Launched in 2017, Kabana Shop designs and sells resort wear inspired by incredible places around the world.

It’s one of the projects Pat Racco, owner of Advantage Media Marketing Consulting, is most passionate about as he knows the owners well, was involved right at the start and is a bit of a globe trotter himself.

Pat reached out last year requesting help to make Kabana Shop load faster and after the original hosting provider was experiencing ongoing issues: “Plugins are not the issue. We are experiencing very high TTFB, about 6-7 secs.”

We quickly migrated it to a Dedicated Server and worked with Pat to fine-tune performance, resulting in a speedy online store and a better user experience.

A quick intro: Who are you and what’s your background?

My name is Pat Racco; I’m the founder of Advantage Media Marketing Consulting. Over the years, I’ve helped businesses achieve their financial goals through digital marketing and advertising. Amongst all the clients, there’s one that is in my heart… an exceptional one.

It’s called Kabana Shop and there are many reasons why I think it’s unique.

First of all, I was involved at the very start when Kabana was just an idea.

Secondly, the fashion industry is incredibly challenging and fast-paced, pushing you to meet and break your boundaries. Which is what I like the most about my business.

Third, we had huge ups and downs since we launched the company, but we always found a way out and came back stronger than before.

Tell us about Kabana – when was the brand launched and what is your mission?

The brand launched in August 2017. At Kabana we are travelers. The team has members from all around the world, including Dubai, Hawaii and Italy.

Kabana is resort wear inspired by seeing and experiencing incredible places such as Chile, Balearic Islands, Venezuela.

Even the owners themselves spend a lot of time around the globe in search of inspiration. Most of the time they visit jaw-dropping destinations and incredible cultures.

It’s very satisfying to know that this inspires Kabana and all of its garments.

Who is your target market and what sets you apart?

One of the things I appreciate the most about Kabana is that we have an in-house team of fashion designers. Nothing gets lost in the creative process: the excitement becomes the garment.

Our target is women aged 35+. If I had to describe Kabana in a word I’d say ‘freedom’.

Our garments are for people who enjoy life, who love the ocean and being on holiday.

The beauty of Kabana resides in the brightness of the colours and the balance between styles — sometimes classy, sometimes bohemian… and almost gypsy.

Tell us about your website: was it designed and built internally or did you get help?

As you may have noticed, when I talk about Kabana, I like to use ‘we’ and ‘our’. However, I am an external consultant who runs his own digital marketing business.

I’m the person behind the design and development of the website, as well as advertising and promoting.

What were the main challenges when you built your website and how were they resolved? Any particular aspect of your website that you are most proud of?

Design is such a relative thing. Somebody once said: “Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.”

However, what I’m proud of is speed. The combination of WP Hosting and CloudFlare is a win for us.

You recently migrated to WP Hosting as you were experiencing issues with the previous host. How did these impact conversions and the general customer experience?

We experienced many issues with the previous hosting provider. Not just the website was slow, but our server was not as safe as we wanted it to be.

Implementing Sucuri (although it seems people appreciate it) only made things worse. I found out that if you have an Australian-based server and use a Sucuri firewall, your visitors are redirected to a US IP address, which makes your Aussie website slower.

Website speed was the #1 factors affecting sales.

Speed and security have always been my priorities, not just for Kabana but in general.

How is the WordPress – WooCommerce combo working out for you so far?

I’m a big fan of WordPress and WooCommerce. I use both daily.

I’ve worked with Opencart, Magento, and Prestashop in the past and, in terms of usability, they are light years behind from WooCommerce.

However, to achieve high performance on a WordPress + WooCommerce site, you need to do some work.

Thinking about your marketing can you share any strategies and tactics that have worked particularly well?

Yes, three things work particularly well when it comes to eCommerce business.

For privacy, I won’t share any details or figures about Kabana.

What I can do instead is sharing my best performing eCommerce strategies here:

1. Remarketing campaigns on Facebook/Instagram and Google display advertising network. Remarketing is one of the most powerful tools available today. To put it simply, you invest money only to get back your most valued website visitors. I.E., you can buy ads to only show to people who have added something in their shopping bag. It’s smart marketing. I even dedicated a whole page of my website to remarketing.
2. Cart recovery. Consider that over 98% or your website visitor leave without making a purchase and never come back, unless you invite them to. If you don’t recover abandoned carts, you leave a massive amount of money on the table. To give you an idea, I’m running a campaign for a client that has generated $152,036 in abandoned carts in the last 30 days.Here to find out more about how to recover cart abandonment.
3. Affiliate marketing. It’s been around for ages, but still a few know its real power. Basically, you pay a commission to someone who makes a sale for you. In a nutshell, you pay a percentage of your choice only if you make a sale. Again, smart marketing, or better, efficient marketing.

Apart from a good mailing list, nothing can beat the three above in terms of ROI. Nothing.

Something personal: What’s the best business advice that you have ever received?

I came to Australia in 2013 and started Advantage Media from the ground up. I can fiercely say I made myself from nothing.

Two books are stuck in my head; they’re like a tattoo in my mind.

The first one is ‘CAN’T HURT ME’ by David Goggins. Although it’s not about business, I’m a great believer that when you have a strong personality, you can build a strong business. This book changed my perspective about limits.

The second one is ‘THE BAREFOOT INVESTOR’ by Scott Pape. I became an Australian citizen in 2019, but I bet I know more about Aussie finance than the average person.

The reason I’m answering your question mentioning these two books is that by combining them, I’ve been given the best business advice I could ever get: invest on you, build a long term strategy.

To conclude, what do you hope to achieve in the next 12 months?

Over the years, I’ve gathered so much knowledge about digital marketing that, what I really just need is to get my voice out there. When I talk face-to-face to people, I see the excitement in their eyes, because I show them what’s possible. Things they did not even know they existed become crystal clear.

I’m planning to invest a lot of my time into my business by adding as much value as is humanly possible to my next interlocutors. For example, I plan to offer complete marketing strategies for free. No catch and no BS. Just value. This will certainly help get to know me and my capabilities.

Here you can learn more about Pat Racco.

Very confidently I say I want to grow Advantage Media by a 50% in the next 12 months.

Regarding Kabana, we aim to expand to the US market within the next 3 months. North America will be a big hit for us as we already have a retail presence there, and we know people love our garments.

The aim for the next 12 months is ambitious…double the turnover! I’m not kidding.