentic voices, strategic product seeding, and user-generated content can actually supercharge your growth while reducing those brutal acquisition costs we all know too well.

My guest is William Gasner, Co-founder and CMO of Stack Influence—a marketplace that's connected brands with over 11 million vetted micro and nano creators. But here's what makes William different: he's not just talking theory. He's a six-time founder who's scaled multiple seven-figure Shopify businesses before building the platform he wished existed when he was in the trenches.

Stack Influence isn't your typical SaaS database where you're left to figure things out. It's a living, two-sided marketplace that automates hundreds—sometimes thousands—of collaborations monthly. Think of it as where "give a product, get a post" is just the beginning.

William shares some eye-opening insights, like why major brands such as Unilever are shifting 50% of their budgets away from traditional Meta and Google ads toward influencer tactics. More importantly for most of you listening, he explains why smaller brands often see their best ROI from curated, genuine recommendations rather than big-money sponsorships.

We break down how social platforms are evolving, why content now matters more than follower count for reach, and how Stack Influence's unique "pay for outcome" model actually guarantees results—while most platforms only offer hope.

Whether you're scaling your Shopify brand and thinking about Q4 strategy, or you're a founder just launching your first product, this episode gives you a tactical roadmap to build real trust, amplify word-of-mouth marketing, and extract maximum value from every UGC asset—not just for social, but across your ads, website, and retention strategies.

Check out his YouTube channel here for more strategies!

Reach out to us! We welcome questions and comments about this episode. Connect with us here or through our socials — your feedback is always welcome.

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook

For more ecommerce, marketing, and growth strategies, check out the eCommerce Fastlane Insights Blog.

Today, we're shining a light on an invisible profit killer lurking in many Shopify stores: technical debt.

It's the hidden drag on your growth, silently creeping in as you layer on apps, experiment with new tech, and expand your team—until suddenly, you're slowed by complexity, site issues, and mounting customer headaches.

My guest today is Paolo Vidali, Founder and CEO of Hidden Gears. Paolo’s team specializes in helping scaling Shopify brands get to the root of technical chaos—those “duct tape” solutions, clashing apps, and homegrown workarounds that work… until they don’t. If your store feels a bit buggier, slower, or just harder to operate as you grow, this episode is your roadmap to getting operationally lean again—before Q4 hits and every conversion counts.

Paolo shares real-world examples from his agency’s work: migrating brands in and out of headless, troubleshooting mysterious checkout bugs, and auditing countless tech stacks where everyone forgot why an app or workaround even exists. The conversation covers not just fixes, but how to future-proof your stack as AI, low-code tools, and ever-shifting Shopify features accelerate both opportunity and risk.

Check out his YouTube channel here for more strategies!

Reach out to us! We welcome questions and comments about this episode. Connect with us here or through our socials — your feedback is always welcome.

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook

For more ecommerce, marketing, and growth strategies, check out the eCommerce Fastlane Insights Blog.

Welcome back to eCommerce Fastlane! Here's a painful reality that's quietly killing Shopify brands: you're spending thousands driving traffic to your store, but 98% of those visitors are complete ghosts.

They browse, they leave, and you have zero way to bring them back—while your competitors who've cracked visitor identification are building massive email lists from the exact same traffic.

If you're feeling the squeeze of rising acquisition costs while retention gets tougher thanks to the cookie apocalypse, this episode is your wake-up call.

My guest today is Liam Millward, Co-Founder and CEO of Instant. After working with 1,000+ Shopify brands—including headliners like Liquid I.V., July Luggage, and The Oodie—Liam's team has cracked the code on turning "anonymous" traffic into high-ROI repeat customers.

While most brands are still playing the "pray they come back" game with tools that identify maybe 5% of visitors, Instant routinely identifies 40-60%—turning anonymous browsers into revenue-generating customers. We're talking about brands like July Luggage adding $1.2M in incremental revenue in just 10 months, and College & Co seeing 62x ROI in their first 30 days.

Today, Liam reveals why most retention solutions are leaving money on the table, how AI-powered flows are eliminating the manual email grind, and why the brands implementing smarter identification now are building unfair advantages for Q4—while their competitors will be fighting for scraps from traffic they can't even track.

Check out his YouTube channel here for more strategies!

Reach out to us! We welcome questions and comments about this episode. Connect with us here or through our socials — your feedback is always welcome.

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook

For more ecommerce, marketing, and growth strategies, check out the eCommerce Fastlane Insights Blog.

Welcome back to eCommerce Fastlane! Here's a story that might sound familiar: you're spending $10,000+ a month on ads, traffic looks solid, but somehow you're barely breaking even. Sound familiar?

The hard truth is that most Shopify merchants don't realize they have a revenue leak problem. While you're obsessing over getting more traffic, your store is quietly bleeding money through hidden conversion killers and psychological friction points that drive customers away.

I see it every BFCM season—brands celebrate stellar top-line numbers only to discover their net profit has vanished into the red. The real challenge isn't getting more eyeballs; it's plugging the invisible leaks that are costing you thousands every month.

