In today’s Woo AgencyChat, host Robert Jacobi chats with Cody Landefeld from Mode Effect.
In the conversation, Cody discusses the evolution of Mode Effect from a WooCommerce-focused company to a full-service ecommerce agency, offering technical and marketing support to e-commerce stores.
He emphasizes the importance of treating customers well and investing in the team for the growth of an agency.
On the technical side of things, Cody also shares the significance of understanding Google Analytics, leveraging email automation, and using tools like Active Campaign and High Level for cart abandonment.
He does add a warning against relying solely on social media platforms for business and encourages store owners to become subject matter experts in what they’re selling.
Looking into the future, Cody predicts that AI will play a significant role in online shopping, with devices becoming more accessible and socially acceptable.
Show Transcript
Robert:
Hi, and welcome to another Woo AgencyChat. This is Robert Jacobi, missing the wonderful Robbie Adair today. But we do have Cody Landefeld from Mode Effect as our guest. This is really exciting. We’re all in Phoenix in separate rooms, in separate hotels and locations in the weird, small wildness of what’s WordPress and agency life and all that. How are you doing, Cody?
Cody:
I’m doing fine. How are you doing?
Robert:
Excellent. I’m enjoying. Well, it’s pretty much the same weather as is back in Chicago, so weird weather this year. Let’s run crazy. Let’s get a good rundown of Mode Effect and what you have been up to you and your team in the WooCommerce space.
Cody:
Yeah, well, I mean the mission really is just to serve our clients as best we can. And when I say clients, I mean e-commerce stores ranging from two to $10 million kind of in that sweet spot for us. We help folks with just helping them on the technical side, marketing side, just really a holistic approach to serving them and helping their stores thrive and do well. And me personally, I just have been sort of heads down with making sure that we have a good team that’s well prepared to be able to serve our clients, and also just making sure that we have all of the well run resources and client support and whatnot. I wear a lot of hats, so I’m certain with clients and all that fun stuff.
Robert:
So is this, because I’ve known you and Mode Effect for a while where it was we’re a WooCommerce development firm, is this full agency thing sort, not necessarily brand new, but an outgrowth of first starting out very focused on WooCommerce?
Cody:
Yeah, so going back to about 2017, 2018, we primarily were fully in the WordPress WooCommerce space. That’s all we did everything in PHP. And then I met my partner John Morrison in about 2017 in that timeframe. And he was actually a competitor of mine. And he ran a shop that primarily did a esp.net, storefront.net e-commerce CMS system, whatnot. And he was starting to compete with me in the WooCommerce space. And what had happened was we became aware of each other, started talking and then started collaborating a little bit on some projects because while he had a strong senior team on the net side, the staffing of the WooCommerce side was a little bit of a challenge, whereas we had been in that market and that game for quite a while. So we sort of joined forces organically and started to see a real opportunity for us to partner up.
And then that became a journey of just, I’d say about three, four years of running alongside each other. And then in 2020 we merged our companies, which was at the time Morrison Consulting. And then my company was Modif Effect. And then at that time, we sort of became all one conglomerate, which is still mode effect, but the makeup of our team is, we still have a T net side to our agency and then we have a WooCommerce side to our agency and we’ve got some folks that we help with Shopify. I hope it’s okay to say that on the Do the Woo podcast. We very much are in the WooCommerce, we care about that space and we do a lot for our customers and still see that as absolutely our, if not our largest, one of our largest opportunities for growth. But we truly are an e-commerce firm.
That’s who we know, who we serve, who we know best, and yeah, that’s it. And then, I dunno, I’m kind of rambling or going on a long way of explaining, but the outgrowth, like you were mentioning, sort of getting into digital marketing that’s come as a way of recognizing our customers. Like I mentioned in that revenue space of say two to 10 million, somewhere in there, that sweet spot, what we’ve realized is that these particular clients are not especially thrilled with the folks that they use for digital marketing. So it just naturally came as a reach out from them and kind of a curiosity from us to say, Hey, what are you doing over here with your Google Analytics? Who’s helping you with your SEO? Have you seen that you’re running Google Ads and there’s sort of some disparity between what you’re paying and what you’re getting on conversions.
