Ryan

E-commerce agency (Hey Frankie) founder. Working with 7-9 figure brands on Shopify. Founder of a 12+ year old brand. Shark Tank alum. NY'er. Dad.

[Ryan @ryanshell]

E-commerce is full of bad advice and empty promises.

I learned that the hard way.

12+ years ago, I built my own brand from scratch—no investors, no shortcuts, just relentless testing to figure out what actually worked.

I scaled it, took it to Shark Tank, and kept pushing. But, like most founders, I needed help along the way.

So I hired agencies. Every single one fell short. Big promises, underwhelming results—the same song and dance.

Instead of looking for a better agency, I built the one I always wished existed.

Now? The results speak for themselves.

One brand we’ve worked with for four years (when’s the last time you worked with an agency that long?) was stuck at $5 million in revenue—plateaued, no real momentum.

In our first year together, they hit $33 million. Today? They’re a nine-figure brand.

Another client, an organic skincare company, saw a 320% revenue increase after we took over paid ads and retention marketing.

We don’t just sell strategies—we test them, refine them, and prove they work.

E-commerce is brutal. Even when you do everything “right,” you can still feel stuck. But when you finally break through—when the numbers climb, customers return, and the business actually scales—that’s what makes it all worth it.

And our operating system? It's called No B.S.

[Ryan @ryanshell]

Quick share. Haven't seen this approach mentioned anywhere yet.

Disclaimer: I'm not a developer. If you've got a smarter way to do this, I want to hear it.

Here's the problem I was solving. I run a lot of Claude projects. Claude's built-in memory (referring to standard chats) helps, but it hits a wall fast. Project files work too, but only if you remember to update them. I don't.

So, a few weeks ago, I connected Supabase to my Claude chats (not Claude Code).

Now every project feeds into a single table. Entries are organized by project. Learnings, fixes, and process improvements all get logged automatically. I added one line to each project's instructions so Claude knows to write to Supabase and check it before starting certain conversations.

The result: no more banging my head on the wall because one chat doesn't know what I told another chat nine minutes ago.

You can do the same thing with Google Drive. I went with Supabase because I already use it, and Drive had a few drawbacks for this use case.

If you've got a better setup, let me know.

[Ryan @ryanshell]

A jewelry client spent $100,000 on a custom website.

Six months later, they were considering going back to their old Shopify theme.

Over the previous two years, I'd offered them two free redesign options, both built on their existing infrastructure, both targeting the exact friction points hurting their conversions. Nothing revolutionary. Just the right fixes in the right places.

They passed on both.

They wanted the full custom build. The development agency promised a "revolutionary" experience. 

The new site looked incredible. Clean design, fluid animations, premium feel from the first scroll.

But the custom checkout confused returning customers who'd bought from them dozens of times. Load times doubled. Mobile navigation turned into a maze. Every conversion element that had quietly done its job for years was gone, rebuilt from scratch, broken.

Conversion went down, and revenue was impacted.

Here's what I've seen across dozens of ecommerce brands: expensive doesn't mean effective. A $100K price tag feels like progress. It looks like a decision. But conversion optimization isn't about impressing visitors; it's about removing friction from the path to purchase.

Sometimes the highest-ROI move is the boring one. Better hero images. A cleaner checkout. Mobile navigation that actually works. Keep what converts, fix what doesn't.

The most profitable website is the one that gets out of the customer's way.

[Ryan @ryanshell]

A $250k creative versus a $200 UGC ad. 

One of our clients is notorious for big-budget productions. Celebrity partnerships, elaborate shoots, the works. Last quarter, they dropped $250K on a campaign featuring a major influencer.

High production value. Professional lighting. Multiple outfit changes. The works.

Around that same time, we also received a new UGC asset that cost around $200. Just a real person, talking to their phone, explaining why they love the product.

Guess which one performed better?

The UGC destroyed the celebrity campaign. Not by a little, by a lot. Better click-through rates, lower cost per acquisition, and higher conversion rates across the board.

The client's first reaction was a touch of rage and a pinch of disbelief. Then they realized, "We can save an enormous amount of money!"

This happens more than you'd think. Brands chase the shiny object while the simple, authentic content quietly outperforms everything else.

The algorithm doesn't care about your production budget. It cares about stopping the scroll and driving action.

Sometimes the best creative is just someone being real about your product.

[Ryan @ryanshell]

@bandholz @chrislukehall What would you change?

[Ryan @ryanshell]

@mannybarbas_ What did you do to cause the reset? Sorry to hear you have to deal with that. Painful.

[Ryan @ryanshell]

@levelsio @matthewmillerai Now if he can just take care of the chord management situation.

[Ryan @ryanshell]

A broken email flow can quietly kill conversions.

Picture this: a shopper visits a website, signs up for a 20% discount, and heads to checkout, only to find the code never arrived. No welcome email, no promo, just silence. Hours later, still nothing. Meanwhile, three abandoned cart emails show up, two of them a minute apart.

What happens next? Does the sale go through? Or does frustration lead to an abandoned cart for good?

This isn’t just a hypothetical; it actually happened. And it reveals exactly where brands go wrong with their email automation. More below.

https://t.co/RJUCCuxH1y

[Ryan @ryanshell]

Three Shopify mistakes that tons of brands (even big ones) make that are easy to fix.

[Ryan @ryanshell]

Saks has an easy-to-fix revenue leak, but they probably don't even know it.

[Ryan @ryanshell]

Did BEIS mess up by sending an email with a controversial subject line that potentially eroded consumer trust?

[Ryan @ryanshell]

Does anyone know why car dealer marketing is so impressively bad?

[Ryan @ryanshell]

A bunch of small mistakes can add up to big losses. Here's an example of an e-commerce email marketing mistake that a lot of brands make.

[Ryan @ryanshell]

Everyone has e-commerce rookie stories. Here's one that started with someone yelling at me to convince me to create a Black Friday offer... and resulted in over $100k in revenue by noon.

[Ryan @ryanshell]

Here’s a Black Friday marketing secret that… really isn’t a secret or rocket science, but so many e-commerce brands get it wrong.

[Ryan @ryanshell]

Should brands require consumers to use a code for big holiday promotions such as Black Friday, or should the discount be automatically applied? One of the ways will definitely help increase conversions and create a better shopping experience.

[Ryan @ryanshell]

Simple Shopify e-commerce website mistakes can be costly during Black Friday and the broader holiday shopping period. Here's a miss from the brand WISKII.

[Ryan @ryanshell]

@arihappywick Congratulations. What's your most immediate point of focus?

[Ryan @ryanshell]

People spend lots of time talking about Facebook ads, email marketing, the new Widgetizer 9000 and more… while ignoring e-commerce infrastructure items that can dramatically impact revenue. Here’s an example from @JanSport. There’s no telling how long it’s been like this.

[Ryan @ryanshell]

Toyota had the hype, but they messed up on one crucial thing and it's impacting success with the new 4-Runner.

[Ryan @ryanshell]

Dear Business Owners, your content doesn't have to be perfect. While you are perfecting, others are creating and leaving you behind.