My guest today is Matt Stafford, Managing Partner at Build Grow Scale. Matt's been in the trenches for nearly 30 years, scaling multiple 7- and 8-figure brands and helping close to a thousand founders break through growth plateaus. But here's what makes him different: he doesn't just tweak conversion rates—he decodes the psychology behind why people buy and why they don't.

Matt learned this the hard way. After selling $15 million in t-shirts, he launched a kitchen gadgets store that was crushing it at 100-200 sales per day...until it suddenly wasn't. Orders dropped to 30-40 per day, and with hundreds of thousands in inventory on the way, he had to figure it out fast.

That crisis became his breakthrough—and today, he's going to share the frameworks that can help you stop the bleeding and start scaling profitably.

Check out his YouTube channel here for more strategies!

Reach out to us! We welcome questions and comments about this episode. Connect with us here or through our socials — your feedback is always welcome.

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook

For more ecommerce, marketing, and growth strategies, check out the eCommerce Fastlane Insights Blog.

Welcome back to eCommerce Fastlane! Today, we're tackling the hidden growth killer that's sabotaging even the best DTC brands—and most founders don't see it coming until it's too late.

You know the story: you've nailed product-market fit, your marketing is humming, orders are pouring in... then everything falls apart. Split shipments eat your margins. Inventory nightmares unfold. Customer complaints spike. And suddenly, you're drowning in operational chaos instead of celebrating growth.

Here's the thing most brands miss: those first warning signs are almost invisible. You start solving fulfillment problems with your leadership's time—founders manually fixing orders, ops managers chasing inventory issues. You're reacting instead of scaling, and that's where growth stalls.

My guest today is Aras Kolya, Chief Revenue Officer at ShipMonk, one of America's fastest-growing 3PLs that's doing things radically differently. While most 3PLs are just brokers stitching together fulfillment networks with middleware, ShipMonk is what Aras calls a "tech-enabled operator"—they own their warehouses, control their labor, and run their entire technology stack under one roof.

Their proprietary four-in-one platform combines warehouse management, order management, inventory systems, and transportation optimization into a single, real-time control tower. And here's why this matters: they're not just moving boxes—they're helping brands like Dr. Squatch scale from startup to 8-figure powerhouse without hitting that invisible ceiling.

If you're spending all your energy on acquisition but ignoring the post-click experience, you're leaving money on the table. Because as Aras puts it: "Fulfillment IS marketing." It's the fuel that feeds conversion, retention, and lifetime value—and most brands are getting it dead wrong.

Check out his YouTube channel here for more strategies!

Reach out to us! We welcome questions and comments about this episode. Connect with us here or through our socials — your feedback is always welcome.

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook

For more ecommerce, marketing, and growth strategies, check out the eCommerce Fastlane Insights Blog.

Welcome back to eCommerce Fastlane! Today, we're diving deep into the evolving world of eCommerce SEO—and trust me, the game has completely changed in 2025.

Joining me is Jeff Oxford, founder and CEO of 180 Marketing, an eCommerce SEO agency that's delivered an average ROI of 874% across their client base. Jeff isn't just talking theory—he's managed over 300 eCommerce SEO campaigns and runs his own dropshipping store, so he knows exactly what it takes to scale organic traffic that actually converts.

Here's what makes this episode critical: while everyone's panicking about AI "killing" SEO, Jeff reveals why eCommerce SEO is actually the highest-ROI marketing channel for Shopify brands—and how the rise of ChatGPT product carousels, AI overviews, and generative search is creating massive new opportunities for brands that know how to adapt.

Whether you're watching your organic traffic plateau or wondering how to get your products featured in AI-driven shopping results, this episode gives you the exact playbook to dominate organic search in an AI-first world.

Check out his YouTube channel here for more strategies!

Reach out to us! We welcome questions and comments about this episode. Connect with us here or through our socials — your feedback is always welcome.

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook

For more ecommerce, marketing, and growth strategies, check out the eCommerce Fastlane Insights Blog.

Welcome back to eCommerce Fastlane! Today, we’re spotlighting a marketing channel that’s quietly dominating Europe, Australia, and beyond—but is still underused in North America: WhatsApp marketing.

While most Shopify brands are stuck battling expensive Facebook ads and crowded email inboxes, a new frontier is emerging that offers 80–90% open rates and instant, conversational engagement.

To break down this opportunity, I’m joined by Jeremy Horowitz, CEO of CocoAI. Jeremy’s background in private equity, Shopify app acquisitions, and international DTC growth gives him a unique vantage point on why WhatsApp is poised to become the next big wave for Shopify merchants—especially as brands look to expand internationally and leverage AI-powered automation.

If you’re ready to move beyond traditional channels and tap into a high-value, conversational approach to commerce, this episode is your playbook for getting started.

Check out his YouTube channel here for more strategies!

Reach out to us! We welcome questions and comments about this episode. Connect with us here or through our socials — your feedback is always welcome.

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook

For more ecommerce, marketing, and growth strategies, check out the eCommerce Fastlane Insights Blog.