So there’s been a little bit of a curiosity of our to scratch at that as well as clients just naturally being a little unsatisfied and asking us about it. So in addition to our T net team and our PHP team, we’ve grown a new business unit for marketing and that’s been going really well. Excited to help clients like I mentioned before, in a holistic way as it relates to their e-commerce as far as attracting traffic, converting it, and making sure that we continue to nurture customers and create future opportunities for growth on their stores. So I
Robert:
Remember a time where full service agencies were sort of vaulting and keeping whatever core competency they had and then just working on a partner to partner basis. So if they were a technical agency, they work with graphics and design or search engine marketing or content teams totally separate that are totally separate businesses. You’ve evolved into a full service agency. Do you see pros and cons for both kinds of operations?
Cody:
Not yet. I think so far it’s only been a pro for us because while our marketing business unit is small, it’s helped us learn more about marketing on the development side and then also more about development in the marketing unit. So it’s just been good because I think part of that is just we’re very disciplined in the type of customer we serve, which is online stores. We are always kind of in those same conversations. People are pretty woven together and conversations and clients and accounts. So it’s not very siloed in the sense of participation. And so far it’s been pretty much all pros. I mean, I haven’t seen many really that I can think of or name right now.
Robert:
So there’s no trade off on making sure you have all that staffing. The first thing that comes to mind is that a staffing expense of keeping a full team is different than being a little more flexible with partnering ad hoc.
Cody:
It’s been a stretch. I mean, I think for us it’s all been organic. There hasn’t been a sit down to say we have to hire five marketing people and then we have to pound the pavement and find clients to satisfy that. It’s been very steadily steady organic growth for us, and we’ve been really just focused on our current development clients serving them. So that’s been, I think it’s really just a benefit to how my partners built this business previously with just the structure in which targets or clients we targeted and the trust we built with them over the years and then recognizing there’s an opportunity to step into that marketing space and help them with other services that really will be a benefit to their business. So I don’t know. I mean, I feel like, yeah, I hear you. I hear those things all the time, but for us, I feel like it’s been only been a value add for our customers so far.
Robert:
No, that’s great to hear. So I’m going to have to ask on behalf of the audience, what are the nice steps, I dunno if they’re easy or difficult to take to get to the position since you’re already seven plus years into this to help them become as successful.
Cody:
I think it’s just familiarizing yourself well, so are you talking about for store owners or agency owners?
Robert:
For agency owner source? We’ll get to the stores very soon, but on the agency side, if you have a team of three people right now, how do you look to what are the critical next steps to get it to Mode Effect level?
Cody:
Yeah, right. So I honestly think it has to do with just treating your customers like gold, earning trust with your customers, looking to offer value as much as you can above your own, really above your own health and your profit. So to say those things are obviously necessary to be in business, but really showing your customers that you care and showing and treating them well and earning trust is going to go so far because for us, we’ve been fortunate to keep some clients over 10 years, and I mean even extremely large clients over 10 years, which is just unheard of. And that just comes to showing that we’ve done everything we can to treat them well and add value to them. So I think that’s first and foremost, number one. Number two would be really making sure that you care for the folks that you work with, making sure that you invest in them, making sure you recognize them, making sure you support them in every which way you can professionally and even personally. I mean I think there’s space to make sure that you have empathy and you have a genuine care for what’s going on in their lives. So I think really it’s kind of like that one and two, taking care of your clients. You don’t have a business without clients. And then two, just making sure your team is well taken care of. And then those are sort of the one and two of what I would say is most important for a baseline of an agency’s growth.
Robert:
Perfect. Now let’s get to the store side. So if you are that small store selling on the S word or some other platform, no, we can say Shopify. I don’t think Bob’s going to bleep those words out because obviously Shopify had huge growth during the pandemic and it’s become a name folks know. So I got a bunch of questions around that. I guess the first one will be regardless of store platform, whether it’s WooCommerce or something else, what are the key things that a store owner should look to do right away? And let’s say this is a very small shop, we’re talking $10,000 a month in revenue.
Cody:
I think just recognizing the below hanging fruit you have to take advantage of as it relates to your website, for instance, I think it astounds me how many people don’t understand analytics, especially at that level and they’re just really making it their mission to familiarize themselves with sort of the baseline things you need to know as it relates to good website, health core web vitals, Google Analytics, everything that relates to your webmaster settings and just overall health of your website, your speed, just making sure that you’re heading in the right direction as it relates to how your website functions. Are you missing opportunities? Are you not nurturing customers? Do you have an email list? I think email list is another thing that’s so huge. That’s another thing. I get on calls with stores of all sizes every single day, and one of the things that I recognize oftentimes is just how much of a missed opportunity email automation is.
