Selling to e-commerce owners (product almost there, looking for tips)

Dear Bootstrapers,

This is my second approach to turning a side project into a business. So far I’ve fared much better than last time.

In short, I’m fixing broken product pages & sold out items in any e-commerce site. I learned that while e-commerce owners might not be familiar with what UX is - they are definitely aware of the issues that arise when potential customers land on expired/broken pages. This is particularly true in the fashion vertical where plenty of traffic is driven by social media and one cannot predict/control how long a link will ‘stay fresh’.

I’m currently pursuing a typical sales funnel - I’m using my network and cold calling web-shops to land meetings to talk about the problem and present my solution.

As you might have guessed, trust is of paramount issue here, I’m aiming for directly sparking interest of potential partners over phone or by being introduced. I have the impression that my web-presence (Keepleads) is not a problem yet, because of word-of-mouth. Hopefully by the end of the year a medium-sized shop will have tested out my solution live, so then I have hard facts (stats) and arguments (references) to land more meetings.

Was anyone in a similar situation selling to this particular audience? Any insider tips? Should I pursue social media presence on LinkedIn? Any books/courses I should read? I doubt that targeted advertising would work, but I’m open to ideas.

Obvious next step seems to be integration with the major ecommerce platforms. Personally I 100% focus on Shopify and it’s worth it.

Thanks for answering. Are you suggesting Shopify integration as a sales channel - using their markeplace to gain visibility - or a Shopify integration for the value in it itself?

Yes. Shopify has 300K shops on its platform, 70% of those shops install at least one app. My sales have come exclusively from Shopify app store. The easy days are over (the gold rush was 2-3 years ago) but if your app can get past initial traction in the store it’s still a solid distribution channel.