It’s like it’s either buy from me or don’t buy from me. Like listen, it’s imperatives to make sure that you capture somebody you with whatever small information they’re going to give and reward them for that information, whether it’s a coupon or it’s just value and email or whatever. Because if they’re not buying today, they can buy next week, next month, or maybe even in a year. I have no idea what you’re selling, but you have to build an you to do something. So I think those are the two things I would say are very important. Making sure that you just familiarize yourself with those baseline things and then email, email is just so important.
Robert:
And what are you seeing with regards to sort of all the tracking around that? Obviously third party cookies are disappearing, all that cookie madness is going away, cookie getin, as I’ve heard some people call it, do you need to be tracking all those reads and clickthroughs as well, or is it just good enough to get the information out there?
Cody:
I do think you have to understand a baseline like listen, I know the avatar we work with, nobody’s going to be able to be a deep student, like a very experienced student of all things as it relates to information gathering and Google and trends and whatnot. I think it’s just good to have a high level awareness of those things and then understand where your deficiencies are and then also have a game plan for how you’re going to meet those deficiencies. And then not only deficiencies, but opportunities and opportunities are very important as it relates to say, yeah, on the information email gathering side. It’s like that’s such a huge opportunity for store owners just to get people known to people. You can take a list and you can familiarize an audience on social media and you can go to search and you can go and utilize that so well to just become known and stay in front of people. Really.
Robert:
Gotcha. So for some of the more technical things like handling cart abandonment and all of that, what are some suggestions you put out there for stores?
Cody:
So we use a tool that uses their email automation to do that, and I almost sound like I’m the email guy now pounding the deck, talking about email or something. I mean, it really has to do again with email, getting somebody in there if there’s any capture of email, we can chase them down on abandoned cart, offer them some type of a discount to come back and finish their checkout. And I can’t tell you with stores of a certain size how valuable that is to do abandoned cart. And that’s another one. I mean, like I said, stores not leveraging those low hanging fruit opportunities just to bring in more conversions and revenue and capture the audience that they either already have or could have with the eyeballs that are actually hitting their website. Ben abandoned car is huge, huge opportunity for a store of the size, like you mentioned.
Robert:
So we’re here to educate folks. So I’m not going to let you off the hook by saying we use a tool. What tool do you use?
Cody:
So we use two, we use Active Campaign. Okay. And we used High Level as well.
Robert:
Oh, I have not heard of High Level. I know ActiveCampaign. Well, they’re local when I’m home firm. No, that’s excellent. Well, let’s run with that since we love to do these sort of ad hoc. What other mission critical tools can store owners either somehow take advantage of either internally or obviously more helpful with an agency who knows how to use those tools? What else besides one of these car abandonment email tools?
Cody:
It depends on the store size. On the larger size, I’ve started to see some of our larger clients that’s running subscriptions get a lot of value out of using Metorik. That’s been a very valuable tool kind of on the high end for stores that are a little bit larger, kind of in that approaching eight figures, they’ve gotten a lot of value out of using that tool sort of as a separate component. Let’s say ships station’s really important. A lot of the stores that come to us are doing a lot of shipping of their products and ShipStation is still one of those really important tools that runs kind of parallel to the website and helps people not go crazy managing their shipping. And that’s actually kind of like a smaller topic. I think WooCommerce, the admin can be an impediment to people at a certain size feeling like their store is just kind of a bear to do all of their sort of operations within.
If you’re in there managing fulfillment and you’re doing all of those things, I think at a certain size store slowness can become a component of, or just even the enormity of what’s in your store for your staff. You sort of want to take away that overwhelm and point them towards an external tool like ShipStation or Metorik or whatnot. So those are two. And then for smaller folks, I mean just again, familiarizing yourself. Make yourself a student of Google Analytics, understand the type of traffic you’re getting and you’re not getting understand why people aren’t sticking around. I think that’s just, it’s insane how people just are, store owners particularly are not making themselves students of understanding what behavior happens on their website and what missed opportunities they have and what opportunities they have. I just think that’s of a smaller size, that’s something you should know extremely well.
And then of course, mixed in there is your email. Talk to your audience, make sure you’re constantly in front of them. I mean, I really feel like what’s interesting about email is you see certain retailers are sending daily emails. I mean, of course if you’re in the $10,000 a month range and you sell one product or maybe two products, I could see how that’s a challenge to talk to your audience every single day. But what’s the limit of what you can talk about? Start thinking about content, start thinking about what your audience cares about and start engaging them. Make it your goal to not only stay in front of them, but to be known by them and care them and show that by ways of reaching out to them and adding value, whether that’s always going to be a sales driven tactic or it’s just going to be a touch a point and that, I promise you, that does move the needle.
Robert:
So focus on really becoming a subject matter expert in whatever you’re selling. Yeah,
Cody:
Absolutely.
Robert:
So interestingly, I did not hear you say in the last been on for almost half an hour plus or minus anything about social media?
Cody:
Yeah, well, I think I would say social media is pretty assumed in my instance. And yeah, good point. Good call out. Media is important. I see that as kind of almost similar to email. Social media is a very important part of what they’re doing, especially Instagram. It’s insane how integrated you can make your Instagram with your online store these days. I mean, how many stores do I know that exclusively do or have some sort of their inventory all showing up on Instagram and you can basically complete a checkout on there. So I think that’s important. I think Instagram really moves the needle. TikTok moves the needle. I got to say, man, I got four kids and I’m in my early forties, and so I’m like a dinosaur out here when it comes to TikTok and some of the social media stuff, man. So I’m not out here on those social media networks spending a lot of time, but I can see how it’s valuable and important for a lot of stores. So yeah, good call out. I think I’m used to talking about things that we provide services for. We don’t yet offer much for social media here.
Robert:
Great. I’m liking this thread here because there’s a sense that the TikToks and Instagrams, and I’m going to add s to all the social medias of the world, are looking to capture the entire experience within their platform. If someone says, I’m just going to build my entire shop and life on Instagram, what can WooCommerce folks say, this is why you shouldn’t do that. What are the pros and cons of working with WooCommerce versus just saying, you know what, I’m going to sell T-shirts on Instagram. How do you make that conversation happen, I guess?
Cody:
Well, I think it’s a mistake. Build anything on a rented platform. So I mean, in a brick and mortar sense, you could set up in a suite and go month to month or sign a two year lease, and when that second year is up, they could decide, we don’t want to renew it because we don’t like you. Or there’s something that’s out of your hands essentially. But even more so on a digital platform, say anything on social media, I think it’s tricky to be able to just solely depend on that as your platform. I think you have to go back to the hub and spoke method. Your website’s really the hub and those social media outlets, the emails, any of your ads or anything, those are really the spokes of the wheel, so to say. So it’s great to leverage social media in some type of setting.
I see it all the time on Instagram where certain stores are making it so easy to get a product, see it in a link, even buy it on Instagram, but they’re just as diligent. I mean far more diligent on their website and constantly bringing people back through SMS or email or social media and whatnot. But it all comes back to the website eventually. So it’s sort of in a micro instance, I think that’s probably the best strategy to not put all of your eggs in one basket. Again, hub and spoke, but your mileage may vary depending on which particular industry you’re in or what you’re selling. I think it’s important to really think through what are your competitors doing? What do they have success in doing So to say what do they seemingly have success in doing on Instagram, you can at least go on there or really any of the social platforms, you can see what’s getting good engagement by likes or whatnot.
Even if that is inflated, you can see what could be really getting a lot of eyeballs and see if you can replicate some of those things by taking some of the things on your website and creating sort of a micro instance or a micro experience on social media. So that’s sort of the way I would advise somebody to go with it, never just stay and build it all on a social media platform, sort of like I think WooCommerce is such a good platform because our customers that run WooCommerce are so very loyal to the platform and very understanding of why they are here, and it just really makes sense because it is sort of an ownership type of situation with open source and knowing that you can control your destiny and knowing you can extend it and whatnot. And I think that a lot of that lends itself to why a website is very important as a hub instead of a web or instead of a social media network being a hub, so to say.
Robert:
So yeah, publish once, repurpose everywhere else.
Cody:
Yes,
Robert:
I’m happy that we’ve gone so far, but I’m going to save it for last because if we don’t talk about it, we won’t talk about it. AI and WooCommerce, what does that look like in the next six months and in the next three years?
Cody:
I’m going to do the ostrich routine and just put my head in the I. Ever since I saw Terminator two, I was way too freaked out to acknowledge ai. I think AI is just, we’re sort of at the, I don’t know, it’s the first scene in the movie, first scene in a first chapter of the book, so to say. I think the opportunity for, I want to say that AI is going to really be a huge outgrowth and a huge opportunity for store owners. And I think right now what we’re seeing is just sort of that first application is on chatbots and sort of having that somewhat customized experience or that friendly experience with having some type of a shopping assistant. You think about what Apple has put out with the Vision Pro, I think that is going to be an opportunity for people to easily buy things.
For instance, I know we right now are looking at people on social media, out in public with Vision Pro and think, oh my God, this just looks ridiculous. But I promise you, I promise you, it will become more fashionable and more acceptable. And what’s going to happen is you’re going to see something more like you saw in Minority Report, you’re going to be walking by the store or driving by a place and you’re going to be able to be aware of something that interests you and something will retarget you. Can you imagine either riding a bike, driving a car, or walking by a store or just seeing something you’re watching on a video and it will sort of call to mind or allow you to bookmark something of interest, and then we’ll start to kind of feather in some of those products you might be interested in from that certain brand or whatnot.
I think that’s kind of the future of how it’s going to go with brands and AI and online shopping, just making it so much easier for it to be in our subconscious and our conscience with the devices that we use. And whether it’s a screen, whether it’s some type of thing we wear, something we listen to. I think that’s just going to become something that just allows us to be more, or rather stores to become more sticky to us. So that’s kind of the way I see it going in the future, and that’s going to be something that is probably leveraged through ar, augmented reality or even virtual reality and just more and more opportunities for advertisers to grab you. I mean, just a small example of that, it’s not really ai, but when you’re on Peacock watching a show, when you pause the screen, they’re hitting you with an ad, but take that to another level, and if you see something and it allows you to bookmark something of interest in your brain or in something that always is connecting to you, then it makes it so much easier for brands to kind of target you and sell to you or whatnot.
I don’t know, that’s sort of off the top of my head where I could see it’s going and where I think there’s opportunities, but I think that’s going to continue unfold with how accessible devices become and how sort of more things become more socially acceptable. It’s kind of like Google Glass too, you know what I’m saying?
Robert:
That’s what I was thinking. And there were some fun words for that as well.
Cody:
Right? So it’s funny is look at how ridiculous and heavy that Vision Pro is. I mean, it’s just well designed as it can be. I mean, it’s not, and again, people make fun of it and it’s like, oh, look at these guys with their mouth open in public and look at how ridiculous they look before it. It’s just going to be contact lenses and you’re not going to be able to distinguish that and think about what Elon Musk is making with Neuralink. That’s going to be a game changer. There’s actually a bit by the comedian I saw where he is like, man, this is going to be terrible. He is like, all it’s going to be is like, well, it’s like everybody gets the chip in their head. They’re going to have all their memories behind a paywall. Now it’s like this memory is brought to you by Burger King or whatnot.
Robert:
Well, in that augmented privacy and paranoid future, I’m just going to be slightly terrified
Cody:
It’s coming, man. The younger the generations get, they don’t care about who has their information, and it’s fascinating that you, just fascinating to me watching human behavior. You look at, I think you and I are probably of a similar age.
Robert:
I’m happy to be called to my early forties, so thank you, Cody.
Cody:
All right, take it. But we watch videos of people on social media having to say everything to everybody on your network and crying or just talking to an audience or venting to an audience, and I’m just like, yeah, I guess at my age and in my generation, I don’t feel like I need to do that, but every younger generation has grown up without not knowing a world without that. I can remember a world without the internet, and my youngest, she can’t even imagine a world. She didn’t even know what an iPod is.
Robert:
Oh my gosh.
Cody:
Yeah. Like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. But my point being is to them, it’s like there’s kids that are being born now that they won’t even know world without AR or VR or any of those things. So I guess the point being is while you, and I think that’s crazy, thinking about some type of ad being driven that’s going through your head or in your eyes or whatnot, it’s definitely a lot of things that we can see becoming more commonplace.
Robert:
I’ll be at least excited to see what that future looks like. Cody, thank you so much. What are the best ways to get ahold of you in whatever reality we’re in?
Cody:
You can always go to modif effect.com, M-O-D-E-E-F-F-E-C t.com and email straightaway. I think there’s links to all of our socials as well. And then I’m at CodyL on most of the socials as well.
Robert:
And what’s your augmented reality phone number? No, I’m kidding. Cody, thanks so much. This went from, and this is why I love the Woo AgencyChat. We start with the basics and then we end up in a future that could be fantastic or completely dystopian, depending on your views. Thank you so much, Cody.
Cody:
Yeah, thanks. Pleasure.